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It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a baseless conspiracy theory. Here’s what you need to know about the chemtrails conspiracy.

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Photo by Erik van Wees

What are chemtrails? 

First and foremost, chemtrails don’t exist. 

But Suzanne Maher disagrees. Maher is the founder of chemtrails awareness group Bye Bye Blue Sky. According to her website, chemtrails are toxic compounds sprayed into the atmosphere to “direct and control our weather for military purposes and global domination.” 

She sees the evidence in the wisps of white exhaust from planes criss-crossing the blue sky, lingering, and dissipating into a thin cover of clouds. According to chemtrail believers, this exhaust is laden with compounds like aluminum, barium, and strontium that’s intentionally being pumped into the atmosphere.

Maher’s billboard on display in Woodstown, New Jersey. Photo by Sharon LePere.

In reality, the trails left behind airplanes are just condensation, or contrails. When hot, moist engine exhaust hits cold, high-altitude air, condensation forms, the same way you can see your breath in the air on a cold day.

What exactly is the chemtrail conspiracy, and where does it come from?

People are drawn to the chemtrails theory for a variety of reasons. Some think the chemicals are controlling the weather. Others think they’re controlling our minds. Regardless of the specifics, chemtrail believers see a sinister government plot in the clouds.

The most popular and recent version of the theory posits that the chemicals are being sprayed into the atmosphere to block out the sun and slow global warming. This idea might sound familiar if you’ve heard of solar geoengineering. David Keith, a leading geoengineering researcher at Harvard, is investigating the potential of albedo modification; his team proposes that injecting sulfate compounds into the atmosphere to reflect some sunlight back into space, like chemtrails allegedly do, could save us from climate disaster. But their work so far is entirely speculative; there is no active testing or implementation of albedo modification. Keith also reminds chemtrail believers that “the Internet is filled with people who are completely sure about stuff that just isn’t true.” 

Still, a 2016 study in Nature reported that 20-30% of Americans thought the chemtrails theory was “somewhat true.” 

The most compelling conspiracy theories always have a grain of truth. The U.S. started experimenting with cloud seeding in 1946. Cloud seeding introduces compounds to the atmosphere to induce precipitation, but nowhere near the scale that chemtrail believers would have you think. A 1996 paper from the U.S. Air Force speculated about how weather manipulation could be used as a military tactic. Though this work was purely speculative, internet forums of the late 90s became the breeding grounds for accusations that large scale weather control was already underway. 

How did this theory gain traction?

Open platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter make information (and misinformation)  accessible to everyone with an internet connection.

Despite scientists emphatically rejecting the chemtrails theory, the majority of popular YouTube videos about climate modification actually embrace and spread the conspiracy theory. Facebook groups and Twitter help circulate false information about chemtrails. Most people don’t scroll through their feeds with a critical lens. Many take such misinformation at face value.

The Trump era did wonders for fake news and the conspiracy-minded; widespread mistrust of the government and media makes people susceptible to believing in a sinister plot to control the masses. On the left, die-hard environmentalists are quick to believe that the government is destroying the planet. Instead of following predictable party lines, chemtrails unite people from all walks of life.

Even though the evidence against chemtrails is overwhelming, many Americans still believe in them. That has consequences.

What are the dangers of the chemtrails conspiracy?

The most immediate consequence of the chemtrail conspiracy theory affects legitimate geoengineering researchers. Chemtrail theorists have hijacked the terminology of geoengineering research because of the similarities in proposed albedo modification projects and the alleged implementation of chemtrails. 

Geoengineering is already controversial. The effects of albedo modification are under researched, and a lot of people, including climate scientists, worry about interfering with environmental processes. The chemtrails theory asserts that large-scale geoengineering projects are already underway, recklessly endangering our health and our planet. This misguided belief has contributed to anti-geoengineering sentiment and researchers like Keith are stuck cleaning up the mess.

The chemtrails conspiracy theory is also a gateway to general mistrust and paranoia. If the government and scientists are conspiring to secretly control the global climate, what else could they be hiding? 

