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Eight years ago, the field of carbon removal amounted to a handful of academic lab projects and a few fledgling companies working on a novel concept: sucking carbon out of the atmosphere.
That was when Giana Amador, an undergrad at the University of California, Berkeley, founded a nonprofit called Carbon180 with another student, Noah Deich. They hoped to convince policymakers and the climate community that reversing carbon emissions — in addition to reducing them — was essential to limiting the worst impacts of climate change.
A lot has changed since then. Scientists have become more outspoken about the need for carbon removal. Last year, a major U.N. report concluded that achieving international climate goals would be nearly impossible without cleaning up some of what’s already been emitted. Startups hoping to do that now number in the hundreds. Universities have opened research centers to explore the best methods. Private companies and venture capital firms have committed hundreds of millions in the cause, and Washington has followed suit. There’s a new carbon removal research program within the Department of Energy, $3.5 billion in federal funding available to build machines that extract carbon from the air, and a tax credit of up to $180 for every ton of carbon those machines sequester underground.
This explosive growth led Amador to see the need for a different type of advocacy. Last week, she launched the Carbon Removal Alliance, a group of startups and investors that will lobby for policies that support “high quality, permanent carbon removal.”
“I’m really excited that we have more than 20 companies who have come together around those principles to set the bar for what good carbon removal should look like,” Amador, the group’s executive director, told Grist.
The group’s explicit focus on “high quality” or “good” carbon removal underscores a simmering debate within the field about how to best meet the challenge of cleaning up the atmosphere, drawing a stark line between methods that could remove and store carbon for millennia, and those that are more temporary.
There’s generally two reasons scientists say carbon removal will be necessary to tackle climate change. First, it’s a way to balance out emissions that are hard to eliminate, like those from airplanes or agriculture. Second, if the planet warms more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) as many models show is likely, taking carbon out of the atmosphere will be the only way to cool it down. There’s no consensus on exactly how much carbon removal will ultimately be needed, but scientists put the number at between 450 and 1,100 gigatons by the end of the century.
Nearly all of the carbon removed from the atmosphere to date has been accomplished by nature. A recent review of the state of CO2 removal estimates that conventional land management techniques, like reforestation, take up about 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year, or roughly 5 percent of global fossil fuel emissions in 2021. Trees, soils, wetlands, and other natural carbon sinks can be enhanced to absorb even more of it, and many companies are focused on doing so. But these are considered short-duration solutions. Wildfires, droughts, diseases, and natural death threaten the carbon stored in trees, while any perturbation to soils and wetlands can also cause a release. Polluting companies often buy carbon offsets derived from these relatively short term solutions. But scientists have criticized that practice, noting that fossil fuel emissions stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, while trees typically store carbon for hundreds, or less.
The Carbon Removal Alliance, by contrast, is comprised of companies focused on sucking up carbon and storing it practically forever. Some, like Climeworks, build direct air capture machines that suck up air, separate the carbon, then stash it underground. Others, like Charm Industrial, refine corn stalks into a stable, viscous oil and inject it into the earth’s crust. Other companies grind up rocks and spread them on agricultural fields to accelerate a natural weathering process that absorbs carbon. Still others hope to sink carbon into the depths of the ocean. But these approaches are far more expensive and technologically challenging than planting trees. It’s not yet clear what a successful business model for permanent carbon removal looks like. So far entrepreneurs have relied on venture capital and on selling their services as pricy carbon offsets to a few benevolent companies eager to support the field.
Many members of the Alliance aim to distance themselves from traditional carbon offsets not only by advancing methods with longer time scales, but also by pushing for more rigorous standards for measuring and verifying the amount of carbon they remove. Researchers have found that many forest and soil-based projects are rife with accounting issues and don’t remove as much carbon as they claim to. But while newer, more highly engineered approaches have come a long way since Amador started, they have yet to remove meaningful amounts either.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in the field,” she said. “That being said, we’ve still only captured about 10,000 tons of permanent carbon removal today. And that is a very, very small fraction of the billions of tons that we need to be capturing 30 years from now.” She said the next chapter is about building larger, proof of concept projects, and driving down the cost.
Amador and other members of the Alliance make clear that cutting emissions is much more urgent in the near term. But they argue that permanent carbon removal will not be an option later without immediate, sustained investment. Companies need funding and regulatory support to determine what works; what the risks are, and how to measure the benefits. And while policymakers have started to create programs to support the field, they have focused on a narrow set of solutions. Take the $180 per ton tax credit, for example. Only direct air capture projects can claim it. Peter Reinhardt, the CEO and founder of Charm Industrial, was frustrated that his company’s bio-oil solution didn’t qualify despite his best efforts to lobby lawmakers.
“What actually matters is how much carbon we get out of the atmosphere and put underground,” he said. “And so I made kind of a solo effort to try to push that, and learned very quickly that building a broad coalition is the only effective way to get things done.” That’s why he joined other founding members in creating the Carbon Removal Alliance.
The group wants to discourage policymakers from supporting specific technologies and instead prioritize certain criteria, like the length of carbon storage. It’s an approach that another carbon removal trade association, the Carbon Business Council, disagrees with.
“We see the benefits of an all-of-the-above strategy and not necessarily choosing one or the other,” said Ben Rubin, the organization’s executive director.
The council launched last year and includes more than 80 members representing a wide array of solutions. While there’s some overlap with the Carbon Removal Alliance, the group also has entrepreneurs focused on capturing carbon in soil and trees, and on using the material to make products like jet fuel and diamonds. It also has a handful of members focused on building carbon credit marketplaces to help companies commercialize their services.
Rubin said the benefit of relatively temporary forms of carbon removal is they are “bountiful on the market today,” and very affordable. “If the CO2 is re-released in the future, we still think it has a role in helping to buy society the time we need to decarbonize. As we look at the trends of where renewable energy is heading, electric vehicle adoption is heading, we need more time.”
Amador agrees with that idea, at least in the short term. She didn’t dismiss the possibility that the two groups might work together. “But the reason why we’re focused on long-term is because we know, from a climate perspective, we need to be storing carbon on timescales that match how long carbon actually stays in our atmosphere,” she said.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A new alliance for ‘high quality’ carbon removal highlights tensions within the industry on Feb 28, 2023.
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This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist andWABE, Atlanta’s NPR station.
Emotions ran high during a pair of public meetings last week discussing a plan to allow a company to mine for heavy minerals less than three miles from Georgia’s iconic Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, the country’s most intact swamp ecosystem.
“Please don’t let them mine what God has put for us here to enjoy, and generations beyond us,” said Sheila Carter, a former Okefenokee guide, to representatives from the Environmental Protection Division of Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources during a Thursday Zoom hearing. She was one of more than 70 people ranging from state representatives to high school students, who spoke out against the mine, which scientists warn could change the water level in the Okefenokee watershed.
The hours-long meetings were part of the 60-day public comment period on the Mining Land Use Plan drafted by the Twin Pines Minerals company. The vast majority of participants spoke in defense of the swamp, citing reasons such as the Okefenokee’s importance as a habitat and a carbon sink. Many shared impassioned messages about their own experiences there, such as being inspired as children by the refuge’s beauty.
