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New California law will speed cleanup of idle oil wells

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Thursday, September 26, 2024

In summary Three new oil well laws come after the Newsom administration delayed enforcement of an existing law protecting communities near wells. California will accelerate cleanup of the state’s idle oil wells, shut down one low-producing oilfield and allow cities and counties to restrict oil drilling under three measures that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law today. Under one of the new laws, Assembly Bill 2716, an oilfield in unincorporated Los Angeles County will be shut down, with oil wells plugged by the end of 2030. Another new law, Assembly Bill 1866, requires oil companies to eliminate between 5% and 15% of their idle wells each year between 2025 and 2027, ramping up to between 10% and 20% in all subsequent years. Addressing drilling of new wells, the third law, Assembly Bill 3233, would give local governments the authority to “limit or prohibit oil and gas operations or development in its jurisdiction.” The measure was prompted by court decisions that blocked local ordinances in Monterey County and Los Angeles. Newsom lauded the new laws as his get-tough approach on the oil industry. However, his administration took another major step during this legislative session that delays protection of communities with oil wells. Newsom’s administration requested delays in an existing law requiring monitoring of oil and gas wells near homes and schools for leaks into air and water, saying regulators needed more time. In response, the Legislature passed a bill granting a three-and-a-half year delay, which means wells will not have to be monitored until July, 2030. Newsom has not yet signed it; at a press conference today, he declined to comment. The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, told CalMatters that the new laws are a good step, but the delays in the measures to protect communities from leaking wells demonstrates that “there’s more work to do.” “The delay is extremely troubling and will force frontline communities to wait longer for much-needed pollution protections,” said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the group’s Climate Law Institute. “We’re celebrating the landmark achievements these bills represent, but we won’t rest until all Californians get the future free from oil and gas pollution that they deserve.”  The oil industry had sought to eliminate the two-year-old law entirely through a ballot measure, but decided in June to abandon that effort. More than 2.5 million Californians live within 3,200 feet of an oil or gas well, predominantly in low-income communities of color,  including in Long Beach, Los Angeles and Kern County. Research has linked an array of health effects, including a higher incidence of premature and low birthweight babies, to proximity of wells.   Newsom, speaking at a soccer field in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Baldwin Hills with the Inglewood Oil Field as a backdrop, hailed one of the measures as “empowering local communities to go further than the state itself.” He added that Legislature was “absolutely right” to hold oil companies accountable for idle wells.  Starting in 2026, low-producing wells in the Inglewood Oil Field cannot operate for more than 12 months. All wells in the sprawling field will be shut down and plugged by the end of 2030. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, chief executive of the Western States Petroleum Association, dismissed the governor’s actions as “political theater,” adding that the new mandates will drive up gasoline costs for Californians, result in lost jobs and increased reliance on imported oil. “More mandates won’t lower gas prices or help California families,” she said. Newsom lambasted the companies. “They’re ripping you off,” Newsom said. “Big Oil has been ripping you off and then lying to you.”  Newsom called the Legislature into a special session to address gas prices, giving him more time to persuade lawmakers to act on a package of energy bills he failed to jam through in the final weeks of the regular session.

Three new oil well laws come after the Newsom administration delayed enforcement of an existing law protecting communities near wells.

In summary

Three new oil well laws come after the Newsom administration delayed enforcement of an existing law protecting communities near wells.

California will accelerate cleanup of the state’s idle oil wells, shut down one low-producing oilfield and allow cities and counties to restrict oil drilling under three measures that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law today.

Under one of the new laws, Assembly Bill 2716, an oilfield in unincorporated Los Angeles County will be shut down, with oil wells plugged by the end of 2030. Another new law, Assembly Bill 1866, requires oil companies to eliminate between 5% and 15% of their idle wells each year between 2025 and 2027, ramping up to between 10% and 20% in all subsequent years.

Addressing drilling of new wells, the third law, Assembly Bill 3233, would give local governments the authority to “limit or prohibit oil and gas operations or development in its jurisdiction.” The measure was prompted by court decisions that blocked local ordinances in Monterey County and Los Angeles.

