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Can OffShore Wind Blow Out California's Fires?

Christine Heinrichs

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Thursday, September 30, 2021

Floating wind projects take advantage of steady winds that blow offshore. Those faster, steadier winds can produce more energy. Wind power increases with the cube of wind speed. Bigger turbines with longer blades capture more wind and are more aerodynamically efficient. How they overcome obstacles such as interference with fisheries, environmental damage, and high cost will influence how many, and which ones, get built.

California jump-started the offshore wind industry when Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB525 on September 23, https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/09/23/governor-newsom-signs-climate-action-bills-outlines-historic-15-billion-package-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-and-protect-vulnerable-communities/ . Now the state and industry are grappling with the implications for wildlife, the environment and energy demands as they weigh the costs and benefits. Possibilities were reviewed at a conference held in Scotland September 15-16 with dozens of international players attending virtually.

In late May the Biden administration opened two areas off the California coast to floating wind projects: a 399-square-mile area off Morro Bay in the Central Coast and another off the North Coast’s Humboldt County. The permitting process may take a decade or longer before either is constructed.

Eliminating fossil fuels and replacing them with renewables to reduce greenhouse gases are imperative to mitigate the climate crisis. However, floating wind farms will impact local wildlife and local economies. All the impacts need to be evaluated and weighed before choosing the renewable path forward. Energy systems and policy, migratory birds and mammals, and other marine life need to be studied to estimate the effects of floating offshore wind energy production. The amount of energy anticipated from floating wind farms and how it fits into the country’s energy portfolio have to be weighed along with its effects on people and wildlife.

The bill requires that the state’s energy supply be 100 percent zero carbon by 2045. Offshore wind will be needed to make up the 145 Gigawatts of new energy from renewables needed to meet that goal.

“This means great things for offshore wind, after four years of stagnation,” said Jim Lanard, CEO of Magellan Wind, https://mieibc.org/company/magellan-wind/, at an industry conference in Aberdeen, Scotland September 15-16.

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Politics

National programs are leading the way. The Covid stimulus, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, helped by extending the investment tax credit to 2025, reducing expenses. The Biden administration’s Build Back Better package and the Green Jobs Plan also contain economic incentives to develop offshore wind that “have energized lawmakers,” said Jamie McDonald, director of operations for Xodus, https://www.xodusgroup.com/, now at the Boston office.

The political climate is changing. Climate change is becoming a bipartisan issue, with red and blue state governors competing for the jobs, development and supply chain for renewable energy projects, Lanard said.

“The consensus is that climate change is an existential threat,” he said from his office in Houston. “The words I’m hearing out of California are, ‘Doing nothing is doing harm’.”

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California site issues

California is the focus, but Oregon and Washington coasts are also in the sights for floating wind farm locations. Floating offshore wind farms are proposed for California, 30 miles off Morro Bay on the Central Coast, and off the northern coast near the Oregon state line. Construction on the up to 200-turbine Central Coast wind farm could begin in 2025-2027, pending environmental review and regulatory permitting.

The military uses the airspace over the Central Coast for training. That snarled consideration temporarily in 2020, but discussions have resolved the conflict.

“The area has important military uses, but we know we can be compatible,” Lanard, a veteran of the Obama administration, said. “Now we are working together cooperatively. There are a lot of Obama alums in the Department of the Interior and the Department of Defense, directly advising president.”

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Business

Business leaders are looking for certainty to commit investments, McDonald said. The permitting and regulatory process requires the lease areas to be defined, so that environmental assessments can be done preparatory to the lease auction and sale with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, https://www.boem.gov/. Baseline environmental surveys will be required, taking 18 months to two years to complete, on which to write an environmental statement. A federal permit as well as approval of state agencies such as the Department of Fish & Wildlife and the California Public Utility Commission (PUC) could push construction four to six years past that 2025 construction date.

