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Think NYC’s L train fiasco is bad? Just wait until storms swamp JFK Airport

When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in 2012, water rushed into the underground tunnels that are the backbone of the city’s transit system, swamping sensitive electronics and decades-old infrastructure in corrosive saltwater. Nothing like that had ever happened in the 100+ years the subways had been operating. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had no timetable for when the system would reopen.

Fixing the L train tunnel, which connects Brooklyn to 14th Street in Manhattan, has caused a major headache for the city. More than 300,000 New Yorkers rely on the L every day. On Thursday, after years of planning a complete overhaul that would shut down the line for more than a year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo did an about-face, throwing fresh uncertainty on the problem.

The 15-month total shutdown, which went through an extensive public vetting process and wound up depressing home values in Brooklyn, is no longer. The new plan is a 20-month nights-and-weekends shutdown, which will disadvantage New Yorkers who work at odd hours for even longer. Instead of a wholesale overhaul of the tunnel, the new plan is to encase sensitive wires in plastic. It’s a method that’s never been used before in the United States, and never anywhere in the world during a tunnel repair.

The vast majority of NYC’s subway tunnels were built between 1900 and 1936, and since the system runs 24-hours a day, they’ve been patched together for decades. The city pumps millions of gallons of water out of the system each day that pours in from percolating rainwater and countless leaks.

In the past 70 years, there have been a dozen coastal storms where rising waters came within less than two feet of flooding the subways. It actually happened during Sandy, but it almost happened the year before, too, during Hurricane Irene.

Rising sea levels and stronger storms are making coastal flooding much more common. By 2050, at our current near-worst case scenario of rising carbon emissions, floods like Sandy’s could hit an average of once every five years. It’s a question of when, not if the subways will flood again.

If you think the L train fiasco is bad, what will happen when JFK Airport floods? Or when the next catastrophic Midwest flood permanently forces the Mississippi River away from New Orleans? What should we do about the Hoover Dam, once the drought in the Southwest finishes draining its reservoir and renders it obsolete?

Climate change means uncertainty, and uncertainty means more drawn-out decisions to rebuild or replace infrastructure not just in New York City, but in every part of the world. And in that kind of context, we will inevitably get more decisions like Cuomo’s which pit difficult long-term consensus planning against quick-fix changes.

Welcome to infrastructure planning in the era of rapid climate change.

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Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged cities, city, cuomo, current, governor, metropolitan, river, united, water | Comments Off

Antarctic sea ice is ‘astonishingly’ low this melt season

by LieseloRylah Posted on January 3, 2019

Antarctic sea ice is ‘astonishingly’ low this melt season

Right now, on the shores of Antarctica, there’s open water crashing against the largest ice shelf in the world. The annual ice-free season has begun at the Ross Ice Shelf — a month ahead of schedule.

The frozen region of freshwater ice the size of France partially protects the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from collapsing into the sea. In recent years, the ice-free season in the Ross Sea has become a routine event — but it happened this year on New Year’s Day, the earliest time in history.

“Antarctic sea ice extent is astonishingly low this year, not just near the Ross Ice Shelf, but around most of the continent,” says Cecilia Bitz, a polar scientist at the University of Washington.

In recent years, scientists have set up seismic monitoring stations on the ice shelf to track the wave energy as it percolates inland, potentially causing stress fractures on the Ross Ice Shelf along the way.

Bitz pointed to low ice concentration also happening right now in the Amundsen Sea, more than 1,000 miles away from Ross, and that’s potentially even more worrying. In a worst-case scenario, with continued business as usual greenhouse gas emissions, ice shelves all across West Antarctica could collapse within decades, melted from above and below and shattered by wave action.

After that, it would probably be just a matter of time before West Antarctica’s massive land-based glaciers, like the “Doomsday glaciers” at Thwaites and Pine Island, collapse as well, sending sea levels upward by as much as 10 feet and flooding every coastal city on Earth.

Sea ice concentration on January 1, 2019. The Ross Sea is on the lower edge of West Antarctica and Amundsen is north and near this map’s West Antarctica labeling.National Snow & Ice Data Center

Across the entire continent, there are more than 750,000 square miles of sea ice missing, a record deficiet for this time of year. Because it’s approaching mid-summer in the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctica will keep shedding sea ice for about another six weeks or so, and is currently on pace to drop far below the all-time record low set in 2016.

The North Pole and South Pole are both very cold, of course, but they couldn’t be more different in how climate change is affecting them.

The Arctic is an ocean fringed by cold continents, and has already passed a tipping point. Sea ice there has been declining sharply for decades — so much so that about a year ago, scientist declared the start of a “New Arctic,” with conditions likely unseen in at least 1,500 years, and probably much, much longer.

Owing to its unique geography (a cold continent fringed by a relatively warmer ocean), sea ice in the Antarctic region has long been considered something of a climate wildcard. A sharp decline in the Antarctic began only two years ago, and scientists aren’t sure yet if it will continue. If 2019 and the rapidly warming Southern Ocean is any indication, it will.

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11 takeaways from the Washington Post’s climate ideas op-ed

by BeatrisJYI Posted on January 3, 2019

11 takeaways from the Washington Post’s climate ideas op-ed

In 1956, journalist Waldemar Kaempffert published an article in the New York Times warning of future environmental catastrophe — including global temperature rise — if humanity failed to curb CO2 emissions. “Such a comparatively small fluctuation seems of no importance,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, it can bring about striking changes in the climate.”

Kaempffert’s climate assertions, unfortunately, did not set a precedent for the decades of environmental coverage to come. For many years, many top media companies have neglected to cover climate change — and when they do pay attention, it’s usually only because President Trump did or said something about it.

But anecdotally, it seems like climate change coverage might be picking up steam. This past weekend, NBC’s Meet the Press devoted a full hour to climate change — a first for a weekend news program.

Then on Wednesday, the Washington Post Opinions Staff went full-out Waldemar Kaempffert and presented 11 ideas for drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions, each one written by climate policy leaders and experts.

If you’re too busy to read the full Post article, don’t stress. We’ve got the CliffsNotes version right here:

Pass local emission goals. Look, we all know the federal government isn’t moving on this anytime soon. The Trump administration has been systematically dismantling Obama-era Clean Air regulations and continues its love affair with coal power. So we need all levels of government and businesses to green up and curb global warming.
Reduce the use of air conditioners, which contain hydrofluorocarbons, a more potent greenhouse gas than even CO2. “Globally, a phasedown of HFC refrigerants could avoid up to 0.5 degree Celsius of warming by 2100,” wrote Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.
Make electric vehicles easier to use and more affordable. Electric vehicles need not only be the way of the Silicon Valley. Federal tax credits, expanded infrastructure (i.e. charging stations), and incentive measures could make EVs the car of the future.
Keep existing nuclear plants running… for now. Nuclear power is controversial but the Post article posits they’re necessary until more low-carbon solutions are available (lest they be replaced by natural gas).
Design cities to encourage people to walk, not drive. How do you encourage more cyclists and pedestrians? For starters, well-lit intersections, covered bus stops with clear signage, and protected bike lanes. If you need more inspiration, check out this video from about how Grist’s very own Even Andrews (aka Umbra) gave up her vehicle.
Curb food waste by avoiding unnecessary production. In an actual embarrassment of riches, the world lets a third of its food supply go to waste. Composting, and food recycling help place limitations what edible items end up in the landfill heap, but the best strategy is to avoid unnecessary food production in the first place.
Incentivize carbon farming. That’s right – farming doesn’t need to lead to plumes of CO2 and pesticide runoff. With the right techniques (and legislation!), farming can give back to the earth, sequestering carbon in the soil instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.
Secure a moratorium on new factory farms. Factory dairy and meat farms lead to a lot of earth-warming methane (and they don’t even need to report emissions). The article recommends rural communities transition to more resilient, carbon-effective agriculture models by halting new construction (and subsidization) of these massive productions, and focus on reducing overproduction at existing facilities.
Adopt a carbon tax. Former Florida representative (and a 2017 Grist 50 Fixer) Carlos Curbelo writes that carbon taxes are “the best way to inspire such a wide-ranging, meaningful change, at the pace that we need it.” Curbelo proposes using carbon tax revenue to “robustly fund our nation’s infrastructure, help coastal communities adapt to the immediate effects of climate change and give low-income Americans and displaced workers assistance in the transition.”
Stir up competition between electricity companies to get them to retire inefficient plants. In theory, companies will switch to cleaner fuels when they become cheaper.
Pass a Green New Deal (aka the ‘Medicare for all’ of climate change) to get our economy to run on renewable energy. The idea, offered by 2018 Grist 50 member Varshini Prakash, is to create jobs while simultaneously prioritizing the communities most impacted by climate change.

“Radical change from one state, or even the whole United States, won’t address climate change on its own,” writes the Washington Post Opinion section staff, “but taking these actions could help start the planet down a path toward a better future.”

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The term ‘eco-terrorist’ is back and it’s killing climate activists

by RitaTweddle0 Posted on January 2, 2019

The term ‘eco-terrorist’ is back and it’s killing climate activists

When devastating wildfires were sweeping the West last fall, Ryan Zinke, who recently announced his resignation as Interior secretary, lay the blame for the blazes on a ragtag group of environmentalists. “We have been held hostage by these environmental terrorist groups that have not allowed public access, that refuse to allow the harvest of timber,” Zinke said in an interview with Breitbart News.

Environmental activism has long put protesters at odds with government officials. But instead of dismissing climate-conscious demonstrators as hippies or “tree huggers,” government officials have begun using more dangerous labels — including “terrorist.”

It’s happening all over the world, from the U.S. to the Philippines to Brazil (which just yesterday inaugurated particularly anti-environmental/indigenous President Jair Bolsonaro). It even happened at the recent United Nations climate talks in Poland. More than two dozen climate activists headed to the summit in Katowice were deported or refused entry on the pretext of being national threats.

“I had absolutely no time to react,” said Zanna Vanrenterghem, a staff member at Climate Action Network Europe who was pulled off a train from Vienna to Katowice by border patrol agents. “The fact that this happened to 15 other people for similar reasons is very frightening. This is just a very small symptom of a larger disease.”

When it comes to justifying (and promoting) extreme actions, language matters. As Grist’s Kate Yoder wrote, earlier this year, labeling activists as “eco-terrorists” isn’t new. Charges of eco-terrorism peaked in the 1990s, but dissipated for the most part by 2012.

Now the term is starting to pick up steam again. And the consequences of treating environmentalists like terrorists can go to much further lengths than denying them entry to a climate conference.

Standing Rock was a turning point in the American war of words against climate activists.

In 2016, law enforcement agents used tear gas and water cannons (despite freezing temperatures) on Dakota Access pipeline protesters at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Since those protests, dozens of bills and executive orders have been introduced to suppress similar environmental demonstrations.

Activists say this is part of an aggressive campaign by fossil fuel companies and their government allies to increase criminal penalties for minor violations — such as trespassing on a pipeline easement — as a way of suppressing climate action. Eighty-four members of Congress sent a bipartisan letter to the Department of Justice last fall, asking officials to prosecute pipeline activists as “terrorists.” And bills introduced in Washington and North Carolina would have defined peaceful demonstrations as “economic terrorism.”

And as we know in the U.S., branding a group of people as “terrorists” is kind of a big deal.

The label of “terrorism” has always been contested and politicized. Advocates for human rights say that the term has been used to suppress criticism of the government or corporate interests. “Making antiterror laws, that’s the most rational, the most logical tool [governments] use against indigenous people and all those that are critical of government,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights indigenous peoples, during a panel discussion this spring at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Daniel Sheehan of the Lakota Law Project, which provided legal defense to Standing Rock protesters, likened modern cries of domestic terrorism to anti-communist rhetoric in U.S. history. “Instead of communist, they now call you a terrorist, anybody who’s opposing the capitalist system,” says Sheehan. “What you get is this thing called industrial terrorism, these statutes that say if you do anything which is a direct action to attempt to impede a corporation from being able to pursue its business and to make its profit, that is terrorism.”

As a result of protests at Standing Rock, Energy Transfer Partners — the developer behind the Dakota Access Pipeline — filed a civil suit for $900 million against Greenpeace and other environmental groups alleging acts of eco-terrorism. Greenpeace has called the suit a “textbook strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP).”

