The Lakota say "Mní wičhóni"—“water is life.” Drought is certainly proving the truth of that. Since 2000, 1.5 billion people have been affected by drought, according to the United Nations, which calculates the economic loss at $124 billion. In many places, it’s getting worse. From East Africa to Brazil to the western half of the United States and parts of the Midwest, the drought is worldwide, with every continent but Antarctica being affected, though not of course all regions. Consequences run from annoying to grave, from the threat of famine in Somalia to the reduction or cut-off of hydroelectric power and worsening wildfires in the American West.
Droughts come and go, but because of climate change, scientists believe that much of the megadrought-ridden American West and Southwest is headed for a more arid future that could last for centuries or more. The last time it was this dry in the region was 1200 years ago, so fierce in its impact on the environment that Ancestral Pueblo people living near what is now the Arizona-New Mexico border may have been pushed into cannibalism, according to evidence studied by some archeologists. Probably we won’t be eating each other. But drought is having impacts on food production.
Ranked No. 1 in the nation, California’s annual agricultural output brings in 40% more income than second-place Iowa. But as the drought continues, production levels in both states are certain to fall. In California, levels at many of the big reservoirs are 50% below historic averages. Snowpack is at 12% of normal. Last July, Gov. Gavin Newsom sought a 15% reduction in water usage by asking people to voluntarily conserve. But as measured in March, usage was up 19% from levels two years ago. That contrasts with the state’s January-March “rainy season,” which was exceedingly dry. Newsom has warned that statewide water restrictions may be imposed. About half the state is already under local water rules. In parts of three counties in Southern California, restrictions now mandate just one day a week of outdoor watering, a limit officials hope will cut water usage by 30% and that has spurred some of the 6 million affected residents to complain.
But parched landscaping is nothing compared with what farmers face in the Sacramento Valley. In the 1930s, the federal government arrived to build the Central Valley Project’s Shasta Dam to supply water to the valley. This cost the indigenous Winnemem Wintu people 90% of their land, something that happened to several tribes throughout the West as the feds got heavily involved in water management. Come the 1960s, and the water supply was guaranteed to the valley’s irrigation districts under federal agreements even in the driest years. But the drought is forcing valley landowners and irrigation districts to give up the water they once were assured of getting. As Rachel Becker writes at CalMatters (via Grist):
Now, this region, which has relied on the largest portion of federally-managed water flowing from Lake Shasta, is wrestling with what to do as its deal with the federal government no longer protects them.
All relying on the lake’s supplies will make sacrifices: Many are struggling to keep their cattle and crops. Refuges for wildlife also will have to cope with less water from Lake Shasta, endangering migratory birds. And the eggs of endangered salmon that depend on cold water released from Shasta Dam are expected to die by the millions.
For decades, water wars have pitted growers and ranchers against nature, north against south. But in this new California, where everyone is suffering, no one is guaranteed anything.
One thing we are guaranteed is that global warming is going to take the global temperature higher than 1.5 C. That means more aridity for about half the Earth’s land area. And that means more wildfires, water scarcity, and desertification. Water conservation should always have been a priority even without droughts. But as those March usage figures illustrate, the only thing that really works is a mandate. Adapting to the changing climate’s impacts on water availability with methods like regenerative agriculture and wastewater recycling are just two of many new approaches that should be ramped up. In the past, federal water management in the West has focused on increasing supply. With that now profoundly constrained, more attention needs to be paid to reducing demand, not just in California but across the whole planet. Nothing about that will be easy.
WEEKLY ECO VIDEO
You may have known how smart crows and other corvids are for a long time. They’ve certainly gotten a lot of attention for their brainpower. But about three-quarters of the way through, the narrator of this video discusses how their lengthy upbringing may be a big part of the reason for their striking intelligence. I wonder what this says about their dinosaur ancestors.
green briefs
As the climate crisis continues to alter our future and the fallout from the war in Ukraine boosts energy prices and threatens efforts around the planet to prevent, ameliorate, and adapt to various aspects of the crisis, a survey by Greenberg Research shows American attitudes about the situation has shifted since a year ago. Asked which concept is “more fundamental,” the “climate crisis” or “energy crisis,” a majority of 52% chose the climate crisis, with just 41% choosing the energy crisis. Since last June, the percentage approving of actions to tackle global warming has risen from 44% to 52%.
