22/01/2021

(AU) World's First Domestic Hydrogen Battery Developed By Australian Firm

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

The world’s first commercially available line of hydrogen-powered domestic products, including a barbecue, a bicycle and most crucially a unit that creates and stores hydrogen power, has been developed by an Australian company, LAVO, working with the University of NSW.

The LAVO battery, which is about the size of a large fridge, can be hooked up to an existing array of solar panels. Inside it, electrolysers use that power to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Professor Francois Aguey-Zinsou, Chief Scientist at the UNSW Hydrogen Energy Research Centre, with hydride used to store hydrogen in a newly developed battery. Credit: Janie Barrett

The oxygen is vented and the hydrogen stored in a patented hydride - a fibrous metal alloy not dissimilar to iron-filings in appearance - in canisters inside the unit for use as needed.

LAVO’s chief executive, Alan Yu, says the unit can store three times as much power as the largest popular commercially available wall-mounted batteries, allowing it to power the average household for two to three days on a single charge.

Unlike other lithium batteries, it can also constantly recharge itself rather than waiting until it has been fully discharged.

Professor Francois Aguey-Zinsou with a LAVO hydrogen battery. Credit: Nick Moir

He said the system, which costs around $34,000, has a lifespan around three times longer than current lithium batteries and should last users around 30 years. When the hydride is degraded it can be melted down and reused, giving the system significant environmental advantages over its competitors.

How the LAVO system works
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, LAVO
Because the hydrogen is stored in a solid state inside the hydride, the system avoids the risks of fire associated with hydrogen stored under pressure or in liquid form. The LAVO battery system is already available on the market.

The battery would not only act as a hot water service but act as something like a domestic power bank, with users able to remove cylinders of charged hydride from their own units to power household items such as the barbecue and bicycle. LAVO hopes that even people who have not purchased the battery system might be able to use its hydrogen canisters available via exchange like a Sodastream tank .

LAVO’s head of marketing, Matthew Muller, said the company expects its initial customers to include homes and businesses on the edge of the national grid, such as mines and agribusinesses. One eco-lodge is already a customer. 

In addition, Gowings Bros, the investment company that evolved from the famous mens’ clothing business, announced this week it had signed-on as an investor and further committed to buying 200 of the power units for its properties around the country.

Professor Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou, who leads the Hydrogen Energy Research Centre at the University of NSW, and has worked on the system with LAVO, says products like this are crucial to the development of a domestic hydrogen industry and in keeping with the federal government's plans to build a competitive low-carbon economy.

“Hydrogen technology exists in an ecosystem, we can either import technology like this or we can develop it ourselves and build the jobs here,” he said.

He said the hydride used in the LAVO system had the potential for much broader future applications, including as a possible means of exporting hydrogen.

At present hydrogen can be generated at scale using either renewable energy to split water, known as green hydrogen, or using gas, which emits carbon that may in future be captured and stored, known as blue hydrogen.

LAVO's hydrogen-powered barbecue and bicycle. Credit: Nick Moir

Either way future exporters of hydrogen would then have the problem of shipping, which Professor Aguey-Zinsou says could be solved by the hydride used in the LAVO system, which is safer and easier to transport than hydrogen stored under pressure or converted into ammonia.

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(USA) A ‘Nerve Center’ For Climate In The Biden White House

New York Times - Lisa Friedman

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. brings with him the largest team of climate change experts ever assembled in the White House, and action on global warming is expected quickly.

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden Jr. assumed the presidency on Wednesday, bringing an expansive team of climate change experts to staff a White House that is preparing to focus on global warming in a way no other administration has done before.

Mr. Biden enters office with the largest team ever assembled inside the White House to tackle global warming and has installed policy experts at the State Department as well as the National Security Council, the president’s top advisory body for all foreign policy decisions.

The Treasury Department, the Transportation Department and the office of Vice President Kamala Harris all will have dedicated climate policy staff, with more hires expected in the coming days throughout the government.

He has vowed to move quickly. In addition to rejoining the Paris Agreement on Wednesday, the new president intends to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit in his first hours in office.

In the following days, people with knowledge of the team’s plans said, Mr. Biden will issue a series of executive orders that start the process of rolling back some of the Trump administration’s most debated environmental decisions — such as restricting the science that can be used to create new air and water protections — and lay the groundwork for ambitious new policies.

An executive order aimed at re-establishing scientific integrity in federal decision-making is high on the list, after four years of an administration that mocked or belittled the established science of climate change, elevated discredited climate denial studies and sidelined scientists who work on the issue.

He also is expected to begin the process of forcing agencies to calculate the costs that carbon dioxide emissions impose upon society.

By raising the costs of climate change, the Biden administration hopes to change cost-benefit analyses in a way that makes strong regulatory action more economically appealing and less susceptible to negative court rulings, two people familiar with the plans said.

