According to a new report by Climate Central, the amount of clean energy produced by the U.S. skyrocketed in 2022, with wind and solar producing enough energy to power “the equivalent of 64 million average American households.” Among the largest renewable energy producers of this dramatic increase are California, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
California’s new car policy, approved by the California Air Resources Board, requires all new vehicles to run on hydrogen or electric starting in 2035.
By Catelyn Fitzgerald ’23
Science & Environment Editor
Traffic in California is no joke. The California New Car Dealers Association reported that the state had 1.6 million new light vehicle —car and light truck — registrations just in 2020, a low number in comparison to pre-pandemic years.
In a fossil fuel-driven world, more cars mean more gasoline. California accounted for 10 percent of the country’s total motor gasoline consumption in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, a CNN article reported that California’s fuel consumption might drop to new lows over the coming decade, thanks to a new policy that could change transportation in the state and trigger harsher auto emissions laws across the country.
The policy, approved by the California Air Resources Board in late August, consists of a gradual ban on the sale of gasoline vehicles culminating in a total ban in 2035, a New York Times article stated. The report from CNN clarified that the ban only applies to new vehicles, meaning that used cars and trucks can continue to be sold after the policy takes effect.
According to a Los Angeles Times article, the policy will cut auto emissions in half by 2040. The article also reports that the policy will have positive health benefits, such as an estimated 1,400 fewer deaths from heart disease and 700 avoided asthma-related emergency room visits.
The effects of California’s new policy will extend far beyond the state's borders by paving the way for other states to enact similar legislation, a recent article in The Boston Globe said. California’s influence on environmental regulations goes back to the Clean Air Act, a federal law passed in 1970 that created national air quality standards and aims to address a wide range of air pollution sources, according to the EPA. Stipulations in the Clean Air Act prevent states from individually adopting air pollution regulations that are stricter than the national standard. As a populous state with ongoing air quality challenges, California is the exception to this rule and is allowed, by the Clean Air Act, to create tougher regulations. As soon as California’s policies are federally approved, any U.S. state is permitted to adopt them as its own.
Several states are already moving swiftly toward similar gas-powered vehicle bans. According to PBS, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington are among those states likely to assume California’s policy. For Massachusetts, California’s ban represents a continuation of ongoing efforts to reduce auto emissions rather than a drastic new policy, says The Boston Globe. The article cites Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s endorsement of a strikingly similar ban back in 2020, which can now become an official part of Massachusetts state law thanks to California’s path-clearing legislation.
An important step towards reducing air pollution in the state, an article in Science Magazine points out that California’s transition away from gasoline-powered cars will also pressure electric vehicle manufacturers to address the technology’s challenges. The article states that a common issue with EVs is their slow charging time, with even high-quality chargers taking over 10 hours to charge EV batteries fully. Improvements to either the EV chargers or the EV batteries themselves can and must happen to address this issue, the article said. Scientists have taken up the challenge, but it may be some time before quick-charging EVs are widely available. Science Magazine predicts that the rise in demand for EV batteries resulting from this ban will cause the market to “splinter,” meaning that consumers will someday have a choice between several battery types, each presenting unique characteristics such as high charging capacity or low cost.
The Los Angeles Times reveals that there is an additional flaw in the policy due to its reputation as a “zero-emission vehicle mandate.” The regulation’s nickname refers to the lack of emissions from vehicles’ engines as they drive but overlooks the emissions that occur during the production of EV batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. The article explains that depending on where a household’s electricity comes from, whether from renewable sources or burning coal, charging EV batteries may still create considerable emissions.
Other concerns surrounding the EV mandate question California's ability to provide large volumes of electricity, as illustrated by an opinion piece written for The Washington Post. Author Megan McArdle calls California’s electric grids “already fragile and prone to blackouts” and questions how they could support an additional rise in demand for a fully electrified auto industry. McArdle offers some solutions to the challenge, including charging cars using household solar panels or encouraging drivers to charge their vehicles overnight when electricity demand is lower. She concludes that without considerable improvements, California’s “overstretched grid” will struggle to support EVs during peak energy use.
The aforementioned Los Angeles Times article explored how the higher cost of EVs will play into California’s policy. In a discussion with the Times, the chair of the California Air Resources Board revealed that there are ways to address this cost disparity and make buying EVs accessible for low-income residents. Solutions include improving warranties for EVs so that they may become reliable used cars for a lower cost, as well as creating state programs that offer financial aid for EV purchases. Additional measures to ensure equitability in the policy include requiring apartment complexes to provide on-site EV chargers.