Atlanta high school junior Zain Khemani recently visited the Okefenokee for the first time on a school field trip. He told the meeting he learned more there about wildlife and biology than he has in a classroom.
“I’ve never been in a wilderness like that before,” Khemani said. “As someone who’s lived my entire life in the city, it was genuinely magical to learn from the wilderness.”
The proceedings are more than just a place for people to vent their feelings. While the wildlife refuge is technically protected by the federal government, a short-lived Trump-era rule has left the decision surrounding the current mining proposal up to the state. In national news, the Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on a case that could settle decades of legal ambiguity about which wetlands should receive federal protection under the Clean Water Act. But legal experts say that any protections from the court’s decision might not apply to projects like the Twin Pine mine, which has already passed certain milestones in the permitting process.
Federal officials have wrangled for years over what waterways are and are not covered by the Clean Water Act. The Obama administration expanded those rules, the Trump administration reversed course, and the Biden administration reversed the reversal. The Supreme Court ruling is expected to help untangle some of that back and forth.
That’s not to say the decision will be good news for many of the country’s bogs and wetlands. The case could “eliminate longstanding safeguards for tens of millions of acres of wetlands that help protect our communities from flooding and pollution,” according to Kelly Moser, leader of the Clean Water Defense Initiative at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which filed an amicus brief in the case.
In the case of the Okefenokee, the nearby Twin Pines mine received its project clearance under the Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which removed the protection of the Clean Water Act from huge swaths of streams and wetlands across the United States. Under that rule, all the waters associated with the project site were abruptly excluded from federal protection. The rule was vacated after 16 months by a federal judge, but several projects, including Twin Pines, were allowed to proceed.
Environmental groups have sued to place the mine back under federal jurisdiction, but for now, the decision lies with Georgia’s EPD. A bill before the Georgia state legislature seeks to ban future mining on Trail Ridge, the key geological feature where the proposed mine is located. The Okefenokee Protection Act was introduced last month by Republican Rep. Darlene Taylor and signed by a bipartisan group of about 50 lawmakers. It would block future mining, including any expansions of the current mine footprint, but wouldn’t affect the current proposal. The measure has yet to receive a hearing, though an assistant to the chair of the relevant committee said Friday that it will.
For its part, Twin Pines has said that the plan currently up for Georgia state approval is a demonstration project it intends to expand upon. At just under 600 acres, the Okefenokee mine would be substantially smaller than a 2,000-acre demonstration mine the company proposed in 2019. But depending on the Supreme Court ruling and what happens at the state level, future phases of the project could face much stricter reviews.
If the current mining proposal moves forward, it would require several state permits – meaning another round of public comments and, likely, opposition. According to state law and EPD guidance, the mining land use plan has to be “consistent with the land use in the area of the mine.”
Twin Pines Minerals contends the mine is consistent land use, citing a letter from the administrator of Charlton County, where the mine would be located. The letter says no zoning prohibits the mine, and points to a county commission resolution supporting it.
But many public commenters were not convinced. They pointed out the land surrounding the mine is used primarily for the wildlife refuge or for timber growth and harvesting. They worried the mine could harm both by lowering the groundwater level, depriving the swamp and timber farmers of water and increasing the risk of wildfire.
Courtney Reich of the Georgia Conservancy pointed to the comprehensive plan the county adopted in 2020, which recognizes the conservation lands in the Okefenokee as a priority.
“Protection of this important resource and support for the ecotourism industry features heavily in the plan and its stated goals,” Reich said of the refuge, which draws more than half a million visitors annually and has been identified as a possible UNESCO World Heritage Site. “Permitting a mine which puts this refuge at risk is in direct conflict with the comprehensive plan.”
With so many technicalities to consider and many well-funded groups invested in the outcome, the legal and legislative battles over the nation’s wetlands are expected to continue for some time. But many of the commenters at the Okefenokee hearing pleaded with officials to keep the bigger picture in mind.
“There are some things that are just not worth risking,” said Jack Spalding of the Georgia River Network. “This is one of those things.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Georgians plead with state officials to protect the Okefenokee from mining on Feb 28, 2023.
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Indigenous Sámi youth and dozens of environmental activists in Oslo, Norway shut down the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy on Monday, with many chaining themselves to the building. The action is part of a human rights campaign that demands the Norwegian government close an onshore wind energy complex that the country’s supreme court says was built illegally in Sámi territory.
Last Thursday, 15 Sámi youth activists began occupying the Ministry’s lobby and refused to leave the building in an effort to bring attention to the $1.3 billion Fosen Vind project, along Norway’s west coast, one of Europe’s largest onshore wind farms consisting of 151 turbines and completed in 2020. Norway is working with the European Union to decarbonize its economy by scaling up its renewable energy production. As of 2016, 98 percent of electricity production in the country comes from renewable sources. Most of that electricity comes from hydropower with wind power representing less than a 10th of production.
“We cannot be sacrificed in the name of the green transition because they cannot find other solutions,” said Áslat Holmberg, president of the Saami Council, a non-governmental organization with Saami members in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
In 2018, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination requested Norway suspend construction of a power plant associated with the complex in traditional Sámi territory so that it could review complaints.
In 2021, Norway’s Supreme Court voted unanimously to strip the wind farm of its operating license after finding that its construction violated the Sámi’s ability to exercise their cultural rights because the windmills prevented them from herding reindeer – the area Fosen Vind occupies is a winter grazing area and crucial to the survival of herds. However, the ruling did not spell out what actions should be taken to remedy the problem.
Exactly 500 days after the court ruling, the Norwegian government has yet to take action against the Fosen Vind project, which led Sámi youth to occupy the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy on Monday where they were joined by climate activist Greta Thunberg. Organizers with the Norwegian Sámi Association’s youth council could not be reached for comment, but told the AP “the ongoing human rights violations” against Sámi reindeer herders “must come to an end.”
“Nothing has happened since the Supreme Court concluded that the permissions for the wind turbine area violates the human rights of the Sámi people,” said Eirik Larsen, a political adviser to the Sámi Parliament in Norway. “They have said they want to look into how they can keep the wind turbines without violating the human rights of the reindeer herders, which is impossible because they use the same land and you can’t herd reindeer in a wind industry area.”
“What kind of safeguards are there for Sámi if the justice system isn’t working in our favor?” Holmberg said. “What kind of constitutional state doesn’t respect the ruling of its own Supreme Court? Even when we win in court, still our rights are being offended. So what can we do?”
Sámi reindeer herders say that the turbines scare the animals and that the turbines are dangerous in the winter because they can “throw” dangerous shards of ice several hundred meters. Traditionally, the area Fosen Vind occupies is a winter grazing area and crucial to the survival of herds.
Requests for comment from the Norwegian government and Ministry of Petroleum and Energy were not returned. In a statement to Reuters, Terje Aasland, the minister of energy and petroleum, said that he understood that the case was a burden for reindeer herders, adding that “the ministry will do what it can to contribute to resolving this case and that it will not take longer than necessary.”
According to Eirik Larsen, the protest marks the first time in more than 40 years since Sámi organizers have occupied a government building. In 1981, 13 Sámi women and one child occupied the meeting room of the Norwegian prime minister for a day while a hunger strike took place outside of the parliament in opposition to a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Álttáeatnu River in Sámi homelands in northern Norway. Known as the Álta Action, Indigenous opponents of the project were ultimately unsuccessful in stopping construction of the dam, but the conflict has been seen as a turning point for Indigenous sovereignty in the region and became an international point of solidarity among many Indigenous communities around the world.
Reuters reported that the Fosen wind farms’ owners include Stadtwerke Muenchen, one of Germany’s largest energy companies, Statkraft and TrønderEnergi, two Norwegian companies focused on green energy, and Swiss energy infrastructure companies, Energy Infrastructure Partners and BKW.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous youth occupy Norwegian energy office to protest illegal wind farm on Feb 27, 2023.
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After assuming office in early 2021, President Joe Biden announced the Justice40 initiative, which promised that 40 percent of federal investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and other climate-related programs would be directed toward disadvantaged communities. The program is an effort to counteract the legacy of past policies that have unevenly distributed the country’s environmental burdens, with communities of color historically faring the worst in terms of underinvestment and pollution exposure.
In order to implement Biden’s vision for equitable federal spending, the government first needed to decide which communities would officially be considered “disadvantaged.” The Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, or CEJST, that debuted last year is an attempt to use reams of socioeconomic and environmental data to pinpoint neighborhoods facing the greatest burdens.
But the beta version of the tool, which was developed by the White House Council on Environmental Quality in an open-source process, quickly proved controversial. Despite evidence that race is the strongest and most consistent predictor of environmental burdens, the tool did not explicitly consider racial demographics as a factor that could tip a community into the “disadvantaged” category. While the White House said it made the decision to avoid legal challenges, environmental justice advocates were incensed, fearing that without considering race the tool would fail to identify disadvantaged communities of color that should be prioritized for Justice40 funds.
A Grist analysis last year found that many of these fears didn’t come to pass. By analyzing criteria such as proximity to traffic, linguistic isolation, and proximity to hazardous waste sites — factors which are all strongly correlated with race — the tool was able to account for race by proxy. As a result, the race-neutral screening tool still prioritized communities of color. The higher a census tract’s non-white population, the more likely that it would be flagged as disadvantaged.
Still, roughly 9,000 census tracts where the majority of residents are non-white were not considered disadvantaged by the tool. While some of these, like parts of the California Bay Area, are high-income areas with little pollution exposure, others, like parts of San Bernardino County, the Eastwick neighborhood in Philadelphia, and the Woodlawn neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, are arguably exactly the sorts of communities the tool was intended to identify.
As a result, the White House received an avalanche of comments critiquing the prototype. More than 2,300 people wrote in, and the vast majority demanded that the tool explicitly consider race in order to include more communities of color. After taking these comments into consideration, the White House quietly released an updated version of the tool in late November.
Here’s how the tool now works. It first computes a slew of socioeconomic and environmental statistics for every census tract in the country. These metrics include a tract’s income and whether it is near legacy pollution sites, close to heavy traffic, and has a high projected flood or fire risk, among others. If a tract meets one each of the tool’s socioeconomic and environmental burden thresholds, it is considered disadvantaged. Based on the suggestions of several researchers and advocates, the new version also now automatically considers more than 750 federally recognized tribal tracts disadvantaged, refines its income formula, and adds nine new criteria for judging whether a neighborhood is disadvantaged, including whether it is flood- or wildfire -prone, lacks green space, and is near abandoned mines. Additionally, if a tract is surrounded by disadvantaged communities and is at or above the 50 percent threshold for low income, then it is also automatically considered disadvantaged, even if it fails to meet the environmental thresholds.
The changes led to an addition of roughly 4,400 census tracts to the ranks of the disadvantaged. As a result, 37 percent of the country’s nearly 74,000 tracts are now considered disadvantaged by the tool — up from 32 percent in the initial version. Those tracts are home to about 109 million Americans.
The White House “was really responsive to community feedback,” said Justin Schott, a project manager at the Energy Equity Project at the University of Michigan, a group researching ways to improve clean energy access for communities of color. “I was impressed by the breadth of new datasets that they took on.”
Like in the beta version, the “disadvantaged” designation in the revised tool remains highly correlated with race: The larger the share of people of color in a tract, the more likely it is to be flagged. A recent E&E News analysis also found that the tool identified more than three-fourths of all U.S. tracts where Black and Hispanic residents make up a majority as disadvantaged.
But a Grist analysis has found that the addition of new data and methodological changes did not dramatically alter the tool’s effectiveness at capturing communities of color shouldering environmental burdens. In fact, some advocates argue that the tool’s focus on communities of color has actually been diluted by the addition of many rural, majority-white tracts.
Of the roughly 4,400 disadvantaged tracts added in the new version, just 37 percent of the population are people of color. Conversely, the roughly 650 tracts that lost their status as disadvantaged had a population that’s 57 percent non-white. In total, about 800 tracts that are majority non-white were added as disadvantaged. At the same time, the number of tracts with a population that is 90 percent or more white increased by nearly 1,000.
Grist / Jessie Blaeser
“The changes they made, and I think inadvertently, in my opinion, ended up making the program less focused on people of color than it originally was,” said Bob Dean, CEO of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago-based nonprofit that has been assessing the tool over the last year.
A spokesperson for the White House Council on Environmental Quality did not respond to specific questions, but said that the new version of the tool “adds new datasets to better reflect the burdens that communities face in response to feedback from Tribal Nations, the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, environmental justice stakeholders, and others.” While the tool does not include race explicitly, it reflects “on-the-ground burdens and realities that disadvantaged communities face,” she said.
There are a few reasons why the new version appears biased toward less diverse tracts. Some of the newly added criteria for inclusion — such as risk of flooding, homes without a kitchen or indoor plumbing — appear to prioritize whiter communities. For example, of the more than 4,400 tracts newly included as disadvantaged, about 500 were selected because people who live in these tracts had inadequate access to transportation. However, only 27 percent of the people in these tracts are non-white — considerably lower than the average non-white population in disadvantaged tracts in both versions of the tool.
Dean said it was likely the transportation access criteria was causing the tool to pick up a number of rural tracts where public transit is scarce. “You end up with people traveling a very long way to get to work and being dependent on cars and having to maintain a car for work because there is no transit alternative,” he said. “And those places are majority white.”
In order to assess the difference between the old and new versions of the tool, Manuel Salgado, a research analyst at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a community advocacy group based in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, analyzed the racial makeup of the disadvantaged tracts. He found that the percentage of Latino, Black, and Asian residents in disadvantaged tracts decreased in the new version, but the percentage of white residents increased. The proportion of non-Hispanic/Latino white population increased by more than 4.5 percentage points in the new tool, while the proportion of Black and Latino populations decreased by 1.8 and 2.8 percentage points respectively.
Grist / Jessie Blaeser
“The new additions as far as people are concerned were so predominantly white, it dilutes the impact that the tool has in general on communities of color,” said Salgado. “There’s potential here, but on its own, I don’t necessarily view it as a positive change.”
Overall, the tool now considers many more rural communities disadvantaged. In a webinar announcing the new version of the tool in November, Sharmila Murthy, the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s senior counsel said that nearly a third of rural communities were now considered disadvantaged — compared to just 23 percent in the earlier version. The inclusion of many more rural communities was likely driving the demographic changes in the new version, Salgado said.