Even fossil fuel advocates said they have been surprised by the intensity of the Biden team’s focus on climate change.

“I underestimated the level of seriousness that these guys had about this,” said Thomas J. Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, an organization that supports the expanded use of gas, oil and coal.

“They are devoting a lot of personnel to the issue set, and I think that just emphasizes the level of influence that the greens have on the Democratic Party,” Mr. Pyle said.

Pipes intended for the Keystone XL oil pipeline in Gascoyne, N.D., in 2017. Credit...Terray Sylvester/Reuters

As with other policy areas, when it comes to climate policy the incoming president has relied heavily on old hands from the Obama administration.

He selected Gina McCarthy, who led the Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama administration, start up a new White House office on climate policy. Ali Zaidi, a former top energy official in the Obama administration’s White House Office of Management and Budget, will be Ms. McCarthy’s deputy.

Last week Mr. Biden appointed David Hayes, who served as the deputy interior secretary in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, to be a special assistant to the president for climate policy. Former Secretary of State John Kerry will serve as Mr. Biden’s international climate envoy.

In the coming days, two people with knowledge of new hires said, Mr. Biden is expected to announce several additions to Mr. Kerry’s team.

They will include:
  • Jonathan Pershing, who served as the State Department special envoy for climate change under President Obama;
  • Sue Biniaz, a former top climate lawyer for the State Department across multiple administrations who played a key role in drafting the Paris Agreement; and
  • Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury Department for energy and environment under Mr. Obama.

Rick Duke, who served as a special assistant to Mr. Obama on climate change also is in talks to join Mr. Kerry’s team, the two people confirmed.

But Mr. Biden also has reached into the worlds of clean energy development, the youth climate movement and environmental justice activism for key deputy-level positions.

Cecilia Martinez, a prominent advocate for addressing racial inequality in environmental policies, will serve as senior director for environmental justice at the Council on Environmental Quality. Tarak Shah, a former Energy Department official under Mr. Obama is also expected to be chief of staff to Jennifer Granholm, the nominee to be Energy Secretary.

The mix of expertise was applauded by moderate Democrats as well as the liberal wing of the climate movement, which has been critical of some of the incoming president’s policy positions and personnel choices.

“The picks are genuinely encouraging,” said Evan Weber, political director of the Sunrise Movement, a group that pressed for the Green New Deal, an expansive suite of climate and economic policies that Mr. Biden has not embraced in full.

“These are serious advocates who understand the policy details, who have connections to the climate movement and the environmental justice movement,” Mr. Weber said.

Paul Bledsoe, a former climate adviser in the Clinton White House, said the picks showed the White House was becoming the “domestic nerve center” for climate change in the Biden administration.

Credit...Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
 RIGHT: John Kerry brought his granddaughter to a signing ceremony for the Paris Agreement at the United Nations General Assembly in 2016. Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Credit...Alex Wong/Getty Images
RIGHT: Ali Zaidi, President Biden’s deputy national climate adviser. Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
Mr. Bledsoe said Mr. Hayes in particular, with whom he worked in the Interior Department in the 1990s, “has an encyclopedic knowledge of the connection between public lands and climate,” and called him “the perfect complement” to Ms. McCarthy, whose expertise is in mitigating emissions through clean air and water laws.

Working with Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Hayes in the White House Office of Climate Policy will be Sonia Aggarwal, who co-founded the San Francisco-based energy and environmental policy firm Energy Innovation.

There, Ms. Aggarwal helped develop a model called the Energy Policy Simulator to help policymakers drill down on specific clean energy policies and measure in real time the costs and emissions impacts of various plans. She will serve as senior adviser for climate policy and innovation.

One of Ms. Aggarwal’s areas of expertise is the development of a clean energy standard — that is, the percentage of non-fossil fuel sources that utilities must reach in their power generation and sales.

By setting a standard without a source-by-source prescription, the policy is supposed to allow businesses and utilities to determine the most efficient way of meeting the targets.

With the Senate now controlled by Democrats, even with a razor thin margin, the possibility of passing such a mandate could be within reach.

Maggie Thomas, who served in climate adviser roles in the presidential campaigns of Governor Jay Inslee of Washington and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, will serve as Ms. McCarthy’s chief of staff.

Jahi Wise, who was a policy director for the Coalition for Green Capital, a nonprofit group that works to drive investment in clean energy, will be a senior adviser for climate policy and finance.

The expansive White House team, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, has provoked consternation among Republicans.

Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, said he believed increased energy innovation and “not the appointment of countless unchecked czars” would be best for both the economy and the environment.

James P. Pfiffner, an emeritus professor of public policy at George Mason University and an expert on the presidency, noted that presidents have increasingly centralized control in the White House by creating special positions around policies of high importance, with mixed results.

A new White House climate office staffed with at least five people is a lot, he said, and a White House “czar” like Ms. McCarthy would have her challenges.

“White House staffers do not have the authority to make decisions on spending or personnel,” he said. “Certainly, they can be powerful, but only to the extent that their policy area is of primary importance to the president.”

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(USA) Biden Returns US To Paris Climate Accord Hours After Becoming President

The Guardian - 

Biden administration rolls out a flurry of executive orders aimed at tackling climate crisis

Joe Biden kicks off his new administration with orders to restore the United States to the Paris climate accord. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Joe Biden has moved to reinstate the US to the Paris climate agreement just hours after being sworn in as president, as his administration rolls out a cavalcade of executive orders aimed at tackling the climate crisis.

Biden’s executive action, signed in the White House on Wednesday, will see the US rejoin the international effort curb the dangerous heating of the planet, following a 30-day notice period. The world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases was withdrawn from the Paris deal under Donald Trump.

Biden is also set to block the Keystone XL pipeline, a bitterly contested project that would bring huge quantities of oil from Canada to the US to be refined, and halt oil and gas drilling at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, two vast national monuments in Utah, and the Arctic national wildlife refuge wilderness.

The Trump administration’s decision to shrink the protected areas of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will also be reviewed.

The flurry of first-day action on the climate crisis came after Biden, in his inauguration speech, said America needed to respond to a “climate in crisis”.

The change in direction from the Trump era was profound and immediate – on the White House website, where all mentions of climate were scrubbed out in 2017, a new list of priorities now puts the climate crisis second only behind the Covid pandemic. Biden has previously warned that climate change poses the “greatest threat” to the country, which was battered by record climate-fueled wildfires, hurricanes and heat last year.

The re-entry to the Paris agreement ends a period where the US became a near-pariah on the international stage with Trump’s refusal to address the unfolding disaster of rising global temperatures.

Countries are struggling to meet commitments, made in Paris in 2015, to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5C above the pre-industrial era, with 2020 setting another record for extreme heat.

“It’s just a huge day to get rid of this myopic, benighted administration and welcome in a new president who manifestly is committed to strong, meaningful action,” said Todd Stern, who was the lead US negotiator in Paris. “Rejoining Paris is just the first step, but it’s a big first step.”

Biden is expected to convene an international climate summit in the spring to help accelerate emissions cuts and will probably submit a new US emissions reduction goal to help it reach net zero emissions by 2050.

“We can’t be afraid or diffident about exercising leadership again but we need a sense of humility in light of what has occurred over the past four years,” Stern said of America’s return to climate diplomacy. “The message is ‘we are back, let’s move hard.’ It will be deliberate, aggressive and strategic.”

Gina McCarthy, Biden’s top climate adviser, said Biden will in all reverse “more than 100” climate-related policies enacted by Trump.

The twice-impeached Republican repeatedly dismissed the science of climate change and spent his term as president weakening or overturning rules to limit pollution from cars, trucks and power plants.

McCarthy said climate change poses an “existential threat” and the administration’s opening salvo “will begin to put the US back on the right footing, a footing we need to restore American leadership, helping to position our nation to be the global leader in clean energy and jobs”.

Biden will be able to unilaterally limit fossil fuel development on federal land and set tougher rules for fuel efficiency in cars and trucks but sweeping climate legislation to make deeper cuts in emissions will be more challenging to get through Congress.

While Democrats control the House, the Senate is split 50-50 and is unlikely to embrace anything styled like the Green New Deal, which has been championed by progressive representatives such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

Instead, Biden’s hopes of providing huge financial support to boost clean energy such as solar and wind may rely upon funding being included in budgets and infrastructure bills.

“There is a serious backlog of needs in water systems, roads and bridges and other things and my colleagues understand that,” said Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat who chairs the House’s select committee on the climate crisis. “We know we must go much further much faster. This is a race to the future.”

Scientists and climate campaigners have welcomed the urgency voiced by Biden given the ever-worsening impacts of the climate crisis across the world.

“Even if we can’t get new climate legislation, our executive branch already has many tools to act,” said Leah Stokes, an expert in environmental policy at the University of California. “The best time to cut emissions was decades ago; the second-best time is today.”

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21/01/2021

(USA) Fighting Climate Change Could Define Kamala Harris’ Vice Presidency. Watch Our Interview With Her.

Mother Jones - 

In an exclusive 2019 chat with Climate Desk, Harris laid out her plans.

MSNBC, Zuma

Kamala Harris represents a series of historic firsts—she will be the first woman vice president, the first Black vice president, and the first Asian American vice president.

She’ll also be the first-ever vice president who has devised a comprehensive plan to address climate change—and as the tie-breaking vote in the evenly split Senate, she’ll have plenty of opportunity to fight for the environment. 

