The Ecology of Jesus

Last month Jay Griffith and Andi Pitcher invited me to participate in an online conversation about how the coming of Christ changes our relationship with Earth and all living things. It was part of the Think Again Faith Again series, so I jumped at the opportunity. They asked me to write some thoughts as a primer, which I ended getting to them less than 24 hours before the actual event because…of course I did (sorry Jay and Andi).

Here is the recording:

And here are the preparatory paragraphs and some thoughts about what Jesus teaches us about ecology:

Ecology is the study of how living and nonliving parts of the Earth system interact. Rooted in the Greek word for home (oikos), ecology tries to understand how the household of God is run. We usually think about what Jesus taught us about our relationship with self, society, and God. But Christ’s example is rich with teachings about proper attitudes and behavior in ecological communities (populations of different species) and ecosystems (all life and environment).

Pope Francis wrote, “how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.” This congruence between love of God, creation, and neighbor is taught in every book of scripture and most perfectly typified in the pattern of Christ’s life. His birth among peasants, beasts, and Earth. His disdain for hierarchy and insistence on reconciliation. His interpretation of dominion as service and love. Most importantly, his demonstration that all life depends on death. In a world of nearly 8 billion neighbors, how can we apply Christ’s ecology today? In this conversation, we hope to ask, what can we do as a faith community to return to a place of obedience to Earthly laws? We will explore how the life and teachings of Jesus could heal our personal relationships, patterns of consumption and reciprocity, and the structure of our societies.

Perhaps more than any other choice we make, the relationship we cultivate with our earthly home affects our ability to keep the two great commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. We live in a time of unparalleled human dominion of the Earth’s great cycles and life—an epoch called the Anthropocene or time of humans. Though our relationship with the Earth is obscured by industrial supply chains and carefully controlled indoor lifestyles, our dependence on ecological community—relationship with creation—is more immediate and absolute than ever before. Indeed, our abuse of the environment is now the leading cause of human sickness and death—pollution accounts for 1 in 4 deaths every year, more than all communicable diseases, dietary disorders, and human violence combined.

A figure from Isabella Errigo and others 2020, showing causes of death (Human Health and Economic Costs of Air Pollution in Utah).

Economic and ecological sciences typically assume that human nature is immutable. Christ’s Gospel of radical transformation—his invitation to abandon all our wealth and be released from the burdens of our careers—challenges this assumption. Jesus showed us that each individual, community, and ecosystem has unique and sacred attributes. No one and no place is dispensable. We must meet our temporal needs in ways that do not poison or exploit the Earth. What can we learn from Christ’s example and teachings about how to live in community with creation? How can we share this gospel in time to save our sisters and brothers across all the branches of the tree of life?

Here are ten lessons from Christ’s life and teaching that are relevant to how we treat other humans, other life, and all creation.

1. Redefinition of power to mean humility, meekness, and focus on others. Power is not the capacity to take life but to give it. This turns our modern concept of dominion on its head. According to Christ’s teachings, stewardship or dominion over the Earth are simply a responsibility to serve and protect it.
2. Utter rejection of inequality and injustice. In all his interactions, Jesus taught us that hierarchy doesn’t (or shouldn’t) determine relationship. His time, attention, and service was guided by need. Rather than a chain of command, Christ taught us connect with all creation in a web of learning and sharing.
3. Nothing is wasted, nothing is disposable. Christ put an end to destructive sacrifice.
4. Glorification of all creation: Zion will come forth from all creation. Jesus paid special attention to small things that sustain other things. There is beauty and glory in meekness and humility.
5. Common purpose for all creation. All life and even the nonliving elements share the purpose of fulfilling the measure of our creation and having joy.
6. Agency and opposition. The universal separation isn’t between humans and nonhumans, it’s between things that act and things that are acted upon. All life has agency—the ability to choose and act for itself. Opposition allows us to exercise that agency. Darkness and life, death and birth, right and wrong.
7. Consent—that we should interact with the Earth through persuasion, forbearance, and love unfeigned, without compulsory means. We should receive gifts rather than extract resources.
8. Collaboration and disinterest in credit. During creation, Christ worked with the Earth to create life: “let the Earth and water bring forth life.”
9. True power and persistence come from resilience not rigidity. Christ had no patience for those who compromised the spirit of the law for its letter. He focused on the specific circumstances. Gift of time.
10. Uncompromising and expecting radical change. There is an objective reality that is uncompromising and absolute in its consequences. Choices bring greater life or greater death. Wickedness never was happiness. Christ asked us to leave our wealth and comfort to follow him and serve those in need.

Additional readings:

Robin Wall Kimmerer 2014, “Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass”.

Pope Francis 2015, “Laudato Si’—our care for our common home”.

Wendell Berry 2012, It all turns on affection.

Ben Abbott 2020, How close are we to the edge?

Joseph Smith 1834, Doctrine and Covenants 104

Beauty and function in every detail and corner of creation.

Seven problems with the Utah Lake islands proposal

As you may have heard, there is a truly epic project brewing in Utah Valley. In 2017, a limited liability company proposed to build 20,000 acres of artificial islands in Utah Lake, claiming this would somehow help the ecosystem. In 2018, the Utah legislature passed House Bill 272, which opened the door to transferring the lakebed from the people of Utah to a private corporation. Since that time, the lake developers have been solidifying political support and lining up financing, including a $10 million loan guarantee approved by the legislature last year without any public vetting. They are having a major lobbying dinner at the state capitol next week. The company says they are motivated by a desire to restore the lake, describing their project as a “comprehensive restoration.” Here is the full text of their proposal. 

