REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, the climate crisis, REDD, and natural climate solutions. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
4 May 2020
“And/also”, not “Either/or” — The need to restore nature AND cut emissions
Nature Based Solutions, 4 May April 2020
Amidst the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic and home confinement, many people long for the joy and refuge of nature. The restrictions have heightened our collective awareness of nature’s many benefits — from the tranquillity of the outdoors to clean air and water, natural resources, disease suppression, and the capacity to help slow climate change and protect us from its impacts.
Noodle.ai: Taking action to protect forests with Pachama
Pachama, 4 May 2020
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that humanity faces in the twenty-first century, but with collective effort and responsibility, solutions are possible. Many private organizations are leading the sustainability charge by committing to net-zero emissions or even to drawing more carbon out of the air than they emit. To accomplish this, conserving and restoring forests are among the most effective and scalable solutions to support a healthy planet.
Jane Goodall: COVID-19 is a product of our unhealthy relationship with animals and the environment
By Jane Goodall, Mongabay, 4 May 2020
The world is facing unprecedented challenges. At the time of writing, the coronavirus COVID-19 has infected over 3.57 million people globally and as of the 4th of May 250,134 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. At present, people in most countries around the world are self-isolating at home (either alone or with family), keeping social distance and reducing going outdoors to a minimum. Some businesses have totally closed down, some carry on with staff working from home, some people are temporarily laid off, and thousands of people around the world have lost their jobs. Already the economic cost of all this is catastrophic.
‘The parallels between coronavirus and climate crisis are obvious’
By Michael Segalov, The Guardian, 4 May 2020
“I’m sorry,” says Emily Atkin, not sounding very apologetic, “but if you still refuse to see parallels between climate change and coronavirus then honestly you’re just stupid.”
A few weeks ago, the 30-year-old journalist wasn’t feeling so confrontational. Less was known about the global pandemic; the data and scientific research showing how the two global crises are linked was not as clear is it is today. But the connections quickly became obvious to Atkin, founder of the climate newsletter and podcast Heated. “Both are global crises which threaten millions of lives with clear science on how to solve them which governments have been too slow to act on; the same people who promote climate denial are refusing to accept the science of coronavirus, too.
Carbon credits explained: an industry veteran breaks down how they actually work
By Arjun Gangakhedkar, theRising, 4 May 2020
As environmental concerns have continued to grow over the years, carbon credits have entered the spotlight as a popular instrument that incentivizes businesses to support clean development projects and offset their own emissions.
From establishing wind power systems in India to ensuring potable water in Ethiopia, developers of clean initiatives can finance their projects using proceeds from the sale of carbon credits, which companies purchase to offset their own emissions.
Investors holding trillions of dollars of assets join calls for green Covid-19 recovery
By Michael Holder, BusinessGreen, 4 May 2020
A coalition of major green investors backed by trillions of dollars of assets under management worldwide have joined growing calls for a green economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, arguing governments “should not lose sight of the climate crisis” as they seek to restart their economies.
In a joint statement issues today, a raft of green investor organisations – including the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), the Asia Investment Group on Climate Change, CDP, and Ceres – argued economic stimulus efforts should accelerate the net zero transition.
Tigers retreat before spreading road networks
By Tim Radford, Climate News Network, 4 May 2020
Humans have made inroads into the last territory of the tiger – literally: the inexorable increase in roads is driving the tigers’ retreat.
A new study of the wilderness set aside for the rapidly-dwindling populations of Panthera tigris in 13 countries warns that more than half of all this supposedly untouched reserve is within 5kms of a road.
Altogether, tiger conservation landscapes considered crucial for the recovery of an endangered species are now home to 134,000 kilometres of road. This intrusion alone may have reduced the abundance of both the carnivore and its natural prey by about one fifth.
Australian businesses call for climate crisis and virus economic recovery to be tackled together
By Adam Morton, The Guardian, 4 May 2020
A leading Australian business group is calling for the two biggest economic challenges in memory – recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and cutting greenhouse gas emissions – to be addressed together, saying it would boost growth and put the country on a firm long-term footing.
Innes Willox, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, representing more than 60,000 businesses, says economic recovery from the virus and the transition required to meet net-zero emissions by 2050 are overlapping issues that should be taken on together.
What the Coronavirus pandemic means for China’s national carbon market
By Hongming Liu and Xiaolu Zhao, Environmental Defense Fund, 4 May 2020
COVID-19 pandemic has upended the global economy and peoples’ lives. The crisis has caused China’s central government to shift policy priorities to better address the health and economic fallout of the epidemic. It’s the right move and expected.
Prior to tragic spread of the coronavirus epidemic, China was preparing to roll out its national emission trading system (ETS) this year, according to The National Carbon Emission Trading Market Establishment Work plan (Power Generation Industry). Although initially covering only the power sector, which includes around 1,700 companies, the ETS will be the world’s largest carbon market. It will eventually cover 7,000 companies from heavy industries, like cement and steel. Its successful operation is key to China meeting its commitment under the Paris Agreement.
Photos of an environmental crime on border of Dominican Republic and Haiti: They denounce indiscriminate cutting of trees and forest fires
Dominican Today, 4 May 2020
The Coalition of Environmental Organizations of the Northwest (COANOR), denounced the recurrence of forest fires and indiscriminate cutting of trees in this region and called on the Government to declare an environmental emergency to the Northeast Line due to the environmental situation that reduces the wooded areas.
COANOR stated that more than 50 forest fires have been counted in the region since March. The organization said that the geography of the claims includes the protected area of Cerro de Chaquey, which feeds 19 rural aqueducts and two reservoirs located in the province of Monteristi, as well as in the municipalities of Loma de Cabrera and Partido, corresponding to this province.
[Thailand] Racism is fuelling more than wildfires
By Sanitsuda Ekachai, Bangkok Post, 4 May 2020
With the May rains coming to our rescue, we can now put the forest fires and toxic haze nightmares behind us — until they return to haunt us again next year.
How can we end this vicious circle? Is there a chance that the government and mainstream society will understand that they cannot save the forests without saving forest dwellers and communities? Where should we start?
5 May 2020
Leading economists: Green coronavirus recovery also better for economy
By Brian O’Callaghan and Cameron Hepburn, CarbonBrief, 5 May 2020
In the aftermath of the global coronavirus pandemic, governments are likely to mobilise significant spending to reinvigorate their economies.
Our new research, based on surveys of more than 200 of the world’s most senior economists and economic officials, suggests that spending this money on climate-friendly “green” policy initiatives could not only help shift the world closer to a net-zero emissions pathway, but could also offer the best economic returns for government spending.
We created the Anthropocene, and the Anthropocene is biting back
By Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano, The Guardian, 5 May 2020
About 12,000 years ago, human domestication of the natural world began in earnest with the intentional cultivation of wild plants and animals. Fast forward to today and our dominion over the planet appears complete, as 7.8 billion of us multiply across its surface and our reach extends from the deep-sea beds, which are being mined, to the heavens, where we are, according to Donald Trump, dispatching a space force.
Yet as has been made clear by a recent litany of disasters – from the coronavirus pandemic to America’s deadliest wildfire in a century – there are forces that cannot be domesticated. Indeed, our interference with the natural world is making them more liable to flare up into tragedy. We created the Anthropocene, and the Anthropocene is biting back.
Greta Thunberg and children’s group hit back at attempt to throw out climate case
By Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 5 May 2020
Greta Thunberg and a group of other children have pushed forward their legal complaint at the UN against countries they accuse of endangering children’s wellbeing through the climate crisis, despite attempts to have it thrown out.
The 16 children, including the Swedish environmental activist, lodged a legal case with the UN committee on the rights of the child against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey last September.
Terrain through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic: Blueprint for a healthy planet
By Julie Mollins, CIFOR Forests News, 5 May 2020
Scientists have demonstrated that such diseases as the new SARS-COV2 coronavirus COVID-19 and Ebola can emerge due to ecosystem imbalances in forests.
Over the past few months, this hypothesis has flourished through coverage in the mainstream news media, shoring up the notion that COVID-19 is zoonotic — transmitted from a bat through another animal, possibly a pangolin or a dog — initially infecting humans in a market in China’s city of Wuhan.
