Record wildfire burns at least 40,000 acres on Hawaii’s Big Island, sets up mudslide danger

Washington Post
By Paulina Firozi

A brush fire that scorched at least 40,000 acres on Hawaii’s Big Island is the largest ever on the island, officials said, and the area burned may pose a risk for mudslides if there are heavy downpours in coming months.

Mandatory evacuations forced residents in three communities out of their homes over the weekend, but the orders were lifted late Sunday as conditions stabilized.

Cyrus Johnasen, a spokesperson for the Hawaii County mayor’s office, said Tuesday that the confirmed area burned remained around 40,000 acres. Johnasen told The Washington Post that the fire was 75 percent contained, and that officials expect the blaze to be 85 to 90 percent contained by the end of Tuesday, local time. Officials say that the fire is no longer a threat to residences or homes but that there is concern about an effect on forest reserves and species habitats.

He also warned of “after effects” even when the flames are curbed. For the next two or three months, heavy rains could cause mudslides, he said.

“All the areas that have burned, the soil no longer has roots to hold it in place,” he said. “ … So that 40,000 acres of burned soil could translate to mudslides anywhere along the west side of the island, resulting in potential road closure or hazardous conditions.”

He said residents should be cautious on roads if those heavy rains arrive.

Maui residents rail against spike in tourism during water shortage: ‘Stop coming’ to Hawaii

The fire ignited amid recent drought conditions in parts of the state of Hawaii. Nearly 60 percent of the state is experiencing at least moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Much of the Big Island is abnormally dry or experiencing moderate drought.

A National Weather Service forecast from early July warned of “increasing drought conditions” in parts of the state during the summer.

“It’s important to note that by no means are we out of this drought,” Johnasen said. “The threat of this particular fire is over, but folks should keep in mind who live in those dry areas that more forest fires and brush fires could spark over the course of the summer. We want folks to remain cautious and remain alert and have an evacuation plan in the event something becomes more of a threat to homes.”

Exceptional heat and drought also have created tinderbox conditions elsewhere, fueling wildfires across the western United States this year. The National Interagency Fire Center lists 97 active large fires burning in the country, mostly in Western states.

Clay Trauernicht, part of the extension faculty in ecosystems and fire at University of Hawaii at Manoa, said fires in Hawaii are fueled by widespread tropical grasses.

“That’s what drives our fire risk here,” Trauernicht told The Post.

“We’ve been in pretty deep drought conditions, especially in that part of the Big Island,” he added. “The other thing that hammers us is we’ve had an especially wet wintertime.”

Wet winters with excess rainfall lead to more tropical grass growing, accumulating more fuels that later dry out and can increase the chance of fires.

“What we’re seeing is that perfect one-two punch,” Trauernicht said.

He said there’s also been a long-term trend of grasslands expanding, in part driven by a reduction in agriculture and ranching operations over the past two or three decades. With less land under production, grasses have further filled in.

Trauernicht said there are occasional lightning strike-sparked fires, brush fires and fires from active lava flows. In 2018, an eruption from the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island devastated surrounding areas. Fissures opened up, spewing lava into residential roads and destroying structures in its path.

But a large majority of fires are started by people, Trauernicht said. “Human ignitions coupled with an increasing amount of nonnative, fire-prone grasses and shrubs and a warming, drying climate have greatly increased the wildfire problem,” notes the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization website.

Roth pointed fingers at the drought as firefighters fought the record blaze in Hawaii County.

“With the drought conditions that we’ve had, it is of concern,” the mayor said, according to the Associated Press. “You see something like this where you’re putting thousands of homes in danger, it’s very concerning.”

Why Capturing Renewable Natural Gas Has Legs in the Climate Conversation

RealClear Energy
By Mike Butler

When many people think of renewable energy, they think of modern wind, solar and hydropower resources. When they think of natural gas, they think of it as a traditional, finite source of energy – something that’s used and then gone.

But there’s another form of renewable energy that many have overlooked as an option to help meet some states’ emission reduction goals in regulatory actions like New Jersey’s Energy Master Plan and the Garden State’s larger climate conversation. It’s called Renewable Natural Gas or RNG inside the energy world.

RNG combines the strength and benefits of two forms of energy – renewable energy and natural gas – and it turns out it’s been around for as long as humans have been farming. Some might even refer to it as biogas, a byproduct of organic materials mixing with oxygen. RNG in this case comes from multiple sources of organic leftovers and waste.

Methane is the key molecule that makes up natural gas and found in the prolific energy basins across the country that we use to produce, transport and sell energy. Natural gas has many benefits, too. It’s clean, affordable and plentiful here in the U.S. Gas is able to be safely transported in pipelines and is used every day in our homes, businesses, transportation systems and power grid.

But traditional exploration for natural gas isn’t the only way to capture and harness methane – a chemical compound that occurs abundantly in nature does as well.

Besides being found underwater, in wetlands, and from naturally occurring seeps, methane is also released in landfills, water treatment plants, and in agriculture. The same methane that comes from oil and gas production also comes from four-legged creatures that dot the plains and fields of America’s farms and ranches – cows. There are an estimated 95 million cows in America and the small amounts of methane they release can really add up, and if uncaptured, that methane escapes into the atmosphere anyway where it has a significant impact on emissions.

If we effectively collect that waste, and process it, it can become a usable fuel that fits our existing infrastructure for power and home heating needs. And because this resource can be produced over and over, it makes for a great renewable source of energy from our livestock that also reduces harmful air emissions.

While the renewable gas utility market in Canada appears to have a more mature market, the U.S. is catching up quickly with California, New York, Colorado, Oregon and Hawaii all making strides to help utilities incorporate RNG into their energy mix.

For example, promising projects from agribusiness companies like Smithfield Foods will result in enough renewable natural gas to power more than 2,700 homes and business and brings the company closer to its goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 25 percent by 2025.

The traditional natural gas industry is also committed to capturing more methane – after all, that’s the primary fuel source they are trying to sell, and every molecule going into the atmosphere is a dollar lost. Since 2000, the industry has invested more than $108 billion in technologies to help capture these “fugitive emissions” which can escape during production and operations.

That money is in addition to the $151 billion the federal government has invested in research and development programs primarily run though the Department of Energy and Argonne National Labs. On top of that, satellites, airplanes and helicopter sensor technology are all helping to detect and reduce methane from entering our atmosphere.

While RNG only makes a small percentage of our energy make-up today, the opportunities are tremendous and should be a part of the clean energy future New Jersey is pursuing. The more solutions we have to meet both our energy needs and environmental goals the better. Plus, consider the significant benefits that will be achieved by removing waste from our agriculture operations and the benefits for rural America. Over time our best minds will continue to advance and refine technology to help costs come down for RNG – just look at the cost of solar panels 10 years ago to today.

So while it may be early, the idea of capturing renewable natural gas definitely has legs for New Jersey’s energy future energy solutions.

Experts warn Hawaii summer drought ‘could be worse than last year’

KHON2
by Jenn Boneza

Less than normal rainfall and higher temperatures may cause severe drought conditions in summer 2021.

Some places are already seeing the impact and experts say it will only get worse.

Hot, sunny days are great while at the beach, but too much sunshine and not enough rain for prolonged periods of time can cause problems — especially for farmers and ranchers.

Be prepared for another dry, hot summer. Weather experts are expecting below average rainfall.

Hawaii is seeing abnormally dry conditions on every island across the state and some Leeward areas are experiencing moderate drought conditions already.

According to NOAA Hydrologist Kevin Kodama, two counties will be hit the hardest.

“Hawaii County and Maui County would have the quickest impacts and probably the most severe impact, especially early on,” Kodama said. “I would anticipate that based on the climate outlook, climate model projections, that it could be worse than last year.”

Rep. Lynn DeCoite (D) who represents Molokai, Lanai and parts of Maui, says she can see it already.

“It’s bad. And we’re in May,” Rep. DeCoite said. “Pastures are drying up.”

Rep. DeCoite, who lives on Molokai, says it is concerning. She does not want a repeat of summer 2020 when hundreds of axis deer were found dead of starvation along roadways due to overpopulation and lack of food.

The Hawaii Cattleman’s Council managing director Nicole Galase says ranchers are already preparing for the worst.

“Ranchers are monitoring so many factors when it comes to their operation,” Galase said. “So if a drought is coming, they are preparing ahead of time.”

If there is not enough forage on the ground, they purchase supplemental feed, which she said can get very expensive.

“On top of making sure that the cattle are fed, another important factor when drought comes up is that the ranchers are always looking ahead to make sure that that they’re grazing down the forage so that there’s not a big fuel load for when those dry seasons come so they can prevent wildfires before they start,” she explained.

According to Agriculture Committee vice chair Rep. Amy Perruso, some farmers are more vulnerable than others.

“Small farmers are the most vulnerable,” Perruso said. “Because in my experience, their margins are the smallest. And they can’t really afford the kinds of losses that might come with drought.”

Consumers will feel it as well.

“You’re going to see prices jump in vegetables, fruits, beef,” Rep. DeCoite explained. “We will be depending upon our imports more highly.”

Water will also be an issue as Hawaii moves into the summer months.

Experts are suggesting the people who rely on water catchment systems for their water to begin conserving now.

“Stop washing your cars and watering your yards, it needs to be used for the crops at this time,” Rep. DeCoite said.

A Fifth of Food-Output Growth Has Been Lost to Climate Change

Bloomberg Green
By Breanna T Bradham –

Climate change has been holding back food production for decades, with a new study showing that about 21% of growth for agricultural output was lost since the 1960s.

That’s equal to losing the last seven years of productivity growth, according to research led by Cornell University and published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study was funded by a unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The revelation comes as the United Nations’ World Food Programme warns of a “looming catastrophe” with about 34 million people globally on the brink of famine. The group has cited climate change as a major factor contributing to the sharp increase in hunger around the world. Food inflation is also on the rise as farmers deal with the impact of extreme weather at a time of robust demand.

This is the first study to look at how climate change has historically affected agricultural production on a global scale, using econometrics and climate models to figure out how much of the sector’s total productivity has been affected, across crops and livestock.

The loss of productivity comes even as billions has been poured into improving agricultural production through the development of new seeds, sophisticated farm machinery and other technological advances.

“Even though globally agriculture is more productive, that greater productivity on average doesn’t translate into more climate resilience,” said Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, an author of the paper and associate professor at Cornell’s Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.

The damages to productivity growth aren’t evenly spread across regions. Warmer areas — especially those in the tropics — are more detrimentally affected. Ortiz-Bobea said that coincides with many countries where agriculture makes up a bigger share of the economy.

He was also warned that current research into improving production may not enough consider the pace of climate change.

“I worry that we’re breeding or preparing ourselves for the climate we’re in now, not what is coming up in the next couple of decades.”

Nonprofit moves forward with lawsuit to protect Hawaiian honeycreeper

Star Advertiser
By Nina Wu –

The Center for Biological Diversity today filed suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to designate critical habitat and develop a recovery plan for the iiwi, a cherished forest bird in Hawaii.

The move comes five months after the national nonprofit filed a formal notice of intent to sue due to lack of progress. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for Hawaii.

“The beautiful iiwi needs our help and it needs it now,” said Maxx Phillips, the center’s Hawaii director and staff attorney, in a news release. “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s foot-dragging is unacceptable. Without the protections provided by critical habitat and a valid recovery plan, iiwi will continue down a heartbreaking path towards extinction.”

Iiwi, or Drepani coccinea, are medium-sized honeycreepers with bright, red plumage, black wings and distinctive, curved bills used to drink nectar.

The iiwi was listed in 2017 as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act due to extensive threats from mosquito-borne diseases such as avian malaria, as well as loss of habitat due to rapid ohia death and climate change.

Once abundant across the state — from the coastal lowlands where they foraged for food to the high mountain forests where they nested — the iiwi today can only be found in a narrow band of forest on East Maui, and elevated windward slopes of Hawaii island, and on Kauai.

They are now gone from the islands of Lanai, Oahu, Molokai and West Maui, the center said, and the Kauai population is likely to go extinct within 30 years.

Under the act, the agency is required to designate critical habitat with its listing determination and develop a recovery plan for the bird — but has failed to do so, according to the suit.

Phillips said there are measures the USFWS could take right now — including the restoration of upland forests at higher elevations, fencing off of potential breeding areas, and eradication of ungulates such as pigs, which create breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

The USFWS, in a December letter to Phillips after receiving the notice of intent to sue, said development of a recovery plan for iiwi is underway under the leadership of its Pacific Islands Fish and Wildlife Office, and that a draft should be available for public review in the Federal Register by October.

The USFWS said, however, that it could not offer a timeframe for designating a critical habitat for iiwi due to its “national workload within the limited budget Congress has set.” The agency already has a 5-year National Listing Workplan for 12-month petition findings and status reviews, and will need to prioritize its workload.

Among those priorities, the agency said, are the designation of critical habitat for 14 Hawaiian species, including the picture-wing fly, by Feb. 28, 2023 as a result of a settlement with the center following an earlier lawsuit.

The center says Hawaiian forest birds are in crisis, with 68% of Hawaii’s known endemic bird species have already gone extinct because of habitat loss, disease and invasive predators.

“The longer that the service drags their feet, the closer these species come to a tipping point of going extinct,” said Phillips. “Time is of the essence. Any delay is really inexcusable.”

Planting crops — and carbon, too

Washington Post
Story by Gabriel Popkin –

Maryland farmer Trey Hill pulled in a healthy haul of corn last fall and then immediately planted rye, turnips, clover and other species, which are now spreading a lush green carpet over the soil. While his grandfather, who started the family farm along the Chesapeake Bay, always planted in the spring in a clean field, in Hill’s approach to farming, “you never want to see the ground.”

As the winter cover crops grow, they will feed microbes and improve the soil’s health, which Hill believes will eventually translate into higher yields of the crops that provide his income: corn, soybean and wheat.

But just as importantly, they will pull down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the ground. Hill is at the cutting edge of what many hope will provide not just a more nature-friendly way of farming, but a powerful new climate solution.

In early 2020, he became the first seller in a privately run farmer-focused marketplace that paid him $115,000 for practices that, over the past few years, had sequestered just over 8,000 tons of carbon in the soil. The money came from corporations and individuals who want to offset carbon dioxide produced by their activities. Hill used the proceeds to buy equipment he hopes will allow him to squirrel away even more of the planet-warming gas.

If farmers throughout the world adopted similar “regenerative” methods, experts estimate they could sequester a sizable chunk of the world’s carbon emissions. The idea has been endorsed by soil scientists, a slew of food industry giants and, recently, President Biden.

But some doubt that farmed soils can reliably store carbon long enough to make a difference for the climate — or that changes in soil carbon can be accurately yet affordably measured. Others worry voluntary measures such as soil sequestration could make a polluting food and agriculture industry appear environmentally friendly while forestalling stronger climate action.

Researchers and companies are now racing to reduce the scientific uncertainties and win over skeptics.

Many scientists are confident that farming can be adapted to build carbon into soils, said Deborah Bossio, a soil scientist at the Nature Conservancy, an environmental organization. “We know how to do it,” she said.

Agriculture has done a masterful job of feeding the world’s burgeoning population. It has been less wonderful for the climate. For thousands of years, plowing has mixed underground carbon-containing compounds with atmospheric oxygen, creating carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that is driving global warming. Researchers estimate that farming throughout history has unearthed roughly 133 billion tons of carbon, an amount equal to almost 14 years of global emissions at current levels.

To prevent climate change from irrevocably damaging human civilization and the world’s ecosystems, humans must reduce carbon emissions enough to prevent the average global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, scientists say. Some areas of the planet have already passed that threshold.

[Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world]

As scientists came to appreciate the threat posed by climate change over the past few decades, some wondered whether carbon already in the atmosphere could be captured and returned to the soil. A team led by Bossio estimated in early 2020 that if soil was protected and replenished globally, it could provide nearly 10 percent of the carbon dioxide drawdown needed to avert near-term climate catastrophe.

Soil carbon building practices, loosely gathered under the term “regenerative agriculture,” have been practiced for decades, or centuries in some places. Planting without tilling the soil took off after the devastating Dust Bowl in the 1930s spurred a search for ways to avert further soil loss, and the practice now includes more than a fifth of U.S. farmland. Maryland has paid farmers to plant cover crops since the 1990s to stanch the flow of nitrogen into the Chesapeake Bay. Some livestock producers rotate animals on pastures of grasses and legumes, whose roots pull carbon underground. And though rare in the United States today, farmers elsewhere in the world mix trees into fields and pastures.

Hill, who farms 10,000 acres, admitted he got into cover crops purely because the state paid him. “We had no intent of doing it for climate,” he said.

But he has since become a true believer. He now mixes rye and other fast-growing grasses with legumes such as clover and lentils, whose roots host nitrogen-fixing bacteria. He also plants root crops such as radishes and turnips to loosen and aerate the soil. While most farmers kill their cover crops in March, as soon as the state allows, Hill lets the plants grow taller than he is, to maximize root mass and carbon gains. He kills them just before planting his cash crop in May.

“The longer the cover crop is alive, the better off we all are,” he said.

There are barriers that keep more farmers from following his lead, Hill said. He has had to buy specialized equipment, and climate-friendly farming hasn’t yet translated to higher yields or premium prices.

“It’s a b—- to farm this way,” he said. Turnips can get stuck in his planting equipment, costing his team valuable time, for example. “It makes life a lot more difficult, and not necessarily more profitable.”

Hill sells most of his corn to the chicken producer Mountaire Farms, which pays him the same market price other suppliers get. If farmers were paid for the carbon accumulating in their soils, they would have greater incentive to adopt climate-friendly practices, Hill said.

But implementing that idea is challenging. Carbon accumulates slowly in soil, and past attempts to pay farmers for it have failed when the costs of verifying carbon gains exceeded what buyers were willing to pay. Backers of new, private-sector carbon markets hope that computer models fed by data from farm fields, satellites and handheld carbon sensors can measure and predict soil carbon gains more cheaply and reliably.

Hill connected with one of those markets, a Seattle-based tech start-up called Nori. After lengthy negotiations, credits representing carbon stored in some of Hill’s fields went on sale in October 2019 at $16.50 a ton — around the most an acre of his farmland might capture in a year, Hill said. Buyers included the e-commerce company Shopify, Arizona State University and individuals looking to offset the carbon their activities produce.

Nori eschews traditional soil tests, which can cost thousands of dollars for a large farm, and instead relies on third-party audits and a U.S. Agriculture Department computer model called COMET-Farm that estimates greenhouse gas emissions from farms.

Nori has competitors. One is Indigo Ag, a Boston-based ag-tech company that has lined up corporate customers including JPMorgan Chase, Boston Consulting Group and Dogfish Head to buy credits for carbon stored in more than a million acres of farmland across 21 states. After farmers upload their 2020 data, Indigo will calculate the amount of carbon stored and verify the numbers with a third party, a process that could take six months.

Still, the emerging market has hit speed bumps. Nori hoped to enroll more than 100 farmers in 2020, but so far, only Hill and an Iowa farmer have sold credits on the marketplace, with three more in the final stage of verification, according to Radhika Moolgavkar, a Nori program manager. At least one potential buyer, Microsoft, which has pledged to go “carbon negative” by 2030, turned down Nori’s credits because they weren’t backed by physical soil samples, Moolgavkar said. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to confirm that account.

“We’re seeing market formation in real time,” said David LeZaks, a senior fellow at the Croatan Institute, a nonprofit organization that researches sustainable investment.

The maturation of soil carbon science has complicated matters. Reduced tillage, already practiced by thousands of farmers, was once considered a major climate win because researchers saw carbon accumulate near the surface of untilled soils. But studies that sampled deeper soil layers revealed that carbon was lost there, wiping out most of the apparent gains.

Cover crops, whose roots and stalks add organic matter to the soil, have become the hotter item. A recent global meta-analysis estimated that if cover crops were planted on 15 percent of the world’s cropland, soils could soak up between 1 and 2 percent of all fossil fuel emissions. In December, Biden announced he wants to pay farmers to plant cover crops, and his USDA transition team has called for setting up a “carbon bank” within the first 100 days of his administration that would pay farmers, ranchers and forest owners for climate-friendly practices.

The USDA already offers three-year grants to encourage farmers to grow cover crops, but those have had limited impact. A 2017 USDA census found that cover crops were grown on less than 4 percent of American cropland.

Some researchers have questioned the practice’s climate benefits. In papers published last year based on long-term research plots in Iowa and California, scientists reported that when they measured carbon in soil to a depth of a meter or more, the gains of cover crops largely disappeared, similar to what had happened to no-till. By contrast, organic farming may do more to build deep reserves of carbon, those and other studies suggest.

Last year, the World Resources Institute, a leading Washington environmental nonprofit organization, stirred debate when it published two blog posts strongly questioning whether farming practices could make a meaningful dent in climate change.

Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University and senior fellow at WRI who was the lead author of both posts, says cover cropping and other regenerative practices are good for soil and the environment generally, but their carbon drawdown rates are too low to play a major role in averting climate disaster.

“An overfocus on soil carbon is a diversion from the climate strategies that can have a bigger impact,” Searchinger said in an interview. These include restoring carbon-absorbing peatlands, reducing methane emissions from cattle and other ruminants, and increasing the productivity of existing farmland to discourage deforestation.

Soil-based strategies are also limited in duration. Sequestration rates are highest in severely degraded soils, and after a few decades of climate-friendly farming, most soils become saturated with carbon — a fact not always noted by regenerative agriculture promoters, said David Powlson, a researcher at Rothamsted Research in Britain, which hosts the world’s longest-running agriculture experiment: “It’s not like getting rid of a coal-fired power station and replacing it with renewables, where exactly the same carbon savings is happening every year.”

Some fear emerging carbon markets risk wasting a rare opportunity for broader agricultural changes while giving corporations cover from more stringent climate regulations. Large industrial farmers such as Hill already benefit from a bevy of government programs, critics point out, while small-scale farmers with limited acreage will struggle to tap into markets. Expanding existing programs that pay farmers to grow native vegetation rather than crops could be a more cost-effective way to achieve climate benefits, others say.

Still, regenerative agriculture practices appeal to many experts because they’re field-tested and ready to be implemented.

“They are relatively inexpensive, relatively easy to adopt, and have a huge area of land where they’re suitable, and they have tremendous momentum and provide huge benefits to farms,” said Eric Toensmeier, a consultant with Project Drawdown and author of a recent report comparing the climate benefits of dozens of farming practices. “Cover cropping is one of the lowest hanging fruits.”

For Hill, the money from Nori was nice, but he doubts it will be enough to get more traditional farmers off the sidelines. An acre of single-species cover crops could cost $25 to $40 to plant; a biodiverse mix like Hill’s can run $65 an acre. And unlike Hill, most farmers can’t get payments from their state.

Still, between emerging carbon markets, a potential federal program and consumers waking up to the climate costs of food production, Hill is confident that he’s making a move that will be good for both the planet and his bottom line.

“Soil health,” he said, “should be the solution to climate change.”