Category: Environment

There has been a recent change in verb tense with respect to climate change: What was once the future is now the present. Louisiana just got hammered by a hurricane that — in what is becoming a signature characteristic of a warming climate — strengthened very rapidly thanks to super-hot temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, giving residents barely enough time to evacuate. The remnants of that hurricane then caused flooding all the way from Louisiana to Maine. Philadelphia saw the worst flooding since 1869. The National Weather Service issued the first flash flood warning for New York City in its history. At time of writing, at least 45 people were confirmed dead across the Northeast.

I find it hard to grapple with this reality. Following the science, I have been predicting this kind of thing for many years. But now that climate change is truly undeniably here, and highly unusual if not totally unprecedented weather disasters are hitting on a weekly basis, it is still somehow shocking. I suppose arid scientific predictions will always feel a lot different than one’s own city being heavily flooded. It’s a reaction that Americans — in particular Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), who recently launched a broadside against Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, which contains a great deal of climate policy — need to get over soon.

It is tempting to read some kind of cosmic justice into these events. America spewed forth greenhouse gas emissions with reckless abandon for two centuries, 50 years of which were after the basics of climate science were well-understood and widely publicized, and now a vengeful nature is inflicting retribution.

The truth, of course, is even scarier. An angry nature god would imply that something powerful cared about humanity enough to punish us. In reality every human being could die tomorrow and the world would go on spinning without interruption in an inconceivable vast universe. It would be a drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean. In the colossal expanse of cosmic time, humanity’s entire lifespan is barely an eyeblink.

Our only significant accomplishment is how rapidly we are changing the climate, which is in the same league as a major asteroid strike or continent-scale volcanic eruptions. But even that is nothing new. Planet Earth has seen worse than us before and it’ll see worse after we are gone. Nobody is coming to teach us lessons about our hubris, and there is no appealing the laws of physics.

Some form of denial must be part of the reason why Manchin is now raising questions about the reconciliation bill, not to mention the giant corporate lobbying campaign that undoubtedly explains his sudden change of heart. The reconciliation bill would — in large part because Manchin himself insisted that it can’t raise the deficit — raise taxes on corporations, people making high incomes, and especially wealthy heirs. Obviously corporate interests and the oligarch class don’t want that, because no amount of money is ever enough for them.

Very few people are so evil that they can willfully consign their own society to catastrophe for the sake of avoiding a fairly modest tax increase. It’s just the common behavior of ultra-privileged humans: When faced with a situation requiring any sacrifice, they make up excuses why it shouldn’t have to happen. And they’ll keep denying they could be hit by disaster — like a wildly unusual tornado ripping up a wealthy New Jersey suburb — until the rising seas close over their heads.

That said, Manchin’s op-ed is still blatantly dishonest. He complains about inflation that is happening almost entirely because of temporary bottlenecks in a handful of industries. He complains about deficits that a.) are not a problem and b.) will not increase anyway because of the tax increases. He complains that “I can’t explain why my Democratic colleagues are rushing to spend $3.5 trillion,” regarding a bill that has been discussed in minute detail for months in negotiations that have revolved around him personally.

It’s obvious what is happening here. Manchin is throwing up chaff to try to trim down the bill, if not destroy it completely. It is a duplicitous public relations campaign to protect the bottom lines of his rich friends. It’s of a piece with ex-senators Heidi Heitkamp and Max Baucus’s maudlin lies that ending the stepped-up basis loophole — which allows ultra-wealthy people to collect inheritance tax-free — will exterminate America’s family farms and ranches.

More blinkered, self-defeating selfishness would be hard to imagine. As the dire flooding across the eastern U.S. showed this week, American infrastructure is already desperately in need of upgrades just to deal with the weather disasters happening now, let alone those that will happen if we continue to procrastinate.

And as Greg Sargent argues at The Washington Post, Manchin would not only core out most of Biden’s climate policy, but also risk blowing up global climate negotiations, which are set to resume soon. If the worst historical emitter can’t show that it is at least making some effort, other nations could easily conclude that doing their part would be pointless.

The wealthy aristocrats of Ancien Régime France behaved as Manchin and his rich friends are doing now — furiously preventing reforms that would preserve society because they would require the rich to make small sacrifices. Faced with this despicable betrayal of President Biden and the Democratic Party, it is therefore critical for the party left in the House and Senate to continue to demand that there be no bipartisan infrastructure bill unless reconciliation gets through as well. Even the climate policy in there is seriously inadequate compared to the scale of the problem — and this package is very likely the only reform that is getting passed until 2030 at the earliest.

If it’s blocked, Washington should consider what usually happens when political elites are unable to fix disintegrating conditions around them: revolution.

For months, the city of Needles has endured not just scorching hot weather but the possibility that its single water well could fail, a potentially life-threatening risk for this Mojave desert community of 5,000 residents.

Yet over recent weeks, word arrived that state officials — flush with billions of dollars in surplus tax revenue — intend to hand over $2 million to pay for a new well that could be operational later this year. City officials are now breathing easier, even as they prepare for high temperatures this Labor Day weekend of 111 degrees.

Needles is one of the hottest cities in the nation and one of the poorest in California. It has faced what City Manager Rick Daniels calls a “life and death” situation after state officials notified the city that three of its four wells failed to meet state water quality standards.

The city is so short of cash that it didn’t have money for a new well and was instead relying on its single good well that barely met demand. The well failed in late August, after an electronic control panel was fried in a power outage, and the city nearly ran out of water. The city has only 24 to 36 hours of water in storage tanks. City water technicians worked around the clock and restored the pump as reserves were nearly exhausted.

After The Times wrote about the city’s risky situation in July, Sen. Diane Feinstein, along with state legislators, began to put some political heat on the California State Water Resources Control Board to speed up conditional approval for emergency funding the city had sought.

“We got our grant, it is glorious,” Daniels said.

Until Feinstein and others weighed in, the state board was asking that the city modify an environmental report for the new well before they would process the grant, Daniels said. At best the city thought the grant might not come for at least a year, playing blackjack with the residents’ safety.

“We are just a microcosm of the state,” Daniels said. “There has to be hundreds of small rural towns across the state that are in or will be in our situation. Small towns can’t afford staffs of engineers, grant writers and lawyers to deal with these regulations.”

The drought has exacerbated the water supply problems of many communities, putting the lowest-income cities at a disadvantage.

Jay Lund, co-director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, said the state has about 9,000 regulated public water utilities and many of them are facing serious problems. It is a tough task to ensure there are no cities or towns that have failing water systems.

“You never will,” he said. “There are so many of them and you can afford to fix only a few of them at a time. Even if you try your best, you will miss some problem. There aren’t enough resources to fix everybody’s problem, especially when you get into a drought.”

Lund estimates that as many as 100 public water systems face the threats that Needles faces. “California is a big state and there are a lot of problems,” he said.

Needles received help in navigating the state’s thicket of regulations from a nonprofit coalition of labor unions and contractors, known as Rebuild SoCal Partnership. It attempts to help smaller cities deal with the state’s complex laws governing infrastructure issues.

“Things are falling apart in the state,” said Dave Sorem, an engineer on the group’s board and a vice president of a Baldwin Park construction firm, who went out to Needles to advise them on the problem. “A lot of agencies don’t have a clue about what is happening in small cities.”

Indeed, Daniels, the city manager, said none of the state water officials who were dealing with the city’s requests have ever been to Needles. The county seat is more than 200 miles away and the state senator lives in the Central Valley. Daniels said the situation reminds him of the Jimmy Buffet line, “Don’t try to describe the ocean if you’ve never seen it.”

Indeed, the city is hotter than many renowned municipal ovens, like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Houston. The daily high temperature in August never went below 100 degrees and topped out at 122 on Aug. 4.

The Colorado River flows through town and the city has rights to 1,272 acre feet of water each year. It has historically operated four wells, but starting last fall the water board notified the city that three of the wells were contaminated with naturally occurring minerals, manganese and iron, that exceeded state standards. Then it ordered a corrective action plan in May, which the city said it could not afford.

Manganese is regulated as a secondary contaminant, based on its aesthetics. It causes stains and a bitter taste to water. But toxicologists believe manganese causes neurological disorders, particularly in children, and say it will eventually be regulated as a health hazard.

The new well will be 150 feet to 300 feet deep, located upriver in an area where some private wells have low levels of manganese, Daniels said. It will be connected by a new 16-inch main, running 2,700 feet to the city’s water system. The city hopes to have the well online within three to four months.

When the new well is running, the city will have a 48-hour reserve capacity, still well under the seven-day reserve recommended for large municipal systems in Southern California. Ultimately, the city would like to build another water tank to supplement the three it currently uses, Daniels said.

Among the heavy water users in the city are 14 marijuana growing facilities, which also contribute a fair amount to city finances through cultivation taxes and a 10% local excise tax on production. The city puts tax receipts back into upgrading the water system, Daniels said. For example, Needles is trying to replace aged and leak-prone pipes made of cast iron, asbestos cement and copper. Last year, the system sprung 200 leaks and in one case dumped a half-million gallons of water onto I-40, forcing a partial shutdown.

Needles Mayor Jeff Williams said the few local residents who know about the situation have been understanding. “Luckily, we didn’t have to distribute bottled water,” he said.

Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster since June, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations.

Why it matters: The data underscores the extent to which climate change and a warming planet are increasingly impacting Americans’ lives on a daily basis, the Post notes.

Driving the news: At least 388 people have died from hurricanes, floods, heat waves and wildfires since June in the U.S., per media reports and government records obtained by the Post.

• Additionally, 64% of people live in areas that experienced a prolonged heat wave, which are not officially considered disasters but can be life-threatening.
• Over the course of the summer, extreme heat waves scorched the Pacific Northwest, wildfires raged across the West and flash floods from storms killed dozens of people in the Northeast, among other weather events.

Between the lines: The Post based its analysis on FEMA-declared severe storms, fires, hurricanes, storms and floods.

The big picture: Atmospheric CO2 concentrations were higher in 2019 than at any time in at least 2 million years, and the past 50 years saw the fastest temperature increases in at least 2,000 years, according to an assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published last month.

• Weather and climate events are becoming increasingly common and severe and rising sea levels are flooding coastal areas with regularity, Axios’ Andrew Freedman reports.
• The world must approximately halve emissions by the end of the decade to have a chance of avoiding the worst effects of warming, the Post writes.

What they’re saying: “What we are doing with global warming is making ourselves play a game that is rigged more and more against us because of our own actions,” Claudia Tebaldi, a researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and a lead author of the IPCC’s climate report, told the Post.

• “If we want to limit these probabilities, if we want to limit the damages, then we should start to do something for real about mitigating,” Tebaldi said. “And we need to start now.”