Renewable energy- wind and solar

Turbines at PacificCorp’s Ekola Flats wind farm outside Medicine Bow, Wyo.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Sammy Roth’s newsletter today which is well worth looking at.

But not every Western community is embracing renewable energy — and it’s often hard to blame them.

As my colleagues and I traveled across Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and Nevada, we spent time with a biologist who worries about wind turbines killing golden eagles; a rancher who fears Anschutz’s power line will industrialize his rural backcountry; and a National Park Service official who says the power line will interrupt scenic views on the road to a national monument. There are many such conflicts across the West, some of which involve clean power projects threatening sacred Native American sites.

Global warming is still the overriding concern — at least for me, a 30-year-old Los Angeles resident worried about a future of more dangerous heat waves, droughts, megafloods, wildfires, infectious diseases and rising seas. These changes should be alarming for everyone, everywhere, in my view. There’s no spot on planet Earth immune to the climate crisis.

But our road trip gave me pause.

Yes, the landscapes and communities we explored are distressingly vulnerable to climate change. But who am I to tell the people who live and work and play in these rural places that they’re missing the big picture? How is it fair for me to conclude that parts of the West are worth sacrificing to meet California’s demand for large amounts of electricity?

And yet Governor Newsome is now trying to keep Diablo Canyon open; and there is funding for nuclear in the IRA.

Anyway, here is Roth’s roundup of ideas..

As I’ve learned over eight years reporting on energy in the American West, there are plenty of opportunities to build bridges and seek out middle ground.

That could involve big cities working with small towns — especially towns losing fossil fuel jobs — to help those rural communities actually reap the economic benefits of clean energy. That’s what Los Angeles is trying to do in Utah’s Millard County, where the nation’s second-largest city is preparing to shutter a coal-fired power plant it’s operated for decades.

As we’ve seen in Kemmerer, Wyoming, there was not need to involve big cities, just big bucks from Bill Gates, and probably the feds. One wonders whether LA has enough of its own problems to solve.

It could also involve government agencies and conservationists mapping out the most sensitive habitats, and prohibiting wind and solar farms in those spots — while promoting clean energy development in less sensitive areas. That’s what California and the federal government have tried to do with the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan.

Jon has mentioned this before.. we all agree that this is the way to go.. but what is keeping it from happening elsewhere? Lack of federal or state leadership? We have a D federal admin and several western states have D govs, so it must not be politics.  And what if we map all those sites and they do not add up to the amounts needed?

It almost certainly involves going big on rooftop solar power in major cities such as L.A. The more solar panels installed on homes, parking lots and warehouses, the fewer sprawling solar and wind farms will be needed to eliminate fossil fuels — which is one reason many climate activists are furious with a California proposal to slash rooftop solar incentives.

Stronger collaboration among Western states could also help. Right now, power-grid operators from California to Montana share relatively little electricity, even when one of them has extra solar or wind capacity that could help keep the lights on in a state facing a power-supply crunch. Although there are political pitfalls to overcome, a coordinated Western electric grid could help phase out fossil fuels in the West while (somewhat) reducing the need for new clean energy infrastructure.

Laine Anderson, PacifiCorp’s director of wind operations, stands next to a turbine at the Ekola Flats wind farm outside Medicine Bow, Wyo.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Farms and ranches offer another intriguing opportunity. As I’ve written previously, building solar projects on farmland is one way to avoid damaging pristine wildlife habitat, while also reducing water use in drought-stressed regions such as California’s Central Valley. And scientists have found that reducing cattle grazing is one of the best ways to restore Western ecosystems.

Um.. don’t we need farms to produce food?  And turbines don’t seem to bother cattle all that much, so how does that relate?

But as always, there are complications. Although some farmers and ranchers have embraced solar and wind energy as a new source of income, others see industrial renewable energy projects as a threat to their agricultural way of life. It’s a topic I’ll be covering soon as part of the next story in our Repowering the West series.

Which brings me to one last point: Seeking out middle ground is extremely worthwhile, and necessary to speed up the clean energy transition. But all the creative problem-solving in the world won’t make everyone happy.

It’s pretty much impossible to build a clean energy project with zero opposition and zero consequences — no matter how much care you might take to protect ecosystems and work with rural communities. Confronting the climate crisis will almost certainly result in some ruined views, dead eagles and job losses in towns that can’t afford them.

