> This is where the funding comes from..you can click to read more easily.
Here’s the link. First of all, I’d like to acknowledge that this is really difficult stuff to do and I appreciate them exploring these issues.
Some of the communities that are most in need of funding are the ones getting the least funds to do environmental work. We hope that foundations recognize this fact and use our findings to evaluate their grantmaking processes and develop more equitable grantmaking strategies.”
Dorceta Taylor Professor of Environmental Justice
There are many fascinating observations in the Executive Summary. (there is a link in the story above)
Over the past decade, there has been much discussion about disparities in grantmaking. As the arguments go, organizations focusing on environmental justice, racial justice, and other forms of social inequality, and those led by People of Color, were less likely to be funded than other kinds of organizations.
However, was this the case with environmental funders?
This study sought to determine if such disparities existed and what factors contributed to the outcomes. To this end, we examined over 30,000 environmental and public health grants totaling about $4.9 billion awarded over three years by 220 foundations.
Sources of mesic/coastal bias in conservation issue framing? You can also click on this one to read more easily.
The fewest foundations were based in the South Central and Mountain regions. Moreover, the two regions generated the fewest awards and the lowest grant dollars. The fewest grants were also disbursed to grantees in the two regions.
It seems from here as if much of the conservation dollars are actually spent on Mountain issues (aka “conservation of western landscapes”), say Monuments, anti-federal oil and gas drilling, grazing, etc., But perhaps those efforts are managed by organizations located outside the area. After all, there are no Wyoming foundations funding “conservation of Pennsylvania landscapes.” Perhaps someone skilled with 990s could break this down. If the Yale folks could figure out the dollars for each grant, it must be doable.
The study also found that foundations tended to fund organizations in their home state. Since most of the foundations were located in California, most of the grants and grant dollars originated in that state. Most of the grant dollars ended up going to California.
At a micro-scale, there is an urban bias to environmental grantmaking. That is, grantees in large cities and cities with dense clusters of foundations receive the most awards and the heftiest grant dollars. Ergo, the most grants and the highest grant dollars were generated in New York City. San Francisco was second in both categories.
Organizations’ revenues matter in their ability to attract funding. Foundations prefer to direct funding to organizations with significant revenues. Consequently, more than half of the grant dollars go to
organizations with revenues of $20 million or more. Organizations with revenues under $1 million receive less than 4% of the grant dollars.
The organizations studied were split into 59 categories and two tiers. The 14 categories constituting Tier I received 64% of the grants and three-quarters of the grant dollars. Natural resources and conservation protection organizations were the most prolific grant-getters. The 45 categories of Tier II organizations received a mere25% of the grant dollars. In other words, they received fewer grants that were smaller in size.
Foundations preferred to fund organizations working on the following issues – conservation, education, energy, ecosystems, and water resources. Though foundations lavished funding on these core topics, philanthropies also funded other issues such as social inequality, justice, empowerment, Indigenous rights, environmental justice, disaster preparedness and relief, housing and homelessness, food assistance and food insecurity, faith and religion, movement building, voter mobilization, workplace and workforce issues, and institutional diversity.General support grants, highly coveted by grantees, were awarded frequently. However, over 80% of the general support grants went to White-led organizations. Moreover, less than 10% of the general support grants go to organizations focused on People of Color.Male-led organizations obtained about 54% of the grants and more than two-thirds of the grant dollars. White-led organizations obtained more than 80% of the grants and grant dollars. Hence,White-male-led organizations received the most grants and grant dollars. White male-led organizations obtained about 48% of the grants and roughly 61% of the grant dollars awarded.
I have to give this group much credit for tracking down all this information. I would think it would be very hard to define what is an environmental issue, a climate issue or a social justice versus an environmental justice issue. Anyway, there’s lots of interesting info in this report.
This one is from the Cowboy State Daily. Don Day is a Wyoming meteorologist who, among other things, does forecasts in the Cowboy State Daily.
The story is about how people perceive bad winters through time.
Pine Beetles Aren’t Evidence Of Worst Winters Past
In addition to grafting selective memories of bad winters into supposed long-term trends, people also can mistakenly apply regional patters to other areas, Day said.
That’s the case with pine beetle infestation, he noted. During the 2000s and 2010s, pine beetles cut a swatch of death through forests across Wyoming and the West. To this day, large stands of dead pine trees are reminders of the havoc they wreaked.
