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Earth Matters: In place of a farm bill, we need an agrarian reform act; hope for Pacific gray whales [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Daily Kos Staff Emeritus']

Date: 2023-07-06

The vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum, and including most media, don’t pay much attention to one of the most important packages of legislation Congress takes up every five years. That’s so even though it goes to the heart of how we feed ourselves, who feeds us, how this affects the socio-economic well-being of the nation and the world, how all of this interacts with nature, and how the powers-that-be keep dragging their feet in dealing with long-known problems in agricultural methodology and concentrated ownership.

The legislation is the farm bill, and the latest iteration is slated for approval in September. As always, the final product will cover a lot of ground, and there are provisions that would be good under any circumstances, at least in their intent. But breaking up agricultural monopolies, reducing extensive agricultural pollution on a broad scale, and incentivizing vast adjustments in farm practices because of climate change have little chance of being part of the package. As regards the latter the unlikely duo of Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa are working together on amendments they hope will survive the bill’s conference committee scrutiny.

In a stellar analysis on this year’s farm bill in the June issue of The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein succinctly explores several of the nooks and crannies of the complex trajectory of U.S. farm legislation over the past 90 years and how this affects the current bill. Here’s a brief taste:

Despite its title, the farm bill, which is due for reauthorization this September, impacts more than just farmers. Over 80 percent of the allocated funds supports the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, one of the largest welfare programs and arguably the United States’ closest imitation of a Scandinavian social safety net. The fate of SNAP’s 42 million impoverished recipients is shackled to a baroque patchwork of agriculture subsidies that could rival any late-Soviet central-planning efforts. [...] The real function of the modern farm bill is to deliver windfalls to industry by subsidizing cheap commodity grains, mostly corn and soybeans used for animal feed, that sell below the cost of production to agribusiness, fast-food chains, and global exports. Oil and gas companies are also major beneficiaries of subsidized corn production, used in ethanol and biofuel. And the structure of the subsidies tilts the playing field in favor of the biggest factory farms and middlemen monopolists. Low commodity prices drive down incomes for family farmers who actually put in the labor to produce the nation’s food. The government steps in to keep farmers on just enough life support so that they can continue serving their overlords in agribusiness. Subsidy payments are primarily available for grain commodities like corn, soybeans, and wheat, which drives farmers toward a monocrop culture. Those who raise animals for meat products, though, don’t get covered by the payments, and instead are left to fend for themselves against dominant middlemen.

Well worth the time it takes to read the whole piece.

Turnips and carrots picked from the greenhouse are displayed at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture on the Rockefeller family estate in Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

For those who believe that firm application of market principles can solve any economic problem (and that economic problems can be unlaced from their political, cultural, and environmental problems), the quinquennial renewal of the farm bill is an exercise in cognitive dissonance writ large. It’s even worse for those who believe ownership concentration, overuse of chemicals and underground fossil water, and the relentless pollution that is a major byproduct of factory agriculture are literally killing us. They want farm policy restructured at its roots, that is, radically. For these advocates, the congressional approach is simplistically narrow. Needed, they believe, are policies that minimize bureaucratic intervention, use appropriate technology, reverse the favoritism for industrial agriculture, rebuild rural and small town populations, and stop ignoring the environmental and economic damage caused by myopic bipartisan policy.

This is no small matter. “Entrenched” scarcely describes the forces arrayed against any such changes. They have political clout way beyond their numbers. But the changes are needed if we’re serious about addressing climate change. Getting those agricultural changes implemented requires persuading the dwindling percentage of family farmers still working the land that such changes are in their interest as well as everybody else’s, including the rest of the planet’s.

Industrial agriculture has forced most modern farmers to treat the land like a factory, machinery that pumps out commodity foodstuffs, an assembly line for corn and soybeans and wheat. Keeping this food factory going requires lubricants in the form of expensive synthetic fertilizers and pesticides whose costs comprise a major part of farm debt.

Like other industries, agribusiness has ignored just about anything beyond what affects profit margin. The health of farm communities, of good buyers, of water resources, and of the land don’’t matter. These, in economists’ jargon, are “externalities”—just as pollution and carbon emissions have long been. Consequently, among its many other problems, industrial agricultural methods in the United States contaminate groundwater and erode 2 billion tons of soil annually.

