The Government Shutdown Could Do Lasting Damage to the Environment
As the federal government shut down last week, many employees were furloughed, had their jobs suspended, or were working without pay. Science and environmental projects faced major setbacks.
On September 30, the Trump administration’s energy department canceled almost $8 billion of funding for over 220 green energy projects, which could lead to tens of thousands of jobs being lost. The terminations were in 16 states where Kamala Harris won the presidential election last year and included programs that would have reduced air and water pollution as well as carbon emissions.
For example, Colorado, which went for Harris, will lose $550 million in clean energy grants, including more than $300 million to Colorado State University, meant to develop technologies that cut emissions of the greenhouse gas methane in the fight against climate change. The largest cuts were to transit projects in New York, home to two of Congress’s highest-ranking Democrats, totaling $18 billion.
Contigency plans for the shutdown show that EPA will stop doing inspections into clean air and water violations that are not connected to alleged crimes. Inspections at drinking water and wastewater facilities will be suspended, and enforcement will be done only if there is an imminent threat to human health or property. Nearly 90 percent of the EPA’s staff was expected to be furloughed. Even before the shutdown, 25 percent of EPA employees had likely been cut, an uncertain number that is estimated by former officials because the agency won’t say, and furloughs at the agency could be permanent.
Jeremy Symons, a former official at EPA, told the Associated Press, that there is justified worry that the worst polluters will see this time as a chance to dump toxic contamination without being caught. He added that polluters will not be held accountable for what they release into drinking water.
Despite the shutdown, the administration is continuing to permit fossil fuel projects and is moving forward with the largest coal auctions in ten years from public reserves in Wyoming and Montana. Offshore renewable energy development will cease. This shutdown is different from earlier ones, because Trump is threatening to use it as a chance to remake the government to cut Democratic Party agencies and their priorities.
Government research has halted and non-government scientists will be affected because the National Science Foundation and EPA will stop awarding grants. The effects of the shutdown could last for months, years, or even decades, according to Forbes magazine, because it’s not easy to bring back laid-off staff, reinitiate programs, and get information to the public.
China Is Betting on a “Polar Silk Road” Through the Arctic
A couple of weeks ago, a cargo ship, the Istanbul Bridge, left China destined for the UK and other European countries. Instead of heading south and passing through the Suez Canal, the vessel went north toward the Arctic Circle. The ship, with the aid of ice breakers, will pass through the Bering Strait and travel along the northern coast of Russia. Taking this so-called Northern Sea Route or Northeast Passage will shave thousands of miles off the trip and require half as many days as existing routes.
The Northeast Passage is different from the Northwest Passage that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Canadian Arctic—a route considered to be much more treacherous. The Arctic is heating up four times faster than anywhere on Earth and melting ice is making voyages possible that just a decade ago would have been unfeasible.
In 2017, during a high-level visit between China and Russia, President Xi Jinping first proposed cooperation to jointly build what he deemed a “Polar Silk Road.” The Chinese government claims the Northern Sea Route is “green” because a shorter journey reduces carbon emissions in half. China says the polar route avoids costly risks of encountering pirates in the Indian Ocean and having to transit through conflict zones in the Middle East.
However, there are great risks, says the environmental group Clean Arctic Alliance, starting with the fuels the ships burn that releases “black carbon.” It’s a sooty material that not only pollutes the air but also settles on white snow and ice, causing them to absorb heat instead of reflecting it back into space. In 2020, a ban on the fuel that releases black carbon was proposed at the International Maritime Organization—the UN agency responsible for regulating maritime transport—starting in 2024, but the Clean Arctic Alliance says its use has more than doubled in recent years, creating a feedback loop in which shipping adds to global warming that melts more ice, which, in turn, facilitates more shipping.
The group adds that increased traffic in the Arctic will impact biodiversity, pollute the seas with wastewater, create noise that disturbs marine life, and increase the risk of damaging oil spills in a region not equipped to respond to an accident.
Rock Art Showed Ancients Where to Find Water in the Desert
If you were traveling on a secluded desert highway, you would look for road signs indicating the distance to the next opportunity to get food and water. According to a new study, that practice is as old as time.
A team of researchers working in Saudi Arabia have uncovered more than 170 rock art engravings depicting life-sized and naturalistic camels, ibex, and gazelles that marked water sources for desert travelers. The wall carvings date back over 12,000 years, a period when seasonal water bodies reappeared in the region. The scientists confirmed through sediment analysis that the animal figures and the water sources matched up.
Some of the road signs, so to speak, were almost ten feet wide and six and a hal feet tall, which would have required ancient artisans to climb and work on narrow, precarious ledges. Writing in The Conversation, the team said they were excited to find an engraving tool used to carve the art, small arrowheads, beads, and even a seashell in undisturbed soil layers beneath the carved camels. They also discovered the use of pigments, including a green tint they say had to have come from either the Mediterranean or Red Sea, hundreds of miles away.
The animal engravings likely guided people to water sources concealed behind boulders and sandstone formations, but they could also have been a secret handshake, indicating who was—and who wasn’t—permitted access.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.