Category: Policy

Posted on

Hot, Hungry Planet Book Launch May 3

Join me in person or online on May 3 at 3 p.m. at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. for the book launch of HOT, HUNGRY PLANET: The Fight to Stop a Food Crisis in the Face of Climate Change. The event is free and open to the public. Details are here. Please RSVP.

I will share what I have learned from my research and reporting. The book focuses on three key concepts that support food security and resilience in a changing world: social, educational, and agricultural advances; land use and technical actions by farmers; and policy nudges that have the greatest potential for reducing adverse environmental impacts of agriculture while providing more food.

For the book launch, I will be joined by experts on global food security for a panel discussion and will take questions from the audience. Copies of the book will be available for sale. This conversation is part of the ongoing “Managing Our Planet” series, jointly developed by George Mason University and the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute and Environmental Change and Security Program. The series, now in its fifth year, is premised on the fact that humanity’s impacts are planetary in scale and require planetary-scale solutions.

9781250084200_fc– See more at: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/hot-hungry-planet-book-launch#sthash.M30dkpxF.dpuf

Posted on

Climate change and how to fix it

My latest story for The New York Times features Oxford University professor Dieter Helm. We met on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., to discuss Europe’s flawed energy policies and what he considers America’s lucky break with natural gas. The best part of the interview? He’s refreshingly honest and doesn’t mind admitting he’s angry. Helm is the author of “The Carbon Crunch: How we’re getting climate change wrong – and how to fix it.” He told me, “Parts of my book are angry. It was a great way to construct an argument!”

Posted on

What’s up with Arctic shipping, climate change, and invasive species?

In Scientific American you’ll find “Melting Arctic Ice Will Make Way for More Ships–and More Species Invasions,” a story I wrote about the immense increases in shipping that are likely over the North Pole and Arctic Ocean in the coming years. This has alerted scientists studying invasive species. The Arctic is a pristine environment. Scientists are just now beginning to catalogue and classify native and nonnative species in a few select places the Arctic.

Historically, shipping has been the major pathway of invasive species introductions, accounting for 69% of invasions. The cold water over the Arctic provides special opportunities for invasions from hull fouling. In my article, I explain it this way:

Mario Tamburri, a marine scientist and director of the Maritime Environment Resource Center at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, has been researching survivorship and reproduction of organisms likely to be transported by ships by mimicking the conditions of shipping traffic. New colder, shorter routes afforded by the retreat of ice help invaders, such as mussels, barnacles and crabs, on a biological level, Tamburri says. Cold water slows metabolism of organisms, which can sustain themselves in low food conditions. “It’s like putting your groceries on ice,” he says.

 

Shorter routes also mean more organisms either attached to the hull or in ballast water are now more likely to survive the journey. Previously, the high heat and lack of light of longer trips outside the Arctic killed them off. “When ships now transport goods through the Panama Canal, for instance, through warm water and freshwater, natural barriers to invasive species are built into the shipping routes,” Tamburri says. “In the Arctic, those barriers go away.

Check out the complete story in Scientific American; or, if you prefer, it’s also published in Nature. Thanks for reading. And thank you for sharing my stories with your colleagues and social networks. As environmental journalism struggles in many media outlets, reader support means a great deal on many levels. Onward!

Posted on

Coal is Dead. Gas is the New Frontier: Fossil Fuel Hogs Conversation at ARPA-E

22713arpaeBloombergmasterandlead-1361996591726-1362077770518.jpg

I don’t have much faith that the world will use less coal any time in the near future.

Certainly energy innovation and natural gas hold promise in the U.S., but the reality of widespread coal use worldwide made its way into many of the main discussions this week at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit.

Blythe Masters, head of global commodities and corporate & investment bank regulatory affairs at JP Morgan, shares my same opinion. Coal will be a main player for the future, and especially in China, she said in an interview at ARPA-E.

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg this week came out swinging at coal in his keynote address at the Summit. He said, “Coal is a dead man walking.”

Sure, in the U.S.

Pressure to squelch coal use in the U.S. has been effective, but that’s due to the increase in cheap natural gas and efforts by the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Still, the U.S. is exporting record amounts of coal and that will continue.

As I wrote for Slate Magazine in their series on coal energy last November, “Despite better alternatives and concern about climate change, coal isn’t disappearing any time soon.”

Efforts to reduce coal use in the America are continuing. Coal is dirty, dangerous and the single biggest contributor to heat-trapping gases that cause climate change. But we are shipping it elsewhere. That means more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In my Slate Magazine story, I explained a bit of the economics of why the world uses a lot of coal. Here’s an excerpt:

“It’s cheap. It’s abundant. And it’s going to be in use for a long time. Until recently, coal fueled half of the electricity generated in the United States. That number was whittled to 42 percent last year, mostly due to a new flood of cheap natural gas that made it economical for power plants to make the switch from burning coal.

Efforts to use cleaner sources of energy in the United States have put coal in a state of flux. Air pollution regulations have forced power plants to clean up emissions from their smokestacks or shut down. Many operators are choosing natural gas rather than upgrading outdated coal plants. And renewable energy sources like wind and solar now vie for up to 20 percent of the electricity generated in states such as South Dakota and Iowa. But don’t be fooled into thinking coal is on a deep dive.

While coal consumption in the electric utility sector is down 10 percent, the world’s appetite for coal is driving up the demand for coal like never before. In 2011, U.S. coal exports were valued at $16.2 billion. And now coal producers are eager to supply the newest growth market: Asia.”

In his keynote presentation this week at the Energy Innovation Summit, Bloomberg said that coal doesn’t deserve its reputation as a cheap fuel, and especially not when you factor in the public health costs, he said.

Bloomberg added that economic destruction caused by extreme weather events should also factor into the calculus of the cost of coal. Bloomberg said, “Coal use has dangerous impact on climate change. Coal accounts for 40 percent of the carbon footprint in the U.S., and carbon pollution is accelerating climate chaos worldwide.”

Posted on

Another Jobs Push

Almost two years ago, I reported on President Obama’s jobs plan, which he outlined in a speech at the Brookings Institution. Time has passed, and yet my report on how to get more Americans back to work couldn’t be more relevant today. Here’s the story that appeared on Dec. 11, 2009, in U.S. News & World Report:

The Next Jobs Push
Obama unveils a three-part plan for stimulating more jobs—to mixed reviews
By Lisa Palmer

A year ago, Americans were losing their jobs at a rate of 700,000 per month. Now, even as that rate has dropped to 135,000 per month, the ranks of unemployed workers still top 11 million. So it’s no surprise that figuring out how to get America back to work has taken the spotlight.

President Obama this week announced in a speech at the Brookings Institution a new “effort to accelerate job growth [in] those areas that will generate the great- est number of jobs while generating the greatest value for our economy.” His plan outlines three main policies to spur job growth. Small businesses would receive a tax credit if they hired new workers, and they would get relief from capital-gains taxes on small-business investments. Second, the plan includes money for key infrastructure improvements, such as building roads and construction projects. Third, it proposes a “cash for caulkers” rebate program that would provide financial incentives for homeowners to make their houses more energy efficient. In addition, Obama called for an extension of unemployment insurance and more aid to state and local governments facing budget crunches.

The plan has drawn mixed reviews from economic policy experts. Labor market economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute says Washington insiders are starting to realize the enormity of the job crisis. “There is a strong consensus amongst economists that the February stimulus act is working,” she says. “But it wasn’t big enough to get us back on track. We need more.”

Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University’s Urban Institute, is pleased with some components of the plan. “It was very important to extend money to states and localities to prevent additional job loss,” he says. But other parts of the plan are a mishmash: “It is not as well targeted to job creation as I would have liked,” Holzer says.