Perhaps the most dangerous part of the theory is how it mirrors the fundamental truth of climate change in a terrifying fun house sort of way. By continuing our reliance on fossil fuels, the government and corporations really are pumping toxic compounds into the atmosphere that are harming our planet and our health. By focusing their energy on the fake plot, conspiracists misdirect action away from the real problem.

How can conspiracy theories be countered?

Swaying hardcore chemtrail believers is hard– maybe even impossible. Mainstream reporting on the science that disproves the chemtrails conspiracy takes an overwhelmingly condescending tone, which only strengthens the conviction of conspiracy believers. Dedicated believers like Maher only seem to double down when faced with criticism. 

Still, the chemtrails theory might have had its day in the sun. Google searches for chemtrails peaked during the 2016 election cycle, and the uptick this year is mostly attributed to Lana Del Rey’s new album, Chemtrails Over The Country Club. 

Like many of us, geoengineering researchers hope that we can restore our trust in science. Staving off climate disaster requires innovative solutions and early geoengineering studies show a lot of promise. It might not even work, but I prefer an optimistic future to a false reality.

Geoengineering could save the Arctic, study finds

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Image: NASA

The Arctic is our planet’s refrigerator. It’s also warming six times faster than the global average.

The Arctic’s snow and ice reflect much of the light that reaches it, helping to keep the planet cool. As the planet warms, ice melts and the Arctic reflects less light. Warmer temperatures also mean that permafrost, or soil that is frozen year-round, begins to thaw out. When it does, frozen organic matter begins to decay, releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, which intensifies the greenhouse effect, leading to more warming, which leads to more permafrost thawing and… you get the point. 

This cycle, called permafrost climate feedback, drives the higher rates of warming at the poles. Arctic permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere. A melted Arctic would release this carbon into the atmosphere, leading to catastrophic effects for the entire planet. 

So, we need to keep the Arctic frozen. But how?

A study in Nature  by Yating Chen and her colleagues at Beijing Normal University examines a radical solution: increase albedo in the Arctic to prevent warming and permafrost thawing by preventing sunlight from entering the atmosphere. 

Known as solar geoengineering, this strategy aims to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption by injecting sulfur compounds into the atmosphere. These compounds reflect some sunlight back into space before it has the chance to enter the atmosphere.  

Solar geoengineering is controversial partly because the effects of sulfate injection are under researched. But don’t worry; Chen’s study is just a simulation. By using what we know about environmental processes, Chen and colleagues  built an earth system model that mimics the conditions of life on earth, then manipulate the conditions to predict the future. This study uses a geoengineering model that’s popular because it models a sudden injection of sulfates into the atmosphere. If we embrace geoengineering only as an emergency solution to climate change, sulfate injection will probably happen quickly as a last-ditch attempt to save the world, so this model is realistic.

In addition to modeling sulfate injection, this study incorporates a moderate emissions reduction framework that projects the climate stabilizing at a global average of 1.8 degrees Celsius warmer. This keeps our climate just under the 2 degrees C of warming that has come to represent a point of no return for the global climate. If the climate stabilizes at 2 degrees C, the models predict that 40% of Arctic permafrost will melt. Under moderate emissions reductions, 35% would melt. With the sulfate injections, this figure plummets to just 15%.

Putting a price tag on the Arctic is tricky, but the permafrost climate feedback could result in  $13.8 trillion (trillion, with a tr) in economic losses, even under the reduced-emissions scenario. Sulfate injection would help save about $8.4 trillion. 

There’s still a lot we don’t know about sulfate injection. What are the ecological impacts of more atmospheric sulfur? How would people living in the Arctic, especially Indigenous communities, be affected? What does maintenance look like? What would happen if a solar geoengineering project was suddenly interrupted? 

Critics raise these questions to discredit geoengineering, but the immensely promising results of this study should spark interest in more research using models to explore the effects of sulfate injection. Nobody can predict the future with certainty, but models can give us a pretty good guess. 

