by Margaret Francis, via Planet Change

The cherry: a little scarlet globe of sweet pleasure. This time of year, those of us in Michigan eagerly anticipate stopping by our local fruit farm in search of this tiny, flavorful vermillion prize.

Last week I excitedly searched my utensil drawer to dig out my coveted cherry pitter for its annual exercise of de-pitting 10-pound boxes of this favorite fruit for canning and freezing to sustain me through the long winter. My head was afloat in sweet thoughts of jams, pies and other good treats I would make.

With over half a million expected attendees this week at one of the state’s largest gatherings — the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City― we cherry-lovers face a sad scenario: the Michigan cherry crop has been devastated and our erratic weather is to blame.

A freakishly warm March jump-started the growing season causing trees to blossom early, and then subsequent typical freezes in April blasted the young buds. As a result, the cherry crop was decimated: A 90 percent loss in the tart and 80 percent loss in the sweet varieties. Prices rose 40 percent. Because fruit was so sparse, much of it had to be hand-picked instead of using shakers, an increased labor cost which may have added to prices. Festival goers will eat mostly local cherries, but they will be supplemented by cherries from Washington and Poland.

What we’re seeing in Michigan may likely be part of a larger issue. Carbon pollution is warming our Earth, causing increasingly erratic weather, including earlier springs and more frequent droughts, floods and heat waves. One study by a Nature Conservancy scientist found global warming has the potential to greatly reduce temperate fruit and nut crop yields (including cherries), resulting in losses of $93 billion annually, and impacting the ability of growers in some regions to produce the same array of crops as they have in the past.

This week the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it will offer assistance to fruit farmers in nearly all of the state’s affected counties. The impacts may not only be local: Michigan supplies 75 percent of the country’s tart cherries, which are used in many food products, and 20 percent of the sweet kind.

The last time Michigan’s cherry crop was hurt badly was in 2002, and prior to that, 50 years earlier. Although this year’s extreme spring weather may have been an anomaly, some scientists say that warmer temperatures, wetter conditions and more erratic weather events linked to a changing climate could impact Michigan’s crops, making me fret about the long-term fate of the precious local cherry.

I made that anticipated call to my fruit farm to inquire if cherries were available and this year’s price: $42 for a box of the sweet kind versus $28 per box last year. Yikes! Talk about climate change hitting my pocketbook.

As I face the economic dilemma of paying significantly more for my cherries, I bitterly stifle my urge with hopes that next year’s crop will be better, and back goes my pitter to the drawer. Let’s just say erratic weather is the pits.

Margaret Francis is Assistant Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Great Lakes Project. This piece was originally published at the Nature Conservancy’s Planet Change and was reprinted with permission.

By Jessica Goad

Yesterday, Congressman Ed Markey’s (D-MA) Natural Resources Committee staff released a report called “Our Pain, Their Gain:  Mountains Destroyed for Coal Shipped Overseas.”  It outlines how coal exports from Appalachia have been growing over the past few years. And, quite surprisingly, how some of the companies in the region export up to 100 percent of the coal that they mine.

As the report details:

Coal exports have nearly doubled since 2009 to 107 million tons last year, now accounting for almost 12 percent of U.S. production.  Three out of every four tons that are exported come from the Appalachian region.

Some these exports are from mountaintop removal mines — one of the most destructive types of mining that destroys mountains in order to access the coal underneath. Already, mountaintop removal has flattened an area the size of Delaware and polluted more than 2,000 miles of streams.

As Markey’s report concludes:

While mountaintop removal mines are happy to sell to the highest foreign bidder, it’s the Appalachian people who are paying the steepest price for this coal that America no longer uses.

The use of coal  in the United States is on the decline due to the rise of natural gas, a strong activist community, and new public health regulations making it difficult to keep old, dirty power plants open.  But coal companies have seen exports as a way to continue growing. In fact, exporting coal is often more lucrative than selling it domestically.

Coal exports in other parts of the country are expected to increase, particularly from Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin.  A number of companies like Peabody and Arch Coal are investing heavily in infrastructure like railways and new ports in the Pacific Northwest to ensure that this happens.

But one key difference between coal exports from the West and Appalachia is that the great majority of the coal in the Powder River Basin is owned by American taxpayers. Despite the accumulating evidence that coal mining has major environmental and health impacts, the U.S. Department of the Interior continues to offer major lease sales of our taxpayer-owned coal, knowing that much of could be bound for locations overseas.

Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Two weeks after reports first emerged about Shell’s failure to receive Coast Guard certification for its Arctic oil spill recovery barge, delays continue to stall the project.  The Los Angeles Times reports:

“Coast Guard officials said Thursday that several important systems remained to be installed before they could certify the oil spill containment vessel. Sources familiar with the multimillion-dollar refurbishing underway in Bellingham, Wash., said it was clear that the 38-year-old barge would not be ready for sea trials by July 23—a date recently set after a previous schedule was scrapped.”