Harris’ home state of California has been hammered by longer wildfire seasons, blackouts from extreme heat, and drought.

Harris doesn’t shy away from connecting these events to manmade climate change. When I sat down with her in Dubuque, Iowa, a year before she joined the presidential ticket, she was still in the midst of her own presidential campaign.

“For me this issue of the climate crisis relates to every aspect of what we do,” she said.

Her remarks to me in October 2019 captured some of the themes that are starting to define the Biden administration’s all-hands-on-deck approach to the climate crisis: It’s not something the Environmental Protection Agency can address alone. “Every branch has a role in this responsibility.” 

Harris’ climate plan didn’t get much attention during her presidential run, but it was impressive: Her vision of the Green New Deal included a staggering economic investment in clean energy and infrastructure.

She spoke about the importance of including low-income and communities of color in the fight against pollution and climate change; her Climate Equity Act, introduced first in 2019 with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2019, requires that any environmental legislation receive an equity score to assess its impact on frontline communities.

Another theme from my interview with Harris was her insistence that the Department of Justice should investigate and rein in manipulative oil and gas industry practices.

Her actual record on that is more mixed: As California attorney general, Harris led an investigation into whether ExxonMobil misled consumers about climate change, but she did not go as far as to issue subpoenas.

And although she has at times embellished her history of suing and winning against Big Oil, she has spoken forcefully about holding polluters accountable.

“Let’s get them not only in the pocket book, but let’s make sure there are serious penalties for their behaviors,” she said.

That means taking aim at the “whole apparatus built around them” that’s built to protect the dominance of fossil fuels. And, she emphasized, that may not just mean the major oil companies, but other players, like gas-reliant utilities.

“I think everyone who is part of misinforming the public, misleading the public and false advertising should be held accountable,” she said.


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(AU) Lessons From The Past

Cosmos - 

Could Indigenous wisdom help us create a “good Anthropocene”?

Warlpiri people burning spinifex to promote new growth; Tanami Desert, Northern Territory, Australia. Credit: Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Author
Natalie Parletta is a freelance science writer based in Adelaide and an adjunct senior research fellow with the University of South Australia.
The Anthropocene marks relentless and increasingly grave environmental degradation as the Earth faces tipping points for climate change, biodiversity and survival. To address these ills, scientists say we can learn valuable lessons from the past.

“As our planet emerges into a new epoch in which humans dominate the Earth system, it is imperative that societies initiate a new phase of responsible environmental stewardship,” researchers write in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

“Maintenance of the Earth’s current ecological trajectory threatens not only countless other species but also critical ecosystem services that support human societies.

“Here we argue that information from the past has a valuable role to play in enhancing the sustainability and resilience of our societies.”

As well as learning from past mistakes, Nicole Boivin and Alison Crowther, both affiliated with Germany’s Max Planck Institute and the University of Queensland, stress how historical success stories can be integrated with contemporary solutions.

In doing this, they say that archaeology, history and palaeoecology offer a vast resource that we should tap into to build on efforts to create a better future and a “good Anthropocene”.

“We have at our fingertips a huge amount of information about how humans in the past have tried to solve many of the same problems we face today,” says Crowther. “Many of these solutions have been tried and tested over millennia; we know which ones worked and which ones failed, and why.”

The review explores how historical data can be mined to improve biodiversity, conservation, fire management, carbon sequestration, soil sustainability, food security and agricultural sustainability, as well as mitigating pollution, building more sustainable cities and boosting resilience to climate change.

For conservation, archaeology and palaeoecology offer insights into ecological baselines to understand how change occurred naturally before humans plundered onto the scene. 

“Work in restoration ecology requires understanding of the degree of change that has occurred from baseline conditions, the natural, climate-driven shape of ecosystems prior to human intervention,” write Boivin and Crowther.

In some instances, they note, past human activity added value to the planet, such as Canada’s Garry oak ecosystem, the formation of which has been attributed to indigenous peoples’ burning regime.

“Accordingly, conservationists are increasingly embracing novel ecosystems and recognising that ecosystems created via long-term human management are equally valid targets for conservation.”

Archaeology also tells us about past removal of species and successes or failures of efforts to reintroduce them, which can help us understand those species’ ranges and endemic status.

In Australia and elsewhere, Indigenous and prehistoric fire-management practices are increasingly recognised by forest and land managers as effective ways to create fire-resilient communities and ecosystems – a burning issue with looming threats of longer, hotter dry spells and more intense fires.

Agricultural practices also pose a major problem as “humans today control a vast and disproportionate share of the planet’s resources,” contributing to climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss and groundwater depletion.

Modern agriculture destroys forests and ecosystems and humans’ unbridled population growth threatens food security. For this we can again turn to indigenous cultures for insights.

