Are They Cutting Climate Change out of Bay Diet?

I hope so. WHRO, Proposed revision to Chesapeake Bay agreement cuts out climate change, environmentalists say

The massive, decades-long effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay is at an inflection point. Significant progress has been made, including restoring oyster habitat across the region. Other goals have proven more difficult to achieve, such as cutting pollution.

Growing challenges from climate change now threaten to stall or reverse progress — and local environmental groups worry that proposed changes to the document guiding the bay restoration do not address those threats. “We are glossing over this giant problem that's going to make the bay agreements today and of the future really, really difficult,” said Mary-Carson Stiff, executive director of the Norfolk nonprofit Wetlands Watch.

The concerns stem from the recent release of a draft new iteration of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. Virginia and other states around the region signed onto the most recent agreement in 2014. It set 31 benchmarks for participants to voluntarily achieve by 2025, such as boosting seagrass and crab populations. Officials failed to meet about a third of the targets by this year’s deadline.

Late last year, the Chesapeake Executive Council, which includes Gov. Glenn Youngkin and sets the strategic vision for the restoration, launched an effort to formally revise the document by the end of 2025. The resulting draft was developed by a Chesapeake Bay Program committee made up of nearly three dozen members from various state and federal agencies. The draft document simplifies goals, consolidating the previous 10 goals and 31 specific outcomes into four broader goals and 21 outcomes.

The agreement “acknowledges that the partnership cannot address every issue at once and that progress must be made in a strategic manner, focusing on efforts that will achieve the most meaningful and cost-effective results,” officials wrote in the draft.

The 2014 agreement included climate resiliency as a goal and set objectives, including monitoring shifting sea level conditions in the bay ecosystem. The new draft does not mention climate change or sea level rise by name, Stiff said.

“All of a sudden, they change tune and use politically palatable language like ‘changing conditions,’” she said. “To not really speak truthfully about what the challenges are, it does a disservice to everyone who's a part of the hard work to actually implement the goals. The time is now to be radical.”

The Bay restoration project is to find ways to improve the condition of the Bay. Even assuming climate change is significantly changing the Bay, the question is whether that would be for the better or worse. There are plenty of fine, clean ecosystems south of the Bay. Besides, what are you, the Bay folks going to do to fix the climate, ban coal and oil in China and India?