Could a 'Digital Twin of Earth’ Help Scientists Predict the Future of Climate Change?
25 February
Science
A "digital twin of Earth." European Space Agency
As the weather grows more severe, and its damages more expensive and fatal, current weather predictions fall short in providing reliable information on Earth's rapidly changing systems.
<p>That's why a team of European scientists and ETH Zurich computer scientists are putting their heads together to "marry" the earth sciences and computer sciences to create a "<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-00986-y?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nclimate%2Frss%2Fcurrent+%28Nature+Climate+Change+-+Issue%29" target="_blank">digital twin of Earth</a>." The simulation will provide an information system for scientists and policymakers to test scenarios with different sustainable development options, <a href="https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2021/02/a-highly-accurate-digital-twin-of-our-planet.html" target="_blank">ETH Zurich reported</a>.</p><p>"If you are planning a two-metre high dike in The Netherlands, for example, I can run through the data in my digital twin and check whether the dike will in all likelihood still protect against expected extreme events in 2050," Peter Bauer, deputy director for Research at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and co-initiator of the project Destination Earth, told ETH Zurich.</p>
<p>Over the past 20 years, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather">extreme weather</a> events have been on the rise, according to a <a href="https://www.undrr.org/news/drrday-un-report-charts-huge-rise-climate-disasters" target="_blank">report by the United Nations</a>. From 2000 to 2019, 1.23 million people were killed by 7,348 major natural disasters. Twenty years before that, in comparison, there were 4,212 natural disasters, killing 1.19 million. This increase comes with a heavy price tag. Extreme natural weather cost $2.97 trillion in global economic losses in the past two decades, compared to the $1.63 trillion, two decades prior.</p><p>These numbers are expected to grow, urging researchers to design large-scale policy solutions across nations.</p><p>As part of their plans to become climate neutral by 2050, the European Union launched the Destination Earth initiative to track and plan for the future of extreme weather, monitor the health of the planet and support and inform EU environmental policy, according to a <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/destination-earth-destine" target="_blank">EU policy report</a>.</p>
<p>In an effort to advance the "digital revolution of earth-system sciences" a team of scientists and researchers, including Bauer looked at the steady advancement of weather models since the 1940s, <a href="https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2021/02/a-highly-accurate-digital-twin-of-our-planet.html" target="_blank">ETH Zurich reported</a>. Their <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43588-021-00023-0" target="_blank">paper</a> was published Monday in <em>Nature Computational Science.</em></p><p>The climate problem is a complex one, requiring weather predictors to cover more than just local regions, but encompass the "complex processes of the entire Earth system," ETH Zurich reported. Yet, while their findings are not meant to "invalidate the steady progress achieved in weather prediction over the past decades," the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43588-021-00023-0" target="_blank">authors stress</a> the urgent need to develop a "high resolution" and "more realistic representation" of Earth's changing atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, land surfaces and biosphere.</p>
<p>"We are willfully destructive," Mami Mizutori, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction <a href="https://www.undrr.org/news/drrday-un-report-charts-huge-rise-climate-disasters" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">said in a statement</a> about the UN report on natural disasters. "Disaster risk is becoming systemic with one event overlapping and influencing another in ways that are testing our resilience to the limit. The odds are being stacked against us when we fail to act on science and early warnings to invest in prevention, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction."</p><p>While the "digital twin of Earth" model is a bold step forward, it is necessary to ensure nations are prepared to handle the future of extreme weather, the authors wrote.</p><p>"The apparent effects of climate change on our environment — in particular on the frequency of occurrence and the intensity of environmental extremes — require urgent political response and much faster progress in delivering skillful predictions of future change," the authors wrote.</p>
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Houses and wooden debris are shown in flood waters from Hurricane Katrina Sept. 11, 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Jerry Grayson / Helifilms Australia PTY Ltd / Getty Images
By Eric Tate and Christopher Emrich
Disasters stemming from hazards like floods, wildfires, and disease often garner attention because of their extreme conditions and heavy societal impacts. Although the nature of the damage may vary, major disasters are alike in that socially vulnerable populations often experience the worst repercussions. For example, we saw this following Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey, each of which generated widespread physical damage and outsized impacts to low-income and minority survivors.
<p>Social vulnerability researchers seek to understand the impediments and capacities of people and communities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from extreme natural hazards. A major tool in this work is social vulnerability modeling, the use of which is expanding in large part because of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/30/opinions/hurricane-laura-hurricane-katrina-15-anniversary-climate-justice-russell/index.html" target="_blank">growing awareness</a> of the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/688786177/how-federal-disaster-money-favors-the-rich" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">social equity implications of disasters</a>.</p>
<p>This modeling applies knowledge garnered from disaster case studies describing how chronic marginalization translates to disproportionate adverse outcomes to identify the most vulnerable population groups. Such populations often include those living in poverty, the very old and young, minoritized ethnic and racial groups, renters, and recent immigrants [<a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25381/framing-the-challenge-of-urban-flooding-in-the-united-states" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine</em></a>, 2019]. Social vulnerability modelers select demographic variables representing these groups and combine them to construct spatial indicators and indexes that enable comparisons of social vulnerability across places.</p>
Mapping Social Vulnerability
<p>Figure 1a is a typical map of social vulnerability across the United States at the census tract level based on the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) algorithm of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1540-6237.8402002" target="_blank"><em>Cutter et al.</em></a> [2003]. Spatial representation of the index depicts high social vulnerability regionally in the Southwest, upper Great Plains, eastern Oklahoma, southern Texas, and southern Appalachia, among other places. With such a map, users can focus attention on select places and identify population characteristics associated with elevated vulnerabilities.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY4NDI3Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTAzMjg0MH0.v1q8kvdcaspP-06Y3lP3-fpjepuK4DByrALDDlLLTuY/img.png?width=980" id="dabfe" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cf5abb87eb49497c7585585a853aa449" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2740" data-height="1062" />
Fig. 1. (a) Social vulnerability across the United States at the census tract scale is mapped here following the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI). Red and pink hues indicate high social vulnerability. (b) This bivariate map depicts social vulnerability (blue hues) and annualized per capita hazard losses (pink hues) for U.S. counties from 2010 to 2019.
<p>Many current indexes in the United States and abroad are direct or conceptual offshoots of SoVI, which has been widely replicated [e.g., <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13753-016-0090-9" target="_blank"><em>de Loyola Hummell et al.</em></a>, 2016]. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/placeandhealth/svi/index.html" target="_blank">has also developed</a> a commonly used social vulnerability index intended to help local officials identify communities that may need support before, during, and after disasters.</p><p>The first modeling and mapping efforts, starting around the mid-2000s, largely focused on describing spatial distributions of social vulnerability at varying geographic scales. Over time, research in this area came to emphasize spatial comparisons between social vulnerability and physical hazards [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-009-9376-1" target="_blank"><em>Wood et al.</em></a>, 2010], modeling population dynamics following disasters [<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11111-008-0072-y" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Myers et al.</em></a>, 2008], and quantifying the robustness of social vulnerability measures [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0152-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Tate</em></a>, 2012].</p><p>More recent work is beginning to dissolve barriers between social vulnerability and environmental justice scholarship [<a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304846" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Chakraborty et al.</em></a>, 2019], which has traditionally focused on root causes of exposure to pollution hazards. Another prominent new research direction involves deeper interrogation of social vulnerability drivers in specific hazard contexts and disaster phases (e.g., before, during, after). Such work has revealed that interactions among drivers are important, but existing case studies are ill suited to guiding development of new indicators [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2015.09.013" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Rufat et al.</em></a>, 2015].</p><p>Advances in geostatistical analyses have enabled researchers to characterize interactions more accurately among social vulnerability and hazard outcomes. Figure 1b depicts social vulnerability and annualized per capita hazard losses for U.S. counties from 2010 to 2019, facilitating visualization of the spatial coincidence of pre‑event susceptibilities and hazard impacts. Places ranked high in both dimensions may be priority locations for management interventions. Further, such analysis provides invaluable comparisons between places as well as information summarizing state and regional conditions.</p><p>In Figure 2, we take the analysis of interactions a step further, dividing counties into two categories: those experiencing annual per capita losses above or below the national average from 2010 to 2019. The differences among individual race, ethnicity, and poverty variables between the two county groups are small. But expressing race together with poverty (poverty attenuated by race) produces quite different results: Counties with high hazard losses have higher percentages of both impoverished Black populations and impoverished white populations than counties with low hazard losses. These county differences are most pronounced for impoverished Black populations.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY4NDI3OS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NTc3NjUwNX0.bfkxzYwjdvBUvGu3zsI0iI_710xQyiARxVgrww1ZhpA/img.png?width=980" id="52f88" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="799dc45654e18d5e42c72f96c704e218" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1464" data-height="1432" />
Fig. 2. Differences in population percentages between counties experiencing annual per capita losses above or below the national average from 2010 to 2019 for individual and compound social vulnerability indicators (race and poverty).
<p>Our current work focuses on social vulnerability to floods using geostatistical modeling and mapping. The research directions are twofold. The first is to develop hazard-specific indicators of social vulnerability to aid in mitigation planning [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-04470-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Tate et al.</em></a>, 2021]. Because natural hazards differ in their innate characteristics (e.g., rate of onset, spatial extent), causal processes (e.g., urbanization, meteorology), and programmatic responses by government, manifestations of social vulnerability vary across hazards.</p><p>The second is to assess the degree to which socially vulnerable populations benefit from the leading disaster recovery programs [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17477891.2019.1675578" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Emrich et al.</em></a>, 2020], such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) <a href="https://www.fema.gov/individual-disaster-assistance" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Individual Assistance</a> program and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) <a href="https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/cdbg-dr/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Disaster Recovery</a> program. Both research directions posit social vulnerability indicators as potential measures of social equity.</p>Social Vulnerability as a Measure of Equity
<p>Given their focus on social marginalization and economic barriers, social vulnerability indicators are attracting growing scientific interest as measures of inequity resulting from disasters. Indeed, social vulnerability and inequity are related concepts. Social vulnerability research explores the differential susceptibilities and capacities of disaster-affected populations, whereas social equity analyses tend to focus on population disparities in the allocation of resources for hazard mitigation and disaster recovery. Interventions with an equity focus emphasize full and equal resource access for all people with unmet disaster needs.</p><p>Yet newer studies of inequity in disaster programs have documented troubling disparities in income, race, and home ownership among those who <a href="https://eos.org/articles/equity-concerns-raised-in-federal-flood-property-buyouts" target="_blank">participate in flood buyout programs</a>, are <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063477407" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">eligible for postdisaster loans</a>, receive short-term recovery assistance [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.102010" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Drakes et al.</em></a>, 2021], and have <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/08/25/texas-natural-disasters--mental-health/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">access to mental health services</a>. For example, a recent analysis of federal flood buyouts found racial privilege to be infused at multiple program stages and geographic scales, resulting in resources that disproportionately benefit whiter and more urban counties and neighborhoods [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023120905439" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Elliott et al.</em></a>, 2020].</p><p>Investments in disaster risk reduction are largely prioritized on the basis of hazard modeling, historical impacts, and economic risk. Social equity, meanwhile, has been far less integrated into the considerations of public agencies for hazard and disaster management. But this situation may be beginning to shift. Following the adage of "what gets measured gets managed," social equity metrics are increasingly being inserted into disaster management.</p><p>At the national level, FEMA has <a href="https://www.fema.gov/news-release/20200220/fema-releases-affordability-framework-national-flood-insurance-program" target="_blank">developed options</a> to increase the affordability of flood insurance [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2018]. At the subnational scale, Puerto Rico has integrated social vulnerability into its CDBG Mitigation Action Plan, expanding its considerations of risk beyond only economic factors. At the local level, Harris County, Texas, has begun using social vulnerability indicators alongside traditional measures of flood risk to introduce equity into the prioritization of flood mitigation projects [<a href="https://www.hcfcd.org/Portals/62/Resilience/Bond-Program/Prioritization-Framework/final_prioritization-framework-report_20190827.pdf?ver=2019-09-19-092535-743" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Harris County Flood Control District</em></a>, 2019].</p><p>Unfortunately, many existing measures of disaster equity fall short. They may be unidimensional, using single indicators such as income in places where underlying vulnerability processes suggest that a multidimensional measure like racialized poverty (Figure 2) would be more valid. And criteria presumed to be objective and neutral for determining resource allocation, such as economic loss and cost-benefit ratios, prioritize asset value over social equity. For example, following the <a href="http://www.cedar-rapids.org/discover_cedar_rapids/flood_of_2008/2008_flood_facts.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2008 flooding</a> in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, cost-benefit criteria supported new flood protections for the city's central business district on the east side of the Cedar River but not for vulnerable populations and workforce housing on the west side.</p><p>Furthermore, many equity measures are aspatial or ahistorical, even though the roots of marginalization may lie in systemic and spatially explicit processes that originated long ago like redlining and urban renewal. More research is thus needed to understand which measures are most suitable for which social equity analyses.</p>Challenges for Disaster Equity Analysis
<p>Across studies that quantify, map, and analyze social vulnerability to natural hazards, modelers have faced recurrent measurement challenges, many of which also apply in measuring disaster equity (Table 1). The first is clearly establishing the purpose of an equity analysis by defining characteristics such as the end user and intended use, the type of hazard, and the disaster stage (i.e., mitigation, response, or recovery). Analyses using generalized indicators like the CDC Social Vulnerability Index may be appropriate for identifying broad areas of concern, whereas more detailed analyses are ideal for high-stakes decisions about budget allocations and project prioritization.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY4NDMyMy9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTA2OTU2NX0.GKHtixn35Mwpubn_GE8KBYNs4P2npvnM_Y9bXC-ONoM/img.png?width=980" id="c2ef1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7d3650965f39a777c809cb3093c8bb76" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1308" data-height="860" /><p>Selecting the relevant modes of equity for analysis is crucial. Is the primary interest to quantify disparities in the distribution of hazard impacts or procedural disparities in accessing resources? Is the focus on individual populations or on combinations of population characteristics? As social inequities often accrue to low-income households, analysts should consider assessing economic losses in both absolute and proportional terms.</p><p>Creating valid measures of equity requires not only statistical expertise but also a fundamental understanding of the underlying processes of social marginalization. This facilitates selection of optimal proxy indicators and their geographic scales. However, practical considerations like data availability and cost can lead to indicator selection that diverges from conceptual bases. For example, for disaster assistance received by households, an equity analysis should ideally be conducted at the household scale. Unfortunately, data describing some dimensions of inequity, like race, are rarely collected by disaster agencies, necessitating analysis using census data at larger geographic scales.</p>
<p>The final major challenge is to develop statistically robust measures and best practices for assessing disaster equity that strengthen the foundation for policy interventions. Doing so may require expanding current approaches to include sensitivity analyses to assess how choices of parameters (e.g., input variables, geographic scale) in building social vulnerability indicators affect the statistical stability of resulting measures, and how these measures correlate with observed disaster impacts like dislocation, assistance eligibility, and recovery time.</p><p>The stakes for improving our understanding of relationships among hazards, vulnerability, and social equity are high, as climate disasters from flooding, drought, tropical cyclones, and wildfire have been increasing in their frequency and destruction. By definition, sustainable solutions that empower communities to resist, recover from, and adapt to these threats must be not only economically viable and environmentally sound but also socially equitable. Well-designed measures of disaster equity are an important tool for quantifying disaster disparities, which is the first step toward dismantling them.</p><p><em>This story originally appeared in <a href="https://eos.org/science-updates/assessing-social-equity-in-disasters" target="_blank">Eos</a></em> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>
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Like many other plant-based foods and products, CBD oil is one dietary supplement where "organic" labels are very important to consumers. However, there are little to no regulations within the hemp industry when it comes to deeming a product as organic, which makes it increasingly difficult for shoppers to find the best CBD oil products available on the market.
<p>Here you can learn about the importance of organic hemp oil, why it's better for the environment, and which CBD companies actually make trustworthy products with sustainable farming processes. origins which weigh heavily on many consumers who want to buy a product that's produced in the best way possible for not only themselves to ingest, but for the environment as well through sustainable farming methods. </p><h2>What Is CBD Oil?</h2><p>First things first, CBD stands for cannabidiol, and it's a cannabinoid found within cannabis sativa plants. This plant compound is believed to have many potential benefits, and it is primarily derived from hemp plants via a CO2 extraction process. </p><p>Since CBD is extracted from industrial hemp, which contains only trace amounts of THC (the psychoactive component in cannabis plants), this means that CBD won't make you feel high like marijuana, which has much higher levels of THC that causes psychoactive effects. Instead, the effects of CBD are much more subtle and promote a general sense of calm and relaxation in most users.</p><h2>What Makes a CBD Oil Organic?</h2><p>In terms of organic labels, perhaps the most important (and prominent) certification comes from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This government organization has been labeling foods as "organic" for many years, but what exactly does this certification entail? Essentially, a label indicating that a product is "USDA Organic" or "Certified Organic" means that at least 95% of the ingredients are obtained from organic sources.</p><p>For a crop to be considered organic by the USDA, it must be grown without the use of industrial solvents, irradiation, genetic engineering (GMOs), synthetic pesticides, or chemical fertilizer. Instead, farmers rely on natural substances and <a href="https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/03/22/organic-101-what-usda-organic-label-means" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">mechanical, physical, or biologically based farming</a> techniques to cultivate healthy and organic crops.</p><p>Before the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, no hemp-derived products could be dubbed as "certified organic" since the hemp plant and its extracts were still categorized as a Schedule I Controlled Substance. However, it's still difficult for CBD companies to obtain a USDA certified organic label for their products due to the legal grey area that still surrounds CBD extracts. </p><p>Because of these challenges, and due to the fact that industrial hemp has only recently become an agricultural crop, very few CBD oils are USDA certified organic. Rather, many CBD products contain hemp extracts from plants that were grown in organic conditions but may not be federally certified.</p><h2>What are the Best Organic CBD Oil Brands?</h2><p><em>Each product featured here has been independently selected by the writer. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn commission.</em></p><em><br></em>
<h2>Why Organic Hemp Oil Matters</h2><p>Hemp is a unique plant, not only for its rich cannabinoid content, but also for its ability to absorb a wide variety of components in soil. But this trait poses great risks when it comes to the creation of CBD products derived from hemp.</p><p>Because hemp has a high capacity for compound uptake, this means that the plants can retain <a href="https://www.remedyreview.com/industry/lab-test-results/" target="_blank">harmful chemicals like pesticides</a>, heavy metals, and other residual solvents. This is especially true when it comes to synthetic chemicals that are more toxic to humans, and difficult to remove once they have been absorbed by the hemp plant.</p><p>Organic farming practices help reduce the risk of hemp crops absorbing harsh chemicals that may later end up in CBD oil after extraction. When you're taking CBD as a wellness supplement to help alleviate your symptoms or improve your overall well-being, the last thing you want is to ingest compounds that might negatively outweigh the benefits of CBD. This is an important reason to look for third party lab test results when shopping for CBD products since these certificates of analysis can show the full cannabinoid and terpene profile of a hemp extract, as well as test results that search for the presence of any residual solvents.</p><p>In addition to creating a better end product, organic farming practices are also better for the environment. Sustainable and organic farming methods may <a href="https://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-eating/organic-foods.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reduce pollution, conserve water, reduce soil erosion, increase soil fertility, and use less energy</a>. The use of natural pest deterrents as opposed to chemical pesticides is also better for nearby animal populations and ecosystems.</p><h3>Organic vs. Natural</h3><p>While there are only a select few companies offering certified organic ingredients in their products, almost every brand in the CBD market creates "natural" products. The term "all-natural" or "plant-based" does not mean that a product is organic, and since hemp oil is a natural derivative of hemp plants, these products are often referred to as all-natural. However, there are some synthetic CBD oils that should be avoided because they are chemically constructed and may produce unwanted side effects that are not caused by naturally derived CBD extracts.</p><h2>What are the Benefits of Organic CBD Oil?</h2><p>There's a long list of potential CBD oil health benefits, and some of the most common wellness advantages include:</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2503660/" target="_blank">Chronic pain relief</a></li><li><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604171/" target="_blank">Anti-anxiety effects</a></li><li>Better sleep</li><li><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inner-source/201901/cbd-oil-mental-health-should-you-take-it-too" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Improvements in mood</a></li><li>Internal balance and regulation</li></ul><p>When dealing with pain, inflammation, sleep issues, and mental health struggles, it can be hard to find sufficient treatment options. The use of certain prescriptions can cause unwanted side effects, yet they are often the only solution for patients with these medical conditions. In search of other therapies, people have started to flock towards CBD oil as an alternative remedy for a variety of conditions. However, it should be noted that CBD products are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and you should seek your doctor's advice before using CBD if you have a serious medical condition.</p><h2>Look at the Labels Before You Buy CBD Oil</h2><p>When you go online to buy CBD oil, you'll quickly realize there is an overwhelming number of brands that are saturating the market. It can be difficult to determine which products are truly as good as they make themselves out to be. Always look for up-to-date third-party lab tests so you know you are getting a great product, and don't hesitate to contact the brand if you have any additional questions. And if you're intent on purchasing 100% organic CBD oil, it's best to look for certified products or brands that are held to strict regulatory standards.</p><p><strong>Melena Gurganus </strong>is the Reviews Editor at EcoWatch. She is passionate health and wellness and her writing aims to help others find products they can trust. Her work has been featured in publications such as Health, Shape, Huffington Post, Cannabis Business Times, and Bustle.<br></p>
Spruce
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDY4NjI3OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTM2NzgzOX0.axY0HjeqRctJsR_KmDLctzDpUBLBN-oNIdqaXDb4caQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="774be" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8379f35b1ca8a86d0e61b7d4bfc8b46e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="spruce organic cbd oil" data-width="710" data-height="959" /><p>As one of the best brands in the business, Spruce CBD is well-known for its potent CBD oils that feature many additional beneficial phytocannabinoids. This brand works with two family-owned, sustainably focused farms in the USA (one located in Kentucky and one in North Carolina) to create its organic, small product batches. The max potency Spruce CBD oil contains 2400mg of full-spectrum CBD extract, but the brand also offers a lower strength tincture with 750mg of CBD in total.</p>
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CBDistillery
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDcwMjkzNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTU4OTM4Nn0.ypRdeDSBcE87slYrFfVrRwtJ2qGIK6FD5jBB4pndTMo/img.jpg?width=980" id="b473b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9930b53c9d58cb49774640a61c3e3e75" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="cbdistillery cbd oil" data-width="1244" data-height="1244" /><p>All of the products from CBDistillery are <a href="https://ushempauthority.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">U.S. Hemp Authority Certified</a>, and for good reason. The company only uses non-GMO and pesticide-free industrial hemp that's grown organically on Colorado farms. Its hemp oils are some of the most affordable CBD products on the market, yet they still maintain a high standard of quality. CBDistillery has a wide variety of CBD potencies across its product line (ranging from 500mg to 5000mg per bottle) and offers both full-spectrum and broad-spectrum CBD oils to give customers a completely thc-free option.</p>
$35
FAB CBD
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDY4NjIyNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NDIwOTEyMn0.MlTjz096FJ0ev_-soK7_Z-FeQeJczWoeh9Qi9SSkHsY/img.jpg?width=980" id="04b26" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="76aa4862f44603242e318982acea6646" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="fab cbd oil" data-width="800" data-height="800" /><p>For an organic CBD oil that has it all, FAB CBD offers plenty of variety for any type of consumer. All of its products are made with zero pesticides and extracted from organically grown Colorado industrial hemp. FAB CBD oil comes in five all-natural flavors (mint, vanilla, berry, citrus, and natural) and is also available in four strengths (300, 600, 1200, and 2400mg per bottle).</p>
$39
NuLeaf Naturals
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDY4NjIxOS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NzExNTgyMX0.D6qMGYllKTsVhEkQ-L_GzpDHVu60a-tJKcio7M1Ssmc/img.jpg?width=980" id="94e4a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3609a52479675730893a45a82a03c71d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="nuleaf naturals organic cbd oil" data-width="600" data-height="600" /><p>As an industry-leading brand, it comes as no surprise that NuLeaf Naturals sources its CBD extract from organic hemp plants grown on licensed farms in Colorado. The comany's CBD oils only contain two ingredients: USDA certified organic hemp seed oil and full spectrum hemp extract.</p><p>NuLeaf Naturals uses one proprietary CBD oil formula for all of its products, so you will get the same CBD potency in each tincture (60mg per mL), but can purchase different bottle sizes depending on how much you intend to use.</p>
$38.50
Charlotte's Web
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDcwMjk3NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MzQ0NjM4N30.SaQ85SK10-MWjN3PwHo2RqpiUBdjhD0IRnHKTqKaU7Q/img.jpg?width=980" id="84700" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a2174067dcc0c4094be25b3472ce08c8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="charlottes web cbd oil" data-width="1244" data-height="1244" /><p>Perhaps one of the most well-known brands in the CBD landscape, Charlotte's Web has been growing sustainable hemp plants for several years. The company is currently in the process of achieving official USDA Organic Certification, but it already practices organic and sustainable cultivation techniques to enhance the overall health of the soil and the hemp plants themselves, which creates some of the highest quality CBD extracts. Charlotte's Web offers CBD oils in a range of different concentration options, and some even come in a few flavor options such as chocolate mint, orange blossom, and lemon twist.</p>
$60
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A car is seen driving in the snow in Dallas in Feb. 2021. Matthew Rader / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons
By Matt Casale
There were many lessons to be learned from Texas' prolonged periods of lost power during its cold snap, which saw temperatures drop into the single digits. But one many people may not recognize is that electric vehicles, or EVs, can be part of a smart resiliency plan — not only in the case of outages triggered by the cold but in other scenarios caused by extreme weather events, from fire-related blackouts in California to hurricane-hit power losses in Puerto Rico.