Some of their practices include sustainable irrigation, terracing and systems such as raised-field agriculture. The latter, once used across South and Central America before the Spanish came along, has been attributed to better drainage, soil aeration, moisture retention and fertility.

Already, people have tried to rehabilitate prehistoric agricultural methods, for example in the Peruvian Andes where pre-Hispanic terraces have been reintroduced. Many lessons can be learned from these efforts, note Boivin and Crowther, such as the importance of engaging local communities and observing markets.

Other insights come from the eastern Amazon up to 4500 years ago, such as complex agroforest practices – rather than modern unsustainable monocrops – that grew multiple crops while creating edible forests.

Archaeology can also help explore ancient resilient crops such as millet, a heat-tolerant cereal that colonists replaced with thirsty, labour-intensive maize. 

“By reviving local crops and other forms of local agriculture we can better address the food crises that we face globally with population growth and climate change,” says Crowther.

All of this relies on healthy soil, she and Boivin note. “Soil lies at the base of all human subsistence systems,” they write, “and soil retention and improvement were key foci of human activity in many regions of the world for thousands of years.”

Historically, humans created soils that were rich in organic matter, had better capacity to hold nutrients and moisture and were “remarkable” at sequestering carbon. Soil enrichment methods included adding algae to Maya gardens in Mesoamerica, and seaweed to topsoils surrounding the Baltic Sea, in Europe. African savannah soils were unintentionally enriched by prehistoric animal droppings.

We can also learn from past patterns of air pollution, a major health hazard that confronts us and reportedly impacted historical populations; how levels are estimated and how it accumulates and breaks down, for instance.

Ancient tropical cities in places such as Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia and the Amazon offer insights for sustainable cities. In Maya culture, for instance, households and domestic gardens were interspersed with agriculture in the city itself. 

“These proximate food staple sources probably contributed to the longevity of many Maya cities,” write Boivin and Crowther.

Another example of urban agriculture they note is Byzantine Constantinople, which sustained people even during prolonged sieges.

“These early dispersed agrarian cities offer more sustainable, food-secure models of urbanism that are less dependent on fossil fuel and more resilient to food-supply shocks resulting from, for example, pandemics, conflict or climate change.”

Such cities also featured cultivation by smallholders, empowering local communities to control their activities and foster food security. Importantly, they included impressive water-conservation technologies.

Last but certainly not least, the researchers say we can learn from the past to build greater climate-change resilience, a topic that has long captivated archaeologists who seek to understand past human responses to climate changes. Peruvian archaeology, for instance, offers a window into El Niño patterns.

The authors urge that archaeology, in particular, be embraced by and take part in multi-disciplinary efforts to address modern challenges, as well as engaging with policy makers, Indigenous peoples and other stakeholders such as farmers, conservationists, rangers and local communities.

“We must work towards solutions that bring together the best of the past, present and future, integrating traditional and modern approaches to find the best way forward.”

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The New Climate War Review: Reasons To Be Optimistic About The Future

New Scientist - Richard Schiffman

The forces fighting climate science have not been defeated, just changed tactics. But Michael Mann, a key figure in the fightback, argues for hope in his new book

A wind, solar and fishing base in Dongtai, Jiangsu province in China. Alex Plavevski/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

MOST people accept that climate change is happening, but that doesn’t mean the war against climate science is over. The denialists have just changed their tactics, argues Michael Mann in his book The New Climate War.

Mann should know. A climatologist at Penn State University, he has been a target since his “hockey stick” graph was published in 1999. The graph shows the rapid rise in temperature globally since industrialisation caused heat-trapping carbon dioxide to spew into the atmosphere.

This dramatic visual, featured in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, earned Mann decades of harassment and death threats. This was part of a war against climate research that has been waged since the 1970s, first to cover up and then to contest the growing evidence that shows our planet is warming.

However, as data about rising sea levels, higher temperatures and megafires mounted, the climate sceptics shifted to “a kinder, gentler form of denialism”, says Mann. They now mostly concede that, yes, there is some warming and human activity plays some role, but it’s not nearly as bad as those “alarmist” scientists say.

This new effort (bankrolled by the same polluting interests that funded the old one) no longer disputes climate change, but tries to block the action needed to move towards a low-carbon future. It is being fought by the successors to climate change denialists, who Mann calls the “inactivists”. They lobby against effective carbon pricing programmes and subsidies for renewable energy that would imperil big energy’s bottom lines.

According to Mann, central to this strategy is a campaign to shift culpability for climate change from the corporations selling fossil fuels to those who use them. Fossil fuel companies aren’t to blame, “it’s the way people are living their lives”, Chevron argued in court in 2018.

