Air Date: May 30, 2025

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CA Clean Air Tool Revoked


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California’s car culture, trucking industry, and weather contribute to chronically bad air that it’s been gradually improving with its own laws and regulations and the blessing of the US Environmental Protection Agency. But now under President Trump, the EPA and Republican Congress are taking away California’s ability to clean up its air. Ann Carlson is a Professor of Environmental Law at UCLA and joins Host Jenni Doering to discuss the legal questions and public health impact. (14:35)

Cuts to Clean Energy Tax Credits


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The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that passed through the House of Representatives on party lines guts multiple provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act, terminating or reducing tax credits for electric vehicles, clean hydrogen and advanced manufacturing. Dan Gearino, a clean energy reporter with Inside Climate News, talks with Host Paloma Beltran about why over a dozen House Republicans who had voiced support for clean energy tax credits ultimately voted to cut them, and what could happen as the legislation moves to the Senate. (12:00)

After the Storm


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Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence Mark Seth Lender is keenly aware of the risks of living right on the Connecticut coast as sea levels rise and hurricanes strengthen. But being that close to Nature, in all her ferociousness, sure does inspire. (02:42)

Turbulence and Climate Change


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Emerging research predicts that with rising global temperatures, climate change may increase clear-air turbulence by as much as four times along some of the most heavily traveled routes. Clear air turbulence as the name suggests is the kind of turbulence you can’t see on most radar. It can toss around large airplanes, damage aircraft and injure passengers and crew. Reporter Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News joins Host Jenni Doering to explain how these changes tie into the jet stream. (07:53)

Reforesting a Gravel Mine


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At a former gravel mine in northwestern Pennsylvania, nonprofits are working to plant 70,000 trees as part of a larger project to reforest thousands of acres of degraded mine land in the region. The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple reports on how they’re experimenting with fungi and biochar to help restore degraded soil and give the saplings a head start. (06:27)

Listening on Earth: California Coast and Crows


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This week, sounds sent in by Living on Earth listeners include the crashing waves at Point Lobos near Monterey Bay on the California coast, and a crow in downtown San Francisco. (02:15)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

250530 Transcript

HOSTS: Paloma Beltran, Jenni Doering

GUESTS: Bob Berwyn, Ann Carlson, Dan Gearino

REPORTERS: Kara Holsopple, Mark Seth Lender

[THEME]

DOERING: From PRX – this is Living On Earth.

[THEME]

DOERING: I’m Jenni Doering.

BELTRAN: And I’m Paloma Beltran.

Congress and EPA attempt to rescind California's ability to clean up its unhealthy air.

CARLSON: Right now, CA does not meet the standards for both ozone pollution and fine particulate matter. Ozone pollution causes all kinds of problems and fine particulate matter is really, really dangerous because it can embed deeply into the lungs. So, this is really a major public health concern.

DOERING: Also, climate disruption is changing the jet stream in a way that could lead to bumpier air travel.

BERWYN: Just like when a river starts to flow faster, a smooth river, if it starts to go over a little steeper slope, it goes faster and it starts to tumble and churn. And that’s kind of what’s going on in these rivers of air up in the sky, too.

DOERING: That and more, this week on Living on Earth. Stick around!

Back to top

[NEWSBREAK MUSIC: Boards of Canada “Zoetrope” from “In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country” (Warp Records 2000)]

[THEME]

CA Clean Air Tool Revoked

BELTRAN: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Paloma Beltran.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

California is way ahead of much of the rest of the US on clean energy and electric vehicle adoption, with over 2 million zero-emission cars on the road. Yet it also has among the worst air quality in the nation. That’s because it’s hard to get around California without a car, and its nearly 40 million residents means there are a lot of vehicles and tailpipes on the road. And a lot of trucks too since nearly 17% of all U.S. imports and exports travel through California at least as of January 2025. Then there’s the weather. Abundant sunshine is a double-edged sword because all that sun and heat turns pollution from tailpipes into ozone, the main ingredient in smog, which settles in the Central Valley and Los Angeles Basin. So, California has a chronic air pollution problem that it’s been gradually improving with its own laws and regulations and the blessing of the US Environmental Protection Agency. But now under President Trump the EPA and Republican members of Congress are taking away California’s ability to clean up its air. Joining us from Los Angeles is Ann Carlson, the Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at UCLA. She was also Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under President Biden. Hi Professor Carlson and welcome back to the show!

CARLSON: Thanks. Good to be here.

DOERING: So, we're talking to you, Professor Carlson, because the Republican led Senate has just voted along party lines to overrule the waivers that California receives from the EPA, which allows California to set stricter regulations on clean air under the Clean Air Act. What exactly are those waivers?

CARLSON: So, California has this special authority under the Clean Air Act, which is a federal law, to set its own air pollution standards for mobile sources, that is cars and trucks and other things that move. But it can't do so unless it gets what's called a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency. The idea of a waiver basically is you're being waived from the preemption that all other states experience, and EPA has to grant that waiver, if California meets certain conditions. It needs to show that it has compelling and extraordinary circumstances, and it also has to show that its standards are at least as protective of public health as any federal standards.

DOERING: And so, I understand that there's three waivers in question here. What do those waivers actually do?

CARLSON: The three waivers cover both cars and trucks. The first one covers something called the Advanced Clean Car two Rule. And it would phase out internal combustion engines and replace them with zero emission vehicles, they could be fueled by things like electricity or hydrogen, by 2035. And then there are two rules that deal with trucks. One is the advanced clean truck rule, and that also requires the penetration of zero emission trucks, although it's not as stringent as the car rule. And then the third is really an odd title. It's called the omnibus NOx rule. NOx are a form of pollution that come out of the tailpipes of vehicles and create ozone, which is the worst smog problem that California faces, and that would cut NOx emissions by about 75% over the next decade.

DOERING: Over a single decade? That sounds like a pretty ambitious timeline.

CARLSON: These are ambitious rules, but that's because California has air districts that don't comply with federal law. They're out of compliance with the ozone standard and with another standard for fine particulate matter. That's really, really tiny particles. And we can't meet those standards currently. For example, Los Angeles doesn't even meet a standard that was set in 1997. There are two standards that have been passed since then that are even more stringent. And so, we are really facing a problem where our air quality continues to violate federal law. I should add, though, that the air quality is much, much cleaner than it used to be. Sometimes, I think we get left with the impression that California, or Los Angeles in particular, is basically a cesspool. The air quality is much, much cleaner. We've cleaned up lead out of the air. We've cleaned up carbon monoxide. Our ozone pollution is at levels that are much, much lower than they used to be, but they still violate federal standards.

DOERING: So, Professor Carlson, I understand that the Senate Republicans were able to use something called the Congressional Review Act to try and revoke these California Clean Air Act waivers. What exactly did they do here?

CARLSON: So, the Congressional Review Act is a very obscure statute that typically allows a Congress that comes in after a presidency changes hands, changes parties, to revoke rules that were enacted in the last days of the administration. Typically, it's in the last 60 days, counted by how many days that Congress is in session. What's weird about the use of the Congressional Review Act here... there's really several things, but the weirdest thing is that waivers are not rules. They are not considered rules by the Government Accountability Office, the Senate Parliamentarian, and yet Congress went ahead and voted to revoke the waivers. Also, the other thing that's weird is that the waivers were actually granted, at least two of them, far earlier than the 60 days required by the statute, but they weren't submitted to Congress — that's one of the requirements of the Congressional Review Act — by the EPA, until January. And that's because under President Biden's Environmental Protection Agency, the waivers weren't considered rules because they're not by the definition of the statute, so they were never submitted. So, EPA then went ahead and submitted them in January, trying to argue that they're rules, despite the fact that legal authorities have said they're not rules. And then the Senate went ahead and voted on them and voted to revoke them anyway. The House did as well.

DOERING: And so, by the way, who is the Senate Parliamentarian and why are they important here?

CARLSON: So, the Senate Parliamentarian really sets the ground rules for the Senate, and it's her decision, typically about what gets voted on and when by the Senate. So, one really good example is a process called budget reconciliation. The Senate can adopt a budget with a majority vote as long as the substance of the budget amendments are about what you're going to spend and what you're going to tax. You can't add on to that budget reconciliation bill a bunch of things that don't have anything to do with the budget. The Parliamentarian will say, "No, that's not subject to the budget reconciliation rules." So, if you stop following the Senate Parliamentarian's basic ground rules, you really blow up the Senate policies and procedures and norms that senators have been governed by and abided by for decades.

DOERING: I think the air quality implications and public health implications of this decision are really important to highlight. So, let's just take a step back and talk about why does California need these waivers more than other states?

CARLSON: So, the Environmental Protection Agency sets standards — they're called the National Ambient Air Quality standards — for pollutants that are kind of everywhere in the air. One of them is ozone pollution. Another, as I mentioned, is fine particulate pollution. They're standards for lead, for carbon monoxide, really nasty pollutants that do terrible things to public health. And they set these standards based on the best science available. And right now, California does not meet the standards, at least in Southern California and in the Central Valley for both ozone pollution and fine particulate matter. And we know that even at quite low levels, ozone pollution causes all kinds of health problems. It causes respiratory problems. It can enhance the possibility of a heart attack. And fine particulate matter is really, really dangerous because it's so tiny, the matter, that it can embed deeply into the lungs, and so it can again interfere with breathing. It can cause cancer. So, this is really a major public health concern. One of the very strange things about revoking the California waivers is that the EPA has been threatening to sanction California for being out of compliance with the standards, and yet, it's taking away the most powerful tool that the state has to address what is the biggest source of pollutants. So, one of the things to watch for is, does EPA try to sanction California? If it does, it revokes its highway funding. So, it's a huge sanction. It's not like a little slap on the wrist. It's basically withholding millions and millions of dollars from the state for failing to meet air pollution laws when it's the federal government itself that's standing in the way of California meeting those standards. There's another real benefit of two of the rules. The Advanced Clean Car Rule and the Advanced Clean Truck Rule would also cut greenhouse gasses and therefore help slow the warming of the planet. That won't happen with the revocation of the waivers.

DOERING: Now, Professor, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta have said that they're going to fight this decision in court. What could happen once they do?

CARLSON: Well, one of the strange provisions of the Congressional Review Act, this very obscure statute, is that it says that courts can't review decisions under the Act that are made by Congress. So, California has a tough legal road ahead of it. It may be the case that a court nevertheless is willing to say, "Look, you can't take a statute and apply it to something that the statute itself doesn't cover." So, a court may be willing to rule that in fact, Congress used the Congressional Review Act in a way that it wasn't meant to be used. But there is this provision barring judicial review in the Congressional Review Act, and we're going to have to wait and see what courts do with that provision.

DOERING: So, how could other states besides California be impacted by this decision that the Senate has made?

CARLSON: The Clean Air Act allows all states to make a choice about which vehicle emission standards they follow under a section called Section 177 of the Clean Air Act. The states that follow California's lead, we call the 177 states. And a number of states were going to follow the Advanced Clean Car Two rule. A number of states were also going to follow the two truck rules. It's kind of a different mix of states, depending upon which rule it is. They will not be allowed to do that as long as California does not have a waiver to implement its standards. So that means that something like 40% of the passenger vehicle market was going to be covered by the California standards. It won't be anymore. And a huge part of the truck market also will no longer be covered by the California truck rules, unless they're reinstated by a court.

DOERING: You know, Professor one argument that we've seen the Trump Administration try to make as it goes about undoing clean energy tax credits and trying to roll back some of these policies supporting, for example, electric vehicles from the Biden administration, they've been saying that, you know, we don't want to pick winners and losers. We don't think that we should be giving a leg up to the clean energy industry. What's your response?

CARLSON: Well, first of all, there are a lot of subsidies for fossil fuels, so if you want to level the playing field, then you have to get rid of all sorts of tax breaks and tax incentives that encourage the drilling of oil and so forth. But secondly, we're in a climate emergency, and we need to act. And we need to act with urgency. The Inflation Reduction Act, which contains a lot of the programs that the Trump Administration and now the House Republicans are seeking to roll back, are really the most effective climate bill that has ever passed Congress. So essentially, what you're saying is, okay, we don't care about climate change. We don't care about the fact that the planet is burning, that we are seeing climate events coming at us so rapidly it's hard to keep up with them. It's just unprecedented. And so, to say we're just going to back away from what is, again, the most ambitious climate bill we've ever enacted is really to say we're not going to do anything to try to solve climate change.

DOERING: And Professor Carlson, you know, as a legal scholar, what long term implications of the Senate's decision here worry you the most?

CARLSON: Well, what the Senate did is to effectively blow up the filibuster because if they were really interested in following procedure and scaling back California's authority to regulate under the Clean Air Act, they should do so with the normal bill. And that bill would require a 60-vote majority in the Senate. By using the Congressional Review Act and ignoring the Senate Parliamentarian's decision, they're essentially saying we only think that we're going to try to pass things with 51 votes. That has huge implications far outside of environmental law. That means that anything that normally would be subject to the filibuster could be now voted on with a 51-vote majority. So, I guess the question is, has the Senate opened a Pandora's box that it can't close again? And is it going to result in the busting of the filibuster and the use of the Congressional Review Act for all kinds of actions that it should not be used for?

DOERING: Ann Carlson is the Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under President Biden. Thank you so much, Professor Carlson.

CARLSON: You're welcome. It was a pleasure to be here.

DOERING: After the Senate voted to revoke the California waivers, EPA issued a press release with this statement from Administrator Lee Zeldin, who said: “We are glad to see that Congress recognized the truth, that EPA’s California waivers are rules that would create a negative impact on all Americans by driving up costs while limiting consumer choice and acted accordingly. This action, once signed by President Trump, not only prevents California from implementing their attempt at EV mandate actions but ensures that they can never do something similar again.” The full EPA press release is at the Living on Earth website, loe.org.

Related links:
- Read Ann Carlson’s blog post about the Senate’s decision
- See how your Senator voted in the decision to repeal California’s Clean Air Act waivers

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[MUSIC: Bill Quist, “Gymnopedie 1” on Piano Solos of Erik Satie, by Erik Satie, Sony Music Entertainment]

BELTRAN: Just ahead, 2025 might be your last chance to get a big tax break when you buy an electric vehicle. We’ll take a deeper look at the impact of the House budget reconciliation bill on those tax credits. Stay tuned to Living on Earth!

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Sailors for the Sea and Oceana. Helping boaters race clean, sail green and protect the seas they love. More information @sailorsforthesea.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Miles Davis/Red Garland/Paul Chambers/Philly Joe Jones, “It Never Entered My Mind” on Music from and Inspired By “Miles Davis-The Birth of the Cool, by Richard Rodgers, Columbia LegacyStart]

Cuts to Clean Energy Tax Credits

DOERING: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Jenni Doering.

BELTRAN: And I’m Paloma Beltran.

The Inflation Reduction Act or IRA that was passed during the Biden administration included a wide range of investments in renewable energy projects and tax subsidies. But on May 22nd the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" as it’s officially titled was approved by the House of Representatives by just a 1-vote majority. This bill contains much of President Donald Trump's domestic policy agenda. And guts multiple provisions from the IRA, terminating or reducing tax credits for electric vehicles, clean hydrogen and advanced manufacturing. Joining us now to discuss the impact of this bill is Dan Gearino, a clean energy reporter with our media partner Inside Climate News. Dan, welcome back to Living on Earth!

GEARINO: Glad to be here.

BELTRAN: So, there's been a lot of chatter recently about this "One, Big, Beautiful Bill" that passed through the US House of Representatives. What is the main goal, and how does energy factor into it?

GEARINO: So, the bill does a whole bunch of things, and I think one of the most important things to remember from the perspective of somebody who cares about the energy provisions, is that the energy provisions are not a huge part of the bill. This is a bill that deals with extending tax cuts, makes modifications to Medicaid, does a whole bunch of things. The energy provisions are largely about cutting or accelerating the phase out of tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act so that you can free up more money so that the tax cuts can be partially paid for. So, if you're someone who cares about wind power, solar power, battery storage, electric vehicles, a whole bunch of the federal tax credits that help to support those things are either going away or are gaining restrictions or other impediments, and this is really harmful to a whole bunch of industries. But when you watch the debate, a lot of the discussion is about other things, because the energy provisions are not one of the top line concerns. It creates this kind of a strange atmosphere for if you're an energy company, if you're someone who has rooftop solar or an electric vehicle or wants to buy one of those things, there's this kind of dissonance between the discussion of stuff that's really important to you and this kind of appearance that it's not nearly as important in the discussion that's taking place, that took place in the house, and then it's going to take place in the Senate.

BELTRAN: Now, Dan, to what extent have the clean energy tax credits been benefiting communities and individuals across the US?

GEARINO: The Inflation Reduction Act includes a $7,500 tax credit that will reduce the cost of buying an electric vehicle. So, if you buy an electric vehicle, it costs less. It's a real incentive to buy an electric vehicle. There's also a $4,000 credit for buying a used electric vehicle if it meets certain qualifications. There is a tax credit that reduces the cost of buying rooftop solar makes it so that if you buy a rooftop solar system for your house, certain percentage of it can be deducted.

BELTRAN: So, what jobs are at stake in Republican districts when it comes to the rollback of clean energy tax credits?

GEARINO: So, we're hearing comments from union members and union leaders. You're hearing comments from trade groups, but I would say that one of the important dynamics here is that we are still early in the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act. So, when we talk about lost jobs, we're talking largely about jobs that haven't started yet. These are factories that are being built. Some of them are factories that have been announced but have not broken ground yet. So, if this was five years from now, you would have tons of workers saying, don't hurt my job. You definitely do have some places where there are current jobs that stand to be harmed by this, but by trying to impair these industries, as this bill does, you're catching it at a time before some of the natural constituencies that would support these tax credits have really had enough time to come into being. There's a gigantic manufacturing plant in, say, Georgia, South Carolina, and it's either in the very early stages of operating or is not opened yet. You know, it’s a different debate than if that plant had been around for a while.

BELTRAN: Are there any major manufacturers that we can name who are going to be impacted by this bill?

GEARINO: Well, when you're talking about manufacturing of solar panels, of batteries for use in EVs, batteries for use in stationary energy storage systems. Manufacturing of a bunch of different technologies, and a lot of these companies are household names, companies like Ford, Honda, major automakers, are getting some of the manufacturing credits. But it's important to specify here that the manufacturing credits are, it isn't like the manufacturing credits are going to, you know, snap your fingers and they're gone. What's happening with those is more nuanced, but the consumer credits will go away pretty quickly. So, if I'm a company that is spending a whole bunch of money to build a plant to build batteries for electric vehicles, and many major automakers are doing that in this country. The tax credit that allows me to offset some of the costs for setting up that plant will remain, but the consumer credits are going to go away. So that means that you're reducing demand for the product, and that means that those factories are going to have fewer customers for the things that they're making, and for people in these industries, they say it kind of has to be on both sides. It has to be both on the consumer side, and it needs to be on the manufacturing side. It's not like everything that was in the Inflation Reduction Act just goes away. Most of what goes away quickly are the things that consumers would directly benefit from.

BELTRAN: And House Republicans initially raised concerns about the bill potentially gutting IRA credits. What led to their change of heart? You know, some environmental groups have said that they view this as a "monumental betrayal."

GEARINO: There is this recurring theme whenever renewable energy policy comes up in a highly partisan context, where moderate Republicans, oftentimes Republicans in narrowly divided districts, districts that may vote Democrat for president, will say that they support a lot of these consumer facing tax credits. They will say that they support, basically support, most, if not all, of what was in the IRA. It was a bill that had a bunch of stuff that was really popular and helpful to red states and red districts. So, there are Republican members of Congress who say, be really careful in the way that you deal with these tax credits. But when it's a very close vote those members, they don't kind of put their votes out there. It's not a deal breaker for them. So, this bill passed the House 215 to 214, there were 14 Republicans that had a joint statement basically saying, be very careful with anything dealing with these tax credits. Some aspects of these tax credits should be preserved. Zero of those 14 ended up voting against the bill. So it's one of these things where, if I'm a local activist who supports rooftop solar, who supports actions that will slow the advancement of climate change, it really can be frustrating, because it seems as though a lot of the moderate Republicans who said they cared about this kind of care about it in terms of just saying they care about it, but when it comes time to actually vote on it, it's not a deal breaker issue for them.

BELTRAN: So, we've talked about the House Republicans and how many shifted their support in favor of the bill. But how does the Senate play a role in the outcome of this bill?

GEARINO: I wouldn't be surprised if you see some substantial changes on this bill as it goes to the Senate. We're already seeing a variety of objections to what the House produced. You're seeing concerns about just basic budget issues, about whether the spending is sustainable, when I say the spending, I mean, are the tax cuts paid for, or is this all just going to balloon the deficit? It's going to balloon the deficit. But the question is kind of how much and whether or not that's accurate accounting. You are seeing discussions of how to modify what the House did on some of the IRA credits. I wouldn't be surprised if you see modifications in some of the IRA manufacturing credits. I'm not going to make any predictions about how long this is going to take on the Senate side, but I imagine there's some pretty tough conversations happening right now about what changes need to happen and then whether those changes would be acceptable to the house.

BELTRAN: So, Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska has expressed her support for the energy tax credits. And of course, Alaska is a major energy producing state. What's in it for her state? You know? Why did she express her support?

GEARINO: Lisa Murkowski has been a leader in the Senate in supporting investment in U.S. energy production across the board. So that means supporting oil and gas. That means supporting renewables. And the Inflation Reduction Act was a law that, in a pretty broad way, supports expanding the U.S. ability to produce energy. So, when Lisa Murkowski expresses doubts or skepticism or opposition, some of that comes from Alaska's status as a major energy producing state. I think her larger point is that the U.S. needs to, well, have a coherent policy. Can't be just wildly gyrating in terms of its energy policy. Needs to have a policy that encourages investment and that rewards investment. And to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, and then just a few years later, drastically change it, is bad for business, she would say. And that's kind of where she's coming from. She's just one vote, though. So, in order to really necessitate substantial changes, you would need to have four Republican senators who kind of dig in and say that this is they can't support the House version of this. And the question is, kind of who those four are.

BELTRAN: And we don't know yet what will happen with all of the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, but how much of a lasting impact might the Inflation Reduction Act have on the clean energy industry, regardless of whether these rollbacks become law?

GEARINO: The Inflation Reduction Act is by far the most substantial in terms of just about any way you want to measure it, bill advancing renewable energy, electric vehicles and various energy technologies that the country has ever had. I mean number one by a lot. Number two is way far behind. So, what its legacy will be depends a lot on how many of these factories end up getting built and how successful they are. Do these factories that were built because of the tax credits end up being successful, end up employing lots of people, end up making a lot of money for their owners, and end up contributing to a kind of more robust and diverse economy in the US, some of them will. It's just a question of how many, and so we don't really know yet. So, nothing can take away the IRA status as being kind of the biggest that ever was, but its long-term effect depends on decisions that are yet to be made.

BELTRAN: Dan Gearino is a clean energy reporter with our media partner InsideClimate News, covering renewable energy and utilities. Dan, thank you so much for joining us.

GEARINO: Thank you.

Related links:
- The Inflation Reduction Act
- The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act

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[MUSIC: Alex de Grassi, “Children’s Dance” on Turning: Turning Back, by Alex de Grassi, Windham Hill Records]

After the Storm

BELTRAN: As sea levels rise and hurricanes strengthen Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence Mark Seth Lender is keenly aware of the risks of living right on the Connecticut coast. But being that close to Nature, in all her ferociousness, sure does inspire.

After the Storm
Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge
Long Island Sound
© 2024 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved

Child of the Weather is building castles made of sand scooped out, from beneath the bulkheads and all around the boulders of the groins and breakwaters until they reach, a toppling, geometry. Child takes and makes: A deep moat near shore; then a long linear battlement of sand bars. Another moat… Another bar... That’s as far as she got. This time. Because the Weather Herself climbed down from those seventy knot gusts in a fifty-knot blow to a normal small craft warning. And took the Child home.

Well, I tell you what. The house has stopped swaying on its tree-trunk wide, tree-top high pilings. They shake, but do not shatter. This small castle of wood, behind a sea wall. When Child is out to play and it is only, play. When the windows only chime like a baby rattle; when the highest storm-gathered tides wash, under.

And not away…

We will have the brief and pleasant privilege to watch, the sun come up and how for an instant the lowest edge of brilliance pools on the horizon like a kiss. And hazard a guess what will come this way by the clouds, if they are soft and round or thin long threads and what direction they are coming from and say, Tomorrow it will rain, Tomorrow it will snow; as temperature and time of year allow because, there will be one more day. Or inhale deeply of that certain late summer perfume, its tropical intoxication and say, Hurricane. Coming this way. And wonder will it be the next? And only one of many for the year? Or for us the last.

Only Child of the Weather knows and will not tell.

This time we only bend. Only the clouds break to reveal, a coruscation of Stars!

BELTRAN: That’s Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence, Mark Seth Lender.

Related links:
- Read the field note for this essay
- Explore more of Mark Seth Lender’s work
- View the hurricane forecast for 2025

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[MUSIC: Stormy weather - cool jazz clarinet version – YouTube, CLARINET SOLO: Leor Schweitzer, @leorschweitzer]

BELTRAN: Coming up, even when there’s no stormy weather in sight, climate disruption could bring bumpier flights. Keep listening to Living on Earth!

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Friends of Smeagull the Seagull and Smeagull’s Guide to Wildlife. It’s all about the wildlife right next door to you! That’s Smeagull, S - M - E - A - G - U - L - L, SmeagullGuide.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Oscar Peterson, “Stormy Weather” on A Night of Oscar Peterson, UMG Recordings]

Turbulence and Climate Change

BELTRAN: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Paloma Beltran.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

The summer travel season is kicking off and for plenty of folks that means it’s time to hop on a jet plane somewhere far away. But you might be in for a bumpy ride due to increased turbulence even when the skies are clear. And yep, this is yet another example of how climate disruption is affecting just about every aspect of our lives.
Emerging research predicts that with rising global temperatures, climate change may increase clear-air turbulence by as much as four times along some of the most heavily traveled routes. Clear air turbulence as the name suggests is the kind of turbulence you can’t see on most radar. It can toss around large airplanes, damage aircraft and injure passengers and crew. Bob Berwyn has been reporting on this new research for our media partner InsideClimate News, and he’s based in Austria. Bob recently attended the big European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna where he learned about the links between turbulence and climate change. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Bob!

BERWYN: It's nice to be back again. Thanks.
DOERING: How does climate change factor into these bumpier flights?

BERWYN: So, there's been a lot of research going back, you know, a few decades on wind currents and how global warming is changing the distribution of air pressure systems and of big areas of warm air and cold air, and how they relate to each other. And it's the contrasts between these big air masses, often in the polar north and then in the mid latitudes down across North America and Europe, the contrasts that drive the winds. Some of them are called jet stream winds that flow like a wavy river all the way around the northern and southern hemispheres. And those also coincide with some of the flight routes, the flight paths of airplanes. And global warming is kind of changing the way those pressure patterns are distributed. And it gets pretty complicated, but right in an area, at an elevation and at a latitude where it can affect flights. It's increasing the turbulence. It's making the jet stream faster. And just like when a river starts to flow faster, a smooth river, if it starts to go over a little steeper slope, it goes faster, and it starts to tumble and churn. And that's kind of what's going on in these rivers of air up in the sky, too.

DOERING: So, it's like the lazy Danube River is turning into a stream in the Alps, right?

BERWYN: Right, yep.

DOERING: In your neck of the woods.

BERWYN: Exactly.

DOERING: So now, now I'm understanding just how complex this is, because we have also been hearing about the jet stream weakening in certain ways in certain parts because of climate change. And, you know, taking more dips further south, and letting that really cold arctic air come down into the East Coast, for example. So, it's doing all sorts of different things.

BERWYN: It is, exactly, yep. One of the main researchers who actually, studies the jet stream in a lot of ways, and not necessarily just related to clear air turbulence, was the one who really was able to pinpoint this particular zone of the jet stream that is affecting the amount of clear turbulence that's been happening and is projected to increase over the next few decades.

DOERING: And of course, we know that stormy weather also causes turbulence. How is clear air turbulence different?

BERWYN: It's different in that there aren't any visible signs, let's say, big thunderstorms that can go up into the altitude. Commercial passenger planes fly at their highest and, you know, sometimes planes have to fly around those clear air severe turbulence is when there are no real visible signs of it. So, you'd have to really have a detailed understanding of the way the different air masses are moving within the vertical column of the atmosphere. And that can be done, but it requires, you know, really sensitive radar instruments and looking for these anomalies, these kind of unusual patterns that would cause turbulence.

DOERING: And Bob, what did you hear from researchers about why they were interested in looking into this particular climate change impact on turbulence?

BERWYN: I had a nice interview with co-author on one of the papers, Davide Faranda, as a researcher with the French National Center for Scientific Research, said that he'd had an interest in weather and in flying since he was a little kid, and so he grew up to study meteorology, and he kept his interest in flying, and flies as part of his job, too, and was already studying this topic, and then experienced a really extreme episode of clear air turbulence on a flight across the U.S. from the West Coast to the East Coast. And described it as pretty terrifying, with objects flying through the cabin and really sort of hanging on for dear life, is what he said. And you know, he said, specifically, that it left him feeling pretty traumatized, and I think, you know, definitely is part of his motivation for working on this.

DOERING: So, Bob, we're finding out that clear air turbulence may get worse as a result of climate change. At the same time that we have air traffic control cuts and job losses at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Weather Service. How does that complicate this problem?

BERWYN: Along with a lot of other impacts from global warming, they require more research to understand what those effects are going to be, to make more precise projections of how the atmosphere is going to be affected, because what we're talking about here goes beyond just turbulence that affects individual planes. It's really affecting a fundamental part of the climate system. It's pretty profound, if you think about it, the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is shifting these climate patterns that have been, you know, more or less stable for thousands and thousands of years in the time that people kind of developed and built-up modern civilization. And so, if the jet stream changes, it also changes things like where extreme weather goes, or where droughts happen, and if you undermine research and hinder the ability of scientists understand that it's going to make people everywhere more vulnerable to those types of things.

DOERING: So, before you go, what are the lessons that we should take away from this research? And what would you say to airline passengers given the bumpy rides ahead?

BERWYN: Well, I would definitely say, you know, heed the captain if he says to keep your seatbelt buckled. My takeaway is the profound effect that we're causing on the whole climate system through our emission of greenhouse gasses that we're changing these incredibly complex and tuned up climate mechanisms that affect, you know, weather patterns across the globe, and that's shifting and changing fast. And you know, we need to understand what's going on more than ever, and the air turbulence is one of the symptoms that catches a lot of people's attention.

DOERING: Bob Berwyn is a reporter with our media partner InsideClimate News, and he's based a very long flight away in Austria. Thanks, Bob.

BERWYN: You're welcome.

Related link:
Inside Climate News | “Scientists Forecast a Big Increase of Clear-Air Turbulence That Could Lead to Bumpier Flights”

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[MUSIC: Zoe Lewis, “Blink” on Blink by Zoe Lewis, www.zoelewis.com]

Reforesting a Gravel Mine

BELTRAN: Lake Pleasant in northwestern Pennsylvania was created over 15,000 years ago when a glacier retreated. Since the 1990s, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy has been buying and conserving land around the lake, which supports rare plants and birds like osprey. The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple reports that now a nonprofit is helping the conservancy reforest a problem area on the property.

[AMBI OUTDOORS NEAR ROAD]

[NAT WALKING]

HOLSOPPLE: Michael Knoop walks down a hillside in the Lake Pleasant Conservation Area in Erie County. This section was an old gravel mine, and now the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy owns it. We have to watch our step…

KNOOP: There's trees planted in this burrow right here, so if you stay to the left and right of it, we should be okay. I'm just going to show you one of the trees. This is what they look like when they go in.

HOLSOPPLE: It’s just a 8-inch-stick with a teeny green leaf at the top. Knoop is vice president of Bosland Growth a nonprofit that partners with landowners–in this case, the conservancy–to reforest land. Here, the trees will create wildlife habitat and improve water quality. But there’s a problem. The soil here is poor.

KNOOP: The regulations require the companies to return the landscape to relatively the same contours that they had been before mining, and to do that, they have to use heavy equipment that compacts the soil a lot more than is healthy for trees to grow in.

HOLSOPPLE: So, to treat the compacted soil and prepare for planting, Knoop says, last fall, a company ripped down into the ground about three feet with machinery, creating a checkerboard pattern across the landscape. Knoop is leading me and a group of project partners and guests today towards two experimental plots on the property, where they’re testing different ways to improve the tree growth here. We pass a team of workers, swinging hoedads, long spades used to make a hole in the ground, and popping the little trees in.

[NAT OF WORKERS]

HOLSOPPLE: This crew is planting 70,000 trees here this week. That’s no small feat on this 100-acre section of the property the conservancy purchased in 2006. Knoop says they’re planting white pine, black locust, scarlet oak, and red maple on the site. And in the bottom land, swamp white oak, sycamores and silky dogwood–trees he says like to get their feet wet. There’s already water on the property. It’s dotted with small ponds. Andy Zadnik, Director of Land Stewardship for Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, says they are actually the pits left by the mining company…

ZADNICK: They really shouldn't be here.

HOLSOPPLE: Zadnick says Lake Pleasant is the finest example of an inland glacial lake in the state. It’s mainly fed by groundwater, so the water collecting in these pits could be impacting the water chemistry and temperature in the nearby lake. The pits are also infested with an invasive aquatic plant called Eurasian watermilfoil – the conservancy is treating the ponds for the plant which hasn’t made it to the lake yet…

ZADNICK: We're taking a really long-term view that we're hoping that if we can restore a healthy forest on this property in time, these pits might start to fill in or become more scrub-shrub wetlands and less these open water areas.

HOLSOPPLE: In the shorter term, the reforestation partners are hoping for a 70% survival rate for the trees over the next few years. Bosland Growth combines grant funding from government and philanthropic organizations with revenue from the sale of carbon credits to pay for the reforestation. They need healthy, growing trees here as a base for those carbon credits. Here’s where the experiment comes in. On one two-and a half acre section they’re partnering with the biotech company Funga. Josh Parrish, Chief Growth Officer at Funga, combs his fingers through some dirt in a 5-gallon plastic bucket to explain.

PARRISH: There's like little fine, here, you can see like fine white roots.

HOLSOPPLE: These are the fungal roots or “fungal hyphae”.

PARRISH: The fungi break down all of the nutrients and then the fungi pass on the nutrients to the tree roots, to the fibrous, little, tiny tree roots through the fungal hyphae.

HOLSOPPLE: Parrish says nearly all trees require a below-ground fungus partner, to grow. His company tested the soil here for signs of life – to see how degraded the microbiome has become after all of the industry and land disturbance. They also took multiple samples of soil from healthy forest land. Then Funga uses machine learning and DNA sequencing to predict what kind of soil microbiome would make the trees they’re planting here healthier and more productive. Under each tree goes a handful of the healthy soil from one of the buckets.

PARRISH: By putting this with the tree at time of planting, you're essentially giving the trees the best chance possible at survival and growth because you're giving them that essentially the right partners.

HOLSOPPLE: Some of the rich soil comes from other Western Pennsylvania Conservancy forested properties. This is Funga’s first hardwood restoration trial in the US. Just over a little hill is a second experimental plot, where trees are being planted with another material: biochar. It’s a medium fine black powder and is a byproduct of the logging industry. It’s porous and helps trees retain water and pick up nutrients from the soil. It gives those microbes and fungi a space to colonize, too. Brenda Costa is scooping biochar from a bucket with a red Solo cup, as her colleague digs a hole with a shovel to prepare the soil. Costa is the executive director of the French Creek Valley Conservancy.

[NAT SCOOPING AND DIGGING SOUND]

COSTA: You know, Lake Pleasant is a really important feature or place within our watershed. And so, this additional effort to try to protect it is pretty great.

HOLSOPPLE: Lake Peasant is part of the headwaters of French Creek, an important habitat for freshwater mussels, including some endangered species. Michael Knoop from Bosland Growth says they’ll monitor the experiments over the next few years to see what’s most effective. The Lake Pleasant project with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy is Bosland’s first project toward their goal of reforesting 2,800 acres of degraded mine land in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

KNOOP: So, t's a gigantic opportunity to return native forest to a huge amount of land across the region.

HOLSOPPLE: Knoop says they have signed up a handful of private landowners to work with in Pennsylvania and West Virginia over the next couple of years.

BELTRAN: That’s Kara Holsopple reporting for the Allegheny Front.

Related link:
Find this story on the Allegheny Front website

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[MUSIC: OscaPeterson, “Molten Swing” on A Night of Oscar Peterson, UMG Recordings]

Listening on Earth: California Coast and Crows

DOERING: We love that you, our listeners, keep sending in audio for our “listening on earth” series! And a couple of your submissions feature California, starting with the crashing waves at Point Lobos near Monterey Bay from Christoper Dunn.

[CRASHING WAVES SFX]

DOERING: You know, some of my fondest memories include summer road trips on the iconic Highway 1 up the coast from San Diego with stops including Point Lobos. And Paloma it’s such a great spot to watch the sea otters!

BELTRAN: That sounds amazing! I’ve heard so much about Point Lobos. Hopefully I’ll get to visit soon. You know Jenni, this next one is from a bit further up the coast, “the city by the bay”.

[CROW SOUNDS]

LITWIN: I’m Aaron and I live in downtown San Francisco in California in the United States and I get to listen to crows almost every morning, along with my cat, Dusty Junior, looking out my window onto the city skyline where nature has seemed to found a way to coexist with us.

BELTRAN: I’m happy to report that Aaron Litwin also sent in a great photo of the cat Dusty Junior which we’ll post on the Living on Earth website, loe dot org. By the way, he says sometimes a whole “murder” of more than a hundred crows visits!

DOERING: Who knows what they’re plotting… Well, we want to remind you that to capture your sounds you can use any sound recording app on your phone, like Voice Memos or Voice Recorder. And for the best audio quality make sure to stand still for at least two minutes without fidgeting or talking.

BELTRAN: That’s right and of course we do want to hear from you! So, be sure to speak clearly and let us know who you are, where you are, what you’re hearing and what inspired you to record the moment. Then you can email the file to comments@loe.org, and we might just use your audio postcard on the air! That’s comments at loe dot org.

Related links:
- How to make a sound recording on an iPhone
- How to make a sound recording on an Android

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[MUSIC: OscaPeterson, “Molten Swing” on A Night of Oscar Peterson, UMG Recordings]

BELTRAN: Next week on the show, a new study from the University of California Davis found that air pollution levels considered “safe" for farmworkers don’t protect them enough from health risks and injuries.

TALABONG: According to California, our farm workers need to be exposed to 150 AQI that's very high before employers need to protect them and give out face masks. According to researchers, it's not actually a matter of having to cross that threshold. It's more of a spectrum. Even before we hit that threshold, it can be dangerous, because if it hits, for example, 140 that's already dangerous. If it hits 100 that can also be dangerous. And there are also complicating factors here, because farm workers are outside for long periods of time. They're exposed to more pollution.

BELTRAN: Farmworkers and wildfire smoke, next time on Living on Earth!

BELTRAN: Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation. Our crew includes Naomi Arenberg, Daniela Faria, Mehek Gagneja, Swayam Gagneja, Mark Kausch, Mark Seth Lender, Don Lyman, Ashanti McLean, Nana Mohammed, Aynsley O’Neill, Sophia Pandelidis, Frankie Pelletier, Jake Rego, Andrew Skerritt, Melba Torres, and El Wilson. Tom Tiger engineered our show. Alison Lirish Dean composed our themes.

DOERING: You can hear us anytime at L-O-E dot org, Apple Podcasts and YouTube Music, and like us please, on our Facebook page, Living on Earth. Find us on Instagram at living on earth radio, and we always welcome your feedback at comments at loe.org.
Steve Curwood is our Executive Producer. I’m Jenni Doering.

BELTRAN: And I’m Paloma Beltran. Thanks for listening!

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Living on Earth comes from you, our listeners, and from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in association with its School for the Environment, developing the next generation of environmental leaders. And from the Grantham Foundation for the protection of the environment, supporting strategic communications and collaboration in solving the world’s most pressing environmental problems.

ANNOUNCER 2: PRX.