Among the key measures in a new bill, passed by both houses: a ban on construction of the controversial underground pipelines for up to two years, or until federal regulators complete their work on new safety regulations, whichever comes first.

“We’ve got a moratorium — that’s a good thing and we might get more safety measures depending on what (the federal regulators) do,” said Pam Richart, coordinator of the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines.

Still, she said, members of her coalition were dismayed that the bill didn’t ban or severely limit eminent domain, in which land can be taken from a nonconsenting owner for the public good.

“There are a lot of good protections in this bill, but what we had hoped to get was landowner protections, and I think we fell short there,” Richart said.

Illinois Manufacturers’ Association President and CEO Mark Denzler, is part of a coalition of business organizations, agriculture groups and organized labor that supports the pipelines.

Denzler said his coalition’s goal is to attract jobs and capital investment to Illinois and to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Emissions reductions are central to carbon transport and storage projects and the reason they receive generous financial incentives from the federal government.

The projects use carbon capture technology to trap CO2, a greenhouse gas that is produced during many industrial processes. Pipelines then transport the CO2 to naturally occurring rock formations deep underground where the carbon dioxide can be permanently stored.

Denzler said the legislation was born of “a tough negotiation.”

“We certainly didn’t get everything we wanted, but I think the important thing is it sets a regulatory framework so that operators know what the ground rules are,” he said.

Denzler downplayed the importance of the state moratorium, the second in the country after California’s, according to the Great Plains Institute, a nonprofit that works to advance energy goals.

At the end of the day, he said, this is a “short-term moratorium” that “really is not going to have an impact.”

The bill addresses the capture of carbon dioxide by various industries, including corn ethanol producers, the transport of CO2 via pipelines, and storage.

Underground storage of CO2 — part of a national effort to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gases and fight climate change — has never been done on the scale contemplated in Illinois and other Midwestern states.

Now, with billions of dollars of federal incentives for carbon storage at stake, and the national race to reduce global warming heating up, companies are seeking approval for massive new projects.

Developers are drawn to the region’s corn ethanol plants, which emit a relatively pure stream of CO2, making carbon capture cheaper and easier, and to the kind of underground rock formations found in Illinois, which has vast deposits of porous sandstone. The sandstone is considered an ideal medium for storing CO2.

Environmentalists and landowners worry about the risk of pipeline leaks, in which a potentially suffocating gas can be released into the air, as well as the possibility of contamination of underground water sources by underground storage areas or the injection wells that feed them.

After a 2020 carbon dioxide pipeline rupture in Mississippi, in which at least 45 people sought medical care —  some after losing consciousness — federal regulators announced they would update carbon dioxide pipeline safety regulations.

Supporters point out that CO2 pipelines have been operating for decades in the United States — largely in the service of the oil industry, which uses CO2 for oil extraction — and that a large CO2-storage pilot project in Decatur has performed well.

A 2023 report to the state by the Prairie Research Institute noted that Illinois had not addressed some of the basic legal and regulatory issues involved in carbon capture and storage, including who actually owns the “pore space,” the openings in underground rock where CO2 can be stored.

The 104-page Illinois bill, which Gov. J.B. Pritzker is expected to sign, addresses that question: The owner of the land on the surface owns the pore space below.

Among the other key features of the legislation are a requirement that carbon pipeline companies use advanced computer modeling to predict where gaseous CO2 could flow in the event of a pipeline leak or rupture, and provide the results to the state, which will publish them on a website.

CO2 exposure can cause confusion, unconsciousness and even — at high doses — death.

Protections for the government and taxpayers include a requirement that carbon storage owners monitor their sites for at least 30 years after storage is completed. The legislation also sets up fees for carbon pipelines and storage facilities, financial and insurance requirements for storage operators, and state funds to pay for monitoring and inspections and emergency planning and training.

Great Plains Institute Vice President for Carbon Management Patrice Lahlum called the Illinois bill “a robust effort and start.”

“It’s heartening to see that so many voices, and the range of voices, were at the table to think about it and talk about it and develop the legislation,” she said.

Denzler said that after more than a year of discussion, Pritzker’s office reconvened the authors of competing bills.

“I give the governor’s office a lot of credit for bringing business and labor and environmentalists and agriculture together to get the compromise,” he said.

Richart, co-director of the Champaign-based environmental group Eco-Justice Collaborative, said her coalition’s work isn’t done. Among their top concerns: a provision that could force landowners to lease space to an underground CO2 storage site.

If owners of 75% of the land required for an underground carbon dioxide storage site sign agreements with the site operator, the other affected landowners can be required to join in the project, according to the legislation.

Also concerning to landowners and environmentalists: They didn’t get additional protections for the Mahomet Aquifer, which supplies drinking water to nearly a million people in central Illinois.

Richart said that her coalition will continue to work on issues including landowner rights, the Mahomet Aquifer, and setbacks, or requirements that pipelines not be built too close to homes, schools or health facilities.

There are currently no setbacks for carbon dioxide pipelines in Illinois.

“There are pretty important provisions that didn’t get in there, that we’re just going to have to keep working on,” Richart said.

Chicago Tribune’s Olivia Stevens contributed.

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

Growing up in Long Beach, California, she needed inhalers and nebulizers and often had to miss recess.

Still, Thomas said it wasn’t until she was in her early 20s that she learned that living in an area with multiple sources of air pollution, including a freight train yard, had put her at higher risk for illness.

“We get told that this is normal,” said Thomas, co-director of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice in Southern California. “We’re supposed to expect … that our kids will regularly be in the hospital, that they will regularly miss school, that we will have to go to work sick.”

Thomas spoke Wednesday at a meeting in Chicago, where grassroots advocates from across the country called for stricter limits on diesel-exhaust emissions from freight trains.

Also present were some members of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency subcommittee who are looking into the issue, a smattering of local politicians, and Democratic Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García, who delivered the opening remarks.

“We must do more to protect the health of rail workers and (frontline) communities and close the existing loopholes that rail carriers exploit to keep dirty trains on the tracks,” Garcia said.

The “loophole” critics frequently reference is the industry practice of repairing and rebuilding locomotives, rather than purchasing new ones that are subject to very strict emissions standards.

The Association of American Railroads said that  “remanufacturing” locomotives by modernizing key parts is a way to make the locomotives more fuel-efficient and reliable.

“EPA regulations govern this process and the certification of these locomotives to ensure they meet the appropriate emissions standards,” Association of American Railroads Assistant Vice President for Communications Jessica Kahanek said in a written statement.

The statement said the railroads have taken numerous steps to increase their sustainability, including introducing highly advanced fuel management systems and installing idling-reduction technologies.

The Wednesday meeting was sponsored by the Moving Forward Network — a national, grassroots-led environmental organization that seeks to reduce pollution from the freight transportation system — as well as several of the network’s affiliates.