Stanley B. Greenberg writes that “The desire to prioritize the climate crisis also holds for those most likely to vote in a midterm election and in the battleground states and districts.” That sounds encouraging for Democrats in a year when negative assessments are the predominant take on Democratic chances for keeping their thin majorities in the House and Senate come November. Greenberg notes that “America is becoming somewhat less polarized on climate change. A big majority of moderate and a plurality of conservative Republicans now believe climate change requires major action and is worth the cost.”
Unfortunately, the survey wasn’t taken on the floor of Congress where, whatever views elected Republicans have about climate, the polarization between them and Democrats about taking the necessary corrective actions remains what it’s been for years, with Republicans blocking almost anything on climate that would have a significant impact. At the heart of their opposition is continued support for extracting and burning fossil fuels, not just as a stopgap measure to deal with energy shortages and prices resulting from the war and sanctions on Russia, but as a continuing element of U.S. energy production for many decades to come. That, of course, is exactly what climatologists say we must not do.
Chris Woolston at Knowable Magazine has written a fascinating article about studies of bear hibernation that may eventually unlock treatments for Alzheimer’s, better protect people such as stroke victims in intensive care, prevent osteoporosis, and perhaps someday even let space travelers on long cruises in the solar system hibernate for months on limited oxygen, food, water, and exercise. One area of study is looking into how climate shifts may alter hibernation habits, even spurring bears in some regions to give up on it as all but pregnant bears in Greece and Croatia have already done. For those bears that continue to hibernate, the change in timing of the seasons could present serious health problems, scientists speculate.
Many creatures hibernate, but only a few mammals do. Besides bears, the list includes lots of rodents like dormice and ground squirrels, some amphibians and some lemurs, bats, and marmosets. But they are all relatively small, a few pounds at most. Bears are the biggest hibernators by far, an adult male grizzly can weigh in at 600-800 pounds. And bears do hibernation differently than the others.
For instance, Arctic ground squirrels can temporarily drop their body temperature to -3°C (27°F) without freezing to death. But bears slow their metabolism to a crawl without losing much heat, according to Brian Barnes, a zoologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and his colleagues who 10 years ago conducted a study of black bears in sensor-rich artificial dens.
Still, hibernating bears aren’t just resting away the winter, Barnes says. They truly shut down, completely resetting the parameters of their daily lives. “They go in, turn around two or three times, lie down, and they stay that way for six months,” he says, and they only get up to switch sides every few days. “Hibernation defines the outer limits of what’s possible in terms of mammalian function.” Barnes notes that sow bears often nurse twins or triplets during hibernation without eating or drinking, tapping into their own fat and water stores for the sake of their cubs.
For humans, that level of lethargy would come at a cost. Whether we were recovering in a hospital bed or riding a rocket to Mars, our muscles would wither and our bones would thin after months of inactivity. Bears have no such problem. Part of the secret to their strong bones is just now coming to light. In 2021, Barnes and colleagues published a study showing that hibernating bears are able to shut down genes involved with the breakdown of bone.
Much fallout from the war in Ukraine—like constraints on food exports, soaring energy prices, and damage to the environment—has gotten extensive media attention. But there are a host of matters being impacted in relative obscurity. One is the harm to climate science in Russia, which has an effect on the global scientific community. Decades of cooperation took place even during the depths of the Cold War. Fifty years ago, in 1972, the U.S. and Soviet Union signed an environmental agreement on the exchange of data, equipment, and joint publications, write Katja Doose, Alexander Vorbrugg, and Angelina Davydova at Climate Home News. But now, because of European Union sanctions that have suspended Russian participation in joint research and service on national research councils, scientific projects are suffering.
As the Economist reports, Russian and Western scientists are no longer collaborating in the Arctic, where climate change is moving faster than any place else on the planet. This has thrown research into chaos. One example of the harm this causes is epitomized by Paul Aspholm of the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research:
Dr Aspholm has spent 30 years studying the wildlife that inhabits the Arctic lands where Norway and Russia march. He has needed Russian scientists’ assistance for almost everything he has done. Together, they have kept track of species ranging from the area’s native brown bears to the invasive pink salmon that are driving out local trout and salmon, and which die in such numbers when they spawn that bacteria feeding on their corpses turn the rivers toxic and so kill other animals which live in or drink those waters. They had planned this autumn to start tracking the migration of elk along a narrow “superhighway” through the tundra, but the war has put paid to that.
