Climate Point: Even green Portland struggles with transportation emissions
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. I’m Erin Rode, writing from Palm Springs, California.
A nearby corner of the Southern California desert continues to receive national and international attention for its estimated 15 million metric tons of lithium, believed to be one of the largest deposits of the element in the world. Global demand for the mineral used for rechargeable batteries, including for cell phones, battery storage, and electric vehicles, is expected to grow by as much as 4,000% over the next several decades.
Several residents told her that they understand the much-hyped potential of the area for lithium extraction, but they want the federal government to recognize the existing health concerns plaguing the community caused by the receding Salton Sea, and want to make sure the new industry doesn't exacerbate those issues.
Granholm said comments from community members will "help us develop a plan that makes sure we're doing this in partnership with the community."
"I feel badly that I'm not coming with the solutions right now. I'm coming to listen, and to be able to understand what the concerns are. And that's the first step to making sure that (those concerns) don't perpetuate," said Granholm.
Here are some other stories of interest related to electric vehicles, plus drought, mountain lions and more.
Car culture
Expensive EVs. Batteries are getting cheaper, but that hasn’t brought down the cost of electric vehicles. Instead, the average price paid for an EV has risen from around $36,000 in 2015 to over $63,000 today, even while the price of lithium-ion batteries has dropped from $946 per kilowatt-hour in 2011 to $132 last year, Shannon Osaka reports for Grist. Other examples like wind and solar show that clean energy typically gets cheaper as technology improves, but that hasn’t been the case for electric cars. There’s a few reasons for this, Osaka explains, including car companies using bigger (and more expensive) batteries and consumer appetite for pricier crossover vehicles.
Roads in Rose City. In Portland, the city has invested heavily in meeting its ambitious climate goals, including building an extensive light rail system, adding hundreds of miles of bike lanes, and adopting zoning rules that encourage walkable neighborhoods. But the number of cars and trucks on the roads has continued to rise, and now state officials want to expand several highways, Nadja Popovich and Brad Plumer report for the New York Times. Other cities are facing similar difficulties in curbing their transportation emissions, which make up the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases and have risen in many major U.S. metro areas over the past 30 years as cities have sprawled.
And electric vehicles won’t immediately solve this, Popovich and Plumer write, as it could take decades before all the gas-burning vehicles are replaced with EVs. Instead, Americans will also need to drive less to reduce transportation emissions.
Water in the West
Toxic water. In California’s eastern Coachella Valley, low-income residents living in mobile home parks are still without clean drinking water after a decade of efforts, even as luxury housing developments and newly proposed surf wave parks and lagoon resorts quickly obtain promised water supply, my colleagues Janet Wilson and Eliana Perez report for The Desert Sun. Since November, EPA inspectors have found water containing arsenic levels above federal legal limits, even from a faucet equipped with a filter, at seven eastern Coachella Valley mobile home parks. It's just one example of how farmworkers and other low-income residents in rural areas often have aging septic systems and old water wells tainted with chemicals.
"We have over 1 million Californians that don't have access to safe water in the state, and they're located in virtually every county of the state,” Kelsey Hinton, spokeswoman for Community Water Center, told The Desert Sun.
Playing pretend. Earlier this month, the federal government asked the seven states that rely on the Colorado River to work out an emergency conservation deal after Lake Powell reached critically low levels. The seven states reached a deal late last week, but it involves “an unusual act of hydrological accounting,” as Jake Bittle reports for Grist. The deal involves two parts. First, the federal government will move 500,000 acre-feet from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir into Lake Powell, bumping up that lake’s levels. The second part gets… interesting.
Normally, the Bureau of Reclamation releases water from Lake Powell into the larger Lake Mead, where the water then goes to households and farms in the Southwest. States that use that water from Mead are agreeing to leave about 480,000 acre-feet of that water in Lake Powell. But in exchange for this, the federal government would act as if that water did still go to Lake Mead, to avoid triggering mandatory water reductions. The Bureau of Reclamation will decide whether to move forward with this plan in the coming weeks.
Water cuts. Meanwhile, in Southern California, millions of residents will be required to cut their outdoor water use to once a week in an unprecedented step amid the drought.
Hot takes
Save the trees. President Joe Biden celebrated Earth Day by signing an executive order that seeks to protect old-growth forests from wildfires and climate change. USA Today
Price of water. Industries are deeply undervaluing water, leading to irresponsible usage and pollution, a new report found. USA Today
Greenwashing. The days and weeks leading up to Earth Day are full of greenwashing, or marketing that attempts to portray a product as good for the environment, but we can’t purchase our way to a cooler climate. Arizona Republic
Balloons on pause. The Indianapolis 500 won’t continue the long-standing tradition of releasing thousands of balloons before the race this year, citing environmental concerns. Indianapolis Star
And another thing
Wildlife crossing. Hundreds of people gathered last week to celebrate the groundbreaking of what’s being billed as the world’s largest urban wildlife crossing, Cheri Carlson reports for the Ventura County Star. The $87 million bridge will stretch across the 10-lane Highway 101 in Agoura Hills, located west of Los Angeles near Calabasas. The crossing aims to help save an isolated mountain lion population from extinction. The face of the years-long campaign for the crossing is P-22, a mountain lion who famously crossed two major freeways to reach Griffith Park in the heart of Los Angeles, where he’s remained for a decade. The L.A. icon recently got a celebrity profile treatment in the Los Angeles Times.
That's all for this week. Stay in touch @RodeErin on Twitter or via email at erin.rode@desertsun.com, and you can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here.