Ch 3.8 | 🌪️Climate change and environmental regulations

While many politicians acknowledge the reality and urgency of climate change, there is significant debate about the best ways to address it. This debate often stalls comprehensive action, despite the consensus of the scientific community that urgent action is needed. America's aging infrastructure, including roads, bridges, airports and utility grids, requires significant investment for upgrades and maintenance. This issue often falls prey to partisan gridlock. 

I like to inject a little humor into very serious discourse.  And this is a very serious subject indeed. I shared some commentary from Jim Jefferies on the Second Amendment. Well, enjoy this short clip on global warming.

I share it because I like that he calls the propaganda around climate change "a lie." I say that not because I'm a climate change denier. Not at all. I find it ironic because I know politicians do focus groups to find the best ways to market issues to us in order to either scare us or lull us into complacency. Are you aware that when it comes to estate taxes, opponents marketed them as a “death tax”?  You see, it’s all very calculated. I wonder if people would care about the environment more if we actually said what it really is: saving the human race! As Jefferies rightly points out,

There is no bigger lie than “we have to save the planet.” We have to save ourselves.  We have to save the human race. The Planet doesn’t give a fuck about us, and it will be happy when we’re gone.”

Like health care, the Second Amendment and immigration, climate change divides us. Party dogma and extreme points of view on either side are not smart nor will they help us arrive at a consensus around a common sense solution. I'm saying this about the "Green New Deal" as much as I'm calling out the GOP. 

About two-thirds (65%) of Americans say the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change.  Consistent with public concerns over climate and the environment, 79% of Americans say the priority for the country’s energy supply should be developing alternative sources of energy, such as wind and solar; far fewer (20%) give priority to expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas. A majority of the public (58%) says government regulations will be necessary to encourage businesses and individuals to rely more on renewable energy; fewer (39%) think the private marketplace will ensure this change in habits. 

Here again, whom we elect in the near term matters. Along the lines of the "lesser of two evils" approach, I'm advocating that until such time as we are able to change the current system, we must avoid extreme dogmas.

Where the Democratic Party has managed to keep the fringe at bay, the GOP has gone all in on this agenda. Did you know that Trump’s Interior Department set a new standard for ignoring Congress? Interior Secretary David Bernhardt showed up for congressional hearings that decided the fate of the department’s budget, but otherwise refused invitations from the House Natural Resources Committee to defend his department’s policy actions under Trump. The attitude flowed down to sub-agency heads as well. Scott Angelle, the administration’s head of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (the office in charge of setting offshore drilling safety standards), told the committee he was “too busy” to answer its request that he explain the agency’s practice of handing out waivers on regulation put in place in response to the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster. Are you OK with an unchecked executive branch?

On greenhouse gas emissions, Trump went the opposite direction from the rest of the world.  His attempts to roll back Obama-era rules aimed at cracking down on methane emissions had major implications for not only the near-term warming caused by this potent greenhouse gasses, but also shrunk the United States’ stature on the global stage. The Trump administration loosened the standards oil and gas companies had to meet for how much methane — the largest chemical component of natural gas and a major heat-trapping substance — they could allow to leak out of pipelines, storage tanks and other oil field infrastructure. Senate Republicans had failed to kill the Obama rule at the beginning of the Trump administration, leaving the White House to roll back an environmental regulation even some oil and gas companies supported as a way to keep an increasingly green-minded public on their side.

Trump exiled climate scientists from Washington — literally. The Agriculture Department went to great lengths to quietly quash scientific research conducted by its employees or funded by government dollars, in particular research into how the agriculture industry could play a critical role in combating climate change. Secretary Sonny Perdue was aggressive in reshaping the USDA, most overtly by relocating many of the department’s research scientists out of Washington to the Midwest.

As you’d imagine, Trump went all in to end curbs on auto emissions. Obama used his stimulus leverage over the auto manufacturers to negotiate landmark federal rules to curb carbon dioxide pollution from new vehicles through 2025 — a central component of his work to fight climate change. Automakers took advantage of Trump’s election to ask for moderate changes to those targets, but Trump instead completely scrambled the regulatory scheme, attacked California’s special regulatory authority and created a schism among automakers. Vehicle emissions represent the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and the rollback was likely the biggest climate-related action of Trump’s term, especially as electric utilities continue to move away from coal on their own and as electric vehicles are slow to take hold in the U.S. But some of the effect was mitigated when California brokered a deal with five major auto manufacturers to meet standards similar to the Obama-era rules.

On toxic chemicals, the story is the same. Trump impeded regulation — even though Republicans wanted it.  Trump’s EPA essentially blew up a bipartisan deal to more strictly regulate toxic chemicals that Americans are exposed to daily and instead tapped a group of chemicals industry experts to run and advise the program. The 2016 overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, had given the EPA new teeth to go after well-known dangerous chemicals, like asbestos and methylene chloride, in a bid to boost public confidence in the safety of consumer products. Trump officials muzzled scientists and civil servants at the agency and crafted narrow approaches to assessing chemicals’ dangers, enabling massive loopholes. 

One example: Under that law, Congress urged the EPA to consider, cumulatively, all possible exposures to a chemical, whether through water, air, consumer uses or exposure at work. But Trump’s EPA opted only to look at risks from exposures that couldn’t be regulated under other laws. For instance, they wouldn’t weigh potential exposure to a chemical in drinking water since it could be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, even if it wasn’t. Trump’s EPA also mostly whiffed on statutory deadlines to finish studying risks for the first round of chemicals under the 2016 law and was slapped by a federal court for ignoring certain ways Americans are exposed to toxins.

So just imagine what we could expect if Trump wins a second term!

Ray Dalio weighed in on the subject in a post titled, "The Fourth Big Force: Climate Change."  I always appreciate his insights and find him to be reasonable in his approach.

Dalio seems to believe that there are good "double-bottom-line investments," and I do believe that businesses have a role to play in influencing the course of history.  

But, sadly, we haven't been able to rely upon corporations to embrace “conscious capitalism” when it comes to climate change. It just doesn't seem to be in their DNA.   Consider this news about Big Oil (aka Big Plastic).

And, the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the EPA has infringed upon a state’s constitutional right to pollute.  If you missed the case, in May 2023, the court established a more stringent test to determine whether the Clean Water Act applies to certain wetlands, limiting the EPA’s authority over them. 

The decision in Sackett vs. EPA removed over 90 million acres of formerly protected wetlands from EPA oversight and the protections of the Clean Water Act. Even Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices in criticizing Justice Samuel Alito’s new definition on the limits of EPA authority with respect to wetlands.

That said, it's important to note that all nine justices agreed that the EPA overstepped its authority and that the plaintiffs' property should not be subject to EPA regulation.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg published this in July 2023:

Humans are losing the race against heat. First came the hottest June in recorded history. Now it’s the hottest-ever July. This year is already highly likely to replace 2016 atop the heat ranking. Scientists suspect the last several years have been warmer than any point in the 125,000 that came before. This acceleration of heat is the result of burning enough fossil fuels to raise global average temperatures about 1.2C since the Industrial Revolution. The bottom line is that heat is intensifying faster than attempts to counteract it, and it’s beginning to look like the time humanity has to change its ways is a lot shorter than previously thought.

According to Bloomberg's David E. Rovella:

The current projections from researchers at Climate Action Tracker, all the existing emissions-cutting policies by governments around the world would result in the global average temperature increasing about 2.7C by 2100. A separate team at the United Nations compiled an end-of-century estimate of 2.8C. The problem is clear: Existing weather is visibly outrunning our combined efforts to stem global warming. “Climate policy is not keeping pace,” says Ann Mettler, vice president for Europe at Breakthrough Energy, a consortium of nonprofits and venture capital funds. Shifting to clean energy, she says, “whatever that cost, would pale in comparison to what these extreme weather events cost.”

