|
| | | | | |  | | By Debra Kahn, Lorraine Woellert and Catherine Boudreau | | | | | 
The Bootleg Fire | Bootleg Fire Incident Command via AP | UP IN SMOKE — Massive wildfires in Oregon and Washington are torching more than vegetation. They’re also burning through the very policies states and businesses are using to fight climate change. The Bootleg Fire is raging through a carbon storage project in southern Oregon, where 400,000 acres of forest owned by Green Diamond Resource Co. are being preserved to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere. Microsoft in February paid Green Diamond to offset a quarter million tons of the tech giant’s 2021 carbon emissions. Two other wildfires are active within a Colville Indian Reservation carbon project in eastern Washington. Here’s how it works. Carbon offsets — which are created by planting trees, preserving mangroves, buying renewable energy and other activities — are bought and sold as a tool to reduce emissions. Landowners pledge to keep their forests healthy enough to store carbon for at least 100 years. They sell the resulting credits to refineries, factories and other big emitters, which use them as a substitute for reducing their own emissions. But if trees are burning less than 10 years into their projected lifetimes, that's a problem for landowners, industry and policymakers — not to mention the forests, which are estimated to store about twice as much carbon than they emit and are a crucial component of global plans to address climate change. The increasing severity and frequency of wildfires could reverse their role. The Bootleg Fire so far has covered 23.9 percent of Green Diamond's project area, according to data provider CarbonPlan. The Colville Indian Reservation project is one of the largest sellers of credits under a California cap-and-trade program. The Summit Trail and Chuweah Creek fires have covered about 3.5 percent of its 453,000 acres, CarbonPlan estimates. Rules governing offsets anticipate damage from fires. Landowners are required to store a certain percent of a project's credits in a buffer pool they can tap if acreage is lost to wildfires, disease or insect outbreaks. For now, the buffer pool, with about 28.5 million credits, is large enough to absorb the recent fires, said Dan McGraw, head of Americas at Carbon Pulse, a market analysis firm. But if acreage keeps burning, the carbon accounting system could find itself in the red. "We've had two projects be affected by fires, and it's July,” McGraw said. “It's only going to get worse." Debra Kahn has the details. While we’re here: California is moving to cut off water to farmers as the drought dries up rivers and streams in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river watersheds. The Water Resources Control Board will vote on the emergency order Aug. 3.
| | | Has your business been affected by extreme weather? Tell us about it at lwoellert@politico.com and cboudreau@politico.com. We’re on Twitter at @ceboudreau and @Woellert. FOMO? Sign up for The Long Game.
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon led the United Nations from 2007 to 2016, an era that saw the rise of multilateral climate action culminating in the Paris Climate Agreement. Since leaving the U.N., he has used his leadership positions at civil society groups to continue his campaign against climate change. One of his driving messages is that the U.S. and other rich nations need to do more individually and collectively through the World Bank and other international institutions. He spoke to POLITICO about skeptics, former President Trump and Pope Francis. Is it time to ban financing and subsidies of fossil fuels, especially where the World Bank and IMF are concerned? I think it is necessary. There are many countries who have been financing [fossil fuels] through public financial organizations. Unfortunately, my own country, Korea, was one of them. I raised this issue very strongly with the office of the president of Korea and other ministers. Now, Korea has decided not to provide any public financial support, except those which are now going on. And you think the U.S. is not doing enough to help. That’s right. In the U.S. during the Trump administration, a lot of private companies made a lot of promises. Are they delivering? In fact, the private sectors are doing better and more than government. Government has their restrictions and laws and opposition parties. But corporations, when the owners, presidents or chairmen have conviction, they can do more. Lorraine has the full interview. | | | | 
Boeing’s 737 MAX | Ellen M. Banner/The Seattle Times via AP, Pool | The Boeing Co. jumped on the sustainability bandwagon Monday, releasing its first sustainability report. Among other pledges, the company said it wants to deliver commercial planes capable of flying on sustainable fuels by 2030. Fidelity International, a global firm with $787.1 billion in assets under management, wants companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and disclose climate risk or risk a Fidelity vote against management. Fidelity also wants to see more women on boards. The guidelines are here. Exxon Mobil Corp. is still facing hard questions. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chair of the Oversight and Reform Committee, and Rep. Ro Khanna, chair of the Subcommittee on the Environment, want lobbyist Keith McCoy to testify after he was caught on tape making some amazing confessions, including this gem: “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes.”
| | | LABOR GOES GREEN IN TEXAS — Texas labor unions want the state to more than triple its wind capacity and increase solar power sixfold by 2040. In a paper released Monday , 27 unions, including steelworkers, electricians, teachers and transit officials, said state and local vehicle fleets should go all-electric and public schools should be retrofitted for energy efficiencies. A high-speed rail connecting the state’s five largest cities is also on the to-do list. Republicans in the Texas Legislature blamed the February freeze on renewable energy and considered putting fees on new projects, even though natural gas and coal also struggled to produce power during the storm. Notably absent from the unions’ Texas Climate Jobs Project are coal and utility workers.
| | | | 
Flooding has turned deadly in India. | Channi Anand/AP Photo | A heat dome has settled over the U.S. The Pacific Northwest has reported 117 deaths from the heat wave so far. High temperatures have triggered an increase in shellfish infections, which is making people sick. Visits to emergency rooms are up 69-fold in parts of the country. The Texas power grid could reach record high demand this week. Russia is tallying crop losses. There’s civil unrest in the Middle East, where temperatures have topped 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Hundreds of people are dead after catastrophic flooding in China and monsoon-induced landslides in India.
| | | Sustainable investing fell in Europe after the bloc set standards for sustainable finance products — and presumably weeded out the green-washers. Europe reported a 13 percent decline in the growth of sustainable investment assets from 2018 to 2020. Globally, sustainable investments reached $98.4 trillion, or nearly 36 percent of total assets under management, the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance reported.
| | | — The Great Barrier Reef won’t be listed as an endangered World Heritage Site, a win for Australia, which had lobbied against the designation. The Guardian has details. — There’s a dramatic turn in the Chevron-Ecuador saga. Disbarred attorney Steven Donziger, who has pursued the oil company for decades, was found guilty of six counts of criminal contempt of court. “It’s time to pay the piper,” U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska wrote. The Wall Street Journal has the story. — Manhattan has no coal mines , but mine workers will be there to picket BlackRock on Wednesday anyway. The asset manager is a big shareholder in Warrior Met Coal, where the United Mine Workers of America has been on strike.
| | | | SUBSCRIBE TO "THE RECAST" TODAY: Power is shifting in Washington and in communities across the country. More people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. The Recast is a twice-weekly newsletter that explores the changing power dynamics in Washington and breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics and policy in America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country and hear critical new voices that challenge business as usual. Don't miss out, SUBSCRIBE . Thank you to our sponsor, Intel. | | | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
|
