SUMMARY: The Democratic Republic of Congo is a massive country, with a land area the size of Alaska and Texas combined. It’s also home to a large part of the Congo Basin rainforest, a habitat for countless species and a crucial absorber of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But illegal and uncontrolled logging represent major threats to this critical ecosystem. Special correspondent Monica Villamizar reports.
SUMMARY: Phosphate mining is a major industry in Florida, but it’s also a major source of pollution, responsible for red tide, toxic algal blooms and killing wildlife. In the northern part of the state, residents of a small town are resisting a man who wants to mine phosphate near their homes. Can the local government balance individual rights and with community health concerns? Laura Newberry reports.
SUMMARY: In a newly released five-year plan, the Trump administration has proposed opening up vast new areas to oil and gas exploration, including federal waters off the California coast and off the East Coast, from Georgia to Maine. Amy Harder, who covers energy and climate change issues for Axios, describes what this all means.
SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency cannot delay implementation of a rule limiting methane emissions from new oil and gas drilling wells, according to an appeals court ruling on Monday. William Brangham speaks with Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post about the obstacle for the Trump administration’s efforts to reverse environmental regulations and the wider implications.
SUMMARY: In Delhi, India, the capital of the world's fastest growing economy, there's a towering symbol of the environmental cost of development; tons of festering, toxic trash, piled up 10 stories high, with more and more added every day. Efforts have been made to turn that trash into energy-producing fuel, but cultural hurdles remain. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour): In India's capital, new housing sprawls as far as the eye can see, a symbol of the world's fastest growing major economy.
There also are towering symbols of the environmental cost of all this. Just look for the birds. Under thousands of hovering vultures are the city's landfills. This is one of three covering some 70 acres in a low-income area called Ghazipur.
I'm standing near the top of the Ghazipur landfill site, an accumulation by now of more than 10 million tons of waste. It's more than 10 stories high. Behind me, it towers over the surrounding skyline. And trucks are all around here, bringing in an additional 2,000 tons of unsorted garbage every day.
MAHESH BABU, Managing Director, IL & FS Company: You can't dump more in that mountain there.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Mahesh Babu heads an infrastructure company that's been contracted by Delhi's government to tackle a trash problem that he says is a crisis at many levels.
MAHESH BABU: Keep in mind Delhi is on the seismic zone. So, you are really…
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: If you had an earthquake here, God forbid.
MAHESH BABU: Yes. You have an earthquake, you will have that mound just sliding down.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And even without an earthquake, he says the festering garbage is toxic. Methane from the dump explodes daily in dozens of spontaneous fires that spew toxins into the air, while a stew of heavy metals and organic and inorganic pollutants washes into the soil when it rains and into Delhi's main river.
MAHESH BABU: Yes, the dark liquid right here is what we call leachate.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Babu showed me a sample of this so-called leachate.
MAHESH BABU: What we do is basically treat it, so that it removes all the toxic impurities.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But of the millions of tons that are not treated yet, this is the stuff that's going into the Yamuna River.
MAHESH BABU: Especially during monsoon.
SUMMARY: The Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone XL Pipeline were put on hold during the Obama administration. But new executive orders by President Trump begin putting them back on track, as part of efforts to undo former President Obama's legacy. How do these moves fit into the broader Trump agenda for energy and the environment? William Brangham talks with Valerie Volcovici of Reuters.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Two of those moves gave new life to two of the most contentious oil pipelines in America, the Dakota Access Pipeline, which hundreds of Native American groups have been protesting, as well as the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Both of these had been delayed or put on hold by the Obama administration.
To understand how these moves fit into the Trump administration's broader plans for energy and environmental policy, I'm joined by Valerie Volcovici. She covers this for Reuters.
Welcome.
VALERIE VOLCOVICI, Reuters: Thank you.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So let's talk about these two pipelines in particular.
The Dakota Access pipeline, what did Trump's order say about that?
VALERIE VOLCOVICI: So, Trump's order this morning basically said that he wants to expedite the process.
As you well know, the Dakota Access protest has really galvanized Native American tribal sovereignty issues. It's brought together so, wide coalition of environmentalists, social activists, in addition to tribes.
So it's been one of the more high-profile protests that we have seen in a while. Right now, it's kind of stalled because former President Obama ordered an environmental review of a kind of contentious section of this pipeline that the tribe argues crosses into some sacred sites. His aim is really to move it along, because…
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: He wants to get this built.
VALERIE VOLCOVICI: He wants to get it built, and he said so on the campaign trail, and he is following through on day four, whatever it is, of the administration.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Yes, this one really wasn't that much of a surprise, if you had been listening to him all along.
VALERIE VOLCOVICI: Right.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And then what about the Keystone XL? That is a slightly different issue. This was another pipeline that goes from Canada down to the Gulf.
And this was one that Obama for many, many years seemed to wrangle with and debate what to do, and then eventually denied the permit for it. What did Trump do today?
VALERIE VOLCOVICI: Well, what Trump did today is, first of all, it invited Canada to reapply. TransCanada is the company that wants to get it built. As far as I'm aware, TransCanada has said it wants to reapply.
And then it will have the State Department. They will do an environmental impact assessment of the permit and decide whether or not to issue it. And it needs to be done within 60 days.
