Llewellyn King: Smoke spreads amidst global warming but beware overzealous regulation
Smoke from Canadian forest fires in the Delaware River Valley. See New England’s “Dark Day’’.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
The smoke from wildfires in Canada that has been blown down to the United States, choking New York City and Philadelphia with their worst air quality in history and blanketing much of the East Coast and the Midwest, may be a harbinger for a long, hot, difficult summer across America.
It could easily be the summer when the environmental crisis, so easily dismissed as a preoccupation of “woke’’ Greens and the Biden administration, moves to center stage. It could be when America, in a sense, takes fright. When we realize that global warming is not a will-or-won’t-it-happen issue like Y2K at the turn of the century.
Instead, it is here and now, and it will almost immediately start dictating living and working patterns.
In an extraordinary move, Arizona has limited the growth in some subdivisions in Phoenix. The problem: not enough water. Not just now but going forward.
The floods and the refreshing of surface impoundments, such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the nation’s largest reservoirs, haven’t solved the crisis.
All along the flow of the Colorado River, aquifers remain seriously depleted. One good, rainy season, one good snowpack may recharge a dam, but it doesn’t replenish the aquifers that hydrologists say have been undergoing systematic depletion for years.
An aquifer isn’t just an underground river that runs normally after rainfall. It takes years to recharge these great groundwater systems. These have been paying the price of overuse for years; across Texas and all the way to the Imperial Valley, in California, unseen damage has been done.
It isn’t just water that looms as a crisis for much of the nation, there is also the sheer unpredictably of the weather.
I talk regularly with electric- and gas-utility company executives. When I ask them what keeps them awake at night, they used to respond, “Cybersecurity.” Recently, they have said, “The weather.”
This year, we are entering the tropical-storm season with unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic and the Pacific. The doleful conclusion is that these will signal severe and very damaging weather activity across the country.
The utilities have been hardening their systems, but electricity is uniquely affected by weather. The dangers for the electricity industry are multiple and all affect their customers. Too much heat and the air-conditioning load gets too high. Too much wind and power lines come down. Too much rain and substations flood, poles snap and there is crisis, from a neighborhood to a region.
In the electricity world, the words of John Donne, the 16th-Century English metaphysical poet, apply, “No man is an island entire of itself.”
There is another threat that the electricity-supply system will face this summer if the weather is chaotic: overzealous politics and regulation.
It is the electric utilities that are most identified in the public mind with climate change. The public discounts the myriad industrial processes as well as the cars, trucks, bulldozers, trains and ships that lead to the discharge of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Instead, it is utilities that have a target pinned to them.
A bad summer will lead to bad regulatory and bad political decisions regarding utilities.
Foremost are likely to be new attacks on natural gas and its supply chain, from the well, through the pipes, into the compressed storage, and ultimately to combustion turbines.
At this time, natural gas – about 60-percent cleaner than coal — is vital to keeping the lights on and the nation running when the wind isn’t blowing, or the sun has set or is obscured.
The energy crisis that broke out in the fall of 1973, and lasted pretty well to the mid-1980s, was characterized by silly over-reactions. First among these was probably the Fuel Use Act of 1978, which got rid of pitot lights on gas stoves and even threatened the eternal flame at Arlington Cemetery.
It also accelerated the flight to coal because, extraordinarily, that was the time of the greatest opposition to nuclear power — from the environmental communities.
This summer may be a wakeup for climate change and how we husband our resources. But wild overreaction won’t quiet the weather.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and a long-time editor, writer and consultant in the international energy sector. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
#global warming #Llewellyn King #electric utilities
Tim Faulkner: The role of small New England farms in combatting global warming
— Photo Frank Carini, ecoRI News
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
Farming and the climate crisis are no doubt interconnected even in relatively farm-scarce southern New England. But local farming operations, including fishing and aquaculture, are increasingly considered part of the climate-adaptation solution and may even help to mitigate global warming.
“How are we going to be more sustainable in our region and continue to feed ourselves?” asked Sue AnderBois, moderator of a panel on climate and food at the Oct. 4 Rhode Island Energy, Environment & Oceans Leaders Day hosted by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
As director for food strategy with the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, AnderBois looks for business opportunities that advance food and farming policies in the state. There is definitely room to grow.