There is no silver bullet to stop climate change, but this study shows that the combination of reduced emissions and sulfate injection are key in preventing permafrost thawing. Stabilizing the climate is a daunting task, but the Arctic is a good place to start.

What You Should Know About Biden’s EPA

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Photo: Gage Skidmore

 

“A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear.” President Biden made clear in his Inaugural Address that addressing environmental degradation would be a high priority for his administration. Repairing an EPA weakened by the Trump administration will be key to making that happen, but just what kind of EPA is Biden inheriting from the Trump administration before him?

 

How did Trump change the EPA?

In a word: rollbacks. During his term as President, Trump completed 98 rollbacks of environmental policy. Most of these involved the EPA.

EPA rollbacks under Trump left critical wetland habitats unprotected and weakened limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and vehicles. Rules on the disposal of coal ash and other air pollutants were eroded. Rollbacks allowed facilities that pollute the environment to emit more hazardous materials without fearing that the EPA would find them in violation of rules.

The Trump EPA reduced inspections of polluting facilities, and even gave facilities advance warning of inspections, lessening their effectiveness.

Trump’s limitations on inspecting facilities that pollute and weaker rules to enforce added up. The number of EPA cases against polluters plummeted under the Trump administration.

Trump also made it more difficult for the EPA to make new rules with an arbitrary “one in, two out” executive order requiring the EPA to rescind two rules for every new one implemented. 

We are already seeing the consequences of Trump’s EPA. Deaths due to air pollution in the US have increased, at least in part because of weakened enforcement on air pollution. 

And none of this includes how Trump set the nation back in addressing the global climate crisis!

 

What has Biden’s EPA done so far?

The rollbacks are being rolled back, and progress is being  made- but slowly.

Biden issued an executive order directing agencies to “hold polluters accountable”, signaling that the EPA may get its enforcement groove back. 

He has also revoked some Trump-era executive orders that hindered the regulatory role of the EPA, including the “one in, two out” rule.

The Senate confirmed the appointment of Michael Regan, former head of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, as EPA Administrator. In his former role, Regan focused on environmental justice and increasing inspection capacity — areas that were not a priority for the Trump administration.

Immediately upon taking office, Biden established a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council within the EPA. This demonstrates a renewed effort to address the  disproportionate harms that environmental hazards pose to marginalized communities in the US.

 

What does Biden want to accomplish for the environment?

Biden has centered his environmental agenda around job creation. The American Jobs Plan, announced on March 31, but not yet put before Congress, reflects this.

The American Jobs Plan  focuses on improving physical infrastructure. Environmental health will improve as infrastructure improves, at least in theory.

Under this plan, transportation policy would get an overhaul. Federal funding for public transportation would double, so transit systems could hire more employees, serve more riders, and keep cars off the road, reducing emissions. 

The government would make massive investments in electric vehicle production, making American transportation more compatible with sources of renewable energy in the long term. 

The plan also includes investments in developing resilience against climate-driven disasters like hurricanes.

Provisions for improved utilities aim to put the nation on track for carbon-free electricity by 2035. Buildings all over the US, especially those used for public housing, are slated to be retrofitted for energy efficiency.

The plan also calls for the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps to get more Americans working in climate resilience and conservation efforts while bolstering labor unions.

The fate of this $2.2 trillion plan rests with Congress. The Biden administration is meeting with leaders on Capitol Hill to drum up bipartisan support. Biden hopes to have the plan passed by this summer.

 

What if the plan doesn’t pass through Congress?

Luckily for the Biden administration, some of what is included in the American Jobs Plan can be accomplished by executive order.

Some of what is not possible through executive order is possible through corporate action, according to John Kerry, Biden’s Special Envoy for Climate. For example, the transition from gas and diesel to electricity-powered vehicles looks inevitable, and companies are planning for the electric future accordingly. The biggest companies in America are moving towards a greener marketplace, and “no politician in the future is going to undo this.”

