In a meeting reportedly scheduled for Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s team will debate whether to abandon the historic climate pact.
It might seem surprising that this is even up for debate. During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to “cancel” the agreement, which many consider necessary to keep the planet from overheating. But before making a move, it appears he’ll let his advisers fight it out.
Two members of Trump’s inner circle, Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, want the administration to stick with the agreement. Reports say the meeting will pit those two against Steve Bannon, the climate-denying former chief of Breitbart News, and Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, who want out. Reports say Kushner and Tillerson argue that remaining in the Paris accord gives the administration diplomatic leverage in other matters.
If the opening skit on Saturday Night Live is any sign, the outlook for Kushner’s faction is good.
Of course, President Trump’s moves to trash the environment since taking office suggest that, whatever happens, the administration has no plans to meet the the carbon-cutting pledge the U.S. made under the Paris Agreement.
UPDATE, 18 Apr 2017: The meeting has been postponed. No word yet on rescheduling, but the White House is expected to announce its decision on whether to stay in the agreement in late May.
Originally posted here:
The world’s biggest petrostate just set its sights on wind and solar expansion.
In a meeting reportedly scheduled for Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s team will debate whether to abandon the historic climate pact.
It might seem surprising that this is even up for debate. During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to “cancel” the agreement, which many consider necessary to keep the planet from overheating. But before making a move, it appears he’ll let his advisers fight it out.
Two members of Trump’s inner circle, Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, want the administration to stick with the agreement. Reports say the meeting will pit those two against Steve Bannon, the climate-denying former chief of Breitbart News, and Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, who want out. Reports say Kushner and Tillerson argue that remaining in the Paris accord gives the administration diplomatic leverage in other matters.
If the opening skit on Saturday Night Live is any sign, the outlook for Kushner’s faction is good.
Of course, President Trump’s moves to trash the environment since taking office suggest that, whatever happens, the administration has no plans to meet the the carbon-cutting pledge the U.S. made under the Paris Agreement.
UPDATE, 18 Apr 2017: The meeting has been postponed. No word yet on rescheduling, but the White House is expected to announce its decision on whether to stay in the agreement in late May.
Link:
California is gearing up to pass a cap-and-trade law. Again.
You can’t fight what you can’t measure. But Davida Herzl has a solution: Her company, Aclima, builds sensor networks that monitor environmental impacts at a hyperlocal scale. Clients can deploy sensors on city streets, inside buildings, even on vehicles, to compile data on pollutants, carbon footprint, and more.
Think of it as a Fitbit for a planet trying to take more steps toward carbon reduction. In addition to working with the Environmental Protection Agency, Aclima has partnered with Google’s Street View fleet to map greenhouse gas emissions and air quality in California.
Herzl ultimately wants her sensor networks to create changes in behavior, both from large institutions and from individuals who can follow their lead. “One of the things we know is that emissions from non-electric vehicles influence climate change — but now we’ve learned that the proximity of my house to a freeway increases my health risk,” she says. “That can influence whether I choose to buy an electric vehicle or a nonrenewable-fuel-based vehicle … That personal moment motivates me every day.”
Workplace culture matters to Herzl, too: She sees Aclima’s multiracial, gender-diverse crew as part of a new vanguard in Silicon Valley dedicated to solving the world’s biggest problems through industry and innovation.
Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.
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Catherine Flowers has been an environmental justice fighter for as long as she can remember. “I grew up an Alabama country girl,” she says, “so I was part of the environmental movement before I even knew what it was. The natural world was my world.”
In 2001, raw sewage leaked into the yards of poor residents in Lowndes County, Alabama, because they had no access to municipal sewer systems. Local government added insult to injury by threatening 37 families with eviction or arrest because they couldn’t afford septic systems. Flowers, who is from Lowndes County, fought back: She negotiated with state government, including then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, to end unfair enforcement policies, and she enlisted the Environmental Protection Agency’s help to fund septic systems. The effort earned her the nickname “The Erin Brockovich of Sewage.”
Flowers was continuing the long tradition of residents fighting for justice in Lowndes County, an epicenter for the civil rights movement. “My own parents had a rich legacy of fighting for civil rights, which to this day informs my work,” she says. “Even today, people share stories about my parents’ acts of kindness or help, and I feel it’s my duty to carry on their work.”
Years later, untreated and leaking sewage remains a persistent problem in much of Alabama. Flowers advocates for sanitation and environmental rights through the organization she founded, the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise Community Development Corporation (ACRE, for short). She’s working with the EPA and other federal agencies to design affordable septic systems that will one day eliminate the developing-world conditions that Flowers calls Alabama’s “dirty secret.”
Former Vice President Al Gore counts himself as a big fan of Flowers’ work, calling her “a firm advocate for the poor, who recognizes that the climate crisis disproportionately affects the least wealthy and powerful among us.” Flowers says a soon-to-be-published study, based on evidence she helped collect, suggests that tropical parasites are emerging in Alabama due to poverty, poor sanitation, and climate change. “Our residents can have a bigger voice,” she said, “if the media began reporting how climate change is affecting people living in poor rural communities in 2017.” Assignment editors, pay attention.
Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.
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U.S. cities are packed with about 5 million medium-sized buildings — schools, churches, community centers, apartment buildings. Most use way more energy than they should. Many also have poor airflow and dirty, out-of-date heating and electrical systems. Those conditions contribute to high inner-city asthma rates and other health concerns.
“These buildings are actually making children sick,” says Donnel Baird, who grew up in such a place. His parents, immigrants from Guyana, raised their kids in a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, relying on a cooking stove for heat. Baird eventually moved to the South and then attended Duke University, before returning to New York as a community organizer in 2008.
In 2013, Baird launched BlocPower, which provides engineering and financial know-how to retrofit city buildings. The technical part is cool: Engineers survey structures with sensors and smartphone apps, figuring out the best ways to reduce energy use, like replacing oil boilers with solar hot water. But the financing is critical; BlocPower builds the case for each project and connects owners with lenders. It has already retrofitted more than 500 buildings in New York and is expanding into Chicago, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.
“The biggest way for us to reduce carbon emissions right now,” Baird says, “is efficiency.”
Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.
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Burning coal for electricity continues its steep slide into history.
A self-described “anonymous environmental activist collective” spelled out “NO MORE TIGERS, NO MORE WOODS” in six-foot-high letters at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
“It’s a protest piece against Trump’s administration’s handling of our environmental policies,” one of the activists told a local ABC affiliate, using a voice disguiser. “He’s been very aggressive in gutting a lot of the policies that we’ve had in place for a very long time. We felt it necessary to stand up and go take action against him.”
Plus the activists don’t like golf courses. “Tearing up the golf course felt justified in many ways,” one activist told the Washington Post. “Repurposing what was once a beautiful stretch of land into a playground for the privileged is an environmental crime in its own right.”
The Washington Post article originally called the action a “daring act of defiance.” Though accurate, the description irritated Eric Trump, the president’s second-oldest son:
The Post then changed its story to say the group “pulled off an elaborate act of vandalism.”
No comment from Tiger Woods, who has golfed with Donald Trump and said he plays pretty well for an old guy.
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Trump is sending Obama’s auto fuel economy standards back to the drawing board.
The industry is growing so fast it could become the largest source of renewable energy on both sides of the Atlantic.
In America, wind power won the top spot for installed generating capacity (putting it ahead of hydroelectric power), according to a new industry report. And in the E.U., wind capacity grew by 8 percent last year, surpassing coal. That puts wind second only to natural gas across the pond.
In the next three years, wind could account for 10 percent of American electricity, Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, said in a press release. The industry already employs over 100,000 Americans.
In Europe, wind has hit the 10.4 percent mark, and employs more than 300,000 people, according to an association for wind energy in Europe. Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, and Lithuania lead the way for European wind growth. In the U.S., Texas is the windy frontier.
“Low-cost, homegrown wind energy,” Kiernan added in the release, “is something we can all agree on.”
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The state’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, had vetoed a bill that would require utilities to buy 25 percent of their electricity from wind, hydroelectric dams, and other renewable sources by 2020, but legislators voted to override his veto.
Now this new, stronger renewable energy standard replaces the previous one, which had called for utilities to be getting 20 percent of their power from clean sources by 2020.
Democrats argued the bill would create jobs, mitigate climate change, and clean up air pollution. Republicans said it would cost too much. According to the Baltimore Sun, “Nonpartisan legislative analysts estimated it might raise residential electricity bills by 48 cents to $1.45 per month.”
It’s easy to focus on the U.S. presidency — that’s the center of the national reality show. But much of the substantive policy in this country is made on the state and local levels, where people are often more practical than ideological — or, you could say, more likely to be tailored for reality, rather than for reality TV.
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Why is California building fossil-fuel power plants it doesn’t need?
The acting secretary of the Army has reportedly ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to issue a critical easement that would allow the pipeline to be built underneath Lake Oahe, the primary source of drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, a proponent of the pipeline, announced the news Tuesday night.
The easement, which could come within days, would clear the way for construction of the last major segment of the pipeline. A week ago, President Trump called for the Army Corps to move quickly toward approval of the easement.
This is the same easement the Obama administration declined to issue in December. At that time, the Army Corps ordered an environmental impact statement (EIS) to be conducted for the project, a process that could take years, granting the water protectors a small but important victory. It’s not clear whether the Army Corps now has the authority to simply stop the EIS process.
“If and when the easement is granted, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will vigorously pursue legal action,” the tribe said in a statement. “To abandon the EIS would amount to a wholly unexplained and arbitrary change based on the President’s personal views and, potentially, personal investments.”
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Innovation, not scarcity, could bring us peak oil as soon as 2020.
Libros
