Climate Change Prevention and Care

From the desk of Pat Ford, SOS executive director. May 10, 2013

For some years I have been seeking simple, evocative ways to communicate a core SOS conviction as we all confront climate change: that work to stop or slow it, and work to weather or respond to it, must be done each in concert with the other, in strategic and task unison. I won’t outline here the many reasons this is so, but I can if requested.

I just found my newest candidates for the simplest, most evocative way so far, in a book by Dr. Paul Farmer called To Repair the World. He is the amazing co-founder and leader of Partners in Health, the group begun in Haiti but now working in nations across earth to bring health care, education and clean water to the poorest of people. His book is a group of his speeches to graduating classes of many kinds. I recommend it; this is a man to listen to.

Partners in Health has a basic principle in its work: integrate prevention and care. This is something we, and other conservationists, and leaders of all kinds, must do with climate change. We must integrate work to prevent it and to care for those afflicted by it, a group that includes all of us and the web of life of which we are part. But, as Dr. Farmer reminds and re-reminds us, those first in being afflicted by climate chaos will primarily be the voiceless: poor people and the web of life minus us. (That’s quite a phrase: the web of life minus us. It describes a way we tend to think that is not the way it is.)

Prevention and care. This captures pretty well our moral and civic obligations, to both people and our part of the earth, as we talk and work with others on climate change.

The Oregonian: A 21st-century blueprint for saving Oregon species from climate change

By Bill Bradbury

April 20, 2013

You don't have to leave western Oregon to witness the escalating impacts of climate change.

On Mount Hood, river-feeding glaciers thousands of years old have shrunk by as much as 60 percent in the past 100 years.

In the often water-starved Klamath Basin, average summer temperatures are projected to increase by more than 10 degrees by 2075, with surrounding snowpack levels expected to decrease by as much as 90 percent.

In the Columbia River, average August and September water temperatures are already pushing levels that disrupt salmon migration, and they're projected to rise another 4 degrees by midcentury.

Given those pressing realities, I read with great interest the plan just released by the Obama administration to help America's wildlife adapt to the rapid habitat changes caused by global warming. Much of the plan's focus is on plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. The act, which turns 40 this year, is not without its critics, and I can be frustrated by how long it can take to get protection for critically imperiled species and, once they're listed, how long it can take to get a recovery plan in place.

Yet, when we use it as intended, the law can have a tremendous impact. More than 90 percent of the species it protects have been saved from extinction, and hundreds are on the road to recovery. Here in Oregon, some of our most cherished species -- from coho salmon to gray whales and bald eagles -- owe their existence to the Endangered Species Act.

But as we move through the climate-fueled challenges of the 21st century, we're entering uncharted waters in the battle to preserve the broad diversity of life critical to our planet's future.

The Obama administration's new plan includes a series of mitigation measures for wildlife, including protecting corridors that allow animals to move to more suitable habitat as climate change alters ecosystems. It's an intriguing idea, but will it be enough? Or is it simply an incremental step in a much longer journey we've yet to commit to?

We're entering uncharted waters in the battle to preserve the broad diversity of life critical to our planet's future.

What "corridor," for example, can help coho salmon escape the ever more heated Columbia River? And consider the plight of Oregon's fast-disappearing wolverines. Scientists have known for some time now that wolverines require at least 5 feet of spring snowpack in the high- mountain terrain where they dig protective dens.

So it was hardly surprising that when proposing Endangered Species Act protections for wolverines earlier this year, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists cited climate change as the greatest threat to the 300 or so of the solitary predators that remain from Oregon and Washington to the northern Rockies. Unchecked, temperature increases could very likely wipe out wolverines in the Lower 48 before the end of this century.

Yet, just as was the case when polar bears were listed as "threatened" in 2008, federal wildlife managers declared that any protections extended to the wolverine would not include regulation of greenhouse gas pollution -- the leading driver of rising global temperatures that are threatening wolverines and degrading the planet we all share. That troubling dichotomy reflects the need for a dramatic change in our current political climate, one in which elected officials can be far too quick to trade critically important long-term conservation and economic benefits for the exaggerated benefits of short-term economic gain.

Whenever we're ready, even the most challenging policy solutions are within reach. We need only glance back at the confident steps taken to preserve the national bird we now routinely see soaring above the Willamette River for a model of how to move forward. We not only used the Endangered Species Act to protect bald eagles from being killed and captured -- much as we're proposing to do with the wolverine -- but we also banned pesticides such as DDT. In the process of protecting the eagle's habitat, as required by the Endangered Species Act, we cleaned up the waterways critical to our own health and economic stability.

The sooner we realize that protecting our environment and our economy is not an "either-or" proposition, the more quickly we can get down to the work of building a sustainable bridge to the future that's anchored in the reality of our times.

Only then will we have a real shot at protecting Oregon's irreplaceable ecosystems, from the high-mountain home of wolverines and our winter sports industries to the rivers critical to the future of our salmon runs, as well as our commercial and recreational fishing interests.

Bill Bradbury, former Oregon secretary of state, is a member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and is on the board of the Oregon Environmental Council.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/04/a_21st-century_blueprint_for_s.html

Fires, Sediment, Salmon and Taxpayers

From the desk of Pat Ford. April 12, 2013.

Climate change is changing the Columbia and Snake Rivers. One timely example is the link between fires in the Snake River Basin, sediment in the lower Snake reservoirs, and taxpayer liabilities for the lower Snake waterway.

Sediment accumulation in the lower Snake reservoirs is already a big expensive problem. Over time it dooms the reservoir behind Lower Granite Dam to a fairly short life, as it steadily fills in and thus creates a fiscally unmanageable flood risk to Lewiston, Idaho. The Army Corps of Engineers’ local office has no taste to squarely face the long-term issue, preferring instead to repeat next winter its usual temporary response: dredge the reservoir’s navigation channel to keep it open a few more years. Retired Forest Service hydrologist Al Espinosa aptly calls this approach “chronic dredging.”

But in its environmental impact statement (EIS) intended to legally justify the next round of chronic dredging, the Corps admits a compounding climate effect. Fire frequency in the watersheds above the dam is increasing, thus increasing already-sizable sediment flows into the reservoir.

During the 1970s 214 square miles of forest burned within watersheds that feed sediment to the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers. In the 1980s, 1,125 square miles burned. In the 1990s, 2,281 square miles. In the 2000s, 3,025 square miles. In 2012 alone, over 1,300 square miles burned.

Appendix D to the Corps’ document is a study by James R. Goode et. al., Enhanced Sediment Delivery in a Changing Climate in Semi-arid Mountain Basins: Implications for Water Resource Management and Aquatic Habitat in the Northern Rocky Mountains. From that study:

"Climate-modulated interactions among vegetation, wildfire, and hydrology suggest that sediment yields will likely increase in response to climate change. Within central Idaho recent climate-driven increases in wildfire burn severity and extent have the potential to produce sediment yields roughly 10-times greater {emphasis added] than those observed during the 20th century. …these elevated sediment yields are probably outside of the range of expectations for downstream reservoirs, which may have consequences for reservoir management and life expectancy."

The Army Corps does not quantify the sediment and fiscal impacts of this trend. Doing so would show chronic dredging as even more fiscally and environmentally unsustainable than it already is. But residents of Lewiston, waterway users, taxpayers, fishermen, and Northwest elected leaders need that information, so SOS and others are asking for it.

This is not the only climate-related impact of the Corps’ chronic dredging. The Corps’ document, for example, completely ignores the unique value of Snake River salmon and steelhead in the hot-and-getting-hotter Columbia and Snake Rivers – that they are the highest and longest-migrating salmon group on earth, with the coldest spawning areas of any salmon in the 48 states. Yet these are the salmon most adversely affected by both the presence of the Lower Snake dams and chronic dredging of the lower Snake. Climate change also has large effects, which also go un-analyzed, on the Corps’ plan and justifications for disposal of the huge volumes of dredged silt.

Climate change effects are a critical legal, biological, and economic issue confronting people who live near and use the lower Snake reservoirs, Northwest people generally, and American taxpayers. These effects strengthen the already-strong case that what Al Espinosa calls “the lower Snake entitlement” should and will not survive federal fiscal retrenchment.

Climate change as it affects the lower Snake waterway is a taxpayer issue.

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*I want to acknowledge my reliance on Linwood Laughy’s expert citizen analysis of the Army Corps’ lower Snake dredging EIS.

Light in the River - Save Our wild Salmon Coalition’s climate program in 2013

Salmon, the light in our rivers, are also a beacon to help lead us through climate change.  What these adaptive masters need most to make it through climate change is connectivity – diversely linked and scaled chains of habitats.  Connectivities – ecological, social, institutional – are also what people need both to stabilize climate change and to weather it.  Salmon can show us such ways if we let them survive to do so.
 
Our program seeks both to stem climate change, and help salmon, waters and people weather its effects.  We must meet these challenges in tandem; with recognition that climate change dissolves boundaries between issues, laws, and people; and with urgency that is also yoked to the long haul.  Our program tackles immediate challenges, and sets foundations for the work of years that climate change in the Columbia and Snake Rivers will demand.
 
Our Light in the River program in 2013 is:
 
1.  In March, re-issue our 2010 Light in the River reports:  A Great Wave Rising, by Patty Glick and Jim Martin, which documents climate change’s effects on salmon and describes a science framework and actions to respond; and Bright Future, by the NW Energy Coalition, which shows the Northwest can meet its future electricity needs, electrify cars and trucks, wean itself from coal power, adjust hydropower to restore wild salmon, create jobs and keep electric bills low – all through expanded energy efficiency and new renewable energy.
 
2.  Highlight climate effects and seek climate action in each part of our salmon work.  This includes our participation in NOAA’s Columbia-Snake stakeholder talks, our work to finally secure a legal Columbia-Snake Biological Opinion for endangered salmon, our challenge to the Army Corps of Engineers’ fruitless dredging of the lower Snake, and our promotion and touring late this year with DamNation, the new film on American river restorations.
 
3.  Explore with Northwest leaders ways and means to create fruitful collaboration on how to weather climate disruptions for the Columbia-Snake and its users.  We are talking to leaders of NOAA Northwest, Bonneville Power Administration, and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council; Northwest governors, members of Congress, and Indian Tribes; and users of both rivers. 
 
4.  In July and August, when water temperatures are at their highest, elevate in Northwest media and to its leaders the threat of hot water to the Columbia and Snake.  Both are getting hotter, hot rivers are sick rivers, and the illness affects every river use and user.  We are partnering with other organizations on this public awareness project.
 
5.  Build public and political support for the Columbia Basin Tribal initiative to make “ecosystem function” a co-equal purpose (with power and flood control) in the Columbia River Treaty being re-negotiated by the U.S. and Canada.  The new treaty must put stemming and adapting to climate change at its core; the Tribes’ initiative is the way to do that.
 
6.  Help cut carbon emissions.  We have joined work led by others to keep the Northwest from becoming a coal export corridor, and the Lewis & Clark/Nez Perce Trail from becoming a transport corridor to the tar sands; and to support the Northwest wind industry against Bonneville Power’s unneeded curtailments.  We will keep partnering with NW Energy Coalition to expand the job-creating engines of Northwest energy: energy efficiency and renewable energy.  

Light in the River reports

In 2009-10, the NW Energy Coalition, Sierra Club and Save Our wild Salmon Coalition published two reports to help the Northwest combat climate change and weather its effects:*

• A Great Wave Rising: solutions for Columbia and Snake River salmon in the era of global warming by climate specialist Patty Glick and fisheries biologist Jim Martin, documents how climate change is harming salmon, and recommends science-based actions to lessen or help salmon adapt to its effects.

• Bright Future: how to keep the Northwest’s lights on, jobs growing, goods moving, and salmon swimming in the era of climate change by NW Energy Coalition staff, shows that the Northwest can meet future electricity needs, electrify cars and trucks, wean itself from dirty coal power, adjust hydropower production enough to restore wild salmon, create jobs and keep electric bills low – all through expanded energy efficiency and new renewable energy.

We meant the two reports to be read and used in tandem, by people, businesses and governments, to fashion strategies to stem global warming and help salmon and rivers survive unavoidable changes. In fact, Bright Future significantly influenced regional energy policy and continues to do so, while A Great Wave Rising received less attention from policymakers, media and people than it deserves.

At that time, most Northwest policymakers (with exceptions such as then-congressman and now Washington Governor Jay Inslee) saw climate change more as a future threat than a clear and present danger. Today, most Northwest elected leaders, agencies and people realize that climate change is harming our air, waters, lands, forests, farms, animals, people, cities and economies right now … with worse on its way.

Today, coal plants are closing. Citizens in every Northwest state are passionately debating whether our region should be a coal transport corridor to China, and whether to continue growing wind and other forms of renewable energy. Each of us has one eye on our changing weather and water, and the other on our children.

In 2013, the Northwest has two new governors, several new members of Congress, many new state legislators and agency leaders. The Bonneville Power Administration has a new chief as that powerful agency enters its second 75 years. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council is revising its regional plans for both salmon and energy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has launched a new Columbia-Snake stakeholder process, while at the same time re-writing, with Bonneville Power and the Army Corps of Engineers, its illegal salmon plan for a fourth time.

So it is timely for Save Our wild Salmon to re-issue, in tandem, the two reports, and re-send them to policymakers, writers and reporters, and other interested people. We have not updated them; events since 2009-10 have largely confirmed their conclusions and recommendations, though we welcome debate and discussion of that assessment.

We hope A Great Wave Rising and Bright Future will help people, businesses, agencies and leaders tackle our common climate challenge. A 4-page summary of A Bright Future is also available for download.

*We thank the Hewlett Foundation for special support that allowed us to commission both reports.