welcome to reality trivia
environment
The environment is everything that isn't me.
Albert Einstein
oct 18, 2019
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
THANKS TO THE GREED AND IGNORANCE OF THE POLITICAL LEADERS, OIL, GAS , CHEMICAL, AND PESTICIDE INDUSTRIES THE HUMAN RACE IS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES.
*articles*
*War on plastic waste faces setback as cost of recycled material soars
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*California bans pesticide linked to brain damage in children
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Bird Population Has Plunged in North America
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*SCIENTISTS UNCOVER ALARMING LEVELS OF DANGEROUS PLASTICS IN CHILDREN’S BODIES
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Not just the bees, first-of-its-kind study shows neonics may be killing birds too
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US BEEKEEPERS FILE SUIT AGAINST TRUMP EPA CHARGING ‘ILLEGAL’ APPROVAL OF INSECTICIDE LINKED TO MASS DIE-OFF(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Global food producers 'failing to face up to role' in climate crisis
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THERE’S POISON IN THE TAP WATER. THE GOVERNMENT MUST ACT.
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*HOW OHIO’S CHAMBER OF COMMERCE KILLED AN ANTI-POLLUTION BILL OF RIGHTS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump moves to allow logging in the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Suppressed federal report shows how Trump water plan would endanger California salmon
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Plutonium found in Colorado soil at five times higher level than acceptable radioactive level
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The Gas Field Next Door
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Two-Mile Dead Zone Confirmed in Chesapeake Bay Due to Warm, Wet Weather
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*How a little known government board decimated Gulf Coast fisheries
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*It's raining plastic: microscopic fibers fall from the sky in Rocky Mountains
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Gold over life, literally’: How Trump forced reversal on mining project EPA Scientists warn could destroy ecosystem(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Alaska records warmest month ever in July with coastline barren of sea ice
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*IPCC leaked report: Going vegetarian and controlling land use are key to climate crisis
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*CLIMATE CHANGE: THOUSANDS OF PACIFIC WALRUSES HAVE TURNED UP IN ALASKA AHEAD OF SCHEDULE AFTER RECORD-BREAKING TEMPERATURES(ARTICLE BELOW)
*EPA Inspector General wants to know how something like this was OK’d
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Biodegradable plastics have existed for decades. So why aren't they mainstream?
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Fecal bacteria found at more than half of US beaches last year, report says
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*EPA-funded research shows US air pollution linked to more than 30,000 deaths
(ARTICLE BELOW)
cartoons(at the end)
War on plastic waste faces setback as cost of recycled material soars
Europe’s manufacturers face $250m-a-year hit as rising demand drives up price
Jillian Ambrose
the guardian
Sun 13 Oct 2019 09.16 EDT
The battle to reduce Europe’s plastic waste could become a quarter of a billion dollars more expensive every year as the cost of recycled plastic soars.
In recent months, the price of recycled plastic flakes, used to make goods from soft drink bottles to glitter, has become more expensive than virgin plastic for the first time.
For years the cost of making plastic products from recycled flakes was cheaper than relying on virgin plastics made using fossil fuels, meaning the sustainable option was an economic option too.
But according to experts it is now cheaper for major manufacturers to use new plastic.
A report from S&P Global Platts, a commodity market specialist, revealed that recycled plastic now costs an extra $72 (£57) a tonne compared with newly made plastic.
According to the analysts this trend is driven in part by the growing demand to include recycled plastics in new products. Meanwhile, new plastic is becoming cheaper to make due to a flood of petrochemicals production from the US driven by the shale gas boom.
They have warned that this could cost sustainable manufacturers across Europe an extra $250m a year.
Although many larger manufacturers would struggle to switch their machinery back to virgin plastics, smaller manufacturers may be forced to turn their backs on recycled plastic to keep costs down.
In a blow to the war on plastic this could mean the makers of clear plastic bottles and fruit punnets stoke demand for new fossil-fuel based plastic rather than reusing old recycled bottles.
Makers of plastic packaging are under pressure to use more recycled plastic to reduce the scourge of plastic pollution in the oceans.
Coca-Cola’s European business plans to cut the amount of virgin plastic used in its soft drink bottles to 50% within the next two years, and will change the colour of its Sprite bottles from green to clear to make sure 100% of its bottles can be reused.
The UK is planning to tax companies which don’t use at least 30% recycled plastic in their products, but until then it may be cheaper for companies to demand more new plastic to make their packaging.
Alongside a tax on virgin plastic use, experts are calling for the UK government to support plans to increase the amount of recycled plastic in the market.
This could mean incentives for new recycling plants, improving recycling facilities at a local council level, or importing recycled plastic flakes from Latin America.
In recent months, the price of recycled plastic flakes, used to make goods from soft drink bottles to glitter, has become more expensive than virgin plastic for the first time.
For years the cost of making plastic products from recycled flakes was cheaper than relying on virgin plastics made using fossil fuels, meaning the sustainable option was an economic option too.
But according to experts it is now cheaper for major manufacturers to use new plastic.
A report from S&P Global Platts, a commodity market specialist, revealed that recycled plastic now costs an extra $72 (£57) a tonne compared with newly made plastic.
According to the analysts this trend is driven in part by the growing demand to include recycled plastics in new products. Meanwhile, new plastic is becoming cheaper to make due to a flood of petrochemicals production from the US driven by the shale gas boom.
They have warned that this could cost sustainable manufacturers across Europe an extra $250m a year.
Although many larger manufacturers would struggle to switch their machinery back to virgin plastics, smaller manufacturers may be forced to turn their backs on recycled plastic to keep costs down.
In a blow to the war on plastic this could mean the makers of clear plastic bottles and fruit punnets stoke demand for new fossil-fuel based plastic rather than reusing old recycled bottles.
Makers of plastic packaging are under pressure to use more recycled plastic to reduce the scourge of plastic pollution in the oceans.
Coca-Cola’s European business plans to cut the amount of virgin plastic used in its soft drink bottles to 50% within the next two years, and will change the colour of its Sprite bottles from green to clear to make sure 100% of its bottles can be reused.
The UK is planning to tax companies which don’t use at least 30% recycled plastic in their products, but until then it may be cheaper for companies to demand more new plastic to make their packaging.
Alongside a tax on virgin plastic use, experts are calling for the UK government to support plans to increase the amount of recycled plastic in the market.
This could mean incentives for new recycling plants, improving recycling facilities at a local council level, or importing recycled plastic flakes from Latin America.
California bans pesticide linked to brain damage in children
By JOHN ROGERS - ap
October 9, 2019
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A widely used agricultural pesticide that California environmental officials have said has been linked to brain damage in children will be banned after next year under an agreement reached with the manufacturer, state officials announced Wednesday.
Under the deal, all California sales of chlorpyrifos will end on Feb. 6, 2020, and farmers will have until the end of 2020 to exhaust their supplies.
The pesticide is used on numerous crops in the nation’s largest agriculture-producing state — including alfalfa, almonds, citrus, cotton, grapes and walnuts.
State regulators have said chlorpyrifos has been linked to health defects in children, including brain impairment, and to illnesses in others with compromised immune systems.
“For years, environmental justice advocates have fought to get the harmful pesticide chlorpyrifos out of our communities,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement after the deal was announced.
He added: “Thanks to their tenacity and the work of countless others, this will now occur faster than originally envisioned. This is a big win for children, workers and public health in California.”
The president of the California Citrus Association, which represents about 5,000 growers, said in an interview that he believes the risks were not as great as the state made them out to be.
“We really thought the exposure assessments and risks were just inflated and it wasn’t a true characterization of the protections that were already in place,” said Casey Creamer.
Creamer added he appreciated that officials have agreed to budget $5.6 million to help pesticide manufacturers develop a safer alternative to chlorpyrifos.
“But just so you’re aware, that’s what agriculture does every day, we’re always looking for new products, safer products that are effective,” he said.
When California announced earlier this year it was moving toward banning the pesticide, the state’s environmental secretary, Jared Blumenfeld, said it was doing so because the federal government was allowing it to remain on the market.
“The swift end to the sale of chlorpyrifos protects vulnerable communities by taking a harmful pesticide off the market,” Blumenfeld said after Wednesday’s announcement.
The Obama administration announced in 2015 that it would ban chlorpyrifos after scientific studies funded in part by the federal Environmental Protection Agency showed the potential for brain damage in children. After President Donald Trump was elected, the EPA reversed that ban, questioning the studies’ validity.
Hawaii and New York are already phasing in chlorpyrifos bans.
Blumenfeld said the agreement reached with chlorpyrifos’ manufacturer, Corteva Agriscience, “avoids a protracted legal process while providing a clear timeline for California farmers as we look toward developing alternative pest management practices.”
Corteva said in a statement that it reached the agreement “in the best interests of the affected growers.”
“Through recent actions, the state of California has improvised and implemented several uniquely challenging regulatory requirements for chlorpyrifos. These new, novel requirements have made it virtually impossible for growers to use this important tool in their state,” Corteva said.
Under the deal, all California sales of chlorpyrifos will end on Feb. 6, 2020, and farmers will have until the end of 2020 to exhaust their supplies.
The pesticide is used on numerous crops in the nation’s largest agriculture-producing state — including alfalfa, almonds, citrus, cotton, grapes and walnuts.
State regulators have said chlorpyrifos has been linked to health defects in children, including brain impairment, and to illnesses in others with compromised immune systems.
“For years, environmental justice advocates have fought to get the harmful pesticide chlorpyrifos out of our communities,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement after the deal was announced.
He added: “Thanks to their tenacity and the work of countless others, this will now occur faster than originally envisioned. This is a big win for children, workers and public health in California.”
The president of the California Citrus Association, which represents about 5,000 growers, said in an interview that he believes the risks were not as great as the state made them out to be.
“We really thought the exposure assessments and risks were just inflated and it wasn’t a true characterization of the protections that were already in place,” said Casey Creamer.
Creamer added he appreciated that officials have agreed to budget $5.6 million to help pesticide manufacturers develop a safer alternative to chlorpyrifos.
“But just so you’re aware, that’s what agriculture does every day, we’re always looking for new products, safer products that are effective,” he said.
When California announced earlier this year it was moving toward banning the pesticide, the state’s environmental secretary, Jared Blumenfeld, said it was doing so because the federal government was allowing it to remain on the market.
“The swift end to the sale of chlorpyrifos protects vulnerable communities by taking a harmful pesticide off the market,” Blumenfeld said after Wednesday’s announcement.
The Obama administration announced in 2015 that it would ban chlorpyrifos after scientific studies funded in part by the federal Environmental Protection Agency showed the potential for brain damage in children. After President Donald Trump was elected, the EPA reversed that ban, questioning the studies’ validity.
Hawaii and New York are already phasing in chlorpyrifos bans.
Blumenfeld said the agreement reached with chlorpyrifos’ manufacturer, Corteva Agriscience, “avoids a protracted legal process while providing a clear timeline for California farmers as we look toward developing alternative pest management practices.”
Corteva said in a statement that it reached the agreement “in the best interests of the affected growers.”
“Through recent actions, the state of California has improvised and implemented several uniquely challenging regulatory requirements for chlorpyrifos. These new, novel requirements have made it virtually impossible for growers to use this important tool in their state,” Corteva said.
Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions
New data shows how fossil fuel companies have driven climate crisis despite industry knowing dangers
by Matthew Taylor and Jonathan Watts - the guardian
Wed 9 Oct 2019 07.00 EDT
The Guardian today reveals the 20 fossil fuel companies whose relentless exploitation of the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era.
New data from world-renowned researchers reveals how this cohort of state-owned and multinational firms are driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity, and details how they have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry’s devastating impact on the planet.
The analysis, by Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in the US, the world’s leading authority on big oil’s role in the escalating climate emergency, evaluates what the global corporations have extracted from the ground, and the subsequent emissions these fossil fuels are responsible for since 1965 – the point at which experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by both industry leaders and politicians.
The top 20 companies on the list have contributed to 35% of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane worldwide, totalling 480bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) since 1965.
Twelve of the top 20 companies are state-owned and together their extractions are responsible for 20% of total emissions in the same period. The leading state-owned polluter is Saudi Aramco, which has produced 4.38% of the global total on its own.
Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, said the findings shone a light on the role of fossil fuel companies and called on politicians at the forthcoming climate talks in Chile in December to take urgent measures to rein in their activities.
“The great tragedy of the climate crisis is that seven and a half billion people must pay the price – in the form of a degraded planet – so that a couple of dozen polluting interests can continue to make record profits. It is a great moral failing of our political system that we have allowed this to happen.”
The global polluters list uses company-reported annual production of oil, natural gas, and coal and then calculates how much of the carbon and methane in the produced fuels is emitted to the atmosphere throughout the supply chain, from extraction to end use.
It found that 90% of the emissions attributed to the top 20 climate culprits was from use of their products, such as petrol, jet fuel, natural gas, and thermal coal. One-tenth came from extracting, refining, and delivering the finished fuels.
The Guardian approached the 20 companies named in the polluters list. Seven of them replied. Some argued that they were not directly responsible for how the oil, gas or coal they extracted were used by consumers. Several disputed claims that the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known as far back as the late 1950s or that the industry collectively had worked to delay action.
Most explicitly said they accepted the climate science and some claimed to support the targets set out in the Paris agreement to reduce emissions and keep global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
All pointed out efforts they were making to invest in renewable or low carbon energy sources and said fossil fuel companies had an important role to play in addressing the climate crisis. PetroChina said it was a separate company from its predecessor, China National Petroleum, so had no influence over, or responsibility for, its historical emissions. The companies’ replies can be read in full here.
The latest study builds on previous work by Heede and his team that has looked at the historical role of fossil fuel companies in the escalating climate crisis.
The impact of emissions from coal, oil and gas produced by fossil fuel companies has been huge. According to research published in 2017 by Peter Frumhoff at the Union of Concerned Scientists in the US and colleagues, CO2 and methane emissions from the 90 biggest industrial carbon producers were responsible for almost half the rise in global temperature and close to a third of the sea level rise between 1880 and 2010. The scientists said such work furthered the “consideration of [companies’] historical responsibilities for climate change”.
Heede said: “These companies and their products are substantially responsible for the climate emergency, have collectively delayed national and global action for decades, and can no longer hide behind the smokescreen that consumers are the responsible parties.
“Oil, gas, and coal executives derail progress and offer platitudes when their vast capital, technical expertise, and moral obligation should enable rather than thwart the shift to a low-carbon future.”
Heede said 1965 was chosen as the start point for this new data because recent research had revealed that by that stage the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by industry leaders and politicians, particularly in the US.
In November 1965, the president, Lyndon Johnson, released a report authored by the Environmental Pollution Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, which set out the likely impact of continued fossil fuel production on global heating.
In the same year, the president of the American Petroleum Institute told its annual gathering: “One of the most important predictions of the [president’s report] is that carbon dioxide is being added to the Earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas at such a rate by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or even national efforts.”
Heede added: “Leading companies and industry associations were aware of, or wilfully ignored, the threat of climate change from continued use of their products since the late 1950s.”
The research aims to hold to account those companies most responsible for carbon emissions, and shift public and political debate away from a focus just on individual responsibility. It follows a warning from the UN in 2018 that the world has just 12 years to avoid the worst consequences of runaway global heating and restrict temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The study shows that many of the worst offenders are investor-owned companies that are household names around the world and spend billions of pounds on lobbying governments and portraying themselves as environmentally responsible.
A study earlier this year found that the largest five stock-market-listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m each year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change.
Heede said the companies had a “significant moral, financial, and legal responsibility for the climate crisis, and a commensurate burden to help address the problem”.
He added: “Even though global consumers from individuals to corporations are the ultimate emitters of carbon dioxide, the Climate Accountability Institute focuses its work on the fossil fuel companies that, in our view, have their collective hand on the throttle and the tiller determining the rate of carbon emissions and the shift to non-carbon fuels.”
CLICK HERE FOR LIST OF COMPANIES.
RELATED: Richmond v Chevron The California city taking on its most powerful polluter
RELATED: Global polluters: What do we know about the worst 20? its most
New data from world-renowned researchers reveals how this cohort of state-owned and multinational firms are driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity, and details how they have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry’s devastating impact on the planet.
The analysis, by Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in the US, the world’s leading authority on big oil’s role in the escalating climate emergency, evaluates what the global corporations have extracted from the ground, and the subsequent emissions these fossil fuels are responsible for since 1965 – the point at which experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by both industry leaders and politicians.
The top 20 companies on the list have contributed to 35% of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane worldwide, totalling 480bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) since 1965.
Twelve of the top 20 companies are state-owned and together their extractions are responsible for 20% of total emissions in the same period. The leading state-owned polluter is Saudi Aramco, which has produced 4.38% of the global total on its own.
Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, said the findings shone a light on the role of fossil fuel companies and called on politicians at the forthcoming climate talks in Chile in December to take urgent measures to rein in their activities.
“The great tragedy of the climate crisis is that seven and a half billion people must pay the price – in the form of a degraded planet – so that a couple of dozen polluting interests can continue to make record profits. It is a great moral failing of our political system that we have allowed this to happen.”
The global polluters list uses company-reported annual production of oil, natural gas, and coal and then calculates how much of the carbon and methane in the produced fuels is emitted to the atmosphere throughout the supply chain, from extraction to end use.
It found that 90% of the emissions attributed to the top 20 climate culprits was from use of their products, such as petrol, jet fuel, natural gas, and thermal coal. One-tenth came from extracting, refining, and delivering the finished fuels.
The Guardian approached the 20 companies named in the polluters list. Seven of them replied. Some argued that they were not directly responsible for how the oil, gas or coal they extracted were used by consumers. Several disputed claims that the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known as far back as the late 1950s or that the industry collectively had worked to delay action.
Most explicitly said they accepted the climate science and some claimed to support the targets set out in the Paris agreement to reduce emissions and keep global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
All pointed out efforts they were making to invest in renewable or low carbon energy sources and said fossil fuel companies had an important role to play in addressing the climate crisis. PetroChina said it was a separate company from its predecessor, China National Petroleum, so had no influence over, or responsibility for, its historical emissions. The companies’ replies can be read in full here.
The latest study builds on previous work by Heede and his team that has looked at the historical role of fossil fuel companies in the escalating climate crisis.
The impact of emissions from coal, oil and gas produced by fossil fuel companies has been huge. According to research published in 2017 by Peter Frumhoff at the Union of Concerned Scientists in the US and colleagues, CO2 and methane emissions from the 90 biggest industrial carbon producers were responsible for almost half the rise in global temperature and close to a third of the sea level rise between 1880 and 2010. The scientists said such work furthered the “consideration of [companies’] historical responsibilities for climate change”.
Heede said: “These companies and their products are substantially responsible for the climate emergency, have collectively delayed national and global action for decades, and can no longer hide behind the smokescreen that consumers are the responsible parties.
“Oil, gas, and coal executives derail progress and offer platitudes when their vast capital, technical expertise, and moral obligation should enable rather than thwart the shift to a low-carbon future.”
Heede said 1965 was chosen as the start point for this new data because recent research had revealed that by that stage the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by industry leaders and politicians, particularly in the US.
In November 1965, the president, Lyndon Johnson, released a report authored by the Environmental Pollution Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, which set out the likely impact of continued fossil fuel production on global heating.
In the same year, the president of the American Petroleum Institute told its annual gathering: “One of the most important predictions of the [president’s report] is that carbon dioxide is being added to the Earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas at such a rate by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or even national efforts.”
Heede added: “Leading companies and industry associations were aware of, or wilfully ignored, the threat of climate change from continued use of their products since the late 1950s.”
The research aims to hold to account those companies most responsible for carbon emissions, and shift public and political debate away from a focus just on individual responsibility. It follows a warning from the UN in 2018 that the world has just 12 years to avoid the worst consequences of runaway global heating and restrict temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The study shows that many of the worst offenders are investor-owned companies that are household names around the world and spend billions of pounds on lobbying governments and portraying themselves as environmentally responsible.