After interacting with them for years, I have major doubts about their intentions and methods. While there are literally hundreds of ecological, financial, and legal problems with their proposal, I’ve summarized seven of my main concerns below. If you want to dig deeper, check out this new article called “Getting to know Utah Lake.” There are also several op-eds that have been written on this topic, including The present, future and past of Utah Lake in the Deseret News and Keep Utah Lake shallow and wet in the Salt Lake Tribune. If you prefer video format, here is a presentation I gave at the Salt Lake Watershed Symposium earlier this month: Is Utah Lake a Steaming Failure or a Gleaming Success?

Buckled ice on Utah Lake (Justin Lehman)

Problem #1. The project is built on false premises. The developers claim that 1. Utah Lake’s condition is bad and getting worse, 2. The lake needs to be dredged, and 3. The lake used to be deep and clear. These claims couldn’t be farther from the truth. Utah Lake has always been shallow and cloudy. In fact, these are some of the attributes that make the lake so remarkably resilient. Multiple studies have found that Utah Lake’s status is better than most water bodies in the U.S., and its sediment is not contaminated—it is clean and crucial to the health of the lake. Dredging would cause immense damage to the lake ecosystem while not providing any ecological benefit.

Hundreds of science-based restoration projects have put the lake on the road to recovery. Cooperative agreements with farmers and other water users have restored river flow to the lake, and upgraded wastewater treatment plants are decreasing nutrient flows to the lake. Invasive species removal has been effective, reducing carp biomass by 80% and restoring native plants along the lakeshore. The Hobble Creek and Provo River Delta restoration projects have been immensely successful, increasing public access to the lake and improving habitat. In response to these efforts, algal blooms are decreasing, native species are returning, and public use of the lake is on the rise. Thanks to this progress, the native June Sucker was downlisted from endangered to threatened just this year. Why would we make such a drastic change when things are finally going the right direction?

A juvenile June Sucker. This endemic fish went from no reproducing adults in the late 1990s to more than 4,000 spawning in 2021 (Riley Nelson)

Problem #2. Building islands would destroy the attributes that make Utah Lake resilient and reduce ecosystem services it freely provides. The unique characteristics of Utah Lake have helped it maintain much of its function despite decades of abuse. First, about a third of the water that enters the lake evaporates to the atmosphere. This causes the constant formation of calcite (the source of the lake’s beautiful cloudy color), which makes nutrients in the lake unavailable to algae. Second, the water’s cloudiness slows the cyanobacterial blooms that affect most water bodies more often and intensely than Utah Lake. Third, the lake’s shallowness prevents the worst effects of algal blooms when they do occur. In deep lakes, blooms consume all the oxygen in the deep water, which causes fish kills and massive release of pollutants from the sediment.

The islands proposal would destroy all three of these attributes: reducing the lake’s surface area, allowing more light to stimulate algal growth, and creating multiple deep channels in the lakebed. This would damage the invaluable ecosystem services the lake freely provides us, including increasing local precipitation, cooling the valley during summer extremes, removing nutrients, providing world-class opportunities for recreation and photography, and creating habitat. Indeed, the lake is currently a hot spot of biodiversity, providing habitat for nearly 1,500 species, including 10 million fish, 35 million water birds, and 69 kinds of mammals, amphibians, and reptiles. How would a project that directly destroys the resilient qualities of the lake make things better?

Lights reflect off the water while Mount Cascade looms in the background (Chuck Castleton)

Problem #3. This proposal would permanently deface our valley and dishonor the legacy left by our ancestors. Anyone who has hiked Timpanogos or any of the surrounding mountains knows that Utah Lake is the centerpiece of our community. The developers propose to build massive islands housing half a million people in the shape of arches, beehives, railroad spikes, and seagulls. This would destroy views of the lake and make our valley unrecognizable to our ancestors. Before European contact, Utah Lake supported the Timpanogos Nation for generations—we now know that people have been living in this area for more than 20,000 years. When the Mormon Pioneers arrived, fish from the lake saved the settlers along the Wasatch Front during crop failures in 1855 and 1856. After disasters during the Dust Bowl, our ancestors carefully regulated water diversions to make sure Utah Lake would be preserved. Will we honor that legacy or desecrate a lake that so many have worked to protect?

Harvest of June Sucker and other native fish from the shore of Utah Lake in 1855. Courtesy of the June Sucker Recovery history.

Problem #4. The project is very likely impossible. It is very common for developers to underestimate the technical challenges and economic costs of projects they are pitching. The larger the project, the greater the potential for overconfidence. Let’s compare this proposal to similar large projects. The world’s largest dredged island is the Kansai International Airport, which was built in Osaka Bay in Japan. The island is around 2,500 acres. It took 23 years to plan, permit, and build, costing around $20 billion. Despite careful engineering and environmental surveys, when they began building on the island, it sunk 27 feet into the sediment. The Utah Lake islands would be 20,000 acres: 8-times larger than Kansai island. Additionally, the bed of Utah Lake is unconsolidated marl—which has much less structural integrity than the Holocene clay in Osaka Bay.

On the dredging side, the Hudson River Cleanup currently holds the record for the largest freshwater dredging project: 2.7 million cubic yards of sediment removed over 10 years for a cost of $1.6 billion.  According to the island developers, dredging Utah Lake would involve removing 1 billion cubic yards of sediment, making the project 370-times larger than the already enormous Hudson River project.

Despite the truly unprecedented size of this project, the developers are claiming they can do it for $2.6 billion in just 8 years. This seems like either a textbook case of engineering hubris or intentional false advertising. Independent estimates suggest the project could cost $10 to $90 billion while providing no ecological benefit to the lake system.

