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Big Oil May Pay Billions for Climate Pollution under New Legislation

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Friday, May 24, 2024

CLIMATEWIRE | Vermont is picking a fight with the fossil fuel industry, a battle that could transform how lawmakers nationwide wield climate science — with billions of dollars at stake, if not more.Legislators in Montpelier are on the brink of enacting the "Climate Superfund Act," modeled after the federal Superfund law, that seeks to make oil, gas and coal companies pay for damages linked to historical greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation would mark the first time a state applies the “polluter pays” framework to climate impacts.Such a revolution in climate policy follows an evolution in climate science: the ability to fingerprint global warming’s effects on not just worldwide trends, but individual events such as floods and heat waves. Advancements have been made, too, in tracking companies’ historical emissions. Together, the innovations allow researchers to link specific emissions to disasters with countable costs.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“Thanks to attribution science, we can measure just how worse storms are now because of climate change,” said Democratic state Sen. Anne Watson, a prime sponsor of the bill. “So it’s time for us to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the damage they have caused.”The legislation signals an inflection point for climate action. No longer theoretical, the escalating effects of rising temperatures are being cataloged with increasing sophistication — just as those same climate impacts are blowing billion-dollar holes in state budgets.That’s what happened in Vermont, where rains last summer caused flooding on par with past hurricanes. With an estimated cost of over $1 billion, the floods helped push a supermajority of lawmakers — from the state Senate Republican leader to members of the left-wing Progressive Party — to support the climate superfund bill.“Adaptation costs money,” said state Sen. Nader Hashim, a Democrat who carried the bill on the floor. “We could place the burden on Vermont taxpayers. We could keep our fingers crossed that the federal government will help us. Or we can have fossil fuel companies pay their fair share.”The fossil fuel industry is certain to litigate the Vermont legislation, which still awaits action from Republican Gov. Phil Scott. But legal advocates don’t expect oil, gas and coal companies to challenge the attribution science itself. And so far, the sector’s top trade association has focused on other arguments.“What’s novel here is that state policymakers are taking this attribution science seriously,” said Christophe Courchesne, director of the Vermont Law and Graduate School's Environmental Advocacy Clinic, which has offered to help Vermont defend a climate superfund program in court. “It’s a powerful tool.”The oil industry might question attribution science in its public messaging, he said, but courts give broad leeway for legislatures to craft laws based on the best-available science.“I just don’t see it as a major component of a legal challenge,” he said.Currently, the oil industry is fighting lawsuits from more than 30 state and local governments. Some of those draw on attribution science to argue companies should be liable for climate damage.Fossil fuel companies dispute responsibility for emissions created by others using their products, and some corners of the industry argue that attribution science itself arose from activists’ desire to shake down oil companies.The climate superfund effort is “based on the same flawed theories as the climate litigation campaign and ultimately aims to bankrupt the American energy industry,” FTI Consulting’s Mandi Risko wrote last month for Energy In Depth, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.The group has portrayed attribution research, climate superfund legislation and climate lawsuits as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the Rockefeller Family Fund and other wealthy activists to “shut down” U.S. energy production.“At their core, the climate superfund bills are lawfare in sheep’s clothing,” Risko wrote. “Superfund bills would tax a handful of oil and natural gas companies for the effects of estimated, historical, global emissions caused not just by the companies themselves but also by consumers around the world.”But the idea of using attribution science in climate legislation is starting to take root. Lawmakers in California, New York, Massachusetts and Maryland have introduced bills similar to the one in Vermont. And Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) have proposed a like-minded measure in Congress.'Ripe for this kind of legislation'The Vermont bill doesn’t outline the total amount it would seek from polluting companies.Instead, it calls for the state treasurer to account for the costs Vermont has incurred because of emissions from 1995 through 2024 — including future costs from those past emissions. That includes impacts from floods and heat waves, along with losses to biodiversity, safety, economic development and anything else the treasurer deems reasonable.Companies would be held liable for the costs associated with those emissions, though the bill only seeks compensatory payments from firms that have produced more than a billion tons of greenhouse gases.That would encompass about 68 companies, according to one estimate — mostly oil and gas companies, along with some coal companies. (Some of the top-emitting producers are state-owned enterprises, such as Saudi Aramco, which could be beyond the state’s reach.)Each company’s payments would be calculated in proportion to their emissions. Once the state assesses the total costs linked to fossil fuel emissions, it would demand payments from a company based on its share of those emissions.The American Petroleum Institute argues Vermont cannot reliably link specific companies to emissions — especially emissions caused by the public using their products.Those emissions estimates become even less defensible, the trade group said, when they’re used to calculate “alleged injuries to Vermont.”“The bill incorrectly suggests that past emissions attributable to companies can be determined with great accuracy. That is simply not true. At best the state can only estimate emissions; and these estimates are imprecise,” API wrote in a March letter to lawmakers.The trade group, which did not respond to questions from POLITICO's E&E News, also cast doubt on attribution science, saying Vermont “must offer more than an asserted causal connection” between a company’s emissions and social costs.“With respect to impact attribution from source emissions, it seems obvious that those who drafted this legislation are aware of the difficulties of establishing a conclusive link between anthropogenic climate change and alleged injuries to Vermont,” API wrote.The scientists behind the research say their work is precise, because it draws on the companies’ own records.“We’re in the realm of having full documentation of what each company has contributed,” said Richard Heede, the co-founder of the Climate Accountability Institute and principal investigator for the group’s Carbon Majors Project, a dataset of historical emissions that’s expected to be a key element of Vermont’s effort.“I'd love to be able to sit down at the table with the leading fossil fuel companies — that Vermont will send a bill to, in due time — and work out any difference of opinion about how much each should contribute, within the realm of relative certainty,” he said.Event attribution science has grown into a mainstream tenet of climate research, especially over the past decade. It’s featured in reports by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as the National Climate Assessment, and major extreme weather events nowadays are often accompanied by a “rapid attribution” study by groups like the World Weather Attribution.Scientists have grown more confident in attribution science as computer models and methodologies have become more sophisticated, said Justin Mankin, a professor at Dartmouth University whose research has helped define the field.But that’s not the only reason, he said. It’s also because global temperatures are meaningfully higher than even a few years ago.Last month was the warmest April on record, more than 0.6 degree Celsius warmer than the past 30 years' average April temperatures, and almost 1.6 C warmer than preindustrial levels, according to the European Union's climate service, Copernicus. That marks the 11th month in a row that's set a temperature record.“The signal associated with climate impacts is just so much worse today than it was a decade ago,” Mankin said. “It's no longer a prediction exercise, it's a documentation exercise. That's a totally different thing.”Not only are the effects of warming more documented, he said, so are corporate emissions, thanks to the work of researchers such as Heede.“That's one of the reasons why we're at a moment that's ripe for this kind of legislation,” Mankin said.“We can now pretty definitely go back in [to models] and remove a particular emitter’s contributions to global emissions over a particular time interval and estimate the world as it could have been,” he said. “That positions us to make the claim about the culpability of particular emitters in contributing to a particular harm.”Such calculations ultimately could shape how courts treat a climate superfund program, said Vermont Treasurer Mike Pieciak, whose office would implement much of the legislation.That’s one reason why the bill leaves its ultimate price tag up to a scientific process, he said. And it raises the stakes for one of his first tasks: choosing the experts and methods that will undergird the whole program.“Really, no state has undertaken a full analysis like the one that we’re contemplating here,” he said. That’s why lawmakers asked for a breakdown of different kinds of climate-related costs, he added. “They wanted us to show our work.”Possible pitfallsOne potential tripwire is how Vermont might address uncertainty in its assessments.A strong scientific consensus has validated attribution science at top bodies like the IPCC, said Carly Phillips, a research scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate litigation team. Nevertheless, methodological differences between attribution studies can sometimes produce slightly different results.“All science, especially high-quality science, has uncertainty involved,” she said. “And that also is part of the playbook that industry has used for decades to push back on climate science.”She compared climate attribution science to the research linking cigarettes with health problems. Tobacco companies also attacked that science before ultimately agreeing to pay more than $200 billion to settle state claims of health care costs.“It feels like it’s part of a similar pattern that we’ve seen,” Phillips said.The oil industry has criticized Vermont for seeking to retroactively penalize legal activity in such potentially harsh terms. One of the many reasons courts might find this legislation unconstitutional, API said, is its “unknown but potentially extreme price tag.”In choosing between different methods for calculating damage, Pieciak said he would focus on what has the strongest factual basis and the most scientific certainty. That could mean looking for overlap between different methods.“We have to present something that’s very defensible,” the treasurer said.That cuts both ways, he added. He’s not going to go looking for the method that simply produces the biggest damage estimate — but neither would a big damage estimate undermine Vermont’s efforts.“It’s not really defensible [for industry] to say, ‘I created too much damage, I can’t be held liable,’” he said.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

Vermont's “Climate Superfund Act” would use attribution science to force oil, gas and coal companies to cover damages associated with their emissions

CLIMATEWIRE | Vermont is picking a fight with the fossil fuel industry, a battle that could transform how lawmakers nationwide wield climate science — with billions of dollars at stake, if not more.

Legislators in Montpelier are on the brink of enacting the "Climate Superfund Act," modeled after the federal Superfund law, that seeks to make oil, gas and coal companies pay for damages linked to historical greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation would mark the first time a state applies the “polluter pays” framework to climate impacts.

Such a revolution in climate policy follows an evolution in climate science: the ability to fingerprint global warming’s effects on not just worldwide trends, but individual events such as floods and heat waves. Advancements have been made, too, in tracking companies’ historical emissions. Together, the innovations allow researchers to link specific emissions to disasters with countable costs.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

“Thanks to attribution science, we can measure just how worse storms are now because of climate change,” said Democratic state Sen. Anne Watson, a prime sponsor of the bill. “So it’s time for us to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the damage they have caused.”

The legislation signals an inflection point for climate action. No longer theoretical, the escalating effects of rising temperatures are being cataloged with increasing sophistication — just as those same climate impacts are blowing billion-dollar holes in state budgets.

That’s what happened in Vermont, where rains last summer caused flooding on par with past hurricanes. With an estimated cost of over $1 billion, the floods helped push a supermajority of lawmakers — from the state Senate Republican leader to members of the left-wing Progressive Party — to support the climate superfund bill.

“Adaptation costs money,” said state Sen. Nader Hashim, a Democrat who carried the bill on the floor. “We could place the burden on Vermont taxpayers. We could keep our fingers crossed that the federal government will help us. Or we can have fossil fuel companies pay their fair share.”

The fossil fuel industry is certain to litigate the Vermont legislation, which still awaits action from Republican Gov. Phil Scott. But legal advocates don’t expect oil, gas and coal companies to challenge the attribution science itself. And so far, the sector’s top trade association has focused on other arguments.

“What’s novel here is that state policymakers are taking this attribution science seriously,” said Christophe Courchesne, director of the Vermont Law and Graduate School's Environmental Advocacy Clinic, which has offered to help Vermont defend a climate superfund program in court. “It’s a powerful tool.”

The oil industry might question attribution science in its public messaging, he said, but courts give broad leeway for legislatures to craft laws based on the best-available science.

“I just don’t see it as a major component of a legal challenge,” he said.

Currently, the oil industry is fighting lawsuits from more than 30 state and local governments. Some of those draw on attribution science to argue companies should be liable for climate damage.

Fossil fuel companies dispute responsibility for emissions created by others using their products, and some corners of the industry argue that attribution science itself arose from activists’ desire to shake down oil companies.

The climate superfund effort is “based on the same flawed theories as the climate litigation campaign and ultimately aims to bankrupt the American energy industry,” FTI Consulting’s Mandi Risko wrote last month for Energy In Depth, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

The group has portrayed attribution research, climate superfund legislation and climate lawsuits as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the Rockefeller Family Fund and other wealthy activists to “shut down” U.S. energy production.

