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July 11, 2016
On July 7, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that June was the hottest June on record for the contiguous United States, with an average temperature of 71.78 degrees F, 3.3 degrees F above the 20th century average. Image courtesy of NOAA.
On July 5, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing stated that the United States will have a long-term commitment to the Paris Agreement no matter what the outcome of the presidential election, in an interview with ClimateWire. Pershing said that while there has been a lot of concern in the international community over the election and its impact on the future of U.S. climate policy, many of the current U.S. climate policies will stay in place. Pershing emphasized that the next presidential administration will have to take action on climate, even though he notes that the candidates have "very different" priorities, saying, “I believe that [climate change] is a huge problem, though, and no matter who is president, it’s going to be a part of what they have to deal with.”
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E & E Publishing, LLC
On July 1, government officials from 23 states filed a joint lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuit challenges EPA’s decision to not reevaluate regulations that would limit carbon emissions from new coal and natural gas power plants. In the filing, state officials write, “[the decision] is in excess of the agency’s statutory authority, and otherwise arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law.” These regulations are separate from the Clean Power Plan. A lawsuit against the regulation was previously filed by a different group of states and political and energy interests.
The Hill
On July 6, four Miami-Dade County commissioners presented an unprecedented plan to collect “impact fees” from developers in order to finance local climate mitigation and adaptation projects. The commissioners say the initiative would help provide the funds required to properly prepare the county for the negative effects of sea level rise. Georgetown University law professor J. Peter Byrne co-authored a paper on these fees earlier this year, stating that they are “sensible, well-adapted [tools] that a local government can use,” and “if [the program] discourages the developers from building . . . they can try to build it in a manner or location in which there’s less climate harm.” The four commissioners asked Miami Mayor Carlos Jimenez to draft a report looking at the utility of their proposal and whether it would be appropriate.
Miami New Times
On July 7, Christina Figueres, the former executive secretary of the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was formally nominated to serve as the next secretary-general of the United Nations by President Luis Guillermo Solis of Costa Rica, her native country. Figueres completed her term leading the UNFCCC on July 1, 2016, and can claim significant credit for the organization's successful production of an international deal on climate in Paris last year. Eleven people have already been nominated for the position. A UN led by Figueres would have a stronger focus on climate change. The first "straw poll" of permanent UN members to decide the new secretary-general will take place July 21.
E&E News, The Guardian, Financial Times
On July 5, Alberta officials declared the Fort McMurray wildfire, which began on May 1, “under control.” The fire caused the evacuation of 80,000 people, and is likely to be the costliest wildfire in Canadian history, said Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre representative Mark Mousseau. The Fort McMurray fire burned 2,300 square miles, the same size as Delaware, but is not the largest in Canadian history. However, the proximity to the city means that the damage was more expensive—2,400 buildings were destroyed, approximately 10 percent of the city, which may be a new record. The Alberta Agriculture and Forestry department said the wildfire may burn in more remote areas for another year.
USA Today, Huffington Post Canada
On July 5, the climate politics group NextGen Climate announced it has organized voter outreach groups on 100 college campuses, halfway to its stated target of establishing teams on 200 campuses in swing states before the November election. The campus outreach is part of a $25 million campaign to get young people out to vote for candidates who care about climate change, funded primarily by NextGen Climate founder, billionaire Tom Steyer. The teams are being placed at both large and small schools, in places such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire. Steyer said at the launch of the campaign in April, “When young people . . . use the fact that they are the biggest cohort in this election cycle, incredible things can happen.”
On July 6, the Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) reported that a small leak in a natural gas pipeline near a well connected to their Aliso Canyon storage facility was found and repaired on July 2. SoCalGas spokeswoman Melissa Bailey defended the company’s decision not to inform the local community of Porter Ranch of the leak, saying, “This was a very small leak and did not present a safety risk to SoCalGas employees or nearby communities . . . it did not trigger any external notifications.” This leak was the second since the enormous Aliso Canyon leak which began October 2015 and took five months to plug. Local environmental groups have called for the California state government to permanently shut down SoCalGas's Aliso Canyon facility.
Los Angeles Daily News
On July 7, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that June was the hottest June on record for the contiguous United States, with an average temperature of 71.78 degrees F, 3.3 degrees F above the 20th century average. According to NOAA, the "Lower 48" has had an average temperature 3.2 degrees F above the 20th century average so far in 2016. Climatologist Jake Crouch at NOAA told ClimateCentral that the "record-breaking heat wave in the Southwest during June played an important role in boosting the contiguous U.S. average temperature to record territory." NOAA has not yet released its global analysis for June.
ClimateCentral, NOAA
On July 6, the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) declared that the average extent of Arctic sea ice in June hit a new record low, with an average of 4.09 million square miles. The new record is 100,000 square miles less than the previous record from 2010, and 525,000 square miles (about twice the size of Texas) less than the 1981 to 2010 average. NSIDC noted that every month in 2016 except March has set a new record low for average ice extent in the Arctic.
The Guardian, NSIDC
On July 8, a study published in Science found that about 90 percent of the kelp forests along the West Coast of Australia died off between 2011 and 2013. A 2011 heatwave contributed to the die-off by raising the regional ocean temperature 2 degrees Celsius, effectively killing a hundred kilometers of kelp forest and 370 square kilometers of coral reefs, which were adapted to colder temperatures. As the cold-temperature reef and kelp forest died out, new populations of corals and seaweed turfs generally found in subtropical and tropical areas moved in, along with tropical fish with a taste for kelp that have kept the forest from regrowing. Study lead author Dr. Thomas Wernberg at the University of Western Australia warned that if trends continue, the economic and environmental consequences would be equivalent to losing the Great Barrier Reef.
The Guardian, Science
Dozens Dead in Pakistan and India after Floods and Landslides
Park Rangers on Assateague Island May Let Climate Change Alter its Landscape
House Republicans Pass Amendment to Block Pentagon’s Climate Initiatives
Australian Scientists Warn that Natural Gas Leaks Hurt Its Climate Benefits
Kiribati Faces Existential Threat from Rising Seas
New North America Agreement May Open Trillion Dollar Renewable Energy Market
Lake in Bolivia Dries Up due to Climate Change, Changing Indigenous Way of Life
Building a Billion-Ton Bioeconomy Tuesday, July 19 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm 1300 Longworth House Office Building Independence Avenue SE and New Jersey Avenue SE Please RSVP to expedite check-in A live webcast will be streamed at 1:30 PM EDT at www.eesi.org/livecast (wireless connection permitting) The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to a briefing assessing the ability of the United States to sustainably produce 1 billion tons of renewable non-food biomass every year. This could potentially displace more than 30 percent of the country's petroleum consumption. The briefing will focus on key findings from volume 1 of the 2016 Billion-Ton Update, which examines the technical feasibility of a billion-ton annual biomass supply chain by 2040. The 2016 report, to be released at the Bioenergy 2016 conference in mid-July, builds and expands on previous Billion-Ton studies, released in 2005 and 2011 by the Department of Energy's Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO).
Authors: Daniel Lopez and Rebecca Chillrud
Editor: Laura Small
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