Climate Point: Nissan dumps Trump, and Nevada is spared from bombing

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and environment news from around the Golden State and the country. In Palm Springs, Calif., I’m Mark Olalde.

I've unfortunately never reported from Nevada, but from what I've read, it's safe to say many Silver State residents don't take kindly to the U.S. military dropping bombs on it. They received some welcome news recently, as the National Defense Authorization Act, which annually throws buckets of money at the military, didn't include an expansion of a huge bombing range into a nearby wildlife refuge. It's been a contentious subject for years, and it looks like environmental protections will continue. Jacob Fischler of States Newsroom has the story.

I'm about to take several days off to go wander the Mojave Desert, so, sadly, you'll have to ever so briefly go without Climate Point. To tide you over, I'm jamming this edition full of even more news than normal. Here it is ...

MUST-READ STORIES

No funds for you. In their bids to win Western states where conservation issues don't fall along straightforward liberal-conservative lines, politicians from President Donald Trump to Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., tried to create environmental bona fides by passing the Great American Outdoors Act. Both lost their races, but the act permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund, albeit with money from oil and gas. "But post-election, the Trump administration’s support for the LWCF seems to have dried up," New Mexico Political Report writes. Every proposed project in New Mexico was denied funding, a move panned by conservationists and Democrats as political retribution.

Some tricky accounting. Not all methods of addressing climate change are created equal, and one widely embraced, market-based solution — carbon credits — has hit another bump. Bloomberg reports that the Nature Conservancy, a massive green group, is peddling arguably worthless credits. The point of these particular tools is to offset corporations' carbon footprints by putting up money to conserve important ecosystems such as forests. The Nature Conservancy, which pulled in $932 million in revenue last year, appears to be enrolling "its own well-protected properties in carbon-offset projects," thereby defeating the purpose. That hasn't stopped companies like Disney, BlackRock and JPMorgan from snapping up these offsets.

Where's the leaf? Drawing on a study from Tufts University, Civil Eats is out with a new look into the world of urban farming in a year when the pandemic has exposed flaws in the world's food supply chain. The question at hand: Can cities source food locally? "While generalizations are difficult, there was one big takeaway: In all regions, shifting to lower-meat diets increased the potential to localize food production," they write.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

Getting to 100. California is aiming to source nothing but zero-carbon emission electricity by 2045, but is that ambitious timeframe doable? Utility Dive is out with an interesting look into the challenges and possibilities lying before the plan. Among the findings — regulators must address issues of renewables' reliability and storage, although the pathway is still "technically achievable."

Locking in pollution. Trump only has about six more weeks in office, but he appears to be using every one of them to continue his push to deregulate regulations or halt new rules, The Washington Post reports. On Monday, the EPA officially declined to toughen a rule governing soot, "despite mounting evidence linking air pollution to lethal outcomes in respiratory illnesses." Documents the newspaper obtained also showed that EPA officials ignored advice from their own staff that the rules would disproportionately hurt low-income communities and people of color.

No more Nissan. With Trump losing the presidential election by more than 7 million votes, more segments of the country are now acknowledging the results. That includes car companies that had hoped they wouldn't have to significantly improve their products' fuel efficiency. The Associated Press reports that Nissan is the latest to abandon the Trump administration's legal fight against the Golden State.

INVESTIGATING THE ENVIRONMENT

From political pressure to attempts to keep pollution secret, there's plenty to expose in the environmental world. With so much good reporting coming out this week, let's take a closer look at a few deep dives into agriculture, fossil fuels and chemical refining.

"Get poisoned or get on board." That's the first line in this piece, and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting doesn't slow down from there. They write that Monsanto and German chemical company BASF "knew their dicamba weedkillers would cause large-scale damage to fields across the United States but decided to push them on unsuspecting farmers anyway, in a bid to corner the soybean and cotton markets." The investigation found that Monsanto limited testing that it thought could slow the permitting process for its herbicide, blocked independent scientists from testing its product and worked to put liability back on the farmers who used it. The company declined to comment on the findings.

Offshore exploitation. In a piece reminiscent of the groundbreaking Panama Papers, Reuters is out with a new story lifting the veil on how oil and gas supermajors shift their revenue through offshore tax havens that have little to do with their businesses but help them evade taxes. The report found that Shell, one of multiple companies using this practice, funneled $2.7 billion in revenues through Bermuda and the Bahamas without needing to pay taxes. The company stood to pay $700 million, however, if it filed in the Netherlands, where it's headquartered.

Double trouble. And finally, Southerly, New Orleans Public Radio and Baton Rouge's NPR affiliate, WRKF, partnered to highlight the one-two punch of hurricanes and pollution events at Louisiana's ubiquitous refineries. They investigated 30 facilities with highly toxic substances stored on site, and reviewed the worst-case scenarios as defined to the EPA by the facilities' staffs. In a third of the locations, the investigation found that disasters like severe storm events could blow toxic gases 25 miles offsite, although most of the impacts would fall on nearby, largely Black communities.

AND ANOTHER THING

$H2O. There's nothing new about the idea that water is as valuable as gold or that water is the next oil. But, in a world made ever hotter and drier by climate change, should we be acting on those hypotheses? And, should be entrusting Wall Street to play a responsible role? Water, which has been bought and sold in various forms, is becoming an official commodity. Quartz reports that on Monday, California water began trading in a futures market. "In spite of its modest size, the futures market — which buys investors the right to purchase water at a specific price on a future date like oil, corn, and other commodities — is likely to become a benchmark indicator of water stress in the region," they write.

Someone yell "fire." You know what, I feel bad about leaving you for a minute, so here's one more bonus piece. All of California has had a rough year in terms of fires, and my colleague Janet Wilson has been, quite literally, right in the middle of it all. She recently had to evacuate as the Bond Fire swept through Orange County. But, her emergency notification came from a neighbor banging on her door in the middle of the night. Where was the alert that should've gone to her cell phone? It turns out, as she writes, that cell service often drops out as utilities shut off power to avoid sparking fires. While regulators asked companies like Verizon to install backup power, they resisted.

Scientists agree that to maintain a livable planet, we need to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration back to 350 ppm. We’re above that and rising dangerously. Here are the latest numbers:

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to follow along on Twitter at @MarkOlalde. You can also reach me at molalde@gannett.com. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here. And, if you’d like to receive a daily round-up of California news (also for free!), you can sign up for USA Today’s In California newsletter here. Wear a mask, really! Cheers.