Category Archives: ALPHA

James Hansen’s legacy: Scientists reflect on climate change in 1988, 2018, and 2048

by VirgilioHam3 Posted on June 22, 2018

Thirty years ago this week, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to Congress that the age of climate change had arrived.

The announcement shook the political establishment in 1988. George H. W. Bush, in the middle of a heated presidential campaign, vowed to use the “White House effect” to battle the “greenhouse effect.” Four years later, with then-President Bush in attendance, the United States became a founding member of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — which still guides global climate action today.

Of course, it was not enough. Bush’s actions at the time were perceived as weakening the treaty — a missed opportunity. Since 1988, global carbon dioxide emissions have risen 68 percent. At the time of Hansen’s speech, fossil fuels provided about 79 percent of the world’s energy needs. Now, despite every wind turbine and solar panel that’s been installed since, it’s actually worse — 81 percent.

Hansen’s warning was prescient and his predictions were scarily accurate. Every county in every U.S. state has warmed significantly since then. Sea-level rise is accelerating, heavier rains are falling, countless species of plants and animals are struggling to adapt.

Thirty years after Hansen testified, the world still isn’t even close to solving the problem. In fact, for every year we wait, we are making the problem much, much harder.

On our current path, emissions will still be rising 30 years from now, and the world will have long ago left behind all reasonable chances of preventing the irreversible tipping points in the climate system that Hansen predicted.

If climate change was an urgent problem in 1988, it’s now an emergency.

Looking back on what’s happened in an interview with the Associated Press this week, Hansen expressed regret that his words weren’t “clear enough.” At times, Hansen and his colleagues have been down on themselves for not doing more, as if some perfectly worded sentence, or some arrestingly compelling chart would be enough to inspire a global mass-movement of action.

Thankfully, a new generation of climate scientists is starting to understand that perfect knowledge of the problem is no longer enough. Grounded in the missteps and failures of the past, scientists these days seem much more modest with their expectations for the next 30 years — but much more confident in their roles as citizens first, scientists second, just as Hansen has been.

This week, I asked 10 climate scientists to describe how Hansen’s work has affected them, and where they think the world’s response to climate change will go from here.

Ploy Achakulwisut, George Washington University
Suzana Camargo, Columbia University
Christine Chen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Andrew Dessler, Texas A&M University
Peter Kalmus, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (and Grist 50 member)
Kate Marvel, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Kimberly Nicholas, Lund University
Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton University
Eric Rignot, University of California-Irvine
Farhana Sultana, Syracuse University

Answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q. What has James Hansen — the advocate — meant to you personally and professionally as you wrestle with how to respond to climate change?

Kalmus: Simply put, Hansen is a personal hero of mine. Not only was he a pioneer in recognizing the scientific reality of climate change, he also realized this knowledge carries an obligation to sound the alarm.

Achakulwisut: As a PhD student in climate science, I wasn’t taught or incentivized to engage in advocacy. But Hansen’s actions helped me realize that the climate crisis is far too serious and urgent for me to contribute solely by publishing peer-reviewed papers. He’s inspired me to challenge academic norms and engage in grassroots activism.

Chen: I was born in the early ‘90s, which means that James Hansen’s testimony happened literally a lifetime — my lifetime — ago. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel hopeless about the situation when a NASA scientist has been trying to convince the world to mobilize for longer than I’ve been alive.

Camargo: I admire his courage to be such a strong public advocate. Unfortunately, other scientists can be discouraged from doing this type of advocacy, given the level of public attack that they could suffer.

Marvel: I think it’s important to note that there are now many diverse voices speaking up about the implications of climate change, and that there’s no “right” way to engage the public with the science. I admire James Hansen immensely as a scientist, and I respect his advocacy choices. But he’s not the only role model out there.

Oppenheimer: Jim became a symbol for the movement to push governments to act on climate change. I disagree with him on some of his specific proposals – like supporting a revival of nuclear power, and sometimes I disagree with him on the science. But it’s good to see a scientist who can articulate his concerns to governments, to the media, and other people based on the facts. We need more scientists who do so.

Q. Looking back on how scientists responded to climate change over the past 30 years — what was the single biggest mistake, in your opinion?

Camargo: If scientists had worked on a communication strategy from the start, there could have been a better chance for support of climate change policies by the public. The media had a big role in our current issues as well — by trying to give equal weight to the small minorities of skeptics and the other 95 percent of scientists.

Oppenheimer: We never found a way to make the issue tangible to the average person. That’s changing now as the impacts become more apparent. But for this problem, action before impacts was necessary. Now we are stuck with the inevitability of some unpleasant climate changes as we play catch-up.

Achakulwisut: When climate change first emerged in public consciousness, it somehow got filed under “environmental issue” with far-off impacts. (Polar bears are still the face of climate change.) But its major culprit — fossil fuel combustion — also causes many immediate impacts to our health and well-being. I think we missed an opportunity to connect these dots.

Q. And the single biggest success?

Dessler: The only encouraging thing happening today is the staggering drop in the price of renewable energy. I consider this our main hope to avoid catastrophic climate change — prices drop so much that emissions decrease without government policies.

Rignot: The biggest success was the banning of [ozone-destroying] CFCs with the Montréal protocol in 1986. It was the single biggest event where science and policy came together to take action and literally save the world. Now it should serve as a reference in time, where the world demonstrated that environmental changes can be solved for the better, with no economic setback.

Nicholas: The climate leadership void at the federal level has inspired so many state, city, business, finance, university, neighborhood, household, faith, youth, civil society, and other leaders to step forward and find ways to cut their climate pollution. People want to create solutions that work for them and their communities. They want a future without relying on fossil fuels.

Sultana: A positive outcome is that today a number of young people understand and care about the impacts of climate change … with a greater focus on issues of equity and justice.

Q. Where do you hope we will be 30 years from now? Where do you think we will be realistically?

Marvel: I hope we will take this seriously. I like humans, and I think we’re capable of great things. We (mostly) fixed the ozone hole. We signed the Paris agreement. I have optimism that we can do more in the future. But I fear that we will respond to the adversity that climate change brings with hate, fear, and unreason.

Dessler: I don’t think a serious carbon tax or other policy will happen. The best-case I see is that renewables become cheap enough that the economy switches by itself. As for what should happen: As a citizen and father, I think we should get our asses in gear and start reducing emissions as fast as we can.

Kalmus: I hope that we reach a cultural tipping point, where people finally vote with climate urgency, and elect leaders who enact sensible policies like a revenue-neutral carbon fee. Emissions ramp down, innovation ramps up. This is also what I think will happen – it’s only a question of when, and how bad we’ll let things get.

Rignot: Most likely we will only take a slow course of action. We will experience the consequences of climate change in full swing in the later part of the century. At that point, we will have technologies in place to avoid the most disastrous consequences. But the world should take a much more aggressive course of action. We also need to bring morality into the debate. The most deprived people on the planet will suffer the most from climate change.

Oppenheimer: Human history suggest that we may eventually wise up and move to cut emissions deeply – but only after significant losses emerge in such a way that action can’t be avoided. We do this sort of thing repeatedly but never seem to learn. Sometimes the catastrophe actually happens (like World War I and World War II), but often it’s averted, just barely (like the Cuban missile crisis).

Governments shouldn’t move blindly toward the precipice, mindlessly continuing behavior that is bound to end badly for everyone. There’s still time if we get going immediately to reduce our looming losses and come out the other side more or less OK. There’s still time, just barely.

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James Hansen’s legacy: Scientists reflect on climate change in 1988, 2018, and 2048

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The water crisis the Trump administration didn’t want you to know about

by HoseaHundley Posted on June 22, 2018

The government just released a huge study about chemicals. Mazel tov! You made it through the most boring part of this article. Now for the fun stuff: The Trump administration didn’t want you to see the results of this study.

As you go about your daily business, you’re surrounded by compounds called perfluoroalkyls, or PFAS. They’re used in carpeting, food packaging, clothing, pots and pans, and the foam firefighters use to douse flames, to name a few. That’s because PFAS are resistant to heat, water, and oil. They’re incredibly helpful! They’re also toxic.

According to a major study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, the EPA has seriously underestimated how much of this stuff human beings can safely be exposed to. The major takeaway? PFAS have thoroughly contaminated many of the nation’s water sources, and they are associated with cancer, liver damage, fertility issues, and more — even in small doses. The study is the most fleshed-out assessment of information on PFAS to date, and it found that the EPA’s exposure limits should be 10 times lower than they are now.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of the study’s findings, here’s the story behind why EPA chief Scott Pruitt and the White House wanted to block its publication in the first place.

White House emails from earlier this year show that the Trump administration was worried the study would cause a “public relations nightmare,” and Pruitt’s aides intervened to block the report. An unnamed White House aide also said, “The impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful,” according to a report in Politico last month.

In other words, the Trump administration headed off a study that highlighted a major public health crisis because officials didn’t want to deal with the fallout. When members of Congress got vocal about releasing the report, Pruitt decided to hold a summit at EPA headquarters about PFAS in drinking water systems at the end of May.

The saga, already pretty dramatic, started to resemble an episode of House of Cards when an AP reporter was forcibly removed from that summit. The reporter, along with journalists from CNN, Politico, and E&E News, were barred from entering the summit because of limited space, but reporters who were allowed to sit in on the meeting tweeted out pictures of empty chairs in the room.

It seems like Pruitt should have learned by now that doing something like, oh, I don’t know, forcibly ejecting a reporter from a summit, only serves to attract attention to the very thing he’s trying to downplay. Luckily for us, he’s a slow learner. It’s worth highlighting two more notable revelations from the newly published 852-page CDC report.

In studies of rats and mice, researchers found regular exposure to PFAS affected development, body weight, and brain activity. If you’re thinking, “Well, those are just rats!”, keep in mind that the CDC assumes humans are more sensitive to this stuff than other animals when it goes about setting exposure limits.
The CDC only looked at 14 PFAS compounds in its study. There are more than 4,000 kinds of PFAS chemicals out there in the world, and the chemical industry regularly switches between types. So there’s a lot to learn about these pesky and incredibly harmful little compounds.

It’s no wonder the Trump administration wanted to keep this one quiet. A Harvard study from 2016 that analyzed PFAS contamination in drinking water showed that 6 million Americans were drinking water that exceeded the EPA’s limits — and that was using the agency’s old standards. This new study indicates a lot more people are at risk than previously thought.

There’s another reason why White House officials may have hoped this report would fly under the radar. Earlier this year, the Department of Defense reported to Congress that 126 water systems at or nearby military bases in the U.S. were contaminated with PFAS. More than 600 additional sites are at risk of serious contamination, which means the federal government will have to foot a hefty cleanup bill. But if there’s one thing we know about Scott Pruitt, it’s that he hates spending money on the environment.

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The water crisis the Trump administration didn’t want you to know about

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Republicans are backing a ‘carbon dividend.’ What the heck is that?

by DesireeBleasdale Posted on June 21, 2018

Federal climate action may seem like a far-off prospect, but that’s not stopping a new group of climate hawks from launching a fresh campaign for a national carbon tax.

Here’s the real surprise: The proposal comes from Republicans, and it’s got the support of ExxonMobil and Shell.

The Baker-Shultz Carbon Dividends Plan, floated last year by the Climate Leadership Council, calls for taxing carbon emissions and returning the revenue as a “dividend” to everyday Americans. It’s named after James A. Baker III and George P. Shultz, two former secretaries of state and old-school Republican bigwigs.

And now this new bipartisan group, the Americans for Carbon Dividends, wants to push the plan through Congress someday — hopefully soon. The group is chaired by two former U.S. senators, Republican Trent Lott of Mississippi and Democrat John Breaux of Louisiana.

If you’re wondering what the heck a carbon dividend is, or why oil companies might be backing a carbon tax, we’ve got you covered.

The carbon dividend

The basic premise of a carbon dividend is to return 100 percent of the revenue raised from the tax to American households.

Other carbon fees would spend the money differently. To generalize, progressives prefer to invest the revenue in clean energy and climate mitigation. A coalition of new grassroots groups are pushing just this sort of policy in Washington state. Centrist and right-leaning climate-hawks, on the other hand, have called for a revenue-neutral plan that would return money to American citizens.

While Washington state’s proposed fee has an initial price of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, the Baker-Shultz plan starts much higher, at $40 per ton. Under their proposal, the price would ramp up over time, taxing emissions from refineries, mines, wells, and ports.

To make up for higher energy costs, an average American family of four would receive about $2,000 from the program in the first year.

And then there’s cap-and-trade, which puts a limit on annual greenhouse gas emissions and either sells or gives companies permits to pollute. Although California and Northeastern states have figured out how to get regional cap-and-trade schemes in action, an attempt at a national cap-and-trade program failed almost 10 years ago — even with Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress. So…

Could a dividend be successful?

The carbon dividend has had prominent, eclectic backers, from James Hansen, a prominent NASA-official-turned-climate-advocate, to Bob Ingliss, a former Republican representative from South Carolina.

But there’s simply no good precedent. Like carbon taxes in general, it hasn’t been implemented in any state. And that can worry legislators who are considering it.

“It’s not going to happen overnight — we’ve been debating this for 30 years,” former Senator Lott tells the New York Times. But he says “the tide is turning.”

If a carbon dividend does manage to pass, experts are optimistic that it would be popular. In an interview earlier this year, Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said, “Once people have the experience of getting that check, there will be a huge constituency saying, ‘Don’t you dare touch my revenue.’”

Leiserowitz pointed to Alaska, where residents get a yearly cut of oil revenue from the Alaska Permanent Fund. It created the sort of popular demand that Leiserowitz thinks could make a carbon tax politically sustainable over the long term, protecting it from future politicians.

Of course, the end goal is to ditch fossil fuels. If the economy ever gets fully decarbonized, you won’t be getting a big check in the mail from the dividend program.

The trade-offs

And now we get to why Exxon and Shell might be a fan of the Baker-Shultz plan. Environmentalists will find some bits hard to swallow. For one, it would protect fossil fuel companies from future lawsuits to hold them accountable for climate change.

Baker-Shultz’s carbon tax would also replace the Clean Power Plan, which regulates pollution from coal- and gas-fired power plants. President Trump and Scott Pruitt have been trying to dismantle the Obama-era plan — but maybe Baker and Shultz could end up doing the work for them.

For its part, Americans for Carbon Dividends says their proposal would be better at reducing carbon emissions than all of Obama’s regulations combined.

That’s compromise for ya.

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Republicans are backing a ‘carbon dividend.’ What the heck is that?

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The Koch brothers hate public transit. But they can’t always stop projects in their tracks.

by Selma4889gkgw Posted on June 20, 2018

The infamous Koch brothers have bankrolled climate deniers, propped up polluting industries, and even tried to turn the black community pro-fossil fuel. But, as a recent New York Times story shows, the billionaire conservatives have been steadily exerting pressure against public transit as well.

Americans for Prosperity, a conservative lobbying group funded by the Koch family, has rallied against public transit works across the country. With a mix of political ads and door-to-door campaigning, the organization managed to get a transit tax increase shot down in Little Rock in 2016. Koch-linked groups have successfully watered down legislation in Indianapolis and blocked efforts in Florida.

This spring, the organization financed conservative activists in Nashville, Tennessee, to oppose a mass transit referendum. The plan would have increased the city’s sales tax in order to fund a light rail system, eight new bus lines, and 19 transit centers in the city. The anti-transit campaigners knocked on 6,000 doors and made 42,000 phone calls, all while repeating the anti-tax party line. The referendum, once a sure bet, failed, with almost 64 percent of voters rejecting it. Public transit experts were disappointed, but unsurprised.

Yonah Freemark, a transport researcher and doctoral student at MIT, says that the Koch effort has been around for years. “They have been focusing on regions without a strong transit constituency [or] historical support for transit investment,” he says. That’s perhaps why Americans for Prosperity has not focused as much on Seattle, San Francisco, or Los Angeles — but has targeted relatively conservative cities.

While it might seem puzzling that any group would be stridently opposed to public transit, the Kochs have both financial and ideological reasons to reject transit spending. The New York Times cited their extensive financial interest in the automotive industry, combined with a libertarian and anti-tax ideology.

“It’s part of their overall agenda of conservatism, and part of an ideology tied up with cities and transit being bad, and suburbs as good,” says Jeff Wood, a transit consultant and blogger based in San Francisco.

Luckily for transit enthusiasts, the Kochs have not always been successful, even in sprawling cities with a sizable Republican base. Phoenix, Arizona, successfully expanded its light rail system in the face of opposition from the organization’s state branch.

And the Nashville plan had other, compounding factors. Mayor Megan Barry, who introduced the referendum in October 2017, became embroiled in a sex scandal with her head of security and eventually resigned in March. Her resignation further ignited the already bitter conflict between pro- and anti-transit activists.

So transportation experts are still hopeful that the Koch brothers will not derail many more projects. “Despite the fact that we have these people going out and running smear campaigns against public services, the large majority of such referenda have passed,” says Freemark. In 2016, large transit plans were passed in Atlanta, Seattle, Raleigh, and Los Angeles. “Americans are not universally buying into these tactics,” he concludes.

Wood is similarly optimistic, and believes that the Nashville failure can inform future efforts. “I think we are going to see other places learn from this,” he says. “I don’t think this ideology can win forever.”

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The Koch brothers hate public transit. But they can’t always stop projects in their tracks.

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The government has been separating children from parents at the border. Now the border is flooding.

by GracielaFitzwate Posted on June 20, 2018

Torrential rains flooded south Texas on Wednesday morning, the latest danger in an escalating crisis for the hundreds of child migrants detained near the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to radar estimates, more than 10 inches of rain fell overnight as severe thunderstorms swept through the area. That was enough to cause widespread flooding, with water entering homes and flooding wide streets in Weslaco, a town between McAllen and Brownsville.

The Associated Press recently reported that young children separated from their families as a consequence of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies were being housed in three shelters for infants and toddlers in the region. Trump announced Wednesday that he will sign an executive order to end the separations imminently. As the rain fell, hundreds of migrants were seeking entry into the United States at the border, according to CNN.

The town of Combes, site of one of the shelters, was included in severe thunderstorm warnings and flash flood emergencies issued by the local outpost of the National Weather Service. Local NWS guidelines say that a rainstorm of this magnitude over a 12-hour period has a less than a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year under a stable climate. The bulk of the rainfall Wednesday morning came in just an hour or two, according to radar.

The climate, of course, is not stable. Wednesday’s storm is the latest 100-year downpour in a state full of them in recent years. In Houston alone, there have been three 500-year rainstorms in the past three years. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, and increases the ability of routine thunderstorms to become downpours.

Wednesday is also World Refugee Day, so it’s worth mentioning that those who have crossed borders seeking a better life in the U.S. aren’t the only ones dealing with displacement and more extreme weather at the same time. There’s growing evidence that climate change is already leading to increased migration, and once migrants leave their homes, they are more vulnerable to the weather.

This is a global story. In April, for instance, heavy rains and flash flooding destroyed 750 homes and displaced thousands of people at a refugee camp in northern Kenya. And earlier this month, heavy monsoon rains hit the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh, washing away makeshift shelters.

These are the escalating climate consequences for people with little means to withstand them, perpetuating a cycle of injustice that now defines our warming era: Those who contributed the least to climate change stand to lose the most.

Organizations like the Red Cross are already working to make better use of weather forecasts for humanitarian purposes. But with climate change expected to produce a four-fold increase in the number of migrants worldwide over the next 30 years, they’ll have their work cut out for them.

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The government has been separating children from parents at the border. Now the border is flooding.

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San Francisco residents were sure nearby industry was harming their health. They were right.

by MargartHaddock5 Posted on June 20, 2018

For decades, the residents of San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood have sounded the alarm that industry emissions and pollution in their backyard are making them sick.

Located right off the Bay in the southeastern corner of the city, the historically black neighborhood has played host to a number of pollution sources over the years. It is home to a sewage treatment facility and surrounded by freeways that carry vehicle fumes over residences. A former Navy nuclear research facility is now a Superfund site dogged by a sloppy cleanup that workers involved in the project say was faked.

“Bayview-Hunters Point is a picture postcard of environmental racism and injustice,” says Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction, a grassroots health and environmental group based in San Francisco.

Studies had found higher rates of some cancers in Bayview versus the city at large. And asthma has been a serious public health issue: A 2000 report found that one in six kids and one in ten overall residents reported having the respiratory illness.

But with so many polluters in this neighborhood, there has been little accountability, notes Michelle Pierce, a longtime resident and executive director of Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates. In response to the community’s health complaints, she says local government tended to stick to the same line: “We can’t place blame on any one factor.”

Now it can at least assign some responsibility to a now-closed industrial facility. Two recent studies have assessed the effects on reproductive outcomes caused by a single local polluter: a Pacific Gas & Electric power plant that had operated in the neighborhood from 1929 to 2006. More than a decade since the PG&E plant closed in Bayview-Hunters Point, the new research lends credence to residents’ long-espoused health concerns.

A study published in May in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that after eight coal or oil-fired power plants closed between 2001 and 2011 in California — including the PG&E facility in Bayview-Hunters Point — fewer babies were born preterm in surrounding communities.

Previous research has shown that air pollution may cause reactions in the body, causing pregnant women to give birth early, says Joan Casey, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral scholar at University of California, Berkeley. (Grist board member Rachel Morello-Frosch is also a study coauthor.) Babies born preterm — before 37 weeks of pregnancy — are at an increased risk of death, as well as conditions such as cerebral palsy or asthma.

The eight California coal and oil-fired power plants closed between 2001 and 2011 included in the study.Image courtesy of Joan Casey

The researchers analyzed birth data in areas near all eight power plants before and after each closed. Those numbers were compared with communities further away from the facilities — and presumably less affected by the site — to help isolate the impact of the power plants.

For those living within roughly three miles of the plants, the team concluded that closing the facilities dropped preterm birth rates from seven percent to 5.1 percent, effectively decreasing the number of preemies born by a quarter.

In a separate study published in Environmental Health in May, the same group of researchers found that retiring those eight power plants resulted in another health benefit: an uptick in fertility rates — the number of live births per 1,000 women.

Interestingly, the benefits of a power plant’s closure weren’t distributed equally across race. Black residents, for instance, experienced one of the greatest drops in preterm birth rates — and Casey points to several factors that help explain that finding.

Low-income groups and people of color are more likely to live close to a power plant. Black people, for example, are 75 percent more likely than the average American to live next to an industrial facility. And in the case of the eight sites studied, on average, black women tended to live within roughly a mile of the retired power plants, while white women, for instance, lived more than 2 miles away.

Black women are also at a 50 percent higher risk of delivering their babies early, in general, and thus had more to gain from the plant closure, Casey explains. This startling and mysterious statistic is relatively stable across education level, and some doctors suspect it’s due to higher levels of stress experienced by black women due to the racism they face in the U.S.

“This is a really concrete step that could be taken in terms of potentially reducing health disparities,” Casey says. “Some of this information could be used perhaps in decisions about which power plants to focus on retiring first to improve health equity.”

It was grassroots organizing from groups like Greenaction and Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates that finally helped close the PG&E plant in 2006 — in what Bradley Angel calls “an incredible example of community persistence.” The new research validates those groups’ work, though the results don’t surprise Michelle Pierce at all.

“We absolutely knew to expect those kinds of health outcomes,” she explains. “It’s not news to anybody with a little bit of technical knowledge or anybody with direct contact with the people out here.”

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San Francisco residents were sure nearby industry was harming their health. They were right.

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Exxon says climate lawsuits violate its right to free speech. Seriously.

by ClarenceMcClear Posted on June 19, 2018

Just a short time ago, it seemed like Exxon might finally be forced to reckon with the harm it had inflicted through the digging up, selling, and burning of fossil fuels.

A wave of cities led by San Francisco and Oakland filed suit against Exxon and other major polluters last year, alleging that the companies had purposefully misled the public about the effects of climate change in order to keep profits high. In March, a federal judge handed the California cities a small win: the chance to publicly debate polluters in court about their role in denying climate science.

But if we’ve learned anything from the way the tobacco industry rapidly went on the offensive when it was accused of peddling cancer sticks, it’s that getting industry to fess up to its wrongdoings is easier said than done. And Exxon, it seems, will do anything to shift the blame from its own shoulders, even if that means spinning an entirely new narrative around who the real victim is.

After the California cities filed suit, Exxon brought a petition before the Texas 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals claiming the lawsuits were part of a conspiracy intended to waylay the company’s right to free speech and force it to change its position on climate change. Yes, you read that correctly. Exxon argued that the cities were trying to make the company agree to a number of truths about climate change, which, in effect, violated Exxon’s First Amendment rights to say whatever the hell it wants about climate change.

Yeah, sounds crazy! But the Texas judge, R.H. Wallace Jr., bought the argument and handed Exxon a victory in April. That means the company can now grill California city officials about whether the climate suits, from the Bay to New York City, have been one big conspiracy to violate the company’s right to free speech.

Michael Burger, Executive Director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, doesn’t think Exxon’s free speech argument holds up under scrutiny. Exxon already tried a similar tactic in a New York court. Former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who recently resigned after four women accused him of sexual assault, started investigating the company over climate change in 2015. Exxon’s lawyers argued Schneiderman tried to “silence and intimidate one side of the public policy debate on how to address climate change” by launching the probe.

The New York judge dismissed the case this year. When Exxon tried to edit, or “amend,” its original complaint, the judge denied the amendment “as futile,” which is a fancy way of saying the judge kicked Exxon in the gnads. The fact that Exxon already tried and failed to invoke its First Amendment rights doesn’t bode well for the company’s latest attempt in California. “The idea that these lawsuits could infringe on First Amendment rights is, as the judge in New York said, implausible,” Burger says.

So, while the Texas judge gave Exxon a small window of opportunity to question California officials about the alleged “conspiracy,” Burger says that doesn’t mean it’ll turn into a full-blown court case. California has already appealed Judge Wallace Jr.’s decision.

The First Amendment claim isn’t an entirely new invention — big companies have asserted such claims before, says Peter Lehner, former chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s office. But Exxon’s argument that the climate lawsuits are a big conspiracy, he says, is based on “flimsy ground.”

First of all, attorneys general communicate with each other often. And second of all, he says, “If the company is lying to their shareholders and to their consumers, then that is fraud.” It all comes back to the underlying issue: If California can prove Exxon knew about climate change and lied to the public about it, the company probably won’t be able to get out of an investigation by crying free speech. Why? Because the First Amendment doesn’t protect liars!

As for why Exxon might be pulling out the flawed free speech argument again, Burger raises one possibility: “It may well be that Exxon is threatening to bring a lawsuit in an effort to intimidate those [California] officials or enact some form of retribution.”

A major oil company acting like a huge bully? Nah, doesn’t sound like good ol’ Exxon. Psyche!

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Exxon says climate lawsuits violate its right to free speech. Seriously.

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Even Scott Pruitt’s friends have given up on him

by FlossieQLWM Posted on June 18, 2018

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt may still be clinging to his job despite his ever-expanding list of controversies, but his inner circle of allies is shrinking fast.

Since April, seven key EPA staffers have resigned, four of whom had once worked for him or were longtime friends he brought to the EPA from Oklahoma. And while not directly affiliated with the EPA, Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who has been a key ally of Pruitt’s, recently revealed some cracks in his support. On Wednesday, when Fox News personality Laura Ingraham observed that Pruitt was “hurting the president”and it was time for him to go, Inhofe replied,“I’ve seen these things. They upset me as much as they upset you, and I think something needs to happen to change that.” He suggested that one solution “would be for him to leave that job,” and that the deputy EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler “might be a good swap.”

Inhofe’s connection to Pruitt runs deep. His former chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, became Pruitt’s chief of staff and reportedly wanted to quit the agency, according to an E&E report in early April. So far, he has remained in his position, and the House oversight committee plans to interview him as part of its investigation into Pruitt’s conduct. Four of his former EPA colleagues who have since left have also been asked to appear before the committee.

A turning point in staff loyalty may have occurred in April, when news broke that Pruitt had rented a $50-a-night condo co-owned by an energy lobbyist for six months. After that, a series of stories about his questionable behavior appeared, and one by one, his formerly loyal staff began to exit the EPA.

Here they are:

Samantha Dravis: One of Pruitt’s first and closest advisers, she worked for the EPA Office of Policy and was often seen by his side. She knew Pruitt from her days as general counsel to the Republican Attorneys General Association and president of its affiliate dark-money group Rule of Law Defense Fund, both of which Pruitt chaired during his time as Oklahoma attorney general. On April 20, she officially left the EPA for the private sector after taking a three-month leave from the agency between November and January. Unnamed agency officials told CBS and the Washington Post that her decision had nothing to do with the bombardment of news that came days later about Pruitt renting a condo from the lobbyist and approving inappropriate pay raises for two staffers.

Albert “Kell” Kelly: Two weeks after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation fined Kelly for his alleged involvement in a loan that hadn’t received FDIC approval, Scott Pruitt hired his old friend “Kell” at the EPA in 2017 to lead the Superfund Task Force. The former banker’s company had issued three mortgages to the Pruitts and provided a loan to finance Pruitt’s stake for co-ownership of a minor league baseball team, according to an investigation by the Intercept. Kelly, seen as a close confidante of his EPA boss, left the agency in early May (on the same day as another official, Pasquale Perrotta). In a statement, Pruitt praised the “tremendous impact” Kelly had on the Superfund program, which Pruitt has singled out as his personal achievement, adding, “Kell Kelly’s service at EPA will be sorely missed.”

Pasquale Perrotta: Pruitt’s head of security, Perrotta, quit the agency on the same day as Kelly, accelerating his retirement after serving under four EPA administrators. Perrotta came under fire for helping to enable Pruitt’s expansive spending, signing off on regular first-class flights that Pruitt had justified as necessary because of security concerns. The EPA hired Perrotta’s business partner at his private security firm, Sequoia Security Group, for security sweeps when Pruitt arrived.

Liz Bowman: A four-year veteran of the chemical lobby American Chemistry Council, Bowman arrived at the EPA to run its communications team. During Pruitt’s tenure, the press shop has shut out reporters who cover the EPA from events while turning to conservative media to create an echo chamber amplifying Pruitt’s message. Bowman sent her resignation letter as the chief spokesperson for the agency on April 30 and, in early May, assumed her position to handle communications for Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa. Just after her resignation letter, the Atlantic reported that a communications staffer had been reportedly shopping negative stories about another Cabinet member, the Department of Interior’s Ryan Zinke.

John Konkus: Konkus was second-in-command in the press shop, and his departure was announced on May 4, making him the fourth staffer to leave that week. Last year, the aide was tasked with cutting contracts from the Obama years, and reportedly combed through grants and contracts looking for the phrase “climate change.” True to his communications roots, on his LinkedIn page, Konkus frames this experience in a positive light: “Completely reformed the $4B/annual grant award and solicitation process at the agency to adhere to the new EPA strategic plan and better reflect the policies of the Trump Administration.” He also sparked a minor controversy for receiving an ethics waiver to work as a Republican political consultant while at the EPA. A former field office director in Florida for Trump’s presidential campaign, Konkus is headed to another federal agency — this time, the Small Business Administration, where he will be in charge of communications.

Sarah Greenwalt: Another Oklahoma aide from when Pruitt worked as state attorney general, Greenwalt, a senior counsel, announced her departure in early June. She was one of the two aides who received a 53 percent raise from Pruitt, who used the Safe Drinking Water Act to approve the raises after the White House rejected them. She is leaving to become an attorney for the Oklahoma Workers Compensation Commission.

Millan Hupp: Once an employee of Pruitt’s in Oklahoma, Hupp came to the EPA to do his scheduling. She was one of the five staffers interviewed by the House oversight committee for her involvement in finding Pruitt a used Trump hotel mattress and housing with the energy lobbyist, which Democrats say violates federal law forbidding Pruitt from using EPA staff and resources for private gain. The Atlantic quoted an anonymous staffer saying she left because she was “tired of being thrown under the bus by Pruitt.” Hupp was one of the two staffers to receive a raise unauthorized by the White House from Pruitt. Her sister Sydney Hupp also worked at the agency and left last year. She helped Pruitt’s wife, Marlyn, set up a meeting with Chick-fil-A in an unsuccessful bid to own a franchise. She may not have a franchise, but she was responsible for yet another possible violation of federal law.

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Even Scott Pruitt’s friends have given up on him

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Rising seas could wipe out $1 trillion worth of U.S. homes and businesses

by ClaudioFitzGibb Posted on June 18, 2018

Some 2.4 million American homes and businesses worth more than $1 trillion are at risk of “chronic inundation” by the end of the century, according to a report out Monday. That’s about 15 percent of all U.S. coastal real estate, or roughly as much built infrastructure as Houston and Los Angeles combined.

The sweeping new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists is the most comprehensive analysis of the risks posed by sea level rise to the United States coastal economy. Taken in context with the lack of action to match the scale of the problem, it describes a country plowing headlong into a flood-driven financial crisis of enormous scale.

“In contrast with previous housing market crashes, values of properties chronically inundated due to sea level rise are unlikely to recover and will only continue to go further underwater, literally and figuratively,” said Rachel Cleetus, an economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a report co-author, in a statement. “Many coastal communities will face declining property values as risk perceptions catch up with reality.”

The report defines chronic inundation as 26 flood events per year, or roughly one every other week — enough to “make normal routines impossible” and render the properties essentially worthless. It builds on the group’s previous work to identify the risk of chronic flooding under a sea-level-rise scenario of two meters (6.6 feet) by 2100. Using data from Zillow for every property in every coastal zip code in the lower 48, the results of this week’s report are at once familiar and surprising. (Here’s the interactive map where you can plug in your zip code).

It’s probably no surprise that Miami Beach is the community most at risk nationwide. More than $6 billion could be wiped out by 2045 (within the lifespan of current mortgages). That’s more than 10 percent of the city’s property value. (All amounts are in 2017 dollars).

A more surprising result: New Jersey is the state with the most to lose over the same time frame, eclipsing Florida. In Wildwood, Ocean City, and Long Beach, more than $10 billion is at risk.

In about two percent of all coastal zip codes, rising waters could soon eliminate more than half of property tax revenue. For these communities, like Crisfield, Maryland and parts of Newport Beach, California, sea level rise is an immediate existential threat — city services would have to shutter with such a catastrophic budget shortfall.

Looking further ahead — under the high sea level rise scenario to 2100 — a quarter of Boston would be underwater. Vulnerable barrier islands, like Miami Beach and Galveston, Texas, would be largely uninhabitable. Nationwide, more than $12 billion in property tax revenue would be lost.

The study estimates that Long Island, New York would experience floods at the scale of Hurricane Sandy more than two dozen times a year. The longer the world waits to significantly cut emissions, and the more bad news we discover about the inherent instability of the vast Antarctic ice sheets, the more likely this scenario becomes.

Though the costs and scale of this looming disaster are staggering, it’s important to remember that the catastrophe will hit some people much harder than others. Academics and climate activists have been talking about this for a long time, but local governments have struggled to prepare for a more watery future.

“While wealthier homeowners may risk losing more of their net wealth cumulatively, less-wealthy ones are in jeopardy of losing a greater percentage of what they own,” Cleetus said. “Homes often represent a larger share of total assets for elderly or low-income residents.” For some, taking a $100,000 loss could be a life-shattering blow; for others it’s a temporary setback.

The futurist Alex Steffen calls this situation a “brittleness bubble,” and it’s characteristic of slow-onset but predictable problems like climate change. When the brittleness bubble breaks, those without means — the economically poor, those from marginalized groups — will be forced to abandon their homes and ways of life.

“The risks we face grow with inaction,” Steffen recently wrote. “So, too, do the losses we can expect.”

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Rising seas could wipe out $1 trillion worth of U.S. homes and businesses

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Here are the carbon pricing battles to watch right now

by info1994 Posted on June 18, 2018

Massachusetts, Washington state, and the District of Columbia have a decent shot this year at passing the first law that looks anything like a carbon tax.

While 81 percent of economists say that a carbon tax or cap-and-trade policy is the most effective way to cut carbon pollution, state legislatures haven’t been so easy to convince. Carbon tax proposals keep crashing and burning, even in reliably blue states like Washington and Oregon.

The only state to put an economy-wide cap on carbon emissions is California, where a cap-and-trade program began more than a decade ago. Now, the concept of a carbon fee is gaining popularity. The strategy ensures that funds go straight to a designated purpose, rather than being collected and used by the government like a more general tax.

There’s some trepidation about passing a carbon price because there aren’t many examples out there, says Jamie DeMarco, state-level carbon pricing coordinator at the grassroots advocacy organization Citizens’ Climate Lobby. “Legislatures are hesitant to be the first one to enact a policy,” he says.

Will the second half of 2018 bring better luck for state-level climate action? Here are the three efforts to watch.

Massachusetts

On Thursday, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan carbon pricing bill as part of a larger energy package. Now the bill is heading to the state House, where its fate is uncertain.

Its language around the carbon price is “pretty light on the details,” says DeMarco. Technically, the legislation calls for something called a “market-based compliance mechanism” (yawn). DeMarco anticipates that the state would implement a carbon fee if the legislation passes, but says that the language is vague enough to allow for a cap-and-trade system instead. The Massachusetts governor would determine most of the details of how it works, as Benjamin Storrow reports.

If the House fails to pass the carbon pricing portion of the energy bill, DeMarco says, it’s still possible that the provision could get added back in when negotiating the final version with the Senate.

Washington, D.C.

Another carbon fee is brewing in the country’s capital. D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh is expected to introduce a bill in July. Her initial proposal outlined in May calls for a $10 fee per metric ton on carbon pollution that would increase to $100 per ton by 2038.

Some environmental advocates say that Cheh’s proposal doesn’t go far enough toward meeting the city’s climate goals. A coalition called Put A Price on It D.C. put forth an alternate plan that starts at $20 per ton and increases to $150 by 2032. The group also argues for a rebate program that would return the majority of the revenue to D.C. residents.

We’ll wait and see if Cheh takes their advice. With D.C.’s overwhelmingly progressive city council, DeMarco says a carbon fee proposal would have a decent chance of passing.

Washington state

After a carbon tax fizzled out in the Washington legislature in March, the state is getting another chance. If Initiative 1631 gathers 260,000 signatures, voters will be deciding on the so-called “fee on pollution” this November.

The ballot measure calls for a $15 charge on each metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted in Washington starting in 2020, with the price rising $2 each year until the state meets its climate goals. The money raised would go toward investing in clean energy, protecting natural resources, and helping communities prepare for wildfires and sea-level rise.

Washington isn’t the only state that’s trying to pass a carbon price after recent failures. DeMarco says that Maryland, Oregon, Vermont, and Utah are all places to watch in 2019. New Jersey is a likely newcomer to the carbon pricing game next year, too.

The ultimate goal for environmental advocates, though, is a national carbon price. Flannery Winchester, communications coordinator at the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, says that these state-level carbon proposals are putting pressure on Congress come up with a countrywide solution. After all, a patchwork system that charges different prices for carbon across the country could be logistically challenging for businesses.

“Whatever roadblocks come up,” she says, “the big value is that they’re all really loud signals to Congress to move on a national carbon price.”

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Here are the carbon pricing battles to watch right now

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