welcome to reality trivia
environment
The environment is everything that isn't me.
Albert Einstein
oct 9, 2020
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
THANKS TO THE GREED AND IGNORANCE OF THE POLITICAL LEADERS, OIL, GAS , CHEMICAL, AND PESTICIDE INDUSTRIES THE HUMAN RACE IS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES.
THIS IS WHAT TRUMP HAS WROUGHT...SAME AS HILLARY
Cattledog - demo. underground
|
24 rollbacks are in progress
Clean Power Plan Paris climate agreement Wetland and tributary protections Car and truck fuel-efficiency standards Status of 10 national monuments Status of 12 marine areas Limits on toxic discharge from power plants Coal ash discharge regulations Emissions standards for new, modified and reconstructed power plants Emissions rules for power plant start-up and shutdown Sage grouse habitat protections Fracking regulations on public lands Regulations on oil and gas drilling in some national parks Oil rig safety regulations Regulations for offshore oil and gas exploration by floating vessels Drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge Hunting method regulations in Alaska Requirement for tracking emissions on federal highways Emissions standards for trailers and glider kits Limits on methane emissions on public lands Permitting process for air-polluting plants Offshore oil and gas leasing Use of birds in subsistence handicrafts Coal dust rule |
29 rules have been overturned
Flood building standards Proposed ban on a potentially harmful pesticide Freeze on new coal leases on public lands Methane reporting requirement Anti-dumping rule for coal companies Decision on Keystone XL pipeline Decision on Dakota Access pipeline Third-party settlement funds Offshore drilling ban in the Atlantic and Arctic Ban on seismic air gun testing in the Atlantic Northern Bering Sea climate resilience plan Royalty regulations for oil, gas and coal Inclusion of greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews Permit-issuing process for new infrastructure projects Green Climate Fund contributions Mining restrictions in Bristol Bay, Alaska Endangered species listings Hunting ban on wolves and grizzly bears in Alaska Protections for whales and sea turtles Reusable water bottles rule for national parks National parks climate order Environmental mitigation for federal projects Calculation for “social cost” of carbon Planning rule for public lands Copper filter cake listing as hazardous waste Mine cleanup rule Sewage treatment pollution regulations Ban on use of lead ammunition on federal lands Restrictions on fishing |
7 rollbacks are in limbo
Methane emission limits at new oil and gas wells
Limits on landfill emissions
Mercury emission limits for power plants
Hazardous chemical facility regulations
Groundwater protections for uranium mines
Efficiency standards for federal buildings
Rule helping consumers buy fuel-efficient tires
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Methane emission limits at new oil and gas wells
Limits on landfill emissions
Mercury emission limits for power plants
Hazardous chemical facility regulations
Groundwater protections for uranium mines
Efficiency standards for federal buildings
Rule helping consumers buy fuel-efficient tires
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
*articles*
*TRUMP’S EPA GIVES OKLAHOMA CONTROL OVER TRIBAL LANDS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*IF WE DON’T ACT NOW, THE ENTIRE US COULD BECOME A “CANCER ALLEY”
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A JUDGE JUST DISMISSED EFFORTS TO STOP PESTICIDES AND GMO CROPS FROM BEING USED IN WILDLIFE REFUGES(ARTICLE BELOW)
*MOST PLASTIC WILL NEVER BE RECYCLED – AND THE MANUFACTURERS COULDN’T CARE LESS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Clean Electricity Plan Would Free US Economy of Carbon Dependence in 15 Years
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP’S EPA GIVES POWER PLANTS A PASS ON DEADLY COAL ASH
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE LATEST AMERICAN NATURAL WONDER ON THE TRUMP HIT LIST
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US rivers and lakes are shrinking for a surprising reason: cows
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*WHOLE FOODS HIGH LEVELS OF ARSENIC FOUND IN US WHOLE FOODS’ BOTTLED WATER BRAND
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Agriculture Department Eases The Way For Test-Tube Plants To Spread Into Nature
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*SO, OF COURSE, TRUMP’S EPA IGNORES HARVARD STUDY AND ITS OWN SCIENTISTS TO STICK WITH LAX AIR POLLUTION STANDARDS(ARTICLE BELOW)
*WITH NATION FOCUSED ON PANDEMIC, TRUMP INTERIOR DEPT. TO GREENLIGHT KILLING OF BEAR CUBS AND WOLF PUPS IN THEIR DENS(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP ADMINISTRATION USES PANDEMIC TO COVER FOR LOOSENING CROP POISON REGULATION
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP DISMANTLES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS UNDER COVER OF CORONAVIRUS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER GREENLIGHTING 'CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF OUR OCEANS WHILE THEY HOPE WE AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION'(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Critics alarmed by US nuclear agency's bid to relax rules on radioactive waste
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Gas stoves making indoor air up to five times dirtier than outdoor air, report finds
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*EPA DECIDES TO REJECT THE LATEST SCIENCE, ENDANGER PUBLIC HEALTH AND IGNORE THE LAW BY KEEPING AN OUTDATED FINE PARTICLE AIR POLLUTION STANDARD(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Is Carbon Capture and Storage a Climate Solution or a Pyramid Scheme?
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Coronavirus detected on particles of air pollution
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*WHITE HOUSE MOVES TO WEAKEN EPA RULE ON TOXIC COMPOUNDS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Higher rates of air pollution linked to more COVID-19 deaths, study shows
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE PANDEMIC IS SLOWING DOWN THE WHOLE WORLD … AND THAT’S A GOOD THING
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump to roll back Obama-era clean car rules in huge blow to climate fight
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump administration allows companies to break pollution laws during coronavirus pandemic(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Deadly Poison Used To Kill Weeds Wreaks Havoc On Nearby Farms
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*PFAS “Forever Chemicals” Found in Tap Water Linked to Cancer Risks
(ARTICLE BELOW)
cartoons(at the end)
ANYTHING TO BUY VOTES AND CONTINUE THE THIEF OF RESOURCES AND GENOCIDE OF THE REAL AMERICANS!!!
Trump’s EPA Gives Oklahoma Control Over Tribal Lands
Agency Reverses Tribal Sovereignty Recognized in Recent Supreme Court Ruling
By Ti-Hua Chang, TYT Investigates DC REPORTS
10/8/2020
The Environmental Protection Agency has granted the state of Oklahoma regulatory control over environmental issues on nearly all tribal lands there, TYT has learned.
This strips from 38 tribes in Oklahoma their sovereignty over environmental issues. It also establishes a legal and administrative pathway to potential environmental abuses on tribal land, including dumping hazardous chemicals like cancer-causing PCBs and petroleum spills, with no legal recourse by the tribes, according to a former high-level official of the EPA.
This also includes hazardous chemicals that are byproducts of petroleum procurement and refining. In 2019, Oklahoma had the fourth largest petroleum industry in our country.
TYT has obtained a copy of the letter EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler sent to Gov. J. Kevin Stitt (R-Ok.) on Oct. 1. The end of the opening paragraph states simply, “EPA hereby approves Oklahoma’s request.”
TYT previously revealed that on July 22, Stitt requested control of environmental regulations on tribal land involving a wide range of issues. All of Stitt’s requests in his letter were granted by the EPA. They include:
The EPA has now granted the State of Oklahoma the same authority it had before McGirt on environmental issues, especially on petroleum. It can do this because federal legislation can nullify Supreme Court rulings. In 2005, a midnight rider attached to a transportation bill took away environmental regulatory control by Oklahoma tribes if requested by the state as it has now done. The Oklahoma state government is pro-fossil fuel and pro-big agribusiness.
Pro Fossil Fuel Interests
This return to previous pro-fossil fuel regulations may be one factor in the multi-billion dollar merger of Oklahoma’s Devon Energy with WPX Energy. As previously reported by TYT, the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma knew about Governor Stitt’s letter to the EPA on July 22, the day it was sent. This was close to one month before the tribal governments were told.
The EPA action infuriated Oklahoma’s Ponca Tribe. Casey Camp-Horinek, Environmental Ambassador & Elder & Hereditary Drumkeeper Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, which provided the following statement:
“After over 500 years of oppression, lies, genocide, ecocide, and broken treaties, we should have expected the EPA ruling in favor of racist Governor Stitt of Oklahoma, yet it still stings. Under the Trump administration, destroying all environmental protection has been ramped up to give the fossil fuel industry life support as it takes its last dying breath. Who suffers the results? Everyone and everything! Who benefits? Trump and his cronies, climate change deniers like Governor Stitt, Senators Inhofe and Langford, who are financially supported by big oil and gas. I am convinced that we must fight back against this underhanded ruling. In the courts, on the frontlines and in the international courts, LIFE itself is at stake.”
Summary Report
TYT also obtained the EPA Summary Report sent Sept. 29 to Oklahoma’s tribes. In it, the EPA writes that the agency will keep Oklahoma’s environmental actions within federal law. But this is the same EPA that has rolled back 100 of the agency’s previous regulations protecting the environment and has pushed for a rule which would bar the agency from relying on scientific studies that have granted confidentiality to the people tested.
In a seminar Sept. 21 at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank funded by fossil fuel companies, Wheeler concluded that he had fulfilled President Trump’s requests to him. Wheeler said, “[Trump] asked me to continue to clean up the air, continue to clean up the water and continue to deregulate and help create more jobs…”
The EPA not only granted all of Oklahoma’s requests, it added additional ones such as regulatory control over underground storage (the state has one of the largest oil storage facilities in the country), air pollution, pesticides, lead-based paints, and asbestos in schools.
The EPA Summary report says it consulted with 13 Oklahoma tribes in September. The report says that all the tribes questioned the limited consultation and short time of it, saying, “Comments submitted state that the length of the consultation period was too short, that the consultation should have been extended to tribes beyond Oklahoma…”
The EPA report also acknowledged that the Oklahoma tribes said the agency’s decision was contrary to the principles contained within the EPA Policy for the Administration of Environmental Programs on Indian Reservations (1984 Indian Policy). That policy requires a government-to-government negotiation.
The summary report concluded, “However, EPA is also bound to apply the clear and express mandate of Section 10211(a) of SAFETEA, a duly enacted Act of Congress, that specifically allows environmental regulation under EPA administered statutes by the State in areas of Indian country, and that requires EPA to approve a request of the State to so regulate notwithstanding any other provision of law…” Section 10211 (a), the federal law giving Oklahoma the legal right to take over environmental regulations on Tribal land, is a mere two-paragraph rider on page 795 of the 836-page SAFETEA transportation bill. In 2005, this midnight rider was maneuvered into this massive transportation bill by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.). Inhofe is a staunch fossil fuel advocate and climate-change denier. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler worked for Inhofe for 14 years.
The former high-level official worked in the EPA’s office of general counsel. The former official told TYT, “EPA overstates when it claims ‘[t]he statute provides EPA no discretion to weigh additional factors in rendering its decision.’ The statute says that Oklahoma need not make any further demonstration of authority than it already did when it sought approval from EPA to administer the same programs elsewhere in the state. But the position EPA takes in the letter — that it lacks discretion entirely — departs from earlier statements made by EPA in Oklahoma Dept. of Environmental Quality v. EPA, where it interpreted SAETEA as still allowing it to attach conditions to its approval of Oklahoma programs implemented in Indian Country.”
Who will benefit from the state of Oklahoma taking over environmental regulations on tribal lands there? Fossil fuel companies, big agriculture, and livestock companies. This is based on what a former high-level EPA official said after reviewing Governor Stitt’s letter to the EPA requesting jurisdiction.
As for the future of Oklahoma’s environmental control, the EPA Summary Report includes one paragraph that suggests a pro-environment president and Congress could have impact, but only if new federal legislation is passed:
“EPA has found no evidence, nor has any been provided by tribes, that indicates section 10211 has sunset and is therefore no longer valid. Should Congress elect to repeal this provision after EPA approves the State’s request, EPA would address any effect on its approval of the State’s request at that time.”
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has now joined other Republican officials trying to nullify the McGirt v. Oklahoma ruling that much of the eastern portion of the state is tribal land. The Associated Press and a local Cherokee Radio station report that during a Sept. 30 visit to the Cherokee Nation headquarters, Barr said that he is working with Oklahoma’s federal congressional delegation to devise a “legislative approach” to address the McGirt decision. Both Governor Stitt and Senator Inhofe have called for a federal “legislative solution.”
As TYT has reported, Stitt and Inhofe have pushed for federal legislation to take over not only environmental regulatory control of Tribal lands but all regulatory control, which would return Oklahoma back legally to pre-McGirt status.
In six emails between the EPA’s public relations office and TYT, the agency has not denied the accuracy of TYT’s main points or the Wheeler letter and Summary Report.
This strips from 38 tribes in Oklahoma their sovereignty over environmental issues. It also establishes a legal and administrative pathway to potential environmental abuses on tribal land, including dumping hazardous chemicals like cancer-causing PCBs and petroleum spills, with no legal recourse by the tribes, according to a former high-level official of the EPA.
This also includes hazardous chemicals that are byproducts of petroleum procurement and refining. In 2019, Oklahoma had the fourth largest petroleum industry in our country.
TYT has obtained a copy of the letter EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler sent to Gov. J. Kevin Stitt (R-Ok.) on Oct. 1. The end of the opening paragraph states simply, “EPA hereby approves Oklahoma’s request.”
TYT previously revealed that on July 22, Stitt requested control of environmental regulations on tribal land involving a wide range of issues. All of Stitt’s requests in his letter were granted by the EPA. They include:
- Hazardous waste dumping on tribal lands which could be any of the hundreds of hazardous chemicals listed by the EPA, including formaldehyde, mercury, lead, asbestos, toxic air pollutants, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pesticide chemicals, glyphosate and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
- Underground Injection Control, an EPA program used to permit fracking. Fracking uses large amounts of high-pressured water to remove oil and gas from shale rock. It is a contributor to climate change and is known to leave behind contaminated water and toxic pollution.
- Protecting large agricultural polluters in industrial-sized livestock operations, most often dairy cows, hogs or chickens. These mega-farms produce enormous amounts of waste, according to the Sierra Club, which estimates that “the quantity of urine and feces from even the smallest CAFO [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation] is equivalent to the urine and feces produced by 16,000 humans.” In his letter, Wheeler acknowledges that the U.S. Supreme Court decision McGirt v. Oklahoma precipitated this EPA action. The McGirt ruling found that, by treaty, much of eastern Oklahoma is still Native American territory, which could mean under five tribes’ jurisdiction including for taxation and regulation. In anticipation of the decision, the Seminole tribe in 2018 issued an 8% tax on oil and gas wells on its reservation land.
The EPA has now granted the State of Oklahoma the same authority it had before McGirt on environmental issues, especially on petroleum. It can do this because federal legislation can nullify Supreme Court rulings. In 2005, a midnight rider attached to a transportation bill took away environmental regulatory control by Oklahoma tribes if requested by the state as it has now done. The Oklahoma state government is pro-fossil fuel and pro-big agribusiness.
Pro Fossil Fuel Interests
This return to previous pro-fossil fuel regulations may be one factor in the multi-billion dollar merger of Oklahoma’s Devon Energy with WPX Energy. As previously reported by TYT, the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma knew about Governor Stitt’s letter to the EPA on July 22, the day it was sent. This was close to one month before the tribal governments were told.
The EPA action infuriated Oklahoma’s Ponca Tribe. Casey Camp-Horinek, Environmental Ambassador & Elder & Hereditary Drumkeeper Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, which provided the following statement:
“After over 500 years of oppression, lies, genocide, ecocide, and broken treaties, we should have expected the EPA ruling in favor of racist Governor Stitt of Oklahoma, yet it still stings. Under the Trump administration, destroying all environmental protection has been ramped up to give the fossil fuel industry life support as it takes its last dying breath. Who suffers the results? Everyone and everything! Who benefits? Trump and his cronies, climate change deniers like Governor Stitt, Senators Inhofe and Langford, who are financially supported by big oil and gas. I am convinced that we must fight back against this underhanded ruling. In the courts, on the frontlines and in the international courts, LIFE itself is at stake.”
Summary Report
TYT also obtained the EPA Summary Report sent Sept. 29 to Oklahoma’s tribes. In it, the EPA writes that the agency will keep Oklahoma’s environmental actions within federal law. But this is the same EPA that has rolled back 100 of the agency’s previous regulations protecting the environment and has pushed for a rule which would bar the agency from relying on scientific studies that have granted confidentiality to the people tested.
In a seminar Sept. 21 at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank funded by fossil fuel companies, Wheeler concluded that he had fulfilled President Trump’s requests to him. Wheeler said, “[Trump] asked me to continue to clean up the air, continue to clean up the water and continue to deregulate and help create more jobs…”
The EPA not only granted all of Oklahoma’s requests, it added additional ones such as regulatory control over underground storage (the state has one of the largest oil storage facilities in the country), air pollution, pesticides, lead-based paints, and asbestos in schools.
The EPA Summary report says it consulted with 13 Oklahoma tribes in September. The report says that all the tribes questioned the limited consultation and short time of it, saying, “Comments submitted state that the length of the consultation period was too short, that the consultation should have been extended to tribes beyond Oklahoma…”
The EPA report also acknowledged that the Oklahoma tribes said the agency’s decision was contrary to the principles contained within the EPA Policy for the Administration of Environmental Programs on Indian Reservations (1984 Indian Policy). That policy requires a government-to-government negotiation.
The summary report concluded, “However, EPA is also bound to apply the clear and express mandate of Section 10211(a) of SAFETEA, a duly enacted Act of Congress, that specifically allows environmental regulation under EPA administered statutes by the State in areas of Indian country, and that requires EPA to approve a request of the State to so regulate notwithstanding any other provision of law…” Section 10211 (a), the federal law giving Oklahoma the legal right to take over environmental regulations on Tribal land, is a mere two-paragraph rider on page 795 of the 836-page SAFETEA transportation bill. In 2005, this midnight rider was maneuvered into this massive transportation bill by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.). Inhofe is a staunch fossil fuel advocate and climate-change denier. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler worked for Inhofe for 14 years.
The former high-level official worked in the EPA’s office of general counsel. The former official told TYT, “EPA overstates when it claims ‘[t]he statute provides EPA no discretion to weigh additional factors in rendering its decision.’ The statute says that Oklahoma need not make any further demonstration of authority than it already did when it sought approval from EPA to administer the same programs elsewhere in the state. But the position EPA takes in the letter — that it lacks discretion entirely — departs from earlier statements made by EPA in Oklahoma Dept. of Environmental Quality v. EPA, where it interpreted SAETEA as still allowing it to attach conditions to its approval of Oklahoma programs implemented in Indian Country.”
Who will benefit from the state of Oklahoma taking over environmental regulations on tribal lands there? Fossil fuel companies, big agriculture, and livestock companies. This is based on what a former high-level EPA official said after reviewing Governor Stitt’s letter to the EPA requesting jurisdiction.
As for the future of Oklahoma’s environmental control, the EPA Summary Report includes one paragraph that suggests a pro-environment president and Congress could have impact, but only if new federal legislation is passed:
“EPA has found no evidence, nor has any been provided by tribes, that indicates section 10211 has sunset and is therefore no longer valid. Should Congress elect to repeal this provision after EPA approves the State’s request, EPA would address any effect on its approval of the State’s request at that time.”
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has now joined other Republican officials trying to nullify the McGirt v. Oklahoma ruling that much of the eastern portion of the state is tribal land. The Associated Press and a local Cherokee Radio station report that during a Sept. 30 visit to the Cherokee Nation headquarters, Barr said that he is working with Oklahoma’s federal congressional delegation to devise a “legislative approach” to address the McGirt decision. Both Governor Stitt and Senator Inhofe have called for a federal “legislative solution.”
As TYT has reported, Stitt and Inhofe have pushed for federal legislation to take over not only environmental regulatory control of Tribal lands but all regulatory control, which would return Oklahoma back legally to pre-McGirt status.
In six emails between the EPA’s public relations office and TYT, the agency has not denied the accuracy of TYT’s main points or the Wheeler letter and Summary Report.
OP-ED ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH
If We Don’t Act Now, the Entire US Could Become a “Cancer Alley”
BY Sharon Lavigne, Truthout
PUBLISHED October 3, 2020
People across the country are waking up to structural racism and coping with police brutality and civil unrest while also living through the nightmare of the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re mourning losses and longing for life to get back to normal.
But in St. James Parish, Louisiana, where I’m from — a predominantly Black and low-income community nicknamed “Cancer Alley” — racism, brutality, loss and unrest are normal. In fact, a new plastics complex and President Trump’s decision to gut the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) stand to make things even worse.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden mentioned St. James Parish in his clean energy plan speech because we’re notorious for having the country’s highest concentration of chemical plants and refineries, the highest cancer rates, the worst particulate pollution and one of the highest mortality rates per capita from COVID-19 in the nation. For those of us living here, it’s not just Cancer Alley; it’s death row.
Imagine living in a hotspot like this, which has had standout rates of illness and death for 40 years. Now imagine a foreign company seeking to redouble the pollution and health risks you’re already facing, wipe out your local history and target those who object for arrest on draconian charges. Then imagine on top of all this that Washington is gutting the law that contained the few environmental protections that remained to help communities like yours. That’s exactly what’s happening in St. James Parish now.
Formosa Plastics Corporation is a Taiwan-based company whose Texas plant illegally dumped massive amounts of plastic pellets (or “nurdles”) into the Gulf of Mexico, and the company paid the largest fine of any suit against an industrial polluter brought by a private citizen in U.S. history.
Formosa’s new project was considered too polluting for Taiwan, so it chose to site it in Cancer Alley instead, calling it — get this — “the Sunshine Project.” It obtained Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’s blessing and environmental permits to build a giant, $9.4 billion, 14-plant complex — one of the largest plastic plants in the world — on 2,500 acres in St. James Parish.
The plant would more than double the area’s already heavy toxic air pollution; more than triple exposure to cancer-causing chemicals, including emitting more carcinogenic ethylene oxide than anywhere else in the U.S.; and discharge more waste into the St. James Canal and the Mississippi River.
The Formosa project is part of a larger, industry-wide push to vastly expand plastic production and consumption. The feedstocks (or unprocessed material) for plastics are the petrochemical byproducts of fossil fuel production. But as demand for fossil fuel energy falls, the industry plans to keep expanding fracking, drilling and refining by building hundreds more plants to extract more ethane, the main ingredient in plastic, and producing and selling more plastic. That stokes climate pollution and plastic pollution, both of which are already choking the planet. In fence-line communities of color like mine, where the plants are overwhelmingly located, it’s killing people.
These facts have been hushed-up and spun by the plastic and petrochemical industries, but it’s increasingly coming out. The true extent of the plastic crisis is exposed in the documentary film The Story of Plastic, where Ronnie Hamrick, who worked at the Formosa Plastics plant in Texas, says, “I worked 25 years at the plant as a supervisor, but I had to get out of there because I got tired of the bullcrap — lying for them — because that’s all you do out there at that plant is lie.”
Plastic industry executives doubled down on lies and spin in the COVID-19 crisis, using it as an excuse to roll back plastics bans and pretend more single-use plastic is needed to ensure public health during the pandemic. But at a briefing of the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment in July, titled, “Plastic Production, Pollution and Waste in the Time of COVID-19: The Life-Threatening Impact of Single-Use Plastic on Human Health,” experts refuted this, testifying how petroleum and chemical plants are making COVID-19 worse, and how they destroy African American communities.
“What’s left are the gravesites of these communities,” said Monique Harden, assistant director of law and policy at the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, “and over those gravesites the towering smokestacks, storage tanks, and processing units of petrochemical facilities.”
In St. James Parish, the Formosa project site includes at least one African American graveyard from around 1877, and probably others. The company knew it, and planned to build a pipeline through it but didn’t even tell Parish officials until community groups like mine exposed them. Formosa claimed we couldn’t prove the graves were there, and we had to go to court to get a restraining order just to go to the site, which the company tried to block.
On Juneteenth, the day that commemorates emancipation from slavery in the U.S., members of my organization, RISE St. James, went there to honor our ancestors. Formosa and local officials, meanwhile, celebrated by charging two peaceful activists from the community group Louisiana Bucket Brigade with “terrorizing,” because they had left a box of nurdles Formosa had illegally dumped on the lawn of an industry lobbyist in December 2019. Now these activists face possible jail sentences of up to 15 years.
I’ve been warned that other activists like me face arrest, too. But we’re not cowed, we’re not going to stop fighting, and we’re getting traction. We’ve sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for improperly approving the Formosa project, and obtained a stop-work order that blocks the company from building the complex while the lawsuit plays out. U.S., Taiwanese and Vietnamese groups in the #StopFormosa campaign even went to Taiwan recently to protest at the Formosa shareholders meeting.
We may yet defeat the Formosa plant, like we defeated the Wanhua Chemical plant before it. But our fight in Cancer Alley is now the whole country’s fight. The plastic industry plans hundreds of new plants in the U.S., and worldwide. In July, the Trump administration rolled back protections and disclosure requirements in NEPA that have made our work possible, with the express intention of making more projects like these harder to fight.
Here in St. James Parish, almost no family has escaped from illnesses caused by industrial pollution, including mine. I have autoimmune hepatitis and aluminum in my body. Our cancer rates and COVID-19 rates are among the highest in the country. But we’re not just an outlier; we’re the canary in the coal mine. If Trump and the plastic industry get their way, what’s “normal” here in Cancer Alley could soon become normal in the rest of the country.
But in St. James Parish, Louisiana, where I’m from — a predominantly Black and low-income community nicknamed “Cancer Alley” — racism, brutality, loss and unrest are normal. In fact, a new plastics complex and President Trump’s decision to gut the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) stand to make things even worse.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden mentioned St. James Parish in his clean energy plan speech because we’re notorious for having the country’s highest concentration of chemical plants and refineries, the highest cancer rates, the worst particulate pollution and one of the highest mortality rates per capita from COVID-19 in the nation. For those of us living here, it’s not just Cancer Alley; it’s death row.
Imagine living in a hotspot like this, which has had standout rates of illness and death for 40 years. Now imagine a foreign company seeking to redouble the pollution and health risks you’re already facing, wipe out your local history and target those who object for arrest on draconian charges. Then imagine on top of all this that Washington is gutting the law that contained the few environmental protections that remained to help communities like yours. That’s exactly what’s happening in St. James Parish now.
