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California’s battle against climate change is going up in smoke

by SheltonUPJ Posted on December 10, 2018

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This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Just a few months ago, climate activists in California were celebrating an impressive victory: New data showed that the state had brought greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels, four years earlier than planned. The win, a cut of emissions to 429.4 million metric tons (the equivalent of taking 12 million cars off the road) was the result of steady decreases in emissions most years.

“California set the toughest emissions targets in the nation, tracked progress and delivered results,” Governor Jerry Brown tweeted. The next step was to cut emissions another 40 percent by 2030 — “a heroic and very ambitious goal.”

But by November, skies across the state were gray. Wildfires were raging, including a blaze which would prove to be the deadliest and most destructive in state history. The conflagrations have set California back: The recent Camp and Woolsey Fires, officials say, have produced emissions equivalent to roughly 5.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, more than three times the total decrease in emissions in 2015. Recently, the Department of the Interior announced that new data shows the 2018 California wildfire season is estimated to have released emissions equal to about one year of power use.

California’s wildfire problem

Of course, wildfires are not new to the West Coast. But the kind of vast, devastating conflagrations seen in California in recent years — this fall’s Camp Fire decimated 153,000 acres in the Butte County area and destroyed almost 14,000 homes — are becoming more common. According to the state’s most recent climate assessment, California could see a 77 percent increase in the average area burned in wildfires by 2100.

All this is bad news for a state committed to decreasing its carbon footprint. But California’s official emissions score will not be affected by the extraordinary amount of carbon released during wildfires this year, because the agency that calculates emissions — the California Air Resources Board — considers wildfires to be a part of the earth’s natural carbon cycle. (The ARB is a regulatory body and, as agency spokesperson Dave Clegern noted, “can only regulate what can be controlled.”)

But the agency is looking into ways to better track carbon emissions from conflagrations. Right now, Clegern says, the ARB uses data including the size of the fire and the kind of fuel burned to estimate its carbon footprint. But, he said, scientists don’t currently have a good way to accurately calculate emissions from disasters like the Camp Fire, which burn residential and commercial properties. While those findings won’t be included in the state’s emissions tally, Clegern said it’s still important to gather the data: “We need to know what goes up in the air when these things happen. Our first mission is to protect public health.”

The increasing size of wildfires in California is driven by several factors linked to climate change, scientists say, including a shift in the jet stream that causes the state to suffer more hot, dry spells. The state’s seven-year drought has weakened forests and left millions of acres highly susceptible to lethal attacks from insects like bark beetle. In recent years, more than 100 million trees are estimated to have died statewide. Dry, dead forests are a fire hazard, and they pose a threat so severe that, in 2015, Governor Brown declared a state of emergency and created a task force to identify areas of particular risk. This January, scientists at the University of California-Berkeley reported that the situation was “compounded by the long-established removal” of naturally occurring, frequent, and low-intensity fires in the state’s forested areas, “a key ecosystem process” in hazardous wildfire prevention.

Aside from preventing deadly conflagrations, protecting forests also means preserving the state’s best tool for regulating carbon emissions. By removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it as carbon in soil, branches, and tree trunks, forest have historically worked as a “carbon sink” for the state. But research shows that between 2001 and 2010, tree die-off meant California’s forests emitted more carbon than they sequestered.

Wildfires accelerate this process. Conflagrations release carbon into the atmosphere as they burn and, once the smoke has cleared, leave fewer trees to sequester carbon. In the years following a fire, dead trees begin to release their stored carbon back into the atmosphere. And a recent study also showed that forests which burned at high severity suffered worryingly low regeneration rates. In some places, no trees grew back at all.

But the damage doesn’t end there. When a forest is burned for the first time, “between 5 and 20 percent of the carbon goes up,” explained Nic Enstice, regional science coordinator at the state’s Sierra Nevada Conservancy agency. That’s because even a high-severity fire will not incinerate every tree in a forest. But if a second wildfire ravages through an already-burned area, the dead trees are more readily consumed, resulting in even greater carbon release.

The fire season’s growing effect on the state gives scientists all the more reason to study its emissions. “That’s the kind of issue we’re wrestling with now,” Clegern said.

California’s best hope for reaching its ambitious climate goals may lie in technology and rebuilding the state’s dilapidated forests. The state is relying on energy companies like utility giant PG&E to increase purchases of renewable power and invest heavily in burgeoning industries like electric transportation over the next decade. (PG&E, meanwhile, could be on the hook for billions of dollars in fines if an investigation finds the company’s equipment ignited some of California’s recent conflagrations.) Plans are also underway to push harder on forest restoration efforts: In May, the state announced its Forest Carbon Plan, which included a pledge to double the rate of forest rehabilitation to an average 35,000 acres a year by 2020.

“We know that we have to increase the health of our forests pretty significantly over the coming years,” Enstice said.“What we saw in the Camp Fire, the Rim Fire, the King Fire — these are all out of the normal patterns.”

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California’s battle against climate change is going up in smoke

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As Trump questions warming, climate report warns of dire risks to U.S.

by JeseniaDelaney Posted on November 24, 2018

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This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The United States already warmed on average 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century and will warm at least 3 more degrees by 2100 unless fossil fuel use is dramatically curtailed, scientists from more than a dozen federal agencies concluded in their latest in-depth assessment.

The 13-agency consensus, authored by more than 300 researchers, found in the second volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment makes it clear the world is barreling toward catastrophic — perhaps irreversible — climate change. The report concluded that warming “could increase by 9°F (5°C) or more by the end of this century” without significant emissions reductions.

“Observations of global average temperature provide clear and compelling evidence the global average temperature is much higher and is rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced,” said David Easterling, chief of the scientific services division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. “This warming trend can only be explained by human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”

It’s the sort of staggering reality the Trump administration seems eager to minimize. Ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump antagonized climate scientists by tweeting, once again, that he believes cold weather disproves long-term trends of a warming climate.

“Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?” he posted Wednesday on Twitter.

That the White House opted to release the long-awaited update on climate change ― which Congress mandates the administration provide every four years — on Black Friday, a popular shopping holiday the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, indicates it wanted fewer people to see the news about the findings. Monica Allen, a spokeswoman for NOAA, repeatedly pushed back against questions about when the White House decided to move up the release of the report.

“The decision was made in the last week or so,” she said. “Please, I ask you to focus on the content of the report. The substance.”

The report adds to an ever-growing, all-but-irrefutable body of scientific research that shows climate change is real and driven by human carbon emissions ― a reality that President Donald Trump and his team refuse to accept as they pursue a fossil fuel-focused, “energy dominance” agenda.

Last year, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released a special report ― the first volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment ― that found Earth has entered the warmest period “in the history of modern civilization,” with global average air temperatures having increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 115 years. And in October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading United Nations consortium of researchers studying human-caused climate change, issued a report warning world governments must cut global emissions in half over the next 12 years to avoid warming of 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond which climate change is forecast to cause a cataclysmic $54 trillion in damages.

A series of devastating natural disasters, worsened by rising temperatures, made those findings tangible. In October, Typhoon Yutu, the most powerful storm all year, struck the Northern Mariana Islands, plunging the U.S. territory into chaos just a year after Hurricane Maria left thousands dead in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. California, meanwhile, is suffering its deadliest and most destructive wildfire on record during what was once the state’s rainy season.

Last year was the United States’ second-hottest in history, and the costliest in terms of climate-related disasters, with a record $306 billion in damages. Sixteen of the last 17 years have been the warmest on record globally.

In January, the Trump administration unveiled a proposal to open nearly all U.S. waters to oil and gas development. It has since worked to roll back safeguards adopted after the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In October, the Department of the Interior approved the development of the first oil production facility in Arctic waters off Alaska, but the company behind the project has since had to extend its construction timeline due to dwindling sea ice brought on by Arctic warming, as NPR reported.

The latest findings are likely to bolster the growing protests and legal battles over climate change. Over the past two weeks, activists in the United States and United Kingdom staged major demonstrations. In Washington, youth activists with the climate justice group Sunrise Movement stormed Democratic leaders’ offices demanding support for the so-called Green New Deal, the only policy to emerge in the American political mainstream that comes close to the scale of economic change needed to make a serious dent in national emissions. British activists stopped traffic this week as part of the so-called Extinction Rebellion.

The assessment could have weight in some critical court cases. The Supreme Court is considering a landmark suit brought by 21 plaintiffs between the ages of 11 and 22, who accuse the federal government of violating their civil rights to a safe climate by pursuing fossil fuel-focused energy policies. And various states and cities are suing big oil companies over climate damages, a number that could grow since Democrats scored victories in a number of attorney general seats in the midterm elections.

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Here’s how anti-immigrant policies hurt hurricane recovery

by DarbyInman73 Posted on October 31, 2018

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This week, President Trump hinted at an upcoming executive order that would end the long-standing Constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. The announcement had its (likely intended) effect of gumming up the news cycle less than a week before the midterm elections. For communities recovering from natural disasters, it introduced a different kind of complication — a potential loss of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds.

Like many other government-run assistance programs, FEMA relief is available to individuals whose children are U.S. citizens, regardless of their own immigration status. By nullifying birthright citizenship guarantees, the Trump administration would remove protections available to many victims of current and future superstorms. And it’s only the latest potential policy blow to immigrant communities.

The anticipated executive order also comes as people are still reeling from the Trump administration’s proposal earlier this fall to make it harder for individuals who accept federal housing assistance, food stamps, and Medicaid to qualify for a green card. Those moves, advocates say, would force parents to choose between becoming a legal permanent resident, or getting support to keep their families healthy.

Even though the policies are not yet law, they are already complicating recovery efforts in areas of the U.S. affected by climate change. Advocates say anti-immigrant efforts could limit many residents’ access to housing, healthy food, and disaster relief.

Rachna Khare is the executive director of Daya, a Houston-based organization that provides counseling and services to South Asian survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. It’s well documented that gender-based violence increases after disasters like hurricanes — there was a 45 percent increase in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, for example. Khare says that after the Hurricane Harvey, many domestic violence shelters in Houston were either full or flooded. “To say low-cost housing became a challenge is an understatement,” Khare told Grist. “That’s why public benefits became incredibly important.”

Although President Trump’s next executive order is currently dominating the news cycle, advocates say his administration’s quieter moves that complicate the path to citizenship are already having a chilling effect. The Department of Homeland Security published a proposal in October that would change its definition of “public charge.” Currently, “public charge” is a term used to mean someone who is likely to become dependent on government help, such as cash welfare, for survival. Being designated a public charge can make it harder to get an application for permanent residency approved.

The proposed rule change would expand the “public charge” criteria so that accepting food stamps, Medicaid, or Section 8 Housing vouchers would also be considered a strike against you. And earlier this year, a leaked draft of the proposed policy stated that applying for benefits for your dependents could be included in the new definition of public charge. The idea that adults might be penalized for seeking resources for their eligible children sparked outrage, and by the time the final language came out in October, the language regarding aid for family members had been removed.

Lost yet? The back and forth was hard for pretty much anyone to follow. And advocates say that misinformation, fear, and anti-immigrant rhetoric are leading families to drop out of benefits regardless of whether or not it would actually harm their immigration status.

“It doesn’t matter what it says in the rule. What matters are the choices people make based on the rhetoric and the swirl of information of that is out there, which is less nuanced and less precise than it should be,” says Kate Vickery, executive director of the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative. “The collateral damage to this is people dropping out of programs that help stabilize their families.” Vickery’s organization helps provide cash assistance to families still recovering from Harvey. She has been hearing reports of some families refusing help even from faith-based organizations over fears of it affecting their immigration status.

The draft proposal of the changes to the definition of “public charge” is open to public comment until December. Khare says keeping abreast of changing immigration policies and managing clients’ fears has placed an extra workload on advocates.

“We want to make sure survivors know nothing has changed yet, please don’t unenroll from benefits that are keeping you alive,” says Khare. “Our biggest fear is that people would — without these benefits — go back to abusive partners and unsafe homes, and that can result in life-ending consequences.”

The stakes can be even higher for domestic violence survivors who are immigrants with U.S.-born children. For them, the decision becomes a choice between getting help for their families or being able to stay in the country with their children.

“Pia” is one of the women that Khare’s organization, Daya, has helped with housing. (Her name has been changed to protect her identity.) She is waiting for the Department of Homeland Security to reissue her a green card that she says was misplaced by one of the shelters she lived in after fleeing her husband in 2015. Because her children are U.S. citizens, she’s been able to get food stamps and Medicare for them.

“If my kids are not insured, then I have no idea where I’m going to go for a doctor. It’s a big help. And also food, food is like an everyday need. It’s been very helpful,” she says.

Despite how much Pia values the assistance, and although she’s confident she’ll be issued a new green card, she says that if she was forced to choose, “I’m going to choose a green card over anything because I need to stay with my kids.” If she had to return to her home country, she says, it would be easy for her husband and his family to take away her children without recourse. And her son, who has autism, wouldn’t have access to the same supports he gets in the U.S.

Pia’s children have access to many of those benefits because they were born in the United States. If there were no birthright citizenship guarantee, families like Pia’s would not be eligible for services like disaster aid. That kind of change would have huge implications for a diverse city like Houston. Almost half of all children in the Houston area are the children of immigrants. And a study found that immigrant communities were more likely to suffer a loss of income and say they needed help getting medical care after Hurricane Harvey. In disaster-affected areas across the U.S., immigrant families have had to rebuild in the midst of a flurry of policies and political rhetoric aimed at displacing them again. In 2017, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Houston arrested more noncitizens than anywhere else in the U.S. except for Dallas.

At least for now, it’s unclear how the proposed policies would impact individuals who already have their U.S. citizenship via birthright. When the Dominican Republic revoked birthright citizenship in 2013, it required citizens to file for “re-naturalization.” Stripping children of citizenship could have effects across generations, says Randy Capps, director of research at the Migration Policy Institute. “It’s about the long-term well-being and functioning of these children — if they get hungry, if they get sick, and also if their parents are more stressed, that could result in more problems,” he said.

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Is the government planning a crackdown on Keystone XL protesters?

by EdgarMazure Posted on September 5, 2018

Based on newly released emails, the American Civil Liberties Union suspects the government plans to treat Keystone XL protesters with counterterrorism tactics.

The ACLU sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to turn over more records detailing cooperation between the federal government and state officials in Montana in anticipation of protests against the planned Keystone XL pipeline.

The reason the ACLU is suing? It recently obtained emails through the Freedom of Information Act that provide “substantial evidence of federal preventative measures against Keystone XL protests,” according to the ACLU’s press release. And it’s concerned that government plans to surveil and police indigenous and environmental activists infringe on their First Amendment rights.

TransCanada, the company behind Keystone XL, expects to begin construction on the pipeline expansion next year. The once-dead pipeline project, revived by President Trump, would transport up to 830,000 barrels of oil a day from the Canadian tar sands through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska, coming within a hundred miles of a dozen tribal lands.

The ACLU obtained emails revealing that federal employees discussed an “interagency team” to “deal with safety and security concerns related to the Keystone XL project.” It also found evidence indicating that the Department of Justice held “anti-terrorism” and “social networking and cyber awareness” trainings in Montana.

These records “suggest that additional documents documents exist, which the government continues to withhold, detailing plans for protests,” the ACLU said in a press release. The organization filed its original records requests in January, after it got its hands on Department of Homeland Security analysis that characterized pipeline opponents as “environmental rights extremists” intent on “criminal disruptions and violent incidents.”

During the Dakota Access pipeline protests in 2016, Standing Rock activists were watched over by drones and monitored on social media. The company behind that pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, hired the private security firm TigerSwan to launch a military-style surveillance and counterintelligence campaign against the activists, who TigerSwan labeled “jihadists.” Police used tear gas and water cannons against protesters. Some Standing Rock activists now face years in jail.

“Evidence that the federal government plans to treat Keystone XL protests with counterterrorism tactics, coupled with the recent memory of excessive uses of force and surveillance at the Standing Rock protests, raises immense concerns about the safety of indigenous and environmental protestors who seek to exercise their First Amendment rights,” writes Jacob Hutt, who filed the ACLU information requests, in a blog post.

There’s a long tradition of environmental activists facing charges of “ecoterrorism,” a word coined by libertarian activist Ron Arnold in the 1983. As we wrote last month, the term picked up steam in the ’80s and ’90s, and was eventually named the “the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat” by the FBI in 2004. Yet a 2013 study that found “there is no documented evidence of harm coming to humans as a result of actions by radical environmentalists.”

Despite their relatively peaceful protests, it seems that environmental activists are still viewed by the government — and by oil companies — as a threat.

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Carbon offsets for urban trees are on the horizon

by DelilaGreenup05 Posted on August 31, 2018

This story was originally published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The evidence is in: Urban trees improve air and water quality, reduce energy costs, and improve human health, even as they offer the benefit of storing carbon. And in cities across the country, they are disappearing.

A recent paper by two U.S. Forest Service scientists reported that metropolitan areas in the U.S. are losing about 36 million trees each year. The paper, by David Nowak and Eric Greenfield, was an expansion of the same researchers’ 2012 study that found significant tree loss in 17 out of the 20 U.S. cities studied.

This arboreal decline is happening even in some areas that promote “million-tree” campaigns, Arbor Day plantings, and street-tree giveaways. Cash-strapped municipalities just can’t find enough green to maintain the green. Additionally, many cities are adjusting to population booms, and to temperature increases and drought due to climate change — both conditions that can be hard on trees (while increasing their value as sources of cooling and cleaner air). There’s also a growing recognition of the inequity of tree-canopy distribution in many cities, with lush cover in wealthy neighborhoods and far fewer trees in disadvantaged areas.

To find more funding for urban trees, some local governments, including Austin, Texas, and King County, Washington (where Seattle is located), are running pilot projects with a Seattle-based nonprofit called City Forest Credits (CFC). The nonprofit is developing a new approach: generating funding for city tree canopies from private companies (and individuals) that wish to offset their carbon emissions by buying credits for tree planting or preservation.

The vast majority of forest carbon credits worldwide have been issued for trees in tropical rainforests and other forests far from urban areas. A study released last year of the forest offsets in California’s cap-and-trade program found that they are effective at reducing emissions.

The new credits aim to quantify not only the carbon benefits of urban trees, but also rainfall interception, energy savings from cooling and heating effects, and air-quality benefits. CFC has no role in marketing or selling credits for specific projects, but maintains the standards (protocols) and credentialing for other organizations that sell them. A third-party firm, Ecofor, verifies compliance for tree-preservation projects. Tree-planting projects are either third-party verified, or, for smaller projects that cannot afford that, verified by CFC with peer review, using Google Earth and geocoded photos.

To be eligible for the credits, city tree projects must follow protocols created specifically for urban forests — rules governing such specifics as the location and duration of a project and how the carbon will be quantified.

The new credits “are specifically catered to the urban environment and the unique challenges and possibilities there, so they differ from traditional carbon credits,” said Ian Leahy, director of urban forestry programs at the nonprofit conservation group American Forests, and a member of the CFC protocol board.

“I think the work is innovative and potentially game-changing,” said Zach Baumer, climate program manager for the City of Austin. (Baumer also serves on the protocol board for CFC.) “To harness the market to create environmental benefits in cities is a great thing.”

Austin

The City of Austin aims to be carbon neutral in government operations by 2020. To get there, it has been reducing emissions through energy efficiency, renewable energy, alternative fuels, and hybrid and electric vehicles. But the city will still need offsets to claim neutrality.

If governments and businesses choose to purchase these credits, they could help fill that gap, and they can keep their dollars local. Austin is running two pilot projects this year with CFC: a riparian reforestation project near a creek and a tree-planting project on school-district land. The City of Austin is purchasing the credits for both projects from the nonprofit TreeFolks, via CFC.

The fact that credits can cover both stream-side plantings and trees on school property illustrates the complex task of developing a city credit — the protocols and quantification methods must work for the disparate tree species and stewardship strategies of an urban forest, in contrast to the more controlled setting of an industrial plantation.

CFC is eager to road-test the protocols in Austin, said its founder and executive director, Mark McPherson, a Seattle lawyer and businessperson who has dedicated pro bono hours throughout his career to city tree issues. “Even though you have a national drafting group that put the protocols together, that brings together lots of expertise, they’re still cooked in the lab, if you will,” he said. “They have to be tested in the real world.” The effort is being helped by McPherson’s older brother, E. Greg McPherson, a prominent scientist in the field of urban forestry who helped develop the protocols.

King County

Another piece of the puzzle is a pilot project in King County, where a new land conservation initiative (LCI) targets protection of 65,000 acres, spanning urban areas to farmland. “We really want to maintain this intact landscape — what I’d call our natural infrastructure — that is the foundation of the quality of life we have here,” said Charlie Governali, the land conservation projects manager at King County’s Department of Natural Resources & Parks.

King County has been working with CFC over the last year, piloting a carbon program to help protect about 1,500 acres of currently unprotected and threatened tree canopy in and around urban communities. The county will consider expansion to a full-blown program by the end of 2018. Governali said there are already businesses interested in buying credits.

One of the first commitments made through CFC is a planting project on a rare parcel of open space in the City of Shoreline, just north of Seattle, funded by Bank of America through American Forests.

According to a study by the nonprofit Forest Trends, in 2016, $662 million globally went toward the purchase of carbon offsets for the protection or restoration of forests and other natural landscapes. The usual model is that for-profit carbon project developers work with landowners to qualify large forests for credits. Doubters have questioned whether city trees offer enough scale to be worthwhile, McPherson noted. “Carbon developers are thinking they want to lock up 10,000 acres of forest land, so they don’t see the scale or the volume in what we’re doing.”

But Governali said that for King County, the carbon protocol offers something different — a way to protect a lot of urban green space cumulatively by selling credits over time, and for many small green spaces.

Urban credits will be expensive — many times what a commodity credit for carbon might cost. Urban land is not cheap, and urban trees are costly to plant and maintain compared to those on forest land.

However, urban trees offer more public benefits. “Compared to one additional tree left standing in a far-off industrial forest, each additional urban tree we protect has an outsized human impact,” argued Governali, because these trees bring cooling on hot days, better air quality, and even improved mental health. Finally, he noted, the sale of carbon credits from urban trees can help a municipality buy the underlying land and make it a public park, “a place for families to gather, relieve stress, get some exercise, relax, and for children to play and learn.”

At the outset, the work adds to already full urban-forest workloads and stretches budgets, at least until credit revenue from buyers can support the programs. “We’re good at planting trees, but documenting the work to create an official carbon credit is new for us,” said Austin’s Baumer. However, generating credits is one more way to stall or reverse tree loss at a time when people are just starting to understand how critical trees — whether elms, oaks, Douglas firs, or cedars — are to a city’s health and economy.

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Tofurky is suing over Missouri’s definition of ‘meat’

by MurrayCalder Posted on August 29, 2018

On Tuesday, Missouri became the first state to ban “meat” from the product labels of plant-based and lab-grown alternatives. The new law, part of a larger agricultural bill, prohibits “misrepresenting a product as meat” if it doesn’t come directly from an animal. Violators are subject to a fine of $1,000 and — wait for it — a year in prison.

Harsh punishment for calling vegetarian sausage “sausage,” huh? Tofurky seems to think so. The vegan company filed a lawsuit against Missouri on Monday to block the law, joined by the Good Food Institute, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri. The suit seeks to defend the right to market meatless products with meaty words on First Amendment grounds.

The Missouri Cattlemen’s Association lobbied to pass the law. The beef industry has been working to protect what it calls “beef nomenclature” with stricter labeling rules, which could potentially leave environmentally friendlier plant-based or lab-grown options with some unappetizing names (anyone want some textured vegetable protein for dinner?). In April, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association president wrote to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to raise the alarm over the “flagrantly deceptive food product labels proliferating the marketplace.”

To counter the claim that “vegan bacon” and the like are confusing shoppers, Tofurky’s lawsuit includes a surprising etymology lesson. The text points out that “the very oldest usages of the term ‘meat,’ and its analogues in the predecessor languages to Modern English … are to describe nourishment or food generally.”

We’ve used the word “meat” in this broader sense since the 9th century, Kory Stamper, lexicographer and author of Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, told me last month during our conversation about similar tactics over the label “milk.”

Old English speakers used the word to refer specifically to animal flesh in the 1300s, Stamper said. But just a century later, people were also using it for the flesh of a fruit or a nut, like the meat of a walnut — another factoid cited by Tofurky’s lawsuit.

The suit notes that plant-based product labels have included words like “beef” and “sausage” for decades. It suggests that this practice has resulted in little confusion for shoppers: “[T]here have been no consumer protection lawsuits in Missouri — or any other state — challenging the accuracy of plant-based meat products’ marketing or packaging.”

If Missouri’s law stands, it could end up setting the standards for the whole country. As Quartz reports, it’s a big pain for food companies to tweak their packaging for just one state.

The U.S. has seen battles over vegan terminology before, like the vegan “mayo” controversy of 2015. And last month brought news that the FDA was officially reviewing the question of whether almond milk can be labeled as milk (after all, “an almond doesn’t lactate,” according to the FDA commissioner).

While Missouri is the first state to legislate a restricted definition of meat, there’s an international precedent: The language purists in charge of France approved a similar meat terminology ban in April.

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Kirstjen Nielsen and Brock Long visited Puerto Rico, and it was really weird

by XOCKellieqnkfp Posted on August 4, 2018

Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Brock Long, head of FEMA, went on tour in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Friday. Their mission, nearly a year after Hurricane Maria devastated both territories? To “meet with and thank Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel working on hurricane recovery and preparedness efforts,” according to a news release.

Local media on the islands reported that Long and Nielsen aren’t making themselves available to press during their visits and are limiting public appearances. But we sure got a sense of what’s happening on social media:

Twitter quickly responded to Nielsen’s tweet with a chorus of “too little, too late.”

Last month, FEMA — which is part of Department of Homeland Security — released a report admitting to some of its blunders during the response to Hurricane Maria. That included not having enough qualified staff, food, water, or other supplies on hand to deal with the disaster.

Outrage over the federal response to Maria is still simmering. Now it’s compounded by the frustration of Maria survivors — some of who still face uncertain housing prospects, even as we go deeper into this year’s hurricane season. After several extensions, FEMA plans to end its transitional shelter assistance again at the end of the month, but advocates say that a longer-term plan to help people get back into homes is needed.

And because tossing out paper towels just isn’t enough these days, Nielsen spent time handing out school supplies to children in San Juan before visiting a school in St. Croix.

Nielsen has been facing a lot of kid-related criticism lately. Her department forcibly separated families at the U.S.-Mexico border, lost track of who belongs with who, and has now missed deadlines to reunite them. Some members of Congress, including Senators Dick Durbin and Kamala Harris, have called for her to leave office over the policy.

So, of course, photos of Nielsen handing out backpacks on DHS’ Twitter account didn’t sit well with everyone.

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Kirstjen Nielsen and Brock Long visited Puerto Rico, and it was really weird

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Lab 257 – Michael C. Carroll

by Myrna Posted on July 6, 2018

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Lab 257

The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Germ Laboratory

Michael C. Carroll

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: October 13, 2009

Publisher: HarperCollins e-books

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


Strictly off limits to the public, Plum Island is home to virginal beaches, cliffs, forests, ponds — and the deadliest germs that have ever roamed the planet. Lab 257 blows the lid off the stunning true nature and checkered history of Plum Island. It shows that the seemingly bucolic island in the shadow of New York City is a ticking biological time bomb that none of us can safely ignore. Based on declassified government documents, in-depth interviews, and access to Plum Island itself, this is an eye-opening, suspenseful account of a federal government germ laboratory gone terribly wrong. For the first time, Lab 257 takes you deep inside this secret world and presents startling revelations on virus outbreaks, biological meltdowns, infected workers, the periodic flushing of contaminated raw sewage into area waters, and the insidious connections between Plum Island, Lyme disease, and the deadly West Nile virus. The book also probes what's in store for Plum Island's new owner, the Department of Homeland Security, in this age of bioterrorism. Lab 257 is a call to action for those concerned with protecting present and future generations from preventable biological catastrophes.

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Lab 257 – Michael C. Carroll

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Leaked letter: Kinder Morgan broke rules for months during Trans Mountain Pipeline construction

by MargeneNeudorf Posted on June 16, 2018

This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Kinder Morgan put fish, porpoises, sea lions and other marine life in danger during recent construction work near an oil terminal in Vancouver, says a leaked federal letter that warns the company could face prosecution for its violations.

The letter from the federal Fisheries and Oceans Department (DFO) notes that the company also went months without filing mandatory monitoring reports to the government and First Nations before federal officials noticed the Texas company was breaking the rules.

The department sent the warning to an executive at the company’s Canadian unit, Trans Mountain, in a letter dated June 6, 2018, and obtained by National Observer. That was just days after the Trudeau government announced a deal to take over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project and buy many of Kinder Morgan’s Canadian assets for 4.5 billion Canadian dollars ($3.4 billion).

It has prompted environmental lawyer Eugene Kung to raise this question: “Down the line, if the feds become the owner, what does it look like for them to prosecute themselves?”

Letter identifies four violations

The letter contrasts with recent assurances by the federal government that its officials have kept a close eye on the company and taken adequate measures through a “world-leading” plan to ensure that the Trans Mountain west coast pipeline and tanker expansion project will proceed without damaging the environment or public safety.

The Trudeau government approved the expansion project in November 2016, prompting fierce opposition from several affected First Nations and communities along its proposed route. But at the time, the government said that it was also imposing 157 conditions on Kinder Morgan, as recommended by the federal energy regulator, the National Energy Board (NEB), to ensure that the project would be safe. These conditions included requiring the company to obtain more than 1,000 federal, provincial, and municipal permits required for different stages of the construction.

The fisheries department gave Trans Mountain permission to begin some expansion work on its Westridge Marine Terminal on Sept. 8, 2017, provided that it meet a number of safety and environmental conditions. Noncompliance would contravene a major Canadian environmental law, the federal Fisheries Act, that is used to protect bodies of water inhabited by marine species.

The warning letter identifies four different violations related to pile driving during expansion work on the Burrard Inlet in the metro Vancouver region near the Kinder Morgan terminal between January and May 2018. The company exceeded safe underwater noise limits for such marine species as the harbor porpoise and the Steller sea lion as it proceeded with the pile driving activity, according to a separate email sent by the federal department to members of an Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committee that was set up to keep tabs on the project.

The letter also noted that the company failed to file required construction monitoring reports to the federal department and members of the special committee, including First Nations representatives, for three consecutive months, from January to March. The department said in the letter, sent to Trans Mountain vice president David Safari, that it only noticed that Trans Mountain wasn’t filing its mandatory reports after email correspondence with the company on April 26, 2018.

“By way of this letter, we are therefore providing you with a written warning for having contravened the Fisheries Act, particularly for having carried on works, undertakings and activities without complying with the conditions prescribed by the Minister under … this Act,” said the four-page letter, signed by Tracey Sandgathe, a regional manager from the department’s fisheries protection program.

“Please note that this warning letter does not exclude prosecution under the Fisheries Act in respect of this project in the event of future instances of non-compliance.”

The letter also said that the department had reviewed noise monitoring records in April, noting that construction work exceeded an underwater noise threshold for injury to finfish on six separate occasions during impact pile driving on April 3, 2018. Each time Trans Mountain exceeded the limit, the monitoring records indicated that it attempted to reduce noise levels without any success, the letter said.

“Despite adjusting the mitigation measures after each of the six separate exceedances of the underwater noise threshold, the noise threshold continued to be exceeded after each subsequent attempt,” Sandgathe wrote in the letter. “Despite failing to reduce noise levels to below the threshold, Trans Mountain nonetheless resumed pile driving after each exceedance.”

DFO reviewed the violations while government and company officials were criticizing land defenders and water protecters who wanted construction activity halted and risked arrest for violating a B.C. Supreme Court injunction requested by lawyers for Kinder Morgan.

The email shared with members of the advisory committee said that the department based the letter on a review of construction reports and follow-up with Trans Mountain between April 3 and May 29, the latter being the date that the government announced that it was making an offer to buy the project for 4.5 billion Canadian dollars.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other government officials have said that Canada is a country based on the “rule of law” — warning opponents, including the B.C. government, that they have no authority to stop the oil and tanker expansion project since it was approved by the federal government and falls under its jurisdiction.

More than 200 people have been arrested for violating the injunction near the terminal on Burnaby Mountain, and thousands more have pledged to do whatever it takes to stop the Trans Mountain expansion.

‘Part of a pattern’

The Trudeau government made its offer to buy the project after the company threatened to abandon the expansion due to uncertainty caused by fierce opposition in British Columbia. Trudeau has said that the project is critical to Canada’s economy since it would enable producers in Alberta’s oil sands to bypass their main customer in the United States and find new markets in Asia.

Trudeau also told National Observer in an interview last February that the project was helping to ensure support from Alberta, home to the world’s third largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, for a national climate change plan. Opponents say that the Trans Mountain expansion is too risky and would push Canada’s international climate change goals out of reach.

Under the deal, Safari, the vice president who received the warning letter, and Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson, would each receive bonuses of 1.5 million Canadian dollars ($1.1 million) if they remain in their current positions, after the sale is completed, until July 2020.

Kung, a lawyer from West Coast Environmental Law, a firm providing advice to one of the First Nations affected by the project — the Tsleil-Waututh — noted that this isn’t the first time Kinder Morgan has been caught breaking the rules.

Last fall, the federal pipeline regulator, the National Energy Board, ordered the company to stop using anti-spawning mats in streams inhabited by fish, after it had started to do this work without authorization.

“It’s part of a pattern that we’ve observed and sadly not all that surprising about Kinder Morgan not being able to even meet the minimal requirements that were the result of the NEB process and here’s another example of them violating the conditions and essentially having very little consequences, which is what DFO is saying,” Kung said in a phone interview.

DFO didn’t immediately respond to questions about the warning letter. Trans Mountain told National Observer in a statement that it is “committed to compliance with its environmental and regulatory obligations,” and “aggressively implementing measures to avoid future non-compliance.”

The company also said it was engaging with DFO “directly, transparently and collaboratively through ongoing site inspections, information request exchanges and required reporting.”

“The Trans Mountain process for responding to underwater noise exceedances is designed to protect marine life. In the case described in the April monitoring report, it is key to note that each exceedance resulted in an immediate response by Trans Mountain. In each instance, pile driving was stopped, the situation was assessed and further mitigation was undertaken.”

The company also said it “recognized and reported exceedances of the thresholds and followed a mitigation plan which included providing the occurrence details, mitigative actions taken and results in the reports and responses to Information Requests from DFO.”

Regarding the missing reports, Trans Mountain said it started sending them after they were told the committee wasn’t receiving them, but it didn’t explain why it had failed to send these reports in the first place.

Last summer, the company had said it was taking an “innovative approach” to reducing noise from pile driving, by using special noise shrouds “to cover the hammers that drive piles into the ocean floor” for the new terminal.

“The shrouds, which are about two stories tall and wide enough to hold a medium-sized SUV, dampen the sound of hammer impact by 65 to 95 percent,” Trans Mountain said on its website on July 6, 2017.

The project’s director for the Lower Mainland region, Randy Brake, said on the website that this technique had been used in other ports around the world, but that it would be the first time it was being used for a piling project in the Vancouver Port.

Several months later, some local residents living near the terminal in Burnaby said that the pile driving was shaking their homes and causing small tremors, Burnaby Now reported on March 7, 2018. One resident even told the local publication that the noise and vibrations were enough to wake him up on a Saturday morning in his home on a hill, about 700 meters above the terminal.

“You could literally feel it through the bed and obviously through the walls. You put your ear or your hand up to the wall, and literally you can feel it,” the local resident, Aaron Keogh, told Burnaby Now. “The further concern from that is what effect will weeks of ongoing activity like that … have on the structures — basically the houses and such —  surrounding the area?”

Trans Mountain declined to respond to a question about whether the “noise shrouds” had worked as it had anticipated.

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Leaked letter: Kinder Morgan broke rules for months during Trans Mountain Pipeline construction

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Scott Pruitt’s vision of a ‘lean’ EPA includes spending a lot of money on himself

by AudreyMartino Posted on May 14, 2018

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced the new “Office of Continuous Improvement” on Monday. The purpose of the office, he says, is “to make sure, as we do our work here, that we set real goals and we track those goals and show real improvement.”

The OCI isn’t about improving air quality, Americans’ health, or EPA transparency, though. Rather, it concerns — hold on to your seats! — improving productivity and cutting waste at the department.

The office expands the agency’s “lean management system” established under the Obama administration.

While “lean” is an apt description of the current state of the EPA, which has cut half a billion dollars from its budget over the past two years and brought staff numbers down to Reagan-era levels, it’s the opposite of Pruitt’s own spending habits. Since his very first day as administrator, bodyguards (who don’t come cheap) have been watching him 24/7. That’s not to mention Pruitt’s pricey private flight habit and $43,000 soundproof phone booth, all on the taxpayer dime.

Some EPA employees aren’t excited about the new office.

“The Office of Continuous Improvement sounds like it’s straight out of 1984,” one staffer told Buzzfeed Science reporter Zahra Hirji.

It’s unlikely that Pruitt’s message about boosting productivity will drown out the numerous scandals coming out about him. He’ll face a tough audience on Wednesday, when he’ll appear in front of the Senate appropriations subcommittee. If it goes anything like his recent hearings in front of the House, we’re in for a treat.

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Scott Pruitt’s vision of a ‘lean’ EPA includes spending a lot of money on himself

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