Arctic Policy – Water Policy Consulting LLC

Reversing Trump’s Environmental Policies Under a Biden Administration will be a Tall Order

This year’s presidential election was a close race in a handful of states. When the Associated Press announced that, for just the second time in 70 years, with the help from the Native vote, announced a decisive win for Democrat Joe Biden announced an ambitious Indian Policy as part of his campaign, over President Trump on November 7, 2020. This was partly due to record turnout throughout the country, including pivotal votes from Native Americans in key states. As of 2018, the state of Arizona alone which turned from red to blue this election cycle, members of federally recognized tribes made almost 6% of the population and the Navajo Nation alone contains around 67,000 eligible voters.

The question on everyone’s mind is whether a Biden win will end Trump’s war on the environment. If the democrats do not become the majority party in the senate, in order to stay on track with his environmental agenda, Biden will need to rely primarily on executive actions and essential legislative measures like tax reform, the federal budget and the Farm Bill. Just hours after the United States officially withdrew from the Paris accord, on the day after the election, for example, Biden announced that he would reverse that decision on the first day of his term in office.

During his candidacy, Biden also pledged to reverse several of Trump’s Alaska initiatives including drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and issuing a permit to develop the Pebble Mine. Also, in relation to Alaska Native Tribes Biden plans to create a new division of the Justice Department that will focus on environmental and climate justice and to incorporate environmental justice throughout EPA programs.

The key will be how hard will the Trump administration push for completion of it’s resource extraction agenda before he leaves office on January 20. Although, The Trump administration recently issued a request to energy companies to identify what specific land areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be offered for sale, this will be difficult due to the remaining environmental analysis, leasing logistics and the fact that global banks continue to adopt policies stating that they will not fund drilling in the Arctic due to climate change. And there’s also the fact that many of the Trump administrations decisions affecting BLM lands, including ANWR and the NPRA leasing were made by Scott Pendly who has been serving illegally as the Director of the Bureau of Land Management for the past 14 months.

Never one to let a small thing like the law get in the way of opening lands up to resource extraction activity however, Trump could simple move to put leases in ANWR and open up areas to mining, despite federal laws or even court orders to the contrary before leaving office. And then there’s the fact that Trump has not conceded the elections results to Biden and may not leave the Whitehouse at all.

Public Lands Management Under Trump Descends into Chaoss

President Donald Trump’s appointment of William Perry Pendley as Director of the Bureau of Land Management who is openly hostile to environmental regulations, has turned into yet another legal debacle typical of the current administration. Pendley’s inflammatory statements and open opposition to social justice and diversity including for native and African American communities, statements that public lands should be privatized, conflicts of interest, unethical conduct, support of anti-government extremists and efforts to dismantle the BLM, have outraged conservation and tribal organizations throughout the western U.S. It, therefore, quickly became obvious to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt that because of Pendley’s record, there would be no way he would obtain confirmation from congress if the administration did what was legally required and nominate him for that purpose. In fact, in a procedure that the U.S. Supreme Court calls a “critical structural safeguard” of democracy, the Appointments Clause of the Constitution requires that the heads of prominent federal agencies be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate” a standard that is also found in the federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Especially when it comes to dismantling environmental regulatory standards, however, the Trump administration has never been that concerned with federal law or, for that matter the U.S. Constitution and Bernhardt resolved the issue of Pendley’s radical anti-public land views, racism and support of extremists simply by repeatedly extending Pendley’s appointment as Director of the agency for the past 13 months.

As a result, in July 2020, the state of Montana and several conservation organizations filed a lawsuit to enjoin Bernhardt from continuing to extend Pendley’s status as Acting Director of BLM. This prompted Trump to finally put Pendley’s name before congress as required only to almost immediately remove it because of concerns of several republican senators in key states who are up for election about the audacity of the appointment. However, rather than remove Pendley as acting Director in accordance with with the law, Secretary Bernhardt announced that Pendley will “stay on leading BLM” as the bureau’s deputy director of policy and programs, who is also “exercising the authority of director.”

