Center for Sustainable Economy

Oregon Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Bill Signed into Law

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:57:25 GMT

HB 4100 helps protect taxpayers from the risks and costs of fossil fuel infrastructure

In 2016, Center for Sustainable Economy proposed a new policy mechanism to protect taxpayers and frontline communities from the risks and costs of fossil fuel infrastructure and climate change. Fossil fuel risk bond programs, as we called this new approach, would accomplish that goal through two distinct regulatory approaches:

1. Financial assurances – where owners of fossil fuel infrastructure would be required to provide proof of financial responsibility for the risks of explosions, spills, and accidents at their facilities as well as the costs of decommissioning when those facilities are no longer needed.

2. Fossil fuel risk trust funds – a surcharge-based mechanism to help cities and states finance projects and programs needed to adapt to climate change, such as cooling centers, sea walls, green infrastructure, and retrofits of stormwater facilities. The trust funds would be capitalized by surcharges on greenhouse gases emitted by major polluters in an amount necessary to offset expected public outlays for these line items over the next few decades.

The campaign to enact these measures began in Multnomah County, Oregon, but quickly garnered interest at the state and county level in both Oregon and Washington. On April 2nd, 2026, momentum behind fossil fuel risk bonds got a major boost when Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed into law HB 4100 – legislation enacting requirements for financial assurances for bulk liquid fuels terminals in Multnomah, Clatsop, and Lane counties.

In these places, owners of facilities that store 2 million gallons or more of liquid fuels will be required to present certificates of financial responsibility to the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) demonstrating that they have the funds set aside to cover the worst-case costs passed on to public agencies and nearby communities in the event of catastrophic spills or explosions, such as those that may occur as a result of the anticipated Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) earthquake (which could top 9.0 on the Richter scale).

One of the first accomplishments of the fossil fuel risk bond work we initiated in 2016 was a 2021 risk assessment completed by the firms ECONorthwest, Salus Resilience, and Enduring Econometrics. The study – funded by Multnomah County Resolution 2019-091 – found that in the event of magnitude 8 or 9 CSZ quake a massive release of 95–194 million gallons of fuel would likely occur, some of which would catch fire and potentially result in a one or more catastrophic explosions. At the high end, such a spill would be larger than the Deepwater Horizon disaster (~134 million gallons). The study estimated that economic damages could top $2.6 billion in the form of clean-up costs, harmful effects on human health, lost and contaminated ecosystems, reduced property values and harms to navigation. With HB 4100 now the law of the land, fossil fuel infrastructure owners, not taxpayers, will be responsible for paying cleanup costs and compensating businesses and individuals for at least some of these damages through payouts from financial assurance mechanisms such as surety bonds, performance bonds, trust accounts, or corporate guarantees.

HB 4100 – Strengths and Weaknesses

In a short session like 2026, it is remarkable to have any significant environmental legislation passed. But through the tireless efforts of advocates such as Portland’s Risky Business Coalition, the CEI Hub Task Force, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, Willamette Riverkeeper and others, HB 4100 made it over the finish line. But as is often the case with legislative victories, there were compromises made along the way that will need to be remedied either in the context of DEQ’s forthcoming rule-making process or in subsequent legislative sessions when the bill can be amended.

Key strengths of what passed this session include first-of-its-kind financial assurance requirements for fossil fuel facilities, flexibility in what financial assurance mechanisms owners can choose from, and establishment of a citizen advisory committee to help oversee the rule making process. Key weaknesses include a $300 million cap on facility liability, language preempting cities or counties from enacting stronger regulations, and omission of decommissioning costs from the required financial assurance coverage.

Next Steps for Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds in Oregon

For the three counties (Multnomah, Clatsop, and Lane) where HB 4100 applies, DEQ’s rule making process will provide a forum for ensuring that the certificates of financial responsibility obtained from fossil fuel infrastructure owners are adequate to cover all potential economic damages externalized onto taxpayers and communities adjacent to hazardous facilities in the event of a catastrophe. But because DEQ has a significant degree of discretion, there is a danger that regulators simply focus on clean-up costs and discount other public agency outlays associated with repairing damages or compensating victims. CSE and its partners will be participating in the rule-making process to guard against this outcome.

For the remaining 31 Oregon counties, HB 4100’s preemption language is highly problematic since these counties are barred from doing anything at all on financial assurances for risky fossil fuel (or so-called “renewable fuel”) infrastructure. When CSE first proposed fossil fuel risk bonds in 2016, we did not anticipate the rapid rise of so-called “renewable natural gas” (RNG), or biogas derived from large-scale manure digesters. While often framed as a climate solution, RNG has increasingly become a driver of industrial livestock expansion.

Policies and subsidies intended to support climate action are, in practice, incentivizing the growth of large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to produce manure and methane for sale into energy and carbon markets. This dynamic is exacerbating environmental and public health harms in frontline communities. In Sunnyside, Washington, for example, the nation’s largest proposed biodigester would be sited in a low-income, predominantly Latino community already burdened by some of the highest levels of air and water pollution in the country. Rather than reducing emissions at the source, these projects risk locking in and expanding the very systems that generate methane in the first place .

For Oregon counties currently not covered by HB 4100, there are ways to move forward on bonding for decommissioning and bonding for other types of liquid or gaseous fuel infrastructure not addressed, such as large fossil methane or biogas pipelines. And statewide, there is nothing in HB 4100 that prevents the state or counties from implementing the second major prong of liquid or gaseous fuel risk bond programs – namely, surcharges on greenhouse gases to begin to get the funds in place for climate adaptation.

In a 2025 report CSE published with the Forum on Oregon Climate Change Economics (FORCE) , we estimated that a surcharge of as little as $5.60 per ton of CO2 emitted from fossil (or other liquid or gaseous) fuel combustion and industrial logging activities would be enough to generate $22.3 billion by 2050 to fund several big ticket climate adaptation programs related to comprehensive cooling centers, resilient forests, micro-grids, acquisition of sensitive lands and retrofit of extreme-risk highways.

Stay tuned on this site for updates on these efforts as well as a review of next steps in Washington State, where some of the strongest fossil fuel risk bond language has been in place since 2022 and where an important new rule-making process has begun that provides us an opportunity to significantly strengthen financial assurance requirements.

Appeals Court Rules that DNR Must Consider Climate Smart Alternatives to Legacy Forest Logging

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 20:02:17 GMT

DNR is now 0-3 in forest-climate litigation on this issue. But will the agency change behavior?

For the third consecutive time a Washington court has ruled that the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) must study alternatives for reducing climate damages associated with logging mature ‘legacy’ forests on state forestlands. In a unanimous decision , the Division One Court of Appeals affirmed King County Justice Kristin Ballinger’s May 2024 ruling that DNR violated the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) by failing to consider alternatives that include setting aside the mature, structurally complex components of its timber sales as forest carbon reserves, limiting logging to variable density thinning of younger plantation trees, building no new roads and earning revenues from carbon markets. In its Opinion, the Court did not agree with plaintiffs Center for Sustainable Economy, Save the Olympic Peninsula and Legacy Forest Defense Coalition about the need to do a site specific analysis of climate impacts, but did agree that the alternatives analysis is required because clearcutting big old trees that are just now entering a period of maximum carbon sequestration precludes their use as forest carbon reserves that can pull carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries.

In its precedent setting decision, the Appeals Court found that "Certainly, cutting down the trees precludes their use as carbon reserves, which is not just a theoretical use. We conclude that the alternatives analysis under RCW 43.21C.030(2)(e) applies to the Wishbone Timber Sale." The Court also dismissed DNR's claims that its generic environmental checklist (which still excludes climate impacts) is somehow related to an alternatives analysis. The Court found that "DNR claims, with no supporting authority, that the environmental checklist is an accepted form of alternatives analysis under RCW 43.21C.030(2)(e) because its purpose is “to reduce or avoid impacts from the proposal, if it can be done.” See also WAC 197-11-960. We reject this argument because doing so would render RCW 43.21C.030(2)(e) superfluous and allow DNR to disregard alternative uses proposed during the comment period."

Prior to the King County suit, plaintiffs also won a similar ruling by now retired Judge Keith Harper in Jefferson County . But instead of complying with these rulings DNR chose to engage in a costly and protracted appeals process that concluded today with the ruling against them.

According to Dr. John Talberth, President and Senior Economist at the Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE), “Three strikes and you’re out should apply in this situation. Instead of ignoring court orders, DNR now has a clear responsibility from a higher court to do what the law requires and begin to scale back the senseless destruction of century-old forests at a time when we need those trees to stay on the land to capture and store carbon at a rate that surpasses nearly every ecosystem on Earth. This means looking for reasonable, climate smart alternatives to every timber sale.”

According to Michael Rea, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, “"The Court of Appeals handed conservationists a partial, but significant legal victory. Plaintiffs challenged the Wishbone timber sale on grounds that clearcutting old growth or legacy trees precludes their use for mitigating climate impacts, and that DNR is obligated under SEPA to consider alternatives when such preclusion is at issue. The court agreed. The era of DNR defaulting to clearcutting as opposed to considering climate smart alternatives must end, as required by SEPA."

In response to the ruling, CSE sent a letter to Commissioner Upthegrove and other members of the Board of Natural Resources asking for a pause on 12 new timber sales that include logging of mature legacy forests and construction of new logging roads. In each case, CSE submitted extensive comments on the draft SEPA analyses calling attention to the fact that DNR failed to take any steps to understand climate harms

“We have offered to work with DNR to study and research alternatives to these sales to reduce or eliminate their climate impacts,” Talberth continues. “But if the agency continues to violate the law we will be forced to go back to court and seek injunctions against logging and road building activities that are amplifying the risks climate change poses to all of us.”

Read:

Request to pause high-impact timber sales

Appeals Court ruling

Justice Ballinger’s ruling

Victory: Salmon beat sprawl in Port Orchard

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:07:49 GMT

Army Corp of Engineers withdraws permit application for Home Depot project that threatens salmon

Late last year, CSE and the Kitsap Environmental Coalition (KEC) teamed up to call on the Army Corp of Engineers to deny a permit application for a new Home Depot commercial center adjacent to into Blackjack Creek, one of Puget Sound's most productive salmon streams and one that is part of the ancestral fishing grounds of the Suquamish Tribe. Our concerns were that nearly 2 acres of new impervious surface created by the project would generate over 2.2 million gallons of new stormwater runoff contaminated with the toxin 6PPD-Q - the second most toxic substance to marine organisms ever identified.

Generated through oxidation of 6PPD – a chemical used in almost every tire on the road today – 6PPD-q is present in runoff from high traffic roadways and big parking lots associated with strip malls and commercial centers like Home Depot. This runoff, if untreated, enters streams and rivers where coho, Chinook and steelhead spawn and can cause both lethal and sub-lethal effects (i.e. lower reproductive success) on these species and their predators, like Orcas, who routinely starve due to reductions in their prey base.

CSE has just learned that the permit application has been withdrawn because Home Depot failed to respond to the CSE-KEC comments and others, including those filed by the Suquamish tribe. This underscores how important it is to be monitoring these land use decisions and weighing in with detailed comments and analysis calling attention to threats from 6PPD-Q, other pollutants, and the loss of wetlands and other native habitats.

Because the project would have involved disturbance to streams and wetlands, a Clean Water Act Section 404 permit was required from the Army Corp of Engineers before work could begin. The permit issuance would need to comply with the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and other federal laws. As a condition of approval, CSE-KEC asked the Army Corps to require mitigation measures in the form of advanced stormwater treatment technologies that include porous pavement, filtration boxes, and biofiltration systems like constructed wetlands. No such treatments were being proposed by Home Depot.

In a 12-page comment letter submitted on October, 10th, 2025, CSE and Kitsap Environmental Coalition asked the Seattle District of the Army Corp to withhold issuing the permit until the agency consults with NOAA Fisheries over ways to reduce the adverse effects of the new stormwater runoff generated by the project on five ESA-listed species:

Puget Sound/Georgia Basin distinct population segment (DPS) of bocaccio (Sebastes paucispinis) – endangered.
Puget Sound Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) – threatened.
East Kitsap steelhead distinct individual population (Oncorhynchus mykiss) – threatened.
The Puget Sound/Georgia Basin distinct population segment of yelloweye rockfish (Sebastes ruberrimus) – threatened.
The southern resident distinct population segment of orcas (Sebastes ruberrimus) – endangered.

CSE-KEC also asked the Army Corp to prepare an individual environmental assessment or environmental impact statement on the permit rather than permitting it under one of the generic, blanket permits used to approve more routine activities. Because the Home Depot project is likely to generate significant environmental impacts – including impacts to ESA-listed species – these blanket permit approvals are not appropriate.

While this project has been halted, for now, CSE and its partners will continue to monitor Army Corp notices and reengage with this project should Home Depot try again. Given our success here, we are seeking support for expanding our work to monitor and challenge land use decisions throughout the Puget Sound region.

Read: CSE-KEC Comment Letter 10-10-25

A Just Transition for the Port Townsend Paper Mill

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 20:01:42 GMT

An inland facility that uses non-wood feedstocks could be cleaner, greener, and more profitable

There comes a time in the life of an aging industrial facility where deliberate planning for its closure, cleanup, and replacement must begin. For the Port Townsend Paper Corporation mill, that time is now. Take your pick, the problems are proliferating: foul odors, marine organisms smothered by debris or suffocating from nutrient pollution, foam and algal blooms along the shore, occupational health and safety violations , water and air quality violations, climate pollution and toxins that will be around for a very long time.

You can drill down on any one of these and see how bad the news gets. Take chronic violations of the mill’s national pollution discharge elimination (NPDES) permit. As noted by Scott Doggett in his Port Townsend Leader opinion piece “ Mill keeps the public in the dark about spill ,” many of the pollutants the mill discharges in its wastewater are neurotoxins and carcinogens and several are among the most toxic and persistent substances on Earth. He notes that there have been 23 permit violations in the past seven years. These join 149 permit violations or triggers and 54 regulatory enforcement actions since 1990 . As Doggett notes in a follow up piece in The Leader the paltry fines Washington Department of Ecology assesses for these violations have not been raised since the late 1980s and are having little to no effect incentivizing better behavior.

Or take air quality. Port Townsend residents are all too familiar with the odors caused by emissions from the settling ponds, leaky pipes, and the smokestacks. Measured contaminants include reduced sulfur compounds, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and aldehydes. The sulfur compounds cause the smell. According to the Environmental Integrity Project , the mill has been in violation of the Clean Air Act for 12 of the last 12 quarters. In 2024, the US Department of Health and Human Services warned that breathing a cocktail of sulfur compounds in air near the mill can cause acute respiratory distress.

And the mill is by far the largest source of climate pollution in Jefferson County. The 2023 facility inventory from the EPA put the mill’s carbon dioxide emissions from burning wood chips and using fossil fuels at 554,000 metric tons CO2 per year. That’s over two and a half times the entire emissions from the rest of Jefferson County’s economy ( 207,582 metric tons ).

Given all this, a clean replacement facility that keeps all jobs intact and is financially attractive to investors is sorely needed. Otherwise, we end up like Port Angeles, with 200 sudden layoffs and a decades-long toxic cleanup legacy . Here’s one option to consider: a state-of-the-art pulp and paper facility located away from the shore that consumes far less water, energy and chemicals and has a much lower carbon footprint because it uses wheat straw, grass, hemp, kenaf, bamboo or agricultural wastes from Washington farmers as feedstock rather than wood (virgin wood chips or recycled paper and cardboard). It would also generate far less odors since non-kraft pulping processes can be used with these feedstocks. Non-kraft processes include any pulping process used to separate cellulose fibers from raw materials (like wood or non-wood biomass) that does not use sulfates. The resource efficiency gains – i.e. less environmental impact per ton of product – stems from lower levels of lignin, which makes these feedstocks easier to process. And well-paying union jobs would be involved with dismantling the existing mill and building and operating the new one.

While most non-wood pulp and paper facilities are in China and India the US is beginning to catch up as the demand for clean and green products soars. Companies like Genera (Tennessee) and Cotrell Paper (Massachusetts) are using grass, wheat straw and hemp as feedstock and are using far less water, energy, and chemicals than their wood-based competitors. Here in Washington, Columbia Pulp was the first large scale experiment – one that was designed to use wheat straw feedstock from eastern Washington farmers, but it opened its plant just as COVID hit and had to shut down operations in 2019.

There are several things public officials can do to accelerate a just transition. The legislature can undo decades of preferential treatment for wood products and give non-wood alternatives a level playing field. A bill snuck through the legislature in 2020 says that clearcutting and industrial wood products are "climate solutions" – a claim long ago debunked– but what if non-wood alternatives received this designation legitimately and were rewarded with the same portfolio of tax breaks, subsidies, and public investments now going to Big Timber? The legislature can also rescind the exemption of pulp and paper facilities from the state's signature climate law - the Climate Commitment Act. Despite their high emissions, pulp and paper facilities have been deemed " emissions intensive and trade exposed (EITE) ," relieving them from any requirements to reduce climate pollution over time. Given the Trump Administration's unprecedented support for protectionist measures - like steep tariffs on many pulp and paper imports - the EITE exemption is no longer needed.

Also, Washington Department of Ecology should notify the current owner – Atlas Holdings, LLC – that the current water and air quality permits are their last ones. These permits are not worth the paper they’re written on if violations and enforcement actions are chronic and doing nothing to protect or improve the air we breathe or the waters we use for fishing, boating, and swimming.

At the City level, our councilors should impose a bonding requirement that will ensure that Atlas bears full financial responsibility for cleaning up the site once it’s closed. With $18 billion in annual revenues, Atlas can afford this. Center for Sustainable Economy worked with King County to get a similar risk bonding ordinance in place for fossil fuel facilities that can easily be replicated here.

Our councilors and county commissioners could also play a major role by rolling up their sleeves and working with state economic development officials and the union to begin the process of recruiting new capital – if Atlas takes a pass – with some public support since the transition serves a public purpose. Similar facilities have been jumpstarted by solid waste bonds, new markets tax credits, and IRA’s section 45X for advanced manufacturing. The market outlook for non-wood facilities is promising. According to Global Growth Insights, the compound annual growth rate for non-wood pulp is forecast to be 6.4% through 2034 but only 0.81% for wood pulp .

So far, elected officials have been silent on the largest polluter in Jefferson County. Remarkably, neither the City of Port Townsend nor County staff or elected officials commented on reissuance of the latest NPDES permit. Nor was the mill even mentioned in the 14 candidate statements published in the pre-election edition of The Leader . There’s a long way to go, but it’s time to start.

A Pollutant in Tire Wear Particles is Killing West Coast Salmon at Alarming Rates

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 18:06:11 GMT

An overview of 6PPD-Q pollution and what CSE is doing about it.

BACKGROUND - 6PPD-Q is causing 90%+ mortality in urban streams during fall spawning migrations

Healthy salmon mean healthy watersheds. But for the past two decades, researchers in the Pacific Northwest have been alarmed by the urban runoff mortality syndrome (URMS) in coho salmon. In 2020, researchers identified a specific chemical in stormwater that was directly linked to URMS. The chemical, 6PPD-Q, forms from an antiozonant, 6PPD, which has been used in tires to extend their lifespan since the 1960s. 6PPD-Q is acutely toxic to coho and, to a lesser degree, steelhead and chinook. Mortality occurs most often during the early fall, when spawning fish encounter a flush of pollution caused by buildup of tire wear particles over the long dry summer months. These flushes also occur after any extended dry period throughout the year.

Significant mortality events have been documented for decades and across many urban watersheds. For example, Scholtz (2011) describes a 60%-100% pre-spawn mortality event in Longfellow creek, west Seattle, a range found often in the literature. In California, Oregon, and Washington, the chemical has been detected in streams and stormwater runoff at concentrations shown to kill at least half of coho in laboratory studies. In terms of lethal concentrations to detect, the adult 24-hour lethal concentration associated with 50% mortality (LC50) for juvenile coho salmon is 0.095 micrograms per liter (μg/L) whereas the 3-week post-swim up stage for coho salmon has an LC50 of 0.041 μg/L. Rainbow trout are also sensitive but at higher concentrations with an LC50 ranging from 1.0 to 2.3 μg/L during 72- and 24-h exposures, respectively. Steelhead LC50 has been found to be about 1.0 ug/L.

Landscape modeling has shown that the severity of spawner mortality scales with the extent of imperviousness within a watershed and, more specifically, the density of motor vehicle traffic near spawning habitats. Other factors include whether the stormwater runoff into receiving waters is mostly treated or untreated, traffic volume, heavier vehicles, more lanes, higher speeds, more turning and stopping, more impervious surface and absence of natural infiltration processes.

SOLUTIONS - Phasing out 6PPD in tires and advanced stormwater controls are two priority interventions

Tackling the 6PPD-Q issue comes down to two basic approaches. The first is a rapid phase-out of the additive 6PPD in tires. This additive has been used in tires since the early 1960s. Its main purpose is to extend tire life. According to the Interstate Technology Regulatory Council , 6PPD protects the components of the tire from degrading via ozone, oxygen, thermal degradation, and mechanical fatigue. Eliminating 6PPD in tires without an available alternative that offers comparable performance would compromise tire safety. For this reason, the search for 6PPD alternatives is in high gear, but will take time. Entities with active alternatives research include Washington Department of Ecology, California's Safer Consumer Products Program, the USDA, University of California and Flexsys, a major 6PPD manufacturer. Despite all these efforts, the reality is that 6PPD pollution will be around either in new tires or legacy tires still on the road for decades.

Because of this, CSE and its partners have begun researching what it would take in terms of policy changes and financial resources to put in place several promising controls on stormwater discharges to filter out this pollutant before it reaches critical habitat streams used by coho, Chinook, and steelhead. Advanced stormwater controls with the greatest promise include media filters, porous asphalt, and bio filtration. Ideally, all untreated stormwater outfalls would be prioritized for treatment with these technologies since most of the salmon mortality from 6PPD-Q now comes from outfalls with no treatment at all.

As part of its 6PPD-Q research and monitoring program, CalTrans has investigated the efficacy of these three types of stormwater controls and found that in each case, significant reductions in 6PPD-Q concentrations were achieved. BMPs monitored include:

Media filters : A media filter BMP uses a bed of sand, peat, zeolite, anionic and/or cationic media, granite or other fine-grained materials or fabrics to physically separate sediment and sediment-bound pollutants and/or electro-chemically remove dissolved constituents from storm water (County of San Diego, 2018). Stormwater media filters are usually housed within a two-chambered structure including a pretreatment settling basin and a filter bed filled with sand or other absorptive filtering media.
Porous pavement: Pervious or porous pavements allow stormwater to filter through voids in the pavement surface into an underlying rock reservoir where it is temporarily stored and infiltrated into the surrounding materials. While porous pavement designs may vary, they all have a similar structure consisting of a surface pavement layer with an underlying reservoir layer. Importantly, a porous asphalt layer can be installed as part of the original roadway design (i.e. for new roads) or when major reconstruction is needed or overlaid on existing asphalt.
Biofiltration or bioretention: Biofiltration is the process of improving stormwater or wastewater quality by filtering water through biologically influenced media. In less technical terms, it means filtering polluted water through various facilities that rely on natural vegetation and soils to a large extent but which often include artificial filtration media as well. Biofiltration facilities are often paired with bioretention facilities that store the treated water and percolate it underground.

Results show promise. In each case, CalTrans found that BMPs reduced 6PPD-Q concentrations below the LC50 95 nanogram per liter for coho, and well below critical thresholds for chinook and steelhead (Figure below).

CSE's PROGRAM OF WORK - Citizen science and land use advocacy

6PPD-Q is an emerging issue for federal, state, and local public agencies and for CSE. CSE is now in the formative stages of a campaign to halt all new residential and commercial developments that fail to include these advanced stormwater controls and to help county governments identify, cost out, and plan for large scale installation of BMPs once funding becomes available. Our program of work includes the following activities:

Engaging communities, tribes and stakeholders at public workshops

CSE and its partners will be sponsoring a series of public workshops providing an overview of the 6PPD-Q issue and outlining what local actions our organizations are taking to combat this threat. Nonprofits, tribal leaders, fisheries advocates and experts will be invited to help plan and prepare for these workshops. In addition to providing a detailed science and policy overview of the issue, we will utilize these workshops as a way to recruit citizen scientists to help with the task of monitoring 6PPD-Q pollution during storm events that come on the heels of extended dry periods. Citizen scientist volunteers will be required to attend a training workshop prior to field work and familiarize themselves with the latest standard operating procedures issued by Washington Department of Ecology for sampling stormwater from pre-selected outfalls.

Monitoring 6PPD-Q pollution with citizen scientists

Despite the fact that 6PPD-Q pollution is now widely accepted as the single most important toxic contamination threat to salmonids, federal, state, and local public agencies have yet to ramp up sampling of stormwater from high-risk outfalls, which include those within critical habitat reaches and adjacent to large areas of impervious surface and high traffic roadways. Testing is not yet required by EPA or state agencies, so citizen science teams have an important role to play in identifying pollution hot spots.

CSE has already done the advance work to identify high risk areas in some Pacific Northwest regions, so it will be relatively easy for us to identify specific outfalls that should be prioritized by our citizen scientist teams. Grab samples will be captured using the Washington State Department of Ecology’s “Collecting Grab Samples from Stormwater Discharges” protocol and sent to the EuroFins laboratory in Sacramento, CA, which is currently being used for 6PPD-Q testing by public agencies in the Northwest.

Leveraging advanced stormwater controls via SEPA and ESA

New greenfield developments for residential or commercial purposes greatly exacerbate the 6PPD-Q issue by creating new, high traffic impervious surface areas that drain into critical habitat for listed salmonids. The only way such developments can be 6PPD-Q neutral is by careful set asides of greenspace (including stream buffers) and installation of biofiltration, media filter, or porous asphalt BMPs as conditions or mitigation measures required by land use or water quality permits.

Land use permits are subject to review under Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). Among other requirements, SEPA requires mitigation of any unavoidable environmental impacts, including water pollution. CSE and its partners will participate in the SEPA review process by offering technical comments addressing the risks of 6PPD-Q pollution and recommend types and locations of BMPs that have high likelihood of lowering pollution concentrations below the thresholds of concern discussed above. If our recommendations are ignored, we will pursue litigation if we can find pro-bono representation or a donor to assist with costs. CSE has won two cases already in Washington State under SEPA and is working with some of the most talented attorneys on this statute, so we are hopeful about leveraging SEPA for 6PPD-Q mitigation measures if needed.

