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China said it was done with these coal plants. Satellite imagery shows otherwise.

by KristianWYO Posted on September 25, 2018

Newly released satellite photos appear to show continuing construction of coal plants that China said it was cancelling last year, according to CoalSwarm.

“This new evidence that China’s central government hasn’t been able to stop the runaway coal-fired power plant building is alarming,” said Ted Nace, head of CoalSwarm, the nonprofit research network which analyzed and released the satellite images. “The planet can’t tolerate another U.S.-sized block of plants to be built.”

Experts said the images provide credible evidence that China is still building more coal-fired plants than its government claims. Take a look at these shots, the first from January 2017 and the second from this February.

Before…Planet Labs / CoalSwarm…and afterPlanet Labs / CoalSwarm

China burns more coal than the rest of the world combined. The dirty fossil fuel has powered the country’s rapid economic expansion over recent decades, the main reason China is the world’s largest polluter ahead of the United States. This is a problem China wants to fix — and it’s retiring the worst sources of pollution while bringing great gobs of cleaner power online. The country has pledged to begin reducing its rising greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2030. It can’t do that while also burning a lot more coal.

In January 2017, China announced that it was canceling more than 100 coal plants across 13 provinces. At the time, a researcher familiar with Chinese politics said that regional officials might try to skirt the central government’s order.

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“Some projects might have been ongoing for 10 years, and now there’s an order to stop them,” Lin Boqiang, an energy policy researcher at Xiamen University in southeastern China, told the New York Times. “It’s difficult to persuade the local governments to give up on them.”

Burning more coal is bad news for the climate and people’s lungs. But if new coal plants replace older, dirtier ones, “it actually could be good news,” said David Victor, a professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Most of the pictures CoalSwarm released show plants that are much more efficient than the Chinese average, Victor said. Of course, it would be better news for the climate if they were replacing those old coal plants with zero-carbon power.

Ultimately, China’s ability to cut carbon emissions will will depend on how quickly the economy transforms from dirty industrial manufacturing to “less carbon-intensive service sector growth,” said Peter Masters, who watches China’s energy moves for the research firm Rhodium Group.

In other words, China’s past economic growth came from building things like iPhones but future growth could come from designing and marketing their own gadgets. If China’s next wave of workers are designers, economists, and architects, rather than factory workers, it won’t necessarily need a surge of coal power.

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China said it was done with these coal plants. Satellite imagery shows otherwise.

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California wants all of its electricity carbon-free. How’s that possible?

by LouisSizer1 Posted on August 29, 2018

If you want to get electricity generated by fossil fuels in California you’re soon going to be out of luck. A bill that just made it through the legislature requires the state’s electricity to come entirely from zero-carbon sources by 2045.

Environmentalists campaigned hard for the bill. Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, called its passage, “a pivotal moment for California, for the country and the world.”

That’s assuming Governor Jerry Brown signs it into law. Brown reportedly said he won’t sign unless the legislature also passes a bill to expand the energy grid to cover several states.

There’s a key term of art in this clean-energy bill that’s easy to miss if you aren’t clued in. Activists and like-minded politicians often campaign for “100 percent renewable,” but this bill mandates 100 percent carbon-free sources of electricity. Catch that? It means California is likely to replace fossil fuels with more electricity from large hydroelectric dams (not considered renewable under California rules), nuclear reactors, and any new technologies, like fusion, that become viable in the next 30 years.

There’s a big debate among greens over how much wind and solar an electric grid can handle.

Right now, California gets about a third of its electricity from renewables. Another third comes from natural gas. The rest comes from large hydroelectric dams, nuclear, and a little coal.

Most experts say that California — and the United States as a whole — could eventually get 80 percent of its electricity from renewables, but it’s really hard to fill that last 20 percent (see explanations here and here). A few academics, most famously Stanford’s Mark Jacobson (a 2016 Grist 50 member), think 100 percent renewable energy is within our grasp.

The new bill says that California will have to get half its electricity from renewables by 2027 and 60 percent by 2030. That seems within reach because the state expects to produce 50 percent renewable electricity by 2020.

Where will the other half come from? California’s network of dams provides as much as a fifth of its electricity in some years, but that depends on the weather. In the middle of the drought in 2015, California hydropower was less than half of what it is in an average year.

California Energy Commission

In-state nuclear looks like a long shot. It provides 10 percent of the state’s electricity, but the state’s only nuclear plant, near San Luis Obispo, is slated to shut down in 2025.