So, again, another sign that Trump wants to fast-track this, because, as we remember from the Keystone fights, it lasted a long time and kind of became a symbol of President Obama's environmental goals and it really also galvanized the environmentalists.
As the western United States struggles with chronic water shortages and a changing climate, scientists are warning that if vast underground stores of fresh water that California and other states rely on are not carefully conserved, they too may soon run dry.
Heeding this warning, California passed new laws in late 2014 that for the first time require the state to account for its groundwater resources and measure how much water is being used.
Yet California's natural resources agency, with the oversight and consent of the federal government, also runs a shadow program that allows many of its aquifers to be pumped full of toxic waste.
Now the state — which relied on aquifers for at least 60 percent of its total water supply over the past three years — is taking steps to expand that program, possibly sacrificing portions of dozens more groundwater reserves. In some cases, regulators are considering whether to legalize pollution already taking place at a number of sites, based on arguments that the water that will be lost was too dirty to drink or too difficult to access at an affordable price. Officials also may allow the borders of some pollution areas to be extended, jeopardizing new, previously unspoiled parts of the state's water supply.
The proposed expansion would affect some of the parts of California hardest hit by drought, from the state's agriculturally rich central valley to wine country and oil-drilling fields along the Salinas River. Some have questioned the wisdom of such moves in light of the state's long-term thirst for more water supplies.
“Once [the state] exempts the water, it's basically polluted forever. It's a terrible idea,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, which is suing California to force it to complete an environmental impact assessment of the proposed aquifer changes. California, she said, is still offering breaks to its oil industry. “We're at a precipice point where the state is going to have to prioritize water over an industry that isn't going to last.”
California is one of at least 23 states where so-called aquifer exemptions — exceptions to federal environmental law that allow mining or oil and gas companies to dump waste directly into drinking water reserves — have been issued.
Exemptions are granted by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency division that has had difficulties in record keeping and has been criticized for its controversial management of groundwater reserves. A 2012 ProPublica investigation disclosed that the federal government had given energy and mining companies permission to pollute U.S. aquifers in more than 1,000 locations, as part of an underground disposal program that allows toxic substances to be disposed of in nearly 700,000 waste wells across the country.
In many cases, the exact locations of the exemptions and the precise boundaries of areas where aquifer pollution was allowed had been left poorly defined, raising concerns that waste might reach adjacent drinking water. Several states, including California, have since admitted they've allowed that to happen.
As droughts have worsened and aquifers have become more cherished, the implications of aquifer exemptions have become more serious, even as regulators have continued to issue these legal loopholes.
The federal Safe Drinking Water Act distinguishes between underground aquifers that are too salty or dirty to ever be used and those that are pure enough to drink from, defining the latter as an “underground source of drinking water.” Protection of drinking water is required under the law, and any polluting of it through waste disposal, oil and gas production, or mining is a crime. Companies, however, can file petitions to change how an aquifer is classified, arguing that it either has already been polluted or is too deep underground to likely be used. Even if water is relatively clean, if the EPA approves a change in definition, an aquifer is no longer considered a “source of drinking water,” and is no longer protected.
Applications to exempt an aquifer are supposed to undergo extensive scientific scrutiny, and today they usually do. But when the Safe Drinking Water Act was initially implemented, the federal government traded away much of that scrutiny as a compromise to win state and industry support for the new regulations. The EPA granted blanket exemptions for large swaths of territory underlying California and Texas oil fields, for example, and did the same in other states with large energy and mining industries. Documents from California, dating to 1981, estimate that at least 100 aquifers in the state's central valley were granted exemptions.
It's not always clear where the aquifers polluted under these early exemptions are located. For decades, both state officials and the federal government have struggled just to identify the precise places where the permits they issued applied, and where pollutants were being injected into groundwater. A spreadsheet listing thousands of exempted aquifer locations nationwide, provided to ProPublica in 2012 by the EPA in response to a Freedom of Information request, listed incomplete location coordinates for a majority of the exemptions, describing them merely by the county or township in which they are located . When pressed for more information, an EPA official admitted that was all the information the agency had.
California's exemption records are only slightly more precise, and no less problematic.
Most of them appear to be best described in the appendices of a tattered 1981 document, yellowed with age. (State officials suggested to ProPublica this week that other records exist but could not produce them.) Overlying sections of a simple map of the state's vast central valley, hand-drawn boundaries are sketched over areas equivalent to thousands of acres and shaded in. There are only vague descriptions like depth and name of the geologic formation, but nothing as precise as latitude and longitude coordinates, for the borders of the shaded areas. “Unfortunately, what we do not have is an easy-to-use, enumerated list,” Don Drysdale, a spokesman for the California Department of Conservation, wrote to ProPublica in an email this week. The state has never endeavored to measure the total volume of water it has allowed to be spoiled.
The waste being injected into exempted aquifers is often described as merely “salt water.” Indeed, only “non-hazardous” substances are supposed to be pumped into aquifers, even with exemptions. But under concessions won by the oil industry and inserted into federal law, oilfield production waste — including chemicals known to cause cancer and fracking materials — are not legally considered “hazardous,” a term with a specific definition in federal environmental law. According to the California Department of Conservation, which regulates the state's oil and gas industry, “drilling mud filtrate, naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM), slurrified crude-oil, saturated soils, and tank bottoms” are all allowed to be injected into aquifers as “non-hazardous” material.
