Evangelical Christians and climate change? The two aren’t usually mentioned in the same breath, unless referring to the former as staunch and outspoken deniers of the latter.
Like the origins of life itself, the notion of man-made climate change is one that frequently puts religious conservatives at odds with the scientific community. And despite the fact that 97 percent of climate scientists agree the threat of ecological disaster at the hands of humans is real, just over a quarter of white evangelicals believe the same. Even less believe in climate reform.
This puts the small cohort of eco-conscious Christians in a bind: How do they convince their fellow worshippers that the earth is warming due to human activity, that it will disproportionately affect the poor, and that evangelicals have a role to play in stopping it?
“There’s a lot in the Christian faith that is chock-full of evidence of God’s love for the world that he created, and particularly in the non-human world,” says Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, a national organizer and spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. “Faith and a concern for the environment tend to get pitted against each other and get associated with one side of the aisle or the other. We don’t have to bridge these two seemingly disparate concerns because they are the same concerns.”
Meyaard-Schaap and others in the so-named creation-care movement are facing an uphill battle, if numerous studies are right. Two years ago, for example, evolutionary biologist Josh Rosenau dug into a massive 2007 Pew Research Center survey on America’s religious beliefs. He created a chart that examined the relationship between a denomination’s acceptance of evolution and the degree to which it supports stricter environmental regulations.
Rosenau found that the more a religion dismisses evolution in favor of creationism, the more its members push back against government action on climate change.
But while evangelicals’ religious beliefs inform their views on climate change, it’s their politics that might be more responsible for their attitudes — especially where environmental regulations affect the fossil fuel industry. (To wit: Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin’s christening of Oct. 13 as “Oilfield Prayer Day.”)
That entangling of religion, science and politics has become a hallmark of the current administration, perhaps most visibly in the appointment of Scott Pruitt, a former Sunday school teacher and deacon, to sit atop the Environmental Protection Agency. Just as he once said there aren’t “sufficient scientific facts to support the theory of evolution,” Pruitt has made no bones about his dismissal of man-made climate change. In a February interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, he alleged that unfettered development of the nation’s energy reserves is rooted in Scripture.
That view is in line with most evangelicals, who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. For many of the faithful, earth was created for human “dominion” — a word found in Genesis and used often in the argument against human-led climate change.
But that kind of literal reading of the Bible is problematic — and misguided — says Rev. Mitch Hescox, a leading voice in the creation-care movement.
“There are some very conservative people who believe that humanity’s right to use the earth is biblical, and correcting that understanding is my number one job,” says Hescox, who also serves as president of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN). He adds that the church has long ignored creation-care.
Creation-care isn’t a new movement — EEN was founded in 1993 — but it has gotten more attention in recent years as prominent religious leaders, such as Pope Francis, have agitated on behalf of environmentalism and balked at the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. And from its beginnings, creation-care has pushed a human-centric message whereas liberal-leaning groups might focus on more abstract concepts like melting glaciers and eroding coastlines.
“We’ve never been climate deniers; we’ve acknowledged it was real, but it didn’t ever impact [our] day-to-day life,” say Dave and Lonna Schaap, Kyle Meyaard-Schaap’s parents, who were convinced to pay attention to climate change by their son’s campaign. “We have other values. We care for the poor, for orphans, for those in prison. And we’ve always been taught to care for those things.”
Hescox says the focus on people is where those in the left-leaning environmental movement get lost in relaying the message.
“What liberals don’t get is that faithful conservatives have a different value system,” Hescox says. “Trying to get conservative folks to care about polar bears is the wrong issue. And where maybe people like polar bears, people will not change their life over a polar bear. People will, though, change their life when you start helping them understand how fossil-fuel pollution affects children around the world.”
Still, that doesn’t mean EEN and other groups have found it easy to convert the faithful. According to an analysis by the nonpartisan think-tank New America, it’s a battle of David-and-Goliath proportions, where eco-conscious evangelicals just don’t have the resources or organization and lobbying power to go head-to-head with opposing groups — groups like the Christian Right, for example, whose network of outspoken evangelical leaders have pushed back against the environmental activism of their fellow followers.
The reason? It’s political.
“First, evangelicals’ political partners saw Creation Care as a menace for economic conservatives and opponents of environmental regulation, and did not hesitate to let evangelicals know it,” concluded the New America report. “Second, the evangelical old guard saw the Creation Care activists as threatening their role as the arbiter of evangelicalism’s political engagement.”
Another Pew study likewise found that once you take political leanings out of the conversation, there are only a few areas where deeply religious individuals actually digress from conventional scientific thinking.