Cost is a significant factor, but these industry leaders expect it to decrease significantly as projects advance. Onshore wind costs have declined, and solar costs declined by 90 percent as the technology improved.

Jonah Margulis, senior vice president of US Operations for Aker Offshore Wind, https://akeroffshorewind.com/, expects the Levelized Cost of Energy, the standard measure of cost of energy production, for floating wind to decline from $110 to $60 by 2032.

Transmission is another factor influencing the success of floating wind. Central California has facilities in place that could serve that function. The Morro Bay Power Plant has been vacant for several years. A 600 MW lithium-ion battery storage project is proposed for part of the site. It would be the largest in the US. Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant will be closed, one reactor in 2024 and the second in 2025, opening that site for electrical transmission.

The north coast site lacks that advantage, but Humboldt State University, slated to become the state’s next polytechnic university, is studying prospective transmission solutions.

“The future is floating on the west coast,” Margulis said. “The US is back on track for a booming era on east and west coasts.”

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Fishing conflicts

Morro Bay is home to active commercial fishing. The Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization and the Port San Luis Commercial Fishermen’s Association have signed a Mutual Benefit Agreement with Castle Wind, https://castlewind.com/, the company actively pursuing development of the site. The agreement provides for a fund to assist the associations with support for members.

Such financial arrangements are made for good relationships, but are not legally required, Adam Payne, Senior Offshore Consenter, Flotation Energy https://www.flotationenergy.com/what-we-do, said. Funds can be directed to projects that benefit the community, such as the Thanet Fishermen’s Association Fuel Depot in the UK, which provides round-the-clock fuel support to fishermen.

Each site requires detailed knowledge of that fishery to develop a unique solution.

“Floating is going to be a more difficult discussion,” said Payne. “Certain gear is not compatible with floating wind equipment.”

Commercial fishing can coexist with floating wind, said Signe Nielsen, senior products management development at RWE, https://www.rwe.com/en. The industry’s experience with fixed wind projects in Europe will help floating wind projects adapt to the fishermen’s needs by siting the projects with their concerns about potential overlap with fisheries, navigation and site design in mind, she said.

“There will be lessons to be learned along the way,” she said, citing cooperation, building communication and transparency as factors to resolve conflicts.

Local opposition can doom a project. Shell encountered opposition to a natural gas pipeline that caused local turmoil and tension, eventually resulting in local activists being jailed. The experience is recounted in the documentary The Pipe, available online, https://guidedoc.tv/documentary/the-pipe-documentary-film/ ‍

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Environmental protection

California’s coastline is subject to various levels of protection. The Central Coast site is just outside the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The corridor is known as the Blue Serengeti, for the many large marine mammals that migrate through the area, several kinds of seals and whales, including Blue Whales. Seabirds also fly through the area. The turbines could be over 700 feet tall. Species that live far at sea are not studied well with respect to disturbance by floating wind turbines. That research remains to be done.

In the respect of environmental disruption, floating wind turbines compare favorably with fixed wind turbines onshore, Nielsen said. Installation is less noisy than pounding pilings into the seabed, and less seabed is disturbed by the floating platform moorings than fixed bottom turbines. The moorings, giant chain cables, are too big for marine mammals to become entangled, but they might snag ghost fishing gear that would endanger seals and whales. Marine mammals might not be diving to the 3,000-foot depths, which remains to be established by research.

The floating platforms could act as fish aggregators and fish nurseries, she said, although it’s unclear whether the fish taking refuge under the platforms represent an increase in fish or relocation of fish from other places.

The platforms could act as artificial reefs to increase biodiversity, Monica Fundingsland, sustainability advisor at Equinor, https://www.equinor.com/en/what-we-do/wind.html, said. Three studies are underway at Hywind in Scotland.

A study of the effect of operational noise on seabirds at Hywind in Scotland is expected by the end of 2021. Whether operational noise could be a barrier to marine mammals is not known.

Hywind Scotland is the pilot project, producing electric power since 2017. Its five 830-foot turbines, with rotors 500 feet in diameter, produce enough power to serve the equivalent of 36,000 homes, from about 19 miles offshore in water 300 to over 400 feet deep. The site off the California coast is about 3,000 feet deep.

Centralizing the research could help streamline the process by making information more easily available to all stakeholders, and addressing information gaps. Studies buried in industry information silos may conceal data already collected and result in duplicated effort.

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Port

The port where the turbines will be either manufactured or assembled needs to be able to accommodate the huge equipment. Ports also need to be free of obstructions such as bridges and electrical wires to allow the equipment to be brought in.

Morro Bay is not deep enough, so other facilities will have to be developed to assemble the turbines, which will then be towed out to the site. Morro Bay harbor will then become a staging area for maintenance and operations.

Another restriction is the Jones Act, which requires port-to-port cargo movement on ships that are U.S.-owned, U.S.-crewed, U.S.-registered, and U.S.-built. One Jones Act-compliant vessel is now being built, but the industry plans to bring vessels over from Europe and then transfer the unassembled pieces to feeder vessels that comply with the Jones Act sent out to collect them. That raises a point of risk to the equipment, which could be damaged in the transition from one ship to another.

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Great Lakes

The industry is also evaluating the Great Lakes as floating wind farm sites. A major difference is that the states that border the lakes own the lake bed, so they have more flexibility in leasing them.

The fresh water lakes form ice during the cold months. Floating turbines can be adapted to floating ice, but the pressure of ice on the foundations is another challenge. The Great Lakes Wind Assessment is due in draft form by the end of 2021

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Building an industry

“It’s challenging to build an industry, but we’ve got to start somewhere,” said Aker’s Margulis. “The ambitions we’ve all had for a number of years are being released.”

RenewableUK, https://events.renewableuk.com/fow21, with 25 industry sponsors and partners, hosted the Floating Offshore Wind conference in Aberdeen Scotland September 15-16, 2021. Over 500 attended, in person and virtually. Twenty-eight exhibitors pitched their products and 56 speakers presented information and took questions. Hopefully together they can work out the issues of concern and successfully create new renewable energy options for California and the nation.

Read the full story here.

Photos courtesy of

Christine Heinrichs

Christine Heinrichs writes from her home on California’s Central Coast. She keeps a backyard flock of about a dozen hens. She follows coastal issues, writing a regular column on the Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery for the San Luis Obispo Tribune. Her narrative on the Central Coast condor flock will appear in Ten Spurs 2021 edition.

Her book, How to Raise Chickens, was first published in 2007, just as the local food movement was starting to focus attention on the industrial food system. Backyard chickens became the mascot of local food. The third edition of How to Raise Chickens was published in January 2019. The Backyard Field Guide to Chickens was published in 2016. Look for them in Tractor Supply stores and online.

She has a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Oregon and belongs to several professional journalism and poultry organizations.

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The Obscure Maritime Law That Ruins Your Commute

“Ship American” might sound nice in theory. This is what it looks like in practice: not shipping much of anything in America at all.

What with everything going on in the world, stewing over an obscure, century-old maritime law might seem odd. But the Jones Act really does warrant such consternation. It’s not just a terrible law that hurts you, me, and everyone we know—especially if they live in Puerto Rico or drive to work on the East Coast. It’s also a cautionary tale against government industrial policies, which can have unintended consequences far beyond higher prices or budget overrun.The Jones Act, formally known as Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, was ostensibly intended to ensure adequate domestic shipbuilding capacity and a ready supply of merchant mariners and ships in times of war or other national emergencies. Today, it requires that any domestic waterborne shipping of goods be conducted on vessels that are built, owned, flagged, and crewed by Americans. As a result, the U.S. has one of the most (if not the most) restrictive shipping systems in the world.By effectively barring foreign competitors from transporting goods between U.S. ports, the Jones Act has predictably inflated the cost of shipping and shipbuilding in the United States. That’s the law’s seen cost, which many of its supporters acknowledge but claim is necessary for ensuring a thriving industrial base and sufficient supply of ships and mariners. But the unseen costs do the most notable damage and thus swamp any alleged benefits.[From the April 2023 issue: The age of American naval dominance is over]First, let me put the direct costs in perspective: We’re not just talking about a few extra bucks here and there. Building a container ship in the United States costs up to five times as much as it does abroad, and transporting crude oil on a Jones Act tanker can cost three times as much—an ever-expanding price differential driven by decades of insulation from foreign competition.Because ships and shipping are so expensive, few companies use this method outside routes that offer no other alternatives, such as between the continental United States and Puerto Rico or Hawaii. Instead, they use land-based transport—mainly trucks and trains—to deliver goods that could have traveled by sea between the approximately 360 U.S. ports to service the 130 million people that live near our 95,000-plus miles of coasts. (Many other countries do this kind of “short-sea shipping.”) In fact, the Congressional Research Service reports that only about 2 percent of all U.S. freight is carried by ships, and that—despite the massive growth in coastal U.S. cities since the 1960s—coastwise shipping tonnage has actually declined by roughly 44 percent over the same period. All other modes of freight transport, including international shipping, have either increased or remained steady.“Ship American” might sound nice in theory. This is what it looks like in practice: not shipping much of anything in America at all.Heightened use of trucks and freight trains means more wear on aging U.S. infrastructure and more traffic, especially on roads running parallel to U.S. sea lanes. It means a higher risk of accidents involving dangerous materials in or around urban centers, such as the recent propane-car derailment near Sarasota, Florida. And it means increased environmental harms, because surface transportation emits more carbon and uses more energy than ocean ships and barges. The law thus forces unwitting northeasterners to be stuck on I-95 surrounded by smog-producing 18-wheelers hauling trailers that could have been traveling between the Ports of New York and Boston on compact, low-emission ships that the Jones Act has made cost-prohibitive.The expense of U.S. shipping and shipbuilding thus forces us to waste finite resources—work or leisure time, tax dollars, environmental efforts—that could be better used elsewhere.It also denies us many other types of ships. For example, the U.S. has a grand total of zero Jones Act–compliant liquefied natural gas tankers, because producing these massive, complex vessels here would be so expensive as to defy any economic sense. Consequently, transporting LNG in bulk to New England and Puerto Rico is impossible, and these U.S. regions suffer from diminished energy security. Last fall, several New England governors, alarmed by Ukraine-related depletion of local energy inventories, begged the Biden administration for a winter-long Jones Act waiver, and local utilities warned that an unseasonably cold winter could produce rolling blackouts across the region. (The waiver was never issued.) A lack of LNG, propane, and oil tankers also forces these areas to import energy from Nigeria, Oman, Spain, (pre-sanctions) Russia, and other faraway places, even as U.S. energy is exported from Texas to China and dozens of other countries. Not only is that economically nonsensical, but it also means higher shipping emissions.The environmental damage doesn’t stop there. The United States lacks specialized wind-turbine-installation vessels, used to build offshore wind projects, that meet Jones Act requirements. This means higher project and taxpayer costs, slower wind-energy deployment, and diminished progress on climate change. (The first Jones Act–compliant wind-turbine-installation vessel is supposed to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2023 at a substantial cost, but we’ll still need four or five more to meet U.S. offshore wind goals. No other such vessels are in the pipeline.)Thanks to the Jones Act and another antiquated law (the Foreign Dredge Act of 1906), the U.S. fleet also suffers from a dearth of top-notch dredging vessels, which excavate seabed material for port expansions and other projects. (In fact, the largest hopper dredge in the United States wouldn’t crack Europe’s top 30.) Dredging U.S. ports and waterways is therefore costly and slow, imperiling much-needed projects that would boost supply-chain efficiency, job numbers, and economic growth.The general lack of Jones Act vessels also inhibits emergency-response efforts for Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, and other U.S. regions without easy land-based access. When Hurricanes Maria and Fiona devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 and 2022, respectively, more than 99 percent of the world’s cargo ships couldn’t immediately participate in the relief efforts, because they didn’t comply with the Jones Act’s restrictions. At one point last year, a tanker moving diesel from Texas to Europe rerouted to Puerto Rico to boost the island’s depleted fuel supply, but the Jones Act blocked it from offloading this much-needed cargo. The ship finally docked days later, but only after massive public outcry prodded the Biden administration to issue a legally dubious Jones Act waiver. Bureaucratic delays and bottlenecks are costly annoyances in normal times, but they become life-threatening problems following a natural disaster, when every second counts.High costs mean not only fewer ships but also older ones, because they’re so expensive to replace. The average age of a Jones Act ship in 2019 was 20 years—more than seven years older than ships that don’t meet the law’s requirements. And the previous 15 Jones Act ships that were scrapped had an average age of 43. Having decrepit rust buckets cruising right off U.S. coasts raises more safety and environmental concerns.The Jones Act’s unintended harms even extend to the U.S. shippers and shipbuilders it’s supposed to protect. The law encourages American shipyards to turn away from the competitive international market and toward a captive, but much smaller, domestic one. Their reduced output (averaging just three oceangoing ships a year), in turn, means that high fixed costs are spread across fewer vessels, and that economies of scale, volume discounts from suppliers, and specialization are extremely limited. The result is a vicious cycle where prices go up and the quantity demanded goes down, placing further upward pressure on prices. Rinse and repeat until you have the zombie industry we see today.The Philly Shipyard offers a troubling example of this cost death spiral. In 2013, the shipping company Matson ordered two container ships from the shipyard for $209 million each; last year, Matson ordered three of the same ships from the same company for roughly $333 million each. Even accounting for inflation and some technological upgrades, this deterioration in competitiveness was so notable that it prompted a Danish maritime magazine to wonder whether the ships were going to be built with gold plates.[Derek Thompson: Don’t ‘buy American’]Supporters claim that reforming or repealing the Jones Act would destroy the domestic industry and imperil national security, but these doomsday scenarios are far-fetched. For starters, government orders account for almost all U.S. shipbuilding output and revenue, and repealing the law wouldn’t touch these transactions. The availability of cheaper and better vessels, moreover, would boost domestic demand for coastwise shipping, improving the industry’s financial prospects. A recent OECD study estimates, in fact, that nixing the Jones Act would increase domestic shipbuilding output and final value added by hundreds of millions of dollars a year.And it’s not like current law is doing a bang-up job protecting the industry. The Jones Act fleet has dropped from around 250 ships in the 1980s to just 91 today. No use protecting something that’s already dead.Industrial policy is once again hot in the United States. Federal subsidies and trade restrictions—fueled by pandemic- and China-related security risks and intended to boost strategic commercial industries such as semiconductors and batteries—have proliferated dramatically since 2020. Collectively, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act will funnel hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to favored companies in the United States, marking one of the biggest U.S. industrial-policy pushes since the ’80s.The ribbon-cutting ceremonies and golden shovels that will accompany commercial projects supported by these laws will make for great photo ops and generate lots of political excitement. But the cameras won’t catch the invisible knock-on effects and unintended harms. And if the Jones Act is any guide—which, really, it should be—they’re going to be worth stewing over.

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Rural communities have pushed back in recent years, claiming wind and solar projects harm property values. Who was number one? It was Iowa, with 63 percent. Next was South Dakota, the only other state to get half of its electricity from wind and solar, with 55 percent, essentially all of it coming from wind. Not all of that wind energy is getting used in Iowa and South Dakota. The electricity goes into a regional grid that covers much of the Midwest, and gets used wherever it’s needed, which is often in metro areas like Minneapolis-St. Paul. In recent years, rural communities across the country have been pushing back against renewable energy development, saying that wind and solar are ugly and harm property values. This is happening in Iowa too. And since the state leads the country in wind plus solar generation per square mile, it’s a good place to look at land use concerns. 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Geoengineering our atmosphere to cool the planet has long been a taboo subject. But as the earth keeps heating up, that may now be changing.

If you can think of something, there’s probably a scientist studying it. There are researchers looking into naked mole rat breeding patterns, the aerodynamics of cricket balls, and that people tend to like pizza better than beans. But there are also certain experiments that scientists generally don’t do. They don’t, for instance, genetically modify humans, or clone them. They don’t conduct psychology experiments without subjects’ informed consent. And there’s a whole host of experimental medical procedures that could teach us a lot, but no one would ever be justified to try. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Many scientists have long thought of experiments to inject chemicals into the earth’s atmosphere in order to cool the climate, known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), as falling within that taboo category—arguing developing the technology could pose serious planetary risks. But some researchers have been working to alter that perception in recent years, splitting the climate science community. In recent months, the field has seen a surge in momentum: last month the U.N. Environment Programme called for more research into geoengineering, while reports emerged last summer that the Biden Administration has begun coordinating a five-year research plan. Rogue researchers and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs meanwhile conducted small scale tests late last year and in February, despite condemnation from much of the scientific community. All that attention has added fuel to the smoldering disagreements among climate scientists, creating what is likely the most significant rift in the world of atmospheric science and climate studies in years. Academic factions have published a series of dueling petitions as part of an increasingly visible and contentious battle for control of the scientific narrative—and ultimately over how to tackle climate change as emissions continue to rise. One side says that humanity may doom itself by refusing to look into potential chemical means of cooling our atmosphere. The other claims that undertaking such research could lead to disastrous consequences that we can barely imagine. Read more: Inside a Controversial Startup’s Risky Attempt to Control Our Climate No one person or organization has a monopoly on decisions over what scientific questions are off limits for ethical reasons—the answers tend to come about from messy consensus among governments, scientific bodies, and individual researchers. And until recently, when it came to geoengineering our atmosphere, the majority agreed the risks outweighed the opportunity. There’s the risk that such geoengineering technology would be used by the wealthy and powerful at the expense of others—that we’ll use it to save coastal property from inundation by rising sea levels, but end up disrupting monsoons and causing famine in Southeast Asia in the process—or that disputes between nations over who gets to set the global thermostat could lead to war, or, in an extreme scenario, to nuclear armageddon. There’s the moral hazard argument: that if governments and industries begin to perceive SAI as a reliable plan B for climate change, they’ll use it as an excuse to hold off on making urgently-needed emissions cuts. And then there’s the Frankenstein’s monster aspect: that is, the deep unease that many people feel in altering what seems to be the natural order of things, and the foreboding sense that something will, almost inevitably, go terribly wrong. Solar geoengineering remained largely outside the scientific mainstream until the early 2000s, when influential scientists like David Keith, now a professor of applied physics at Harvard University, first started advocating for more study and discussion of using chemicals to cool the planet. A succession of papers, books, and philanthropic donations to support research followed over the course of the next two decades, particularly from tech billionaires like Bill Gates who became interested in the technology’s potential. By 2021, the momentum was shifting, with respected organizations like the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommending scientists “cautiously pursue” solar geoengineering research. Hansi Singh, a professor of climate dynamics at The University of Victoria in Canada says things have changed markedly. Back in 2016, she was interested in studying geoengineering after graduating from a PhD program, but was warned away from the field because it could taint her reputation. “There’s been enough negative sentiment that people … were afraid to go into that area,” she says. “There’s less of that now.” Advocates like Singh say that the turnaround is partly due to the worsening climate situation. With emissions still not falling nearly fast enough to avoid dangerous impacts, geoengineering seems more like an option that may one day need to be considered. But those opposed to geoengineering work are skeptical. They see the shift in favor of exploring this solution more as the result of a sustained lobbying effort. “A very small group of individuals with a lot of financing, they’re pushing for this,” says Jennie Stephens, a professor of sustainability science and policy at Northeastern University. “The advocates are very good fundraisers.” Read more: Why Billionaires are Obsessed With Blocking Out the Sun That growing support for research into geoengineering technology has led to a serious schism in the normally friendly world of climate science. “You think of polarization only in terms of Trump and Twitter, but it doesn’t come home to roost.” says Aarti Gupta, a professor of global environmental governance at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “We are friends—we know each other. And then suddenly there’s this issue.” For opponents of geoengineering research, a 2021 article advocating for more study of the field in influential science journal Nature was an indication that the proponents were making headway, as was a plan that year by Keith’s Harvard research group to test SAI technology in the skies over northern Sweden. That project was later canceled due to opposition from environmentalists and local Indigenous groups. But Frank Biermann, a professor of global sustainability governance at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, says that the fact that Keith’s project got as far as it did sent shockwaves through the broader environmental sciences community. “It was a signal that these folks are serious,” he says. Biermann helped organize a letter in response to those developments. It was published in January 2022 and signed by dozens of scientists and climate researchers, with the goal of making it clear that the academic community didn’t want governments to develop solar geoengineering technologies. He says it’s a sign that anti-geoengineering scientists are getting more organized. Today, more than 400 academics have signed the letter, including influential climate scientists like Michael Oppenheimer, a professor at Princeton University and one of the original voices who warned about the danger of global climate change. “So many people have ignored this debate for a long time,” Biermann says. “They’re now getting a little bit into the fray because they are concerned.” Many of those involved in studying geoengineering saw the letter as a direct attack. Daniele Visioni, a researcher at Cornell University, immediately began discussing ways to counter calls to restrict such research. To him and other proponents of studying geoengineering, to avoid working in the field was to lose out on a chance to better understand the risks and potential benefits of a technology that is likely to be on the table in the future. “You cannot say we shouldn’t be studying this because someone somewhere in the future might misuse it,” Visioni says. “You are making the decision for other people, and for people that maybe don’t exist yet.” Eventually, they settled on the idea of producing their own letter that would show support for geoengineering research. “People that do [geoengineering] research are always on the defensive,” he says. “There’s been a realization that we need to be more forceful.” Visioni’s letter, published late last month, gathered more than 100 signatories, largely from European and international researchers, as well as other prominent scientists like James Hansen, a professor at Columbia University and another of the original scientists who called for action on global warming. It emerged alongside another similar U.S.-focused call for support for geoengineering research, published around the same time. Researchers who work on geoengineering often emphasize that such climate interventions are no substitute for emissions reductions, and stress the need for global agreement and fair governance in how the technology might be used. Other potential players, like private business, might not be so scrupulous. Singh, who signed on to the second pro-geoengineering research letter, says that reports in December of a controversial series of test flights by geoengineering startup Make Sunsets helped to galvanize their side of the debate—it was a clear sign that if researchers and government bodies didn’t start studying geoengineering seriously, someone else might take matters into their own hands, with unpredictable consequences. “There’s no research body that has come to any sort of general agreement, and so within the vacuum, anybody can come in and claim that they’re going to do some smoke and mirrors and cool the planet,” Singh says. For those opposed to researching geoengineering, though, those controversial experiments have been a sign of exactly the opposite. The pro-geoengineering research faction may be adamant about the ethics of how the technology should be deployed, but once those scientists lay the scientific groundwork, the decision of how the technology is used might be out of their control. Biermann, of Utrecht University, says the pro-geoengineering researchers don’t understand that—he calls it “Captain Kirk syndrome.” “The idea is there is this kind of [global] President who behaves like Captain Kirk, and the scientists are like Mr. Spock, the person who has absolute logic,” he says. “[But] Captain Kirk is not real life. There is no Captain Kirk.”