The Executive Summary from the islands project, showing the size and shape of the proposed work.

Problem #5. The project is very likely illegal and will probably never get permitted. By law and precedent, Utah Lake must be managed according to the public trust doctrine. This legal framework requires the state of Utah to act as a trustee to hold the lake (and other waterbodies) for the benefit of all Utahns—present and future. This doctrine has been challenged multiple times in other water bodies around the state, but the Utah Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court have defended it quite fiercely. This is why the island developers’ first step was to lobby the legislature to change the law. In January of 2018, Representative Mike McKell of Spanish Fork introduced the Utah Lake Restoration Act (H.B. 272), which would allow the state to dispose of sovereign lands in exchange for “comprehensive restoration” of the lake system. Despite the law’s clear constitutional problems and the infeasibility of the island proposal, H.B. 272 passed with overwhelming support in both the house and senate. This law hasn’t yet been tested in court, but if the legislature attempts to transfer large portions of the lakebed to private parties, they would almost certainly be sued.

Previous disputes over Utah Lake and other nearby waterbodies provide a hint of how that might go. In 1990 the Utah Supreme Court ruled that the “essence of [the public trust] doctrine is that navigable waters should not be given without restriction to private parties and should be preserved for the general public for uses such as commerce, navigation, and fishing.”  The court specified that even leasing of these lands can be challenged. A 2019 ruling by the Utah Supreme Court specified that “the abdication of the general control of the state over lands under the navigable waters of an entire harbor or bay, or of a sea or lake. . . is viewed as a gross infringement of the public trust doctrine.”

Even if the project didn’t get tangled in state and federal court, there is still the question of permitting. All such projects are required to do an environmental impact study, which typically takes 10 years or more (this legal panel at the Utah Lake Symposium discussed the law and permitting challenges this project will face).

A juvenile northern harrier learns to hunt near Utah Lake (Travis McCabe).

Problem #6. The project has no scientists on its team. This is one of the strangest and most troubling aspects of this proposal. For any legitimate restoration project, you assemble a team of researchers, engineers, and legal experts to ensure an efficient, effective, and safe process. While there are several engineers and lawyers involved, the team appears to be primarily real estate entrepreneurs. There are no PhD-level environmental or ecological scientists on the team, though their “senior scientist” did earn a master’s degree in biology in 1996. The developers know this is extremely unusual for a project this size because they have been trying to recruit researchers from all over Utah. They have made job offers to several faculty at BYU and even tried to snatch a graduating Ph.D. student from my department to lend some credibility to their proposal.

The fact that no researchers are willing to take their generous salary highlights another particularity about this project: no one in the research or management communities thinks it is a good idea. With most environmental proposals, there is heated debate and disagreement about pros and cons. I have spoken with more than 100 researchers from across the state and beyond, and all of them think this project is a horrible idea. It has dozens of poison pills and no upside for Utah Lake or the people of Utah.

Utah Lake as seen from Mount Timpanogos (Jeff Beck).

Problem #7. The project has shady foreign funding. The developers claim to have $6.4 billion lined up in investments. This money ostensibly comes from Dubai, where the famous Palm Islands were constructed in the early 2000s. Those islands have been both a, ecological and economic failure. They have caused massive erosion of Dubai’s coastline, extensive algal blooms, and widespread asphyxiation of corals and other marine life. Though $6.4 billion is woefully inadequate to complete the described work (see problem 5), it would still make the Utah Lake islands the largest private restoration project in history. More to the point, if they have so much money lined up, why are they still fundraising? Last year, they tried to raise $15 million on the SEC but ended up with only $200,000—potentially from a single investor. They told the state legislature that they had applied for $200 million from the EPA (rejected this fall), which helped them get a $10 million loan guarantee slipped into the Utah state budget last year. Now they are working with a PR firm Halcyon host a series of fundraising events with celebrity concerts costing $1 million.

These kinds of “moonshot” projects with outside investors have been proposed before. Right here in Utah Valley, we flirted with the idea of a ski resort behind Y Mountain for more than 30 years. The investors never showed up and the proposal ended with nothing but bankruptcy and a heap of wasted taxpayer dollars to show for it. These large miracle solutions are always just what they seem: too good to be true. True ecological restoration takes scientific evidence, community engagement, and persistent collaboration. If we allow the island developers to start this project, we may end up with an injured lake and an enormous mess of half-built islands to clean up.

Light from Saratoga Springs reflects off a partly frozen Utah Lake (Mandy Jensen).

So what can we do? The best way to permanently stop this dangerous proposal is to repeal H.B. 272. This is the law that allows the legislature to dispose of our public trust lands in exchange for the islands project. It was passed in 2018 without much opposition or fanfare (coverage here), but it has left the door open for foreign investors to .

A more complicated issue is the Utah Lake Authority bill, which failed earlier this year. A revised version will be considered in the 2022 session starting in January. The bill would create an independent body, similar to the Inland Port Authority, to oversee projects within and around Utah Lake. It is not associated with the islands project, but my concern is that it completely reworks the governance of Utah Lake right when we are making measurable progress. While the revised bill has not yet been made public, I worry that it could threaten the important gains that have been made over the past decade. While increased coordination among stakeholders around the lake could be a plus, the authority could also make modification of the lakebed and surrounding area more likely. Utah Lake has been saved from the costly and damaging alterations that have been made to the Great Salt Lake (diversions, causeways, and artificial bays have resulted in major hydrological and toxicological problems).

