Earth Matters is a Daily Kos compendium of wonderful, disturbing, and hideous news briefs about the environment.
• Installations of solar and wind soar will obliterate previous record: The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects another 37 gigawatts of electricity-generating power will be installed this year by the solar and wind industries. That is more than double the previous record of 17 gigawatts. In April, the EIA had reduced its earlier projections for the year to 32 gigawatts because of the pandemic. Installations this year are close to an even split between utility-scale solar and wind. All told, the United States has about 1,100 gigawatts of installed electricity-generating capacity from all energy sources. Just over 10% of this consists of non-hydroelectric renewables. The question is whether the industries can maintain this pace. Energy Innovation, a think tank dedicated to a clean energy transition, calculated earlier this year that reducing greenhouse gas emissions 90% by 2035 would require adding 40 gigawatts of renewables every year for the next 10 years. One reason for the ramped up installations this year is that the investor-friendly federal wind production tax expires in December and the investment tax credit for solar is being phased to a lower level. Companies want to get projects built under the wire to get those credits. The impact of the tax credit changes on 2021 and beyond is unknown, but historically when Congress has allowed the credits first adopted in 1992 to expire, solar and wind installations have fallen, sometimes significantly. Mike O'Boyle, who leads electricity research at Energy Innovation, told Benjamin Storrow at EnergyWire: "It is still worth celebrating. What I am worried about is can we replicate that success consistently, not to hit the record one time, but do it over and over again?"
• Inspired by devices on “The Wire” and “Breaking Bad,” researchers create decoy turtle eggs to nab poachers: Kim Williams-Guillén at the conservation organization Paso Pacifico designed the eggs as part of an effort to protect endangered green and olive ridley sea turtles from traffickers who snatch the eggs from beach nests and sell them to restaurants, bars, and even door-to-door to individuals, adding to pressures driving the creatures toward extinction. Nicknamed the InvestEggator, each decoy is fitted with a transmitter in a manner similar to that used to track drug dealers using tennis balls on the long-running TV crime drama “The Wire.” According to a study in Current Biology, the decoys were mixed with real turtle eggs in 101 nests on four Costa Rican beaches. About a quarter of them were stolen, and some were discarded on the beach, their deception apparently uncovered by sharp-eyed poachers. A few did what they were supposed to. Most of the trafficked decoys stayed in the local area. But in one instance, the decoy stopped responding in Cariari, a town 43 kilometers from the beach where it was taken. Photographs of the dissected decoy were sent to the researchers along with details about where it was bought and how many real eggs were in the purchased batch, all useful information for the local authorities intent on stopping traffickers.
• YouTube series amplifies Latino voices in the environmental movement: A recent poll found that Latinos (69%) and African Americans (57%) are more alarmed or concerned about environmental issues than whites (49%). That isn’t all that surprising given that people of color are disproportionately harmed by environmental pollution and certain impacts of the climate crisis even though the U.S. environmental movement is heavily white and its leadership is overwhelmingly white and male. But young climate activists of color are changing the movement. Crystal Mojica, a communications specialist at Greenpeace whose family is Colombian and Puerto Rican, and Valentina Stackl, another Greenpeace communications specialist whose family is from Chile, wanted their organization and others to engage Latinos more. The two women created a bilingual YouTube series Planeta G. (Planeta is Spanish for “planet,” and the “G” is for Greenpeace.) They highlight the work of Latino environmentalists and at the same time show the racial and cultural diversity found within Latin American communities inside and outside the U.S. “Latinx people play an integral part in the environmental movement, and it’s about time our experiences are brought to the forefront,” they wrote in a press release about the series.
• Emissions of nitrous oxide are rising fast on a worst-case trajectory: Fertilizer is a leading culprit in the emission of nitrous oxide, a climate super-pollutant hundreds of times more potent than carbon dioxide. Those emissions are rising faster than scientists once thought and the rate is consistent with a worst-case trajectory for climate change, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.
• Trump regime “sitting on” Fifth National Climate Assessment: The assessments are mandated by Congress to be generated at least once every four years, which means work on the 2022 report needs to be underway now. But the White House has yet to put out a call for scientists to get going with it. “It’s not being approved to go out, so therefore they’re just sitting on it,” Donald Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois and co-author of the fourth assessment, told ClimateWire. That report released in 2018 laid out the case starkly. "Earth's climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities." Donald Trump tried to keep the fourth assessment out of the news by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving in 2018.
• Prince William recruits celebs to judge £1 million Earthshot environmental prize: The grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and second in line to the British throne, Prince William now takes his place alongside other royal family members, including his grandfather Prince Philip and his father Prince Charles, who have campaigned on environmental issues for decades. Five Earthshot Prizes of 1 million pounds each ($1.29 million) will be presented every year for the next decade. Categories are protecting and restoring nature, cleaner air, reviving oceans, waste reduction, and climate change. Some dozen celebrities will decide who gets the prizes. They include Brazilian footballer Dani Alves, Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, naturalist David Attenborough, Queen Rania of Jordan, Australian actor Cate Blanchett, Colombian singer Shakira, and former U.N. Climate Chief Christiana Figueres.
• Climate crisis could mean these six toss-up contests go Democratic: In the 2018 midterm elections, districts most worried about the climate voted overwhelmingly for Democratic House candidates, and the least-worried ones voted for Republicans. The chart below shows how big the partisan gap is. A decade ago, there was a 36-point gap between Democrats and Republicans over whether climate change was a major threat to U.S. well-being. The latest Pew Research Center survey this April found a 57-point gap. With this in mind, the online environmental magazine Grist looked at this year’s congressional contests and found six toss-up states where climate could provide the tipping point for a Democratic victory. The districts: New York’s 11th District (72% worried) with Max Rose (D) v. Nicole Malliotakis (R); Florida’s 26th District (69% worried) with Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D) v. Carlos Gimenez (R); New Jersey’s 2nd District (67% worried) with Jeff Van Drew (who switched from Democrat to Republican in 2019) v. Amy Kennedy (D); California’s 21st District (65% worried), with T.J. Cox (D) v. David Valadao (R) who lost to Cox in 2018; Pennsylvania’s 10th District (63% worried) with Eugene DePasquale (D) running against Scott Perry (R); and Texas’ 24th District (62% worried) with Candace Valenzuela (D) v. Beth Van Duyne (R).
• Americans are driving less now, and that may become permanent: When COVID-19 struck, from February to April on a seasonally adjusted basis the number of vehicle miles traveled in the United States fell 41%. By July, the last month we have data on the subject from the Federal Highway Administration, vehicle miles were still down 13% over February. A study from the accounting and consulting firm KPMG predicted vehicle miles traveled will in years to come settle down at about 90% of pre-pandemic levels. Per capita, they were already down 5% over the mid-2000s before the coronavirus struck. The indication is that in the U.S. we may have reached peak driving.