“The fact that corporations are trying to frame environmental advocates in that way, it’s just a very clear example of how they’re trying to stigmatize it without addressing the concerns of the movement which are very legitimate,” says Rodrigo Estrada, senior communications specialist at Greenpeace. “In the end, this is about the protection of communities and the environment.”

While the backlash against Standing Rock protesters was iconic, it was far from the most serious consequence of anti-activist fear-mongering.

In February 2018, the President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines sought to label Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations special rapporteur, as a terrorist. Tauli-Corpuz’ job is to look into abuses against indigenous peoples and present her findings and recommendations to the United Nations Human Rights Council. She’s been a vocal advocate for global action on climate change. And even before her tenure began in 2014, she has been a staunch defender of her tribe’s land, the Kankana-ey Igorot people of the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. Tauli-Corpuz has also called attention to the killings of indigenous Lumad people, who have long defended their land from logging and mining interests.

President Duterte filed a petition to designate more than 600 people, including Tauli-Corpuz, as terrorists for their alleged connections to the Communist Party of the Philippines and its New People’s Army. Duterte has also waged a bloody “war on drugs” (which some critics say has also been an excuse to eliminate his political opposition) that has led to thousands of alleged drug-dealers being killed by police and vigilantes.

In an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Tauli-Corpuz called the allegation of terrorism against her “entirely baseless and malicious.”

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“The government sees this as an opportunity to pursue people they don’t like. I am worried for my safety and the safety of others on the list, including several rights activists,” she said.

The charge against Tauli-Corpuz was dismissed last August after an international outcry. But many other activists remained on the president’s petition to designate individual leaders and the Communist Party of the Philippines as terrorists.

“The inclusion of human rights defenders, amongst them indigenous peoples, on the Government list amounts to intimidation and harassment of people who are peacefully defending their rights,” wrote Michel Forst, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.

And governments don’t always stop at mere intimidation and harassment. 2017 proved to be the deadliest year on record for environmental activists, with the most killings perpetrated in Brazil and the Philippines. Nearly 200 activists were killed — an average of nearly four per week. The Guardian, which has attempted to track the growing number of protester deaths, reported that at least 83 environmental activists were killed in 2018.

Just last month, two members of Brazil’s landless activist group Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra were killed following comments from (then-candidate, now President) Jair Bolsonaro in which he called them “terrorists.” His comments have also been linked to assaults against members of Brazil’s indigenous groups, many of which are fighting to keep protected status for their lands. (In one of his first acts as President, Bolsonaro issued an executive order giving the anti-environmentalist Agriculture Ministry power to decide on indigenous lands.)

The activists’ murders in Brazil are the latest in a long line of alleged crimes against people who oppose Bolsonaro’s plans to ramp up deforestation in the Amazon. Brazilian activists fear Bolsonaro could inspire even more violence against environmentalists and indigenous peoples.

“Bolsonaro’s racist, fascist, genocidal government will not be enough to silence us,” said Dinamã Tuxá, coordinator of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous Peoples, in an interview with Amazon Watch. Still, he hinted at the fact that President Bolsonaro’s word choices could be continue to result in loss of life for indigenous activists down the road.

“This violence has become institutionalized and has saturated state institutions,” he said.

Back in the U.S., protesters are worried law enforcement is planning to employ violent tactics to stop anti-pipeline demonstrations in 2019.

In September, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained emails in which U.S. government officials characterized pipeline opponents as “extremists” and violent criminals that could commit potential acts of “terrorism.” The documents suggested that police were organizing counter-terrorism tactics to clamp down on possible Keystone protests. (If construction on the embattled Keystone XL pipeline advances in the coming months, it will likely draw protests from indigenous and environmental activists.)

“Evidence that the federal government plans to treat Keystone XL protests with counterterrorism tactics, coupled with the recent memory of excessive uses of force and surveillance at the Standing Rock protests, raises immense concerns about the safety of indigenous and environmental protestors who seek to exercise their First Amendment rights,” wrote Jacob Hutt, a fellow at the ACLU, in a blog post for the organization.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, Estrada of Greenpeace says the alarmist language may be a sign of progress. “The more effective people are becoming in mobilizing, the more backlash they’re going to face … If you corner a wild animal, they’re going to come really hard back at you.”

