- Two items about the Supreme Court’s redefinition of “wetlands,” despite the science of hydrology;
- Two items about the effects of climate change, including how some insurance companies are refusing new homeowner policies.
Salon, Mike Lofgren, 9 Jun 2023: The party of pollution, disease and death: When Republicans tell you who they are, believe them, subtitled “In the name of imaginary freedom, Republicans are willing to let many people die. In fact, they’re proud of it”
Removing a large number of waterways and wetlands from the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act will predictably lead to more pollution. To say that additional contamination of water is only hypothetical if dumping is no longer prohibited in deregulated waters, and that if such pollution occurs it would be a regrettable and unforeseen consequence, is to engage in dishonest argumentation.
Similar to health policy choices during the covid pandemic.
The same holds true with other public health, pollution control, workplace and consumer safety regulations established during the last century. The money supposedly saved (mainly by corporations who just happen to be political contributors) when Republicans eliminate or weaken them is more than neutralized by costs externalized onto the general public in the form of cleanup expenses or illness or premature death.
Republicans blinkered by near-termism either don’t understand this, or don’t care. Freedom!
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Morever, Slate explains, the redefinition of ‘wetlands’ is antiscientific.
Slate, Louis Derry, 8 Jun 2023: Samuel Alito’s Wetlands-Destroying Opinion Pretends Physics Doesn’t Exist
You may have heard about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Sackett v. EPA that the Clean Water Act does not permit the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the use of wetlands that are not connected at the surface to lakes, rivers, and streams. While there’s been plenty of analysis of the significant legal flaws in the ruling—which will greatly restrict the ability of the EPA to protect not only wetlands but our entire freshwater system—less has been said about the science undergirding the case. The reality is this: The ruling takes no consideration whatsoever of the science of water.
…The notion that a wetland can only be linked to streams or lakes by a continuous surface connection—presumably visible to the justices themselves—is fundamentally at odds with hydrology, the science of water. The movement of water beneath the surface (groundwater) connects water bodies in ways that are just as or more important than surface connections, something that has been understood by hydrologists for well over a century.
Science may have understood this for a century, but the justices (the conservatives ones anyway) don’t want to hear about it.
Justices Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh correctly note that it is well understood that wetlands can be linked to other water bodies without an obvious surface connection. If the court were truly interested in establishing whether wetlands are connected to other water bodies, instead of abstruse arguments about the meaning of adjacent vs. adjoining, the hydrologic sciences have an extensive tool kit that can address those questions. But the court opinion dismisses that approach as “fact-intensive,” as if facts bearing on a question were somehow a hindrance to a logical and just decision.
Further, the court takes a distinctly negative view of the possibility that the classification of a wetland could “evolve as scientific understandings change.” There could hardly be a clearer indication of the disconnect between law and science in this opinion.
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On related matters…
The Week, 8 Jun 2023: 4 regions around the world where you can see climate adaptation in real time, subtitled “What are countries doing to handle the consequences of climate change?”
Indonesia, California, The Bahamas, Australia. The California example considers the risks of earthquakes, the link to climate change being how drought and oil drilling may increase the likelihood of earthquakes.
Indonesia, meanwhile, is moving and rebuilding its entire capital, away from Jakarta to a new city called Nusantara. The Bahamas face the risk of sinking under rising seawater. And Australia’s problems include the ruination of its wine industry.
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NY Times, 31 May 2023: Climate Shocks Are Making Parts of America Uninsurable. It Just Got Worse., subtitled “The largest insurer in California said it would stop offering new coverage. It’s part of a broader trend of companies pulling back from dangerous areas.”
This means that not only can new homeowners not get insurance, it means that current homeowners will have a harder time selling because there will be fewer potential buyers. Why not just raise the rates? Because past a certain point it’s not economically feasible.
Insurance rates in California jumped after wildfires became more devastating than anyone had anticipated. A series of fires that broke out in 2017, many ignited by sparks from failing utility equipment, exploded in size with the effects of climate change. Some homeowners lost their insurance entirely because insurers refused to cover homes in vulnerable areas.
Michael Soller, a spokesman for the California Department of Insurance, said the agency was working to address the underlying factors that have caused disruption in the insurance industry across the country and around the world, including the biggest one: climate change.
The piece concludes,
The best way for policymakers to help keep insurance affordable is to reduce the risk people face, said Carolyn Kousky, associate vice president for economics and policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. For example, officials could impose tougher building standards in vulnerable areas.
Government-mandated programs, like the flood insurance plan, or Citizens in Florida and Louisiana, were meant to be a backstop to the private market. But as climate shocks get worse, she said, “we’re now at the point where that’s starting to crack.”
