Category: Climate News Roundup

We are a civilization obsessed with expansion that has suddenly discovered, as it were, that it inhabits an island. Will we cling to our reckless old ideologies, or will we seek to learn a new, more intelligent way of being? –Jason Hickel, in Less is More.

Our Climate Crisis

This July 4^th was the hottest day on record since climate scientists began using our present modeling system to estimate global daily average temperatures starting in 1979. Furthermore, evidence left in tree rings and ice cores indicates that it hasn’t been this warm since at least 125,000 years ago during the previous interglacial age.

Temperatures around the world in June were at their highest levels in decades for this time of year. The heat spike reflects two factors that could create a multiyear period of exceptional warmth for the planet: humans’ continued emissions of heat-trapping gases and the return of the natural climate pattern known as El Niño. This is setting the stage for more-severe hot spells, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes.

Experts say that the oppressive heat wave roasting Texas and Mexico is an effect of rapid warming in the Arctic. Temperatures there are rising four times faster than the global average. This alters the jet stream, a fast-flowing air current that wraps around the Northern Hemisphere, causing it to dip and meander up and down as it zooms around the globe. A wavier jet stream can cause heat waves, storms and other weather systems to get stuck in place, dragging out for days or weeks on end.

The smoke that Canadian wildfires sent swirling over swaths of the East Coast blanketed cities including New York, Philadelphia and Toronto, shocked many Easterners, broke air quality records and threatened people’s health. Some climate experts say this has created an important opportunity for helping the public make the connection between these kinds of events and climate change. More recently this dangerous smoke pollution has been enveloping cities in the Midwest and may intermittently continue throughout the summer.

The climate crisis is fueling an insurance crisis in disaster-prone areas, leaving homeowners struggling to find affordable coverage. In California, State Farm and Allstate recently stopped selling new home insurance policies after years of catastrophic wildfires. In Louisiana, at least seven insurance companies have failed since Hurricane Ida. And in Florida, most big insurance companies have already pulled out of the storm-battered state.

Politics and Policy

The White House released a report last week on solar geoengineering as a way to slow rising global temperatures. The Biden administration indicated that it is open to studying the possibility that altering sunlight might quickly cool the planet. It, however, added a degree of skepticism by noting that Congress has ordered the review and said that it isn’t changing its climate policy.

About two-thirds of Americans support transformative climate policies like a carbon tax or Green New Deal. Most, however, do not realize that their views are so widely shared. This misperception matters, because when people feel alone in their views, they are less likely to take action.

Agrivoltaics—the double-duty climate solution that pairs solar panels (photovoltaics) with agriculture—enables farmland to host solar and stay in production. This has caught the attention of U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle who recently proposed two bills to boost agrivoltaics that benefit both farmers and ecosystems.

The debt ceiling bill agreed to by GOP house leader Kevin McCarthy and the White House approves all the remaining permits to complete the stalled Mountain Valley Pipeline. This delivered a big win for West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito who have received campaign contributions totaling over $70,000 from political action committees for developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline since the start of 2018.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order that the Mountain Valley Pipeline is “authorized to proceed with all remaining construction associated with the project.” The company building the pipeline said that, with this approval, the pipeline could carry natural gas as soon as this winter. It asked to have the two federal legal cases against it dismissed. The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a brief opposing motions to dismiss the cases.

Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board voted 4-3 to remove the commonwealth from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multi-state cohort aimed at reducing carbon emissions. Ultimately the board, with a majority of Gov. Glenn Youngkin appointees, voted to align with the administration’s wishes. This has looming consequences because the initiative generates hundreds of millions of dollars for energy efficiency for low income households as well as climate mitigation in flood prone areas of the state.

Energy

As India’s overburdened electrical grid strains, rural hospitals and health clinics are finding reliable power in rooftop solar. This enables them to provide constant electricity that keeps the lights on, patients and staff comfortable, and vaccines and medicines safely refrigerated. It also allows them to get rid of toxic, carbon-spewing diesel generators that provide emergency backup electricity.

It took 22 years for global solar power capacity to grow from one gigawatt to one terawatt. New projections indicate the second and the third terawatts will arrive within five years. Another bit of news on the rapid deployment of renewable energy is that 50.9% of installed electricity capacity in China is now renewables and nuclear, meeting a 2025 target two years early.

Nearly everything we do contributes to our carbon footprint. But a two-wheeled solution is zipping through the world at 20 miles an hour. U.S. sales of e-bikes nearly doubled in just one year as commuters looked for accessible and affordable modes of transportation. In 2021, more than 880,000 e-bikes were sold in the U.S., compared with 608,000 electric cars and trucks. That’s up from 450,000 e-bike sales in 2020.

Climate Justice

War, poverty and climate change have created a perfect storm for children around the world, according to a recent United Nations report. This has driven the number of children currently displaced from their homes to an unprecedented 42 million, and it has left those young people vulnerable to criminal violence and exploitation.

The US is racing to produce more biofuels, which use much more land than solar and wind while displacing much less fossil fuel. It’s fairly well-known that biofuels accelerate food inflation and global hunger, but they’re also a disaster for the climate and the environment. It takes about 100 acres worth of biofuels to generate as much energy as a single acre of solar panels.

Coastal land loss has upended life in South Louisiana for the half-dozen Indigenous tribes that rely on the abundance of its wetlands. Some 11,000 Native Americans live in the four most vulnerable coastal parishes (counties). They have been fighting to get the attention of the federal government as they push for coastal restoration efforts that would at least slow the degradation enough for them to plan an orderly retreat.

A pastor in Java, Indonesia recounts how ocean floodwaters exasperated by global warming breached an embankment and flooded their community last year. His church joined others in providing food and relief supplies across religious and ethnic boundaries. He reflects, “As I contemplate the natural disaster, I can see that the ministry of love invites us to bring about justice toward others. But I also know that the breach of the embankment shows that nature and our environment are not doing well.” 

With no public transit available, an innovative E.V. ride-sharing program is bringing low-cost, clean transportation to an agricultural town in California’s Central Valley. The service shuttles low-income residents, many of them elderly, to medical appointments for free. Similar programs are following suit in other parts of California, New York, and Washington, DC.

Climate Action

Dominion Energy is seeking households for its Income and Age Qualifying Solar Program which is no-cost for its customers in Virginia. A two person household qualifies at a yearly income of $46,544 or $93,088 if someone 60 or older lives in the home. You can find out more and see if you qualify by contacting Dominion Energy here . You can also contact Community Housing Partners here to find out more about this program in relation to other no-cost home weatherization and energy efficiency programs.

Pope Francis, in a fresh plea over climate change, called on people to repent for their “ecological sins.” The world must rapidly ditch fossil fuels and end “the senseless war against creation.” Francis has made the protection of the environment a cornerstone of his pontificate. He said that the upcoming U.N. climate summit meeting in Dubai “must listen to science and institute a rapid and equitable transition to end the era of fossil fuel.”

Americans generate more than 12% of the planet’s trash, though we represent only 4% of the global population. Our throw-away culture started about a hundred years ago with the rise of mass manufacturing. Now, aided by on-line how-to videos, consumers are showing an increased interest in prolonging the life of the things they own, rather than getting rid of them.  Additionally, so-called “Right to Repair” legislation seeks to make manufacturers provide consumers and independent repair companies access to their parts, tools and service information.

Richmond is joining other cities in scrapping decades-old mandatory parking space requirements. It’s expected to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases in an evolving capital city that prizes walking, bicycling and ready access to public transit. It could also reduce sprawl and free up space for affordable and additional housing.

Outside of catastrophic wildfire events, the leading sources of unhealthy air in the United States are fossil-fuel-powered transportation and electricity generation. A recent report from the American Lung Association indicates how much the most common pollutants would be reduced if the country were to speed up the transition to EVs and a clean energy grid.

The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated billions of dollars for EV buses but the program can’t keep up with demand. The Department of Energy recently allocated $1.7B in clean-bus grants but saw $8.7B in applications.

You should consider an electric grill when you replace your current gas or charcoal grill. They exist and, according to some advocates, they’re just as good at producing delicious food. They’re less expensive to use and give you one more option to unhook from fossil fuels.

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee

Despair is just deadly. We know how challenging all the climatic problems are that are now unfortunately baked into the environment. But we need to start every conversation with saying, “We can do this.” – Washington Governor Jay Inslee

Our Climate Crisis

The World Meteorological Organization warns that record-hot global temperatures in recent years are just the start of the kind of heat we’re headed toward. That’s because human-caused global warming will be combined with an emerging “El Niño” weather pattern that also warms the globe. There’s a two-thirds chance that at least one of the next five years will breach the 1.5 C threshold of increased global warming set by the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

The property insurance market is collapsing along the Gulf Coast following a series of destructive climate related storms. The insurance crisis has been created by insurance associations in Florida and Louisiana being forced to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to pay the hurricane claims of now insolvent insurers. Borrowing could reach a combined $1.35 billion, leading to soaring premiums and the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of homeowners’ policies.

This spring a heat wave in Southeast Asia has broken all-time heat records. In April temperatures broke former records in both Vietnam and Thailand. This came on the heels of a record-breaking heat wave in Southern Europe and North Africa, which scientists say was “almost impossible” without climate change.

The number of internally displaced people reached a record 71.1 million worldwide last year due to various climate calamities and conflicts such as the war in Ukraine. That number is a 20% increase since 2021, with an unprecedented number of people fleeing in search of safety and shelter.

Politics and Policy

The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced a proposal for the tightest limits ever on power plants’ planet-warming pollution. This is a giant step toward meeting President Biden’s pledge to halve U.S. emissions by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. In response, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he’ll oppose every EPA nominee put forward until the administration backs off.

The Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office has become an engine of the Biden administration’s efforts to aggressively advance clean energy. As part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, Congress supersized the office’s authority to arrange loans to companies trying to bring emerging energy technologies to market. Its loan capacity increased tenfold from $40 billion to more than $400 billion, making it potentially one of the biggest economic development loan programs in U.S. history.