And that’s news that Meyaard-Schaap, Hescox and others in the creation-care movement can use, especially where younger evangelicals are concerned.
In the past six years, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, the group Meyaard-Schaap helps lead, has grown from 18 people signing a call to action to currently reaching over 10,000 youth, he says.
“A lot of conservative lawmakers are the ones holding up on the progress of climate change from a policy position, and most conservative lawmakers rely on evangelicals to keep their seat,” says Meyaard-Schaap. “So now we’re using our voice to say, ‘You’ve depended on the support of our community to keep your seat and be a member of Congress, and you have to continue relying on our support. So now you have to pay attention.’”
Tag: Environmental Protection Agency
The History of the Leaked Climate Report
After a draft copy of the 2017 Climate Assessment Report leaked recently, people are left wondering exactly what it is and why it’s important.
THE CLIMATE REPORT: EXPLAINED
Under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, an inter-governmental agency, is required to research and produce a report that shows the impact of global climate change. The study is conducted by hundreds of scientists and reviewed by multiple government agencies, including NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Despite federal policy mandating an assessment to be released every four years, only three have been issued: once under President Bill Clinton in 2000 and twice under President Barack Obama in 2009 and 2014. (President George W. Bush’s administration was sued for delaying the report’s release.)
There’s speculation whether or not the current White House will sign off on the report’s official release (which is scheduled for the fall), given the Trump administration’s pullback from the Paris climate accord and its push to increase fossil fuel production.
The leaked version of the 2017 report, which was first published by the New York Times, repeats similar warnings of increased greenhouse gas emissions as earlier assessments. But it also uses extremely blunt language regarding the cause, stating that humans are “extremely likely” to be the dominant producers of this pollution.
And according to the latest report, global temperatures have risen 1.2 degrees, in the past 30 years — human involvement accounting for at least 1.1 degrees of that increase.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has publicly said that he does not think carbon emissions cause climate change, writing in the National Review that, “scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.”
Regardless of political actions or ideologies on global climate change, these reports are accepted by the scientific community as a whole and are used to inform policymakers.
PAST FINDINGS
All issuances of the climate report have been in consensus: Global greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures have increased dramatically in the past century, due in large part to humans burning fossil fuels.
“The human impact on [global warming] is clear,” states the 2000 analysis — the first published report. “[Increased carbon emissions] resulted from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas, and the destruction of forests around the world to provide space for agriculture and other human activities.”
The initial report gave warning that U.S. temperatures would rise by up to 9 degrees within the next 100 years if greenhouse gas emissions weren’t curbed.
The 2009 report echoed the same language, stating that human involvement was the largest contributor, but its findings were more dire as carbon emissions continued to rise during the years of the Bush administration. That report concluded that there could be an increase of up to 11 degrees by 2100.
By 2014, when the most recent report was officially published, the evidence was clear to scientists that action needed to be taken, as authors of the report found that certain areas of the U.S., specifically within America’s heartland, were going to experience 2 to 4 degree increases in temperature over the next few decades.
THE REPORT MAKES AN IMPACT
The Obama administration seemingly worked to make climate change policy its primary legacy. In 2009, after the second climate report was released, Obama pledged to reduce the U.S.’s carbon emissions by 2020 and reduce its carbon emissions levels 17 percent below 2005 levels.
Four years later, when the third climate report was under consideration by Obama, the Executive Office of the President released a broad action plan aimed at specifically cutting carbon emissions.
These reactions to the climate reports were dramatically different to actions taken by President Bush. That administration hastily exited the Kyoto Protocol (a global climate change treaty), partnered with Exxon-Mobil‘s leaders to craft U.S. climate change policy and cast doubt among the public that humans were to blame for global climate change.
In contrast, polls conducted during the past three years reveal that more Americans believe humans are to blame for climate change. Furthermore, a March 2017 Gallup poll found that more than 70 percent support alternative energy over traditional fossil fuels.
Which means that Americans are likely to continue curbing greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of whether or not the climate assessment report receives an official stamp of approval.
MORE: Can the U.S. Reduce Its Carbon Emissions?
Here’s What 15 Experts Think of President Obama’s Record on the Environment
Ask people for their opinion, and they’ll usually give you an honest response. Which is exactly what we wanted when we asked government officials, legislators, environmental experts, scientists and historians what President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy would be. Read on for their judgments.
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“I think and hope President Obama will establish a legacy as one of the most consequential Presidents dealing with the environment, particularly with regard to climate change, which is the greatest threat we face today.”
