As Tennesseans deal with record-breaking heat, hurricanes and prolonged drought linked to a changing climate, a new report showed how American taxpayers are subsidizing disinformation about climate change.
Chuck Collins, co-founder of the Climate Accountability Research Project and the report's co-author, said people with ties to the fossil fuel industry are bankrolling groups trying to block action on climate change through tax-deductible donations.
"There's 137 organizations that are actively involved in promoting climate disinformation, challenging the science, sowing doubt, blocking alternatives," Collins reported. "Their goal is to run out the clock and keep extracting their profits."
The report said between 2020 and 2022, the organizations received nearly $6 billion in tax-deductible donations, which are entirely legal under the U.S. tax code. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled financial contributions deserve the same First Amendment protections as speech, at least in political campaigns.
Collins contended because wealthy donors are essentially pushing the burden of building and maintaining roads, schools and other essential services onto other taxpayers, the public deserves to know who they are.
"They're opting out of paying their taxes, so the rest of us do have a public interest in knowing how that money is being used," Collins asserted. "And whether it's being used in a way that influences Congress and influences public policy, and takes us down a road that we may not want to go down."
Many donors are now listed online at ClimateCriminals.org, which also features a countdown to a deadline set in Paris to cut fossil fuel emissions in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. Collins pointed out many more donors remain anonymous by contributing through groups, including donor-advised funds. He believes increasing transparency is important in removing barriers to serious climate action.
"We should know who is blocking our ability to respond in a timely way to climate change," Collins emphasized. "We should hold those people accountable."
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American lobsters along Maine's coast are relocating to new habitats as the Atlantic continues to warm.
Researchers with the University of Maine said the majority of lobsters have left their rocky shelters for open waters as their numbers and density declines
Robert Jarrett, lobster ecology researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of Maine, said the findings reveal how climate change is altering the lobster population and the way fisheries will manage it.
"They're always going to find a space to be able to thrive because of the oceanography," Jarrett acknowledged. "But there are definitely some challenges ahead of us."
Jarrett pointed out a drop in baby lobster survival rates and fewer predators are also creating an older lobster population. He noted coastal water temperatures increased nearly 3 degrees Celsius over the past two decades, forcing lobsters to seek cooler areas to the north.
While the overall lobster population density has declined, researchers said adult lobsters are bigger as fewer juveniles take up habitat space. Still, they emphasized more than 90% of lobsters observed remain within the legal size to be caught and sold, a promising sign for Maine's $730 million lobster industry.
Jarrett explained the habitat data is helping fill in the information gaps about how lobsters are adapting to an altering environment.
"It's just providing a lot of context for the health of the lobster stock and hopefully have a better understanding of the population as a whole," Jarrett stressed.
Jarrett and a team of researchers investigated 20 sites along Maine's coast, from York to Jonesport, counting and measuring lobsters, as well as collecting temperature and habitat data. The team also reviewed historic data for the same sites dating back to the 1990s.
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According to a Florida Atlantic University survey, most Floridians prefer political candidates who support action on climate change.
The poll, conducted before hurricanes Helene and Milton made landfall, found 52% of respondents favored candidates with a climate-focused record. The Invading Sea Florida Climate Survey also highlights a significant partisan divide, with 74% of Democrats, 35% of Republicans and 39% of unaffiliated voters expressing a preference for candidates prioritizing climate issues.
Colin Polsky, professor of geosciences at Florida Atlantic University, noted while the divide is narrower than the national average and has decreased among Floridians compared with previous surveys, it helps explain the slow pace of efforts to reduce emissions in the Sunshine State.
"There's still some legacy partisanship and specifically around weaning from fossil fuels," Polsky pointed out. "People think it's a Sunshine State and they seem to think solar energy is a great thing based on our survey result but when it comes to policy to promote it, there's still a very stark partisan divide."
The poll was conducted Sept. 4-6. It also found strong bipartisan support for renewable energy, with 75% of respondents across party lines agreeing Florida should diversify its energy mix. In addition, the survey showed most Floridians, 88%, believe climate change is happening.
While climate change is important to many Floridians, Polsky does not expect it to be a determining issue in the 2024 elections.
"It's not the number one issue. It's not even in the top five, I would say," Polsky observed. "I would not expect climate change to have a determining effect on elections this year, in 2024. That could change."
In the meantime, Polsky emphasized the need for a shift in how climate issues are discussed, advocating for what he calls "humble climate politics." He explained on the left, there can be condescending attitudes toward those who do not believe in or act on climate change, while on the right, misinformation and disinformation are prevalent.
Polsky suggested a more humble approach is necessary, one seeking to understand what the other side is genuinely feeling or objecting to.
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By Rebecca Randall for Earthbeat.
Broadcast version by Trimmel Gomes for Florida News Connection for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration.
Nuestra Señora del Carmen Parish in Cataño, a town bordering the San Juan Bay in Puerto Rico, installed solar in March to prepare for the threat of coming storms and serve as a centerpiece for a climate resilience hub.
Dominican Sr. Lissette Avilés-Ríos, a member of the Parish Pastoral Council, explained that the parish wants to help the community organize and respond in future disasters. Cataño's coastal location makes it vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as hurricanes like María in 2017. Rather than rely on the electric grid in Puerto Rico, which is unstable and frequently experiences power outages, the church opted for the independence offered by solar — a move supported by many Catholics.
In 2017, the one-two punch of Hurricane Irma and Hurricane María left 100% of the island without electricity, limited access to food and clean water, and caused 4,600 deaths. When María hit, Avilés-Ríos chose to stay in her convent on Calle Ocean Drive, right in front of the bay, in order to help neighbors who were older or living alone.