That may sound harsh, but so is living in a small apartment without air conditioning during a brutal heat wave, in a neighborhood with few shade trees and no public parks. So is going to elementary school in the shadow of a polluting oil refinery, and struggling to secure safe drinking water after your well runs dry, and fleeing from wildfire after wildfire.

Wouldn’t the solution to these be.. establishing shade trees and public parks (role of city government?). The link goes to a Grist article making the case that California does a poorer job of regulating drilling in neighborhoods than Wyoming and Texas and not about refineries at all.

Al Muratsuchi, the state assemblymember who introduced A.B. 345, pointed to the political power of the oil industry as the culprit for the bill’s failure. “The reason why the bill died in committee with three Democrats voting against the bill is not only the political power of big oil but also the political power of the labor unions that represent workers who have a stake in the oil industry,” Muratsuchi said. “We talk a lot about how science should prevail over politics. In this case, the science is clear — but the politics prevailed.”

In response to a request for comment, a WSPA spokesperson said that the oil and gas industry does not oppose setbacks wholesale, but that “a one-size-fits-all approach for an entire state for an issue like this is rarely good public policy.”

Interesting that “Still, California is the nation’s seventh-largest oil-producing state.”

The “well runs dry” link goes to an article that says:

The San Joaquin Valley’s water well problems stem from a complex mix of infrastructure failure, contamination and record-dry conditions.

I don’t see how wind farms in Wyoming will help with lack of urban forests and parks, or problems with setback regulation in California, or infrastructure failure and contamination.  In the long term it can help (to some extent) with wildfires and droughts.. but only over a very long term.  And wildfires and droughts also affect the states to be industrialized. Until then, we need to deal with those issues as best we can, both in LA and throughout the West.

Like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill does for fuels projects, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) or Big Climate Bill, or whatever, puts enormous bucks in the pipeline (so to speak) for solar and wind (as well as other) projects. The key thing about solar and wind, though, is the massive footprint.  As usual, Sammy Roth of the L.A. Times does a good job of presenting diverse perspectives in this article. We’ll discuss the Build Back Better forest-related leftovers in this bill in another post.  NB: “an area much bigger than California.”

But finding good sites for all those renewable energy projects — and contending with opposition from landowners, Native American tribes and even environmental activists — could be just as challenging as getting a bill through Congress.

Across the country, local opposition has slowed or blocked many renewable energy facilities, and land-use conflicts are likely to intensify. Princeton University researchers estimate that zeroing out U.S. carbon emissions by 2050 could require installing solar panels and wind turbines across more than 225,000 square miles, an area much bigger than California.

“There’s this misperception that there’s plenty of land,” said Eric O’Shaughnessy, a renewable energy researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “That is true, but [solar and wind farms] have to go in specific places.”…

Two recent studies help explain the sources of that opposition — and what might be done to alleviate local concerns.

The first study, from researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explored 53 renewable energy projects that were delayed or blocked over more than a decade. It found that the most common sources of opposition were concerns about environmental impact and land use.

California and neighboring states have seen both types of conflicts. Some conservation groups have tried to block solar and wind farms in the Mojave Desert, citing potential harm to desert tortoises, golden eagles and Joshua trees, among other animals and plants. Just this month, Ormat Technologies Inc. paused construction of a geothermal project in Nevada while federal wildlife officials study whether it would harm the endangered Dixie Valley toad.

Then there’s San Bernardino — California’s largest county by land area. Three years ago, it banned solar and wind farms on more than 1 million acres, spurred by locals who worried that the sprawling projects would industrialize their rural communities.

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Some clean energy advocates consider that type of opposition to be, at best, NIMBYism and, at worst, thinly veiled climate denial.

Philosophical Questions: Can Indigenous people be NIMBY’s or be dismissed at climate denialists?  When do local people have legitimate concerns about any kind of new infrastructure and who decides whose concerns can be dismissed?

But Lawrence Susskind, an urban planning professor and the MIT study’s lead author, said local concerns of all kinds need to be taken seriously. His research has convinced him that speeding up the clean energy transition will be possible only if developers take the time to make a good-faith effort to gather input from communities before dumping solar and wind farms on them.

Too often, Susskind said, companies exclude local residents until the last minute, then try to steamroll opposition — to their own detriment. His study cited 20 projects that were blocked, some by lawsuits or other forms of public resistance.

“If you want to build something, you go slow to go fast,” he said. “You have a conversation, not a confrontation.”

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I agree and wonder how does” going slow to go fast” fit with getting it done by 2030? Or would it be more honest (yes I know, politicians (!)) to say we are on a path, this is the best path we can agree on, and we’ll get to where we get to.

Stanford University researchers hope to facilitate similar compromises for the rest of the country.

Not to diss Stanford, but should there be others engaged in developing those compromises across the country? I would tend to see this as a role of State government. For example, I’d see at least Colorado School of Mines and CSU involved, the former the energy experts, the latter the rural people, wildlife and agriculture experts. This big bag o’ bucks is an opportunity to build governance bridges IMHO.

Stanford’s Dan Reicher told The Times he has convened more than 20 groups — representing the solar industry, environmental advocates, Native American tribes, the agriculture industry and local governments — in an “uncommon dialogue” to discuss land-use conflicts involving large solar farms. It’s modeled after a dialogue he convened for the hydropower industry and conservation groups that led to an unprecedented agreement between those long-warring factions.

Reicher hopes the solar discussions will lead companies to make smarter decisions about where to build projects — and do a better job communicating with local residents and conservationists when they think they’ve found good locations.

“Done well, siting is a highly technical process that also lends itself to significant input,” Reicher said.

O’Shaughnessy agrees on the need for public engagement upfront.

The Lawrence Berkeley researcher was lead author of the second recent study, which found that solar and wind farms typically are built in rural areas with low-income populations — and those projects can be either a benefit or a burden to those communities, depending on local factors. Construction jobs and tax revenue can be a boon, while loss of agricultural land can be a big loss.

Renewable energy facilities can also destroy land held sacred by Native American tribes or disrupt treasured views.

The potential harms from solar and wind energy pale in comparison with the dangers of oil and gas drilling and other fossil fuel projects, which, unlike renewable energy, can expose residents to cancer-linked chemicals and other toxic substances. The low-income communities of color that have borne the brunt of fossil fuel pollution are also especially vulnerable to climate change consequences.

Note that “solar and wind farms typically are built in rural areas with low-income populations”. If we look at places in the interior West anyway where build out has occurred, this seems to be the case.  They may be particularly vulnerable to climate change consequences, but sometimes are, and sometimes aren’t communities of color.

I also think there’s a difference between drilling impacts and the impacts of other fossil fuel infrastructure (refineries) that is not clear here.  For one thing,  drilling may not be close to communities at all, as we see in much federal lands drilling.

Taking steps to ensure that solar and wind farms in vulnerable communities don’t worsen ongoing injustices is important, O’Shaughnessy said. It’s a priority for the Biden administration, which has set a goal of delivering 40% of the benefits of federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged neighborhoods — an initiative known as Justice40.

“There will be projects that move forward despite some degree of local opposition. That’s inevitable,” O’Shaughnessy said. “It comes back to making sure there are participation processes in place to do this as fairly and equitably as possible.”

The key question is whether enough clean energy can be built fast enough to avert climate catastrophe.

Susskind, the MIT researcher, thinks it’s doable. He said renewable energy companies should be willing to redesign their projects to avoid sensitive lands and to offer financial compensation to people or businesses who feel they’re being harmed.

“More stuff would get built faster,” he said.

The national trade group Solar Energy Industries Assn. agrees with that assessment.

Ben Norris, the group’s director of environmental policy, said in an interview that engaging with communities early — and giving them a real opportunity to be heard — is “the hallmark of good project development.” He said it’s an area the solar industry is working to improve, in part through the Stanford initiative — and the Senate deal makes it more important than ever.

“This is such a historic opportunity that we’re on the cusp of that we need to get it right,” Norris said.

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I like watching California grappling with climate change from the “laboratory of democracy” point of view. And I’m helped along in my observations by one of my favorite reporters, Sammy Roth.

California lawmakers passed a sweeping, polarizing energy bill last night, making it easier for state officials to buy electricity from beachfront gas plants and diesel generators, and to approve solar and wind farms over the objections of local governments.

