This story was originally published by the HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
A majority of likely 2020 voters supports key aspects of a Green New Deal even when faced with potential costs and downsides, but strict regulations to decarbonize the nation’s top polluters could trigger a backlash, according to a new poll from proponents of the policy.
The survey, released by the think tank Data for Progress and shared with HuffPost, found net support for a range of policies, including improving drinking water infrastructure, reforesting land, providing job training and insurance to displaced workers, and guaranteeing clean-energy jobs.
“At the core, the Green New Deal is about a moral imperative to transform our economy and improve people’s lives for the better,” said Greg Carlock, the researcher at Data for Progress and architect of the first Green New Deal blueprint published last September. “You can’t put a price on that, but even when you do, people still support it.”
But faced with a range of possible price tags, voters’ support varied, suggesting costs could factor high into the Green New Deal’s political viability. The results showed a majority of voters would likely oppose policies with stringent mandates — rules requiring all cars be electric by 2030 and every fossil fuel power plant close by 2035.
To test the support, Data for Progress commissioned the Democratic pollster Civis Analytics to survey 3,496 likely voters between January 4 – 26 on 11 policies expected to be included a Green New Deal. The poll tested four different cost scenarios on each question, randomly alternating between zero, low, medium, and high prices to test how the cost of a policy weighed on one-quarter of respondents’ opinions.
The green jobs guarantee, considered by Green New Deal proponents to be the heart of the suite of policies, proved one of the tricker components. In a lengthy prompt, the survey asked respondents if they support or oppose a policy that Democrats promised would “guarantee an environmentally friendly job to every American adult, with the government providing jobs for people who can’t find employment in the private sector.”
The question described the job as a position that would pay “at least $15 an hour, included healthcare benefits, and collective bargaining rights.” The surveyors added that Republicans warned the policy “would increase the national debt, endanger the long term health of our economy, and this policy will end up paying people who can’t contribute in the job market to perform pointless busy work.”
Thirty-nine percent supported the green jobs guarantee, 33 percent opposed, and 27 didn’t know. Without a price, voters were 9 percentage points likelier to support than oppose the policy. At a low of $100 billion, support hit 2 percentage points. Voters were about evenly divided on policies costing $500 billion or $1 trillion.
Mandates requiring the country to generate 100 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2050 enjoyed sweeping support. The question noted that Democrats believed such a policy would “kickstart the renewable energy sector, creating jobs for many Americans and ensuring that America leads the world in green technology,” while Republicans said, “this would take away freedom from American consumers, put people out of work, and raise prices for everything from transportation to consumer goods.”
Thirty-eight percent supported the proposal, 33 percent opposed and 30 percent didn’t know. Without a price, voters backed the policy by 7 percentage points. At a low of $25 billion, that figure fell to 2 percentage points. Support held steady at 1 percentage point for both a medium cost of $37.5 billion and a high of $50 billion. Age impacted support at the unstated price level. Voters aged 18 to 34 supported the policy by 15 percentage points, while those 65 and older opposed the policy by 11 percentage points.
Policies improving drinking water infrastructure proved to be the most popular. The survey outlined a proposal to improve infrastructure “and replace lead pipes,” considering that Republicans “say that our drinking infrastructure is in good shape already, and this represents a wasteful use of resources that will burden our children with debt.”
Half of the respondents supported the proposal, 21 percent opposed, and 29 percent didn’t know. At no stated price, voters supported the proposal by 36 percentage points. Faced with a low cost of $25 billion, support sank to 27 percentage points. At a medium cost of $37.5 billion, the percentage dropped to 23. At a high of $50 billion, it fell to 22 percentage points.
The least popular policy was one “proposing requiring that all new cars sold be electric by 2030.” The question said, “Democrats say this would help stop climate change, save thousands of lives by reducing pollution, and make the U.S. the definitive leader in the electric car industry.”
Republicans say this would take away freedom from American consumers, put people making cars out of work, and make new cars unaffordable for the average American.
Just 26 percent supported the policy, with 44 percent opposed, and 33 percent unsure. Without even seeing a price, voters opposed the electric car mandate by 15 percentage points.
The second-least popular was a proposal “requiring that all fossil fuel plants (coal, natural gas, and oil) cease operating by 2035” in an effort to “help stop climate change” that Republicans say “would put many Americans out of work, and could lead to an energy crisis as energy prices soar.”
Voters opposed the measure by 3 percentage points, again without seeing a price.
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The findings come just weeks before the Senate is expected to hold a vote on the Green New Deal resolution Senator Ed Markey (a Democrat from Massachussetts) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a Democrat from New York) released last week. The measure, essentially a political statement outlining the scope of what’s needed to prepare the U.S. for a rapidly warming climate, staked out an ambitious list of policies to protect vulnerable communities already suffering from pollution.
In what Green New Deal supporters called a cynical ploy to halt their movement’s growing momentum, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (a Republican from Kentucky), a veteran climate change denier who’s taken millions from the fossil fuel industry, vowed this week to hold a vote, forcing swing-state senators to take positions on a policy Republicans are aggressively working to vilify.
The vast majority of Americans understand climate change is happening and human-caused emissions are the primary cause. In December, 81 percent of registered voters supported the goals of the Green New Deal, including 64 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of conservative Republicans, according to a poll from Yale and George Mason universities. But the pollsters warned that the overwhelming bipartisan support could erode as the Green New Deal became more closely associated with individual politicians.
The Sunrise Movement, the grassroots climate advocacy group whose thousands of volunteers helped propel the Green New Deal into the national stage in November with a series of protests against top Democrats, said Wednesday it would ramp up actions confronting both Democrats and swing-state Republicans, urging them to support the policy. Groups like Justice Democrats, the left-wing organization that helped run Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign, and Data for Progress vowed to aid efforts to primary any Democrats who oppose the Green New Deal.
“The Green New Deal won’t hurt Democrats politically,” said Sean McElwee, the co-founder of Data for Progress. “But failing to take aggressive action on climate change could demoralize the millennial base who demand immediate action on climate change.”
See the article here:
Likely 2020 voters support parts of Green New Deal, despite reservations over the cost
Thousands of young people in the U.K. are up in arms — not about Brexit, or the latest royal family gossip, but about climate change.
Students walked out of schools today in cities across the U.K., and other parts of Europe — the latest demonstration in what has become a global youth climate strike. This movement started six months ago when Swedish teen Greta Thunberg began leaving school every Friday to protest on the steps of her country’s parliament. Thunberg’s environmental activism is still going strong, and she has delivered powerful speeches to both the U.N. and the World Economic Forum on the urgency of climate change.
This is week 26 of her climate strike. But she’s no longer in it alone.
These kids aren’t just hooting and hollering, either. The U.K. Student Climate Network, a group that helped coordinate some of the biggest protests in London, Brighton, Oxford, and Exeter, has four very specific demands.
They want leaders in government to:
Declare a climate emergency and take “active steps to achieve climate justice”
Adjust curriculum to make the ecological crisis a priority in public education
Do more to communicate the severity of the problem to the general public
Lower the voting age to 16, so that young people can have a voice in determining their future
The young protestors were keen to apply their Gen Z wit to the climate cause, with slogans like: “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at Ikea,” “Make Earth cool again,” “Like the oceans we rise,” “Nobody minds if you miss school on a dead planet,” and the straightforward “Don’t f*ck us over.” Sometimes simplicity wins.
View this post on InstagramThe magical youth! #westminister #protest #climatestrike #climate #climatechange #climatechangeisreal #climateaction @gretathunberg #londonprotest #youthforclimate #climatemarch #westminster #schoolstrike4climate #bnw #bnwondemand #instabest #important #strike #documentaryphotography #documentary #socialmovementsA post shared by Urbis Vivendi (@urbisvivendi) on Feb 15, 2019 at 11:07am PST
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Don’t worry if you’re feeling left out in the U.S. The climate strike is spreading stateside as well, with a major national action planned for Friday, March 15. And some young American activists, like Alexandria Villasenor, have already been at it for weeks.
Next month’s climate march is expected to galvanize not only students from around the globe, but also major environmental groups like 350.org, Extinction Rebellion, and the Sunrise Movement.
If one teen can spark a movement this size, we’d better be keeping an eye on all these youngsters. Who’s telling what they might do next — save the world, maybe?
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Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Niño — the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, with weather consequences worldwide — has officially arrived.
El Niño typically peaks between October and March, so it’s pretty late in the season for a new one to form. This year’s El Niño is expected to remain relatively weak, but that doesn’t mean this one won’t be felt — in fact, its cascading consequences already in motion.
El Niños normally happen every two-to-seven years, but this is already the sixth El Niño of the 21st century. It’s also the first since the so-called “Godzilla” El Niño of 2015-2016, which boosted global temperatures to all-time records, snuffed out entire coral reef ecosystems, and created havoc for about 60 million people worldwide. There’s some evidence that El Niños are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change.
The advent of this El Niño means that 2019 is “almost certain to be another top-5 year,” wrote Gavin Schmidt director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in an email to Grist. He gave “roughly 1-in-3 odds” that 2019 will surpass 2016 as the warmest year on record, thanks in part to the boost from El Niño.
Most short-term climate models show Pacific Ocean temperatures remaining unusually warm for at least the rest of this year, and a few hint that a bigger El Niño could form within about six months — though forecasting that far ahead is notoriously tricky.
This winter has been warmer and wetter than usual for most of the West Coast — a classic sign of El Niño weather. After years of drought, California snowpack currently sits at about 130 percent of normal, and on Thursday, Los Angeles officially surpassed its “normal” annual rainfall threshold for the first time in years.
In the short term, this El Niño is likely to keep pushing stormy weather ashore out West, especially in Southern California. Judging by past weak El Niños, the rest of winter elsewhere in the country could be cooler and wetter than normal, especially for the Northeast where snow has been notably absent so far. El Niño could bring some late-season snowstorm doozies for the East Coast as well as severe weather and flooding in the Southeast. Later this year, it’s likely that widespread wildfires will return to portions of the West Coast (new grasses and brush from the wet weather will become kindling in dry weather) and Southeast Asia, and severe drought could afflict East Africa and Australia.
The biggest potential consequence of this El Niño is its effect on global temperatures. Carbon dioxide is driving the long-term acceleration of global warming, of course, but there’s evidence that El Niño droughts prevent carbon dioxide uptake and permanently worsen climate change. The five warmest years in history have occurred in the past five years, and odds are that 2019 temps will rank second in all-time weather records. Should El Niño intensify later this year, 2020 would be even warmer, and may even be the first year to breach the much-feared 1.5 degree Celsius mark.
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Four climate activists attempted to shut down the Enbridge Line 3 and Line 4 pipelines, which carry oil from Canada’s tar sands region into the U.S., on Monday.
In a statement, the group called themselves “The Four Necessity Valve Turners,” a nod to the so-called “necessity defense,” which it will likely use to defend its actions in court in the coming months.
“The extraction of the tar sands oil flowing through these pipes represents an ongoing atrocity against the boreal forests of Canada,” said Daniel Yildirim, one of the activists. “I refuse to stand by in silence as this river of death flows through the Great Lakes region.”
Added Allyson Polman, another of those involved in the action: “This is an act of grief for the state of violence the world is in. This is an act of celebration for the beauty of the earth.”
The four activists disrupted the pipeline near Grand Rapids in northern Minnesota. According to the Four Necessity Valve Turners website, their intervention involved cutting the locks on an emergency cut-off valve in the pipeline, and then manually turning the valve closed.
The group had informed Enbridge before conducting the action — and the company subsequently shut the pipeline off remotely. The activists, who are members of the Catholic Worker movement, have been arrested and are currently being held at the Itasca County jail. The quartet posted a video of its action on Twitter, writing: “Since politicians won’t act, we did.”
A Minnesota judge recently dropped charges against another group of activists for a similar valve-turning action in 2016. The decision meant the defendants were not able to make the argument that climate change has grown into such a dire emergency that it requires acts of civil disobedience.
A replacement for the Line 3 pipeline, which is more than 50 years old, has become a sticking point in Minnesota politics with youth activists and tribes arguing against new fossil fuel infrastructure on both climate and pollution grounds.
In a statement provided to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Enbridge said: “The actions taken to trespass on our facility and tamper with energy infrastructure were reckless and dangerous.”
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Valve turners try to shut off Minnesota pipelines, say ‘politicians won’t act’
This January should be remembered for its unusual warmth, not its cold.
Yes, it’s so cold right now that even hardy Minneapolis is shutting down schools, but even with these few days of extreme cold, Minnesota should end up with a near “normal” month thanks to weeks of unusual warmth. It was in the 70s and 80s as far north as Maryland on New Year’s Day. Alaska has been so warm that they’re canceling sled dog races. So far this month, there have been 651 record daily highs across the United States, compared to 321 record daily lows — a roughly 2-to-1 ratio. And that’s just in the U.S.
Globally, the ratio of record highs to lows was about 20-to-1, with new all-time records in Namibia, Chile, and Reunion Island.
It’s summer in the southern hemisphere, and a brutal heat wave in Australia is melting roads and killing wildlife on a mass scale. On January 18, one town never dropped below 96.6 degrees F — marking the hottest night in Australian history. Thursday was the hottest day so far in relatively mild Sydney, with temperatures reaching 104 degrees F and knocking out power for tens of thousands of people.
Ongoing bushfires in Tasmania are threatening a World Heritage site with thousand-year-old pine trees — parts of the same area burned in 2016. Fires in this protected alpine wilderness were once unheard of; now they’re becoming routine.
To put it bluntly, events like this can’t happen in a normal climate. The harsh truth is we are not only losing the weather of the past, but there’s no hope of it stabilizing any time soon.
Underlying this warmth and extreme weather is the irreversible heat buildup of the oceans. The waters in the South Pacific are off the charts right now, triggering the highest alert for coral bleaching and boosting the likelihood of significant mortality in marine ecosystems. Sea ice on both poles is near record lows, with profound effects for the world’s weather. Current temperatures in the Arctic are likely the warmest they’ve been in at least 115,000 years, with melting ice beginning to reveal plants and landscapes buried for at least 40,000 years, according to new research.
Climate change is the sum effect of changes to daily weather, and our weather these days is bordering on indescribable. We are pushing the atmosphere into uncharted territory. That means what happens next is inherently unpredictable.
According to the Trump administration’s just-completed National Climate Assessment, “positive feedbacks (self-reinforcing cycles) within the climate system have the potential to accelerate human-induced climate change and even shift the Earth’s climate system, in part or in whole, into new states that are very different from those experienced in the recent past.”
The real danger of climate change is not that we are proving ourselves unable to heed scientists’ warnings, but that those warnings are inherently too cautious and we’ve already gone past the point of no return. Even the bombshell IPCC report, which recently kicked off an unprecedented youth movement advocating for a Green New Deal, may have underestimated how dire things truly are.
This is the core truth of our time: We have left the stable climate era that gave rise to civilization. Our society is brittle, and our new context — for generations to come — will be constant change. Even if we manage to rapidly stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in the next 10 years or so, as the IPCC report says we must, weather will continue to worsen for decades and the seas will continue to rise for hundreds of years.
With this extreme month as yet another warning sign, we need to wrap our heads around what it will take to match our solutions with the scale of the problem.
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No, despite the cold snap, the Midwest does not need more warming. Ever since President Trump’s infamous “Global Waming” tweet, a lot of folks have been chiming in to set the record straight. NOAA. Cable TV hosts. Bill Nye. But two adorable kids just stole the freaking show.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live! Tuesday night, 10-year-old Kaitlynn and 8-year-old Apollo took turns breaking down basic science for the president of the United States. As Kaitlynn put it: “Don’t get angry, Mr. President — it’s just science.”
Kaitlynn handled the greenhouse effect, while Apollo patiently explained the difference between weather and climate: “Even though it’s cold where you are, that doesn’t mean the globe isn’t heating up.”
Kaitlynn stressed that the many consequences of climate change are going to make the world pretty rough for people her age — and that includes Trump’s 12-year-old son, Barron.
At the end, the kids said if there’s anything else the president needs to know, he should feel free to ask. Pretty nice of them, considering their futures are on the line — but as long as they’re offering, maybe they could throw in a spelling lesson next time? Then at least we won’t have to wonder what “Waming” is.
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This story was originally published by National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Ryan Kennedy had never been on a cruise ship until two years ago when he embarked on four North American cruises armed with a P-TRAK Ultrafine Particle Counter. This device is a portable digital contraption. It measures minute particles of air pollution that, when inhaled, can cause harm to your heart and lungs.
Kennedy, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, is the author of a new study, released Thursday, which details the findings of a two-year study exposing poor air quality on four Carnival Corporation ships — the largest cruise operator in the world — including one that left Vancouver for Los Angeles in October 2018.
The report, titled “An investigation of air pollution on the decks of four cruise ships,” found that air pollution on these ships was significantly worse than some of the world’s most polluted cities like Beijing, China or Santiago, Chile.
Kennedy measured air pollution every second for one minute and created an average for each minute for 20 minutes at time, during the day and night. His findings reveal that while all four ships were traveling at sea, average pollution particle counts were significantly higher at the stern — the area on a ship behind the smokestacks.
The lowest particle count across these four ships was 38,888 particles per cubic centimeter (pt/cc), while the highest was 157,716 pt/cc. Particle counts on the L.A.-bound ship got as high as 76,000 pt/cc while out at sea, the investigation found.
In comparison, pollution measurements taken with the same equipment in Beijing, China in 2009 were 30,000 pt/cc on a busy street, and in Santiago, Chile in 2011-2012 were in the ranges of 8,000-30,100 pt/cc.
“It’s very compelling data,” Kennedy told reporters on a conference call from Baltimore, Maryland. “People who are predisposed with cardiovascular or pulmonary conditions are at greater risk.”
He continued: “It’s dangerous. It’s not a healthy thing for us to be exposed to.”
The study was commissioned by the international environmental organization Stand.earth, and is the first to measure air quality on cruise ships when docked at port and while moving at sea, during multi-day cruises. The research has not yet been submitted to a scientific journal for peer review, but Kennedy said he was considering this as a next step.
Ultrafine particulate pollution can be detrimental to human health because of increased toxicity. These particles are small enough to be inhaled into a person’s lungs and move into the bloodstream, where they can cause higher rates of cardiovascular disease and asthma, Kennedy explained.
Recent studies have suggested that the smallest ultrafine particles may be the most dangerous to human health, and that particulate matter from ship exhaust may be responsible for tens of thousands of annual deaths, according to the report.
In light of the study’s findings, Stand.earth is calling on Carnival Corporation, which holds 40 percent of the global market, to transition away from heavy fuel oil to power its ships, to help reduce ultrafine particulate pollution — and “to step up to the plate and clean up its act,” according to Kendra Ulrich, Stand.earth’s senior shipping campaigner.
Of the 26.6 million people that went on cruises last year, nearly half, about 12 million people, went on a Carnival or one of its 10 subsidiary cruise lines. Most of Carnival Corporation’s ships burn heavy fuel oil where allowable, according to the report. Heavy fuel oil is a toxic, “bottom of the barrel waste sludge leftover” from the refining process, Uldrich explained, and is often classified as hazardous waste.
Ulrich believes the findings have implications far beyond the passengers and workers on the cruise ships. It could impact those who live and work in port and coastal communities where the ship docks or passes. Some studies have shown approximately 70 percent of ship emissions occur within 250 miles of land, she explained.
More than 30 million people worldwide are expected to go on a cruise in 2019 — many of whom are expected to be senior citizens.
“What Dr. Kennedy found on board was shocking,” Ulrich told reporters on the same conference call, noting that the stern — where the highest pollution levels were found — is usually where running tracks, swimming pools, or lounge areas are located on a cruise ship, where people spend the most time. “But, this is a pervasive health concern that extends far beyond the short term acute health exposures on the ship.”
Ulrich is urging Carnival Corporation to switch to a cleaner-burning fuel while installing filters to help reduce ultrafine particulate pollution, and eventually transition away from fossil-fuel powered ships completely.
Kennedy told reporters that there were limitations to his study, in that he conducted it inconspicuously so as to not disrupt cruise passengers and workers. His study measured emissions aboard only four ships, over short intervals rather than extended periods. He told reporters that the potential health impacts from particulate matter can also differ depending on how long someone is exposed to it.
“There are physical models and human studies that can be linked to a physiological impact to even short-term exposure,” Kennedy said. “There would be people who are more vulnerable, there are people who would have asthma, people who would be more concerned.”
But, Kennedy said he “made every effort to be consistent with my methods across environments. But I wasn’t able to measure everything, everywhere, always.”
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The report goes on to say that the size of the particulate matter measured by Kennedy’s device “aligns closely with the size of particles known to be generated by ship engines, and the ship’s exhaust system is located between the environments” in question in the study, “suggesting the particulate matter is likely, in part, the ship’s engine exhaust.”
But, the study also says that “there is not universal agreement on how to measure or report particulate matter,” and that there remain unknowns in the study, including which fuel types were used by the ships and how efficient the engines were. The report also notes that higher winds could play a factor in the disparity between measurements in the front and back of the ships, at port and at sea.
In an email statement to National Observer, a Carnival Corporation spokesperson responded to the study, saying “these so-called fly-by tests are completely ridiculous, inaccurate, and in no way represent reality.”
“We test the air quality of our ships and they meet or exceed every requirement,” the spokesperson said. “The air quality on our ship decks when in port compares favorably with a typical urban or suburban environment. Independent testing on our funnels — which is the area where the exhaust originates — further validates our claims.”
The company declined to answer questions about how they test the air quality.
The spokesperson told National Observer that they have installed Advanced Air Quality Systems on nearly 80 percent of its global fleet, as required by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, “so these systems are environmentally friendly, in addition to rolling out new ships powered by LNG, the cleanest burning fuel available, so their study is misleading and inaccurate.”
The company added in their statement that Stand.Earth is creating “fake tests that really have no scientific basis,” to aid in their fundraising efforts. The organization, the statement said, “is constantly in search of a problem in our industry. The safety of our guests is our top priority and we undertake our cruises in close coordination with national and international regulatory bodies like the EPA to insure the utmost safety of our guests and crew.”
Some cruise ships and shipping lines began phasing out bunker fuel as the International Maritime Organization — a body of the United Nations — gears up to implement rules in 2020 that will require ships to either install expensive scrubbers or switch to different fuels.
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