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Climate impacts are starting to collide.
The wildfires that devastated Maui on Wednesday were exacerbated by strong winds intensified by a hurricane hundreds of miles offshore, according to meteorologists. While the precise relationship between the fires, the hurricane, and climate change has yet to be determined, these kinds of “compound” events are likely to increase in a warming world, with consequences that are hard to predict.
Hurricane Dora, which formed in the Pacific last week, did not cause the fires, nor did it directly “fan the flames.” The hurricane had become a Category 4 storm by Tuesday night when the fires in Maui ignited, but the storm remained hundreds of miles offshore and its associated rain and wind never reached the island.
As Ginger Zee, chief meteorologist and managing editor of the climate unit at ABC News, explains it, when the hurricane’s low-pressure system ground up against a high-pressure weather system just north of Hawaii, it created a force that amplified existing downslope tradewinds to 40 to 60 miles per hour.
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While the initial cause of the fires is still unknown, the unusually strong, dry winds helped them spread quickly. “It is fair to say that, at least indirectly, these hurricanes south of Hawaii may have contributed to what will probably be the worst wildfire disaster, and potentially one of the worst disasters, period, in the history of the state of Hawaii,” said the University of California, Los Angeles, climate scientist Daniel Swain during a livestream on Youtube Wednesday night.
There are many other factors that contributed to the severity of the fires, including a drought that turned non-native grasses into a tinderbox and the expansion of the urban footprint into fire-prone areas. Swain noted that this wasn’t even that large of a fire in the scheme of things; it just occurred in a highly populated area.
But this isn’t the first time that a hurricane has exacerbated fire conditions in the Aloha State. In August 2018, Hurricanes Hector and Lane brought high winds directly to the islands that fanned a series of major wildfires — some of the largest on record — according to the Pacific Fire Exchange, a wildfire science research group based in Hawaii.
In both 2018 and this week, the confluence of events made emergency response challenging. Helicopters that could have been deployed to put out the fires were grounded due to the winds. The wind also knocked out the power to 13,000 households in Maui on Tuesday night, complicating evacuations.
Scientists call this a “compound event,” when multiple weather or climate-driven factors come together, causing more dangerous disasters than they would individually. The most common example is a drought co-occurring with a heatwave, which can exacerbate fire risk, threaten agriculture, and make water scarce. Hurricanes, by themselves, are another form of compound event, as they can produce both wind-driven impacts like coastal storm surge as well as precipitation-driven flooding.
“Compound event research has blossomed in recent years,” Flavio Lehner, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University, told me, “because we recognize that some of the most impactful extreme events are because of certain factors coming together at the right time, or at the wrong time.”
Lehner said it’s extremely challenging to predict what’s going to happen in the future with compound events because there’s basically double the uncertainty. Take droughts and heatwaves, for example. Different climate models might disagree about how much warmer it’s going to get in the future and how much it will rain. So it’s very hard to draw conclusions about how much more frequent or severe the chance of simultaneous high temperatures and low rainfall will be in any given region.
That being said, scientists do know the direction these events are trending in. Hurricanes will drop more rain and their winds are likely to intensify. Drought conditions will increase.
“Some of these extreme events, they just bring to the forefront vulnerabilities that have existed that might have been exposed even without climate change,” said Lehner. “So confronting our infrastructure or our plans to adapt in case of an emergency, that's really what I think we have to take away from these kinds of events.”
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Let’s talk more about Denali ... that is, Mt. McKinley.
President Donald Trump signed 46 presidential actions during his first 12 hours in office, including overturning 78 of former President Joe Biden’s executive orders. Between Trump’s moves with major ramifications (like ending all wind permits) and those that seem to represent more personal grievances (like free-flowing showerheads), there has been much confusion over what they all mean.
Some would argue that is the entire point: “The more bizarreness Trump generates,” the journalist Edward Luce wrote last year for The Financial Times, “the less people notice.” Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist during his rise to power in 2015 and 2016, memorably described this as a deliberate technique of “flood[ing] the zone with shit.”
Whatever way you frame it, though, where there’s Trump, there’s noises, which means news can fall through the cracks. Here’s our list of what you might have missed during Trump’s first hours as president and what might happen next.
In one of his first actions in office, Trump repealed almost seven-dozen Biden-era executive orders, including Executive Order 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.”
Signed on Biden’s Inauguration Day, the policy called for the government to take a “comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.” That meant that the Environmental Protection Agency considered things like race and socioeconomic status — given the historic burdens put on frontline communities — during its permitting processes. Trump also signed a new executive order, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which limits government agencies from considering the impacts on disadvantaged communities. The administration has reportedly gone as far as to warn government employees that they could face consequences for failing to report on colleagues whose diversity and inclusion efforts might slip past its notice.
As Dan Farber writes for Legal Planet, however, to carry out this anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion executive order, “agencies will have to eliminate their own environmental justice regulations. At that point, the door will be open to judicial review. I think agencies will have a hard time justifying the repeals.”
Trump further overturned Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” another first-week Biden policy. In addition to declaring climate change a national security risk, the order also created the Justice40 initiative, directing 40% of federal climate spending to disadvantaged communities.
Jillian Blanchard, the Climate Change and Environmental Justice Program director at Lawyers for Good Government, told me this was also legally dubious. “There’s already existing infrastructure and policies in place that can’t be undone by an executive order,” she said — for example, grants for ongoing efforts to install EV chargers in disadvantaged communities, or clean-up projects in coal mining communities in Appalachia. “I think it’s important to take a minute and say, okay, what does this mean in practice?”
Blanchard added that, in particular, Trump’s moves on environmental justice “make me question what this administration plans to do with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act,” which prohibits race-based discrimination in programs that receive federal funding. “There’s really important questions here that are being raised that everyone should be paying attention to.”
Trump also repealed Executive Order 14030, “Climate-Related Financial Risk,” signed by Biden in May 2021. The executive order called for government-wide assessment and disclosure of climate-related financial risks to U.S. programs, and ordered the Secretary of Labor to submit a report on actions to protect U.S. workers’ savings and pensions from those same threats. Executive Order 14030 also established the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which called for government agencies to be more conservative when siting projects that could face sea-level rise or flood threats.
In addition to government agencies no longer being required to consider how extreme weather and climate risks might threaten their operations, Trump’s executive order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” also takes aim at diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring practices, or the “social” aspect of ESG.
Though you’ve probably already heard about Trump’s attempt to spangle the Gulf of Mexico with a new name, the “ Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness” executive order also calls for reverting the name of North America’s highest peak, Denali, back to Mt. McKinley.
The political effort to change the mountain’s name to Denali, backed by the state’s Republican politicians, dates back to the 1970s. (It took until 2015 for the name to be changed to the Alaskan Athabaskan word meaning “the high one” because of the Ohio delegation’s insistence on honoring its native president.) Trump’s decision to restore the mountain’s colonial name is a pointed brush-off of Alaskan Natives and represents a troubling precedent by his administration of undermining promises made to Indigenous partners by the federal government.
Tribal partners have historically assisted the U.S. government on issues of land use, resource management, and climate resiliency, and can prove formidable opponents to projects that lack their support. By disregarding Alaskan Natives’ support of the name Denali, Trump risks alienating the greater Indigenous community and starting off on a contentious footing with one of the government’s most valuable allies.
When the Los Angeles County fires began earlier this month, Trump launched a renewed crusade against the “essentially worthless” Delta smelt, a nearly extinct two-inch-long fish. Per the then-president-elect, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom had supposedly refused to sign a “water restoration declaration” that would have “allowed millions of gallons of water … from the North to flow daily into many parts of California,” where it allegedly could have helped to fight the devastating fires.
Only, there was no “water restoration declaration.” The vast majority of Los Angeles’ water doesn’t come from northern California, and the smelt have nothing to do with the water shortages some fire crews faced. That didn’t prevent Trump from issuing a memorandum to “stop radical environmentalism” and put “people over fish.” Still, it is so vague that it appears to be more of a nod to the Trump-supporting farmers in California’s Central Valley, who occasionally face water restrictions during droughts to protect the smelt.
“It’s all political posturing — it’s all an attempt to shock and awe,” Blanchard told me of the executive orders taken in sum. She added that “it’s going to be really important for people to take a deep breath and recognize that many of these things are not legal and challenges will be put in place.”
“Don’t become too distracted by fear and uncertainty,” she went on, “because that is one of their main goals.”
With plenty more to come.
A conversation with Bob Moczulewski, tax director for law firm Baker Tilly’s federal credits and incentives practice
Given the Trump administration’s new pause on grants under the Inflation Reduction Act, this week’s conversation is with Bob Moczulewski, tax director for law firm Baker Tilly’s federal credits and incentives practice. We asked him to explain this 90-day pause via executive order, because if anyone’s going to cut the nonsense and tell you what actually matters here, it’ll be a tax attorney.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity.
Does Trump’s executive order actually impact the IRA’s tax credits?
The IRA had several components to it, most of which – the biggest things – are tax credits. Those are written into tax law. They are a legally binding ability for developers and users, creators of renewable energy that are allowed within the law – wind, solar, geothermal, battery storage, biogas – those are laws.
[The order] has a stop on those items that were more discretionary that had the control of the administration to delegate out: its grants, loans, and contracts. That has no impact on the tax credits, where the bulk of the IRA sits right now. A lot of that stuff was in anticipation of being heavily pushed through and sent out before January 20. There’s actual impact there. But tax credits are not appropriated funds.
This is not holding back the tax credits that are there.
You’ve said it is unclear if this covers all prospective funding, like direct pay?
If you’re a municipality and you put up a solar project that is eligible for tax credits and direct pay, that is the part with this potential slow play that could be done here. We really don’t know what the executive branch can do to hold back the payment of those direct payments. If you’re a business, you put up a solar, it’s a $10,000 tax credit, you can use it to reduce your taxable income. None of these orders impact that.
Now if you’re a municipality and you’re requesting a direct payment for those tax credits that are legally binding in tax law, I could see the possibility that an executive branch could have pressure on the Treasury Department, which has pressure on the IRS, to slow play those payments. But that’s only speculation. The law is stated, this is supposed to be paid out. This is in a realm of, y’know, almost a conspiracy theory-type of thing that could be done.
With respect to how a pause like this can impact the bankability of IRA, are you seeing it affect executives’ views on the durability of the law?
I would say there’s just a lot of caution as to [the] next steps around it. These are laws. Until the laws are repealed, if they are repealed, that would be the only way you’d know for certain.
As I’ve explained many times over, the history of tax credit laws is once they’re repealed or altered, those changes are prospective as to the time the law is changed. If I have a half a billion dollar solar project underway, I’ve met or begun a construction criteria. There has been no prior passing of tax laws that would revoke the ability to claim credits on that.
What are you watching for next for clarity?
There’s two things I’m looking for in the future. Where pundits around this really feel this is truly going. And the other part is to see if there’s any actual traction to repeal the tax credits that exist right now.
There’s a whole new realm of credits that begin in 2025 and continue through 2032. Will there be incentive to repeal those credits?
I have clients that are engaging in multi billions of dollars of projects that are in the heart of the southern tier of the United States of America, that would impact thousands of jobs. Those groups have strong ties to a lot of senators and congresspeople along the way. Just enough of a push and turn on this and all it takes is a few senators to not go along with it.
And more of the week's news in renewable energy fights.
1. Magic Valley, Idaho – It’s never a dull day for the Lava Ridge wind project.
2. Multiple counties, Ohio – Regulators in Ohio issued final decisions for two contested solar projects, clearing the way for one while all but stopping another.
3. Pender County, North Carolina – A solar project that was rejected late last year by the North Carolina Court of Appeals will be reconsidered by the same court, after the Democrat vote that decided the case was replaced by a Republican.
4. Lancaster County, Nebraska – in We have good news for solar in Nebraska, where county commissioners have approved a massive NextEra solar project.
5. Montgomery County, Alabama – Another solar project – Silicon Ranch – also got approval this past week from the local Board of Adjustments, meaning a Meta data center is now poised to receive renewable energy.
Here’s what else we’re watching ...
In Kansas, landowners are suing to stop a NextEra solar project in Jackson County.
In Oklahoma, a Woodside-backed hydrogen project has been paused citing the Trump administration’s changes in policy.
In Nevada, the Bureau of Land Management cleared the way for the Rough Hat solar project days before Joe Biden left office.