U.S. Environment & Energy

Written by Diana Thebaud Nicholson // January 10, 2025 // Environment & Energy, U.S. // No comments

Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
(Wikipedia) a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that set forth the legal test used when U.S. federal courts must defer to a government agency’s interpretation of a law or statute.[1] The decision articulated a doctrine known as “Chevron deference”.[2] Chevron deference consisted of a two-part test that was deferential to government agencies: first, whether Congress has spoken directly to the precise issue at question, and second, “whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute”.

10 January
L.A. Fires Show Limits of America’s Efforts to Cope With Climate Change>
California has focused on fortifying communities against wildfires. But with growing threats, that may not be enough.
(NYT) This week’s fires around Los Angeles present a puzzle: Why is California, the state best equipped to deal with wildfires, seemingly unable to prevent blazes from consuming entire chunks of the country’s second-largest city?
California’s building code for wildfires is among the most protective in the nation. Its local fire departments are backed up by CalFire, the state fire agency, which has a $4 billion budget and some of the best trained firefighters in the world. The state’s huge tax base generates effectively unlimited resources for wildfire protection. And California has mandatory statewide requirements that homeowners in risky areas create “defensible space” around their property — rules that other Western states would like to apply but can’t because it would anger conservative voters.
Yet the events of this week demonstrate the limits of those efforts, raising uncomfortable questions about whether any part of the United States — even the wealthiest, best prepared and most experienced — can truly adapt to wildfires made worse by a hotter climate.
“Climate change, and climate events, are causing us to butt up against that limit,” said Joshua Saks, the adaptation program director for Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. “The risk will always grow, and at some point outpace what you’ve done.”
Part of the extensive damage from the fires in Los Angeles may reflect errors in planning or execution. Fire hydrants designed to fight house fires ran dry, as water reserves faced greater demand than officials anticipated. It’s not clear that residents had sufficient warning or that evacuation routes were well planned. The second-guessing and questions about accountability have already begun even as the fires continue to rage.
But there is no escaping the fact that wildfires in the American West are growing worse. Rising temperatures mean drier vegetation, which creates more fuel for fires; it also means those fires are harder to extinguish once they start. An analysis of 60,000 wildfires between 2001 and 2020 found that fires are spreading faster over time, in California and other Western states.
What’s the latest on the Los Angeles wildfires and what caused them?
(BBC) Wildfires are ripping across parts of Los Angeles, leading to at least 11 deaths, burning down hundreds of buildings, and prompting evacuation orders for tens of thousands across the county.
Despite the efforts of thousands of firefighters, the biggest blazes remain mostly uncontained.
Weather conditions and the underlying impact of climate change are expected to continue fanning the flames for days to come, and there is intense scrutiny of officials’ preparedness for the disaster.

What happened during the first four days of the Eaton, Palisades fires in Southern California
(LA Times) Coverage of the fires ravaging Altadena, Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Pasadena, including stories about the devastation, issues firefighters faced and the weather.
Newsom invites Trump to California to see L.A. fire damage
“In the spirit of this great country, we must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines,” Newsom said. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans — displaced from their homes and fearful for the future — deserve to see all of us working in their best interests to ensure a fast recovery and rebuild.
State to probe why Pacific Palisades reservoir was offline, empty when firestorm exploded
A large reservoir in Pacific Palisades that is part of the Los Angeles water supply system was out of commission when a ferocious wildfire destroyed thousands of homes and other structures nearby, the Los Angeles Times found.
Officials said that the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been closed since about February for repairs to its cover, leaving a 117-million-gallon water storage complex empty in the heart of the Palisades for nearly a year.