Skyler Zunk, a young conservative activist, co-founded Energy Right last year to promote solar energy in rural Virginia. Today roughly 6% of Virginia’s electricity comes from the sun. To Zunk, that number falls woefully short. “Virginia has to be producing more energy. We’re a net importer and we need to be an exporter,” he argues. “It’s an enormous opportunity to seize.” His goal is that rural counties will see Energy Right as the nonprofit to seek out when they’re considering solar projects.

Weatherization providers for low-income households, such as Community Housing Partners,  are concerned about losing vital funding as Governor Youngkin continues to push for Virginia to leave the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Funds provided by RGGI finance outstanding repairs on houses before they can qualify for federal or state or utility sponsored weatherization programs.

Texas rolled out the welcome mat for renewables in 1999 by deregulating the electricity market. With ample wind and sunshine, a business-friendly regulatory regime, and state-backed construction of new high-voltage transmission wires, the state quickly became the nation’s renewable energy leader. This makes it hard to understand why Governor Greg Abbott and Republicans in the state legislature are now tripping over themselves to introduce bills designed to kill the Texas clean energy boom.

In a political climate trade-off the White House endorsed a plan by Sen. Joe Manchin to speed the approval of some fossil fuel projects in order to also hasten the construction of new transmission lines critical for meeting President Biden’s climate goals. The announcement of the deal drew swift opposition from many environmental groups, which are still seething over the administration’s support of the Willow oil project in Alaska and the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia.

The U.S. has more than enough proposed clean energy and storage projects needed to clean up the electricity sector. They’re, unfortunately, stuck in the queue and can’t get connected to the grid. Only about 21% of proposed projects get built because of the high costs of connecting to the grid and it takes about 5 years for a project to become operational once it enters the queue. Legislation is needed to help speed up the development of energy projects but Congress is haggling over permitting reforms for clean energy versus fossil fuel projects.

Energy

Dominion Energy says it expects the number of electric vehicles in its territory to roughly double by the end of next year. It forecasts another doubling by 2026. After five years, in 2027, it expects there will be 220,000 electric vehicles in its territory. That will mean a substantial increase in electricity usage. In related news, Dominion has created an energy plan document that completely ignores the legal requirements of the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

The global shift to electric vehicles is unfolding much faster than was expected even one year ago. The International Energy Agency says that by 2030, electric vehicles — including both fully electric and plug-in hybrid models — could make up 35% of new vehicle sales globally.

The investment boom in ​‘renewable natural gas’ (RNG), derived from trash, food, and manure, is sparking debate about its pros and cons. These investments, which are partially driven by federal tax credits, are soaring as energy companies seek what they claim are cleaner ways of powering the economy. The jury is still out on how clean RNG will prove to be. In any respect, it will hardly be a big player in providing clean energy.

The holy grail of fusion nuclear power has always been just beyond our grasp. Now Microsoft has inked a power purchasing deal for electricity with fusion start-up Helion Energy on a timeline beginning in 2028. If real, that would be game-changing but scientists remain skeptical. Both the technology and the cost are huge hurdles that need to be overcome.

China’s carbon emissions grew 4% in the first quarter of this year, reaching a record high. At the same time, renewables and nuclear, passed 50% of China’s installed power capacity for the first time, overtaking coal and other fossil fuel-based capacity. The rapid expansion in low-carbon energy, if sustained, could enable their carbon emissions to peak and enter structural decline in the near future.

Climate Justice

Research by the Common Wealth thinktank shows that the US fund managers BlackRock and State Street use funds with an “environment, social and governance” (ESG) label to invest in fossil fuel firms. Despite claims that their ESG funds offer a green and socially responsible option for investors, they remain significantly exposed to fossil fuel companies.

Our fleet of roughly half a million school buses is our nation’s single biggest transportation fleet. To date, 5,600 electric school buses have been funded or put in operation through government awards. The transition to electric buses will significantly reduce carbon emissions while benefiting local neighborhoods and the more than 20 million students who currently breathe in harmful diesel exhaust. Government funding through the Clean Bus Program is focused on serving lower-income, disadvantaged and rural school districts.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is investing nearly $11 billion to bring affordable clean energy to rural communities throughout the United States. Rural electric cooperatives, renewable energy companies and electric utilities will be able to apply for funding through two programs. This is the largest single federal investment in rural electrification since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act in 1936 as part of the New Deal.

Climate Action

Transportation creates 27% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Switching to EVs could reduce emissions up to 48% by 2050, but that still leaves us short of our climate commitments. Furthermore, many will still be without access to reliable and affordable transportation options. To significantly reduce transportation emissions, local governments will need to expand public transit, biking, and walking options and enact land use policies that encourage dense development and affordable housing around transit.

It is estimated that by 2050 one in every seven people in Bangladesh will be displaced by climate change, and up to 18 million people may have to move because of sea level rises. One climate mitigation effort is dredging earth from rivers to create a large, oval-shaped plateau that can withstand the oncoming rush of water during monsoons.  This creates a space for safe housing as well as to accommodate displaced families and their possessions during floods.

Food accounts for 10-30% of an American household’s carbon footprint and 75% of that comes from meat or dairy. You don’t need to go completely vegan to make a big environmental impact. The Michael Pollan family recommends eating a “plant-based diet with a focus on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds with the inclusion of meat and other animal products in moderation.” An added plus is that this is a much healthier diet.

Globally, about 2% of  carbon emissions are produced from burning wood for cooking, roughly the same share as aviation. Additionally, exposure to smoke from cooking fires is linked to an estimated 3.2 million premature deaths annually around the world and remains one of the main drivers of pollution-related disease and death in Africa. Inexpensive and energy efficient insulated cook stoves make a huge difference yet making the switch has been difficult.

Climate Victory Gardens is a movement inspired by the collective action of Americans taken during the WWI and WWII victory gardening movement, when 20 million gardeners produced 40% of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S. at the time. They’re bringing victory gardens back. This time, it’s for the climate. Click onto their website to learn more and to register your own garden, no matter how small it may be.

A staggering one-third of all food in the U.S. gets thrown out and most of that ends up in landfills. Each year, the greenhouse gas emissions from all that discarded stuff represents the estimated equivalent emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants. Yet, there’s a simple solution, beyond simply reducing waste. A new scientific study shows that composting food scraps results in 38 to 84% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than tossing them in landfills.

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee

Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world. – E. O. Wilson

Our Climate Crisis

Scientists have documented an abnormal and dramatic surge in sea levels along the U.S. gulf coast in the past decade. Sea-level rise in the area has been nearly 5 inches between 2010 and 2022—more than double the global average rate of sea-level rise. This raises questions about whether New Orleans, Miami, Houston and other coastal communities might be even more at risk from rising seas than once predicted.

The Horn of Africa is suffering its worst drought in 40 years after five consecutive years of below-average rainfall. New scientific studies have shown that the drought would not have happened without the human-made impact of the climate crisis. A conservative estimate is that climate change has made droughts in the region about 100 times more likely to occur.

A growing number of young people are “hesitant to have children” because of decades of climate denial and inaction. A global survey of people between the ages of 16 and 25 shows how widespread these sentiments are. Close to 60% say they feel “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change and nearly 4 in 10 said they are therefore “hesitant to have children.”

Politics and Policy

House Republicans are confident that pushing the production and use of fossil fuels will be a winning political strategy in 2024. They’ve already wrapped this agenda into their demands in the national debt standoff. So far, however, the voters they’re hoping to attract don’t seem to care.

Going beyond offering incentives for clean energy, the Biden administration recently announced ambitious Environmental Protection Agency auto pollution rules aimed at accelerating the shift to electric vehicles. Last year EVs accounted for just 7% of vehicle sales. The ambitious goal is to increase that to two-thirds of passenger cars, half of freight delivery vehicles and a quarter of heavy trucks purchased in a decade from now.

The enormous $8 billion Willow oil project on Alaska’s North Slope represents a small fraction of the hundreds of new oil and gas extraction projects approved in the past year across the world. Many more are expected to be approved this year. This surge in extraction ignores the warning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that fossil fuel production must start declining sharply to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency is tightening its rules on the emissions of mercury and other harmful pollutants from coal-fired power plants, updating standards imposed more than a decade ago. Such emissions can harm brain development of young children and contribute to health problems in adults. The stricter rules will likely lead to the early retirement of some coal-fired power plants.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit again blocked the Mountain Valley Pipeline from moving forward in West Virginia. The reason for the ruling was that the pipeline builder has repeatedly failed to comply with state stormwater and water quality requirements.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is encouraging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to proceed expeditiously on new permits for the Mountain Valley pipeline, the natural gas project favored by West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and opposed by environmentalists. She made the ironic claim that the pipeline will “play an important role” in supporting the transition to clean energy and in safeguarding our energy system.

After a nearly two-decades-long permitting process, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management gave final approval to begin building the $3 billion TransWest Express high-voltage transmission line. It will carry enough electricity from a large wind energy project in a former coal-mining community in Wyoming to power about 2 million homes in Arizona, Nevada, and California.

Energy

Automakers and battery manufacturers are developing solid-state batteries, which are lighter, less flammable, and have the potential for longer ranges than current lithium-ion systems. Some companies claim they are just a few years from releasing the first cars with solid state batteries.

Installing roof solar on warehouses could generate enough clean electricity to power every household in every state’s most populous cities, according to a report by two environmental research organizations. One of the researchers comments, “If we want to create a clean energy future, we should look first to the already-built environment that could host the tools we need. Warehouse rooftops provide a perfect opportunity—they’re big, they’re flat, and they’re begging to be put to this crucial use.”

Globally, electricity generated from wind and solar surged to 12% last year—up from 10% in 2021 and 5% in 2015. Renewable sources, including nuclear power and hydroelectric, now account for 39% of world electricity. The rest comes from fossil fuels that cause planet-warming carbon emissions. Coal, at 36%, remains the single biggest global energy source.

Virginia regulators approved nine solar projects and one energy storage project totaling about 500 megawatts that will be owned by Dominion Energy. The approved projects also include contracts with third-party developers who will build solar and storage facilities, totaling about 300 megawatts, and sell the energy to Dominion. This is in line with the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which seeks to decarbonize the electric grid by 2050.

