A Forgotten April Climate Holiday (It's Not Earth Day)

The Forgotten April Climate Holiday (It's Not Earth Day)

Greetings,

Not much has happened where I live since my last email to you. Oh, wait … there was an earthquake, a 20-inch snowfall, and a total eclipse – all over the course of 7 days.

The snowfall was great. Most of us have had a warm winter, which is likely to be the case as we move forward. As one climate scientist stated put it, the warm weather we experience today will be looked back on as cool weather at some point in the future. But the recent snowfall meant that I was able to get out in the mountains for two days of snowshoeing – what a treat.

I did manage to get into the path of totality for the eclipse. I was on the edge and so only got about 2 minutes of it, and now am kicking myself that I didn’t drive farther north to get another minute. That is how spectacular it was.

It is not like it wasn’t cool watching the cookie (i.e. the Sun) get eaten by the Moon as the latter passed across. Totality is not better than that. It is different than that. And it was an OMG moment. I am already planning to see the next one in Iceland and then the one in North Africa after that.

Whatever you got to see, let’s all agree that the Eclipse shows how the physical world (including how the Sun and the Earth’s atmosphere interact) includes forces that we must recognize and deal with. The next Eclipse visible in the U.S. will be in 2046. That is close to the year 2050, which is often used as a round-number target for climate commitments made. Let’s get to work and make sure that everyone who sees that phenomenon in 2046 does so in a world that has taken big steps by then to reduce emissions and make climate change less bad than it already will be.

Best,

Dan

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Links to Past Posts:

Climate Change and the Snail Darter

St. Patrick's Day and Climate Change

Charging My Car in Manhattan

Step Into These Shoes Wearing a Climate and Energy Hat

Resilience Recognition is Rising - But There is That Other Thing

There is no "O" in Climate Change

It was an Instagram COP - And I am Finally OK with That

How to Talk About Climate With Your Crazy Uncle at Thanksgiving

Monty Python and Climate Change

What You Need to Know About NIMBYism

H mm..So How Much Did My Heat Pump Really Cost?

What it Means to Be a Climate Voter

The Climate Conundrum of Air Conditioning

Predictions Made About Utilities Made 10 Years Ago - How Did They Hold up?

My Vote For The Most Under-Appreciated Impact of Climate Change

10 Things I Should Have Written About

So I Went to the COP - Here Are My Top 10 Takeaways.

Efficiency and Clean Energy - Faster vs More

Efficiency & Clean Energy - More vs. Faster

It's Time For A Climate Vote - On the Record

Good COP, Bad COP .....Thoughts Before Glasgow

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

What I Should Have Written About

The Serenity of Being a Climate Voter

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Some Things That Caught My Eye ...

A Snapshot of a Big Box Retailer and its Impact on Renewables

One of the biggest drivers in the deployment of renewable energy have been companies like Google for supply to its data centers. But companies like Wal-Mart are also major players in that regard. Here is a recent announcement it put out.

https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/03/26/walmart-accelerates-clean-energy-purchases-and-investments-with-nearly-1-gm-of-new-projects-across-the-us?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosgenerate&stream=top

A Headline That Will Make an EV Buyer Think

If you are a regular reader of what I put out, you know that one of my biggest issues is the slow speed at which policy (like the IRA) is being implemented and actual projects being developed and deployed. The recent headline (free link below) in the Washington Post pointing out that of the of the $7.5 Million in the IRA for building charging stations along major federal highways, “Only 7 have been produced in 2 years.

As I have said about my own EV experience, it is not range that ultimately matters for EVs. It is the charging stations. And given that EVs have become a political football between the two major parties, a robust roll-out of chargers, and the related roll-out of EVs may be impacted by the election in November.

https://wapo.st/3UlCy2R

Commercial Rooftops for Solar?

