March 1 marked the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone National Park. It’s a magical place with spectacular natural beauty, from jagged peaks, boiling mud pots and geysers to roaming bison, elk, cougar, lynx, wolf, beaver, and other wildlife. No wonder that the park drew 4.5 million visitors in 2019 and even the outbreak of COVID-19 barely moved those numbers down the past two years. As some people would have it, that’s evidence that we need more national parks. And while that would indeed be a good thing, as park rangers remind visitors, Yellowstone is unique in so many ways.
But in one way, it isn’t. As with many of the other 62 national parks, there were people living on that land long before it was taken over. The headline on NPR’s story on Yellowstone’s anniversary noted that The Indigenous population was eventually pushed out of Yellowstone entirely. True, but a bit whitewashed. Shane Doyle, a citizen of the Crow Nation and a cultural consultant from Bozeman, Montana, would like the whole history of Yellowstone to be told without euphemisms or erasures.
He explained to Rob Hotakainen at Greenwire that the park’s 10,656-foot Mount Doane is named for Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a company commander in the 2nd U.S. Cavalry. In January 1870, two years before the park was born under President Ulysses S. Grant’s signature, he and his men were sent with three other companies to punish Mountain Chief’s band of Piegan Indians over an incident that started with a theft that sparked a beating and escalated into lethal revenge. The soldiers picked the wrong village—Mountain Chief’s band was by then in Canada—and murdered 173 Piegans of a different band. Weakened by smallpox, with the able-bodied men away on a bison hunt, the victims were mostly children, women, and old men. Doane later boasted that this was “greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by U.S. troops.”
Said Doyle, “Everyone that goes to the park should learn that story. That should be part of their understanding of how this land was set aside. You know, people had to die, and they were innocent people.” The anti-critical race theory folks aren’t going to be down with this.
However, telling that mostly unknown story and getting the mountain’s name changed to something that doesn’t glorify ethnic cleansing aren’t the only things on Doyle’s agenda for the park. “It is a great time to reboot the Yellowstone park and to rethink and recalibrate our cultural understanding of how it came to be and what it symbolizes and why it’s important,” he said. Park Superintendent Cam Sholly agrees with a lot of that and has worked to make changes to defeat past erasures. Natives will be prominent in the 150th anniversary celebrations this summer.
Doyle isn’t alone in seeking a new narrative. The idea has been percolating among Native activists for some time. But name changes and a more full telling of the history of Yellowstone and other national parks isn’t all that is on their minds. They seek more influence in park policy, on-the-ground co-management, and in some cases complete repatriation to the tribes. None of that sits well with some people. When the National Park Service announced it was renaming the Custer Battlefield National Monument the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in 1991, the hate mail flowed.
In an interview with Hotakainen, Dina Gilio-Whitaker—a descendant of the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington state who teaches American Indian studies at California State University, San Marcos—said the anniversary should serve as “a jumping-off point to talk about how we’ve evolved from that horrible history” since conservation begins with the dispossession of Natives, she said. “This is unsettling work, talking about decolonizing and unsettling the settler state. It means making people uncomfortable, inevitably, but we have to have these uncomfortable conversations.”
Last year, the brilliant Ojibwe author David Treuer wrote a piece for The Atlantic—“Return the National Parks to the Tribes”—in which he called Yellowstone a “crime scene,” leading off with a scene from 1851 when an official state militia did to the Miwok inhabitants of Yosemite what happened to the Piegans in Yellowstone. Arguing that the American West “began with war but concluded with parks,” Treuer wrote that the parks are sacred land to Natives, and “It’s time they were returned to America’s original peoples.” It’s a lengthy piece, and no excerpt can do it justice. But here’s one anyway:
Our survival hasn’t mattered only to us: As the efforts to assimilate us largely failed and we remained, mostly, in our homelands, Americans have gradually assimilated to our cultures, our worldview, and our modes of connecting to nature. The parks enshrine places, but they also emphasize and prioritize a particular way of interacting with the land. In the nation’s mythic past, the wilderness may have been a dangerous environment, something to be tamed, plowed under, cut down. But that way of relating to the land is no longer in vogue. For many Americans, our wild spaces are a solace, a refuge—cathedrals indeed. America has succeeded in becoming more Indian over the past 245 years rather than the other way around ...