The shipping industry is searching for cleaner ways to power the behemoth vessels that underpin the modern economy. Methanol is gaining favor as an alternative ​“drop-in” fuel that can be used immediately as companies develop truly zero-carbon solutions. If made from renewables, it can sharply curb carbon emissions compared to using oil-based fuels.

Climate Justice

While developed countries have historically contributed the most greenhouse gas emissions, that is rapidly changing. The top 10 emitters of greenhouse gases today (other than the United States and Canada) are emerging economies. This means providing international support in lowering emissions in poor countries as well as taking a surgical approach to reducing emissions by country and sector.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports that women working in agriculture “tend to do so under highly unfavorable conditions” – often in the face of “climate-induced weather shocks and in situations of conflict.” Addressing these inequalities and empowering women would improve their well-being and that of their households.

The Menominee tribe has sustainably logged its 235,000 acre forest in Wisconsin for 160 years. The tribe has been recognized by the United Nations and certified by the Forest Steward Council, the gold standard for responsible forestry, among other awards. Foresters from around the world routinely come to study the forest, which is healthier today than it was a century ago.

Small farmers in Malawi are becoming some of the most creative farmers in the world in response to global warming. They are sowing pigeon peas to shade their soils from a hotter, more scorching sun. They are resurrecting old crops, like finger millet and forgotten yams, and planting trees that naturally fertilize the soil. And they are turning away from one legacy of European colonialism, the practice of planting rows of corn and saturating the fields with chemical fertilizers.

Climate Action

Community Housing Partners (CHP) held a weatherization program at Mosby Heights in Harrisonburg last week. The nonprofit makes weatherization improvements, including attic insulation, air sealing, low flow shower heads, LED bulbs, an energy efficient water heater, and even an energy efficient heat pump HVAC system, to low income households at no cost to the homeowner or renter. This is a big win in driving down energy costs while reducing local greenhouse gas emissions. The CHP Weatherization Program application form is available at https://www.communityhousingpartners.org/energy-solutions/weatherization/.

Electrification has become a major tool in lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Transforming the economy so that more things run on clean electricity is a cornerstone of slashing emissions to nearly zero by 2050. It will require major efforts to strengthen and upgrade our electrical grid. Using electric power will be especially challenging in sectors such as aviation and heavy industry. Switching to clean electricity will be a formidable challenge but not impossible.

Our country’s largest solar array is being built in Springfield, Illinois. The massive 593-megawatt Double Black Diamond solar project will power O’Hare Airport and Chicago government buildings. This is part of the commitment of the Chicago city government to use 100% renewable electricity in city buildings by 2025.

A growing concern in rural Virginia is that  solar farms are taking over usable agricultural land. Dominion Energy is combating that with an alternative way of keeping things green at its 200 acre solar farm in Sussex County. Their solar grazing program uses a herd of sheep to clean up more than 40 acres of grass a day across five of their solar farms. Grass-fed animals produce fewer emissions than grain-fed animals, while concentrating that carbon back into the soil.

Woodstock Gardens, in Woodstock, VA,  is one of three garden centers across the state piloting a Virginia Department of Forestry program offering significant discounts to customers who buy and plant native trees and shrubs. Native trees and shrubs require less maintenance and resources and additionally improve water quality by filtering out pollutants, storing harmful greenhouse gases and reducing erosion.

Virginia’s voluntary Pollinator-Smart program encourages pollinator-friendly solar development. Solar energy facilities designed to support bees, butterflies and birds are now beginning to take hold through this innovative program to improve biodiversity. For example, Foxhound Solar, an 83-megawatt solar installation on 600 acres in Halifax County, is the second solar facility to be certified Pollinator-Smart in the commonwealth.

James Madison University is now offering a new Climate Science minor. Program coordinator Bill Lukens says that “human activity is changing Earth’s atmosphere and oceans in ways that we haven’t seen on Earth for millions of years.” Students taking courses in the minor will explore past climates through geological records and then contextualize them within our current and future world.

Researchers at Washington State University have developed a viable formula for a carbon-negative, environmentally friendly concrete that is nearly as strong as regular concrete. They did it by infusing regular cement with environmentally friendly biochar, a type of charcoal made from organic waste, that had been strengthened beforehand with concrete wastewater.

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee

We need the right kind of climate optimism. Climate pessimism dooms us to a terrible future. Complacent optimism is no better. – Hannah Ritchie

Our Climate Crisis

The recently released synthesis report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows hopeful progress in developing low-carbon technologies, more ambitious national commitments, and more funding.  This is, however, still not enough to keep global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels—the threshold necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Every fraction of a degree of warming we can mitigate will make a big difference.

Scientists have long cautioned that global warming would lead to wetter and drier extremes—increasingly severe rainfall and more intense droughts around the world. A new satellite study shows that it may already be happening. It provides an emerging picture of precipitation extremes over the past 20 years, leading to distortions in the total amount of water both above ground and also in aquifers deep beneath the Earth’s surface.

Antarctic sea ice reached the lowest levels ever recorded by the end of February. This is concerning because open water around the continent can melt its glaciers from beneath. Antarctica holds enough ice to raise sea levels by many feet. On the other pole, Arctic sea ice declined dramatically in 2007 and has never recovered. This may be proof of the sort of climate tipping point that scientists have warned the planet could pass as it warms.

Recent record snowfall and rain have helped to loosen drought’s grip on parts of the American west. Lake Powell on the Colorado River could gain 35 feet as snow melts over the next three months. That may sound like a lot of water for one of the nation’s largest reservoirs, but it will still be only one-third full.

Politics and Policy

The Biden administration approved the controversial Willow project to drill oil in Alaska. Environmentalists roundly criticized the decision despite the administration’s announcement of new protections against future oil production in other North Slope and coastal areas of the state. At peak production Willow carbon emissions will be roughly equal to running two coal-fired power plants during those 30 years.

California will now require half of all heavy trucks sold by 2035 to be electric, complementing their requirement that all cars sold be 2035 be electric. This is an effort to significantly cut carbon dioxide emissions from transportation, the sector of the American economy that generates the most greenhouse gases.

Funding from the federal Rural Energy for America Program could enable cash-crunched small farmers to save big with clean energy and substantially cut their operating costs. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act allows funding in guaranteed loans and grants of up to 50% of the cost of a clean energy project. The daunting application process is a barrier for small farmers.

Governor Youngkin’s push to remove Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has faced a flood of mostly negative public feedback. Comments on the public portal have been running about 50 opposed to his push for every person who supports it.

The bulk of the funding for Virginia’s Community Flood Preparedness Fund, which provides money to localities that need to reduce their flood risks, comes from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Flood-prone Communities may lose this lifeline if Gov. Youngkin succeeds in his effort to pull the state out of RGGI.

China’s Supreme People’s Court encouraged judges to hear climate-related cases and weigh up carbon impacts to help the country achieve its emission reduction goals. China’s climate goals are to peak its carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and be carbon neutral before 2060. At the same time, China is rapidly increasing its coal power capacity and decarbonizing the country will be a major challenge.

There is growing bipartisan support in the US Senate for instituting a tariff on carbon-intensive goods. Environmentalists have long considered a carbon tax to be a crucial tool to combat climate change but have been unable to get the necessary political support. The carbon tariff, on the other hand, is seen as a way to level the playing field against carbon intensive products being produced in countries like China.

Energy

Renewable energy is growing rapidly around the world—especially solar. Total capacity was 3.4 terawatts at the end of 2022 compared to 2.2. terawatts in 2017. It continues to gain in overall share of total generation capacity, now standing at 40.2% compared to 38.3% a year ago. China is leading the growth in global solar energy expansion, which now exceeds 1,000 gigawatts, compared to just 100 gigawatts a decade ago.

Georgia’s big new nuclear power plant is billions over budget and years behind schedule. It’s the first new nuclear reactor built in the U.S. in the last 30 years and it may be the last. Rather than representing the dawn of a new nuclear renaissance, it’s more likely the swan song of the conventional nuclear industry in the U.S.

The Virginia General Assembly passed legislation last year allowing gas companies to use biogas, a form of gas made by capturing methane emissions from landfills, sewage plants, manure, and abandoned coal mines. But is it really clean energy? Some environmentalists worry that it will support the existing gas infrastructure while hindering the needed transition to wind, solar, and green hydrogen energy.

Coal use in the UK fell by 15% last year. The last time coal use was that low was in 1757 before the industrial revolution. The decline, driven by strong growth in wind and solar power among other factors, helped drive down the nation’s emissions by 3.4%. The UK is now around halfway to meeting its net-zero emissions target in 2050.

A consortium of energy companies led by BP is investing in a high-tech gamble to make hydrogen clean, cheap and widely available. It involves as many as 1,743 wind turbines and 10 million solar panels in Australia’s Outback. All of the energy produced, equivalent to a third of what Australia’s electric grid currently requires, will be used to manufacture green hydrogen that is cheap enough for industrial uses such as manufacturing steel and concrete.

Toyota was the forerunner in producing hybrid electric vehicles but has been slow to transition to battery electric vehicles (BEVs). That’s because the company has been focused on developing hydrogen cell technology. It is now beginning to market BEVs while still developing hydrogen powered vehicles. The company recently introduced a limited offering of a hydrogen powered vehicle in California.

The Hampton Roads Alliance, in partnership with Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, is creating a $6.5 million green hydrogen fuel program to help kick-start a local industry. The plan is to be part of a Mid-Atlantic Hydrogen Hub that would add 9,000 new jobs, generate $1.7 billion in economic activity and create $490 million in state and federal tax revenue by 2030.

Climate Justice

The Rockingham County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a feasibility study on demand-response public transit that provides curb-to-curb service. They were responding to lots of groundwork by Valley Interfaith Action (VIA) culminating in a public event that turned out more than 500 people. The feasibility study is a crucial step toward providing public transit for all as well as lowering transportation carbon emissions in the county. Shenandoah Valley Faith and Climate helped organize with VIA to make this happen.

Stacey Abrams, the Georgia organizer and politician, is leaving campaign politics behind to focus on weaning America off fossil fuels. She recently took a job as senior counsel for the non-profit Rewiring America. Her role will be helping people across America wean their homes and businesses off fossil fuels and on to electricity. A goal will be to especially benefit low-income communities and communities of color.