Water quality permits – in particular, those required under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act – are often required for these new developments when wetlands or streams are dredged, filled, or otherwise degraded by proposed developments. CSE has a track record of monitoring, commenting on, and litigating Army Corp of Engineers issuance of these permits without adequate consideration of direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts. Our successful litigation against the Army Corps in Virginia, for example, led that agency to issue new regulations for complying with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the context of 404 permits issued in association with new greenfield developments and has helped us both scale back the extent of new impervious surfaces and scale up green infrastructure elements such as forest and riparian buffers. To combat 6PPD-Q, we intend to follow a similar approach and have already signed up to be notified when the Seattle District of the Army Corp opens new 404 permits up for comment.

Creating shovel-ready lists of advanced stormwater BMPs and associated costs

For the vast area of impervious surface that already exists, CSE and its partners will work with city and county planning, engineering, and fisheries staff to identify priority sites for installation of BMPs in advance of funding anticipated as a result of litigation and/or funding made available through routine infrastructure spending at the state and federal levels. We have done preliminary work on this approach in Gresham, OR, Bellingham, WA, and Eureka CA. In these places, CSE modeled what it would take to treat all impervious surface areas within 1/4 mile of critical habitat streams for listed species and for all high traffic roadways within critical habitat watersheds. We will be expanding this work to include many other jurisdictions.

Please stay tuned here for further developments on CSE's 6PPD-Q work in the months ahead.

Time to Get Washington Department of Natural Resources Out of the Logging Business

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 18:20:55 GMT

State forests are far more valuable for water, carbon and recreation

REPRINTED FROM THE PORT TOWNSEND LEADER, 8-6-25

It’s time to stop logging big old trees on state forestlands to pay for schools and public services. The revenues can be replaced but the ecological and climate damages from continuing this practice may be impossible to reverse.

Forest ecosystems on Washington’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) lands are highly degraded. A 2020 study published in Nature Communications found that over 90 percent of the state’s forests are severely or moderately degraded by clearcuts, logging roads, and timber plantations. DNR lands are so degraded they are capturing the least amount of carbon across all forest ownerships in the state according to the most recent federal forest inventory data. Two recent court decisions including one here in Jefferson County found that DNR’s failure to account for the climate impacts of logging older, carbon rich ‘legacy’ forests violates the State Environmental Policy Act .

Clearly, far more DNR forests need a permanent break from logging, not just a pause. But a recent Seattle Times editorial underscores the difficulty of doing so – in this case, by setting aside a paltry 10 – 15% of structurally complex forest – when everyone from mill owners to school superintendents are fighting over their cut of the logs or revenues from their sale.

A solution is in plain sight: eliminate DNR’s wasteful logging program altogether and replace the revenues it generates with one or more of the “ myriad ways ” noted by the Washington Supreme Court. Doing so will free up DNR’s globally significant forestlands to capture and store carbon, replenish water supplies, salmon, and wildlife, and help the state close its growing budget deficit since tens of millions of dollars spent each year planning timber sales and repairing their damages will no longer be needed. Instead of cutting firefighting budgets, DNR can eliminate what it spends on logging. Here’s how it could work.

Last spring, I co-authored a study in the journal Environment, Development and Sustainability proposing a carbon tax on industrial logging to help incentivize the transition to climate smart practices like long rotations and alternatives to clearcutting while raising revenues for public services and ecological restoration. That study found that a modest tax on carbon emissions from industrial clearcutting in Washington could raise $114 – $213 million a year depending on how private forestland owners respond to the tax – absorb it as the cost of doing business, pass some of it on to log buyers, or adopt climate smart practices and get a significantly reduced rate while earning income from carbon markets. Either way, we found that tax revenues generated will be more than adequate to replace all DNR logging revenues now passed on to local governments. We also found that such a tax would have minimal effects on log supply and retain private forestlands as a lucrative investment.

DNR can raise additional revenues above and beyond this in several ways. Investing in more fee-based recreation sites to help alleviate overcrowding is one. Conservation leasing lands to universities for long term research and to hunting, fishing, and watershed protection groups is another. Carbon payments are yet another option. If the carbon income modeled in our paper held for DNR lands, then it is reasonable for DNR to expect to earn at least $14 million a year over 50 years if all 1.4 million acres in western Washington were enrolled in a carbon offset program.

Jumpstarting the process of getting DNR out of the logging business will require legislative action. Legislation that helps keep DNR locked into logging (i.e. HB 2858 from 2020, which declares logging to be a climate solution) needs to be repealed and replaced with a mandate to develop a new business model suited for the 21 ^st century and the world’s urgent need to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation. A forest carbon tax program based on draft legislation in Oregon can be part of that new business model. As Commissioner of Public Land Dave Upthegrove settles into his new job, passing this legislation will provide him with an exciting new mission commensurate with the kinds of leadership he provided on the King County Council.

John Talberth, Ph.D., is President and Senior Economist for the Center for Sustainable Economy, based in Port Townsend, WA.

Boreal Forests Down the Toilet

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 14:58:36 GMT

New report documents the climate consequences of clearcutting

Canada’s vanishing forests for tissue paper and paper towels

Seattle, WA: In a new report , the Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) estimates that clearcutting over 32,000 acres of boreal forests in Ontario to produce pulp for toilet paper made in the US generates over 3.8 million tons of carbon pollution each year. This is equivalent to what is emitted by over 824,000 gas-powered passenger vehicles or several small coal-fired plants. The report also quantifies the economic damages associated with this pollution – over $560 million each year, or $1,715 for every ton of pulp exported to the US. The export price of pulp from Ontario is currently hovering around this same level, meaning any financial benefits from export are entirely canceled by the economic harm created.

According to Dr. John Talberth, President and Senior Economist for CSE, “It’s hard to imagine a more wasteful use of carbon rich forests. In a rational economic system, this should not be happening. The problem is that neither Canada nor the US is putting a price on the climate and environmental damages associated with boreal forest clearcutting and factoring that price into trade and environmental policies. Our report helps lay the groundwork for doing so.”

At a time when Canada’s forests are facing catastrophic levels of human and climate-related deforestation and are now a source instead of a sink for carbon emissions the report argues that trade and environmental policies need fast-tracked reforms to end subsidies and otherwise disincentivize the use of carbon-rich boreal forests for toilet paper and accelerate growth in the manufacturing of non-wood alternatives from hemp, bamboo, kenaf, and agricultural wastes, mostly provided by US farmers.

One policy CSE and its partners are promoting are border carbon adjustments (BCAs), a type of tariff included in two bi-partisan bills currently circulating in the US Congress . The point of these bills is to create economic incentives to help US producers of goods that are less carbon intensive than those imported from abroad. In an opinion piece by Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Chris Coons (D-DE) in support of their legislation, “Our bipartisan PROVE IT Act (Providing Reliable, Objective, Verifiable Emissions Intensity and Transparency Act) would demonstrate our advantage in clean production and make clear to consumers around the world the environmental damage caused by some emissions-intensive foreign products.”

“Canadian pulp for toilet paper is an ideal test case for the Senators border carbon adjustment idea, Talberth continues. “Here, a 100% tariff is justified on climate damages alone, an amount that will give US producers of non-wood paper products a leg up in markets that are now subsidized by Canada.”

Environmental Paper Network (EPN) , who leads a 350-member international coalition has been working for decades to help such producers capture a greater share of the market now dominated by timber corporations that have convinced legislators on both sides of the border and both sides of the aisle to subsidize their products over non-wood alternatives. Industrial logging activities, whether for mass timber products or paper, receive generous government subsidies in the form of lower taxes, exemptions from tariffs, limits on liability, taxpayer funds for mills and infrastructure, and access to below-cost wood from public lands. As the CSE analysis shows, the unaccounted-for greenhouse gas emissions associated with the Dryden mill’s current operations in Ontario likely outweigh its economic benefits.

According to Dr. Elizabeth Underwood, EPN’s North American Director, “Clearcutting about 13,000 hectares a year of the Canadian Boreal Forest for pulp production at the Dryden mill has enormous environmental implications. Calculations from this report are on par with EPN's Paper Calculator (TM) tool , which uses a science-based methodology to estimate various metrics, including GHG emissions. Moreover, this egregious environmental devastation by the logging industry is currently subsidized at a time when marketplace sustainability leaders are offering products made from environmentally preferable alternative fibers, such as hemp, bamboo, kenaf, and recycled content. This report brings to light both problems and solutions at a time when US and Canadian governments -- and public consumers -- are scrutinizing subsidies and tariffs. Hopefully leaders on both sides will use the scientific data to reform economic policies to align with environmental and ethical protections."

The full report can be downloaded here .

This press release can be downloaded here .

Washington Times op-ed can be viewed here .

Washington Times op-ed full version can be viewed here .

How Trump’s Timber Trade War Can Benefit North American Forests

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 18:41:05 GMT

Carbon border adjustments on pulp and lumber could provide a rational basis

for tariffs and reduce high-emissions logging.

Most economists are appalled at any restraints to free trade, including tariffs. However, like any good thing, openness to international trade has declining returns of scale. Past a certain threshold, more trade openness causes more economic harm than good [1]. An economy too reliant on foreign countries for its goods, services, or investment capital suffers a host of socioeconomic ills caused by the inherent volatility of trade and the drain of manufacturing jobs, skills and knowledge that go with extreme specialization. Wise regulation of free trade, through strategic tariffs, can help reverse such trends and help communities rebuild the capacity to produce essential goods and services locally. Strategic tariffs can also be a tool to foster a race to the top in sustainable production and consumption [2]. But only if they are reconfigured for this purpose rather than existing merely as political weapons based on arbitrary tariff rates.

As an example, let’s take a closer look at the effects of the trade wars sparked by the Trump Administration on harmful logging activities in Canada and the U.S. As of this writing, the Administration has pledged to impose a 25% duty on all Canadian exports of pulp and lumber to the US in addition to a 14.5% tariff already in place [3]. This is a big deal for Canada. In 2023, Canada's wood product exports, a significant portion of which are softwood lumber, reached $13.6 billion, with the United States being the primary destination. Forest product exports represented 20% of BC’s total commodity export value. Canada is planning to retaliate with a 25% tariff of its own on US lumber imports, mostly softwoods. Canada is the largest US lumber export market, so this is also a big deal for the US.

Despite the trade distorting effects of these tariffs, they can, in fact, be justified by market failures associated with industrial logging activities on both sides of the border. In the US, corporate logging practices like replacing real forests with monoculture tree farms, clearcutting, spraying of toxic chemicals and converting forestlands to urban sprawl have accelerated. Because of these stressors, only 28% of US forestlands exist in their natural state of ecological integrity [4]. In the lower 48, that figure falls to just 10% or less. If properly accounted for, the carbon emissions associated with this type of logging would be the number one or two source in a recent analysis of logging-related emissions in four states (figure below) [5].

In Canada, the logging and export of old growth forests from British Columbia and the rampant clearcutting of boreal forests for low end uses such as toilet paper have sparked a major backlash by conservation and scientific organizations. NRDC, for example, estimates that carbon emissions associated with clearcutting of boreal forests at a rate of approximately 1.3 million acres a year generates 80 million metric tons CO2-e [6].

A strategic tariff regime – one based on the externalities associated with deforestation and forest degradation – can play a role in reducing harmful practices and scaling up climate smart alternatives like long rotations (which reduces the annual rate of logging) and alternatives to clearcutting. It can help reduce competitive barriers to lower carbon substitutes like bamboo, green steel, and carbon negative concrete. How can this be operationalized? Here, carbon border adjustments (CBAs) can play a major role as a longer-term substitute for the haphazard tariffs now being imposed by both countries.

CBAs have received an increasing amount of attention in recent years in the EU and the US as a way to level the playing field with respect to the import of high-carbon commodities. A carbon border adjustment mechanism is a policy tool that aims to ensure imported goods face a carbon price equivalent to that of domestically produced goods, preventing carbon leakage. The EU first enacted its CBA mechanism in 2023 and is planning to supplement its list of commodities affected to include pulp, paper, biomass and lumber in the next year or two. In the US, four legislative proposals were introduced into the 118th Congress that provide a range of CBAs between $15 and $65 per metric ton CO2-e embodied in imported goods. It is useful to compare the effective tariff rate associated with these CBAs with what is currently being imposed by the tit for tat trade war between Canada and the US. The table below provides an overview.

The key to CBA rates is the carbon intensity of production, expressed as metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2-e) per ton of product. In a journal article released in 2024, CSE calculated the relevant carbon intensities for both short and long-lived wood products produced in Oregon, Washington, Maine and North Carolina [6]. The average across all states was estimated to be 4.98 tCO2-e for long lived products (i.e. lumber). In Canada, CSE calculated the carbon intensity of pulp exports using the data from one of the largest pulp operations there, which produces pulp for export to the US for manufacturing into tissue paper, paper towels, and diapers. In a forthcoming report, we estimate that the carbon intensity of pulp exports from Ontario is 7.49 tCO2-e [7].

In the table, three CBA levels are applied to these carbon intensities and then compared with current market prices to determine the effective tariff rate if the mechanism were the CBAs and not the political tariff rates now being imposed. CBA rates of $16.30, $35, and $65/tCO2-e, were modeled, with the $16.30 figure the actual effective carbon price in the US in 2025 while the latter two levels were taken from prospective legislation now before the 118th Congress. For Canadian pulp imports, the CBAs would result in effective tariffs of 13.71 – 54.65%, which is more or less in line with the current US tariff of 40% on imported pulp. For US lumber exports, a Canadian CBA of $16.30/tCO2-e would amount to a 31.56% tariff, a bit above the 25% retaliatory level but still within a reasonable range. Canadian CBAs of $35 and $65 would be prohibitive and greatly curtail US exports since the effective tariff rates would be 67.77 and 125.86%, respectively.

What this analysis demonstrates is that carbon border adjustments, if set based on rigorous life cycle analyses of carbon intensities, could be a workable substitute for the current, highly politicized regime of tariffs and counter tariffs now being pursued by both countries. It also demonstrates how CBAs can be used to help internalize the enormous, externalized costs associated with clearcutting and rapid logging of boreal and temperate forests on both sides of the border and incentivize climate smart alternatives that have lower carbon intensities.

References

[1] Talberth, J., Bohara, A., 2006. Economic openness and green GDP. Ecological Economics 58 (2006) 743 – 758.

[2] Hersh, A.S., Bivens, J., 2025. Tariffs – Everthing you need to know but were afraid to ask. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. Available online at: https://www.epi.org/publication/tariffs-everything-you-need-to-know-but-were-afraid-to-ask/.

[3] Stewart, P., 2025. Lumber Market Shifts: How New Tariffs Will Reshape the Industry. ResourceWise. Available online at: https://www.resourcewise.com/forest-products-blog/lumber-market-shifts-how-new-tariffs-will-reshape-the-industry.

[4] Grantham,H.S., Duncan, A., Evans, T.D., et al. (2021). Anthropogenic modification of forests means only 40% of remaining forests have high ecosystem integrity. Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19493-3. F.

[5] Talberth, J., Carlson, E., 2024. Forest carbon tax and reward: regulating greenhouse gas emissions from industrial logging and deforestation in the US. Environ Dev Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04523-7

[6] Skene, J., Polanyi, M., 2021. Missing the Forest: How carbon loopholes for logging hinder Canada’s climate leadership. Washington, DC: Natural Resources Defense Council.

[7] Talberth, J., 2025. Boreal forests down the toilet. A life-cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions associated with pulp exports from Ontario, CA. Port Townsend, WA: Center for Sustainable Economy (in press).

Report: Oregon Remains Unprepared for the Costs of Climate Adaptation

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 18:48:19 GMT

New FORCE report addresses what it will cost and who will pay

Portland, OR. — March 27, 2025 — In its second major report , the Forum on Oregon Climate Change Economics (FORCE) has concluded that Oregon is ill-prepared for the costs of adapting to climate change but can begin to collect the needed funding through surcharges on the most significant sources of greenhouse gas pollution.

The report, entitled “Climate Change Adaptation in Oregon: What will it cost and who will pay?,” was authored by FORCE member John Talberth, PhD, and Richard Mietz, Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) with support from other members of the FORCE team at University of Oregon, Reed College, and Natural Resource Economics.

According to Dr. Talberth, “With the Trump Administration pulling out of all climate change related programs, it is imperative that states fill the void and take the lead on planning and financing climate adaptation projects that will save lives, property, and natural ecosystems from the worst effects of climate change. This report lists some of the big-ticket items identified by prior federal, state and local public agencies and demonstrates how surcharges on the greenhouse gas emissions from oil, gas, coal and industrial timber can fund the necessary adaptation to climate change.”

The report warns, however, that climate adaptation planning has slowed down significantly and little to no work has been done to estimate the financial costs of what will be needed. Most of the work completed to date has been in response to former Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s Executive Order 20-04 and President Biden’s Executive Order 14008. After complying with initial climate adaptation planning requirements, very little additional work has been done and it remains unclear what projects will be needed sooner rather than later, how much they will cost, and who will pay for them.

According to Richard Mietz, “We pored over dozens of climate action and climate adaptation documents from public agencies. While it’s encouraging to see all the great work that has been done, it’s disheartening to see any and all funding for this commonsense climate work being gutted by the Trump Administration. With no further advance planning – including thinking about what will it cost and who should pay for it– Oregon taxpayers will be forced to shoulder all of the costs associated with heat deaths, collapsing highways, wildfires, water shortages and lost fisheries.” In its first report, the FORCE team found that climate change is already responsible for frequent, multi-billion dollar disasters .

After reviewing the status of climate adaptation planning at the federal, state and local levels, the report modeled the amount of money that would need to be collected by an annual surcharge in order to have the requisite money to pay for five urgent climate adaptation measures by 2050. These include:

Comprehensive cooling investments identified by the Oregon Department of Energy applicable to all residential structures (60,000) currently lacking adequate technology, mainly heat pumps and air conditioners.
Retrofit of all high to extreme risk highway corridors studied by ODOT in Oregon’s Coast Range.
Carbon payments adequate to halt clearcutting on roughly 148,000 acres of private forestland for 20 years in order to restore forest cover and make landscapes near rural communities more resilient to wildfires and water shortages.
Acquisition of forestland, farmland, and floodplain properties to mitigate climate damages and replace habitat that will be lost to climate change.
A significant increase in deployment of microgrid systems as backups for basic services, schools, and emergency operations.

All told, these amount to a climate adaptation cost of $22.3 billion dollars by 2050. To make sure that money is available, surcharges of $11.31 per short ton of coal, $2.41 per barrel of oil, $0.28 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas and $61.38 per thousand board feet of timber could be levied now. Such surcharges are based on the international ‘polluter pays’ principle which states that the costs of climate adaptation are assigned to the parties most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. Such surcharges will also help expedite the transition to lower-carbon alternatives such as wind and solar energy, carbon-negative concrete, “green” steel, and bamboo-based paper products.

To view and download the report click here .

Economic Costs of Climate Change in Oregon: A First Look

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 20:44:33 GMT

New report the report begins the process of developing evidence-based estimates of the costs to Oregonians.

CSE researchers John Talberth and Richard Mietz are part of a collaboration that has come together to begin putting a price tag on the climate crisis as it unfolds in the state of Oregon. The collaboration – Forum on Oregon Climate Economics, or FORCE – includes researchers at the University of Oregon, Reed College, Natural Resource Economics and CSE. Today, the FORCE team released a report taking a ‘first look’ at climate damages already incurred or expected over the next fifty years. Subsequent reports will quantify these climate change costs more thoroughly and also help public agencies in the state identify cost-effective climate adaptation measures that could be put in place to help Oregonians be more resilient to heat waves, droughts, wildfires, sea level rise and other climate disasters in the decades ahead. The report’s Executive Summary is reprinted below:

Full report

Press release

The Economic Costs of Climate Change for Oregonians. A First Look.

Forum on Oregon Climate Economics, October 2024

Executive Summary

By increasing the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, flooding and other impacts, climate change imposes costs on Oregon’s economy every year, on every Oregonian. We present a review of public data and research results from the academic literature to provide an initial, partial assessment of these costs both today and into the future.

A few examples of costs include:

The economic costs to Oregonians from heat-related deaths during the 2021 heatwave total between $1.3 billion and $4.6 billion.
Including both short-term and long-term costs, Oregon’s 2018 fire season may have generated $6.8 billion in costs, or $3,900 per household. Future fire seasons may generate higher or lower costs.
The average Oregonian could lose roughly $12,000 in personal income per year due to changes in the climate that have already been set in motion due to past greenhouse gas emissions. Oregonians will also likely see increases in the cost of food and other goods and services.
Oregonians risk losing over $450 million in ecosystem services each year from salt marshes depending on the degree of sea level rise.
Douglas fir die-off (traced clearly to climate change) in southern Oregon is eliminating carbon sequestration services worth over $100 million per year.
Current global analyses of the impacts of climate change over the next several decades, if applied to Oregon, suggest that climate change may reduce Oregon’s gross domestic product by $7,500 per Oregonian per year.

These costs can be both direct (e.g. increased risk of a house burning down in a wildfire) and indirect (e.g. increase in home insurance premiums due to increases in wildfire risk). Some are directly observable through market prices, meaning they materialize as decreases in cash available for use on other things or increases in the amount of spending necessary to avoid harm. Others are “non-market” values, meaning that they do not have an immediate cash effect but represent a reduction in quality of life or economic well-being in ways that are quantifiable in dollar terms. Some of these costs are inclusive of each other: that is, it is not appropriate to sum all of these costs to obtain a single overall cost.

In short: the effects of climate change are already impacting Oregonians’ economic bottom lines and reducing their overall economic well-being. These impacts will grow in the future without significant investments in mitigation and adaptation.

A Gaping Hole in California’s Climate Action Framework: Big Timber

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 16:45:56 GMT

Logging is a major source of GHG emissions in Shasta, Siskiyou, and other California counties but is ignored in the state's climate action agenda

Center for Sustainable Economy has teamed up with Battle Creek Alliance to produce one of the first life-cycle based greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) estimates for industrial logging practices in northern California. While California routinely boasts about its leadership on climate, GHG emissions associated with clearcutting and logging road construction is entirely overlooked and represents a major gap in the climate agenda for heavily logged regions of the state.

The report replicates a peer reviewed methodology first published in the journal Environment, Development, and Sustainability and in an analysis of the climate impacts associated with logging, grazing, and road construction in the Nez Perce – Clearwater National Forest published last year . Both reports received financing and technical support from the Forest Carbon Coalition . The new report estimates GHG emissions associated with logging and logging road construction in Siskiyou and Shasta counties and also describes the many ways industrial-scale logging for wood products and to clear the way for development is making the land more susceptible to climate change. Key findings include:

Despite its stated intention to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 and growing support for climate restoration the State of California does not report or regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from industrial logging activities. This is because logging-related emissions are simply assumed to be climate neutral – offset by forest growth elsewhere or in the future or by substitution of wood products for more carbon intensive goods.
Both assumptions are inconsistent with science and climate policy. Compared to the natural forests they have replaced, landscapes dominated by clearcuts, logging roads and timber plantations store and sequester less and emit far more carbon. As such, GHG emissions associated with intensive logging activities play a key role in keeping GHG concentrations in the atmosphere far above pre-industrial levels.
Compared with pre-industrial forests, emissions from logging are new to the landscape, forest growth has always been there and has, in fact, been greatly reduced by logging. Moreover, replanting is the law and not some voluntary action. Therefore, granting the logging and wood products industry an effective offset for forest growth elsewhere or in newly established plantations violates the additionality requirements in California and other states’ emissions trading programs, which require the timber industry to improve on nature’s carbon balance and go beyond mere compliance with existing laws to earn offsets.
Counting CO2 captured by growth of trees eventually put on the chopping block also violates the criteria of permanence.
And while wood products may be less carbon intensive than some substitutes, they are more carbon intensive than many others like bamboo, hemp, carbon negative concrete, wind and solar energy.
The State of California and its counties have many methods and sources of information that can be relied upon to monitor and report the climate impacts of logging on an annual basis. To demonstrate, this report provides preliminary estimates of GHG emissions associated with logging and road building in Shasta and Siskiyou counties based on peer reviewed methodologies and also reviews ways these activities could make the land more vulnerable to climate change by increasing risks associated with wildfires, floods, heat waves and other climate stressors.
Using a life-cycle carbon footprint method, this report estimates that GHG emissions associated with logging and logging roads in Shasta and Siskiyou counties averages over 4 million metric tons CO2 equivalent per year (4.06 MMT CO2-e/yr). This is equivalent to annual emissions from 883,000 gas-powered passenger vehicles. In Shasta County, the annual emissions estimate of 2.07 MMT CO2-e/yr exceeds those associated with building energy use, transportation, solid waste, water use and agriculture combined.
Emissions factors found by this research (9.4 – 11.4 tCO2-e/mbf) fall squarely within the range reported in previous studies from both temperate and tropical forests worldwide. Applied to California timber harvests in total suggests that the logging and wood product sector is responsible for at least 16.8 MMT CO2-e per year.
The results suggest that these activities are likely to generate between $487 million and $1.4 billion dollars in climate damages each year, an amount far more than any revenues generated by logging and wood products.

To view and download a copy of the report, click here .

To view the Battle Creek Alliance press release, click here .

National Forest Logging Increases by 24% Under Biden's Watch

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 23:01:40 GMT

Equivalent to taking 241,000 electric cars off the road each year

Since President Biden took office, the volume logged on our public lands has increased dramatically despite his pledge to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 under the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use . Volume logged is expressed in thousand board feet (MBF), and since 2021, the Forest Service total has risen from 2,377,642 MBF to 2,939,816 MBF through the end of fiscal year 2023 according to the agency's quarterly cut and sold reports [1]. This is a 24% increase. The results from FY 2024 continue this unsettling trend. Logging volume has jumped another 6% over the last year. The climate consequences are severe.

