If you think oil, gas, and coal companies pay to get anti-climate politicians elected to Congress, think again.
I mean, you’re right — but it’s only the beginning.
Once those candidates get elected, they keep on raking in more and more dirty dollars. So while the people paid Joe Manchin $174,000 in 2020 (that’s the annual salary for serving in the U.S. Senate), the fossil fuel industry and its boosters paid his campaign more than $577,000.1
Wonder which he feels accountable to, the people of West Virginia or ExxonMobil?2
Well, at Greenpeace, we’re accountable to YOU. We never sell out. But we do ask our members and supporters to renew for each new year — and right now there are only three days left before our January 31 deadline. We’re counting on you!
Please renew your Greenpeace USA membership for 2022 now in the cleanest, greenest, and most efficient way by making this the year you start a monthly contribution.
Your gift will immediately be put to use exposing the dirty dollars being pumped into our democracy and winning impactful victories in all our critical campaigns! Our growing movement can secure groundbreaking climate action at the highest levels, like the Build Back Better Act, if we show politicians we’re too big to ignore!
RENEW TODAY
Run for Congress as a climate denier, and chances are some fossil fuel companies will contribute to your campaign.
Get ELECTED as a climate denier — or even a climate skeptic — and that’s when the dirty money pipeline REALLY starts flowing. They’ve got you just where they want you!
In 2021 alone, the fossil fuel industry spent over $83M on lobbying.3 They even sent lobbyists to last year’s COP26 climate conference.4
Oil, gas, and coal companies spent heavily during the 2020 election cycle to keep the Senate under the control of notorious climate denier Mitch McConnell (R-KY) with major oil companies like Valero, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips contributing more than $1 million each to the conservative Senate Leadership Fund.5
They continue to keep the pumps open for their hero, Maserati Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has accepted the MOST money from fossil fuel companies so far in the 2022 cycle.6
I feel dirty just writing about this level of corruption, especially since it reveals the gross inequities of our American electoral system and our entire democracy.
But I feel proud to represent Greenpeace, and I’d be grateful to have your support once again this year.
Please renew for 2022 now with a recurring monthly gift to Greenpeace USA. It’s easy, it’s effective, it’s affordable since you choose your monthly gift — and most importantly, it means you’ll speak truth to power each and every month.
Thank you for being a part of the solution — not the problem.
Janet Redman Climate Change Campaign Director, Greenpeace USA
702 H Street, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20001 | 1-800-722-6995
Greenpeace Inc. is a non-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(4) organization. As a result of our effective work for new environmental policies, contributions are not tax-deductible.
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Like other rich nations, the UK is more talk than action on the climate crisis. Something needs to change in Glasgow
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called the recent IPCC report on the climate crisis a “code red” for humanity. “We are at the verge of the abyss,” he said.
You might think those words would sound some kind of alarm in our society. But, like so many times before, this didn’t happen. The denial of the climate and ecological crisis runs so deep that hardly anyone takes real notice any more. Since no one treats the crisis like a crisis, the existential warnings keep on drowning in a steady tide of greenwash and everyday media news flow.
And yet there is still hope, but hope all starts with honesty.
Because science doesn’t lie. The facts are crystal clear, but we just refuse to accept them. We refuse to acknowledge that we now have to choose between saving the living planet or saving our unsustainable way of life. Because we want both. We demand both.
But the undeniable truth is that we have left it too late for that. And no matter how uncomfortable that reality may seem, this is exactly what our leaders have chosen for us with their decades of inaction. Their decades of blah, blah, blah.
Science doesn’t lie. If we are to stay below the targets set in the 2015 Paris agreement – and thereby minimise the risks of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control – we need immediate, drastic, annual emission reductions unlike anything the world has ever seen. And since we don’t have the technological solutions which alone will do anything close to that in the foreseeable future, it means we have to make fundamental changes to our society.
We are currently on track for at least a 2.7C hotter world by the end of the century – and that’s only if countries meet all the pledges that they have made. Currently they are nowhere near doing that. We are “seemingly light years away from reaching our climate action targets”, to once again quote Guterres.
In fact, we are speeding in the wrong direction. 2021 is currently projected to experience the second-biggest emission rise ever recorded, and global emissions are expected to increase by 16% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels. According to the International Energy Agency, only 2% of governments’ “build back better” recovery spending has been invested in clean energy, while at same time the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020 alone. The world’s planned fossil fuel production by the year 2030 accounts for more than twice the amount than would be consistent with the 1.5C target. This is science’s way of telling us that we can no longer reach our targets without a system change. Because doing so would require tearing up contracts and abandoning deals and agreements on an unimaginable scale – something that is simply not possible in the current system.
In short, we are totally failing to even reach targets that are completely insufficient in the first place. And that’s not the worst part. In my own country, Sweden, a news investigation recently concluded that once you include all of Sweden’s actual emissions (territorial, biogenic, consumption of imported goods, burning of biomass, pension fund investments and so on), only one-third of the net total is accounted for in the country’s climate targets. It is reasonable to assume that this is not just a Swedish phenomenon.
Surely the first step to address the climate crisis should be to include all of our actual emissions into the statistics in order to obtain a holistic overview. This would allow us to evaluate the situation and start making the necessary changes. But this approach has not been adopted – or even proposed – by any world leaders. Instead they all turn to communication tactics and PR in order to make it seem as if they are taking action.
One textbook example is the UK – a nation that is currently producing 570m barrels of oil and gas each year. A nation with a further 4.4bn barrels of oil and gas reserves to be extracted from the continental shelf. A nation that is also among the 10 biggest emitters in history. Our emissions stay in the atmosphere for up to a thousand years and we have already emitted about 89% of the CO2 budget that gives us a 66% chance of staying below 1.5C. This is why historical emissions and the aspect of equity not only count – they basically make up 90% of the entire crisis
Between 1990 and 2016, the UK lowered its territorial emissions by 41%. However, once you include the full scale of UK emissions – such as consumption of imported goods, international aviation and shipping – the reduction is more like 15%. And this is excluding burning of biomass, like at Drax’s Selby plant – a heavily subsidised so-called “renewable” power plant that is, according to analysis, the UK’s biggest single emitter of CO2 and the third biggest in all of Europe. And yet the government still considers the UK to be a global climate leader.
The UK is, of course, far from the only country relying on such creative carbon accounting. This is the norm. China, currently by far the world’s biggest emitter of CO2, is planning to build 43 new coal power plants on top of the 1,000 plants already in operation – while also claiming to be an ecological “trailblazer” committed to leaving “a clean and beautiful world to future generations”. Or take the new US administration, claiming to “listen to … science” even though it – among many otherreckless decisions – recently announced plans to open millions of acres for oil and gas that could ultimately result in production of up to 1.1bn barrels of crude oil and 4.4tn cubic feet of fossil gas. Being by far the biggest emitter in history, as well as the world’s number one oil producer, doesn’t seem to embarrass the US while it claims to be a climate leader.
The truth is there are no climate leaders. Not yet. At least not among high-income nations. The level of public awareness and the unprecedented pressure from the media that would be required for any real leadership to appear is still basically nonexistent.
Science doesn’t lie, nor does it tell us what to do. But it does give us a picture of what needs to be done. We are of course free to ignore that picture and remain in denial. Or to go on hiding behind clever accounting, loopholes and incomplete statistics. As if the atmosphere would care about our frameworks. As if we could argue with the laws of physics.
As Jim Skea, a leading IPCC scientist, put it: “Limiting warming to 1.5C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but doing so would require unprecedented changes.” For the Cop26 in Glasgow to be a success it will take many things. But above all it will take honesty, solidarity and courage.
The climate and ecological emergency is, of course, only a symptom of a much larger sustainability crisis. A social crisis. A crisis of inequality that dates back to colonialism and beyond. A crisis based on the idea that some people are worth more than others and, therefore have the right to exploit and steal other people’s land and resources. It’s all interconnected. It’s a sustainability crisis that everyone would benefit from tackling. But it’s naive to think that we could solve this crisis without confronting the roots of it.
Things may look very dark and hopeless, and given the torrent of reports and escalating incidents, the feeling of despair is more than understandable. But we need to remind ourselves that we can still turn this around. It’s entirely possible if we are prepared to change.
Hope is all around us. Because all it would really take is one – one world leader or one high-income nation or one major TV station or leading newspaper who decides to be honest, to truly treat the climate crisis as the crisis that it is. One leader who counts all the numbers – and then takes brave action to reduce emissions at the pace and scale the science demands. Then everything could be set in motion towards action, hope, purpose and meaning.
The clock is ticking. Summits keep happening. Emissions keep growing. Who will that leader be?
CNN got hold of a Trump lawyer's memo that describes a precise six-point plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Anyone who read the novel Seven Days In May, or anyone who’s watched the superb movie, knows the main reason that the military coup driving the plot failed is that it got so tangled in its own complexities—codes involving horse races, secret flights of military transports, hijacking the president to a national security bunker, depending vitally upon a wishy-washy admiral in Europe—that the president and his allies finally were able to gum up the works and save the republic. The hero of the piece, Marine Colonel “Jiggs” Casey, even cites the complexity of the government as a sign that the coup plotters will fail.
What a complicated thing this government is, he thought. There sits the man with the codes that could launch a nuclear war and the Secretary of the Treasury doesn’t even know it.
The point is that it shouldn’t be this easy. CNN got hold of a memo from a lawyer in the employ of the last administration named John Eastman, which Eastman sent to then-Vice President Mike Pence, that described a precise six-point plan by which Pence could overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Eastman’s plan has an evil logic to it that cuts through any institutional safeguards in place through the simple expedient of believing that Pence was both a team player and a coward.
2. When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.
3. At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” – the language of the 12th Amendment -- is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.
Ultimately, the whole plan is summarized by Point No. 6, which is fairly summarized as, “We’re lawless. So fcking what?”
The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.
Is there any doubt that this would have worked, at least temporarily, with the mob also howling outside the Senate chamber? At the very least, it would have thrown the government into utter chaos and prompted a constitutional crisis unlike anything we’d seen since 1861. Is there any doubt that the great mass of people in this country would have seen it as just Both Sides Arguing and gone back to sleep? (I believe there would have been fighting in the streets, which would then be cast as more evidence of our Sadly Divided Nation.) And before we all start blessing the name of Michael Richard Pence, we should remember that he actually agonized over what to do, going so far as to consult with Dan Quayle, who had to remind Pence what Pence’s duty to the republic actually was. We now have the game plan, in writing. It shouldn’t be this easy—and this, I promise you, was just a scrimmage. The real ball game still awaits.
U.S. oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp have failed to meet a core transparency standard set by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a global anti-corruption body on which the companies have board seats, EITI said on Wednesday.
Exxon and Chevron have declined to publicly disclose taxes and other payments they have made to governments in the countries where they operate that are not EITI members, the group said in a spreadsheet detailing member company https://eiti.org/news/eiti-publishes-data-on-adherence-to-supporting-company-expectationsadherence to its standards.
Norway-based EITI, founded two decades ago, has about 55 country members. It implements voluntary global standards to promote open and accountable management of oil, gas and mineral resources to prevent corruption in all resource-rich countries.
Countries that Exxon has operated in that are not EITI members include Qatar, Pakistan and India, according to its company website. Non-EITI countries that Chevron has operated in include China and Angola.
ConocoPhillips, which is not on the EITI board, is another member that does not disclose payments to countries not in EITI, the group said. It has had operations in countries including Libya, Malaysia and China.
Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said Exxon complies with all laws that are in effect today.
Conoco spokesperson Dennis Nuss said the company had no comment. Chevron did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
EITI's release, based on publicly available information, could add pressure to the companies, already under fire from shareholders, activists and lawmakers for greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.
It also highlights a widening governance rift between U.S.-based oil majors and those in Europe, which are widely seen to be doing better on climate and transparency.
European-based companies BP, Shell and Total all publicly disclose their taxes and payments to non-EITI countries, the group said.
EITI published the data for the first time since the standards were introduced in 2018, after pressure from civil society groups including Publish What You Pay-US (PWYP-US) and Oxfam America.
It is not mandatory that the companies, which as EITI members make annual payments to help fund the group's management, follow the group's standards.
But EITI Board Chair Helen Clark said in July, without elaborating, that the board's oversight committee would consider consequences for companies not meeting the group's expectations, possibly in October.
Clark said on Wednesday that publication of the companies not following expectations will help EITI members "engage in dialogue to improve corporate accountability and transparency." She said work remains to clarify the expectations, "but our hope is that it will encourage a 'race to the top' to meet or exceed them."
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is set to consider next April implementing a measure of the 2010 Wall Street reform law known as Dodd Frank that would require disclosures from energy and mining companies on payments to all foreign governments.
PWYP-US said the U.S. companies supporting EITI were getting the reputational benefit of EITI participation without meeting the basic expectations for membership.
EITI's company members and particularly those on its board must ensure that group's credibility is not weakened by companies that are not being transparent, said Carly Oboth, PWYP-US interim director.
"Otherwise, it will be clear that this global transparency initiative has become a victim of corporate capture," Oboth said.
Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon and Dan Scavino among advisers called to testify over president's connection to 6 January events. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon and Dan Scavino among advisers called to testify over president’s connection to 6 January events
The House select committee scrutinizing the Capitol attack on Thursday sent subpoenas to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a cadre of top Trump aides, demanding their testimony to shed light on the former president’s connection to the 6 January riot.
The subpoenas and demands for depositions marked the most aggressive investigative actions the select committee has taken since it made records demands and records preservation requests that formed the groundwork of the inquiry into potential White House involvement.
House select committee investigators targeted four of the closest aides to the former president: deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon, and the former acting defense secretary’s chief of staff Kash Patel as well as Meadows.
“The select committee has reason to believe that you have information relevant to understanding important activities that led to and informed events at the Capitol on January 6,” the chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in the subpoena letters.
“Accordingly, the select committee seeks both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” Thompson said.
The select committee is expected to authorize further subpoenas and schedule closed-door interviews with key witnesses – as well as the inquiry’s second public hearing – in the coming weeks, according to two sources familiar with internal deliberations.
The Trump aides compelled to cooperate with the select committee have some of the most intimate knowledge of what the former president was doing and thinking during the insurrection – and what he knew in advance of plans to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.
Several administration officials, such as Meadows and Scavino, remained by Trump’s side for most of the day on 6 January, while campaign aides such as Bannon strategized how to subvert the results of the 2020 election and reinstall Trump in the Oval Office.
Meadows also accompanied Trump back to the White House after the conclusion of the “Stop the Steal” rally that swiftly descended into the Capitol attack, from where Trump told Republican senator Ben Sasse he was “delighted” at seeing the images of the insurrection.
Patel, who was nearly appointed CIA director in the final weeks of the Trump administration four years after emerging from obscurity as a Hill staffer, may also hold the key to unlocking the full picture of the Capitol attack as one of the former president’s top lieutenants.
The subpoena authorizations came after the Guardian first reported on Tuesday that House select committee investigators were considering issuing the orders to Meadows and other Trump aides as the panel ramps up the pace of its investigation.
There is no guarantee that the subpoena targets will comply. Trump has suggested he will demand that the Biden administration invoke executive privilege over Trump-era executive branch records requested by the select committee and try to block damaging witness testimony.
But it appears unlikely that the White House Office of Legal Counsel would assert the protection in the case of 6 January materials, given it previously allowed Trump DOJ officials to testify to Congress and the protection does not extend to an individual’s private interests.
The campaign was reimbursed for the $6,000 in prohibited "personal use" expenditures after Boebert "self-reported the error," her spokesman said.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., improperly spent thousands of dollars in campaign funds on rent and utilities, her campaign acknowledged this week in a filing with the Federal Election Commission, but it said the money had been paid back.
The FEC had asked Boebert's campaign treasurer in a letter last month for more information about $6,000 in payments that had been listed in her quarterly filing as a "personal expense of Lauren Boebert billed to campaign account in error." The filing said the money had already been paid back.
The letter warned that "if it is determined that the disbursement(s) constitutes the personal use of campaign funds, the Commission may consider taking further legal action. However, prompt action to obtain reimbursement of the funds in question will be taken into consideration."
In a filing this week, the campaign said the money had been sent to a person named John Pacheco at the same address as Boebert's restaurant, Shooters Grill. The eatery in the town of Rifle is best known for its armed waitresses.
Boebert communications director Ben Stout said the "funds were reimbursed months ago when Rep. Boebert self-reported the error."
The FEC prohibits using campaign funds for personal expenses. It defines personal use "as any use of funds in a campaign account of a candidate (or former candidate) to fulfill a commitment, obligation or expense of any person that would exist irrespective of the candidate's campaign or responsibilities as a federal officeholder."
Penalty can include letters reminding candidates of their obligations to financial penalties.
Asked about the new filing, FEC spokesman Myles Martin said, "We cannot comment on specific candidates or committees."
Murdoch’s News Corp has spent the past 15 years mitigating its own climate risk while giving media outlets like Fox News carte blanche to deny climate change altogether.
When Kevin Rudd was prime minister of Australia, he lived in fear of Rupert Murdoch. The Labour Party leader came to power in 2007 promising to address the climate emergency, but attacks from Murdoch-owned outlets were relentless to the point where Rudd said he’d “wake up every morning and wonder how they would seek to crucify us that day, with rusty nails.”
Papers such as the Australian, the country’s equivalent of the New York Times, ran high-profile pieces attacking Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, an attempt to force companies to pay for the climate-warming carbon they release into the atmosphere, including a front-page story about an industry report claiming the policy would cost 23,000 resource sector jobs. And it worked: Australian Parliament eventually voted against Rudd’s carbon-reduction effort, his public opinion rating tanked, his own Labour Party led a coup against him, and he resigned in 2010.
“If there was no Murdoch media here, or if, say, they only owned half the media instead of two-thirds of the media,” Rudd told VICE News, “we would have a carbon price today.”
What few people knew during all this is that the parent company of these Australian news outlets, Murdoch’s News Corporation, actually thought carbon pricing was a good idea. News Corp has meticulously documented its own carbon footprint since 2006 and sought to “take a leadership role on the issue of climate change” by reducing it, according to hundreds of pages of publicly available documents reviewed by VICE News.
Even as Murdoch-owned outlets tore down Rudd in 2010, News Corp was advocating “market-based mechanisms to support carbon reductions” in the U.S. and other places. This is according to documents submitted to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a nonprofit group that has for two decades catalogued and rated environmental reporting from more than 300 companies including Apple, Coca-Cola, and Ford Motors.
No one forced News Corp to make disclosures to the CDP, which the group publishes in a database on its website. And far from altruism, News Corp’s disclosures are cast as corporate self-interest. In 2010, for example, a filing explained that doing so would give the company “valuable expertise when responding to mandated reporting requirements” under a potential carbon pricing system, should any country implement one.
News Corp also modeled the potential financial damage it faced due to extreme weather, wildfires, and other physical dangers intensified by climate change. “The company believes it is in a better position than others to mitigate those risks,” the documents read.
News Corp has submitted yearly reports on its environmental progress to CDP since 2006, often receiving “A” grades for its efforts from the organization. Ateli Iyalla, North American managing director of the CDP, said News Corp’s disclosures place it among the world’s more responsible media corporations. “They have a strong understanding of climate issues and climate risk,” he told VICE News.
VICE News reviewed more than a decade’s worth of those submissions, and the documents show a company that’s taking steps to protect its operations and thousands of employees from a climate emergency it knows is getting worse, while giving a massive media platform to people who say the emergency isn’t real.
The documents show that News Corp privately acknowledged climate change is making hurricanes worse, even as a Wall Street Journal Europe editorial writer claimed in 2012 that “‘climate change’ shouldn’t be blamed for Hurricane Sandy.” The company in 2019 briefed employees on the dangers they could face from Australia’s “climate-related” bushfires as the Australianran an editorial saying, “Experts keep telling us there is no direct link between climate change and bushfires; we know many fires are lit by arsonists.”
Murdoch’s company in its 2020 disclosure cited severe droughts in California that lead to wildfires as a potential example of the “physical aspects of climate change.” But his top-rated Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, attacked Democrats for “insisting without evidence that climate change is causing California wildfires.”
In its 2020 disclosure to CDP, News Corp said it carefully evaluates the risk of sea-level rise and flooding when deciding to acquire new facilities. That disclosure states that “members of the board are periodically updated” about the company’s sustainability initiatives and the risks it faces from climate disasters. The board of directors includes Murdoch himself. It also includes his eldest son, Lachlan, who is co-chairman of News Corp as well as CEO of Fox Corporation, the current corporate owner of Fox News. Meanwhile, one of Fox News’ rising stars, Greg Gutfeld, said this May the climate crisis “does not exist.”
VICE News presented a detailed list of questions asking about these events to News Corp, Fox News, Dow Jones (which publishes the Wall Street Journal), Fox Corporation, and the Australian, but none of these outlets and companies responded.
Taking serious measures to reduce corporate emissions while spreading climate denial might seem like a huge contradiction. But there may be a simple, coherent strategy at work. Murdoch is saving tens of millions of dollars due to the green initiatives, and at the same time earning record profits by feeding his global audience rage-inducing content attacking “out-of-control” liberals and downplaying the crisis.
“If there’s a buck to be made,” Rudd said of Murdoch, “he’ll make a buck.”
Rupert Murdoch, now 90, seemed to abruptly decide in 2006 that the climate emergency was real. “Until recently, I was somewhat wary of the warming debate,” he said that year during a speech in Tokyo outlining political and economic challenges facing Asia and the world in the decades to come. But he had become convinced that “the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt.” Murdoch had also made a financial calculation. “Being environmentally sound is not sentimentality,” he said. “It is a sound business strategy.”
The following year, Murdoch held an event in midtown Manhattan that was webcast to all News Corp employees. The company would be launching a Global Energy Initiative, he said, whereby it would use renewable energy and energy efficiency to become carbon-neutral by 2010. Murdoch wanted to shrink his audience’s emissions, too.
“We can set an example, and we can reach our audiences. Our audience’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours. That’s the carbon footprint we want to conquer,” he said. News Corp’s vast array of newspapers, TV stations, and movie studios could make the case for aggressive environmental change. “The challenge is to revolutionize the message. For too long, the threats of climate change have been presented as doom and gloom—because the consequences are so serious,” Murdoch explained.
He wanted to make the issue “dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.”
Some of News Corp’s papers seemed eager to follow their boss’s lead. “Go green with the Sun,” declared a weeklong series in 2006 on eco-friendly living run by the London-based media outlet, which had previously run stories skeptical of climate change. Australia’s Daily Telegraph that same year published multiple editorials criticizing the government for not taking climate change seriously enough. The New York Post during this period ran articles promoting New York’s Go Green Expo.
This was an era when awareness of climate change was reaching unprecedented highs, and even prominent Republicans like Sen. John McCain of Arizona were calling for a price on carbon. But there may have been a personal reason for Murdoch’s newfound enthusiasm. “The primary mover behind it was James—Murdoch’s son,” said David Folkenflik, NPR media correspondent and author of Murdoch’s World, echoing an argument that other observers of the family have made. James at the time was chief executive of British Sky Broadcasting. “I don’t think it happens without him,” Folkenflik said.
(James Murdoch has an ownership stake in VICE Media Group through his holding company, Lupa Systems.) “James is traveling and not participating in interviews right now,” spokesperson Juleanna Glover wrote to VICE News.
During this period, Lachlan Murdoch was distancing himself from the company due to personal feuds with company executives in which Rupert sided against him. That gave James, a political moderate whose wife, Kathryn, was becoming increasingly involved in climate issues, more influence over his father, Folkenflik said. In 2006, James helped arrange to have Al Gore present his film An Inconvenient Truth at a five-day gathering of News Corp executives and employees entitled “Imagining the Future” at the Pebble Beach resort in California.
But even at that early stage, tensions were visible. After the screening, Andrew Bolt, then a columnist for News Corp’s Herald Sun paper in Australia who frequently questions the science of climate change, got up to speak, according to an account in the Bulletin:
“Bolt opened his comments by congratulating Gore on his performance, then began to attack claims made by Gore in his film. Soon, according to one onlooker, the pair were involved in ‘a full-on barney.’ Gore ended up shouting at Bolt. ‘It was brilliant,’ says one onlooker. ‘Embarrassing,’ recalls another.”
In an email to VICE News, Bolt said, “I most certainly did not congratulate him on feeding the audience fake news.” He went on, “Nor was there a ‘full-on barney.’ I calmly and politely asked him to explain three misrepresentations in his presentation, and he then went red and started shouting. This is more properly described as a meltdown.”
Editors at the Australian were apparently not in agreement with Murdoch’s climate ambitions either. Asa Wahlquist, a former environmental reporter at the paper, said during an academic conference in 2010 that she had frequent fights with editors over her climate change coverage, calling it “torture” and “unbearable.” The paper’s then-editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell said at that time that “any reading of the (Australian’s) editorials on climate change would make it clear that for several years the paper has accepted man-made climate change as fact.”
In the U.S., however, Murdoch was confident he could get Fox News anchors such as Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly interested in doing more climate coverage. “Probably Sean’s first reaction will be that this is some liberal cause or something, you know? But he’s a very reasonable, very intelligent man,” Murdoch said in 2007 in a rare sit-down interview with the environmental media outlet Grist. “He’ll see, he’ll understand it. As will Bill—he just likes to get debate going between people. And that has its benefits—someone says, ‘No there isn’t,’ someone says, ‘Yes there is,’ and they have it out for 10 minutes and it’s entertaining and creates more consciousness.”
Around this time, as Murdoch’s World recounts, Fox Studios created a public service announcement featuring the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, as well as Kiefer Sutherland, star of the studio’s hit show 24. But while Sutherland proclaimed that “global warming is a crime for which we are all guilty,” Ailes’ contribution was much more muted. “I was very clear,” he says in the video, “that energy was gonna be one of the things that was going to determine leadership for countries in the future.”
“Ailes’ line is fascinating,” Folkenflik said. “He came up with something that sounded supportive but committed him to nothing. The real question is, what was Murdoch committing himself to?”
By some measures, News Corp was doing a lot. “The company has made 24 the first major television production to be carbon-neutral, helped to pioneer the use of lighter-weight eco-friendly DVD cases in the home entertainment industry, launched a global tree planting campaign tied to the DVD release of the film Avatar, built the world’s largest and most energy-efficient print plant in the U.K., commissioned a study on the most effective way to communicate to the public on climate change policy, and committed to build the largest commercial solar PV installation at a single site in the U.S.,” reads its 2010 filing to CDP.
“These are just a few examples of ways in which the company is taking action on the issue of climate change,” it explained, “and avoiding the risks faced by those companies that are slow to do the same.”
But viewers of Fox News were receiving a much different message. President Barack Obama’s election in 2008 caused a backlash among grassroots conservatives, culminating in the far-right Tea Party movement, many of whose adherents were hardcore climate change deniers. One of the movement’s targets was a major piece of U.S. carbon-pricing legislation proposed by Democrats called cap and trade. “Stopping cap and trade is a key priority for the Tea Party activists,” reads a 2010 Fox News opinion piece, referring to legislation somewhat similar to what Prime Minister Rudd had proposed in Australia.
Several months later, with Republicans and some conservative Democrats declining to support the policy, cap and trade died in the Senate.
Fox News hosts like Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Neil Cavuto cheered the Tea Party movement on, in some cases broadcasting live from Tea Party events and encouraging viewers to join the protests. This was much different than the approach to coverage taken by outlets like CNN and the New York Times. “The mainstream media hates the Tea Party,” claimed Fox News VP of News Bill Sammon in 2010.
Around that time, Sammon sent an email to Fox News staffers telling them to stress scientific uncertainty in the network’s coverage of climate change. “Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data,” Sammon wrote in the email, which was later leaked, “we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”
As Fox News became more successful at denying climate change, Murdoch’s views also appeared to shift—at least in public. “Climate change has been going on as long as the planet is here, and there will always be a little bit of it. At the moment, the North Pole is melting, but the South Pole is getting bigger,” he said in a 2014 interview with Sky News. The following year, Murdoch tweeted an aerial photo of Arctic ice. “Just flying over N Atlantic 300 miles of ice,” he wrote. “Global warming!”
Internally News Corp continued to take climate change seriously. By 2011 it had achieved its goal of becoming carbon-neutral across its global operations. To celebrate the occasion, James Murdoch gave a speech that was broadcast to the company’s employees. “Almost four years ago, our chairman, my father, asked us to ‘imagine the future’ for News Corp,” he said. “The goal was not superficial change, but to embed the principles of efficiency and sustainability in the core of our business.”
James Murdoch claimed that the company’s investments in green technologies—including a 4.1-megawatt solar power system in New Jersey—resulted in $180 of savings for every ton of carbon reduced. A project to more efficiently integrate News Corp’s data centers would reduce costs by $20 million per year, he said. And even smaller initiatives, such as putting heat-reflective coatings on the roofs of some facilities, could save $1.5 million annually.
“Really, the results speak for themselves,” he said. “Our company continues to grow—yet, for the first time, our absolute carbon footprint is shrinking. Imagine a future in which every company is on this same path.”
A year and a half after James’ 2011 speech, Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York City, killing 44 people, displacing thousands, and causing more than $19 billion in damage. The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece by two climate experts making the link to climate change. But its other opinion coverage of the intense and unprecedented storm was dismissive of the connection. “The idea that you can take one weather event, any given weather event, and attribute this cause to it, is from the standpoint of the research, it’s sort of a nonsense question,” Wall Street Journal Europe editorial writer Anne Jolis stated in 2012.
“There are no signs that human-caused climate change has increased the toll of recent disasters, as even the most recent extreme-event report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds,” read a separate 2012 opinion piece in the paper by University of Colorado at Boulder professor Roger Pielke Jr.
But that’s not how News Corp saw it. “In 2012, News Corporation was affected by Superstorm Sandy through filming interruptions, plant shutdowns, and box office closings in the Northeast U.S.,” its 2013 disclosure to CDP reads. “The storm indicated that News Corporation can be negatively impacted by climate-related weather impacts.”
The Wall Street Journal’s opinion coverage of Sandy wasn’t an isolated occurrence. When researchers with the advocacy organization Climate Nexus later analyzed 20 years of opinion pieces in the paper about climate change, they found a “consistent pattern that overwhelmingly ignores the science, champions doubt and denial of both the science and effectiveness of action, and leaves readers misinformed about the consensus of science and of the risks of the threat.”
There was a similar disconnect during the horrific Australian bushfires in early 2020, which razed an area larger than all of South Korea, resulted in at least 34 deaths, and killed millions of wild animals. It was obvious to scientists the fires wouldn’t have become so extreme without dry conditions brought on by global temperature rise, yet Murdoch-owned papers instead pushed a narrative that environmentalists and arsonists were to blame.
“Bushfires: Firebugs fuelling crisis as national arson arrest toll hits 183,” read a headline in the Australian at the height of the fires. After receiving complaints, the Australian Press Council later investigated the reporting that went into the story, and while it found that the article was not misleading, it “accepts that the publication’s initial representation of the data may have led readers to consider that an unusually high number of ‘arsonists’ had been arrested since the beginning of the 2019-20 fire season.” In reality, most of the major fires were sparked by lightning.
“Our coverage has recognized Australia is having a conversation about climate change and how to respond to it,” the company said in a 2020 email to the New York Times. “The role of arsonists and policies that may have contributed to the spread of fire are, however, legitimate stories to report in the public interest.”
The story on arsonists was the top-read item on the Australian’s website that day and was given an international platform by people like Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted to his more than 6 million followers: “Truly disgusting that people would do this! God Bless Australia.”
As with Hurricane Sandy, the Australian’s parent company, News Corp, knew full well there was a strong link between the disaster and climate change. “Climate-related events such as floods, cyclones (for example, those that regularly occur in Northern Queensland), and bushfires also have an impact on News Corp Australia's ability to operate efficiently,” reads its CDP filing for 2020. “The 2019-2020 Australian wildfires added additional strain on our logistics and on our effectiveness to deliver our products to our customers.”
News Corp explained in that same document that for years it has taken measures to protect its own employees from climate-related dangers. “Prior to each bushfire and cyclone season, the Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) team works with the business units in properties that may be exposed to these weather conditions to ensure safety for staff such as editors, photographers, and journalists while they are out in the field,” it reads. “The WHS team brief staff on risks and ensure protocols are in place to secure their safety.”
News Corp also fretted about the climate risks faced by employees in the U.S. “Climate projection models make it difficult to know exactly which businesses or locations are most prone to the physical aspects of climate change,” it wrote in its 2020 CDP filing. “However, it is clear from past severe weather events that some of News Corp’s businesses are susceptible to such extreme events. Extended and severe droughts in California and Colorado that lead to an increased frequency and intensity of wildfires are a concern, and could impact employees, facilities, and productions in the region.”
You wouldn’t know about the connection between climate change and disasters from watching Fox News’ coverage of the record-smashing 2020 wildfire season on the U.S. West Coast.
“Massive wildfires unprecedented in their scope continue to sweep across huge portions of the West tonight,” Tucker Carlson said in a September 2020 broadcast. “How did climate change do that? They didn't tell us, but they just kept saying it. In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: You can't see it, but rest assured it's everywhere and it's deadly.”
The top executive at Fox knew that there was in fact a connection between climate change and extreme weather. As co-chairman of News Corp and member of its board of directors, Lachlan Murdoch was “periodically updated” about the company’s climate and sustainability reporting to the CDP, as News Corp’s 2020 disclosure states. And as CEO of Fox News’ parent company, Fox Corporation, he wrote in the 2020 Corporate Social Responsibility report: “We believe our main climate risk is related to business continuity in the event of more extreme weather events.”
In the summer of 2020, James Murdoch decided to step back for good from the Murdoch media empire. “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions,” he said at the time. Earlier that year, James and Kathryn had released a statement criticizing News Corp and Fox’s “ongoing denial” of climate change “given obvious evidence to the contrary.”
But James Murdoch’s climate change legacy lives on at News Corp. His father said in 2019 during a shareholders meeting in New York that “there are no climate deniers around, I can assure you.”
The company’s 2020 disclosure to CDP explains that “our News Corp global real estate team reviews climate change risks when deciding where to purchase or lease new facilities around the world. These risks include hurricane/storm potential, water-stressed areas, and flooding risks.”
The company is attempting to reduce its emissions in line with meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold that scientists say is our best shot at keeping the emergency under control. Meeting previous climate goals has saved the company at least $18 million, Murdoch said during the 2019 New York meeting.
These days, even News Corp’s stridently climate-change–denying Australian media outlets may be changing their tune. According to the New York Times, several Murdoch-owned papers as well as the 24-hour Sky News channel will next month publish “features and editorials” that promote net-zero emissions by 2050. The new editorial position “could be a breakthrough that provides political cover for Australia’s conservative government to end its refusal to set ambitious emission targets,” the Times said.
Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, is skeptical, tweeting that the apparent rebrand is “Murdoch’s attempt to ‘greenwash’ themselves in the lead-up to the Glasgow climate conference. It’s all politics.”
It’s clear that Murdoch’s empire isn’t earning huge profits by making earnest statements about climate change to its viewers. In Fox Corp’s third quarter financial update for 2021, Lachlan Murdoch told investors, “Fox News channel finished this last quarter as the most-watched cable network in primetime and finished March as the most-watched cable news network overall.”
Lachlan Murdoch attributed some of this success to the launch of Gutfeld!, a new late-night program hosted by longtime Fox host and panelist Greg Gutfeld, which Lachlan said is currently drawing an audience larger than NBC’s The Tonight Show.
In May, Gutfeld did a segment attacking President Biden’s climate policies. “By the way, if you want to make electric cars the choice for Americans, you don’t try to hit them with guilt and virtue-signaling and tying it to a climate crisis that does not exist,” he said.
Gutfeld assured his viewers that extreme weather in their communities has nothing to do with global temperature rise. “Because our own data says that is not actually happening,” he said. “That is not due to the climate crisis.”
Rebbeccah Atieno stands with one of the boats owned by the No Sex for Fish women. Once a proud boat owner herself, she says she lost her home when Lake Victoria swept through the village; her boat no longer functions. (photo: Julia Gunther/NPR)
In November 2019, we profiled a group with a bold name stating its aim: No Sex for Fish. Women in Nduru Beach, a Kenyan community on the shores of Lake Victoria, wanted to change the dynamics in the local fish business. Men did the fishing and often demanded sex with female fishmongers before giving them a supply of fish to sell at nearby markets. The practice has led to high rates of HIV. The women hated the practice but selling fish was their livelihood. Then they had a revolutionary idea: What if they owned their own boats and hired men to fish for them? In 2010, with support from international donors and charities, they got their boats. Eventually 30 women in Nduru Beach and neighboring communities became boat owners. We spoke to members and supporters of the collective to see how they're now faring.
No Sex for Fish is facing a precarious future.
At its peak, the women in this collective, living in Nduru Beach and neighboring communities, had obtained some 30 boats with their initial grant from PEPFAR, the U.S. HIV program, and subsequent funding from the charity World Connect, which supports small-scale local programs.
But when we visited in 2019, a number of the wooden boats had been damaged by time and use. The women were preparing a new grant application. With a new boat costing $1,000 or more, they simply couldn't afford replacements without help.
Then came two unforeseen blows that struck simultaneously in early 2020: catastrophic flooding and the global pandemic.
After heavy rainfall, rising waters swamped Nduru Beach, which sits on low-lying ground. Homes were submerged. The 1,000 or so residents had to be evacuated. Many of them had no choice but to live in a shelter set up in a local school. All of them, including the No Sex for Fish boat owners, lost their ability to earn a living in the midst of an economic downturn triggered by the pandemic.
Rebbeccah Atieno, a proud boat owner, says she lost her home and all her property when waters from Lake Victoria swept through the village, including her boat and with it her ability to support her family of six children. The widowed 37-year-old moved to a home on higher ground where she paid about $30 a month in rent before finding a place to stay for free. A kindhearted acquaintance who'd left the area to live in Nairobi invited Atieno to stay in her house in Amboo, a village a few miles from Nduru Beach, for the time being.
At one point, Atieno contracted malaria. "There was a time I was sick and down," she says. "I thought I would die. My worry was my children since there was no food for them to eat."
Atieno has recovered and says she now makes a living by helping people cultivate their rice farms in the morning, then selling groceries at her kiosk in a local market later in the day.
She struggles to get by.
"I do not know where I will get money to pay for school fees next term since my business is not giving me much," she says. Two of her children are in high school and four in elementary school.
Other members of the No Sex For Fish group face similar challenges.
Lorine Abuto, a mother of seven, is the only member whose boat survived the floods in good enough condition to take out into Lake Victoria. She hires men to fish for her but the aftermath of the floods, including tangles of weeds near the shore, has made it more difficult to reach schools of fish, and she sometimes has to buy fish from other sources. One morning in early September, she skillfully removed the scales of a Nile perch from a recent catch and sliced it in two, then put it on a mat to dry in the sun. She sells dried fish – and also fried fish – at a market near her new home a few miles from Nduru Beach.
A young child squealed with delight as a Hamerkop bird danced next to the mat where some fish were drying. Abuto scared the bird away.
"Nature separated some of us but our goal is still intact," says Abuto, referring to the women of No Sex for Fish. With Nduru Beach still uninhabitable, they have scattered to different parts of the region. The regular group meetings to discuss fishing issues and finances no longer take place.
"It is not easy for us because the fish stocks have dwindled and it is hard to get fish to sell, but we are coping with the situation," she says. The pandemic has made matters worse. Many Kenyans lost jobs or saw their income decrease, so people are reluctant to splurge on fish, she says. Some days, she says, she earns less than $3 – barely enough to feed her family.
Lorine Abuto hopes she will one day be able to live in Nduru Beach again. That's the dream of the displaced residents, says Tim Kibet, a retired Peace Corps employee from Kenya and now a part-time field agent with World Connect. Kibet is monitoring Nduru Beach and the neighboring villages that were part of the collective.
A return any time soon seems unlikely. In a visit last year, he says, "those homes were all submerged in water. Homes with mud walls started falling apart, some even came down. Only ones with brick could be standing by now."
And even though the waters have receded, he says, the Nduru Beach area is still wet and muddy.
Table banking was a life preserver
During this time of dislocation, the past success of No Sex for Fish has helped the members get by.
In their meetings, they had contributed some of their earnings to a fund to use for boat repairs, new nets and other fishing-related expenses.
When the floods hit, the group had managed to save some $6,000. The money served as an emergency fund during the months after they were evacuated and unable to earn any money from the fishing business.
"That they had the money was an incredible triumph for them," says Patrick Higdon, director of programs for World Connect. "And they spent it down to zero because of flooding and displacement."
In addition, there another $5,500 to draw upon from what's known as a "table banking" group – a community-based way to save money for the proverbial rainy day.
Prior to the crises of 2020, the members, many of them part of the No Sex for Fish collective, met regularly. Our NPR team sat in on a session.
The meeting took place in the living room of Justine Adhiambo Obura's home. She's the chairwoman of the No Sex For Fish group. The thick mud walls were decorated with lace hangings, family photos and a framed certificate declaring her the "Inspirational Woman of the Year 2014" in Kisumu County.
The 18 women and 1 man sat in a circle, tossing coins into a lockbox that landed with a clink. The box had three locks whose keys are kept "far away" in separate locations, said Obura.
Those in need could ask for a loan that they'd promise to repay at the next session. They might need cash to cover household expenses at a tough time — or pay for carfare to the clinic for a checkup. Several of the group members are HIV positive – one of the horrible legacies of the practice of trading sex for fish.
There was a tense moment when a man made a loan request and was told his wife had, unbeknownst to him, taken out a loan in his name and not yet paid it back.
But overall, there was a spirit of warm generosity. Some of the money contributed goes into a special goat fund. When there's enough money in the pot, a lucky member would be gifted with a kid that can one day provide milk or be used for breeding.
But those goats – and indeed much of the livestock owned by villagers – perished in the floods. And the table banking fund has been dispersed to cover the expenses involved in evacuating residents in the wake of the flooding. It's now down to about 10,000 Kenyan shillings — $90.
New grants, new dreams — from rice to tomatoes
In April and July of this year, World Connect disbursed two $3,000 replenishment grants to help the No Sex For Fish women in Nduru Beach start new businesses in the wake of the loss of their boats. Some are selling firewood and charcoal. Some are running food kiosks. At year's end, women who got funding from the grant will report on their efforts.
Despite the gloom in the wake of the floods, Obura is optimistic that the group and its members will come up with new ways to generate income in this interim period: "We are of the opinion of doing fish cage and rice farming in the future."
In Kusa Beach, another lakeside village with an affiliated chapter of No Sex For Fish, some of the members have already launched an ambitious new project.
That village is located on higher ground than Nduru Beach so the homes are intact. But their flood-damaged boats are out of commission.
So 15 women from Kusa Beach decided to put their hope in tomatoes — and received a grant of $3,700 from World Connect to get started.
This summer they planted five plots, hoping for a harvest to sell at market and also to process into tomato paste and powder. Four plots are doing well so far. The fifth has issues with salinity in the soil and water pumps.
"In two to three months the women will be able to evaluate their initial crop," says Kibet, the World Connect field agent from Kenya, who himself does some farming. World Connect's hope is that the tomato business will earn enough to pay for a second round.
They're busy spraying and weeding, he reports: "They look so determined. We'll see how it goes their first time."
You may be wondering – why tomatoes? Kibet wondered, too.
The answer, he says, has to do with local lore. Hippos live in Lake Victoria and sometimes come ashore to graze. The rising waters have made it easier for them to do so. And they can be very aggressive, not only consuming crops but sometimes even killing people.
The women told him: "Hippos don't like to eat tomatoes."
Kibet, who himself does some farming, is not entirely convinced: "I've still yet to see that!" But the women told him they didn't want anything to interfere with their agricultural project, and they were certain that tomatoes would not be enticing to any marauding hippos.
The 2020 Castle Fire burned the Alder Creek sequoia grove with extreme intensity, killing many of the 1,000-year-old trees there. Without any green foliage, the trees can't survive or resprout. (photo: Lauren Sommer/NPR)
On a hot afternoon in California's Sequoia National Park, Alexis Bernal squints up at the top of a 200-foot-tall tree.
"That is what we would call a real giant sequoia monarch," she says. "It's massive."
At 40 feet in diameter, the tree easily meets the definition of a monarch, the name given to the largest sequoias. It's likely more than 1,500 years old.
Still, that's as old as this tree will get. The trunk is pitch black, the char reaching almost all the way to the top. Not a single green branch is visible.
"It's 100% dead," Bernal says. "There's no living foliage on it all."
The scorched carcasses of eight other giants surround this one in the Alder Creek grove. A fire science research assistant at UC Berkeley, Bernal is here with a team cataloguing the destruction.
It's not easy to kill a giant sequoia. They can live more than 3,000 years and withstand repeated wildfires and droughts over the centuries.
Now, with humans changing both the climate and the landscape surrounding the trees, these giants face dangers they might not survive.
Last year, the Castle Fire burned through the Sierra Nevada, fueled by hot, dry conditions and overgrown forests. Based on early estimates, as many as 10,600 large sequoias were killed — up to 14% of the entire population.
"This is unprecedented to see so many of these large old-growth trees dead, and I think it's a travesty," says Scott Stephens, fire scientist at UC Berkeley, as he surveys the damage. "This is pure disaster."
With extreme fires increasing on a hotter planet, scientists are urgently trying to save the sequoias that remain. Researchers from federal agencies and universities are teaming up to find the sequoia groves at highest risk. The hope is to make them more fire-resistant by reducing the dense, overgrown vegetation around them, before the next wildfire hits.
But one year later, the sequoia groves are again under threat. At the time of publication, wildfires burning in Sequoia National Park are within a mile of a grove with thousands of sequoias. Firefighters are battling to contain the blazes.
"It's hard to see these trees that have lived hundreds to potentially thousands of years just die," Bernal says, "because it's just not a normal thing for them."
Sequoias need fire, but fires are changing
Giant sequoias only grow in isolated pockets, tucked in the mountains of California. Losing even a few groves spells significant loss to the entire population.
Sequoias are one of the most fire-adapted trees on the planet. With tough, foot-thick bark, they're insulated from the heat. They tower above the rest of the forest and the bottom of the tree is bare, without low branches that might be ignited by trees burning around it.
Old-growth sequoias weathered the low-intensity wildfires that were once the norm in the Sierra Nevada. Fires regularly spread along the forest floor, either ignited by lightning or set by Native American tribes who used burns to shape the landscape and cultivate food and materials.
With the arrival of white settlers, fire began to disappear from these forests. Tribes were forcibly removed from lands they once maintained, and federal firefighting agencies mounted a campaign of fire suppression, extinguishing blazes as quickly as possible.
That meant forests grew denser over the last century. Now, the built-up vegetation has become a tinder box, fueling hotter, more extreme fires, like the Castle Fire, that kill vast swaths of trees.
"These trees have been here 1,500 years, so how many fires have they withstood: 80?" Stephens says. "And then one fire comes in 2020 and suddenly they're gone."
The Castle Fire's fierce heat was also fueled by the changing climate. In 2012, when a drought hit California, hotter temperatures amplified the toll it took on Sierra Nevada forests. While the largest sequoias could handle it, other kinds of conifers around them succumbed. Millions of trees were killed.
"The extra warmth that came with the drought pushed it into a whole new terrain," says Nate Stephenson, an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "That's what really helped kill a lot of trees, and they became fuel for fires."
During his four decades of studying sequoias, Stephenson had rarely seen an old-growth sequoia die. When the first images emerged after the Castle Fire hit, he wasn't prepared.
"That's when I couldn't help it," he says. "I don't cry often, but I cried when I saw the photos. Because I love these trees."
Few seedlings sprout from the ash
The soil is still powdery black in the Alder Creek sequoia grove a year later. The UC Berkeley team is scanning it for signs of hope: a spot of green.
"Two tiny sequoias here growing from the regeneration from the fire," Stephens says, finding 2-inch-tall seedlings, impossibly tiny compared to what they could become.
The lifecycle of a sequoia hinges on wildfire, which is the trigger for releasing its seeds. The blast of heat opens the cones, sending a shower of seeds to the forest floor, which get established quickly on the newly cleared ground.
In some groves, researchers are finding hundreds of seedlings where the Castle Fire burned with low intensity, the kind of fire sequoias are accustomed to.
But in the Alder Creek grove, where the fire burned with ferocious heat, the team only finds a dozen seedlings the entire afternoon. Other groves look similarly bare.
Even under normal conditions, around 98% of sequoia seedlings die in their first year. This year could be even tougher with extreme drought gripping the landscape.
"I am very concerned that some areas will not have sequoias," says Christy Brigham, head of resource management and science for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. "All the adults are killed and there will not be enough seedlings to repopulate."
That's leading land managers to consider planting new sequoias, so the scorched groves don't disappear entirely. But in a changing climate, it's not a simple question. As temperatures rise, young trees planted today face surviving in a vastly different future. The most suitable habitat for sequoias could move somewhere else.
"That is one of the gifts of giant sequoias — is that they force us to think in deep time," says Brigham. "It forces us to confront the challenge of climate change."
Rush to save remaining sequoias
Federal land managers say that given the millennia-length timeframe, planting new sequoias is a back-up plan at this point. The more pressing need is saving the trees that are left.
A coalition of the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, universities, tribes and nonprofits is banding together to identify the groves most at risk. This summer, the Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition has been rapidly assessing conditions on the ground.
"We just saw what one wildfire did," Brigham says. "Can we find the places, do the plans, and get the funding and put the people on the ground fast enough to prevent loss like this in the future?"
Brigham estimates around 40% of the sequoia groves on national park land alone are at risk of severe wildfires, because the surrounding forests haven't burned in decades. Other groves at risk are found on Forest Service or private land.
Sequoia National Park has used controlled burns, also known as prescribed fire, since the 1960s to prevent forests from becoming overgrown. But Brigham says burning continues to be a challenge.
In the spring, when cooler conditions are better for controlled burning, projects are limited because of the threatened pacific fisher. The slender, mink-like animal was listed as endangered in 2020, and its habitat is protected during the spring denning season.
But burning in the summer can be tough because of air quality concerns, extremely dry vegetation or lack of personnel, since they're generally fighting wildfires.
"There are all these constraints on prescribed fire that we can't control," Brigham says. "As it gets hotter and drier, that window is smaller and smaller."
Brigham says she's hopeful that land managers can move quickly over the next year to prioritize the sequoia groves that need help the most. With extreme fires increasingly common, time is running short.
"It is not too late," says Brigham. "We can do better. People love these trees. So I just hope we can take that love and translate it into immediate action to protect the groves and long term action to limit climate change and its impacts."