Despite the substantial wiggle room granted by law, California has come under fire for not managing its roughly 52,000 waste wells properly. In 2011, the EPA sharply criticized the state for keeping poor records, mismanaging its environmental reviews, and failing to follow federal law. It suggested that the state's autonomy over its groundwater regulations could be revoked, and that the EPA would impose federal oversight.
To fend off that change, California launched its own review and, in 2014, began to uncover extraordinary lapses: Thanks to poor record keeping and confusion over which aquifers had been written off, the state found more than 2,000 wells were injecting toxins not into exempt areas, but directly into the state's drinking water aquifers. In 140 cases wastewater was being put into the highest quality aquifers, raising concerns in the state capitol about the threat to public health. California shut down some 56 waste wells last year until it could sort out the mess, and it passed improved regulations that will give the state's water agency a role in the approval process. Still, it has allowed injection to continue until the end of this year in 11 drinking water aquifers that it has to reevaluate because neither the feds nor state officials are sure whether they exempted them in the 1980s. The state is also allowing injection to continue until next February in other drinking water quality aquifers pending the approval of new aquifer exemptions that would extend that indefinitely.
Those 11 aquifers have been the focus of much of the state's renewed attention, but California still hasn't confirmed the borders of the hundreds of legacy exemptions in other aquifers that date back to the 1980s. Without taking this step, the state's top water official said, there's no way to know how much clean water California still has.
“That's part of the whole point,” Felicia Marcus, chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board told ProPublica, “not injecting into aquifers that people are depending on now, but also to go back and make sure we were not too loose on it in the past. Certainly the discovery of all these mistakes puts us on red alert.”
Now California — with Marcus' blessing — may fix the problem by expanding the boundaries of exempted areas rather than identifying and restricting them.
The Department of Conservation is poised to consider as many as 70 new aquifer exemptions, redrawing some to include areas where companies have been injecting waste illegally into drinking water. In the state's central valley, where a substantial portion of the nation's fruits and nuts are grown using groundwater, three applications for aquifer exemptions around the Fruitvale, Round Mountain and Tejon oil fields — all in or near Bakersfield — are already undergoing state reviews that would precede approval by the EPA.
And in February the state submitted final plans to the EPA to exempt a new portion of the Arroyo Grande Aquifer in Paso Robles, allowing oil companies to inject waste or fluids to help in pumping out more oil. In that case, Marcus and the state's Water Resources Control Board — the agency in charge of the quality of the state's water supply — say they agreed to allow the exemption because the aquifer was already of poor quality and would not be used in the future. Marcus said she was convinced the contaminants injected there could not migrate underground in ways that would affect other, cleaner water sources nearby — that they would be sealed in by the geologic structure of the region.
Still, the areas California is writing off are surrounded by underground water reserves that get used every day. An exemption might cover the water soaked up in one particular layer of rock, at a certain depth, even while wells extract water from aquifers above or below it. And, according to Golden-Krasner, the state's assessment that pollution will remain confined is often dependent on an oil company maintaining a specific pressure underground, making the future of the clean water vulnerable to human error.
In our 2012 investigation, ProPublica found numerous cases in which waste defied the containment that regulators and their computer models had promised, and contamination spread. In many instances, injection wells themselves punched holes in the earth's seal and leaked. In others, faults and fissures in the earth moved in ways that allowed trapped fluids to migrate. Several of the problems documented had occurred in California.
The area around Bakersfield affected by the majority of the new aquifer pollution applications is also home to one of the state's largest underground water storage facilities, the Kern Water Bank, relied on by California farmers. It lies directly above at least one of the exempted aquifers and is pierced by dozens of oil wells. The state's water board supports the exemptions, but their close proximity to drinking water could be reason to worry, acknowledges Jonathan Bishop, the chief deputy director of the Water Resources Control Board.
“Are we concerned that wells going through aquifers that have beneficial use be maintained and have high integrity? Yeah,” Bishop said. “They do go through drinking water aquifers in many locations, not just in Bakersfield.”
Opponents of the exemption program are infuriated by the fact that applications are evaluated on an isolated basis, without any consideration of the state's larger water supply issues. The original criteria for aquifer exemptions set out in federal statute never contemplated that in California and plenty of others states, multiple exemptions could be granted in close proximity or that polluted areas could be sandwiched between clean water reserves. Neither state nor federal codes call for any broader analysis of the cumulative risk.
“Their whole review is from the perspective of can we check the boxes on federal criteria and the state law,” said John Noel, who covers oil and gas issues for the environmental group Clean Water Action. “Nobody is asking the question, if we exempt these five aquifers what is the long term supply impact? How much water are we writing off?”
SUMMARY: The economic disaster in Venezuela caused by tumbling petrol prices — oil production is the main industry — is also behind an environmental one. Lake Maracaibo, which sustains the Añu indigenous group, is being contaminated by oil spills and the leaky drilling infrastructure, all made worse by rampant gas smuggling. Special correspondent Nadja Drost and videographer Bruno Federico report.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): We return now to a Venezuela in crisis.