According to the latest scientific estimates , every thousand board feet (MBF) of timber logged in the US or internationally generates anywhere from 9.69 to 16.74 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent over the wood products life cycle [2]. National forest logging is on the higher end of this range because most of what is cut is mature, carbon dense timber. At an emissions factor of 15 tCO2-e/mbf, the emissions impact of a nearly one billion board foot (942,213 MBF) increase in annual volume cut on national forests compared with FY 2021 is over 8.4 million metric tons per year. That's enough to take nearly a quarter million (241,000) electric vehicles off the road each year and replace them with 193,000 gas guzzling SUVs [3]. A gaping hole in US climate policy continues to be Big Timber and the devastating climate consequences of industrial logging on both our public and private forestlands.

CSE and other members of the Forest Carbon Coalition are hard at work trying to turn things around. Last September, we published an updated version of Repairing America's Tattered Forests: Maximizing natural carbon removal while revitalizing or forgotten rural areas . This policy roadmap calls for ending the subsidized logging of public forestlands, including national forests, and contains an extensive list of policy interventions available to Congress and state legislatures for making a decisive turn towards full implementation of the Glasgow Leaders pact.

Footnotes:

[1] USDA Forest Service. All fiscal years since 1997. Forest Products Cut and Sold from National Forests and Grasslands. Available online here .

[2] Talberth, J., Carlson, E., 2024. Forest carbon tax and reward: regulating greenhouse gas emissions from industrial logging and deforestation in the US. Environment, Development, and Sustainability 17 Feb. 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04523-7.

[3] According to an analysis by Earthjustice , the lifecycle carbon savings of an electric vehicle relative to a conventional passenger car is about 35 metric tons. SUVs are about 20% less efficient than conventional vehicles, and thus require less of them to replace the EV fleet displaced each year.

At Brookings.edu: Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds Make Headway

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 17:19:13 GMT

An overview of risk bonds, how they work, and how they are being implemented in the PNW

Brookings Institution has teamed up with researchers at CSE to publish an overview of our work on Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Programs. The report, now online at Brookings.edu provides a summary of the concept, a demonstration of how such programs can be used to raise funding for climate adaptation, and a progress report on how state and local governments in Oregon and Washington are moving forward to implement the concept on-the ground.

Click here to access the report online .

Court Halts Logging Over Climate Impacts

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 22:52:09 GMT

King County Superior Court rules that DNR violated SEPA by

failing to disclose and mitigate the climate impacts of logging mature 'legacy' forests

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 28 MARCH, 2024

Contact:

John Talberth, CSE, (510) 384-5724, jtalberth@sustainable-economy.org
Claudia Newman, Bricklin and Newman, (206) 264-8000, newman@bnd-law.com

Seattle – For the second time in two years a Washington Superior Court has ruled that the Department of Natural Resources, under Hilary Franz’s leadership, is violating the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) by deforesting the last remnants of mature natural forest cover on its lands and failing to disclose or mitigate the harmful climate impacts of doing so. Despite losing on this issue in Jefferson County , DNR refused to make any substantive changes to its logging program or environmental analysis procedures under SEPA. In this latest round, Center for Sustainable Economy, Save the Olympic Peninsula, and Legacy Forest Defense Coalition filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court last June to halt the Wishbone Timber Sale – a 100-acre patch of carbon rich 80- to 110-year-old ‘legacy’ forests in the Tolt and Snoqualmie River basins northeast of Seattle. Legacy forests are rare, naturally regenerated stands that provide exceptional levels of carbon storage, biodiversity, and water quality. Led by Dave Upthegrove, currently running for Commissioner of Public Lands, seven members of the King County Council sent a letter to DNR supporting plaintiffs in asking for accounting of climate impacts associated with this kind of logging.

In today’s ruling in Center for Sustainable Economy et al. vs. DNR (No. 23-2-11799-9-KNT), Judge Kristin Ballinger took DNR to task over its rationale for ignoring climate impacts of logging at the project level – that as a whole, DNR lands are capturing more carbon than is released by logging. In her Decision and Order , Judge Ballinger agreed with plaintiffs that “DNR cannot circumvent an examination of the impacts of logging on a specific parcel of land by relying on carbon sequestration benefits from other lands that it manages.” She said that by failing to consider the impacts of deforestation and forest degradation on climate, DNR’s determination that the Wishbone Timber Sale would have no significant environmental impacts was ‘clearly erroneous.’

According to Dr. John Talberth at Center for Sustainable Economy, "This is a major victory for carbon rich, biodiverse forests and the laws that protect them. To stabilize the Earth's climate, all such forests need lasting protection. But tragically, under Hilary Franz's leadership, DNR has been deforesting these stands to keep logging levels at an extremely unsustainable rate rather than setting the high bar on what climate smart forestry looks like."

In their litigation, plaintiffs repeatedly pointed out that DNR's mismanagement of the landscape has all but eliminated carbon sequestration capacity. According to the latest data from the US Forest Service, DNR lands in western Washington currently rank last place in terms of the ratio of carbon captured vs. carbon released by logging and mortality (chart below). Logging mature legacy forests is part of the reason. But now that two courts have found DNR in violation of SEPA by failing to disclose these facts, the agency is being compelled to find alternatives.

According to Claudia Newman, who litigated the case for plaintiffs, "Instead of facing the reality that logging century old, structurally complex forests and replacing them with early-stage tree plantations causes significant adverse climate impacts, DNR tried to convince the court that these actions have no climate consequences whatsoever. We are grateful to Judge Ballinger for recognizing reality and ordering the agency to consider employing climate-smart, sustainable forest management tools for future harvesting projects.”

DNR's position throughout this litigation mirrored timber industry tactics in the range of false and misleading claims made about climate change, its management activities, and plaintiffs' goals. In particular:

DNR deception: Plaintiffs hold "extremist" views that are contrary to the international community. Truth: Plaintiffs are asking DNR to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions and other climate impacts associated with its deforestation activities and develop alternatives to lessen the impact. The international climate community is firmly supportive of efforts to curb deforestation and find alternatives - like partial cutting and preservation of primary forests - to prevent any further loss of forest cover and carbon dense stands.

DNR deception: Our lands are capturing far more carbon than they release. Truth: The only comprehensive inventory of forest carbon stocks and fluxes across the landscape has found that DNR's lands are not accumulating carbon at all because so much is being lost by logging operations.

DNR deception: Since our lands are capturing more carbon than they release there are no climate impacts from logging. Truth: Even if DNR lands were net positive on carbon accumulation, it does not mean that logging projects have no climate impacts. This is analogous to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management saying that new oil platforms have no climate impacts because the ocean still absorbs more CO2 than is released by this new fossil fuel infrastructure. The reality is that since logging, as with drilling, is not part of nature's carbon cycle any emissions generated by these activities are helping to drive up CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

DNR deception: We carefully considered the climate impacts of logging in programmatic documents from 2019 and so don't need to do anything further at the project level. Truth: Programmatic documents don't emit carbon, logging projects do, and SEPA requires consideration of actual, on-the-ground effects. Moreover, the 2019 documents considered only a small fraction of what might be emitted by its logging program and failed entirely to consider other climate impacts, such as increases in surface temperature caused by stripping forest cover.

DNR deception: Storing carbon in wood products is better than storing it in forests. Truth: This ‘furniture’ theory has been thoroughly debunked. Each ton of carbon stored in wood products comes at a carbon cost of 20 or more tons CO2 released by logging, manufacturing, and disposal of wood products in landfills. There is no net carbon storage in wood products, just a net release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In addition, forests can accumulate and store carbon for hundreds of years while most carbon stored in wood products is released into the atmosphere in a few decades.

DNR deception: Through our standard practices, we are protecting fish, wildlife, water and forest productivity from climate change. Truth: By converting natural forests into tree plantations DNR is making state forestlands more susceptible to wildfire, drought, water shortages, heat waves, invasive species, flooding, landslides and other climate stressors.

For access to all pleadings filed in this case, please visit the Wishbone litigation project page here.

New Research Finds EU’s Welfare Increasingly Divergent with GDP Growth

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 20:06:58 GMT

GPI 2.0 is gaining traction amongst sustainability researchers

In 2017 CSE published the results of an international collaboration updating the methodology for the Genuine Progress Indicator , with an application to the US, the State of Maryland, and the City of Baltimore to demonstrate the applicability of the GPI 2.0 approach at multiple scales. Since that time there has been a proliferation of new research based on GPI 2.0. This new article by Jonas Van der Slycken and Brent Bleys applies GPI 2.0 (also referred to as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) to an evaluation of the EU’s economic performance between 2015 and 2018.

Citation: Jonas Van der Slycken, Brent Bleys,Is Europe faring well with growth? Evidence from a welfare comparison in the EU-15 (1995–2018),Ecological Economics, Volume 217, 2024,108054, ISSN 0921-8009, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.108054.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800923003178 .

Abstract

This paper is the first to calculate welfare, measured by the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), for the EU-15 countries in a standardized and comparable way. This paper does so by building on a case study for Belgium by Van der Slycken and Bleys (2023) that puts forward a “2.0 methodology” with two distinct ISEWs that deal with cross-time and cross-boundary issues.

Both welfare and GDP per capita improved in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2018. Yet, there is an important divergence between welfare and GDP: over time experiential welfare per capita and the per capita benefits and costs of present activities improved by respectively 10,5% and 13,4%, which is less than one third and half of the growth in GDP per capita that grew by 32,4%. These welfare trends are mainly driven by individual consumption growth, the shadow economy and welfare losses from income inequality, which compensated about half of the welfare gains of the former two categories.

The gap between welfare and GDP diverged especially after the financial crisis when welfare started stagnating. At the end of the studied period, the EU-15 had already recovered from the financial crisis from a GDP perspective, but not from a welfare view. Since welfare in 2018 was less than 2% lower than the period-maximum, there is no conclusive evidence in favor of the threshold hypothesis at the level of the EU-15. However, the fact that welfare levels in nine countries are more than 5% lower than their peak values signals a clear threshold for these countries. Yet, welfare can be increased beyond previous peaks with postgrowth policies that focus on social and ecological welfare.

Tax Clearcuts. Reward Climate Smart Practices.

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 16:58:31 GMT

How forest carbon taxes can help slow and reverse deforestation and forest degradation across the US, and internationally

In a new study published in the journal Environment, Development, and Sustainability researchers at the Center for Sustainable Economy demonstrate how a tax on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from industrial logging practices and clearing of forests for subdivisions can help slow and reverse deforestation and forest degradation and catalyze the transition to climate smart alternatives like long harvest rotations, ecological thinning of dense tree plantations, and establishment of forest carbon reserves. Across the four US states included in the study - Maine, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington - the researchers found that a forest carbon tax based on the social cost of carbon along with a number of tax credits and exemptions for good practices is likely to raise between $56 and $357 million per year for a Forest Carbon Incentive Fund used to acquire forestlands for public purposes, reduce the loss of forestland to developers, and compensate small forestland owners for the costs they face in making the climate smart transition. They also found that while the tax on clearcutting is likely to reduce profits for investor-owned forestlands somewhat, it would still leave an acceptable rate of return for "patient capital" investors like family offices, socially responsible investors, non-profits and sustainability fund managers.

The study argues that the present GHG accounting system is flawed because it excludes GHG emissions from industrial logging activities and land development and that this gap has led to a corresponding policy vacuum. Despite the fact that the carbon footprint of a given year's logging activity is as significant as GHG emissions from sectors that are tracked (Figure 1), there remains no existing or proposed policy mechanism to reduce these emissions over time. Carbon taxes are one effective tool widely endorsed by economists that may do the trick. For GHG emissions from fossil fuels, policy makers at the state level have thus far opted for environmental trading schemes (i.e. cap and trade) over carbon taxes so perhaps for logging emissions a carbon tax could serve as the market-based mechanism of choice. Market based mechanisms are efficient because they are based on the concept of 'polluter pays,' which requires industries that pollute to pay for the damages and face the true costs of their activities.

The results of this study suggest that designing such a forest carbon tax and reward program is well within the capabilities of state forestry or air pollution agencies and can be implemented with existing sources of data and methods. It also finds that such a program can piggyback on timber harvest tax programs that already exist and so would not require significant new public funds for administration. Other key findings include:

Compared with the "catch and store" forest carbon cycle associated with natural forests, the "catch and release" carbon cycle on industrial forest landscapes results in greater carbon emissions, less carbon sequestration, less carbon storage, and greater vulnerability to climate stressors like wildfires, floods, and droughts (Figure 2).
As a result, GHG emissions from industrial logging and land clearing should be accounted for under the same rules that apply to other sectors and not presumed to be offset by trees growing elsewhere or planted in the future. Any emissions offsets claimed by logging corporations should also be subject to the same rules facing fossil fuel emitters who must adhere to criteria such as permanence and additionality.
Under the proposed forest carbon tax program, based on a draft legislative vehicle prepared for Oregon lawmakers, forestlands now managed under high-emissions-low-resiliency tree farming techniques would pay a gross carbon tax on the GHG emissions associated with any given volume of harvest but receive generous tax breaks and exemptions to adopt climate smart practices like long rotations, alternatives to clearcutting, and forest carbon reserves.
Across the states, the study estimated the range of taxable GHG emissions to be 22 – 57 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent each year, with emissions factors of 0.91 – 2.31 tons carbon per cubic meter harvested, which translates to 9.29 – 16.74 tons CO2 per thousand board feet. These emissions factors are in remarkable agreement with factors estimated for tropical countries and suggest that logging in the US is just as carbon intensive, if not more, than logging tropical forests.
Forestland cleared for subdivisions, strip malls, and highways is resulting in a steady and significant decline in carbon sequestration capacity, and a forest carbon tax can help steer development pressure to land that has already been cleared.
A forest carbon tax can pay for big ticket items on each state's climate agenda. For example, the study estimates that annual forest carbon tax collections in Oregon (up to $347 million) can in one year enroll over 247,000 of non-industrial forestlands into a carbon payment program that would protect 42 million metric tons of CO2 over 30 years, according to a recent study by Portland State University . In Maine, a single year's tax collection ($56 million) could pay for conservation easements protecting over 150,000 acres now threatened by urban sprawl.

Please follow the links below for further reading:

Read the paper online via Environment, Development, and Sustainability
Download the paper in PDF format

Wishbone Litigation Update - DNR Sued Again for Logging Carbon Rich Legacy Forests

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 17:01:53 GMT

The Wishbone Timber Sale, in King County, will release nearly 50,000 tons of greenhouse gas pollution and make the land more susceptible to water shortages, drought, wildfires, and heat waves

Litigation updates:

March 24, 2024 update: See below for links to DNR's Response Brief and Appellants' Reply.
February 2, 2024 update: See below for a link to the Appellants Opening Brief, which lays out all the reasons DNR cannot continue to hide behind its FEIS for the Marbled Murrelet Habitat Conservation Plan and Sustainable Harvest Calculation since those documents do not contain any useful information about the GHG emissions or any other climate impact of the Wishbone timber sale.

Seattle, WA – The Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE), Save the Olympic Peninsula (STOP) and the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition (LFDC) today sued the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) over its plans to clearcut over 100 acres of carbon rich 80- to 110-year-old ‘legacy’ forests in the Tolt and Snoqualmie River basins northeast of Seattle in King County. Legacy forests are rare, naturally regenerated stands that provide exceptional levels of carbon storage, biodiversity, and water quality.

The complaint (notice of appeal) for the Wishbone Timber Sale cites Hilary Franz, as Commissioner of State Lands and DNR for violating State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) requirements to disclose and mitigate climate impacts and consider climate smart alternatives, such as the thinning of densely stocked young plantation trees rather than the big, old trees in legacy forests. The groups are being represented by attorney Claudia Newman of Bricklin and Newman, a Seattle-based firm.

Prior to filing the lawsuit, the plaintiffs submitted extensive scientific and technical evidence to DNR documenting that as proposed, the timber sale is likely to generate nearly 50,000 metric tons of carbon pollution, eliminate carbon sequestration entirely for ten to fifteen years, and make the land more susceptible to heat waves, droughts, landslides, floods and wildfires.

Last October, CSE and STOP were successful in a similar lawsuit filed against two timber sales in Jefferson County. There, Superior Court Justice Keith Harper found that DNR’s “determination of non-significance” for those sales were clearly erroneous because climate impacts were not considered. According to Dr. John Talberth, President and Senior Economist for CSE “Rather than taking Justice Harper’s ruling to heart Hilary Franz is doubling down on climate denial and offering up dozens of new timber sales in Washington’s most carbon rich forests without disclosing their greenhouse gas emissions or other climate impacts. Wishbone is one of the most egregious. Washington voters want climate leaders not climate laggards so it’s surprising to see this pattern of decision making from someone aspiring to be Governor.”

SEPA provides DNR with every opportunity to transition its logging program away from the logging of carbon rich legacy forests and concentrate, instead, on thinning dense, young timber plantations in order to help transition those stands back in to real, climate resilient forests with bigger trees and more complexity. This is because SEPA is not just about disclosure of impacts, it is also about mitigating those impacts. SEPA also provides the agency with an opportunity to consider a myriad ways DRN could choose to generate revenues from proposed logging sites other than timber. Last July, the Washington State Supreme Court recognized DNR’s authority to do so.

But according to Ron Richards, STOP’s Chair, “None of these workable alternatives – like earning revenues from carbon, recreation, or conservation leasing – will see the light of day unless DNR complies with SEPA and evaluates those options before logging. This is what we’re after. The impacts of DNR's disrespect for the law and its lack of concern for the environment go far beyond this one sale in King County and adversely affect the health of forests throughout Washington State and beyond. It's critical that DNR and Commissioner Hillary Franz, begin complying with the law.”

For more information, please read:

Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Programs - From Vision to Reality

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 17:53:20 GMT

PROGRAM UPDATE MARCH 2023

Program overview

In 2016 Center for Sustainable Economy proposed a commonsense solution for addressing the market failures associated with fossil fuel infrastructure – fossil fuel risk bond (FFRB) programs. Climate change is one, a market failure of breathtaking proportions. Add to that the market failures associated with fossil fuel infrastructure itself – the vast network of coal mines, oil and gas wells, pipelines, refineries, oil trains, LNG trains and fossil fuel export terminals that cause expensive physical damages to land, air, water and frontline communities.

Air pollution and climate change caused by fossil fuels generate externalized damages of $2.2 – $5.9 trillion per year in the US, and by 2100, the Network for Greening The Financial System predicts a hit in the order of 3 – 10% of GDP each year. Fossil fuel risk bond programs are tools that regulators can use to begin to address these staggering externalized costs. They consist of two primary mechanisms:

Suites of financial assurance mechanisms such as surety or performance bonds, trust accounts, letters of credit or catastrophic insurance that make fossil fuel infrastructure owners fully responsible for the financial and economic costs associated with explosions, spills, groundwater contamination, abandoned infrastructure and other discrete risks associated with fossil fuel infrastructure, and;

Fossil fuel risk trust funds capitalized by surcharges on all fossil fuel product transactions in a local economy and used to compensate public agencies, businesses, and individuals for the more generalized risks of fossil fuel infrastructure in their regions such as earthquake swarms or groundwater pollution as well as the costs of climate disasters, climate adaptation and mitigation.

While CSE is working at the national level and in six states with NGOs and elected officials, this update will be focused on the Pacific Northwest, where three separate processes have been kicked off by the organizing work of CSE and its partners.

Project update for Oregon and Washington

King County, WA – nearing the finish line on program implementation

Last week, King County Washington’s Local Services and Land Use Committee unanimously passed the final ‘Phase 3” risk bond ordinance out of committee. It now moves before the full Council for a final vote and is expected to pass without major opposition.

King County is an important test case, since it has now embraced the full policy “trifecta” needed to get the FFRB program fully in place: (a) Phase 1: an initial ordinance (2019) jumpstarting the assessment of risks and costs; (b) Phase 2: an assessment of risks and costs that identifies gaps in the current policy framework and includes recommendations for filling those gaps, and, finally (c) Phase 3: an ordinance requiring all owners of fossil fuel infrastructure not otherwise covered to provide financial assurances to cover the costs of worst-case accidents as well as the costs of decommissioning.

We had to fight for the decommissioning language, but were ultimately successful. We are very excited to have all three steps completed because it gives us policy templates to share with thousands of US counties struggling with the public financial costs of existing and planned fossil fuel infrastructure.

Further reading:

King County FFRB Phase 1 – 2019

King County FFRB Phase 2 risk assessment – 2022

King County FFRB Phase 3 implementation language (draft) - 2023

Oregon – Seismic vulnerability for fossil fuel storage facilities

As a result of organizing around fossil fuel risk bond programs in the City of Portland and Multnomah County, the Oregon legislature passed SB 1567A, which requires owners or operators of bulk oils and liquid fuels terminals located in Columbia, Multnomah or Lane County to conduct and submit to Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) seismic vulnerability assessments and to pay into a seismic risk mitigation fund to offset public costs associated with the process. While this legislation takes a significant step forward in protecting taxpayers from liabilities associated with a worst-case event at larger fossil fuel facilities in Oregon, much more needs to be done to ensure that whatever seismic mitigation measures are identified are actually implemented and that if facilities are abandoned, funds have been set aside for clean-up and decommissioning.

The DEQ is currently engaged in a rule making process, is developing assessment and mitigation criteria and will also be designing an implementation program. DEQ intends to formally propose these new rules for public comment by the end of May 2023, and hopes to have the Environmental Quality Commission review and adopt these rules at its regular meeting in the Fall of 2023. The DEQ also intends to complete facility assessments by June 1, 2024, as required under the legislation. In the meantime, DEQ established a rules advisory committee to provide input and suggestions during the development of the new rules. The purpose of the committee was to advise DEQ on the development of the rules and to consider the fiscal and equity impacts. The committee held its last regularly scheduled meeting last month.

Further reading:

CSE memorandum – SB 1567A status 2-9-23

CEI Hub economic risk assessment

Washington – new financial assurance rules for oil vessels and onshore facilities

Led by Rep. Mia Gregerson (D-33) the Washington legislature passed HB 1691 this time last year as a first step towards implementing fossil fuel risk bond programs at the state level. HB 1691 requires the owners or operators of any covered oil vessel or oil facility to obtain a "certificate of financial responsibility” from the Department of Ecology (DOE) that guarantees such owners fully cover the costs of a worst-case spill. The law is a bit complex, and DOE is now charged with initiating a host of new rules to comply. These include:

1) DOE must adopt rules governing the effective date for owners and operators of covered vessels or facilities to obtain the required certificates of financial responsibility. RCW 88.40.020(5).

2) DOE may adopt rules that provide a self-insurance option provided that such rules must require the applicant to thoroughly demonstrate the security of the applicant’s financial position. RCW 88.40.030(2).

3) DOE must adopt rules governing the suspension, revocation, and re-issuance of certificates of financial responsibility in light of potential liabilities incurred by a covered entity after an oil spill or other incident which may affect the entity’s ability to maintain sufficient financial resources to meet the state’s financial responsibility requirements. RCW 88.40.040(3).

4) DOE is required to adopt a rule to evaluate whether an applicant for a financial responsibility certificate for an onshore or offshore facility has demonstrated an ability to compensate the state and other governmental entities for damages that might occur during a worst case oil spill. RCW 88.40.025.

5) DOE may engage in rule making to update the hazardous substances currently covered by the state’s existing financial responsibility requirements to maintain consistence with CERCLA. RCW 88.40.020(7).

CSE has been briefed on the process, and it appears that the initial round of rulemaking will be announced this April. As per Washington law, the rules will be accompanied by a benefit-cost analysis, which CSE will be closely tracking. The target date for rulemaking on the ground is about 18 months from now (September 2024).

Further reading:

CSE memorandum HB 1691 implementation 12-27-22

2023 Year in Review

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 00:17:44 GMT

CSE scored big gains on fossil fuel risk bonds and forests for climate

2023 Program Highlights

Every year CSE provides a concise summary of work accomplishments under our various programs to keep our supporters up to date, maintain an archive of progress over the 3 decades we have been in existence (Forest Conservation Council and Ecology and Law Institute before 2004) and to provide references to important decision making processes, publications, and other information that will aid public engagement on these issues. This update is current as of 12-31-23.

New Measures of Progress

In August, staff from Representative Ilhan Omar’s office got in touch with us about re-introduction of the GPI Act of 2022 – this time with a few dozen co-sponsors and timed to coincide with meaningful decision points in approval of the federal budget. They are also interested in developing communication materials about the imperative of accounting for all costs and benefits of economic activity fueled by federal spending (in particular, money included in the Inflation Reduction Act). CSE and its partner Ecology and Democracy Network (MN) are continuing to advise Rep. Omar’s staff and look forward to a high-profile reintroduction event sometime in the spring of 2024.

Climate Justice – Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds

The year 2023 saw major advancements in our work to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the externalized costs of spills, accidents, explosions, infrastructure abandonment and climate change associated with production and consumption of fossil fuels in the US. Some work has progressed at the federal level, but most of the action has been in the Pacific Northwest where three decision making processes initiated by our FFRB organizing are proceeding as planned. Here is a quick update:

Federal legislation

As reported last year, and with assistance from Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and technical input from NRDC and other allies, there is a working draft of federal fossil fuel risk bond legislation (“Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Financial Accountability Act”) ready for introduction pending the outcome of other legislative initiatives that are advancing components of that legislation. The draft legislation would implement the fossil fuel risk bond concept by requiring owners of fossil fuel infrastructure to disclose information about any financial assurances they may already have, require the Secretary of Commerce to conduct an assessment of the residual financial risks to taxpayers, require the Secretary to promulgate new rules to shore up financial assurance requirements to eliminate the public financial risks associated with infrastructure abandonment and accidents, including a worst-case scenario, and to establish a Fossil Fuel Risk Trust fund capitalized by fees to provide badly needed funding for climate adaptation.

The draft has been circulated to key staff in both chambers, and elements of the proposed legislation have already helped garner support for efforts to tighten up bonding requirements for oil and gas leases and otherwise levy fees on fossil fuel infrastructure owners to help offset public costs. These included bonding and fees contained in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) but unfortunately, these provisions were removed during last minute deal making. However, new bonding requirements for oil and gas leases are now moving forward in H.R. 4301 – Bonding Reform and Taxpayer Protection Act of 2023 (Porter, CA). Depending on the outcome of this bill and other measures, CSE and its partners will revisit our draft fossil fuel risk bond legislation to see if any changes are warranted.

