“It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.” –Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, 1962

“We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment” –Scott Pruitt, EPA Administrator, 2017

Rachel Carson had no idea how impactful her words would be over 5 decades later; yet after reading the EPA press release denying the petition to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos for agricultural use in the US, it’s hard to believe how little has changed since the 1960s. Despite decades of progress, our reality is that it is industry—not public or environmental health—that the new EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, aims to safeguard with “regulatory certainty.” While the EPA has based its decision to allow the continued use of chlorpyrifos on its uncertain risk to human health, the risks to environmental health, including marine and aquatic environments, have been well documented.

Chlorpyrifos belongs to a class of insecticides called organophosphates (OPs) which are popular because (1) a little goes a long way in killing pests (in the business we call this “high acute toxicity”), and (2) it is broad spectrum (effective at killing several crop pests). Chlorpyrifos, like other OPs, works primarily by blocking the proper function of acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme needed for normal brain and nervous system functioning.¹ This enzyme is common across the animal kingdom including invertebrate groups (like crabs and worms), fish, birds, and, you guessed it, humans. By essentially ‘clogging’ neural pathways, chlorpyrifos exposure can lead to a host of behavioral changes including muscle spasms, reduction in muscle coordination, and, with high enough doses, paralysis and death. It’s a nasty, highly effective chemical. So nasty, in fact, that it has been banned for household use since 2000.

But if chlorpyrifos is sprayed mostly on commercial crops, how can it be a problem for marine ecosystems? Chlorpyrifos and many other dangerous toxicants can be washed into nearby streams or sewers by rain storms or crop irrigation and end up in estuaries, where fresh water bodies like rivers meet the sea.² While chlorpyrifos usually doesn’t stick around in the environment on land, it tends to stick around longer in saltwater³ and anoxic sediment⁴ (the dark sludge that gives estuaries their sulfur smell). In fact, in the Santa Monica estuary in California, chlorpyrifos drove acute toxicity (i.e. high mortality of test organisms) observed in sediment and water samples collected in 2008.² Although this pesticide degrades over time, it is still found in high concentrations in both fish and crustacean tissues.⁵

Pesticide use has only increased through the years. For example, according to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, 15,412 lbs. of chlorpyrifos were applied to agricultural crops in 2008 (the same year as the study above). Compare that to 2014 (the latest available data), when 67,982 lbs. were applied (that is a 341% increase!).

Over the last several years, we decided to focus our graduate thesis research on the sublethal (i.e. not quite deadly) effects of exposure to chlorpyrifos. Nick’s research investigated how chlorpyrifos exposure impacted predator-prey interactions between two estuary residents: the California Killifish and its prey, a worm that builds tubes in the mud. He found that when exposed to even relatively low doses of chlorpyrifos, fish struggled to accurately locate and strike the worms. He also found that the fish indiscriminately ate worms that had been exposed to chlorpyrifos, which suggests at least one way these fish are being exposed. This sounds crazy and gross, right? But think about how similar it is when you eat fruit or vegetables that have been coated in pesticides. You don’t know the difference! But the consequences can be devastating all the same.

Violet’s research looked at different types of ecological fish behaviors that could be altered by low doses of chlorpyrifos. She found that this pesticide made fish anti-social, oblivious to predator attacks, and less willing to forage for food. In other words, even small amounts of this pesticide can make fish an easy snack to their predators (leading, of course, to chlorpyrifos exposure for the unwitting predator!).

Each of our studies shows a small snapshot of the complex interactions that happen in estuaries daily, and together they paint a larger picture of some of the ways that chlorpyrifos can alter estuarine ecosystems. Estuaries are extraordinarily important systems, performing water filtration, providing nursery grounds for many fish you eat, and a variety of other ecosystem services. Aside from the importance of human health risks (because chlorpyrifos is a risk to human health), it is important to consider environmental health risks as well, because we all benefit from a properly functioning environment.

Sources

Fulton, M. H. & Key, P. B. Acetylcholinesterase inhibition in estuarine fish and invertebrates as an indicator of organophosphorus insecticide exposure and effects. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 20, 37–45 (2001).

Anderson, B. et al. Impacts of pesticides in a Central California estuary. Environ. Monit. Assess. 186, 1801–1814 (2014).