Conservation in crisis: ecotourism collapse threatens communities and wildlife
By Patrick Greenfield, The Guardian, 5 May 2020
From the vast plains of the Masai Mara in Kenya to the delicate corals of the Aldabra atoll in the Seychelles, conservation work to protect some of the world’s most important ecosystems is facing crisis following a collapse in ecotourism during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Organisations that depend on visitors to fund projects for critically endangered species and rare habitats could be forced to close, according to wildlife NGOs, after border closures and worldwide travel restrictions abruptly halted millions of pounds of income from tourism.
Economy bigwigs rank airline bailouts last on virus recovery wishlist
By Sam Morgan, EURACTIV, 5 May 2020
More than 200 of the world’s foremost economic experts spelled out their wishes for a post-coronavirus recovery on Tuesday (5 May), ranking airline bailouts last in order of climate-friendliness and long-term economic benefit.
According to a survey of 230 finance ministry officials, central bankers and economic experts, the most effective solutions to the economic hardships that will be caused by the virus outbreak will be those that also curb greenhouse gases.
UN, Governments, Civil Society Generating Ideas for UN75 Declaration
IISD, 5 May 2020
The Baha’i International Community in collaboration with the Together First and UN2020 campaigns are holding a series of dialogues to generate ideas for the UN’s 75th anniversary declaration. The dialogues gather UN Member States, civil society, and UN representatives for off-the-record discussions, in parallel to the ongoing intergovernmental consultations on the declaration.
‘Compelling evidence’ logging native forests has worsened Australian bushfires, scientists warn
By Lisa Cox, The Guardian, 5 May 2020
A group of senior Australian scientists have warned in an international journal that logging native forests makes fire more severe and is likely to have exacerbated the country’s catastrophic summer bushfires.
In a comment piece published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, the scientists call for a clearer discussion about how land management and forestry practices contribute to fire risk.
[Australia] Spared by the fires, NSW’s south coast bushland now faces the bulldozers
By Anne Davies, The Guardian, 5 May 2020
Residents of a tiny community on the New South Wales south coast gathered at dawn on Tuesday as part of a last-ditch effort to prevent a small pocket of bushland that escaped the summer bushfires being bulldozed for a 20-hectare housing development.
Between 70% and 80% of bushland in the Shoalhaven council area was affected during the January fires. Now the local community at Manyana wants the state government to intervene to at least postpone the destruction of one of the few unburnt areas, with the chainsaws expected to start as early as Thursday.
[Brazil] Forest fire season is coming. How can we stop the Amazon burning?
By Dom Phillips and Daniel Camargos, The Guardian, 5 May 2020
We found the first fire without looking, crackling and roaring on farmland beside the busy Amazon highway, the flames consuming a road sign with its name – BR-163 – lying in the grass. Trucks thundered past, ferrying soya and corn from the agricultural heartlands of Brazil’s central-west to the ports of Santarém and Miritituba. Nobody was around.
Amazon faces ‘perfect storm’ of forest clearance, coronavirus and wildfire
By Chloé Farand, Climate Home News, 5 May 2020
A spike in forest clearance puts the Amazon on course for a severe fire season, experts warn, which could aggravate the deadly impact of Covid-19 in the region.
From January to March, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 51% compared to the same time last year, according to preliminary satellite data from the space research agency INPE.
Forest fire season is coming. How can we stop the Amazon burning?
By Dom Phillips, The Guardian, 5 May 2020
We found the first fire without looking, crackling and roaring on farmland beside the busy Amazon highway, the flames consuming a road sign with its name – BR-163 – lying in the grass. Trucks thundered past, ferrying soya and corn from the agricultural heartlands of Brazil’s central-west to the ports of Santarém and Miritituba. Nobody was around.
Every year fires roar across the Amazon, and in just a few months they will be here again. But last August the number of blazes reached a nine-year high, and sparked an international crisis for Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Months later, their traces hung over the forests in the Amazon state of Pará, leaving blackened logs and charred tree stumps where there was once rainforest.
France and the Netherlands call for more climate ambition in trade talks
By Simon Pickstone, ENDS Europe, 5 May 2020
French and Dutch trade officials have joined forces to propose stepping up the EU’s climate commitments in trade talks by rewarding partners for abiding by sustainability provisions and making the Paris Agreement an essential requirement for any deal.
