We Need to Learn Better

I’m old enough to remember the 1973 Middle East oil embargo and the long lines at gas stations. So is our current president. The lesson was clear: We needed to end our dependence on the oil from that region. 

The fallout included U.S. automakers’ loss of significant market share to Japanese companies, which were producing cars that could go many more miles on a gallon of gas than most of the ones made by Ford, GM, and Chrysler. 

That oil shock did lead to some progress. "Solar, wind, and nuclear are children of the 1970s oil shocks — with growth driven by security, not environmentalism," the Carlyle Group's Jeff Currie and Admiral James Stavridis, the former NATO commander, wrote recently. And, as Rebecca Elliott noted in a news analysis in The New York Times, our fuel-economy standards are “an enduring legacy” of the embargo.

That progress was bolstered by the developing scientific consensus that fossil fuels were changing our climate and a range of actions taken to address that problem. 

Because of efforts to boost energy efficiency and promote renewable energy sources, Americans are more insulated from oil shocks today than decades ago, Francesca Paris noted in The New York Times. “Petroleum makes up a tiny share of electricity generation (less than 1 percent, down from 11 percent in 1980). Oil prices hit consumers on the road most of all, but even there, less so: The country’s cars are more efficient, on average, and a growing share of Americans are driving electric vehicles.”

Yet it’s discouraging that in the half century since the OPEC embargo, the U.S. and other nations remain so vulnerable to what is transpiring today in and around the Strait of Hormuz. As The Times’ Elliott observed: “With oil front and center, it feels almost like revisiting an earlier time, before countries began embracing renewable energy…”  

And the need to move away more quickly from reliance on fossil fuels became even clearer with the March 6 publication of a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Researchers found that the rate of global warming has nearly doubled over the last decade. As David Gelles reported in The Times, “Many of the consequences of global warming — such as more intense storms, warming oceans and melting glaciers — are arriving faster and more powerfully than many scientists had expected,” David Gelles reported in The Times.

Ben Geman of Axios wrote, “Various analysts and advocates say (the Iran War) could — or at least should — prompt governments and investors to prioritize fuels that don't have to move across oceans.”

But maybe not. "While I agree that oil price spikes could revive interest in renewables, I'll say it again: high prices tend to usher out incumbent politicians faster than they usher in new technologies," ClearView Energy Partner's Kevin Book posted on X.

The politician occupying the Oval Office remains intent on stifling any transition away from fossil fuels, including what he calls “clean, beautiful coal.” With the courts frustrating his efforts to block wind farms off the East Coast, the Trump administration offered to pay nearly $1 billion  to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina, to not proceed with those projects. Total Energies accepted that deal. Not only that, the company committed to investing in natural gas infrastructure in Texas. 

Imagine if Congress, back in the mid-1970s, had voted to put a price on carbon. Think how different our sorry history on oil and the Middle East would have been. Wouldn’t it be great if this latest conflict could convince our political leaders that they cannot postpone this sensible step any longer? 

Endangerment Finding: Now What?

Now that President Trump’s EPA has thrown out the endangerment finding–a determination that carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases were a threat to public health and welfare–legal and state policy wheels are turning.

Of course, what we also would like to see is renewed momentum on Capitol Hill for putting a price on carbon emissions. Such a free-market approach should appeal to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, regardless of their views on regulatory responses to global warming.

The withdrawal of the endangerment finding marks the culmination of years of effort by right-wing and industry groups to undermine the cornerstone of federal rules that limit greenhouse gases — and to hamper future administrations from putting them back in place after Trump leaves office.

“If the rule survives …legal challenges, we reiterate that it could reshape U.S. federal climate policy by pendulum-proofing the issue against a Democrat sweep” in the 2028 general elections, Clearview Energy Partners, a consulting firm, said.

That is a risk that many supporters of the endangerment finding think is worth taking. “You can’t just stand by and let E.P.A. trash its own authority because you’re scared of a potentially negative ruling” from the Supreme Court, said Andres Restrepo, a lawyer for the Sierra Club. “I think that it’s a bigger risk to do nothing.”

A coalition of health and environmental organizations has already sued the Trump administration over its February 12 decision. “EPA has a duty to consider the well-being and safety of all, and the science is clear; climate change and air pollution threaten everyone’s health,” said Georges Benjamin, chief executive officer of the American Public Health Association, one of the plaintiffs. The lawsuit was brought in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. 