Both Holzer and Shierholz advocate direct job creation initiatives, which were absent from Obama’s proposal. Holzer said a $30 billion job creation plan to set up a public service employment program would put 1 million Americans back to work.

Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Business, is critical of both the original stimulus plan and the new proposal. “What businesses need are customers,” he says, arguing that a greater proportion of the plan’s funds should be directed to things like construction, which would stimulate consumption, which would in turn create jobs.

Obama did not talk about the plan’s price tag. Some lawmakers estimate it would total roughly $200 billion, the amount the Treasury Department estimates has been trimmed from the projected cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But that could face resistance. Republicans, already howling that the $787 billion in the original stimulus plan was wasted, argue that any money saved should be used for deficit reduction.

Posted on

Rising Temperatures and Threats to Health

More Concerted Action on Public Health
Coming from Medical Community Interests:

The public health/climate change connections recognized by the medical establishment might help in informing the public at large. Policy experts say a growing awareness of the public health/climate linkage could be a key in breaking through political logjams impeding action on mitigation and adaptation.

Consider some climate change/public health indicators:
-Roughly 10 million Americans suffered from asthma in 1990. Today, twice as many do — a surge that has been linked to climate change.
-Allergy season is becoming longer and pollen counts are stronger.
-Diseases like dengue fever and malaria, previously seen only in warmer areas, are now popping up in places like Florida and Texas.
-The ticks carrying Lyme disease — once limited to southern New England and mid-Atlantic states — have expanded their ranges to Maine.
-Extreme weather patterns brought about by climate change are expected to cause an increase in injuries and illness.
-And projected heat waves are likely to be so intense that many more people will have trouble simply cooling themselves and, in some cases, remaining hydrated.

As science points to the troubling health consequences of climate change, the American Medical Association and various public health organizations are bracing themselves. In April the AMA published an editorial warning that climate change is putting public health at risk. It stated:

Scientific evidence shows that the world’s climate is changing and that the results have public health consequences. The American Medical Association is working to ensure that physicians and others in health care understand the rise in climate-related illnesses and injuries so they can prepare and respond to them. The Association also is promoting environmentally responsible practices that would reduce waste and energy consumption.

To help doctors prepare for climate-related illnesses and injuries, AMA has held continuing medical education courses on climate change in three states, most recently in Florida. A fourth one is to take place in Illinois. The courses stem from a grant from the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment.

The American medical community’s new advocacy measures arrive on the coattails of climate change policy statements made by other health organizations. In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics. AAP, warned of negative health effects of climate change on children. In a statement, Dana Best, MD, MPH, and fellow of AAP said, “As the climate changes, environmental hazards will change and often increase, and children are likely to suffer disproportionately from these changes.”

In 2008, the American Nurses Association declared that “Nurses have the responsibility to be aware of broader health concerns such as environmental pollution,” and acknowledged the “threats posed by global climate change on a massive human and environmental scale.”

A Critical Mass Expresses Concerns

In May 2009, the health community took an especially firm position on climate change when a joint commission led by the British medical journal The Lancet and University College London Institute for Global Health published findings that climate change poses the biggest public health threat of this century. The report outlined “major threats” to global health involving disease, water and food security, and extreme weather events, and added a cautionary statement: “Although vector-borne diseases will expand their reach and death tolls, the indirect effects of climate change on water, food security, and extreme climatic events are likely to have the biggest effect on global health.”

That Lancet study prompted Linda Marsa, a California-based medical and health writer, to do her first reporting on health effects of climate change. “At the time, there was stuff published here and there,” said Marsa, a contributing editor at Discover magazine. “I had to dig down rabbit holes to find information.” But Marsa’s reporting persistence produced a bonanza, and the result was “Hot Zone,” a feature article published in Discover in December 2010 that explores the magnitude of global health impacts of a changing climate.

A Medical, Health Journalist Newly ‘Energized’

Now, Marsa believes a “critical mass” of scientific studies over the past two years has zeroed-in on strong evidence of health consequences. “I personally think climate change is going to be the biggest science story for the rest of my career,” she said. “As a medical and health writer, frankly, this has fascinated and energized me.” Marsa is now working on a book based on her Discover story. It is to be published next year by Rodale Press.

