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Our Daily Planet: What Justice Kennedy's retirement means for the environment, offshore wind gets a battery and pass the oat milk, please!
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By: Monica Medina and Miro Korenha

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Monday, July 2nd, 2018

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 People

Justice Anthony Kennedy   Photo: KURV.com
Justice Kennedy's Retirement Is A Blow For Conservation

Justice Kennedy's retirement last week has led to much analysis of his pivotal role in many of the most important environmental cases of the last three decades.  There are two cases in which Justice Kennedy was a key swing vote, and where his deference to a federal agency is unlikely to be repeated by his successor.  He was the key vote upholding EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gasses even though they are not named in the Clean Air Act, and that set the stage for President Obama's suite of climate regulations under the statute.  Kennedy also wrote a pivotal opinion in one of the most important Clean Water Act cases in the history of the Act -- a case that determined the scope of what rivers and wetlands could be regulated under the Act -- the Obama Administration "WOTUS" rule was based on it. 
  • “One can comfortably say that he was the single most influential justice for environmental law over the past 30 years,” Richard J. Lazarus, a Harvard law professor, told The New York Times. “Many of those cases were sharply divided, but the one constant was that Kennedy was in the majority in every single case but one.”
  • Abigail Dillen, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at Earthjustice, told ThinkProgress. “He softened the hardest line, and the hope was that his pragmatism would help the Court productively grapple with the existential issue of climate change.”
  • “You can imagine the Scott Pruitts of the world feeling emboldened and saying, ‘Let’s adopt a more aggressive stance on deregulation and take our chances before the Supreme Court,’” Jody Freeman, a law professor at Harvard who was the counselor for energy and climate change in the Obama White House, told The New York Times. “By the same token, you also might see environmental advocates try to keep cases away from the court if they think they’ll get a worse decision there.”
  • “There’s no happier person in America right now than Scott Pruitt,” said Vermont Law School professor Patrick Parenteau.
Why This Matters:  Kennedy's more conservative replacement will be on the Court for decades -- and will likely vote against environmental regulations consistently.  The nation’s highest court would now “almost certainly” be more hostile to environmental law than it has been since the founding of the EPA in 1970, said Jonathan Z. Cannon, a law professor at the University of Virginia.  “ Trip Van Noppen, the president of the environmental-legal-advocacy group Earthjustice said, “Trump intends to fill this Supreme Court vacancy with someone who will put corporations, the wealthy, and the powerful above the rest of us. We must do everything in our power to resist this.”  The President has promised to name his pick next Monday in prime time.  Stay tuned.
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 Forests

Conversion of forest for an oil palm plantation in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Photo: Rhett A. Butler
40 Football Fields a Minute Chopped in 2017

A new study by Global Forest Watch and the Univesity of Maryland showed that tropical countries lost 39 million acres of tree cover in 2017, which is an area of about the same size as the country of Bangladesh.  This was the second highest loss in a year since Global Forest Watch started keeping track in 2001, and it was second only to 2016.   Frances Seymour, an expert at the World Resources Institute said, "[v]ast areas continued to be cleared for soy, beef, palm oil and other globally traded commodities.  Much of this clearing is illegal and linked to corruption."  While some countries have improved, there are new hotspots such as Colombia, which lost 1 million acres, which was 46 percent more than the previous year, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which lost 3.4 million acres of forest to agriculture, artisanal logging, and charcoal production.
 

“This is a crisis of existential proportions,” Ola Elvestuen, Norway’s minister of climate and environment, said last week in the opening presentation of the Oslo Tropical Forest Forum where the data was released. “We either deal with it or we leave future generations in ecological collapse.”   Norway has invested about $2.8 billion into reforestation in the past decade, more than any other wealthy nation.

Why This Matters: We need to get deforestation under control in order to keep global temperature rise to the agreed-upon level in the Paris agreement.  The United Nations started a program (called REDD) a decade ago to stem the tide in deforestation, and since the Paris agreement, the program has been considered an integral part of the solution to climate change because tropical forests and wetlands can deliver 23% of the total mitigation needed between now and 2030.  Conversely, according to Vox, "deforestation accounts for an estimated 15 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions."  

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 Climate Change

Don Pedro Lake 100 miles east of San Francisco  Photo: Paul Hames, CA Dept. of Water Resources
It's the "Aridification" of the West

Scientists at the Colorado River Research Group, are working to change the way people think about water by changing the words used to describe the water shortages in the west.  They have called for leaders and experts to move away from the word "drought" and instead have labeled the changing climate in the Colorado River Basin as  “aridification,” meaning a transformation to a drier environment  By shifting terminology, the researchers hope to change behaviors.  The goal, according to the High Country News, is to "reframe" our understanding of the Southwest’s climate — thinking of it as a dry place getting drier, rather than a place simply waiting for the next drought to end.  

There is some anecdotal evidence to back them up.  High Country News reports that during California’s recent five-year drought, residents cut their water use by a quarter or more amid intense media coverage of the state's water use restrictions. However, once California Gov. Jerry Brown declared the drought over, Californians used nearly as much water as they had before drought was declared.

Why This Matters:  As writers, we have always believed that words matter.  The impacts of climate change may vary a bit from year to year, but we all know the trajectory.  We need to adjust our language as well as our behavior in order to reflect this ongoing reality.  
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+1

 Energy

World's First Offshore Wind Battery Installed in Scotland 

Hywind Scotland, the world's first floating wind farm, was just fitted with its first 1.2-megawatt battery. Energy generated offshore will be transported via cables to an onshore substation where the batteries are placed and connected to the grid. For reference, the capacity of the batteries is equivalent to more than 128,000 iPhones. Watch the video above to see how this works. 

As Business Green reported, Hywind was opened last October by Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and is the first offshore wind farm in the world to deploy turbines without fixed foundations in deeper waters where there are stronger winds, thereby enabling the 15 turbines to deliver higher yields of electricity.

Why This Matters: Wind power is a variable energy source and is dependent on whether or not the wind is blowing. Battery technology can help store excess energy on windy days and help grid reliability on days without wind.  Sebastian Bringsvaerd, development manager for Hywind and Batwind, explained that "The variability of renewable energy can to a certain extent be managed by the grid. But to make renewable energy more competitive and integrate even more renewables to the grid, we will need to find new, smart solutions for energy storage to provide firm power."
 
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 Food

Pass the Oat Milk, Please 

Milk alternatives have become popular in recent years as more people are making the switch for health and environmental reasons.  Plant-based milks are beneficial for those with dietary issues and are the most nutritious milk option. Most significantly, the dairy industry has a big footprint on the planet and Grist noted that "Here in the U.S., your daily glass of milk accounts for 2 percent of our countrywide [greenhouse gas] emissions."

One of the plant-based milk alternatives rising in popularity is oat milk which many people like for its richness and cow milk-like flavor. It's also thought that oat milk is one of the most sustainable milk alternatives because of the lower environmental impact of cultivating oats. The New York Times reported that according to the Water Footprint Network, almonds require six times as much water to grow than oats. Growing soybeans, for soy milk and other purposes, can have tremendously damaging effects on the ecosystems where they're introduced, according to the World Wildlife Fund. While oat milk has been around for a while, more companies like Oatley are beginning to make it commercially available and manufacturing it in a sustainable manner. 

Why This Matters: For many years, Americans were lead to believe that milk was the ultimate superfood (remember those Got Milk ads?) and while cows milk does have a lot of calcium and nutrients a big percentage of adults aren't able to digest it. When creating milk alternatives we should push for beverages that reduce their impact on the planet compared to the product that they're trying to replace. 

Go Deeper: Oat milk is easy to make at home, try this yummy vanilla version!
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 Animals   

Photo: Julie Larsen Maher (courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society)
One Cool Thing: New York Aquarium Goes to the Sharks 

After Hurricane Sandy ravaged the New York Aquarium located on Coney Island in 2012, many of its residents—fish, sharks, and even a baby walrus—had to be relocated for a few years while the aquarium worked to renovate. The good news is that after years of planning, the aquarium's major exhibit, “Ocean Wonder: Sharks!,” finally debuted this past weekend. The bold and beautiful new exhibit housed in  57,500-square-foot pavilion will be operated by the Wildlife Conservation Society and is ready to welcome visitors this summer. Definitely put it on your list! 
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