“The more we can voice that these things are happening,” Estrada says, “the more strength that we can provide to those people that are on the frontlines of these very dangerous situations.”

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Pines, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged communist, corpuz, linguistics, president, radius, standing, standing-rock, tauli-corpuz | Comments Off

PG&E could face murder charges for California’s wildfires

by JackiGifford Posted on January 1, 2019

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It’s been nearly two months since the massive Camp Fire laid waste to the town of Paradise in northern California. It destroyed nearly 14,000 homes and claimed at least 86 lives, making it the deadliest fire in the state’s history. And now the state’s largest public utility provider, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. could face murder or manslaughter charges related to the blazes.

PG&E is already under investigation for criminal wrongdoing related to California’s deadly wildfires. Though investigators have not determined what officially sparked the fire, PG&E reported “an outage” on a transmission line in the area where the blaze began around the time the blazes started.

If district prosecutors find that “reckless operation” of its power equipment caused any of the state’s deadly wildfires in the past two years, the company could be held responsible for not just the resulting property damages but the loss of life as well.

“PG&E’s most important responsibility is public and workforce safety,” the utility, which provides electricity to about 16 million Californians, said in a statement. “Our focus continues to be on assessing our infrastructure to further enhance safety and helping our customers continue to recover and rebuild.”

On Friday, California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra submitted a legal brief to a federal judge who is considering how the wildfires could affect PG&E’s probation from a criminal case born out a 2010 explosion at a natural gas pipeline operated by PG&E. The judge will have to gauge PG&E’s “mental state” — meaning, its employees’ degree of negligence and recklessness — before determining which charges to bring, if any.

Potential charges range from minor misdemeanors related to poor maintenance of trees along power lines to involuntary manslaughter or murder if the company is found to be the cause of the wildfires.

In addition to possible criminal charges, PG&E could be found liable for billions of dollars in civil damages. But it’s not just the company that will bear the burden of any resulting settlements. In September 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill which permitted PG&E to pass on some of the costs related to utility’s role in the 2017 wildfires on to their customers.

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PG&E could face murder charges for California’s wildfires

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Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Paradise, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged alo, company, governor, infrastructure, justice, life, Paradise, radius, september, utility | Comments Off

Timefulness – Marcia Bjornerud

by Myrna Posted on January 1, 2019

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Timefulness
How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World
Marcia Bjornerud

Genre: Earth Sciences

Price: $17.99

Publish Date: September 11, 2018

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Seller: Princeton University Press

Why an awareness of Earth’s temporal rhythms is critical to our planetary survival Few of us have any conception of the enormous timescales in our planet’s long history, and this narrow perspective underlies many of the environmental problems we are creating for ourselves. The passage of nine days, which is how long a drop of water typically stays in Earth’s atmosphere, is something we can easily grasp. But spans of hundreds of years—the time a molecule of carbon dioxide resides in the atmosphere—approach the limits of our comprehension. Our everyday lives are shaped by processes that vastly predate us, and our habits will in turn have consequences that will outlast us by generations. Timefulness reveals how knowing the rhythms of Earth’s deep past and conceiving of time as a geologist does can give us the perspective we need for a more sustainable future. Marcia Bjornerud shows how geologists chart the planet’s past, explaining how we can determine the pace of solid Earth processes such as mountain building and erosion and comparing them with the more unstable rhythms of the oceans and atmosphere. These overlapping rates of change in the Earth system—some fast, some slow—demand a poly-temporal worldview, one that Bjornerud calls “timefulness.” She explains why timefulness is vital in the Anthropocene, this human epoch of accelerating planetary change, and proposes sensible solutions for building a more time-literate society. This compelling book presents a new way of thinking about our place in time, enabling us to make decisions on multigenerational timescales. The lifespan of Earth may seem unfathomable compared to the brevity of human existence, but this view of time denies our deep roots in Earth’s history—and the magnitude of our effects on the planet.

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Timefulness – Marcia Bjornerud

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Trump’s EPA isn’t so tough on law-breaking polluters

by EnriqueBarrier Posted on January 1, 2019

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This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is more likely to give polluters a pass when they violate laws intended to keep the air healthy and water clean, according to recent reporting by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a watchdog group.

By analyzing public data and interviewing past and current EPA employees, EDGI documented notable declines in agency law enforcement this year, particularly in EPA Region 8, which includes Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and 27 Indigenous nations. According to an internal EPA report, by mid-year, Region 8 had opened 53 percent fewer enforcement cases in 2018 than in 2017. And it concluded only 53 civil cases in 2018, less than half the number in any year since at least 2006. Nationally, EDGI found a 38 percent drop in the number of orders requiring polluters to comply with the law, and a 50 percent drop in the number of fines.

EDGI’s analyses are based on provisional numbers, which the EPA routinely cleans up at the end of each year, so the exact figures could change when the agency’s annual enforcement report is released. Still, EDGI expects the general trend to hold.

“It’s another iteration of EPA’s industry-friendly approach,” said EDGI member Marianne Sullivan, a public health expert at William Paterson University. “It says we’re prioritizing industry’s needs and desires over the health of our environment and the health of our communities.”

In the short term, dialing back enforcement could be a particularly effective way to relieve industry of the burdens of environmental protections. President Trump’s EPA appointees have tried to formally roll back regulations, such as the Clean Power Plan and a rule safeguarding water from toxic coal ash. But it’s a slow and public process that invites lawsuits. Simply declining to enforce the law, however, can subtly accomplish the same thing, because it happens largely out of public view, and EPA administrators have wide discretion over it.

EPA officials deny ignoring violations of the law. “There has been no retreat from working with states, communities, and regulated entities to ensure compliance with our environmental laws,” spokesperson Maggie Sauerhage wrote in an email. “Focusing only on the number of federal lawsuits filed or the amount of penalties collected fails to capture the full range of compliance tools we use.”

Still, the agency acknowledges a shift in focus from “enforcement” to “compliance.” That means it’s likely to work less as a cop than an adviser with the companies it regulates, an approach critics say could incentivize companies to cut corners.

“Focusing on compliance instead of enforcement is a way of saying, ‘We might make people get back into compliance, but we’re resistant to the idea of punishment,’” explained David Janik, an attorney who managed Region 8’s legal enforcement program until 2011. But punishment helps you achieve compliance, Janik added. It deters polluters from spoiling the air and water in the first place, just as traffic tickets make drivers think twice about speeding. “If I go 90 and I get caught, I’m paying $200 for punishment,” he said. “If one chemical company has a big case and they pay $40 million to settle it, other companies will say, ‘Maybe I should hire another guy to make sure we don’t slip into noncompliance.’”

In some cases, lackluster enforcement since Trump took office appears to have been a boon to corporate pocketbooks, while the environmental benefits remain murky. Consider the difference in how a series of oil and gas cases were handled under President Barack Obama.

In 2015, the EPA and the state of Colorado jointly entered into a landmark settlement agreement with Noble Energy covering thousands of gas storage tanks that were leaking volatile organic compounds. VOCs are part of the toxic soup that contributes to smog levels on Colorado’s Front Range that exceed federal limits, exacerbating asthma and other respiratory diseases.

The settlement required Noble to pay a nearly $5 million fine, spend $60 million to reduce VOC emissions, and report its progress to the public. Two parallel cases resulted in smaller, but still substantial costs to companies in Colorado and North Dakota.

But under [former] EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, three similar cases came with remarkably cushier terms, according to the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project. In all three, the EPA declined to assess fines for the violations at all. And it’s unclear what, if anything, the companies were required to do to fix the problems. The companies were all Oklahoma-based, raising questions of favoritism from Pruitt, a pro-oil-and-gas Oklahoman.

The Noble case was part of an Obama-era National Enforcement Initiatives program focused on air pollution from oil and gas drilling. National initiatives historically targeted problems particular to certain industries and they’re where big enforcement cases were often made. But in August, Susan Bodine, EPA’s current head of enforcement, announced that the program was being renamed “National Compliance Initiatives,” and that the agency would discontinue the campaign on oil and gas in 2019, a move industry pushed for.

“It’s really about who’s going to benefit,” Sullivan said. “If industry doesn’t have to capture as much pollution, that may be good for their bottom line. But it puts the burden on the public. You can’t pollute for free. Either industry pays to capture it, or people pay with their health.”

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Trump’s EPA isn’t so tough on law-breaking polluters

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What’s greener than burial or cremation? Human composting.

by JimmyVRJYun Posted on January 1, 2019

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After death, your options tend to be limited. You could go the cremation route, releasing carbon dioxide and mercury in the process. Or you could be buried in casket within a plastic-lined concrete vault, your body coated in carcinogenic embalming fluid. But must you destroy the planet, even after you’ve expended your time on earth?

Washington state might soon expand your options to include the (in my humble opinion, unfortunately named) process of “human composting.” A bill, expected to be introduced by state Senator Jamie Pedersen next month, would make the state the first to legalize “recomposition” — letting a body decompose in nutrient-dense soil. It would also legalize alkaline hydrolysis, aka water cremation, where a body dissolves in a vessel with water and lye until it’s just bone and liquid.

“People from all over the state who wrote to me are very excited about the prospect of becoming a tree or having a different alternative for themselves,” Pedersen told NBC News.

I don’t mean to get macabre here, but the reality is that everyone eventually dies. And the environmental cost of death really adds up. In the United States, 30 million board feet of wood, 1.6 million tons of concrete, 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid, and 90,000 tons of steel are used every year for conventional burials. Cremation releases 250,000 tons of CO2 each year, the equivalent of burning nearly 30 million gallons of gasoline.

Death didn’t use to be such an environmental drag. Burials were once a simple affair: a shrouded body lowered into the ground. The body would decay and leave behind minerals and nutrients in the soil. Maybe, if lucky, those remains could one day feed a flower or a tree.

Katrina Spade, the founder of Recompose, is popularizing a modern incarnation of this natural process. The company promises that over the span of a month, bodies will decompose into about a cubic yard of compost per person, saving at least a metric ton of CO2 in the process.

As Spade told the Seattle Times, “Our bodies are full of potential” — even, apparently, when dead.

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What’s greener than burial or cremation? Human composting.

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Posted in alo, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, OXO, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged cremation, donate, Everyone, katrina-spade, living, news, people, recompose, seattle, states, times, united-states | Comments Off

Meet the Press just modeled what it looks like to take climate change seriously

by millieharpur33 Posted on December 31, 2018

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On Sunday morning, NBC’s Meet the Press did what no other weekend news program had ever done before: They discussed climate change for a full hour.

Host Chuck Todd led off the hour with what amounted to a bold line in the sand: Climate denial is no longer welcome on our airwaves. It’s a statement that hopefully sets the tone for media coverage as a new year begins and 2020 Presidential campaigns gets underway. It was a glimpse of what it would look like if we took climate change seriously.

Although an episode like this was a long-time coming and the debate itself was a little underwhelming (and maybe the show’s forward-looking ban should have come with an apology for past sins), it was still a watershed moment for the media when most shows have long-ignored the most important issue facing humanity in our collective history. And it was refreshing to see a real-life climate scientist speaking freely about the urgency of our present moment and unimpeded by stale talking points.

If you break down the 60-minute episode, solutions-focused politicians took up most of the time. The show focused on long interviews with outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown and ex-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — past and (maybe) future presidential candidates who have devoted large portions of their careers to addressing climate change head-on. The only member of Congress to appear on the program was Republican Carlos Curbelo of Florida, who will give up his Congressional seat in three days.

Notably absent from the conversation were direct voices from the current generation of climate leaders — Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who helped change the national conversation on climate change by advocating for a Green New Deal during the last half of 2018, and young Sunrise Movement activists who, in a tweet, claimed partial credit for the show’s topical focus. As a result, the episode barely mentioned bold science-based policies to rapidly decarbonize the global economy.

Still, since talking about climate change is the most important thing any of us can do about it, the show was significant. It amounted to a call-to-action for the media: Debates over the science of climate change are no longer welcome. It’s high time to focus on solutions. We also need to be thinking about the kinds of climate conversations we should be hearing in the next election cycle.

The New York Times’ David Leonhardt made the claim on Sunday that climate change was the biggest story of 2018. If that’s true, then this Meet the Press episode was a signal to candidates like Elizabeth Warren, who have yet to endorse officially the Green New Deal, to pay even closer attention to the issue.

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