During the comment period, environmental justice groups advocated that the White House use redlining data in order to pull in more diverse communities. In the 1930s, the federal government created color-coded maps that designated certain neighborhoods as risky areas to invest in. These redlining maps resulted in historic underinvestment in communities of color. Environmental advocates hoped that including redlining data would be a closer proxy to race — but that didn’t bear out. In effect, the redlining criteria only pulled in an additional 21 tracts with a population of roughly 75,000, according to an analysis by the Center for Neighborhood Technology.
That’s because of the tool’s methodology and how the data is used. CEJST requires that each criteria be considered alongside a socioeconomic variable. In this case, the redlining threshold is only met when a tract has both experienced historic underinvestment and is at or above the 65th percentile of a low-income measure. More than 1,100 redlined tracts weren’t included because they failed to meet that income threshold.
That’s the case in the East Bronx in New York, where one tract has a population that is 99 percent non-white, including a nearly 80 percent Black population, was redlined, has a large share of the population suffering from asthma, is exposed to high levels of particulate matter from diesel exhaust, and is close to a leaky underground storage tanks. But it’s not considered disadvantaged by the tool because its income score is 64 percent — just below the 65 percent threshold. Salgado advocated for lowering the income threshold for formerly redlined tracts. Decreasing the threshold to 50 percent would bring in an additional 254 tracts, he found.
Environmental justice experts Grist spoke to argued that the tool would identify more qualified communities of color if it took a more cumulative approach. Currently, for example, the tool doesn’t distinguish between tracts that meet multiple environmental thresholds and those that meet just one. Analyses by Salgado and researchers at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, a conservation group, also found that tracts that are facing multiple environmental burdens are also more likely to have larger Black populations.
When they looked at the racial breakdown of disadvantaged tracts, those that meet three or more of the tool’s thresholds contain two-thirds of the Black disadvantaged-tract population and more than half of the Latino disadvantaged-tract population. Conversely, tracts where only one or two thresholds are met have larger white populations. Given this, a cumulative impact approach might pull in more Black and Latino tracts if it relaxed the income threshold in cases where multiple environmental burden thresholds are met.
“The cumulative impact component would allow [the tool] to better capture those communities of color who are currently not captured and also really look at the magnitude of disadvantage,” said Sacoby Wilson, a professor at the University of Maryland who helped the state of Maryland develop its own environmental justice screening tool.
Murthy, the White House counsel, said that the tool will continue to be refined and that they are “eager to be improving the methodology to better reflect cumulative impacts in future versions of the tool.” The White House is currently working with an advisory council and a study committee to implement these changes. A guidance document released by the White House last month also noted that while a methodology to assess cumulative burdens is being built, “agencies have discretion to prioritize communities in a way that approximates this goal.”
“We anticipate that future versions of the tool will be able to identify communities that are disproportionately bearing these cumulative impacts,” Murthy said.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why the White House’s environmental justice tool is still disappointing advocates on Feb 27, 2023.
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This story was originally published by InvestigateWest, an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest.
As she drove into Butte, Montana, six years ago to visit her son, environmental epidemiologist Suzanne McDermott couldn’t ignore the gouged-out mountain that loomed over the town.
It’s the result of decades of open-pit mining that continues to this day in Butte. McDermott was stunned at how close the mining pits were to homes and businesses. In town, she noticed parked cars with a film of dust that looked as if ash had fallen from a fire. Her son, who worked for the local newspaper, later told her of children who had developed mysterious ailments in Butte.
“It just struck me that there’s something very unhealthy going on here,” said McDermott, a professor at City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.
Butte, a once-booming city, is home to a massive Superfund site overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency. Past mining has polluted the soil and water in and around Butte, and when Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) abandoned the mine in 1982, it left a pit that’s since filled with water so toxic that it kills flocks of birds that land on it.
But what troubled McDermott most wasn’t the poisoned Berkeley Pit. It was the active copper and molybdenum mine right next to it, operated by Montana Resources, a company owned by the richest man in the state, Dennis Washington. At the edge of town, she could look across the street and watch the dust from the mine rise into the air and drift over to people’s homes.
Locals have wondered for years whether that dust carries heavy metals that may be slowly poisoning them. The EPA and health officials, however, have maintained what strikes many as two conflicting messages: One, that previous open-pit mining in Butte left behind a toxic legacy necessitating a major cleanup effort. And two, that the current open-pit mining operation is safe.
McDermott and other independent scientists have questioned that narrative through a series of small, underfunded studies in recent years. They’ve received pushback from the mining companies in town, ARCO and Montana Resources.
But they’ve also run into a more unlikely foe: the EPA.
Emails obtained by InvestigateWest reveal a cozy relationship between EPA officials and the mining companies in Butte. Thousands of pages of documents detail how the EPA coordinated with the very companies they’re supposed to be regulating to attack researchers like McDermott and smear peer-reviewed science that has raised alarms over current mining practices.
In one email, EPA toxicologists directly urged Montana Resources to fashion a response meant to pressure scientists into retracting their findings. In another, the mining company asked if the EPA could dig into the funding sources of McDermott and another researcher. In a third correspondence, the EPA deferred to a mining company official for guidance on public messaging.
Montana Resources mines copper and molybdenum in Butte, Mont., year round.
Erick Doxey / InvestigateWest
The documents provide a rare, important glimpse into how a regulatory agency can fall under the influence of industry, said Christopher Sellers, an environmental health researcher at Stony Brook University who reviewed the cache of records. Sellers has studied how the EPA could side with private industry and warned of such scenarios under the Trump administration, but had never seen his concerns put into practice so clearly.
“You have it there, a paper trail — at least for this scientific sort of arena where a lot of these political battles or battles of regulation are now fought,” Sellers said.
The EPA declined interview requests for this article and would not answer questions about individual emails between the agency and industry officials. Instead, spokesperson Richard Mylott provided an emailed statement stating that the EPA had a responsibility to consult with all parties in response to new research.
In Butte, the scientific battle has obscured the answer to a longstanding question: Whether the thing that’s long been the livelihood in the small mining town could also be costing lives.
“There’s an alliance that has developed over the years between the EPA and the mining company. It’s clear as day,” McDermott said. “Our government should be working for us and not some company.”
Raising alarms
In 2019, McDermott and two other scientists published a study that said the current mining in Butte may be tied to a “potential public health emergency.” The study compared Butte samples of meconium — a baby’s first poop — to those from South Carolina where no mining operations exist. The Butte samples had metals at levels thousands of times higher than South Carolina.
The researchers originally thought of the study as a pilot and hadn’t planned to publish it. But the results were so shocking that they felt they needed to make them public.
One of the other scientists on the study, however, argued prior to publication against including the “public health emergency” line. That scientist was Katie Hailer, a bioinorganic chemist at Montana Technical University in Butte, who thought the claim would strike at the heart of the town’s identity.
“I knew that that sentence was going to cause issues,” Hailer says. “But I underestimated the number of issues that sentence was going to cause.”
Butte’s always been a mining town. In the early 1900s, its underground mines — manned by some 10,000 miners — supplied the copper for the country’s electrical grid, and it gave the “copper kings” of the time incredible wealth.
Today, Butte’s population of 34,000 is less than half of its heyday. Abandoned mine shafts are scattered around a shrinking university and historic brick buildings. Still, Montana Resources employs nearly 400 people, and Hailer knows the current mine wields influence. Any suggestion that it might be dangerous could threaten people’s livelihood. But that 2019 study wasn’t the first to take aim at the mine in Butte.
Two years earlier, Hailer published a paper that found higher metal levels in Butte subjects’ hair as compared to another Montana city. Notably, the Butte subjects had significantly elevated levels of arsenic in both their hair and blood. Hailer urged caution in interpreting the results, due in large part to the small sample size used in the study, and the research didn’t attract much attention.
“It really wasn’t talked about at all in the community for two years,” Hailer said.
Katie Hailer, a bioinorganic chemist at Montana Technical University, has been researching the impact of mining in Butte.
Erick Doxey / InvestigateWest
On the other side of the country, McDermott, meanwhile, researched Butte as sort of a passion project in her career of studying environmental impacts on human health. While she often receives federal funding for large studies, she self-funded the smaller Butte research, she says. She previously examined death data for Butte residents, finding that adults living in and around Butte had higher rates of cancer deaths and other diseases than the rest of the state. In a separate study, she also found a higher incidence of brain and central nervous system cancers in children living in and around Butte compared with other areas of Montana.
Neither study established the cause as coming from heavy metals or active mining, though arsenic and other heavy metals are known to cause cancer.
Meconium, McDermott and Hailer thought, could potentially show how mining in Butte exposes humans to dangerous metals. For good measure, they enlisted the help of Jamie Lead, a nanoscientist in the top 1 percent of cited scientists worldwide in 2019.
In an effort to soften any possible blowback from the EPA, Hailer presented the raw data to EPA officials months before the study was published. But Hailer says the EPA was disinterested and didn’t dig into the questions raised by the data.
Then the study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. A couple weeks later, the local media got their hands on it. The article sent waves across the community.
Suddenly, the EPA was interested.
Siding with industry
In the weeks after the meconium study was published, toxicologists from the EPA working on the Superfund site in Butte sent a flurry of emails to public agencies, local health officials, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asking for input.
But the EPA also sought guidance from Montana Resources, the mining company, and ARCO, owned by oil giant BP. In emails with those industry officials, the EPA openly coordinated strategies to rebut the study, aligned on public messaging and discussed tracking the funding of the researchers.
McDermott, it should be noted, admits that the meconium study has its weaknesses. Looking at metals in meconium is a relatively new area of research. In fact, in an effort to finalize a methodology for future research, McDermott is now working on a large study — with a grant from the EPA — to analyze meconium in New York City.
Looking back now, she says that it was not a “good comparison” to compare Butte meconium to South Carolina. She suspects that the collection process of the samples may have differed in the two locations, and that may account for part of the vast difference between the two.
Despite the criticisms of the study, however, Hailer and McDermott maintain that the Butte samples raise enough questions for the EPA to conduct further research on the issue. The presence of arsenic alone is alarming, Hailer says.
“Every one of those samples had detectable arsenic at levels that I would say are on the higher end [compared to other published research],” Hailer says.
Mark Thompson, the vice president of environmental affairs for Montana Resources, has family in Butte that live near the mine.
Erick Doxey / InvestigateWest
Ron Sahu, a mechanical engineer and independent consultant on environmental regulatory compliance, says the meconium study raised “important questions that deserve to be run down.” It isn’t a perfect study, but any flaws should be addressed through scientific inquiry, he says.
“If you think there are methodology problems, then let’s fix them,” Sahu says.
The EPA quickly focused on the South Carolina data. It argued that metal levels in that state were not only low compared to Butte’s samples, but they were also out of line with samples from other studies that measured metals in meconium. The differences with the South Carolina data have not been fully explained since Lead, the nanoscientist, has declined to share the data. (He did not return a message seeking comment for this story.)
The EPA contends that the Butte levels are roughly in line with other meconium studies if the South Carolina data is taken away. But comparing Butte samples to other studies can also present problems. Some studies on meconium measure dry weight, while others used wet weight, for example. Other studies involving meconium, McDermott notes, were also done in places where there were toxic accidents, making comparisons to Butte less helpful.
Instead of doing a larger study, the EPA led an attack in direct coordination with the mining companies. In one email, the EPA asked Mark Thompson, the vice president of environmental affairs for Montana Resources, if he could pressure Hailer and McDermott into walking back their findings, based on a company consultant’s review of the study.
“We believe that any scientist that see’s (sic) both our review and your review would only have one conclusion,” wrote Nikia Greene, the EPA’s remedial project manager for the Superfund site in Butte. “So if you decide to send an email please do not copy us, but let us know what you decide.”
Thompson didn’t send the email. As he recalled in an interview with InvestigateWest, he told EPA officials at the time that “no one’s going to give a shit what the mine says or what ARCO says,” and that the EPA should be asking other state or federal agencies to analyze the study instead.
In a statement to InvestigateWest, Mylott, the EPA spokesperson, said that the agency had a “responsibility to objectively evaluate the McDermott study” and communicated with “various parties” to do so, including the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the Butte-Silver Bow Health Department, and the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.
“These actions reflected a desire to develop and share accurate information and encourage accountability in clarifying the study,” he said.
Other emails suggest Montana Resources had direct influence over how the EPA responded. In one email, Thompson asks Greene at the EPA, “Have you made any progress with the publication that published the paper?” Later, the EPA would ask for the journal to retract the study. That request was rejected.
The emails show how Montana Resources felt comfortable asking the EPA for additional help. Later in 2020, Thompson saw a flier asking for volunteers for a pilot study led by McDermott and another researcher, David Hutchins. He sent an email to Greene and local health officials.
“David Hutchins and McDermott are up to their old ways. Any chance on tracking their funding?” Thompson asked.
Greene forwarded the email to three other officials with a note that said, “FYI: This is on the verge of unethical. Charlie and I are looking into this. …We will keep you posted.” The EPA would not discuss the email with InvestigateWest.
But in an interview, Thompson says that the EPA did, in fact, agree to “dig into the federal funding side of things” to see if a federal source was funding McDermott’s research. If so, Thompson says, the EPA “wanted to call that into question.”
“There were some conversations about, you know, where’s this money coming from? Shouldn’t they have something to say about the quality of what’s being used with their money?” Thompson says.
Hailer said Montana Resources also tried to pressure Montana Tech, her employer. Shortly after the meconium study was published, she was told that Montana Resources requested a meeting with her boss with the intention of silencing Hailer. (The dean of her college at the time confirmed that Montana Resources requested the meeting, but declined to go into specifics on what was discussed.)
Hailer tried to stay out of the public eye for two years following the meconium study, but she’s still working on research related to the mining in Butte, albeit without major funding support. She hadn’t seen the emails obtained by InvestigateWest until now.
“I’ve already experienced, and seen firsthand, this interwoven relationship between ARCO, Montana Resources, and EPA,” Hailer says. “It’s completely inappropriate. You can’t have the people that made the mess also get to be the people that tell the community how they’re going to clean up the mess.”
‘Regulatory capture’
The coordination between the EPA and the companies they are meant to police was a central concern for many scientists during the Trump administration.
When Donald Trump became president in 2016, he appointed Scott Pruitt as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt, previously Oklahoma’s attorney general, had a cozy relationship with the fossil fuel industry and a record of suing the EPA. Shortly after taking over as head of the EPA, emails were released that showed that as AG, Pruitt “coordinated with industry officials to fight unwanted regulations from Washington.”
A team of researchers took a hard look at the EPA under Pruitt, analyzing his speeches, political appointments and actions. In a paper published in 2018, they determined that the EPA was so pro-business that it was “enabling a form of regulatory capture.” That is, the EPA was working more for the industries it’s supposed to be regulating than the public interest.
Sellers, the Stony Brook University professor, and one of the co-authors of the paper, said that while the EPA has often leaned in favor of industry officials, the Trump administration was “unprecedented” for opening the doors to industrial influence. The agency was set on undermining its own rules and regulations and undercutting its own budget in order to help industry, he said. The administration also stacked industry representatives on scientific advisory committees. Corporate scientists, Sellers says, were part of “gaming the scientific system” in favor of industry, according to the paper.
But at the time of writing the paper, Sellers admits that they didn’t have many real-world examples of the EPA working for industry.
“We didn’t really have a paper trail to prove, ‘Here’s an industry approach, here’s what they want the agency to do, here’s the agency actually responding and doing it, basically,’” Sellers says.
The communication between the EPA and Montana Resources regarding McDermott and Hailer’s research, however, is “significant,” Sellers says. He added, though, that there are no legal consequences for the EPA taking a certain side in a scientific debate.
A safe place?
Steve McGrath has lived in the Greeley neighborhood that’s directly across from Montana Resources for decades. Throughout the day, he can see rocks being blasted and trucks roving back and forth across the mine to haul ore. While some in Butte don’t worry about the dust emanating from the mine, McGrath can’t ignore it.
“The people in this neighborhood are continually getting bombarded by this dust,” McGrath says.
From the Greeley neighborhood at the edge of Butte, the mine can be seen from across the street.
Erick Doxey / InvestigateWest
Ten years ago, McGrath, who also works as an analytical chemist at Butte’s Montana Technical University, brought a bag of gray dust that had accumulated at his house to a local health department meeting. (Local health officials did not respond to requests for comment.)
“I asked, ‘Is this a health concern? Should I be worried about it?’” McGrath recalls. “And the reply I got from them was that it’s simply a nuisance and outside the purview of their regulation.”
Thompson, with Montana Resources, has been at the public meetings where neighbors of the mine have brought a piece of glass from their backyard filthy with dust. He agrees with them on one thing: More research is needed to get to the bottom of this. But in his view, independent scientists are attacking mining in Butte with scant evidence. And the dust in the Greeley neighborhood, he argues, isn’t as bad as people say.
“I’m not seeing what they’re seeing,” Thompson says.
Montana Resources has spent millions on dust mitigation. The company, he says, believes in being a good neighbor. After all, Thompson’s own son lives in the Greeley neighborhood closest to the mine.
“My kids asked me, ‘Am I in a safe place?’” Thompson says. “And I said, ‘You’re fine.’ I’m pretty confident. I’ve got my own family on the line.”
Montana Resources has funded studies looking at dust impacts in Butte, but residents often won’t trust studies funded by the mining companies. Besides, those studies often have their own limitations.
For instance, Montana Resources hired an engineering firm to analyze particulate matter in the Greeley neighborhood in 2021. The research, also backed by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, found that particulate matter levels were safe because they met federal standards.
Sahu, the independent consultant, studied the data and said that was the wrong conclusion to reach. For starters, except for lead, there are no federal standards for individual metals in the air such as arsenic, copper or molybdenum — metals of concern in Butte. The EPA’s standards for particulate matter are looser than those of the World Health Organization. In the Greeley neighborhood, annual averages were recorded from 2018 to 2020 that would exceed the WHO limit. The Biden administration proposed stricter standards in January, taking aim at the Trump administration for retaining the looser standards.
“You cannot conclude that if you meet the standards, that therefore, you are safe,” Sahu said at a meeting in Butte last year.
Ed Banderob, president of the local neighborhood community development corporation near the mine, has lived in Butte for roughly 15 years. Today, despite the handful of independent studies in the last decade, he still feels like he doesn’t fully understand the risk of living where he does. Banderob maintains that Butte residents have no intention of shutting down the active mine — “we’re not that stupid,” he says. They just want answers.
“Our position is that it would be best to recognize the problems and openly address them,” Banderob said. “Their attitude has been, ‘If we can sweep it under the rug, that’s the best way to go.’”
McDermott sees the pattern in Butte continuing: The EPA, mining companies and other governmental officials aren’t making a good faith effort to find answers, McDermott argues. Instead, they focus on “red herrings.”
“They keep doing little things to make people feel better, to keep people distracted,” she says. For McDermott, that’s not how science should proceed.
“Why not repeat my studies? Why don’t you contract with the university and have them do the sample and the analysis, instead of screaming at me that I’m wrong?” McDermott says. “That’s how science progresses.”
This report was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Newly revealed records show how the EPA sided with polluters in a small Montana mining town on Feb 26, 2023.
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This story was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for their newsletter.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently gave a Chevron refinery the green light to create fuel from discarded plastics as part of a “climate-friendly” initiative to boost alternatives to petroleum. But, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and the Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer.
“That kind of risk is obscene,” said Linda Birnbaum, former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “You can’t let that get out.”
That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals. Chevron hasn’t started making this jet fuel yet, the EPA said. When the company does, the cancer burden will disproportionately fall on people who have low incomes and are Black because of the population that lives within 3 miles of the refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
ProPublica and the Guardian asked Maria Doa, a scientist who worked at the EPA for 30 years, to review the document laying out the risk. Doa, who once ran the division that managed the risks posed by chemicals, was so alarmed by the cancer threat that she initially assumed it was a typographical error. “EPA should not allow these risks in Pascagoula or anywhere,” said Doa, who now is the senior director of chemical policy at Environmental Defense Fund.
In response to questions from ProPublica and the Guardian, an EPA spokesperson wrote that the agency’s lifetime cancer risk calculation is “a very conservative estimate with ‘high uncertainty,’” meaning the government erred on the side of caution in calculating such a high risk.
Under federal law, the EPA can’t approve new chemicals with serious health or environmental risks unless it comes up with ways to minimize the dangers. And if the EPA is unsure, the law allows the agency to order lab testing that would clarify the potential health and environmental harms. In the case of these new plastic-based fuels, the agency didn’t do either of those things. In approving the jet fuel, the EPA didn’t require any lab tests, air monitoring, or controls that would reduce the release of the cancer-causing pollutants or people’s exposure to them.
In January 2022, the EPA announced the initiative to streamline the approval of petroleum alternatives in what a press release called “part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s actions to confront the climate crisis.” While the program cleared new fuels made from plants, it also signed off on fuels made from plastics even though they themselves are petroleum-based and contribute to the release of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
Although there’s no mention of discarded plastics in the press release or on the EPA website’s description of the program, an agency spokesperson told ProPublica and the Guardian that it allows them because the initiative also covers fuels made from waste. The spokesperson said that 16 of the 34 fuels the program approved so far are made from waste. She would not say how many of those are made from plastic and stated that such information was confidential.
All of the waste-based fuels are the subject of consent orders, documents the EPA issues when it finds that new chemicals or mixtures may pose an “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment. The documents specify those risks and the agency’s instructions for mitigating them.
But the agency won’t turn over these records or reveal information about the waste-based fuels, even their names and chemical structures. Without those basic details, it’s nearly impossible to determine which of the thousands of consent orders on the EPA website apply to this program. In keeping this information secret, the EPA cited a legal provision that allows companies to claim as confidential any information that would give their competitors an advantage in the marketplace.
Nevertheless, ProPublica and the Guardian did obtain one consent order that covers a dozen Chevron fuels made from plastics that were reviewed under the program. Although the EPA had blacked out sections, including the chemicals’ names, that document showed that the fuels that Chevron plans to make at its Pascagoula refinery present serious health risks, including developmental problems in children and cancer and harm to the nervous system, reproductive system, liver, kidney, blood and spleen.
Aside from the chemical that carries a 25 percent lifetime risk of cancer from smokestack emissions, another of the Chevron fuels ushered in through the program is expected to cause 1.2 cancers in 10,000 people — also far higher than the agency allows for the general population. The EPA division that screens new chemicals typically limits cancer risk from a single air pollutant to 1 case of cancer in a million people. The agency also calculated that air pollution from one of the fuels is expected to cause 7.1 cancers in every 1,000 workers — more than 70 times the level EPA’s new chemicals division usually considers acceptable for workers.
In addition to the chemicals released through the creation of fuels from plastics, the people living near the Chevron refinery are exposed to an array of other cancer-causing pollutants, as ProPublica reported in 2021. In that series, which mapped excess cancer risk from lifetime exposure to air pollution across the U.S., the highest chance was 1 cancer in 53 people, in Port Arthur, Texas.
The one-in-four lifetime cancer risk from breathing the emissions from the Chevron jet fuel is higher even than the lifetime risk of lung cancer for current smokers.
In an email, Chevron spokesperson Ross Allen wrote: “It is incorrect to say there is a one-in-four cancer risk from smokestack emissions. I urge you avoid suggesting otherwise.” Asked to clarify what exactly was wrong, Allen wrote that Chevron disagrees with ProPublica and the Guardian’s “characterization of language in the EPA Consent Order.” That document, signed by a Chevron manager at its refinery in Pascagoula, quantified the lifetime cancer risk from the inhalation of smokestack air as 2.5 cancers in 10 people, which can also be stated as one in four.
In a subsequent phone call, Allen said: “We do take care of our communities, our workers and the environment generally. This is job one for Chevron.”
In a separate written statement, Chevron said it followed the EPA’s process under the Toxic Substances Control Act: “The TSCA process is an important first step to identify risks and if EPA identifies unreasonable risk, it can limit or prohibit manufacture, processing or distribution in commerce during applicable review period.”
The Chevron statement also said: “Other environmental regulations and permitting processes govern air, water and handling hazardous materials. Regulations under the Clean Water, Clean Air and Resource Conservation and Recovery Acts also apply and protect the environment and the health and safety of our communities and workers.”
Similarly, the EPA said that other federal laws and requirements might reduce the risk posed by the pollution, including Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s regulations for worker protection, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and rules that apply to refineries.
But OSHA has warned the public not to rely on its outdated chemical standards. The refinery rule calls for air monitoring only for one pollutant: benzene. The Clean Water Act does not address air pollution. And the new fuels are not regulated under the Clean Air Act, which applies to a specific list of pollutants. Nor can states monitor for the carcinogenic new fuels without knowing their names and chemical structures.
We asked Scott Throwe, an air pollution specialist who worked at the EPA for 30 years, how existing regulations could protect people in this instance. Now an independent environmental consultant, Throwe said the existing testing and monitoring requirements for refineries couldn’t capture the pollution from these new plastic-based fuels because the rules were written before these chemicals existed. There is a chance that equipment designed to limit the release of other pollutants may incidentally capture some of the emissions from the new fuels, he said. But there’s no way to know whether that is happening.
Under federal law, companies have to apply to the EPA for permission to introduce new chemicals or mixtures. But manufacturers don’t have to supply any data showing their products are safe. So the EPA usually relies on studies of similar chemicals to anticipate health effects. In this case, the EPA used a mixture of chemicals made from crude oil to gauge the risks posed by the new plastic-based fuels. Chevron told the EPA the chemical components of its new fuel but didn’t give the precise proportions. So the EPA had to make some assumptions, for instance that people absorb 100 percent of the pollution emitted.
Asked why it didn’t require tests to clarify the risks, a spokesperson wrote that the “EPA does not believe these additional test results would change the risks identified nor the unreasonable risks finding.”
In her three decades at the EPA, Doa had never seen a chemical with that high a cancer risk that the agency allowed to be released into a community without restrictions.
“The only requirement seems to be just to use the chemicals as fuel and have the workers wear gloves,” she said.
While companies have made fuels from discarded plastics before, this EPA program gives them the same administrative break that renewable fuels receive: a dedicated EPA team that combines the usual six regulatory assessments into a single report.
The irony is that Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard Program, which this initiative was meant to support, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost the production of renewable fuels. Truly renewable energy sources can be regenerated in a short period of time, such as plants or algae. While there is significant debate about whether ethanol, which is made from corn, and other plant-based renewable fuels are really better for the environment than fossil fuels, there is no question that plastics are not renewable and that their production and conversion into fuel releases climate-harming pollution.
Under the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard, biobased fuels must meet specific criteria related to their biological origin as well as the amount they reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared with petroleum-based fuels. But under this new approach, fuels made from waste don’t have to meet those targets, the agency said.
In its written statement, Chevron said that “plastics are an essential part of modern life and plastic waste should not end up in unintended places in the environment. We are taking steps to address plastic waste and support a circular economy in which post-use plastic is recycled, reused or repurposed.”
But environmentalists say such claims are just greenwashing.
Whatever you call it, the creation of fuel from plastic is in some ways worse for the climate than simply making it directly from fossil fuels. Over 99% of all plastic is derived from fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas. To produce fuel from plastics, additional fossil fuels are used to generate the heat that converts them into petrochemicals that can be used as fuel.
“It adds an extra step,” said Veena Singla, a senior scientist at NRDC. “They have to burn a lot of stuff to power the process that transforms the plastic.”
Less than 6 percent of plastic is recycled in the U.S. Much of the rest — hundreds of millions of tons of it — is dumped in the oceans each year, killing marine mammals and polluting the world. Plastic does not fully decompose; instead it eventually breaks down into tiny bits, some of which wind up inside our bodies. As the public’s awareness of the health and environmental harm grows, the plastics industry has found itself under increasing pressure to find a use for the waste.
The idea of creating fuel from plastic offers the comforting sense that plastics are sustainable. But the release of cancer-causing pollution is just one of several significant problems that have plagued attempts to convert discarded plastic into new things. One recent study by scientists from the Department of Energy found that the economic and environmental costs of turning old plastic into new using a process called pyrolysis were 10 to 100 times higher than those of making new plastics from fossil fuels. The lead author said similar issues plague the use of this process to create fuels from plastics.