The American Institute of Architects in DC is offsetting the greenhouse gas emissions from a major renovation of its building with a $500,000 donation to Habitat for Humanity Virginia. The startup Give Solar will coordinate with Habitat in using the donation to cover the cost of solar panels on an estimated 72 Habitat homes. Jeff Heie, who directs Give Solar, says the gift is huge in breaking through barriers in providing solar energy to low income households.

Climate Action

ACTION ALERT: Gov Youngkin is trying a backdoor approach to weaken the Virginia Clean Energy Act through adding anti-climate amendments to energy legislation. Through this  Chesapeake Climate Action Network link, you can send a letter to your VA state senator urging him or her to reject these amendments and hold the line on climate.

Carba, a Minneapolis startup company wants to become a leader in the emerging carbon capture and storage market. They have developed a portable reactor that converts plant waste into a charcoal-like substance called biochar that can be buried to seal carbon in place for generations. This promises to consume a fraction of the energy of other carbon capture technologies, such as direct air capture methods.

Third Act, a climate protest group for people aged 60 and older (calling themselves the Rocking Chair Rebellion) organized an action in D.C. and 100 other locations across the country. The action targeted Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America, the biggest investors in fossil fuel projects. Collectively, the four banks have poured more than $1 trillion into oil and gas between 2016 and 2021.

It is common knowledge that highly religious Americans tend to deny or express less concern about our warming environment. Some people of faith are now beginning to leverage their faith traditions to drive action. Emerging organizations such as Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, Green Muslims, Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, and Dayenu are drawing from their own religious and spiritual traditions to engage in climate action.

JAUNT, the public transit agency in Charlottesville and surrounding counties, is conducting a preliminary study on using alternative fuels such as battery electric, or hydrogen fuel cells in their vehicles. Ted Rieck, their executive director, says “One of our goals is to reduce greenhouse emissions by about 45% by 2030 and net zero by 2050.”

The Conservative Energy Network seeks to convince farmers, landowners, evangelicals and state lawmakers that wind, solar and other forms of renewable power are good for their wallets, rights and votes. While the group believes the science underpinning climate change, it eschews terms like “green energy” and “net zero.” Its message, instead, focuses squarely on energy independence, free markets, land rights and consumer choice.

Technology firm Intuit is partnering with Staunton based Secure Solar Futures to develop solar projects and help start job training programs in Virginia and West Virginia. Qualifying community colleges and K-12 public schools will receive awards ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 per campus to deploy solar power solutions and prepare local students for careers in renewable energy.

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee

The climate crisis is not a science problem. It is a human problem. The ultimate power to change the world does not reside in technologies. It relies on reverence, respect, and compassion—for ourselves, for all people, and for all life. This is regeneration. – Paul Hawken

Our Climate Crisis

The public is increasingly paying more attention to our climate crisis. This is changing the dominant strategy of fighting climate change through global treaties where it’s easy to dream up bold agreements but hard to make them stick. Public buy-in is enabling highly motivated governments and companies to invest in new technologies and business models. They can, in effect, run experiments and quickly learn what works in the drive toward a greener future.

This January was the warmest on record in seven states, including the entirety of New England. It was also the sixth warmest on record for the Lower 48 states and third warmest in Europe.  Five of the six warmest Januaries in the United States have occurred since 1990.

Rising tides are impacting coastal Virginia’s rural communities, which do not have the public infrastructure that urban areas have. This pushes more of the cost burden onto individual households. FEMA is helping people raise their houses but they still need to contend with waterlogged septic systems and water wells that turn brackish. Sea level rise in the Hampton Roads region is up roughly eight inches since 1970.

We have entered a new chapter in the climate and ecological crisis that presents us with difficult decisions. Severe climate events draw focus and resources from tackling the underlying causes of global warming and ecological loss—creating a possible doom loop. Our challenge is to navigate through the shocks while staying focused on creating a more sustainable world.

The megadrought made worse by climate change forced Texas farmers to abandon 74 percent of their planted crops last year. This especially impacted the global supply and price of cotton, made even worse by the cotton crops destroyed by the massive flood in Pakistan. The extreme drought in the American Southwest could re-create the dust bowl conditions of the 1930s.

Last fall, the Alliance for World Scientists published their “Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022” along with a 35 minute documentary. This marks the 30th anniversary of the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” signed by more than 1700 scientists in 1992. Since then there has been a roughly 40% increase in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Politics and Policy

The gas industry is under fire. It’s fighting back by creating a group dubbed Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future and recruiting prominent Democratic politicians as spokespersons. Among them are former senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and former congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). The argument they are making is that, while we need wind and solar power, gas is a needed abundant, cheap, and potentially “clean” energy source.

A new French law will require canopies of solar panels to be built atop all substantial lots in the country. Upon completion, this will generate as much electricity as 10 nuclear power plants and add as much as 8% to France’s current electrical capacity.

Michigan will be home to the $3.5 billion Ford battery factory that Virginia governor Youngkin rejected over his concern that a Chinese company is a partner in the venture. The 2,500 jobs the factory will create now go to Michigan instead of Virginia.

A Republican bill sponsored by Del. Tony Wilt, R-Rockingham, seeking to end a Virginia law tying the state to emissions standards set by California, that will ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles starting in 2035, died in the state Senate on a party line vote. Virginia Democrats have defended the law on the grounds that it puts Virginia at the front of the line to receive electric vehicles from automakers who are transitioning their fleets and it will improve air quality.

Energy

Texas is building utility scale solar faster than any other state and is expected to soon surpass California as the state with the most solar capacity. Utility-scale solar is surging ahead across the United States, which is forecast to add 29.1 gigawatts of new capacity in 2023.

Energy giant BP has reported record annual profits, which more than doubled to $27.7bn in 2022; other energy firms have seen similar rises. BP had previously promised to lower emissions 35-40% by the end of this decade. It has now cut that target to 20-30%, saying it needs to keep investing in oil and gas to meet current demands.

Methane from cow manure can be purified into a product being billed as “renewable natural gas” (RNG), which is virtually indistinguishable from fossil fuel natural gas. Major fossil fuel companies have inked deals with the dairy industry in California to build manure digesters. But is RNG carbon negative? It depends on if one calculates it as being derived from a waste product versus becoming an integral income stream in the very carbon intensive dairy industry.

The U.S. Department of Energy is providing funding for up to seven pilot projects that will test the efficacy and scalability of enhanced geothermal systems. Geothermal energy currently generates about 3.7 gigawatts of electricity in the U.S.; with the development of these enhanced systems it could provide 90 gigawatts of firm, flexible power to the U.S. grid by 2050.

Dominion Energy reports that its $9.8 billion wind farm 27 miles off the shores of Virginia Beach is on track and on budget. The installation, which could provide carbon-free power to more than 650,000 homes and businesses, is slated for completion by the end of 2026.

Last year European wind and solar production overtook natural gas in electricity generation.  That had seemed unimaginable one year ago on the cusp of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Solar capacity alone has doubled since 2018 and is on track to triple in the next four years.

Climate Justice

Prioritizing a transition to electric cars has an equity problem because low-income Americans cannot afford them and are more likely to use public transit. Sita M. Syal, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, says that the EV transition should, therefore, be part of a broader shift to clean mobility that invests in public transit, walking, and biking, as well as systems like EV charging that support private car use.

Minnesota paid Enbridge, the company replacing the corroded Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline and doubling its capacity, $8.6 million to fund police and other agencies to respond to the acts of civil disobedience that the project would surely spark. Protestors, who then experienced mass arrests and detention, now contend that the financial arrangement created an unconstitutional police and prosecutor bias that violated their rights.

Climate Action

ACTION ALERT: Please submit your comments in support of keeping Virginia in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) on the Virginia Townhall website before March 31. Gov. Youngkin is continuing his effort to use regulation to withdraw the state from RGGI through the Air Pollution Control Board. To this end, they recently put this proposed regulation out for public comment. Let him know that there is broad public support for RGGI.

Using an inexpensive inverter, it’s now possible to power your home from your EV during a power outage. This is the leading edge of how EVs will be integrated into of our electrical power grid and become a key step in the transition to renewable energy. In the near future, with a bidirectional charger and a home integration system, your EV will be able to draw energy from the grid when there is ample supply and then resupply it during hours of peak demand.

Many in the younger generation are shunning getting a driver’s license or buying a car. In 1997, 43% of 16-year-olds and 62% of 17-year-olds had driver’s licenses. In 2020, those numbers had fallen to 25% and 45%.

The ability to commercially produce low carbon ethanol from rice and wheat straw, sugar cane, and corn stalks has been tantalizingly just beyond our grasp for decades. A big hurdle has been  collecting and distributing what is essentially a bulky waste product. Another has been processing this dirty, abrasive stuff after it reaches the plant. Now, after many fits and starts, we may be on the precipice of some significant breakthroughs that will make it viable.

Prince William County, the second largest school district in Virginia, is going solar. They will install solar power systems on the roofs of buildings at twelve school sites. The combined electric capacity will be 7.9 megawatts, which will save the district more than $16 million in energy costs over the next 25 years. Students will also be offered training and hands-on science experiments on energy.

The push is on to boost the production of sustainable aviation fuel. United Airlines recently launched a $100 million fund to support startups working to solve the supply problem. The goal is to increase production of sustainable aviation fuel from 1% today to 7.5% by 2030. Thirty-eight major airlines, including United, have committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 or earlier.

News and experiences from the Harrisonburg  Pollinator Program will be included in the new “Parks and Pollinators: Taking Action and Advancing Sustainability” resource put out by the National Recreation and Park Association. The program is enhancing the environmental health of the city and doing its bit to help reverse our climate crisis. Find out more and explore opportunities to get involved here.

