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Climate change is forcing a rift in the Murdoch family

As wildfires spread across Australia last November, newspapers and television networks owned by conservative media tycoon Rupert Murdoch started pushing a false narrative: Arson, not climate change, was responsible for the crisis.

That wasn’t the only inaccurate claim being bandied about by Murdoch’s conservative news outlets in Australia and the U.S. while millions of acres burned and an estimated billion animals perished. Fox News spread the incorrect claim that 200 arsonists had set Australia on fire. News Corp, the linchpin of Murdoch’s media empire, also pushed the false ideas that environmentalists were opposed to fire prevention measures and that this year’s fires were not out of line with what’s occurred in previous years. The latter claim is diametrically contrary to the science, which indicates rising temperatures are creating conditions ripe for prolonged mega-wildfires.

Murdoch is no stranger to criticism. In a recent op-ed, climate scientist Michael Mann called the mogul an “arsonist.” A six-month New York Times investigation found the Murdoch family turned their outlets into “political influence machines” that “destabilized democracy in North America, Europe, and Australia.” In 2011, Murdoch was denounced left and right when a tabloid he owned called News of the World shuttered after employees hacked into a number of phones, including the device of a recent murder victim.

But it is unusual for Murdoch to catch heat from his own family. In a dramatic turn of events, a spokesperson for Murdoch’s son, James, said the scion felt “frustration” over the way his father’s business covered the crisis on Wednesday. James and his wife Kathryn Murdoch are “particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary,” according to the spokesperson’s statement, which was first reported by the Daily Beast. Murdoch’s decision to distance himself from his family’s views on climate are notable in no small part because he was recently in line to take over the company — his brother, Lachlan, got the gig — and is on the News Corp board of directors.

The spokesperson’s statement says that “Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established,” and that’s true. As chief executive of Sky, James pushed the British television service to go carbon-neutral. He invited former vice president Al Gore to give a lecture on climate change at a Fox corporate retreat. Meanwhile, Kathryn is, by any definition, a climate advocate. She’s a trustee of the Environmental Defense Fund and Climate Central, and was the director of strategy and communications for the Clinton Climate Initiative for four years.

Now that James is no longer directly involved with his family’s company apart from sitting on News Corp’s board of directors, his comments will likely have little bearing on whether News Corp and Fox News continue to sow disinformation. But fans of HBO’s blockbuster TV drama Succession, a thinly veiled dramatization of the Murdoch family’s exploits, know the younger Murdoch’s public stand would make for extremely good television.

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Climate change is forcing a rift in the Murdoch family

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The pope might make destroying the earth a sin. Will Catholics listen?

Pope Francis is not your average pope. He’s weighed in on prison reform and women’s rights, and he wrote a whole encyclical on climate change in 2015. On Friday, at the 20th World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law, Francis waded into the climate change debate again with an unusual idea: perhaps environmental destruction should be classified as an official sin.

During his speech, Francis said he was thinking about adding “ecological sin against the common home” to the catechism, the book that summarizes Catholic belief. “It is a sin against future generations and is manifested in the acts and habits of pollution and destruction of the harmony of the environment,” he said.

Some theology experts think the pope’s interest in the environment is a reflection of his social justice beliefs. “Climate change will impact the poor and marginalized first and worst across the world who have the least capacity to adapt or to recover from disasters,” Erin Lothes Biviano, associate professor of theology at the College of St. Elizabeth, told E&E News. “It’s viewed not as an environmental problem, but an environmental and social problem.”

But will Catholics accept the idea that destroying the environment is an offense against God? The pope’s past efforts to integrate environmental stewardship into the Catholic faith haven’t always convinced his flock. A survey conducted a year after he published his climate-themed encyclical found that the call to action backfired among conservative Americans. Right-leaning Americans were less worried about rising temperatures after hearing his message. Only 22.5 percent of Americans who had even heard of the encyclical expressed concern over climate change. And the Pope actually lost some credibility with conservative Catholics.

Francis might not be the climate influencer advocates hoped he’d be. But that doesn’t necessarily mean all Catholics are ignoring his message. Emma Frances Bloomfield, an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Las Vegas and the author of a book called Communication Strategies for Engaging Climate Skeptics, says it all depends on whether people believe the environment is related to faith.

Folks who see environmental conservation and religion as two entirely separate spheres will likely ignore Francis’ emphasis on the subject. But for religious people who are already inclined to think the two go together, an authority figure like the pope pushing for stewardship might be highly effective. “The idea of casting environmental damage as an ecological sin really amplifies how important the pope and Catholics think environmental damage is,” she said. “If Pope Francis really solidifies it as part of the catechism it can encourage Christians who are uncertain about the environment to consider it more strongly.”

In other words, preaching to the choir may actually be useful … when the pope does it.

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The pope might make destroying the earth a sin. Will Catholics listen?

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What the climate petition filed by 16 kids at the U.N. really means

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What the climate petition filed by 16 kids at the U.N. really means

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‘We’re not alone:’ Thousands of NYC students join Greta’s climate strike

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‘We’re not alone:’ Thousands of NYC students join Greta’s climate strike

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We have to transform food production to take on climate change, leaked report says

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We have to transform food production to take on climate change, leaked report says

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Climate experts to New York: Go green or go home

Thirty-five scholars, policy experts, and researchers from across the country are urging New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers to commit the state to zero net emissions by 2040 by the end of this year’s legislative session in June.

In a letter sent to Cuomo and state Senate leaders on Monday, these experts laid out how and why New York state is uniquely positioned to achieve this goal and serve as a model for other state, national, and international policies.

The thinking behind the letter: New York finally has the support it needs to pass strong climate legislation, so lawmakers should strike while the iron is hot.

“Now that the Senate has flipped to Democratic control and is led by advocates of climate action as well, this seems a perfect time to enact a new law,” said Michael Gerrard, a signee and professor at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

Cuomo has a track record of talking big, and sometimes acting big, on climate. He famously banned fracking in New York state, and was one of President Trump’s most fiery critics over the plan to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. But Cuomo’s critics point out that he has been slow to condemn the Williams pipeline, which would bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania into the state.

With the exception of the pipeline, things are already looking greener in New York. The state Senate just passed a landmark package of bills on Tuesday, amending the state constitution to guarantee a right to clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment for all. They’re also in the process of considering the Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA), a progressive measure that would mandate a totally carbon-neutral economy by 2050 and institute a handful of equity provisions. Plus, New York City just passed its own Green New Deal, and Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to take the New York real estate industry to task over its emissions.

The letter proposes a two-pronged approach to reaching zero net emissions by 2040: Decarbonizing the energy sector first, and only then buying offsets for some of the most challenging sources of emissions to eliminate, such as those from agriculture, flying, and cement production.

“Achieving zero net emissions, rather than zero direct emissions (which means not emitting any CO2 at all), is ambitious, consistent with the scientific recommendations of the IPCC, and provides greater flexibility to meet climate goals at lower cost,” the letter reads.

The experts say decarbonizing electricity is the “linchpin” to achieving zero emissions, not only because energy is one of the biggest emissions culprits, but also because carbon-neutral energy is essential for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the industrial, heating, and transportation sectors. They advocate for using all possible forms of carbon-free energy. “The legislation should focus on achieving key ends (carbon-free electricity) rather than specifying a limited set of means (specific technologies),” they write.

Michael Davidson, a signee and research fellow at Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, said he is excited to see what New York state passes. The resulting legislation be a guide for other states looking to uphold the Paris Agreement, and it could inform the national discussion about how to decarbonize the economy, he said.

“We hope that the leaders in Albany will now sit down and hammer out a deal that works for everyone,” said Gerrard. “The differences seem quite bridgeable.”

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Climate experts to New York: Go green or go home

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Sorry, but you’ve got a gas emissions problem

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The burgeoning love affair between Americans and renewable energy is turning into a love triangle with natural gas.

That’s one of the findings from the U.S. Energy Information Administration recently released annual forecast. The projections, widely used by bureaucrats and business people, show renewables and gas becoming the main source of our electricity and sales of gasoline-burning cars declining. But greenhouse gas emissions aren’t expected to fall much. What gives?

One reason: Even though coal emissions are falling, emissions from natural gas are making up the difference. And the country keeps using more energy. Last year for instance, according to another recent EIA report, U.S. emissions ticked up as more Americans turned up their air conditioners and heaters to stay comfortable in extreme weather.

EIA

It’s an open question whether things will play out this way, of course. The EIA’s predictions have consistently underestimated the growth of renewable energy (more on the caveats below). In 2009, for instance, the EIA expected wind and solar to take 20 years to reach 56 gigawatts of capacity. Instead, thanks to a suite of new policies from President Barack Obama’s administration, the U.S. built 89 GW in just six years. As Mike Grunwald from Politico put it, “Oops.”

Still, this particular crystal ball provides a solid estimate of the country’s current trajectory, because its forecasts are built on recent trends. A quick perusal of the following charts will give you a sense of how much climate progress the country is making.

First, the good news. Renewable energy is poised to grow so robustly that it would easily exceeds states’ carbon-cutting goals.

For the foreseeable future, the United States will be turning to solar panels, wind turbines, and gas plants to generate electricity, according to the forecast, while shuttering nuclear, oil, and coal plants.

All this points to renewables and natural gas pairing up to provide most of our electricity. That makes some sense, because renewables play well with gas. Gas plants are easy to control — they can ramp up and down cheaply. And renewables depend on nature (the rising sun and the gusting wind) so need a partner to fill in the gaps.

Electricity is just one slice of our oh-so-yummy energy pie. But that slice should grow as more people begin to buy electric cars. The EIA projects that cars with internal combustion engines will lose market share in the coming years. But it expects that decline to level off shortly after 2020.

EIA

When you look at the other sources of energy demand, like industry and buildings, the EIA sees something similar happening: Emissions are flat, or slowly falling.

Add it all up and you get per-person emissions declining, but declining pretty darn slowly. Even if oil prices spike, the EIA expects just a 25 percent decline in per-capita emissions by 2050.

There are caveats here. The energy analyst Alex Gilbert, co-founder of the energy-research company SparkLibrary, thinks it’s also unrealistic to expect coal to pull out of its death spiral (the EIA sees that plunge mellowing into a glide), and points out that EIA is predicting that folks will pretty much stop building wind turbines, which seems… unlikely.

What’s more, the EIA’s expectations for a shift away from gas-powered cars lag far behind estimates by others. The EIA has also consistently underestimated the growth of renewable energy, and it may do the same with the growth of electric vehicles.

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Sorry, but you’ve got a gas emissions problem

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Ryan Zinke’s new gig could be a disaster for the environment too

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Trump’s former secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, departed Washington in January amid a barrage of ethics investigations. It didn’t take long, but Zinke has managed to find a new gig that sees him going from one controversial enterprise (the Trump administration) to another: He’s now a cryptocurrency guy (yes, really).

In an interview with Vice News, Zinke, sporting MAGA socks, made his post-government business debut as the managing director of Artillery One, a little-known blockchain and cryptocurrency investment company based out of North Carolina. He said he’s hoping to make the private crypto company “great again.”

But making something great again implies it was great at some point in the past.

It’s no secret that cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is the first and most valuable, have a huge environmental toll. Most are maintained by a network of specialized computers that crunch mathematical puzzles, or “mine” to log transactions and make new coins. All those computations take a massive amount of energy: At its peak, Bitcoin was consuming the same amount of energy every year as nearly 7 million U.S. homes.

But the libertarian fantasy currency had a wild year in 2018, with more than $480 billion of value wiped off the entire market. With a lower financial worth, Bitcoin only demands the same amount of energy as powering 4 million US households. (Which, you know, is still not ideal.)

Somehow evaluating power-sucking cryptocurrencies in a swanky hotel in Switzerland, as he’s doing in the Vice News clip, seems all too appropriate for Zinke. After all, his legacy at the Interior Department is putting 13 million acres of public lands in private hands for dirty fuel development, rescinding environmental protections, shrinking national monuments, and … an extensive hat collection.

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Ryan Zinke’s new gig could be a disaster for the environment too

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Doctors call on the health sector to take action on climate change

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Doctors call on the health sector to take action on climate change

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What do vaping and offshore drilling have in common? Amendment 9.

The Sunshine State is no stranger to high drama come election season. This year, Florida is the place to watch if you’re curious how toxic algae has changed the Senate race or how Puerto Rican émigrés are shaping policy on the mainland. It’s also the place to be for voters with a disdain for both fossil fuels and e-cigarette vapors — they’ll get a chance to hit two birds with just one ticked oval on the ballot.

If passed, Amendment 9 would ban both offshore drilling and indoor vaping in the state constitution. A series of unusual events has led to the pairing, which only could have happened in Florida.

Florida is the sole state that appoints a commission with the power to refer constitutional amendments to the ballot. This Constitution Revision Commission only forms once every 20 years — and this is the lucky year. It exercised a unique power: “bundling” several proposals that span multiple issues into a single amendment. In contrast, if a proposed amendment were to make it to the ballot via petition, it’s bound by a “single-subject rule” aimed at preventing “log-rolling” — forcing voters to compromise one issue for another, or leading an unpopular measure to success by tying it to a more likable cause.

“Grouping some ideas which share common elements is for the benefit of the voter,” Brecht Heuchan, chair of the commission’s Style & Drafting Committee, said in a press release. “Grouping some ideas together keeps the ballot from becoming too lengthy to complete.”

The commission is now defending that reasoning in court after a retired Florida Supreme Court justice challenged six amendments on the ballot — including Amendment 9 — and charged the commission with “a form of issue gerrymandering.” In early September, a circuit judge sided with the plaintiff and ruled to have the amendments taken off the ballot, but Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly appealed.

“I’m hopeful and I have every reason to believe it will be on the ballot from November,” Lisa Carlton, author of the proposal to limit where e-cigarettes can be used, tells Grist. “We’ll have to wait and see what the final decision is.”

Carlton, a former Republican state senator, was appointed to this year’s Constitution Revision Commission by Governor Rick Scott. When it comes to pairing her proposal with a stop to offshore drilling, she’s enthusiastic.

“The issues together send a message of clean air, clean water,” says Carlton, who believes her original proposal encompassed both health and environmental benefits. “I cannot think of anything more important than protecting our near shores in Florida,” she says.

Others are worried about marrying the two issues. The Florida League of Women Voters’ endorsement of the amendment comes with a caveat: “Our concern for the environment overrides our concern about putting vaping in the Constitution.”

“Frankly, bundling offshore drilling with vaping — it’s laughable,” says Patricia Brigham, president of the Florida League of Women Voters. Asking Floridians to vote on an amendment that encompasses unrelated issues puts voters in a difficult position, she says. It also makes the amendment harder to understand.

Another pairing that has left some voters scratching their heads is an amendment that addresses both college fees and death benefits for spouses of first responders and military members killed in the line of duty.

Manley Fuller is the president and CEO of Florida Wildlife Federation, the organization that wrote the language on offshore drilling now included in Amendment 9. He wasn’t happy about the bundling at first, either — but if his organization was going to be forced to tango with anybody, he’s glad it happened to be the vaping measure.

“There were other [proposals] which were much more complicated and very divergent,” Fuller says. “Vaping was probably the least objectionable.”

It’s been a long battle to stop offshore drilling. Only recently has it become a cause with bipartisan support. Rick Scott opposed a similar constitutional ban in 2010, but he’s now running to keep his seat on a platform that challenges the Trump administration’s attempts to expand offshore drilling. If passed, Amendment 9 offers permanent protection of the state’s shores and marine habitats.

“The reason we need to put it in the constitution is to send a clear message that Floridians do not want oil or gas drilling in our state marine waters,” says Fuller.

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What do vaping and offshore drilling have in common? Amendment 9.

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