This, once again, got the attention of the Montana U.S. District Court which as part of the lawsuit filed by the state and conservationists a couple months before, promptly enjoined Pendley from exercising such authority and Bernhardt from unlawfully delegating the authority of the BLM director to him. In fact, the Court’s declaration that Pendley served unlawfully as the Acting Director of the BLM for well over a year, also meant that many of the decisions he made during that time were similarly illegal, threatening Trump’s strategy to dismantle protections of public lands and open them up to development.

Chief Judge Brian Morris found that “’any function or duty’ of the BLM Director that has been performed by Pendley would have no force and effect and must be set aside as arbitrary and capricious” and instructed DOI to compile any such acts and provide a full report to the Court. Therefore, any of the official actions Pendley took over the 424 preceding the decision including opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the National Petroleum reserve to oil drilling,” or vast acreages of public lands, including areas relied on by Native village communities for subsistence, to mining, are potentially unauthorized.

Unflagging Opposition to Business-as-Usual Extraction Practices

With Present Trump rolling back one environmental policy after another, ongoing efforts to slow global warming, safeguard wilderness, and provide clean water and air can seem futile. But never doubt that a handful of thoughtful, committed lawsuits can change the world. Indeed, it may be the only recourse that can.

We need look no farther than the Gwich’in Native community for inspiration when it comes to fighting to protect the environment. For more than thirty years they have resisted attempts to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Under Trump’s plan to open lease sales across the entire coastal plain, that fight has kicked into high gear. For the Gwich’in, the coastal plain, birthing grounds for the Porcupine caribou herd which numbers approximately 200,000, is sacred ground. Their culture, history and way of life revolve around the caribou and the 1.5 million-acre expanse of coastal lands. Sarah James, Gwich’in elder, explains, “We have a special connection in that we are a part of the caribou and the caribou are part of us. It is our language, our songs, our dance…. We take care of the caribou, and in return, they take care of us, and that’s really important to my people here.”

The Gwich’in Sterring Committee, along with several other plaintives including Canada’s Yukon chapter of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, filed a lawsuit in late August, seeking to overturn Trump’s approval for oil leasing, and siting violations of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and likely impacts to the Porcupine Caribou Herd.

A second lawsuit to halt oil leasing on the Refuge filed by The National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, and Center for Biological Diversity sight insufficient concern over increased greenhouse gas emissions and melting permafrost, poor air quality, and negative impacts to the region’s wildlife.

And most recently, a third lawsuit to overturn drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was filed on September 9th with the U.S. District Court in Anchorage by attorneys general for 15 states and led by Washington and Massachusetts. The lawsuit states that drilling will contribute to global climate change and its effects such as sea level rise and extreme weather events.

A number of other environmental legal battles continue in Alaska and Siberia. In North-western Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, Trump seeks to overthrow Obama-era safeguards by expanding development into regions of the Reserve long slated for protection. Two recent lawsuits are pushing back against expanded development in NPR-A oil leasing. The lawsuits are in response to the final environmental impact statement released by the Bureau of Land Management in June allowing oil leasing on 18.7 million acres in the 23-million-acre reserve, including drilling in Teshekpuk Lake. Teshekpuk is the largest lake on the North Slope and provides critical habitat for migratory waterfowl and shorebirds.

And while a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s reversal of restrictions on Pebble Mine was dismissed in US District Court, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan has joined a growing rank of conservatives who are openly opposed to the Pebble mine project. The proposed gold, molybdenum and cooper mine, in South-central Alaska’s Lake and Peninsula region, is recognized as a threat to the nationally-significant Bristol Bay salmon fisheries. Following the release of secret recordings by Pebble executives, Sullivan stated in a tweet on September 24^th, “Let me be even more clear: I oppose Pebble Mine. No Pebble Mine.” This follows a surprise stipulation issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in late August to Dynasty Minerals Ltd requiring the mine owners to outline how they will offset damage to wetlands and any impacts to the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. Other conservatives who oppose the mine, at least as it is currently proposed, including Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, Donald Trump Junior and Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

In the southern part of the state, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, and other conservation groups including the Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan, lost lawsuits in federal district court and the Ninth Circuit court which sought to challenge federal permits issued to the Palmer mine project near Haines. The Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. obtained permits to build 2.5 miles of roads across U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands to access zinc, copper, gold and silver deposits. The lawsuit argued that BLM did not factor in future mining development at the Palmer mine and impacts on the 3,000 bald eagles and spawning salmon along the nearby Chilkat River.

In southeastern Alaska, the Trump administration is zeroing in on the Tongass National Forest, seeking to exclude this, the nation’s largest national forest, from the Clinton-era roadless rule. A much-disputed study by the U.S. Forest Service states that lifting protections “will not significantly harm the environment.” By year’s end, the Trump administration hopes to open vast tracts of pristine old growth forest to road construction and timber sales. Recent lawsuits blocking timber sales that failed to identify impacted areas, and for deficiencies in the review process have stalled the sales process several times. That pushback resulted in the Trump administration implementing the new roadless rule exemption.

Meanwhile, in the Russian far north, a lawsuit has been filed against Norilsk Nickle seeking 1.96 billion dollars in damages for a May 29^th fuel spill. The spill, blamed on melting permafrost, dumped 21,000 tons of diesel into the Ambarnaya and Daldykan rivers which feed into Lake Pyasino before emptying into the Arctic Ocean. The spill is one of the largest ever recorded in the Arctic and has been compared with Alaska’s 1989 ExxonValdez spill, in part because both spills coincided with the spring migration — just as birds and fish are returning to their natal grounds.

The one take-away the Gwich’in can offer in this legal playing field is don’t give up. The fights for the Coastal Plains, the Tongas, and the headwaters of Bristol Bay continue, one lawsuit at a time. For Gwich’in elder Sarah James it’s straight forward. “We’re not a nonprofit. We’re not a movement. We’re not a corporation. We’re a neets’aii Gwich’in tribal government, and that’s how we’re now taking on this issue, government-to-government, and we’re standing our ground.”

There are alternatives to sacrificing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain

The Trump administration recently gave the final go-ahead to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which by the end of 2020 would authorize the sale of two separate 400,000-acre oil and gas leases, encompassing a major portion of the refuge’s coastal plain and 8 percent of the 19.3 million-acre Refuge.

Opponents who have filed multiple lawsuits to stop the leasing, believe that the approval process was rushed for political reasons resulting in a flawed and inadequate analysis of the environmental impacts, violating prohibitions on killing or harassing of polar bears and laws requiring the protection of indigenous subsistence resources as well as exacerbate sea level rise, extreme weather events, the spread of diseases like and other impacts of climate change.

Alaska’s political leadership, on the other hand, seems unfazed by yet another botched Trump administration environmental analysis and the fact that more drilling in the Arctic will contribute to Alaska’s carbon footprint. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, for example, said “[t]his is a capstone moment in our decades-long push to allow for the responsible development of a small part of Alaska’s 1002 Area. … I’m confident the ROD has been developed carefully and comprehensively and look forward to the lease sales mandated by law…”

Why are our political leaders still stepping in line with President Trump’s insatiable thirst for oil no matter what the environmental cost, when economists have been warning for decades that the state is too dependent on the oil and gas industry to bail it out from spending at an unsustainable rate year after year?

It should have been obvious in the mid-1980s when global oil prices crashed sending the state into a full recession, that not only were the days of the oil and gas fueling fiscal growth over, but continuing to put all the state’s eggs in one basket would actually harm the economy. That the ongoing sugar-daddy delusion was still alive and well by 2003, however, is illustrated by then-Gov. Frank Murkowski’s announcement regarding the solution to the state’s economic crises: “Ladies and gentlemen, in a single word, it’s oil.”

Today the state’s addiction to oil is partly illustrated by the millions it provides via annual tax write-offs to oil and gas corporations who drill in Alaska but do not provide much in the way of return on this investment. in 2014, for example, the state’s largest producer, ConocoPhillips, made 68 percent of its global profits from Alaska but invested only 15 percent of its global capital in the state.

Despite the delusion of some politicians that drilling in places like ANWR could take Alaska back to the days of economic Nirvana of Prudhoe Bay, one thing that could prevent development in ANWR would be if presidential candidate Joe Biden who, if elected, has promised to “permanently protect” the refuge.

But in the end, rather than politics or litigation, it is simple economics that could stop drilling in the coastal plain. Ever sense COVID-19 — which came at a time when oil prices were already down — drove those prices to historic lows, the industry as a whole has been bleeding money, shedding jobs, and interest in drilling in the remote sites with difficult conditions, such as the Arctic refuge, may be waning.

More importantly, while oil companies are making cutbacks in drilling programs, banks
are less inclined to front them capital on future investments resulting in a vicious cycle of less funding available for future drilling. This situation has been further exacerbated by the
declaration from several global banks that they will stop financing oil and gas exploration in the Arctic due to the need to move away from fossil fuels and invest in alternative energy sources because of the rapidly increasing impacts of climate change on communities and ecosystems in the Arctic.

The good news is that with the banks turning away from fossil fuel investments while they decide what kind of energy programs could benefit from COVID-19 stimulus funding, there may not be a better chance than right now to move towards green energy. Fossils fuels have become no more than an economic dinosaur and a carbon-producing disaster, especially for the Arctic.

So, rather than sacrificing the coastal plain and Alaska’s fiscal future, why not investigate the potential local and global economic impact of renewable energy in the Arctic, including solar, and hydro and wind power as part of Alaska’s financial recovery?

This Op-ed also appeared in the September 24, 2020 edition of Arctic Today.

Trump Would Like You to Think He’s Gone Environmental

Just weeks away from the Presidential election, Trump is pandering for votes by suggesting that he is our man when it comes to preserving the environment. Describing himself as “the number one environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt,” in recent weeks he has backtracked on his administration’s move to grant a permit for Pebble Mine in Alaska which has to potential to devastate Bristol Bay salmon runs, and extended a federal moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico which is largely supported by residents of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina where he is trying to solidify his base. Moreover, he rescinded his nomination of William Perry Pendley, the controversial candidate chosen to run the Bureau of Land Management. This smokescreen does little to obscure the dozens of deregulatory actions undertaken by the Trump administration, including rolling back fuel economy standards, opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plains to oil leasing, and tougher air-quality standards to name but a few.

Lawsuits Filed on ANWR

Three lawsuits have been filed seeking to block the Trump administration’s efforts to sell oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, and Center for Biological Diversity have signed off on a lawsuit sighting insufficient concern over increased greenhouse gas emissions and melting permafrost, poor air quality, and negative impacts to the region’s wildlife. The lawsuit alleges violations of the National Environmental Protection Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, and the Endangered Species Act. A second lawsuit, filed by the Gwich’in Steering Committee also sites violations of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and includes plaintiffs in Canada’s Yukon chapter of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Most recently, a third lawsuit was put forth by fifteen states including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Concerns addressed in this lawsuit include habitat damage and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as impacts to waterfowl hunting and a lucrative birdwatching industry for birds that breed on the Arctic plain and overwinter in the lower 48 states.

Arctic Refuge Oil Leasing Approved, Now Come the Legal Battles

Under the Trump administration, the 1.5 million-acre arctic plain on the northern edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is now open for drilling. Next up, a call for oil lease sale nominations and industry and public comment of at least 30 days, followed by a notice of the lease sale.

Home to imperiled polar bears, the vast and far-ranging Porcupine Caribou herd, countless nesting birds, and the Gwich’in Indian Nation, this is America’s last great wilderness. After a forty-year battle to prevent oil extraction on the refuge, the announcement was a blow, but that may not be the end for this pristine ecosystem.

Opponents believe that the process for approval of drilling was rushed for political reasons resulting in a flawed and inadequate analysis of the environmental impacts in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. In addition, they claim the approval is contrary to prohibitions on killing or harassing of polar bears under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the protection of indigenous subsistence food-gathering rights under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Vast lakes, rivers and wetlands could be affected by drilling in the Coastal Plain through water quality impacts and mining and road building related to needed infrastructure.

