BBB fight shows need for more climate activism, pollution hits people of color harder

In support of the transformation needed to ameliorate the impacts of climate change and adopt policies designed to stop making things worse, thousands of people have been arrested in protests against new fossil fuel infrastructure, politicians’ climate complacency and obstinacy, and corporate irresponsibility. While a few climate hawks have engaged in civil disobedience, much more of that is needed.

The specifics depend on circumstances. Six decades ago, Black students initiated sit-ins at segregated diners, while others took part as Freedom Riders in perilous bus trips across the South. Like those innovative actions, effective civil disobedience requires thoughtful assessment of what the impact of particular actions will have. Getting good media coverage is often a big part of such protests in hopes of moving public opinion. Repeating old methods often generates little more than yawns while newly conceived actions can have a significant impact.

I’m not going to suggest any specific actions in this regard. That requires far more intense, serious discussion than can be addressed here now in a few paragraphs.

Getting arrested, however, is not something even some of the most avid climate activists want to do. Having a criminal record isn’t made easier just because you were motivated by high principles. Legal costs can be substantial and even being arrested, much less convicted, can make you a target for police and FBI surveillance for years afterward. I can personally attest. Choosing to be civilly disobedient thus isn’t something to do casually or impulsively.

But there are plenty of perfectly legal things activists can take up to fight the climate crisis that don’t mean handcuffs, fines, or jail time. Let me offer a single example:

Thirty-six states have a renewable or clean energy standard that requires or encourages utilities to voluntarily get a certain amount of electricity by a certain date from renewable or otherwise clean sources, sometimes including nuclear power. California’s renewable energy standard, for instance, mandates that electricity sales be 60% from zero carbon sources by 2030, 100% by 2045. Ohio’s standard requires renewables to make up a paltry 8.5% of electricity sales in the state by 2026. Six years ago, West Virginia repealed its 2009 standard that had called for 25% of electricity sales in the state be renewables by 2025. Eleven states, seven of them in the Old Confederacy, have no renewable energy standard. Worst of all, few states that do are actually reaching their goals. 

With a majority of the Republican caucus—139 of them—still outright denying there even is a climate crisis, it’s tough for activists to have an impact on Congress in its current iteration. This isn’t to say the effort shouldn’t be made. However, politicians at the state level are more reachable. Every time a legislator speaks publicly, activists should press her or him on the status of the state’s energy standard, on making it tougher, on making voluntary ones mandatory, on making the deadlines sooner. Putting the squeeze on like this makes the job of traditional environmental lobbyists easier.

The same effort can be yet more effective in cities, where politicians are even more reachable. Few of the cities that have made their own climate plans—including pledges to cut emissions—are meeting their goals. A city council or planning board meeting offers activists ample opportunities to put the screws to these leaders and spur them into getting serious about meeting their own emissions goals and improving them as well as setting other climate-related policies into motion.

As noted, this is just one example of a way forward. No doubt neither this idea nor civil disobedience will appeal to everyone. Which is why an entire array of approaches is necessary to offer everyone an opportunity to participate in fighting this threat or of increasing their existing participation. Given our current perilous trajectory, there is no excuse for standing aside.

One final note. Agitating for greatly increased climate activism doesn’t mean I think we should give up on other crucial matters. Without getting voting rights passed, for example, all kinds of activism will get squelched.

ECO-TWEET

SHORT TAKES

Biden administration announces new efficiency and emission-cutting rules: While progressives worked on ideas and tactics for passing at least some parts of what’s included in the Build Back Better Act after Sen. Joe Manchin gave the current version a thumbs down on Sunday, the Biden administration issued two final rules this week that will limit greenhouse gas emissions even if none of the climate-related items in the BBBA are adopted. One rule overturned a Trump-era efficiency policy that environmental advocates had criticized for being an obstacle to reducing emissions from buildings because it allowed continued installation of inefficient natural gas furnaces, water heaters, and boilers. The new rule will allow the Department of Energy to update energy efficiency standards for furnaces for the first time since 1987 and water heaters for the first time since 2010.

The administration replaced another Trump-imposed rule to increase efficiency and reduce emissions in cars, SUVs, and light-duty trucks sold in model years 2023 through 2026. Under the Trump standard, such vehicles were expected to reach an average of 32 miles per gallon in model year 2026. The new rule will mandate that they be nearly 20% more efficient, with average fuel economy of 40 mpg. That will be achieved by vehicles made cleaner with more fuel-efficient engines and high-speed transmissions or electric power trains. If these requirements were to remain in place, they would reduce carbon emissions 3.1 billion metric tons by 2050. 

The White House also released the first annual report on the America the Beautiful initiative, the locally led nationwide goal to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. The 43-page report “centers on work that federal agencies are undertaking around six areas of focus: creating more parks and safe outdoor opportunities; building connectivity and corridors for fish and wildlife; supporting Tribally-led conservation and restoration; increasing access for outdoor recreation; incentivizing voluntary conservation; creating jobs and growing local economies; and deploying nature to increase climate resilience and remove carbon from the atmosphere. The report also includes a brief review of land-cover changes and the status of fish and wildlife habitats and populations, according to a White House fact sheet. 

Study: People of color breathe more polluted air, regardless of income: Activists have long noted that Black people, Indigenous, other people of color, and people with low incomes are burdened with far more of the impacts of pollution than are white people and the more affluent. A new study published last week in the journal of Environmental Health Perspectives compared air-pollution levels to census data from 1990, 2000, and 2010. With a focus on six major air pollutants, the University of Washington researchers found people of color, are, on average, more likely to breathe in polluted air, regardless of income. Lower-income groups generally were more exposed than their affluent counterparts, but racial and ethnic disparities were worse, senior author Julian Marshall told Grist. “Even if you account for differences in income, you still see disparities,” he said. Extensive research has shown that years of racist housing policies has meant that people of color are more likely than whites to live near highways, power and chemical plants, refineries, and other sources of pollution.

“This paper is a chance to recognize that, while every community is unique, there are some factors that play out over and over again consistently across our country,” said Marshall, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UW, in a press release. “If we go state by state, there’s no place where there are no environmental justice concerns.”

White House opens the door to more solar development on federal land: In a notice in Wednesday’s Federal Register, the Bureau of Land Management has invited the solar energy industry to nominate parcels for leasing and developing projects in seven of the nation’s 17 designated solar energy zones (SEZs) in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. The deadline for nominations is Jan. 20. The three SEZs in Nevada would have the capacity to produce up to 8.76 gigawatts of electricity, the single SEZ in New Mexico 6.9 gigawatts, and the three SEZs in Colorado 1.5 megawatts. Full development of the 17.2-gigawatt capacity of all seven zones could provide electricity to about 6 million homes. And it would go far toward the Biden administration’s goal of permitting 25 gigawatts of onshore renewable energy projects by 2025. Thirty-four solar projects now operate on BLM-managed lands in the West. The bureau has some 50 solar, wind, and geothermal power projects under permitting review, including at least 23 solar projects.

Steven Rattner at The New York Times created10 charts describing various aspects of 2021. Here is No. 9:

WEEKLY VIDEO

ECO-OPINION

Tornadoes Should Change How Liberals Talk About Climate With Middle America. For too long, we’ve failed to show how climate change hurts this part of the country. It might be why so few people there see it as a threat, by Abdul El-Sayed at The New Republic

Sanders and the Squad Knew Manchin Couldn’t Be Trusted. They had strategies for taking on the West Virginian, but top Democrats refused to listen, by John Nichols at The Nation

How Do Democrats Recover From This? Here are five ways in which they could salvage their election chances, by Elaine Godfrey at The Atlantic

By ditching landmark climate legislation, America makes the world unsafe. The rest of the world needs to start treating the U.S. as what it is: a dangerous country that needs to be reined in, by Kate Aronoff at The Guardian

Honoring traditional ecological knowledge is critical. Traditional ecological knowledge is a practice that promotes environmental stewardship and sustainability through relationships between humans and environmental systems that have evolved over millennia, continue to evolve, and have been passed from generation to generation, by Penobscot Indian Nation chief Kirk Francis Sr. at Indian Country Today

In Defense of Hunting. “[A good deal of the public’s] perception of hunting is caricature, born from a lack of understanding and fed by the propaganda of a techno-culture at war with both the natural world and those who would take part of their living from outside the market. The image of the arrogant, blood-thirsty hunter is a useful scapegoat for such a culture, which depends on the daily mass death of creatures wild and tame and has no intention of changing its ways,” writes Joseph Bullington at In These Times

Protecting Earth: If ‘Nature Needs Half,’ What Do People Need? The campaign to preserve half the Earth’s surface is being criticized for failing to take account of global inequality and human needs. But such protection is essential not just for nature, but also for creating a world that can improve the lives of the poor and disadvantaged, by Carl Safina at Yale Environment 360.

Nuclear Plants Masquerading as Climate-Friendly Shouldn’t Qualify for Green Finance. Fossil fuel accountability expert Kathy Mulvey and climate litigation scientist Delta Merner discuss the industry’s deception before Congress and at recent global climate talks, by Gaye Taylor at The Energy Mix

HALF A DOZEN MORE THINGS TO READ

• Can EV chargers act like gas stations? That won’t be easy. 
• ’That phrase — ‘just like filling up your car with gas’ — is invoked by industry, government and advocates as a guiding light for the federal government’s record investment in EV charging that was included in the huge bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed last month. The problem is that an EV charger is in many ways nothing like a gas station. But the comparison, apt or not, is already starting to shape the political debate over the rollout of federal money over the next few years, not to mention the features of the electric fueling network that drivers will use for the foreseeable future,” says David Ferris
   
• How a debate over carbon capture derailed California’s landmark climate bill. The failed net-zero bill highlights some of the biggest tensions plaguing climate action around the world, by Emily Pontecorvo
   
• This year disappointed on climate. Fierce accountability journalism can help save 2022. “Journalistic accountability alone cannot necessarily compel governments to do better. In democratic countries, at least, public pressure on leaders to follow through on and improve their climate pledges is essential. But let’s be real: As important as emissions policies are, they’re too wonky to connect with many news consumers. And so, journalists must continue to emphasize people’s lived experience of the climate emergency — increasingly dramatic and deadly, as humanity careens towards 1.5 degrees C — while drawing a clear connection to the policies that are helping or not,” writes Andrew McCormick