— Former Rep. Harry Waxman, a 20-term California Democrat who chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee until 2011 and authored the amendments that strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1990
“President Obama has dogmatically used energy as a political tool rather than a building block of renewed economic vibrancy…The innovation of independent producers and the scale of larger companies has combined to make the United States a world economic leader in clean energy — one of our few areas of industrial domination. Yet the President has chosen to brand oil and gas as evil forces and essentially shut down federal lands as source of production.”
— Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a Republican who implemented higher standards for ozone and other air pollutants and spearheaded a federal cleanup of the Great Lakes while serving as EPA administrator from 2003 to 2005.
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“While President Obama has taken significant steps to address climate change — establishing the first-ever carbon emissions limits for power plants and new fuel economy standards for cars — his administration continues to lease massive amounts of publicly-owned fossil fuels…It’s clear that President Obama is serious about cementing his climate legacy, but until he takes steps to ensure the vast majority of fossil fuels remain in the ground, his legacy is as vulnerable as an Arctic ice sheet.”
— Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA
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“Barack Obama is destined to go down as the greatest climate change-fighting president in history. By the time he leaves office some 15 months from now, he will have instituted game-changing programs to slash carbon pollution from our vehicles and trucks, and from our power plants – together accounting for two-thirds of all U.S. greenhouse gases, the primary driver of dangerous climate change.”
— Ed Chen, national communications director for the National Resources Defense Council
“Even as Obama has talked an increasingly tough game on climate change and the need for dramatic reductions [in emissions], he has also pursued policies that have exacerbated the environmental impacts of domestic energy development — and have increasingly exported our dirty energy sources even as we embrace clean renewables. His environmental achievements, then, have been hamstrung by politics — both the unyielding political opposition as well as his own sense of what’s politic in a nation craving economic growth and energy independence.”
— Paul Sutter, professor of modern U.S. history at the University of Colorado in Boulder
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“Looking at individual policy accomplishments doesn’t do justice to President Obama’s legacy on climate change…The component parts of his actions — from making cars and power plants cleaner to preserving major swaths of land and sea for future generations to leading on global ocean policy to beginning to take on industrial methane pollution — tell a story about how he and his administration addressed the problem. But the story is larger than that. I’d say the president’s legacy on climate change lies in his success in making climate change a central policy obligation, getting millions of Americans to care about it, bringing along industry and other stakeholders, and tackling the problem in the face of withering opposition from Congress. So I wouldn’t say that setting fuel efficiency standards is a legacy, I’d say that achieving the cooperation and buy-in of all the stakeholders is the legacy accomplishment. This president, more than others, has had to build those coalitions to overcome the legislative obstruction of climate action and he’s changed how climate policy is developed and implemented.”
— Carol M. Browner, former EPA adminstrator during the Clinton administration and director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy from 2009 to 2011
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“As soon as Obama took office, [the] EPA began moving vigorously to regulate greenhouse gas emissions…Obama strongly advocated environmental protection and took several highly publicized trips to advance concern about environmental issues and to promote renewable energy. After his first two years, he was confronted with the most anti-environmental Congress in history, so new legislation was challenging, to say the least. However, he pushed against the limits of his authority under existing laws, especially on climate change.”
— Michael B. Gerrard, professor at Columbia Law School in New York City who teaches courses on environmental regulation and climate change policy
“Obama has ignored not only bipartisan solutions but Congress itself after it rejected his approach on climate change even when Democrats controlled that body. He was the president who deepened the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats over these crucial intersecting issues. His partisanship has been destructive of any consensus on major enviro-energy issues…Meanwhile, the huge energy event that happened during his watch – the shale oil and gas revolution – flourished not thanks to his administration, but in spite of it.”
— Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association
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“Mr. Obama is the most radical president in terms of environmental policy in the history of the U.S. It is as if the spirit of Rachel Carson – author of “Silent Spring” – is occupying the Oval Office. Every imagined environmental threat takes on the utmost urgency in this president’s mind, no matter how weak the scientific evidence…He leaves behind a legacy of narcissism, grandiosity and political correctness that will be hard for anyone to match, though Mrs. Clinton, should she survive the FBI probe of her national security lapses, might be able to come close.”
— Gene Koprowski, director of marketing for the Heartland Institute, a conservative public policy think tank
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“The stimulus package gave President Obama a chance to invest in renewables early in his first term, allowing him to make progress on the issues unlike most other recent presidents, who have been forced for political reasons to leave critical environmental issues to their second terms. In 2009 and 2010, there was an apparent window of opportunity to promote a carbon cap and trade bill in Congress, but the administration was eager for a quick victory and opted for health care. Whether with Obama’s support this could have happened is a good question, but there is no question that the decision to back off was demoralizing to the environment and climate change community.”