Formosa Plastics Corporation is a Taiwan-based company whose Texas plant illegally dumped massive amounts of plastic pellets (or “nurdles”) into the Gulf of Mexico, and the company paid the largest fine of any suit against an industrial polluter brought by a private citizen in U.S. history.
Formosa’s new project was considered too polluting for Taiwan, so it chose to site it in Cancer Alley instead, calling it — get this — “the Sunshine Project.” It obtained Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’s blessing and environmental permits to build a giant, $9.4 billion, 14-plant complex — one of the largest plastic plants in the world — on 2,500 acres in St. James Parish.
The plant would more than double the area’s already heavy toxic air pollution; more than triple exposure to cancer-causing chemicals, including emitting more carcinogenic ethylene oxide than anywhere else in the U.S.; and discharge more waste into the St. James Canal and the Mississippi River.
The Formosa project is part of a larger, industry-wide push to vastly expand plastic production and consumption. The feedstocks (or unprocessed material) for plastics are the petrochemical byproducts of fossil fuel production. But as demand for fossil fuel energy falls, the industry plans to keep expanding fracking, drilling and refining by building hundreds more plants to extract more ethane, the main ingredient in plastic, and producing and selling more plastic. That stokes climate pollution and plastic pollution, both of which are already choking the planet. In fence-line communities of color like mine, where the plants are overwhelmingly located, it’s killing people.
These facts have been hushed-up and spun by the plastic and petrochemical industries, but it’s increasingly coming out. The true extent of the plastic crisis is exposed in the documentary film The Story of Plastic, where Ronnie Hamrick, who worked at the Formosa Plastics plant in Texas, says, “I worked 25 years at the plant as a supervisor, but I had to get out of there because I got tired of the bullcrap — lying for them — because that’s all you do out there at that plant is lie.”
Plastic industry executives doubled down on lies and spin in the COVID-19 crisis, using it as an excuse to roll back plastics bans and pretend more single-use plastic is needed to ensure public health during the pandemic. But at a briefing of the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment in July, titled, “Plastic Production, Pollution and Waste in the Time of COVID-19: The Life-Threatening Impact of Single-Use Plastic on Human Health,” experts refuted this, testifying how petroleum and chemical plants are making COVID-19 worse, and how they destroy African American communities.
“What’s left are the gravesites of these communities,” said Monique Harden, assistant director of law and policy at the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, “and over those gravesites the towering smokestacks, storage tanks, and processing units of petrochemical facilities.”
In St. James Parish, the Formosa project site includes at least one African American graveyard from around 1877, and probably others. The company knew it, and planned to build a pipeline through it but didn’t even tell Parish officials until community groups like mine exposed them. Formosa claimed we couldn’t prove the graves were there, and we had to go to court to get a restraining order just to go to the site, which the company tried to block.
On Juneteenth, the day that commemorates emancipation from slavery in the U.S., members of my organization, RISE St. James, went there to honor our ancestors. Formosa and local officials, meanwhile, celebrated by charging two peaceful activists from the community group Louisiana Bucket Brigade with “terrorizing,” because they had left a box of nurdles Formosa had illegally dumped on the lawn of an industry lobbyist in December 2019. Now these activists face possible jail sentences of up to 15 years.
I’ve been warned that other activists like me face arrest, too. But we’re not cowed, we’re not going to stop fighting, and we’re getting traction. We’ve sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for improperly approving the Formosa project, and obtained a stop-work order that blocks the company from building the complex while the lawsuit plays out. U.S., Taiwanese and Vietnamese groups in the #StopFormosa campaign even went to Taiwan recently to protest at the Formosa shareholders meeting.
We may yet defeat the Formosa plant, like we defeated the Wanhua Chemical plant before it. But our fight in Cancer Alley is now the whole country’s fight. The plastic industry plans hundreds of new plants in the U.S., and worldwide. In July, the Trump administration rolled back protections and disclosure requirements in NEPA that have made our work possible, with the express intention of making more projects like these harder to fight.
Here in St. James Parish, almost no family has escaped from illnesses caused by industrial pollution, including mine. I have autoimmune hepatitis and aluminum in my body. Our cancer rates and COVID-19 rates are among the highest in the country. But we’re not just an outlier; we’re the canary in the coal mine. If Trump and the plastic industry get their way, what’s “normal” here in Cancer Alley could soon become normal in the rest of the country.
A judge just dismissed efforts to stop pesticides and GMO crops from being used in wildlife refuges
Salon spoke with experts who discussed the ecological consequences of the federal court's decision
MATTHEW ROZSA - salon
SEPTEMBER 29, 2020 10:26PM (UTC)
A Washington federal court last week dismissed a lawsuit against the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service after a pair of nonprofit groups sued the agency for reversing previous bans on specific insecticides and genetically modified organisms (GMO) in national wildlife refuges.
"It's incredibly disappointing, but this case was intended to look at this issue at a national level, and what the court said is you need to go and look at it at a case specific level," Hannah Connor, Senior Attorney at the Environmental Health Program, told Salon. "So as it's done individually, and that means that there's going to be a limited review of the actual impacts of this decision across the refuge system, which will only detriment wildlife and the habitat that they crave to be able to survive."
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) and Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed their lawsuit against the agency in 2018 after the decision was made to reverse a 2014 policy phasing out GMO seeds, according to Bloomberg. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that the plaintiffs failed to show that they would be harmed by the policy reversal, adding that the alleged injuries put forward by individual members are speculative and therefore do not establish standing.
"Unfortunately, as a result of dismissal, we expect and we've already seen that different refuges around the country will start implementing this reversal policy, meaning they're gonna start approving genetically engineered crops to be planted and neonicotinoid pesticides to be used," Sylvia Wu, a senior attorney for the Center for Food Safety, told Salon. Neonicotinoid pesticides, whose active ingredient is a nicotine-like molecule, are largely accepted by scientists to have been responsible for a massive decline in bee populations that threatened the human food supply. Those same pesticides are now being linked to bird deaths, too.
"Our next step is to monitor these developments as we had done before the lawsuit, to continue to engage with refuge managers and the public, hopefully to educate them about the harms of these uses, but you know, if these harmful uses are implemented, we will continue to monitor them and take legal action as appropriate," Wu continued.
Wu elaborated on the original 2014 memo issued by the agency, noting that when it banned certain GMOs from refuges, "the majority of genetically engineered crops that are grown in the U.S, as well as back then on refugee lands — we're talking genetically engineered corn and soy — the majority were specifically engineered to resist the use of pesticides, with many of them like the herbicide Roundup containing glyphosate. These are crops that are designed to withstand multiple applications of the pesticide glyphosate. This technology has made glyphosate the most-used pesticide in the United States."
She added, "We know there have been a lot of lawsuits filed specifically about the harm of glyphosate. The World Health Organization identified it as a possible carcinogen. Our EPA unfortunately has refused to follow suit. As a result there have been multiple lawsuits filed against Bayer — which now owns Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup — and the folks that have developed cancer and various health illnesses, farm workers and farmers, that have been impacted by the use of glyphosate."
Wu pointed out that the same 2014 memo also banned neonicotinoids. She noted that they affect not merely bees, but also "sensitive protected insects species, like the Monarch butterfly."
Indeed, numerous animal and plant species are threatened by the use of pesticides and GMOs in wildlife refuges.
Connor discussed a few examples, including whooping cranes.
"Whooping cranes are migratory, which means that they will go across large spots of the country and in that progress will make a stop so that they can recharge themselves, so they can get some kind of forage, some kind of food," Connor told Salon. "And when they do that, if they stop at a wildlife refuge, the expectation is that that forage is not going to be something that's really detrimental to them. But whooping cranes are ingesting pesticides, and that is really problematic for an already imperiled species."
Connor also mentioned Monarch butterflies, which are declining because of the "80% decline in milkweed" that's "largely attributed to glyphosate use."
Mussels, too, she said were threatened by the use of pesticides in wildlife refuges.
"There are such a wide diversity of [mussels] that formerly existed in waterways with some of the most charming names you've ever heard, like the pocketbook mussel or the orange-footed pearly mussel, and so many of them have ended up on the endangered species list in part because of pesticides," Connor explained.
"It's incredibly disappointing, but this case was intended to look at this issue at a national level, and what the court said is you need to go and look at it at a case specific level," Hannah Connor, Senior Attorney at the Environmental Health Program, told Salon. "So as it's done individually, and that means that there's going to be a limited review of the actual impacts of this decision across the refuge system, which will only detriment wildlife and the habitat that they crave to be able to survive."
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) and Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed their lawsuit against the agency in 2018 after the decision was made to reverse a 2014 policy phasing out GMO seeds, according to Bloomberg. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that the plaintiffs failed to show that they would be harmed by the policy reversal, adding that the alleged injuries put forward by individual members are speculative and therefore do not establish standing.
"Unfortunately, as a result of dismissal, we expect and we've already seen that different refuges around the country will start implementing this reversal policy, meaning they're gonna start approving genetically engineered crops to be planted and neonicotinoid pesticides to be used," Sylvia Wu, a senior attorney for the Center for Food Safety, told Salon. Neonicotinoid pesticides, whose active ingredient is a nicotine-like molecule, are largely accepted by scientists to have been responsible for a massive decline in bee populations that threatened the human food supply. Those same pesticides are now being linked to bird deaths, too.
"Our next step is to monitor these developments as we had done before the lawsuit, to continue to engage with refuge managers and the public, hopefully to educate them about the harms of these uses, but you know, if these harmful uses are implemented, we will continue to monitor them and take legal action as appropriate," Wu continued.
Wu elaborated on the original 2014 memo issued by the agency, noting that when it banned certain GMOs from refuges, "the majority of genetically engineered crops that are grown in the U.S, as well as back then on refugee lands — we're talking genetically engineered corn and soy — the majority were specifically engineered to resist the use of pesticides, with many of them like the herbicide Roundup containing glyphosate. These are crops that are designed to withstand multiple applications of the pesticide glyphosate. This technology has made glyphosate the most-used pesticide in the United States."
She added, "We know there have been a lot of lawsuits filed specifically about the harm of glyphosate. The World Health Organization identified it as a possible carcinogen. Our EPA unfortunately has refused to follow suit. As a result there have been multiple lawsuits filed against Bayer — which now owns Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup — and the folks that have developed cancer and various health illnesses, farm workers and farmers, that have been impacted by the use of glyphosate."
Wu pointed out that the same 2014 memo also banned neonicotinoids. She noted that they affect not merely bees, but also "sensitive protected insects species, like the Monarch butterfly."
Indeed, numerous animal and plant species are threatened by the use of pesticides and GMOs in wildlife refuges.
Connor discussed a few examples, including whooping cranes.
"Whooping cranes are migratory, which means that they will go across large spots of the country and in that progress will make a stop so that they can recharge themselves, so they can get some kind of forage, some kind of food," Connor told Salon. "And when they do that, if they stop at a wildlife refuge, the expectation is that that forage is not going to be something that's really detrimental to them. But whooping cranes are ingesting pesticides, and that is really problematic for an already imperiled species."
Connor also mentioned Monarch butterflies, which are declining because of the "80% decline in milkweed" that's "largely attributed to glyphosate use."
Mussels, too, she said were threatened by the use of pesticides in wildlife refuges.
"There are such a wide diversity of [mussels] that formerly existed in waterways with some of the most charming names you've ever heard, like the pocketbook mussel or the orange-footed pearly mussel, and so many of them have ended up on the endangered species list in part because of pesticides," Connor explained.
Most plastic will never be recycled – and the manufacturers couldn’t care less
Oil and gas companies make far more money churning out new plastic than reusing old. Meanwhile, the public gets the blame
Arwa Mahdawi -the guardian
9/15/2020
Plastic recycling is a scam. You diligently sort your rubbish, you dutifully wash your plastic containers, then everything gets tossed in a landfill or thrown in the ocean anyway. OK, maybe not everything – but the vast majority of it. According to one analysis, only 9% of all plastic ever made has likely been recycled. Here’s the kicker: the companies making all that plastic have spent millions on advertising campaigns lecturing us about recycling while knowing full well that most plastic will never be recycled.
A new investigation by National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reports that the large oil and gas companies that manufacture plastics have known for decades that recycling plastic was unlikely to ever happen on a broad scale because of the high costs involved. “They were not interested in putting any real money or effort into recycling because they wanted to sell virgin material,” Larry Thomas, former president of one of the plastic industry’s most powerful trade groups, told NPR. There is a lot more money to be made in selling new plastic than reusing the old stuff. But, in order to keep selling new plastic, the industry had to clean up its wasteful image. “If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” Thomas noted. And so a huge amount of resources were diverted into intricate “sustainability theatre”.
Multinationals misleading people for profit? Hold the front page! While the plastics industry’s greenwashing will come as no surprise to anyone, the extent of the deception alleged in NPR’s investigation is truly shocking. (I should state for the record that an industry representative interviewed by NPR contested the idea that the public was intentionally misled, although he does “understand the scepticism”.)
The subterfuge around recycling plastic is also an important reminder of just how cynically and successfully big companies have shifted the burden of combating the climate crisis on to individuals. This might be best encapsulated in a famous ad campaign that aired in the US during the 1970s with the slogan “People Start Pollution. People can stop it.” The campaign was created by a non-profit group called Keep America Beautiful, which happened to be heavily funded by beverage and packaging companies with a vested interest in convincing people that they were the ones to blame for a polluted planet, not capitalism.
Perhaps one of the most effective bits of propaganda that big business has come up with to shift the burden of combating the climate crisis on to individuals is the idea of the “carbon footprint”. BP popularised the term in the early noughties, in what has been called one of the most “successful, deceptive PR campaigns maybe ever”. While oil companies were telling us to fret about our carbon usage they were doing whatever the hell they liked: 20 fossil fuel companies can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, an analysis by leading climate researchers found last year. Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell are behind more than 10% of the world’s climate emissions since 1965 – but we have been successfully convinced that people start pollution and people can stop it. That if we just fly less and recycle more the planet will be OK. To some degree that is right: there must be a level of personal responsibility when it comes to the climate emergency. We all have to do our part. But individual action is a tiny drop in a heavily polluted ocean; we need systemic change to make a real difference. And, more than anything, we need to change what we value. What frustrates me most about BP’s “carbon footprint” propaganda is how clever it is. There is so much human ingenuity in the world, but it is all directed towards the wrong things.
A new investigation by National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reports that the large oil and gas companies that manufacture plastics have known for decades that recycling plastic was unlikely to ever happen on a broad scale because of the high costs involved. “They were not interested in putting any real money or effort into recycling because they wanted to sell virgin material,” Larry Thomas, former president of one of the plastic industry’s most powerful trade groups, told NPR. There is a lot more money to be made in selling new plastic than reusing the old stuff. But, in order to keep selling new plastic, the industry had to clean up its wasteful image. “If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” Thomas noted. And so a huge amount of resources were diverted into intricate “sustainability theatre”.
Multinationals misleading people for profit? Hold the front page! While the plastics industry’s greenwashing will come as no surprise to anyone, the extent of the deception alleged in NPR’s investigation is truly shocking. (I should state for the record that an industry representative interviewed by NPR contested the idea that the public was intentionally misled, although he does “understand the scepticism”.)
The subterfuge around recycling plastic is also an important reminder of just how cynically and successfully big companies have shifted the burden of combating the climate crisis on to individuals. This might be best encapsulated in a famous ad campaign that aired in the US during the 1970s with the slogan “People Start Pollution. People can stop it.” The campaign was created by a non-profit group called Keep America Beautiful, which happened to be heavily funded by beverage and packaging companies with a vested interest in convincing people that they were the ones to blame for a polluted planet, not capitalism.
Perhaps one of the most effective bits of propaganda that big business has come up with to shift the burden of combating the climate crisis on to individuals is the idea of the “carbon footprint”. BP popularised the term in the early noughties, in what has been called one of the most “successful, deceptive PR campaigns maybe ever”. While oil companies were telling us to fret about our carbon usage they were doing whatever the hell they liked: 20 fossil fuel companies can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, an analysis by leading climate researchers found last year. Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell are behind more than 10% of the world’s climate emissions since 1965 – but we have been successfully convinced that people start pollution and people can stop it. That if we just fly less and recycle more the planet will be OK. To some degree that is right: there must be a level of personal responsibility when it comes to the climate emergency. We all have to do our part. But individual action is a tiny drop in a heavily polluted ocean; we need systemic change to make a real difference. And, more than anything, we need to change what we value. What frustrates me most about BP’s “carbon footprint” propaganda is how clever it is. There is so much human ingenuity in the world, but it is all directed towards the wrong things.
if we only had a real government!!!
Clean Electricity Plan Would Free US Economy of Carbon Dependence in 15 Years
BY Peter Montague, Truthout
PUBLISHED September 10, 2020
A detailed new engineering study reveals that, if the U.S. converted all its fossil-fueled technologies to clean electric power (mainly solar and wind) in the next 15 years, it would create 25 million new jobs over the next three to five years at its peak. This total would eventually taper off to 5 million permanent new jobs (over and above existing energy-sector jobs).
There’s no surprise here: Clean renewable energy, such as solar panels and electric vehicles, simply requires more manufacturing, installation and maintenance compared to fossil fuels. These would be good, well-paid jobs in every zip code — jobs that could not be outsourced to China or Mexico. Most of the jobs would be in the trades — electrical, plumbing and construction, many of them in parts of the country neglected during the past 40 years. All it would take is government leadership, organization and commitment.
The new engineering study, produced by Rewiring America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to converting the U.S. economy to clean electric power, uses conservative assumptions. For example, it assumes using only technologies that are commercially available today; no technical or price breakthroughs are presumed. The study also assumes no behavioral changes by the public. Further, the study assumes that no assets, like coal power plants, will be shut down before their original capital costs have been amortized (no “early retirement” of fossil-fuel assets). It also posits no special efficiency measures besides the inherent efficiency of clean electricity vs. fossil fuels, and no carbon capture and storage. Lastly, it assumes a technology transition no faster than the U.S. has achieved in the past — the authors call it “the maximum feasible transition,” based on the history of U.S. industrial mobilization organized by the government between 1940 and 1945.
The new study was conducted by Saul Griffith and Sam Calisch (both with advanced degrees from MIT) and Alex Laskey, co-founder of Rewiring America.
The study — in the form of a 30-page white paper, plus a short book available free in PDF — began in 2018 when Griffith (a MacArthur “genius” awardee) worked under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, creating a detailed database of every publicly documented energy flow in the U.S. economy, from supply to demand.
The present study builds on that database using a “machines up” approach — examining every machine involved in every energy flow: lights, heat and motors throughout every sector of the economy, including transportation, buildings, industry and power generation. The study assumes that, at the end of every fossil-fueled machine’s normal lifetime, it will be replaced by an equivalent electric-powered machine. A gas stove gets replaced by an induction cooktop, a gasoline car by an electric car, a natural-gas furnace by a heat pump, an incandescent light bulb by an LED. In many buildings, a new breaker box would be required. The difference in cost between the old machines and the new ones installed, added up across the economy, is the cost of the transition. The number of jobs created by this expenditure is then calculated from reliable databases showing jobs created per million dollars invested.
Most households and many businesses cannot afford to make a lump-sum investment in new technologies, so the government would need to invent a low-interest loan program (“climate loans”) to make the transition possible. Griffith and his colleagues calculate the transition would cost the federal government $300 billion per year for 10 years, about 1.5 percent of current gross domestic product, less than half of what the U.S. currently spends on the military.
The benefits of the plan would be enormous. First, of course, the world’s other major manufacturing nations (China, Germany, Japan and South Korea) would see the economic benefits of replicating our transition, so the world could avoid the worst of the climate emergency. In 2017, climate disruption was costing the U.S. about $240 billion each year, according to a study led by Robert Watson, former chair of the International Panel on Climate Change. With more fires, floods, record-breaking heat waves and destructive wind storms, the annual cost of climate change is likely higher today, and rising.
The Griffith plan, with its conservative assumptions, says it is consistent with holding global average temperature rise to about 1.75 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit), if the world’s other major emitters adopt a similar plan within 10 years. To hit the stricter 1.5°C/2.7°F target established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would require early retirement of some large fossil-fueled machines, such as coal power plants. The federal government could buy them out and retire them, as part of its overall effort. To go further and hit the 1.0°C/1.8°F target that likely could prevent long-term melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice would require removal of carbon dioxide directly from the air, an expensive and nascent technology. The Griffith study says what’s most important is to ramp up rapidly now what we already know how to do. The climate emergency is truly an emergency.
Second, the average U.S. household would save between $1,000 and $2,000 each year on its energy bill, the Griffith study shows, because electric power is simply more efficient than fossil-fueled sources, doing more work with less energy. After the transition, the U.S. economy as a whole would use 50 to 60 percent less energy than today. And then there are the jobs. In addition to jobs in manufacturing and the trades, there would be jobs in education and training, plus finance jobs to manage the large volume of financial transactions required during the transition. Third, as a technology leader and early adopter, the U.S. could export both its technology and its clean energy.
The clean energy would come 85 percent from wind turbines and solar-panel arrays. Some nuclear power would be “very useful” but “not necessary,” the study says, though it still assumes 100 gigawatts (GW) of new nuclear power. Nuclear currently produces about 20 percent of U.S. electricity; the study says the cost of a new nuclear plant is double the cost per watt of solar or wind. The study also includes some biofuels for long-distance aviation and certain industrial processes, plus 100 GW of new hydropower.
The U.S. currently has roughly 300 GW of carbon-free electricity-generating capacity. In the Griffith plan, this would grow sixfold to about 1,800 GW by 2035. Some of this would be generated on rooftops and used in the underlying buildings, requiring no access to the nation’s electrical transmission grid.
However, about 1,000 GW of new electricity would have to be carried by the grid. This would more than triple the load on the grid, forcing a totally new grid-management philosophy to accommodate many new sources of supply and demand. At present, access to the nation’s electric grid is strictly limited; the new grid could be modeled on the internet, where everyone can attach a device and start sending and receiving easily. Furthermore, the new grid would consist of many microgrids tied together, greatly increasing the reliability of energy-delivery to homes and businesses.
Renewable energy presents unique challenges, requiring many changes in building codes, laws, regulations and policies. For example, large wind turbines can produce flickering light and very-low-frequency sounds, which some humans find profoundly disturbing, in some cases potentially triggering seizures or causing illness. Therefore, large turbines could only be placed where they would not disturb anyone, and impacts on wildlife require careful consideration. In addition, new transmission lines will be political poison in some locales; therefore, thoughtful, sensible and detailed early planning will be required everywhere. Only the government has the capacity to organize such a large undertaking.
Still, there’s no doubt that the U.S. has sufficient land to site the necessary new renewable energy equipment. Griffith’s free book shows that 100 percent of U.S. energy demand could be met by either 100 million acres of wind turbines, or 15 million acres of solar panels. (Wind turbines require more land because they must be spaced farther apart than solar panels.) The clean solution will involve some combination of solar and wind. The U.S. currently has 2.8 million acres of residential rooftops, 1.3 million acres of commercial rooftops, 4.6 million acres of parking lots and 12.8 million acres of roads in addition to 339 million acres of cropland, 655 million acres of grassland and pasture, and another 39 million acres of idle cropland. In sum, a small fraction of available land, rooftops and road rights-of-way would be sufficient to power the whole economy with solar energy.
To provide another perspective, the Earth receives 85,000 terawatts of sunlight; all human activity worldwide requires 19 terawatts, and the U.S. alone requires about 4 terawatts. Sun power is plentiful and free.
In late August, Democrats in the U.S. Senate released their own far-reaching plan for converting the economy to clean sources of power. They promise that, when they gain a majority, they will immediately begin spending $400 billion per year to convert the economy to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, and they say 40 percent of those dollars will be intended to benefit communities of color and low-income, deindustrialized and disadvantaged communities.
Similarly, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has proposed converting the U.S. electricity-generating system to renewable fuels by 2035 and the rest of the economy (transport, buildings and industry) by 2050.
Both Democratic blueprints are huge steps forward, far better than the Republican plan, which is to double down on fossil fuels, fry the planet, and hope for the best. Still, both Democratic plans are somewhat less ambitious than the Griffith road map. Griffith calls for a World War II scale of mobilization, to “shoot for the moon,” to reach the clean energy goal in 15 years, creating the needed sense of urgency and national commitment. If the Democrats embraced Griffith’s more-aggressive plan, we could avert the worst of the climate emergency, revive the economy quickly with many millions of good new jobs, and save every family money, all at the same time. Why would anyone want to settle for less?
There’s no surprise here: Clean renewable energy, such as solar panels and electric vehicles, simply requires more manufacturing, installation and maintenance compared to fossil fuels. These would be good, well-paid jobs in every zip code — jobs that could not be outsourced to China or Mexico. Most of the jobs would be in the trades — electrical, plumbing and construction, many of them in parts of the country neglected during the past 40 years. All it would take is government leadership, organization and commitment.
The new engineering study, produced by Rewiring America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to converting the U.S. economy to clean electric power, uses conservative assumptions. For example, it assumes using only technologies that are commercially available today; no technical or price breakthroughs are presumed. The study also assumes no behavioral changes by the public. Further, the study assumes that no assets, like coal power plants, will be shut down before their original capital costs have been amortized (no “early retirement” of fossil-fuel assets). It also posits no special efficiency measures besides the inherent efficiency of clean electricity vs. fossil fuels, and no carbon capture and storage. Lastly, it assumes a technology transition no faster than the U.S. has achieved in the past — the authors call it “the maximum feasible transition,” based on the history of U.S. industrial mobilization organized by the government between 1940 and 1945.
The new study was conducted by Saul Griffith and Sam Calisch (both with advanced degrees from MIT) and Alex Laskey, co-founder of Rewiring America.
The study — in the form of a 30-page white paper, plus a short book available free in PDF — began in 2018 when Griffith (a MacArthur “genius” awardee) worked under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, creating a detailed database of every publicly documented energy flow in the U.S. economy, from supply to demand.
The present study builds on that database using a “machines up” approach — examining every machine involved in every energy flow: lights, heat and motors throughout every sector of the economy, including transportation, buildings, industry and power generation. The study assumes that, at the end of every fossil-fueled machine’s normal lifetime, it will be replaced by an equivalent electric-powered machine. A gas stove gets replaced by an induction cooktop, a gasoline car by an electric car, a natural-gas furnace by a heat pump, an incandescent light bulb by an LED. In many buildings, a new breaker box would be required. The difference in cost between the old machines and the new ones installed, added up across the economy, is the cost of the transition. The number of jobs created by this expenditure is then calculated from reliable databases showing jobs created per million dollars invested.
Most households and many businesses cannot afford to make a lump-sum investment in new technologies, so the government would need to invent a low-interest loan program (“climate loans”) to make the transition possible. Griffith and his colleagues calculate the transition would cost the federal government $300 billion per year for 10 years, about 1.5 percent of current gross domestic product, less than half of what the U.S. currently spends on the military.
The benefits of the plan would be enormous. First, of course, the world’s other major manufacturing nations (China, Germany, Japan and South Korea) would see the economic benefits of replicating our transition, so the world could avoid the worst of the climate emergency. In 2017, climate disruption was costing the U.S. about $240 billion each year, according to a study led by Robert Watson, former chair of the International Panel on Climate Change. With more fires, floods, record-breaking heat waves and destructive wind storms, the annual cost of climate change is likely higher today, and rising.
The Griffith plan, with its conservative assumptions, says it is consistent with holding global average temperature rise to about 1.75 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit), if the world’s other major emitters adopt a similar plan within 10 years. To hit the stricter 1.5°C/2.7°F target established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would require early retirement of some large fossil-fueled machines, such as coal power plants. The federal government could buy them out and retire them, as part of its overall effort. To go further and hit the 1.0°C/1.8°F target that likely could prevent long-term melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice would require removal of carbon dioxide directly from the air, an expensive and nascent technology. The Griffith study says what’s most important is to ramp up rapidly now what we already know how to do. The climate emergency is truly an emergency.
Second, the average U.S. household would save between $1,000 and $2,000 each year on its energy bill, the Griffith study shows, because electric power is simply more efficient than fossil-fueled sources, doing more work with less energy. After the transition, the U.S. economy as a whole would use 50 to 60 percent less energy than today. And then there are the jobs. In addition to jobs in manufacturing and the trades, there would be jobs in education and training, plus finance jobs to manage the large volume of financial transactions required during the transition. Third, as a technology leader and early adopter, the U.S. could export both its technology and its clean energy.
The clean energy would come 85 percent from wind turbines and solar-panel arrays. Some nuclear power would be “very useful” but “not necessary,” the study says, though it still assumes 100 gigawatts (GW) of new nuclear power. Nuclear currently produces about 20 percent of U.S. electricity; the study says the cost of a new nuclear plant is double the cost per watt of solar or wind. The study also includes some biofuels for long-distance aviation and certain industrial processes, plus 100 GW of new hydropower.
The U.S. currently has roughly 300 GW of carbon-free electricity-generating capacity. In the Griffith plan, this would grow sixfold to about 1,800 GW by 2035. Some of this would be generated on rooftops and used in the underlying buildings, requiring no access to the nation’s electrical transmission grid.
However, about 1,000 GW of new electricity would have to be carried by the grid. This would more than triple the load on the grid, forcing a totally new grid-management philosophy to accommodate many new sources of supply and demand. At present, access to the nation’s electric grid is strictly limited; the new grid could be modeled on the internet, where everyone can attach a device and start sending and receiving easily. Furthermore, the new grid would consist of many microgrids tied together, greatly increasing the reliability of energy-delivery to homes and businesses.
Renewable energy presents unique challenges, requiring many changes in building codes, laws, regulations and policies. For example, large wind turbines can produce flickering light and very-low-frequency sounds, which some humans find profoundly disturbing, in some cases potentially triggering seizures or causing illness. Therefore, large turbines could only be placed where they would not disturb anyone, and impacts on wildlife require careful consideration. In addition, new transmission lines will be political poison in some locales; therefore, thoughtful, sensible and detailed early planning will be required everywhere. Only the government has the capacity to organize such a large undertaking.
Still, there’s no doubt that the U.S. has sufficient land to site the necessary new renewable energy equipment. Griffith’s free book shows that 100 percent of U.S. energy demand could be met by either 100 million acres of wind turbines, or 15 million acres of solar panels. (Wind turbines require more land because they must be spaced farther apart than solar panels.) The clean solution will involve some combination of solar and wind. The U.S. currently has 2.8 million acres of residential rooftops, 1.3 million acres of commercial rooftops, 4.6 million acres of parking lots and 12.8 million acres of roads in addition to 339 million acres of cropland, 655 million acres of grassland and pasture, and another 39 million acres of idle cropland. In sum, a small fraction of available land, rooftops and road rights-of-way would be sufficient to power the whole economy with solar energy.
To provide another perspective, the Earth receives 85,000 terawatts of sunlight; all human activity worldwide requires 19 terawatts, and the U.S. alone requires about 4 terawatts. Sun power is plentiful and free.
In late August, Democrats in the U.S. Senate released their own far-reaching plan for converting the economy to clean sources of power. They promise that, when they gain a majority, they will immediately begin spending $400 billion per year to convert the economy to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, and they say 40 percent of those dollars will be intended to benefit communities of color and low-income, deindustrialized and disadvantaged communities.
Similarly, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has proposed converting the U.S. electricity-generating system to renewable fuels by 2035 and the rest of the economy (transport, buildings and industry) by 2050.
Both Democratic blueprints are huge steps forward, far better than the Republican plan, which is to double down on fossil fuels, fry the planet, and hope for the best. Still, both Democratic plans are somewhat less ambitious than the Griffith road map. Griffith calls for a World War II scale of mobilization, to “shoot for the moon,” to reach the clean energy goal in 15 years, creating the needed sense of urgency and national commitment. If the Democrats embraced Griffith’s more-aggressive plan, we could avert the worst of the climate emergency, revive the economy quickly with many millions of good new jobs, and save every family money, all at the same time. Why would anyone want to settle for less?
trump's epa allows greedy mofos to poison your water and land!!!
Trump’s EPA Gives Power Plants A Pass On Deadly Coal Ash
Unlined Ponds Leak Arsenic and Other Poisons; Rivers and Waterways Polluted; Unedible Fish in a Tranquil Kentucky Lake
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
9/4/2020
Retiree Julie Pease and her husband moved into their modest lakefront home near Herrington Lake in Kentucky eight years ago, but she won’t eat the fish because the lake is polluted by coal ash from the nearby power plant.
Team Trump recently pushed back the deadlines for utilities to close an estimated 523 leaking, unstable or dangerously-sited coal ash ponds. Kentucky Utilities, which operates the E.W. Brown power plant in Harrodsburg, Ky., closed its main coal ash pond in 2008, but the six million tons of coal ash that remain at the site has polluted Herrington Lake.
“The fact that we could retire from New Jersey and buy a home on the lake was very appealing to us,” said Pease who didn’t know about the pollution when they bought their house.
Coal-burning power plants produce about 100 million tons of coal ash a year. Arsenic, lead and mercury lace the ash. Companies mixed the ash with water and stored it in unlined pits called coal ash ponds, often near rivers or lakes such as Herrington Lake which was built in the 1920s.
About a third of power plants with coal ash dumps are in the southeast. About 41% are in the Midwest, and about 10% are in the Southwest.
Under the law, the EPA is required to ensure that there is “no reasonable probability of adverse effects on health or the environment.” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who previously lobbied for a coal company, maintains that allowing coal ash ponds to stay open longer still meets this standard because the agency will require some utilities to submit risk mitigations plans and “meet the baseline level of acceptable risk.”
“Extending closure deadlines delays necessary cleanup, allows ongoing contamination to worsen, and puts communities at risk from the catastrophic harms that happen when impoundments fail or flood,” said Lauren Piette, an attorney for Earthjustice.
A spokesperson for Kentucky Utilities did not respond to an email from DCReport.org.
Court Cases
A coal ash rule passed under former President Barack Obama allowed power companies to put coal ash in unlined ponds indefinitely, until their operators determined they were leaking. Federal judges threw that out in a 2018 decision, Utility Solid Waste Activities Group v. EPA.
Wheeler used that decision and a 2019 decision, Waterkeeper Alliance Inc. v. EPA, to rewrite regulations to benefit utilities. The Trump EPA initially gave power companies until Oct. 31, 2020 to stop receiving waste and start closing unlined, leaking ponds.
Eight More Years
Wheeler’s new rule says power plants have until April 11, 2021 to stop sending coal ash ponds and start the closure process. Plants can get extensions until 2023, 2024 and even 2028.
Wheeler’s new rule is expected to save utilities $26.1 million a year.
At Herrington Lake, selenium, an element that is concentrated in coal ash, is poisoning fish and causing deformities in juvenile largemouth bass. Kentucky Waterways Alliance and the Sierra Club have sued Kentucky Utilities over pollution in the lake, and the state recently held a hearing.
Pease, who used to work at a Habitat for Humanity, and her husband, a retired high school math teacher, get their drinking water from the lake, but they filter it. They like to kayak on the lake with their dogs and go swimming.
“We were absolutely drawn by the beauty of the place where we live,” Pease said.
RELATED: Environment Trump cuts oil and gas drillers' rent on public lands, as state budgets suffer
RELATED: Environment Trump seeks to fast-track dozens of fossil fuel projects
Team Trump recently pushed back the deadlines for utilities to close an estimated 523 leaking, unstable or dangerously-sited coal ash ponds. Kentucky Utilities, which operates the E.W. Brown power plant in Harrodsburg, Ky., closed its main coal ash pond in 2008, but the six million tons of coal ash that remain at the site has polluted Herrington Lake.
“The fact that we could retire from New Jersey and buy a home on the lake was very appealing to us,” said Pease who didn’t know about the pollution when they bought their house.
Coal-burning power plants produce about 100 million tons of coal ash a year. Arsenic, lead and mercury lace the ash. Companies mixed the ash with water and stored it in unlined pits called coal ash ponds, often near rivers or lakes such as Herrington Lake which was built in the 1920s.
About a third of power plants with coal ash dumps are in the southeast. About 41% are in the Midwest, and about 10% are in the Southwest.
Under the law, the EPA is required to ensure that there is “no reasonable probability of adverse effects on health or the environment.” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who previously lobbied for a coal company, maintains that allowing coal ash ponds to stay open longer still meets this standard because the agency will require some utilities to submit risk mitigations plans and “meet the baseline level of acceptable risk.”
“Extending closure deadlines delays necessary cleanup, allows ongoing contamination to worsen, and puts communities at risk from the catastrophic harms that happen when impoundments fail or flood,” said Lauren Piette, an attorney for Earthjustice.
A spokesperson for Kentucky Utilities did not respond to an email from DCReport.org.
Court Cases
A coal ash rule passed under former President Barack Obama allowed power companies to put coal ash in unlined ponds indefinitely, until their operators determined they were leaking. Federal judges threw that out in a 2018 decision, Utility Solid Waste Activities Group v. EPA.
Wheeler used that decision and a 2019 decision, Waterkeeper Alliance Inc. v. EPA, to rewrite regulations to benefit utilities. The Trump EPA initially gave power companies until Oct. 31, 2020 to stop receiving waste and start closing unlined, leaking ponds.
Eight More Years
Wheeler’s new rule says power plants have until April 11, 2021 to stop sending coal ash ponds and start the closure process. Plants can get extensions until 2023, 2024 and even 2028.
Wheeler’s new rule is expected to save utilities $26.1 million a year.
At Herrington Lake, selenium, an element that is concentrated in coal ash, is poisoning fish and causing deformities in juvenile largemouth bass. Kentucky Waterways Alliance and the Sierra Club have sued Kentucky Utilities over pollution in the lake, and the state recently held a hearing.
Pease, who used to work at a Habitat for Humanity, and her husband, a retired high school math teacher, get their drinking water from the lake, but they filter it. They like to kayak on the lake with their dogs and go swimming.
“We were absolutely drawn by the beauty of the place where we live,” Pease said.
RELATED: Environment Trump cuts oil and gas drillers' rent on public lands, as state budgets suffer
RELATED: Environment Trump seeks to fast-track dozens of fossil fuel projects
in the land of stupid!!!
destroying the land for greed
The Latest American Natural Wonder On The Trump Hit List
Mining Companies Want to Do Their Dirty Work Near the Boundary Waters Wilderness
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
8/4/2020
President Jimmy Carter signed a law more than four decades ago to prohibit mining in the Boundary Waters, a pristine wilderness with more than 1,000 lakes that stretches almost 200 miles along the Canadian border in Minnesota.
Now the Trump Administration is preparing to sully this land forever—to the benefit of the billionaire Chilean landlord of the Kushners.
Trump’s Bureau of Land Management plans to study the environmental impact of mining for copper, nickel, cobalt and precious metals near Ely, Minn., just three miles away from the Boundary Waters, which are within the 3 million-acre Superior National Forest . State regulators say the plans of Twin Metals, the mining company, are incomplete and have published almost 800 comments asking for more information.
Under Obama, the Forest Service said a copper-nickel sulfide mine on land leased by Twin Metals carried an “unacceptable” risk that the mine might “cause serious and irreplaceable harm” to the Boundary Waters. The Bureau of Land Management decided against renewing two leases held by Twin Metals.
After Trump was elected, a company controlled by Andrónico Luksic, the Chilean mogul behind Twin Metals, bought a six-bedroom house for $5.5 million in the Kalorama neighborhood in D.C. where Jeff Bezos and Barack Obama own homes. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner moved in, paying $15,000 a month in rent.
Luksic’s spokesman has said that the Kushners’ choice of the property was coincidental, but soon after Trump’s inauguration the BLM started to look at reversing the Obama decision on the leases.
“The WH has expressed interest in the Twin Metals matter and Doug Domenich [sic.] (then an advisor to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke) wants to talk to the WH today,” attorney Karen Hawbecker wrote in June 2017. The leases were renewed for 10 years in May 2019 with a right to perpetual renewal.
Twin Metals claims the design of the mine would prevent acid mine drainage in which sulfuric acid formed by mining dissolves heavy metals in rocks. The pollution can make streams as acidic as battery acid, and the damage can last hundreds, sometimes even thousands of years. Acid mine drainage destroyed Tar Creek in Oklahoma, contributing to one of the worst Superfund sites in our nation’s history.
The Wilderness Society, Minnesota businesses and other environmental organizations sued Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in federal court to try to stop the mine, saying that damage caused by acid mine drainage might not ever be remediated.
The lawsuit claims that renewing the leases without doing an environmental impact statement was a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.
Now the Trump Administration is preparing to sully this land forever—to the benefit of the billionaire Chilean landlord of the Kushners.
Trump’s Bureau of Land Management plans to study the environmental impact of mining for copper, nickel, cobalt and precious metals near Ely, Minn., just three miles away from the Boundary Waters, which are within the 3 million-acre Superior National Forest . State regulators say the plans of Twin Metals, the mining company, are incomplete and have published almost 800 comments asking for more information.
Under Obama, the Forest Service said a copper-nickel sulfide mine on land leased by Twin Metals carried an “unacceptable” risk that the mine might “cause serious and irreplaceable harm” to the Boundary Waters. The Bureau of Land Management decided against renewing two leases held by Twin Metals.
After Trump was elected, a company controlled by Andrónico Luksic, the Chilean mogul behind Twin Metals, bought a six-bedroom house for $5.5 million in the Kalorama neighborhood in D.C. where Jeff Bezos and Barack Obama own homes. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner moved in, paying $15,000 a month in rent.
Luksic’s spokesman has said that the Kushners’ choice of the property was coincidental, but soon after Trump’s inauguration the BLM started to look at reversing the Obama decision on the leases.
“The WH has expressed interest in the Twin Metals matter and Doug Domenich [sic.] (then an advisor to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke) wants to talk to the WH today,” attorney Karen Hawbecker wrote in June 2017. The leases were renewed for 10 years in May 2019 with a right to perpetual renewal.
Twin Metals claims the design of the mine would prevent acid mine drainage in which sulfuric acid formed by mining dissolves heavy metals in rocks. The pollution can make streams as acidic as battery acid, and the damage can last hundreds, sometimes even thousands of years. Acid mine drainage destroyed Tar Creek in Oklahoma, contributing to one of the worst Superfund sites in our nation’s history.
The Wilderness Society, Minnesota businesses and other environmental organizations sued Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in federal court to try to stop the mine, saying that damage caused by acid mine drainage might not ever be remediated.
The lawsuit claims that renewing the leases without doing an environmental impact statement was a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.
Colorado
US rivers and lakes are shrinking for a surprising reason: cows
Cattle-feed crops, which end up as beef and dairy products, account for 23% of water consumption in the US
Troy Farah
the guardian
Thu 2 Jul 2020 05.30 EDT
As a fifth-generation rancher in Colorado, Paul Bruchez knows the value of water. Not only does he raise cattle irrigated by the Colorado River and its nearby tributaries, Bruchez runs a fly-fishing business on those same streams.
“My income, my life, requires a reliable water resource,” he said. But since moving to northern Colorado two decades ago, the Colorado River has shrunk by an average of 20% compared to last century. Climatic conditions are one culprit – the area is suffering the worst regional dry spell on record. But there’s another big problem.
Cows.
A recent analysis published in Nature found cattle to be one of the major drivers of water shortages. Notably, it is because of water used to grow crops that are fed to cows such as alfalfa and hay. Across the US, cattle-feed crops, which end up as beef and dairy products, account for 23% of all water consumption, according to the report. In the Colorado River Basin, it is over half.
“There are many smaller streams that have been dried up completely,” said Brian Richter, the study’s lead author and the president of Sustainable Waters, a water conservation non-profit. “We’re only seeing the beginning of what’s going to become a major natural resource issue for everybody living in the western United States.”
Agriculture accounts for 92% of humanity’s freshwater footprint across the planet, and has long been identified as a major culprit in drought. But the new study suggests how extreme its impact can be.
“The fact that over half of that water is going to cattle-feed crops just floored us,” Richter said. “We had to double and triple check to make sure we got the numbers right.”
Lake Mead, in Arizona and Nevada, for example, hasn’t been full since 1983, and has fallen by almost two-thirds in the last 20 years alone. According to Richter’s analysis, almost 75% of that decline can be attributed to cattle-feed irrigation.
In the Colorado River Basin as a whole, which services about 40 million people in seven states and is overtaxed to the point that it rarely ever reaches the ocean anymore, that number is 55%.
It takes a lot of water to make a double-cheeseburger. One calculation puts it at 450 gallons per quarter-pounder. The study also found that most of these water-intensive beef and dairy products are being consumed in western cities. “Beef consumers living in the Los Angeles, Portland, Denver and San Francisco metropolitan areas bear the greatest responsibility for these hydrological and ecological impacts,” Richter and his colleagues reported.
Around 60 species of fish in the western US are experiencing increased risk of extinction due to draining water tables, according to the study. As streams dry up, toxic chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides that run off from farms become concentrated, suffocating river-dwelling fauna. Invasive species can find a foothold in the changing environment.
It’s a dire situation, but people like Richter and Bruchez are working on solutions. For the past 18 years, Bruchez has been involved with local water sustainability efforts, including several multimillion dollar river restoration projects, and champions strategies like improved irrigation systems and rebuilding riparian habitat.
The most cost-effective solution, proposed in Richter’s paper, is fallowing farmland, meaning letting it sit idle, without irrigation. “You can’t get more water savings off of an acre than by not watering it,” Richter said, and described it as “growing water” rather than a crop. He noted that the strategy should be temporary and rotational, and that ranchers should be compensated because they lose income growing nothing. Fallowing is at least twice as effective as other water-saving tactics, according to Richter’s analysis.
Agricultural strategies aside, people who eat beef and dairy will ultimately need to consume less or choose products that don’t depend on irrigated crops fed to cows, Richter said. Plant-based meat alternatives can play a role, as one analysis found that a meatless Beyond Burger generates 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and has practically no impact on water scarcity.
“Reduced consumption of beef is one very effective way for an individual consumer to reduce their water and energy footprint; however, it is difficult to guarantee that there would be a subsequent decrease in water stress in the western US with decreased beef consumption,” Dr Shelie Miller, the director for University of Michigan’s Program in the Environment, said in an email. “Even with decreased water consumption associated with beef and dairy, there are a multitude of competing water demands in the western region of the US.”
In other words, even if beef and dairy are sucking American rivers dry, addressing cattle-feed crops is only part of the solution to growing water scarcity.
Bruchez, the rancher, is concerned about “the volume of water that is used to put into people’s yards, parks, golf courses, whatever for scenery”. Agriculture, he said, “isn’t in my eyes the only thing to look towards”.
“My income, my life, requires a reliable water resource,” he said. But since moving to northern Colorado two decades ago, the Colorado River has shrunk by an average of 20% compared to last century. Climatic conditions are one culprit – the area is suffering the worst regional dry spell on record. But there’s another big problem.
Cows.
A recent analysis published in Nature found cattle to be one of the major drivers of water shortages. Notably, it is because of water used to grow crops that are fed to cows such as alfalfa and hay. Across the US, cattle-feed crops, which end up as beef and dairy products, account for 23% of all water consumption, according to the report. In the Colorado River Basin, it is over half.
“There are many smaller streams that have been dried up completely,” said Brian Richter, the study’s lead author and the president of Sustainable Waters, a water conservation non-profit. “We’re only seeing the beginning of what’s going to become a major natural resource issue for everybody living in the western United States.”
Agriculture accounts for 92% of humanity’s freshwater footprint across the planet, and has long been identified as a major culprit in drought. But the new study suggests how extreme its impact can be.
“The fact that over half of that water is going to cattle-feed crops just floored us,” Richter said. “We had to double and triple check to make sure we got the numbers right.”
Lake Mead, in Arizona and Nevada, for example, hasn’t been full since 1983, and has fallen by almost two-thirds in the last 20 years alone. According to Richter’s analysis, almost 75% of that decline can be attributed to cattle-feed irrigation.
In the Colorado River Basin as a whole, which services about 40 million people in seven states and is overtaxed to the point that it rarely ever reaches the ocean anymore, that number is 55%.
It takes a lot of water to make a double-cheeseburger. One calculation puts it at 450 gallons per quarter-pounder. The study also found that most of these water-intensive beef and dairy products are being consumed in western cities. “Beef consumers living in the Los Angeles, Portland, Denver and San Francisco metropolitan areas bear the greatest responsibility for these hydrological and ecological impacts,” Richter and his colleagues reported.
Around 60 species of fish in the western US are experiencing increased risk of extinction due to draining water tables, according to the study. As streams dry up, toxic chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides that run off from farms become concentrated, suffocating river-dwelling fauna. Invasive species can find a foothold in the changing environment.
It’s a dire situation, but people like Richter and Bruchez are working on solutions. For the past 18 years, Bruchez has been involved with local water sustainability efforts, including several multimillion dollar river restoration projects, and champions strategies like improved irrigation systems and rebuilding riparian habitat.
The most cost-effective solution, proposed in Richter’s paper, is fallowing farmland, meaning letting it sit idle, without irrigation. “You can’t get more water savings off of an acre than by not watering it,” Richter said, and described it as “growing water” rather than a crop. He noted that the strategy should be temporary and rotational, and that ranchers should be compensated because they lose income growing nothing. Fallowing is at least twice as effective as other water-saving tactics, according to Richter’s analysis.
Agricultural strategies aside, people who eat beef and dairy will ultimately need to consume less or choose products that don’t depend on irrigated crops fed to cows, Richter said. Plant-based meat alternatives can play a role, as one analysis found that a meatless Beyond Burger generates 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and has practically no impact on water scarcity.
“Reduced consumption of beef is one very effective way for an individual consumer to reduce their water and energy footprint; however, it is difficult to guarantee that there would be a subsequent decrease in water stress in the western US with decreased beef consumption,” Dr Shelie Miller, the director for University of Michigan’s Program in the Environment, said in an email. “Even with decreased water consumption associated with beef and dairy, there are a multitude of competing water demands in the western region of the US.”
In other words, even if beef and dairy are sucking American rivers dry, addressing cattle-feed crops is only part of the solution to growing water scarcity.
Bruchez, the rancher, is concerned about “the volume of water that is used to put into people’s yards, parks, golf courses, whatever for scenery”. Agriculture, he said, “isn’t in my eyes the only thing to look towards”.
America's water crisis
Whole Foods High levels of arsenic found in US Whole Foods’ bottled water brand
Tests by Consumer Reports find toxic metal in Starkey Spring Water, which was
previously recalled for exceeding federal limits, and is sold on Amazon
Ryan Felton
the guardian
Wed 24 Jun 2020 05.00 EDT
Bottled water manufactured by Whole Foods and sold in most of its US stores and on Amazon contains potentially harmful levels of arsenic, according to new tests by Consumer Reports (CR).
CR recently tested dozens of bottled water brands and found that Starkey Spring Water, introduced by Whole Foods in 2015, had concerning levels of arsenic, ranging from 9.49 to 9.56 parts per billion (PPB), at least three times the level of every other brand tested. Federal regulations require manufacturers to limit the amount of arsenic, a potentially dangerous heavy metal, in bottled water to 10 PPB. CR experts believe that level does not adequately protect public health.
CR also tested samples of Starkey Spring Water in 2019, finding levels of arsenic that approached or exceeded the federal limit: three samples ranged from 9.48 to 9.86 PPB of arsenic; a fourth registered 10.1 PPB. Those results are cited in two pending consumer lawsuits over Starkey’s arsenic content.
Drinking a single bottle of Starkey probably will not harm you, says Dr James Dickerson, CR’s chief scientific officer. “But regular consumption of even small amounts of the heavy metal over extended periods increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and lower IQ scores in children, and poses other health issues as well,” he says.
The results of the testing come as the Guardian and Consumer Reports launch a major project this week on the challenges of getting access to safe, clean, affordable water in the US. That includes how the bottled water consumers sometimes resort to as an alternative is not only expensive, but may also not always be safer.
“I think the average consumer would be stunned to learn that they’re paying a lot of extra money for bottled water, thinking that it’s significantly safer than tap, and unknowingly getting potentially dangerous levels of arsenic,” says Erik Olson, senior strategic director of health and food at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy organization that has researched bottled water quality.