Another example is Sander Veraverbeke, a climatologist at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He studies Arctic fires and was ready to get back to his fieldwork in northern Siberia after two years lost because of COVID-19. During that time, Siberia has been scorched with record numbers of wildfires, a situation that cries out for data that hasn’t been gathered. A key area of research is permafrost, which is becoming much less perma as the Arctic warms. Because melting permafrost holds the potential to release vast amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane and carbon dioxide into the already overburdened atmosphere, intensive study provides knowledge essential to understanding the possible impacts on climate.
Even if the war and sanctions end, it may not be all that easy to restore cooperation. Dag Olsen at Arctic University notes that 200 of his Russian colleagues signed a letter in March supporting the invasion of Ukraine. He says, “It will not be easy. There is absolutely no trust.”
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ecopinion
Biden’s Main Legislative Accomplishment Is in One Man’s Hands by Dorothy Slater at The American Prospect. Mitch Landrieu is overseeing the bipartisan infrastructure law. His record does not inspire confidence in how that might be handled. Landrieu is now poised to funnel billions of dollars in infrastructure spending into other hands like his. We need more scrutiny into how that is playing out. Because if the past is precedent, then his preference will be to use the infrastructure money to privatize public goods, enable fossil fuel expansion, and turn a blind eye to the people who are steeling themselves for the next school shooting, the next deadly hurricane, and the next pandemic.
Food Price Spikes Are About Much More than Ukraine by Jennifer Clapp at Civil Eats. Today, a new generation is facing mounting food insecurity sparked by the third food price crisis in 15 years. But this crisis has not to this point been caused by a lack of food. The issue is getting it to the people who need it, at a price that’s affordable. [...] As we detail in the latest report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), the world’s food security is built on a house of cards—the whole edifice can tumble when one card falls. The concentrated nature of the global food system creates vulnerabilities, which can have cascading consequences when there are disruptions to any part of it. These economies of scale might be designed for profitable efficiency, when things operate according to plan. But they’re neither stable, resilient, nor dependable in the face of risks, especially for vulnerable people.
Our Overdependence on Methane Gas is Costly: We Need Policymakers to Pass Clean Energy Legislation Now by Ashtin Massie at the Union for Concerned Scientists. Rising prices of methane gas used for power and heating, exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are contributing to soaring electric and heating bills across the country. This is exacerbating a crisis in energy insecurity that has only worsened during the pandemic, leaving many more families struggling to pay their bills, facing disconnection, or already shut off from their utility service. Many of my colleagues have already described the various ways we’ve gotten into this elevated fuel price mess, why doubling down on fossil fuels at this moment is a horrible idea, and why doing so would not improve our current or future economic, geopolitical or environmental problems. I’m adding my voice to the chorus by focusing on an underlying issue of the affordability crisis—the utility-driven overreliance on methane gas used to produce electricity and heat—and the actions policymakers need to take to combat this practice and provide relief for U.S. families.
eco-quote
“The U.S. oil and gas sector has consistently argued for policies that allow for new or increased fossil fuel exploration, and against policies that would reduce demand. But what’s changed in recent months is the intensity of that message. The sector has quickly mobilized around the war in Ukraine and high gas prices to promote the need for more ‘American-made energy,’ often relying on potentially misleading or questionable claims.” — Faye Holder, program manager for InfluenceMap, a corporate watchdog.
half a dozen other things to read
We cannot adapt our way out of climate crisis, warns leading scientist by Fiona Harvey at The Guardian. Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy in the US and professor at Texas Tech University, said the world was heading for dangers unseen in the 10,000 years of human civilization, and efforts to make the world more resilient were needed but by themselves could not soften the impact enough. “People do not understand the magnitude of what is going on,” she said. “This will be greater than anything we have ever seen in the past. This will be unprecedented. Every living thing will be affected.”