A common narrative is that a lack of prolonged winter deep freezes failed to kill of beetle larva, allowing them to hatch during the spring and invade areas they’d never been in before, Day said.
People will use that as evidence that winters used to be a lot harder, he said. As the story goes, sub-zero cold snaps would go on for weeks and kill off pine beetle larva, but that quit happening because our winters got milder.
But that’s based on assumptions that conditions in the Canadian Rockies, where the beetles originated, apply across the American Rockies as well, Day said.
In truth, the Canadian Rockies are actually lower than the American Rockies and can be susceptible to polar air sinking down into them, driving temperatures to 30 below zero or so for extended periods. That’s kept the beetles in check there Day said.
But when the beetles managed to spread southward, they were able to survive winters in the American Rockies in much greater numbers, Day said.
“In southern Alberta and British Columbia, the arctic air masses can go deeper and the tree lines are lower,” Day said. “It can’t get that cold for that long in the central and northern American Rockies, it just can’t.”
So, people have “imprinted” conditions in the Canadian Rockies to mountains in Wyoming, creating the false impression that winters here used to get colder and stay cold for longer than they do now, Day said.
The up-and-down cycles of snowfall in the Cheyenne area. (Courtesy Don Day)
This one is from Chuck Rhoades of the Rocky Mountain Research Station. It’s one of their “Science You Can Use (in 5 minutes)” series. Check out the new RMRS website.
Of course, as he says, if desirable lodgepole stocking levels are 150 per acre, it doesn’t take many cones with 26% germination to provide that number, depending on other site conditions. At this point, I’d still bet on the lodgepole.. unless there’s a reburn before the next generation produces seed. Some of us will be around long enough to find out…
Compared to seeds from live or recently killed trees, seeds from these long-dead trees germinated about half as often. Germination varied across the study sites, ranging from 26 percent to 41 percent. Germination also declined with cone age, and 35 percent of the oldest cones produced no germinants at all. The team also tested germination of seeds in cones stored in the soil seedbank under snowpack. These seeds averaged 36 percent germination, which was comparable to seeds released from the canopy seedbank. Though this is good news, cones in the soil seedbank are susceptible to burning by surface and ground fires and predation by rodents.
For many lodgepole pine forests burned in the recent fires, postfire tree densities will meet or surpass acceptable stocking levels (i.e., 150 seedlings per acre). However, based on these RMRS findings, stands with high bark beetle mortality may not provide enough viable seed to reach the minimum density of seedlings needed for recovery. Thus, the double disturbance of bark beetle outbreaks and wildfire may translate into costly reforestation projects.
Nevertheless, I thought that this was a super article by reporter Danielle Venton of KQED. It is long and comprehensive, as befits a piece on such a complicated subject. I like the way she structured it.
1. Updating the standard is good, say public health, air regulators and the EJ community. According to a quoted source, it saves lives, especially those of communities of color.
According to the story, it’s particularly a problem om Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley. As a former resident of Southern California, home of all income levels and races, I think it might be better to target specific producers of whatever pollutants are leading to increased asthma.
“Everyone knows a parent who has brought their baby, or their 2-year-old, into the ER because they couldn’t breathe. You know, the baby’s turning blue,” Amsalem said. “It’s a story you hear across generations.”
If you go to the linked article here, you find about the San Joaquin Valley
Because the region is surrounded on three sides by mountain ranges, pollutants get trapped in the valley. Wildfires — such as the blazes that have dirtied the valley’s air this summer — exacerbate asthma symptoms and send more kids to the emergency room.
Wildfires likely contributed to the high rate of childhood ER visits for asthma in Del Norte County in 2016 — 121 visits per 10,000 children — which represents an increase of more than 40 percent from the previous year. Del Norte, which sits along the Oregon border, had the fifth-highest rate in the state in 2016.
And if we look at the map, Imperial County has the problem of dust from the Salton Sea drying up. I’m not sure that wildfires or the Salton Sea will be helped by a new PM2.5 regulation.
If you go to this story you can click on the counties.
2. Wildfires are bad for PM 2.5
It still amazes me that people never noticed this until wildfires were blamed on climate change. All those discussions in California about why wildfires are good.. and this didn’t come up until the last few years.
And if wildfire trends continue and worsen, as climate models suggest they will, then we’ve seen nothing yet.
