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Many young voters don’t see a difference between Clinton and Trump on climate

by mamieisabelle68 Posted on July 31, 2016

The poll shebang

Many young voters don’t see a difference between Clinton and Trump on climate

By on Jul 31, 2016 9:30 amShare

PHILADELPHIA — One presidential candidate says that scientists who work on climate change are “practically calling it a hoax” and wants to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency. The other calls climate change “an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time.” And about four out of 10 millennials in battleground states think there is no difference between their views on the issue.

Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate group released polling at the Democratic National Convention this past week focused on millennials in 11 battleground states, conducted by Global Strategy Group in June and early July.

According to the poll, 21 percent of millennials are Bernie Sanders supporters who are so disillusioned with Clinton that they wouldn’t plan to vote for her in a general election if there are third-party candidates as well. Young voters are one of the more unpredictable factors in the 2016 election, because they’re more likely than other age groups to support Sanders and less likely to vote in general. Democrats run the risk of losing Sanders holdouts to a third-party candidate. Nearly seven out of 10 Sanders supporters believe there’s no daylight between Trump and Clinton on the issues they care about.

NextGen Climate/Project New America Battleground Millennial Survey

That is alarming news for Clinton. But the numbers could change. NextGen’s findings suggest that if Democrats emphasize climate change and clean energy, they could make progress in winning over this demographic.

Young voters polled, including pro-Sanders voters, rank clean air and water and switching to renewable energy as high priorities. Three-quarters are more likely to support a candidate who wants to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels. On the flip side, Trump’s position on the EPA could hurt him. Millennials like the EPA, the polling found — about as much as they like Beyoncé.

NextGen Climate/Project New America Battleground Millennial Survey

But this may not help Clinton much because young voters don’t recognize how different she is from Trump. Forty-four percent say there’s no distinction between the two candidates on transitioning away from fossil fuels, and 43 percent say there’s no distinction on protecting air and water.

Maybe that’s in part because Sanders hammered Clinton over her positions on fracking and fossil fuel extraction during the primaries.“ On the ground, students just don’t know the difference between the candidates,” Heather Hargreaves, NextGen’s vice president, said at a briefing on the poll.

“It’s not just ignorance,” added Andrew Baumann of Global Strategy Group. “They assume she’s more conservative than she is.” He continued, “I think part of the goal is to educate” voters and reintroduce Clinton.

But if her convention speech was any indication, Clinton isn’t interested in focusing much more on this issue, beyond the usual applause lines. She mentioned in passing how clean energy will lead to job creation, but she didn’t dwell on it. She left the task of drawing a contrast between her climate policies and Trump’s to speakers like California Gov. Jerry Brown and League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski.

Even if Clinton isn’t going to be heavily focused on climate, Steyer and his group plan to press the issue on her behalf. NextGen is putting $25 million into efforts to turn out young voters who are concerned about climate change, including at more than 200 college campuses. The group’s hope is that young voters will understand that the stakes are so high for climate change that they will vote for Clinton even if they don’t love her.

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Many young voters don’t see a difference between Clinton and Trump on climate

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For this black church, supporting climate action is a no-brainer

by WesleyRosman Posted on July 29, 2016

preach

For this black church, supporting climate action is a no-brainer

By on Jul 29, 2016 7:06 amShare

Earlier this month, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, or AME — one of the oldest black churches, with 2.5 million members around the world — made history. At their general conference in Philadelphia, they voted to hold local, state, and national policymakers accountable for climate action to make the Paris climate agreement viable. The resolution from the the 200-plus-year-old black church is the first to address climate change wholly, committing to “support climate policies that will protect families, create healthy and safe communities, and build a clean energy future.”

The resolution was met with strong affirmation from congregants around the world, says Jackie Dupont-Walker, who directs the social action commission for the AME. Some individual churches had already taken a stance on climate change: An AME church in Zimbabwe, for example, already incorporates it into its Sunday school curriculum.

While some might be surprised that AME made such a bold move, it’s perfectly keeping in the church’s tradition. AME emerged in response to racial segregation in Philadelphia’s Methodist church. Addressing climate change, which church leaders says disproportionately impacts African Americans, makes perfect sense.

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For this black church, supporting climate action is a no-brainer

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Finally, the climate teardown of Trump you’ve been waiting for

by wilbertbarber4 Posted on July 28, 2016

What can Brown do for you?

Finally, the climate teardown of Trump you’ve been waiting for

By on Jul 28, 2016Share

PHILADELPHIA — Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention was dedicated to ripping apart the GOP nominee while extending an olive branch to blue-collar voters and moderate Republicans. With so much material to choose from, perhaps it’s no surprise that Joe Biden, Tim Kaine, Michael Bloomberg, and President Obama stuck largely to their opponent’s character and business record.

So it was left to California Gov. Jerry Brown, as chief executive of one of the most progressive states in the union on climate and energy — and one suffering from a multi-year drought that Donald Trump doesn’t think is real — to make the contrast between Trump and the Dems on sustainability. Brown devoted his entire speech to tearing down the real estate developer’s public statements on climate science, with one-liners earning cheers from the audience.

“Trump says global warming is a hoax. I say Trump is a fraud,” Brown declared. “Trump says there’s no drought in California. I say Trump lies.”

When Obama closed out the night, he provided a broad argument that America is in fact making progress, and that Americans can’t give up on “perfecting our union.” He touched lightly on climate and energy in a conciliatory note to voters who might not always fit the Democratic mold, saying: “If you want to fight climate change, we’ve got to engage not only young people on college campuses, but reach out to the coal miner who’s worried about taking care of his family, the single mom worried about gas prices.”

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Finally, the climate teardown of Trump you’ve been waiting for

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A solar-powered plane just flew around the world

by BWYKendric Posted on July 26, 2016

around the world in 23 days

A solar-powered plane just flew around the world

By on Jul 26, 2016 4:18 pmShare

The scrappy plane we’ve all been rooting for just completed the first solar-powered flight around the world, no fossil fuels burned. On Tuesday, Solar Impulse 2 ended its epic 24,500-mile journey and landed back home in Abu Dhabi.

The one-seater plane, sporting 17,000 solar cells on its wings, is as wide as a Boeing 747 but light as a feather — well, as light as a car, anyway. Though the 16-month trip was largely a stunt to promote renewable energy, it’s a milestone for aviation as well.

Bertrand Piccard, one of two Swiss pilots who flew the Solar Impulse, predicted that medium-size electric planes will begin carrying passengers within the next decade. We’re a fan of that possibility — and the EPA might be, too. The agency recently announced plans to begin limiting carbon emissions from airplanes since they pose a threat to public health.

One thing we can say now: Renewable energy is gellin’ — as in Magellan.

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A solar-powered plane just flew around the world

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Are giant suction cups the key to cheap wind power?

by bileteaviononline Posted on July 26, 2016

Suckers

Are giant suction cups the key to cheap wind power?

By on Jul 26, 2016Share

The coolest new innovation in offshore wind energy right now is, essentially, a giant toilet plunger. Put enough of these plungers together and they could help power Detroit, Chicago, and the other metropolises of the Midwest.

Lake Erie Energy Development and Fred Olsen Renewables, a European energy company, plan on building a wind installation with the help of these toilet plungers, aiming for six 50-foot high turbines in Lake Erie, seven miles off the coast of Cleveland.

Putting wind turbines in the Great Lakes instead of on Midwestern farmland makes plenty of sense. Compared to farmland, underwater land is cheap. There’s also more wind on the water, because there are no inconvenient trees or buildings in the way. The Great Lakes are freshwater, so mechanical parts won’t wear down as fast as they would in the ocean’s saltwater. And big cities surround the Great Lakes, which makes it easy to connect a new installation to a pre-existing power plant.

The toilet plunger method (more formally known as the “Mono Bucket”) is an example of how a technological game-changer can often be incredibly low tech. Imagine a bunch of giant plungers in a lake. When the plungers descend, the water trapped in the bottom is pushed out, creating a vacuum. The vacuum pulls the plunger down to the lake bed and anchors it. This provides a solid base for a wind turbine and takes much less time than the standard method of using pile drivers to push concrete-filled steel pipes into the ground. It’s also less environmentally destructive.

This “Icebreaker” project  — a nod to the ice floes that dot Lake Erie in the winter — is expected to generate 20 megawatts by the fall of 2018. But the potential for expanding this project is enormous. The Great Lakes have one-fifth of the country’s impressive but unused offshore wind energy, a mind-boggling 700 gigawatts, enough to power as many as 525 million households, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That’s nearly four times as much energy as U.S. households currently use.

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Are giant suction cups the key to cheap wind power?

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There’s a new global climate deal that you probably haven’t heard of yet

by OrlandoK65 Posted on July 25, 2016

European Climate Action and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader

Oh, Vienna

There’s a new global climate deal that you probably haven’t heard of yet

By on Jul 25, 2016 4:28 pmShare

The nations of the world are on the verge of reaching a new deal to fight climate change — while also protecting the ozone layer.

Talks in Vienna, Austria, have been leading toward a worldwide agreement to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). They were widely adopted to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in air conditioners and refrigerators after it was discovered that CFCs were creating a hole in the ozone layer. The Montreal Protocol, a landmark treaty, phased CFCs out. But while HFCs don’t damage the ozone layer, it turns out they are potent greenhouses gases, trapping thousands of times more heat than carbon dioxide, so now they need to go too. Researchers think that by cutting HFCs globally, we could prevent up to 0.5 degrees C of global warming by 2100.

Negotiators are currently working on adding an HFC-cutting amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which would be the single largest measure to fight climate change since the Paris Agreement was reached last December. Under the current draft of the amendment, developed nations like the United States would eliminate HFCs by the 2030s, while developing nations would have until the 2040s. Developed nations would also help pay for the transition. The deal could be finalized in Rwanda in October.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who’s been playing a key role in the negotiations, says, “an HFC phase-down amendment is a critical piece of the climate puzzle.”

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There’s a new global climate deal that you probably haven’t heard of yet

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The GOP has a plagiarism problem and it’s not Melania Trump

by MOLMatthias Posted on July 22, 2016

The GOP has a plagiarism problem and it’s not Melania Trump

By on Jul 22, 2016Share

One of the biggest headlines out of the Republican National Convention this week was that Melania Trump’s speech plagiarized Michelle Obama’s words from 2008.

Though not as puzzling, or high-profile, as her unexplained gaffe, there’s much more insidious plagiarism that we see every day in politics. Like, for example, Republicans stealing near-exact language from the dirty energy industry. The 2016 Republican platform calls coal “an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource.” The language is remarkably similar to that of the lobbying group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which describes coal as “an affordable, abundant and increasingly clean domestic energy resource.”

Even when the language isn’t lifted directly, the party often copies ideas from industry and  big donors.

The GOP platform includes a proposal “to shift responsibility for environmental regulation from the federal bureaucracy to the states and to transform the EPA into an independent bipartisan commission, similar to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with structural safeguards against politicized science.” Politico notes that the idea comes from Pepperdine University Professor Stephen Hayward, who happens to be a fellow at the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute and treasurer of the Koch’s money-machine Donors Capital Fund.

You also see the same kind of borrowed language when politicians are trying to dodge the issue of climate change.

Last year, Arch Coal handily supplied members of Congress with a memo about how to respond to Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change, including noting that the encyclical “does not appear to address the tragedy of global energy poverty” and that billions “around the globe are living without electrification and suffering though untold poverty and disease as a result.” Republican politicians echoed these points everywhere. “I think on the whole that much of the effort to reduce global warming actually hurts the poor,” House Science chair Lamar Smith said last year. The idea that coal is the only good way to lift the world’s poor out of energy poverty originally traces back to Peabody Energy, one of the world’s largest coal companies.

Copying ideas is not the same as copying language. But in a way, it’s even more insidious, because it’s so tough to catch politicians in the act — and because pro-coal policies are much more damaging to Americans than encouraging words about hard work and integrity. And to be clear, Democrats lift ideas from special interests and wealthy donors, too. Among Republicans dealing with energy, climate change, and the environment, though, the problem is especially pervasive given the powerful lobbying arm pushing to protect industry profits.

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The GOP has a plagiarism problem and it’s not Melania Trump

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4 things Trump got very wrong in his convention speech

by Rowena3785 Posted on July 22, 2016

Tall tales

4 things Trump got very wrong in his convention speech

By on Jul 22, 2016Share

Donald Trump’s big speech at the Republican convention on Thursday didn’t contain a single reference to the environment or climate change. It was vague on policy overall, focusing heavily on the primary themes of this year’s Republican National Convention: bashing Hillary Clinton’s character and fear-mongering over crime and national security, with a heavy dose of Islamophobia and xenophobia.

There was, however, one section that dealt hazily with energy policy. Unfortunately, it was filled with falsehoods. Let’s go through the four key assertions one at a time:

• “Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and we will end it.”

The apparent source for this figure is the National Association of Manufacturers, a conservative business lobbying organization that is fiercely opposed to regulations. The group’s $2 trillion estimate calculates only the cost of regulatory compliance and not the cost savings that result from government rules. So the fact that environmental and workplace safety regulations prevent health-care expenses and missed work days, for example, is simply ignored in this calculation. When you do account for the benefits of regulations, they often end up saving far more money than they cost. Experts debunked NAM’s report; the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service cited the Office of Management and Budget in calling the kind of methodology used “inherently flawed.” No unbiased, empirical cost-benefit analysis would come up with anything close to the number Trump cites.

• “We are going to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy. This will produce more than $20 trillion in job-creating economic activity over the next four decades.”

The source for this $20 trillion figure is the Institute for Energy Research, an organization funded by the Koch brothers. As The New York Times has previously noted, “economic reality” contradicts this projection. Additional fossil fuel production has diminishing returns because increased supply means lower prices. So, according to experts the Times interviewed, the number is wildly exaggerated.

• “My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steelworkers of our country out of work — that will never happen when I am president.”

Hillary Clinton’s admission that coal workers will be put out of work in the years ahead was not a statement of what she wants; it was a statement of reality. The coal industry is shedding jobs because of mechanization, tapped-out mountains, and increasing competition from natural gas and renewables. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan would prevent backsliding toward more coal use but not seriously worsen the industry’s already grim prospects. So Trump can’t actually reverse coal’s decline just by rolling back regulations. In any case, Clinton, unlike Trump, has a plan to put laid-off workers from this dying industry back to work in growing sectors — including, but not limited to, wind and solar energy production.

• “With these new economic policies, trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country. This new wealth will improve the quality of life for all Americans — We will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of tomorrow. This, in turn, will create millions more jobs.”

Trump is right that infrastructure investment would be good for the economy. Too bad his party’s own platform explicitly rejects spending on railways and many other kinds of infrastructure. And, in reality, Trump’s insane budget plan would leave no money for such projects.

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4 things Trump got very wrong in his convention speech

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Hey, someone mentioned climate change on stage at the Republican convention

by SusanneStansfie Posted on July 21, 2016

Hey, someone mentioned climate change on stage at the Republican convention

By on Jul 21, 2016Share

Harold Hamm, a fracking mogul and GOP donor, ventured where few Republicans are willing to go on Wednesday night: He mentioned climate change on stage at the Republican National Convention. “Climate change isn’t our biggest problem,” he said. “It’s Islamic terrorism.” OK, not a rousing call to action, but at least there’s the implication that climate is a problem.

But, of course, the real focus of the speech was the need for more oil and gas drilling — and how it could save us from the bad guys. “We can double U.S. oil production again and put America in a global league of its own,” Hamm said. “Every time we can’t drill a well in America, terrorism is being funded. Every onerous regulation puts American lives at risk.”

Currently an energy advisor to Trump, Hamm is reportedly being considered for energy secretary, a cabinet position that oversees nuclear safety and funding for energy research and technology. During President Obama’s two terms, the spot has been filled by first a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and second a nuclear physicist.

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Hey, someone mentioned climate change on stage at the Republican convention

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Extreme heat is exhausting and expensive

by EarnestTrumbo Posted on July 21, 2016

cool it

Extreme heat is exhausting and expensive

By on Jul 21, 2016Share

It’s July, the month where the whole world collectively reaches for the nearest chilled beverage. Work be damned: Hordes of city-dwellers are relocating to the seaside, celebrities frolic in Ibiza, and most of us in the continental United States are tethered to the air conditioner right now.

Just kidding — first-world problems are the least of our worries in the middle of this 14-month global heat streak. It turns out that increasingly hot summers are going to wreak total havoc on some countries’ GDP, as excessively high temperatures make working during peak daylight hours impossible.

According to a just-released United Nations study, poorer workers and manual laborers are especially affected by heat stress. In developing countries, fewer working hours can translate into serious economic strain. In Southeast Asia, heat is already cutting work hours by 15 to 20 percent. By 2050, that number could be as high as 40 percent.

“It’s a whole working month that would be lost because it’s so hot you can’t work,” the report’s coauthor Tord Kjellstrom told the Washington Post. If global warming continues at its current rate, extreme heat could cost global economies $2 trillion by 2030.

Though excess heat primarily affects poor or middle-income countries, the report also notes that more prosperous countries such as Sweden, Norway, and Russia could see their working hours impacted by extreme winters.

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Extreme heat is exhausting and expensive

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