09/11/2020

A Biden Victory Positions America For A 180-Degree Turn On Climate Change

The Washington Post - Juliet Eilperin | Dino Grandoni | Darryl Fears

New administration will seek to shift U.S. off fossil fuels and expand public lands protections, but face serious opposition from Senate GOP.

Former vice president Joe Biden exits his car for a flight at the New Castle Airport in New Castle, Del., on Sept. 21. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

Joe Biden, the projected winner of the presidency, will move to restore dozens of environmental safeguards President Trump abolished and launch the boldest climate change plan of any president in history. While some of Biden’s most sweeping programs will encounter stiff resistance from Senate Republicans and conservative attorneys general, the United States is poised to make a 180-degree turn on climate change and conservation policy.

Biden’s team already has plans on how it will restrict oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters; ratchet up federal mileage standards for cars and SUVs; block pipelines that transport fossil fuels across the country; provide federal incentives to develop renewable power; and mobilize other nations to make deeper cuts in their own carbon emissions.

“Joe Biden ran on climate. How great is this?” said Gina McCarthy, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during President Barack Obama’s second term and now helms the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’ll be time for the White House to finally get back to leading the charge against the central environmental crisis of our time.”

Biden has vowed to eliminate carbon emissions from the electric sector by 2035 and spend $2 trillion on investments ranging from weatherizing homes to developing a nationwide network of charging stations for electric vehicles. That massive investment plan stands a chance only if his party wins two Senate runoff races in Georgia in January; otherwise, he would have to rely on a combination of executive actions and more-modest congressional deals to advance his agenda.

Still, a number of factors make it easier to enact more-ambitious climate policies than even four years ago. Roughly 10 percent of the globe has warmed by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature rise the world has pledged to avoid. The price of solar and wind power has dropped, the coal industry has shrunk, and Americans increasingly connect the disasters they’re experiencing in real time — including more-intense wildfires, hurricanes and droughts — with global warming. Biden has made the argument that curbing carbon will produce high-paying jobs while protecting the planet.

Biden’s advisers are well aware of the potential and pitfalls of relying on executive authority to act on climate. Obama used it to advance major climate policies in his second term, including limits on tailpipe emissions from cars and light trucks and the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Trump has overturned them, along with 125 others.

League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski pointed to California — which has already adopted a low-carbon fuels standard and requirement that half its electricity come from carbon-free sources within five years — as a model. “You look at where California is now going, the federal government needs to get there."

Some of the new administration’s rules could be challenged in federal court, which have a number of Trump appointees on the bench. But even some conservative activists said that Biden could enact enduring policies, whether by partnering with Congress or through regulation.

Myron Ebell, who directs the Center for Energy and the Environment at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, said that if Biden faces a GOP-controlled Senate, “it means that all of the nuttiest and most radical ideas on the left are dead on arrival in the Congress. And that means he is much more likely to be successful because he can just tell his left-wing supporters, ‘Hey, we just can’t do this.’ ”

McKie Campbell, managing partner of the bipartisan energy consulting firm BlueWater Strategies and a former top aide to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), said he hopes divided government “means we may have a return of people working with each other to work out some solutions. The question is, in the middle, do you have compromise, or do you have stalemate, and nothing happens.”

An oil pipeline stretches across the landscape outside Prudhoe Bay in North Slope Borough, Alaska. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

The new administration may be able to broker compromises with key industries that have experienced regulatory whiplash in the past decade, including the auto industry and power sector, while offering tax breaks for renewable energy that remain popular with both parties. And Biden can rebuild diplomatic alliances that will spur foreign countries to pursue more-ambitious carbon reductions.

Some activists are pressing for the creation of a White House interagency group, similar to the National Security Council and National Economic Council, that could steer decisions across the federal government. Even without such a body, Biden’s advisers have said that they plan to elevate climate change as a priority in departments that have not always treated it as one, including the Transportation, State and Treasury departments. It will influence key appointments, affecting everything from overseas banking and military bases to domestic roads and farms.

“It’s really important to remember that personnel is policy,” said Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmentalist who ran against Biden during the primary but who then raised money for him. “And every Cabinet position has to be staffed by somebody who has an awareness about climate.”

Mustafa Santiago Ali, vice president of environmental justice, climate, and community revitalization at the National Wildlife Federation, said these policies will also be shaped by how they affect communities of color.

“When we talk about new jobs being created in the renewable energy sector, just because they’re being created doesn’t mean they are going to the communities that have been ignored in the past,” said Ali, who left his post at the EPA early in Trump’s term. “This administration is going to have a diverse set of voices on the outside and inside who are connected to what’s going on on the ground. We can’t just have voices from people who went to Ivy League schools that come from a place of privilege.”

Biden’s campaign has been eyeing a range of candidates for top environmental posts, including two New Mexico Democrats — retiring senator Tom Udall and Rep. Deb Haaland — for interior secretary. Mary Nichols, who has implemented many of the nation’s most liberal climate policies for more than a dozen years as chair of the California Air Resources Board — is a leading contender to head the EPA.

Retiring senator Tom Udall is said to be on Biden's shortlist for the interior secretary position. (Andrew Harnik/AP)


It is unclear who might coordinate climate policy at the White House. Possible contenders include several Obama administration veterans, including Ali Zaidi, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s (D) top climate adviser; Biden’s former national security adviser Jake Sullivan; and Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, a former deputy national security adviser and deputy director of the National Economic Council. While former secretary of state John F. Kerry may get involved with climate policy, according to two individuals familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, it is less likely that he will join the White House staff and could seek a different spot in the Cabinet.

Biden’s vow to reinvigorate climate diplomacy, including rejoining the Paris accord, is one of the easiest ones to fulfill. He could also capitalize on Republican senators’ support for slashing the use of hydrofluorcarbons, chemicals widely used in air conditioners and refrigeration that are warming the planet and that are supposed to be phased out under a separate international climate agreement.

“Joe Biden’s win ratifies what’s been clear all along: despite Trump’s best efforts, the American people have remained committed to the Paris Agreement. Business, investors, cities, and states redoubled their efforts to solve the climate crisis, proving that the path to a sustainable economy is inevitable,” said former vice president Al Gore in a statement Saturday.

While Biden has said he would “transition” away from using oil, and target fossil fuel subsidies, steps like that would be much harder under a Republican-controlled Senate. Unless Democrats take over, the seats of two senators from coal states — John Barrasso (Wyo.) and Shelley Moore Capito (WVa.) — are slated to helm the Energy and Natural Resources and Environment and Public Works Committee, respectively. Those committees also have say over whom Biden puts in top-level positions at the EPA and other agencies.

Democrats are eager to take sweeping acts to conserve public lands and waters, many of which have been opened up to drilling, logging and fishing under Trump. He’s vowed to block permits for the Keystone XL pipeline and the proposed Pebble Mine near Alaska’s Bristol Bay, and protect vast swaths of the landscape that Trump has opened up to mining and logging.

He is also likely to soon restore the original boundaries of national monuments Trump has shrunk, including Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, and he’s already signed onto a pledge to protect 30 percent of America’s land and waters by 2030.

Landscape south of Colt Mesa in Garfield County, Utah. The area is part of the Circle Cliffs region that was removed from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by the Trump administration and is now open to development. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Udall said in a recent interview that Biden is poised to sign an executive order on the “30 by 30” pledge early on and that it will serve as “an organizing principle” for environmental policy decisions. “We don’t have any other options when it comes to facing down the climate crisis, and the nature crisis."

But some of Biden’s most ambitious environmental pledges will be difficult to fulfill. His climate plan calls for “banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters,” something no administration has ever done on a permanent basis.

And Republican attorneys general like West Virginia’s Patrick Morrisey are ready for battle. In an interview Thursday, Morrisey — who successfully challenged Obama’s Clean Power Plan — said before the race was called for Biden that he backs the president and sees “a pathway” for him to win reelection.

But, he added, “If Biden were to somehow prevail, we would fight to prevent the administration from advancing the same kind of unlawful approaches they pursued under the Obama administration.”

Biden’s pledge to achieve a carbon-free U.S. power sector within 15 years would mean the closing or revamping of nearly every coal- and gas-fired power plant around the country, and the construction of an unprecedented number of new wind turbines and solar farms. On top of that, engineers still need to devise a better way of storing energy when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing.

“If I were advising Biden on energy, my first three priorities would be storage, storage and storage,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who worked in the alternative energy businesses before running for office.

Industry representatives are more wary of a Biden presidency but hold out hope they can persuade him that the commodities they produce are necessary for a healthy economy.

Marcellus Shale Coalition President David Spigelmyer, whose Pittsburgh-based group represents companies that drill horizontally for natural gas, said that their product helps warm homes, produce steel for windmills and solar panels, and make plastics that businesses need. “We wrap ourselves in plastic every time we get in a car or a bus or a plane."

Still, climate activists who pushed Biden during the campaign don’t intend to let up on the pressure. “We’re seeing that Joe Biden has a climate mandate,” said Varshini Prakash, head of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, “and we expect him to do everything in his power to act on climate change.”

Links

at No comments:

Australia Warned It Could Be Isolated Over Climate Inaction After Joe Biden Victory

The Guardian - 

Experts say they believe the US president-elect will exert significant pressure on Australia to lift its climate commitments

Australia faces increasing pressure to act on climate change as US president-elect Joe Biden says he would ‘use every tool of American foreign policy to push the rest of the world’ to combat the problem. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Australia risks becoming an isolated laggard in addressing the climate crisis, without obvious allies to shelter it from rising international pressure to act, as the US takes a leadership role under Joe Biden, experts say.

The president-elect has declared addressing climate change “the No 1 issue facing humanity” and promised $2tn in climate spending and policies to put the US on a path to 100% clean electricity by 2035 and net zero emissions no later than 2050.

Biden last week promised to rejoin the Paris agreement, which due to a quirk of timing the US officially left on the day after the election, on his first day in office and has said he would “use every tool of American foreign policy to push the rest of the world” to increase their ambition to combat the problem.

With the Democrats in the White House, every member of the G7 and the European Union will be committed to net zero emissions by 2050. China – comfortably the world’s biggest annual emitter – says it will be carbon neutral before 2060. The Morrison government has resisted setting a specific long-term emissions goal, saying it would reach net zero “in the second half of the century”.

Howard Bamsey, Australia’s former special envoy on climate change, said Biden’s win demonstrated “even more clearly that the world is indeed changing” in its response to the issue. Japan and South Korea – the world’s fifth and seventh-biggest emitters respectively and, with China, the biggest markets for Australia’s fossil fuel exports – last week set carbon neutrality targets for 2050.

Bamsey said Biden’s election would likely affect climate action in two ways – by increasing the confidence of major investors to back clean solutions as it became even clearer the world was moving away from fossil fuels, and by “radically” transforming climate change diplomacy ahead of the major international conference in Glasgow in November 2021.

He said the Morrison government risked being left with no obvious allies on the issue if it continued to stand apart from increasing action and co-operation.

“There’s no cover any longer with this,” Bamsey said. “I think in Joe Biden’s first conversation with Scott Morrison, or the second, climate change will be mentioned. It’s been such an important part of his campaign and he clearly recognises the economic imperative for change.”

Dean Bialek, a former Australian diplomat to the UN now working with the British government in preparing for the Glasgow conference, said much of the world was increasingly seeing climate action as an economic opportunity, rather than a burden.

He said Australia had faced significant pressure to lift its climate commitments at the UN climate conference in Madrid last year, and risked being further isolated as a climate laggard alongside only Brazil, Russia and Saudi Arabia among G20 countries if it stuck to its current position.

“It means that the shadows that Australia has been hiding in are much smaller now, particularly with China, Korea and Japan having moved on net zero in recent weeks,” Bialek said. “It starts to smell like a government that doesn’t care about climate change.”

With most major economies now promising net zero emissions by mid-century, it is expected attention in climate diplomacy will turn to countries increasing their commitments to act over the next decade, a period scientists have advised is crucial if countries are to live up to the commitment under the Paris agreement to “pursue efforts” to limit global heating to 1.5C.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated hitting that mark would require about a 45% cut in global emissions below 2010 levels by 2030. With global action falling far short of that – global emissions rose slightly last year – scientists say the globe is on track for more than 3C of heating, a change they say would have far-reaching and catastrophic consequences.

The Morrison government has a 2030 emissions target of a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, having rejected a science-based recommendation by the Climate Change Authority of a reduction of between 45% and 60% over that timeframe. Prior to Covid-19, national emissions had reduced just 2.2% since the Coalition was elected in 2013 and official data released last December suggested Australia would miss its 2030 target unless it used a contentious carbon accounting measure rejected by other countries.

The Coalition has backed a “technology, not taxes” approach to climate change, setting “stretch goals” to reduce the cost of five low-emissions technologies to make them competitive, but the goals are not tied to a timeframe or an emissions reduction trajectory.

Frank Jotzo, director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University, said Biden would be expected to announce a stronger 2030 target (the US’s current short-term goal is a 26%-28% cut by 2025) before the Glasgow summit, as expected under the Paris agreement.

While the Democrats appear only an outside chance to control the Senate – likely to be necessary if it is to pass significant national climate legislation – Jotzo said a Biden administration would be expected to re-strengthen institutions and bring back climate friendly regulations abolished under Donald Trump. 

A taskforce led by former secretary of state John Kerry and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez identified 56 policy steps on climate and energy that would not need Congress support.

Jotzo said he expected the US to exert significant pressure on Australia “to stop being a recalcitrant on this issue”.

“They will find some common ground, maybe a lot, on the tech development side of things,” he said. “But the US will say this is not enough, not nearly enough, and that Australia also needs to move ahead and deploy low-carbon technology and transition from a fossil fuel based economy to a renewables based economy.”

Speaking on the ABC on Saturday, moderate Liberal backbencher Trent Zimmerman said one of the pluses of a Biden presidency would be a re-engagement and increased focus on climate change.

“I actually see opportunities for Australia in that,” he said. “We have said, as Joe Biden has said, that we want to develop a technology roadmap to ensure that we are playing our role in emissions reduction, and I actually see the opportunity for us to be working with the United States on many of those areas.”

He said the government had similar arrangements with Germany and Korea on clean hydrogen. “I think that the closeness of our relationship with the United States means there will be considerable and new economic opportunities as we explore some of the natural strengths that Australia has in areas like renewable energy,” Zimmerman said.

Links

at No comments:

(AU) Reefs At WA's Rowley Shoals Make Surprise Recovery From 'Significant' Coral Bleaching

ABC News - Ben Collins

Scientists inspect healthy coral on the slope of Clerke Reef at the Rowley Shoals. (Supplied: Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions)
Coral Comeback
  • Widespread coral deaths were feared after 60 per cent of coral in areas of the Rowley Shoals bleached in April
  • The latest survey has found much of the bleached coral is recovering
  • The Rowley Shoals are a chain of three coral atolls 300km off Broome, Western Australia
It was a depressing, if expected inevitability when Western Australia's Rowley Shoals showed the first signs of mass coral bleaching earlier this year, but a follow-up survey has found a remarkable recovery looks likely to preserve the reef's near-pristine health — at least for now.

Tom Holmes, the marine monitoring coordinator at the WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, said that while his team was still processing the data, it appeared the coral had pulled off an "amazing" return towards health over the past six months.

"We were expecting to see widespread mortality, and we just didn't see it … which is a really amazing thing," Dr Holmes said.

Dr Tom Holmes prepares to dive in the ocean off Western Australia. (Supplied: DBCA)
The survey was a follow-up to one conducted in April that found as much as 60 per cent of corals on some Rowley Shoals reefs had bleached after the most widespread marine heatwave since reliable satellite monitoring began in 1993.

It has long been known that high sea temperatures cause coral bleaching which can kill coral — as seen by the devastation of the Great Barrier Reef off the Queensland coast — but what is less well known is that bleached corals do not die immediately.