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY4MzUzMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0ODE5NDUyNX0.HsCUIOHci2bS-YOU-V6mfoODWVeCapEzr1YbNdFqnig/img.jpg?width=980" id="b6c31" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1af172a4964aad443c982a094d7c85d9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1080" data-height="720" />
A car driving in the snow in Dallas, Feb. 2021. Matthew Rader / CC BY-SA 4.0
<p>Experts recognize that electric vehicles are a central climate solution for their role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But EVs are also essentially batteries on wheels. You can store energy in those batteries, and if EVs are equipped with something called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid" target="_blank">vehicle-to-grid</a> or vehicle-to-building technology, they can also be used to keep the lights on in emergencies. The technology allows the energy being stored in an EV battery to be pushed back into the grid or into buildings to provide power.</p><p>There are hurdles: The technology is still <a href="https://www.greenbiz.com/article/vehicle-grid-technology-revving" target="_blank">developing</a>, the vast majority of EVs currently on the road do not have this capability, and utilities would need regulatory approval before bringing it to scale. But done right it could be a great opportunity.</p><p>Electric car batteries can hold approximately <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/11/how-california-can-use-electric-vehicles-keep-lights" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">60 kilowatt hours (kWh)</a> of energy, enough to provide back-up power to an average U.S. household for two days. Larger electric vehicles like buses and trucks have even bigger batteries and can provide more power. The American company Proterra produces electric buses that can store <a href="https://www.proterra.com/press-release/proterra-launches-zx5-electric-bus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">up to 660 kWh of energy</a>. Electric <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-trash-trucks-are-coming-quietly-to-your-town-11602098620#:~:text=Electric%20trash%20truck%20love%20is%20in%20the%20air.&text=A's%20program%20to%20reduce%20carbon,being%20primarily%20electric%20by%202023." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">garbage trucks</a> and even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/business/electric-semi-trucks-big-rigs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">big-rigs</a>, with bigger batteries, are becoming a reality too.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY4MzUzNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NTM2MzEwNn0.KL9N8R5wSAaHQUpJVAFdUkc4DyNAV3ERQSP6vhAxj1c/img.jpg?width=980" id="a2215" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f089d78a004c8cb279189d1c3f068bf5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="800" data-height="562" />
MTA New York City Transit / Marc A. Hermann / CC BY 2.0
<p>If equipped with vehicle-to-grid or vehicle-to-building technology, those cars, buses and trucks could prove invaluable during future blackouts. People could rely on their cars to power their houses. Municipalities, transit agencies and school districts could send out their fleets to the areas most in need. We could power homes, shelters and emergency response centers — and could keep people warm, healthy and comfortable until power could be restored.</p><p>But to add this great resiliency tool to our arsenal in times of extreme weather, we must significantly increase the number of EVs on the road. In 2019 electric cars accounted for only about <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1136-june-1-2020-plug-vehicle-sales-accounted-about-2-all-light-duty" target="_blank">2%</a> of all light-duty vehicle sales in the country. Electric buses and trucks are becoming more common in the United States, but still only represent a tiny fraction of the fleet. As it stands now, the EVs currently on the road, even if equipped with vehicle-to-grid technology, would do little to help a broad swath of the population in need of power.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY4MzU0OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMDM3MjIxOX0.7YMrPnmM94g_wIhBA7irS7WeIeHQJQUhkZ30nEsWEFY/img.jpg?width=980" id="15537" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="abb30f1e8d614f5aa8bf4fb5c4c14f7f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="799" data-height="533" />
A line of electric cars at charging stations. Andrew Bone / CC BY 2.0
<p>There are some signs that this is changing. <a href="https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/09/23/governor-newsom-announces-california-will-phase-out-gasoline-powered-cars-drastically-reduce-demand-for-fossil-fuel-in-californias-fight-against-climate-change/" target="_blank">California</a> and <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gasoline-car-sales-to-end-by-2035-in-massachusetts/" target="_blank">Massachusetts</a> have both announced intentions to explore a policy that would require all new cars after 2035 be electric. General Motors is the latest major automaker to announce an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/01/28/general-motors-electric/" target="_blank">intention</a> to move toward producing only electric cars. Several major transit agencies, including in <a href="https://www.capmetro.org/electricbus#:~:text=CapMetro%20has%20purchased%20a%20total,and%20more%20riders%20per%20bus." target="_blank">Texas</a>, are starting to switch to all-electric buses.</p><p>But we must move faster. If we <a href="https://uspirg.org/feature/usp/electric-buses-america-0" target="_blank">electrified the nation's transit and school bus fleets</a> by 2030, for example, we could have more than 500,000 large mobile batteries available across the country.</p><p>To support widespread adoption of electric vehicles, we need to invest in the <a href="https://uspirg.org/reports/usp/plugging" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">charging infrastructure necessary</a> to accommodate explosive growth. We also need to make sure that as EV adoption increases, the vehicles and infrastructure are set up to use the power-transfer technology. Nissan already does this with its <a href="https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127590_nissan-leaf-as-home-energy-device-wallbox-will-soon-enable-it-in-the-u-s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Leaf-to-home</a> system. <a href="https://www.proterra.com/press-release/proterra-introduces-new-high-power-interoperable-ev-charging-technology/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Proterra</a> offers transit buses equipped with the technology. <a href="https://www.dominionenergy.com/our-stories/electric-school-buses" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dominion Energy</a> in Virginia is working with school bus manufacturers to develop and operationalize a large-scale school bus vehicle-to-grid program.</p><p>To standardize the technology and make it accessible to everyone, utilities should seek regulatory approval to implement programs and invest in vehicle-to-grid capable infrastructure, and automakers should make it easy for consumers to install chargers that can send power both ways.</p><p>As that happens, governments at all levels should work to incorporate electric vehicles into their emergency response plans. Shelters, hospitals, emergency response centers and other buildings critical to crisis management should be equipped with the infrastructure necessary to pull power from EVs. Heavy-duty fleets like buses and trucks present particularly promising opportunities to provide power to people in need, but all the electric buses in the world won't do any good if we're not prepared to have them charged and ready to deploy to the areas that need them the most.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vyvk/texas-tesla-owners-are-drawing-power-from-their-cars-during-blackouts" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">few Tesla owners</a> in Texas were able to draw power from their cars to stay warm and keep the lights on this month, which is great. But this valuable resource shouldn't be limited to a few select people on a one-off basis. With more EVs on the road and careful planning and preparation, we could have millions of mobile batteries available to help keep the power on for <em>everyone</em> in emergencies.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://therevelator.org/author/casale/" target="_blank"><em>Matt Casale </em></a><em>is the transportation campaign director for U.S. PIRG, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the public interest and speaks out for a healthier, safer world in which we're freer to pursue our own individual well-being and the common good. Matt works on the local, state and federal levels to bring about policy changes that will reduce the need to drive, electrify buses and electrify cars — so the easiest, cheapest and most pleasant ways to travel are also the cleanest and healthiest. Matt lives in Boston with his wife and two daughters.</em></em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/texas-blackouts-electric-vehicles/" target="_blank">The Revelator.</a></em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Trending
Earth’s Magnetic Field Broke Down 42,000 Years Ago, Causing Massive and Sudden Climate Change
23 February
Science
Illustration of Earth's magnetic fields. Elements of this image furnished by NASA. Elen11 / iStock / Getty Images Plus
By Chris Fogwill, Alan Hogg, Chris Turney and Zoë Thomas
The world experienced a few centuries of apocalyptic conditions 42,000 years ago, triggered by a reversal of Earth's magnetic poles combined with changes in the Sun's behavior. That's the key finding of our new multidisciplinary study, published in Science.
