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The plan meant to unite Biden and Bernie voters on climate is finally here

by Iona32C781947 Posted on July 8, 2020

Once upon a time, many moons ago — i.e., back in April — Democratic presidential primary candidate Bernie Sanders agreed to exit the race and join forces with his mortal frenemy Joe Biden to help the former vice president take the White House. The two announced they were putting together a series of joint “unity” task forces with experts from each of their camps to shape the Democratic platform, including a task force on climate change.

After a few months of weekly Zoom meetings and conference calls, the task forces sent their final recommendations to the Democratic National Committee for its consideration on Wednesday.

On climate change, the two candidates and their supporters had some serious divides to bridge. Over the course of nine months of primary debates, Biden touted his plan to build 500,000 electric vehicle chargers and put his faith in American exceptionalism while Sanders bashed fossil fuel executives and promoted the Green New Deal. To try to find a middle ground, Sanders appointed Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash, and Catherine Flowers, the founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, to the joint climate task force. Biden selected former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy, and former Biden policy advisor Kerry Duggan, along with two members of Congress.

From the preamble to the task force’s policy recommendations, it’s clear that Sanders’ camp had a meaningful influence on the platform. Titled “Combating the climate crisis and pursuing environmental justice,” the introduction immediately namechecks communities that have suffered the most from the effects of climate change, like Houston, Texas and Paradise, California, and quickly moves on to those that have long suffered from racist policies and pollution, like Flint, Michigan and the Navajo Nation. The platform goes on to work justice and equity into pretty much every bullet point, from eliminating legacy pollution like Superfund sites, to creating union jobs in clean energy that reflect the full diversity of the country. While the Green New Deal is never mentioned, traces of it are all over the place.

Prakash wrote about her experience on the task force on Twitter on Wednesday, explaining that she had two goals: to push Biden to increase his ambition on climate change in terms of timelines and benchmarks, and to place environmental and climate justice at the heart of all of Biden’s climate policies.

On Prakash’s first goal, there was certainly some success. Previously, Biden’s climate policies centered around achieving 100 percent clean electricity by 2050. The task force shaved 15 years off that goal. It also came up with a slew of closer, more specific benchmarks: Within five years, make all school buses electric and help spur retrofits of 4 million buildings by unlocking private sector funding and setting efficiency standards, and by 2030, zero out the carbon footprint of all new buildings.

As for Prakash’s second goal, she applauded Biden’s commitment to putting environmental justice at the heart of his climate policy agenda by “directing federal funds to disadvantaged communities, ending pollution & toxic waste sites, and creating mitigation strategies and rebuilding from disaster in just and equitable ways.”

“We are leaving these discussions with policies that, if implemented, will make Joe Biden’s climate agenda far more powerful, equitable, and urgent than where his plans were just weeks ago,” she tweeted.

Naturally, there is evidence of compromise throughout the task force’s plan. While the document endorses repealing fossil fuel subsidies and addressing methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure, it does not say anything about fracking, and the only pipeline that it mentions is the “diverse pipeline of talent” the government should help create to fill good clean energy jobs. However, it does urge the Democratic party to explicitly fess up to “historic wrongs” perpetrated against Native American tribes with respect to infrastructure (i.e. pipelines), and to commit to a more robust and meaningful consultation process with tribes across all federal agencies. To do so, the task force recommends conducting a “Tribal Needs Assessment” to understand how to support more than 500 tribes in the energy transition.

Primary season left the Democratic party deeply divided, and some on the climate left will inevitably remain skeptical that a Biden administration will be ambitious enough. This document is by no means the scripture of climate policy. But Biden has proven to be pliant, allowing himself to be pushed further and further on climate since first announcing his candidacy, and this experiment in intra-party negotiation and compromise offers some evidence that the trend could continue.

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The plan meant to unite Biden and Bernie voters on climate is finally here

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Fake news is killing us. How can we stop it?

by PBIJannieaz Posted on July 1, 2020

Salmon Arm is a little town of 17,000 in central British Columbia, not far from busy ski slopes in the Canadian Rockies. It’s home to stunning blue lakes, tree-covered mountains, and a worrying number of signs claiming that COVID-19 is a hoax.

Tim Walters

But maybe less than there used to be. Tim Walters, a professor of English at Okanagan College, has been tearing down the signs one by one since they started appearing a few months ago. The signs demand B.C. “wake up” and sport a hashtag tied to QAnon, a far-right conspiracy movement. By June, Walters was walking three or four hours a day, wandering in ever-widening circles, yanking down the signs wherever he went.

It’s become a “low-level obsession,” he said. “Because of how crazy they are, people don’t take these conspiracy theories seriously enough.”

The conspiracy theorists responded by putting their signs higher, 8 or 9 feet off the ground. But Walters is 6 feet 6 inches tall with long arms to match. People have been sending him directions to new signs in their neighborhoods that they can’t reach.

The reality is that fake news is killing people. Research shows that wearing masks could reduce the spread of COVID-19 by half, yet misleading claims about the safety of mask-wearing have proliferated. If everyone wore face masks in public, according to a model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, it could save an estimated 33,000 American lives by October.

“Misinformation about COVID is spreading faster than the virus itself,” said Gale Sinatra, a professor of education at the University of Southern California who’s writing a book about fake news and the public’s understanding of science. Epidemiological experts say that a pandemic is as much of a communications crisis as it is a public health emergency. It’s reminiscent of climate change — despite a mountain of evidence showing the devastating effects on our overheating planet, only two-thirds of Americans say they’re worried about it. That’s a sign that these messages aren’t reaching people, or perhaps that fake news resonated with them more.

As an added challenge, the climate crisis and COVID-19 have both gotten sucked into the vortex of polarization in America. And as the pandemic has stretched on, becoming the background of our lives, it’s activating many of the same psychological barriers that people face when confronted with climate change. “Everyone’s got COVID fatigue now,” Sinatra said.

Coronavirus denial shares many similarities to climate denial, the dismissal of the scientific consensus around global warming. It’s spread by many of the same people, and the arguments for these bonkers theories often sound a lot alike: a rejection of mainstream science, a story of governments plotting to manufacture a crisis, and a message that the best thing to do is just continue business as usual. So why should I wear a face mask?

Studies have shown that fake news spreads faster on social media than real news does. People on Twitter are 70 percent more likely to share false news than the real stuff. And it’s difficult to shut down. “Misinformation is unfortunately a bit more compelling than regular information,” Sinatra said. Conspiracists spin tales that are surprising and dramatic, like a plot twist in a movie — a contrast to the drumbeat of “COVID-19 cases are rising!” seen on the news every day. So short of tearing down posters, what can people do to shut down the spread of misinformation?

Taking misconceptions head-on is one option, Sinatra said. But it has to be done carefully, or it can backfire, because repeating wrongheaded claims in the course of refuting them risks spreading them even further. Repeating things makes them stick. As the linguist George Lakoff pointed out, when you tell people “Don’t think of an elephant” they can’t help but picture an elephant.

“Just saying ‘You’re wrong’” — that does not work,” Sinatra said. You have to explain why something is incorrect and offer a good explanation for a convincing counterpoint.

Conspiracy signs headed for the recycling. Tim Walters

“My thing is, you always have to confront them head-on,” said Walters, who incorporates rebuttals into his English classes. He recently taught a college course about the climate crisis and found that many of his students were on the fence about the science at first, unsure of what was true, before reading assignments like David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, which educated (and terrified) them. Walters equipped his students with the facts about climate change and encouraged them to discuss what they learned with their friends and family.

One resource that could help them is the new Conspiracy Theory Handbook, written by two cognitive scientists, Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook. It’s a free online source that offers tips on how to debunk conspiracy theories and talk to people who believe in them.

Even so, the best way to counter fake news might be to equip people with the tools to evaluate what’s fake and what’s real from the get-go. “It’s better to inoculate people preemptively against conspiracy theories rather than trying to go in afterward and undo the damage,” said Cook, a professor at George Mason University, in a recent interview with The Verge.

The problem, of course, is that those under the sway of misinformation aren’t willing to take the vaccine.

One nonprofit, the News Literacy Project, aims to help students across the country get savvy when it comes to identifying fake news and think critically about what they come across online. There’s evidence that this approach helps for people of all ages. One study from the University of Michigan found that people are less likely to trust, “like,” or share fake climate change news on Facebook if they read a few questions beforehand such as “Do I recognize the news organization that posted the story?” and “Does the information in the post seem believable?”

Scientists and public health experts are having a tough time in the COVID-19 pandemic, because they’re learning basic facts about the virus and how it spreads from week to week. They’re trying to communicate new findings to the public in real time, and evolving recommendations are bound to sow confusion. That’s one big difference between the two crises: Climate scientists got the basic story nailed down ages ago. “The science around climate change has been developing for decades,” Sinatra said. “COVID’s only been on the planet for the last six months.”

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Fake news is killing us. How can we stop it?

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A bill in Congress could get to the bottom of how coronavirus links air pollution and racism

by adellbrody Posted on June 12, 2020

It’s becoming clear that black and Latino communities in the U.S. suffer disproportionately from the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 mortality rate for black New York City residents, for example, is twice that of white residents, and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report has suggested that black Americans in general are hospitalized for COVID-19 at much higher rates. Research is also emerging showing that exposure to air pollution likely makes COVID-19 deadlier. In other words, when it comes to COVID-19 outcomes, it’s clear that race matters and that pollution matters. What is not yet clear is how, exactly, these two troubling trends are related.

In hopes of finding concrete connections between air pollution in communities of color and COVID-19 outcomes, last month Democrats in Congress introduced the Environmental Justice COVID-19 Act, which would allocate an additional $50 million to existing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant programs and prioritize that funding for projects that “investigate or address the disproportionate impacts of the COVID–19 pandemic in environmental justice communities.”

The measure was included in the HEROES Act, the $3 trillion pandemic relief legislation that passed the House of Representatives last month with mostly Democratic support. The legislation’s future in a Republican-controlled Senate is shaky, but at a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on Tuesday, lawmakers and advocates continued to push for the bill funding the study of the relationship between pollution and racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes.

“COVID-19 has exacerbated what we have known all along,” said California Representative Raul Ruiz, one of the bill’s cosponsors, during the hearing. “[At-risk communities are] disproportionately breathing polluted air and drinking dirty water due to neglect or decisions by others.”

Jacqueline Patterson, director of the NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program, discussed how black and Latino communities in the U.S. face more extensive exposure to pollutants, making them more susceptible to lower respiratory illnesses like COVID-19. More than 70 percent of black Americans “are living in counties in violation of federal air pollution standards,” she told the panel of lawmakers.

Patterson also criticized the Trump administration’s approach to environmental policy.

“Instead of strengthening regulations to reinforce protections for communities made vulnerable by poor air quality, we have an administration that has rolled back over 100 regulations in the context of COVID-19,” she said, referring to the Trump administration’s broad relaxation of environmental enforcement during the pandemic.

Patterson said that the funding provided by the Environmental Justice COVID-19 Act would help existing organizations, like local chapters of the NAACP, study the way environmental factors affect public health for communities of color. However, she isn’t sure that the $50 million allocated is enough to accomplish the bill’s aims.

“[The bill] is going to make a difference, but I think ‘enough’ is gonna be a hard bar to reach at this point because the needs are so great,” she told Grist. “Air pollution standards aren’t even stringent enough in the first place.”

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A bill in Congress could get to the bottom of how coronavirus links air pollution and racism

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How fast will you need to flee from the heat? There’s a word for that.

by JasmineSeymour Posted on May 27, 2020

Ocean creatures are finding themselves in hot water as the world warms. To stay cool, they’re relocating to deeper parts of the ocean, and it’s throwing ecosystems all out of whack.

A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change calculated how fast different layers of the ocean are heating up. Species are swimming to deeper waters to escape the heat at different rates, and the researchers warn that many sea dwellers like tuna, which rely on plankton at the water’s surface for food, might struggle to adapt.

The study brought a new phrase into the news: climate velocity. It’s basically the speed and direction that a given species will need to shift as their corner of the world heats up. Climate velocity has been in use in academic circles for more than a decade, but the study marks the first time the phrase made the headlines.

As climate change reshuffles life on earth, climate velocity applies up here on the surface, too. Warmer weather will drive animals seeking new homes into encounters with species they don’t normally meet — sort of like how grizzlies have been showing up in polar bears’ dwindling territory, leading to the emergence of grolar bears (or pizzlies?). And it’s not just flora and fauna. Humans, too, will have to move to survive.

Global warming will make large swaths of the Earth too hot for humans, as David Wallace-Wells memorably described in The Uninhabitable Earth, a book that features a grisly account of how the body breaks down in sweltering heat. That’s just one of many interesting challenges in store. The rising ocean is already submerging coasts, and changing weather patterns are helping to create new deserts. (The Sahara is expected to keep swallowing up more land as the planet warms.) Researchers estimate that the climate crisis could displace between 25 million and 1 billion people by 2050. For perspective, the most commonly cited number — 200 million — means that one in every 45 people would be displaced by mid-century.

Warmer weather and changing weather patterns are already altering how people grow food. In Alaska, for instance, rising temperatures mean that farmers can farm potatoes on the previously inhospitable tundra. Greenlanders are harvesting strawberries and tomatoes. In California, farmers are planting orchards, crossing their fingers that the fruit and nut trees they’re planting today will be able to make it in the hotter, drier world that the coming decades will bring.

Migration is inevitable. The fish are definitely in trouble. But our climate velocity, the pace at which people will be forced to abandon their homes and relocate, is largely TBD. One reason estimates of the number of people who will be displaced varies so widely is that it’s hard to predict human behavior. If governments decide to pull the plug on fossil fuel emissions soon, it will slow climate velocity and save human lives — and probably rescue a bunch of cute marine species, too.

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About all those oil tankers off the coast of California …

by RosaLadner63 Posted on May 13, 2020

The U.S. oil market was in a tailspin when dozens of oil tankers began approaching California’s coast in late April. The vessels, some as long as three football fields, were filled with millions of barrels of oil that suddenly had no place to go.

Amid the combined effects of a price war between oil-rich states Saudi Arabia and Russia and the COVID-19 pandemic’s curbing of demand, American refineries slashed production while onshore facilities filled to the brim. As a result, U.S. oil prices plunged to negative levels for the first time in history.

Tankers are still anchored near southern California today, and as they wait, they’ve switched from running their primary diesel engines to smaller auxiliary engines. While idling doesn’t create the carbon emissions of actually transporting cargo, the fleet is still generating the equivalent daily footprint of driving roughly 16,000 passenger cars. The giant ships burn fuel to keep lights on, power equipment, and heat the large volumes of crude oil resting in their tanks. Given the turbulent economy, oil analysts say the tankers might sit in suspended animation for weeks or months.

In recent days, as many as 32 tankers were anchored near Los Angeles and Long Beach, with some vessels leaving and new ones arriving as oil very slowly trickles in and out of ports. On May 11, 18 tankers filled designated spots as if in a “truck stop parking lot” three miles offshore, said Captain Kit Louttit, who monitors port traffic for the Marine Exchange of Southern California. That is about triple the typical number of tankers in those spaces.

Tankers along the U.S. West Coast, mainly off of California, held some 20 million barrels of oil on Monday, or nearly enough to satisfy a fifth of the world’s daily oil consumption, according to market data firm Kpler. The floating supply glut should gradually clear once new deliveries from the Middle East and Asia stop arriving.

But while the idling ships remain near California, they “could pose an ongoing risk to air quality,” said Bryan Comer, a senior researcher at the environmental think tank International Council on Clean Transportation, or ICCT. “Especially because you have these ships lumped together.” The cluster, he noted, concentrates the pollution that drifts ashore.

ICCT gathers annual emissions and fuel-use data for the world’s shipping fleet. By its estimates, the largest oil tankers burn nearly 4 tons of petroleum-based fuel every day they’re at anchor. That means each ship emits more than 11 tons of carbon dioxide per day — the equivalent of driving nearly 800 passenger vehicles. Anchored tankers also emit about 15 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 8 pounds of particulate matter daily, contributing to smog and air pollution. (Those global data points hold true even off the coast of California, Comer said, despite cargo ships of all kinds having to meet some of the strictest air-quality rules in the region.)

Worldwide, shipping regulators are cracking down on sulfur pollution, which is linked to heart and lung disease — and is thought to raise the risk of dying from COVID-19. As of this past January, oceangoing vessels can burn fuel with only 0.5 percent sulfur content, a significant drop from the previous limit of 3.5 percent. However, since 2009, California has required ships sailing within 28 miles of its coastline to use lighter “distillate” fuels with just 0.1 percent sulfur content. (A similar rule now applies to most coastlines in the United States and Canada.) Still, even the cleaner-burning distillate fuel has nearly 70 times the sulfur content of on-road diesel fuel.

It’s not yet clear how the tankers will affect shipping pollution overall — especially in light of pandemic-induced disruptions across the industry. Container ships and other cargo vessels are sailing far less frequently to ports around the world as measures taken to slow the spread of coronavirus upend trade flows and squeeze consumer demand. In Los Angeles, home of the busiest U.S. container port, cargo volumes fell by 15.5 percent in the first four months of 2020, with no growth expected in the near future. Comer said researchers haven’t yet calculated the net effect of fewer trips and idling tankers on shipping-related emissions.

Much like in California, oil tankers are crowding ports in places like India, Singapore, and the U.S. Gulf Coast, serving as temporary storage units or waiting indefinitely for customers. With cities and countries on lockdown, global oil demand fell sharply in April to levels last seen in 1995, according to the International Energy Agency. Russia and Saudi Arabia only agreed last month to cut output to ease the glut.

According to ICCT’s Comer, some of these stranded vessels pose pollution concerns beyond air quality. Certain tankers burn dirty bunker fuel — a byproduct of the petroleum refining process — and use “open-loop” scrubbers to reduce the ship’s sulfur output in line with regulations. The scrubber systems mix water with exhaust gas, filter it, then dump the resulting washwater — an acidic mixture that contains carcinogens like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals that can harm marine life. ICCT estimates that large vessels emit nearly 40 tons of scrubber washwater every hour.

This particular problem doesn’t apply to California, where state regulators prohibit scrubber use. And while anchoring so many massive tankers could raise the risk of collisions and spills, Capt. Louttit said that every vessel’s movement is monitored and planned in advance to prevent such a catastrophe. The U.S. Coast Guard also flies helicopters over California’s San Pedro Bay to ensure the vessels aren’t leaking oil or dumping trash or sewage.

The California Air Resources Board, or CARB, which monitors air quality in the state, said that given the tankers’ “fairly low” power needs while idling, their emissions “are not likely as high as” when the ships are at berth and running pumps to load crude oil onto ships or shore. Nevertheless, storing the excess crude at sea doesn’t come without some environmental cost.

“We are experiencing a unique and extraordinary situation,” CARB spokesperson Karen Caesar said about the tankers. “We are closely monitoring the situation and tracking these ships.”

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About all those oil tankers off the coast of California …

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Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy – Alastair Gee & Dani Anguiano

by Myrna Posted on May 5, 2020

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy

Alastair Gee & Dani Anguiano

Genre: Nature

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: May 5, 2020

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


The harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century. There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018, the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85 people. The catastrophe seared the American imagination, taking the front page of every major national newspaper and top billing on the news networks. It displaced tens of thousands of people, yielding a refugee crisis that continues to unfold. Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents, firefighters and police, and scientific experts. Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are California-based journalists who have reported on Paradise since the day the fire began. Together they reveal the heroics of the first responders, the miraculous escapes of those who got out of Paradise, and the horrors experienced by those who were trapped. Their accounts are intimate and unforgettable, including the local who left her home on foot as fire approached while her 82-year-old father stayed to battle it; the firefighter who drove into the heart of the inferno in his bulldozer; the police officer who switched on his body camera to record what he thought would be his final moments as the flames closed in; and the mother who, less than 12 hours after giving birth in the local hospital, thought she would die in the chaotic evacuation with her baby in her lap. Gee and Anguiano also explain the science of wildfires, write powerfully about the role of the power company PG&E in the blaze, and describe the poignant efforts to raise Paradise from the ruins. This is the story of a town at the forefront of a devastating global shift—of a remarkable landscape sucked ever drier of moisture and becoming inhospitable even to trees, now dying in their tens of millions and turning to kindling. It is also the story of a lost community, one that epitomized a provincial, affordable kind of Californian existence that is increasingly unattainable. It is, finally, a story of a new kind of fire behavior that firefighters have never witnessed before and barely know how to handle. What happened in Paradise was unprecedented in America. Yet according to climate scientists and fire experts, it will surely happen again.

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Study: Gas-powered appliances may be hazardous for your health

by Sang41834480885 Posted on April 30, 2020

Stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures have dramatically improved outdoor air quality in cities around the world, but a new study published Tuesday shows that indoor air quality may pose acute risks of its own — especially now that the novel coronavirus has us all spending so much time at home.

The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health study found that after just an hour of using a gas-fired stove or oven, levels of nitrogen dioxide — one of a group of gases that contribute to smog formation and are considered harmful to human health — inside California homes reached levels that exceeded both state and national ambient air-quality standards. The compromised indoor air quality caused by gas-powered furnaces, stoves, and water heaters could increase the likelihood of respiratory and cardiovascular disease and premature death, according to the study.

“The goal of this report is to provide information to Californians on how pollution from gas-fired appliances affects the air they breathe, and the related health effects,” Yifang Zhu, the study’s lead researcher, said in a statement. “California’s state agencies often focus on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts, but there has been much less focus on how fossil fuel use in household appliances can adversely impact indoor air quality and public health.”

The research, commissioned by Sierra Club, comes as recent studies have linked air pollution to higher rates of COVID-19 mortality. Inhaling nitrogen oxides poses especially acute risks to children and the elderly. Meanwhile, residential gas appliances emit approximately 16,000 tons of nitrogen oxides to outdoor air each year — which Rachel Golden, deputy director of Sierra Club’s building electrification program, notes is more than twice the NOx emissions from all of California’s gas-fired power plants combined.

Air pollution concentration matters a great deal, so residents of smaller homes and apartments often have it worse. Researchers found that after an hour of cooking in a small household, more than 90 percent of smaller residences had peak levels of nitrogen oxides that exceeded national ambient air quality standards. As Grist’s resident advice columnist Eve Andrews reminded us last week, indoor air quality isn’t always better than what you’re breathing outdoors.

The study also highlights environmental justice issues, since low-income households tend to have less space and more unmet maintenance needs, which can increase indoor emissions on top of being more at-risk for poor outdoor air quality. These factors may contribute to higher rates of respiratory challenges among low-income communities — particularly communities of color — which in turn may make residents more vulnerable to developing serious complications if they contract COVID-19.

To decrease indoor air pollution, the study proposes that households transition to zero-emission electric appliances. If all residential gas appliances in California were immediately replaced with clean energy alternatives, the resulting decrease in pollution would result in approximately 350 fewer deaths, 600 fewer cases of acute bronchitis, and 300 fewer cases of chronic bronchitis annually.

Without a massive public intervention, however, it seems unlikely that these appliances will be replaced at that scale, at least not in the homes of many low-income residents that could benefit the most. Golden says that policymakers can prioritize a just transition by focusing on efforts to reduce pollution and lower energy bills for vulnerable households, especially given the economic fallout from COVID-19.

“State agencies have a central role to play in helping people replace polluting gas appliances with clean, pollution-free electric alternatives like heat pumps and induction stoves,” Golden told Grist.

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Study: Gas-powered appliances may be hazardous for your health

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Trump is sneaking environmental rollbacks past a nation in quarantine

by MackN1969983798 Posted on April 1, 2020

In the weeks since the novel coronavirus began its exponential spread across America, schools have closed; churches, synagogues, and mosques have canceled services; and non-essential businesses have shuttered. The U.S. economy has ground to a halt. But the Trump administration and some state governments are still going full steam ahead on rolling back environmental protections.

So what’s been happening while we’ve been sheltering in place? A whole lot. “Consistent” isn’t generally a word used to describe this president, but Trump has been nothing if not consistent in his commitment to ensuring unfettered freedom for big polluters.

On Tuesday, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency put the nail in the coffin of President Obama’s 2012 rule aimed at curbing auto emissions. That rule would have required automakers to improve the fuel economy standards of their cars and light fleet trucks to by 5 percent on average a year. Trump’s new rule will only require them to raise those standards by 1.5 percent annually. For an idea of how easy Trump has made life for automakers, the industry has said it would boost standards 2.4 per year sans regulation.

Trump says the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles rule will make new cars cheaper and bolster auto manufacturers in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. But loosening restrictions on automakers will lead to a billion more tons of carbon dioxide emitted and 80 billion more gallons of gasoline consumed cars over the course of their lifetimes. California is currently in a courtroom tussle with the EPA over a waiver that would allow the state to sidestep Trump’s rule and continue imposing stricter tailpipe emissions rules on vehicles driven in its jurisdiction.

Speaking of the EPA, the agency, helmed by former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, is steadily moving forward with other rollbacks. Among them, a rule that could hobble future federal health regulations by limiting the studies regulators can use in the rulemaking process. Wheeler says the agency’s new rule to require disclosure of the raw data behind scientific studies used by the government to make regulations will increase transparency. Health experts argue it’ll exclude key studies that rely on confidential medical data.

Not content to move ahead with rollbacks that were already in the works, the EPA is also using the coronavirus as an excuse to let polluters loose on the playground. Last week, the agency announced it was going to let facilities like power plants and factories regulate themselves during the pandemic. The EPA will not issue fines for some air, water, and hazardous waste violations, and that loosening of restrictions will take retroactive effect going back to March 13. Companies should “act responsibly,” according to the EPA. Fat chance.

At the Department of the Interior, a similar saga is playing out. Last week, the department refused to extend the public comment period on its proposed reinterpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a 1918 rule protecting more than 800 avian species. The agency also kept moving along plans this month to consider drilling projects on previously protected lands in Alaska and New Mexico, and is continuing oil and gas drilling lease auctions apace.

States are getting in on the deregulatory action, too. Over the past two weeks, Kentucky, South Dakota, and West Virginia quietly passed laws that would penalize pipeline protesters. Under the new state laws, fossil fuel infrastructure like the Dakota Access Pipeline are designated “critical infrastructure” or “key infrastructure assets.” Causing damage above a certain dollar amount or tampering with those assets could now lead to felony charges.

Meanwhile, the governors of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Illinois have already temporarily banned or officially discouraged reusable bags in grocery stores, and Maine’s plastic bag ban is being postponed until January 2021. Republican officials arguing against efforts to limit plastic pollution are taking talking points from the plastics industry. The president of the Plastic Industries Association recently said, “As the coronavirus spreads across the country, single-use plastics will only become more vital.” But the science behind the assertion that plastic bags spread the virus is thin, and a recent study showed the virus is still viable on plastic surfaces after 72 hours.

It’s clear that the coronavirus crisis has handed Trump and conservative state lawmakers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do away with environmental protections they find too burdensome. Too bad social distancing isn’t effective for pollution.

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Trump is sneaking environmental rollbacks past a nation in quarantine

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Coronavirus fallout could be the ‘nail in the coffin’ for smaller oil companies

by CEQLionel770 Posted on March 13, 2020

At the State of the Union in February, President Trump boasted that his administration’s deregulatory agenda had made the U.S. “energy independent.” It was a dubious claim at the time, but recent events stemming from the outbreak of the novel coronavirus have shown it to be even more of a ruse.

This month oil prices plummeted about 25 percent and settled around $35 per barrel — the biggest slide in nearly 30 years. The slip started with reduced demand for oil in China and elsewhere due to the economic fallout of COVID-19. Then it accelerated dramatically this week, after Russia refused to sign onto a proposal from Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers to cut production in response to lower overall energy demand. With demand sagging and a sustained glut in the supply, the stage was set for prices to plummet.

The crash demonstrates the interconnected nature of the global oil market. The U.S. is now the largest oil producer in the world, but it still imports roughly 9 million barrels of petroleum per day. The cost and availability of oil is therefore still very much dependent on market activity elsewhere. In a globalized world, the U.S. economy cannot escape the effects of a global pandemic, geopolitical upheaval, and the subsequent plunge in oil prices.

With prices cratering, oil and gas market analysts expect a slate of bankruptcies, job cuts, and slashes in expenditures across the globe — and especially in the supposedly “independent” U.S. This could well result in operators idling or abandoning wells, which can have detrimental effects on the environment. Unplugged wells leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change, and can contaminate groundwater.

“If this price war continues for a year or more, it can really be the nail in the coffin for many companies,” said Audun Martinsen, head of oilfield service research at Rystad Energy, an energy consulting group based in Norway. Martinsen projected that oil and gas companies worldwide will scale back capital and operational expenses by $100 billion in 2020 and that the shale industry in the U.S. would bear the brunt of the economic effects. About half of the 10,900 wells planned for 2020 might not be dug at all, he said.

While there are climate benefits that come with decreased fossil fuel extraction, environmental groups fear that oil and gas producers will also respond to this week’s crash by simply pausing production at many wells for months or years until it becomes profitable to pump again — or abandoning them altogether, leaving taxpayers to pay for cleanup costs.

A recent investigation by the Los Angeles Times and the Center for Public Integrity found that in California alone about 35,000 wells are already in “idle” status. About half of them have not produced oil and gas in more than a decade. Companies are required to post bonds to ensure the state has money to plug disused wells and clean up abandoned oilfields, but the investigation found that operators had only posted $110 million in bonds — even though it would cost about $6 billion to fully remediate the sites.

A similar analysis by the Center for Western Priorities, a Colorado-based environmental group, found that it would cost about $6.1 billion to clean up all producible oil and gas wells on federal lands, but companies had only ponied up $162 million — less than 2 percent of the projected cost. The more operators that close up shop during this price shock, the higher the risk that they will walk away from their cleanup responsibilities and leave the federal government holding the bag.

That shortfall might ultimately become the responsibility of state and federal governments. At the same time, lower oil prices could also affect state budgets. For instance, in Wyoming, a $5 per barrel drop in oil prices results in a $70 million decrease in revenue for the state annually. State lawmakers there are already dealing with a $150 million deficit over the next two years, and that’s without taking this week’s price drop into consideration.

Major oil and gas companies like Exxon and Chevron are likely to weather prolonged low prices without serious consequence. So will midsize operators with private equity backing. But small, family-owned businesses will struggle to stay afloat, Martinsen said.

That’s because the coronavirus-fueled price decline this week comes on the heels of sustained low prices over the last few years. In 2014, crude oil prices dropped from about $110 per barrel to less than $60 per barrel. In an attempt to force the U.S. to decrease production, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) — a cartel of 13 oil exporters including Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela — refused to cut production, pushing prices down further. By the time OPEC agreed to scale back production in 2016, prices had dropped below $40 per barrel.

But the damage was already done. The low prices between 2014 and 2016 put dozens of shale drillers out of business.

“That was basically a bloodbath,” said Martinsen. “Big service companies were laying off big time and many remaining [companies] went under Chapter 11 [bankruptcy].”

U.S. oil production has continued to balloon since 2016, pushing prices down further. According to Haynes and Boone, a corporate law firm, nearly 200 oil and gas producers have filed for bankruptcies since 2015. As a result, many shale drillers facing this week’s drop in prices are already in a financially precarious situation.

Whether prices rebound again largely depends on whether OPEC and Russia can reach an agreement on cutting production, Martinsen said. Those efforts are further complicated by the spread of COVID-19. The two parties are scheduled to meet again in June, but Martinsen said “it is likely that they will not come to an agreement” then.

“It seems to be a challenging time ahead,” said Martinsen. “It’s all about trying to seek shelter — and trying to recover some of that potential loss that we’ll see in the future.”

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Coronavirus fallout could be the ‘nail in the coffin’ for smaller oil companies

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Don’t call it a climate bill: Senators unveil bipartisan energy package

by CelsaDann937308 Posted on February 28, 2020

On Thursday, Senators Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska and the chair of the Senate’s energy committee, and Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, unveiled the American Energy Innovation Act of 2020. If passed, the bill would be the first comprehensive update to U.S. energy policy in 12 years.

In a statement, Murkowski called the package, which combines bits and pieces of 50 energy-related measures cleared by the energy committee in 2019, America’s “best chance to modernize our nation’s energy policies.” She said she hopes Senate Democrats and Republicans will work together to pass the act, which “will help keep energy affordable even as it becomes cleaner and cleaner.”

That’s the foundational principle of this package, which is expected to be introduced in the Senate early next week. It basically ensures that states like Alaska and West Virginia can keep drilling and fracking while the nation also develops renewables like wind and solar and invests in advanced nuclear energy. In short, it’s an all-of-the-above energy strategy. It’s the kind of approach President Obama took in his years in office — one that has been disavowed in recent months by some presidential candidates.

Senate energy committee aides expect the bill to garner wide support in the Senate, and if the same happens in the House, it means Congress could actually pass bipartisan energy legislation in the year of our Lord 2020. But it certainly isn’t a substitute for a climate bill. Committee staff told reporters that while the committee considers the bill important for the climate, it isn’t claiming it’s “in any way sufficient.” Instead, it’s a “down payment” on tackling the crisis.

There are certainly some climate-friendly elements in the bill. It would require Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette, a Trump appointee, to establish a pilot program aimed at awarding grants to nonprofits for using energy-efficient materials in buildings like museums and historical centers. It extends current energy-efficiency targets for federal buildings through 2028 and adds in water-efficiency targets through 2030. It would help “weatherize” renewable energy technologies to help them withstand storms. It authorizes the secretary of energy to create a wind and solar technology program to address “near-term, mid-term, and long-term challenges” in development through the fiscal budget year 2025. The list goes on.

Leah Stokes, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says there’s a lot that’s laudable about the bill. “It’s really good that, even though the Republicans are the majority in the Senate, that there’s some willingness on the part of Senator Murkowski to do something” about climate, she said. The emphasis on energy efficiency is good, she said, if ultimately too narrow. Stokes said she’d like to see homes and commercial buildings included in the bill’s efficiency directives, not just schools, nonprofits, and federal buildings.

The biggest head-scratcher, she said, are the portions of the bill that focus on expanding oil and gas production. For instance, the bill would speed up the approval process for small-scale natural gas exports, even though recent research says the production of natural gas, once seen as a fuel that could bridge the gap between oil and coal and wind and solar, emits massive amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The bill requires Brouillette to study the possibility of building out new oil and gas facilities in Appalachia. It also includes provisions for research and innovation in carbon capture and storage technology for emissions from power plants and other industrial sources of carbon. Those provisions would, according to the bill, “improve the efficiency, effectiveness, costs, and environmental performance of coal and natural gas use.”

So, instead of banning fracking and other fossil-fuel related activities, the bill encourages those things while simultaneously boosting carbon capture, an unscalable (for the time being) technology the GOP has started to champion as a key part of its belated response to rising temperatures.

“I thought that was very odd,” Stokes said. “I don’t know why we need coal and natural gas technology programs at this point in time.” She said that a better bill would focus those carbon-removal technologies on capturing historical emissions directly from the atmosphere rather than capturing emissions from new fossil fuel developments. “I think that there’s a bit of a mismatch there,” she said.

Her general impression of the bill? “Not at the scale of what’s necessary by any means, but it’s better than nothing.” Stay tuned next week, when the bill moves to the Senate floor.

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Don’t call it a climate bill: Senators unveil bipartisan energy package

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