Marsa is among a growing number of journalists now covering health in the context of climate change. The Association of Health Care Journalists, AHCJ, has helped members develop their knowledge of climate change by providing tipsheets, workshops, and panel discussions at conferences. The group has jointly conducted week-long health journalism fellowships with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and climate change has been among the segments covered over the past five years. In 2008 and 2009, the AHCJ’s annual health journalism conference also addressed the climate link with allergies, asthma, disease, heat illness, and injuries.

Leonard Bruzzese, AHCJ executive director, says the organization regularly provides members access to climate-related health topics. For instance, a resources guide for reporting on extreme heat included topics ranging from heat-related deaths among crop workers and how heat-related deaths are underestimated to prevention of heat-related illnesses. The four-page resource guide features links to science articles from magazines and newspapers and summaries of journal articles and scientific resources from public and private institutions. AHCJ has provided similar resource guides for reporting on other public health consequences of climate change.

Scientists, too, are working across disciplines to study the health effects of climate change. Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Crop Systems and Global Change Laboratory, worked with colleagues at the National Allergy Bureau and Aerobiology Canada to study effects of climate warming on ragweed plants from Texas north to Saskatchewan, Canada, from 1995 to 2009. The study confirmed that pollen season is extending further into the fall, with the greatest effects at the northern latitudes.

“We were able to confirm that climate change is having an effect on pollen, that it is happening in real time, and we are seeing a real signal,” Ziska now says.

Public Health Issues Sharpening Public’s Focus

The medical community has a formidable challenge, in both addressing the health consequences of climate change and advocating for policy, according to Dan Ferber, co-author, with Harvard Professor Paul Epstein, MD, of Changing Planet, Changing Health.

“They’re dealing not with a single health effect but with a large-scale change with many health effects such as the possible spread of infectious diseases and increase in outbreaks due to extreme weather; the effects of worsening heat waves and other extreme weather; worsening respiratory disease, including allergies and asthma, and more,” Ferber said. “The medical community is realizing that good human health depends on a healthy environment, and they’re starting to broaden their focus to recommend policy efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, where once they might have considered this beyond their purview.”

Ferber says he thinks public health professionals are well suited to address the human health risks posed by climate change because they’re professionally charged with protecting human health.

“To the extent they take that role seriously and educate themselves about the health risks posed by climate change, they can exert real influence on policymakers,” Ferber said. “Climate scientists have the credibility, but their cautious and carefully parsed pronouncements about the science don’t necessarily connect well with the concerns of ordinary Americans. Policy folks are also often depicted as ivory-tower types in what passes for public discourse on this subject. I think it’s a lot harder to dismiss the serious concerns of bona fide health leaders.”

Despite policy pronouncements and urgent warnings, Ferber said he thinks the medical community is failing on some levels by not yet connecting well with the average health worker. Ferber has talked to doctors and nurses about it. “They’ve complained that they’re aware of the connections between climate change and health but their colleagues don’t seem to take these concerns seriously,” he said. “And they’ve certainly not yet built a large movement in these professions akin to the effort by physicians in the 1970s and 1980s to ease the risk of nuclear war.”

Climate change is responsible for an increasing number of direct and indirect health problems. Communicating these risks of climate change will prove key to understanding how the public can prepare for it. Many who follow the field believe that having the public better understand and appreciate the public health consequences of a warmer world may help break the political logjam in the way of meaningful mitigation and adaptation measures.

**NOTE: After this article was published, Ed Maibach, of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, told me about a new project he has been working on with public health officials. The climate change communications primer, “Conveying the Human Implications of Climate Change,” will soon be co-branded with the Center for Disease Control, he said. The primer will also include a “lunch and learn” slide deck to help public health officials conduct briefings.