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee

The world will not be saved by conscientious “green consumers” who decide, one family at a time, to drive less or install solar panels on their roof. The problem is just too big for that. Instead, we all need to become “green citizens.” We need to focus, together, on a relatively small number of public policies that can, over time, bring about sweeping change. – Hal Harvey and Justin Gillis

Our Climate Crisis

The ocean has become an increasingly greedy neighbor, forcing parts of the Outer Banks in North Carolina to retreat more than 200 feet in the last two decades. Some beaches are now losing about 13 feet a year. Sea levels along U.S. coastlines are expected to rise as much as 12 inches by 2050, with the Southeast and Gulf Coasts seeing the most change.

The heat is on in the Chesapeake Bay. The average summer water temperature has increased about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1995. This is threatening to undo decades of efforts to restore the Bay by improving its aquatic habitat. Populations of native species like blue crabs and striped bass are declining while some southern species, such as white shrimp and red drum, are already moving into the Bay in increasing numbers.  

Half of the world’s glaciers could disappear by the end of the century even under the Paris Climate Accord goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Current global commitments to fight climate change are projected to lead to 2.7°C of warming, which would cause the near-complete deglaciation of entire regions in Europe, North America, and New Zealand.

Europe broke heat records last year and kicked off 2023 with a record-setting heat wave. A winter heat dome descended on the continent at the beginning of the year, crushing thousands of high-temperature records. One climatologist called it “the most extreme heat wave in European history.”

When scientists tagged a seal with an ocean sensor, he led them to signs of a potential climate disaster in Western Antarctica. The seal appeared just offshore, roughly half a mile below the surface of the vast oceanfront glacier called Denman. This provided early evidence that warm ocean currents are undercutting the glacier, which could be a major threat to global coastlines. If the glacier completely melts, it could raise global sea levels by nearly 5 feet.

Politics and Policy

A bill to withdraw Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) was recently defeated in the State Senate. The Youngkin administration is, however, continuing its effort to use regulation to withdraw through Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board. To this end, they recently put the proposed regulation out for public comment. Please submit your comments in support of RGGI and your opposition to the repeal on the Virginia Townhall website between now and March 31. They need to hear that there’s broad public support for RGGI.

The oil and gas industry donated millions of dollars to members of the House in the last election cycle. Eight of the top ten recipients were Republicans. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who received $616,563, raked in the most donations from the industry.

U.S. carbon emissions rose 1.3 % in 2022. Can clean energy get them on track with the goal of cutting them 50% by 2030? The clean-energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act should help by supercharging the cost advantages of renewable energy. Emissions dropped 1% in the electrical power sector and should start dropping significantly as solar, wind power, and battery storage continue to become significantly cheaper than fossil fuels.

Exxon’s internal models already predicted global warming accurately in the 1980s. Their public stance, however, remained hostile to any public discussion of climate research. Their leadership and marketing team worked to create a cloud of confusion around climate change and shifted the blame from fossil fuel producers to the carbon footprint of individuals.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill last month to legally redefine natural gas as a source of “green energy.” The new law is anything but homegrown. The Empowerment Alliance, a dark money group with ties to the gas industry, helped Ohio lawmakers push the narrative that the fuel is clean.

The United Arab Emirates chose Sultan Al Jaber, the head of their national oil company, to be the president of the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai. Climate activists, angered by the decision, see this as a clear conflict of interest. Some have likened it to putting a tobacco company head in charge of an anti-smoking treaty.

Defying the federal government, the Tennessee Valley Authority recently announced that it will stick with fossil fuels by replacing a retiring coal plant with a 1,450 MW natural gas plant. Clean energy advocates are also fighting an uphill battle to push Duke Energy in North Carolina away from its plan to build 3 GW of new gas-fired power plants.

Virginia state senator Chap Peterson insists that Dominion Energy must adjust to a new political reality. For years, Dominion has lavished donations on Virginia lawmakers who crafted its regulatory structure that locked in bloated base rates and other advantages. That has to end!

Energy

This year the U.S. is on track to export more liquefied natural gas (LNG) than any other country and the industry is planning for a surge of growth over the coming years. This flies in the face of efforts to fight global warming. The fracking boom allowed the U.S. to start exporting LNG in 2016.

Germany has agreed to join a new green hydrogen pipeline project between Spain, Portugal and France. The pipeline under the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and France will carry green hydrogen, made from water via electrolysis using renewable energy.

Renewable energy is projected to be 26% of U.S. electricity generation this year according to the Energy Information Administration. The growth in renewables is coming from wind and solar power, with wind responsible for about one-third of the growth and solar accounting for two-thirds. Coal has dropped dramatically in the last decade and natural gas, which is still highest at 37%, has also begun to decline in the past several years.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is helping Virginia lower its carbon emissions by driving down emissions from power plants by 12% annually during the last two years. This is happening even in the midst of rapid data center growth in Northern Virginia that’s expected to drive a 38% increase in electricity use by 2035.

Geothermal energy is drawing fresh interest after lawmakers boosted funding for it in the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act. While the next generation of geothermal projects are still in the early stages of development, they have the potential for a 15-fold jump in capacity in the United States by 2050.

Both Dominion Energy and Gov. Youngkin’s office have included small modular nuclear reactors in their plans for future energy, but expanding nuclear is not as timely and efficient as proponents claim. Wind and solar generate much cheaper electricity. The cost of unsubsidized utility-scale solar plus battery storage is about half the cost of new nuclear reactors.

A report from an energy nonprofit indicates that we may have already hit the peak in using fossil fuels to generate electricity and are entering a period of decline. Wind and solar power are experiencing substantial growth that follows the trend lines for the early stages of transformative products like automobiles, computers, and smartphones.

An advocacy group filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission accusing the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell of “greenwashing.” The company’s most recent annual report claims that it directed 12% of its capital expenditure to “Renewables and Energy Solutions” in 2021. Only 1.5% of that, however, went toward developing renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. The rest of the spending went toward gas.

Climate Justice

Even though California was inundated by unprecedented rain in January, it’s too early to declare an end to the region’s long-term drought. Some climatologists say the state is dealing with weather whiplash—extremes on the dry end and extremes on the wet end. The poor experience the worst of these extreme weather woes. They live in housing that was often poorly built and placed in some of the highest-risk areas for weather related disasters.

The super-rich are coming under increased scrutiny for the ways their lifestyles are baking our planet. While private jets and mega yachts are on the extreme end of the scale, cruise ships and commercial passenger planes are close behind. The 19% of adults who take more than four flights a year in the United States and Canada account for 79% of the flights taken. In contrast, just 2-4% of the global population gets onto a plane each year.

A peer-reviewed scientific study finds that gas stove pollution causes roughly 12.7% of childhood asthma in the United States. Children of color and those in lower-income neighborhoods are twice as likely to be hospitalized for asthma. Poor households are more likely to have smaller kitchens that lack proper ventilation.

A new study shows that pesticides are a key contributor to climate change. This comes from their manufacturing, transportation, and application, all the way to their degradation and disposal. Conventional farming methods don’t account for such environmental externalities, while organic food is more expensive because it does. All people, regardless of income level, should be able to afford food grown without using pesticides.

Climate Action

Cities across the U.S. are taking surprising and innovative community-driven climate action. This includes a resident-centered bike-share program, radical budget restructuring, equitable home heating plans, planting trees and eliminating heat islands, recycling waste water, and creating a long-term climate change advisory committee.  

A Tennessee-based utility scale solar company has an unusually holistic brand of solar development that can serve as a model for rural agricultural communities. Its self-owned projects incorporate regenerative land practices and recycle old solar panels. Instead of treating vegetation as a problem to be dealt with using chemicals and lawnmowers, it is exploring ways to graze livestock alongside and under solar panels and enhance the ecosystem.

Dine in rather than take out—it’s a simple climate action that you may not have considered. Harrisonburg restaurant owners Mikey Reisenberg of Mashita, a Korean theme restaurant, and Kirsten Moore of Magpie restaurant note the economic and environmental costs of disposable silverware, napkins, sauce containers, and the bag in take out orders. Moore said. “Dine-in is so much better for the workers, the business, the craft, and the environment.”

German rail and public transit infrastructure is far advanced to what we have in the U.S., even though it has some challenges. Things we can learn from them include: a.) How vital public transit is to reducing carbon emissions, b.) The justice issue of providing public transit to poor populations, and c.) The connection between dense, affordable housing and a reliable, affordable transit system.

How do we feed 8 billion people without frying our planet? One obvious answer is eating less meat. Our food system is responsible for about a third of our climate problem and most of our biodiversity and deforestation problems. Food and climate writer Michael Grunwald says we need to get over our squeamishness about high tech foods and meat substitutes. We’ll need to use them to avert a climate catastrophe.

More than 90% of the rainforest carbon offsets in Peru sold by Verra, the biggest provider of carbon credits, are worthless according to a study by Cambridge University and a team of investigative journalists. This raises questions about the credits bought by internationally renowned companies such as Disney, Shell, and Gucci so they can make the claim that their products are “carbon neutral.”

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee

No matter your field of work, no matter where you live or what role you play in your home, workplace, or community, you and the people around you are interacting with nature and society and have insights into how to solve the problems associated with climate change. So that’s where we start. Climate change solutions are not waiting for us at a fancy delegation of diplomats in a foreign country. They are at our kitchen table. –Andreas Karelas

Our Climate Crisis

Wildlife is disappearing at an alarming rate around the world, in the oceans and on land. The main cause on land is because humans are taking over too much of the planet, erasing what was there before. There has been at least 33% habitat loss for wildlife since 2001. Climate change and other pressures make survival even harder. “The biodiversity crisis presents a longer-term threat to the viability of the human species,” says Katharine Hayhoe, a prominent climate change researcher who also focuses on biodiversity.  

A bit of encouraging news is research showing that polar bears are surviving in Greenland despite decreasing sea ice. They have clung on thanks to freshwater discharge from glaciers, offering hope for the species.

Our current Holocene geologic epoch began 11,700 years ago with the end of the last big ice age. Now a working panel of geologists appears to be close to recommending that we have spent the past few decades in a brand-new time unit identified as the Anthropocene, the age of humans. This new epoch is characterized by human-induced, planetary-scale changes that are unfinished but very much underway.

A recent aerial survey in Oregon found that more than a million acres of forest contain fir trees that have succumbed to stressors exacerbated by a multi-year drought and global warming. The die-off is way beyond anything seen before and scientists are dubbing it “fir-mageddon”.

Politics and Policy

American cities have way too many cars and too little affordable housing. A prime culprit is zoning laws that mandate minimum parking requirements for commercial and residential development. Climate campaigners and public transport advocates are beginning to push back and this is finally, slowly beginning to change in some cities. Reducing minimum parking requirements preserves green space, allows for denser housing, makes cities more walkable, reduces traffic, and fosters downtown renewal.

Gov. Youngkin got one step closer to his goal of withdrawing Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) when the Air Pollution Control Board voted to advance the process of pulling the state from the program. Environmental advocates for RGGI argue that this is an illegal end run around the Virginia General Assembly which passed the 2020 law requiring Virginia to participate in RGGI.

The Senate blocked Sen. Joe Manchin’s permitting reform amendment for energy infrastructure from getting onto a defense funding bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act. Environmentalist Democrats supported the reforms for clean energy infrastructure but voted against the amendment because it also streamlines the permitting process for fossil fuel projects, especially the Mountain Valley Pipeline which Manchin has been trying to get approved. Most Republicans opposed the amendment for political reasons.

Wall Street’s biggest banks and mutual funds are backing off the climate commitments they made before the COP26 climate conference last year. Bank of America and JP Morgan say they’re concerned about being held liable for accidentally running afoul of United Nations climate rules. Blackrock and Vanguard, the world’s largest asset managers, then confirmed that their net zero commitments would not preclude them from investing in fossil fuels. Vanguard later announced that it is resigning from the global net-zero initiative.

Energy

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm hailed a major breakthrough in creating fusion nuclear energy. Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were able to create a fusion reaction that generated more energy than it took to produce. This holds potential to provide constant energy without the pollution of fossil fuels or the radioactive risks of traditional nuclear power plants. It will, however, most likely be decades, if ever, before fusion energy can be technically and affordably used to generate electricity.

Natural gas is getting in the way of slashing carbon emissions from power plants in the U.S. Over the next few years, electric utilities are expected to build around 17 gigawatts of natural gas plants (enough to power close to 12.8 million homes). Unless those plants are closed early, they will operate for decades on an electric grid that still gets almost 60% of its power from fossil fuels.

Installing battery storage on the electrical grid increased rapidly in 2022. The federal government had estimated that 5.1 gigawatts of batteries would be added over the course of the year and it now appears that more like 5.4 gigawatts were added—about 11% of new power plant capacity. Battery manufacturers cannot keep up with the demand.

Dominion Energy demands have stalled a planned 1.2-megawatt community solar project in Augusta County. Their insistence on a high-speed fiber optic line between the solar array and the nearest substation would increase the cost by 50% and make it unaffordable. This demand,  which is inconsistent with industry standards, appears to be an effort by Dominion to restrict solar energy to its own utility solar.

Federal regulators published a draft environmental review approving Dominion Energy’s planned 176-turbine wind farm off the coast of Virginia. This approval will take the largest proposed ocean renewable energy project in the U.S. one step closer to construction, scheduled to begin in 2024.

The Department of Energy is providing funding to projects that accelerate the deployment of small- and medium-sized wind turbines across the United States. The wind turbines, designed to be used by homeowners, farmers, and small businesses, can reduce costs, increase energy production, and enhance grid reliability.

Climate Justice

The mammoth bipartisan budget bill of roughly $1.7 trillion to fund the U.S. government includes roughly only $1 billion to help poor countries transition to clean energy. This is more than 10 time less than the $11.4 billion annually that  President Biden had pledged at the COP27 climate change summit in Egypt.

Many African countries are struggling with how to reconcile their desire to strengthen energy independence, the growing awareness of the climate and ecological crisis, and their desire to be part of a just energy transition. They insist that developing countries need clean energy technology transfers from developed countries, which they say has been slow to materialize.

Wealthy countries and banks will provide $15.5 billion to help Vietnam develop clean energy and transition away from coal. The funds, which will be disbursed over the next three to five years, will help Vietnam to peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 rather than 2035, as had previously been projected.

Historic flooding last year in Pakistan displaced nearly 8 million people. Such displacement is generally temporary but is increasingly becoming permanent as climate induced drought and flooding makes their homes uninhabitable. The UN estimates that there will be 2 million climate refugees in Pakistan by 2050. It takes a heavy toll both economically and socially when people are forced to migrate from the places where their families have lived for generations.

Climate Action

The Inflation Reduction Act climate bill allocates billions of dollars that people can use to go green. This includes 30% tax credit of up to $2,000 for the cost to switch to an energy efficient heat pump heating system. It also includes a tax credit of up to $7,500 to buy an electric vehicle, depending on where it is manufactured. Even more significantly, it allocates a 30% tax credit with no monetary limit for installing rooftop solar.

Protecting big wild herbivores roaming natural areas helps reduce global warming in various ways. According to a 2022 scientific paper in Current Biology, these animals “help prevent fires, decrease the amount of solar heat absorbed by the Earth’s surface, and contribute a lot to the long-term storage of carbon in soil.” Elephants, wildebeests and other big plant eaters may actually be helping, not hindering, our carbon storage efforts.

Nations at the COP15 biodiversity summit in Canada made a major conservation commitment to try to halt the loss of hundreds of thousands of plants and animals. Their “30 by 30” pledge seeks to stem the loss of nature worldwide by protecting nearly a third of Earth’s land and oceans as a refuge for the planet’s remaining wild plants and animals by the end of the decade. It remains to be seen if they will follow through by funding and implementing this commitment.

About a quarter of the cars bought in China last year have been battery-powered or plug-in hybrids. No other country comes close. Chinese automakers are poised to lead the EV industry in producing affordable EVs, not just in China but globally as their offerings become available overseas. This is a win for efforts to prevent the worst consequences of climate change.

After facing fierce backlash for plans to add thousands of gas guzzlers to its fleet, the US Postal Service has shifted course with a game-changing pledge to go electric. In the effort to change out their aging fleet, they are now committed to purchasing 66,000 EVs, making up 60% of their new truck purchases. This is way more than their original stingy commitment of 10%. The new plan will be almost like shutting down a gas powered power plant each year.

The overproduction of light is another human-made problem we urgently need to take responsibility for. Light pollution upsets the natural rhythms of insects and nocturnal animals. We humans need darkness too. Natural cycles of light and dark control our hormonal systems and only at night do we find true rest. Turning down lights in our house and putting bright outside lights on motion sensors not only saves electricity—it’s good for us and our environment.  

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee

As Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” So it is with solving climate change. While transitioning to an equitable, sustainable economy powered by clean energy will be a massive undertaking, the process is made up of small steps. —Andreas Karelas

Our Climate Crisis

As more than 180 heads of state were converging in Egypt for the COP27 climate summit, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres opened the proceedings with this dire warning, “The clock is ticking. We are in the fight of our lives. And we are losing. Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”

Like the rest of the Caribbean, Cuba is suffering from longer droughts, more intense storms, and higher sea levels because of climate change. This is reducing agricultural yields, and putting farmers under intense financial pressure. It is also driving people to leave the island in the highest numbers in decades. Nearly 221,000 Cuban migrants have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border this year.

The Interior Department is giving three Native American tribal communities $25 million each to move their key buildings onto higher ground and away from rising waters, with the expectation that homes will follow. Eight more tribes will receive $5 million each to plan for relocation. This is most likely a precursor to forced relocation in response to climate change.

A century ago the residents of the town of Oyster on Hog Island off the coast of Virginia were forced to relocate their town to the mainland due to rising sea levels. Historically, the ocean has risen about a foot in a human lifetime, but estimates are that it will now increase to two or three feet because of climate change. These more rapidly rising sea levels are now challenging the relocated town to again relocate to higher ground.

Extreme weather events have caused an estimated $115 billion in insured financial losses around the world this year, which is 42% higher than the 10-year average of $81 billion. About $50 billion to $65 billion of the total losses are a result of Hurricane Ian, which pummeled Florida’s west coast in late September.

Politics and Policy

The COP27 U.N. Climate Summit in Egypt ended with a hard-fought deal to create a fund to help poor countries being battered by climate disasters. This includes  proposed reforms at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that could attract trillions of dollars in private capital available to developing nations to mitigate the effects of climate change. The summit, however, did little to cut the use of fossil fuels and advance efforts to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees C.

The transition to clean energy does not always follow the partisan political divide in our country. South Dakota, a solidly “red” state, has now amassed enough renewable energy to fulfill its own electricity needs and then some. The state has a built in advantage with ample hydropower but wind energy has now surpassed it in-state electricity generation.

Climate leadership and promoting policies to transition to clean energy was a political win for three Midwest governors. Democratic governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Tim Walz of Minnesota, and Tony Evers of Wisconsin won reelection, beating three Trump-backed candidates who campaigned on turning back clean energy initiatives.

Some of the biggest oil and gas producers and consumers have committed to cut their emissions of methane at the COP27 climate summit. Methane molecules do not last as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide but heat the planet more than 80 times more, over their 20 years lifespan. Cutting methane pollution by 45% this decade would avoid 0.3 degrees Celsius of global warming by the 2040s and can be done with existing, inexpensive technologies.

In response to a surprise environmental order from the Youngkin administration, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is reviewing proposed stormwater regulations that would treat ground-mounted solar arrays the same as parking lots. This would likely require solar developers to acquire more land, driving up the cost of solar energy.

Energy

Green hydrogen fuel has always been the holy grail of clean energy but it has remained just beyond our reach. That may now change with the billions of dollars allotted to hydrogen research and development in the Inflation Reduction Act. This is especially important in intensive energy uses such as heavy manufacturing, long-haul trucking, international shipping, and aviation, which cannot easily be converted to electric battery power.

The US Energy Information Administration reports that nearly a quarter of the coal-fired electric plants currently operating in the US have plans to be retired by the end of 2029. Further data released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission indicated that the use of natural gas for electric generation may have peaked.

The world’s largest floating wind farm is now producing power off the coast of Norway. When completed, the wind farm will have 11 turbines and create 88 megawatts of combined capacity—more than half of all the floating wind capacity in place today. The development of offshore wind is surging globally as costs decline and countries adopt ambitious climate change policies.