A ‘non-paper’ issued by the two countries, seen by ENDS, calls on the bloc to “raise the ambition and improve the implementation” of trade and sustainable development (TSD) chapters in future agreements.
[USA] Vermont landowners come together in conservation partnership
By Christina Guessferd, WCAX, 5 May 2020
Vermont landowners are coming together under one big project to conserve land and meet environmental goals.
In partnership with Amazon and the Nature Conservancy, the Vermont Land Trust and Cold Hollow to Canada is helping landowners of a dozen parcels of land across the state get paid to preserve valuable wildlife through carbon credits.
A regional conservation partnership in the Northeast Kingdom called Cold Hollow to Canada has been encouraging practices that protect diverse plant and animal species.
[USA] Power company commitments to cut carbon pollution are an important step for our climate and health. Here’s what we need next.
By Taylor Bacon, Environmental Defense Fund, 5 May 2020
Arizona’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service, has joined over a dozen other power companies across the U.S. that have committed to delivering 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050. These commitments, which add to momentum for ambitious climate action and would significantly reduce health-harming pollutants that contribute to soot and smog, are a key step in addressing one of our nation’s leading sources of climate pollution. They also highlight the types of action that will be required across all sectors of the U.S. economy to reach net-zero economy-wide carbon pollution by mid-century, a target guided by science and supported in recent bills introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
6 May 2020
Climate change: Could the coronavirus crisis spur a green recovery?
By Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 6 May 2020
The Covid-19 lockdown has cut climate change emissions – for now. But some governments want to go further by harnessing their economic recovery plans to boost low-carbon industries. Their slogan is “Build Back Better”, but can they succeed?
I’ve just had a light bulb moment. The feisty little wren chirping loudly in the matted ivy outside my back door is telling us something important about global climate change.
That’s because, intertwined with the melodious notes of a robin, I can actually hear its song clearly.
Brazil: largest rise in Covid-19 deaths follows Bolsonaro ‘worst is over’ claim
By Dom Phillips, The Guardian, 6 May 2020
razil has seen its largest ever daily increase in its coronavirus death toll, despite erroneous suggestions from President Jair Bolsonaro that the worst of the crisis was over.
Brazil – which is now considered a major global centre of the pandemic – reported 633 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, taking its total to nearly 8,000.
Three of Brazil’s 27 states this week announced the country’s first official lockdown measures to try to slow the spread of the disease.
UK watchdog clears Shell’s ‘drive carbon neutral’ ad on petrol pumps
By Matthew Green, Reuters, 6 May 2020
Britain’s advertising watchdog has ruled Royal Dutch Shell’s ad campaign on petrol pumps promising customers they can “drive carbon neutral” is acceptable, following complaints.
The Anglo-Dutch oil major said in October it would become the first petrol retailer in Britain to offset the carbon dioxide emissions from customers’ fuel purchases at its service stations at no extra cost by backing forestry schemes.
[USA] California And Trump Push Geoengineering—A Fraught Climate Crisis Fix
By Kim Brown, The Real News, 6 May 2020
Both California and the Trump Administration have advanced a controversial form of geoengineering, a technological proposal to alter the natural environment in an attempt to offset climate change and reverse engineer the climate crisis. The two, often at odds with one another on climate policy, have quietly found common ground on this issue. Geoengineering is a climate solution favored by Big Oil. That’s the case because it does not ask them to reduce emissions or their carbon footprint, but simply invest in more technology.
7 May 2020
‘Promiscuous treatment of nature’ will lead to more pandemics – scientists
By Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, 7 May 2020
Humanity’s “promiscuous treatment of nature” needs to change or there will be more deadly pandemics such as Covid-19, warn scientists who have analysed the link between viruses, wildlife and habitat destruction.
Deforestation and other forms of land conversion are driving exotic species out of their evolutionary niches and into manmade environments, where they interact and breed new strains of disease, the experts say.
How did Michael Moore become a hero to climate deniers and the far right?
By George Monbiot, The Guardian, 7 May 2020
Denial never dies; it just goes quiet and waits. Today, after years of irrelevance, the climate science deniers are triumphant. Long after their last, desperate claims had collapsed, when they had traction only on “alt-right” conspiracy sites, a hero of the left turns up and gives them more than they could have dreamed of.
Planet of the Humans, whose executive producer and chief promoter is Michael Moore, now has more than 6 million views on YouTube. The film does not deny climate science. But it promotes the discredited myths that deniers have used for years to justify their position. It claims that environmentalism is a self-seeking scam, doing immense harm to the living world while enriching a group of con artists. This has long been the most effective means by which denial – most of which has been funded by the fossil fuel industry – has been spread. Everyone hates a scammer.
Virtual World Bank, IMF Meetings Recognize COVID-19’s Impact on Development
IISD, 7 May 2020
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings 2020 recognized the “devastating effects” of the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasized the critical role of multilateral cooperation in containing the pandemic and mitigating its health, social and economic consequences.
The World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings 2020 convened virtually from 14-17 April, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Could COVID-19 mark a ‘turning point’ in the climate crisis?
By Mathew Green, World Economic Forum, 7 May 2020
Massive programmes of green public investment would be the most cost-effective way both to revive virus-hit economies and strike a decisive blow against climate change, top U.S. and British economists said in a study published on Tuesday.
With co-authors including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz from Columbia University and prominent British climate expert Lord Nicholas Stern, the findings are likely to fuel calls for “green recoveries” gathering momentum around the world.
How Climate Change Is Contributing to Skyrocketing Rates of Infectious Disease
By Abrahm Lustgarte, ProPublica, 7 May 2020
The scientists who study how diseases emerge in a changing environment knew this moment was coming. Climate change is making outbreaks of disease more common and more dangerous.
Over the past few decades, the number of emerging infectious diseases that spread to people — especially coronaviruses and other respiratory illnesses believed to have come from bats and birds — has skyrocketed. A new emerging disease surfaces five times a year. One study estimates that more than 3,200 strains of coronaviruses already exist among bats, awaiting an opportunity to jump to people.
Never Wasting a Crisis: Industry Climate Lobbying During the COVID-19 Pandemic Exposed
Carbon Market Watch, 7 May 2020
This briefing counters industry attempts to use the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to weaken international, European and national climate and carbon pricing laws. It debunks myths and provides policy recommendations to decision-makers.
The examples include large polluters pushing for delays in implementing the EU Green Deal and national climate policies and airlines aiming to secure unconditional public bailouts and trying to weaken the future aviation carbon market.
World cannot return to ‘business as usual’ after Covid-19, say mayors
By Matthew Taylor, The Guardian, 7 May 2020
Mayors from many of the world’s leading cities have warned there can be no return to “business as usual” in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis if humanity is to escape catastrophic climate breakdown.
City leaders representing more than 750 million people have published a “statement of principles”, which commits them to putting greater equality and climate resilience at the heart of their recovery plans.
‘We are living in a catastrophe’: Peru’s jungle capital choking for breath as Covid-19 hits
By Dan Collyns, The Guardian, 7 May 2020
In the final hours before Covid-19 claimed her life, Cecilio Sangama watched helplessly as his eldest sister Edith gasped for breath.
Hospitals across Peru’s largest Amazon city had run out of oxygen, and the shortage had pushed the black market price of a cylinder well above $1,000 (£810).
8 May 2020
Brazil opens 38,000 square miles of indigenous lands to outsiders
By Mauricio Torres and Sue Branford, Mongabay, 8 May 2020
With Brazil’s attention focused on the Coronavirus soaring case load and death toll, the Jair Bolsonaro government has introduced major modifications to the country’s indigenous land policy. Announced as a big step forward, the new rules will greatly facilitate the takeover of unregistered ancestral indigenous lands by landgrabbers, permitting use by loggers, cattle ranchers, soy growers, and other outsiders.
The measure opens up 9.8 million hectares (37,830 square miles) of land to these and other economic activities — land still not recognized as indigenous, as required by Brazil’s 1988 Constitution. Critics fear these wide-ranging land use changes will devastate the lives of thousands of indigenous people and result in significant deforestation that will push the Amazon forest toward an irreversible climate change tipping point, converting a large portion of it to degraded savanna and releasing massive amounts of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases.
Formalizing artisanal logging in Central Africa
By Ahtziri Gonzalez and Arnauld Ulrich Chyngwa, CIFOR Forests News, 8 May 2020
Central Africa’s national and regional timber markets are booming. Across the region, rapid population growth, urbanization and economic development are driving an increase in domestic demand for sawn timber, which in many countries is already more important in volume than demand for industrial timber for export.
