Three decades ago, a Louisiana community had an idea to combat shoreline erosion and wetland loss using the most common holiday decoration: a Christmas tree.

“It was just magical” to see people in St. Charles Parish so willing to give their trees that first year to save coastal Louisiana, said Robert Thomas, who helped come up with the idea over coffee.

He was sharing that coffee with coastal science professor John Day and Allan Ensminger, former head of refuges with Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

At the end of the fall 1988 semester at Louisiana State University, they were chatting about Day’s research project. Inspired by a practice in the Netherlands of interweaving fences to trap sediment for marsh restoration, he wanted to try something similar in Louisiana.

The project was showing good results, Day said, but it was hard to interweave the fences over long periods of time in the bitter cold winter.

Then someone had an idea.

“None of us have a recollection of who it was, [but] somebody said, ‘What if you could get something that is already clumped up like Christmas trees that you don’t have to do any weaving, you can just drop them into a cage or something like that?'” said Thomas, director of the Center for Environmental Communication at Loyola University in New Orleans.

“I remember John saying, ‘I think that would work, but I could never get enough trees to do that.'”

Thomas recalled that three days later he was telling the public on a morning television show to gather their Christmas trees. They gathered about 10,000 trees the first year and 25,000 trees the next, he said.

He remembers a girl about 7 years old and her dad pulling up with a Christmas tree in the trunk of their car. “I went over to help and the little girl started tugging on the tree,” Thomas remembered. “I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and she said, ‘I’m trying to get the tree out of here because I’m saving the wetlands.'”

3 decades and 800,000 trees later

St. Charles Parish’s program was the pilot for placing recycled trees in the marsh for coastal restoration. Despite a lack of state funding for the project today, the parish still collects about 2,000 to 3,000 Christmas trees and puts them in marshland each year, according to Earl Matherne from the parish’s planning and zoning department.

Neighboring communities like Jefferson Parish also started collecting Christmas trees and placing them along the shoreline.

Today Jefferson Parish is still running its Christmas tree recycling program, with over 800,000 trees collected over the past 30 years.

In recent years, the parish’s Coastal Management Department has run the program from December until February. Last year, an estimated 5,000 trees were recycled with the help of 125 volunteers.

Lauren Averill, the department’s director, said Jefferson Parish has lost 30% of its land since the 1960s, “and so any ways that we can maintain the land that we have is super important.”

Averill explained that two-by-four wooden boards are placed along the shoreline to create “cribs” where trees are placed. The trees help increase the creation of sediment, reduce marsh loss and improve fish habitat.

“You get two benefits out of the Christmas trees: One, you get to enjoy it during the holidays. And two, it is actually helping to save land loss and prevent land loss within Jefferson Parish,” Averill said.

In 1997, the parish received 70 Christmas trees from the White House for recycling, but Averill said the collaboration ended.

‘This is a national issue’

Between 1996 and 2010, Louisiana lost 309 square miles of wetlands, according to NOAA, and the land loss increased the damage the state sustained from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

The U.S. government’s Climate Resilience Toolkit estimated that average erosion rates are 25 feet annually along barrier islands in the Southeast and 50 feet along the Great Lakes.

“This is not a Louisiana issue,” Thomas said. “This is a national issue.”

Christmas trees are recycled in locations across the country like Nevada, California, Florida and Washington, D.C. Recycled trees can help prevent erosion, restore dunes or enhance hiking trails with mulch.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in New York is recycled each year. Since 2007, the lumber from the iconic tree has been donated to build a Habitat for Humanity house.

In Louisiana parishes, the recycling program helped people understand how wetlands loss affects their state and local community, Thomas said.

“It gave the average citizen who cares about the environment a chance to do something,” he said. “They could bring their Christmas tree and drop it off. They knew that would in some way help the wetlands.”

For Averill, outreach is a key component of Jefferson Parish’s program because it teaches people why the project is so important to Louisiana’s future. Volunteers get a firsthand look at the wetlands.

