Tag Archives: climate crisis

Mongabay: U.S. policy experts confident of future climate action despite Trump election

The once and future president of the United States continues to mock climate science as if it’s fashion not reality.

No single president U.S. history, just Donald Trump, did more to undermine the trajectory of conservation, forest and species protections, clear air and clean water regulations, and most critically of all, climate action connected to promoting zero-carbon renewable energy while reducing fossil fuel burning during his first term in office. Remarkably, but not surprisingly, none of those issues was discussed much at all during the chaotic, and for Democrats, truncated campaign for the presidency in 2024.

In an election that was suppose to be razor thin but ended up being far less so, American voters decided among many other things that the candidate who still insists climate change is a hoax (residents of Asheville, North Carolina, word like a word with Trump) is the candidate they want back in charge of federal environmental policy. They did so even as he demanded a quid pro quo from US oil barons to fund his campaigns with billions in return for unrestrained drilling and extraction permits. He also vowed once again to remove the United States from the historic Paris Agreement, the only country on earth to do so.

Meeting the urgency of the moment, this story was published on the day it was written: three says after the US election; three days before the start of the COP29, the United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan (just north of Iran). In it, two U.S. government experts on climate policy shared during an global virtual press conference what they think the impact of another four years of Trump policies on climate and the environment will be on the U.S. and the world. The fact that they believe it will be less impactful than before is in itself an indictment of a miserable U.S. record of leadership amid the worst crisis humanity has ever collectively faced — accelerating climate change and global warming.

Uncontrollable wildfires in California and across Canada are a deadly reality of worsening climate change, not a political hoax.

Mongabay: As EU finalizes renewable energy plan, forest advocates condemn biomass

Wood chips piled in mounds more than 6 meters (20 feet) high cover the lot of an Enviva wood pellet plant in Ahoskie, North Carolina. Enviva claims it uses wood waste and doesn’t use large whole trees in the making of its wood pellets and that it only accepts wood from sites that will be replanted with trees — greenwashing that was discounted this week by a whistleblower who worked for Enviva and also confirmed by a Mongabay onsite investigation. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

As I was preparing my exclusive whistleblower story, a commentary was released in the journal Nature that sought to weigh in on the late-stage negotiations in the European Union on its Renewable Energy Directive (RED) as it applied to biomass harvest and burning. The headline pretty much summed up the message: EU climate plan boosts bioenergy but sacrifices carbon storage storage and biodiversity.

I interviewed the lead author, Tim Searchinger of Princeton, sought comments from sources in The Netherlands and Germany regarding the state of the negotiations, got one German member of parliament to answer a few questions without attribution, and layered in context regarding European politics and bioenergy industry lobbying.

The result: this story that updates readers on the state of RED negotiations and the latest scientific arguments for limiting biomass harvest and burning, and eliminating billions in subsidies. A reference to my whistleblower story fit into the story as well.