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‘Moment of reckoning:’ U.S. cities burn recyclables after China bans imports

by Garland36G Posted on February 22, 2019

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

The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yogurt containers, and other items into recycling bins.

But in the past three months, half of these recyclables have been loaded onto trucks, taken to a hulking incineration facility, and burned, according to the city’s government.

It’s a situation being replicated across the U.S. as cities struggle to adapt to a recent ban by China on the import of items intended for reuse.

The loss of this overseas dumping ground means that plastics, paper, and glass set aside for recycling by Americans is being stuffed into domestic landfills or is simply burned in vast volumes. This new reality risks an increase of plumes of toxic pollution that threaten the largely black and Latino communities who live near heavy industry and dumping sites in the U.S.

About 200 tons of recycling material is sent to the huge Covanta incinerator in Chester City, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, every day since China’s import ban came into practice last year, the company says.

“People want to do the right thing by recycling but they have no idea where it goes and who it impacts,” said Zulene Mayfield, who was born and raised in Chester and now spearheads a community group against the incinerator, called Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living.

“People in Chester feel hopeless — all they want is for their kids to get out, escape. Why should we be expendable? Why should this place have to be burdened by people’s trash and shit?”

Some experts worry that burning plastic recycling will create a new fog of dioxins that will worsen an already alarming health situation in Chester. Nearly four in 10 children in the city have asthma, while the rate of ovarian cancer is 64 percent higher than the rest of Pennsylvania and lung cancer rates are 24 percent higher, according to state health statistics.

The dilemma with what to do with items earmarked for recycling is playing out across the U.S. The country generates more than 250 million tons of waste a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, with about a third of this recycled and composted.

Until recently, China had been taking about 40 percent of U.S. paper, plastics, and other recyclables, but this trans-Pacific waste route has now ground to a halt. In July 2017, China told the World Trade Organization it no longer wanted to be the end point for yang laji, or foreign garbage, with the country keen to grapple with its own mountains of waste.

Since January 2018, China hasn’t accepted two dozen different recycling materials, such as plastic and mixed paper, unless they meet strict rules around contamination. The imported recycling has to be clean and unmixed — a standard too hard to meet for most American cities.

It is “virtually impossible to meet the stringent contamination standards established in China,” said a spokesperson for the city of Philadelphia, who added that the cost of recycling has become a “major impact on the city’s budget,” at around $78 a ton. Half of the city’s recycling is now going to the Covanta plant, the spokesperson said.

There isn’t much of a domestic market for U.S. recyclables — materials such as steel or high-density plastics can be sold on but much of the rest holds little more value than rubbish — meaning that local authorities are hurling it into landfills or burning it in huge incinerators like the one in Chester, which already torches around 3,510 tons of trash, the weight equivalent of more than 17 blue whales, every day.

“This is a real moment of reckoning for the U.S. because of a lot of these incinerators are aging, on their last legs, without the latest pollution controls,” said Claire Arkin, campaign associate at Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. “You may think burning plastic means ‘poof, it’s gone’ but it puts some very nasty pollution into the air for communities that are already dealing with high rates of asthma and cancers.”

Hugging the western bank of the Delaware River, which separates Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Chester City was once a humming industrial outpost, hosting Ford and General Motors plants. Since the war, however, Chester has been hollowed out, with an exodus of jobs ushering in an era where a third of people live in poverty.

The industry that remains emits a cocktail of soot and chemicals upon a population of 34,000 residents, 70 percent of them black. There’s a waste water treatment plant, a nearby Kimberly-Clark paper mill, and a medical waste facility. And then there’s Covanta’s incinerator, one of the largest of its kind in the U.S.

Just a tiny fraction of the trash burned at the plant is from Chester — the rest is funneled in via truck and train from as far as New York City and North Carolina. The burning of trash releases a host of pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides, and particulate matter, which are tiny fragments of debris that, once inhaled, cause an array of health problems.

It’s difficult to single out the exact cause of any cancer, but a host of studies have identified possible links between air pollution and ovarian and breast cancers, which are unusually prevalent in Chester. A 1995 report by the EPA found that air pollution from local industry provides a “large component of the cancer and non-cancer risk to the citizens of Chester.”

“There are higher than normal rates of heart disease, stroke, and asthma in Chester, which are all endpoints for poor air,” said Marilyn Howarth, a public health expert at the University of Pennsylvania who has advised Chester activists for the past six years.

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Howarth said residents now risk a worsened exposure to pollution due to increased truck traffic rumbling through their streets, bringing recycling to the plant. Once burned, plastics give off volatile organics, some of them carcinogenic.

“It is difficult to link any single case of cancer, heart disease, or asthma directly to a particular source. However, the emissions from Covanta contain known carcinogens so they absolutely increase the risk of cancer to area residents.”

Covanta say that pollution controls, such as scrubbers in smokestacks, will negate toxins emitted by recyclables. After passing through the emissions control system, the plant’s eventual output is comfortably below limits set by state and federal regulators, the company says, with emissions of dioxins far better than the expected standard.

The company also argues that incineration is a better option than simply heaping plastic and cardboard in landfills.

“In terms of greenhouse gases, it’s better sending recyclables to an energy recovery facility because of the methane that comes from a landfill,” said Paul Gilman, Covanta’s chief sustainability officer. “Fingers crossed Philadelphia can get their recycling program going again because these facilities aren’t designed for recyclables, they are designed for solid waste.”

Covanta and its critics agree that the whole recycling system in the U.S. will need to be overhauled to avoid further environmental damage. Just 9 percent of plastic is recycled in the U.S., with campaigns to push up recycling rates obscuring broader concerns about the environmental impact of mass consumption, whether derived from recycled materials or not.

“The unfortunate thing in the United States is that when people recycle they think it’s taken care of, when it was largely taken care of by China,” Gilman said. “When that stopped, it became clear we just aren’t able to deal with it.”

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‘Moment of reckoning:’ U.S. cities burn recyclables after China bans imports

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The EPA made two big announcements this week that could affect your water

by PVGAveryopduno Posted on February 15, 2019

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The Environmental Protection Agency has been busy this week, moving on two major water-related issues. Whether either action will result in cleaner water, though, is still up for debate.

The EPA proposes replacement to Clean Water Rule

The EPA, along with the he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, proposed a replacement to the Obama-era Clean Water Rule, which defined which bodies are protected by the longstanding Clean Water Act, extending protections to some contested waterways. That didn’t sit well with some farmers and ranchers, who felt the law was an overreach and too burdensome on their operations.

With its new rule, the EPA seeks to redefine “waters of the United States” so it applies to fewer bodies of water. Critics of the move — including Sierra Club and the Cincinnati NAACP — have dubbed the new proposal the “#DirtyWaterRule.”

President Trump has denounced Obama’s Clean Water Rule since he was on the campaign trail, eventually signing an executive order asking the EPA to review the rule. The Agency suspended the rule in January 2018 until a federal judge reinstituted it in 26 states later that year.

When the EPA released a statement last December saying it planned to propose a new definition of the nation’s waters, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler said, “Our simpler and clearer definition would help landowners understand whether a project on their property will require a federal permit or not without spending thousands of dollars on engineering and legal professionals.”

Now the public will have 60 days (until April 15) to comment on the proposed change.

The EPA moves (but not too fast) to limit toxic “forever chemicals”

The EPA released an action plan on a class of widely-used, man-made water and oil-repelling chemicals known as Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The so-called “forever chemicals,” named for how long they persist in your body and the environment, are found in everything from food packaging to non-stick pans and dental floss. They’ve also been found in around 6 million Americans’ drinking water. A growing body of research suggests that PFAS could have negative effects on fertility, hormones, immune systems, and place people at a higher risk of certain cancers.

Last spring, the EPA said it would evaluate whether it should set a cap on PFAS levels in drinking water. The plan released Thursday disappointed lawmakers and advocacy groups because the agency signaled that it may take until the end of the year to determine whether it will set a maximum contaminant level for the substance.

“This is a non-action plan,” Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said in a statement Thursday. “The big winners today are polluting corporations, not the people affected by this industrial waste in their drinking water supplies.”

Critics say there is already ample evidence of the chemicals’ harmfulness and that the administration should act more quickly. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who is a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement: “After a year of hemming and hawing, Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler’s EPA is punting on action to tackle a serious public health risk lurking in Americans’ drinking water … I hope this episode makes my Republican colleagues think twice before confirming Andrew Wheeler as EPA Administrator.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have supported taking action on PFAS; Politico reported last month that the EPA’s decisions on the chemical now could affect the acting administrator’s confirmation to the post.

In a statement, Wheeler lauded the EPA’s PFAS plan: “For the first time in Agency history, we utilized all of our program offices to construct an all-encompassing plan to help states and local communities address PFAS and protect our nation’s drinking water. We are moving forward with several important actions, including the maximum contaminant level process, that will help affected communities better monitor, detect, and address PFAS.”

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The EPA made two big announcements this week that could affect your water

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A Green New Deal must not sabotage climate goals

by LGYJaymeknbiym Posted on February 2, 2019

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

Recently, 626 organizations — mostly environmental groups, including 350.org and Greenpeace USA — sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to consider a number of principles when crafting climate legislation like a Green New Deal “to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).” Broadly, there were six major principles in the letter: Halt all fossil fuel leasing, phase out all fossil fuel extraction, end fossil fuel and other dirty energy subsidies; transition power generation to 100 percent renewable energy; expand public transportation and phase out fossil-fuel vehicles; harness the full power of the Clean Air Act; ensure a just transition led by impacted communities and workers; and uphold indigenous rights.

These are generally wise goals, but some concerns about the details caused eight major environmental groups — including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund — to decline to sign the letter. As one national environmental group spokesperson put it, “the details matter … There is some language that gave us some concern.”

To meet climate targets, we need every tool in the chest. Meeting the Paris climate agreement targets of limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) of global warming above pre-industrial temperatures — or even a more dangerous but more feasible 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) — would require massive and immediate global action to reduce fossil fuel consumption and carbon pollution. Simply put, we’ve already burned through so much of our carbon budget that meeting those targets would take everything we’ve got. (We’ve already locked ourselves in to close to 1.5 degrees C of warming, just based on greenhouse gas emissions to date.)

But the letter includes language that rules out some zero-carbon technologies. For example, it states, “in addition to excluding fossil fuels, any definition of renewable energy must also exclude all combustion-based power generation, nuclear, biomass energy, large scale hydro and waste-to-energy technologies. To achieve this, the United States must shift to 100 percent renewable power generation by 2035 or earlier.”

The listed energy sources all have pros and cons, and groups concerned about their non-climate environmental impacts could certainly make the case for eventually phasing out each one. But the United States currently gets about 32 percent of its electricity generation from natural gas, 30 percent from coal, 20 percent from nuclear, 7 percent from hydroelectricity, 6 percent from wind, and 1 percent from solar, in round numbers. (The remaining few percent come from miscellaneous energy sources such as geothermal, landfill gas, wood, and others.) Were nuclear and hydroelectric power to be eliminated as energy sources at the same time as all fossil fuels, that means that the United States would have to replace its top four electricity sources (nearly 90 percent of its supply) within about 15 years.

Simply replacing all forms of fossil fuels alone (63 percent of the supply) with zero-carbon technologies within this short timeframe would already be an immense task. And the figures here are strictly referring to what it is required for electricity generation in the United States; they don’t even account for other voracious energy-consuming sectors like transportation — which bring the fossil-fuel share of the U.S. economy up to 80 percent, plus another 9 percent from nuclear and 7 percent from hydroelectric power and biomass. Why make the already gargantuan task so much more difficult?

Germany provides a cautionary tale for environmental groups. The country implemented what it called an “Energiewende” (energy transition) strategy that prioritized the phase-out of nuclear power over replacing fossil fuels, despite its goal of achieving a low-carbon energy supply. For example, in the year 2000, 50 percent of Germany’s electricity was supplied by coal compared to 29 percent from nuclear power and 7 percent from renewables. In 2015, the share was 46 percent coal, 15 percent nuclear, and 33 percent renewables. In other words, the country’s coal consumption has remained nearly unchanged since the turn of the century — from 50 percent coal to 46 percent coal. Instead, Germany’s rapid deployment of renewable energy has primarily replaced its nuclear power plants.

There are certainly legitimate objections to nuclear power, but it is nevertheless a zero-carbon energy source. If we consider climate change an urgent, existential threat and if we want to meet the Paris climate targets, then eliminating fossil fuels must be our first priority. Only after fossil fuels have been replaced can we consider doing the same to other zero-carbon energy sources.

Market-based solutions can be effective. Along similar lines, the letter states: “We will vigorously oppose any legislation that … promotes corporate schemes that place profits over community burdens and benefits, including market-based mechanisms and technology options such as carbon and emissions trading and offsets, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, waste-to-energy and biomass energy.”

The letter seems to envision that the needed carbon pollution cuts will be achieved purely through government regulations rather than market-based mechanisms such as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. But it’s unclear why that must necessarily be our approach. Putting a price on carbon pollution is a logical way to incorporate its costs into fuel and energy prices, and 45 top economists across the political spectrum recently endorsed a carbon tax. And rebating the taxed revenue via regular dividend checks is a progressive measure that would benefit lower income communities.

One concern may be that a market-based system pricing carbon pollution would benefit zero-carbon energy technologies that some letter signatories oppose — such as nuclear, hydroelectric, biomass, and fossil fuels using carbon capture and storage. There are environmental reasons to oppose some of these technologies; for example, other harmful pollution from fossil fuels and the disposal of hazardous nuclear waste present very real problems.

But the letter’s stated primary goal is to meet the Paris climate targets, and we’ll fail if we tie our hands behind our backs by ruling out zero-carbon technologies and market-based policy tools. Phasing out nuclear, hydroelectric, and biomass energy should only be considered after fossil fuels have been eliminated. Pricing carbon pollution certainly shouldn’t be ruled out (and in fact should be pursued vigorously), and even carbon capture and sequestration should remain on the table.

If we consider climate change an urgent existential threat that justifies the Paris climate targets, then at the very least phasing out fossil fuels and carbon pollution must be our top priority when crafting climate policy. Other concerns that undermine zero-carbon energy sources must be secondary, lest we sabotage our own climate-preserving efforts.

Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist, and author of Climatology versus Pseudoscience. He has published 10 papers related to climate change in peer-reviewed journals, including three studies on the expert climate consensus.

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The EPA hired GOP oppo firm because it was sick of ‘fake news’

by Mohamme6022 Posted on January 7, 2019

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

When Mother Jones first reported in December 2017 that the Environmental Protection Agency had hired a hyperpartisan GOP opposition research firm known for its aggressive tactics to handle the agency’s news-clipping work, the politically appointed flacks in the agency’s press office insisted the decision was about saving money and that the hiring had been handled through normal procurement channels. As we reported Thursday, we now know that was not the case. Internal emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that political appointees in the EPA press office demanded that career staff push through the hiring of Definers Public Affairs — best known for its work for Republican campaigns and recently for its role as Facebook’s attack dog on Capitol Hill, which included attempts to smear George Soros for his critiques of the social-media network.

Now, thanks to another batch of internal emails, we have even more evidence that the motivation for hiring Definers came from the top agency political appointees who were ticked off at the old service because it was collecting too many news clips that portrayed then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt negatively.

News clipping services are used by public relations offices both inside and out of the government to help keep track of the wide constellation of media outlets that might be talking about a topic of interest. The product they create — usually a roundup of headlines or excerpts — is an internal document designed to keep those inside the agency informed about press coverage. Liz Purchia, a press staffer in Obama’s EPA, noted that “cherry-picking the clips so you only saw the good ones” isn’t typically done, because it “doesn’t give you a realistic picture.” The collection of clippings is not usually publicly distributed.

But according to the new batch of emails, also obtained through FOIA, top EPA political staff were sick of the previous news clipping service’s propensity to include headlines that tended to make the controversial new appointee, who brought to the EPA a Rolodex of industry connections, look bad.

“Is it necessary to include all the negative headlines that go out to everyone?” complained Samantha Dravis, the agency’s associate administrator for policy, in a March 17, 2017, email to John Konkus, who now leads the EPA’s press office. “I could care less what Al Gore thinks about Scott Pruitt’s position — why is that news?? Who puts this together?”

Dravis, who previously had worked as general counsel for the Republican Attorney General’s Association, which Pruitt had run before coming to Washington, was objecting to the inclusion of a link to a PBS News Hour interview with former Vice President Al Gore from the night before, in a daily news roundup.

Konkus, who had previously worked at Republican consulting firm Jamestown Associates, replied that he agreed and that this was an ongoing problem with the news clipping service at the time, a Virginia-based company called Bulletin Intelligence that had provided news clip roundups to the EPA and a number of other federal agencies for several years.

“We had them on the phone about a week ago complaining about the tilt and they said they would change,” he wrote. “They haven’t.”

Don Benton, a White House senior adviser to the EPA, forwarded the whole chain of complaints to his counterpart at the Department of Homeland Security, a political operative named Frank Wuco. A former military consultant, Wuco once created an alter-ego Islamic terrorist character that he featured in videos and as a host for radio shows in which he warned of the danger of Islamic extremism. Benton told Wuco that a scientist had told him that Bulletin Intelligence disseminates “fake news” and suggested Wuco “look into it.” The email was sent to Wuco’s private email address. Wuco’s reply, if any, was not included in the FOIA materials.

Neither Wuco nor Benton replied to a request for comment on the email exchange.

This was early in the Trump administration, but the aggressive and overtly partisan strategy eventually carried over into the EPA’s public operations. The EPA generated even more negative headlines for itself by blocking reporters from events, trying to plant negative stories about EPA reporters in conservative outlets, scripting interviews with Fox News, and calling reporters names, like when then-spokesperson Jahan Wilcox called a reporter a “piece of trash.” The EPA’s spending on Pruitt’s travel, his security, and his soundproof phone booth were already under scrutiny when the EPA approved a contract with Definers.

Charles Tiefer, a professor of contract law at the University of Baltimore, told Mother Jones: “One of the main reasons that we have a corps of career government contract personnel is to keep the political people away from giving the taxpayer money out to political cronies.”

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The EPA hired GOP oppo firm because it was sick of ‘fake news’

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Senate confirms 4 Trump nominees to top environmental posts in last-minute vote

by jaymeallsop Posted on January 4, 2019

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

The Senate voted to confirm at least four of President Donald Trump’s nominees to top environmental posts Thursday in last-minute votes just hours before the 115th Congress adjourned.

The confirmations, which received mixed reaction from environmentalists, fill long-vacant roles and save the White House from having to restart the nomination process with a newly sworn-in 116th Congress.

The nominees, among more than 60 administration officials confirmed in the 11th-hour voice vote, include those picked for executive posts at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Council on Environmental Quality.

At EPA, Alexandra Dunn was confirmed to lead the agency’s chemical office. Dunn previously served as the EPA administrator for Region 1 in Boston. She won praise overseeing the New England region as an “apolitical” bureaucrat who The Boston Globe described in an August profile as gaining “respect for protecting the environment.”

The position as assistant administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention was left open since 2017, when former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt nominated Michael Dourson, whose consultancy InsideClimate News described in 2014 as the “one-stop science shop” favored by the chemical and tobacco industries. Dourson dropped out as Republican support for his nomination waned.

The other EPA nominee — the Senate’s final confirmation, just minutes before adjourning — faced more intense scrutiny from environmentalists and public health advocates. William Charles “Chad” McIntosh, Trump’s pick for the EPA’s Office of International and Tribal Affairs, came under fire in March when HuffPost reported on his 19-year career as the head of Ford Motor Co.’s environmental compliance and policy divisions.

During his tenure at Ford, degreasing chemicals spilled at a manufacturing plant in Livonia, Michigan, and broke down into vinyl chloride — linked to cancers of the liver, brain, lungs, lymph nodes and blood — and tainted the local groundwater.

“You can’t ignore these kinds of toxic chemicals in such an enormous quantity on your property, so whoever was in charge of the environmental state of affairs at this plant did not do his job,” Shawn Collins, an attorney representing homeowners whose groundwater was affected, told HuffPost in March. “That’s McIntosh.”

Among the most controversial nominees was Daniel Simmons, a former fossil fuel lobbyist who questioned climate science, to lead the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. After the White House nominated him to the post in June, Simmons backtracked on some of his past criticisms of renewable energy, insisting he “likes” zero-emissions energy sources. But, as Utility Dive reported, he previously served as the vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research, a coal- and oil-backed think tank, and for the American Energy Alliance, its lobbying arm. The latter organization called for the abolition of the office Simmons will now oversee as recently as 2015.

Among the least controversial was Mary Neumayr, Trump’s pick to lead the Council on Environmental Quality. The president initially nominated Kathleen Hartnett White, a die-hard climate denier and fossil fuel ideologue, to run the seldom-discussed White House agency, which oversees the National Environmental Policy Act. But Hartnett White flamed out during her confirmation hearing, delivering one of the most embarrassing performances of any nominee as she withered before senators’ questions about basic earth science.

Neumayr, by contrast, appeared to be a “more middle-of-the-road” pick, The Washington Post surmised in June, citing her “reputation as a pragmatist.” She spent much of her career working for the federal government, including eight years as the chief counsel on energy and environmental issues for the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. During her confirmation hearing, she told senators, “I agree the climate is changing and human activity has a role.”

But unnamed insiders close to Neumayr, who until Thursday served as the Council on Environmental Quality’s chief of staff, told the Post she’s a strong supporter of the president’s deregulatory agenda. ThinkProgress criticized Democrats on the Senate committee that vetted Neumayr’s nomination for going easy on her.

The power of the Council on Environmental Quality changes from administration to administration. But the White House released a 55-page infrastructure plan in February that calls on the council to “revise its regulations to streamline NEPA would reduce the time and costs associated with the NEPA process.” Neumayr would be central to overseeing that process.

EPA declined an interview request, sending an email stating: “Due to a lapse in appropriations, the EPA Press Office will only be responding to inquiries related to the government shut down or inquiries in the event of an environmental emergency imminently threatening the safety of human life or where necessary to protect certain property.”

Neither the White House nor Energy Department immediately responded to requests for comment.

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Senate confirms 4 Trump nominees to top environmental posts in last-minute vote

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Life after EPA: What is Scott Pruitt doing now?

by dla@kk2.pl Posted on December 28, 2018

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Ever wonder what happens to people when they get booted from President Trump’s graces? (They don’t all wind up with a Saturday Night Live trip down memory lane.)

It’s been almost six months since Scott Pruitt was cut loose as head of the EPA, and for the most part he’s been keeping out of the spotlight. According to sources, Pruitt is using his industry connections to launch a private consulting business — you know, promoting coal exports and consorting with coal barons, the way a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency would.

However, Pruitt’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, says these new career pursuits will stop short of violating an official five-year ban on lobbying the EPA. After a mess of ethics violations and legal scandals, Pruitt is proceeding with caution. Mitchell says: “He has discussed multiple opportunities with me and has been quite careful not to do anything that is even close to the line.”

Although Pruitt’s fall from grace hasn’t been memorialized on SNL, he did become the butt of a few jokes by someone else — his former bestie, Donald Trump.

Evidently, Trump has congratulated Andrew Wheeler, Pruitt’s replacement, several times for not trying to buy used mattress from Trump Hotel. Yep. Pruitt did that. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little reuse, reduce, recycle — it may turn out to be one of Pruitt’s better moves for the environment.

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Life after EPA: What is Scott Pruitt doing now?

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What’s the Environmental Impact of Flying Cross-Country?

by AnaBruxner Posted on December 3, 2018

With millions traversing the globe to reach their loved ones for the holidays, travel (particularly air travel) is top of mind.?How can I avoid the lines??Will I be able to fit all these gifts in my carry-on??But one more question arises in the environmentally conscious: What’s this going to do to my carbon footprint?

Aviation is, at its core, a fossil fuel industry, one which guzzles a shocking 5 million barrels of oil every single day. Burning this fuel to get you to your grandma’s place in Wisconsin or that winter getaway in Hawaii currently contributes to close to 2.5 percent of total carbon emissions. Experts expect this figure to rise to 22 percent by 2050, even as other sectors start cutting.

Additionally, we are flying more than ever. Demand for flights increases daily, to the point that demand from new and existing travelers is supposed to double by 2035. With?the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warning us that we have just 12 years to avoid apocalyptic climate change disaster, this rising trend in air travel is certainly bleak.

The third problem? While aircraft is becoming more fuel efficient, electric planes are still decades away. We have yet to invent a battery that can deliver as much power as jet fuel and, so far, the technology is cost prohibitive.

Most of us are ignorant of how our flying behavior contributes to climate change, largely because it just isn’t communicated to us very often. Think about it…when was the last time you saw an advertisement mentioning the environmental impact of flying? New cars, appliances, even houses are required to disclose energy efficiency. Planes and airlines? Not so.

So what’s to be done? We won’t be shutting down cheap air travel anytime soon (aviation was purposefully excluded from the Kyoto and Paris climate change agreements) and regulatory organizations are dragging their feet, avoiding any plan that might have negative economic implications.

Here’s what you can do about this.

Your government, your favorite airline, the companies that control global wealth…they won’t do a thing as long as citizens remain blissfully unaware of the impact of aviation emissions. Want a carbon tax on flights? Speak up.

Connect with your peers. Encourage everyone to use their voice to make change. Maybe then, we will be able to find a less damaging solution, while still retaining access to global travel and that vacay you always dreamed of in Hawaii.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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What’s the Environmental Impact of Flying Cross-Country?

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Trump administration’s climate report raises new questions about nuclear energy’s future

by LGYJaymeknbiym Posted on November 30, 2018

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

Call it the nuclear power industry’s thirst trap.

The United States’ aging fleet of nuclear reactors ― responsible for one-fifth of the country’s electricity and most of its low-carbon power ― has never been more necessary as policymakers scramble to shrink planet-warming emissions. Yet the plants are struggling to stay afloat, with six stations shut down in the last five years and an additional 16 reactors scheduled to close over the next decade. So far, new coal- and gas-burning facilities are replacing them.

The nuclear industry blames high maintenance costs, competition from cheaper alternatives and hostile regulators concerned about radiation disasters like the 2012 Fukushima meltdown in Japan. But the country’s most water-intensive source of electricity faces what could be an even bigger problem as climate change increases the risk of drought and taxes already crumbling water infrastructure.

That finding, highlighted in the landmark climate change report that the Trump administration released with apparent reluctance last Friday, illustrates the complex and at times paradoxical realities of anthropogenic, or human-caused, warming. It also stokes an already hot debate over the role nuclear energy should play in fighting global warming, a month after United Nations scientists warned that carbon dioxide emissions must be halved in the next 12 years to avoid cataclysmic climate change leading to at least $54 trillion in damage.

The report ― the second installment of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated update on the causes and effects of anthropogenic warming from 13 federal agencies ― devoted its entire third chapter to water contamination and depletion. Aging, deteriorating infrastructure means “water systems face considerable risk even without anticipated future climate changes,” the report states. But warming-linked droughts and drastic changes in seasonal precipitation “will add to the stress on water supplies and adversely impact water supply.”

Nearly every sector of the economy is susceptible to water system changes. And utilities are particularly at risk. In the fourth chapter, the report’s roughly 300 authors conclude, “Most U.S. power plants … rely on a steady supply of water for cooling, and operations are expected to be affected by changes in water availability and temperature increases.”

For nuclear plants, that warning is particularly grave. Reactors require 720 gallons of water per megawatt-hour of electricity they produce, according to data from the National Energy Technology Laboratory in West Virginia cited in 2012 by the magazine New Scientist. That compares with the roughly 500 gallons coal requires and 190 gallons natural gas needs to produce the same amount of electricity. Solar plants, by contrast, use approximately 20 gallons per megawatt-hour, mostly for cleaning equipment, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.

Nuclear plants are already vulnerable to drought. Federal regulations require plants to shut down if water in the river or lake that feeds its cooling drops below a certain level. By the end of the 2012 North American heat wave, nuclear generation fell to its lowest point in a decade, with plants operating at only 93 percent of capacity.

The availability of water is one problem, particularly for the majority of U.S. nuclear plants located far from the coasts and dependent on freshwater. Another is the temperature of the water that’s available.

Nearly half the nuclear plants in the U.S. use once-through cooling systems, meaning they draw water from a local source, cool their reactors, then discharge the warmed water into another part of the river, lake, aquifer, or ocean. Environmental regulations bar plants from releasing used water back into nature above certain temperatures. In recent years, regulators in states like New York and California rejected plant operators’ requests to pull more water from local rivers, essentially mandating the installation of costly closed-loop systems that cool and reuse cooling water.

In 2012, Connecticut’s lone nuclear power plant shut down one of its two units because the seawater used to cool the plant was too warm. The heat wave that struck Europe this summer forced utilities to scale back electricity production at nuclear plants in Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. In France, the utility EDF shut down four reactors in one day.

“Already they’re having trouble competing against natural gas and renewable energy,” said John Rogers, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Add onto that high water temperatures, high air temperatures and drought. It’s just another challenge.”

But water has yet to pose an existential crisis. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that it considers climate change when reviewing applications for nuclear plants’ construction or operation permits and that it has never rejected one over concerns about dwindling cooling water resources.

“For plants on lakes and rivers, the basic consideration will continue to be whether or not the water level in that body is high enough to meet the conditions of the license,” said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “To this point, there have been no indications in the NRC’s analyses to suggest that plants would have to deal with the potential for the water bodies to no longer be able to fulfill their function.”

If or when that situation arises, a plant would have to propose a plan to maintain the requirements of the license, likely by reducing water intake and cutting electricity production, he said.

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There are ways to make nuclear plants more efficient with water. Closed-loop systems already cool 40 percent of the country’s reactors. For more than a decade, regulators and industry players have been discussing the feasibility of air-cooled condensers, which use electricity generated by the plant to power air conditioners that cool reactors without water. But the technology siphons roughly 7 percent of the power produced by the plant and has yet to be installed at any U.S. nuclear station, according to the industry-funded Nuclear Energy Institute.

Another approach is to use recycled water. To cool its three reactors, the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona sources most of the 20,000 gallons it uses per minute from reclaimed sewage from a treatment plant near Phoenix — a technique hailed in 2016 as “a feat of engineering” amid a drought.

Breakthroughs like that could make nuclear an attractive option for powering solutions to water scarcity in the years to come, such as desalinating brackish or saltwater and moving it to drought-parched regions.

“That’s energy intensive,” said Matt Wald, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. “If you want to do that without adding carbon emissions, you’re likely to look at nuclear power as a way to do that.”

That, however, gets to the heart of the biggest question looming over the nuclear industry: Is it, given the radioactive waste it produces, clean energy?

For the growing number of states and municipalities pledging to use 100 percent renewable energy by the middle of the century, the answer is maybe.

Hawaii became the first state to adopt a 100 percent renewable electricity rule in 2015, pledging to quit gas and coal by 2045. The law makes no mention of nuclear, probably because the archipelago state has no reactors and requires a minimum two-thirds vote from both houses of the legislature to approve the construction of a nuclear plant or radioactive waste site.

The 100 percent clean electricity bill that California passed in August mandates that the state generate 60 percent of its electricity from renewables like wind and solar by 2030. But it gives regulators another 15 years after that to complete the overhaul with energy sources considered nonrenewable, including nuclear power, large hydropower dams, and gas-fired power plants that capture and store emissions.

A statute that Atlanta passed in June to get the city to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 is vague, listing nuclear as a source of clean energy but vowing to get all its power from renewables.

For the Sierra Club, the environmental giant making a huge push to get cities and states to go all renewable, nuclear power is “a uniquely dangerous energy technology for humanity” and “no solution to climate change.”

“There’s no reason to keep throwing good money after bad on nuclear energy,” Lauren Lantry, a Sierra Club spokeswoman, said by email. “It’s clear that every dollar spent on nuclear is one less dollar spent on truly safe, affordable, and renewable energy sources like wind, solar, energy efficiency, battery storage, and smart grid technology.”

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Closing nuclear plants risks rise in greenhouse gas emissions, report warns

by aundreaburch71 Posted on November 18, 2018

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

Looming climate breakdown is opening fresh divisions among environmentalists over nuclear energy, with a major advocacy group calling for struggling nuclear plants to be propped up to avoid losing their low-carbon power.

Nuclear is the single largest source of low-carbon electricity in the U.S. But a third of nuclear plants are unprofitable or scheduled to close, risking a rise in greenhouse gas emissions if they are replaced by coal or natural gas, a major Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report has found.

U.S. emissions could increase by as much as 6 percent if struggling plants are shuttered early, the report warns. This scenario has put pressure on many environmental groups to reevaluate their intrinsic opposition to nuclear energy as a dangerous blight that must be eradicated.

“We are running out of time to make the emissions reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis,” said Steve Clemmer, director of energy research for the UCS climate and energy program. “Losing a low-carbon source of electricity like nuclear power is going to make decarbonization even harder than it already is. Nuclear has risks, it’s not a perfect technology, but there have to be trade-offs.”

The U.S., like the rest of the world, faces a steep challenge to avoid the worst ravages of heatwaves, drought, extreme weather, and flooding. The IPCC report states emissions must reach net zero by 2050 to avoid the most punishing climate change impacts, whereas the Trump administration is currently dismantling every major policy aimed at lowering emissions in the U.S.

The U.S. has an aging fleet of nearly 100 reactors at 60 nuclear plants, with many nearing the ends of their expected lifetimes. Five plants have shut down since 2013, with a further five set to shutter over the next eight years.

In total, a third of U.S. nuclear power plants are set to close down or are unprofitable largely due to a major shift to cheaper natural gas. As nuclear provides more than half of the United States’ low-carbon energy, this situation “raises serious concerns about our ability to achieve the deep cuts in carbon emissions needed to limit the worst impacts of climate change,” the UCS report states.

Replacements for nuclear will vary across the country. The huge Diablo Canyon plant in California, for example, will probably spawn a surge in renewable energy when it shuts in 2025. But in other states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, weak clean energy policies and the abundance of natural gas mean the closure of nuclear plants will probably raise emissions.

“Renewables can fill a lot of the gap but it’s a timing issue,” Clemmer said. “Over a long timeframe, we can ramp up renewables and phase out coal, gas, and nuclear generation, but we don’t have that time. We have to cut half of all emissions by 2030, according to the IPCC. We can’t physically ramp up renewables fast enough.”

Anti-nuclear campaigning has been a foundational shibboleth for groups such as Greenpeace, which has pointed to disasters such as Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 as evidence that the sector should be shut down.

While the UCS have never been militant opponents of nuclear power, Clemmer said “we are getting a bit more vocal” about the benefits of keeping plants open as the scale of the climate crisis has become clearer.

Many opponents remain implacable, however.

“Nuclear reactors are a bad bet for a climate strategy,” said Gregory Jaczko, who was chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Obama administration. “The Union of Concerned Scientist models don’t reflect the reality of the United States electricity market. Renewables are getting cheaper faster than expected and are in some cases the least expensive source of electricity.”

Jaczko said new nuclear is a “financial boondoggle,” with investments better placed in solar or wind. “Employing nuclear for climate change is like Dorothy seeking the Wizard of Oz to get home,” he added. “It’s an expensive enticing mirage.”

Clemmer said he agreed that new nuclear plants are enormously expensive, but said there was a case for the U.S. government to invest around $814 million a year to keep existing unprofitable plants online, given the cleaner energy they provide. “Environmental groups may come round to this, but I’m just not sure,” he said.

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Young activists and Ocasio-Cortez push Pelosi for Green New Deal

by JIYKelle8195347 Posted on November 15, 2018

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The young climate activists clustered into California Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office this week to demand a “Green New Deal” hadn’t wasted any time. As soon as it became clear that Democrats will have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, they descended on Washington to exert whatever clout they had.

The protest in Pelosi’s office was organized by the Sunrise Movement, a group of young people who have been pushing for climate action for a little over a year. They may have some sway with Pelosi, who issued a supportive statement while they were occupying her office on Tuesday. But with a Republican-held Senate and Donald Trump in the White House, the chances of enacting meaningful climate legislation next year are close to zero. So what’s their strategy here?

Varshini Prakash, Sunrise’s co-founder and communications director (and one of our Grist 50), said they have two objectives. First, they want all Democrats in leadership positions to stop accepting contributions from fossil fuel interests. And they want Pelosi to back something along the lines of a “Green New Deal,” a massive government mobilization to build a new, non-polluting, economy while also creating jobs.

Prakash said she was under no illusions about Pelosi’s ability to drive a climate bill through a Republican-controlled Senate, but she believes both of the group’s objectives could still be satisfied. Politicians don’t need anyone’s permission to stop taking oil money, and Democrats could set up a select committee in the House to begin laying the groundwork for a massive climate jobs program. As it happens, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newly elected Representative from New York, joined the protesters outside Pelosi’s office, and has already proposed such a committee.

House Democrats need to start hammering out policy now, Prakash said, so that they will have strong legislation to pass when climate-conscious politicians take the Senate. In the meantime, Sunrise will be building a campaign to elect politicians who will support their cause at both the state and federal level. “This is definitely not a one-off event,” she said.

In a statement, Pelosi said she welcomed “the presence of these activists” and noted that she has already recommended reviving a select committee on climate change, which Republicans disbanded when they took the House in 2011.

That’s not enough for Prakash. “The old committee was toothless,” she said “It had no funding and no ability to put forward legislation — its purpose was to make connections and raise awareness. The time for messaging to the public about climate change is over, we need action.”

Pelosi’s office had no comment when we requested a response, but Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, told reporters that even Pelosi’s proposal for a select committee goes too far. It’s unnecessary, Pallone said, because the environmental policy committee he is expected to lead can handle the job.

In her statement, Pelosi said that many Democrats had campaigned on something that looks very much like a Green New Deal. “House Democrats ran on and won on our bold campaign for a $1 trillion investment in our infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient to the climate crisis, while creating 16 million new good-paying jobs across the country.”

Environmental journalist Mark Hertsgaard, who might have been the first person to use the term “Green New Deal” back in 1998, said Pelosi needs to embrace the rhetoric of young activists if she wants this idea to take fire.

“The next step is to get Pelosi to use those words, Green New Deal,” Hertsgaard said. “She’s already on board, but her statement about 16 million jobs and $1 billion investment in infrastructure, that’s policy wonk talk out of Washington.The average person can understand what a Green New Deal is.”

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