We recently brought you a report from Caracas on the collapse of the economy and the health care system and the lawlessness run rampant there.
Tonight, again in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on crisis Reporting, special correspondent Nadja Drost and videographer Bruno Federico report from western Venezuela on Lake Maracaibo. It is the hub of Venezuela's oil industry, the country's lifeblood, which is now a trade in serious trouble.
NADJA DROST, special correspondent: The drop in oil prices has not just devastated the Venezuelan economy. It's causing an environmental crisis as well. An oil spill that happened in May still covers the shoreline of Lake Maracaibo.
JOSE GREGORIO GARCIA, Fisherman (through translator): Lately, we have been seeing a lot of oil spills. It wasn't like this before.
NADJA DROST: Jose Gregorio Garcia is part of the Anu indigenous group, who live in the lake area. Anu means people of the shore, and fishing has long been their sustenance. But leaking oil is damaging their livelihood; 15,000 barrels of oil have spilled into the lake in the last two months, according to the state oil company.
JOSE GREGORIO GARCIA (through translator): There were species that we don't see now. We think it's because of the contamination.
NADJA DROST: Shrimp are gone completely, and the lake's once-thriving blue crab fishery is also disappearing.
JOSE GREGORIO GARCIA (through translator): The oil goes to the bottom of the lake. That's where the crab is. It migrates, or dies, or gets covered with petroleum, and when it's stained like that, no one will buy it.
NADJA DROST: Oil wells have been abandoned, and production has slowed to a 13-year low. That means money that was supposed to be set aside to stop oil spills has dried up.
Alfredo Dominguez, who checks oil platforms for the state company which operates all the oil fields, says there's a lack of everything, equipment and the parts to fix it and oversight by management. Plus, thieves have also wrecked the infrastructure.
ALFREDO DOMINGUEZ, Field Operator (through translator): They rob cables from the oil stations, bulbs, everything that can be melted down. They take apart the tubes. The wells keep pumping and sending the oil to the station, but the cables and tubes have been cut, so the oil ruptures and spills into the lake.
NADJA DROST: For decades, Lake Maracaibo has been a symbol of Venezuela's oil wealth, but, today, it's in a state of decay. Beneath us, there is a massive network of interlaced tubes transporting oil and gas. Locals refer to it as a bowl of spaghetti.
SUMMARY: Clean coal technology is key to the Obama administration's plans for combating climate change. But a high-profile power plant, once a poster child for clean coal's promise, has run billions over budget in construction costs, faces federal investigations and allegations of fraud. William Brangham talks with Ian Urbina, who investigated the story for The New York Times.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): The New York Times investigation published this week examines problem at the Kemper power plant in Central Mississippi. The plant is still under construction, but its price tag has run billions of dollars over budget. It's the subject of two federal investigations and a lawsuit by Mississippi rate payers who say they have been defrauded.
The problems at Kemper also call into question the Obama administration's reliance on this clean coal technology to fight climate change.
New York Times investigative reporter Ian Urbina wrote the story about Kemper. And he joins me now.
So what is clean coal?
IAN URBINA, The New York Times: It's sort of the promising notion that we could still burn coal, but without so much pollution.
And behind the promise is technology that would allow you in different versions to pull carbon out of the emissions from coal plants.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So that it doesn't get up into the atmosphere and drive climate change?
IAN URBINA: Correct.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And was the — is the idea that the technology is proven, but we just don't know how to do it economically? What's the question been about it?
IAN URBINA: Yes, so the technology, as you say, is proven, and we know how to make it work. The challenge is, can we scale it up, so to move it from the model stage to big enough plants to make a difference, and can we do so affordably?
The affordably is really where it gets complicated, because that means can we do so in a fashion that's cheaper than natural gas? Can we do so quickly enough so that the prices don't change and then, by the time you get the plant online, it's no longer the same price tag? And this has been the big stumbling block, with Kemper included.
SUMMARY: Among the many concerns confronting Brazil's first Olympic Games, one of the most pressing is the state of Guanabara Bay, site of the sailing competition. A vital source of income for local fishermen, the bay is severely polluted and lethally toxic -- but those fighting to preserve it face a violent response. Special correspondent Lulu Garcia-Navarro of NPR reports.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO (NPR): Alexandre Anderson is a hunted man, targeted for his work on these treacherous waters.
Every day, as he heads out onto Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay, he's on a mission to defend the bay he calls home. He tells us its stark beauty hides a dark reality.
ALEXANDRE ANDERSON, Fisherman (through interpreter): We hope the Olympics will show the world another bay. There is the bay for the rich, for visitors to see, and there is the bay of the fishermen, who are suffering. That is the bay of excrement, garbage, and oil. It is the Guanabara Bay of violence.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: Alexandre took us on a tour of that bay. He knows it well. He grew up fishing here. But as the bay got more and more polluted, he became an activist, who leads a fishermen's organization.
The ecological devastation here is hard to miss. He shows us a mangrove swamp used as an illegal dumping ground for trash. Raw sewage is also pumped into the bay from communities that have no access to sanitation.
But for Alexandre Anderson, the biggest polluters are not only the residents who lack basic infrastructure, but also the petroleum industry. This is one of the biggest refineries in the area. And it's right on the banks of the Guanabara Bay.
And you can see here in the water it's slick with oil. Rio de Janeiro, a world-famous beach town, is also Brazil's oil and gas heartland. Energy accounted for 13 percent of Brazil's GDP in 2014. And almost three-quarters of the world's recent deep-water oil discoveries have been made in Brazil. The Guanabara Bay is the industry's hub.
Alexandre takes us to an oil industry shipyard and points out broken eco-barriers meant to stop paint and chemicals from leaking into the water.
SUMMARY: Minnesota’s Arrowhead region sits atop a trove of precious metals: four billion tons of raw material like copper and nickel, a haul worth $1 trillion, mining companies say. But local residents and activists are taking a stand against encroaching mining operations, citing the potentially disastrous environmental consequences. Josh Buettner of Iowa Public Television reports.
JOSH BUETTNER (PBS Iowa): Last fall, demonstrators pressured Minnesota’s Saint Louis County Board to publicly acknowledge a proposed copper-nickel sulfide mine would threaten the health of their local watershed.
WOMAN: It’s crazy to clean the river, only to allow it to be polluted again.
MAN: Mining is less than 1 percent of Minnesota’s economy.
JOSH BUETTNER: Opponents allege newly unearthed sulfur-bearing rock will create acid mine drainage, diluting previous efforts to restore the Saint Louis River, a waterway once crippled by iron ore pollution.
Since 2008, applications to conduct exploratory drilling have surged in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. And Toronto, Canada-based PolyMet Mining Corporation is first in line to unlock precious metals from the Duluth complex, a vast mineral deposit in the Arrowhead of Minnesota.
Mining proponents say geologists have known about the formation for over 60 years, but new technology will allow excavation of four billion tons of raw material worth an estimated $1 trillion.
LATISHA GIETZEN, PolyMet: It’s kind of a closed loop system.
JOSH BUETTNER: Latisha Gietzen, director of public affairs for PolyMet, says new mining techniques and rehabilitated infrastructure will mitigate past damages.
LATISHA GIETZEN: Because we’re using a Legacy site, we will actually be able to clean up some of the issues that are currently going on and bring modern technology to the process.
JOSH BUETTNER: Additionally, corporate officials say any water released from their proposed NorthMet site will be treated to meet state and federal guidelines.
But, for some, the mining industry’s track record is suspect. A well-established hub for agriculture, forestry and mining exports, the Port of Duluth sits between the contested estuary and Lake Superior. Ships from North America’s furthest inland port traditionally transported taconite, a mineral used to make steel, to mills around the Great Lakes Rust Belt and the world.
The finite resource is mined exclusively in the state’s Mesabi Iron Range. In the 1980s, two steel making facilities on the banks of the Saint Louis River became so polluted, they became qualified for EPA’s Superfund program.
With corporate- and taxpayer-funded cleanup continuing today, environmentalists such as Aaron Klemm fear relapse.
SUMMARY: Biologist and Pulitzer winner E.O. Wilson has spent his life studying animals and fighting for their conservation. As species go extinct at 1,000 times the normal rate thanks to human interference, Wilson’s new book “Half Earth” holds a bold plan to preserve the world’s biodiversity: set aside half of the entire planet for natural habitats. Jeffrey Brown talks to Wilson for more.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Scientist and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson first gained fame for his study of ants. Through the years, he’s moved from small insects to big ideas, and now a very big one, one made more urgent by the problems of climate change.
Jeffrey Brown has our profile in his second report from Southern Alabama.
E.O. WILSON, Author, “Half Earth”: I was just a 12-, 13-year-old boy, and it was just a wonderland to me.
JEFFREY BROWN: Edward O. Wilson spent his formative years in Mobile, Alabama, looking for snakes and insects in the surrounding delta.
E.O. WILSON: If I could, I would just do the same thing today that I did then, but it would look funny.
(LAUGHTER)
JEFFREY BROWN: The experience would shape him, as biologist, evolutionary theorist, naturalist, and at age 86 perhaps most important to him now conservationist.
E.O. WILSON: What is man? Storyteller, mythmaker, and destroyer of the living world.
JEFFREY BROWN: His new book, “Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight For Life,” takes on nothing less than the survival of plant and animal life on earth.
E.O. WILSON: Yearning to be more master than steward of the declining planet.
JEFFREY BROWN: Wilson’s solution is in the title, setting aside half the Earth as natural habitat.
We spoke beneath the old live oak trees at Fort Blakeley Historic Park, where Wilson’s great-grandfather fought in one of the last battles of the Civil War.
Half Earth. Are you serious?
E.O. WILSON: I’m serious. I know it sounds radical, but we must have it if we’re going to save most of the species remaining on Earth. And it’s easier to do than most people might think.
JEFFREY BROWN: It sounds impossible. It sounds for some people crazy.
E.O. WILSON: I was just going to use the word insane.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.
E.O. WILSON: Yes, it sounds that way, because they envision cutting the Earth into two hemispheres, one for us and one for the other 10 million species. But, no, we mean giving 50 percent or setting it aside, patches, some large wilderness areas, others far, far smaller, in order to make that amount of reserve area.