South Korea Tackled The Coronavirus. Now It’s Taking On The Climate Crisis.
Green Team, 8 May 2020
The world’s seventh-largest emitter has launched a Green New Deal. But critics say there are big problems.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s ruling party won a landslide victory in last month’s national election as voters turned out in huge numbers in a show of support for a government whose successful containment of the coronavirus pandemic became a model for the world.
His center-left Democratic Party and a satellite party it set up ahead of the vote will now control three-fifths of the 300-seat National Assembly, giving Moon the largest majority of any president in more than three decades.
[USA] Firefighters continue battling fires in Florida Panhandle
By Caina Calvan, Associated Press, 8 May 2020
For two sleepless nights, Kelly Kniss had wondered what had become of her home in the Florida Panhandle and the two dozen hens she and her husband Ryan had left behind after authorities ordered them to grab what they could and flee to safety.
A wildfire was approaching, and they knew it was time to leave. They gathered what was important — their kids, two cats, two dogs and a few documents. They grabbed a couple days worth of clothes and drove out before the fire could stop them.
9 May 2020
How Brazil’s ‘Little Trump’ Bolsonaro is using COVID-19 crisis to destroy the Amazon rainforest
By Tony Burman, The Star, 9 May 2020
The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating its deadly march across the world, reaching what seems to be virtually every corner of the globe.
But in terms of an enduring legacy, it may be in Brazil’s threatened Amazon rain forests where the damage to our planet will turn out to be most irreversible.
[Canada] Region could see above average forest fire season
By Doug Diaczuk, tbnewswatch.com, 9 May 2020
A warmer and drier summer throughout most of the country could result in an above average forest fire season this year in the region, but with fewer people travelling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the risk of human caused fires may be lower.
Natural Resources Canada recently released its national forest fire season forecast for this summer, and while it is just a projected model based on historical trends, much of western Canada could see a high risk for forest fires, which could spread into Northern Ontario.
Smoke from Indonesian fires may add to respiratory illness spike
By Christine T. Tjandraningsih, Kyodo News, 9 May 2020
Smog from forest and peatland fires in Indonesia could complicate the country’s efforts to battle the new coronavirus, as the government has no contingency plan for additional respiratory illness amid the ongoing pandemic.
Wiendra Waworuntu, director for communicable disease prevention and control at the Ministry of Health, said Friday that the symptoms of acute respiratory infection caused by smoke from the fires are similar to coronavirus symptoms.
Expansion debate rumbles on amid hush over Britain’s biggest airports
By Joanna Partridge, The Guardian, 9 May 2020
Christine Taylor has lived her entire life in the shadow of London’s Heathrow airport, her childhood bedroom affording a view of one of its two runways. She grew up in Sipson, a village that can trace its history back more than 1,000 years, but now sits immediately north of Britain’s busiest airline hub.
Now living a mile to the east in Harlington, Taylor, 62, is experiencing a rare moment of quiet, thanks to the dramatic reduction in air traffic caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
[USA] Climate Crisis Weekly: Trump has rolled back 98 environmental rules — NYT
By Michelle Lewis, electrek, 9 May 2020
Donald Trump promised to deregulate environmental and climate policies, and he’s delivered. Why did he want to do that? Because he thinks the rules are unnecessary, that industry can regulate itself, and he continues to actively try to save the fossil-fuel industry. (It’s not working.)
The New York Times drew data from eight sources to calculate all of Trump’s rollbacks, and here’s what they found….
10 May 2020
[USA] California faces a perilous fire season as coronavirus threatens firefighters
By Joseph Serna, Los Angeles Times, 10 May 2020
As forecasters predict higher-than-normal chances of large fires in Northern California this year — as well as the usual risk of “large significant” burning in Southern California — fire authorities are growing increasingly concerned over their ability to muster a large, healthy force of firefighters in the face of COVID-19.
Realizing that wildfire smoke will steadily impair a firefighter’s immune system, and that traditional base camps can magnify the risk of infection, federal, state and county officials are urging a blitzkrieg approach to wildfires that will rely heavily on the use of aircraft.