The barge is designed to be a first responder for a potential oil spill in the region, including carrying equipment designed to cap and siphon oil from a blown out well in the event of an accident.  As of this week, it still lacked operational anchors and required further work to its piping, catwalks, electrical wiring, and lifeboats, “all theoretically simple, but time-consuming” to install.  Equally troubling is the current lack of necessary weights “that would anchor the containment dome over the top of an oil spill.”

Furthermore, Shell has sought to reduce the necessary standard for the barge from a “100 year storm,” to a “10 year storm,” on the basis that it can be repositioned more easily than a drilling ship in the event of such a storm.

Though Shell continues to state that they are “not going to cut corners and move quickly where it doesn’t make prudent sense,” the company has faced setbacks that suggest it has overestimated its fleet’s ability to minimize environmental impacts in such an extreme environment.

After Shell’s drilling rig, the Noble Discoverer, ran adrift last weekend, this latest report marks yet another setback to Shell’s efforts to drill in Alaska this summer.  Due to the challenging and remote nature of the Arctic, Shell has had to assemble a spill response team that is self-contained.  With one full month of summer gone and the centerpiece of Shell’s response plan still docked in Washington State, and the icepack taking longer than expected to retreat, this latest setback raises serious concerns about their response readiness.

If such setbacks continue, at some point, Shell and the federal government will have to reevaluate whether it will be possible for the company to meet operating requirements in the region at all this year.

UPDATE: What is below is what was prepared. I added a bio sentence on the fly upfront (in italics) and changed one word. This was my very first piece of testimony using the secrets of the most memorable and persuasive communicators in history that I detail in my forthcoming book.

Oral Testimony of Joseph J. Romm

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify. I’m a physicist, former acting assistant secretary of energy, and climate expert who runs the blog ClimateProgress.

Four score and seven years ago our grandfathers and grandmothers were enjoying life in the roaring 20s.

Now imagine you are in Congress back then and imagine that the nation’s leading scientists are warning that human activity – years of bad land management practices – has left our topsoil vulnerable to the forces of the wind. And that the next time a major drought hits, much of our farmland will turn to dust. Dust in the wind.

YOU WOULD TAKE ACTION.

Over the past two decades, the nation’s leading scientists have issued stronger and stronger warnings that human activity – burning fossil fuels and deforestation – will lead to longer and stronger droughts that dry out topsoil and timber, creating the conditions ripe for multiple, multi-decade Dust Bowls and wildfires.

In fact, we’re already topping Dust Bowl temperatures in many places – and the Earth has warmed only about 1 degree Fahrenheit since the 1930s Dust Bowl. Yet we are poised to warm some 10 degree Fahrenheit this century if we stay on our current path of unrestricted carbon pollution emissions.

I repeat, several studies now project the world may warm 10 degree Fahrenheit this century if we don’t act. And that is the average warming of the globe. Much of our country would see far higher temperatures. The recent heat wave would be considered a pleasantly, cool summer.

Another study looked at mid-century warming of just 2 degrees Fahrenheit. It found that wildfire damage in many of your home states — Utah, Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, Nevada and Washington – would double, triple, even quadruple from current levels.

Imagine how big the government would have to be to deal with rampant wildfires and with a Dust Bowl choking the bread basket of the world. A lot bigger government than today, for sure.

So of course this great deliberative body is debating various bills to avoid this catastrophe by slashing carbon pollution.

Except it isn’t. We are here discussing bills aimed at “fuels treatment” – a euphemism for cutting down trees and using controlled burns.

Ignoring carbon pollution and focusing instead solely on fuels treatment to address the epidemic of bark beetles, the epidemic of drought, the epidemic of wildfires is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Or, more precisely, it is like burning some of the deck chairs and removing some of the umbrellas on the Titanic. Same outcome, more time wasted.

As I explained in the journal Nature last year, what we are discussing here today is the single most important question facing the nation: Can we prevent the extreme drought and wildfires ravaging the country today from becoming the new normal?

But the real question — and I am addressing myself to the members of the majority now – is how you want to be remembered. Do you want to be remembered as a Herbert Hoover, who sat by and did nothing in the face of obvious calamity, or as Abraham Lincoln, who took every measure to save the Union?

Lincoln said at Gettysburg “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” That of course wasn’t true. But after testifying to Congress nearly a dozen times since 1995 (when I was principal deputy assistant secretary of energy), I am quite convinced that nobody remembers what we say here – and in the case of these bills, everyone will forget what you did here.

Are you Nevil Chamberlain — Or will you be Winston Churchill, who worked tirelessly to warn and prepare Britain for what was coming and told the House of Commons in 1936 “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”

The consequences are here, now, just as climate scientists predicted.

If we fail to take action, many scientists predict ruin for large parts of this country – ruin for large parts of your districts – ruin that lasts 50 generations.

Americans have fought for generations to defend government of the people, by the people, for the people. In the hour of crisis, we need that government to do its job. Now is that hour.

Thank you

By Ben Bovarnick

On Wednesday, the Republican-led House Natural Resources Committee voted 24-17 to approve a bill designed to increase exploitation of oil and gas reserves off America’s coasts.  Determining that the Obama administration’s plan to open 75 percent of US oil reserves for lease was insufficient, Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) proposed a bill to lease huge tracts along the Pacific and Atlantic coastlines, as well as smack in the middle of some of Alaska’s richest fishing grounds.

Though the devastation from Deepwater Horizon is still being felt throughout the Gulf Coast, the House hopes to lease more federal drill sites to oil companies, in spite of their reluctance to utilize 72 percent of leases they currently hold.  As was noted by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), “here in the Republican House of Representatives, it is oil above all else,” even if this means placing our nation’s beaches, fisheries and coastal tourism industries at risk.

Republicans claim that this bill is a necessary response to the Obama Administration’s decision to restrict leasing in 85 percent of the US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).  In fact, the Department of Interior has already opened 75 percent of known oil deposits in the OCS to leasing. The 85 percent calculation refers to the entire OCS, regardless of the presence of oil.

One justification for the bill was to provide Virginia and South Carolina the ability to exploit the resources off their state coasts.  Republicans such as Rep. Jeff Landry (LA) rationalized that, “if those states want to drill off their coast, they should have the right to do so.”

However, in spite of their fervent support for states’ rights, they repeatedly ignored pleas from other coastal representatives to respect the anti-drilling desires of their own constituents.  Though confronted by Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) that “the state of California’s view is no more leases—use existing leases,” and an amendment that would have allowed the state of New Jersey to exclude lease sales off its coast through referendum, Republicans disregarded these appeals to state sovereignty in an effort to provide an overly friendly business environment to oil prospectors and open the maximum acreage to oil and gas drilling.

In a further effort to expedite federal leasing, the bill would alter existing environmental protection standards, directing the Department of Interior to prepare a single Environmental Impact Statement for all leases included in the bill.  Rep. Hastings deemed this sufficient to justify that the bill “safely opens these new areas.”  However, as Rep. Garamendi noted, the bill “would require an environmental statement that is basically worthless,” lumping together the California coast, Atlantic, and Bristol Bay into one review.  The ecosystems and environmental conditions of Southern California, Alaska, and the Atlantic are drastically different, and requiring one EIS for all three only serves to rush important precautions without due diligence.

Our coastlines provide a wealth of resources, jobs and economic vitality.  Far from providing a jobs boon as Republicans suggest, this bill would trample the rights of some states, disrupt existing coastal industries, and force the federal government to disregard established environmental protections to suit the interests of Big Oil.

The drought that has settled over more than half of the continental United States this summer is the most widespread in more than half a century. And it is likely to grow worse. [New York Times]

The latest outlook released by the National Weather Service on Thursday forecasts increasingly dry conditions over much of the nation’s breadbasket, a development that could lead to higher food prices and shipping costs as well as reduced revenues in areas that count on summer tourism. About the only relief in sight was tropical activity in the Gulf of Mexico and the Southeast that could bring rain to parts of the South.

The unsettling prospects come at a time of growing uncertainty for the country’s economy. With evidence mounting of a slowdown in the economic recovery, this new blow from the weather is particularly ill-timed.

A team of researchers has published a new study in Nature showing that, under the right conditions, it’s possible to lace the ocean with iron in order to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton. The tiny algae absorb carbon from the air during the course of photosynthesis, and when they die, the carbon gets buried deep down on the ocean floor. [Wonk Blog]

Native American and Alaska Native leaders told of their villages being under water because of coastal erosion, droughts and more on Thursday during a Senate hearing intended to draw attention to how climate change is affecting tribal communities. [Associated Press]

The plan to use a 50-50 blend of alternative and petroleum-based fuel in the Navy has hit a snag — Congressional lawmakers who bristle at spending time and money chasing alternative energy at a time when defense spending is being cut and traditional oil is cheaper. [Washington Post]

The vessel designated to act as a crucial oil spill containment system in Arctic waters has obtained Coast Guard  approval to meet less rigorous weather standards than originally proposed. But, less than two weeks before drilling off Alaska’s northern coast is due to begin, a series of troubling construction delays have left the Arctic Challenger without federal certification. [Los Angeles Times]

On Thursday, Koch Industries escalated what began as a quick jab by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) into a heated back-and-forth. The company lashed out at Lautenberg, who spoke on the Senate floor earlier this week about legislation he had cosponsored to increase transparency in campaign finance. [Huffington Post]

The “greenest Olympics ever” could have been a great deal greener than they will be, according to a critical new report that finds fault with the handling of the Games’ environmental impact. [Guardian]

China’s national government, working closely in partnership with large industrial companies, still has as its official policy that “new energy vehicles” will become a major part of the country’s output–and domestic sales. [Green Car Reports]