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<p>This last major geomagnetic reversal triggered a series of dramatic events that have far-reaching consequences for our planet. They read like the plot of a horror movie: the ozone layer was destroyed, electrical storms raged across the tropics, solar winds generated spectacular light shows (auroras), Arctic air poured across North America, ice sheets and glaciers surged and weather patterns shifted violently.</p><p>During these events, life on Earth was exposed to intense ultraviolet light, Neanderthals and giant animals known as megafauna went extinct, while modern humans sought protection in caves.</p>
<p>The magnetic north pole – where a compass needle points to – does not have a permanent location. Instead, it usually wobbles around close to the geographic north pole – the point around which Earth spins – over time due to movements within Earth's core.</p><p>For reasons still not entirely clear, magnetic pole movements can sometimes be more extreme than a wobble. One of the most dramatic of these pole migrations took place some 42,000 years ago and is known as the Laschamps Excursion – named after the village where it was discovered in the French Massif Central.</p><p>The Laschamps Excursion has been recognized around the world, including most recently in <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-found-the-first-australian-evidence-of-a-major-shift-in-earths-magnetic-poles-it-may-help-us-predict-the-next-155040" target="_blank">Tasmania, Australia</a>. But up until now, it has not been clear whether such magnetic changes had any impacts on climate and life on the planet. Our new work draws together multiple lines of evidence that strongly suggest the effects were indeed global and far-reaching.</p>
<h3>Ancient Trees</h3><p>To investigate what happened, we analyzed ancient New Zealand <a href="https://theconversation.com/lord-of-the-forest-new-zealands-most-sacred-tree-is-under-threat-from-disease-but-response-is-slow-100447" target="_blank">kauri trees</a> that had been preserved in peat bogs and other sediments for more than 40,000 years. Using the annual growth rings in the kauri trees, we have been able to create a detailed timescale of how Earth's atmosphere changed over this time. The trees revealed a prolonged spike in atmospheric radiocarbon levels caused by the collapse of Earth's magnetic field as the poles switched, providing a way of precisely linking widely geographically dispersed records.</p>
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<p>"The kauri trees are like the Rosetta Stone, helping us tie together records of environmental change in caves, ice cores, and peat bogs around the world," said professor Alan Cooper, who co-led this research project.</p><p>Using the newly-created timescale, we were able to show that tropical Pacific rain belts and the Southern Ocean westerly winds abruptly shifted at the same time, bringing arid conditions to places like Australia at the same time as a range of megafauna, including giant kangaroos and giant wombats <a href="https://theconversation.com/dna-evidence-proves-climate-change-killed-off-prehistoric-megafauna-45080" target="_blank">went extinct</a>. Further north, the vast Laurentide Ice Sheet rapidly grew across the eastern U.S. and Canada, while in Europe the Neanderthals spiraled into extinction.</p>
<h3>Climate Modeling</h3><p>Working with a computer program that simulated the global interactions between chemistry and the climate, we investigated the impact of a weaker magnetic field and changes in the Sun's strength. Importantly, during the magnetic switch, the strength of the magnetic field plummeted to less than 6% of what it is today. A compass back then would struggle to even find north.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY3Njc4NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNzE0OTcyNX0._6giz_hkdx8BolumooinqSERhaRFMZEnSqsHFHaVG5I/img.jpg?width=980" id="c8f93" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b649fb72ee55c49e794cdcf3f90b1eb9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1200" data-height="676" />
An ancient kauri tree log from Ngāwhā, New Zealand. Nelson Parker, author provided
<p>With essentially no magnetic field, our planet totally lost its very effective shield against cosmic radiation, and many more of these very penetrating particles from space could access the top of the atmosphere. On top of this, the Sun experienced several "grand solar minima" throughout this period, during which the overall solar activity was generally much lower but also more unstable, sending out numerous massive solar flares that allowed more powerful ionizing cosmic rays to reach Earth.</p><p>Our models showed that this combination of factors had an amplifying effect. The high energy cosmic rays from the galaxy and also enormous bursts of cosmic rays from solar flares were able to penetrate the upper atmosphere, charging the particles in the air and causing chemical changes that drove the loss of stratospheric ozone.</p><p>The modeled chemistry-climate simulations are consistent with the environmental shifts observed in many natural climate and environmental change archives. These conditions would have also extended the dazzling light shows of the aurora across the world – at times, nights would have been as bright as daytime. We suggest the dramatic changes and unprecedented high UV levels caused early humans to seek shelter in caves, explaining the apparent sudden flowering of cave art across the world 42,000 years ago.</p><p>It must have seemed like the end of days.</p>
<h3>The Adams Event</h3><p>Because of the coincidence of seemingly random cosmic events and the extreme environmental changes found around the world 42,000 years ago, we have called this period the "Adams Event" – a tribute to the great science fiction writer Douglas Adams, who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and identified "42" as the answer to life, the universe and everything. Douglas Adams really was onto something big, and the remaining mystery is how he knew?</p>
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<em>Chris Fogwill is a professor of glaciology and palaeoclimatology, and the head of school geography, geology and the environment and director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures, Keele University.<br/>
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<em>Alan Hogg is a professor and director of the Carbon Dating Laboratory, University of Waikato.</em>
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<em>Chris Turney is a professor of earth science and climate change, director of the Earth and Sustainability Science Research Centre, director of Chronos 14Carbon-Cycle Facility, and UNSW director of the ARC Centre for Excellence in Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW.<br/>
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<em>Zoë Thomas is an ARC DECRA fellow, UNSW.</em>
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<em>Disclosure statements: Chris Fogwill receives funding from UKRI and the Australian Research Council. A huge thanks to professor Alan Cooper, honorary researcher at the South Australian Museum, who co-led this study, adjunct professor Ken McCracken and Dr. Jonathan Palmer at the University of New South Wales, Drew Lorrey at the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Dr. Janet Willmshurst at Landcare Research and our co-authors on the published article.</em>
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<em>Professor Alan Hogg works for University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. He is an associate investigator in a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden grant - MFP-NIW1803: Dr. Andrew Lorrey, NIWA, Auckland, principal investigator.</em>
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<em>Chris Turney receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is a scientific advisor to cleantech graphite company CarbonScape (<a href="https://www.carbonscape.com/" target="_blank">https://www.carbonscape.com</a>).</em>
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<em>Zoë Thomas receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</em>
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<em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/earths-magnetic-field-broke-down-42-000-years-ago-and-caused-massive-sudden-climate-change-155580" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em>
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Icicles hang off the State Highway 195 sign on February 18, 2021 in Killeen, Texas following winter storm Uri, which has brought historic cold weather and power outages. Joe Raedle / Getty Images
By Jessica Corbett
While millions of Texans on Monday continued living without safe drinking water and many faced storm damage and massive electricity bills, youth leaders with the Sunrise Movement rallied at the state capitol in Austin, using the current conditions across the Lone Star State to bolster their demand for a Green New Deal.
<p>"Texas is the perfect example of what happens when our politicians cater to fossil fuel executives instead of the young people who have been shouting from the rooftops for years, warning of an impending climate emergency like this," said Sunrise leader Chante Davis in a statement ahead of the rally.</p><p>The Houston teenager's family moved to Texas in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.</p><p>"I've survived three once-in-a lifetime storms in my 17 years of life," Davis said. "We need change, and the Green New Deal is the obvious, urgent solution. As our communities come together to fill the void of our government, our leaders must invest in us to provide jobs that directly address the crises we face."</p><p>The group has been a key proponent of the Green New Deal resolution <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/02/07/major-party-backing-ocasio-cortez-and-markey-unveil-green-new-deal-outlining-wwii" target="_blank">introduced</a> in 2019 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).</p>
<div id="33fe2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="20d635a68d8c6c0e2ee0e9ba14e3bf69"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1363901146478219266" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">[email protected] at the Texas Capitol this morning to confront state and country leaders about last week’s snow storm… https://t.co/kokBBRZoNA</div> — Hannah Falcon (@Hannah Falcon)<a href="https://twitter.com/hannahfalcon_/statuses/1363901146478219266">1614014348.0</a></blockquote></div>
<div id="5f790" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="94bf16b155a9b5ee079ce2b230981e54"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1363909975597285382" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">And the state has the fucking gall right now to put troopers with ARs out on the capitol grounds to intimidate us.… https://t.co/WFUZcKDcKl</div> — EmGe (@EmGe)<a href="https://twitter.com/em_magining/statuses/1363909975597285382">1614016453.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Last week's <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/19/fossil-fuel-exec-brags-hitting-jackpot-natural-gas-prices-surge-amid-deadly-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">deadly</a> winter weather, which experts have <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/17/role-climate-crisis-cant-be-hand-waved-away-scientists-say-freezing-texas-linked" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">linked</a> to human-caused climate change, led to <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/17/he-lying-people-are-dying-calls-texas-governor-resign-he-blames-power-outages-wind" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">major power </a>outages across Texas—the only state that mostly relies on its own electricity grid. Some Republicans, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, tried to blame renewable energy and warn of the not-yet-implemented Green New Deal, but the outages were largely tied to fossil fuel and nuclear facilities. Though much of the state now has power again, Texans are still dealing with water and food issues.</p><p>Concerns are also <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/21/no-safe-amount-environmentalists-sound-alarm-over-texas-refineries-release-hundreds" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">mounting</a> over the hundreds of thousands of pounds of pollutants—including benzene, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur dioxide—that Texas oil refineries released while scrambling to shut down during the storm.</p><p>Climate campaigners within and beyond Texas have responded to the state's cascading crises by <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/18/forget-ted-cruz-whats-really-missing-texas-green-new-deal" target="_blank">ramping up</a> their calls for a Green New Deal, which would create millions of jobs by transitioning the nation to 100% clean power while launching a WWII-style mobilization to build "resiliency against climate change-related disasters."</p>
<div id="580d0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="87ca15ef9a8a31b909d0919db56fa761"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1362528807073234948" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">We know that when our lights go out, there are neighborhoods like @GovAbbott’s whose don’t. The rest of us? We com… https://t.co/EwTZ4kA2Zh</div> — Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@Sunrise Movement 🌅)<a href="https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/statuses/1362528807073234948">1613687156.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>In a <a href="https://secure.everyaction.com/8GnCQBZjI0S6EweMDre84A2" target="_blank">petition</a> open for signatures from Texas residents, Sunrise lays out four key demands—including the resignation of Abbott and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who came <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ted-cruz-accused-flying-cancun-texas-power-outages-photo-goes-viral-1570118" target="_blank">under fire</a> last week for fleeing to Cancún for a vacation as his constituents <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/18/blood-abbotts-hands-anger-gop-leaders-surges-food-water-shortages-compound-texas" target="_blank">endured</a> the fallout from the storm during the coronavirus pandemic:</p><ul><li>Direct, Immediate Relief: We need cancelled utility bills, direct cash assistance of $2,000/month, a rent freeze, and specific support for our most marginalized community members.</li><li>A 100% Renewable, Resilient Energy System and Good Jobs to Build It: A public, well-regulated power system to make our state and country more resilient to future disasters and create good union jobs for our communities.</li><li>Joe Biden must come to Texas. Where Texas' leaders have failed us, the president of the United States has an opportunity to lead. He must come to Texas and help the suffering, and use this moment to take urgent action on the climate crisis and build the resilient power system of the future.</li><li>The resignation of Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz. Gov. Abbott and Sen. Cruz have neglected their duty as public servants in the midst of this humanitarian crisis and must step down immediately. They are unfit to serve.</li></ul><p>Journalist and environmentalist Naomi Klein on Monday noted Cruz's attempted defense of the trip in a tweet promoting the Sunrise rally:</p>
<div id="8bcef" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c7186a458462e9d1332cd150cf23d73e"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1363902295344226304" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Ted Cruz says he went to Mexico to be a "good parent." That was BS, as we all know. The way to be a good parent (or… https://t.co/uWZWdCgsbe</div> — Naomi Klein (@Naomi Klein)<a href="https://twitter.com/NaomiAKlein/statuses/1363902295344226304">1614014621.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Klein—author of <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/this-changes-everything-naomi-klein-lessons" target="_blank"><em>This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate</em></a> and other books—<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/22/republicans-fear-green-new-deal-argues-naomi-klein-because-its-viable-alternative" target="_blank">argued</a> in a Sunday column for the <em>New York Times</em> that Republicans "fear" the Green New Deal because it offers a viable alternative to "the collapse of a 40-year experiment in free-market fundamentalism" that Texans are now enduring.</p><p>"The horrors currently unfolding in Texas expose both the reality of the climate crisis and the extreme vulnerability of fossil fuel infrastructure in the face of that crisis," Klein wrote. "So of course the Green New Deal finds itself under fierce attack. Because for the first time in a long time, Republicans face the very thing that they claim to revere but never actually wanted: competition—in the battle of ideas."</p>
<div id="d2af4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="07057c3270fc8f809f160c8a4aeff329"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1363531126426398721" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">I wrote about why Texas Republicans are terrified of the #GreenNewDeal for @nytimes. Their ideas are no longer "l… https://t.co/RWDDJhCeua</div> — Naomi Klein (@Naomi Klein)<a href="https://twitter.com/NaomiAKlein/statuses/1363531126426398721">1613926128.0</a></blockquote></div><p> In a statement last week <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/17/demanding-gov-abbotts-resignation-sunrise-movement-says-texas-crisis-shows-urgent" target="_blank">calling on</a> Abbott to resign over his handling of the storm and his lies about the power outages on <em>Fox News</em>, Sunrise digital director Paris Moran declared that "we deserve a government that addresses our basic needs and protects all of us in moments of crisis."</p><p>"Despite the lies you'll hear from Gov. Abbott on <em>Fox News</em>, that's truly what the Green New Deal is all about," said Moran, whose family in Texas lost electricity, had food go bad, and lacked consistent running water. "We must come together and rebuild an era of prosperity through the Decade of the Green New Deal."</p>
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A swamp wallaby searches for food in a bushfire-scorched forest on February 3, 2020 in Braidwood, Australia. John Moore / Getty Images
By Tara Lohan
A hailstorm in South Texas. Tornadoes in Tennessee. Wildfires across the West. A barrage of Gulf Coast hurricanes. Those are among the record 22 weather and climate disasters that each topped $1 billion in damages last year in the United States.