Perhaps most importantly, we need to share the positive message of a lake in recovery. Utah Lake is a beautiful and sacred place, and it needs our support and love. We will only convince the legislature and the people of Utah Valley to turn their hearts back to the lake if we can show them its value and central role in our history and future. Please share the Getting to know Utah Lake article with your family, friends, and representatives at the city and state level. Please visit Utah Lake and share its unique beauty with all you know.

Utah, I ask that you please take heed to what the experts opposing this project have to say. Our people and the reeds around this lake give you your name. We stand in favor of restoring the lake to its natural beauty but have to oppose privatizing and desecrating this historic sacred site. 

-Mary Murdock Meyer, Chief Executive of the Timpanogos Nation, August 2021

 Utah Lake Sunset (Preston Holman).

Sign this petition by Conserve Utah Valley and a coalition of community and conservation groups to stop the island developments.

Ben Abbott is a professor of aquatic ecology at Brigham Young University. He has been studying reservoirs, lakes, and river networks throughout Utah and Idaho since 2009. The scientific and legal claims made in this blogpost are based on a synthesis of over 70 studies and reports on Utah Lake, which was published this August: “Getting to know Utah Lake.”

Behind (for) a good cause

This year has been the most spectacular sequence of missed deadlines and unanswered emails. Life turned what I intended to be a deliberate deceleration into a focused flurry of new projects and ventures. The current state of my life (and my inbox) brings me consternation, and I do hope to soon pare down my commitments. However, I take great consolation that my behindness is because of what I believe to be needed and meaningful projects.

January 2021 

After a year of COVID-19, I was pretty caught up. I’d finished a couple of long-simmering research projects and was starting to feel on top of this whole professor thing. Then the environmental science capstone class that I was teaching decided to do their group project on rapid decarbonization pathways. Because fossil fuel combustion is fueling both air pollution and climate change, this is a really important topic. It’s also totally different than my typical ecological research. The students really dug in, and it grew into a major project with collaborators in Germany, Finland, and across the U.S. It also took much longer than a semester, and we are just now getting ready to submit the findings for peer review. One of the students even made this awesome poster with our slogan.

July 2021 

During a meeting of our Utah Lake monitoring project, one of our collaborators mentioned that the proposal to build artificial islands on Utah Lake had reared its head again. We learned that the island developers had taken the legislature out to lunch in April and presented their two-hour dog and pony show about how the real way to restore Utah Lake was to destroy it. I was still working on the renewable energy project and supervising a team in Alaska, but this islands proposal is level-11 crazy. In 2018, they convinced the legislature to pass a law that would allow the state to give the lakebed of Utah Lake to a private corporation. In 2020, they weaseled a $10 million loan guarantee slipped into the state budget. We went into full emergency mode and organized a symposium to bring researchers, managers, lawmakers, and concerned citizens together to discuss the lake. In just a few weeks the plans and funding came together, and 500 people gathered at UVU and virtually to participate in the Utah Lake Symposium. It led to ongoing talks with the legislature and will hopefully conclude with the permanent protection of this unique and important water body.

Since then, a half-dozen other “side projects” and opportunities have kept me from feeling on top of things. However, I am honestly deeply grateful for the chance to contribute, even in a small way, to issues that go beyond my personal professional development. We are living in a period of extreme change, and there isn’t time for career building and navel gazing. Or at least that’s what I tell myself when I’m feeling really ragged and resentful about not having the time to watch the newest True Facts video.

Myths and misinformation about meat

 I was cruising my favorite news app yesterday when an add came up claiming that beef was actually super sustainable and good for the environment. I couldn’t help but click. It was funded by the Beef Farmers and Ranchers association—the group responsible for the “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” campaign. The website was a tossed salad of half-truths and incomplete reasoning. Beef has a big carbon footprint, but smaller than a flight to London. Cattle are “up-cyclers” taking useless plants and turning them into calories and leather. Meat is a nutrient dense food that supplies 9% of U.S. calories but (wait for it) a whopping 10% of our protein and some vitamins.

My favorite part was that they showcase their “Environmental Stewardship Award,” which, it turns out is an annual award given exclusively to cattle producers and funded by McDonalds among other conflicted sponsors. The meat industry is so committed to greenwashing that they bought the URL www.environmentalstewardship.org and use it to shower an award on themselves every year.

While this vein of greasy propaganda was particularly rich, it isn’t unique. I am frequently forwarded Alan Savory’s TED talk on how grazing could halt desertification and solve climate change too. As an aside, TED talks, like Wikipedia articles, are a great place to start your research, and a very bad place to draw your conclusions¹. Just this week, I was called a “shame and a sham” (kind of a nice ring to that actually) for suggesting that eating a plant based diet would be good for the environment.

The extraordinary and highly reproducible case of South Australia

 Over the past three years, I’ve been talking a lot with politicians. It started with the Voices for Science program, which pairs scientists with their senators and representatives to help lawmakers understand how research benefits society. I went to DC and met with the offices of Senators Lee and Romney. I shared my story about how scientific research creates jobs in Utah and leads to innovation that benefits our economy and quality of life. I was surprised how accessible they were.

Some scientists on Capitol Hill. We were so young and naive.

I was also surprised at the differences in Romney and Lee’s voting records and approaches. As a junior senator, Romney was tucked into a basement office with borrowed filing cabinets. Despite the tight quarters, his team was working tirelessly to create or support meaningful legislation on everything from child poverty to climate change. Lee had a sumptuous office with heavy leather couches and professional flyers inviting donors to eat jello with him. Like their leader, his team seemed to be scrupulously avoiding anything meaningful, instead spending their time flailing in the culture wars while complaining they weren’t being treated fairly.