Did Joe Manchin block climate action to benefit his financial interests? by Chris McGreal at The Guardian.. “For years, Manchin has justified voting against curbs on the burning of fossil fuels and other measures to tackle the climate crisis on the grounds that they were bad for West Virginia, with its economy and culture rooted in coal mining,” McGreal explains. “Last year, he used his vote in a hung U.S. Senate to block President Biden’s $3.5 trillion economic plan in part because he said he was ‘very, very disturbed’ that its climate provisions would kill the coal industry.” Manchinearned “nearly half a million dollars” from his company, Enersystems, in 2020 and $5.6 million “over the previous decade.” Christopher Regan, former vice-chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party, told The Guardian, “What’s he doing? Is this for West Virginia? Or is this just strictly for his own narrow pecuniary interest?”
Plastic Recycling Doesn’t Work and Will Never Work by Judith Enck and Jan Dell at The Atlantic. Americans support recycling. We do too. But although some materials can be effectively recycled and safely made from recycled content, plastics cannot. Plastic recycling does not work and will never work. The United States in 2021 had a dismal recycling rate of about 5% for post-consumer plastic waste, down from a high of 9.5% in 2014, when the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled—even though much of it wasn’t. Recycling in general can be an effective way to reclaim natural material resources. The U.S.’ high recycling rate of paper, 68%, proves this point. The problem with recycling plastic lies not with the concept or process but with the material itself.
In a Bid to Save Its Coal Industry, Wyoming Has Become a Test Case for Carbon Capture, but Utilities are Balking at the Pricetag by Nicholas Kusnetz at Inside Climate News. As many other states and nations have tried to wean themselves off fossil fuels, Wyoming has done the opposite: In 2020, Gov. Mark Gordon signed a law—the first in the nation—that requires electrical utilities to generate some of their power from coal plants fitted with carbon capture equipment. [...] But two years later, Wyoming may be no closer to willing this coal-friendly climate solution into being. In March, the utilities covered by the law submitted filings to regulators saying that carbon capture was not economically feasible. Retrofitting their plants would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, at the least, they said, forcing them to raise customers’ electricity bills. Beyond that, the filings said operating carbon capture equipment could spike water use at the coal plants and increase emissions of some air pollutants, as well as solid and liquid waste.
‘Grolar Bears’: Is Cross-Breeding to Protect Vulnerable Species From Climate Change a Good Idea? By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes at EcoWatch. Some scientists have explored the idea of intentionally cross-breeding species in order to help them adapt to the climate crisis. “Given the pace and severity of climate change, conservationists are increasingly considering interventions such as assisted colonization and assisted evolution to improve species’ resilience to climate disruption,” wrote Claire Hirashiki, a researcher with the UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability, and colleagues in the introduction to the paper, “Concern over hybridization risks should not preclude conservation interventions,” published last year in the journal Conservation Science and Practice. These conservationists see hybridization as a way to help give “an evolutionary head start” to certain vulnerable species, reported The Guardian.
They Pick Food All Day, But Many Farmworkers Go to Sleep Hungry by Astra Lincoln at In These Times. Immigrant farmworkers in the U.S. often live in food deserts without access to the fruits and vegetables they spend their days harvesting. In 2020, when the pandemic began, organizer Samantha Guerrero drove across the low, parched hills of Idaho’s Canyon County to a neighborhood she calls Farmway Village. First built as a labor camp, the low-income housing complex has become home to many of the county’s agricultural employees. Guerrero had planned to distribute information about the new virus. But what she found wasn’t a lack of information; it was a lack of good groceries. She’s been working to change that ever since. For immigrant farmworkers, food is in short supply: “The only thing close to that place is a gas station,” Guerrero told me. “That means they only have access to the processed foods sold there.” Guerrero works for the nonprofit Idaho Organization of Resource Councils, which is trying to change things. Recently, it started distributing culturally relevant foods, like masa for corn tortillas, and some local, organic farmers let volunteers glean produce like tomatoes and pumpkins to redistribute.
ecobits
• AstroForge aims to succeed where other asteroid mining companies have failed • The Internet needs to stop getting excited by vaporware EVs • China Coal Expansions Threaten Higher Methane Levels Worldwide • Parents Demand Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty 'For the Sake of the Children' • The Oil Industry’s Dishonest Effort to Wring Profits from Pain • Spring floods delay planting, imperil crop insurance • US Navy aims for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030 • A family of termites has been traversing the world's oceans for millions of years • Biden Administration to Cut Costs for Wind and Solar Energy Projects