I often get asked the question “why do we have to have solar farms in pristine areas when we can just put solar on all the commercial rooftops? There are several answers to this question, but the main one is that even if all those rooftops were covered with panels, it would not be enough to eliminate the need for solar farms based on numbers I have seen. However, a recent Stanford study estimates that 20-30% of the electricity needs of lower to moderate income households could be met that way. The Study shows that while disadvantaged communities lag far behind in hosting residential building solar deployment, putting panels on nearby commercial rooftops could become a way to address that lag and other environmental and energy justice issues.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01485-y

A Spotlight on A State Public Utility Commission

The State Agencies (PUCs, PSCs, etc.) that have oversight over investor-owned public utilities are often said to be the most powerful, yet least understood component on the State Org Chart. Georgia is in the minority of Commissions where the Commissioners are elected instead of being appointed, but the article below is an interesting look at how these commissions do their work. Georgia has had major issues to deal with in the past, such as approving costs for a nuclear project that went way over budget, and now is trying to deal with what kind of generation projects they approve to address present electricity needs and a forecasted rise in electricity demand.

https://www.wabe.org/who-controls-the-power-the-overlooked-georgia-officials-who-have-say-over-georgia-powers-policies-and-prices/?utm_medium=email

Bank Says Energy Clients Not Planning for a Transition

I find this kind of news to be among the most unsettling among the many other downbeat news articles about progress on addressing climate mitigation and resilience.

Citigroup said that 71% of its energy sector clients either lack a substantive low-carbon transition plan that accounts for scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions or have a high-level plan in place but have “unclear ability to execute” on it, the bank disclosed in its latest climate report. Specific reporting on this topic within the Report was the result of intervention by a shareholder advocacy group called As You Sow.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/citi-energy-clients-lack-substantive-transition-plans-2023-tcfd-as-you-sow/711987/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202024-04-02%20Utility%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:60662%5D&utm_term=Utility%20Dive

It's Hard to Put Out a Fire When More Fuel is Being Added

The only news more unsettling than that in the blurb just preceding this is what the Guardian reported on last week. According to a new Study covered by the media outlet, The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to make the commitments made under the Paris Agreement out of reach.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/28/oil-and-gas-fossil-fuels-report?utm_campaign=P%26P%20%7C%20International%20Climate%20Briefing&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8c6-2BVjX1LZjMEhR9TbZfRH2b_mWeL5gOLXlfBDFoBaW1LxzNfk0z9LgVDi6R30HhDGSK4E86Pe1nJCA5hI8VhDjFPA&_hsmi=301056369&utm_content=301056369&utm_source=hs_email

57 Have Emitted 80% Since 2015

Speaking of the Paris Climate Agreement, Axios reports on a new study that shows that Just 57 fossil fuel and cement producers are linked to 80% of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions since the Agreement was signed in 2015.

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/04/carbon-emitters-paris-agreement?utm_campaign=heatmap_am&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9SA837Mkz-6NF28jbpN6LHq_03HWmDeOFm0UjCgbX-Su8aE2k7z4czR5QyjUGJna8_oiA0Vsk117_bLLmMuUJ6b03NBQ&_hsmi=301207616&utm_content=301207616&utm_source=hs_email

Wish I Had Known This Figure When I Wrote My Last Commentary

If you read the essay part of my last send-out to you, you know it was about endangered and threatened species, and what climate change mitigation efforts to our efforts to save them. No sooner did I put that out than a Study was published in the journal Nature Climate Change that found that if all announced solar energy projects in California are completed, it would directly lead to the loss of 1.7 percent of the future habitat of the Joshua tree and 3.9 percent of the habitat of the San Joaquin kit fox by 2070. Those are small numbers. But here is the big one – the Study found that climate change will account for approximately 20 times more habitat loss by 2070 for both species than solar energy expansion.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01941-3

The Bad News Outweighs the Good in Deforestation

A new survey by WRI found that the world lost 9.1 million acres of tropical forest in 2023 – a lost that was 9% less than the year before. Brazil itself lost 2.8 million acres of forest last year, 36 percent less than in 2022. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the wildfires in Canada last year destroyed such a huge tract of boreal forests, almost three times as much as in any other year, that they turned what would have been a 4 percent decrease in global forest loss into a 24 percent increase over the 2022 total.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/climate/global-forest-tree-loss-wri.html