"The level of the bay rose with the storm surge and reached the convent hall," she said. "The second floor flooded when water entered through the balcony doors."
Eventually the power went out that September and didn't come back until November. "Thank God we did not have major damage to the structure; it is made of cement," she added.
David Ortiz, the Puerto Rico director of Solar United Neighbors (SUN), said the experience of Hurricane María and Hurricane Irma left lessons to apply in becoming more resilient for future storms.
Since then, Archbishop Roberto González Nieves has encouraged all 142 parishes to switch to solar by 2030 in a pastoral letter on implementing the teachings of Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical Laudato Si' in the Archdiocese of San Juan de Puerto Rico.
For SUN, that letter signaled the commitment they wanted to see before awarding funds earmarked for frontline communities to create resilience hubs in Puerto Rico. Both Nuestra Señora del Carmen and Centro Buen Pastor, a Catholic nonprofit eco-spirituality center in Guaynabo, received enough funds to cover the cost of equipment and installation.
What is a resilience hub?
The term "resilience hub," coined by the Urban Sustainability Network, includes coordinating community networks of care that provide a safety net in case of an emergency. A resilience hub often begins with identifying a stable source of renewable energy.
Ortiz said this is because access to electricity affects communication — if people can't charge their phones or connect to Wi-Fi, they can't contact their loved ones. It also impacts vulnerable community members, such as those needing medical devices or refrigeration for medicine, or a simple fan to keep an infant cool on a hot day. Clean water fails, too, because pumps need electricity to run.
Avilés-Ríos explained that the church wants to amplify the impact of its solar to be available to the community. "This gives us the security of being able to provide help for those people, parishioners or not, who can charge their cellphones, refrigerate medications or receive respiratory therapies," she said.
To Ortiz, it's a logical choice to provide solar to entities like churches that have proven they are poised to leverage resources to disadvantaged community members. During past hurricane response, "the churches and community groups in many cases were the first ones there to help, because government still couldn't get there or couldn't reach that mountain, but outreach organizations, community organizations, and churches were able to throw stuff on their back and make it up the hill," he said.
Understanding the energy system
Resilience hubs need durability and stability amid an emergency situation to keep power running to meet neighborhood needs.
Ortiz said the solar panels installed at Nuestra Señora del Carmen are made to sustain winds for a Category 3 hurricane. "They tend to hold on," he said.
The panels in the church's system each have micro-inverters, which take direct energy from the sun and turn it into electricity. This means the whole system will keep running even if one panel blows down. In contrast, if damage occurs on a system with a central inverter for all the panels, the power may go down for the whole system.
Either way, getting a panel back up isn't too complex. Ortiz remembers how those with solar fared after María. "I saw it firsthand in my neighborhood," he said. One neighbor's panels stayed intact, and the other had two fly off, but both had electricity.
Additionally, if the grid is down, the local internet company might go down as well. Since most systems rely on a Wi-Fi connection to keep users informed about the amount of storage left on their battery, Ortiz recommends satellite internet.
Another key is having enough storage, said Ortiz. Most solar systems in Puerto Rico are connected to the public electrical grid via net metering, which feeds surplus solar energy back to the grid in exchange for customer credit. But U.S. electric code requires the panels to shut down when there is a power outage to protect workers who are trying to restore the lines in the electric grid. With an inverter, the panels can send electricity to your battery instead.
Nuestra Señora del Carmen already knows that its system works. The system stayed up and running during a recent six-hour power outage.
But the key is still knowing how much storage you will need or how to conserve energy when you're relying only on your solar system. "Sometimes people overconsume when they know a hurricane is coming," said Ortiz. "They wash all these clothes ... and only have half a battery left."
Plus, cloudy days — which are likely during a storm — will generate less electricity. So, a resilience hub might want to decide ahead of time what usage to prioritize, said Ortiz.
Building a community plan
Avilés-Ríos, who is appointed by the bishop to advise on ecological pastoral matters, said the community is in the meeting phase of deciding what resources the resilience hub can offer and how it will operate.
"We still lack details of the plan, but there is a lot of enthusiasm in the community," she said. "We must establish a protocol for when there is a lack of electricity in Cataño."
The hub plans to identify other families in the parish who have solar and create a community map, so everything is not dependent on the church. It will also decide how they might offer other resources beyond electricity, such as food and water.
Avilés-Ríos sees the parish in Cataño as a model for others. "We will guide and motivate the parish communities of the entire archdiocese to establish their ecological action plan," she said.
Of course, while two parishes received full funding through grants, other parishes have not yet accessed funds for solar. Ortiz and Avilés-Ríos said opportunities for federal funding, such as Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, are more limited for churches in Puerto Rico. Unlike churches in the states, the parishes in Puerto Rico cannot directly receive the tax credit.
"We know that there are funds allocated," she said, but "the structure does not make it easy for us to access those funds."
Once the panels and installation are paid for, Ortiz said, net metering could help pay for other aspects of a resilience hub. However, there's been a hiccup. Nuestra Señora del Carmen is still waiting for the meter to be switched to net metering, so that it can earn energy credits. If it saves money on electricity, the church could invest it back into the resilience hub.
Ortiz further pointed out that officials in Puerto Rico have made moves to remove net metering despite its recent extension of the policy. As more electric customers go solar, utility companies worry about lost revenue.
"Although there are economic challenges to establishing photovoltaic systems with backup batteries, we cannot lose hope of achieving it," said Avilés-Ríos. "It is not a merely economic matter but a Christian matter to make good use of the resources of creation and to be a place of help for everyone who needs it."
Rebecca Randall wrote this article for Earthbeat.
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