The European Union burns more than half the wood it harvests for energy and also imports massive amounts of wood pellets from the U.S. Phasing out forest biomass as ‘renewable energy’ would yield massive benefits in terms of air pollution and climate protection. The forest products industry is opposing such reforms and has the ear of key European policymakers.

Prospect Power LLC, of Austin, Texas, applied for a special-use permit for Rockingham County’s first battery energy storage facility on a 24-acre tract of land. The proposed facility will be charged with energy from, and discharged back to Virginia’s electric grid, enabling grid operators to deal with supply and demand in a revolutionary way.

Canadian Pacific’s experimental hydrogen-powered locomotive made its maiden run in Calgary, Alberta in October. This is the first step in seeing if these locomotives utilizing clean energy can replace diesel locomotives. Canadian Pacific is producing green hydrogen with solar power.

Recent Virginia legislation allows certain customers of Dominion Energy to buy solar energy from independent providers of shared solar, also known as community solar. Dominion has however used the rulemaking process and its control over project interconnection to create hurdles including high minimum bills to drive away all but the most tenacious developers. Lawmakers have, however, included a provision exempting low- to moderate-income participants from the minimum bill requirement.

Climate Justice

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry unveiled a proposal at the COP27 climate summit for companies to buy carbon credits that fund the greening of power grids in developing countries. The proposal comes as part of the promise from rich countries to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance for poorer nations. Developing countries spokespersons countered that it appears to be an attempt by rich countries to avoid paying their fair share.

A recent study shows that more lower-income US households are adopting rooftop solar. Last year 22% of households installing solar systems in the U.S. could be considered low-income and an additional 21% could be considered moderate-income. This makes a total of 43% of households installing solar that, broadly speaking, fall into the lower-income category.

The Indonesia Just Energy Transition Partnership will mobilize $20 billion of public and private finance to help Indonesia transition to clean power and shut coal power plants, bringing the country’s peak emissions date forward by seven years to 2030. The international partnership “is probably the single largest climate finance transaction or partnership ever” according to a U.S. Treasury official.

Transportation pollution is the largest source of carbon emissions, which mostly affects poor communities—making it a matter of climate justice. That makes North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s executive order to press forward with a plan to cut pollution from medium and heavy-duty trucks across the state a big deal. While trucks are only 6.5% of the vehicles on the road in North Carolina, they contribute about 71.2% of pollution and 34.5% of greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector.

Climate Action

The United States Postal Service is using a hard-won $3 billion infusion from Congress to jump-start its transition to 34,000 zero-emission mail trucks beginning next year. A substantial part of the money will be used toward the build-out of EV infrastructure to support the trucks. This goes a long way toward meeting President Biden’s directive to ensure all new government-owned vehicles are EVs by 2035.

Researchers in China are working to create perennial, climate friendly rice that requires much less labor, dramatically reducing a farmer’s costs while producing about the same amount of grain. Another advantage is that its long-lived roots may deliver big environmental benefits by preserving vulnerable soil and enriching natural ecosystems. Thousands of Chinese farmers have now started to grow this remarkable new version of rice with good results.

The Covid pandemic led to a bike riding boom. The spike in people using bikes has now faltered in places that didn’t build bike-friendly infrastructure but it survives in cities that have stepped up. The city of Tucson, for example, established a “Slow Streets” walk- and bike-friendly program that restricts car traffic in some places and prioritizes walking and biking over other modes of transport.  

A Pew Research poll shows that highly religious Americans are far less likely to be concerned about global warming. The main driver of public opinion about the climate, however, is political party rather than religion and highly religious Americans are more inclined to identify with the Republican Party. What the poll does not show, according to the executive director of GreenFaith, a global multi-faith environmental organization, “is the role that religion, when utilized effectively, can play in moving people who are concerned but inactive into public action on the climate’s behalf.”

Do you know that about 90% of the energy your washing machine uses goes towards heating the water? Washing in cold water saves money (as much as 64¢ a load), saves your clothes, reduces your energy consumption, and contributes toward saving our planet. Newer detergents clean clothes just as well in cold water.

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee

Ultimately, climate change will not be solved by climate scientists and engineers calculating how many solar panels we need installed. It will be solved by citizens sitting down and talking to each other over a glass of iced tea about how we need to start taking care of each other, trusting each other, and working together to save this place and everything we love. —Andreas Karelas

Our Climate Crisis

Scientists are finding an alarming global drop in biodiversity. One study shows that monitored populations of vertebrates have declined an average of 69% from 1970 to 2018. That’s more than two-thirds in only 48 years.  The top driver on land is agriculture, as we turn forests and other ecosystems into farmland. At sea, it’s fishing. Unless we’re able to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, preferably 1.5 degrees, climate change will become the leading cause of biodiversity loss in coming decades.

Extreme drought in the American Midwest has pushed water levels in the Mississippi River and its tributaries to drop to record lows this month. This has both constrained barge cargo traffic on the Mississippi and is allowing salt water from the Gulf of Mexico to creep up the river.

So-called ghost forests are stretching across eastern U.S. coastal communities. The miles of gray, barren trees in once-healthy wetlands are the result of sea rise and saltwater infiltration, which are the direct products of climate change. This is happening right now in our region, not by the end of the century or in some far off polar region.

A study by the World Meteorological Organization shows that the amount of methane in the atmosphere is racing ahead at an accelerating pace, threatening to undermine efforts to slow climate change. A worrisome part of the finding is that the bulk of the increased methane is coming from wetlands and other natural systems as a result of global warming.

Some 20 million people are already being displaced every year by natural disasters. All signs point to even more people being forced from their communities by weather-related disasters as well as slow-onset catastrophes like drought and sea-level rise. The World Bank projects that 216 million people will be forced to migrate because of climate change by 2050 if we do not take serious efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Politics and Policy

The Amazon rainforest was on the ballot in Brazil’s presidential election runoff, which former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly won over President Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation skyrocketed under Bolsonaro and Lula made climate and protecting the Amazon part of his election campaign. Even so, it will be a tough fight because Bolsonaro won the popular vote in half the states that make up the rainforest.

The Inflation Reduction Act allocates $141 billion to wind and solar energy. This is the first time that subsidies and tax credits for renewable energy in the United States have exceeded subsidies to fossil fuel companies. Still, these renewable energy subsidies are only about two-thirds of what the petrochemical companies have received from the government over the past decade.

Germany is in the process of phasing out its nuclear reactors. Now, in response to the energy crisis created by the war in Ukraine, it is gearing up coal power plants to help meet energy needs for the winter. Climate activist Greta Thunberg created a heated political argument by chastising Germany for cutting already operating nuclear power for coal. Chancellor Olaf Scholz then ordered Germany’s three remaining nuclear plants to remain in operation at least until next April.

More than 20 major universities have pledged to stop investing their endowment funds in fossil fuel stocks. Getting them to stop taking donations from fossil fuel companies has been a harder sell. They need to stop doing so to protect the integrity of their climate research. It was therefore a major breakthrough when Princeton University recently committed not just to divest but also to disassociate from 90 fossil fuel companies. This puts pressure on other major universities to do the same.

The World Bank has come under fire for investing nearly $15 billion in fossil fuel projects despite its commitment to addressing climate change. One of those projects is a natural gas pipeline, which will stretch across the entire country of Turkey to deliver gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. The World Bank is pushing back on the criticism by saying they have “delivered a record $31.7 billion for climate-related investments, to help communities around the world.”

A report from the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund gives the Virginia science standards for public schools a failing grade in teaching climate change. It received an F grade along with only two other states, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Energy

“Energy markets and policies have changed as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not just for the time being, but for decades to come,” according to the executive director of the International Energy Agency. The spiraling energy costs caused by the war and various other factors could be a turning point toward cleaner energy. Worldwide investment in wind and solar is set to outpace oil and gas drilling for the first time this year.

Record wind and solar production in Europe offset 11 billion euros in natural gas costs this year. This softened the blow of limited natural gas supply and soaring energy prices caused by the war in Ukraine. Even so, this is too little to end the energy crisis or to completely supplant the continent’s appetite for fossil fuels.

The House speakers in Virginia and West Virginia recently announced that they are working together to bring advanced small, modular nuclear reactors to the rural and economically challenged regions of their states. The energy hub in Virginia would be located on former coal mine sites in the Southwest part of the state. Residents there say they were not consulted on the proposal to locate a nuclear reactor in their community.

This is part of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s push to make Virginia an innovative energy hub with a focus on emerging technologies such as nuclear, hydrogen, carbon capture, and battery storage—strangely omitting offshore wind. Environmental critics say the plan focuses on unproven technologies that are not necessarily green. This is kicking the climate can down the road.

Australia will build the world’s largest battery to help position the country to shut down its biggest coal plant. Australia has more than doubled its renewable electricity generation in the last decade thanks to rapid growth in solar and wind production. The battery will help the electric grid to store and evenly distribute this intermittent energy.

Climate Justice

Twenty poor countries most vulnerable to climate change say they are caught in a trap of spending money for climate change mitigation that will increase their debt payments. They are pushing for the creation of an international fund that would compensate them for losses and damage caused by climate change. Therefore, whether wealthy countries like it or not, climate reparations will be on the agenda at the United Nations climate change conference, or COP27, in Egypt this month.

A study, recently published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, shows that climate anxiety is spreading all over the planet, not just in wealthy countries. A related study shows that “45 percent of teens and young adults said that climate anxiety was affecting their daily lives and ability to function.” They are taking various actions “like going to a protest, becoming an advocate for mass transit, or trying to get an environmental champion elected.”

Climate Action

The transportation sector accounts for 27% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., making it the largest single emitter. Tackling those emissions will necessarily include better public transit that utilizes microtransit, demand-response transit, and specified commuter routes in addition to fixed circular routes. Cities and local governments can utilize $3 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act climate law to create such efficient transportation systems.

Under a new federal program, nearly 400 school districts across the United States are receiving roughly $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500 electric school buses. This will benefit the health of children, who will no longer be exposed to noxious diesel fumes, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Protected bike lanes can help cities cut greenhouse gas emissions. It, however, requires a full network of protected lanes to make biking a viable, safe alternative for more people. Bogota’s $130 million investment in protected bike lanes proves that it works.