If this isn't motivation enough to address our political system and start working towards nonpartisan common sense solutions, I don't know what is.  Especially considering this from the same Bloomberg report:

There’s still hope: Here’s how experts at eliminating carbon pollution think we can catch up.

Sadly, in the 2024 election cycle, the GOP hasn't moderated its view.   In fact, one primary candidate not surprisingly doubled down on Trump's "vision" regarding climate change.  Vivek Ramaswamy claimed during the first Republican debate that the "climate change agenda is a hoax," (despite the fact that five months earlier he said "human activity is causing climate change") and that "more people are dying from bad climate change policy than actual climate change".   During an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, Ramaswamy stated:

I can offer clear evidence that the number of climate disaster related deaths is down by 98% over the last century. The number of people who died of hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and other weather-related events in 1920, for every 100 that died then, two die today. And the reason why is more plentiful, abundant access to fossil fuels and technology powered by fossil fuels.

Now I'm not going to dispute his statement.  In fact, according to  ur World In Data, the average annual deaths due to natural disasters in the 1920s was 523,892. For the 2020s, it’s 12,886. That is a ratio of 2.4 people dying this decade compared to every 100 from a century ago, which acceptably rounds to two for every 100 — 50x the number of people dying in 1920.

But the causal conclusion he draws is a false narrative because fossil fuels are not the reason why there have been less deaths — it's a deceptive conclusion and fosters continued irrational behavior to the detriment of common sense solutions.   Isaac Saul of Tangle News once again does a fantastic job of dissecting Ramaswamy’s position on climate change. 

If you're interested in moving beyond the political rhetoric and actually understanding climate change in an intelligent manner, I'd highly recommend reading Bill Gates' 2021 book "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster." Gates focuses on how all countries, rich or poor, can enjoy the same quality of life, powered by a green version of activities that would otherwise accelerate the process of global warming.  It's a worthwhile read.  His strategy for reaching zero emissions is laid out in a very straightforward way, using numbers to help guide the reader to the magnitude of the challenge.

At its highest level, his strategy is simple: Make power generation zero-carbon by replacing fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear power, and then electrify as much of our activities as possible. This works in theory, but creates significant challenges, such as how to manage the intermittency of supply from sources such as solar panels and wind turbines.

Another book to pick up: professor Michael Mann’s “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet.” It's worth noting that Mann criticizes the 2016 edition of Bill and Melinda Gates’ annual letter for highlighting the challenges of cutting emissions and declaring “we need an energy miracle.” Mann, America’s most famous climate scientist, points out that many zero-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels. He even suggests that, far from needing a miracle, we could achieve 100% clean electricity with current renewable technologies alone.

The main focus of Mann’s book is a call to arms in the new war against “inactivists” who are using new tactics of “deception, distraction and delay” to prevent the phase-out of fossil fuels. Mann is a robust character and has fought off several disgraceful onslaughts against him and his work by climate change deniers in U.S. politics and the media over the past 20 years. He warns that vested interests and ideological extremists who oppose efforts to eliminate fossil fuels no longer deny outright the reality of climate change because people can see the evidence for it all around them. Instead, opponents of action now rely on slightly subtler arguments, and Mann reveals how they are sometimes unwittingly assisted by clumsy communications from climate scientists and campaigners.

He cautions against highlighting in particular the need for action by individual citizens and consumers. As important as personal efforts are, they can distract attention away from the critical role of governments and companies in making systemic changes.

Mann criticizes the practice of flight-shaming climate researchers, because it creates the false impression that experts have to experience personal sacrifice and deprivation to be taken seriously, regardless of how successful they are in persuading politicians to act. Despite the attention devoted to it, flying is responsible for about 3% of annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Mann also attacks “doomsayers,” including some members of Extinction Rebellion who claim we have already passed the point of no return, condemning us all to imminent climate destruction. Such claims are not based on science and have the effect of making people give up on efforts to rid the world of fossil fuels.

Mann does not pull his punches, but his aim is usually strong and true. This book will no doubt prove controversial for some climate campaigners, as well as the deniers, but I hope it will be read by everybody who is engaged in making the case for action.