Newsom lauded the new laws as his get-tough approach on the oil industry. However, his administration took another major step during this legislative session that delays protection of communities with oil wells.

Newsom’s administration requested delays in an existing law requiring monitoring of oil and gas wells near homes and schools for leaks into air and water, saying regulators needed more time. In response, the Legislature passed a bill granting a three-and-a-half year delay, which means wells will not have to be monitored until July, 2030. Newsom has not yet signed it; at a press conference today, he declined to comment.

The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, told CalMatters that the new laws are a good step, but the delays in the measures to protect communities from leaking wells demonstrates that “there’s more work to do.”

“The delay is extremely troubling and will force frontline communities to wait longer for much-needed pollution protections,” said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the group’s Climate Law Institute. “We’re celebrating the landmark achievements these bills represent, but we won’t rest until all Californians get the future free from oil and gas pollution that they deserve.” 

The oil industry had sought to eliminate the two-year-old law entirely through a ballot measure, but decided in June to abandon that effort.

More than 2.5 million Californians live within 3,200 feet of an oil or gas well, predominantly in low-income communities of color,  including in Long Beach, Los Angeles and Kern County. Research has linked an array of health effects, including a higher incidence of premature and low birthweight babies, to proximity of wells.  

Newsom, speaking at a soccer field in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Baldwin Hills with the Inglewood Oil Field as a backdrop, hailed one of the measures as “empowering local communities to go further than the state itself.” He added that Legislature was “absolutely right” to hold oil companies accountable for idle wells. 

Starting in 2026, low-producing wells in the Inglewood Oil Field cannot operate for more than 12 months. All wells in the sprawling field will be shut down and plugged by the end of 2030.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, chief executive of the Western States Petroleum Association, dismissed the governor’s actions as “political theater,” adding that the new mandates will drive up gasoline costs for Californians, result in lost jobs and increased reliance on imported oil. “More mandates won’t lower gas prices or help California families,” she said.

Newsom lambasted the companies. “They’re ripping you off,” Newsom said. “Big Oil has been ripping you off and then lying to you.” 

Newsom called the Legislature into a special session to address gas prices, giving him more time to persuade lawmakers to act on a package of energy bills he failed to jam through in the final weeks of the regular session.

Read the full story here.
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Vietnam Evacuates Thousands and Shuts Airports as Typhoon Bualoi Nears Landfall

Vietnam has evacuated thousands from central and northern provinces as Typhoon Bualoi approaches faster than expected

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam evacuated thousands of people from central and northern provinces Sunday as Typhoon Bualoi raced toward the country faster than expected with landfall forecast later in the day.Bualoi had left at least 20 people dead in the central Philippines since Friday, mostly from drownings and falling trees, and knocked out power in several towns and cities, officials said. It forced about 23,000 families to evacuate to more than 1,400 emergency shelters.In Vietnam, the typhoon was expected to bring winds of up to 133 kph (83 mph), storm surges of more than a meter (3.2 feet) and heavy rains that could trigger flash floods and landslides. The eye of the typhoon was nearing the coast Sunday night and forecast to make landfall before midnight, before moving inland toward Nghe An province. Authorities grounded fishing boats in northern and central regions and ordered evacuations. State media reported Da Nang planned to relocate more than 210,000 people, while Hue prepared to move more than 32,000 coastal residents to safer ground.The Civil Aviation Authority said operations were suspended at four coastal airports, including Danang International Airport, with several flights rescheduled.Heavy rains have drenched central provinces since Saturday night. In Hue, floods swamped low-lying streets, storms ripped off roofs and at least one person was reported missing after being swept away by floodwaters. In neighboring Quang Tri province, a fishing boat sank and another was stranded while seeking shelter. Nine people have been rescued while efforts were underway to reach two others at sea, state media said.Forecasters warned of more heavy rain through Oct. 1, raising risks of flooding and landslides in northern and central provinces.Bualoi was the second major storm to threaten Asia in a week. Typhoon Ragasa, one of the strongest to hit in years, left at least 28 deaths in the northern Philippines and Taiwan before making landfall in China and dissipating Thursday over Vietnam.Global warming is making storms like Wipha stronger and wetter, according to experts since warmer oceans provide tropical storms with more fuel, driving more intense winds, heavier rainfall, and shifting precipitation patterns across East Asia.Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines contributed to this report.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate
Water

UNESCO Designates 26 New Biosphere Reserves Amid Biodiversity Challenges and Climate Change

The U.N. cultural agency UNESCO has designated 26 new biosphere reserves

An Indonesian archipelago that's home to three-fourths of Earth's coral species, a stretch of Icelandic coast with 70% of the country's plant life and an area along Angola's Atlantic coast featuring savannahs, forests and estuaries are among 26 new UNESCO-designated biosphere reserves.The United Nations cultural agency says the reserves — 785 sites in 142 countries, designated since 1971 — are home to some of the planet’s richest and most fragile ecosystems. But biosphere reserves encompass more than strictly protected nature reserves; they're expanded to include areas where people live and work, and the designation requires that scientists, residents and government officials work together to balance conservation and research with local economic and cultural needs.“The concept of biosphere reserves is that biodiversity conservation is a pillar of socioeconomic development” and can contribute to the economy, said António Abreu, head of the program, adding that conflict and misunderstanding can result if local communities are left out of decision-making and planning. The new reserves, in 21 countries, were announced Saturday in Hangzhou, China, where the program adopted a 10-year strategic action plan that includes studying the effects of climate change, Abreu said. The new reserves include a 52,000-square-mile (135,000-square-kilometer) area in the Indonesian archipelago, Raja Ampat, home to over 75% of earth’s coral species as well as rainforests and rare endangered sea turtles. The economy depends on fishing, aquaculture, small-scale agriculture and tourism, UNESCO said.On Iceland's west coast, the Snæfellsnes Biosphere Reserve's landscape includes volcanic peaks, lava fields, wetlands, grasslands and the Snæfellsjökull glacier. The 1,460-square-kilometer (564 square-mile) reserve is an important sanctuary for seabirds, seals and over 70% of Iceland's plant life — including 330 species of wildflowers and ferns. Its population of more than 4,000 people relies on fishing, sheep farming and tourism.And in Angola, the new Quiçama Biosphere Reserve, along 206 kilometers (128 miles) of Atlantic coast is a “sanctuary for biodiversity” within its savannahs, forests, flood plains, estuaries and islands, according to UNESCO. It's home to elephants, manatees, sea turtles and more than 200 bird species. Residents' livelihoods include livestock herding, farming, fishing, honey production.Residents are important partners in protecting biodiversity within the reserves, and even have helped identify new species, said Abreu, the program's leader. Meanwhile, scientists also are helping to restore ecosystems to benefit the local economy, he said.For example, in the Philippines, the coral reefs around Pangatalan Island were severely damaged because local fishermen used dynamite to find depleted fish populations. Scientists helped design a structure to help coral reefs regrow and taught fishermen to raise fish through aquaculture so the reefs could recover.“They have food and they have also fish to sell in the markets,” said Abreu.In the African nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, a biosphere reserve on Príncipe Island led to restoration of mangroves, which help buffer against storm surges and provide important habitat, Abreu said.Ecotourism also has become an important industry, with biosphere trails and guided bird-watching tours. A new species of owl was identified there in recent years. This year, a biosphere reserve was added for the island of São Tomé, making the country the first entirely within a reserve. Climate and environmental concerns At least 60% of the UNESCO biosphere reserves have been affected by extreme weather tied to climate change, which is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gas, including extreme heat and drought and sea-level rise, Abreu said.The agency is using satellite imagery and computer modeling to monitor changes in coastal zones and other areas, and is digitizing its historical databases, Abreu said. The information will be used to help determine how best to preserve and manage the reserves.Some biosphere reserves also are under pressure from environmental degradation.In Nigeria, for example, habitat for a dwindling population of critically endangered African forest elephants is under threat as cocoa farmers expand into Omo Forest Reserve, a protected rainforest and one of Africa’s oldest and largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. The forest is also important to help combat climate change.The Trump administration in July announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO as of December 2026, just as it did during his first administration, saying U.S. involvement is not in the national interest. The U.S. has 47 biosphere reserves, most in federal protected areas.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