And by the way.....the Canadian Federal Government just announced that they expect another terrible wildfire season.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-may-face-another-catastrophic-wildfire-season-government-says-2024-04-10/?utm_campaign=heatmap_am&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--PRmDCTD7k6OAmbFo_Wp9sviIaA0pfokOK2LxRA7V0HbXwNz5eykgPW3zrS3OVtVKb8Rs18y_gSFV8699WmiZsmHeZAA&_hsmi=302202217&utm_content=302202217&utm_source=hs_email

As I said…I really am nervous about GeoEngineering

It was only a couple of weeks ago when I included a blurb that talked about climate GeoEngineering and my discomfort with it. Here is a story in the NYT since then that doesn’t make me feel any better.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/climate/global-warming-clouds-solar-geoengineering.html

Latest Issue of a Unique Report on RE Numbers, Facts & Trends

REN21 is a global renewable energy community of actors from science, governments, NGOs, and industry. It provides up-to-date and peer-reviewed facts, figures, and analysis of global developments in technology, policies, and markets with the aim of keeping government decision-makers informed so as to make more informed decisions.

One of the key Reports the organization puts out is what they claim to be the world’s only crowd-sourced report on renewable energy, the Renewables Global Status Report (GSR). It covers policies, markets, and other aspects of renewable energy development and deployment. The latest version is now out and accessible via the link below.

https://www.ren21.net/reports/global-status-report/

Climate Migration Blurb #1 – Insurance is a Driver

A recent headline in The Hill says it all:

“Insurance trends are deciding where American’s will live as planet heats”.

One of the sleeper issues for some time has been the effect that Climate Change would have on the insurance industry, especially real estate insurance markets. Due to the increasing number of severe, climate-enhance storms, the home insurance industry has lost money every year for the past five according to a Report covered by The Hill. In the category of personal insurance, the industry suffered three consecutive years of losses in excess of $20 billion.

The industry has responded by raising costs, but perhaps more notably, by completely exiting states with high potential impact from climate change.

https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/4570956-insurance-trends-are-deciding-where-americans-will-live-as-planet-heats/?email=467cb6399cb7df64551775e431052b43a775c749&emaila=12a6d4d069cd56cfddaa391c24eb7042&emailb=054528e7403871c79f668e49dd3c44b1ec00c7f611bf9388f76bb2324d6ca5f3&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04.03.24%20Sustainability%20BH

Climate Migration Blurb #2 - Chances Are You or Someone You Know Will Climate-Migrate To This Area

No area of the U.S. is getting more interest as a place to move to because of Climate Change than the Great Lakes/Rust Belt Region. As a fascinating article in Atlantic describes, the fact that the region has 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, and virtually no threat from hurricanes, sea-level rise or wildfires makes it very attractive according to models that run migration scenarios.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/03/climate-migration-rust-belt-economy/677856/?utm_campaign=weekly-planet&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20240328&utm_term=The+Weekly+Planet

Climate Migration Blurb #3 - And Then There is This Kind of Migration …

While we as humans have the ability to adapt quite quickly to various other changes, not all of our fellow denizens of the natural world can do that. Especially migratory birds.

In a recent study, Scientist found that of 150 migratory species studies, 130 were migrating according to their historical seasonal cues, and not to current ones. The result was that the species were not accounting for Spring happening sooner and the greening up of the bird’s food sources developing on a different timetable than the bird’s expectations.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2308433121

Emotional Signatures of Climate Policy Support

That is the exact headline of a recent piece from Yale, and when I saw it, I had no idea what it is about. You may not either, but I think the new work is very interesting.

https://mailchi.mp/yale/our-latest-study-emotional-signatures-of-climate-policy-support?e=9a5ccd4f52

Your Talking Point on Emissions from EV Tires

There is a new argument against EVs that is circulating on certain media outlets, including the WSJ. It argues that emissions from EV tires are greater than those of ICE vehicles.

That is true because EVs typically weigh more. But the tire emissions are particulate emissions, not CO2. Not that particulate emissions are good, but studies show that the decrease in greenhouse gas emissions outweigh the increase in particulate emissions to make EVs the greener option overall. (I think this is a classic case of the trade-offs that we need to start making, as I wrote about in my commentary last time)

And it’s not like gas-powered vehicles are getting leaner. The EPA has data that shows that due to the increase in size of vehicles (in part due to the rise of the SUV) has increased 34% since 1981.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110016823009055#s0055

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gotten limaNot Earth Day)

A Forgotten April Climate Day (It's Not Earth Day)

On April 27, 1882, thousands of people gathered in the City of Cincinnati to celebrate a newly declared state holiday that unbeknownst to them recognized and celebrated something that is in play today as a major factor to address climate change. There was a parade with marching bands, and seven thousand uniformed girls and boys from thirty school districts marching as part of it.

Ohio was the second state to recognize this new holiday, and today 50 states today having it on their books. It is also a federal holiday which occurs on the last Friday of April (4/26 this year).

The day is called Arbor Day. A celebration of Trees.

When Europeans arrived on the East coast of America, they found a continent that in large part was completely forested. They were intimidated by this dark mass since most of them had very little experience with forests since much of the ones in their homelands had by then been chopped down and turned into open land. Even though the New World forests the arrivals saw were reported to have been managed by the indigenous population to the extent that one could “drive a wagon through them”, they were still something entirely new for the colonists to encounter.

As Annie Proulx describes in her eye-opening non-fiction work titled Barkskins, the colonists wasted no time attacking the forest to create farms, build and heat their homes, and provide the ship building industry with tall masts and other building materials. As Proulx tells the story, the logging industry started to chop down the trees the in the Canadian Maritimes and New England and over the course of decades they moved west, chopping as they went.

Something else happened to trees in the 19^th century – sheep. Sheep farming in the Northeast became the de facto farming industry and the value of cleared land rose to support that. Deforestation got to the point where at one point only 18% of Vermont was forested. Another comment recorded in those days was that you could take a coach from Boston to New York City and not see anything that might be called a forest. If you look at painting, or later photographs, from that era you will note the openness of the landscape.

But while the forests were being reduced, there was something different happening with trees in U.S. cities. The value of trees in the urban environment was recognized. It was obvious to municipal leaders and their citizens that the trees provided a cooling effect and that this, combined with their contribution to aesthetics, made a city with trees simply a nicer, more pleasant, place to live and work.

Urban streets in the 19^th Century were filled with trees, including with corridors of tall, stately elm trees. People also wanted trees in their yards. The term “leafy” began to show up in real estate circles as an indicator that a place was a pleasant neighborhood or village.

But that doesn’t mean that these urban trees were not under threats. They were constantly under threat from invasive pests, disease, and municipal budgets, which had to include funding for maintenance of public trees. The trees began to come down along the streets and in the yards.

A few influential people realized early in the mid-19^th Century what was going on and began to organize efforts to address the loss of urban trees. Chief among these efforts was to create a day devoted to the celebration of trees. It would be a day when people would come together in communities across the nation and praise and plant trees. There would be parades, speeches, and contests for children. This new holiday called Arbor Day became a day that people planned for, and looked forward to, all throughout the year. Starting in Nebraska and slowly spreading to all the States, Arbor Day was the kind of thing that caused communities to act like communities.

As the 20^th Century progressed, however, urban budgets became simply too tight to support urban trees. The mantra of urban renewable not only resulted in tearing down older buildings because it was seen as too expensive to repair them but affected the urban forest as well. Furthermore, many people began to look at the trees in their yards as a nuisance that did not do too much other than lead to a lot of work especially in leaf raking during the Fall. It they came down they didn’t replace them. The rise of Air Conditioning also contributed to this, as now it was possible to be cool inside a home, meaning the cool shade of trees on a lot became less thought of and appreciated.