And then there’s conservation: If people turn off their lights and air conditioners, the state won’t need to generate as much electricity.

Finally, there’s generation from outside the state, which is the most likely way that California will compensate for any shortfall. Californians already buy hydropower from Washington and Oregon, along with some nuclear electricity from Arizona. If Brown signs the mandate into law, they’re likely to get more.

Of course, climate action is a planetary problem, not a local problem, so there’s only so much one state can do. It doesn’t help the climate if California buys Arizona’s low-carbon electricity while Arizona buys the fossil-fuel power that California shunned. But California could prove to other states that switching to clean electricity isn’t so hard. Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C are considering bills to make the switch. Hawaii already has a carbon-free law — not just for electricity, but for all forms of energy.

Brown is holding out for another bill that would allow California’s electric grid to bring in renewable resources from say, windy Wyoming, to big coastal cities like Los Angeles. The larger the grid, the greater the likelihood that it contains a spot where the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. But many labor and environmental justice groups are fighting against that bill on the grounds that it would give away local control. The Sierra Club and Earthjustice oppose it; the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists back it.

In the meantime, it seems like every environmental group is cheering the passage of the zero carbon bill.

By shooting for 100 percent carbon free, instead of 100-percent renewable, California is shifting from the true north of activists’ demands. Yet activists appear exultant. It’s like what New York’s Governor Mario Cuomo said back in 1985, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”

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California wants all of its electricity carbon-free. How’s that possible?

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How California can make its cap-and-trade program more equitable

by JudeMathis Posted on July 18, 2018

Last week California celebrated a big milestone: The state announced it had succeeded in bringing down its carbon emissions to levels it hasn’t seen since the 1990s. And the Golden State managed to hit that benchmark four years earlier than it had set out to, all while laying to rest the tired old argument that an economy can’t grow while emissions shrink.

There is, however, a catch: Carbon emissions may have dropped statewide, but according to a study published in the journal PLOS Medicine, low-income and communities of color that border heavy industry are seeing greater amounts of greenhouse gases and other airborne pollutants. Further, the analysis validates criticism against one of the state’s most celebrated climate interventions: its cap-and-trade program.

Historically, proposed climate solutions have focused on addressing aggregate carbon dioxide numbers while ignoring localized impacts, says Amy Vanderwarker, senior policy strategist at the California Environmental Justice Alliance. And communities in closest proximity to greenhouse gas emitters have long argued that cap-and-trade has concentrated airborne contaminants on those who are most vulnerable to pollution.

“In many ways we have thought of the work that these research partners are doing as the ‘I Told You So Report,’” Vanderwarker says. “It’s academic and data- driven verification of the lived reality and experience and knowledge and wisdom of low income communities of color across the state.”

Unfair Trade

Through it’s cap-and-trade program, California sets a “cap” for the total amount of carbon that can be emitted by certain companies operating within the state. Companies can purchase or “trade” emission allowances with each other, allowing bigger polluters to essentially purchase the right to emit from state auctions or from other companies that aren’t sending out as much carbon and have allowances to sell. The danger of this system is that the companies that end up purchasing those allowances — and thus polluting more — tend to be located in “fence-line” communities, which are typically lower-income and inhabited predominantly by people of color.

The report shows a correlation between greenhouse gas emissions and the presence of other harmful pollutants, like particulate matter and volatile organic compounds, that have been linked to cancer, respiratory problems, and other health issues. (Grist board member Rachel Morello-Frosch is a study co-author.) Put simply, facilities are usually emitting more than just carbon: so when greenhouse emissions go up, so does the amount of other bad stuff in the air.

The new research confirms that facilities regulated by California’s cap-and-trade program are disproportionately located in “fence-line” communities: Neighborhoods within 2.5 miles of regulated facilities on average had a 34 percent higher proportion of residents of color and a 23 percent higher proportion of residents living in poverty than areas beyond that boundary. And more than half of these polluters actually increased the amount of greenhouse gases they released since the system started in 2013. Those facilities were surrounded by neighborhoods that had higher rates of poverty and more residents of color than those surrounding facilities that cut down their emissions .

“When it comes to climate change and to greenhouse gas emissions, place does matter,” Vanderwarker says. “When you look at what’s happening on the ground, you see a different picture than what a statewide analysis and statewide numbers show.”

Clean Air for All

So what is a well-meaning, climate-concerned state to do? In addition to pointing out California’s discrepancy in cap-and-trade pollution, the new study outlines potential solutions to make the program more equitable.

While cap-and-trade is designed to tackle climate change by reining in greenhouse gases statewide, it’s federal statutes, like the Clean Air Act, that regulate the quality of the air we breathe. One of the keys to improving California’s air overall, according to the study’s lead author Lara Cushing, is to quit thinking about measures designed to address climate change and those targeting air pollution separately.

“Having them harmonize those efforts instead of regulating them separately might help the state achieve both its climate and its equity goals,” Cushing says. “From a public health perspective, getting the biggest bang for your buck for the emissions reductions you’re undertaking means prioritizing emissions reductions from sources that also release a lot of health-damaging pollutants.”

Another obvious course of action is for California to significantly lower the cap and give out fewer allowances to companies. An initial glut of allowances may have made it too easy for companies to purchase additional permits to pollute.

Then there’s the issue of offsets — investments companies can buy in green projects, like forest-preservation efforts (since trees absorb carbon dioxide). Facilities regulated by the cap-and-trade program can use offsets to cancel out up to 8 percent of the emissions they’re allowed under California’s cap. The problem: A majority of these investments — 75 percent — have been made on out-of-state initiatives. Cushing’s research suggests that regulations incentivizing or requiring companies to put their money in local green projects could help alleviate the health impacts facing California’s fence-line communities.

The state is actually starting to do this: When it passed an expansion of the cap-and-trade system last year, the bill included a measure that reduces the amount of offset credits a company can purchase and requires half of those credits to go towards projects that benefit California.

The California Environmental Justice Alliance — which opposed the expansion of the cap-and-trade system approved last year — is now paying close attention to how the state moves forward with implementing the program. Vanderwarker wants trends in the amount of greenhouse gases and co-pollutants emitted in fence-line communities to be clearly tracked as part of cap-and-trade, and she argues there needs to be a plan in place to address any hot spots where air concentrations are increasing.

“We haven’t really seen any clarity on that plan from the California Air Resources Board,” she says.

What California does to address equity within its climate policies matters not only for vulnerable communities in California, but for those across the country — particularly as other places consider their own carbon-trading systems.

“California is a leader on climate change, and California can be proud of that,” Cushing says, “It’s important that we get it right and that we continue to study this program — and whether disadvantaged communities are seeing the full benefits of California’s carbon reduction efforts — so that we can continue to play that leadership role.”

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How California can make its cap-and-trade program more equitable

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Meet Hurricane Beryl, now aimed at the Caribbean

by christoperschone Posted on July 6, 2018

The first hurricane of the 2018 season has formed in the Atlantic Ocean, and it’s headed toward the Caribbean. Those aren’t welcome words, especially considering the region’s fragile recovery after last year’s record-breaking storms.

On Friday, the National Hurricane Center upgraded a tropical storm in the central Atlantic to Hurricane Beryl, with top wind speeds of 80 mph. The storm’s hurricane-force winds are only 20 miles wide, relatively small for a hurricane, so Beryl’s behavior is especially unpredictable.

In advance of the storm, Puerto Rico’s government has opened more than 400 shelters and started distributing satellite radios to mayors. Even more worrisome: Beryl’s path takes it dangerously close to tiny Dominica, an island-nation of 75,000 people still struggling to recover after taking a direct hit from Hurricane Maria last year. Dominica’s government has already circulated a list of 120 shelters.

Beryl could strengthen to a Category 2 hurricane this weekend with winds of up to 100 mph before entering the eastern Caribbean on Sunday afternoon, according to the National Hurricane Center. Thereafter, it’s forecasted to steadily weaken as it passes by Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Islands along Beryl’s path could face torrential rains of 4 to 8 inches — enough to cause flash flooding, worrying enough in normal circumstances.

In a press briefing on Thursday, Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, said that, despite the storm’s expected weakening, Beryl remains “a danger due to the vulnerable condition of Puerto Rico.”

Puerto Rico, which just finished restoring power to all of its municipalities on July 1 — 284 days after Maria made landfall — is simply not ready for another storm. Tens of thousands of people are living in homes without permanent roofs, and the power grid routinely fails during passing showers. A recent independent estimate conducted by Harvard University showed that more than 4,000 people likely died in the storm and its aftermath, making it the deadliest natural disaster in modern American history. The island’s recovery was plagued by delays and indifference by the federal government — meaning that many of those deaths were likely preventable.

Beryl could also pose significant setback for Dominica’s recovery efforts. The country lost half of its buildings from Maria’s 160 mph winds, and is in the middle of a transformational change to prepare for the future storms of a warmer world.

The National Hurricane Center plans updated forecasts every six hours until Beryl dissipates, likely on Tuesday.

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Meet Hurricane Beryl, now aimed at the Caribbean

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The West is burning, and it’s barely July

by MarcySpooner Posted on July 3, 2018

Just in case you’ve been living in an (air-conditioned) underground cave, summer is in full swing.

The heat is breaking temperature records coast-to-coast, drought covers half of the country, and — sure enough — wildfires are already enveloping the West. More than 30 large fires are burning in 12 states right now.

In Utah, dozens of homes have been destroyed and hundreds more are threatened from a largely out-of-control blaze in the eastern part of the state. In Colorado, some of the largest fires in state history have already drawn comparisons to the nightmare fire seasons of 1988 and 2002.

And then there’s California, where the “County fire” began on Saturday near Sacramento and quickly spread out of control, threatening hundreds of homes and growing at a rate of 1,000 football fields an hour. It’s the latest megafire in a state still recovering from the most damaging wildfire season in history.

Wildfires across California have burned more than twice the five-year average so far this year, as of July 1. The County fire alone has burned 70,000 acres — twice the size of San Francisco and more than every other fire in the state this year combined. Over the weekend, smoke and ash from the fire drifted over the Bay Area, reminding residents of last year’s horrific blazes and partially blocking out the sun.

Large fires are on the rise for many complex reasons, but rising temperatures are a chief culprit. Hotter temperatures dry out the atmosphere, lengthen the wildfire season, and allow invasive insects to expand their range, killing trees in their path.

Wildfire politics plays a big role, too. With more people living in harm’s way and the costs of fire suppression spiraling up, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that the vast majority of wildfires are human-caused. Authorities in California, Colorado, Utah, Texas and other states have banned Fourth of July fireworks this week for fear of starting more of them.

When you put together current drought conditions, the staggering number of dead and dying trees, and the growing prospect of an El Niño, the risk of large fires will remain “above normal” along the West Coast until at least September.

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The West is burning, and it’s barely July

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What does Puerto Rico’s utility privatization mean for solar?

by ArnoldXMLW Posted on June 29, 2018

It’s official: Puerto Rico’s beleaguered, bankrupt, and possibly corrupt power utility is being privatized. The U.S. territory was battered by Hurricane Maria nine months ago, and many homes remain without power amid a deeply flawed recovery effort.

Puerto Rico gets an enormous percentage of its electricity from fossil fuels. In 2016, the territory pulled just 2 percent of its power from renewables and a whopping 98 percent from fossil fuels. These fuels have to be imported, since Puerto Rico has no on-island sources for coal, petroleum, or natural gas, which raises their cost considerably.

It seems like the perfect opportunity to rebuild with cleaner sources of power. And after the storm, communities and companies stepped in with solar arrays and even a solar microgrid. So, what does privatization mean for the territory’s burgeoning installments of solar energy?

Selling the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) could be beneficial for solar, says Masaō Ashtine, who researches energy systems in the Caribbean. The change “will give more power to the industry to plan for renewable energy,” Ashtine says. Privatization could remove the red tape associated with public utility companies, he argues, and thus streamline the energy delivery process.

But others say that it has the potential to make things worse. PREPA’s workers’ union has protested that privatization will likely lead to higher energy prices with few improved services. Puerto Rican customers already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country and experience an enormous number of service outages.

And, with more influence and control, the industry could leave some of the most promising community energy projects behind. “There’s no talk of community solar in the privatization bill,” says Frederico de Jesus, an affiliate of the advocacy coalition Power4PuertoRico. “They’re putting all their faith in the private companies.”

Arturo Massol-Deyá, the director of community organization at solar hub Casa Pueblo, is doubtful that the newly privatized utility will engage with community groups or with citizens more broadly. “Decisions by PREPA have been made with limited participation of the public, and I think with privatization that’s going to get worse,” he says.

The new bill also weakens the role of Puerto Rico’s Energy Commission, which for the past four years has served as a check on PREPA’s profligate spending and poor management. Without an independent regulatory board like the commission, de Jesus told me, Puerto Ricans face an uncertain future — both in terms of energy pricing and the future of renewables.

But advocates say they will continue to push forward with microgrids and renewables, with or without government support. Although Puerto Rico officials have proposed modest energy goals — 20 percent renewables by 2035 — recent projections from researchers at University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez say that the island has enough solar, wind, biomass, and hydropower potential to generate 200 percent of its needed electricity. And solar is on the front lines.

“Privatization is almost a false choice,” says de Jesus. “There can be a public monopoly or private monopoly. But a decentralized system with microgrids would do a lot to solve these problems.”

Massol-Deyá agrees. Casa Pueblo, he points out, has been running on solar since 1999, and an increasing number of businesses and other community centers are following suit. “Whether it’s in public or private hands, we need to move away from fossil fuel dependency,” he argues. “It’s a matter of changing our obsolete energy system.”

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What does Puerto Rico’s utility privatization mean for solar?

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Supreme Court Justice Kennedy is retiring. Here’s what that means for the environment.

by MichaelMahony Posted on June 27, 2018

Anthony Kennedy is retiring, and progressives around the country are trying not to freak out. The 81-year-old justice, who has served on the Supreme Court since 1988, has been a crucial swing vote on many issues from abortion to gay marriage to campaign finance. And — for better or worse — he has also been the deciding vote on environmental issues for the past three decades.

As a moderate on an increasingly divided court, Kennedy has been in the majority in an outstanding number of environmental cases. As Lewis and Clark environmental law professor Michael Blumm writes, “Advocates in environmental cases must tailor their arguments to win his vote or risk losing their appeals.”

Over his 30-year tenure, Kennedy — who was once called by the New York Times an “equal opportunity disappointer” — has been a mixed bag for environmentalists.

In Massachusetts v. EPA, the most consequential ruling on climate change in the past two decades, Kennedy was the swing vote. The state of Massachusetts had challenged the EPA’s refusal to regulate greenhouse gases, despite profound and convincing evidence that they are harmful to human health and well-being.

Kennedy joined the four liberal justices, arguing that the EPA would have to treat CO2 like any other pollutant, unless the Bush-era agency provided “scientific basis” for its reasoning. Although he didn’t write the majority opinion, without him — or with a more staunchly conservative justice in his place — we might still be fighting to have CO2 recognized as a pollutant at all.

On the other side of spectrum, Kennedy, again as the swing vote, tempered his support for the EPA by aligning with conservatives in the 2014 decision on Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, joining the late Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion. The majority argued that while the EPA could continue to place limits on CO2 emissions from large stationary pollution sources like power plants, the administration could not regulate smaller sources like schools, apartment buildings, or businesses.

In 2006, a Michigan property owner, John Rapanos, faced criminal charges from the EPA for draining and filling in potentially protected wetlands with earth. Conservative justices wanted to dramatically restrict the definition for wetlands — which would have decimated protected areas across the country.

Kennedy’s decisive opinion in the case, Rapanos v. United States, established a new standard which protected all wetlands that are part of a “significant nexus” of navigable waters. It was a win for environmentalists — but one that still significantly restricted wetland protection under the Clean Water Act.

Despite his mixed record, any replacement for Kennedy will likely have a much, much worse record on environmental issues. Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme Court appointment — and the son of a former EPA administrator to whom current chief Scott Pruitt has garnered frequent comparisons —  has been an opponent of many Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act protections throughout his career. Some of the other members on Trump’s initial shortlist carried even more alarming disregard both for issues of civil liberties and for the environment. And Kennedy has, at times, provided the much-needed fifth vote to reject restrictions on abortion rights, with significant impacts for both women’s health and our environmental future.

It remains to be seen exactly what the new justice will think of the EPA, clean air protections, and climate change, but the conservative-liberal split on the court will significantly change for the first time in decades. Environmentalists may have gotten lucky with Kennedy’s moderate support of CO2 regulation and protecting wetlands — and chances are their luck has run out.

“I’m fearful,” Blumm, the law professor, told Grist. “And I think all people who watch the court and care about the environment should be fearful.”

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Supreme Court Justice Kennedy is retiring. Here’s what that means for the environment.

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Don’t tell Trump, but meeting with North Korea could help environment

by DonnieConnah Posted on June 13, 2018

You might have heard that Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un had a strange, historic meeting this weekend in Singapore, leading pundits to furiously analyze a resulting joint statement for hints about the future of North Korean denuclearization and U.S. sanctions. But there was one overlooked issue that could have surprising consequences: the summit’s potential impact on the environment and climate change.

A thawing of relations between North Korea and the U.S. could open up opportunities for more research and environmental support. North Korea’s participation in the Paris climate agreement is at least partly due to a desire for access to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s agricultural and energy know-how. And the U.S. summit could mark the start of more ecological and technical exchange with the “hermit kingdom.”

“North Korea has a direct existential reason for wanting to address issues of environmental degradation,” says Benjamin Habib, lecturer in international relations at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Since the mid-1990s, North Korea has endured decades of drought, flooding, and deforestation, at times pushing people in the famine-vulnerable nation to starvation.

Due to poor agricultural techniques and limited sources of fuel — some trucks in the country actually run on wood — North Korea has lost over 25 percent of its forest cover. And in 2016 alone, flooding from Typhoon Lionrock displaced tens of thousands of its citizens.

After Syria’s entry into the Paris agreement in late 2017, the U.S. remains the only country on Earth not in the climate accord. Even North Korea — with its prison camps, rogue nuclear testing, and authoritarian propaganda — has pledged to reduce its CO2 emissions to support global climate goals. Last June, North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs critiqued Trump for backing out of the agreement, calling it a “silly decision.”

Habib argues that the fight against deforestation can serve as a less-politicized common interest for North Korea, South Korea, and the U.S. to unite behind. “The political window of opportunity is now open for environmental capacity-building in a way that it wasn’t before,” he says.

Of course, the future of U.S./North Korea diplomacy is far from certain, thanks to two wildly unpredictable leaders. And North Korea is sitting on more than 100 billion tons of coal. If sanctions are lifted, those reserves could be sold on the world market, with deleterious effects for the global climate. (China used to buy coal from North Korea but suspended those imports last year over the country’s nuclear testing.)

But still, a meeting between two historically narcissistic world leaders might net a positive effect on environmental outcomes? We’ll take what we can get, 2018.

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Don’t tell Trump, but meeting with North Korea could help environment

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The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea – Jack E. Davis

by Myrna Posted on April 17, 2018

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

Jack E. Davis

Genre: Nature

Price: $13.99

Publish Date: March 14, 2017

Publisher: Liveright

Seller: W. W. Norton


WINNER OF THE 2018 PULITZER PRIZE FOR HISTORY In this “cri de coeur about the Gulf’s environmental ruin” (New York Times), “Davis has written a beautiful homage to a neglected sea” (front page, New York Times Book Review). Hailed as a “nonfiction epic . . . in the tradition of Jared Diamond’s best-seller Collapse, and Simon Winchester’s Atlantic” (Dallas Morning News), Jack E. Davis’s The Gulf is “by turns informative, lyrical, inspiring and chilling for anyone who cares about the future of ‘America’s Sea’ ” (Wall Street Journal). Illuminating America’s political and economic relationship with the environment from the age of the conquistadors to the present, Davis demonstrates how the Gulf’s fruitful ecosystems and exceptional beauty empowered a growing nation. Filled with vivid, untold stories from the sportfish that launched Gulfside vacationing to Hollywood’s role in the country’s first offshore oil wells, this “vast and welltold story shows how we made the Gulf . . . [into] a ‘national sacrifice zone’ ” (Bill McKibben). The first and only study of its kind, The Gulf offers “a unique and illuminating history of the American Southern coast and sea as it should be written” (Edward O. Wilson).

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The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea – Jack E. Davis

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The Department of Interior is a hostile place to work if you’re Native American.

by TerrencHazeltin Posted on April 4, 2018

On Monday, EPA chief Scott Pruitt announced that he’s trashing federal standards that aim to bring the average vehicle to 55 miles per gallon by 2025.

Pruitt also said he may tear up a decades-old waiver that allows California to set its own pollution and gas-mileage standards above the federal government’s. Because so many car buyers live in California, most automakers comply with the state’s higher standard.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is ready to fight back. “The Trump Administration’s assault on clean car standards risks our ability to protect our children’s health, tackle climate change, and save hardworking Americans money,” he said in a statement. “We’re ready to file suit if needed to protect these critical standards and to fight the Administration’s war on our environment. California didn’t become the sixth-largest economy in the world by spectating.”

Pruitt said that the standards were unrealistic, and that it didn’t make sense for California to set the default rules: “Cooperative federalism doesn’t mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country,” he said in an EPA statement.

While the statement says that the California waiver is being “reexamined,” it sounds like Pruitt may have already made up his mind.

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The Department of Interior is a hostile place to work if you’re Native American.

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