Refugia Newsletter #43
Wildfires, states on the job, churches and the IRA, and the art of frolicking.
Refugia News
I hate it when people ask me, “So isn’t it nice to have the summer off?” I guess people imagine that professors do nothing all summer but frolic through meadows. If only there were more meadow-frolicking in my life! Instead, I’ve been on campus several days for some teaching workshops—we are very serious about excellent teaching at Calvin. I revised a conference paper for publication. I led an intensive week for doctoral students (wrote about that two newsletters ago). I’ve been reading reading reading, trying to keep up on refugia-related reading as well as prepare for five different courses I’m teaching next year, one of them entirely new to me. And of course, I keep writing.
It’s been busy! Good busy, though. I’m not complaining. I love the rhythms of academic life.
In fun news, I am excited to attend the Wild Goose Festival for the first time! It’s July 13-16 in North Carolina. If you’re going to be there, would you please let me know? I’d love to meet you! It looks like I will be participating as a speaker in the Climate Justice Camp, one of the pre-festival events taking place on Thursday, July 13, the day before the festival really gets rockin’. I’ll let you know more details next time.
If I were going to folic through a meadow, it would be one like this, a rewilded golf course on the West Side of Grand Rapids called The Highlands.
This Week in Climate News
Maybe you heard about some wildfires? Most likely you’ve already read all about the Canadian wildfires that covered much of Eastern North America with furiously smokey air. We even felt it here in Michigan. Here’s a visual reminder, thanks to the data-viz people at the NOAA via the New York Times, of how extreme this event turned out to be:
This is a screen shot. Take a look at the link for the full animation.
Of course, there was all manner of fitting fuss over how climate change is creating hotter, drier conditions that make wildfires more likely, much larger, and more frequent. And a great deal of fuss over the idea that America’s power centers, New York and DC, were feeling the brunt of a climate-changed world. “Now you know what we’re talking about!” other parts of the world seemed to say.
While I’m sure the stats here are incomplete, an article in Carbon Brief from June 9 summed up the impacts (at that point) on Canadians as well as Americans:
Forests cover about a third of the total land area or 3.62m km2 of Canada. As of Thursday, around 2,300 wildfires had burned roughly 42,897 km2, according to Reuters. The newswire says this is more than 15 times the 10-year average for this time of year. … Across Canada, more than 20,000 people have been evacuated as firefighters continue to tackle the blazes, according to the Associated Press. …
At least 100 million Americans – nearly one-third of the US population – were under air-quality alerts on Wednesday [June 7], with the smoke spreading as far west as Chicago and as far south as Atlanta, according to USA Today.
The north-east, including major population centres such as New York City, Philadelphia and Washington DC, bore the brunt of the haze. Reuters reported that New York City temporarily had the world’s worst air quality of any major city on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday, CBS News Philadelphia noted that that city now had the world’s worst air quality.
Wildfires have always occurred anyway, so can we attribute this specific event to climate change, like, directly? Well, that’s called “attribution science,” and it takes time. In general, the answer is yes, but putting precise numbers on just how much of an extreme event “isn’t normal” is tricky. Nevertheless, this article by Benjamin Shingler for CBC News reports on a recent study doing attribution science for wildfires in Canada up to 2021, and linking fire directly to fossil fuel emissions:
The peer-reviewed study, published last week in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that 37 per cent of the total burned forest area in Western Canada and the United States between 1986-2021 can be traced back to 88 major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers.
“What we found is that the emissions from these companies have dramatically increased wildfire activity,” said Carly Phillips, co-author on the study and a researcher at the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
As many climateratti were pointing out, this wildfire showed East Coast Americans the kind of air quality many people in the world have simply had to get used to, thanks to wildfires and, even more, daily air pollution in their regions. It was a reminder of the unequal impacts of industrial pollution and climate change—the most vulnerable suffer first and worst. And of course, it was also a reminder that no one is entirely safe from climate impacts, which care nothing for national borders.
So now that many more of us are more keenly aware of air quality, what do we need to know? This article in Vox by Rebecca Leber explains why particulate matter is so damaging and suggests how to manage when the air is bad in your area. Turns out the EPA has a nifty tool for monitoring air quality in your area. It’s even an app!
So where should you start? If you’re interested in overall air quality, including ozone and PM2.5, the EPA recommends you use its AirNow website. But if you’re worried about the smoke from wildfires, look to the Fire and Smoke Map. The EPA’s mobile app, also called AirNow, has both.
Here’s the air quality index from the AirNow website for right this minute where I’m sitting. Lookin’ pretty good! I’ll note that on the worst days of the Canadian fires, even in Michigan the AQI got up to 156.
Deeper Dive
You might have seen the news that State Farm will no longer insure any homes in California. Insurance is a business, business is about profit, and profit is about math. And increasingly, the math just doesn’t work out to try to insure homes in high risk areas. “Risk has a price,” as one former FEMA official remarked.
I found this development quite ominous. According to this piece in the New York Times, though, Florida has long been dealing with a home insurance crisis. Smaller, private insurers step in, and tax-payer-funded insurance is also a solution—kind of. But as some regions of the country face “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure,” eventually the math will not work at all for living in those places.
All this to say: climate change has different regional impacts. And while federal action addressing energy transition and impact mitigation is crucial, states have to act in ways fitting to their situations and can definitely lead the way. So here are some states who are on the job.
Minnesota:
In February, Minnesota passed a 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2040 law that also streamlines permitting for renewable energy projects, defines what qualifies as renewable energy and ensures that constructing or retrofitting of major electric facilities receive the prevailing wage in the state. The new law also includes provisions excluding large polluting incinerators near environmental justice communities from counting toward its 100 percent target and ensuring that all Minnesotans have access to and benefit from clean and renewable energy.
Minnesota’s initiatives pay careful attention to climate justice, according to this article by Aydali Campa in Inside Climate News.
Michigan:
Michigan’s Democratic-majority Senate voted in May to repeal a 2018 “no-stricter-than-federal” law put in place under our previous Republican governor. The law prevented the state from creating environmental protections stricter than federal requirements. Repealing it is an extremely important move because of Michigan’s unique natural resources and abundant fresh water. But the old law’s repeal has taken on more urgent importance in the wake of the May 25 SCOTUS ruling limiting the EPA’s ability to protect wetlands. Michigan should get this repeal settled so that we can pass wetlands protections in the state that are, indeed, stricter than the federal law requires.
Restoration work at The Highlands, mentioned above under that meadow photo, involved recreating wetlands, actually sculpting them out of the old fairways. Image credit: Land Conservancy of West Michigan (naturenearby.org).
California:
This excellent article by Max Graham in Grist describes how California is serving once again as a “climate policy test kitchen” for the country. This time, they’re working on passing legislation to require that companies report emissions fully and consistently:
The bill, which cleared the state Senate on May 30, would require companies that operate in California and generate more than $1 billion a year to report greenhouse gas emissions across their supply chains. While a lot of companies measure and report at least some of their emissions without any legal requirements, many of them don’t account for all the emissions tied to their products. And they don’t all measure and report emissions in the same way.
The idea here is to create a standard reporting protocol that accounts for all emissions, up and down the supply chain. This would help measure progress accurately. It would also help expose greenwashing and make it easier to see who the real villains—and heroes—are. Naturally, companies don’t want to do this. The bill still has to pass in the Assembly (House), and of course lobbyists from various industries—like ranching—are busy working the offices. Interestingly, In-N-Out Burger is one of the businesses not happy about this.
Nevertheless,
“States have a big responsibility to lead on climate because we’re not going to be able to get much done at the federal level given the politics around climate,” said Melissa Romero, the senior legislative affairs manager at California Environmental Voters. “States have to step up here. That’s literally the role California has played, and we have to play it once again.”
Refugia Sighting
Today’s sighting is for faith congregations who want to become better refugia. Interfaith Power and Light is offering a series of webinars to help faith communities take full advantage for the Inflation Reduction Act. (Thanks to my friends at the Third Act Faith newsletter for bringing these opportunities to our attention.)
Since 1998 Interfaith Power and Light has served to educate and resource congregations. They are now “a national leader in engaging faith communities in environmental stewardship and climate action.” You might call IPL a “refugia incubator.”
Here’s a link to their page explaining how the IRA can help faith groups.
Here’s a link to their upcoming events page, where you can find more information about the webinars listed below. If you aren’t able to attend, you should still register! After each event, IPL will send the recording out to everyone who registered.
June 21: Solar Financing for Congregations, 2 pm ET.
July 18: Climate and Energy Resources for Faith Communities: A Briefing, 3 pm ET.
Sept. 7: Inflation Reduction Act Resources to Help Electrify Your Home, 7 pm ET
The Wayback Machine
On the topic of wildfires, I thought I would share this podcast interview I did last year with fellow Fortress Press authors Talitha Amadea Aho and Sharon Delgado. Both live in Northern California and have experienced the anxiety of wildfire season first-hand. I recommend their books, too. Talitha’s book In Deep Waters, for example, movingly describes conversations she had with young people in her church who are growing up with the impacts of climate change. During the episode, the three of us ponder what it’s like to mentor and teach a generation of youth who have never known a stable climate.
That’s all for now. May your summer days allow you at least some delightful frolics!