Bondarenko, S., Gan, J., Haver, D. L. & Kabashima, J. N. Persistence of selected organophosphate and carbamate insecticides in waters from a coastal watershed. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 23, 2649–2654 (2004).

Bondarenko, S. & Gan, J. Degradation and sorption of selected organophosphate and carbamate insecticides in urban stream sediments. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 23, 1809–1814 (2004).

Smalling, K. L. et al. Environmental fate of fungicides and other current-use pesticides in a central California estuary. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 73, 144–153 (2013).

About the Authors

Nick Hayman recently graduated with his Masters in biology from San Diego State University, where he studied effects of pesticide exposure on predator-prey interactions in estuaries. He is currently a contractor working in the exotoxicology lab at SPAWAR Systems Pacific performing environmental monitoring work.

During her doctoral research, Dr. Violet Renick looked to better understand the influence of pollutants (specifically chlorpyrifos) on the ecology and behavior of fishes. She currently manages the Ecotoxicology Lab for the City of San Diego.

The post The Return to Silent Spring first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The EPA:

The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment.

Scott Pruitt’s first address to the EPA employees (paraphrased):

Let’s all be civil and compromise. I learned about it in a book about the founding fathers. Alexander Hamilton said let’s reduce state debt. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison said, sure…but only if we completely develop this tidal plain in Virginia and call it Washington D.C.

Dear humans of the US, I’d like to hold your hand, stare deeply into your eyes and tell you it’s going to be alright. Sure, it all sounds reasonable. Businesses and government working together to get what they want. But in light of Pruitt’s history of suing the EPA, ties to the fossil fuel industry and complete non-mention of climate in this speech, I just can’t. I really can’t.

Was his use of this environmental anecdote was intentional or not? I can’t say. But what I can say is that Scott Pruitt will definitely be doing as he always has done, putting the interests of business and money ahead of human health and the environment. It’s going to be a long 4 years, so don’t stop paying attention and don’t stop speaking out. We won’t.

The post Scott Pruitt and the EPA: One of these statements is not like the other first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Would you want your taxi driver using a paper road map from 1892? Or would you rather he plug in the route on his Google Map iPhone app?

You just got off a 14-hour flight from Australia, you’re exhausted and sore, and counting down the seconds until you can crawl into the soft comfort of your memory foam mattress. You want to get home as fast as possible, and any further delay is unacceptable.

In this scenario, if your taxi driver pulled out a faded historical road map, you would literally shout at him “Are you fucking kidding me? Is this a joke?”. Old maps list wagon trails, not highways, since the modern interstate system wasn’t built until the 1950s. In another scenario, maybe your taxi driver agrees to use Google Maps, but he turns off the traffic settings and also takes away your own smartphone so you can’t see where you’re going. He might be driving down back roads on purpose, choosing to ramp up the mileage and ramp up his final fare to rake in the cash.

Any of these above scenarios would really suck. They’re not cool. You should DEFINITELY not stand for them. You also shouldn’t stand for the gag order (#EPAgag) and grants freeze (#EPAfreeze) that’s happening this week at the EPA – because the results will be sickeningly similar to the above taxi driver scenario.

NPR reports this morning that peer-reviewed research coming out of the EPA may soon face a case-by-case review before it gets cleared for release into the public domain. This is exactly what corporations do when they fund research – do you think tobacco companies would approve studies confirming that cigarettes cause cancer? Nope, they would bury the science and ensures it never sees the light of day – and that’s exactly what the Trump administration wants to happen at the EPA. Climate change facts? Bury them. Gag the scientists. The difference is that corporations don’t fund the science at the EPA – YOU FUND IT, as a taxpayer and US citizen, and you should have a say in how your tax money is spent:

Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency who want to publish or present their scientific findings likely will need to have their work reviewed on a “case by case basis” before it can be disseminated, according to a spokesman for the agency’s transition team.

Any review would directly contradict the agency’s current scientific integrity policy, which was published in 2012. It prohibits “all EPA employees, including scientists, managers and other Agency leadership from suppressing, altering, or otherwise impeding the timely release of scientific findings or conclusions.”