Meantime, as Politico’s Alex Nieves wrote, “The Trump administration just tore apart decades of U.S. climate policy, but it may have also handed California its golden ticket.”  He explained that some legal experts argue that state regulators now will have the power to fill the void. “That’s because states are preempted from setting their own tailpipe standards — a restriction that becomes hard to defend if the federal government bows out of the emissions game.”

Trump’s EPA is trying to head off that legal reasoning. The agency’s official repeal argues that states are still preempted from developing laws or regulations that “adopt or attempt to enforce any standard relating to the control of emissions from new motor vehicles or engines.”

Fifty states trying to solve the climate problem individually is not a scenario that appeals to the auto industry.  As Politico reported, “While major car companies lobbied Congress to revoke California’s EV sales mandate last year, they stopped short of advocating against the endangerment finding and didn’t explicitly praise the repeal last week.”

Maxine Joselow of The New York Times noted that Colorado legislators “are trying carrots rather than sticks.” In the coming weeks, they plan to introduce a bill that would provide a $2,000 tax credit toward new electric vehicle purchases starting in 2027, up from the current amount of $750. It’s just one example of initiatives that states are pursuing to tackle climate change’s threats to our health and prosperity.

“The transition to cleaner, nonfossilized fuel is happening very rapidly even though Donald Trump is trying to slow down this progress,” said Jay Inslee, the former governor of Washington. “The states are tremendous powers in this clean energy transition we’re going through.”

Three East Coast Wind Farms Breeze to Court Victories

Wind farms were on the verge of providing electricity to millions of homes along the East Coast. The projects had generated tens of thousands of jobs and promised to speed the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

But President Donald Trump despises wind power and, in December, his administration issued stop-work orders for five East Coast wind farms that were under construction. 

His animosity dates back to the time when turbines, which he called “monsters,” were proposed off the coast of Scotland in sight of his Aberdeenshire golf course. He went before the Scottish Parliament in an unsuccessful attempt to block their construction. Trump derides wind farms as “losers” that lose money, destroy the landscape and kill birds.

The president also contends that they pose a national security threat. His administration argued in court that wind turbine blade movement can interfere with radar. New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) termed that a “bogus pretense,” adding, “When I heard this, I said one thing: I’m the governor of New York. If there is a national security threat off the coast of New York, you need to tell me what it is. I want a briefing right now. Well, lo and behold, they had no answer.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said wind projects are “bad for everybody.”

Workers are now back on the job at three of those offshore sites, thanks to rulings by federal judges. On January 12, a judge said that work could resume on Revolution Wind, which will power 350,000 homes in Connecticut and Rhode Island. 

Three days later, District Judge Carl J. Nichols, a Trump appointee, ruled that construction on the Empire Wind project could go forward offshore from Long Island, N.Y., while he considers the merits of the government’s order to suspend the project.

Twenty-four hours later, a third wind farm got a green light. Federal Judge Jamar Walker allowed the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Commercial Project to temporarily keep building. 

Meantime, Orsted is suing over the pause of its Sunrise Wind project for New York, with a hearing still to be set. The fifth paused project is Vineyard Wind, under construction in Massachusetts. 

Pointing to the upheaval for Orsted’s Revolution Wind, Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a champion of the oil and gas industry, said, “You have this project that has been underway for years, millions of dollars, 80 percent complete, and then you have, ‘Sorry, that’s not on our approved list,’” she said.

“OK, now we’re back on. But what is the message that is sent to Ørsted? What is the message that is sent to any of these companies about the reliability of working on a project in the United States?” she continued. “I worry about that.”

In contrast, as Claire Brown and Brad Plumer reported in The New York Times, “Over the past eight months, the Energy Department has taken the extraordinary step of ordering that generators at five coal-burning power plants that had been headed for retirement stay open and keep running. That’s just the beginning, officials say.”

Trump has expressed “a certain affection for the fuel,” Brown and Plumer wrote, calling it “beautiful clean coal” even though it is the dirtiest of fossil fuels and a major driver of global warming.

If Congress could find the will and energy to put a price on carbon, it would be easier to move away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Urge your senators and House member to take that important step.

Trump administration dismantling climate and weather research center

Climate scientists around the globe were stunned to hear on December 15 that the Trump administration was breaking up one of the world’s preeminent Earth and atmospheric research institutions. The reason? It was promoting “climate alarmism.”

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), based in Boulder, Colorado, was created in 1960 to conduct research and educate future scientists. Many of the big advances in weather prediction originated at the center, the University of California’s Daniel Swain told The Washington Post.