 

What does the American Jobs Plan have to do with the EPA?

If passed as proposed, the American Jobs Plan would give the EPA the funding necessary to accomplish long-held environmental goals. 

The American Jobs Plan includes $45 billion to replace all of America’s lead water service lines. This would mean that no community in the US ever suffers water-borne lead poisoning again. 

Other water infrastructure is up for an overhaul, too. $56 billion will be offered to states, tribes, and communities in grants and low-cost loans to revamp waste, storm, and drinking water systems.

Funding these projects is good for environmental and economic health, as evidenced by the 300,000 jobs created over the last two years by EPA water infrastructure programs. 

The plan also includes $5 billion to clean up contaminated Superfund and Brownfields sites, and to develop the workforce necessary for cleanup. 

Surprisingly, school buses are another target of the EPA under the American Jobs Plan. The plan provides for 20% of yellow school buses in the US to run on electricity instead of diesel. This would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve student and driver health.

 

Between reversing  Trump-era environmental rollbacks and implementing the measures of the American Jobs Plan if it passes, the EPA under Biden has a lot of work to do. As American lives are lost due to environmental dangers and the climate crisis looms, getting the job done is more important than ever before.

Can we engineer our way out of a climate disaster?

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Image: NASA

The deadline is clear: we must cut our carbon emissions in half by 2030 in order to avoid catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change. 

After a brief COVID-19-induced dip, carbon emissions are shooting upwards again with no sign of slowing down. Transitioning away from fossil fuel use is a monumental undertaking that will require enormous societal and economic restructuring. As the climate clock ticks, nations stumble through climate decision making, and achieving the necessary reductions in time seems impossible. 

But what if we could buy ourselves more time? 

Cutting carbon emissions is essential to curbing the effects of climate change, but it is not our only hope. Advocates for geoengineering argue that manipulating the environmental processes that underlie global warming is critical to stabilize the climate. 

The two main schools of geoengineering thought are simple: remove existing carbon from the atmosphere or solar geoengineering to prevent more sun from getting in. 

The “negative emissions” approach of sucking carbon from the atmosphere would help to de-insulate the planet, allowing more low-energy heat to travel through the atmosphere and back out to space. A firm called Carbon Engineering has already designed a machine that uses a series of simple chemical reactions to isolate and capture pure carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere before burying it underground.

Solar geoengineering projects propose spraying a fine mist, either of seawater or sulfate aerosols, into the atmosphere to reflect some sunlight back into space. Usually, high-energy sunlight enters the atmosphere and is absorbed into the planet, then re-emitted from the earth as lower-energy heat, which gets trapped in our increasingly greenhouse gas-rich atmosphere. Solar geoengineering would deflect some high-energy sunlight, never giving it a chance to be trapped as heat.

These types of projects could slow warming and extend the deadline set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), giving us time to make the necessary changes to prevent complete climate disaster.

Despite its promise, geoengineering strategies  attract sharp criticism for interfering with natural processes or attempting to “play god.” Some critics point to the lack of research on the potential detrimental effects of geoengineering projects, like pollution from introduced aerosols or crop failure from a dimmed sun. Others worry that providing alternatives to cutting carbon emissions will decrease the sense of urgency that has driven decades of climate activism and policy advancements. 

I hope to examine all sides of the controversy and explore the potential of geoengineering as a tool in the fight against climate change. What are the risks and rewards of geoengineering projects? Who stands to benefit the most from geoengineering, and who will bear the costs? How are we, as humans, responsible for the planet we call home? Can we save it?

 

EPA Under Attack: Legacies of Deregulation by Reagan, Bush, and Trump

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Photo: US Environmental Protection Agency

 

Donald Trump prevented the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from protecting the environment effectively, but he wasn’t the first US President to do so. In a 2018 paper in the American Journal of Public Health, Leif Fredrickson and colleagues examine the impacts that Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump have had on the EPA.

Why care about this history lesson?

Looking at how these former Presidents used staffing, deregulation, and science to take the EPA apart in the past offers key insights into how President Biden can put the agency back together again today and how to fend off attacks on the EPA in the future.

Let’s look at EPA staffing.

Reagan was the first to hinder the EPA’s mission through staffing. Reagan’s EPA turned down experts with experience in federal government in favor of anti-regulation legislators and industry veterans from fossil fuel companies like Exxon to fill leadership positions. Reagan’s EPA Administrator, Anne Gorsuch, slashed staff by 21% in her two years heading the agency. 

Trump’s EPA took after Reagan when it comes to staffing. The advice of energy executives was prioritized over those of career employees. Trump-proposed staff cuts matched the numbers of the Reagan years, though the Trump proposals did not pass. 

The EPA was sidelined by the anti-regulation priorities of all three presidencies Fredrickson studied.

Under Reagan, deregulation was the name of the EPA’s game. The agency’s Office of Enforcement was dissolved, giving industry less reason to take environmental rules seriously. Reagan’s EPA listened when industry figures complained about regulations such as those phasing out the use of leaded gasoline. It was only after public outcry that the phaseout continued unimpeded.

Bush’s EPA was anti-regulation in subtler ways. Instead of rejecting regulatory action, the EPA avoided having to take action at all by strategically delaying until the chance to act had passed. This was true of chances to strengthen the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. 

Trump took after Reagan with his deregulatory approach to the EPA, but he added his own flair. In an executive order,  Trump required repealing two rules for every new rule enacted, hindering the EPA’s rulemaking ability. Trump’s EPA also repealed the Clean Power Plan, a policy which promised to save lives by reducing particulate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

These administrations manipulated environmental science to suit their political goals without hesitation.

Bush was, frankly, a nightmare for environmental science in the EPA. Under Bush, industry actors gained the right to challenge scientific analyses, slowing the regulatory process. Bush’s EPA gummed up the works of climate science by playing up scientific uncertainty around climate change and prohibiting agency employees from even mentioning the phenomenon.

Trump combined approaches to science from the Reagan and Bush administrations. Like Bush, Trump obscured climate science in EPA resources and discussions. Trump’s EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, planned debates to hash out questions about climate science that have long been settled. Like Reagan, Trump contested the regulation of hazardous materials despite evidence of their dangers. Pruitt overturned a ban on a pesticide that is dangerous to pregnant people and children when ingested in any amount.

Trump seemed like a unique threat to the EPA during his term. In hindsight, he just adapted the worst of Reagan and Bush strategies for his own bombastic brand of governance.

What does all of this tell us about what’s next for the EPA under President Joe Biden?

Just as staffing, regulation, and science can be used to weaken the EPA, restoring their roles at the EPA can strengthen the agency. Biden is already using executive orders to address climate change and return enforcement capabilities to the EPA. How he will “build back better,” as was his mantra on the campaign trail, remains to be seen.

In the long run, no single executive order is going to make environmental health invulnerable to political whims. Nothing is preventing another Trump, Bush, or Reagan from winning the presidency, mismanaging the EPA, and putting our health and our planet’s health in danger. The best we can do is inform ourselves and others on the environmental legacies of our Presidents (as Fredrickson and his colleagues have with this paper) and fight for political candidates who will use the EPA for environmental protection, as it is intended.

A Matter of Life and Death: the Role and Record of the United States Environmental Protection Agency

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Photo: US Fish & Wildlife Service

 

If you live in the United States, you can thank the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for extending your life. Americans in some places would lose on average more than 100 days of life to environmental hazards if not for regulations like the Clean Air Act. Just as a well-managed EPA can extend and improve Americans’ lives, a mismanaged one can jeopardize our health.

Now is an especially important time to understand the EPA. The agency endured more than 100 rollbacks to regulations under the Trump presidency. These will cause thousands of asthma attacks and premature deaths in the years to come and will accelerate global climate change. Now that the EPA is beginning to reflect the priorities of the Biden administration, lives can be saved. It remains to be seen whether the EPA under Biden will be able to halt and reverse the damage of the last four years.

