This Memorial Day, state and local leaders are speaking out – calling climate change the battle of our time – crucial to national security.
Advocates are calling on President Joe Biden to invoke the Defense Production Act to speed up the transition to renewable energy and phase out dependence on fossil fuels.
Mayor Daniel Lee of Culver City is a veteran of the Air Force and the California Air National Guard who currently works as project director at the James Lawson Institute. He said the invasion of Ukraine is being financed by Russian oil and gas.
“The war in Ukraine is a resource war,” said Lee. “And the more the world doesn’t rely on Russian oil for electricity for heating or cooling, the less we are apt to engage in resource wars and the more we can slow down the effects of climate change.”
Russian oil and gas make up 40% of Europe’s energy consumption, but countries are working to reduce that dependence as quickly as possible.
New Mexico State Rep. Debbie Sariñana – D-Albuquerque – also is an Air Force veteran. She noted that climate change is fueling extreme drought and massive wildfires across the West – so leaders must act to slow the damage.
“We have people dying for our country,” said Sariñana. “And what kind of country do we have, if climate change continues? Our planet can’t sustain this much longer. We’re just borrowing the world from our grandkids.”
Five hundred state and local leaders, including Lee and Sariñana, have signed a petition from the group “Elected Officials to Protect America” calling on the administration to declare a climate emergency and implement a clean-energy plan. They both serve as members of the group’s leadership council.
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A technology that once existed only in science fiction soon could emerge as a viable solution to climate change. The city of Flagstaff has added carbon dioxide removal to its plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2030.
Flagstaff officials say once the technology is proved and deployed, it will extract and neutralize carbon and other pollutants from the atmosphere.
In recent years, significant progress has been made in developing systems that can remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Ramon Alatorre is climate and energy coordinator for the northern Arizona city. He said it could be one of the first in the country to implement a climate plan to capture and store carbon dioxide.
“We can do as much reducing as possible, but we’re still going to be producing some emissions,” said Alatorre. “And so there’s going to, by necessity, be the other half of the equation. In order to be net zero, we’re going to have to remove emissions from the atmosphere.”
Alatorre said demonstration projects in Iceland and around the world show promise, but are not yet ready for commercial deployment.
He said his office also is working closely with the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University to develop CDR technology.
Alatorre said Flagstaff is part of the Four Corners Coalition with other governments across the region – including Boulder County, Colorado – seeking to obtain the new technology when it becomes available.
“If we join with Boulder and half a dozen other communities,” said Alatorre. “And suddenly we’ve got an aggregated demand and an aggregated pool of resources that really might attract somebody that wouldn’t have looked at Flagstaff by ourselves.”
Alatorre said while communities such as Flagstaff eventually will utilize a variety of solutions for removing greenhouse gases, he believes CDR will play a major role in cleaning the atmosphere.
He said while the technology may be expensive, the cost of not dealing with climate change could be much higher.
“Cost curve reduction could be achieved certainly by mid-century if we get started now,” said Alatorre. “But that we need those early projects to get the ball rolling, that it’s really going to be deployment-led innovation that result in cost coming down and scalability coming up.”
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The mayor of Huntington, where more than 200 homes were recently damaged by severe flooding, said now is the state’s “one chance” to prevent other residents from experiencing the same tragedy.
Last week, leaders from across West Virginia gathered in Charleston to coordinate on a new state Flood Protection Plan. Huntington Mayor Steve Williams was there, and he later warned that flooding can wipe out everything people have worked for overnight.
“Right now, I have over 215 homes that have just been devastated,” said Williams. “This is just ruining people’s lives. They’ve lost everything. The effect on people’s lives is not just palpable. It’s real.”
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice toured Huntington’s flood damage earlier this month, just two days after declaring a State of Emergency for Huntington and other areas affected by flooding.
Projections say the state’s mountains mean West Virginians can expect to be some of the hardest hit by climate driven natural disasters. Mayor Williams said the only solution is for West Virginia to work together.
“Local, county and municipal governments, but you don’t leave out the people in the neighborhoods,” said Williams. “Everybody plays a role in this. We have one chance to get this right now. Whether you believe in climate change or not, these things are happening more often than they’ve ever happened.”
Robert Martin is the director of West Virginia’s resiliency office. He said they expect to have an update to the state’s 18-year-old flood plan by the end of the year.
But Martin stressed that West Virginians have to realize flooding is going to happen here, and be ready to take the steps to mitigate that reality.
“The topography of the state is such that you’re always going to have rains,” said Martin. “Rains seem to be a little bit more frequent than they used to be, or they’re cells of heavy rains that occur. But, we’ll do what we can to mitigate those, so that we all get some flooding, we know that, but it’d be at a much lesser level.”
Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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Fifteen conservation groups from Wyoming and across the nation have filed administrative protests challenging the Biden administration’s plans to resume oil and gas leasing on public lands as early as June.
They’re calling for the president to end new leasing in order to protect communities, water and wildlife. Dan Ritzman – lands, water, and wildlife campaign director for the Sierra Club – said the move is critical for the administration to meet its own climate goals.
“One of the biggest single sources of greenhouse gases across the country is fossil-fuel leasing on our public lands,” said Ritzman. “So to address climate change, we need to keep those fossil fuels in the ground, keep them from being burned.”
Lease sales set for June include 144,000 acres across eight western states, with a majority of acres in Wyoming. Oil companies repeatedly have claimed that opening up more public lands for drilling can ease pressure on international supplies and lower gas prices.
The protests call for a halt to oil and gas leasing, and a nationwide plan to align federal fossil-fuel management with the goal of avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
Ritzman said new leases on public lands won’t lower prices at the pump, in part because it takes years for oil companies to develop leases. He added that companies already have plenty of options for drilling.
“The oil and gas industry is currently sitting on millions of acres that they have yet to develop,” said Ritzman. “They are making those claims not to help the general public with gas prices but to get their hands on more of these public lands.”
The new leases come on the heels of record industry profits. Shell Oil brought in more than $9 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2022, according to a Guardian report – nearly triple its profits during the same period last year.
Ritzman said lands owned by all Americans have been monopolized by the oil and gas industry for far too long. He said it’s time for public lands to be part of the climate solution, not the problem.
Disclosure: Sierra Club, Wyoming Chapter contributes to our fund for reporting on Climate Change/Air Quality, Endangered Species & Wildlife, Energy Policy. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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