By Kiley Kroh
New York governor Andrew Cuomo delivered his State of the State address this week and announced an even greater commitment to clean energy, including $1 billion in new funding for solar energy projects.
Launched in 2012, Cuomo’s NY-Sun Initiative has already been a tremendous success, with almost 300 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaic capacity installed or under development, more than was installed in the entire decade prior to the program. Now with another major financial boost, Cuomo aims to install 3,000 MW of solar across New York.
Solar panel in New York City. Photo credit: VoteSolar.org
“That’s enough solar to power 465,000 New York homes, cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2.3 million tons annually—the equivalent of taking almost 435,000 cars off the road—and create more than 13,000 new solar jobs,” according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In addition to the 10-year financial boost for NY-Sun, Cuomo announced a new program entitled K-Solar, which will incentivize the deployment of solar energy by using the state’s 5,000 schools as “demonstration hubs” to increase the number of solar energy projects in their surrounding communities.
The governor also unveiled the $40 million NY Prize competition, which will bolster community microgrids in the state, helping to make the electrical grid more resilient in the face of increasing extreme weather like Superstorm Sandy. Additionally, Renewable Heat NY will seek to utilize private sector investment to boost biomass heating as a cheaper, renewable alternative to home heating oil.
As Cuomo’s impressive commitment to clean energy pays off in the state’s rapidly growing solar industry, NRDC notes that not only is NY-Sun expanding the marketplace, it has also served to “to drive down the cost of installed solar power by establishing new, cost-effective and efficient practices and technologies.”
Thanks to this suite of forward-thinking policies, New York has skyrocketed through the U.S. solar rankings. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, “with enough solar to power more than 30,900 homes, New York currently ranks 12th in the country for installed solar capacity. There are more than 411 solar companies at work throughout the value chain in New York, employing more than 3,300 people.” And those figures are on the rise. An analysis of clean energy jobs created in the third quarter of 2013 ranked New York third in the U.S., behind only California and Nevada.
Visit EcoWatch’s RENEWABLES page for more related news on this topic.
Trump's Affordable Clean Energy rule eliminated a provision mandating that utilities move away from coal. VisionsofAmerica /Joe Sohm / Getty Images
A federal court on Tuesday struck down the Trump administration's rollback of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
<p>Trump's Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, which was <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/clean-power-plan-trump-epa-2638927020.html" target="_self">finalized</a> by the Environmental Protection Agency (<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa" target="_self">EPA)</a> in 2019, moved away from imposing national limits on greenhouse gas emissions, instead allowing states to set their own. It also did away with a provision mandating that utilities move away from <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal" target="_self">coal</a>. The new rule would have reduced electricity emissions by less than half of what would be necessary to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius and, according to the EPA's initial estimate, would have led to between 470 and 1,400 additional <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/air-pollution" target="_self">air pollution</a> deaths a year by 2030.</p><p>"Despite [EPA Administrator] Andrew Wheeler's frequent protests, the EPA's role is to protect the American people from dangerous pollution and act on the greatest threat to our country: the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a>," Sierra Club Chief Climate Council Joanne Spalding said in a <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2021/01/court-vacates-dirty-power-plan-bookending-trump-administration-s-wide-ranging" target="_blank">statement</a>. "The Dirty Power Plan didn't do either of these things and the court rightly vacated it."</p><p>At stake in Tuesday's decision was the meaning of the Clean Air Act. The Trump EPA argued that the law only allows the agency to limit pollution from individual sources, not across an entire sector, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climate-powerplants/us-court-deals-final-blow-to-trump-epas-clean-power-rule-replacement-idUSKBN29O2BO" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Reuters reported</a>. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed.</p>
<p>"Because the ACE Rule rests squarely on the erroneous legal premise that the statutory text expressly foreclosed consideration of measures other than those that apply at and to the individual source, we conclude that the EPA fundamentally 'has misconceived the law,' such that its conclusion 'may not stand,'" the three-judge panel <a href="http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/files/2021/01/2021.01.19-ACE-Opinion.pdf" target="_blank">ruled</a>.</p><p>Some environmental groups hailed the ruling as a boon to the incoming Biden administration, since they will now have an easier time replacing it, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/01/19/federal-circuit-court-scraps-trump-administration-power-plant-rules/" target="_blank">The Washington Post reported</a>.</p><p>"Today's decision is the perfect Inauguration Day present for America," Environmental Defense Fund Senior Attorney Ben Levitan said in a <a href="https://www.edf.org/media/dc-circuit-strikes-down-trump-administration-repeal-and-replacement-clean-power-plan" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">statement</a>. "It confirms that the Trump administration's dubious attempt to get rid of commonsense limits on climate pollution from power plants was illegal, it reaffirms that the Clean Air Act and the Endangerment Finding are the law of the land, and it restores the vibrancy of the rule of law. Now we can turn to the critically important work of protecting Americans from climate change and creating new clean energy jobs."</p>
<p>However, the Washington Post reported that the Clean Power Plan also ran into legal challenges. When the Trump administration took office, the plan had been put on hold by the Supreme Court while the court battle continued. In a dissent from part of the ruling Tuesday, Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, said the EPA never had the authority to implement the Clean Power Plan either.</p><p>Columbia Law School Professor Michael Gerrard noted that Walker was a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.</p><p>"[The dissent could be a bad sign for how the Supreme Court might rule if these issues ever go there," he told The Washington Post.</p>
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A wild mink in Utah was the first wild animal in the U.S. found with COVID-19. Peter Trimming via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA
By Jonathan Runstadler and Kaitlin Sawatzki
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have found coronavirus infections in pet cats and dogs and in multiple zoo animals, including big cats and gorillas. These infections have even happened when staff were using personal protective equipment.
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<p>More disturbing, in December the United States Department of Agriculture confirmed the first case of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/science/covid-wild-mink-utah.html" target="_blank">wild animal infected with SARS-CoV-2</a>, the virus that causes COVID-19. Researchers found an infected wild mink in Utah near a mink farm with its own COVID-19 outbreak.</p><p>Are humans transmitting this virus to wildlife? If so, what would this mean for wild animals – and people too?</p>
<h2>How Viruses Hop Between Species</h2><p>We are <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=iAQr9XwAAAAJ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">two scientists</a> who study <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=pgjLWAEAAAAJ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">viruses in wildlife</a> and are currently <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/CoVERS" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">running a study</a> investigating the potential for SARS-CoV-2 transmission from humans into domestic and wild animals.</p><p>When viruses move from one species into another, scientists call it spillover. Thankfully, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro.2017.45" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">spillover doesn't occur easily</a>.</p><p>To infect a new species, a virus must be able to bind to a protein on a cell and enter the cell while dodging an immune system the virus hasn't encountered before. Then, as a virus works to avoid <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coviro.2011.07.002" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">antibodies and other antiviral attackers</a>, it must replicate at a high enough volume to be transmitted on to the next animal.</p><p>This usually means that the more closely related two species are, the more likely they are to share viruses. Chimpanzees, the species most closely related to humans, <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/primatologists-work-keep-great-apes-safe-coronavirus" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">can catch and get sick from many human viruses</a>. Earlier this month, veterinarians at the San Diego Zoo announced that the zoo's <a href="https://zoo.sandiegozoo.org/pressroom/news-releases/gorilla-troop-san-diego-zoo-safari-park-test-positive-covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">troop of gorillas was infected with SARS–CoV–2</a>. This indicated it is possible for this virus to jump from humans to our close relatives.</p><p>Some viruses tend to stay in a single species or in closely related species, while other viruses seem innately more capable of large species jumps. Influenza, for example, can infect a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/other/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wide variety of animals, from sparrows to whales</a>. Similarly, coronaviruses are known to <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41579-018-0118-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">regularly jump between species</a>.</p><p>The question of how many and which species can be infected by SARS-CoV-2 – and which ones might be able to support continued circulation of the virus – is an important one.</p>
<h2>Searching for COVID-19 in Wildlife</h2><p>For human-to-wildlife spillover of SARS-CoV-2 to occur, an animal needs to be exposed to a high-enough viral dose to become infected.</p><p>The highest-risk situations are during direct contact with humans, such as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/science/Covid-bats.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">veterinarian's caring for an injured animal</a>. Contact between a sick person and a pet or farm animal also poses a risk, as the domestic animal could act as an intermediate host, eventually passing the virus to a wild animal.</p><p>Another way COVID-19 could spill over from humans into animals is through indirect infection, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/can-marine-mammals-catch-covid-19-new-study-says-its-possible-180976471/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">such as through wastewater</a>. COVID-19 and other pathogens can be detected in waste streams, many of which end up dumped, untreated, into environments where wildlife like marine mammals may be exposed. This is thought to be how <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062259" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elephant seals in California became infected with H1N1 influenza</a> during the swine flu pandemic in 2009.</p><p>To study whether spillover of SARS-CoV-2 is happening, our team at Tufts is partnering with veterinarians and licensed wildlife rehabilitators across the U.S. to collect samples from and test animals in their care. Through the project, we have tested nearly 300 wild animals from over 20 species. So far, none – from bats to seals to coyotes – have shown any evidence of COVID-19 by swab or antibody tests.</p><p>Other researchers have launched targeted surveillance of wild animals in places where captive animals have been infected. The first confirmed infection in a wild mink was found during <a href="https://promedmail.org/promed-post/?id=8015608" target="_blank">surveillance near an infected mink farm</a>. It's not yet clear how this wild mink got the coronavirus, but the high density of infected minks and potentially infectious particles from them made it a high-risk location.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUwNjgyMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1OTA3ODk3OX0.-nR4pFCXOW974_jiSjY0HHR2_8gVL5cA8eYdLMSd5tI/img.jpg?width=980" id="fc711" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b901ace8188e316e4e411e7c5c690d83" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1200" data-height="800" />
Gorillas have been affected by human viruses in the past and are susceptible to the coronavirus. Thomas Fuhrmann via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