— D. James Baker, former administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and current director of the Global Carbon Measurement Program at the William J. Clinton Foundation
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“President Obama will be remembered for strong leadership on climate change. He implemented two key policies in the United States that will substantially cut the emissions of heat trapping gases — fuel economy standards for vehicles, and limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. He also brokered a deal with China to cut emissions from that country, which is critical to the success of a worldwide agreement expected to emerge in Paris this year. The missing piece of his legacy is national climate change legislation, which he and congress failed to pass.”
— Kenneth Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit
MORE: Which Presidents Are the Greenest in U.S. History?
Obama Promised to Make the Environment a Main Policy Issue. Did He?
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” That’s what Barack Obama promised in 2008 upon winning the Democratic nomination. Seven years later, he’s returning to his pledge as he ponders his legacy and his final 500 days in office.
Was this really the moment when climate change reversed course? NationSwell asked dozens of scientists, historians, jurists, former EPA administrators, legislators and presidential candidates a simple question: How will future generations judge Barack Obama’s record on energy and the environment? Not surprisingly, the responses vary. Some were glowing (“Barack Obama is destined to go down as the greatest climate change-fighting president in history,” says Ed Chen, national communications director for the Natural Resources Defense Council), while others were hesitant to issue a verdict: “It’s a very unfinished climate legacy, full of steps forwards, sideways, and back,” says Bill McKibben, former staff writer at The New Yorker and founder of 350.org, a grassroots climate change movement.
Indeed, the 44th president faltered on environmental legislation in his first term, preferring to expend his political capital on the Affordable Care Act. But Obama’s use of regulatory authority and his agreement with China likely ensure his place in the pantheon of modern environmental champions.
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BACKPEDALLING FROM CAMPAIGN PROMISES
It’s taken nearly two full terms to bring his labors to fruition. Shortly after defeating Sen. John McCain in the race for the Oval Office, Obama set two bills in motion on which he would stake his legacy: the health care law in the upper chamber, and in the lower, a comprehensive environmental bill that included a market-based carbon cap-and-trade system and renewable energy standards, co-authored by Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat whose amendments strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1990.
In June 2009, Waxman’s bill narrowly passed the House by a vote of 219-212. “There was an apparent window of opportunity” in that moment, says D. James Baker, a scientist who headed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under Bill Clinton, but by December, “the administration was eager for a quick victory and opted for health care.” The climate change bill became Obama’s “stepchild,” a senior official told The New Yorker.
Offering concessions to earn goodwill from the Republican caucus, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed to delay implementation of carbon regulations for another year. Soon after, the president announced huge sections of U.S. waters along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico open for drilling and withdrew support for the versions of Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill being negotiated in the Democratic-led Senate.
“Whether with Obama’s support [a nationwide cap-and-trade law] could have happened is a good question,” says Baker, “but there is no question that the decision to back off was demoralizing to the environment and climate change community.” Days later, as oil bubbled up from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Democrats hung their heads in defeat. “The missing piece of his legacy is national climate change legislation, which he and Congress failed to pass,” says Kenneth Kimmel, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
MAKING USE OF REGULATION, NOT LEGISLATION
That’s not to say Obama failed completely during his first term. The 2009 stimulus bill designated $90 billion for a bevy of green initiatives: retrofitting homes for energy efficiency, fueling development in wind and solar power, modernizing the grid, training employees for green jobs, building high-speed rail, researching carbon capture for coal-burning plants and manufacturing cleaner cars.
“The stimulus package gave President Obama a chance to invest in renewables early in his first term, allowing him to make progress on the issues unlike most other recent presidents, who have been forced for political reasons to leave critical environmental issues to their second terms,” says Baker. If anything, the president’s preference for working outside the legislature set the standard for his later environmental accomplishments. After the bruising battle over healthcare and the Republican sweep of the 2010 midterm elections, Obama took the path of least resistance.
Waxman retired last year after 20 terms, but you can still sense his frustration with the gridlock that killed his legislation. In an email, he tells NationSwell that Congress “refuses to learn from the overwhelming scientific consensus on the dangers we are facing.” He applauded President Obama for circumventing the increasingly partisan legislature by using “the power to act domestically and internationally based on existing laws on the books, even without Congress passing new laws.” Bolstered by a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that George W. Bush’s administration had shirked their duties, Waxman’s Clean Air Act amendments provided all the authority Obama needed.