2024

3 December
Trump’s first climate crisis
By Annie Snider
(Politico) The West is on the precipice of the most high-stakes water war this country has seen.
The Colorado River is the lifeblood of 40 million people from Wyoming to Mexico, the backbone of economies from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Denver. It nourishes rural cattle ranching communities on the slope of the Rocky Mountains and massive agricultural regions along the U.S.-Mexico border. It supports 30 tribes and courses through 11 national parks and monuments, including the Grand Canyon.
But it has shrunk dramatically over the past 25 years.
Now, the rules that govern water deliveries are about to expire and the seven states that share the waterway, along with the federal government, must agree on new ones that will work in a far drier future. It’s a wrenching task that can only bring political and economic pain.
The West’s most important river has lost 20 percent of its flows since the turn of the century, gripped by a megadrought that climate experts say may be just a taste of things to come. The region is warming and drying out far faster than the rest of the U.S., sending water levels at the region’s two main reservoirs so low in recent years that federal engineers have begun worrying about their ability to physically release water from the dam that feeds California, Arizona and Nevada.

30 September – 2 October
Helene death toll now at least 166 as Biden plans to visit ravaged Carolinas
President Joe Biden will survey the devastation in North and South Carolina on Wednesday as rescuers continue their search for anyone still unaccounted for after Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage across the Southeast and killed at least 166 people.
Many residents in both states were still without running water, cellular service and electricity as floodwaters receded and revealed more of the death and destruction left in Helene’s path.
Search crews with cadaver dogs wade through muck of communities ‘wiped off the map’ by Helene
(AP) — Cadaver dogs and search crews trudged through knee-deep muck and debris in the mountains of western North Carolina on Tuesday looking for more victims of Hurricane Helene days after the storm carved a deadly and destructive path through the Southeast.
Meanwhile, across the border in east Tennessee, a caravan including Gov. Bill Lee that was surveying damage outside the town of Erwin drove by a crew pulling two bodies from the wreckage, a grim reminder that the rescue and recovery operations are still very much ongoing and the death toll — already surpassing 160 — is likely to rise
Supplies arrive by plane and by mule in North Carolina as Helene’s death toll tops 130
(AP) — Widespread devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene came to light Monday across the South, revealing a wasteland of splintered houses, crushed cargo containers and mud-covered highways in one of the worst storms in U.S. history. The death toll topped 130.

19 August
Competing energy and climate visions in the 2024 presidential election
Samantha Gross and Fred Dews
The Trump administration’s most significant climate impact was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement; the Biden administration’s has been the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Energy independence” gets a lot of attention, but we should be talking about energy security, and the U.S. is a very energy secure country.
Changing the energy economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions isn’t just about sacrifice; it creates a lot of business and economic opportunities.
(Brookings) There’s a critical debate to be had about the level of risk and opportunities posed by a changing climate and what actions should be considered to adapt and transition to a carbon neutral and resilient future. And this is not only a domestic concern here in the U.S.; the international community is watching how climate and energy issues play out in the U.S. presidential election, with both major party candidates offering different visions for climate and energy policy.
…unquestionably, the biggest move during President Biden’s term has been the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August of 2022. This is the largest piece of climate legislation ever passed here in the United States. It’s quite a different situation than you see in Europe and some other countries. We don’t have a carbon tax or a policy that includes a lot of sticks. It’s really focused on carrots: tax subsidies and loan guarantees and the like to encourage the U.S. to move to a lower carbon economy. There’s encouragement for renewable electricity development; for electric vehicles; for greener manufacturing; for development of new, greener technology here in the United States; for reshoring critical minerals development. There’s something in there for everyone and it’s a gigantic step towards meeting our climate goals.

17 July
Why isn’t Hurricane Beryl inspiring bi-partisan action to reduce disaster risks?
Manann Donoghoe and Andre M. Perry
(Brookings) …in the southern United States, the ripple effects of a devastating natural disaster are still occurring. Houston residents, who were already impacted by Hurricane Beryl, are facing a severe heat wave amplifying the damages of the hurricane. Such compound disasters undermine basic functions of government, including the provision of safe and effective public infrastructure, and also jeopardize the foundational tenets of American democracy, such as the sanctity of property rights. So why is addressing climate change still a partisan issue?
Put simply, the U.S. lacks a sustainable policy platform to build the climate resilient communities that the nation needs. More concerningly, climate change has become a polarizing issue when it should be a unifying one. Democrats and Republicans need to take this threat seriously and reignite a bi-partisan platform for climate action grounded in disaster risk reduction.
Developing over ultra hot Atlantic waters that supercharged the storm, Beryl reached Category 5 status faster than any previous hurricane. By the time it made landfall in Texas on Monday, July 8, Beryl had been downgraded to a Category 1, but it still caused tremendous destruction. First striking Corpus Christi and then Houston, the hurricane caused 13 deaths, and left over 2.2 million residents without electricity. As of Monday, July 15, a full week after making landfall, roughly 300,000 Houstonians are still without power.

16 July
The MAGA Plan to End Free Weather Reports
Project 2025 would all but dissolve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
By Zoë Schlanger
(The Atlantic) In the United States, as in most other countries, weather forecasts are a freely accessible government amenity. The National Weather Service issues alerts and predictions, warning of hurricanes and excessive heat and rainfall, all at the total cost to American taxpayers of roughly $4 per person per year. Anyone with a TV, smartphone, radio, or newspaper can know what tomorrow’s weather will look like, whether a hurricane is heading toward their town, or if a drought has been forecast for the next season. Even if they get that news from a privately owned app or TV station, much of the underlying weather data are courtesy of meteorologists working for the federal government.
… NOAA’s scientific-research arm, which studies things such as Arctic-ice dynamics and how greenhouse gases behave (and which the document calls “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism”), should be aggressively shrunk. “The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded,” the document says. It further notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims,” so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s.
Trump’s Environmental Impact Endures, at Home and Around the World
His break from the Paris accord inspires other populist leaders, while his reshaping of the federal courts and environmental rollbacks affect the air, water, wetlands and public lands, disrupting efforts to counter climate change.
(Inside Climate news) Former President Donald Trump dismantled the pillars of U.S. climate policy when he exited the Paris climate accord and rolled back more than 100 regulations to protect air, water, endangered species and human health.
… President Joe Biden’s administration has reversed most of the regulatory rollbacks of his predecessor, but Trump left behind a conservative 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court that has already irrevocably changed environmental protection in America. The biggest shock came on June 28, when the court overturned a 40-year-old legal precedent that buttressed federal regulatory action. By dismissing the so-called “Chevron doctrine,” the court handed a legal advantage to those challenging aspects of Biden’s climate change agenda.
… Trump’s international influence and his broader reshaping of the federal courts will hinder climate policy for years to come, leading environmentalists contend—a legacy they say will endure whether or not he is re-elected in November. If Trump does regain the White House, his allies expect him to further break from international cooperation on climate and free existing constraints on U.S. oil, gas and coal production.
But as Republicans convene this week in Milwaukee to make Trump their presidential nominee, don’t expect them to call climate change a “hoax,” as Trump himself did repeatedly on social media years before the 2016 election. By the time he became president, Trump showed an awareness of the political popularity of environmental protection. Instead of dismissing climate science, he talked about lifting the economic burden he said the Paris agreement imposed on the nation. He framed his actions as part of an America-first agenda of energy “dominance” that safeguarded the nation against competitors, particularly China. Eventually, he signed a well-received environmental law, the Great American Outdoors Act, and proposed long-overdue standards to reduce lead in drinking water.

13 June
Climate Change in the American Mind: Politics & Policy, Spring 2024
Most registered voters have not heard much about the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022.
On August 16, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. The law aims to curb inflation by reducing the federal deficit, lowering prescription drug prices and the cost of health insurance, modernizing the Internal Revenue Service, and investing in U.S. clean energy production. The law authorizes $391 billion for developing clean energy and addressing global warming, including tax incentives and rebates to help consumers and businesses buy energy-efficient appliances, solar panels, electric vehicles, etc. The IRA also includes support for clean energy jobs and investments in communities that are most harmed by air and water pollution. It is the largest investment the U.S. government has ever made to reduce global warming, and it is projected to help the U.S. reduce its carbon pollution 40% by 2030. The law will be paid for by closing tax loopholes.

16 May
Understanding the Inflation Reduction Act
The Inflation Reduction Act passed into law in August 2022. In just the past year and a half, the law already has begun driving low-carbon investments—but additional policies could help the United States reach the overarching goal of decarbonizing by midcentury.