Offshore oil drilling is a common practice to remove oil from the ocean, and has led to a series of oil spills. On Oct. 1, the U.S. Coast Guard received a report of a petroleum smell off the coast of Huntington Beach, according to The Guardian. An underwater oil pipeline had cracked and was leaking oil into the ocean. The pipeline is owned by Amplify Energy based in Houston, Texas, who will likely be held as a responsible party. The exact timeline of the oil spill remains unclear, leading to an investigation into its origins by the U.S. Coast Guard.
To meet goals outlined by the Paris Agreement, a measure of energy inefficiency called the “energy intensity” per square meter of buildings requires a 30 percent increase by 2030, according to the World Green Building Council. Climate change is at least partially considered in most building codes, as buildings around the world are designed to withstand natural disasters. Yet it is often up to individual builders and contractors to go beyond codes for improving building performance and minimizing environmental impacts. Working with architects, both old and new cities are making eco-friendly enhancements.
Photo courtesy of Freephotos.com.
By Helen Gloege ’23
Staff Writer
Since 2016, over 1 million natural disaster displacements have occurred each year in the U.S. It is predicted that the number of people who will be displaced by natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires will increase. By 2100, 6 feet of sea-level rise could force 13.1 million Americans to relocate. Climate change will soon factor into homebuyers’ and renters’ choices of where to live, but most are not warned about flood or wildfire risk in their new homes. They often pay for the resulting damages financially and beyond, in lives lost and the toll on physical and mental health that can last for years to come. The annual number of floods and wildfires that exceed $1 billion in damage has increased in recent years. Between 2015 and September 2020, there have been 28 of these disasters in the United States.
Fire prevention is on the minds of those who live in Western states, and there is political division on how best to prevent fires. The governors of California, Oregon and Washington have all indicated that climate change is the reason for the fires. President Donald Trump, however, has argued that the fires resulted from how the states manage their forests.
Scientists have pointed toward forest thinning and controlled burns as solutions. However, complicating this is the influx of people moving into rural areas or building vacation cabins in the woods, leading to populated small acreages. This means that, if controlled burns were to escape, they would most likely move onto someone’s property.
Millions of people living in the West have moved into fire-prone landscapes with little warning of risk from government, real estate agents or sellers. Between 1992 and 2015, about 60 million homes were within less than a mile of a wildfire, and that number has since increased.
Only Oregon and California require wildfire risk to be disclosed to residents. Frequently, this disclosure amounts to a few lines buried in hundreds of pages of text. In Oregon, homebuyers didn’t see the word “wildfire” mentioned in a disclosure statement recorded during a sale, only a line that said the property was in the “forestland-urban interface.” In California, there is a special form for disclosing natural hazards that states risk level, but these rules are only enforced in some parts of the state. If this applies, homeowners are responsible for clearing flammable brush and dry vegetation that would create a defensible space between the house and the fire.
California lawmakers passed a bill in 2019 that increases wildfire disclosure. This law includes that, starting in 2021, sellers must inform the buyer if they are following flammable brush rules and provide a list of potential ways their house may be susceptible to fires. Starting in 2025, sellers must say if they have completed retrofits to make the house more fire-resistant.
Even if states did want to disclose wildfire risk, the information isn’t always available. Wildfire risk mapping involves detailed modeling because fire behavior fluctuates greatly. In 2020, the U.S. Forest Service released new maps showing community risk nationwide, but the maps aren’t scaled to use for individual properties. According to NPR, “Insurance companies have done the most detailed risk analysis but most homeowners won’t find out unless the insurance rates go up or their policy is canceled.” Additionally, most existing wildfire maps don’t reflect the added risk from climate change.
The decision made to build in these fire-prone areas is usually made by developers and local officials. They are frequently guided by large-scale zoning plans that don’t take wildfire risks into account. These local governments are financially incentivized to allow new development in risky areas. Homeowners need to know wildfire risks to allow them to make informed decisions. Homebuyers will also be more likely to have evacuation plans and take fireproofing steps. They will understand that preparing for wildfires isn’t a one-time job.
Wildfire risk is not the only natural disaster with a lack of transparency. Growing research has suggested that flood risk also falls under this category, despite the growing risk due to climate change. There are an estimated 15 million properties that have a significant risk of flooding. Between 1980 and 2017, about 80 percent of presidential disaster declarations were for events that involved flooding; however, only 29 states require flood disclosure laws. The 21 states that don’t require information include some of the most vulnerable, like Florida, Virginia and Massachusetts.
Residents of states that do require flood risk disclosure frequently don’t know they live in harm’s way until it is too late. In 27 of the 29 states that require disclosure, potential buyers receive information about flood risk after they make an offer on the house. The information often isn’t clear as most states’ requirements involve a single check box if the property is on an official flood plain. This may not be an accurate indicator of flood potential, as official flood maps have hard lines between areas with high flood risk and little to no flood risk.
In addition, nearly one-third of all flood damage occurs outside of official flood plains. After Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in 2017, a law was passed requiring sellers to tell buyers if the house is in a flood zone and if they had flood insurance. Similar attempts in other states have stalled due to a fear of driving down property values. Indeed, research has suggested that disclosing flood risk may cause a decrease in property values by about 4 percent.
Future and current homebuyers may not listen to maps or data. However, the clear dissemination of information regarding fire and flood risk would allow the increasing number of homeowners moving into high-risk areas to understand the possible dangers and take precautions by purchasing flood insurance or making a house more fire-resistant.
By Catelyn Fitgerald ’23
Staff Writer
As wildfires raging across the West Coast have become increasingly common, some states have taken stock of wildfire management practices to determine how to address the threat of major fires. Recent struggles to properly prevent and manage wildfires come as no surprise to Indigenous peoples, whose land management practices were disrupted centuries ago by colonization.
Native Americans living in what today is California used to uphold a tedious burning regimen where small, controlled fires would be lit to encourage the growth of specific plants. One such tribe is the Karuk Tribe of California, who use knowledge of weather patterns and the local climate to determine when and where to light fires while posing minimal risk to vulnerable habitats and species. Plants that benefit from regular burning are often important elements of Indigenous life and culture. The North Fork Mono Tribe, for example, uses sumac branches as basket weaving material, and the burning of these plants encourages the growth of straight, flexible branches which are ideal for the craft. Reduced vegetation also leads to greater hunting success, as prey are able to move freely through the forest and are more visible to hunters.
Not only do burns serve practical purposes for Indigenous life, they are also key to the preservation of healthy ecosystems. Regular fires improve soil quality and are a part of the life cycles of some plants for which fire is a key facilitator of reproduction processes such as spore distribution. Cultural burning represents an important part of Indigenous philosophy, which is that humans are a part of how an ecosystem functions and cycles. It follows that the human relationship with the environment should enhance the ecosystems that it benefits from, rather than simply extracting resources from the environment without replenishment.
Cultural burning was a key part of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and their environment until colonizers arrived and brought with them an impression of fire as an evil entity and a regimen of fire suppression methods. In 1850, cultural burns were criminalized. When controlled burns no longer occurred at the same rate that they once had, flammable plant matter built up throughout forests in the West, causing fires to have the potential to grow quickly and cause extreme damage. Climate change adds to the favorable conditions for large fires as it worsens droughts and causes weather patterns that facilitate the spread of fires. Today, the use of fire suppression remains predominant in land management, but techniques used to fight wildfires, such as the digging of firelines or aerial dispersal of fire retardant, can pollute water resources and permanently alter physical environments.
As wildfires have grown more intense in recent years, government officials have begun to listen to Indigenous leaders and give tribes increased authority and space to engage in controlled burning. California has recently set a goal to reduce excess vegetation in 500,000 acres of forest, and several tribes are partnering with the U.S. Forest Service and land managers to achieve this through controlled burning. However, there are still barriers to cultural burning practices, as the necessary permits for burning may still be denied on the basis of air quality and liability concerns. Controlled burning also poses greater risks than it did when it was a common practice centuries ago, due to the buildup of plant matter during the practice’s cessation, which makes even small burns potentially harder to control.
Similar efforts by Indigenous peoples to increase cultural burning are gaining traction in Australia. Australia’s 2019-2020 bushfire season began earlier and was more destructive than it had been in past years. By early 2020, 46 million acres had burned, and an estimated three billion animals were killed or displaced during the span of the fires, many of which were endangered species. Indigenous communities were also affected by the fires, facing the loss of homes, community buildings and extensive damage to local ecosystems.
The history of Indigenous land management in Australia is similar to that of the U.S. Burning was commonplace among Indigenous people for thousands of years until it was slowly eradicated following Australia’s colonization in 1788.
While controlled burning is practiced in Australia today, contemporary methods are considered to be ineffective and Indigenous leaders are urging the government to allow them to restore their burning practices and engage in full-time land management. Recently, the New South Wales government formally accepted a recommendation to increase the use of cultural burns in fire prevention and published a report explaining its benefits.
As climate change is making extreme weather and natural disasters a reality around the world, national governments are beginning to listen to the urging of Indigenous leaders to incorporate cultural burns and other traditional practices into land management. A healed environment necessitates a reciprocal relationship between humans and the environment, and restoring land management practices is just one step towards the acknowledgment that resources must be cared for rather than exploited. Indigenous land management demands that we ask ourselves what we can do to support the plants, animals and ecosystems that support us.
by Dnyaneshwari Haware ’23
Staff Writer
Forest fires have become the most prevalent environmental disaster in both North and South America in recent years. Forest fires on the West Coast of the United States and in the Amazon in Brazil have engulfed acres of flora- and fauna-filled land, illustrating the urgent need for a solution. NASA, along with researchers from the University of California Irvine, has observed this phenomenon and developed a new set of fire analysis tools. The Amazon Dashboard fire monitoring tool will help governments, scientists and other parties decipher the types of fires burning, why they are burning and the chances that they will damage rainforests.
The NASA-developed tool is satellite-driven, web-based and can almost instantly categorize fires as one of the following: deforestation, understory fire, small clearing and agricultural fire or savanna/grassland fire. Made available Aug. 19, 2020, it has been deemed useful in not only spotting fires, but also encouraging governments to enforce policies and observe their effectiveness on controlling fires.
In July 2020, the government of Brazil announced a 120-day ban on intentionally setting fires in the Amazon. However, the fire analysis tool indicated there was an increase in fires in deforestation hotspots. The primary cause of these fires was not small farmers using methods like slash-and-burn farming, but rather giant blazes raging over large patches of deforested land.
Researchers have found that increased deforestation in the Amazon coupled with rising temperatures leaves behind dry and highly flammable wood. The majority of deforestation fires are intentionally started as part of a larger process to convert forest lands into use for ranching and agricultural activities. Fires starting in these areas spread further as understory fires by burning the leaf litter and other flammable materials on the forest floor of standing Amazon rainforests. This affects the most vulnerable parts of the rainforest that are not generally used to these fires, thus causing long-term damage. Understory fires could be harder to locate and, thus, spread to large areas. However, tools such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer are now being used by researchers to get satellite images through which they can spot increased smoke activity and other indicators of deforestation fires.
Environmental degradation due to prioritizing economic activity in the Amazon has resulted in damage that could be permanent. Technology has provided ways to better understand the sources of fires, but it has also been used to show that the root causes are being ignored.
by Catelyn Fitgerald ’23
Staff Writer
As climate change increasingly disrupts the environment as we know it, people across the world have had to flee to safer land. This process, referred to as climate migration, occurs when people must leave their homes as a result of rising sea levels, extreme weather events, droughts and other climate change effects. In California, the hundreds of thousands of residents evacuated to escape wildfires are indicative of a more permanent migration that may need to occur in the near future. It is estimated that up to 13 million people in the United States could be driven from their homes by the end of the century due to climate change.
Coastal communities are at the highest risk of displacement, and some state and local governments are preparing to evacuate residents of these areas before it is too late. One of these regions is New York City, which is investing $10 billion into adaptation measures such as building seawalls and constructing sand dunes to extend lower Manhattan into the East River. Not only do at-risk towns and cities need to prepare for the impact of climate change, but “safe zones,” regions that are less vulnerable to climate change, must be identified and prepared for incoming migrants.
This is not the first time the U.S. has seen a significant population movement due to climate-induced events. In the 1930s, prairies in the United States experienced a period of severe dust storms known as the Dust Bowl. This event caused a mass exodus of refugees from southern states to the West Coast, all of whom had to look for work after the storms left them economically devastated. The difference between the Dust Bowl and climate migration is that the events driving current and future movements of people are not isolated — they will only worsen as the effects of climate change accumulate.
However, not everyone in the U.S. has the option to migrate to avoid future climate disasters. As fires rage though the West Coast, farm workers continue to labor in evacuation zones amid unsafe air conditions. A large portion of these workers are non-English speaking migrants, and a lack of emergency information in other languages makes it difficult for them to know the status of fires and evacuation orders in their areas. Even in evacuation zones or areas with unsafe working conditions, many farm workers are given the option to continue working, leaving them with an impossible choice between paying their bills and staying safe.
In a Washington town, farmworkers were forced to evacuate unexpectedly, and many had to sleep outside in a city park until they could be placed in emergency housing. While most of these workers were soon placed in alternative company-provided housing, the COVID-19 pandemic caused difficulties in housing the workers safely. Without home insurance, workers whose housing was burned or damaged by the wildfires were left financially devastated. This serves as an example of what the future of climate migration may look like for those who cannot afford to leave their work or travel to find new housing. Efforts must be made to plan for the safe evacuation of low-income and undocumented people from at-risk areas.