2. But to reduce wildfire smoke, we need to have prescribed fire (or burn excess fuels in some kind of smoke free environment, which seems possible, but not at the scale we’re talking about). And here’s a process the EPA has:
However, EPA officials recognize that sometimes air districts are out of compliance through no fault of their own. In this case, they are allowed to file for an “exceptional event.” In this bureaucratic process, the “event” is linked to the cause of pollution going over the legal limit. It is meant for events that are unforeseeable and are unlikely to occur in the same location again, like a volcanic explosion. If the link can be made, then emissions from that event can be subtracted from the total, and the air district is no longer in trouble with the EPA.
It is a long, technically involved process. A California Air Resources Board (CARB) exceptional events filing (PDF) for ozone concentrations during the Northern California wildfires of 2020 runs 228 pages.
You’re kidding me.. California taxpayers paid for CARB employees to write about ozone from forest fires? Isn’t there anyone who is interested in “useful and efficient” regulation rather than unclear and wasteful regulation?
The problem, as seen by many in the wildfire science community, is that while this process essentially means air districts are not on the hook for wildfire smoke, they are on the hook for prescribed fire smoke. And prescribed fire — the most affordable, effective inoculation against future wildfires — has never been used as a basis for an exceptional event in California.
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The EPA also seems aware of these concerns. In its proposed rule, it says it acknowledges stakeholder concerns about the importance of prescribed fire and intends to work with stakeholders to address these issues. It also says prescribed fires have the potential to qualify for exceptional events (PDF), which could encourage their continued and expanded use.
However, this has environmental lawyers very concerned. Sara Clark of the law firm Shute, Mihaly and Weinberger works with nonprofit organizations and supports prescribed fire and Indigenous cultural burners. She thinks the EPA’s reasoning as written might not hold up under a judge’s evaluation.
“[The EPA] does a lot of linguistic acrobatics to try and clarify how a prescribed fire is … not reasonably preventable or controllable. But it’s called a ‘controlled burn,’” said Clark. “I’m concerned about the legal underpinnings there.”
She also believes that the time and technical expertise needed to file for an exceptional event exemption would make air regulators wary of using it. Extensive documentation and analysis is needed to submit for an exceptional events determination from CARB or the EPA.
Stakeholders interviewed by the GAO said that state and local agencies aren’t likely to use the exceptional events provision for prescribed burns because “the agencies would not likely approve prescribed burns that could cause National Ambient Air Quality Standards exceedances in the first place.” And they said that “exceptional event demonstrations are technically complicated and resource intensive.”
Put another way, it’s more likely that prescribed burns would never happen if air regulators thought they might have to file for an exceptional event.
It is also legally uncharted, or nearly uncharted, territory. The EPA has received only one exceptional events demonstration for a prescribed burn (PDF) — too much ozone was associated with prescribed burns in the Flint Hills of Kansas in December 2012. But since then, no tribal, state or local agency has submitted an exceptional event demonstration for a prescribed burn, according to EPA officials.
The air districts (who need to keep EPA as much on their side as possible) aren’t worried
Neither Bay Area nor California air regulators seem to share the worries of the fire community that the EPA will hamper the increased use of prescribed fire, however.
She expressed hope that the rule’s implementation phase, which it now heads into, would be the time for nitty-gritty details to be worked out.
“Even though they can be expunged from the data, residents are still feeling [the effects of wildfire] very much so,” said Amsalem, of the Central California Environmental Justice Network. She hopes agencies will work out this issue, she said, “because we do need to do more prescribed burning to reduce the catastrophic events.”
It seems unlikely to me that an agency would willing give up fairly unconditional power over other agencies’ activities, but we’ll see how this all works out.
So the current fire retardant issue is interesting, not least because the current and past fire retardant lawsuits have been brought by one of our very own TSW contributors, Andy Stahl. Who may or may not be able or want to talk about it much. It doesn’t seem like the agency “cone of silence” around litigation applies to plaintiffs.
Anyway, I’ve spoken to current wildland firefighters, retired fire folks, and Andy, and as usual tried to fit all the points of view into a whole zone of agreement. I was listening to, of all things, a podcast called “The Witch Trials of J.K Rowling” developed by The Free Press. On one episode (Chapter 6), a teenager named Noah spoke about (on a completely different subject) encouraging the good things that can happen and discouraging the bad things that can happen. And of course, isn’t that applicable to many policy issues?