<h2>Bad for Animals, Bad for Humans</h2><p>When a virus infects a new species, it sometimes mutates, adapting to infect, replicate and transmit more efficiently in a new animal. This is called host adaptation. When a virus jumps to a new host and begins adapting, the results can be unpredictable.</p><p>In late 2020, when SARS-CoV-2 jumped into farmed mink in Denmark, <a href="https://www.who.int/csr/don/03-december-2020-mink-associated-sars-cov2-denmark/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">it acquired mutations that were uncommon in humans</a>. Some of these mutations occurred in the part of the virus that most vaccines are designed to recognize. And it didn't just happen once – these mutations <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe5901" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">independently arose in mink farms multiple times</a>. While it's not yet clear what impact, if any, these mutations may have on human disease or the vaccine, these are signs of host adaptation that could allow novel variants of the virus to persist and reemerge from animal hosts in the future.</p><p>Another risk is that SARS-CoV-2 could cause disease in animals. Ecologists are especially concerned about endangered species like the <a href="https://www.aaha.org/publications/newstat/articles/2020-12/endangered-black-footed-ferret-gets-experimental-covid-19-vaccine-in-colorado/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">black-footed ferret</a>, which is closely related to minks and thought to be very susceptible to the virus.</p><p>Human-to-wildlife spillover has happened before. In the late 20th century, the Ebola virus jumped from humans into great apes and has resulted in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/543S56a" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">devastating consequences for these endangered animals</a>. More recently, a human respiratory virus has been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-020-01506-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">detected in threatened mountain gorilla populations</a> and has caused deaths as well.</p><p>But perhaps the biggest risk to humans is that spillover could result in the coronavirus establishing a reservoir in new animals and regions. This could provide opportunities for reintroduction of COVID-19 into humans in the future. This month researchers published a paper showing that this had already happened on a small scale with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe5901" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">human–to–mink–to–human transmission on mink farms</a> in Denmark.</p><p>While our team has found no evidence of COVID-19 in wild animals in the U.S. at this time, we have seen convincing evidence of regular spillover into dogs and cats and some zoo animals. The discovery of the infected wild mink confirmed our fears. Seeing the first wild animal with natural COVID-19 is alarming, but sadly, not surprising.</p>
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<em>Jonathan Runstadler is a professor of infectious disease and global health at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Tufts University.</em>
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<em>Kaitlin Sawatzki is a postdoctoral infectious disease researcher at Tufts University.</em>
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<em>Disclosure statements: </em><em>Jonathan Runstadler receives funding from NIH/NIAID. </em><em>Kaitlin Sawatzki receives funding from the NIH/NIAID.</em>
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<em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-covid-19-infecting-wild-animals-were-testing-species-from-bats-to-seals-to-find-out-151467" target="_blank">The Conversation</a></em><em>.</em><br/>
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A mass methane release could begin an irreversible path to full land-ice melt. NurPhoto / Contributor / Getty Images
By Peter Giger
The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
<p>Our evolution has selected the "fight or flight" instinct to deal with environmental change, so rather like the metaphor of the frog in boiling water, we tend to react too little and too late to gradual change.</p><p>Climate change is often described as global warming, with the implication of gradual changes caused by a steady increase in temperatures; from heatwaves to melting glaciers.</p><p>But we know from multidisciplinary scientific evidence - from geology, anthropology and archaeology - that climate change is not incremental. Even in pre-human times, it is episodic, when it isn't forced by a human-induced acceleration of greenhouse gas emissions and warming.</p><p>There are parts of our planet's carbon cycle, the ways that the earth and the biosphere store and release carbon, that could trigger suddenly in response to gradual warming. These are tipping points that once passed could fundamentally disrupt the planet and produce abrupt, non-linear change in the climate.</p>
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUwNjQ0MS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NTgwMjY2MX0.IvCzVigFTmY5avYrfi_Muh47dXM1TvLwTPFv5Zs95Pk/img.png?width=980" id="b580e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="491f17ca2d159ebbc564d9c4a6771983" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1222" data-height="1324" />
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>
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Doug Emhoff, U.S. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Jill Biden and President-elect Joe Biden wave as they arrive on the East Front of the U.S. Capitol for the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021 in Washington, DC. Joe Raedle / Getty Images
By John R. Platt
The period of the 45th presidency will go down as dark days for the United States — not just for the violent insurgency and impeachment that capped off Donald Trump's four years in office, but for every regressive action that came before.
