tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/maine-32861/articlesMaine – The Conversation2024-03-27T17:07:01Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2265582024-03-27T17:07:01Z2024-03-27T17:07:01ZThe total solar eclipse in North America could help shed light on a persistent puzzle about the Sun<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584141/original/file-20240325-24-ot473c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/totality-during-2023-australian-total-solar-2344355767">aeonWAVE / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/types/#hds-sidebar-nav-1">total solar eclipse</a> takes place on <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/eclipse-2024/">April 8 across North America</a>. These events occur when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, completely blocking the Sun’s face. This plunges observers into a darkness similar to dawn or dusk.</p>
<p>During the upcoming eclipse, the path of totality, where observers experience the darkest part of the Moon’s shadow (the umbra), crosses Mexico, arcing north-east through Texas, the Midwest and briefly entering Canada before ending in Maine.</p>
<p>Total solar eclipses occur roughly <a href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/solar-eclipse-guide.html">every 18 months at some location on Earth</a>. The last total solar eclipse that crossed the US took place on August 21 2017. </p>
<p>An international team of scientists, led by Aberystwyth University, will be conducting experiments from <a href="https://www.fox4news.com/news/2024-eclipse-dallas-crowds-traffic">near Dallas</a>, at a location in the path of totality. The team consists of PhD students and researchers from Aberystwyth University, Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena. </p>
<p>There is valuable science to be done during eclipses that is comparable to or better than what we can achieve via space-based missions. Our experiments may also shed light on a longstanding puzzle about the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere – its corona.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Eclipse shadow" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584503/original/file-20240326-18-9yqs13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584503/original/file-20240326-18-9yqs13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584503/original/file-20240326-18-9yqs13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584503/original/file-20240326-18-9yqs13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584503/original/file-20240326-18-9yqs13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584503/original/file-20240326-18-9yqs13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584503/original/file-20240326-18-9yqs13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The path of eclipse totality passes through Mexico, the US and Canada.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5186/">NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Sun’s intense light is blocked by the Moon during a total solar eclipse. This means that we can observe the <a href="https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/corona.shtml">Sun’s faint corona</a> with incredible clarity, from distances very close to the Sun, out to several solar radii. One radius is the distance equivalent to half the Sun’s diameter, about 696,000km (432,000 miles).</p>
<p>Measuring the corona is extremely difficult without an eclipse. It requires a special telescope <a href="https://www.space.com/what-is-a-coronagraph.html">called a coronagraph</a> that is designed to block out direct light from the Sun. This allows fainter light from the corona to be resolved. The clarity of eclipse measurements surpasses even coronagraphs based in space.</p>
<p>We can also observe the corona on a relatively small budget, compared to, for example, spacecraft missions. A persistent puzzle about the corona is the observation <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119815600.ch2">that it is much hotter</a> than the photosphere (the visible surface of the Sun). As we move away from a hot object, the surrounding temperature should decrease, not increase. How the corona is heated to such high temperatures is one question we will investigate.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Solar eclipse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584507/original/file-20240326-20-xairh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584507/original/file-20240326-20-xairh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584507/original/file-20240326-20-xairh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584507/original/file-20240326-20-xairh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584507/original/file-20240326-20-xairh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584507/original/file-20240326-20-xairh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584507/original/file-20240326-20-xairh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/solar-eclipse-diagram-1146598682">Andramin / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>We have two main scientific instruments. The first of these is Cip (coronal imaging polarimeter). Cip is also the Welsh word for “glance”, or “quick look”. The instrument takes images of the Sun’s corona with a polariser. </p>
<p>The light we want to measure from the corona is highly polarised, which means it is made up of waves that vibrate in a single geometric plane. A polariser is a filter that lets light with a particular polarisation pass through it, while blocking light with other polarisations. </p>
<p>The Cip images will allow us to measure fundamental properties of the corona, such as its density. It will also shed light on phenomena such as the solar wind. This is a stream of sub-atomic particles in the form of plasma – superheated matter – flowing continuously outward from the Sun. Cip could help us identify sources in the Sun’s atmosphere for certain solar wind streams.</p>
<p>Direct measurements of the magnetic field in the Sun’s atmosphere are difficult. But the eclipse data should allow us to study its fine-scale structure and trace the field’s direction. We’ll be able to see how far magnetic structures called large “closed” magnetic loops extend from the Sun. This in turn will give us information about large-scale magnetic conditions in the corona.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Coronal loops." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584489/original/file-20240326-24-zlpsmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584489/original/file-20240326-24-zlpsmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584489/original/file-20240326-24-zlpsmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584489/original/file-20240326-24-zlpsmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584489/original/file-20240326-24-zlpsmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584489/original/file-20240326-24-zlpsmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584489/original/file-20240326-24-zlpsmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Coronal loops are found around sunspots and in active regions of the Sun.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/coronal-loops-an-active-region-of-sun/">NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second instrument is Chils (coronal high-resolution line spectrometer). It collects high-resolution spectra, where light is separated into its component colours. Here, we are looking for a particular spectral signature of iron emitted from the corona. </p>
<p>It comprises three spectral lines, where light is emitted or absorbed in a narrow frequency range. These are each generated at a different range of temperatures (in the millions of degrees), so their relative brightness tells us about the coronal temperature in different regions. </p>
<p>Mapping the corona’s temperature informs advanced, computer-based models of its behaviour. These models must include mechanisms for how the coronal plasma is heated to such high temperatures. Such mechanisms might include the conversion of magnetic waves to thermal plasma energy, for example. If we show that some regions are hotter than others, this can be replicated in models. </p>
<p>This year’s eclipse also occurs during a time of heightened solar activity, so we could observe a <a href="https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/coronal-mass-ejections">coronal mass ejection (CME)</a>. These are huge clouds of magnetised plasma that are ejected from the Sun’s atmosphere into space. They can affect infrastructure near Earth, causing problems for vital satellites. </p>
<p>Many aspects of CMEs are poorly understood, including their early evolution near the Sun. Spectral information on CMEs will allow us to gain information on their thermodynamics, and their velocity and expansion near the Sun.</p>
<p>Our eclipse instruments have recently been proposed for a space mission called <a href="https://www.surrey.ac.uk/research-projects/feasibility-study-moon-enabled-sun-occultation-mission-mesom">Moon-enabled solar occultation mission (Mesom)</a>. The plan is to orbit the Moon to gain more frequent and extended eclipse observations. It is being planned as a UK Space Agency mission involving several countries, but led by University College London, the University of Surrey and Aberystwyth University.</p>
<p>We will also have an advanced commercial 360-degree camera to collect video of the April 8 eclipse and the observing site. The video is valuable for public outreach events, where we highlight the work we do, and helps to generate public interest in our local star, the Sun.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Morgan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The eclipse will allow scientists to get rare measurements of the Sun’s atmosphere.Huw Morgan, Reader in Physical Sciences, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2180082023-12-05T13:19:21Z2023-12-05T13:19:21ZHow a thumb-sized climate migrant with a giant crab claw is disrupting the Northeast’s Great Marsh ecosystem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560052/original/file-20231116-28-pkwiiq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=83%2C832%2C3233%2C2161&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Male fiddler crabs are small, with one oversized claw.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David S. Johnson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nine years ago, I stood on the muddy banks of <a href="https://www.mass.gov/info-details/great-marsh-acec">the Great Marsh</a>, a salt marsh an hour north of Boston, and pulled a thumb-sized crab with an absurdly large claw out of a burrow. I was looking at a fiddler crab – a species that wasn’t supposed to be north of Cape Cod, let alone north of Boston.</p>
<p>As it turned out, the marsh I was standing in would never be the same. I was witnessing climate change in action.</p>
<p>The Great Marsh is on the Gulf of Maine, the piece of the Atlantic that extends approximately from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to Nova Scotia, Canada. The marshes along the gulf are <a href="https://www.massaudubon.org/our-work/birds-wildlife/bird-conservation-research/massachusetts-important-bird-areas/iba-sites/great-marsh">critical breeding sites</a> for many bird species. But the water there is warming faster than almost <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac9819">anywhere else on the planet</a>. And with warming water comes warm-water species.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A view of a marsh with grasses growing along a creek at sunset." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560051/original/file-20231116-19-nva80e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560051/original/file-20231116-19-nva80e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560051/original/file-20231116-19-nva80e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560051/original/file-20231116-19-nva80e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560051/original/file-20231116-19-nva80e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560051/original/file-20231116-19-nva80e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560051/original/file-20231116-19-nva80e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marsh grass is essential for both habitat and adapting to sea-level rise in the Great Marsh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David S. Johnson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-already-disrupting-us-forests-and-coasts-heres-what-were-seeing-at-5-long-term-research-sites-164906">Maryland blue crab</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsu217">black sea bass</a>, both southern species, are now being caught in <a href="https://www.manomet.org/bluecrab/">Maine lobster traps</a>. And fiddler crabs, whose charismatic males have oversized claws to attract mates and defend against rivals, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4203">are marching up the Eastern Seaboard</a>.</p>
<p>This rapid migration is due, in part, to their young. While adult fiddler crabs scuttle on the mud, their young swim in the water and are carried by the currents. Warming waters allow them to complete their life cycle, and currents carry the next generation farther north.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.vims.edu/about/directory/faculty/johnson_d.php">marine ecologist who has worked in the Great Marsh for decades and studies climate migrants</a> – species that have shifted or expanded their ranges due to climate change – I want to know how these migrations affect the ecosystems they move into. I was surprised to find fiddler crabs in the Great Marsh, but I was more surprised by how they affected the marsh.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A canal through a marsh, with boats on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560214/original/file-20231117-19-z9lafq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560214/original/file-20231117-19-z9lafq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560214/original/file-20231117-19-z9lafq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560214/original/file-20231117-19-z9lafq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560214/original/file-20231117-19-z9lafq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560214/original/file-20231117-19-z9lafq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560214/original/file-20231117-19-z9lafq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Rowley River in Rowley, Mass., at low tide in the Great Marsh. Marshes are critical for recreational and commercial activities such as clamming, fishing, boating and birding.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David S. Johnson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fiddler friend turns foe</h2>
<p>Salt marshes are grasslands flooded daily by the sea. Imagine a Midwest prairie as oceanfront property.</p>
<p>South of Cape Cod, decades of research has shown that when fiddler crabs are present, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1940564">grass is more productive</a>. Fiddler-crab poop and burrows release nutrients and fuel plant growth. They are the earthworms of the salt marsh – they help plants grow.</p>
<p>But in the Great Marsh, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4203">it isn’t working that way</a>.</p>
<p>Digging by fiddler crabs reduced the biomass of shoots and leaves in the Great Marsh by 40% and roots by 30% over the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4203">course of the summers of 2020 and 2021</a>. That’s the opposite of what we would predict for summer growth.</p>
<p>I was surprised because the crabs were coexisting with the same plant species, <em><a href="https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/spartina/alterniflora/">Spartina alterniflora</a></em>, in the Great Marsh as they were south of Cape Cod.</p>
<p><iframe id="ICMoY" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ICMoY/11/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Why the different impacts? One reason is that while they may be the same species, these plants haven’t evolved with fiddler crabs as their southern kin have. Fiddler crabs don’t eat the grass, but when they dig, they damage <em>Spartina’s</em> roots. Plants in southern areas have adapted to this damage and now benefit from it, but plants in the North have yet to adapt. </p>
<h2>A chain reaction through the ecosystem</h2>
<p>The harm from this disruption can go well beyond the grasses to affect the rest of the Great Marsh food web.</p>
<p>Insects, spiders, snails and small crustaceans all rely on the grasses for food. These animals, in turn, are food for fish, shrimp and crabs. Less plant biomass could lead to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-018-0265-x">fewer fish</a> and shrimp. The <a href="https://www.massaudubon.org/our-work/birds-wildlife/bird-conservation-research/massachusetts-important-bird-areas/iba-sites/great-marsh">many birds that breed</a> in the marsh and stop there during migration rely on that food web.</p>
<p>Will this harmful relationship with crabs last forever for the plants? Probably not. <em>Spartina</em> has been able to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.16371">adapt to new conditions within decades</a>. Plants in the Great Marsh, and the rest of the Gulf of Maine, will likely adapt to the fiddler’s presence over time, too.</p>
<p>In the meantime, however, fiddler crabs may magnify the impacts of climate change in the area.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560060/original/file-20231116-23-ed38g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a US Fish and Wildfire uniform kneels beside a ditch in the marsh." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560060/original/file-20231116-23-ed38g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560060/original/file-20231116-23-ed38g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560060/original/file-20231116-23-ed38g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560060/original/file-20231116-23-ed38g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560060/original/file-20231116-23-ed38g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560060/original/file-20231116-23-ed38g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560060/original/file-20231116-23-ed38g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nancy Pau, a wildlife biologist at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, north of Boston, points to salt marsh grasses, which are essential for building up soil to help marshes survive sea-level rise.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwsnortheast/14441512407/in/photolist-o19wve">Margie Brenner/USFWS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Accelerated sea level rise driven by warming temperatures already <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.11444">threatens to drown the Great Marsh</a>. Salt marshes have kept pace with sea-level rise for millennia the same way you might deal with rising water threatening your house – by building up. Plants build marshes by trapping sediment brought in with each tide. Less grass could mean less marsh, and the marsh could drown.</p>
<p>Fiddler crabs also reduce the Great Marsh’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.3354/meps08708">ability to store carbon</a>. Salt marshes are giant compost piles that take centuries to rot, if ever. Every gardener knows that temperature and oxygen get a compost pile cooking. This is why you turn your compost.</p>
<p>Each year, dead plant roots are buried in soils with no oxygen. As a result, decomposition is greatly slowed, allowing the “compost” and carbon to build up and be stored. Because of this, salt marshes are <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/ecosystems/coastal-blue-carbon">critical as places that store carbon</a>, keeping it out of the atmosphere where it would contribute to climate change. However, burrows from fiddler crabs stimulate decomposition. The dead plants begin to rot, and carbon, once buried, is released.</p>
<h2>Climate migrants are found worldwide</h2>
<p>Fiddler crabs are just one of thousands of climate migrants we’ve seen worldwide. While ecosystems will adapt as climate migrants arrive, they will likely never be the same.</p>
<p>In Australia, when an herbivorous sea urchin expanded its range south, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-008-1043-9">plant and animal diversity plummeted after kelp forests were stripped bare</a>. In California, a predatory nudibranch (aka a sea slug) reduced the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-011-1633-7">local population of other nudibranchs</a> when it migrated north. In Antarctica, krill <a href="https://www.vims.edu/research/topics/global_change/ts_archive/krill_range.php">are shifting south</a>. Krill are the primary diet for whales, penguins and seals, so this shift could disrupt the Antarctic food web.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A krill swims through dark water off Antarctica feasting on phytolankton." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560229/original/file-20231118-24-fcrm6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560229/original/file-20231118-24-fcrm6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560229/original/file-20231118-24-fcrm6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560229/original/file-20231118-24-fcrm6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560229/original/file-20231118-24-fcrm6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560229/original/file-20231118-24-fcrm6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560229/original/file-20231118-24-fcrm6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shrimplike krill are essential food for many species, including whales. They make up about a quarter of the Gentoo penguin’s diet in Antarctica.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/106398176@N07/10544282175/">Beth Simmons/Palmer Station LTER</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But it’s not always bad news when climate migrants show up.</p>
<p>When mangroves replace marshes in the southern United States, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.12571">store more carbon</a>. Climate migrants can also benefit fisheries.</p>
<p>My lab studies the blue crab, famous in the Chesapeake Bay, which generated over <a href="https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/foss/f?p=215:200:409148916679:Mail::::">US$200 million in dockside landings in 2022</a>. Now that blue crabs are <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-already-disrupting-us-forests-and-coasts-heres-what-were-seeing-at-5-long-term-research-sites-164906">being found in lobster pots in Maine</a>, a fishery could be developed in northern Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. However, it’s unknown how blue crabs and lobsters will get along.</p>
<p>In Virginia, warming waters have brought <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/mcf2.10143">an abundance of white shrimp</a> along with <a href="https://www.bayjournal.com/news/climate_change/warm-temperatures-move-more-shrimp-into-chesapeake-waters/article_e55ea8ca-5479-11ec-a1c3-4f6085190504.html">a new fishery</a>. To the delight of anglers, the snook – a fun sportfish – has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234083">expanded into the Big Bend of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico</a>.</p>
<h2>More migration is still to come</h2>
<p>The year 2023 set a record for heat waves <a href="https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/">in the world’s oceans</a>, and with greenhouse gases emissions still rising, <a href="https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/">warming will continue</a>. </p>
<p>While climate migrants are not considered invasive species, they can change ecosystems, as we’re already seeing in the Great Marsh. It’s important to understand how that happens, and whether ecosystems can adapt as species continue to change their ZIP codes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218008/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David S. Johnson receives funding from the National Science Foundation.. </span></em></p>South of Cape Cod, fiddler crabs and marsh grass have long had a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s a different story in the North, where the harms can ricochet through ecosystems.David Samuel Johnson, Associate Professor of Marine Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2172322023-11-09T22:35:27Z2023-11-09T22:35:27ZMaine voters don’t like their electric utilities, but they balked at paying billions to buy them out<p>Frustration with electric utilities is universal today. Whether it’s concerns over <a href="https://www.maine.gov/mpuc/regulated-utilities/electricity/delivery-rates">high rates</a>, <a href="https://www.ktvu.com/news/aging-infrastructure-missing-data-and-backlog-of-repairs-continue-to-plague-pge-new-state-report-shows">poor service</a> or a combination of both, people are constantly looking for a better answer to the systems that serve them.</p>
<p>In the Nov. 7, 2023, election, voters in Maine had a chance to consider a new model for electricity service that would replace the state’s <a href="https://mainebeacon.com/cmp-versant-once-again-ranked-last-in-residential-customer-satisfaction-survey/">two widely unpopular private utilities</a>, but they balked in the face of multibillion-dollar cost projections. </p>
<p>This decision took the form of <a href="https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/ballotquestionsnov2023.html">two ballot questions</a>. Question 3 asked whether voters wanted to create a new publicly owned power company, dubbed Pine Tree Power, to take over the existing assets of Maine’s two privately owned utilities. The related Question 1 asked whether consumer-owned electric utilities should have to get public approval before taking on more than US$1 billion in debt. Voters <a href="https://wgme.com/news/local/2023-election-results-for-maine">adopted Question 1 and soundly defeated Question 3</a>.</p>
<p>Municipal ownership of utilities is not new: Across the U.S., <a href="https://www.publicpower.org/public-power/stats-and-facts">about 2,000 communities have public power utilities</a>. In Nebraska, <a href="https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=NE">all electricity providers are publicly owned</a>.</p>
