Climate Point: Agriculture is in trouble
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Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. I'm Sammy Roth, and I'll start this edition with a reminder that sometimes you have to laugh. Paste BN's Doyle Rice reports that two-thirds of all king penguins on Earth will be forced to relocate or die trying if the planet keeps warming at its present rate, which obviously is depressing and not funny — except in the hands of The Onion.
America's Finest News Source took on the penguin doomsday story with an assortment of person-on-the-street reaction quotes, including the following gem from Wilhelm Erickson, an assistant cantor: "Cool. So they're going to outlast most other species."
Gotta love dark humor.
Here are some other things you might want to know:
MUST-READ STORIES:
California agriculture is in trouble: You know how California produces two-thirds of America's fruits and nuts and more than a third of its vegetables? Well... Climate change is going to throw a real wrench in those works. The Desert Sun's Ian James reports on a new study finding that global warming will render more than half of California's Central Valley unsuitable for growing crops like apricots, peaches, plums and walnuts by the middle of the century (with 90 percent of the valley unsuitable by century's end). And this wasn't just one study; it was a comprehensive review examining 89 previous papers and reports. Moral of the story: The science is solid, and the results are not encouraging.
Climate change is already here, Part 108: I know I say this every week, but we don't need to look the future to imagine what climate change will be like. We just need to look around. This week, the North Pole surged above freezing in the dead of winter, in what the Washington Post's Jason Samenow described as an unprecedented heat wave. The Ohio River, meanwhile, overflowed its banks in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, causing historic flooding. This is all totally consistent with climate change; just a few months ago, James Bruggers at the Courier-Journal in Louisville reported that rising temperatures are dramatically increasing the risk of serious flooding along the Ohio River.
ENERGY, CLEAN AND DIRTY:
Trump said some things about solar panels: The president got side-tracked while discussing gun violence this week and went on a riff about solar panels, which of course sent me into fact-check mode. Trump claimed the United States makes higher-quality solar panels than China, and that his import tax on foreign-made panels is bringing back domestic manufacturing jobs. Alas, neither claim is especially true. Here's my story.
China is pushing coal power all over the world: If President Trump really wants to go after China on an energy issue, I've got a suggestion. For all the steps President Xi Jinping has taken to reduce climate pollution at home, Chinese companies are working to build more than 200 coal-fired power plants in 31 countries, including some countries that currently burn no coal, as Somini Sengupta reports for the New York Times. This is one of the world's biggest climate stories. If all those coal plants get built, the odds of keeping global warming to manageable levels may go from low to virtually nonexistent.
POLITICAL CLIMATE:
California looks to build a 'renewable engine on the West Coast': There's a big fight brewing in the California Legislature over energy, with potentially huge implications for the western United States. Gov. Jerry Brown, in his last year in office, has one more shot at expanding California's power grid to include other states, most likely starting with Nevada, Oregon and Washington, as I reported for the Desert Sun. In theory, Brown's plan would make it easier to share clean energy across state lines, thereby making it cheaper for everyone to cut climate pollution. Critics, though, worry Brown's plan would do the opposite, creating a new market for western coal plants and raising energy costs.
Judge Curiel rejects environmental challenges to Trump's border wall: As democratic norms continue to shatter, it's good to know some institutions still answer to a master other than naked partisanship. Love his decision or hate it, you have to respect federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, whom Donald Trump famously said couldn't treat him fairly because of the judge's Mexican heritage. Despite that insult, Judge Curiel ruled that the Trump administration didn't do anything illegal when it waived environmental laws for border-wall construction in California, per Brandon Loomis at the Arizona Republic.
AND ANOTHER THING:
Today's last word goes to Gina McCarthy, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency during President Obama's second term. She had a fundamentally different view of the world than President Trump's EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, who recently told the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody that with respect to fossil fuels, "The biblical world view...is that we have a responsibility to manage and cultivate, harvest the natural resources that we've been blessed with to truly bless our fellow mankind."
Anyway, McCarthy spoke at Colorado State University this week, per the Coloradoan's Jacy Marmaduke. Here's what she said about what to do when you're feeling hopeless:
"If you ever feel like you're getting down, and you can't figure out how to get yourself back up... I want you to go outside and play. Go out skiing, go on a hike, go jump in a lake, do everything that everybody says to you, 'That’s nasty.' And remember about the natural world we live in, and how important it is to us, and how we're a part of it. And lie at night and look up at the stars above and you realize that these are moments in time. These are not everything. We live in a world that we will protect, because we have to."
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.