In the political whiplash the EPA experienced as power cycled between the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, one thing has become clear: while legislators play politics with the agency, the stakes are life and death. With lives on the line and our planet in climatic crisis, the time to read, write, think, and act about the US EPA is now.

Making Energy Connections

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Governor Baker signs Massachusetts energy bill, August 2016

“This is a win for the environment, the economy and the people of the Commonwealth,” said Massachusetts house representative Thomas Golden, Jr. He was celebrating Massachusetts’s historic energy bill which committed the state to 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind energy generation by 2027. At that scale, wind energy could power 240,000 homes statewide.

Despite Golden’s excitement, the bill was also met with a storm of criticism. “More can and should be done to lower carbon dioxide emissions. This plan, may be the most expensive way to get there I’ve seen,” the New England Power Generators Association’s president Dan Dolan wrote in response. There are many concerns surrounding this energy bill, specifically about utility rate increases and more generally about the reliability of wind power.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has answers for both Representative Golden and Mr. Dolan. The NREL is a national laboratory funded by the United States Department of Energy that researches renewable energy and energy efficiency. In a new study they modeled a full year of eastern electric grid operations with increasing amounts of renewable energy generation, up to 30% of wind and solar. NREL published their results this summer in the Eastern Renewable Generation Integration Study (ERGIS). Their research shows that the eastern grid can accommodate far more renewable energy than expected, however to comprehend their findings it is important to first understand the basics of the electric grid.

Massachusetts is part of a regional electric grid that connects all states east of the Rockies. The electric grid is made up of electricity generators, transmission lines, and control centers. Like train tracks linking major hubs, transmission lines connect generators to the homes needing electricity while the control centers coordinate the electric grid, like the operators of railroad switches. The NREL studied this system with a model that includes more than 5,600 electricity generators and 60,000 transmission lines.

The ERGIS study revealed three key lessons that suggest the goals of Massachusetts’s energy bill are more achievable than critics claim and give suggestions for best implementation.

First, more multi-regional coordination through transmission lines and enhanced communication of control centers will best allow for the utilization of renewable energy generation. A scenario with added transmission lines had more than 50% more exchange of electricity between regions of the grid. The study also found that daily flows of power were more frequent with increased wind and solar generation. By applying this lesson to the energy bill, offshore wind won’t just benefit Massachusetts. Homes in New Hampshire could benefit from Massachusetts wind if excess clean energy is diverted instead of wasted. But this endeavor would require new transmission lines and increased coordination of the grid, potentially through innovative smart grid technology.

Second, the existing electric grid can effectively balance renewable and non-renewable sources of energy surprisingly well, even under the most challenging conditions. For example, spring poses unique challenges for integrating renewables. Wind is especially variable during these months. In the summertime, the challenge is different. The high demand for electricity, especially for air conditioning, requires a constant base load which wind cannot always meet. Despite these concerns, the ERGIS study revealed the grid was successful in balancing production with demand through coordination and regional interchange. So when wind generation was over-predicted, the real time management of the grid allowed for supplementing with conventional sources. More renewable energy sources required more system coordination, but did not result in a deficient energy generation.

Third, increasing renewable energy generation has economic benefits and reduces pollution. Production costs were lower by a third in the 30% renewable energy generation scenario compared to the benchmark scenario. Additionally, CO2 emissions decreased by 33% as the renewable energy sources primarily displaced fossil fuels. Pocketbooks and polar bears agree, renewable energy is ready for wide-scale implementation.

The ERGIS study counters Dolan’s concerns about price and reinforces Golden’s excitement surrounding Massachusetts’s energy bill. The electric grid is ready to integrate renewable energy. The wind has always been blowing, but finally Massachusetts is going to harness it.