<p>But private utilities <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/pge-us-sanfrancisco-assets/pge-turns-down-san-franciscos-2-5-bln-offer-to-buy-assets-idUKL3N26W40A">often fight against public takeover attempts</a> – and Maine was no exception. The parent companies of Central Maine Power and Versant Power <a href="https://www.bangordailynews.com/2023/11/07/politics/maine-voters-reject-utility-takeover-after-heavy-spending-from-cmp-and-versant/">spent nearly $40 million</a> campaigning against the ballot measures, compared with $1.2 million on the pro-public power side.</p>
<p>At the University of Florida’s <a href="https://warrington.ufl.edu/public-utility-research-center/">Public Utility Research Center</a>, I work with utilities and regulators around the world to assess different ways of structuring power companies. Questions about what kinds of utilities best serve the public have <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-battle-over-control-of-pgande-means-for-us-utility-customers-126992">intensified</a> in recent years. As the Maine vote shows, people want different and sometimes competing things from their utility systems.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ikUiajyT9H8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Maine utilities have struggled to modernize their networks and cope with increasing outages caused by climate-driven storms.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Three basic structures</h2>
<p>There are three basic ownership models for electric utilities. Investor-owned utilities, or IOUs, are owned by private shareholders, who might live next door or halfway around the world. Their stock is publicly traded, and their CEOs have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders as well as to serve their customers.</p>
<p>Municipally owned utilities, often known as munis, are owned locally, generally by the government of the city they serve. Some municipal utilities also serve customers in surrounding areas.</p>
<p>Cooperative utilities are owned entirely by their customers, much like housing or food co-ops. Initially, cooperatives tended to be located in more rural zones. Some of these areas, such as <a href="https://www.lcec.net/">southwest Florida</a>, have grown so rapidly that the term “rural cooperative” no longer applies. </p>
<p>Both munis and cooperatives operate as nonprofits. There is no consistent nationwide link between rates and ownership structure, but it is notable that five of the nine municipal and cooperative utilities in <a href="https://www.maine.gov/mpuc/regulated-utilities/electricity/delivery-rates">Maine</a> charge less then 15 cents per kilowatt-hour for residential customers, compared with 27 to 30 cents for Central Maine Power and Versant. This may have influenced voters’ perception that a municipal utility could provide power at lower prices. </p>
<p><iframe id="lumEG" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lumEG/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Municipal utilities do return a portion of their revenues to their investors, but a muni’s investor is the city it serves. According to the American Public Power Association, in 2020, public power utilities <a href="https://www.publicpower.org/system/files/documents/2023-Public-Power-Statistical-Report.pdf">returned a median of 6.1% of their revenues</a> to the communities they served. This return allows local governments to keep taxes lower than would otherwise be necessary to provide government services.</p>
<p>These utilities are also regulated in different ways. Investor-owned utilities are regulated by state <a href="https://www.naruc.org/">public utility commissions</a>, which oversee everything from what kinds of facilities to build and where to build them to how to reflect those costs in electricity rates. </p>
<p>Municipally owned and cooperative utilities are typically regulated on a limited basis by state public utility commissions – usually on matters of safety, reliability or the utilities’ impacts on the rest of the grid. Responsibility for municipal utility rates lies with either the city council or an independent local utility board. Cooperative utilities typically set their rates through a board elected by their customers.</p>
<h2>Maine’s approach</h2>
<p>The structure proposed in Maine was a fascinating hybrid case. Pine Tree Power’s ownership would have closely mirrored that of a municipal utility, governed by a board, but its rates would have been regulated by the Maine Public Utilities Commission. It is unclear what the board’s responsibilities would have been.</p>
<p>Further, since the public utility commission would have been required to set rates according to the actual costs of providing service, it is unclear whether Pine Tree Power would have been allowed to charge rates sufficient to return revenue to the state, similar to what most municipal utilities do. </p>
<p>There was intense debate about Pine Tree Power’s potential benefits. <a href="https://pinetreepower.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/review-and-assessment-of-lei-model-2020-1.pdf">One study</a> showed that shifting from private to public power would produce significant benefits, while <a href="https://maineaffordableenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Whitepaper-Analysis-of-Government-Controlled-Power-in-Maine.pdf">another</a> showed significant costs. A <a href="https://legislature.maine.gov/doc/4350">third study</a> forecast long-term benefits but short-term costs, primarily from buying out the state’s two private utilities. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558670/original/file-20231109-23-ksakcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A 1942 sign in east central Oklahoma announces that local power is provided at cost by a cooperative utility." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558670/original/file-20231109-23-ksakcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558670/original/file-20231109-23-ksakcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558670/original/file-20231109-23-ksakcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558670/original/file-20231109-23-ksakcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558670/original/file-20231109-23-ksakcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558670/original/file-20231109-23-ksakcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558670/original/file-20231109-23-ksakcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rural electrification was a central element of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The 1936 Rural Electrification Act authorized low-interest federal loans to local cooperatives that would build and maintain power plants and lines and charge reasonable fees for membership.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=RU007">Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a municipalization, the cost to buy out the private utility strongly influences how much net benefit will result – and it’s not as simple as writing a check for the book value of the assets. Typically, price determination is a quasi-judicial process overseen by an arbitrator. </p>
<p>For example, when Winter Park, Florida, took control of the local assets of its power provider in 2005, the city estimated the value of the physical assets at $15.8 million. The eventual purchase price determined by an arbitrator was <a href="https://doee.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ddoe/publication/attachments/An%20Analysis%20of%20Municipalization%20and%20Related%20Utility%20Practices.pdf">just over $42 million</a>. The city also incurred legal and technical support costs. Winter Park issued almost $49 million in bonds to cover all of the costs of the acquisition.</p>
<h2>Maine’s cost safeguard</h2>
<p>One curious element of the Maine vote that could have future impacts is the voter approval process under Question 1, which was adopted. Typically, when a community municipalizes its electric power, voters would consider an initial referendum authorizing the government to explore the possibility of purchasing the private utility’s assets, and then a second referendum when the costs of the purchase were known. </p>
<p>The second vote would be more specific – something like, “Should the City issue bonds in the amount of $200 million to finalize the purchase of the assets of XYZ Corp. for the express purpose of establishing a municipal utility?”</p>
<p>This approach is expensive to administer, since it requires two votes, and a defeat at either stage can stop the acquisition process. But it also safeguards voters, since it ensures that they have information about how much municipalizing their utility will cost before they vote to approve it.</p>
<p>Cost estimates for buying out Maine’s utilities and creating Pine Tree Power <a href="https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2023-10-05/heres-everything-we-know-about-the-referendum-to-replace-cmp-and-versant-with-pine-tree-power">ranged from $5 billion to $13.5 billion</a>, and buyout opponents – including Maine Gov. Janet Mills – <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/maine-votes-takeover-cmp-versant-pine-tree-power/696078/">strongly emphasized the potential price tag</a>. However, the fact that voters approved Question 1 might actually make a future municipalization vote more likely to pass, since voters now know they will have a safeguard of knowing the purchase price prior to their final approval. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/Cw5XjbBMfXq/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link\u0026igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Ultimately, in my view, there is no best model for utility ownership and operation. One strength of private utilities is that they are subject to clear, consistent oversight by professional utility regulators. For their part, municipal and cooperative utilities offer local control and greater flexibility to address local concerns. However, all types of power companies <a href="https://www.powermag.com/public-power-and-ious-the-same-but-different/">face daunting challenges</a>, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/electricity-grid-cybersecurity-will-be-expensive-who-will-pay-and-how-much-114137">grid cybersecurity</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/bidens-proposed-tenfold-increase-in-solar-power-would-remake-the-us-electricity-system-167605">clean energy transition</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-jobs-are-booming-but-too-few-employees-have-sustainability-skills-to-fill-them-here-are-4-ways-to-close-the-gap-193953">hiring and retaining skilled workers</a>.</p>
<p>As I see it, a community’s best strategy is to choose a model that has strengths residents value, and whose weaknesses are less important or can be mitigated in other ways. While Maine voters may not love the system they have, their fear of the unknown was apparently stronger.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Theodore Kury is the Director of Energy Studies at the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center, which is sponsored in part by the Florida electric and gas utilities and the Florida Public Service Commission. In 2018, he was principal investigator on a grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund to study the value of municipal utilities in a changing marketplace. That work informs portions of this piece. However, the Center maintains sole editorial control of this and any other work.</span></em></p>Power companies can be publicly or privately owned and may report to corporate boards, local governments or co-op members. But there’s no one best way to deliver electricity reliably and affordably.Theodore J. Kury, Director of Energy Studies, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1943882022-11-10T18:46:04Z2022-11-10T18:46:04ZThe ‘carpetbagger’ label that Fetterman stuck on Oz may have been key in defeating him<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494684/original/file-20221110-14-fd6c36.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C16%2C3583%2C2379&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Fetterman, left, relentlessly ridiculed Mehmet Oz, right, with the label 'carpetbagger' during the U.S. Senate campaign, which Fetterman ultimately won.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2022PennsylvaniaSenate/921b5a36c84943bc997caa2c459badc3/photo?Query=Fetterman%20Oz&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=20&currentItemNo=2">AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz came to a close very early on the morning of Nov. 9, 2022, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/08/us/elections/results-pennsylvania-us-senate.html">with Fetterman securing a crucial victory for Democrats</a>. Oz had closed the gap in recent weeks thanks to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-jr-mocks-john-fettermans-health-as-pennsylvania-race-tightens-2022-11">increased attention on Fetterman’s health</a> stemming from the stroke Fetterman suffered back in May. But ultimately, Fetterman may have prevailed thanks to his relentless trolling of his opponent, mainly for being a resident of neighboring New Jersey rather than the state he was running to represent.</p>
<p>Throughout the campaign, Fetterman ran <a href="https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2022/07/08/fetterman-to-attack-oz-s-residency-in-ads-including-with-airplane-banner-over-new-jersey-beaches/stories/202207080095">ad after ad</a> using Oz’s own words to highlight his deep Jersey roots. His campaign <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/john-fetterman-petition-dr-oz-new-jersey-hall-of-fame-2022-7">started a petition</a> to nominate Oz for the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Fetterman even enlisted very-Jersey celebrities like <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/fetterman-ad-new-jersey/">Snooki of “Jersey Shore</a>” to draw attention to his charge that Oz was a carpetbagger in the Pennsylvania race: a candidate with no authentic connection to an area, who moved there for the sole purpose of political ambition. </p>
<p>Fetterman’s attacks against Oz may have been entertaining, and they seem to have worked for Fetterman, but they aren’t unprecedented. Such characterizations have been helpful in past elections. </p>
<p>Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, won a tight race in Montana in 2018 in part by dubbing his out-of-town opponent “<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/leading-montana-gop-senate-candidate-matt-rosendales-thick-maryland-accent.html">Maryland Matt</a>.” Democrat Joe Manchin has held on for so long to a Senate seat in a deep red state by “<a href="https://rollcall.com/2018/11/06/west-virginias-joe-manchin-stays-put-in-trump-country/">play[ing] up his West Virginia roots</a>.” Meanwhile, Maine Democrat (and native Rhode Islander) Sara Gideon got caught – and derided for – <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/sara-gideon-senate-democratic-candidate-from-l-l-bean-home-town-erases-logo-from-her-patagonia-jacket-in-campaign-video">sporting a Patagonia fleece</a> in a state that famously is home to L.L. Bean. <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/why-susan-collins-won.html">She lost to Maine native Susan Collins</a> in the 2020 Senate race even as Joe Biden carried the state by nine points.</p>
<p>Given how heavily defined modern congressional elections are by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2015.11.001">partisanship</a> and by the increasing focus on <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo27596045.html">national rather than local issues</a>, it was reasonable for commentators to wonder whether this kind of messaging is actually effective as a campaign strategy. Do voters really still punish carpetbaggers and reward candidates with deep ties to their districts?</p>
<p>Fetterman’s successful campaign, along with new findings from political science research, tell us that the answer is an emphatic “yes.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479995/original/file-20220818-23247-dekuzj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large man in a blue shirt fistbumps a bunch of young men sitting on a flatbed truck at a rural gathering." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479995/original/file-20220818-23247-dekuzj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479995/original/file-20220818-23247-dekuzj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479995/original/file-20220818-23247-dekuzj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479995/original/file-20220818-23247-dekuzj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479995/original/file-20220818-23247-dekuzj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479995/original/file-20220818-23247-dekuzj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479995/original/file-20220818-23247-dekuzj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, talks with state basketball champions at the Crow Fair in Crow Agency, Mont., on Aug. 19, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-jon-tester-d-mont-talks-with-state-basketball-champions-news-photo/1021367952?adppopup=true">Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Some politics is local</h2>
<p>In my recent book, “<a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/12157973/home_field_advantage">Home Field Advantage</a>,” I created a “Local Roots Index” for each modern member of the U.S. House of Representatives to measure how deeply rooted they are in the geography of the districts they represent. The index pulled from decades of geographic data about members’ pre-Congress lives, including whether they were born in their home district, went to school there or owned a local business. </p>
<p>High index scores meant members had most or all of these life experiences within the boundaries of their district; low scores meant they had little to no local life experience in their district.</p>
<p>I found that members of Congress with higher Local Roots Index scores perform far better in their elections than their more “carpetbagging” colleagues without local roots in their districts. Deeply rooted members are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1532673X20959606">twice as likely</a> to run unopposed in their primary elections, and they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07343469.2020.1811425">significantly outperform</a> their party’s presidential nominees in their districts. They win more elections by bigger margins and don’t need to spend as much money to notch their victories.</p>
<h2>Why do voters care about roots?</h2>
<p>Why do voters respond positively to deeply rooted candidates and negatively to their carpetbagging counterparts?</p>
<p>One explanation is that deep roots offer candidates a number of practical campaign benefits. A deeply rooted candidate tends to have more intimate knowledge of the district, including its electorate, its economy and industries, its unique culture and its political climate. Deeply rooted candidates also enjoy naturally higher name recognition in the community, more extensive social and political networks and greater access to local donors and vendors for their campaigns.</p>
<p>Other work has theorized that local roots help candidates tap into a shared identity with their voters that is less tangible but meaningful. Scholars like <a href="https://kalmunis.com/">Kal Munis</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102345">have shown</a> that when voters have strong psychological attachments to a particular place, it has major impacts on voting behavior. And in a recent survey I conducted with <a href="https://www.law.gwu.edu/david-fontana">David Fontana</a>, we found that voters consistently rated homegrown U.S. Senate candidates as more relatable and trustworthy, and cast votes for them at higher rates. </p>
<p>Just as you’d trust a true born-and-raised local to give you advice about where to eat in town over someone who just moved there, so too do voters trust deeply rooted candidates to represent them in Washington.</p>
<h2>‘Intimate sympathy’ with the voters</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480111/original/file-20220819-3511-zgyd4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A ruddy-cheeked older main with long white hair and a white shirt with a black cloak over it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480111/original/file-20220819-3511-zgyd4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480111/original/file-20220819-3511-zgyd4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480111/original/file-20220819-3511-zgyd4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480111/original/file-20220819-3511-zgyd4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480111/original/file-20220819-3511-zgyd4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480111/original/file-20220819-3511-zgyd4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480111/original/file-20220819-3511-zgyd4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Founding Father James Madison believed that political representatives should have an ‘intimate sympathy’ with the people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-james-madison-american-politician-president-of-news-photo/164078290?adppopup=true">DeAgostini/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Political science tells us that voters care about candidates’ roots, and we know a bit about why. But should they? Deep ties to a place may create a sense of connection and familiarity that voters appreciate, but at what cost?</p>
<p>On the one hand, it’s natural to wonder whether the flood of media and campaign attention to Oz’s residency status is distracting from a discussion of more pressing issues like the economy, climate change and the state of American democracy. There’s also a reasonable concern that a healthy attachment to one’s home place could cross the line into outright nativism and unfair vilification of “outsiders” and immigrants.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the framers of the Constitution devised – for better or worse – a geographically focused system of elections and representation. Party is important, but places are different from each other even if they have similar partisan makeups – think San Francisco and New York City – and have different needs. This means having members of Congress who have lived in and understand the place they are elected to represent. </p>
<p>As a result, shared local ties could also serve as a line of defense against steadily declining levels of <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust-in-government-1958-2022/">trust in government</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/08/02/americas-hidden-crisis-power-place/">politicians</a>. Perhaps locally rooted representation can help imbue a sense of what <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed52.asp">James Madison and Alexander Hamilton called an “intimate sympathy</a>” with the people – and reinvigorate faith in public officials and institutions. </p>
<p><em>This story is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/dr-oz-should-be-worried-voters-punish-carpetbaggers-and-new-research-shows-why-188569">a story that was originally published</a> on Aug. 19, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194388/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the hard-fought contest between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz for the US Senate, Fetterman slammed Oz with charges he was a carpetbagger. That may have helped Fetterman win the race.Charlie Hunt, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boise State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1847202022-06-22T14:39:19Z2022-06-22T14:39:19ZThe common eider sea duck contributes to its own conservation by donating its feathers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469379/original/file-20220616-26-q27x18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C29%2C4947%2C3293&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A group of female eider ducks with one male.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Simon Laroche)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The common eider is a sea duck that nests in colonies on islands along the North American coast from Maine to Labrador, and in the estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence in Québec.</p>
<p>Eiderdown feathers cling to each other thanks to microscopic hooks on the barbs, the basic element of a down feather. The tangle of barbs, made up of barbules, traps air and give down its insulating power. These exceptional characteristics of eiderdown have been used for hundreds of years to make bed duvets.</p>
<p>In Canada, eiderdown harvesting is regulated by the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/m-7.01/">Migratory Birds Convention Act</a>. Collectors must obtain a permit from Environment and Climate Change Canada and follow a rigorous protocol when visiting a colony to minimize disturbances. Pickers must also record the number of nests they observe in a colony to help track eider populations.</p>
<p>As an associate professor in the department of biological sciences at Université du Québec à Montréal, I research the ecology and management of migratory birds, particularly ducks and geese. As a director of the non-profit conservation organization <a href="https://duvetnor.com/en/about-us/mission/">Société Duvetnor</a>, I co-ordinate eiderdown harvesting operations in the St. Lawrence estuary islands. </p>
<hr>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469058/original/file-20220615-9549-jj1phn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469058/original/file-20220615-9549-jj1phn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469058/original/file-20220615-9549-jj1phn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469058/original/file-20220615-9549-jj1phn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469058/original/file-20220615-9549-jj1phn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469058/original/file-20220615-9549-jj1phn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469058/original/file-20220615-9549-jj1phn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>This article is part of our series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca-fr/topics/fleuve-saint-laurent-116908">The St. Lawrence River: In depth</a>.