<p>In all, the price tag for 2020 hit a whopping $95 billion — and that's just in the United States. Reinsurance firm Swiss Re put <a href="https://www.swissre.com/media/news-releases/nr-20201215-sigma-full-year-2020-preliminary-natcat-loss-estimates.html" target="_blank">global economic losses</a> at $175 billion last year, including $32 billion for <a href="https://qz.com/1950391/the-10-most-expensive-natural-disasters-of-2020/" target="_blank">floods in China</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/weather/cyclone-amphan-damage-intl-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">$13 billion in damages</a> from Cyclone Amphan across India and Bangladesh.</p><p>The worst news? Our profligate burning of fossil fuels means we're in store for more.</p><p>Studies show that climate change is supercharging some weather and climate events and will lead to more severe and longer-lasting <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/305/5686/994" target="_blank">heat waves</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/climate/climate-changes-hurricane-intensity.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stronger hurricanes</a>, an <a href="https://www.c2es.org/content/wildfires-and-climate-change/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">increased wildfire risk</a> and a longer wildfire season. We can also expect more <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2881/earths-freshwater-future-extremes-of-flood-and-drought/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">heavy rain events</a> and <a href="https://www.c2es.org/content/drought-and-climate-change/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">severe droughts</a>, not to mention other extreme events like February's polar vortex.</p><p>"You can't attribute any particular storm to climate change, but what we do know is that climate change tips the odds of making many of these events more severe," says Bruce Stein, chief scientist and associate vice president at the National Wildlife Federation.</p><p>While experts tabulate the economic losses — homes destroyed, crops ruined, businesses shuttered — ecosystems and wildlife can also sustain damage that's harder to quantify.</p><p>Many plants and wildlife evolved with and have adapted to dealing with large-scale disturbances, but we're beginning to see "megadisturbances" at levels beyond what we saw in the past, says Stein.</p><p>And that can take a toll. Extreme weather can kill animals directly — or indirectly, like by destroying food sources, contaminating water or altering habitat, forcing a species to move into areas where there may be more competition, fewer resources or a greater risk of predation.</p><p>"What we begin to find when you get some of these mega disturbances is that it's beyond the ability of a species — or their adaptive capacity — to bounce back," says Stein.</p>
<h1>The Research</h1><p>The effects of climate change on the natural world are being felt at two speeds. One is more gradual, referred to by scientists as "ramping" — shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels. The second is quick, like extreme weather events.</p><p>Both are problematic, says Sean Maxwell, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland's Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science. But, he adds, "I think the changes to acute events have the greatest potential to devastate local populations or ecosystems, and the impacts of these events are often more difficult to plan for or avoid."</p><p>Maxwell was the lead author of a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ddi.12878" target="_blank">2018 study</a> published in the journal <em>Diversity and Distributions</em> that examined how changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather and climate events affected wildlife. The researchers looked at 519 studies of ecological responses to extreme events — including cyclones, droughts, floods, and heat and cold waves — that took place from 1941 to 2015. They found that the response was negative 57% of the time. (And in those instances where species benefited, they were mostly invasive species.)</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY3MjMxMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2MDQ5MjcwMX0.vWOhTY5PgWrupHYIMFFce6KUG1XH6n1aw0qMCWv3-bE/img.jpg?width=980" id="3f9df" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f1ccfeffe9a6723900d8f76612d9f9b8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="799" data-height="533" />
A manatee stranded by Hurricane Irma in Melbourne, Florida. Bill Greer, FWC / CC BY-ND 2.0
<p>"Some of the negative responses we found were quite concerning, including more than 100 cases of dramatic population declines and 31 cases of local population extinction following an extreme event," says Maxwell. "Populations of critically endangered bird species in Hawai'i, such as the palia, have been annihilated due to drought, and populations of lizard species have been wiped out due to cyclones in the Bahamas."</p><p>Plant species, the researchers found, had the highest number of negative responses to extreme events, followed by reptiles and amphibians.</p><p>"Collectively, the studies in our review suggest that extreme weather and climate events have profound implications for species and ecosystem management," the researchers concluded.</p><h1>The Most Vulnerable</h1><p>Species that are already threatened or endangered are of course especially at risk.</p><p>Take the Attwater prairie chicken. A million of these birds once ranged across the prairies of Texas and Louisiana.</p><p>Today fewer than 100 remain in the wild and scientists have sought to bolster their populations with captive breeding programs. But when Hurricane Harvey walloped Texas with 130-mile-per-hour winds and record rainfall in 2017, the birds were right in harm's way.</p><p>"The Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge tracked 29 individual birds, mostly hens. Post-hurricane, staff confirmed only five of them still alive," <a href="https://texasclimatenews.org/features/attwaters-prairie-chicken-population-hit-hard-by-harvey/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Texas Climate News</a> reported. "The hurricane also killed roughly 80% of a prairie chicken population on private property in Goliad County."</p><p>Other species with limited ranges, like those on islands, also face big threats.</p><p>"If a species is well distributed, then if one part of its range gets hit, there's the ability for it to recover," says Stein. "But if essentially all its eggs are in one basket, and that particular place gets hit by one of these big disturbances, that's when you have a real concern."</p><p>In 2017 Hurricane Maria <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/after-hurricane-dorian-survey-shows-hope-and-concern-bahamas-birds" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cut the population of just 200 Puerto Rican parrots</a> in half. The year before, Hurricane Matthew was believed to have wiped out the last Bahama nuthatches (<em>Sitta insularis</em>). It took two years before a few of the birds were found — and then Hurricane Dorian struck in 2019, making their survival unlikely, according to Diana Bell, a professor of conservation biology at the University of East Anglia.</p><p>"In fact, Dorian may have not only sealed the fate of the nuthatch but also severely impacted other birds endemic to these islands, particularly the Bahama warbler and the Abaco parrot," Bell <a href="https://theconversation.com/hurricane-dorian-was-also-a-catastrophe-for-the-bahamas-unique-birds-123493" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a> in an essay for <em>The Conversation</em>. "Also known as the Bahama Amazon parrot, this subspecies uniquely nests in limestone cavities on the ground which are likely to have been flooded by the storm surge."</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY3MjMxOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3NTgxMjYyMH0.GEcdU7i6_0jsNoolMUAM1ZNpvsQWjlDj8KfSZzLxvNE/img.jpg?width=980" id="47539" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0aaf95300b450d0f8d0a49b310aeae5a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="799" data-height="533" />
Damage in the Bahamas from Hurricane Dorian. Seaman Erik Villa Rodriguez / U.S. Coast Guard
<h1>Compounding Crises</h1><p>The risk to wildlife from extreme storms can be compounded by the ramping effects of climate change, too.</p><p>"If you have increasingly severe hurricanes where you've also got sea-level rise essentially providing a higher lodge point for the storm surge, then you start seeing impacts beyond the historical record," says Stein.</p><p>In other places, extreme weather is an extra blow to species already struggling with other environmental pressures, like habitat loss, invasive species or pollution.</p><p>Last year the world watched in horror as land-use management, climate change and drought helped push Australia's bushfires to a terrifying new level, killing 34 people and burning 37,500 square miles.</p><p>In the immediate aftermath, one expert put the death toll for wildlife at <a href="https://therevelator.org/australia-bushfires-extinction/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1 billion animals lost</a>. Since then the figure has been revised to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/study-says-australias-bushfires-harmed-3-billion-animals/a-54344204" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">3 billion killed or displaced</a> by the blazes.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1251-1.epdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">study</a> published in <em>Nature Ecology and Evolution</em> found that the fire impacted the critical habitat of 832 native species, with 70 species losing more than 30% of their natural range. Twenty-one of those were already at risk of extinction.</p><p>Those that survived could find themselves hard-pressed in future climate disasters. "Multiple extreme events are likely to act in synergistic ways to exacerbate risk of species' extinction," wrote Maxwell and the other researchers of the 2018 study.</p><p>Australia already has one of the highest extinction rates, and the wildfires could limit the capacity of some species to recover — like the endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart and the long-footed potoroo — and threaten others. Australia's record blazes last year could push the number of endangered species in the country up by 19%, the study in <em>Nature Ecology and Evolution </em>found.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY3MjMyMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MTE0NDI3NX0.GIq4Um10O8jxxaX6lV8YLVU0ZEeSfml4KGSas0xx_rc/img.jpg?width=980" id="b65a7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="23f41600dfbd2c618b67fac0e1b87ac6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="799" data-height="533" />
Kangaroo Island, the only habitat of the endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart, after the 2019-2020 Australia wildfires. StephenMitchell / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
<h1>Solutions</h1><p>When Hurricane Irma sacked the Florida Keys in 2017, the storm tossed boats ashore, destroyed more than 1,000 homes and left a trail of debris across the islands.</p><p>It also endangered one of the region's beloved endemic species, the tiny Key deer, which today primarily live on Big Pine Key. Some deer were killed in the storm, and surviving animals faced threats to their already limited freshwater supply as the storm surge dumped saline ocean water into freshwater pools.</p><p>Island residents responded the way folks often do after a disaster — they offered help to their neighbors.</p><p>"What you saw during and shortly after Irma is that these Key deer were coming up to houses looking for fresh water," says Stein. "And people were putting out kiddie pools of water for them."</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY3MjMyNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MjM4MTE0OH0.x_zKoXw0-UArsFon5rOFwKQ93UVDBTyJdRClAD98qvE/img.jpg?width=980" id="7cf53" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7af4c5a126d38d68aeda4daaaa4ad61c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="799" data-height="533" />
Key deer after Hurricane Irene. Carol Lyn Parrish /CC BY-ND 2.0
<p>Following Australia's bushfires last year, the country's government jumped to the aid of wildlife by dropping 4,000 pounds of carrots and sweet potatoes to starving brush-tailed rock-wallabies who lost their food source in the blazes.</p><p>"There's a lot of things that we can do to help human communities as well as wildlife after these acute disturbances," says Stein.</p><p>But beyond immediate food and water relief, there's a much bigger task ahead: reducing greenhouse gas emissions to address the ongoing dangers of climate change and the ability of ecosystems to adapt. Key deer, for example, also face a long-term threat to their drinking water supply from rising seas, something no number of kiddie pools can repair. And more severe hurricanes are likely in their future, too.</p><p>"As climate change continues to ensure extreme climate and weather events are more and more common, we now need to act to ensure species have the best chance to survive," says Maxwell. "Wherever possible, high-quality and intact habitat areas should be retained, as these are the places where species are most resilient to increasing exposure to extreme events."</p><p>If such intact habitat doesn't exist, ecological restoration efforts can be used to help species adapt, his study found.</p><p>And the more we know, the better.</p><p>"Incorporating extreme events into climate change vulnerability assessments and adaptation plans will be challenging," the researchers of the 2018 paper concluded. "But by doing so we have a greater chance of arriving at conservation interventions that truly address the full range of climate change impacts."</p><p>And that could give more species a fighting chance in a changing climate.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://therevelator.org/author/taralohan/" target="_blank"><em>Tara Lohan </em></a><em>is deputy editor of The Revelator and has worked for more than a decade as a digital editor and environmental journalist focused on the intersections of energy, water and climate. Her work has been published by The Nation, American Prospect, High Country News, Grist, Pacific Standard and others. She is the editor of two books on the global water crisis.</em></em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="The%20Revelator" target="_blank">The Revelator.</a></em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A neighborhood that flooded during Hurricane Harvey near the Motiva refinery flaring in Port Arthur, Texas on Aug. 26, 2020. Michael Stravato / for The Washington Post via Getty Images
By Brett Wilkins
Texas oil refineries released hundreds of thousands of pounds of pollutants including benzene, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur dioxide into the air as they scrambled to shut down during last week's deadly winter storm, Reuters reported Sunday.