A study earlier this year found that the largest five stock-market-listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m each year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change.
Heede said the companies had a “significant moral, financial, and legal responsibility for the climate crisis, and a commensurate burden to help address the problem”.
He added: “Even though global consumers from individuals to corporations are the ultimate emitters of carbon dioxide, the Climate Accountability Institute focuses its work on the fossil fuel companies that, in our view, have their collective hand on the throttle and the tiller determining the rate of carbon emissions and the shift to non-carbon fuels.”
CLICK HERE FOR LIST OF COMPANIES.
RELATED: Richmond v Chevron The California city taking on its most powerful polluter
RELATED: Global polluters: What do we know about the worst 20? its most
Bird Population Has Plunged in North America
Researchers find 29% decline since 1970
By Bob Cronin, Newser Staff
Posted Sep 19, 2019 4:16 PM CDT
(NEWSER) – Scientists knew that the numbers of some species of birds were declining. But they also knew some were increasing in number, and thus they weren't sure there had been a net loss. So they collected numbers from surveys of 529 bird species over the years, along with radar information, to arrive at a total count, NPR reports. Now they know: The data showed that since 1970, North America has lost 3 billion birds—29% of the total a half-century ago. The reduction is widespread. "We saw this tremendous net loss across the entire bird community," said an applied conservation scientist. Most of the decline involves sparrows, warblers, blackbirds and finches, and other common families. More than one-third of shorebirds are gone, and grassland birds have declined by more than half since 1970.
A biologist not involved in the research called the findings, published Thursday in Science, "depressing but not surprising." The grassland birds' number wasn't shocking because of pesticides and changes to their habitats caused by humans, per the Washington Post. But data about other, more familiar birds was "staggering," one scientist said. “The generalist, adaptable, so-called common species were not compensating for the losses, and in fact they were experiencing losses themselves," he said. We know more about the situation with birds because they're easier to count than, say, insects. So this decline could be a sign of a wider problem, scientists say. "These birds are an indicator of ecosystem health," said a London professor, adding, "Studies like this do suggest the potential of a systems collapse." (A recent study found plant species disappearing.)
A biologist not involved in the research called the findings, published Thursday in Science, "depressing but not surprising." The grassland birds' number wasn't shocking because of pesticides and changes to their habitats caused by humans, per the Washington Post. But data about other, more familiar birds was "staggering," one scientist said. “The generalist, adaptable, so-called common species were not compensating for the losses, and in fact they were experiencing losses themselves," he said. We know more about the situation with birds because they're easier to count than, say, insects. So this decline could be a sign of a wider problem, scientists say. "These birds are an indicator of ecosystem health," said a London professor, adding, "Studies like this do suggest the potential of a systems collapse." (A recent study found plant species disappearing.)
Scientists uncover alarming levels of dangerous plastics in children’s bodies
September 16, 2019
By Common Dreams - raw story
Plastic by-products were found in an alarming 97-100% of blood and urine samples from 2,500 children tested between 2014 and 2017, according to a new study by the German Environment Ministry and the Robert Koch Institute.
Der Spiegel, the German weekly magazine, published the findings Saturday, which were part of a federal study focused on “human biomonitoring” of 3 to 17-year-olds. Traces from 11 out of 15 plastic ingredients were found in the test samples.
“Our study clearly shows that plastic ingredients, which are rising in production, are also showing up more and more in the body. It is really worrying that the youngest children are most affected as the most sensitive group,” Marike Kolossa-Gehring, one of the study’s authors, told the magazine.
Researchers said that they were especially concerned about high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) that were found in the study. PFOA is an extremely persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemical frequently used in non-stick cookware and in waterproof clothing.
In 20 percent of those examined, they were above the limit, in the younger children, the proportion was even higher. The study also showed children from poorer families had more plastic residue in their bodies than children from higher-income families, according to German public broadcaster ARD
“It can not be that every fourth child between the ages of three and five is so heavily burdened with chemicals that long-term damage cannot be reliably ruled out,” says Hoffmann. “The Federal Government must make every effort to protect people from harmful chemicals,” says Hoffmann, “Provision is an obligation.”
The chemical is dangerous for the reproductive system and is toxic to the liver. While a global ban of perfluorooctanoic acid is to take effect in 2020, a group of international NGOs has criticized the EU for requiring an exemption for medical textiles from a global ban on the use of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) agreed at the UN Conference of the Parties (COPs) last May.
In a statement, NGOs, including the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) and Arnika, expressed “deep regret and disapproval” for the request, which could “undermine an otherwise effective worldwide ban.
“Delegates from more than 180 countries agreed the prohibition of the use of the chemical, adding it to Annex III of the Stockholm Convention at the conference in Geneva. However, several exemptions for the substance, including one for medical textiles, were requested by the EU delegation – along with China and Iran – and approved
The new German research was made available by the government upon request by a Green Party inquiry into the effects of chemicals on public health.
Hoffmann said that there has not been enough research on how plastic chemicals affect the body, and how they are ingested.
The results of the study also show an increase in exposure to substitutes for previously banned chemicals. Hoffmann sees this as a critical signal: Substances that are classified as dangerous should not be replaced by similar chemicals with likewise questionable properties, she says. In addition, it must be better researched, which entry routes chemicals enter the human body, the Green politician told Der Spiegel. The results of the study include, for example, the exposure to substances contained in cosmetics, children’s toys or medical devices.
Der Spiegel, the German weekly magazine, published the findings Saturday, which were part of a federal study focused on “human biomonitoring” of 3 to 17-year-olds. Traces from 11 out of 15 plastic ingredients were found in the test samples.
“Our study clearly shows that plastic ingredients, which are rising in production, are also showing up more and more in the body. It is really worrying that the youngest children are most affected as the most sensitive group,” Marike Kolossa-Gehring, one of the study’s authors, told the magazine.
Researchers said that they were especially concerned about high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) that were found in the study. PFOA is an extremely persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemical frequently used in non-stick cookware and in waterproof clothing.
In 20 percent of those examined, they were above the limit, in the younger children, the proportion was even higher. The study also showed children from poorer families had more plastic residue in their bodies than children from higher-income families, according to German public broadcaster ARD
“It can not be that every fourth child between the ages of three and five is so heavily burdened with chemicals that long-term damage cannot be reliably ruled out,” says Hoffmann. “The Federal Government must make every effort to protect people from harmful chemicals,” says Hoffmann, “Provision is an obligation.”
The chemical is dangerous for the reproductive system and is toxic to the liver. While a global ban of perfluorooctanoic acid is to take effect in 2020, a group of international NGOs has criticized the EU for requiring an exemption for medical textiles from a global ban on the use of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) agreed at the UN Conference of the Parties (COPs) last May.
In a statement, NGOs, including the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) and Arnika, expressed “deep regret and disapproval” for the request, which could “undermine an otherwise effective worldwide ban.
“Delegates from more than 180 countries agreed the prohibition of the use of the chemical, adding it to Annex III of the Stockholm Convention at the conference in Geneva. However, several exemptions for the substance, including one for medical textiles, were requested by the EU delegation – along with China and Iran – and approved
The new German research was made available by the government upon request by a Green Party inquiry into the effects of chemicals on public health.
Hoffmann said that there has not been enough research on how plastic chemicals affect the body, and how they are ingested.
The results of the study also show an increase in exposure to substitutes for previously banned chemicals. Hoffmann sees this as a critical signal: Substances that are classified as dangerous should not be replaced by similar chemicals with likewise questionable properties, she says. In addition, it must be better researched, which entry routes chemicals enter the human body, the Green politician told Der Spiegel. The results of the study include, for example, the exposure to substances contained in cosmetics, children’s toys or medical devices.
Not just the bees, first-of-its-kind study shows neonics may be killing birds too
September 14, 2019
By Common Dreams - raw story
“It’s clear evidence these chemicals can affect populations.”
In addition to devastating effects on bee populations and the pollination needed to feed humans and other species, widely-used pesticides chemically related to nicotine may be deadly to birds and linked to some species’ declines, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan studied the pesticide imidacloprid, in the nicotine-linked class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, or neonics, and found that the pesticide had effects on migrating birds’ health and ability to reproduce.
The scientists gave small amounts of the pesticide to white-crowned sparrows and found that the limited consumption caused the birds to lose weight and delay their migration.
Within hours of being given the neonics, the birds stopped eating and lost an average of six percent of their body weight and about 17 percent of their fat stores, making it impossible for them to complete their long flights south. The birds took at least an extra 3.5 days to recover and migrate.
“It’s just a few days, but we know that just a few days can have significant consequences for survival and reproduction,” Margaret Eng, an ecotoxicologist who led the study told Science magazine, where the research was published Friday.
The disruption of the species’ normal migration led to decreased ability to reproduce and survive, the researchers found.
The study “causatively links a pesticide to something that is really, tangibly negative to birds that is causing their population declines,” study author Christy Morrissey told the Associated Press. “It’s clear evidence these chemicals can affect populations.”
More than 70 percent of North American farmland bird species are currently experiencing population declines.
The research shows for the first time “behavioral effects in free-living birds as result of neonicotinoid intoxication,” Caspar Hallmann, an ecologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told National Geographic after reviewing Eng’s study.
Scientists in Europe revealed in 2017 that neonicotinoids can decimate honey bee populations, threatening food sources for humans and other species.
The European Union banned the use of neonics in 2018 due to their effects on pollinators.
The EPA announced in May it would cancel the registrations of 12 neonicotinoid pesticides, but in July, the Trump administration removed restrictions on sulfoxaflor, a neonic that’s been found to kill bees in low doses.
In addition to devastating effects on bee populations and the pollination needed to feed humans and other species, widely-used pesticides chemically related to nicotine may be deadly to birds and linked to some species’ declines, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan studied the pesticide imidacloprid, in the nicotine-linked class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, or neonics, and found that the pesticide had effects on migrating birds’ health and ability to reproduce.
The scientists gave small amounts of the pesticide to white-crowned sparrows and found that the limited consumption caused the birds to lose weight and delay their migration.
Within hours of being given the neonics, the birds stopped eating and lost an average of six percent of their body weight and about 17 percent of their fat stores, making it impossible for them to complete their long flights south. The birds took at least an extra 3.5 days to recover and migrate.
“It’s just a few days, but we know that just a few days can have significant consequences for survival and reproduction,” Margaret Eng, an ecotoxicologist who led the study told Science magazine, where the research was published Friday.
The disruption of the species’ normal migration led to decreased ability to reproduce and survive, the researchers found.
The study “causatively links a pesticide to something that is really, tangibly negative to birds that is causing their population declines,” study author Christy Morrissey told the Associated Press. “It’s clear evidence these chemicals can affect populations.”
More than 70 percent of North American farmland bird species are currently experiencing population declines.
The research shows for the first time “behavioral effects in free-living birds as result of neonicotinoid intoxication,” Caspar Hallmann, an ecologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told National Geographic after reviewing Eng’s study.
Scientists in Europe revealed in 2017 that neonicotinoids can decimate honey bee populations, threatening food sources for humans and other species.
The European Union banned the use of neonics in 2018 due to their effects on pollinators.
The EPA announced in May it would cancel the registrations of 12 neonicotinoid pesticides, but in July, the Trump administration removed restrictions on sulfoxaflor, a neonic that’s been found to kill bees in low doses.
political donations and higher profits vs environment!!!
US beekeepers file suit against Trump EPA charging ‘illegal’ approval of insecticide linked to mass die-off
September 7, 2019
By Common Dreams - raw story
“Honeybees and other pollinators are dying in droves because of insecticides like sulfoxaflor, yet the Trump administration removes restriction just to please the chemical industry.”
A group of beekeepers joined forces on Friday against Trump’s EPA by filing a lawsuit over the agency’s move to put a powerful insecticide—one that scientists warn is part of the massive pollinator die-off across the U.S.—back on the market.
The lawsuit (pdf) charges that the EPA’s approval of sulfoxaflor—touted by its manufacturer, agro-chemical giant Corteva, as a “next generation neonicotinoid”—was illegally rendered as it put industry interests ahead of the health of pollinators and ignored the available science.
“EPA is harming not just the beekeepers, their livelihood, and bees, but the nation’s food system.”
“Honeybees and other pollinators are dying in droves because of insecticides like sulfoxaflor, yet the Trump administration removes restriction just to please the chemical industry,” said Greg Loarie, an attorney with Earthjustice, the legal aid group representing the beekeepers. “This is illegal and an affront to our food system, economy, and environment.”
According to a statement by Earthjustice:
EPA first approved sulfoxaflor in 2013, but thanks to a lawsuit brought by Pollinator Stewardship Council, the American Beekeeper Federation, and Earthjustice, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision. The Court ruled EPA failed to obtain reliable studies regarding the impact of sulfoxaflor on honeybee colonies.
In 2016, EPA re-approved sulfoxaflor subject to significant restrictions to reduce the risk to honeybees and other pollinators. On July 12, 2019, without any public notice, the Trump administration removed these restrictions on sulfoxaflor and approved a host of new uses for the bee-killing insecticide.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include beekeeper Jeff Anderson, the Pollinator Stewardship Council, and the American Beekeeper Federation.
“It is inappropriate for EPA to solely rely on industry studies to justify bringing sulfoxaflor back into our farm fields,” said Michele Colopy of the Pollinator Stewardship Council. “Die-offs of tens of thousands of bee colonies continue to occur and sulfoxaflor plays a huge role in this problem. EPA is harming not just the beekeepers, their livelihood, and bees, but the nation’s food system.”
A group of beekeepers joined forces on Friday against Trump’s EPA by filing a lawsuit over the agency’s move to put a powerful insecticide—one that scientists warn is part of the massive pollinator die-off across the U.S.—back on the market.
The lawsuit (pdf) charges that the EPA’s approval of sulfoxaflor—touted by its manufacturer, agro-chemical giant Corteva, as a “next generation neonicotinoid”—was illegally rendered as it put industry interests ahead of the health of pollinators and ignored the available science.
“EPA is harming not just the beekeepers, their livelihood, and bees, but the nation’s food system.”
“Honeybees and other pollinators are dying in droves because of insecticides like sulfoxaflor, yet the Trump administration removes restriction just to please the chemical industry,” said Greg Loarie, an attorney with Earthjustice, the legal aid group representing the beekeepers. “This is illegal and an affront to our food system, economy, and environment.”
According to a statement by Earthjustice:
EPA first approved sulfoxaflor in 2013, but thanks to a lawsuit brought by Pollinator Stewardship Council, the American Beekeeper Federation, and Earthjustice, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision. The Court ruled EPA failed to obtain reliable studies regarding the impact of sulfoxaflor on honeybee colonies.
In 2016, EPA re-approved sulfoxaflor subject to significant restrictions to reduce the risk to honeybees and other pollinators. On July 12, 2019, without any public notice, the Trump administration removed these restrictions on sulfoxaflor and approved a host of new uses for the bee-killing insecticide.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include beekeeper Jeff Anderson, the Pollinator Stewardship Council, and the American Beekeeper Federation.
“It is inappropriate for EPA to solely rely on industry studies to justify bringing sulfoxaflor back into our farm fields,” said Michele Colopy of the Pollinator Stewardship Council. “Die-offs of tens of thousands of bee colonies continue to occur and sulfoxaflor plays a huge role in this problem. EPA is harming not just the beekeepers, their livelihood, and bees, but the nation’s food system.”
Global food producers 'failing to face up to role' in climate crisis
Report urges meat, dairy and seafood companies to address impact of industry’s deforestation, use of antibiotics and emissions
Harriet Grant
the guardian
Wed 4 Sep 2019 07.50 ED
The world’s biggest producers of meat, dairy and seafood are failing to tackle the enormous impact they are having on the planet through deforestation, the routine use of antibiotics and greenhouse gas emissions, a report warns.
The Coller Fairr index ranks 50 of the largest global meat, dairy and fish producers by looking at risk factors from use of antibiotics to deforestation and labour abuses. The producers are the “hidden” supply chain, providing meat and dairy to global brands including McDonald’s, Tesco, Nestlé and Walmart.
The index is written by investment experts who want to encourage awareness of the risks posed to the planet – and to their own profitability – by companies that fail to mitigate the damage done to the environment by food production.
Jeremy Coller is founder of Fairr and chief investment officer at Coller Capital. He says it is the huge companies behind the brands that will themselves suffer if the planet isn’t protected. “It is the companies hidden upstream in the meat and dairy supply chain who face the most significant climate and public health risks.
“As last month’s landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demonstrated, the world’s meat, fish and dairy industries are under serious threat from climate change impacts. In stark contrast to the transport sector, only one in four meat, fish and dairy producers even measure their greenhouse gas emissions, let alone act to reduce them.”
Among other failings, the index says that none of the companies analysed have a comprehensive policy to stop deforestation. And just four companies in the index “have committed to phasing out routine use of antibiotics, widespread in the industry”.
According to the report, two-thirds of producers do not even measure all their greenhouse gas emissions let alone set targets to reduce them. These include Hormel Foods in the US, a supplier to McDonald’s. Also included is Cal-Maine Foods. Cal-Maine is the largest producer of fresh eggs in the US and a supplier to Walmart and Nestle. Nestlé, McDonald’s and Walmart have all publicly committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
And while Walmart has previously said it wants to achieve zero net deforestation in its supply chain by 2020, the research shows that Walmart suppliers such as Cranswick in the UK have no comprehensive policy on deforestation. McDonald’s have pledged to reduce antibiotics use in their beef supply chains. But the vast majority of beef suppliers do not have a policy to avoid routine use of antibiotics. Only one – Marfrig – does.
The companies are ranked according to their risk for investors, based on analysis of nine key environmental, social and governance risk factors, combined with the sustainable development goals. The Hong Kong-based WH Group were noted as “high risk” while Hormel Foods and Cranswick were designated as “medium risk”.
The research argues that some of the companies, who between them have a value of $300bn (£248bn), are already suffering the costs of the deepening climate crisis.
Cal-Maine Foods reported a 30% decline in revenues in the last quarter of the year alone due to extreme weather.
Peter Van der Werf is an engagement specialist at investment firm Robeco, advising on how to invest sustainably. He told the Guardian that research into the environmental risks of food production is vital.
“This is very important research. As investment managers we take a lot of care assessing risk – for example an analyst looking at food production needs to have a good understanding of climate change risks … like deforestation, loss of feed supply that comes through cattle grazing on depleted land, use of water.”
Van der Werf says that he can see progress being made as producers are made aware of the benefit of considering environmental risks.
“Companies were previously reluctant to show an interest in alternative proteins like fake meat, but we have seen a huge growth in demand. We started engagement over labour safety and use of antibiotics and over three years we have clearly seen an engagement and awareness. Now Tyson Foods, for example, has climate targets. They didn’t have that before.”
He says the end aim is for producers and investors to move away from meat and fish as protein sources as much as possible.
“The fires we have seen in the Amazon have come up in conversations with investors. They are concerned about climate change, about forest fires. There is a global need to further reduce reliance on meat and dairy and look at different protein choices.”
A spokesman for the National Farmers’ Union told the Guardian that there is a commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions in the UK farming industry by 2040. He said this will be achieved through improving efficiency and animal welfare, managing carbon storage on farms and boosting renewable energy.
The Guardian contacted the companies named but at the time of publication had not received responses from all of them.
Nestle said: “The Nestlé Responsible Sourcing Standard sets out sustainability practices that we ask our suppliers, their employees, agents and subcontractors to respect and adhere to at all times. In addition, we run a responsible sourcing program for 15 high-priority raw materials, including meat, poultry and eggs and dairy. For these materials, our work starts by mapping our supply chain all the way down to the farm or slaughterhouse. When suppliers refuse to improve, we will remove them from our supply chain.”
Walmart said: “We believe that both collaborative action and traceability across our global supply chain are needed to reduce deforestation associated with the production of beef and soy in Brazil. We’re working with the Consumer Goods Forum, the Tropical Forest Alliance and the Statement of Support Group for the Cerrado Manifesto as we work toward our goal to reduce deforestation.”
Tyson Foods said: “We recently announced a science-based target to decrease greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2030 as well as a partnership with Environmental Defense Fund focused on increasing sustainable farming practices on more than 2m acres of row crop corn by 2020. This is the largest commitment ever made by a US protein company, and we will be reporting on our progress over time.”
Hormel said: “As a global branded food company, we take our sustainability practices very seriously. We are working toward achieving our 2020 goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and non-renewable energy use by 10% by 2020.
“We are pleased to see the report highlighted our company as one of the leaders in the industry and showcased Hormel Foods for our best practices for water usage. Additionally, the report singled out Hormel Foods as being the only company that has established a sustainable agricultural policy that extends to feed-grain growers.”
The Coller Fairr index ranks 50 of the largest global meat, dairy and fish producers by looking at risk factors from use of antibiotics to deforestation and labour abuses. The producers are the “hidden” supply chain, providing meat and dairy to global brands including McDonald’s, Tesco, Nestlé and Walmart.
The index is written by investment experts who want to encourage awareness of the risks posed to the planet – and to their own profitability – by companies that fail to mitigate the damage done to the environment by food production.
Jeremy Coller is founder of Fairr and chief investment officer at Coller Capital. He says it is the huge companies behind the brands that will themselves suffer if the planet isn’t protected. “It is the companies hidden upstream in the meat and dairy supply chain who face the most significant climate and public health risks.
“As last month’s landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demonstrated, the world’s meat, fish and dairy industries are under serious threat from climate change impacts. In stark contrast to the transport sector, only one in four meat, fish and dairy producers even measure their greenhouse gas emissions, let alone act to reduce them.”
Among other failings, the index says that none of the companies analysed have a comprehensive policy to stop deforestation. And just four companies in the index “have committed to phasing out routine use of antibiotics, widespread in the industry”.
According to the report, two-thirds of producers do not even measure all their greenhouse gas emissions let alone set targets to reduce them. These include Hormel Foods in the US, a supplier to McDonald’s. Also included is Cal-Maine Foods. Cal-Maine is the largest producer of fresh eggs in the US and a supplier to Walmart and Nestle. Nestlé, McDonald’s and Walmart have all publicly committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
And while Walmart has previously said it wants to achieve zero net deforestation in its supply chain by 2020, the research shows that Walmart suppliers such as Cranswick in the UK have no comprehensive policy on deforestation. McDonald’s have pledged to reduce antibiotics use in their beef supply chains. But the vast majority of beef suppliers do not have a policy to avoid routine use of antibiotics. Only one – Marfrig – does.
The companies are ranked according to their risk for investors, based on analysis of nine key environmental, social and governance risk factors, combined with the sustainable development goals. The Hong Kong-based WH Group were noted as “high risk” while Hormel Foods and Cranswick were designated as “medium risk”.
The research argues that some of the companies, who between them have a value of $300bn (£248bn), are already suffering the costs of the deepening climate crisis.
Cal-Maine Foods reported a 30% decline in revenues in the last quarter of the year alone due to extreme weather.
Peter Van der Werf is an engagement specialist at investment firm Robeco, advising on how to invest sustainably. He told the Guardian that research into the environmental risks of food production is vital.
“This is very important research. As investment managers we take a lot of care assessing risk – for example an analyst looking at food production needs to have a good understanding of climate change risks … like deforestation, loss of feed supply that comes through cattle grazing on depleted land, use of water.”
Van der Werf says that he can see progress being made as producers are made aware of the benefit of considering environmental risks.
“Companies were previously reluctant to show an interest in alternative proteins like fake meat, but we have seen a huge growth in demand. We started engagement over labour safety and use of antibiotics and over three years we have clearly seen an engagement and awareness. Now Tyson Foods, for example, has climate targets. They didn’t have that before.”
He says the end aim is for producers and investors to move away from meat and fish as protein sources as much as possible.
“The fires we have seen in the Amazon have come up in conversations with investors. They are concerned about climate change, about forest fires. There is a global need to further reduce reliance on meat and dairy and look at different protein choices.”
A spokesman for the National Farmers’ Union told the Guardian that there is a commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions in the UK farming industry by 2040. He said this will be achieved through improving efficiency and animal welfare, managing carbon storage on farms and boosting renewable energy.
The Guardian contacted the companies named but at the time of publication had not received responses from all of them.
Nestle said: “The Nestlé Responsible Sourcing Standard sets out sustainability practices that we ask our suppliers, their employees, agents and subcontractors to respect and adhere to at all times. In addition, we run a responsible sourcing program for 15 high-priority raw materials, including meat, poultry and eggs and dairy. For these materials, our work starts by mapping our supply chain all the way down to the farm or slaughterhouse. When suppliers refuse to improve, we will remove them from our supply chain.”
Walmart said: “We believe that both collaborative action and traceability across our global supply chain are needed to reduce deforestation associated with the production of beef and soy in Brazil. We’re working with the Consumer Goods Forum, the Tropical Forest Alliance and the Statement of Support Group for the Cerrado Manifesto as we work toward our goal to reduce deforestation.”
Tyson Foods said: “We recently announced a science-based target to decrease greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2030 as well as a partnership with Environmental Defense Fund focused on increasing sustainable farming practices on more than 2m acres of row crop corn by 2020. This is the largest commitment ever made by a US protein company, and we will be reporting on our progress over time.”
Hormel said: “As a global branded food company, we take our sustainability practices very seriously. We are working toward achieving our 2020 goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and non-renewable energy use by 10% by 2020.
“We are pleased to see the report highlighted our company as one of the leaders in the industry and showcased Hormel Foods for our best practices for water usage. Additionally, the report singled out Hormel Foods as being the only company that has established a sustainable agricultural policy that extends to feed-grain growers.”
OP-ED ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH
There’s Poison in the Tap Water. The Government Must Act.
BY
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout
Residents of Worden and Ballantine, Montana — two tiny towns northeast of Billings — were recently informed they may be unable to use tap water for a year or more. Tests began detecting pollutants in the water back in May, but officials have been unable to pinpoint exactly where or how the groundwater supply is being contaminated. The people have been told to use bottled water only for the foreseeable future, a future of indeterminate length.
The residents of Flint, Michigan, can relate. So can residents of Newark, New Jersey, and East Chicago, Indiana, along with thousands of other communities of color that are being poisoned by the water in their homes, schools, parks and businesses. Unlike Worden and Ballantine, whose water supply was likely contaminated by nitrates used in farming, Flint and the other municipalities have been dealing with the dangers of lead.
“What does lead do to the human body?” I wrote in 2016 when the Flint crisis was revealed. “Infants and small children can suffer brain and nervous system damage, weakened immune systems and general physical collapse that can lead to death. Pregnant [people] have a higher risk of stillbirth or miscarriage. A raft of studies has pretty much concluded that lead can cause cancer. It causes cardiovascular diseases and kidney damage which, like cancer, can also kill.”
Tamara Rubin, filmmaker and lead poisoning activist, has firsthand experience with the damage lead can cause. “My son was acutely poisoned 14 years ago as an infant,” she told Truthout, “and there is simply not a day that goes by that we don’t struggle with the impact of his exposure. We need a shift in political will; I truly cannot understand why this has not yet happened in 2019.”
“When my 4-year-old always asks me if it’s safe to drink from a water fountain, I realize the lead poisoning he has endured reaches far beyond the medical,” Danielle Feinberg, mother of another child poisoned by lead, told Truthout. “He not only has to deal with the permanent brain damage it caused — altering his behavior, mood, and even his physical health. He also has to face this idea that nothing is truly safe, especially not the water.”
There are few things in life more frightening and bewildering than when that which you never think twice about suddenly goes sideways and does you harm. When something as prosaic as tap water becomes a menace, everything is suspect. When that menace is caused by greed and institutional racism, it speaks to the rot at the core of the country itself.
Flint’s story in brief: Rick Snyder, Michigan’s Republican governor at the time, appointed an emergency manager to run the city amid the region’s broader economic woes. The emergency manager, in an insidious move with no measurable financial benefit, opted to switch Flint’s primary water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River, a wildly polluted waterway used as a dumping ground by General Motors for decades.
That filthy, highly acidic water flowed into the miles of lead pipes in Flint, striping the lead off as it went. Nobody warned the predominantly Black, predominantly poor residents for two years. Thousands of people drank, ate and bathed in lead poisoning, which has lifelong effects, particularly on children. The problems with the water still have not been adequately resolved.
In Newark, also a predominantly Black community, lead in the water is an ongoing crisis. “The levels of lead in Newark, New Jersey’s, drinking water are some of the highest recently recorded by a large water system in the United States,” reports the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “And we know the cause: City and state officials are violating the Safe Drinking Water Act in several ways, such as failing to treat its water to prevent lead from flaking off from pipes into residents’ drinking water and neglecting to notify people about the elevated levels and the health risks.”
As in Flint, the governmental response to Newark’s active crisis was horrifyingly low-key.
“Critics have compared Newark’s crisis to that of Flint, especially since they believe city officials have been slow to act and have understated the severity of the contamination,” reports The Guardian. “Also similar to Flint, affected communities in Newark are predominantly low-income and African American.”
In the face of insufficient municipal action, some politicians are pointing out that the federal government also has a responsibility to act.
“Newark’s water emergency demands our federal government’s immediate attention,” New Jersey senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker, previously the mayor of Newark, tweeted recently.
“Everyone deserves clean, safe water — it’s shameful that our national crisis of lead-contaminated water disproportionately hits poor black and brown communities like my own.”
In 2017, high levels of lead were also discovered in the water supply of East Chicago, Indiana, another predominantly Black community, but the Trump administration’s EPA was slow to reply. “This boils down to: How much does the administration value the lives in low-income communities of color?” NRDC attorney Anjali Waikar told Truthout’s Mike Ludwig at the time.
Indeed, if the administration valued the lives of people in these communities, clear actions would be immediately available. Contaminated drinking water is a huge and growing national problem, but one that does not lack for solutions. “A health-protective regulatory standard for lead in water should fall below 5 parts per billion, accounting for the limited capacity of utilities to reliably reduce water-lead levels,” argues Mekela Panditharatne, attorney for the NRDC. “Federal regulations must also require the full replacement of lead service lines adjoining water mains to people’s homes — which deliver water to millions of Americans — regardless of lead levels in water.”
Such an undertaking would be expensive — around $30 billion according to Panditharatne. But expense is relative; $30 billion is about 20 percent of the estimated price tag for the dubious F-35 Joint Strike fighter program. It is about 20 percent of the tax cut Trump and congressional Republicans gave to the wealthy and corporations in December of 2017, right around the time East Chicago was learning that it was being poisoned by lead.
U.S.-style capitalism was born in the cauldron of slavery and genocide. Maximizing profit for the few at the expense of the many, especially people of color, remains the guiding principle of the U.S. economic model, and the ongoing water crisis is further proof of this.
If poison in the water does not galvanize this government to act, regardless of expense, they may as well drop all pretense and hang a sign on the White House door: “We Don’t Care. You Can Die.”
The residents of Flint, Michigan, can relate. So can residents of Newark, New Jersey, and East Chicago, Indiana, along with thousands of other communities of color that are being poisoned by the water in their homes, schools, parks and businesses. Unlike Worden and Ballantine, whose water supply was likely contaminated by nitrates used in farming, Flint and the other municipalities have been dealing with the dangers of lead.
“What does lead do to the human body?” I wrote in 2016 when the Flint crisis was revealed. “Infants and small children can suffer brain and nervous system damage, weakened immune systems and general physical collapse that can lead to death. Pregnant [people] have a higher risk of stillbirth or miscarriage. A raft of studies has pretty much concluded that lead can cause cancer. It causes cardiovascular diseases and kidney damage which, like cancer, can also kill.”
Tamara Rubin, filmmaker and lead poisoning activist, has firsthand experience with the damage lead can cause. “My son was acutely poisoned 14 years ago as an infant,” she told Truthout, “and there is simply not a day that goes by that we don’t struggle with the impact of his exposure. We need a shift in political will; I truly cannot understand why this has not yet happened in 2019.”
“When my 4-year-old always asks me if it’s safe to drink from a water fountain, I realize the lead poisoning he has endured reaches far beyond the medical,” Danielle Feinberg, mother of another child poisoned by lead, told Truthout. “He not only has to deal with the permanent brain damage it caused — altering his behavior, mood, and even his physical health. He also has to face this idea that nothing is truly safe, especially not the water.”
There are few things in life more frightening and bewildering than when that which you never think twice about suddenly goes sideways and does you harm. When something as prosaic as tap water becomes a menace, everything is suspect. When that menace is caused by greed and institutional racism, it speaks to the rot at the core of the country itself.
Flint’s story in brief: Rick Snyder, Michigan’s Republican governor at the time, appointed an emergency manager to run the city amid the region’s broader economic woes. The emergency manager, in an insidious move with no measurable financial benefit, opted to switch Flint’s primary water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River, a wildly polluted waterway used as a dumping ground by General Motors for decades.
That filthy, highly acidic water flowed into the miles of lead pipes in Flint, striping the lead off as it went. Nobody warned the predominantly Black, predominantly poor residents for two years. Thousands of people drank, ate and bathed in lead poisoning, which has lifelong effects, particularly on children. The problems with the water still have not been adequately resolved.
In Newark, also a predominantly Black community, lead in the water is an ongoing crisis. “The levels of lead in Newark, New Jersey’s, drinking water are some of the highest recently recorded by a large water system in the United States,” reports the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “And we know the cause: City and state officials are violating the Safe Drinking Water Act in several ways, such as failing to treat its water to prevent lead from flaking off from pipes into residents’ drinking water and neglecting to notify people about the elevated levels and the health risks.”
As in Flint, the governmental response to Newark’s active crisis was horrifyingly low-key.
“Critics have compared Newark’s crisis to that of Flint, especially since they believe city officials have been slow to act and have understated the severity of the contamination,” reports The Guardian. “Also similar to Flint, affected communities in Newark are predominantly low-income and African American.”
In the face of insufficient municipal action, some politicians are pointing out that the federal government also has a responsibility to act.
“Newark’s water emergency demands our federal government’s immediate attention,” New Jersey senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker, previously the mayor of Newark, tweeted recently.
“Everyone deserves clean, safe water — it’s shameful that our national crisis of lead-contaminated water disproportionately hits poor black and brown communities like my own.”
In 2017, high levels of lead were also discovered in the water supply of East Chicago, Indiana, another predominantly Black community, but the Trump administration’s EPA was slow to reply. “This boils down to: How much does the administration value the lives in low-income communities of color?” NRDC attorney Anjali Waikar told Truthout’s Mike Ludwig at the time.
Indeed, if the administration valued the lives of people in these communities, clear actions would be immediately available. Contaminated drinking water is a huge and growing national problem, but one that does not lack for solutions. “A health-protective regulatory standard for lead in water should fall below 5 parts per billion, accounting for the limited capacity of utilities to reliably reduce water-lead levels,” argues Mekela Panditharatne, attorney for the NRDC. “Federal regulations must also require the full replacement of lead service lines adjoining water mains to people’s homes — which deliver water to millions of Americans — regardless of lead levels in water.”
Such an undertaking would be expensive — around $30 billion according to Panditharatne. But expense is relative; $30 billion is about 20 percent of the estimated price tag for the dubious F-35 Joint Strike fighter program. It is about 20 percent of the tax cut Trump and congressional Republicans gave to the wealthy and corporations in December of 2017, right around the time East Chicago was learning that it was being poisoned by lead.
U.S.-style capitalism was born in the cauldron of slavery and genocide. Maximizing profit for the few at the expense of the many, especially people of color, remains the guiding principle of the U.S. economic model, and the ongoing water crisis is further proof of this.
If poison in the water does not galvanize this government to act, regardless of expense, they may as well drop all pretense and hang a sign on the White House door: “We Don’t Care. You Can Die.”
They keep electing Republicans!!
Protecting polluters!!!
HOW OHIO’S CHAMBER OF COMMERCE KILLED AN ANTI-POLLUTION BILL OF RIGHTS
H. Claire Brown - The Untercept
August 29 2019, 5:00 a.m.
A glass of water sampled near Toledo’s water intake crib on Lake Erie, off the shore of Curtice, Ohio, on Aug. 3, 2014. Photo: Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP
EARLIER THIS SUMMER, environmental activists in Ohio were alarmed by the passage of a mysterious state budget amendment that would close a new avenue for residents to sue polluters. The provision invalidated a landmark anti-pollution initiative passed by Toledo voters just a few months before. Now, emails obtained in a public records request reveal that the Ohio Chamber of Commerce secured the cooperation of a key Republican lawmaker in a successful effort to slip the amendment into an appropriations bill at the eleventh hour.
The emails depict the chamber’s environmental policy director requesting a last-minute meeting with state Rep. Jim Hoops to discuss the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the newly minted ballot initiative allowing citizens to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie. A legislative aide responded quickly, scheduling a same-day meeting. Despite the chamber director’s admission that his proposal would need to be submitted after the legislature’s deadline, the aide produced draft amendment language to share with him three weeks later. The chamber’s subsequent revisions made their way into the final bill, effectively nullifying the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.
“This shows the influence of the Chamber of Commerce writing our laws and undermining the democracy of the people of Toledo,” said Bill Lyons, a board member of the Ohio Community Rights Network, an environmental advocacy organization. After the May vote, Lyons filed a series of public records requests to try to figure out which lawmaker introduced the amendment. The emails were provided to The Intercept and The New Food Economy by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, an affiliate of the Ohio Community Rights Network.
IN FEBRUARY, MORE than 60 percent of participants in a special election in Toledo voted to establish a Bill of Rights for Lake Erie. It was a unique ballot question that would grant Lake Erie the right to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.” The intent was to give Lake Erie and its human allies legal standing to file lawsuits against polluters.
Organizers in Ohio launched their efforts to pass the initiative after a toxic algal bloom — caused by fertilizer and manure runoff from upstream farms — rendered Toledo’s water undrinkable and largely unusable (some residents were advised not to shower) for a few days in 2014. Tish O’Dell, a state organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, said residents spent two years trying to persuade the state government to take action to prevent future issues.
In Ohio, however, the farm runoff largely responsible for polluting Lake Erie is minimally regulated. Farmers in the state also benefit from key legal protections that limit their vulnerability to pollution-related lawsuits. Ohio has a so-called right-to-farm law, which dramatically limits neighbors’ ability to win lawsuits alleging that farm pollution unfairly impacts their quality of life. (Hoops appears to have introduced another amendment that expands the definition of farmland protected under the state’s right-to-farm law; that amendment passed this summer as well, further narrowing the legal pathways advocates might use to limit agricultural runoff.) And at the federal level, the Clean Water Act has long exempted most agricultural operations from robust regulation.
For all these reasons, advocates came to believe that existing legal frameworks would never sufficiently protect the lake and those who live near it. By 2016, they were ready to try something new. After O’Dell gave a presentation on so-called rights-of-nature laws at Bowling Green University, Toledo activists approached her about devising a plan for Lake Erie. The group headed to a nearby pub.
“That’s actually how the Lake Erie Bill of Rights hatched,” O’Dell said. “It was on a cocktail napkin at the bar.”
After its passage, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights was immediately challenged in federal court. The next day, the Drewes Farm Partnership had filed a 24-page lawsuit arguing that protections for the lake could mean financial ruin for the farm’s business. That lawsuit is ongoing. Then, in May, the eleventh-hour amendment invalidating the lake’s rights found its way into the House version of the state’s budget.
It all started with an email from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. The chamber’s director of energy and environmental policy, Zack Frymier, wrote to request a meeting with Hoops, the state House representative, on April 11, a few weeks before the vote. (Hoops is chair of the Ohio House Finance Subcommittee on Agriculture, Development, and Natural Resources.)
“I’m hoping to find some time (like everyone else) to run something by Chairman Hoops regarding the Lake Erie Bill of Rights that passed in Toledo in February,” Frymier wrote. “We have some language that we’d request to be considered for the budget. Though obviously it would have to be submitted after tomorrow’s deadline we’d still like to have a conversation.”
A legislative aide replied promptly, arranging a meeting with Hoops for 4:00 p.m. that day. Despite the short notice — it was already nearly 3:00 p.m. — Frymier quickly and enthusiastically responded that he’d be there.
A few weeks later, the aide got back to Frymier with draft text of the amendment, asking if the wording made sense to him. Frymier then asked for the addition of text that would more directly refute the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.
“Language in this amendment stating that [nature and ecosystems] do not have standing is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish,” Frymier wrote on May 2.
The amendment’s final text includes the additional statement Frymier asked for: “Nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas.”
The amendment was reported by local media on May 8. The next day, the state House passed its version of the bill. Lyons, the Community Rights Network board member, later testified in front of the state Senate, asking legislators to strike the amendment from the final budget. His efforts were unsuccessful and, after a few weeks of negotiation, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the measure into law.
Lyons said he was surprised by the degree of collaboration between the Chamber of Commerce and Hoops’s subcommittee. “The fact that they would run that language specifically by them — I mean, who else gets that opportunity?” he said. (Neither the Ohio Chamber of Commerce nor Hoops’s office responded to requests for comment.)
Business advocates — primarily the fossil fuel giant BP, which has fracking interests in the state — spent more than $300,000 to campaign against the Lake Erie Bill of Rights prior to its passage in Toledo. The coalition advocating in its favor, Toledoans for Safe Water, spent less than $8,000, according to Great Lakes Now.
Municipalities around the nation have been slowly adopting rights-of-nature ordinances for more than a decade. Pittsburgh banned fracking using this legal framework in 2010. More recently, a county in Oregon voted to ban aerial pesticide spraying the same way.
Rights-of-nature laws likely face a long road ahead. If the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is any indication, many may be tied up in lawsuits for years to come.
For O’Dell, the Ohio organizer, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is already a win regardless of its fate. “The people kept fighting to get it on the ballot. They defeated big corporate money. They won, and they’re still fighting,” she said. “So I don’t care what happens — they have ignited interest all around the world.”
The emails depict the chamber’s environmental policy director requesting a last-minute meeting with state Rep. Jim Hoops to discuss the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the newly minted ballot initiative allowing citizens to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie. A legislative aide responded quickly, scheduling a same-day meeting. Despite the chamber director’s admission that his proposal would need to be submitted after the legislature’s deadline, the aide produced draft amendment language to share with him three weeks later. The chamber’s subsequent revisions made their way into the final bill, effectively nullifying the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.
“This shows the influence of the Chamber of Commerce writing our laws and undermining the democracy of the people of Toledo,” said Bill Lyons, a board member of the Ohio Community Rights Network, an environmental advocacy organization. After the May vote, Lyons filed a series of public records requests to try to figure out which lawmaker introduced the amendment. The emails were provided to The Intercept and The New Food Economy by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, an affiliate of the Ohio Community Rights Network.
IN FEBRUARY, MORE than 60 percent of participants in a special election in Toledo voted to establish a Bill of Rights for Lake Erie. It was a unique ballot question that would grant Lake Erie the right to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.” The intent was to give Lake Erie and its human allies legal standing to file lawsuits against polluters.
Organizers in Ohio launched their efforts to pass the initiative after a toxic algal bloom — caused by fertilizer and manure runoff from upstream farms — rendered Toledo’s water undrinkable and largely unusable (some residents were advised not to shower) for a few days in 2014. Tish O’Dell, a state organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, said residents spent two years trying to persuade the state government to take action to prevent future issues.
In Ohio, however, the farm runoff largely responsible for polluting Lake Erie is minimally regulated. Farmers in the state also benefit from key legal protections that limit their vulnerability to pollution-related lawsuits. Ohio has a so-called right-to-farm law, which dramatically limits neighbors’ ability to win lawsuits alleging that farm pollution unfairly impacts their quality of life. (Hoops appears to have introduced another amendment that expands the definition of farmland protected under the state’s right-to-farm law; that amendment passed this summer as well, further narrowing the legal pathways advocates might use to limit agricultural runoff.) And at the federal level, the Clean Water Act has long exempted most agricultural operations from robust regulation.
For all these reasons, advocates came to believe that existing legal frameworks would never sufficiently protect the lake and those who live near it. By 2016, they were ready to try something new. After O’Dell gave a presentation on so-called rights-of-nature laws at Bowling Green University, Toledo activists approached her about devising a plan for Lake Erie. The group headed to a nearby pub.
“That’s actually how the Lake Erie Bill of Rights hatched,” O’Dell said. “It was on a cocktail napkin at the bar.”
After its passage, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights was immediately challenged in federal court. The next day, the Drewes Farm Partnership had filed a 24-page lawsuit arguing that protections for the lake could mean financial ruin for the farm’s business. That lawsuit is ongoing. Then, in May, the eleventh-hour amendment invalidating the lake’s rights found its way into the House version of the state’s budget.
It all started with an email from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. The chamber’s director of energy and environmental policy, Zack Frymier, wrote to request a meeting with Hoops, the state House representative, on April 11, a few weeks before the vote. (Hoops is chair of the Ohio House Finance Subcommittee on Agriculture, Development, and Natural Resources.)
“I’m hoping to find some time (like everyone else) to run something by Chairman Hoops regarding the Lake Erie Bill of Rights that passed in Toledo in February,” Frymier wrote. “We have some language that we’d request to be considered for the budget. Though obviously it would have to be submitted after tomorrow’s deadline we’d still like to have a conversation.”
A legislative aide replied promptly, arranging a meeting with Hoops for 4:00 p.m. that day. Despite the short notice — it was already nearly 3:00 p.m. — Frymier quickly and enthusiastically responded that he’d be there.
A few weeks later, the aide got back to Frymier with draft text of the amendment, asking if the wording made sense to him. Frymier then asked for the addition of text that would more directly refute the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.
“Language in this amendment stating that [nature and ecosystems] do not have standing is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish,” Frymier wrote on May 2.
The amendment’s final text includes the additional statement Frymier asked for: “Nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas.”
The amendment was reported by local media on May 8. The next day, the state House passed its version of the bill. Lyons, the Community Rights Network board member, later testified in front of the state Senate, asking legislators to strike the amendment from the final budget. His efforts were unsuccessful and, after a few weeks of negotiation, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the measure into law.
Lyons said he was surprised by the degree of collaboration between the Chamber of Commerce and Hoops’s subcommittee. “The fact that they would run that language specifically by them — I mean, who else gets that opportunity?” he said. (Neither the Ohio Chamber of Commerce nor Hoops’s office responded to requests for comment.)
Business advocates — primarily the fossil fuel giant BP, which has fracking interests in the state — spent more than $300,000 to campaign against the Lake Erie Bill of Rights prior to its passage in Toledo. The coalition advocating in its favor, Toledoans for Safe Water, spent less than $8,000, according to Great Lakes Now.
Municipalities around the nation have been slowly adopting rights-of-nature ordinances for more than a decade. Pittsburgh banned fracking using this legal framework in 2010. More recently, a county in Oregon voted to ban aerial pesticide spraying the same way.
Rights-of-nature laws likely face a long road ahead. If the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is any indication, many may be tied up in lawsuits for years to come.
For O’Dell, the Ohio organizer, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is already a win regardless of its fate. “The people kept fighting to get it on the ballot. They defeated big corporate money. They won, and they’re still fighting,” she said. “So I don’t care what happens — they have ignited interest all around the world.”
Trump moves to allow logging in the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest
Meanwhile, the Amazon burns.
KYLA MANDEL - Thinkprogress
AUG 28, 2019, 9:54 AM
As Brazil’s Amazon burns, President Donald Trump is taking aim at one of the largest expanses of temperate rainforest in Alaska.
On Tuesday, the president instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to allow logging in the 16.7 million acre Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, the nation’s largest national forest.
Together with British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest in Canada, the Tongass encompasses the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth.
The move would undo logging restrictions that have been in place for nearly 20 years, according to The Washington Post, impacting more than half of the national forest.
Under the Clinton-era “roadless rule,” construction of roads were barred in the forest, thereby restricting commercial logging, energy, and mining projects (only certain road projects approved by the Forest Service were allowed).
The rule has faced challenges over the years, though, including by President George W. Bush who tried unsuccessfully to reverse it. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) have also called for Trump to exempt the state from the rule.
“It should never have been applied to our state, and it is harming our ability to develop a sustainable, year-round economy for the Southeast region,” Murkowski said in a statement to the Washington Post.
Environmentalists, however, fear the implications of opening up the rainforest to commercial activities.
The pristine forest includes thousands of islands along with glacial fjords and old-growth cedar, spruce, and hemlock trees — old-growth trees are those that have generally grown undisturbed for at least 120 years. The area supports countless wildlife, including all five species of Pacific salmon, brown bears, wolves, and Bald Eagles.
Over the years, logging has threatened the oldest — and largest — trees. But while only 9% of the rare forest has so far been threatened by logging, according to the Audubon Society “perhaps half of the big-tree old growth has been cut.”
The forest is also a vital player in tackling climate change.
“The Tongass stores hundreds of millions, if not over a billion, tons of carbon, keeping the heat-trapping element out of the atmosphere,” wrote Earthjustice, which tweeted that the old-growth trees provide a “MAJOR BUFFER” against climate change.
Cutting down ancient trees risks not just releasing the carbon stored in them over the past century but also reducing the forest’s ability to store new carbon.
News of the Trump administration’s logging intentions in Tongass come as another major forest suffers devastating wildfires. In Brazil, more than 26,000 forest fires have been recorded in the Amazon this month — the most in a decade.
Like the Tongass, the Amazon — often referred to as the “lungs” of the planet — plays a vital role in storing carbon as well as critical habitat to endangered species.
On Tuesday, the president instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to allow logging in the 16.7 million acre Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, the nation’s largest national forest.
Together with British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest in Canada, the Tongass encompasses the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth.
The move would undo logging restrictions that have been in place for nearly 20 years, according to The Washington Post, impacting more than half of the national forest.
Under the Clinton-era “roadless rule,” construction of roads were barred in the forest, thereby restricting commercial logging, energy, and mining projects (only certain road projects approved by the Forest Service were allowed).
The rule has faced challenges over the years, though, including by President George W. Bush who tried unsuccessfully to reverse it. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) have also called for Trump to exempt the state from the rule.
“It should never have been applied to our state, and it is harming our ability to develop a sustainable, year-round economy for the Southeast region,” Murkowski said in a statement to the Washington Post.
Environmentalists, however, fear the implications of opening up the rainforest to commercial activities.
The pristine forest includes thousands of islands along with glacial fjords and old-growth cedar, spruce, and hemlock trees — old-growth trees are those that have generally grown undisturbed for at least 120 years. The area supports countless wildlife, including all five species of Pacific salmon, brown bears, wolves, and Bald Eagles.
Over the years, logging has threatened the oldest — and largest — trees. But while only 9% of the rare forest has so far been threatened by logging, according to the Audubon Society “perhaps half of the big-tree old growth has been cut.”
The forest is also a vital player in tackling climate change.
“The Tongass stores hundreds of millions, if not over a billion, tons of carbon, keeping the heat-trapping element out of the atmosphere,” wrote Earthjustice, which tweeted that the old-growth trees provide a “MAJOR BUFFER” against climate change.
Cutting down ancient trees risks not just releasing the carbon stored in them over the past century but also reducing the forest’s ability to store new carbon.
News of the Trump administration’s logging intentions in Tongass come as another major forest suffers devastating wildfires. In Brazil, more than 26,000 forest fires have been recorded in the Amazon this month — the most in a decade.
Like the Tongass, the Amazon — often referred to as the “lungs” of the planet — plays a vital role in storing carbon as well as critical habitat to endangered species.
Suppressed federal report shows how Trump water plan would endanger California salmon
By BETTINA BOXALLSTAFF WRITER - LA Times
AUG. 21, 2019 5 AM
Federal officials suppressed a lengthy environmental document that details how one of California’s unique salmon runs would be imperiled by Trump administration plans to deliver more water to Central Valley farms.
The July 1 assessment, obtained by The Times, outlines how proposed changes in government water operations would harm several species protected by the Endangered Species Act, including perilously low populations of winter-run salmon, as well as steelhead trout and killer whales, which feed on salmon.
But the 1,123-page document was never released.
Two days after federal scientists submitted their review, called a biological opinion, a regional fisheries official pulled the document and replaced the team that wrote it with a new group tasked with revising it, as The Times reported in July.
Had the opinion been adopted and released, it would have interfered with efforts to ramp up irrigation deliveries to powerful California farm interests with ties to the Trump administration. The revision, critics say, is another example of the administration intervening to weaken environmental protections and reverse the findings of federal scientists.
In the report, the National Marine Fisheries Service unequivocally concludes that increasing water deliveries would likely jeopardize the continued existence of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon, threatened spring-run Chinook and threatened Central Valley steelhead, as well as endangered Southern Resident killer whales that dine on salmon.
The proposed changes in California water operations “will produce multiple stressors” on winter-run salmon “that are expected to reduce survival and the overall fitness of individuals,” the agency wrote.
Harmful impacts include warm river temperatures lethal to fish eggs and newly hatched salmon; low flows in the Sacramento River and more salmon deaths at the giant government pumps that send supplies south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“Winter-run Chinook salmon are particularly important among California’s salmon runs because they exhibit a life-history strategy found nowhere else in the world,” the scientists noted.
Adults leave the ocean and migrate upstream in the winter and early spring. During the summer, they historically spawned in cold, spring-fed rivers and streams in Northern California. But the fish lost access to those spawning grounds after the federal government constructed Shasta and Keswick dams on the upper Sacramento River in the 1940s.
That, coupled with the destruction of flood plains and other habitat, sent the fabled run on a long downward spiral. Now only a few thousand of them typically return to California every year to swim upstream to spawn below Keswick, which regulates flows out of Shasta.
Despite spending millions of dollars on hatchery operations, fish screens and gravel bed restoration, federal water managers have fallen far short of meeting a long-standing congressional goal of doubling the natural production of anadromous fish in Central Valley rivers and streams.
Of over 165 species that the marine fisheries agency protects under the Endangered Species Act, California’s winter-run Chinook “is considered one of just nine species that are most at risk of extinction in the near future,” the agency wrote.
The extinction risk has increased since 2007, in part because warm-water releases from Shasta during the state’s severe drought cooked salmon eggs and newly hatched fish. In 2015, 96% of the eggs and fry died.
Revision of the July 1 biological opinion is “unquestionably an effort to subvert the best available science,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, which represents commercial fishermen.
“Literally before our eyes, we’re seeing science suppressed by monied political interests,” he argued.
Paul Souza, the regional U.S. Fish and Wildlife director who is coordinating work on the salmon opinion and a separate one for delta smelt that his agency is conducting, rejected claims that the July 1 assessment was suppressed. It was a draft that needed more work, he said.
“We have no final documents yet,” he said. “I know there are a lot of conversations about politics. But that’s a misunderstanding of the fact. We’re working with career professionals, scientists and leaders in Sacramento and making sure we do everything in our power to conserve the fisheries that we care deeply about and also meet water supply needs.”
Souza said the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the Shasta operations, has agreed to maintain higher May 1 levels of the reservoir, increasing cold water reserves for salmon. The bureau will also adhere to what Souza called “smarter” delta pumping restrictions based on the real-time location of fish.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the Trump proposal to increase water deliveries is the Westlands Water District, a sprawling irrigation district on the arid west side of the San Joaquin Valley led by some of the state’s wealthiest growers. In 2018, the district’s biggest crops were almonds, pistachios, canning tomatoes and cotton.
Westlands and other districts that depend on water supplies from the delta have bitterly fought Endangered Species Act restrictions for delta smelt and migrating salmon that have restricted their deliveries.
Water users argue that fishery agencies pay too much attention to fresh water flows in the delta and the rivers that empty into it — and too little attention to other environmental stressors, such as exotic predators, that have contributed to the fish crisis.
Critics of the act now have a major ally, Interior Sec. David Bernhardt. Before joining the Trump administration, Bernhardt was a partner in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a top-grossing law and lobbying firm that sued Interior four times on behalf of Westlands. Bernhardt was a lobbyist for Westlands and personally argued an appeals case challenging salmon protections.
He is leading efforts to implement a 2018 Trump administration directive to develop plans for “maximizing water supply deliveries” from the federal Central Valley Project, which operates Shasta Dam and reservoir and sends irrigation water to Westlands.
Releases from Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir, are not only vital to CVP deliveries to the state’s agrarian middle, they are critical to maintaining river flows and cool water temperatures for fish.
That conflict is a focus of the July 1 biological opinion, which found that under the Bureau of Reclamation’s proposed water operations, salmon would lose needed reserves of cold water, as well as flows to sustain important floodplain habitat.
“Each freshwater life stage will be harmed to some degree by the [proposal], with extensive lethal impacts expected to eggs, fry, and juveniles,” scientists concluded.
If the new team delivers a less critical assessment of the Trump proposal, it will not be the first agency reversal on California fish protections.
In 2004, under the George W. Bush administration, federal biologists concluded in draft documents leaked to the media that delta water operations would jeopardize populations of winter-run Chinook and Central Valley steelhead. A few months later, a final opinion reversed that finding, opening the door to increased exports.
The Commerce Department inspector general later faulted the fisheries service for not following agency guidelines designed to ensure “the quality of the biological opinion.” A series of lawsuits followed, ultimately resulting in tougher protections for delta smelt and salmon — which the Trump administration now seeks to undo.
RELATED: Revealed Emails raise ethical questions over Trump official's role in gas project
The July 1 assessment, obtained by The Times, outlines how proposed changes in government water operations would harm several species protected by the Endangered Species Act, including perilously low populations of winter-run salmon, as well as steelhead trout and killer whales, which feed on salmon.
But the 1,123-page document was never released.
Two days after federal scientists submitted their review, called a biological opinion, a regional fisheries official pulled the document and replaced the team that wrote it with a new group tasked with revising it, as The Times reported in July.
Had the opinion been adopted and released, it would have interfered with efforts to ramp up irrigation deliveries to powerful California farm interests with ties to the Trump administration. The revision, critics say, is another example of the administration intervening to weaken environmental protections and reverse the findings of federal scientists.
In the report, the National Marine Fisheries Service unequivocally concludes that increasing water deliveries would likely jeopardize the continued existence of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon, threatened spring-run Chinook and threatened Central Valley steelhead, as well as endangered Southern Resident killer whales that dine on salmon.
The proposed changes in California water operations “will produce multiple stressors” on winter-run salmon “that are expected to reduce survival and the overall fitness of individuals,” the agency wrote.
Harmful impacts include warm river temperatures lethal to fish eggs and newly hatched salmon; low flows in the Sacramento River and more salmon deaths at the giant government pumps that send supplies south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“Winter-run Chinook salmon are particularly important among California’s salmon runs because they exhibit a life-history strategy found nowhere else in the world,” the scientists noted.
Adults leave the ocean and migrate upstream in the winter and early spring. During the summer, they historically spawned in cold, spring-fed rivers and streams in Northern California. But the fish lost access to those spawning grounds after the federal government constructed Shasta and Keswick dams on the upper Sacramento River in the 1940s.
That, coupled with the destruction of flood plains and other habitat, sent the fabled run on a long downward spiral. Now only a few thousand of them typically return to California every year to swim upstream to spawn below Keswick, which regulates flows out of Shasta.
Despite spending millions of dollars on hatchery operations, fish screens and gravel bed restoration, federal water managers have fallen far short of meeting a long-standing congressional goal of doubling the natural production of anadromous fish in Central Valley rivers and streams.
Of over 165 species that the marine fisheries agency protects under the Endangered Species Act, California’s winter-run Chinook “is considered one of just nine species that are most at risk of extinction in the near future,” the agency wrote.
The extinction risk has increased since 2007, in part because warm-water releases from Shasta during the state’s severe drought cooked salmon eggs and newly hatched fish. In 2015, 96% of the eggs and fry died.
Revision of the July 1 biological opinion is “unquestionably an effort to subvert the best available science,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, which represents commercial fishermen.
“Literally before our eyes, we’re seeing science suppressed by monied political interests,” he argued.
Paul Souza, the regional U.S. Fish and Wildlife director who is coordinating work on the salmon opinion and a separate one for delta smelt that his agency is conducting, rejected claims that the July 1 assessment was suppressed. It was a draft that needed more work, he said.
“We have no final documents yet,” he said. “I know there are a lot of conversations about politics. But that’s a misunderstanding of the fact. We’re working with career professionals, scientists and leaders in Sacramento and making sure we do everything in our power to conserve the fisheries that we care deeply about and also meet water supply needs.”
Souza said the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the Shasta operations, has agreed to maintain higher May 1 levels of the reservoir, increasing cold water reserves for salmon. The bureau will also adhere to what Souza called “smarter” delta pumping restrictions based on the real-time location of fish.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the Trump proposal to increase water deliveries is the Westlands Water District, a sprawling irrigation district on the arid west side of the San Joaquin Valley led by some of the state’s wealthiest growers. In 2018, the district’s biggest crops were almonds, pistachios, canning tomatoes and cotton.
Westlands and other districts that depend on water supplies from the delta have bitterly fought Endangered Species Act restrictions for delta smelt and migrating salmon that have restricted their deliveries.
Water users argue that fishery agencies pay too much attention to fresh water flows in the delta and the rivers that empty into it — and too little attention to other environmental stressors, such as exotic predators, that have contributed to the fish crisis.
Critics of the act now have a major ally, Interior Sec. David Bernhardt. Before joining the Trump administration, Bernhardt was a partner in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a top-grossing law and lobbying firm that sued Interior four times on behalf of Westlands. Bernhardt was a lobbyist for Westlands and personally argued an appeals case challenging salmon protections.
He is leading efforts to implement a 2018 Trump administration directive to develop plans for “maximizing water supply deliveries” from the federal Central Valley Project, which operates Shasta Dam and reservoir and sends irrigation water to Westlands.
Releases from Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir, are not only vital to CVP deliveries to the state’s agrarian middle, they are critical to maintaining river flows and cool water temperatures for fish.
That conflict is a focus of the July 1 biological opinion, which found that under the Bureau of Reclamation’s proposed water operations, salmon would lose needed reserves of cold water, as well as flows to sustain important floodplain habitat.
“Each freshwater life stage will be harmed to some degree by the [proposal], with extensive lethal impacts expected to eggs, fry, and juveniles,” scientists concluded.
If the new team delivers a less critical assessment of the Trump proposal, it will not be the first agency reversal on California fish protections.
In 2004, under the George W. Bush administration, federal biologists concluded in draft documents leaked to the media that delta water operations would jeopardize populations of winter-run Chinook and Central Valley steelhead. A few months later, a final opinion reversed that finding, opening the door to increased exports.
The Commerce Department inspector general later faulted the fisheries service for not following agency guidelines designed to ensure “the quality of the biological opinion.” A series of lawsuits followed, ultimately resulting in tougher protections for delta smelt and salmon — which the Trump administration now seeks to undo.
RELATED: Revealed Emails raise ethical questions over Trump official's role in gas project
Plutonium found in Colorado soil at five times higher level than acceptable radioactive level
August 20, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - Raw Story
Why is there plutonium in the soil of a national wildlife refuge that is five times higher than the rate that demands a “clean up?” It’s a question Colorado state health officials are examining Tuesday after their soil sample readings showed 264 picocuries-per-gram found in Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.
The Denver Post reported the findings of the radioactive substance, but toxicologists at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said they don’t believe “there is an immediate public health threat.”
The site explained that the standard for toxic cleanup of the Rocky Flats plants was 50 picocuries per gram.
“We do believe that further sampling and analysis is needed to assess what this elevated sample may mean for long-term risks, and whether it is an isolated instance or a sign of a wider area of relatively high contamination,” said the department’s director of hazardous materials, Jennifer Opila. “We are taking the sample result seriously because it is much higher than previous samples in the vicinity and higher than the cleanup standard.”
The testing came after the toxic substance was discovered last weekand scientists sought further tests. That’s when they learned the dangerous degree they were dealing with on the public land.
The area was the site where triggers for nuclear weapons were made for over 40 years.
Citizens are already starting to worry and they fear the Environmental Protection Agency is no longer in the business of keeping people safe.
“I want our fellow citizens around the Denver area to finally wake up and realize that the federal government is not watching your back on this area,” Nick Hansen, co-founder of Rocky Flats Downwinders told Denver7. “It’s the federal government who caused this problem. It’s the federal government who supposedly cleaned it up.”
Bill Ray, executive director of the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority, also told Denver7 that a second test that was done showed a lower level. The “inconsistent testing results from one soil sample” is now posing questions to the viability of the tests and what could be going on in the area.
You can read more at The Denver Post.
The Denver Post reported the findings of the radioactive substance, but toxicologists at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said they don’t believe “there is an immediate public health threat.”
The site explained that the standard for toxic cleanup of the Rocky Flats plants was 50 picocuries per gram.
“We do believe that further sampling and analysis is needed to assess what this elevated sample may mean for long-term risks, and whether it is an isolated instance or a sign of a wider area of relatively high contamination,” said the department’s director of hazardous materials, Jennifer Opila. “We are taking the sample result seriously because it is much higher than previous samples in the vicinity and higher than the cleanup standard.”
The testing came after the toxic substance was discovered last weekand scientists sought further tests. That’s when they learned the dangerous degree they were dealing with on the public land.
The area was the site where triggers for nuclear weapons were made for over 40 years.
Citizens are already starting to worry and they fear the Environmental Protection Agency is no longer in the business of keeping people safe.
“I want our fellow citizens around the Denver area to finally wake up and realize that the federal government is not watching your back on this area,” Nick Hansen, co-founder of Rocky Flats Downwinders told Denver7. “It’s the federal government who caused this problem. It’s the federal government who supposedly cleaned it up.”
Bill Ray, executive director of the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority, also told Denver7 that a second test that was done showed a lower level. The “inconsistent testing results from one soil sample” is now posing questions to the viability of the tests and what could be going on in the area.
You can read more at The Denver Post.
The Gas Field Next Door
Living Amid Old Storage Wells at Risk of Leaks
By Susan Abram, Fair Warning - DC Report
8/17/19
More Americans than previously estimated live within a city block of aged, underground natural gas storage wells, some more than a century old and most of them lacking modern designs to prevent major leaks, according to researchers from Harvard University.
Using satellite imaging, researchers estimate that 20,000 homes and about 53,000 people across six states live within 650 feet of natural gas wells.
Most of the homes are in suburban residential areas, researchers found. And many of the nearby wells lack the structural integrity to safely store highly pressurized natural gas.
“The question then becomes: is it acceptable that thousands of likely unsuspecting people should have to bear the risks of living on top of these aging, under-regulated systems that are doing a job they weren’t designed to do?” said Drew Michanowicz, lead author and research associate at the Center for Climate, Health and Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Michanowicz and his research team, whose study was funded in part by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, wanted to understand how many people were at risk of exposure to harmful air pollutants or explosions because of their proximity to underground storage wells. They focused on six states with large numbers of aging wells. Their method allows residents in these states – Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan, New York and California – to see if their own homes are located near any of these wells.
About 80 percent of the wells in U.S. gas storage fields were completed in the 1970s or earlier. Built for oil production, they later were modified to store natural gas, according to a federal government report released in 2016.
But repurposing the old has created new safety concerns, the researchers say.
Wells Lack Modern Safety Features
Many older wells, for instance, have only one pipe for injections and withdrawals and lack a secondary blow-out prevention system needed for gas storage wells, which are subject to high-pressure injections, said the federal report by a Department of Energy task force.
Such high-pressure storage can create explosion hazards and, in a leak, the release of toxic compounds like benzene and formaldehyde, according to the Harvard research.
Failures can be catastrophic. In 2015, one of 115 wells in the Aliso Canyon storage field in suburban Los Angeles ruptured, sending nearly 100,000 metric tons of methane into the air and over nearby neighborhoods. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and, at high levels, can react with other compounds to form a toxic mix that can cause respiratory problems and headaches.
More than 8,000 nearby residents were forced to relocate, leaving their homes for months. Schools in the area were closed and children were sent to classrooms far from their neighborhood.
The ruptured well, originally constructed in the 1950s, had only one pipe and lacked safety valves. The scale of the leak is considered unprecedented.
The American Gas Association, which represents more than 200 local energy companies, did not comment specifically on the safety of older wells. But the association stated that the natural gas industry already goes above and beyond state and federal regulations and has collaborated with outside companies to design, operate and “ensure the integrity of underground storage for natural gas.”
The Aliso Canyon incident led Michanowicz and his team to examine the safety of gas storage fields. They estimate that two-thirds of the nation’s storage wells lack needed safety features.
Old Wells Concentrated in Four States
A majority of those repurposed wells are in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia, states where the Harvard researchers found that regulations on setback requirements between homes and underground storage fields are seldom enforced.
Long-term exposure to natural gas operations also has been associated with many illnesses. A University of Colorado study released last month found there may be a connection between mothers living near more intense oil and gas development and having children with congenital heart defects.
The massive leak from the Aliso Canyon storage field in northern Los Angeles continued for more than three months. During that time, Los Angeles County health authorities logged more than 700 reports from residents of health problems ranging from headaches and nosebleeds to other illnesses.
The federal task force created in response to the Aliso Canyon accident recommended taking older wells offline and further studying the cost and effectiveness of updating them with safety valves.
During his research, Michanowicz and his team found that while the industry is starting to provide information on wells that are plugged, leaking, repaired or tested for durability, little data exists on which old wells remain active. “There is currently no effective means to ensure compliance with safety standards,” according to Michanowicz’s study.
In California, regulations finalized in 2018 called for natural gas operators to prove that older wells are safe by modifying them with both primary and secondary barriers, according to the state’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources.
“Operators have to submit a work plan for bringing existing wells into compliance with the new standards,” said agency spokesman Don Drysdale. “The work plan must provide for all wells to be in compliance within seven years with minimum annual benchmarks.”
Environmentalists Want Swifter Action
That’s not soon enough, say environmental activists. “California’s underground gas storage wells are old and not properly maintained or monitored, making them ticking time bombs that endanger nearby residents,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, deputy director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.
Meanwhile, setback rules between homes and storage fields are seldom enforced nationwide.
In Ohio, more than 12,000 homes and over 30,000 residents are within 650 feet of an underground well. Michigan requires a 300-foot setback, one of the most stringent laws on the books, but there were more violations of the rule there than in all six states that Harvard researchers examined. In Pennsylvania, setbacks can be as far as 500 feet.
But all an operator has to do is get written consent from a homeowner and “they can put the wells where they want,” Michanowicz said.
“A lot of these homeowners don’t know what they are signing.”
Using satellite imaging, researchers estimate that 20,000 homes and about 53,000 people across six states live within 650 feet of natural gas wells.
Most of the homes are in suburban residential areas, researchers found. And many of the nearby wells lack the structural integrity to safely store highly pressurized natural gas.
“The question then becomes: is it acceptable that thousands of likely unsuspecting people should have to bear the risks of living on top of these aging, under-regulated systems that are doing a job they weren’t designed to do?” said Drew Michanowicz, lead author and research associate at the Center for Climate, Health and Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Michanowicz and his research team, whose study was funded in part by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, wanted to understand how many people were at risk of exposure to harmful air pollutants or explosions because of their proximity to underground storage wells. They focused on six states with large numbers of aging wells. Their method allows residents in these states – Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan, New York and California – to see if their own homes are located near any of these wells.
About 80 percent of the wells in U.S. gas storage fields were completed in the 1970s or earlier. Built for oil production, they later were modified to store natural gas, according to a federal government report released in 2016.
But repurposing the old has created new safety concerns, the researchers say.
Wells Lack Modern Safety Features
Many older wells, for instance, have only one pipe for injections and withdrawals and lack a secondary blow-out prevention system needed for gas storage wells, which are subject to high-pressure injections, said the federal report by a Department of Energy task force.
Such high-pressure storage can create explosion hazards and, in a leak, the release of toxic compounds like benzene and formaldehyde, according to the Harvard research.
Failures can be catastrophic. In 2015, one of 115 wells in the Aliso Canyon storage field in suburban Los Angeles ruptured, sending nearly 100,000 metric tons of methane into the air and over nearby neighborhoods. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and, at high levels, can react with other compounds to form a toxic mix that can cause respiratory problems and headaches.
More than 8,000 nearby residents were forced to relocate, leaving their homes for months. Schools in the area were closed and children were sent to classrooms far from their neighborhood.
The ruptured well, originally constructed in the 1950s, had only one pipe and lacked safety valves. The scale of the leak is considered unprecedented.
The American Gas Association, which represents more than 200 local energy companies, did not comment specifically on the safety of older wells. But the association stated that the natural gas industry already goes above and beyond state and federal regulations and has collaborated with outside companies to design, operate and “ensure the integrity of underground storage for natural gas.”
The Aliso Canyon incident led Michanowicz and his team to examine the safety of gas storage fields. They estimate that two-thirds of the nation’s storage wells lack needed safety features.
Old Wells Concentrated in Four States
A majority of those repurposed wells are in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia, states where the Harvard researchers found that regulations on setback requirements between homes and underground storage fields are seldom enforced.
Long-term exposure to natural gas operations also has been associated with many illnesses. A University of Colorado study released last month found there may be a connection between mothers living near more intense oil and gas development and having children with congenital heart defects.
The massive leak from the Aliso Canyon storage field in northern Los Angeles continued for more than three months. During that time, Los Angeles County health authorities logged more than 700 reports from residents of health problems ranging from headaches and nosebleeds to other illnesses.
The federal task force created in response to the Aliso Canyon accident recommended taking older wells offline and further studying the cost and effectiveness of updating them with safety valves.
During his research, Michanowicz and his team found that while the industry is starting to provide information on wells that are plugged, leaking, repaired or tested for durability, little data exists on which old wells remain active. “There is currently no effective means to ensure compliance with safety standards,” according to Michanowicz’s study.
In California, regulations finalized in 2018 called for natural gas operators to prove that older wells are safe by modifying them with both primary and secondary barriers, according to the state’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources.
“Operators have to submit a work plan for bringing existing wells into compliance with the new standards,” said agency spokesman Don Drysdale. “The work plan must provide for all wells to be in compliance within seven years with minimum annual benchmarks.”
Environmentalists Want Swifter Action
That’s not soon enough, say environmental activists. “California’s underground gas storage wells are old and not properly maintained or monitored, making them ticking time bombs that endanger nearby residents,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, deputy director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.
Meanwhile, setback rules between homes and storage fields are seldom enforced nationwide.
In Ohio, more than 12,000 homes and over 30,000 residents are within 650 feet of an underground well. Michigan requires a 300-foot setback, one of the most stringent laws on the books, but there were more violations of the rule there than in all six states that Harvard researchers examined. In Pennsylvania, setbacks can be as far as 500 feet.
But all an operator has to do is get written consent from a homeowner and “they can put the wells where they want,” Michanowicz said.
“A lot of these homeowners don’t know what they are signing.”
Two-Mile Dead Zone Confirmed in Chesapeake Bay Due to Warm, Wet Weather
Updated: Aug 15, 2019 5:39 AM PDT
By Amy Lu - WBOC16.com
CAMBRIDGE, Md.- Warm weather is welcomed by many in the summer, but mix that with lots of rain, and it's a bad outcome for the Chesapeake Bay.
Earlier this year, University of Maryland scientists predicted a 2 cubic mile large dead zone, an area with no oxygen, would form in the waters of the bay. They were right.
In late July, Maryland's Department of Natural Resources confirmed it found that 2-mile dead zone significantly worse than what they've found in years past.
Scientists say it's a combo of intense heat and freshwater pollution that's caused the abnormally large dead zone, wreaking havoc for some bay-area watermen, including Queen Anne's County waterman Dennis Anthony.
Anthony says it takes days to catch just a bushel of crabs and nearly half a day to find crabs to catch. Time, he says, is running out.
"The numbers are extremely low," Anthony said. "It seems like this dead zone is a wall where they won't come through. It's very minimal and it's almost August. The season is already three quarters of the way over for us."
Watermen say the culprit: lots of freshwater from the rain this year, flowing through the Conowingo Dam and driving down salinity levels.
Rob Newberry of the Delmarva Fisheries Association says more must be done to stop what's happening at the Conowingo Dam as well as the wastewater pollution from entering the bay.
Scientists also say the rising temperatures have heated bay waters, adding to the dead zone and potentially harming an entire ecosystem that relies on oxygen to breathe.
"July is even worse than what was initially predicted," Dave Nemazie, a coastal scientist at the University of Maryland of Environmental Science, said.
But Nemazie says he's hopeful improvements to stopping pollution and wastewater will continue to help the bay.
"There's absolutely hope for the bay. The bay is very resilient. We've seen a lot of improvements," Nemazie said.
Earlier this year, University of Maryland scientists predicted a 2 cubic mile large dead zone, an area with no oxygen, would form in the waters of the bay. They were right.
In late July, Maryland's Department of Natural Resources confirmed it found that 2-mile dead zone significantly worse than what they've found in years past.
Scientists say it's a combo of intense heat and freshwater pollution that's caused the abnormally large dead zone, wreaking havoc for some bay-area watermen, including Queen Anne's County waterman Dennis Anthony.
Anthony says it takes days to catch just a bushel of crabs and nearly half a day to find crabs to catch. Time, he says, is running out.
"The numbers are extremely low," Anthony said. "It seems like this dead zone is a wall where they won't come through. It's very minimal and it's almost August. The season is already three quarters of the way over for us."
Watermen say the culprit: lots of freshwater from the rain this year, flowing through the Conowingo Dam and driving down salinity levels.
Rob Newberry of the Delmarva Fisheries Association says more must be done to stop what's happening at the Conowingo Dam as well as the wastewater pollution from entering the bay.
Scientists also say the rising temperatures have heated bay waters, adding to the dead zone and potentially harming an entire ecosystem that relies on oxygen to breathe.
"July is even worse than what was initially predicted," Dave Nemazie, a coastal scientist at the University of Maryland of Environmental Science, said.
But Nemazie says he's hopeful improvements to stopping pollution and wastewater will continue to help the bay.
"There's absolutely hope for the bay. The bay is very resilient. We've seen a lot of improvements," Nemazie said.
fools in charge!!!
How a little known government board decimated Gulf Coast fisheries
August 13, 2019
By Sarah Okeson, DCReport @ RawStory
A federal commission whose longest-serving member is an EPA-hating Arkansas farmer appointed by former President Jimmy Carter helped make decisions that decimated the gulf’s seafood industry this year.
Toxic algae closed all 21 of Mississippi’s beaches after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened a Louisiana spillway, pouring more than 10 trillion gallons of freshwater laced with fertilizer, pesticides, sewage and other pollutants into the Mississippi Sound.
The influx of freshwater in the brackish Mississippi Sound damaged oyster, blue crab and shrimp fisheries. Blue crab harvests were down about 25% and shrimp down about 40%.
“Our natural and economic resources have been damaged and will continue to be damaged long after the Bonnet Carré spillway is closed,” said Delbert Hosemann, the Mississippi secretary of state.
The seven-member Mississippi tells the Corps when to open the four floodways on the Mississippi River.
The commission was created by Congress in 1879 and includes three civilians, two of whom must be civil engineers. The commission president is Maj. Gen. R. Mark Toy,an Obama appointee, who became president in July.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and the state’s representatives asked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to declare a federal fisheries disaster.
Farther out in the gulf a dead zone is created each year from algae growth fueled by fertilizer from farms. The dying algae decompose, sucking the oxygen from the water which becomes toxic. The dead zone this year is larger than the state of Hawaii.
The Bonnet Carré spillway, 33 miles upstream from New Orleans, diverts water to Lake Pontchartrain to protect New Orleans from flooding. The spillway was built from 1929 to 1931 after the Mississippi River flood of 1927, one of the worst natural disasters in our nation’s history.
None of the civilian members of the Mississippi River Commission live in Mississippi although the commission is based in Vicksburg, Miss. The longest-serving member is Sam Angel, the third generation of his family to run a cotton gin business in Arkansas. The other civilian members are civil engineers James Reeder of Memphis, Tenn., who was nominated by Trump in 2018 and Norma Jean Mattei of Metairie, La., who was nominated in 2012 by former President Obama.
Angel, a critic of the EPA, said in 2017 that that first thing Trump should do is get rid of the EPA, calling it “the worst agency for business for maintaining the waterways.”
The commission was criticized in 2011 for its reluctance to open another floodway, the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway in Missouri, which caused millions of dollars in unnecessary damage to Cairo, Ill., and nearby communities. One of the commissioners at the time was R.D. James, a New Madrid farmer who owned land in the floodway. James now leads the Corps’ civil works division which oversees levees.
The Corps opened the Bonnet Carré spillway twice this year and had it open for a record 123 days.
Mississippi politicians wanted the Corps to open another floodway,the Morganza spillway east of Lafayette, La., to reduce the amount of water going through Bonnet Carré. The Corps made plans to open the Morganza but postponed them as hurricane Barry approached.
Toxic algae closed all 21 of Mississippi’s beaches after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened a Louisiana spillway, pouring more than 10 trillion gallons of freshwater laced with fertilizer, pesticides, sewage and other pollutants into the Mississippi Sound.
The influx of freshwater in the brackish Mississippi Sound damaged oyster, blue crab and shrimp fisheries. Blue crab harvests were down about 25% and shrimp down about 40%.
“Our natural and economic resources have been damaged and will continue to be damaged long after the Bonnet Carré spillway is closed,” said Delbert Hosemann, the Mississippi secretary of state.
The seven-member Mississippi tells the Corps when to open the four floodways on the Mississippi River.
The commission was created by Congress in 1879 and includes three civilians, two of whom must be civil engineers. The commission president is Maj. Gen. R. Mark Toy,an Obama appointee, who became president in July.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and the state’s representatives asked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to declare a federal fisheries disaster.
Farther out in the gulf a dead zone is created each year from algae growth fueled by fertilizer from farms. The dying algae decompose, sucking the oxygen from the water which becomes toxic. The dead zone this year is larger than the state of Hawaii.
The Bonnet Carré spillway, 33 miles upstream from New Orleans, diverts water to Lake Pontchartrain to protect New Orleans from flooding. The spillway was built from 1929 to 1931 after the Mississippi River flood of 1927, one of the worst natural disasters in our nation’s history.
None of the civilian members of the Mississippi River Commission live in Mississippi although the commission is based in Vicksburg, Miss. The longest-serving member is Sam Angel, the third generation of his family to run a cotton gin business in Arkansas. The other civilian members are civil engineers James Reeder of Memphis, Tenn., who was nominated by Trump in 2018 and Norma Jean Mattei of Metairie, La., who was nominated in 2012 by former President Obama.
Angel, a critic of the EPA, said in 2017 that that first thing Trump should do is get rid of the EPA, calling it “the worst agency for business for maintaining the waterways.”
The commission was criticized in 2011 for its reluctance to open another floodway, the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway in Missouri, which caused millions of dollars in unnecessary damage to Cairo, Ill., and nearby communities. One of the commissioners at the time was R.D. James, a New Madrid farmer who owned land in the floodway. James now leads the Corps’ civil works division which oversees levees.
The Corps opened the Bonnet Carré spillway twice this year and had it open for a record 123 days.
Mississippi politicians wanted the Corps to open another floodway,the Morganza spillway east of Lafayette, La., to reduce the amount of water going through Bonnet Carré. The Corps made plans to open the Morganza but postponed them as hurricane Barry approached.
It's raining plastic: microscopic fibers fall from the sky in Rocky Mountains
Discovery raises new questions about the amount of plastic waste permeating the air, water, and soil virtually everywhere on Earth
Maanvi Singh in San Francisco
The Guardian
Tue 13 Aug 2019 01.00 EDT
Plastic was the furthest thing from Gregory Weatherbee’s mind when he began analyzing rainwater samples collected from the Rocky Mountains.“I guess I expected to see mostly soil and mineral particles,” said the US Geologic Survey researcher. Instead, he found multicolored microscopic plastic fibers.
The discovery, published in a recent study titled “It is raining plastic”, is raising new questions about the amount of plastic waste permeating the air, water, and soil virtually everywhere on Earth.
“I think the most important result that we can share with the American public is that there’s more plastic out there than meets the eye,” said Weatherbee. “It’s in the rain, it’s in the snow. It’s a part of our environment now.”
Rainwater samples collected across Colorado and analyzed under a microscope contained a rainbow of plastic fibers, as well as beads and shards. The findings shocked Weatherbee, who had been collecting the samples in order to study nitrogen pollution.
“My results are purely accidental,” he said, though they are consistent with another recent study that found microplastics in France’s Pyrenees Mountains, suggesting that plastic particles could travel with the wind for hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers. Other studies have turned up microplastics in the deepest reaches of the ocean, in UK lakes and rivers and in US groundwater.
A major contributor is trash, said Sherri Mason, a microplastics researcher and sustainability coordinator at Penn State Behrend. More than 90% of plastic waste isn’t recycled, and as it slowly degrades it breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. “Plastic fibers also break off your clothes every time you wash them,” Mason said, and plastic particles are byproducts of a variety of industrial processes.
It’s impossible to trace the tiny pieces back to their sources, Mason said, but almost anything that’s made of plastic could be shedding particles into the atmosphere. “And then those particles get incorporated into water droplets when it rains,” she added, then wash into rivers, lakes, bays and oceans and filter into groundwater sources.
Though scientists have been studying plastic pollution in the ocean for more than a decade, they can only account for 1% of it. Researchers know even less about the amount of plastic in freshwater and in the air, said Stefan Krause at the University of Birmingham. “We haven’t really started quantifying it,” he said.
Another unknown is whether it would be theoretically possible to flush all plastic out of the natural world, and how long that might take. “Even if we waved a magic wand and stopped using plastic, it’s unclear how long plastic would continue to circulate through our rivers waters systems,” he said. “Based on what we do know about plastic found in deep sources of groundwater, and accumulated in rivers, I would guess centuries.”
Animals and humans consume microplastics via water and food, and we likely breathe in micro- and nanoplastic particles in the air, though scientists have yet to understand the health effects. Microplastics can also attract and attach to heavy metals like mercury and other hazardous chemicals, as well as toxic bacteria. “Plastic particles from furniture and carpets could contain flame retardants that are toxic to humans,” Krause said.
Because we are all are exposed to hundreds of synthetic chemicals as soon as we’re born, it’s difficult to say how much longer we’d live if we weren’t exposed, said Mason. “We may never understand all the linkages between plastics and health.”
“But we know enough to say that breathing plastic probably isn’t good, and we should start thinking about dramatically reducing our dependence on plastic,” she said.
The discovery, published in a recent study titled “It is raining plastic”, is raising new questions about the amount of plastic waste permeating the air, water, and soil virtually everywhere on Earth.
“I think the most important result that we can share with the American public is that there’s more plastic out there than meets the eye,” said Weatherbee. “It’s in the rain, it’s in the snow. It’s a part of our environment now.”
Rainwater samples collected across Colorado and analyzed under a microscope contained a rainbow of plastic fibers, as well as beads and shards. The findings shocked Weatherbee, who had been collecting the samples in order to study nitrogen pollution.
“My results are purely accidental,” he said, though they are consistent with another recent study that found microplastics in France’s Pyrenees Mountains, suggesting that plastic particles could travel with the wind for hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers. Other studies have turned up microplastics in the deepest reaches of the ocean, in UK lakes and rivers and in US groundwater.
A major contributor is trash, said Sherri Mason, a microplastics researcher and sustainability coordinator at Penn State Behrend. More than 90% of plastic waste isn’t recycled, and as it slowly degrades it breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. “Plastic fibers also break off your clothes every time you wash them,” Mason said, and plastic particles are byproducts of a variety of industrial processes.
It’s impossible to trace the tiny pieces back to their sources, Mason said, but almost anything that’s made of plastic could be shedding particles into the atmosphere. “And then those particles get incorporated into water droplets when it rains,” she added, then wash into rivers, lakes, bays and oceans and filter into groundwater sources.
Though scientists have been studying plastic pollution in the ocean for more than a decade, they can only account for 1% of it. Researchers know even less about the amount of plastic in freshwater and in the air, said Stefan Krause at the University of Birmingham. “We haven’t really started quantifying it,” he said.
Another unknown is whether it would be theoretically possible to flush all plastic out of the natural world, and how long that might take. “Even if we waved a magic wand and stopped using plastic, it’s unclear how long plastic would continue to circulate through our rivers waters systems,” he said. “Based on what we do know about plastic found in deep sources of groundwater, and accumulated in rivers, I would guess centuries.”
Animals and humans consume microplastics via water and food, and we likely breathe in micro- and nanoplastic particles in the air, though scientists have yet to understand the health effects. Microplastics can also attract and attach to heavy metals like mercury and other hazardous chemicals, as well as toxic bacteria. “Plastic particles from furniture and carpets could contain flame retardants that are toxic to humans,” Krause said.
Because we are all are exposed to hundreds of synthetic chemicals as soon as we’re born, it’s difficult to say how much longer we’d live if we weren’t exposed, said Mason. “We may never understand all the linkages between plastics and health.”
“But we know enough to say that breathing plastic probably isn’t good, and we should start thinking about dramatically reducing our dependence on plastic,” she said.
When your "leader" is a fool!!!
‘Gold over life, literally’: How Trump forced reversal on mining project EPA Scientists warn could destroy ecosystem
August 10, 2019
By Common Dreams - Raw Story
“This is one of the world’s most beautiful places, with a thriving salmon run, and now we’ll get some…gold.”
“Gold over life, literally.”
“If that mine gets put in, it would … completely devastate our region. It would not only kill our resources, but it would kill us culturally.” —Gayla Hoseth, Curyung Tribal Council/Bristol Bay Native AssociationThat was the succinct and critical reaction of Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein to reporting on Friday that President Donald Trump had personally intervened—after a meeting with Alaska’s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy on Air Force One in June—to withdraw the Environmental Protection Agency’s opposition to a gold mining project in the state that the federal government’s own scientists have acknowledged would destroy native fisheries and undermine the state’s fragile ecosystems.
Naomi Klein✔
@NaomiAKlein
So Trump meets Alaska's governor in his airplane and agrees to push through a goldmine that had been stopped b/c it will devastate salmon habitat. This at a time that orcas are already starving death. Salmon carry entire ecosystems on their backs. Gold over life, literally. https://twitter.com/DrewGriffinCNN/status/1159962757883731974 …
Drew Griffin✔
@DrewGriffinCNN
Our latest on EPA being run by energy lobbyists and ignoring science. Sources: EPA lifted block on controversial mine after Trump meetinghttps://www.cnn.com/2019/08/09/us/epa-alaska-pebble-mine-salmon-invs/index.html …
4:49 PM - Aug 9, 2019
Based on reporting by CNN that only emerged Friday evening, the key developments happened weeks ago after Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Dunleavy—who has supported the copper and gold Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay despite the opposition of conservationists, Indigenous groups, salmon fisheries experts, and others.
CNN reports:
In 2014, the project was halted because an EPA study found that it would cause “complete loss of fish habitat due to elimination, dewatering, and fragmentation of streams, wetlands, and other aquatic resources” in some areas of Bristol Bay. The agency invoked a rarely used provision of the Clean Water Act that works like a veto, effectively banning mining on the site.
“If that mine gets put in, it would … completely devastate our region,” Gayla Hoseth, second chief of the Curyung Tribal Council and a Bristol Bay Native Association director, told CNN. “It would not only kill our resources, but it would kill us culturally.”
When the internal announcement was made by Trump political appointees that the agency was dropping its opposition, which came one day after the Trump-Dunleavy meeting, sources told CNN it came as a “total shock” to some of the top EPA scientists who were planning to oppose the project on environmental grounds. Sources for the story, the news outlet noted, “asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.”
According to CNN:
Four EPA sources with knowledge of the decision told CNN that senior agency officials in Washington summoned scientists and other staffers to an internal videoconference on June 27, the day after the Trump-Dunleavy meeting, to inform them of the agency’s reversal. The details of that meeting are not on any official EPA calendar and have not previously been reported.
Those sources said the decision disregards the standard assessment process under the Clean Water Act, cutting scientists out of the process.
The EPA’s new position on the project is the latest development in a decade-long battle that has pitted environmentalists, Alaskan Natives and the fishing industry against pro-mining interests in Alaska.
---
After being told that the decision was made, one EPA inside told CNN, “I was dumbfounded. We were basically told we weren’t going to examine anything. We were told to get out of the way and just make it happen.”
“Gold over life, literally.”
“If that mine gets put in, it would … completely devastate our region. It would not only kill our resources, but it would kill us culturally.” —Gayla Hoseth, Curyung Tribal Council/Bristol Bay Native AssociationThat was the succinct and critical reaction of Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein to reporting on Friday that President Donald Trump had personally intervened—after a meeting with Alaska’s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy on Air Force One in June—to withdraw the Environmental Protection Agency’s opposition to a gold mining project in the state that the federal government’s own scientists have acknowledged would destroy native fisheries and undermine the state’s fragile ecosystems.
Naomi Klein✔
@NaomiAKlein
So Trump meets Alaska's governor in his airplane and agrees to push through a goldmine that had been stopped b/c it will devastate salmon habitat. This at a time that orcas are already starving death. Salmon carry entire ecosystems on their backs. Gold over life, literally. https://twitter.com/DrewGriffinCNN/status/1159962757883731974 …
Drew Griffin✔
@DrewGriffinCNN
Our latest on EPA being run by energy lobbyists and ignoring science. Sources: EPA lifted block on controversial mine after Trump meetinghttps://www.cnn.com/2019/08/09/us/epa-alaska-pebble-mine-salmon-invs/index.html …
4:49 PM - Aug 9, 2019
Based on reporting by CNN that only emerged Friday evening, the key developments happened weeks ago after Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Dunleavy—who has supported the copper and gold Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay despite the opposition of conservationists, Indigenous groups, salmon fisheries experts, and others.
CNN reports:
In 2014, the project was halted because an EPA study found that it would cause “complete loss of fish habitat due to elimination, dewatering, and fragmentation of streams, wetlands, and other aquatic resources” in some areas of Bristol Bay. The agency invoked a rarely used provision of the Clean Water Act that works like a veto, effectively banning mining on the site.
“If that mine gets put in, it would … completely devastate our region,” Gayla Hoseth, second chief of the Curyung Tribal Council and a Bristol Bay Native Association director, told CNN. “It would not only kill our resources, but it would kill us culturally.”
When the internal announcement was made by Trump political appointees that the agency was dropping its opposition, which came one day after the Trump-Dunleavy meeting, sources told CNN it came as a “total shock” to some of the top EPA scientists who were planning to oppose the project on environmental grounds. Sources for the story, the news outlet noted, “asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.”
According to CNN:
Four EPA sources with knowledge of the decision told CNN that senior agency officials in Washington summoned scientists and other staffers to an internal videoconference on June 27, the day after the Trump-Dunleavy meeting, to inform them of the agency’s reversal. The details of that meeting are not on any official EPA calendar and have not previously been reported.
Those sources said the decision disregards the standard assessment process under the Clean Water Act, cutting scientists out of the process.
The EPA’s new position on the project is the latest development in a decade-long battle that has pitted environmentalists, Alaskan Natives and the fishing industry against pro-mining interests in Alaska.
---
After being told that the decision was made, one EPA inside told CNN, “I was dumbfounded. We were basically told we weren’t going to examine anything. We were told to get out of the way and just make it happen.”
Alaska records warmest month ever in July with coastline barren of sea ice
Average temperature for month amid Arctic heatwave was 58.1F (14.5C), nearly 1F above previous high set in July 2004
Oliver Milman in New York
The Guardian
Thu 8 Aug 2019 02.00 EDT
A heatwave pulsating through the Arctic helped push Alaska to its warmest month ever recorded in July, with the state’s vast coastline left completely barren of sea ice.
Alaska’s average temperature in July was a record 58.1F (14.5C), nearly 1F above the previous monthly high set in July 2004, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Cities and towns across the vast US state, such as Anchorage, Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow) and Kodiak all had their warmest month in 125 years of record-keeping.
This heat, 5.4F warmer than the long-term average for July, helped spur wildfires that shrouded much of Alaska in a pall of smoke and has now resulted in a remarkable melting away of shoreline ice.
There is now no sea ice within 150 miles of Alaskan shores, according to an analysis by the National Weather Service. The pace of ice loss is “unprecedented” in 40 years of satellite records, scientists said, with the Bering Sea, which separates Alaska from Russia, left completely ice-free.
The record-breaking warmth in Alaska is part of a broader heatwave that has swept the northern latitudes, with Greenland shedding a record 12.5 gigatons of ice into the ocean in a single day, Norway experiencing its joint hottest day ever and forest fires in Siberia tearing through an area as large as Belgium.
Scientists warned that the extreme conditions are consistent with the most pessimistic scenario where countries do little to constrain global heating by cutting planet-warming gases from cars, trucks and power generation.
“We are seeing record after record after record,” said Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, of the heat and melting episodes.
“It looks like the worst case scenario put forward by the IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change] could be an underestimate because we are seeing ice melting now that we expected 30 to 40 years from now. It’s alarming because it’s very fast-paced and the consequences are hard to predict.”
Arctic sea ice accumulates over winter before receding as temperatures start to rise in spring. The unusually hasty retreat of ice in 2019 has been prompted by persistent southerly winds, storms and high temperatures roiling both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Across the Arctic, July set a new record low for sea ice extent, at 2.93m sq miles.
“While we cannot directly compare one particular extreme year to climate change, the long-term trends are obvious – sea ice is declining and temperatures are rising,” said Zack Labe, a climate scientist at the University of California, Irvine.
He added: “Without a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will continue to increase the probability of extreme heatwaves around the world.”
The Arctic is heating up at about twice the average of the rest of the world, with the frigid polar region caught in a spiral where sea ice thins and melts away, opening up vast tracts of dark ocean that is more absorbent of heat, causing further warming.
The loss of ice causes numerous hazards for communities living in the Arctic, with many facing complete relocation. Meanwhile, the melting of glaciers in Greenland are a leading contributor to sea level rise that imperils coastal cities around the world via flooding.
Tedesco said that the pace of melting in Greenland this year is on track to break a record set in 2012, when a net 562 gigatons of ice was lost. This will probably raise the global sea level by more than 1mm. If Greenland’s entire ice sheet were to melt, the world’s oceans would rise by about 20ft.
“What’s happening in Greenland is exceptional and shows that the melting is not only increasing but accelerating,” said Tedesco.
“There are still cascading events we still don’t fully understand. We will see impacts on society and life as we know it.”
The unspooling of the Arctic’s environment will be just one consequence of global heating discussed at an upcoming UN climate summit in New York in September.
Governments will meet amid growing alarm over heatwaves, fierce storms, drought and food insecurity that have wracked countries around the world. Such concerns have sparked a global protest movement, headed by young activists such as the teenager Greta Thunberg, who is sailing to New York on a solar-powered boat for the UN summit.
“My concern is that Greenland will be forgotten because there will probably be a huge hurricane by then,” said Tedesco. “Momentum is gaining but there is clearly a strong need to take real action on this at a government level.”
Alaska’s average temperature in July was a record 58.1F (14.5C), nearly 1F above the previous monthly high set in July 2004, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Cities and towns across the vast US state, such as Anchorage, Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow) and Kodiak all had their warmest month in 125 years of record-keeping.
This heat, 5.4F warmer than the long-term average for July, helped spur wildfires that shrouded much of Alaska in a pall of smoke and has now resulted in a remarkable melting away of shoreline ice.
There is now no sea ice within 150 miles of Alaskan shores, according to an analysis by the National Weather Service. The pace of ice loss is “unprecedented” in 40 years of satellite records, scientists said, with the Bering Sea, which separates Alaska from Russia, left completely ice-free.
The record-breaking warmth in Alaska is part of a broader heatwave that has swept the northern latitudes, with Greenland shedding a record 12.5 gigatons of ice into the ocean in a single day, Norway experiencing its joint hottest day ever and forest fires in Siberia tearing through an area as large as Belgium.
Scientists warned that the extreme conditions are consistent with the most pessimistic scenario where countries do little to constrain global heating by cutting planet-warming gases from cars, trucks and power generation.
“We are seeing record after record after record,” said Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, of the heat and melting episodes.
“It looks like the worst case scenario put forward by the IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change] could be an underestimate because we are seeing ice melting now that we expected 30 to 40 years from now. It’s alarming because it’s very fast-paced and the consequences are hard to predict.”
Arctic sea ice accumulates over winter before receding as temperatures start to rise in spring. The unusually hasty retreat of ice in 2019 has been prompted by persistent southerly winds, storms and high temperatures roiling both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Across the Arctic, July set a new record low for sea ice extent, at 2.93m sq miles.
“While we cannot directly compare one particular extreme year to climate change, the long-term trends are obvious – sea ice is declining and temperatures are rising,” said Zack Labe, a climate scientist at the University of California, Irvine.
He added: “Without a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will continue to increase the probability of extreme heatwaves around the world.”
The Arctic is heating up at about twice the average of the rest of the world, with the frigid polar region caught in a spiral where sea ice thins and melts away, opening up vast tracts of dark ocean that is more absorbent of heat, causing further warming.
The loss of ice causes numerous hazards for communities living in the Arctic, with many facing complete relocation. Meanwhile, the melting of glaciers in Greenland are a leading contributor to sea level rise that imperils coastal cities around the world via flooding.
Tedesco said that the pace of melting in Greenland this year is on track to break a record set in 2012, when a net 562 gigatons of ice was lost. This will probably raise the global sea level by more than 1mm. If Greenland’s entire ice sheet were to melt, the world’s oceans would rise by about 20ft.
“What’s happening in Greenland is exceptional and shows that the melting is not only increasing but accelerating,” said Tedesco.
“There are still cascading events we still don’t fully understand. We will see impacts on society and life as we know it.”
The unspooling of the Arctic’s environment will be just one consequence of global heating discussed at an upcoming UN climate summit in New York in September.
Governments will meet amid growing alarm over heatwaves, fierce storms, drought and food insecurity that have wracked countries around the world. Such concerns have sparked a global protest movement, headed by young activists such as the teenager Greta Thunberg, who is sailing to New York on a solar-powered boat for the UN summit.
“My concern is that Greenland will be forgotten because there will probably be a huge hurricane by then,” said Tedesco. “Momentum is gaining but there is clearly a strong need to take real action on this at a government level.”
IPCC leaked report: Going vegetarian and controlling land use are key to climate crisis
Scientists in Geneva warn that cutting carbon emissions from cars and factories is not enough
Robin McKie
The Guardian
Sat 3 Aug 2019 13.00 BST
Attempts to solve the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions from only cars, factories and power plants are doomed to failure, scientists will warn this week.
A leaked draft of a report on climate change and land use, which is now being debated in Geneva by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that it will be impossible to keep global temperatures at safe levels unless there is also a transformation in the way the world produces food and manages land.
Humans now exploit 72% of the planet’s ice-free surface to feed, clothe and support Earth’s growing population, the report warns. At the same time, agriculture, forestry and other land use produces almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, about half of all emissions of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, come from cattle and rice fields, while deforestation and the removal of peat lands cause further significant levels of carbon emissions. The impact of intensive agriculture – which has helped the world’s population soar from 1.9 billion a century ago to 7.7 billion – has also increased soil erosion and reduced amounts of organic material in the ground.
In future these problems are likely to get worse. “Climate change exacerbates land degradation through increases in rainfall intensity, flooding, drought frequency and severity, heat stress, wind, sea-level rise and wave action,” the report states.
It is a bleak analysis of the dangers ahead and comes when rising greenhouse gas emissions have made news after triggering a range of severe meteorological events. These include news that:
•
*Arctic sea-ice coverage reached near record lows for July;
*The heatwaves that hit Europe last month were between 1.5C and 3C higher because of climate change;
*Global temperatures for July were 1.2C above pre-industrial levels for the month.
This last figure is particularly alarming, as the IPCC has warned that rises greater than 1.5C risk triggering climatic destabilisation while those higher than 2C make such events even more likely. “We are now getting very close to some dangerous tipping points in the behaviour of the climate – but as this latest leaked report of the IPCC’s work reveals, it is going to be very difficult to achieve the cuts we need to make to prevent that happening,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
The new IPCC report emphasises that land will have to be managed more sustainably so that it releases much less carbon than at present. Peat lands will need to be restored by halting drainage schemes; meat consumption will have to be cut to reduce methane production; while food waste will have to be reduced.
Among the measures put forward by the report is the proposal of a major shift towards vegetarian and vegan diets. “The consumption of healthy and sustainable diets, such as those based on coarse grains, pulses and vegetables, and nuts and seeds … presents major opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states.
There also needs to be a big change in how land is used, it adds. Policies need to include “improved access to markets, empowering women farmers, expanding access to agricultural services and strengthening land tenure security”, it states. “Early warning systems for weather, crop yields, and seasonal climate events are also critical.”
The chances of politicians and scientists achieving these goals are uncertain, however. Nations are scheduled to meet in late 2020, probably in the UK, at a key IPCC conference where delegates will plant how to achieve effective zero-carbon emission policies over the next few decades.
The US, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, will have just had its presidential elections. A new Democrat incumbent would likely be sympathetic to moves to control global heating. Re-election of Donald Trump, who has called climate change “a hoax”, would put a very different, far gloomier perspective on hopes of achieving a consensus.
A leaked draft of a report on climate change and land use, which is now being debated in Geneva by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that it will be impossible to keep global temperatures at safe levels unless there is also a transformation in the way the world produces food and manages land.
Humans now exploit 72% of the planet’s ice-free surface to feed, clothe and support Earth’s growing population, the report warns. At the same time, agriculture, forestry and other land use produces almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, about half of all emissions of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, come from cattle and rice fields, while deforestation and the removal of peat lands cause further significant levels of carbon emissions. The impact of intensive agriculture – which has helped the world’s population soar from 1.9 billion a century ago to 7.7 billion – has also increased soil erosion and reduced amounts of organic material in the ground.
In future these problems are likely to get worse. “Climate change exacerbates land degradation through increases in rainfall intensity, flooding, drought frequency and severity, heat stress, wind, sea-level rise and wave action,” the report states.
It is a bleak analysis of the dangers ahead and comes when rising greenhouse gas emissions have made news after triggering a range of severe meteorological events. These include news that:
•
*Arctic sea-ice coverage reached near record lows for July;
*The heatwaves that hit Europe last month were between 1.5C and 3C higher because of climate change;
*Global temperatures for July were 1.2C above pre-industrial levels for the month.
This last figure is particularly alarming, as the IPCC has warned that rises greater than 1.5C risk triggering climatic destabilisation while those higher than 2C make such events even more likely. “We are now getting very close to some dangerous tipping points in the behaviour of the climate – but as this latest leaked report of the IPCC’s work reveals, it is going to be very difficult to achieve the cuts we need to make to prevent that happening,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
The new IPCC report emphasises that land will have to be managed more sustainably so that it releases much less carbon than at present. Peat lands will need to be restored by halting drainage schemes; meat consumption will have to be cut to reduce methane production; while food waste will have to be reduced.
Among the measures put forward by the report is the proposal of a major shift towards vegetarian and vegan diets. “The consumption of healthy and sustainable diets, such as those based on coarse grains, pulses and vegetables, and nuts and seeds … presents major opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states.
There also needs to be a big change in how land is used, it adds. Policies need to include “improved access to markets, empowering women farmers, expanding access to agricultural services and strengthening land tenure security”, it states. “Early warning systems for weather, crop yields, and seasonal climate events are also critical.”
The chances of politicians and scientists achieving these goals are uncertain, however. Nations are scheduled to meet in late 2020, probably in the UK, at a key IPCC conference where delegates will plant how to achieve effective zero-carbon emission policies over the next few decades.
The US, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, will have just had its presidential elections. A new Democrat incumbent would likely be sympathetic to moves to control global heating. Re-election of Donald Trump, who has called climate change “a hoax”, would put a very different, far gloomier perspective on hopes of achieving a consensus.
CLIMATE CHANGE: THOUSANDS OF PACIFIC WALRUSES HAVE TURNED UP IN ALASKA AHEAD OF SCHEDULE AFTER RECORD-BREAKING TEMPERATURES
BY ARISTOS GEORGIOU - Newsweek
ON 8/2/19 AT 12:45 PM EDT
Close up of a female walrus resting after entering a haulout.
SMITH COLLECTION/GADO/GETTY IMAGES
Thousands of Pacific walruses have been spotted on an island off the northwest coast of Alaska in what is their earliest appearance on the state's shores—something experts have put down to rapidly receding Arctic sea ice and unusually warm ocean temperatures.
Sea ice off northern Alaska usually reaches its summer minimum in September, but recent high temperatures in the region—which have seen records smashed across the state—have meant that the ice has disappeared much earlier than normal, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The walruses were seen near the Iñupiaq village of Point Lay which is located on a barrier island in the Chukchi Sea, according to environment officials. This is the first time a herd has been seen in the area in the month of July.
"This is the earliest date that large numbers of walruses have been confirmed on shore at Point Lay," Andrea Medeiros, a spokeswoman for the the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in Anchorage, told AP.
Walruses spend most of their time on sea ice. However, global warming is reducing the amount of ice available for them to rest on, according to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF.) When no ice is available, walruses congregate on shores in large groups known as "haulouts" to seek refuge.
In recent times, walruses are congregating in increasingly large haulouts—sometimes numbering up to 40,000 individuals—in places like Alaska and Russia.
"The formation of coastal haulouts along the Chukchi Sea coast in recent years is associated with the loss of sea ice habitat near offshore feeding grounds," a statement from the USFWS read. "The walruses typically begin to haul out approximately two weeks after sea ice recedes off the continental shelf. Sea ice provides protection from predators and easy access to feeding areas below. Walruses would normally rest on the sea ice in small groups and occasionally slip into the water to feed."
These haulouts can be dangerous because walruses are easily scared by predators, humans or vehicles—which can lead to stampedes as they rush to safety in the ocean, crushing younger members of the herd.
Furthermore, the journey from the receding sea ice to the shore—which can be more than 100 miles—can be tiring and perilous, particularly for young calves.
Sea ice off northern Alaska usually reaches its summer minimum in September, but recent high temperatures in the region—which have seen records smashed across the state—have meant that the ice has disappeared much earlier than normal, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The walruses were seen near the Iñupiaq village of Point Lay which is located on a barrier island in the Chukchi Sea, according to environment officials. This is the first time a herd has been seen in the area in the month of July.
"This is the earliest date that large numbers of walruses have been confirmed on shore at Point Lay," Andrea Medeiros, a spokeswoman for the the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in Anchorage, told AP.
Walruses spend most of their time on sea ice. However, global warming is reducing the amount of ice available for them to rest on, according to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF.) When no ice is available, walruses congregate on shores in large groups known as "haulouts" to seek refuge.
In recent times, walruses are congregating in increasingly large haulouts—sometimes numbering up to 40,000 individuals—in places like Alaska and Russia.
"The formation of coastal haulouts along the Chukchi Sea coast in recent years is associated with the loss of sea ice habitat near offshore feeding grounds," a statement from the USFWS read. "The walruses typically begin to haul out approximately two weeks after sea ice recedes off the continental shelf. Sea ice provides protection from predators and easy access to feeding areas below. Walruses would normally rest on the sea ice in small groups and occasionally slip into the water to feed."
These haulouts can be dangerous because walruses are easily scared by predators, humans or vehicles—which can lead to stampedes as they rush to safety in the ocean, crushing younger members of the herd.
Furthermore, the journey from the receding sea ice to the shore—which can be more than 100 miles—can be tiring and perilous, particularly for young calves.
EPA Inspector General wants to know how something like this was OK’d
July 29, 2019
By Sarah Okeson, DCReport @ RawStory
Cathy Stepp helped greenlighted polluting Lake Michigan during her time overseeing Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources, and now she is helping a mining company that could contaminate Lake Superior.
Stepp, a regional administrator for the EPA, is part of an investigation by the agency’s inspector general into how Minnesota awarded a permit in December to PolyMet Mining Co. which wants to build a $1 billion copper-nickel mine on 19,000 acres near Hoyt Lakes, Minn., near the North Shore of Lake Superior.
The water permit has become a test case for Trump’s effort to weaken environmental oversight by having the EPA mostly defer to state regulators.
Stepp’s chief of staff, Kurt Thiede, who previously worked for her in Wisconsin, was asked in the Minnesota review to stall submitting written comments from the EPA on the proposed mine until after the period for submitting public comments had ended. That move in effect made those comments secret until environmental groups sued.
“Under the current administration, EPA is a pollution watchdog not only on a leash but under a muzzle, as well,” said Kyla Bennett of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the nonprofit that sued for the records on behalf of WaterLegacy.
Kevin Pierard, a senior official in the EPA’s Chicago office, told Minnesota regulators that the proposed permit didn’t have numeric limits on how much pollution could be in discharges from the mine. He also said the discharges would exceed federal health and aquatic life standards for mercury, copper, arsenic, cadmium and zinc.
Pierard’s comments were read over the phone to Minnesota regulators so they wouldn’t appear in the official record, a move former EPA attorney Jeffry Fowley said was “seriously improper conduct.” Fowley said the permit is “an end-run around the … requirements of the Clean Water Act.”
Glencore PLC, one of the world’s largest publicly traded companies with annual revenues of more than $200 billion, took majority ownership of PolyMet in June. The U.S. Justice Department has subpoenaed Glencore in an investigation into foreign corruption and money laundering, asking for documents for business in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Venezuela and Nigeria.
“Alarm bells should have gone off all over the place,” said former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson. “It’s like making an investment in a company and suddenly finding out the mob owns it.”
In Wisconsin, Stepp and Thiede helped Foxconn, the giant Taiwan manufacturer best known for assembling iPhones, be exempted from any major environmental review. Foxconn and the state claimed the deal would bring up to 13,000 jobs to Wisconsin, but now it looks like just 1,500 people could be hired to start.
Stepp, a regional administrator for the EPA, is part of an investigation by the agency’s inspector general into how Minnesota awarded a permit in December to PolyMet Mining Co. which wants to build a $1 billion copper-nickel mine on 19,000 acres near Hoyt Lakes, Minn., near the North Shore of Lake Superior.
The water permit has become a test case for Trump’s effort to weaken environmental oversight by having the EPA mostly defer to state regulators.
Stepp’s chief of staff, Kurt Thiede, who previously worked for her in Wisconsin, was asked in the Minnesota review to stall submitting written comments from the EPA on the proposed mine until after the period for submitting public comments had ended. That move in effect made those comments secret until environmental groups sued.
“Under the current administration, EPA is a pollution watchdog not only on a leash but under a muzzle, as well,” said Kyla Bennett of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the nonprofit that sued for the records on behalf of WaterLegacy.
Kevin Pierard, a senior official in the EPA’s Chicago office, told Minnesota regulators that the proposed permit didn’t have numeric limits on how much pollution could be in discharges from the mine. He also said the discharges would exceed federal health and aquatic life standards for mercury, copper, arsenic, cadmium and zinc.
Pierard’s comments were read over the phone to Minnesota regulators so they wouldn’t appear in the official record, a move former EPA attorney Jeffry Fowley said was “seriously improper conduct.” Fowley said the permit is “an end-run around the … requirements of the Clean Water Act.”
Glencore PLC, one of the world’s largest publicly traded companies with annual revenues of more than $200 billion, took majority ownership of PolyMet in June. The U.S. Justice Department has subpoenaed Glencore in an investigation into foreign corruption and money laundering, asking for documents for business in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Venezuela and Nigeria.
“Alarm bells should have gone off all over the place,” said former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson. “It’s like making an investment in a company and suddenly finding out the mob owns it.”
In Wisconsin, Stepp and Thiede helped Foxconn, the giant Taiwan manufacturer best known for assembling iPhones, be exempted from any major environmental review. Foxconn and the state claimed the deal would bring up to 13,000 jobs to Wisconsin, but now it looks like just 1,500 people could be hired to start.
stupidity and greed???
Biodegradable plastics have existed for decades. So why aren't they mainstream?
As Earth's oceans becoming a plastic dumping ground, why haven't biodegradable plastics been normalized yet?
MATTHEW ROZSA - Salon
JULY 28, 2019 5:00PM (UTC)
The business world rarely yields good news, at least when it comes to environmental issues, so this recent story from PR Newswire was quite welcome. It says that the market for biodegradable plastic packaging was valued at $3.97 billion as of last year and is expected to reach $10.3 billion by 2024. At a time when normal (read: non-biodegradable) plastics are polluting our oceans, poisoning our bodies and threatening life on this planet in a manner surpassed only by climate change, this is good news indeed.
Yet the technology to create biodegradable plastics is not new. Indeed, it has existed for more than forty years. Given how crucial such technology is, why has it taken so long for it to become popular? Are there political barriers to it becoming prevalent? What does it say that, during the deepest submarine dive (to the bottom of the Mariana Trench), explorers found a plastic bag?
To learn more, Salon reached out to Ramani Narayan, a professor at Michigan State University's College of Engineering. The main takeaway from this conversation was that — although biodegradable plastics are not a panacea for what ails our planet — there is no sound economic or ecological reason for our global society to not aggressively pursue using them.
The following interview was conducted by email.
In the 1975 novel "Ecotopia" author Ernest Callenbach described a world in which everything was biodegradable or compostable, one that was based on technology which existed at the time. Why did this not become a reality over the past 44 years?
Design and nature of materials changed – plastics became the material of choice — stronger, lighter, cheaper, longer lasting, impervious to microbial action, moisture etc — however, we never worried or bothered about the impact of these new materials at its end-of-life. Because we did not manage its end-of-life, these single-use, disposable plastics soon found itself in natural environments including the oceans. The very properties that made plastics the material of choice became a problem in the environment — they were not biodegradable at rate and time to be removed from the environment, their light weight allowed it to be blown and carried to remote corners causing unintended consequences.
Are there technological, scientific or economic limits to what can be achieved on this front today?
Plastics offers considerable benefits to society — think of lightweight safety helmets, glasses, preserving and protecting food and industrial products, hygiene and many more valuable attributes. The missing link is a viable end-of-life for plastics and other materials, creating a circular loop. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation provides a blueprint for change to a “circular economy” — 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic packaging by 2025
Are there political limits to which can be achieved on this front today?
Politics needs to be set aside, and logical closed loop circular materials approaches [are] needed.
What have been the ecological consequences of humanity not transitioning to biodegradable products over the past 44 years?
Biodegradability is not a magical solution to the problem of plastics and other bio-wastes. Biodegradability in concert with managed, closed-loop disposal systems like composting/anaerobic digestion or soil (agricultural products) resulting in complete removal from the environmental in a short time defined by the disposal environment can be a viable and responsible “end-of-life” solution in harmony with Ellen MacArthur Foundation Circularity model.
However, there are many misleading and unqualified use of the term “biodegradable” to describe products — like the oxo- and organic additives claimed to make conventional plastics “biodegradable”.
Is any of that damage permanent?
Clearly, there is an urgency — but not all is lost, and much activity is taking place in the space.
Yet the technology to create biodegradable plastics is not new. Indeed, it has existed for more than forty years. Given how crucial such technology is, why has it taken so long for it to become popular? Are there political barriers to it becoming prevalent? What does it say that, during the deepest submarine dive (to the bottom of the Mariana Trench), explorers found a plastic bag?
To learn more, Salon reached out to Ramani Narayan, a professor at Michigan State University's College of Engineering. The main takeaway from this conversation was that — although biodegradable plastics are not a panacea for what ails our planet — there is no sound economic or ecological reason for our global society to not aggressively pursue using them.
The following interview was conducted by email.
In the 1975 novel "Ecotopia" author Ernest Callenbach described a world in which everything was biodegradable or compostable, one that was based on technology which existed at the time. Why did this not become a reality over the past 44 years?
Design and nature of materials changed – plastics became the material of choice — stronger, lighter, cheaper, longer lasting, impervious to microbial action, moisture etc — however, we never worried or bothered about the impact of these new materials at its end-of-life. Because we did not manage its end-of-life, these single-use, disposable plastics soon found itself in natural environments including the oceans. The very properties that made plastics the material of choice became a problem in the environment — they were not biodegradable at rate and time to be removed from the environment, their light weight allowed it to be blown and carried to remote corners causing unintended consequences.
Are there technological, scientific or economic limits to what can be achieved on this front today?
Plastics offers considerable benefits to society — think of lightweight safety helmets, glasses, preserving and protecting food and industrial products, hygiene and many more valuable attributes. The missing link is a viable end-of-life for plastics and other materials, creating a circular loop. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation provides a blueprint for change to a “circular economy” — 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic packaging by 2025
Are there political limits to which can be achieved on this front today?
Politics needs to be set aside, and logical closed loop circular materials approaches [are] needed.
What have been the ecological consequences of humanity not transitioning to biodegradable products over the past 44 years?
Biodegradability is not a magical solution to the problem of plastics and other bio-wastes. Biodegradability in concert with managed, closed-loop disposal systems like composting/anaerobic digestion or soil (agricultural products) resulting in complete removal from the environmental in a short time defined by the disposal environment can be a viable and responsible “end-of-life” solution in harmony with Ellen MacArthur Foundation Circularity model.
However, there are many misleading and unqualified use of the term “biodegradable” to describe products — like the oxo- and organic additives claimed to make conventional plastics “biodegradable”.
Is any of that damage permanent?
Clearly, there is an urgency — but not all is lost, and much activity is taking place in the space.
Fecal bacteria found at more than half of US beaches last year, report says
Beaches were deemed unsafe on at least a quarter of days tested and climate crisis will likely increase the pollution
Miranda Bryant in New York
The Guardian
Wed 24 Jul 2019 07.00 BST
Beaches in Illinois were among the worst-offending in the study. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Before diving into the waves this summer, beachgoers in the US might like to do some homework on what they will be diving into, according to a new report.
The Environment America Research and Policy Center (EARPC) found that more than half of American beaches were home to potentially dangerous levels of fecal bacteria at some point last year.
The Safe for Swimming? report contains analysis of data submitted to the National Water Quality Monitoring Council from 29 states and Puerto Rico. It found that 58% of 2,620 beaches analysed had fecal bacteria levels exceeding the “beach action value”, a threshold used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for making beach notification decisions, on at least one day in 2018.
A total of 605 sites were deemed potentially unsafe on at least a quarter of days on which water was tested.
Among the worst-offending states were Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana, where all beaches tested were found to be unsafe on at least one day. Other badly performing states included Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Better-performing states included New Hampshire, where 15 of 47 beaches fell short on at least one day, Maine and Hawaii, which scored 39 of 85 and 90 of 218.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the annual European bathing water report, based on 22,000 sites across EU member states plus Albania and Switzerland, found that around 300 had poor bathing quality.
Peter Kristensen, European water expert for the European Environment Agency, said the two systems were “not fully comparable” because they use different guidelines.
“My impression is that the US standards may be stricter,” he said. “In the European system it is also possible after heavy rains and storm water overflow to warn against swimming and discard a sample taken under the short-term pollution event.”
According Safe for Swimming?, the worst beach in the US was Singing Bridge Beach in Arenac county, Michigan, which was found to have unsafe levels of fecal bacteria each time it was tested. San Pedro Creek in San Mateo county, California, came second with 91% of sampling days found to have potentially unsafe water.
Fecal contamination is caused by run-off and sewage overflows, said John Rumpler, co-author of the report and EARPC clean water program director. It can cause gastrointestinal illness, respiratory disease, eye and ear infections and skin rash. According to the report, each year there are an estimated 57m cases of recreational waterborne illness.
While Rumpler was not surprised by the results, he said they were disappointing.
“The basic findings of the report are that there’s far too much fecal bacteria pollution in places where we swim all across the US and that fecal bacteria is an indicator of pathogens in the water that can make swimmers sick,” he said. “So that’s a real cause for concern and we thought the public should know about it. Policy makers should know something about it too.”
Increasingly severe storms due to the climate crisis are likely to result in more run-off pollution and sewage overflows, he said.
Adding: “If you look at those of the predominant causes of fecal bacteria and water sewage overflows and run-off pollution, those factors are tending to be more ominous year by year.”
He believes there is hope. Some communities are investing in infrastructure such as rain barrels, expanded green space and rooftop gardens to help absorb storm water.
The 1972 Clean Water Act controls the discharge of pollution into US waters. Rumpler said the Trump administration could pose a risk to future bathing water quality if it were to weaken rules around sewage treatment plants, a measure he believes the EPA is considering.
An EPA spokesperson said: “Last week, EPA issued its BEACH Report: 2018 Swimming Season … a national summary of beach closings and advisories that states, territories and tribes issued during the 2018 swimming season as well as data trends from 2013 to 2018.
“This year’s report suggests that America’s beaches are open and safe for recreation the vast majority of the time. Specifically, the nation’s monitored coastal and Great Lakes beaches were open and safe for swimming 95% of the time during the 2018 swimming season. The 2018 results were similar to previous years.”
The EARPC report nonetheless calls for the government to take steps including increased funding for sewage systems, protection and restoration of natural infrastructure such as wetlands and strengthened enforcement of municipal wastewater treatment.
On a practical level, Rumpler said it was worth noting how often a beach has been measured unsafe: “Some of these beaches that we highlighted, they may have had an unsafe level, or potentially unsafe level, of fecal bacteria one or two days out of all the days that were tested. So that’s one set of risks as opposed to, say, the 605 beaches that we identified where the fecal bacterial levels were excessive at least 25% of the time or more.”
Colleen Henn, clean water and eastern Long Island chapter coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental charity, said surfers such as herself get sick from water bacteria.
She added: “I think that’s why this report really opened up people’s eyes and kind of scared people in a way … It is frequent for recreational [water] users to get sick from going to beach.”
In January 2018, the Environmental Health journal published a report on recreational waterborne illness which estimated water recreation activities cause 90m illnesses annually at a cost of $3.7bn.
Henn said she does not think water quality has worsened – rather that people are becoming more aware of it. That, she said, was “a wonderful thing”.
The Environment America Research and Policy Center (EARPC) found that more than half of American beaches were home to potentially dangerous levels of fecal bacteria at some point last year.
The Safe for Swimming? report contains analysis of data submitted to the National Water Quality Monitoring Council from 29 states and Puerto Rico. It found that 58% of 2,620 beaches analysed had fecal bacteria levels exceeding the “beach action value”, a threshold used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for making beach notification decisions, on at least one day in 2018.
A total of 605 sites were deemed potentially unsafe on at least a quarter of days on which water was tested.
Among the worst-offending states were Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana, where all beaches tested were found to be unsafe on at least one day. Other badly performing states included Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Better-performing states included New Hampshire, where 15 of 47 beaches fell short on at least one day, Maine and Hawaii, which scored 39 of 85 and 90 of 218.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the annual European bathing water report, based on 22,000 sites across EU member states plus Albania and Switzerland, found that around 300 had poor bathing quality.
Peter Kristensen, European water expert for the European Environment Agency, said the two systems were “not fully comparable” because they use different guidelines.
“My impression is that the US standards may be stricter,” he said. “In the European system it is also possible after heavy rains and storm water overflow to warn against swimming and discard a sample taken under the short-term pollution event.”
According Safe for Swimming?, the worst beach in the US was Singing Bridge Beach in Arenac county, Michigan, which was found to have unsafe levels of fecal bacteria each time it was tested. San Pedro Creek in San Mateo county, California, came second with 91% of sampling days found to have potentially unsafe water.
Fecal contamination is caused by run-off and sewage overflows, said John Rumpler, co-author of the report and EARPC clean water program director. It can cause gastrointestinal illness, respiratory disease, eye and ear infections and skin rash. According to the report, each year there are an estimated 57m cases of recreational waterborne illness.
While Rumpler was not surprised by the results, he said they were disappointing.
“The basic findings of the report are that there’s far too much fecal bacteria pollution in places where we swim all across the US and that fecal bacteria is an indicator of pathogens in the water that can make swimmers sick,” he said. “So that’s a real cause for concern and we thought the public should know about it. Policy makers should know something about it too.”
Increasingly severe storms due to the climate crisis are likely to result in more run-off pollution and sewage overflows, he said.
Adding: “If you look at those of the predominant causes of fecal bacteria and water sewage overflows and run-off pollution, those factors are tending to be more ominous year by year.”
He believes there is hope. Some communities are investing in infrastructure such as rain barrels, expanded green space and rooftop gardens to help absorb storm water.
The 1972 Clean Water Act controls the discharge of pollution into US waters. Rumpler said the Trump administration could pose a risk to future bathing water quality if it were to weaken rules around sewage treatment plants, a measure he believes the EPA is considering.
An EPA spokesperson said: “Last week, EPA issued its BEACH Report: 2018 Swimming Season … a national summary of beach closings and advisories that states, territories and tribes issued during the 2018 swimming season as well as data trends from 2013 to 2018.
“This year’s report suggests that America’s beaches are open and safe for recreation the vast majority of the time. Specifically, the nation’s monitored coastal and Great Lakes beaches were open and safe for swimming 95% of the time during the 2018 swimming season. The 2018 results were similar to previous years.”
The EARPC report nonetheless calls for the government to take steps including increased funding for sewage systems, protection and restoration of natural infrastructure such as wetlands and strengthened enforcement of municipal wastewater treatment.
On a practical level, Rumpler said it was worth noting how often a beach has been measured unsafe: “Some of these beaches that we highlighted, they may have had an unsafe level, or potentially unsafe level, of fecal bacteria one or two days out of all the days that were tested. So that’s one set of risks as opposed to, say, the 605 beaches that we identified where the fecal bacterial levels were excessive at least 25% of the time or more.”
Colleen Henn, clean water and eastern Long Island chapter coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental charity, said surfers such as herself get sick from water bacteria.
She added: “I think that’s why this report really opened up people’s eyes and kind of scared people in a way … It is frequent for recreational [water] users to get sick from going to beach.”
In January 2018, the Environmental Health journal published a report on recreational waterborne illness which estimated water recreation activities cause 90m illnesses annually at a cost of $3.7bn.
Henn said she does not think water quality has worsened – rather that people are becoming more aware of it. That, she said, was “a wonderful thing”.
EPA-funded research shows US air pollution linked to more than 30,000 deaths
The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted air quality standards.
E.A. CRUNDEN - Thinkprogress
JUL 23, 2019, 2:00 PM
More than 30,000 deaths have been linked to poor air quality in the United States over the past two decades, according to new research funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And even at levels considered to be safe, researchers argue that air pollution can increase mortality rates.
The study, released Tuesday, was also supported by the research charity Wellcome Trust, and reinforces long-running concerns over microscopic pollution particles in the air and their impact on human health. It also widens the gap between the Trump administration’s efforts to rollback clean air rules and the government’s own findings on the importance of air quality.
Researchers from Imperial College London and Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Air, Climate, and Energy Solutions authored the new study, published in PLOS Medicine, which probes the impacts of air pollution across the contiguous United States from 1999 to 2015. At the center of the study is PM2.5, atmospheric particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers — 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
These particles typically come from sources like power plants and cars, and are so tiny that they can travel deep into the lungs, risking various health problems like cancer and lung disease. The current national standard is 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air (ug/m3) but Tuesday’s study shows that might not be strict enough — while PM2.5 has declined nationally since 1999, the researchers found that PM2.5 levels as low as 2.8ug/m3 are associated with an uptick in deaths.
Majid Ezzati from Imperial’s School of Public Health and the study’s lead author, said in a statement that the research has jarring implications for the current EPA air quality standard.
“We’ve known for some time that these particles [PM2.5] can be deadly. This study suggests even at seemingly low concentrations — mostly below current limits — they still cause tens of thousands of deaths,” said Ezzati.
Using a combination of satellite imagery, data from over 750 U.S. air quality monitoring stations, and the National Center for Health Statistics, the researchers found that air pollution deaths during the 16-year time period examined totaled more than 30,369. That data, which used binary gender, broke the total number down to 15,612 women and 14,757 men, and noted that they died from cardiorespiratory conditions like asthma or heart attacks.
Region and class status seemingly played a role in the deaths as well. Some areas were more prone to high PM2.5 concentrations and associated mortality, including Los Angeles, California, and a number of Southern states, like Arkansas and Alabama.
Imperial College London also notes that at any concentration of PM2.5, “life expectancy loss was, on average, larger in counties with lower income than in wealthier counties.” Prior EPA-funded studies have shown that black and Latinx Americans also disproportionately suffer from poor air quality.
The researchers said their analysis highlights the dangers of fine particulate matter even at low levels and argued that shifting the national standard could save lives.
“Lowering the PM2.5 standard below the current level is likely to improve the health of the U.S. nation, and reduce health inequality,” said Ezzati.
That advice comes as the Trump administration continues to push forward with an onslaught of regulatory rollbacks at the EPA — many of which are specifically aimed at undoing clean air rules.
The agency’s head, Andrew Wheeler, has targeted the 2011 Mercury and Air Toxics standards, or MATS, which seek to curb pollution from coal and oil-burning plants.
Moreover, the administration is embroiled in a war with California over its clean air waiver, which allows the state to impose its own vehicle emissions standards. Those requirements are stricter than their federal equivalent and have helped improve air quality, but under President Donald Trump the EPA has sought to revoke the waiver while standardizing policies nationwide.
Meanwhile, even as air quality has improved nationally over the course of several decades, it has declined since Trump took office, according to the EPA. The agency’s Air Quality Index (AQI) shows that air quality has slightly decreased from 2016 to 2018, even as totals remain far better than in the period between 2010 and 2012 — the last time the country topped 1,000 days with air deemed “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
Another emerging issue for air quality, however, is climate change.
Tuesday’s study comes at the same time as new research from the University of Delaware finds that rising global temperatures will increase the number of days with high concentrations of ground-level ozone in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.
Like PM2.5, ozone — also known as smog — is linked to respiratory problems and reduced lung function. While ozone pollution has been declining in Delaware specifically, the research shows that rising temperatures are “threatening to reverse the decrease” of the trace gas in the area.
But while research has found that air pollution can actually assist with global cooling by helping to reflect sun away from the Earth, critics of the Trump administration’s policies argue that the combination of regulatory rollbacks around issues like air quality, coupled with active skepticism around climate science, is harming public health and the environment. And both studies out this week highlight the very contemporary dangers of poor air quality.
Meanwhile, the EPA’s air quality office itself is likely to remain at the center of controversy after its former head Bill Wehrum resigned abruptly last month.
Ethics watchdogs have long accused Wehrum, a former lobbyist who sought weaker air standards, of remaining close to his former clients while simultaneously unraveling air quality standards at the EPA. On Monday, the agency’s internal watchdog acknowledged that Wehrum is facing a new ethics inquiry.
The study, released Tuesday, was also supported by the research charity Wellcome Trust, and reinforces long-running concerns over microscopic pollution particles in the air and their impact on human health. It also widens the gap between the Trump administration’s efforts to rollback clean air rules and the government’s own findings on the importance of air quality.
Researchers from Imperial College London and Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Air, Climate, and Energy Solutions authored the new study, published in PLOS Medicine, which probes the impacts of air pollution across the contiguous United States from 1999 to 2015. At the center of the study is PM2.5, atmospheric particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers — 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
These particles typically come from sources like power plants and cars, and are so tiny that they can travel deep into the lungs, risking various health problems like cancer and lung disease. The current national standard is 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air (ug/m3) but Tuesday’s study shows that might not be strict enough — while PM2.5 has declined nationally since 1999, the researchers found that PM2.5 levels as low as 2.8ug/m3 are associated with an uptick in deaths.
Majid Ezzati from Imperial’s School of Public Health and the study’s lead author, said in a statement that the research has jarring implications for the current EPA air quality standard.
“We’ve known for some time that these particles [PM2.5] can be deadly. This study suggests even at seemingly low concentrations — mostly below current limits — they still cause tens of thousands of deaths,” said Ezzati.
Using a combination of satellite imagery, data from over 750 U.S. air quality monitoring stations, and the National Center for Health Statistics, the researchers found that air pollution deaths during the 16-year time period examined totaled more than 30,369. That data, which used binary gender, broke the total number down to 15,612 women and 14,757 men, and noted that they died from cardiorespiratory conditions like asthma or heart attacks.
Region and class status seemingly played a role in the deaths as well. Some areas were more prone to high PM2.5 concentrations and associated mortality, including Los Angeles, California, and a number of Southern states, like Arkansas and Alabama.
Imperial College London also notes that at any concentration of PM2.5, “life expectancy loss was, on average, larger in counties with lower income than in wealthier counties.” Prior EPA-funded studies have shown that black and Latinx Americans also disproportionately suffer from poor air quality.
The researchers said their analysis highlights the dangers of fine particulate matter even at low levels and argued that shifting the national standard could save lives.
“Lowering the PM2.5 standard below the current level is likely to improve the health of the U.S. nation, and reduce health inequality,” said Ezzati.
That advice comes as the Trump administration continues to push forward with an onslaught of regulatory rollbacks at the EPA — many of which are specifically aimed at undoing clean air rules.
The agency’s head, Andrew Wheeler, has targeted the 2011 Mercury and Air Toxics standards, or MATS, which seek to curb pollution from coal and oil-burning plants.
Moreover, the administration is embroiled in a war with California over its clean air waiver, which allows the state to impose its own vehicle emissions standards. Those requirements are stricter than their federal equivalent and have helped improve air quality, but under President Donald Trump the EPA has sought to revoke the waiver while standardizing policies nationwide.
Meanwhile, even as air quality has improved nationally over the course of several decades, it has declined since Trump took office, according to the EPA. The agency’s Air Quality Index (AQI) shows that air quality has slightly decreased from 2016 to 2018, even as totals remain far better than in the period between 2010 and 2012 — the last time the country topped 1,000 days with air deemed “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
Another emerging issue for air quality, however, is climate change.
Tuesday’s study comes at the same time as new research from the University of Delaware finds that rising global temperatures will increase the number of days with high concentrations of ground-level ozone in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.
Like PM2.5, ozone — also known as smog — is linked to respiratory problems and reduced lung function. While ozone pollution has been declining in Delaware specifically, the research shows that rising temperatures are “threatening to reverse the decrease” of the trace gas in the area.
But while research has found that air pollution can actually assist with global cooling by helping to reflect sun away from the Earth, critics of the Trump administration’s policies argue that the combination of regulatory rollbacks around issues like air quality, coupled with active skepticism around climate science, is harming public health and the environment. And both studies out this week highlight the very contemporary dangers of poor air quality.
Meanwhile, the EPA’s air quality office itself is likely to remain at the center of controversy after its former head Bill Wehrum resigned abruptly last month.
Ethics watchdogs have long accused Wehrum, a former lobbyist who sought weaker air standards, of remaining close to his former clients while simultaneously unraveling air quality standards at the EPA. On Monday, the agency’s internal watchdog acknowledged that Wehrum is facing a new ethics inquiry.
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