Pacific Northwest FFRB processes

While CSE is working at the national level and in six states with NGOs and elected officials to promote FFRB programs, the most promising developments come from the Pacific Northwest where three separate processes have been kicked off by the organizing work of CSE and its partners. Here, advocates have been promoting a model of FFRB implementation that unfolds in three distinct phases:

Phase I – enabling legislation. While authority for implementing FFRB programs may already exist in a given jurisdiction, it is helpful to solidify that authority through enabling legislation. As recommended by CSE and its partners, that legislation should include findings connecting the dots between fossil fuel infrastructure, public health and safety risks, and allocation of funds for an economic risk assessment to establish the legal basis for subsequent regulation.

Phase II – risk assessment. Once commissioned, the risk assessment quantifies the anticipated public financial costs associated with worst-case accident and disaster scenarios for fossil fuel infrastructure as well as the anticipated costs of climate change, mitigation, and adaptation. A gap analysis looking at the adequacy of financial assurance and adaptation funding is also conducted during this phase as well as recommendations for policy interventions to close this gap.

Phase III – program implementation. Through rulemaking or ordinance, a jurisdiction adopts new financial assurance requirements for fossil fuel facilities based on the gap analysis and a surcharge for fossil fuel transactions to offset anticipated public financial costs.

The general three-phased approach is common to many forms of regulation (i.e. an initial resolution calling attention to the problem, a study to document the magnitude of local risks, and a rulemaking phase for implementation of recommendations). While a more streamlined approach could be to simply go right to the rulemaking phase – in this case, imposition of financial assurance and FFRTF surcharges – skipping the quantification of actual financial and economic risks on the ground would undermine the credibility, and potential legal footing, of the final regulatory requirements.

Three case studies demonstrate how FFRB initiatives are moving forward in the Pacific Northwest. They include Multnomah County, Oregon, King County, Washington, and the State of Washington with respect to oil spill liabilities.

Multnomah County, OR – Rulemaking for the CEI Hub well under way

In 2019, the Multnomah County Commission adopted a Phase I resolution opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure and initiating work on a FFRB program to “require the fossil fuel industry to bear the full cost of damages potentially caused by transporting and storing fossil fuels.” The resolution included findings that made a clear link between the storage, refining, transport, trade and combustion of fossil fuels and a wide range of local health, safety, environmental and economic risks. It is important to make these findings in order to ward off legal challenges based on federal or state preemption (i.e. Interstate Commerce Clause) and keep FFRB program initiatives firmly grounded in a local jurisdiction’s police powers.

The resolution initiated a Phase II analysis of economic risks associated with a worst-case scenario at the Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub in Portland along the banks of the Willamette River as a first step towards internalizing those risks through various financial assurance mechanisms or requirements for risk mitigation. The CEI Hub contains 630 tanks of petroleum-based liquids distributed over 220 acres, and stores over 90% of Oregon’s liquid fuels.

In early 2021, the Phase II risk analysis was completed by the firms ECONorthwest, Salus Resilience, and Enduring Econometrics. The study found that in the event of magnitude 8 or 9 Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) quake – long overdue for the Pacific Northwest – a massive release of 95 – 194 million gallons of fuel would likely occur, some of which would catch fire and potentially result in a one or more catastrophic explosions. At the high end, such a spill would be larger than the Deepwater Horizon disaster (~134 million gallons), making it the largest marine spill in US history. In terms of economic damages, the study considered a broad range of both market and non-market effects and assigned monetary values to seven. Depending on the size of the spill, failure rate for storage tanks, and utilized capacity at the time of the quake, damages could range from a low of $359 million to a high of $2.6 billion.

With this tally of potential damage in hand, decision makers are now considering options for Phase III in order to shift these financial and economic risks back onto infrastructure owners. One scenario involves assessment of seismic related risks by individual companies (there are about 10 in the CEI), mitigation planning to harden this infrastructure, and (potentially) bonding against mitigation plans. Bonding for decommissioning is also on the table since in the event of a catastrophic quake, abandonment without post-catastrophe clean up and repair is a distinct possibility. In the spring of 2022, the Oregon Legislature passed SB 1567A to jumpstart this process. The state’s Department of Environmental Quality has begun a rulemaking initiative, and the initial round of facility assessments are expected to be completed by June 1st, 2024 as the legislature intended. After this, discussions over bonding against mitigation plans and decommissioning will begin in earnest.

An alternative, more direct pathway to Phase III regulations would require the Multnomah County Commission to enact financial assurance requirements and FFRTF surcharges on a track separate from the seismic risk assessments since SB 1567A does not explicitly call for either. CSE has taken the EcoNorthwest analysis and calculated the basis for per gallon surcharges to offset potential public liabilities associated with a worst case CSZ quake. So there are no real barriers to moving ahead with some form of a levy at this point. CSE and its partners will be pursuing this approach while continuing to monitor implementation of SB 1567A writ large.

King County, WA – Final Phase III regulations now in place

In July of 2020, the King County Council enacted a Phase I ordinance in the form of amendments to its 2019 Comprehensive Plan establishing a new permitting system for fossil fuel facilities and a fossil fuel risk bond evaluation to lay the groundwork for new financial assurance requirements. As with Multnomah County, King County found that “the operation of fossil fuel facilities carries risk of explosion, leaks, spills and pollution of air and water,” which, in turn, subject nearby communities to a litany of health and safety risks. King County is an interesting case study for FFRB programs because there are no active permits or applications for fossil fuel facilities at this time in the unincorporated portions of the Seattle metropolitan area where the Council has jurisdiction. So enacting a FFRB program here is largely a deterrent strategy against new or expanded facilities.

King County’s Phase II risk assessment was completed in June of 2022. The risk assessment concluded that three types of fossil fuel facilities could present public financial risks to the county in the form of costs related to health, safety, and infrastructure abandonment. These include thermal (gas) electric power plants, liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants and oil terminals. The assessment found sufficient evidence of past high-cost incidents to propose requiring proof of adequate financial coverage for explosions from any of the three types of facilities. It also recommended that self-bonding not be accepted as a financial assurance mechanism to cover financial risks associated with potential explosions or site contamination and that advance planning around potential onsite hazards and facility decommissioning be required along with financial assurances against these potential public liabilities. Both of these recommendations are well justified based on the financial assurance gaps and issues identified in CSE’s 2016 report.

A draft ordinance was subsequently prepared to enact these recommendations, and in May of 2023 the King County Council adopted a final Phase III ordinance putting these FFRB program recommendations in place. With this, King County has become the first US county to enact a full policy “trifecta” on the FFRB program concept. The Phase I, II, and III materials provide an excellent template to guide development of FFRB programs in jurisdictions across the US with or without significant concentrations of fossil fuel infrastructure.

State of Washington – New financial assurance rules for oil vessels and onshore facilities are being developed

Led by Representative Mia Gregerson (D-33) the Washington legislature passed HB 1691 in the spring of 2022 as a first step towards implementing fossil fuel risk bond programs at the state level. HB 1691 requires the owners or operators of any covered oil vessel or oil facility to obtain a certificate of financial responsibility from the Department of Ecology (DOE) that guarantees such owners fully cover the costs of a worst-case spill. Acceptable forms of financial assurance include insurance, surety bonds, corporate guarantees, letters of credit, certificates of deposit, or protection and indemnity club membership. The legislation does not prohibit, but instead puts conditions on self-insurance as an option. Oil spills of all sizes are frequent visitors to Washington’s waters, and HB 1691 was seen as a way to start shifting the significant cost burden of monitoring and responding to these spills to fossil fuel infrastructure owners. For the largest oil tankers, financial assurances of at least $1 billion are now required.

Initially, Rep. Gregerson drafted a more comprehensive statewide Phase I bill that would have expanded the Department of Ecology’s existing financial assurance requirements for hazardous facilities to include fossil fuel infrastructure. The first step in this statewide approach would have been a Phase II DOE report to the legislature evaluating the financial and economic costs and risks associated with fossil fuels and climate change, a gap analysis of existing financial assurance requirements, and recommendations to the legislature of how to close those gaps. DOE reviewed the legislative proposal and concluded that the analysis would cost about $1 million to complete – a price tag a bit too high to fly under the radar screen and avoid political pushback. Of course, investing $1 million to avoid potentially billions of dollars of economic costs is a great deal for public finance, but in a political climate of fiscal austerity such a price tag for the Phase II study was enough to derail the more comprehensive approach. As an alternative, HB 1691 is viewed as an incremental, but important step forward.

The law is a bit complex, and DOE is now charged with initiating a host of new rules to comply. These include (a) a rule governing the effective date for owners and operators of covered vessels or facilities to obtain the required certificates of financial responsibility; (b) a rule limiting use of a self-insurance option provided that such a rule must require the applicant to thoroughly demonstrate the security of the applicant’s financial position; (c) a rule governing the suspension, revocation, and re-issuance of certificates of financial responsibility; (d) a rule to evaluate whether an applicant for a financial responsibility certificate for an onshore or offshore facility has demonstrated an ability to compensate the state and other governmental entities for damages that might occur during a worst case oil spill, and, optionally (d) a rule to update the hazardous substances currently covered by the state’s existing financial responsibility requirements to maintain consistency with the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA).

CSE and its partners are participating in this rule making process as it evolves. For example, in late October, CSE and six other regional NGOs sent detailed input to Department of Ecology asking for the initial financial assurance unit cost of $27,700 per barrel be significantly raised to reflect worst case outcomes as well as a host of other issues that would have weakened the effectiveness of the new financial assurance rules. In response to our comments, DOE is now considering a significant increase in the per-barrel amount and other changes we have requested – such as closing loopholes on the time delay between financial assurance acquisition and their effect on the ground, or other issues related to transparency and public records.

Report – Implementation Guidance for Local Government

CSE has published a report entitled “Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Programs – Implementation Guidance for Local Government,” now available on our website. The report provides a broad overview of FFRB programs, an explanation of how these programs are rooted in existing policy mechanisms, a demonstration of how they can be used to generate funding for climate adaptation, and an update on all the progress that has been made in the Pacific Northwest. Brookings Institution has agreed to publish the report on its website as well and has completed a peer review process for that. We expect it to be up on the Brookings site early next year.

Forests for Climate and Biodiversity

This year saw scientific advances in forest carbon accounting and calls for climate smart forestry rise much higher on the global climate change agenda. CSE is proud to have been part of that effort. Our work this year focused on strategic litigation in Washington State, the Forest Carbon Coalition, and preparation of a peer reviewed manuscript proposing a forest carbon tax to address the serious climate damages from industrial logging operations.

Forest Carbon Coalition

Under a partnership with United Plant Savers, we hired a new coalition coordinator last May. His name is Tanner Filyaw, and he is based at the UPS office in Rutland, Ohio. He’s a great fit for the coalition since he specializes in promoting non-timber forest uses, plant biodiversity, carbon and other ecosystem services. In addition to keeping in touch with our 100+ member coalition and handling the nuts and bolts of our Zoom calls, outreach efforts, and participation in a few high-level decision-making processes (like federal forest planning), he is an educator and has a nice portfolio of YouTube videos that are being disseminated to educate members and supporters about the nexus between forest carbon and plant conservation and cultivation.

In June, Center for Sustainable Economy (the FCC secretariat) filed new litigation to halt the deforestation of native, mature rainforests in western Washington by the State’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR). As you may recall, last year, we scored the first legal victory in the country on the failure of a regulatory agency (DNR) to consider the climate impacts of clearcutting including its social costs. The high-profile battle to save Washington’s legacy forests is regularly featured in major media outlets, like the Seattle Times, who published a story on our litigation against the Wishbone timber sale in King County (home to Seattle). As you know, CSE’s case is based on the catastrophic climate and biodiversity costs of DNR’s logging program, and this new round of litigation is likely to have a big impact on state policy, if successful.

Also in King County, FCC coalition members (including CSE) were successful in getting the King County Council to support our lawsuit by filing a request to DNR asking for the same relief we asked for in the lawsuit – full and fair accounting of climate impacts and adoption of climate smart alternatives to the timber sale design. As a result of all the positive feedback they received, Council Chair Dave Upthegrove decided to run for Commissioner of State Lands, something he had been mulling over for a few months prior to our lawsuit. He would be a staunch ally of FCC if elected.

In July, and at the request of one of our member groups, CSE/FCC released an analysis of the climate impacts of the proposed Nez Perce – Clearwater National Forest plan, quantifying greenhouse gas emissions associated with logging, grazing, and road building over the life of the plan as well as other climate impacts, such as increases in flooding, heat waves, and water shortages. Funded in part by this grant and partially by the member group Friends of the Clearwater, the analysis is a valuable tool for FCC members nationwide as they participate in the forest planning process and try to hold the US Forest Service accountable. Tanner subsequently disseminated the report to the entire membership, and we’ve already received several requests to replicate the effort in other regions. Also, the report received front page coverage in the Idaho Statesman Journal. The reporter Julie Jung did an excellent job of covering our concerns.

In late August, capping out about 3 months of steady work, FCC released version two of Repairing America’s Tattered Forests: Maximizing natural carbon removal while revitalizing our forgotten rural areas. The new version is updated to reflect a wealth of new policy, scientific, and economic information that has emerged since 2021, including the Glasgow Leaders Declaration to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. The report was disseminated broadly using our movement infrastructure tool Congress + to roughly 200 legislative aids and environmental policy leads at progressive member offices on Capitol Hill as well as broadly to the media and our members and partners.

In October at a webinar hosted by the Sierra Club, John Talberth presented “The Climate Impacts of Industrial Logging Practices” to a large group (110+) online as part of the Forest Protection Forum’s lecture series. The talk, summarizing over three years of research, makes the case that compared to the natural carbon cycle, industrial logging practices reduce carbon storage and carbon sequestration on the land and greatly increase GHG emissions and the vulnerability of our forest dependent communities to climate change. This was the largest turnout yet in the forum’s three-year history. The full Youtube video is available on request.

DNR Carbon and Forest Management Workgroup

In November, John Talberth received word that he was appointed to the Washington DNR’s Carbon and Forest Management Work Group, created by the legislature to promote the conservation of older, carbon dense forests on state-owned lands. This is an exciting opportunity to get good science and economics to the forefront of DNR’s management, which has been pro-timber for decades. He looks forward to representing FCC and its regional members in this venue.

Forest carbon tax and reward

In mid-December, authors John Talberth and Ella Carlson submitted the revised manuscript "Forest Carbon Tax and Reward: Regulating greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the US" to the journal Environment, Development and Sustainability. This is the first academic paper of which we are aware that applies the idea of carbon taxes to emissions from the logging sector. Two reviewers asked for several revisions to the original manuscript submitted last August, and we now eagerly await a final decision in the next few weeks. If published, the article will form the basis of our outreach efforts in Congress and state legislatures to pursue a forest carbon tax program along the lines of what we modeled.The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.

Biden Administration Begins Process To Protect And Restore Old Growth Ecosystems Across The US

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 19:55:02 GMT

A key ask of the Forest Carbon Coalition becomes a reality

On December 20th, 2023, the Biden Administration announced its intent to amend all 128 national forest management plans to protect and restore old growth ecosystems that have been largely destroyed by logging, grazing, mining, road building, oil and gas infrastructure and other commercial uses of public lands. Old growth forests in the US are hotspots of biological diversity and bulwarks against climate change, capturing and storing more carbon per acre than almost any ecosystem on the planet while keeping nearby communities protected from wildfires, heat waves and water shortages made worse by industrial logging activities and young timber plantations that typically surround federal forests.

The Forest Carbon Coalition – a network of over 100 conservation, scientific, and community organizations across the country was a strong advocate for the plan amendment approach, making it the first ask in its policy blueprint sent to Congress and the Biden Administration in 2021 and updated last August. In particular, the FCC asked for:

“Nationwide forest plan amendments placing all remaining tracts of unlogged primary and carbon dense natural forests on federal lands into protected area status as refugia for native species, forest carbon reserves, and blueprints for forest recovery. Plan amendments, which could be adopted in less than two years, should also establish forest carbon storage targets for each unit of the federal forest system and propose strategies to achieve those targets.”

For forests lacking in existing old growth, the FCC also asked for establishment of late successional reserves on each unit of the federal forest system as areas where old growth conditions are allowed to develop over time. It remains to be seen if the Administration will fully implement this approach, but today’s announcement initiates a plan amendment process, an interim policy , and an environmental impact statement that will provide a forum for FCC, its members, and the public to ensure that rigorous science, community-based economics, and indigenous knowledge are applied to ensure the strongest protection possible.

The interim policy is mean to ensure “the careful evaluation of proposed vegetation management activities occurring in areas where old growth forest conditions exist while the national old growth amendment is developed.” There are hundreds of Forest Service projects being readied for the chopping block that will need to be scrutinized, but with its strong nationwide coalition the FCC is hopeful that it can help steer the chainsaws away from lands that are essential for a well-distributed, interconnected system of old growth forests across large landscapes.

Some perspectives from our Steering Committee members :

“As a member of the Patawomek Tribe and a medicinal plant conservation advocate, I applaud the Biden Administration’s intent to incorporate indigenous knowledge into a planning process that will help replenish the land with big old trees and protect eco-cultural practices associated with old-growth forest conditions. After all, indigenous peoples all across this continent relied on old growth forest ecosystems for sustenance, medicines, and spiritual renewal long before the land was colonized, and all the big trees cut down. It’s exciting to think that the tide may be turning.”

- Susan Leopold, Ph.D., Executive Director, United Plant Savers, Linden, VA

(703) 667-0208, susan@unitedplantsavers.org .

“It’s time to put the public back in the concept of public lands, and we commend the Biden Administration for taking a step in the right direction to exclude harmful commercial activities from taking place in forests that are far more valuable for carbon, water, fish, wildlife and plants than they are cut down and turned into wood pellets or two by fours or cleared to make room for more oil and gas infrastructure. But a lot more work needs to be done to ensure that the Administration does not take a one-step-forward-two-steps-back approach by subsidizing logging elsewhere.”

- John Talberth, Ph.D., President and Senior Economist, Center for Sustainable Economy, Port Townsend, WA, (510) 384-5724, jtalberth@sustainable-economy.org .

“These actions by federal forest managers are long overdue. Old-growth forests in the US make huge contributions to the economic well-being of all Americans. Robust evidence has shown for decades that the economic benefits from protecting and expanding old growth forests in the U.S. far exceed the benefits from logging: for workers, local communities, taxpayers, and society as a whole.”

- Ernie Niemi, Natural Resource Economics, Eugene, OR, (541) 505-2704, ernie.niemi@nreconomics.com .

A Green Infrastructure Alternative for Jefferson County Fairgrounds

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 19:52:43 GMT

Community gardens and climate resilient cropping provide alternatives to polluting mud drags.

In the heart of Port Townsend, Washington, a community sacrifice zone has drawn the ire of neighbors and those who see a greener, more economically beneficial alternative for use of the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. Twice a year, a small army of 4x4 offroad enthusiasts gather to destroy several acres of these public lands for pleasure, strewing toxic waste barrels, garbage, used tires, exhaust, noise and polluted water across a county property used year-round by neighbors and visitors for exercise, wildlife watching, dog walking and other healthy endeavors and by local businesses including a kitchen that prepares food for the hospital.

Neighbors have reported dogs covered in oil after soaking in the water-filled mud pits. Discarded tires and empty barrels once used to store pesticides and carcinogenic industrial solvents are left behind for others to clean up. Because the land is disturbed so often, it is a prime breeding ground for noxious weeks like poison hemlock ( Conium maculatum ). Between mud drag events the land sits unused, empty, scarred, and polluted. Clearly, there must be an alternative use for these precious public lands.

In the spring of 2023, Center for Sustainable Economy was asked by neighbors to use its expertise to start holding local elected officials accountable for this ongoing degradation of public property. We began by sending a letter notifying the County that continued use of the Fairgrounds for mud drags was in direct conflict with its land use code, the legislature’s intent for these properties, and the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) since the events have been conducted without any permitting or environmental review.

We helped forty community members prepare and submit a sign-on letter asking their county commissioners to put a halt to the mud drags and engage a “competent, professional team to design and implement a master plan” to begin the process of restoring the site for a wide range of beneficial uses such as community gardens or regenerative, climate-smart agriculture. In December, CSE filed a public records request to identify the persons involved with the most recent bout of land degradation and disposal of toxic waste barrels – some of which have product labels indicating that they should be buried and not placed in areas that risk human exposure.

This is a developing story. Despite all the efforts by CSE and its partners, City and County officials have doubled down and refused to budge. They are simply turning their backs on the problem and hoping it goes away. But it won’t.

As part of its Green Infrastructure program, CSE will continue to work on a positive vision for the Jefferson County Fairgrounds that makes maximum use of its cultural, ecological and recreational values to do what the legislature intended: “to showcase Washington’s agriculture heritage and related arts and manufactures, to train youth and to promote the welfare of farm people and rural economic development.”

Further reading:

CSE cease and desist letter February 2023

Community sign-on letter submitted to the County Commission

Public records act request of December 2023

Ilhan Omar just introduced a bill to make people and the planet priorities for economic policy

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 15:58:56 GMT

Legislation update September 2023 : After garnering the support of NGOs and five co-sponsors, Rep. Omar is now exploring options for reintroduction of the GPI Act in 2024 or possible inclusion of key components of the bill in appropriations language. Stay tuned here for further updates as the reintroduction date approaches.

Original post July 2021:

On July 30th, Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced the GPI Act of 2021, directing the Secretary of Commerce to establish a new metric for measuring US economic performance, setting budget priorities and guiding policy– the Genuine Progress Indicator. If her bill becomes law, the GPI would effectively unseat Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the nation’s leading economic indicator, a reform long sought after by politicians, economists and civil society. Rep. Omar was joined by five House co-sponsors including Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Dwight Evans, Pramila Jaypal and Marie Newman.

Against the backdrop of a global pandemic and on the heels of one of the nation’s most fractured and contentious election cycles, the world of economic indicators may seem distant and esoteric, irrelevant to struggles Americans are facing every day. But the legislation is, in fact, revolutionary and transformative, signaling a long overdue shift in economic priorities away from the bottom-line profits of Wall Street corporations and towards improving economic conditions for those least well off and ordinary American households. With Biden-Harris now at the helm, this new metric should be a centerpiece of the administration’s economic policies.

Despite its many logical failings and fallacies, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its state-level counterparts still reign as the most ubiquitous measures of economic performance. It works well for the world’s elites who own the means of production because when GDP grows it means more buying and selling from which they profit. But more buying and selling is not always a good thing.

Sometimes it represents something that is truly beneficial (healthy food and experiences in nature) and other times it represents a cost we’d rather avoid (inflated health insurance premiums) or expenditures that reflect growing insecurity around us (guns and burglar alarms). GDP does not differentiate between costs and benefits; it considers all spending beneficial and as such provides an extremely poor measure of economic wellbeing.

GDP also overlooks valuable dimensions of the economy that are not priced in formal markets. We all benefit from the fruits of higher education, modern infrastructure, healthy natural ecosystems and from vast amounts of unpaid labor in the form of carework, volunteering, and neighbors helping neighbors. Just because this labor is volunteered does not mean it does not have economic value. GDP is also blind to economic inequality. As it has often in the past, a growing GDP may reflect vast increases in wealth and conspicuous consumption of the 1% while the vast majority of Americans feel the pain of economic insecurity and deteriorating quality of life.

Rep. Omar’s bill would go a long way towards rectifying these shortcomings. As developed by the Secretary of Commerce, the overriding goal of the new metric would be to provide an estimate of the net benefits of economic activity (benefits minus costs) and a far more complete accounting of the many non-market dimensions to economic wellbeing overlooked by GDP – time spent with family and friends, the value of water produced and filtered by intact forests and wetlands, or the enormous economic returns from high speed internet. It would also incorporate estimates of the ever-growing social costs of inequality, pollution, deforestation, climate change and a host of social ills including homelessness (Figure below).

As a direct monetary measure of economic wellbeing, the GPI can and should be used alongside GDP in the President’s Annual Economic Report, Office of Management and Budget’s federal budget, in the benefit-cost analysis of federal spending and regulations. Rep. Omar’s bill would require use of the new metric in these and other policy settings.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was one of the earliest proponents for a tectonic shift away from GDP growth as the foundation for economic policy (Box). Rep. Omar’s bill – the GPI Act of 2020 – would bring Kennedy’s vision to fruition. The bill rests on a solid foundation of GPI initiatives in Maryland, Vermont, Washington, Minnesota and many other states. As these initiatives have shown, the GPI is not some abstract theoretical framework, but one that can be used by decision makers at all levels to guide budgeting and economic policy making. Given this, Congress should embrace and pass the GPI Act of 2021 and get to the hard work of refocusing the vast economic power of the federal government on advancing genuine progress for all rather than growing GDP for the wealthiest Americans.

READ THE PRESS RELEASES

READ THE BILL:

The Genuine Progress Indicator Act of 2021

UNDERSTAND THE SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS:

GPI NEWS AND VIEWS:

Repairing America's Tattered Forests - Forest Carbon Coalition's Policy Blueprint 2023

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 18:42:54 GMT

Coalition calls for deep reforms of practices, ownership, subsidies and incentives

America’s forests and forest dependent communities need help. Despite signing the Glasglow Leaders Declaration to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030, the Biden Administration, Congress, governors and statehouses throughout the US have failed to intervene to halt Big Timber’s assaults on the few carbon rich, biodiverse forests that remain. Corporate logging practices like replacing real forests with monoculture tree farms, clearcutting, spraying of toxic chemicals and converting forestlands to urban sprawl have accelerated. Because of these stressors, only 28% of US forestlands exist in their natural state of ecological integrity. According to Global Forest Watch, the US has a higher rate of tree cover loss (17% since 2000) than Brazil (13%). This is all bad news for climate, biodiversity, and the rural economy.

Progressive leaders have been largely absent from the struggles of rural, forest dependent communities in the Southeast, Pacific Northwest, and other places where economic diversification is badly needed. This vacuum has allowed pro-timber politicians to jump on the bandwagon of Big Timber’s lies and deceptions and promote false climate solutions and economic narratives that keep these communities locked into endless cycles of poverty, social pathologies, and environmental degradation. The ‘resource curse’ associated with overinvestment in extractive industries is plainly evident in America’s impoverished timber towns. Current practices impose spillover costs on workers, families, and communities, keeping them poor and disaffected. Continuation of current practices will make things worse.