Placing these lands under collective Native control would be good not just for Natives, but for the parks as well. In addition to our deep and abiding reverence for wild spaces, tribes have a long history of administering to widely dispersed holdings and dealing with layers of bureaucracy. Many reservations are checkerboarded: Large parcels of reservation land are scattered and separated from one another. And much of the land within reservation boundaries is owned by a number of different interests—private, nontribal citizens; corporations; states; the federal government—that tribal leadership balances and accommodates. Through hard practice—and in the face of centuries of legal, political, and physical struggle—Indian communities have become adept at the art of governance. And tribes have a hard-earned understanding of the ways in which land empowers the people it sustains.
The last time the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) opened bids for offshore wind leases back in 2015, the winner paid $1.06 an acre for a 160,000-acre patch of shallow ocean 15 miles south off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Construction began last November, and that lease will soon host 62 wind turbines generating electricity for 400,000 households.
Last week, BOEM held another auction. Analysts hinted that leases could go as high as $3,000 an acre and bring in $1.5 billion. They guessed wrong. The six winning bidders paid an average of $9,000 an acre for 488,000 acres, an area about half the size of Rhode Island. That’s more than any bid ever for an oil or gas drilling lease. The most expensive lease went for a bid of $1.1 billion. The leases are in the shallow New York Bight offshore between Long Island and New Jersey. Eventually, some 500 wind turbines will generate electricity in the Bight to displace the juice from fossil fuel plants along the coast. That will serve around 2 million households.
Only one purely U.S. company won a bid. Invenergy LLC and EnergyRe LLC spent $645 million for an 84,000-acre lease about 35 miles off the New Jersey coast. Foreign companies dominate the offshore wind industry because, with a few exceptions, U.S. companies failed to get serious in the 1980s about development of both onshore and offshore turbines. Ranked No. 3, only GE Renewables has a spot in the roster of the world’s top 10 turbine manufacturers.
Currently, Europe has installed more than 5,300 offshore wind turbines. In the Asia-Pacific there are another 4,200 offshore turbines, with China leading and installing new turbines at breakneck speed. By contrast, the United States has just five turbines in the ocean off Rhode Island and two off Virginia. But proposals for thousands of turbines in the Atlantic Ocean are working their way through the approval process in Washington, D.C. The Biden administration wants to install 30,000 megawatts of wind capacity offshore by 2030. That would generate enough electricity for about 10 million households. Federal agencies are working together to make that a reality. One factor driving these installations is state targets for renewable energy. New York has set a goal of 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2035. New Jersey’s goal for the same date is 7,500 megawatts. Those two alone account for more than half the Biden goal, though the federal and state deadlines don’t mesh.
The Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council said in its latest Offshore Wind Report 2021, “Offshore wind has the biggest growth potential of any renewable energy technology, but the policy environment needs to improve rapidly for offshore wind to reach international net zero targets.” Offshore wind today is only 2% of what the world needs to hit net zero by 2050.
weekly eco-video
In case you’re not up for reading all 3,675 pages of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest climate report or of the plethora of write-ups about it, here’s a condensed video version. If you want to read my take on the report, you can do so here.
short takes
The investigative reporting site Reveal found that Amazon counts the emissions of stuff it sells differently from its business peers. When Target sells a box of something, it includes the emissions that went into making that something as part of its carbon footprint. But when somebody buys a box of the same something on Amazon, the company doesn’t add the emissions that went into making it, nor the emissions a product—say, a television—generates when it is used. The only time Amazon includes such emissions is when a product wears the Amazon brand. That’s 1% of what it sells. In other words, the company counts 99% of what it sells as having zero emissions.
Over the past two decades, under pressure from investors and activists, thousands of companies have agreed to disclose their carbon footprints to a nonprofit organization named CDP (originally known as the Carbon Disclosure Project).
Amazon had been shamed with an F grade for failing to disclose until this past year, when it submitted to CDP’s questionnaire for the first time. But unlike the majority of companies pressured by investors to disclose, Amazon asked that its report not be shared publicly.
Amazon has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2040. Easily achievable with its perverted tally.
That was the headline that the Pew Research Center put on the story about its latest survey. For its coverage, ClimateWire chose “Poll: Most Americans don't back 100% renewables.” Both these are accurate, but the positive versus negative angle was stark.
Conducted before the Russia invasion of Ukraine that has rattled world energy markets and boosted oil prices at a time when they were already rising, the survey found that nearly 72% of Americans (87% of Democrats) think the federal government should encourage production of electricity from wind and solar sources, and 69% favor the U.S. prioritizing a drive toward carbon neutrality by 2050. But only 31% think oil, coal, and natural gas should be phased out completely. Sixty-seven percent say future energy should come from using a mix of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources.