Don’t miss new articles on this mythical river of remarkable beauty. Our experts look at its fauna, flora and history, and the issues it faces. This series is brought to you by <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca-fr">La Conversation</a>.</em></p>
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<h2>Down keeps eggs warm</h2>
<p>Each colony has from a <a href="https://duvetnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/management-plan.pdf">few dozen to a few thousand nests</a>. Eiders share their nesting islands with herring gulls and sea gulls, which are predators of eider eggs and ducklings. </p>
<p>Females return year after year to the same island to nest and may reuse the same nest. Colony changes are very rare, hence the importance of protecting nesting islands. A female begins to nest at about <a href="https://duvetnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/management-plan.pdf">age three and can live to 20 years</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469374/original/file-20220616-16-txo2j0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Female eider on her nest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469374/original/file-20220616-16-txo2j0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469374/original/file-20220616-16-txo2j0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469374/original/file-20220616-16-txo2j0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469374/original/file-20220616-16-txo2j0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469374/original/file-20220616-16-txo2j0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469374/original/file-20220616-16-txo2j0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469374/original/file-20220616-16-txo2j0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Female eider on her nest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Francis St-Pierre)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Each female eider lays between <a href="https://duvetnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/management-plan.pdf">four and six eggs</a> in a nest on the ground that she lines with down to keep the eggs warm and camouflage them from predators’ view. By plucking the down feathers from their breasts, females expose an incubator plate that allows better heat transfer to the eggs to ensure embryo development.</p>
<h2>Population monitoring</h2>
<p>Since 2003, I have led a research project that aims to understand the population dynamics of estuary eiders. Members of my team join down gatherers in capturing and banding females as they leave their nests. Banding data make it possible to estimate, among other things, the survival and fidelity rates of females at the colonies. Our results showed that <a href="https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.22122">eider populations in the estuary are relatively stable</a>. </p>
<p>Only one visit per colony is allowed per year, and harvesting must be synchronized with the end of incubation, which lasts an average of <a href="https://duvetnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/management-plan.pdf">26 days</a>. Down cannot be harvested after nesting, as it quickly becomes soggy from dew and rain and therefore unusable. Hatching is fairly synchronous, and females leave their nest with their young no later than <a href="https://duvetnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/management-plan.pdf">24 hours after the last egg hatches</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469376/original/file-20220616-19-3xnpo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Common eider nest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469376/original/file-20220616-19-3xnpo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469376/original/file-20220616-19-3xnpo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469376/original/file-20220616-19-3xnpo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469376/original/file-20220616-19-3xnpo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469376/original/file-20220616-19-3xnpo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469376/original/file-20220616-19-3xnpo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469376/original/file-20220616-19-3xnpo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Common eider nest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Francis St-Pierre)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the St. Lawrence estuary, down harvesting was done in early June about 25 years ago. It now takes place at the end of May. This <a href="https://duvetnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/management-plan.pdf">advance in the eider nesting season</a> demonstrates the effects of climate change. </p>
<p>The team of gatherers must progress systematically through a colony without retracing their steps to allow the females to return to their nests, which they do within minutes or hours of the pickers’ passage.</p>
<p>The amount of down harvested from each nest varies according to the amount of down present. The rule is to leave enough down to cover the eggs, as a female would do when leaving her nest, which she does once a day to go drink. Unlike other duck species, <a href="https://duvetnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/management-plan.pdf">female eiders do not feed during the incubation period</a>. This particular behaviour is possibly the result of predation pressure by gulls on eider nests.</p>
<h2>A luxury resource</h2>
<p>Down harvested from colonies must be cleaned to remove twigs, feathers and other debris that end up in nests. In fact, only 15 to 20 per cent of the down harvested from a colony can be cleaned and made into duvets. It takes about 170 nests to produce one kilogram of clean down. Annual global production of eiderdown is between 4,000 and 5,000 kilograms, of which about <a href="https://duvetnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/management-plan.pdf">70 per cent comes from Iceland, 20 per cent from Canada and the rest from Greenland, Norway, Finland and Russia</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469375/original/file-20220616-14-q27x18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="bags containing down" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469375/original/file-20220616-14-q27x18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469375/original/file-20220616-14-q27x18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469375/original/file-20220616-14-q27x18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469375/original/file-20220616-14-q27x18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469375/original/file-20220616-14-q27x18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469375/original/file-20220616-14-q27x18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469375/original/file-20220616-14-q27x18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Down collected from 2,530 eider nests on Isle Blanche by Société Duvetnor in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Francis St-Pierre)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Considering that a duvet requires about one kilogram of down, it is clear that the annual production of duvets is very limited, hence the high price that can vary between $6,000 and $10,000 depending on the size of the duvet. The wholesale price obtained for the sale of down varies from year to year and can reach $1,500 per kilogram.</p>
<h2>Reinvesting profits to protect the species</h2>
<p>Société Duvetnor has been harvesting down from a dozen colonies in the estuary for 40 years. The revenues generated by down marketing have allowed Duvetnor to buy islands frequented by eiders and other seabirds species. That’s how Île aux Lièvres, the Îles du Pot à l'eau-de-vie and the Pilgrims’ Archipelago have been protected.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469378/original/file-20220616-15-azuyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="boat heading to an island" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469378/original/file-20220616-15-azuyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469378/original/file-20220616-15-azuyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469378/original/file-20220616-15-azuyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469378/original/file-20220616-15-azuyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469378/original/file-20220616-15-azuyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469378/original/file-20220616-15-azuyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469378/original/file-20220616-15-azuyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Excursion to the Pot à l'eau-de-vie Island lighthouse aboard Le Renard boat. Société Duvetnor provides this ecotourism activity thanks, in part, to income generated by eiderdown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Patric Nadeau)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The income from down also permits Duvetnor to manage an ecotourism program that gives visitors an the opportunity to discover the islands of the Lower St. Lawrence River. Stays in inns, chalets or camping allow holidaymakers to observe, among other things, broods of eider ducks that feed on small aquatic invertebrates along the island shores. </p>
<p>This close contact with nature allows visitors to be aware of the importance of conservation of these natural environments, which are protected in part by the income generated by down.</p>
<p>The eiders are, therefore, making a real contribution to their own conservation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184720/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean-François Giroux is a director of the Société Duvetnor, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of the islands of the Lower St. Lawrence and to public education through an ecotourism program. During his career as a professor at UQAM, he obtained research grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Quebec Research Fund - Nature and Technologies (FQRNT), Environment and Climate Change Canada, etc</span></em></p>The common eider nests in colonies on islands of the St. Lawrence estuary. The down that the female duck takes to fill her nest has exceptional insulating properties.Jean-François Giroux, Professeur associé, Département des sciences biologiques; écologie et aménagement des oiseaux migrateurs, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1846182022-06-22T01:56:20Z2022-06-22T01:56:20ZState funds for students at religious schools? Supreme Court says ‘yes’ in Maine case – but consequences could go beyond<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470121/original/file-20220621-7816-k6m80x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C9%2C996%2C672&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students walk by security fences installed in front of the Supreme Court.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/student-tour-groups-walk-past-the-u-s-supreme-court-news-photo/1404048984?adppopup=true">Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For nearly three-quarters of a century, one issue in education has come up before the Supreme Court more than any other: <a href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/eda_fac_pub/71/">disputes over religion</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf">Carson v. Makin</a>, a case about Maine’s tuition assistance program for students in districts without high schools of their own, continues the pattern – with potential consequences for schools, families and courts across the country.</p>
<p>On June 21, 2022, the court ruled that parents in rural districts lacking public high schools, but who receive state aid to send their children to private schools instead, can use that money for tuition at schools with faith-based curricula. In <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf">a 6-3 order</a>, the court held that Maine’s requirement that tuition assistance payments be used at “nonsectarian” schools violated <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/free_exercise_clause">the free exercise clause</a> of the First Amendment because parents could not send their children to the schools of their choice.</p>
<p>In two <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-1195_g314.pdf">recent cases</a> on <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-577_khlp.pdf">similar issues</a>, the court ruled in favor of families. Carson continues this trend of allowing more public support to students in faith-based schools, which has been developing for <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/96-552.ZS.html">more than 20 years</a>.</p>
<p>To the <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/School_choice_in_the_United_States">school choice</a> movement – which advocates affording families more options beyond traditional public schools, but having the government help foot the bill – Carson represents a chance for more parents to give their children an education in line with their religious beliefs. </p>
<p>Opponents fear that cases such as Carson could establish a precedent of requiring taxpayer dollars to fund religious teachings. Based on its most recent judgments, many legal analysts maintain that the current court <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-supreme-court-found-its-faith-and-put-religious-liberty-on-a-winning-streak-158509">is increasingly sympathetic</a> to claims that religious liberties are being threatened but, in so doing, is creating too close of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/06/30/how-supreme-courts-decision-religious-schools-just-eroded-separation-between-church-state/">a relationship between religion and government</a>.</p>
<h2>SCOTUS’ shift in thought</h2>
<p>Religion in schools emerged as a significant issue at the Supreme Court starting in 1947’s <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/330us1">Everson v. Board of Education</a>, when the justices upheld a New Jersey law allowing school boards to reimburse parents for transportation costs to and from schools, including ones that are religiously affiliated. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/">the First Amendment</a>, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” – an idea courts often interpreted as requiring “a wall of separation between church and state.” In Everson, however, the Supreme Court upheld the law as not violating the First Amendment because children, not their schools, were the primary beneficiaries.</p>
<p>Everson signaled the start of the “<a href="https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/educationlaw/n62.xml">child benefit test</a>,” an evolving legal concept that I have written about in <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/education/eda/russo_charles.php">my work on education law</a>. According to this test, which has guided many of the court’s decisions about religion, money and education, children who attend faith-based schools are the primary beneficiaries of the state aid they receive, rather than their schools. In other words, this logic reasons that the government is not directly supporting particular religions.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A yellow school bus stops, with its 'Stop' sign visible, along a country road in autumn." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470111/original/file-20220621-7816-jw2nyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470111/original/file-20220621-7816-jw2nyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470111/original/file-20220621-7816-jw2nyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470111/original/file-20220621-7816-jw2nyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470111/original/file-20220621-7816-jw2nyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470111/original/file-20220621-7816-jw2nyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470111/original/file-20220621-7816-jw2nyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Just how far can public funds go to support students in religious schools?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/school-bus-on-country-road-royalty-free-image/AB07269?adppopup=true">Stephen Simpson/Stone via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In recent years, though, the court has expanded the boundaries of what aid is allowed – as it has now done again with Carson. The decision extends the Supreme Court’s two most recent judgments on aid to students in faith-based schools: In 2017’s <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2016/15-577">Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer</a>, the Supreme Court reasoned that states cannot deny religious people or religious institutions generally available public benefits simply because they are religious. Three years later, in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2019/18-1195">Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue</a>, the court decided the state’s tuition tax credit program cannot bar private, faith-based “schools from public benefits solely because of the religious character of the schools.”</p>
<h2>Mainers’ education</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.maine.gov/legis/const/">Maine’s Constitution</a> mandates the creation of public schools. But many rural towns don’t have <a href="https://www.maine.gov/doe/sites/maine.gov.doe/files/inline-files/SAU2020_21Map_FINAL.pdf">their own secondary schools</a>: In fact, of the 260 “school administrative units” in Maine, more than half <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1088/197324/20211022151803212_Brief%20of%20Respondent%2010%2022%2021.pdf">lack a secondary school</a>. </p>
<p>In areas without access to public schools, Maine law allowed students to attend other public or private schools at public expense, but not faith-based ones. <a href="https://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/statutes/20-a/title20-Asec2951.html">The state requires</a> approved schools to be nonsectarian, “in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”</p>
<p>Carson v. Makin began in 2018 when three sets of parents unsuccessfully filed suit on behalf of their children, arguing that the rule discriminated on the basis of religion. The <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-med-1_18-cv-00327/summary">federal trial court</a> in Maine ruled in favor of the state, affirming that its tuition aid requirements did not violate the rights of the parents or their children. On appeal, the First Circuit unanimously affirmed <a href="https://casetext.com/case/carson-v-makin">in favor of the state</a>, rejecting all the parental claims.</p>
<h2>The decision</h2>
<p>When, as the parents in Carson alleged, state actions limit fundamental rights such as free exercise of religion, courts apply what is called “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/strict_scrutiny">strict scrutiny</a>,” meaning that public officials must prove they have a “compelling interest” in restricting such a right. When the Supreme Court applies “strict scrutiny,” as it did in Carson, state restrictions typically fail.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf">Writing for the court</a>, Chief Justice John Roberts declared that the Maine program “effectively penalizes the free exercise of religion.” Relying on Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza, he wrote that “a neutral benefit program in which public funds flow to religious organizations through the independent choices of private benefit recipients does not offend the Establishment Clause.” He also declared that a state’s interest in not violating the establishment clause does not justify excluding people from a public benefit because they are religious.</p>
<p>The previous recent cases dealt with schools’ status as religious schools, rather than whether their actual teaching is religious. <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca1/19-1746/19-1746-2020-10-29.html">Lower courts’ decisions</a> about Carson, on the other hand, looked at how religious schools would actually use the funds: whether they would provide an equivalent education to the one that Maine’s public schools deliver.</p>
<p>But the Supreme Court held that both “status-based” and “use-based” refusals to allow state aid for students at religious schools are “offensive to the Free Exercise Clause.”</p>
<p>As often occurs in such high-profile cases, the dissenters disagreed strongly. Justice Stephen Breyer, joined in full by Justice Elena Kagan and partially by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote of “an increased risk of religiously based social conflict when government promotes religion in the public school system.”</p>
<p>Dissenting separately, Sotomayor expressed concern that Carson is “leading us to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment. Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf">constitutional violation</a>.”</p>
<p>Carson is unlikely to end disagreements over public funds and religion – or religion and schools more generally. But two clear points emerge in Carson’s wake: the court’s ongoing support for the “child benefit test” and its continuing to lower the wall of separation between church and state in education.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/money-schools-and-religion-a-controversial-combo-returns-to-the-supreme-court-168232">an article</a> originally published on Nov. 29, 2021.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles J. Russo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Once again, the court has expanded the legal ways that public funds can be used for students at religious institutions.Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education in the School of Education and Health Sciences and Research Professor of Law, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1850152022-06-21T11:50:00Z2022-06-21T11:50:00ZWhat are PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals’ showing up in drinking water? An environmental health scientist explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469402/original/file-20220617-15-3xnpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C16%2C5599%2C3715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">PFAS, often used in water-resistant gear, also find their way into drinking water and human bodies.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/scientist-ecologist-taking-a-water-sample-in-the-royalty-free-image/1125152554">CasarsaGuru via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You’ve probably been hearing the term PFAS in the news lately as states and the U.S. government consider <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/15/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-combatting-pfas-pollution-to-safeguard-clean-drinking-water-for-all-americans/">rules and guidelines</a> for managing these “forever chemicals.” </p>
<p>Even if the term is new to you, chances are good that you’re familiar with what PFAS do. That’s because they’re found in everything from nonstick cookware to carpets to ski wax.</p>
<p>PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are a large group of human-made chemicals – currently estimated to be around 9,000 individual chemical compounds – that are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1039/D0EM00291G">used widely</a> in consumer products and industry. They can make products resistant to water, grease and stains and protect against fire. </p>
<p>Waterproof outdoor apparel and cosmetics, stain-resistant upholstery and carpets, food packaging that is designed to prevent liquid or grease from leaking through, and certain firefighting equipment often contain PFAS. In fact, <a href="https://toxicfreefuture.org/pfas-in-stain-water-resistant-products-study/">one recent study</a> found that most products labeled stain- or water-resistant contained PFAS, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c05175">another study</a> found that this is even true among products labeled as “nontoxic” or “green.” PFAS are also found in unexpected places like high-performance ski and snowboard waxes, floor waxes and medical devices.</p>
<p>At first glance, PFAS sound pretty useful, so you might be wondering “what’s the big deal?”</p>
<p>The short answer is that PFAS are harmful to human health and the environment. </p>
<p>Some of the very same chemical properties that make PFAS attractive in products also mean these chemicals will persist in the environment for generations. Because of the widespread use of PFAS, these chemicals are now present in water, soil and living organisms and can be found across almost every part of the planet, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.10.091">Arctic glaciers</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/es9003894">marine mammals</a>, remote communities living on subsistence diets, and in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.10598">98% of the American</a> public. </p>
<p>The U.S. Geological Survey estimates common types of PFAS are now in <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/tap-water-study-detects-pfas-forever-chemicals-across-us">at least 45%</a> of the country’s tap water. PFAS maker 3M, facing lawsuits, announced a <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/3m-resolves-claims-by-public-water-suppliers-supports-drinking-water-solutions-for-vast-majority-of-americans-301858581.html">$10.3 billion settlement in June 2023</a> with public water systems to pay for PFAS testing <a href="https://theconversation.com/3m-offers-10-3b-settlement-over-pfas-contamination-in-water-systems-now-how-do-you-destroy-a-forever-chemical-208362">and treatment</a>.</p>
<h2>Health risks from PFAS exposure</h2>
<p>Once people are exposed to PFAS, the chemicals remain in their bodies for a long time – months to years, depending on the specific compound – and they can accumulate over time.</p>
<p>Research consistently demonstrates that PFAS are associated with a variety of adverse health effects. A <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7906952/">recent review by a panel of experts</a> looking at research on PFAS toxicity concluded with a high degree of certainty that PFAS contribute to thyroid disease, elevated cholesterol, liver damage and kidney and testicular cancer.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman lying on her back on white carpet holds up a little girl who is pretending to fly. A white couch is behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469403/original/file-20220617-26-wyxgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469403/original/file-20220617-26-wyxgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469403/original/file-20220617-26-wyxgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469403/original/file-20220617-26-wyxgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469403/original/file-20220617-26-wyxgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469403/original/file-20220617-26-wyxgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469403/original/file-20220617-26-wyxgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Stain-resistant fabrics and carpets often contain PFAS.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/photo-of-pretty-funny-little-girl-young-mommy-royalty-free-image/1215183791">Deagreez via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Further, they concluded with a high degree of certainty that PFAS <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7906952/">also affect babies</a> exposed in utero by increasing their likelihood of being born at a lower birth weight and responding less effectively to vaccines, while impairing women’s mammary gland development, which may adversely impact a mom’s ability to breastfeed.</p>
<p>The review also found evidence that PFAS <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7906952/">may contribute to a number of other disorders</a>, though further research is needed to confirm existing findings: inflammatory bowel disease, reduced fertility, breast cancer and an increased likelihood of miscarriage and developing high blood pressure and preeclampsia during pregnancy. Additionally, current research suggests that babies exposed prenatally are at higher risk of experiencing obesity, early-onset puberty and reduced fertility later in life. </p>
<p>Collectively, this is a formidable list of diseases and disorders.</p>
<h2>Who’s regulating PFAS?</h2>
<p>PFAS chemicals have been around since the late 1930s, when <a href="https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202104/history.cfm">a DuPont scientist created one by accident</a> during a lab experiment. DuPont called it Teflon, which eventually became a household name for its use on nonstick pans. </p>
<p>Decades later, in 1998, Scotchgard maker 3M <a href="https://www.ewg.org/research/20-plus-years-epa-has-failed-regulate-forever-chemicals">notified the Environmental Protection Agency</a> that a PFAS chemical was showing up in human blood samples. At the time, 3M said low levels of the manufactured chemical had been detected in people’s blood as <a href="https://static.ewg.org/reports/2020/pfas-epa-timeline/1998_3M-Alerts-EPA.pdf">early as the 1970s</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the lengthy list of serious health risks linked to PFAS and a tremendous amount of federal investment in PFAS-related research in recent years, PFAS haven’t been regulated at the federal level in the United States.</p>
<p>The EPA has <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-new-drinking-water-health-advisories-pfas-chemicals-1-billion-bipartisan">issued advisories</a> and health-based guidelines for two PFAS compounds – PFOA and PFOS – in drinking water, though these guidelines are not legally enforceable standards. And the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has a <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/resources/info-for-health-professionals.html">toxicological profile</a> for PFAS. </p>
<p>Federal rules could be coming. The EPA has a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-strategic-roadmap-epas-commitments-action-2021-2024">road map for PFAS regulations</a> it is considering, including regulations involving drinking water. The Biden administration has said it also <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/15/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-combatting-pfas-pollution-to-safeguard-clean-drinking-water-for-all-americans/">expects to list PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances</a> under the Superfund law, a move <a href="https://www.enr.com/articles/54206-utilities-voice-pfas-liability-fear-as-chemicals-head-to-superfund-list">that worries utilities</a> and businesses that use PFAS-containing products or processes because of the expense of cleanup. </p>
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<p>States, meanwhile, have been <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528650/original/file-20230526-27-z9wg9e.png">taking their own actions</a> to protect residents against the risk of PFAS exposure. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.saferstates.com/toxic-chemicals/pfas/">At least 25 states</a> have laws targeting PFAS in various uses, such as in <a href="http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/bills/display_ps.asp?ld=1433&PID=1456&snum=129">food packaging</a> and <a href="https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb22-1345">carpets</a>. But relying on <a href="https://www.saferstates.org/toxic-chemicals/pfas/">state laws</a> places burdens on state agencies responsible for enforcing them and creates a patchwork of regulations which, in turn, place burdens on business and consumers to navigate regulatory nuances across state lines.</p>
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<h2>So, what can you do about PFAS?</h2>
<p>Based on current scientific understanding, most people are exposed to PFAS primarily through their diet, though drinking water and airborne exposures may be significant among some people, especially if they live near known PFAS-related industries or contamination.</p>
<p>The best ways to protect yourself and your family from risks associated with PFAS are to educate yourself about potential sources of exposures.</p>
<p>Products labeled as water- or stain-resistant have a good chance of containing PFAS. Check the ingredients on products you buy and watch for chemical names containing “fluor-.” Specific trade names, such as Teflon and Gore-Tex, are also likely to contain PFAS. </p>
<p>Check whether there are sources of contamination near you, <a href="https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/">such as in drinking water</a> or PFAS-related industries in the area. Some states don’t test or report PFAS contamination, so the absence of readily available information does not necessarily mean the region is free of PFAS problems.</p>
<p>For additional information about PFAS, check out the <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/index.html">Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry</a>, <a href="https://www.epa.gov/pfas">EPA</a> and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/PFAS_FactSheet.html">U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a> websites or contact your state or local public health department. </p>
<p>If you believe you have been exposed to PFAS and are concerned about your health, contact your health care provider. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has a succinct report to help health care professionals understand the <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/activities/assessments.html">clinical implications of PFAS exposure</a>.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated July 11, 2023, with the USGS study on PFAS in drinking water.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185015/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Crawford has received funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.</span></em></p>These chemicals are now present in water, soil and living organisms and can be found across almost every part of the planet – including 98% of the American public.Kathryn Crawford, Assistant Professor of Environmental Health, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1682322021-11-29T13:29:51Z2021-11-29T13:29:51ZMoney, schools and religion: A controversial combo returns to the Supreme Court<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432859/original/file-20211119-17-r9f8hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C0%2C2077%2C1332&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Carson v. Makin comes on the heels of other SCOTUS cases about aid to students in religious schools.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">franckreporter/E+ via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>An updated version of this article was published on June 21, 2022. <a href="https://theconversation.com/state-funds-for-students-at-religious-schools-supreme-court-says-yes-in-maine-case-but-consequences-could-go-beyond-184618">Read it here</a>.</em></p>
<p>Since 1947, one topic in education has regularly come up at the Supreme Court more often than any other: <a href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/eda_fac_pub/71/">disputes over religion</a>.</p>
<p>That year, in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/330us1">Everson v. Board of Education</a>, the justices upheld a New Jersey law allowing school boards to reimburse parents for transportation costs to and from schools, including religious ones. According to <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/">the First Amendment</a>, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” – an idea courts often interpreted as requiring “a wall of separation between church and state.” In Everson, however, the Supreme Court upheld the law as not violating the First Amendment because children, not their schools, were the primary beneficiaries. </p>
<p>This became known as the “<a href="https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/educationlaw/n62.xml">child benefit test</a>,” an evolving legal idea used to justify state aid to students who attend religious schools. In recent years, the court has expanded the boundaries of what aid is allowed. Will it push them further?</p>
<p>This question was in the spotlight Dec. 8, 2021, when <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/20-1088_bp7c.pdf">the court heard arguments</a> in a case from Maine, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1088">Carson v. Makin</a>. Carson has drawn intense interest from educators and religious-liberty advocates across the country – as illustrated by the large number of <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/carson-v-makin/">amicus curiae</a>, or “friend of the court,” briefs filed by groups with interests in the outcome.</p>
<p>To the <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/School_choice_in_the_United_States">school choice</a> movement – which advocates affording families more options beyond traditional public schools – Carson represents a chance for more parents to give their children an education in line with their religious beliefs. Opponents fear it could establish a precedent of requiring taxpayer dollars to fund religious teachings. </p>
<h2>SCOTUS’ shift in thought</h2>
<p>As a faculty member <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/education/eda/russo_charles.php">who focuses on education law</a>, I have often written about the Supreme Court’s decisions about religion in schools. In the almost 75 years since Everson, the court’s thinking about aid to students who attend religious schools has evolved.</p>
<p>In 1993, justices heard <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1992/92-94">Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District</a>, which centered on a student who was deaf. Under the <a href="https://sites.ed.gov/idea/">Individuals with Disabilities Education Act</a>, the public school board provided him with an interpreter. When he enrolled in a Catholic high school, the justices ruled that the board still had to provide him with an interpreter because this was a discrete service that assisted him and no one else. Ever since, the court has allowed greater aid to students attending religious schools.</p>
<p>Two recent judgments have continued that trend. In 2017’s <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2016/15-577">Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer</a>, the court reasoned that states cannot deny religious people or religious institutions generally available public benefits simply because they are religious. Three years later, in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2019/18-1195">Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue</a>, the court invalidated a provision in the state constitution barring “religious schools from public benefits solely because of the religious character of the schools.” This decision meant parents in Montana who enrolled their children in faith-based schools could participate in a state tuition tax credit program.</p>
<h2>Mainers’ education</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.maine.gov/legis/const/">Maine’s Constitution</a> mandates the creation of public schools. But many rural towns don’t have <a href="https://www.maine.gov/doe/sites/maine.gov.doe/files/inline-files/SAU2020_21Map_FINAL.pdf">their own school system</a>: In fact, of the 260 “school administrative units” in Maine, more than half <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1088/197324/20211022151803212_Brief%20of%20Respondent%2010%2022%2021.pdf">lack a secondary school</a>. </p>
<p>In areas without access to public schools, Maine allows students to attend other public or private schools at public expense, but not religious ones. <a href="https://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/statutes/20-a/title20-Asec2951.html">The state requires</a> approved schools to be nonsectarian, “in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”</p>
<p>Carson v. Makin arose when three sets of parents unsuccessfully filed suit on behalf of their children, arguing that the rule discriminated on the basis of religion. The <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-med-1_18-cv-00327/summary">federal trial court</a> in Maine ruled in favor of the state, affirming that its “tuitioning” statute did not violate the rights of the parents or their children. On appeal, the First Circuit unanimously affirmed <a href="https://casetext.com/case/carson-v-makin">in favor of the state</a>, rejecting all the parental claims.</p>
<h2>A closer look</h2>
<p>First, <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca1/19-1746/19-1746-2020-10-29.html">the First Circuit decided</a> the requirement that schools be “nonsectarian” did not discriminate solely based on religion or punish the plaintiffs’ rights to exercise their religion. </p>
<p>This is because the rule has a “use-based” limitation – which may prove to be a crucial distinction. <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca1/19-1746/19-1746-2020-10-29.html">In other words</a>, sectarian schools are denied funding not because of their religious identity, the First Circuit wrote, but because of “the religious use that they would make of it.” </p>
<p>It is “wholly legitimate” to restrict religion-based content, the court noted, because “there is no question that Maine may require its public schools to provide a secular educational curriculum rather than a sectarian one.” </p>
<p>[<em>3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-3-in-1">Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.</a>]</p>
<p>The First Circuit also rejected the parental claims that Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement violated their rights to freedom of speech, because it was enacted to provide students with secular secondary educations and “does not commit to providing any open forum to encourage diverse views from private speakers.” </p>
<p>Quoting <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/386/344/632434/">Eulitt v. Maine</a>, another case about Maine’s tuitioning system, the court noted: “The fact that the state cannot interfere with a parent’s fundamental right to choose religious education for his or her child does not mean that the state must fund that choice.”</p>
<p>School-choice advocates had hoped that Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza would strengthen the Maine parents’ case, since they upheld the idea that the First Amendment requires the government to extend general benefits to religious institutions or individuals, so long as it is not discriminating against or in favor of particular religions. But the courts differentiated these cases, and
mused that if parents wish to forgo the free secular education Maine offers in its public schools or “tuitioning” program, they are free to pay tuition in the religious schools of their choice. </p>
<h2>The decision ahead</h2>
<p>During <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/20-1088_bp7c.pdf">oral arguments</a> at the Supreme Court Dec. 8, Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Barrett, appeared skeptical of the constitutionality of Maine’s tuitioning program. These justices favor an “accommodationist” interpretation of the religion clauses in the First Amendment – meaning they tend <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Establishment_Clause_of_the_First_Amendment">to read the Constitution</a> as requiring the government to not promote one religion over another, but not to forbid government from getting involved in religion at all. Therefore, they largely reject the “wall of separation” on the question of financial aid. </p>
<p>As such, these justices – a majority of the court – are likely to rule in favor of the parents challenging Maine’s program. For instance, <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/20-1088_bp7c.pdf">Kavanaugh commented</a> that “discriminating against all religions versus secular is itself a kind of discrimination that the court has said is odious to the Constitution” – pointedly alluding to Trinity Lutheran, and showing his skepticism about Maine’s explicit exclusion of religious schools.</p>
<p>The court is expected to render its judgment in Carson in late June or early July, near the end of its term. The case is unlikely to end disagreements over the limits of using taxpayer funds to assist students who attend religious schools. However, it will likely provide an indication of the Supreme Court’s position on the future of the child benefit test, as it seems to be softening on its attitude of maintaining a wall of separation between church and state when it comes to education and aid to students who attend religious schools.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles J. Russo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Carson v. Makin, a case from Maine about aid to students attending religious schools, goes to the Supreme Court on Dec. 8, 2021.Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education in the School of Education and Health Sciences and Research Professor of Law, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1655172021-09-08T12:26:24Z2021-09-08T12:26:24ZPackaging generates a lot of waste – now Maine and Oregon want manufacturers to foot the bill for getting rid of it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418974/original/file-20210901-17-1riez50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C0%2C5184%2C3406&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Packaging for consumer products represents a large share of U.S. solid waste, and barely half of it is recycled. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/garbage-bag-with-different-trash-on-wooden-royalty-free-image/1044377978">iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most consumers don’t pay much attention to the packaging that their purchases come in, unless it’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwCKftT4ZhY">hard to open</a> or the item is <a href="https://twitter.com/helepoleo/status/785209312708730880">really over-wrapped</a>. But packaging accounts for <a href="https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/containers-and-packaging-product-specific-data">about 28% of U.S. municipal solid waste</a>. Only some 53% of it ends up in recycling bins, and even less is actually recycled: According to trade associations, at least 25% of materials collected for recycling in the U.S. are <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-era-of-easy-recycling-may-be-coming-to-an-end/">rejected and incinerated or sent to landfills instead</a>. </p>
<p>Local governments across the U.S. handle waste management, funding it through taxes and user fees. Until 2018 the U.S. exported huge quantities of recyclable materials, primarily to China. Then China banned most foreign scrap imports. Other recipient countries like Vietnam followed suit, triggering <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-plastic-waste-crisis-is-an-opportunity-for-the-us-to-get-serious-about-recycling-at-home-93254">waste disposal crises in wealthy nations</a>. </p>
<p>Some U.S. states have laws that make manufacturers responsible for particularly hard-to-manage products, such as <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/e-waste-recycling-legislation.aspx">electronic waste</a>, <a href="https://batterycouncil.org/page/State_Recycling_Laws">car batteries</a>, <a href="https://mattressrecyclingcouncil.org/programs/">mattresses</a> and <a href="https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/tires/web/html/live.html">tires</a>, when those goods reach the end of their useful lives.</p>
<p>Now, <a href="http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/bills/getPDF.asp?paper=HP1146&item=1&snum=130">Maine</a> and <a href="https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2021R1/Downloads/MeasureDocument/SB582">Oregon</a> have enacted the first state laws making companies that create consumer packaging, such as cardboard cartons, plastic wrap and food containers, responsible for the recycling and disposal of those products, too. <a href="https://www.maine.gov/dep/waste/recycle/epr.html">Maine’s law</a> takes effect in mid-2024, and <a href="https://www.wastedive.com/news/oregon-epr-packaging-truth-in-labeling-living-wage/602640/">Oregon’s follows</a> in mid-2025.</p>
<p>These measures shift waste management costs from customers and local municipalities to producers. As researchers who study <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YY6NEBQAAAAJ&hl=en">waste</a> and <a href="https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/users/1563327">ways to reduce it</a>, we are excited to see states moving to engage stakeholders, shift responsibility, spur innovation and challenge existing extractive practices.</p>
<p><iframe id="0zkCS" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/0zkCS/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Holding producers accountable</h2>
<p>The Maine and Oregon laws are the latest applications of a concept called extended producer responsibility, or EPR. <a href="https://ilsr.org/the-concepts-of-extended-producer-responsibility-and-product-stewardship/">Swedish academic Thomas Lindhqvist</a> framed this idea in 1990 as a strategy to decrease products’ environmental impacts by making manufacturers responsible for the goods’ entire life cycles – especially for takeback, recycling and final disposal. </p>
<p>Producers don’t always literally take back their goods under EPR schemes. Instead, they often make payments to an intermediary organization or agency, which uses the money to help cover the products’ recycling and disposal costs. Making producers cover these costs is intended to give them an incentive to redesign their products to be less wasteful.</p>
<p>The idea of extended producer responsibility has driven regulations governing management of electronic waste, such as old computers, televisions and cellphones, in the European Union, China and <a href="https://www.ecycleclearinghouse.org/contentpage.aspx?pageid=10">25 U.S. states</a>. Similar measures have been adopted or proposed in nations including <a href="https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/sites/default/files/plastics-policies/8035_N_National_Sustainable_Waste_Management.pdf">Kenya</a>, <a href="https://www.nesrea.gov.ng/extended-producer-responsibility/">Nigeria</a>, <a href="https://leyrep.carey.cl/en/what-is-the-epr-law/">Chile</a>, <a href="http://circulodepoliticasambientales.org/assets/pdf/LEY%20REP.pdf">Argentina</a> and <a href="https://www.environment.gov.za/mediarelease/creecy_extendedproducerresponsibility_g44078gon20">South Africa</a>. </p>
<p>Scrap export bans in China and other countries have given new energy to EPR campaigns. <a href="https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/about/#meet-the-members">Activist organizations</a> and even some <a href="https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/news/100-leading-businesses-call-for-epr-for-packaging">corporations</a> are now calling for producers to become accountable for more types of waste, including <a href="https://www.productstewardship.us/page/Packaging">consumer packaging</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XfE9th-Sbow?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Packaging helps sell consumer products, and consumers are starting to demand more sustainable containers.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What the state laws require</h2>
<p>The Maine and Oregon laws define consumer packaging as material likely found in the average resident’s waste bin, such as containers for food and home or personal care products. They exclude packaging intended for long-term storage (over five years), beverage containers, paint cans and packaging for drugs and medical devices. </p>
<p>Maine’s law incorporates some core EPR principles, such as setting a target recycling goal and giving producers an incentive to use more sustainable packaging. Oregon’s law includes more groundbreaking components. It promotes the idea of a <a href="https://www.repair.org/stand-up">right to repair</a>, which gives consumers access to information that they need to fix products they purchase. And it creates a “<a href="https://www.wastedive.com/news/oregon-epr-packaging-truth-in-labeling-living-wage/602640/">Truth in Labeling” task force</a> to assess whether producers are making misleading claims about how recyclable their products are.</p>
<p>The Oregon law also <a href="https://www.biocycle.net/oregon-second-state-to-pass-packaging-epr-law/">requires a study</a> to assess how bio-based plastics can affect compost waste streams, and it establishes a <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/deq/recycling/Documents/RSC-ProposalFactSheet.pdf">statewide collection list</a> to harmonize what types of materials can be recycled across the state. Studies show that contamination from poor sorting is one of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2019.11.020">main reasons why recyclables often are rejected</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418979/original/file-20210901-25-4a4qmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Infographic on paint recycling in California." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418979/original/file-20210901-25-4a4qmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418979/original/file-20210901-25-4a4qmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418979/original/file-20210901-25-4a4qmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418979/original/file-20210901-25-4a4qmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418979/original/file-20210901-25-4a4qmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418979/original/file-20210901-25-4a4qmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418979/original/file-20210901-25-4a4qmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">California paint recycling data from PaintCare, a nonprofit stewardship organization that runs paint recycling programs across the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.paintcare.org/california-official-docs/">PaintCare</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some extended producer responsibility systems, such as those for paint and mattresses, are funded by consumers, who pay an added fee at the point of sale that is itemized on their receipt. The fee supports the products’ eventual recycling or disposal. </p>
<p>In contrast, the Maine and Oregon laws require producers to pay fees to the states, based on how much packaging material they sell in those states. Both laws also include rules designed to limit producers’ influence over how the states use these funds. </p>
<h2>Will these laws reduce waste?</h2>
<p>There’s no clear consensus yet on the effectiveness of EPR. In some cases it has produced results: For instance, Connecticut’s <a href="https://www.productstewardship.us/page/Mattresses">mattress recycling rate rose from 8.7% to 63.5%</a> after the state instituted a takeback law funded by fees paid at the point of sale. On a national scale, the Product Stewardship Institute estimates that since 2007 U.S. paint EPR programs have reused and recycled almost 24 million gallons of paint, created 200 jobs and <a href="https://www.productstewardship.us/page/Paint">saved governments and taxpayers over $240 million</a>.</p>
<p>Critics argue that these programs need <a href="http://wiki.ban.org/images/f/f4/Holes_in_the_Circular_Economy-_WEEE_Leakage_from_Europe.pdf">strong regulation and monitoring</a> to ensure that corporations take their responsibilities seriously – and especially to prevent them from passing costs on to consumers, which requires enforceable accountability measures. Observers also argue that producers can have <a href="https://youtu.be/-lIg0hfFBfU">too much influence within stewardship organizations</a>, which they warn may undermine enforcement or the credibility of the law.</p>
<p>Few studies have been done so far to assess the long-term effects of extended producer responsibility programs, and those that exist do not show conclusively whether these initiatives <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/recycling3020016">actually lead to more sustainable products</a>. Maine and Oregon are small progressive states and <a href="https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/top-suppliers/packaging-companies-suppliers/">are not major centers for the packaging industry</a>, so the impact of their new laws remains to be seen.</p>
<p>However, these measures are promising models. As Martin Bourque, executive director of <a href="https://ecologycenter.org/recycling/about/">Berkeley’s Ecology Center</a> and an internationally known expert on plastics and recycling, told us, “Maine’s approach of charging brands and manufacturers to pay cities for recycling services is an improvement over programs that give all of the operational and material control to producers, where the fox is directly in charge of the hen house.”</p>
<p>We believe the Maine and Oregon laws could inspire jurisdictions like California that are <a href="https://www.wastedive.com/news/2021-state-extended-producer-responsibility-recycling/594873/">considering similar measures</a> or <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06092021/baltimore-zero-waste-incinerator-wheelaborator/">drowning under waste plastic</a> to adopt EPR themselves. Waste reduction efforts across the U.S. took hits from foreign scrap bans <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-has-resurrected-single-use-plastics-are-they-back-to-stay-140328">and then from the COVID-19 pandemic</a>, which spurred greater use of disposable products and packaging. We see producer-pay schemes like the Maine and Oregon laws as a promising response that could help catalyze broader progress toward a less wasteful economy.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Maine and Oregon have enacted laws that require makers of consumer product packaging to pay for recycling or disposing of it. Will other states follow?Jessica Heiges, PhD Candidate in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, BerkeleyKate O'Neill, Professor of Global Environmental Politics, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1635662021-08-12T12:28:40Z2021-08-12T12:28:40ZA century after the Appalachian Trail was proposed, millions hike it every year seeking ‘the breath of a real life’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415112/original/file-20210808-124063-14veivx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C2048%2C1330&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">McAfee Knob in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, one of the Appalachian Trail's most scenic vistas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/9qWPTz">Ben Townsend/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Appalachian Trail, North America’s most famous hiking route, stretches over 2,189 mountainous miles (3,520 kilometers) from Georgia to Maine. In any given year, some <a href="https://appalachiantrail.org/our-work/about-us/media-room/">3 million people hike on it</a>, including more than 3,000 “thru-hikers” who go the entire distance, either in one stretch or in segments over multiple years. </p>
<p>The AT, as it’s widely known, is a national icon on a par with conservation touchstones like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser and the Florida Everglades. It symbolizes opportunity – the chance to set out on a life-altering experience in the great outdoors, or at least a pleasant <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/20552/a-walk-in-the-woods-by-bill-bryson/">walk in the woods</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://bmta.org/about-us/#man">Benton MacKaye</a>, the classically trained forester who proposed creating the AT in 1921, saw it as a space where visitors could escape the stresses and rigors of modern industrial life. He also believed it could be a foundation for sound land-use patterns, with each section managed and cared for by local volunteers. MacKaye was a highly original thinker who called for protecting land on a continent-spanning scale and thought about how land use patterns could influence work and social relationships. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415111/original/file-20210808-27-1rdf06z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sign shows distance to Maine and Georgia." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415111/original/file-20210808-27-1rdf06z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415111/original/file-20210808-27-1rdf06z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415111/original/file-20210808-27-1rdf06z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415111/original/file-20210808-27-1rdf06z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415111/original/file-20210808-27-1rdf06z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415111/original/file-20210808-27-1rdf06z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415111/original/file-20210808-27-1rdf06z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Halfway there, more or less: a trailhead in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/kT3XUN">Michel Curi/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=yhrCijUAAAAJ&hl=en">My research</a> focuses on how people work together to promote <a href="https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/policy-focus-reports/large-landscape-conservation">large landscape conservation</a> and to protect connectivity – physically linking patches of habitat, <a href="https://islandpress.org/books/conservation-across-borders">on land</a> or <a href="https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/habitat-connectivity.html">at sea</a>, so that animals and plants can move between them. MacKaye’s conception of the AT represents an early example of such comprehensive approaches to conservation.</p>
<h2>An escape from industrial life</h2>
<p>One hundred years ago, MacKaye <a href="https://appalachiantrail.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/An-Appalachian-Trail-A-Project-in-Regional-Planning-Benton-MacKaye-1921.pdf">laid out his vision for the AT</a> in an article for the Journal of the American Institute of Architects. At that time, progressive thinkers were conceptualizing and promoting the idea of regional planning at many different scales. </p>
<p>Had MacKaye focused solely on a physical trail, the editors probably would have rejected his manuscript. But MacKaye envisioned the AT as a connecting cord that would run through and define a natural and rural region. In his view, maintaining the undeveloped character of the land would only become more essential in the face of an encroaching East Coast metropolis. And because it lay in the eastern U.S., the trail would “serve as the breath of a real life for the toilers in the bee-hive cities along the Atlantic seaboard and beyond,” he wrote.</p>
<p>By 1925 MacKaye organized an <a href="https://appalachiantrail.org/our-work/about-us/atc-history/">Appalachian Trail Conference</a> to build the footpath, which was completed in 1937. The first thru-hiker, a <a href="https://appalachiantrailhistory.org/exhibits/show/hikers/firstthruhiker">World War II veteran named Earl Shaffer</a>, completed the full journey in 1948. Over the following decades, most of the practical work on the AT focused on tying together the thread of the trail itself – a challenging mission of acquiring access rights to myriad public and private lands.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LplaSyK6TWA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Clips from an AT thru-hike, moving from south to north.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Maintaining the landscape around the AT in perpetuity is a bigger challenge. And climate change is making that issue more urgent, for the AT isn’t just a footpath for humans. It also provides two ways for plants and animals to shift their ranges in a changing world. </p>
<p>First, the trail offers a chance for wildlife and plants to <a href="https://conservationcorridor.org/digests/2018/08/climate-corridors-of-north-america/">move northward to cooler habitats</a> on a warming planet. Second, species can also <a href="http://www.mountainecology.org/index.php/me/article/view/12">move up mountains to avoid warmer temperatures</a> – and any thru-hiker has the blisters to prove that the AT has plenty of mountains. </p>
<h2>More than a footpath</h2>
<p>Beginning with MacKaye, many people over the past century have aspired to frame the AT as a platform for conservation at a regional scale – that is, extending far beyond the narrow trail corridor, which <a href="https://www.nps.gov/appa/learn/management/upload/AT-report-web.pdf">averages about 1,000 feet (300 meters) wide</a>, or less than a quarter of a mile. One impetus is to provide a natural experience for hikers. Who wants to go exploring through <a href="https://www.planetizen.com/definition/exurbs">exurban sprawl</a>? Protecting land around the trail also expands spaces for plants and animals.</p>
<p>One of the best-known examples of large landscape approaches is the <a href="http://y2y.net">Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative</a>, often referred to as Y2Y (I am the current chair of the Y2Y Council). Since the mid-1990s, this venture has striven to conserve habitat and rural working lands across a region that stretches some 2,000 miles (3,220 kilometers) north from the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/greater-yellowstone-ecosystem.htm">Greater Yellowstone region</a> in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to Canada’s Yukon Territory. </p>
<p>As the <a href="https://y2y.net/work/our-impact/">Y2Y experience has shown</a>, conserving large landscapes around the AT will not be easy or straightforward – but it is possible. MacKaye worried about urban and suburban encroachment – a threat that has only grown more severe over the past hundred years. “<a href="https://appalachiantrail.org/official-blog/building-a-climate-resilient-at-landscape/">Pinch points</a>” include the mid-Atlantic portion of the AT, but development threats are present all along the trail. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1277139814362603521"}"></div></p>
<p>Conservation advocates have identified <a href="https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=1e630101729d402e97a45be94ef33f65">key spots along the AT</a> where land around the trail could be protected from development to support wildlife by preserving it as open space. They include highlands in northern New Jersey and southern New York; forests and wetlands in Vermont and New Hampshire; and Maine’s North Woods. </p>
<p>Land trusts and conservation organizations from Georgia to Maine are working to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk-NapHTWrc&t=25s">protect wild lands along the length of the AT</a> and increasingly are coordinating their efforts through the <a href="https://appalachiantrail.org/our-work/conservation/landscape/">Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership</a>. This initiative includes more than 100 partners, led by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/appa/index.htm">U.S. National Park Service</a>, which has managed the AT since the passage of the 1968 National Scenic Trails Act. </p>
<h2>Footpath and barrier</h2>
<p>Benton MacKaye hoped that the AT would be a symbolic and literal pathway toward solving social problems. His initial vision for the trail included community camps, covering up to 100 acres, that would grow out of trail shelters into small settlements where people could live year-round and pursue “nonindustrial” activities such as study and recuperation. Eventually, he envisioned more permanent camps that would offer the opportunity to move from cities back to the country and work cooperatively on the land, raising food and harvesting timber.</p>
<p>“The camp community … is in essence a retreat from profit. Cooperation replaces antagonism, trust replaces suspicion, emulation replaces competition,” MacKaye wrote. </p>
<p>MacKaye’s grand hopes may have been idealistic, but fulfilling the AT’s potential for large landscape conservation in some of the most populated regions of North America is still a worthy goal. As MacKaye presciently concluded in his 1921 article, “This trail could be made to be, in a very literal sense, a battle line against fire and flood – and even against disease.” A century later, I believe the time has come for MacKaye’s vision of the trail to flourish as a mutually supportive endeavor among people and nature in a changing world. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 109,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163566/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles C. Chester is the U.S. chair of the Yellowstone to Yukon Council, which works to connect and protect habitat in the Yellowstone to Yukon region of the western U.S. and Canada.</span></em></p>When forester Benton MacKaye proposed building an Appalachian Trail 100 years ago, he was really thinking about preserving a larger region as a haven from industrial life.Charles C. Chester, Lecturer in Environmental Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1601472021-05-10T12:30:39Z2021-05-10T12:30:39ZWater wells are at risk of going dry in the US and worldwide<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399333/original/file-20210506-15-1dgny6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C14%2C4792%2C2809&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An orchard near Kettleman City in California's San Joaquin Valley on April 2, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-orchard-is-seen-on-the-outskirts-of-kettleman-city-in-news-photo/1232098529">Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the drought outlook for the Western U.S. becomes <a href="https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2021-04-26/as-drought-deepens-california-growers-see-grim-futurequin">increasingly bleak</a>, attention is turning once again to groundwater – literally, water stored in the ground. It is Earth’s most widespread and reliable source of fresh water, but it’s not limitless.</p>
<p>Wells that people drill to access groundwater supply nearly half the water used for irrigated agriculture in the U.S. and provide <a href="https://www.ngwa.org/what-is-groundwater/About-groundwater/groundwater-facts">over 100 million Americans</a> with drinking water. Unfortunately, pervasive pumping is causing groundwater levels to decline in some areas, including much of <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abc2671">California’s San Joaquin Valley</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/farmers-are-depleting-the-ogallala-aquifer-because-the-government-pays-them-to-do-it-145501">Kansas’ High Plains</a>.</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=BmbVaAgAAAAJ&hl=en">a water resources engineer with training in water law</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9lzSDgcAAAAJ&hl=en">a water scientist and large-data analyst</a>. In <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abc2755">a recent study</a>, we mapped the locations and depths of wells in 40 countries around the world and found that millions of wells could run dry if groundwater levels decline by only a few meters. While solutions vary from place to place, we believe that what’s most important for protecting wells from running dry is managing groundwater sustainably – especially in nations like the U.S. that use a lot of it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398767/original/file-20210504-13-68uims.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="About 75% of global groundwater pumping occurs in India, the U.S., China, Pakistan, Iran, Mexico and Saudi Arabia." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398767/original/file-20210504-13-68uims.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398767/original/file-20210504-13-68uims.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398767/original/file-20210504-13-68uims.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398767/original/file-20210504-13-68uims.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398767/original/file-20210504-13-68uims.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398767/original/file-20210504-13-68uims.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398767/original/file-20210504-13-68uims.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. has one of the highest national groundwater use rates in the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abc2755">Jasechko and Perrone, 2021</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Groundwater use today</h2>
<p>Humans have been digging wells for water for thousands of years. Examples include 7,400-year-old wells in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105082">Czech Republic</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051374">Germany</a>, 8,000-year-old wells in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/095968369300300309">eastern Mediterranean</a>, and 10,000-year-old wells in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X0006049X">Cyprus</a>. Today wells supply <a href="https://www.ngwa.org/what-is-groundwater/About-groundwater/facts-about-global-groundwater-usage">40% of water used for irrigation worldwide</a> and provide billions of people with drinking water. </p>
<p>Groundwater flows through tiny spaces within sediments and their underlying bedrock. At some points, called discharge areas, groundwater rises to the surface, moving into lakes, rivers and streams. At other points, known as recharge areas, water percolates deep into the ground, either through precipitation or leakage from rivers, lakes and streams.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399513/original/file-20210507-17-k62ybd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pumping can remove groundwater from underground faster than it recharges." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399513/original/file-20210507-17-k62ybd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399513/original/file-20210507-17-k62ybd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399513/original/file-20210507-17-k62ybd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399513/original/file-20210507-17-k62ybd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399513/original/file-20210507-17-k62ybd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399513/original/file-20210507-17-k62ybd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399513/original/file-20210507-17-k62ybd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Groundwater can remain underground for days to millennia, depending on how deep it sinks, how readily it moves through rock around it and how fast humans pump it to the surface.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/conceptual-groundwater-flow-diagram">USGS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Groundwater declines can have many undesirable consequences. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abb8549">Land surfaces sink</a> as <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/centers/ca-water-ls/science/aquifer-compaction-due-groundwater-pumping">underground clay layers are compacted</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2012.03.004">Seawater intrusion</a> can contaminate groundwater reserves and make them too salty to use without energy-intensive treatment. River water can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03311-x">leak down to underground aquifers</a>, leaving less water available at the surface. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_oiffKmc0dQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Leaky streams are widespread across the United States.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Groundwater depletion can also cause wells to run dry when the top surface of the groundwater – known as the water table – drops so far that the well isn’t deep enough to reach it, leaving the well literally high and dry. Yet until recently, little was known about how vulnerable global wells are to running dry because of declining groundwater levels. </p>
<p>There is no global database of wells, so over six years we compiled 134 unique well construction databases spanning 40 different countries. In total, we analyzed nearly 39 million well construction records, including each well’s location, the reason it was constructed and its depth. </p>
<p>Our results show that wells are vital to human livelihoods – and recording well depths helped us see how vulnerable wells are to running dry.</p>
<h2>Millions of wells at risk</h2>
<p>Our analysis led to two main findings. First, up to 20% of wells around the world extend no more than 16 feet (5 meters) below the water table. That means these wells will run dry if groundwater levels decline by just a few feet.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TBXrBjk_5go?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Groundwater wells are at risk of running dry around the globe.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, we found that newer wells are not being dug significantly deeper than older wells in some places where groundwater levels are declining. In some areas, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0325-z">eastern New Mexico</a>, newer wells are not drilled deeper than older wells because the deeper rock layers are impermeable and contain saline water. New wells are at least as likely to run dry as older wells in these areas. </p>
<p>Wells are already going dry in some locations, including parts of the U.S. West. In previous studies we estimated that as many as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa8ac0">1 in 30 wells were running dry</a> in the western U.S., and as many as 1 in 5 in some areas in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001339">southern portion of California’s Central Valley</a>. </p>
<p>Households already are running out of well water in the <a href="https://www.fresnobee.com/fresnoland/article245990855.html">Central Valley</a> and <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/in-depth/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/12/05/wells-drying-up-around-willcox-where-effort-change-groundwater-rules-failed/2357906001/">southeastern Arizona</a>. Beyond the Southwest, wells have been running dry in states as diverse as <a href="https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/dry-well-survey-maine/97-f5251341-469b-4672-b17d-7d9a8f72c117">Maine</a>, <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/ct-illinois-water-supply-lake-michigan-aquifers-20210226-27j6lwnyjndjhg4ux5ek42qcxu-story.html">Illinois</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/01/01/792692254/water-crisis-puts-oregon-community-at-a-crossroads">Oregon</a>.</p>
<h2>What to do when the well gives out</h2>
<p>How can households adapt when their well runs dry? Here are five strategies, all of which have drawbacks.</p>
<p>– Dig a new, deeper well. This is an option only if fresh groundwater exists at deeper depths. In many aquifers <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/117/51/32302">deeper groundwater tends to be more saline than shallower groundwater</a>, so deeper drilling is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0325-z">no more than a stopgap solution</a>. And since new wells are expensive, this approach favors wealthier groundwater users and raises equity concerns.</p>
<p>– Sell the property. This is often considered if constructing a new well is unaffordable. Drilling a new household well in the U.S. Southwest can cost <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001339">tens of thousands of dollars</a>. But selling a property that lacks access to a reliable and convenient water supply can be challenging. </p>
<p><iframe id="JHznu" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/JHznu/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>– Divert or haul water from alternative sources, such as nearby rivers or lakes. This approach is feasible only if surface water resources are not already reserved for other users or too far away. Even if nearby surface waters are available, treating their quality to make them safe to drink can be harder than treating well water.</p>
<p>– Reduce water use to slow or stop groundwater level declines. This could mean switching to crops that are less water-intensive, or adopting irrigation systems that reduce water losses. Such approaches may reduce farmers’ profits or require upfront investments in new technologies. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>– Limit or abandon activities that require lots of water, such as irrigation. This strategy can be challenging if irrigated land provides higher crop yields than unirrigated land. Recent research suggests that some land in the central U.S. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2020.106061">is not suitable for unirrigated “dryland” farming</a>. </p>
<p>Households and communities can take proactive steps to protect wells from running dry. For example, one of us is working closely with <a href="https://law.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/rebecca-nelson">Rebecca Nelson of Melbourne Law School</a> in Australia to <a href="http://groundwater.stanford.edu/dashboard/">map groundwater withdrawal permitting</a> – the process of seeking permission to withdraw groundwater – across the U.S. West.</p>
<p>State and local agencies can distribute groundwater permits in ways that help stabilize falling groundwater levels over the long run, or in ways that prioritize certain water users. Enacting and enforcing policies designed to limit groundwater depletion can help protect wells from running dry. While it can be difficult to limit use of a resource as essential as water, we believe that in most cases, simply drilling deeper is not a sustainable path forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160147/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US has one of the highest groundwater use rates in the world. When wells run dry, households may opt to conserve water, find new sources or sell and move.Debra Perrone, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa BarbaraScott Jasechko, Assistant Professor of Water Resources, University of California, Santa BarbaraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1373462020-05-29T12:24:00Z2020-05-29T12:24:00ZWhen dams cause more problems than they solve, removing them can pay off for people and nature<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338032/original/file-20200527-20215-jdeawg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C3000%2C1998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Maine's Penobscot River flows freely where the Veazie Dam once stood. Dam removals have reopened the river to 12 native fish species.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-penobscot-river-flows-free-where-the-veazie-dam-once-news-photo/490445262?adppopup=true">Gregory Rec/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Across the United States, dams generate hydroelectric power, store water for drinking and irrigation, control flooding and create recreational opportunities such as slack-water boating and waterskiing.</p>
<p>But dams can also threaten public safety, especially if they are old or poorly maintained. On May 21, 2020, residents of Midland, Michigan were hastily evacuated when two aging hydropower dams on the Tittabawassee River <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2020/05/20/8ee0b9b6-9aad-11ea-a282-386f56d579e6_story.html">failed, flooding the town</a>. </p>
<p>I’m an ecosystem scientist and have studied the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8oUGU8sAAAAJ">ecology of salmon streams</a> in the Pacific Northwest, where dams and historical over-harvest have drastically reduced wild populations of these iconic fish. Now I’m monitoring how river herring are responding to the removal of two derelict dams on the Shawsheen River in Andover, Massachusetts.</p>
<p>There’s growing support across the U.S. for removing old and degraded dams, for both ecological and safety reasons. Every case is unique and requires detailed analysis to assess whether a dam’s costs outweigh its benefits. But when that case can be made, dam removals can produce exciting results.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337764/original/file-20200526-106866-h1jskx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337764/original/file-20200526-106866-h1jskx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337764/original/file-20200526-106866-h1jskx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337764/original/file-20200526-106866-h1jskx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337764/original/file-20200526-106866-h1jskx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337764/original/file-20200526-106866-h1jskx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337764/original/file-20200526-106866-h1jskx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337764/original/file-20200526-106866-h1jskx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Between 1850 and 2016, 63 dam failures with fatalities occurred across the U.S., killing an estimated 3,432 to 3,736 people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://npdp.stanford.edu/consequences_fatalities">National Performance of Dams Program, Stanford University</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pros and cons of dams</h2>
<p>It’s relatively easy to quantify the benefits that dams provide. They can be measured in kilowatt-hours of electricity generation, or acre-feet of water delivered to farms, or the value of property that the dams shield from floods.</p>
<p>Some dam costs also are obvious, such as construction, operation and maintenance. They also include the value of flooded land behind the dam and payments to relocate people from those areas. Sometimes dam owners are required to build and operate <a href="https://www.nwcouncil.org/reports/columbia-river-history/hatcheries">fish hatcheries</a> to compensate when local species will lose habitat. </p>
<p>Other costs aren’t borne by dam owners or operators, and some have not historically been recognized. As a result, many were not factored into past decisions to dam free-flowing rivers.</p>
<p>Research shows that dams <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1109454">impede transport of sediment to the oceans</a>, which worsens coastal erosion. They also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biw117">release methane</a>, a potent greenhouse gas, as drowned vegetation beneath dam reservoirs decomposes. </p>
<p>One of dams’ greatest costs has been massive reductions in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix069">numbers</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-4571.2008.00030.x">diversity</a> of migratory fish that move up and down rivers, or between rivers and the ocean. Dams have driven some populations to extinction, such as the iconic <a href="https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/chinese-river-dolphin">Baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin</a>, and the once economically important <a href="https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/atlantic-salmon-protected">Atlantic salmon</a> on most of the U.S. east coast.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1263551944460730368"}"></div></p>
<h2>Old dams under stress</h2>
<p>As dams age, maintenance costs rise. The average age of U.S. dams is 56 years, and seven in 10 will be <a href="https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Dams-Final.pdf">over 50 by 2025</a>. The American Society of Civil Engineers classifies 14% of the nation’s 15,500 <a href="https://www.fema.gov/rehabilitation-high-hazard-potential-dam-grant-program">high hazard potential dams</a> – those whose failure would cause loss of human life and significant property destruction – as deficient in their maintenance status, requiring a total investment of US$45 billion to repair.</p>
<p>Like the failed Michigan dams, which were built in 1924, older dams may pose growing risks. Downstream communities can grow beyond thresholds that determined the dams’ original safety standards. And climate change is increasing the size and frequency of floods in many parts of the U.S. </p>
<p>These factors converged in 2017, when intense rainfall stressed the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/potentially-catastrophic-tens-thousands-evacuated-amid-dam-spillway-failure-n720051">Oroville Dam</a> in Northern California, the nation’s tallest dam. Although the main dam held, two of its emergency spillways – structures designed to release excess water – failed, triggering evacuations of nearly 200,000 people.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Quh6fX57YxY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Huge rains caused by early snowmelt led to erosion and risk of a catastrophic failure at California’s Oroville Dam in 2017.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Benefits from free-flowing rivers</h2>
<p>As dam owners and regulators increasingly recognize the downsides of dams and deferred maintenance costs mount, some communities have opted to dismantle dams with greater costs than benefits. </p>
<p>The first such project in the U.S. was the <a href="https://www.nrcm.org/programs/waters/kennebec-restoration/a-brief-history-of-edwards-dam/">Edwards Dam</a> on the Kennebec River in Augusta, Maine. In the mid-1990s when the dam was up for relicensing, opponents provided evidence that building a fish ladder – a step required by law to help migratory fish get past the dam – exceeded the value of the electricity that the dam produced. Federal regulators denied the license and ordered the dam removed.</p>
<p>Since then, the river’s river herring population has grown from less than 100,000 fish to more than <a href="https://www.nrcm.org/programs/waters/restoring-alewives-maine-rivers/">5,000,000</a>, and the fish have drawn ospreys and bald eagles to the river. This project’s success catalyzed support for removing more than <a href="https://figshare.com/articles/_/5234068">1,000 other dams</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oj6-E-w20J0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Breaching the Edwards Dam on Maine’s Kennebec River, which was built in 1837.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’ve been studying one such project – removal of the derelict Balmoral and Marland Place dams on the Shawsheen River in Andover, Massachusetts. The owner of the Marland Place dam, originally built in the 18th century to power a mill, faced a $200,000 bill to restore it to safe condition. The Balmoral, an ornamental dam built in the 1920s, had changed hands so many times that the latest owner – a company in another state – wasn’t even aware that it owned a century-old dam in Massachusetts. </p>
<p>The project was a broad team effort. State environmental officials wanted to help restore the river’s health. Federal regulators supported removing the dams to open up historical habitat to migratory fish such as river herring, American shad and American eels. And Andover leaders wanted to improve recreation on the river. </p>
<p>Dam removals require extensive permitting and a lot of negotiation. For the Shawsheen project, experts from the nonprofit <a href="https://www.ecorestoration.org/">Center for Ecosystem Restoration</a> in Rhode Island guided the many organizations involved through the process.</p>
<p>My role was organizing a volunteer effort to monitor the response of river herring that migrate from the ocean to spawn in freshwater systems. The fish didn’t disappoint. Although the first spawning season was less than three months after the dams were removed, data collected by local volunteer monitors – who number over 300 – indicated that the newly opened habitat had hosted approximately 1,500 river herring spawners for the first time in more than 100 years. Since then, numbers have fluctuated, following the pattern on the Merrimack River, into which the Shawsheen flows. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335247/original/file-20200514-77230-yxydzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335247/original/file-20200514-77230-yxydzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335247/original/file-20200514-77230-yxydzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335247/original/file-20200514-77230-yxydzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335247/original/file-20200514-77230-yxydzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335247/original/file-20200514-77230-yxydzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335247/original/file-20200514-77230-yxydzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335247/original/file-20200514-77230-yxydzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Volunteers from Andover High School count fish in the Shawsheen River.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jon Honea</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like salmon, river herring mostly spawn where they hatched. During the previous three years of monitoring, spawners in the Shawsheen were all strays from elsewhere in the system. But this year we expected to see a large number of newly matured adults from our first year of monitoring. Our work is on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we look forward to measuring increased numbers in the spring of 2021.</p>
<h2>Still growing</h2>
<p>In April 2020, California’s State Water Resources Control Board <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1062829919">approved two key permits</a> for removing four large aging hydropower dams on the Klamath River in California and southern Oregon. This would be the largest dam removal in the U.S. </p>
<p>The board acted based on evidence that dam removal would improve drinking water quality by reducing algal blooms, and would restore habitat for endangered salmon and other organisms that rely on free-flowing rivers. The project still needs approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Assuming it goes forward, I expect that a restored Klamath River will further fuel the movement to remove dams whose costs now clearly outweigh their benefits.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Honea is a Conservation Commissioner for the Town of Andover, Massachusetts. </span></em></p>Thousands of dams across the US are aging and overdue for maintenance. Taking them down can revive rivers, restore fish runs and create new opportunities for tourism and outdoor activities.Jon Honea, Assistant Professor of Science, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1249782019-10-24T11:49:14Z2019-10-24T11:49:14ZLeaf peep for science – I want your old photos of fall foliage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298412/original/file-20191023-119433-8lq1kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1101%2C437%2C5393%2C3303&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What can your vacation pix tell scientists?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/female-hiker-standing-on-ledge-enjoying-1463849003">Try Media/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every October, when I was growing up in Massachusetts, my parents would check out the fall foliage reports and determine where we were going to drive to see the colorful leaves. And they still do. In New England, leaf peeping, as it’s called, is a <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-10-19/leaf-peeping-huge-new-england-will-climate-change-alter-tourism">billion dollar industry</a> and millions of people travel to the region during foliage season. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B3uqR3qJDEq","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>In Maine’s Acadia National Park, visitation has <a href="https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/">more than doubled in September and October</a> since the early 1990s. Tourists book leaf peeping cruises, bus trips and lodging packages, all scheduled to coincide with what’s traditionally been the somewhat predictable fall foliage season.</p>
<p>But Earth’s climate is changing. A big question is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057373">how climate change’s impacts</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/fall-foliage-in-the-crosshairs-of-climate-change-32012">on the timing, duration and vibrancy</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.2737/NRS-GTR-99">of fall foliage</a> will affect the tourist season.</p>
<h2>Pulling together all kinds of data</h2>
<p>Untangling the relationship between climate, fall foliage and visitorship in Acadia National Park – <a href="http://www.stephaniespera.com/anpfallfoliage.html">the goal of my research</a> – requires a variety of data, including meteorological observations, park visitor surveys and knowledge of when fall foliage starts, peaks and ends every year.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cG3piHgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As an environmental scientist</a>, one of the primary ways I study changes in vegetation phenology – that is, the timing of biological events like flowering, leaf out, or onset and duration of fall foliage – is through the use of satellite data. Every day, <a href="https://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/">dozens of satellites</a> circle the Earth collecting data on everything from land cover to weather to sea surface temperatures to ground water to the chemical composition of the atmosphere. </p>
<p>These data are crucial in teasing apart environmental changes. Scientists have used satellite data of land cover and vegetation to show that as global temperatures increase, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2007.04.003">trees are flowering earlier</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2012JG001977">earlier</a>.</p>
<p>But like all technology, the farther back in time you go, the lower the quality of the data. Even worse, there isn’t any reliable satellite data over Acadia National Park before the year 2000 at all. So my team needs to get creative.</p>
<h2>Science behind the seasonal display</h2>
<p>Here’s what biologists do know. As summer turns to autumn, the days get shorter and colder, both of which are signals to trees to stop <a href="https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/autumn-foliage-color">photosynthesizing</a> and producing the chlorophyll that makes their leaves green. With green chlorophyll out of the picture, the orange and yellow carotenoid pigments in the leaves that are masked by all the chlorophyll production all summer have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/news.2007.202">their moment to shine</a>.</p>
<p>In some trees, cooler weather cues the production of a chemical called anthocyanin, which helps trees pull the nutrients from their leaves into their trunk and roots. Anthocyanin is responsible for those gorgeous red and purple leaves on trees like red maples and <a href="https://www.americanforests.org/blog/science-behind-fall-foliage/">dogwoods</a>. </p>
<p>While every tree is different, studies have found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.133">earlier spring bud burst</a>, warmer temperatures and a dry fall are linked to a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1509991112">later fall foliage season</a>. A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2017.12.259">shorter foliage season</a> can result from a hot summer and wet fall. Additionally, the concentration of nitrogen in the atmosphere – which humans are releasing into the atmosphere on faster time scales than nature does – affects just how red those <a href="https://academic.oup.com/treephys/article/23/5/325/1657937">gorgeous maples get</a>.</p>
<p>The northeastern U.S. has gotten <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101302">warmer</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-16-0195.1">wetter</a> over the last century. How have these climate changes affected the timing, vibrancy and duration of fall foliage in Acadia National Park? Have tourists, in turn, changed how and when they visit the park?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ce1DTBECS","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Looking in new places for old foliage records</h2>
<p>To answer this question, my team is using historical data on temperature and precipitation in Acadia National Park. What we’re missing, though, is information about when fall foliage has started and peaked, going back through the decades. </p>
<p>Most historical records of phenology, like those of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2008.10.038">Henry David Thoreau</a>, are focused on the spring season. Historical documentation of fall foliage is harder to come by.</p>
<p>My colleagues and I are mining National Park reports and old newspapers, like this article in the Oct. 12, 1893 Bar Harbor Times, which is local to Acadia National Park:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The autumn foliage on Mount Desert was never more brilliant than this year. The hills are ablaze with crimson and yellow, and the woodbine embowered cottages are resplendent with opalescent tints. But, alas ‘tis but the beetie glow in the consumptive’s cheek. A few weeks and winter’s white pail will cover all the autumn glories.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the records are few and far between.</p>
<p>We’ve found one continuous record of fall foliage since 1975, although it’s not focused on the Acadia area. <a href="https://pollyspancakeparlor.com/wp-content/uploads/Leaf-Chart-1-1.pdf">Polly’s Pancake Parlor</a> in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire has been collecting data on onset and peak of fall foliage since the mid-1970s. Interestingly, their data show that since 1975 fall foliage gets going earlier in the year, but peak fall foliage occurs later.</p>
<h2>Maybe you have the selfies we seek</h2>
<p>This lack of data is why we need citizen scientists to help us fill in the gaps. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B2y6pisBpgH","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>With apps and programs like <a href="https://www.usanpn.org/natures_notebook">Nature’s Notebook</a>, <a href="https://www.inaturalist.org/">iNaturalist</a>, <a href="https://budburst.org/">BudBurst</a> and <a href="https://ebird.org/home">eBird</a>, it’s never been easier for anyone to share their observations of the world around them. Scientists have recently been trawling social media sites like Twitter, Flickr and Instagram for data to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/srep02976">estimate park visitation rates</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.08.008">map monarch butterfly and snowy owl sightings</a> and understand the various ways people <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614158113">value different landscapes</a>. </p>
<p>Collecting photos from people who’ve traveled to Acadia is helping us validate the satellite data we do have. My team is able to make sure what we see in the satellite images actually represents of what is happening on the ground in the park. We are so appreciative of all the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B3aO1trhMmg/">photos</a> we’ve received from people who have visited Acadia this year. And we have received a bunch, 907 to be exact, of submitted photos from the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B2EzlCLBtWX/">post-cellphone camera era</a>.</p>
<p>That doesn’t get us back to before the advent of continuous satellite data, though. We need leaf peepers to dig deeper into their personal photo albums to help us figure out the timing of fall foliage before the year 2000.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B3PO8TzBp3-","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Those earlier photos – from a time of yore when you actually had to remove film from a camera and take it to get developed – are proving much harder to come by. So far we have two data points from before 2010, one from <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B2RdMktBGzW/">1987</a> and one from <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ce1DTBECS/">1981</a>.</p>
<p>We’re <a href="http://www.stephaniespera.com/anpfallfoliage.html">asking for your help</a>. We know those awkward family photos of you or your parents in their 1970s bell bottoms standing in front of Acadia’s Jordan Pond exist. And we want them. If you have any old vacation photos taken in the park during the fall, scan them and <a href="mailto:anpfallfoliage@richmond.edu">send them our way</a>.</p>
<p>Understanding the relationships between climate change, fall foliage and park visitorship have important implications for park management, the local economies of towns on and around Mount Desert Island, and those of us who love visiting Acadia in the fall. So leaf peep – for science.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.aag.org">Stephanie Spera is a member of the American Association of Geographers. </a></p>
<footer>The association is a funding partner of The Conversation US.</footer>
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</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Spera receives funding for this project from from the Second Century Stewardship, a collaboration between the Schoodic Institute, National Park Service and the National Park Foundation.</span></em></p>To untangle the relationship between climate change, fall foliage and national park visitors, researchers are asking tourists to check their old photo albums for snapshots that could hold valuable data.Stephanie Spera, Assistant Professor of Climate Change & Remote Sensing, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1069602018-11-15T11:45:44Z2018-11-15T11:45:44ZMaine congressional election an important test of ranked-choice voting<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245615/original/file-20181114-194513-etetxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With no candidate taking a majority of the overall vote, election officials will be counting ballots again under Maine's new ranked-choice voting system.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, an innovative vote-counting system has had its trial run in a federal election.</p>
<p>No candidate received a majority of the overall vote in the 2018 midterms. Rather, the vote was split between four candidates – a Democrat, a Republican and two left-leaning independent candidates who garnered 8 percent of the votes between them. As a result, Maine used the ranked-choice voting counting process to <a href="http://www.wbur.org/news/2018/11/15/judges-ruling-on-whether-to-halt-ranked-choice-vote-count-in-maine-could-come-today%5D">determine a majority winner</a>.</p>
<p>As a University of Memphis law professor, I’ve studied and published on ranked-choice voting for years, and have <a href="https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/rethinking-us-election-law">a book on it coming out next month</a>. Naturally, I find the inaugural use of ranked-choice voting in a federal election fascinating. I also believe it’s a significant step forward for election reform.</p>
<p>Under ranked-choice voting (more precisely, the variety of ranked-choice voting also known as “instant runoffs”) voters can rank their candidates in <a href="https://www.fairvote.org/rcv#how_rcv_works">order of preference</a> – first, second, third and so on. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes, the system eliminates the candidate with the fewest first-place votes. In Maine, that meant eliminating independent candidate Will Hoar, who got only <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Maine%27s_2nd_Congressional_District_election,_2018">2.4 percent of the vote</a>. </p>
<p>The system then redistributes the votes for that eliminated candidate among the remaining candidates based on the second choices indicated by voters. If a candidate now has a majority of votes, that candidate wins. If there’s still no majority winner, the system again eliminates the weakest candidate and transfers the votes as before, with the process continuing until there is a majority winner. </p>
<p>Ranked-choice voting is used in more than <a href="https://www.fairvote.org/rcv#where_is_ranked_choice_voting_used">10 U.S. cities</a>. Six states use it for overseas ballots. Australia has used it for over 100 years. The Oscars use it, as does the Heisman Trophy.</p>
<p>Maine voters adopted ranked-choice voting by <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016)">referendum in 2016</a>. <a href="https://www.pressherald.com/2017/05/23/maine-high-court-says-ranked-choice-voting-is-unconstitutional/">Court challenges</a> and <a href="https://www.pressherald.com/2017/10/23/in-special-session-legislature-cant-break-impasse-on-ranked-choice-voting/">state legislative action</a> delayed implementation, but voters reaffirmed their support in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_Question_1,_June_2018">a second referendum in 2018</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245617/original/file-20181114-194497-7gttwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245617/original/file-20181114-194497-7gttwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245617/original/file-20181114-194497-7gttwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245617/original/file-20181114-194497-7gttwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245617/original/file-20181114-194497-7gttwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245617/original/file-20181114-194497-7gttwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245617/original/file-20181114-194497-7gttwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Maine ballot allows voters to choose more than one candidate in order of preference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maine Office of Secretary of State via AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Proponents cite <a href="http://saveirvmemphis.com/why-irv">a number of advantages of this system</a>. It allows for a majority winner without the trouble, expense and historically low turnout of a runoff. By reducing campaign costs for the runoff, it levels the playing field for lesser-funded candidates, making elections more competitive. It also encourages civil campaigns. Candidates want to be the first choice of their own base, but the second choice of their opponents’ bases. Thus, they’re less willing to risk alienating those voters with attack ads.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.apnews.com/62c997cfd2ab403ca0b3c3333e1a9312">Critics say</a> ranked-choice voting is too confusing for voters, or too hard to administer. However, it has been successfully implemented in <a href="https://www.sightline.org/2017/11/08/over-300-places-in-the-united-states-have-used-fair-voting-methods/">over 200 local elections</a> in over a dozen U.S. cities over the past 20 years, without mass voter confusion. </p>
<p>Ranked-choice voting also solves the “vote-splitting” problem common to plurality, or “first past the post” systems, where a candidate can win with less than 50 percent as long as he gets more votes than other candidates. If too many candidates who reflect the majority’s view run, they will split that vote. That allows a candidate with 40 percent of the vote to win – even though 60 percent of the voters would say, “anybody but him.” Maine elected controversial Gov. Paul LePage with only 37 percent of the vote. During that election, liberal voters were split between <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2016/09/01/how-paul-lepage-got-elected-and-how-mainers-think-they-can-fix-a-broken-voting-system">a Democrat and a left-leaning third-party candidate</a>.</p>
<p>A similar dynamic occurred in Maine during the midterms. Two left-leaning independent candidates, Tiffany Bond and Will Hoar, got <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Maine%27s_2nd_Congressional_District_election,_2018">5.8 percent and 2.4 percent of the vote respectfully</a>, enough to <a href="https://bangordailynews.com/2018/11/07/politics/maines-toss-up-2nd-district-appears-headed-to-a-ranked-choice-count/">deny both the Democratic and Republican candidate a majority</a>.</p>
<p>Democratic nominee Golden ultimately won under ranked-choice voting. Many liberals who voted for the independent candidates <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/667435326/facing-defeat-maine-republican-sues-to-block-states-ranked-choice-voting-law">ranked him second</a>. As a result, this was the first time a Maine incumbent lost in over 100 years - demonstrating the rank-choice voting proponents’ claim that the system makes elections more competitive.</p>
<p>Fearing precisely that dynamic, Republican Poliquin who lost under rank choice voting filed <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/667435326/facing-defeat-maine-republican-sues-to-block-states-ranked-choice-voting-law">a lawsuit challenging the process</a>. A judge <a href="https://bangordailynews.com/2018/11/15/politics/judge-denies-poliquins-request-to-stop-ranked-choice-count-as-decision-nears/">rejected his request</a> for a temporary injunction blocking the ranked-choice counting process, but the underlying legal challenge continues.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/mpbn/files/201811/poliquin-rcv_lawsuit.pdf">lawsuit</a> alleges that anything other than a plurality election for the U.S. House violates the Constitution and federal civil rights statutes. But nothing in the text of the Constitution requires a plurality-only election for the U.S. House. The cases cited in the complaint merely say states are allowed to permit plurality elections, not that they must require them. Indeed, the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei">Elections Clause of the Constitution</a> provides that each state can “prescribe” the “Manner of holding Elections for … Representatives.” That’s how other states can and do require congressional candidates to win with a majority, using <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/primary-runoffs.aspx">separate runoff elections where necessary</a></p>
<p>Moreover, this lawsuit is probably filed too late. The proper time to raise these issues would have been before the election. </p>
<p>For these reasons, I think the legal challenge will fail, and we will see, for the first time in U.S. history, a congressional race decided using this innovative new system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106960/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Mulroy works with Save IRV Memphis, a local grassroots advocacy group urging use of Instant Runoff Voting (a form of Ranked Choice Voting) in Memphis, Tennessee.</span></em></p>The system allows voters to pick their first, second- and third-choice candidates – and could encourage more civil campaigns.Steven Mulroy, Law Professor in Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Election Law, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/749732017-04-12T00:38:29Z2017-04-12T00:38:29ZBeyond instant runoff: A better way to conduct multi-candidate elections<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164512/original/image-20170407-27621-1e5q4aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A vote is cast in New Hampshire 2012 primary. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-New-Hampshire-Primary-2012/de5da42595844cceb510a83af8150039/15/0">AP Photo/Matt Rourke</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last November, <a href="https://theconversation.com/maine-ballot-initiative-would-let-voters-rank-candidates-67694">Maine voters approved</a>, by a slim majority, a ballot initiative to adopt a voting system called “instant runoff.” </p>
<p>This system has been proposed as an alternative to our traditional election method – called “plurality voting” – by several politicians, including 2016 Green Party presidential candidate <a href="http://www.jill2016.com/ranked_choice_voting">Jill Stein</a>. It has also been implemented in <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/rcv#where_is_ranked_choice_voting_used">various municipal elections</a> in the United States. </p>
<p>Many other multi-candidate election methods have been proposed. Most of them have the drawback of being complicated, and therefore are probably not politically viable. I want to suggest a method that I believe is much better than both plurality voting and instant runoff, and just as simple as instant runoff. </p>
<h2>Plurality voting and its problems</h2>
<p>In plurality voting, every voter names their favorite candidate, and the candidate named most often wins. </p>
<p>This is the only reasonable thing to do when there are only two candidates, but it becomes problematic when there are more. The problems are <a href="https://electology.org/blog/top-5-ways-plurality-voting-fails">well-recognized</a>. For example, if you were every voter’s second choice among five candidates, you’d be doing very well, quite possibly better than any other candidate by most reasonable measures – yet you would lose. Plurality voting in fact appears to promote the emergence of two-party systems. Political scientists call this <a href="http://scorevoting.net/Duverger.html">Duverger’s Law</a>.</p>
<p>When there are two major candidates and some much weaker third-party candidates, plurality voting leads to “spoiler” problems. The weak candidates can change the outcome, sometimes in ways that their supporters find highly undesirable. For instance, the presence of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot in Florida in 2000 may very well have caused Al Gore to lose Florida, and thereby the presidency, even though it’s likely that a large majority of Nader voters preferred Gore to George Bush. </p>
<p>Attempts to improve plurality voting have a long history, with primaries in the U.S. as well as runoff rounds in presidential elections in France, Brazil and other countries. </p>
<h2>Instant runoff and its problems</h2>
<p>With instant runoff, every voter ranks the candidates. The candidate who is ranked first by the fewest voters is then removed from the ballots, and candidates who were ranked underneath the removed candidate move up by one notch. Then the process is repeated until only one candidate remains. That candidate wins.</p>
<p>In practice, one would want to allow voters to rank only some, not all, of the candidates, and one would want to allow ties. These are complications that are important, but also easy to deal with. For simplicity, we’ll assume here that all voters rank all candidates, with no ties.</p>
<p>When there are two strong candidates and some much weaker third-party candidates, instant runoff clearly does away with the spoiler problem. Weak candidates are eliminated early on. </p>
<p>For example, if instant runoff had been used in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, Gore would likely have been president. Nader would have been eliminated early on in the process, and those among his 97,421 voters who preferred Gore over Bush would have been counted as Gore voters. Considering that the final official margin by which Bush won Florida was 537, it seems likely that this would have changed the outcome.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, instant runoff – just like plurality voting – also immediately eliminates the candidate who is everyone’s second choice but nobody’s first.</p>
<p>And, just like plurality voting, instant runoff does not work well when there are more than two strong candidates. It can then produce quite arbitrary outcomes. If there are five strong candidates, should you really be eliminated just because 18 percent of voters put you first, while the other four candidates were placed first by 19 to 22 percent of voters? Shouldn’t we look at how many voters put you second, for instance, before ruling you out as the winner? </p>
<h2>Condorcet and Borda</h2>
<p>Two French noblemen of the 1700s thought about how to organize multi-candidate elections: the Marqis de Condorcet and Jean-Charles de Borda. (Condorcet was friends with Thomas Jefferson, who appears to have paid little attention to Condorcet’s writings about voting.) </p>
<p>Condorcet suggested that, if an absolute majority – more than half the voters – prefers Candidate X to Candidate Y, then Candidate Y should not be the winner. That seems very reasonable. Why not make the majority happier by making X the winner? </p>
<p>Unfortunately, when there are more than two candidates, this principle can easily rule out everyone. There can be a situation where, say, 55 percent of voters prefer Candidate A to Candidate B, 60 percent prefer B to C and 65 percent prefer C to A. </p>
<p>Condorcet didn’t say what should happen in such a case. His proposal refers only to situations in which there is a single candidate, the “Condorcet candidate,” who would beat every other candidate in head-to-head contest. He suggested that a Condorcet candidate, if there is one, should win. </p>
<p>As sensible as this sounds, both plurality voting and instant runoff violate it. Take my earlier example of an election with five candidates. If you are ranked second by every single voter, you might well win head-to-head contests against each of your four competitors. But, under plurality voting or instant runoff, you will lose.</p>
<p>Borda proposed <a href="http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/borda-count">his own election method</a> that allots each candidate points based on their ranking. For instance, if there are five candidates, then Borda proposes to give a candidate five points for first place on a voter’s ballot, four points for second place, and so on. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, Borda and Condorcet can clash in a rather dramatic way. Even if an absolute majority of voters place you first, Borda may have you lose if most of the other voters strongly dislike you.</p>
<p>Borda’s method tends to handicap polarizing candidates. This seems like a good thing. However, if an absolute majority of voters place me first, then I should win, according to Condorcet, and most people would probably agree. When Borda’s method makes me lose because I am strongly disliked by a substantial minority, one could – and Condorcet would – argue that this goes a bit too far.</p>
<h2>Merging Condorcet’s and Borda’s ideas</h2>
<p>Merging Condorcet’s and Borda’s ideas creates an election method which, in my view, is much better than instant runoff, and just as simple. (I discuss this method at greater length in <a href="http://epubs.siam.org/doi/book/10.1137/1.9780898717624">my textbook</a> on this subject.) </p>
<p>In the system I propose, voters rank candidates, as in instant runoff and many other election methods. The outcome is then evaluated in two stages: a “Condorcet stage” where we pick out the strongest candidates, followed by a “Borda stage” where we identify the winner. </p>
<p>In the Condorcet stage, we determine the “strong” candidates. We define the “strong” candidates to be the smallest group of candidates with the property that everybody inside the group would beat everybody outside the group in two-person races. (This is also often called the <a href="http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Smith_set">Smith set</a>, after the mathematician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Smith_(mathematician)">John H. Smith</a>.) For instance, if there is a Condorcet candidate X, then X is the only strong candidate. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164701/original/image-20170410-8840-rpb1l5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164701/original/image-20170410-8840-rpb1l5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164701/original/image-20170410-8840-rpb1l5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164701/original/image-20170410-8840-rpb1l5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164701/original/image-20170410-8840-rpb1l5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164701/original/image-20170410-8840-rpb1l5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164701/original/image-20170410-8840-rpb1l5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Condorcet stage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christoph Borgers</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We then remove all candidates who are not strong from the ballots, and move on to the Borda stage. The winner is computed with the reduced ballots based on Borda’s method. </p>
<p>In a presidential election, voters would all rank all the candidates: Republicans, Democrats and others. A computer would then determine the strong candidates. (No cause for alarm: Anybody who knows the election results could quite easily verify the computer’s work by hand.) Borda’s method would then decide from among this group. </p>
<p>I believe that many of the people who now support instant runoff should, and would, like this scheme even more. It eliminates weak candidates right away, removing the possibility of spoiler effects. It allows two candidates from the same party to run without interfering with each other so much that neither can win. It allows more than two strong candidates to emerge. When there are several strong candidates, the results are intuitively sensible. The method retains one of the advantages of Borda’s method – namely that polarizing candidates often lose – but, unlike Borda’s method, it does not allow a Condorcet candidate to lose. Equally importantly, the method is simple and transparent, and therefore might be politically viable. </p>
<p>There is no doubt that the issue is important: We cannot value democracy, yet refuse to think about the question how to conduct elections in a fair way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74973/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christoph Borgers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some American voters hope that instant runoff can make our elections better. But a mathematician has an idea for another solution.Christoph Borgers, Professor of Mathematics, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/692062016-12-02T02:59:47Z2016-12-02T02:59:47ZHow majority voting betrayed voters again in 2016<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148160/original/image-20161130-17000-nguzzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What if this was our choice on Election Day?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photos/Gary Landers and Paul Sancya</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The system for electing the U.S. president went woefully wrong from the very beginning of 2016. </p>
<p>First, the two <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/">most disliked candidates ever nominated</a> – Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump – emerged victors from their parties’ primaries, but shouldn’t have. Second, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-common-arguments-for-preserving-the-electoral-college-and-why-theyre-wrong-68546">increasingly controversial</a> Electoral College system will formally elect Trump on December 19 despite Clinton’s lead of over two million in the popular vote.</p>
<p>The system is “rigged” all right, not for a candidate but against the voter. It fails to elect candidates the voters really want. Why? And what should be done about it? </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-apportionii3">Years of work</a> in developing <a href="http://www.mathaware.org/mam/08/EliminateGerrymandering.pdf">fair</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-make-the-house-of-representatives-representative-32921">methods</a> of representation and systems for <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/majority-judgment">electing candidates</a> that truly respond to the opinions of the electorate have convinced me that the real culprit is majority voting and not the Electoral College. I will give my reasons.</p>
<h2>Majority voting’s failures</h2>
<p>Majority voting (MV) is an extremely crude approximation of the opinion of the electorate that has often elected a candidate counter to the popular will. </p>
<p>Walter Lippmann – claimed by many to be the most influential American journalist of the 20th century – <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Phantom_Public.html?id=fnk-a3IX5ZgC">realized this in 1925</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“But what in fact is an election? We call it an expression of the popular will. But is it? We go into a polling booth and mark a cross on a piece of paper for one of two, or perhaps three or four names. Have we expressed our thoughts … ? Presumably we have a number of thoughts on this and that with many buts and ifs and ors. Surely the cross on a piece of paper does not express them … [C]alling a vote the expression of our mind is an empty fiction.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>There have been 57 presidential elections. By my count, 12 of them elected candidates that were almost certainly not the true choices of the electorate, the last three occurring in 1912, 1992 and 2000. </p>
<p>Woodrow Wilson was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1912">elected in 1912</a> (with 41.8 percent of the popular vote) against incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft (23.2 percent) because of the Bull Moose candidacy of the former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt (27.4 percent): Either of them would most likely have won head-to-head against Wilson.</p>
<p>A similar <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1992">scenario occurred in 1992</a> with Bill Clinton (43.0 percent) winning against George H. W. Bush (37.4 percent) because of the candidacy of Ross Perot (18.9 percent): Bush (father) would almost surely have beaten Clinton head-to-head. </p>
<p>And in 2000 George W. Bush (47.9 percent) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida,_2000">won with a bare majority</a> of 271 Electoral College votes against Al Gore (48.4 percent) because of the candidacy of Ralph Nader. Bush’s lead of a mere 537 (out of nearly 6 million) votes in Florida would have easily been erased if the 97,000 who voted for Nader could have expressed their preference for Gore.</p>
<p>Why does this happen? Because, as Lippmann suggested, MV does not permit voters to express their opinions fully.</p>
<p>In 1912 it was impossible for a Roosevelt voter to express a preference for Taft over Wilson, or a Taft voter to express a preference for Roosevelt over Wilson. Similarly, it was impossible for voters to express their preference for Bush (father) and Perot over Clinton in 1992, or for Nader voters in Florida to express their preference for Gore rather than Bush (son) in 2000. Had they been able to express their opinions of the candidates more accurately, the outcomes would have been different.</p>
<p>MV, as old as the hills, is merely a mechanism that has been accepted by force of habit. As Thomas Paine <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/147/147-h/147-h.htm">wrote in 1776 in “Common Sense”</a> – “the <a href="https://www.amrevmuseum.org/read-the-revolution/biography/revolutionary-characters">most incendiary and popular pamphlet</a> of the entire revolutionary era”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Majority voting is such a thing. It is thought to be democratic, but isn’t, as these examples (and many others) show. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148164/original/image-20161130-17047-civz9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148164/original/image-20161130-17047-civz9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148164/original/image-20161130-17047-civz9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148164/original/image-20161130-17047-civz9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148164/original/image-20161130-17047-civz9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148164/original/image-20161130-17047-civz9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148164/original/image-20161130-17047-civz9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Don Lamb, an employee of La Scala Restaurant in Little Rock, Arkansas, cleans the front window of the restaurant, Saturday, Oct. 31, 1992.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Danny Johnston</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ranked voting’s failures</h2>
<p>Some reformers advocate another mechanism, “ranked voting” (RV). Instead of choosing one among the candidates the voter lists them all from their most to their least preferred.
This <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count">18th-century idea</a> (from the French mathematician and political scientist <a href="http://gerardgreco.free.fr/IMG/pdf/MA_c_moire-Borda-1781.pdf">Jean-Charles de Borda</a>) is a better scheme for voters to express themselves – and so it must have seemed to the narrow majority of 51.99 percent of <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016)">Maine’s voters</a> who adopted one version of the possible methods based on RV, Ranked Choice Voting, in a statewide vote on November 8. </p>
<p>However, I argue that they were sold a bill of goods: RV’s drawbacks completely disqualify it. </p>
<p>First and foremost, RV is far from permitting an adequate expression of the voters’ opinions. A voter cannot reject all candidates, cannot consider two candidates equally good and cannot express strong versus lukewarm support (or rejection). </p>
<p>Furthermore, when RV has actually been used by juries in such competitions as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISU_Judging_System">figure skating</a>, <a href="http://www.fig-gymnastics.com/publicdir/rules/files/mag/MAG%20CoP%202013-2016%20(FRA%20ENG%20ESP)%20July%202015.pdf">gymnastics</a> and <a href="http://www.fina.org/content/diving-rules">diving</a>, its results have sometimes been so wildly peculiar that increasingly it has been abandoned in favor of methods that ask judges to evaluate competitors instead of ranking them. Figure skating juries’ rules, for example,<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/majority-judgment"> made the change</a> in response to the 2002 winter Olympic scandal in pairs figure skating. </p>
<h2>Majority judgment</h2>
<p>My colleague, Rida Laraki, and I <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-and-clinton-victorious-proof-that-us-voting-system-doesnt-work-58752">have developed a new method</a> of voting, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/majority-judgment">majority judgment (MJ)</a>, which avoids the drawbacks of MV and RV. </p>
<p>MJ asks voters a simple and natural question such as that recently posed by the Pew Research Center: “What kind of president do you think each of the following would be – a great, good, average, poor or terrible president?” In its <a href="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/11/03170033/10-27-16-October-political-release.pdf">last national survey </a> of registered voters (Oct. 20-25) Pew reported the following results (here adjusted to sum to 100 percent):</p>
<iframe id="datawrapper-chart-VlROX" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/VlROX/2/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="270"></iframe>
<p>All one needs to do is look at the evaluations of the two candidates in the table above to conclude that Clinton is better evaluated than Trump. </p>
<p>But what exactly is the majority opinion? </p>
<p>Clinton would be an Average President because in a majority vote between Average and any other “grade,” it wins. This is most easily seen by noting that a majority of 8%+27%+20%=55% believes she would be at least Average – so Average defeats any lower grade – and a majority of 20%+11%+34%=65% that she would be at most Average – so Average defeats any higher grade. It suffices to start from each end of the spectrum adding percentages until a majority is reached; in practice the sums from both directions will always reach a majority at the same grade. </p>
<p>Similarly, a majority believes Trump would be a Poor President because 54 percent believes he would be at least Poor and 57 percent that he would be at most Poor. With these evaluations majority judgment elects Clinton since the majority evaluates her above Trump. </p>
<p>MJ simply uses the majority principle – the idea that the majority can represent the whole – to deduce the electorate’s evaluation of every candidate, called their majority-grades, instead of using it to compare the number of votes each candidate receives. </p>
<p>No system is perfect. But majority judgment is far superior to any other known system. Here’s why:</p>
<ul>
<li>It is easier and more natural for voters since grading is familiar since school days; </li>
<li>It obtains more information from voters and puts more confidence in them by permitting them to express their opinions accurately;</li>
<li>It gives more information about the standing of candidates in the eyes of the public – had Clinton won she would have known her standing: Average;</li>
<li>Most importantly, it elects the candidate highest in the esteem of the electorate.</li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148161/original/image-20161130-17028-73izta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148161/original/image-20161130-17028-73izta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148161/original/image-20161130-17028-73izta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148161/original/image-20161130-17028-73izta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148161/original/image-20161130-17028-73izta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148161/original/image-20161130-17028-73izta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148161/original/image-20161130-17028-73izta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John and Colleen Kramer, of Stockton, Missouri, vote at the Caplinger Mills Trading Post on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Caplinger Mills, Missouri.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What happened this year?</h2>
<p>Pew Research – without realizing that their question serves as the basis of a method of voting – posed exactly the same question this year in January, March and August as well as late October. </p>
<p>In every case the majority evaluated Clinton an Average President and Trump a Poor President; moreover, their respective grades remained remarkably similar over all four polls, suggesting that despite all the hoopla – emails, sexism, racism, walls, FBI, secret speeches, jail and so much more – the electorate’s opinions concerning the two candidates remained very much the same throughout the year. </p>
<p>And yet Trump beat Clinton. Why? MV denied voters the right to express their opinions adequately in the state face-to-face encounters. </p>
<p>U.S. voters were in revolt, determined to show their exasperation with politicians. But how, with the majority vote, could they express this disgust other than by voting for Trump? </p>
<p>With majority judgment some of them would surely have rated Clinton as Poor or Terrible to make the point, but Trump as Poor or Terrible as well, exactly as the Pew survey shows. </p>
<p>This could well have been the case in each of several states where their total votes were close such as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/florida">Florida</a> (a difference of 1.3 percent in their vote totals), <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/michigan">Michigan</a> (a difference of 0.3 percent), <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/wisconsin">Wisconsin</a> (a difference of 0.8 percent) and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</a> (a difference of 1.1 percent). With MJ the result would then have been much closer to a true expression of voters’ opinions and so of the popular will: 307 Electoral College votes for Clinton, 231 for Trump.</p>
<p>Well before the vote on Nov. 8 something else went wrong. Trump and Clinton should not have been the victors in the Republican and Democratic primaries – they are, after all, generally considered to be the least popular candidates of recent history. But the primaries were decided by majority vote as well. Had the primaries used <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-and-clinton-victorious-proof-that-us-voting-system-doesnt-work-58752">majority judgment</a>, the general election would have pitted Bernie Sanders against John Kasich. </p>
<p>Imagine how different the country and the world would feel today – and be tomorrow – had they been the candidates!</p>
<p>The time has come to replace the obviously undemocratic mechanism of the majority vote by a method that captures the true will of the electorate: majority judgment.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: this article was updated to make clear that Ranked Voting has different versions, including Ranked Choice Voting.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michel Balinski is related to an employee of The Conversation US. </span></em></p>In this year’s election, the system of majority voting didn’t allow voters to express their opinions adequately. If they had, the choice would have been between Kasich and Sanders.Michel Balinski, American Applied Mathematician, Mathematical Economist, and O.R. Analyst. "Directeur de recherche de classe exceptionnelle" (emeritus) of the C.N.R.S., École polytechniqueLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/676942016-11-03T00:15:59Z2016-11-03T00:15:59ZMaine ballot initiative would let voters rank candidates<p>In a 1996 “Simpsons” episode, evil aliens Kodos and Kang secretly replace and impersonate Bill Clinton and Bob Dole during that year’s election. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4v7XXSt9XRM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Simpsons: ‘Two Party System’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When their plot is revealed, an angry crowd of voters vows to vote third party. Kodos scoffs at their empty threat, saying, “What, and throw away your vote?” The voters realize they are beaten. Looking on, ‘90’s third-party candidate Ross Perot punches through his straw hat in frustration. </p>
<p>It’s the age-old “spoiler” problem: Voters who prefer third-party candidates won’t pull the lever for them, for fear that doing so will waste their vote on a candidate who has no chance of winning – or even worse, throw the election to their least-preferred candidate. The spoiler issue has special resonance this year, with large numbers of voters <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/">disliking both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton</a>. </p>
<p>This November, Maine may lead the way in resolving this issue, with a referendum for “ranked-choice voting” for state elections. Under RCV, also called “instant runoff voting,” voters indicate their first choice, second choice, third choice, etc. for all the candidates who are running.</p>
<p>If one candidate wins a majority of first-place votes, she is declared the winner. However, if no one candidate gets a majority of first-place votes, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and his votes are redistributed to the other candidates based on who those voters chose as their second choice. This process continues until one candidate has a majority of votes and is declared the winner. </p>
<p>I’ve studied and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1923777">written about RCV systems</a> for decades, first as a lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department then as a law professor teaching election law. In 2008, I led a successful referendum effort to pass RCV for Memphis City Council elections. Implementation in Memphis <a href="http://archive.commercialappeal.com/news/government/politics/elections/local/instant-runoffs-in-memphis-elections-its-complicated-officials-say-215d4eb0-4b38-49b1-e053-0100007f3-330751871.html">has been delayed</a> because of outdated voting equipment and lack of political will, but I still believe the system has much to commend it. </p>
<h2>A proven system</h2>
<p>RCV is <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/rcv#where_is_ranked_choice_voting_used">used currently</a> in municipal elections in 11 U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Minneapolis and Oakland. Five states use it for military and overseas ballots. It’s used at the national level in a number of countries, including Ireland and Australia. The venerable <a href="http://www.robertsrules.com/">Robert’s Rules of Order</a> recommends it for some situations. Even the Oscars use it.</p>
<p>2016 might be a banner year for RCV. On the November ballot in Maine is a referendum which would institute RCV for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/13/will-ranked-choice-voting-succeed-in-maine-that-depends-on-the-democrats/">state elected offices</a>. The measure was largely inspired by the success of controversial Maine Republican Governor Paul LePage, <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21709402-maines-governor-loud-hint-what-trump-white-house-might-be-paul-lepage">who has described himself</a> as “Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular.” </p>
<p>LePage has been elected twice with less than a majority of the vote – the first time with only <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_LePage">37 percent support</a>. In both cases, the presence of an independent candidate on the ballot split the anti-LePage vote. </p>
<p>In fact, in the last four Maine gubernatorial elections, the winner did not have majority support. And there’s no way under our current plurality system to avoid situations where the winner ends up being someone who is the least-preferred candidate of a majority of voters. </p>
<p>The traditional response to that problem is to have a separate “runoff” election between the top two vote-getters some weeks after the initial election. These runoffs occur in many jurisdictions around the country whenever no one candidate receives a majority of all votes cast in the first election. Not only are these separate elections time-consuming and expensive, but experience shows that turnout drops precipitously in the second round, with only a tiny fraction of voters deciding the final outcome. For example, in Memphis, <a href="http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/lets-have-instant-runoffs/Content?oid=1142344">average turnout</a> in city council races drops from about 38 percent to about 5 percent between the first and second rounds of voting. </p>
<p>It is because of cost, time and turnout that many states have been abandoning their runoff elections. North Carolina and Florida are the <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/north_carolina_s_elimination_of_primary_runoffs_shows_why_ranked_choice_voting_is_a_better_way">latest states to abandon runoff elections</a> for just these reasons. </p>
<p>RCV solves this problem because only one election is needed. As a result, recent scholarship has shown, <a href="http://www.umsl.edu/%7Ekimballd/KimballRCV.pdf">turnout rates in RCV elections</a> exceed those in systems with runoffs. </p>
<p>The turnout advantage is intuitive even as compared to plurality elections without runoffs. By solving the “spoiler problem,” RCV provides opportunities to third-party candidates and other lesser-funded, lesser-known candidates. With the outcome less predictable, elections become more competitive, which has the natural result of boosting turnout. </p>
<h2>California gets innovative</h2>
<p>Another alternative to business as usual is the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gerston-top-two-primary-senate-race-20161005-snap-story.html">“top two” system</a> used in California, which abolishes individual party primaries and has all candidates of all parties run together in one primary election, with the top two vote-getters appearing in the general election. While admirable, the “top two” system still has a spoiler problem, since voters can’t rank, and often results in just two Democrats or two Republicans as the final-round choice. Indeed, some in deep-blue California <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gerston-top-two-primary-senate-race-20161005-snap-story.html">have complained</a> that it tends toward one-party rule. </p>
<p>RCV prevents this outcome, ensuring that the winner has majority support. It provides more opportunity for third parties, and is more reflective of the popular will. </p>
<p>Rank choice voting also decreases the effectiveness of negative campaigning. In an RCV election, you want to get your base to vote you as #1, but you also want to appeal to the base of like-minded candidates, hoping you can become their #2 choice. For that reason, it makes less sense to wage a scorched-earth, trash-your-opponent campaign. </p>
<p>While used primarily at the local level, there’s no reason RCV couldn’t be used at the presidential level too. As the Supreme Court said in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZC.html">Bush v. Gore</a>, under the Constitution, state legislatures have full power to decide how they will allocate their Electoral College votes. Variations aren’t unknown. For example, Maine allots electors by <a href="http://www.colby.edu/news/2016/09/13/maine-electoral-votes-could-split-for-first-time-colby-boston-globe-poll/">congressional district</a> for fear that, in a three-way race, one candidate could get all the electors with just 34 percent of the vote. </p>
<p>All those frustrated by their choices this election season, and those interested in fair, representative outcomes, should remember that the “spoiler problem” is an eminently fixable problem. </p>
<p>Kodos and Kang may seem scary, but they’re not invincible.
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Mulroy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What if you could go into a voting booth and rank your first, second and third choices? It could happen in Maine, if voters approve.Steven Mulroy, Law Professor in Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Election Law, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.