Two of our biggest problems globally are hunger and climate change. Food waste accounts for 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. When it rots in a landfill, it produces methane that quickly heats up the planet. At the same time, 31% of food that is grown, shipped or sold is wasted. This is where governments and resourceful local people are stepping in to help feed hungry people, while cutting down on food waste. 

Many homes in the U.S. are ill-prepared for the increasing stresses of climate change. The Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program helps low-income homeowners save on utility costs, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Activities covered under WAP include adding insulation, replacing heating and/or cooling systems, air sealing, replacing doors and windows, as well as various repairs.

There are roughly 50 million acres of lawn in the U.S.; they take up as much land as all our national parks combined. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, our sod-obsessed, grow, mow and blow culture relies on three trillion gallons of water, 800 million gallons of gasoline, and 59 million pounds of pesticides per year. Louise Washer discovered that her lawn was a food desert for bees and other wildlife so she is transforming it into a pollinator friendly landscape.

Eight states are launching their own Civilian Climate Corps programs after funding was stripped out of the Democrats’ landmark climate bill this summer. Using the AmeriCorps program and additional state funding, these efforts range from home energy conservation in Maine to composting and edible food recovery in California. Advocates hope that these programs will eventually provide a powerful model for a Civilian Climate Corps at the federal level.

Solar panels were recently installed on the roof of the Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Center as supporters gathered to celebrate with a solar picnic. The Harrisonburg Carpenters’ Guild had earlier carried out weatherization improvements on the building. An energy efficient electric HVAC system will also be installed. These upgrades will make the center more effective at achieving its core mission while contributing to environmental solutions.

The second annual Rocktown Energy Festival was held in downtown Harrisonburg on Saturday, Oct. 29, near the farmers market. It was a great place to learn more about efforts to combat climate change through converting to clean energy. Local non-profits and clean energy companies were there promoting practical solutions such as home weatherization, installing solar panels, transitioning to EV cars, and offering ways to get politically involved. There were also forums where speakers discussed various clean energy related matters. 

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee

“Like other countries, the United States needs to embark on a decades-long course of cutting its [greenhouse gas] emissions. And no matter how much help comes from Washington, much of the work will need to be done by state and local communities.” –Hal Harvey and Justin Gills, The Big Fix: Seven Practical Steps to Save Our Planet

Our Climate Crisis

After pummeling Cuba, Hurricane Ian was among the most powerful and devastating hurricanes to make landfall in the US. The destruction of property alone appears to be among the worst recorded. According to Michael Wehner at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, “Climate change didn’t cause the storm but it did cause it to be wetter.” Warming oceans caused it to absorb and dump 10% more water than it otherwise would have, creating a significant multiplying effect.

According to a recent scientific report, global warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius will most likely set off several climate “tipping points.” This includes the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, abrupt thawing of Arctic permafrost, the loss of mountain glaciers, and the collapse of ocean currents in the North Atlantic. This will have long-term effects such as unrelenting sea level rise, the release of more heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere, and more extreme weather.

South Asia’s monsoon, which brings life-giving water to nearly a quarter of humanity, is becoming more extreme. This includes erratic periods of drought punctuated by heavy rainfall events. Climate change induced warmer air holds more moisture, which can stay in the atmosphere for longer periods and then dump it in a short period of time.  A normal week’s or month’s rainfall can fall in a few hours to a few days, creating severe flooding as recently experienced in Pakistan.

Politics and Policy

Environmentalists fear that the side deal on federal energy permitting reform that majority leader Chuck Schumer agreed to with Sen. Joe Manchin could be a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry. Others see it as necessary for building out necessary clean energy infrastructure. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine sharply criticized such permitting reform if it is used to force completion of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline, saying that “it could open the door to serious abuse and even corruption.”

Chevron is exploiting a news desert created by the closure of local newspapers to serve up a mixture of local news and energy propaganda in Texas. This copies the tactics of right-wing operatives who used a sprawling network of 28 fake news sites to publish almost 5,000 articles about teaching critical race theory in schools to influence the Virginia governor’s race in 2021.

Sixty-one Virginia Democrats signed onto a letter opposing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed regulatory route to remove Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The letter states that participation in RGGI is mandated by law, making it a decision for the General Assembly. This makes Gov. Youngkin’s proposed regulatory route improper and illegal. Even so, Youngkin says he supports flood mitigation even though RGGI funds are used for this purpose.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Virginia Energy Plan takes an all-of-the-above approach to energy and regulatory reform. It calls for looking beyond solar- and wind-powered generation of electricity by supporting the development of hydrogen fuel, geothermal energy, small modular nuclear reactors, and carbon sequestration. It also seeks to roll back aspects of the Virginia Clean Economy Act. Climate activists are concerned about its reliance on unproven technologies and fear that it is little more than a thinly veiled attempt to support the fossil fuel industry while obstructing our transition to a clean energy economy.

Current Virginia laws regulating electric utilities hinder an affordable and equitable clean energy transition in Virginia. The regulatory system rewards utilities for capital-intensive investments rather than cost-saving measures for customers. Additionally, they’re able to pass along 100% of fuel costs to customers, incentivizing them to sell as much energy as possible instead of prioritizing energy efficiency, which saves money and reduces pollution.

Energy

There’s a surge in electric vehicles in India but not necessarily electric cars. Instead, electric powered mopeds and three-wheeled rickshaw taxis that sell for as little as $1,000 are zipping along India’s congested urban streets. This is providing a template for how developing countries can get rid of combustion engines and combat climate change as well as urban smog.

Renewable energy (including wind, hydropower, solar, biomass and geothermal) now powers 24.8% of U.S. electricity generation, leap frogging past coal last year. Natural gas remains the leading fuel for electricity, with 37.9% of the country’s total; coal contributes 18.5%; and nuclear, 17.9%. It will be a while until renewables dethrone natural gas, but that day is coming.

The notion that switching to clean energy sources will be expensive has been stood on its head by rising fossil fuel prices and the dropping costs of wind and solar energy. An Oxford University study shows that switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy could save the world as much as $12 trillion by 2050.

Building large-scale, high-power EV charging centers across the U.S. is rapidly moving forward. The startup company Terawatt Infrastructure has raised $1 billion to roll out charging depots for electric cars and trucks. To date, more than $6.4 billion toward this effort has been raised by equity and debt financing through various private-sector efforts. In a related development, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced the approval of the first 35 states to build out EV charging infrastructure across 53,000 miles of highway. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law makes $5 billion available for this effort over five years.

The Inflation Reduction Act will make clean energy much more competitive in the next decade according to analysis from ICF Climate Center, a global consulting firm. The cost of solar energy could fall 20 to 35% and the cost of wind energy could fall 38 to 49%. The cost of green hydrogen could fall a whopping 52 to 67% and become cost-competitive with new natural-gas-powered facilities by 2030.

The nations of the world recently committed to drastically lower greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s airplanes in an effort to reach net zero by 2050. Airline companies have previously relied on offsetting aviation’s emissions growth through tree-planting programs or through investing in yet unproven technology to pull carbon dioxide out of the air. Reaching net zero will, however, require them to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in increasingly efficient planes and cleaner fuels to sharply reduce emissions from air travel.

The United States now gets about 40% of its electricity from carbon-free sources and researchers have a pretty good idea of how to cost-effectively get to about 90%. But there’s little agreement about how to get to the last 10%. Some researchers say we can do it with wind and solar power along with battery storage. Others think it will take options like nuclear and hydrogen, with perhaps fossil fuels connected to carbon capture.

The US Department of Defense is the single largest institutional fossil fuel user in the world, being responsible for 77 to 80% of federal energy consumption. While the Pentagon looks at the world in terms of threats, it fails to see its own role in increasing greenhouse gas emissions as part of a massive global threat.

Climate Justice

Some $60 billion in environmental spending recently passed by Congress has been earmarked for environmental justice. Robert Bullard, a scholar at Texas Southern University known as the father of environmental justice, sees this as a reason for celebration, but also caution. Never before has so much been at stake. Too often, federal money and relief funds are “doled out inequitably by state and local governments, and away from people of color and poor communities, who are the most afflicted by pollution and most vulnerable to climate change.”

Africa is most disproportionally affected by the impact of climate change even though its contribution is historically negligible. Around 15% of the world’s population lives on the continent but they contribute less than 3.8% of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming.

Vanessa Nakate, a 25-year-old, thoughtful, smart and quietly spoken climate activist from Uganda, comments, “Africa is on the frontlines of the climate crisis but it’s not on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. Every activist who speaks out is telling a story about themselves and their community, but if they are ignored, the world will not know what’s really happening, what solutions are working. The erasure of our voices is literally the erasure of our histories and what people hold dear to their lives.”

Rising sea levels, heatwaves, wildfires, and increasingly intense hurricanes are putting more Americans in harm’s way. People looking for places to live have flocked to areas vulnerable to such disasters, leaving some 40 million people at risk. Now local, state, and federal officials are increasingly considering managed retreat, or buyouts, as a way to get people out of such areas. But this raises questions of equality? What gets lost, and who gets left behind?

Climate Action

California’s power grid was strained to the limit by record-high demand in the beginning of September during a searing heat wave.  Californians saved the grid by responding to a call from the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services asking them to “conserve energy now to protect public health and safety.” The state should, therefore, go all in on smart thermostats, solar-charged batteries, EVs and other devices that can help shore up the grid when it is stressed.

Various ways to combine solar power with agriculture are being tested. The most common and successful combination is grazing sheep under and around solar installations. A farmer in Maine is also experimenting with growing wild blueberries under a solar installation on his farm. Researchers at the University of Vermont are successfully growing saffron between solar panels.

Virginia schools are among the top in utilizing solar energy in the US. The solar capacity of Virginia’s K-12 schools has more than doubled over the past two years, saving them millions of dollars. This progress was largely spurred by a policy change in Virginia allowing tax-exempt entities like schools and localities to use third-party power purchase agreements.

Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee