March, 30 2022, 02:19pm EDT
Coastal California Sunflower Is Latest Endangered Species Act Success
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today changed the Endangered Species Act status of beach layia, a small sunflower that grows only in California's coastal dunes, reclassifying it from endangered to threatened. The change is due to reduced impacts from offroad vehicles, grazing, and development throughout much of the species' range.
EUREKA, Calif.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today changed the Endangered Species Act status of beach layia, a small sunflower that grows only in California's coastal dunes, reclassifying it from endangered to threatened. The change is due to reduced impacts from offroad vehicles, grazing, and development throughout much of the species' range.
"The lovely beach layia has benefited immensely from protection under the Endangered Species Act and is heading toward recovery," said Jeff Miller, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Their gorgeous white, yellow and purple flowers now adorn more than 600 acres of our coastal dunes."
The largest populations of beach layia are found on the North Coast in Humboldt County, where it grows in 13 locations -- mostly around Humboldt Bay -- and at Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County. On the Central Coast there are three small populations on Monterey Peninsula, and there is a small South Coast population at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Beach layia was protected as endangered in 1992 because of damage to dune habitat from human disturbances, particularly from offroad vehicles, agricultural activities, and development. Since a recovery plan was developed for the species in 1998, a significant amount of suitable dune habitat has been protected as preserves and conservation areas. Threats have been reduced, especially by preventing offroad vehicles from driving in the flower's habitat. Beach layia has responded by increasing in abundance, and there are now nine robust populations of the flowers that each had more than 1 million plants during 2017 surveys.
But beach layia still faces threats, mostly from invasive plants that compete for growing space on open areas of sandy dunes. Invasive plants can also artificially stabilize coastal dunes, disrupting natural dune movement and processes that layia plants depend on. They're further threatened by livestock grazing, erosion and disturbance from offroad and equestrian recreation, rapid climate change, drought, sea-level rise, and pesticide use.
"The future looks better for beach layia, but its survival isn't secure yet," said Miller. "There are still many threats to this flower, and it could benefit from reintroducing plants to former sites where it once thrived to expand its range and resilience."
An estimated 20% of beach layia occurrences at Point Reyes National Seashore have been subject to cattle grazing, which caused an 84% decline in the flowers' abundance in the park between 2004 to 2018. Livestock trample layia plants and increase the spread of weeds. The National Park Service has restored dune habitats where layia can thrive but recently approved a plan to continue unsustainable levels of cattle grazing at Point Reyes, over the objections of conservation groups that want to end commercial cattle ranching in the park. The Park Service plan would allow cattle to continue trampling 12% of the layia occurrences at Point Reyes.
"There's no excuse for allowing any cattle grazing in habitat for beach layia and other endangered plants at Point Reyes National Seashore," said Miller.
Beach layia occurs on the North Coast in five areas in Humboldt County, with the largest populations near Humboldt Bay and the mouth of the Mattole River. One of largest populations in size and acreage is at Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County. Former layia populations have been eliminated from San Francisco, Point Pinos in Pacific Grove, and two locations in Humboldt County.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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'Historic Moment': Applause as UN Adopts Climate Justice Resolution
"We have witnessed a win for climate justice of epic proportions," said Vanuatu's prime minister after the passage of a resolution asking the world's highest court to clarify national obligations for climate action and the legal consequences of inaction.
Mar 30, 2023
Climate justice advocates cheered Wednesday after the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on climate change and human rights.
The newly approved measure, introduced by Vanuatu and co-sponsored by more than 130 governments, asks the world's highest court to outline countries' legal responsibilities for combatting the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency and the legal consequences of failing to meet those obligations.
"We have witnessed a win for climate justice of epic proportions," Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau said after the resolution was adopted by consensus.
"This is a landmark moment in the fight for climate justice as it is likely to provide clarity on how existing international law... can be applied to strengthen action on climate change."
Like other Pacific Island nations, Vanuatu bears little responsibility for the climate crisis but is acutely vulnerable to its impacts, including existentially threatening sea level rise and intensified cyclones such as those that displaced thousands in the region just weeks ago. The country began pushing for the ICJ resolution in 2021, following a campaign launched in 2019 by a group of students from a university in nearby Fiji.
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) hailed its passage as "a historic moment."
\u201c\u201cIt is so decided\u201d \n\nThe @UN General Assembly just unanimously adopted the resolution for an advisory opinion on #HumanRights and #ClimateChange from the @CIJ_ICJ \u2696\ufe0f.\n\n\ud83c\udf89 This is a historic moment and a win for climate frontlines communities across the world.\u201d— Center for International Environmental Law (@Center for International Environmental Law) 1680100615
So too did Marta Schaaf, director of Amnesty International's Climate, Economic, and Social Justice program.
"This is a landmark moment in the fight for climate justice as it is likely to provide clarity on how existing international law, especially human rights and environmental legislation, can be applied to strengthen action on climate change," said Schaaf. "This will help mitigate the causes and consequences of the damage done to the climate and ultimately protect people and the environment globally."
“We salute this remarkable achievement by Vanuatu, and other Pacific Island states, which originally brought this urgent call to advance climate justice to the U.N.," Schaaf continued. "Today's victory sprang from the efforts of youth activists in Pacific Island states to secure climate justice."
Schaaf urged the ICJ "to provide a robust advisory opinion to advance climate justice." Last week's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she noted, shows that "the 1.5°C global warming limit agreed to in Paris in 2015 is likely to be breached before 2035 unless urgent action is taken." Temperature rise of roughly 1.1°C to date is already fueling catastrophic weather, with even more lethal impacts on the horizon barring transformative action.
"We see some fossil fuel-producing states both resisting calls to phase them out, and falsely promoting carbon capture and storage as a technological fix for the climate," said Schaaf. "An advisory opinion from the court can help put a brake on this accelerating climate disaster."
CIEL's Climate and Energy program director Nikki Reisch also applauded the resolution, saying it marks an important step "toward clarifying what existing law requires states to do to curb climate change and protect human rights."
"Courts can translate the clear scientific evidence that fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis into clear legal imperatives to phase them out now and implement proven available solutions."
Despite volumes of indisputable scientific evidence highlighting the need quickly replace fossil fuels—the leading source of greenhouse gas pollution—with renewables, last year's COP27 negotiations ended, like the 26 preceding U.N. climate summits, with no concrete commitment to wind down coal, oil, and gas production.
In the absence of a needed crackdown on the fossil fuel industry, immensely profitable oil and gas giants are planning to expand their operations in the coming years even though their executives know it means locking in additional planet-heating emissions and cataclysmic temperature increases.
While a handful of Pacific Island governments are leading calls for a global just transition to clean energy, other governments are actively aiding the continued extraction and combustion of fossil fuels.
Earlier this month, for instance, the Biden administration, which claims to view the climate crisis as an existential threat, approved ConocoPhillips' Willow project in the Alaskan Arctic—the largest proposed oil drilling endeavor on public land in U.S. history—and moved ahead with Lease Sale 259, one of the largest-ever offshore drilling auctions in the Gulf of Mexico.
As CIEL pointed out, "impacted communities across the globe are finding themselves with few alternatives but to resort to courts in their pursuit of clear rules to guide state climate action and hold states accountable for their failures."
According toThe New York Times:
The [ICJ's] opinion would not be binding. But, depending on what it says, it could potentially turn the voluntary pledges that every country has made under the Paris climate accord into legal obligations under a range of existing international statutes, such as those on the rights of children or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That could, in turn, lay the groundwork for new legal claims. (A few national courts have already relied in part on international law to rule in favor of climate activists' lawsuits.)
Courts play a critical role "in breaking through the inertia when politics break down," said Reisch. "Courts can translate the clear scientific evidence that fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis into clear legal imperatives to phase them out now and implement proven available solutions. They also can—and indeed must—hold states accountable for the mounting suffering caused by their failure to act."
Describing climate justice as "both a moral imperative and a prerequisite for effective global climate action," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the ICJ resolution "essential."
Advisory opinions issued by the world's top court "have tremendous importance and can have a long-standing impact on the international legal order," he added. Such a move "would assist the General Assembly, the U.N., and member states to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs."
The passage of the ICJ resolution comes just days after a pair of scholars put forth a novel legal theory of "climate homicide," which aims to hold fossil fuel corporations criminally liable for disaster deaths.
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In Fiery Shadow of New Train Disaster, Fetterman Leads Railway Accountability Act
"This bill will implement commonsense safety reforms, hold the big railway companies accountable, protect the workers who make these trains run, and help prevent future catastrophes," said the Pennsylvania Democrat.
Mar 30, 2023
As a train derailment and fire forced evacuations in Minnesota on Thursday, a trio of Democratic U.S. senators introduced another piece of legislation inspired by the ongoing public health and environmental disaster in and around East Palestine, Ohio.
The Railway Accountability Act—led by Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)—would build on the bipartisan Railway Safety Act introduced at the beginning of March by Brown and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) after a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials including vinyl chloride derailed in the small Ohio community on February 3.
While welcoming "greater federal oversight and a crackdown on railroads that seem all too willing to trade safety for higher profits," Eddie Hall, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), also warned just after the earlier bill was unveiled that "you can run a freight train through the loopholes."
The new bill is backed by unions including the Transport Workers of America (TWU), the National Conference of Firemen & Oilers (NCFO), and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers-Mechanical Division (SMART-MD).
"Communities like Darlington Township and East Palestine are too often forgotten and overlooked by leaders in Washington and executives at big companies like Norfolk Southern who only care about making their millions."
"It is an honor and a privilege to introduce my first piece of legislation, the Railway Accountability Act, following the derailment affecting East Palestine, Ohio, and Darlington Township, Pennsylvania," Fetterman said in a statement. "This bill will implement commonsense safety reforms, hold the big railway companies accountable, protect the workers who make these trains run, and help prevent future catastrophes that endanger communities near railway infrastructure."
Fetterman, who is expected to return to the Senate in mid-April after checking himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last month to be treated for clinical depression, asserted that "working Pennsylvanians have more than enough to think about already—they should never have been put in this horrible situation."
"Communities like Darlington Township and East Palestine are too often forgotten and overlooked by leaders in Washington and executives at big companies like Norfolk Southern who only care about making their millions," he added. "That's why I'm proud to be working with my colleagues to stand up for these communities and make clear that we're doing everything we can to prevent a disaster like this from happening again."
As Fetterman's office summarized, the Railway Accountability Act would:
- Direct the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to examine the causes of and potential mitigation strategies for wheel-related derailments and mechanical defects, and publish potential regulations that would improve avoidance of these defects;
- Ensure that employees can safely inspect trains by prohibiting trains from being moved during brake inspections;
- Require that the mechanic that actually inspects a locomotive or rail car attests to its safety;
- Direct the FRA to review regulations relating to the operation of trains in switchyards, and direct railroads to update their plans submitted under the FRA's existing Risk Reduction Program (RRP) to incorporate considerations regarding switchyard practices;
- Require the FRA to make Class 1 railroad safety waivers public in one online location;
- Require railroads to ensure that communication checks between the front and end of a train do not fail, and that emergency brake signals reach the end of a train;
- Ensure Class 1 railroad participation in the confidential Close Call Reporting System by requiring all railroads that have paid the maximum civil penalty for a safety violation to join; and
- Ensure that railroads provide warning equipment (such as white disks, red flags, or whistles) to railroad watchmen and lookouts.
A preliminary report released in late February by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) suggests an overheated wheel bearing may have caused the disastrous derailment in Ohio. The initial findings added fuel to demands that federal lawmakers enact new rules for the rail industry.
"Rail lobbyists have fought for years to protect their profits at the expense of communities like East Palestine," Brown noted Thursday.
Casey stressed that "along with the Railway Safety Act, this bill will make freight rail safer and protect communities from preventable tragedies."
In addition to pushing those two bills, Brown, Casey, and Fetterman have responded to the East Palestine disaster by introducing the Assistance for Local Heroes During Train Crises Act and—along with other colleagues—writing to Norfolk Southern president and CEO Alan Shaw, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, and U.S. Environmental Protection Administrator Michael Regan with various concerns and demands.
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Rapidly Melting Glaciers Threaten Collapse of Crucial Ocean Circulation Systems: Study
"It's way faster than we thought these circulations could slow down," said one researcher. "We are talking about the possible long-term extinction of an iconic water mass."
Mar 30, 2023
Scientists from the United States and Australia on Wednesday warned in a new study that the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting rapid melting of Antarctic glaciers is placing a vital deep ocean current "on a trajectory that looks headed towards collapse" in the coming decades.
As Common Dreams has reported, Antarctic ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, and the melting is causing fresh water to enter the ocean—reducing the salinity and density which is needed to drive the "overturning circulation" of water deep in the world's oceans.
Normally, dense water flows toward the ocean floor and helps transport heat and and vital nutrients through the planet's oceans. The circulation helps support marine ecosystems and the stability of ice shelves.
With carbon emissions continuing to rise despite clear warnings from energy and climate experts about the urgent need to draw down emissions, the deep ocean current is projected to slow by 40% by 2050, according to the study, which was published in Nature.
The current slowdown would "profoundly alter the ocean overturning of heat, fresh water, oxygen, carbon, and nutrients, with impacts felt throughout the global ocean for centuries to come," according to the study.
The researchers, who study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Australian National University, and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), examined models and simulations over two years to determine how fast the deep ocean current more than 13,000 feet below the surface is expected to slow down as fresh water rapidly enters the ocean.
Circulation deep in the ocean could weaken twice as fast as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which carries warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic Ocean. The collapse of the AMOC has previously been identified as "one of the planet's main potential tipping points," as Common Dreams reported in 2021, but the Antarctic overturning circulation has been less studied until now.
The deep ocean current allows nutrients to rise from the bottom of the ocean, supporting about three-quarters of phytoplankton production and forming the basis of the global food chain.
"If we slow the sinking near Antarctica, we slow down the whole circulation and so we also reduce the amount of nutrients that get returned from the deep ocean back up to the surface," Stephen Rintoul, a fellow at CSIRO and co-author of the study, told Al Jazeera.
The ocean would also be left with a limited ability to absorb carbon dioxide due to the stratification of its upper layers, and warm water could increasingly intrude on the western Antarctic ice shelf, creating a feedback loop and even more melting of glaciers.
The study is "actually kind of conservative" in that it doesn't go into detail regarding that "disaster [scenario]," Alan Mix, a co-author of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report who was not involved in Wednesday's study, toldAl Jazeera.
Matthew England, another co-author of the study, toldThe Guardian that deep ocean circulations have "have taken more than 1,000 years or so to change, but this is happening over just a few decades."
"It's way faster than we thought these circulations could slow down," England added. "We are talking about the possible long-term extinction of an iconic water mass."
The study is the latest sign that action to reduce planet-heating fossil fuel emissions is happening far too slowly, said climate scientist Bill McGuire.
\u201cMore absolutely horrendous news on the global heating front.\n\nOur climate is falling apart in front of our eyes.\n\nNet zero in 2050 is nowhere near enough and far, far, too late.\n\nhttps://t.co/BvjXqX9cft\u201d— Bill McGuire (@Bill McGuire) 1680123140
"It seems almost certain that continuing on a high greenhouse gas emission pathway will lead to even more profound effects on the ocean and the climate system," John Church, an emeritus professor at University of New South Wales in Australia, told Al Jazeera. "The world urgently needs to drastically reduce our emissions to get off the high-emission pathway we are currently following."
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