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In the past month, much of the focus has been on the Clean Power Plan, which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants 32 percent by 2030. But that’s only the latest in a long series of administrative actions. During Obama’s first term, the EPA and the Department of Transportation set new fuel efficiency standards: All cars built after 2025 must get at least 54.5 miles per gallon. This summer, those same agencies proposed raising standards for medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles as well. Despite litigation that’s made its way all the way to the Supreme Court, the EPA slashed the acceptable levels of ozone that clouds city skylines, mercury released by coal-fired plants and methane billowing from oil fields, landfills and farms. When it comes to conservation, Obama’s designated more land and water as national monuments under the Antiquities Act — 260 million acres total — than any other president.
In creating “the first-ever framework for the United States to achieve long-term emissions reductions,” says Richard Revesz, former dean of New York University School of Law, these achievements will outlast Obama’s two terms — regardless of whom the next president is. “Even if the Democrats lose the White House in 2017, the new greenhouse gas regulations will still need to be implemented,” says Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia’s Earth Institute. Those guidelines, along with states’ actions, “will probably end the use of coal as a source of energy in the U.S.”
Despite the likely positive outcomes, several Republicans interviewed chastised the president for his reliance on regulations, instead of legislation. “It will be seen as a failure that he wasn’t able to get anything through that is enforceable,” says Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who was George W. Bush’s first appointee as EPA administrator. She argues that using the “heavy-handed tool” of the EPA “will make things more difficult for the agency going forward.”
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Others had even harsher words. “President Obama has dogmatically used energy as a political tool rather than a building block of renewed economic vibrancy,” says Mike Leavitt, former governor of Utah and Whitman’s successor as EPA administrator. Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association, agrees. “He was the president who deepened the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats over these crucial intersecting issues” of energy and the environment.
CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE HEAD ON
Perhaps because the president has been “hamstrung by politics,” as one historian phrased it, he’s not staking his legacy on any one bill or rule. Instead, as his recent photo-ops in Alaska demonstrates, Obama seems to be focusing on perceptions. His prominence on the global stage — including his role in negotiating the limited Copenhagen Accord in 2010 and the recent deal with China to curb their emissions by 2030 — “helped move the issue of global environmental sustainability to the center of the American and international political agenda,” says Cohen.
As the commander-in-chief prepares to convene with leaders from 196 countries to sign a treaty at the United Nations Climate Change Conference this December, his legacy on climate change “lies in his success in making climate change a central policy obligation,” says Carol M. Browner, Obama’s advisor who directed the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy from 2009 to 2011, when Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill foundered. If the president can get millions of Americans, industry and other stakeholders to think about it while also facing opposition from Congress, he’ll be remembered for changing how climate policy is developed and implemented.
As the effects of climate change become more visible, the challenges facing Obama aren’t disappearing like glaciers are. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the president’s loudest critics are on the left. They’re fuming over the Keystone XL pipeline and off-shore oil and gas exploration in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.
“With the president’s permission, Shell is now drilling for oil in the Alaskan Arctic, and his administration has authorized the future sale of 10.2 billion tons of coal,” says Annie Leonard, Greenpeace USA’s executive director. “It’s clear that President Obama is serious about cementing his climate legacy, but until he takes steps to ensure the vast majority of fossil fuels remain in the ground, his legacy is as vulnerable as an Arctic ice sheet.”
The Verdict on Cap and Trade? It Works
Contrary to what you hear from political candidates, cap and trade isn’t just a theory anymore. Its implementation won’t cause rolling blackouts or “catastrophic” spikes on energy bills, as naysayers like Sen. Marco Rubio warn, nor will it “throw countless people out of work,” as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush predicts; in fact, it will probably lower your electric bill.
Coast to coast, from California to New England, several states have already established working cap and trade models that successfully cut pollution without stifling economic growth. As the Environmental Protection Agency rolls out its final Clean Power Plan, which requires a 30 percent reduction in a state’s carbon footprint by 2030, even more parts of the country may join.
Back in 2009, a group of 10 Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states joined together in the first regional, market-based program to reduce large power plant carbon emissions. Known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (or RGGI, pronounced “Reggie”), the states account for one-sixth of America’s population and one-fifth of its gross domestic product. The consortium sets a limit on the carbon dioxide that can be emitted into the atmosphere — the “cap” — then auctions off the rights to pollute — the “trade.” It’s the same model brokered between conservationists and fiscal conservatives to deal with acid rain under President George H. W. Bush.
How has RGGI fared? Far better than expected. Over the past six years, emissions from electricity usage are down 40 percent from 2005 levels. According a third-party report (funded by four private foundations advocating sustainable energy), RGGI created $1.3 billion in economic benefits just in the last three years, primarily from customer rebates, efficiency improvements and 14,000 new jobs.