The EPA funds a stunning amount of stuff that effects your everyday life – the EPA monitors beach health (so you can swim in a seweage-free ocean!), water quality in lakes and rivers (so you can fish there!), air quality (don’t wanna taste smog on your run, right?), and even programs on Native American reservations to help with initiatives like recycling and sustainability.

If you want to know what the EPA funds in your local area, 1) Click here and enter your ZIP code to find your congressional district, and then 2) Go to the EPA search tool and search for grants awarded to your congressional district (you only have to fill out two boxes – your district number and state). The list of EPA search results will show you exactly what type of projects and how much $$ has been allocated to your town in the past few years.

Finally, CALL YOUR CONGRESSPERSON AND SENATORS to let them know that the #EPAfreeze and #EPAgag is NOT OK! All us scientists at Deep-Sea News are steaming mad, and you should be too. Click here to find contact info for your state senator. And click here and type in your ZIP code for your local congressperson in the House of Representatives. Phone calls are the best way to get in touch – inundate their district and DC offices with phone calls. Phone calls are scary for me as a millennial, but then again so is that dodgy taxi driver who wants to take me home using unpaved wagon trails and historical maps. Make a stand, make your voice heard.

———

UPDATE: 1/25/17, 1:42PM PST

To dig into this issue further, I did my own EPA award search. My congressional district (California 41st) has been awarded $26,369,556 in EPA grants over the last ~15 years. Here’s a screenshot of the awards:

To dig in even further, I started reading about the grants and tweeting short summaries of what the EPA had actually funded in my local area:

In my district alone, EPA has funded projects in basic research, terrorist attack prevention, drinking water and air quality #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

$218k EPA grant went to Fort Mojave Indian Tribe to train staff & implement new environmental protocols https://t.co/VSuUSQWAYQ #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

Other $15k EPA grant funded research on BBQ smoke (small particles that go airborne when grease sizzzles) https://t.co/8uVykdeyoN #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

One $15k EPA grant funded research to build a device that lowers pollution/exhaust from your lawnmower https://t.co/iVchR80lxn #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

A $1.2 million EPA grant went to Big Bear Lake to replace aging water pipes & ensure safe drinking water https://t.co/iVqo3lt6ia #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

$1.2 million EPA grant even went to “Air Quality Monitoring for Homeland Security” (w/ no other details) https://t.co/cCpdXgG1vi #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

More serious – $450k EPA grant went to the Luiseno Indian Tribe to fund water pollution control programs https://t.co/Ff9lhpj5df #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

A $408k EPA grant went to Chemehuevi Indian Tribe for community recycling program & to buy a wood chipper https://t.co/Lfq1K4941N #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

A $1.5 million EPA grant went to San Diego County to fund research and analysis on SoCal air quality https://t.co/xIYo9XSpk4 #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

$1.7mill EPA grant to “advance environ literacy & stewardship” for preschool, senior citizens, businesses https://t.co/GIH8SaZ1Su #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

A $115k EPA grant aimed to reduce vulnerabilities of large drinking water utilities to terrorist attacks https://t.co/Z48XapM2Si #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

I encourage you to do your own search – what has the EPA funded in YOUR local community?

The post Fight against the #EPAfreeze – Because you don’t want sewage on your beaches, right? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

There’s nothing quite like the excitement of moving to a new city and getting your first apartment, and for me as for so many others, that feeling is amplified when the city in question is New York.  So it was when I moved from Brisbane to Brooklyn in 2000.  That first apartment was a questionably-legal loft space in a commercial building on the waterfront of the East River, directly adjacent to one of the monolithic pylons of the Manhattan Bridge in a neighbourhood now known as DUMBO.  Man, I loved that loft!  It was a 6 flight walk-up, the nearest laundry was in Brooklyn Heights, the door buzzer was broken and tar dripped on my bed from between the roof beams in summer (I was on the top floor), but it had 13 foot ceilings, wooden floors polished by 150 years of factory worker’s shoes, and a multimillion dollar unobstructed view of the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge and all of downtown Manhattan beyond.  I loved nothing more than hanging out that window with a Brooklyn Lager listening to the N train rattle overhead and counting how many different modes of transport I could see at once.

Catching the F-train to Coney Island each day for work, I routinely passed the highest point in the NY Subway system, a graceful elevated arc of bridge at Smith and 9th Streets that weaves between long-defunct illuminated signs on Civil War era warehouses.  And every day I would look down from that bridge into one of the darkest, most shameful corners of the NY metropolitan area and a stark example of all that is wrong with 400 years of poorly constrained urban development in NY: The Gowanus Canal.

Gowanus Canal: the name alone is enough to nauseate most visitors to that little corner of western Brooklyn.  It’s greasy rotting wooden bulkheads, rafts of oily plastic pollution, scummy skin of god-knows-what and rank smell (oy vey, the smell!) assault the senses like few other bodies of water I have ever known (although some back bay areas of Rio and urban streams in Delhi give it a good run!).  I don’t know what’s scarier, that such a cesspool is allowed to exist in the greatest city in the world, or that most residents of Gowanus, Red Hook and Carroll Gardens  wander about their daily lives of Metrocards, bodega knock-off sunglasses and limp pizza slices – folded of course – oblivious (or worse, acclimatised) to the unmitigated environmental disaster that snakes from Greenwood cemetery to the harbour.  Of course I’m not the only one who would gag at the mere thought of that fetid ditch, and it seems like there might finally be some action to make a major restoration of the Gowanus Canal area: it was listed as a Superfund site by the US-EPA in 2010 and the agency is now considering options about how to clean it up.

Gowanus Creek was an original feature of the natural shoreline of the western tip of Long Island that is now Brooklyn and was named after a chief of the resident Canarsee native tribe.  As the industrial revolution exploded in NY, that part of Brooklyn began to develop rapidly and the water quality in the creek began it’s inexorable decline.  In the mid-19th century the creek was engineered into a 1.5 mile canal and began to be used to transport materials to and from the slew of ink, paint, gas, coal, chemical and other factories proliferating in the surrounds.  The low-lying salt marsh was reclaimed, the channel dredged and the shoreline hardened with concrete, boulders and wooden beam bulkheads, with the work completed in 1854.  Here’s where the first major error took place.  The original canal design was supposed to maintain good tidal flushing of the creek using a system of locks, but these were value engineered out of the plan, all but ensuring that the upper reaches would eventually become both polluted and starved of the life-giving oxygenated water otherwise delivered twice daily by the (unfortunately gentle) NY tides.  This situation was exacerbated as the surrounding wetlands continued to be drained for residential development; the first sewerage pipes from these areas were directed into the creek in 1858.  An agreement to redirect these to the East river in the 1860’s was never executed, so the canal continued it’s pollution from both the 50-odd factories in the area and an expanding series of raw sewage discharges.  An attempt was made to improve the flushing of the canal at the turn of the century by connecting a major stormwater drain (like, 17ft diameter!) from Greene Street to the canal, but rather than flush the canal with oxygenated seawater, it simply provided a periodic input of freshwater washed from the hardened streets of turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, with all the unimaginable filth that inevitably went with that.  This situation couldn’t last, so a new pipe was built to the harbour and fitted with a pumping station to force seawater from NY Bay into the upper reaches of the canal with a 7 foot propeller.  This arrangement didn’t cure the canal’s ills, but it did get it through the busiest part of its history when up to 25,000 vessels a day transited the Gowanus (nowadays its “just” a thousand or so).  At that time it was the nation’s busiest commercial waterway, moving 6 million tons of cargo each year in the years around WW1.  The pumping station flushing system operated until (so the story goes), a maintenance worker accidentally dropped a manhole cover on a critical part of the motor in 1960, permanently disabling it; the pumping station never operated again.  These days the canal is used less, but is no less contaminated; the sediments have high levels of persistent pollutants like PCBs and PAHs and the marine pathogen counts are off the chart from continued sewage inputs and stormwater runoff.

There IS life in the canal yet.  No longer will you find the creek’s famed fat oysters that Mark Kurlansky wrote about and there’s certainly nothing in there you would want to eat, but the occasional bass & spider crab pass through, and apparently there are some very interesting and adaptable microbes found in the tar-like sediment sludge.  Supposedly a Minke whale swam into the canal in 2007, beached itself and died, but its hard to say whether it got sick because it went into the canal, or went into the canal because it was sick.  Either way, with dissolved oxygen levels consistently below 1ppm (the definition of “anoxic”), persistent chemical pollution and 20 active combined sewer overflows, the canal is still as nasty as ever.

Current NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has resisted the Superfund listing of the Gowanus because it means ceding some authority over city property to the feds and adding a 5th (count ’em!) superfund site to the western part of Brooklyn, which affects public perception and – no doubt – real estate values.  But, radical problems require radical solutions and the Superfund listing and associated restoration process (& funding) offers the canal probably it’s best chance to see some meaningful improvement.  Degraded urban sites can be renewed.  Great work has been done at nearby Brooklyn Bridge Park, for example, which was built in DUMBO around the time I was there and involved removing hardened shorelines, creating a pebble beach on the East River and building grassy areas and playgrounds now popular with the families that have moved into the area as “gentrification” has progressed.  A remediation plan is expected to be chosen shortly with restoration efforts in the Canal to commence later this year and continue until the Canal meets federal standards.  One day in the not-too-distant future, then, I’d love to go back to NY, take a ride on the F-train to Smith and 9th and look down into a new sort of canal.  I don’t expect to see a Thoreau-ian idyll of waving cord grass and bluefish chasing silversides in the shallows, but it sure would be nice to NOT see the rainbow of oil on water, half a rusty shopping cart and an Oldsmobile slowly sinking into the sludge.

Sources/Further reading – Kevin Olsen’s excellent list of Gowanus Canal resources including the two two pictures above. NY Magazine’s “A Brief History of Slime” by Christopher Bonanos. And of course, Wikipedia

The post FEATURED POST: A (fetid) river runs through it, the Brooklyn edition first appeared on Deep Sea News.

“We cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now. We are already breaking records with the intensity of our storms, the number of forest fires, the periods of drought. By 2050 famine could force more than 250 million from their homes . . . . The polar ice caps are now melting faster than science had ever predicted. . . . This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn’t have to be.”

Barack Obama spoke these words addressing an audience in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in late 2007.  He, with the notable exception of Al Gore, represented one of the most progressive presidential candidates on matters of environment protection, green energy, and climate change.  The League of Conservation Voters gave Obama the highest lifetime rating of anyone ever running for president of the United States.

Vying for the White House, Barak Obama and Joe Biden’s environmental agenda (pdf) was both detailed and ambitious. The plan called for stricter policies, renewed commitments, and investment in research and infrastructure all while creating new jobs and technologies.  As a candidate, he vowed to:

• reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 with a market-based cap-and-trade system:
• invest in clean energy, including research, and create American jobs by doing so;
• establish policy and incentives to improve the energy efficiency of buildings, with the federal government itself setting an example;
• create a green job core;
• invest in a digital smart grid and more fuel efficient modes of transportation while making communities themselves generally more sustainable;
• make the United States a leader in combating climate change by re-engaging with the U.N. Framework on Climate Change, creating a new forum for the largest greenhouse gas emitters, sharing American technology with the developing world to fight climate change, confront deforestation, and promote carbon sequestration;
• renew our commitments to clean air and water through new policies and by restoring American lakes, rivers, and wetlands;
• and increase protection of National Parks and Forests, creating new protected areas, and incentivizing the protection of private lands.

Barack Obama’s environmental stance exemplified his overall platform of hope and change and it garnered my vote.  However, politics often represents a journey of compromise and disappointment despite ideals and best efforts.  After two years in office, what became of Barack Obama’s environmental pledge to the American public?

Quick Action Early On

Within a short few months, Obama seemed to exemplify a renewed commitment to the environment and reversal of Bush era politics. Needed policies, delayed during the Bush era, were quickly signed and put into effect.  One of the best examples was the requirement for higher energy efficiency from appliances.  On Inauguration Day, Obama blocked plans to reduce air quality standards and remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list.

Obama asked the EPA to reconsider granting California a waiver to impose their own stricter limits on carbon dioxide emissions from cars.  Simultaneously, he signed a presidential memorandum to set new fuel efficiency standards from the current average of 27 mpg to 35 mpg by 2011.  In February of 2009, the U.S. and Canada agreed to a joint initiative combating global warning.  In March of 2009, when details of the new stimulus package surfaced, $59 billion in tax incentives and research funds of the $787 billion total stimulus package were earmarked for clean energy.  This linking of the budget and environment is a welcome Obama trademark. Clearly, Obama had not faltered on his campaign pledges.   But many worried that with Obama’s agenda tackling the “sacred cows” of health care reform, military involvement overseas, the joint problems of the budget, the national debt, and financial reform, that climate change would lose out.

Two Years Later

Unless you’ve lived in complete isolation without radio, internet, TV, or newspapers then you are fully aware that health care reform, foreign policy, and budget consumed Obama’s first two years. But did the environment lose out?  Yes and No.

When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act eventually did pass more than $80 billion was dedicated to the development of renewable/clean energy, smarter electrical grids, and fuel efficiency technologies all with the goal of producing green jobs.  Obama also fulfilled his campaign promise of committing the Federal Government to lead by example promising a 28% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2020.  In May 2009, Obama announced fuel economy and gas emissions standards for cars and trucks including the first standards for previously ignored medium- and heavy-duty cars and trucks.  A task force identified key barriers to making homes more energy efficient.  The Recovery Through Retrofit program will seek to eliminate these barriers, chiefly the lack of straightforward information for consumers on their home’s energy use and how to improve it.

The Obama administration also worked toward protecting, conserving, and restoring U.S. lands.  Obama in early 2009 signed the broad reaching Omnibus Public Land Management Act designating 2 million acres in 9 states as wilderness, creating new trails, renewing commitment to protection of historic battlefields and National Parks, protecting watersheds, cleaning up groundwater, and making efforts to revitalizing our fisheries. Obama also signed a presidential memorandum establishing the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative to support communities in conserving outdoor spaces and promoting public interest in the outdoors.  To restore habitats, he established a group to coordinate and improve restoration of the Gulf of Mexico coastal regions, and outline near-term actions to restore the California Bay Delta and the Chesapeake Region.  Obama also dedicated $475 million for Great Lakes restoration, the most invested into the lakes in two decades.

With regard to climate change, Obama hit some well-known stumbling blocks but managed some advancement.  On one campaign promise, meager progress was made turning the U.S. into an international leader.  In regards to the international community, the U.S. renewed interest in the Major Economies Forum; moved toward eliminating fossil fuel subsides; formed new partnerships with China, India, Mexico, and Canada; and begin phasing down HFCs. For the first time, the U.S. will catalogue greenhouse gas emission from large emissions sources.  Thirteen federal agencies are now collaborating on the U.S. Global Change Research Program to reduce green gas emissions and grow a clean energy economy.  Obama signed an executive order calling on a task force to develop within one year recommendations for adapting to climate change impacts.

But many herald the most important contribution of the Obama administration to be the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

In the most sweeping accomplishment – not just of 2009 but perhaps in a generation – the House passed the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act in June by a vote of 219-212. This vote marked the first time that comprehensive global warming and clean energy legislation passed either chamber of Congress. The House-passed bill, while not perfect, would reduce global warming pollution by 17% by 2020 and 83% by 2050 and includes complementary clean energy measures to help meet those emissions reductions.

Obama’s Environmental Mistakes

However, Obama’s environmental legacy does contain some glaring omissions and quite frankly some major failings.  Although early on Obama reversed many of Bush’s decisions, he could have also stopped several other controversial, late-term environmental regulations including revisions to the Endangered Species Act, movement to open up lands in the West for oil shale development, leases for oil/gas drilling near national parks, new offshore oil drilling, and mountain top coal mining.  With regard to last of these, while the Memorandum of Understanding between key agencies seeks to strengthen oversight/regulation and minimize environmental impact from mountain top coal mining, it falls horrendously short of ending the destructive practice coal mining mountaintops. The Secretary of Agriculture allowed the clear-cutting of 381 acres of primary rainforest in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.  Under Obama, the EPA will clean up fewer Superfund sites than any other administration since 1991.

Many also viewed the Copenhagen Climate Summit as a failure.  The U.S., despite Obama’s pledge for our new leadership role in international climate change plans, and negotiators failed to reach any binding contract to reduce greenhouse gases when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.  The resultant “meaningful agreement” adds a $1 trillion price tag to preventing increase in temperatures, provides no real mechanism to decrease global emissions, reduces emission cuts, and lacks any substance.