There’s a partisan divide, but not as sharp in one area as might be expected. A complete phase-out is favored by only 49% of Democrats, while 50% favor a mix of sources. Even among Democrats identifying as liberal, a complete phase-out only gets approval from 63%. This, of course, reflects a poor understanding of the climate crisis, something exacerbated by more than three decades of fossil fuel interests paying shills and funding “think-tanks” to create doubt about what climatologists are telling us.
The GOP is more deeply split than Democrats, with 66% of those calling themselves liberal or moderate Republicans in favor of moving toward carbon neutrality and just 33% of conservative Republicans saying so. Those favoring a complete phase-out barely move the needle.
Partisans generally agree that the U.S. should do at least as much as other countries with large economies in this area. But about half of Republicans (51%) think the U.S. is currently doing more than others, while about half of Democrats (49%) think the U.S. is currently doing less than other countries.
Most surveyed Americans say transitioning to renewable energy production would make energy job opportunities in their local area better than worse (56% vs. 20%); 23% do not think it would have much of an effect.
Pew asked other questions as well. For instance, 39% of the homeowners in the survey say they have seriously considered installing solar panels in the past 12 months, and 8% say they already have installed some. That’s up from 6% in 2019, but the share who say they have given installation serious consideration is down seven percentage points.
Karen McVeigh at The Guardian reports:
World leaders, environment ministers and other representatives from 173 countries have agreed to develop a legally binding treaty on plastics, in what many described a truly historic moment.
The resolution, agreed at the UN environment assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, calls for a treaty covering the “full lifecycle” of plastics from production to disposal, to be negotiated over the next two years. It has been described by the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) as the most important multilateral environmental deal since the Paris climate accord in 2015.
Approximately 7bn of the estimated 9.2bn [metric] tonnes of plastics produced between 1950 and 2017 are now waste. About 75% of that waste is either deposited in landfills or accumulating in terrestrial and aquatic environments and ecosystems.
To dig out of the economic mess imposed by COVID-19, the world’s largest economies spent gobs of money to keep everything from collapsing. Much of the money went for welfare, health care, shoring up wages, keeping locked-down businesses out of bankruptcy, and the like. But in a new study published in Nature this week, researchers Jonas M. Nahm, Scot M. Miller, and Johannes Urpelainen found that the wealthy G20 nations’ individual promises to also spend on climate action weren’t kept.
Just $860 billion (6% of the total) went to projects and programs that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as installing renewable power plants and electrifying vehicle fleets. To rub salt into that wound, 3% went into programs likely to boost emissions, such as subsidizing fossil fuels, including coal. That, the authors say, hasn’t changed as these nations have moved on from economic rescue into recovery as businesses reopened. The authors write:
Today’s green investments are proportionately less than those that followed previous recessions. After the global financial crisis in 2007–09, for example, 16% of global stimulus spending was directed at emissions cuts (or about $520 billion of $3.25 trillion in total)1. If a similar share had been committed today, the total would be $2.2 trillion — more than double what has been pledged towards reducing emissions ...
Little has changed since the start of pandemic. In the first six months of 2020, green recovery measures accounted for 5% of overall stimulus spending. That rose to 12% in the second half of the year, largely because the European Union passed its large emissions-reducing spending package. The share fell back to 3% in 2021.
Green Quote
“There has been the assumption that, ‘Well, if we cannot control climate change, we’ll just let it go and adapt to it’ ... this is certainly a very illusionary approach.” —Hans-Otto Pörtner, a marine biologist in Germany who helped coordinate the IPPC’s second installment of its Sixth Assessment report on climate released Monday.
ecopinion
This is how we defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats, by Bill McKibben. After Hitler invaded the Sudetenland, America turned its industrial prowess to building tanks, bombers, and destroyers. Now, we must respond with renewables. “This is not a ‘war for oil and gas’ in the sense that too many of America’s Middle East misadventures might plausibly be described. But it is a war underwritten by oil and gas, a war whose most crucial weapon may be oil and gas, a war we can’t fully engage because we remain dependent on oil and gas. If you want to stand with the brave people of Ukraine, you need to find a way to stand against oil and gas.”
