welcome to reality trivia
environment
The environment is everything that isn't me.
Albert Einstein
december 9, 2018
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
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*articles*
*TRUMP’S ATTACK ON THE CLEAN WATER ACT WILL FUEL DESTRUCTIVE PIPELINE BOOM
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Airlines ignoring efficient planes in blow to carbon targets – study
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*EPA’S NEW WATER RULE WILL GUT THE CLEAN WATER ACT
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*More Crap From The Trump Administration
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP OFFICIALS ACCUSED OF USING DEADLY WILDFIRES TO BOOST LOGGING
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*EPA PLANS TO ROLL BACK WATER PROTECTIONS DESPITE CLIMATE CHANGE WARNINGS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*We Can Fight Climate Change and Still Eat Beef
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Energy company takes stance against Trump effort to rollback mercury rule
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*West Coast crab fishers sue 30 fossil fuel companies over climate change
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Why The EPA Won’t Get The Lead Out Of Our Water
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Big Banks Just Flunked Their Own Test on Climate, Indigenous Rights
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Climate change is taking a severe toll on Florida farmworkers, new study shows
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Hawaiian island erased by powerful hurricane: ‘The loss is a huge blow’
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Energy Department Ready To Approve Nuclear Waste Dumping
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Science Says Saving the Planet Could Really Be as Simple as Saving Trees
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*DONALD TRUMP ACCUSED OF ‘WAGING A WAR ON CHILDREN’ THROUGH EPA REGULATORY ROLLBACKS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
cartoons(at the end)
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TRUMP’S ATTACK ON THE CLEAN WATER ACT WILL FUEL DESTRUCTIVE PIPELINE BOOM
Sharon Lerner - the intercept
December 9 2018, 6:00 a.m
A NEW WATER RULE that will strip federal protections from an estimated 60-90 percent of U.S. waterways will dramatically ease restrictions on how polluting industries do business.
According to the rule, which is due out next week, streams that don’t run year-round and many wetlands will no longer be subject to the Clean Water Act. As a result, a wide range of industries — including agriculture, mining, waste management, chemical companies, real estate development, and road construction — will be free to pollute, reroute, and pave over these waterways as they see fit.
But oil and gas transport companies may benefit most from the imminent shift.
When the rule takes effect, pipeline construction projects that are currently required to undergo months, or even years, of scrutiny from water experts in order to minimize their environmental impact will be allowed to speed forward. For energy companies that have been pushing for exactly these changes for years, the new rule may be well worth the wait.
A Pipeline Bonanza
The energy company ONEOK should have applied for permits to work on its Arbuckle II pipeline by now. The $1.3 billion project, which will transport natural gas liquids 530 miles from the company’s supply basins in Velma, Oklahoma, to its storage facilities on the Gulf Coast of Texas, will cross dozens of waterways in both states. According to factsheets onits website, ONEOK was supposed to have begun construction in both Texas and Oklahoma and has submitted applications for water permits required for this work during 2018.
As of Friday, however, the company hadn’t submitted any applications for the permits required to build its pipeline across waterways, according to the Army Corps of Engineers offices in Tulsa, Fort Worth, and Galveston, which are responsible for permitting pipelines under the Clean Water Act.
Brad Borror, a communications manager at ONEOK, said the company was not delaying its projects. “We’re still going to go through that process and confident in our timeline,” said Borror.
But if ONEOK and other companies currently constructing pipelines do fall behind on their permits, they may ultimately come out ahead. The Trump administration rollback of water regulations will allow ONEOK and other companies involved in the energy pipeline boom now underway to simply bulldoze through waterways that are currently protected without any environmental scrutiny at all.
The Trump administration’s rule will replace an Obama-era regulation known as the Waters of the United States rule. According to leaked talking points about the replacement rule, it will exempt seasonal waterways and wetlands that are not connected by surface water to permanent water bodies from regulation. The change will allow the Arbuckle II and other pipelines now in the works to advance more quickly — and with far fewer environmental protections.
The oil and gas industries have been pushing for years for these same changes. The Waters Advocacy Coalition, an umbrella organization of 48 industry trade groups, has spent more than $1 million since 2007 lobbying to limit federal water protections. The group’s members include the Association of Oil Pipe Lines, the American Gas Association, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, according to comments that the group filed with the EPA in 2017.
The 2015 WOTUS rule aimed to settle long-standing conflicts between industry and regulators over which waterways are protected by the Clean Water Act. Almost since that federal statute went into effect in 1972, industries have been fighting to limit its reach. Still, for decades, the law was widely seen as protecting the great majority of the country’s waterways, both big and small.
That began to change after a 2001 Supreme Court case that dealt with whether ponds on an abandoned mining site were subject to federal water protections, said Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The decision was narrow, about whether certain isolated water bodies could be protected based on their use by water fowl, but there was a lot of language that expressed doubt about the proper scope of the law,” said Devine. “And industries jumped on that, and challenges sprang up across the country.”
Though some environmentalists felt it didn’t go far enough to protect water, the 2015 rule pushed back slightly against some of the incursions that industry campaigns had made on federal water protections. Now in effect in 22 states, and held up by court challenges in the others, the rule increased the waters covered by the Clean Water Act by 3-5 percent and clarified that rivers, streams, and wetlands are protected by the Clean Water Act even if they run for part of the year or depend on rain to flow.
The Trump rule, which will be subject to public comment before it’s finalized, will reverse those expansions in federal water protections and go further by stripping protections from many wetlands. The change will likely have the most dramatic effect in Alaska and the arid west, which, depending on the wording of the rule, may see up to 90 percent of its waterways lose federal protection.
A Sledgehammer to Clean Water Act
Pipeline companies are currently required to either get approval for the crossing of every waterway, or in cases when they can show that a project will have only minimal impact on the environment, apply for a nationwide permit that allows them to avoid scrutiny of each individual crossing.
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will carry fracked natural gas 600 miles from the Marcellus Shale in West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina, recently had its national permit suspended due to concerns about its impact on a West Virginia waterway. The new regulations will likely cut the number of permits required for the project in half, according to an analysis by the Southern Environmental Law Center.
A joint effort of Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, and Southern Company Gas, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (together with a much shorter pipeline that will supply natural gas to customers) will cross waterways in 1,699 places. At least half those waterways flow only during the wet seasons or after rainstorms and therefore would no longer require permits after the new rule is in place.
The new rule will increase the environmental threats posed by the Atlantic Coast and other pipeline projects, according to Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has filed numerous challenges to the pipeline.
“This is a sledgehammer to the Clean Water Act,” Gisler said of the new rule. “Out of all the anti-environmental attacks we have seen from this administration, this may be the most far-reaching and destructive.”
Dozens of other pipelines now in the planning phase could also see the number of permits required for their projects reduced. Fifty-four natural gas pipeline projects, including the Atlantic Coast, were approved in U.S. in the past two years, and 36 more projects are currently pending, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Three new oil pipeline projects have recently been announced, and five, including the Keystone XL, are in development.
Many of the companies building these pipelines may be putting off applying for their permits until the industry-friendly rule is in place, according to Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “Going through the permitting process can take years, so waiting for the final rule is still going to be shorter than applying for a permit that can have a ton of impact,” said Bennett, who described the companies as “salivating over the new rule.”
For the Arbuckle II pipeline, which runs through semi-arid areas, far fewer permits will likely be required under the new rule, which will ultimately speed up the construction process. “If they end up saying they’re crossing the Red River, and if they only have to get a couple of crossings versus 100 crossings, then the permit process is going to be way, way quicker,” said Bennett, a scientist and attorney who worked on wetlands management at the EPA before joining the environmental group. “I think they’re poised to apply for the permits the minute the new rule comes out.”
The permitting process typically involves pipeline companies meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and the Fish and Wildlife Service to discuss the project’s impact on the environment. The federal agencies then devise plans to minimize the environmental damage of construction.
“They might require them to tunnel underneath a stream or work when a stream is dry,” said Amy Mall, senior advocate at the NRDC.
“Every single site is unique.” Without these environmental protections, sediment and erosion can pollute the waterways, which can impact species living there.
Disruption of waterways by pipeline construction can also result in drinking water contamination, as it has in the case of the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Pennsylvania.
“You can have long term or permanent damage,” said Mall.
While some states may continue to require permits for waterways once they’re not subject to the federal law, others are unlikely to safeguard their own waterways from damage caused by pipeline construction. “We have no local protections,” Ashley Nicole McCray said of Oklahoma, which is home to one of the biggest pipeline hubs in the world. McCray, who ran for a spot on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission this year, has been raising concerns about the environmental impacts of the pipelines in her state.
“Because of the construction of so many pipelines, we’re losing traditional prairie lands and grasslands,” said McCray, who is a member of the Oglala Lakota nation. “The loss of land has serious impacts. When the vegetation is gone, the insects and animals that rely on it die, too. We’re seeing animals going extinct.”
The danger to endangered species is just one of the grounds on which environmentalists are likely to sue the government over the new rule once it comes out. Legal experts say that the rule may be stayed in parts of the country while the these questions are being hashed out.
According to the rule, which is due out next week, streams that don’t run year-round and many wetlands will no longer be subject to the Clean Water Act. As a result, a wide range of industries — including agriculture, mining, waste management, chemical companies, real estate development, and road construction — will be free to pollute, reroute, and pave over these waterways as they see fit.
But oil and gas transport companies may benefit most from the imminent shift.
When the rule takes effect, pipeline construction projects that are currently required to undergo months, or even years, of scrutiny from water experts in order to minimize their environmental impact will be allowed to speed forward. For energy companies that have been pushing for exactly these changes for years, the new rule may be well worth the wait.
A Pipeline Bonanza
The energy company ONEOK should have applied for permits to work on its Arbuckle II pipeline by now. The $1.3 billion project, which will transport natural gas liquids 530 miles from the company’s supply basins in Velma, Oklahoma, to its storage facilities on the Gulf Coast of Texas, will cross dozens of waterways in both states. According to factsheets onits website, ONEOK was supposed to have begun construction in both Texas and Oklahoma and has submitted applications for water permits required for this work during 2018.
As of Friday, however, the company hadn’t submitted any applications for the permits required to build its pipeline across waterways, according to the Army Corps of Engineers offices in Tulsa, Fort Worth, and Galveston, which are responsible for permitting pipelines under the Clean Water Act.
Brad Borror, a communications manager at ONEOK, said the company was not delaying its projects. “We’re still going to go through that process and confident in our timeline,” said Borror.
But if ONEOK and other companies currently constructing pipelines do fall behind on their permits, they may ultimately come out ahead. The Trump administration rollback of water regulations will allow ONEOK and other companies involved in the energy pipeline boom now underway to simply bulldoze through waterways that are currently protected without any environmental scrutiny at all.
The Trump administration’s rule will replace an Obama-era regulation known as the Waters of the United States rule. According to leaked talking points about the replacement rule, it will exempt seasonal waterways and wetlands that are not connected by surface water to permanent water bodies from regulation. The change will allow the Arbuckle II and other pipelines now in the works to advance more quickly — and with far fewer environmental protections.
The oil and gas industries have been pushing for years for these same changes. The Waters Advocacy Coalition, an umbrella organization of 48 industry trade groups, has spent more than $1 million since 2007 lobbying to limit federal water protections. The group’s members include the Association of Oil Pipe Lines, the American Gas Association, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, according to comments that the group filed with the EPA in 2017.
The 2015 WOTUS rule aimed to settle long-standing conflicts between industry and regulators over which waterways are protected by the Clean Water Act. Almost since that federal statute went into effect in 1972, industries have been fighting to limit its reach. Still, for decades, the law was widely seen as protecting the great majority of the country’s waterways, both big and small.
That began to change after a 2001 Supreme Court case that dealt with whether ponds on an abandoned mining site were subject to federal water protections, said Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The decision was narrow, about whether certain isolated water bodies could be protected based on their use by water fowl, but there was a lot of language that expressed doubt about the proper scope of the law,” said Devine. “And industries jumped on that, and challenges sprang up across the country.”
Though some environmentalists felt it didn’t go far enough to protect water, the 2015 rule pushed back slightly against some of the incursions that industry campaigns had made on federal water protections. Now in effect in 22 states, and held up by court challenges in the others, the rule increased the waters covered by the Clean Water Act by 3-5 percent and clarified that rivers, streams, and wetlands are protected by the Clean Water Act even if they run for part of the year or depend on rain to flow.
The Trump rule, which will be subject to public comment before it’s finalized, will reverse those expansions in federal water protections and go further by stripping protections from many wetlands. The change will likely have the most dramatic effect in Alaska and the arid west, which, depending on the wording of the rule, may see up to 90 percent of its waterways lose federal protection.
A Sledgehammer to Clean Water Act
Pipeline companies are currently required to either get approval for the crossing of every waterway, or in cases when they can show that a project will have only minimal impact on the environment, apply for a nationwide permit that allows them to avoid scrutiny of each individual crossing.
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will carry fracked natural gas 600 miles from the Marcellus Shale in West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina, recently had its national permit suspended due to concerns about its impact on a West Virginia waterway. The new regulations will likely cut the number of permits required for the project in half, according to an analysis by the Southern Environmental Law Center.
A joint effort of Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, and Southern Company Gas, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (together with a much shorter pipeline that will supply natural gas to customers) will cross waterways in 1,699 places. At least half those waterways flow only during the wet seasons or after rainstorms and therefore would no longer require permits after the new rule is in place.
The new rule will increase the environmental threats posed by the Atlantic Coast and other pipeline projects, according to Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has filed numerous challenges to the pipeline.
“This is a sledgehammer to the Clean Water Act,” Gisler said of the new rule. “Out of all the anti-environmental attacks we have seen from this administration, this may be the most far-reaching and destructive.”
Dozens of other pipelines now in the planning phase could also see the number of permits required for their projects reduced. Fifty-four natural gas pipeline projects, including the Atlantic Coast, were approved in U.S. in the past two years, and 36 more projects are currently pending, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Three new oil pipeline projects have recently been announced, and five, including the Keystone XL, are in development.
Many of the companies building these pipelines may be putting off applying for their permits until the industry-friendly rule is in place, according to Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “Going through the permitting process can take years, so waiting for the final rule is still going to be shorter than applying for a permit that can have a ton of impact,” said Bennett, who described the companies as “salivating over the new rule.”
For the Arbuckle II pipeline, which runs through semi-arid areas, far fewer permits will likely be required under the new rule, which will ultimately speed up the construction process. “If they end up saying they’re crossing the Red River, and if they only have to get a couple of crossings versus 100 crossings, then the permit process is going to be way, way quicker,” said Bennett, a scientist and attorney who worked on wetlands management at the EPA before joining the environmental group. “I think they’re poised to apply for the permits the minute the new rule comes out.”
The permitting process typically involves pipeline companies meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and the Fish and Wildlife Service to discuss the project’s impact on the environment. The federal agencies then devise plans to minimize the environmental damage of construction.
“They might require them to tunnel underneath a stream or work when a stream is dry,” said Amy Mall, senior advocate at the NRDC.
“Every single site is unique.” Without these environmental protections, sediment and erosion can pollute the waterways, which can impact species living there.
Disruption of waterways by pipeline construction can also result in drinking water contamination, as it has in the case of the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Pennsylvania.
“You can have long term or permanent damage,” said Mall.
While some states may continue to require permits for waterways once they’re not subject to the federal law, others are unlikely to safeguard their own waterways from damage caused by pipeline construction. “We have no local protections,” Ashley Nicole McCray said of Oklahoma, which is home to one of the biggest pipeline hubs in the world. McCray, who ran for a spot on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission this year, has been raising concerns about the environmental impacts of the pipelines in her state.
“Because of the construction of so many pipelines, we’re losing traditional prairie lands and grasslands,” said McCray, who is a member of the Oglala Lakota nation. “The loss of land has serious impacts. When the vegetation is gone, the insects and animals that rely on it die, too. We’re seeing animals going extinct.”
The danger to endangered species is just one of the grounds on which environmentalists are likely to sue the government over the new rule once it comes out. Legal experts say that the rule may be stayed in parts of the country while the these questions are being hashed out.