<p>It's been said that Trump was the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-worst-president-environment-2645034831.html" target="_self">worst environmental president in history</a>, and that's easy to see from his administration's record. They rolled back decades of environmental progress by slashing protective regulations, strangled the agencies tasked with enforcing the regulations that remained, pushed corporate agendas damaging to wildlife, human health and the climate, and stoked the flames of right-wing extremists — including people whose radical agendas often attack public-land protections or climate science.</p><p>That barely covers it all, of course. It would take an entire book — a whole library — to fully convey the environmental damage done under Trump.</p>
<p>And now it's up to a new administration — and the work of a lot of people on top of it — to undo the damage and hopefully make up for four lost years of potential progress.</p><p>President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, together with the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, have a tough task ahead of them.</p><p>Make that many tough tasks. They'll need to rebuild the ranks of government workforces while reinforcing the trust in government and the trust in America on the world stage. They'll need to pass and restore regulations that don't just return us to the status quo but radically improve on it — taking the world forward at a time when the effects of climate change and the extinction crisis continue to worsen. 2020 tied for the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08012021/2020-earth-hottest-year-temperatures/" target="_blank">hottest year on record</a>, and Trump <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/trump-has-listed-the-fewest-endangered-species-of-any-p-1845854952" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">added fewer species</a> to the Endangered Species Act than any other president while <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750479370/trump-administration-makes-major-changes-to-protections-for-endangered-species" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">slashing protections</a> for those already on the list. They'll need to address environmental justice at a time when white supremacy is at its most vocal point in decades and firmly entrenched in some areas of government. They'll need to resist the usual corporate influence that could slow things down along the way.</p>
<p>And they'll need to do it all while helping the country stabilize and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump's botched response to the crisis, not to mention the continued threat from seditious domestic terrorists.</p><p>That's a lot on one plate, but they're already off to a good start. Biden and Harris ran on a strong climate platform and have assembled an experienced climate team. Neither the platform nor the team is perfect — progressives think they can do much better — but they're light years ahead of anything we saw under the previous administration.</p><p>And of course, now that the Democrats have won the Senate, Biden's cabinet picks are more likely to be confirmed and the country will no longer face the obstruction ever-present under the majority leadership of Mitch McConnell.</p>
<p>But at the same time, Republicans have risen to power in cities and state legislatures around the country, and many of them are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/us/politics/trump-republicans.html" target="_blank">still fueled by MAGA Trumpism</a> and unhinged conspiracy theories. The right-wing media, meanwhile, continue to shape and mold millions with their unique brand of misinformation and discord. Both trends will present a barrier to progress at every level.</p><p>So what's the agenda for moving forward under the Biden-Harris administration? Below, you'll find a series of articles and expert commentaries from <em>The Revelator</em>'s archives addressing key steps the incoming team can take to restore the EPA, protect key species, address the COVID-19 pandemic in a just and climate-focused manner, and more.</p><p>We'll continue to add to these roadmaps as the administration gets its footing, and we invite any insiders and experts to <a href="https://therevelator.org/contact#write-for-us" target="_blank">contribute their own voices</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://therevelator.org/reform-blm-biden/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Reform the Bureau of Land Management: Biden Must Succeed Where Obama Failed</a></p><p><a href="https://therevelator.org/climate-new-deal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">For a Path Forward on Climate, Let's Learn From the Original New Deal</a></p><p><a href="https://therevelator.org/gray-wolf-biden-administration/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gray Wolf Recovery and Survival Require Immediate Action by the Biden Administration</a></p><p><a href="https://therevelator.org/restoring-epa-biden/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Biden Can Restore the EPA, But It Will Require Steadfast Effort</a></p><p><a href="https://therevelator.org/biden-restore-rollbacks/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">How Biden Can Do More Than Just Restore Trump's Environmental Rollbacks</a></p><p><a href="https://therevelator.org/biden-climate-plan-trent/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Biden-Harris Climate Plan: 'Not Trump' Is Not Enough</a></p><p><a href="https://therevelator.org/biden-leadership-wildlife-crime/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Biden Must Take a Leadership Role Against Wildlife Crime</a></p><p><a href="https://therevelator.org/multisolving-covid-recovery/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Multisolving Our Way to COVID-19 Economic Recovery</a></p><p><a href="https://therevelator.org/biden-climate-farber/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Biden Can Leverage Larger Trends to Make Climate Progress</a></p><p><em>And here's a report from our parent organization, the Center for Biological Diversity:</em></p><p><a href="https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/report-50-critical-environmental-reforms-president-biden-can-enact-without-congress-2020-12-03/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">50 Critical Environmental Reforms President Biden Can Enact Without Congress</a></p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/rebuilding-years/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A hazy Seattle skyline due to wildfire smoke is seen on September 11, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. Lindsey Wasson / Getty Images
Washington state residents are taking climate matters into their own hands. Beginning this month, 90 members of the public join the country's first climate assembly to develop pollution solutions, Crosscut reported.
