Climate Point: Draining national forests for profit
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. I'm Janet Wilson, writing from the doorstep of the Cleveland National Forest in SSouthern California, which like all national forests was created per an 1897 federal law to conserve public timber and watersheds.
About half of Western water supply now originates on national forest land. But before any of it reaches the West’s major cities or great rivers, much of it has already been taken, as a USA Today network team led by Jacy Marmaduke with the Fort Collins Coloradoan chronicles in a recent investigation, "Draining the Forests: Death By 1,000 Cuts."
While the U.S. Forest Service pours resources into battling wildfires, it is losing the war over water, she writes. Thousands of farmers, ranchers, housing developments and bottling companies take water from forest lands. The forest service has "threadbare" permit regulations and oversight of private entities using public supply. It doesn't even appear to track how much total is diverted. With the West's mega-drought and mounting climate change, not to mention those wildfires, that means an untold amount of critical water goes elsewhere.
Here are some other stories that may be of interest:
Must-read stories
Kicking up dust. Along Utah's back roads, magnesium chloride is often sprayed to keep down choking clouds of dust that rise off dirt byways and ATV trails. Not everyone's happy. Joan Meiners with the St. George Spectrum and Daily News writes about one family's struggle to convince local agencies and neighbors that heavy use of the sprays is killing trees, and is dangerous for human health. "Eat dust," they say the owner of Road Solutions Inc. told them when they raised questions.
It's all part of $300 million worth of road spraying across the U.S., although those federal EPA-funded figures are badly outdated, Meiners found. As of 2019, the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimated there are 1.2 million miles of unpaved public roads in the United States. According to the 2004 EPA report, 25% of them were treated with a chemical dust suppressant at the time.
Meiners' story was one of several also featured in the Washington Post as an example of great local reporting that is being lost across the U.S., as thousands of smaller papers shut down. Looking for a great holiday gift for someone? Some local papers offer digital deals for as low as $1 for six months.
Plastic fantastic? A giant garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean is home to a thriving new community of plants and animals, USA Today's Christine Fernando reports. Coastal anemones, barnacles, crabs and other creatures have found a way to survive in a place previously considered inhospitable: rafts of microplastic rubbish floating between the coast of California and Hawaii, per new research in Nature Communications.
But will they survive in the harsh open ocean with little food and shelter? "We don't know," said lead author Linsey Haram. "These are questions that need to be answered.”
Energy clean and dirty
Make mine carbon-free, please. President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday that aims to use federal buying power to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2030. The order requires agencies to ramp up purchases of electric vehicles in the feds' 600,000-car fleet, to modernize building energy systems and to procure power from solar, wind and other renewables. The steps would put the government on a path to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, reports Michael Collins for USA Today.
Not so fast. Rising prices may slow years of renewables growth, experts find. Market analyses from BloombergNEF and the International Energy Agency assessed how high prices of key raw materials — ranging from steel, aluminum and copper to polysilicon, lithium and battery electrolytes — could impact clean energy economics.
For instance, BNEF concluded a wave of cheap electric cars might have to wait an extra two years, as lithium-ion batteries break their long streak of annual price drops. But elevated fossil fuel prices could help preserve renewables’ competitive edge, along with favorable state and federal policies (like Biden's announcement) and corporate procurements. David Iaconangelo at E&E News fills us in.
Top line. A new global ranking of 50 top electric utilities shows only a fraction of electric utilities around the world are on track to meet climate goals sufficient to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Only three are on track, the report finds, though two U.S. utilities ranked highly by the report, Xcel Energy and Dominion Energy, say their own studies show they are headed to meeting the target. Utility Dive's Emma Penrod reports.
Hot takes
Manna. Feds okay plan to feed starving manatees. Treasure Coast Newspapers.
Cough it up. BP refinery must pay $500,000 fines for Lake Michigan pollution. IndyStar.
Really? Desert water plan finds plenty through 2045. Others say nay. The Desert Sun
Corny. Does corn really store more carbon than solar per acre? USA Today Fact Check.
And another thing.
No snow days. The dizzying increase in impacts from long-predicted climate change can blur together, with year-round wildfires, melting permafrost, monster floods and rising seas worldwide. But some still stop me cold. I first read in 2005 that the Sierra Nevada mountains' snowpack could shrivel in a warming atmosphere. Now, as Kurtis Alexander with the San Francisco Chronicle reports, a new study finds winters with little or no snow could be common in 25 years on the iconic peaks John Muir loved. That is breathtaking in the worst ways.
That's all for this week. Subscribe to your local paper, and for more climate, energy and environment news, follow me @janetwilson66. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here.