<p>Winter storm Uri, which <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/19/texas-power-outage-winter-storm-deaths/" target="_blank">killed</a> dozens of people and cut off power to over four million Texans at its peak, also disrupted supplies needed to keep the state's refineries and petrochemical plants operating. As they shut down, refineries flared — or burned off — gases in order to prevent damage to their processing units.</p><p>According to the Texas Commission on Environment Quality, the five largest refiners emitted nearly 337,000 pounds of pollutants in this manner.</p>
<p>ExxonMobil's Baytown Olefins plant in Baytown released 68,000 tons of carbon monoxide and nearly a ton of benzene in what it called a "safe utilization of the flare system."</p><p>Critics noted, however, that benzene is harmful to bone marrow, red blood cells, and the immune system.</p><p>"There is no safe amount of benzene for human exposure," Sharon Wilson, a researcher at the advocacy group Earthworks, told Reuters.</p>
<div id="c9b47" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8e087bc318806cfd5b8a2494c188f447"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1363487660971597828" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">The five largest U.S. oil refiners emitted tons of pollutants into the skies over Texas this week, including benzen… https://t.co/yZtlbByZ6U</div> — Reuters (@Reuters)<a href="https://twitter.com/Reuters/statuses/1363487660971597828">1613915765.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Motiva's Port Arthur refinery released 118,100 pounds of pollutants into the air between Feb. 15 and Feb. 18. This was triple the amount of excess emissions the plant reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the entire year of 2019.</p><p>Valero's refinery in Port Arthur flared 78,000 pounds of pollutants over 24 hours beginning Feb. 15, while Marathon Petroleum's Galveston Bay refinery released 14,255 pounds in less than five hours that same day.</p><p>Hilton Kelly, who lives in Port Arthur, told Reuters that there were "six or seven flares going at one time."</p><p>Wilson said that the flaring "could have been prevented" by winterizing the refineries.</p><p>"We need someone in the Texas legislature to file a bill requiring the oil and gas industry to thoroughly winterize all their equipment," Wilson <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/texas-oil-and-gas-plants-quadruple-air-pollution-as-sys-1846299152" target="_blank">told</a> Earther. "The bill probably won't pass in Texas, but that will create some more scrutiny about it."</p>
<div id="86ff1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8fd2fac7710d8b3f605704c950e6e4b0"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1363528659458400256" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">“If [the industry] had winterized their equipment, this wouldn’t be happening."
ICYMI: oil & gas "pollution event"… https://t.co/5jHzhVhW2d</div> — Earthworks (@Earthworks)<a href="https://twitter.com/Earthworks/statuses/1363528659458400256">1613925540.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Earther reports that between Feb. 11 and Feb. 18, there were 174 so-called "emissions events" from fossil fuel facilities in Texas, compared to between 37 and 46 such events in weeks before the storm.</p><p>In addition to the previously mentioned pollutants, chemicals released from Texas facilities include over 6,500 pounds of the <a href="https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc/content/profiles/isoprene.pdf" target="_blank">carcinogen</a> isoprene from a Shell plant in Deer Park near Houston, as well as an indeterminate amount of methane, which is <a href="https://www.edf.org/climate/methane-other-important-greenhouse-gas" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">84 times more harmful</a> to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over the short term.</p><p>Wilson told Earther that "in Texas we don't count methane" in pollution reports.</p><p>The release of large amounts of dangerous pollutants during Uri stands in stark contrast with <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/17/he-lying-people-are-dying-calls-texas-governor-resign-he-blames-power-outages-wind" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">claims</a> by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that alternative energy sources such as solar and wind are responsible for Uri's deadly power outages and that the Green New Deal would be a "deadly deal" for the United States.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/21/no-safe-amount-environmentalists-sound-alarm-over-texas-refineries-release-hundreds" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em><br/></p>
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An aerial view shows Hurricane Delta flood waters surrounding homes destroyed by Hurricane Laura, on October 10, 2020 in Creole, Louisiana. Mario Tama / Getty Images
Residents of Southwest Louisiana continue to endure the turmoil set off by Hurricanes Laura and Delta, and rooted in systemic inequities and exacerbated by the fossil fuel industry, Southerly reports.
<p>"People who are poorer than they were six months ago are expected to spend more on housing than they did six months ago," said Bill Quigley, a civil rights attorney and professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. </p><p>"It's just a vicious cycle for folks." </p><p>The region already faced an affordable housing crisis made worse by the gas boom over the last decade. </p><p>After the storms, landlords used loopholes to kick out tenants despite a national eviction moratorium, or simply evicted them illegally. </p>
<p>Now, amidst massive job losses fueled by the storms and the raging coronavirus pandemic, Lake Charles residents like Sasha Miller and her five-year-old daughter are caught in a tightening vise-set-on-spin-cycle of joblessness, homelessness, and COVID-19 exposure — all of which is made more stressful by a hard-to-navigate web of FEMA assistance processes.</p><p>After months of tumult, including at least one point at which she called a suicide crisis hotline, Miller and her daughter now live in a two-bedroom trailer with 11 other people and an unknown timeline for returning to their old apartment. </p><p>"I just hope it doesn't get more stressful," she said. </p><p>Last week, electricity in Lake Charles abruptly shut off as temperatures plummeted to 14°F.</p>
<p><strong>For a deeper dive:</strong></p><p><a href="https://southerlymag.org/2021/02/17/its-just-a-vicious-cycle-evictions-homelessness-surge-in-southwest-louisiana-after-two-hurricanes/?utm_campaign=Hot+News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=112313290&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8p2nvGgTlGkG3bbw6beXV-VXp5KCN4bYFHxwumDJn74u9ewly6oG4gMvqp9oFa1zEop3ceKYA3fB6H0WKkNszQ9eUlhDEmNSjXxgERv8AJHDnnQiw&utm_content=112313290&utm_source=hs_email" target="_blank">Southerly Mag</a>; Cold: <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-louisiana-city-struck-by-two-hurricanes-last-year-i-1846315984?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=112313290&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--r6KDP_PpGnyFOzIMCs_-GTc1jq_cwy_5shMZvobF5cENkUfq2t0t5gsnqNs9ERet_hCgkGCoWk87ZwoaFvwdFJvT4R76qg2N7yltGShAX6xJUxRk&utm_content=112313290&utm_source=hs_email" target="_blank">Earther;</a> Climate Signals background: <a href="https://www.climatesignals.org/climate-change-hurricanes?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=112313290&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-87Q_2fDASXPCIjTrSVwO4l2ygP8bmlXyt98Hd8tf0IQ_sQR8HCidS1RoDogo98kbtaJ0bozXNRxm_EXjQ5eV4fDjvTxquAgThlFSSnr-VrhdMJOZ4&utm_content=112313290&utm_source=hs_email" target="_blank">Hurricanes</a>, <a href="https://www.climatesignals.org/events/atlantic-hurricane-season-2020?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=112313290&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9D4N8d761tJRJBsxi5_IzWv9YldFPPik5cFpwtivsk2ZtV1nvYamqG1xBJjG8w7JZJIFWbKxsB3nQ_CDtF968kwG1f1ea5KwWxpIHp_nTr1-UBHj8&utm_content=112313290&utm_source=hs_email" target="_blank">2020 Atlantic hurricane season</a><br/></p><p><em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, sign up for daily </em><a href="https://www.linktrack.live/hot-news-sign-up" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>, and visit their news site, </em><a href="https://nexusmedianews.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Nexus Media News</em></a><em>. </em></p>
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Photos of alligators engaged in "icing" were posted on Facebook by an Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation worker. David Arbour / Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation
As unusually cold temperatures descended on the south and central U.S. this week, it wasn't only humans who struggled to adjust.
<p>In Texas, sea turtles had to be <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/turtle-rescue-texas-2650597417.html" target="_self">rescued by the thousands</a> as cold water temperatures made them go limp. Now, in Oklahoma, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/alligators" target="_self">alligators</a> have been pictured engaging in an extraordinary survival technique.</p><p>That technique is called "icing," and David Arbour of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation posted photos on Facebook Tuesday of alligators engaging in this odd-looking strategy.</p><p>What is icing exactly?</p><p>"They keep [their] nose up through the ice to maintain a[n] air hole so they can breathe," Arbour explained in the comments.</p>
<p>Arbour took the photos in the Red Slough Wildlife Management Area, a 5,814-acre wetland in southeastern Oklahoma that is home to alligators as well other reptiles, fish, mammals and amphibians, the <a href="https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article249345545.html#:~:text=The%20alligators%20were%20recently%20seen,helps%20the%20alligators%20breathe%20properly." target="_blank">Tri-City Herald reported</a>.</p><p>The behavior is also called snorkeling, and this is not the first time it has been observed in American alligators (<em>Alligator mississippiensis</em>). Alligators in a frozen-over pond in North Carolina were pictured doing the same thing during a cold snap in 2018, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/61389-alligators-snorkel.html" target="_blank">LiveScience reported at the time</a>.</p>
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d5ce0e6e3dbb85657904bbaedaca46b1"><div class="fb-video" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=767656473434331" data-allowfullscreen="true"></div></div>
<p>Because alligators are cold blooded, they depend on the surrounding environment to keep warm. That is why they bask on sunny days. But when it freezes, this kind of basking isn't possible, and that is when they "ice."</p><p>"It's an interesting behavior because it's opposite of what most crocodilians do," James Perran Ross, a retired associate scientist of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida, told LiveScience. "The normal response of most other crocs when it gets really cold is to come out of the water and try to bask to get warm again."</p><p>However, Ross added, this would be a bad idea for alligators in a cold climate, since the air is usually colder than the water. If they left the water, they might freeze.</p>
<p>Arbour wrote on Facebook that the alligators in his pictures would not freeze as long as the water remained liquid. He added that the ice did not hurt their snouts, because they are only made of cartilage.</p><p>Instead of hibernating, Arbour wrote, alligators enter a state called brumation.</p><p>"They can still move and are aware of things," Arbour said.</p><p>Brumation is a reptile-wide response to cold weather, according to <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/this-how-alligators-stuck-frozen-swamps-spending-winter-brumation-hibernation" target="_blank">Science Alert</a>. The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/animals/" target="_self">animals</a> slow down their metabolism and are very lethargic. Usually, alligators brumate at the bottom of swamps and come up once a day to breathe. When water freezes over, however, that is not possible.</p>
<p>Alligators can survive in water as cold as 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but it is not ideal.</p><p>"Obviously, that is not optimal, being frozen like that," North Carolina's Shallotte River Swamp Park general manager George Howard told <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/frozen-alligators-winter_n_5a55043de4b01e1a4b1a401e" target="_blank">HuffPost in 2018</a>, when alligators were videoed icing in his swamp. "I can't imagine it being very good for them if it was much over a week in cold water. That's why you don't see indigenous alligators north of North Carolina. Their bodies like the warmth."</p><p>In Oklahoma, temperatures have now been below freezing for 10 days as of Thursday, according to <a href="https://www.wlbt.com/2021/02/18/oklahoma-alligators-frozen-water-with-snouts-sticking-out/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">WLBT3</a>. However, the Southern Plains are expected to finally thaw this weekend, according to the <a href="https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/discussions/hpcdiscussions.php?disc=pmdspd" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">National Weather Service</a>.</p>
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While Texans were burning their furniture and children's toys for warmth, other wider-ranging impacts of the energy crisis precipitated by Arctic temperatures across the U.S. will be felt for years.
<p>In Fulton, Missouri, which serves as a gas utility for its residents, skyrocketing methane gas prices over the last week severely taxed the city's ability to cover the cost. As of Tuesday, the city had spent more than $3 million of its $5 million gas reserve fund. "We know that some of our residents just can't pay these exorbitant prices," a city official told KOMU. </p>
<p>Officials said absent outside relief it will take the city years to replenish the funds. Not everyone is suffering, however. The fracking company owned by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was able to maintain extraction despite the cold, making the week like "hitting the jackpot," according to its CFO. </p>
<p><strong>For a deeper dive:</strong><br/></p><p>Furniture and toys: <a href="https://www.today.com/news/surreal-photos-capture-dangers-cold-snap-across-south-t209378?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=111917289&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_ZGAWcoOc9ZGh0Pa6ZX9LWAoVMlVaVXtr3tu32H9_rt0L9NeIDh_APEMSCYkZ05XX-A_fL4dr17bnCbXjX4vkG_lLi-A&utm_content=111917289&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NBC</a>, <a href="https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/dallas-fire-rescue-triples-its-call-load-as-winter-storm-devastates-residents/287-82563b24-8c79-4d0d-84c7-7249ca927c53?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=111917289&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_5kIqXD8VvlwUlc6lFJC4Jzd0Px73tBlF7CWsLLOsoq8tBbYPJduU-fz0XnNqsnNyZP4TSv8jDE1s3duJ0asXrlBx0-w&utm_content=111917289&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">WFAA</a>, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/pictures-of-what-texas-is-like?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=111917289&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9HEfRx46UG4BRA3BgTPZDpY4tOOajmvubdCljwgizWONQvfM7z4BYeI8E7wql4zGpYSTCE6Nbzb9v95Glp9T_5gjDx0Q&utm_content=111917289&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">BuzzFeed</a>; Fulton, MO: <a href="https://www.komu.com/news/midmissourinews/fulton-city-council-to-hold-emergency-meeting-on-natural-gas-and-electricity-costs/article_ebe7ec72-70a6-11eb-b214-43966feef7bd.html?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=111917289&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--oHz6Y5e11Dw2p_CQCqAzW9bVxz0t14m1BBg7Pj2vMT7uyCJ9dFFfDzJuOCg3Xhx2y9A_iAQpYKsIVselU5FwzZk5c3w&utm_content=111917289&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">KOMU</a>, <a href="https://abc17news.com/news/fulton/2021/02/16/fulton-facing-financial-disaster-as-natural-gas-prices-skyrocket-because-of-frozen-pipes/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=111917289&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9rgOIL-y7TmpxvSDkwFXpNztWHgyIILltpelLqLHLH6FrADQ-yCZvyQgsKd-yKhZMyF-Z0KlxoL1nOIUeeasF_eeNvZw&utm_content=111917289&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">KMIZ/KOFX</a>, <a href="https://krcgtv.com/news/local/fulton-city-council-meets-amid-natural-gas-price-concerns?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=111917289&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9w-BPleAYVNQdDdQq2oK71HhmlsidlWV_gVr6WQnT40rXjmcxJa4GpvHlkPUHoPwZsyPe_ImctVPjrmeECM_iihwO6qw&utm_content=111917289&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">KRCG</a>; Jackpot: <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-winter-storms-2021/2021/02/18/969074414/jerry-jones-company-hits-jackpot-as-harsh-storms-send-natural-gas-prices-surging?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=111917289&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8VTgk8Ikg8CXFZ4PD2G7_v7_cum6zcvxz6fD14iGU9sZ9e9kQ_56iYNlwsO6mPBrLS-snBSzfuGcbxFoR47wfgYWUkkA&utm_content=111917289&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NPR</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-17/dallas-cowboys-owner-s-gas-driller-hits-jackpot-on-price-surge?sref=oUjKJw8m&utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=111917289&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_idIts1VOdfm7ypchb-_mAL6FoVDjXbcbUJQWu9_z_aPAzhxy_bCBLYaCOGMGxu09ObgMYDWWK7cVwEi6vhJ47PEA78w&utm_content=111917289&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a></p><p><em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, sign up for daily </em><a href="https://www.linktrack.live/hot-news-sign-up" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>, and visit their news site, </em><a href="https://nexusmedianews.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Nexus Media News</em></a><em>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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By Michael Svoboda
The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed again a fundamental truth about the Anthropocene: When disaster strikes, the vulnerable take the hardest punches. Communities of color have suffered much higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and mortality, both because they are disproportionately represented in frontline service positions and because their access to routine healthcare is more limited.
<p><br/></p>
<p>This pattern has long been observed in studies of environmental and climate justice, as the titles in this month's bookshelf show. Vulnerable communities of color face more and more serious exposure to environmental hazards and have more limited access to economic, social, and political remedies.</p><p>In addition to the overviews and historical and regional case studies illustrating and documenting this pattern, this bookshelf feature includes non-governmental organization reports detailing the poor performance of EPA's Superfund program; updating the results of efforts by environmental NGOs and foundations to diversify their organizations; and describing best practices for "covering climate equitably."</p><p>As with previous YCC bookshelves, the abbreviated descriptions of the books and reports listed below are drawn from copy provided by their publishers or issuing organizations. When two dates of publication are listed, the second refers to the release of the paperback edition.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300743/environmental-justice-in-a-moment-of-danger" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger</a>, by Julie Sze (University of California Press 2020, 160 pages, $18.95 paperback)</p><p><em>We are living in a precarious environmental and political moment. In the US and around the world, environmental injustices have manifested across racial and class divides in devastatingly disproportionate ways. What can we learn from environmental justice struggles? Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger examines mobilizations and movements, from protests at Standing Rock to activism in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Environmental justice movements fight, survive, love, and create in the face of violence that challenges the conditions of life itself. Exploring dispossession, deregulation, privatization, and inequality, this book is the essential primer on environmental justice, packed with cautiously hopeful stories for the future.</em></p><p><em></em><a href="https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/harriet-a-washington/a-terrible-thing-to-waste/9780316509442/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind</a>, by Harriet A. Washington (Little, Brown & Co. 2019/2020, 368 pages, $17.99 paperback)</p><p><em>From injuries caused by lead poisoning to the devastating effects of atmospheric pollution, infectious disease, and industrial waste, Americans of color are harmed by environmental hazards in staggeringly disproportionate numbers. This systemic onslaught causes irreparable physical harm to millions of people. But these deadly environments create another insidious and often overlooked consequence: robbing communities of color of intellectual power. Science writer Harriet A. Washington investigates heavy metals, neurotoxins, bad nutrition, and even pathogens as agents influencing intelligence to explain why communities of color are disproportionately affected. A Terrible Thing to Waste is sure to outrage, transform, and inspire debate.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674971714" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Katrina: A History, 1915-2015</a>, by Andy Horowitz (Harvard University Press 2020, 296 pages, $35.00)</p><p><em>Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, but the decisions that caused the disaster extend across the twentieth century. After the city weathered a major hurricane in 1915, its Board believed that developers could safely build housing in lowlands. When the flawed levee system surrounding the city and its suburbs failed, these were the neighborhoods that were devastated. Andy Horowitz investigates the response to the flood, and he explores how the profits and liabilities created by Louisiana's oil industry have been distributed unequally. Laying bare the relationship between structural inequality and physical infrastructure Katrina offers a chilling glimpse of the future disasters we are already creating.</em></p><p><em></em><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300232158/climate-change-streets" target="_blank">Climate Change from the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement</a>, by Michael Mendez (Yale University Press 2020, 304 pages, $30.00)</p><p><em>Environmental planner Michael Méndez tells a timely story of people, place, and power in the context of climate change and inequality. He explores the perspectives and influence low income people of color bring to their advocacy work on climate change. In California, activist groups have galvanized behind issues such as air pollution, poverty alleviation, and green jobs to advance equitable climate solutions at the local, state, and global levels. Arguing that environmental protection and improving public health are inextricably linked, Mendez contends that we must incorporate local knowledge, culture, and history into policymaking to fully address the global complexities of climate change and the real threats facing our local communities.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674984653" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment</a>, by Lucas Channel (Harvard University Press 2020, 184 pages, $29.95)</p><p><em>Can we fight poverty and inequality while protecting the environment? The challenges are obvious. To rise out of poverty is to consume more resources, almost by definition. And many measures to combat pollution lead to job losses and higher prices that mainly hurt the poor. In Unsustainable Inequalities, economist Lucas Chancel confronts these difficulties head-on. She begins by reviewing the problems. Human actions have put the natural world under unprecedented pressure. The poor are least to blame yet suffer the most. But policy pioneers worldwide are charting a way forward. The rare work that combines the skills of an economist with the rigor of a philosopher, Unsustainable Inequalities shows that there is still hope.</em></p><p><em></em><a href="https://islandpress.org/books/revolutionary-power" target="_blank">Revolutionary Power: An Activist's Guide to the Energy Transition</a>, by Shalanda H. Baker (Island Press 2021, 224 pages, $32.00 paperback)</p><p><em>In September 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, completely upending the energy grid of the brown and black US citizens who call the island home. Revolutionary Power arms those made most vulnerable by our current energy system with the tools they need to remake the system in the service of their humanity. In it, Shalanda Baker tells the stories of those who have been left behind, drawing from her experience as an energy-justice advocate, a lawyer, and a queer woman of color to inspire activists working to build our new energy system. This unique moment in history provides an unprecedented opening for a deeper transformation of the energy system, and, thus, an opportunity to transform society. Revolutionary Power shows us how.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/contamination-earth" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Contamination of the Earth: A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age</a>, by Francois Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux (The MIT Press 2020, 480 pages, $39.95)</p><p><em>The Contamination of the Earth offers a social and political history of industrial pollution, mapping its trajectories over three centuries, from the toxic wastes of early tanneries to the fossil fuel energy regime of the twentieth century. The authors describe how, from 1750 onward, polluted water and air came to be seen as inevitable side effects of industrialization. By the 19th century, pollutants became constituent elements of modernity. The 20th century saw new and massive scales of pollution, in part due to a lifestyle defined by consumption. In the 1970s, pollution became a political issue, but efforts to regulate it often fell short. Viewing the history of pollution though a political lens, the authors offer lessons for the future of the industrial world.</em></p><p><em></em><a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/waste" target="_blank">Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret</a>, by Catherine Coleman Flowers (New Press 2020, 224 pages, $25.99)</p><p><em>MacArthur "genius" Catherine Coleman Flowers grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place often called "Bloody Lowndes" because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it's Ground Zero for a movement that is Flowers's life's work. It's a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets. Flowers calls this America's dirty secret. In Waste, Flowers tells the story of the systemic prejudices that foster these Third World conditions. She shows how sanitation is too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://environmentamerica.org/reports/amc/superfund-underfunded" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Superfund Underfunded: How Taxpayers Have Been Left with a Toxic Financial Burden</a>, by Jillian Gordner (US PIRG/Environment America 2021, 174 pages, free download available <a href="https://environmentamerica.org/sites/environment/files/reports/USP_AME_SuperfundUnderfunded_1_0.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>)</p><p><em>In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, informally called Superfund, to hold polluters responsible for cleaning up contaminated waste sites or clean up the sites themselves if no responsible party could afford the cleanup. Originally funded by a tax on petro-chemical industries that expired in 1995, money for the Superfund program now comes primarily through general revenues. But as appropriations decreased over the past two decades, cleanup has slowed. From 1999 to 2020, annual appropriations decreased by more than a billion dollars. In FY 2020, EPA started or completed the fewest cleanup actions in the history of the Superfund program—putting more people at risk.