SUMMARY: Though now one of the most politically divisive issues in the country, the environmental movement once enjoyed strong support from both Democrats and Republicans. In his new book “Getting to Green,” author Fred Rich asserts that a return to those bipartisan roots is key for future success. Rich joins Hari Sreenivasan for more.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Last Friday, Earth Day was celebrated for the 47th time since its inception in 1970. From the beginning, the environmental movement had strong support from both Democrats and Republicans.
Returning to the movement’s bipartisan roots is key for future success, says Fred Rich.
I recently spoke to rich for this latest addition to the "NewsHour Bookshelf."
Fred Rich, thanks for joining us.
FRED RICH, Author, “Getting to Green”: You’re welcome Hari. I’m glad to be here.
HARI SREENIVASAN: You have been a corporate lawyer for 30 years and worked with industry that perhaps the green movement wouldn’t find friendly.
And, on the other hand, you have been a conservationist for just as long working with land trusts. So, where are you coming at this book from?
FRED RICH: When I criticize the green movement and call them on some of their recent failings, so they know it’s from a position of solidarity, right, I mean, complete sympathy with the goals.
I want to see the green movement succeed. So they know that I’m coming at it from that side. Equally, the right at least knows I was a registered Republican until 2012, pretty solid fiscal conservative. It breaks my heart to see that the conservative movement in America has really abandoned a century of tradition of support for conservation of the environment.
So, I hope each side will have something they don’t like and I hope that there’s something equally that each side sees that it does like.
HARI SREENIVASAN: I want to pull up a quote from a State of the Union address: “Shall we make peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our land, to our air, and to our water? It has become a common cause of all people of this country, clean air, open spaces. These should once again be the birthright of every American.”
This was 1970. It was Richard Nixon delivering this.
FRED RICH: Correct.
HARI SREENIVASAN: To bipartisan applause.
FRED RICH: Correct. It was amazing.
Richard Nixon, who I have to say was no nature lover, but he was a very savvy politician. And Richard Nixon believed that clean air and clean water was a cause that transcended class, it transcended party. He was very nervous that the Democrats not get out front on environment.
And he was dealing in 1970 with deep divisions in the country from the civil rights movement and especially at that moment the Vietnam War. And Nixon had the idea that environment could heal those wounds, that environment was an issue that would bring both sides together. Pretty ironic, given where we are today.
SUMMARY: Southern California's tranquil Coachella Valley has long been an environmental battleground. Home to 27 endangered and threatened species, the valley has also seen enormous population growth, with residents projected to double in the next 20 years. But a government plan 10 years in the making aims to balance conservationism with urban development. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports.
CAT WISE (NewsHour): The views from Chino Canyon high above Palm Springs are grand. The rocky hillsides are home to the endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep and a number of other species. But this tranquil canyon has long been an environmental battleground.
NICKIE MCLAUGHLIN, Friends of Palm Springs Mountains: If the project had been completed, you would have been looking at a 500-room hotel, a five-star resort, and all surrounded by an 18-hole golf course.
CAT WISE: Nickie McLaughlin heads up a local nonprofit that recently purchased 600 acres of privately owned land in the canyon to prevent that development.
NICKIE MCLAUGHLIN: There will be nothing here. It will be preserved as it is in perpetuity. This was a huge success.
CAT WISE: The push to save Chino Canyon is part of a much larger environmental conservation effort unfolding in Coachella Valley, a 45-mile stretch of desert dotted with upscale cities like Palm Springs, as well as areas of deep poverty.
The population here is expected to almost double in the next 20 years. Golf courses and condos butt up against fragile desert ecosystems.
TOM KIRK, Coachella Valley Association of Governments: In a lot of places throughout this country, we know that we have done development perhaps in a rash and vast way. In the Coachella Valley, we didn't want to do that.
CAT WISE: Tom Kirk heads up the local government agency now managing a plan that took more than 10 years to develop and that will be on the books 75 years into the future.
It's called the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan. Nearly 2,000-pages long, it is essentially a huge compromise between government agencies, private landowners and developers, scientists, and environmental groups.
SUMMARY: Porter Ranch seems like a picturesque Southern California town, but an environmental disaster has been unfolding there for several months. Natural gas has been spewing from an underground storage facility, causing health issues for residents and forcing temporary relocations for thousands of households. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now we turn to the natural gas leak in Southern California.
Earlier this month, Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for residents of the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, many of whom have been suffering from health impacts since the leak began in late October. Relief well drilling efforts continue at the site, but Southern California Gas Company, which owns the well, says it could be late February or March before they are able to stop all leaks.
Special correspondent Cat Wise recently visited Porter Ranch, and she filed this report.
CAT WISE (NewsHour): On the surface, it seems a serene, picturesque Southern California town, with gated communities and views. But Porter Ranch, which is home to 30,000 residents in Northern L.A., is anything but serene these days.
An invisible environmental disaster is unfolding in the hills above the community, where natural gas, seen in this infrared video taken by an environmental group, is now spewing out from one the country’s largest underground gas storage facilities called Aliso Canyon.
STEVE CONLEY, University of California, Davis: This one leak is roughly equivalent to the entire Los Angeles Basin. It will change California’s emissions for the year, substantially.
CAT WISE: Steve Conley an atmospheric scientist with the University of California, Davis, owns one of only a handful of planes in the country with specialized equipment that can measure gas leaks from the air.