Airlines ignoring efficient planes in blow to carbon targets – study
TUI Airways comes top of 2018 Atmosfair Airline Index while Virgin Atlantic ranks 83rd
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
the guardian
Sat 8 Dec 2018 06.00 EST
Airlines are failing to take up the most efficient planes in sufficient numbers to make a significant dent in their carbon dioxide emissions, a new study has found.
The most efficient new aircraft models, such as the Boeing 787-9 and Airbus A350-900 and A320neo, can achieve substantial carbon savings over older models, but no airlines have invested sufficiently in the new types to reach the top levels of energy efficiency, according to a ranking by Atmosfair, a German NGO.
In the annual Atmosfair Airline Index for 2018, published on Saturday, no airlines received an A for efficiency, and only two airlines were ranked in efficiency class B.
TUI Airways, the British holiday airline, came top of the rankings for the second year running, reaching just under 80% of the possible optimum level of carbon emissions. TUI Fly, the company’s German counterpart, came in fourth.
Atmosfair also found that only one in 10 airlines worldwide were succeeding in keeping their greenhouse gas emissions constant while achieving economic growth. Among these were Thai Airways, Finnair, American Airlines and All Nippon Airlines.
Dietrich Brockhagen, executive director of Atmosfair, said: “Our results show that the efficiency improvements of the vast majority of airlines worldwide is not sufficient [to keep within the] 2C or 1.5C target [of the Paris agreement]. We need new, synthetic and CO2-neutral fuels and other more radical measures to curb CO2 emissions in the sector.”
British Airways was placed at 74th, with an efficiency rating of D, behind companies such as Aeroflot and Aeromexico. It fell behind many of Europe’s other flag carriers, including Alitalia, Lufthansa, Air France, KLM and Iberia.
British Airways said: “We are committed to reducing our carbon emissions and have improved efficiency by more than 10% since 2008. We are well on course to deliver a 25% improvement in carbon emissions reduction by 2025. British Airways is the first airline in Europe to invest in building a plant to generate renewable jet fuel from household waste, and last week we kicked off a research project with some of the UK’s leading universities to find a way to power a long-haul aircraft with 300 customers on board with zero emissions.”
The company also pointed to a commitment by its parent group IAG to invest $400m (£313.6m) on alternative sustainable fuel development over the next 20 years.
Virgin Atlantic Airways ranks 83rd in the world, behind many airlines from developing countries such as Indonesia’s Garuda, Royal Air Maroc, Air India, and Thailand’s Eva Airways. This showing comes despite the much-publicised activities of Sir Richard Branson, Virgin’s chairman, in highlighting the risks of climate change.
Branson co-founded the Carbon War Room, which since 2009 has operated as a non-profit organisation aimed at speeding up the adoption of cleaner, low-emissions technology by businesses.
Virgin took issue with the report methodology, saying it misrepresented the airline. A spokeswoman added: “We have undertaken a massive renewal programme to replace our entire fleet over a 10 year period, switching from four-engine aircraft to much more efficient two-engine aircraft. As a result we have reduced our aircraft carbon emissions by 23.7% since 2007. Our carbon emissions will continue to reduce as we take delivery of more new aircraft over the next three years.”
Carbon emissions from airlines grew by about 5% last year, while the number of kilometres flown increased by 6%, according to Atmosfair, showing that much more needs to be done to ensure aviation does not take up an unsustainable amount of the world’s remaining “carbon budget”. Biofuels are being given trials as an alternative to fossil fuels for aviation, but these carry their own difficulties, not least the threat of deforestation. Virgin recently used recycled waste to fuel a flight, a potentially more environmentally sound alternative.
“You cannot beat physics, therefore long-haul flights will not be feasible with heavy batteries and electric engines,” said Brockhagen. “But you can produce carbon neutral kerosene synthetically, using carbon extracted from the air, water and green electricity. This is ready technologically, but 10 times more expensive per gallon than fossil kerosene. Who will invest the billions to scale this technology up? If airlines grouped together they could do it, but this would require an international spirit of cooperation over competition, so far rarely seen in the industry.”
There are also ways for airlines to reduce their emissions without resorting to new fuels and planes, through adjusting their pilots’ flying practices and small tweaks to planes. Some airlines look to offset their emissions through carbon reductions elsewhere.
A spokesman for Airlines UK, which represents the industry, said: “UK airlines are making enormous efforts to reduce their carbon emissions, and are committed to a global target to cut CO2 emissions from all flights by 50% of their 2005 levels by 2050, through technology, operational efficiency improvements and the use of sustainable biofuels. On top of this, in 2016 the International Civil Aviation Organization adopted the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation to address CO2 emissions from international aviation – a global first for any sector.”
The most efficient new aircraft models, such as the Boeing 787-9 and Airbus A350-900 and A320neo, can achieve substantial carbon savings over older models, but no airlines have invested sufficiently in the new types to reach the top levels of energy efficiency, according to a ranking by Atmosfair, a German NGO.
In the annual Atmosfair Airline Index for 2018, published on Saturday, no airlines received an A for efficiency, and only two airlines were ranked in efficiency class B.
TUI Airways, the British holiday airline, came top of the rankings for the second year running, reaching just under 80% of the possible optimum level of carbon emissions. TUI Fly, the company’s German counterpart, came in fourth.
Atmosfair also found that only one in 10 airlines worldwide were succeeding in keeping their greenhouse gas emissions constant while achieving economic growth. Among these were Thai Airways, Finnair, American Airlines and All Nippon Airlines.
Dietrich Brockhagen, executive director of Atmosfair, said: “Our results show that the efficiency improvements of the vast majority of airlines worldwide is not sufficient [to keep within the] 2C or 1.5C target [of the Paris agreement]. We need new, synthetic and CO2-neutral fuels and other more radical measures to curb CO2 emissions in the sector.”
British Airways was placed at 74th, with an efficiency rating of D, behind companies such as Aeroflot and Aeromexico. It fell behind many of Europe’s other flag carriers, including Alitalia, Lufthansa, Air France, KLM and Iberia.
British Airways said: “We are committed to reducing our carbon emissions and have improved efficiency by more than 10% since 2008. We are well on course to deliver a 25% improvement in carbon emissions reduction by 2025. British Airways is the first airline in Europe to invest in building a plant to generate renewable jet fuel from household waste, and last week we kicked off a research project with some of the UK’s leading universities to find a way to power a long-haul aircraft with 300 customers on board with zero emissions.”
The company also pointed to a commitment by its parent group IAG to invest $400m (£313.6m) on alternative sustainable fuel development over the next 20 years.
Virgin Atlantic Airways ranks 83rd in the world, behind many airlines from developing countries such as Indonesia’s Garuda, Royal Air Maroc, Air India, and Thailand’s Eva Airways. This showing comes despite the much-publicised activities of Sir Richard Branson, Virgin’s chairman, in highlighting the risks of climate change.
Branson co-founded the Carbon War Room, which since 2009 has operated as a non-profit organisation aimed at speeding up the adoption of cleaner, low-emissions technology by businesses.
Virgin took issue with the report methodology, saying it misrepresented the airline. A spokeswoman added: “We have undertaken a massive renewal programme to replace our entire fleet over a 10 year period, switching from four-engine aircraft to much more efficient two-engine aircraft. As a result we have reduced our aircraft carbon emissions by 23.7% since 2007. Our carbon emissions will continue to reduce as we take delivery of more new aircraft over the next three years.”
Carbon emissions from airlines grew by about 5% last year, while the number of kilometres flown increased by 6%, according to Atmosfair, showing that much more needs to be done to ensure aviation does not take up an unsustainable amount of the world’s remaining “carbon budget”. Biofuels are being given trials as an alternative to fossil fuels for aviation, but these carry their own difficulties, not least the threat of deforestation. Virgin recently used recycled waste to fuel a flight, a potentially more environmentally sound alternative.
“You cannot beat physics, therefore long-haul flights will not be feasible with heavy batteries and electric engines,” said Brockhagen. “But you can produce carbon neutral kerosene synthetically, using carbon extracted from the air, water and green electricity. This is ready technologically, but 10 times more expensive per gallon than fossil kerosene. Who will invest the billions to scale this technology up? If airlines grouped together they could do it, but this would require an international spirit of cooperation over competition, so far rarely seen in the industry.”
There are also ways for airlines to reduce their emissions without resorting to new fuels and planes, through adjusting their pilots’ flying practices and small tweaks to planes. Some airlines look to offset their emissions through carbon reductions elsewhere.
A spokesman for Airlines UK, which represents the industry, said: “UK airlines are making enormous efforts to reduce their carbon emissions, and are committed to a global target to cut CO2 emissions from all flights by 50% of their 2005 levels by 2050, through technology, operational efficiency improvements and the use of sustainable biofuels. On top of this, in 2016 the International Civil Aviation Organization adopted the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation to address CO2 emissions from international aviation – a global first for any sector.”
EPA’S NEW WATER RULE WILL GUT THE CLEAN WATER ACT
Sharon Lerner - the intercept
December 7 2018, 9:01 a.m.
A NEW WATER rule will greatly reduce federal water protections, imperiling drinking water, endangered species, and ecosystems across the country. According to the rule that the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release next week — some details of which were leaked Thursday — streams that are dependent on rainfall and wetlands not physically connected to year-round waterways will no longer be covered by the Clean Water Act.
As a result of the change, an estimated 60-90 percent of U.S. waterways could lose federal protections that currently shield them from pollution and development, according to Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Alaska and the arid west will be hit particularly hard by the new rule, which will be subject to a comment period before it is finalized.
Environmentalists are bracing for what they predict will be disastrous consequences for our nation’s waterways. “For some parts of the country, it’s a complete wiping away of the Clean Water Act,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
By removing water quality standards and permitting requirements, the rule will open these streams, rivers, and wetlands to being paved over, filled in, or polluted. The result, environmentalists say, may take us back to the days of river fires. “You’ll be able to dump as much crap into them as you want,” Hartl said of our nation’s waterways. “Anyone will be free to destroy them as they see fit.”
Rivers of Fire
Jane Goodman had just graduated from high school when the Cuyahoga River caught fire in June 1969. The river fire focused attention on the extent to which Americans had fouled their waterways and is widely seen as the final indignity that spurred Congress to pass the Clean Water Act.
But for Goodman, who grew up in a suburb of Akron, Ohio, not far from the Cuyahoga, the blaze barely registered. She had always known the river, which flows north from Akron into Cleveland and from there into Lake Erie, to be coated with a slick of oil and floating debris. Heavy pollution was the norm back then. The water, which made downtown Cleveland smell like a giant septic tank, was often the color of whatever paint the Sherwin-Williams company happened to be cleaning out of its tanks. The Cuyahoga had caught fire at least nine times before that day, which explains why Goodman hadn’t thought much of the 1969 fire. She couldn’t remember the river when it wasn’t flammable.
Yet something about that particular moment turned into a national environmental turning point. Just months after a Time magazine story about the fire described the Cuyahoga as a giant cesspool — “chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases” — Americans reached a collective limit when it came to abusing their waterways. The next year saw the founding of the EPA and the country’s first Earth Day. Two years after that, Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto to pass the Clean Water Act. For the first time, the country had national water quality standards and significant restrictions on what industry could dump into rivers and streams.
The new Trump administration rule imposes the most substantial restrictions on the Clean Water Act since its passage in 1972. Over the last decades, the law has succeeded in removing the most offensive pollution from the nation’s waterways. The floating human excrement is mostlygone, as are the putrid stenches, and rivers rarely flow in day-glow colors or with so much industrial waste that they pose fire hazards. PCBs and DDT are no longer freely dumped into rivers and streams, as they were before the law took effect.
But many of the less obvious water problems remain. “You only see the surface,” said Goodman, who is now the executive director of Cuyahoga River Restoration and has spent the past 12 years fighting to improve that waterway. “River restoration is like an onion,” said Goodman. “As soon as you fix those problems, that peels away the top layer. But then underneath it is a different layer.”
Indeed, there are many areas in which the law was not so successful. The drafters of the Clean Water Act set the goal of stopping all pollution discharges by 1985 and making all waterways fishable and swimmable. “It’s completely failed in that area,” said Daniel Estrin, general counsel and advocacy director at Waterkeeper Alliance.
To make matters worse, the number of contaminants in water has ballooned in the intervening years. The Environmental Working Group recently surveyed states and found 267 contaminants in drinking water across the country, 93 of which were associated with cancer risk. Many more chemicals that end up in water, including certain members of the class known as PFAS, have yet to be identified, let alone regulated.
The result is a water pollution crisis that is still dire, if less visible. Today, the Cuyahoga is one of 43 contaminated sites deemed official areas of concern in the Great Lakes basin alone. Among the environmental threats it faces are bacteria, storm water runoff, hazardous waste disposal sites, sewer overflows, and warming due to climate change.
While the Cuyahoga, along with all other navigable waterways and their tributaries, will still be protected by federal law, any wetlands not directly connected to them by surface waters will not be.
“Just about all of our tributary streams have wetlands that serve them by holding and filtering the water before it gets to the stream,” said Goodman. “Now, if someone wants to build something between the wetland and the receiving stream, there’s nothing to stop them.”
Goodman said that by lifting the protections for certain waterways, the administration was disregarding the science that shows their interconnectedness. “It’s like keeping protections for your kitchen sink and the sewer in the street and taking them away from all the plumbing in between.”
Ohio currently has its own water protections in place that may continue to protect the Cuyahoga. But with the removal of federal protections and the recent election of a Republican governor, Goodman worries that the state may no longer be as committed to protecting water. “We don’t know if local communities are going to protect their piece of the watershed or if they’ll be able to,” she said.
Even before the new rule goes into effect, more than half of the waterways in the U.S. are officially impaired, according to EPA data. The majority of the more than 1 million miles of rivers and streams that have been assessed violate federal water quality standards — as do more than 70 percent of ponds, lakes, and reservoirs, and almost 80 percent of the bays and estuaries that have been assessed. Of the 4,460 miles of monitored Great Lakes shoreline, 98 percent is contaminated, as are virtually all the Great Lakes’ open waters, which now contain PCBs, dioxin, mercury, pesticides, and other pollutants.
Yet by easing the public’s concerns about water quality, the visible improvements made possible by the Clean Water Act have ironically paved the way for the new rule that will further increase pollution.
“The Clean Water Act succeeded just enough to doom itself,” said Estrin, whose organization helps people across the country contend with coal ash leaks, chemical spills, algal blooms, drinking water contamination, and all matter of water crises. “The rollback will take us backward. And most people don’t remember just how bad that was.”
As a result of the change, an estimated 60-90 percent of U.S. waterways could lose federal protections that currently shield them from pollution and development, according to Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Alaska and the arid west will be hit particularly hard by the new rule, which will be subject to a comment period before it is finalized.
Environmentalists are bracing for what they predict will be disastrous consequences for our nation’s waterways. “For some parts of the country, it’s a complete wiping away of the Clean Water Act,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
By removing water quality standards and permitting requirements, the rule will open these streams, rivers, and wetlands to being paved over, filled in, or polluted. The result, environmentalists say, may take us back to the days of river fires. “You’ll be able to dump as much crap into them as you want,” Hartl said of our nation’s waterways. “Anyone will be free to destroy them as they see fit.”
Rivers of Fire
Jane Goodman had just graduated from high school when the Cuyahoga River caught fire in June 1969. The river fire focused attention on the extent to which Americans had fouled their waterways and is widely seen as the final indignity that spurred Congress to pass the Clean Water Act.
But for Goodman, who grew up in a suburb of Akron, Ohio, not far from the Cuyahoga, the blaze barely registered. She had always known the river, which flows north from Akron into Cleveland and from there into Lake Erie, to be coated with a slick of oil and floating debris. Heavy pollution was the norm back then. The water, which made downtown Cleveland smell like a giant septic tank, was often the color of whatever paint the Sherwin-Williams company happened to be cleaning out of its tanks. The Cuyahoga had caught fire at least nine times before that day, which explains why Goodman hadn’t thought much of the 1969 fire. She couldn’t remember the river when it wasn’t flammable.