“At their core, the climate superfund bills are lawfare in sheep’s clothing,” Risko wrote. “Superfund bills would tax a handful of oil and natural gas companies for the effects of estimated, historical, global emissions caused not just by the companies themselves but also by consumers around the world.”

But the idea of using attribution science in climate legislation is starting to take root. Lawmakers in California, New York, Massachusetts and Maryland have introduced bills similar to the one in Vermont. And Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) have proposed a like-minded measure in Congress.

'Ripe for this kind of legislation'

The Vermont bill doesn’t outline the total amount it would seek from polluting companies.

Instead, it calls for the state treasurer to account for the costs Vermont has incurred because of emissions from 1995 through 2024 — including future costs from those past emissions. That includes impacts from floods and heat waves, along with losses to biodiversity, safety, economic development and anything else the treasurer deems reasonable.

Companies would be held liable for the costs associated with those emissions, though the bill only seeks compensatory payments from firms that have produced more than a billion tons of greenhouse gases.

That would encompass about 68 companies, according to one estimate — mostly oil and gas companies, along with some coal companies. (Some of the top-emitting producers are state-owned enterprises, such as Saudi Aramco, which could be beyond the state’s reach.)

Each company’s payments would be calculated in proportion to their emissions. Once the state assesses the total costs linked to fossil fuel emissions, it would demand payments from a company based on its share of those emissions.

The American Petroleum Institute argues Vermont cannot reliably link specific companies to emissions — especially emissions caused by the public using their products.

Those emissions estimates become even less defensible, the trade group said, when they’re used to calculate “alleged injuries to Vermont.”

“The bill incorrectly suggests that past emissions attributable to companies can be determined with great accuracy. That is simply not true. At best the state can only estimate emissions; and these estimates are imprecise,” API wrote in a March letter to lawmakers.

The trade group, which did not respond to questions from POLITICO's E&E News, also cast doubt on attribution science, saying Vermont “must offer more than an asserted causal connection” between a company’s emissions and social costs.

“With respect to impact attribution from source emissions, it seems obvious that those who drafted this legislation are aware of the difficulties of establishing a conclusive link between anthropogenic climate change and alleged injuries to Vermont,” API wrote.

The scientists behind the research say their work is precise, because it draws on the companies’ own records.

“We’re in the realm of having full documentation of what each company has contributed,” said Richard Heede, the co-founder of the Climate Accountability Institute and principal investigator for the group’s Carbon Majors Project, a dataset of historical emissions that’s expected to be a key element of Vermont’s effort.

“I'd love to be able to sit down at the table with the leading fossil fuel companies — that Vermont will send a bill to, in due time — and work out any difference of opinion about how much each should contribute, within the realm of relative certainty,” he said.

Event attribution science has grown into a mainstream tenet of climate research, especially over the past decade. It’s featured in reports by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as the National Climate Assessment, and major extreme weather events nowadays are often accompanied by a “rapid attribution” study by groups like the World Weather Attribution.

Scientists have grown more confident in attribution science as computer models and methodologies have become more sophisticated, said Justin Mankin, a professor at Dartmouth University whose research has helped define the field.

But that’s not the only reason, he said. It’s also because global temperatures are meaningfully higher than even a few years ago.

Last month was the warmest April on record, more than 0.6 degree Celsius warmer than the past 30 years' average April temperatures, and almost 1.6 C warmer than preindustrial levels, according to the European Union's climate service, Copernicus. That marks the 11th month in a row that's set a temperature record.

“The signal associated with climate impacts is just so much worse today than it was a decade ago,” Mankin said. “It's no longer a prediction exercise, it's a documentation exercise. That's a totally different thing.”

Not only are the effects of warming more documented, he said, so are corporate emissions, thanks to the work of researchers such as Heede.

“That's one of the reasons why we're at a moment that's ripe for this kind of legislation,” Mankin said.

“We can now pretty definitely go back in [to models] and remove a particular emitter’s contributions to global emissions over a particular time interval and estimate the world as it could have been,” he said. “That positions us to make the claim about the culpability of particular emitters in contributing to a particular harm.”

Such calculations ultimately could shape how courts treat a climate superfund program, said Vermont Treasurer Mike Pieciak, whose office would implement much of the legislation.

That’s one reason why the bill leaves its ultimate price tag up to a scientific process, he said. And it raises the stakes for one of his first tasks: choosing the experts and methods that will undergird the whole program.

“Really, no state has undertaken a full analysis like the one that we’re contemplating here,” he said. That’s why lawmakers asked for a breakdown of different kinds of climate-related costs, he added. “They wanted us to show our work.”

Possible pitfalls

One potential tripwire is how Vermont might address uncertainty in its assessments.

A strong scientific consensus has validated attribution science at top bodies like the IPCC, said Carly Phillips, a research scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate litigation team. Nevertheless, methodological differences between attribution studies can sometimes produce slightly different results.

“All science, especially high-quality science, has uncertainty involved,” she said. “And that also is part of the playbook that industry has used for decades to push back on climate science.”

She compared climate attribution science to the research linking cigarettes with health problems. Tobacco companies also attacked that science before ultimately agreeing to pay more than $200 billion to settle state claims of health care costs.

“It feels like it’s part of a similar pattern that we’ve seen,” Phillips said.

The oil industry has criticized Vermont for seeking to retroactively penalize legal activity in such potentially harsh terms. One of the many reasons courts might find this legislation unconstitutional, API said, is its “unknown but potentially extreme price tag.”

In choosing between different methods for calculating damage, Pieciak said he would focus on what has the strongest factual basis and the most scientific certainty. That could mean looking for overlap between different methods.

“We have to present something that’s very defensible,” the treasurer said.

That cuts both ways, he added. He’s not going to go looking for the method that simply produces the biggest damage estimate — but neither would a big damage estimate undermine Vermont’s efforts.

“It’s not really defensible [for industry] to say, ‘I created too much damage, I can’t be held liable,’” he said.

Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

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Hampshire have been accused of taking part in a “sportswashing vehicle” before their participation in this month’s Global Super League in Guyana, a T20 tournament sponsored by oil giant ExxonMobil.Hampshire’s participation in the GSL comes despite their venue’s public commitment to playing a leading global role in environmental sustainability. The Utilita Bowl celebrated switching on more than 1,000 solar panels before a T20 between England and Australia in September. David Mann, chief executive of the Utilita Bowl, used the initiative to highlight “our commitment to being the greenest international cricket venue”.The new five-team GSL tournament runs from 26 November to 6 December and, alongside Australian state team Victoria, features franchise sides Guyana Amazon Warriors, Lahore Qalandars and Rangpur Riders.ExxonMobil Guyana is its title sponsor, with the tournament website stating the event “has the full support of the Government of Guyana … the government sees the GSL as a key driver for tourism and economic growth”. ExxonMobil found oil in the country in 2015 and, this month, celebrated the production of 500m barrels from the Stabroek block.Etienne Stott, an Olympic gold medallist in 2012 who now campaigns for Extinction Rebellion, told the Guardian: “I’m really sad and angry that yet another sport is being corrupted by the oily money of the fossil fuel industry.”Stott said it was “perverse” for ExxonMobil to sponsor “a supposedly global cricket tournament in a country which is very much at risk from the effects of global heating.“I cannot understand why Hampshire [County] Cricket Club would risk reputational damage by associating itself with such an obvious sportswashing vehicle, especially given their public commitments to be more sustainable,” said Stott. “I hope cricket fans will demand that this tournament ditches its filthy sponsor.”Hampshire have declined to comment.Joe Cooke, an environmental campaigner and ex-professional cricketer for Glamorgan, said: “It’s disheartening to see cricket being sponsored and influenced by companies with such a direct link to the climate crisis. As a sport we are deeply at mercy to the environment with extreme weather events that have been made more likely by a changing climate, impacting the game at all levels. Cricket could be in a unique position to set a positive example by distancing itself from these kinds of partnerships.”ExxonMobil also sponsors the Amazon Warriors, who play in the Caribbean Premier League, and its involvement in cricket highlights the significant relationship between fossil fuel firms and the sport. In May the International Cricket Council announced a four-year extension to its partnership with Aramco, the Saudi Arabian oil company.skip past newsletter promotionSubscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week’s actionPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionChris Britt-Searle of The Next Test, a group aiming to raise awareness of the climate crisis’s impact on cricket, said: “It’s very easy to condemn individual teams, countries and competitions. But the truth is, the whole of cricket is awash with fossil fuel money.”Britt-Searle added that the tournament could be an “opportunity” for cricketers to discuss the involvement of fossil fuels in cricket, noting the recent letter signed by more than 100 female professional footballers urging Fifa to end its partnership with Aramco.“I would say to all cricketers, all cricket fans, clubs, cricket organisations, you have an opportunity to talk about this,” said Britt-Searle. “There’s a great opportunity here to put your hand up and say, look, we’re not OK with this.”

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Starmer condemns Badenoch for abandoning cross-party consensus on climate crisis policy – UK politics live