<p>Randomly picked and representing every congressional district in the state, assembly members have until March to discuss climate pollution, reach a consensus and forward their recommendations to the state Legislature. </p><p>"It's going to hinge on getting people from different ideological perspectives to talk and be informed and come to some consensus," State Rep. Jake Fey, D-Tacoma, told Crosscut. "It's an experiment, but I'm supportive of this because I think that it could be more persuasive in furthering the different strategies that might be used to reduce carbon."</p><p>Crosscut reported that the group represents racial, income and gender diversity. Their views on the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" target="_blank">climate crisis </a>also vary, from whether it exists to whether people are responsible for it.</p><p>"One fact that has become clear is that the polarized nature of this debate harms us all. This issue cannot be another 'us versus them' issue, because it affects us all," Fey and three other Washington representatives wrote in <a href="https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/commentary-citizens-assembly-would-seek-consensus-on-climate/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Herald</a>.</p>
<p>Although environmental concern is growing across the country, a recent<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/02/13/as-economic-concerns-recede-environmental-protection-rises-on-the-publics-policy-agenda/" target="_blank"> Pew Research Center study</a> found that the partisan gap on climate change has never been wider than in 2020,<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/20/climate/climate-change-polls.html" target="_blank"> The New York Times reported</a>.</p><p>While 78 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents list <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_blank">climate change</a> as their top policy priority, just 21 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents do, according to the Pew Research Center's findings. </p><p>Republican State Senator Judy Warnick will sit on Washington's Climate Assemblies monitoring team. "It will be interesting for me — I haven't been involved in a lot of climate discussion," she told Crosscut. Warnick hopes to improve the air quality and forest health in her district.</p><p>Last year, Warnick's district, alongside others in the Central and Eastern Washington region, experienced devastating <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires" target="_blank">wildfires</a>.</p>
<p>"This is an unprecedented and heartbreaking event," Washington's Gov. Jay Inslee said about the wildfires that roared through the state in the spring and summer, <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/wildfire-smoke-blows-into-western-washington-worsening-air-quality/" target="_blank">The Seattle Times</a> reported. "We're living in a new world. This is not the old Washington."</p><p>Although Washington's Climate Assembly is the first in the U.S., a similar assembly took place in the UK.<br></p><p>At the beginning of last year, UK citizens were selected at random, asked to listen to experts and come up with a list of recommendations on how their country could reach net-zero emissions by 2050,<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-the-climate-assembly-says-the-uk-should-reach-net-zero" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> CarbonBrief reported</a>. Their consensus was published in a report where they listed changes to a range of sectors, from meat and dairy consumption to electricity generation. </p>
<p>"The first weekend changed me really. I thought, 'Oh my God, [climate change] is really going to happen,'" Sue Peachey, one of the 108 people who took part in the UK assembly, told<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/31/its-awakened-me-uk-climate-assembly-participants-hail-a-life-changing-event" target="_blank"> The Guardian</a>. "It made me want to learn and to live my life greener."</p><p>The report is a tool to push the UK toward net-zero emissions, CarbonBrief noted. But it could do more than recommend climate policy. </p><p>"The report shatters the illusion that ordinary people will not accept stronger climate policies and are incapable of making difficult decisions about our collective future," Graham Smith, a politics professor at the University of Westminster, wrote for <a href="https://theconversation.com/citizens-assembly-what-weve-learned-about-the-kind-of-climate-action-the-public-wants-to-see-146161" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a>.</p><p>Citizen assemblies on climate change could bring the public together to form agreements on an issue that has largely divided it. "It's all about building relationships, listening to each other's ideas," Warnick told Crosscut. "That's what has me the most optimistic."</p>
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