This article was originally published on The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media on June 7, 2011. Article illustrations have been changed.

Posted on

Pew Center scientist Jay Gulledge tills communication and policy fields

Pew Climate Change Senior Scientist Jay Gulledge has mixed science and communicating since earning his Ph.D. in biological sciences 15 years ago.

On the research side, the biogeochemist has studied carbon cycling and the cycling fluxes of methane between ecosystems and the atmosphere, and he continues to work with colleagues in China on issues involving the country’s methane budget.

Before joining the Arlington, Va.-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change in 2005, Gulledge had taught at the University of Louisville and at Tulane University. Now much of his work involves helping scientists and scientific organizations improve their ability to make research accessible and meaningful to the public, says Gulledge, a self-described “pure-bred scientist” now actively tilling the communications and policy fields.

Gulledge spoke with me recently for an interview that appears in the Yale Forum. So what’s the big takeaway? My guess is that standards for data transparency will move into greater focus in the coming years. Gulledge says, “Industry professionals in fields like engineering have long ago set standards for how they archive their work and so on. That has not been a practice in the basic fields of science, such as earth sciences, because they are not closely tied to contract law. Now they need to start doing it because the need is becoming apparent. The point would be to protect earth scientists from unwarranted accusations of conflict of interest.”

You can read the complete interview here.

Posted on

Earth’s vitals signs go unmeasured

Satellites are eyes and ears for many professions, but their observations give scientists who study climate change the only means to precisely monitor Earth systems worldwide. The New York Times’ recent cover story on glaciers touched on this point. But satellites aren’t built to last forever. So when there’s a gap in observations, one scientist told me that “we basically close our eyes for awhile.”

NASA image: ICESat
The third and last laser on NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation ICESat (ICESat) quit working a year ago, outlasting its designed mission length by three and a half years. Problem is, its successor, ICESat II, won’t go aloft for several more years. The Times article failed to fully express problems scientists have when Earth’s vital signs go unmeasured, especially in the case of climate change. Last December I wrote an article for Scientific American that spells out how NASA’s fleet of Earth Observing System orbiters is on borrowed time due to a lack of planning and underfunding.

I talked with senior scientist Thorsten Markus, head of the Cyropheric Sciences Branch at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He said, “It is critical that we continue those time-series observations. For climate change, the satellite provides the only means to truly monitor the Earth on a global basis. There is simply no other way.” When satellites “go dark,” they rob scientists of critical data needed for monitoring climate change and verifying international agreements, just as a critical mass of global players is agreeing that such agreements are essential to the future health of the world’s people and economies.

Posted on

Cap and trade: How big an issue?

The Republican election victory last week was fueled by a dramatic tangle of interests, but mostly economic ones. Still, in the days following the election, climate change took a starring role in several major newspapers’ reporting. My analysis shows the number of stories of climate in major dailies increased in the days after the election, with only spotty pre-election treatment and commentary. Once the magnitude of GOP gains sunk in, news articles emerged that highlighted growing climate skepticism and climate illiteracy among current and newly elected Republicans. What happened? Should media be held accountable? You can read the complete story and weigh-in on the subject in this week’s The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media.

Posted on

With Federal, Global Regs at Standstill … Courts Become Front Line on Climate Change

Climate change litigation is in its infancy, but experts predict growth in number of battles fought within the legal system.

Seven years ago, the United States court system became involved with making decisions on climate change. Today, in the absence of federal legislation, courts more and more are expected to play a key role on greenhouse gas regulation and on issues arising from claims of liability linked to alleged climate-related damages.

An especially notable case arose in 2003 when the Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency determined it lacked authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions as pollutants. Massachusetts and 11 other states challenged that decision. The Supreme Court eventually heard the case, Mass. v. EPA, and in 2007 ruled in favor of the states (see Yale Forum article) .

The Supreme Court may address climate change again this term, potentially deciding whether climate cases can proceed as courts become front lines for the climate fight. [See Yale Forum for my complete article]