A Sicker, Poorer, and Less Abundant World, by Robinson Meyer. “An IPCC report from several years ago found that human activity now shapes 70 percent of the ice-free surface of the globe. Nature is running out of places to hide. So climate change will make us pay. But it will also deplete the unquantifiable inheritance that is the Earth’s beauty and diversity, and bankrupt us in more ways than we can know. Given that climate change is a solvable problem, one that the United States can make a large dent in on the cheap … isn’t it time to start?”
Conflict and Climate Change: Is This the New Normal? by Simon Whalley. “The egregious situation that has been inflicted on the people of Ukraine by the kleptocratic egotist Vladimir Putin has provided yet another opportunity for humanity to change course. The man is funded by fossil fuel giant Gazprom, who provide 36% of his budget, and the world clearly needs to end its dependence on petro state authoritarians, including Saudi Arabia, who are waging a war against Yemen with U.S. oil dollars and western weapons. Unfortunately, in reaction to the Ukraine situation, fossil fuel companies plan to expand production elsewhere to take up the slack from Gazprom when we all know that the answer is a rapid transition to renewables.”
How a new Supreme Court case endangers the New Deal, the Great Society, and Obamacare, by Ian Milhauser. The Supreme Court’s Republican supermajority will hear a case about the Commerce Clause. God help us. “The Supreme Court will hear four cases challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 1978 law enacted to prevent states from breaking up American Indian families and removing children from their indigenous cultures. The four cases will likely be consolidated under the name Haaland v. Brackeen. But the most alarming of these four cases is Texas v. Haaland, because that case targets a provision of the Constitution that is the foundation of much of the federal government’s power. In the worst-case scenario for, well, pretty much everyone who doesn’t share Clarence Thomas or Neil Gorsuch’s policy preferences, the Texas case could do considerable violence to a wide range of federal laws — including the ban on child labor, the ban on whites-only lunch counters, the Affordable Care Act, and nearly all federal laws governing the workplace.”
Don’t let Putin distract America from its climate change imperative, by Manish Bapna. “The world has become a more dangerous place in the wake of Russia’s aggression. We won’t make it safer by increasing our dependence on fossil fuels — at home or abroad. As the climate assault tightens its grip worldwide, acting now to cut carbon pollution will help to foster a more peaceful and equitable world where people everywhere are healthier, more prosperous and more secure.”
GREEN TWEET
half a Dozen other things to read
In Search of Panama’s Elusive Spider Monkeys by Matt Stirn. The Azuero spider monkey, a subspecies of the Central American spider monkey, is endemic to Panama’s Azuero Peninsula. Widespread deforestation and plant poisoning in the region has eliminated food resources and nearly wiped out the population.
Before Invasion, Ukraine’s Lithium Wealth Was Drawing Global Attention, by Hiroko Tabuchi. Chinese and Australian investors had been lining up to explore for lithium, a metal that is critical to batteries and the world’s transition to clean energy. “Ukrainian researchers have speculated that the country’s eastern region holds close to 500,000 tons of lithium oxide, a source of lithium, a mineral critical to the production of the batteries that power electric vehicles. That preliminary assessment, if it holds, would make Ukraine’s lithium reserves one of the largest in the world.”
Investor-owned utilities underestimate potential costs of carbon, climate change, Deloitte finds, by Emma Penrod. “Many investor-owned utilities have under-estimated costs of failing to accelerate their decarbonization efforts. Based on public filings, utilities anticipate a price of carbon in the range of $3-55 per metric ton by 2030, and $60-120 per metric ton by 2050. However, outside estimates put the price of carbon as high as $160 per metric ton by 2030 if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The more action is delayed, the more potential costs to utilities will likely escalate.”
Amsterdam Plans the Netherlands’ First Modern-Day Wooden Neighborhood, by
Feargus O’Sullivan. “Amsterdam confirmed plans this week to build an entire neighborhood out of wood, a renewable material that the region hopes will be key in reducing building emissions.
The new quarter, dubbed the first such neighborhood in a Dutch city in several centuries, reflects a broader commitment by municipalities in Greater Amsterdam in 2020 to ensure that at least 20% of new construction uses wood as its primary material by 2025. The move, the city argues, will do much to reduce the emissions of the construction sector, and possibly provide a model for future wooden developments.”
Climate Negotiators Are Seriously Underestimating Methane’s Warming Power, by Fred Pearce. “A sudden surge in methane emissions is threatening to undermine international efforts to halt planetary warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. And scientists are warning that the task of holding back the surge is being made worse because climate negotiators are underestimating by a factor of three the warming effect that methane will have over the critical quarter-century we have left to reach net-zero emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement.”
ecobits