In the rolling hills around San Diego and its suburbs, the rumble of bulldozers and the whine of power saws fill the air as a slew of new homes and apartments rise up. The region is booming, its population growing at a rate of about 1 percent a year. This, in spite of the fact that Southern California, along with much of the West, is in the midst of what experts call a megadrought that some believe may not be a temporary, one-off occurrence, but a recurring event or even a climate change-driven permanent “aridification” of the West. The drought is so bad that last year federal officials ordered cuts to water provided to the region by the Colorado River for the first time in history. Water officials in San Diego, though, say they are not worried. “We have sufficient supplies now and in the future,” said Sandra Kerl, general manager of the San Diego Water Authority. “We recently did a stress test, and we are good until 2045” and even beyond. - Yale Environment350

FRONTLINE examines the fossil fuel industry’s history of casting doubt and delaying action on climate change. This three-part series traces decades of missed opportunities and the ongoing attempts to hold Big Oil to account. - Frontline

"If you can't grow it, you have to mine it" goes the miner's credo. The extraction of minerals, metals and fuels from the ground is one of humankind's oldest industries. And our appetite for it is growing. Society is more dependent on both greater variety and larger volumes of mined substances than ever before. If you live in a middle-income country, every year you use roughly 17 tonnes of raw materials – equivalent to the weight of three elephants and twice as much as 20 years ago. For a person in a high-income country, it is 26 tonnes – or four and a half elephants' worth.- BBC

The question now, as it has been since 1911 when the first big reservoir was completed to supply Phoenix with water, is one of longevity. Can this desert bounty be sustained for another 100 years, or even another 50? That question is more urgent and more relevant than ever. Climate change is disrupting the rules of the development game. Drought and extreme heat are emptying rivers and reservoirs, fallowing tens of thousands of acres of farmland, forcing thousands of homeowners to secure water from trucks and not their dead wells, and pushing Arizona ever closer to the precipice of peril.- HCN

During his last year in office, Gov. Doug Ducey is trying to create a legacy of water security in drought-stricken Arizona. But his most ambitious effort in that quest could end up being in Mexico. In his last state of the state speech in January, he proposed an investment of $1.16 billion over the next three years to make the state “more resilient to drought, secure a sustainable water future and allow for continued growth.” The goal, he said, is to “secure Arizona’s water future for the next 100 years.”- Inside Climate News

The number of trees cut down in the Brazilian Amazon in January far exceeded deforestation for the same month last year, according to government satellite data. The area destroyed was five times larger than 2021, the highest January total since records began in 2015. Environmentalists accuse Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro of allowing deforestation to accelerate. Protecting the Amazon is essential if we are to tackle climate change. Trees are felled for their wood as well as to clear spaces to plant crops to supply global food companies. At the climate change summit COP26, more than 100 governments promised to stop and reverse deforestation by 2030. - BBC

The Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project today applauded French Polynesian President Édouard Fritch’s commitment to conserve roughly 1 million sq km (386,000 sq mi) by creating a new large-scale marine protected area and establishing artisanal fishing zones around 118 islands in the South Pacific Ocean. During the One Ocean Summit in Brest, France, earlier today, President Fitch pledged to launch an effort to create a 500,000-square-kilometer (193,000 square miles) marine protected area in the SW area of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ)—a move long supported by local mayors and community members. In fact, President Fritch acknowledged the local proposal, calling it by the name Rāhui Nui, or “big rāhui”—a Tahitian reference to the traditional Polynesian practice of restricting access to an area or resource to conserve it. - Pew Trust

Influential companies, including retail giants Amazon.com and Target; and tech powerhouses Microsoft and Meta — parent company of Facebook FB, -3.74% bought a record 31.1 gigawatts of renewable energy to run their operations in 2021. That’s a jump of nearly 24% from the previous year’s record of 25.1GW of renewables, mostly solar and wind. The latest tally comes from research firm BloombergNEF, which said in a release Monday that over two-thirds of these purchases occurred in the U.S. America has trailed Europe and parts of Asia in shifting from coal and natural gas-derived NG00, +1.04% power to renewable alternatives ICLN, -2.60% to create electricity. Within the U.S., the largest technology companies are leading the move, however; they collectively signed over half of the deals. - MarketWatch

Corporate consolidation—in which mergers and acquisitions of smaller companies lead to fewer, larger companies—has been a trend for decades in areas ranging from retail to technology. This consolidation gives some corporations outsize power, a consequence President Biden addressed in his 2021 executive order seeking to curb the “excessive concentration of industry”  The food and agriculture sector is no exception to this troubling trend, and the consequences can be far-reaching. For example, recent research has shown that the nation's largest meat and poultry producer, Tyson Foods (Statista 2022), has monopoly-like power that threatens the health, safety, and well-being of chicken farmers, workers, and communities in numerous ways (Boehm 2021a). Another recent study showed how corporate consolidation in the US food system has increased food prices and decreased food access . - UCS