What makes fire retardant more interesting than many of our TSW debates, I think, is that we agree on what good things and bad things are.. or do we? Good things would be helping fire suppression folks save valuable human and ecosystem assets, and for human health and safety- of firefighters and residents. Bad things would be dumping in streams or on firefighters. So first TSW discussion question… Do we agree on good things and bad things? Are there more good things or bad things I haven’t considered?
But the meta-dialogue is “how best to increase the good things and decrease the bad things?” Who should be in the room to decide? Should there be carrots or sticks or some combination? How are wildfire practitioners and the air resource industry involved?
If I had to guess about Andy’s motivations, it would be to put pressure on the USG to work harder to decrease the bad things. But the danger with this approach is that involving another federal agency- in this case the EPA-may not be actually all that helpful in terms of adding value to the work- the ultimate work of trying things and doing lessons learned that the fire community is generally better at than most.
So let’s think about some other examples. For some reason, I thought of healthcare-associated infections. The below is from the Florida state website.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has shown that the implementation of recommendations for HAI prevention from the CDC Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) can reduce HAI by 70% overall and virtually eliminate some specific types of infections. Broad implementation of the CDC guidelines saves lives, reduces suffering, and decreases health care costs. Through partnerships and the commitment of stakeholders, the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) HAI Prevention Program supports health care facilities implementing best practices for preventing the spread of health care-associated infections. Health care facilities are asked to conduct surveillance or track HAI infections, ensure health care workers perform hand hygiene before and after patient contact and when they come in contact with body fluids, use personal protective equipment such as gowns and gloves, minimize use of devices (i.e. catheters), and ensure the patient care environment has been cleaned including the proper cleaning of shared medical equipment such as blood pressure cuffs and glucometers.
So suppose a similar approach was taken for fire retardant. Maybe we would disagree on who would be the best people to put on the advisory committee (HICPAC) Or would we?
It seems as if in this health case, it is assumed that everyone wants HAIs to be reduced and the academics and practitioners work together to figure out ways to do that. On the other hand, what might make the fire retardant issue is that big bucks are involved and specialized technologies in extreme and dangerous conditions. Not exactly handwashing or antiseptics.
An Advisory Committee of knowledgeable and experienced people could help add to knowledge and dive into the weeds of specific practices, jointly look at accidents or errors, different formulations, new technologies and lessons learned. And actually with the big bucks out there for new technologies (drones, AI, and so on) maybe an advisory committee should tackle all that? And no, I don’t think the current Wildland Fire Commission has the right folks to take that on.
With open meetings, public comment and all that. Because it seems like trust is super-important. As in the classic difference between the chicken and the pig at breakfast- the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. Similarly, communities in wildfire areas (which can be much of the US) may not want to be guinea pigs for new technologies- nor may wildland firefighters. So it seems to me in this case, the more involvement and trust-building the better.
To me, this would seem like a more useful approach than asking the (in their words) overburdened and (in my words) currently non-expert EPA to do a rule and then apply for a permit.
Do you have other examples of mechanisms for how agencies work to increase the good, and reduce the bad, of practices?
And people have studied aerial firefighting.. I think if you read Bill Gabbert’s post here you’ll get some idea. What I got from it was that you need to actually know the business to know what needs to be improved and how. Which most of us do not.
Note from Sharon.. Based on the earlier discussion Jon started here of DxP, I asked Eli Jensen of Ironwood Forestry to add his two cents and also talk about some of his cool technologies. I wanted the technologies highlighted, so am putting this up as a guest post.
On DxP
Great discussion so far. I own one of the contract marking crews in N-AZ. Inexperienced crew technicians marking trees definitely is a problem, on both contract crews and district crews. It boggles my mind that TSP technicians are not given even one day of operations training. We go out with the loggers any chance we get.. And yes, tracer paint is very expensive, and is perishable, meaning the sale is only really good for 5-7 years. That makes it problematic to prep the massive acres needed for industry. If something goes awry (again), the cost to remark is the same as the initial remark.
That being said, I am an open critic of DxP. I won’t say that it’s never appropriate, but it is not the magic bullet for forest restoration. There are some key shortcomings.
1) As alluded to above, it shifts the cost from sale prep to sale admin. I don’t know the numbers on the district side, but for the rates I charge for daily harvest inspection and the frequency the USFS wants me out there, I think it would math out the same to just mark it.
2) Uncertainty. This is the biggest shortcoming in my opinion. You don’t know the outcome. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes its not. If its not, there’s nothing you can do. To me, the cost savings to not mark a sale pales in comparison to botching a sale. It feels too much like gambling, except we’re gambling with something that belongs to the public, not us.
3) Accountability. The USFS can claim all day long that the contracts have teeth. The truth as I know it, aside from basal area and eyeballing the spacing, the USFS has almost no way to tell the logger they messed up. The logger can take all the nice trees and leave all the crap, and there won’t be any way of knowing. The evidence is gone. The USFS barely knows whats out there when it’s marked. They don’t map the mark in any way. No drones. No mobile LiDAR. Low frequency point sampling to inspect the contractor and low frequency cruise plots and that’s it.
4) Tree quality. And how do you determine what’s “crap”? When I’m marking, I spend A LOT of time looking at tree tops. I train my crew to incorporate win/win scenarios in their decision making. If there’s a crooked tree with a vigorous top and a straight tree with a trash top, we leave the healthy top and give the logger the straight log. I’ve talked to a lot of loggers and they all do their best. There’s not a single one that I think poorly of. However, the idea that they’re going to have the same awareness as someone on foot, while also paying attention to cutting, and trying to be productive while burning fuel, and with an obstructed view? That would take some convincing.
5) Conflict of interest. I get a lot of flack for this, but the USFS needs to face this one head on. Anytime you mention this in a meeting, they change the subject or brush it off. Having a financial interest in which trees are being cut, and being able to decide which trees are cut IS A FINANCIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST. I am NOT saying the logger will high grade it. I am NOT saying the logger will try and pull a fast one. I am NOT saying the outcome will be poor. That’s not what that means. And it doesn’t matter if the trees are high value or low value. It simple means a conflict of interest exists, and its a BIG liability to ignore that. My main concern is one day some environmental group will cause up some ruckus about something or another, as they do, on a DxP sale. Look at the Jacob Ryan sale on the North Kaibab. A pretty decent sized controversy on the regional scale. CBD was upset too many big trees were being cut. Luckily it was a marked sale so the USFS ultimately was responsible. If it had been DxP, the logger could easily have been blamed, and who knows how widespread that smear campaign could be. If I were a logger, I wouldn’t want the liability.
For these reasons and others, DxP has fallen out of favor with some districts in N-AZ. We’re actually submitting a bid on Monday to mark DxP stands in a sale we remarked last year, before they re-offer.
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Leave Tree Mark using Ironwood’s System (left) and from a competitor using a Panama system (right)
New Technologies for Better Quality Marking at Lower Cost
This sets me up for what I really came here to share with you all. I have been working very hard for a very long time to present alternative options to the USFS and stakeholders. In the last 3 seasons, we have saved the USFS almost a HALF A MILLION DOLLARS on paint. I developed and built my own paint sprayer that saves 75% on paint, and it looks way nicer too. That’s about $30+ an acre. I have presented this to every level of the forest service, from district to the national modernization board. I have not found anyone that cares about saving money on paint, even though it would be just about enough to fund all of the road packages that everyone was so concerned about.
Furthermore, I’ve been introducing increasingly advanced digital tools. In 2020, we started GPSing every tree we marked, with DBH, at no extra cost. That means we can map the planned post harvest stand and know the basal area to the foot. Then I linked it with aerial LiDAR, so you can see a canopy cover map of the planned future stand. Last year, I upgraded that to mobile LiDAR, giving you a high resolution 3D map of the post harvest stand, with census level data (dbh, height, crown height, width, volume) on ALL leave and cut trees. We can turn +-40% cruise data to nearly 100% accurate. We plan to throw a camera module on the scanner to colorize the point cloud for increased realism. It will look like a 3D photograph because it literally IS a 3D photograph.
The neat thing is, the paint savings is less than the cost of the additional remote sensing. It sounds too good to be true, but its not, its just been a lot of hard work and risk taking.
We finally have a project planned for this summer to deliver all of this on a 3500 acre pilot sale. In addition to the above mentioned, we’re testing out a new marking designation, which we are calling Hybrid Flex (HF). It basically a combination of CTM and DxP+ (tablet marking). We expect additional paint savings, now approaching ~93% (97% if we can use commercial paint), significantly increased technician productivity (shooting for 100 acres/day per person), and it comes with all the digital mapping.
We cannot meet the needs of 4FRI with the old methods, but we can with the new. I’m starting to sound like Billy Mays, but there’s more! We’re working towards abandoning paint all together. Augmented reality individual tree marking. No paint. Doesn’t fade. Census level data. 3D photographs of current and FUTURE stands. We could have introduced this over a year ago if we had the buy-in. We’ve got two partners that can do it – one that will do it for free if the USFS will buy the end result, and another that will develop it for a fee and the USFS owns it. Either way, the development would pay for itself in less than a year from the paint savings, just from AZ timber sales.
If you’ve gotten this far, I appreciate your patience in reading all of that. We’re a small company and we’re looking to serve the needs of the USFS and forest restoration in the southwest, but its been phenomenally difficult despite the technical successes we’ve had.
Here is a link to a video we produced after our Dec 2021 demo.
I may have posted this on a previous Passover, but this video about the schools of Hillel and Shammai and arguments “for the sake of heaven” is one of my favorites. It’s done by the Pardes Center for Judaism and Conflict Resolution.
According to a source cited in Wikipedia (who knows?) Hillel worked as a woodcutter while studying the Torah.
In another part of the New Testament (Acts 22:3) Paul claimed that he had been a student of Gamaliel, who was Hillel’s grandson.
Anyway, wisdom is wisdom and Hillel and Shammai both had it. Plus humility. Virtues still needed today. And this reminds me a bit of TSW discussions.
Mordcha: Why should I break my head about the outside world? Let them break their own heads. Tevye: He’s right. As the Good Book says, “If you spit in the air, it lands in your face.” Perchik: That’s nonsense. You can’t close your eyes to what’s happening in the world. Tevye: He’s right. Avram: He’s right and he’s right? How can they both be right? Tevye: You know, you’re also right.
Caribou near ConocoPhillips oil pipelines, which are elevated to allow herds to pass beneath.
There are several different lenses I’ve been looking at news stories through. One is a regional lens- so let’s take a look at this story about the Willow Project in Alaska. This project has had major ENGO forces arrayed against it, and the State folks united for it. Apparently it had bipartisan support in Alaska, plus support of many Alaska Native groups.
“I am grateful that the court has recognized the fact that Willow is a well-planned and beneficial project for Alaska and the nation, and that this most recent lawsuit should not be allowed to overrule the wishes of Alaskans and the President while it is being litigated,” said Rep. Peltola. “With this decision, the court acknowledges the years that the Willow Project has already spent under extensive litigation and environmental review, the approval of multiple levels of government, and the strong support for the project from the majority of affected Alaska Native groups. It’s finally time for Alaskans to get to work, and I look forward to seeing construction begin as we await the final resolution of this case.”
“Scientists say nations must stop new oil and gas projects to avoid climate catastrophe.”
Which scientists? There’s a link to the new IPCC report.
While scientists have warned that nations must stop approving new oil and gas drilling or face a perilous future on a dangerously heated planet, the people involved in the Willow project are eager to get going.
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At the earliest, the crude would begin flowing in about six years. By that time, the Biden administration hopes that demand for oil will have plummeted because of federal investments to encourage use of renewable energy and to encourage a transition to electric vehicles.
The world will need fossil fuels for decades but they must be paired with technologies that capture their greenhouse gas emissions, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Wednesday.
The Biden administration wants the U.S. to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 to help limit global warming. It is seeking to displace oil, gas, and coal with renewable energy and electric technologies, but forecasts, including those by the Energy Information Administration, indicate prolonged demand for traditional energy sources.
“We know that even the boldest projections for clean energy deployment suggest that, in the middle of this century, we’ll be using abated fossil fuels,” Granholm said during remarks at CERAWeek by S&P Global, an annual industry conference in Houston.
“Abated” refers to fossil fuel combustion linked with carbon management technologies, which capture emissions so they can be kept from entering the atmosphere.
“We need both traditional and new energy,” added Granholm, who, along with President Joe Biden, has asked the oil and gas sector to increase production to alleviate high energy prices at home and in the larger global energy marketplace.
Her pronouncement comes as many environmental interest groups and some lawmakers in Congress push for policies to block new oil and gas development and related infrastructure to slow climate change.
The administration has supported increased oil and gas production in response to higher prices and the war in Ukraine.
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My bold, decades vs. six years. Maybe the difference is between “hopes” and “beliefs”.. but maybe different people in the Biden Admin have different views.. and it’s not speaking with one voice on this?
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Still, projected emissions from Willow would be a small fraction of the 5.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually by the United States, the second biggest polluter on the planet after China. ConocoPhillips and the Biden administration both say that if Willow were not permitted, supply to meet demand would just shift to oil drilling elsewhere.
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It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics, plus recent experience, to say that reducing supply without decreasing demand leads to higher prices. Which affect the poorest people the most. It would be interesting if the reporter found someone who would go on record as explaining the mechanics of how supply would not go elsewhere.
Burning all that oil could release nearly 254 million metric tons of carbon emissions. On an annual basis, that would translate into 8.4 million metric tons of carbon pollution, equal to adding nearly two million cars to the roads each year.
Again, it’s not clear to me why reporters continue to make these statements.. I guess anything “could” happen and there is a world in which folks wouldn’t have used those 600 million barrels if they hadn’t been produced in this project.
“When do you get off fossil fuels?” said Abigail Dillen, the president of Earthjustice, which is leading the lawsuit against the project. “After you destroy one of the most important and fragile ecosystems for wildlife in the world, or before?”
This seems like rhetoric, not an actual path to decarbonization. The “just say no” campaign directed at producers, not users.
I thought this was curious.. perhaps while the oil fields are “giant”, 500 acres to suck it out is.. not.
To drill profitably in the North Slope, the oil fields have to be “giant,” Mr. Marks said. Although the Biden administration reduced the size of ConocoPhillips’s original plan, Willow will have a footprint of almost 500 acres and at its peak could generate about 180,000 barrels of oil a day.
This was also curious..
The benefits to Alaska, which remains dependent on fossil fuel revenues because it has no statewide sales tax or personal income tax, will be somewhat limited. Willow is on federal land, which means that Washington will receive royalties but that Alaska will be able to collect only oil-production taxes, which would be offset by company tax deductions for expenses. For a few years, until the oil starts flowing, Willow could even have a small negative impact on state revenues.
I’m confused.. aren’t some of those royalties returned to the States? I looked at the BLM website and it says:
All Federal oil and gas royalty, rental fee, and bonus bid revenue is split about half between the U.S. Treasury and the states where development occurred. The amount of annual revenue that Federal mineral development provides to the U.S. Treasury is second only to that provided by the Internal Revenue Service.
In fact, it looks like New Mexico made 2.74 billion from the feds for oil and gas in 2022, and Alaska 45 mill. Thank you helpful DOI site!
What I like about this story is that Native Alaskans who support the project are interviewed in addition to those concerned about it (and the great photos).
Their attitude seems to be .. if we are going to be using it (oil and gas) why shouldn’t it come from here? And we get taxes and economic benefits and our own environmental regulations. This seems reasonable to me.
And why isn’t the Energy Secretary’s approach (or maybe it’s the entire Admin, who can tell?) good enough for Earthjustice?
Thanks to the many folks who have contacted me with their own concerns and observations about how the CEQ-Agency decision process is working. I had no idea that the concern was as widespread- and in areas I didn’t expect. So thank you all for reaching out!
My own CEQ Stories: Please Add Yours..
For me, I had expectations for the role of CEQ based on my own experiences. Absolutely each Admin can run things the way they want. Still, as it turns out, there is a vast body of people who work in and with government- what we might call Faithful Denizens of the Swamp- with many familial, friend and other connections who communicate with each other across party and other lines. I too was a Swamp Denizen and proud of the work I did as a career civil servant- trying to keep politicals from doing questionable things- and finding good ideas and floating them when different parties come into power. I I put the word faithful because most of us are faithful to values beyond a political party.. like good government, whatever that it. IMHO good government must be measured by trust, accountability, and the real-world effects on citizens (not hot air). As we used to say, the occupational disorder of DC is believing your own hype.
I have had three experiences of working directly with CEQ.
One was when I worked with Dan Magraw of EPA (assigned to CEQ) on regulation of genetically engineered organisms during the Clinton Administration. I was working at the Office of Science and Technology and the project was joint with CEQ. Dan and I were co-leads.
The second was working on the Limited Timber Harvest Categorical Exclusion during the Bush Administration (as the FS NEPA person). The third was as the FS NEPA person on the interagency NEPA group, but I’ve told that story before.
