Sustainable Clackamas

03/13/2025

EPA Endangerment finding.

“The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding was based on extensive review of decades of scientific research and peer-reviewed assessment reports synthesizing thousands of individual climate science studies.

The Agency concluded based on the scientific evidence that “elevated concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are the root cause of recently observed climate change,” and these changes are “very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”

The EPA considered the current and future effects of climate change, and found that climate-changing pollution endangers public health for current and future generations.1

The public health effects supporting this determination include:
* Direct temperature effects: Extremely hot days and heat waves are becoming more frequent, and are projected to intensify. Heat causes the most weather-related deaths in the United States, and projected warming is expected to increase heat-related mortality.
*. Air quality effects: There is consistent evidence that climate change will increase ground-level ozone pollution (smog), which causes respiratory illnesses and aggravates asthma.
*. Extreme weather events: Heavy precipitation events and severe storms are expected to become more frequent and intense. The resulting flooding and storm surge will put more people at risk of death or injury and increase risks of infectious diseases.
*. Disease and allergen effects: Warmer temperatures are likely to increase the spread of food- and water- borne illnesses and insect-borne diseases. Climate change may also affect the prevalence and severity of allergy symptoms by increasing pollen and altering the distribution of aeroallergens and the plants that produce them.”

Now the Trump EPA is going to unilaterally without any counter mainstream peer reviewed science is going to revoke the endangerment finding and thus will undermine all legal validity to regulate greenhouse gases.

Please contact your Federal Rep and two Senators to ask them to investigate this process and defend the endnagerment order.

08/02/2024

Tippping Points are key.

Clackamas County’s climate approach is driving the probably of crashing tipping points.

Despite several citizen advisory board members requesting the County take immediate action instead of delaying until 2030 to hit County climate targets.

Many of the business representatives on the citizen task force just couldn’t justify taking action today, instead of waiting to take needed action. Even requests to target low hanging opportunities for reduction today were ignored in the final report.

A recent study modeled what most climate science understand. If any of the various tipping points are crossed and the indicator they represent crashes, recovery if possible, will be greatly delayed with significant crisis for many.

If global temperature exceeds the Paris 1.5 degree goal even for a year the likelihood of one of the key tipping points crashing increases dramatically. Each portion of a degree makes a crash of one tipping point even more likely

“Our study reveals that following current climate policies until 2100 may lead to high tipping risks even if long-term temperatures return to 1.5 °C by 2300. Under such an emission pathway, we report a tipping probability of 45% (median estimate, 10–90% range: 23–71%) until 2300 and of 76% (median estimate, 10–90% range: 39–98%) in the long term. Scenarios following pledged NDCs under the UNFCCC in 2020 until 2100 fail to adhere to the Paris Agreement LTTG, and even when subsequently designed such that temperatures return to 1.5 °C (median) after overshoot, we find that they are insufficient to avoid tipping risks (median estimate: 30%, 10–90% range: 10–56% until 2300). We find that tipping risk increases with every 0.1 °C of overshoot peak temperature. Further, we find a non-linear acceleration in tipping risk for peak overshoot temperatures above 2.0 °C resulting in more than 3% tipping risk increase per additional 0.1 °C peak temperature for overshoot temperatures exceeding 2.5 °C peak warming. This underscores the importance of the Paris Agreement climate objective24 to hold warming to ‘well below 2 °C’ even in case of a temporary overshoot above 1.5 °C.”

Open access (OA) refers to the free, immediate, online availability of research outputs such as journal articles or books, combined with the rights to use these outputs fully in the digital environment. OA content is open to all, with no access fees.