It is not surprising at all that these towns provided fertile recruiting grounds for right wing extremists who organized the January 6 ^th insurrection .

To help make the case to Congress and the Biden Administration, The Forest Carbon Coalition has updated and republished Repairing America’s Tattered Forests – Maximizing natural carbon removal while revitalizing our forgotten rural areas . The report is a portfolio of policy interventions that are long overdue, and badly needed now as the climate crisis spirals out of control and the plight of frontline forest communities worsens.

The policy interventions are grouped into six strategic goals, that include:

Ending deforestation and forest degradation, for example, by establishing an interconnected network of forest carbon and biodiversity reserves on public lands and adopting a no-net-loss policy for forests and farmland threatened by development.
Diversify and revitalize forest dependent communities and remedy environmental injustices by redirecting logging subsidies and reducing frontline community risks associated with wildfires, heat waves, water shortages and floods – all made worse by industrial scale clearcutting.
Reduce forest ownership by short-sighted investors by closing tax loopholes and placing restrictions on ownership by Wall Street and foreign corporations.
Reduce wasteful consumption of wood and paper products by, for example halting federal investments in new paper, biomass, or mass timber facilities and scaling up markets for less carbon intensive substitutes like bamboo, hemp, and carbon negative concrete.
Reduce the climate impacts of industrial logging activities by including this sector in annual GHG emissions inventories and using regulatory and market-based mechanisms to accelerate the transition to climate smart alternatives.
Fight Big Timber’s greenwashing and disinformation by forcing logging corporations to disclose climate risks to investors and by cracking down on false claims about the climate and economic benefits of industrial wood relative to non-wood substitutes.

The Forest Carbon Coalition – 100 members strong from communities across the US – invites you to join with us to explore how to implement as many of these interventions as possible as quickly as possible to get us on track to meet the Glasgow Leaders Declaration while bolstering natural carbon removal and bringing economic growth and prosperity to counties, cities, and towns who are missing out on the socioeconomic benefits of progressive policies.

VIEW AND DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE

King County WA Joins the Fight to Protect Mature and Old Growth Forests and Force Agencies to Disclose the Harmful Climate Impacts of Clearcutting

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 00:26:31 GMT

Council says climate risk disclosure should be required under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA)

Seattle - On Thursday July 20th the King County Council sent a letter to Hilary Franz, Commissioner of Public Lands and the Board of Natural Resources asking them to cancel auction of the Wishbone Timber Sale, northeast of Seattle, until the agency discloses the greenhouse gas emissions and other adverse climate impacts associated with clearcutting. The Wishbone Timber Sale is on lands managed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and contains naturally regenerated stands of mature ‘legacy’ forests up to 110 years old that have world class abilities to capture and store carbon. DNR plans to auction the sale on July 25th.

In a press release that was issued along with the letter, King County Council Chair Dave Upthegrove said, "In order to have a healthy sustainable economy, we need to keep our region a great place to live. That is why we want greater consideration of the carbon impacts of clearcutting the remaining mature legacy forests in King County. The harmful economic impacts of climate change require us to fundamentally revisit the old way of doing things.”

King County’s letter cites provisions of its 2020 Strategic Climate Action Plan that calls for protection of such forests for their climate benefits and full accounting of climate impacts in land management decisions. As noted by that plan, “Mature temperate conifer forests in the Pacific Northwest sequester more carbon than any other forest ecosystem in North America. They are also among the most carbon dense forests in the world.”

King County’s letter comes on the heels of lawsuit filed by Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE), Legacy Forest Defense Coalition and Save the Olympic Peninsula against the Wishbone sale, citing DNR for its continuing failures to disclose the climate impacts of its mature legacy forest logging program under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). Last fall, plaintiffs won an identical case against two timber sales in Jefferson County.

But since that time, DNR has refused to comply with the court’s ruling and continues to propose carbon dense forests for logging without accounting for greenhouse gas emissions or other climate impacts, such as increases in heat, drought, and wildfires. Plaintiffs hope the letter from King County, Washington’s most populous, will convince the agency to alter its practices.

According to Dr. John Talberth, CSE’s President and Senior Economist, “This is what real climate leadership looks like. We applaud the King County Council for its efforts to hold DNR accountable for the climate impacts of logging mature and old growth forests and its duties under SEPA. Left standing, the cool, moist interiors of these stands are climate oases. When clearcut, their vast carbon stores are released into the atmosphere and the land becomes hotter, drier, and more susceptible to fires and floods. We are hopeful that the agency will take King County’s request seriously and start telling the truth about logging and climate change.”

A copy of the King County letter is available online here .

A copy of the CSE, LFDC and STOP Notice of Appeal for the Wishbone Timber Sale is available online here .

A summary of the prior SEPA litigation in Jefferson County is available here .

Climate Impacts of the Nez Perce - Clearwater Forest Plan Revision

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:01:30 GMT

New Report Shows “Climate Threat” of Proposed Nez Perce-Clearwater Forest Plan

NEWS RELEASE - Reprinted from the Friends of the Clearwater

Tuesday, July 18th, 2023

Contacts:

Paul Busch, Friends of the Clearwater, (208) 882-9755, foc@friendsoftheclearwater.org
John Talberth, Center for Sustainable Economy, (510) 384-5724, jtalberth@sustainable-economy.org

Moscow, Idaho – A new report reveals that proposed Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest (NPCNF) plan alternatives would drastically increase greenhouse gas emissions on public lands in Idaho and make the land more susceptible to wildfires, water shortages, heat waves, and other threats from climate change. The report, completed by the Center for Sustainable Economy, shows that planned emissions from logging, roadbuilding, and grazing would emit at least 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide in the most industry-intensive alternative. This would be about the same as putting 250,000 new cars on the road. The full report can be read here .

The report also highlights the failure of the Forest Service to properly account for climate impacts, as required under the 2012 Planning Rule governing the revision of land management plans (also known as “forest plans”). The NPCNF’s 2019 Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the revised forest plan fails to disclose climate impacts associated with management activities despite readily available data to do so.

According to Dr. John Talberth, the lead author, “As the climate crisis deepens it is imperative that the Forest Service drastically reduce carbon emissions from logging, grazing, road construction and other damaging activities on federal lands to protect existing carbon stocks and allow the land to heal and become as climate resilient as possible. Sadly, the Nez Perce-Clearwater is headed in the opposite direction by considering a fourfold increase in logging and road building emissions and maintaining grazing related emissions at their current level.”

“The fact that an independent report like this is even necessary shows gross negligence on the part of the Forest Service,” said Paul Busch, of Moscow-based nonprofit Friends of the Clearwater (FOC). FOC wrote a grant that funded the report. “Climate change is actually upon us. The 2021 heat dome showed the Inland Northwest is not safe from incredible heat waves. Now is the time to protect our public forests as carbon reserves, not log them and add to climate dysfunction.” Scientific research into forest carbon cycles has advanced quickly in recent years. Multiple studies show that logging, especially logging old-growth forests, is the primary driver of emissions in forests, far exceeding even intense wildfire. According to a 2018 study, forestry is the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions for the entire State of Oregon, above the transportation and energy sectors. In contrast, a four year on-the-ground study of a large wildfire in California in 2022 showed just a 2% reduction in carbon at the landscape level. Older, wetter forests, like in north Idaho, tend to be more carbon dense than younger, drier forests elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains. This is in part due to the area producing large trees. Although they grow slowly, the largest trees store disproportionate amounts of carbon in forests. Old-growth forests have made news lately, as the Biden administration’s effort to inventory mature and oldgrowth forests moves forward. The effort, which follows through on a 2022 executive order on forests, has led to estimates of the total mature and old-growth left on public lands in the United States. A comment period asking what actions the USFS should take ends this week, on July 20th.

“This report is really important in the context of the old-growth initiative,” said Jeff Juel, policy director of Friends of the Clearwater. “What we see, over and over, is an agency that outwardly claims to care about climate change while putting out projects that target mature and old-growth forests with abandon. The Nez Perce- Clearwater National Forest was actually required to measure and protect old-growth forest wide in the 1987 plan, but that kind of management conflicts with corporate interests, so it’s been avoided.”

Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Programs - Implementation Guidance for Local Government

Mon, 08 May 2023 17:22:47 GMT

A policy innovation makes headway in the Pacific Northwest

WHAT ARE FOSSIL FUEL RISK BOND PROGRAMS?

In 2016 Center for Sustainable Economy proposed a commonsense solution for addressing the market failures associated with construction and operation of fossil fuel infrastructure – fossil fuel risk bond (FFRB) programs. Climate change is one, a market failure of breathtaking proportions. Add to that market failures associated with fossil fuel infrastructure itself – the vast network of coal mines, oil and gas wells, pipelines, refineries, oil trains, LNG trains and fossil fuel export terminals causing expensive physical and economic damages to land, air, water and frontline communities on an almost daily basis.

The International Renewable Energy Agency reports that air pollution and climate change caused by fossil fuel consumption generates externalized damages of $2.2 – $5.9 trillion each year. [1] By 2100 the White House , citing figures from Network for Greening the Financial System, predicts a hit in the order of 3 – 10% of GDP each year in the US alone. Fossil fuel risk bond programs are tools that regulators can use to begin to address these staggering externalized costs. They consist of two primary approaches:

Suites of financial assurance mechanisms such as surety or performance bonds, trust accounts, letters of credit or catastrophic insurance that make fossil fuel infrastructure owners fully responsible for the financial and economic costs associated with explosions, spills, toxic air emissions, abandoned infrastructure and other discrete risks associated with fossil fuel infrastructure, and;

Fossil fuel risk trust funds capitalized by surcharges on all fossil fuel product transactions in a local economy and used to compensate public agencies, businesses, and individuals for more generalized risks of fossil fuel infrastructure in their regions such as earthquake swarms or groundwater pollution as well as the costs of climate disasters, climate adaptation and mitigation.

FOSSIL FUEL RISK BOND PROGRAMS ARE ROOTED IN EXISTING POLICY MECHANISMS

These mechanisms are not new ideas. Some degree of financial assurance is required for onshore and offshore oil and gas wells and hazardous waste . FFRB programs represent a logical extension of these to all classes of fossil fuel infrastructure and for the total economic value (TEV) of damages associated with worst-case scenarios. As envisioned, FFRB programs would also bar self-insurance or self-bonding as a mechanism given the fact that these forms of financial assurance are often lost in corporate ownership shuffles or bankruptcies that plague the fossil fuel industry.[2]

Surcharges to pay for infrastructure improvements are not new either – surcharges on water bills routinely pay for upgrades to wastewater infrastructure. FFRB programs would extend the concept to wholesale trade of fossil fuels to pay for adaptation and other climate costs incurred by public agencies. A number of states, counties, and municipalities have begun to identify financial needs for big ticket climate adaptation measures, and it is fairly straightforward to design a surcharge to capitalize a fossil fuel risk trust fund (FFRTF) to meet those needs at the time the investments are needed. Alternatively, if funds are needed sooner, FFRTFs can be capitalized by bonds at any time and paid back with the surcharge proceeds.

New Jersey and California provide an example (Table 1). In New Jersey, unmet climate adaptation needs to control coastal flooding, retrofit highways, and harden water infrastructure within the greater New York metropolitan region have been estimated at roughly $11.30 billion. [3] In California, adaptation needs within these same categories are projected to be nearly $98 billion. [4] Assuming these are inflation adjusted and needed no later than 2050 it is relatively straightforward to calculate the amount that needs to be deposited annually to ensure that those funds are available.

As with most other trust funds, FFRTF investments would primarily be invested in public debt securities with a relatively low rate of return. In our example, if the expectation is for a 3% annual return, then annual deposits in New Jersey would need to be in the order of $260 million. California would need deposits of roughly $2.2 billion per year. Dividing these figures by the quantity of fossil fuel trade in each state in CO ₂ equivalent terms results in a surcharge of $6.31/tCO ₂ -e in California and $2.68/tCO ₂ -e in New Jersey. Using standard emissions factors for various types of fossil fuels, this translates into surcharges per barrel of oil, thousand cubic feet of natural gas, and short ton of coal reported in Table 1. To prevent these surcharges from being passed on to consumers, legislation or ordinances adopted to levy such charges can be accompanied by language prohibiting such a pass on, although the legal authority to do so may be challenged.

UPDATE ON PACIFIC NORTHWEST INITIATIVES

While CSE is working at the national level and in six states with NGOs and elected officials to promote FFRB programs the most exciting developments come from the Pacific Northwest where three separate processes have been kicked off by the organizing work of CSE and its partners. Here, advocates have been promoting a model of FFRB implementation that unfolds in three distinct phases:

Phase I – enabling legislation. While authority for implementing FFRB programs may already exist in a given jurisdiction, it is helpful to solidify that authority through enabling legislation. As recommended by CSE and its partners, that legislation should include findings connecting the dots between fossil fuel infrastructure and public health and safety risks and allocation of funds for an economic risk assessment to establish the legal basis for subsequent regulation.

Phase II – risk assessment. Once commissioned, the risk assessment quantifies the anticipated public financial costs associated with worst-case accident and disaster scenarios for fossil fuel infrastructure as well as the anticipated costs of climate change, mitigation, and adaptation. A gap analysis looking at the adequacy of financial assurance and adaptation funding is also conducted during this phase as well as recommendations for policy interventions to close this gap.

Phase III – program implementation. Through rulemaking or ordinance, a jurisdiction adopts new financial assurance requirements for fossil fuel facilities based on the gap analysis and a surcharge for fossil fuel transactions to offset anticipated public financial costs.

Three case studies demonstrate how FFRB initiatives are moving forward in this region. They include Multnomah County, Oregon, King County, Washington, and the State of Washington with respect to oil spill liabilities.

Multnomah County, OR – Portland’s Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub

In 2019 the Multnomah County Commission adopted a Phase I resolution opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure and initiating work on a FFRB program to “require the fossil fuel industry to bear the full cost of damages potentially caused by transporting and storing fossil fuels.” The resolution included findings that made a clear link between the storage, refining, transport, trade and combustion of fossil fuels and a wide range of local health, safety, environmental and economic risks. It is important to make these findings in order to ward off legal challenges based on federal or state preemption (i.e. Interstate Commerce Clause) and keep FFRB program initiatives firmly grounded in a local jurisdiction’s police powers.

The resolution initiated a Phase II analysis of economic risks associated with a worst-case scenario at the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub (CEI) in Portland along the banks of the Willamette River as a first step towards internalizing those risks through various financial assurance mechanisms or requirements for risk mitigation. The CEI HUB contains 630 tanks of petroleum-based liquids distributed over 220 acres, and stores over 90% of Oregon’s liquid fuels.

In early 2021, the Phase II risk analysis was completed by the firms ECONorthwest, Salus Resilience, and Enduring Econometrics.[5] The study found that in the event of magnitude 8 or 9 Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) quake – long overdue for the Pacific Northwest – a massive release of 95 – 194 million gallons of fuel would likely occur, some of which would catch fire and potentially result in a one or more catastrophic explosions. If at the high end, such a spill would be larger than the Deepwater Horizon disaster (~134 million gallons), making it the largest marine spill in US history. In terms of economic damages, the study considered a broad range of both market and non-market effects and assigned monetary values to seven (Table 2). Depending on the size of the spill, failure rate for storage tanks, and utilized capacity at the time of the quake, damages could range from a low of $359 million to a high of $2.6 billion.

With this tally of potential damage in hand, decision makers are now considering options for Phase III in order to shift these financial and economic risks back onto infrastructure owners. One scenario involves assessment of seismic related risks by individual companies (there are about 10 in the CEI), mitigation planning to harden this infrastructure, and (potentially) bonding against mitigation plans. Bonding for decommissioning is also on the table since in the event of a catastrophic quake, abandonment without post-catastrophe clean up and repair is a distinct possibility. In the spring of 2022, the Oregon Legislature passed SB 1567A to jumpstart this process. The state’s Department of Environmental Quality has begun a rulemaking initiative, and the initial round of facility assessments are expected to be completed by June 1 ^st , 2024 as the legislature intended. After this, discussions over bonding against mitigation plans and decommissioning will begin in earnest.

An alternative, more direct pathway to Phase III regulations would require the Multnomah County Commission to enact financial assurance requirements and FFRTF surcharges on a track separate from the seismic risk assessments since SB 1567A does not explicitly call for either. As shown in Table 2, the basis for per gallon surcharges to offset potential public liabilities associated with a worst case CSZ quake exist now and so there is no real barriers to moving ahead with some form of a levy based on the ECONortwest et al. analysis. CSE and its partners will be pursuing this approach as we continue to monitor implementation of SB 1567A.

King County, WA – Final Phase III regulations now in place

King County’s Phase II risk assessment was completed in June of 2022. [6] The risk assessment concluded that three types of fossil fuel facilities could present public financial risks to the county in the form of costs related to health, safety, and infrastructure abandonment. These include thermal (gas) electric power plants, liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants and oil terminals. The assessment found sufficient evidence of past high-cost incidents to propose requiring proof of adequate financial coverage for explosions from any of the three types of facilities. It also recommended that self-bonding not be accepted as a financial assurance mechanism to cover financial risks associated with potential explosions or site contamination and that advance planning around potential onsite hazards and facility decommissioning be required along with financial assurances against these potential public liabilities.

State of Washington – New financial assurance rules for oil vessels and onshore facilities

Led by Representative Mia Gregerson (D-33) the Washington legislature passed HB 1691 in the spring of 2022 as a first step towards implementing fossil fuel risk bond programs at the state level. HB 1691 requires the owners or operators of any covered oil vessel or oil facility to obtain a certificate of financial responsibility from the Department of Ecology (DOE) that guarantees such owners fully cover the costs of a worst-case spill. Acceptable forms of financial assurance include insurance, surety bonds, corporate guarantees, letters of credit, certificates of deposit, or protection and indemnity club membership. The legislation does not prohibit, but instead puts conditions on self-insurance as an option. Oil spills of all sizes are frequent visitors to Washington’s waters (Figure 1), and HB 1691 was seen as a way to start shifting the significant cost burden of monitoring and responding to these spills to fossil fuel infrastructure owners. For the largest oil tankers, financial assurances of at least $1 billion are now required.

Initially, Rep. Gregerson drafted a more comprehensive statewide Phase I bill that would have expanded Department of Ecology’s existing financial assurance requirements for hazardous facilities to include fossil fuel infrastructure. The first step in this statewide approach would have been a Phase II DOE report to the legislature evaluating the financial and economic costs and risks associated with fossil fuels and climate change, a gap analysis of existing financial assurance requirements, and recommendations to the legislature of how to close those gaps. DOE reviewed the legislative proposal and concluded that the analysis would cost about $1 million to complete – a price tag a bit too high to fly under the radar screen and avoid political pushback. Of course, investing $1 million to avoid potentially billions of dollars of economic costs is a great deal for public finance, but in a political climate of fiscal austerity such a price tag for the Phase II study was enough to derail the more comprehensive approach. As an alternative, HB 1691 is viewed as an incremental, but important step forward.

CONCLUSIONS

Lord Stern famously stated that climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen.[7] As the foregoing demonstrates, fossil fuel risk bond (FFRB) programs provide states, counties, and cities an option for taking this market failure head on by shifting the public cost burden of both fossil fuel infrastructure and climate change back to where it belongs – on the polluters. By forcing fossil fuel infrastructure owners to internalize costs that are now passed on to taxpayers, FFRB programs have the potential to disincentivize applications for new or expanded facilities and relieve fiscally stressed governments from the ever-growing costs associated with climate disasters, climate adaptation, and mitigation of greenhouse gases.

The Pacific Northwest case studies illuminate both the promise and complexities of enacting FFRB programs at the state and local levels. In Multnomah County, Oregon, the key driver was the specter of a CEI Hub oil spill even larger than Deepwater Horizon and public financial costs that could top $2.6 billion. Given the urgency of avoiding such costs in the event of a magnitude 9.0 Cascadia Subduction Zone quake, decision makers here opted for a Phase III process that accelerates adoption of seismic risk mitigation measures by individual companies rather than a program of financial assurances or a fossil fuel risk trust fund to offset a wider range of climate related costs.

In King County, Washington, the key driver was deterrence. The Pacific Northwest has been in the crosshairs of the fossil fuel industry – 50 large coal, oil or gas projects proposed since 2012 – and having a FFRB program in place is here provides an expensive regulatory hurdle that may prove too high to overcome. The absence of new applications for fossil fuel infrastructure permits allowed the full policy trifecta to be embraced and enacted without major opposition. At the state level in Washington, the cost of the Phase II risk assessment was deemed too high and forced legislators to revert to a less comprehensive approach focused on financial assurance requirements for oil vessels and onshore oil facilities. Despite the normal twists and turns of taking policy interventions from concept to on-the-ground reality, the PNW experience with FFRB programs should provide a workable model for other states, counties and cities across the US where fossil fuel infrastructure is now concentrated or where new applications are on the rise.

FOOTNOTES

[1]. Anil Markandya, Deger Saygin, Asami Miketa, Dolf Hielen and Nicholas Wagner. The True Cost of Fossil Fuels: Saving on the Externalities of Air Pollution and Climate Change. Abu Dhabi: International Renewable Energy Agency, 2010.

[2] Robert Schuwerk and Greg Rogers. It’s Closing Time: The Huge Bill to Abandon Oilfields Comes Early. New York: Carbon Tracker Initiative, 2020.

[3] Jesse M. Keenan. Regional Resilience Trust Funds: An Exploratory Analysis for the New York Metropolitan Region. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, 2017.

[4] Leah Fischer and Sonya Ziaja (lead authors). California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment. Sacramento, CA: Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, CA Energy Commission, CA Natural Resource Agency, 2018.

[5] EcoNorthwest, Salus Resilience, Enduring Econometrics. Impacts of Fuel Releases from the CEI Hub due to a Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake. Portland, OR: Multnomah County Office of Sustainability, 2022.

[6] King County Comprehensive Plan Workplan Action 20: Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds Report. Seattle, WA: King County Department of Local Services, 2022.

[7] Nicholas Stern. Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change. London, HM Treasury, 2006.

DNR vs. Climate Stability - Round Two

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 18:47:56 GMT

Agency doubles down on climate denial instead of protecting carbon rich forests

Last October, CSE and Save the Olympic Peninsula prevailed in their lawsuit seeking to force Washington’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to consider climate impacts of logging mature legacy forests as required by the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). In that ruling, Judge Keith Harper found that DNR’s determinations of non-significance (DNS) for two Jefferson County timber sales were clearly erroneous for failing to make any mention, let alone analysis of, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with logging or other climate impacts such as increased temperatures or landslide risk.

Instead of using that decision as an opportunity to protect carbon rich forests from logging, DNR has doubled down on its pattern of climate denial by authorizing dozens of new, high impact logging proposals that once again fail to account for climate impacts. But this time, the agency has cut and pasted about a page and a half of obfuscatory language into its SEPA environmental checklists in hopes of heading off round two of climate litigation.

In response, CSE and its partners Legacy Forest Defense Coalition (LFDC) and STOP have challenged the agency’s failures once again and will likely be heading back to court to expose the myths and falsehoods contained in the band-aids DNR has slapped on to its environmental checklists. In particular:

Despite Judge Harper’s decision, DNR claims that it has no obligation to consider climate impacts at the project level. Instead, the agency argues that generic discussions contained in past, non-project EISs shield the agency from doing anything more. However, SEPA, recent court decisions, and DNR Commissioner’s Order 202006 do not, in fact, provide this discretion. To the extent that prior landscape or programmatic EISs are relevant, they must be incorporated into project-level SEPA documents through an orderly phased review process and supplemented with site specific information, such as estimates of project-level GHG emissions, the forgone sequestration associated with new roads, or temperature changes associated with loss of the forest canopy.

DNR asserts that “[u]sing a gross estimate of carbon dioxide released from the harvest of an individual stand of timber provides no useful information” for evaluating climate impacts. This is an irrational statement. Anthropogenic releases of GHG pollution are the primary driver of climate change. And mature forest logging projects like the Juneau timber sale are ‘carbon bombs’ that each release tens of thousands of metric tons CO2 and convert some of the world’s most productive carbon sinks into net sources of emissions for well over a decade after logging. Quantifying GHG pollution released or committed in association with DNR logging projects would provide the agency with information needed to minimize such pollution in project level design through, for example, barring any new road construction, logging of mature forests, or clearcutting.

DNR embraces timber industry rhetoric claiming that its products are less carbon intensive than substitutes, like concrete or steel. However, that is only true for fossil-fuel (energy) related emissions. When biogenic and fossil fuel related emissions are taken into account, conventional wood products are far more carbon intensive than any of these substitutes. For example, and as noted in our challenge letters, results from Hudiburg et al. (2019) suggest a carbon intensity of about 10.27 tCO2-e/mbf in Washington State. Using standard conversion factors from Global Wood, this translates into about 32 tCO2-e per metric ton of finished Douglas fir lumber, far beyond recent LCA estimates for steel (~2 tCO2e/t) or concrete (~ 1 tCO2-e/t).

DNR continues to make the case that as long as its forestlands are capturing more carbon than they release from logging the climate impacts of its logging program are zero. But there are two problems with that. First, the most recent forest carbon data available show that losses of carbon from DNR lands through logging and mortality actually exceed carbon capture. Because of this, DNR has the dubious distinction of being in last place with respect to carbon sequestration in western Washington. Secondly, even if DNR were breaking even, it still represents a major loss of carbon sequestration capacity since natural forests, especially in this region, can capture many times more carbon than they release if left unlogged. For example, on unlogged portions of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest nearly ten times more carbon is captured than released (see chart, below). DNR’s degradation of this natural capacity down to a 1:1 ratio or less means that much more carbon is being left in the atmosphere as a result of its logging program relative to the natural forest carbon cycle.

DNR has the lowest ratio of carbon in (via growth of above-ground biomass) to carbon out (via harvest and mortality) than any other forestland owner group in western Washington. Source: USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis Program, EVALIDator web-application Version 2.0.6.

As they seek support from voters in 2024, Governor Inslee and Commissioner Franz must abandon their pattern of climate denial and recognize that clearcutting DNR forestlands is a major disruption of the natural carbon cycle with profound impacts on climate change and climate resiliency.

