February 10, 2021 — Just before Joseph Biden was sworn in as president of the United States a month ago, his chief of staff, Ronald Klain, laid out the obstacles ahead for the administration.
“We face four overlapping and compounding crises: the COVID-19 crisis, the resulting economic crisis, the climate crisis, and a racial equity crisis,” Klain wrote in a memorandum issued to staff on 16 January.
February 8, 2021 — Ocean pollution is widespread, worsening, and poses a clear and present danger to human health and wellbeing. But the extent of this danger has not been widely comprehended – until now. Our recent study provides the first comprehensive assessment of the impacts of ocean pollution on human health.
Ocean pollution is a complex mixture of toxic metals, plastics, manufactured chemicals, petroleum, urban and industrial wastes, pesticides, fertilisers, pharmaceutical chemicals, agricultural runoff, and sewage. More than 80 percent arises from land-based sources and it reaches the oceans through rivers, runoff, deposition from the atmosphere – where airborne pollutants are washed into the ocean by rain and snow – and direct dumping, such as pollution from waste water treatment plants and discarded waste. Ocean pollution is heaviest near the coasts and most highly concentrated along the coastlines of low-income and middle-income countries.
Ocean pollution can also be found far beyond national jurisdictions in the open oceans, the deepest oceanic trenches, and on the shores of remote islands. Ocean pollution knows no borders.
February 8, 2021 — David Ismay, the Baker administration’s undersecretary for climate change, got into hot water with the governor on Friday after a video surfaced in which he appeared to say Massachusetts residents are going to be squeezed financially as the state tries to reduce emissions.
In a panel discussion with the Vermont Climate Council on January 25 that is available on YouTube, Ismay said the numbers facing the state are daunting. He said 60 percent of the state’s emissions come from residential heating and passenger vehicles. To meet the state’s goal of net zero emissions by 2050, Ismay said, 3 million homes need to transition to clean energy and 5 million vehicles need to be replaced with zero emission cars.
Ismay said Massachusetts doesn’t have many big sources of emissions left to target, and is left with changing the lifestyles of ordinary people. “There is no bad guy left, at least in Massachusetts, to point the finger at, turn the screws on, and break their will so they stop emitting,” he said. “That’s you. We have to break your will. I can’t even say that publicly.”
February 8, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Coastal habitats like salt marshes, mangroves, and seagrass beds provide us with countless benefits, from nursery grounds for fish to protection from storms. They also play an important role in addressing climate change by removing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing them. The NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation works to protect and restore these important coastal habitats and the climate benefits they provide.
What is Coastal Blue Carbon?
Coastal blue carbon is carbon that is stored in coastal habitats like salt marshes, mangroves, and seagrass beds.
Just like forests on land, coastal habitats capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, both in plants and in the soil. But compared to forests, coastal habitats do so on a much larger scale. Research shows that mangroves and salt marshes remove (sequester) carbon from the atmosphere at a rate 10 times greater than tropical forests. They also store three to five times more carbon per acre than tropical forests. This is because most coastal blue carbon is stored in the soil, rather than in above-ground plants.
Coastal blue carbon habitats are also sometimes referred to as “carbon sinks,” because they sequester more carbon than they release. They also hold on to it for long periods of time. Carbon found in coastal soils is often hundreds or thousands of years old.
February 5, 2021 — “Fish have been an important source of food for humans for millennia, but seafood production and fisheries management are inexplicably still not viewed as key parts of global policies to fight hunger and promote food security,” says John Virdin, director of the Oceans and Coastal Policy Program at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
“This needs to change, especially as food systems worldwide face increasing threats from climate change and the global development community falls further behind in meeting its goals.”
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the number of malnourished people worldwide will increase from 678 million in 2018 to 841 million in 2030 if current trends continue.
Fish, which already account for 17% of the animal protein consumed globally, could help meet this growing need, yet current food policies and funding priorities show little recognition of this, the authors of the new paper in the journal Ambio argue.
February 3, 2021 — President Joe Biden hit the ground sprinting on his first day of office. On day one he rejoined the Paris Agreement, and now he has announced a pause on offshore oil and gas leasing. It’s exciting to hear the president’s plan to return science to policy decision-making, even advancing his science adviser to a cabinet-level position. These encouraging moves will certainly translate to more effective action on climate.
Oil and gas are killing us. Burning fossil fuels is driving climate change, which is causing a wave of extinction and disasters that devastate property and the environment, and cost human lives. But President Biden has committed to aggressively address the climate crisis, which gives me great hope that we can work together to permanently protect our climate and coasts from offshore oil and gas.
Permanently ending new offshore oil and gas leasing in U.S. waters would prevent the release of a catastrophic amount of greenhouse gas emissions, which are driving ever larger and more intense wildfires, hurricanes and floods. A new report from Oceana estimates that permanent protection against offshore drilling would prevent 19 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions and $720 billion in damages to people, property and the environment.
February 3, 2021 — For decades, warning signals sent by ocean ecosystems — such as increased sea surface temperature, sea-level rise and ocean acidification — have illustrated the urgent need to reduce global greenhouse emissions. As most global economic activity and ultimately man-made carbon emissions occur on land, abatement policies tend to focus on land-based reductions. Meanwhile, the ocean traditionally is viewed as a victim of climate change rather than a source of solutions. That needs to change.
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made clear, limiting the damaging effects of a changing climate requires policies to incorporate an entire ecosystem approach that properly accounts for contributions from the ocean, its ecosystems and economic sub-sectors.
Recent analysis shows that ocean-based solutions could reduce the emissions gap — the difference between emissions expected if current trends and policies continue and emissions consistent with limiting global temperature increase — by up to 21 percent if the target is keeping temperature rise by 2050 to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or by about 25 percent on a 2C pathway.
Achieving such potential will rely on significant political will and clear policy signals sent to industry, financial markets and domestic agencies over the coming years. Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) can be critical tools in sending these signals and accelerating ocean-based climate action. Additionally, including ocean-based targets, policies and measures in NDCs can help coastal and island states enhance their ambition in line with the requirements of the Paris Agreement. Such ocean-based opportunities also can help governments recover and rebuild their economies following the COVID-19 pandemic. World Resource’s Institute recent publication, “Enhancing Nationally Determined Contributions: Opportunities for Ocean-Based Climate Action,” aims to provide the necessary input to assist governments on that journey.
February 3, 2021 — President Joe Biden last week unveiled an ambitious conservation goal, unprecedented for the United States: conserving 30% of the country’s lands and waters by 2030, which would require more than doubling the area of public and private holdings under heightened protections.
Conservation scientists welcomed the so-called 30-by-30 goal, announced in an executive order on climate released 27 January. “The ambition is fantastic,” says ecologist Joshua Tewksbury, interim executive director of the nonprofit Future Earth.
But Biden’s order also raises a thorny practical question: Which swaths of land and sea should be the top targets for enhanced protection or management? The order says the effort should aim for a number of outcomes, including preserving biodiversity, curbing climate change, and even creating jobs and reducing social inequality. But researchers warn that difficult trade-offs lie ahead, because few chunks of territory are likely to provide all of the desired benefits. “The balancing act [will be] the hardest part of this work,” Tewksbury says.
Observers say the Biden administration could make rapid progress and contain costs by enhancing protections for territory already owned by the federal government. “We can make really huge gains on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands,” says Jacob Malcom, a conservation biologist with Defenders of Wildlife. That could mean reducing logging, mining, drilling, and grazing. “There will be vested interests who are not happy about that,” Malcom notes. “So I don’t want to make it seem like it’s going to be easy.” Fishing associations, for example, have already reacted with concern to proposals to ban commercial fishing in 30% of U.S. waters. “Thirty-by-thirty is a campaign slogan, not a scientific proposal,” Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, wrote last year.
February 2, 2021 — Ocean pollution is widespread, worsening, and poses a clear and present danger to human health and wellbeing. But the extent of this danger has not been widely comprehended—until now. Our recent study provides the first comprehensive assessment of the impacts of ocean pollution on human health.
Ocean pollution is a complex mixture of toxic metals, plastics, manufactured chemicals, petroleum, urban and industrial wastes, pesticides, fertilizers, pharmaceutical chemicals, agricultural runoff, and sewage. More than 80% arises from land-based sources and it reaches the oceans through rivers, runoff, deposition from the atmosphere—where airborne pollutants are washed into the ocean by rain and snow—and direct dumping, such as pollution from waste water treatment plants and discarded waste. Ocean pollution is heaviest near the coasts and most highly concentrated along the coastlines of low-income and middle-income countries.
Ocean pollution can also be found far beyond national jurisdictions in the open oceans, the deepest oceanic trenches, and on the shores of remote islands. Ocean pollution knows no borders.
February 1, 2021 — California’s Dungeness crab fishermen have had a rough year. Poor meat quality, endangered whales migrating too close to shore and price disputes with wholesalers kept crab pots on boats for nearly two months. The delays left families without their cherished holiday centerpiece and fisherman without the funds that normally pay their bills the rest of the year.
But as rising ocean temperatures threaten to make fishery closures routine, it will be even harder to count on crab for holiday meals—or livelihoods. Over the past decade, warming sea waters have produced harmful algal blooms that contaminate crab meat with domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can cause seizures, memory loss and other serious symptoms and has been blamed for poisoning and stranding scores of sea lions in California every year. State officials delayed three out of the last six crab seasons to protect public health after an unprecedented multiyear marine heat wave, dubbed “the blob,” hit the north Pacific Ocean in 2013.
The blob precipitated a series of extraordinary events: it caused a massive harmful algal bloom that led to record-breaking domoic acid concentrations, which in turn caused first-of-its-kind closures of the West Coast’s most valuable fishery, from southern California to Washington state. But in doing so, it also set up a natural experiment that researchers harnessed to reveal strategies that could help food-producing communities recover from climate-driven disturbances.