The Road to a Sustainable Future: Urban Transportation Policy Reform

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Atlanta, Georgia, known as the “poster child of sprawl,” may not be the first place you think of when imagining a forward-thinking city, however, an innovative project aims to combat the issue of congestion as Atlanta’s population doubles in the next fifteen years and turn Atlanta into a walkable and bikeable city. Like New York City’s High Line or Chicago’s 606, 22 miles of disused railroad tracks are to be transformed into a greenway loop by 2030, open to pedestrians and cyclists. This so-called “BeltLine,” proposed in 2001, is a breakthrough in the way that urban planners approach cities — in terms of sustainability, livability, and coherency.

According to the United Nations, more than half of the world’s population resides in urban areas, and this number is predicted to rise to two-thirds by 2050. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for 21st-century metropolises to lessen the Western world’s dependence on fossil fuels and provide citizens with alternatives such as bicycling, public transit and walking, following Atlanta’s example. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that one-seventh of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by transportation and that number is also rising. By pursuing options that use less energy and cleaner forms of it, we will be able to not only prevent further global warming but also to improve the quality of life in cities by reducing traffic and smog.

In this beat I will explore the complex challenge of implementing innovative transportation policy reforms as well as sparking a cultural paradigm shift towards the goal of sustainable city-living. How do the obstacles facing the global South in this regard differ from those in the global North? What approaches are working well and in which areas could improvements be made? What roles will technology and lifestyle play in the future to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions? In order to answer these questions, I will examine individual cities as case studies to formulate a hopeful yet critical view of the current state as well as the future of urban transportation.

Opportunity Blows in the Wind

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offshore-power

Offshore wind turbines offer clean energy and jobs to MA

Swirling autumn leaves, winter blizzards, sweet summer breezes. What if our classic New England weather could be our source of energy too? A largely untapped renewable energy source, offshore wind offers clean energy and a boost to the local economy that Massachusetts can capitalize on.

With recent international agreements and Obama’s proposed plan on climate change, the United States energy sector is at a precipice of change and opportunity. In the midst of retiring power plants, energy sources are in flux. Natural gas and renewable energy compete to takeover as major energy sources. Infrastructure commitments made today will last for 60 years, with far reaching consequences for the climate. The choices we make today are critical.

As a global issue, climate change requires global collaboration. But this starts with a local commitment to clean energy. Here in Massachusetts, we have an opportunity to demonstrate that this commitment is both feasible and beneficial. Massachusetts is already a leader for energy efficiency. And with our coastal location and classic New England weather, Massachusetts is poised to become a leader in offshore wind production as well. In August, Governor Baker of Massachusetts signed a historic energy bill with a major commitment to offshore wind. The bill commits to 1,600 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind, the largest pledge to this renewable energy source in the United States. Once implemented, this could power 240,000 homes in the state. This was a bold move considering that the infamous Cape Wind Project off Cape Cod failed after 15 years of public opposition and controversy.

The Massachusetts government is willing to gamble on offshore wind, due in large part to economic considerations. Massachusetts is 45th in total energy production and almost three-quarters of the state’s electricity generation is fueled by imported natural gas. Without local ties to the energy production, Massachusetts has the freedom to try energy alternatives. And investment in offshore wind will not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions and particulate pollution, it will also create local short-term and long-term jobs. Offshore wind can bring energy production for Massachusetts to Massachusetts.

If Massachusetts’s new commitment to wind energy is going to avoid the same fate as Cape Wind, there are some big questions that need to be answered. What lessons can be learned from the failed implementation of Cape Wind? How can a repeat be avoided in future offshore wind projects? And in contrast, what lessons can be taken from the successful European large-scale offshore wind projects and applied to Massachusetts? Are local utility companies willing to cooperate with offshore wind production companies? Achieving the offshore wind commitment outlined in the energy bill will not be simple. As the failed Cape Wind Project demonstrated, economics, politics, and public opinion complicate the process and require careful, deliberate approaches. By investigating current offshore wind technology, lessons from previous energy projects, and the political tensions of state energy, I will examine the possibilities and challenges of implementing this energy source in Massachusetts.

A Toolkit for Transition: A Review of Take Back the Economy

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In one of the cities most impacted by the decline of the United States’ economy, change is happening. Cleveland, Ohio used to be one of the epicenters of America’s industrial heartland– now it is serving as a model for how a city can recover from economic decline and urban decay. This model for change, known as “The Cleveland Model“, is centered within the Evergreen Cooperatives– a group of worker-owned cooperatives that are commited to building sustainable and democratic workplaces that benefit their communities.

Specifically, the Evergreen Cooperatives target the needs of Cleveland’s most dependable institutions, such as hospitals and universities, to ensure that jobs will stay in the city. Currently, Evergreen Cooperatives consists of a solar installation and weatherization program, an industrial-scale laundry service commited to a low environmental impact, and the largest urban food-producing greenhouse in the United States. Not only are these cooperatives owned by the workers themselves, but each is committed to employing those who live in some of the poorest neighborhoods of the city, where poverty rates can reach 30 percent.

A diagram depicted the exchange of resources in the Cleveland Model.

A visualization of the Cleveland Model via community-wealth.org

The Cleveland Model demonstrates how a community can ethically and sustainably redevelop, but how do other communities follow suit? In their book, Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide to Transforming our Communities, a team of geographers shows how people around the world are building such resilient community economies. Although the authors J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy are all geographers with specialties ranging from feminism to the environment, the book is not a scholarly review. Rather, Take Back the Economy tells the stories of successful and inspiring projects while also providing tools and resources to help guide readers to make change themselves. In that way, Take Back the Economy is more than a book– it is a toolkit that can be used by activists, leaders, students, and academics alike.

The book explores how communities can make change happen in five different sectors of our community economies: work, business, markets, property, and finance. Each of these sectors is reframed to take into account our ethical responsibility to one another and our natural world. This approach helps us to see that places like Cleveland can serve as a compelling model for rethinking both work and business. Far beyond Cleveland, the book provides countless examples of groups of people who are making change happen in each of the five sectors of our community economies.

For instance, Take Back the Economy reframes work as a means to surviving well, which can benefit our material, social, community, and physical well-being. With the Cleveland Model, the cooperative-style of business gives marginalized workers a means to improve their material well-being, build stronger interpersonal relationships, and give back to their communities.”Evergreen has changed my life. It enabled me to be a contributer, not only to the community, but to society as well,” stated one worker. With the Cleveland Model, work is not just a means to make income, but it is also a way to increase personal well-being.

Take Back the Economy additionally provides tools that help us to rethink the different sectors of our community economies. In the case of business, the book provides an exercise called the “People’s Account” which breaks down business models to see how much revenue workers generate versus how much they actually get paid. In a typical corporation, minimum-wage earning workers only receive a small fraction of the profits they generate from working, leading to surplus profits that don’t always benefit the workers. While some surplus may be used to sustain the business, a lot is left to accumulate in the pockets of CEOs. Even so, CEOs can pack up and leave a community when a business model in another part of the world becomes more profitable, making these business models even less sustainable.

However, in cooperatives like those used in the Cleveland Model, workers collectively determine their wages so that they earn a reasonable income for the value of their work. At the same time, the cooperatives can generate collective wealth that can be invested back in their business and in their community. Especially important to Cleveland, the businesses are owned by members of the community, meaning the businesses are more likely to remain invested in the city, creating long-term and reliable jobs. As one worker in Cleveland noted, “I am an owner, not just a worker. I help to make decisions within the community.”

Take Back the Economy goes even further to explore redevelopment strategies ranging from alternative currencies to communal ownership of land. No matter the topic, the stories, tools, and frameworks provided by the book are both accessible and empowering to the reader. While considerable engagement, organizing, and work is needed to transform our communities, the ideas and examples in Take Back the Economy can serve as a starting place. With many communities already paving the way, more can work together to a build a more ethical and sustainable world.