CR’s findings highlight inconsistencies with how water is regulated in the US. Research suggests health risks from arsenic can emerge below the federal limit of 10 PPB, especially in children, prompting two states, New Jersey and New Hampshire, to lower their level to 5 PPB. Those limits, however, only apply to tap water.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which regulates municipal water in the US, allows states to set their own standards for tap water, so long as they’re at least as strict as the federal level. But federal bottled water regulations, which are enforced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), generally prohibit states from creating more stringent limits for contaminants in bottled water.
That puts Starkey Spring Water in the unusual position of being legal when put in a bottle but, in certain states, illegal if it came out of a household faucet.
---
Previous recalls
Whole Foods introduced Starkey Spring Water in 2015, with chief operating officer AC Gallo telling investors “it’s amazingly pristine water” that “naturally flows out of the ground” from a spring in Idaho. That point is reinforced on the product’s label, which declares that Starkey is “made by Mother Nature”.
But in December 2016, records show that the FDA was notified of tests conducted by Florida’s bottled water regulator showing that Starkey had 11.7 PPB of arsenic, which is above the federal safety threshold. Weeks later, additional tests found 12 PPB of arsenic in samples taken from other lots.
The FDA told Whole Foods about the results, saying the findings could warrant a recall, and asked how the company planned to respond, according to FDA records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The FDA noted the potential health risks –including cancer, skin lesions, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
“With prolonged use of the product for many years, a wide variety of adverse effects may occur,” the FDA report said.
Whole Foods responded to the findings by recalling more than 2,000 cases of Starkey Spring Water in late 2016 and early 2017.
Since then, the company’s own internal tests continue to show arsenic levels at 8 to 9 PPB – lower than the levels CR found.
In California, state law requires bottlers to provide consumers an easy-to-read report detailing the quality of their product. If a bottled water has arsenic levels above 5 PPB, the company must include a disclaimer in those reports noting the elevated levels. Consumers often can find the report on a company’s website or by contacting the manufacturer directly.[...]
RELATED: REVEALED: MILLIONS OF AMERICANS CAN’T AFFORD WATER AS BILLS RISE 80% IN A DECADE
CR recently tested dozens of bottled water brands and found that Starkey Spring Water, introduced by Whole Foods in 2015, had concerning levels of arsenic, ranging from 9.49 to 9.56 parts per billion (PPB), at least three times the level of every other brand tested. Federal regulations require manufacturers to limit the amount of arsenic, a potentially dangerous heavy metal, in bottled water to 10 PPB. CR experts believe that level does not adequately protect public health.
CR also tested samples of Starkey Spring Water in 2019, finding levels of arsenic that approached or exceeded the federal limit: three samples ranged from 9.48 to 9.86 PPB of arsenic; a fourth registered 10.1 PPB. Those results are cited in two pending consumer lawsuits over Starkey’s arsenic content.
Drinking a single bottle of Starkey probably will not harm you, says Dr James Dickerson, CR’s chief scientific officer. “But regular consumption of even small amounts of the heavy metal over extended periods increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and lower IQ scores in children, and poses other health issues as well,” he says.
The results of the testing come as the Guardian and Consumer Reports launch a major project this week on the challenges of getting access to safe, clean, affordable water in the US. That includes how the bottled water consumers sometimes resort to as an alternative is not only expensive, but may also not always be safer.
“I think the average consumer would be stunned to learn that they’re paying a lot of extra money for bottled water, thinking that it’s significantly safer than tap, and unknowingly getting potentially dangerous levels of arsenic,” says Erik Olson, senior strategic director of health and food at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy organization that has researched bottled water quality.
CR’s findings highlight inconsistencies with how water is regulated in the US. Research suggests health risks from arsenic can emerge below the federal limit of 10 PPB, especially in children, prompting two states, New Jersey and New Hampshire, to lower their level to 5 PPB. Those limits, however, only apply to tap water.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which regulates municipal water in the US, allows states to set their own standards for tap water, so long as they’re at least as strict as the federal level. But federal bottled water regulations, which are enforced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), generally prohibit states from creating more stringent limits for contaminants in bottled water.
That puts Starkey Spring Water in the unusual position of being legal when put in a bottle but, in certain states, illegal if it came out of a household faucet.
---
Previous recalls
Whole Foods introduced Starkey Spring Water in 2015, with chief operating officer AC Gallo telling investors “it’s amazingly pristine water” that “naturally flows out of the ground” from a spring in Idaho. That point is reinforced on the product’s label, which declares that Starkey is “made by Mother Nature”.
But in December 2016, records show that the FDA was notified of tests conducted by Florida’s bottled water regulator showing that Starkey had 11.7 PPB of arsenic, which is above the federal safety threshold. Weeks later, additional tests found 12 PPB of arsenic in samples taken from other lots.
The FDA told Whole Foods about the results, saying the findings could warrant a recall, and asked how the company planned to respond, according to FDA records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The FDA noted the potential health risks –including cancer, skin lesions, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
“With prolonged use of the product for many years, a wide variety of adverse effects may occur,” the FDA report said.
Whole Foods responded to the findings by recalling more than 2,000 cases of Starkey Spring Water in late 2016 and early 2017.
Since then, the company’s own internal tests continue to show arsenic levels at 8 to 9 PPB – lower than the levels CR found.
In California, state law requires bottlers to provide consumers an easy-to-read report detailing the quality of their product. If a bottled water has arsenic levels above 5 PPB, the company must include a disclaimer in those reports noting the elevated levels. Consumers often can find the report on a company’s website or by contacting the manufacturer directly.[...]
RELATED: REVEALED: MILLIONS OF AMERICANS CAN’T AFFORD WATER AS BILLS RISE 80% IN A DECADE
poisoning americans for profit!!!
Agriculture Department Eases The Way For Test-Tube Plants To Spread Into Nature
It Helped When a Florida Billionaire Hired a Lobbyist With Close Ties to Trump
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
6/12/2020
A USDA plan to loosen regulation of genetically modified crops could benefit Florida billionaire Randal Kirk whose company hired Trump fundraiser and lobbyist Roy Bailey.
Michael Gregoire, then the acting administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, withdrew a proposed regulation to give more power to APHIS to evaluate whether genetically modified plants could become harmful weeds. This happened just 21 days after Bailey became a lobbyist for Intrexon, one of Kirk’s companies.
The regulation that Trump’s Agriculture Department drafted instead would let developers determine whether their crops should be regulated based on comparing plant traits to traits that already aren’t regulated. It becomes effective Aug. 17
“This common-sense approach will ultimately give farmers more choices in the field and consumers more choices at the grocery store,” said Greg Ibach, the USDA undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.
Kirk, who lives just 7.1 miles from Mar-a-Lago in a house an LLC bought for $25.5 million in 2011, is estimated to be worth $2.2 billion. Intrexon, where Kirk was the CEO, bought a company that developed apples that don’t brown. Intrexon, which recently was renamed Precigen, sold the biotech parts of the company to another Kirk company, Third Security LLC, after Intrexon lost $509.3 million in 2018.
Records show Intrexon paid Bailey’s lobbying firm, Bailey Strategic Advisors, about $180,000 from 2017 through 2019 to meet with officials from the White House, the president’s office, the vice president’s office, and agencies including the USDA.
Bailey has also served as the finance chair of America First Action, a super PAC that raised more than $40 million to try to re-elect Trump.
The Center for Food Safety called the regulation “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to sound science.”
Under the Plant Protection Act, signed by President Bill Clinton, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, is supposed to regulate genetically engineered crops to reduce risk of spreading plant pests or harmful weeds. But Trump’s regulation would allow the developers of genetically engineered plants to decide if their companies should be exempted from this.
The center said assessing the risk of plant pests must account for unintended as well as intended effects of genetic modification. For instance, the genetic engineering of Arctic apples to resist browning involved silencing genes that generate enzymes that help protect against disease and insects in some plants.
APHIS currently only regulates genetically engineered plants that were produced using genetic material derived from plant pests such as the common soil bacteria Agrobacterium.
Michael Gregoire, then the acting administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, withdrew a proposed regulation to give more power to APHIS to evaluate whether genetically modified plants could become harmful weeds. This happened just 21 days after Bailey became a lobbyist for Intrexon, one of Kirk’s companies.
The regulation that Trump’s Agriculture Department drafted instead would let developers determine whether their crops should be regulated based on comparing plant traits to traits that already aren’t regulated. It becomes effective Aug. 17
“This common-sense approach will ultimately give farmers more choices in the field and consumers more choices at the grocery store,” said Greg Ibach, the USDA undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.
Kirk, who lives just 7.1 miles from Mar-a-Lago in a house an LLC bought for $25.5 million in 2011, is estimated to be worth $2.2 billion. Intrexon, where Kirk was the CEO, bought a company that developed apples that don’t brown. Intrexon, which recently was renamed Precigen, sold the biotech parts of the company to another Kirk company, Third Security LLC, after Intrexon lost $509.3 million in 2018.
Records show Intrexon paid Bailey’s lobbying firm, Bailey Strategic Advisors, about $180,000 from 2017 through 2019 to meet with officials from the White House, the president’s office, the vice president’s office, and agencies including the USDA.
Bailey has also served as the finance chair of America First Action, a super PAC that raised more than $40 million to try to re-elect Trump.
The Center for Food Safety called the regulation “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to sound science.”
Under the Plant Protection Act, signed by President Bill Clinton, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, is supposed to regulate genetically engineered crops to reduce risk of spreading plant pests or harmful weeds. But Trump’s regulation would allow the developers of genetically engineered plants to decide if their companies should be exempted from this.
The center said assessing the risk of plant pests must account for unintended as well as intended effects of genetic modification. For instance, the genetic engineering of Arctic apples to resist browning involved silencing genes that generate enzymes that help protect against disease and insects in some plants.
APHIS currently only regulates genetically engineered plants that were produced using genetic material derived from plant pests such as the common soil bacteria Agrobacterium.
Soot In The Air + Coronavirus = Higher Death Rates
So, of Course, Trump’s EPA Ignores Harvard Study and Its Own Scientists to Stick with Lax Air Pollution Standards
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
june 4, 2020
A Harvard study found that long-term exposure to microscopic soot in the air appears to be associated with higher death rates from the coronavirus.
But Trump’s EPA has recommended keeping the 2012 standards for microscopic soot that are linked to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year.
The plan overrides advice from EPA staff scientists.
“I do think it’s unwise to roll back regulatory pollution standards at a time when we know there is a virus that is attacking the lungs,” said Harvard biostatistician Francesca Dominici.
Microscopic soot, or particulate matter, is about 1/30th the width of a human hair. The pollution comes from power plants, cars, trucks, wood-burning stoves and wildfires. The particles can enter the lungs and are linked to heart attacks, strokes, aggravated asthma and premature deaths.
The EPA is required by law to study the latest science about particulate matter pollution and public health every five years so the EPA administrator can set a standard to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt removed the process of assessing air quality standards from the EPA Office of Research and Development which has much of the EPA’s scientific expertise. Pruitt moved it to Office of Air and Radiation, then headed by attorney Bill Wehrum.
Andrew Wheeler, who replaced Pruitt, fired scientists on a panel set up to study particulate matter. The committee making recommendations about microscopic soot is led by consultant Tony Cox who wrote a discredited study that claimed soot in the air can be beneficial. The panel has no statisticians, experts in modeling risk assessment or epidemiologists.
Harvard’s ‘Bogus Analysis’
Historically, Harvard’s public health studies have been vital for EPA public health rules, but Cox trashed the Harvard study. He called it “not a model that is ready for prime time” and a “bogus piece of analysis.”
“I would have zero confidence in the published results of this study because its interpretation, design and analysis are fundamentally flawed,” Cox said.
Since Trump took office, the concentration of fine particles of soot, or particulate matter 2.5, has increased 5.8%. The number of “unhealthy air days” in major cities, based on smog and PM 2.5 levels, rose to its highest level since 2012.
Industry groups that have urged the Trump EPA against tightening the rule include the American Petroleum Institute, for which Cox has done consulting work.
Save 12,000 Lives a Year
The current EPA limit for microscopic soot is 12 micrograms per cubic meter. An unofficial panel assembled by the Union of Concerned Scientists recommended lowering that limit to between 8 and 10 micrograms per cubic meter. Reducing the soot standard to 9 micrograms per cubic meter could reduce deaths by up to 27% or about 12,150 people a year.
The Harvard study, whose lead authors are doctoral student Xiao Wu and assistant professor Rachel Nethery, is the first nationwide study to estimate the relationship between long-term exposure to microscopic soot and COVID-19 death rates.
The study looked at 3,087 counties covering 98% of the population. At that time, in late April, there were just 45,817 deaths. It found an 8% increase in the COVID-19 death rate associated an increase in microscopic soot of 1 microgram per cubic meter.
Earlier studies also have found connections between pollution and deaths during pandemics. During the 2003 SARS outbreak, locations in China with a moderate or high long-term air pollution had SARS death rates 126% and 71% higher, respectively, than locations with low air pollution indexes.
Studies found exposure to microscopic soot associated with deaths during the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009. Historical data shows a relationship between air pollution from burning coal and deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic.
But Trump’s EPA has recommended keeping the 2012 standards for microscopic soot that are linked to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year.
The plan overrides advice from EPA staff scientists.
“I do think it’s unwise to roll back regulatory pollution standards at a time when we know there is a virus that is attacking the lungs,” said Harvard biostatistician Francesca Dominici.
Microscopic soot, or particulate matter, is about 1/30th the width of a human hair. The pollution comes from power plants, cars, trucks, wood-burning stoves and wildfires. The particles can enter the lungs and are linked to heart attacks, strokes, aggravated asthma and premature deaths.
The EPA is required by law to study the latest science about particulate matter pollution and public health every five years so the EPA administrator can set a standard to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt removed the process of assessing air quality standards from the EPA Office of Research and Development which has much of the EPA’s scientific expertise. Pruitt moved it to Office of Air and Radiation, then headed by attorney Bill Wehrum.
Andrew Wheeler, who replaced Pruitt, fired scientists on a panel set up to study particulate matter. The committee making recommendations about microscopic soot is led by consultant Tony Cox who wrote a discredited study that claimed soot in the air can be beneficial. The panel has no statisticians, experts in modeling risk assessment or epidemiologists.
Harvard’s ‘Bogus Analysis’
Historically, Harvard’s public health studies have been vital for EPA public health rules, but Cox trashed the Harvard study. He called it “not a model that is ready for prime time” and a “bogus piece of analysis.”
“I would have zero confidence in the published results of this study because its interpretation, design and analysis are fundamentally flawed,” Cox said.
Since Trump took office, the concentration of fine particles of soot, or particulate matter 2.5, has increased 5.8%. The number of “unhealthy air days” in major cities, based on smog and PM 2.5 levels, rose to its highest level since 2012.
Industry groups that have urged the Trump EPA against tightening the rule include the American Petroleum Institute, for which Cox has done consulting work.
Save 12,000 Lives a Year
The current EPA limit for microscopic soot is 12 micrograms per cubic meter. An unofficial panel assembled by the Union of Concerned Scientists recommended lowering that limit to between 8 and 10 micrograms per cubic meter. Reducing the soot standard to 9 micrograms per cubic meter could reduce deaths by up to 27% or about 12,150 people a year.
The Harvard study, whose lead authors are doctoral student Xiao Wu and assistant professor Rachel Nethery, is the first nationwide study to estimate the relationship between long-term exposure to microscopic soot and COVID-19 death rates.
The study looked at 3,087 counties covering 98% of the population. At that time, in late April, there were just 45,817 deaths. It found an 8% increase in the COVID-19 death rate associated an increase in microscopic soot of 1 microgram per cubic meter.
Earlier studies also have found connections between pollution and deaths during pandemics. During the 2003 SARS outbreak, locations in China with a moderate or high long-term air pollution had SARS death rates 126% and 71% higher, respectively, than locations with low air pollution indexes.
Studies found exposure to microscopic soot associated with deaths during the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009. Historical data shows a relationship between air pollution from burning coal and deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic.
With nation focused on pandemic, Trump Interior Dept. to greenlight killing of bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens
May 28, 2020
By Common Dreams
“Killing has no place in our National Wildlife Refuges.”
President Donald Trump’s National Park Service plans to finalize rules this week that will allow hunters in Alaska to kill bear cubs and wolf pups while they are in their dens, reversing Obama-era regulations meant to prevent destabilization of the state’s biodiversity.
The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) accused the administration of taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to push through a rule change against the advice of dozens of natural resource experts and lawmakers.
“Amid the global pandemic, the Trump administration is declaring open season on bears and wolves through its sport hunting rule on national parklands in Alaska,” said NPCA President Theresa Pierno.
Under the new rules, hunters in Alaska will be permitted to:
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, claimed Thursday that the new rules are a matter of “principle” and protecting states’ rights. Conservation groups expressed outrage.
“Killing has no place in our National Wildlife Refuges,” tweeted the Wolf Conservation Center.
Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke drafted the rule before resigning in 2018 in the face of 17 federal ethics investigations, and the proposal promptly drew condemnation.
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) led more than 70 of her colleagues in demanding the rule be withdrawn.
“The proposed rule would roll back critical protections for America’s beloved, rare and iconic native carnivores, including brown bears, black bears and wolves on the approximately 20 million acres of national preserves in Alaska—land that belongs to all Americans,” wrote the lawmakers. “The rule would effectively endorse the state of Alaska’s efforts to use extreme practices to reduce bear and wolf populations in order to artificially inflate populations of prey species for sport hunting.”
More than 100 scientists, former National Park Service employees, and academics also denounced the rule, saying “extremely limited scientific evidence” was being used to justify making it easier for hunters to kill bear cubs and wolf pups.
“Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had the opportunity to halt this rule that includes baiting park bears but chose instead to ignore commonsense and opposition by members of Congress, scientists, and tens of thousands of Americans,” said Pierno. “Shooting hibernating mama and baby bears is not the conservation legacy that our national parks are meant to preserve and no way to treat or manage park wildlife.”
President Donald Trump’s National Park Service plans to finalize rules this week that will allow hunters in Alaska to kill bear cubs and wolf pups while they are in their dens, reversing Obama-era regulations meant to prevent destabilization of the state’s biodiversity.
The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) accused the administration of taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to push through a rule change against the advice of dozens of natural resource experts and lawmakers.
“Amid the global pandemic, the Trump administration is declaring open season on bears and wolves through its sport hunting rule on national parklands in Alaska,” said NPCA President Theresa Pierno.
Under the new rules, hunters in Alaska will be permitted to:
- use bait including donuts and grease-soaked bread to draw in and kill brown bears;
- use artificial lights to enter dens and kill black bears, including females and their cubs;
- shoot caribou while they are swimming; and
- trap and kill wolves and their pups during denning season.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, claimed Thursday that the new rules are a matter of “principle” and protecting states’ rights. Conservation groups expressed outrage.
“Killing has no place in our National Wildlife Refuges,” tweeted the Wolf Conservation Center.
Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke drafted the rule before resigning in 2018 in the face of 17 federal ethics investigations, and the proposal promptly drew condemnation.
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) led more than 70 of her colleagues in demanding the rule be withdrawn.
“The proposed rule would roll back critical protections for America’s beloved, rare and iconic native carnivores, including brown bears, black bears and wolves on the approximately 20 million acres of national preserves in Alaska—land that belongs to all Americans,” wrote the lawmakers. “The rule would effectively endorse the state of Alaska’s efforts to use extreme practices to reduce bear and wolf populations in order to artificially inflate populations of prey species for sport hunting.”
More than 100 scientists, former National Park Service employees, and academics also denounced the rule, saying “extremely limited scientific evidence” was being used to justify making it easier for hunters to kill bear cubs and wolf pups.
“Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had the opportunity to halt this rule that includes baiting park bears but chose instead to ignore commonsense and opposition by members of Congress, scientists, and tens of thousands of Americans,” said Pierno. “Shooting hibernating mama and baby bears is not the conservation legacy that our national parks are meant to preserve and no way to treat or manage park wildlife.”
we are being poisoned!!!
Trump Administration Uses Pandemic To Cover For Loosening Crop Poison Regulation
A Deadly Herbicide Ends Up in Lakes and Rivers, Severely Harming Wildlife
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
5/12/2020
The Trump EPA wants to reapprove use of a dangerous herbicide.
Trump appointees are hiding behind the COVID-19 pandemic to excuse a herbicide manufacturer from monitoring levels of the poison in Midwest lakes and streams.
The EPA plans to raise the concentration of atrazine allowed in streams and lakes to 15 parts per billion. That is more than four times higher than what the EPA had recommended under the Obama administration. In April, Elissa Reaves, acting director of the herbicide re-evaluation division, suspended monitoring for the rest of the year.
“The public will now have no idea whether dangerous levels of atrazine are reaching rivers and streams throughout the Midwest,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “That’s absurd and reckless.”
Atrazine, which is banned in Europe, often washes into streams and lakes and is one of the most common contaminants of drinking water. It chemically castrates frogs. More than 70 million pounds of atrazine was sprayed in 2016, mostly to control weeds in cornfields but also on sorghum, sugarcane and other crops.
Syngenta, the Swiss company that is the main manufacturer of atrazine, didn’t report any federal lobbying in 2019. But its former lobbyists include Jeff Sands who took a $99,125 pay cut in 2017 to work for then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt as a senior agricultural adviser.
Sands, who left the EPA, received an ethics waiver from Don McGahn, then Trump’s attorney, to participate in agricultural issues, including those he previously lobbied. The waiver was not supposed to include anything relating to Syngenta.
The Swiss company is known for trashing its critics and wielded influence over EPA decisions long before Trump was elected. Syngenta commissioned a psychological profile of Tyrone Hayes, the University of California, Berkeley, professor whose research found atrazine appeared to disrupt the sexual development of frogs.
The EPA’s 2007 and 2012 assessments of atrazine excluded 74 of 75 published laboratory studies on the effects of atrazine on amphibians. The single study it relied on, which found virtually no adverse reproductive impacts even at relatively high doses of atrazine, was funded by Syngenta. Co-author Alan Hosmer was an employee of Syngenta.
The EPA’s ecological risk assessment, done during the Obama administration, repeatedly cites a 2008 paper, funded by Syngenta. The paper about atrazine’s effects on fish, amphibians and reptiles was written by pesticide industry consultant Keith Solomon and colleagues.
Jason Rohr and Krista McCoy, then at the University of South Florida, found that Solomon misrepresented more than 50 of the studies he and his colleagues reviewed with 122 inaccurate and 22 misleading statements. About 96.5% of these inaccurate or misleading statements appeared to benefit Syngenta.
Frogs are an indicator species, meaning that harm to them can show risks to other species. The average decline for amphibian populations is about 3.8% a year. At this rate, some species will disappear in half the habitats they occupy in about 20 years.
Trump appointees are hiding behind the COVID-19 pandemic to excuse a herbicide manufacturer from monitoring levels of the poison in Midwest lakes and streams.
The EPA plans to raise the concentration of atrazine allowed in streams and lakes to 15 parts per billion. That is more than four times higher than what the EPA had recommended under the Obama administration. In April, Elissa Reaves, acting director of the herbicide re-evaluation division, suspended monitoring for the rest of the year.
“The public will now have no idea whether dangerous levels of atrazine are reaching rivers and streams throughout the Midwest,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “That’s absurd and reckless.”
Atrazine, which is banned in Europe, often washes into streams and lakes and is one of the most common contaminants of drinking water. It chemically castrates frogs. More than 70 million pounds of atrazine was sprayed in 2016, mostly to control weeds in cornfields but also on sorghum, sugarcane and other crops.
Syngenta, the Swiss company that is the main manufacturer of atrazine, didn’t report any federal lobbying in 2019. But its former lobbyists include Jeff Sands who took a $99,125 pay cut in 2017 to work for then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt as a senior agricultural adviser.
Sands, who left the EPA, received an ethics waiver from Don McGahn, then Trump’s attorney, to participate in agricultural issues, including those he previously lobbied. The waiver was not supposed to include anything relating to Syngenta.
The Swiss company is known for trashing its critics and wielded influence over EPA decisions long before Trump was elected. Syngenta commissioned a psychological profile of Tyrone Hayes, the University of California, Berkeley, professor whose research found atrazine appeared to disrupt the sexual development of frogs.
The EPA’s 2007 and 2012 assessments of atrazine excluded 74 of 75 published laboratory studies on the effects of atrazine on amphibians. The single study it relied on, which found virtually no adverse reproductive impacts even at relatively high doses of atrazine, was funded by Syngenta. Co-author Alan Hosmer was an employee of Syngenta.
The EPA’s ecological risk assessment, done during the Obama administration, repeatedly cites a 2008 paper, funded by Syngenta. The paper about atrazine’s effects on fish, amphibians and reptiles was written by pesticide industry consultant Keith Solomon and colleagues.
Jason Rohr and Krista McCoy, then at the University of South Florida, found that Solomon misrepresented more than 50 of the studies he and his colleagues reviewed with 122 inaccurate and 22 misleading statements. About 96.5% of these inaccurate or misleading statements appeared to benefit Syngenta.
Frogs are an indicator species, meaning that harm to them can show risks to other species. The average decline for amphibian populations is about 3.8% a year. At this rate, some species will disappear in half the habitats they occupy in about 20 years.
america is being poisoned by its "leader"!!!
Trump dismantles environmental protections under cover of coronavirus
Administration is weakening protections ahead of the election, making changes that could take years for a Democratic president to undo
Emily Holden in Washington
the guardian
Mon 11 May 2020 02.00 EDT
The Trump administration is diligently weakening US environment protections even amid a global pandemic, continuing its rollback as the November election approaches.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, US federal agencies have eased fuel-efficiency standards for new cars; frozen rules for soot air pollution; proposed to drop review requirements for liquefied natural gas terminals; continued to lease public property to oil and gas companies; sought to speed up permitting for offshore fish farms; and advanced a proposal on mercury pollution from power plants that could make it easier for the government to conclude regulations are too costly to justify their benefits.
The government has also relaxed reporting rules for polluters during the pandemic.
Trump’s ambitions reach even to the moon, which he has announced he wants the US to mine.
Gina McCarthy, formerly Barack Obama’s environment chief, now runs the Natural Resources Defense Council. She said the Trump administration was acting to cut public health protections while the American public is distracted by a public health crisis.
“People right now are hunkered down trying to put food on the table, take care of people who are sick, worry about educating their children at home,” McCarthy said. “How many people are going to really be able to sit down and scrutinize these things in any way?”
McCarthy said the government was “literally not interested in the law or science”, and that “is going to become strikingly clear as people look at how the administration is handling Covid-19”.
The Trump administration is playing both offense and defense, rescinding and rewriting some rules and crafting others that would be time-consuming for a Democratic president to reverse.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has written what critics say will be a weak proposal for climate pollution from airplanes, a placeholder that will hinder stricter regulation.
Trump officials have been attempting to create a coronavirus relief program for oil and gas corporations, a new move in his campaign to back the industry and stymie global climate action. The president has sown distrust of climate science and vowed to exit the Paris climate agreement, which the US can do after the election.
Historians say Trump’s presidency has forced a pendulum swing back from the environmental awakening of the 1960s and 70s, when there was bipartisan support for conservation. Protecting the environment – and particularly the climate – is an issue that has become embroiled in political ideology.
“What Trump’s done is create a blitzkrieg against the environment … trying to dismantle not just Obama’s environmental achievements but turn back the clock to a pre-Richard Nixon day,” said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University who is writing a book on the subject.
“It’s just death by a thousand cuts. It’s not one issue, it’s just across the board.”
The administration is under a tight deadline to secure changes before the election. A US law, the Congressional Review Act, allows lawmakers to more easily rescind regulations or rollbacks issued later in an election year.
“They’re hitting a now or never timeline,” said Christine Tezak, the managing director at the analysis firm ClearView Energy Partners. “There’s a lot they want to get done before the election, just in case.”
Some trends are working against Trump – including states advancing environmental goals, and low-cost renewable power and natural gas helping reduce the climate footprint of the electricity sector. Even Houston, an energy hub, has issued a climate action plan. Yet such contributions are not expected to be enough to fulfill America’s role in stalling the global crisis.
Environmental advocates have challenged many of the Trump changes in court – and won. The Natural Resources Defense Council has sued 110 times and says it has prevailed in about 90% of lawsuits resolved.
Recently, judges tossed out a permit for the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline and decided the EPA cannot bar scientists who receive federal grants from serving as agency advisers.
Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer with the firm Bracewell who represents regulated industries and was a deputy EPA administrator under George W Bush, argued that many of the changes characterized as “rollbacks” are actually “sensible, reasonable regulatory reforms” or fixes to problems.
“It’s impossible to understand the Trump administration’s EPA unless you go back and look at the Obama administration,” he said. “In many groups there was a sense that there really had been a great deal of regulatory overreach. And even if you disagree with that, the regulatory programs created problems that they didn’t come back and fix.”
‘This is about who we’re protecting’
Trump’s deregulatory agenda has addressed some issues industry would rather were left alone. The agency is changing the way it calculates the benefits of mercury controls for power plants. Companies had already complied with the rule and most didn’t want it changed. But the revision is meant to set a precedent for the government to ignore some positive health outcomes of regulation.
Trump’s weakened standards often go against science too, critics say.
Last month, for example, the EPA decided not to tighten rules for soot pollution, refuting rebutting guidance from experts that more stringent standards would save lives. The EPA has also repopulated advisory boards with representatives from industry and conservative states and is trying to change what science it can consider when developing health protections.
If a Democrat takes the White House, it will take years to reverse some changes. Moving faster would require Democrats holding both chambers of Congress. Even then, industry would fight hard.
Christopher Cook, the environment chief for Boston, said Trump’s efforts had been “incongruous with all the actions that major cities are taking”.
“The thing I would ask most Americans to consider when they’re supporting stronger regulation is that this isn’t about what we’re protecting against, this is about who we’re protecting,” Cook said, noting that places with more pollution are faring worse under the coronavirus pandemic.
“Covid has been a dry run for the climate crisis. We’ve seen the populations that Covid affects because it attacks the respiratory system. We can’t continue with bad air in America.”
During the Covid-19 lockdown, US federal agencies have eased fuel-efficiency standards for new cars; frozen rules for soot air pollution; proposed to drop review requirements for liquefied natural gas terminals; continued to lease public property to oil and gas companies; sought to speed up permitting for offshore fish farms; and advanced a proposal on mercury pollution from power plants that could make it easier for the government to conclude regulations are too costly to justify their benefits.
The government has also relaxed reporting rules for polluters during the pandemic.
Trump’s ambitions reach even to the moon, which he has announced he wants the US to mine.
Gina McCarthy, formerly Barack Obama’s environment chief, now runs the Natural Resources Defense Council. She said the Trump administration was acting to cut public health protections while the American public is distracted by a public health crisis.
“People right now are hunkered down trying to put food on the table, take care of people who are sick, worry about educating their children at home,” McCarthy said. “How many people are going to really be able to sit down and scrutinize these things in any way?”
McCarthy said the government was “literally not interested in the law or science”, and that “is going to become strikingly clear as people look at how the administration is handling Covid-19”.
The Trump administration is playing both offense and defense, rescinding and rewriting some rules and crafting others that would be time-consuming for a Democratic president to reverse.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has written what critics say will be a weak proposal for climate pollution from airplanes, a placeholder that will hinder stricter regulation.
Trump officials have been attempting to create a coronavirus relief program for oil and gas corporations, a new move in his campaign to back the industry and stymie global climate action. The president has sown distrust of climate science and vowed to exit the Paris climate agreement, which the US can do after the election.
Historians say Trump’s presidency has forced a pendulum swing back from the environmental awakening of the 1960s and 70s, when there was bipartisan support for conservation. Protecting the environment – and particularly the climate – is an issue that has become embroiled in political ideology.
“What Trump’s done is create a blitzkrieg against the environment … trying to dismantle not just Obama’s environmental achievements but turn back the clock to a pre-Richard Nixon day,” said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University who is writing a book on the subject.
“It’s just death by a thousand cuts. It’s not one issue, it’s just across the board.”
The administration is under a tight deadline to secure changes before the election. A US law, the Congressional Review Act, allows lawmakers to more easily rescind regulations or rollbacks issued later in an election year.
“They’re hitting a now or never timeline,” said Christine Tezak, the managing director at the analysis firm ClearView Energy Partners. “There’s a lot they want to get done before the election, just in case.”
Some trends are working against Trump – including states advancing environmental goals, and low-cost renewable power and natural gas helping reduce the climate footprint of the electricity sector. Even Houston, an energy hub, has issued a climate action plan. Yet such contributions are not expected to be enough to fulfill America’s role in stalling the global crisis.
Environmental advocates have challenged many of the Trump changes in court – and won. The Natural Resources Defense Council has sued 110 times and says it has prevailed in about 90% of lawsuits resolved.
Recently, judges tossed out a permit for the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline and decided the EPA cannot bar scientists who receive federal grants from serving as agency advisers.
Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer with the firm Bracewell who represents regulated industries and was a deputy EPA administrator under George W Bush, argued that many of the changes characterized as “rollbacks” are actually “sensible, reasonable regulatory reforms” or fixes to problems.
“It’s impossible to understand the Trump administration’s EPA unless you go back and look at the Obama administration,” he said. “In many groups there was a sense that there really had been a great deal of regulatory overreach. And even if you disagree with that, the regulatory programs created problems that they didn’t come back and fix.”
‘This is about who we’re protecting’
Trump’s deregulatory agenda has addressed some issues industry would rather were left alone. The agency is changing the way it calculates the benefits of mercury controls for power plants. Companies had already complied with the rule and most didn’t want it changed. But the revision is meant to set a precedent for the government to ignore some positive health outcomes of regulation.
Trump’s weakened standards often go against science too, critics say.
Last month, for example, the EPA decided not to tighten rules for soot pollution, refuting rebutting guidance from experts that more stringent standards would save lives. The EPA has also repopulated advisory boards with representatives from industry and conservative states and is trying to change what science it can consider when developing health protections.
If a Democrat takes the White House, it will take years to reverse some changes. Moving faster would require Democrats holding both chambers of Congress. Even then, industry would fight hard.
Christopher Cook, the environment chief for Boston, said Trump’s efforts had been “incongruous with all the actions that major cities are taking”.
“The thing I would ask most Americans to consider when they’re supporting stronger regulation is that this isn’t about what we’re protecting against, this is about who we’re protecting,” Cook said, noting that places with more pollution are faring worse under the coronavirus pandemic.
“Covid has been a dry run for the climate crisis. We’ve seen the populations that Covid affects because it attacks the respiratory system. We can’t continue with bad air in America.”
Trump Signs Executive Order Greenlighting 'Corporate Takeover of Our Oceans While They Hope We Aren't Paying Attention'
"Trump is exploiting a public health crisis to help an industry known for pumping diseases and antibiotics into oceans."
byJake Johnson, staff writer - common dreams
Friday, May 08, 2020
President Donald Trump issued an executive order late Thursday that environmentalists warned will accelerate the corporate exploitation of oceans by relaxing regulations on and streamlining the construction of industrial offshore aquaculture facilities, which critics deride as "floating factory farms" that pump pollution and diseases into public waters.
The Don't Cage Our Ocean Coalition, which was formed to oppose ocean industrial fish farming, said in a statement that Trump's Executive Order on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth "mandates federal agencies to craft a program for rapid authorization of industrial offshore aquaculture facilities, which use giant floating cages to cultivate finfish, allowing toxic pollution to flow into open waters."
Rosanna Marie Neil, policy counsel for Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, a member of the coalition, said the Trump White House is "supporting the corporate takeover of our oceans while they hope we aren't paying attention."
Environmental attorney Marianne Cufone similarly accused Trump of exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic to "push through dangerous short-cuts to regulatory processes, while communities struggle to stay healthy, pay rent, and put food on the table."
"The federal government should strengthen local food security during this health crisis by supporting sustainable seafood," said Cufone, "rather than allowing corporations to pollute the ecosystems we depend on."
Trump's executive order Thursday was just the latest step the president has taken amid the coronavirus pandemic to loosen regulations on polluting industries. In late March, as Common Dreams reported, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a sweeping suspension of pollution regulations and empowered the fossil fuel industry to police itself indefinitely.
Environmental groups sued the EPA over the move, which they condemned as a "free pass for polluters."
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal Thursday, White House advisers Joe Grogan and Peter Navarro touted Trump's aquaculture executive order as a step toward making the U.S. "the world's seafood superpower."
"President Trump's executive order creates a task force to enact policies that encourage fair and reciprocal trade for America's seafood industry, and strengthens enforcement of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing," Grogan and Navarro wrote. (BULLSHIT!!!)
But environmentalists cautioned that the order simply hands U.S. mega-corporations more power to plunder oceans without oversight, imperiling local fishing communities and the health of public waters.
"It is outrageous and unethical for the federal government to use the current public health crisis to bolster this polluting industry," Hallie Templeton, senior oceans campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. "Now is the time to prioritize our health, security, sustainable food systems, and American farmers and fishermen, not corporations."
The Don't Cage Our Ocean Coalition, which was formed to oppose ocean industrial fish farming, said in a statement that Trump's Executive Order on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth "mandates federal agencies to craft a program for rapid authorization of industrial offshore aquaculture facilities, which use giant floating cages to cultivate finfish, allowing toxic pollution to flow into open waters."
Rosanna Marie Neil, policy counsel for Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, a member of the coalition, said the Trump White House is "supporting the corporate takeover of our oceans while they hope we aren't paying attention."
Environmental attorney Marianne Cufone similarly accused Trump of exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic to "push through dangerous short-cuts to regulatory processes, while communities struggle to stay healthy, pay rent, and put food on the table."
"The federal government should strengthen local food security during this health crisis by supporting sustainable seafood," said Cufone, "rather than allowing corporations to pollute the ecosystems we depend on."
Trump's executive order Thursday was just the latest step the president has taken amid the coronavirus pandemic to loosen regulations on polluting industries. In late March, as Common Dreams reported, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a sweeping suspension of pollution regulations and empowered the fossil fuel industry to police itself indefinitely.
Environmental groups sued the EPA over the move, which they condemned as a "free pass for polluters."
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal Thursday, White House advisers Joe Grogan and Peter Navarro touted Trump's aquaculture executive order as a step toward making the U.S. "the world's seafood superpower."
"President Trump's executive order creates a task force to enact policies that encourage fair and reciprocal trade for America's seafood industry, and strengthens enforcement of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing," Grogan and Navarro wrote. (BULLSHIT!!!)
But environmentalists cautioned that the order simply hands U.S. mega-corporations more power to plunder oceans without oversight, imperiling local fishing communities and the health of public waters.
"It is outrageous and unethical for the federal government to use the current public health crisis to bolster this polluting industry," Hallie Templeton, senior oceans campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. "Now is the time to prioritize our health, security, sustainable food systems, and American farmers and fishermen, not corporations."
Nuclear waste
Critics alarmed by US nuclear agency's bid to relax rules on radioactive waste
Nuclear Regulatory Commission keen to allow material to be disposed of by ‘land burial’ – with potentially damaging effects
Daniel Ross - the guardian
Thu 7 May 2020 06.30 EDT
The federal agency providing oversight of the commercial nuclear sector is attempting to push through a rule change critics say could allow dangerous amounts of radioactive material to be disposed of in places like municipal landfills, with potentially serious consequences to human health and the environment.
“This would be the most massive deregulation of radioactive waste in American history,” said Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear industry watchdog non-profit, about a proposal that would permit “very low-level” radioactive waste to be disposed of by “land burial”.
Currently, low-level radioactive waste is primarily disposed of in highly regulated sites in Texas, Washington, South Carolina and Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) also provides exemptions allowing “low-level waste” to be dumped in unlicensed disposal sites, but these exemptions are given only rarely, and are conducted with strict case-by-case protocols in place.
The proposed “interpretive” rule change relaxes the rules surrounding how radioactive materials would be disposed of in unlicensed disposal sites “significantly”, said Hirsch.
“If you dump radioactive waste in places that aren’t designed to deal with it, it comes back to haunt you. It’s in the air you breathe, the food that you eat, the water you drink,” he added.
In an email, David McIntyre, an NRC spokesperson, explained that the rule would apply only to a “small subset” of very low-level waste, and that the agency would not allow such disposals “if we felt public health and safety and the environment would not be protected”.
But major sticking point, say experts, concerns how the term “very low-level waste” is not defined by statute or in the NRC’s own regulations.
The NRC describes low-level wastes as contaminated materials like clothing, tools, and medical equipment. According to McIntyre, the radioactivity of “very low-level waste” is just above background. “The radioactivity level of very low-level waste is so low that it may be safely disposed of in hazardous or municipal solid waste landfills,” he wrote.
Nevertheless, “background doesn’t mean it’s safe,” said Diane D’Arrigo, radioactive waste project director for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, who added that the interpretive rule’s loose language “opens the floodgates” for nuclear waste to be disposed of “as if not radioactive.”
The proposal caps the maximum annual “cumulative dose” to a person from the radioactive wastes dumped into unlicensed sites to 25 millirems – the same limit the NRC uses for highly regulated waste disposal sites. That measurement, said D’Arrigo, is a “projected” amount that can be manipulated through modeling.
Experts point out that the nuclear industry has long sought cheaper ways to dispose of its wastes. As the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants continues to age, and as more of them approach retirement, some of the decommissioning funds set up to safely dismantle the reactors are proving inadequate.
“The NRC regulations are in effect a cost-benefit analysis,” explained Rodney Ewing, a professor of nuclear security at Stanford University. “It’s been a common trend to look for waste streams that, if separated out, they could be disposed of in less expensive ways.”
Some environmentalists fear the rule change will also disproportionately impact low-income, marginalized communities who are more likely than their wealthier neighbors to be situated near solid waste landfills.
According to Caroline Reiser, nuclear energy legal fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council, if the proposal is successfully passed, then the issue could end up in court.
“Once it starts getting implemented, that’s when the real fights end up happening,” she said.
“This would be the most massive deregulation of radioactive waste in American history,” said Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear industry watchdog non-profit, about a proposal that would permit “very low-level” radioactive waste to be disposed of by “land burial”.
Currently, low-level radioactive waste is primarily disposed of in highly regulated sites in Texas, Washington, South Carolina and Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) also provides exemptions allowing “low-level waste” to be dumped in unlicensed disposal sites, but these exemptions are given only rarely, and are conducted with strict case-by-case protocols in place.
The proposed “interpretive” rule change relaxes the rules surrounding how radioactive materials would be disposed of in unlicensed disposal sites “significantly”, said Hirsch.
“If you dump radioactive waste in places that aren’t designed to deal with it, it comes back to haunt you. It’s in the air you breathe, the food that you eat, the water you drink,” he added.
In an email, David McIntyre, an NRC spokesperson, explained that the rule would apply only to a “small subset” of very low-level waste, and that the agency would not allow such disposals “if we felt public health and safety and the environment would not be protected”.
But major sticking point, say experts, concerns how the term “very low-level waste” is not defined by statute or in the NRC’s own regulations.
The NRC describes low-level wastes as contaminated materials like clothing, tools, and medical equipment. According to McIntyre, the radioactivity of “very low-level waste” is just above background. “The radioactivity level of very low-level waste is so low that it may be safely disposed of in hazardous or municipal solid waste landfills,” he wrote.
Nevertheless, “background doesn’t mean it’s safe,” said Diane D’Arrigo, radioactive waste project director for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, who added that the interpretive rule’s loose language “opens the floodgates” for nuclear waste to be disposed of “as if not radioactive.”
The proposal caps the maximum annual “cumulative dose” to a person from the radioactive wastes dumped into unlicensed sites to 25 millirems – the same limit the NRC uses for highly regulated waste disposal sites. That measurement, said D’Arrigo, is a “projected” amount that can be manipulated through modeling.
Experts point out that the nuclear industry has long sought cheaper ways to dispose of its wastes. As the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants continues to age, and as more of them approach retirement, some of the decommissioning funds set up to safely dismantle the reactors are proving inadequate.
“The NRC regulations are in effect a cost-benefit analysis,” explained Rodney Ewing, a professor of nuclear security at Stanford University. “It’s been a common trend to look for waste streams that, if separated out, they could be disposed of in less expensive ways.”
Some environmentalists fear the rule change will also disproportionately impact low-income, marginalized communities who are more likely than their wealthier neighbors to be situated near solid waste landfills.
According to Caroline Reiser, nuclear energy legal fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council, if the proposal is successfully passed, then the issue could end up in court.
“Once it starts getting implemented, that’s when the real fights end up happening,” she said.
Gas stoves making indoor air up to five times dirtier than outdoor air, report finds
Gas cookers making people sick and exposing tens of millions to air pollution levels that would be illegal if they were outside
Emily Holden in Washington - the guardian
Tue 5 May 2020 06.00 EDT
Gas stoves are making people sick, contributing pollution that makes indoor air up to two to five times dirtier than outdoor air, according to a new report.
Fossil-fuel-burning stoves are likely exposing tens of millions of Americans to air pollution levels that would be illegal if they were outside, concludes the review of decades of science by the Rocky Mountain Institute and multiple environmental advocacy groups.
Lead report author Brady Seals said little attention has been paid despite longstanding knowledge of the problem. “Somehow we’ve gotten accustomed to having a combustion device, often unvented, inside of the home,” Seals said.
About a third of US households cook primarily with gas – which emits nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide, in addition to the particle pollution that all types of stoves produce. Older, poorly maintained stoves pollute even more including risks from carbon monoxide.
Even small increases in short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide can increase asthma risks for children. One analysis found that children in homes with gas stoves have a 42% higher chance of having asthma symptoms. Another in Australia attributed 12.3% of all childhood asthma burden to gas stoves.
Nitrogen dioxide also makes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease worse and may be linked to heart problems, diabetes and cancer.
Carbon monoxide poisoning can cause a headache, nausea, a rapid heartbeat, cardiac arrest and death.
The best solution, according to the report, is to change to electric stoves. But individuals with gas stoves can also open windows, cook on their back burners, use an exhaust hood, run an air purifier with a HEPA filter and install a carbon monoxide detector.
Indoor air pollution hits poor Americans and people of color worse because they are often also exposed to lead, mercury, highways and industrial plants, said Dr Robert Gould, a California pathologist and board member for Physicians for Social Responsibility who peer-reviewed the report.
“We just need to make these investments,” Gould said. “This fits into an overall plan we would have to protect, particularly, our vulnerable populations.”
Fossil-fuel-burning stoves are likely exposing tens of millions of Americans to air pollution levels that would be illegal if they were outside, concludes the review of decades of science by the Rocky Mountain Institute and multiple environmental advocacy groups.
Lead report author Brady Seals said little attention has been paid despite longstanding knowledge of the problem. “Somehow we’ve gotten accustomed to having a combustion device, often unvented, inside of the home,” Seals said.
About a third of US households cook primarily with gas – which emits nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide, in addition to the particle pollution that all types of stoves produce. Older, poorly maintained stoves pollute even more including risks from carbon monoxide.
Even small increases in short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide can increase asthma risks for children. One analysis found that children in homes with gas stoves have a 42% higher chance of having asthma symptoms. Another in Australia attributed 12.3% of all childhood asthma burden to gas stoves.
Nitrogen dioxide also makes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease worse and may be linked to heart problems, diabetes and cancer.
Carbon monoxide poisoning can cause a headache, nausea, a rapid heartbeat, cardiac arrest and death.
The best solution, according to the report, is to change to electric stoves. But individuals with gas stoves can also open windows, cook on their back burners, use an exhaust hood, run an air purifier with a HEPA filter and install a carbon monoxide detector.
Indoor air pollution hits poor Americans and people of color worse because they are often also exposed to lead, mercury, highways and industrial plants, said Dr Robert Gould, a California pathologist and board member for Physicians for Social Responsibility who peer-reviewed the report.
“We just need to make these investments,” Gould said. “This fits into an overall plan we would have to protect, particularly, our vulnerable populations.”
EPA decides to reject the latest science, endanger public health and ignore the law by keeping an outdated fine particle air pollution standard
May 4, 2020
By The Conversation - raw story
The COVID-19 pandemic and economic shutdown have temporarily produced clearer skies across the U.S. Meanwhile, however, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been busy finding reasons not to pursue long-lasting air quality gains.
On April 30, 2020, the agency published a proposed new rule that retains current National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter without any revisions. It took this action after a five-year review process, in which scientific evidence showed unequivocally that these standards are not adequate to protect public health.
I have studied air pollution and air quality for over 30 years, and have been directly involved for a decade with EPA’s reviews of scientific findings on air pollution. This includes serving on the agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, or CASAC, and on 10 specialized panels focused on individual pollutants.
As I have written previously, the Trump administration has watered down the role of science in what is supposed to be a science-based process of setting national air quality standards. This new proposal – which I expect will be challenged in court when finalized – is the result.
Fine particle air pollution is deadly
Fine particles, known as PM2.5 because they measure 2.5 microns or less in diameter, can penetrate deeply into the lungs and bloodstream. EPA staff scientists have reaffirmed that daily and annual exposure to PM2.5 causes premature death and a variety of illnesses.
Scientists have known this for decades, but since the national standard was last revised in 2012, new studies have strengthened these findings. They include an epidemiologic study with the largest ever number of subjects and several that include PM2.5 concentrations well below the current standard.
EPA’s scientific staff estimates, based on multiple epidemiologic studies, that currently an average of 13,500 to 51,300 people die prematurely each year from breathing fine particles. Although these numbers are uncertain, the likelihood of thousands of deaths per year would typically spur regulators to tighten existing standards. However, EPA’s current political leadership disagrees.
What the law requires
The Clean Air Act directs the EPA to set air quality standards based on an accurate and thorough review of the latest science. This function is performed by CASAC, which I chaired from 2012 to 2015.
CASAC has seven members, which isn’t enough to provide the breadth, depth and diversity of expertise, experience and perspectives needed for these complex reviews. Recognizing this, for four decades the EPA has augmented the committee by convening expert review panels for each pollutant. They include scientists with extensive knowledge of epidemiology, toxicology, medicine, air quality, exposure, risk, statistics and other fields. I served on the 20-member CASAC PM Review Panel that was appointed in 2015 to help CASAC review the PM2.5 standard.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler disbanded that panel in October 2018. Wheeler also continued a makeover of CASAC, started by his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, that removed leading researchers from the committee. Now CASAC has no epidemiologists – a key discipline for assessing PM2.5 health effects.
What our expert panel recommended
Realizing that EPA would not otherwise get the science advice it needs, the disbanded PM review panel reconvened itself in October 2019. We found that current fine particle standards are not protective of public health.
The studies published since 2012 demonstrating that exposure to fine particles causes premature death at concentrations below current standards were key to our decision. We advised the EPA that the annual standard should be reduced from its current level of 12 micrograms per cubic meter to a range of between 10 and 8 micrograms per cubic meter.
For the 24-hour standard, which regulates short-term air quality spikes, we recommended reducing the limit from the current level of 35 micrograms per cubic meter to between 30 and 25 micrograms per cubic meter. These scientific findings were based on multiple epidemiologic studies, augmented with evidence from controlled experiments with animals and humans.
Failing to protect the public
Administrator Wheeler claims that recent studies since the last time the standards were revised “do not provide a basis for revising the standards.” Wheeler acknowledges that studies based on long-term exposures below the current standards show “associations” between air quality and premature death. However, he argues that this research does not show a causal relationship. Yet, based on the overall body of evidence, he acknowledges that “a causal relationship exists between long-term PM2.5 exposure and total mortality.” In my view, his rationale is illogical and is inconsistent with the evidence.
The Clean Air Act requires regulators to set standards that will provide an “adequate margin of safety.” This means that they should be stringent enough to protect sensitive populations, such as older adults, people with preexisting cardiovascular or respiratory diseases and children with asthma.
The EPA proposal acknowledges that these groups exist, but does not specify how it will protect them from PM2.5 in the air. Wheeler is also silent regarding the role of racial and ethnic differences in exposure and risk, even though a federal court called EPA to task in 2009 for not specifically addressing at-risk groups.
Preliminary evidence suggests that exposure to particles worsens the effects of COVID-19. While this finding needs peer review and additional study, existing evidence of risk for sensitive populations shows the need for a more protective standard.
EPA currently faces lawsuits for multiple instances in which it has either sought to weaken, or failed to strengthen, air pollution regulations. They include rolling back motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards, failing to implement stringent rules limiting interstate air pollution and repealing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan to limit carbon emissions from power plants. Unless EPA modifies its position on particle air quality to address the law and the science, I expect that this regulation too will end up in court.
On April 30, 2020, the agency published a proposed new rule that retains current National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter without any revisions. It took this action after a five-year review process, in which scientific evidence showed unequivocally that these standards are not adequate to protect public health.
I have studied air pollution and air quality for over 30 years, and have been directly involved for a decade with EPA’s reviews of scientific findings on air pollution. This includes serving on the agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, or CASAC, and on 10 specialized panels focused on individual pollutants.
As I have written previously, the Trump administration has watered down the role of science in what is supposed to be a science-based process of setting national air quality standards. This new proposal – which I expect will be challenged in court when finalized – is the result.
Fine particle air pollution is deadly
Fine particles, known as PM2.5 because they measure 2.5 microns or less in diameter, can penetrate deeply into the lungs and bloodstream. EPA staff scientists have reaffirmed that daily and annual exposure to PM2.5 causes premature death and a variety of illnesses.
Scientists have known this for decades, but since the national standard was last revised in 2012, new studies have strengthened these findings. They include an epidemiologic study with the largest ever number of subjects and several that include PM2.5 concentrations well below the current standard.
EPA’s scientific staff estimates, based on multiple epidemiologic studies, that currently an average of 13,500 to 51,300 people die prematurely each year from breathing fine particles. Although these numbers are uncertain, the likelihood of thousands of deaths per year would typically spur regulators to tighten existing standards. However, EPA’s current political leadership disagrees.
What the law requires
The Clean Air Act directs the EPA to set air quality standards based on an accurate and thorough review of the latest science. This function is performed by CASAC, which I chaired from 2012 to 2015.
CASAC has seven members, which isn’t enough to provide the breadth, depth and diversity of expertise, experience and perspectives needed for these complex reviews. Recognizing this, for four decades the EPA has augmented the committee by convening expert review panels for each pollutant. They include scientists with extensive knowledge of epidemiology, toxicology, medicine, air quality, exposure, risk, statistics and other fields. I served on the 20-member CASAC PM Review Panel that was appointed in 2015 to help CASAC review the PM2.5 standard.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler disbanded that panel in October 2018. Wheeler also continued a makeover of CASAC, started by his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, that removed leading researchers from the committee. Now CASAC has no epidemiologists – a key discipline for assessing PM2.5 health effects.
What our expert panel recommended
Realizing that EPA would not otherwise get the science advice it needs, the disbanded PM review panel reconvened itself in October 2019. We found that current fine particle standards are not protective of public health.
The studies published since 2012 demonstrating that exposure to fine particles causes premature death at concentrations below current standards were key to our decision. We advised the EPA that the annual standard should be reduced from its current level of 12 micrograms per cubic meter to a range of between 10 and 8 micrograms per cubic meter.
For the 24-hour standard, which regulates short-term air quality spikes, we recommended reducing the limit from the current level of 35 micrograms per cubic meter to between 30 and 25 micrograms per cubic meter. These scientific findings were based on multiple epidemiologic studies, augmented with evidence from controlled experiments with animals and humans.
Failing to protect the public
Administrator Wheeler claims that recent studies since the last time the standards were revised “do not provide a basis for revising the standards.” Wheeler acknowledges that studies based on long-term exposures below the current standards show “associations” between air quality and premature death. However, he argues that this research does not show a causal relationship. Yet, based on the overall body of evidence, he acknowledges that “a causal relationship exists between long-term PM2.5 exposure and total mortality.” In my view, his rationale is illogical and is inconsistent with the evidence.
The Clean Air Act requires regulators to set standards that will provide an “adequate margin of safety.” This means that they should be stringent enough to protect sensitive populations, such as older adults, people with preexisting cardiovascular or respiratory diseases and children with asthma.
The EPA proposal acknowledges that these groups exist, but does not specify how it will protect them from PM2.5 in the air. Wheeler is also silent regarding the role of racial and ethnic differences in exposure and risk, even though a federal court called EPA to task in 2009 for not specifically addressing at-risk groups.
Preliminary evidence suggests that exposure to particles worsens the effects of COVID-19. While this finding needs peer review and additional study, existing evidence of risk for sensitive populations shows the need for a more protective standard.
EPA currently faces lawsuits for multiple instances in which it has either sought to weaken, or failed to strengthen, air pollution regulations. They include rolling back motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards, failing to implement stringent rules limiting interstate air pollution and repealing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan to limit carbon emissions from power plants. Unless EPA modifies its position on particle air quality to address the law and the science, I expect that this regulation too will end up in court.
Is Carbon Capture and Storage a Climate Solution or a Pyramid Scheme?
BY Daniel Ross, Truthout
PUBLISHED April 24, 2020
To a growing portion of the public, this is the existential question of our time: How do we significantly slash greenhouse gas emissions before it’s too late?
Solar? Wind? Nuclear? Reforestation? How about carbon capture and storage (CCS), what is in essence the process of separating carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, or from gases produced in electricity generation and industrial processes, then injecting the captured CO2 into geological rock formations typically located several kilometers underground?
CCS features in three of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) four primary pathways to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.5°C) with no overshoot — a best-case scenario to protect the planet from the very worst impacts of climate change, but one we’re currently nowhere near meeting. (Recent estimates put us on track for an increase of between 3-5°C by the end of the century.) Indeed, operational CCS projects are capturing carbon at a rate far behind where it will need to be within decades to meet those global emission reductions.
Part of the problem is how these technologies are, in many respects, still very much in the developmental stage, despite the fact that the fossil fuel industry has been using them since the 1970s. Questions also surround just how meaningfully CCS technologies are currently contributing to carbon emission reductions. For example, CCS is being used to funnel CO2 back underground to stimulate oil fields that are running dry, in a process called enhanced oil recovery (EOR) — a way, say CCS skeptics, not so much of reversing course on global warming but of prolonging the life-blood of the fossil fuel industry. Strictly speaking, such technologies fall under the umbrella of carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS.
“In terms of the actual efficiency of carbon capture, it’s not nearly as effective as people claim it is,” said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University who says anthropogenic global warming must be tackled by scaling up to 100 percent renewables as quickly as possible. His own research into two CCS projects, factoring in production and processing emissions, found they trapped only between 10-11 percent of net carbon emissions averaged over 20 years.
“It’s never better to capture carbon than it is to use that money to replace coal or gas,” Jacobson said.
The underlying discrepancies at the heart of CCS have spilled out into the political arena. In his Green New Deal outlined last year, former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders struck a red line through the possibility. “To get to our goal of 100 percent sustainable energy, we will not rely on any false solutions like nuclear, geoengineering, carbon capture and sequestration,” his proposal stated. On the flip side of that coin, Joe Biden and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg outlined plans that would accelerate development and deployment of CCS technologies.
“Understandably, there are concerns around some of the ramifications from CCS,” said Deepika Nagabhushan, director of the Clean Air Task Force’s (CATF) Decarbonized Fossil Energy program. CATF co-signed a letter last year to the Senate advocating legislation advancing the development of CCS projects.
“But the reality is that it would be very difficult – impossible, frankly — to meet some of these really ambitions temperature targets without exploring some of these technologies,” said Nagabhushan.
“Contain the Surge to Gas”
According to the Global CCS Institute, there are 51 CCS facilities globally, 19 of which are in operation and 32 in various stages of development, including construction. They include ammonia and ethanol production plants, as well as direct air-capture facilities. The CATF also maintains a database of more than 20 publicly announced projects as part of the 45Q tax credit program, which is awarded to new CCS projects in the U.S.
The holy grail of CCS is in the energy sector, the single largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the CATF’s list of CCS projects includes several at coal plants and natural gas retrofits. As for what’s currently at play in the power sector, there are two large-scale CCUS power projects in operation in North America: the Petra Nova facility in Texas and the Boundary Dam plant in Canada, both of them coal power plants. But important questions hover over their overall carbon-capture efficiencies.
The Boundary Dam, for example, is designed to trap 1 million metric tons of CO2 a year, but has captured a total of only 2.2 million metric tons over four years, according to an Institute Energy Economics and Financial Analysis report from 2018. As for the Petra Nova plant, if broader factors — like the energy needed to power the carbon capture equipment and the extra oil generated through EOR — are calculated in, “it is possible the Petra Nova project could increase, rather than decrease, global CO2 emissions,” the report claimed.
As coal is becoming increasingly uneconomic — at least relative to cleaner power resources — the potential use of CCS in the power sector should be primarily focused on natural gas, said Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Nevertheless, a continued push toward natural gas — the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced natural gas consumption recently set a record high — comes with its own set of problems, she added.
“Our view is that we really need to contain the surge to gas, otherwise we’re going to get locked into a pathway that will result in either a surge in emissions, CO2 and methane, or a lot of stranded assets in the natural gas sector,” Cleetus said.
For this reason, the CCS projects of the future need not focus so much on the power sector as on a broad menu of heavy carbon-producing industries, said Cleetus. “Think cement, iron and steel,” she said, adding that right now, industrial CCS applications come with other concerns such as decreased efficiency and increased water usage. “We have proof of concept, but we’re still far from scaling up.”
Indeed, CCS will have to be scaled up fast for it to play its part in effectively curbing global warming. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) sustainable development scenario holds the global temperature rise to below 1.8 °C. It’s also well within the trajectory of the various scenarios the IPCC proposed in 2018 providing a 50 percent chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.
This IEA sustainable development scenario requires that by 2030, 350 million metric tons of CO2 (MtCO2) is captured per year. But system limitations mean that the CCS facilities currently in operation capture an estimated 96 MtCO2 per year only, according to the Global CCS Institute. This is a little more than a quarter of where it needs to be within 10 years. Zeroing in on individual facilities, the Petra Nova and Boundary Dam plants combined capture 2.4 MtCO2 per year, according to the IEA.
Interestingly, there’s enough available geological space in the world’s nearshore continental margins — the shallowest parts of the ocean abutting the coastline — to hold enough greenhouse gas emissions to reach an IPCC goal of six to seven gigatons of sequestered carbon dioxide a year by 2050, according to a study published last year in Nature Scientific Reports. This could be achieved by drilling between 10,000 to 14,000 injection wells worldwide in the next 30 years, the report finds.
Of course, such a goal faces tremendous obstacles, not least of all the massive investments needed to develop and build the requisite infrastructure, including pipelines. There would also have to be market incentives to persuade companies to trap and simply squirrel carbon away underground rather than using it for something like EOR. That said, the CATF argues that EOR can act as a stepping stone toward such a goal.
“Looking at the whole picture of what’s needed to achieve ambitious climate goals or to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, we do have to find ways to commercialize CCS for hard-to-decarbonize sectors where possible,” Cleetus said. “We also have to ensure strong legal, environmental and social safeguards for this technology.”
“It’s Just a Pyramid Scheme”
That CCS isn’t where it needs to be isn’t due to lack of investment — indeed, billions have been spent on carbon capture research and development over the years, some of it on expensive boondoggles. The Bush administration greenlit in 2003 what was then a billion-dollar state-of-the-art coal gasification and carbon capture facility, but cancelled the project in 2008 after massive cost overruns. The Obama administration tried and failed to revive the project.
The most infamous, however, is the Kemper coal power plant in Mississippi, a $7.5 billion coal-gasification and carbon capture project that was abandoned after massive cost overruns and delays. The plant is now the world’s most expensive natural gas power plant. However, the project’s financial failures, CATF argues, was the result of trying to develop a “first-of-a-kind” coal-gasifier, “which is completely separate from the carbon capture equipment installed on the plant.”
Indeed, CCS technologies will need road-testing through deployment for them to work more efficiently, said Nagabhushan. “Every project will be different, I can’t stress this enough,” she said. “It depends on so many factors what costs that plant will incur.”
In that respect, the political pendulum appears to be swinging in CCS’s favor — at least in the near term. A coalition of industry, labor and environmental groups recently pushed successful legislation that revamped the 45Q tax credits, increasing the amount of federal money available to companies undertaking CCS or CCUS projects. Individual states like California have woven CCS into their emissions reductions targets. Meanwhile, carbon capture costs are decreasing. According to the Energy Department, it cost $80 to capture a metric ton of carbon in 2012. Today, it costs around $50 per metric ton, while by 2030, the projected cost is $30.
Nevertheless, the urgency of the situation — greenhouse gas emissions hit a record high last year — requires a wholesale pivot away from fossil fuels. “You have biofuels. Nuclear power. Coal and carbon capture. They all claim that they can do things, and all they need is another billion dollars to solve it,” said Jacobson. “It becomes a part of what people assume is working, whereas really, it’s just a pyramid scheme.”
Solar? Wind? Nuclear? Reforestation? How about carbon capture and storage (CCS), what is in essence the process of separating carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, or from gases produced in electricity generation and industrial processes, then injecting the captured CO2 into geological rock formations typically located several kilometers underground?
CCS features in three of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) four primary pathways to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.5°C) with no overshoot — a best-case scenario to protect the planet from the very worst impacts of climate change, but one we’re currently nowhere near meeting. (Recent estimates put us on track for an increase of between 3-5°C by the end of the century.) Indeed, operational CCS projects are capturing carbon at a rate far behind where it will need to be within decades to meet those global emission reductions.
Part of the problem is how these technologies are, in many respects, still very much in the developmental stage, despite the fact that the fossil fuel industry has been using them since the 1970s. Questions also surround just how meaningfully CCS technologies are currently contributing to carbon emission reductions. For example, CCS is being used to funnel CO2 back underground to stimulate oil fields that are running dry, in a process called enhanced oil recovery (EOR) — a way, say CCS skeptics, not so much of reversing course on global warming but of prolonging the life-blood of the fossil fuel industry. Strictly speaking, such technologies fall under the umbrella of carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS.
“In terms of the actual efficiency of carbon capture, it’s not nearly as effective as people claim it is,” said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University who says anthropogenic global warming must be tackled by scaling up to 100 percent renewables as quickly as possible. His own research into two CCS projects, factoring in production and processing emissions, found they trapped only between 10-11 percent of net carbon emissions averaged over 20 years.
“It’s never better to capture carbon than it is to use that money to replace coal or gas,” Jacobson said.
The underlying discrepancies at the heart of CCS have spilled out into the political arena. In his Green New Deal outlined last year, former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders struck a red line through the possibility. “To get to our goal of 100 percent sustainable energy, we will not rely on any false solutions like nuclear, geoengineering, carbon capture and sequestration,” his proposal stated. On the flip side of that coin, Joe Biden and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg outlined plans that would accelerate development and deployment of CCS technologies.
“Understandably, there are concerns around some of the ramifications from CCS,” said Deepika Nagabhushan, director of the Clean Air Task Force’s (CATF) Decarbonized Fossil Energy program. CATF co-signed a letter last year to the Senate advocating legislation advancing the development of CCS projects.
“But the reality is that it would be very difficult – impossible, frankly — to meet some of these really ambitions temperature targets without exploring some of these technologies,” said Nagabhushan.
“Contain the Surge to Gas”
According to the Global CCS Institute, there are 51 CCS facilities globally, 19 of which are in operation and 32 in various stages of development, including construction. They include ammonia and ethanol production plants, as well as direct air-capture facilities. The CATF also maintains a database of more than 20 publicly announced projects as part of the 45Q tax credit program, which is awarded to new CCS projects in the U.S.
The holy grail of CCS is in the energy sector, the single largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the CATF’s list of CCS projects includes several at coal plants and natural gas retrofits. As for what’s currently at play in the power sector, there are two large-scale CCUS power projects in operation in North America: the Petra Nova facility in Texas and the Boundary Dam plant in Canada, both of them coal power plants. But important questions hover over their overall carbon-capture efficiencies.
The Boundary Dam, for example, is designed to trap 1 million metric tons of CO2 a year, but has captured a total of only 2.2 million metric tons over four years, according to an Institute Energy Economics and Financial Analysis report from 2018. As for the Petra Nova plant, if broader factors — like the energy needed to power the carbon capture equipment and the extra oil generated through EOR — are calculated in, “it is possible the Petra Nova project could increase, rather than decrease, global CO2 emissions,” the report claimed.
As coal is becoming increasingly uneconomic — at least relative to cleaner power resources — the potential use of CCS in the power sector should be primarily focused on natural gas, said Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Nevertheless, a continued push toward natural gas — the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced natural gas consumption recently set a record high — comes with its own set of problems, she added.
“Our view is that we really need to contain the surge to gas, otherwise we’re going to get locked into a pathway that will result in either a surge in emissions, CO2 and methane, or a lot of stranded assets in the natural gas sector,” Cleetus said.
For this reason, the CCS projects of the future need not focus so much on the power sector as on a broad menu of heavy carbon-producing industries, said Cleetus. “Think cement, iron and steel,” she said, adding that right now, industrial CCS applications come with other concerns such as decreased efficiency and increased water usage. “We have proof of concept, but we’re still far from scaling up.”
Indeed, CCS will have to be scaled up fast for it to play its part in effectively curbing global warming. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) sustainable development scenario holds the global temperature rise to below 1.8 °C. It’s also well within the trajectory of the various scenarios the IPCC proposed in 2018 providing a 50 percent chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.
This IEA sustainable development scenario requires that by 2030, 350 million metric tons of CO2 (MtCO2) is captured per year. But system limitations mean that the CCS facilities currently in operation capture an estimated 96 MtCO2 per year only, according to the Global CCS Institute. This is a little more than a quarter of where it needs to be within 10 years. Zeroing in on individual facilities, the Petra Nova and Boundary Dam plants combined capture 2.4 MtCO2 per year, according to the IEA.
Interestingly, there’s enough available geological space in the world’s nearshore continental margins — the shallowest parts of the ocean abutting the coastline — to hold enough greenhouse gas emissions to reach an IPCC goal of six to seven gigatons of sequestered carbon dioxide a year by 2050, according to a study published last year in Nature Scientific Reports. This could be achieved by drilling between 10,000 to 14,000 injection wells worldwide in the next 30 years, the report finds.
Of course, such a goal faces tremendous obstacles, not least of all the massive investments needed to develop and build the requisite infrastructure, including pipelines. There would also have to be market incentives to persuade companies to trap and simply squirrel carbon away underground rather than using it for something like EOR. That said, the CATF argues that EOR can act as a stepping stone toward such a goal.
“Looking at the whole picture of what’s needed to achieve ambitious climate goals or to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, we do have to find ways to commercialize CCS for hard-to-decarbonize sectors where possible,” Cleetus said. “We also have to ensure strong legal, environmental and social safeguards for this technology.”
“It’s Just a Pyramid Scheme”
That CCS isn’t where it needs to be isn’t due to lack of investment — indeed, billions have been spent on carbon capture research and development over the years, some of it on expensive boondoggles. The Bush administration greenlit in 2003 what was then a billion-dollar state-of-the-art coal gasification and carbon capture facility, but cancelled the project in 2008 after massive cost overruns. The Obama administration tried and failed to revive the project.
The most infamous, however, is the Kemper coal power plant in Mississippi, a $7.5 billion coal-gasification and carbon capture project that was abandoned after massive cost overruns and delays. The plant is now the world’s most expensive natural gas power plant. However, the project’s financial failures, CATF argues, was the result of trying to develop a “first-of-a-kind” coal-gasifier, “which is completely separate from the carbon capture equipment installed on the plant.”
Indeed, CCS technologies will need road-testing through deployment for them to work more efficiently, said Nagabhushan. “Every project will be different, I can’t stress this enough,” she said. “It depends on so many factors what costs that plant will incur.”
In that respect, the political pendulum appears to be swinging in CCS’s favor — at least in the near term. A coalition of industry, labor and environmental groups recently pushed successful legislation that revamped the 45Q tax credits, increasing the amount of federal money available to companies undertaking CCS or CCUS projects. Individual states like California have woven CCS into their emissions reductions targets. Meanwhile, carbon capture costs are decreasing. According to the Energy Department, it cost $80 to capture a metric ton of carbon in 2012. Today, it costs around $50 per metric ton, while by 2030, the projected cost is $30.
Nevertheless, the urgency of the situation — greenhouse gas emissions hit a record high last year — requires a wholesale pivot away from fossil fuels. “You have biofuels. Nuclear power. Coal and carbon capture. They all claim that they can do things, and all they need is another billion dollars to solve it,” said Jacobson. “It becomes a part of what people assume is working, whereas really, it’s just a pyramid scheme.”
Air pollution
Coronavirus detected on particles of air pollution
Exclusive: Scientists examine whether this route enables infections at longer distances
Damian Carrington Environment editor
the guardian
Fri 24 Apr 2020 09.29 EDT
Coronavirus has been detected on particles of air pollution by scientists investigating whether this could enable it to be carried over longer distances and increase the number of people infected.
The work is preliminary and it is not yet known if the virus remains viable on pollution particles and in sufficient quantity to cause disease.
The Italian scientists used standard techniques to collect outdoor air pollution samples at one urban and one industrial site in Bergamo province and identified a gene highly specific to Covid-19 in multiple samples. The detection was confirmed by blind testing at an independent laboratory.
Leonardo Setti at the University of Bologna in Italy, who led the work, said it was important to investigate if the virus could be carried more widely by air pollution.
“I am a scientist and I am worried when I don’t know,” he said. “If we know, we can find a solution. But if we don’t know, we can only suffer the consequences.”
Two other research groups have suggested air pollution particles could help coronavirus travel further in the air.
A statistical analysis by Setti’s team suggests higher levels of particle pollution could explain higher rates of infection in parts of northern Italy before a lockdown was imposed, an idea supported by another preliminary analysis. The region is one of the most polluted in Europe.
Neither of the studies by Setti’s team have been peer-reviewed and therefore have not been endorsed by independent scientists. But experts agree their proposal is plausible and requires investigation.
Previous studies have shown that air pollution particles do harbour microbes and that pollution is likely to have carried the viruses causing bird flu, measles and foot-and-mouth disease over considerable distances.
The potential role of air pollution particles is linked to the broader question of how the coronavirus is transmitted.
Large virus-laden droplets from infected people’s coughs and sneezes fall to the ground within a metre or two. But much smaller droplets, less than 5 microns in diameter, can remain in the air for minutes to hours and travel further.
Experts are not sure whether these tiny airborne droplets can cause coronavirus infections, though they know the 2003 Sars coronavirus was spread in the air and that the new virus can remain viable for hours in tiny droplets.
But researchers say the importance of potential airborne transmission, and the possible boosting role of pollution particles, mean it must not be ruled out without evidence.
The work is preliminary and it is not yet known if the virus remains viable on pollution particles and in sufficient quantity to cause disease.
The Italian scientists used standard techniques to collect outdoor air pollution samples at one urban and one industrial site in Bergamo province and identified a gene highly specific to Covid-19 in multiple samples. The detection was confirmed by blind testing at an independent laboratory.
Leonardo Setti at the University of Bologna in Italy, who led the work, said it was important to investigate if the virus could be carried more widely by air pollution.
“I am a scientist and I am worried when I don’t know,” he said. “If we know, we can find a solution. But if we don’t know, we can only suffer the consequences.”
Two other research groups have suggested air pollution particles could help coronavirus travel further in the air.
A statistical analysis by Setti’s team suggests higher levels of particle pollution could explain higher rates of infection in parts of northern Italy before a lockdown was imposed, an idea supported by another preliminary analysis. The region is one of the most polluted in Europe.
Neither of the studies by Setti’s team have been peer-reviewed and therefore have not been endorsed by independent scientists. But experts agree their proposal is plausible and requires investigation.
Previous studies have shown that air pollution particles do harbour microbes and that pollution is likely to have carried the viruses causing bird flu, measles and foot-and-mouth disease over considerable distances.
The potential role of air pollution particles is linked to the broader question of how the coronavirus is transmitted.
Large virus-laden droplets from infected people’s coughs and sneezes fall to the ground within a metre or two. But much smaller droplets, less than 5 microns in diameter, can remain in the air for minutes to hours and travel further.
Experts are not sure whether these tiny airborne droplets can cause coronavirus infections, though they know the 2003 Sars coronavirus was spread in the air and that the new virus can remain viable for hours in tiny droplets.
But researchers say the importance of potential airborne transmission, and the possible boosting role of pollution particles, mean it must not be ruled out without evidence.
behind your back!!!
the bastard is trying to poison us!!!
White House moves to weaken EPA rule on toxic compounds
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER - ap
4/18/2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump White House has intervened to weaken one of the few public health protections pursued by its own administration, a rule to limit the use of a toxic industrial compound in consumer products, according to communications between the White House and Environmental Protection Agency.
The documents show that the White House Office of Management and Budget formally notified the EPA by email last July that it was stepping into the crafting of the rule on the compound, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, used in nonstick and stain-resistant frying pans, rugs, and countless other consumer products.
The White House repeatedly pressed the agency to agree to a major loophole that could allow substantial imports of the PFAS-tainted products to continue, greatly weakening the proposed rule. EPA pushed back on the White House demand for the loophole, known as a “safe harbor” provision for industry.
Pushed again in January, the agency responded, “EPA opposes proposing a safe harbor provision, but is open to a neutrally-worded request for comment from the public” on the White House request.
The rule is one of the few concrete steps that the Trump administration has taken to deal with growing contamination by PFAS industrial compounds. The EPA has declared dating back to 2018 that consumer exposure to the substances was a “national priority” that the agency was confronting “aggressively.”
Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the ranking Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, who obtained the documents revealing the White House intervention, and public-health advocates say the White House action was led by Nancy Beck, a former chemical industry executive now detailed to President Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.
In a letter sent Friday to the EPA, Carper charged the White House pressure amounts to unusual intervention in what had been the EPA’s in-house efforts to regulate imports tainted with the compound. Trump has nominated Beck to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a government panel charged with protecting Americans from harm by thousands of kinds of consumer goods.
Asked about the White House actions, EPA spokeswoman Corry Schiermeyer said in an email that “consulting with other federal agencies on actions is a normal process across government,” and that “EPA is often required to engage in an interagency review process led by OMB.”
“It is routine for the agency to receive input from all of our stakeholders, including our federal partners,” Schiermeyer wrote.
The EPA did not respond to a question about whether Beck led the White House intervention. Emails sent for comment to the White House, the White House Office of Management and Budget and Beck were not immediately answered.
Carper obtained pages of back-and-forth proposed changes, redline drafts and other communications between the White House Office of Management and Budget, the EPA and others on the draft rule. No authors are listed in many of the final rounds of White House edits, drafts and proposals and EPA’s responses.
Carper wrote to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Friday to object to the White House push for weakening of the rule, newly revealed in the documents. Carper said it appeared that Beck, who was moved to the White House from a top regulatory job at the Trump EPA, “sought to make it more difficult for EPA to use its authority ... to protect Americans from these harmful substances.”
While thousands of kinds of PFAS compounds are still in use in the United States, the new EPA rule would set up agency oversight of imports of products that use a few kinds of the compounds that manufacturers agreed to phase out in this country starting in 2006. Those versions remain in production in some parts of the world.
In addition to the safe harbor loophole, another change sought by the White House would raise the technical bar for EPA to consider blocking any of the tainted products.
The agency agreed to rewrite the rule to include a third White House request, narrowing the range of imported products that would fall under the rule.
The official public comment period for the current form of the rule ends Friday, moving the proposal close to crafting of its final form. Congress, impatient for the Trump administration to start bringing the PFAS compounds under federal regulation, has ordered the administration to get a final rule out by mid-summer.
Even if the rule goes out in its current form, applying to fewer kinds of product imports, “it would certainly be better than where we are without it,” although “scaled back significantly from what it was originally,” said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund advocacy group, and a longtime monitor of the EPA’s regulation of toxic substances.
But if the final rule includes the other two key changes being pushed by the White House “it could even do more damage than good,” Denison said.
Industries also would be likely to push for those two exceptions in regulations of future substances, Denison said. “Those two provisions would establish precedence that the EPA has never used for 40 years..”
Industries produce thousands of versions of the man-made compounds. They are used in countless products, including nonstick cookware, water-repellent sports gear, cosmetics, and grease-resistant food packaging, along with firefighting foams.
Public health studies on exposed populations have associated them with an array of health problems, including some cancers, and weakened immunity. The advent of widespread testing for the contaminant over the past few years found it in high levels in many public water systems around the country. The administration initially sought in 2018 to suppress a federal toxicology warning on the danger of the compounds, then publicly vowed action.
The documents show that the White House Office of Management and Budget formally notified the EPA by email last July that it was stepping into the crafting of the rule on the compound, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, used in nonstick and stain-resistant frying pans, rugs, and countless other consumer products.
The White House repeatedly pressed the agency to agree to a major loophole that could allow substantial imports of the PFAS-tainted products to continue, greatly weakening the proposed rule. EPA pushed back on the White House demand for the loophole, known as a “safe harbor” provision for industry.
Pushed again in January, the agency responded, “EPA opposes proposing a safe harbor provision, but is open to a neutrally-worded request for comment from the public” on the White House request.
The rule is one of the few concrete steps that the Trump administration has taken to deal with growing contamination by PFAS industrial compounds. The EPA has declared dating back to 2018 that consumer exposure to the substances was a “national priority” that the agency was confronting “aggressively.”
Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the ranking Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, who obtained the documents revealing the White House intervention, and public-health advocates say the White House action was led by Nancy Beck, a former chemical industry executive now detailed to President Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.
In a letter sent Friday to the EPA, Carper charged the White House pressure amounts to unusual intervention in what had been the EPA’s in-house efforts to regulate imports tainted with the compound. Trump has nominated Beck to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a government panel charged with protecting Americans from harm by thousands of kinds of consumer goods.
Asked about the White House actions, EPA spokeswoman Corry Schiermeyer said in an email that “consulting with other federal agencies on actions is a normal process across government,” and that “EPA is often required to engage in an interagency review process led by OMB.”
“It is routine for the agency to receive input from all of our stakeholders, including our federal partners,” Schiermeyer wrote.
The EPA did not respond to a question about whether Beck led the White House intervention. Emails sent for comment to the White House, the White House Office of Management and Budget and Beck were not immediately answered.
Carper obtained pages of back-and-forth proposed changes, redline drafts and other communications between the White House Office of Management and Budget, the EPA and others on the draft rule. No authors are listed in many of the final rounds of White House edits, drafts and proposals and EPA’s responses.
Carper wrote to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Friday to object to the White House push for weakening of the rule, newly revealed in the documents. Carper said it appeared that Beck, who was moved to the White House from a top regulatory job at the Trump EPA, “sought to make it more difficult for EPA to use its authority ... to protect Americans from these harmful substances.”
While thousands of kinds of PFAS compounds are still in use in the United States, the new EPA rule would set up agency oversight of imports of products that use a few kinds of the compounds that manufacturers agreed to phase out in this country starting in 2006. Those versions remain in production in some parts of the world.
In addition to the safe harbor loophole, another change sought by the White House would raise the technical bar for EPA to consider blocking any of the tainted products.
The agency agreed to rewrite the rule to include a third White House request, narrowing the range of imported products that would fall under the rule.
The official public comment period for the current form of the rule ends Friday, moving the proposal close to crafting of its final form. Congress, impatient for the Trump administration to start bringing the PFAS compounds under federal regulation, has ordered the administration to get a final rule out by mid-summer.
Even if the rule goes out in its current form, applying to fewer kinds of product imports, “it would certainly be better than where we are without it,” although “scaled back significantly from what it was originally,” said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund advocacy group, and a longtime monitor of the EPA’s regulation of toxic substances.
But if the final rule includes the other two key changes being pushed by the White House “it could even do more damage than good,” Denison said.
Industries also would be likely to push for those two exceptions in regulations of future substances, Denison said. “Those two provisions would establish precedence that the EPA has never used for 40 years..”
Industries produce thousands of versions of the man-made compounds. They are used in countless products, including nonstick cookware, water-repellent sports gear, cosmetics, and grease-resistant food packaging, along with firefighting foams.
Public health studies on exposed populations have associated them with an array of health problems, including some cancers, and weakened immunity. The advent of widespread testing for the contaminant over the past few years found it in high levels in many public water systems around the country. The administration initially sought in 2018 to suppress a federal toxicology warning on the danger of the compounds, then publicly vowed action.
Higher rates of air pollution linked to more COVID-19 deaths, study shows
A Harvard study finds even slightly higher levels were “associated with a 15% increase in the COVID-19 death rate”
IGOR DERYSH - salon
APRIL 12, 2020 12:00PM (UTC)
Areas of the United States with higher levels of air pollution experience higher COVID-19 death rates than areas with cleaner air, according to a study by researchers at Harvard University.
Researchers at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed 3,080 counties and found that even slightly elevated levels of tiny particles known as PM 2.5 — meaning 2.5 micron-wide pollutants — were linked to higher death rates. PM 2.5 particles are emitted from vehicle exhaust and coal power plants. PM 2.5 exposure has long been linked to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory illnesses, which have all been linked to a higher risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19. Nearly 80% of patients requiring intensive care treatment have at least one of the three types of conditions.
The researchers found that an increase of just one unit of PM 2.5 was "associated with a 15% increase in the COVID-19 death rate."
The study included multiple secondary analyses and controlled for factors like household income, population, hospital capacity, and smoking rates. Researchers noted that it was difficult to "accurately quantify the number of COVID-19 cases due to limited testing capacity."
"The results of this paper suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes," the researchers wrote.
"This study provides evidence that counties that have more polluted air will experience higher risks of death for Covid-19," lead researcher Francesca Dominici, a biostatistics professor, told The New York Times, adding that counties with higher pollution levels "will be the ones that will have higher numbers of hospitalizations, higher numbers of deaths and where many of the resources should be concentrated."
The study demonstrates the importance of clean air regulations, which the Trump administration has relentlessly worked to roll back in the years preceding the pandemic.
Indeed, the administration last week rolled back vehicle tailpipe emissions regulations even after the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that doing so would result in higher death rates. The EPA similarly found that its decision to gut coal power plant regulations would lead to as many as 1,400 annual premature deaths.
"The study results underscore the importance of continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations to protect human health both during and after the Covid-19 crisis," the Harvard researchers warned in the new study.
The new findings echo the conclusions of past research on air pollution, which the World Health Organization blames for about 7 million deaths each year.
An analysis published in the journal Environmental Pollution similarly found a correlation between pollution rates and death rates in northern Italy, where up to 12% of patients have died from COVID-19.
Moreover, researchers at Cambridge University found that the 1918 flu pandemic, the deadliest in history, killed more people in cities that burned more coal compared to cities that did not.
A 2003 study led by Dr. Zuo-Fend Zhang, the associate dean of research at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health, found that SARS patients in parts of China with the highest pollution rates were twice as likely to die from the virus than those who lived in areas with lower rates.
Zhang told The Times that the new Harvard research was "very much consistent" with his findings.
Dr. John Balmes, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who serves as a spokesman for the American Lung Association, told the outlet he was concerned about what the findings mean for poor neighborhoods and communities of color, which tend to have higher levels of air pollution.
"We need to make sure that hospitals taking care of folks who are more vulnerable and with even greater air pollution exposure have the resources they need," he said.
A study by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency found in 2018 that poor neighborhoods had about 135% as much air pollution as the overall population and black communities had 154% as much air pollution as the overall population.
"Communities of color, they've always been the sacrifice zones," Mustafa Ali, who led the environmental justice program at the EPA under President Obama, said in a video this week. "They've been the places where we've pushed things that nobody else wants."
Ali, who now works on environmental justice issues at the National Wildlife Federation pointed to data showing that black people are far more likely to die from the coronavirus. In areas like Chicago and Louisiana, black people make up roughly 70% of COVID-19 deaths despite making up just a third of the population.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said this week that, much like the longstanding issue of air pollution, black Americans are more affected by the virus because of long-running health disparities.
"When you're in the middle of a crisis, like we are now with the coronavirus, it really does… shine a very bright light on some of the real weaknesses and foibles in our society," Fauci said. "Health disparities have always existed for the African American community. But… it's shining a bright light on how unacceptable that is."
Though racial data on virus deaths is still limited, Fauci pointed to the prevalence of "underlying medical conditions — the diabetes, the hypertension, the obesity, the asthma" as the cause for the higher death rate. "The underlying reason why that is happening does not change from state to state," he added.
Dr. Uche' Blackstock, an emergency physician at New York University's Langone Health and the founder of Advancing Health Equity, agreed that the startling number of deaths among black Americans was not caused by the coronavirus alone but by decades of systemic inequality.
"This pandemic will likely magnify and further reinforce racialized health inequities, which have been both persistent and profound over the last five decades, and Black Americans have experienced the worst health outcomes of any racial group," she wrote in an op-ed at the Scientific American. "Black Americans will be more vulnerable to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic because of several manifestations of structural racism, including lack of access to testing, a higher chronic disease burden and racial bias within health care institutions."
But what is to be done in the middle of a pandemic? Fauci argued that "there's nothing we can do right now other than try to give them the best possible care to avoid complications."
New York City has taken a more proactive approach, launching a multimillion-dollar campaign to reach minority communities with information about the virus. New York state has also launched a similar awareness campaign.
Dr. Patrice Harris, the president of the American Medical Association, urged local officials to go further. Harris called for cities to implement housing policies to protect frontline workers, many of whom are black and Hispanic, and to ramp up efforts to ensure they have the necessary protective equipment.
Dr. Oliver Brooks, the president of the National Medical Association, called to expand access to health technology, including remote monitoring tools for chronic diseases. "We must create a data repository overseen by a credible organization to ensure data are consistently accessible to everyone," he said.
Ultimately, the first step in any effort will be to make the data available. Spencer Overton, the president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said in a Washington Post op-ed that collecting and publishing race data throughout the entire country is necessary to educate the public and inform lawmakers.
"The disproportionate impact appears to be attributable to preexisting conditions — high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and inadequate access to health care — that make African Americans more vulnerable to the disease," he wrote. "But the handful of examples above raises an urgent question: Does the effect hold true for African Americans throughout the country? Unfortunately, there's no way for the public to know."
Researchers at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed 3,080 counties and found that even slightly elevated levels of tiny particles known as PM 2.5 — meaning 2.5 micron-wide pollutants — were linked to higher death rates. PM 2.5 particles are emitted from vehicle exhaust and coal power plants. PM 2.5 exposure has long been linked to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory illnesses, which have all been linked to a higher risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19. Nearly 80% of patients requiring intensive care treatment have at least one of the three types of conditions.
The researchers found that an increase of just one unit of PM 2.5 was "associated with a 15% increase in the COVID-19 death rate."
The study included multiple secondary analyses and controlled for factors like household income, population, hospital capacity, and smoking rates. Researchers noted that it was difficult to "accurately quantify the number of COVID-19 cases due to limited testing capacity."
"The results of this paper suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes," the researchers wrote.
"This study provides evidence that counties that have more polluted air will experience higher risks of death for Covid-19," lead researcher Francesca Dominici, a biostatistics professor, told The New York Times, adding that counties with higher pollution levels "will be the ones that will have higher numbers of hospitalizations, higher numbers of deaths and where many of the resources should be concentrated."
The study demonstrates the importance of clean air regulations, which the Trump administration has relentlessly worked to roll back in the years preceding the pandemic.
Indeed, the administration last week rolled back vehicle tailpipe emissions regulations even after the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that doing so would result in higher death rates. The EPA similarly found that its decision to gut coal power plant regulations would lead to as many as 1,400 annual premature deaths.
"The study results underscore the importance of continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations to protect human health both during and after the Covid-19 crisis," the Harvard researchers warned in the new study.
The new findings echo the conclusions of past research on air pollution, which the World Health Organization blames for about 7 million deaths each year.
An analysis published in the journal Environmental Pollution similarly found a correlation between pollution rates and death rates in northern Italy, where up to 12% of patients have died from COVID-19.
Moreover, researchers at Cambridge University found that the 1918 flu pandemic, the deadliest in history, killed more people in cities that burned more coal compared to cities that did not.
A 2003 study led by Dr. Zuo-Fend Zhang, the associate dean of research at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health, found that SARS patients in parts of China with the highest pollution rates were twice as likely to die from the virus than those who lived in areas with lower rates.
Zhang told The Times that the new Harvard research was "very much consistent" with his findings.
Dr. John Balmes, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who serves as a spokesman for the American Lung Association, told the outlet he was concerned about what the findings mean for poor neighborhoods and communities of color, which tend to have higher levels of air pollution.
"We need to make sure that hospitals taking care of folks who are more vulnerable and with even greater air pollution exposure have the resources they need," he said.
A study by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency found in 2018 that poor neighborhoods had about 135% as much air pollution as the overall population and black communities had 154% as much air pollution as the overall population.
"Communities of color, they've always been the sacrifice zones," Mustafa Ali, who led the environmental justice program at the EPA under President Obama, said in a video this week. "They've been the places where we've pushed things that nobody else wants."
Ali, who now works on environmental justice issues at the National Wildlife Federation pointed to data showing that black people are far more likely to die from the coronavirus. In areas like Chicago and Louisiana, black people make up roughly 70% of COVID-19 deaths despite making up just a third of the population.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said this week that, much like the longstanding issue of air pollution, black Americans are more affected by the virus because of long-running health disparities.
"When you're in the middle of a crisis, like we are now with the coronavirus, it really does… shine a very bright light on some of the real weaknesses and foibles in our society," Fauci said. "Health disparities have always existed for the African American community. But… it's shining a bright light on how unacceptable that is."
Though racial data on virus deaths is still limited, Fauci pointed to the prevalence of "underlying medical conditions — the diabetes, the hypertension, the obesity, the asthma" as the cause for the higher death rate. "The underlying reason why that is happening does not change from state to state," he added.
Dr. Uche' Blackstock, an emergency physician at New York University's Langone Health and the founder of Advancing Health Equity, agreed that the startling number of deaths among black Americans was not caused by the coronavirus alone but by decades of systemic inequality.
"This pandemic will likely magnify and further reinforce racialized health inequities, which have been both persistent and profound over the last five decades, and Black Americans have experienced the worst health outcomes of any racial group," she wrote in an op-ed at the Scientific American. "Black Americans will be more vulnerable to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic because of several manifestations of structural racism, including lack of access to testing, a higher chronic disease burden and racial bias within health care institutions."
But what is to be done in the middle of a pandemic? Fauci argued that "there's nothing we can do right now other than try to give them the best possible care to avoid complications."
New York City has taken a more proactive approach, launching a multimillion-dollar campaign to reach minority communities with information about the virus. New York state has also launched a similar awareness campaign.
Dr. Patrice Harris, the president of the American Medical Association, urged local officials to go further. Harris called for cities to implement housing policies to protect frontline workers, many of whom are black and Hispanic, and to ramp up efforts to ensure they have the necessary protective equipment.
Dr. Oliver Brooks, the president of the National Medical Association, called to expand access to health technology, including remote monitoring tools for chronic diseases. "We must create a data repository overseen by a credible organization to ensure data are consistently accessible to everyone," he said.
Ultimately, the first step in any effort will be to make the data available. Spencer Overton, the president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said in a Washington Post op-ed that collecting and publishing race data throughout the entire country is necessary to educate the public and inform lawmakers.
"The disproportionate impact appears to be attributable to preexisting conditions — high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and inadequate access to health care — that make African Americans more vulnerable to the disease," he wrote. "But the handful of examples above raises an urgent question: Does the effect hold true for African Americans throughout the country? Unfortunately, there's no way for the public to know."
The Pandemic Is Slowing Down The Whole World … And That’s A Good Thing
It’s Giving the Earth a Much-Needed Break from Climate-Wrecking CO2 Emissions
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief
4/9/2020
Awful and lethal as coronavirus is, the pandemic is producing some good news about the other big threat – climate disruption.
Sheltering at home means a sharp drop in the burning of fossil fuels, the primary source of CO 2 which drives global warming and climate disruption.
Reducing pollutants in the air may save lives, based on research into the 1918 flu pandemic in which one-third of humans were infected and an estimated 50 million died.
During that pandemic, cities that relied heavily on coal, primarily to generate electricity, experienced significantly higher mortality rates than demographically similar cities with less polluted air.
Tiny particles in the air from burning coal, diesel and other fuels have been linked to higher death rates among the infected a new national study by Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health showed.
Here are examples of how reduced fossil fuels use during this pandemic is both a human and an ecological benefit:
Each gallon of gasoline burned generates about 20 pounds of CO2, the greenhouse gas that is a major factor in climate disruption caused by global warming. The reason that eight pounds of gasoline generate 20 pounds of CO2 is explained here.
Inefficient old jumbo jets are being retired, meaning less air pollution. Both KLM and Qantas stopped flying 747s at the end of March. Fuel-efficient long-haul planes such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus 350, together with the Boeing 777, will be used when the pandemic has passed. The German airline Lufthansa shut down two of its discount sister carriers, retired a host of its jumbo and older jets and announced it expects it will be “years until worldwide demand for air travel returns to pre-crisis levels.” If companies and trade associations make wider use of video conferencing services such as Zoom, then global travel may be subdued for many years. Even with more fuel-efficient jet engines, that would be good for the environment.
None of these developments is good for workers in the affected industries and those that supply those industries. But the reduction in fossil fuel burning should have a positive impact on climate disruption, which unchecked will likely kill many millions of Earthlings as seas cover land, while droughts, fires and flooding wreak havoc and melting tundra unleashes ancient viruses unknown to modern people.
Sheltering at home means a sharp drop in the burning of fossil fuels, the primary source of CO 2 which drives global warming and climate disruption.
Reducing pollutants in the air may save lives, based on research into the 1918 flu pandemic in which one-third of humans were infected and an estimated 50 million died.
During that pandemic, cities that relied heavily on coal, primarily to generate electricity, experienced significantly higher mortality rates than demographically similar cities with less polluted air.
Tiny particles in the air from burning coal, diesel and other fuels have been linked to higher death rates among the infected a new national study by Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health showed.
Here are examples of how reduced fossil fuels use during this pandemic is both a human and an ecological benefit:
- Gasoline sales are expected to plunge to levels lower than when America had a third fewer people than the almost 330 million people today. So says the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), which surveys 17,500 service stations. Tom Kloza, the service’s top energy analyst, said, “We are likely to see weekly gasoline demand numbers [for March] drop to levels last witnessed in the Nixon administration, and we’ll see those lower levels in April.”
- Miles driven on American roads must already have fallen sharply from job loss and shelter at home orders. Americans drove almost 3 trillion miles in January.
- Gasoline sales are collapsing. Americans burned about 142 billion gallons of gasoline last year. If sheltering at home continues through the end of 2020, that indicates 2020 gasoline consumption will fall by more than half.
- Fuel economy for cars in America averaged about 25 mpg last year. If gasoline consumption falls by half the effect on the volume of air pollution would be the same as raising automobile fuel efficiency to 50 mpg during the pandemic.
Each gallon of gasoline burned generates about 20 pounds of CO2, the greenhouse gas that is a major factor in climate disruption caused by global warming. The reason that eight pounds of gasoline generate 20 pounds of CO2 is explained here.
- Oil production will have to cut back and in some places even shut down because the world has pretty much run out of places to store oil. Not only are underground storage in salt domes near the brim, so are metal storage tanks on land and oil tankers at anchor in ports around the globe.
- New car sales are plummeting. Hyundai, which together with its sister brand Kia sold 4% of all new cars in America last year reported a 40% drop in March sales. That’s not surprising because the two brands focus on lower-income customers who will be hard hit by the loss of jobs. Porsche, a very upscale carmaker, announced that its sales fell 20% in March.
- As people reduce driving it means fewer fossil fuels will be used to fabricate cars, from turning bauxite into aluminum and iron ore into steel stamped into parts.
- The price of what Donald Trump calls “beautiful coal” has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, down by half since 2018.
- The spot price natural gas, coal’s biggest competitor to fuel electric power stations, fell 42% from its last high in November 2019.
- Cement production also will decline. Worldwide making cement generates about 6% of all fossil fuel pollution. The United States produces about 2% of global production.
Inefficient old jumbo jets are being retired, meaning less air pollution. Both KLM and Qantas stopped flying 747s at the end of March. Fuel-efficient long-haul planes such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus 350, together with the Boeing 777, will be used when the pandemic has passed. The German airline Lufthansa shut down two of its discount sister carriers, retired a host of its jumbo and older jets and announced it expects it will be “years until worldwide demand for air travel returns to pre-crisis levels.” If companies and trade associations make wider use of video conferencing services such as Zoom, then global travel may be subdued for many years. Even with more fuel-efficient jet engines, that would be good for the environment.
None of these developments is good for workers in the affected industries and those that supply those industries. But the reduction in fossil fuel burning should have a positive impact on climate disruption, which unchecked will likely kill many millions of Earthlings as seas cover land, while droughts, fires and flooding wreak havoc and melting tundra unleashes ancient viruses unknown to modern people.
america's fool promotes pollution!!!
Trump to roll back Obama-era clean car rules in huge blow to climate fight
Announcement will allow vehicles to emit 1bn more tons of CO2
Experts say move will lead to more life-threatening air pollution
Emily Holden in Washington
the guardian
Tue 31 Mar 2020 10.00 EDT
The Trump administration is rolling back the US government’s strongest attempt to combat the climate crisis, weakening rules which compel auto companies to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. Critics say the move will lead to more life-threatening air pollution and force Americans to spend more on gasoline.
The changes to Obama-era regulations will allow vehicles to emit about a billion more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide – equivalent to roughly a fifth of annual US emissions.
The rollback is one of dozens Trump officials have ushered to completion, seeking to bolster the fossil fuel industry amid intense opposition from Democratic-led states and pushback from world leaders.
Experts say the world is far off track in dealing with the climate emergency, following a year of record-breaking heat, rising hunger, displacement and loss of life due to extreme temperatures and weather disasters.
Donald Trump is expected to laud the new rule as a boost to the US economy, which has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic. His administration says weakening the standards will make cars about $1,000 cheaper, leading Americans to buy new and safer models more frequently and resulting in fewer crash fatalities.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andrew Wheeler said in a statement: “Now, more than ever, this country needs a sensible national program that strikes the right regulatory balance for the environment, the auto industry, the economy, safety, and American families.
“[This rule] does all of those things by improving fuel economy, continuing to reduce air pollution, and making new vehicles more affordable for all Americans.”
Miles Keogh, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, an organization of state and local air regulators, called the timing of the rule change “appalling”.
He said: “We know coronavirus preys on people with respiratory problems, and this dirty air rule will make more Americans vulnerable.”
The Obama administration required auto companies to make vehicles 4.7% more efficient each year. The Trump administration initially wanted to freeze any progress on fuel efficiency past 2020. But its final rule, written by the EPA and the Department of Transportation, sets an improvement rate of 1.5% per year – or an industry average of 40.4 miles per gallon by 2026.
That’s far less than the 2.4% per year by which the industry has said it will increase standards without any regulation.
The rollback has drawn opposition from nearly half of states and a significant portion of the auto industry. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia, representing about half of US residents, sued over the changes. They said weakening the standards would kill about 2,000 more people and cause 50,000 more cases of respiratory illnesses, while making the climate crisis worse.
California has long instituted more stringent auto standards than the federal government, but the Trump administration has revoked the state’s authority to do so. The state last year struck a deal with four companies – Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW of North America – to exceed what Trump is asking for and require cars, trucks and SUVs to get nearly 50 miles per gallon on average by 2026.
Democratic-run states and environmental advocates are expected to challenge the new regulation. They are already fighting the Trump administration over its weakening of dozens of other environment and public health protections.
Ann Carlson, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, said the legal fight will be “one of the hardest fought, in part because it’s the most significant”.
Carlson believes the rollback is meant to maintain demand for gasoline, which is expected to fall as vehicles become more efficient and transition to electricity.
“You can make cars with zero emissions now, zero greenhouse gases that don’t run on petroleum, anymore,” Carlson said. “So I think the big beneficiaries are absolutely the oil companies.”
The rule change comes as many communities around the US are seeing a decline in air quality, a result of climate change, wildfires, higher temperatures, regulatory rollbacks and poor enforcement of regulations, said Paul Billings, senior vice-president of advocacy for the American Lung Association.
“This will mean there will be more pollution associated with oil extraction, transport, refining – sort of all the way from the well to the pump,” Billings said. “This will mean high levels of smog, more coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, asthma attacks, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) exacerbations and also more particulate pollution.”
The effects will be worse on communities near oil processing facilities and highways, often people of color and poorer Americans.
The changes to Obama-era regulations will allow vehicles to emit about a billion more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide – equivalent to roughly a fifth of annual US emissions.
The rollback is one of dozens Trump officials have ushered to completion, seeking to bolster the fossil fuel industry amid intense opposition from Democratic-led states and pushback from world leaders.
Experts say the world is far off track in dealing with the climate emergency, following a year of record-breaking heat, rising hunger, displacement and loss of life due to extreme temperatures and weather disasters.
Donald Trump is expected to laud the new rule as a boost to the US economy, which has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic. His administration says weakening the standards will make cars about $1,000 cheaper, leading Americans to buy new and safer models more frequently and resulting in fewer crash fatalities.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andrew Wheeler said in a statement: “Now, more than ever, this country needs a sensible national program that strikes the right regulatory balance for the environment, the auto industry, the economy, safety, and American families.
“[This rule] does all of those things by improving fuel economy, continuing to reduce air pollution, and making new vehicles more affordable for all Americans.”
Miles Keogh, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, an organization of state and local air regulators, called the timing of the rule change “appalling”.
He said: “We know coronavirus preys on people with respiratory problems, and this dirty air rule will make more Americans vulnerable.”
The Obama administration required auto companies to make vehicles 4.7% more efficient each year. The Trump administration initially wanted to freeze any progress on fuel efficiency past 2020. But its final rule, written by the EPA and the Department of Transportation, sets an improvement rate of 1.5% per year – or an industry average of 40.4 miles per gallon by 2026.
That’s far less than the 2.4% per year by which the industry has said it will increase standards without any regulation.
The rollback has drawn opposition from nearly half of states and a significant portion of the auto industry. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia, representing about half of US residents, sued over the changes. They said weakening the standards would kill about 2,000 more people and cause 50,000 more cases of respiratory illnesses, while making the climate crisis worse.
California has long instituted more stringent auto standards than the federal government, but the Trump administration has revoked the state’s authority to do so. The state last year struck a deal with four companies – Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW of North America – to exceed what Trump is asking for and require cars, trucks and SUVs to get nearly 50 miles per gallon on average by 2026.
Democratic-run states and environmental advocates are expected to challenge the new regulation. They are already fighting the Trump administration over its weakening of dozens of other environment and public health protections.
Ann Carlson, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, said the legal fight will be “one of the hardest fought, in part because it’s the most significant”.
Carlson believes the rollback is meant to maintain demand for gasoline, which is expected to fall as vehicles become more efficient and transition to electricity.
“You can make cars with zero emissions now, zero greenhouse gases that don’t run on petroleum, anymore,” Carlson said. “So I think the big beneficiaries are absolutely the oil companies.”
The rule change comes as many communities around the US are seeing a decline in air quality, a result of climate change, wildfires, higher temperatures, regulatory rollbacks and poor enforcement of regulations, said Paul Billings, senior vice-president of advocacy for the American Lung Association.
“This will mean there will be more pollution associated with oil extraction, transport, refining – sort of all the way from the well to the pump,” Billings said. “This will mean high levels of smog, more coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, asthma attacks, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) exacerbations and also more particulate pollution.”
The effects will be worse on communities near oil processing facilities and highways, often people of color and poorer Americans.
no reason for this rule except greed and political donations!!!
death by greedy POLLUTERS of coronavirus, what a country!!!
US Environmental Protection Agency
Trump administration allows companies to break pollution laws during coronavirus pandemic
Extraordinary move signals to US companies that they will not face any sanctions for polluting the air or water
Oliver Milman and Emily Holden
the guardian
Fri 27 Mar 2020 10.53 EDT
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suspended its enforcement of environmental laws during the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, signaling to companies they will not face any sanction for polluting the air or water of Americans.
In an extraordinary move that has stunned former EPA officials, the Trump administration said it will not expect compliance with the routine monitoring and reporting of pollution and won’t pursue penalties for breaking these rules.
Polluters will be able to ignore environmental laws as long as they can claim in some way these violations were caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the event of an imminent threat to public health, the EPA will defer to the states and “consider the circumstances” over whether it should intervene.
There is no end date set for this dropping of enforcement.
Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the EPA, said that coronavirus had made it difficult for businesses to protect workers and the public while adhering to clean air and water rules.
“This temporary policy is designed to provide enforcement discretion under the current, extraordinary conditions, while ensuring facility operations continue to protect human health and the environment,” Wheeler said.
The new stance has caused uproar among former EPA officials and environmental groups who warn that the sweeping will pose a further risk to public health amid the pandemic.
“EPA should never relinquish its right and its obligation to act immediately and decisively when there is threat to public health, no matter what the reason is,” said Cynthia Giles, who was head of EPA enforcement during the Obama administration.
“I am not aware of any instance when EPA ever relinquished this fundamental authority as it does in this memo. This memo amounts to a nationwide moratorium on enforcing the nation’s environmental laws and is an abdication of EPA’s responsibility to protect the public.”
A letter sent to the EPA by Giles and a number of other environmental advocates states that while it may be “reasonable in limited circumstances” to relax certain enforcement during the crisis, the blanket waiver of environmental requirements poses a danger to the American public.
There is particular concern over air pollution emitted by industrial facilities, which are predominantly located in communities with large numbers of low-income people and people of color. Covid-19 attacks the respiratory system, with its spread causing states to scramble for more ventilators to prevent thousands of infected people from dying.
The air pollution that industrial plants will not have to monitor damages the respiratory system, which is especially dangerous for already at-risk populations who may also become infected with Covid-19, which attacks the lungs.
“Excusing the potential release of excess toxic air pollutants and other pollution that exacerbates asthma, breathing difficulty and cardiovascular problems in the midst of a pandemic that can cause respiratory failure is irresponsible from a public health perspective,” the letter states.
“This is not about reporting and paperwork,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project.
“If you’re flying blind because you’re not monitoring for pollution and the public’s flying blind because you’re not reporting it, a lot of problems that come to light when you do those things are going to stay hidden,” Schaeffer said.
In one example, oil refineries will not be compelled to report on and reduce their carcinogenic benzene emissions. Ten refineries, most of them in Texas, have already been exceeding limits.
The relaxation of environmental laws follows lobbying from the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas industry group, which sent the EPA a letter this week calling for the suspension of rules requiring repair of leaky equipment as well as monitoring of pollution.
The EPA’s move goes even further than this request, although the regulator said it expects businesses will comply with laws “where reasonably practicable” and that it will not tolerate flagrant, intentional breaches of the law.
However, Michael Brune, executive director of Sierra Club, indicated that the move may be challenged in the courts. “While there may be no limit to the lengths Trump and Wheeler are willing to go for corporate polluters, there is a limit to what the public will allow,” Brune said. “This illegal and reckless action will not go unchecked.”
In an extraordinary move that has stunned former EPA officials, the Trump administration said it will not expect compliance with the routine monitoring and reporting of pollution and won’t pursue penalties for breaking these rules.
Polluters will be able to ignore environmental laws as long as they can claim in some way these violations were caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the event of an imminent threat to public health, the EPA will defer to the states and “consider the circumstances” over whether it should intervene.
There is no end date set for this dropping of enforcement.
Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the EPA, said that coronavirus had made it difficult for businesses to protect workers and the public while adhering to clean air and water rules.
“This temporary policy is designed to provide enforcement discretion under the current, extraordinary conditions, while ensuring facility operations continue to protect human health and the environment,” Wheeler said.
The new stance has caused uproar among former EPA officials and environmental groups who warn that the sweeping will pose a further risk to public health amid the pandemic.
“EPA should never relinquish its right and its obligation to act immediately and decisively when there is threat to public health, no matter what the reason is,” said Cynthia Giles, who was head of EPA enforcement during the Obama administration.
“I am not aware of any instance when EPA ever relinquished this fundamental authority as it does in this memo. This memo amounts to a nationwide moratorium on enforcing the nation’s environmental laws and is an abdication of EPA’s responsibility to protect the public.”
A letter sent to the EPA by Giles and a number of other environmental advocates states that while it may be “reasonable in limited circumstances” to relax certain enforcement during the crisis, the blanket waiver of environmental requirements poses a danger to the American public.
There is particular concern over air pollution emitted by industrial facilities, which are predominantly located in communities with large numbers of low-income people and people of color. Covid-19 attacks the respiratory system, with its spread causing states to scramble for more ventilators to prevent thousands of infected people from dying.
The air pollution that industrial plants will not have to monitor damages the respiratory system, which is especially dangerous for already at-risk populations who may also become infected with Covid-19, which attacks the lungs.
“Excusing the potential release of excess toxic air pollutants and other pollution that exacerbates asthma, breathing difficulty and cardiovascular problems in the midst of a pandemic that can cause respiratory failure is irresponsible from a public health perspective,” the letter states.
“This is not about reporting and paperwork,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project.
“If you’re flying blind because you’re not monitoring for pollution and the public’s flying blind because you’re not reporting it, a lot of problems that come to light when you do those things are going to stay hidden,” Schaeffer said.
In one example, oil refineries will not be compelled to report on and reduce their carcinogenic benzene emissions. Ten refineries, most of them in Texas, have already been exceeding limits.
The relaxation of environmental laws follows lobbying from the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas industry group, which sent the EPA a letter this week calling for the suspension of rules requiring repair of leaky equipment as well as monitoring of pollution.
The EPA’s move goes even further than this request, although the regulator said it expects businesses will comply with laws “where reasonably practicable” and that it will not tolerate flagrant, intentional breaches of the law.
However, Michael Brune, executive director of Sierra Club, indicated that the move may be challenged in the courts. “While there may be no limit to the lengths Trump and Wheeler are willing to go for corporate polluters, there is a limit to what the public will allow,” Brune said. “This illegal and reckless action will not go unchecked.”
Deadly Poison Used To Kill Weeds Wreaks Havoc On Nearby Farms
Approved by Obama and Trump, Dicamba Drifts to Damage Soybeans, Peaches, Other Crops; In Court, Farmers Win a Round Against Manufacturer
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
3/12/2020
Problems with dicamba, the herbicide that tricks weeds into growing so fast they die, were found more than 50 years ago. But the EPA under Obama approved new dicamba sprays in 2016 without independent testing of how prone the herbicide was to drift to damage other fields.
A jury deliberated just 30 minutes on Feb. 15 in a Southeast Missouri courthouse named after Rush Limbaugh’s grandfather before deciding on $250 million in punitive damages for the makers of the herbicide, Monsanto and BASF. The case was brought by an owner of a peach orchard. The companies were also ordered to pay $15 million in compensation.
Trump met with CEO Werner Baumann of Bayer, the German company that now owns Monsanto, soon after his election. Trump’s EPA kept dicamba on the market. Concentrations in the air in Missouri’s Bootheel and Arkansas’s Delta have been compared to smog. The dicamba products’ EPA approval is set to expire Dec. 20 unless the agency extends it again.
“EPA understands that dicamba is a valuable pest control tool for America’s farmers,” Andrew Wheeler, then the EPA acting administrator, said in 2018.
Dicamba can damage soybeans that aren’t treated to resist it at concentrations in the air as low as one billionth of a gram per cubic meter. One tell-tale sign of damage in soybeans is “cupping” where necrosis on the leaf tip makes the leaf cup up. Peach trees like the ones on Bill and Denise Bader’s peach orchard spread over more than 1,000 acres near Campbell, Mo., are also ultra-sensitive to dicamba.
Steve Smith of Red Gold, the world’s largest privately held tomato canner, warned Congress in 2010 that widespread use of dicamba is “incompatible with Midwestern agriculture.”
Environmental groups including the National Family Farm Coalition and the Center for Food Safety sued the EPA and Monsanto in federal court in 2017. They claimed the EPA failed to analyze costs to farmers from drifting dicamba, “recklessly pushing to market” a product that damaged millions of acres of crops.
No Study of Drift
Monsanto denied requests by university researchers before the EPA approved the herbicide to study how likely it was to vaporize and drift across fields.
A three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit in January 2019, saying the case was moot because the EPA had extended the registration for the dicamba spray.
Bader Farms, the Missouri company that sued Monsanto and BASF, is the largest peach farm in Missouri with nearly 110,000 peach trees but puny compared with Monsanto and BASF. The farm is expected to go out of business because of damage from dicamba.
Bader’s legal team asked for $200 million in punitive damages or 2.5% of Monsanto’s net worth. The company put that figure at $6.5 billion in 2017 and $7.8 billion in 2018.
Decimated Peach Crop
The three-week trial focused the damage to the Bader business which the couple started in 1987. Their peach harvest dropped from an average of 162,000 bushels in the early 2000s to as low as 12,000 bushels in 2018.
Weed scientist Ford Baldwin said so many farmers were spraying dicamba that a dicamba smog would build up, often poisoning crops for an entire night. In 2017, 80% of the cotton and 65% of the soybeans in the Bootheel were planted using Xtend seed from Monsanto and nearly all of it was sprayed with dicamba.
Bayer and BASF contended that illegal spraying by farmers, inclement weather and soil fungus damaged the peach trees.
Bayer and BASF have said they plan to appeal the verdict. The lawsuit was the first of at least 140 similar cases to go to trial.
A jury deliberated just 30 minutes on Feb. 15 in a Southeast Missouri courthouse named after Rush Limbaugh’s grandfather before deciding on $250 million in punitive damages for the makers of the herbicide, Monsanto and BASF. The case was brought by an owner of a peach orchard. The companies were also ordered to pay $15 million in compensation.
Trump met with CEO Werner Baumann of Bayer, the German company that now owns Monsanto, soon after his election. Trump’s EPA kept dicamba on the market. Concentrations in the air in Missouri’s Bootheel and Arkansas’s Delta have been compared to smog. The dicamba products’ EPA approval is set to expire Dec. 20 unless the agency extends it again.
“EPA understands that dicamba is a valuable pest control tool for America’s farmers,” Andrew Wheeler, then the EPA acting administrator, said in 2018.
Dicamba can damage soybeans that aren’t treated to resist it at concentrations in the air as low as one billionth of a gram per cubic meter. One tell-tale sign of damage in soybeans is “cupping” where necrosis on the leaf tip makes the leaf cup up. Peach trees like the ones on Bill and Denise Bader’s peach orchard spread over more than 1,000 acres near Campbell, Mo., are also ultra-sensitive to dicamba.
Steve Smith of Red Gold, the world’s largest privately held tomato canner, warned Congress in 2010 that widespread use of dicamba is “incompatible with Midwestern agriculture.”
Environmental groups including the National Family Farm Coalition and the Center for Food Safety sued the EPA and Monsanto in federal court in 2017. They claimed the EPA failed to analyze costs to farmers from drifting dicamba, “recklessly pushing to market” a product that damaged millions of acres of crops.
No Study of Drift
Monsanto denied requests by university researchers before the EPA approved the herbicide to study how likely it was to vaporize and drift across fields.
A three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit in January 2019, saying the case was moot because the EPA had extended the registration for the dicamba spray.
Bader Farms, the Missouri company that sued Monsanto and BASF, is the largest peach farm in Missouri with nearly 110,000 peach trees but puny compared with Monsanto and BASF. The farm is expected to go out of business because of damage from dicamba.
Bader’s legal team asked for $200 million in punitive damages or 2.5% of Monsanto’s net worth. The company put that figure at $6.5 billion in 2017 and $7.8 billion in 2018.
Decimated Peach Crop
The three-week trial focused the damage to the Bader business which the couple started in 1987. Their peach harvest dropped from an average of 162,000 bushels in the early 2000s to as low as 12,000 bushels in 2018.
Weed scientist Ford Baldwin said so many farmers were spraying dicamba that a dicamba smog would build up, often poisoning crops for an entire night. In 2017, 80% of the cotton and 65% of the soybeans in the Bootheel were planted using Xtend seed from Monsanto and nearly all of it was sprayed with dicamba.
Bayer and BASF contended that illegal spraying by farmers, inclement weather and soil fungus damaged the peach trees.
Bayer and BASF have said they plan to appeal the verdict. The lawsuit was the first of at least 140 similar cases to go to trial.
PFAS “Forever Chemicals” Found in Tap Water Linked to Cancer Risks
BY Mike Ludwig, Truthout
PUBLISHED March 8, 2020
For the first time, scientists reviewed 26 types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and found that they all display at least one characteristic of cancer-causing chemicals that can alter crucial bodily functions. The new study comes on the heels of alarming laboratory tests that detected many of these “forever chemicals” in tap water sampled across the country and suggest that fluorinated compounds in the PFAS family have contaminated virtually every major source of drinking water in the United States.
PFAS are in a broad group of chemicals used in an array of consumer products and industrial processes for their nonstick, stain-repellent and waterproofing properties. The substances trace their chemical roots back to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the chemical originally used to make Teflon for non-stick cookware.
PFOA and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), the chemicals originally used to make 3M’s Scotchgard, were phased out after PFAS pollution contaminated local communities and raised mounting environmental health concerns. Both PFOA and PFOS are categorized as PFAS, but today, there are hundreds of other PFAS chemicals. The industry has introduced dozens of new compounds it claims are safer for humans and the environment because they made up by shorter, less-complex chains of fluorinated carbons.
However, at least one class of replacements, known as GenX chemicals, caused tumors and damage to the liver, kidney and immune system in animal studies, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Now a new study released by the Environmental Working Group suggests more than at least a dozen different PFAS compounds display some of the same “key characteristics” of PFOS and PFOA that are linked to an increased risk of cancer.
PFOS and PFOA are the most well studied PFAS, and have been linked to a number of health problems, including increased cholesterol levels, liver dysfunction and weakened immune systems in children. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified PFOA as a “possible human carcinogen” and the EPA says there is some evidence to suggest PFOS and PFOA may increase cancer risks.
Scientists have long suspected that closely-related PFAS chemicals pose similar health risks, but few have undergone rigorous safety testing, and data on how the substances react in the bodies of humans and animals tends to be scant. Still, millions of people are exposed to PFAS from a multitude of sources, including food packaging and drinking water.
“The short-chain and replacement chemicals, while they are not complete in data, do exhibit some of the similar characteristics as the well studied ones, and that’s concerning because we know we are exposed to them in drinking water, for example,” said Alexis Temkin, an Environmental Working Group toxicologist and the primary author of the new study.
Temkin worked with researchers at Indiana University to review all the publicly available data on 26 different PFAS chemicals, including PFOS and PFOA. The team found “strong evidence” that multiple PFAS suppress the immune system and interfere with cell growth and hormonal signaling, all factors associated with carcinogenicity.
While PFOS and PFOA displayed five characteristics associated with an elevated risk of cancer, the rest of the PFAS substances under review displayed at least one of these key characteristics. This suggests they may be safer than the original PFAS chemicals, but not safe enough to subject the public to widespread exposure. Temkin said the majority of PFAS the team reviewed have what’s known as “receptor mediated effects” that may alter critical bodily functions such as hormonal signaling and cell growth.
““The majority of them have what’s called receptor mediated effects,” Temkin said. “A lot of these chemicals can either bind or interact with receptors that control cell growth, or hormonal signaling like the estrogen receptor, which can play a role in breast cancer and reproductive organ cancers,” Temkin said.
To be clear, the study did not determine that PFAS cause cancer, but there is evidence to suggest that various PFAS substances act similarly to known cancer-causing substances by disrupting bodily systems. People are exposed to toxins all the time, and determining cancer risk is complicated. Temkin said more research is needed to understand how these chemicals may contribute to health problems and how the body reacts to different combinations of various PFAS substances.
“We have multiple routes of exposure, but not complete safety testing data,” Temkin said, adding no knew tests were conducted for the study and the researchers did not use data obtained from the industry, which often shields research from the public.
PFAS are “persistent” chemicals, which means they do not break down easily in the human body and the environment, allowing contamination to spread indefinitely. Last month, the EWG released laboratory tests of tap water sampled from 44 cities and towns across the country, and 43 came back positive for some level of various PFAS substances. Some of the highest levels were detected in major metropolitan areas, including New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.
The only tap water free of PFAS was sampled from Meridian, Mississippi, which draws its water from deep underground wells. Alongside previous tests and research, the findings suggest that major sources of drinking water such as rivers and lakes are contaminated with small but detectable levels of “forever chemicals” that will remain in the environment for years. Thanks to PFAS persistence and various sources of PFAS pollution, scientists now believe everyone living in the U.S. likely has some level of PFAS in their bodies.
Politicians and regulators are now scrambling to address a silent public health crisis that is only growing in scope as scientists continue to uncover new information about the health dangers of PFAS and its pervasiveness in the environment.
The EPA has a PFAS “action plan,” but the agency only recently began the regulatory process for setting mandatory federal limits for PFOS and PFOA in drinking water. The regulations could be years in the making and would not cover hundreds of additional PFAS chemicals, which Congress recently added to a national database that tracks toxic substances released into the environment. President Trump has threatened to veto legislation passed by House Democrats that would require the EPA to establish tough standards for PFAS in drinking water and designate PFOS and PFOA as hazardous substances under federal law. The EPA would have five years to determine whether other PFAS should be classified as hazardous, but the legislation is stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The EPA has come under fire for dragging its feet in responding to PFAS and now says regulators are investigating polluters on criminal charges. Environmentalists recently sued the Department of Defense for using incinerators to destroy firefighting foam containing PFAS that has contaminated Air Force bases across the country, in part because nearby residents were concerned about the spread of pollution. That’s an alarming sign that there is no easy fix for cleaning up chemicals that tend to stick around and turn up everywhere.
PFAS are in a broad group of chemicals used in an array of consumer products and industrial processes for their nonstick, stain-repellent and waterproofing properties. The substances trace their chemical roots back to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the chemical originally used to make Teflon for non-stick cookware.
PFOA and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), the chemicals originally used to make 3M’s Scotchgard, were phased out after PFAS pollution contaminated local communities and raised mounting environmental health concerns. Both PFOA and PFOS are categorized as PFAS, but today, there are hundreds of other PFAS chemicals. The industry has introduced dozens of new compounds it claims are safer for humans and the environment because they made up by shorter, less-complex chains of fluorinated carbons.
However, at least one class of replacements, known as GenX chemicals, caused tumors and damage to the liver, kidney and immune system in animal studies, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Now a new study released by the Environmental Working Group suggests more than at least a dozen different PFAS compounds display some of the same “key characteristics” of PFOS and PFOA that are linked to an increased risk of cancer.
PFOS and PFOA are the most well studied PFAS, and have been linked to a number of health problems, including increased cholesterol levels, liver dysfunction and weakened immune systems in children. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified PFOA as a “possible human carcinogen” and the EPA says there is some evidence to suggest PFOS and PFOA may increase cancer risks.
Scientists have long suspected that closely-related PFAS chemicals pose similar health risks, but few have undergone rigorous safety testing, and data on how the substances react in the bodies of humans and animals tends to be scant. Still, millions of people are exposed to PFAS from a multitude of sources, including food packaging and drinking water.
“The short-chain and replacement chemicals, while they are not complete in data, do exhibit some of the similar characteristics as the well studied ones, and that’s concerning because we know we are exposed to them in drinking water, for example,” said Alexis Temkin, an Environmental Working Group toxicologist and the primary author of the new study.
Temkin worked with researchers at Indiana University to review all the publicly available data on 26 different PFAS chemicals, including PFOS and PFOA. The team found “strong evidence” that multiple PFAS suppress the immune system and interfere with cell growth and hormonal signaling, all factors associated with carcinogenicity.
While PFOS and PFOA displayed five characteristics associated with an elevated risk of cancer, the rest of the PFAS substances under review displayed at least one of these key characteristics. This suggests they may be safer than the original PFAS chemicals, but not safe enough to subject the public to widespread exposure. Temkin said the majority of PFAS the team reviewed have what’s known as “receptor mediated effects” that may alter critical bodily functions such as hormonal signaling and cell growth.
““The majority of them have what’s called receptor mediated effects,” Temkin said. “A lot of these chemicals can either bind or interact with receptors that control cell growth, or hormonal signaling like the estrogen receptor, which can play a role in breast cancer and reproductive organ cancers,” Temkin said.
To be clear, the study did not determine that PFAS cause cancer, but there is evidence to suggest that various PFAS substances act similarly to known cancer-causing substances by disrupting bodily systems. People are exposed to toxins all the time, and determining cancer risk is complicated. Temkin said more research is needed to understand how these chemicals may contribute to health problems and how the body reacts to different combinations of various PFAS substances.
“We have multiple routes of exposure, but not complete safety testing data,” Temkin said, adding no knew tests were conducted for the study and the researchers did not use data obtained from the industry, which often shields research from the public.
PFAS are “persistent” chemicals, which means they do not break down easily in the human body and the environment, allowing contamination to spread indefinitely. Last month, the EWG released laboratory tests of tap water sampled from 44 cities and towns across the country, and 43 came back positive for some level of various PFAS substances. Some of the highest levels were detected in major metropolitan areas, including New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.
The only tap water free of PFAS was sampled from Meridian, Mississippi, which draws its water from deep underground wells. Alongside previous tests and research, the findings suggest that major sources of drinking water such as rivers and lakes are contaminated with small but detectable levels of “forever chemicals” that will remain in the environment for years. Thanks to PFAS persistence and various sources of PFAS pollution, scientists now believe everyone living in the U.S. likely has some level of PFAS in their bodies.
Politicians and regulators are now scrambling to address a silent public health crisis that is only growing in scope as scientists continue to uncover new information about the health dangers of PFAS and its pervasiveness in the environment.
The EPA has a PFAS “action plan,” but the agency only recently began the regulatory process for setting mandatory federal limits for PFOS and PFOA in drinking water. The regulations could be years in the making and would not cover hundreds of additional PFAS chemicals, which Congress recently added to a national database that tracks toxic substances released into the environment. President Trump has threatened to veto legislation passed by House Democrats that would require the EPA to establish tough standards for PFAS in drinking water and designate PFOS and PFOA as hazardous substances under federal law. The EPA would have five years to determine whether other PFAS should be classified as hazardous, but the legislation is stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The EPA has come under fire for dragging its feet in responding to PFAS and now says regulators are investigating polluters on criminal charges. Environmentalists recently sued the Department of Defense for using incinerators to destroy firefighting foam containing PFAS that has contaminated Air Force bases across the country, in part because nearby residents were concerned about the spread of pollution. That’s an alarming sign that there is no easy fix for cleaning up chemicals that tend to stick around and turn up everywhere.
environment funnies
When your "leader" is a fool!!!
