Climate Point: Warming could drive immigration
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. I'm Sammy Roth, writing to you from Palm Springs, California. It's warm and sunny here, but I sympathize with those of you dealing with bone-chilling cold and bomb cyclones and whatnot. This may sound counterintuitive, but climate change may be partly to blame for the cold snap, as Emily Hopkins reports for the Indianapolis Star.
Another surprising climate impact? Rising temperatures may drive more people to migrate from Mexico to the U.S., as I reported for Paste BN. The short vision is that increasingly intense dry spells in rural northern Mexico are expected to reduce crop yields in agriculture-dependent areas, giving people more reason to cross the border.
Here are some other things you might want to know:
MUST-READ STORIES:
Half of Puerto Rico still doesn't have power: In an unprecedented national scandal that would dominate news feeds in any normal universe, nearly half the people in Puerto Rico — 1.5 million American citizens — still don't have power, more than 100 days after Hurricane Maria struck the island. Here's the story from Frances Robles and Jess Bidgood at the New York Times. And it could be another four months before the whole island has electricity again, per Jake Lowary at the Tennessean. Truly unimaginable.
Cities are heating up faster: As the planet gets warmer, cities are facing a double whammy, because they've got all these unnatural concrete and asphalt surfaces that absorb heat. It's called the "urban heat island effect," and it means global warming is even more painful for cities. One solution? Shade. The Arizona Republic's Brandon Loomis wrote about pioneering efforts in Dallas and Phoenix to plant trees in the neighborhoods that need them most, to keep people cool(er) as temperatures rise.
ENERGY, CLEAN AND DIRTY:
Decision day is here for solar industry: Sometime in the next three weeks, President Trump will decide whether to slap a tariff on imported solar panels — a move that the solar industry says would drive up the price of solar power and potentially put people out of work. (Fun fact: The solar industry employs twice as many people as the coal industry.) Here's the view from Vice President Pence's home state, Indiana, where the solar market could be especially sensitive to tariffs, as Emily Hopkins reports for the Indianapolis Star. (Meanwhile, a state law is already making it difficult for Indiana schools, cities and churches to save money with solar, per Sarah Bowman at the Star.)
Making America great again, oceans edition: As part of the Trump administration's quest for "energy dominance," Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposed opening 90% of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf to offshore oil and gas exploration, per Ledyard King at Paste BN. That definitely sounds like a lot of carbon. Meanwhile, Interior has also proposed eliminating some of the offshore drilling safety rules designed to prevent another Deepwater Horizon-type event, per Reuters.
POLITICAL CLIMATE:
Making America great again, Superfund edition: EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has made a big deal out of his commitment to Superfund, the federal government program to clean up hazardous waste sites. He's so committed to it, in fact, that the guy he hand-picked to streamline the Superfund program is a banker from Pruitt's home state of Oklahoma with no environmental experience, who supported Pruitt's political campaigns, made loans to Pruitt, appears to have run his bank into the ground, and ultimately got banned from banking for life, as Sharon Lerner reports for the Intercept.
Climate change in the West: While the western United States is not currently snowed in, we've got plenty of climate-related weather things to worry about. For instance, not enough snow. Benjamin Spillman at the Reno Gazette-Journal reports that the Lake Tahoe area has gotten its third-lightest snowpack in nearly four decades so far this winter, in a clear signal of climate change. (Here in Palm Springs, California, there's no snow whatsoever in the mountains, which is also super bizarre.) In Arizona, rising temperatures threaten the farms that produce a huge percentage of the leafy greens the rest of the country eats all year, as Joshua Bowling reports for the Arizona Republic.
AND ANOTHER THING:
Over the last few years, I've heard from plenty of people who think climate change is a hoax perpetrated by scientists to generate research funding, or by foreign governments to swindle the United States, or by journalists to drive clicks. Well, if any of those things is true, it's the world's longest con. Writing for the Guardian, Benjamin Franta reveals the true story of the time the oil industry was warned about the greenhouse effect, and the potential for carbon dioxide emissions to heat the planet and raise the oceans — at an event celebrating the U.S. oil industry's 100th birthday, all the way back in 1959.
That's all for this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow me on Twitter @Sammy_Roth. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox here.