“Doomism and the loss of hope can lead people down the very same path of inaction as outright denial”

Some environmentalists have bought into this argument. While Mann agrees it is good to eat less meat, travel less and recycle more, such actions alone aren’t enough. We need to decarbonise the economy, he says. Focusing on personal responsibility takes our eyes off that prize.

Another thing inactivists do, Mann says, is to support divisive films like Michael Moore’s recent documentary Planet of the Humans that purported to show that renewable energy is ineffective and polluting.

The film was condemned by environmental activists and climate scientists. But the pro-fossil fuel American Energy Alliance spent thousands to promote a film it hoped would take the wind out of the sails of the push for clean energy.

“Doomism and the loss of hope,” writes Mann “can lead people down the very same path of inaction as outright denial. And Michael Moore plays right into it.” Despair is counterproductive.

Fossil fuel interests also cynically push “non-solution solutions” like natural gas, carbon capture and geoengineering, whose inadequacies Mann details. Again, the effort is to distract from the real task of weaning the world off fossil fuels.

But in the end, Mann says he is optimistic, heartened by the upswell of youth activism and the rapid development of green technologies. Even investors are beginning to flee from fossil fuels. Moreover, botched responses to covid-19 underline the peril of ignoring science and failing to act.

With the major COP26 UN climate summit due to be held later this year in Glasgow, UK, Mann’s call to get serious about climate change couldn’t be more timely. Let’s hope he is right that the tide is finally about to turn.

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20/01/2021

(US) Meet Biden’s Climate Crisis Army

The Independent - Louise Boyle

‘I believe in this team, and together, we will show the world that America is once again ready to take a leading role in the fight against climate change,’ Mr Biden said.

Incoming president, Joe Biden, has assembled a team who he calls “a tested cohort of bold thinkers” to tackle the climate crisis. (Getty/AP)

The hopes of millions of Americans demanding climate action now rest with president-elect Joe Biden and after four years of Donald Trump’s rampant regulatory rollbacks and cynical climate misinformation, the list of priorities is a long one.

The new president’s executive orders on day one are expected to include instructions to rejoin the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and cancel the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit. 

Mr Biden has  outlined the most ambitious climate plan in US history including an injection of $2trillion into clean energy to shift the country to carbon-free electricity by 2035 and overhauling transport, building and manufacturing, creating new jobs along the way.

It’s a staggering to-do list on which there’s no time to waste. The impacts of the climate crisis are striking more rapidly, and scientists estimate that roughly a decade remains in which to prevent a runaway catastrophe. 

While no single government - let alone one leader -  can solve the global crisis, Mr Biden’s approach, both at home and abroad, could lead to a sea change in driving down the greenhouse gas emissions heating the planet. 

To achieve the goal, Mr Biden has assembled a team which he’s called “a tested cohort of bold thinkers who know how to pull every lever of government”.“I believe in this team, and together, we will show the world that America is once again ready to take a leading role in the fight against climate change,” Mr Biden said.

The list has been largely welcomed by climate scientists and activists. “We're pleased that Biden's nominees support renewable energy, climate justice and keeping fossil fuels in the ground so that they can work with him to really come through on his climate agenda,” Denali Nalamalapu, from 350.org told The Independent.

Here we take a closer look at the megawatt names, trusted Obama alum, and diverse newcomers on the team who will lead climate action.

►Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary

Janet Yellen
If confirmed, Ms Yellen will be the first woman to hold the post in US history.  And with the economy “spiraling down” as another Biden adviser said on Sunday, the president-elect has turned to a trusted and seasoned operator to right the ship.

Ms Yellen is the first person to have held all three top economic posts, having served as lead in the Council of Economic Advisers and Federal Reserve chair before being nominated for Treasury.

She was appointed as Fed chair, the central banking system which adjusts interest rates, by President Obama in 2014 to help rehab the still-lagging economy after the 2008 recession.

Early on she made it clear that “our goal is to help Main Street, not Wall Street", placing greater emphasis on alleviating historically-high unemployment than on price inflation.

Brooklyn-born Ms Yellen, 74, has spoken of her parents - father Julius Yellen,  doctor and son of Polish immigrants, and her mother Anna, an elementary-school teacher, as greatly influencing her world-view.

The Senate Finance Committee will hold Ms Yellen’s confirmation on Tuesday before the Inauguration. Respected on both sides of the aisle, Ms Yellen is expected to be a shoo-in.

Ms Yellen has long viewed climate change as a threat to the financial system and supported an international climate treaty in the 1990s which President George W Bush ultimately got rid of.

The incoming treasury lead “has backed the idea of taxing carbon emissions and returning the proceeds to Americans as a quarterly check — an idea popular with many economists”, the Washington Post reported. 