In a very surprising move, Obama unveiled plans for large swaths of the ocean to be drilled for oil and gas for the first time.  Of course there is also the Obama administration’s response to the Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill.  Obama’s own commission stated that the administration lagged in initial response, played down spill projections, overreacted, and injected politics into the situation.  To that I would add, Obama also failed to sufficiently reprimand BP in both the short term and long term, capitalize on the opportunity of negative public sentiment to make gains in energy policy, continue to downplay the impact of the oil spill on Gulf ecosystems, and provide sufficient funds and support for independent scientific research into the environmental impact of the oil spill.

There is also the travesty of Obama’s treatment of the Endangered Species Act. Recently he denied Endangered Species Act protection to 251 species. Instead he placed them in long-term limbo on the “candidate” species list.  So far Obama has designated only 51 species as endangered under the Act and is far below the annual averages of both Clinton and Bush.

Clearly not everything is sunshine and daisies.

Obama and the Oceans

Obama established the Interagency Task Force on Ocean Policy to develop recommendations for national policy. In July of this year, Obama signed an Executive Order establishing a National Policy for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Coasts, and Great Lakes that moved to strengthen ocean governance and coordination while establishing guidelines.  Specifically the Order set U.S policy with regard to these ecosystems to:

• protect, maintain, and restore the health and biological diversity as well as improve resiliency;
• bolster conservation and sustainable use;
• use the best available science and knowledge to inform decisions;
• support sustainable, safe, secure, and productive access to and uses of ;
• respect and preserve our Nation’s maritime heritage;
• increase scientific understanding of these habitats and interconnections;
• improve our understanding and awareness of changing environmental conditions, trends, and their causes, and of human activities taking place;
• foster a public understanding of the value of these habitats and build a foundation for improved stewardship;

To accomplish and promote this policy the order calls for comprehensive increases and a collaborative framework for stewardship across government agencies and levels, for the U.S. to take an international leadership role, and for supporting stewardship in a fiscally responsible manner. More importantly it establishes the National Oceans Council composed of government officials tasked with the above-mentioned ordered agenda.

What is more obvious is what has not been done. Last year Obama’s NOAA Chief Lubchenco revealed there were no plans to consider new marine protected areas citing the lack of funds. Although commended by Ocean Conservancy for establishing a National System of MPA’s, Obama’s administration is simply coordinating efforts between existing MPA’s and agencies while not protecting new areas.

Hope and Change in the Next Two Years?

Clearly, there is room for improvement.  The Obama administration has been consistently ineffective in communicating its progress on any issue to the public.  I see this as largely responsible for the mid-term election results.  Indeed, before writing this post I too was both unaware of and unconvinced by Obama’s contributions to environmental policy.

Obama’s accomplishments largely appear to lie in the creation of task forces, councils, and working groups.  While I appreciate that he wants to proceed only after clearly examining an issue, his tenure so far with regard to the environment is characterized more by discussion than action.  Hopefully, in the next two years we can move toward the latter.

The genius of Obama’s plan has been linking the budget and our economy to the development of clean energy innovations and reducing our energy demand.  Creating green-collar jobs simultaneously addresses two major issues we face now—the recession and the environment.  Let’s not forget it also makes sense for national security by reducing our reliance on foreign oil and possibly bank rolling the very causes we are against.  Convincing the public that environmental initiatives are win-win is key.  We need more of this forward thinking and it appears he is committed to this strategy.

My grade for Obama’s record is a B-.  While I think he has made considerable improvements over prior presidents, I don’t feel he has gone far enough and his ocean policy is laughable at best.  The latter is surprising given his Hawaiian island roots.

Of course I don’t expect major gains will be made in the next two years.  The Obama environmental agenda is already under threat from incoming Republicans.

Republican leaders have begun gathering evidence for sweeping investigations of Barack Obama’s environmental agenda, from climate science to the BP oil spill… Republican leaders have also raised the possibility of disbanding the global warming committee in Congress.

My only hope is that Republicans read this letter.

The post From the Editor’s Desk: Obama and the Environment first appeared on Deep Sea News.