Why Blue States Matter

If You Make Them Pay Here, You Can Hurt Them Anywhere!

First of all, immense thanks to all who wrote with kinds words of congratulation about my new grandchild. I confess, it does seem unlikely that with 8 billion people on the planet I would personally know the single most charming and charismatic member of our species, but there you go.

And now to business. One of the most annoying features of America’s absurd electoral college is that most of us have no direct role to play in the presidential campaign—we’re in either red states or blue, and we depend on the swing voters in the seven swing states to make the ultimate decision that may well determine, among other things, the eventual temperature of the earth: prepare to learn more than you’d ever want to know about how the somehow undecided voters of Green Bay or Tempe are thinking about the world.

But beyond traveling to or phonebanking into those purple enclaves (and Third Act is a good way to do just that), there are still profound ways that people in reliably blue states can make an enormous difference—because we have leverage too, just of a different kind.

That leverage is financial and legal, and no better example exists than the plan—currently under very active consideration in New York State—to charge the oil companies for the climate damage they’ve caused. I wrote about this ‘climate superfund’ plan a while ago with relation to Vermont, which may become the first state to pass it. But Vermont is, well, small: its spunky lawyers would benefit from some help once Exxon inevitably sues. Across the border, New York has a lot of lawyers—just ask Donald Trump, who’s felt the sting of Letitia James and her well-honed AG’s office.

Which is why it’s excellent news that New York is also close to passing a superfund law of its own—really, the only open question is whether Gov Kathy Hochul will stick it in the budget currently under preparation; the decision will come in the next couple of weeks, and it will go a long way towards determining her profile on the most important issue the world faces. Here’s a letter from 180 youth organizations in the Empire State, making the basic and obvious points

As you know, New York State’s growing climate burden will grow from billions now to tens of billions by our middle age. Currently, New York taxpayers are footing the entire bill resulting from climate damages – rising sea levels, more intense storms, hotter temperatures, more pollution, etc.

That is not fair to anyone today and nor is it fair to future generations who will bear those mushrooming costs. Instead, those responsible – most notably the largest oil companies –should be held financially accountable.

The bill we support (S.2129A/A.3351A) is a just source of revenue to address the climate crisis. Based on the “polluter pays” legal principle, this legislation ensures that the largest oil companies are held financially responsible for the rising costs of the climate catastrophe,specifically for funding climate damage repair and resilience projects. Under the bill, the companies responsible for the largest greenhouse gas emissions are charged an aggregate $3 billion annually (the more GHG that a company is responsible for, the greater the share of the $3 billion)

You might say, of course, that it would make the most sense to pass this on a national basis (or, truly, a global one). But America, taken as a whole, is neither red nor blue; as the biggest producer of hydrocarbons on the planet, its politics are greasy. It was a modest miracle that Joe Biden was able to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, but it was all carrot, no stick. (The Federal Reserve last week even blocked global efforts to impose new climate risk rules on Wall Street banks—Fed Chair Jerome Powell is emerging as a massive obstacle to serious climate action). The sticks have to come from places like New York that don’t have a major fossil fuel industry, and do have a huge climate problem (Hurricane Sandy remains fresh in many minds; the world’s great city brought to its knees, with whitecaps dancing on Avenue A). And New York, on its own, would be the tenth largest economy on planet earth. It’s Canada, Italy, Brazil.

California, of course, is even larger—it’s Germany. And though it has a remnant oil industry, its economy is now obviously based on other stuff: silicon, mostly. So it can act. Sometimes it does dumb stuff (right now it’s contemplating booting EVs out of carpool lanes, even as Disneyland ditches gas cars at Tomorrowland). But it is also contemplating a climate superfund bill. Meanwhile, some of its most important actions have to do with its mammoth pension funds—CalPERS has stubbornly refused to divest over the last decade, costing its retirees billions. But even they may be reaching a breaking point, after Exxon chair Darren Woods said the quiet part out loud in a recent interview, acknowledging his company would never transition to renewable energy.

“I don't think engaging with [Exxon] will work,” said Theresa Taylor, CalPERS President. “ I think we need a plan...To say that we are very disappointed [is not enough].

“All the work we have done for 20 years is being pushed back on...I think we need a plan and that plan needs to include whether or not we keep these companies in our fund,” she added.

Better late than never. Meanwhile, in Connecticut activists are writing thank you letters to state legislators for advancing a new law that would require that insurers (the Nutmeg State’s big local industry) pay into

a climate resiliency fund to support communities in Connecticut harmed by extreme weather disasters fueled by climate chaos.

The measure instructs the Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection to propose by the end of the year how the new fund would be financed with a surcharge on insurers’ policies offered to fossil fuel projects.

This piece of legislation would take a crucial step in highlighting insurers' role in the climate crisis, and hold them accountable for the devastation their underwriting policies have caused.

And earlier today in Oregon the governor signed a law divesting the state’s funds from coal. Meanwhile in New York City, which has long since gone down the divestment path, the city’s comptroller Brad Lander has been demanding that the banks he does business with (which is to say, all big ones) should report the ratio between their dirty and clean energy financing, a first step toward forcing change. Royal Bank of Canada, one of the banking world’s five biggest funders of fossil fuel, complied earlier this week

Canada’s largest bank is the third financial giant to agree to begin disclosing the ratio after New York Comptroller Brad Lander and the city’s public-pension boards filed shareholder resolutionswith six banks in January. The proposal was set to be voted upon at Toronto-based Royal Bank’s annual meeting next week.

“We’re thrilled that they’ve adopted it,” Lander said in an interview Wednesday. “We expect this will become a standard part of what banks disclose and we hope the others will follow suit promptly.”

So blue states matter—a lot. (Here’s the superfund petition to sign if you live in Vermont, in New York, and in California.) And if they lead, even red states may eventually follow. Texas, for instance, faces a “nightmarish” price tag if a big hurricane comes ashore this summer (and with sea surface temperatures across the prime hurricane spawning grounds at absurd records, that seems not so unlikely). The oil industry doubtless has enough juice in Austin to keep them from being held liable, but you never know. Here’s Robert Plattner, a former New York state deputy tax commissioner, now serving as an advisor to the wonderful senator Liz Krueger, who is behind the climate superfund law. He points out that if other jurisdictions enact similar laws, eventually even Exxon may begin to run a bit short of cash.

It would be best for other states not to sit on the sidelines and wait to see what happens in New York, only to realize some years later that the state has a judgment against fossil fuel companies for more than $15 billion dollars while they have not yet introduced legislation. The states cannot afford to let those years go by before seeking to make the polluters pay.

In other energy and climate news:

+Earlier today the Biden administration freed up $20 billion for a series of ‘green banks’ across America, funding crucial spending on energy efficiency for average Americas. As Emily Pontecorvo reports in Heatmap:

The general idea is to funnel the money into green lending programs, colloquially known as “green banks,” that will offer low-cost loans and other financing options for consumers, community organizations, businesses, and local governments. Projects financed through the fund could do everything from residential electrification, to green public transit, to solar on schools, to storm water management.

EPA anticipates the awardees will mobilize $7 of private capital for every $1 of federal funds — a total investment of nearly $150 billion. Each of the winners will get access to their share of the funding in the next six months, and will have until 2031 to use it.

This is the best part of the IRA, and the companion $7 billion Solar for All act will follow later in the summer!

+Replanting forests after massive wildfires is hard because the infrastructure—the nurseries for raising seeds and seedlings—has been allowed to dwindle. The Times has a fascinating account of efforts to rebuild this “forestry supply chain.”

Meanwhile, Scientific American has an account of new science showing the best way to protect old growth forests is to…leave them alone. Alexis Marie Adams’ fine piece is centered on Montana’s Yaak Valley, where old friend Rick Bass is leading efforts to fight off the Black Ram timber sale by the Forest Service

“They say they’ll log this old-growth forest—this wet, green rainforest—to create fire resilience,” Bass says, “but these trees are already fire-resilient. This larch, for example, is not only meant to survive fire; it’s meant to prosper from it. These attributes, the species diversity here, the structural diversity of the forest—they need to be studied, not clear-cut. But the Forest Service says that by clear-cutting a, what, nearly 1,000-year-old forest, they’ll teach it to be resilient?”

And meanwhile again, the very best way to wreck a forest, and the climate as well, is to chop it up for wood pellets to burn for electricity, something the comically villainous Drax company is trying to pull off in northern California. Happily, neighbors are fighting back. As the Lassen County Times reports

Gloria Alonso Cruz, environmental justice coordinator at Little Manila Rising, said: “Our community is in danger. If the Port of Stockton buys into the GSNR scheme, South Stockton will get hit with even more harmful pollution, noise and traffic. We are already overburdened with severe health risks from existing toxic air pollution. South Stockton understands the lasting trauma and sacrifices of the past, and we rise in opposition to GSNR’s project because we deserve development that values our health, well-being, and is non-emissive. We deserve to not be treated as a sacrifice zone.”

Until the 1960s, South Stockton had the largest population of Filipinos in the world outside of the Philippines. Previously, GSNR planned to also export its wood pellets from the Port of Richmond on the San Francisco Bay, but the community rejected the project in 2023. The Port of Stockton has a similar offramp, however GSNR is attempting to fast-track the project through minimal community engagement events and greenwashing wood pellet biomass.

Rita Vaughan Frost, Forest Advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said: “The GSNR proposal isn’t really about wildfire mitigation or rural jobs, it’s about corporate profit. Industrial-scale wood pellet projects meant for overseas energy markets, like those owned by Drax, won’t solve California’s wildfire problem, and it can actually make the problem worse. This is a dangerous misuse of valuable time and resources that are needed for real solutions.Destructive wildfire is something we must address — but not by harming California’s vulnerable communities and forests.”

+Victoria Guida offers an excellent account in Politico of efforts to build more housing—and especially denser communities—across the country, a key environmental step as well as a basic human need.

It’s not just Montana: Oregon has cleared a lot of red tape for denser housing in the last few years, and Portland, which is facing an acute shortage, saw a jump in permits for newly legal units. Minneapolis now allows duplexes and triplexes in all neighborhoods previously reserved for single-family homes, as well as more apartments in commercial areas, and they’ve seen rent growth slow dramatically.

In Utah, the state is investing funds alongside community banks for construction of smaller single-family “starter” homes. This type of reform requires ensuring that the lot size for the construction can be smaller. In Florida and elsewhere, they’ve also made it easier to build apartments above retail spaces.

+So far the White House is resisting efforts by House speaker Mike Johnson to tie Ukraine aid to lifting their landmark pause on new LNG export terminals. According to Bloomberg:

“The president supports the pause on pending, additional approvals of LNG export licenses to evaluate the economic and climate impacts on consumers and communities.”

Reuters reported earlier that US officials were “open” to perhaps lifting the pause on LNG export approvals that the administration implemented in late January, but wanted to see the entire proposal first. The White House said the report “is not true.”

The brave Ukrainian energy activist Svitlana Romanko put Johnson—and the anonymous White House aides who were apparently in league with him as they leaked to reporters last week—in their place:

Speaker Johnson's attempt to link U.S. aid to Ukraine with expanding LNG exports is a blatant ploy to exploit the war for the benefit of the fossil fuel industry. It's deeply concerning that the GOP would consider using critical life-death matter support for Ukraine as a bargaining chip to advance their agenda of locking in decades more of climate-destroying oil and gas infrastructure, especially when Ukraine itself has expressed a clear desire to rebuild with renewable energy and blood free energy. 

Ukrainians are fighting for their lives and their freedom, and we refuse to be used as pawns in the GOP's shameless bid to further enrich the oil and gas industry. The fact that Republicans would even consider such a quid pro quo shows how beholden they are to their fossil fuel donors.

(Meanwhile, the House Freedom Caucus—think Marjorie Taylor Greene—wants to tie lifting the LNG pause to funding for repairs of Baltimore’s collapsed bridge. It’s a reminder that the entire GOP, even its theoretically ideological wings, are just a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Oil on all energy issues).

One reason for that Biden pause on LNG permits was new research from Cornell scientist Bob Howarth, and the Wall Street Journal offered a fine profile of him.

In a way, Howarth had been on a collision course with [the gas industry] for years. The [fracking company EQT] says the U.S. sits on so much cheap natural gas that it could supply global markets for decades and help phase out global coal use. EQT Chief Executive Toby Rice has advocated for erecting new LNG terminals on the East Coast, which would allow it to ship more molecules to foreign markets abroad and increase demand for EQT’s gas.

Jordan said Howarth’s argument that shale gas is worse for the climate than coal relies on flawed assumptions about how much methane coal and shale gas emit, and that the scientist is cherry-picking data. He said a research effort involving academics and partially funded by EQT has found that at least in some parts of Appalachia where the company operates, coal mines emit much more methane than shale gas operations. 

Howarth said he categorically denied Jordan’s assertion that his assumptions are flawed or that he is selectively picking data. He noted he is one of the most cited scientists in the world, and said that overall, his research had been received positively by the rest of the scientific community. 

For the moment, the White House has been assuring environmentalists they will stand firm. Let us hope so, because if they pander to Johnson it will be one of the biggest betrayals of the environmental cause in recent history, on a par with the president’s approval of the misbegotten Willow oil complex in Alaska.

+For earth month, the Metta Center for Nonviolence is offering to let activists view their new film, The Third Harmony, about the history of nonviolence

+A truly epic—and heavily illustrated—account of how New York is trying to get piles of trash off its streets. Having survived today’s earthquake, this is clearly the next big job for Gotham!

In a similar vein, the Times also has a long chronicle of efforts to remove carbon from the atmosphere

Some critics say that other types of interventions could open up a Pandora’s box of new problems by scrambling weather patterns or amplifying human suffering through unintended consequences. In effect they are asking: Should humans be experimenting with the environment in this way? Do we know enough to understand the risks?

“We need more information so we can make these decisions in the future,” said Alan Robock, a professor of atmospheric science at Rutgers University. “Which is riskier: to do it, or not to do it?”

+Schools are closing and crops withering across Asia as a horrendous heatwave smashes the region.

A “historic heatwave” is being experienced across south-east Asia, according to Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian. In updates posted on X, he said heat that was unprecedented for early April had been recorded at monitoring stations across the region this week, including in Minbu, in central Myanmar, where 44C was recorded – the first time in south-east Asia’s climatic history that such high temperatures had been reached so early in the month. In Hat Yai, in Thailand’s far south, 40.2 C was reached, an all-time record, while Yên Châu in north-west Vietnam hit 40.6C, unprecedented for this time of year.k

Not surprisingly, a new study makes clear that heatwaves like this have gotten deeper and stronger as the climate warms. As stalwart climate reporter Seth Borenstein described the research:

Since 1979, global heat waves are moving 20% more slowly — meaning more people stay hot longer — and they are happening 67% more often, according to a study in Friday’s Science Advances. The study found the highest temperatures in the heat waves are warmer than 40 years ago and the area under a heat dome is larger.

Studies have shown heat waves worsening before, but this one is more comprehensive and concentrates heavily on not just temperature and area, but how long the high heat lasts and how it travels across continents, said study co-authors and climate scientists Wei Zhang of Utah State University and Gabriel Lau of Princeton University.

From 1979 to 1983, global heat waves would last eight days on average, but by 2016 to 2020 that was up to 12 days, the study said.

Marine heat waves are a thing too, and one is currently bleaching big sections of the Great Barrier Reef, for the fifth time in eight years

All of this is bad enough in and of itself, and it also presents compounding dangers for the future—like rapid and widespread crop collapses, which Heather Souvaine Horn, writing in the New Republic, says we might want to plan for?

Can our food systems survive this kind of shock? Food systems are dizzyingly complex, encompassing crops grown in fields and greenhouses, meat and dairy animals elsewhere that consume some of those field crops, wild and farmed fisheries, refrigerated supply chains transporting plant and animal products to processing sites or warehouses, the grocery and restaurant industries, and international trade. When I asked experts about how U.S. food supply might be affected by weather shifts like the one outlined in the new paper, their responses weren’t reassuring. In essence: Both domestic and international food systems are quite vulnerable. But figuring out how vulnerable is hard. Not only is the United States failing to make its food system more resilient, it’s not even gathering enough data to know how to make the food system more resilient.

“We’ve done surprisingly little preparing for these kinds of shocks,” said Roni Neff, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Center for a Livable Future. When Neff and her colleagues surveyed local governments on food system resilience, “the people that responded were those that were already thinking about this, and of those that responded only 10 percent considered their local jurisdiction to be prepared.”

+One person not standing idly by in the face of all this Sonam Wangchuk, who explained to Jonathan Mingle the reasons behind his 21-day fast high in the Himalayan mountains

An educator and an engineer, Wangchuk has pioneered the construction of passive solar-heated buildings throughout the region, as well as “ice stupas,” in which meltwater is refrozen for later irrigation use. But he is painfully aware such efforts can’t solve the bigger problem, which is why he has become one of India’s most prominent voices for climate action.

For three weeks, Wangchuk, whom Yale Environment 360 interviewed on day 19 of his fast, consumed only water and salt and slept outdoors at 11,500 feet in subfreezing temperatures. Thousands joined him in their own day-long fasts and in mass protests in the Ladakhi capital to call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to designate Ladakh as a “tribal area” under a provision of India’s constitution, which would guarantee local autonomy over land use and resource management. Entrusting Ladakhis with this authority, says Wangchuk, is the only way to protect this fragile, cold-desert ecosystem and Ladakhis’ way of life.

“In Ladakh, we are in a very important position to be messengers from the frontier,” he says. “We have a responsibility… to tell the world what’s happening with us today, and that tomorrow it will be happening to you.”

Thank you Mr. Wangchuk!