Owl in America || November 27, 2024
Notes from an American environmentalist
“Owl in America” is a series of letters chronicling the next four years from the perspective of an environmental lawyer. Practicing conservation and public-lands law during the first Trump administration was an exercise in hope and dogged persistence amidst the ever more effective demolition issuing forth from Washington, D.C. Much ground was lost, only some of which was regained during Biden’s four-year term. This time around, I’m taking notes.
Hi all~
Reading a short piece in the Washington Post this morning about the sputtering end of the COP29 climate conference, it struck me that, even more than the “authoritarian petrostate” venue chosen, the actual physical space in which the conference was held may have had an impact. Negotiations occurred in a “windowless prefab complex,” “a soccer stadium on the outskirts of Baku.” According to the reporter, still there in the final, overtime days:
In the section of the stadium where countries once hosted flashy pavilions, the lights are off and the walls are bare. The Singapore delegation has packed up its crates of “sewage beer” made from recycled toilet water. The Russian delegation has ferried away a trio of human-sized Matryoshka dolls.
The only people left here are the last essential negotiators, a few die-hard climate activists and journalists. In the eerily quiet halls, most food stalls have stopped serving their soggy sandwiches and what one attendee called “concrete croissants.” Some sleep-deprived delegates try to nap on armchairs and couches.
Ugh. How depressing does this sound? Can we not do better? As much as I hate that thousands of people fly all over the planet for these conferences each year, at least could the organizers consider something less industrial, something that might inspire delegates in service of our beautiful world? Could planners set up pavilions and comfortable (even “glamping”) tents in natural settings, where delegates could be surrounded by fresh air and the sounds of our other-than-human friends? Might we see humans are better collaborators and decision makers when they’re talking around fires, sharing meals at picnic tables, and going on group hikes?
It’s just a thought experiment, but having organized (much smaller) conferences that included rather fractious attendees and topics, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful shared meals in the breeze and honest conversations under the stars can be, to bring arguing people to common truths and common ground.
Sputtering end or not, the talks did reach a conclusion. Richer nations pledged $300 billion to support the poorer nations that will suffer most from climate change, which is hundreds of billions short of what analysts say is needed. Too, delegates opted not to officially revisit last year’s commitments to transitioning away from fossil fuels.
In the wake of COP29, climate scientists have decried how casually we’d just “blow past the 1.5°C threshold.” At the same time, because of cost reductions in renewable technologies, activists are celebrating because now, it often makes more sense to build new solar or wind power generation facilities than fossil-fueled ones.
The key word there is “new.” A sobering and unpopular truth about the “green energy transition,” which a subset of writers have been trying to tell us about for years, is that new “green” energy capacity has not replaced fossil fuel use, it has just added more to the supply. This explains why fossil fuel use hasn’t declined, and (in part) why emissions continue to rise.
I think a long quote from Sarah Kaplan’s Post piece “A strange new climate era is beginning to take hold” is in order:
[E]ven as old [1.5C] aspirations fall, changes are underway that cannot be easily undone. Solar and wind energy have become so cheap that it often makes more economic sense to build renewable projects than coal or gas-fired power plants. Costs of solar panels and batteries have plummeted 90 percent in the past decade; electric vehicles have skyrocketed in popularity around the world. […]
But the demand for power is also rising, complicating these efforts. According to a recent report from the International Energy Agency, countries are expected to add electricity demand equivalent to the entire nation of Japan every year — thanks to the growth of EVs, the rapid build-out of AI data centers, and a surge in a need for air conditioning in developing countries.
That growth in demand means that even as clean energy is added to the grid, fossil fuel use hasn’t decreased. And unless countries close coal and gas plants and shut down oil drilling, emissions won’t start to come down.
“Two things can both be true: Clean energy is breaking almost every record you can imagine,” [founding director of the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University Jason] Bordoff said. “And oil use is going up, and gas use is going up, and coal use is going up.”
I found the article’s thesis pretty interesting: the world is “veering away from catastrophe, but not fast enough to avoid some dangerous climate impacts. Many experts say it will be the economics of clean energy that defines the future of the planet — and how developing countries choose to meet their growing electricity demands.” Kaplan notes that many nations still lack access to electricity for large portions of their populations. All else remaining equal, that will certainly change, and whether those nations choose to electrify with fossil fuels or “green” sources (and if green, whether they opt for distributed microgrids and efficiency or industrial-scale renewable grids) will have major consequences.
The piece also drew some interesting conclusions regarding the impacts of Trump’s proposed tariffs on climate efforts, implying that the tariffs’ overseas consequences could end up mattering more than his signaled intention to pull the U.S. out of the Paris accords.