For the last several months, he’s been flying the skies over Porter Ranch to monitor methane emissions for the state. Methane, a greenhouse gas, is the main component of natural gas. And it’s extremely potent. It’s more efficient at trapping radiation and heat than carbon dioxide.
STEVE CONLEY: That first flight, we measured something like 44,000 kilograms per hour. The best number that I have come up with to give people a perspective, it’s close to 100,000 pounds an hour. Every month, it’s the weight of an aircraft carrier.
My first thought was tapping the instruments, there’s something wrong, because we have never seen anything like that on any of our flights in the past.
Talk about thinking outside the proverbial box! When the going gets cold, the smart sustainability devotees experiment with …. greenhousing a whole structure. Via Ecowatch, meet Marie Granmar and Charles Sacilotto:
The couple recently gave Fair Companies a tour of their “Naturhus” (or Nature House) that’s surrounded by a 4-millimeter pane of glass that cost roughly $84,000 to install.
The Naturhus was built on the site of an old summer house on a Stockholm archipelago and was inspired by Swedish eco-architect Bengt Warne, who was also Sacilotto's mentor.
There are many advantages of living in a greenhouse for this family. Sunlight helps warm the home during the day and residual heat is stored in the bedrock below the house. The roof deck can be used for year-round activities such as sunbathing, reading or playing with their son.
Of course, a couple this dedicated doesn’t only go for the non-obvious extreme—they’ve tackled other sustainability challenges along the way. They collect rainwater for plants and household use, they compost, they grow their own food within the greenhouse. And Sacilotto even designed a sewage system that “begins with a urine-separating toilet and uses centrifuges, cisterns, grow beds and garden ponds to filter the water and compost the remains,” according to Ecowatch.
Check out the Fair Companies video that explores this “Naturhus” in more detail.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): To many observers, President Obama’s decision on the Keystone pipeline may have seemed like a forgone conclusion.
But earlier during his term, environmentalists were worried that he would approve it. Climate change, however, has become a central focus of the Obama second term, and it was very much on his mind today when he announced the decision. It was a decision seven years in the making.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: After extensive public outreach and consultation with other cabinet agencies, the State Department has decided the Keystone XL pipeline wouldn’t serve the national interest of the United States. I agree with that decision.
JUDY WOODRUFF: With that, President Obama formally rejected TransCanada’s application to extend the controversial pipeline. The massive network would have connected oil sands in Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Gulf Coast, adding to existing pipelines. It would have carried 800,000 barrels of oil a day.
The company, along with many Republican lawmakers in the U.S., argued the project would create thousands of jobs and lower gas prices. But Mr. Obama disagreed, pointing out gas prices are already lower. More importantly, he said, the pipeline wasn’t in line with his administration’s efforts to combat climate change.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Today, we’re continuing to lead by example, because, ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable, but uninhabitable, in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground, rather than burn them.
JUDY WOODRUFF: TransCanada quickly condemned the decision, calling it — quote — “misplaced symbolism.”
The company’s statement read: “It is disappointing the administration appears to have said yes to more oil imports from Iran and Venezuela over oil from Canada, the United States’ strongest ally and trading partner.”
And even some Democrats in Congress, from states the pipeline would have passed through, criticized the move.
Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas:
REP. HENRY CUELLAR (D), Texas: So, you’re talking about jobs, you’re talking about energy independence. And, all of a sudden, the State Department flip-flops and goes to the other directions. Bottom line, it’s a job creator, and I see that on a day-to-day basis in my district.
JUDY WOODRUFF: President Obama had faced considerable pressure from the left to act, while he kept his own opinion under wraps.
Environmental activists staged large protests in front of the White House and demanded he reject the proposal. Today, they called the decision a big win.
But the fate of the pipeline could change after the 2016 elections if TransCanada reapplies. Several Republican presidential candidates said today they would reverse Mr. Obama’s decision.
SUMMARY: What do lawmakers think of President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline? Judy Woodruff gets thoughts on the economic, environmental and political fallout from Rep. Leonard Lance, R-N.J., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
SUMMARY: President Obama laid out new regulations that reset emissions standards for power plants and call for 28 percent of U.S. power to be generated from renewable energy. States, industry groups and politicians pushed back, setting the stage for legal challenges. Gwen Ifill gets views from Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): The President has made his climate change plans a major part of his second-term, legacy-making agenda. Today, he laid out new details about a key component of his strategy: regulating power plant emissions.
But within moments of his speech, opponents within some industries and in many states were resisting the stricter standards.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Today, after working with states and cities and power companies, the EPA is setting the first ever nationwide standards to end the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from power plants.
(APPLAUSE)
GWEN IFILL: With that, the president formally announced an even tougher clean power plan than expected.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So, the idea of setting standards and cutting carbon pollution is not new. It’s not radical. What is new is that starting today, Washington is starting to catch up with the vision of the rest of the country.
GWEN IFILL: The rule, to be implemented by the EPA, means power plants must cut carbon dioxide emissions 32 percent by 2030. That’s from 2005 levels. Such a reduction would be up from a 30 percent cut in the original draft. The revised rule also calls for generating 28 percent of U.S. power from renewable energy, up from 22 percent.