“If you don’t get out into that coastal marsh, then you don’t see the loss and you don’t appreciate it for what it is,” Averill said.

Making a case for real trees

The National Christmas Tree Association represents the Christmas tree industry in the United States and also selects the White House Christmas tree each year.

The group encourages people to opt for a real tree rather than an artificial one.

“It’s endless what you can do with them,” spokesman Doug Hundley said. “They will decompose on their own, and fortunately, they can serve a purpose while they’re doing that.”

Hundley said 99% of the trees are grown on Christmas tree production farms, and after one tree is cut down, another is immediately replanted in its place.

Recycling used Christmas trees saves on landfill costs.

“Landfills are expensive — county and state expense for managing, building and maintaining and capping landfills is a big part of governmental expenses,” Hundley said.

Thomas also supports keeping trees out of the trash.

“All landfills are supported by tax dollars, so that means we’re actually paying tax dollars to fill them up after Christmas with Christmas trees,” he said.

Hundley hopes Christmas tree recycling will expand to more communities as they recognize the environmental and cost-saving benefits.

“Any county that’s not doing it will wake up and smell the coffee one day, I’m sure,” he said.

Published in conjunction with E&E News

It’s not just millennials leading climate change protests — grandmothers, including film star Jane Fonda, are getting in on the action, worried about the planet becoming uninhabitable for their grandchildren.

As Fonda, 81, holds her next “Fire Drill Fridays” demonstration on Capitol Hill today, other grandmothers across the country are also taking a stand.

“If my last breath on this earth is working to make their lives better, that’s what I do,” said 74-year-old Dorothy Brandt of Washington, D.C., a climate activist who has two granddaughters, a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old.

Brandt maintains a busy schedule as a climate change advocate. She attended Fonda’s rally last Friday and then testified to the EPA this past Wednesday about her experiences with smog in Los Angeles and toxic waste in Tacoma, Wash.

Brandt is not alone in her fight. She belongs to Moms Clean Air Force, which has drawn over 1.2 million members since it was established in 2011.

One of its co-founders, Dominique Browning, 64, of New York City, has a 3-year-old grandson, who will turn 4 on Earth Day. As a grandmother, Browning said the projected impact of climate change is “completely 150% motivating” and that many of her peers feel obligated to protect the next generation.

“I think what a lot of older people really respond to [is] a feeling of moral responsibility and handing on a world that is as good as it possibly can be,” Browning said.

Geri Freedman, 68, of central Florida, couldn’t agree more. Freedman is the co-chair of Elders Climate Action, an 8,000-member organization that mobilizes older people to speak up and take action on climate change. The group has chapters across the country as well as internationally in Canada, India, New Zealand and Australia.

“I have two grandchildren ages 10 and 8,” Freedman said. “I look into their eyes and I know that I have to do everything that I possibly can to make sure that their generation inherits a planet that’s habitable.”

The planet’s future habitability is a major concern for Jean Cummings, 71, of Acton, Mass. Cummings belongs to Mothers Out Front, a nonprofit with 35,000 supporters in nine states. She has prioritized her activism on the effects that the fossil fuel industry has on the future of her grandsons, ages 8 and 11.

“I think about what their life is apt to be like unless some major institutional changes are made to get us off of fossil fuels in an accelerated fashion,” Cummings said.

‘What do we have to lose?’

Fonda’s weekly protests have inspired people of all ages to voice their outrage on climate change in the streets and halls of government.

During her Oct. 25 rally, Fonda encouraged the crowd to “put your body on the line, especially us grandmas, what do we have to lose?”(E&E News PM, Oct. 25).

Kathleen Rall, 72, of Frederick County, Md., attended Fonda’s protest that day because she worried that her daughter and 9-year-old grandson might one day experience an intense warming of the Earth.

“We actually might be destroyed by fire if we don’t cut the emissions quickly,” Rall said. “We have 10 years to cut them dramatically.”

After attending the Nov. 1 demonstration, Brandt said Fonda inspired her, and she got goose bumps listening to the speakers’ words (E&E News PM, Nov. 1).

“I’m proud to see Jane Fonda step up, and she stepped up, as far as I can tell, for all the same reasons that I did,” Brandt said.

Browning thought Fonda’s protests were fantastic, and she wished “more celebrities had their hair on fire about climate change.” Although she noted that you don’t have to be arrested to make a difference.

“I think we have to be very careful about checking our privilege,” Browning said. “There are not very many people who can afford to get arrested, who can afford to not show up at the end of the day to feed the children, who can afford to take a day off.”

Freedman noted that Fonda’s protests are connecting all generations to climate change.

“It’s hopefully making the point that it’s all generations that care about climate change,” Freedman said. “It’s elders. It’s youth. It’s everybody. It’s not one generation.”

‘My generation messed it up’

Millennials and members of Generation Z (born 1982-1996 and 1997-on, respectively) have often blamed older generations for creating the current climate crisis.

Brandt said that while everyone should take some personal responsibility for the environment, her generation has made mistakes that led to climate change.

“My generation messed it up good,” Brandt said. “I think we owe it to this new generation and the generations to come to clean it up.”

On the other hand, Browning said that her generation should not be the scapegoat for all of the effects and that young people are not alone in saving the planet.

“I’m excited about how the movement has grown,” Browning said. “I’m not particularly excited at this trope that baby boomers, my generation, have ruined the planet and it’s up to young people to save it.”

Browning explained that although civil disobedience is important, boomers have “been in the trenches” and engaged with legislators to change regulations.

In March, Gallup released a poll that showed demographic differences on global warming opinions. In the 18- to 29-year-old subgroups, 67% were concerned believers in contrast to 43% in the 50 to 64 age group and 47% of those 65 and older.

A joint survey released in June 2019 between Yale University and George Mason University explained that while younger generations are more likely to engage in climate activism, they are no more likely than baby boomers (born 1946-1964) or the silent generation (born roughly 1925-1945) to contact government officials about global warming.

A grandmother’s act of love

A sense of hope is central to Cummings’ mission to ensure her grandchildren have a livable climate when they’re adults.

“I think all of us would like to give the future generations the chance to experience our amazing natural world in the way that we were able to do it,” Cummings said.

For Browning, thinking about the age of her children and grandchildren helped her frame the immediacy and urgency to act with climate projections for 2050 and 2100.

“We’re talking about when my son is my age, when my grandson will be his father’s age,” Browning said. “He will be a young adult as this catastrophe deepens.”

After Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg came out “speaking truth to power” for the next generation, Brandt decided that she couldn’t sit at home and read during her retirement.

“I’m never too tired. I’m never too sick,” Brandt said. “I’m never too old.”

Published in conjunction with E&E News

Fossils from 66 million years ago have pointed to a potential link between mass extinction of marine life and ocean acidification.

A study published yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences revealed how the collapse of marine species occurred following a meteorite’s impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. The meteorite increased carbon levels in the atmosphere and altered the chemistry of the Earth’s oceans over time.

Researchers studied marine animals with shells, known as foraminifera, to determine how a spike in carbon levels increased ocean acidification.

Their findings argued that the disappearance of the organisms occurred after pH levels dropped 0.25 unit between 100 and 1,000 years after the meteorite hit. Acidification then intensified.

One of the study’s authors, Ellen Thomas, a senior research scientist in Yale University’s geology and geophysics department, noted how increased ocean acidity raised the risk for extinction of marine organisms with shells.

“If we have more acidic oceans, then on the one hand, it is more difficult, it takes more energy for organisms to make a calcium carbonate shell,” Thomas said.

As chemical changes occur when salt water reacts with carbon dioxide, the pH level falls and ocean acidity levels rise.

NOAA reported that following the Industrial Revolution, the pH levels in oceans dropped by 0.11 unit. That translates to a 30% hike in acidity levels.

NOAA launched its Ocean Acidification Program in 2011 as part of a larger effort to monitor, research and educate the public on the impacts of the changing chemistry of the oceans.

The program has funded multiple research projects along the Gulf of Mexico, in coral ecosystems and in the Southeast.

Emily Osborne, a University Corporation for Atmospheric Research visiting scientist with the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, explained how the study’s findings coincided with NOAA’s modern-day research on ocean acidification.

“Model projections suggest that if business-as-usual scenarios continue into the future, we might see pH decline on the scale that was observed in this study as a result of that [meteorite] impact,” Osborne said.

Ocean acidification is reversible, but Thomas pointed out that changes in chemistry cannot be altered for thousands of years.

“They are reversible on time scales that are so long that humans are not really interested in that,” Thomas said. “We’re talking reversible on time scales of 10,000 to 100,000 years.”

Published in conjunction with E&E News and Scientific American

 

 

March 20 (UPI) — WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday about racial discrimination in jury selection for a case that could reverse a conviction for a Mississippi man on death row.

The justices considered whether purposeful racial discrimination played a role in the exclusion of jurors for a murder trial in a Mississippi. The case, Flowers vs. Mississippi, centers on whether the prosecuting attorney intentionally eliminated jurors based on race and, as a result, created an unfair trial for defendant Curtis Flowers, who was eventually convicted and sentenced to death.

Wednesday’s oral arguments relied on the 1985 Supreme Court decision in Batson vs. Kentucky, which held excluding jurors based on race violates a person’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial and Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law.

“The history of this case is very troubling,” Justice Samuel Alito said.

Tried six times for his alleged role in a 1996 murder of four workers at a furniture company in Winona, Miss., Flowers was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to death. He still maintains his innocence.

Prosecutor Doug Evans, who is white, has led the case against Flowers, who is black, for all six trials. Evans has been accused of abusing his legal power of peremptory challenge to dismiss black jurors from having a seat in the sixth trial.

Flowers’ attorney, Sheri Lynn Johnson, argued that the history of this case has to be reconsidered because the aggressiveness of Evans’ questions toward black jurors indicated racial bias.

Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the “case is unusual because of the extensive history,” but he questioned whether there was any legal precedent that allows for limitations on considering history.

The four left-leaning justices on the court, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, focused on the distinction between a black and white juror in the case.

Evans struck Carolyn Wright, who is black, from the jury because she had been sued by the furniture company and worked with Flowers’ father at the Winona Walmart store. Pamela Chesteen, a white juror, was a bank teller in Winona where the Flowers family were customers.

“Isn’t the relationship of a bank teller different than someone who is a coworker?” Ginsburg asked.

Sotomayor said she was most interested in the comparison between Wright and Chesteen given their similarities in knowing the defendant’s family.

Kagan agreed and also pointed out that “the numbers themselves are staggering” when looking at the difference between the larger amount of questions posed to black jurors than white jurors.

This is the second time the Supreme Court has considered the Flowers case. In 2016, the justices granted the petition for a writ of certiorari and rejected the decision of the Mississippi State Supreme Court, ordering the lower court to re-examine the case based on the ruling in Foster vs. Chatman.

In Foster, the high court ruled that the defendant met the burden of proof established in Batson vs. Kentucky since there was physical evidence of the prosecutor’s notes about only striking black jurors.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned how Batson would be applied given the history of the number of black jurors stricken from the trial court.

When the plaintiff’s attorney, Jason Davis, agreed that consideration of history is important to this case, Kavanaugh pointed to a prosecutor’s challenge to a juror’s partiality to the “defendant because of their shared race” as discussed in Batson.

In a rare move, Justice Clarence Thomas posed a question to the defense at the end of oral arguments. Thomas asked whether the defense had exercised any peremptory challenges that threw out white jurors in this case. The last time Thomas spoke during oral arguments was in 2016.

Even if the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Flowers, the defendant’s conviction would be reversed but he could still face a seventh trial for the murders in Mississippi.

Published in conjunction with