Climate

Technology

Chemicals

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Total Disaster

Armed with realistic bird puppets, trickster environmental activists pretend to be oil company Total—staging a satirical press conference to introduce "RéHabitat," a program to rescue animals from the East African Oil Pipeline by relocating them to “more sustainable” habitats. Using humor and mischief, they expose a deadly ecological disaster in a zany effort to help #StopEACOP.

Activism

Energy

Animals

LEAVES

An academic woman in Texas becomes concerned when a massive red oak in her backyard seems to be ailing, though she isn’t sure why it bothers her so much. At the same time, in her small cottage, her attention to her work is distracted by news reports she sees and hears. They tell in graphic terms of the out-of-control forest fires up and down the West Coast. Her attention is further pulled in the direction of other stories about the worsening conditions of the world’s rainforests which she discovers are disappearing at the astounding rate of 200,000 acres a day. Suddenly such stories are all she seems to hear and see on the radio or television or on her computer. But when she hears/sees a science report about how trees actually communicate with each other, she begins to realize there may be a connection between her tree and what she is learning from the news. She begins to recall a strong connection she herself has with that tree and allows that connection to regrow…..

Pollution

Forests

Inspirational

Rise and Fall

A film to provide an awareness of climate change and the individual measures we can take to combat it. The production process of Rise and Fall began as your stereotypical documentary meant to showcase various aspects of the Earth and Ocean Sciences Department at UNCW. Still, as the interview process was underway, it was quickly decided to move in another direction. It is an essay film about the science of climate change, what we can do in our day-to-day lives to combat it, and its impacts. Without using talking heads, the images of the natural world provide a sensual look at what will be affected by climate change.

Climate

Nature

Documentary

A Whale's Worth

The Canary Islands are a whale Paradise. Their waters hold more than a third of the world’s species, making it the most important enclave in the European Union, and one of the most relevant globally.Today, this paradise is being threatened by different human pressures, such as boat collisions, plastic consumption and climate change. This struggle aggravates their mortality each year and makes us face ourselves as the ones responsible for their survival, forcing us to rethink how much we value these animals currently.How much is a whale worth? Can you put a price on the life of such a majestic animal? How can we estimate that value? How has the value that human beings give to whales changed throughout history? What are whales used and needed for?To answer all these questions, Natacha Aguilar, an eminent Canarian scientist and whale expert, backed up by a group of scientists and non-profit organizations, will guide us in a spectacular journey through time and space to discover the never-told stories of the lives of these animals.

Animals

Culture

Climate

Sounding the Alarm ~ America's Climate Crisis

"It's really hard being a fire family. Every day it's getting worse." -Brett, wife of Marin County Battalion Chief in California.Every day, Americans who live close to the land and sea face the dangers of climate change—from a firefighter in California, to a beekeeper in Arizona, to a climate refugee losing her home in Florida. The changing climate affects our food systems, water and way of life. These American families are in the trenches sacrificing everything while facing depression, PTSD, and suicide—collateral damage of a crisis unchecked. Award-winning filmmaker, Peter Goetz, captures America's faces and voices, shot in 2020 leading up to the presidential election. Goetz and the Biden campaign made history, producing the first national climate spot to run during a presidential election. But this film dives deeper into the American climate crisis to explore the lives of the people who are sounding the alarm, worried about their grandchildren’s future, asking, "If not us, then who?" This is a story of the resilience, perseverance, and ingenuity of the American people. Ever hopeful, they collectively take on a common enemy. As the young, Navajo solar visionary Brett Issac insists, "We've got to turn this train around before it's too late."

Climate

Crisis

Government

GoGreenNation news

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Can OffShore Wind Blow Out California's Fires?

Related News

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Suggested Viewing

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Sounding the Alarm ~ America's Climate Crisis

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future