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Food

On North Carolina’s Rivers and Streams, the Cleanup of Helene’s Fury Seems Never-Ending

It’s been only a year since Hurricane Helene hammered the southeast U.S. from Florida to the Carolinas

WOODFIN, N.C. (AP) — Bracing himself against the current in waist-deep water, Clancy Loorham wrestles a broken length of PVC pipe from the rocky bottom of the French Broad River and peers inside.“I got a catfish in the pipe,” the 27-year-old with wispy beard and mustache shouted to fellow cleanup workers floating nearby in rafts, canoes and kayaks piled with plastic pipe and other human-made detritus. “He’s right here. I’m looking him in the eyes!”It’s been just a year since floodwaters from the remnants of Hurricane Helene washed these pipes out of a nearby factory with such force that some pieces ended up in Douglas Lake, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) away in Tennessee. But they're already slick with algae and filled with river silt — and creatures.Helene killed more than 250 people and caused nearly $80 billion in damage from Florida to the Carolinas. In the North Carolina mountains, rains of up to 30 inches (76 centimeters) turned gentle streams into torrents that swept away trees, boulders, homes and vehicles, shattered century-old flood records, and in some places carved out new channels.In the haste to rescue people and restore their lives to some semblance of normalcy, some fear the recovery efforts compounded Helene’s impact on the ecosystem. Contractors hired to remove vehicles, shipping containers, shattered houses and other large debris from waterways sometimes damaged sensitive habitat.“They were using the river almost as a highway in some situations,” said Peter Raabe, Southeast regional director for the conservation group American Rivers.Conservationists found instances of contractors cutting down healthy trees and removing live root balls, said Jon Stamper, river cleanup coordinator for MountainTrue, the North Carolina-based nonprofit conducting the French Broad work.“Those trees kind of create fish habitats,” he said. “They slow the flow of water down. They’re an important part of a river system, and we’ve seen kind of a disregard for that.”The Army Corps of Engineers said in a statement that debris removal missions “are often challenging” due to the large volume storms can leave behind across a wide area. The Corps said it trains its contractors to minimize disturbances to waterways and to prevent harm to wildlife. North Carolina Emergency Management said debris removal after Helene took into account safety and the environment, and that projects reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency met that agency’s standards for minimizing impact. Battered first by the storm, and then by the cleanup Hannah Woodburn, who tracks the headwaters and tributaries of the New River as MountainTrue's Upper New Riverkeeper, said waters are much muddier since Helene, both from storm-related vegetation loss and from heavy machinery used during cleanup.She said it's been bad for the eastern hellbender, a “species of special concern” in North Carolina. It's one of only three giant salamanders found in the world, growing up to 2 feet (61 centimeters) long and weighing more than 3 pounds (1.4 kilograms).“After the storm, we had so many reports and pictures of dead hellbenders, some nearly a mile from the stream once the waters receded,” said Woodburn.Of even greater concern is the Appalachian elktoe, a federally endangered mussel found only in the mountains of North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Helene hurt the Appalachian elktoe, but it also suffered from human-caused damage, said Mike Perkins, a state biologist.Perkins said some contractors coordinated with conservation teams ahead of river cleanups and took precautions. Others were not so careful. He described snorkeling in the cold waters of the Little River and “finding crushed individuals, some of them still barely alive, some with their insides hanging out.” On that river, workers moved 60 Appalachian elktoe to a refuge site upstream. On the South Toe River, home to one of the most important populations, biologists collected a dozen and took them to a hatchery to store in tanks until it's safe to return them to the wild.“It was shocking and unprecedented in my professional line of work in 15 years,” Perkins said of the incident. “There’s all of these processes in place to prevent this secondary tragedy from happening, and none of it happened.”Andrea Leslie, mountain habitat conservation coordinator with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, said she hopes the experience can inform future recovery efforts.“To a certain degree, you can’t do this perfectly,” she said. “They’re in emergency mode. They’re working to make sure that people are safe and that infrastructure is safe. And it’s a big, complicated process. And there are multiple places in my observation where we could shift things to be more careful." Humans along the river are still recovering, too Like the hellbender and the Appalachian elktoe, humans cling to the river, too.Vickie and Paul Revis’ home sat beside old U.S. 70 in a bend of the Swannanoa River. As Helene swept through, the Swannanoa took their home and scraped away a big chunk of their half-acre lot.With the land paid for and no flood insurance payment to move away, they decided to stay put.After a year in a donated camper, they'll soon move into their new house — a double-wide modular home, also donated by a local Christian charity. It sits atop a 6-foot mound that Paul Revis piled up near the front of the property, farther from the river. Using rock, fill dirt and broken concrete dumped on his property by friendly debris-removal contractors, Paul has reclaimed the frontage the Swannanoa took. His wife planted it with marigolds for beauty and a weeping willow for stability. And they've purchased flood insurance.“I hope I never see another one in my lifetime, and I’m hoping that if I do, it does hold up,” Vickie said. “I mean, that’s all we can (do). Mother Nature does whatever she wants to do, and you just have to roll with it.” Tons of debris pulled out, tons still to go Back on the French Broad, the tedious cleanup work continues. Many on the crew are rafting guides knocked out of work by the storm.MountainTrue got a $10 million, 18-month grant from the state for the painstaking work of pulling small debris from the rivers and streams. Since July, teams have removed more than 75 tons from about a dozen rivers across five watersheds.Red-tailed hawks and osprey circle high overhead as the flotilla glides past banks lined with willow, sourwood and sycamore, ablaze with goldenrod and jewelweed. That peacefulness belies its fury of a year ago that upended so many lives. “There are so many people who are living in western North Carolina right now that feel very afraid of our rivers,” said Liz McGuirl, a crew member who managed a hair salon before Helene put her out of work. “They feel hurt. They feel betrayed.”Downstream, as McGuirl hauled up a length of pipe, another catfish swam out.“We’re creating a habitat, but it’s just the wrong habitat,” crew leader Leslie Beninato said ruefully. “I’d like to give them a tree as a home, maybe, instead of a pipe.”The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environmentCopyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate
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The Dismantling of the US Forest Service Is Imminent

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the 1880s, giant cattle companies turned thousands of cattle out to graze on the “public domain”—i.e., the Western lands that had been stolen from Indigenous people and then opened up for white settlement. In remote southeastern […]

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the 1880s, giant cattle companies turned thousands of cattle out to graze on the “public domain”—i.e., the Western lands that had been stolen from Indigenous people and then opened up for white settlement. In remote southeastern Utah, this coincided with a wave of settlement by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The region’s once-abundant grasslands and lush mountain slopes were soon reduced to denuded wastelands etched with deep flash-flood-prone gullies. Cattlemen fought, sometimes violently, over water and range. The local citizenry grew sick and tired of it, sometimes literally: At one point, sheep feces contaminated the water supply of the town of Monticello and led to a typhoid outbreak that killed 11 people. Yet there was little they could do, since there were few rules on the public domain and fewer folks with the power to enforce them. That changed in 1891, when Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act, which authorized the president to place some unregulated tracts under “judicious control,” thereby mildly restraining extractive activities in the name of conservation. In 1905, the Forest Service was created as a branch of the US Agriculture Department to oversee these reserves, and Gifford Pinchot was chosen to lead it. A year later, the citizens of southeastern Utah successfully petitioned the Theodore Roosevelt administration to establish forest reserves in the La Sal and Abajo Mountains. Since then, the Forest Service has gone through various metamorphoses, shifting from stewarding and conserving forests for the future to supplying the growing nation with lumber to managing forests for multiple uses and then to the ecosystem management era, which began in the 1990s. Throughout all these shifts, however, it has largely stayed true to Pinchot and his desire to conserve forests and their resources for future generations.  But now, the Trump administration is eager to begin a new era for the agency and its public lands, with a distinctively un-Pinchot-esque structure and a mission that maximizes resource production and extraction while dismantling the administrative state and its role as environmental protector. Over the last nine months, the administration has issued executive orders calling for expanded timber production and rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, declared “emergency” situations that enable it to bypass regulations on nearly 60 percent of the public’s forests, and proposed slashing the agency’s operations budget by 34 percent. The most recent move, which is currently open to public comment, involves a proposal by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to radically overhaul the entire US Department of Agriculture. Its stated purposes are to ensure that the agency’s “workforce aligns with financial resources and priorities,” and to consolidate functions and eliminate redundancy. This will include moving at least 2,600 of the department’s 4,600 Washington, DC, employees to five hub locations, with only two in the West: Salt Lake City, Utah, and Fort Collins, Colorado. (The others will be in North Carolina, Missouri, and Indiana.) The goal, according to Rollins’ memorandum, is to “bring the USDA closer to its customers.” The plan is reminiscent of Trump’s first-term relocation of the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, in 2019. That relocation resulted in a de facto agency housecleaning; many senior staffers chose to resign or move to other agencies, and only a handful of workers ended up in the Colorado office, which shared a building with oil and gas companies. Using an emergency declaration, Trump’s timber production executive order would ease environmental protections so as to greatly expand logging in the national forests. Though Rollins’ proposal is aimed at decentralizing the department, it would effectively re-centralize the Forest Service by eliminating its nine regional offices, six of which are located in the West. Each regional forester oversees dozens of national forests within their region, providing budget oversight, guiding place-specific implementation of national policies, and facilitating coordination among the various forests. Rollins’ memo does not explain why the regional offices are being axed, or what will happen to the regional foresters’ positions and their functions, or how the change will affect the agency’s chain of command. When several US senators asked Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden for more specifics, he responded that “decisions pertaining to the agency’s structure and the location of specialized personnel will be made after” the public comment period ends on September 30. Curiously, the administration’s forest management strategy, published in May, relies on regional offices to “work with the Washington Office to develop tailored strategies to meet their specific timber goals.” Now it’s unclear that either the regional or Washington offices will remain in existence long enough to carry this out. The administration has been far more transparent about its desire to return the Forest Service to its timber plantation era, which ran from the 1950s through the ’80s. During that time, logging companies harvested 10 billion to 12 billion board-feet per year from federal forests, while for the last 25 years, the annual number has hovered below 3 billion board-feet. Now, Trump, via his Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production order, plans to crank up the annual cut to 4 billion board-feet by 2028. This will be accomplished—in classic Trumpian fashion—by declaring an “emergency” on national forest lands that will allow environmental protections and regulations, including the National Environmental Protection Act, Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, to be eased or bypassed. In April, Rollins issued a memorandum doing just that, declaring that the threat of wildfires, insects and disease, invasive species, overgrown forests, the growing number of homes in the wildland-urban interface, and more than a century of rigorous fire suppression have contributed to what is now “a full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.” Emergency determinations aren’t limited to Trump and friends; in 2023, the Biden administration identified almost 67 million acres of national forest lands as being under a high or very high fire risk, thus qualifying as an “emergency situation” under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Rollins, however, vastly expanded the “emergency situation” acreage to almost 113 million acres, or 59 percent of all Forest Service lands. This allows the agency to use streamlined environmental reviews and “expedited” tribal consultation time frames to “carry out authorized emergency actions,” ranging from commercial harvesting of damaged trees to removing “hazardous fuels” to reconstructing existing utility lines. Meanwhile, the administration has announced plans to consolidate all federal wildfire fighting duties under the Interior Department. This would completely zero out the Forest Service’s $2.4 billion wildland fire management budget, sowing even more confusion and chaos. The administration also plans to slash staff and budgets in other parts of the agency, further compromising its ability to carry out its mission. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency fired about 3,400 Forest Service employees, or more than 10 percent of the agency’s total workforce, earlier this year. And the administration has proposed cutting the agency’s operations budget, which includes salaries, by 34 percent in fiscal 2026, which will most likely necessitate further reductions in force. It would also cut the national forest system and capital improvement and maintenance budgets by 21 percent and 48 percent respectively. The goal, it seems, is to cripple the agency with both direct and indirect blows. The result, if the administration succeeds, will be a diminished Forest Service that would be unrecognizable to Gifford Pinchot.

Climate
Forests
Indigenous

Two climate scientists on how to use emotion in the climate crisis

From anger to hope, Kate Marvel and Tim Lenton explain how to tackle the tricky feelings aroused by climate change and harness them to take action

With emissions still rising, how do we feel hope for the future?Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images With dire environmental warnings and extreme weather events in the news almost every day, it can be tempting to simply avoid thinking about the climate crisis. But how do climate scientists, who must grapple with the harsh reality of our changing planet every day, cope? What can they teach us about processing the powerful emotions provoked by escalating climate change? And are there ways we can use these feelings to our advantage? New Scientist recently sat down with New York-based climate scientist Kate Marvel and Tim Lenton, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter, UK. Both have spent years modelling how our planet may react to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and both have recently published books that distil their perspectives on how best to engage with, and tackle, the climate emergency. At first glance, these are two quite different books. Human Nature, by Marvel, is a series of essays exploring the science of climate change, each centred on a different emotional response to the crisis. By contrast, Lenton’s book, Positive Tipping Points, prioritises taking action over introspection. It makes a persuasive case that a radical, systemic shift to a cleaner world is possible with the right social, economic and technological interventions. At their heart, though, both books are about how to embrace our emotions around climate change so we can reframe our thinking and actions. In this conversation, Lenton and Marvel reveal why we should feel angry, fearful, proud and hopeful all at once about our future on Earth. Rowan Hooper: Kate, your book is about nine ways to feel about our changing planet. Can we start with anger? Kate Marvel: The anger chapter was one of the easiest ones to write. What I wanted to talk about was the history of how we discovered climate change was happening. The thing that makes me really angry is that the history of scientists finding stuff out is intertwined with the history of people lying about it. I tell this story of a research group. They’re trying to establish that most of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuels, and they design these really creative experiments to prove that. They have a large ship that’s going around, taking measurements of the ocean. And eventually they develop a climate model that has made extremely accurate projections in retrospect. You know who did all of that? It was Exxon. That does make me very angry. The fact that they knew. RH: Can anger be motivating? KM: I hope so. It can be really easy to go down a bad path where all you are is angry. Social media definitely incentivises this, where you’re fed more and more outrage, but it’s not productive outrage. RH: Your book also covers wonder, guilt, fear, grief, surprise, pride, hope and love. Can you talk us through how you processed these emotions? KM: What I wanted to do is embrace the fact there is no one way to feel about climate change. I was getting really frustrated when I was reading things that were designed to elicit a single emotion. Either, just be afraid, or just be angry, or just be hopeful. That didn’t feel very useful to me. I wanted to acknowledge that if you live on planet Earth, you have a conflict of interest. You care about what happens to this place. Because everybody that you know lives here. Tim Lenton studies “tipping points” in ecosystems that could affect the wider climateUniversity of Exeter RH: Tim, how do you find dealing with the emotions that come with studying climate change? Tim Lenton: I’ve been studying climate tipping points that could be really bad, really nasty. And arguably some of them are starting to unfold. I mean, we’re losing tropical coral reefs that up to half a billion people in the world depend on for their livelihoods. I’ve been staring this stuff down for nearly 20 years. So, I just found I had to use the mental toolkit I had of understanding complex systems to try to see if I could find plausible grounds for hope. Could we build a credible case that we could accelerate the change we need to get out of trouble? It took doing the research on the book to see that there was evidence that this is possible, and I wasn’t just going to delude myself with naive hope. RH: So it’s rational, usable hope? TL: It’s conditional optimism. I’m optimistic on the basis that some people are going to read the book, and some fraction of them will join me on the same journey. History teaches us that it only needs a fraction of people to change to ultimately tip everyone to change. Madeleine Cuff: Tim, much of your career has focused on this idea of tipping points. For those who are new to the concept, what are they? TL: Tipping points are those moments where a small change makes a big difference to the state or the fate of some system. For the bad ones in the climate, we know that there are large parts of the Earth system – major ice sheets, aspects of the ocean circulation, big bits of the biosphere – that have what we call alternative stable states. And they can be tipped from one state into another. We could potentially tip the Amazon rainforest