Nowadays, try to think of walking into any restaurant or store that does not have air conditioning. Here, in San Diego, where the summers are cool, I’ve known folks to turn on the AC once the thermometer hits 70. I was recently in a conference room in which most folks were wearing sweaters, and the person leading the meeting turned the air conditioning way up. We even air condition the outdoors. How often have you seen a business with its doors open while the AC is pumping away? From the torrid deserts and sweltering South to the most northern ends of New England we turn on the AC. In 2020, nearly 90 percent of U.S. homes had air conditioning.

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This is yet another difference between Europe and the U.S. While we’re at 90 percent AC, that figure for Europe has stayed around 20 percent, with some countries having a very low rate of cooling the inside air. Percentages for the UK and Germany are as low as five percent and three percent, respectively.

Europeans have traditionally viewed air conditioning as an excess, something Americans, with their big SUVs, big houses, and big everything indulge themselves in.

That difference is now becoming less different. More and more Europeans are putting in window units or installing whole-house air conditioning. While part of the reason is simply advertising and the influence of U.S. culture, the biggest reason is climate change. Global warming is now bringing heat waves in the nineties or even triple digits to England, France, Germany, and the rest of Europe.

Last year, a heat wave hit Scandinavia that prompted health alerts in Finland and Sweden. In the United Kingdom, 2025 was its hottest year on record and last month, the UK recorded its hottest day in May, with London temperatures exceeding 90 degrees on the 25th. The thermometer hit 95 at Kew Gardens in southwest London.

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Another heat wave hit Europe at the end of May. Temperature records were broken, with the heat soaring to over 86 degrees throughout France. The heat was likely a major contributing factor in deaths at sporting events. The temperatures hit the upper eighties in Italy as well.

Air conditioning comes to some European countries

Germans have always eschewed air conditioning. That’s changing. In a span of four years, from 2020 to 2024, German production of air conditioning surged by 75 percent, from 181,000 units to approximately 317,000 units. Imports of air conditioners rose by 50 percent as well. The pandemic may have played a part in this development. People stuck at home may have thought passing the time a little cooler may have made it more bearable. But if it were simply because of COVID, that trend would not be continuing, as it has been.

It’s the same in the UK. As London, Belfast, even Edinburgh now swelter for parts of the summer, more and more people in Britain and Northern Ireland are getting air conditioning. The number of houses with air conditioning has doubled, from two million to four, in the past three years. Demographers and others who follow trends like this say more than just heat is boosting sales of AC units. They say more people are working from home.

Other European countries say “not so much”

Italy actually restricts the use of air conditioning as well as heating. With some exceptions, cooling and heating in public buildings are allowed only during the hottest and coldest times of year, and then only during certain times of day. Further, air conditioning can be set no lower than 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Similar wintertime restrictions keep the heat from being set higher than 70.

The energy intensity of air conditioning has the Swiss viewing it as incompatible with their country’s climate goals. And while Switzerland has no outright bans on air conditioning, folks there sometimes have a few hurdles to pass before installing a unit. In Geneva, possibly the strictest canton, people may have to show a legitimate need, such as a medical condition, before being allowed to install AC.

And the Swiss are on to something. Even though renewables are advancing everywhere, we still use a lot of fossil fuels for our electricity. With Europe and the rest of the world cooling more of their houses, businesses, and schools, by 2050 the emissions from all of our air conditioning could contribute another tenth of a degree of warming. That may not sound like much, but small increases in the overall planetary temperature have great ramifications.

Thoughts? Are there better ways of staying cool besides AC? Have you sweltered through Europe in summer? Please leave a comment by clicking the “Leave a comment” button below.

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Previous Green Dispatches about air conditioning and staying cool:

First, to be sure we’re on the same page, let’s talk about what an invasive species is and is not. Let’s get our terms straight about what is meant by an invasive species and how that differs from a nonnative species.

When I teach interns, volunteers, and students about invasive and nonnative species, I tell them that we are going to dig into our Plato and Schopenhauer and study philosophy, because these questions and definitions have less to do with how you measure or quantify something and more to do with how you think about it.

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A nonnative species is any living organism that is found outside its historic range. These do not necessarily cause harm to their new environments. In San Diego, where I live, an example of a harmless nonnative species is the Moreton Bay fig tree. Native to Australia, these trees have been planted here for more than 100 years. Huge, old ones grow in our Balboa Park. These trees are from elsewhere, but they don’t spread into other areas and cause no environmental or ecological problems. Moreton Bay fig trees are a nonnative species in Southern California. They are not invasive.

How far away is far away?

That’s pretty straightforward. Moreton Bay fig trees are native to another continent on the other side of the world. But how far away does a species have to travel to be considered nonnative? Lots of folks in Southern California plant Saint Catherine’s lace, a buckwheat native to the Channel Islands, which are 20 to 50 miles off the coast of California. These buckwheat plants wouldn’t be here unless people planted them, but they naturally occur on islands just over the horizon. Not naturally here, but naturally occurring only 50 miles away. Native? Nonnative?

At the zoo where I work are Tecate cypress, endangered trees that naturally occur on Otay Mountain, ten miles away. They do not naturally occur along the coast, where the zoo is found. So are they native or nonnative to the zoo’s landscaping? They wouldn’t be growing at the zoo if we hadn’t planted them, but from the zoo I can see the mountain they grow on. That’s how close naturally occurring groves are. Native? Nonnative?

What if the organisms move on their own?

Organisms change their ranges all the time, expanding into new areas and abandoning old ones. Birders in particular will note and document bird species moving or expanding ranges. If they naturally move on their own accord, a perfectly natural thing to do, are they native to their new lands or waters?

But what of organisms moving into new territory because of human activity? The Texas armadillo has been extending its range northward for generations, due mostly to human activity. And the Baltimore oriole and other birds are shifting their ranges because of human-induced climate change. These creatures have moved into new territory because of us humans. They probably would have kept their old addresses if it wasn’t for us. Are they native or nonnative in their new landscapes?

Invasive species

Invasive species are nonnatives that are harmful. When I talk to folks here in San Diego, one example of an invasive species I like to give is mosquitos. When I moved here, decades ago, mosquitos were virtually unknown, and I was glad to be free of the pests I grew up with in Appalachia. Now, getting bit by a mosquito in Sa Diego is a common occurrence. As with much of the rest of the world, we have been invaded by Aedes, tropical mosquito species that can spread diseases. These certainly fit the criteria for invasive: from somewhere else and harmful.

Ecologically, invasive species harm native species. They can do this in a lot of ways. They can outcompete native species for food, disrupt reproductive cycles, or push out native organisms from their territory. They can spread disease, like mosquitos. They can reduce the numbers of native species by just eating them up.

That’s pretty easy to understand. We get back into the realm of Aristotle and Kirkegaard when we distinguish nonnative and invasive sometimes. Invasives vary as to the amount and type of harm they can cause, as well as how humans view those harms. Invasive species that attack food crops are taken quite seriously by farmers, as well as local, state, and federal governments. No matter the extent of the harm, a lot of resources are spent to eradicate or control for agricultural invasive species. In these cases, few people shy away from calling these pests invasive.

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There are nonnative species that are slightly problematic. Introduced to much of the rest of the world from Europe, the house sparrow may be a good example of such an invasive species. They are disruptive, as they take over nesting cavities used by native birds. House sparrows avoid grasslands and woodlands, however, preferring urban and suburban environments. This behavior limits the harm this species poses to native birds. They are harmful, but only so much.

There are people, and I know a good number of them, who say there are no invasive species or that folks like me make too much of the harm they cause, that we make mountains out of invasive molehills. Well, I disagree and hope I can introduce and clarify several concerns about invasive species as this series continues. If you have questions or comments, please hit the “Leave a comment” button below. I’m eager to hear from you.

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Petrini was concerned about the advance of fast food to Italy and all that it represents, not only quickness and convenience over quality but what that quickness does to our spirits. It’s more than the difference between a Big Mac and fries versus a plate of ravioli; it’s what happens to us when we don’t take time with family or friends to sit and savor both the tastes and the company.

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Three years after the pasta protest, Petrini founded the Slow Food Movement, which not only countered fast food but also the entire quickened pace of modern life.

The idea of slow—for food, for living—developed into the idea of slow travel or slow tourism. As with slow food, slow travel had its beginnings in Italy. And in the same vein, slow travel emphasizes connection, spending time to get to know a location and maybe getting to know the people who live there.

Nat King Cole sings of Route 66 when the prototype of the interstate highway was still kinda sorta slow travel.

Sebastian Modak, writing in Condé Nast Traveler reports that many tourists have soured on jetting from place to place to tick off bucket list items one after another. He writes, “Slow travel can be best understood as a collective reaction to our post-industrial obsession with convenience, where time, and using as little of it as possible, is the biggest priority in getting from point A to point B.”

If you’re interested in a slow approach to traveling, there are companies packaging slow tourist itineraries. One of the oldest is Cittaslow, which was established in 1999, in Tuscany (where else?). According to their website, their packages “respect the environment and local culture.” When reviewing their packages, the first thing I noted was the destinations are off the beaten path: not one mention of Rome, Naples, or Venice, but smaller places.

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In emphasizing the experience of travel over the get-there-as-quickly-as-possible mindset that dominates our idea of the modern vacation, a lot of slow travel advocates sing the praises of rail. Having traveled via Amtrak a number of times, I agree that taking the train can be a wonderful experience. From my home in San Diego, I’ve ridden the rails to Los Angels on business as well as pleasure trips. The Amtrak central hub in L.A., Union Station, is worthy of a trip in and of itself. Completed in 1939, the structure is a cathedral of travel that blends aspects of Spanish mission with art deco. You can spend the better part of an hour taking in the huge ornate windows and other architectural splendors.

My wife and I have also taken the train on short getaways to San Juan Capistrano to visit the renowned mission. Our biggest trips have been on the Coast Starlight to Seattle. This is old style luxurious train travel. We spent hours in the large-windowed observation car watching miles and miles of California coastline and Cascade Mountains go by. It was also a pleasure to watch fields and farms pass by as we enjoyed our meals in the dining car. We played cards and other games in the club car and were graciously and hilariously entertained by the employees.

That being said, every time we rode the Starlight Express, the train has run behind schedule. And I hear that this problem is endemic to many Amtrak routes.

Train travel also get high marks for being climate friendly. Taking the train has about half the carbon footprint of driving a hybrid, one fifth the footprint of driving a regular car, and 1/7th the carbon output of taking a flight.

One interesting take on slow travel is ’s advocacy of slow cycling. Since the pandemic, more and more folks are riding e-bikes, which can go faster than just peddling, and some electric bikes can go way fast. He emphasizes that the 20 mph capability of most e-bikes makes them incompatible with bike lanes shared by unpowered cyclists.

Other types of slow travel

I’m all for visiting overlooked destinations. Part of the reason I started my other Substack, Two Old Guys, Two Bikes, and A Lot of Electrons was to emphasize the enjoyment of short morning or day trips close to home.

One of the more environmental ways to “travel” is by staying put with a staycation, staying at home and enjoying things close to where you live.

You could consider staycations as slow travel. Being authentic and getting to know the locals? Hey, you’re already authentic, and with a staycation you already know the locals. There are no hassles of travel, getting to the airport, checking baggage, or going through security. And staying put has a very low carbon footprint.

Also, I think you can visit major tourist destinations and still have a slow travel experience. San Francisco, Paris, London all are big cities and major tourist destinations. They might be filled with fast food restaurants, but these metropolises are not by default inauthentic. There are still local restaurants and interesting neighborhoods to hang out in. One of my last visits to San Francisco included a stop at a Polish restaurant, with cabbage rolls, sausage, and, well… authenticity.

I’m not suggesting folks avoid slow tourism packages, but I think you can create your own slow travel experience. That experience can be pretty much what you, yourself, want to make it: big cities, smaller destinations, cycling, train travel, you name it.

Have you ever purposefully traveled slowly? Have you ever opted for the train instead of flying? Do you think slow travel is part of a sustainable lifestyle? Please share your experiences by clicking the “Leave a comment button below.

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Firebreaks

I wrote about wildfire and firebreaks back in March, in the meantime, there have been some new studies on the topics. Firebreaks, or fuel breaks, are gaps in forest, chaparral, or other wildlands that serve as barriers to spreading wildfires. The Forest Service creates firebreaks by clearing a wide path through trees and vegetation. Lacking anything to burn, fires will often stop at these breaks. I say often, because it also happens that winds can sometimes fan flames across the breaks. In 2003, during a San Diego wildfire, Santa Ana winds blew embers across ten lanes of highway to ignite fires. No firebreak will stop a fire in such conditions.

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Firebreaks are also used as passageways for firefighting equipment during fires. Some of the most crude fuel breaks I’ve seen, usually ones created long ago, are those in which the Forest Service simply bulldozed a swath of land through the forest and hoped for the best.

Firebreaks and invasives

Firebreaks help in fighting wildfire, but they are created and maintained at a cost. Walk along just about any firebreak anywhere, and you’ll see invasive species. Invasive plant species rely on disturbance, and firebreaks by definition disturb the natural landscape. In the western United States, cheatgrass (Brooms tectorum) and other nonnative grasses are among the most prevalent invaders. Around where I live, nonnative grasses and European mustard (Brassica nigra) most often invade firebreaks.

While firebreaks can stop or impede wildfire, by allowing the advancement of nonnative grasses and other annuals, they can, in an environmental Catch22, actually increase wildfire risk. Invasive grasses and other exotic annuals grow and bloom in spring, dying and drying out for the rest of the year. The dried-up remains become ready tinder for the smallest spark.

In a further feedback loop, nonnative grasses burn easily, increasing fire frequency. Fires can then burn so often that native shrubs and trees lack the time to grow to maturity and reproduce. More grass invades in a cycle called “type conversion,” until the landscape is transformed to nearly 100 percent exotic annual grasses.

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Why e-bikes rule

Folks have wanted good electric bikes for years and years. But it’s only since 2020 that they have really taken off in the U.S. Long ago, during a gas crunch, as I recall—this time during the mid- to late-eighties—people hit the streets with mopeds. These hybrids impressed me as not quite enough of anything. They lacked the lightness and agility of a bicycle, without the power of a motorcycle. Yet they required the maintenance of a motorbike: oil changes and stops at the gas station. They were noisy, too. Though a lot of folks advocated for them (“Just try one!” “They’re really big in Europe!”), their popularity followed other phenomena like Nehru jackets, quadrophonic sound systems, Betamax, and laser disks.

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E-bikes don’t have the maintenance requirements of internal combustion. They won’t spill oil or gasoline, so you can park them at your apartment, just as you do with a regular “acoustic” bike.

Cycling, even with the added motor and battery of an e-bike is one of the best transportation options for the environment. The resources, the steel, aluminum, rubber, and other material needed to manufacture a bicycle is only a fraction of the tons needed for a car. After a bicycle is assembled, pedaling it down the street or bike lane is almost carbon neutral. Factoring everything together, manufacturing and pedaling a bike, the carbon footprint of cycling comes to about 1.2 ounces of CO2 per mile.

That’s about ten percent of the carbon produced by driving.1 That’s lower than the CO2 you produce when you ride a bus. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s even lower than walking. E-bikes have twice the carbon footprint of an acoustic bike because they need to be recharged, but even so, that is far lower than driving.

Why I like my electric bike

My electric bike has enhanced my mobility. I’m reluctant to drive short distances for trivial things, like shopping for small items, picking up library books, or stopping at local cafes and restaurants. It doesn’t seem worth the effort of getting in the car and spewing exhaust, not to mention finding parking. I now run twice the number of these small errands with the new bike.

While I’ve always made some of these trips on my acoustic bike, particularly for round trips under ten miles, the electric bike has opened up more possibilities. Although it’s only a little over three miles away, going to Balboa Park, the large park in the city of San Diego, has always been difficult. Cyclists in my neighborhood face steep climbs coming and going. With the electric bike, I now make this trip frequently. The motor gets me up the steep hills easily. It’s the same with trips to other destinations—Old Town, Mission Valley, Mission Trails Regional Park—some of these offer more than one or two great climbs. They are now among my regular biking destinations.

One might think that adding a motor to help you cycle would make you lazy. But I’m getting more exercise with the e-bike because I just ride more now, more than I did with my regular bike. Subsequently, my overall health has improved. Some aches that I’ve had for decades aren’t as bad as they were a year ago. About four years ago, my blood sugar had risen to the prediabetic stage. A recent lab results indicated that my levels had lowered. I’ve also changed my diet, but I’m certain one reason for my better numbers is riding my new electric bicycle.

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Additionally, cycling requires alertness. Cyclists are always checking the roadway for broken glass or other obstacles, remaining cognizant of traffic, changing gears, maintaining balance, all while pedaling down the road. I know there is no way to measure this, but I’m certain that spending several hours a week in a more aware mental state on the bike has sharpened me up a bit. My memory seems better. I even remember people’s names at parties a lot better now.

As gas prices skyrocket, I’m also saving a little money with my bike. Besides gas money, I’m spending less on parking. All in all, I’ve probably saved about $300 over the last year. I would save a lot more—factoring in maintenance, car washes, insurance and other costs—if I completely replaced my car with my bike, but I’m not ready to do that. A recent study from Clean Cities Campaign and Solve The School Run found a family could save around $4,000 a year by replacing a second car with an electric cargo bike combined with increased use of public transportation.

New laws

As more people ride electric bicycles, the number of crashes has increased. Although most of these crashes are caused by cars and trucks striking cyclists, states and municipalities are addressing this safety concern by passing laws regulating e-bikes. In San Diego, the laws governing powered bicycles are pretty much the same as those that have governed bicycles for decades: stop at stop signs, obey other signs, and observe traffic signals.

While I’m in agreement with some age restrictions—for example, keeping young children off e-bikes, or speed limits on bike paths—some states are going over the top with electric bike legislation. Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, and West Virginia now require licensing and registration for e-bikes. New Jersey goes even further, requiring insurance. As most of these crashes are caused by drivers, I think city councils and state legislatures might better spend their efforts by making safer streets and cracking down on bad automobile driving.

Get an e-bike!

If you’re in reasonable health and live in an area where you can cycle safely, I highly encourage you to consider getting and riding an electric bike. Get the bike that’s right for you. If you have kids or plan to do lots of shopping with your bike, a cargo e-bike might be your best choice. Short commutes? A lower-powered, lighter commuter bike, one light enough to carry upstairs or lift onto a bus bike rack, would be a good choice. The Guardian just published a gear guide (it looks suspiciously like advertorial, but it still may be helpful) that could be a good starting point to pick up accessories you might need, such as a bike lock and rack.

One more bit of advice: pedal, pedal, pedal! Hey, you’re on a bike. It has two pedals. Use them. While the motor is helpful, you may as well get some exercise while you’re cycling. And every bit that you pedal saves electricity and saves your battery. My e-bike is estimated to get up to 70 miles per charge. I’ve been able to get well over 100 miles on a single charge simply because I pedal most of the time.

Please share your experiences with your bike, electric or acoustic. Do you ride a lot? Commute to work? Are you thinking of getting an e-bike? Just click the “Leave a comment” button and contribute to the conversation.

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Previous Green Dispatches on cycling and electric bikes:

We went one night to try the super-affordable, super-fast food. I don’t remember anything about what I ate that night. What I do remember were the bright yellow arches, the glowing neon that emanated from the shiny new building, and the tall poles with their big lights beaming down on the parking lot. My parents and other families were probably happy they could feed themselves and their kids for a couple bucks. What I remember most from that night is that McDonald’s was ILLUMINATED!

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McDonald’s no longer features glowing arches, but as much as humans like fast food, we like to light things up at night. And just like that McDonald’s on that long-ago Atlanta night, we light things up a lot. We light our suburban streets and front porches. We illuminate freeways and parking lots. All these lights help us get around after dark, and we feel safer when we turn on the lights. But these photons can spill over into the surrounding countryside and hillsides. This unwanted light is called light pollution.

Light pollution history

The first mention of light pollution I found was in a search of The New York Times historical database: an article on astronomers struggling with the increasing lights of Tucson in the early seventies.1 With advances in air conditioning enabling residents to live through the extreme heat of southern Arizona summers, the population of Tucson had mushroomed from 30,000 to 300,000. Federal housing policies also encouraged ownership of single-family homes, leading to urban sprawl. The bright lights of the big city were spreading to the countryside, in this case the Sonoran Desert.