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You can do so via this page.Matt Hancock gives evidence to Covid inquiryWe will carry on reporting tributes to John Prescott as the day goes on, but there is other news happening today too and soon I will switch to the Covid inquiry, where Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, is giving evidence from 10am. He has already given evidence to the inquiry before, but the inquiry is now on module 3, focusing in particular on the impact of the pandemic on the NHS, and Hancock will be talking about that.We have also got John Healey, the defence secretary, giving evidence to the Commons defence committee from 10.30am this morning.Matt Hancock arriving at the Covid inquiry this morning. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/ShutterstockShareUpdated at 04.49 ESTThere's no paywall hereApologies for the brief interruption. We hope you’re appreciating these factual, verified, up-to-the-minute news updates provided by our expert reporters.You won't find a paywall around our live blogs – or any of our news, because the Guardian believes that access to trustworthy information is vital for democracy.In a time of increasing misinformation spread by bad actors, extremist media and autocratic politicians, real, reliable journalism has never been more important – and we’re proud to be able to make ours free thanks to the generous support of readers like you. By helping fund the Guardian today, you can play a vital role in combating the bad faith and self-interest of a powerful few who spread lies to undermine our democracy, enrich themselves, and stoke division between Americans.Before you get back to reading the news, we would be grateful if you could take half a minute to give us your support. Any amount helps. Thank you.Peter Mandelson says Prescott was 'the cement that kept New Labour together'Peter Mandelson was one of many people in the Labour party who feuded with John Prescott at various times when they were in government, and at one memorable photocall in the summer of 1997 Prescott compared him to a crab. Today, speaking on Sky News, Mandelson played down the extend of their disagreements, and pointed out that Prescott had supported his application to become Labour’s communications director in 1985 – the job that turned out to be the launchpad for Mandelson’s career.Mandelson said it was wrong to say Prescott was not New Labour. Some people say sometimes that he wasn’t New Labour. But that’s not true. He was New Labour. He was one very essential part of New Labour. He basically kept us anchored in our working class roots, our trade union history. And he was the bridge, essentially, between that and the modernisers in the Labour party, Tony, Gordon, me and the others. 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But I’ve looked at it, I’ve dipped into it and I’ve seen what you went through … I feel rather sorry for you actually. And anyway, thanks very much.’ It was a few minutes more … but that was it. That was the last time I spoke to him. Here are more tributes to John Prescott from Labour figures on social media.From Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s communications director in No 10 JP RIP … there was nobody else like him. Tony could not have had a better deputy. Labour could not have had a better campaigner. The government could not have had a better negotiator and - yes, often, peacemaker. Hull could not have had a better MP. Of course he was combative but he had an enormous heart and a great capacity for friendship. Even with his horrible illness in later years, the old JP was always there. Love to Pauline, Jonathan and David and nothing but fond memories of a total one off who will be missed by so many. From Yvette Cooper, the home secretary Such sad news about John Prescott. A campaigning Labour hero & a remarkable minister who transformed lives - upgrading millions of council homes, coalfield regeneration, tackling climate change. Fierce & warm hearted - there was no one like him. Thinking of Pauline & family today From Ed Balls, the former adviser to Gordon Brown and later secretary of state for childrenFrom Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader I am really sad to hear that John Prescott has passed away. John was a huge figure and personality, from his seafaring union days to the highest offices in Government. I will be forever grateful for his personal and political support in the 2017 and 2019 elections. His endless warmth and iconic wit were loved on the campaign trail. My deepest sympathies to John’s family at their loss. He will be greatly missed. From Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary 1/2 John Prescott was a political giant who made a unique contribution to the Labour and trade union movement he loved so deeply. Authentic, funny, tough, highly skilled and, at times, unpredictable, he often used the phrase “traditional Labour values in a modern setting”. 2/2 In doing so, he would reassure and inspire Party members with whom he had a great bond. He will be much missed. All our thoughts are with Pauline and his family on this very sad day. From David Lammy, foreign secretary John Prescott was one of the giants of our party. Committed, loyal, Labour to his core. A relentless champion of working people who never forgot who he came into politics to fight for. Full of good humour and blunt common sense. Rest in peace Angela Rayner pays tribute to Prescott, saying he was 'inspiration to me'Angela Rayner is often compared to John Prescott. They were both brought up working class, became Labour MPs after working in the trade union movement and have been frequently patronised or demonised by Tories and the media, partly on the grounds of class snobbery. And both ended up deputy PM.Here is her tribute to Prescott. Through his half a century of public service and a decade as deputy prime minister, John Prescott was driven by his Labour values to serve working people. Fiercely proud of his working class and trade union roots, he never lost sight of who he came into politics to serve. He used the chance he was given to change the lives of millions of working people. A giant of the labour movement and loyal friend, he will be remembered with huge fondness by all those who knew him. John was not only a Labour legend but an inspiration to me, and always so generous with his time and support. We will miss him greatly. Our thoughts and prayers are with Pauline, David, Johnathan and the rest of the family. ShareUpdated at 04.06 ESTPrescott's family ask people not to send flowers but to donate to Alzheimer's Research UK insteadHere is the full statement from John Prescott’s family announcing his death. Prescott was living with Alzheimer’s in his final years and his family have asked wellwishers minded to send flowers to donate to Alzheimer’s Research UK instead.They say: We are deeply saddened to inform you that our beloved husband, father and grandfather, John Prescott, passed away peacefully yesterday at the age of 86. He did so surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery. John spent his life trying to improve the lives of others, fighting for social justice and protecting the environment, doing so from his time as a waiter on the cruise liners to becoming Britain’s longest serving deputy prime minister. John dearly loved his home of Hull and representing its people in parliament for 40 years was his greatest honour. We would like to thank the amazing NHS doctors and nurses who cared for him after his stroke in 2019 and the dedicated staff at the care home where he passed away after latterly living with Alzheimer’s. In lieu of flowers and if you wish to do so, you can donate to Alzheimer’s Research UK. As you can imagine, our family needs to process our grief so we respectfully request time and space to mourn in private. Thank you. Here is a John Prescott picture gallery.Gordon Brown pays tribute to PrescottGood morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Caroline Davies.The former prime minister Gordon Brown has just been on the Today programme paying tribute to John Prescott. He said: John was a friend of mine, he was a colleague, but when you think of him, he was a colossus, he was a titan of the Labour movement. John Lennon talked about working class hero. It’s difficult to fit that term, but I think John would like that. You’ve got to look at his achievements. He was probably the first government minister to see the importance of the environment. Kyoto, that environmental treaty in 1997, you’ve got to attribute that to John’s hard work with Al Gore. Then he saw the importance, and he was a pioneer of regional policy. So the fact we have devolution and mayors owes a great deal to what John was thinking right throughout the 1980s and 90s when I was working with him. And then we mustn’t forget that one of the great achievements of John as environment secretary was the repair and improvement of housing, 1.5m houses which would not have been repaired without John’s determination that the social housing stock had to be remodernised. So you’ve got to look at the practical achievements of someone who possibly surprised himself by the way that he managed to become deputy prime minister, but actually made a huge difference. Yorkshire has “lost one of its great political heavyweights,” said Tracy Brabin, mayor for West Yorkshire. In a post on X she said: Deeply sad news to hear of John Prescott’s passing. Yorkshire has lost one of its great political heavyweights. A true Northerner with unwavering authenticity. John’s record speaks for itself: tackling regional inequalities, fighting for social justice and protecting the environment. We must all now build on his legacy and work tirelessly, as he did, to create a country that works for all. ShareUpdated at 03.44 ESTLord Prescott’s wife and two sons said he had been in a care home recently living with Alzheimer’s. Hilary Evans-Newton, chief executive at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: It’s heartbreaking to hear that former deputy prime minister, Lord John Prescott, one of the most prominent political figures of our generation, has died with Alzheimer’s. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time. It’s tragic how many lives are being lost to dementia, the leading cause of death in the UK. We’re incredibly moved by Lord Prescott’s family, who have asked for donations to Alzheimer’s Research UK, in lieu of flowers. As the UK’s leading dementia research charity, we’re accelerating progress towards a cure, so no one’s life has to end this way.

Climate
Government
Social Justice

The climate crisis is a big problem. Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is dreaming of even bigger solutions.