Not everyone is sharing the wealth, however. Power plant owners are expected to lose $500 million in revenue through 2025 from lower demand and the price of buying carbon allowances. These effects are partly attributable to a nationwide pivot toward renewable energy, shale gas replacing coal and general mindfulness about waste, but RGGI’s decline in emissions far outpaces the rest of the country, says Katie Dykes, a deputy commissioner for Connecticut’s Department of Energy & Environmental Protection.
“The centerpiece of RGGI’s program design, we auction the majority of our allowances for carbon. The proceeds from those allowance auctions are distributed among all nine states” — one dropped out — “then each state can invest the proceeds in a variety of programs that benefit customers,” Dykes tells NationSwell. “It accelerates this virtuous cycle. Taking these caps, we are generating proceeds and reinvesting in projects that are going to further reduce carbon emissions.”
Historically, economic growth was tied increased emissions: smoggy skies meant wider wallets. But RGGI’s proved those don’t need to be linked. In the Nutmeg State, for example, the Calabro Cheese Corp., a family-owned mozzarella, ricotta and grated parmesan manufacturer in East Haven, got a cut of the allowance proceeds for its 74,000-square-foot facility. Retrofitted lighting, replacement refrigeration motors and evaporator fans, repairs and better insulation all led to an annual reduction of 149,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity — enough power for about 13 homes — and monetary savings of $96,000 every year.
Trading within a larger regional market increases efficiency, Dykes adds. Plus, it’s a more accurate reflection of the way climate change works. Pollution from a coal-burning plant doesn’t hover above one building’s smokestacks; it diffuses into the atmosphere and alters the temperature of the entire globe.
Politics still prove to be an obstacle. Just look at Chris Christie, the Republican governor and presidential candidate from New Jersey, who withdrew his state from the program in late 2011. “RGGI amounted to nothing more than a tax on business that failed to achieve its goals,” a spokesperson for Christie tells NJ Advance Media. Critics “may look at that failed program as a missed opportunity to tax our state’s job creators and yearn to spend more of their money, but that’s simply not acceptable to this governor.”
Christie’s opponents are still furious that the state missed out on millions in savings. But with the EPA’s rules set for implementation, the Garden State and others may have a second chance at improving the air and their economies.
5 Very Simple, Practical Things You Can Do to Curb Climate Change
Climate change is a defining issue of our time and there is no time to lose,” proclaimed Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General, during last month’s U.N. Climate Summit. “There is no Plan B because we do not have a Planet B.”
Since you’ve already converted from a gas-guzzling SUV and always BYOB (bring your own bag) to the supermarket, try making these tweaks to your everyday lifestyle. They’ll help the U.N. achieve its goal of keeping the earth’s temperature from rising no more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 and, in turn, keep the planet from facing even more disasters like famine, disease and water shortages.
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Despite Reports About Increasing Environmental Hazards, the Air in Our Cities is Getting Much Safer to Breathe
For all the hot air we often hear from politicians and pundits alike, the quality of the air we breathe in this country has actually gotten a lot better in the last two decades.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released their Second Integrated Urban Air Toxics Report to Congress, which surprisingly, shows that a lot of progress has been made to reduce harmful pollutants in cities due to the Clean Air Act updates from 1990, reports Think Progress.
Some highlights in the report include:
– A 66 percent reduction in benzene
– A nearly 60 percent reduction in mercury from man-made sources like coal-fired power plants
– An 84 percent decrease of lead in outdoor air, which slows brain development in children
– The removal of an estimated 1.5 million tons per year of air toxics like arsenic, benzene, lead and nickel from stationary sources
– Another 1.5 million tons per year (about 50 percent) of air toxics from mobile sources. This is significant because air toxics (also referred to as hazardous air pollutants or HAPs) are known or suspected of causing cancer and can damage the immune, respiratory, neurological, reproductive and developmental systems
– Approximately 3 million tons per year of criteria pollutants, like particulate matter and sulfur dioxide, have been reduced as co-benefits of air toxics reductions
MORE: Do Ants Hold the Key to Reducing Pollution?
And if you think the EPA is just tooting it’s own horn, NASA also studied satellite images from 2005 to present day and saw physical proof that air pollution is decreasing in major urban areas.
Not only is cleaner air good news for our health, it’s good for the economy, too. CNN reports that better air quality prevented 160,000 deaths in 2010, 1.7 million asthma attacks and cut down hospital admissions and emergency room visits by 86,000. By 2020, the dollar savings in cleaner air will amount to $2 trillion annually in alleviated health risks.
In a statement, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy emphasizes that strict environmental regulations do not hinder this country’s economic growth: “This report gives everyone fighting for clean air a lot to be proud of because for more than 40 years we have been protecting Americans — preventing illness and improving our quality of life by cutting air pollution — all while the economy has more than tripled.”
“But we know our work is not done yet,” McCarthy notes. “At the core of EPA’s mission is the pursuit of environmental justice — striving for clean air, water and healthy land for every American; and we are committed to reducing remaining pollution, especially in low-income neighborhoods.”
So yes, while this is a small victory for all of our lungs, we shouldn’t breathe easy just yet.
DON’T MISS: This Student-Invented Device Eliminates Almost All of the Emissions from a Very Common Household Polluter
Top 10 Cities for Energy Efficient Office Buildings
It takes a lot of energy to go to work, and we mean that quite literally. In fact, most of a city’s carbon emissions come from commercial buildings. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, commercial buildings in Chicago are responsible for 70 percent of the city’s carbon emissions; in New York City, it’s a staggering 80 percent.
In recent years, however, many metropolitan cities have committed to reducing their carbon footprint. These days you’ll see many high rises sporting green roofs, LED lighting, and automated heating and cooling systems, in addition to other green upgrades. As Fast Company reports, since 1999, more than 23,000 commercial buildings have earned the EPA’s Energy Star rating.
These buildings use 35 percent less energy and produce 35 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than similar buildings, the EPA said. To earn the seal, a commercial building has to score 75 or higher on an energy efficiency scale out of 100 (50 is the average).
MORE: This Amazing Home Creates More Energy Than It Uses
Impressively, Los Angeles topped the list for the sixth consecutive year with 443 Energy Star certified buildings. In 2013, these green structures helped the city save $132.2 million in utility bills and prevented greenhouse gas emissions equal to 45,100 homes. A reason for Los Angeles’ success is that California requires buildings to disclose their energy use.
Here’s a complete list of the top 10:
1. Los Angeles
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Atlanta
4. New York
5. San Francisco
6. Chicago
7. Dallas-Fort Worth
8. Denver
9. Philadelphia
10. Houston
Did your metro area make the list? Here, the top 25 as well as which small and mid-sized cities that also made the cut.
Why New Farm and Construction Equipment Will Improve Air Quality and Save Lives
Diesel-sapping farm vehicles and construction equipment are going the way of the dodo — thanks to new standards from the Environmental Protection Agency that have forced big equipment makers to go green.
Like cars, buses, and heavy-duty trucks, bulldozers and tractors are getting a much-needed green makeover. Prompted by the EPA’s latest emission standards, manufacturers have cut fine particles (linked to heart attacks and respiratory disease) and nitrogen oxides in their newer models by 99 percent, the Environmental Health News reports. Additionally, CO2 (a driver of greenhouse gas) has also been reduced due to improved fuel efficiency.
These new standards are obviously welcome news because they should dramatically impact air quality. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2003 when talks of diesel-emission regulations first began, even though you don’t usually see tractors and bulldozers on the road, they account for 44 percent of soot and 12 percent of nitrogen oxide in the U.S. atmosphere.
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Now that these standards are in place, not only will our lungs benefit from cleaner air, countless lives should also be saved, as farmers and construction workers are especially prone to diesel-related illnesses such as cancer, respiratory disease, and heart attacks. Amazingly, the EPA estimates that by 2030, the new standards will prevent 12,000 premature deaths and 8,900 hospitalizations per year.
The Environmental Health News report does note that there is still room for improvement. First, there is no federal incentive to buy greener equipment. Secondly, compared to cars or trucks, it takes much longer to replace bulldozers and tractors (some date back to the 1950s and 60s). However, these new EPA regulations mean that when farmers or construction workers finally do replace their gear, they will have no choice but to buy green because that’s all that is available.
Now that’s bulldozing our way to a cleaner future.
Food Cowboy: Teaching Truck Drivers ‘Nothing Goes to Waste’
It’s 2:30 on a recent Monday morning in Washington, D.C., and most of the city is still and dark. But near the intersection of New York and Florida Avenues in the northeast area known as Brookland, there is a flurry of activity at the loading dock outside S.W. Produce Inc., a small wholesaler. There, underneath bright-yellow fluorescent lights, truck after truck backs up to the concrete dock to unload crates filled with squash, cabbage, oranges and other produce, after making the journey from places as far away as Florida, Georgia or the Carolinas.
Jerry Pence, a thin, bearded trucker from Tennessee who seems so awake it could be 2:30 p.m., arrives with eight boxes of bruised zucchini that had spilled into the truck bed, all immediately rejected by the buyer. Pence must head to his next stop with an empty truck to make a pickup. “They’re good squash. If you want ’em you can have ’em!” Pence says to the folks at the dock. But they didn’t order zucchini and they have no use for them, so those eight boxes eventually make their way to the giant metal dumpsters that sit just next to the loading dock. “If there are hungry people who want these squash, I’d be happy to give them to ’em,” Pence says.
