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Supreme Court slaps down Big Coal

by Tetianah03 Posted on April 29, 2014

Take that!

Supreme Court slaps down Big Coal

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Take that, filthy old power plants. The Supreme Court says you can’t just send your pollution willy-nilly over state borders.

The New York Times reports:

In a major environmental victory for the Obama administration, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate the smog-causing pollution from coal-fired power plants that wafts across state lines from 27 Midwestern and Appalachian states to the East Coast.

The 6-to-2 ruling upholds a centerpiece of what has become a signature of President Obama’s environmental agenda: a series of new Clean Air Act regulations aimed at cutting pollution from coal-fired power plants. Republicans and the coal industry have criticized the effort as a “war on coal.”

More from the Associated Press:

Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution from power plants can be carried long distances and the pollutants react with other substances to form smog and soot, which have been linked to respiratory illnesses and other disease. The cross-border pollution has prevented many cities and counties from complying with health-based air pollution standards set by law, because they have no authority to control it.

It will be expensive for electric utilities to comply with the EPA rules, and they’ll likely have to shut some polluting power plants down, but the administration argues that it’ll be worth it. From AP again:

The EPA said the investments would be far outweighed by the hundreds of billions of dollars in health care savings from cleaner air. The agency said the rule would prevent more than 30,000 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of illnesses each year.

Public health activists and enviros are psyched about the ruling. The Obama administration is pleased. People who simply like to breath clean air should be happy too.

The ruling also signals that the court might be supportive of EPA’s plans to limit carbon dioxide pollution from power plants via Clean Air Act regulations. Because Congress is deadlocked and won’t be passing serious climate legislation anytime soon, these types of regulations are one of the administration’s key tools for combating climate change. Proposed rules on CO2 from existing power plants are due to be released in June.

Today’s ruling “means that there are six Justices on the Court — including Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy — who are willing to follow the text of the Clean Air Act where it leads, recognizing that the Act provides the EPA with ample authority to address some of the major environmental challenges of our time,” Tom Donnelly, counsel at the progressive think tank Constitutional Accountability Center, told ThinkProgress.

With that, we can all breathe a little easier.


Source
In Victory for Obama, Court Backs Rules for Coal Pollution, The New York Times
Court upholds EPA rule on cross-state pollution, The Associated Press
What The Supreme Court’s Latest Air Pollution Ruling Means, ThinkProgress
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Droughts push beef prices to record highs

by MollieUrquhart Posted on April 10, 2014

Droughts push beef prices to record highs

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A cost-saving barbecue.

Mo’ drought, moo problems. Hamburger and sirloins are becoming more expensive than ever in the wake of drought-driven herd thinning.

Herd thinning isn’t a bovine diet and calisthenics regime. It’s a euphemism for unplanned cow slaughtering — though the end result of the unfortunate practice could literally lower your meat and cholesterol intake. The L.A. Times reports that the retail price of choice-grade beef hit a record $5.28 a pound last month, up from $4.91 a year ago:

Soaring beef prices are being blamed on years of drought throughout the western and southern U.S. The dry weather has driven up the price of feed such as corn and hay to record highs, forcing many ranchers to sell off their cattle. That briefly created a glut of beef cows for slaughter that has now run dry.

The nation’s cattle population has fallen to 87.7 million, the lowest since 1951, when there were 82.1 million on hand, according to the USDA. (The peak was 1975, with 132 million heads of cattle, but the animals then were less meaty and required more feed.)

“We’re dealing with chronically low herds,” said Richard Volpe, an economist for the USDA. “Beef prices should remain at near-record highs this year and into 2015.”

Even vegetarians aren’t being spared from repercussions of herd thinning. Cattle munch on tumbleweeds, and Colorado’s dwindling cattle population has contributed to a choking outbreak. The AP reports that the freewheeling weeds are so thick in some places that firefighters had to cut through them to help a pregnant woman reach the hospital.

“The frustrating part is once you get the first wave beat down, packed down and out of the road, the wind comes up and here comes the next batch,” said county road worker Russell Bennett.


Source
Beef prices hit all-time high in U.S., Los Angeles Times
Colorado tumbleweeds overrun drought areas, Associated Press

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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That old, rusty underwater pipeline? Nothing to worry about!

by dfonis5 Posted on March 4, 2014

That old, rusty underwater pipeline? Nothing to worry about!

By

Kate Ter Haar

Recently, scenes from the frozen Great Lakes region have brought to mind the post-apocalyptic icy landscape of the Lands Beyond the Wall. The Straits of Mackinac in northern Michigan is currently facing its own “winter is coming” scenario, and it doesn’t involve a horde of aggressive snow zombies with a penchant for disembowelment (we hope). This threat, however, could result in the destruction of a vast ecosystem, threatening drinking water supplies and the livelihoods of local fishermen.

To stave off disaster, Michiganians are loudly voicing their concerns about a section of oil pipeline that runs along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile-wide body of water separating the upper peninsula of Michigan from the rest of the state, and conjoining Lakes Michigan and Huron. Called Line 5, the segment, part of a pipeline built in 1953, has undergone minimal repairs in the past 60+ years. As production from Alberta’s tar sands has soared over recent years, many are beginning to question whether Line 5 can handle more of that oil. Pipeline owner Enbridge expanded the line’s capacity by about 10 percent last year, to nearly 23 million gallons per day. The National Wildlife Federation released a video in October 2013 showing broken supports that suggest corrosion along Line 5, and is demanding that it be replaced entirely.

Enbridge’s position is that the pipeline has “been operating there for decades and operating safely.” But plenty of things tend to operate less effectively after decades of use. A few examples: nuclear waste receptacles, Kobe Bryant’s legs, capitalism.

Enbridge already has a bad rep in Michigan after one of its pipelines burst in 2010 and poured over a million gallons of tar-sands oil into the Kalamazoo River watershed. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, that little oopsie was the costliest pipeline disaster in the nation’s history – and, because tar-sands oil is far more difficult to clean up than the standard variety,  the cleanup is still going on three and a half years later.

A cleanup in the straits — where parts of the pipeline lie under 270 feet of water — would be much harder still, as the Associated Press notes:

The Straits of Mackinac epitomizes a potential worst-case scenario for a pipeline accident: an iconic waterway, ecologically and economically significant, that could be fiendishly hard to clean up because of swift currents and deep water that’s often covered with ice several months a year.

In December, Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) sent a letter of concern to federal pipeline officials about environmental risks posed by the aging pipeline.

The oil and natural gas industry has a hell of a streak going when it comes to pipeline spills, so speaking strictly in terms of mathematical probability, Line 5 should be perfectly fine. That’s how statistics work – right?


Source
Sunken Great Lakes Oil Pipeline Raises Spill Fears, The Associated Press

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Sochi Olympics are bad for environment and locals alike

by LynetteCjr Posted on January 22, 2014

Sochi Olympics are bad for environment and locals alike

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Vladimir Arndt / Shutterstock

When Russia made its bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, it promised green building standards and “zero waste.” But as we count down to the opening ceremony on Feb. 7, illegal landfills and trashed ecosystems suggest that Russia may not medal in eco-friendly practices.

Not only is this shaping up to be the most expensive Olympics in the history of the games, with $51 billion of new development, it is also arguably one of the most destructive. Five thousand acres of pristine forests have been felled, while wetlands that served as important stopovers for migrating birds have been filled in. Landslides and waste dumping threaten the watershed, which feeds into the Black Sea. Building within national parks in Russia used to be limited, but that regulation was reversed in order to make way for some games facilities, hotels, and roads. Some observers note that the Olympics have provided an opportunity for developers to cash in on what they hope will be a profitable tourist destination in the future.

The construction projects have also left local Sochi-ers in the lurch, facing frequent power shortages, land subsidence, flooding, and widespread pollution. While the mayor of Sochi pointed to a new Louis Vuitton store as a symbol of progress, nearby communities are living without running water, and some have been cut off from the city by a new $635 million highway, as the Associated Press reports:

The residents of 5a Akatsy street have lived for years with no running water or sewage system. Construction for the 2014 Winter Games has made their lives more miserable … Even their communal outhouse had to be torn down because it was found to be too close to the new road and ruled an eyesore. …

People elsewhere in Sochi and surrounding villages have had the quality of their life decline because of Olympic construction. In the village of Akhshtyr, residents complain about an illegal landfill operated by an Olympics contractor that has fouled the air and a stream that feeds the Sochi water supply. Waste from another illegal dump in the village of Loo has slid into a brook that flows into the already polluted Black Sea.

As though to prove how ecologically oblivious they are, some Russian entrepreneurs recently flew two captured orca whales to a Sochi aquarium, where they’ll be on display during the Olympics. It’s a bizarrely tone-deaf move considering the widespread popularity of anti-dolphinarium documentary Blackfish. But the presiding philosophy in Sochi seems to be “make hay while the sun shines,” and it only shines for another month.

Russia doesn’t want you to be thinking about any of this, so officials have put the squeeze on potential whistleblowers. In the wake of the highly publicized release of Pussy Riot and Greenpeace activists last December, lower-profile harassments of activists and reporters continue. Evgeny Vitishko, a member of the Environmental Watch of the North Caucasus and an outspoken critic of Sochi development, has just been sentenced to spend three years in a penal colony, and his group was ordered to suspend its activities under a controversial foreign-agents law. Al Jazeera reports:

Vitishko, who denies all charges and remains free pending an appeal, was accused of violating a curfew imposed on him after he was sentenced to probation in 2012 on charges that human-rights advocates have called spurious and politically motivated. Another member of the group sentenced with him, zoologist Suren Gazaryan, fled to Estonia and was granted asylum. …

“It seems that every other day, police in Sochi are detaining and stopping people who are political and environmental activists,” [Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch] said. “It has been a steady stream of harassment.”

Meanwhile, officials claim that five trees will be replanted for every one felled, and animals disturbed during preparations for the games will be relocated or replaced. Even if all this is carried out — and some NGOs working with the planners are dubious — it will still almost certainly not be enough to save the ecosystem.

“The Mzymta Valley had the most diverse ecosystem in the region. It was a beautiful place,” Gazaryan said from Tallinn, Estonia. He dismissed official promises of reforestation for the area. “Of course we can put some trees. We can breed some animals. But we can’t restore an ecosystem. We lost a territory for the future.”


Source
A crumbling Sochi hides behind Olympic facades, Associated Press
Russia cracks down on green activism ahead of Sochi Olympics, Al Jazeera

Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern. Follow her on Twitter.

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Exxon fined for Arkansas spill, sued over Yellowstone spill, and still just keeps making piles of money

by illenassi Posted on November 8, 2013

Exxon fined for Arkansas spill, sued over Yellowstone spill, and still just keeps making piles of money

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The federal government wants to fine Exxon $2.7 million for the March oil spill from its 70-year-old pipeline in Mayflower, Ark. The ruptured pipe spewed 5,000 gallons of tar-sands oil and triggered the evacuation of 22 houses, some of which had to be bulldozed.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration sent a letter [PDF] to the Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. on Wednesday proposing the civil penalty because the company failed to heed test results and take other steps that could have prevented the spill. The fine isn’t final yet; Exxon has 30 days to file an appeal. And an appeal seems likely considering that Exxon is claiming PHMSA’s analysis contains “fundamental errors.”

Meanwhile, Montana and the U.S. Department of Interior informed Exxon last week that they plan to sue the company over a 63,000-gallon oil spill from a pipeline two years ago in the Yellowstone River. That’s on top of $3.4 million in state and federal fines that have already been assessed. From the Associated Press:

The move puts Exxon on notice that Montana and the Department of Interior expect the company to make up for harm done to wildlife and their habitat. The company also is being asked to pay for long-term environmental studies and for lost opportunities for fishing and recreation during and since the cleanup.

Exxon spent millions on cleanup, but it turns out that its cleanup workers did a pretty shitty job:

“You picked up the oil, but you picked up the stuff that makes the habitat work, as well,” said Bob Gibson, a spokesman for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “We know there’s damage out there that has not been mitigated, cleaned up or compensated for. We need to decide what further can be done.”

But what does Exxon care? The company made $45 billion in profit last year. A couple million here and there in fines and legal fees doesn’t even make a dent.


Source
Montana, U.S. to seek damages for oil spill, Associated Press
Notice of probable violation and proposed compliance order, PHMSA
Exxon faces $2.7 mln fine for Arkansas pipeline spill, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Exxon fined for Arkansas spill, sued over Yellowstone spill, and still just keeps making piles of money

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Warming oceans are killing baby puffins

by Ameliankak Posted on June 4, 2013

Warming oceans are killing baby puffins

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Atlantic puffins — sometimes called the clowns of the sea because of their squat bodies and odd waddles — are finding themselves in a particularly unfunny predicament.

Scientists think warming ocean temperatures are driving the puffins’ normal meals of herring away from the coastlines; they’re being replaced with other fish that are too large for puffin fledglings to swallow.

We told you in May that record-breaking Atlantic coastal water temperatures were driving some fish away. And on Friday we quoted Oceana scientist Matthew Huelsenbeck warning that the warming of the oceans is “causing significant changes to marine ecosystems.”

Well, what could be a more dramatic poster child for these impacts than the vision of adorable pufflings starving to death? From the Associated Press:

Steve Kress, director of the National Audubon Society’s seabird restoration program, has worked to restore and maintain the puffin population off the Maine coast for the past 40 years. Puffins spend most of their lives at sea, coming ashore only to breed each spring before returning to the ocean in August. The chicks swim to sea about 40 days after hatching and typically return to the islands after two years.

More than 2,000 of the birds are now in Maine, the vast majority on three islands. But the chick survival rates on the two largest colonies took a dive last summer, possibly because of a lack of herring, their primary food source, Kress said.

On Seal Island, a national wildlife refuge 20 miles offshore that’s home to about 1,000 puffins, only 31 per cent of the laid eggs produced fledglings, down from the five-year average of 77 per cent. Similar numbers were experienced at Matinicus Rock, a nearby island with more than 800 birds.

Instead of feeding their young primarily herring, puffin parents were giving them large numbers of butterfish, a more southerly fish that’s becoming more abundant in the Gulf [of Maine] or perhaps more accessible to seabirds because they’ve moved higher up in the water column. But the chicks ended up starving to death because the butterfish were too big and round for them to swallow, Kress said. Piles of uneaten butterfish were found next to some of the dead birds.

Perhaps the puffins could raid area homes and steal fish knives.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Carbon dioxide levels made a big, scary jump in 2012

by da3xs1z Posted on March 6, 2013

Carbon dioxide levels made a big, scary jump in 2012

By John Upton

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/ Galyna AndrushkoNOAA’s carbon dioxide measurements are taken at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose to just under 395 parts per million last year, according to new figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Compare that to the 350 ppm target that many climate scientists and activists say we need to get down to — activists like those at, yes, 350.org.

Global CO2 levels last year jumped by 2.67 parts per million, which might not sound like a dramatic leap, but it’s the second highest one-year increase since record-keeping began in 1959, surpassed only by the 1998 spike of 2.93 ppm.

From the Associated Press:

In 2009, the world’s nations agreed on a voluntary goal of limiting global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit [2 degrees Celsius] over pre-industrial temperature levels. Since the mid-1800s temperatures have already risen about 1.5 degrees. Current pollution trends translate to another 2.5 to 4.5 degrees of warming within the next several decades, [says John Reilly of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change].

“The prospects of keeping climate change below that [3.6 degree F goal] are fading away,” [NOAA’s Pieter] Tans says.

Why are greenhouse gas levels rising so quickly? From the same article:

More coal-burning power plants, especially in the developing world, are the main reason emissions keep going up — even as they have declined in the U.S. and other places, in part through conservation and cleaner energy.

At the same time, plants and the world’s oceans, which normally absorb some carbon dioxide, last year took in less than they do on average, says [Reilly]. Plant and ocean absorption of carbon varies naturally year to year.

But, Tans tells The Associated Press the major factor is ever-rising fossil fuel burning: “It’s just a testament to human influence being dominant.”

Hurrah for dominance. Maybe now let’s use that dominance to do some actual good?

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Global food giants get bad grades on environment and ethics

by AlvinaiTyler Posted on February 26, 2013

Global food giants get bad grades on environment and ethics

By Susie Cagle

Photo by Oxfam.

They may have located our ideal bliss points, but multinational food companies are far from hitting the mark when it comes to treating workers and the environment decently.

A new “Behind the Brands” report from Oxfam rates “10 of the world’s most powerful food and beverage companies” on their ethics: Coca-Cola, Mars, Nestle, Kellogg’s, General Mills, Associated British Foods, PepsiCo, Unilever, Danone, and Mondelez International (previously known as Kraft). Surprise: They didn’t do very well. The highest grade was a 38 out of 70.

From the report:

“Companies are overly secretive about their agricultural supply chains, making claims of ‘sustainability’ and ‘social responsibility’ difficult to verify; none of the Big 10 have adequate policies to protect local communities from land and water grabs along their supply chains; companies are not taking sufficient steps to curb massive agricultural greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate changes now affecting farmers; most companies do not provide small-scale farmers with equal access to their supply chains and no company has made a commitment to ensure that small-scale producers are paid a fair price; only a minority of the Big 10 are doing anything at all to address the exploitation of women small-scale farmers and workers in their supply chains.”

“It is time the veil of secrecy shrouding this multi-billion dollar industry was lifted,” Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking told The Guardian. “Consumers have the right to know how their food has been produced and the impact this has on the world’s poorest people who are growing the ingredients.”

Not a surprise: A couple of the accused “Big 10″ rejected the report’s claims. “We treat local producers, communities and the environment with the utmost respect,” said an Associated British Foods spokesman, who may be unaware of the generally accepted usage of the terms “community” and “environment.”

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The USDA is gearing up to steal candy from babies

by Myrna Posted on February 7, 2013

The USDA is gearing up to steal candy from babies

By Susie Cagle

The USDA seems a little conflicted about what it wants you to eat, kids. A year ago, it put out new rules intended to make school lunches healthier. Then in December, it backed away from restrictions on servings of meat and grains. Now the agency says it wants to crack down on greasy ‘n’ sweet snacks sold both in vending machines and in school lunches. From the Associated Press:

Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers. …

Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have “a la carte” lines that sell other foods. Food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated.

Let’s just hope the USDA doesn’t backtrack on these new standards.

The proposed rules would apply to anything sold directly by the schools, but not fundraising bake sales or after-school event concessions, where a lot of parents would probably be pretty annoyed about having to eat low-fat hamburgers and baked chips.

Another school lunch change in the works: The USDA is launching a pilot program to test out Greek yogurt as a protein-packed alternative to meat. Somehow I think that’s more likely to excite dairy farmers than grade-school kids, though.

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Another urgent need for infrastructure spending: Levees

by iscciaglewstrone123 Posted on January 17, 2013

Another urgent need for infrastructure spending: Levees

By Philip Bump

One source of contention during the House’s aggrieved, extensive debate over providing aid to Hurricane Sandy victims was how much money should be spent on preventative measures. To what extent, that is, should the government spend money now in order to save money in the future — spend money bolstering coastlines in New York and New Jersey so that the next time a big storm comes through, damage is less severe. The preferred answer of the House Republican majority was: zero dollars.

usacehq

An intentional levee breach in Iowa.

The GOP’s refusal to spend on prevention is looking all the more shortsighted in light of a new assessment by the Army Corps of Engineers of the strength of the nation’s levees. What the Corps is finding is not encouraging, raising the specter of another massive infrastructural need. From the Associated Press:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has yet to issue ratings for a little more than 40 percent of the 2,487 structures, which protect about 10 million people. Of those it has rated, however, 326 levees covering more than 2,000 miles were found in urgent need of repair.

The problems are myriad: earthen walls weakened by trees, shrubs and burrowing animal holes; houses built dangerously close to or even on top of levees; decayed pipes and pumping stations.

How big is the risk? Hard to say.

The Associated Press requested, under the Freedom of Information Act, details on why certain levees were judged unacceptable and how many people would be affected in a flood. The Corps declined on grounds that such information could heighten risks of terrorism and sabotage.

It’s up to local governments to maintain levees, just as it’s up to each of us to go to the dentist. It’s costly, it takes time, and if there’s no immediate problem, it’s easy to postpone. The longer you go without maintenance, though, the bigger the problems that result.

One would think that — following 2005 when all of New Orleans’ teeth fell out and its wisdom teeth were all impacted and so on — communities would be eager to figure out how to prevent the same thing from happening to them. Not so.

Some local officials say that the Corps is exaggerating the dangers, that some deficiencies were approved or not objected to by the federal government and that any repairs could cost them hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

“It’s just not right to tell a little town like this to spend millions of dollars that we can’t raise,” said Judy Askew, mayor of Brookport, a hardscrabble town of about 1,000 on the banks of the Ohio River.

If the Ohio floods and the levee fails, someone will pay to restore Brookport — at a price tag almost certainly greater than those millions Askew doesn’t have. And these areas are very likely to flood, if the federal government’s draft climate change report is any indicator.

As we’ve noted before, government has a bias toward funding relief and an antipathy to funding prevention. A lot of this is politics; there’s much more political will to help those left homeless than there is to raise money to protect the home in the first place. It’s why each of the people who spoke out against Sandy aid were very deliberate in articulating how far their hearts went out to victims, even as they pushed measures that would ensure there’d be more victims in the future.

In the meantime:

As of Jan. 10, the agency had rated 1,451, or 58 percent, of [the nation’s levees]. Of those, 326 were unacceptable, 1,004 were minimally acceptable with deficiencies that need correcting, and 121 were acceptable. …

A number of local managers blame their “unacceptable” ratings on the Corps taking a harder line on compliance with levee construction, operation and maintenance standards.

“Since Katrina, they’re almost hyper-vigilant,” said John Sachi, city engineer for South St. Paul. “It’s almost like they’re remedying their mistakes from the past by putting the onus on us to make sure things get better.”

That’s almost exactly what it’s like.

Source

Deficient levees found across America, Associated Press

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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