What’s interesting about this at the macro scale is that California is faced with the reality of having reliable power- today and tomorrow. As I often say, you can’t solve an engineering problem with more words. While the chatterati opine about how easy it is to decarbonize, and the evil oil and gas industry preventing it, someone has to actually provide power.  So the Legislature grappled, and they came up with something that sounds…at least somewhat common-sensical.  It’s interesting that Roth refers to the bill as “polarizing”.  I wonder when a plain old disagreement is a “polarizing” disagreement. Or whether by naming perhaps garden-variety disagreements this way, we highlight the emotive extremes and invisibilize the center. Those boring and practical folks who want to deal with climate change AND keep the lights on.

Here’s a link to the article. For the purposes of TSW, though, I’d like to focus on the description of part of the bill that works on speeding up infrastructure buildout, in an earlier Roth piece for some ideas that might be of interest in expediting permitting on federal lands.

A separate provision would allow companies building solar farms, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries — as well as electric lines to connect those facilities to the grid — to opt in to an accelerated approval process that doesn’t require sign-off from county governments. State officials would be required to conduct environmental reviews and approve or deny those projects within nine months. Legal challenges to any project approvals would need to be resolved by state courts within another nine months.

Needless to say, (at least some) local governments are less than thrilled.

Local governments have at times emerged as a serious obstacle to clean energy, with San Bernardino County supervisors banning solar and wind farms on more than 1 million acres in 2019 and Shasta County supervisors set to vote next month on a wind farm moratorium. Shasta and Humboldt counties have both rejected proposed wind farms in recent years — an increasingly common occurrence across the Western U.S. as local residents raise concerns about environmental damage and diminished views.

Major solar companies have been focused on building better relationships with local officials rather than pushing to circumvent county approval, several people familiar with the industry’s thinking told The Times. The California Wind Energy Assn., on the other hand, supports Newsom’s plan to let the state handle permitting where developers prefer it, executive director Nancy Rader said.

The plan for speedier solar and wind approvals has also drawn support from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Developers who opt in to the streamlined process would need to hire union workers through project labor agreements.

“We think that’s a wise balancing of an option for developers who have their ducks in a row and want to go to the Energy Commission, which is extremely capable and competent and talented,” said Marc Joseph, an attorney representing IBEW.

Major environmental groups haven’t taken a position on Newsom’s proposal to streamline project approval, after an earlier provision that would have eliminated additional layers of review — including from the Coastal Commission — was removed.

Local governments, though, are furious.

In a letter opposing the bill, the California State Assn. of Counties, Urban Counties of California, Rural County Representatives of California and the League of California Cities said renewable energy facilities “can have enormous impacts on local communities.” They said the Energy Commission approval process is “overly broad, usurps local control, excludes local governments from meaningful involvement in major development projects within their jurisdictions, and could result in even more litigation.”

Two thoughts on this.. (1) could the Feds develop the same ideas for permitting on federal lands and leave the States out?

I’m just thinking federal land, but the Germans have draft laws for relaxing environmental requirements if their states don’t pony up the acres to meet federal requirements (yes, I know that the German government is very different):

With the “onshore wind energy law”, Germany’s 13 larger states have to have designated 1.4% of their surface area to onshore wind power by 2026; by 2032 they have to reach their respective target of 1.8-2.2%.

Bavaria, notorious for its anti-wind power policies, must reserve 1.8% of its land for onshore wind.

The states must do their own planning, guided by a set of uniform rules and modelling issued by the federal government, but can stick to individual distance rules if this doesn’t interfere with reaching the percentage target.

If, however, they do not manage to assign enough space to wind turbines, wind power investors would be automatically allowed to build new turbines in areas previously unavailable due to the distance rules. The country’s three city states, Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen, must use 0.5% of their area for wind power…

While satisfied that the government is tackling too long planning procedures and legal hurdles for wind power, industry representatives strongly criticised the species protection rules for creating new legal uncertainties that would prolong procedures even more.

(2) Who decides what is NIMBY and what is environmental justice, and on what specific criteria?

If it is legitimate for the well-heeled in Redondo Beach to want gas-fired power plants removed from their community, is it equally legitimate for local governments of the less-well-heeled to not want wind turbines?

Here’s another one from Wyofile; we’ve talked about the Sierra Madre Chokecherry build-out before.  Two things I’ve noticed from attending public meetings on powerlines here in Colorado.  First, no one talks about how many new wind farms are expected in acres.  That’s possibly because they don’t know, the way it works is that once the powerlines are there, companies will then develop windfarms.

A person might wonder how that might fit with goals, say of some large  foundations and others to “protect” 50% of the western US.  Also the 30 by 30 effort of the Biden Admin and others.

Another topic raised by affected communities in Colorado is “why do we need to incur environmental damage so that other states have “cleaner” electricity?  Or in Colorado, if it’s not for our own use, but for Denver?  Is that just another example of the Interior West resources being used for urban areas?

And finally our friends at CBD and others are concerned about critters who mostly care about disturbed habitat and getting killed by blades (I’m thinking that ultimately there will be a tech solution to that one); it doesn’t matter to those critters if it’s an oil and gas road or a windfarm road. So it will be interesting for us to watch how all this plays out over time.

The added transmission capacity and increased number of “on-ramps” and “off-ramps” that the transmission lines would provide to Wyoming and the western grid set the stage for a major buildout of wind turbines in the state. When completed, that extra capacity and interconnectivity would also provide PacifiCorp — and possibly others — the ability to retire coal-fired power units in the state by meeting several new state-level power delivery and reliability requirements, according to University of Wyoming energy economist Rob Godby.

“When you have a more flexible system, it’s just less likely that you need coal,” Godby said. “You can rely on a more flexible set of generation alternatives, and that old fossil fuel backbone [coal-fired power] is less relevant.”

Adding interstate transmission capacity — and therefore boosting the ability to move power in and out of Wyoming as needed — is integral to PacifiCorp’s plans to meet the state’s reliability standards, according to PacifiCorp spokesperson David Eskelsen.

“The Gateway South and Segment D.1 transmission projects were modeled in the 2021 [integrated resource plan] as key to system reliability as the energy transition is expected to continue,” Eskelsen told WyoFile.

I thought this opinion piece would be worthy of discussion, because federal lands in the West turn out to be key to current renewable energy build-outs.

But first I’d like to back up and give a framework which I think is important to consider, especially since these are likely to be major issues in the future.  Take a community composed of various ethnic groups, economic classes and so on, with surrounding landscapes.  Someone want to develop something there (mines, solar and wind, geothermal, powerlines, oil and gas, dams, grizzly or wolf reintroduction) for the good of the broader population.  Not to get all political science-y here but who decides what is the good of the broader population? Who decides who gets to sacrifice (however felt by locals) their own views, agriculture, land, to what end? What if some in the community benefit and others get only the downsides?   How does social justice enter into the equation?

And finally, should Tribes not only have a voice, but have the ultimate say, based on their original ownership of the land and the injustice of treaties? I’m thinking here on federal lands for pragmatic reasons.   With all these complexities, when Coastals start talking about NIMBYism when it comes to development of rural lands, I like to replace NIMBY in my mind with “local concerns.” As one of my fellow planning commissioners in El Paso County said.. “it’s got to go somewhere.” But does it? At the most extreme, using political force to do something locals don’t want has colonialist overtones.

Check out this Noah Smith op-ed in Bloomberg Opinion .. tagline

State and national leaders need to move more forcefully to override local protestors who are blocking new solar and wind developments under the guise of land conservation.

And for readers interested in partisan political stuff, the fellow who wrote this op-ed, Wally Nowinski, is  the former democratic ads director for House and Senate Dem candidates, according to the blurb.  As for me, I am quite sympathetic to the environmental groups.  They want to be the “good guys” but without the traditional “bad guys” (forest products, oil and gas) the way forward is not so clear.  They could be for nuclear to reduce the environmental footprint, but members probably don’t want that either.  I don’t see any bad guys here, just people who want different things.  Side note: in the comments it was pointed out that NRDC really hadn’t done what the author said.

Conservation is not the same thing as climate action.

Conservation is a conservative impulse, but right now, the climate threat calls for sweeping changes to our physical environment. Our best shot at mitigating the impact of climate change is to electrify every process in our economy as quickly as possible: We need to preserve clean energy infrastructure like hydro and legacy nuclear power plants. We need to build a ton of new wind and solar fast. And we need to find and harvest the raw materials needed for batteries.

All of these projects pose tradeoffs: They’re important from a climate standpoint, but bad from a conservation standpoint. To state the obvious: If you build a solar farm in the desert, it is no longer a natural desert habitat, it’s a solar farm. Meanwhile, wind farms do kill some birds. Hydro dams (though we aren’t likely to build more since we’ve already used the best sites), do disrupt fish, and nuclear plants still scare people.

So it’s not actually surprising that conservation groups like the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society and the NRDC regularly oppose specific clean energy projects, even while they acknowledge the importance of a rapid energy transition.

The tradeoffs are a hard problem for organizations to wrestle with, particularly when many of our biggest environmental groups were founded specifically with a goal of conservation. The Audubon Society was created to protect birds and the Sierra Club was founded by mountaineers. The Natural Resources Defense Council, meanwhile, grew out of opposition to a hydro-electric project on the Hudson River. Until very recently, their agendas were focused on protecting what already existed–not embracing rapid change.

For its part, the national Sierra Club leadership seems to be trying to put more emphasis on supporting clean energy projects than it did in the past. Its platform calls for 100% clean energy now, and the organization’s national magazine even published a story about the threat NIMBYs pose to renewable energy. But when you have an organization that has fought for conservation for over 100 years, and whose entire playbook and tool kit is designed to stop or at least delay change, embracing clean energy development can be hard.

Many conservation groups have a structure that makes them chaotic, and vulnerable to NIMBYs. 

One of the reasons the Sierra Club was so successful at advancing its agenda in the late 20th century is that it was organized as a chapter-based membership organization. Local chapters popped up across the country where the most passionate members could organize around local issues, lobby local politicians, and talk to the press, all with the credibility of the Sierra Club name behind them. The Audubon Society, and more recently the Sunrise Movement, followed a similar model.

This structure enabled the groups to take on many more fights than they otherwise would have, and helped broaden their influence within state and local governments across the country. Wherever you went, there was likely a Sierra Club chapter ready to weigh in on local development projects.

Now, that structure means that the groups’ power can be high-jacked to protect members’ backyards. For example, last year, the Sierra Club of Iowa came out swinging against a solar project. The weight of its message was increased by the imprimatur of the national brand—normie voters don’t know the difference—even though the national organization has said it’s pro-solar development.

The Sierra Club used to be for natural gas as a transitional fuel.. but local groups didn’t like development near them. So in that case, it was The Right Thing to be against natural gas due to the influence of locals.. or was it “high-jacked to protect members’ backyards” in that case as well?
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It’s not just organizations with a historic conservation mission that can be taken over by NIMBY interests either. Earlier this week the Amherst Chapter of the Sunrise Movement, a group whose tagline is “We are the climate revolution,” joined area NIMBYs in advocating for a moratorium on all large solar projects in the city.

Where do we go from here?

Big environmental groups have very powerful brands, particularly in blue states. Unfortunately, I think we should expect the trend of these organizations opposing clean energy projects to continue, at least in the short term. Because of their brand power, that opposition will carry a lot of weight, and it will likely be weaponized by conservatives and others to say “even environmentalists oppose this project.”

The solution will involve rethinking what it means to be “environmentalist.” The term is usually understood to encompass a wide range of different causes–from climate activism, to habitat conservation, to recycling and plastic straw bans. But it’s worth remembering that not everything coded as “green” helps fight climate change, and much of it is actively counterproductive.

The good news is there are some signs of an internal backlash within environmental groups. In 2019, a cadre of activists concerned about climate change took over the Ann Arbor, Michigan Sierra Club in a contentious election. In the Bay Area, different local Sierra Club chapters are fighting with each other about whether or not to support a big solar project. And while many chapters continue to be almost cartoonishly NIMBY on housing issues, the national Sierra Club changed its tune on housing construction and now supports infill development.

The most basic thing we can do now is simply to recognize we are not in an era where all environmental goals are aligned. Conservation and climate action are often directly at odds. And if we’re going to successfully prevent global calamity wrought by extreme weather and rapid warming, we’re going to have to displace many more tortoises.

In reality, developing a scheme of decarbonizing on paper is easy, and building it out is difficult. We always knew that.