Similarly, the Gwich’in Steering Committee which represents members of the Gwich’n Athabascan tribes located on both sides of the Canadian/Alaskan boarder, argues that approval of drilling violates a 1987 treaty that gives the Canadian Government oversight authority into the management of the Porcupine Caribou herd. According to Arctic Today, Steering Committee Executive Director Bernadette Demientieff the “administration has done nothing but disrespect the Indigenous peoples that have occupied these lands. Our ways of life, our food security, and our identity is not up for negotiation. The fight is not over…”^[1]

Due to the impacts of COVID-19 resulting in less transportation, which in-turned caused a drop in oil processes, oil and gas companies’ interest in drilling in remote and difficult conditions of Arctic Plain has been waning. So it remains to be see whether there will be any bids submitted on the leases. Moreover, oil-tax initiative on the ballet in Alaska in November, Ballot Measure 1 would impose a 10 percent base tax on production form large North Slope oil fields and eliminate production tax credits. And finally, major banks, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, have declared that they will not finance any development in the refuge. So the fights to save the Arctic Coastal Plain is not over yet.

Is Federal Disaster & Hazard Mitigation Aid Getting to Those Communities Most in Need?

In August 2020, National Public Radio’s Ted Talk broadcast an episode entitled “Our Relationship with Water” in which Colette Pichon Battle who is an attorney turned climate activist who grew up in Bayou Liberty just north of New Orleans.[1] She says she was thrown into her new role because rising sea levels, flooding and other climate factors are threatening the land that has been in her family for generations. Pichon-Battle says “’I work at the community level to make sure that black folks, poor folks and native folks are part of thia climate conversation’” including to communicate the policy and science of climate change to her neighbors and that the scientific community and policy makers listen to the traditional knowledge that the community can provide about the area.[2]

After Hurrican Katrina caused a tidal surge from the Gulf that swept her entire community into Lake Pontchartrain, she found that the surge was caused by sea level rise and the absence of barrier islands, now gone because of oil and gas drilling, which use to block such surges. Once she realized that hurricans like Katrina and likely worse are her to stay and in looking at flood maps of Lousiana she realized that her community along with other African American, Native American and impoverished communities would likely simply disappear before the end of the century. Quechon-Battle, notes that she was invited to the Whitehouse during the Obama administration to talk with the Federal Emergency Management Service, the agency primarily responsible for assisting communities with disaster and hazard mitigation preparedness in relation to flooding and other natural events, about how her community could obtain assistance to prepare for future flooding events. She says that during this conversation “the FEMA administrator said ‘I understand what your saying, but the FEMA regulations are’nt ment for the most vulnerable communities.’ The disaster assistance process for this country are ment for the middle class.” Despite the double take she made when she heard this statement she firmly believes that “This was an honest comment from FEMA. This is what you realize when you recognize that you recognize that the structures that are in place right now are absolutely not meant for me.”[3]

Arctic Native communities which have been experiencing increased permafrost melt, loss of sea ice, extreme weather events, flooding and erosion that may make current residences and settlements uninhabitable in the near future, no all to well about competition for limited federal disaster and hazard mitigation funding to defend against the inevitable march of climate change. In addition to what communities like Quechon-Battle’s experienced when approaching FEMA for help, in many cases, agencies require cost-benefit analysis, plans, environmental analysis, or other measures above and beyond analysis or strategies contained in Hazard Mitigation Plans (HMPs) or other plans before such communities qualify to apply for funds. Similarly, because standard arctic community HMPs do not contain a detailed cost-benefit analysis of natural hazards affecting water resources, such communities cannot obtain high rankings that larger cities can to qualify for competitive funding or other federal or state assistance needed to address such impacts. Finally, the villages cannot afford to hire consultants or even staff to conduct climate adaption planning on behalf of such communities to include more meaningful consideration of economic impacts and risks associated with coastal water resource management resiliency strategies, in order to move beyond the planning phase and into on the ground project implementation.

There is a need, therefore, to conduct economic risk-benefit and environmental analysis and otherwise close the gap between Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other governmental funding and technical assistance programs such so that North Bering Sea communities can implement on-the-ground projects that will address the Villages’ climate-related coastal water resources management challenges.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899845219/our-relationship-with-water.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Bringing Water Justice to the Arctic

Responding to the current focus on anti-discrimination and the need to provide clean water to communities as a means of preventing infection and spread of the Pandemic, the decades old environmental justice and human right to water movements have combined to create new terminologies such as “Water Ethics” and “Water Justice.” House Democrats responded to the call by proposing a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that would include everything from tax incentives for clean energy businesses, funding for drinking water programs and for climate resiliency upgrades to public housing. They hope to submit the bill to Congress by the 4^th of July holiday.

The need to shore up water infrastructure is even getting attention in the Arctic these days where, as part of the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2020, the plan to expand and deepen the city of Nome’s port was recently approved by the Army Corp of part of Engineers. Because the purpose of the expansion is primarily to extend the harbor into Norton Sound and dredge the outer area so that it is deep enough to accommodate big vessels like fuel tankers and large cargo and cruise ships, it’s main effect will be to further open the Arctic to commerce and development. In their present form , therefore, both infrastructure bills are missing an opportunity to effectively respond to the Pandemic and increase climate resiliency by incorporating adequate water infrastructure for indigenous communities, including many Arctic Native communities who have never had running water.

It’s easy to imagine , for example, many of the Alaska Native communities who have never had access to running water, shaking their heads in response to recent federal and state health agency cries to “Wash Your Hands!.” According to water justice advocates, “more than 2 million Americans who lack indoor plumbing or wastewater services live in remote areas, or come from high-risk groups like the elderly, disabled, homebound and homeless.” Closing the access gap, therefore, should include the use of “existing disaster response protocols to close this access gap and prioritize communities where local capacity is limited. It should partner with state and local municipalities for both immediate and long-term solutions.”

Water ethics is also getting media attention these days in the form of the disproportionate impact of oil and gas development on Arctic Native communities as it relates to climate change. Last month, for example in the worst environmental disaster in Russian history, tons of water spilled into the Ambarnaya River in Siberia, due in part to rapidly melting permafrost at the Nornickel plant. As with so many industrial crises, the damage from the spill landed heaviest on the nearby indigenous peoples of the Taimyr Krasnoyarsk Territory.

In a bizarre twist on the water injustice of oil and gas drilling, however, the Alaska Delegation has managed to turn recent attention on the problem of discrimination on it’s head, by requesting that the federal government investigate recent global banking policies to forego loans and investments with companies that produce oil and other fossil fuels. Their argument? Such policies harm local Alaska Native communities who rely on drilling in the Arctic for jobs. Noticeably absent from the letter that Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan and Don Young sent to the comptroller of the currency and the chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp , however, is the discriminatory effects of carbon producing drilling activity on these same communities who rely on the unraveling fresh water and marine ecosystems in the rapidly heating Arctic for subsistence.

Still, our response to COVID-19 may provide an opportunity to address climate change in the Arctic. At least for now, airlines and other businesses are in slowdown around the globe and in some countries, CO2 emissions and air pollution are at their lowest in many years. To some extent, house democrats are using the opportunity provided by the Pandemic to address the need to convert to clean energy and focus on environmental justice by introducing climate change legislations which calls for net-zero CO2 emissions over the next 30 years and reducing pollution in communities that are disproportionately affected.

Why not go a step further and take the hint when Mother Nature is trying to send us a message? Could we, for example, use the opportunity from reduced travel and other CO2 emitting activities to switch to flying less, making a quicker switch to electric cars and focusing less on infrastructure that supports carbon producing industrial development, and more on providing water accessibility and applying nature-based solutions related to water issues?

Melting Permafrost Linked to Russian Oil Spill

In late May of this year, a huge oil tank collapsed in Norilsk, an industrial city in north-central Siberia. An estimated 21,000 tons of diesel fuel spilled into the Ambarnaya and Daldykan rivers coating the water with an oily crimson layer. A failed attempt to contain the spill lead to further contamination downstream as the oil spread northward, entering the 45-mile-long Lake Pyasino, a on its way to the Arctic ocean. One of the largest spills documented in the Arctic, the Norilsk spill has been compared to Alaska’s 1989 ExxonValdez oil spill. As with the ExxonValdez, the spill occurred during spring migration, poisoning the waters just as fish and birds are returning to their natal grounds.

Russian mining firms identified melting permafrost as the culprit – destabilizing the soil under the tank. Clearly, as the arctic warms, the potential for lethal spills increases. Better surveillance of melting permafrost with inexpensive temperature probes would likely have prevented the spill. Despite the up-front costs, preventative measures save hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-up efforts and safeguard wetlands and the wildlife and human inhabitants they support.

Voluntary compensation for damages from Norilsk Nickle in the amount of $148 billion rubles, or $2 billion dollars.