I was chuckling thinking that when I worked at OSTP (the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, like CEQ, part of the White House, but not what you think of exactly as “the White House”) the 2001 Planning Rule came through to be cleared. I raised the issue with OMB as part of the clearance process that the costs might be.. well.. underestimated. I got one of the OMB staffers interested in that, until that was shut down by our then-undersecretary (if he needed additional clout to do this, I have no idea). The story goes the Undersec complained to my FS boss at the time (Bill Sommers) who told him “what did you expect when you sent her over there?”
When we finished our interagency report on GE organism regulation, our bosses presented it to George Frampton, the CEQ Chair, with us in the room. He said basically.. no. So I think the higher ups and others had a discussion with him prior to the meeting, and that was definitely a joint Administration decision. Somehow biotech companies had the ear of the powers that were.
When I worked on Limited Timber Harvest, CEQ folks raised lots of questions. Patiently Pam Gardiner and I would answer questions, and this back and forth went on for months. At one point Pam and I went to a meeting with Mark Rey, our Undersecretary at the time, and as I recall, Jim Connaughton, the CEQ chair dropped in to say to the CEQ staff person “enough is enough” and that was that. Again, I don’t know if Mark, the Sec, Jim, and others had had some prior convo.
I know other readers have had their own experiences. Again, any Admin can organize the way it wants to. However, if one chooses to operate differently, it will raise eyebrows among those who are used to working within the system. And my experiences are old now, but my still-friends in the Faithful Denizens of the Swamp who have emailed and called me are concerned about this new role. At the same time, a big change since the old days is where exactly climate concerns are interspersed in all this -who hold what “climate” cards, where and how is the climate game played exactly?
Why Not Give More Work to EPA?
Yes, let’s give those poor feds another task.. rulemaking for fire retardant to the EPA! Why not? This is not negative about EPA, but they seem to already have too much to do.
First, they’re 20K people down and say that they can’t do what’s in the IRA and BIL … see Grist story here..
Today, the workforce is around the size that it was under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The AFGE has said that the agency will need 20,000 full-time staff, a 40 percent increase, to carry out the programs it has been tasked with.
Nicole Cantello, who practiced as an EPA attorney for three decades before joining AFGE Council 238 full time in 2020, told Grist that the issue is not only with hiring, but also with retention. A dearth of promotional opportunities and limited work-from-home options have caused retirement-age employees to depart early. Roughly 20 percent of the EPA’s staff have been at the agency for 30 years or more and could elect to retire soon.
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For members of AFGE, the staffing shortages are both personal and existential. A failure to address them could have repercussions for generations to come.
“Our mission has grown enormously, and climate challenges continue to escalate, but EPA’s inability to hire and retain staff has created a crisis,” said AFGE Council 238 President Marie Powell Owens in a statement. “We need to raise pay and restore career ladders now. The future of the EPA and our planet are at stake.”
The 2023 TSW Hyperbole Award may well go to Ms. Owens.
It’s also just too… hard… to keep track of all that money. Check out this non-paywalled story from Bloomberg Law. Et tu, Congresswoman DeGette?
The EPA’s inspector general raised concerns to House lawmakers Wednesday that his office can’t adequately track the tens of billions of dollars flowing into the agency from the infrastructure and climate laws under its current funding.
The comments from Sean O’Donnell and two other agency inspectors general come as some congressional Republicans’ concerns that the Biden administration is frittering away taxpayer dollars and increasing the national debt.
“Over the past two years, your federal government has been spending taxpayers’ dollars like it was Monopoly money,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.
But Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), the panel’s top Democrat, countered that funding from the infrastructure and climate bills is crucial to protect the environment and grow the economy. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said that, despite the financial risks of pushing billions of dollars out the door quickly, the risk of doing nothing is unacceptable.
Broadly, O’Donnell and the other inspectors general pointed to shortcomings in their offices’ ability to oversee government spending. O’Donnell said he wasn’t asking Congress for new money, but “to actually use the money that’s already been given to pay for that independent audit.”
It’s kind of sad to me, as a former Faithful Swamp Denizen,when oversight is seen (by some partisans) to be a partisan issue. Is the future of the planet at stake if billions don’t go out the door fast enough? I can sympathize with those who might wonder (given the non-ground-truthed maps) whether there might be some kind of well- directed- funding in all this? My view.. if people are not trusting, don’t call them names (tinfoil hatted and all that).. become more trustworthy.
> This is where the funding comes from..you can click to read more easily.