And Arbor Day fell by the wayside.

The people who created Arbor Day, and the thousands who used to celebrate it did not know anything about climate change. Today is a different story. Climate change is issue number one in terms of the relationship between living beings and the physical world. And Trees are an important component of that.

Because of climate change, most everyone today recognizes that trees are good for the environment, and good for fighting climate change. We are remembering what we were taught in our early school years about photosynthesis and the carbon cycle and understanding the importance of trees as a carbon sink, i.e. removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We are also starting to remember the cooling effect of trees in the urban environment. Studies show areas of cities with trees being multiple degrees cooler than areas of the same city that are treeless.

A key part of many Earth Day celebrations is planting a few trees. But there are a lot of other things that are focused on that day, and Earth Day itself is not what it used to be in terms of the public consciousness. I find this a bit counterintuitive given the rising awareness and concern over climate change, but it is indeed less of a thing than it used to be.

People are always asking me what they can do as one person to combat climate change. I find myself responding with the usual list of things that will reduce their personal carbon footprint. In thinking about Arbor Day, however, I am realizing that I rarely talk about trees (other than in the big context of global deforestation, and the other related issue of the challenges of carbon offsets). I should be doing that.

I am also realizing that it is the public nature of trees that presents an opportunity for a new communal activity that could include a good dose of climate activity. The most communal climate activity that most people participate in today (if they do anything communal at all) is a march. Unfortunately, whereas marches may have once had a big impact on policy and consciousness, that is not the case today. They result in no tangible “product” to address emissions, and in my opinion have become simply a “feel-good” activity. I see no evidence that they are making a difference to policymakers.

If Arbor Day is brought back, it offers a chance for a communal activity where people can work together on something, and that would in turn give people a way to talk to each other about climate change – something that climate experts (and climate psychologist) say is very important to create a foundation for broader and faster climate action.

Yes, we could simply make trees an even bigger part of Earth Day. But I think trees are worth a stand-alone event. Let Earth Day focus on the large and varied number of environmental issues, including non-climate issues of clean water, non-carbon air problems, etc. Not many people are against trees, when you come down to it, especially if you lay out the benefits to them. And you don’t make Arbor Day only about climate change, you should be able to walk a line that brings everyone together.

Hmm…. everyone getting together in activities on a designated day to celebrate trees (and planting a few) while also talking about climate change. Why not?

Look … making a bigger deal out of Arbor Day is not enough to eliminate our climate emergency. But we need more opportunities for collective conversation and collective action on climate change. Let’s make Arbor Day one of them.

Dan

Note: I was fortunate enough to grow up in a house that had a yard large enough to have six massive elms of our own. We lost them all, along with all the other Elms in my small town. Today, when I am in Central Park, or on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., I remember what it was like. If you find yourself in either place, take a bath in the elms.

Note: While there is a Federally designated date for Arbor Day, many States have designated their own different dates for the celebration. The list of State Dates can be found at https://www.thoughtco.com/when-is-arbor-day-1341910

Note: If you want to know more about Arbor Day, and the history of trees in the urban environment and how society has viewed them in the past, you will enjoy (and have your eyes opened) by reading “Urban Forests – A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape” by Jill Jonnes.

Note: If the city, town, village, or community where you live does not celebrate Arbor Day, what better thing for your to do than jump in and help create something. You can visit www.arborday.org to get some ideas and possible support from the Arbor Day Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the holiday.

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Links to Past Posts:

Climate Change and the Snail Darter

St. Patrick's Day and Climate Change

Charging My Car in Manhattan

Step Into These Shoes Wearing a Climate and Energy Hat

Resilience Recognition is Rising - But There is That Other Thing

There is no "O" in Climate Change

It was an Instagram COP - And I am Finally OK with That