Chevron buys oil that another company extracts from discarded plastics through pyrolysis. Though the parts of the consent order that aren’t blacked out don’t mention that this oil came from waste plastics, a related EPA record makes this clear. The cancer risks come from the pollution emitted from Chevron’s smokestacks when the company turns that oil into fuel.
The EPA attributed its decision to embark on the streamlined program in part to its budget, which it says has been “essentially flat for the last six years.” The EPA spokesperson said that the agency “has been working to streamline its new chemicals work wherever possible.”
The New Chemicals Division, which houses the program, has been under particular pressure because updates to the chemicals law gave it additional responsibilities and faster timetables. That division of the agency is also the subject of an ongoing EPA Inspector General investigation into whistleblowers’ allegations of corruption and industry influence over the chemical approval process.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This “climate-friendly” fuel comes with an astronomical cancer risk on Feb 25, 2023.
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The last three years were objectively hot, numbering among the warmest since records began in 1880. But the scorch factor of recent years was actually tempered by a climate pattern that slightly cools the globe, “La Niña.”
This year and next, La Niña might give way to its hotter counterpart, El Niño. Distinguished by warm surface waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean, the weather pattern has consequences for temperatures, drought, and rainfall around the world. The planet hasn’t seen a strong El Niño since 2016 — the hottest year ever recorded — and the next El Niño will occur on top of all the warming that’s occurred since then.
El Niño’s return could further strain sensitive ecosystems, like the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon rainforest, and nudge the planet closer to worrisome tipping points. It might also push the world past a threshold that scientists have been warning about, giving people a temporary glimpse of what it’s like to live on a planet that’s 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) than preindustrial times — a level that could begin to unleash some of the more drastic consequences of climate change.
“Looking back at past years when you’ve had El Niños, we have seen those global temperatures kind of boost themselves, sometimes significantly, depending on how big El Niño was,” said Tom Di Liberto, a climate scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
El Niño is expected to arrive later this year, and the warmer weather pattern could continue to build up through 2024, sending global temperatures past that 1.5 degrees C marker, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, after which they could ease back when a La Niña returns. But there’s still plenty of uncertainty. According to the most recent forecast from NOAA, El Niño has a 60 percent chance of forming by the fall, although other scientists are more confident it’s on the way. Researchers in Germany and China, some of whom issued an early warning for the El Niño that began in 2015, have predicted an 89 percent chance that the pattern will emerge this year — and have cautioned that it could be a strong one.
The world has already warmed an average of 1.2 degrees C (2.2 degrees F) since the Industrial Revolution ushered in the widespread use of fossil fuels. Most estimates said 1.5 degrees of warming wouldn’t arrive until at least the early 2030s. The chance that El Niño could push the planet above that mark for the first time, however, has about a 50/50 chance of happening in the next five years, Adam Scaife, the head of long-range prediction at the U.K. Met Office, told the Guardian last month.
Climate activists hold protest signs calling upon the G20 conference to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C during the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, November 15, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine / AFP via Getty Images
1.5 degrees is about the level of warming that scientists say would be more likely to start setting off irreversible feedback loops, such as the disintegration of ice sheets in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the abrupt thawing of permafrost in the Arctic, or the collapse of the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf Stream current (as imagined in the film The Day After Tomorrow). Island nations have spearheaded the effort to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees because it’s a matter of survival for low-lying atolls that could be swallowed up by rising ocean waters. When crafting the Paris Agreement in 2015, countries committed to “pursuing efforts” to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. In the spirit of taking the goal more seriously, diplomats asked the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to release a report on the effects of 1.5 degrees.
When the report came out in 2018, it made a splash, with news headlines warning that the world had “12 years” left to tackle climate change. Activists, including Greta Thunberg, rallied around the goal as a point of no return. But as time wore on and the world failed to dramatically rein in carbon emissions, the target — already considered unrealistic back in 2018 — slid out of reach. Scientists say that it’s certainly bad news, but it’s not game over. “It’s not like there’s a magical barrier at that number in terms of like, we can never go back, or like it’s a clear tipping point where that number specifically flips a switch,” Di Liberto said. “These things run on a spectrum.” Each incremental increase in warming leads to more catastrophic consequences.
Hitting 1.5 degrees in an El Niño year wouldn’t be the same as averaging those temperatures across several years. “This would be a temporary breaching,” said Josef Ludescher, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “This is a different story compared to if it’s a constant state every year for vegetation or corals. One year might be survivable, but what happens if it’s always those temperatures?”
That said, a strong El Niño like the one in that started in 2015 could cause some permanent damage. That year, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia saw the most devastating coral bleaching event in history, with a marine heat wave killing off more than half of corals in the northern part of the reef. If El Niño appears again, “that would ratchet up concerns, especially for another bleaching event across the Great Barrier Reef,” Di Liberto said. Even La Niña years, such as last year, are getting hot enough to cause mass bleaching.
Dead coral found at Lady Elliot Island on the eastern coast of Australia after a mass bleaching event, July 5, 2016.
onas Gratzer / LightRocket via Getty Image
El Niño’s arrival could also be disastrous for the Amazon rainforest, which scientists have warned is nearing a critical “tipping point.” The rainforest, already struggling with challenges from climate change and deforestation, could eventually transform into something more like a grassy savanna, releasing the vast stores of carbon held in its trees. The drought and fires egged on by the last strong El Niño killed roughly 2.5 billion trees in the Amazon, temporarily turning one of the world’s largest carbon-capturing ecosystems into a giant source of carbon emissions.
That same El Niño brought drought to Indonesia, and wildfires took off in forests and peatlands. During their height in September and October that year, the fires in Indonesia and surrounding areas released vast stores of carbon into the atmosphere per day — by one estimate, more than the entire European Union emitted from burning fossil fuels over the same period.
And, just like any other year, ice that melts from the land into the ocean helps lift sea levels. The last big El Niño was likely behind a major bout of melting in Antarctica in January 2016, when a sheet of meltwater developed across the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, affecting an area larger than the state of Texas. Stronger El Niños may also accelerate the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet by warming up the deep waters of the ice shelf, according to a study by Australian researchers published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change.
But every El Niño is its own thing. Di Liberto likes to talk about it as a “tilt in the odds” towards different weather events. El Niño “may be the most consistent thing that allows us to forecast farther in advance, but we know there are other climate phenomena which could be just as strong an influence in a given month or season,” he said.
The effects would vary, depending on the place. In the United States, for instance, El Niño would likely bring more rain to the South and drier conditions to northern states. It would also cool waters in the Atlantic and lead to stronger wind shear that could tear apart tropical storms, a promising sign for a quieter hurricane season.
Climate change may even be starting to affect El Niño itself, leading to “super El Ninos.” Over the last 40 years or so, the world has seen some of the strongest El Niños on record, Ludescher said. But it’s not totally clear whether this is a trend or just plain old chance. In any case, most models forecast that the world will continue to see intense El Niños over the next century — a worrying sign that the hottest years to come will be made even hotter.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A looming El Niño could give us a preview of life at 1.5C of warming on Feb 24, 2023.