However in a recent paper with Mark Carney, UN special envoy on climate and finance and former Bank of England governor, she wrote that “the scale of the challenge means that carbon prices alone are not enough”.

Ms Yellen will be at the heart of how the climate crisis and the pandemic are handled, overseeing the spending of any new economic recovery package.

Mr Biden has promised to end subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, also falling under Ms Yellen’s remit. And as the treasury department controls tax credits, she could direct incentives towards renewables and carbon capture systems, that draw down emissions from the atmosphere.

►John Kerry, climate czar

John Kerry
John Kerry, who served as secretary of state when Mr Biden was vice president, has been nominated for perhaps the most senior climate job in US history.

Mr Kerry, 77, will have a seat on the National Security Council, the first time it has an official dedicated to climate. It makes the issue a core consideration in major foreign and domestic policy decisions by the president, VP and Cabinet.

The dyed-in-the-wool Democrat from Massachusetts was among the architects of Paris deal and a familiar face in geopolitics.

A longtime friend and ally of Mr Biden, Mr Kerry is likely to be viewed as reliable and in lock-step with the president by foreign leaders left with lingering distrust towards America after the Trump years, marked by mistreatment of allies and erratic exiting of global agreements.

Mr Kerry will likely take on big-ticket issues. In September, he spoke to Salon about the importance of getting China on board to tackle the climate crisis, and focusing on the global issue of climate migration which will impact borders and security.

But Mr Kerry’s high-profile also makes the wealthy and well-connected elder statesman a familiar punching bag for conservatives wishing to undermine climate action.

“We look forward to the anti-carbon lectures from a guy who travels the globe on private jets and luxury yachts,” the New York Post wrote after Mr Kerry was nominated.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who has repeated misleading statements on climate change, tweeted: “John Kerry thrilled at prospect of returning to his dream job of living in Central European luxury hotels while negotiating deals that are bad for America."

►Congresswoman Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior

Deb Haaland
The congresswoman from New Mexico makes history as the first-ever Native American Cabinet Secretary. 

A member of the Laguna Pueblo people, if confirmed Rep. Haaland will oversee America’s land and natural resources, and is keeper of the government’s legally-binding obligations to hundreds of tribal nations.

As vice-chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, she’s had to sharpen her skills in bipartisanship. But her nomination has also given heart to progressives as sheis a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal.

“I’ll be fierce for all of us, for our planet, and all of our protected land,” Rep. Haaland, 60, said in her nomination speech. 

She also paid emotional tribute to what her nomination meant for Indigenous peoples.

“This moment is profound when we consider the fact that a former secretary of the interior once proclaimed it his goal to, quote, ‘civilize or exterminate’ us. I’m a living testament to the failure of that horrific ideology,” she said.

At the Department of Interior, Rep Haaland would oversee one-fifth of all America’s land, more than 450 million acres. This includes national parks, wildlife refuges and resources like gas, oil and water.

She will almost certainly do a 180 on the Trump’s administration’s agenda which attempted to sell-off public lands for fossil fuel development and removed regulations to protect natural resources and wildlife.

Last year Rep Haaland sponsored a bill that would commit the US to protect 30 per cent of the nation’s land and oceans by 2030. Mr Biden has vowed to make this a priority via execution action.

Among her first priorities as secretary, it is believed that she will restore the protections stripped from Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante in southeast Utah by Mr Trump. The vast areas of public land are full of sacred meaning for Indigenous peoples.

►Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

Pete Buttigieg
In “Amtrak Joe” Biden’s climate platform, transportation plays a vital role in tackling emissions. Ahead of electricity production and industry, transport generates the most greenhouse gas emissions in the US (28 per cent).

Mr Buttigieg, 38, will be tasked with implementing the new president’s ambitious clean public transport plan which includes expanding dedicated bicycle paths and implementing “the second great railroad revolution” of high-speed trains and new tracks across the midwest and western states.

The openly gay former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he ended his own White House campaign in March and was a passionate supporter for president-elect Biden on the campaign trail. 

And Mr Buttigieg is not the only one in the Cabinet with city hall experience, an indication of Mr Biden’s faith in those who can get things done in local government. Marty Walsh, nominee for Labor, was mayor of Boston and Rep. Marcia Fudge for Housing and Urban Development, was formerly mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio. 

►Governor Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of Energy

Jennifer Granholm
A two-term Governor of Michigan, if confirmed Ms Granholm will be the second woman ever to hold the top energy job. As governor, she was credited with helping save the auto industry in Detroit.

Like many Cabinet picks, Gov. Granholm, 61, goes back a long way with Mr Biden. The former governor worked with him on the 2009 bailout of automobile manufacturers General Motors Co and Chrysler when he was vice president.

She has advocated for US development of zero-emission vehicles in recent years, arguing to pull the industry ahead of its international competitors.

