Environmental News For The Week Ending 23November 2019

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI (but can be posted at other times).

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We’ve Found a Serious New Health Risk to Human Spaceflight –We’re still learning about the potential effect that extended periods spent in space could have on the human body. Now a new health threat has been identified, one which could put lives at risk on long journeys through the cosmos.The problem lies in the internal jugular vein (IJV), a major blood vessel running down the neck from the brain. A study of 11 astronauts who spent time on the International Space Station (ISS) found that six of them had developed stagnant or backwards blood flow in this particular vein, within a period of just 50 days. One crew member was found to have developed thrombosis, or blockage in the internal jugular vein, the first time that this has been recorded as a result of spaceflight.According to the team behind the new findings, this issue needs to be investigated before we start sending astronauts on long trips to Mars. It’s not yet clear just what the consequences of this kind of thrombosis might be, but the implications could be severe and perhaps even fatal. “Exposure to a weightless environment during spaceflight results in a chronic headward blood and tissue fluid shift compared with the upright posture on Earth, with unknown consequences to cerebral venous outflow,” write the researchers in their published paper.Down here on Earth of course, gravity takes care of the job of pulling blood down from the head to the rest of the body – it’s one of the reasons you’d start feeling very strange if you stood on your hands for an extended period of time.Up in the microgravity environment of the ISS, it’s a different story – and bloodflow issues aren’t the only health risks we need to worry about. “Headward fluid shifts during prolonged weightlessness result in facial puffiness, decreased leg volume, increased stroke volume, and decreased plasma volume,” write the researchers.

Medicines pose global environmental risk, experts warn – (AFP) – Residues from billions of doses of antibiotics, painkillers and antidepressants pose a significant risk to freshwater ecosystems and the global food chain, a new analysis said Thursday. There are growing fears that the unchecked use of antibiotics in both medicine and agriculture will have adverse effects on the environment and on human health. When animals and humans ingest medicines, up to 90 percent of active ingredients are excreted back into the environment. Many medicines are simply discarded — in the United States alone an estimated one third of the four billion drugs prescribed each year ends up as waste. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) compared data on concentrations of pharmaceutical residue in water samples worldwide as well as prescribing trends and water purification regulations in various countries. One study cited in its report estimates that 10 percent of all pharmaceuticals are potentially harmful to the environment — including hormones, painkillers and antidepressants. The OECD said that antibiotic use for livestock is predicted to rocket by more than two thirds in the next decade, stoking concerns over antibiotic resistance. Human prescriptions are also set to drastically increase, according to the report. “We’re seeing constant engineering of new pharmaceuticals and seeing clinical practices evolve to include recommendations of earlier treatment and higher doses,” said the lead report author Hannah Leckie. Another study cited said “extremely high” concentrations of pharmaceutical products had already been detected in water ways in China, India, Israel, South Korea and the United States. In Britain alone, ethinyloestradiol, diclofenac, ibuprofen, propranolol and antibiotics are now present in the run-off of 890 wastewater treatment plants at high enough levels to cause “adverse environmental effects”, according to another study.

Measles Outbreak in Samoa Kills 6. Schools Closed. State of Emergency Declared – The Pacific Island nation of Samoa declared a state of emergency this week, closed all of its schools and limited the number of public gatherings allowed after a measles outbreak has swept across the country of just 200,000 people, according to Reuters.In declaring the health emergency, officials said they were anticipating the worst to come, according to a post on Facebook, as the New York Times reported.The tiny country that is just south of the equator in the Pacific ocean, half way between New Zealand and Hawaii, has seen at least 716 suspected cases of measles, over 40 percent have required hospitalization. The six deaths were mostly infants under two, according to Reuters.Nearly 100 people remain hospitalized with 15 in intensive care. The National University of Samoa, the island’s only university, told students to stay home and indefinitely postponed exams, according to the New Zealand Herald.The government announced that official plans for compulsory measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) immunizations would be published on Monday, according to Deutsche Welle.”MMR vaccinations for members of the public who have not yet received a vaccination injection is now a mandatory legal requirement for all of Samoa,” it said.Also, on Friday, the Samoan government declared that measles vaccinations would be mandatory. It also planned to limit exposure by prohibiting children under 17 gathering in public or entering medical centers unless they are sick, according to the New York Times.

Third person diagnosed with deadly plague in a week in China | The Independent – A 55-year-old man has been diagnosed with bubonic plague after killing and eating a wild rabbit in northern China, resulting in a further 28 people being put in quarantine, according to health authorities.The case is the third reported example of plague in the country over the past week, adding to two plague cases which were discovered in the capital of Beijing.A statement from the health authority in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region said the man was being treated at a hospital in the city of Huade.It said investigators had learned the patient, who is from Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, consumed the rabbit on 5 November.Twenty-eight people who had close contact with the man are still under observation but none of them have shown plague symptoms, the statement said. The health authority added that no new cases of plague have been found in the region.On 12 November, two patients from the same area were diagnosed withpneumonic plague in Beijing – although the two incidents are not thought to be related. Pneumonic plague, which is more severe than the bubonic version, is believed to be the type of plague that was mainly responsible for the Black Death in the 1300s. The disease can be fatal in up to 90 per cent of people infected if they do not receive treatment, which primarily involves taking several types of antibiotics.

DARPA Seeks Militarized Microbes So They Can Spread Genetically-Modified Bacteria – The Pentagon’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) wants to be able to spread genetically modified bacteria as “explosives sensors.” The United States government could very well be looking into ways to militarize microbes. The Pentagon has teamed up with Raytheon for this project, which seems like it should come straight out of a dystopian science fiction story. The government wants to develop a system capable of delivering genetically modified bacteria underground, according to a report by RT. Initiated by DARPA, the same agency that led programs to create telekinetic super soldiers and weaponized robotic insects, the project seeks to “program two bacterial strains to monitor ground surfaces for explosive materials,” defense contractor Raytheon said in a joint press release with the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. So the genetically modified bacteria are for your own good! “We already know that some bacteria can be programmed to be very good at detecting explosives, but it’s harder underground,” said Raytheon researcher Allison Taggart. “We’re investigating how to transport the reporting bacteria to the required depth underground.” Though the Pentagon claims it only plans to use the system for “defensive“ purposes only, some may find the idea of militarized microbes off-putting while conjuring apocalyptic scenarios of a runaway genetically engineered superbug.

Botulism feared responsible for India migratory bird deaths – Thousands of birds have died at India’s largest inland saltwater lake from suspected botulism, officials said Sunday. The 8,000 carcasses were found over the last few days in and around Rajasthan state’s Sambhar Lake, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the capital Jaipur. “Veterinary experts from the Rajasthan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences have indicated that the deaths occurred due to botulism,” the state forest department’s principal secretary, Sreya Guha, told AFP. Avian botulism, a naturally occurring neurotoxin activated in warm weather by bacteria in silt, is passed along to waterbirds through infected bugs, causing paralysis or death. It is not contagious to humans. The government is awaiting a detailed analysis of the dead birds from the Indian Veterinary Research Institute as well as a report from a southern India laboratory on the water’s heavy metal toxicity. Officials suspect the birds had been feeding on maggot-infested carcasses, contributing to their death. Thousands of carcasses have been fished out of the water and buried but there are fears more could be lying on the bed of the lake. A 70-member team had been formed to recover and dispose of the birds over the next few days, a senior government official added. The region around Sambhar Lake, like several other big and small water bodies around India, is an important destination for thousands of domestic and international migratory birds every winter. Bird watchers in the region fear the final toll and impact of the botulism infection will be significantly higher because of the size of the lake ecosystem, local media reports said.

There Are 2,000 Untested Chemicals in Packaged Foods – and It’s Legal – A major but largely glossed over report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmental and public health nonprofit based in Washington, DC, shows that thousands of untested chemicals (an estimated 2,000, to be exact) are found in conventional packaged foods purchasable in U.S. supermarkets. And yes, all of them are legal. The extensive collection of permissible additives includes several known or suspected carcinogens, such as synthetic sodium nitrate, found in processed meats and considered probably carcinogenic by the World Health Organization, and butylated hydroxyanisole, also known as BHA, a chemical listed as a cancer-causing chemical by the state of California and found in commonplace items like frozen pepperoni pizza. Other unappealing chemicals are commonly found in our food packaging, such as polypropylene, sulfuric acidand bisphenol A – all of which can have impacts on human health and the environment. How much should consumers panic before their next supermarket trip? “It really depends on what level of risk consumers are comfortable with,” said Dawn Undurraga, a nutritionist at EWG and co-author of the study. “The more we learn about what is in conventional foods, the more evidence for concern we accumulate.” Independent laboratory tests commissioned by EWG, for example, found glyphosate, a probable carcinogen, in every sample of conventional oats tested. The fact that dangerous chemicals are legal for use in our food is a major public health concern that goes largely unrecognized by the U.S. government. “Unfortunately, our current policy on food additives was written in 1958 and has been completely co-opted by food and chemical companies,” Undurraga said. “Additives that are deemed ‘Generally Recognized as Safe,’ or GRAS, by a food or chemical company or trade association are exempt from the food additive petition process where the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviews the safety of the additive.” Originally, this GRAS exemption was created to cover ingredients widely known to be safe, like vinegar, but with advancements in food science, the provision has been applied to thousands of chemicals. As a result, questionable substances have been allowed into a host of conventional foods. In 2017, EWG joined several other public health groups to file a lawsuit against the FDA in an effort to eliminate the GRAS loophole.

Inhofe: Pelosi insisting on PFAS language in final NDAA – Senate Armed Services Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) says Speaker Nancy Pelosi is demanding that provisions related to toxic PFAS chemicals be included in the National Defense Authorization Act. Inhofe said Pelosi drew that line in the sand in a memo to senior lawmakers Wednesday. “It says unless we have her PFAS language, she will not bring the bill up for a vote in the House,” Inhofe told POLITICO today. “Once you make that statement, you know something is not sellable.” Inhofe declined to discuss what specific provisions related to PFAS are sought by Pelosi. Tougher PFAS regulations have been a top priority for House Democrats and a handful of Republicans throughout the negotiations over the defense bill. In a letter last month, 68 House members said they would vote against the defense bill if it did not crack down on PFAS.A House Democratic leadership aide declined to respond directly to Inhofe’s characterization of Pelosi’s position.“There are multiple open items outstanding on the NDAA. Negotiations continue,” the aide said. “We are not going to negotiate through the press.” Lawmakers had expressed optimism a tentative deal on NDAA could be reached before the end of the week, and Inhofe said that remained a possibility. “We’re moving right along,” Inhofe told reporters.

Sources: Trump admin delaying action on PFAS cleanups –The Trump administration has been slow-walking efforts to clean up two widely used toxic chemicals that have been linked to health risks around the country, according to two sources close to EPA, a delay that is raising concerns that the Defense Department is having undue influence over a regulation that could cost it billions of dollars. EPA promised in February to issue a rule that would declare the chemicals PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under the federal Superfund law – a move that would require expensive cleanups at military bases, factories and other sites contaminated by the chemicals. Two sources close to EPA say agency staff completed work on a proposed version of that rule in September, but it still has not been sent to the White House for review, the next step of the rulemaking process. The delay has raised questions about the Trump administration’s willingness to follow through on its action plan for the class of PFAS chemicals , which have been linked to certain cancers, immune problems and preeclampsia, and have been found in the drinking water supplies of communities across the country. And it comes as Defense Department officials and former chemical industry officials have been playing an outsized role in the process. The administration this week reiterated that it plans to release a Superfund rule by the end of this year, but lawmakers eager to see action on the class of PFAS chemicals appear unwilling to give the White House the benefit of the doubt. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told lawmakers this week that she would not bring the annual must-pass defense bill to the floor if it does not include strong PFAS language, according to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Armed Services chairman. An industry source close to the administration said the Superfund rule would likely remain on hold through next year.

EPA rolls back Obama-era chemical safety requirements – EPA on Thursday reversed key portions of a chemical safety rule implemented by the Obama administration in response to the 2013 West, Texas, fertilizer facility explosion that killed 15 people. The Trump administration’s final Risk Management Program rule frees companies from mitigation and safety preparation requirements that EPA says will save $87.8 million annually, and it no longer requires the owners of chemical plants, refineries and other industrial facilities to publicly release data on the chemicals they store on site.EPA said the previous rule was targeted too broadly and imposed too high a burden on industry to justify its cost and that it maintained enough of the regulation to protect public safety.“Accident prevention is a top priority of the EPA and this rule promotes improved coordination between chemical facilities and emergency responders, reduces unnecessary regulatory burdens, and addresses security risks associated with previous amendments to the RMP rule,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement. The RMP amendments apply to more than 12,500 refineries, chemical plants, agricultural facilities, food and beverage manufacturers and other industrial sites that store certain chemicals. It requires owners to work to reduce the risk of releasing those chemicals into the air. The Obama administration finalized its rule in January 2017, but many provisions had not yet taken effect. The Trump administration’s final rule comes afterthirteen attorneys general last month urged EPA against rolling back the rule in the wake of the June Philadelphia refinery disaster, which they said “avoided catastrophic loss of life by the narrowest of margins.” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) was a lead critic of the rule and argued that the public data sharing provisions put facilities at risk of terrorist attacks by revealing details about the chemicals stored at regulated facilities. Inhofe in 2017 even introduced a Congressional Review Act resolution targeting the Obama RMP update, but it failed to advance. Industry also complained about some of the Obama rule’s provisions after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2016 ruled the West, Texas, disaster was caused by arson – not an accident. That finding in part prompted the Trump administration’s revisions to the rule.

945 Toxic Waste Sites at Risk of Disaster From Climate Crisis – The climate crisis has put at least 945 designated toxic waste sites at severe risk of disaster from escalating wildfires, floods, rising seas and other climate-related disasters, according to a new study from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), as the AP reported. The country’s most contaminated spots that pose an imminent threat to human health or the environment are designated Superfund sites. That means cleaning them up is a national priority. The EPA has identified more than 500 contaminants at Superfund sites, including arsenic, lead and mercury. However, the GAO found that efforts to secure the toxic waste have weakened as the Trump administration plays down their threat, according to the AP. Senate Democrats responded to the report in a letter to the EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler demanding an explanation for agency leaders’ “failure to embrace addressing climate change as a strategic objective,” according to the Washington Post. “We believe that EPA’s refusal to implement GAO’s recommendations could result in real harm to human health and the environment as the effects of climate change become more frequent and intense,” the lawmakers wrote to Wheeler, as the Washington Post reported. The GAO report looked at 1,571 Superfund sites and found that six out of 10 are vulnerable to extreme weather caused by the climate crisis. The GAO produced an interactive map that shows each of the 945 vulnerable sites. It is color-coded to show if the site is threatened by wildfires, hurricanes, storm surge, sea-level rise, or coastal and river flooding, as the Verge reported. The study recommended that the EPA start incorporating the climate crisis into its decision making for toxic waste sites and its risk assessments for the Superfund sites. The EPA however has continued to deny the climate crisis as a threat to the Superfund sites, according to the GAO report. The EPA does not include the climate crisis in its agency-wide policies, which stops the EPA from tackling the risks at contaminated sites as the planet heats up and extreme weather events increase in frequency, duration and intensity, as Inside Climate News reported. The EPA issued a statement that was largely dismissive of the report. The statement also managed to avoid mentioning climate change.

