
By Julia Conley
Sen. Elizabeth Warren expanded her vision for combating the climate crisis on Tuesday with the release of her Blue New Deal — a new component of the Green New Deal focusing on protecting and restoring the world's oceans after decades of pollution and industry-caused warming.
The plan includes proposals for an array of ocean-related issues — including fossil fuel emissions, ocean acidification, overfishing and the destruction of coastal communities. The Massachusetts Democrat and 2020 primary contender wrote in a Medium post that "a Blue New Deal must be an essential part of any Green New Deal."
"As we pursue climate justice, we must not lose sight of the 71% of our planet covered by the ocean," Warren wrote. "While the ocean is severely threatened, it can also be a major part of the climate solution — from providing new sources of clean energy to supporting a new future of ocean farming."
In keeping with the Green New Deal's focus on a "just transition" for fossil fuel sector workers, the plan aims to expand offshore renewable energy exploration as Warren follows through with an earlier promise to impose a moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling.
Along with reversing President Donald Trump's inaction on offshore renewables, Warren wrote that she will "work to streamline and fast-track permitting for offshore renewable energy, including making sure projects are sited with care based on environmental impact assessments."
Coastal communities hosting the projects will be consulted regarding transparency, environmental and labor standards, and community agreements will ensure that those living in these areas see a share of the benefits. With Warren's planned investment in the industry, she wrote, the U.S. could come closer to filling 36,000 well-paying offshore renewable energy jobs.
The progressive think tank Data for Progress praised the senator for giving consideration to an "essential" component of combating the climate emergency.
"Tackling climate change must include a comprehensive plan to address the emergency gripping our oceans, where the harms of warming are becoming alarmingly apparent to researchers, fishermen, and communities alike," wrote Johnny Bowman, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Sean McElwee. "This is an essential (and admittedly less sexy) part of the agenda for equitable decarbonization. Senator Warren has distinguished herself by studying the details."
Other areas in which Warren plans to introduce measures to boost the U.S. economy while protecting the environment include fishing and ocean farming.
Whereas one-in-four fish eaten in the U.S. are now shipped to Asia for processing before being re-imported into American markets, Warren would invest $5 billion over ten years to expand the USDA's Local Agriculture Market Program. The investment would help employ people at U.S.-based food hubs and distribution centers while reducing the massive carbon footprint caused by the current system.
The Blue New Deal was released as University of Delaware researchers published a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that the climate crisis has led to a 16% decline in jobs in New England's fishing industry, stemming from variations in water temperatures.
The senator would also direct the USDA to research and develop policies for ocean-based farming, paying farmers for their contributions to the climate change fight and including the industry in disaster assistance programs.
"Land-based farmers have long been supported by the USDA, but in a world of rising seas, increasing ocean temperatures, and ocean acidification, we must expand that support to include ocean farming as well," Warren wrote. "Algae and seaweed are the trees of our oceans, absorbing carbon and helping to reduce ocean acidification and pollution locally, and are valuable sources of nutrition ... These resources even have the potential to become a key ingredient in renewable fuels."
Warren added that under her administration, agribusiness companies would be held accountable for the water pollution they've caused for decades. Loopholes they've used to get away with exacerbating toxic algal blooms, harming marine life and contaminating drinking water would be closed, and enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts would be strengthened.
In addition to investing in coastal communities through offshore renewable energy projects, Warren promised to quintuple investment in FEMA's pre-disaster mitigation grant program, which Trump has proposed slashing.
"As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and I want to ensure we protect the 40% of Americans who live in coastal counties," Warren wrote.
"Studies have shown that every dollar invested in disaster mitigation saves $6 overall."
The League of Conservation Voters and Fridays for Future organizer Alexandria Villaseñor were among those who praised the senator on social media.
Greenpeace climate campaigner Jack Shapiro said it is "vital that our next president realize we're already in hot water" and recognize that "the climate crisis is an oceans crisis."
"Instead of opening virtually all U.S. waters to dangerous oil and gas drilling — as Trump has so far unsuccessfully tried to do — we should be shifting investment to clean, community-powered renewable energy and giving our oceans a chance to recover from decades of industrial exploitation," said Shapiro. "We're glad to see Senator Warren putting ocean protection on the national stage with this plan."
Reposted with permission from Common Dreams.
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The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>By John R. Platt
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