She currently teaches law and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

In 2015 Ms Granholm launched the American Jobs Project, to focus on promoting state policies to create middle-class jobs in batteries and other forms of advanced energy technology. A bulk of the Energy Department’s budget, more than $27bn, is focused on maintaining the nation’s nuclear program, but it oversees more than a dozen labs tasked with developing renewable energy production. 

The department also plays a role in developing standards for building emissions and appliances, areas that the Biden administration will also target in its emissions battle. 

►Gina McCarthy, national climate advisor

Gina McCarthy
With decades of public service at state and federal level, Gina McCarthy, former administrator of the EPA under President Obama, will become the first-ever National Climate Advisor.

The idea is for Ms McCarthy, 66 to drive an “all government” approach to the climate crisis, in tandem with Sec. Kerry’s efforts internationally.

During the Obama era, Ms McCarthy was a driving force behind the Clean Power Plan - to curb emissions from power plants and vehicles -

which President Trump went on to reverse. 

She was a key player in the US brokering of the Paris Agreement as well as the 2016 Kigali agreement, signed by nearly 200 countries, to phase out potent substances known as hydrofluorocarbons which drive global heating.

Ms McCarthy comes to the job from her role as head of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which sued the Trump administration more than 100 times over environmental rollbacks.

While regulations from the EPA, Interior and Energy departments will be the framework for tackling emissions and pollution, Ms McCarthy’s role at the newly-installed “White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy” will focus on how to tackle the climate crisis via other avenues like in agriculture, transport, treasury, housing, for example.

►Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Michael Regan
Mr Regan has been North Carolina’s top environmental regulator for the past three years, and will be the first Black man to run the EPA.

The 44-year-old’s role will focus on the Biden environmental justice plan, tackling how the burdens of pollution and climate change disproportionately impact poorer Americans and communities of color.

“Growing up as a child, hunting and fishing with my father and grandfather in eastern North Carolina, I developed a deep love and respect for the outdoors and our natural resources, but I also experienced respiratory issues that required me to use an inhaler on days when pollutants and allergens were especially bad,” said Mr Regan in his nomination speech.

One of Mr Regan’s greatest achievements in North Carolina was negotiating a multibillion-dollar payout from Duke Energy, the largest settlement in US history for the clean up of hazardous coal ash. 

High on his agenda will be tackling vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, emissions from plants running on fossil fuels, and oil and gas sector pollution.

The Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations and protections over four years, plowing ahead with as many as possible in his final days in office. Some have been overturned after court battles with environmentalists but the EPA under Mr Regan will likely try to unwind the decisions as part of the strategy to reduce GHG emissions.

►Brenda Mallory, Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality

Brenda Mallory
A longtime environmental attorney, Ms Mallory is returning to lead a department she was part of during the Obama era. She is currently the director of regulatory policy at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which also sued the Trump administration over climate change rollbacks. 

If confirmed, she will be the first African-American to run the council - which oversees how the public are informed about projects which can cause pollution in their communities.

With a lower-profile than some of the other climate hires, Ms Mallory is viewed as one of America’s leading experts on environmental regulations, including in-depth knowledge of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA is one of the country’s landmark environmental laws which low-income and minority communities have used for decades to fight back against potential polluters. President Trump significantly weakened the act last year. 

Environmental group, NRDC, said that “Mallory is in an excellent position to work with President Biden to untangle the mess that Trump has made of NEPA—and to return the White House Council on Environmental Quality to its proper role as an agency that places the interests of people and the environment above the interests of corporate polluters”.

►Ali Zaidi, deputy national climate advisor

Ali Zaidi
Currently New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s top climate adviser, Mr Zaidi has been driving the state’s effort to decarbonize along with prioritizing environmental justice projects. The 32-year-old will be Ms McCarthy’s deputy.

Mr Zaidi was born in Pakistan and moved to the small town of Edinboro, Pennsylvania on the shore of Lake Erie when he was a child. He worked on the Obama administration’s climate action plan and was also part of Paris negotiations.

During the Obama years, Mr Zaidi warned that climate change was already impacting the US taxpayer, from costs associated with rising sea levels, more extreme weather and intensifying wildfires.

“But the costs we are incurring today will be dwarfed by the costs that lie ahead. Without action, taxpayers will face hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs every year by late in this century as the effects of climate change accelerate,” he wrote in a white paper.

In a podcast with Columbia University this summer, Mr Zaidi backed the idea of creating clean energy jobs in communities that have long suffered from pollution, a suggestion in line with Mr Biden’s climate plan.

“You're talking about all these really cool jobs and wind and solar, where the hell you're going to hire those people from,” he said.

“You're going to hire them from the same old, same old, or you're going to create new roads of opportunity into the communities that have been taxed in six different ways from this pollution over the years.”

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