Hillary Clinton Discusses Her Climate Change Wake-Up Call in ‘Hard Choices'

This week's release of Hillary Clinton's autobiography, Hard Choices, offers more than a chance to see if she has, in fact, written a "frustrating read." The book provides some insight into her environmental priorities in the event that she decides to make a bid for 2016.
The former U.S. secretary of state and possible presidential candidate includes some thoughts about climate change, framed around a 2005 visit to Alaska that she says opened her eyes regarding the degradation, forest fires and other factors that had been taking place all around the planet.
"Virtually everyone I spoke to on that trip had a personal wake-up call about what was happening,” she wrote about the trip she took with John McCain and two other Republican senators.
“A tribal elder recounted how he had returned to a lake where he had fished as a boy only to find it dried up. I met lifelong participants in dogsled races who told me they no longer even needed to wear gloves"
According to a Huffington Post review, Clinton also describes how she and President Barack Obama forced a tension-filled encounter with representatives from China, India, Brazil and South Africa in an attempt to change the Kyoto Protocol so that emissions targets included more than just developed countries. She and Obama barged into a secret meeting at the 2009 Copenhagen climate-change conference, alarming the representatives, including Wen Jiabao, former premier of the China, to whom Obama shouted, "Mr. Premier!" upon entering.
The book also provides some insight into Clinton's environmental priorities, should she run for president. She says she would work to maintain Obama's goals and rules on carbon emissions from power plants.
Clinton also warns readers about the dangers of placing the economy above the environment, as some of her political adversaries and energy executives have done in the wake of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's announcement of Obama's rules.
"When the economy is hurting and people are looking for jobs, many other concerns fade into the background," she wrote. "And the old false choice between promoting the economy and protecting the environment surfaces once again."
In anticipation that Clinton would run, 30 environmental groups in May requested that she take a strong stand against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Believing she had been somewhat vague on the issue, Friends of the Earth, 350.org, Greenpeace, Moms Clean Air Force and others reminded Clinton that building Keystone would be the equivalent of building 46 new coal-fired power plants.
At first glance, you wouldn't think avocados and almonds could harm bees; but a closer look at how these popular crops are produced reveals their potentially detrimental effect on pollinators.
Migratory beekeeping involves trucking millions of bees across the U.S. to pollinate different crops, including avocados and almonds. Timothy Paule II / Pexels / CC0
<p>According to <a href="https://www.fromthegrapevine.com/israeli-kitchen/beekeeping-how-to-keep-bees" target="_blank">From the Grapevine</a>, American avocados also fully depend on bees' pollination to produce fruit, so farmers have turned to migratory beekeeping as well to fill the void left by wild populations.</p><p>U.S. farmers have become reliant upon the practice, but migratory beekeeping has been called exploitative and harmful to bees. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/10/health/avocado-almond-vegan-partner/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a> reported that commercial beekeeping may injure or kill bees and that transporting them to pollinate crops appears to negatively affect their health and lifespan. Because the honeybees are forced to gather pollen and nectar from a single, monoculture crop — the one they've been brought in to pollinate — they are deprived of their normal diet, which is more diverse and nourishing as it's comprised of a variety of pollens and nectars, Scientific American reported.</p><p>Scientific American added how getting shuttled from crop to crop and field to field across the country boomerangs the bees between feast and famine, especially once the blooms they were brought in to fertilize end.</p><p>Plus, the artificial mass influx of bees guarantees spreading viruses, mites and fungi between the insects as they collide in midair and crawl over each other in their hives, Scientific American reported. According to CNN, some researchers argue that this explains why so many bees die each winter, and even why entire hives suddenly die off in a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder.</p>Avocado and almond crops depend on bees for proper pollination. FRANK MERIÑO / Pexels / CC0
<p>Salazar and other Columbian beekeepers described "scooping up piles of dead bees" year after year since the avocado and citrus booms began, according to Phys.org. Many have opted to salvage what partial colonies survive and move away from agricultural areas.</p><p>The future of pollinators and the crops they help create is uncertain. According to the United Nations, nearly half of insect pollinators, particularly bees and butterflies, risk global extinction, Phys.org reported. Their decline already has cascading consequences for the economy and beyond. Roughly 1.4 billion jobs and three-quarters of all crops around the world depend on bees and other pollinators for free fertilization services worth billions of dollars, Phys.org noted. Losing wild and native bees could <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/wild-bees-crop-shortage-2646849232.html" target="_self">trigger food security issues</a>.</p><p>Salazar, the beekeeper, warned Phys.org, "The bee is a bioindicator. If bees are dying, what other insects beneficial to the environment... are dying?"</p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Australia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. It is home to more than 7% of all the world's plant and animal species, many of which are endemic. One such species, the Pharohylaeus lactiferus bee, was recently rediscovered after spending nearly 100 years out of sight from humans.
Trending
Scientists have newly photographed three species of shark that can glow in the dark, according to a study published in Frontiers in Marine Science last month.
- 10 Little-Known Shark Facts - EcoWatch ›
- 4 New Walking Shark Species Discovered - EcoWatch ›
- 5 Incredible Species That Glow in the Dark - EcoWatch ›
FedEx's entire parcel pickup and delivery fleet will become 100 percent electric by 2040, according to a statement released Wednesday. The ambitious plan includes checkpoints, such as aiming for 50 percent electric vehicles by 2025.
Lockdown measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic had the added benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by around seven percent, or 2.6 billion metric tons, in 2020.
- Which Is Worse for the Planet: Beef or Cars? - EcoWatch ›
- Greenhouse Gas Levels Hit Record High Despite Lockdowns, UN ... ›
- 1.8 Billion Tons More Greenhouse Gases Will Be Released, Thanks ... ›