That said, what struck me particularly about this piece is that it was honest about why the energy transition has not so far resulted in lowered fossil fuel use and carbon emissions. Perhaps only a worldwide reduction in demand can begin to achieve that, and that’s a sticky wicket. But at least, knowing this, we can look in the right places for some of the solutions we’ll need.
This is the second time recently I have come across honest writing on how we’ve been missing the truth about carbon emissions. The other, as I mentioned in a previous newsletter, was when a law firm analyzing the outcome of the UN Biodiversity Conference last month noted that “The world is progressively recognizing that biodiversity loss and climate change are correlated and mutually reinforcing. A common refrain is that ‘there is no net zero without nature’.”
Needing to find a thread of hope amid dark times, I do take heart from the fact that sparks of honesty are entering the climate conversation. Perhaps the realization that what we have been doing isn’t working has led the more clear-eyed among us to admit that we’ll have to look elsewhere for solutions.
Another global environment talk is happening this week in Busan, South Korea. Up against an end-of-year deadline, delegates from 175 nations are trying to finalize a treaty to “end plastic pollution.” The U.S. is the world’s largest contributor to the plastic waste problem and had previously indicated that it would sign on.
Almost all plastics are produced from fossil fuels. They include an array of chemicals, many toxic to humans and wildlife. Not surprisingly, fossil fuel industry reps, the delegates from petrostates, and chemical industry reps have fought provisions that would limit plastic production. They want all the focus to be on handling plastic waste. Indeed, when fossil fuel use for transportation and power does eventually start to decline, producers will want to have on hand a substitute market so as not to suffer financial losses. Any such shortfall could be filled by increased plastic production. Negotiations are tense, but it will be interesting to see what sort of framework emerges in Busan this week.
I am more and more drawn to stories of people—just regular people—doing things to rebuild the natural world and thereby doing their part to end the climate, biodiversity, and pollution polycrisis. As America takes a break for a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day (is that a sigh of relief I hear from the rest of the world?), I thought I’d leave you with a story of hope from Massachusetts, one of the earliest sites in the American experiment.
Cranberry sauce is a traditional Thanksgiving dish, and cranberries are a traditional indigenous food, for humans and wildlife, both. Native to much of the U.S., they were probably domesticated by a Revolutionary War veteran in southeast Massachusetts who discovered he could transplant the wild vines to a swamp. Since then, cranberries have been grown in flooded bogs that provide fine habitat for many wildlife species, although they do require nitrogen fertilization, which leads to pollution of waterways and bays.
Warming weather has meant that some cranberries no longer ripen to red in Massachusetts, and growers there have also had to compete with cranberries from colder climes like Wisconsin and Quebec. Farmers are seeking a way out, and their coastal land is being eyed by developers of all sorts, from power companies to home builders. Massachusetts is already at risk of losing coastal wetlands due to rising seas, and is on the hunt for parcels to restore. It’s a win for both sides if conservation groups and the state can protect former cranberry bogs as marshlands before developers can buy and drain them for shopping malls and solar farms.
So far, the conservation coalition has turned 400 acres of cranberry bogs back to marshland and another 14 projects are underway. Interest is growing among retiring farmers, but one of the biggest hurdles is funding. Bogs that have been farmed for, in some cases, over a hundred years, do not revert to natural habitat without removal of water control structures and equipment, imported sand, and other impediments. Also, planners have to consider homes and roads nearby to prevent accidentally flooding them after removing all that infrastructure.
According to conservation biologists, though, no replanting is required. The seed bank remains under the surface, waiting for human activity to stop so native plants can reclaim their former homes. If that isn’t a sweet metaphor for a way forward out of this global mess, I don’t know what is.
Talk to you next week,
Rebecca
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/11/23/cop29-un-climate-conference-news-resolutions-updates/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/11/27/global-warming-fight-paris-agreement-future/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/11/25/global-plastics-treaty-pollution-waste/
https://www.savebuzzardsbay.org/current-issues/cranberry-bogs/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/11/26/cranberries-bogs-wetlands-farmers/
*Inspired by historian Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American.
You can reach me at fearlessgreen@substack.com
Thanks for calling attention to the fact that fossil fuel usage is still rising, and to the problems of plastic pollution, neither of which are topics that get enough attention. And it was great to hear about the wetland restoration in Massachusetts.
Hooray for the Massachusetts restoration projects! Yes, the native seed bank waiting in the ground is one of the most hopeful possible things to contemplate. Just waiting! For a little encouragement.