Climate Point: Native American takes lead at Interior; low-income neighborhoods are hot

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. In Palm Springs, Calif., I'm Janet Wilson. Huge thanks to Mark Olalde, my fellow environment reporter at The Desert Sun/USA Today network, for his spectacular stewardship of Climate Point while I was working with ProPublica for a year or so. 

Historic. It's a word that's often overused, but Deb Haaland's confirmation to serve as Secretary of Interior this week is truly that. Haaland, who was sworn in Thursday wearing traditional ceremonial garb, is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and the first Native American to lead a sprawling agency that among other things, has been responsible for the killings, "re-education" and removal of tribes from their homelands. 

"The only alternatives left are to civilize or exterminate" indigenous people, then-Secretary of the Interior Alexander H.H. Stuart wrote in 1851.

Now, Haaland, a longtime environmentalist, will oversee 500 million acres of public land, including the national parks system and oil and gas drilling on federal land. One-quarter of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to fossil fuels extracted from those lands.

Haaland's first media briefing was with indigenous reporters, in which she said, "I want the era when tribes were on the back burner to be over.”

MUST-READ STORIES

Walling it off? Work has been halted on a $49 million-per-mile border wall through the rugged Jacumba Wilderness between California and Mexico, one of the costliest segments constructed in recent years. A firm that donated to the campaigns of President Donald Trump and other GOP candidates earned money off the project, writes Mark Olalde in The Desert Sun. Now, the administration is faced with the task of figuring out what to do next; environmentalists are split on whether to pull down the structure, which also bisected tribal lands. Some say bringing in heavy bulldozers to bring down the wall would be destructive. 

Too darned hot. Low-income, Latino neighborhoods endure more extreme heat in the Southwest, according to a new UC Davis-led study that Ian James with The Arizona Republic reports on. While the iniquities exist across the region, from Albuquerque and Phoenix to Fresno, Southern California had the biggest differences:  pn hot days by 6 to 7 degrees in Los Angeles, the Inland Empire and Palm Springs. Extreme heat can kill, and deaths are on the rise, with Arizona, for instance, suffering the hottest summer on record in 2020.

There's gold up there. Spurred by the rising price of gold, K2 Gold Corp., of Vancouver, Canada, is drilling and trenching in hopes of perhaps transforming public lands into an open-pit cyanide heap leach mine, just a few miles from California's Death Valley. But environmental groups and tribal nations have drawn a line in the alluvial sands overlooking the community of Lone Pine, population 2,000, on the eastern flanks of the Sierra Nevada range, writes Louis Sahagun with the Los Angeles Times. No mining in Conglomerate Mesa, not ever again.

But Stephen Swatton, president and chief executive officer at K2, said his company is cognizant of the environment. “There’s gold up there and the world needs gold.” 

The dispute could be an early test for Interior Secretary Haaland, whose agency oversees large-scale mining projects on public lands.

ALL ABOUT ENERGY

Oil strikes. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has long owned oil production sites in city neighborhoods, frustrating residents who say the aging wells and related equipment pollute the air, are potentially explosive and carry other risks. Now, as I report for The Desert Sun, one community group has sued the city fire department, charging they failed to order the oil company that leases the Murphy drill site, deeded to the church by a tycoon, to shut down potentially dangerous idled wells. They said they have tried unsuccessfully to meet with church officials. 

"For this reason, we focus on the operator's actions, though personally I find the archdiocese's culpability in the destruction of life and our common home a source of grief," said Richard Parks, head of Redeemer Community Partnership.

In its statement, the Archdiocese said it "is committed to the safety and well being of our communities. We are supportive of efforts to ensure that operations are conducted in accordance with all public safety and air quality regulations."

Say what? Edelman, a well-known public relations firm, pledged to “work with an environmental conscience” — including not taking on clients who deny climate change. Then it took $4 million to promote one of the most extreme fossil fuel trade groups in the country, per new tax filings uncovered by Zahra Hirji and Kendall Taggart with BuzzFeed News. in 2019 the company accepted more than $4 million from the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a major U.S. oil trade organization that even Shell and BP dumped for its aggressive opposition to popular climate solutions. The trade group also funds the climate change-denying Heartland Institute. Edelman had no comment.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

Pony up. Federal regulators are pushing corporate America to reckon with the cost of climate change, arguing that global warming also poses significant peril to the U.S. economy. On Wednesday, as the Washington Post reports, the acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced a Climate Risk Unit to focus on understanding and pricing climate-related hazards. On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission asked for public input on how to require companies to disclose “reliable information on climate change” risks to investors.

What's in the water? California is pushing to issue the world’s first guidelines for microplastics in drinking water by July 1, despite no data on how plentiful they are in the state, no scientific agreement on how to test water for them and little research on their health risks, as Rachel Becker with CalMatters writes. The pieces of plastic — smaller than an ant, some so tiny they can be seen only with a microscope — have entered wildlife and human bodies through their food, air and water.

Under a 2018 state law, California must require four years of testing for microplastics in drinking water, and the state must consider guidelines to help water providers and consumers determine what levels may be safe to drink. But needed research is still in its infancy.

AND ANOTHER THING

Plenty of room, c'mon over. Jaguars could roam across wider areas of the United States than once thought, a new study finds, potentially raising the chances of survival for the endangered cats. Researchers identified a swath of land the size of South Carolina in parts of Arizona and New Mexico that could potentially support more than 150 jaguars in the future, reports Erin Stone in the Arizona Republic. Since 1996, seven jaguars, all males, have been documented in the U.S. Wildlife officials here have placed the onus of conservation on Mexico, Central and South America, where most existing populations remain. 

The coalition of scientists who carried out the new study hope their conclusions will spur federal officials to focus more efforts on conserving jaguars in the U.S. Long may they run. 

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 this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow me @janetwilson66. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here. And if you are interested in California news, sign up for USA Today's new newsletter, In California, here.