Inflation may be at a 40-year high, but the cost of grazing on public lands is lower now than it was 40 years ago, in 1981. Last week, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service announced federal grazing fees for 2022: Just $1.35. Grazing fees dictate how much ranchers pay for each “animal unit” — one cow and calf, one horse or five sheep — per month. This year’s fee — just $1.35 per animal unit — keeps the grazing costs at the same rate since 2019, when Trump’s BLM lowered the fee from $1.41. Fees apply to roughly 18,000 BLM grazing permits and leases and 6,250 Forest Service permits; income is funneled to rangeland betterment funds, the U.S. Treasury, and the states where the grazing occurs. - High Country News

Hemp, a long banned crop in the US, has great potential for North Carolina agriculture. Like the peanut, hemp has many uses in food and manufacturing.  During a twenty-five year business career, Jack Whitley has worked for two organizations; a Fortune 50 consumer financial services company and a mid-market e-commerce specialty retailer.
Jack’s work has been at the intersection of marketing, technology, e- commerce, strategy, corporate leadership, and both for-profit and non-profit board service.  Now he grows hemp which can be used for paper, fuel, clothing, and building products all while saving water.  - TED Talks

A federal appeals court said Monday that SRP customers who also have solar panels at their homes can pursue an antitrust claim against the utility for a policy of charging them more than other customers. The decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that had thrown out the case, which claimed the higher fees were aimed at stifling competition from renewable energy. Advocates for the customers welcomed the ruling as a win for “everyday people” like William Ellis, the lead plaintiff in the suit. “These are everyday people like Mr. Ellis, who just wants to put rooftop solar on his house to get clean energy,” said Jean Su, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, which supported the customers’ suit. - Cronkite News

Almost 10% of the 8 billion people on earth are already undernourished with 3 billion lacking healthy diets, and the land and water resources farmers rely on stressed to “a breaking point.” And by 2050 there will be 2 billion more mouths to feed, warns a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). For now, farmers have been able to boost agricultural productivity by irrigating more land and applying heavier doses of fertilizer and pesticides. But the report says these practices are not sustainable: They have eroded and degraded soil while polluting and depleting water supplies and shrinking the world’s forests. - Yale Climate Connections

For years, commentators have been handwringing about the extraction practices, environmental and social harms, and corporate ownership of mining operations that contribute to clean energy technology, with a focus on cobalt, rare earths and other rare ingredients of the clean energy transition. Much like governmental, intergovernmental and private assessments of "critical materials," these critiques pay far too little attention to how scarcity, usually signaled by price, elicits not only mineral exploration and mine development but also a powerful set of other and faster adaptations and alternatives such as efficient use, substitution and recycling. - Green Biz / Amory Lovins-RMI

Some Californians and powerful scholars are trying to resurrect nuclear energy in the state from the dead. They want PG&E Corp. to keep its Diablo Canyon plant in operation past its planned closure for 2025. The reason: California cannot meet its climate change obligations without it. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University have raised new questions. In their just-released study, they conclude that extending Diablo Canyon through 2045 would save $21 billion — a number that would be compounded if the plant could be also used to produce hydrogen and desalinated water. If the plant stayed operational from 2025 to 2035, they say that CO2 levels would drop by 10% a year and displace natural gas use, saving customers $2.6 billion. - Forbes

Danish firm Maersk said Tuesday it is ordering eight large, ocean-going vessels able to run on what it called “carbon neutral methanol.”  The world’s largest container shipping firm said the vessels would be built by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries and have the capacity to carry around 16,000 containers. According to a number of reports, each ship will cost $175 million, making the total cost $1.4 billion. In a video message, Morten Bo Christiansen, Maersk’s head of decarbonization, said the vessels would “hit the waters from early 2024.” He added: “Once they are all out there sailing on green methanol, they will save a million tons of CO2 every year.” - CNBC

Something big is happening in southern Colorado. One of the state's largest solar fields is now almost fully powering the 150-year-old EVRAZ steel mill in Pueblo. "We've always been a trendsetter here in the West," said David Lawler, the chairman and president of bp America. "This sets up the steel mill for long-term success." - The Denver Channel

Renewable energy prices have fallen far more quickl than the industry anticipated, says a new report. And they are fast becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. A rapid transition to emissions-free ‘green’ energy could save many trillions of dollars in energy costs - and help combat climate change. The global energy sector has an impressive record of scaling-up renewables like wind and solar – but it is not so good at predicting future price changes of the clean energy these renewables produce, according to a new report. Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Institute of New Economic Thinking suggest early pricing prediction models have consistently underestimated both how far the costs of renewable energy sources might fall, and the benefits of an accelerated switch to clean energy. - WEForum / Oxford University

Near the Freire home, there was a stream so wide that the children – aged between 5 and 12 when they arrived – would dare each other to reach the other side. They called it Jaguar's Creek. Now it's not a meter wide and can be cleared with a single step. The loss of such streams, and the wider water problems they are a part of, fill scientists with foreboding.Covering an area roughly the size of the contiguous United States and accounting for more than half of the world's rainforest, the Amazon exerts power over the carbon cycle like no other terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. The tree loss from an extremely dry year in 2005, for example, released an additional quantity of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere equivalent to the annual emissions of Europe and Japan combined, according to a 2009 study published in Science magazine. - Reuters