Please review the following for more details about what CSE, LFDC and STOP are doing to reduce the climate impacts of DNR’s logging program:

Baltimore’s Stormwater Management Plan Will Generate Significant Social and Economic Returns

jtalberth@sustainable-economy.org (John Talberth) — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:06:39 GMT

In December 2014 the City of Baltimore released an ambitious management plan for reducing stormwater pollution from nearly 24,000 acres of pavement within City limits. Nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediments contained in this stormwater are responsible for recurring hypoxic “dead zones” in the Chesapeake Bay devoid of fish, crabs, and other aquatic life. Stormwater runoff from cites accounts for 10-20% of the load of these pollutants entering the Bay. Although efforts to control pollution from other sources are beginning to pay off, pollution from urban runoff is still growing. Baltimore’s Stormwater Management Plan (SMP) will play a role in reversing this trend.

The SMP was created to meet Baltimore’s obligations under the Clean Water Act and is based on implementation of a variety of best management practices (BMPs) designed to reduce runoff and filter out pollutants from at least 4,240 acres of paved surfaces. Major BMPs will include expanded mechanical street sweeping, stream restoration, bioretention ponds, artificial wetlands, and converting impervious pavement to open space and forest.

Many, including Maryland’s new Governor Larry Hogan (R) have expressed concerns over the costs jurisdictions like Baltimore will face implementing their SMPs and over the stormwater fees collected to pay for them. But from an economics standpoint, the point is not how much it costs but whether or not the benefits generated by these SMPs exceed costs and how they can be configured to maximize such benefits. CSE’s preliminary analysis of Baltimore’s SMP tackles these questions by using Baltimore’s Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) as a framework. The results are encouraging. In particular, our analysis found that:

The SMP has the potential to generate nearly $20 million in economic benefits each year with no special emphasis on GPI-enhancing design features. Major annual benefit categories include those related to ecosystem services of streams, wetlands, parks and open space as well as volunteering, employment, and water quality.
If GPI-enhancing design features were added – features like local hiring preference, greater emphasis on green infrastructure, and location of BMPs in residential areas – then the SMP’s annual economic contribution would rise by 29% to over $25 million per year.
Over a 20-year period, the SMP as currently configured is likely to generate over $22 million in net benefits with a benefit-cost ratio of 1.08 and a social return on investment of over 8%.
With GPI-enhancing features added, net benefits could be substantially larger. Our analysis shows that 20-year net benefits could be over $107 million with a benefit-cost ratio of 1.40 and social a return on investment of nearly 40%. This underscores the importance of paying attention to design features of the SMP as it is implemented on the ground and recognizing that some design features will pay off far better from a social, economic, and environmental perspective than others.

As more precise economic data on both costs and benefits of projects and programs to implement the SMP become available, CSE’s preliminary analysis can also be refined and updated. So too can the list of GPI-enhancing measures. Doing so will help decision makers implementing the SMP to choose options that maximize its social and economic returns – an important goal recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency in its new Integrated Municipal Stormwater and Wastewater Planning Approach Framework, adopted last summer. That framework recognizes that communities can “manage stormwater as a resource, and support other economic benefits and quality of life attributes that enhance the vitality of communities.” As shown in CSE’s preliminary analysis, the GPI provides a useful analytical tool for achieving this goal.

For a copy of CSE’s preliminary analysis, click here to visit our GPI project page

Victory! Court Orders DNR to Consider the Climate Impacts of Logging

jtalberth@sustainable-economy.org (John Talberth) — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 16:49:37 GMT

Port Townsend, WA – In a major legal victory for Washington forests, Superior Court Judge Keith Harper ruled that the Department of Natural Resources violated the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) by failing to consider the climate impacts of two timber sales in Jefferson County, vacated DNR’s determination of non-significance for the projects, and ordered the agency to redo its SEPA analysis to address climate concerns. The Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) and Save the Olympic Peninsula (STOP) sued to halt the Goodman 1 and Taylor Downhill Sorts timber sales in February of this year on the grounds that DNR failed to quantify and mitigate the significant greenhouse gas emissions associated with the logging projects or the effects of clearcutting on wildfire risk, flooding, heat waves, water shortages, landslides, reforestation failures and other stressors already on the rise due to climate change. The ruling is likely to extend far beyond these two timber sales by forcing DNR to redo its SEPA procedures to make sure they are compliant with the statute – which clearly requires consideration of climate impacts – and in line with the best available science for doing so.

According to Dr. John Talberth, President and Senior Economist for CSE, “As Senator Manchin has done in West Virginia for coal, Governor Inslee, Commissiner Franz and the legislature have gone to extraordinary lengths to shield the timber industry from climate regulation , including passing legislation that declares logging to be a climate solution and entirely ignoring the enormous climate impacts of clearcutting when making forest management decisions. This ruling will help turn things around by requiring DNR to report greenhouse gas emissions associated with logging and evaluate the extent to which clearcutting is making the land hotter, drier, and more susceptible to wildfires.”

The case revolved around DNR’s refusal to even mention climate change when it approved the two timber sales after CSE and STOP provided extensive scientific evidence about how logging projects such as these are generating significant quantities of GHG emissions and making the land more vulnerable to climate change. According to Jefferson County’s recent Forest and Trees GHG inventory, logging is by far the greatest source of carbon pollution in the county. Despite this, DNR offered no explanation of why it ignored climate impacts except to say that “ the SEPA Environmental Checklist does not include analysis of climate impacts .” CSE and STOP disputed this fact, and today’s ruling validates their position. During the late stages of litigation, DNR offered another explanation: that since DNR forestlands absorb more carbon than is given off by logging there is no effect on climate.

According to attorney Claudia Newman, who argued the case before Judge Harper today, “Judge Harper issued a well-reasoned decision that is consistent with law. DNR’s position in this case was untenable. The agency does not have unbridled discretion to ignore its climate related duties under SEPA for timber sales.”

One of the key arguments plaintiffs advanced was that by failing to address climate impacts of logging at all, DNR is overlooking alternatives that are better for climate but keep logs flowing to where they are needed – such as using variable density thinning instead of clearcutting in order to retain shade and promote natural regeneration. According to Ron Richards, Director of STOP, “Without addressing the climate impacts of logging during SEPA, none of these win-win-win solutions will see the light of day. In addition to thinning instead of clearcutting, these solutions include protecting older ‘legacy’ forests from logging and earning revenues from carbon markets, as DNR is now beginning to do elsewhere.”

For more information about the case, including copies of all pleadings, visit:

https://www.sustainable-economy.org/washington-drn-sued-for-failing-to-account-for-the-climate-impacts-of-its-logging-proposals .

Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Programs Move Forward in the Pacific Northwest

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 21:40:59 GMT

As previously reported, King County, Washington and Multnomah County, Oregon moved forward by passing resolutions initiating risk assessments to determine what level of financial risks taxpayers in those jurisdictions faced in the event of catastrophic, worst-case scenarios, such as a 9.0 earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. EcoNorthwest completed that assessment for Multnomah County earlier this year, and found that taxpayers could potentially face up to $2.6 billion in economic damages unless owners of fossil fuel infrastructure in Portland’s Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub (CEI) adopted stringent mitigation measures against seismic risk.

Spurred by that risk assessment, the Oregon Legislature, led by Senator Michael Dembrow (D-23) passed SB 1567 , a bill that requires all owners of bulk oils and liquid fuels terminals in Multnomah, Columbia and Lane Counties to conduct and submit seismic vulnerability assessments to the Department of Environmental Quality by June 1 ^st , 2024 and then directs the Environmental Quality Commission, in consultation with other agencies, to adopt a seismic risk mitigation program based on these assessments. Full implementation of SB 1567 has the potential to eliminate or significantly reduce taxpayer exposure for fossil fuel facilities in Oregon, and CSE will be engaging in the various assessment and rule making processes kicked off by the legislation over the next two years to help ensure this result.

In King County, the fossil fuel risk assessment was completed in February of 2022 and focused on evaluating the adequacy of existing financial assurance mechanisms for reducing the financial risk from fossil fuel facility development in unincorporated King County. That report recommended that the King County Council adopt an ordinance to impose financial assurance requirements on any future thermal, LNG, or oil terminals to guard against public financial risks associated with vapor cloud explosions that may occur under a worst-case scenario. The report also found that there was sufficient evidence to warrant financial assurances for decommissioning. A proposed ordinance, as of this writing, is before the King County Council.

Further reading:

Without Adequate Financial Assurances, Oil Refineries Present Long Term Environmental Justice Hazards

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 19:04:16 GMT

There are currently 124 active oil refineries in the United States with an operating capacity of roughly 17.7 million barrels per day. As the transition away from fossil fuels accelerates careful planning is needed to ensure that these facilities don’t degrade and become more dangerous as they continue to operate or become abandoned toxic brownfields that saddle future generations with long term environmental hazards and enormous clean-up costs.

As part of its Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Program, Center for Sustainable Economy and its partners have been advocating for state and local governments to take a hard look at what financial resources owners have set aside for compensating victims and repairing damage when catastrophic accidents occur and for dismantling, removing, and restoring sites to their natural condition (DRR) to prepare the ground for beneficial land uses in the future.

In this policy note, CSE compiled data from federal, state, and local agencies to determine the adequacy of financial assurance mechanisms for a sample of 10 active or recently closed oil refineries in four states and found that funding for DRR activities and accidents are far below what is needed.

READ full report

Deforestation and Forest Degradation Are Making Heat Waves and Drought More Intense. Evidence from The Pacific Northwest Heat Dome

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 19:18:49 GMT

It’s no secret that landscapes dominated by clearcuts, logging roads, and timber plantations pose significant public health and safety risks by amplifying the effects of heat waves, drought, water shortages, wildfires, landslides, floods, invasive species and other stressors already on the rise due to climate change. The pool of research documenting these effects is robust, and growing.

Recently, CSE teamed up with Dr. Christopher Still at Oregon State University to add to that body of research by comparing and contrasting the effects of the unprecedented 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave on undisturbed, old growth forest vs. heavily clearcut and degraded forestlands near Cougar Reservoir in Oregon’s central Cascades and in southwest Washington. The technical report is now available and can be viewed and downloaded here . Key findings include:

The loss and degradation of primary forests is driving climate change and amplifying the severity of heat waves and droughts.
The unprecedented Pacific Northwest heat dome of 2021 provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the climatic responses of undisturbed primary forests to deforested and degraded lands.
Using NASA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) data, land surface temperatures of undisturbed vs. deforested and degraded forestlands in western Oregon were compared before, during and after the heat dome event.
In two contrasting sites in southwest Washington, tower data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) was used to compare canopy temperatures, ecosystem fluxes of water, net ecosystem carbon exchange, and ecosystem photosynthesis.
At the western Oregon region of interest, the mean, maximum, and minimum land surface temperature was always higher on the deforested and degraded lands. During the heat dome event, the undisturbed forest was 5.5 ºC cooler ( 94.8 ºF vs. 104.7 ºF).
At the NEON sites in Washington and relative to the undisturbed old growth forest, the degraded (plantation) site was hotter (~4.5 ºC), lost more water, was less efficient at photosynthesis, and experienced a more dramatic impact to carbon cycling, flipping from a sink to a source during the heat dome event.
The results suggest that as heat and drought intensify with climate change, maintaining the extent of undisturbed forest and reducing the extent of deforested and degraded lands may be important for mitigating the effects of heat waves, conserving water supplies, and reducing wildfire risk.

This technical report will be split into two papers for peer reviewed journals and likely published in the fall. In the meantime, CSE will continue to work with legislators and county commissions in Oregon and Washington to advocate for changes in forest practices and comprehensive land use plans to better protect nearby communities from these growing public health and safety threats. Stay tuned for updates on this work.

Read:

Still, C., Talberth, J. 2022. Deforestation, Forest Degradation, Heat Waves and Drought. Evidence from the Pacific Northwest Heat Dome of 2021.

World Scientists and A New Film Outline Urgent Action for Survival of Civilization

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 19:36:32 GMT

MOUNT VERNON, Wash., MARCH 12, 2022 – The nonprofits Stable Planet Alliance and Scientists Warning Europe (SWE) announced publication today of a new paper and accompanying film: the “World Scientists’ Warning into Action” paper – a solutions-oriented follow-up to the 2019 “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency,” and the accompanying short film “Warnings to Action: Mobilizing Humanity.” CSE’s Dr. John Talberth helped lead the economics section of the paper, which calls on governments at every level to take bold actions to transform our economic system from one that drives climate change, extinction, and poverty to one that stays within a safe operating zone between planetary boundaries and social floors.

The new paper, published today by the journal Science Progress goes beyond the reach of traditional scientific papers, and even existing scientists’ warnings. It lays out concrete actions for leaders to take on specific timelines to avert the most dangerous climate change and ecosystem loss, without which our current trajectory will rapidly destabilize civilization. The paper briefly recaps impending risks, but mainly articulates what leaders must do to avoid them, by when, and at what levels.

It sets out a framework for solutions: specific, urgent, large-scale transformative actions and approaches to the multi-faceted planetary overshoot emergencies faced by humanity.

Addressed to leaders around the world at multiple scales — from householders and community leaders to heads of state and the UN Secretary-General — the paper is a collaboration of 15 top world scientists, economists, and governance specialists from the USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Nigeria, South Africa, and Australia.

“This paper shows the main ways that we can bend the needle on the climate and biodiversity crises, by systemic reforms at different levels,” said co-lead author, Professor Phoebe Barnard of the University of Washington, who is also CEO of the Stable Planet Alliance. “We had identified in 2019 in our World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency paper six issues for urgent action – Energy, Atmospheric Pollutants, Nature, Food Systems, Population Stabilization, and the Economy. In our new paper, we look at these issues at six scales of action: from individual and household levels through communities, cities, districts, nations and the United Nations. While most of our problems need systemic solutions, there are powerful opportunities for individuals and communities.”

The paper has received wide airtime at COP26, and already prior to publication, has been co-signed by over 2,300 graduate specialists from 105 countries.

It is accompanied by the new film “Warnings to Action: Mobilizing Humanity” by director Jonathan Clay, known for the 2021 Netflix film “Breaking Boundaries: The Science of our Planet” with Sir David Attenborough and Prof Johan Rockström.

“This film and paper tell the leaders and officials at COP26, and people around the world, what is needed to save humanity and our planet,” says Managing Director of Scientists Warning Europe, UK lawyer and local politician Edmund Gemmell. “The paper offers concrete guidance for a wiser, sustainable civilization, and the film calls scientists, students, artists, faith leaders and others to step forward and work together to shape it.”

“But we now have an extremely steep hill to climb,” says co-lead author, Professor Emeritus William Moomaw of Tufts University. “Since leaders have delayed essential action for decades, we have now dramatically reduced the comfort and timeframe within which we can make changes.”

The paper also highlights just how ill-equipped are our existing systems of governance – and their vulnerability to corruption – to facilitate rapid and transformative change on short timescales. Time is now so short that we cannot wait for reforms to be complete before we act. Temporary measures must be enabled for planning, policy and management, including corruption prevention, while this is done.

As the paper concludes, “Our challenges are less technical than social – taking the necessary actions quickly enough, in all nations and governance regimes – particularly democratic ones – while maintaining adequate social, economic and political stability to steer the ship of humanity safely into a wiser, more sustainable world order. This will require unprecedented global collaboration, social learning, and public awareness and pressure. This will profoundly challenge us all, and our systems of planning, cooperation and governance. (But) everything we know and love is at stake.”

Read:

World Scientists Warning – paper

Washington DNR Sued for Failing to Account for The Climate Impacts of Its Logging Proposals

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 19:29:45 GMT

Port Townsend, WA – On February 3rd, Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) and Save The Olympic Peninsula (STOP) filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court for Jefferson County against the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for failing to account for the harmful climate impacts of its logging proposals in violation of the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). The complaint names two Jefferson County timber sales – Goodman 1 and Taylor Downhill Sorts – that CSE and STOP challenged during the comment period and before the Board of Natural Resources (BNR). Taken together, the timber sales would log over 316 acres of state forests, remove nearly nine million board feet of wood and construct over a mile of new logging roads. BNR declined to make any changes in these sales to lessen their climate impacts and gave final approval for the sales during their January 4th and February 1st meetings. See below for the CSE-STOP complaint, opening brief, reply brief and administrative challenge files. Also find attached DNR's response brief, which contains their explanation of why they believe the DNR logging program has no climate impacts.

In the context of each challenge, CSE and STOP provided extensive scientific information and data sources indicating that the two timber sales will generate significant quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, reduce the land’s ability to sequester carbon, and make the land more vulnerable to the effects of climate change by amplifying the risks associated with wildfires, floods, landslides, insects, disease, and heat waves. Remarkably, DNR’s generic response to these challenges is that climate change is not on the agency’s SEPA checklist and so warrants no attention whatsoever as timber sales are planned, sold, and logged:

“At this time, the SEPA Environmental Checklist does not include analysis of climate impacts. The topic of climate impacts is an evolving issue as new science emerges and agencies work to include that new science in their work” ( DNR response to the Taylor Downhill project challenge ).

According to Dr. John Talberth, President and Senior Economist for CSE, “The climate crisis demands that decision makers at DNR carefully consider the many ways these timber sales are generating greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the risks associated with fires, floods, and landslides, yet DNR has chosen to simply look the other way and deny it has any obligation to do so. We hope the court agrees with us that climate change presents an existential threat to humanity and must indeed be considered in the SEPA context for every project that poses a climate risk.”

CSE and STOP are represented by the firm Bricklin & Newman, based in Seattle. According to the complaint, the groups are requesting six specific remedies, including (1) an order invalidating BNR’s approval of the Taylor Downhill and Goodman 1 projects for auction; (2) an order invalidating the ‘determination of non-significance’ for the projects as clearly erroneous; (3) a declaration that climate impacts are a necessary component of SEPA analysis for DNR logging proposals; (4) a declaration that the projects could have probable, significant adverse impacts to the environment; (5) an order enjoining all forest practices associated with the projects, (6) an order requiring mitigation for any climate-related impacts.

If successful, the lawsuit will help CSE, STOP and others concerned with DNR’s logging program make the case for alternative timber sale designs that minimize climate impacts, including avoiding any additional logging of carbon rich legacy (naturally regenerated), mature and old growth forests, prohibiting new road construction, and using lower-impact techniques such as variable density thinning rather than clearcutting to help accelerate the development of fully functional forest conditions from timber plantations. These techniques will advance key biodiversity and climate goals, employ more workers, and put DNR in a position to take part in evolving carbon markets that can provide more income to the beneficiaries of its timber sale program (including schools) than what can be earned from timber alone.

According to STOP Chair Ron Richards, “By evading its SEPA duties DNR is precluding these win-win-win solutions for the climate, for communities, and for workers. Instead, Commissioner Franz and DNR are building a wall of resistance that promises to keep business-as-usual clearcutting on the land for the foreseeable future.”

Read:

Reconciliation and Infrastructure Bills Would Generate Massive Carbon Emissions From Logging and Highways

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 00:14:42 GMT

As Congress accelerates work to pass two massive new spending bills – the budget Reconciliation ($3.5 trillion) and Infrastructure ($1.2 trillion) packages – lawmakers need to do the math to ensure that money is not thrown to programs that increase greenhouse gas pollution and reduce our ability to overcome the climate crisis. After all, one of the key selling points for each is their claimed climate benefits. Proponents of the Reconciliation package, for example, assert that some clean energy measures included in the bill, along with some in the Infrastructure package, would slash US carbon emissions by 880 million metric tons (0.88 gigatons) of annual CO2 emissions by 2030. However, as discussed below, the very recent elimination of the Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP) from the Reconciliation package lowers the annual CO2 emissions reduction to only 0.38 gigatons by 2030. Moreover, buried within both bills are expenditures that would take us even further in the opposite direction – among them, massive subsidies for logging and highways that come with a steep carbon footprint. In combination with the elimination of CEPP, these climate-harming aspects of the Reconciliation and Infrastructure packages would actually increase net annual CO2 emissions by 2030 relative to current levels.

When the House passed the Reconciliation package on September 13th, Big Timber celebrated. As they should. Of the $40 billion allocated for agriculture and forestry, over $22 billion is for line items that would subsidize logging, and associated carbon removal and emissions, on both public and private forestlands. Because most members of Congress have little experience with forestry, they were easy targets for the usual scientifically indefensible narratives telling us we need more logging to combat wildfires, improve forest health, and reduce emissions by storing carbon in wood products. The Forest Climate Working Group, whose members include notorious logging corporations like Green Diamond , Enviva and Rayonier, deceptively lauded the investment as “the most significant legislative action yet to leverage forests and forest products as a powerful nature-based solution to help combat climate change.”

"Giving logging's double whammy on climate change and climate resiliency, logging subsidies have no place in either the budget reconciliation or infrastructure packages. Congress should strike the offending line items and take a hard look at others that also raise climate red flags, like funding for new highways."

But the reality is that logging stimulated by this money will be a big step backward for efforts to curb carbon emissions and promote climate resiliency. While calculating the amount of new logging and associated carbon emissions from the spending bills requires some care, it is nonetheless tractable enough for Congress to do the homework before passing either measure. One relatively straightforward way is to ask how much logging would the $22 billion buy and from there calculate the volume produced (measured in thousand board feet) and associated emissions based on emissions factors (metric tons CO2 per thousand board feet) reported in existing studies. Another way is to consider the acres targeted for logging – 30 million in the Infrastructure bill alone and many millions more in the Reconciliation bill – and estimate emissions using reliable federal data on how much carbon would be removed by logging and how much would likely end up in the atmosphere.

A new report from John Muir Project and Center for Sustainable Economy employs both methods, and the results are disturbing. If passed, the Reconciliation and Infrastructure packages are likely to generate an additional 3 to 4 gigatons of CO2 pollution from logging over the next 10-15 years, as carbon now stored in trees would be lost and emitted into the atmosphere through the wood products life cycle and as newly logged areas give off rather than sequester carbon – an effect that can last ten to fifteen years after logging activities conclude. In terms of 2030 goals, this would take a big bite – 0.25 to 0.34 gigatons – out of the 0.38 gigaton CO2 emission reductions associated with remaining clean energy provisions in the bills (with CEPP eliminated) and would take us farther away from President Biden’s goal of a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution , actually causing an overall net increase in annual CO2 emissions of 80 million tons by 2030.

But emissions are just part of the story when it comes to logging and climate change. A consistent conclusion from many scientific studies approaching the issue from many directions is that heavily logged landscapes are far less resilient to the effects of climate change. They are more susceptible to wildfires, flooding, insects, disease, wind damage, heat waves, landslides and harmful algae blooms. These stressors are already on the rise due to climate change – logging makes the effects so much worse.

For example, in fire prone regions of the West, timber plantations burn hotter and faster than natural forests , and logging in general, including thinning, degrades the cool, moist microclimate that denser forests have, resulting in hotter, drier, and winder conditions that increase fire intensity, according to the largest scientific analysis ever conducted on this question . Logged areas produce far less water in the dry season and the waters that trickle out are more vulnerable to harmful algae blooms (HABs) because they’re hotter and laced with a cocktail of chemicals and fertilizers that fuel HAB growth. Hurricanes have a field day in heavily logged areas while real forests with a diversity of ages and tree sizes survive more intact .

Given logging’s double whammy on climate change and climate resiliency, logging subsidies have no place in either the budget Reconciliation or Infrastructure packages. Congress should strike the offending line items and take a hard look at others that also raise climate red flags, like funding for highways.

The current Infrastructure package passed by the Senate in August authorizes $110 billion for highways, roads, bridges and other major transportation projects. While the intent is to focus on the backlog of repairs needed to existing infrastructure, significant portions would be used for new roads or extra lanes – each of which has serious climate consequences by accommodating more traffic and catalyzing the conversion of farm and forestland to suburban sprawl. Case in point is the massive Birmingham Northern Beltline Project, which is being punched through some of the nation’s most productive forests and wetlands and which would be brought to completion if the Infrastructure bill is signed into law. With that money, 3,100 football fields’ worth of forestland would be paved over. But this project is just one of many the Infrastructure bill would support.

As reported by the Washington Post, in 2019, $19 billion – about a third of states’ capital spending on roads that year, went towards expanding the road network rather than addressing the maintenance backlog. Despite federal intentions, states retain the right to use transportation funding as they see fit and new highways often have a much higher political payoff than routine maintenance or repairs. So it could be expected that a third ($37 billion) of the $110 billion line item would be used to pay for new or expanded highways. At roughly $4 million per mile , that’s enough funding for over 9,250 miles of new pavement.

But what’s the climate cost? According to a useful analysis by Seattle’s Sightline Institute, each new mile of highway generates between 117,000 and 186,000 tons of CO2 associated with construction activities and new traffic even after deducting some carbon savings from less congestion. If the Infrastructure spending results in 9,250 miles of new roads, that’s a carbon price tag of another 1.1 to1.7 gigatons of CO2 (mid-range of 1.4 gigatons of CO2).

And, despite calls for elimination of all fossil fuel subsidies from the Biden Administration and many Congressional Democrats, the Reconciliation bill retains most fossil fuel subsidies. If these subsidies were eliminated, it would equate to a reduction in emissions of 0.18 gigatons of CO2-e in 2030 .

Moreover, instead of increasing logging and associated carbon emissions, what if the Infrastructure and Reconciliation bills went the other direction? If the bills not only restored the CEPP, but also reduced annual US carbon emissions from logging by 50% by 2030 by defunding logging on public and private lands and initiating and funding a large-scale program of acquisition of private forestlands into protected public ownership from willing sellers, it would reduce CO2-e by an additional 0.36 gigatons in 2030, based on figures pertaining to current annual carbon emissions from logging in US forests, and adding 17% for CO2 emissions from transportation associated with logging.

As this analysis of the massive Reconciliation and Infrastructure bills suggest, blindly throwing money at federal programs is not a panacea for climate change. Instead, Congress should carefully consider federal investments by using a strict climate test that uses best available science and data to predict the net effects of any particular investment being considered. Even if it takes more time. The climate emergency does not afford us the latitude to take two steps forward and one or two back.

Read the report: Running Backwards: Logging provisions in the infrastructure and budget reconciliation packages would worsen the climate crisis and threaten public health.

Chad Hanson, Ph.D. is Executive Director and Principal Scientist of John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. John Talberth, Ph.D. is President and Senior Economist for the Center for Sustainable Economy and Co-Director of the Forest Carbon Coalition.

If Governor Inslee Doesn’t Like the Heat He Should Stop Authorization Clearcut Logging on Washington’s State and Private Forestlands

Sat, 10 Jul 2021 19:58:12 GMT

Last month’s deadly heat wave was a stark reminder that we’re not doing nearly enough to tackle the existential threat of climate change. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide continue to rise at an increasing rate while erstwhile ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ events like our late June scorching are happening with alarming frequency. And while Governor Inslee is correct is saying that we need to turn up our level of effort , with one of the region’s most notorious climate change culprits – Big Timber – his own level of effort is in exactly the wrong direction.

Governor Jay Inslee is one of the most prominent proponents of mass timber products like cross laminated timber, despite their adverse effects on climate change. Photo by Rajah Bose/InvestigateWest as published in CrossCut.com May 8th 2020.

Governor Inslee, like much of the region’s congressional delegation, has swallowed Big Timber’s big deceptions about logging and climate change hook, line and sinker. We are told fairy tales about how mass timber buildings store carbon better than forests, how burning trees for energy reduces emissions and how widespread logging is needed to reduce wildfire risks. Last spring, it was disheartening to watch Governor Inslee proudly sign ESSHB 2528 , proclaiming the logging and wood products sector to be a climate solution rather than the big driver of climate change and climate vulnerability it really is.

The truth is that industrial logging activities are very carbon intensive and keep the land stripped clean of the tall shady forests and big trees we need to minimize the harmful effects of climate change. Trees are half carbon by weight, and when they are chopped down and turned into paper, cardboard, or lumber most of what was once stored in the forest ends up in the atmosphere. Clearcuts left behind emit more carbon than can be sequestered by new seedlings for well over a decade as logging slash decays and soils bake in the sun.

In Oregon, two independent studies found the logging and wood products sector to be the single largest source of GHG emissions . If the carbon intensity factors found by that research (about 7 tons carbon dioxide per thousand board feet harvested) are applied in Washington, it implies that this sector could be the state’s third most carbon intensive, emitting roughly 20 million metric tons CO2 per year.

But emissions are only half the story. The other half is about making our rural communities more vulnerable to climate change. Lands dominated by clearcuts, logging roads, and timber plantations that feed markets for paper, biomass and mass timber products burn hotter and faster than the natural forests they’ve replaced . They produce less water for drinking and other downstream uses. Waters that do keep flowing are warmer, often proving lethal to salmon. During the rainy season, they are more susceptible to flooding and landslides. And in hot summer months, they don’t cool us off.

In fact, they get scary hot – much hotter than official measurements. Like hot sand or pavement in full sun, soil surface temperatures in exposed clearcut units frequently exceed 130 degrees Fahrenheit and bake soils to a depth of over a foot and a half . Readings up to 188 degrees have been recorded. Satellites captured land temperatures of 156 degrees in parts of Washington during the June heat wave. Under these conditions, seedlings die and those that don’t stop growing. In contrast, the cool interiors of older natural forests are able to protect soils from this heat, maintain growth, and keep air temperatures thirty to forty degrees lower. Nature’s AC is hard to beat. To keep Washington cool and our forests productive, we need more of these groves and far fewer clearcuts.

This means setting aside state forestlands as forest carbon reserves where big trees are allowed to grow and capture more carbon per acre than anyplace else on Earth . It means stopping the routine approval of harmful clearcuts without any consideration of climate impacts. It means modernizing forest practices to make climate smart techniques like long rotations, alternatives to clearcuts and ecological forestry the law.

Solutions abound, and a recent publication by the Forest Carbon Coalition contains a more complete menu. But as long as Governor Inslee is embracing Big Timber’s version of ‘toxic sludge is good for you’ we’ll make little progress in bringing these climate smart practices to scale. For a man who is complaining about the heat, Governor Inslee should be promoting a cool forest agenda for the state rather than finding ways to spread more scorched earth clearcuts across the landscape.

Dr. John Talberth is President and Senior Economist for the Center for Sustainable Economy and Co-Director of the Forest Carbon Coalition. He is based in Port Townsend, Washington.

Green vs. Gray: Nature's Solution to Infrastructure Demands of the 21st Century

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 22:12:48 GMT

In 2016, CSE teamed up with researchers at World Resources Institute to develop a replicable methodology cities and counties can use to analyze the relative costs and benefits associated with green vs. gray investments to achieve water quality related goals. The paper was published in the journal Solutions, and can be read in full here . Find below a summary and a list of key concepts:

In Brief

Substitution of nature’s services for technological alternatives has been pursued with almost religious zeal as societies have industrialized over the past three centuries. But the time for reverse substitution may be upon us. In a wide variety of settings, from water purification to climate change adaptation, investors are increasingly considering the worthiness of green solutions such as mangrove restoration rather than conventional gray investments like sea walls. But in times of fiscal austerity, cost-effectiveness is paramount. The problem is that infrastructure investors do not have a consistent and robust way to compare gray with green infrastructure in an apples-to-apples manner that is convincing to budget hawks. As a result, green solutions are often neglected. Here, we present the contours of a general methodology called green-gray analysis (GGA) and demonstrate its usefulness in a green-gray tradeoff facing the Portland Water District in Maine. Results provide evidence for the superiority of green investments in several scenarios, purely on financial terms. When ancillary benefits such as carbon sequestration or passive use values for Atlantic salmon are factored in, the case becomes even more compelling. A replicable GGA methodology can be one important solution for scaling up green infrastructure investments worldwide.

Key concepts

Investments in so called “green” infrastructure solutions such as agricultural and forestry best management practices are increasingly recognized as cost-effective ways to achieve environmental quality outcomes relative to traditional investments in “gray” infrastructure, such as wastewater treatment or water filtration plants.
Despite this, there is no consistent and accessible methodology available to decision makers for investigating the financial tradeoffs.
This paper suggests such a methodology—green-gray analysis (GGA)—and demonstrates its application by considering a green-gray case study involving the Portland Water District (PWD) in Maine.
This application suggests that investing in five green infrastructure options could represent either a cost savings of up to 71 percent over constructing a new filtration plant or a cost increase of up to 44 percent. Uncertainty over green infrastructure efficacy and costs accounted for this wide range of outcomes in six modeled scenarios. The PWD analysis demonstrates the usefulness of a general methodology, but also identifies significant data gaps that need to be filled to make GGA more widely applicable.
By working out the details of a replicable methodology, it is our hope that infrastructure investors who typically opt for gray can routinely evaluate the financial and economic benefits of green in their formal decision making process.

Repairing America’s Tattered Forests: A Roadmap for USDA-USDI Compliance with Executive Order 140008

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 20:30:00 GMT

Sixty-one scientific, conservation community and faith organizations today called on the Biden Administration’s National Climate Task Force to reject the false solutions and narratives offered by Big Timber and instead embrace a climate-forestry for the US based on science, sustainable economics and environmental justice. The letter, coordinated by the Forest Carbon Coalition, was accompanied by a detailed policy roadmap containing five high-level strategic goals and dozens of policy interventions to achieve them.

These include:

Halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation
Diversifying and revitalizing rural communities and addressing environmental injustices
Reducing forestland ownership by short-sighted investors
Reducing wasteful consumption of wood products, and
Reducing the climate impacts of industrial forest practices

As documented in the policy roadmap – Repairing America’s Tattered Forests – nearly 80% of US forestlands are moderately or severely degraded from decades of mismanagement and harmful projects and activities including logging, grazing, mining, roads, invasive species, off road vehicle use, suburban sprawl and unwarranted fire suppression. In addition, logging of the last remnants of ecologically intact primary and natural forests continues, largely as a result of subsidized logging on public forestlands.

The loss and degradation of US forestlands comes with a high climate price tag. Industrial logging activities are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions despite being excluded from national and state level GHG inventories. In addition, lands heavily impacted by clearcuts, dense logging road networks and timber plantations are far more vulnerable to wildfires, water shortages, floods, storm damage and other stressors already on the rise due to climate change. But President Biden’s Executive Order 140008 offers hope for turning the tide.

The EO requires the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of Interior to develop and implement a climate-forestry plan for the US that accomplishes several overlapping goals including reducing climate pollution, increasing landscape resilience to climate change, protecting public health, conserving our lands, waters and biodiversity, delivering environmental justice and creating jobs and economic growth in our most economically distressed rural communities. A first iteration of that plan will be released on April 27th. Forest Carbon Coalition and its partners are hopeful that the dozens of specific policy recommendations identified in the roadmap will be carefully considered and adopted in the years ahead.

Read the sign on letter here

Read the policy roadmap, America’s Tattered Forests here

Analysis of Governor Kate Brown’s climate change Executive Order (20-04)

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 22:41:17 GMT

A Positive Direction: Governor Kate Brown’s Executive Order (EO) is breaking with the carbon market-based approach of the past and is instead pursuing a declining cap on Oregon’s emissions on an emergency, science-based timeline.

Needs Improvement: The EO’s targets and timetables are neither ambitious nor comprehensive enough. The EO leaves out the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, the timber industry. It omits any mention of public transportation, nor does it mention the need to rapidly phase out fracked gas and biomethane hookups in homes and buildings. The EO gives insufficient attention to the carbon drawdown potential and critical role Oregon’s forest and farmlands can and should play in advancing an ambitious climate agenda. The EO is limited in its scope by virtue of the limited regulatory authority of the various agencies tasked with acting on the EO.

On March 10, 2020, Oregon Governor Kate Brown released an executive order, EO 20-04, that lays out the goals for Oregon’s climate response on an emergency timeline. The EO states: “This Executive Order establishes science-based GHG emissions reduction goals, and calls for the State of Oregon to reduce its GHG emissions (1) at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2035, and (2) at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.”

While the document references the importance of science-based targets and timelines, the document gets the actual science wrong. According to the most recent Paris climate goals, we need to markedly enhance our ambition with annual targets, not decadal ones, and shoot for a global average temperature increase that does not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius, not 2 degrees Celsius, as this EO references.

7.6% Annual Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions Targets Required Now

The United Nations Environment Program issued a report in November 2019 calling for at 7.6 percent annual decline in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in order to avoid exceeding the 1.5 C target of the Paris Accords. In addition, the IPCC states, “limiting warming to 1.5°C implies reaching net zero CO2 emissions globally around 2050 and concurrent deep reductions in emissions of non-CO2 forcers, particularly methane.” Every year matters, and to delay annual sharp declines in emissions between 2020 and 2030 is to ensure a rise in temperatures of 3.2 C which would be catastrophic. In addition, Gov. Brown’s EO references a 45% drop in emissions below 1990 levels by 2035 and an 80 percent overall reduction by 2050 which is inconsistent with the current climate science.

Timber Industry, Not Counted, is State’s Largest Emitter

The report repeats the false claim that the transportation sector is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state. Yet recent scientific studies have shown that the timber industry is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state and transportation is second largest.

Transportation Sector: Carbon Intensity Reductions Not Equivalent with Absolute GHG Reductions

Additional questionable targets include a reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions intensity of fuels by 20 percent below 2015 levels by 2030. Again, the UN has made it clear that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.6% overall annually between 2020 and 2030. Reducing the carbon intensity of transportation fuels by 25 percent below 2015 by 2035 does not equate to an annual drop in overall greenhouse gas emissions in this sector. For example, if Oregon’s vehicle miles driven were to double by 2035, decreasing the carbon intensity of that travel by 25 percent would still result in an overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions of 50 percent.

Furthermore, assuming Oregon’s population stays constant and vehicle miles traveled stays constant (which is unlikely), a 25 percent reduction below transportation-related emissions levels from 2015 (which were 23MMT CO2e) by 2035 would translate to roughly 17 million metric tons of CO2e by 2035 for Oregon’s transportation sector. However, an annual target of 7.6% reduction in GHG emissions for Oregon would result in a drop of transport-related emissions from 23 MMTCO2e to roughly 10MMT CO2e by 2030 and roughly 6.5 MMT CO2e by 2035, a difference of over 10.5 MMT CO2 by 2035 over the EO’s target.

The EO makes reference to “clean fuel credits,” which would allow fuel producers to bank credits for later use at a time when annual and absolute emissions reductions are necessary. Given the potential for gaming of such a credit trading system, CSE recommends against this approach.

Importantly, the EO makes no mention of the need for enhanced, rapid public transportation options, and free or low-cost public transportation options for low-income communities and youth.

Building Sector: No New Gas Hookups Now

Gov. Brown’s EO sets a 2030 goal for Oregon’s buildings, with three-year intervals for interim assessment. Yet over the past four years, Oregon has seen the use of natural gas grow faster in our homes and buildings than in any other state (a 9% increase between 2015 and 2017 according to Energy Information Administration data). This gas is used for space and hot water heating, as well as cooking. The EO also includes a statement on the potential for transitioning fracked gas to “renewable natural gas” (or biomethane) sources. However, a recent study from the Oregon Department of Energy found that only 10-20% of the state’s existing demand could be met by potential biomethane sources. And continued dependence on methane–whether sourced from fracking or biomethane–for our state’s energy needs is not what is called for at a time when we need to reduce emissions by 7.6% annually. We need to minimize biomethane as much as possible. Creating economic opportunities for its consumption and proliferation runs the risks of further leaks from transport and infrastructure, with significant climate forcing impacts.

To start the process of tackling these rapidly growing emissions, which could also represent a stranded cost for households and businesses, this EO should require all new homes and buildings to be 100 percent electric, with no new gas hookups for any new built structures and for existing structures in Oregon to be carbon-neutral as quickly as possible. In addition, the EO should start by eliminating all subsidies for new gas line extensions to new buildings and ending state subsidies for new gas appliances. We must commit to phasing out the use of fracked gas and biomethane (and other fossil fuels) in our buildings at the same pace as other sectors, which will require that we align all state energy efficiency programs to help all buildings rapidly transition to super-efficient all-electric appliances.

PUC Should Push Annual Emissions Targets, Evaluate Cost of Stranded Assets at Household, State Level

The EO places appropriate pressure on the Public Utility Commission (PUC) to evaluate and reduce the risks and costs of various energy options. Given that PGE’s portfolio is currently two-thirds fossil fuels, and Pacific Power plans to continue to consume coal past 2030, though solar and wind are cheaper, an immediate starting point for the PUC would be to place a shadow carbon price of at least $200 per ton CO2 (according to current social cost of carbon estimates), and evaluate the costs and benefits of proceeding accordingly with annual emissions reduction targets of at least 7.6% emissions reductions for all utilities.

In addition, the risk and costs of stranded assets—including the household cost of purchasing new heating and cooking equipment –should be evaluated by the PUC should Oregon continue to build fossil fuel infrastructure, including power plants, pipelines, and centralized, grid-dependent infrastructure.

Oregon faces at least two simultaneous challenges to its energy grid: The risk caused by power lines making contact with dry biomass sparking a fire (which took place in California in 2019, causing long-term rolling blackouts and economic disruption); and the risk of a seismic event completely disrupting all electrical transmission. Large dams are particularly vulnerable to extreme seismic activity. In California, as wildfires burned in extreme drought conditions, with power lines sparking fires, it was the Native American tribes, with their solar-powered casinos, who were remarkably untouched by the outages.

PUC Should Evaluate Seismic and Climate Risk of Central Grid Vs. Community-Owned Energy Systems

For both climate and earthquake preparedness reasons, our PUC should evaluate the seismic and climate risks of existing infrastructure, and compare and contrast that to distributed, community-owned and operated renewable energy-powered infrastructure.

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley is proposing legislation to “to promote energy democracy through the development of decentralized and community-owned and community-benefiting energy systems.” As Merkley has recognized, such an approach would “reduce household energy costs, lower localized pollution, build environmental wealth for communities, and enhance community and climate resiliency,” allowing communities, especially tribes, communities experiencing lower incomes, and black, indigenous, and other communities of color, to benefit from the economic opportunities of the clean energy economy and make their own choices in the transition to renewable energy.” In addition, as Merkley notes, “Microgrids and storage can alleviate the effects of power outages due to extreme weather events, or other natural disasters, and reduce wildfire risks, boosting climate resilience and safeguarding public health, safety, and access to electricity.” Net metering—allowing households to sell their surplus energy back to the grid—could be a boon, particularly for rural communities. Ensuring access to such opportunities for low-income and rural communities could start with extended tax credits and rebates for renewable energy systems, heat pumps, electric stoves and electric vehicles ensuring communities who spend a disproportionate share of their income on energy, including household heating, come out ahead economically. Similar no or low-cost weatherization for rural communities should be made widely available.

Government Procurement Should Focus on Renewable Energy, Electric Vehicles, Regenerative Agriculture, Climate-Smart Forest Products

The EO rightly discusses the role of government procurement as a powerful tool for transformation of the state economy. One could envision all electric school buses, garbage pickup trucks, postal vans, and electricity provided for these vehicles via solar arrays on Oregon’s public buildings, parking lots, and alongside freeways. The PUC should conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine at what point up front costs would be recuperated, if a shadow carbon price on carbon of $200 per ton were applied. Using Oregon’s high solar insolation, geothermal, wind and abundant offshore wave energy, the state could provide power not just for government-owned vehicles but could keep revenue generated from the sale of this electricity within the state, boosting the state’s economy, particularly in rural areas in eastern and southern Oregon where solar insolation is greater.

Similarly, government procurement of food for schools, prisons, and other public agencies could focus on the great potential of regenerative farming to draw carbon from the atmosphere while restoring the health of our soil. A similar procurement policy could incentivize climate-smart timber products; given that 40 percent of all trees are turned into wood pulp for paper, a government policy of only purchasing tree-free paper could help jumpstart this industry.

Educating the Next Generation on Regenerative, Sustainable, Climate-Smart Practices

To ensure that the transition to more sustainable methods of farming and forest management is just, and to incentivize young farmers and foresters to take up this career, Oregon’s public schools, colleges and universities should begin to teach regenerative farming and climate-smart forestry techniques with an emphasis on the carbon sequestration potential of this form of farming and forestry. They should do so by providing free tuition to students willing to commit to a career in regenerative farming or sustainable forestry, or for forest or farm workers who need to be retrained in regenerative farming and forestry techniques as part of a just transition.

Repeal Environmentally Harmful Forest and Farm Subsidies

Oregon’s Departments of Agriculture, Forestry and Revenue should review and repeal any subsidies provided for farming and forest practices that do not now result in greater uptake of carbon by agricultural soils and forest lands, and ensure that land use policy is guided by carbon drawdown. Oregon’s agricultural and forest lands should be treated as the vital assets that they are—to our state’s health and wellbeing, along with our climate—and all foreign, out-of-state corporations should be restricted from owning productive forest land and farmland. All zoning for farms and forests should be frozen, and a moratorium on greenfield development imposed. Additional housing on forest and farmland should only be allowed if sustainable, climate smart forest and regenerative farming management practices are preserved to the maximum extent possible.

Enhanced Focus on Compost, Zero Food Waste Needed

The focus on food waste and methane from landfill waste gas is welcome. However, we need to move to zero food waste, given the climate forcing aspects of methane (a byproduct of food waste in landfills), as soon as possible, and encourage the carbon drawdown potential of food waste composting. Recent studies suggest composting could have a significant impact on both soil health and rapid accumulation of carbon in soils, if practiced appropriately. In an age of weather extremes and possible food insecurity, encouraging people to plant their own “victory gardens,” participate in the health and environmental benefits of composting, either in their own gardens or in community gardens, could prove to have numerous ancillary health and environmental benefits.

For further information, please read CSE’s 2019 Report, “Beyond Cap and Trade: Toward a Green New Deal for Oregon."

To Save Our Climate We Need Taller Trees Not Taller Wooden Buildings

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 23:53:20 GMT

To many of us working at the intersection of forest conservation and climate stability recent opinions and news coverage of proposals to fill our cities with tall wooden buildings presents not a stirring vision of sustainability but a nightmarish scenario of a land base increasingly scarred by clearcuts, logging roads and small diameter tree plantations at a time when climate science insists that reestablishing natural forests and letting them grow much bigger and older is one of humanity’s last best hopes to keep climate change from accelerating out of control. To save our climate we need taller trees not taller wooden buildings.

There are two key reasons for this. The first has to do with the carbon cycle and how managing forestlands for tall trees vs. tall wood buildings affects atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Natural forests, allowed to grow big and tall, accumulate carbon for centuries . While some carbon is emitted through decay of dead trees and sporadic wildfires, much more is caught than released and so carbon is taken out of the atmosphere and built up on the land for a very long time. As such, using proforestation – letting trees attain their maximum size – as well as other climate smart practices to replenish carbon stocks on lands where it has been depleted by logging will help humanity bend the curve on CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere back towards the scientific safe zone of less than 350 parts per million.

In contrast, boosting production for massive new wood for buildings takes CO2 concentrations in the other direction. Wood buildings release carbon, they don’t store it. Wood is half carbon by weight and once cut off the stump is emitted into the atmosphere at rates that are well known but vary with species and end use. More wood products in use means more wood products emissions. It also means fewer trees on the land absorbing carbon because the short rotation timber plantations from which mass timber products are sourced are clearcut so often that nearly half of the landscape at any one time is a carbon sequestration dead zone. In particular, net ecosystem productivity, a measure of carbon sequestration, is negative for many years after clearcutting because emissions from the decay of logging debris and exposed soils outweighs any carbon captured by newly planted seedlings. Higher rates of clearcutting needed to feed demand for new wood buildings means expansion of the area occupied by these carbon sequestration dead zones.

Increased emissions and diminished carbon sequestration capacity – these two effects make conventional wood production very carbon intensive. For every ton of carbon stored in wood buildings many more are emitted along the way. In two separate assessments in Oregon, greenhouse gas emissions from logging and wood products were found to be the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, though untallied under current GHG accounting protocols. A recent analysis in North Carolina suggests that logging and wood products production there is likely the third largest source . The carbon intensities suggested by this research should be a cause for concern for anyone promoting the idea of more logging and tall wooden buildings as climate solutions. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is the gold standard for comparing the relative carbon intensities of wood versus substitutes for various uses, and one recent analysis that included emissions associated with soil carbon loss and conversion of native forests into tree plantations found wood-based buildings to have a cradle to grave carbon footprint six percent higher than concrete buildings. Advances in concrete technologies that reduce its carbon footprint show promise in tipping the scales even further.

The second key reason why big tall trees are preferable to tall wooden buildings has to do with the ability of our forest dependent communities to adapt to climate change. An alarming conclusion from many scientific studies approaching the issue from many directions is that landscapes dominated by clearcuts and corporate tree plantations are far less resilient to the effects of climate change. They are more susceptible to wildfires, flooding, insects, disease, wind damage, landslides and harmful algae blooms than the natural forests they’ve replaced. These stressors are already on the rise due to climate change – timber plantations make the effects so much worse. For example, in fire prone regions of the West, these timber plantations burn hotter and faster than natural forests . They produce far less water in the dry season and the waters that trickles out are more vulnerable to harmful algae blooms (HABs) because they’re hotter and laced with a cocktail of chemicals and fertilizers that help boost seedling growth but fuel HAB growth as well. Hurricanes have a field day in monoculture tree plantations while real forests with a diversity of ages and tree sizes survive more intact .

In addition, the conversion of structurally diverse forests into monoculture tree plantations is helping to drive many species towards extinction. In the Pacific Northwest, the expansion of industrial tree plantations puts over 1,000 species that need real forests to survive at risk. Northern spotted owl populations are declining at a rate of 4% per year, in part due to continuing habitat loss. North America has lost over a third of its birds since 1970 , and loss of natural forests is a key factor.

Clearly, we need to reduce logging pressures on the land and not increase demand with wooden skyscrapers and cross laminated timber – a product based on small diameter plantation trees. Instead, we need a rapid transition to climate smart practices that can provide steady supplies of high-quality, large diameter wood to meet demand while simultaneously achieving four key climate objectives: reduced emissions, increased sequestration, increased carbon storage on the land and enhanced climate resilience. In addition to proforestation, extended rotations and various forms of selective harvesting can meet this test.

Policy makers have a rich portfolio of options to scale these practices up and phase out industrial tree plantations. Given their unique role on the landscape (i.e. the only lands where the public has any rights) forestlands managed by federal, state, and local public agencies should be set aside as forest carbon reserves and no longer managed for commercial logging. Massachusetts is considering a bill to do that on state-owned lands , and the Sierra Club and others are mounting a campaign to establish a forest carbon trust on federal public lands .

On private lands, market-based strategies can help penalize bad practices and reward the good. In Oregon, a forest carbon tax and reward bill was drafted for consideration in 2017 to do just this. Carbon emissions from timber plantations would be taxed at the social cost of carbon to capitalize a forest carbon incentives fund to help offset the cost of climate smart practices by responsible forestland owners as they manage their lands for carbon storage, timber, recreation, wildlife, fish and many other ecosystem goods and services. Thousands of new jobs in the woods would be created because climate smart practices are far more labor intensive than the highly mechanized techniques used in timber plantations.

Rescinding and redirecting harmful logging subsidies is another market-based strategy that holds great promise. Every year, federal, state and local public agencies grant logging corporations a wide spectrum of subsidies that take the form of below cost timber from public lands, tax exemptions, reduced tax rates and a number of direct services and expenditures such as unreimbursed firefighting costs, grants, and technical assistance. Below cost timber sales on federal public lands alone cost taxpayers nearly $2 billion a year . Handing out these subsidies for free is no longer an option in a climate constrained world. At the very least, they need to be conditioned on good practices on the land. A bill to do this was introduced in Oregon in 2019. It would make receipt of over $300 million a year in various tax breaks contingent upon the land being covered in healthy forests and not clearcuts, logging roads, or timber plantations.

We agree wholeheartedly with Lowenstein et al. when they said in a New York Times opinion piece last fall , “Trees are some of our best allies in solving the climate crisis.” But to do so, they need to be allowed to grow to maturity wherever possible. Policies to do this have been crafted and introduced. Decision makers need to embrace these rather than the false solutions offered by wooden skyscrapers and cross laminated timber.

Oregon Public Water Providers Asked To Intervene To Halt Over 18,000 Acres Of Clearcuts

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 00:20:58 GMT

Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) and local watershed advocates have asked 28 public water system providers in rural Oregon to intervene to halt the planned clearcutting of over 18,000 acres in surface drinking water supplies this year. The requests for intervention cite legal requirements of the Public Trust Doctrine, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and Oregon’s constitution. The requests also point out duties of water providers and the state to assess and collect damages associated with past logging activities to help cover the increased costs of purifying water, an expense made necessary by sediment and chemicals that run off from deforested and degraded lands. A sample letter sent to the City of Cottage Grove can be accessed here .

In each of these drinking watersheds, Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has identified clearcutting, logging roads, and spraying of chemicals and fertilizers as key threats to drinking water. Decades of scientific research and monitoring data on the ground have demonstrated that such practices harm both the supply and its quality – impacts likely to be made much worse by climate change.

Despite drinking water supply threats and the increasing costs of providing clean drinking water in the aftermath of clearcuts, the State and drinking water providers have yet to intervene when clearcuts are planned each year. CSE’s letter is the first step in the process of forcing state agencies and drinking water providers to fulfill their responsibilities to ensure clean and stable water supplies for present and future generations.

According to Dr. John Talberth, President and Senior Economist with the Center for Sustainable Economy, “Oregon’s drinking water supplies are under assault from clearcuts that raise water temperatures and dry up summertime flows, logging roads that bleed sediment into streams and a cocktail of chemicals and fertilizers like glyphosate and urea that provide fast food for harmful algae blooms. These risks are being made so much worse by climate change. Taken together, the Public Trust Doctrine, Safe Drinking Water Act and Oregon’s constitution compel public water managers to be proactive in eliminating these threats and scaling up alternative practices that will leave our watersheds in the best shape possible as climate change unfolds.”

The Public Trust Doctrine (PTD) is a legal framework rooted in constitutional duties of trustees – i.e., the states – to prevent private corporations from acquiring the right to monopolize or deprive the public of the right to use and enjoy natural resources. It has most consistently been applied to water resources, however, it has recently achieved widespread visibility in the innovative litigation brought by youth plaintiffs and Our Children’s Trust to force federal and state governments to take action on climate change. The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) required public water systems to conduct risk assessments for their source waters, and in Oregon, implementing regulations require system managers to assure that water system facilities are then free of these public health risks. Article XI, Section 4 of Oregon’s constitution prohibits corporations from taking public trust resources without compensation and has been applied to the taking of public water supply by private logging companies.

While CSE and its partners are confident these requirements can be enforced in court, they have no plans to do so in the near future. Instead, the groups want to help public water supply managers work with landowners to implement climate smart forest practices like long rotations and alternatives to clearcuts and chemicals. They have invited public water system managers and the State Forester to resolve the issue through collaboration.

According to Alex Renirie, CSE’s Forest Practices Enforcement Specialist, “As we learned during hearings on Safe Waters legislation (HB 2656) this past session, there are many cost-effective, climate smart alternatives to clearcutting that will help reduce fire risk, lower water temperatures, and improve summertime flows. We look forward to working with public water system managers and the State Forester to make these practices the norm, not the exception.”

Such climate smart practices are beneficial not only for water supply, but for salmon. According to Cristina Hubbard, Executive Director of Forest Web of Cottage Grove, “The health of our watersheds is critical not only to protect salmon-bearing streams, but to provide clean water to our farms, homes, and schools. As climate change accelerates, forest management practices need to change as well away from clearcuts, chemicals, and new logging roads and towards climate smart alternatives that can help maintain water supplies while keeping our water clean and cool for salmon and human uses.”

Intervention request letters to public water system providers can be viewed through these links:

Federal Logging Program Loses Billions for Taxpayers

Tue, 21 May 2019 21:42:50 GMT

New report from CSE finds that the Federal timber sale program loses nearly $2 billion a year for US taxpayers while increasing fire risk and degrading habitat for fish and wildlife.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 5-21-19

For more information contact:

John Talberth, Senior Economist, Center for Sustainable Economy

(510) 384-5724

jtalberth@sustainable-economy.org

Portland, OR –In a new report released today, the Center for Sustainable Economy has documented taxpayer losses of nearly $2 billion a year associated with the federal logging program carried out on national forest and Bureau of Land Management lands. Despite these losses, the Trump Administration plans to significantly increase logging on these lands in the years ahead, a move that would plunge taxpayers into even greater debt. On December 21, 2018, President Trump signed an executive order that would increase national forest logging by 40% over current levels.

The CSE study compares the costs of the timber sale program to US taxpayers with US Treasury deposits earned from the sale of timber, relying on a methodology first used by California’s John Muir Project and found by the Congressional Research Service to be a “reasonable estimate” of the net cash loss to taxpayers. While the report focuses on financial losses to taxpayers, it also highlights the fact that the federal logging program is an economically inefficient use of federal forestlands.

Key findings of the report include:

Federal forestlands are far more valuable when managed for carbon and other ecosystem services yet logging on these lands continues to be subsidized.
Taxpayers subsidies for the federal logging program ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 billion per year in fiscal years 2013 through 2017. The estimated losses are conservative as they do not include logging related damages to water, soils, wildlife and other resources.
The Forest Service attempts to justify these losses by hiding commercial timber sale projects within larger ecological restoration projects – a move that consistently lands the agency in court.
Selling timber from federal lands below cost is a form of environmentally harmful subsidy that runs afoul of international agreements.
Congress can remedy the situation by decoupling funding for ecological restoration projects from commercial logging and ensuring that minimum bid prices for federal timber offset all agency costs.

According to Dr. John Talberth, Senior Economist from the Center for Sustainable Economy, “Federal forests represent the last remaining islands in a sea of forestlands degraded by industrial logging activities on state and privately owned lands. Our federal forests are far more valuable as carbon sinks, recreation destinations, wildlife habitat and natural water filters than they are for timber production. As such, the economic damage from these logging subsidies is twofold: taxpayers lose money and local economies lose opportunities to diversify and use the land for much more valuable purposes.”

The report also challenges the claim made by the Forest Service that logging projects help reduce fire risk and result in improvements in watershed function and wildlife habitat. “Best available science and experience on the ground have shown over and over that commercial logging is the problem, not the solution, and that ecological goals can be achieved far more effectively through legitimate restoration activities that are not distorted by perverse logging incentives,” Talberth said.

CSE’s report is the first in a series of reports addressing environmentally harmful subsidies in the US, beginning with federal- and state-level subsidies for the logging industry. As the report notes, eliminating environmentally harmful subsidies (EHS) is a key strategy embraced by international institutions for achieving sustainable development goals, reducing climate impacts, and making trade regimes more efficient. The US is party to these international agreements and so eliminating EHS at both the federal and state levels constitutes a broken commitment by the US to its strategic partners and allies.

Download the report here

Sustainable Development Opportunities in Nunavut

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 00:03:51 GMT

In a report commissioned by Greenpeace Canada, “Beyond Fossil Fuels: Sustainable Development Opportunities in Eastern Nunavut,” CSE’s John Talberth and Daphne Wysham explored the dilemma Canada’s northern territory of Nunavut is facing. With so few economic alternatives available, and with climate change wreaking havoc on an already disrupted traditional way of life, the people of Nunavut—largely Inuit—are facing yet another threat in the form of extractive industries, including oil and gas exploration, poised to expand their operations in the melting Arctic. The lucrative opportunities being offered to the Inuit could help defray the exorbitantly high cost of basic living expenses for food, fuel, housing and health care the region so desperately needs. But they come with the promise of even more disruption to the traditional Inuit way of life.

The Inuit of Nunavut were resettled by the Canadian government from their traditional widely dispersed villages to clustered housing units, most of which are are poorly constructed and insulated, and require massive amounts of diesel fuel for heating and lighting.

While poverty, malnutrition, infant mortality, poor health and suicide are at record levels in Nunavut, it was not always this way. The transition from a traditional Indigenous culture to a formal market economy—foisted on the Inuit by the Canadian government– has brought with it financial insecurity, food insecurity and substandard housing, all relatively new phenomena.

Wysham and Talberth explore four ways in which Nunavummiut could avoid going further down the path of the extractive economy, and instead shore up a more sustainable, self-reliant economy in Nunavut. Among the authors’ suggestions:

Investment in the region’s human capital – with enhanced education, internet connectivity, and a stronger focus on food security, while respecting and rewarding traditional knowledge, ensuring its preservation;
Supporting renewable energy options such as solar, wind, hydro and tidal power in the region while promoting more efficient building construction;
Supporting Indigenous tourism by bolstering sustainable tourism managed by the Inuit themselves;
Growing an Inuit-controlled sustainable fishery for both commercial and subsistence purposes.

Read the full report here: Beyond Fossil Fuels: Sustainable Development Opportunities for Nunavut

Media coverage: Report calls on Nunavut to shun resource development in favor of sustainable projects

GPI 2.0: States and Cities Can Lead the Way Beyond GDP

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 23:37:13 GMT

In a new study authored by Dr. John Talberth and Michael Weisdorf of Portland State University, CSE has demonstrated a new methodology for the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) that promises to accelerate its adoption by states and cities as a way to measure and promote economic wellbeing that takes into account income inequality, environmental degradation, and the benefits of public investments in human, social, built and natural capital. For over three decades, the GPI has been one of the most ubiquitously used alternatives to GDP, but persistent issues with its theoretical foundations, methods, and sources of data have kept its use in check.

At the 2017 US Society for Ecological Economics annual conference in St. Paul MN, Dr. Talberth and Mr. Weisdorf presented their new paper entitled GPI 2.0: Pilot Accounts for the United States, Maryland, and Baltimore . The paper was published in the journal Ecological Economics just prior to the conference. While many of the GPI 2.0 upgrades are difficult to understand without formal training in welfare economics, the end result is a new method that greatly enhances its usefulness to states and cities committed to sustainable development and growing their economies in ways that matter most to the wellbeing of their citizens.

Minnesota could very well be the next state to enroll the GPI towards this end. During the 2017 Legislative Assembly, Senator John Marty (DFL) and Representative Jennifer Schultz (DFL) teamed up to introduce legislation establishing the GPI as a metric maintained by University of Minnesota’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER). The bill would finance BBER’s calculation of the GPI and also require that the Minnesota Department of Management and Budget include the GPI along side other measures of state economic growth and wellbeing in its annual forecasts.

Momentum is growing to pass a revised version of this bill next year and have Minnesota join the ranks of Maryland, Vermont, Washington and Hawai’i as states exploring the GPI’s use as a litmus test for economic policy and performance. One of the GPI’s advantages over GDP is that it provides a way to accurately report the true benefits and costs of public investments in health care, education and the environment and other policies to advance the goals of sustainable development. GDP cannot do this because it is simply a gross measure of economic activity that says nothing about how that activity translates into household wellbeing. To operationalize this use of the GPI, a “GPI impact note” can be used in place of more conventional fiscal and economic impact notes prepared for proposed legislation. In 2014, CSE demonstrated the usefulness of the GPI note concept by applying it the proposal to lift Maryland’s minimum wages. The analysis documented that raising Maryland’s minimum wage to over $10/hour would generate net benefits in the range of $1.7 billion per year , chiefly as a result of increased spending by low to middle income households and reduced costs of inequality.

State and cities that adopt the GPI as a key economic metric will discover that it is a powerful tool for depoliticizing economic policy interventions and shifting the debate over such policies onto rational grounds in terms of metrics that matter rather than partisan rhetoric that serves no purpose other than to generate attention grabbing headlines. Now that a GPI 2.0 methodology is in place, CSE is eager to help Minnesota and other states move forward with this agenda.

Read:

Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds: Making Polluters Pay For The Climate Crisis

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 23:14:27 GMT

One of the most aggravating aspects of the climate crisis is the fact that fossil fuel companies are passing on huge financial risks to taxpayers and politicians are simply turning their backs on the problem instead of holding those companies accountable. At each stage of the fossil fuel product life cycle, taxpayers are increasingly burdened with a litany of costs such as those associated with fracking-induced earthquake swarms, pipeline explosions, abandoned infrastructure, water pollution and, of course, the costs of climate change. Fossil fuel risk bond programs – a policy innovation proposed by Center for Sustainable Economy – can help reverse this glaring inequity by shifting the economic risk back where it belongs: on the polluters.As set forth in our new report, fossil fuel risk bond programs are systematic efforts by state and local governments to evaluate and respond to the financial risks they face at each stage of the fossil fuel lifecycle in their jurisdictions. Specific fossil fuel risk bond program instruments can be grouped into two broad categories:

The first category of risk bonding for fossil fuels would consist of conventional financial assurance instruments such as surety bonds and environmental liability insurance that would address discrete risks caused by particular entities in particular places – such as abandoned infrastructure, explosions, or localized pollution. Fossil fuel risk bond programs can expand the scale (i.e. required coverage amounts) and scope (i.e. types of hazards covered) of these conventional instruments.

The second category of risk bonding for fossil fuels would consist of surcharge-based climate or natural hazard risk trust funds. These trust funds can be used by governments to offset public costs of climate-related natural disasters, to pay for the costs of climate adaptation, or to pay for economic damages associated with fossil fuel production and trade that are difficult to attribute to a single entity. They would be capitalized by a surcharge on all fossil fuel transactions in the local economy. The surcharge rate could be based on a jurisdiction’s expected costs associated with climate change, climate adaptation, and other pervasive risks such as earthquake swarms and pollution, and be levied on each ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) embodied in fossil fuels extracted, transported, stored, distributed, and combusted (at least by industry and power plants) by any source in a given jurisdiction.

The benefits could be huge for states, counties, and cities struggling with rising climate-related costs with no clear way to pay for them. For example, consider a county in which oil, gas, and coal extraction takes place that is also suffering the effects of a strengthening climate change signal in the form of regular 100-year floods. Climate risk trust funds maintained by that county could be used to: (1) compensate homeowners for fracking-related earthquake damage; (2) pay for the costs of filtering water contaminated by tailing pond leaks; (3) pay for the increased public service cost burden associated with oil or gas boomtowns; and (4) relocate infrastructure from floodplains.

CSE has begun work along the West Coast to promote this policy innovation as part of our work on a just transition toward a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy. In particular, fossil fuel risk bond programs provide a way to ramp up the funding necessary to put scores of people to work – including displaced oil, gas, and coal workers – while ramping down fossil fuel consumption, decommissioning obsolete fossil fuel infrastructure, restoring mines, oil platform sites, and gas well pads back into a natural condition and implementing climate adaptation projects to help make communities safe in the face climate disasters. In a 2012 analysis of oil platforms in Cook Inlet, Alaska, we estimated that decommissioning 16 active oil platforms and 160 miles of pipeline could inject over $1 billion into the local economy .

As our report goes to press, Fort McMurray, Alberta has experienced one of the scariest signals of climate change – an unprecedented wildfire of epic proportions that burned large portions of the city to the ground. Over 1,600 structures were lost. The economic toll is $1 billion and counting. The irony, of course, is that the city lies at the epicenter of the tar sands industry, producing oil that packs an enormous climate change punch. If fossil fuel risk bond programs were in place, the city, province, and federal governments would have adequate funding to respond to this disaster, help residents rebuild, and invest in a future beyond fossil fuels. Instead, they are left with a blackened landscape and a mountain of debt that has yet to be tallied.

For a copy of Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds: Safeguarding public finance from product life cycle risks of oil, gas, and coal, click here.

Pay for Performance: Maximizing the Impact of BMP Investments

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 22:20:16 GMT

Agricultural best management practices (BMPs) such as streamside buffer zones and cover crops are increasingly being used to reduce nutrient pollution from fertilizers into water bodies. Eutrophication from fertilizer runoff is the key driver behind growth of hypoxic “dead zones” where fish production comes to a standstill. The extent of these dead zones has increased more than nine fold since 1969 and now encompasses more than 245,000 km2. Continued growth of these marine dead zones undermines global biodiversity conservation goals and poses a significant challenge to meeting the world’s increasing demands for capture fisheries and aquaculture.

Governments heavily subsidize BMPs, but do not generally allocate funds to maximize their environmental benefits. The conventional approach to allocation of subsidies is most often first-come-first-served. But with ever-increasing fiscal constraints, policy makers are searching for ways to enhance efficiency of BMP programs and maximize their bang for the buck.

Pay for performance (PFP) presents an alternative platform based on the level of environmental quality actually achieved on the ground. With respect to agriculture, a PFP program would allocate subsidies for BMPs to those practices that accomplish the maximum amount of nutrient reduction for each dollar invested. PFP programs are applicable not only to BMPs that reduce nutrients, but to any subsidy program designed to achieve environmental quality outcomes including emerging payments for ecosystem services markets. In a new paper published in the journal Ecological Economics , CSE’s John Talberth and researchers from the World Resource Institute compared a conventional subsidy approach with PFP for BMPs designed to reduce nutrient pollution into the Chesapeake Bay.

We model four paired scenarios using a constrained optimization model. In the first pairing we held the level of nutrient reduction constant and compared cost effectiveness of the two subsidy allocation methods. In the second pairing we held the level of program investment constant and compared nutrient reduction outcomes. In both pairings, PFP was far superior – delivering identical nutrient reduction outcomes at less than half the cost in the first and delivering two to three times the amount of nutrient reduction for the same budget allocation in the second. CSE is now seeking partnerships with federal, state, and local governments as well as non-profits to investigate the feasibility of PFP for a wide range of programs that provide public financial support for sustainable land management practices.

To download the PFP publication, click here .

Front Range Green vs. Gray Analysis

Thu, 05 Dec 2013 23:24:13 GMT

Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) and World Resources Institute (WRI) have partnered with the Center for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University to investigate the potential cost savings associated with investments in green infrastructure solutions to water quality issues in the Cache la Poudre and Big Thompson Watersheds of Colorado’s Front Range. In recent years, and especially in the wake of the destructive High Park Fire, concerns over the potential costs of catastrophic forest fires on drinking water supplies have spurred interest in investigating the potential economic benefits of green infrastructure solutions in the upper portions of each watershed that could reduce fire risk and restore watershed conditions. Meanwhile, at lower elevations near the cities, population growth coupled with new water quality regulations for nutrient pollution have generated interest in green infrastructure solutions that would obviate the need for expensive wastewater treatment upgrades and generate payments to farmers and ranchers who implemented best management practices.

Our analysis provides a preliminary Phase I assessment of cost-savings potential associated with green infrastructure options in both the upper and lower watershed areas. In the upper watersheds, we found that investment in a portfolio of ecologically based thinning, prescribed fire, forest restoration, fuel breaks and road decommissioning that include both expenditures by public agencies and payments to private landowners would reduce the risk of fire and reduce the costs of fires that do occur. Over a 20-year period, investing in an ambitious portfolio of these green infrastructure options could generate up to $320 million in savings after taking costs of implementation into account. In the lower watersheds, an assessment of nutrient reduction potential from cropland and grazing lands upstream from each city indicates that utilities in Fort Collins and Greeley could benefit from investing in best management practices in order to obviate the need for wastewater treatment plant upgrades. Investments in green infrastructure could represent a cost savings of over $15.4 million over a 20-year period. The magnitude of these potential cost savings warrants a closer look in a more detailed Phase II analysis.

Read:

CSE-WRI Front Range GGA Final Report

Aichi Biodivesity Goals: A Global Cost Assessment

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:42:51 GMT

In 2010 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011 – 2020 with the purpose of stimulating a diverse array of activities by governments, NGOs, business leaders, and other stakeholders to halt the loss of biological diversity. In recognition of the critical importance of biological diversity for livelihoods, wellbeing, health and the genetic foundations of modern agriculture the parties agreed to an ambitious set of 20 targets – many of them time bound and quantitative – for slowing, halting, and reversing biological diversity loss associated with degradation of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems throughout the world.

Collectively, these are known as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. The costs and benefits of achieving these targets are of keen interest to policy makers as they begin the process of implementing programs of work and on-the-ground activities. Choosing the most cost effective means of implementation is critical given the overall political and economic environment of fiscal austerity facing governments in both developed and developing countries.

In May of 2012, the U.K. Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) entered into an agreement with Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) to develop a rough order of magnitude estimate (ROM) of the resource requirements of meeting three of the Aichi Targets: 5 (related to halting the loss of wetlands), 8 (reducing pollution harmful to biodiversity), and 14 (protecting ecosystem services relied upon by traditional communities). We researched the costs and benefits of 17 distinct conservation and restoration programs such as global clean up of marine debris, dramatically reducing nitrogen and phosphorous runoff into marine dead zones, pulling subsidies for new large dams, adopting “no net loss” standards for wetlands, and restoring coral reefs.

While the economic costs of such programs may average $154 to $465 billion per year through 2020, economic benefits – such as increased commercial fish landings and public savings from reduced subsidies – are likely to offset all these costs and in many cases exceed them. As a result, significant global resources allocated to biodiversity preservation represent sound economic investments in the future.

Read:

Center for Sustainable Economy

Oregon Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Bill Signed into Law

HB 4100 helps protect taxpayers from the risks and costs of fossil fuel infrastructure

Appeals Court Rules that DNR Must Consider Climate Smart Alternatives to Legacy Forest Logging

DNR is now 0-3 in forest-climate litigation on this issue. But will the agency change behavior?

Victory: Salmon beat sprawl in Port Orchard

Army Corp of Engineers withdraws permit application for Home Depot project that threatens salmon

A Just Transition for the Port Townsend Paper Mill

An inland facility that uses non-wood feedstocks could be cleaner, greener, and more profitable

A Pollutant in Tire Wear Particles is Killing West Coast Salmon at Alarming Rates

An overview of 6PPD-Q pollution and what CSE is doing about it.

Time to Get Washington Department of Natural Resources Out of the Logging Business

State forests are far more valuable for water, carbon and recreation

Boreal Forests Down the Toilet

How Trump’s Timber Trade War Can Benefit North American Forests

Carbon border adjustments on pulp and lumber could provide a rational basis

﻿ for tariffs and reduce high-emissions logging.

Report: Oregon Remains Unprepared for the Costs of Climate Adaptation

New FORCE report addresses what it will cost and who will pay

Economic Costs of Climate Change in Oregon: A First Look

New report the report begins the process of developing evidence-based estimates of the costs to Oregonians.

A Gaping Hole in California’s Climate Action Framework: Big Timber

Logging is a major source of GHG emissions in Shasta, Siskiyou, and other California counties but is ignored in the state's climate action agenda

National Forest Logging Increases by 24% Under Biden's Watch

Equivalent to taking 241,000 electric cars off the road each year

At Brookings.edu: Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds Make Headway

An overview of risk bonds, how they work, and how they are being implemented in the PNW

Court Halts Logging Over Climate Impacts

King County Superior Court rules that DNR violated SEPA by

failing to disclose and mitigate the climate impacts of logging mature 'legacy' forests

New Research Finds EU’s Welfare Increasingly Divergent with GDP Growth

GPI 2.0 is gaining traction amongst sustainability researchers

Tax Clearcuts. Reward Climate Smart Practices.

How forest carbon taxes can help slow and reverse deforestation and forest degradation across the US, and internationally

Wishbone Litigation Update - DNR Sued Again for Logging Carbon Rich Legacy Forests

The Wishbone Timber Sale, in King County, will release nearly 50,000 tons of greenhouse gas pollution and make the land more susceptible to water shortages, drought, wildfires, and heat waves

Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Programs - From Vision to Reality

PROGRAM UPDATE MARCH 2023

2023 Year in Review

CSE scored big gains on fossil fuel risk bonds and forests for climate

Biden Administration Begins Process To Protect And Restore Old Growth Ecosystems Across The US

A key ask of the Forest Carbon Coalition becomes a reality

A Green Infrastructure Alternative for Jefferson County Fairgrounds

Community gardens and climate resilient cropping provide alternatives to polluting mud drags.

Ilhan Omar just introduced a bill to make people and the planet priorities for economic policy

Repairing America's Tattered Forests - Forest Carbon Coalition's Policy Blueprint 2023

Coalition calls for deep reforms of practices, ownership, subsidies and incentives

King County WA Joins the Fight to Protect Mature and Old Growth Forests and Force Agencies to Disclose the Harmful Climate Impacts of Clearcutting

Council says climate risk disclosure should be required under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA)

Climate Impacts of the Nez Perce - Clearwater Forest Plan Revision

New Report Shows “Climate Threat” of Proposed Nez Perce-Clearwater Forest Plan

Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Programs - Implementation Guidance for Local Government

A policy innovation makes headway in the Pacific Northwest

DNR vs. Climate Stability - Round Two

Agency doubles down on climate denial instead of protecting carbon rich forests

Baltimore’s Stormwater Management Plan Will Generate Significant Social and Economic Returns

Victory! Court Orders DNR to Consider the Climate Impacts of Logging

Fossil Fuel Risk Bond Programs Move Forward in the Pacific Northwest

Without Adequate Financial Assurances, Oil Refineries Present Long Term Environmental Justice Hazards

Deforestation and Forest Degradation Are Making Heat Waves and Drought More Intense. Evidence from The Pacific Northwest Heat Dome

World Scientists and A New Film Outline Urgent Action for Survival of Civilization

Washington DNR Sued for Failing to Account for The Climate Impacts of Its Logging Proposals

Reconciliation and Infrastructure Bills Would Generate Massive Carbon Emissions From Logging and Highways

If Governor Inslee Doesn’t Like the Heat He Should Stop Authorization Clearcut Logging on Washington’s State and Private Forestlands

Green vs. Gray: Nature's Solution to Infrastructure Demands of the 21st Century

Repairing America’s Tattered Forests: A Roadmap for USDA-USDI Compliance with Executive Order 140008

Analysis of Governor Kate Brown’s climate change Executive Order (20-04)

To Save Our Climate We Need Taller Trees Not Taller Wooden Buildings

Oregon Public Water Providers Asked To Intervene To Halt Over 18,000 Acres Of Clearcuts

Federal Logging Program Loses Billions for Taxpayers

New report from CSE finds that the Federal timber sale program loses nearly $2 billion a year for US taxpayers while increasing fire risk and degrading habitat for fish and wildlife.

Sustainable Development Opportunities in Nunavut

GPI 2.0: States and Cities Can Lead the Way Beyond GDP

Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds: Making Polluters Pay For The Climate Crisis

Pay for Performance: Maximizing the Impact of BMP Investments

Front Range Green vs. Gray Analysis

Read:

Aichi Biodivesity Goals: A Global Cost Assessment

for tariffs and reduce high-emissions logging.