"So when a coral bleaches, it's actually just a sign of initial stress," Dr Holmes said.
"Tiny little microscopic algae that live in the coral are expelled by the corals themselves, so the actual coral animal underneath is still alive."
However, corals rely on these microscopic algae as a food source and cannot survive for long without them.

"If that stress continues for a long time and those corals remain white, then it can lead to mortality," Dr Holmes said.

"But there are some cases of bleaching around the world where … that stress hasn't continued for a long time, and the corals have been able to take that algae back in from the water."

Dr Holmes believes that vital time gap between bleaching and dying created a chance for the reefs to recover at the Rowley Shoals, a chain of three coral atolls 300 kilometres off Broome on the edge of Australia's continental shelf.

Coral bleaching observed on the Rowley Shoals' Clerke Reef slope in April 2020. (Supplied: Chris Nutt, DBCA)
Marine heatwave

Last summer, as bushfires raged across Australia's east coast, an unprecedented marine heatwave enveloped the west coast, reaching from South Australia all the way up to the Kimberley in northern Western Australia.

The high seawater temperatures killed crabs, abalone and other molluscs in the south-west, and killed fish and oysters and caused widespread coral bleaching in north-west WA.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science teamed up with WA's Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions to survey the effects of the marine heatwave on offshore reefs, including those at the Rowley Shoals.
"It was actually the most significant bleaching event we've ever recorded out there," Dr Holmes said.
"Based on the original images that we were getting back in April, we were really quite worried at the extent of the bleaching."

Divers conduct coral and fish surveys at the Imperieuse Reef, the largest in the Rowley Shoals Marine Park. (ABC Kimberley/Supplied
Natural protection

The devastating effect of mass bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef is well known but many people may not be aware of similar catastrophes that have occurred in remote reefs off WA.

In 2016, scientists documented bleaching of 60-90 per cent of corals at Scott and Seringapatam reefs, about 400 kilometres north-west of Broome.

But something different was occurring in the Rowley Shoals further to the south.
"This is a reef that many of us hold in high esteem and I guess it has a special place in our hearts," Dr Holmes said.
"It's one of the only places in WA, and only one of the places in Australia, where we've had long-term stability in coral cover and to date it's been largely free of widescale bleaching events."

A survey boat floats in one of the coral lagoons of the Rowley Shoals. (Supplied: DBCA)
The ocean currents off north-west Australia seemed to direct the increasingly warm summer currents away from the Rowley Shoals, until April this year.

"This particular event was not predicted and it was a little bit unusual, but what happened was that warmer water moved a little bit further south than we've previously seen it," Dr Holmes said.

But as the change in water currents came at the end of summer, the unusually warm sea temperatures did not bathe the Rowley Shoals for long.

"We had this sudden temperature peak, which is when the bleaching occurred," Dr Holmes said. "But then the water temperatures dropped down fairly quickly."

This likely would have reduced the stress on the coral and enabled it to recover.

Calm before long-term storm
A large school of humphead parrotfish on the slope of Clerke Lagoon. (Supplied: DBCA)
The relief that perhaps only 10 per cent of the coral at the Rowley Shoals has been killed, rather than the feared 60 per cent, is tempered by the knowledge that worse is almost certain to come.

"We feel like we may have dodged a little bit of a bullet in terms of a widespread bleaching event," Dr Holmes said.
"But looking forward, there's a degree of pessimism there I think … it's not great."
James Gilmour, from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, agrees that reefs in the Rowley Shoals appear to have escaped widespread coral mortality this time, but he fears they may not fare as well over the next 10 years.

"With ongoing climate change and ocean warming, we expect repeated bleaching events in the coming decade, and perhaps severe mass bleaching," Dr Gilmour said.
"Climate change will also result in more severe cyclones, and cyclones are the most common disturbance to coral communities at the Rowley Shoals."
Documenting the demise of Australia's once pristine coral reefs is the downside of what might at first look like a dream job for Dr Holmes as he dives at the Rowley Shoals.

"To the tour operators who go out there, to the fishermen who utilise it, to the scientists who study it, it's quite devastating to see it," Dr Holmes said.

"If we don't deal with the climate-change issue and the warming waters, then we're going to have some serious issues here."

Links
at No comments: