Climate Adaptation

Interior Department Releases Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan, includes climate change ›

Note, this includes DOI’s Adaptation Plan, at bottom!

Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan

President Obama signed Executive Order 13514 on Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance in October 2009, directing Federal agencies to become more sustainable, and create climate action plans.

Under Executive Order 13514, Federal agencies are required to develop, implement, and annually update a Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan that describes how they will achieve the environmental, economic, and energy goals mandated in the Executive Order. Agencies must prioritize actions based on a positive return on investment for the American taxpayer. The plans are updated each year, reviewed by the Council on Environmental Quality and approved by the Office of Management and Budget to ensure that actions are carefully aligned with resources, Administration priorities, and the Federal budget process.

Click on the links below to view the Department of the Interior’s Strategic Sustainability Performance Plans:

2012 Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan

The Department is accepting comments on the Department of the Interior Climate Change Adaptation Plan for Fiscal Year 2013.

#DOI #climate change #adaptation #sustainability #obama #eo 13514 #executive orders #CEQ #OMB #federal #government

∞ 05/20/13 at 08:41pm

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itsfullofstars:

Some Strange Things Are Happening To Astronauts Returning To Earth

Tremendous. Surprise ending.

∞ 05/08/13 at 12:21pm via itsfullofstars

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Extreme Weather and Climate Change in the American Mind, April 2013 ›

New survey from the Center for Climate Change Communication: Extreme Weather and Climate Change in the American Mind.

Some highlights:

About six in ten Americans (58%) say “global warming is affecting weather in the United States.”

Many Americans believe global warming made recent extreme weather and climatic events “more severe,” specifically: 2012 as the warmest year on record in the United States (50%); the ongoing drought in the Midwest and the Great Plains (49%); Superstorm Sandy (46%); and Superstorm Nemo (42%).

About two out of three Americans say weather in the U.S. has been worse over the past several years, up 12 percentage points since Spring 2012. By contrast, fewer Americans say weather has been getting better over the past several years - only one in ten (11%), down 16 points compared to a year ago.

Overall, 85 percent of Americans report that they experienced one or more types of extreme weather in the past year, most often citing extreme high winds (60%) or an extreme heat wave (51%).

Of those Americans who experienced extreme weather events in the past year, many say they were significantly harmed. Moreover, the number who have been harmed appears to be growing (up 5 percentage points since Fall 2012 and 4 points since Spring 2012).

Over half of Americans (54%) believe it is “very” or “somewhat likely” that extreme weather will cause a natural disaster in their community in the coming year.

Americans who experienced an extreme weather event are most likely to have communicated about it person-to-person - either in person (89%) or on the phone (84%).

The report includes an Executive Summary and a breakdown of results by region and can be downloaded here.

∞ 05/01/13 at 12:20pm

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HIGH RES

More doom reality:

Bottled Water Sales: The Shocking Reality

The Beverage Marketing Corporation, which tracks sales and consumption of beverages, is reporting that sales of bottled water grew nearly 7 percent between 2011 and 2012, with consumption reaching a staggering 30.8 gallons per person.

Despite having one of the best municipal tap water systems in the world, American consumers are flocking to commercial bottled water, which costs thousands of times more per gallon. Why? Four reasons:

First, we have been bombarded with advertisements that claim that our tap water is unsafe, or that bottled water is safer, healthier, and more hip, often with celebrity endorsements. (Thanks a lot, Jennifer.)

Second, public drinking water fountains have become increasingly hard to find. And the ones that exist are not being adequately maintained by our communities.

Third, people are increasingly fearful of our tap water, hearing stories about contamination, new chemicals that our treatment systems aren’t designed to remove, or occasional failures of infrastructure that isn’t being adequately maintained or improved.

Fourth, some people don’t like the taste of their tap water, or think they don’t.

Some people, including the bottled water industry, argue that drinking bottled water is better than drinking soft drinks. I agree. But that’s not what’s happening. The vast increase in bottled water sales have largely come at the expense of tap water, not soft drinks. And even if we pushed (as we should) to replace carbonated soft drinks with water, it should be tap water, not expensive bottled water.

This industry has very successfully turned a public resource into a private commodity.

Via Peter Gleick (a scientist whom I swear never sleeps)

#plastic #consumption #cognitive dissonance #environment #water #Food #data #charts #sustainability #gif #Science #News

∞ 04/25/13 at 04:28pm

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Stephen Flynn is one of America’s foremost experts on cities, disasters, and security. Here, Bloomberg News interviewed Flynn outside and near the Boston Marathon bombing. His answers about how the city will cope is incredibly surprising as he launches into an easy to understand overview of resilience thinking in city planning. A must watch for my readers interested in resilience and cities.

#resilience #disasters #stephen flynn #bloomberg #news #boston #bombing #marathon #video #cities #urban planning #sustainability #massachusetts

∞ 04/16/13 at 05:36pm

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More Than Half of U.S. Rivers in Trouble ›

While water allocation, drought, and fires seems to be the theme of climate adaptation for 2013, pollution and conservation will play a dual role. The EPA has announced that nearly 55% of U.S. rivers and streams are in rough shape - mostly due to little to know local interest.

More than half of the country’s rivers and streams are unable to support healthy populations of aquatic insects and other creatures, a survey of nearly 2,000 locations by the Environmental Protection Agency reported Tuesday.

The study found more than 55 percent of the rivers and streams “in poor condition, 23 percent in fair shape, and 21 percent in good biological health,” The Associated Press noted. High levels of nutrient pollution—phosphorous and nitrogen from farms, cities and sewers—were found in the waterways. Phosphorous was found in 40 percent of rivers and streams.

Land development along waterways was found to have enabled erosion, flooding and the introduction of pollutants as well.

“This new science shows that America’s streams and rivers are under significant pressure,” said Nancy Stoner, acting assistant administrator of the EPA’s water office. “We must continue to invest in protecting and restoring our nation’s streams and rivers, as they are vital sources of our drinking water, provide many recreational opportunities and play a critical role in the economy.”

#EPA #pollution #clean water act #local dissinterest #apathy #environment #community #education #discharge #rivers #water #resources #sustainability #climate change #science

∞ 04/05/13 at 03:21pm via theamericanbear

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Pecos River is running with cows - A warning sign of climate impacts to come, drought in the southwest obliterates rivers, snow pack, and aquifers used by farmers in New Mexico. Above, the Pecos River in New Mexico is dry for the first time in recent memory.

Farmers in Carlsbad were told last week that they will be allotted 10% of their previous water supply. Thus, a southwestern water war has begun. Welcome to the Anthropocene.

Just after the local water board announced this month that its farmers would get only one-tenth of their normal water allotment this year, Ronnie Walterscheid, 53, stood up and called on his elected representatives to declare a water war on their upstream neighbors.

The drought-fueled anger of southeastern New Mexico’s farmers and ranchers is boiling, and there is nowhere near enough water in the desiccated Pecos River to cool it down. Roswell, about 75 miles to the north, has somewhat more water available and so is the focus of intense resentment here. Mr. Walterscheid and others believe that Roswell’s artesian wells reduce Carlsbad’s surface water.

For decades, the regional status quo meant the northerners pumped groundwater and the southerners piped surface water. Now, amid the worst drought on record, some in Carlsbad say they must upend the status quo to survive. They want to make what is known as a priority call on the Pecos River.

A priority call, an exceedingly rare maneuver, is the nuclear option in the world of water. Such a call would try to force the state to return to what had been the basic principle of water distribution in the West: the lands whose owners first used the water — in most cases farmland — get first call on it in times of scarcity. Big industries can be losers; small farmers winners.

The threat of such a move reflects the political impact of the droughts that are becoming the new normal in the West. “A call on the river is a call for a shakeout,” explained Daniel McCool, a University of Utah political scientist and author of “River Republic: The Fall and Rise of America’s Rivers.”

“It’s not going to be farmers versus environmentalists or liberals versus conservatives,” he said. “It’s going to be the people who have water versus the people who don’t.” And, he said, the have-nots will outnumber the haves.

Dudley Jones, the manager for the Carlsbad Irrigation District said that water law and allocation practice have long diverged. “We have it in the state Constitution: First in time, first in right. But that’s not how it’s practiced.” In New Mexico’s political pecking order, his alfalfa farmers, despite senior priority rights dating back 100 years, have little clout. The state water authorities, he said, “are not going to cut out the city.”

“They’re not going to cut out the dairy industry,” he added. “They’re not going to cut off the oil and gas industry, because that’s economic development. So we’re left with a dilemma — the New Mexico water dilemma.”

A priority call, said Dr. McCool, “will glaringly demonstrate how unfair, how anachronistic the whole water law edifice is.”

He added, “The all-or-nothing dynamic of prior appropriation instantly sets up conflict. I get all of mine, and you get nothing.”
The prior appropriation system on the Pecos has its beginnings in the late 19th century. Its waters flow about 925 miles from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico, ending up in the Rio Grande in Texas. It has been a focus of conflict. Texas, saying upstream users were taking its share, won a 1987 Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing deliveries under the Pecos River Compact.

NYTimes

#prior appropriations #water #allocation #climate change #adaptation #new mexico #rivers #conservation #natural resources #environment #sustainability

∞ 04/05/13 at 03:17pm

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Lessons from the women who are leading the sustainable cities movement ›

Nice round-up by Darby Minow Smith, susty-cities writer at Grist:

THE THINGS I LEARNED FROM [SUSTY-WOMEN]

1.When you’re building a new field, you need all the help you can get.

A sustainability director must be versed in local food, energy efficiency, waste management, and public transportation. “You have to be ADHD” to do the job, jokes Oak Park, Ill., Sustainability Manager K.C. Poulos.

Add anemic city budgets and the burden of having a new, sometimes politically controversial, position to the mix, and it’s a lot of pressure. As a result, sustainability directors built up a sharing network, the Urban Sustainability Directors Network. Members compare notes on what is or isn’t working in their cities, share plans, and even use regional networks to approach utilities or test strategies for communicating with their communities.

2.To get anything done, you have to tailor your approach to your community.

Prest uses the term “Minnesota nice” to describe her approach to introducing new programs and interacting with her community. Minneapolis’ bikeshare is even named “Nice Ride.” Salt Lake’s Vicki Bennett uses Mormonism’s roots as a sustainable, independent community to break through with religious conservatives. Susanne Torriente, of Fort Lauderdale, plans for rising sea levels by pointing out recent flooding, rather than rehashing the climate change debate in polarized Florida. Lauren Riga argues that sustainability can be an important tool to turn abandoned, apocalyptic Gary, Ind., into a lauded example of urban renewal. Lawrence, Kan., Sustainability Director Eileen Horn uses local sports rivalries to convince otherwise-conservative Kansans to try energy efficiency programs.

3.While cities are carrying the torch on sustainability, they can only go so far.

Austin may have a high hip factor and cool new eco-districts, but if Texas continues to dry up, so will the city’s water supply. San Francisco might be bringing down greenhouse gas emissions and shooting for zero waste by 2020, but it won’t matter much if a good chunk of the city is underwater by the end of the century. And even the greenest cities have a long, long way to go. More on that in a minute.

4.Don’t count out people from small towns.

Some of my favorite interviewees were from smaller cities. I’ll never forget Maggie Ullman, of Asheville, N.C., and the groggy chickens. (A resident called to complain that the brighter, LED streetlights in front of her place were keeping her flock up at night. Ullman talked to the woman’s neighbors and turned that streetlight off.) Or K.C. Poulos and her experiments in trying to create a versatile, storm-resistant electricity grid.

While sustainability directors in major cities manage staffs that can number in the hundreds — especially if they are in charge of the waste department — small city departments are tiny. This means that sustainability directors have to be scrappy and buckle down on a handful of issues that are important to them. Plus, they are automatically closer to their communities. Which brings me to my next major lessons…

Read the rest at Grist

#sustainability #cities #urban planning #grist #local #politics #environment #climate change #energy

∞ 03/27/13 at 02:00pm

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U.S. farmers converted more than 1.3 million acres of grassland into corn and soybean fields between 2006 and 2011.

- Corn and soy wiping out America’s grasslands at fastest pace since the 1930s.

Update: This is more about America’s heritage landscapes - grasslands - and less about particular crops. Grasslands provide important habitat for countless species. President Theodore Roosevelt protected millions of acres of grasslands by including them in several National Parks. Converting them to crops destroys habitat for animals, changes and poisons the soil, pollutes rivers, devalues people’s properties, among numerous other environmental harms. Destroying nature for a quick buck is not the right direction for America’s future. The situation is worse when climate change is factored in.

And, the US Forest Service has an excellent overview of how grasslands are threatened by agriculture and climate change.

#land use #agriculture #heritage #conservation #environment #farming #soy #food #corn #rural planning #iowa #texas #grasslands #sustainability

∞ 03/26/13 at 06:22pm

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Dan Pallotta’s new TED talk criticizing charity systems is great stuff. “The way we think about charity is dead wrong.”

Why you should listen to him:

“The nonprofit sector is critical to our dream of changing the world. Yet there is no greater injustice than the double standard that exists between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. One gets to feast on marketing, risk-taking, capital and financial incentive, the other is sentenced to begging,” Dan Pallotta says in discussing his latest book, Charity Case. This economic starvation of our nonprofits is why he believes we are not moving the needle on great social problems. “My goal … is to fundamentally transform the way the public thinks about charity within 10 years.”

Pallotta is best known for creating the multi-day charitable event industry, and a new generation of citizen philanthropists with the AIDS Rides and Breast Cancer 3-Day events, which raised $582 million in nine years. He is president of Advertising for Humanity, which helps foundations and philanthropists transform the growth potential of their favorite grantees.

“He liberates charity from its Puritan constraints and cogently attaches it to entrepreneurship.” - Gary Hart

But how to implement his solutions?

#charity #TED #video #dan pallotta #humanity #kindness #Anthropocene #capitalism #economy #nonprofits #bullying #99% #ows #business #sustainability

∞ 03/25/13 at 12:57pm

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Rockefeller Foundation Commits $3 Million to Help Cities Adapt to Climate Change ›

Huge charity organization commits funds for climate adaptation projects in cities across the U.S.

The Rockefeller Foundation announced its support for a new public-private program that will help cities across the country finance and build resilient and integrated urban storm water infrastructure systems in order to prevent damage during future severe weather events like Superstorm Sandy. The Rockefeller Foundation will provide up to $3 million in seed money for the RE.invest Initiative, which will align philanthropic and public resources to leverage private financing for sustainable urban storm and waste water systems in cities across the United States.

The project, which will be supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, is a collaboration with c.dots development. Through a national application process, RE.invest will select up to eight US cities and provide seed funding and technical support from leading engineering, law, and finance firms to create new Community Investment Vehicles (CIVics) designed to leverage hundreds of millions of dollars of private investment in local infrastructure. RE.invest will serve as a template for catalyzing innovative finance for cities across the country.
There are four primary objectives of the RE.invest Initiative. First, lessen the financial burden on governments by providing cities with direct technical and financial support. Second, mobilize large-scale, long-term private investment through Community Investment Vehicles to protect communities. Third, improve the resilience of vulnerable cities with strained infrastructure systems, and finally, build integrated planning capacity at the municipal level.

Via: RockerfellerFoundation

#grants #climate change #adaptation #foundations #charity #cities #environment #resilience #sustainability #science #tech #urban planning #rockerfeller foundation

∞ 03/24/13 at 11:48am

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Redefining sustainable development

“Climate change and other global environmental threats will increasingly become serious barriers to further human development,” says lead author Professor David Griggs from Monash University in Australia. Humans are transforming Earth’s life support system — the atmosphere, oceans, waterways, forests, ice sheets and biodiversity that allow us to thrive and prosper — in ways “likely to undermine development gains”, he adds.

The team asserts that the classic model of sustainable development, of three integrated pillars — economic, social and environmental — that has served nations and the UN for over a decade, is flawed and does not reflect reality.

“As the global population increases towards eight billion people sustainable development should be seen as an economy serving society within Earth’s life support system, not as three pillars,” says co-author Dr. Priya Shyamsundar from the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics, Nepal.

The six goals
The new set of goals — thriving lives and livelihoods, food security, water security, clean energy, healthy and productive ecosystems, and governance for sustainable societies — aim to resolve this conflict. The targets beneath each goal include updates and expanded targets under the MDGs, including ending poverty and hunger, combating HIV/aids, and improving maternal and child health.

But also a set of planetary “must haves”: climate stability, reducing biodiversity loss, protection of ecosystem services, a healthy water cycle and oceans, sustainable nitrogen and phosphorus use, clean air and sustainable material use.

Co-author Dr. Mark Stafford Smith, science director of CSIRO’s climate adaptation research programme in Australia says:

Read the rest at Stockholm Resilience Center

#sustainability #climate change #population growth #environment #stockholm #resilience #sweden #science #UN #economics #MDGs

∞ 03/23/13 at 11:30am

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Climate Forecasting Gaining Traction among Farmers ›

#climate change #agriculture #farming #sustainability #weather

∞ 03/23/13 at 07:40am

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‘Tsunami’ of anti-environment GOP budget amendments draws swift rebuke ›

Shopping list of corporate giveaways, most skirt pollution regulations - even elimination of disclosing environmental harms. One anti-science measure was snuck in by Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. His amendment would defund (in part) the United States’s world renowned scientific research institute called the NSF (National Science Foundation, widely known as the NSF).

The NSF supports science in universities around the US and is a beacon/model for science around the world - from cancer research to climate change. It is speculated that Coburn has failed over the years to get his pet anti-science bill passed through regular procedural votes, so he’s attaching it to an emergency budget bill which will keep government running only temporarily.

None of the amendments promote economic stability or aim to create jobs.

(M)any of 110 amendments offered by Republicans to the Democratic-authored legislation would amount to giveaways to major industry groups. The amendments, unveiled Thursday, are expected to see floor action by Friday evening.

“Giant corporations are hoping to sneak provisions into the rushed Senate budget bill to undermine the core regulatory protections on which Americans rely to make our country stronger, better, safer, cleaner, healthier and more fair and just,” said Robert Weissman, who serves as co-chair of the coalition and president of Public Citizen.

“The American people aren’t so easily tricked, and they demand Senators vote down these corporate-gift amendments,” he added.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/regwatch/legislation/289723—tsunami-of-gop-budget-amendments-draws-swift-rebuke-from-regulation-defenders#ixzz2OIdvNhKb
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

#republicans #regulatory capture #politics #environment #sustainability #nature #law

∞ 03/22/13 at 03:57pm

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Obama Will Use Nixon-Era Law to Fight Climate Change ›

Wants to include climate change risks in environmental permits. When you build something, such a house or store, you typically need a permit (or three) from the local or state government. Bigger projects require federal approval, such as an oil pipeline or a rail line. So, the larger the project, the more information the government requires as part of those permits.

In order to get a permit, you need to conduct some studies and write a few reports, typically these include an economic feasibility and an environmental impact statement. For federal permits, these studies are made public. This “public comment period” gives everyone, including other businesses, a chance to voice their opinions on the project.

Now, Obama wants to change the rules. He is proposing that the federal permit process should include risks and impacts from climate change. These climate risks will be part of the environmental impact statement.

Businesses do not like permits - but not for the reasons you’d expect. It’s very expensive to conduct the required economic and environmental studies. Businesses have to hire specialists just for these permits. Often, these studies delay projects, which makes the projects more expensive to build.

The biggest complaint is that rules are inconsistent - they’re difficult to comply with, unclear in their intent, guidelines are always changing, and (worst of all) they’re unevenly enforced. Sometimes a politician will intervene - essentially subverting the law. Political intervention creates an atmosphere of unfairness and favoritism (but, that is discussion for another post).

In the permitting world, lawsuits abound. And lawsuits compound the costs of building and it generally pisses off a lot of people.

So, when you hear complaints that “environmental permits hurts jobs” it’s not that the developer hates the environment, it’s that the rules are a convoluted, expensive mess. It’s also a clever way for politicians to dismantle environmental regulations because, after all, the rules “hurt jobs” - a line that resonates with the voting public.

Thus, from the perspective of business, Obama’s proposal to increase the rules for environmental permits has businesses - and the politicians that they’ve bought - shaking in their boots.

Queue a big political fight on this one.

President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways.

The result could be significant delays for natural gas- export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn.

“It’s got us very freaked out,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based group that represents 11,000 companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Southern Co. (SO) The standards, which constitute guidance for agencies and not new regulations, are set to be issued in the coming weeks, according to lawyers briefed by administration officials.

In taking the step, Obama would be fulfilling a vow to act alone in the face of a Republican-run House of Representatives unwilling to pass measures limiting greenhouse gases. He’d expand the scope of a Nixon-era law that was first intended to force agencies to assess the effect of projects on air, water and soil pollution.

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” Obama said last month during his State of the Union address. He pledged executive actions “to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

Via the excellent Bloomberg.com