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That’s exactly what Roger Gordon, co-founder of Food Cowboy, aims to do. Gordon was at the loading dock that early morning to build relationships with the truck drivers and to persuade them and their employers to join his venture. His one-year-old startup, Food Cowboy, systematically connects truckers to food banks with the mantra that “Nothing Goes to Waste.”
“We’re very picky eaters,” Gordon says. “Retailers won’t even try to sell anything that doesn’t look just right.” Distributors often don’t have time to find a home for perishable food that stores won’t accept, he goes on to explain, and so much of it is thrown out — nearly 36 million tons, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Food Cowboy’s goal is to redirect it to the hungry.
Gordon, 46, started the organization with the help of his brother, Richard, a truck driver who’d grown all too accustomed to hauling food that was perfectly edible, though not aesthetically pleasing, to dumpsters or landfills.
Richard explains that he and Roger started talking about Food Cowboy “after I had to dump 20,000 pounds of organic green beans.” The refrigeration unit in his truck had broken, and the temperature had risen slightly before he could get it fixed. He estimates that the green beans lost only half a day of shelf life in that time, but the customer still rejected the entire shipment. “Roger and I spent a lot of time trying to donate the load, but there wasn’t anywhere close by that could accept all that food,” he says. “If we had a way of reaching all the food banks faster, we might have been more successful.”
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While there are other organizations working to curtail food waste like CropMobsters, Food Recovery Network and City Harvest, the brothers found that there was no group working directly with truck drivers to help at this level of the food-supply chain. The brothers felt they could offer the food banks a good business opportunity. Food Cowboy charges food banks a 10-cent routing service fee per pound of produce — considerably less than the 67 cents a pound that food banks would normally pay on average to buy fresh vegetables wholesale, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But getting the food from truckers to food banks proved far from easy. “The challenge is that food banks operate Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. The rest of the food industry operates 24/7,” Gordon says. Food Cowboy has to persuade food banks to open up for those 2:30 a.m. drop-offs, and then has to find places with the manpower — and sometimes forklifts — to handle the massive loads that come off of trailer trucks.
And then there is the problem of persuading the food companies to allow the donation of rejected shipments in the first place. After all, there is the potential for lawsuits if the food makes someone sick. But Food Cowboy has found success relying on the food banks’ own quality-control measures as well as Good Samaritan laws, which protect them in the unlikely event that the food is contaminated.
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Gordon and his small staff of four — who work out of his D.C. row house — have spent the last year developing contacts at food banks across the country and building a database of places where they can direct truckers. They include Capital Area Food Bank, the largest food bank in the D.C. area. In 2012, Gordon learned through one of his brother’s connections that a shipment of 900 pounds of eggplant had recently been rejected because the vegetables, though perfectly edible, had been deemed too round and too dark to be marketable. They were destined for the dumps. Gordon was able to save the eggplants and redirect them to Capital Area Food Bank, where they were distributed to the nearly half a million people the food bank serves in the region.
Food Cowboy also brokers relationships on a smaller scale, for which they do not charge a transaction fee. Gordon introduced DC Central Kitchen, a local soup kitchen, to Mexican Fruits, a produce shop only about a five-minute drive from the soup kitchen. DC Central Kitchen can call Mexican Fruits to see if they have any produce that’s still good, but getting too old to sell. If so, they pick up the food, which Mexican Fruits donates, and serve it to hungry Washingtonians. This relationship has resulted in several pickups of food that would otherwise have gone to waste.
Amy Bachman, a manager at DC Central Kitchen, notes how helpful this relationship has been. “Food Cowboy connected us with a food source we didn’t have before,” Bachman says. “We probably wouldn’t have known about Mexican Fruits without them.”
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Gordon and his team currently field more than 20 calls each month from truckers across the country, and have helped folks in states as far away as California and North Dakota. Usually they pair truckers individually with food banks. But recently Food Cowboy has begun to expand its operation by creating an online system that allows truckers to find open food banks along their routes that will accept their edible rejected shipments. “We’re trying to make the whole process as efficient as possible,” Gordon says.
They’ve also started a Twitter campaign called “The Great Food Roundup,” with an associated app, which allows people to notify Food Cowboy anytime they see wasted food that could be redistributed. “The goal is to crowdsource a food-waste map of the United States,” Gordon says. “It will give people like Amy a much more robust map of donors they can work with.”
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