The resulting bright lights made research difficult for the astronomers at several nearby observatories, including the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory and the Smithsonian’s Whipple Observatory on Mt. Hopkins, 47 miles south of Tucson in the Santa Rita mountains.

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Light pollution is often overlooked. Unlike other forms of pollution, it’s only around half the time, from dusk till dawn. And it’s not considered pollution by most folks. We’re attracted to the bright lights of our cities. For years and years after the astronomers in southern Arizona first complained of the bright lights of Tucson, light pollution was thought to affect only astronomers and star gazers.

More recent research has revealed that light pollution has broader ramifications, affecting animals and ecosystems.

What we now know

Even some of the darkest skies are being encroached by light pollution. Chili’s Atacama Desert has been prized by astronomers for its almost crystal-clear night sky and lack of clouds, averaging more than 300 clear nights per year. Astronomers there just fought—and won—a battle to keep an energy firm from developing a green-power project, yet concerns persist that they are fighting a losing battle.

The astronomers are aware that the forces of greater populations and commerce are not on their side. Nighttime is getting brighter the world over. Though researchers recently found that certain light pollution policies have brought about some dimming, notably in Europe, daily satellite data has shown that light pollution has worsened by 16 percent worldwide in the last eight years. Most of the lighting increased in Africa and Asia. The United States remains the brightest country; we have by far the highest total luminosity in the world, with China, India, Canada, and Brazil following. This study was published in the journal Nature in April.

One of the factors spreading lights into rural areas and the countryside is the proliferation of data centers. The National Wildlife Federation lists light pollution as one of the banes of the spread of data centers. Of the many complaints of Meta’s Stanton Springs data center in Georgia is the bright lights that illuminate the nearby forests and neighborhoods.

It’s more than astronomy

Plants

The effects of night lights on plants have been known to botanists for a long time. Back in 1936, scientists found that plants growing around night lights experienced changes in their physiology, affecting leaf development and the timing of when these plants dropped their leaves in fall.

Photosynthesis is a complex process, which plants complete in two phases, a daytime, sunlit phase, and a nighttime, dark phase. A study published in February of this year found that night light affects the dark phase of photosynthesis. With this part of the cycle disrupted, plants have a difficult time synthesizing the sugars on which they depend (and all other life depends on as well).

Insects

Just about anybody over the age of fifty will tell you that there were a lot more insects around a generation or so ago. Culprits in the decline include increased urbanization and the use of pesticides. Our night lights also play a part.

Fireflies use their bioluminescence to find their mates; nighttime lighting can confuse them. Mayflies can be confused by street lighting, which makes asphalt appear to be bodies of water. The befuddled flies lay their eggs on roads instead of in streams or lakes, which is extremely detrimental to these insects that live and breed for a single day.

In 2021, scientists found that street lighting diminished the number of moths and caterpillars compared to unlit places (47% reduction in hedgerows and 33% reduction in grass margins). Night lights also disrupted feeding behaviors of nocturnal caterpillars. LEDs are a climate change solution, as they save a lot energy, but this study found that streetlights using LEDs affect insects more than conventional sodium lamps.

Mammals

Lights have been found to disrupt circadian rhythms, alter predators’ foraging, and movements. Nocturnal mammals will avoid illuminated areas. This can keep them away from underpasses created for them to pass beneath freeways or cross other areas. The researchers involved in this study found, however, that badgers and other animals quickly resumed using underpasses after lighting was reduced or removed.

Lights can delay the emergence of bats from their roosts at dusk, when the insects they feed on are most abundant. Many species of bats avoid illuminated areas, as they expose the bats to predators. Some bats never leave their roosts because nighttime lighting can fool them into thinking it’s daytime all the time. In such cases, the bats may remain roosted and die of starvation.

Birds

Large cities with their lights are known to disrupt the migration of birds. To stay cool and save energy, many birds migrate at night. Normally guided by moonlight and starlight, stable markers in the night sky, bright, artificial lights can confuse birds. In New York City alone, an estimated quarter million migratory birds get confused, crash into buildings and windows, and die every year. The spread of lights through our highways and suburbs further complicates bird migration.

Good news

There are some hopeful developments for keeping the nighttime dark. Some municipalities are working at dimming their lights. Louisville, Kentucky, is taking noteworthy strides to help migratory birds and otherwise keep the night a little darker. The city’s mayor, Craig Greenberg, is spearheading a policy initiative to reduce unnecessary lighting, from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., during peak bird migration months, April and May in the spring, and September and October in the fall, as well as promoting a voluntary Lights Out Pledge for citizens and businesses.

The same team of scientists who found the world was getting 16 percent brighter found encouraging news as well. Due to municipal policies, such as installing streetlights that glow with a reddish hue, Europe now has dimmer nights. France in particular has seen a drop of 33 percent in nighttime illumination.

Are you aware of light pollution? Is your municipality doing anything to reduce nighttime lighting? Are you reducing the lights around your home? Please share your thoughts by clicking the “Leave a comment” button.

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The 99-year old film depicts a futuristic world dominated by machines and factories. Yet instead of bettering the lives of all, human society has split, with a well-off bourgeoisie society living lives of pleasure above ground and a subterranean society of workers doomed to dreary conformist drudgery.

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Lang was not alone in his critique of the modern world. Every Dickens novel is set against the industrial excesses of 19th century London. Sinclair Lewis’ The Jungle revealed the brutality of industrial slaughterhouses to such a degree it prompted federal reforms. Other critics can be added to this list, from Henry Miller to Kafka to Kurt Vonnegut and Dr. Seuss.

Critiques of industrialism include songs such as Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi.

While watching the movie, I couldn’t help thinking of the discussions we are having about AI and data centers.

Why are data centers proliferating now?

In the U.S., just over 150 gigawatts of new data center power are currently in the plans nationally, with Virginia, Texas, and Pennsylvania among the top states for data center development.

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In the past, the number of data centers and their electricity consumption had remained pretty stable. More and more people have been doing more and more things with computers and the internet, everything from buying dental floss to getting directions to sporting events. This increased use had been, until now, offset by gains in efficiency.

AI has supercharged our use of data and data centers. In the U.S., the power demand of data centers is projected to increase by about ten percent per year through 2030.

Data centers already use gigawatt upon gigawatt of electricity, with a typical data center using as much electricity as 100,000 American homes. The data centers currently being constructed in the U.S. and other parts of the world are projected to use 20 times as much electricity as those in operation now.

Even still, people don’t want them

If you want to find common ground among liberals, MAGA, and folks in between, mention data centers. People don’t want them. A Marquette poll published on Wednesday found that an overwhelming majority of folks, 69 percent, said the costs of data centers outweighed the benefits.

Opposition was voiced by 76 percent of Democrats, and 73 percent of independents. Even 62 percent of those identifying as GOP voiced opposition to the centers. And further bad news for the folks promoting AI and data centers: all those percentages had increased since a similar January poll.

Despite the promise of jobs and economic growth, people living in communities where data centers are planned or being built are voicing their concerns and downright opposition to their construction. Worries over water consumption and electricity use are usually the reasons folks say they don’t want data centers in their communities.

Municipalities in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida have said the it’s time to step on the data center brake. This week, Oklahoma City passed a moratorium on new data centers, enacting a temporary suspension on new zoning and development applications for them within city limits. There is even a call for a national ban on further data center construction.

The resistance to data centers is growing despite industry friendly coverage in the press that deemphasizes the environmental costs of the data giants.

Data centers: hot hot hot

Recent research indicates data centers may generate so much heat that they can raise the temperature of the surrounding environment. Temperatures around newly constructed data centers increased on average 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the months after commencing operations. The researchers also found this warming could be detected as far as six miles away from the data centers. In a few alarming instances data centers raised temperatures by more than 45 degrees! That can translate into warm summer temperatures even during cold winter days. The research team calls these local, warmed microclimate zones “data heat islands.”

To conduct their research, the scientists used surface temperature data gathered by satellite over the last 20 years. To ensure that temperatures were not affected by other human-caused factors, the team focused their study on data centers located away from cities or other densely populated areas. Cornell University sponsored this research.

With the proliferation of the centers combined with their extraordinary heat output, the researchers estimate that 340 million people worldwide may already be affected by the heat generated by these data centers.

Can all that heat be put to use?

This next report is out of Scandinavia, where they have good schools and comprehensive healthcare. Last month, in Espoo, Finland’s second largest city, a Nordic data center company, atNorth, started using waste heat from its FIN02 data center to warm a nearby retail operation. According to Kesko, the company that owns the retail outlet, the heat transfer is expected to reduce emissions by about 200 tons of CO2 annually. Similar projects are underway in Denmark, Iceland, and Canada.

Microsoft has also chosen Finland to spearhead a data center warming community project. Microsoft’s two new data centers will provide approximately 40 percent of the heat for the cities of Espoo and Kirkkonummi. It’s estimated that, annually, about 75 percent of the data centers' waste heat will be used for heating.

Their emissions aren’t going away, and they may get worse

I have previously written about the increased emissions that data centers are responsible for and the expectations for those emissions to increase. The Center For Biological Diversity predicts that by 2035, U.S. data centers will annually emit more than 350 million metric tons of CO2. This is approximately equal to the entire amount of emissions from Italy in 2023.

On Wednesday of this week, the featured story in Wired, the magazine that focuses on technology’s effects on society, looked at 11 data center projects in the U.S., which are being built to support large AI companies such as Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and xAI. Together, these 11 centers have the potential to emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. That is more than some countries emit annually.

What do you think of data centers? Are they worth the costs? Or are there too many downsides? Can their environmental effects be offset through the use of renewables and channeling their excess heat to warm schools, businesses, and homes?

Previous Green Dispatches on AI and data centers:

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Aiyana used to manage the animal care department at the Living Coast Discovery Center, where I work as a horticulturist. Aiyana is a terrific person. It’s impossible to be in a bad mood when she’s around.

Her presentation concentrated on rail populations, where they have increased in number, where they have decreased, and why.

I attended Aiyana’s presentation, and one thing that I learned: the rails can have as many as four clutches in a mating season. Because rail chicks are precocious, feeding themselves from the day they are hatched, a rail couple doesn’t need to spend time raising and feeding their young. As soon as the chicks hatch, mom and dad are off to make another nest. As far as mom and dad are concerned, it’s clutch after clutch after clutch!

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The rails live in coastal marshes along the coast of California, from the San Francisco Bay south through Baja, Mexico. They are also found in similar habitats in the Sea of Cortez. Among the findings of Aiyana’s research, the larger the marshland the greater the population of rails. It seems this would be true on a common sense basis, but that’s not always the case with all animals. Some creatures freak out if given too much space. Further, her research showed that, more important than acreage of land, the quality of the habitat—the prevalence of flora on which the rails depend, such as pickleweed and cordgrass—is more important for supporting a large rail population.

Separated populations will often increase or decrease simultaneously. This is possibly due to the different population responding to similar conditions, such as drought. Aiyana found separate populations of rails, up and down the coast of California, increase or decrease independent of one another; populations in the south may increase while those in the north may decrease. There is one caveat to this finding: there are marshes around northern San Diego County and southern Orange County, that seem to increase and decrease at the same time.

There is more from Aiyana’s research, and I hope to present it here. In the meantime, I thought we could revisit a post about the rail from July of 2022.

The endangered Ridgway’s rail

The sky is a slate gray and there is a chill in the air, despite the calendar showing that it is well into June. I am driving into work, passing over the single-lane roadway that traverses the estuary and connects the island where I work with the mainland, when a bird about the size of a chicken and the color of a ripe peach rushes across the roadway. A moment later, another one of these birds follows, scurrying on his long, marsh-wading legs.

It’s a good thing that I was minding the 15 mph speed limit and avoided hitting these birds. They are Ridgway’s rails, and since 1970 they have been federally listed as Endangered.

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The Ridgway’s rail had been considered a subspecies (Rallus longirostris levipes) of the clapper rail, which is found along the coasts of the eastern U.S., the Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean islands. As a subspecies, they had been called the light-footed clapper rail, but since around 2014, when they were designated as a separate species, the bird is now called the Ridgway’s rail, with a new scientific name, too (Rallus obsoletes). They look a lot like clapper rails, and like clapper rails they make a distinctive kek, kek, kek call when they are mating or otherwise excited.

As they are shy and secretive, it is rare to see one, let alone two. I used to be a fairly active birder and visited the Tijuana estuary where there are a good number of rails, and it took several years of birding at that spot before I saw one in the marsh.

Ridgway’s rails live in coastal salt marshes and lagoons, making their nests in tall, dense stands of cordgrass or occasionally in dense pickleweed. On rare occasions, they have also been found in freshwater reeds. Tall grass allows the birds to hide, as they pull leaves and stems over their nests. Tall grasses also allow the nests to ride up and down on their stems, enabling the nests to float at high tide. The birds eat invertebrates, mussels and such, although they will eat a variety of other foods when their main foods are unavailable.1

One thing I tell folks about the Ridgway’s rail is that they were once quite common. As far back as 1889 in San Francisco, there were reports of sportsmen returning from hunts with as many as 200 rails. In five years time, however, by 1894, it was noted that the rails were becoming scarce. Despite this decline, nothing was done to protect the bird until the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1913 ended the hunting of the rail. Hunting still continued, albeit in a more restrictive and clandestine manner. By then, though, the crack of a shotgun was no longer the primary threat to this species. The encroachment of civilization posed a more serious threat.2

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By 1927 almost the entire northern section of San Francisco Bay, which had been habitat for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rails, was bereft of the bird. Not one could be found. Dozens of other areas that had been known to be home to the bird had been turned into roads, farms, factories, and towns. The area that had been open, coastal wetlands was now known as the town of Hayward, which “throb[bed] with human life and activity.”3 Industrialization and urbanization plagued the coast of California farther south as well. Los Angeles and San Diego were on their way to becoming the second and eighth largest cities in the United States, respectively, and both urbanized their coastlines. It is uncertain exactly how much of southern California’s wetlands have been lost, but estimates vary from 75 to 95 percent.4 If all of our cars and shopping malls weren’t enough, the rails also fall victim to two introduced predators, the red fox and our domestic house cats.5

Ridgway’s rails are sedentary and not prone to move from marsh to marsh. Even over several years, a rail will not move her nesting site more than 400 yards from her first nest. In one study, 55 rails were observed over a three-year period. At the end of the observation, no rail had moved its nesting site more than 70 yards from where it was first sited.6

Below is a video of Ridgway rail chicks I was lucky enough to capture on a recent visit to the Tijuana Estuary.

Because they tend not to move around and because we have paved over so much of their habitat, rails in one marsh tend to stay in that marsh. These isolated populations will thus have little or no breeding with birds from outside their marsh, leading to what is known as genetic bottlenecking. Genetic bottlenecking is the equivalent of people marrying their cousins. Around 20 years ago, research indicated that rails were starting to suffer from this bottlenecking.7

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In 1998, the Living Coast Discovery Center (then known as the Chula Vista Nature Center), the zoo where I work, in partnership with SeaWorld San Diego, started a captive breeding program for the Ridgway’s rail.8 Rails from different marshes are brought into a breeding facility just west of the Discovery Center. Once chicks are old enough, they are released to the wild. Dozens and dozens of rails have been bred this way

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The breeding program can take some credit for the success of the rail. In 1980 an annual census of the Ridgway’s rail was initiated and sponsored by the California Department of Fish and Game.9 Based on these census records, the population of Ridgway’s rails has gone from a low of 163 nesting pairs in 1989 to a high of 646 nesting pairs in 2016. If this trend continues, the population of the rail may soon reach the target of 800 nesting pairs believed to be the level at which the bird can be self-sustaining.10

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The world is turning more and more to renewables for its electricity. In 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that by the end of this decade, half of the world’s energy needs will be generated from renewable sources.

Much of that electricity is coming from and will come from wind turbines, with an ever-growing percentage of wind energy coming from offshore facilities. The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), in its 2025 Global Offshore Wind Report, stated there were 83 gigawatts of energy produced by offshore wind installations worldwide, supporting the power needs of 73 million households. And the potential for even more wind-generated power is growing. Currently, offshore wind facilities capable of generating 48 gigawatts of power are under construction.

It’s obviously easier to build windmills on dry land, but with no trees, mountains, or other obstacles, open waters can have higher winds than most terrestrial sites. According to the U.S. Energy Department, the generating potential of offshore wind turbines is about three times that of land-based turbines. Another reason for building windmills offshore: people can complain about wind facilities obstructing views or otherwise despoiling landscapes; if the windmills are off in the distance on the sea’s horizon, most folks don’t mind so much.

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The Danes were the first to generate power using offshore windmills, creating the world’s first installation in 1991. One of the most developed countries for offshore wind is the UK, which produces 16 gigawatts of power from its offshore windmills, with further construction predicted to provide 10.4 additional gigawatts. Other countries pursuing large-scale offshore wind facilities are Australia, Brazil, Japan, the Philippines, Poland, South Korea, and Vietnam. The first power from what will be the largest offshore wind facility in the U.S. started flowing at the end of May. The 2.6 gigawatt Dominion Energy Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind facility, 28 miles off Virginia Beach, is about 70 percent complete.

There is a fair amount of research on the environmental effects of wind generation on land, particularly regarding windmills killing bats and birds. However, we do not fully understand the environmental ramifications of building wind generation off our coasts. It may be easy to assume windmills at sea would pose little threat to bats and birds, but these creatures can fly far from shore and traverse open waters during migration. We need to understand these hazards when developing and operating offshore wind generation sites. Unfortunately, funding for these kind of studies is jeopardized by the Trump administration.

The Trump administration does not want offshore wind

The GWEC pointed out the U.S. is a peculiar outlier in offshore wind development. Indeed, while poking around on the internet, I found that we are seriously lagging, as the Trump administration slashes funding, curtails research, and closes departments involved in renewable energy and sustainability. Trump and his cronies are dismantling and discouraging offshore wind development despite current data suggesting more than 4,000 gigawatts could be harvested off the coasts of the continental United States and Great Lakes.

In a move that seems perverse, in August, the Trump administration halted

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On Tuesday of this week, the Endangered Species Committee did what we all assumed it would do: end Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for 20 species living in the Gulf of Mexico. Knowing the workings of this administration, we could have guessed that ending ESA protections was a foregone conclusion. (For background on the Committee’s intended purpose and current malfeasance, see last week’s Green Dispatch.)

But there is reason for hope. A coalition of environmental groups has already filed a lawsuit to invalidate the Committee’s actions.

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The lawsuit claims the rationale for waiving ESA protections—this administration’s assertion that there is a conflict between extraction activities and protecting endangered species—is a fiction. The plaintiffs point out that extraction in the gulf is at record levels, even with ESA protections in place. The lawsuit states further, “the Committee’s sweeping Exemption is arbitrary and capricious and contrary to and in excess of authority under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and its implementing regulations.”

The lawsuit alleges the exemption from the ESA is based entirely on an arbitrary National Security Finding from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In the Finding, Hegseth claimed that some future ruling based on the ESA could possibly halt oil and gas production in the gulf. Additionally, the lawsuit says Hegseth’s claim of a “threat” to national security is unspecified and unrealized. Basically, the plaintiffs are saying Hegseth is making stuff up.

The coalition comprises the Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, Healthy Gulf, and the Turtle Island Restoration Network. In filing the lawsuit, Healthy Gulf Executive Director Martha Collins had this to say: “The Extinction Committee’s vote to absolve oil and gas companies from adhering to the Endangered Species Act is an unprecedented act that will have disastrous consequences for the Gulf. Communities want greater protections for Gulf species, and this is a clear attempt by the Trump administration to silence those voices.”

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This is heartening news. And while we’re on the topic, I just want to say how much I appreciate all the support folks showed last week when I wrote about the impending meeting of the Committee. Many of you shared the post, and many of you wrote letters. The Committee ignored what we had to say, but our efforts were not in vain. In writing to Doug Burgum and others on the Endangered Species Committee, we formed a corpus of documentation. When judges make their decisions, they take this kind of documentation seriously.

There is further reason for hope. The courts have been reining in Trump and his administration left and right. A federal judge found the building of Trump’s ballroom to be illegal and blocked its construction. Citing First Amendment rights, another judge found Trump’s Executive Order defunding of PBS and NPR to be “unlawful and unenforceable.”

And important to the environment, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Center For Biological Diversity, on Tuesday, a court overturned four key provisions from Trump’s previous administration (and retained by the Biden administration) that weakened the Endangered Species Act.

These rulings bode well for our efforts to protect the creatures living in the Gulf of Mexico. The meeting of “the God Squad” was blatantly illegal, and I have a great deal of confidence that our judicial system will reverse the decision of the gas and oil industry sycophants in the Trump administration.

The press

In last week’s post, I was highly critical of the limited press coverage of this issue. There was little news of the Endangered Species Committee when its convening was announced last month. On Tuesday, however, the meeting and its results were all over the internet. It seems as though every major news publication had a story on the meeting.

Maybe this is the way news is published today. But it is inadequate. To be properly informed, for folks to have a chance to have some input on a topic, to write comment letters and contact their representatives, we need to know of these meetings and conferences beforehand. There should have been a lot more coverage. This lawsuit seeking to reverse the Committee’s decision is also receiving very little press coverage.

I searched through Fox News on Wednesday, and found no mention of the meeting or its results. I was a little surprised. I would have expected the mouthpiece of MAGA to publish a piece on the meeting, but casting the news as a victory for Trump and taking a credulous stance on Hegseth and his erroneous Finding. But by being quiet on the activities of this Committee, Fox is keeping their viewers uninformed, which they need to do to maintain support for Trump and this administration. The network has a history of bad practices, and social scientists have found Fox viewers to be misinformed and given to hyper-partisanship

Keep going!

I know these are trying times. Trump and his administration are wielding axes to over 100 years of American conservation and environmentalism and doing the same to 250 years of our striving for a more democratic and more perfect union. But we can be encouraged by these recent court decisions. And there is hope for our country. This week, philosopher and fascism expert Jason Stanley wrote on the effectiveness of the No Kings marches. Professor of history and political commentator Heather Cox Richardson often shares glimmers of hope as she comments on and critiques the current administration.

We must keep marching, keep writing letters, and keep making comments, and we will win. Our country will win. Endangered species will continue to have a fighting chance.

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Previous Green Dispatches about endangered species:

According to a NOAA webpage, 20 species in the Gulf of Mexico are listed as Threatened or Endangered. Among the listed are the green sea turtle, five species of coral, sperm whales, and the Rice’s whale.

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Of particular concern to conservationists is the plight of the Rice’s whale, a baleen whale that makes its home in the Gulf of Mexico and nowhere else. A 2016 survey counted fewer than 100 individuals of this species; more recent surveys put the whale’s numbers at around 50.

According to NOAA, this leviathan that can reach a length of 41 feet and weigh as much as 60,000 pounds is threatened by vessel strikes, oil spills and other pollutants, including lingering effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and ingestion of and entanglement in marine debris and fishing gear. They are also plagued by noise from vessels and energy exploration, as well as the effects of climate change.

Under the auspices of NOAA, a “vessel slowdown zone” to protect Rice’s whales from vessel strikes and noise pollution has been proposed, along with a year-round 10-knot vessel speed restriction in waters from 300 to 1,200 feet deep along northwestern Florida. Vessel transits would also be prohibited in the slowdown zone at night, when Rice’s whales swim more frequently near the surface.

A meeting of this Endangered Species Committee—or as it is sometimes called “the God Squad” or Extinction Committee—could ensure that the above recommendations never see the light of day.

The committee was created by an act of Congress and added to the Endangered Species Act soon after the hallmark environmental legislation was enacted in 19731 Before the formation of the committee, only Congress could permit the extinction of a species previously protected by the ESA.

Congress established the committee to have six members: The Agriculture Secretary, Interior Secretary, Army Secretary, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, and the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Previous administrations have been reluctant to use the committee. The last time it was convened was in 1991. But Donald Trump fully activated the committee on the first day of reentering office in 2025. Section Six of his Declaring a National Energy Emergency Executive Order states:

In acting as Chairman of the Endangered Species Act Committee, the Secretary of the Interior shall convene the Endangered Species Act Committee not less than quarterly, unless otherwise required by law, to review and consider any lawful applications submitted by an agency, the Governor of a State, or any applicant for a permit or license who submits for exemption from obligations imposed by Section 7 of the ESA. (bold mine)

Yes, that’s right, a rarely used committee, one empowered to kill off species, is required to convene quarterly under the Trump administration. By law, this committee is supposed to meet only under rare and pressing circumstances. It can meet only within 90 days of the completion of a Biological Opinion, a scientific document determining if a federal action is likely to jeopardize the existence of a listed species. The opinion needs to reach the conclusion that there are no reasonable alternatives for saving a species.

The Interior Secretary must also determine that, by requesting a convening of the committee, applicants seeking a waiver of the ESA have acted in good faith and completed required assessments. None of these conditions has been met for this committee meeting. Additionally, the meeting is supposed to be open to the public, but the Trump administrations is bypassing this requirement by planning on live streaming the meeting.

The Center For Biological Diversity is offering a portal to help folks send comments to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. I highly encourage you to voice your opposition to their efforts. Click that link and send a message. Use the template letter as just that, a template. Original letters have a lot more weight than repeated form letters. The Center also filed a lawsuit to stop the committee meeting.

The press

I mostly concentrate on new science in conservation or climate change, but it’s also my intention that The Green Dispatch should inform in cases where the regular press is not following a story. It’s true that the New York Times published an article on the 16th of this month on the topic. But I’ve not seen it in other major newspapers, such as USA Today, Washington Post, or even prominent regional papers, in particular the gulf states for which there may be ramifications of the action, Houston Chronicle, Tampa Bay Times.

The story is absent from TV and radio. It’s not on NPR, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, etc. My searches used Duck Duck Go and Proquest. Yesterday, as I was finishing up this story, I found it in the Washington Examiner and Bloomberg.

Admittedly, there are big stories competing for pixels and screen time. Donald Trump is making war on Iran, Israel continues its war on its neighbors, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, and there are the Epstein Files. Even still, this meeting could mean the extinction of several gulf species, with further deleterious effects on the environment of the gulf and its coasts and estuaries.

The story is absent from TV and radio. It’s not on NPR, CNN, ABC, or MSNBC. This meeting should get a lot more press coverage from major news sources. Admittedly, there are big stories competing for pixels and screen time. Donald Trump is making war on Iran, Israel continues warring against its neighbors, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, and there are the Epstein Files. Even still, this meeting could mean the extinction of several species in the Gulf of Mexico, with further deleterious effects on the environment of the gulf, its coasts, and its estuaries.

I learned about the committee’s meeting because I check the Center For Biological Diversity’s website almost daily. I also read about it in More Than Just Parks, a must-read Substack for environmentally conscious folks written by the Pattiz brothers.

Before you finish reading and click “like” at the end of this post, I want to encourage you again to write to Secretary Burgum. We have to let him and the rest of the committee know this meeting is not good and certainly not legal. If Burgum and the rest of the committee are able to blithely remove protections for species, then the Endangered Species Act will be toothless. People involved in big business as well as right-wing zealots have wanted to repeal the Endangered Species Act for decades. With this proposed meeting, and others like it to follow, these folks will get their wish. The ESA will remain on the books, remain part of federal law, and it will be as good as gone.

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All forests and wildlands burn at some time. Usually sparked by lighting, fire is a natural part of ecological cycles. Forests in the western part of the United States have historically experienced small ground fires as frequently as every seven years or so. When I was growing up in Appalachia, I had assumed that the forests there burned infrequently, but that was the result of Smokey Bear and his fire-prevention campaign. Recent research indicates that throughout the eastern portion of the United States, before modern fire suppression, there were more frequent fires that occurred every few years. Fires had been especially common and extended over large expanses of oak and pine forests, most notably in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

In the last few months, there have been new publications highlighting recent discoveries about fire. Following are summaries and explanations of the science.

Do firebreaks bring more harm than good?

If you’ve hiked through forests or other wildlands, you’ve probably come across firebreaks: wide, cleared swaths that snake their way through trees or scrublands. These are intended to stop the advance of fires. Firefighting crews also use them for access to forest interiors to bring in firefighting equipment.

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They may seem benign, but firebreaks come at a cost. They fragment habitat, with some species reluctant or even refusing to venture across them. Recently, researchers in southern Spain found butterflies that would not fly across firebreaks.

Firebreaks give invasive species routes to colonize into wildlands. Hiking around Southern California, I’ve seen European thistle, invasive mustard, and other exotic species growing in firebreaks. And from the firebreaks, the invasive spread to other areas of the wildlands. In a Catch-22 scenario, invasive grasses and forbs have entered sagebrush habitat by way of firebreaks. These nonnatives are annuals that die and dry up during the summer months, thus increasing fire risk throughout the entire biome. In these cases, firebreaks actually increase fire risk.

When the wind picks up, firebreaks can be useless. In Southern California in 2003, when Santa Ana winds brought humidity down to single digits and gales reached over 50 miles an hour, the winds carried firebrands across ten lanes of the 15 freeway and started fires on the other side of the highway.

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I often run across a firebreak that was cut through a forest several years ago but hasn’t been maintained; vegetation has regrown all around, defeating its purpose. Recent research finds that fire breaks can be effective , but they must be strategically placed and well-maintained.

Roads bring fires

I recently wrote about the dubious practice of roadbuilding through wilderness. A paper published in January found that besides bringing humans, automobiles, and trash into forests, forest roads bring fire.

Using fire data records from 1992 through 2024, and examining all eight U.S. Forest Service regions across the contiguous 48 states, researchers with the Wilderness Society found roadless forests had the lowest incidence of fire, less than two fires per 1,000 hectares. Conversely, wildlands that had roads cut through them or were close to forest roads had nearly eight fires per 1,000 hectares. Essentially, the farther from a road, the less likely there was to be a fire. One caveat: the farther from roads, the bigger the fire.

Roads bring fire. Do The Doors bring fire, too?

Climate change taxes firefighters worldwide

Longer fire seasons in Chile and Argentina have led to massive blazes destroying forests and towns. In Southern California, the Palisades Fire spread over 24,000 acres and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses in January 2025. So Cal locals will tell you wildfires had been unknown in this region in January. This story is repeated all over the world, from Pakistan to France to Southeast Asia. Climate change is extending wildfire seasons all over the world.

A new paper, published in Science Advances in February, points out that these extended fire seasons are taxing fire response. Traditionally, with wildfire season occurring at different times of the year in different parts of the world, states and countries could share firefighting resources. Argentines could help quell fires in California in October, and California could return the favor in January. This kind of coordination was used across continents. Climate change has now put that cooperation and coordination under intense strain. To find out more about this, check out articles in the New York Times, as well as Phys.org.

Have you worked as a firefighter? Have you ever had to evacuate your home due to a wildfire? What do you think of climate change further taxing our firefighting capabilities? Is there a solution? Please let us know what you think by clicking the “Leave a comment” button below.

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Previous Green Dispatches about wildfire:

News items and scientific papers on mangroves have caught my eye in the last few months.

First, what are mangroves?

Mangroves are trees, and just as there are different species of pines or oaks, there are different species of mangroves, around 70 of them. The term “mangrove” can refer to an individual tree or a forest of trees.

They grow in brackish waters of coastal lagoons, bays, deltas, and estuaries and are characterized by the ramifying arial roots that extend above the waterline. Mangroves like it where it is warm, the tropics and subtropics. The historic range of mangroves includes the East Indies and the northern shores of Australia. They grow along the coastal regions of Africa as well.

In the Western Hemisphere, their environments include the West Indies, Central America, and South America. In the United States, mangroves occur along the coasts of Florida and the Gulf states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

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If you took all the mangroves and put them in one place, their collective area would be around 57,000 square miles, an area a little larger than the state of Louisiana. Although they constitute only five percent of the world’s forests, a lot of mammals, reptiles, and birds breed in mangroves. Each mangrove forest is usually dominated by one or two mangrove species; this led a lot of folks to conclude that mangrove forests were not biodiverse in other ways. But researchers found that they hold an immense number of insect species.

Mangroves in Florida

Just this week, in Broward County, in heavily populated southern Florida, The Broward County Commission nixed a proposal that would have allowed a property owner to build warehouses on and near a protected mangrove forest.

Building the warehouses would have required suspending local environmental laws that protect the mangroves east of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

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We have constant reminders of how we are heating the globe, with major news stories of global heating’s effects being major newspapers’ prominent stories almost daily. Two days ago, the Boston Herald ran a story of climate-related disruption to fishermen in Greenland. One of this morning’s headlines in The Guardian screamed “Humanity heating planet faster than ever before.”

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And yet there seems to be little or no public will to lower emissions. Climate change was not a major issue for voters in the 2024 election. Since entering office, Donald Trump, with a GOP-controlled Congress, has dismantled major climate legislation, all with little outcry from the American pubic.

Enter climate action, stage left

Actors, scientists, and improv performers believe that they can make a difference, that they can get people talking about climate change, and that theater and improv can get people motivated to cool our planet.

A study published last month in the Journal of Science Communication analyzed audience and performer responses to improvised shows themed around nature, climate change, and local action. Titled We Built This City on Rock and Coal, the shows were performed throughout communities in Ireland. The performers in the shows included veteran improvisers as well as climate scientists who were trained in improv.

Two veterans of science-related improve theater, Jessamyn Fairfield and Katy Schutte, developed We Built This City on Rock and Coal to gauge the effectiveness of improv theater to explore reactions to the climate crisis. They also wanted to see if theater can prompt audience and performers into climate action. Both Fairfield and Schutte had taken part in a science and art residency, which is focused on engagement with the climate crisis.

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Through survey questionnaires of both audience and performers, researchers found the show did not seem to increase the number of people worried about climate change or increase the worry of those that did worry about climate change. There was, however, an increase for both audience and performers, from 46 to 61 percent, who felt more confident talking to friends and family about climate change. After the full tour, the number of performers feeling confident in taking action on global heating more than doubled, rising from 40 to 89 percent.

The whole world is a stage, and that stage is getting warmer

Similarly hoping to inspire people to take action, Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) coincides their performances with the United Nations’ COP meetings. Every two years, this worldwide festival commissions 50 professional playwrights from all over the world to write extremely short (five-minute) plays about some aspect of the climate crisis.

Unifying the festival, all the plays are based on a single prompt for each two-year cycle. Last year’s prompt was “The Time is Now.”

Once the five-minute plays are completed and compiled, CCTA then encourages community organizers to present events using the material created by the playwrights. CCTA goes on to explain, “To emphasize the “Action” part of Climate Change Theatre Action, organizers are also urged to think about an action—educational, social, political, or civic—that can be incorporated into their event. It may involve the scientific community, other departments within a university, or local environmental organizations. Examples of actions from previous years include: presentations by scientists, donations to hurricane relief efforts and food banks, conversations with social justice and environmental organizations, writing letters to legislators, and sharing tools for sustainability at the local level.”

Children’s theater

Using theater to communicate ideas about the climate crisis and other environmental issues motivated Anika Larsen to write The Pocket Park Kids, a play that depicts young people debating and strategizing on how best to save a beloved park from destruction, all with the help of a friendly parakeet.

Larsen, who was nominated for a Tony for her role in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” sees theater as being a particularly useful medium to help children, and even adults, to deal with tough topics without dwelling in despair. In July of last year, she told Caroline Preston at the Hechinger Report, “Artists have always been at the forefront of every movement because we’re able to talk about things in ways that are uplifting and activating and inspiring, as opposed to demoralizing and begetting feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.” Of climate change, she added, “None of us really want to hear about it. It feels too overwhelming, it feels too scary.”

Would you see a play about climate change?

The current thinking is that showing people charts of increasing CO2, higher and higher temperatures, and coastal flooding does not inspire people to take action. This approach to climate information and education is often derided as a “doom and gloom,” with some even saying it leads to inaction, as folks conclude any action they take will be for naught. Is it better to give people a venue where they can learn while they laugh or have an emotional response? Is it better to give them a story instead of facts and figures?

Do you think theater a good way to motivate people? Science is complicated and difficult to explain sometimes. And its self-correcting nature makes it an easy target to sow confusion, as has been pointed out by Naomi Oreskes in Merchants of Doubt. Can theater overcome these obstacles? What other art forms would you suggest for conveying the importance of climate change and motivating people to action? Movies? Music? Television?

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Previous Green Dispatches on the arts and the environment:

We got some rain recently, but this morning, it’s a bright sunshiny day. Postcard blue skies framed Otay Mountain and the Peninsular Mountains to the east during my commute. And it’s already warm, in the seventies, once I get to work. Another special treat: thousands of bees greet me as they swarm around the blooms of two wart-stemmed ceanothus shrubs.

Wart-stemmed ceanothus (Ceanothus verrucosus) is yet another rare and endangered plant I work with. These shrubs are endemic to the coastal sections of northern Baja, Mexico, and Southern California. A few have been spotted elsewhere, some in the northern Central Valley and a handful around Santa Barbara, but these were probably horticulturally planted.

For landscaping with native plants in Southern California, I like to work with these members of the Buckthorn family. They are fairly hearty and easy to grow. I’m told they like sandstone soils, but from my experience they don’t seem too picky about growing in clay or other soils. When I started working 12 years ago at this small zoo/aquarium in southern San Diego County, there were two of these ceanothus plants already in the landscaping. I’ve since planted two more in the zoo’s pollinator garden. The only problem is they can be slow growing. I planted the two newer ceanothus plants seven or eight years ago, and neither has grown to three feet yet.

So named because of the small knobs on their stems, the wart-stemmed ceanothus blooms in the spring, with moths, butterflies, and bats visiting their clusters of small, white flowers. Like this morning, I mostly see bees visiting the blooms, usually European honeybees, and lots of them.

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The plant’s leaves are small and obovate. A small dimple at the end of each leaf makes for a heart-shaped appearance. The California Native Plant Society ranks the wart-stemmed ceanothus as 2B.2: “Rare, threatened, or endangered in California, but more common elsewhere; moderately threatened in California.”

Although I have seen wart-stem ceanothus growing in coastal sage scrub, I have found it more often among mountain mahogany, scrub oak, and other coastal chaparral plants. They grow as rounding shrubs, usually attaining the height of an average-sized person. Under the right conditions, they can grow ten feet tall.

Wart-stemmed ceanothus are limited to this small portion of the world, which explains their rarity. Also, we humans have paved over or turned their habitats into neighborhoods, city streets, and backyards. This has further limited their habitat and numbers.

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There are other types of ceanothus plants, roughly 58 species in the genus. And you might say they are California plants. Although they grow throughout North America and Central America, 42 ceanothus species are endemic to California; 25 species can be found in San Diego County.

Why there are so many rare and endangered species in San Diego County

In about a 40-to 50-foot radius around the two older ceanothus at my workplace, I see four other rare and endangered species: Shaw’s agave, San Diego sunflower, Tecate cypress, and coast barrel cactus.

San Diego County is a hotspot for rare and endangered species, having the most biodiversity of any county in the United States. San Diego’s geography is part of the reason; the county encompasses coasts, foothills, mountains, and desert. Within a short distance, you can travel from estuaries to alpine meadows, pine forests to oak woodlands, to palm-shaded oases.

Additionally, if you take a close look at a map of the area, you’ll see a line of mountains starting in Baja California, Mexico, and heading north just past Los Angeles. This is the Peninsular Range (the mountains I saw on my way to work this morning). It rose up 90 million years ago and cut the western portion of southern California and northern Baja from the rest of the continent.

Since the time of dinosaurs, species have had time to evolve in this ecological island. Most of the rare and endangered species that I have written about in the In Touch series are endemic to southern California.

I’ll be continuing this series on rare and endangered species, and I’m also considering another series on invasive species. Do these topics interest you? Would you rather read about other topics in The Green Dispatch? Click the “Leave a comment” button below and let me know.

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Previous In Touch postings on rare and endangered species:

Amanda had an interesting take on the Washington Post firing most of its climate reporters. Almost everyone outside the Fox/rightwing talk radio universe condemned the move, saying that Jeff Bezos, who owns the paper, was capitulating to the climate denying Trump administration. Royal disagrees. To Bezos and to the Post she says good riddance, going on to say in her post:

While the Post has had a Climate Solutions page, Amanda says, much of the content is journalistic drivel, what she calls “feeding the editorial beast” that dilutes the important news. Her critique has much more to say about the Post and other newspapers and news sources. I highly encourage you to check it out here.

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I share many of the same views and have the many of the same criticisms of the Post and other newspapers. After all, I was motivated to start The Green Dispatch because I saw a real lack of coverage of many interesting and important environmental stories in the press. Part of my studies for my master’s degree was on newspaper coverage of global warming. And I’ve voiced my complaints about how the press has covered climate change for over a dozen years now.

So I thought I would take a look at what researchers and those who keep an eye on environmental and climate coverage had to say.

Reuters conducted an online survey in November of 2024 of people living in eight countries: Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the U.K., and the U.S. They asked how folks received their climate news, how often, and how they perceived the problem of climate change.

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Across countries they found that people pay more attention to climate news if it is local (52%) and if the news concerns the weather (54%). The public greatly trust scientists (74%) and half say they trust the press (50%) on this issue.

France stood out for having the most engaged public, with 60 percent of survey respondents saying they read or listen to climate news. With partisan politics and MAGA probably having an effect, the U.S. stood out at the other end of the spectrum; only 34 percent of our public consumes news on global heating, a 16 percentage point drop since 2023.

And politics, unfortunately, does play a part. Those who identify as left expressed climate concerns 91 percent of the time. Concern drops to 77 percent for folks on the right.

In general, across all countries, Reuters found what they term “climate perception inertia.” There is a stagnation in engagement with climate issues and information, despite the increasing urgency for climate action. This is probably inevitable. Climate change has been in the headlines since the eighties. People tend not to stay involved with stories that last that long. I remember when I was a kid, and when the Mercury program shot men up in space, people were glued to their radios and TVs. And when two men first landed on the Moon, folks went out and bought televisions so they could watch it. Only a few years later, as astronauts returned to the Moon, some people were unaware that they were there.

All of us are swayed by the presentation of climate news, both fact-based and skeptical or denialist presentations. An Ohio State University study had folks read a scientifically based article on climate change. The people in the study were likely to believe the material in the article; they also thought that global heating should be a prominent governmental concern and government should do more about the problem.

Even though these folks had read a fact-based article, when study subjects later read an article skeptical of climate change, their views shifted to skepticism.

We have our criticisms of news coverage, but the coverage is there. Researchers used MediaCloud database to look at more than 9,000 news sources across the U.S., from small town papers to national publications like The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.

They found between 2011 and 2022 regional news sources increased their coverage of climate change by 144 percent. But the national papers, what a lot of folks critical of the press call “legacy media,” increased coverage by 299 percent, basically, three times more than their 2011 coverage. This research was published in the journal Climate Change in 2024.

This may account for a regional divide. In 2024, found something of a rural/urban divide in the U.S. Almost 15 percent of Americans deny the reality of climate change. Most of those rejecting the science live in the central states and the South, with the rate of denial in some states exceeds 20 percent. Folks who live on the West Coast, Northern Atlantic states, and New England, places where the major newspapers dominate, tend to believe the science.

What effect does climate news have on people?

People who are aware of and worry, at least a bit, about environmental issues are more likely to do something environmentally positive, join or donate to an environmental organization, recycle, walk instead of driving.

Research performed by Lorraine Whitmarsh, a professor at University of Bath in environmental psychology and published in 2022 found that in people in the United Kingdom had high levels of concern about climate change. But there was little of what is called climate anxiety.

Younger people reported having higher levels of climate anxiety than older folks. And while we think of climate anxiety as petrifying, keeping people from taking action on climate change, that was not the conclusion of Whitmarsh and other researchers. She says, “Consistent with other recent research, these findings indicate that climate anxiety may not necessarily be a negative impact of, or maladaptive response to, climate change; but rather, at least to some degree, be a motivating force for effective action.”

There is other good news. While a great number of Americans worry, and worry frequently about global heating, few, only around ten percent, experience climate anxiety. Although this is undesirous on a personal level, very few are fatalistic. We might be worried, we might be almost out of our wits frightened, but just about everybody thinks we can solve this problem.

What about you? Do you often read or listen to environmental news. Where do you get your news from? Does thinking or reading about the climate crisis cause you anxiety? Please share your thoughts by clicking the button below.

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Here is a previous Green Dispatch about how people perceive of the problem of climate change:

Amphibians can be a different story. You might find a salamander when you’re digging through the clutter behind that pile of firewood or (as I have done) when you peek behind that loose piece of bark on a tree.

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Though amphibians aren’t as conspicuous as birds and butterflies, scientists are realizing how important they are to functioning ecosystems. Researchers are also finding that these small, semiaquatic creatures can help us solve a number of human health problems.

In a paper, The Multifaceted Importance of Amphibians: Ecological, Biomedical, and Socio-Economic Perspectives, published last month in the journal Biology, an international team of researchers examined and summarized the scientific literature on amphibians. They looked at peer-reviewed papers, international reports, and conservation datasets published primarily between 2000 and 2024 and synthesized the findings.

Amphibians all over the world

Amphibians emerged over 350 million years ago during the Devonian period, filling ecological niches all over the world except Antarctica. Like birds, reptiles, humans, and fish, reptiles are vertebrates. The word amphibian comes to us from Greek amphibios, which means “living a double life” and refers to their lives encompassing both aquatic and terrestrial environments. A few amphibians live solely on land, and a few live only aquatic lives, but more than 90 percent of all amphibians spend some of their lives in water and some of their lives on land. One of their chief characteristics is having a moist skin.

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Scientists know of 8,981 species of amphibians. The Neotropic countries of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru have more than 3,000, of which Brazil has at least 1,000. Africa’s amphibian hotspots are the equatorial Guineo–Congolian rainforests, the Albertine Rift, and Madagascar. Over 300 amphibious species are found in Madagascar, 99 percent of which are endemic to the island. Southern China and Sri Lanka are also amphibian hot spots. In North America, the wet, temperate hardwood forests of Appalachia are environments for a great number of salamanders.

Amphibians are important to ecosystems

As I said above, salamanders and toads can be inconspicuous, but they can be quite important in some regions of the world. In some ecosystems, by weight, the total number of frogs, toads, and salamanders exceeds that of either mammals or birds.

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I drank a lot of soda pop when I was a kid. I imagine most kids do. My father had a fondness for RC Cola, and I can’t remember a time when our refrigerator did not have at least a couple of bottles of RC inside. Dr. Pepper was a favorite, and summers weren’t complete without a surfeit of root beer floats. Still today, I sometimes like to have a soda with a hamburger or hot dog, sipped through a straw with plenty of ice.

This stuff isn’t good for you and isn’t good for the environment, either

Having a soda pop once in a while is a real treat, but drinking lots of it can be bad for you. As long ago as 1942, the American Medical Association recommended limiting the intake of soft drinks because of their sugar content. As your mother told you, soda pop can give you cavities. A recent study in Australia found that drinking a lot of sugar-sweetened beverages was associated with obesity, heart disease, and depression. And if you think you’re getting off easy with the zero-calorie kind, Type 2 Diabetes was associated with drinking artificially sweetened drinks. What’s more, drinking soda pop can shorten your life. Science links soda pop with a higher risk of death from all causes.

Then there is all that plastic. Every single minute across the globe, more than one million plastic bottles are sold. The soft drink industry is one of the greatest contributors to plastic pollution in the world’s seas and oceans. In the Ocean Conservancy’s annual September beach cleanups conducted in more than 100 countries, plastic bottles and bottle caps are the third and fourth most collected plastic trash.

Poorer countries are more likely to bear the brunt of plastic pollution because many lack the waste management infrastructure to handle the immense volume of waste. Large amounts of plastic waste flow from prosperous countries to poorer ones. With no capacity to recycle the plastic, and lacking landfill capacity, lots and lots of those bottles that once held our soda pop are burned, contributing significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Big Soda is big!

A recent study, published in Globalization and Health looked at why the soft drink industry, as well as bottled water companies, have been allowed to make us humans and our planet less healthy. There is Big Pharma, Big Oil, and when it comes to Big Soda, there are two players, Coke and Pepsi. In 2020 Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo individually and together held the largest market share of the global soft drink market. Coke had 20.8 percent of the market and Pepsi held 10 percent. Combined, their share of the market was greater than the next 78 soft drink firms taken together. They are the 37th and 50th largest publicly listed corporations in the world.

It is also important to consider market dominance. Of the 98 countries in this study, Coke was the leader in 83 countries and second in the rest. Pepsi led in 12 countries. Only the Dominican Republic, Angola, and Myanmar had soft drink leaders other than Pepsi and Coke.

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Pepsi and Coke have been expanding their markets to poor and moderately poor countries. From 2006 to 2020, total revenue from poor countries increased eightfold for both companies and fourfold from moderately poor countries. Revenues from the U.S. and the rest of the world increased as well.

Power

As the investigators point out, all this market share and money give the two giants a lot of clout. They spend an enormous amount on advertising. Between 1980 and 2019 Coke spent $90.5 billion on advertising, nearly nine times more than the industry average. Pepsi spent $74.9 billion, 7.4 times the industry average.

Their gigantic market share also means they have a lot of money to spend on lobbying, which leads to favorable legislation. From 1970 to 2016 the effective tax rate for Pepsi declined from 40 to 25 percent, and Coke declined from 50 to 19 percent. (Coke and Pepsi are not alone, it should be kept in mind. Other businesses saw their taxes decline in the same time frame.) Such clout also leads to what is called “legislative capture” or what has been known for centuries as plain old corruption. Through legislative capture, proposed laws to limit the amount of sugar in drinks, or to require companies like Coke and Pepsi to clean up their plastic bottle pollution never see the light of day, or, if passed, are considerably watered down.

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As Naomi Oreskes chronicles in Merchants of Doubt, Big Tobacco and the fossil fuel industries funneled enormous amounts of money into “research” that obfuscated results that their products caused cancer or warmed the globe. Big Soda has done the same. Between 2010 and 2019, Coke financed “research” to the tune of $10 million to shift the blame for diet-related chronic diseases away from its sugary products. An inquiry sponsored by Right to Know, an investigative public health and consumer group, analyzed more than 18,000 emails between Coca-Cola, West Virginia University, and the University of Colorado. Results indicated that the universities formed part of a “front group” called Global Energy Balance Network that downplayed the link between sugary drinks and obesity.

A 50 year old Coca-Cola ad that people still talk about. How can something so sweet with a song so pleasant be so bad for you and the environment?