</em></p><p><em></em><a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030279646#aboutBook" target="_blank">Struggles for Climate Justice: Uneven Geographies and the Politics of Connection</a>, by Brandon Derman (Palgrave Macmillan 2020, 261 pages, $74.99 soft cover)</p><p><em>How should we understand campaigns for climate justice? What do these initiatives share, and what differentiates them? What, in fact, does "climate justice" mean in these contexts? And what do the framing and progression of such efforts in different settings suggest about the broader conditions that produce and sustain climate injustice, how those conditions could be unmade, and what might take their place? In Struggles for Climate Justice, environmental studies professor Brandon Derman approaches these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective accessible to graduate and advanced undergraduate students as well as scholars of geography, social movements, environmental politics, policy, and socio-legal studies.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://diversegreen.org/transparency-cards/2020-ngo-foundation-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The 2020 NGO and Foundation Transparency Report</a>, by Staff of Green 2.0 (Diverse Green 2021, 101 pages, free download <a href="https://diversegreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/green-2.0-2020-transparency-report-card.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>)</p><p><em>For the fourth year in a row, Green 2.0 – an independent advocacy campaign to increase racial and ethnic diversity within the mainstream environmental movement – presents diversity data from the movement's most influential non-profit organizations ("NGOs") and foundations. The 2020 Green 2.0 Transparency Report Card reflects data collected from the 40 largest NGOs and 40 largest foundations on the number of women and people of color on their full-time staffs, senior staffs, and boards. This year's results are colored by two major national news events – the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide protests over racial justice – that likely influenced the participation we received. Green 2.0 hopes to add more groups to this list in future years.</em></p><p><em></em><a href="https://thesolutionsproject.org/tools/covering-climate/" target="_blank">Covering Climate Equitably: A Guide for Journalists</a>, by Erica Priggen Wright, Vanice Dunn, Katie Parrish, and Benjamin Gass (The Solutions Project with Conspire for Good and Provoc 2020, 36 pages, free download available <a href="https://thesolutionsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Solutions-Project-Covering-Climate-Equitably-A-Guide-for-Journalists.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>)</p><p><em>Years of environmental justice research reveals that people of color and low-income communities are disproportionately affected by pollution and climate change. But when The Solutions Project and Conspire for Good reviewed over <a href="https://thesolutionsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/2019-RENEWABLE-ENERGY-NARRATIVE-TRENDS-2.pdf" target="_blank">2,300 renewable energy articles</a> in 2019, they found that only 2% of the articles referenced communities of color, down from 7% in 2018, and only 6% of the articles talked about issues of equity or justice. Covering Climate Equitably: A Guide for Journalists includes tips on looking at potential stories through an equity lens and handling some common challenges. It also includes a glossary of terms, guidance on language choices, lists of sources and contacts, and case studies that show how to produce outstanding stories.</em></p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/02/new-books-reports-on-environmental-and-climate-justice/" target="_blank">Yale Climate Connections</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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How the Texas Electricity System Produced Low-Cost Power but Left Residents Out in the Cold
19 February
Insights + Opinion
A homeless camp under a bridge on I-35 in Austin, Texas on Feb. 17, 2021 as millions of Texans were still without water and electric during winter storms. Montinique Monroe / Getty Images
By Theodore J. Kury
Americans often take electricity for granted – until the lights go out. The recent cold wave and storm in Texas have placed considerable focus on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the nonprofit corporation that manages the flow of electricity to more than 26 million Texans. Together, ERCOT and similar organizations manage about 60% of the U.S. power supply.
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<p>From my research on the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yxN_35oAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">structure of the U.S. electricity industry</a>, I know that rules set by entities like ERCOT have major effects on Americans' energy choices. The current power crunch in Texas and other affected states highlights the delicate balancing act that's involved in providing safe, reliable electricity service at fair, reasonable rates. It also shows how arcane features of energy markets can have big effects at critical moments.</p>
<h3>Let There Be Light</h3><p>The <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/88630/empires-of-light-by-jill-jonnes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">electric age</a> began in 1882 when the Edison Illuminating Company sent power over wires to 59 customers in lower Manhattan from its Pearl Street Generating Station. Edison was America's first investor-owned electric utility – a company that generated electricity, moved it over transmission lines and delivered it to individual customers.</p><p>The scope and scale of electric utilities grew rapidly from those humble beginnings, but this underlying, vertically integrated structure remained intact for more than 100 years. Each utility had a monopoly on serving customers in its area and reported to a <a href="https://www.naruc.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">public utility commission</a>, which told the company what rates it could charge.</p><p>Since the utilities knew more about their costs and abilities than anyone else, the burden was on regulators to decide whether the utility was operating efficiently. <a href="https://www.raponline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/rap-lazar-electricityregulationintheus-guide-2011-03.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Regulators also determined</a> whether the costs that utilities proposed to pass on to customers – such as building new generating plants – were just and reasonable.</p>
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<h3>The Lines Get Tangled</h3><p>Things grew complicated in 1996 when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/industries-data/electric/industry-activities/open-access-transmission-tariff-oatt-reform/history-oatt-reform/order-no-888" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Order 888</a>, allowing states to restructure their electric power industries to promote more competition. Through the actions, or inaction, of individual state legislatures, the U.S. electricity market fractured.</p><p>Some states, primarily in the Southeast and the West, maintained the vertically integrated structure. The rest of the nation moved to a market structure in which generators compete to sell their electricity.</p><p>Regions created new independent organizations – known as independent system operators or regional transmission organizations – to regulate the flow of power on the grid. In these regions, generators compete to sell their electricity, and organizations called <a href="https://www.potomaceconomics.com/markets-monitored/ercot/" target="_blank">market monitors</a> make sure that generators follow the rules. This approach created power markets that prioritize generating electricity at the lowest possible price.</p>
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In the Southeast, Southwest and Northwest U.S., traditional utilities generate electricity and deliver it to customers. Other regions, including Texas, have moved to competitive power markets run by Independent System Operators, or ISOs. FERC
<h3>An Imperative to Keep Prices Low</h3><p>What do these changes mean for electricity customers in regions with competitive power markets? The companies that deliver power over wires to homes and businesses still have to get their prices approved by regulators, but the system works differently for the businesses that generate that power.</p><p>Generators offer their electricity, typically at a particular price each hour, on exchanges run by market operators like ERCOT. Those operators figure out how much electricity is needed across the regions they serve and choose the lowest-cost bidders to supply it.</p><p>If a generating company is not selected, it loses the opportunity to sell its electricity during that hour. And selling power is how generators create revenue to pay for things like workers, power plants and fuel. This means that generators have an incentive to bid as low as possible and sell as much electricity as possible.</p><p>Generators in Texas are facing criticism now that they <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/16/ercot-texas-electric-grid-failure/" target="_blank">weren't prepared to operate in extremely cold temperatures</a>. But consider the challenges facing two Texas generators that are identical in every way, except that one decides to invest in winterization. That company will have higher costs than its competitor and may be forced to submit higher-priced offers in the market, potentially losing out on opportunities to sell its electricity.</p>
<div id="c2792" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0322eb9acedc7416dc04356f6be3da2a"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1361346284230234112" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">ERCOT expected to get low capacity factors from wind and solar during winter peak demand. What it didn't expect is… https://t.co/WTn1btQgVx</div> — Daniel Cohan (@Daniel Cohan)<a href="https://twitter.com/cohan_ds/statuses/1361346284230234112">1613405221.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>In the long run, the company that winterizes may have a more difficult time staying in business. It would be better prepared for the conditions affecting Texas now, but it would operate at a competitive disadvantage under more normal conditions.</p><p>An international nonprofit regulator called the <a href="https://www.nerc.com/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank">North American Reliability Corporation</a> conducts semi-annual reliability assessments for each North American region, but those assessments are only as good as the assumptions they're based on. If the assessment doesn't consider extreme events, then the regulator can't determine whether a power system is ready for them.</p><p>After an earlier cold wave in 2011 that led to power shortages, federal regulators identified options for winterizing the Texas power system – but ERCOT <a href="https://www.kxan.com/investigations/winter-preparedness-not-mandatory-at-texas-power-plants-and-generators-despite-2011-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">did not require energy companies to carry them out</a>. Other regions might value resilience differently. For example, ISO-New England launched a program in 2018 that compensates generators for <a href="https://vimeo.com/257500308" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">providing extra capacity when the system is strained</a>.</p><p>The power of a competitive generation market is that each generator gets to decide for itself what makes it sustainable in the long run. That's also a weakness of the market.</p>
<h3>What's Next for Texas?</h3><p>Once power is restored across Texas, state and federal policymakers will have to address several tough questions in order to make failures like this less likely.</p><p>First, does preparing the power system for severe storms represent value for electricity customers? What types of events should people be protected from? Who determines the scenarios that go into reliability assessments? Since consumers will pay the costs, they should also benefit.</p>
<p>Second, how should people pay for this resiliency? Costs could be assessed based on the number of kilowatt hours each household uses or charged as a flat fee per customer – an approach that could benefit heavy electricity users. Or they could be covered through new taxes. How will decision-makers respond a year from now, when the crisis has passed and people ask, "The weather is great and the system is doing fine, so why am I paying more for my electricity?"</p><p>Third, how does that money that consumers pay to improve the system translate into projects? Should it go directly to generators or into a fund that generating companies can draw on? Who would administer the fund? Who is ultimately responsible for implementing changes to the system and accountable if things don't improve?</p><p>Finally, how will these changes affect the market's central goal: inducing energy companies to provide power at the lowest cost?</p><p>Ultimately, <a href="https://theconversation.com/delinquent-electric-bills-from-the-pandemic-are-coming-due-who-will-pay-them-147970" target="_blank">the public pays the costs of electricity service</a>, either through higher rates or service interruptions during events like this week's Texas freeze. In my view, utilities, regulators, government officials and people like me who study them have a responsibility to ensure that people get the best value for their money.</p>
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<em>Theodore J. Kury is the director of energy studies at the University of Florida.<br/>
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<em>Disclosure statement: </em><em>Theodore Kury is the director of energy studies at the University of Florida's Public Utility Research Center, which is sponsored in part by the Florida electric and gas utilities and the Florida Public Service Commission, none of which has editorial control of any of the content the Center produces.</em>
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<em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-texas-electricity-system-produced-low-cost-power-but-left-residents-out-in-the-cold-155527" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em>
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