When I got back to Utah, I couldn’t kick the habit. Some BYU students put our program in contact with Representative John Curtis. We met on the mountain, discussing how climate change was threatening everything from our forests to our economic future. Curtis knew his stuff and seemed to be playing the long game—educating and working with a diverse coalition.

I wasn't sure what to wear, so I put on a faux leather belt. Seemed reasonable at the time.

Next thing I knew, my student Isabella and I were traveling to the Utah Capital to share the findings of a statewide study on the health and economic costs of air pollution in Utah. The bipartisan Clean Air Caucus listened to our findings and provided feedback and guidance on how to move forward. I was impressed by their sincerity, wisdom, and generosity.

Isabella and Ben go to Salt Lake City!

During the pandemic, we changed tack and worked on COVID itself, summarizing research on what interventions are effective for the broader community and in school settings. When we found out that the insane Utah Lake islands proposal was still on the table, we changed course again, organizing what turned out to be an extremely stimulating and productive Utah Lake symposium earlier this month.

Through all these forays into translational science, one topic seems to always come up: fossil fuels. Dirty energy is at the nexus of so many of the challenges we are facing. There are multigenerational problems like climate change and the socioeconomic instability of the oil world. There are immense and immediate tragedies like the 10.2 million people who lose their lives each year to pollution from coal, oil, and gas. Fossil fuels played a crucial role lifting billions from poverty in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. But two hundred years later, it’s time to move on.

Katherine Hayhoe teaches us about fossil fuels, oil derricks, and lumberjacks.

Every time I speak with a policymaker, I try to bring up how beneficial the transition to clean and renewable energy could be. If there are a thousand reasons to not like fossil fuels, there are a million to like clean energy. From cheap and equitable power to quiet and comfortable neighborhoods, the renewable revolution is going to be better than even Captain Picard imagined. Plus it is rolling in at warp 9, with a host of plausible scenarios getting us to decarbonization of the electricity grid by 2030 or 2035.

Not everyone believes this.

This email from a state representative is pretty typical in my experience:

Thanks for the energy data. I’m still not sold on the tech being there yet, but I hope it will be. California has been a cautionary tale on their energy management and the ability to handle the various loads. The tech could get there, but I can tell you that the appetite to put Utah at risk of rolling blackouts or anything close to it is pretty low. But we do believe in technology and I am hopeful it will get there and that it will be perceived as getting there (which is important in politics).

I appreciate sincere skepticism. Heck, my job literally depends on checking assumptions and thinking through things differently. However, skepticism is a pernicious form of damnation if it’s not married to a thirst for knowledge and light. There is nothing that can more completely shield us from basic truths and moral opportunities than self-serving skepticism.

If the technology isn’t there yet, then it follows that it’s not anywhere. Turns out that fully renewable, or near fully renewable systems are popping up all over the planet. Let’s take one of my favorite examples, which you may have never heard of: the state of South Australia.

A little bit bigger than Texas, South Australia is home to only 1.8 million people. Last year, it briefly reached 100% renewable energy (this temporarily created a negative cost to electricity of 9$ a MWh!), though it is averaging around 70% renewable electricity in 2021.

True, the power is extremely cheap (2.9¢ a kWh!). True, the grid is substantially more reliable and resilient than our fossil fuel one. However, the thing I find most thrilling and encouraging about South Australia is how quickly they got there. In just 12 years, they’ve gone from a coal and gas system like ours to a renewable system that is superior in almost every way. They have done so while growing their economy and earning huge dividends on their infrastructure investments.

Check out the speed of that energy transition! Full story in this article and linked report.

To be fair, the legislative groundwork did begin in the early 2000s, when they set a modest renewable energy target. However, it wasn’t until 2008 that they started working on this in earnest. They rolled out feed-in tariffs, which encouraged distributed power generation such as rooftop solar. They set renewable portfolio standards, which ensured predictable conditions for investment and business creation. They offered low-cost financing to individuals, organizations, and businesses to purchase and install the renewable tech.

But what about the intermittency problem!? What are you going to do when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow!?

The assumption that I hear parroted by many (including Bill Gates in his recent book), is that energy storage is not economical. South Australia has both utility scale and distributed battery storage, including the world’s (second) largest chemical battery: the Hornsdale Power Reserve. The project paid for itself in two years. That’s an ROI that even the summer sales bros can’t compete with.

The combination of distributed and centralized production has decreased strain on the power grid, allowing South Australia (and other areas that have decarbonized) to reduce maintenance and extend equipment lifetimes. It’s harder to shuffle electrons from a single location through a whole network than produce and consume it locally.

As their transportation and heating sectors electrify, South Australia has a goal of 500% renewable power by 2050 (that is to say they will be creating 5-times the electricity that they are today, and it will all be renewable). Really, really cool.

But what about California!?

On the topic of our friend to the west, I actually agree that California is a cautionary tale. They have high power prices and low reliability. However, I see that as a bureaucratic and administrative failure, not a technological one. They still primarily have centralized energy production, a large amount of interstate importation, inadequate distributed storage, and vulnerable long-distance transmission that often must be shut down because of fire risk (exacerbated by climate change).

Renewables get blamed for every grid problem, though their net effect is a large increase in resilience and reliability. Take the Texas power crisis in February. Natural gas and coal failed at twice the rate of wind, but everyone from Greg Abbott to Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed the renewables (Reuters fact check here). 

Unlike California, Utah could be a national leader in this space with local production, multiple storage solutions, and an open energy market. Unfortunately, the current producers have effectively stifled deployment with anti-competitive tactics and regulation at the county to state level. Here in the valley, both Rocky Mountain Power and UMPA are doing their darndest to penalize rooftop solar, and the gas lobby scored a win last session by requiring hookups in all new developments.

There are lots of effective legislative actions that could improve the situation, including the following

1. Set statewide renewable portfolio standards. These targets create a stable regulatory environment that allows businesses and individuals to invest and deploy renewables.
2. Work with utilities across the state to ensure solvency and financing during the transition. Distributed power generation and storage is extremely frightening to many power operators who have been sold stories from the fossil fuel lobby about “death spirals” and “duck curves.” Clear talk and financial assurances would remove barriers and accelerate the transition.
3.  Provide financing, tax breaks, or direct subsidies for renewable power generation and storage. We are spending the money in any case. It’s our choice whether we pay the utility billions to build and maintain giant coal and gas plants, or support families and local businesses to create a cheaper and more reliable grid that doesn’t pollute.
4. Update the domestic building efficiency code (hasn’t been done for two cycles)
5. Invest in research and manufacturing of renewable technologies. Last year, 96% of all new electricity production was wind and solar. Fossil fuels are old news. The market for solar has almost been cornered by China. If we don’t invest in domestic production, we are going to end up with a solar OPEC sunburn.

Megadrought

I went in an airplane for the first time in 18 months. I flew over the Great Salt Lake—what was left of it. It looked like the Aral Sea. Antelope Island was connected to the mainland on three sides. The antelope were halfway to Saratoga Springs. There was hay growing in Farmington Bay. Foxes and coyotes were nearly across the new land bridge to Gunnison Island to visit the 10,000 pelicans they insisted were kin.

The Great Salt Lake is about to drop below the all-time low because of agricultural water diversions and climate change.

The bottom of the Great Basin. This is the place that floods when God sends the snow. This is the place that dries up when we divert the rivers.

Some of us get lulled into thinking that this drought is just more of the same. Some of us are wrong. The current conditions the Southwest is experiencing are called a megadrought—a dry period that lasts more than 10 years. This megadrought has been going on for so long that if you were born in the 90s or later, your entire life may have unfolded during the big dry.

Evaporation ponds next to the Great Salt Lake during a more normal year.

Lake Powell is so low the dock just broke loose. At the Utah Water Task Force meeting, I learned that reservoirs in the Weber River usually have 80,000 acre feet of water storage. This year, they hold 2,700. Now that humans dominate the global water cycle, this story is stuck on repeat almost everywhere on Earth (Abbott et al., 2019a). 

I think it's really important to provide some context to this drought. Tree rings show that we are in the driest 20-year period since trees started keeping records some 2,000 years ago. I think it’s even more important to identify what is causing these conditions. Our megadrought is directly a consequence of human-caused climate change. This isn't a natural disaster. This is an unnatural consequence of our overuse of fossil fuels. We have supercharged the summers, disrupted the wet winds from the Pacific, and made snow and rain less reliable. I don't blame climate change in a generic way, there is solid science on this megadrought specifically (Williams et al., 2020). These conditions have also caused a doubling of annual wildfire extent across the West, setting the stage for megafires that burn whole valleys and mountainsides. 

Governor Cox asks Utahns to join him in prayer to break the drought.

I believe in the power of prayer, but how does God feel when we pray for our actions to have no consequences? To solve this part of the megadrought, we need to dramatically decrease fossil fuel combustion so the climate can get back to normal. The best way individuals can do that is by pressuring their elected officials to stop climate change, changing their transportation to bikes and public transport, and eating a plant-based diet (cartoon Ben says it best). Doing these things would leave us healthier, wealthier, and much more secure (check out this recent post on the ongoing global decarbonization).

The natural response to scarcity is to try to increase supply. We build pipelines, dams, and canals so there is more water available when we want it. This has been the response of Utah as a state. I hear from state legislators all the time that we should build more dams, and the state just created a new River Authority that is going to fight with our neighbors in Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado for more water. They'll be fighting over water that doesn’t exist.

The problem with this supply-side approach is that demand can always grow faster than supply (Abbott et al., 2019, Ellison et. al., 2012). Demand is basically limitless. Building more dams won't help in any way if the rain and snow never come. Suing California won't help if there is no water in the river or aquifer to take.

We need to manage our demand as individuals and as a society to live within our means. Much of Utah, including where I live, is in the Great Basin. This is a huge internally draining part of the Earth with no rivers to the ocean. Areas like ours are extremely sensitive to climate change and human water use. Consequently, endorheic basins all over the world are experiencing hydrological collapse (Wurtsbaugh et al., 2017). We need to recognize that we have limited water resources and change our behavior to live within those limits.

So what are we using our water for? More than 80% of Utah's water use is agricultural. Some of this water use is totally justified and important, such as the water used to grow food for people. I love Utah cherries, watermelon, corn, and essential oils. Unfortunately, the production of Utah fruits has dropped by half since the mid 80s. Over the same time period, alfalfa production has increased by 300,000 tons per year (USDA). Today, 70% of our agricultural water goes to grow alfalfa, most of which is exported to China to feed livestock. Does it really make sense to subsidize an economically marginal activity that doesn't increase our food and water security? If you think it doesn't, I invite you to stop eating meat and talk with your legislators about supporting water reform.

Of the remaining non-agricultural use, most is outdoor water use. There are plenty of beautiful native plants that grow happily without irrigation. However, for some reason we have decided that we need turfgrass in front of every house and building, even though this non-native species needs huge amounts of water and fertilizer. As individuals and as a part of various corporate, educational, city, and state communities, we need to change the way we landscape.

Outdoor water use is up the bulk of domestic water use. In light of the severe and extended drought, we let our lawn go dormant this year.

There is also an economic solution to this problem: let the price of water increase. Currently we heavily subsidize water, paying one of the lowest prices per gallon of anywhere in the U.S (Utah Rivers Council). If the price reflected the cost, we would all waste a lot less water.

There are also problems with water law that cause a lot of waste. Under current water law, if you don't use your water rights, you lose them. That means there is a huge disincentive to conserve. For example, Provo is considering piping water from the Provo River and releasing it up Rock Canyon. They could simply let Rock Canyon flow, but they have water rights in the Provo River that they need to find a beneficial use for. I wonder if the river could use the water beneficially. There are thousands of counterintuitive inefficiencies like this going on every day in our state that we need to resolve. We should have water law that encourages conservation and strategic agriculture while ensuring the health of our ecosystems. Call your legislators or provide feedback here to encourage scaling up the water banking pilot program.

I grew up in Utah, and I love this place with all my heart. We need to change our laws, policies, and behaviors to stop climate change and water waste in our beautiful state. This will make a better world for all of us and make us much more prepared for the next drought. Or for this drought, if it lasts another twenty years.

Stewards and seedlings

The truth about EVs, windmills, solar panels, and other "green" stuff

As an environmental scientist, I used to get asked about climate change all the time.

Is it happening? Is it caused by people? How worried should I be?

I was always grateful for these questions. Regardless of the person’s background, they were reaching out to learn about a politicized issue that can be confusing and intimidating. I felt privileged that they trusted me enough to ask.

Though this post isn’t about climate change, the short answer to those questions is yes, yes, and very. If you want more detail, here are three of my favorite resources:

1. BYU’s course on climate change science andsolutions
2. Project Drawdown’s Climate 101 series
3. Skeptical Science’s ugly but accurate wiki

Cool sky at my brother's birthday party.

While I still get asked about climate change, a different set of questions have become dominant over the past few years.

Don’t solar panels take more energy to manufacture than they produce? Aren’t windmills only built because they are subsidized? Isn’t the ecological footprint of an EV greater than a gas car?

I see the evolution in questioning as an enormously positive sign. We are no longer in the “is there a problem” stage. We have graduated into the “what are the best solutions” stage, which is infinitely more useful and stimulating.

Given the rate of change in the renewable energy space, it’s no wonder that people are hearing more about these technologies. Last year, more than 90% of the new energy production built was wind and solar. This isn’t because of subsidies or regulation—fossil fuels still have huge structural advantages there. Despite the fact that fossil fuel pollution causes approximately 1 in 5 deaths globally (10.2 million a year)^1,2, we invest more than three times the direct subsidies into fossil fuels than renewable energy³.

Figure 1 From Errigo et al. 2020. Estimates of premature deaths caused by pollution and other causes and risk factors worldwide. Deaths associated with COVID-19 were current on 9 October 2020. 

If it’s not big government picking winners and losers, why are we hearing so much more about wind and solar? This quiet and clean revolution is happening because solar photovoltaic and wind power are now providing the cheapest energy ever available to humankind⁴. The cost of solar has decreased by 90% in the past 10 years, and the cost of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 95%.

A cost comparison of various energy sources. The levelized cost includes all manufacturing, installation, and operating costs over the life of the unit, allowing direct comparison across very different technologies. This is a sneak peek from a forthcoming paper with data from Lazard and IRENA.

But back to our questions. Isn’t this whole green thing a scam?

One of the most prominent ecologists of the 20^th century was Barry Commoner. He called ecology, the “Science of survival,” referring to all the organisms on Earth, including humans. 

Because ecology is a study of complex interactions (systems of systems), we usually don’t think of universal laws relating to ecological interactions. However, Commoner was a rebel, and he proposed four ecological laws:

1. Everything is connected to everything else
2. Everything must go somewhere
3. Nature knows best
4. There aint no such thing as a free lunch

While each of these laws deserves its own seminar, I think that #4 is especially pertinent to questions about renewables and electrified technologies. This law posits that every activity has an ecological cost. For example, all animals are heterotrophs—organisms that can’t harvest energy from the sun or inorganic chemicals. This means that we must eat other organisms to survive. Riding a bicycle has an ecological cost: the materials and energy to construct it, maintain it, and operate it. This is where I see many people get confused about more sustainable technologies and behaviors. While all lunches have a cost, law #4 does not posit that all lunches cost the same.

Many critics rightfully point out that EVs and solar panels have ecological costs. They are not, and cannot be, a “free lunch.” From an ecological perspective, the question is never, “is the lunch free,” but “how much does it cost.”

Because of the complexity of our globalized world (anyone else a huge fan of the “Good Place”?), answering the question of how much a particular product or activity costs ecologically is really complicated. Indeed, there is a whole scientific field dedicated to assessing ecological impact: life-cycle analysis (LCA). Researchers in LCA do detailed accounting to quantify the overall environmental impact of an object or activity from cradle to grave (or cradle to cradle in the case of circular production approaches). They assess how much energy, pollution, and habitat loss are created by extraction of the raw materials followed by the manufacturing, distribution, use, and disposal of the product.

While LCA is a painfully meticulous research activity, it reveals the price column on the menu of life. For example, eating a plant-based diet only uses 15% of the energy and 25% of the land required by the typical American diet^5,6. Riding a bicycle uses less than 1% of the energy required to drive a car⁷. Driving an electric car produces much more pollution than a bicycle but 75% less greenhouse gas and a tiny fraction of the local pollution of a gas- or diesel-powered car^8,9. Solar panels and wind turbines recoup their initial energy and pollution costs within 1-5 months, producing less than 4% of the greenhouse gas emissions of their fossil fuel equivalents per kWh^10,11. Most encouraging, the ecological cost of all these green technologies (from bicycles to solar panels) is decreasing as global manufacturing and transportation becomes cleaner. For example, Tesla’s gigafactories are nearing 100% solar, and new techniques for extracting lithium from deep groundwater brines allow efficient extraction without expansive evaporation pools¹².

A figure from Kim et al. 2020, which compared the greenhouse gas footprint of different diets in 140 countries.

Pro-tip #1, when given a choice, pick the cheaper lunch.

I think there is a deeply engrained human instinct to resent hypocrisy. This can be an influence for good, especially when we apply it to ourselves. However, it can also lead us to reject legitimate improvements just because they are not complete solutions. Are solar panels, windmills, electric cars, and heat pumps impact free? Absolutely not. That would infringe one of the only laws of ecology. Are they better than the current coal, gas, and internal combustion engine alternatives? Yes. They are so much better that we should be doing everything in our power to encourage their uptake. This is literally a matter of life and death for millions of people worldwide. Whether you are in a “sensitive group” or you are completely healthy, air pollution harms every system in our body: respiratory, reproductive, neurological, cardiovascular, and mental².

In addition to decreasing harm from pollution and climate change, there are another suite of reasons to embrace the clean energy revolution. Cleaning up our electricity, transportation, and heating is going to create millions of high-paying jobs in every zip code of the United States. There are approximately 1.14 million jobs currently associated with coal, gas, and oil extraction and processing nationwide. The renewable transition will create more than 25 million jobs nationwide, including manufacturing, installation, financing, sales, transportation, construction, and education¹³. The laborers and engineers currently in fossil fuel can be directly transitioned to jobs requiring the same skills in transmission, maintenance, raw materials, and permitting. We need these workers and companies to pull this off. If we remove the regulatory and political obstacles that are behind our current situation of expensive and dirty energy¹⁴, we can have a cleaner, wealthier, and more abundant life for all of us.

Figure 8 from Griffith and Calisch 2020. This shows the new clean energy jobs that would be created in the U.S. were we to commit to halving greenhouse gas emissions each decade until reaching zero emissions.

Last winter, my mom purchased a Chevy Bolt. A couple weeks ago, I was on a forum to see how the new version compared, and surprise surprise, people were fighting about whether EVs were better than gas and diesel cars. In the midst of long and usually data-free opinions, some dude from Wisconsin blurted in all caps,

“I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT. THE CAR HAS WAY BETTER PERFORMANCE AND HARDLY COSTS ANYTHING TO OPERATE.”

This is one of the many signs that renewables are winning. If you have money to invest or things to purchase, I invite you to put it towards clean—though imperfect—electric technologies. If you are a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or member of the Independent American Party of Utah, call up your state representatives and encourage them to streamline manufacturing and deployment of renewable energy. Whether you voted for Trump, Biden, or Jo Jorgensen, don't miss out on the personal, financial, and environmental benefits of these new technologies.

If you have questions or challenges, I would be honored to hear them. If you want more information, here are some good sources:

1. Rewiring America (Other Labs)
2. 3 clean energy myths debunked (Yale)
3. Interview with Saul Griffiths on renewable jobs (VOX)
4. De-risking renewable energy projects (Forbes)
5. Low-cost renewable electricity as the key driver of the global energy transition towards sustainability  (Energy)
6. Are electric vehicles really better for the climate? (Union of Concerned Scientists)
7. Our Energy Library clearing house for articles and reports on fossil fuels and renewables (Our Energy Policy)
8. The 2035 Report (Energy Innovation)
9. The Electrify This! podcase (Sara Baldwin)

 References

1. Vohra, K. et al. Global mortality from outdoor fine particle pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion: Results from GEOS-Chem. Environ. Res. 195, 110754 (2021).
2. Errigo, I. M. et al. Human Health and Economic Costs of Air Pollution in Utah: An Expert Assessment. Atmosphere 11, 1238 (2020).
3. Coady, D., Parry, I., Le, N.-P. & Shang, B. Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large: An Update Based on Country-Level Estimates. IMF Work. Pap. 19, 1 (2019).
4. Bogdanov, D. et al. Low-cost renewable electricity as the key driver of the global energy transition towards sustainability. Energy 120467 (2021) doi:10.1016/j.energy.2021.120467.
5. If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares. Our World in Data https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets.
6. Kim, B. F. et al. Country-specific dietary shifts to mitigate climate and water crises. Glob. Environ. Change 62, 101926 (2020).
7. Hollingsworth, J., Copeland, B. & Johnson, J. X. Are e-scooters polluters? The environmental impacts of shared dockless electric scooters. Environ. Res. Lett. 14, 084031 (2019).
8. Choma, E. F., Evans, J. S., Hammitt, J. K., Gómez-Ibáñez, J. A. & Spengler, J. D. Assessing the health impacts of electric vehicles through air pollution in the United States. Environ. Int. 144, 106015 (2020).
9. How Clean is Your Electric Vehicle? Union of Concerned Scientists https://evtool.ucsusa.org.
10. Haapala, K. R. & Prempreeda, P. Comparative life cycle assessment of 2.0 MW wind turbines. Int. J. Sustain. Manuf. 3, 170 (2014).
11. NREL. Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Solar Photovoltaics. 3 https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf (2013).
12. Tscherning, R. & Chapman, B. Navigating the emerging lithium rush: lithium extraction from brines for clean-tech battery storage technologies. J. Energy Nat. Resour. Law 39, 13–42 (2021).
13. Griffith, S. & Calisch, S. Jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs. 34 (2020).
14. Stokes, L. C. Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States. (Oxford University Press, 2020).