Back to plastic, Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo are the world’s two largest manufacturers of plastic packaging. Most of those millions of bottles clogging up the world’s waterways and oceans come from Coke and Pepsi. Taken together, the two cola giants produce at least 5.8 million tons of plastic packaging every year, with about 370,000 tons polluting ecosystems.

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As far as taking responsibility for their plastic pollution, Big Soda replies with, “We don’t care.” They also follow up with, “And you can’t make us!” For most of us, once we empty a bottle of Coke or Pepsi, it’s our responsibility to find a proper recycling receptacle for it. In a few places, however, laws are in place to make it the responsibility of the beverage companies for their waste. Known as “Bottle Bills,” they require a deposit on the bottles, reimbursed when the consumer returns the bottle for recycling. Beverage containers in states with bottle bills are returned at about 60 percent, while states without them have a return rate of only 24 percent.

With all their money and clout, Big Soda has fought any efforts for bottle bills. Soon after Vermont passed the first bottle bill, The American Can Company and other corporations founded Keep America Beautiful. Coke and Pepsi soon joined up. Portraying themselves as anti-litter, the organization has actually worked to deter bottle bills and other legislation that would make companies responsible for their waste. Keep America Beautiful is most famous for the “Crying Indian” PSA that fooled an entire generation into thinking that all that trash was their fault.

The famous “Crying Indian” ad. Ask not for whom the Indian cries. He cries because he’s a paid actor in an ad to convince you that all that packaging produced by big companies is your problem, not theirs.

Coke and Pepsi use other tactics to avoid responsibility for their plastic pollution. Among the strategies used by Big Soda is to offer funds for recycling to states and municipalities on the condition that they don’t pass bottle bills. And their ads and the ads from their front groups like Keep America Beautiful are quite successful at keeping recycling laws in their favor.

Things should change, but they won’t until we get money out of politics—or at least elect officials who won’t bend to the will of Big Soda.

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Previous Green Dispatches on plastic bottles and plastic pollution:

What these folks are talking about are mountaintop removal mines, huge expanses of surface or “strip” mining in which entire hills and mountains are blown apart to dig out the underlying coal. The dirt and rock blasted from the mountains are bulldozed into adjacent ravines and streams. Other Appalachian states in addition to West Virginia have been subjected to this extreme mining technique.

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First of all, mountaintop removal is BIG. Below is the footprint of the Hobart Mine, one of hundreds of mountaintop mines, superimposed on the city of San Diego. The image of the mine sprawls over several neighborhoods. You can see from the map scale the mine is at least seven miles long.

Second, mountaintop removal has severe environmental ramifications. Between 1985 and 2001, these mines affected more than one million hectares of forests throughout central Appalachia. Studies have shown declines in songbirds because of the mining. Filling in ravines and valleys with rock debris has buried more than 2,400 miles of Appalachian streams. The remaining streams are affected by mining pollutants as well, having only about one-third of the fish that more pristine waters have. Mountaintop mines affect the health of residents living nearby, increasing incidences of cancers, birth defects, and other health problems.

The good news

Despite the dire effects of these large mines, scientists have found some good news for Appalachia. In a paper published in Ecological Informatics in December of last year, scientists looked at the lower portion of the Levisa river and its watershed in eastern Kentucky. I took a particular interest in this study, as the watershed is about 75 miles from Huntington, West Virginia, where I went to college.

Since the time of increased mechanization of mining work after World War II, the Levisa watershed has been heavily mined. And that mining continues today. In 2022, the Bluegrass State produced 28,526,558 tons of coal. More than half of that coal was mined in eastern Kentucky.

John Prine’s song Paradise describes the ravages of strip mining in Kentucky

Mining companies are required to perform land reclamation after they have ceased mining operations at a site as a condition of their mining permits. Although I have often read about these companies shirking their responsibilities after the coal is mined out and the mining operations have shut down, the authors of this paper indicate that reclamation has been a part of the recovery of the Levisa watershed. They did not, however, describe the recovery efforts, and I was unable to find out for myself about reclamation in this area.

The mines can produce great wealth for investors, but the lives of miners, as well as other Appalachians, can be rough. The people can be very poor, as you can see in this documentary about a miners’ strike in eastern Kentucky during the 1970s.

The research team used satellite data to assess the Levisa watershed’s ecological health. One of the indicators was simply how green the former mines had become, basically how much trees and other plants had come back to the mined lands.

Overall, they found the majority of the former mines had recovered post-mining, at least to some extent. Only about seven percent of the former mines had degraded. The scientists hypothesized that the greater the slope of the land, the greater the ecological recovery. This surprised me. I would have thought the greater the slope, the more likely the land would be vulnerable to erosion.

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The scientists say there is reason to hope; they anticipate the watershed will continue to improve. I believe this study is a good one, but more in-depth research of ecological surveying should be performed on the ground to see how much reclaimed areas resemble unmined lands. Surveys could assess how if reclaimed lands wind up having more invasives or if certain organisms—salamanders, for example—have a harder time returning to reclaimed mines.

The not-so-good news

Runoff from mines contains sulfur and other chemicals, such as selenium. Selenium is naturally occurring, and is even a micronutrient, an antioxidant essential for your immune system and thyroid.

But too much selenium is harmful. Fish can bioaccumulate selenium, to an extent, when the waters they swim in have higher levels of the element. When they are exposed to excessive levels of selenium, fish can develop deformities and even die.

Scientists looked at Crowsnest Lake in Alberta, Canada, which receives runoff from the Tent Mountain Coal Mine. Even though the mine was closed some 40 years ago and was reclaimed, at least in part, fish in the lake have high levels of selenium and exceed guidelines for consumption by humans.

Do you or family members live near an area affected by mountain top removal mining? Have you seen positive reclamation efforts? Heard of any negative effects? Click the button below to share your experience.

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Previous Green Dispatches on coal mining and Appalachia:

One of the biggest concerns that keeps people off their bikes is safety. The prospect of navigating a very narrow space between parked cars and traffic can intimidate many would-be cyclists. Studies have found, however, that bicycle ridership increases once bike lanes are added to roadways. The lanes may also help municipalities better manage roadway capacity.

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Bike lanes not only feel safer, they are safer. In a paper titled Bicyclist Crash Types on National, State, and Local Levels: A New Look published in Sage Journals, researchers from Arizona State University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, looked at data from across the U.S., while concentrating much of their study on North Carolina and Denver, Colorado. They found most bike fatalities (69%) occur in cities, and most of those occur at non-intersection locations, basically along city streets. Mostly this happens when drivers try to overtake cyclists. Crashes at intersections were usually caused by cyclists failing to yield as well as motorists turning across a bicyclist’s path.

According to a 2022 study published by the Federal Highway Administration, the more separated bike lanes are from car traffic, the better. Adding flexible delineator posts to bike lanes can reduce crashes by up to 53 percent.

The push and push back of bike lanes

Bike lanes get us better safety, better health, and a greener planet, yet they can still be infuriatingly scarce. Why?

People have wanted bike lanes since the great flowering of the environmental movement in the early seventies. In September of 1970, a large group of cyclists, including “Wall Street executives, hippies, housewives, and labor leaders” cycled eight miles down New York City’s famed Fifth Avenue to demonstrate that cycling was a good way to get around the great metropolis.1

Backlash against cycle lanes developed quickly, within ten years the bike lanes that New Yorkers had demonstrated for were all pulled out by then-mayor Edward Koch.2 New York restored bike lanes after Koch removed them, but there was always protest, resistance, and drives to eliminate them.3

But most folks want bike lanes

According to research performed for the Independent, the British online newspaper, reporters evaluated more than 36,000 tweets concerning bike lanes from people in the UK, finding that most folks approve of bike lanes. The reporters found 14,370 tweets in support of bike lanes, 10,465 in opposition, and 12,142 neutral.

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Delving more into the content of the tweets, opposition was less about a desire to keep bike lanes out and more about how people felt excluded from the decision-making process when leaders introduced bike lane projects to communities. Cyclists and others both criticized the lack of consultation and the sometimes poor design of the bike lanes.

One criticism voiced by motorists is that bike lanes, in reducing the amount of space on the roads for cars, lead to an increase of automobile congestion and crashes. But the data find no such outcome.

Bike lanes go in, bike lanes come out

New York City’s new mayor, Zorhan Mamdani, is resurrecting plans to put in a bike lane in Brooklyn, a plan that was scrapped under a cloud of alleged corruption under his predecessor, Eric Adams.

On the other hand, city politicians in Oklahoma City voted last month to outright ban the construction of a bike lane along a busy corridor of their city. And Medford, Oregon, just voted this week to remove bike lanes and restore streets to their previous designs. Motorists complained the bike lanes made driving through the area confusing and difficult to navigate. Visibility was another factor.

Toronto has had a saga of anti-bike lane pushes from politicians for over a year now. As with other cities, Toronto expanded the number of its bike lanes during the pandemic. But back in November of 2024, the Ontario government, in a MAGAesque move, introduced as a bill the “Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act,” which restricts municipalities from creating new bike lanes if the lanes would “interfere with existing vehicle routes.” The measure also targeted Toronto and its existing bike lanes for removal. A cycling organization successfully challenged the new law, but appeals have left the issue unresolved.

My town of San Diego has had its own push and pull on bike lanes. In July of 2021, when road crews began creating bike lanes along a 2.5 mile stretch of 30th Street—from the neighborhoods of South Park to North Park, opposition was quite vocal. Both residents and business owners expressed their displeasure with the plan in part because it necessitated the removal of hundreds of parking spaces.

The bike lane still went in, and opposition has died down. But bike lanes have remained contentious. In our last mayoral race, Larry Turner, the candidate challenging incumbent Todd Gloria, promised to remove all the city’s bike lanes as part of his campaign platform. He later backed off a bit, saying he would only prevent the installation of future bike lanes.

As it is with public transportation, high speed rail, and other transportation issues, the U.S. lags behind many other places in the world when it comes to bike lanes. With almost 250 miles of lanes dedicated to two-wheel travel, Copenhagen, leads the world as the city with the greatest number of bike lanes. Almost half of all trips in the Danish city are made on bikes. Other cities in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany lead the world in bike lanes.

Does your city have bike lanes?

If so, what do you and other residents think of them? Do you or folks you know use bike lanes when cycling around town? Share your opinions and experience by clicking the button below.

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Previous Green Dispatches on cycling: