A New Endowment Established at Columbia Basin College Celebrating Earth Day 2021

Earth Day this year is April 22

 

To achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and avoid catastrophic climate change we need to act with far greater urgency than we have to date. We must undertake climate change mitigation efforts now, not in the future, now, that are up to the monumental problems we face -- a rapidly warming climate, rising sea levels, more extreme hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods, mega droughts, and species extinctions that might one day include our own. On one front we see hope -- mayors of the world’s leading cities have emerged as strong and inspiring champions of the kind of ambitious climate action the world needs.

Richard Rogers, the multi-award winning architect, has talked frequently about sustainability and climate change, the growth and density of cities, and the architect’s role as problem-solver. He's said that, “The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved.”

It’s in this spirit that I recently endowed a scholarship at Columbia Basin College (CBC). Titled the “Badalamente Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES) Scholarship,” it recognizes the crucial role community colleges play in serving the higher education needs of an increasingly diverse student population, and the role CBC in particular can play in contributing to an increasing number of students studying and ultimately working in climate change and related fields, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. Student applicants must demonstrate an interest in topics surrounding climate change, with the expectation that they will go on to complete a 4-year degree, and perhaps graduate work in climate science.

I have established the initial endowment for the BEES Scholarship with a $25,000 donation. Investment earnings from the fund and additional donations will be used to award scholarships to students pursuing environmental education at CBC. The more funds that can be raised, the more scholarships that can be awarded.

If you’re interested in donating to the BEES Scholarship, go to the CBC Network for Good donate page, specify the amount, and frequency of donation, then pull down the “Please select” drop-down menu and select “CBC BEES Scholarship.” Alternately, call (509-833-5647) or email (efishburn@columbiabasin.edu) Erin Fisburn at the CBC Foundation and tell her you’re interested in BEES.

Columbia Basin College, Tri-Cities, Washington

Goodbye to the Climate

by Robert N Stavens

The International New York Times

Smog trapped in the valley of Sandy, Utah. Credit George Frey/Bloomberg

Donald J. Trump once tweeted that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” Twitter messages may not be clear signs of likely public policies, but Mr. Trump followed up during the campaign with his “America First Energy Plan,” which would rescind all of President Obama’s actions on climate change.

The plan includes canceling United States participation in the Paris climate agreement and stopping all American funding of United Nations climate change programs. It also includes abandoning the Clean Power Plan, a mainstay of the Obama administration’s approach to achieving its emissions reduction target for carbon dioxide under the Paris agreement.

What should we make of such campaign promises? Taking Mr. Trump at his word, he will surely seek to pull the country out of the Paris pact. But because the agreement has already come into force, under the rules, any party must wait three years before requesting to withdraw, followed by a one-year notice period.

Those rules would seem to be mere technicalities. The incoming Trump administration simply can disregard America’s pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 26 to 28 percent below the 2005 level by 2025. That is bad enough. But the big worry is what other key countries, including the world’s largest emitter, China, as well as India and Brazil, will do if the United States reneges on its pledge. The result could be that the Paris agreement unravels, taking it from the 97 percent of global emissions currently covered by the pact to little more than the European Union’s 10 percent share.

In addition, Mr. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency probably will stop work on regulations of methane emissions (a very potent greenhouse gas) from existing oil and gas operations. Undoing complex existing regulations, such as the Clean Power Plan, will be more difficult, but a reconstituted Supreme Court will probably help President Trump when that plan inevitably comes before the court.

Also, the new president will most likely ask that the Keystone XL pipeline permit application be renewed — and facilitate other oil and gas pipelines around the country.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump promised to “bring back” the coal industry by cutting environmental regulations. That may not be so easy. The decline of that industry and related employment has been caused by technological changes in mining, and competition from low-priced natural gas for electricity generation, not by environmental regulations. At the same time, Mr. Trump has pledged to promote fracking for oil and gas, but that would make natural gas even more economically attractive, and accelerate the elimination of coal-sector jobs.

If he lives up to his campaign rhetoric, Mr. Trump may indeed be able to reverse course on climate change policy, increasing the threat to our planet, and in the process destroy much of the Obama legacy in this important realm. This will make the states even more important players on this critical issue.

Robert N. Stavins is a professor at Harvard, where he directs the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements.