Tag Archives: climate & energy

1 in 5 Americans now live in places committed to 100% clean power

by StevieFusqpw Posted on May 7, 2019

Obsession with the families Stark (both the Iron Man and Iron Throne) is fleeting, but it’s looking like there’s one durable trend unfolding before our eyes: The embrace of clean energy.

On Tuesday, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state (and presidential contender) signed legislation that aims to make the state’s electricity carbon neutral by 2030. It’s the most recent in a series of similar moves. A couple of weeks ago, on Earth Day, Nevada’s governor signed into law a measure banning fossil-fuel generated electricity by 2050. In March, New Mexico committed to 100 percent clean electricity by 2045. California, Hawaii, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico, passed similar laws a bit further back.

“One in five U.S. residents now live in places committed to 100-percent clean electricity,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, on a conference call with reporters before Inslee signed the legislation.

There are similar bills pending in Illinois, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, and Massachusetts. And don’t forget the 100-odd cities — Orlando, Florida and Pueblo, Colorado, among them — that have vowed to kick their fossil-fuel addiction.

“Voters and state legislatures are being pretty darn clear that there’s widespread support for getting the electricity sector to 100 percent clean,” said Josh Freed, who runs the energy program at the Third Way think tank in Washington, D.C. “In our wildest expectations, we couldn’t have anticipated this much action this quickly.”

It’s a seismic shift from the 1990s and 2000s, when states made goals to get get a certain share of their electricity from renewable power. Those laws were designed to help the nascent renewables industry find its footing, Freed said. Now that the industry is up and running, “the next question is, how do we get carbon off the grid?”

There’s more than one good reason to focus on building a carbon-free electric system. Though there are still hurdles to leap, states basically know how to eliminate emissions from the electrical grid, said Mike O’Boyle, head of electricity policy at the think tank Energy Innovation in San Francisco. You can’t say the same about eliminating emissions from air-travel or concrete production, at least not yet. So squeezing the greenhouse gases out of electricity is a clearly achievable goal. And there are beneficial knock-on effects: It paves the way to clean up transportation (by switching to electric vehicles) and buildings (by switching to electric heating and cooling).

“It think its a robust and meaningful trend,” O’Boyle said. “A lot of gubernatorial candidates, and presidential candidates, have campaigned on 100-percent clean electricity. It’s become part of the conventional wisdom that it’s a realistic and effective policy goal.”

Besides the bill mandating Washington state’s switch to clean electricity, Inslee signed four other bills into law that will target greenhouse gas pollution from buildings, appliances, transportation, and super-polluting hydrofluorocarbons. They arose from negotiations between unions, environmental justice groups, industry, and climate hawks, said Lauren McCloy, Inslee’s senior energy advisor. Members of these groups, from the Certified Electrical Workers of Washington, to the Audubon Society, praised the new laws.

“Signing these clean energy bills into law is a commitment to our shared values of justice and stewardship,” said LeeAnne Beres, executive director of Washington Interfaith Power & Light. “People of faith applaud the Legislature for putting Washington on a strong path toward equity and sustainability.”

For Inslee, these new laws are a key selling point as he tries to distinguish himself as the climate candidate among the 21 Democrats running for president. He recently unveiled a “100% Clean Energy for America Plan,” which would keep the United States in the Paris Agreement and ban drilling on public lands, among other proposals. But without laws demonstrating action in his own state, it would be hard to make the case that he could get his climate platform passed in Washington D.C.

*This story updates and adds to a previous story. 

Continued here:  

1 in 5 Americans now live in places committed to 100% clean power

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, KTP, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 1 in 5 Americans now live in places committed to 100% clean power

Climate experts to New York: Go green or go home

by ShielaTressler Posted on May 2, 2019

Thirty-five scholars, policy experts, and researchers from across the country are urging New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers to commit the state to zero net emissions by 2040 by the end of this year’s legislative session in June.

In a letter sent to Cuomo and state Senate leaders on Monday, these experts laid out how and why New York state is uniquely positioned to achieve this goal and serve as a model for other state, national, and international policies.

The thinking behind the letter: New York finally has the support it needs to pass strong climate legislation, so lawmakers should strike while the iron is hot.

“Now that the Senate has flipped to Democratic control and is led by advocates of climate action as well, this seems a perfect time to enact a new law,” said Michael Gerrard, a signee and professor at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

Cuomo has a track record of talking big, and sometimes acting big, on climate. He famously banned fracking in New York state, and was one of President Trump’s most fiery critics over the plan to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. But Cuomo’s critics point out that he has been slow to condemn the Williams pipeline, which would bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania into the state.

With the exception of the pipeline, things are already looking greener in New York. The state Senate just passed a landmark package of bills on Tuesday, amending the state constitution to guarantee a right to clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment for all. They’re also in the process of considering the Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA), a progressive measure that would mandate a totally carbon-neutral economy by 2050 and institute a handful of equity provisions. Plus, New York City just passed its own Green New Deal, and Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to take the New York real estate industry to task over its emissions.

The letter proposes a two-pronged approach to reaching zero net emissions by 2040: Decarbonizing the energy sector first, and only then buying offsets for some of the most challenging sources of emissions to eliminate, such as those from agriculture, flying, and cement production.

“Achieving zero net emissions, rather than zero direct emissions (which means not emitting any CO2 at all), is ambitious, consistent with the scientific recommendations of the IPCC, and provides greater flexibility to meet climate goals at lower cost,” the letter reads.

The experts say decarbonizing electricity is the “linchpin” to achieving zero emissions, not only because energy is one of the biggest emissions culprits, but also because carbon-neutral energy is essential for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the industrial, heating, and transportation sectors. They advocate for using all possible forms of carbon-free energy. “The legislation should focus on achieving key ends (carbon-free electricity) rather than specifying a limited set of means (specific technologies),” they write.

Michael Davidson, a signee and research fellow at Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, said he is excited to see what New York state passes. The resulting legislation be a guide for other states looking to uphold the Paris Agreement, and it could inform the national discussion about how to decarbonize the economy, he said.

“We hope that the leaders in Albany will now sit down and hammer out a deal that works for everyone,” said Gerrard. “The differences seem quite bridgeable.”

This article: 

Climate experts to New York: Go green or go home

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, OXO, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Climate experts to New York: Go green or go home

‘Climate denial’ just made it into the dictionary. Wait, what?

by ChristinOlney9 Posted on May 2, 2019

The world is on fire, and so is our vocabulary. Merriam-Webster added 640 new words to its online dictionary last week. The additions include swole (“extremely muscular”), new meanings for snowflake (someone who is “treated as unique or special” or “overly sensitive”) and, you guessed it, a whole batch of neologisms tied to the environment.

“The work of revising a dictionary is constant, and it mirrors the culture’s need to make sense of the world with words,” the dictionary’s announcement reads.

Many of the new arrivals reflect the creative ways big corporations have found to trash the place. Our plastic pollution problem has brought us microplastic, “a piece of plastic that is five millimeters or smaller in size.” The natural gas industry (the folks who gave us “fracking”) introduced flowblack, “liquid used in fracking that returns to the surface after being injected into shale.” Then there’s omnicide, “the destruction of all life or all human life (as by nuclear war).”

Great, you say, any other downers? Of course! Bioaccumulation for the gradual buildup of contaminants, like pesticides and heavy metals, in an organism over time. And chronic wasting disease is an illness that afflicts deer, leading to weight loss, drooling, and listlessness.

For a more cheerful phrase, take bluebird day, “a day marked by cloudless blue skies.” Sounds lovely until you learn about the potential cloudpocalypse (not an official dictionary entry, I just made that up) in which a lack of climate-regulating cloud cover brings about a scary global-warming feedback loop.

Another nice one: petrichor, the name for that pleasant, earthy smell that fills the air after a rain. Contributing to that odor is geosmin — an organic compound created by soil- and water-dwelling bacteria.

The ever-expanding agricultural lexicon brought us a few new selections, such as the verb hydroseed, for the spraying of a liquid seed-mulch-fertilizer mix, along with the easy-to-pronounce insecticide called imidacloprid.

The big surprise for me was that Merriam-Webster’s new additions included two compound nouns, climate change denial and climate change denier. Wait, haven’t those phrases been in frequent use for a long time? The reason for their inclusion gives us a glimpse into the inner workings of the dictionary and the painstaking process of deciding what makes the cut.

“Traditionally, we limited the entries for compounds because we were always trying to conserve space in the printed dictionary,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, wrote in an email. The online dictionary lifts this limitation, enabling more space for compounds like screen time and go-cup.

But not all compounds make it into the dictionary. Sokolowski pointed to a “longstanding rule not to enter terms that we consider to be self-evident or self-explanatory.”

Consider the phrase cattle ranch. You can look up the definitions for cattle and ranch and deduce the compound’s meaning. That’s why the phrase isn’t in the dictionary. But dude ranch? A large farm for raising … men? Hence, dude ranch gets an entry.

Whereas the meaning of climate change denial is self-evident, the shortened form climate denial could be confusing for those who don’t spend their days thinking about our planetary crisis. Climate, after all, is just a word for the prevailing weather conditions of an area over time. Why would anyone deny the rain dropping on their head?

“Therefore, because the variant needed entry, the expanded form gets an entry even though its meaning is transparent,” Sokolowski said.

Speaking of transparent, one thing couldn’t be clearer: The climate is changing and humans are the cause, as sure as petrichor after a rain.

Credit: 

‘Climate denial’ just made it into the dictionary. Wait, what?

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Climate denial’ just made it into the dictionary. Wait, what?

Climate change’s deadliest effects are unfolding under the sea

by Fernand6284 Posted on April 25, 2019

Originally from:  

Climate change’s deadliest effects are unfolding under the sea

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Climate change’s deadliest effects are unfolding under the sea

Remember the rainforests? We still haven’t saved them.

by TiffinyDarley Posted on April 25, 2019

Every half hour, the world lost a football-field chunk of tropical forest in 2018.

Over the course of the year, that added up to a total forest loss of nearly 30 million acres, an area the size of Pennsylvania, according to the World Resources Institute’s annual report, out Thursday. As bad as that sounds, many more acres were lost in each of the two previous years, when huge fires wiped out millions of trees. The report is hardly cause for celebration, said Frances Seymour, senior fellow at WRI.

“The world’s forests are in the emergency room, said Seymour. “Even though they are recovering from extensive burns suffered in recent fires, the patient is also bleeding profusely from fresh wounds.”

Global Forest Watch

Deforestation is responsible for about 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. If deforestation were a country, it would be the third largest source of carbon pollution, after the United States and China.

“Tropical forest loss pulls the rug out from under efforts to stabilize the global climate,” Seymour said.

Every year, WRI’s Global Forest Watch pores over satellite images of the world’s woodlands and reams of data to monitor where trees are falling. Here are a few bullet points from the report:

Old growth deforestation continues: Primary or old-growth rainforest stores a lot of carbon in big trees and a lot of biodiversity — the frogs, bromeliads, lichens, leafcutter ants, and lemurs that live in those big trees. Since 2000, we’ve been losing about the same amount of primary rainforest every year: A Belgium-sized 9 million acres.

And it’s spreading: Efforts in Indonesia and Brazil to stem the loss of old-growth forests have started to work. By enforcing a moratorium on clearing primary forest, Indonesia has managed to bring deforestation down to the lowest level since 2003, said Belinda Margono from Indonesia’s Department of Environment and Forestry. But forests are falling at a quicker pace in West Africa, Colombia, Bolivia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Big trouble in Madagascar: The East Africane East African island island country lost a full 2 percent of its primary forest, more than any other country.

Peace brings cattle to Colombia: A truce between the government and between the government and rebels made it safe for farmers to enter previously perilous forests. Now they’re cutting down trees to create pastures for cattle.

Small farmers, big problems: Small-scale farmers (often growing cocoa for chocolate) were responsible for most of the forest loss in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Peru. By contrast, large farms — like those growing soy for China — were the main culprit in Bolivia.

From the distance, these data points might seem abstract, but the numbers represent “heartbreaking losses in real places,” Seymour said. “For every area of forest loss there’s likely a species one inch closer to extinction. And for every area of forest loss there’s likely a family that has lost access to an important part of their daily income from hunting, gathering, and fishing. Such loses pose an existential threat to the cultures of indigenous peoples. And for every area of forest loss there’s likely a community downstream that has less access to clean water and is more exposed to floods and landslides.”

Still, she said she’s optimistic that the world can stop leveling forests. Some countries have radically slowed tree loss by passing and enforcing laws. And the United Nations program that pays developing countries to stop deforestation has worked in the few places where it has been funded, she said.

“We know what to do, we just need to do it,” Seymour said.

Originally posted here – 

Remember the rainforests? We still haven’t saved them.

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Remember the rainforests? We still haven’t saved them.

Washington and Nevada join the swelling list of states aiming for 100% clean power

by Donekola Posted on April 24, 2019

The peer pressure to clean up the electric grid is gripping the country.

Recent weeks have brought a flurry of ambitious clean-energy pledges. On Earth Day, Nevada’s governor signed into law a measure banning fossil-fuel generated electricity by 2050. Washington’s legislature just sent a bill to Governor Jay Inslee (the presidential contender) that would have the Evergreen State running on purely carbon-free electricity by 2030. Last month, New Mexico committed to 100 percent clean electricity by 2045. California, Hawaii, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico, passed similar laws a bit further back. There are similar bills pending in Illinois, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, and Massachusetts. And don’t forget the 100-odd cities —  from Orlando, Florida to Pueblo, Colorado — that have vowed to kick their fossil-fuel addiction.

“Voters and state legislatures are being pretty darn clear that there’s widespread support for getting the electricity sector to 100 percent clean,” said Josh Freed, who runs the energy program at the Third Way think tank in Washington, D.C. “In our wildest expectations, we couldn’t have anticipated this much action this quickly.”

It’s a seismic shift from the 1990s and 2000s, when states made goals to get get a certain share of their electricity from renewable power. Those laws were designed to help the nascent renewables industry find its footing, Freed said. Now that the industry is up and running, “the next question is, how do we get carbon off the grid?”

That’s why everyone seems to be excited about the same goal. And this isn’t just the flavor of the month — there’s a good reason to focus on a carbon-free electric system. Though there are still hurdles to leap, states basically know how to eliminate emissions from the electrical grid, said Mike O’Boyle, head of electricity policy at the think tank Energy Innovation in San Francisco. You can’t say the same about eliminating emissions from air-travel or concrete production, at least not yet. So squeezing the greenhouse gases out of electricity is a clearly achievable goal. And there are beneficial knock-on effects: It paves the way to clean up transportation (by switching to electric vehicles) and buildings (by switching to electric heating and cooling).

“It think its a robust and meaningful trend,” O’Boyle said. “A lot of gubernatorial candidates, and presidential candidates, have campaigned on 100-percent clean electricity. It’s become part of the conventional wisdom that it’s a realistic and effective policy goal.”

Originally from: 

Washington and Nevada join the swelling list of states aiming for 100% clean power

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Washington and Nevada join the swelling list of states aiming for 100% clean power

Shell shows how Big Oil cracks up over climate change

by CharisWttxtlvq Posted on April 3, 2019

Subscribe to The Beacon

The decades-old alliance of fossil fuel interests is starting to fracture.

Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, recently said it had dropped out of a Washington D.C. industry lobbying group, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, or AFPM. Why? Because Shell supports the Paris Agreement on climate change and the lobbying group doesn’t.

“We must be prepared to openly voice our concerns where we find misalignment with an industry association on climate-related policy,” wrote Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden. “In cases of material misalignment, we should also be prepared to walk away,”

This could be a crucial fissure in a larger crackup. Shell also said that it might leave nine other industry associations — including the American Petroleum Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce — over climate policy. It’s unlikely to reconcile with all of these groups, said Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

There’s a recent precedent for corporations falling out over climate action. The once-powerful American Legislative Exchange Council has lost dozens of corporate members (including Shell) over recent years, as a result of its position on climate change and other issues. ALEC, which has worked closely with the climate-denying Heartland Institute, says that climate change is “inevitable” and that its causes are still up for debate.

None of this suggests that Shell’s corporate executives will soon join valve-turners to shut off their own pipelines. The oil giant is still trying to make a profit by selling fuels that contribute to climate change. Last year, it raked in $21.4 billion. It’s also still contributing to lobbying groups that fight efforts to curb carbon emissions .

But compared to it’s Big Oil brethren,, Shell stands out for calling on the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases and funneling money into clean energy efforts. In the end, this political realignment matters. If fewer powerful corporations are standing in the way of taking action on climate change, necessary legislation is more likely to pass.

View the original here: 

Shell shows how Big Oil cracks up over climate change

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Anker, FF, GE, Jason, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Shell shows how Big Oil cracks up over climate change

Will Congress leave the Colorado River high and dry?

by SabrinaStilwell Posted on April 3, 2019

Subscribe to The Beacon

Imagine this grim scenario: The drought that has plagued the Colorado River over the past two decades continues into 2021. The water level in Lake Mead drops precipitously, hitting the 1,075 feet mark — a critical threshold that triggers mandatory water restrictions — and then plunges further. The seven Western states that rely on the beleaguered river are forced to reduce the amount of water they draw, threatening water supplies for Phoenix, Las Vegas and other cities and forcing farmers to let thousands of acres lie fallow. Hydropower production at Hoover and Glen Canyon dams becomes impossible.

That may sound far-fetched, but it’s the picture representatives of the seven Colorado River basin states recently painted of what lies ahead if Congress didn’t authorize a drought plan the states put together for the river soon.

“The urgency is real because our system is stressed by warmer temperatures,” Colorado’s lead water official, James Eklund, told the House Natural Resources Committee last week. “When water resources are stressed in any river basin, our environments and people in poverty bear a disproportionate amount of the pain,” he said. “We really need you to, in order for us to control our own destiny, act now.”

It’s no exaggeration to say that the Colorado River is the lifeblood of the American West, a source of water for 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland. But the river has been under enormous stress. Among the many problems: a long-running drought, ballooning demand for water as cities in the West grow, poor policies that incentivize water waste, bad underlying data that led water managers to believe the river held more water than it did, and, of course, warming temperatures.

After months of negotiations, the seven Colorado River basin states settled on a drought plan they can live with last month. Now, they’re asking Congress authorize the federal government to implement the plan. Senator Martha McSally and Congressman Raúl Grijalva, both from Arizona, introduced legislation on Tuesday to do just that.

Here’s a look at what’s at stake as well as other potential land mines that lie ahead.

So, how’d we get here?

To understand why the Colorado River is in the sorry state that it is today, you have to go back to 1922 when a compact was signed by the seven states — Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming — that share the Colorado River’s water. At the time, the states believed that roughly 18 million acre-feet flowed through the Colorado. (One acre-feet is the amount of water needed to flood a one-acre field with a foot of water. It’s about 325,000 gallons.)

But that was based on surveys collected during an extremely wet period in the river’s history. More recent studies show that its river’s annual flow is about 15 million acre-feet. Since the states divvied up the water based on information gathered in an exceptionally wet year, states have rights to more water than is available in the river. It’s like promising 18 slices of pie when you only have 15.

This “structural deficit,” as it’s called, is a major underlying issue in managing the river. Add it to the fact that cities in the West have grown dramatically in the last few decades and that farmers dependent on the Colorado are growing thirsty crops like cotton and alfalfa in the desert, and you can see why there’s just not enough water to keep everybody happy.

What about climate change?

It’s making the situation worse. More than half of the decrease in water in the river is a result of warming temperatures, according to recent research. The snowpack in the Rockies that feeds the river has been dwindling, and rising temperatures mean more water evaporates from the river. The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages water in the West, projects that as the planet continues to warm and demand for water increases, the imbalance between the water available and human need will grow to 3.2 million acre-feet by 2060. That’s more than all the water allocated to Arizona from the river at the moment.

So how does the drought plan help?

Lake Mead is a critical reservoir on the Colorado River that has the capacity to store the entire flow of the river for two years. If levels at Lake Mead sink to 1,075 feet, it will automatically trigger cuts to water use. Water managers have called this mandatory restriction “draconian” because it follows a set of laws that primarily cut off water users with newer water rights. There’ll be little room for compromise or trade offs. Lake Mead currently sits at 1,090 feet, and the Bureau of Reclamation has estimated that there is more than a 50 percent chance there will be a shortage in the lake in 2020.

The states are now trying to avoid that situation by voluntarily agreeing to use less water. California, Arizona and Nevada have agreed to decrease the amount they pull from the river by 400,000 to 600,000 acre-feet every year depending on how low water levels get at Lake Mead. An international treaty between the U.S. and Mexico also requires the U.S. to deliver 1.5 million acre-feet of water to Mexico. A separate agreement has been reached with Mexico to conserve water.

All this talk of compromise is at odds with the oft-repeated maxim in the water world that whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over. Researchers expect that as climate change strains water availability, conflict over shared water resources will increase.

But at the Congressional hearings last week, lawmakers and state water managers emphasized collaboration. “There was a point in time when the Colorado River was the most litigated river in the world,” said John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “Since the 1990s, we’ve been a model on how you can come together as a region.”

That’s all fine and dandy. What could go wrong though?

Always free, always fresh.

Ask your climate scientist if Grist is right for you. See our privacy policy

Well, there’s one key player that’s not on board with the current plan. Imperial Irrigation District is a powerful interest in California politics. It’s one of the biggest irrigation districts in the country and the river’s largest single user. In January, the district upset the states’ drought plan when it demanded $400 million in state and federal funds for rehabilitation work in the Salton Sea — California’s biggest lake — in exchange for its commitment to cut water use. The Salton Sea has shrunk dramatically in recent years exposing a contaminated lake bed and threatening nearby communities with toxic dust.

Though the district had the support of powerful politicians, including Senator Dianne Feinstein, other water users in the state balked at the demand. In February, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies water to Los Angeles, stepped up and agreed to contribute IID’s share. That left IID with no role to play in the drought plan.

IID has issued strongly-worded statements claiming the Salton Sea issue is the “proving ground” for the drought plan and that by sidestepping the issue, water users on the Colorado are “just fooling themselves or have other agendas.” Representatives for the irrigation district were reportedly on Capitol Hill lobbying lawmakers last week.

What happens next?

The seven Colorado River states have set a deadline of April 22 for Congress to pass legislation signing off on their drought plan. What happens if they don’t? Mexico wouldn’t have to cut its water use in 2020 as promised.

In a press release, Patrick Tyrrell, Wyoming’s state engineer, said that the drought plan is an “indispensable bridge” until the states negotiate a longer-term solution. “With these plans, we have direction,” he said. “Without them, we face an uncertain future and increased risks.”

View this article: 

Will Congress leave the Colorado River high and dry?

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, ProPublica, Radius, Salton, Uncategorized, Wiley | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Will Congress leave the Colorado River high and dry?

C-SPAN’s swamp creature unmasked! We talk to the activist in the confirmation meeting clip

by gerardoi54 Posted on March 29, 2019

Subscribe to The Beacon

On Thursday morning, Irene Kim nervously filed into the Senate confirmation hearing of David Bernhardt, President Trump’s nominee to head up the Department of the Interior. The Greenpeace activist was directly behind Bernhardt as he faced questions about his time as an oil lobbyist and conflicts of interests. So Kim and a friend seized the moment and put on swamp creature masks in protest.

Kim was able to stay for the entire hour of the hearing — and then watched in amazement as the video of herself went viral across the internet.

I spoke with Kim about what it was like in the hearing, and why she decided to protest in this way. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

Q. Why transform into a swamp creature live on C-SPAN?

A. What we were trying to accomplish was to bring absurdity to this entire situation. Our reality right now is so absurd. To make sure that folks are paying attention, we wanted to make light of the situation.

I have a lot of climate despair right now. I’ve been feeling really discouraged by everything that’s happening, and I really wanted to do something fun. This was kind of an amazing way to do it.

Q. Talk me through that moment.

A. When I first got to the room, I knew it was going to be really serious. I knew I didn’t want to get arrested. I just wanted to make sure to pull this off in the simplest way possible.

I really wanted to position myself to be as close to David Bernhardt as possible. But that C-SPAN camera being there; that was pure luck. I saw C-SPAN’s tweet, and my face was perfectly aligned, so I thought to myself: “This is our opportunity. There’s nothing else to do right now except this.”

Q. What was going through your head? 

A. I think folks are focusing on saying that I looked really graceful and that I didn’t look scared or anything, but I was actually really scared doing this. I had a lot of nerves. I tried to channel as much fierce energy of all strong women and non-binary folks that I knew who are also out there fighting and resisting our administration. Resisting is scary, but once you’re able to do it, it’s so freeing.

My whole body was shaking, just because I didn’t know what to expect in the first few minutes of putting that mask on. I thought they were going to pull me two minutes in. To be able to stay for the full hour was really awesome.

Q. How did other people react?

A. It felt like some of the senators doing the questioning saw me and were talking amongst themselves, but no one really interacted with me.

I didn’t get arrested. I just received a warning, and was escorted out of the room. I really tried hard not to be a disturbance, because I know how Capitol Police work, and I’ve seen them in action when people are participating in protests like this. I really wanted to make sure it didn’t get crazy.

Q. What’s been the response?

A. We did what we wanted to accomplish, but it turned out to be a lot more viral than we expected. People have been really, really supportive and uplifting what we did. It’s really amazing to see.

Read more: 

C-SPAN’s swamp creature unmasked! We talk to the activist in the confirmation meeting clip

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on C-SPAN’s swamp creature unmasked! We talk to the activist in the confirmation meeting clip

Climate change could push tropical diseases to Alaska, according to a new study

by PNTImogengbpfbf Posted on March 28, 2019

Subscribe to The Beacon

Nearly a billion people could be newly at risk of tropical diseases like dengue fever and Zika as climate change shifts the range of mosquitoes, according to a new study.

Since the life cycle of mosquitoes is temperature sensitive, scientists have long been concerned about how their prevalence might spread as the world continues to warm. The study is one of the first to examine in detail how that might happen by using an overlap of two disease-carrying mosquitoes’ range and projected monthly temperature changes under a variety of future warming scenarios.

In the most extreme scenario of more than 4 degrees C (7.2 degrees F) warming by 2080, certain tropical disease-carrying species of mosquitoes currently found only seasonally in the U.S. South and southern Europe could greatly expand their range, as far north as Alaska and northern Finland — north of the Arctic Circle. That would force a redefinition of the term “tropical” diseases.

The sheer enormity of people who could be exposed gave the lead author pause. “It’s rather shocking,” said Sadie Ryan, a disease ecologist at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, in an interview with Grist.

In Europe alone, the number of people exposed to the dengue-carrying Aedes egypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes could roughly double within the next 30 years. In currently warm climates like the Caribbean, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, tropical disease incedence could actually decrease as those climates become so warm that they “exceed the upper thermal limits for transmission.” In other words: It will be too hot for the mosquitoes to effectively carry dengue.

On the whole, “climate change will dramatically increase the potential for expansion and intensification of Aedes-borne virus transmission,” according to the study.

“Climate change is one of the biggest threats to global health,” Ryan said. “There are many more vector-borne diseases out there that are temperature sensitive.” Ryan also cautioned that mosquitoes, ticks, bark beetles, and invasive fungus threaten animals and plants as well as human health, and climate change is making many of them worse.

Malaria, which was not considered in this study, already affects nearly half of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization, killing more than 400,000 people each year — one of the leading causes of death for children in Africa. Previous studies have shown that hundreds of millions of people could be newly exposed to malaria by the end of the century, which is carried by a different species of mosquito. Dengue is one of the most common tropical diseases, but it is far less deadly than malaria — out of 100 million infections, it causes about 22,000 deaths each year.

According to the work from Ryan and her colleagues, Europe could be hardest hit because it sits on the leading edge of where mosquitoes can now survive. The worst-case scenario that Ryan and her colleagues explore is actually worse than business-as-usual — it’s a world where civilization doubles down on fossil fuels and planetary systems cause the world to heat beyond the 3.4 degrees C (6.1 degrees F) currently projected.

Ryan said her results should send a clear message to public health departments to boost their budgets in preparation.

There are countless reasons to be scared of climate change, and invading mosquitos might be one of the most tangible. Still, Ryan points out that it’d probably be among the least of our worries — sea-level rise, food shortages, mass migration, and financial collapse would probably pose a much greater risk to civilization.

See original: 

Climate change could push tropical diseases to Alaska, according to a new study

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Prepara, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Climate change could push tropical diseases to Alaska, according to a new study