Earlier in the day, the EPA held a Chicago-area rail yard tour for members of the EPA subcommittee that’s researching the freight-train emissions issue.

As the nation’s busiest rail hub, Chicago figures prominently in the advocates’ push to update the EPA’s 16-year-old freight locomotive emissions standards.

About 25% of U.S. freight trains pass through the Chicago region, which has 18 intermodal rail yards, where giant containers from across the country — and the world — are transferred between trains and trucks.

That’s good for the economy, advocates said at the meeting, which was held in Pilsen. But people living close to rail yards — or working there — are paying the price in the form of exposure to diesel exhaust.

“We can’t keep allowing our communities to be sacrificed in the name of economic growth,” said José Acosta-Córdova, transportation justice program manager at the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. “Our lives literally depend on reform.”

Exposure to diesel exhaust can lead to asthma and respiratory illnesses and worsen existing heart and lung disease, especially in children and the elderly, according to the EPA.

In addition, the EPA considers diesel exhaust a likely carcinogen. The World Health Organization’s International Agency For Research on Cancer classified diesel exhaust as a carcinogen in 2012.

Diesel locomotive emissions cause about 1,000 premature deaths per year in the United States, according to a 2021 article in the journal Nature Energy.

“That’s an astounding number,” Earthjustice senior attorney Yasmine Agelidis said at the meeting. “One thousand people are passing away earlier than they would otherwise, just because of diesel locomotives.”

Chicago’s intermodal rail yards are of particular concern for advocates. Both trucks and trains emit diesel exhaust, as does some equipment, and trains are reassembled using older, more polluting “switcher” engines.

The switcher engines tend to stay in the rail yard, adding to local pollution.

“The problem is, you have the oldest, dirtiest locomotives in the most vulnerable, most heavily impacted communities — it’s the worst place for them to be,” said Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs at the Respiratory Health Association, a Chicago nonprofit.

A couple of years ago, Urbaszewski said in an earlier interview, he spotted some local switchers that dated from the Korean War era.

The loophole that advocates complain of dates back to a 2008 EPA rule requiring new locomotives to meet strict new Tier 4 emissions standards, starting in 2015.

In theory, that rule was a big step forward. The EPA estimates that a Tier 4 locomotive emits 90% less diesel particulate matter — a key pollutant — than older Tier 2 locomotives.

But instead of buying the new low-emissions trains at the level expected, railroad companies hung on to their old trains, repairing and rebuilding them rather than purchasing new ones.

Only about 7% of long-distance locomotives at the biggest railroads are Tier 4, according to the 2020 National Emissions Inventory.

Activists say the nation needs stronger regulations, including rules phasing in zero-emissions locomotives.

The EPA “needs to be moving with more urgency,” said Moving Forward Network senior campaign manager Molly Greenberg.

“That needs to be happening now,” she said in an interview before the meeting. “People’s lives are on the line, and on top of all of that we actually have the technology to really work toward eliminating the pollution from rail and locomotives.”

The railroad industry said there are no zero-emissions freight locomotives commercially available on the market today.

“The industry continues to pilot emerging technologies such as battery-electric and fuel-cell locomotives that can potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and criteria pollutants across the state and nationwide,” the statement said. “However, despite billions in investments and an industry-wide push to unlock a zero-emissions solution, a clear technological path has not yet emerged and will require additional testing and development.”

The Moving Forward Network wants the EPA to establish a new Tier 5 zero-emission standard for freight locomotives and require that all new switchers be zero-emissions by 2025. All new long-distance locomotives would be zero-emissions by 2030.

In cases where locomotives are rebuilt, the standards would also be high. Moving Forward Network wants a requirement that 100% of all remanufactured switchers would have to meet the Tier 4 standard by 2025 and 100% of all remanufactured long-distance locomotives would have to meet the Tier 4 standard by 2027.

Among the speakers at the meeting was Larry Hopkins, who works for a rail crew transportation company and lives on the Southwest Side of Chicago.

“I’m bounded by four rail yards within a 2- to 4-mile radius,” said Hopkins, western region vice president of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America. “These train locomotives are polluting our air. These locomotives are causing major problems in our communities and harming railroad workers and drivers like myself.”

In addition to calling for stronger national emissions standards, speakers called for state and local limits and Congressional action.

The EPA subcommittee studying the potential need for stricter freight train emissions rules is expected to submit a report in August. The EPA then would consider the findings and decide if new emissions rules are warranted.

Thomas told EPA staffers in the audience at the meeting that they were welcome to see more.

“You can come and spend the night with us. You can spend the night in any of our houses,” she said. “You need to experience it. If you don’t live in it, you don’t understand it.”

Freelancer John Lippert contributed.

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

The newcomer joins Imani — the city’s most celebrated avian bachelor — who has returned to the North Side beach for three summers, apparently looking for love. The Lake County Audubon Society also announced the return to Waukegan of two plovers that appear to be a few steps ahead of Imani.

The only known surviving chick of local legends Monty and Rose, Imani has endured a series of very public disappointments in his search for a mate.

But his luck may be changing.

There are currently three male piping plovers at the protected beach at Montrose, including one hatched at Cat Island in Wisconsin, and an unbanded bird that arrived Tuesday. But the apparent female has been spending time with the hometown hero, according to Tamima Itani, lead volunteer coordinator for the Chicago Piping Plovers.

“Early reports are that she’s hanging out with Imani,” Itani said.

The stakes are high — and not just because of romantic intrigue.

The Great Lakes population of piping plovers, which once included about 650 nesting pairs, is endangered, with just 80 nesting pairs recorded in 2023, according to the Great Lakes Piping Plover Conservation Team.

When Imani’s parents, Monty and Rose, set up housekeeping at Montrose Beach in 2019, the city rooted for the imperiled lovebirds and their fluffy hatchlings.

Piping plovers in Chicago: How the ‘love story’ between Monty and Rose unfolded at Montrose Beach

The latest piping plover to arrive at Montrose has her own dramatic backstory. She has been identified as Searocket, one of three captive-reared chicks released at Montrose last summer.

Before Searocket left last summer to winter in a warmer climate, she had gotten her foot tangled in a fishing line, a dangerous development. The team of volunteer piping plover monitors that watches the birds every summer attempted to capture her and remove the line, but they were unsuccessful.

Searocket began her migration the next day.

“It’s really remarkable that she was able to get rid of the fishing line,” Itani said.

Searocket is thought to be female because of a “smudged” border between the orange and black portions of her beak. In males, the border is more of a clear line.

In Waukegan, the Audubon Society said two of four captive-reared plover fledglings released in the city in July have returned within days of one another and were spotted one day after the city named the Great Lakes piping plover its official city bird.

Volunteers have said one of the plovers may be Imani’s cousin and related to his father, Monty, who nested in Waukegan as well as at Montrose Beach.

The pair, named Pepper and Blaze, were observed mating multiple times Wednesday, after returning from winters spent in Florida and North Carolina, respectively.

“Our city is dedicated to rehabilitating and preserving our lakefront and dunal habitat, which is crucial to the Great Lakes piping plovers,” Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor said. “We hope for a successful coupling for Blaze and Pepper.”

The next step for the plucky shorebirds on Montrose Beach is unclear, but fans are excited.

“If it’s confirmed that she’s a female, we could possibly end up having a nest, which would be thrilling,” said Itani of the Montrose pairing.

She asked that Chicagoans do their part by staying out of the fenced-off protected beach, which is marked with signs.

“The danger is that piping plovers will not nest in an area that they feel is disturbed,” she said.

Chicago Tribune’s Avani Kalra contributed.

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

But installation went well, the smooth black panels lowered his electric bills, and Gorr — who is very concerned about climate change — relished the opportunity to lower his carbon footprint.

He recalled with a chuckle how his wife, Susan, kidded him when he initially hesitated to turn on the air conditioner on a 90-degree day.

“What are you saving — sunbeams?” she asked.

Gorr, who has since moved to a ranch in Deer Park — and installed his second solar roof — is part of a wave of homeowners who have helped the U.S. reach a new clean energy milestone.

The nation now has more than 5 million solar installations, most of them on residential rooftops, the Solar Energy Industries Association announced on Thursday.

The announcement comes just eight years after the nation reached 1 million installations, SEIA said in a news release.

“Solar is scaling by the millions because it consistently delivers on its promise to lower electricity costs, boost community resilience, and create economic opportunities,” SEIA President and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said in the release.

“Today 7% of homes in America have solar, and this number will grow to over 15% of U.S. homes by 2030,” she said. “Solar is quickly becoming the dominant source of electricity on the grid, allowing communities to breathe cleaner air and lead healthier lives.”

Over 25% of U.S. solar installations have come online since the Inflation Reduction Act became law 20 months ago, according to data released by the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie, a research and consulting firm.

While 97% of solar installations are at residences, the project count also includes solar systems installed at businesses and solar farms.

Gorr said he’s actually surprised that solar hasn’t caught on more quickly.

“There should be yearslong waiting lists,” he said. “The economics is just so strong — we’re talking saving tens of thousands of dollars on electricity.”

The warranty period on a solar system is generally 25 years, he said. Over that time period, he expects his current solar roof to save him $30,000 to $40,000 dollars. And that’s after subtracting the cost of the system.

Between his electricity savings and his gasoline savings, due to owning an electric vehicle, he saves over $2,000 a year, he said.

Gorr, 71, a retired director of marketing and product management, was always interested in the environment, but when he was younger he was busy with his career and his kids.

After he retired, he looked for an environmental cause to focus on, and zeroed in on climate change.

“This is the worst crisis that humanity has ever faced,” he said. “I couldn’t sit idly by.”

He purchased a solar roof in order to reduce his home’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, with his electric bill savings and government incentives, he would recoup his costs.

Excited, he gave a presentation at a local library, and went on to become a volunteer solar ambassador at the nonprofit Illinois Solar Education Association, where he is now vice president of the board of directors.

He said he has talked to hundreds of people about the benefits of going solar and some have come back to tell him they heeded his advice.

Among those he has encouraged to consider solar: both of his sons, his brother and his best friend.

All of them now have rooftop solar systems.

Solar installations in the U.S. are expected to double to 10 million by 2030 and triple to 15 million by 2034, according to SEIA.

Illinois, which had only 2,500 solar installations in 2017, now has more than 87,000.

The U.S. has enough solar installations to cover every residential rooftop in Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, according to SEIA.

Gorr said he has found that most people who don’t have solar don’t understand the economic benefits. His most basic message: If you pay an electric bill, you can save money by switching to solar.

People who don’t own a home — or don’t want to buy rooftop panels — can enroll in community solar programs, which allow you to buy your energy from a solar farm, he said. If you are able to invest in solar panels, you can achieve even greater cost-savings.

And for people with lower incomes, additional financial incentives are available through the state’s Solar for All program.

Gorr said he took a free class and talked to at least three contractors before getting his first solar roof.

But when it came time to purchase his second, he saw no reason to wait.

Within a day or two of closing on his current home, he called his solar installer.

“Meet me at my house,” Gorr said. “I’ve got a very easy sale for you.”

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

A second piping plover — unofficially known as Green Dot — has joined the city’s favorite avian bachelor, Imani, at the North Side’s Montrose Beach.

The newcomer, believed to be male, has been seen walking next to Imani, along a parallel path. And while that may look like wingman behavior to humans, among piping plovers, the message is different.

“That’s male territorial behavior,” said Tamima Itani, lead volunteer coordinator for the Chicago Piping Plovers, which monitors the birds to ensure their safety. “They’re basically delineating their territory.”

The Great Lakes population of piping plovers, which once included about 650 nesting pairs, is endangered, with just 80 nesting pairs recorded in 2023, according to the Great Lakes Piping Plover Conservation Team.

When Imani’s parents, Monty and Rose, set up housekeeping at Montrose Beach in 2019, the city fell in love with the imperiled lovebirds and their fluffy hatchlings.

After Monty’s death in 2022 and Rose’s disappearance the same year, attention shifted to Imani, a jaunty fellow with a white belly, black neck band, and orange and black beak.

But while Imani, who was born in 2021, has returned to Montrose for the past two summers, apparently looking for love, he has yet to start a family of his own.

Green Dot, who appeared Saturday at Montrose Beach, hatched at Cat Island in Wisconsin in 2023.

The newcomer doesn’t have a name, and Green Dot refers to a green sticker on one of his leg bands. Imani has a star on one of his leg bands, a reference to the Chicago flag.

For Imani, the arrival of a rival is only the latest twist in a long and very public struggle to find a mate.

Piping plovers in Chicago: How the ‘love story’ between Monty and Rose unfolded at Montrose Beach

In 2022, the diminutive shorebird returned from his southern wintering grounds to dig shallow nests in the sand and chase off larger birds. But, alas, no female arrived to see the show.

Imani was back last summer, and there was a brief buzz when a female — and another male — showed up, but then they abruptly departed. Itani said the female was from the Great Plains, and thus unlikely to stay and mate.

“It’s not common for Great Plains piping plovers to mate with Great Lakes piping plovers,” she said. “It happens, but they tend to stop and then continue to the Great Plains.”

Foiled but apparently undaunted, Imani made his dramatic return to Montrose this year on April 25.

His best prospects for a mate are females that hatched last year and have not yet established a nesting territory, according to Itani.

“It’s really wait and see,” she said.

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com 

Look closely and you can see low-lying wildflowers — yellow, violet and lavender — hiding in the lush grasses.

Still, there’s little to suggest that Peterson is participating in No Mow May, a national conservation initiative that encourages homeowners to aid struggling pollinators, including bees, by forsaking the lawnmower until June 1.

Four years after No Mow May arrived in the United States, along with foot-high grasses and lawns dotted with hundreds of dandelions, there are signs that the Chicago area is embracing a more moderate approach.

At least five cities and towns in the area, including Westmont, La Grange Park and Riverside, are hosting No Mow ‘Til Mother’s Day, which allows lawns to grow and flowering weeds such as dandelions and creeping Charlie to fully flourish, but only until mid-May.

To supporters, it’s a win-win: Hungry bees get access to important early season pollen and nectar, and neighbors get more orderly vistas.

“I think it’s the perfect middle ground for suburban Chicagoland,” said Peterson, a yoga teacher.

The other participating communities include Glenview and Lombard, which had more than 650 participating households in 2023. Northbrook holds a similar program, Slow Mow May, in which participants mow every two to three weeks.

Local officials said that No Mow May, which started in England and was introduced in the United States in Appleton, Wisconsin, has been modified to account for the Chicago area’s fast-growing grasses.

“I grew up in this area. I’m very familiar with the ecology and grass,” said Jon Yeater, supervisor of the forestry and grounds division at the Westmont Public Works Department. “Even in an average year, I don’t think you can get through the entire month of May (without mowing).”

No Mow May is a response to growing concerns about declines in key insect populations, due to factors such as loss of habitat, climate change and pesticide use.

An influential 2017 study in the journal PLOS ONE found a 75% decrease in flying insects (by weight) in German nature preserves over 27 years, and in 2021 the National Academies of Sciences produced a special issue on insect decline, with the authors of one article writing, “Urgent action is needed on behalf of nature.”

Among the insects at risk are many North American native bees, according to the Xerces Society, a nonprofit conservation organization focusing on invertebrates, including insects.

The No Mow movement has sparked debate in recent years, with some critics saying that adding native plants to your yard or replacing your lawn entirely are more effective ways to support pollinators.

But supporters praise No Mow May for drawing attention to a hard-to-publicize issue, with Yeater saying No Mow programs get citizens involved and can lead to more ambitious home gardening practices.

“One of the things I like about it is it’s catchy, and people are finally starting to acknowledge that they can do something different with their lawns and it can have benefits for bees,” said Susannah Lerman, a research ecologist at the U.S. Forest Service and co-author of a frequently referenced 2018 study that found mowing less benefits bees.

“From that perspective, I think (No Mow May) is really great,” she said. “People are talking about it. You’re seeing (lawn) signs everywhere.”

Still, she said, May is just one month.

“If we can get people to reduce their lawn mowing in May — and June, July and August — then we’re talking. That’s going to have a lot more benefits for bees,” she said.

Her 2018 study found that mowing less frequently leads to more flowers and more bees. Lawns mowed every two weeks had the most bees (compared to lawns mowed every week or every three weeks). Among the possible explanations for the superior bee counts in lawns mowed every two weeks: the taller grasses in lawns mowed every three weeks may have impeded the bees’ access to flowers, the study said.

In Northbrook, which started with a full-blown No Mow May in 2021 but switched to Slow Mow May last year, sustainability coordinator Kate Carney said there were concerns that very tall grasses could crowd out flowers or block insects that burrow underground in winter and emerge in spring.

No Mow May programs — and the many variations —  can help homeowners avoid fines, with towns often temporarily suspending enforcement of lawn-height ordinances.

Still, many No Mow May enthusiasts participate in towns without official programs, taking their chances with tickets, mowing occasionally, or confining their participation to backyards.

Retired special education teacher Kathleen Lojas said she mows her Brookfield front yard but lets the backyard “go meadowy” in May.

She has red clover, Dutch clover, creeping Charlie, dandelions and violets.

“I saw a great, big bumblebee the other day by my irises, and I was so, so happy,” she said.

Peterson said she mowed her front lawn once this spring at her husband’s suggestion, and she keeps the dandelions at bay, in part “to keep the neighbors smiling and waving happily.”

“I want to be responsive. I want to be a good neighbor,” she said. “But I also want to be a good steward of the environment.”

Mother’s Day strikes her as a great no-mow cutoff point, in part due to the nature of the holiday.

“I host my mother and in-laws and you want the place to be pretty. There’s this sense of I don’t know — propriety,” she said.

Lerman, the research ecologist, said she hadn’t heard of No Mow ‘Til Mother’s Day before, but she liked the idea: “What it says to me is that people are taking this idea of No Mow May, and they’re making it work for where they’re at.”

On a sunny day in early May, Peterson gave a tour of her ¼-acre property, where she lives with her husband and their two children in a 1926 brick bungalow.

The front yard included traditional purple irises, wild strawberries, a flower box and a birdfeeder. Big carpenter bees — yellow and fuzzy on top, and sleek and black below — hovered near the house.

The side lot and backyard, which were hidden from the street, won’t be mowed until June, Peterson said. There, the look was wilder, with lots of trees and a stream-like trench making its way through the violets and mock strawberry, toward a small temporary pond. Robins and cardinals sang as Peterson knelt to inspect a single purple violet.

With all the shade, the grasses hadn’t grown very high yet, she said apologetically. But the overall effect was still that of a woodland refuge.

Deer and ducks have stopped by, Peterson said, and two weeks ago she saw a coyote.

“Yards aren’t just for us, and we’re realizing that,” she said. “That’s the important shift that we’re seeing. We’re acknowledging that and we’re making room for all the inhabitants.”

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

Sure enough, sitting very still in the rain was a tiny white-throated sparrow, so drenched you could barely make out its canary-yellow face markings. The bird was too dazed to move — an easy target for the hungry seagulls that were patrolling the area.

Prince looked up at the nearest skyscraper, with its rows of dark windows.

“He probably hit the glass up there and fell down,” she said.

A long-awaited policy update from the city of Chicago is supposed to help prevent such injuries and deaths, which occur by the thousands each year when migrating birds crash into local buildings.

But Chicago bird safety advocates say they are disappointed that the city’s policy update, now in draft form, does not make bird safety measures mandatory.

Instead, anti-collision measures, which can include installing glass with tiny markings, are included in a menu of sustainable design options from which developers working on affected projects can pick and choose.

“We feel it’s not adequate,” said Prince, chair of Bird Friendly Chicago, a coalition of local birding and conservation groups that’s been working for bird-safe building measures since 2016.

“(These measures) are not just bonuses — they’re essential to protecting valuable bird lives and a healthy environment, that these birds are foundational to. They’re good for people. They’re good for birds,” she said.

Chicago Department of Planning and Development Deputy Commissioner Peter Strazzabosco pointed out that the proposed policy update, available for public comment until May 15, gives additional weight to bird-safe building options.

Under the update, one category of bird safety measures would be awarded 30 points, compared with just 10 points under the current policy.

Those points count toward the 100 points that certain new buildings and renovations must earn — by choosing from a list of sustainability options — if the project developers want the city’s permission to build.

“(The new policy) has incentivized the bird-friendly design section by tripling the point total (in one category), and by including, for the first time, an implementation section that helps developers figure out how to use bird-friendly measures in their projects,” Strazzabosco said.

The draft sustainable development policy update would typically apply to about 50 to 75 new or renovated buildings a year, many of them larger projects that are getting some form of assistance from the city, he said.

The proposed update, the first since 2017, comes less than a year after at least 960 birds died in a single day after crashing into McCormick Place Lakeside Center, a glassy, low-lying convention building on the lakefront.

Birds were crashing into windows even as monitors collected the casualties, according to David Willard, a retired bird division collections manager at the Field Museum.

“It was just discouraging as can be,” Willard told the Tribune. “You’re looking at a rose-breasted grosbeak that, if it hadn’t hit a Chicago window, would have made it to the Andes of Peru.”

McCormick Place Lakeside sought expert advice immediately, and has set a goal of installing about $1.2 million worth of bird-safe film on all its windows in time for the fall migration season, according to Larita Clark, chief executive officer at the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which owns the building.

But Chicago, which is located in the Mississippi Flyway — a major bird migration route — remains a perilous place for millions of birds that fly through each year, some from as far away as South America and northern Canada.

Prince, the director of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, said the all-volunteer organization recovers 7,000 to 10,000 dead and injured birds a year — and that’s just a small fraction of the city’s casualties.

During a walk through the Loop, she pulled out her phone to show an array of birds, including an injured meadowlark and a deceased northern flicker with a spotted belly and bright yellow feathers on the undersides of its wings.

The losses come at a time of growing concern about North American birds, which are in the midst of a “staggering” population decline, according to a widely quoted 2019 study in the journal Science.

The study found a net loss of 2.9 billion birds since 1970, a 29% population decline.

A wide range of threats were cited in the study, including habitat loss, agricultural practices, coastal disturbances, climate change and deaths due to human activity, a category that includes collisions with buildings.

Through the years, Chicago has made some major efforts on behalf of the tiny visitors, including a seasonal late-night lights-out program.

Prince’s group patrols a high-risk section of downtown Chicago during spring and fall migration, rescuing birds as well as providing casualty counts.

The white-throated sparrow that Prince spotted on a grate was easy to catch: She came up behind him with a net, then gently placed him in a brown paper bag for transfer to the Willowbrook Wildlife Center.

He didn’t seem harmed, just dazed, Prince said, and he was very likely to recover and be released back into the wild.

Despite such success stories, bird advocates say that the transparent and reflective surfaces of Chicago buildings, as well as certain gratings and landscape and lighting practices, continue to create peril.

Advocates began pushing the city for bird-safe building design measures in 2016, with early efforts focusing on an ordinance.

In 2020, advocates turned their focus to a planned update of the city’s sustainable development policy.

Prince said she and her allies were clear, from the beginning of their discussions with the planning department, that they were calling for bird safety requirements, not options.

“It’s an understanding they had from us, and they continued to indicate that was the direction they were taking,” said Prince.

She said the word “required” was used in the department’s presentations and slides until the end of 2023, and then there was “a reversal at the 11th hour.”

“We feel that we wasted four years, and in those four years, hundreds of buildings have gone up that in their lifetime are going to kill thousands of birds,” she said.

Strazzabosco said that he wasn’t going to dispute what bird advocates “may have heard or what they thought they heard.”

“I’m kind of uncomfortable talking about this he said, she said stuff because neither of us was in the room, but I can tell you that mandatory menu items were suggested, but anything presented was in the discussion phase; it wasn’t final,” he said.

Strazzabosco said that policy documents such as the sustainable development policy update don’t have the authority to create mandates; that typically requires an ordinance with a City Council vote behind it.

At the nonprofit American Bird Conservancy, which tests and rates bird-safe building options, glass collisions program director Bryan Lenz said that point-based policies such as the Chicago sustainable development policy update are more effective than purely voluntary measures but less effective than requirements.

Faced with a menu of sustainable building methods and materials, developers tend to pick ones that are more familiar to them, such as water-conserving low-flow toilets, he said.

“I don’t think (Chicago’s proposed policy) would have the impact anybody was hoping for in terms of reducing collisions,” he said.

Since 2017, about 30 projects have chosen bird safety from Chicago’s menu of sustainable building strategies, Strazzabosco said. That’s approximately 10% of the projects that had to choose from the menu.

Other menu options include energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, landscape and green infrastructure, public health and community benefits, stormwater management, sustainable transportation, waste diversion and water use reduction.

The policy update was released as a draft April 15. A final policy will be posted online July 1, and the policy will be fully implemented in January, according to the planning department.

The owners of McCormick Place Lakeside are finalizing a contract to apply bird-friendly patterns to all the building’s windows, according to Clark.

The glass will be marked with tiny dots — applied via a removable film — that will warn birds they are approaching a hard surface. Workers are also closing blinds at the building, unless customers request otherwise.

Prince said that regardless of what happens with the proposed policy update, bird advocates plan to pursue an ordinance with bird-safe building requirements.

New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Skokie and Evanston already have local laws with such requirements.

“We think that’s a direction that’s going to put the strongest protections in place,” Prince said.

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

To the east of Route 52, there’s the first phase of the 9,500-acre Steward Creek solar farm, in the works since 2019.

To the west, there’s South Dixon Solar, which once hoped to begin construction on 3,800 acres in 2022.

Both projects have been approved by the Lee County Board. But neither can be built, according to a county official, due to PJM Interconnection, a powerful but little-known entity that controls access to the high-voltage electric grid in northern Illinois.

“There isn’t anything we can do to help the state move forward (with its clean energy goals),” said Lee County Zoning Administrator Alice Henkel. “This is all PJM. They have the control.”

As the clean energy transition surges ahead, with prices for electricity from wind and solar dropping and market share growing, long waitlists for new power sources seeking approval to connect to the electric grid have quietly emerged as a major barrier.

Across the nation, the waitlists for large projects to connect to the grid — and deliver power to homes and businesses — have ballooned, leaving over 1,400 gigawatts of wind and solar power in limbo, enough to allow the United States to achieve 90% clean electricity.

“We really shouldn’t have this kind of breakdown in something that’s so vital,” said Mike Jacobs, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

And nowhere is the problem worse, according to a recent first-of-its-kind report, than in the PJM region, which spans Washington, D.C., and 13 states, in whole or in part, including northern Illinois.

PJM came in last out of seven regions, with a grade of D-, in the Generation Interconnection Scorecard report prepared for the business association Advanced Energy United.

PJM’s performance had “few bright spots,” according to the report, which was based on publicly available data, as well as recent interviews with energy developers and engineers working in the field.

The report found that in a nation with “agonizingly slow” grid connection processes, the PJM process of studying and green-lighting new requests to connect to the grid was the slowest, with the most unpredictable timelines.

One clean energy developer was quoted as saying he had stopped doing new projects in the PJM region.

PJM’s delays are severe enough to pose a significant risk to Illinois’ ambitious clean energy goals, according to a 2023 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“(PJM) has unnecessarily set our transition to cleaner energy back by years,” said Clara Summers, the Consumers for a Better Grid campaign manager at the Citizens Utility Board.

PJM, a federally regulated private company that manages part of the high-voltage electric grid, declined a request for a phone interview, instead issuing a written statement saying the interconnection scorecard report “is an assessment of conditions and practices that no longer exist in PJM.”

“Over three years ago, PJM and its stakeholders identified improvements to the interconnection process and developed landmark reforms in record time. These new rules are enabling PJM to process New Service Requests faster and more efficiently,” the statement said.

PJM said the “more relevant challenge” is getting previously approved projects built.

“This is the challenge we need to confront as an industry rather than looking back on problems that have been largely addressed,” the statement said. “PJM is not delaying the energy transition.”

But critics of PJM’s operation say that delays continue.

While PJM points to 40 gigawatts of power that’s approved but awaiting construction, there were 290 gigawatts of power waiting to connect to the PJM grid at the end of 2023, up from 88 gigawatts in 2018, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a federally funded research center.

A tidal wave

In Lee County, wind turbines sprout from cornfields, some as tall as skyscrapers.

There was heated debate when the state’s first utility-scale wind farm was built here in 2003, Henkel said as she drove her SUV down quiet country roads.

But as time went on, farms continued to produce, the turbines did their jobs and concerns faded.

The county now has 280 wind turbines, with enough power to meet the electricity needs of roughly 200,000 homes.

“It works for this area,” said Henkel. “We are contributing to green energy and energy independence, so I’m proud of that.”

Proposals for big solar projects started arriving here about five years ago, part of a national trend.

A tidal wave of renewable energy projects — driven by falling wind and solar costs and state and federal policies — was building, and heading toward the grid.

“It’s happened really fast,” said Joe Rand, an energy policy researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and lead author of Queued Up, a series of reports on the grid-connection waitlist.  “We’re in a rapid and fundamental energy transition in this country.”

In the PJM region, the median time a new energy project had to wait before being allowed to connect to the grid rose to more than five years in 2022, up from just 20 months in 2005.

PJM effectively slammed on the brakes in 2022, with a decision, approved by regulators, that it would not review newer grid-connection requests — submitted after September 2021 — until early 2026, according to government documents and PJM reports.

That allowed PJM to focus on clearing the backlog of older requests but left newer projects with potential waits of up to four years — just to begin the review process.

As part of a broader package of generally well-received reforms, PJM also went to a new review process in which grid-connection requests are studied in clusters, rather than one by one. Other changes included new financial requirements for applicants, aimed at discouraging speculative projects.

Among the local projects affected by PJM delays: Deriva Energy’s South Dixon solar farm in Lee County, which applied to connect to the grid in 2019. According to PJM’s timelines, the project should get an agreement to connect to the grid by mid-2025.

Phase 1 of Hexagon Energy’s Steward Creek solar farm submitted its requests to connect to the grid in 2019 and 2020. The project should get an agreement by mid-2025.

“Having things dragged out — it certainly makes the development timeline a lot trickier,” said Hexagon senior director of development Scott Remer. “It introduces risk to how we’re going to continue to develop and mature the project.”

Planning for the future

No one is saying that PJM’s job is easy.

The Pennsylvania-based company — a membership organization that includes utilities and power providers — is the largest grid operator in the country, coordinating and directing the flow of electricity to 65 million people in a time of unprecedented change.

And PJM is by no means the only region struggling.

A recent report based on a survey of 123 wind and solar developers nationwide found that the grid-connection process was the top cause of delays of six months or more, followed by local ordinances and zoning, community opposition and supply chain issues.

At the Solar Energy Industries Association, senior director of energy markets and counsel Melissa Alfano said that the grid-connection process nationwide is a “huge” problem for big solar farms.

Rand said the issue has moved “to the forefront of the national energy conversation.”

“(Grid-connection) has become the leading barrier to new power plants coming online and new renewables being deployed,” he said.

There are more than 1,400 gigawatts of clean energy in grid connection waitlists nationwide, and 1,000 gigawatts of battery storage, or technology that collects energy for later use, according to the most recent Queued Up report.

That would be enough to take the United States to 90% clean electricity under current conditions, according to Nikit Abhyankar, a senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

However, Abhyankar cautioned that only about 19% of projects that enter the grid-connection waitlists end up being built.

Before the waitlists surged, about 24% of projects got built, according to the 2020 edition of Queued Up.

PJM, historically a leader among grid operators, entered the current era in a strong position. But critics say that while some regions have taken bold steps to meet the challenge of clean energy, PJM has moved more cautiously.

“Honestly, it’s deer in the headlights behavior,” said Summers, grid campaign manager at CUB.

California’s grid operator — or PJM equivalent — has pursued a blue-state strategy of proactively planning the expansion of the high-voltage grid. That’s helpful, experts say, because a right-sized grid allows new clean energy to connect more easily.

In the Texas grid region, a red-state, free-market approach has also drawn praise: new projects can connect to the grid fairly easily, but bear additional risk that their power production may be curtailed if the energy supply exceeds demand.

Both regions earned overall grades of B in the interconnection scorecard report, the highest grades awarded.

PJM, in contrast, stuck to a “sub-par” process for studying grid-connection requests for far too long, the report said. And when PJM did make reforms, the transition to an improved process froze opportunities for new projects to be considered.

The report also gave PJM a low grade for forward-looking grid planning, in which strategically located long-distance power lines are built and upgraded to meet the growing demand for electricity.

Experts say that planning for the grid of the future — and building it — brings a multitude of benefits: It’s easier for far-flung locations to access the cleanest, lowest-cost electricity; the risk of blackouts and other power interruptions diminishes; and adding new power sources is faster and less costly.

But today the United States is expanding the grid “in the most expensive way possible,” via painstaking piecemeal additions, according to Rob Gramlich, president of the power-sector consulting firm Grid Strategies and a co-author of the interconnection scorecard report.

“It’s very costly to just keep putting these Band-Aids on the system when there are huge economic efficiencies that come with higher-capacity lines and upgrades,” Gramlich said.

Studies have repeatedly concluded that expanding and upgrading the high-voltage grid creates economic benefits, with a 2022 study in the journal IEEE Transactions on Power Systems finding that adding high-voltage power lines between huge, largely disconnected sections of the grid would create as much as $2.90 worth of benefits for every dollar spent.

PJM got a D+  for proactive grid-planning in the interconnection scorecard report.

The report did note PJM is finalizing a new long-term planning process. However, the authors wrote, it’s not yet clear if the new process will lead to the kind of proactive expansion that would make it easier for new energy sources to come online.

Ambitious targets

Peter Nichols grew up in Lee County: swimming and canoeing in the Rock River, and accompanying his grandfather on visits to his farmland.

“We’d go around every week and collect eggs and check on the cattle,” he recalled.

It was the kind of childhood that forges deep ties to the land, and Nichols, a retired doctor and emeritus professor in Southern California who visits Lee County regularly, said that when he and his siblings received offers to lease land to two local solar projects, they took the decision seriously.

They spent a lot of time discussing the pluses and minuses, including the opportunity solar would offer to let the land recover from the demands of corn and soybean farming.

They decided solar was the right choice for them about four years ago, Nichols said, and then they waited.

“We’re attached (to our land), we want things that are good for it, and now we’re kind of just held in limbo. That’s aggravating,” Nichols said.

The grid-connection slowdown has affected a wide swath of people, including landowners who plan to lease to developers and the growing number of companies — including data centers — that want to use clean energy.

States such as Illinois, which have set ambitious targets for wind and solar energy, are feeling the impact as well.

A 2023 Natural Resources Defense Council report found that the PJM grid-connection process isn’t currently getting new wind and solar farms online fast enough to put Illinois on pace to meet its clean electricity goals. And a recent planning report from the Illinois Power Agency said grid-connection delays — along with supply chain issues and the amount of time needed for construction — create a “significant challenge” for ambitious state clean-electricity targets.

Still, advocates and experts are heartened by increasing attention to grid-connection delays nationwide, including a 2023 order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requiring reforms to the grid-connection process.

Another federal order, addressing long-term planning of the high-voltage grid, is expected this year, and federal regulators are looking into other improvements.

Rand said there is a lot more room to improve the grid-connection process, but he is “optimistic” that the country is at or near the peak of the problem.

Gramlich, whose resume includes a stint as a senior PJM economist in the late 1990s, said that every problem in the grid connection scorecard report is solvable, and in each case, someone around the country is doing things right.

“Now really all we need to do — at the risk of oversimplification — is identify those activities that work and get everybody else to adopt those activities,” he said.

Rooftop view

On a brisk afternoon in March, Lee County offered evidence of the delays — and a glimpse of what could lie beyond.

When Henkel pulled her SUV to a stop next to a piece of farmland promised to the Steward Creek solar farm, bare fields stretched for miles, interrupted, here and there, by a few lonely landmarks — a house, a water tower, a smattering of leafless trees.

There was nothing to suggest rows of sleek black panels, turning in tandem to follow the sun, until Henkel offered up her cellphone, with photos she had taken during a visit to a big solar farm in Coles County in central Illinois.

She had actually climbed up on top of her car to get a better view of the panels, she said with a chuckle.

“It’s hard to really grasp it from the ground level, because of how tall they are,” she said. “Then once I got up there I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is quite the sight.’”

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

The city should set limits on emissions from certain buildings, using an approach already in place in New York, according to the report from the Urban Land Institute Chicago.

The emission limits would grow stricter over time, pushing buildings to replace planet-warming fossil fuels with clean energy.

“This one’s hard for me, because this is going to be a cost for building owners, but it’s an essential element of getting toward net zero (emissions),” said Mary Ludgin, a senior adviser at the Chicago real estate investment management firm Heitman LLC and a contributor to the report.

The report noted the financial challenges facing many commercial building owners and called for any new emission-reduction targets for existing buildings to be introduced with “realistic timelines.”

The report also called for robust technical and financial assistance programs to help building owners and developers.

The recommendations are part of a wide-ranging report on reducing building emissions from ULI Chicago, which has 1,500 members representing all aspects of the real estate industry, including developers, property owners, investors, architects, planners, public officials and real estate brokers.

The report was produced over the course of a year by 50 stakeholders, including industry experts, civic and community leaders, and public sector officials.

Among the recommendations: Expand the city’s energy-usage reporting requirements to include more Chicago buildings, and require buildings to report carbon emissions.

The report also calls for a well-funded city department of environment, a fast-track permitting process for green development proposals, and more coordination of programs, including those offering technical assistance for building owners working to lower emissions and those offering information about potential funding sources.

Buildings produce 70% of greenhouse gas emissions in Chicago, so reducing those emissions is key to any climate plan, according to Chicago Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer Jared Policicchio, who spoke Tuesday at a downtown launch event for the report.

“We’re simply not going to make progress without thinking about our built environment when it comes to climate change mitigation,” Policicchio said.

Policicchio noted that the Chicago City Council is already considering the Clean and Affordable Buildings Act, which would essentially ban natural gas use in most new buildings.

As for building emissions standards, he said the city is exploring how to structure discussions among interested parties.

“I’m hopeful that you’ll hear more from us this year regarding that, and by ‘that’ I mean a stakeholder process that will begin to look in detail at how to develop (building emissions standards),” he said.

The report didn’t specify which buildings might be subject to emissions limits, but the New York law only applies to buildings over 25,000 square feet.

The report pointed out that installing energy-efficient windows or replacing gas furnaces with all-electric heat pumps can be “expensive and disruptive” for both large and small building owners.

Also a concern, according to the report, are vacancies and falling revenues for some office building owners.

“There is a lot of competition for capital, and many office building owners are simply not earning enough rent right now to cover costs and re-invest into the building,” a building owner was quoted as saying in the report.

Still, the report noted that some emissions improvements are relatively inexpensive or have quick payback periods.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a two-tower complex in Chicago’s Loop, saved over $680,000 — or approximately 18% of its annual energy costs — with the help of the ComEd Energy Efficiency Program, the report said. The complex recouped the initial project investment in under a year.

At the launch event, which was attended by about 90 people, Ludgin said there’s other good news: It’s a “remarkable” time to get government funding, including grants available through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

“If you’re going to decarbonize your building, this is the moment to do it,” she said.

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

Pearsall worries about the greenhouse gas emissions a child would add to a planet already experiencing the effects of rising temperatures.

And he is concerned about the impact climate change would have on the child: “the feeling of impending doom, every day, for their whole life.”

When he and his wife discussed having kids, he said, they found they were on the same page: “Why would we want to bring a child into the world with no consent as to whether they want to (deal with) all these problems?”

Pearsall, 30, of Humboldt Park, is part of a large and increasingly visible group of Americans: people in their teens, 20s and 30s who cite climate change as a reason they are hesitating to have children, or choosing not to do so.

Data is scarce but a 2021 study published in the journal Lancet Planet Health found that 36% of teens and young adults were hesitant to have children due to climate change.

Famous millennials — from Miley Cyrus to Prince Harry — have said they are taking climate into account when planning their families.

This spring the University of Chicago will be offering a new course on the ethics of reproduction during the climate crisis, taught by divinity school doctoral candidate Kristi Del Vecchio, and there are at least four recent or upcoming books, including “The Conceivable Future: Planning Families and Taking Action in the Age of Climate Change,” by Chicago activist Josephine Ferorelli and Rhode Island state Sen. Meghan Kallman.

The kids-and-climate issue “went basically from behind-closed-doors to conventional wisdom,” said Ferorelli.

Ashes raining down

When University of Chicago student Ellen Ma was growing up in Los Angeles, there were rolling blackouts and heat waves.

She remembers going outside after a particularly bad wildfire, and ash was falling from the sky.

“It looked like snow,” she said.

“Even in high school, I remember everyone just being hit with this sense of cynicism and hopelessness like, ‘What am I doing? How can I make any kind of positive impact, even with my own career?’ And then thinking, why would I want to bring a child into a world that’s so messed up?” she said.

Those feelings were triggered by concerns about climate change, as well as frustration with the way politicians were handling the issue, she said.

For Ma, the lack of action was “pretty terrifying.”

Not every flood, heat wave, storm or wildfire is due to climate change, but scientists say that global temperatures are rising, and with them the risk of more — and more extreme — weather events.

Last year was the warmest on record by far, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all been in the past decade.

75 on Tuesday, an ice-free lake, little snow: Climate change blunts winter in Chicago

The worsening climate situation has fueled the rise of the climate-and-kids discussion, according to Ferorelli.

“You can’t ignore it,” Ferorelli said of climate change. “You can’t tune it out the way you could before, not just because more people are talking about it, but because I wore a tank top to the post office yesterday, and it was snowing this morning. This doesn’t seem normal anymore.”

In 2019, Cyrus declared she wouldn’t have children until there was progress on climate change, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle said they would limit themselves to two children because of climate change.

For some Chicagoans, a turning point came last summer, when wildfire smoke from Canada left the city with some of the worst air quality in the world.

Chicago’s air quality: ‘We’re in the crosshairs.’ Wildfires and wind push region’s air to worst in the world, global pollution index shows.

“I just feel like that was one of the first times in my career that I have seen people really make the connection that the wildfires weren’t happening here and yet we were so deeply impacted by them,” said Sierra Club Illinois Chapter communications coordinator Hannah Flath.

“Folks were experiencing bad health outcomes,” Flath said. “Even folks who don’t have asthma or other respiratory issues, and are generally young and fit, were not wanting to go for a run because the air quality was so bad.”

Fewer kids, or none

Growing up, Flath wanted to have lots of kids — maybe six or seven.

In her mid-20s, she went through a period when she didn’t want to have children due to climate change.

And now, at 28, she has reached a middle ground: She doesn’t feel comfortable with having six or seven kids, but she would be open to having one or two biological children, or adopting.

“I do feel pretty comfortable with just leaving it a question, for now, but it’s definitely something I think about,” she said.

Flath’s journey reflects the complexity and fluidity of responses to climate change, with some people limiting their families due to concerns for the planet, the child or both, some deciding not to have children, and many changing their minds.

Thirty-three percent of adults who said they had, or expect to have, fewer children than they would want cited climate change as a reason in a 2018 poll of more than 1,800 people ages 20 to 45, performed for The New York Times.

More recently, the Lancet Planet Health study found that 36% of Americans ages 16 to 25 were hesitant to have children due to climate change.

Co-author Caroline Hickman said the study, based on surveys of 10,000 people in 10 countries, also found that 68% of Americans reported the future was frightening because of climate change, and 67% said the government is not protecting them, the planet or future generations from the threat.

“I don’t think this is just about climate change,” said Hickman, a lecturer in social work at the University of Bath. “This is about a kind of intergenerational betrayal. This is, ‘The very people who are supposed to look after us, the very people we trust with our futures, with our lives, are doing the opposite of what they should do, while, at the same time, telling us that they care about us and we should trust them.’”

She said she saw climate distress increase dramatically among young people during the COVID-19 crisis, not because of the impact on the planet, but because governments responded to the pandemic with such great urgency.

Young people asked Hickman, “If we can do that for COVID, why can’t we do that for climate change?”

An ‘act of hope’

A lifelong environmentalist, Pearsall, the Humboldt Park resident, tries to live as sustainably as possible, composting food scraps, eating a low to moderate amount of meat, growing herbs on the balcony, and walking or skateboarding instead of driving.

All of those things can have an effect on a person’s greenhouse gas emissions, or carbon footprint, but Pearsall, a senior risk engineer at an insurance company, notes that one of the most impactful individual decisions a person can make is whether or not to have children.

According to a 2017 analysis in the journal Environmental Research Letters, having one less child is associated with a reduction of 58.6 metric tons of CO2 equivalents, which compares to 2.4 metric tons a year for living car-free.

Pearsall understands that a lot of people view the decision to have kids through a different lens, but he suspects that his perspective will become more popular.

“As the climate continues to change, with more extreme weather and loss of properties and livelihoods, here and around the world, it’s only going to increase, in terms of the number of people who will consider (climate) as the factor that tips the balance in favor of not having kids,” he said.

Early in her climate-and-kids journey, Flath also had concerns about her carbon footprint.

But as time went on, she began to push back against the idea that climate change is an individual responsibility, as opposed to a corporate, political or societal one.

“We are made to feel so individually guilty,” she said. “If I use a plastic straw, I feel like I’m harming the world. I feel like we have all these messages about individuals and their impact on the planet, and I want the 100 companies that are responsible for the majority of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions to be the ones to feel guilty.”

She wants everyday people to be able to have children, if that’s what they want, she said. And she wants to leave the door open to having a child of her own one day, without overwhelming climate guilt.

“I just really believe that having kids is an incredibly courageous thing to do. It feels like the ultimate act of hope, that you are willing to take that risk and raise children that hopefully will go on to be good to one another and good to the earth,” she said.

Del Vecchio, the U. of C. instructor who is writing her doctoral dissertation about the ethics of having and raising kids during climate change, said that people who decide not to have children, or to have fewer, are finding other ways to expand their family circle.

That can mean serving as godparents, mentors or foster parents.

“I do hear a great sense of loss and lament and frustration about their reproductive choices being minimized or complicated by the climate crisis, but I also want to emphasize that people are finding their way to create these meaningful relationships even if they aren’t having more children,” she said.

Pearsall said his generation, which came of age during the 2008 financial crisis, has grown accustomed to living with scary headlines and global problems.

“Everybody has their own coping strategy to focus on other stuff and not get too bogged down,” he said. “But when it’s 75 degrees in February, it can bubble to the top.”

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com