Could Pipelines Be Part Of The CO2 Capture Solution? It’s…complicated:
Designed to increase the flow of some of the world’s dirtiest oil, the Dakota Access Pipeline became a poignant symbol of the United States’ failure to enact a serious, long-term national plan to stop adding heat-trapping gasses to the atmosphere. It galvanized a worldwide climate movement.
Six years later, President Joe Biden has signed the first major climate law in U.S. history, opening a $369 billion firehose of federal spending on clean energy and infrastructure that could put the country’s 2030 climate goals in reach. In a twist, its passage may herald Tronchetti’s defeat — and a new era of pipeline construction.
If everything goes right, the Inflation Reduction Act could slash U.S. emissions by 40% below 2005 levels this decade by igniting a boom in solar panels, wind turbines, and carbon capture and sequestration. The latter technology, known as CCS, is designed to reduce planet-heating pollution by filtering it out of smokestacks.
It’s a controversial gambit. Depending on how you see it, CCS either saves us from the emissions of inevitable fossil fuel use, or it guarantees oil, gas and coal a share of the future decarbonized economy. CCS has struggled to work at scale, yet industry groups have at times overstated its capabilities in a bid to stop government policies from boosting non-fossil alternative energy sources.
Ottermania? They could make a comeback in the Pacific Northwest:
In 1906, two hunters at Otter Rock on the central Oregon coast killed what may have been Oregon’s last wild sea otter, then sold the pelt for $900. The fur trade decimated sea otter populations from Baja California to Alaska; by 1911, when the U.S., Great Britain, Russia and Japan signed the North Pacific Fur Seal Treaty, banning off-shore hunting, the species was nearly extinct.
Since then, wildlife managers up and down the coast have tried, with mixed success, to bring them back. In Southeast Alaska, reintroduction in the 1960s succeeded so well that many now consider otters a pest. Similar attempts around the same time in Oregon didn’t take, but several populations in Washington and Central California are still slowly growing.
Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has turned its attention to that remaining 900-mile gap. The agency announced in an assessment published last month that returning sea otters to Oregon and Northern California is feasible and would also bring likely—if unequal—economic benefits. Scientists and tribal leaders say reintroducing otters would restore balance to degraded kelp forests, boost fish species, protect shorelines, generate tourist dollars and even capture carbon. But concerns remain in communities where otters would compete with humans for shellfish, and among some tribes that fear their self-governance is also at stake.
Sea otters, which hunt shellfish, crab and kelp-devouring sea urchins, are at the top of the kelp-forest food chain. Without otters, those ecosystems have been slowly degrading, and in 2013 they hit a catastrophic tipping point: A mysterious disease—possibly triggered by warming ocean temperatures—caused a continent-spanning die-off of sea stars, which had filled otters’ role as the top predator of sea urchins. Unchecked, urchins proliferated, causing the widespread collapse of kelp forests: In Northern California, they’ve shrunk by more than 90%, replaced by urchin-filled barrens. Researchers believe reintroducing sea otters may be one of the only ways to save what’s left.
Ousted Arizona Republican: “The Place Has Lost Its Mind.” Stood up to MAGAts, lost. Has no regrets. Real good interview.
This BMW Championship Is Really Something. Seriously, the course is a world-class track. I watched the coverage on Thursday and Friday, and watched part of Saturday when I wasn’t knocking doors for DeShanna Neal. (Saw Rick Jensen’s house. The house, like his audience, was all-white.) Only thing missing, as far as I could see? Black folks. Honestly, other than golfer Harold Varner, I didn’t see a Black face on the coverage at all. And I was looking closely into the crowd. I mean, couldn’t someone even give out a comp, if only to create the illusion of token diversity?
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