Rhode Island produces less than 5 percent of the food it consumes. This means that the Ocean State, and much of New England in fact, rely on food from places suffering from severe climate impacts such as drought-stricken California and the Amazon rainforest, a tropical region being destroyed to raise meat for fast-food restaurants.
Some of our local food sources are also moving away. Lobsters and other popular seafood staples are leaving Rhode Island waters because they are too warm. To counteract this change, the state is supporting businesses that market and process underutilized fish and plants and seafood moving into Rhode Island waters such as Jonah crab and black sea bass.
One of the panelists, Bonnie Hardy, canceled her appearance at the event to tend to work at her planned crab-processing facility in East Providence. A business processing local kelp is opening soon at the food incubator Hope & Main in Warren.
Consumers can contribute to the climate solution by buying local seafood, especially bivalves. A 2018 study found that eating local clams, mussels, oysters, and scallops is akin to a vegan diet when considering the carbon footprint.
On land, insects will be a growing climate problem for farming. Rising temperatures, a changing climate, and more frequent and intense rains will bring more pests. The state’s Division of Agriculture was overwhelmed this summer by efforts to address the spike in eastern equine encephalitis (EEE). The outbreak is a possible omen of future demands on state agencies, according to AnderBois.
Thanks to public pressure, food-service companies such as Sodexo and Aramak are offering more local food at schools and hospitals. Locally caught and processed dogfish is being used to make fish nuggets for public schools. Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Johnson & Wales University are all ramping up local food procurement for their kitchens and cafeterias, AnderBois said.
Nationally, however, such practices aren’t trending.
Government support for big agricultural operations at the expense of small farms hurts both local economies and the environment.
Jesse Rye, co-executive director of Farm Fresh Rhode Island, was appalled by the Trump administration’s recent decision to relocate federal research agencies such as the National Institute of Food and Agriculture from Washington, D.C., to the heart of “Big Ag” territory in Kansas City, Mo.
He said the actions by Trump favor large “commodity” farmers at the expense of small farms. The loss of research on nutrition and food insecurity is undermining the support structures for local food systems in southern New England, according to Rye.
”This way of disconnecting urban and rural communities is really going to erode the trust that we have in institutions, and I feel plays into the narrative that currently our government or this administration really only cares about the people that own food companies or own large-scale farms,” Rye said.
Any plan to address the climate crisis should take into account the most vulnerable, he said. It will require a “gigantic lift” to change consumer behavior and restructure the food system. He noted that a greater appreciation for scientific research and the true price of food is also necessary.
“We need to have a frank conversation as Americans about what cheap food is and how it’s possible and what are the costs that aren’t actually rolled into the costs we see at the supermarket.” Rye said, adding that society needs to recognize the environmental damage caused by continuing to do business as usual.
Rye urged the public to demand action from local, state, and national officials.
“If you have more time and energy for advocacy and outreach around issues for small farms now is the time to let your representatives hear that,” he said. “We need to let people know on a regional and national level that this is totally not acceptable.”
Brown University Prof. Dawn King, an expert on local food policy, agriculture, and the climate crisis, suggested that farms adhere to regulations for greenhouse-gas emissions as other businesses do. Farming, she noted, accounts for 10 percent of greenhouse gases in the United States and up to 25 percent of global emissions if deforestation is included.
Fertilizers, livestock, manure management, and tillage are the primary emission sources. King has researched manure as a source for compost and energy production. And farms, she said, if managed properly, can be one of the most effective carbon sinks.
“There is a lot we can do with carbon storage,” King said. “And even in Rhode Island that can be part of preserving the farmland that we desperately need to preserve here. Specifically, because we are not a farm state.”
Local farms can store carbon by growing grasses for small-scale beef production. Growing perennials and practicing forestry also capture and store carbon dioxide.
“Unfortunately, we are doing the exact opposite worldwide,” King said.
To get there, King called for a transformative initiative such as the Green New Deal combined with paying farmers to conserve land and practice sustainable soil management. Renewable-energy incentives should also be offered to help farmers earn additional revenue.
“We need to be sure we are protecting small farms,” she said.
Tim Faulkner is a journalist with ecoRI News (ecori.org).