Tag Archives: country

Scott Pruitt might be on the wrong end of a Trump tweet soon. Here’s why.

by KennethDetwiler Posted on April 3, 2018

Common guesses include China, which is spending trillions to clean up transit, power plants, and factories. Or Germany, which has gone all-in on renewable energy. But the best answer might be the United Kingdom.

China’s emissions are still rising, and Germany’s are down 23 percent since 1990. Meanwhile, Britain has driven down its emissions by 43 percent since 1990, according to provisional data released Thursday. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Scott Burger helpfully turned the data into a graph:

So, has the U.K. simply moved its emissions to China by closing down the Sheffield steel plants and buying imported steel? Not quite — its overall emissions based on import consumption are down as well. (Though it’s true that the country’s traditional manufacturing sector has taken a hit, as you would know if you’ve seen The Full Monty.)

Of course, having low carbon emissions in the first place is better than polluting a bunch and making big improvements after the fact. All rich countries have pumped more than their share of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But the Brits have provided a model for maintaining all the modern creature comforts while kicking their carbon habit.

How did they do it? Basically, clean energy replaced a lot of coal, industry put a lid on super pollutants, and dumps captured more methane.

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Scott Pruitt might be on the wrong end of a Trump tweet soon. Here’s why.

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Hear ye, hear ye, the Washington state carbon tax is dead. (Again.)

by JesusSiddins0 Posted on March 2, 2018

On the first of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand and eighteen, the Evergreen State’s proposed carbon tax passed from this earth. Its untimely end came, as the end comes to most bills, in Legislature.

The tax plan drew its last breaths on the floor of the Washington Senate, only a few votes shy of passing through to the House. Both chambers of Washington’s state legislature are controlled by Democrats, so the fate of this bill is a testament to how hard it is to agree on a price on carbon, even among lawmakers amenable to environmental policies. (This, by the way, isn’t the first time Washington state has tried to pass an ambitious carbon tax — a $25-per-ton tax perished in 2015.)

Our dearly departed bill had a bright future ahead of it, say supporters who would have liked to see Washington become the first state in the nation to impose a tax on pollution. Instead, the young proposal was cut down before its time, leaving uncertain the fate of similar bills currently waiting in a number of other states across the country.

The tax is survived by its creators, Washington Governor Jay Inslee and the bill’s primary sponsor, Seattle Democrat Senator Reuven Carlyle. The bereaved have vowed to continue to fight for all the tax stood for.

Inslee originally proposed a $20 per ton price on carbon emissions in early January, which would have raised $3.3 billion dollars in four years. The youthful optimism of that initial tax was later tempered with the pragmatism of age, to become the bill known to friends and family as Senate Bill 6203 — levying a $12 tax per ton price on the sale or use of fossil fuels, to increase at a rate of $1.80 annually until it reached a cap of $30 per ton.

The money raised by the tax — an estimated $766 million in its first two years — would have helped the state fund things like natural disaster relief and clean energy, and not been returned to consumers in the form of a check or a tax credit as some of this bill’s predecessors would have had it.

Now the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy — a coalition of health advocates, business leaders, and environmental groups — will propose its a “fee on pollution”* in the coming weeks, believing people overwhelmingly support a tax that funds the clean energy economy. “From the air we breathe to worsening fires and floods, we know pollution and climate change affect us every day,” says a statement from the alliance. “Dirty energy has hurt our health and our climate for years, and it’s time to start cleaning up the mess.”

So pour one out for SB 6203, gone but NEVER forgotten. We barely knew ye, SB, but we hope you’re in a greater, greener world, one where you can roam free with all the other carbon taxes of our better nature.

*This post has been updated. It previously referred to the new Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy proposal as a “carbon tax” and included a quote from the coalition’s spokesman unrelated to its current initiative.

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Hear ye, hear ye, the Washington state carbon tax is dead. (Again.)

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Big surprise: Oil and coal win again in the Trump administration.

by OtisPerkins5 Posted on March 2, 2018

A new review paper pulls together all the research on what farming will look like in California in the coming decades, and we’re worried.

California has the biggest farm economy of any state, and “produces over a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts,” according to the paper. In other words, if you enjoy eating, California agriculture matters to you.

Alas, the projections are mostly grim, with a few exceptions. Alfalfa might grow better, and wine grapes might be able to pull through, but nuts and avocados are in for a beating.

David Lobell et al.

The changing climate could make between 54 to 77 percent of California’s Central Valley unsuitable for “apricot, kiwifruit, peach, nectarine, plum, and walnut by the end of the 21st century,” according to the paper. That’s, in part, because many fruit and nut trees require a specific number of cold hours before they put out a new crop.

Milder winters will also mean that more pests will survive the cold and emerge earlier in the spring. Perhaps most importantly, the state is projected to lose 48-65 percent of its snowpack — a crucial storehouse of irrigation water to get through hotter, drier summers.

Maybe we’ll live to see conservative California farmers convert to cannabis, or move north to plant almond orchards in British Columbia.

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Big surprise: Oil and coal win again in the Trump administration.

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Climate science is back on the agenda in Idaho schools.

by EugenioD07 Posted on February 26, 2018

“The relationship that I had with Putin spans 18 years now,” the secretary of state said during a 60 Minutes interview with CBS’ Margaret Frank. “It was always about what I could do to be successful on behalf of my shareholders, and how Russia could succeed.” A true deal-maker.

But as U.S. secretary of state, the ex-CEO of ExxonMobil is supposed to put the United States’ interests first. That should ostensibly put some pressure on the relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tillerson, which was commemorated with a Russian friendship medal in 2013 after ExxonMobil signed deals with Rosneft, the state-owned Russian oil company.

Russia is one of the world’s top exporters of both oil and gas. As Alex Steffen and Rebecca Leber have written, the country stands to benefit from procrastinating on climate change action that would limit fossil fuel extraction.

In the 60 Minutes interview, Tillerson recounted his first meeting with the Russian president after becoming U.S secretary of state. “Same man, different hat,” is how he recalls reintroducing himself.

“What he is representing is different than what I now represent,” Tillerson elaborated. “And I said to him, ‘I now represent the American people.’”

Convincing! And now, on to the SNL skit that apparently made Tillerson laugh out loud:

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Climate science is back on the agenda in Idaho schools.

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It’s 2018, and black lung disease is on the rise in Appalachia.

by MichalLlcwbcx Posted on February 22, 2018

“The relationship that I had with Putin spans 18 years now,” the secretary of state said during a 60 Minutes interview with CBS’ Margaret Frank. “It was always about what I could do to be successful on behalf of my shareholders, and how Russia could succeed.” A true deal-maker.

But as U.S. secretary of state, the ex-CEO of ExxonMobil is supposed to put the United States’ interests first. That should ostensibly put some pressure on the relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tillerson, which was commemorated with a Russian friendship medal in 2013 after ExxonMobil signed deals with Rosneft, the state-owned Russian oil company.

Russia is one of the world’s top exporters of both oil and gas. As Alex Steffen and Rebecca Leber have written, the country stands to benefit from procrastinating on climate change action that would limit fossil fuel extraction.

In the 60 Minutes interview, Tillerson recounted his first meeting with the Russian president after becoming U.S secretary of state. “Same man, different hat,” is how he recalls reintroducing himself.

“What he is representing is different than what I now represent,” Tillerson elaborated. “And I said to him, ‘I now represent the American people.’”

Convincing! And now, on to the SNL skit that apparently made Tillerson laugh out loud:

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It’s 2018, and black lung disease is on the rise in Appalachia.

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We just got our disaster bill and it was $306 billion

by ElmoDonohoe Posted on January 10, 2018

Highways turned into rivers with white-capped waves in Texas. Wildfire smoke reddened the sky in California. And the country’s signature “amber waves of grain” were parched by drought, leaving farmers with fields of gray, cracked soil in Montana.

In all, the United States was hit by 16 weather events last year that cost more than $1 billion each, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculated. Piece them together, and you get the story of a climate transformed by human activity — and a country racked by wild weather that cost us a record-shattering $306 billion.

That price tag is four times more than average over the past decade, adjusted for inflation. It was nearly off the charts.

2008, 2011, 2012, and 2017 experienced one or more tropical cyclones.Grist / Amelia Bates / NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information

Last year blew past the previous record for disasters, $215 billion, set in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck. The priciest natural disasters tend to be hurricanes, which explains why 2017 was so different. Harvey, Irma, and Maria were three of the five most expensive hurricanes in U.S. history, and they all hit in one year. The three accounted for 87 percent of the bill. 

Western wildfires racked up $18 billion in damages, tripling the price tag of the previous worst wildfire year, 1991.

Severe storms, flooding and drought afflicted people across the country. But the Northeast was the only region spared from a disaster that caused $1 billion or more in damages.

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information

Given how much time we’ve devoted to talking about climate change’s fingerprints on everything, you’d suspect its criminal record would be well-documented. Although it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how climate change affects a particular storm or heatwave, scientists are getting better at untangling the connection. For example, researchers calculated that the chances of a Harvey-esque storm hitting Texas was made six times more likely because of climate change.

Oh, and did we mention that last year was the third-hottest on record? Thank goodness it’s over. But don’t get excited — extreme weather is already creeping in to the new year. In just the first nine days of 2018, the weather has already dealt us deadly mudslides and a bomb cyclone.

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We just got our disaster bill and it was $306 billion

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Let’s hold off on praising China’s new carbon-pricing market

by ErickaToledo Posted on December 21, 2017

This week, China announced it has launched a nationwide carbon-trading market, with the intent of slowing down its growing climate footprint and capping its emissions as soon as possible.

Most news coverage has labeled the move as a major development in the global fight against climate change. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who has devoted his post-political career to fighting warming, hailed the announcement as “a tipping point in the climate crisis.”

However, some close observers in China and elsewhere suggest we pump the brakes on celebrating this week’s news. Several critical details of the Chinese plan are still outstanding, they say. Most importantly: We still don’t know what the “cap” on its cap-and-trade plan will be, how emissions permits will be distributed, or what they will set the target carbon price to.

The Guardian reports that the Chinese government has been toying with the idea of nationwide carbon trading for more than a decade, so the revelation doesn’t come out of nowhere. And as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, any effort to limit the country’s pollution is hugely important.

But Emil Dimantchev, a climate policy researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote earlier this year that it’s premature to call China’s new policy ambitious without the details of the trading scheme being in place. In a series of tweets this week following the announcement, Dimantchev doubled-down on that assessment.

“The policy is still missing the crucial features that will determine whether it will be a success,” he tweeted.

Separate reporting by Beijing-based carbon-market analyst Stian Reklev revealed that for its first two years the new Chinese system will only involve simulated trades. That, obviously, will have no impact on emissions in China or elsewhere.

“It’s clear the market is nowhere near ready to be launched, and they’re only doing this because [Chinese President] Xi Jinping promised the market would start in 2017,” Reklev tweeted this week.

The World Bank currently tracks 47 carbon-pricing initiatives worldwide that are either already in existence or set to open soon. The only one even remotely the size of China’s proposed market is the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme — a hugely complex system with mixed success, which covers about 4 percent of global emissions. Other carbon trading platforms in Washington, California, and in the northeastern U.S. police an additional 1 percent or so of global emissions — but none of them caps pollution across the entire economy of the states involved.

If China’s market eventually covers its whole economy, it would be responsible for about 30 percent of global emissions, more than double all currently existing carbon markets combined. So the higher China sets its carbon price, the more of an impact it will have on emissions elsewhere. A high price on Chinese carbon could motivate other pricing schemes around the world to raise their targets.

The world needs ambitious climate policy from China in order to meet the agreed-upon Paris goals of limiting global warming — especially with the United States’ government in the process of plopping itself on the sidelines.

This step from China is without question in the right direction. But the fact that the scheme is still apparently in the design phase should be a sign that the Asian behemoth may not yet be the planetary savior many are hoping for.

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Let’s hold off on praising China’s new carbon-pricing market

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France’s ban on oil drilling could keep 5 billion barrels in the ground.

by AlexandraDoz Posted on December 21, 2017

For a country that already imports 99 percent of its oil, France’s decision to end all new oil development and phase out existing projects by 2040 may not seem all that meaningful. The Guardian called it a “largely symbolic gesture.”

But actually, as geoscientist Erik Klemetti noted, France is committing to keeping a massive oil reservoir in the ground. The Paris Basin, a region in northern France, may contain nearly as much underground petroleum as the huge Bakken Formation in North Dakota. Extracting that oil and gas would require extensive fracking.

Klemetti calculates that France could extract 100 years worth of oil for the country by fully exploring the Paris Basin — which could contain, according to the top estimate, 5 billion barrels of oil. At current oil prices (around $58 per barrel), that’s worth about $290 billion.

Instead, France decided to say au revoir to oil and gas altogether.

Earlier this year, the country also announced it would ban internal combustion engines by 2040. With decisions like these, France is positioning itself on the right side of history. And it’s sending a message to a world that’s floundering on climate change: A more just and prosperous future is possible, and it doesn’t require the dirty fuels of the past.

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France’s ban on oil drilling could keep 5 billion barrels in the ground.

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New York just blew a $390 billion-shaped hole in the fossil fuel industry.

by LanCulpepper Posted on December 20, 2017

For a country that already imports 99 percent of its oil, France’s decision to end all new oil development and phase out existing projects by 2040 may not seem all that meaningful. The Guardian called it a “largely symbolic gesture.”

But actually, as geoscientist Erik Klemetti noted, France is committing to keeping a massive oil reservoir in the ground. The Paris Basin, a region in northern France, may contain nearly as much underground petroleum as the huge Bakken Formation in North Dakota. Extracting that oil and gas would require extensive fracking.

Klemetti calculates that France could extract 100 years worth of oil for the country by fully exploring the Paris Basin — which could contain, according to the top estimate, 5 billion barrels of oil. At current oil prices (around $58 per barrel), that’s worth about $290 billion.

Instead, France decided to say au revoir to oil and gas altogether.

Earlier this year, the country also announced it would ban internal combustion engines by 2040. With decisions like these, France is positioning itself on the right side of history. And it’s sending a message to a world that’s floundering on climate change: A more just and prosperous future is possible, and it doesn’t require the dirty fuels of the past.

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New York just blew a $390 billion-shaped hole in the fossil fuel industry.

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Donald Trump is threatening to end federal relief to Puerto Rico — on Twitter, of course.

by tonsager.chris1971 Posted on October 12, 2017

In a memo leaked last week, Department of Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert recommended White House staff pivot to a “theme of stabilizing” with regard to messaging around the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico.

President Trump, however, appears to have missed that particular update. On Thursday morning, he threatened to pull federal relief workers from the devastated island just three weeks after Maria made landfall.

Meanwhile, most of Puerto Rico is still without power, hospitals are running out of medical supplies, and clean water remains scarce.

Trump isn’t the only prominent Republican refusing to recognize the severity of the crisis. In an interview with CNN on Thursday morning, Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, accused host Chris Cuomo of fabricating reports of the severity of the disaster.

“Mr. Cuomo, you’re simply just making this stuff up,” Perry said. “If half the country didn’t have food or water, those people would be dying, and they’re not.”

45 Puerto Rican deaths have been officially confirmed so far, and reports from the ground indicate the unofficial number of deaths due to the storm is higher.

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Donald Trump is threatening to end federal relief to Puerto Rico — on Twitter, of course.

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