Those advances include severe weather warnings, the reduced harm from those earlier warnings and looking at the economic impacts of what tomorrow’s weather or weather a few days from now might bring, Swain explained.

NCAR research has played a leading role in improving weather forecasting. Three-day forecasts have been more than 80-percent accurate since the 1980s and are now about 97-percent accurate; five-day forecasts hit the 80-percent threshold in the early 2000s, and seven-day forecasts are approaching it today. 

“Human-caused changes in the global climate have fundamentally changed the weather, making extreme conditions not only possible but also more likely,” Michelle Nijhuis wrote in The Atlantic. “Without ongoing research on climate change, forecasters would be less able to predict deadly weather events such as last week’s flooding in the Pacific Northwest…”

The center is “quite literally our global mothership,” Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University professor and chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, wrote on X. 

According to the White House, the administration plans to identify and eliminate what it calls "green new scam research activities" during an upcoming review of the center, while "vital functions" such as weather modeling and supercomputing will be moved to another entity or location. Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who announced the decision, said that “a comprehensive review is underway.” But why not complete that review before shutting down such an esteemed research center?

Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has been vocal in his concern over climate alarmism and the politicization of climate science and weather disasters. Though he considers NCAR far from perfect, Pielke told USA TODAY that it’s “a crown jewel of the U.S. scientific enterprise and deserves to be improved, not shuttered. If the U.S. is going to be a global leader in the atmospheric sciences, then it cannot afford to make petty and vindictive decisions based on the hot politics of climate change.” 

NCAR plays a unique role in the scientific community by bringing together otherwise siloed specialists to collaborate on some of the biggest climate and weather questions of our time, Caspar Ammann, a former research scientist at the center, told The Washington Post.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D) said, “Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science. NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”

The New York Times noted that President Trump “routinely mocks climate change as a hoax and his administration has labeled virtually all efforts to study climate change, reduce the level of dangerous greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or protect communities from the impacts of global warming as ‘alarmism.’”

We're Paying Billions for Damage Linked to Climate Change

Through the first six months of this year, disasters across the United States caused more than $100 billion in damage, the most expensive start to any year on record, according to a report released October 22 by Climate Central. Fourteen disasters each caused at least $1 billion in damage through the first half of the year.

More than half of the costs from extreme weather so far this year stem from the wildfires that tore through Los Angeles in January. Severe storms — which brought tornadoes, hail and floods to much of the country — accounted for the rest of the nationwide damage. 

The total does not include the July 4 floods that struck central Texas, killing at least 136 people. 

The average number of billion-dollar disasters has surged from three per year during the 1980s to 19 annually during the last 10 years, the data show. Annual costs, which are inflation-adjusted using the Consumer Price Index, typically reached the tens of billions in the 1990s and rose to a high of $182.7 billion last year. 

Climate Central began overseeing the database this spring after the Trump administration directed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to stop updating its database.  Adam Smith led management of the federal database for 15 years but took early retirement in May, shortly after the Trump administration said it would stop reporting disaster damage costs. The government had maintained that database since the 1990s, with data going back to 1980. 

Smith is continuing the work at the nonprofit Climate Central, where he is the senior climate impacts scientist. He is using the same methodology that NOAA did and, according to New York Times reporter Scott Dance, plans to eventually gather even more detailed disaster data. The research relies on data from insurance companies and other sources, some of which is proprietary, to tally up total losses. “This data set was simply too important to stop being updated,” Smith told Dance. 

CNN reported that “the choice to discontinue the database was in keeping with the Trump administration’s focus on cutting climate change datasets and programs across federal agencies.” 

NOAA spokeswoman Kim Doster said that her agency ”appreciates” that the database found “a funding mechanism other than the taxpayer dime” as NOAA focuses on “sound, unbiased research over projects based in uncertainty and speculation.” 

Trump has said he wants to eventually shift the burden of disaster relief and recovery from the federal government onto states. The administration has created a panel that is expected to recommend changes to the way the Federal Emergency Management Agency operates by the end of November. 

Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who studies climate change’s effects on communities, told The Times that the database serves as a powerful signal of both changing weather extremes and “decision making that is costing us a lot of money.”

The billion-dollar-disaster list “has been one of the most effective bridges to the public communicating the increasing costs of disasters,” Rumbach said. “It’s a really powerful tool for communicating to the public this trend we see.”

Pricing carbon would be a sensible way to speed the transition away from fossil fuels and thus reduce the number of disasters and their cost.