into a different degraded forest or savannah state, for example. MC: What is a positive tipping point? TL: I’m drawing on over half a century of scholarship in different fields that shows you can have tipping points in social change. We’re all familiar with the idea of political revolutions popping up and protests popping up seemingly out of nowhere and exploding in size. But history also teaches us that sometimes you get abrupt and hard-to-reverse changes in technology. There are tipping points where one new technology will take over from an existing one. RH: The obvious climate example I’m thinking of is electric vehicles. And, of course, solar is so cheap now that it’s really taking off. How do we bring about positive tipping points? TL: We have to think about what actions can bring forward the positive tipping points, accepting that we need to be going more than five times faster than we are at decarbonising the economy. Luckily, each of us has agency to do something about this. At the most basic level, maybe we can be an adopter of new behaviour, such as eating less meat, or adopting a new technology like EVs or solar panels. We’ve probably also got a pension fund, and we should be asking hard questions about where that’s invested. The story of positive tipping points that have already happened starts with social activists or innovators. The people who have a passion to develop the core new technology, or activists who want to create change and see that possibility before everybody else. In her research, Kate Marvel tries to better model our planet’s changing climateRoy Rochlin/Getty Images MC: Kate, we’ve talked a little bit about the negative emotions that come with thinking about climate change. But what about the impact of positive emotions? What role can they play in inspiring positive action? KM: I started the book with the emotion wonder because, when you take a step back, just thinking about this planet that we live on and the fact that we understand it at all, that’s incredible. It’s a really useful tool for making connections and starting conversations. A lot of times, when I tell people I’m a climate scientist, they assume I’m immediately going to start scolding them. But if you start out with wonder, if you start out a conversation with: “Did you know the Earth’s water is probably older than the Earth itself?” people are going to say: “Oh wait, that’s amazing.” And they are going to be more likely to talk to you. Embracing a wide spectrum of emotions is useful as a communications strategy. There is support for feeling these emotions in the scientific and social scientific literature. There is a sense of pride we can feel in doing the hard work. There is deep satisfaction in making change. The social science literature also says that love is probably the most powerful motivating factor in climate action. People are motivated to act because they love their communities, their families, their children. We know how powerful that emotion is. I have a whole chapter on hope, even though I have a very complicated relationship to hope. I feel like when people always ask me: “Do you hope we can solve climate change?” that, for me, is like asking, do you hope you can clean your bathroom? That’s a silly question. You know what to do, just go clean your bathroom. As Tim says, we have so many of the solutions we need. We are on these trajectories already. We just need to push them over the precipice. We need to get past that social tipping point. RH: We have to face up to these emotions, don’t we? Maybe that’s one reason why we haven’t really got to grips with the problem – it’s too big for us to face. KM: Totally. I think about this stuff all day every day, and I still don’t really understand it. I can’t fit it into my head. This is a problem that is caused by basically every industrial human activity. And because CO2 and other greenhouse gases are well mixed in the atmosphere, it is affecting literally every aspect of life on this planet. Trying to boil that down to something very glib and manageable is just not possible. It is the work of a lifetime, or many lifetimes, to really come to terms with what this is and what this means, and what we do about it. Most Americans are concerned about climate change and want the US government to do something. But when you look at the polls, most Americans think other Americans do not think that. So that, I think, is why one of the most powerful things that an individual can do regarding climate change is to talk about it. Because when you talk about it, you realise, maybe I’m not so much of an individual after all. Maybe I’m not alone. RH: What do you want people to do after reading your books? KM: I would like people to think about how to tell climate stories that resonate with themselves, with their own community, with the people who will listen to them because of who they are and what they bring to the table. TL: I’m hoping the readers are feeling empowered to act, in what might have beforehand been feeling like a very scary, disempowering situation. I’d like them instead to feel a sense of agency. This is an edited version of an interview that originally took place on New Scientist‘s The World, the Universe and Us podcast What on earth can we do about climate change? See Matt Winning explain how to dispel the despair and take action on 18 October newscientist.com/nslmag

Climate
Crisis
CO2

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