At the same time, it gives states extra time to begin reducing emissions. Industry groups and a number of states pushed back today, saying the rule will cost jobs and cause spikes in energy prices. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, representing the coal state of Kentucky, promised to block the plan.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), Majority Leader: It represents a triumph of blind ideology over sound policy and honest compassion. And in Kentucky, these regulations will likely mean fewer jobs, shuttered power plants, higher electricity costs for families and businesses. So, I’m not going to sit by while the White House takes aim at the lifeblood of our state’s economy.
SUMMARY: In the nation’s worst oil disaster, 134 million gallons of crude gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, coating beaches and barrier islands, killing thousands of animals and decimating fisheries. Now nearly five years later, oil giant British Petroleum is facing a record settlement of $18.7 billion. Judy Woodruff discusses the deal with Rep. Garret Graves, R-La.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): It was the nation’s worst oil disaster and came to be known as the BP (British Petroleum) spill. After a long and bitter fight that played out in the courts, a record settlement was finally announced today.
The oil gushed from BP’s Macondo well for 87 days. Now, almost five years since the well was sealed, the company aims to settle with the federal government and five states, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley:
GOV. ROBERT BENTLEY (R), Alabama: With the agreement reached today and the compensation BP will pay for their responsibility, we are taking a significant step forward in our state and in especially the Gulf Coast areas to move forward with the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
JUDY WOODRUFF: In all, 134 million gallons of crude fouled the Gulf’s waters, and coated beaches and barrier islands, killing thousands of animals, and decimating local fisheries.
The projected deal totals $18.7 billion; $5.5 billion would go toward restoration efforts, as part of a federal Clean Water Act penalty. Another $7 billion would cover natural resource damages. And nearly $6 billion goes to economic and other claims by the five states and 400 local government entities.
In a statement today, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch called it the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history. For BP, the settlement will effectively add about $10 billion to the $44 billion it already set aside for cleanup costs and penalties.
The oil giant had revenues of $15 billion last year, and will spread the settlement costs over the next 15 to 18 years. In a statement today, BP’s CEO, Bob Dudley said: “This agreement will resolve the largest liabilities remaining from the tragic accident and enable BP to focus on safely delivering the energy the world needs.”
The agreement is still subject to final approval by a federal judge.
SUMMARY: From a racial hate crime that rocked the nation, to the Pope’s call for action on climate change, there has been no shortage of issues to spark national debate and discussion this week. Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks discuss these topics and more.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): So, another terrible race-related story to talk about, this horrible shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, David, where a young white man killed nine black churchgoers.
How — what are we left with? I mean, is this an isolated — should we think of this as an isolated incident, a racist young man, or do we — or does the whole country need to do some soul-searching?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: Yes.
First, we should mention that the uplifting part of this story, of this terrible story is what happened today in the courtroom, the families forgiving the young man in such a heartfelt and heartrending way. Mark and I were talking before that is living the faith, that is walking the walk.
And we have a society and certainly a politics filled with people who aren’t forgiving each other, filled with vengeance. Well, that speech should be seared in our minds. And so that was an uplifting moment today…
JUDY WOODRUFF: It was.
DAVID BROOKS: … which wasn’t all negative.
The horror is the horror. I confess, I’m a little confused about how much to generalize. We have a race problem in this country. That is so obvious. But we also have an angry solitary young man problem. And I’m not sure a lot of the angry solitary young men are directly connected.
They are obviously loosely connected to the history of race in this country. But they are angry solitary young men looking for hateful and vicious ideologies. Some of them turn into neo-Nazi skinheads. I don’t think we have a Nazi problem in this country. They are solitary and they’re hate-mongers. And the guy sits with the Bible study group for an hour and then starts shooting them. That’s beyond — beyond imagination.
And so I — it’s obviously connected, but I’m a little wary of the too pat causations that are linked between our general race problem and this specific, completely bizarre, and completely evil incident.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How are you seeing this?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist: I just want to underscore what David said about those people in the courtroom today and them saying, may God have mercy on you, and I forgive you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It was extraordinary.
MARK SHIELDS: It is. These are people of faith. These are people who do practice their faith. And it’s a lot more than preaching.
What hit me, Judy, was President Obama, who some of his greatest and most eloquent moments have been at times of crisis and tragedy and sort of putting things in perspective, how yesterday almost seemed — making the announcement, dispirited and a sense of resignation.
And there was a little feeling, I think. For example, after the Birmingham church in 1963, when the four little girls were blown up in Sunday school, there was a moment in the country. You could feel it, an inflection moment, where we moved on civil rights. The passage of the 1964 act was almost assured by that terrible, terrible, inhuman act.
But that was — so there was a sense that we were moving in a direction. After Newtown and after the slaughter of the innocents there and the teachers, where 90 percent of Americans endorsed a background check, three-quarters of NRA members, according to polls, endorsed universal background checks, and nothing happened.
JUDY WOODRUFF: On guns.
MARK SHIELDS: On guns. And nothing happened.
There’s a sense of, how many more, the enormity of it, what’s it going to take? And so I just think there was a — there was really just sort of a sadness that permeated everything. And for him to sit — for this alleged killer to sit there for an hour while these people welcome him into their church and the Bible study, and then to do it, I mean, it’s beyond comprehension.