Yet something about that particular moment turned into a national environmental turning point. Just months after a Time magazine story about the fire described the Cuyahoga as a giant cesspool — “chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases” — Americans reached a collective limit when it came to abusing their waterways. The next year saw the founding of the EPA and the country’s first Earth Day. Two years after that, Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto to pass the Clean Water Act. For the first time, the country had national water quality standards and significant restrictions on what industry could dump into rivers and streams.
The new Trump administration rule imposes the most substantial restrictions on the Clean Water Act since its passage in 1972. Over the last decades, the law has succeeded in removing the most offensive pollution from the nation’s waterways. The floating human excrement is mostlygone, as are the putrid stenches, and rivers rarely flow in day-glow colors or with so much industrial waste that they pose fire hazards. PCBs and DDT are no longer freely dumped into rivers and streams, as they were before the law took effect.
But many of the less obvious water problems remain. “You only see the surface,” said Goodman, who is now the executive director of Cuyahoga River Restoration and has spent the past 12 years fighting to improve that waterway. “River restoration is like an onion,” said Goodman. “As soon as you fix those problems, that peels away the top layer. But then underneath it is a different layer.”
Indeed, there are many areas in which the law was not so successful. The drafters of the Clean Water Act set the goal of stopping all pollution discharges by 1985 and making all waterways fishable and swimmable. “It’s completely failed in that area,” said Daniel Estrin, general counsel and advocacy director at Waterkeeper Alliance.
To make matters worse, the number of contaminants in water has ballooned in the intervening years. The Environmental Working Group recently surveyed states and found 267 contaminants in drinking water across the country, 93 of which were associated with cancer risk. Many more chemicals that end up in water, including certain members of the class known as PFAS, have yet to be identified, let alone regulated.
The result is a water pollution crisis that is still dire, if less visible. Today, the Cuyahoga is one of 43 contaminated sites deemed official areas of concern in the Great Lakes basin alone. Among the environmental threats it faces are bacteria, storm water runoff, hazardous waste disposal sites, sewer overflows, and warming due to climate change.
While the Cuyahoga, along with all other navigable waterways and their tributaries, will still be protected by federal law, any wetlands not directly connected to them by surface waters will not be.
“Just about all of our tributary streams have wetlands that serve them by holding and filtering the water before it gets to the stream,” said Goodman. “Now, if someone wants to build something between the wetland and the receiving stream, there’s nothing to stop them.”
Goodman said that by lifting the protections for certain waterways, the administration was disregarding the science that shows their interconnectedness. “It’s like keeping protections for your kitchen sink and the sewer in the street and taking them away from all the plumbing in between.”
Ohio currently has its own water protections in place that may continue to protect the Cuyahoga. But with the removal of federal protections and the recent election of a Republican governor, Goodman worries that the state may no longer be as committed to protecting water. “We don’t know if local communities are going to protect their piece of the watershed or if they’ll be able to,” she said.
Even before the new rule goes into effect, more than half of the waterways in the U.S. are officially impaired, according to EPA data. The majority of the more than 1 million miles of rivers and streams that have been assessed violate federal water quality standards — as do more than 70 percent of ponds, lakes, and reservoirs, and almost 80 percent of the bays and estuaries that have been assessed. Of the 4,460 miles of monitored Great Lakes shoreline, 98 percent is contaminated, as are virtually all the Great Lakes’ open waters, which now contain PCBs, dioxin, mercury, pesticides, and other pollutants.
Yet by easing the public’s concerns about water quality, the visible improvements made possible by the Clean Water Act have ironically paved the way for the new rule that will further increase pollution.
“The Clean Water Act succeeded just enough to doom itself,” said Estrin, whose organization helps people across the country contend with coal ash leaks, chemical spills, algal blooms, drinking water contamination, and all matter of water crises. “The rollback will take us backward. And most people don’t remember just how bad that was.”
More Crap From The Trump Administration
The U.S. Geological Survey Can’t Figure Out that Pig Poop Is Fouling Arkansas’s Scenic Buffalo River
By Sarah Okeson -dc report
12/5/18
Our nation’s first national river, the Buffalo River in Arkansas, was befouled last summer by algae that sickened people, but the U.S. Geological Survey under Trump can’t decide if a nearby pig farm and more than 3 million gallons of pig waste each year are to blame.
Biologist Billy Justus said the agency doesn’t have the funding to do the research to figure out whose pollution caused the algae to grow.
“If there’s more money, we’d love it,” Justus said.
Cousins Jason Henson, Philip Campbell and Richard Campbell own C&H Hog Farms which was awarded an operating permit by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in 2012. The state recently denied the business a new permit, but the farm is continuing to operate while it fights that decision.
The hog farm supplies the U.S. operations of JBS SA, the world’s largest meat processor. In Brazil, police recently arrested a controlling shareholder of the firm in connection with an investigation into illegal campaign contributions.
Former President Richard Nixon signed legislation in 1972 putting the Buffalo River in the stewardship of the National Park Service. The river runs for 153 miles from its start in the Boston Mountains through limestone bluffs and forests before joining the White River. People were baptized in the Buffalo River. Tourists hike along the Buffalo or kayak on it.
Former NASA astronaut Jim Reilly was confirmed by the Senate in April to lead the U.S. Geological Survey.
The Trump administration’s lack of interest in determining whether pig shit is contaminating our nation’s first national river is just one more example of Trump and his administration coddling up to polluters. Trump shrunk Bears Ears National Monument in Utah which could be explored for oil drilling and wants to lease 2.85 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.
“People swim, fish, and paddle in the Buffalo River, and may be subject to contact with untreated swine waste,” said Dane Schumacher of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance.
The hog farm is on Big Creek near Mount Judea in Newton County, 6.6 miles upstream of the Buffalo River. The liquefied manure is temporarily stored in holding ponds before workers spray it on fields.
The Buffalo River area is riddled with caves and sinkholes in land that water flows easily through. Many Newton County residents get their drinking water from wells.
Scientists injected dye into wells near the hog farm and found the ground was so porous that the colored water flowed into sinkholes and then beneath the Buffalo River and also migrated upstream.
Biologist Billy Justus said the agency doesn’t have the funding to do the research to figure out whose pollution caused the algae to grow.
“If there’s more money, we’d love it,” Justus said.
Cousins Jason Henson, Philip Campbell and Richard Campbell own C&H Hog Farms which was awarded an operating permit by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in 2012. The state recently denied the business a new permit, but the farm is continuing to operate while it fights that decision.
The hog farm supplies the U.S. operations of JBS SA, the world’s largest meat processor. In Brazil, police recently arrested a controlling shareholder of the firm in connection with an investigation into illegal campaign contributions.
Former President Richard Nixon signed legislation in 1972 putting the Buffalo River in the stewardship of the National Park Service. The river runs for 153 miles from its start in the Boston Mountains through limestone bluffs and forests before joining the White River. People were baptized in the Buffalo River. Tourists hike along the Buffalo or kayak on it.
Former NASA astronaut Jim Reilly was confirmed by the Senate in April to lead the U.S. Geological Survey.
The Trump administration’s lack of interest in determining whether pig shit is contaminating our nation’s first national river is just one more example of Trump and his administration coddling up to polluters. Trump shrunk Bears Ears National Monument in Utah which could be explored for oil drilling and wants to lease 2.85 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.
“People swim, fish, and paddle in the Buffalo River, and may be subject to contact with untreated swine waste,” said Dane Schumacher of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance.
The hog farm is on Big Creek near Mount Judea in Newton County, 6.6 miles upstream of the Buffalo River. The liquefied manure is temporarily stored in holding ponds before workers spray it on fields.
The Buffalo River area is riddled with caves and sinkholes in land that water flows easily through. Many Newton County residents get their drinking water from wells.
Scientists injected dye into wells near the hog farm and found the ground was so porous that the colored water flowed into sinkholes and then beneath the Buffalo River and also migrated upstream.
Trump officials accused of using deadly wildfires to boost logging
Interior secretary Ryan Zinke says he hopes new laws will end environmental reviews and allow ‘thinning’ of forests
Oliver Milman in Paradise, California
the guardian
Wed 28 Nov 2018 01.00 EST
The Trump administration has been accused of using the deadly wildfires in California to push for weakened environmental rules in forests, opening them up for more logging.
Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, said that he hoped new legislation would allow for the “thinning” of forests to help prevent wildfires. He said he was confident Congress would soon pass a new farm bill that would remove environmental reviews for the removal of trees and brush, as well as the building of roads through federal forests.
“We have to manage our forests,” said Zinke on a visit to the charred remains of Paradise, a town in northern California that has been razed by the so-called Camp fire. The death toll from the fire stands at 88, making it the deadliest in California’s history.
“It shouldn’t be as hard; sometimes it is,” Zinke said of forest management. “I think our practices over the period have ended up to where we are today. Maybe this is the time to take a horrendous experience like this, and move things along to where we don’t have to do this year after year. It’s unacceptable.”
Zinke was joined on the Paradise tour by Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, who also backs greater intervention in forests. “People say they want pristine forests – well, this doesn’t look pristine to me,” Perdue said, referencing the ashy remains of Paradise. “Pristine is well-managed, groomed forests.”
But environmentalists claimed that the administration, led by Trump, who has blamed “gross mismanagement of the forests”, was using the fire to pave the way for more logging on federal land, with potentially disastrous results.
“Donald Trump and Ryan Zinke are being dangerously dishonest,” said Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist who was involved in a major 2016 study that found that logged areas with lower environmental protections have the most intense, fast-moving fires.
“They are trying to use this tragedy to help logging interests, which is one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen in my career. They are trying to eliminate half a century of environmental protections and turn over forests to the logging industry.”
Since 2011, an area east of Paradise has been set aside for logging, with the Camp fire racing through it rather than slowing down. Instead of selectively eliminating flammable fuel from the forest, “thinning” usually involves removing trees and leaving behind debris and invasive weeds that are actually far more effective at spreading fires, Hanson said.
“Zinke and Perdue are pushing extreme logging provisions that experts say won’t protect Californians from these blazes,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Their so-called solutions could actually worsen wildfire risk. It’s misleading and dangerous to give people a false sense of security that they can log their way out of this, especially in the face of climate change.”
Fire experts have backed a variety of measures, such as allowing remote fires to burn, making buildings more fire resistant and widening roads, as a way to reduce wildfires. Zinke has also backed many of these reforms, as well as improving evacuation routes, and claimed his concept of forest management has been mischaracterized.
“It’s not clear-cutting, it’s coming in and thinning those forests,” Zinke said on Monday. “Logging has become a pejorative term of just massive hillsides of clear-cutting, and that’s not what we’re talking about. That’s not what producing fuel load is all about.”
The Trump administration is less enthusiastic about addressing the link between climate change and wildfires, an influence made clear in a major federal government climate report released last week that warned the area burned annually in the western US could increase by up to six times by the middle of the century due to rising temperatures.
Asked by the Guardian about whether the wildfires would make the administration rethink its reversal of climate regulations, Zinke demurred.
“We’ll go through it with a fine-tooth comb,” he said of the climate report. “I think we’ll look at all things considered. We’re gonna to look at the report, seriously. I’ve asked the US Geological Survey, for example, the last hundred years, tell me what the sea level has risen? In 20 years. Do you know?
“Regardless of whether you believe or don’t believe in climate change, it doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility of mitigating destruction of these fires.”
Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, said that he hoped new legislation would allow for the “thinning” of forests to help prevent wildfires. He said he was confident Congress would soon pass a new farm bill that would remove environmental reviews for the removal of trees and brush, as well as the building of roads through federal forests.
“We have to manage our forests,” said Zinke on a visit to the charred remains of Paradise, a town in northern California that has been razed by the so-called Camp fire. The death toll from the fire stands at 88, making it the deadliest in California’s history.
“It shouldn’t be as hard; sometimes it is,” Zinke said of forest management. “I think our practices over the period have ended up to where we are today. Maybe this is the time to take a horrendous experience like this, and move things along to where we don’t have to do this year after year. It’s unacceptable.”
Zinke was joined on the Paradise tour by Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, who also backs greater intervention in forests. “People say they want pristine forests – well, this doesn’t look pristine to me,” Perdue said, referencing the ashy remains of Paradise. “Pristine is well-managed, groomed forests.”
But environmentalists claimed that the administration, led by Trump, who has blamed “gross mismanagement of the forests”, was using the fire to pave the way for more logging on federal land, with potentially disastrous results.
“Donald Trump and Ryan Zinke are being dangerously dishonest,” said Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist who was involved in a major 2016 study that found that logged areas with lower environmental protections have the most intense, fast-moving fires.
“They are trying to use this tragedy to help logging interests, which is one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen in my career. They are trying to eliminate half a century of environmental protections and turn over forests to the logging industry.”
Since 2011, an area east of Paradise has been set aside for logging, with the Camp fire racing through it rather than slowing down. Instead of selectively eliminating flammable fuel from the forest, “thinning” usually involves removing trees and leaving behind debris and invasive weeds that are actually far more effective at spreading fires, Hanson said.
“Zinke and Perdue are pushing extreme logging provisions that experts say won’t protect Californians from these blazes,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Their so-called solutions could actually worsen wildfire risk. It’s misleading and dangerous to give people a false sense of security that they can log their way out of this, especially in the face of climate change.”
Fire experts have backed a variety of measures, such as allowing remote fires to burn, making buildings more fire resistant and widening roads, as a way to reduce wildfires. Zinke has also backed many of these reforms, as well as improving evacuation routes, and claimed his concept of forest management has been mischaracterized.
“It’s not clear-cutting, it’s coming in and thinning those forests,” Zinke said on Monday. “Logging has become a pejorative term of just massive hillsides of clear-cutting, and that’s not what we’re talking about. That’s not what producing fuel load is all about.”
The Trump administration is less enthusiastic about addressing the link between climate change and wildfires, an influence made clear in a major federal government climate report released last week that warned the area burned annually in the western US could increase by up to six times by the middle of the century due to rising temperatures.
Asked by the Guardian about whether the wildfires would make the administration rethink its reversal of climate regulations, Zinke demurred.
“We’ll go through it with a fine-tooth comb,” he said of the climate report. “I think we’ll look at all things considered. We’re gonna to look at the report, seriously. I’ve asked the US Geological Survey, for example, the last hundred years, tell me what the sea level has risen? In 20 years. Do you know?
“Regardless of whether you believe or don’t believe in climate change, it doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility of mitigating destruction of these fires.”
EPA PLANS TO ROLL BACK WATER PROTECTIONS DESPITE CLIMATE CHANGE WARNINGS
Sharon Lerner - the intercept
November 27 2018, 7:59 a.m.
WHILE ONE BRANCH of the U.S. government issued a report last week outlining the grave threats posed by climate change, another branch was preparing a rollback of water protections that will further exacerbate some of the climate-related problems laid out in the report.
“Water security in the United States is increasingly in jeopardy” warn the authors of the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Issued the day after Thanksgiving, the 1,656-page report was written by a team of more than 300 experts from the government and the private sector, and looks at the wide-ranging impacts of climate change already underway, including its effects on air quality, forests, coasts, transportation, and agriculture.
The report details the role that climate change, including increasing temperatures and more variable precipitation, has played in water quality crises across the country, such as outbreaks of harmful algae in Lake Erie, the reductions of the Pacific salmon population in the Northwest, and droughts in California. In many parts of the country, particularly the Southwest, groundwater has been seriously depleted, causing some rivers and streams to run dry for part of the year.
Yet the Trump administration is poised to issue a regulatory rollback that will make this already alarming situation much worse. The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release a rule replacing water protections for many waterways across the U.S. The new rule, based on an executive order Donald Trump issued in February 2017, will likely take federal protections away from these tributary rivers, streams, and wetlands that are seasonal and rain-dependent.
Though a growing number of waterways may run only a few months a year, such streams and rivers impact 58 percent of the drinking water in the continental United States, supplying more than 117 million people, according to EPA calculations.
The deregulation of seasonal waterways could also worsen flooding. The water rule put in place in 2015 by the Obama administration, now in effect in 22 states, deters the development of streams and rivers, which absorb rainwater, runoff, and pollution during storms. But without the federal protections, these waters may be more easily filled in and paved over.
Proponents of the rollback, which include oil and gas companies, real estate developers, big agriculture, and the mining industry, have insisted for years that regulating seasonal waterways amounts to government overreach. The oft-repeated industry argument was that the 2015 rule, which sought to clarify which waters were subject to the Clean Water Act, would have applied to a mud puddle, as the Waters Advocacy Coalition, an industry group that has spent more than $1 million on lobbying, has argued.
But scientists say that even if they run only intermittently, seasonal waterways wind up affecting entire watersheds. “When they do run, that water goes downstream to lakes to larger rivers and streams that we do care about because they’re sources of drinking water,” said Daniel Allen, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Oklahoma, who is among a growing group of researchers who study seasonal streams.
“We’re just beginning to understand how they contribute to water quality downstream,” said Allen. “And now we’re taking that away before we have even figured out how to manage them more effectively.”
Meanwhile, our prospective weather forecast is hotter, drier — and scarier. We’re already seeing dramatic changes in climate compared to the last century, according to the report. “Paleoclimate analyses and climate projections suggest persistent droughts and wet periods over the continental United States that are longer, cover more area, and are more intense than what was experienced in the 20th century. An evolving future, which can only be partially anticipated, adds to this risk.”
One thing seems clear: Climate change will further threaten our water. Higher temperatures will continue to increase the need for water, both because of human consumption and greater evaporation in farming. And that need will cause more people to tap into groundwater, which is already heavily depleted in parts of the country. Eventually, the report states, “increased future demand due to warming could exceed future supply in some locations.”
Asked about the climate assessment, which predicted that climate change will have severe impacts on the economy, Trump said “I don’t believe it.”
For those who do believe the science and are interested in mitigating the coming disaster, the report also includes a detailed road map for water management that recommends planning for a wide range of possible future climate conditions. The authors recommended updating policies using the best available science. Yet we’ll soon see the EPA do just the opposite.
“Water security in the United States is increasingly in jeopardy” warn the authors of the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Issued the day after Thanksgiving, the 1,656-page report was written by a team of more than 300 experts from the government and the private sector, and looks at the wide-ranging impacts of climate change already underway, including its effects on air quality, forests, coasts, transportation, and agriculture.
The report details the role that climate change, including increasing temperatures and more variable precipitation, has played in water quality crises across the country, such as outbreaks of harmful algae in Lake Erie, the reductions of the Pacific salmon population in the Northwest, and droughts in California. In many parts of the country, particularly the Southwest, groundwater has been seriously depleted, causing some rivers and streams to run dry for part of the year.
Yet the Trump administration is poised to issue a regulatory rollback that will make this already alarming situation much worse. The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release a rule replacing water protections for many waterways across the U.S. The new rule, based on an executive order Donald Trump issued in February 2017, will likely take federal protections away from these tributary rivers, streams, and wetlands that are seasonal and rain-dependent.
Though a growing number of waterways may run only a few months a year, such streams and rivers impact 58 percent of the drinking water in the continental United States, supplying more than 117 million people, according to EPA calculations.
The deregulation of seasonal waterways could also worsen flooding. The water rule put in place in 2015 by the Obama administration, now in effect in 22 states, deters the development of streams and rivers, which absorb rainwater, runoff, and pollution during storms. But without the federal protections, these waters may be more easily filled in and paved over.
Proponents of the rollback, which include oil and gas companies, real estate developers, big agriculture, and the mining industry, have insisted for years that regulating seasonal waterways amounts to government overreach. The oft-repeated industry argument was that the 2015 rule, which sought to clarify which waters were subject to the Clean Water Act, would have applied to a mud puddle, as the Waters Advocacy Coalition, an industry group that has spent more than $1 million on lobbying, has argued.
But scientists say that even if they run only intermittently, seasonal waterways wind up affecting entire watersheds. “When they do run, that water goes downstream to lakes to larger rivers and streams that we do care about because they’re sources of drinking water,” said Daniel Allen, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Oklahoma, who is among a growing group of researchers who study seasonal streams.
“We’re just beginning to understand how they contribute to water quality downstream,” said Allen. “And now we’re taking that away before we have even figured out how to manage them more effectively.”
Meanwhile, our prospective weather forecast is hotter, drier — and scarier. We’re already seeing dramatic changes in climate compared to the last century, according to the report. “Paleoclimate analyses and climate projections suggest persistent droughts and wet periods over the continental United States that are longer, cover more area, and are more intense than what was experienced in the 20th century. An evolving future, which can only be partially anticipated, adds to this risk.”
One thing seems clear: Climate change will further threaten our water. Higher temperatures will continue to increase the need for water, both because of human consumption and greater evaporation in farming. And that need will cause more people to tap into groundwater, which is already heavily depleted in parts of the country. Eventually, the report states, “increased future demand due to warming could exceed future supply in some locations.”
Asked about the climate assessment, which predicted that climate change will have severe impacts on the economy, Trump said “I don’t believe it.”
For those who do believe the science and are interested in mitigating the coming disaster, the report also includes a detailed road map for water management that recommends planning for a wide range of possible future climate conditions. The authors recommended updating policies using the best available science. Yet we’ll soon see the EPA do just the opposite.
We Can Fight Climate Change and Still Eat Beef
How grass-fed cattle can sequester carbon and rebuild soil.
BY PAIGE STANLEY - in these times
NOVEMBER 21, 2018
Meat has received a renewed wave of scrutiny from environmentalists since the October UN climate change report. Beef is painted especially poorly in this narrative, with claims that cattle disrupt the climate, destroy ecosystems, drive deforestation and make us unhealthy all at once.
Campaigns such as “Meatless Monday” and “Eat Less Meat” advocate for individual consumption changes to reduce agriculture’s impact. But that solution is too simplistic: Not all animal agriculture is made the same. Greenhouse gas emissions from beef vary by geographic region, production system and even management practices within these systems. While some practices are harmful, others can be good for the environment, provide important nutrients and even sequester carbon in soil, helping fight climate change. “How” these animals are produced is at least as important as “how much.”
Cattle production in the United States happens primarily in two ways: on grass or on grain. All cattle start out grazing on pasture or rangeland; “grass-fed” keep grazing until sent to slaughter, but most U.S. beef cattle spend the end of their lives in feedlots, where they are fed grain to spur rapid weight gain. As you can imagine, the two systems’ environmental impacts can be very different.
Beef from grain-fed cattle is well known to be detrimental. Feedlots are some of the worst water polluters (including contaminating water from manure lagoons), and contribute to antibiotic resistance and poor air quality.
Feedlots—roughly tied with ethanol--command more U.S.-grown grain than any other use, exacerbating the negative impacts of industrial, commodity crop production, including intense soil erosion, high greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen leaching. In many ways, the problem is the corn, not the cow.
By contrast, a growing body of research shows that grassfed beef from sustainable grazing systems can sequester substantial soil carbon (offsetting some or most of the emissions), maintain wildlife habitats, improve water filtration and produce healthy food from otherwise unusable land—most grazing land can’t be used for other crops. Because so much land is used to grow grain for cattle, moving toward grassbased systems could free up one-quarter of all arable land on Earth for producing crops directly for human consumption, for rewilding, or for other purposes. And grass-fed beef can be a critical component of healthy diets: One study from Virginia Tech and USDA scientists even suggests that, without animals, our food supply would be “incapable of supporting the U.S. population’s nutritional requirements.”
But if grass-fed systems offer so many benefits, why do some studies say otherwise? Partly, it’s because we haven’t been studying beef production holistically. By focusing only on greenhouse gas emissions, we ignore all other ecosystem services that arise from these practices—for example, increasing soil health and resistance to droughts and floods. Many studies only look at systems where cattle continuously graze the same land, which can lead to overgrazing, soil erosion and high methane emissions.
By contrast, well-managed rotational grazing systems are designed to mimic the natural migratory patterns of ruminants that evolved along with grass and rangeland ecosystems. The animals are grazed intensely and moved quickly, which prevents overgrazing, increases production, lowers emissions, sequesters more carbon and is done without any of the pesticides, fertilizers or tillage used in conventional crop production.
The historical conversion of grass and rangeland ecosystems for cropping, and displacement of native grazing animals on these lands, has destroyed topsoil and released huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It doesn’t make sense not to restore the use of cattle (or other ruminants), as it can rebuild lost soil carbon, on marginal land at a very low opportunity cost.
If we’re really going to step up to the climate challenge, the U.S. government needs to separate itself from the influence of agribusiness and—among other things—roll back the commodity corn subsidies that sustain high levels of industrial meat production. Instead of telling people simply to eat less beef, it would be better to tell them not to eat grain-fed beef. Animals can play an integral role in sustainable agriculture.
RELATED: Climate-Friendly Beef Is a Myth. Don’t Buy It.
RELATED: Anything Cows Can Do, Elk Can Do Better
Campaigns such as “Meatless Monday” and “Eat Less Meat” advocate for individual consumption changes to reduce agriculture’s impact. But that solution is too simplistic: Not all animal agriculture is made the same. Greenhouse gas emissions from beef vary by geographic region, production system and even management practices within these systems. While some practices are harmful, others can be good for the environment, provide important nutrients and even sequester carbon in soil, helping fight climate change. “How” these animals are produced is at least as important as “how much.”
Cattle production in the United States happens primarily in two ways: on grass or on grain. All cattle start out grazing on pasture or rangeland; “grass-fed” keep grazing until sent to slaughter, but most U.S. beef cattle spend the end of their lives in feedlots, where they are fed grain to spur rapid weight gain. As you can imagine, the two systems’ environmental impacts can be very different.
Beef from grain-fed cattle is well known to be detrimental. Feedlots are some of the worst water polluters (including contaminating water from manure lagoons), and contribute to antibiotic resistance and poor air quality.
Feedlots—roughly tied with ethanol--command more U.S.-grown grain than any other use, exacerbating the negative impacts of industrial, commodity crop production, including intense soil erosion, high greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen leaching. In many ways, the problem is the corn, not the cow.
By contrast, a growing body of research shows that grassfed beef from sustainable grazing systems can sequester substantial soil carbon (offsetting some or most of the emissions), maintain wildlife habitats, improve water filtration and produce healthy food from otherwise unusable land—most grazing land can’t be used for other crops. Because so much land is used to grow grain for cattle, moving toward grassbased systems could free up one-quarter of all arable land on Earth for producing crops directly for human consumption, for rewilding, or for other purposes. And grass-fed beef can be a critical component of healthy diets: One study from Virginia Tech and USDA scientists even suggests that, without animals, our food supply would be “incapable of supporting the U.S. population’s nutritional requirements.”
But if grass-fed systems offer so many benefits, why do some studies say otherwise? Partly, it’s because we haven’t been studying beef production holistically. By focusing only on greenhouse gas emissions, we ignore all other ecosystem services that arise from these practices—for example, increasing soil health and resistance to droughts and floods. Many studies only look at systems where cattle continuously graze the same land, which can lead to overgrazing, soil erosion and high methane emissions.
By contrast, well-managed rotational grazing systems are designed to mimic the natural migratory patterns of ruminants that evolved along with grass and rangeland ecosystems. The animals are grazed intensely and moved quickly, which prevents overgrazing, increases production, lowers emissions, sequesters more carbon and is done without any of the pesticides, fertilizers or tillage used in conventional crop production.
The historical conversion of grass and rangeland ecosystems for cropping, and displacement of native grazing animals on these lands, has destroyed topsoil and released huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It doesn’t make sense not to restore the use of cattle (or other ruminants), as it can rebuild lost soil carbon, on marginal land at a very low opportunity cost.
If we’re really going to step up to the climate challenge, the U.S. government needs to separate itself from the influence of agribusiness and—among other things—roll back the commodity corn subsidies that sustain high levels of industrial meat production. Instead of telling people simply to eat less beef, it would be better to tell them not to eat grain-fed beef. Animals can play an integral role in sustainable agriculture.
RELATED: Climate-Friendly Beef Is a Myth. Don’t Buy It.
RELATED: Anything Cows Can Do, Elk Can Do Better
texans just reelected the fools who are poisoning them!!!
Toxic herbicide found in many Texans’ drinking water
Texas Tribune - raw story
16 NOV 2018 AT 07:00 ET
Nearly 500 water utilities across the state tested positive for atrazine — a weed killer — which can lead to harmful health effects, according to a new report. The Environmental Working Group also found that utilities are testing water during times when the herbicide isn’t being used as much — and that they may be lowballing the results.
More than 10 million Texans have consumed drinking water with some level of atrazine – a toxic herbicide – with 472 water utility systems statewide testing positive in at least one detection, according to a new report from an environmental group.
Comparing the test results submitted by water utilities to state environmental regulators to those from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington D.C.-based Environmental Working Group concluded that water utilities are testing for atrazine at times when farmers aren’t using it — the growing season typically spans late spring and early summer — and also appear to be lowballing their numbers. The group is calling for updates to federal federal drinking water standards.
The report found that nearly 30 million Americans have atrazine in their tap water — and that Texans who live near sorghum or corn-growing areas are more likely to have contaminated drinking water.
The 472 Texas utilities with atrazine contamination serve nearly 10 million people. Water utilities in Texas send their data to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental regulatory agency.
In their analysis, EWG compared 2017 federal testing data collected at utilities in seven states, including Texas, with atrazine levels reported to state authorities over the same period. For 70 percent of utilities analyzed, the EWG found that tests were conducted outside periods of the atrazine spikes or that reported levels were below what EPA tests found.
Olga Naidenko, an EWG senior science advisor, said many water utilities stay in compliance with drinking water regulations by avoiding testing during seasonal spikes of atrazine.
“The utility, by playing the dates game, may not pick up the spike,” said Naidenko, one of the report’s authors. “By testing before or after the spike, they are effectively missing the spike or reporting very low levels.”
Russell Hamilton, executive director of the Texas Water Utilities Association, said he is concerned when he hears reports like EWG’s, but said there are checks and balances in place to address elevation of herbicides like atrazine in water supplies.
“If atrazine is detected, that’s when the state takes action and there are steps in place where you have to start additional or advanced treatment procedures,” said Hamilton, whose organization provides training to those seeking to become licensed as water supply operators.
Brian McGovern, a spokesman for the state environmental agency, said the TCEQ uses third-party contractors to collect all chemical compliance samples, including those for atrazine. He said that monitoring would increase to a quarterly basis if atrazine levels rose above the EPA’s maximum contaminant levels or above the regulatory detection limit.
In Texas, levels have not gone above the limit, but the EWG report said water utilities in Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio had atrazine spikes much higher than the federal legal limit but the EWG recommends that the atrazine limit for drinking water be at 0.1 ppb. Only two Texas communities were a part of the EPA monitoring program in 2017, according to Sarah Graddy, deputy director of communications at EWG.
Texas must adopt regulations at least as stringent as those adopted by the EPA under the Safe Water Drinking act, according to the TCEQ website. The current EPA standard for atrazine in drinking water is 3 parts per billion (ppb), but EWG says it should be 0.1 ppb.
Naidenko said EWG cannot determine whether there is an intent by water utilities to deceive but said what is truly important is whether or not people consuming the contaminated drinking water are made aware of the issue. Atrazine can disrupt hormones and hurt fetuses, leading to greater risks of cardiovascular disease or developmental delays, the group said.
A medical study from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston suggests a connection between maternal atrazine exposure and gastroschisis, a birth defect in the wall of a baby’s abdomen. Another study by UTHealth “observed modest, but consistent, associations” between maternal atrazine exposure and various deformities in male genitalia.
Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, last updated in 1996, only annual averages of atrazine need to be reported. Naidenko said it is important for state water authorities to advocate for “greater scrutiny” and to require that testing take place at a time when spike in atrazine is expected.
“We know there is under-detection because of when utilities take their samples,” Naidenko said. “All we can say is it looks suspicious that the compliance test does not show the same kind of spike as when testing is conducting by testers who are not associated with the water utilities.”
The Office of Pesticide Programs at the EPA is studying whether or not it is appropriate to revise drinking water standards as they relate to atrazine, according to an EPA spokesperson. The EPA said it continues to evaluate peer reviewed data and information on the health effects of atrazine and simazine, another dangerous herbicide.
TCEQ said Texans can find information about their drinking water supply at Texas Drinking Water Watch, which allows users to search by county and system type, among other parameters. EWG said atrazine can be removed from water using common faucet-mounted filters or pitchers with a filter.
More than 10 million Texans have consumed drinking water with some level of atrazine – a toxic herbicide – with 472 water utility systems statewide testing positive in at least one detection, according to a new report from an environmental group.
Comparing the test results submitted by water utilities to state environmental regulators to those from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington D.C.-based Environmental Working Group concluded that water utilities are testing for atrazine at times when farmers aren’t using it — the growing season typically spans late spring and early summer — and also appear to be lowballing their numbers. The group is calling for updates to federal federal drinking water standards.
The report found that nearly 30 million Americans have atrazine in their tap water — and that Texans who live near sorghum or corn-growing areas are more likely to have contaminated drinking water.
The 472 Texas utilities with atrazine contamination serve nearly 10 million people. Water utilities in Texas send their data to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental regulatory agency.
In their analysis, EWG compared 2017 federal testing data collected at utilities in seven states, including Texas, with atrazine levels reported to state authorities over the same period. For 70 percent of utilities analyzed, the EWG found that tests were conducted outside periods of the atrazine spikes or that reported levels were below what EPA tests found.
Olga Naidenko, an EWG senior science advisor, said many water utilities stay in compliance with drinking water regulations by avoiding testing during seasonal spikes of atrazine.
“The utility, by playing the dates game, may not pick up the spike,” said Naidenko, one of the report’s authors. “By testing before or after the spike, they are effectively missing the spike or reporting very low levels.”
Russell Hamilton, executive director of the Texas Water Utilities Association, said he is concerned when he hears reports like EWG’s, but said there are checks and balances in place to address elevation of herbicides like atrazine in water supplies.
“If atrazine is detected, that’s when the state takes action and there are steps in place where you have to start additional or advanced treatment procedures,” said Hamilton, whose organization provides training to those seeking to become licensed as water supply operators.
Brian McGovern, a spokesman for the state environmental agency, said the TCEQ uses third-party contractors to collect all chemical compliance samples, including those for atrazine. He said that monitoring would increase to a quarterly basis if atrazine levels rose above the EPA’s maximum contaminant levels or above the regulatory detection limit.
In Texas, levels have not gone above the limit, but the EWG report said water utilities in Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio had atrazine spikes much higher than the federal legal limit but the EWG recommends that the atrazine limit for drinking water be at 0.1 ppb. Only two Texas communities were a part of the EPA monitoring program in 2017, according to Sarah Graddy, deputy director of communications at EWG.
Texas must adopt regulations at least as stringent as those adopted by the EPA under the Safe Water Drinking act, according to the TCEQ website. The current EPA standard for atrazine in drinking water is 3 parts per billion (ppb), but EWG says it should be 0.1 ppb.
Naidenko said EWG cannot determine whether there is an intent by water utilities to deceive but said what is truly important is whether or not people consuming the contaminated drinking water are made aware of the issue. Atrazine can disrupt hormones and hurt fetuses, leading to greater risks of cardiovascular disease or developmental delays, the group said.
A medical study from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston suggests a connection between maternal atrazine exposure and gastroschisis, a birth defect in the wall of a baby’s abdomen. Another study by UTHealth “observed modest, but consistent, associations” between maternal atrazine exposure and various deformities in male genitalia.
Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, last updated in 1996, only annual averages of atrazine need to be reported. Naidenko said it is important for state water authorities to advocate for “greater scrutiny” and to require that testing take place at a time when spike in atrazine is expected.
“We know there is under-detection because of when utilities take their samples,” Naidenko said. “All we can say is it looks suspicious that the compliance test does not show the same kind of spike as when testing is conducting by testers who are not associated with the water utilities.”
The Office of Pesticide Programs at the EPA is studying whether or not it is appropriate to revise drinking water standards as they relate to atrazine, according to an EPA spokesperson. The EPA said it continues to evaluate peer reviewed data and information on the health effects of atrazine and simazine, another dangerous herbicide.
TCEQ said Texans can find information about their drinking water supply at Texas Drinking Water Watch, which allows users to search by county and system type, among other parameters. EWG said atrazine can be removed from water using common faucet-mounted filters or pitchers with a filter.
Energy company takes stance against Trump effort to rollback mercury rule
Multi-billion dollar company Exelon argues that weakening the emissions rule would kill jobs and waste billions in investments
Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
the guardian
Fri 16 Nov 2018 01.00 EST
A leading US energy company is lobbying against the Trump administration’s move to rollback a major Obama-era environmental regulation, arguing that weakening a rule on mercury emissions would potentially kill jobs across the south and waste billions of dollars of investment.
Exelon, one of the largest producers of electricity in the US, has also argued to the Environmental Protection Agency that compliance with the existing mercury rule, a 2012 regulation that limits how much of the toxic pollutant can be emitted from coal-fired power plants, has had “substantial” health and environmental benefits and has cost a small fraction of what was originally anticipated.
The campaign by Exelon, a $34 billion company that produces nuclear energy, and other electric power companies against weakening the rule stands in stark contrast to the arguments that have underpinned the Trump administration’s efforts to reverse Obama-era health and environmental rules. It also reveals deep divisions within the energy sector about the alleged benefits of rolling back such regulations.
The Trump administration’s effort to change the mercury rule, which was previously litigated for years in the courts and is arguably one of the most costly environmental regulations ever to be implemented, is seen as benefitting one company in particular:
Murray Energy Company, one of the largest US coal companies. Murray, which is controlled by Robert Murray, a major donor to Trump’s inauguration events, reportedly requested a change in the mercury rule shortly after the president took office. Andrew Wheeler, the acting administrator of the EPA, formerly worked for a law firm that represented the coal magnate.
The Trump administration is not proposing a straightforward reversal of the mercury rule. Instead, it has put forward a legal argument that challenges an Obama-era finding about how the federal government ought to regulate toxic pollution. The ground-breaking finding said that any cost analysis of such regulations must not only examine the cost to the industry, but also must take into account the good health-related economic benefits of the regulations.
The coal industry already challenged the mercury rule and lost its case in 2014. One judge on the DC circuit, Brett Kavanaugh, who was recently confirmed to the supreme court, dissented in that case, and argued that the Obama cost-analysis argument deserved more scrutiny.
The Trump administration’s legal strategy is important because dismantling the Obama-era economic analysis could have broader implications for the White House’s sweeping deregulatory agenda. If the so-called “co-benefits” of such regulations are no longer considered as part of the overall cost analysis of a regulation,it will make it easier for companies like Murray, the coal company, to sue the federal government and argue that the rules create a prohibitive burden on industry.
Regulatory filings show that Exelon held a meeting on November 1 with the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget to make its case. It submitted several papers, including one by a company called ADA Carbon Solutions, which argued that the EPA “should leave [the rule] unaltered”.
“The investments made in response to MATS [the mercury rule] have provided good-paying jobs, while also supporting employment in mining, transportation, distribution and other industries, including in the coal industry. Repealing MATS would itself eliminate jobs or inhibit job creation,” the company said.
Companies that oppose the rollback have also argued that any potential changes would create uncertainty for the groups going forward because they have already complied with the rule.
Mercury is a neurotoxin that humans can be exposed to through the ingestion of contaminated fish, seafood, and wildlife, causing damage to the nervous system in adults and neurological damage in infants.
Exelon, one of the largest producers of electricity in the US, has also argued to the Environmental Protection Agency that compliance with the existing mercury rule, a 2012 regulation that limits how much of the toxic pollutant can be emitted from coal-fired power plants, has had “substantial” health and environmental benefits and has cost a small fraction of what was originally anticipated.
The campaign by Exelon, a $34 billion company that produces nuclear energy, and other electric power companies against weakening the rule stands in stark contrast to the arguments that have underpinned the Trump administration’s efforts to reverse Obama-era health and environmental rules. It also reveals deep divisions within the energy sector about the alleged benefits of rolling back such regulations.
The Trump administration’s effort to change the mercury rule, which was previously litigated for years in the courts and is arguably one of the most costly environmental regulations ever to be implemented, is seen as benefitting one company in particular:
Murray Energy Company, one of the largest US coal companies. Murray, which is controlled by Robert Murray, a major donor to Trump’s inauguration events, reportedly requested a change in the mercury rule shortly after the president took office. Andrew Wheeler, the acting administrator of the EPA, formerly worked for a law firm that represented the coal magnate.
The Trump administration is not proposing a straightforward reversal of the mercury rule. Instead, it has put forward a legal argument that challenges an Obama-era finding about how the federal government ought to regulate toxic pollution. The ground-breaking finding said that any cost analysis of such regulations must not only examine the cost to the industry, but also must take into account the good health-related economic benefits of the regulations.
The coal industry already challenged the mercury rule and lost its case in 2014. One judge on the DC circuit, Brett Kavanaugh, who was recently confirmed to the supreme court, dissented in that case, and argued that the Obama cost-analysis argument deserved more scrutiny.
The Trump administration’s legal strategy is important because dismantling the Obama-era economic analysis could have broader implications for the White House’s sweeping deregulatory agenda. If the so-called “co-benefits” of such regulations are no longer considered as part of the overall cost analysis of a regulation,it will make it easier for companies like Murray, the coal company, to sue the federal government and argue that the rules create a prohibitive burden on industry.
Regulatory filings show that Exelon held a meeting on November 1 with the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget to make its case. It submitted several papers, including one by a company called ADA Carbon Solutions, which argued that the EPA “should leave [the rule] unaltered”.
“The investments made in response to MATS [the mercury rule] have provided good-paying jobs, while also supporting employment in mining, transportation, distribution and other industries, including in the coal industry. Repealing MATS would itself eliminate jobs or inhibit job creation,” the company said.
Companies that oppose the rollback have also argued that any potential changes would create uncertainty for the groups going forward because they have already complied with the rule.
Mercury is a neurotoxin that humans can be exposed to through the ingestion of contaminated fish, seafood, and wildlife, causing damage to the nervous system in adults and neurological damage in infants.
West Coast crab fishers sue 30 fossil fuel companies over climate change
The suit opens up a new frontier in climate change litigation.
E.A. CRUNDEN - thinkprogress
NOV 15, 2018, 11:22 AM
The West Coast’s largest coalition of fishers is suing 30 fossil fuel companies for their role in contributing to climate change, which they say is devastating the region’s fishing industry.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the San Francisco County Superior Court, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) is seeking damages from dozens of fossil fuel companies on behalf of crab fishers and their suffering businesses, along with their communities in California and Oregon. Chevron, ExxonMobil, and BP are among the defendants named in the case.
“The world’s oceans are changing, and commercial fishermen and -women, their businesses, their communities, and their families are paying the price,” the suit states.
PCFFA alleges that greenhouse gas emissions generated by the named companies have resulted in warming waters off the West Coast. That in turn has contributed to toxic algal blooms, which harm wildlife and also pose a danger to people. Different types of blooms in states like Florida have also been linked to climate change and sparked a dramatic economic downturn.
Crab fishers on the West Coast say the algal blooms produce a toxin, domoic acid, which has been appearing in Dungeness crab meat. Ingestion of domoic acid can result in amnesic shellfish poisoning — which can in turn cause brain damage and potentially death in humans.
That means crabbing season, which typically spans eight months, is getting shorter and starting later in the year. The season has dramatically decreased in a number of areas, with at least one — a fishery north of San Francisco — delaying its opening by six months two years ago. That trend began in 2015 and has since worsened, with seasons, which usually begin in November, now beginning as late as March. While the season is largely opening as expected in 2018 after shortening in 2016 and 2017, part of northern California’s coastline remains closed.
“Defendants, major corporate members of the fossil fuel industry, have known for nearly a half century that unrestricted production and use of their fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet, changes our climate, and disrupts the oceans,” the suit states.
Despite that knowledge, PCFFA contends, fossil fuel companies have failed to curb the carbon emissions associated with their industry, all while working to “discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence” regarding the dangers of climate change.
The 91-page lawsuit does not specify an exact amount in damages demanded. But the crabbing industry is responsible for thousands of jobs and the lawsuit calls for sweeping new measures to protect the livelihoods of fishers.
“The fossil fuel companies named in our lawsuit knowingly caused harm, and they need to be held accountable,” said Noah Oppenheim, PCFFA’s executive director, in a statement. “We are seeking to implement measures, at the fossil fuel industry’s expense, that will help crabbers adapt to a world in which domoic acid flareup’s will be increasingly common, and also help those crabbers who suffer financial losses as a result.”
The lawsuit opens up a new frontier in climate change litigation, which has largely seen states and municipalities pursuing damages from fossil fuel companies. Cities and counties in California, Colorado, and Washington, along with New York City, have all sought to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change, as has the state of Rhode Island.
Those efforts have largely met with major legal setbacks, with judges unclearwhether or not the issue of climate change accountability should be determined in court. A landmark climate change lawsuit filed by 21 young people against the federal government has also met with resistance — on November 8, a court put the case on hold yet again.
But the PCFFA lawsuit is pitting businesses against each other, marking a new approach.
“Businesses and other sectors like the fishing industry are increasingly suffering financial losses stemming from climate impacts knowingly caused by companies like Exxon,” said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, in a statement. “This lawsuit is significant in that it opens up a new legal front pitting industry against industry.”
It is unclear if Wednesday’s lawsuit will meet with hurdles similar to those facing other climate change litigation efforts. But fishers are hopeful that the lawsuit will draw attention to their plight and to the havoc carbon emissions are wreaking on their lives.
In a statement shared by PCFFA, John Beardon, who fishes for Dungeness crabs out of Crescent City in California, emphasized that “it’s obvious the oceans are getting warmer.” This is a situation that is “bad for crabs and other fish, and it’s bad for those of us who make a living” seeking them out, he said.
“The last three years have been really hard. Our community came together and held a fish fry to help our crew members,” said Beardon. “But fish fries and disaster relief are no solution to these closures we’re now seeing year-after-year-after year.”
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the San Francisco County Superior Court, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) is seeking damages from dozens of fossil fuel companies on behalf of crab fishers and their suffering businesses, along with their communities in California and Oregon. Chevron, ExxonMobil, and BP are among the defendants named in the case.
“The world’s oceans are changing, and commercial fishermen and -women, their businesses, their communities, and their families are paying the price,” the suit states.
PCFFA alleges that greenhouse gas emissions generated by the named companies have resulted in warming waters off the West Coast. That in turn has contributed to toxic algal blooms, which harm wildlife and also pose a danger to people. Different types of blooms in states like Florida have also been linked to climate change and sparked a dramatic economic downturn.
Crab fishers on the West Coast say the algal blooms produce a toxin, domoic acid, which has been appearing in Dungeness crab meat. Ingestion of domoic acid can result in amnesic shellfish poisoning — which can in turn cause brain damage and potentially death in humans.
That means crabbing season, which typically spans eight months, is getting shorter and starting later in the year. The season has dramatically decreased in a number of areas, with at least one — a fishery north of San Francisco — delaying its opening by six months two years ago. That trend began in 2015 and has since worsened, with seasons, which usually begin in November, now beginning as late as March. While the season is largely opening as expected in 2018 after shortening in 2016 and 2017, part of northern California’s coastline remains closed.
“Defendants, major corporate members of the fossil fuel industry, have known for nearly a half century that unrestricted production and use of their fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet, changes our climate, and disrupts the oceans,” the suit states.
Despite that knowledge, PCFFA contends, fossil fuel companies have failed to curb the carbon emissions associated with their industry, all while working to “discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence” regarding the dangers of climate change.
The 91-page lawsuit does not specify an exact amount in damages demanded. But the crabbing industry is responsible for thousands of jobs and the lawsuit calls for sweeping new measures to protect the livelihoods of fishers.
“The fossil fuel companies named in our lawsuit knowingly caused harm, and they need to be held accountable,” said Noah Oppenheim, PCFFA’s executive director, in a statement. “We are seeking to implement measures, at the fossil fuel industry’s expense, that will help crabbers adapt to a world in which domoic acid flareup’s will be increasingly common, and also help those crabbers who suffer financial losses as a result.”
The lawsuit opens up a new frontier in climate change litigation, which has largely seen states and municipalities pursuing damages from fossil fuel companies. Cities and counties in California, Colorado, and Washington, along with New York City, have all sought to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change, as has the state of Rhode Island.
Those efforts have largely met with major legal setbacks, with judges unclearwhether or not the issue of climate change accountability should be determined in court. A landmark climate change lawsuit filed by 21 young people against the federal government has also met with resistance — on November 8, a court put the case on hold yet again.
But the PCFFA lawsuit is pitting businesses against each other, marking a new approach.
“Businesses and other sectors like the fishing industry are increasingly suffering financial losses stemming from climate impacts knowingly caused by companies like Exxon,” said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, in a statement. “This lawsuit is significant in that it opens up a new legal front pitting industry against industry.”
It is unclear if Wednesday’s lawsuit will meet with hurdles similar to those facing other climate change litigation efforts. But fishers are hopeful that the lawsuit will draw attention to their plight and to the havoc carbon emissions are wreaking on their lives.
In a statement shared by PCFFA, John Beardon, who fishes for Dungeness crabs out of Crescent City in California, emphasized that “it’s obvious the oceans are getting warmer.” This is a situation that is “bad for crabs and other fish, and it’s bad for those of us who make a living” seeking them out, he said.
“The last three years have been really hard. Our community came together and held a fish fry to help our crew members,” said Beardon. “But fish fries and disaster relief are no solution to these closures we’re now seeing year-after-year-after year.”
Why The EPA Won’t Get The Lead Out Of Our Water
The Agency Was Slow to Revise Its Lead Pipe Regulations Under Obama, Worse Under Trump
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
11/14/18
Almost three decades after the landmark Lead and Copper Rule went into effect, children and pregnant women are being poisoned by lead in our nation’s drinking water in part because there is no requirement that the EPA be notified about where lead pipes are.
Public employees are pushing the EPA to rewrite its regulations which have helped enable crises like Flint, Mich., and now Newark, N.J. An estimated 15 million to 22 million people, or 5% to 7.5% of our nation’s population, drink water delivered through lead pipes.
“EPA has known about this problem for years but has yet to lift a regulatory finger,” said Kyla Bennett of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
The EPA under former President Barack Obama and now Trump has delayed plans to revise the Lead and Copper Rule sixtimes. The agency is now supposed to start the rulemaking process in February.
Trump has stacked the agency with industry-friendly appointees such as attorney Susan Bodine who heads the EPA’s enforcement unit. David P. Ross worked to help polluters before Trump nominated him to lead the EPA’s the Office of Water. Patrick Traylor, the deputy in the enforcement office, represented companies owned by the Koch brothers.
There are no safe levels of lead in drinking water. Low levels of exposure to lead in children are linked in hyperactivity, anemia, lower IQs, physical and learning disabilities and slowed growth. In pregnant women, lead can be transmitted to the bones of the developing fetus. In adults, lead can lead to memory loss and high blood pressure. Bones can retain lead for decades.
The 1991 Lead and Copper Rule, written under former President George H.W. Bush and last updated in 2007, required water systems to collect information about the location of lead pipes. But there was no requirement that states tell the EPA where the lead pipes were.
After the Flint crisis, the EPA asked states in 2016 to collect information about where lead pipes were and publish that information online on local or state websites. Nine states, including Kansas and North Carolina, told the EPA they wouldn’t or didn’t intend to because of challenges in finding the information or dedicating staff time.
“We do not have the initial materials inventory from systems readily available and do not intend to spend valuable staff resources sifting through microfilm to find this information,” wrote Steven Pirner, the South Dakota Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources.
Thirteen states noted that the Lead and Copper Rule doesn’t require states to maintain information about lead pipes in water systems or provide the information to the public.
The public employees’ group has petitioned the EPA to require that states report information on lead pipes. The group is also asking that the EPA require states to report information about small water systems that may be at risk of lead problems and do a statistical analysis to identify at-risk water systems.
Public employees are pushing the EPA to rewrite its regulations which have helped enable crises like Flint, Mich., and now Newark, N.J. An estimated 15 million to 22 million people, or 5% to 7.5% of our nation’s population, drink water delivered through lead pipes.
“EPA has known about this problem for years but has yet to lift a regulatory finger,” said Kyla Bennett of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
The EPA under former President Barack Obama and now Trump has delayed plans to revise the Lead and Copper Rule sixtimes. The agency is now supposed to start the rulemaking process in February.
Trump has stacked the agency with industry-friendly appointees such as attorney Susan Bodine who heads the EPA’s enforcement unit. David P. Ross worked to help polluters before Trump nominated him to lead the EPA’s the Office of Water. Patrick Traylor, the deputy in the enforcement office, represented companies owned by the Koch brothers.
There are no safe levels of lead in drinking water. Low levels of exposure to lead in children are linked in hyperactivity, anemia, lower IQs, physical and learning disabilities and slowed growth. In pregnant women, lead can be transmitted to the bones of the developing fetus. In adults, lead can lead to memory loss and high blood pressure. Bones can retain lead for decades.
The 1991 Lead and Copper Rule, written under former President George H.W. Bush and last updated in 2007, required water systems to collect information about the location of lead pipes. But there was no requirement that states tell the EPA where the lead pipes were.
After the Flint crisis, the EPA asked states in 2016 to collect information about where lead pipes were and publish that information online on local or state websites. Nine states, including Kansas and North Carolina, told the EPA they wouldn’t or didn’t intend to because of challenges in finding the information or dedicating staff time.
“We do not have the initial materials inventory from systems readily available and do not intend to spend valuable staff resources sifting through microfilm to find this information,” wrote Steven Pirner, the South Dakota Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources.
Thirteen states noted that the Lead and Copper Rule doesn’t require states to maintain information about lead pipes in water systems or provide the information to the public.
The public employees’ group has petitioned the EPA to require that states report information on lead pipes. The group is also asking that the EPA require states to report information about small water systems that may be at risk of lead problems and do a statistical analysis to identify at-risk water systems.
op - ed: Big Banks Just Flunked Their Own Test on Climate, Indigenous Rights
BY
Lindsey Allen, Truthout
PUBLISHED
November 3, 2018
On October 16, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Crédit Agricole and 91 other global banks met in Washington, DC, to revise the Equator Principles, industry-led due diligence standards meant to prevent banks from supporting environmentally and socially harmful projects.
On the very same day, in a bitter irony, many of those same banks re-upped their support for Enbridge, the Canadian company behind the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, which tramples Indigenous rights and is flatly incompatible with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.
They did so just days after the publication of a landmark United Nations reportshowing the desperate urgency of taking concrete steps to tackle the climate crisis. It’s as if the banks wanted to supply their own headline example of exactly why the Equator Principles are broken and in dire need of repair.
The current round of soul-searching around the Equator Principles dates back to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and the Indigenous-led campaign calling out the banks behind the project. DAPL was a crisis for those banks, and it was a scandal for the Equator Principles Association. How did such an obviously flawed project pass muster?
In response to activist pressure, in 2017, the Equator Principles Association agreed to a revision process, including examining how the principles deal with the internationally accepted standard that projects cannot be built unless directly impacted Indigenous communities give their free, prior and informed consent. The Equator Principles currently ignore these principles in rich countries like the US — and ignore climate impacts everywhere.
It’s astonishing that the banks were discussing those revisions on exactly the same day that many of them reaffirmed their support for Enbridge, when the Line 3 pipeline — the company’s largest new investment — is in danger of becoming DAPL 2.0. In a clear echo of DAPL, Enbridge has failed to secure the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous communities impacted by Line 3: three Ojibwe tribes in the Minnesota portion of the pipeline’s proposed path remain staunchly opposed. There’s been a steady and growing drumbeat of Indigenous-led legal and direct action, up to and including peaceful civil disobedience.
Of course, all this comes on the heels of the historic report recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that describes food shortages, growing wildfires and massive coral reef destruction by 2040 unless we take immediate action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
We urgently need to stop expanding and start phasing out fossil fuels to have any chance of meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement. Flying in the face of these facts, the Line 3 pipeline would increase extraction and burning of tar sands, one of the dirtiest forms of oil. Enbridge is a company going in exactly the wrong direction: Last year, it even sold off a huge wind farm to free up capital to build Line 3.
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Crédit Agricole are the lead banks behind two key Enbridge credit facilities, loans that act like giant credit cards for Enbridge to use as it pleases. They are crucial for Enbridge’s ability to build Line 3. When these loans are set to mature, banks have a choice: They can let them expire, or they can renew their support. One of Enbridge’s credit facilities was renewed recently, with another scheduled for renewal in December. At the beginning of October, Minnesota-based Native rights group Honor the Earth and a coalition of Indigenous and environmental organizations sent a letter to those three banks laying out the case against Line 3 and calling on them not to renew their support.
Because Enbridge is funding Line 3 from its general corporate coffers, the pipeline illustrates another fundamental shortcoming of the Equator Principles: Since the standards only cover direct finance for projects, Line 3 is outside of their scope, despite the project’s clear impacts on Indigenous rights and the climate. This is a litmus test for the current revision of the Equator Principles, which should cover projects like Line 3 if they’re going to be worth anything. As a start for companies sponsoring harmful projects, the Equator Principles evaluation should be triggered when these companies are up for credit renewals as well.
But JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Crédit Agricole can’t hide behind the revision of the Equator Principles. They should immediately end their support for Line 3 by dropping their financing for Enbridge, so long as the company is pushing forward this destructive project. The December credit renewal will serve as another test. This time they should make sure they pass it.
On the very same day, in a bitter irony, many of those same banks re-upped their support for Enbridge, the Canadian company behind the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, which tramples Indigenous rights and is flatly incompatible with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.
They did so just days after the publication of a landmark United Nations reportshowing the desperate urgency of taking concrete steps to tackle the climate crisis. It’s as if the banks wanted to supply their own headline example of exactly why the Equator Principles are broken and in dire need of repair.
The current round of soul-searching around the Equator Principles dates back to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and the Indigenous-led campaign calling out the banks behind the project. DAPL was a crisis for those banks, and it was a scandal for the Equator Principles Association. How did such an obviously flawed project pass muster?
In response to activist pressure, in 2017, the Equator Principles Association agreed to a revision process, including examining how the principles deal with the internationally accepted standard that projects cannot be built unless directly impacted Indigenous communities give their free, prior and informed consent. The Equator Principles currently ignore these principles in rich countries like the US — and ignore climate impacts everywhere.
It’s astonishing that the banks were discussing those revisions on exactly the same day that many of them reaffirmed their support for Enbridge, when the Line 3 pipeline — the company’s largest new investment — is in danger of becoming DAPL 2.0. In a clear echo of DAPL, Enbridge has failed to secure the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous communities impacted by Line 3: three Ojibwe tribes in the Minnesota portion of the pipeline’s proposed path remain staunchly opposed. There’s been a steady and growing drumbeat of Indigenous-led legal and direct action, up to and including peaceful civil disobedience.
Of course, all this comes on the heels of the historic report recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that describes food shortages, growing wildfires and massive coral reef destruction by 2040 unless we take immediate action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
We urgently need to stop expanding and start phasing out fossil fuels to have any chance of meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement. Flying in the face of these facts, the Line 3 pipeline would increase extraction and burning of tar sands, one of the dirtiest forms of oil. Enbridge is a company going in exactly the wrong direction: Last year, it even sold off a huge wind farm to free up capital to build Line 3.
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Crédit Agricole are the lead banks behind two key Enbridge credit facilities, loans that act like giant credit cards for Enbridge to use as it pleases. They are crucial for Enbridge’s ability to build Line 3. When these loans are set to mature, banks have a choice: They can let them expire, or they can renew their support. One of Enbridge’s credit facilities was renewed recently, with another scheduled for renewal in December. At the beginning of October, Minnesota-based Native rights group Honor the Earth and a coalition of Indigenous and environmental organizations sent a letter to those three banks laying out the case against Line 3 and calling on them not to renew their support.
Because Enbridge is funding Line 3 from its general corporate coffers, the pipeline illustrates another fundamental shortcoming of the Equator Principles: Since the standards only cover direct finance for projects, Line 3 is outside of their scope, despite the project’s clear impacts on Indigenous rights and the climate. This is a litmus test for the current revision of the Equator Principles, which should cover projects like Line 3 if they’re going to be worth anything. As a start for companies sponsoring harmful projects, the Equator Principles evaluation should be triggered when these companies are up for credit renewals as well.
But JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Crédit Agricole can’t hide behind the revision of the Equator Principles. They should immediately end their support for Line 3 by dropping their financing for Enbridge, so long as the company is pushing forward this destructive project. The December credit renewal will serve as another test. This time they should make sure they pass it.
Climate change is taking a severe toll on Florida farmworkers, new study shows
The issue is becoming a public health crisis.
E.A. CRUNDEN - thinkprogress
OCT 31, 2018, 12:48 PM
Climate change is taking a heavy toll on farmworkers in Florida, where new research indicates excessive heat stress is increasingly becoming a public health problem with severe human rights and economic implications for the state.
A new report released Tuesday by the non-profit organization Public Citizen, along with the Farmworker Association of Florida (FWAF) and a researcher at Emory University, corroborates what advocates have argued for years: that climate change is impacting farmworkers in Florida.
An analysis of temperature data for all of the state’s 67 counties between May 1 and September 30, 2018, found that workers across Florida were exposed to dangerous levels of heat — temperatures above 82.4°F for moderate work and 78.8°F and 77°F for heavy and very heavy work respectively. Long-term exposure to high temperatures can spark fatigue and nausea, along with heat stroke, dehydration, and over a prolonged period, organ failure.
This temperature assessment was then combined with a study from Emory which had 250 Florida workers wear special equipment while working in order to study their reactions to heat. Blood and urine samples were also collected as part of the study, which ultimately found that four out of five workers were exceeding 100.4°F in body temperature on at least one day during the study, increasing their susceptibility to heat illness.
Entitled “Unworkable,” the final report serves as a dire warning in a state where heat-related hospitalizations are already among the highest in the country. Outdoor workers across a number of sectors, including farming and construction, are already disproportionately vulnerable to high temperatures and shifting climate, something they say global warming will only worsen.
“The price we pay for our food exacts a price too high for the [people] who harvest it,” said Jeannie Economos, a pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator with FWAF.
Earlier this month, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a dire assessment that found that the world only has around 12 years left before crossing over a dangerous global warming threshold. The panel indicated such a move could be catastrophic. Meanwhile, climate scientists have long worried that warming trends are disproportionately harming vulnerable communities, including laborers like farmworkers.
On a call with reporters on Tuesday, Economos and other advocates and experts spoke about the increasing risks climate change is posing to Florida’s farmworkers.
Advocates hope the report on Florida farmworkers released this week will open up new conversations about the impacts of climate change. In addition to imperiling human rights, experts stressed on Tuesday that warming weather is also becoming a public health crisis.
“[It is] important that we recognize that climate change is affecting our health now,” said Dr. Cheryl Holder, the interim president of Florida Clinicians for Climate Action.
Doctors in states like Florida are increasingly seeing a spike in workers suffering from heat-related illnesses, sometimes when it’s too late to prevent life-altering problems. Typically low-income, and oftentimes undocumented, farmworkers have been known to put off seeking treatment for their symptoms. This can lead to kidney failure following prolonged periods of heat exposure and dehydration, at which point they typically need dialysis.
“If someone ends up on dialysis in this country regardless of your income status, you will be covered, and that’s quite a lot of dollars that we will be paying [in Florida],” said Holder, nodding to the economic implications, while also emphasizing the groups most likely to suffer amid warming temperatures.
“The most vulnerable [to climate change] are children, elderly, [and] poor people,” she said.
Farmworkers themselves are aware of what is happening, Economos said. “You talk to farmworkers and they know it’s getting hotter; they feel it, they’re worried,” she explained.
This week’s report follows a July plea from 130 organizations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to take action and provide protections for farm and construction workers.
At that time, David Arkush, managing director for Public Citizen’s climate program, told ThinkProgress that efforts to protect outdoor workers have long been a point of concern for advocates, but that increasingly dire climate warnings have injected such efforts with a new sense of urgency.
“Looking at the string of heat records, looking at the projections for the future… we think that we need to protect workers as temperatures rise,” said Arkush. “Even in the best case scenario, even if we manage to halt all greenhouse gases tomorrow, the problem of heat stress is only getting worse. But also we think that the problem of heat stress is a great way to raise public awareness in the United States about climate change.”
No laws, in Florida or nationally, currently protect farmworkers from heat stress. Advocates have called on OSHA to offer work breaks in the shade coupled with hydration opportunities.
But even those asks have their downsides. At the time of the July plea to OSHA, advocates told ThinkProgress they had concerns that workers would need more than just breaks and water to prevent heat exposure impacts. Many earn their income by piece — according to how much they pick, collect, or harvest — as opposed to hourly, meaning that any breaks (including to use the bathroom after drinking water) directly hit their income.
Issues like labor and immigration have long dominated the community, with many farmworkers engaging in activism over the years in an effort to protect themselves. Now they are organizing around climate change, but many have found the endeavor frustrating.
In August, ThinkProgress reported from Florida on the disillusionment farmworkers feel with lawmakers in the state, many of whom, they say, are slow to act on climate change. Global warming has emerged as a leading issue in the state’s midterm election cycle, which has been dominated by environmental issues even as a number of conservative candidates — including gubernatorial hopeful Ron DeSantis — have attempted to downplay climate change while emphasizing their green bonafides.
That approach is becoming increasingly unsustainable in low-lying Florida, as sea-level rise and hurricanes become ever-more pressing issues. On Tuesday, advocates reiterated that action to help farmworkers is needed, urgently, along with an effort to mitigate the crisis they are facing.
“This is an issue, we need to look at all aspects of this,” said Economos. “But most importantly we need to protect people…[and] to recognize climate change.”
A new report released Tuesday by the non-profit organization Public Citizen, along with the Farmworker Association of Florida (FWAF) and a researcher at Emory University, corroborates what advocates have argued for years: that climate change is impacting farmworkers in Florida.
An analysis of temperature data for all of the state’s 67 counties between May 1 and September 30, 2018, found that workers across Florida were exposed to dangerous levels of heat — temperatures above 82.4°F for moderate work and 78.8°F and 77°F for heavy and very heavy work respectively. Long-term exposure to high temperatures can spark fatigue and nausea, along with heat stroke, dehydration, and over a prolonged period, organ failure.
This temperature assessment was then combined with a study from Emory which had 250 Florida workers wear special equipment while working in order to study their reactions to heat. Blood and urine samples were also collected as part of the study, which ultimately found that four out of five workers were exceeding 100.4°F in body temperature on at least one day during the study, increasing their susceptibility to heat illness.
Entitled “Unworkable,” the final report serves as a dire warning in a state where heat-related hospitalizations are already among the highest in the country. Outdoor workers across a number of sectors, including farming and construction, are already disproportionately vulnerable to high temperatures and shifting climate, something they say global warming will only worsen.
“The price we pay for our food exacts a price too high for the [people] who harvest it,” said Jeannie Economos, a pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator with FWAF.
Earlier this month, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a dire assessment that found that the world only has around 12 years left before crossing over a dangerous global warming threshold. The panel indicated such a move could be catastrophic. Meanwhile, climate scientists have long worried that warming trends are disproportionately harming vulnerable communities, including laborers like farmworkers.
On a call with reporters on Tuesday, Economos and other advocates and experts spoke about the increasing risks climate change is posing to Florida’s farmworkers.
Advocates hope the report on Florida farmworkers released this week will open up new conversations about the impacts of climate change. In addition to imperiling human rights, experts stressed on Tuesday that warming weather is also becoming a public health crisis.
“[It is] important that we recognize that climate change is affecting our health now,” said Dr. Cheryl Holder, the interim president of Florida Clinicians for Climate Action.
Doctors in states like Florida are increasingly seeing a spike in workers suffering from heat-related illnesses, sometimes when it’s too late to prevent life-altering problems. Typically low-income, and oftentimes undocumented, farmworkers have been known to put off seeking treatment for their symptoms. This can lead to kidney failure following prolonged periods of heat exposure and dehydration, at which point they typically need dialysis.
“If someone ends up on dialysis in this country regardless of your income status, you will be covered, and that’s quite a lot of dollars that we will be paying [in Florida],” said Holder, nodding to the economic implications, while also emphasizing the groups most likely to suffer amid warming temperatures.
“The most vulnerable [to climate change] are children, elderly, [and] poor people,” she said.
Farmworkers themselves are aware of what is happening, Economos said. “You talk to farmworkers and they know it’s getting hotter; they feel it, they’re worried,” she explained.
This week’s report follows a July plea from 130 organizations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to take action and provide protections for farm and construction workers.
At that time, David Arkush, managing director for Public Citizen’s climate program, told ThinkProgress that efforts to protect outdoor workers have long been a point of concern for advocates, but that increasingly dire climate warnings have injected such efforts with a new sense of urgency.
“Looking at the string of heat records, looking at the projections for the future… we think that we need to protect workers as temperatures rise,” said Arkush. “Even in the best case scenario, even if we manage to halt all greenhouse gases tomorrow, the problem of heat stress is only getting worse. But also we think that the problem of heat stress is a great way to raise public awareness in the United States about climate change.”
No laws, in Florida or nationally, currently protect farmworkers from heat stress. Advocates have called on OSHA to offer work breaks in the shade coupled with hydration opportunities.
But even those asks have their downsides. At the time of the July plea to OSHA, advocates told ThinkProgress they had concerns that workers would need more than just breaks and water to prevent heat exposure impacts. Many earn their income by piece — according to how much they pick, collect, or harvest — as opposed to hourly, meaning that any breaks (including to use the bathroom after drinking water) directly hit their income.
Issues like labor and immigration have long dominated the community, with many farmworkers engaging in activism over the years in an effort to protect themselves. Now they are organizing around climate change, but many have found the endeavor frustrating.
In August, ThinkProgress reported from Florida on the disillusionment farmworkers feel with lawmakers in the state, many of whom, they say, are slow to act on climate change. Global warming has emerged as a leading issue in the state’s midterm election cycle, which has been dominated by environmental issues even as a number of conservative candidates — including gubernatorial hopeful Ron DeSantis — have attempted to downplay climate change while emphasizing their green bonafides.
That approach is becoming increasingly unsustainable in low-lying Florida, as sea-level rise and hurricanes become ever-more pressing issues. On Tuesday, advocates reiterated that action to help farmworkers is needed, urgently, along with an effort to mitigate the crisis they are facing.
“This is an issue, we need to look at all aspects of this,” said Economos. “But most importantly we need to protect people…[and] to recognize climate change.”
Hawaiian island erased by powerful hurricane: ‘The loss is a huge blow’
East Island has vanished after coming into contact with Hurricane Walaka, an intense storm that hit Hawaii earlier this month
Oliver Milman in New York
the guardian
Wed 24 Oct 2018 07.49 EDT
A piece of the United States has been dramatically wiped off the map after an island in Hawaii was washed away by a powerful hurricane.
East Island, a remote spit of gravel and sand that sat atop a coral reef, has vanished after having this misfortune to come into contact with Hurricane Walaka, an intense storm that surged past Hawaii earlier this month.
Scientists have confirmed the disappearance of the 11-acre island after comparing satellite images of the surrounding French Frigate Shoals, part of an enormous protected marine area in the north-western Hawaiian Islands.
“I uttered a swear word. I had a ‘holy cow!’ moment, somewhat in disbelief that it had disappeared,” said Chip Fletcher, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Hawaii. Fletcher and his colleagues were in the process of researching East Island through drone videos and taking samples of sand and corals to ascertain the age of the island and gauge its future prospects in the face of climate change.
“The island was probably one to two thousand years old and we were only there in July, so for it to be lost right now is pretty bad luck,” Fletcher said.
“We wanted to monitor the island so we are disappointed it has gone, but on the other hand we have learned these islands are far more at risk than we thought. I thought the island would be around for a decade or two longer, but it’s far more fragile than I appreciated. The top, middle and bottom of it has gone.”
East Island was, at about half a mile long and 400ft wide, the second largest island in the the French Frigate Shoals, an atoll in the far western reaches of the Hawaiian archipelago. Until 1952, it hosted a US Coast Guard radar station.
Despite its size, the island played an important role for wildlife, including the critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal, a species that numbers just 1,400 individuals, with many of the seals raising their young on East Island. Green sea turtles, which are also threatened, and seabirds such as albatrosses, which often had their young preyed upon by circling tiger sharks, also depended on the island.
“The loss is a huge blow,” Fletcher said. “Little did we know it could disappear so quickly.”
If conditions align, an atoll would always be at a small risk of being erased by a powerful hurricane. But climate change is causing the ocean and atmosphere to warm, making storms fiercer, while there’s evidence that hurricanes are moving further north into the latitudes where East Island once lay.
Rising sea levels are also eroding away low-lying islands, with several fragments of land in the Pacific vanishing in recent years.
“The take-home message is climate change is real and it’s happening now,” Randy Kosaki, a senior official for the Hawaii monument at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Honolulu Civil Beat, which first reported the disappearance of East Island. “It’s not a hoax propagated in China as some folks have said.”
The French Frigate Shoals sits in the Papahānaumokuākea marine national monument, which became the largest marine reserve in the world when expanded by the Obama administration in 2016. The 1,350-mile string of coral islands, seamounts and shoals feature a riot of life, including coral, fish, birds and mammals, many unique to Hawaii.
A statement by the federal managers of the monument said that East Island “appears to be under water”, while the neighboring Tern island had its shape altered by the hurricane.
“Monument co-managers are working to better understand the implications for cultural resources and wildlife, protected species and their habitat within the Monument,” the statement added.
“We will continue to monitor the species and islands to better assess the impacts from the hurricane. Based on the data, managers will determine next steps and management actions.”
East Island, a remote spit of gravel and sand that sat atop a coral reef, has vanished after having this misfortune to come into contact with Hurricane Walaka, an intense storm that surged past Hawaii earlier this month.
Scientists have confirmed the disappearance of the 11-acre island after comparing satellite images of the surrounding French Frigate Shoals, part of an enormous protected marine area in the north-western Hawaiian Islands.
“I uttered a swear word. I had a ‘holy cow!’ moment, somewhat in disbelief that it had disappeared,” said Chip Fletcher, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Hawaii. Fletcher and his colleagues were in the process of researching East Island through drone videos and taking samples of sand and corals to ascertain the age of the island and gauge its future prospects in the face of climate change.
“The island was probably one to two thousand years old and we were only there in July, so for it to be lost right now is pretty bad luck,” Fletcher said.
“We wanted to monitor the island so we are disappointed it has gone, but on the other hand we have learned these islands are far more at risk than we thought. I thought the island would be around for a decade or two longer, but it’s far more fragile than I appreciated. The top, middle and bottom of it has gone.”
East Island was, at about half a mile long and 400ft wide, the second largest island in the the French Frigate Shoals, an atoll in the far western reaches of the Hawaiian archipelago. Until 1952, it hosted a US Coast Guard radar station.
Despite its size, the island played an important role for wildlife, including the critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal, a species that numbers just 1,400 individuals, with many of the seals raising their young on East Island. Green sea turtles, which are also threatened, and seabirds such as albatrosses, which often had their young preyed upon by circling tiger sharks, also depended on the island.
“The loss is a huge blow,” Fletcher said. “Little did we know it could disappear so quickly.”
If conditions align, an atoll would always be at a small risk of being erased by a powerful hurricane. But climate change is causing the ocean and atmosphere to warm, making storms fiercer, while there’s evidence that hurricanes are moving further north into the latitudes where East Island once lay.
Rising sea levels are also eroding away low-lying islands, with several fragments of land in the Pacific vanishing in recent years.
“The take-home message is climate change is real and it’s happening now,” Randy Kosaki, a senior official for the Hawaii monument at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Honolulu Civil Beat, which first reported the disappearance of East Island. “It’s not a hoax propagated in China as some folks have said.”
The French Frigate Shoals sits in the Papahānaumokuākea marine national monument, which became the largest marine reserve in the world when expanded by the Obama administration in 2016. The 1,350-mile string of coral islands, seamounts and shoals feature a riot of life, including coral, fish, birds and mammals, many unique to Hawaii.
A statement by the federal managers of the monument said that East Island “appears to be under water”, while the neighboring Tern island had its shape altered by the hurricane.
“Monument co-managers are working to better understand the implications for cultural resources and wildlife, protected species and their habitat within the Monument,” the statement added.
“We will continue to monitor the species and islands to better assess the impacts from the hurricane. Based on the data, managers will determine next steps and management actions.”
Energy Department Ready To Approve Nuclear Waste Dumping
Texas Facility Is Operated by a Major Donor to Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s Political Campaigns
By Sarah Okeson - dc report
10/18/18
Our Energy secretary could ship treated nuclear waste from our nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production site to a Texas nuclear dump near an aquifer suppling water from northern Texas to South Dakota. The dump was opened by one of Secretary Rick Perry’s largest campaign donors.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, signed by former President Ronald Reagan, was written to prevent potential disasters and mandates that the Department of Energy must send high-level waste to a network of underground tunnels and rooms where it can safely decay over millions of years.
Republicans and Trump’s new assistant secretary for environmental management, Anne Marie White, who did consulting work for the company that operates the dump, want to rewrite federal regulations to say that some high-level nuclear waste isn’t really high-level nuclear waste so it can be stored elsewhere.
“It certainly raises questions about potential conflicts of interest,” said Tom Carpenter, the executive director of Hanford Challenge, a Seattle watchdog group.
Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who died in 2013 at age 82, owned Waste Control Specialists. Simmons and his wife, Annette, gave Perry’s campaigns more than $1.3 million.
Waste Control Specialists got state licenses in Texas in 2008 and 2009 to dispose of radioactive waste in a dump in Andrews County on the Texas-New Mexico border, adjacent to the giant URENCO USA nuclear enrichment facility at Eunice, N.M. Perry, then Texas governor, appointed the three commissioners of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who approved the licenses.
The dump is over or near the Ogallala Aquifer, depending on whether you believe the water table boundaries of the company or others. The dump is also in an earthquake hazard zone.
Waste Control Specialists wants to take radioactive waste from the Hanford nuclear weapons complex in southeast Washington state, one of the most contaminated places on earth. About 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste produced during World War II and the Cold War is stored in 177 underground tanks.
Hanford was created during the Manhattan Project in World War II and made the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
Waste Control Specialists says it could save the federal government up to $16.5 million. The dump would take waste after cesium is removed and It is encased in grout. In December, 3 gallons of waste, or about 0.0000053% of the waste in the underground tanks, was encapsulated in grout as a test.
Republicans have previously reclassified nuclear waste as less dangerous. In 2004, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) attached a rider to the defense authorization bill so the Department of Energy didn’t have to remove radioactive sludge from underground storage tanks in South Carolina and Idaho.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, signed by former President Ronald Reagan, was written to prevent potential disasters and mandates that the Department of Energy must send high-level waste to a network of underground tunnels and rooms where it can safely decay over millions of years.
Republicans and Trump’s new assistant secretary for environmental management, Anne Marie White, who did consulting work for the company that operates the dump, want to rewrite federal regulations to say that some high-level nuclear waste isn’t really high-level nuclear waste so it can be stored elsewhere.
“It certainly raises questions about potential conflicts of interest,” said Tom Carpenter, the executive director of Hanford Challenge, a Seattle watchdog group.
Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who died in 2013 at age 82, owned Waste Control Specialists. Simmons and his wife, Annette, gave Perry’s campaigns more than $1.3 million.
Waste Control Specialists got state licenses in Texas in 2008 and 2009 to dispose of radioactive waste in a dump in Andrews County on the Texas-New Mexico border, adjacent to the giant URENCO USA nuclear enrichment facility at Eunice, N.M. Perry, then Texas governor, appointed the three commissioners of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who approved the licenses.
The dump is over or near the Ogallala Aquifer, depending on whether you believe the water table boundaries of the company or others. The dump is also in an earthquake hazard zone.
Waste Control Specialists wants to take radioactive waste from the Hanford nuclear weapons complex in southeast Washington state, one of the most contaminated places on earth. About 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste produced during World War II and the Cold War is stored in 177 underground tanks.
Hanford was created during the Manhattan Project in World War II and made the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
Waste Control Specialists says it could save the federal government up to $16.5 million. The dump would take waste after cesium is removed and It is encased in grout. In December, 3 gallons of waste, or about 0.0000053% of the waste in the underground tanks, was encapsulated in grout as a test.
Republicans have previously reclassified nuclear waste as less dangerous. In 2004, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) attached a rider to the defense authorization bill so the Department of Energy didn’t have to remove radioactive sludge from underground storage tanks in South Carolina and Idaho.
Science Says Saving the Planet Could Really Be as Simple as Saving Trees
“We will have a hotter, drier world without these forests.”
OLIVER MILMAN - mother jones
OCTOBER 5, 2018 6:00 AM
The role of forests in combating climate change risks being overlooked by the world’s governments, according to a group of scientists that has warned halting deforestation is “just as urgent” as eliminating the use of fossil fuels.
Razing the world’s forests would release more than 3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, more than the amount locked in identified global reserves of oil, coal and gas. By protecting and restoring forests, the world would achieve 18 percent of the emissions mitigation needed by 2030 to avoid runaway climate change, the group of 40 scientists, spanning five countries, said in a statement.
“We must protect and maintain healthy forests to avoid dangerous climate change and to ensure the world’s forests continue to provide services critical for the well-being of the planet and ourselves,” the statement reads.
The intervention comes as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gathers in South Korea ahead of Monday’s release of an eagerly awaited report on how the world can avoid warming of 2.7 degrees beyond pre-industrial levels, an aspirational target of the landmark Paris climate deal in 2015.
It is expected the report will focus on required changes to the energy system, rather than forests. “In responding to the IPCC report, our message as scientists is simple: Our planet’s future climate is inextricably tied to the future of its forests,” the scientists’ statement pointedly concludes.
Trees and other vegetation currently absorb around a quarter of the CO2 humans are adding to the atmosphere, softening the potential impact of climate change.
While the world won’t lose all of its trees, large tracts of tropical forests, which hold a vast amount of carbon, are still being lost in the Amazon, central Africa and Indonesia. Warming temperatures are also fueling huge fires in forests in higher latitudes, as witnessed this summer when much of northern Sweden was aflame.
“The forest piece of the conversation is often lost and I don’t think the IPCC report will highlight it enough,” said Deborah Lawrence, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a signatory of the statement. “We almost take forests as a given but we lose forest every year, which means we are diminishing them as a carbon sink.
“Deforestation has been massively reduced in the Amazon, but that hasn’t happened elsewhere. As countries get more peaceful in Africa we could lose more tropical forests, which really worries me.”
The IPCC’s report is expected to mention the need for as-yet unproven technology to burn vegetation and bury the resulting emissions underground or directly suck carbon from the air as a way to meet the 2.7-degree target.
The statement by Lawrence and other scientists warns the former strategy, known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (Beccs), is untested and risks wiping out huge areas of rainforest in order to make way for plantation timber for energy.
“It breaks my heart to think we’d lose half our tropical forests for plantations just to save ourselves,” Lawrence said. “It’s horrifying that we’d lose our biodiversity to avert climate change. Losing tropical forests is not somehow cheaper than putting up wind farms in the US or Sahara.”
Lawrence said a steep drop in emissions to zero by 2040 would negate the need for “negative emissions” technology that would damage forests’ ability to suck up carbon, maintain local water supplies and weather patterns and provide a home for a riot of birds, mammals, insects and other creatures.
“We will have a hotter, drier world without these forests,” Lawrence said. “There needs to be an international price on carbon to fund the protection of forests. And countries with tropical forests should maintain large chunks of forests to stabilize rainfall for agriculture and keep a predictable regional climate.”
The prospects for averting at least 2.7 degrees of warming appear dim, however, with a co-author of the upcoming IPCC report warning last week the world is “nowhere near on track” to meet its Paris commitments.
Razing the world’s forests would release more than 3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, more than the amount locked in identified global reserves of oil, coal and gas. By protecting and restoring forests, the world would achieve 18 percent of the emissions mitigation needed by 2030 to avoid runaway climate change, the group of 40 scientists, spanning five countries, said in a statement.
“We must protect and maintain healthy forests to avoid dangerous climate change and to ensure the world’s forests continue to provide services critical for the well-being of the planet and ourselves,” the statement reads.
The intervention comes as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gathers in South Korea ahead of Monday’s release of an eagerly awaited report on how the world can avoid warming of 2.7 degrees beyond pre-industrial levels, an aspirational target of the landmark Paris climate deal in 2015.
It is expected the report will focus on required changes to the energy system, rather than forests. “In responding to the IPCC report, our message as scientists is simple: Our planet’s future climate is inextricably tied to the future of its forests,” the scientists’ statement pointedly concludes.
Trees and other vegetation currently absorb around a quarter of the CO2 humans are adding to the atmosphere, softening the potential impact of climate change.
While the world won’t lose all of its trees, large tracts of tropical forests, which hold a vast amount of carbon, are still being lost in the Amazon, central Africa and Indonesia. Warming temperatures are also fueling huge fires in forests in higher latitudes, as witnessed this summer when much of northern Sweden was aflame.
“The forest piece of the conversation is often lost and I don’t think the IPCC report will highlight it enough,” said Deborah Lawrence, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a signatory of the statement. “We almost take forests as a given but we lose forest every year, which means we are diminishing them as a carbon sink.
“Deforestation has been massively reduced in the Amazon, but that hasn’t happened elsewhere. As countries get more peaceful in Africa we could lose more tropical forests, which really worries me.”
The IPCC’s report is expected to mention the need for as-yet unproven technology to burn vegetation and bury the resulting emissions underground or directly suck carbon from the air as a way to meet the 2.7-degree target.
The statement by Lawrence and other scientists warns the former strategy, known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (Beccs), is untested and risks wiping out huge areas of rainforest in order to make way for plantation timber for energy.
“It breaks my heart to think we’d lose half our tropical forests for plantations just to save ourselves,” Lawrence said. “It’s horrifying that we’d lose our biodiversity to avert climate change. Losing tropical forests is not somehow cheaper than putting up wind farms in the US or Sahara.”
Lawrence said a steep drop in emissions to zero by 2040 would negate the need for “negative emissions” technology that would damage forests’ ability to suck up carbon, maintain local water supplies and weather patterns and provide a home for a riot of birds, mammals, insects and other creatures.
“We will have a hotter, drier world without these forests,” Lawrence said. “There needs to be an international price on carbon to fund the protection of forests. And countries with tropical forests should maintain large chunks of forests to stabilize rainfall for agriculture and keep a predictable regional climate.”
The prospects for averting at least 2.7 degrees of warming appear dim, however, with a co-author of the upcoming IPCC report warning last week the world is “nowhere near on track” to meet its Paris commitments.
Donald Trump accused of ‘waging a war on children’ through EPA regulatory rollbacks
Children's Health Month offers chance to highlight administration's damage to public health protections.
MARK HAND - thinkprogress
OCT 3, 2018, 2:29 PM
Child Health Day, celebrated on Monday, was meant to highlight efforts taken by the nation to protect children’s health. As it turned out, Child Health Day, which kicked off Children’s Health Month, served as a moment for the nation to come to terms with how the Trump administration has prioritized the removal of industry regulations over health protections for children.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken numerous actions that do not bode well for the future health of American children.
And in the past week alone, the administration has introduce plans to rollback back key pollution rules, removed the head of the EPA’s children’s health office, and was shown to have scrubbed any mention of the impact of climate change on children from a draft document.
On Monday it was revealed that the Trump administration is moving forward with a proposal to rollback limits on lead, mercury, and other dangerous air pollution from the nation’s coal-fired power plants, putting children at risk from known brain poisons and toxic pollutants.
The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, finalized in 2011, were projected to preventup to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, and 130,000 asthma attacks yearly, while delivering annual health benefits totaling up to $90 billion.
“What the Trump EPA is pursuing — the fraudulent denial of real-world benefits from clean air and climate safeguards — is the unholy grail of the polluting industry and its lobbyists,” John Walke, clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Monday in a statement.
Then on Tuesday, E&E News reported that the Trump administration removed language about how climate change affects children’s health from a draft EPA proposal on heat-trapping chemicals.
An earlier draft of an EPA proposal on hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) contained language about how children are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. That language was removed during a review by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), according to E&E News.
“Every day we see more evidence that this administration is actively working against the health and safety of the most vulnerable Americans — our children,” Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said Wednesday in a statement. “Tragically, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the Trump administration is waging a war on children.”
HFCs are used in refrigeration and air-conditioning appliances and are a significant contributor to the depletion of the ozone layer. Their atmospheric concentrations and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions are known to be rapidly increasing.
Scientists are concerned about the rise in HFC use because they are thousands of times more potent on a pound-per-pound basis than carbon dioxide. The Obama administration, as part of its climate action plan, issued a rule aimed at reducing the amount of HFCs released from appliances that use them as coolants.
The news of the administration deleting language from the chemical rule came just days after the head of EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection was placed on administrative leave with no explanation, fueling speculation that the office itself may be eliminated.
In a letter written by Ruth Etzel, the head of the office, she said: “I appear to be the ‘fall guy’ for their plan to ‘disappear’ the office of children’s health.”
Meanwhile, the EPA is also fighting a federal court ruling ordering the agency to ban of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which can cause brain damage and development disabilities in children at even low doses. In 2017, former EPA chief Scott Pruitt reversed an earlier decision to ban of the pesticide only weeks after meeting with the head of Dow Chemical, which manufactures the chemical.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the EPA in early August to bar the widely used chlorpyrifos within 60 days. The court decided the EPA had been ignoring its own science that allegedly showed chlorpyrifos is a danger to children.
The EPA, however, filed a petition with the court last month asking for a hearing on the decision before all the judges on the Ninth Circuit. If the court order stands, chlorpyrifos would be officially banned as of next Tuesday.
The White House’s OIRA has removed references to climate change from other EPA proposals, including its proposed Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, E&E News reported. The ACE rule would replace the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature climate rule that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The new plan could result in up to 1,400 more premature deaths and up to 120,000 more asthma attacks every year, according to the EPA’s own analysis.
But, in celebration of Children’s Health Day on Monday, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler held an event at the EPA courtyard. He did not address any of the changes at the agency that could harm the health of children.
Instead, Wheeler touted the EPA’s efforts on behalf on children, despite the long list of clean air and clean water rules the Trump administration has sought to undo. “Children’s health is a top priority at EPA, and we have made tremendous progress improving air and water quality and helping kids and families lead healthier lives,” he said at the event.
“The fact that Wheeler reportedly finalized a plan to repeal protections against mercury pollution just one day before he stood in front of a school bus celebrating Children’s Health Day is an insult to American families,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement on Monday. “While Wheeler’s former employers reap the profits from rollback after rollback, our kids will be paying with their health.”
Prior to joining the Trump EPA, Wheeler served as a top lobbyist for Murray Energy, a major U.S. coal company.
In other attacks on children’s health, the Trump EPA announced to staff last week that it will move forward with plans to reorganize multiple offices housed under its Office of Research and Development (ORD). The National Center for Environmental Research, an EPA office that works to test the effects of chemical exposure on adults and children, will be shuttered as part of the reorganization.
Under the reorganization, David Dunlap, a former Koch Industries chemical engineer, will head the ORD as a deputy chief, a role that will not need Senate confirmation. Prior to his eight years with Koch, Dunlap worked for the Chlorine Institute overseeing health and environmental safety.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken numerous actions that do not bode well for the future health of American children.
And in the past week alone, the administration has introduce plans to rollback back key pollution rules, removed the head of the EPA’s children’s health office, and was shown to have scrubbed any mention of the impact of climate change on children from a draft document.
On Monday it was revealed that the Trump administration is moving forward with a proposal to rollback limits on lead, mercury, and other dangerous air pollution from the nation’s coal-fired power plants, putting children at risk from known brain poisons and toxic pollutants.
The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, finalized in 2011, were projected to preventup to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, and 130,000 asthma attacks yearly, while delivering annual health benefits totaling up to $90 billion.
“What the Trump EPA is pursuing — the fraudulent denial of real-world benefits from clean air and climate safeguards — is the unholy grail of the polluting industry and its lobbyists,” John Walke, clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Monday in a statement.
Then on Tuesday, E&E News reported that the Trump administration removed language about how climate change affects children’s health from a draft EPA proposal on heat-trapping chemicals.
An earlier draft of an EPA proposal on hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) contained language about how children are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. That language was removed during a review by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), according to E&E News.
“Every day we see more evidence that this administration is actively working against the health and safety of the most vulnerable Americans — our children,” Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said Wednesday in a statement. “Tragically, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the Trump administration is waging a war on children.”
HFCs are used in refrigeration and air-conditioning appliances and are a significant contributor to the depletion of the ozone layer. Their atmospheric concentrations and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions are known to be rapidly increasing.
Scientists are concerned about the rise in HFC use because they are thousands of times more potent on a pound-per-pound basis than carbon dioxide. The Obama administration, as part of its climate action plan, issued a rule aimed at reducing the amount of HFCs released from appliances that use them as coolants.
The news of the administration deleting language from the chemical rule came just days after the head of EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection was placed on administrative leave with no explanation, fueling speculation that the office itself may be eliminated.
In a letter written by Ruth Etzel, the head of the office, she said: “I appear to be the ‘fall guy’ for their plan to ‘disappear’ the office of children’s health.”
Meanwhile, the EPA is also fighting a federal court ruling ordering the agency to ban of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which can cause brain damage and development disabilities in children at even low doses. In 2017, former EPA chief Scott Pruitt reversed an earlier decision to ban of the pesticide only weeks after meeting with the head of Dow Chemical, which manufactures the chemical.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the EPA in early August to bar the widely used chlorpyrifos within 60 days. The court decided the EPA had been ignoring its own science that allegedly showed chlorpyrifos is a danger to children.
The EPA, however, filed a petition with the court last month asking for a hearing on the decision before all the judges on the Ninth Circuit. If the court order stands, chlorpyrifos would be officially banned as of next Tuesday.
The White House’s OIRA has removed references to climate change from other EPA proposals, including its proposed Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, E&E News reported. The ACE rule would replace the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature climate rule that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The new plan could result in up to 1,400 more premature deaths and up to 120,000 more asthma attacks every year, according to the EPA’s own analysis.
But, in celebration of Children’s Health Day on Monday, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler held an event at the EPA courtyard. He did not address any of the changes at the agency that could harm the health of children.
Instead, Wheeler touted the EPA’s efforts on behalf on children, despite the long list of clean air and clean water rules the Trump administration has sought to undo. “Children’s health is a top priority at EPA, and we have made tremendous progress improving air and water quality and helping kids and families lead healthier lives,” he said at the event.
“The fact that Wheeler reportedly finalized a plan to repeal protections against mercury pollution just one day before he stood in front of a school bus celebrating Children’s Health Day is an insult to American families,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement on Monday. “While Wheeler’s former employers reap the profits from rollback after rollback, our kids will be paying with their health.”
Prior to joining the Trump EPA, Wheeler served as a top lobbyist for Murray Energy, a major U.S. coal company.
In other attacks on children’s health, the Trump EPA announced to staff last week that it will move forward with plans to reorganize multiple offices housed under its Office of Research and Development (ORD). The National Center for Environmental Research, an EPA office that works to test the effects of chemical exposure on adults and children, will be shuttered as part of the reorganization.
Under the reorganization, David Dunlap, a former Koch Industries chemical engineer, will head the ORD as a deputy chief, a role that will not need Senate confirmation. Prior to his eight years with Koch, Dunlap worked for the Chlorine Institute overseeing health and environmental safety.
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