Environmental News For The Week 24February 2019

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics over the last week. This is a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI.

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FDA Asks Old People To Stop Infusing Children’s Blood To Prevent Aging – The FDA has warned old people to stop infusing plasma from young people in order to slow down the aging process, saying it has “no proven clinical benefit” according to Bloomberg. In a Tuesday safety alert, the agency suggested that old people getting scammed with $8,000 per liter plasma to treat age-related issues including dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease. “There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat or prevent these conditions, and there are risks associated with the use of any plasma product,” reads a statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and Peter Marks, who leads the agency’s biologics center. The idea of infusing young blood to fight aging has attracted technology entrepreneurs like billionaire Peter Thiel and was lampooned in a 2017 episode of the HBO show “Silicon Valley.” Thiel’s reported interest was sparked by a company called Ambrosia, which has locations in five states across the U.S. and sells one liter of blood plasma from donors between the ages of 16 and 25 for $8,000, according to its website.Gottlieb and Marks said none of the plasma treatments has gone through the rigorous testing required by the agency. Ambrosia says “experiments in mice called parabiosis provided the inspiration to deliver treatments with young plasma.” The FDA approval typically requires human trials before companies can make a specific health claim about a product. ” Plasma infusions are an FDA approved treatment intrauma settings or for people whose blood doesn’t coagulate, however the agency notes there are risks, including circulatory overload, allergic reactions, lung injury and the transmission of infectious diseases. “We’re concerned that some patients are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors touting treatments of plasma from young donors as cures and remedies,” say Gottlieb and Marks. “Such treatments have no proven clinical benefits for the uses for which these clinics are advertising them, and are potentially harmful.”

FDA- Stealing Young People’s Blood Won’t Make You Immortal – Rich people have a lot in common with vampires. Both in live in giant manses, host creepy masquerade orgies (we presume), and even wear the same dumb outfit every single day. Also, every once in a while, the insanely rich start thinking that they too can achieve immortality by draining the blood of the young and vigorous. But now, virgin thralls everywhere have a new champion: the FDA, which has put on its bandolier of stakes and declared “Get thee behind me, foul spawn of the night!” This week, the Food And Drug Administration (let that sink in for a moment) has issued a strong warning against people trying to cheat death by harvesting the blood of the young. According to the FDA, a “growing number of clinics” are offering trials wherein they pump you full of plasma from donors as young as 16, with the promise it will extend your life and even cure many age-related afflictions. And with treatments going for up to $8,000 a liter and being completely unregulated, it’s exactly the kind of scheme popular with weird tech billionaires who think they’re too smart and disruptive to just buy healing candles and ginseng extract. But despite the sound logic of treating blood like car oil that needs changing every 3,000 miles, the FDA is warning the new generation of Transfusylvanians that there’s not only “no proven clinical benefit” to prepubescent plasma, but also that it should not be considered safe. And when the FDA tells you that, you better listen, because it takes a lot (and we mean a lot) before they try to put a stop to any kind of shady practice. So there’s still a chance that the immortality industry can find a loophole that makes it so that eating the souls of your vanquished enemies falls within the acceptable parameters of the GRAS protocols.

Gene-Edited CRISPR Twins May Have Supercharged Brains, And Silicon Valley Wants In On It – A pair of Chinese twins who were gene-edited for resistance to HIV may also have ‘supercharged’ brains, along with possible resistance to age-related cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s. In a controversial experiment led by Chinese scientist He Jiankui, the embroys of seven couples had their genes “edited” using a tool known as CRISPR. By removing a gene called CCR5, Jiankui sought to create a natural immunity to HIV – which requires CCR5 to enter blood cells. Based on new research, however, Jiankui may have also left the twins, Lulu and Nana, with improved memory and enhanced cognition, according to MIT Technology Review. They may also enjoy some degree of protection from Alzheimer’s Disease and other maladies which are rapidly being linked to chronic inflammation, as some groups of mice without CCR5 – or who have been given CCR5 inhibitors, experience less severe dementia or Alzheimer’s symptoms. “The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” says UCLA neurobiologist Alcino J. Silva, whose lab discovered a link between CCR5 and the brain’s ability to form new connections. “The simplest interpretation is that those mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function in the twins,” says Silva, adding that the exact effect on the girls’ cognition cannot be predicted, which is “why it should not be done.” In 2016, Silva and professor Miou Zhou of the Western University of Health Sciences in California showed that removing the CCR5 gene from mice significantly improved their memory. Moreover, ” Silva and a large team from the US and Israel say they have new proof that CCR5 acts as a suppressor of memories and synaptic connections,” according to the report. Silva tells the MIT Technology Review that “because of his research, he sometimes interacts with figures in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who have, in his opinion, an unhealthy interest in designer babies with better brains.” “I am against using genome editing for enhancement.”

Long before City Hall rats, L.A. has struggled with the rise of typhus – Los Angeles officials this month called for an investigation into a vermin infestation at City Hall, after at least one city employee was diagnosed with typhus, a disease spread by rodents. The rat problem has focused attention on typhus over the last several weeks. But cases of the disease have actually been increasing in California for more than a decade.Thirteen people in the state were diagnosed with typhus in 2008, compared with 167 last year. More than 95% of the people falling sick in California are in Los Angeles and Orange counties, according to state health data.Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson says he wants to examine the real cause of the typhus cases. On Friday, a giant inflatable rat loomed outside the building while officials inside discussed the vermin issue.Murine typhus, also known as endemic typhus, typically causes flu-like symptoms, but can in rare cases be fatal. It is not to be confused with typhoid fever, a food-borne illness that is rarely contracted within the United States.Officials don’t keep count of how many cases of murine typhus there are each year nationwide, but among states that do track the numbers – California, Texas and Hawaii – more people have been falling ill each year, experts say.Why? Theories abound. In October, L.A. County officials declared a typhus outbreak in downtown L.A. around skid row. The announcement prompted calls to clean up the streets and find housing for the city’s homeless population, which has burgeoned in recent years. Animals including rats and cats carry the disease in their bodies, though it doesn’t make them ill. Fleas transmit the disease to humans by biting the infected animals and then biting humans, something that could become more common as more people live on the streets. “In major cities in the U.S., we hear about increasing numbers of encampments and people living in squalor,” “Those conditions are ideal for increase in vermin like rats.” Among the 19 people who have been infected as part of the typhus outbreak in downtown Los Angeles, eight were homeless, according to the county health department.

Measles Are Back After 900 Dead In Madagascar; Time To Blame Russia – Disinformation campaigns hatched by Russian social-media trolls may be responsible for a 2018 measles outbreak in Europe that killed 72 people and infected over 82,000, according to a new report from the US government-funded RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. There were 229,000 reported measles cases worldwide in 2018 according to figures from the World Health Organization – double the number reported in 2017. And some of that, according to researchers at Duke University in North Carolina, may be due to Russian trolls. “Are Russian Trolls Saving Measles From Extinction?” reads the article’s headline, which then describes how experts are analyzing whether medical disinformation originating from “Russian troll and bot campaigns” is putting lives in danger – noting a World Health Organization warning that “vaccination hesitancy” is now one of the top threats to global health, citing a 30% global rise in measles. Experts in the United States and Europe are now working on ways to gauge the impact that Russian troll and bot campaigns have had on the spread of the disease by distributing medical misinformation and raising public doubts about vaccinations. –RFERL.org Of course, halfway through the article we find that Ukraine – which was “worst hit by the 2018 measles epidemic,” experienced “greatly reduced” access to vaccination services and supplies during the 2015 and 2016 clashes between government forces and pro-Russia separatists. “We actually don’t know enough about the influence of misinformation available online upon vaccination intentions and behaviors,” said WHO vaccine specialist Katrine Habersaat. “What we do know is that there is an element of echo chambers in this.” Perhaps Russian propaganda is also responsible for the latest measles outbreak in Madagascar, which has infected over 66,000 people in the African island nation, killing at least 922. Meanwhile, according to a 2018 survey, just 71% of Americans polled says it is “very important” to have their children vaccinated – down from 82% in 2008.

E-cig users develop some of the same cancer-related molecular changes as cigarette smokers – Public Release: 14-Feb-2019 University of Southern California A small USC study shows that e-cig users develop some of the same cancer-related molecular changes in oral tissue as cigarette smokers, adding to the growing concern that e-cigs aren’t a harmless alternative to smoking. The research, published this week in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, comes amid a mushrooming e-cig market and mounting public health worries. On a positive note, recent research found vaping is almost twice as effective as other nicotine replacement therapies in helping smokers quit. But among adolescents, vaping now surpasses smoking, and there’s evidence that e-cig use leads to nicotine addiction and future smoking in teens. Besaratinia emphasized that the molecular changes seen in the study aren’t cancer, or even pre-cancer, but rather an early warning of a process that could potentially lead to cancer if unchecked.

Healthcare Triage: Traffic is Terrible and Terrible for You – The Incidental Economist by Dr. Aaron Carroll – (video) Commuting is one of the least pleasant things we do. But it’s not just an annoying time waster – there’s a case that it’s a public health issue. This episode was adapted from a column Austin wrote for the Upshot. Links to sources can be found there.

Researchers Create ‘Rat Cyborgs’ That People Control With Their Minds – I’ll just come right out and say it: Scientists have created human-controlled rat cyborgs. Lest you think this is some media sensationalism at work, here’s the actual title of the paper under discussion, which came out last week in Scientific Reports: “Human Mind Control of Rat Cyborg’s Continuous Locomotion with Wireless Brain-to-Brain Interface.” That pretty much says it all. Some of this tech – such as brain-brain interfaces (BBIs) and rat cyborgs – is nothing new in science, so in a way this just a small step in an already existing race. But, put another way: people are controlling rat cyborgs with their freaking brains now. Wirelessly. Here’s the deal. BBIs are themselves based on stringing together BMIs, or brain-machine interfaces. These already exist, and present a cool way for people to control prosthetics or other devices. Apparently they can also function the other way around – instead of a brain controlling a device, a machine can alter brain patterns or “import tactile information back to the brain,” as the study’s authors put it. So BMIs allow for mechanically “controlling” others’ brains. In effect, it works like this: A human has movement-related thoughts, which an EEG picks up and transfers to a computer. The computer translates that signal into “control instructions,” which get wirelessly beamed into the stimulator on the back of the rat and then into its brain via electrodes (which is, by the way, now a rat cyborg because of its cybernetic parts). The rat then responds to the instructions by actually doing them. All this tech exists, but for some reason “very few previous studies have explored BBIs across different brains,” the authors write – so they fixed that with a very real, actual experiment that involved humans wirelessly controlling rat cyborgs through mazes. I can’t stress enough how real this is, or how often the authors used the phrase “rat cyborg” in their peer-reviewed scientific paper.

Hackers Can Turn Sex Robots Into Killing Machines, Security Expert Warns – According to Nicholas Patterson, a cybersecurity lecturer at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, humanoid sex robots that have recently hit the market could potentially be hacked and turned into killing machines. Patterson gave this warning in a string of interviews with various UK publications: “Hackers can hack into a robot or a robotic device and have full control of the connections, arms, legs, and other attached tools like in some cases knives or welding devices. Often these robots can be upwards of 200 pounds and very strong. Once a robot is hacked, the hacker has full control and can issue instructions to the robot. Similar warnings surfaced last year in response to the growing popularity of Bluetooth-enabled sex toys. It was revealed that hackers could control the devices from remote locations, and even use them to spy on unsuspecting pleasure seekers. Realistically, any device connected to the internet can be programmed to do harm, or at the very least spy on you. In fact, most smart devices are specifically designed to spy on users for data mining purposes. The primary reason sex robots evoke a special fear when it comes to hacking potential is because they are made in the likeness of humans. We have been trained to believe that the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) will come in the form of a Terminator-like robot that looks indistinguishable from an actual human, while invisible AI algorithms have been silently taking over our lives for the past decade, right under our noses. The real AI threat is disembodied, and comes in the form of algorithms that are sending the wrong people to jail, controlling the information you see online, and even writing the news. The idea of a rogue robot that can walk and talk is indeed scary, but having every service and product being controlled by invisible algorithms is far worse. While this technology could be used to make positive change in the world, it is unfortunately true, as many experts have pointed out, that the ethics of these devices are only as good as the humans who programming them.

EPA too slow on limiting toxic chemicals, critics say — Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler released an “action plan” for dealing with the long-lasting substances, which have been linked to health threats ranging from cancer to decreased fertility. The perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known collectively as PFAS, have turned up increasingly in public water systems and private wells. Wheeler said the agency’s plan would help communities monitor, detect and address PFAS pollution. But environmentalists and some members of Congress said the strategy wasn’t aggressive enough on dealing with the chemicals, which are found in firefighting foam, nonstick pots and pans, water-repellent clothing and many other household and personal items. “This is a non-action plan, designed to delay effective regulation of these dangerous chemicals in our drinking water,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. Former EPA chief Scott Pruitt described PFAS contamination as a “national priority” and pledged swift action last May. Wheeler has served as the EPA’s acting head since Pruitt’s resignation in July amid ethics scandals, and the agency’s handling of PFAS contamination was raised as an issue in Wheeler’s confirmation hearings. Scientific studies have found “associations” between the chemicals and cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis and other health issues.

EPA blasted for failing to set drinking water limits for ‘forever chemicals’ Science – After intense pressure from politicians and environmental and public health groups, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today published a plan to tackle industrial chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that are showing up in drinking water supplies across the nation. But critics say the plan is vague and lacks regulatory teeth, and it will do little to reduce health risks.PFAS chemicals are widely used to make nonstick and water-proof products, including foams used to fight fires. The compounds can persist in the environment for decades, leading some to dub them “forever chemicals.” And studies have linked them to cancer and developmental defects, raising health concerns.In May 2018, EPA said it would develop a plan to tackle the substances in drinking water. Many were hoping the agency would set national regulatory limits on PFAS concentrations in water supplies. But the plan released today puts little meat on the bones of last year’s promises. EPA has “only laid out a small, tentative step toward considering how to manage this widespread threat. This proposal doesn’t mean the EPA will take serious action – it could just kick the can down the road for years, leaving vulnerable communities at risk,” said Genna Reed, the lead science and policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a statement.By the end of the year, EPA officials say they will begin the process of setting legal drinking water limits on two of the most well-known PFAS compounds, known as PFOA and PFOS. Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a press conference that he “can’t say how long it would take” for the limits to come into force.

Hold EPA to its promise to address dangerous threats to drinking water | Editorial – Philly.com – Acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s promise last week to attack a dangerous threat to drinking water may have sounded soothing to thousands of residents of Bucks and Montgomery Counties, who have lived with contaminated groundwater for decades. But as U.S. Sen. Tom Carper (D., Del.) pointed out, Wheeler’s words cynically masked just another federal government dodge on cleaning up the toxic chemicals because he didn’t have a timeline and worse, the EPA did not even commit to actually setting safe standards for the toxic family of chemicals known as PFAS. Fortunately, by the end of the week, Carper secured a solid commitment from the EPA to set safe drinking water standards by December. The back and forth is emblematic of why EPA must be under constant scrutiny. PFAS have been found in alarming amounts in suburban Philadelphia. They were left behind by firefighting foam at two former military bases. Known as per- and polyfluorinated alkylated substances, or PFAS, these chemicals are found in consumer products, such as flame-retardant fabrics and nonstick cookware, as well as firefighting foams used at about 400 military bases across the country, including the old Naval Air Warfare Center in Warminster, Bucks County, and the former Naval Air Station at Willow Grove, in Horsham, Montgomery County.PFAS have been linked to thyroid and liver disease, low birthrates, low fertility in women and preeclampsia in pregnant women, as well as asthma, high blood pressure, kidney and testicular cancer.Residents and politicians from both parties have been pressuring the EPA to set PFAS standards since at least 2014 and been met with empty promises.

PFAS in Drinking Water: Hazardous at Ever-Lower Levels – Last week, as he unveiled the Environmental Protection Agency’s toothless “action plan” on fluorinated chemicals, acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler maintained that the current guideline of 70 parts per trillion, or ppt, for the compound PFOA is a safe level in drinking water.Says who?Independent scientists and other federal and state regulatory agencies have recommended or established safe levels for PFOA in drinking water that range to more than 200 times below the EPA’s guideline – a health advisory that is not legally enforceable.PFOA, formerly used to make DuPont’s Teflon, is the most notorious member of the PFAS family of fluorinated chemicals. An estimated 110 million Americans’ water may be contaminated with PFAS compounds, which have been linked to cancer, thyroid disease and weakened childhood immunity. The more than 4,700 different synthetic PFAS chemicals manufactured worldwide have become global pollutants that contaminate food, water and the bodies of people.In the almost two decades since the EPA was alerted to PFOA contamination of drinking water near a Teflon plant in Parkersburg, W.Va., a wide range of safe levels have been proposed or adopted. But there’s a clear trend: The levels deemed safe keep going down, and since 2007, all are well below the EPA’s guidelines. Here’s a timeline, with further explanation below.

EPA Adopts Fringe Science Claim That Small Doses of Pollution Are Healthy – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in April 2018 proposed relaxing standards related to how it assesses the effects of exposure to low levels of toxic chemicals on public health. Now, correspondence obtained by the LA Times revealed just how deeply involved industry lobbyists and a controversial, industry-funded toxicologist were in drafting the federal agency’s proposal to scrap its current, protective approach to regulating toxin exposure. The proposed change came just two weeks after a top EPA official contacted toxicologist Ed Calabrese, whose claim that low doses of carcinogens and radiation are healthy stressors akin to physical exercise that activate the body’s repair mechanisms has been panned by more mainstream researchers. “I wanted to check to see if you might have some time in the next couple of days for a quick call to discuss a couple of items … ” EPA deputy assistant administrator Clint Woods wrote to Calabrese. The EPA’s proposed regulation, signed by then-Administrator Scott Pruitt and published in the U.S. Government’s Federal Register, copied Calabrese’s recommendations to Woods almost verbatim. Calabrese, who was also quoted in the EPA’s press release for the proposal, celebrated the announcement in an email to former coal and tobacco lobbyist Steve Milloy, who served on President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team. The EPA’s proposal is a departure from its long-time “linear no-threshold” approach to regulating the study of toxins: once a substance is found to be harmful at one level, the danger applies at all levels. In other words, there can be no safe level of radiation exposure. Calabrese argues this approach is overly cautious and a financial detriment to industry. The new rule would require that regulators look at “various threshold models across the exposure range” for pollutants.

Factory Farms Pollute the Environment and Poison Drinking Water – Hog waste can contain potentially dangerous pathogens, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. According to North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, as of early October nearly 100 such lagoons were damaged, breached or were very close to being so, the effluent from which can seep into waterways and drinking water supplies.Rather than an isolated problem, however, the story of the state’s failure to properly manage its hog waste opens a door to what critics say is a much wider national and global issue: the increasingly extensive and varied impacts on our water resources, air and soils from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations(CAFOs). “The big problem with this model is the waste management problem that it creates, generating so much waste in such high concentration,” said Will Hendrick, staff attorney with the Waterkeeper Alliance, a network of organizations monitoring U.S. waterways. “We haven’t really improved the technologies for managing this waste beyond what we were using centuries ago.” The amount of animal feces and urine produced in these facilities is staggering – more than 40 times the waste generated in wastewater treatment plants. Most CAFO waste is spread over farmland as fertilizer. But unlike strictly regulated human waste, the waste generated by CAFOs isn’t held to the same standard and is largely untreated. “The basic legal theory, which is basic legal fiction, is that the waste will be kept on site and applied to adjacent cropland and [will] never enter our water-bodies,” said Hendrick. What actually happens is that potentially toxic chemicals, drugs and bacteria in untreated animal wastes drain off or leach through the soils, making their way into the nation’s rivers, streams, groundwater and drinking water at alarming rates, directly impacting communities. Iowa’s largest municipal water utility provider, for example, recently sued a number of upstream drainage districts for excessive drinking water nitrate levels caused by farmland runoff. The lawsuit, however, was subsequently dismissed, the judge ruling it a problem for the state legislatures to tackle.

Remember ‘Pink Slime’? It Can Now Be Marketed as ‘Ground Beef’ — That video showed the extrusion of a bubblegum-pink substance oozing into a coiled pile, something between Play-Doh, sausage, and soft-serve strawberry ice cream. Branded “pink slime” – the name came from an email sent by a USDA microbiologist in 2002 – this stuff was actually beef, destined for supermarkets and fast-food burgers. The company that makes pink slime, Beef Products Incorporated, recently notified its customers that the product can now be called something different, and more appetizing: ground beef.Pink slime is not necessarily dangerous or mysterious or even particularly gross, in the abstract. During the butchering process, meat trimmings are captured. The trimmings are then sent through a centrifuge, which separates the fat from the meat; trimmings are very high in fat. The fat can be sold separately as tallow, but the now 95 percent lean (or so) is then treated to prevent contaminants and then processed into the ooze seen in the video.Previously, pink slime was sometimes folded into ground beef sold in supermarkets, or more commonly sold to fast-food purveyors for use in burgers. The anti-contaminant treatment used by BPI is ammonia, which is legal in the US but not in Canada or in the European Union, where pink slime is thus banned. BPI has tried since the release of the 2012 video to rehabilitate the image of this product, which is technically called “lean finely textured beef.” They had an ad campaign (“Dude, it’s beef!”) which was promoted not only by the company but by politicians in states with large cattle industries, like Texas. And now, according to Beef Magazine (an industry publication), BPI asked the USDA to reclassify the product.

Lab Grown Meat Could Be Worse for the Climate Than Farm-Raised Beef, Oxford Study – 2018 saw a number of studies pointing to the outsized climate impact of meat consumption. Beef has long been singled out as particularly unsustainable: Cows both release the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere because of their digestive processes and require a lot of land area to raise. But for those unwilling to give up the taste and texture of a steak or burger, could lab-grown meat be a climate-friendly alternative? In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from the Oxford Martin School set out to answer that question.The results, published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems Tuesday, concluded that lab-grown meat could actually make climate change worse. It all depends on whether the energy used to grow the cultured meat is still generated from fossil fuels.”The climate impacts of cultured meat production will depend on what level of sustainable energy generation can be achieved, as well as the efficiency of future culture processes,” lead study author Dr. John Lynch said in a press release.

World’s food supply under ‘severe threat’ from loss of biodiversity — The world’s capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity, according to the first UN study of the plants, animals and micro-organisms that help to put meals on our plates. The stark warning was issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after scientists found evidence the natural support systems that underpin the human diet are deteriorating around the world as farms, cities and factories gobble up land and pump out chemicals. Over the last two decades, approximately 20% of the earth’s vegetated surface has become less productive, said the report, launched on Friday. It noted a “debilitating” loss of soil biodiversity, forests, grasslands, coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds and genetic diversity in crop and livestock species. In the oceans, a third of fishing areas are being overharvested. Many species that are indirectly involved in food production, such as birds that eat crop pests and mangrove trees that help to purify water, are less abundant than in the past, noted the study, which collated global data, academic papers and reports by the governments of 91 countries. It found 63% of plants, 11% of birds, and 5% of fish and fungi were in decline. Pollinators, which provide essential services to three-quarters of the world’s crops, are under threat. As well as the well-documented decline of bees and other insects, the report noted that 17% of vertebrate pollinators, such as bats and birds, were threatened with extinction. Once lost, the species that are critical to our food systems cannot be recovered, it said. “This places the future of our food and the environment under severe threat.” “The foundations of our food systems are being undermined,”

Trump EPA OKs ‘Emergency’ to Dump Bee-Killing Pesticide on 16 Million Acres — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported last week that in 2018 it issued so-called “emergency” approvals to spray sulfoxaflor – an insecticide the agency considers “very highly toxic” to bees – on more than 16 million acres of crops known to attract bees. Of the 18 states where the approvals were granted for sorghum and cotton crops, 12 have been given the approvals for at least four consecutive years for the same “emergency.” Last year the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General released a report finding that the agency’s practice of routinely granting “emergency” approval for pesticides across millions of acres does not effectively measure risks to human health or the environment. “Spraying 16 million acres of bee-attractive crops with a bee-killing pesticide in a time of global insect decline is beyond the pale, even for the Trump administration,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The EPA is routinely misusing the ’emergency’ process to get sulfoxaflor approved because it’s too toxic to make it through normal pesticide reviews.” Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA has the authority to approve temporary emergency uses of pesticides, even those not officially approved, if the agency determines it is needed to prevent the spread of an unexpected outbreak of crop-damaging insects, for example. But the provision has been widely abused.

“Which species are we sure we can survive without?” Revisited – Two years ago I asked the question in the title of this piece. Now comes a wide-ranging study that suggests we are about to test that question in a major way. The study predicts that at the current rate of loss of insect species, 40 percent could be gone “in the next few decades.” What is particularly alarming is that this “could trigger wide-ranging cascading effects within several of the world’s ecosystems.” That means that many other life-forms including other animals and plants could find themselves without what they need to survive in this dangerous game of musical chairs orchestrated by humans. Might we be one of those species? Insects do much of the crop pollination necessary for food production. A list of crops pollinated by bees is quite long. Humans could survive without these foods, but the nutrition and variety in our diets would be severely limited. And yet there is a greater problem. Outside of agriculture 80 to 95 percent of plant species require animal pollination. Since those plants are the base of every food chain, catastrophic declines in insect populations could lead to a collapse of existing ecosystems. The exact scope and effects of such a collapse cannot be fully anticipated. But it is doubtful humans would be unharmed. Human civilization uses an enormous amount of free ecoservices, that is, services provided by nature including the purification of water, the formation of soil, the regulation of climate, and energy resources such as hydropower and biomass. However one values these services, the value is enormous. If humans had to pay for these services, that is, if we had to set up mechanical and chemical substitutes, we would never able to afford it. But, we probably wouldn’t be able to set up substitute systems that work as precisely and effectively as nature’s.

Politicians are complicit in the killing of our insects – we will be next – The new global scientific review into the perilous condition of our insects reports that more than 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction while the mass of insects is declining by 2.5% a year. This catastrophic decline is a direct cause of the existential threat to other animals, insects being at the bottom of the chain and the primary food source. Since 1970, 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been wiped out. The review identifies a key driver towards this mass extinction: habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture with its associated use of pesticides. Given this is a manmade disaster, surely we are capable of tackling and reversing it? As a member of the European parliament’s agriculture committee, I have lost count of the number of times I have begun meetings with what feels like a sermon on the Armageddon taking place in our countryside. I am always greeted with patient, patronising smiles from many of my fellow MEPs, before they go on to ignore the warnings and refuse to limit the use of pesticides in our fields. Some of the members of this committee are themselves farmers who have grown increasingly dependent on powerful and toxic pesticides. But others have taken the agribusiness shilling and believe that their role in policymaking is simply to support the corporations that sell these poisons. And this is the nub of the issue. What might accurately be dubbed insectageddon is being driven by the agrichemicals industry. This situation is compounded by compliant politicians and policymakers who fall prey to lobbying pressure and then refuse to implement science-driven policy to protect wildlife. This has meant that over the past five decades conventional farmers have forgotten the natural systems they once relied on to control pests. Non-organic agricultural systems are highly dependent on chemicals, so feeding a vicious circle.

The Ticks That Can Take Down an 800-Pound Moose – We found the moose calf half an hour in. He lay atop thin snow on a gentle slope sheltered by the boughs of a big, black spruce, curled up as a dog would on a couch. He had turned his long, gaunt head to rest against his side and closed his eyes. He might have been sleeping. The day before, April 17, 2018, when the GPS tracker on the moose’s collar stopped moving for six hours, this stillness had caused both an email and a text to alert Jake Debow, a Vermont state field biologist who stood next to me now with Josh Blouin, another state biologist, that moose No. 75 had either shucked his collar or died. “You want pictures before we start?” Debow asked me. He’s the senior of the two young biologists, both still in grad school, both in their late 20s, young and strong and funny, from families long in the north country, both drawn to the job by a love of hunting and being outside. It was Debow’s second season on the moose project, and Blouin’s first. This was the sixth calf, of 30 collared, that they’d found sucked to death by ticks this season. They were here to necropsy the carcass, send the tissues to a veterinary pathology lab in New Hampshire, and try to figure out as much as possible about how and why these calves were dying. Debow, wielding his ruler, called out square-centimeter tick counts to Blouin: nine ticks in the first square centimeter, seven engorged; eight in the second, none engorged; 28, four engorged; eight, none. This count would later produce an estimated infestation total of just under 14,000 ticks. This was actually far fewer than they often found, but it was enough to render this calf chronically anemic from January through March and then acutely, fatally anemic in the last couple of weeks of his life. In April, when the gravid females start taking their blood meals, the blood loss over their last two to four weeks aboard the moose “can equate to a calf’s total blood volume,” according to one recent paper – some three and a half gallons. As Inga Sidor, the New Hampshire state veterinary pathologist who processed the tissue samples Debow and Blouin took that day, later told me, the ticks “literally bleed the moose to death.”

Can Zombie Deer Disease Kill Humans- Research Suggests It Already Has – An infectious disease expert has warned that a deadly disease found in deer could infect humans in the near future. Often referred to as “zombie deer” disease because of the symptoms, Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) has been reported in at least 24 states in the continental United States and in two provinces in Canada as of January 2019.But is this warning too late? Because there is an extremely similar disease that has already killed quite a few people. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, recently told lawmakers that CWD should be treated as a public health issue. That unsettling news surfaced at a hearing Thursday at the Minnesota Capitol, where a number of experts from the University of Minnesota pressed upon lawmakers that the disease should be treated as a public health issue – a major expansion of its current scope as mostly a wildlife and hunting concern. The issue is especially pressing for Minnesota, where wildlife officials are tracking the state’s largest outbreak of CWD yet in deer in the southeast portion of the state. (source) Osterholm (who sat on a panel of experts tracking the emergence of mad cow disease, or BSE, decades ago) issued this warning during the hearing:“It is my best professional judgment based on my public health experience and the risk of BSE transmission to humans in the 1980s and 1990s and my extensive review and evaluation of laboratory research studies … that it is probable that human cases of CWD associated with the consumption of contaminated meat will be documented in the years ahead. It is possible that number of human cases will be substantial and will not be isolated events.” (source) While he is aware that skeptics will accuse him of fear-mongering, Osterholm said, “If Stephen King could write an infectious disease novel, he would write about prions like this.” He noted that for years, many public health and beef industry experts did not believe a similar disease – bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as “mad cow disease” – could infect people. In 1996, researchers found strong evidence that BSE can infect humans as a variant known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

Raffle Prize Offers Killing Animals With Donald Trump Jr. – A hunting advocacy group is offering what it has called a “once-in-a-lifetime” raffle prize of killing elk with Donald Trump Jr., but it has faced some criticism online.Hunter Nation promoted the chance to win a five-day guided fall hunt in Utah with President Donald Trump’s son ― who it dubbed “the modern-day Teddy Roosevelt” – on Instagram Monday. Tickets cost $10 each.View this post on Instagram A post shared by Hunter Nation (@hunternation) on Feb 18, 2019 at 4:56pm PST “You will have to go a long way to find a bigger advocate for our hunting lifestyle and a more passionate hunter and conservationist than Don, Jr.,” the group said on its website.It called “the opportunity to share a hunting camp” with Trump Jr. as being “truly priceless.”However, the raffle has sparked anger online ― with some people also taking issue with the Trump Jr.-Roosevelt comparison. Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909, was an avid hunter and champion of conservation causes. (twitter reactions)

Botswana mulls lifting elephant hunting ban – BBC – A report by cabinet ministers in Botswana has recommended lifting a four-year hunting ban and the introduction of elephant culling.After months of public meetings and consultations, the report by ministers also recommends the “establishment of elephant meat canning” for pet food.The number of elephants in Botswana is estimated to be about 130,000, which some argue is too many for the ecosystem – there is increasing conflict between wildlife and people.But others say the country’s tourism has grown dramatically since the ban came into place and that lifting it would affect the country’s international reputation for conservation. Shortly after coming into office in April 2018, President Mokgweetsi Masisi asked ministers to review the hunting ban which was implemented by his predecessor Ian Khama in 2014. Public meetings were held and organisations, communities and individuals were asked to comment. The report’s findings recommend that:

• the hunting ban should be lifted
• the elephant population should be managed “within its historic range”
• wildlife migratory routes “not beneficial to the country’s conservation efforts” should be closed
• game ranches be demarcated to “serve as buffers between communal and wildlife areas”
• “regular but limited elephant culling” should be introduced

As the Colorado River runs dry: A five-part climate change story – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — This article is the first in a 5-part series on the Colorado River originally published by Yale Environment 360. The beginnings of the mighty Colorado River on the west slope of Rocky Mountain National Park are humble. A large marsh creates a small trickle of a stream at La Poudre Pass, and thus begins the long, labyrinthine 1,450-mile journey of one of America’s great waterways. Several miles later, in Rocky Mountain National Park’s Kawuneeche Valley, the Colorado River Trail allows hikers to walk along its course and, during low water, even jump across it. This valley is where the nascent river falls prey to its first diversion – 30 percent of its water is taken before it reaches the stream to irrigate distant fields. The Never Summer Mountains tower over the the valley to the west. Cut across the face of these glacier-etched peaks is the Grand Ditch, an incision visible just above the timber line. The ditch collects water as the snow melts and, because it is higher in elevation than La Poudre Pass, funnels it 14 miles back across the Continental Divide, where it empties it into the headwaters of the Cache La Poudre River, which flows on to alfalfa and row crop farmers in eastern Colorado. Hand dug in the late 19th century with shovels and picks by Japanese crews, it was the first trans-basin diversion of the Colorado. Many more trans-basin diversions of water from the west side of the divide to the east would follow. That’s because 80 percent of the water that falls as snow in the Rockies here drains to the west, while 80 percent of the population resides on the east side of the divide. The Colorado River gathers momentum in western Colorado, sea-green and picking up a good deal of steam in its confluence with the Fraser, Eagle, and Gunnison rivers. As it leaves Colorado and flows through Utah, it joins forces with the Green River, a major tributary, which has its origins in the dwindling glaciers atop Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains, the second largest glacier field in the lower 48 states. The now sediment-laden Colorado (“too thick to drink, too thin to plow” was the adage about such rivers) gets reddish here, and earns its name – Colorado means “reddish.” It heads in a southwestern direction through the slick rock of Utah and northern Arizona, including its spectacular run through the nearly 280-mile-long Grand Canyon, and then on to Las Vegas where it makes a sharp turn south, first forming the border of Nevada and Arizona and then the border of California and Arizona until it reaches the Mexican border. There the Morelos Dam – half of it in Mexico and half in the United States – captures the last drops of the Colorado’s flow, and sends it off to Mexican farmers to irrigate alfalfa, cotton, and asparagus, and to supply Mexicali, Tecate, and other cities and towns with water.

Grand Canyon Visitors Were Exposed to Unsafe Radiation From Buckets of Uranium for Nearly Two Decades – Grand Canyon visitors and employees who passed through the national park‘s museum collection building were exposed to radiation for nearly two decades, AZCentral reported Monday.That’s because, until last year, three five-gallon paint buckets filled with uranium ore were stored in the building, according to a Feb. 4 email sent out to all National Park Service employees by Grand Canyon safety, health and wellness manager Elston “Swede” Stephenson.”If you were in the Museum Collections Building (2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were ‘exposed’ to uranium by the [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] OSHA’s definition,” Stephenson wrote. “The radiation readings, at first blush, exceeds (sic) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safe limits.” Stephenson said the buckets had been placed beside a taxidermy exhibit where children sometimes sat during tours for more than 30 minutes. There was enough radiation in the buckets to expose children to levels considered unsafe by federal standards within three seconds and adults within less than 30 seconds. Stephenson said adults may have been exposed to 400 times the Nuclear Regulatory Commission health limit and children 4,000 times. Stephenson said that while federal officials had learned of and removed the containers last year, park visitors and staff had not been informed of the potential exposure.

Interior officials accused of violating ethics pledge – A government ethics group is accusing six political officials at the Interior Department of violating the Trump administration’s ethics pledge. The Campaign Legal Center sent a formal complaint to Interior’s Office of Inspector General, asking it to investigate those officials’ compliance with provisions of the pledge all political appointees sign, including cooling-off periods for working on matters involving former employers, restrictions on meeting with former employers or clients, and restrictions on dealing with matters for which an employee used to lobby. “Several political appointees at Interior appear to have violated these provisions, which are specifically designed to prevent public officials from using their positions to favor former employers or lobbying clients,” the group wrote. “Taken together, the violations outlined below suggest a disturbing pattern of misconduct across the Department of the Interior that warrants your office’s immediate attention,” they wrote. The targets of the Wednesday letter are assistant secretary for insular and international affairs Doug Domenech, senior deputy director of intergovernmental and external affairs Benjamin Cassidy, former energy adviser Vincent DeVito, deputy director of intergovernmental and external affairs Timothy Williams, White House liaison Lori Mashburn and director of intergovernmental and external affairs Todd Wynn. The Campaign Legal Center’s letter lays out specific allegations regarding each official, based on public documents, news reports and other sources. Interior spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort said Interior “takes ethics agreements very seriously” and that all political appointees have received ethics training.

Ex-Lobbyists Run Amok at Interior Department, New Ethics Complaints Show – ONLY A FEW short weeks after President Donald Trump nominated David Bernhardt, a former oil and agriculture industry lobbyist, to run the Interior Department, the agency is facing a slew of new allegations that top officials violated federal ethics rules by keeping cozy ties to their former employers.A lengthy ethics complaint filed Wednesday by the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, outlines “a disturbing pattern of misconduct” at the scandal-plagued Interior Department, including meetings that violate the White House’s own ethical pledge and good governance standards. The Campaign Legal Center used public records, some of which were first obtained by The Intercept, to lodge the complaint against six top Interior Department officials, including Benjamin Cassidy, a top official at the department’s external affairs office and former National Rifle Association lobbyist; Assistant Secretary for Insular Affairs Douglas Domenech; White House liaison Lori Mashburn, a former Heritage Foundation staffer; and others. The officials are among a little-known but powerful group of Department of Interior political appointees – many of whom joined the agency after careers with fossil fuel groups or conservative lobbying organizations. Amid an environment of persistent ethics issues at the Interior Department, these officials are responsible for the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign to roll back environmental protections and open public lands to extractive industry interests. Among other allegations, the Campaign Legal Center contends that some of these officials have apparently used their government positions to provide their former private employers with access and insight into the Interior Department’s activities. Under the White House’s own ethics pledge, executive branch officials are explicitly prohibited for a period of two years from the date of their appointment from meeting or communicating with previous employers to discuss specific policy matters.

Top Leader at Interior Dept. Pushes a Policy Favoring His Former Client – As a lobbyist and lawyer, David Bernhardt fought for years on behalf of a group of California farmers to weaken Endangered Species Act protections for a finger-size fish, the delta smelt, to gain access to irrigation water. As a top official since 2017 at the Interior Department, Mr. Bernhardt has been finishing the job: He is working to strip away the rules the farmers had hired him to oppose. Last week President Trump said he would nominate Mr. Bernhardt to lead the Interior Department, making him the latest in a line of officials now regulating industries that once paid them to work as lobbyists. Others include Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who now heads the Environmental Protection Agency after the resignation of Scott Pruitt amid ethics scandals. William Wehrum, the nation’s top clean-air regulator, is a lawyer whose former clients included coal-burning power plants and oil giants. If confirmed as the next Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Bernhardt would succeed Ryan Zinke, who left in January under a cloud of ethics investigations. For the California farmers on whose behalf he once lobbied, Mr. Bernhardt’s actions to weaken environmental protections would free up river water, an asset of incalculable value as climate change propels California toward a hotter, drier future. Rerouting river water would also devastate the regional ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay Delta, scientists say, imperiling dozens of other fish up the food chain and affecting water birds, orcas and commercial fisheries and encouraging toxic algal blooms.

Florida is drowning. Condos are still being built. Can’t humans see the writing on the wall?- 2018 was the second deadliest year on record for manatees. Like many of our coastal species, they’re vulnerable to habitat loss and warming seas, which are more hospitable to algal blooms and red tide. Science has given us the foresight we need to make decisions that will reduce the future suffering of other species and ourselves, but we don’t heed it. Why?Studies show that humans don’t respond well to abstract projections. We overvalue short-term benefits, such as driving SUVs, burning coal and building waterfront real estate. We choose these extravagances even though they impede beneficial long-term outcomes, such as saving threatened species, or reducing the intensity of climate change. Humans tend to respond to immediate threats and financial consequences – and coastal real estate, especially in Florida, may be on the cusp of delivering that harsh wake-up call. The peninsula has outsized exposure: nearly 2 million people live in coastal cities. On the list of the 20 urban areas in America that will suffer the most from rising seas, Florida has five: St Petersburg, Tampa, Miami, Miami Beach and Panama City. In 2016, Zillow predicted that one out of eight homes in Florida would be underwater by 2100, a loss of $413bn in property. Aerial views of Miami and South Beach show high density construction on flat, sandy slivers of land. A recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts Miami streets will flood every year by 2070. And though the House of Representatives passed a bill to require real estate agents to disclose flood risks, the Senate has not reviewed it, and a culture of “systemic, fraudulent nondisclosure” persists in high flood risk areas.

India reiterates plan to stop sharing of water with Pakistan – An Indian government minister reiterated on Thursday the country’s plan to restrict the flow of water to Pakistan from its share of rivers, the latest effort by New Delhi to pressure its neighbour after an attack in Kashmir. “Our government has decided to stop our share of water which used to flow to Pakistan,” Nitin Gadkari, transport and water resources minister said in a tweet. He added that the country would divert water from eastern rivers and supply it to its people in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab states. Gadkari did not elaborate but officials from his ministry said he was restating decisions already taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, including a dam project cleared by his cabinet last December. Officials said no new decision had been taken on Thursday. Gadkari’s comments underlined New Delhi’s anger over an attack by a Pakistan-based group last week in the disputed region of Kashmir, which killed 42 paramilitary police. India has accused Pakistan of not doing enough to control such groups, while Pakistan has denied involvement. The sharing of water supplies from the Indus River and its tributaries between the two countries is regulated under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty. In recent years India has begun ambitious irrigation plans and construction of many upstream dams, saying its use of upstream water is strictly in line with the treaty. Following an attack on security forces in the Kashmir town of Uri in 2016, India began to fast track development of some of the dam projects, escalating tensions between the archrivals. Pakistan has opposed some of these projects saying they violate the World Bank-mediated treaty on the sharing of the Indus waters, upon which 80 percent of its irrigated agriculture depends.

Flooding of mines in Zimbabwe leaves 24 dead, dozens more missing — On Sunday, the bodies of 24 miners were recovered from Silver Moon Mine and Cricket Mine in Kadoma, after heavy rains last week caused the collapse of a dam wall, resulting in the massive flooding of the two mines. At around midnight on Wednesday, February 13, the wall of water exploded from the dam and surged into the mines, completely flooding the tunnels where several dozen miners were reported to have descended. The two mines, adjacent to one another in an area known as Battlefields, share three linked shafts which run 30 meters (about 100 feet deep) with 20-meter-wide tunnels (65 feet). The massive flood completely filled the mine’s tunnels to the surface. The town of Kadoma, over 100 miles from the capital city, Harare, is the center of mining industry in the Mashonaland West province that holds significant deposits of gold, copper and nickel. An estimated 70 miners are believed to have been inside the mine when the flood occurred. Of this number, only eight have been rescued alive. With around 40 missing and still unaccounted for, rescue workers stated to the media Sunday that they have little hope of finding survivors. Describing the terror of the moment flood waters rushed into the mines, Charles Mwenye, a 41-year-old survivor, told the UK Guardian that four friends were with him in the shaft. “I could have been the one trapped underground too. When I was on my way out of the shaft, I saw a flood coming straight in … Thank God I am alive. The police came yesterday and today but nothing has been done. All my hope is lost now.” Many of the disaster’s victims were jobless youth under the age of 30. Depicting the gravity of the tragedy, Lovejoy Mbedzi spoke to the Guardian of her brother, Evan Chibuwe, 29, who is still missing since he went into the mine. “I am very sad. This mine shaft is full of boys between the ages of 18 and 30. They are so young and don’t deserve to die in this manner.”

It’s official: El Niño is back. Now what? — Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Niño – the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, with weather consequences worldwide – has officially arrived. El Niño typically peaks between October and March, so it’s pretty late in the season for a new one to form. This year’s El Niño is expected to remain relatively weak, but that doesn’t mean this one won’t be felt – in fact, its cascading consequences already in motion. El Niños normally happen every two-to-seven years, but this is already the sixth El Niño of the 21st century. It’s also the first since the so-called “Godzilla” El Niño of 2015-2016, which boosted global temperatures to all-time records, snuffed out entire coral reef ecosystems, and created havoc for about 60 million people worldwide. . The advent of this El Niño means that 2019 is “almost certain to be another top-5 year,” wrote Gavin Schmidt director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in an email to Grist. He gave “roughly 1-in-3 odds” that 2019 will surpass 2016 as the warmest year on record, thanks in part to the boost from El Niño. Most short-term climate models show Pacific Ocean temperatures remaining unusually warm for at least the rest of this year, and a few hint that a bigger El Niño could form within about six months – though forecasting that far ahead is notoriously tricky. This winter has been warmer and wetter than usual for most of the West Coast – a classic sign of El Niño weather. In the short term, this El Niño is likely to keep pushing stormy weather ashore out West, especially in Southern California. Judging by past weak El Niños, the rest of winter elsewhere in the country could be cooler and wetter than normal, especially for the Northeast where snow has been notably absent so far. The biggest potential consequence of this El Niño is its effect on global temperatures. Carbon dioxide is driving the long-term acceleration of global warming, of course, but there’s evidence that El Niño droughts prevent carbon dioxide uptake and permanently worsen climate change. The five warmest years in history have occurred in the past five years, and odds are that 2019 temps will rank second in all-time weather records. Should El Niño intensify later this year, 2020 would be even warmer, and may even be the first year to breach the much-feared 1.5 degree Celsius mark.

Los Angeles sees first snow in years — It snowed in the city of Los Angeles on Thursday, a rare event creating excitement and confusion in the metro area, according to the Los Angeles Times.”At Noon, scattered rain and snow showers becoming more numerous across #SoCal,” tweeted the Los Angeles branch of the National Weather Service. “Isolated thunderstorms are possible along with small hail.”The NWS also explained the difference between sleet and snow to Californians on Twitter.”Lots of confusion today. If precip bounces it contains ice – call it sleet or small hail,” the agency tweeted. “If precip in flakes it’s snow.” A NWS scientist told the L.A. Times that the snow could drop as far down as 1,000 feet above sea level. Forecasters told the paper that local highways could experience significant delays. If the snow fell in downtown L.A. it would be the first time since 1962, the paper found. The Los Angeles County Sheriff and others also tweeted pictures of the snow.

Plastic pollution: One town smothered by 17,000 tonnes of rubbish — Malaysia has become one of the world’s biggest plastic importers, taking in rubbish the rest of the world doesn’t want. But one small town is paying the price for this – and it is now smothered in 17,000 tonnes of waste. It began last summer. Every night, Daniel Tay’s room would be filled with an acrid smell, like rubber being burned. Coughing, his lungs would tighten. It was only later that he found the source of the smell – illegal recycling factories that were secretly burning plastic.At that point he had no idea that in 2017 China had decided to ban the import of foreign plastic waste. In that year alone it had taken in seven million tonnes of plastic scrap and many environmental campaigners considered it a victory when China clamped down. But with nowhere to go, the bulk of the plastic waste – most of it from the UK, the US and Japan – just went somewhere else and that was to Malaysia.It could have been any town but Jenjarom’s proximity to Port Klang – Malaysia’s largest port and the entry point for most of the country’s plastic imports – made it the ideal location. From January to July 2018 alone, some 754,000 tonnes of plastic waste was imported into Malaysia. According to the State Council, there were soon 33 illegal factories in Kuala Langat – the district Jenjarom is located in. Some sprang up near dense palm oil plantations, others were closer to town. But it would be months before residents learned of their existence – and then only after the symptoms started appearing. Those who lived nearest to the factories were affected the most. Plastic waste is typically recycled into pellets, which can then be used to manufacture other types of plastic. Not all plastic can be recycled, so legal recycling plants should send unrecyclable plastics to waste centres – something which costs money. But many illegal recyling plants instead choose to dispose of it in free but unsanitary ways, either burying it or more commonly – burning.

‘Moment of reckoning’: US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports – The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yoghurt containers and other items into recycling bins. Fighting pollution: Toledo residents want personhood status for Lake Erie Read more But in the past three months, half of these recyclables have been loaded on to trucks, taken to a hulking incineration facility and burned, according to the city’s government. It’s a situation being replicated across the US 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 US. 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% higher than the rest of Pennsylvania and lung cancer rates are 24% higher, according to state health statistics. The dilemma with what to do with items earmarked for recycling is playing out across the US. The country generates more than 250m tons of waste a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with about a third of this recycled and composted.

‘Plastic Is Lethal’: Groundbreaking Report Reveals Health Risks at Every Stage in Plastics Life Cycle – With eight million metric tons of plastic entering the world’s oceans every year, there is growing concern about the proliferation of plastics in the environment. Despite this, surprisingly little is known about the full impact of plastic pollution on human health. But a first-of-its-kind study released Tuesday sets out to change that. The study, Plastic & Health: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet, is especially groundbreaking because it looks at the health impacts of every stage in the life cycle of plastics, from the extraction of the fossil fuels that make them to their permanence in the environment. While previous studies have focused on particular products, manufacturing processes or moments in the creation and use of plastics, this study shows that plastics pose serious health risks at every stage in their production, use and disposal.”The heavy toxic burdens associated with plastic – at every stage of its life cycle – offers another convincing argument why reducing and not increasing production of plastics is the only way forward,” report co-author and Break Free From Plastic Movement (BFFP) Global Coordinator Von Hernandez said in a press release. “It is shocking how the existing regulatory regime continues to give the whole plastic industrial complex the license to play Russian roulette with our lives and our health. Plastic is lethal, and this report shows us why.” The report was a joint effort by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), Earthworks, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF), IPEN, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (t.e.j.a.s.), University of Exeter, UPSTREAM and BFFP. It explains in depth how each stage in the plastics life cycle puts human health at risk.

Plastics reach remote pristine environments, scientists say – Scientists have warned about the impact of plastic pollution in the most pristine corners of the world after discovering chemical additives in birds’ eggs in the High Arctic.Eggs laid by northern fulmars on Prince Leopold Island in the Canadian Arctic tested positive for hormone-disrupting phthalates, a family of chemicals that are added to plastics to keep them flexible. It is the first time the additives have been found in Arctic birds’ eggs.The contaminants are thought to have leached from plastic debris that the birds ingested while hunting for fish, squid and shrimp in the Lancaster Sound at the entrance to the Northwest Passage. The birds spend most of their lives feeding at sea, returning to their nests only to breed. Northern fulmars have an oily fluid in their stomachs, which they projectile-vomit at invaders that threaten their nests. Scientists believe the phthalates found their way into the fluid, and from there passed into the bloodstream and the eggs that females were producing.Jennifer Provencher at the Canadian Wildlife Service said it was worrying to find the additives in the eggs of birds in such a pristine environment. The northern fulmars in the Arctic tend to come across far less plastic than other birds. Provencher’s tests revealed that mothers passed on a cocktail of contaminants to their unborn chicks. “It’s really tragic,” she said at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC. “That bird, from the very beginning of its development, will have those contaminants inside it.”

Plastic Contaminants Found in Eggs of Some of the World’s Most Isolated Birds – Plastics have been recorded in every corner of the world, from the remote icy waters of Antarctica to thebellies of deep-sea fishes. Now, preliminary findings presented at this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC suggest that bird eggs from the highArctic – one of the most remote wildernesses on the planet – show evidence of contamination from chemicals used in plastics. Roughly 20 billion pounds of plastic enter the ocean each year, reports Jennifer Provencher of the Canadian Wildlife Service in her findings. Of these, many contain a hormone-disrupting chemical called phthalates. When birds mistake plastic products like bottle caps or cigarette butts for food, the chemicals from these plastics may leach off a mother’s blood system and, as it turns out, get passed down to the eggs encasing their unborn chicks.”Plastic ingestion reported in seabirds since in the 1980s represents one of the most standardized and widely applied marine plastic data sets available,” wrote Provencher in her presentation summary. Northern fulmars are large birds similar to albatrosses and spend the majority of their life flying low over the waves in search of food only to return to shore to breed. Researchers tested the eggs of northern fulmar populations in the Lancaster Sound, a remote channel that marks the eastern entrance to Canada’s Northwest Passage and is located more than 100 miles from the nearest human establishment. Of five eggs tested, one tested positive for traces of phthalates. Given their home in one of the most isolated wildernesses on the planet, the northern fulmars tested likely ingest far less plastic than birds found in places where plastic consumption is much higher. The problem is believed to be much more widespread than initial findings suggest. “Tracking plastic pollution via seabirds has informed policy reduction targets in Europe, but as we learn more about the source and fate of plastic pollution standardized methods are allowing us to gain insight [into] how plastics may be vectors for chemical contaminants in biota, and how birds may be a vector themselves for plastics to move from the marine to the terrestrial environment, illustrating the widespread impact plastics may have on ecosystem health,” reads the presentation summary.

First Mammal Driven to Extinction by Human-Caused Climate Change Is Australian Rodent – A small Australian rat that lived on a 12 acre island in the Great Barrier Reef has become the first mammal to go extinct primarily because of human-caused climate change, the Australian Government confirmed Monday. The Bramble Cay melomys was first declared extinct after a 2014 search on Bramble Cay, its native island in the Torres Strait, between Queensland, Australia and Papua New Guinea, according to a 2016 report by the University of Queensland and the Queensland government. “The key factor responsible for the extirpation of this population was almost certainly ocean inundation of the low-lying cay, very likely on multiple occasions, during the last decade, causing dramatic habitat loss and perhaps also direct mortality of individuals,” the report authors concluded. “Available information about sea-level rise and the increased frequency and intensity of weather events producing extreme high water levels and damaging storm surges in the Torres Strait region over this period point to human-induced climate change being the root cause of the loss of the Bramble Cay melomys.” Charles Darwin University professor John Woinarski, who has worked on the species, told the program Hack on Australia’s ABC News that a 2008 recovery plan drafted for the species was never implemented. “It suffered from living a long way away from anywhere else, and being a rat and being not particularly attractive. It didn’t have much public advocacy for it.” Researchers believe there were several hundreds of the species on the island in the 1970s, but its numbers had fallen enough by the 1990s that it was listed as endangered, CNN reported. An attempt to save the species with a captive breeding program took place too late. When researchers went to search for the melomys in 2015, they could not find a single rat left, according to Hack.

California has 149 million dead, dry trees ready to ignite like a matchbook – California has just emerged from two back-to-back years of record-setting wildfires, including the Camp Fire, the state’s single most deadly and destructive blaze on record, which killed at least 86 people in October 2018.On Monday, the state received a fresh warning sign of why the risks of massive, devastating blazes like it are growing.According to the US Forest Service’s latest aerial survey of federal, state, and private land in California, 18 million trees throughout the state died in 2018, bringing the state’s total number of dead trees to more than 147 million. The concern is these trees could be matchsticks for another conflagration, or that the decaying timber could maim a hiker, a ranger, or a firefighter.The 2018 results actually represent a decrease in tree deaths compared to 2017 and 2016. But they’re still far above what’s considered typical. “Normal background levels of tree mortality for California, what we would typically see through both insects and diseases, is well less than a million trees per year,” said Sheri Smith, a regional entomologist at the US Forest Service. So why are so many Ponderosa pines, Douglas firs, and quaking aspen in California’s forests dying? There’s no single reason – but the combination of years of drought, extreme heat, and bark beetle infestations are causing trees to splinter and wither. You can see how this wave of tree deaths has spread since 2014 through private, state, and national forests in California in this GIF:

Massive restoration of world’s forests would cancel out a decade of CO2 emissions, analysis suggests –Replenishing the world’s forests on a grand scale would suck enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to cancel out a decade of human emissions, according to an ambitious new study.Scientists have established there is room for an additional 1.2 trillion trees to grow in parks, woods and abandoned land across the planet.If such a goal were accomplished, ecologist Dr Thomas Crowther said it would outstrip every other method for tackling climate change – from building wind turbines to vegetarian diets. Lack of accurate information meant for years experts severely underestimated the number of trees on Earth.Combining data from ground-based surveys and satellites, Dr Crowther and his colleagues arrived at a figure of three trillion – over seven times more than a previous Nasa estimate.The same approach, using machine learning and AI to analyse the enormous data set, allowed the researchers to predict the number of trees that could feasibly be planted in empty patches around the world.Dr Crowther said undervaluing trees means scientists have also been massively underestimating the potential for forests to combat climate change.

The Issue With Tissue and Toilet Paper: How the U.S. Is Flushing Forests Away – For most people, toilet paper is cheap and it’s convenient, something we don’t need to think twice about. But toilet paper’s ubiquity and low sticker price belie a much, much higher cost: it is taking a dramatic and irreversible toll on the Canadian boreal forest, and our global climate. As a new report from NRDC and Stand.earth outlines, when you flush that toilet paper, chances are you are flushing away part of a majestic, old-growth tree ripped from the ground, and destined for the drain. This is why NRDC is calling on Procter & Gamble, the manufacturer of Charmin, to end this wasteful and destructive practice by changing the way it makes its toilet paper through solutions that other companies have already embraced. The Canadian boreal forest is the largest intact forest in the world, holding immense value for Indigenous Peoples, species and the climate. It is home to over 600 Indigenous communities whose cultures have remained inextricably linked to the forest for millennia, and is habitat for iconic species like the boreal caribou, Canada lynx and American marten. In addition, the forest is critical in the fight against climate change, storing the carbon equivalent of nearly twice the world’s recoverable oil reserves in its soil. Yet, this forest is under severe threat from industrial logging operations that push further into intact boreal forests each day. Between 1996 and 2015, more than 28 million acres of boreal forest were logged, an area roughly the size of Ohio. Each year, boreal logging emits hundreds of millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, dramatically accelerating the pace of climate change. Much of this logging goes to feed global demand for tissue pulp – especially in the U.S. The Canadian boreal is a major source of northern bleached softwood kraft (NBSK) pulp, the U.S.’s most favored grade of virgin softwood pulp for tissue products. The average four-person household in the U.S. uses over 100 pounds of toilet paper a year, far outpacing the rest of the world and driving a dangerous “tree-to-toilet pipeline” whereby trees are converted into pulp, turned into toilet paper, and flushed away. Fortunately, alternatives to the “tree-to-toilet” pipeline already exist. Tissue products made from recycled materials are far more sustainable because they do not rely on clearcutting forests and they emit one-third the greenhouse gases as tissue products made from virgin fiber.

Himalayan emergency- It’s not too late to prevent melting glaciers – THE newly released Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) Assessment was yet another scientific call for action on climate change – this time in the Himalayas, also known as the ‘Water Towers of Asia’ because it is from there that all ten major rivers of Asia originate. These rivers provide water, food, and energy for around a third of humanity – approximately two billion people in Asia – and as such, the state of these rivers, glaciers, groundwater, and rain that feed these rivers is of immense importance, not only for the region, but for the entire world. The part of the report that received the most media attention, and understandably so, was the scientific consensus on melting of glaciers: around a third of Himalayan glaciers are likely to melt by 2100, even if the increasingly unlikely climate target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees is met. If not, and if business was to carry on as usual, almost 67 per cent of glaciers will melt by 2100 – bringing in a fundamental change in the Himalayan landscape, with profound and long-lasting impacts on humanity. Some of these impacts that the report highlighted were: increased frequency of extreme events like floods, changes in river regimes with higher uncertainty in lean season flows, and drying up of local water sources including the fragile mountain springs. These, in turn, would impact overall water, energy, and food security in the region – a region which is already a hotspot of global poverty and distress. What was less highlighted in media reports were the solutions and the way forward.

Tourists Are Trashing the World’s Tallest Mountain, So China Has Banned Them From Its Base Camp – China has closed its Everest base camp to tourists because of a buildup of trash on the world’s tallest mountain. The move comes as the Tibet Autonomous Region Sports Bureau said it had collected 8.4 metric tons (approximately 9.3 U.S. tons) of waste, including garbage and human waste, from the core area of the mountain last climbing season, ABC reported. “[N]o unit or individuals are allowed entry into the core area of the Mount Qomolangma National Nature Reserve,” notices posted by the local government in Dingri County, Tibet, read. Qomolangma is what Everest is called in Tibet. While ABC News reported that the notices first appeared in December of 2018, the story has only been widely reported internationally in recent days, according to The Huffington Post. Qomolangma National Nature Reserve Deputy Director Gesang Droma told ABC News that researchers and mountain climbers would still be able to access the mountain from the Chinese side with permits. The People’s Daily said that only 300 permits would be granted this year. Tourists who want to view the north face of the mountain can still do so from the Rongbuk Monastery about a mile away from the base camp.

Sharp rise in methane levels threatens world climate targets – Dramatic rises in atmospheric methane are threatening to derail plans to hold global temperature rises to 2C, scientists have warned. In a paper published this month by the American Geophysical Union, researchers say sharp rises in levels of methane – which is a powerful greenhouse gas – have strengthened over the past four years. Urgent action is now required to halt further increases in methane in the atmosphere, to avoid triggering enhanced global warming and temperature rises well beyond 2C. “What we are now witnessing is extremely worrying,” said one of the paper’s lead authors, Professor Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway, University of London. “It is particularly alarming because we are still not sure why atmospheric methane levels are rising across the planet.” Methane is produced by cattle, and also comes from decaying vegetation, fires, coal mines and natural gas plants. It is many times more potent as a cause of atmospheric warming than carbon dioxide (CO2). However, it breaks down much more quickly than CO2 and is found at much lower levels in the atmosphere. During much of the 20th century, levels of methane, mostly from fossil fuel sources, increased in the atmosphere but, by the beginning of the 21st century, it had stabilised, said Nisbet. “Then, to our surprise, levels starting rising in 2007. That increase began to accelerate after 2014 and fast growth has continued.” Studies suggest these increases are more likely to be mainly biological in origin. However, the exact cause remains unclear. Some researchers believe the spread of intense farming in Africa may be involved, in particular in tropical regions where conditions are becoming warmer and wetter because of climate change. “We have only just started analysing our data but have already found evidence that a great plume of methane now rises above the wetland swamps of Lake Bangweul in Zambia,” added Nisbet. However, other scientists warn that there could be a more sinister factor at work. Natural chemicals in the atmosphere – which help to break down methane – may be changing because of temperature rises, causing it to lose its ability to deal with the gas. Our world could therefore be losing its power to cleanse pollutants because it is heating up, a climate feedback in which warming allows more greenhouse gases to linger in the atmosphere and so trigger even more warming.

Earlier Arctic Rain Is Leading to ‘Methane Emissions Going Bonkers’ — Researchers who monitored one bog for three years in the Alaskan permafrost have identified yet another instance of what engineers call positive feedback. They found that global warming meant earlier springs and with that, earlier spring rains. And as a consequence, the influx of warm water on what had previously been frozen ground triggered a biological frenzy that sent methane emissions soaring. As a consequence, climate scientists may have to return yet again to the vexed question of the carbon budget, in their calculations of how fast the world will warm as humans burn more fossil fuels, to set up ever more rapid global warming and climate change, which will in turn accelerate the thawing of the permafrost. The evidence so far comes from a detailed study of water, energy and carbon traffic from just one wetland. But other teams of scientists have repeatedly expressed concern about the integrity of the northern hemisphere permafrost and the vast stores of carbon preserved in the frozen soils, beneath the shallow layer that comes to life with each Arctic spring. “We saw the plants going crazy and methane emissions going bonkers,” said Rebecca Neumann, an environmental engineer at the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the study. “2016 had above average rainfall, but so did 2014. So what was different about this year?”What mattered was when the rain fell: it fell earlier, when the ground was still colder than the air. The warmer water saturated the frozen forest, flowed into the bog, and created a local permafrost thaw in anoxic conditions: the subterranean microbial communities responded by converting the once-frozen organic matter into a highly effective greenhouse gas.

The permafrost bomb is ticking – Yale – About a fifth of the Northern Hemisphere landmass is permafrost, ground that has been mostly frozen for half a million years or more. Now there are signs of thaw appearing in many places across this vast landscape circling the Arctic, and at accelerated rates. It is only a matter of time until the incremental thawing of the permafrost reaches a tipping point of no return, a state of accelerated and irreversible change, the side effects of which might well push other parts of the Arctic beyond their own tipping points. Quite possibly, we are poised to witness such a transformation within our lifetimes – ice sheet loss, increased frequencies of fires in the tundra and boreal forests, and complete habitat loss for marine mammals, to name just a few examples of the changes that could occur. The major side effect of a thawing permafrost is that it will further enhance global warming with the release of large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The permafrost contains organic matter, and thawing will enable bacterial decomposition that will release methane as a byproduct of anaerobic respiration. The permafrost is not the only climatic system that is susceptible to abrupt regime shifts – the Greenland Ice Sheet, the West Antarctic Ice sheet, and numerous ice shelves in both hemispheres have the potential to undergo abrupt and irreversible change in their state. However, the permafrost is likely one of the fastest to respond, given its southward extent and the existence of positive feedback loops – vicious circles that can amplify the thawing initiated by human-caused warming. The question is, where is the tipping point? The past history of permafrost thawing might give a few clues.

Methane hydrates: Why scientists worry less than you might think – Yale – The blogosphere for years has been abuzz, and particularly in recent weeks, with information – and, equally importantly, misinformation – about the near-term risks posed by uncontrollable and potentially catastrophic releases of large Arctic deposits of methane hydrates, ice-like substances holding a powerful greenhouse gas. Highly vocal have been voices cautioning about existing or perhaps imminent methane releases to the atmosphere, resulting in global catastrophe or cataclysm and threatening human civilization.Such concerned voices in recent weeks are the focus of this post, as many appear to be in response to the January 29 post of videographer Peter Sinclair’s monthly video, at this site. That video included interviews with several highly regarded experts pushing back on the doom-and-gloom “methane time bomb” meme.It’s no surprise that some of those recent and ongoing online commentaries mischaracterize the expert perspectives reflected in that January 29 video. One comes to expect that of the online world of commentary and hyperbole. Carolyn Ruppel, PhD, who heads the gas hydrates research project for the United States Geological Survey, USGS, is among those featured in that video, along with other reputable scientists.But given constraints on how much information could be included in that single six-minute video, we provide here six brief educational videos – ranging from one minute to nearly five minutes – drawn from the Ruppel interview remarks not included in that initial video. These six segments provide authoritative background on the “methane time bomb” and why experts may not “lie awake at night” fretting about it.

School pupils call for radical climate action in UK-wide strike – Thousands of schoolchildren and young people have walked out of classes to join a UK-wide climate strike amid growing anger at the failure of politicians to tackle the escalating ecological crisis. Organisers said more than 10,000 young people in at least 60 towns and cities from the Scottish Highlands to Cornwall joined the strike, defying threats of detention to voice their frustration at the older generation’s inaction on the environmental impact of climate change. Anna Taylor, 17, one of the most prominent voices to emerge from the new movement, said the turnout had been overwhelming. “It goes some way to proving that young people aren’t apathetic, we’re passionate, articulate and we’re ready to continue demonstrating the need for urgent and radical climate action.” Organisers estimated around 3,000 schoolchildren and young people gathered in London, with 2,000 in Oxford, 1,000 each in Exeter and Leeds and several hundred in Brighton, Bristol, Sheffield and Glasgow. In London, the protesters held banners and chanted as police and onlookers watched. They blocked the roads outside parliament chanting “Turn off your engines” at passing cars, and “We want the chance for change now” before mounted police moved them away. There were three arrests in London in connection with the protests. A 19-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl were arrested for obstructing the highway, and a 17-year-old boy for a public order offence. In Manchester, hundreds gathered outside the Central Library before marching to the Royal Northern College of Music with signs reading “Climate over capitalism” and chanting “Whose future? Our future.” Matt Sourby, 18, said his journey from Queen Elizabeth school in Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria, was worth it: “This is our future and this is making a difference. The government has to listen. I feel incredibly powerful just being here.”

My generation trashed the planet. So I salute the children striking back – George Monbiot — The Youth Strike 4 Climate gives me more hope than I have felt in 30 years of campaigning. Before this week, I believed it was all over. I thought, given the indifference and hostility of those who govern us, and the passivity of most of my generation, that climate breakdown and ecological collapse were inevitable. Now, for the first time in years, I think we can turn them around.My generation and the generations that went before have failed you. We failed to grasp the basic premise of intergenerational justice: that you cannot apply discount rates to human life. In other words, the life of someone who has not been born will be of no less value than the life of someone who already exists. We have lived as if your lives had no importance, as if any resource we encountered was ours and ours alone to use as we wished, regardless of the impact on future generations. In doing so, we created a cannibal economy: we ate your future to satisfy our greed.It is true that the people of my generation are not equally to blame. Broadly speaking, ours is a society of altruists governed by psychopaths. We have allowed a tiny number of phenomenally rich people, and the destructive politicians they fund, to trash our life-support systems. While some carry more blame than others, our failure to challenge the oligarchs who are sacking the Earth and to overthrow their illegitimate power, is a collective failure. Together, we have bequeathed you a world that – without drastic and decisive action – may soon become uninhabitable. Every day at home, we tell you that if you make a mess you should clear it up. We tell you that you should take responsibility for your own lives. But we have failed to apply these principles to ourselves. We walk away from the mess we have made, in the hope that you might clear it up.

Gaslighting the climate-striking students – “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” a quote commonly misattributed to Gandhi, nevertheless encapsulates his understanding and that of many other social justice leaders. Given the recent attacks against hundreds of thousands of climate-striking students, though, it is clear that it misses a stage: right after they ignore you, they gaslight you. Gaslighting means to manipulate someone’s perception of reality so that they doubt their own sanity. Right now, we are seeing world leaders, government ministers, editors of major media, all lining up to try to gaslight us, their citizens, the public. They want us to disbelieve our own eyes and ears, our own minds, reasoning and emotions – because the alternative is simply impossible for them to bear. They cannot bear the fact, the reality, that a new generation is rising up and raising its voice, showing its power through striking and non-violent civil disobedience, demanding a habitable planet, and thus casting a bright spotlight on the older generation’s abject failure to curb the power of fossil-fueled industries and halt climate breakdown. Since Greta Thunberg started the student strike for climate movement, it was perhaps only to be expected that various rumor-mongers, unable to attack the crystal-clarity of the message, would attack the messenger instead. It was heartbreaking to read Greta’s response: a 16-year-old with the weight of the world on her shoulders, being distracted from her mission, having to spend any time at all responding to such baseless attacks.The goal of Greta’s attackers was clear: to discredit the climate-strike movement by manufacturing doubt in the integrity of its foremost leader. Unfortunately for them, Greta’s integrity is so large, it can be seen from space. It shine out in her TED talk. We can trust our eyes and ears and reason and emotions: based on her own intellect and reasoning, Greta is demanding of all of us that we stand up and act with all our might, in all ways possible, to stop climate breakdown.

EU’s Juncker proposes billions of spending on climate change after a 16-year-old’s speech – The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Thursday that a quarter of the European Union’s (EU) budget would be spent on tackling climate change.”In the next financial period, 2021 to 2027, every fourth euro spent within the EU budget will go towards climate mitigation actions,” Juncker said.”That is our goal, to ensure that a fourth of the budget goes towards climate change mitigation, and this is going to be a paradigm shift,” he added.The EU budget is usually one percent of its economic output, or 1 trillion euros ($1.13 trillion) across seven years, according to Reuters.Juncker’s comments came after Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, spoke at the same plenary session of the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels. “We know that most politicians don’t want to talk to us,” she said. “Good. We don’t want to talk to them either,” she added. “We want them to talk to the scientists instead. Listen to them, because we are just repeating what they are saying, and have been saying, for decades.” Since starting a protest outside the Swedish parliament in 2018,Thunberg has risen to global prominence, becoming the figurehead for a series of school strikes by children around the world.

Dianne Feinstein Snaps At Group Of Environmental Activist Children – A highly-edited video making the rounds shows Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) lecturing a group of climate activist children on Friday, after she was asked to support the Green New Deal championed by the DNC’s “new hotness,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). Armed with an impassioned letter and memorized talking points, the children belonging to three Bay Area environmentalist groups (Sunrise Bay Area, Youth Versus the Apocalypse, and Earth Guardians San Francisco) implored Feinstein to support the Green New Deal. The Senator responded: “Ok, I’ll tell you what. We have our own Green New Deal.” The video skips forward to the children warning Feinstein that “some scientists have said that we have 12 years to turn this around” – referring to a conclusion by a recent UN-backed report that man-made climate change will become irreversible if carbon emissions are not significantly reduced over the next 12 years (which Ocasio-Cortez turned into “the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change”). “It’s not gonna get turned around in 10 years,” responded Feinstein – drawing a harsh rebuke from an angry chaperone. “Senator if this doesn’t get turned around in 10 years you’re looking at the faces of the people who are going to be living with these consequences,” said the adult – as one of the children chimed in “the government is supposed to be for the people and by the people and for all the people!” Feinstein was not amused. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say “it has to be my way or the highway.” “I don’t respond to that,” shot back Feinstein. “I’ve gotten elected. I just ran. I was elected by almost a million vote plurality. And, I know what I’m doing. So, you know, maybe people should listen a little bit. One kid shot back “I hear what you’re saying but we’re the people who voted you. You’re supposed to listen to us, that’s your job.” “How old are you?” challenged Feinstein. “I’m 16. I can’t vote,” said the girl. “Well you didn’t vote for me,” replied the Senator.

‘Bring It On’: Green New Deal Champions Welcome McConnell’s Cynical Ploy for Up-or-Down Vote – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appears to believe that he can divide and embarrass the Democratic Party by rushing ahead with a vote on the newly introduced Green New Deal resolution. But, confident that the calculated ploy will backfire on the GOP, climate groups and progressive lawmakers are telling the Republican leader: “Bring it on.” After McConnell told reporters on Tuesday that he plans to hold a floor vote the Green New Deal plan unveiled last week by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), environmentalists and progressive members of Congress argued that rather than revealing deep rifts in the Democratic Party, an up-or-down vote will spotlight the GOP’s total opposition to a widely popular policy that represents the best hope of adequately confronting the climate crisis.”Republicans don’t want to debate climate change, they only want to deny it,” Markey said in a statement after McConnell’s announcement. “They have offered no plan to address this economic and national security threat and want to sabotage any effort that makes Big Oil and corporate polluters pay.”Since the Green New Deal resolution was introduced last week, President Donald Trump, Republican lawmakers, and right-wing pundits have spread hysterical falsehoods about the measure and decried it as a “socialist fever dream” that would be political suicide for Democrats to support.But, noting that the Green New Deal is extremely popular among the U.S. public – with one survey showing that 57 percent of Republican voters and 81 percent of Americans overall support the ambitious idea – Markey concluded that “Republicans, climate deniers, and the fossil fuel industry are going to end up on the wrong side of history.”

America’s trains are a drag. The Green New Deal wants to fix that – Ever since the midterm elections, there’s been quite a bit of buzz about the possibility of aGreen New Deal, a comprehensive national plan to tackle climate change and inequality all in one. On February 7, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) finally unveiled a resolution on Capitol Hill. Rather than a set of distinct policies, it’s more of a set of goalposts with ambitions for fighting climate change and transitioning the economy in a just way. Because it’s so vague in its particulars, the resolution has become something of a Rorschach test as observers try to figure out how a Green New Deal would materialize in the real world. The resolution itself doesn’t mention air travel at all but does call for the goal of “investing in … clean, affordable, and accessible transportation; and high-speed rail” as part of a 10-year national mobilization. For a big, ambitious plan to fight climate change, it would make perfect sense to target transit in general and air travel in particular. Transportation – planes, cars, shipping – is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Surging air travel demand helped fuel the rise in US emissions after years of decline. And aircraft are extremely difficult to decarbonize. While electrification is coming for cars, trucks, and buses, no battery or fuel cell is going to fly anyone across the Pacific anytime soon. So alternatives to flying tend stand to be better for the environment. The International Energy Association noted this month in its Future of Rail report that trains carry 8 percent of the world’s motorized passengers and 7 percent of freight, yet use just 2 percent of the energy consumed in the transportation sector. That means trains are a very energy-efficient way to get around.

The War On Climate Change Won’t Be Won Quibbling Over The Green New Deal’s Costs – The Green New Deal unveiled last week by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is a powerful and ambitious statement. It’s more than just a delineation of the enormous changes that will be required to stave off the most cataclysmic impacts of climate warming. It offers a portrait of the better world we can create by doing so.It also has no chance of becoming law, not while Republicans control the Senate and climate change denier Donald Trump resides in the White House.Markey and Ocasio-Cortez know this. That’s why the Green New Deal is framed as a joint resolution, not a formal law, meaning even if it passed, the measure wouldn’t bind the government to any new policies. This distinction is key to understanding what the Green New Deal is – and is not – and how to usefully talk about it now. It is a major statement of the Democratic Party’s political priorities. It is not a detailed blueprint of how to get there – or how to pay for it.The Green New Deal’s agenda, however, is clear: Dramatic action must be taken to avert a climate disaster that will otherwise render much of the world uninhabitable. This is an emergency that deserves immediate attention. Millions of lives are quite literally at stake.Instead of extreme weather disasters, famines and wars over natural resources, the Green New Deal envisions a future in which our nation overcomes its addiction to oil, gas and coal. The federal government would need so many workers to deploy renewable energy, retrofit buildings to be more energy efficient and construct more durable infrastructure that it could guarantee a job to every American who wants one. Those jobs would pay well and offer union protections. And because climate change touches on every facet of life, the transition away from fossil fuels would happen alongside a rapid expansion of safeguards for Americans already suffering the ill effects of dirty energy, from poisoned waterways to the coal industry’s monopolistic domination of entire regional economies.One priority the Green New Deal does not include? Balancing the federal budget. Neither the Green New Deal legislation nor an FAQ released by Ocasio-Cortez last week included a detailed set of plans about how to pay for it.

Green New Deal is feasible and affordable – Jeffrey Sachs – There are three main ideas of the Green New Deal Resolution introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. The first is to decarbonize the US energy system — that is, to end the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning coal, oil and natural gas, in order to stop global warming. The second is to guarantee lower-cost, high-quality health coverage for all.The third is to ensure decent jobs and living standards for all Americans, in part by making colleges and vocational schools affordable for all.The right wing and corporate lobbies are already hyperventilating: It is unachievable; it will bankrupt us; it will make us into Venezuela.These claims are dead wrong. The Green New Deal agenda is both feasible and affordable. This will become clear as the agenda is turned into specific legislation for energy, health care, higher education, and more.The Green New Deal combines ideas across several parts of the economy because the ultimate goal is sustainable development. That means an economy that delivers a package deal: good incomes, social fairness, and environmental sustainability. Around the world, governments are aiming for the same end — a “triple-bottom line” of economic, social, and environmental objectives. In the US, the economy is feeding the wealth of billionaires while leaving tens of millions of households with no financial cushion at all. Meanwhile, the fossil-fuel lobby continues to endanger the planet by promoting the use of fuels that contribute to climate change, raising the risk of mega-floods, droughts, hurricanes, and heat waves, claiming many lives and costing the US more than $450 billion during 2016-18, or more than $150 billion per year on average. The key ideas of the Green New Deal — decarbonization, lower-cost health care, and decent living standards for the working class — have been studied for years. The Green New Deal Resolution is the opportunity, finally, to put that vast knowledge into effect. What is absolutely clear is that the Green New Deal is affordable. The claims about the unaffordability of these goals are pure hype. The detailed plans that will emerge in the coming months will expose the bluster.

The Green New Deal Isn’t Too Expensive. Doing Nothing Is. When the Japanese attacked American forces on Pearl Harbor in 1941, America responded with a historic mobilization of physical and economic resources to overcome the threat of global fascism. In addition to over 400,000 American dead, the United States spent over $4 trillion in today’s dollars and reoriented entire sectors of its economy to the war effort. When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, the United States once again spent enormous resources in reaction: the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already totaled over $6 trillion and counting, even as the United States government added a whole new cabinet department and put itself on a permanent war footing. Few questioned the necessity of dealing with Al Qaeda or the Axis Powers, and those who did were rarely taken seriously in the public discourse. But even now in 2019, decades after most policymakers became aware of the dire threat to all of human civilization and most of the world’s species presented by climate change and thirteen years after the documentary An Inconvenient Truth exploded the issue into the national consciousness, the nation remains at a standstill, paralyzed in inaction. It’s not because the public isn’t aware of the crisis: over 80% of registered voters support dramatic action to deal with climate change. But climate change wasn’t even a major issue in the 2016 presidential election, barely registered as a question in any of the debates, and a bitterly fought election saw the installation by minority vote of a conspiracy-addled president who refuses to acknowledge the reality of the crisis and insists on attempting to exacerbate it by promoting fossil fuel interests.

The Green New Deal’s Huge Flaw – There might be no better monument to the limits of American environmentalism in the climate change era than a parking garage in Berkeley, California. It’s got “rooftop solar, electric-vehicle charging stations, and dedicated spots for car-share vehicles, rainwater capture, and water treatment features” – not to mention 720 parking spots. It cost nearly $40 million to build. At night, it positively glows. And it’s a block from the downtown Berkeley BART station. That America’s most famous progressive city, one where nearly everything is within walking distance, spent $40 million to renovate a parking garage one block from a subway station suggests that progressive Democrats remain unwilling to seriously confront the crisis of climate change. America’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions is transportation. In California, the proportion of CO2 from transportation is even higher: above 40 percent. Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arregu’n anticipates that the Center Street Parking Garage will out-green all others in the state with a LEED Silver rating, making it a perfect example of our approach to climate change: glibly “greening” the lives we live now, rather than contemplating the future generations who will have to live here too. On Thursday, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey unveiled just such a fix: the Green New Deal, a proposal that bills itself as a plan for the environment and the economy in equal measure. It is designed to steer America toward a low-carbon economy, fulfill the right to clean air and clean water, restore the American landscape, strengthen urban sustainability and resilience, and put a generation to work. But the Green New Deal has a big blind spot: It doesn’t address the places Americans live. And our physical geography – where we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places – is more foundational to a green, fair future than just about anything else. The proposal encapsulates the liberal delusion on climate change: that technology and spending can spare us the hard work of reform.

Green New Deal: Some Democrats on the fence – A resolution outlining the goals of the Green New Deal capped off its first week of a somewhat messy rollout with mixed reviews, even from typically Democratic strongholds like labor unions. In the House, the top two Democrats who would oversee any legislation that comes out of the plan have remained reluctant to fully endorse it, stopping at lauding the goals and the enthusiasm behind them. And Republicans quickly branded the Green New Deal as an extreme, socialist plan with unrealistic proposals to eliminate air travel and cows. In an interview with CQ Roll Call, Rep. Paul Tonko, D-New York, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce’s Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee, said he embraces the “goals and principles” of the Green New Deal resolution, but did not endorse the broader plan to radically remake the U.S. economy to combat climate change and make the country more resilient. “I appreciate the consciousness that they’ve raised among Americans coast to coast, but I think my role as chairman and the role of the subcommittee … is to design and develop the tools that get us to those goals and that will be done on science-based, evidence-based grounding,” he said. One of the key selling points of the Green New Deal is that it would create “millions” of jobs, with Markey describing it as “the greatest blue collar job-creation program” in a generation. While it stipulates that those jobs would be family-sustaining union jobs, collective bargaining groups have not been quick to embrace the plan, and at least one major union has rejected the plan for fear of the disruption it would wreak on some industries. “We don’t think this is very well thought through. …. This looks like a fairy tale to us,” Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, said.

New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a ‘Risky Distraction’ – A new report makes the case that the fossil fuel industry prefers geoengineering as an approach for addressing climate change because it allows the industry to keep arguing for continued fossil fuel use. In Fuel to the Fire: How Geoengineering Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Accelerate the Climate Crisis, the Center for International Environmental Law (CEIL) warns that geoengineering, which includes technologies to remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide and to shoot particles into the atmosphere to block sunlight, potentially offers more of a problem for the climate than a solution.“Our research shows that nearly all proposed geoengineering strategies fail a fundamental test: do they reduce emissions and help end our reliance on fossil fuels?” said CIEL President Carroll Muffett, who co-authored the report with the support of the Heinrich Boell Foundation. The report’s title page features a quote from former ExxonMobil CEO (and former Secretary of State) Rex Tillerson that highlights the appeal of geoengineering to his industry:“It’s an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions … The fear factor that people want to throw out there to say we just have to stop this [burning fossil fuels], I do not accept.” Inventing new technological solutions to deal with climate change has an obvious allure, and the mainstream media offers a steady flow of stories supporting this concept, but only according to the headlines. The technology touted currently has no way of being scaled up to a level where it could have an actual impact on the climate – and even if it were possible – would be decades away. Decades the world doesn’t have to wait.

Trump administration quits fuel efficiency talks with California — The Trump administration has broken off talks with the California Air Resources Board over vehicle fuel-efficiency standards and is on track to roll back standards set by President Barack Obama, the White House said in a statement Thursday. The breakdown sets up a potential clash over the state’s long-standing ability to set its own more stringent standards for tailpipe emissions and fuel efficiency, a power the courts have upheld for the past half-century. California and 19 other states have demanded the Trump administration abandon the rollback. The administration has vowed to freeze fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks at 2020 levels, undoing a regulation Obama established to reduce oil imports, slash carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change, improve public health and save consumers money without compromising safety. It argues that the Obama-era requirements would make vehicles more expensive and encourage people to stick with older, less-safe cars and trucks. “Despite the administration’s best efforts to reach a common-sense solution, it is time to acknowledge that CARB [the California Air Resources Board] has failed to put forward a productive alternative,” the White House said in a joint statement with the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department. However, some California officials said real talks never really began. They said sessions between the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and CARB were not substantive and never progressed into the nitty-gritty of policy negotiations. “The administration broke off communications before Christmas and never responded to our suggested areas of compromise – or offered any compromise proposal at all,” California’s power to set its own standards dates back to 1967 legislation and has been reaffirmed every time Congress amended the law. “It is tempting to see this feud as just another in a series of squabbles between the administration and California. However, the state’s independent regulatory authority to set more stringent fuel-efficiency standards was set by Congress over 50 years ago,”

The basic metals industry is one of the world’s largest industrial energy users – The industrial sector is the largest user of energy in the world, accounting for approximately 55% of world delivered energy in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency. Within the industrial sector, the basic metal industry is one of the largest energy users, accounting for 12% of global industrial sector energy use. The basic metals industry includes the manufacture of iron, steel, aluminum, and other intermediate metal goods. Some of the main products of the basic metals industry include steel girders, aluminum sheets, and copper wire. Large amounts of energy are needed to heat ovens for melting and manipulating raw ores and metal. In some parts of the basic metals industry, the selection of fuel is also driven by important chemical factors, such as the need for coking (or metallurgical) coal used in iron smelting. In addition, just as energy is an important input for the basic metals industry, metal goods are an important part of the energy system: equipment, pipelines, wires, and structural materials are used by the mining, refining, and electricity industries to produce and transport energy. Because energy is a main input to the basic metals industry, the energy intensity of the industry, or energy consumed per unit of output, is relatively high compared with other industries. However, the energy intensity of the basic metals industries varies widely by region. According to EIA’s International Energy Outlook 2018, Russia was the most energy-intensive producer of all basic metal goods in 2015, with an average energy intensity of 68,000 British thermal units (Btu) per dollar, followed by Australia and New Zealand with an average intensity of 17,000 Btu/dollar. Manufacturing iron, steel, and aluminum involves processing raw ores, which is the most energy intensive process in the basic metals industry. The reason these countries process such high levels of the ores necessary for iron, steel, and aluminum is partly because these natural resources are produced in their countries. In comparison, the energy intensity of the U.S. basic metal industry is much lower, at 8,000 Btu/dollar, because the industry is more diverse in the metals and stages along the processing path, such as recycling or producing intermediate parts.

Acid Spill on Vehicles Near Glencore Mine Kills 18 People – At least 18 people died when a truck transporting sulphuric acid to a mine owned by Glencore Plc in the Democratic Republic of Congo crashed and spilled its contents onto two vehicles, a provincial health minister said.The tanker was heading to the Mutanda Mine, a copper and cobalt operation near Kolwezi in the southeast of the country, Lualaba province Health Minister Samy Kayombo Mukanza said. Nine people are also injured, he said.“The acid was sprayed over people and vehicles,” Jean-Marie Tshizainga, mines minister for the province, said. The accident occurred on Feb. 20 about 50 kilometers (35 miles) from the mine, whose officials assisted in the rescue operation, Glencore said in an emailed statement. The truck belonged to a logistics company contracted by the mine, it said.

Georgetown wants to raze 210 acres of trees to meet green-energy goals. Environmentalists are crying foul. – Environmentalists are in a position they never imagined: Fighting a solar panel project that would help Georgetown University dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.They say the project, which involves razing about 210 acres of trees in rural Charles County, Md., could endanger the area’s birds and lead to runoff that would put tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay at risk.Leaders at the solar company hired by Georgetown counter that they are prioritizing the safety of the bay but that “trade-offs are necessary” in renewable energy projects. Reductions in greenhouse emissions from the solar panels, they say, would be equivalent to planting hundreds of thousands of trees.Fights like this one are increasingly common as public and private entities turn to solar and wind energy, leading to debates about where projects should be located. “Green projects do not destroy green resources,” said Linda Redding, an accountant from La Plata who is part of a determined group of environmentalists from Charles and Prince George’s counties opposing the project. “If you destroy what is saving our climate in the name of fighting climate change, the effort is hollow.” The activists accuse Georgetown and Origis Energy of “green-washing” and are hoping to convince the Maryland Department of the Environment to deny a needed permit. A public hearing is scheduled for Feb. 27.

New bill is “clear attempt by MidAmerican to monopolize the sun in Iowa” – A new bill backed by MidAmerican Energy would devastate the ability of Iowans to install solar panels for their homes or businesses. House Study Bill 185 would undo a longstanding policy of net metering, which “allows residential and commercial customers who generate their own electricity from solar power to feed electricity they do not use back into the grid.” Iowans served by monopoly providers MidAmerican or Alliant Energy have been able to use net metering since the 1980s, under rules adopted by the Iowa Utilities Board.In recent years, MidAmerican has periodically sought to subvert net metering in various ways. Environmental advocates have been concerned the policy would become the next target for Republican lawmakers who destroyed Iowa’s decades-old, successful energy-efficiency programs last year at the behest of utility companies. State Representative Gary Carlson introduced House Study Bill 185 this morning in his capacity as leader of the Iowa House Commerce Committee. MidAmerican’s lobbyist immediately registered in favor – often a sign that an interest group or company had a hand in writing legislation. The utility’s media relations staff did not respond to an inquiry about why the company is pushing this bill. I also sought comment from the Iowa Environmental Council’s energy program director Kerri Johannsen, who told Bleeding Heartland, HSB 185 is a clear attempt by MidAmerican to monopolize the sun in Iowa. This bill undermines net metering, a policy that allows homeowners and businesses to invest in and use their own solar energy at their own home or business. Iowa has over 800 jobs in the solar industry at small businesses across the state. A recent jobs analysis by the Solar Foundation showed that 86 percent of solar jobs nationally are in the residential and business market while only 14 percent are in utility-scale solar. This bill threatens the solar industry in Iowa as we know it. I enclose below the full text of the bill and more background on solar power and net metering in Iowa.

Attacks on wind and solar power by the coal and gas industries – Wind and solar power projects are under attack by coal and gas companies that fear competition from the booming renewable energy industry. Below are examples from the past year of the fossil fuel industry’s war on renewable energy projects. In July of 2018, AEP announced the cancellation of the Wind Catcher project, a multi-state effort to build what would have been the nation’s largest wind farm. The move came after the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) denied approval of the project, which had been previously approved by regulators in Arkansas and Louisiana, as well as by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Texas Industrial Energy Consumers (TIEC) was among the intervenors who opposed the Wind Catcher project before the PUCT. In its motion to intervene, TIEC said that its members involved in the case “include United States Steel.” A list of United States Steel subsidiaries and joint ventures found in the company’s most recent annual report includes Chisolm Coal LLC, Kanawha Coal LLC, Ontario Coal Company, and Stelco Coal Company. TIEC was represented in the Wind Catcher case by the law firm Thompson & Knight. “We are counselors to Texas Industrial Energy Consumers (TIEC), a trade association representing approximately 50 of the largest energy consumers in the state,” according to the firm’s website. Other TIEC members identified in a filing in a separate case last year included the Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, ExxonMobil Power & Gas Services, Kinder Morgan, Phillips 66, and Valero Energy. The PUCT’s order in the Wind Catcher case noted that while AEP projected nearly $1.5 billion in net benefits for consumers over the life of the project, opponents found the project would result in net costs. TIEC “argued the net cost could exceed $1 billion,” according to the PUCT order. One of TIEC’s arguments was that AEP overestimated the value of Wind Catcher’s carbon emissions benefits by $550 million, and that those benefits should be negated due to President Trump’s efforts to roll back the Clean Power Plan and the unlikelihood of a carbon tax being imposed anytime soon. The PUC and administrative law judge both echoed TIEC’s arguments on this issue.

World’s Biggest Battery to Boost Solar in Texas — The world’s largest battery could soon be storing solar energy deep in the heart of Texas oil country. The 495-megawatt storage system would be built in tandem with a solar farm of the same size in Borden County, Texas. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc., which operates most of the state’s grid, posted the details in a chart that shows the state’s battery storage will surge more than sixfold to 584 megawatts when the projects are completed in 2021. Bigger batteries are being developed to help make the electricity produced through solar and wind power more efficient, even when the sun goes down and it gets less breezy. Recent battery-backed solar projects have, at most, 100 megawatts of panels and 30 megawatts of storage, said Yayoi Sekine, an analyst at BloombergNEF. “This would be about five times that,” Sekine said in an interview. The project underscores how Big Oil’s demand for power in the fossil fuels-rich Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico is, in a twist, boosting the case for renewable energy. Texas’s power grid operator has stressed the need for more electricity resources in the region to power oil and gas drilling operations. Borden County, with a population of less than 700, is located within the oil-rich Permian Basin, is about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Lubbock. Vistra Energy Corp. just completed what’s now the the largest battery storage facility in Texas with a 10-megawatt system connected to a solar farm. It’s also planning a project at the Moss Landing power plant in California, which will store 300 megawatts for as long as four hours when completed next year.

100% Renewable Energy Needs Lots of Storage. This Polar Vortex Test Showed How Much. – In the depths of the deep freeze late last month, nearly every power plant in the Eastern and Central U.S. that could run was running. Energy analysts saw a useful experiment in that week of extreme cold: What would have happened, they asked, if the power grid had relied exclusively on renewable energy – just how much battery power would have been required to keep the lights on? Using energy production and power demand data, they showed how a 100 percent renewable energy grid, powered half by wind and half by solar, would have had significant stretches without enough wind or sun to fully power the system, meaning a large volume of energy storage would have been necessary to meet the high demand. “You would need a lot more batteries in a lot more places,” said Wade Schauer, a research director for Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, who co-wrote the report. Schauer’s analysis shows storage would need to go from about 11 gigawatts today to 277.9 gigawatts in the grid regions that include New England, New York, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest and parts of the South. That’s roughly double Wood Mackenzie’s current forecast for energy storage nationwide in 2040. Energy storage is a key piece of the power puzzle as cities, states and supporters of the Green New Deal talk about a transition to 100 percent carbon-free energy sources within a few decades. The country would need to transform its grid in a way that could meet demand on the hottest and coldest days, a task that would involve a huge build-out of wind, solar and energy storage, plus interstate power lines. The actual evolution of the electricity system is expected to happen in fits and starts, with fossil fuels gradually being retired and the pace of wind, solar and storage development tied to changing economic and technological factors. The Wood Mackenzie co-authors view their findings, part of a larger analysis of utility performance during the polar vortex event, as a way to show, in broad strokes, the ramifications of different options.

Regulators set schedule for comments on CMP deal – The Maine Public Utilities Commission on Thursday set a schedule for comments on a filing earlier in the day by parties supporting a proposed $1 billion hydropower transmission line through western Maine. Only the 30 parties involved in the commission’s case on whether Central Maine power will be granted a certificate of public convenience and necessity for its proposed New England Clean Energy Connect project will be able to comment, according to PUC spokesman Harry Lanphear. The NECEC would transmit hydropower from the Canadian border through Maine to Massachusetts. Public comments on the project submitted to the PUC are being considered by the commissioners as part of the overall case, Lanphear said. While today’s stipulation, which included benefits for Central Maine Power and Emera Maine customers, had the support of the governor’s office as well as nine other parties, NextEra Energy Resources and 11 other parties did not support it. The stipulation aims to garner support for CMP’s request for certificate of public convenience and necessity for the project. Such a certificate would be a big move forward for the controversial project, which still needs PUC approval and approvals from the Department of Environmental Protection, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Maine Land Use Planning Commission, which oversees Maine’s unorganized territory.

Natural gas-fired reciprocating engines are being deployed more to balance renewables – Reciprocating internal combustion engines, which are typically used for backup, standby, or emergency power, are now becoming increasingly popular for larger utility-scale power generation applications, especially in areas with high levels of electricity generation from intermittent sources such as wind and solar. The recent increase in natural gas or dual-fuel capable reciprocating internal combustion engine units has been driven in part by advancements in engine technology that increase operational flexibility and by changes in natural gas markets that have generally provided ample supply and relatively stable fuel prices. Reciprocating engines tend to be smaller than other types of natural gas-fired electricity generators and account for a relatively small share of power plants fueled by natural gas. As of November 2018, the capacity of the average reciprocating engine generator was 4 megawatts (MW), compared with 56 MW for natural gas combustion turbines and 166 MW for combined-cycle units. Based on data in EIA’s Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory, reciprocating engines accounted for 1% of the total natural gas-fired power fleet.Before 2010, reciprocating engines typically had no more than 9 MW in capacity, but in recent years, larger units that range from 16 MW to 19 MW have been installed throughout the United States. Several of these engines are typically installed at one generation facility. The largest of these facilities is the Denton Energy Center, which came online in July 2018 outside Dallas, Texas, and it has twelve 18.8 MW natural gas-fired engines for a total plant capacity of 225 MW. Reciprocating engines can start up even when the grid has no power, which helps electric transmission grid operators match fluctuating power requirements and restore power after major storms. Engine manufacturers have also made advances in efficiency and emission reductions, particularly emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx). In addition, power plants using internal combustion engines tend to require significantly less water than similarly sized combined-cycle or simple-cycle natural gas turbine plants.

India proposes more than $12 billion of pollution-reducing incentives (Reuters) – India has proposed incentives worth 885 billion rupees ($12.4 billion) to encourage power plants to install equipment to curb emissions and to develop infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs), a government statement said on Friday. The bulk of the money, 835 billion rupees, would be aimed at curbing sulphur emissions from power plants, with the rest devoted to development of EV infrastructure in 70 cities over five years ending 2025, the statement said. The proposal by India’s power ministry to its finance commission is in addition to an existing proposal that envisages installation costs for emission-cutting equipment to be passed on to consumers. The ministry’s plans come against the backdrop of a utilities sector under financial stress, with loans from mostly state-run lenders turning sour or requiring restructuring, according to an Assocham-Grant Thorton report this month. The Association of power producers, an industry group that represents private companies such as Reliance Power and Adani Power as well as state-run NTPC, had been lobbying for incentives for the past two years. India has already extended a December 2017 deadline for utilities to meet emissions standards by up to six years as power producers struggle to comply with stringent rules set out by the environment ministry in 2015 to cut emissions that cause lung diseases, acid rain and smog. Thermal power companies account for 80 percent of all industrial emissions of particulate matter, sulfur and nitrous oxides in India. The EV incentives, meanwhile, are part of India’s efforts to encourage higher sales of electric vehicles, having said it hopes to electrify all new vehicles by 2030

Coal going from winner to loser in India’s energy future: Russell (Reuters) – India’s demand for electricity is expected to double in the next two decades, and coal has been long forecast to be the fuel of choice for power generation. But this may no longer be the case. It’s not that India doesn’t have plentiful reserves of coal. It does, and it is the world’s second-largest producer and importer, following China. It’s not even that India’s reserves are expensive to mine. They aren’t. It’s not even that transporting coal from where it’s mined to where it’s needed is too difficult. Yes, it is an issue, but this challenge could be overcome with sufficient investment in rail and other infrastructure. No, the main reason coal may battle to fuel India’s future energy needs is that it’s simply becoming too expensive relative to renewable energy alternatives such as wind and solar. In recent months, power supply auctions have shown that renewables can be offered at less than 3 rupees (4 U.S. cents) per kilowatt hour, a tariff that coal-fired generators have difficulty matching. There is also zero chance that new coal generators can produce electricity at rates competitive to renewables, given higher capital and operating costs. Rajit Desai, the head of engineering, procurement and construction at major private generator Tata Power, told a forum at this week’s Coaltrans India conference that his company wasn’t looking at developing any new coal plants. Tata Power is instead focusing on buying coal-fired power plants that are effectively distressed assets. Many of these plants started construction in the past seven years, when power demand and price forecasts for electricity were bullish. Some of the plants under construction or newly completed, though, have been unable to secure power purchase agreements with high enough prices for them to operate profitably. This means a company such as Tata Power can buy these brownfield plants at a discount steep enough to make them viable at the electricity prices currently being offered.

Global coal use may have peaked in 2014, says latest IEA World Energy Outlook — The world may never again use as much coal as during a peak in 2014, according to the latest World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA).The weighty annual outlook is one of the most widely respected and eagerly anticipated publications among energy analysts and policymakers. The 2018 edition runs to 662 pages and contains the IEA’s latest view of how the future of global energy might play out, depending on political and societal choices.Its prominence means the report is also a frequent target of criticism for having often failed to anticipate the rate or direction of change.In its main scenario – based on existing national policies, plus pledges and targets not yet codified in law – the 2018 outlook points to a 25% increase in energy demand by 2040. This growth, largely driven by Asia, would be twice as large in the absence of continued improvements in energy efficiency, it says.Rapidly growing renewables and nuclear are not expected to cover this new demand, the IEA says. This means that oil, gas and CO2 emissions will likely continue to increase. Even with coal use remaining flat, this leaves a “huge” gap to meeting the Paris Agreement’s climate goals, the IEA adds. In its 2018 edition, the IEA is keen to emphasise what the outlook is, as well as what it is not. The report is based around a series of scenarios designed to “explore possible futures and the actions that could bring them about”. The IEA explains: “There are no forecasts in the WEO…None of these potential pathways is preordained; all are possible. The actions taken by governments will be decisive in determining which path we follow.”

Half of European companies have no carbon reduction plan, report finds -More than half of European companies have no carbon reduction targets in place despite 75 percent of those surveyed believing their business will be meaningfully affected by climate change, a report said Tuesday. In its annual report, non-profit firm CDP analyzed environmental disclosures from 859 companies. It found that 53 percent still had no targets for their total emissions, and only a third of those that did had strategies which extended beyond 2025. CDP also recognized 76 European companies as pioneers for global action, including L’Oreal, Unilever, Bayer, and ING. The CDP, previously known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, has energy information on more than 570 cities worldwide. Meanwhile, investment funds from BNP Paribas, Candriam and Banque Postale were praised for their climate performance, as the analysis found that 46 percent of the funds’ top company holdings had been put on CDP’s “A-List” of best performers. French businesses led European action on environmental sustainability according to the report, with 70 percent of the region’s most climate-friendly investment funds and a third of its best-rated companies based in France. Financial incentives were among the strategies being used by firms to ensure their carbon policies were delivered. The report said that 47 percent of companies in Europe were offering senior management monetary rewards tied to climate targets. As well as business risks arising from climate change, 90 percent of companies included in the study said it presented opportunities. Almost half of businesses expected increased demand for low-carbon goods. European companies reported reductions in greenhouse gas emissions last year that equalled Austria’s annual emissions, as the number of companies with science-backed targets to lower their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement increased by 65 percent.

World’s biggest thermal coal exporter is capping output over climate concerns – Commodities giant Glencore on Wednesday said it will cap the amount of coal it produces each year, part of a broader plan to align its business with the global effort to prevent climate change. Glencore is the world’s largest exporter of thermal coal, the kind burned in power plants and a major contributor to planet-warming carbon emissions. The multinational miner on Wednesday said it will broadly limit its capacity to produce coal to current levels, or about 150 million tons per year. The company instead plans to put capital to work churning out more copper, cobalt, nickel, vanadium and zinc, commodities that are used in electric vehicle batteries and other technologies that underpin the shift to a cleaner energy and transportation future. “As one of the world’s largest diversified resource companies, Glencore has a key role to play in enabling transition to a low carbon economy,” the company said in a statement. “To deliver a strong investment case to our shareholders, we must invest in assets that will be resilient to regulatory, physical and operational risks related to climate change.” To be sure, influential forecasters like BP and the U.S. Department of Energy see coal demand remaining essentially flat over the next two decades. That’s because consumption is rising in parts of the developing world like India and Southeast Asia and dropping in developed nations. Glencore’s decision to limit coal output gives the company a way to continue profiting from the fossil fuel’s continued use in emerging markets while meeting growing demands to contribute to the battle against climate change.

Trade War Goes Global- China Indefinitely Bans Australian Coal Imports– Just days after it warned its citizens against traveling to New Zealand, Beijing has reportedly cracked down on imports of coal from Australia, cutting off the country’s miners from their biggest export market and threatening the island nation’s economy at a time when it and its fellow “Five Eyes” members who have sided with the US by blocking or banning Huawei’s 5G network technology. Customs agents at the port of Dalian have banned imports of Australian coal “indefinitely” while reportedly capping all coal imports from all sources at 12 million tonnes per day, Reuters reported overnight. Elsewhere in China, Australian coal – the combustible rock is the country’s biggest export – has faced customs delays of up to 40 days, just as Rabobank analyst Michael Every anticipated when he pondered earlier this month whether Australian coal might face “bureaucratic delays” at Chinese ports following the country’s “Huawei moment.” This is what Every said two weeks ago: Billionaire political donor Huang Xiangmo, Beijing’s former top lobbyist/fixer in Australia has just had his long-standing application for Aussie citizenship rejected and his permanent residency cancelled while travelling overseas, leaving him stranded and locked out of his USD10m Sydney mansion. The citizenship application refusal apparently comes on both character grounds and concerns about the reliability of his answers in interviews and correspondence with authorities including ASIO, the Australian intelligence service. Note that Mr. Huang has donated AUD2.7m to both major political parties over the last five years and also funds former foreign minister Bob Carr’s Sydney think tank – Carr himself having made several recent public statements arguing for Australia to side with China due to their economic links. Does this smell like a real US-China trade deal is on the cards? And is this Australia’s Huawei moment? Might Aussie exports to China suddenly run slap-bang into bureaucratic delays or boycotts? And should we add Australia to the list of nationalities that might want to rethink visits to China? But silly me: China is already holding one captive. Germany might be about to push the EU onto that China hit-list too, as it is apparently setting the following standard for Huawei to operate: “A guarantee its data will not be shared with Beijing”. So that’s nein then, nicht war

Strange days for coal with Glencore’s cap, China curbs: Russell (Reuters) – It’s been weird in the coal world in recent days, with the world’s largest shipper saying it’s capping output, biggest seaborne buyer China putting restrictions on some imports, and an Australian court saying mines must factor in climate change. Throw in an executive at a major Indian coal-fired power generator saying his company won’t build any new plants as coal can’t compete with renewables, and it’s little surprise that environmental activists may be tempted to pop champagne corks. The most significant development this week was Glencore’s announcement on Feb. 20 that it will cap its annual output around its current capacity of 145 million tonnes. Glencore is the world’s fourth-biggest coal mining company but also the largest supplier to the seaborne market, as miners that produce more – Coal India, China Shenhua Energy and Peabody Energy of the United States – are focused on their domestic markets. Glencore said it was taking the step to help mitigate climate change, prompting commentators and activists to claim another victory in the campaign to end burning of the polluting fuel. While Glencore may genuinely be trying to do its part to halt global warming, it’s also likely the mining giant has calculated that restricting coal output will be good for business. It is accepted that coal consumption is likely to drop in the coming decades, to virtually nothing in Europe and North America, and will even start to decline in Asia. But Glencore has probably calculated that this will be a slow, profitable death, and is positioning itself to take advantage. The seaborne market is set to become tighter, especially in Asia, as more countries in the region build coal-fired generators that rely on imported fuel. Countries on this list include Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines and others in Southeast and South Asia. The world’s three biggest exporters of coal, however, all have various reasons as to why they may not be able to supply much more than they ship now. Indonesia, the world’s biggest shipper of thermal coal used in power plants, has a domestic reservation policy that forecasts declining exports as more fuel is diverted to feed local generators. Australia, the biggest exporter of coking coal used to make steel and number two in thermal coal, may find it hard to boost its shipments, given increasing domestic opposition to the industry and the difficulties in getting new mines approved, financed and insured. South Africa, the third-biggest exporter, has capacity constraints in its rail system and is also trying to balance the needs of its home market against the desirability of earning foreign exchange through exports. Glencore, which spent some $3.7 billion last year on coal mines in Australia, has also probably acquired all the assets it needs in the coal sector.

China says Australian coal imports remain normal, Canberra seeks to calm investors (Reuters) – China’s foreign ministry said on Friday that Australian coal imports to the country continue as normal, although it added customs authorities had stepped up environment and safety checks on foreign cargoes. The statement came after sources at Chinese ports told Reuters Australian coal imports are facing longer waiting times to clear customs than other supplies, and the northern port of Dalian was halting Australian coal shipments. “At present, customs throughout the country are accepting as normal customs declarations for imported coal, including from Australia,” said Geng Shuang, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China, during a press briefing. But Geng added the customs authorities in China have stepped up environment and safety checks on foreign cargoes, to “protect the rights of Chinese importing companies and the environment”. Overseas coal supplies into China, especially from Australia, have slowed for weeks, causing shipping backlogs outside key Chinese ports. The Australian currency fell more than 1 percent to a 10-day low of $0.7070 on Thursday after Reuters reported that customs at Dalian had banned imports of Australia’s biggest export earner since the start of February. Seeking to ease fears of a further rift in ties with China, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday there was nothing to suggest the move was out of the ordinary. The country has asked its ambassador to China to seek urgent clarification. “People should be careful about leaping to conclusions about this. This is not the first time that on occasion local ports make decisions about these matters,” Morrison told reporters in Auckland. China is the largest buyer of Australian coal, taking 89 million tonnes last year, worth A$15 billion ($10.7 billion), according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australia’s Minister for Trade, Simon Birmingham, said delays to exports of coal to China were caused by import quotas. “We have no basis to believe that there is a ban on Australian coal exports into China, or into any part of China,” he told reporters.

Documents detail multimillion-dollar ties involving EPA official, secretive industry group – The nation’s biggest coal-burning power companies paid a top lobbying firm millions of dollars to fight a wide range of Obama-era environmental rules, documents obtained by POLITICO reveal – shortly before one of the firm’s partners became President Donald Trump’s top air pollution regulator. Now that ex-partner, Bill Wehrum, is aggressively working to undo many of those same regulations at the EPA, where he is an assistant administrator in charge of issues including climate change, smog and power plants’ mercury pollution. ..Wehrum’s past role as a utility lobbyist is well-known, but the documents reveal never-before-disclosed details of how extensively his old firm, formerly called Hunton & Williams, worked to coordinate the power industry’s strategy against the Obama administration’s regulations. Twenty-five power companies and six industry trade groups agreed to pay the firm a total of $8.2 million in 2017 alone, according to an internal summary prepared in June of that year – less than three months before Trump tapped Wehrum for his EPA post. POLITICO obtained 26 pages of briefing materials distributed to members of an umbrella group of utilities Wehrum represented while at the firm. Known as the Utility Air Regulatory Group, the secretive organization included some of the largest coal-burning utilities in the country. The materials were marked “CONFIDENTIAL ATTORNEY-CLIENT COMMUNICATION” and outlined goals for a meeting of the group’s policy committee. Topping the list of funders were Duke Energy, Southern Co. and AEP, which together contributed nearly one-third of the money.

West Virginia Coal Miners Rally For Black Lung Legislation – Miners and advocates rallied Wednesday at the West Virginia Capitol in support of a series of bills aimed at preventing and treating severe black lung disease. Five bills introduced by lawmakers would make it easier to make qualify for state benefits and provide benefits to miners who have early-stage black lung. The bills come at a time when the Ohio Valley is facing a surge in cases of severe black lung disease, also called Progressive Massive Fibrosis. “We’re here because so many of the people that’s worked years and years years, 30, 35 years in the mines, and been exposed to coal dust their whole life and they fall through the cracks,” said Terry Abbott, president of United Mine Workers of America Local 8843, which represents miners in West Virginia’s Fayette and Kanawha counties. “We’re here to support all the miners that should be receiving compensation for the the years they put in the mines.” Black lung is caused by exposure to coal dust and the debilitating and progressive disease has no cure. The state and federal government both have benefits systems that allow miners to make a claim against their employer for medical expenses and a small stipend. Advocates and miners argue access to health and financial benefits increases the likelihood sufferers can seek medical treatment. Getting those benefits through federal or state programs can be challenging, and recent changes on the state level has made it tougher for miners to qualify.

What comes after coal for the Tennessee Valley Authority? – – Opened in 1963 with two coal-burning generators and completed in 1970 with the start of a third, the 2,630-megawatt Paradise Fossil Plant was among the largest in the United States and embodied the height of America’s allegiance to coal-fired power. On Feb. 14, the TVA’s seven-member board ordered the Paradise plant’s third and last 1,150-megawatt turbine to shut next year. That same day, the board also ruled that a 52-year-old, 881-megawatt coal-fired station near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, needed to close in 2023. The next day, the agency’s staff issued a draft operating plan that reflects just how rapidly the electrical generating sector is evolving in the Southeast and across the United States. TVA’s generating capacity – currently 33,500 megawatts – will be essentially unchanged over the next five years and may not need to increase, at least to 2038. Yet how that power is produced will change substantially. The authors of the plan call for shifting the agency, which spent more than 30 years in the 20th century building some of the largest centralized coal and nuclear plants in America, to rely much more intensively in the 21st century on natural gas and distributed solar generation. TVA’s plan proposes to close its four remaining coal-fired stations, the youngest of which is 46 years old, perhaps by 2028. Their combined 6,030-megawatt generating capacity would be replaced by 6,000 megawatts of new solar production. A sizable share will come from rooftop solar installations.New generating capacity from wind energy receives scant attention in the plan. TVA opened one small 27-megawatt wind farm in Tennessee in 2000, and purchases 1,517 megawatts of generating capacity from 8 more wind farms in Illinois, Kansas and Iowa. Another of the draft plan’s intriguing proposals reflects TVA’s interest in modular 50-megawatt nuclear reactors, under development in a number of research centers in the United States and Canada. The agency, which operates three big nuclear stations, views producing as much as 600 megawatts from these much smaller machines as a more efficient and less expensive way to develop carbon-free baseload generating capacity.

Santee Cooper accidentally pumped mud from coal ash pit into Waccamaw River – Santee Cooper officials found the line of sludge in the morning. It was at the site of the former coal-fired Grainger Generating Station in Conway, which still has tens of thousands of tons of toxic ash in ponds on site. Maintaining the ponds involves a pump system that empties water into the adjacent Waccamaw River, in part because drier ash is easier to excavate and haul away. But when employees checked one pump the morning of Jan. 30, spokeswoman Mollie Gore said, they found that it had sucked out all the water in a section of pond No. 2 and started dredging up the sediment underneath. That sediment, Gore said, was likely a mix of ash and soil, and about a dumpster’s worth ended up in the river. Typically, employees check the pumps in a rotation at night, but for some reason, that piece of machinery was missed, she said. In the morning, what the utility found was a line of sludge on the wall of the dike separating the pond from the Waccamaw. “Sometime overnight, it was during the night, the pump was not monitored and the area that it was pumping was being dewatered,” Gore said. The state-owned utility has since increased the frequency of its nighttime monitoring, and subsequent tests of the river did not show significant presences of toxic materials in coal ash, such as arsenic, lead and mercury. It also installed stone under the pump so it wouldn’t be able to reach the mud underneath if the water levels again get too low.

Coal Ash Cleanup Legislation Heads to Governor – Two bills are headed to the governor’s desk requiring Dominion Energy to clean up millions of tons of coal ash at four Virginia power plants in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.SB 1355, introduced by Republican Sen. Frank Wagner of Virginia Beach, was approved by the House 93-2 on Friday. The bill’s passage comes a day after the Senate approved an identical bill, HB 2786, 38-2.Both bills require the removal of the more than 28 million tons of coal ash currently stored at Chesterfield Power Station, Chesapeake Energy Center, Possum Point Power Station and Bremo Power Station.According to the legislation, coal ash waste at these sites must be recycled or moved to lined and permitted landfills, with at least one quarter of the coal ash being recycled. The measure also requires Dominion Energy, which owns all four sites, to offer municipal water hookups or water testing to residents within one-half mile of the coal ash basins.The cost of the closure and removal of coal ash sites will be at least partly recovered by rate adjustments authorized by the State Corporation Commision, meaning that Dominion Energy won’t have to foot the bill on its own. The vote is a major victory for environmental organizations that have for years pushed for the cleanup of coal ash.

Fond du Lac Chairman Voices Concerns Following Derailment – Fond du Lac Band members are expressing their concerns after a BNSF train derailment spilled tons of coal on the reservation over the weekend. They say they weren’t contacted by the railway after the incident in a timely matter. Meanwhile, railway officials say the opposite. Chairman Kevin DuPuis says there main concerns are around the fact that the railway is not communicating with them as the clean up process is now underway and potential impacts of the spill. “Everybody should be concerned about this,” said DuPuis. DuPuis says they are upset with how BNSF handled the derailment starting with not being notified about it until hours after it happened. “We feel that as we have jurisdiction and would be the lead agency in this, that at least there would collaboration with one another for the clean-up and remediation and we were not part of that,” said DuPuis. As of Tuesday, trains were running back on the tracks but the investigation and clean-up is still very active, raising concerns about potential environmental impacts. “The simple magnitude with the amount of cars and the coal should send a concern to anybody, whether they are from the reservation or not. This is sitting on the river, there is coal in the river, and with the coal dust nobody knows what this does,” DuPuis added. He says they still don’t know what caused the spill but they are hoping to get that and other answers from officials. “We hope that we can sit at the table, and that they can respect where they are at and respect that the Fond du Lac Band itself has a legitimate government,” said DuPuis.

Marathon wants to keep storing pet coke uncovered along Detroit River — Petroleum coke – the chunky, sooty refinery by-product often stored in piles along the Detroit River that led to black, swirling clouds of misery for nearby residents a few years ago – is once again causing a dustup. Marathon Petroleum, which makes and markets “pet coke” as a fuel for things such as cement kilns and utility boilers, is seeking a variance from several provisions of a 2017 Detroit ordinance on riverfront storage of such products – including a requirement that the pet coke be stored and processed in enclosed structures. The public has until March 18 to submit comments on Marathon’s requested variance to the city’s Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department. The ordinance was passed after years of controversy surrounding large pet coke piles along the Detroit River near the Ambassador Bridge. In 2013, despite Michigan Department of Environmental Quality evaluations showing no “fugitive dust” coming off of the piles, nearby residents complained of finding black soot in their homes – which later tested as coming from pet coke. A dramatic video shot in July 2013 from Windsor, showing a billowing black cloud of pet coke dust over the Detroit River, went viral and spurred government officials into action.

Toxic black snow covers streets in Siberia – video – Guardian – Residents of a coalmining region in Siberia have been posting online videos showing entire streets and districts covered in toxic black snow that critics say highlight a man-made ecological catastrophe in which British industry is compliant.

Second public meeting set on debate over mining in Perry State Forest–The Ohio Department of Natural Resources will hold a second public meeting next week on an application to allow strip mining in a portion of Perry State Forest. The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the cafeteria of New Lexington High School, 2549 Panther Dr. Oxford Mining Company has submitted a 483-page permit application to mine an irregular-shaped, 545-acre parcel west of Route 345 and north of County Road 48. The permitted area would include about 12 percent of the 4,567 acres in Perry State Forest, which is used for various recreational activities, including trails for all-purpose vehicles, dirt motorcycles, horseback riding and hiking. The state forest is about an hour southeast of Columbus. Oxford was recently purchased by its former owner, Chuck Ungurean, who formed a new company in December, CCU Coal and Construction. No one at CCU returned messages from The Dispatch seeking comment. Lauren Ketcham, who has a 12-acre farm that borders Perry State Forest, is a member of Friends of Perry State Forest, which has opposed the coal mining from the beginning. “ODNR should issue a draft permit and make that available for public comment before they consider issuing a final permit,” Ketcham said. “That would allow the community to see what kind of requirements ODNR is going to impose and what issues Oxford has addressed before a final permit is issued.” An ODNR official said issuing a draft permit is not part of the application process. State officials have argued that the mining project actually will remove pits of low pH water, fix iron seeps and remove highwalls – manmade cliffs on the upward side of an excavation – that were left after the land was mined in the 1930s and 1940s but was never returned to a natural state because environmental regulations weren’t in place then. Under this new application, CCU would be required to reclaim the property after mining is completed.

Georgia regulators delay update on status of troubled nuclear project – Georgia regulators have delayed hearing whether Georgia Power’s troubled and overbudget Vogtle nuclear expansion is falling further behind schedule. The bulk of the multibillion-dollar project’s ultimate costs would likely fall on customers.Elected members of the Georgia Public Service Commission voted 4-1 on Tuesday to postpone the start of a scheduled round of updates and hearings on the project until late August. They also increased funding for more independent monitoring of Vogtle’s progress.Georgia Power, which is regulated by the PSC, is required to give an update on the Vogtle work every six months and had been slated to do so later this month. But staff for the PSC, citing its own heavy caseload and the plans for increased Vogtle monitoring, proposed an agreement with Georgia Power to postpone the update. Georgia Power also would report some information from a review of the project by May 15.

Expected legislation might save Three Mile Island – Two state lawmakers plan to introduce legislation within the next two weeks that might keep the Three Mile Island nuclear plant operational beyond its scheduled September closure, but opponents call it a “bailout.” Exelon Generation – which owns the Dauphin County plant’s Unit 1 reactor – must order fuel by June 1 or begin an irreversible decommissioning process. “There is no winding back the clock,” said state Rep. Thomas Mehaffie III, R-Dauphin County. The company will not prepare for a refuel without new policy in place. Mehaffie and state Sen. Ryan Aument, R-Lancaster County, are planning to sponsor bills in their respective chambers that would incorporate nuclear energy into the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act – a 2004 law that requires a percentage of electricity to come from alternative sources. “We cannot comment on whether the legislation will be sufficient to prevent the premature retirement of TMI until the bill is introduced,” Exelon spokesman Dave Marcheskie wrote in an email. But since nuclear energy sources produce 93 percent of the state’s zero-carbon electricity, it should be put on equal footing with the 16 other environmentally beneficial energy sources included in the law, he wrote.

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