On economic grounds alone this is bad news. According to the World Resources Institute, the U.S. agricultural sector loses about $44 billion each year from erosion. This value includes lost productivity together with sedimentation and water pollution. Not measured economically, but with plenty of impact environmentally, agriculture-related carbon emissions make up 10% of the U.S. total, just slightly less than the total from the commercial and residential sector.

This situation didn’t just come to be out of the blue.

Cover crops in a wheat field.

For decades the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been captive of the chemical industry and encourages farmers to use the latest herbicide and insecticide. It urges livestock raisers to inject their animals with antibiotics, which become less effective as germs develop immunity, which has a negative impact on human health.

The department undermines regenerative, sustainable, and organic farming practices. Adopting these low-energy, low-chemical, ecological alternatives along with other changes could make the ever-receding family farm financially viable again, provide ample quantities of healthy food and jobs, and be environmentally sound. Each of the three approaches operates under a different philosophy, but all are directed toward similar goals, with “regenerative” being the most inclusive. But because statistics on regenerative and sustainable practices are scarce, I’m using “organic” as a fudge to cover all three approaches for simplicity’s sake.

Since the 1980s, organic farming has been adopted quite successfully by a small number of full-time and part-time farmers, but only about 6% of U.S. farmers practice these methods, and only 1% of U.S. production is officially certified “organic.” The USDA does not research or promote innovations that improve organic techniques, nor does it pro-actively encourage young farmers to take up these practices.

Propaganda—like Monsanto’s 1970s public relations campaign touting the truism “Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible”—once ridiculed organic farming and conjured up visions of dawn-to-dusk drudgery behind a horse-drawn plow to produce piddling yields of below-standard crops plagued by uncontrolled pests.

Organic farming is more labor intensive than industrial agriculture. But it doesn’t require that all the tractors and combines be left to rust. And while yields are lower depending on the crop, they are not puny. Forty years ago, the Center for the Study of Biological Systems found that in good years, large-scale organic farms produced only about 10% less than high-chemical farms. In bad weather years, they produced as much or more. In the four decades since that study was done, the Farming Systems Trial set up by Bob Rodale in 1981 has run experimental plots designed to compare organic farming methods with conventional, scrutinizing the outcomes of yield, soil health, fuel usage, and since 2018, water quality. FST is thus the longest-running side-by-side comparison of conventional and organic grain cropping systems in North America.

Organic farming is more than just reducing chemical use. It requires nurturing a living, dynamic soil, one in which micro-organisms promote organic decay, building humus. Organic farmers don’t buy fertilizer, they build it by adding manure, compost, and other organic materials to the soil. Instead of plowing high-cost nitrogen pellets into the ground, they grow nitrogen fixers like peas and beans. They recycle plant wastes. Crops planted in this rich soil are better able to resist disease and pests.

Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the U.N. environment program and former executive director of the European Environment Agency,

Broadly achieved, that rich, revitalized soil could have another impact, too. According to The Guardian, Improving soil could keep world within 1.5C heating target, research suggests. Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the U.N. environment program and former executive director of the European Environment Agency, said employing improved farming techniques could absorb 31 metric gigatons of carbon dioxide annually. That’s enough by itself to fill the gap between nations’ promised emissions reductions and what is needed by 2030 to keep the average global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level:

McGlade now leads a commercial organisation that sells soil data to farmers. Downforce Technologies uses publicly available global data, satellite images and lidar to assess in detail how much carbon is stored in soils, which can now be done down to the level of individual fields. “Outside the farming sector, people do not understand how important soils are to the climate,” said McGlade. “Changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon, and reducing the cost of farming.”

A fully regenerative system requires a farm ecology, a system of crop rotation and erosion controls combined with manure-producing livestock. It also requires that much marginal farm land be permanently removed from agricultural production, and that urban land-use policies direct development away from rich farmland.

A regenerative farm.

To be fair, the USDA has taken some positive steps over the years. Some 51% of corn, cotton, soybean and wheat farmers have adopted no-till and similar practices designed to limit erosion. However, cover crops are only used in about 5% of cases where they could be, according to Bruno Basso, a sustainable agriculture researcher at Michigan State University. “It costs $40 to $50 per acre to plant a cover crop,” he says. Though some government grant funding is available, “the costs of cover crops are not supported,” and there is a need for additional incentives, he says.

Just as organically nurtured soil provides a healthy medium in which to grow crops, we need policies to provide a nourishing environment in which rural communities can thrive. With the spread of broadband internet being promoted by the Biden-Harris administration plus other amenities of modern life, farm towns need not be isolated or culturally moribund. Given the hellholes that climate change is going to make of many coastal and other U.S. cities, those small towns and their surroundings might attract new residents as urban climate refugees seek to avoid the impacts of heatwaves, sea-level rise, and other harmful impacts of pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Of course, some agricultural regions will themselves become ever-more unsuitable for human habitation.

Seed money could establish regional centers to provide jobs and markets for crops that we now import from Mexico or farther away. Incentives could also restore the role of once-vibrant agricultural cooperatives. Federal research money that now flows toward furthering chemical-intensive agriculture could be reallocated to improve farming methods regeneratively.

Reviving rural America and securing ecologically sound agriculture means weaning farmers off the chemical teat. It means revamping the USDA and the land-grant institutions to innovate and promote rather than treat organic agriculture as niche operations run by modern hippies. It means putting up obstacles to the further industrialization of farming. It means recognizing that we cannot continue to draw down aquifers without replenishing them if we are to avoid titanic future impacts. Climate change requires quick action in all these matters.

Just as difficult, if not more so, will be dealing with the concentration of agribusiness. Four companies now control 90% of the global grain market. One of those four, Cargill, and three others control 85% of U.S. feedlot cattle. Forty percent of U.S. farmers don’t own the land they farm. Seasonal farmworkers make up a super-exploited workforce without nearly enough protections even compared with other U.S. low-wage earners. And then there are the millions of consumers for whom healthy, affordable food is often out of reach.

To Americans, agrarian reform has always seemed a project for developing countries, what used to be called the Third World. But the U.S. needs its own comprehensive Agrarian Reform Act. Unfortunately, one thing we can count on is that this year’s farm bill won’t come close to being anything like that.

Related:

weekly eco video

(The video contains Sen. Merkley’s opening remarks and a link to the full hearing.)

x YouTube Video

GREEN BRIEFS

Methane emissions are one of the big question marks of the global climate crisis. Over the past few years we’ve been getting a better picture of where those emissions now come from and where future increases are likely to come from.

Leaks from landfills, oil fields, natural gas pipelines have turned out to be releasing more methane than previously thought, partly because companies were doing their own tally, self-monitoring always being a mistake when profits are involved. Heatwaves have led to increased methane emissions from thawing permafrost in Siberia. Indeed, one fifth of frozen soils at high latitudes are rapidly thawing, and a study shows this could mean far more carbon being released from the Arctic than previously thought. This will inevitably contribute to global warming, but scientists are quite divided over how much.

Gabrielle Kleber

Now a study published in Nature Geoscience has found that melting glaciers on the remote Arctic islands of Svalbard, Norway, are uncovering groundwater springs that are the latest previously unknown source of methane releases. Gabrielle Kleber, a lead author on the study and a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, told Lydia Larsen at Inside Climate News, “What we found is that these groundwater springs were just completely untouched or unknown sources of methane in the Arctic, both on Svalbard and very likely across the Arctic.”

The researchers were able to identify these groundwater springs in areas recently uncovered by Arctic glaciers via satellite. Then, over the span of three winters, researchers rode snowmobiles to these frozen springs to take water samples. Over two winters researchers sampled 123 springs from 78 glaciers. [...] After analyzing the samples, researchers found that the methane concentration in this water was up to 600,000 times higher than the normal concentration in water. Most of that methane then flows into the atmosphere, where it is about 80 times more warming than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

While the study focused solely on Svalbard, the same process is almost certainly happening across the Arctic. Temperatures there are rising four times faster than on the Earth as a whole, and around Svalbard they are rising twice as fast as the Arctic as a whole.

So far, these groundwater springs aren’t emitting much methane, but they could become “more relevant as glaciers continue to shrink in our rapidly warming climate,” Kleber said.

A Pew survey has found that a majority of Americans support the United States adopting policies to address the climate crisis and prioritize the spread of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. However, the findings also show once again that support for such policies in general doesn’t automatically translate into support for specific ones. For example, most Americans oppose ending the production of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, and support for eliminating natural gas lines from new buildings is minimal.

The survey of 10,329 U.S. adults was conducted May 30 to June 4, 2023. Among the finds, 74% of Americans say they support the country’s participation in international efforts to reduce the effects of climate change, 67% prioritize the development of alternative energy sources over increasing the production of fossil fuel energy sources, and 61% favor requiring power plants to eliminate all carbon emissions by 2040.

But there are limits:

Only 31% of Americans currently support phasing out the use of fossil fuel energy sources altogether. Another 32% say the U.S. should eventually stop using fossil fuels, but don’t believe the country is ready now. And 35% think the U.S. should never stop using fossil fuels to meet its energy needs. Less than half of the public (40%) favors phasing out the production of gas-powered cars and trucks. Support for this policy is 7 percentage points lower than it was two years ago. And underscoring the strong feelings big changes to American life can engender, 45% say they would feel upset if gas-powered cars were phased out; fewer than half as many (21%) would feel excited.

RESOURCES & ACTION

Environmental Voter Project: The nonpartisan EVP identifies millions of non-voting environmentalists and turns them into consistent voters with the goal of making this critical mass “too big for politicians to ignore.” EVP estimates that more than 8 million environmentalists did not vote in the 2020 presidential election, and more than 13 million skipped the 2022 midterms. The nonpartisan nonprofit is focused on a simple solution to the problem: accurately identifying these non-voting environmentalists and efficiently converting them into a critical mass of consistent voters that will soon be too big for politicians to ignore.” Here’s a story on EVP from Grist.

ECOPINION

The Greenland ice sheet cannot wait. By Twila Moon at Eco-Business. Before landing in Greenland at the start of the melt season, I expected to see more snow. But only patches of winter snow remained. One does not need to be a scientist to observe the trends that we researchers can detect via satellites and other long-term measurements. [...] The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card for Greenland, which I co-authored, paints a grim picture. In 2022, Greenland marked its 25th consecutive year of net ice loss, accompanied by “unprecedented late-season melt events.” [...] Greenland’s accelerating rate of ice loss is projected to exceed that of any period during the Holocene, the geological epoch that began roughly 12,000 years ago. There is compelling evidence that the western portion of the Greenland Ice Sheet is growing increasingly unstable, edging toward a tipping point beyond which its dynamics and structure fundamentally and irreversibly shift. In fact, scientists may have underestimated how sensitive glaciers are to global warming, which means that the tipping point may be reached sooner than we think. Twila Moon is Deputy Lead Scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Related: Meltwater is hydro-fracking Greenland’s ice sheet through millions of hairline cracks—destabilizing its internal structure.

Farm workers labor in a strawberry field amid drought conditions on August 5, 2022, near Ventura, California.

Water is precious in the American West. California barely even tries to manage it. By Nell Green Nylen, Dave Owen, and Michael Kiparsky at the San Francisco Chronicle. For eight days last summer, a group of about 80 California ranchers and farmers took more than half the Shasta River’s flow during severe drought conditions, violating state requirements designed to protect salmon. The state’s water regulator couldn’t stop the illegal diversion but fined the group the maximum penalty it could—$4,000. The fine translated to about $50 per person. That’s not much of a deterrent. The reality is when water, arguably California’s most important resource, is stretched thinnest, the state can’t effectively stop people from taking it out of turn. As a result, many communities and individuals struggle to meet basic human needs for water and the ecosystems we all depend on suffer. [...] California doesn’t need to settle for this dysfunctional status quo. Instead, it can begin to manage water scarcity as a routine fact of life, like traffic. Other Western states do this. California can, too. Nell Green Nylen is a senior research fellow at the Wheeler Water Institute in the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley School of Law. Dave Owen is a professor at UC College of the Law San Francisco. Michael Kiparsky is director of the Wheeler Water Institute.

Ermine Moth on Mountain Mint

Stopping the 'insect apocalypse'​ in the garden of capitalism. By Robert C. Koehler at Common Dreams. If neonics—neonicotinoid pesticides—are so dangerous, what is the Environmental Protection Agency doing about it? Not very much, as it turns out, despite scientific evidence of their danger, which is why Center for Food Safety, along with the Pesticide Action Network North America, are suing the agency. As Amy van Saun, an attorney for the nonprofit Center for Food Safety writes, “almost half of all U.S. farmland is planted with pesticide-coated seeds,” but the agency refuses to regulate them. The result, according to a U.N. report, is that cropland is about 50 times more toxic than it was a quarter of a century ago, at the beginning of the 21st century, and the world is currently experiencing an “insect apocalypse.” And indeed, it begins to appear that the EPA has a mission that transcends “environmental protection.” It may well be that this agency—part of a governmental culture that supports and benefits from wealth and war—has a mission that is more about official denial of the dangers of planetary exploitation. The EPA’s refusal to acknowledge the damage caused by neonics is just a small part of it.