Here’s an exercise for you: Imagine the trajectory of our current climate crisis.  You probably don’t need to imagine very hard what this future looks like because we’re seeing it play out in the present: towns torn apart by massive hurricanes, thousands displaced by wildfires, lives taken by extreme heat. All of it is enough […]

Here’s an exercise for you: Imagine the trajectory of our current climate crisis.  You probably don’t need to imagine very hard what this future looks like because we’re seeing it play out in the present: towns torn apart by massive hurricanes, thousands displaced by wildfires, lives taken by extreme heat. All of it is enough to make a person freeze with fear. But there is a flip side to this terror.  Such an all-consuming problem inherently requires innovative solutions and adaptations of epic proportions. So here’s another exercise: Close your eyes and think, what could a world that hasn’t just taken the climate crisis seriously but also risen to the challenge look like? Envisioning a better future in the face of serious climate threats might seem like lofty daydreaming, especially when we take into consideration our world leaders’ inaction. But Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and climate policy wonk, has spent much of her career dreaming and coming up with climate solutions — and she knows that nihilism and avoidance won’t get us anywhere. In her recently published book, What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures, Johnson tackles how we can transform our ways of being, thinking, and doing to stop the worst of climate change. She expertly intertwines her conversations with scientists, artists, and activists to create a practical and accessible guidebook for a more just future brimming with possibilities — a salve for even the most environmentally anxious.  “Peril and possibility coexist,” she writes in the book. Of course, she’s well aware of just how big of an environmental mess our world is in, but you won’t catch her dwelling on the worst-case scenarios for long. “We’re pretty fucked,” Johnson said in her September interview on Vox’s The Gray Area, “but there’s a lot we could do to have a better possible future.”  Johnson is particularly adept at speaking to those who know the climate crisis is real but have the instinct to bury their head in the sand at the thought of such a massive existential crisis. Though she is frank about the state of our world’s environmental health, she speaks and writes with an energizing clarity — whether it’s conversing with climate advocates for her book tour or breaking down big environmental questions as a co-host of the podcast How to Save a Planet. It’s Johnson’s understanding of our instinct to flee the climate problems that has made it essential for her to explore the possibilities to address it and take action that goes beyond protesting or voting. These are important measures, Johnson believes, but also broad ones that aren’t necessarily fine-tuned to our individual experiences, skills, and interests.  For Johnson, a Brooklyn native who calls the ocean her love before it became her career, that looked like co-founding Urban Ocean Lab (UOL) in 2018. The nonprofit think tank specializes in researching coastal cities in the United States — places that one in five Americans call home and are often vulnerable to some of the worst environmental disasters — and developing equitable, pragmatic policy recommendations for these regions.  One such recommendation is UOL’s climate readiness framework for coastal cities. It’s a comprehensive collection of over 70 actions that coastal communities can apply to better adapt to current and future climate risks, such as working with community-based organizations to strengthen disaster preparedness plans and developing home relocation programs for low-income residents and people of color living in climate-vulnerable places.  The Caribbean region in particular has a special place in Johnson’s heart — her late father hailed from Jamaica, whose waters have suffered from pollution and overfishing. “To me, ocean conservation is in part about cultural preservation,” she writes after reflecting on her father’s life between Jamaica and New York City. “We are losing something more fundamental than a meal: a way of life.” It makes sense that Johnson has also worked to improve the waters surrounding these islands. Prior to founding UOL, she led an ocean management policy project called the Blue Halo Initiative at the Waitt Institute, where she served as executive director. Starting in Barbuda in 2013, Johnson focused on engaging with the community, interviewing hundreds of fishers and residents to develop policy recommendations for better preserving the waters and the species within it. Just a year later, the Barbuda Council signed into law a set of ocean zoning policies to protect underwater ecosystems and ensure sustainable fishing. These efforts were soon replicated in Montserrat and Curaçao. Johnson’s reverence for the ocean and the career she’s made out of it has made its way into the American political sphere, too. Back in 2019, the Green New Deal, a set of proposed progressive climate policies, was supported by left-leaning candidates up and down the ballot. Johnson had just one issue with it: It left out our seas almost entirely. “I was feeling bummed about the ocean getting short shrift in the Green New Deal Resolution — just a single, vague reference to the ocean,” Johnson wrote in What If We Get It Right? That summer, Johnson co-authored an op-ed in Grist about this big blue gap and what solutions to fill it with. Within that year, Johnson was contacted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign to help write what would become the Blue New Deal, an official policy platform for the Warren campaign. It was an extensive list of actions, like expanding marine protected areas, building climate-smart ports, and holding Big Agriculture accountable for water pollution. When Johnson later met Sen. Warren, she wrote in What If We Get It Right? that “[Senator Warren] told me it was the plan that got the most excited mentions in her selfie lines.” And while Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination and the election, his administration became the first to put out a federal Ocean Climate Action plan — which included similar elements to the Blue New Deal — after dozens of businesses and organizations (including UOL) pushed the White House to do so. There are a lot of studies that show engaging with nature helps our physical and mental well-being, so it’s not surprising that conserving our environment is important for many people. One word that Johnson often uses and embodies is “biophilia”: a love for nature and life, and in her words, “a powerful driving force for conservation.” With this in mind, I have one more exercise for you: Think of moments you’ve felt biophilia. Maybe you once walked through a lush forest, swam in a pristine lake, or witnessed snow-capped mountains up close. Perhaps you’ve encountered one of the millions of amazing creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But how can one hold onto this sense of biophilia if much of our ways of life are destroying the very essence of it?  It’s all the more reason not to let our worries immobilize us and instead try to get it right, just as Johnson has done. Her wide-ranging expertise on climate policy; deeply empathetic and inclusive lens for climate solutions; and her unwavering, contagious biophilia has made her a bold visionary to follow in the climate space.  How apt that a lover of the ocean is making waves. —Sam Delgado

Climate
Crisis
Agriculture

Denmark is tiny. Its ambition to make its food system more climate-friendly is huge.

Climate scientists agree on at least one necessary change to our food system: People, especially those in rich countries, ought to be eating more plants and fewer animals.  Globally, livestock production accounts for some 15 to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and accelerates a host of other environmental problems, from deforestation to freshwater depletion […]

Climate scientists agree on at least one necessary change to our food system: People, especially those in rich countries, ought to be eating more plants and fewer animals.  Globally, livestock production accounts for some 15 to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and accelerates a host of other environmental problems, from deforestation to freshwater depletion to air pollution. And yet virtually all Western governments have designed their food policy to churn out more and more meat, milk, and eggs.  The idea that we need to eat more, not less, meat is also baked into many nations’ cultural psyches, with both subtle and overt messages that meat equals masculinity and prosperity. Meat has been dragged into many countries’ culture wars, stifling civil discussions over how to make food systems sustainable. One country, though, far more than any other, has heeded the climate scientists’ advice: Denmark, the small Scandinavian nation of 6 million people known for its intensive factory farming system and resulting pork and dairy exports. In 2021, the Danish Parliament and government made a deal to shift its food system in a more plant-based and organic direction, and has set aside around $200 million US to do it. About $85 million is going to farmers who grow plant-based foods. The rest is being used to fund new projects, like experimenting with “nudge theory” — redesigning cafeterias to subtly encourage consumers to choose more plant-based options — and launching a startup incubator for plant-based companies at the Technological Institute of Denmark.  Many people have labored to turn these ideas into policy, but Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl, the secretary-general of the Vegetarian Society of Denmark, has unquestionably been the leader. Dragsdahl became the society’s first employee in 2016, when he went unpaid for the first year or so. Since then, the organization has grown to employ 22 staff members.  How exactly did a tiny organization with little political clout blaze a trail toward a more sustainable, humane food system? I spoke with Dragsdahl last month to find out. His secret, it turns out, is diplomacy.  Dragsdahl and his vegetarian society colleagues spent years building a coalition of farmers, scientists, and organic food advocates, emphasizing shared values — sustainability and food innovation — instead of differences, like the merits of vegetarianism. This big-tent approach appealed to politicians, including not just members of left-wing parties but also politicians on the right, one of whom called the country’s plant-based action plan an “intelligent idea,” according to Dragsdahl.    “That, I think, shows the fact that we and other stakeholders have somehow managed to mainstream this,” he told me. “There are still ideological battles and clearly we’re not done, but we have to a large extent managed to get many people to see that this should also be a part of Danish agriculture and that it should be stronger. That there’s actual potential in this. That there’s no need to fight over more plants.” My conversation with Dragsdahl has been edited for length and clarity. What role does meat play in Danish society? It’s really a centerpiece of food culture, of Danish culture. There are many social events, whether it’s football events — people will have their hot dogs — and when they’re grilling in the summer.  Apart from food culture … Denmark is a very agricultural nation. We are the most cultivated country in the world, together with Bangladesh, in terms of the [percentage of the] surface of the land being cultivated, because the country is very flat, so you can say it’s suitable for this.  Even though the country might be suitable, you can over-cultivate it. And that is the problem — we have severe biodiversity loss here, severe eutrophication. … So it’s definitely damaging the local environment here. But for many decades, it has been difficult to do anything about it because at least some people have felt we are an agricultural nation. It’s in our blood, that’s who we are. And livestock is an integral part of that.  So there are things here, both culturally but also politically. And there’s this universal pride for people — that Danish dairy, Danish butter, is being exported to the whole world… But also, of course, bacon and pork products. But that has been increasingly questioned in the last 10 years.  What happened to lay the groundwork for the plant-based action plan? In 2019, we got the idea to start something we call the Danish Network for Plant Proteins. You make such a network, really, to make people feel welcome no matter where they’re from. … We had hard-hitting scientists, we had inspiring startups, we had interesting content — but always in a friendly and warm and pragmatic tone. And that meant that even the farming association [the Danish Agriculture and Food Council] attended. They later came back to us a month later and told us that they liked our approach. We don’t agree about scaling down livestock production, but they did agree that we could work together on how to look more into plant-based [food production] to diversify Danish agriculture.  When they did that, it almost immediately eliminated any opposition from a large part of the political spectrum. So maybe some of the resistance in the right wing became neutral, and some of the hesitance among the parties in the center of Danish politics became slightly positive. And that was extremely helpful because you move the entire playing field. And then, of course, the parties which are even more progressive on the center and center-left wing, they can push even harder for it and get the middle parties on board without the right wing making a big fuss about it. And the farmers’ association was definitely important for that. I think we have really successfully been insisting that plant-based is both the whole foods plant-based and the processed [foods] and everything in between. And by insisting on that, we’re getting less opposition between the people who just want everything to be home-cooked and believe children should be taught how to cook their own vegetables again. These solutions are both needed, and there [are] also places in between. There might be processed products that imitate meat but that are processed in milder ways. I think many of the Danish startups in this space are actually trying to find these kinds of solutions. So that has been a way to get many different kinds of people on board.  What kind of plant-based projects have been awarded funding?  So far, around 35 projects have been granted [in each of two rounds].  In the first round, the Hospitality School of Copenhagen got funding for a vegetarian chef’s degree. They got the funding for developing a curriculum that the government could then approve as acceptable for a new chef’s degree — which does not have any meat — and that degree becomes part of the government system, so it becomes a formal government education. But they could not have done it without getting funding to develop the curriculum. In the second round, some [agricultural] schools applied for funding for developing a curriculum on legumes, but also to teach the professionals in the kitchens at the farmer schools how to include more legumes in the foods eaten by the young farmers. What else should people know about Denmark’s efforts to build a more plant-based food system? Denmark is not paradise. [People] will have this excuse — they’ll say, “This is just Denmark, Denmark is always ahead on everything.” But that’s not the full story. And I think that’s the important part to be told here. This happened in the country with the largest livestock production per capita and with a very powerful livestock lobbying sector. So when we can succeed on that in Denmark, there will be pathways to that in other countries. And for me, that is a really important message that we should not give up — that there is actually hope.

Climate
Food
Forests

“Absolutely devastating”: Climate change is pushing coral reefs to extinction, experts warn

Coral reefs have experienced four mass bleaching event in 18 months, with no sign of stopping

The Chagos Archipelago is one of the most remote places on Earth. Smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the collection of more than five dozen tiny islands are mostly uninhabited, due in no small part to the United States and United Kingdom expelling the Indigenous Chagossians in an ethnic cleansing from 1967 to 1973. For decades only a single atoll, Diego Garcia, has had any inhabitants. Yet as coral reef ecologist Alexandra Dempsey explored the atolls’ beautiful coral reefs in 2015, she nevertheless found signs of human pollution. “While we were there, we witnessed the very first stages of a bleaching event,” Dempsey said, referring to when coral becomes dead and white due to stress. Dempsey recalled "the scale at which these 100-year-old corals were just stressed. They were paling. The cotton candy colors paling is definitely an indicator of an ecosystem that is extremely stressed.”  Even the supposed “crown jewel of the reefs” looked bleached because of temperatures upwards of 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. As CEO of the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Dempsey often thinks about how to protect coral reefs from human activity, yet is now presented with evidence that even the most remote locations cannot be entirely protected. One big reason? Few things, if anything, will be unaffected by global heating. “No matter how much protection and how much due diligence goes behind trying to keep humans and people away from the reefs, the effects of climate change are just absolutely devastating to these ecosystems,” Dempsey said. Bleached Corals, Cenderawasih Bay, West Papua, Indonesia (Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images)Similarly, if coral reefs go extinct, it won’t just be the diversity of the ocean that will suffer — many people will too. Approximately 3.3 billion people rely on aquatic foods for nutrition, which accounts for almost 20% of the average per capita consumption of animal protein. If the reefs collapse, so will some bigger fish stocks, like tuna and groupers. Marine fisheries ecologist Khatija Alliji, from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, has personally seen humans tampering with coral reefs while exploring them, and from that observation points out that it is not merely our greenhouse gas emissions that harm coral reefs and underwater ecosystems. "We are clearly challenging coral’s natural capacity for adaptation." “Currently coral reefs face many threats, including (but not limited to) biodiversity loss, water quality, climate change, disease, predation, coastal development, litter, marine traffic and pollution,” Alliji explained. Because reefs are so complex, scientists still do not fully understand all the interlocking parts that make them work. Even the recent Red List assessment that found over two-fifths of coral reef species threatened with extinction added there are some species where data is so deficient that a risk category cannot be assigned. “Advancements in coral taxonomy using DNA has led to the discovery of new species of coral and better taxonomic definition,” Alliji said. “But there is still lots to investigate and this is both exciting and terrifying given the many threats listed above.” For all of the mysteries that remain about coral reefs, though, experts agree that climate change is an undisputed threat. Indeed, our planet is already in the middle of its fourth global coral bleaching event in 18 months largely due to climate change, which experts predict will worsen as we surpass 1.5º C of global temperature rise. Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter Lab Notes. “Locally, some reef regions surpassed 1.5º C in the last year, but it takes a global average over 20 years to calculate the threshold; it is highly likely temperature levels will exceed even 2º C globally before a turning point is reached,” David Obura, chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, told Salon. “Scientists recently shifted the estimated critical range for corals from 1.5º to 2º C warming to [between] 1º and 1.5º C warming. And as with many things with climate change and the Anthropocene, severe and compounding impacts are being observed earlier than predicted.” "The ocean has no boundaries and therefore a collaborative approach is required to ensure coral survival and guarantee their future." Aldo Croquer, a marine conservation program manager for the Central Caribbean in Nature Conservancy, said that coral reefs have weathered many cataclysmic events in Earth’s history, but they may not survive humanity. “Corals have evolved facing great challenges and they have managed to survive, even to massive global extinctions,” Croquer said. “Their capacity to adapt to environmental change and to come back from disturbances is indisputable, at least at evolutionary time scales. However, the changes that we are seeing today occurred at the scales of decades. This is unprecedented. Thus, we are clearly challenging coral’s natural capacity for adaptation.” To protect coral reefs from rising temperatures and other human activity, it is critical for local communities to work together with global authorities so they can salvage what they can. “Climate change is a global issue and will need both local and global management and solutions to ensure we protect our natural ecosystems and resources,” Alliji said. “The ocean has no boundaries and therefore a collaborative approach is required to ensure coral survival and guarantee their future.” Obura added, “There is a localized commitment to enabling the sorts of changes that can reduce local pressures, which revolve around promoting circular economies, less destructive economic and development practices. To some extent the problem is these are pitched as ‘local’ problems for local authorities to act on, but often the broader national and international contexts don’t facilitate this by continually incentivising more growth, more resorts, more fishing, more goods and services, etc.” Yet even if all of those changes are made, scientists like Jason Spadaro from the Coral Reef Restoration Research Program in Florida's Mote Marine Laboratory still expect more depressing journeys like one he recently took to the Florida Keys. “When I started my career back in 2006 or so, coral reefs in the Florida Keys in particular had about maybe a little better than 10% of their surface covered in live coral,” Spadaro said. “Today we've got somewhere less than 2%, as well as a fourfold decrease in the living tissue color cover of our coral reefs in the Keys. That's due almost entirely to things like climate change.” Read more about our oceans

Climate
Extinction
Conservation

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Capturing The Fire

When Louise Coghill saw the first plume of smoke begin to rise behind her parents property, she could never have predicted that in less than four hours, it would become a wall of flames, swallowing everything in its path. A photographer by trade, Louise has travelled the world documenting everything from the nomadic wanderers of Mongolia, to base life at Mount Everest. Capturing the extraordinary comes naturally to Louise, so when her family home in the semi-rural Western Australian town of Gidgegannup became engulfed in flames, her first instinct wasn’t to take shelter, it was to pick up her camera.

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Evangelicals for Climate Action

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Climate
Culture

We Trees

Ever wonder what trees think of us now that we have created a climate disaster? This 2-minute film answers that question. As Bill McKibben recently tweeted about the film, “Who speaks for trees? In this short and elegant video, the trees themselves.” It has been screened at Green Fest (Serbia), The Colorado Environmental Film Festival, The Wildlife Conservation Film Festival and Winner of Merit at the Nature Without Borders Film Festival.

Forests
Chemicals
Climate

Crossing the Divide

An Iowa farmer reacts swiftly when he hears that radical climate marchers plan to disrupt peace in his tiny town. What he does after that offers a lesson for would-be peacemakers everywhere.

Inspirational
Activism
Climate

The Invisible Mammal - The Bat Rescuer

Bats are struggling to survive, specifically in North America, where white nose syndrome is causing a sharp decline of certain species. Pertinent issues: climate change, habitat destruction, what can humans must do to prevent extinction.

Animals
Climate
Extinction

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