2 Million Americans Lack Clean Water Access, Especially Native Americans – Native Americans are disproportionately without access to clean water, according to a new report, “Closing the Water Access Gap in the United States: A National Action Plan,” to be released this afternoon, which shows that more than two million Americans do not have access to access to running water, indoor plumbing or wastewater services. The report is the result of a collaboration from two national non-profit groups, DigDeep and the US Water Alliance. It found that 58 out of every 1,000 Native American households lack plumbing, compared with three out of every 1,000 white people. The report noted that an estimated 30 percent of people on the Navajo Nation lack access to running water and must haul water, but local officials report that the actual number may be even higher. “We knew the problem was much bigger, but when we went out to look at the data, it didn’t exist,” said George McGraw, the founder of DigDeep, a nonprofit that has helped build water systems on the Navajo Nation, asNPR reported. The paper found that many people in the Navajo Nation around Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico had to drive more than 40 miles every few days just to haul home water for drinking, cooking and bathing. That’s some of the better access. Some Navajo residents drive four or five hours just to fill metal barrels. One study participant spends over $200 month in gas just to fetch water. In Red Mesa, Arizona, residents told researchers that the groundwater supplies are so low in some areas that they have to visit four or five locations to collect the water they need. Female elders reported stockpiling water for emergencies and for the winter, when freezing temperatures make hauling water difficult, according to the report.The paper noted that many study participants in the Navajo Nation in the Southwest have under 10 gallons of water at home at any given time. Many use as little as two or three gallons per day, which stands in stark contrast to the 88 gallons per day used by the average American, according to the report. That minimal water use means people in the Navajo nation have to make difficult choices between hygiene and water needed for food. NPR profiled Darlene Yazzie, an elderly woman who is a member of the Navajo nation. She needs to fill two 50-gallon barrels with water and then drive to a windmill to fetch water for her sheep. The water from the windmill is not fit for human consumption since it has unhealthy levels of arsenic and uranium. “A lot of people died of cancer around here,” Yazzie said to NPR. “I noticed that more are being diagnosed. I’m pretty sure it’s because of the environment and the water.” The new report and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have both confirmed her hunch. The ground water in the Four Corners area is contaminated by 521 abandoned uranium mines. When uranium mining was at its peak in the 1990s, gastric cancer rates in the area doubled, according to the new paper, asNPR reported. The EPA says that unregulated drinking water sources are the greatest public health risk to the Navajo Nation, according to NPR.

Exposure to PM 2.5 pollution linked to brain atrophy, memory decline – Women in their 70s and 80s who were exposed to higher levels of air pollution experienced greater declines in memory and more Alzheimer’s-like brain atrophy than their counterparts who breathed cleaner air, according to USC researchers. The findings of the nationwide study, published today in Brain, touch on the renewed interest in preventing Alzheimer’s disease by reducing risk as well as hint at a potential disease mechanism. Alzheimer’s is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, and there’s currently no cure or treatment. “This is the first study to really show, in a statistical model, that air pollution was associated with changes in people’s brains and that those changes were then connected with declines in memory performance,” Fine particles, also called PM2.5 particles, are about 1/30th the width of a human hair. They come from traffic exhaust, smoke and dust and their tiny size allows them to remain airborne for long periods, get inside buildings, be inhaled easily, and reach and accumulate in the brain. Fine particle pollution is associated with asthma, cardiovascular disease, lung disease and premature death. Previous research has suggested that fine particle pollution exposure increases the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. What scientists haven’t known is whether PM2.5 alters brain structure and accelerates memory decline.

Your state’s air pollution might be coming from another state’s power plants – Air pollution from power plants caused 16,000 premature deaths in the United States in 2014, according to new research on the sources and destinations of fine particulate matter produced by electricity generation. The state-by-state study had some other troubling findings, too: Exposure to the toxic pollutants varies by race and income, and in many cases fine particulate matter travels beyond the state where it was produced. Julian Marshall, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington and co-author of the study, told Grist that his team’s findings highlighted an important reason to address air pollution, while at the same time revealing a major challenge. “These findings are a reminder that as the air cleans up, we’re not only improving public health, we’re likely also reducing environmental injustice,” said Marshall. But “for states that want to improve pollution from power plants, there are some things you can do and there are some things you can’t do.” Fine particulate matter – also called PM 2.5, because it consists of particles less than 2.5 micrometers wide – is bad news. It’s one of the most severe environmental health risks in U.S., contributing to a range of medical problems, including respiratory and neurological diseases. Scientists say it causes more than 100,000 premature deaths every year in the U.S. It ends up in the atmosphere from a range of different sources, from fires to construction sites, but this study exclusively looked at the fine particulate matter associated with the electric grid – more than 90 percent of which came from coal-burning plants. Regardless of wealth, black households were exposed to air pollution from power plants at higher levels than the general population. The geographic distribution of fine particulate matter is also striking: PM 2.5 produced by electricity generation in one state is often blown into another state. Or to put it another way, pollution from Pennsylvania isn’t only killing Pennsylvanians – it’s also responsible for the deaths of dozens of New Yorkers, Rhode Islanders, Vermonters, and residents of other downwind states. Some states, like New York and Maryland, acquire more fine particulate matter from other states from outside than they produce themselves. Others, like West Virginia and Illinois, are “net exporters” of air pollution.

New satellite measurements show how polluted Los Angeles’ air really is — Scientists who scanned the skies above dozens of U.S. cities have made a surprising discovery about the smog that’s suspended over Los Angeles: one of its key ingredients isn’t disappearing as fast as it once did. The finding may help explain why the once-steady improvements in air quality have come close to stalling out here even thoughnitrogen oxide emissions have continued to decline. It also suggests that the particular chemistry of L.A.’s air may complicate future cleanup efforts. “That’s certainly part of why we’re in a moment in Los Angeles where it’s harder to get the air cleaner,” Ronald Cohen and his former graduate student Joshua Laughner identified other cities where levels of nitrogen oxides – known collectively as NOx – have fallen out of tandem with emissions in recent years. But the discrepancy is particularly important for Los Angeles because the pollutant is so abundant here. Nitrogen oxides – a combination of nitric oxide (NO) andnitrogen dioxide (NO2) – are generated by motor vehicles and industrial machines like power plants, boilers, turbines and cement kilns. When NOx molecules are mixed with volatile organic compounds – from vehicles and a vast array of household and commercial products – and exposed to sunlight, they help form pollutants like ozone. NOx emissions have fallen at a rate of roughly 7% a year from 2006 to 2013 across most U.S. cities, Cohen said. Scientists had presumed there was a direct correlation between those emissions and NOx levels in the air. Any variations in the length of time NOx lasted in the air probably wouldn’t have much affect on those levels, the thinking went. Cohen and Laughner used satellite data to measure nitrogen dioxide – a good proxy for nitrogen oxides as a whole – in 28 U.S. cities, including Memphis, Indianapolis and New York. t turned out that the length of time the molecules stuck around in the atmosphere before being broken down by chemical reactions seemed to follow different patterns over time in different cities. “In some places the lifetime got longer, in some places it got shorter. In some places it did one and then the other.” The differences in NOx lifetimes in L.A. and elsewhere may be due in part to the particular chemical makeup of the atmospheres above each city, Cohen said. “What we can’t do is explain why some cities behave in one way and why in another,” Cohen said. “We think it’s because we don’t understand the organic molecules in those cities.”

Sydney Air Quality at Hazardous Levels as Wildfires Rage — Thick smoke from wildfires has shrouded Sydney and its surrounding areas with health experts warning residents with medical conditions to remain indoors. The Sydney skyline was barely visible with air quality in some parts of the city reaching over hazardous levels early Tuesday. Shane Fitzsimmons, the state’s rural fire commissioner, says firefighters would be challenged by high temperatures and wind conditions. Most of the coastal areas of the New South Wales are under very high fire danger with 48 fires burning across the state. Fires have destroyed 577 homes in New South Wales during the wildfire season, which peaks during the Southern Hemisphere summer but has started early after an unusually warm and dry winter.

Delhi Air Pollution Crisis: Air Quality In Delhi, World’s Most Polluted City, Still ‘Severe’: Report – A day after Delhi was declared the most polluted city in the world by private weather forecasting agency Skymet, air quality levels in the national capital continue to fluctuate between ‘severe’ and ‘hazardous’ for a third consecutive day. According to Skymet the overall Air Quality Index (AQI) reading in Delhi this morning was 505 – down marginally from 527 on Friday. The slight improvement has been attributed to light winds but it is likely to be temporary, with the toxic haze expected to re-settle over the city on Tuesday.The AQI in neighbouring regions was almost as bad, with Noida recording an AQI of 471, Ghaziabad 424, Faridabad 427 and Gurgaon 420.An AQI between 0-50 is considered good, 51-100 is satisfactory, 101-200 moderate, 201-300 poor, 301-400 very poor and 401-500 is marked as severe/hazardous.On Friday Skymet said Delhi was the most polluted city in the world with AQI readings of 527. The report also named Kolkata and Mumbai as the fifth and ninth most polluted cities, respectively, with AQIs of 161 and 153. The alarming revelations came barely two weeks after a real-time air quality ranking report by IQ Air Visual also called the national capital the world’s most polluted city. Air quality in Delhi and surrounding areas has deteriorated steadily since the Diwali weekend, leaving the city covered in a thick fog of poisonous fog. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which rules Delhi has repeatedly blamed stubble burning in neighbouring states like Punjab and Haryana for exacerbating the problem. Last month Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called Delhi a “gas chamber”.

Eateries and malls too finding it difficult to breathe in Delhi-NCR — High air pollution levels hit the eating-out and entertainment industry in the National Capital Region, resulting in an 8-10% drop in revenue in the first fortnight of November from a year earlier as people stayed indoors or went out of town, industry officials said. “The first fortnight of November has seen a dip of about 10% in revenue,” said Rahul Singh, promoter of the Beer Café, which has 17 outlets in the NCR. “The post-Diwali detox got compounded by the air pollution and odd-even vehicle arrangement, which reduced the propensity of consumers stepping out.” National Restaurant Association of India president Anurag Katriar said the impact of pollution on dining out has been sweeping. “A lot of people left the cities for other parts of India as schools had been closed multiple times. Many worked from home and many others remained cautious, closely monitoring pollution levels,” said Katriar, also chief executive officer of deGustibus Hospitality, which operates restaurants like Indigo. Private weather forecasting agency Skymet and a report by IQ Air Visual named New Delhi as the most polluted city in the world, with the average air quality index crossing the 500 mark on Friday morning.

As Delhi pollution levels soar, customers throng an ‘oxygen bar’ for a breath of fresh air – Business was not great when 26-year-old entrepreneur Aryavir Kumar launched a new venture in South Delhi’s upscale Select City Walk mall in May. The way he saw it, his Oxy Pure “oxygen bar” would offer bursts of fragrant, purified oxygen to clients seeking relief from jet lag, sleep disorders, hangovers and even depression. But Delhi seemed less than enthusiastic. Then, crisis struck the National Capital Region – and opportunity banged on Kumar’s door. In October, pollution levels peaked to hazardous levels. Schools were shut. And for the last week, Delhi residents desperate for clean air have thronged Kumar’s establishment, eager to avail themselves of 15-minute sessions that start at Rs 299 and go up to Rs 499. “The first month was slow but we are now making profits,” The dangerous pollution levels across North India have proved that he’d made a good business decision. In two weeks, Kumar will open a branch of Oxy Pure at Indira Gandhi International Airport’s Terminal 3 and he has been been inundated with calls to start franchises of the bar. Customers at Oxy Pure strap a tube (known as a cannula) under their nostrils that gives them a whiff of oxygenated air with a fragrance of their choice: peppermint, orange, cinnamon, eucalyptus, lavender, spearmint or lemongrass. The air they breathe is generated by an “oxygen concentrating machine” that purifies the air around it and delivers it to the customer. Under normal circumstances, the air humans breathe contains only 20% oxygen. Extremely high levels of oxygen could actually be harmful, causing lung damage and possibly even death. The machines used to generate oxygen at Oxy Pure – sourced from a US firm called Oxygen Bars – create air with a 95% level of the gas, Kumar said. But since the tube is not fixed tightly under the customer’s nose, the oxygen they breathe is mixed with other atmospheric gases to eventually reach a concentration of between 30% and 50%..

‘I was born in garbage, I will die in garbage’ – Kitabun Nisa Shaikh is standing on the edge of a hillock of rubble and garbage, picking out plastic from a nallah slowly flowing by her house in Rafiq Nagar. Some of the waste has slithered there from the adjoining Deonar landfill, some of it is garbage thrown right into the open drain. Using a long wooden stick with a hook, she manages to draw in a pink plastic bottle entangled in a slimy black rag. Then she reaches across with the stick for the next item of value to her. She does this for around six hours a day, her orange hair glowing in the sun, her back bending with the effort at the age of 75. Glass beer bottles and plastic water bottles are prized items, which re-sell for more than other waste material. Every alternate day, when 12 to 15 kilos of plastic have been collected, Kitabun’s daughter-in-law Zahida puts it all in a polythene sack and carries it on her head to a scrap dealer in the Baba Nagar locality, a 15-minute walk away. In return, the family earns Rs. 200-300 – or around Rs. 1,000 a week. “We have to do this [work] to fill out stomachs,” says Kitabun. “I don’t like it at all, but what else can we do?” Near Kitabun’s hut are the outskirts of the 324-acre Deonar dumping ground. This is the largest of three such grounds in Mumbai (the other two are in Mulund and Kanjurmarg). It receives around 35 per cent of the roughly 9,500 metric tons of garbage that the city produces every day. The Deonar site was exhausted in 2016, but continues to be used – with a ‘last extension’ granted by the Bombay High Court to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to use the ground till December 31, 2019, for dumping solid waste. Around the ground are several slum settlements like Rafiq Nagar. These are part of the city’s M-East ward, which has a population of 807,720 (Census 2011). The narrow lanes of Rafiq Nagar are flanked by clogged drains and heaps of garbage. The smell from the dumping ground hangs heavy in the air. Swarms of flies and mosquitoes hover everywhere. Kitabun’s hut is at the end of a lane, at the very edge of that nallah. It’s a 100-square feet room that shelters 16 people – Kitabun’s three sons, Zahida and 11 grandchildren. “During heavy rains, the water from the gutter enters our house,” she says. “We move our important things like dal, rice and some clothes on to the top shelves. Most items get wet. We take shelter at neighbours’ houses [higher up the lane] till the water recedes.”

Plastics Watch: Recycling, Raccoons, and Rubbish – The Guardian reports on Friday that the plastics industry, via an NGO they’ve created, Keep America Beautiful, is the power behind the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recycling initiative, Big plastic polluters accused of cynically backing US recycling day.The NGO promotes three goals: end littering; improve recycling; and beautify communities.Notice that each of these places the onus on individuals to clean up the plastics mess, after plastics pushers generate the waste – rather than on reducing or eliminating that waste in the first instance. According to the Guardian:“Just like the fossil fuel industry, corporate polluters have been using recycling to justify ever-increasing production of single-use packaging, while taxpayers and cities are left to foot the bill,” said Denise Patel, the US and Canada program director of Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.“Lower-income communities and communities of color, who are the hardest hit and the least responsible, bear the brunt of a model that has brought us to the brink of the waste and climate crisis.”Now, far be it for me that recycling should be part of a sound waste management strategy. But it should be far from the major part. Why? Rather than making more plastics – via processes that exacerbate climate change we should stop transforming fossil fuel inputs into unnecessary waste. We’ll likely need to use those fuels in future, for reasons more pressing than swathing things in excessive and unnecessary plastics.The FT published a longform essay on the topic earlier this month, Can we break our addiction to plastic? The future of packaging, which touches on some of the reasons curbing our use of plastics is so difficult. It mentions just how poor the current reality is on recycling plastics, with only about 9% off the 8.3 billion tons of plastics produced since the 1950s being recycled. The remainder ends up in landfills, oceans, or elsewhere in the environment. Before turning away from recycling, I’ll highlight a recent Waste Dive piece, How recycling has changed in all 50 states, which documents changes in state recycling efforts in the wake of the Chinese decision to ban plastic imports about two years ago. The first consequence of the Chinese decision was to divert plastics waste to there designates. Which quickly became overwhelmed, and either reduced, banned, or sent back, further imports (see Waste Watch: US Dumps Plastic Rubbish in Southeast Asia; India Bans Plastics Waste Imports, While Fossil Fuel Plastics Pushers in US and China Ramp Up to Party On; and Recycling Woes: Indonesia Sends Waste Shipment Back to Australia.

A rubbish story: China’s mega-dump full 25 years ahead of schedule – BBC – China’s largest dump is already full – 25 years ahead of schedule. The Jiangcungou landfill in Shaanxi Province, which is the size of around 100 football fields, was designed to take 2,500 tonnes of rubbish per day.But instead it received 10,000 tonnes of waste per day – the most of any landfill site in China. China is one of the world’s biggest polluters, and has been struggling for years with the rubbish its 1.4 billion citizens generate. The Jiangcungou landfill in Xi’an city was built in 1994 and was designed to last until 2044.The landfill serves over 8 million citizens. It spans an area of almost 700,000 square metres, with a depth of 150 metres and a storage capacity of more than 34 million cubic metres.Until recently, Xi’an was one of the few cities in China that solely relied on landfill to dispose of household waste – leading to capacity being reached early.Earlier this month, a new incineration plant was opened, and at least four more are expected to open by 2020. Together, they are expected to be able to process 12,750 tonnes of rubbish per day.The move is part of a national plan to reduce the number of landfills, and instead use other waste disposal methods like incineration.The landfill site in Xi’an will eventually become an “ecological park”. In 2017, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste, according to the country’s statistical yearbook. That’s up from 152 million ten years earlier.The country had 654 landfill sites and 286 incineration plants.It is not clear what China’s recycling rate is, as no figures have been released. China plans to recycle 35% of waste in major cities by the end of 2020, according to one government report.This July, sorting and recycling rubbish was made mandatory in Shanghai – leading to “a sense of panic” among some residents. In 2015, there was a landslide at a rubbish dump in the southern city of Shenzhen, killing 73 people.The dump was designed to hold four million cubic metres worth of rubbish, with a maximum height of 95 metres. When it collapsed, it was holding 5.8m cubic metres of material with waste heaps up to 160m high.

Toxic algae Blooms Are Worsening with climate Change – Every summer, vast blooms of harmful algae erupt in freshwater lakes across the United States. This year, blue-green mats of algae blanketed more than 1,500 square kilometers of Lake Erie’s surface by August; toxic algae forced officials to close New Jersey’s largest lake to recreational activities, and officials in North Carolina and Georgia warned dog owners to keep their pets out of the water after at least four dogs died after swimming in contaminated water. Although these harmful algal blooms are not new to freshwater lakes, they do appear to be getting worse. But researchers weren’t certain whether freshwater blooms are actually intensifying or scientists are just paying closer attention. Summertime algal blooms are indeed worsening in large freshwater lakes around the world – and climate change may be undercutting efforts to combat the problem.A new study that looked back at 3 decades of satellite data finds that these summertime algal blooms are indeed worsening in large freshwater lakes around the world – and that climate change may be undercutting efforts to combat the problem. “For the last 1 or 2 decades, we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress in terms of understanding the links between climate and water quantity – things like drought and flooding and extreme rainfall,” said Anna Michalak, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a coauthor on the new study. “But there’s been much less work related to climate and water quality.” In the new study published in Nature, Michalak and her colleagues sought to fill in some of the gaps in observations with nearly 30 years of satellite data. The team looked at images of 71 large lakes across 33 countries, collected between 1984 and 2012 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Landsat 5 satellite, and used an algorithm to detect peak summertime bloom intensity in each of the lakes. Bloom intensity increased in more than two thirds of the lakes, the study finds, a trend that held across differing regions and across lakes of varying sizes and depths.

In the Great Lakes’ most productive fishing grounds, algae-fueled dead zones are eroding livelihoods – From his lakefront dock in Crystal Rock, 70 miles west of Cleveland, Dean Koch still gleefully reminisces on his career as a commercial fisherman in the heyday. Back then, fishermen set hundreds of miles of gill nets and thousands of trap nets in Lake Erie. The amount of fish in one of his trap nets could easily fill an entire boat. He would sell those bountiful catches to one of the roughly 30 fish markets along the Ohio coastline. Now, Koch, 70, says, the number of fishermen who hold commercial licenses could sit around the small round table in his garage. Some days, his crew, led by his son Drew, is lucky if the fish inside all 12 of their trap nets fill the boat. And there are only two fishhouses that buy their catches. After decades of pollution, habitat degradation, overfishing and numerous waves of invasive species, Lake Erie is still the most productive fishery in the Great Lakes and among the most valuable natural resources in the United States. Its reputation as the most fertile fishing ground in the region is owed to its warm, shallow waters that allow algae, the base of the aquatic food chain, to thrive. The algae serves as the base of the food chain for small fish and is among the reasons why Lake Erie, which only holds 2% of the Great Lakes water volume, cradles roughly 50% of the fish. Ironically, in overabundance, this algae imperils the fishery. Harmful algae blooms and dead zones have killed or forced many Lake Erie fish to migrate. Government regulations limit who is allowed to fish for certain catches, potentially changing the composition of the fishery. “Yellow perch was a big fishery for us. We were selling 8, 10, 12 million a year,” Dean Koch said. “This year, we quit fishing for yellow perch because we couldn’t make any money – there wasn’t enough..” It’s difficult to say whether Lake Erie’s dead zone is directly responsible for curtailing the populations of foraging fish, but scientists say larger and longer-lasting dead zones are certainly altering their behavior.

Fed Agency Plans Are Not Adequate to Prevent 99.8% of U.S. Endangered Species From Suffering Climate Crisis, Study Says – While the planet continues to heat up, almost every single one of the 459 species listed as endangered in the U.S. will struggle as the climate crisis intensifies, according to new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change.The researchers found that every animal on the list except for the Hawaiian Goose had one or more sensitivity that would leave them ill equipped to handle a warming planet, meaning 99.8 percent is vulnerable to extinction caused by global warming. However, federal agencies that are mandated to protect endangered animals have a subpar response. The federal agencies consider that only 64 percent of the endangered animals will be affected by the climate crisis. To make matters worse, the federal agencies have only planned interventions for 18 percent of species, according to the study.”This study confirms that the climate crisis could make it even harder for nearly all of our country’s endangered species to avoid extinction,” said Astrid Caldas, a study co-author and a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, as The Guardian reported.”While agencies have increasingly listed climate change as a growing threat to species whose survival is already precarious, many have not translated this concern into tangible actions, meaning a significant protection gap still exists,” she added.The animals on the Endangered Species List face numerous threats. The Key deer, found only in the Florida Keys, for example, faces a threat of habitat loss due to rising seas. The Florida Panther and the north Atlantic right whale also face threats from declining food stocks. However, nothing faces more threats than amphibians, mollusks and arthropods, which are sensitive to manifold threats from the climate crisis, including changes in water quality and harmful invasive species that move in as temperatures climb, according to the study, as The Guardian reported.While 99.8 percent were found to have at least one of eight sensitivities to a changing climate, the analysis found that 74 percent of the animals on the list face threats from three or more factors.Defenders of Wildlife, a non-profit conservation organization, led the study. The group faulted federal agencies for not doing their due diligence in administering the Endangered Species Act (ESA).”Our study demonstrates that while climate change is a pressing threat to imperiled s pecies, age

Venice: Third Exceptional Flood Makes Week Worst on Record – Record flood water levels in Venice hit again on Sunday making this the worst week of flooding in the city in over 50 years. Venice’s tide office recorded the peak tide of 1.5 meters above sea level just after 1 p.m. local time UTC.The new peak left 70 percent of the UNESCO World Heritage city submerged on Sunday. Since records began in 1872, that level has never been reached even twice in one year. There is no other week on record where waters have reached the 1.5-meter mark three times in one week.Usually, tides of 80-90 centimeters are considered high.St. Mark’s Square – the lowest point in the city and home of the iconic St. Mark’s Basilica – was submerged again and closed to tourists.Museums and stores in hardest-hit areas also remained closed.Hundreds of volunteers mobilized to help Venice’s inhabitants and to protect iconic buildings in the city, which is world-famous for its canals, historic architecture and art.Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, who has also been appointed special commissioner to deal with the emergency, pleaded with citizens not to give up hope, saying, “Venetians only get on their knees to pray.” Earlier in the week the city declared a state of emergency and ministers pledged €20 million ($22 million) to address the immediate damage. Other parts of Italy also experienced severe weather during the weekend, with the river Arno in Pisa threatening to burst it banks.

Venice Inundated by Historic Flooding: In Pictures — Bloomberg –Venice has been inundated with epic rainfall, flooding historic jewels like St. Mark’s Basilica and devastating shops, businesses and homes in a city that attracts more than 20 million visitors a year. Climate change may be partly to blame as more than half of the most serious flooding since 1923 has occurred in the past two decades, coinciding with the changing weather patterns linked to global warming. More localized effects are also at play, with politics, bureaucracy and corruption tripping up an engineering fix that aimed to tame the waters. Project “MOSE,” a series of mobile gates that can rise to control the level of the city’s lagoon, is already three years behind schedule and billions of euros over budget.

The Wall That Would Save Venice From Drowning Is Underwater WSJ – When floods arrived this month, a project to block out the sea wasn’t ready, slowed by corruption and bureaucracy. As the water rose, Alessandro Ferro made a desperate effort to prevent a devastating flood on the islands of the Venetian Lagoon. The mayor of the lagoon town of Chioggia asked for the first-ever use of submersible steel floodgates that had been built for billions of euros to block out the sea. But he could find no one willing and authorized to raise the barriers.

Extinction Rebellion Sends a Sinking Home Along the River Thames, Warning of Climate Disaster –Climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion staged a public protest over the weekend, in the form of a floating structure that created the illusion of a suburban house sinking into the River Thames in London. Titled “The Sinking House,” the intervention took place in the early hours on Sunday, November 10, and is intended as a public appeal to politicians to make a more stringent and immediate response to regulate the effects of human industry and waste on the environment. “A classic suburban house was seen floating down the river, sinking into the water in yet another attempt to send an SOS to the government on climate inaction and draw attention to the threat humans face from climate change and rising sea levels,” read a statement released by the group in connection with the event. The statement directly referred to an ongoing flood crisis affecting properties and populations across England, with nearly 50 flood warnings from the Environment Agency in place this week. According to BBC reporting, the weather has resulted in hundreds of flooded properties in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, causing thousands of citizens to be evacuated from their homes, and at least one death – that of former Derbyshire High Sheriff Annie Hall, who was swept away by flood waters. “Representing the disastrous realities of projected sea level rises, perhaps the stunt was unnecessary. As the ongoing flood disaster in Derbyshire and Yorkshire has so starkly illustrated, our homes, businesses and families are at very real risk,” reads the statement from Extinction Rebellion. “We are watching, in real-time, as people’s lives are destroyed around the world and in the UK. Unless action is taken to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero these tragedies are set to worsen.”The statement goes on to cite hair-raising scientific predictions of rising sea levels by 2100, which range from less than 1 meters (~3.2 feet) to as high as 5 meters (~16.4 feet). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest a rise of fewer than 2 meters (~6.5 feet), but even that could have devastating consequences on personal property and public infrastructure – and the statement points out that past assessments have “almost always underestimated the pace of climate change.”

Fueling Concerns of Approaching Catastrophic ‘Tipping Point,’ Deforestation of Brazilian Amazon Hit Highest Level in Decade -New data out Monday from the Brazilian government showed that Amazon deforestation this year hit its highest level in over a decade, prompting environmental campaigners to warn the rainforest was approaching a possibly catastrophic “tipping point.”According to the figures from the Brazilian Space Research Institute (INPE), in the 12-month period ending July 30, 2019 deforestation claimed 3,769 square miles (9,762 square kilometers). That amount represents the highest rate of deforestation since 2008 and a nearly 30 percent increase from the previous 12-month period.”These figures confirm what we feared, namely that 2019 has been a dark year for the rainforest in Brazil,” said Øyvind Eggen, secretary-general of Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN), calling the numbers “alarmingly high.””We must remember that the Amazon has been undergoing deforestation for decades,” Eggen added. “We are approaching a potential tipping point, where large parts of the forest will be so damaged that it collapses. A loss the size of what we’ve seen this year is terrible news.” Since the data set ends in July, the acreage doesn’t capture losses from the end of the summer as fires – which observers have blamed on the deforestation-supporting policies of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro – raged in Brazil and neighboring countries. The effects of Bolsonaro’s policies drew renewed ire from Cristiane Mazzetti, Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazon Campaigner, who said Monday that the Brazilian president’s “anti-environmental agenda favors those who practice environmental crimes, and encourages violence against forest people. His administration is trashing practically all the work that has been done in recent decades to protect the environment and end deforestation.” “The impacts of this devastation are far reaching,” she said. “Deforestation at these levels is crushing the rich biodiversity of the region putting wildlife and plants at risk of extinction and jeopardizing communities and businesses that rely on the water and other natural resources from the forest.” “The Amazon is approaching a tipping point,” Cesareo said, “in which it could transform into something more like a grassland savannah, causing serious consequences for the planet.”

PG&E reduces scale of latest blackouts, but 120,000 Californians still in the dark due to wildfire threat – Pacific Gas & Electric turned off electricity Wednesday for about 120,000 people in Northern California to prevent power lines from sparking wildfires during a new bout of windy, warm weather. However, favorable weather allowed the nation’s largest utility to drastically reduce the number of customers it originally had planned to black out – about 375,000 – and even to begin restoring electricity in some areas. Higher-than-expected humidity, cloud cover and even some rain showers in the Sierra Nevada helped reduce the risk, said Scott Strenfel, PG&E’s principal meteorologist. “All of these factors kind of broke in all of our favor,” he said. Virtually all those who lost power were expected to get it back Thursday once a weather all-clear is declared and ground crews and helicopters check power lines to make sure any damage is repaired, officials said. Forecasts had called for it to be dry and windy Wednesday, with gusts up to 55 mph, which could fling tree branches or other debris into lines and cause sparks that have the potential to set catastrophic fires, PG&E officials said. A virtually rainless fall has left brush bone dry. The blackout is the latest in a series of massive outages by PG&E PCG, -1.96% , including one last month that plunged nearly 2.5 million people into darkness and outraged officials and customers as overkill. Officials accused the company of using the blackouts as a crutch after years of failing to update its infrastructure to withstand fire weather. PG&E equipment has caused some of California’s most destructive wildfires in recent years.

California utility PG&E plans regular blackouts for another ten years as more residents have power cut this week – Earlier this week, the Pacific Gas and Electricity utility (PG&E) announced that they would shut off electrical power to 375,000 customers beginning Wednesday morning in the fourth such mass power outage since October. The power outages were prompted by red flag warnings from the National Weather Service of winds topping 55 miles per hours coupled with low humidity readings in the Northern Sacramento Valley and North and East San Francisco Bay areas. Due to more favorable than expected weather conditions, including rainfall on Wednesday, however, the utility actually shut off power to 48,000 customers north of the San Francisco Bay Area. Sonoma County officials reported that PG&E would start inspections and re-energization around 8 a.m. today and have power completely restored by 10 p.m. A timeline for power restoration in neighboring Napa County has yet to be shared. In spite of the reduced fire risk yesterday, winds topped 71 miles per hour in the highest elevations and forecasters believe that humidity levels will continue to fall and temperatures rise in the coming days. This will inevitably lead to further risk of wildfires and more power shutoffs by the company. PG&E meteorologist Scott Strenfel said in a press conference Tuesday night that 2019 has been one of the driest starts to a rainy season in more than 100 years. “If you look at precipitation totals for cities across Northern and Central California, some have observed no precipitation as of October 1st,” Strenfel told reporters. “As an example, a climate station in Napa, which is called the Napa State Hospital Fire Station, has not recorded any measurable precipitation since September 15 and the last time that occurred was 1905.” It was only last year that the state of California emerged from its longest drought in recorded history, lasting from 2011-2017. Unless there is a drastic increase in precipitation over the next few months, the state will be in drought conditions once again, raising the risk of further wildfires and associated power outages.

PG&E Struggles to Find a Way Out of Bankruptcy – California’s largest utility needs to reach a settlement with victims of wildfires and other creditors while fending off calls for a state takeover. After an autumn marked by mass blackouts and wildfires, Pacific Gas & Electric is racing to craft a plan to escape bankruptcy. That plan needs to satisfy fire victims and state officials who are threatening to take over PG&E, California’s largest utility, unless executives improve its safety record. If PG&E doesn’t reach an agreement with victims and other creditors by early next year, the utility might not be able to participate in a new state wildfire fund. A federal bankruptcy judge could also strip control from its management and board, or allow it to be broken up, with the pieces sold to the highest bidder. These tensions surfaced in a court hearing on Tuesday in which PG&E asked a bankruptcy judge to limit its liability for wildfires, and at a legislative hearing that featured the company’s chief executive on Monday in Sacramento. Another big problem for PG&E: California’s fire season isn’t over yet. A dangerous combination of high winds and dry conditions is expected as early as Wednesday morning, and PG&E has said it could cut power to up to 150,000 customers. That works out to about 400,000 people – when accounting for shared addresses – in 16 counties across Northern California, including wine country and the Sierra foothills. Subscribe to With Interest Catch up and prep for the week ahead with this newsletter of the most important business insights, delivered Sundays. So far this fire season, the utility has pre-emptively shut off power to nearly three million people in central and Northern California, some for as many as five days. PG&E has said the blackouts help guard against fires ignited by the sparks created when windblown tree branches hit live power lines. But critics, including state and local government officials, have said PG&E has done a poor job of warning residents about the shut-offs, which have had a disproportionate impact on low-income families that cannot afford generators or batteries, and on older and sick residents who rely on electric medical devices. For some, the blackouts have amounted to “a big screw-you,” said State Senator Bill Dodd, a Democrat whose district includes Napa and Sonoma, during the hearing on Monday. PG&E has warned that it might have to employ such blackouts for up to a decade while the utility makes up for deferred maintenance.

Why California’s Wildfires Are Getting Worse – Greta Moran — California’s beautiful stretches of forest and grassland are meant to burn. Fire is a natural part of the state’s diverse ecosystems, and native plants (including sequoias andredwoods) have adapted to withstand periodic fires. But California was never meant to burn the way it is now. Over time, these natural, regenerative wildfires have turned into highly destructive, deadly catastrophes without historical comparison, to the point that fire historian Stephen Pyne has named this era “the Pyrocene.” Paradise, California, was leveled to the ground by fire moving at a speed of 80 football fields per minute. Sonoma County, still recovering from the 2017 Tubbs Fire, was not supposed to experience another catastrophe like the Kincade Fire so soon. California is not supposed to experience statewide tragedies every fall like the ones we’ve seen in the past three years. Wildfires may seem like sudden accidents of nature, but these recent conflagrations are in some ways a more slow-moving disaster: the result of overlapping, systemic issues, including the historical suppression of indigenous fire management practices and accusations of corporate negligence of vital public resources, climate experts tell Teen Vogue. The staggering number of deaths, destruction, and displacement from recent wildfires is so tragic, in part, because so many of the factors involved are caused by humans. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal claimed that California’s largest investor-owned utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, knew that parts of its aging 18,500-mile transmission system were in desperate need of repair and a potential fire hazard, but that the company failed to act. The state found the utility giant responsible for the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in the California’s history, and blamed for sparking more than 1,500 fires in total.The warming climate has dried out California’s landscape, turning it into a tinderbox. It’s no coincidence that, last year, vegetation was at record levels of dryness in the part of California where the most destructive fire in the state’s history was burning. One study showed that the burned areas consumed by California’s wildfires have increased by more than 400% between 1972 and 2018. This is due in part to climate change: rising temperatures, have an exponential impact when it comes to setting the stage for catastrophic wildfires, the researchers found, particularly in forests. “The hotter the air is, the drier the air is,” says Park Williams, the lead researcher on the study and a bioclimatologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The drier the air is, the more easily it can dry out the vegetation and make it flammable.”

‘Code Red’ alert issued as Australia fires continue to burn – RTE – Firefighters are continuing to battle nearly 200 bushfires across eastern Australia, while authorities have issued a Code Red alert for parts of Victoria State. Sydney has also been blanketed in hazardous smoke for the third consecutive day. Officials imposed a total fire ban across Victoria where temperatures were expected to peak above 40C and warned people in high danger areas to be prepared to evacuate. A Code Red alert indicates the worst possible bushfire conditions, warning people that should a fire start it will be fast moving, unpredictable and likely uncontrollable. Dozens of fires were burning across the state by early afternoon. Authorities warned locals in towns about 50km north of Ballarat, the state’s third largest city, that it was too late for them to evacuate safely. “You are in danger, act now to protect yourself,” Victoria Country Fire Authority said in an alert. “It is too late to leave. The safest option is to take shelter indoors immediately.” It was the first Code Red alert issued by Victoria in ten years. “Homes are not built to withstand the types of fires we may see on a Code Red day and you don’t want to be caught travelling through areas on fire at the last minute if you wait and see,” the Victoria Country Fire Authority (CFA) chief officer Steve Warrington told reporters in Melbourne.

Global heating supercharging Indian Ocean climate system – Global heating is “supercharging” an increasingly dangerous climate mechanism in the Indian Ocean that has played a role in disasters this year including bushfires in Australia and floods in Africa. Scientists and humanitarian officials say this year’s record Indian Ocean dipole, as the phenomenon is known, threatens to reappear more regularly and in a more extreme form as sea surface temperatures rise. Of most concern are years in which the sea surface off the coast of Africa warms up, provoking increased rains, while temperatures off Australia fall, leading to drier weather. It is similar to El Niño and La Niña in the Pacific, which cause sharp changes in weather patterns on both sides of the ocean. Caroline Ummenhofer, a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who has been a key figure in efforts to understand the importance of the dipole, said unique factors were at play in the Indian Ocean compared with other tropical regions. While ocean currents and winds in the Atlantic and Pacific can disperse heating water, the large Asian landmass to the north of the Indian Ocean makes it particularly susceptible to retaining heat. “It’s quite different to the tropical Atlantic and tropical Pacific events. There you have you have steady easterly trade winds. In the Indian Ocean that’s not the case,” Ummenhofer said. “There is a certain season where you have easterly winds. Otherwise you have seasonally reversing monsoon winds, which makes for very different dynamics.” Recent research suggests ocean heat has risen dramatically over the past decade, leading to the potential for warming water in the Indian Ocean to affect the Indian monsoon, one of the most important climate patterns in the world. “There has been research suggesting that Indian Ocean dipole events have become more common with the warming in the last 50 years, with climate models suggesting a tendency for such events to become more frequent and becoming stronger,” Ummenhofer said. She said warming appeared to be “supercharging” mechanisms already existing in the background. “The Indian Ocean is particularly sensitive to a warming world. It is the canary in the coalmine seeing big changes before others come to other tropical ocean areas.” Australian climatologists have pointed to this year’s dipole as at least one of the contributing factors in the bushfires. Jonathan Pollock, of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, said this dipole was “up there as one of the strongest” on record.

Pacific seals at risk as Arctic ice melt lets deadly disease spread from Atlantic –A potentially deadly disease affecting marine mammals, including seals and sea otters, has been passed from the North Atlantic Ocean to the northern Pacific thanks to the melting of the Arctic sea ice. Experts have long been concerned that sea ice melting in the northern oceans, caused by global climate heating, could allow previously geographically limited diseases to be transmitted between the two oceans. Now scientists believe they have identified how an outbreak of distemper, similar to that suffered by dogs, was passed from northern seal populations to Alaskan seals and sea otters . “There’s long been concern that melting Arctic sea ice could allow disease to pass between the Atlantic and the Pacific,” Tracey Goldstein, an expert in marine animal diseases at the University of California, Davis, and one of the lead authors of a report, said. “Now here we are.” Phocine distemper virus, or PDV, has long been a threat to seal populations in the northern Atlantic, along with several strains of influenza, but had not previously been identified in the Pacific. It was first recognised in 1988 following a massive epidemic in harbour and grey seals in north-western Europe with a second event of similar magnitude and extent in 2002. The 1988 outbreak killed thousands of Britain’s seals. The virus attacks the immune system, leaving animals susceptible to pneumonia and in the most severe cases can kill a seal within 10 days of infection. The two outbreaks, which both started on the Danish island of Anholt in the Kattegat strait, killed about 23,000 harbour seals in 1988 and 30,000 seals in 2002. The virus is believed to spread through contact between infected individuals and has killed animals in the waters of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the UK and Germany. The new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, based its conclusions on samples taken from seals, sea lions and sea otters in Alaska between 2001 and 2016, finding that PDV had become entrenched in Alaskan waters. The report warns of the potential for other diseases to be spread as sea ice recedes. “Climate change-driven reductions in sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean are projected to increase and open-water routes along the northern Russian coast have occurred every August and/or September since 2008.

The climate chain reaction that threatens the heart of the Pacific -The salmon catch is collapsing off Japan’s northern coast, plummeting by about 70 percent in the past 15 years. The disappearance of the fish coincides with another striking development: the loss of a unique blanket of sea ice that dips far below the Arctic to reach this shore. The twin impacts – less ice, fewer salmon – are the products of rapid warming in the Sea of Okhotsk, wedged between Siberia and Japan. The area has warmed in some places by as much as 3 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times, making it one of the fastest-warming spots in the world, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the nonprofit organization Berkeley Earth.That increase far outstrips the global average and exceeds the limit policymakers set in Paris in 2015 when they aimed to keep Earth’s average temperature rise “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.The rising temperatures are starting to shut down the single most dynamic sea ice factory on Earth. The intensity of ice generation in the northwestern Sea of Okhotsk exceeds that of any single place in the Arctic Ocean or Antarctica, and the sea ice reaches a lower latitude than anywhere else on the planet. Its decline has a cascade of consequences well beyond Japan as climate dominoes begin to fall.When sea ice forms here, it expels huge amounts of salt into the frigid water below the surface, creating some of the densest ocean water on Earth. That water then sinks and travels east, carrying oxygen, iron and other key nutrients out into the northern Pacific Ocean, where marine life depends on it.As the ice retreats, that nutrient-rich current is weakening, endangering the biological health of the vast northern Pacific – one of the most startling, and least discussed, effects of climate change so far observed. “We call the Sea of Okhotsk the heart of the North Pacific,” said Kay Ohshima, a polar oceanographer at the Institute of Low Temperature Science at Hokkaido University. “But the Sea of Okhotsk is significantly warming, three times faster than the global mean. “That causes the power of the heart to weaken,” he said. The cascade starts more than a thousand miles away in a uniquely frigid area of Siberia known as the “Cold Pole,” where the coldest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere (-67.7 degrees Celsius) was measured in 1933.The Cold Pole, too, is warming rapidly, by about 2.7 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times in the village of Oymyakon. That means the bitter north wind that blows down onto the Sea of Okhotsk is also warming.The warmer wind inhibits the formation of sea ice. Across the Sea of Okhotsk, ice cover during the peak months of February and March has shrunk by nearly 30 percent in the past four decades, a vanishing of about 130,000 square miles of ice, an area larger than Arizona.

What’s Driving Antarctica’s Meltdown? – The floating ice shelves along the edges of West Antarctica that slow the flow of its vast glaciers are under assault from all directions, and they’re becoming more vulnerable to collapse, scientists warn. Warmer water has started creeping in under them, eating away at the ice from below. Warmer air – and, in places, more rain – is melting the surface, creating ponds that can drain deep down and then splinter ice from within.Now, new research is highlighting another threat: Since 2000, moist and warm tendrils of air known as atmospheric rivers have been swirling toward the coast more frequently, bringing more rain and surface melting. Antarctica has been losing about 250 billion tons of ice annually in recent years, and research shows the rate has increased sixfold since 1979. At this pace, researchers have suggested, West Antarctica’s ice shelves may reach climate tipping points and crumble, sending sea level rise surging well beyond current projections. The floating ice shelves, partly frozen to the sea floor or to fjord walls, hold back vast quantities of land-based ice that could raise sea level more than currently projected if the ice’s flow to the sea speeds up, said Penn State climate researcher Richard Alley. Alley noted that some research has suggested that, if global warming pushes West Antarctica’s towering ice cliffs to collapse, it could raise sea level more than 3 feet by 2100, surging to 50 feet by 2500, from Antarctic ice melt alone.”That model is sometimes treated as a worst-case scenario, but in fact the model used a maximum calving rate that has briefly been exceeded in Greenland already, and the possibility exists that even faster calving could occur from higher, wider cliffs that could develop in Antarctica,” he said. Even the most recent international assessment of ice loss relies on models that don’t account for some of those ice shelf tipping points, he said. “If we’re fortunate, and the ice shelves are retained, then these models may be accurate. If we do lose the ice shelves, the models may project less sea level rise than will occur, perhaps by a lot.”

California’s methane super-emitters – Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, trapping much more heat. Point-source methane emitters are typically small – usually less than 10 meters in diameter – but they emit plumes of highly concentrated methane. To map such point emissions, scientists in California flew over the state with an airborne imaging spectrometer, using it to measure methane emissions. They focused on a long list of potential sources: oil and gas production, processing, transmission, storage, and distribution equipment; refineries; dairy-manure management sites; landfills and composting facilities; wastewater-treatment plants; gas-fired power plants; and liquified and compressed natural gas facilities.Most facilities, especially the dairies and the oil fields, were in the San Joaquin Valley. The researchers ended up measuring emissions from 564 distinct sources at 250 different facilities. These point emitters had not really been examined before, because they often only belch out their methane intermittently or in a somewhat sporadic manner. To catch them in the act, the researchers repeated the flyovers five times between August 2016 and October 2018.They conclude that roughly 40% of California’s methane emissions come from these point-source emitters rather than larger, more diffuse sources, like rice fields. Over half of point-source emissions come from only 10% of the sites. Landfills were the worst, followed by dairies and the oil and gas sector. A previous analysis that used atmospheric measurements rather than airborne imaging spectrometry reversed the relative contributions of landfills and dairies, leading the authors of this more recent work to suggest that other emission sectors may have also been improperly estimated in that earlier assessment. The authors also highlight that, perhaps not shockingly, “Large discrepancies are observed between many of the self-reported emissions from participating facilities and [this airborne imaging study] and independent airborne estimates.”

Most countries aren’t hitting 2030 climate goals, and everyone will pay the price – The majority of the carbon emission reduction pledges for 2030 that 184 countries made under the Paris Agreement aren’t nearly enough to keep global warming well below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). Some countries won’t achieve their pledges, and some of the world’s largest carbon emitters will continue to increase their emissions, according to a panel of world-class climate scientists. Their report, “The Truth Behind the Paris Agreement Climate Pledges,” warns that by 2030, the failure to reduce emissions will cost the world a minimum of $2 billion per day in economic losses from weather events made worse by human-induced climate change. Moreover, weather events and patterns will hurt human health, livelihoods, food, and water, as well as biodiversity.On Monday, November 4, the Trump Administration submitted a formal request to officially pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement next November. Every nation in the world has agreed “to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change,” according to language in the pact.“Countries need to double and triple their 2030 reduction commitments to be aligned with the Paris target,” says Sir Robert Watson, former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-author of the report that closely examined the 184 voluntary pledges under the Paris Agreement.“We have the technology and knowledge to make those emissions cuts, but what’s missing are strong enough policies and regulations to make it happen,” Watson says in an interview. “Right now the world is on a pathway to between 3 and 4 degrees C (5.5 and 7F) by the end of the century.” That pathway risks triggering natural feedbacks such as massive thawing of permafrost or widespread forest die-offs, which could lead to additional uncontrollable warming. Scientists have called this the Hothouse Earth scenario, where sea levels rise 30 to 200 feet (10 to 60 meters) and large parts of the planet become uninhabitable.

New Report Finds Costs of Climate Change Impacts Often Underestimated – – Yves Smith – Climate economics researchers have often underestimated – sometimes badly underestimated – the costs of damages resulting from climate change. Those underestimates occur particularly in scenarios where Earth’s temperature warms beyond the Paris climate target of 1.5 to 2 degrees C (2.7 to 3.6 degrees F).That’s the conclusion of a new report written by a team of climate and Earth scientists and economists from the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. It’s a conclusion consistent with the findings of numerous recent climate economics studies. Once temperatures warm beyond those Paris targets, the risks of triggering unprecedented climate damages grow. However, because the rate and magnitude of climate change has entered uncharted territory in human history, the temperature thresholds and severity of future climate impacts remain highly uncertain, and thus difficult to capture in climate economics models. Put simply, it’s difficult to project the economic impacts resulting from circumstances which are themselves unprecedented. Research has shown that humans are warming the climate at a rate 20 to 50 times faster than some of Earth’s fastest natural climate change events. Global temperatures may already behotter than they have been during all of human civilization, and they continue to rise rapidly. Continuing on this rapid warming path will create a “rising probability that major thresholds in the Earth’s climate system will be breached as global mean surface temperature rises, particularly if warming exceeds 2°C above the pre-industrial level,” according to the authors of the new study. Some of these thresholds include even more severe extreme weather events (e.g. drought, heat, floods, and hurricanes), destabilizing ice sheets and the resulting sea-level rise, destruction of biodiversity, and collapsing ecosystems. Climate models incorporate these impacts as best as they can – some better than others – but as Earth’s climate enters a state unprecedented in human history, the range and severity of damages become increasingly difficult to accurately account for. Climate economics modelers like recent Nobel Laureate William Nordhaus incorporate these climate damages into their models through what’s called the “damage function.” However, as Nordhaus has noted, “estimates of damage functions are virtually non-existent for temperature increases above 3°C. … The damage function needs to be examined carefully or re-specified in cases of higher warming or catastrophic damages.”

Climate Change Is Coming for Global Trade – After Hurricane Sandy pushed an enormous storm surge toward the New York and New Jersey coastlines several years ago, the ensuing damage left an indelible imprint on the public imagination. Restaurants with ocean views were battered by wild waves, homes were rent asunder, and historic lighthouses were pummeled into piles of rubble. New York City was paralyzed for days, and some 40,000 people were left homeless. The dramatic destruction garnered 24-hour media coverage, but the damage to international trade slipped more quietly under the radar. No TV cameras captured the storm waters as they swelled over the quays surrounding the Port of New York and New Jersey or as they surged through operations centers, knocking computers, power transformers, and cargo control systems off-line. Scant attention was paid to the goods containers strewn like toys around the marine terminals or to the gantry cranes left inoperable by saltwater damage. For a week, container ships laden with cargo floated aimlessly in the calmed harbor while responders scrambled to repair the damage. As concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere at a record-breaking pace, changes to the climate system – not least sea level rise and increasingly ferocious extreme weather – will pose a growing threat to international trade. Costal transport infrastructure, especially ports, is highly vulnerable. But this is a two-way relationship. International trade plays a well-established role in making climate change worse by increasing greenhouse gas emissions, but what Sandy portends is that climate change will also imperil the smooth flow of international trade. Despite their interconnectedness, these issues are mostly considered in silos. The 2015 Paris climate change agreement devotes not one clause to trade. And the sectors underpinning it – aviation and shipping, whose emissions are growing by 3-5 percent annually – are not covered either. Similarly, the 2001 Doha Ministerial Declaration – which set the parameters for the stalled Doha round of trade negotiations – does not mention climate change. As a result, sizable chunks of the global economy have fallen between the environmental protection cracks. Perhaps more important, the rapid growth of international trade also makes striking an effective global climate agreement more difficult.

Climate change could shave off 3% of the world economy, study finds – Climate change could shave off 3% of world growth over the next 30 years, according to a study from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Africa, South America and the Middle East are likely to be impacted the hardest by climate change, the report states. This is because they have higher average temperatures and smaller economies in size, making them more vulnerable to the impact of climate change. The International Monetary Fund expects global growth to reach 3% this year, its lowest level since the global financial crisis. However, the United States – the world’s largest economy, would not escape to the effects of climate change. The U.S. could see its growth rate reduced by more than 1% over the next three decades as a result of climate change. The National Bureau of Economic Research had highlighted in August that growth per capita in the U.S. could shrink by 10.5% over the next 81 years amid expected higher temperatures across the globe. “The EIU’s climate change model calculates that by 2050, the U.S. economy will be 1.1% smaller than it would have been in the absence of climate change,” the EIU report said. “Recent events in the U.S. have demonstrated the serious vulnerabilities that exist even in major developed economies,” the EIU highlighted in its study, mentioning the higher frequency and intensity in wildfires seen in California. Last year, a U.S. government report said that climate change would cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars. That same report was dismissed by the White House, Reuters reported. World leaders are set to meet in early December in Madrid, Spain, at the UN climate change conference. The various leaders will be discussing how to limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius – a core aim of the Paris Climate accord, agreed in 2015. Nonetheless, the U.S. began earlier this month the official process of withdrawing from the Paris agreement. The United States argued that the climate deal imposes an “unfair” economic burden.

Pope Francis proposes Adding ‘Ecological Sin’ to Church Teachings — Pope Francis, who has made the environment a signature cause of his pontificate, said he was strongly considering adding the category of “ecological sin” to the Catholic Church’s official compendium of teachings.Pope Francis has stressed the importance of environmental protection since his election in 2013. He dedicated an entire encyclical, “Laudato Si,’” published in 2015, to the topic.In that document, he called global warming a major threat to life on the planet and called for a reduction in the use of fossil fuels. He also blamed the global market economy for plundering the earth at the expense of the poor and future generaions.In 2016, the pope added environmentalism, or “care for our common home,” to the Catholic Church’s traditional seven works of mercy. He also added it to the Beatitudes, the core set of Christian ideals such as meekness and mercy enunciated by Jesus in the Bible, saying: “Blessed are those who protect and care for our common home.”On Friday, he said he was considering going further. “We must introduce – we are thinking – into the Catechism of the Catholic Church the sin against ecology, the ecological sin against the common home, because it’s a duty,” the pope told an audience of legal experts at the Vatican. He noted that bishops from the Amazon region meeting at the Vatican in October had defined ecological sin as an “action or omission against God, against others, the community and the environment. It is a sin against future generations and is manifested in the acts and habits of pollution and destruction of the harmony of the environment.”

‘Time Is Up’: Campaigners Occupy Pelosi’s Office, Launch Global Hunger Strike for Climate Action – The global grassroots movement Extinction Rebellion Monday is targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hunger strike and demanding that the Democratic leader embrace bold climate action as have progressive lawmakers around the country. The group told Pelosi a week ago that members would begin a hunger strike Monday unless the California Democrat agreed to a one-hour, on-camera meeting to discuss Extinction Rebellion’s demands for concrete climate action.On Twitter, the group announced that Pelosi’s time was up and that at least 20 young activists would occupy the speaker’s Washington, D.C. office until she meets with them. Extinction Rebellion live-streamed the demonstration on social media. Giovanni Tamacas, an organizer of the hunger strike, read from a letter sent to Pelosi as the action began Monday. “We won’t be patronized by a meeting with your staff, or a meeting in the distant future, or a five minute conversation, or an impromptu talk,” the letter reads. “Meet with us or leave us to starve while you jet to your Thanksgiving feasts and cocktail parties in the glow of a burning world. It is with a heavy heart that we will deny ourselves our basic needs. May our pain finally sound the alarm.” The group rebuked Pelosi for “turning a blind eye” to the rapidly warming climate, wildfires raging throughout her home state, melting glaciers, and millions of climate refugees even as she says in speeches that “there is no time left to deny the reality of climate change.” Despite that rhetoric, Extinction Rebellion said, Pelosi has hamstrung attempts to push for wide-reaching climate legislation by creating a congressional committee that has no subpoena power or ability to draft bills. Pelosi herself has not joined more than 100 members of Congress in co-sponsoring Green New Deal legislation, which is supported by a majority of Americans, including 86 percent of Democratic voters, according to recent polling. Extinction Rebellion’s demands – conveyed over the last several months at rallies where attendees have spent weeks occupying public spaces, at nurse-ins in London, and now with the hunger strike – are that government leaders “tell the truth” about the climate by declaring a climate emergency; commit to passing legislation that would reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025; and establish a citizens’ assembly on climate justice to center the concerns of frontline communities.

Democrats unveil first bill toward goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 – Democrats unveiled the first major piece of legislation in their effort to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, with a bill that would first push government agencies to reach the goal. Dubbed the 100 Percent Clean Economy Act, the bill directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to oversee the effort which would be undertaken across the government. It tasks each federal agency with using its authority to reach the net-zero goal, using “a substantial change from business-as-usual policies.” “The Federal Government can and must play a leading role in global efforts to minimize climate change and to mitigate its worst effects. By achieving a 100 percent clean economy by 2050, the United States can take a critical step toward meeting that obligation,” the bill states. The bill is the first in what might be several pieces of legislation dedicated to Democrats’ goal of reaching a green economy by 2050 – a vision they outlined in July and promised to deliver by the end of the year. “We must boldly transition to a 100 percent clean economy. The 100 Percent Clean Economy Act of 2019 will protect public health and our environment; create high-quality green jobs that will strengthen our economy; and mitigate the impacts of climate change for all communities and all generations. Our climate crisis demands immediate action,” said Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) Each agency must come up with a plan that’s technology neutral, crafting a policy consistent with their goals and authority. Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) described the bill as setting “a clear science-based target as our true North and directs federal agencies to pursue it. The bill has over 150 co-sponsors and the backing of eight national public health and medical organizations.

A Military Draft to Confront Climate Change? – Because of climate change, “all hell is breaking loose,” and the only institution capable of handling it is …. the military? Absolutely, says (Ret.) Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, professor of history, friend of TAC, and a familiar critic of U.S. militarism, at a talk sponsored by the All-Volunteer Force Forum Tuesday. Wilkerson has been quite vocal about the degradation of the forces from endless war, but here, in the context of addressing future crisis, he makes a not so modest proposal to in part, fix it.Bring back the draft. Melting glaciers, monster storms, droughts, famine and disease – all are having very real impacts on already very fragile regions in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and in the Arctic, not to mention our own hemisphere. “A real threat to our national security,” he said. What I’m saying is, contrary to the idea that we can reduce the military…we’re probably going to have to have lots of troops to meet a crisis that is indeed existential – not to kill for the state or to foment war, but to provide military assistance in disaster relief,” Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002-2005, pointed to recent cataclysmic storms right here in the U.S. for which tens of thousands of National Guard troops were deployed to respond. What if they were more simultaneous, or had coincided with an attack on U.S. interests overseas? Add all that to the tsunamis and typhoons in East Asia, the rising waters in the Arctic (which already is shaping into a geopolitical security situation), the expanding desert in the Sahara, not to mention fires and flooding all over the Third World. All pose serious humanitarian, economic, and security implications for millions of people, including the United States. Wilkerson is part of the Climate Security and Advisory Group, of which a number of retired military in Washington like himself, along with various experts in the security world, have been studying the effects of climate change on national security and enjoining what he says is a growing number of active duty and DoD staff. Wilkerson claims the services need to ramp up well beyond the current 1.5 million active duty and reserve ranks – perhaps even beyond the peak of 12 million by the end of World War Two – to face the challenges. “You’re not going to do that with an all-volunteer military.” So this is where the draft comes in, and according Wilkerson, it will not only help solve the problem of facing future crisis, but returning policy to the people. How many would have supported the Iraq War if there was a draft? Would we still be fighting Vietnam if there were an all-volunteer army then?

German Farmers Block Hamburg In Revolt Against Globalist Environmental Regulations -German farmers are blocking roads in Hamburg with their tractors to protest against environment regulations as the rural revolt against globalism spreads across Europe. 4,000 tractors arrived in Hamburg yesterday in a massive rebuke to what protesters assert is government bullying amidst efforts to impose Green New Deal-style control measures. Regional environment ministers were meeting to discuss plans to ban certain weed killers and fertilizers, something that farmers insist will kill their livelihoods. Placards displayed on the tractors included one that read, “No farm, no food, no future,” with farmers expressing their fury at being blamed while their contribution to the economy is ignored and ministers refuse to engage in dialogue with them. 4.000 Landwirte protestieren heute in #Hamburg bei der #umkhh2019. Die #Treckerdemo sorgt für erhebliche Verkehrsbehinderungen. pic.twitter.com/rz3iIY3Cd0 – ZDF Hamburg (@ZDFhamburg) November 14, 2019 “The rules, which are coming from the German government, are so hard for us that we can’t work on our farms,” Klaus-Peter Lucht, Vice President of the regional Farmers Association, told RT. “We can’t make good crops. We can’t have good fodder for the dairy [cows].” The kilometer long convoys of tractors caused “considerable traffic disruption” across the city, according to authorities.Hamburg is just the latest site of a rural revolt against globalism that is sweeping Europe.Last month, thousands of Dutch farmers descended on the Netherlands capital to protest against a government proposal that livestock production be slashed by up to 50% in the name of preventing global warming. Demonstrators were angry that the same restrictions they may be hit with will not apply to the aviation industry.

Coldplay’s Chris Martin says band will not tour its new album due to environment concerns – Coldplay is one of the biggest bands in the world, racking up millions of record sales and packing out stadiums with adoring fans wherever they play. With a new record due for release Friday, you would expect the band to embark on a huge tour to promote it. Not so, with the their singer citing sustainability as a concern.“We’re not touring this album,” Chris Martin told the BBC in an interview.“We’re taking time over the next year or two, to work out how our tour can not only be sustainable [but] how can it be actively beneficial,” Martin told the broadcaster, going on to add that the band would be “disappointed” if its next tour was not carbon neutral. “The hardest thing is the flying side of things,” Martin explained to the BBC, adding that the band’s dream was to “have a show with no single use plastic, to have it largely solar powered.” The band is currently in Jordan, where it will play two shows on Friday to promote its new album, Everyday Life. A gig at the Natural History Museum in London will follow on Monday. In a statement issued on its website earlier this week, Coldplay’s decision, and Martin’s mention of flying, chimes with growing concerns about aviation and its impact on the environment, with high profile activists such as Greta Thunberg seeking to increase public awareness of the issue.According to the European Aviation Environmental Report for 2019, domestic and international aviation accounted for 3.6% of European Union member states’ greenhouse gas emissions in 2016.

Globalists Openly Admit To Population Control Agenda – And That’s A Bad Sign — Eugenics and population control are long time hobbies of the financial elites. In the early 1900’s, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute were deeply involved in promoting Eugenics laws in the US. These laws led to the forced sterilization of over 60,000 American citizens in states like California and thousands of rejected marriage licenses. The Eugenics programs in the US were only a beta test though, as the Rockefellers then transferred their programs over to Germany under Hitler and the Third Reich in the 1930’s, were a true widespread eugenics-based population control program was introduced. In the late 1960’s into the 1970’s there was a resurgence of population control rhetoric coming out of globalist circles. Under the supervision of the UN and some related scientific groups, the Club Of Rome was formed. A prominent part of the Club of Rome’s agenda was population reduction. In 1972 the group of “scientists” under the UN’s direction published a paper called ‘The Limits Of Growth’, which called for greatly reduced human population in the name of “saving the environment”. The elites had found a new scientific front for their eugenics obsession: Climate science. In the early 1990’s the Club Of Rome published a book called ‘The First Global Revolution’. In it they state: “In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes. and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.” The statement comes from Chapter 5 – The Vacuum, which covers their position on the need for global government. The quote is relatively clear; a common enemy must be conjured in order to trick humanity into uniting under a single banner, and the elites see environmental catastrophe, caused by mankind itself, as the best possible motivator. It also outlines the perfect rationale for population control – Mankind is the enemy, therefore, mankind as a species must be kept under strict supervision and his proliferation must be restricted.

Planned Fossil Fuel Production Would Put Paris Agreement Goals Out of Reach, Report Finds –Governments are producing fossil fuels at a rate 120 percent above compliance with Paris agreement goals, a landmark report from the UN Environment Programme found. Planned fossil fuel extraction by 2030 would also double what would be required to limit warming to two degrees celsius. This puts the Paris agreement goal of limiting warming to “well below” two degrees far out of range and hampers nations’ ability to meaningfully address the climate crisis. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released in October 2018 warned that even two degrees of warming would have catastrophic consequences. “We’re in a deep hole – and we need to stop digging,” Måns Nilsson, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), which helped produce the report, told The Guardian. “Despite more than two decades of climate policymaking, fossil fuel production levels are higher than ever.” The report looked at the plans of 10 counties, the executive summary explained: seven top fossil fuel producers China, the U.S., Russia, India, Australia, Indonesia and Canada; and three countries that both produce significant amounts of fossil fuels and have made ambitious climate plans – Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom. The report also found that there is a gap between the nations’ stated climate policies and the amount of fossil fuels they plan to produce. The production plans outlined in the report surpass what would be consistent with the countries’ Paris agreement commitments. The so-called “production gap” found in the report is therefore greater than the “emissions gap” between the Paris agreement goals and actual national policies. “The discrepancy between national policies ― the climate change policies and fossil fuel production policies ― highlights there is much more that needs to be done both at country level and international climate negotiations to put a sharpened and increased focus on fossil fuels,” The production gap was especially wide when it came to coal, the report found. Countries plan to produce 150 percent more coal by 2030 than would be consisted with two degrees of warming, and 280 percent more than would be consistent with 1.5 degrees.

Soaring Fossil Fuel Production Is On Track To Blow Past Climate Goals, New Study Finds – The world’s top 10 fossil fuel-producing countries are on track to extract far more oil, gas and coal by 2030 than scientists say the planet can handle without experiencing catastrophic warming, according to a report published Wednesday. The first-of-its-kind analysis ― conducted by scientists at six organizations, including the nonprofit Stockholm Environment Institute and the United Nations Environment Programme ― measured for the so-called production gap between the goals set in the 2015 Paris climate accord and projections for fossil fuel production in China, the United States, Russia, India, Australia, Indonesia, Canada, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom. The findings lay bare a stark contradiction between the amount of climate-changing emissions nations pledged to cut over the next decade and many of those countries’ plans to expand fossil fuel drilling, which “further hinders the collective ability of countries to stabilize the climate system, including closing the emissions gap,” the report stated. The assessment, the scientists said, suggests tighter restrictions on fossil fuel production are urgently needed to avert climate disaster in the decades to come. “The discrepancy between national policies ― the climate change policies and fossil fuel production policies ― highlights there is much more that needs to be done both at country level and international climate negotiations to put a sharpened and increased focus on fossil fuels,” Niklas Hagelberg, the U.N. Environment Programme’s climate change coordinator, said on a call with reporters Tuesday morning. Assuming the fuels extracted will be burned, the combined oil, gas and coal production is on pace to be 50% higher than would be consistent with a goal to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial averages ― the target to which nearly every country on Earth agreed in the Paris Agreement. Coal mining alone is 150% greater than the production goal that would keep warming in that zone, despite the conventional narrative that coal production is declining. The numbers are even starker when it comes to keeping average temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the threshold beyond which United Nations scientists last year projected hundreds of millions would die and islands and coastal cities would face catastrophic sea-level rise. Fossil fuel production overall is 120% higher than would be consistent with a 1.5 degrees scenario. Coal projections are 280% higher.

Coal Knew Too: Explosive Report Shows Industry Was Aware of Climate Threat as Far Back as 1966 –A new report shows conclusively that the coal industry was aware of the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels as far back as 1966 – and, like other sectors of the fossil fuel industry with knowledge of the consequences of their business model, did next to nothing about it. The revelation was published in an article by Élan Young at HuffPost Friday.”It wasn’t just big oil that knew about climate change decades ago,” tweeted HuffPost editor Kate Sheppard.The story uses a discovery by Chris Cherry, professor of civil engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to show industry foreknowledge of the ramifications of extractive technologies over 50 years ago. Cherry found the evidence in a 1966 copy of the Mining Congress Journal he was given by his father-in-law. In the journal, James R. Garvey, president of now-defunct research firm Bituminous Coal Research Inc., describes the future consequences of coal.”There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels,” Garvey wrote. “If the future rate of increase continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the earth will result.”Garvey added that the result of the changes in climate could include melting icecaps and rising seas. “Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London,” wrote Garvey.

Do The World’s Energy Policies Make Sense? – by Gail Tverberg – The world today has a myriad of energy policies. One of them seems to be to encourage renewables, especially wind and solar. Another seems to be to encourage electric cars. A third seems to be to try to move away from fossil fuels. Countries in Europe and elsewhere have been trying carbon taxes. There are alsoprograms to buy carbon offsets for energy uses such as air travel. Maybe it is time to step back and take a look. Where are we now? Where are we really headed? Have the policies implemented since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 had any positive impact? Let’s look at some of the issues involved.

• [1] We have had very little success in reducing CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions for all countries, in total, have been spiraling upward, year after year.If we look at the situation by part of the world, we see an even more concerning pattern. The group US+EU+Japan has been able to reduce its CO2 emissions by 5% since 2005. Emissions were slowly rising between 1981 and 2005. There was a dip at the time of the Great Recession of 2008-2009, followed by a downward trend. A person might get the impression that CO2 emissions for the EU tend to rise during periods when the economy is doing well and tend to fall when it is doing poorly. The group that has more than doubled its emissions includes many countries, including China and India, that ramped up their manufacturing and other heavy industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the World Trade Organization added members.
• [2] Population growth has followed a pattern that is in some ways similar to CO2 growth.
• [3] Deforestation keeps growing as a world problem. – High Income Countries keep pushing the deforestation problem to the poorer parts of the world. Heavily Indebted Poor Countries are especially affected. Worldwide, deforestation continues to grow.
• [4] With respect to fossil fuels, there is a great deal of confusion with respect to, “What do we need to be saved from?” Do we have a problem with too much or too little fossil fuel? We hear two different stories. Climate modelers keep telling us about what could happen, if indeed we use too much fossil fuel. In fact, the climate currently is changing, bolstering this point of view. It seems to me that there is an equally great danger of collapse, accompanied by low energy prices.
• [5] Early studies overestimated how much help renewables might provide, especially if our problem comes from too little energy supply rather than too much. Renewables look like they would be great from many points of view, but when it comes down to the real world situation, they don’t live up to the hype. One issue is that while wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and other devices for capturing energy are called “renewables,” they are really only available through the use of the fossil fuel system. They are made using fossil fuels. If a part breaks, or if insects eat away the insulation on wires, replacements need to be made using the fossil fuel system and transported using the fossil fuel system. At best, renewables should be considered fossil fuel extenders, using less fossil fuels than conventional electricity generation.
• [6] Looking at the actual outcomes, a person might ask, “What in the world were policymakers really thinking about?” – If a person really wants to reduce CO2 emissions, it is easy to see how to do it. A person simply has to take steps in the direction of reducing global co-operation. One step would be to reduce international trade. Another would be to get rid of umbrella organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and the European Union. In fact, within individual countries, the top level of government could be removed, leaving (for example) the provinces of Canada and the states of the United States. In other words, policymakers could push economies in the direction of collapse.
• [7] The scenarios considered by the IPCC climate model need to be revisited. A climate model looks to the past and tries to forecast what would happen in alternative “scenarios.” The concern I have is that the scenarios evaluated are not realistic. To get to the level of CO2 that would produce the most extreme scenarios, coal production would needed to continue at a high level for many, many years. This seems unrealistic because world coal production has been fairly flat for several years, and prices tend to be lower than producers require if they are to stay in business. The likely direction for coal production seems to be down, rather than up. It seems to me that climate modelers should be considering more realistic scenarios regarding CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. One scenario which should be considered is the possible near term collapse of several governmental organizations, such as the European Union, World Trade Organization, and the governments of several oil exporting countries.
• [8] The push toward renewables makes little sense without a firmer foundation than currently exists. Early studies looked only at the cost of renewables themselves, without the cost of extra long-distance grid transportation and battery storage. Such an estimate makes renewables look far more valuable than they really are. We now have enough experience that we can see what goes wrong. A hydroelectric plant that operates during the wet season in a tropical country may be of little practical use, for example, if there is no fossil fuel energy available to provide backup electricity production during the dry season. The total cost of the overlapping systems needs to be taken into consideration, including the need to hire staff year around for both the fossil fuel and hydroelectric facilities. Electricity transmission will likely be needed for both types of generation.

Why Banning Fossil Fuel Investment Is A Huge Mistake – Activist global warming strategies have now caused the European Investment Bank to ban its fossil fuel project funding. After more than a year of internal and external lobbying by several EU member states and an ever-growing list of activist NGO and pressure groups, the EIB has decided to cut its financial support for all new fossil fuel projects by 2021. It will also support €1 trillion of investments in climate action and environmental sustainability. This is meant to force European countries to put an end to new gas-fueled power projects and keep in line with the Paris Agreements and EU CO2 emission targets. EIB VP Andrew McDowell stated to the press that the EIB’s new energy lending policy, seen as a landmark decision, has been approved with “overwhelming” support. He reiterated that it will bar investments or financing for most fossil fuel projects, including those that employ the traditional use of natural gas. There is still a small loophole for fossil fuel projects, as the EIB funding will still be available for projects that can show they can produce one kilowatt-hour of energy while emitting less than 250g of carbon dioxide. New technologies could therefore be the savior in the end for traditional gas-burning power plants.The significance of this decision by the EIB cannot be understated.As a major financial institution, a wide range of energy-related projects inside and outside of the EU, such as gas pipeline projects in Central Asia, Turkey and the recent discussions on East Med offshore gas projects, are now being endangered. While various Green Parties and environmental NGOs are celebrating this move as a major victory, it is a victory that comes with some real risks. The decision, which was largely inevitable after that EU finance ministers unanimously agreed to initiate stricter measures to combat climate change, will put more pressure on all parties to phase out gas, oil and coal projects.Non-EU projects will be hit hardest, as they will have a much more difficult time trying to find enough lending support for new projects. EIB support has always been an important piece of the energy puzzle, with third parties using it as leverage to arrange finance consortia to start up new gas-related projects. The decision by the EIB and the EU finance ministers is very much a political one, not based on real assessments of the overall energy market situation inside of the EU, or taking into account economic and geopolitical risks for the regions bordering the EU. Brussels has, for decades, been targeting a higher level of security of energy supply (mainly gas) in order to wean Europe off its Russian gas addiction. This strategy has been far from a success story, with European countries today seemingly more addicted than ever to Russian gas.

The Capital Stock Turnover Problem for 100% Clean Energy Targets – Scientists say we must reach zero emissions by 2050 to avoid locking in dangerous levels of climate change, but while overall emissions have declined from power-sector decarbonization, stubbornly hard-to-reduce transportation and buildings emissions are still growing. Even with aggressive electric vehicle and building electrification mandates, these two sectors are hard to decarbonize due to slow capital stock turnover – the process whereby old equipment, such as vehicles and appliances, is replaced with new equipment. Capital stock turnover makes net-zero emissions harder to reach with every year we wait to start electrifying our vehicles and buildings. EV adoption is accelerating, and new all-electric homes are less expensive than mixed-fuel homes, but Americans won’t replace our several hundred million existing gasoline vehicles and fossil-fueled appliances for decades to come. This creates significant lag time between setting all-electric sales targets and achieving the goal of all-electric fleets. And it only leaves a few opportunities to convert each vehicle or building, potentially locking in emissions at a level above the 2050 net-zero target. While targets for a 100 percent clean-energy economy are important, policymakers must align their policy timelines and benchmark targets with the stubborn reality of capital stock turnover. Energy Information Administration data shows U.S. electricity was nearly 40 percent carbon-free in 2018. This trend must continue to ensure electrification is a viable pathway to cut transportation and building emissions. These net-zero commitments are imperative. But slow capital stock turnover means meeting these 30-year goals requires immediate acceleration of all-electric vehicle and building component market share as well as finding ways to accelerate the turnover process itself. Capital stock turnover and the average lifetime of vehicles and buildings (as well as building components) means we have one or two opportunities for clean replacement by 2050.

Amid Blackout, a California Tribal Village Kept Lights On With Solar Energy – Building renewable energy projects is about more than just post-fossil fuel economics. It’s about the future of electrification in this country. Think of it this way: This past month, Pacific Gas and Electric, northern California’s largest northern utility, blacked out 500,000 homes because of forest fires; last year’s Paradise Fire was actually caused by PG&E Lines. As fires raged, fanned by climate change and poor infrastructure, there were still lights on at the Blue Lake Rancheria, a Wiyot, Yurok and Hupa village near Eureka, California – with a megawatt of solar and a battery backup system. Energy leadership is coming from Native people. Adopting a climate action plan in 2008, the tribe mobilized every resource at its disposal to advance a leading-edge strategy for eliminating its carbon footprint while bolstering climate resiliency. To date, the Tribe has reduced energy consumption by 35%and reduced greenhouse gas emissions 40%, utilizing biodiesel to power public buses and aggressive energy efficiency measures. Back in the Obama administration, Blue Lake was recognized as one of 16 communities designated as White House Climate Action Champions. The grid went down, and the tribe still had solar. That’s a covenant, a deal with future generations. Change comes, it’s a question of who controls the change. Looking down the barrel of a bad pipeline, I know that we don’t need to make a deal with the devil. North Dakota and Enbridge: Go grow your food with oil – I’m going to grow my gardens with water; I’m going to commit to solar and renewables. Let’s see who will eat.

Solar panels are good for the environment and your wallet, but are they safe? They are marketed as budget and eco-friendly, but there is one thing you may not hear in the solar panel sales pitch: fire hazard. Boston 25 Investigates has been looking at a rash of fires in Massachusetts that appear to be linked to solar panels, following a tip from a viewer about a roof fire at his home in Carver. A review of state and federal data indicates fires caused by solar panels are rare, but an analysis of news stories and fire department reports reveals the official numbers do not tell the whole story. Our investigation found solar panel fires are not uniformly reported by fire departments and there is no central nor comprehensive database that collects this information. Dave and Stephanie Burek had a small fire but a big scare in their Dartmouth home last year. It was May 2018 when a fire had burned a hole in the roof near the bedroom that their two young children – 7 months and 3 years old – sleep in. The fire occurred in a panel located behind a closet in their children’s room and charred their attic ceiling. The Dartmouth Fire Department traced the fire to, “a wire from the solar panels,” according to the fire report. After the fire, the Bureks had their solar panels removed. Pictures of the aftermath show burned wires and electrical components on the backside of the solar panel. They rented their system from SolarCity in 2015, one year before Tesla bought the company. “When they were taking the panel off the roof, the Tesla worker said ‘Oh, it was a bad connector. It looks like a bad connector,'” recalls Stephanie.

The world is getting windier and it could mean a big boost for alternative energy – The world is getting windier, which means a surge in wind-generated power could be coming.A new study led by Princeton University researchers found that from 1978 to 2010 wind speeds decreased by about 2.3% per decade, but that things began to shift in 2010. Between 2010 and 2017 speeds increased roughly 7%, which means that an average wind turbine produced 17% more energy in 2017 than in 2010.The findings in the report, which was published Monday in Nature, were based on data analysis from more than 1,400 weather stations spread across mid-latitude countries primarily in North America, Europe and Asia.Traditionally scientists have argued that vegetation and urbanization levels are the primary factors that influence land wind speeds. But these researchers argue that wind speeds are actually driven by ocean-atmosphere oscillations, which in the simplest of terms represent changes in heat and pressure.Ocean oscillations have long been cited as the determining force for offshore wind speeds, but by comparing changes in land wind speeds with well-documented oceanic shifts, the researchers found that oceanic shifts could also be behind wind speeds on land.The findings are “valuable for the wind energy sector” since wind speed trends tend to develop over decades. The report said that the pickup in wind speeds “bodes well for the expansion of large-scale and efficient wind power generation systems,” and found that if present trends continue, energy generated by wind power will increase 37% by 2024. Examining ocean-atmosphere oscillations could also help companies predict future wind speeds and therefore “allow optimization of turbines for expected speeds during their productive life spans.” This is especially true since the researchers noted that while wind speeds are projected to rise in the near-term, in the longer-term they could once again reverse course and slow

Fishing industry raps proposed wind energy grid – Worcester, MA – Commercial fishing interests are pushing back on the idea that each of the offshore wind developers holding leases off the New England coast would place their turbines in a uniform layout to create a navigable grid, a proposal the developers said is intended to address the concerns of fishermen. Installing all turbines in fixed east-to-west rows and north-to-south columns spaced one nautical mile apart, the developers said, would create a grid across the seven lease areas and hundreds of predictable navigation corridors for fishermen and other mariners. It could also address one of the concerns thought to have led to the federal government effectively freezing the Vineyard Wind 1 project until it can learn more about the new industry as a whole. In a joint statement announcing the proposal Tuesday morning, the five developers said their proposal would mirror an arrangement that is “preferred by many stakeholders, including fishermen operating in the region.” “This uniform layout is consistent with the requests of the region’s fisheries industry and other maritime users,” the five leaseholders – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Orsted, Eversource and Vineyard Wind – said in a statement. “The proposed layout specifies that turbines will be spaced 1 nautical mile (nm) apart, arranged in east-west rows and north-south columns, with the rows and columns continuous across all New England lease areas.” But the claim that the newly proposed layout would satisfy the requests of the fishing industry did not entirely hold up once the developers’ plan was released publicly Tuesday morning. An organization that advocates on behalf of the scallop industry – which accounted for 80% of the value of landings in New Bedford, the highest-value commercial fishing port in the country in 2017 – said its members were not consulted and the developers’ proposal does not reflect the concerns of the scallop industry.

Western Pa. lawmakers fight Gov. Wolf on Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative -A group of lawmakers from Western Pennsylvania is challenging Gov. Tom Wolf’s effort to make Pennsylvania a member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), saying the resulting carbon tax will hurt the state’s energy sector and consumers. The legislators said Tuesday that Wolf does not have the authority to pursue RGGI membership unilaterally and must consult with the General Assembly. “He does not have the authority to tax. It’s very basic,” said state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Cranberry, chairman of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. The lawmakers plan to introduce House Bill 2025 and Senate Bill 950, both of which would require legislative approval of Wolf’s October executive order instructing the state Department of Environmental Protection to join the RGGI. “This unilateral attempt by the governor simply should not occur,” said state Sen. Joe Pittman, R-Indiana. “We seek to ensure that our constitutional separation of powers remains intact.” Wolf committed Pennsylvania to RGGI membership in October, instructing the DEP to draft a regulation to present to the Environmental Quality Board by July 2020. Such membership is part of Wolf’s effort to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change.

Cost, comfort emphasized as building electrification takes off in Colorado – Comfort, not climate, is the central message of a campaign in Colorado to persuade homeowners to switch from natural gas to electricity for heating and other indoor purposes. The joint program sponsored by Boulder and Boulder County, called Comfort 365, may provide insights for state legislators as they consider how to drive down emissions from the built environment in order to achieve the sobering goal of wringing carbon out of 90% of the state’s economy by 2040. “For us to meet our carbon reduction goals, we have to take as many of the fossil fuels as possible out of the equation, and that includes natural gas and propane,” said David Hatchimonji, manager of Boulder County’s EnergySmart Residential Program. Boulder County, which stretches from cornfields of the Great Plains to the Continental Divide, set a goal of 90% reduction by midcentury. Boulder, the county’s largest city and a partner in the program, aims for 80%. “Why ‘Comfort 365’ as opposed to ‘Carbon Reduction 365’ or ‘Save the World 365?’ We want to convey that the technology can result in a much more comfortable home and, all things considered, a safer home in that you don’t have the air quality issues associated with carbon monoxide and other contaminants that come from natural gas use,” Hatchimonji said. “We want folks to save energy, to be able to have a positive impact on their environment. Their families can be warm in winter and cool in the summer with a heat pump.”

Cement has a carbon problem. Here are some concrete solutions. | Grist –The biggest carbon polluters don’t always advertise that fact loudly. In fact, one of the industries with the worst climate impact is all but ignored, even though its product literally supports our existence. I’m talking about the cement industry, which dumps more than 2 billion tons of carbon into the air each year to make its ubiquitous building material, roughly three times as much as the aviation industry. To make cement, you have to heat limestone to nearly 1,500 degrees C. Unfortunately, the most efficient way to get a cement kiln that hot is to burn lots of coal, which, along with other fossil fuel energy sources, accounts for 40 percent of the industry’s emissions. Eventually, the limestone breaks down into calcium oxide (also known as lime) and releases CO2, which goes straight into the atmosphere, accounting for a further 60 percent of the industry’s emissions. The good news is that there’s no shortage of ideas for how to slim down cement’s weighty carbon footprint. The bad news is that most of them are either in their infancy or face significant barriers to adoption. As our window of time for preventing catastrophic climate change grows ever smaller, we need major investments in new technologies and changes to how the cement industry works. But most of all, we need politicians need to wake up to the fact that the cement industry has a climate problem. It’s time for some concrete solutions. One of the most straightforward ways of putting a dent in cement’s carbon emissions would be to find cleaner-burning fuels that are capable of heating a cement kiln. Some alternatives to fossil fuels are available today, like wood, agricultural waste, and even car tires. Despite how that last one sounds, Jeremy Gregory, executive director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub at MIT, says spent tires a “great source of energy,” and cement kilns are one of the most effective ways to dispose of them.

‘Hanging by its fingernails’: U.S. biodiesel industry struggles without subsidy – (Reuters) – When John Whittington shut his Morristown, Indiana, biodiesel plant this week, he felt he had no choice. A $1-per-gallon subsidy that had been propping up the industry since 2005 lapsed at the beginning of 2018 due to Congressional inaction, and his hopes for a swift renewal had been declining along with his business ever since.. “To me, the support systems of the industry have failed.” Integrity Biofuels’ shutdown marks the tenth biodiesel facility to have idled this year after the lapse in the biodiesel credit, putting about 250 people out of work, according to the National Biodiesel Board (NBB). Nationwide production has decreased about 10% year-on-year, according to Energy Information Administration data. The biodiesel credit was part of a broad legislative effort more than a decade ago to help farmers and reduce petroleum imports by supporting biofuels. At a cost of nearly $2 billion per year, it is among the most expensive U.S. energy subsidy programs. Its lapse has added pressure on Midwest farmers, a key constituency in the 2020 presidential election already struggling under poor planting conditions and the fallout from the U.S.-China trade war. In August, some 90 U.S. facilities produced 156 million gallons of the fuel – made from agricultural oils, recycled cooking oil and animal fats – from 172 million gallons a year earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administratihere Other plants that have cut production include facilities run by players like Flint Hills Resources, World Energy and REG.

The Trouble With Biofuels – A ruckus over biofuels has been brewing in Iowa. For months now the Trump administration has been promising to deliver a new biofuels package that would boost the market for production of soy- and corn-based alternative fuels. The move would help American farmers hurt by the administration’s tariffs, as well as ease their anger over changing regulations that have exempted several oil refineries from blending biofuels with their other fuels. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated that all fuels produced in the U.S. contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels. Part of that came in the form of biofuels, derived from living, renewable sources such as crops or plants. The term “biofuels” generally refers to the gasoline substitute derived from corn, while “biodiesel” is a diesel substitute derived from soybean oil or animal fats. At the time many experts predicted biofuels would provide a renewable source of energy, help reduce the use of fossil fuels, and lessen the risks of climate change. After the Act was passed, the biofuels market jolted into life. “By 2010 ethanol was up there with animal feed as the largest consumer of corn.” Last year total U.S. biofuel production reached 16 billion gallons a year, Advocates of biofuels around the country tout them as better for the environment than fossil fuels, a fact that polls tell us the public doesn’t disagree with.Scientists, on the other hand, have begun to question some of those environmental benefits. According to some studies, biodiesels emit more of certain pollutants than regular diesel, and biofuels can have alarger carbon footprint than gasoline, depending on where you start in the production cycle. These findings don’t seem to enter the public discourse.Increased corn production can also harm farmland because it causes farmers to cut back on crop rotation, a process essential to maintaining soil quality and reducing pests. Farmers also have an increased incentive to plant corn in ecologically sensitive grassland or wetlands. But the effects of biofuel production on wildlife and public health are subtle and hard to separate from the consequences of food production. This sets biodiesel apart from other sources of pollution and environmental health, such as fracking, which are often much more immediately visible. For example, images of brown tap water were enough to mobilize national opposition to fracking. Intensified corn production doesn’t generate such arresting sights. Corn requires more fertilizer than other crops, and the toxic algal bloom caused by fertilizer runoff into the rivers is a visible consequence of increased corn production to meet biofuel demand. However, these blooms occur out of sight in the Gulf of Mexico.

BIOFUELS: Bill targets RFS, a ‘well-intentioned flop’ — Two Democratic lawmakers proposed legislation yesterday to cut corn ethanol production while encouraging farmers to convert cropland into pasture and wildlife habitat.

California to stop buying from automakers that backed Trump in emissions battle — California has announced plans to stop buying vehicles from automakers that backed President Trump during the state’s battle over whether it can set tougher emissions standards. The California Department of General Services issued a statement Friday saying the state plans to end purchases from automakers that have not committed to following California’s tailpipe emission regulations, including General Motors, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler, by January. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) tweeted Monday confirming the announcement. General Motors, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler have taken the president’s side as he loosens Obama-era restrictions on tailpipe emissions and takes steps to prevent California from having its own regulations. The state bought $58.6 million worth of vehicles from General Motors, $55.8 million from Fiat Chrysler and $10.6 million from Toyota between 2016 and 2018, according to Reuters. California buys between 2,000 and 3,000 vehicles a year, The New York Times reported. California will now obtain vehicles from Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW, the four automakers that have committed to following the state’s regulations, according to the Times. The Department of Justice issued subpoenas against those four automakers earlier this month, saying if they coordinated, they could violate antitrust laws. The state also announced that it plans to stop purchasing sedans that are “solely powered by an internal combustion engine,” except for public safety vehicles. General Motors said in a statement to Reuters that California’s decision was unfortunate. “Removing vehicles like the Chevy Bolt and prohibiting GM and other manufacturers from consideration will reduce California’s choices for affordable, American-made electric vehicles and limit its ability to reach its goal of minimizing the state government’s carbon footprint, a goal that GM shares,” spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan said.

Electric-Car Onset Leaves Lubricant Industry Facing Kodak’s Fate – The $146 billion lubricants industry is at risk of suffering the same fate as Kodak, thanks to the rise of electric vehicles. From Volkswagen AG to Nissan Motor Co., carmakers are switching to battery-powered models that use fewer greases than combustion vehicles. With demand expected to decline from 2025, lubricant makers are wary of Eastman Kodak’s demise when it failed to grasp the potential of the digital camera in the 1970s. For decades, lubricant makers have been preoccupied with squeezing more fuel efficiency from combustion engines and increasing the mileage between oil changes. EVs present a new set of challenges to their piston counterparts that typically use 40 different oils. They need a grease that can cool and lubricate the motor, while also protecting the electronics on-board and being compatible with non-metal materials like plastics. “I’m very conscious of the world changing,” said Dave Hall, a 30-year industry veteran who is overhauling BP Plc’s line-up of Castrol lubricants for the EV market. “I’d like to think we’re trying to address and prevent a Kodak moment and not just lock it away in a cupboard as maybe they did.” With the current crop of electric cars in circulation, attention has largely been on battery performance and design, with lubricants an afterthought. Some EVs use standard greases found in combustion engines, according to Lutz Lindemann, chief technology officer at Fuchs Petrolub SE. There are signs the pressure is already poised to affect companies. Demand for automotive lubricants, which reached about 20 million tons last year, is supposed to be flat for the “foreseeable future” due to the impact of EVs, the growing use of synthetic lubricants and economic pressures, according to research from energy consultant Kline & Company.

The Bolivian Coup Comes Down to One Precious Mineral – Bolivia’s President Evo Morales was overthrown in a military coup on November 10. He is now in Mexico. Before he left office, Morales had been involved in a long project to bring economic and social democracy to his long-exploited country. It is important to recall that Bolivia has suffered a series of coups, often conducted by the military and the oligarchy on behalf of transnational mining companies. Initially, these were tin firms, but tin is no longer the main target in Bolivia. The main target is its massive deposits of lithium, crucial for the electric car. Over the past 13 years, Morales has tried to build a different relationship between his country and its resources. He has not wanted the resources to benefit the transnational mining firms, but rather to benefit his own population. Part of that promise was met as Bolivia’s poverty rate has declined, and as Bolivia’s population was able to improve its social indicators. Nationalization of resources combined with the use of its income to fund social development has played a role. The attitude of the Morales government toward the transnational firms produced a harsh response from them, many of them taking Bolivia to court. Over the course of the past few years, Bolivia has struggled to raise investment to develop the lithium reserves in a way that brings the wealth back into the country for its people. Morales’ Vice President Álvaro Garc’a Linera had said that lithium is the “fuel that will feed the world.” Bolivia was unable to make deals with Western transnational firms; it decided to partner with Chinese firms. This made the Morales government vulnerable. It had walked into the new Cold War between the West and China. The coup against Morales cannot be understood without a glance at this clash. Bolivia claims to have 70 percent of the world’s lithium reserves, mostly in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats. The complexity of the mining and processing has meant that Bolivia has not been able to develop the lithium industry on its own. It requires capital, and it requires expertise. More technical solutions are needed for Bolivia, which means that more investment is needed. The nationalization policy of the Morales government and the geographical complexity of Salar de Uyuni chased away several transnational mining firms. Eramet (France), FMC (United States) and Posco (South Korea) could not make deals with Bolivia, so they now operate in Argentina. Morales made it clear that any development of the lithium had to be done with Bolivia’s Comibol – its national mining company – and Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) – its national lithium company – as equal partners. Last year, Germany’s ACI Systems agreed to a deal with Bolivia. After protests from residents in the Salar de Uyuni region, Morales canceled that deal on November 4, 2019. The idea that there might be a new social compact for the lithium was unacceptable to the main transnational mining companies.

The Coup in Bolivia Has Everything to Do With the Screen You’re Using to Read This -When you look at your computer screen, or the screen on your smartphone or the screen of your television set, it is a liquid crystal display (LCD). An important component of the LCD screen is indium, a rare metallic element that is processed out of zinc concentrate. The two largest sources of indium can be found in eastern Canada (Mount Pleasant) and in Bolivia (Malku Khota). Canada’s deposits have the potential to produce 38.5 tons of indium per year, while Bolivia’s considerable mines would be able to produce 80 tons per year. Canada’s South American Silver Corporation – now TriMetals Mining – had signed a concession to explore and eventually mine Malku Khota. Work began in 2003, two years before Evo Morales and the Movement for Socialism (MAS) won their first presidential election in Bolivia. South American Silver conducted several studies of the region, all of which found substantial deposits that were poised to make this Canadian firm one of the major players in the mining industry. A study done by Allan Armitage and others for South American Silver, and delivered to the company in 2011, showed that the Malku Khota mine would produce substantial amounts of silver, indium, lead, zinc, copper, and gallium. “The indium and gallium,” the study noted, “are regarded as strategic metals that give the project future upside potential.” Gallium is used for thermometers and barometers, as well as in the testing side of the pharmaceutical industry. There is Fort Knox level treasure to be made from these minerals. Evo Morales rode to victory in 2006 with the promise of a new day for Bolivia. Key to his agenda was to take control of the country’s resources and use them to improve the quality of life of Bolivia’s deprived populations. One of the great tragedies of Bolivia has been that since the mid-16th century, the indigenous populations have had to work to remove precious wealth from underneath their lands and send that wealth to enrich the people of Europe and later North America. They did not benefit from those riches. Millions died in the mines of Potos’ to bring the silver, and later tin, out of the ground. Resource nationalism is no longer on the agenda in Bolivia. The fate of Malku Khota is unknown. The fate of your screen is guaranteed – it will be replaced with indium from the Potos’ deposits. And the benefits of that sale will not go to improving the well-being of Bolivia’s indigenous population; they will enrich the transnational firms and the old oligarchy of Bolivia.

Tribes Halt Major Copper Mine on Ancestral Lands in Arizona – Rising above the Arizona desert, the Santa Rita Mountains cradle 10,000 years of Indigenous history. The Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Hopi Tribe, among numerous other tribes, have worshipped, foraged, hunted and laid their ancestors to rest in the mountains for generations. Mining corporation Hudbay Minerals proposed to dig a mile-wide open-pit copper mine in the Santa Ritas, burying dozens of sites sacred to the tribes under 1.8 billion tons of toxic waste. The mine’s construction would raze ancestral Hohokam burial grounds, a historic Hohokam village and vital mountain springs.Represented by Earthjustice, the Tohono O’odham fought Hudbay’s ill-conceived mine in court, joined by the Hopi and Pascua Yaqui tribes. This summer, a judge ruled in favor of the three tribes, halting the mine in its tracks and directing the Forest Service to protect these public lands from the devastating impacts of the mine. “Our relationship to the land is first and foremost,” said Austin G. Nuñez, chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s San Xavier District in Tucson. “When our Hohokam ancestors’ laid their loved ones in their final resting place, they never envisioned having them disturbed. We make every effort to not disturb them. We still feel their spirits today.”

Non-profit study sees ‘self-committed coal’ distorting MISO market signals | S&P Global Platts – If all generation were dispatched economically in Midcontinent Independent System Operator, average wholesale power prices would rise 3% but production costs would drop 11%, lowering consumer costs, according to a preliminary analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists presented Tuesday. The group, along with the Sierra Club and consumer advocates, has raised concerns about coal plants owned by vertically integrated utilities that “self-commit,” or run out of merit at times when their production costs exceed the wholesale market price. The practice is enabled, they argue, because those coal units recover fuel and operational costs from ratepayers. UCS presented its preliminary study results at a panel discussion Tuesday on how regulators might respond. Joe Daniel, senior energy analyst for UCS, said the practice affects the entire market because other lower-cost resources are not being called. While the approach may have made sense during a time when market prices did not drop below coal-fired plants’ production costs, Daniel argued most coal plants now face weeks, if not months, in a row where prices do not justify operating. While some utilities have altered their practices, there is “a large swath of the fleet in the wholesale markets that is simply operating at an economic loss,” he said.

Poll Shows Strong Support for Phasing Out Coal Plants as Barve Readies Bill – Maryland Matters The chairman of the principal environmental committee in the House of Delegates plans to introduce legislation next year to shutter the state’s six remaining coal-fired power plants.House Environment and Transportation Chairman Kumar P. Barve (D-Montgomery) said Tuesday that he is having legislation drafted to gradually close coal plants in favor of clean power electric generation. In a conference call with reporters, Barve said he hadn’t settled on a timeline for shutting down the coal plants.“As the sponsor, I’m going to want a faster timeline, but this is ultimately something we’re going to have to negotiate,” he said.Barve’s announcement coincided with the release of a poll from the Sierra Club showing strong support in Maryland for eliminating the state’s reliance on coal power.The poll of 947 registered Maryland voters, taken Oct. 18-27, showed widespread support for a transition to clean energy sources – among Democrats, Republicans and independents, and in all regions of the state.In the survey, 70 percent of all Maryland voters said they would support legislation that would transition the state off coal. That number included 80 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independents, and 54 percent of Republicans.The proposal garnered 78 percent support in Prince George’s County, 77 percent in Montgomery County, 76 percent in Anne Arundel County and Baltimore City, 72 percent in Charles County, 67 percent in Baltimore County, and 59 percent in the rest of the state. The poll, by Hart Research Associates, a Democratic firm, and Ferguson Research, a Republican firm, had a 3.8-point margin of error.

Activists honor Kingston coal ash cleanup workers — Activists are organizing a protest of a global government contractor accused in a federal lawsuit of failing to protect hundreds of workers who cleaned up the nation’s largest coal ash spill. The Rev. Jim Sessions announced the planned protest of the Knoxville office of Jacobs Engineering at a Jobs with Justice of East Tennessee annual meeting and awards ceremony Saturday. Jacobs, now based in Texas, was paid $64 million to safely clean up the Tennessee Valley Authority’s spill of 7.3 million tons of toxic coal ash waste and wastewater in December 2008.Since that spill, nearly 60 workers and their families have sued Jacobs in federal court, saying Jacobs didn’t provide adequate protective gear, including facemasks, respirators and Tyvek body suits, and they fell ill because of exposure to coal ash during the cleanup.Jacobs has said it conducted the clean up properly and is not responsible for the workers’ illnesses, which have not been conclusively tied to coal ash exposure.Sessions said the decision to hold a protest – set for noon Dec. 23 on the sidewalk at the intersection of Keller Bend and Northshore Drive – came after he and other members of Interfaith Worker Justice of East Tennessee earlier this year asked TVA to sever ties with Jacobs.TVA has continued to do business with Jacobs to the tune of as much as $200 million. The utility paid to run an advertisement honoring contractors, including Jacobs, on the 10th anniversary of the spill last year. A Knox News ongoing investigation has shown Kingston disaster workers were told they were safe toiling in coal ash – a toxic stew of at least 26 cancer-causing toxins, heavy metals and radioactive material – without respiratory protection or waterproof protective gear. Forty-four Kingston disaster workers have died from illnesses they assert in the lawsuit were caused by coal ash exposure, and more than 400 are sick, according to an ongoing tally from court records by Knox News.

Oak Ridge city manager sends letter critical of TVA Bull Run plans – – Oak Ridge City Manager Mark Watson has sent a letter to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation criticizing TVA’s possible plan for a coal fly ash landfill in the Claxton Community, just outside Oak Ridge. He sent his comments to TDEC as the department is considering whether to give a permit to TVA to redirect a stream called Worthington Branch in order to build that landfill and a haul road. TDEC has been asking for public comments regarding that permit and recently held a public hearing at Claxton Elementary School. Watson addressed the letter to Scott Hall, TDEC assistant manager of the natural resources unit. “The relocation of the waterway and landfill construction in the Lower Clinch River Watershed may negatively impact property values, affect the redevelopment of the site, and impact the extremely valued use of Melton Lake as a recreational venue and sports tourism destination,” Watson states in his letter. “The application states that the purpose of the landfill is to provide a reliable area for ash disposal for 15.5 years of operational capacity. The decision to construct a permanent onsite landfill, however, is strongly opposed by nearby residents as communicated at the public hearing. It is unclear why TDEC is requiring TVA to dig up millions of tons of coal ash for offsite disposal at plants in middle and west Tennessee, but considering a permit for onsite disposal at Bull Run so close to an irreplaceable water resource,” Watson stated.

Hoosier Environmental Council Offers Tanners Creek Cleanup Update – – At the Dearborn County Board of Commissioners meeting last night, Tim Maloney gave an update on the Tanners Creek Cleanup. Although this is a slow moving project and has no specific timeline, his message to the city was aimed at reminding them that all of the work being done is coming from a health and safety perspective.Maloney says that these coal ash ponds at Tanners Creek are major environmental problems that could ultimately cause issues to our air, drinking water, and the workers exposed in close range.”Unfortunately, coal contains traces of heavy metals that are more concentrated in the ash after the carbon is burned off. When coal ash is in contact with water, or water from rain or snow runs through it, the water can become contaminated with heavy metals including arsenic, boron, lithium, molybdenum, and selenium.” HEC says. The goal is to move this pollution of ash fallout to fully engineered landfill that is designed more for these issues.

Power plant closures sink waste recycling rate — Tuesday, November 19, 2019 – Coal ash recycling rates dropped for the first time in four years last year as a record number of coal-fired power plant closures torqued the market for reusing their waste.

Black Lung Trust Fund Likely Burdened by Murray Bankruptcy – The recent bankruptcy of Murray Energy is likely to significantly increase the debt of a struggling federal trust fund that supports disabled miners’ health care expenses. According to court filings, Murray Energy could be responsible for as much as $155 million under the Black Lung Act and general workers’ compensation, but testimony from the Government Accountability Office shows that the company only offered $1.1 million in collateral to the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. That means the struggling fund will likely have to take on at least some of that liability. The federal fund was established in 1978 to provide monthly stipends and health care coverage for miners disabled by black lung, a preventable and progressive workplace disease. The fund, which is supported by a per-ton tax on coal companies, currently covers expenses for some 25,000 miners and their dependents, and is expected to be $15 billion in debt by 2050. Last year, Congress failed to extend a higher per-ton tax rate, increasing the strain on the fund. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in an email to the ReSource, “While the temporary, higher tax expired last year, current benefits for our impacted miners and their families have been maintained. Senator McConnell will continue to ensure these important benefits are maintained. Additionally he will continue working on the many ways to help coal miners and the clinics that serve them across Kentucky.” If the fund becomes insolvent, it may be bailed out by the Treasury’s general fund, effectively transferring the burden of caring for disabled miners from the industry that caused the illnesses to American taxpayers.

One of the largest coal-fired power plants in the Western US has just closed for good – After nearly 50 years in operation, one of the largest coal-fired power plants in the Western United States shut its doors for good on Monday. The Navajo Generating Station, a 2,250-megawatt plant located in Arizona and operated by Salt River Project, ceased operations just after 12 p.m. local time on Monday.The “difficult but necessary” decision to close the plant was made in early 2017, after the owners determined that it was uneconomical to continue operating.A press release cited the “changing economics of the energy industry” against a backdrop that has seen “natural gas prices sink to record lows along with the growth of economical renewable resources.” The decommissioning of the plant has begun. It’s expected to take three years to complete and cost the owners $150 million.The plant closure is the latest casualty in the coal industry as consumers shift to cheaper and cleaner sources of power. At least eight coal companies have filed for bankruptcy this year, most recently Murray Energy, which was once the nation’s largest privately held coal company. Since 2010, more than 540 coal-fired plants have closed. Last year, demand for coal fell to its lowest level in 40 years, according to the US Energy Information Administration, with coal production dropping to its second lowest level since 1978. In April, for the first time ever, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind farms provided more of the US’ electricity than coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This comes despite promises by President Donald Trump to revive the industry. At a campaign rally in West Virginia last year, he declared that “the coal industry is back.”

The U.S. Coal Producers Plowing Ahead With New Mines in a Rout — As coal prices tumble and bankruptcies rise, a few U.S. miners are still pushing ahead with plans to expand. Arch Coal Inc. and Consol Energy Inc. remain on track to open new mines to dig steelmaking, or metallurgical, coal from the West Virginia hills. That’s even as the market is already glutted, with prices down about 30% in 12 months. They’re betting they can produce coal cheaply enough to profit even as their rivals retrench. Bloomberg Intelligence expects the global supply of the metallurgical variety to exceed demand this year by 2.7%, as economic headwinds blunt steel demand. At least four U.S. companies have shut mines since August. Five have filed for bankruptcy this year. “There is a lot of pain in the marketplace,” Consol Chief Executive Officer Jimmy Brock said during a conference call last week. “We expect to hold our ground.” Arch, the second largest U.S. miner, has already started digging small amounts of coal from its Leer South project, which won’t reach full production of 3 million tons annually until the third quarter of 2021. The company announced the project in February, when metallurgical coal prices were around $190 per ton. Now they’re at about $137. The site is near an existing Arch mine and will plumb the same reserves, reducing some of the risk for the company. In July, Arch sped up the project’s schedule by a quarter. Last month, the company said it would “drive forward with the accelerated build-out.” Arch did not respond to a request for comment. Consol, the eighth-largest U.S. miner, expects to begin extracting some coal next quarter from its Itmann mine in West Virginia before ramping up to full capacity in 2021. Excavation is already underway, and the company is working to hire miners. Consol announced the project in May, just as metallurgical coal prices peaked at about $200 million a ton. At the time, Brock said the returns on the project would “significantly” exceed capital costs even if met coal is $150 per ton. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Appalachia’s Strip-Mined Mountains Face a Growing Climate Risk: Flooding –With the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers forecasting more rain and significantly increased stream flows due to climate change in a region that includes the coalfields of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, this kind of life-and-death drama on landscapes heavily strip-mined for coal could happen more frequently in the coming years. Heavier rainfall could also mean more polluted water washing from coal mines, environmental experts say, damaging streams and aquatic life already marred by mining. A new analysis of satellite imagery conducted for InsideClimate News by two Duke University scientists shows how the risks related to strip mining and climate change are spread broadly across the region. It found that a total of 1,400 square miles of Appalachia within the Ohio River basin has been scarred by strip mining, with the tops and sides of mountains blasted away and steep mountains valleys filled with so-called “waste rock.” The area with the largest extent of strip-mining damage in the entire Ohio River basin – almost 500 square miles in the Big Sandy watershed, including Pigeon Creek – is also the most threatened by extreme weather related to climate change, according to the new analysis.

Exclusive: Over half of India’s coal-fired power plants set to miss emission norm deadline – (Reuters) – More than half of India’s coal-fired power plants ordered to retrofit equipment to curb air pollution are set to miss the deadline, private industry estimates and a Reuters analysis show, as millions in the country wake up to toxic air each day. Thermal power companies, which produce three-quarters of the country’s electricity, account for some 80% of India’s industrial emissions of sulfur- and nitrous-oxides in India, which cause lung diseases, acid rain and smog. India, currently struggling with some of the worst air pollution levels on earth, has previously already extended its December 2017 deadline for its utilities to meet emissions standards, after extensive lobbying by the Association of Power Producers (APP). In a letter to the government dated May 24 and reviewed by Reuters, APP’s Director General Ashok Khurana said the installation of Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) units – which cuts emissions of sulfur dioxides – take about 27-30 months and warned that banks were withholding funding for these units due to stress levels in the power sector, among other factors. India has a phased plan for plants to comply with the emission norms, with some plants having until end-December 2019, while others have up to the end of 2022 to comply. A total of 440 coal-fired units that produce 166.5 gigawatts (GW) have to comply with the regulations by December 2022. A Reuters analysis of Central Electricity Authority (CEA) data indicates 267 units, which produce 103.4 GW of power, have to be compliant between December 2019 and February 2022, which is 27 months from now.

A Huge Red Flag? India Shutters Power Plants Citing Lack Of Demand –Half of India’s power generation capacity using coal and nuclear power is being shut down because of lackluster demand, the Indian Express reports, adding that some of the shutdowns have been temporary, lasting just a few days, but other power plants have been closed for months. Some 65.13 GW in generation capacity has been shut down at one point or another, with the earlier shutdown made in July. There seems to be simply not enough demand for electricity, which is worrying as a lot of this demand comes from the industrial and commercial sectors.This is marked departure from 2012, when the worst blackout in years hit 20 of India’s 28 states, plunging 700 million people into darkness. The blackout was caused by a surge in demand that the local utilities found themselves unable to meet. Now, demand is on the decline for India’s coal-powered generation plants as renewables encroach on their territory: coal-fired plants currently account for 63 percent of the country’s energy mix, down from 73 percent three years ago. The country has one of the most ambitious renewables programs in the world, which should result in India deriving 55 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.To date, the country has 83 GW in renewable generation capacity, with another 31 GW under construction, and a further 35 GW awaiting bidders. All this taken together and with hydropower capacity added, India could cross the 200-GW threshold by 2022, according to the government. Yet there are also seasonal factors at play. A longer monsoon season and an early arrival of winter have served to dampen electricity demand faster than usual. The longer monsoon period affected activity in India’s industrial centers, with some of them registering declines in demand for electricity rather than the usual increase for that time of the year.

China coal-fired power capacity still rising, bucking global trend: study – (Reuters) – China raised its coal-fired power capacity by 42.9 gigawatts (GW), or about 4.5%, in the 18 months to June, connecting new projects to the grid at a time when capacity in the rest of the world shrank, according to a study published on Wednesday. China also has another 121.3 GW of coal-fired power plants under construction, U.S.-based research network Global Energy Monitor said in its report, nearly enough to power the whole of France. The increase followed a 2014-2016 “permitting surge” by local governments aiming to boost growth while formerly suspended projects have also been restarted, Global Energy Monitor said. In the rest of the world, coal-fired power capacity fell 8.1 GW over the same period. To cut pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, China has promised an “energy revolution” aimed at dramatically reducing its reliance on coal. It cut coal’s share of the country’s total energy from 68% in 2012 to 59% last year, and researchers predict it will fall to 55.3% by 2020. Absolute coal consumption, however, has continued to increase in line with a rise in overall Chinese energy demand.

A leak shut down a nuclear plant for weeks. Here’s the latest on repairs at the SC plant. The V.C. Summer atomic power plant, which has been shut down since early November because of a pipe leak, is expected to begin producing energy in a few days. Dominion Energy says it has fixed the small leak in a pipe valve that allowed radioactive water to drip out. The company declined to say when the plant would be fully operational, but spokesman Ken Holt said that can take several days. The plant was at 17 percent power Wednesday, he said. Holt, who said Dominion is still investigating the cause, said water that leaked was part of the reactor cooling system. While the water came in contact with nuclear fuel in the reactor, the water never escaped the plant’s containment building and into the environment, Holt said. Subscribe and Save Act now to get a full year of unlimited digital access – just $49.99! VIEW OFFER He characterized the valve leak as ‘”uncommon’’ but not unexpected. The nuclear leak occurred in piping that links the nuclear reactor with the power plant’s steam generators. Hundreds of pipes are in that part of the nuclear plant.

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