Fight to protect our right to enjoy Colorado’s rivers and streams from private landowners. By the Denver Post Editorial Board. Aggressive landowners who mistakenly believe they own the river and can restrict access have a long history in this state – including erecting dangerous metal gates in an attempt to strain out river floaters (creating a drowning hazard in the process)—and the time has come for Colorado lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis to act before someone gets hurt. The Colorado Supreme Court could have settled this case once and for all by taking up Hill’s request for the courts to rule that he and others have access to wade, float or fish navigable rivers and streams. Instead, the court demurred, ruling that Hill had no standing to bring the case, an odd decision given that he was asserting a public right with a basis in the “trust doctrine”—a court-established ruling in 1892 that states hold navigable waters and underlying beds in trust for public uses, a ruling that has been built upon and expanded by the courts for decades. The refusal of the state court to take up the issue demands that our lawmakers do what other states have done and declare that the water and beds in navigable rivers and streams and natural lakes is the property of the people.

Why is climate 'doomism' going viral—and who's fighting it? By Marco Silva at BBC News. Climate doomism is the idea that we are past the point of being able to do anything at all about global warming—and that mankind is highly likely to become extinct. That's wrong, scientists say, but the argument has been picking up steam online for a couple of years. Alaina Wood is a sustainability scientist based in Tennessee. On TikTok she's known as thegarbagequeen. She makes a habit of challenging climate doomism—a mission she has embraced with a sense of urgency. "People are giving up on activism because they're like, 'I can't handle it any more... This is too much...' and 'If it really is too late, why am I even trying?'" she says. "Doomism ultimately leads to climate inaction, which is the opposite of what we want."

eco-quote

“We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone’s arguing over where they're going to sit”—David Suzuki

HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)

No obituary for Earth: Scientists fight climate doom talk. By Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press. University of Maine climate scientist Jacquelyn Gill noticed in 2018 fewer people telling her climate change isn't real and more "people that we now call doomers that you know believe that nothing can be done." Gill says it is just not true. "I refuse to write off or write an obituary for something that's still alive," Gill said, referring to the Earth. "We are not through a threshold or past the threshold. There's no such thing as pass-fail when it comes to the climate crisis." "It's really, really, really hard to walk people back from that ledge," Gill said. Doomism "is definitely a thing," said Wooster College psychology professor Susan Clayton, who studies climate change anxiety and spoke at a conference in Norway last year that addressed the issue. "It's a way of saying 'I don't have to go to the effort of making changes because there's nothing I can do anyway.'" [...] "Everybody knows it's going to get worse," said Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis. "We can do a lot to make it less bad than the worst case scenario."

'We've Run Out of Time': Experts and Activists Urge Climate Action Amid Summer of Extremes. By Olivia Rosane at Common Dreams. In a speech to a United Nations panel discussion on Monday,, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk cautioned that current policies put the planet on course for a "dystopian future." Türk said, "Yet still we are not acting with the urgency and determination that is required. Leaders perform the choreography of deciding to act and promising to act and then ... get stuck in the short term." His remarks came after Reuters ran an article highlighting recent weather extremes and land- and sea-temperature records. Scientists warn that the clock is running out on the chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial levels. "We've run out of time because change takes time," University of New South Wales climate scientist Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick told Reuters.

An employee for SK Battery America, located in Commerce, Georgia, practices work techniques on training equipment that was fabricated by Quick Start to mirror operations inside the facility.

This Georgia program is training a huge cleantech manufacturing workforce. By Alison K. Takemura. Robert Howey has worked at the Hanwha Qcells solar manufacturing plant in Dalton, Georgia since it opened in 2019. But like many of the factory’s other employees, he used to work in a completely different industry: carpet manufacturing. The Qcells plant is located in what Georgians affectionately call ​“the carpet capital of the world.” Before Howey started at Qcells, ​“I had no idea about solar,” he said. He was hired to be a ​“tabber operator” on the production line, where his role would be to watch over machines that solder silicon wafers together, an early stage in the making of a solar module. But he didn’t understand how his particular task fit into the overall process, which made him uncertain about how to do his job well. ​“I was really nervous about it,” he told Canary Media. Georgia Quick Start, a state-funded workforce training program, gave him the guidance he needed. In a week of on-ramping, trainers walked him through all the steps of making a solar panel, instruction that gave him the confidence to start his new career. Quick Start, he said, was ​“a lifesaver.”

Experts See Signs of Hope for the Pacific’s Gray Whales. From Yale Environment 360. Following its latest count of migrating whales, NOAA estimates that gray whales now number around 14,500, down from roughly 16,700 last year, and well below their peak of close to 28,800 in 2015. The gray whale population is now the smallest it has been since the early 1970s, when the creatures were still recovering from commercial whaling. But NOAA officials say there are signs of hope. Whales spotted in Mexico look healthier than in recent years, and strandings along the West Coast are at the lowest level since 2019. In their latest survey, scientists also counted more mothers with calves than at any point in the last five years, suggesting gray whales could be primed for a comeback, said Aimée Lang, a biologist at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “The reports of small increases in the number of calves in Mexico may be a promising sign.”

Wildlife Groups Welcome Endangered Species Act Updates. By Lindsey Botts at Sierra magazine. When the Biden Administration proposed updating the Endangered Species Act last month, many in the conservation community felt a sense of relief. If finalized, the new rules would replace some of the worst regulations the Trump administration proposed in 2019 that undermine the law. The new regulations would make it easier for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, the two agencies tasked with administering the ESA, to save habitat and protect imperiled species. However, those two agencies stopped short of fully revoking all of the Trump administration's policies. So the updates failed to meet the high hopes conservation groups had early on for the administration’s conservation ambitions. Some organizations, like the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice, and Defenders of Wildlife, say the newly proposed updates need to go further in strengthening the Endangered Species Act for the law to live up to its full potential. A coalition of groups, including the Sierra Club, sued the federal government in 2019 to cancel the Trump policies. A federal court refused to erase them altogether, leaving the challenged regulations in place while the Biden administration amended the rules. "What we were advocating for was a full rescission. Then we'd go back to the original regulations," said Kristen Boyles, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. "That's not what [the Biden administration] did. They rescinded some. They amended some. They left some alone."

Joshua Tree National Park

California Enacts Permanent Protections for Joshua Trees. By Paige Bennett at EcoWatch. The Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act has passed in California. The act is the first legislation in the state to protect a species from climate change. It prohibits any person or public agency from importing, exporting, removing, owning, buying or selling western Joshua trees or any of their parts, and the legislation requires the Department of Fish and Wildlife, along with Indigenous tribes and the public, to establish a conservation plan for the species. “The California Endangered Species Act is our most important biodiversity protection law, and western Joshua trees clearly qualify as threatened,” Said Brendan Cummings, conservation director for the Center for Biological Diversity, “As the first species in the state to be protected because of climate change, they deserve the special measures contained in the new conservation act.” Western Joshua trees are native to California and other southwestern states. In California, they span from the Joshua Tree National Park area to the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains. These “trees” are actually monocotyledons, or monocots, a type of grass-like, flowering plant. They trees face many threats, including wildfires, habitat loss, and climate change. A 2019 study found that in a moderate emissions mitigation scenario, the plant’s habitat within Joshua Tree National Park could still shrink to about 14% of the original range by the end of the century. In a business-as-usual scenario, the Joshua tree’s livable habitat within the national park would almost entirely disappear.

GREEN LINKS

California officials warn toxic algae making sea lions aggressive • Locally transmitted malaria in the US could be a harbinger of rising disease risk in a warming climate—5 questions answered • China on Course to Reach Solar and Wind Power Goals Five Years Ahead of Schedule • New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm hits a milestone—and one county is fighting all of it • Extreme heat will cost the US $1 billion in health care costs—this summer alone • In the Everglades, a Clash Portrayed as ‘Science vs. Politics’ Pits a Leading Scientist Against His Former Employer • One seed at a time: Lebanese project promotes agroecology for farmer autonomy • How old coal plants could help fuel a renewable boom • How Arizona stands between tribes and their water • Catastrophic climate 'doom loops' could start in just 15 years, new study warns • Biden admin scoops up $30M in public land oil sales

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