Environmental News For The Week Ending 14Dec 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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Thousands of children in New Jersey found to have elevated blood lead levels – About 4,500 children in New Jersey had an elevated level of lead in their blood during fiscal 2018, according to a report by the state’s department of health. This figure corresponds to 2.3 percent of the 191,000 children younger than 17 across the state who had their blood tested last year. In New Jersey’s largest cities, particularly those with large working-class populations, the proportion of children with elevated blood lead levels was found to be as high as 6.4 percent. The New Jersey Department of Health’s annual report shows that scandalous levels of lead contamination in public water are not limited to the city of Newark, where local officials’ criminal response made headlines this year. New Jersey is one of the wealthiest states in the country, boasting the highest percentage of millionaire residents in the United States. The lead contamination is the fruit of intentional neglect, indifference, and ruling class arrogance, allowing basic infrastructure to deteriorate, endangering the health and very lives of workers and their families. This is being carried out by Democrats, such as Governor Phil Murphy, an alumnus of investment bank Goldman Sachs with a personal worth of over $55 million, and Republicans such as former Governor Chris Christie, alike. Lead is a neurotoxin that can cause developmental, learning, and behavioral problems, particularly in children. State law requires health practitioners to screen all children for lead at ages 12 months and 24 months. Children age three years or older must be screened at least once before they turn six if they have not been screened previously. The potential danger posed by lead in water pipes, older paints, and other sources is well known, especially for children, and has been for decades. Research shows that even very small dosages can have serious consequences. Exposure to lead from drinking water and other sources is a nationwide problem, yet little or nothing is being done to systematically address it, except when a particularly egregious case is exposed to the public. Experts agree that no level of lead in the blood is safe.

The blood of poor Americans is now a leading export, bigger than corn or soy – America is one of the only developed countries in the world that pays people to donate blood, much of it sold abroad (70% of the world’s plasma is of US origin), and as commercial blood donations have soared, blood now accounts for 2% of the country’s exports — more than corn or soya. There’s more growth ahead for blood products, expected to “grow radiantly” according to an analyst who was cheering 13% growth between 2016-17. One study found that the typical blood-seller derives a third of their income from selling blood. Princeton’s Kathryn Edin called the commercial blood industry “the lifeblood of the $2 a day poor.” Mintpress’s interviews with blood-sellers reveal “a mix of disabled, working poor, homeless, single parents, and college students,” who describe a system of arbitrary and predatory payments, which fluxuate wildly from day to day. Chronic bloodletting produces lethargy and cognitive impairment. Respondents all agreed that they were indeed being exploited, but in more ways than one. Desperate Americans are allowed to donate twice per week (104 times per year). But losing that much plasma could have serious health consequences, most of which have not been studied Professor Schaefer warns, stressing that more research is necessary. Around 70 percent of donors experience health complications. Donors have a lower protein count in their blood, putting them at greater risk of infections and liver and kidney disorders. Many regulars suffer from near-permanent fatigue and are borderline anemic. All this for an average of $30 per visit. Rachel described the terrible Catch-22 many of the working poor find themselves in: I got turned away twice – once for being too dehydrated and once for being anemic. Being poor created a shitty paradox where I couldn’t eat, and because I couldn’t eat my iron levels weren’t high enough to allow me to donate. That was a week of a pay cut, money I desperately needed for rent and bills and meds.” — Harvesting the Blood of America’s Poor: The Latest Stage of Capitalism

Flu season comes early this year due to unexpected virus – Flu season has come early this year due to a strain of the virus not typically seen during this time of year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC announced Friday there has already been an estimated 1.7 million flu illnesses, 16,000 hospitalizations, and 910 flu-related deaths this year in the United States, at a minimum. The early activity is primarily being caused by influenza B/Victoria viruses, which is unusual this early in the season, according to the CDC. CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus told “CBS This Morning: Saturday” that the B/Victoria strain “classically” happens in February or March. “Nationally, influenza B/Victoria viruses are the most commonly reported influenza viruses among children age 0-4 years (46% of reported viruses) and 5-24 years (60% of reported viruses),” reads the agency’s website. B/Victoria viruses are generally not dangerous to older people. Flu season is considered to be underway when a significant percentage of doctors visits – for at least three weeks straight – are attributed to flu-like symptoms, the Associated Press reports. As of November 30, flu activity had been elevated in the United States for about four weeks, and is expected to increase as we move into winter, according to the CDC. The virus has largely hit the Southern United States. At the end of November the CDC recorded high flu activity in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, among five other states and Puerto Rico. “We don’t know why the flu season happens when or where, but it’s happening early, it’s clear,” Agus said. “It’s happening in the Southern United States – New Orleans particularly hit – and 1.7-2.5 million people, that’s a big number early.”

Climate Change Could Mean Shorter Winters, But Longer Flu Seasons – The flu has a paradoxical relationship with the weather. In the United States, the flu thrives in the winter, when the air is cold and crisp, and then ebbs in the spring, when the disease is stymied by hotter temperatures. However, in tropical countries, where it is usually warm, humid and rainy, people get sick with the flu all year round. Scientists are studying why this happens, but they have no answers as of yet. “It’s there all the time. We just don’t know why,” said William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University. It’s a real puzzle, since flu viruses spread more easily in cold, dry air than in heat, but they are a perennial problem in the tropics. This contradiction could have major implications for the future of the flu in the United States. While climate change promises shorter, warmer winters, which could yield milder flu seasons, scientists say that the way the flu operates in the tropics suggests that in the coming decades, warmer, wetter weather could make the flu a year-round problem for Americans. “It would not be surprising to see the year-round influenza zone expand as the world warms,” said Robert. T. Schooley, an infectious diseases specialist and editor of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Schaffner agreed. “A warm climate promotes sustained transmission as opposed to seasonal outbreaks, so we might get flu year-round,” he said. A longer flu season could upend annual vaccination programs. The flu vaccine grows less effective over time, especially in the elderly. That’s why public health officials urge Americans to get vaccinated in the fall, so they are best protected through the winter. If the flu becomes a perennial problem, people might need to get vaccinated more than once a year, a prospect that makes health experts shudder.

Leading anti-vaxxer jailed as measles death toll rises to 63 in Samoa Samoa’s most prominent locally based anti-vaccine advocate will stay behind bars as officials go door to door vaccinating residents against a massive measles outbreak that has already killed 63 – nearly all of whom are children under 4 years old. Officials arrested Edwin Tamasese Thursday, December 5, charging him with “incitement against the Government vaccination order[s],” according to the Samoa Observer. He faces two years in jail. The arrest came after he allegedly posted a message on social media about the current vaccination campaign that read, “I will be here to mop up your mess. Enjoy your killing spree.” Officials denied Tamasese bail. That means he will spend the remainder of the government’s vaccination campaign in jail, awaiting the next available court date. Police said they had given him written warnings to cease his anti-vaccination rhetoric prior to the arrest. The attorney general’s office cited the likelihood that he would reoffend as a reason to deny bail. Tamasese, a manager of a coconut farmers’ collective in Samoa, is a vocal anti-vaccine advocate who has garnered an international following. Though he has no medical or scientific background, he questions the safety of life-saving vaccinations. He also claims to be a Samoan Taulasea [traditional healer] and falsely says he is able to cure measles with vitamins A and C. (There is no specific treatment for measles.) A Taulasea who spoke with a New Zealand news outlet, however, noted that healers employ natural resources from the area to treat mainly tropical ailments. “With introduced diseases like measles, you must go to the hospital. We have no plants that can heal this,” the healer said. “Taulasea work hand in hand with Western medicines on diseases like this.”

Samoa: Anger grows over escalating measles toll – The population of Samoa was subjected to an unprecedented nationwide quarantine last week as the government struggled to stem the Pacific country’s deadly measles epidemic. Police were reportedly deployed “in force” to impose the shutdown. On December 5 – 6, all public and private services, offices, and businesses were closed and road travel prohibited to all except essential traffic. The government previously closed schools and banned children from public gatherings. People not yet vaccinated were told to remain indoors and tie a red cloth in front of their homes while awaiting mobile vaccination teams. Despite more than 20,000 inoculations carried out over the two days, the toll from the disease has continued to rise. Over the past 24 hours the total number of deaths has reached 70, of which 61 are children aged 4 years or younger. Another 112 new cases were registered, bringing the total to 4,693 since the outbreak began. Currently 159 people are hospitalised, including 17 critically ill children. According to Auckland University immunisation specialist, Dr Helen Petousis Harris, up to 3 percent of Samoa’s population of 200,000 could be hit with the deadly virus before it is eventually contained. Addressing a press conference last Friday, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi admitted the epidemic remained beyond the government’s ability to control it, despite an influx of international medical aid and personnel. He launched an urgent financial appeal for $US10.7 million to help the overwhelmed health system. UN spokesperson Simona Marinescu warned that there are still 110,000 vulnerable people at risk. The government faces mounting public anger over its failure to prevent what was an entirely foreseeable and preventable outbreak. Relatives of children who have died maintain the authorities must have known that the population was at grave risk of infection. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the last five years levels of vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) collapsed in Samoa, particularly among the most at-risk groups of infants, from 90 to just 31 percent. Dr Petousis-Harris posted on social media that while the compulsory immunisation campaign may mitigate the crisis, “for many it is too late.” The low immunisation coverage has left Samoa extremely vulnerable to measles, comparing it to “a lit match to dry tinder and gasoline.” With the global resurgence of measles, the risk of an outbreak was “almost inevitable.”

When a DNA Test Says You’re a Younger Man, Who Lives 5,000 Miles Away – Three months after his bone marrow transplant, Chris Long of Reno, Nev., learned that the DNA in his blood had changed. It had all been replaced by the DNA of his donor, a German man he had exchanged just a handful of messages with. He’d been encouraged to test his blood by a colleague at the Sheriff’s Office, where he worked. She had an inkling this might happen. It’s the goal of the procedure, after all: Weak blood is replaced by healthy blood, and with it, the DNA it contains. But four years after his lifesaving procedure, it was not only Mr. Long’s blood that was affected. Swabs of his lips and cheeks contained his DNA – but also that of his donor. Even more surprising to Mr. Long and other colleagues at the crime lab, all of the DNA in his semen belonged to his donor. “I thought that it was pretty incredible that I can disappear and someone else can appear,” he said. Mr. Long had become a chimera, the technical term for the rare person with two sets of DNA. The word takes its name from a fire-breathing creature in Greek mythology composed of lion, goat and serpent parts. Doctors and forensic scientists have long known that certain medical procedures turn people into chimeras, but where exactly a donor’s DNA shows up – beyond blood – has rarely been studied with criminal applications in mind. Tens of thousands of people get bone marrow transplants every year, for blood cancers and other blood diseases including leukemia, lymphoma and sickle cell anemia. .The assumption among criminal investigators as they gather DNA evidence from a crime scene is that each victim and each perpetrator leaves behind a single identifying code – not two, including that of a fellow who is 10 years younger and lives thousands of miles away.

Former Monsanto CEO Ordered to Testify at Roundup Cancer Trial – Former Monsanto Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant will have to testify in person at a St. Louis-area trial set for January in litigation brought by a cancer-stricken woman who claims her disease was caused by exposure to the company’s Roundup herbicide and that Monsanto covered up the risks instead of warning consumers. Grant, who led St. Louis-based Monsanto from 2003 until the company was sold to Bayer AG of Germany in June of 2018, and spent a total of 37 years working for Monsanto, was subpoenaed by lawyers for plaintiff Sharlean Gordon, to testify at a trial slated to begin Jan. 27 in St. Louis County Circuit Court.The Gordon trial was originally scheduled for August of this year but was delayed as part of an effort to undertake settlement talks between Bayer and lawyers for tens of thousands of plaintiffs who are suing Monsanto with claims similar to Gordon’s.Two other trials set for January, both in courts in California and both involving children diagnosed with cancer, were recently postponed due to continued settlement talks.Bayer estimates that there are currently more than 42,000 plaintiffs alleging that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides made by Monsanto caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Grant did not have to testify live at the three Roundup cancer trials that have taken place so far because they were all held in California. But because Grant resides in St. Louis County, plaintiffs’ attorneys saw an opportunity to get him on the stand in person. Attorneys for Grant have been fighting the subpoena, arguing that he is not a scientist or regulatory expert and he has already provided information in deposition testimony. Grant has also argued that he should not have to testify because he plans to be out of the country starting Feb. 9. But in a decision handed down Dec. 5, a special master appointed to the case sided with Gordon’s attorneys and ruled that Grant was not entitled to an order quashing the subpoena for trial testimony.

Scientists call for a complete ban on GLITTER because the particles are polluting oceans – Glitter may be sparkly, but reports show it also has a dark side. These tiny particles are making their way into water sources, leading scientists to call a complete ban on glitter saying it is causing an environmental disaster. Because glitter is so small, marine life is mistaking it for food, which in turn is damaging their livers and affecting their behavior functions. And every tiny sparkly bit takes thousands of years to break down. Dr. Trisia Farrelly of New Zealand’s Massey University told CBS News in 2017, ‘I think all glitter should be banned because it’s microplastic.’ ‘Producers should not get away with making a profit out of the production of disposable, single-use plastics, while bearing little responsibility for the damage.’ The US and UK have taken steps towards banning glitter, by outlawing cosmetics and care products containing microbeads. The move is aimed at protecting the marine environment from one source of plastic pollution, as microbeads are washed down the drain and can enter the seas and be swallowed by fish and crustaceans with potentially harmful effects.

Elizabeth Warren helped company to avoid clearing up toxic waste, document reveals – The memo from then-professor Elizabeth Warren was written on Harvard University law school letterhead, a symbol of gravitas for a scholar renowned as a champion for consumers victimised by predatory banks and other big businesses. But on this occasion, Ms Warren was not arguing on behalf of vulnerable families, nor was she offering the sort of stinging rebuke of corporate greed that would later define her political career. Rather, Ms Warren was representing a large development company that was trying to avoid having to clean up a toxic waste site. The memo, which Ms Warren wrote in 1996, used legalistic and often dense language to argue that businesses faced the “risk of the unknown” from a growing threat of lawsuits, and that defended the company’s right to “maximise its returns to its unpaid creditors and to survive as an employer.” “Environmental claims, product liability claims, and mass tort claims, for which we have currently only seen the tip of the iceberg, are multiplying against American businesses,” wrote Ms Warren, who, according to her campaign, was arguing that a different company should bear the cleanup costs. The eight-page memo, which has not previously been reported, offers a rare glimpse of Warren in action during her past work as a corporate consultant – one whose arguments were at times out of step with the liberal presidential campaign she is running today. Ms Warren’s compensation in the 1996 case was included in a summary released by her campaign late on Sunday night showing that she had been paid about $2m (£1.5m) as a legal consultant during her time as a professor, most of it between 1995 and 2009.

Is This the End of Recycling? – After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans arefinally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven’t recycled appropriately. But now much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash. For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China – tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products. But in 2018, the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper – magazines, office paper, junk mail – and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all away. Most are choosing the latter. “We are doing our best to be environmentally responsible, but we can’t afford it,” said Judie Milner, the city manager of Franklin, New Hampshire. Since 2010, Franklin has offered curbside recycling and encouraged residents to put paper, metal, and plastic in their green bins. When the program launched, Franklin could break even on recycling by selling it for $6 a ton. Now, Milner told me, the transfer station is charging the town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 a ton to incinerate. One-fifth of Franklin’s residents live below the poverty line, and the city government didn’t want to ask them to pay more to recycle, so all those carefully sorted bottles and cans are being burned. Milner hates knowing that Franklin is releasing toxins into the environment, but there’s not much she can do. “Plastic is just not one of the things we have a market for,” she said. The same thing is happening across the country. Broadway, Virginia, had a recycling program for 22 years, but recently suspended it after Waste Management told the town that prices would increase by 63 percent, and then stopped offering recycling pickup as a service. “It almost feels illegal, to throw plastic bottles away,” the town manager, Kyle O’Brien, told me.

Human Composting Home to Open in 2021 – No longer will the options when we die be a choice between just burial or cremation. Soon it will be possible to compost your remains and leave your loved ones with rich soil, thanks to a new funeral service opening in Seattle in 2021 that will convert humans into soil in just 30 days, as The Independent reported. Recompose markets itself as a service offering “natural organic reduction” to the public, according to its website. The facility is meant to recognize that death is a momentous spiritual event and to take the opportunity to reconnect funeral rites with nature and to offer a greener alternative to burial or cremation, according to Fast Company. Recompose, which will be able to hold 75 bodies in its flagship facility in Seattle, says it will turn a dead body into usable soil in just 30 days in a process that is much less resource-intensive than cremation or burial. In fact, according to the The Independent, the process will use one-eighth the energy of cremation and save a metric ton of CO2 from being emitted, compared to most forms of burial. A burial usually requires chemical-laden embalming, while cremation is energy intensive, according to the architects at Olson Kundig who designed the new facility, as Fast Company reported. “Our service – recomposition – gently converts human remains into soil, so that we can nourish new life after we die,” Recompose’s website says. “Recompose takes guidance from nature. At the heart of our model is a system that will gently return us to the earth after we die.” “By converting human remains into soil, we minimize waste, avoid polluting groundwater with embalming fluid, and prevent the emissions of CO2 from cremation and from the manufacturing of caskets, headstones, and grave liners,” the company’s website explains. “By allowing organic processes to transform our bodies and those of our loved ones into a useful soil amendment, we help to strengthen our relationship to the natural cycles while enriching the earth.” A single body plus the woodchips, alfalfa and hay will net one cubic yard of soil, or several wheelbarrows full. Some families will take the soil home to use, while others can donate it to conservation projects on the slopes of Bells Mountain in Washington, according to the Seattle Times.

Trump says the EPA is looking ‘very strongly’ at ‘sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms’ because people are flushing their toilets 10 to 15 times – At a Friday meeting at the White House, President Donald Trump talked at length about water and energy conservation, saying the Environmental Protection Agency is looking into restrictions in part because, he said, people are flushing their toilets 10 to 15 times instead of once and are therefore using more water.”We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where it all flows out to sea because you could never handle it all, and you don’t get any water,” he said. “They take a shower and water comes dripping out, very quietly dripping out. People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once; they end up using more water. So EPA is looking very strongly at that, at my suggestion.”You go into a new building, new house, a new home, and they have standards where don’t get water, and you can’t wash your hands practically; there’s so little water,” he added. “And the end result is that you leave the faucet on, and it takes you much longer to wash your hands, and you end up using the same amount of water. So we’re looking very seriously at opening up the standard, and there may be some areas where we go the other route, desert areas, but for the most part, you have states where they have so much water where it comes down – it’s called rain – that they don’t know what to do with it.” In his comments, Trump appeared to be referring to the standards set by the National Energy Policy Act of 1995, federal regulations that stipulated that all newly manufactured toilets had to use a maximum of 1.6 gallons of water per flush, a significant decrease from previous standards. Earlier in the meeting, Trump also jokingly complained about energy-saving lightbulbs. “They got rid of the lightbulb that people got used to,” he said. “The new bulb is many times more expensive, and I hate to say it, it doesn’t make you look as good. Of course, being a vain person, that’s very important to me. It gives you an orange look. I don’t want an orange look. Has anyone noticed? So we’ll have to change those bulbs in rooms where I’m in.”

Trump Makes Strange Claim About Water Efficient Toilets: ‘People Are Flushing Toilets 10 Times, 15 Times’ -President Donald Trump mocked water-efficiency standards in new constructions last week. Trump said, “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water.” Trump asked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a federal review of those standards since, he claimed with no evidence, that they are making bathrooms unusable and wasting water, as NBC News reported.Trump delivered his bizarre tangent on the state of modern bathrooms at a White House meeting about small business and red tape reduction.He started by suggesting his beef with low-flow plumbing was for the American worker and is common sense. “But together, we’re defending the American workers. We’re using common sense,” Trump said just before railing against modern plumbing, according to the White House’s official transcript. “We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on – in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it,” Trump said.”You turn on the faucet and you don’t get any water. They take a shower and water comes dripping out. Just dripping out, very quietly dripping out,” Trump continued, lowering his voice as he spoke about the drips, as CNN reported.He continued, “You go into a new building or a new house or a new home, and they have standards, ‘Oh, you don’t get water.’ You can’t wash your hands, practically, there’s so little water comes out of the faucet. And the end result is you leave the faucet on and it takes you much longer to wash your hands. You end up using the same amount of water,” according to NBC News. It was not clear what standards President Trump was referring to or what exactly he asked the EPA to look into. However, he continued and suggested that most states have a water surplus that make low-flow toilets and sinks unnecessary.

Donald Trump Jr killed rare endangered sheep in Mongolia with special permit – On a hunting trip to Mongolia earlier this summer the US president’s son Donald Trump Jr killed a rare species of endangered sheep. A permit for the killing was retroactively issued after Trump met with the country’s president, according to new reporting from ProPublica.Trump was accompanied by security from both the US and Mongolia on the trip, the outlet reported. The argali sheep, with its large horns, is considered a national treasure there, and permission to kill one is “controlled by an opaque permitting system that experts say is mostly based on money, connections and politics”.In between the killing and the issuing of the permit the month after he left the country, Trump is said to have met with the president, Khaltmaagiin Battulga, suggesting the possibility of special consideration being given to the son of the US president. “Trump Jr shot his argali at night, using a rifle with a laser sight, the guides said,” according to ProPublica. “He stopped the local hunting guides from dismembering it at the kill site, instead instructing them to use an aluminum sheet to carry the carcass so as not to damage the fur and horns, said Khuandyg Akhbas, 50, one of the guides. He also killed a red deer, which similarly required a permit.The legality of the importation of big game trophies into the United States has been, like many other issues in the Trump administration, confusing and ever-changing. The president himself has spoken out against the practice, calling such hunting practices a “horror show” despite his two sons being avid trophy hunters. In order to import trophies of animals on the endangered species list, a US hunter must show that its killing would be beneficial overall to the species at large. In 2017, the Trump administration pushed back against such restrictions on trophy hunting from the Obama era before reinstating the ban. A court ruling found thereafter it was done improperly, allowing imports to continue.

Drive-by Shooters in Brazilian Amazon Kill Two Indigenous Leaders, Injure Two Others – Two indigenous leaders were killed in a drive-by shooting in Northeast Brazil Saturday, and two others were injured. The murdered men belonged to the Guajajara tribe, which is known for organizing guardians to defend theirAmazon rainforest territory against illegal tree clearing, The Guardian pointed out. Violence against Brazil’s indigenous communities has increased during the presidency of far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, who has spoken against indigenous reserves and promised to open more of the Amazon to agriculture and industry. Saturday’s killings come little over a month after illegal loggers shot and murdered forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara. “How long will this go on? Who will be next?” Sonia Guajajara, leader of Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB), told The Guardian. “The authorities need to look at our indigenous people. They’re taking away our lives.” One indigenous witness recorded a video of the scene, along with a plea for help.”Please spread this video so that people can know the state of vulnerability we are in, for lack of security, for illicit acts that some people practice. And now our relatives have had to pay with their own lives,” the filmer said, according to Amazon Watch. “This can’t keep happening. Brazilian authorities and responsible bodies must take action on this.” Homens em um ve’culo atiram contra ind’genas e deixa mortos e feridos na BR-226 no MA – YouTube The murdered men were chiefs named Firmino Prexede Guajajara and Raimundo Guajajara, according to Amazon Watch. They were riding a motorcycle on their way back from advocating for indigenous rights at a meeting with Brazilian electric utility Eletronorte and Funai (Brazilian National Indigenous Foundation). When they reached the part of a highway near El-Betel village, the murderers opened the windows of a moving car and opened fire, tribal spokesman Magno Guajajara said, according to The Guardian. “They were shooting at everyone,” he recounted.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro Calls Greta Thunberg a ‘Brat’ for Speaking up for Indigenous Rights — Right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is angry that 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is speaking out for indigenous rights. On Sunday, Thunberg tweeted a response to the killing of two indigenous leaders in Northeast BrazilSaturday.”Indigenous people are literally being murdered for trying to protect the forest from illegal deforestation,” she wrote. “Over and over again. It is shameful that the world remains silent about this.”Bolsonaro, whose pro-development policies and rhetoric have been blamed for the uptick in violence against indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon, lashed out against Thunberg Tuesday.”Greta said the Indians died because they were defending the Amazon (forest). How can the media give space to a brat like that,” Bolsonaro told reporters, as Reuters reported. Bolsonaro used the Portuguese word “pirralha,” which means roughly “little brat” or “pest,” according to The Guardian. Thunberg then responded by temporarily changing her Twitter biography to “pirralha.”

South African mines grind to halt as floods deepen power crisis – (Reuters) – Mines across South Africa shut down on Tuesday after flash flooding triggered the most severe power blackouts in more than a decade, threatening a key export sector in a further blow to the country’s already slowing economy. Heavy rains across parts of South Africa have submerged entire neighborhoods, leading to evacuations and aggravating problems at state-owned utility Eskom, which has been struggling to keep the lights on since 2008. Harmony Gold, Impala Platinum and Sibanye-Stillwater all said they had been forced to cut production since Monday because of power shortages. The mining industry contributed 351 billion rand ($24 billion) to the South African economy in 2018, the Minerals Council says, equating to about 7% of gross domestic product (GDP). Eskom said on Tuesday that it plans more load-shedding, referring to intentional power cuts, having cut up to 6,000 megawatts (MW) from the national grid on Monday after flooding triggered failures at its Medupi coal-fired plant. President Cyril Ramaphosa cut short a state visit to Egypt to meet Eskom officials, local news agency EWN said on Tuesday. “The ongoing load shedding is devastating,” Ramaphosa said in a statement earlier in the day. “The energy challenges in this country will not be resolved overnight.”

20% of Global Population at Risk From Climate Chaos, Rising Demand of Mountain Water, Study Says – The drinking water of 1.9 billion people is at risk from the climate crisis and the demand for water is rising, a study published Monday in Nature has found. The study set out to assess the vulnerability and importance of 78 natural “water towers” – mountain ecosystems that both generate and store water in glaciers, snowpack and alpine lakes. “I think when we’ve talked about climate change and ice loss, a lot of the narrative has been around sea-level rise,” research team member Dr. Bethan Davies from Royal Holloway, University of London told BBC News. “But actually over the next 100 years, climate change is going to affect drinking water for people, water for power, water for agriculture – and in these water towers, we’re talking about the supply to about 1.9 billion people. That’s more than 20% of the world’s population. We need to adopt urgent mitigation strategies or we will face severe water shortages.” The researchers found that both the most important and most vulnerable water tower is the Indus, which is fed by the Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Ladakh and Himalayan mountains and sustains populations in Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan, The Guardian reported. If current trends continue, temperatures will rise to 1.9 degrees Celsius by mid-century and rainfall will only increase by less than two percent, but population will increase by 50 percent. The “water tower” currently supplies more than 200 million people, according to BBC News.

Victoria Falls Dries Drastically After Worst Drought in a Century – The climate crisis is already threatening the Great Barrier Reef. Now, another of the seven natural wonders of the world may be in its crosshairs – Southern Africa’s iconic Victoria Falls. The falls are located on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. They are also called Mosi-oa-Tunya, which means “the smoke that thunders” in the indigenous Lozi language, according to AccuWeather. But contrasting photographs taken by Reuters in January and December 2019 show how a severe drought has shrunk the falls into something closer to the steam that whispers. Zambian President Edgar Chagwa Lungu also tweeted images of the dried-out falls in October. “These pictures of Victoria Falls are a stark reminder of what climate change is doing to our environment and our livelihood,” he wrote at the time. “It is with no doubt that developing countries like Zambia are the most impacted by climate change and the least able to afford its consequences.” The falls usually decline somewhat during the dry season, but the worst drought to bake the region in a century has reduced its water flow to the lowest level in 25 years, Reuters reported. This has led to concerns that the attraction that draws millions of visitors to Zambia and Zimbabwe could dry up all together. “In previous years, when it gets dry, it’s not to this extent. This (is) our first experience of seeing it like this,” Dominic Nyambe, who sells crafts to tourists on the Zambian side of the falls, told Reuters. “It affects us, because … clients … can see on the Internet (that the falls are low) …. We don’t have so many tourists.” The dwindling falls isn’t the only way drought has impacted the two countries. Both Zambia and Zimbabwe rely on hydropower from the Kariba Dam, located on the Zambezi River that also feeds the falls. The reduced water flow has led to power cuts. In southern Africa overall, around 45 million people require food aid because of crop failures. AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jim Andrews said that it was unclear if this year’s drought was caused by climate change. And hydrologist Harald Kling, who is an expert on the Zambezi River, cautioned Reuters it isn’t always possible to blame the climate crisis for one dry year. While climate models predicted more droughts for the region, Kling said their recent frequency has still been “surprising.” The last drought was only three years ago.

How California’s Government Plans To Make Wildfires Even Worse – Not every square inch of the planet earth is suitable for a housing development. Flood plains are not great places to build homes. A grove of trees adjacent to a tinder-dry national forest is not ideal for a dream home. And California’s chaparral ecosystems are risky places for neighborhoods. This is nothing new. While people many Americans who live back East may imagine that something must be deeply wrong when they hear about fires out West, the fact is things are different in North America west of the hundredth meridian. The West is more prone to extreme temperatures, hundred-year droughts, and fires in the wilderness. Many of these ecosystems evolved with this fire risk. Efforts to blame them primarily on climate change ignore the long standing reality. The Sacramento Bee notes, for example: It’s also not enough to blame the growing devastation of recent wildfires solely on climate change, researchers said. While drier, warmer conditions have lengthened the fire season and likely increased the severity of the blazes, wildfires are only destroying more homes today than decades before because of rapid growth in rural areas. It’s not that fires are more devastating in the natural sense. The problem is that human beings insist on putting their property in places where fires have long destroyed the landscape, over and over again. The Bee continues: [T]he fires aren’t getting closer to us – we’re getting closer to the fires. “We’re seeing wildfires that have always been a part of the landscape that are now interacting more and more with us…” So, why do people keep building homes in these places? Part of it is natural populations growth, of course. But the manner and rapidity with which this development expands out into the fringes of metro areas is also partly due to government policy and infrastructure. In an unhampered market, it would be very expensive to extend a new neighborhood out into ever-further-out regions near metro areas. In order to reach these places, housing developers would need to find a way to finance both the new housing construction and the roads that give access to them. Certainly, developers often provide part of the funding through development fees demanded by governments. But these roads are often also subsidized by state and local governments, especially in the form of ongoing maintenance. Once a road to a new semi-rural community is built, governments will often maintain it, while spreading the cost across all the jurisdiction’s taxpayers. This system of subsidy allows more rapid and more dispersed development. Unsubsidized roads would tend to force more close-in and more dense development.

Australia fires: blazes ‘too big to put out’ as 140 bushfires rage in NSW and Queensland Dozens of fires will burn across Australia for weeks, fire authorities say, including a “mega-fire”, already the size of greater Sydney, that is too big to put out. At 6am on Sunday there were 96 bush and grass fires in NSW – 47 of which were not contained. Five fires are at a watch and act level. Conditions eased on Sunday morning, allowing firefighters a chance to do critical back-burning and containment work ahead of Tuesday, when the mercury is tipped to soar into the 40s in parts of the state. NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said overnight conditions had improved. “We’ve got much more benign conditions, particularly a dominant easterly influence which will stretch pretty much right across most of our fire grounds,” he told Seven News. “Which means hundreds – as a matter of fact more than 1600 – firefighters are around again today doing really important and critical back burning and containment-line consolidation to try and gain the upper hand before we see those conditions deteriorate into Tuesday.” Already this fire season, six people have died and more than 1,000 homes have been lost across NSW and Queensland. The largest conflagration, the “mega fire” at Gospers Mountain near Sydney’s north-western outskirts, was likely to burn for weeks until substantial rain falls, likely at the end of January or early February. The NSW Bureau of Meteorology said the largest fires simply could not be extinguished by water-bombing aircraft or firefighting crews on the ground. “The massive NSW fires are in some cases just too big to put out at the moment … they’re pumping out vast amounts of smoke which is filling the air, turning the sky orange and even appearing like significant rain on our radars,” the bureau said.The bureau has forecast a grim week ahead, with strong winds forecast for fire-affected areas and no rain relief in sight. A months-long drought in eastern Australia has left bushland tinder dry and prone to ignition, especially from dry lightning strikes. Temperatures are expected to reach 43C in western Sydney, and 44C in the Hunter region immediately north of Australia’s largest city. Temperatures will also soar in the state’s north-west, where they are forecast to hit 44C in Bourke and 43C in Colbar. Residents within an three-kilometre-squared exclusion zone were ordered out as the firefront was waterbombed but fire crews warned they might not be able to stop the fast-moving blaze.

Australia Burns as Leaders Worry About Coal More Than Climate – – For weeks now, I’ve not been sleeping properly. Lying down has provoked paroxysmal, bronchial coughing, as drifting clouds from bushfires around Australia’s east coast have settled on my home city of Sydney. A thrumming headache has been a constant. Taking my daughter for an asthma checkup last week, we walked through haze filled with swirling motes of ash. Tuesday was the worst yet. As I wrote this article, a building fire alarm went off in Bloomberg’s office, caused by the permeating fumes. Thick smoke has rendered the Sydney Harbour Bridge invisible. Ambulance calls for breathing problems have risen 30% on typical seasonal levels. Beaches are black from settling embers. You’d think that Australia’s political class would be under pressure to come up with solutions to the disaster spreading over nearly 10 million people – about two-fifths of the population – across some 1,000 kilometers (more than 600 miles) from the capital Canberra north to the third-largest city of Brisbane. The air-quality levels for Sydney are currently worse than New Delhi and Beijing. In fact, the silence has been deafening. The reason is coal. Australia’s largest export last year has a crucial role in the climate change that’s already making spring in southeastern Australia warmer and drier, which in turn increases the odds of the extreme weather that causes severe bushfires. The relationship between climate change and fire season is one that many politicians are unwilling to highlight. After the Labor party suffered a battering in coal-mining seats in May elections where they’d been equivocal in backing the industry, there’s now bipartisan support for a policy of downplaying the link. This is an extraordinary situation. Wildfire pollution is a major public health problem wherever it occurs, causing respiratory problems, heart disease, pregnancy complications, and other ailments. Some 184 bushfire-affected days in Sydney between 2001 and 2013 resulted in 197 premature deaths and 1,223 hospitalizations that could be attributed to smoke exposure,according to a separate 2018 study. Just a handful of days in that 13-year analysis saw concentrations of PM2.5 – fine particles of pollution capable of penetrating the bloodstream and reaching all the tissues of the body – above 50 micrograms per cubic meter. Over the past month alone, there have been nearly 20 days above 50; average concentrations Tuesday were running as high as 1,085 in parts of Sydney. 1 With little respite expected from extreme fire weather for weeks, possibly months, it’s likely that many hundreds will suffer severe health problems or even death from the current conditions. Yet inside the political bubble, you could be forgiven for seeing it as a non-issue.

Sydney Is Choking on Bushfire Smoke, Poorest Residents Struggling Most – The brushfires raging through New South Wales have shrouded Australia’s largest city in a blanket of smoke that pushed the air quality index 12 times worse than the hazardous threshold, according to the Australia Broadcast Corporation (ABC). Still winds on Tuesday left a stagnant haze over the city so smoky, it set off fire alarms in buildings and train stations, stopped ferries from running on the city’s famed harbors, and hid iconic landmarks like the Sydney Opera House, according to Reuters. “This smoky period we’ve been experiencing for the past month or so, it is unprecedented, so these conditions are a risk to people’s health,” said Richard Broome, the New South Wales government’s director of environmental health, as Reuters reported. Satellite imagery shows that a 37-mile long wildfire is tearing through an area northwest of the city and pushing smoke east over the city and over the Pacific Ocean, all the way to New Zealand, according to Reuters. In total, 81 fires are burning across New South Wales and 39 have yet to be contained, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Heavy rains are not expected until the end of January and temperatures hit a high of 107 degrees Fahrenheit today. Outdoor events were canceled over the weekend and respiratory illness is on the rise as smoke, ash and particulate matter irritate lungs, according to Sky News Australia. Sydney schools canceled outdoor trips, recess and sports. The Fire Brigade Employees Union said firefighters have responded to four times as many false alarms on Tuesday as a typical day because of the lingering smoke, as the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The smoke haze is predicted to linger until at least Saturday. Even though the air will clear up a bit net weekend and the winds will shift to give firefighters a chance to make headway, the air will be far from healthy. “It’ll be another few weeks if not longer, depending on the weather conditions,” The hazardous air quality is particularly frightful for the city’s poorest residents who are often unable to afford air conditioners, air filters, or even masks. Rouse Hill, a neighborhood in Sydney, saw the air quality index, a measure of particle pollution, hit 430 on Tuesday. Anything above 200 is considered hazardous. Some suburbs saw the AQI index hit an unprecedented 2,200, as The Guardian reported. The worst air quality reading was in Rozelle on Tuesday afternoon, where the AQI was 2,552, according to ABC.

Sydney’s air 11 times worse than ‘hazardous’ levels as Australia’s bushfires rage Sydney disappeared behind a thick layer of bushfire smoke that blanketed the city and pushed air quality 11 times higher than considered “hazardous” on Tuesday, while Australia’s weary firefighters faced what authorities warned were the potentially “lethal” combination of high temperatures and heavy winds. Across Sydney, buildings were evacuated regularly as fire alarms were triggered at random. During the morning commute, the sound of the ferries using their fog horns due to the poor visibility filled the area surrounding the harbour before the entire fleet was finally grounded. Schools kept children inside during their lunch break and face masks became a regular accoutrement as Sydney’s landmarks were lost in the haze. Images of the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and Bondi Beach shrouded in smoke were shared widely on social media as the usual joie de vivre that greets the beginning of summer in this city gave way to anxiety over the lengthening bushfire crisis. A domestic cricket match between New South Wales and Queensland continued under a pall. Footage of the former Australian test player Steve O’Keefe bowling spin in near darkness seemed to sum up the uncanny feeling that settled across the city. Former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, in town as part of an Australian tour, reflected it better than most: “Sydney looks spooky as fuck with all this smoke proper shitting it,” he wrote on Twitter. A NSW Ambulance superintendent, Brent Armitage, said paramedics were attending up to 100 respiratory-related call-outs per day and the state’s health department warned residents to stay indoors as much as possible amid “unprecedented” smoke pollution. The state’s director of environmental health, Dr Richard Broome, said the smoke in Sydney was “some of the worst air quality we’ve seen”. “Certainly in Sydney we have experienced very poor air quality episodes in the past and the one I’m most aware of is the 2009 dust storm episode where we had extremely high levels, but certainly this smoky period we’ve been experiencing for the past month or so, it is unprecedented, so these conditions are a risk to people’s health,” Broome said.

No End for Drought as Sydney Disappears Into Smoke – Sydney has disappeared, at The Guardian: The New South Wales environment minister Matt Kean has split from his federal Coalition counterparts, arguing climate change is behind the bushfire crisis and calling for greater emissions reduction. Kean’s intervention piles pressure on Scott Morrison to do more on emissions reduction and disaster management after his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull urged him to step up his government’s response to the “national security issue” and former emergency services chiefs pushed for a national summit. As Sydney suffered through air quality 11 times worse than hazardous levels on Tuesday, Kean told the Smart Energy Summit that weather conditions were “exactly what the scientists have warned us would happen”. “Longer drier periods, resulting in more drought and bushfire,” he said. “If this is not a catalyst for change, then I don’t know what is. “This is not normal and doing nothing is not a solution. “We need to reduce our carbon emissions immediately, and we need to adapt our practices to deal with this kind of weather becoming the new normal.” At least the pollies are now choking too, via Canberra Times: ACT school principals have been urged to keep students indoors during recess and lunch and to cancel all physical activity, as the smoke haze engulfs Canberra. In a letter to principals, the ACT Education Directorate has recommended all outdoor activities at schools be cancelled on Tuesday and Wednesday due to the smoke. The smoke haze from bushfires burning near Braidwood and on the South Coast has blanketed the city since Saturday, causing air quality in Canberra to plummet. No relief in sight, at The Australian: There will be no relief for drought-ravaged regions over the summer, with Bureau of Meteorology officials telling a meeting of state and federal ministers there would be no significant rain until at least April. The ministers gathered in Moree, in NSW’s northwest, to discuss the best strategies to combat the enduring drought. Federal Drought and Water Resources Minister David Littleproud vowed to work with drought co-ordinator-general Shane Stone by February to cut bureaucratic red tape so desperate farmers did not have to make separate state and federal applications for assistance.

Australia may be the canary in the climate change coal mine – Australia? It’s not the end of the world as we know it, but you might be able to see it from there, if it were not for all the smoke. Last week scattered bushfires burning close to Sydney converged and formed a “mega-fire,” casting a dense pall of smoke over the city, which is Australia’s largest and one of the world’s most beautiful. This week Sydney’s air quality plummeted, measuring 11 times the level deemed hazardous to human health. The smoke is so bad that fire alarms are being triggered in many parts of the city.More than 100 fires are raging in three Australian states: New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria. So far, they have burnt more than 2.5 million acres of bushland. Mercifully, only a handful of human lives have been lost thus far, and only 800 houses have been destroyed. But firefighters are making little or no progress in extinguishing the blazes and little rain is expected before the end of January. With Australia’s summer rapidly approaching and daytime highs already exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit in many areas, no relief is in sight.Australia is often referred to as “the lucky country” because of its strong economy and abundance of natural resources. But its luck may be running out. Severe drought, soaring temperatures, and the growing threat of bushfires on the world’s driest continent may ultimately destroy the quality of life enjoyed by its 25 million residents.Sydney is increasingly threatened by water shortages. This week, the state of New South Wales imposed “level two” water restrictions to regulate the watering of gardens, and much tighter restrictions may be coming as reservoirs continue to shrink. If it doesn’t get drought relief, Sydney could be approaching a “Day Zero” when it runs out of water in the next few years. Australia is a major exporter of wheat, but wheat production is expected to fall by 20 percent in the 2019/2020 crop year. Tourism is another major source of income, but if summer bushfires continue to threaten air quality and dump ashes on popular beaches, foreign visitors may look elsewhere for vacations.Climate change is threatening Australia’s beloved koalas, with bushfires so far this year killing more than 1,000 of them. Conservationists warn they are in danger of becoming “functionally extinct” in New South Wales, Queensland, and other parts of Australia. It’s too early to write off koalas as a species, but then Australia, like the rest of the world, is only in the early stages of climate change. The worst, almost certainly, is yet to come.

More than two dozen people feared missing after New Zealand volcanic eruption kills 5 – (Reuters) – More than two dozen people were feared missing on Tuesday, a day after a volcano that is a tourist attraction suddenly erupted off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island, killing at least five people and injuring up to 20. Police said early on Tuesday they did not expect to find any more survivors from the volcanic eruption, which occurred on White Island on Monday at about 2:11 p.m. (0111 GMT), spewing a plume of ash thousands of feet into the air. About 50 people, New Zealanders as well as foreign tourists, are believed to have been nearby at the time and several were seen near the rim of the crater minutes before the eruption. “No signs of life have been seen at any point,” the police said in their statement early on Tuesday after rescue helicopters and other aircraft had carried out a number of aerial reconnaissance flights over the island. “Police believe that anyone who could have been taken from the island alive was rescued at the time of the evacuation.”#160;Tour operators took some people off the island before it was declared unsafe. Twenty-three people were rescued, police said on Monday, adding that others were still on the island. “Police (are) working urgently to confirm the exact number of those who have died…” their statement said, adding that a ship would approach the island at first light on Tuesday to further “assess the environment”. Many day tours visit the island regularly. One from a 16-deck cruise liner, Ovation of the Seas, was there at the time. “Both New Zealanders and overseas tourists are believed to (have been) involved, and a number were from the Ovation of the Seas cruise ship,” the police statement said.

Live: White Island erupting: At least five people dead; cruise ship tourists missing New Zealand Herald – Police say there are “no signs of life” on White Island and they believe anyone who could have been taken from the island alive was rescued at the time of Monday’s evacuation. Five people have been confirmed dead and eight are still missing, presumed killed. Thirty-one people are in seven hospitals with a range of injuries following the instant eruption of the island volcano at 2.11pm. Some of the injured have burns to 90 per cent of their bodies and a source said they may not survive the horrific injuries. “The Police Eagle helicopter, rescue helicopter and NZDF aircraft have undertaken a number of aerial reconnaissance flights over the island since the eruption,” police said in a statement early Tuesday.

• There were 47 people in total on the island, 38 of them were from the cruise ship Ovation of the Seas

• Thirty-four injured people and five bodies were taken off the island by heroic rescuers in the face of extreme danger, says PM

• Many of the victims are tourists from Australia, the UK, China, Malaysia and the US

• At least one of the dead is a local man – a popular tourist guide

• The alert level on the island volcano was raised several weeks ago

• Scientists say the volcano erupted instantaneously

READ MORE:

•White Island erupts: Why were tourists allowed on unsettled island?

• Scientist: White Island eruption was ‘basically instantaneous’

• ‘I can’t think of anything worse’ – Survivor on being abandoned on an erupting volcano

• White Island eruption caps off a decade of drama at angry volcano

Multiple deaths from New Zealand volcanic eruption – Five people are dead and eight missing, presumed dead, after a volcanic eruption on White Island, also known as Whakaari, in the Bay of Plenty, off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Another 31 people are in hospital, many with serious burns, and reports indicate that some may not survive. The small, uninhabited island is one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist attractions, with 17,500 visitors last year. It is the country’s most active volcano. Forty-seven people, reportedly from two separate tour groups, were on the island when the crater suddenly erupted at 2:11pm on Monday producing a huge cloud of rock and ash. Several tourists were photographed shortly before the eruption standing near the crater. One survivor who gave first aid to the victims, Geoff Hopkins, told the New Zealand Heraldthat almost all were “horrifically burnt” and in agonising pain, with some drifting in and out of consciousness. Conditions remained too hazardous today for search and rescue teams to explore the island. Bodies were sighted this morning by reconnaissance flights. There is a risk of further eruptions and landslides. The full circumstances of the tragedy are yet to emerge, but questions are already being raised about why visitors were allowed on the island. Professor Ray Cas, a volcano expert from Monash University, told Sydney’s 2GB radio station that he had felt for years that White Island “is a dangerous place to allow the public to visit.” He noted its isolation, 50 kilometres offshore, with “no emergency services immediately available” and no means to escape in the event of an eruption, which can happen without warning. Tour groups typically explore inside the crater, which was transformed on Monday into a horrific inferno. GNS Science, a government agency monitoring seismic activity, raised the alert level for White Island from 1 to 2 due to increased seismic activity on November 18, indicating that eruptions were more likely than normal. Professor Shane Cronin, a vulcanologist at the University of Auckland, told Radio NZ that GNS could issue advice and warnings, but had no authority to stop people visiting the island, which is privately owned by the Buttle family. He said “people often underestimate” the volcano and “we’ve probably taken it a little bit too much for granted.” Tours have been taking place for about 30 years and there have been several minor eruptions over that time, none of which resulted in casualties. This appears to have been purely by chance.

Newly identified jet-stream pattern could imperil global food supplies, says study – Scientists have identified systematic meanders in the globe-circling northern jet stream that have caused simultaneous crop-damaging heat waves in widely separated breadbasket regions-a previously unquantified threat to global food production that, they say, could worsen with global warming. The research shows that certain kinds of waves in the atmospheric circulation can become amplified and then lock in place for extended periods, triggering the concurrent heat waves. Affected parts of North America, Europe and Asia together produce a quarter of the world food supply. The study appears this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. “We found a 20-fold increase in the risk of simultaneous heat waves in major crop-producing regions when these global-scale wind patterns are in place,” said lead author Kai Kornhuber, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “Until now, this was an underexplored vulnerability in the food system. During these events there actually is a global structure in the otherwise quite chaotic circulation. The bell can ring in multiple regions at once.” Kornhuber warned that the heat waves will almost certainly become worse in coming decades, as the world continues to warm. The meanders that cause them could also potentially become more pronounced, though this is less certain. Because food commodities are increasingly traded on a global scale, either effect could lead to food shortages even in regions far from those directly affected by heat waves. “Normally, low harvests in one region are expected to be balanced out by good harvests elsewhere,” said study coauthor Dim Coumou of the Institute for Environmental Studies at VU University Amsterdam, who has been studying Rossby waves for years. “These waves can cause reduced harvests in several important breadbaskets simultaneously, creating risks for global food production.” The scientists showed that in years when these amplified waves occurred during two or more summer weeks, cereal production went down 4 percent when averaged across all the affected regions, and as much as 11 percent in a single affected region. Food-price spikes often followed. The waves have hit in 1983, 2003, 2006, 2012 and 2018, when many temperature records fell across the United States, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia. In addition to killing crops, the waves have killed thousands of people, especially in Europe and Russia, where air conditioning is far less common than in North America.

‘Hurricane Truthers’: Bonkers Conspiracies Are Putting Lives in Danger – With warming waters providing extra fuel, tropical cyclones have become more frequent and more intense in recent years, causing deadly flooding, widespread power outages, and hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. Some people (ahem) see a sinister plot behind it all, an attempt to overhype the threat of disasters so that Big Government can take over (or something). This bonkers “hurricane trutherism” has spread from right-wing blogs to a much broader audience. And it might already have real-world, fact-based consequences. A working papersuggests that by downplaying hurricane risk, conservative media hosts like Rush Limbaugh could be discouraging people from getting out of harm’s way. Before Hurricane Irma struck Florida in 2017, causing more than 100 deaths and $50 billion in damages, hurricane trutherism got a lot of attention. Limbaugh – the most popular talk show host in the country – cast doubt on Irma’s severity and the motivation behind advisories prodding people to evacuate. “Here comes a hurricane, local media goes on the air, ‘Big hurricane coming, oh, my God! Make sure you got batteries. Make sure you got water. It could be the worst ever. Have you seen the size of this baby? It’s already a Cat 5.” Limbaugh went on to suggest that the hype about Irma would lead to a bigger audience for TV stations, a boost in local business from worried residents stocking up on supplies, and of course, “panic” over climate change. Shortly thereafter, Limbaugh evacuated from his South Florida home to escape Irma’s wrath.The right-wing commentator Ann Coulter followed with her own take on Twitter: “HURRICANE UPDATE FROM MIAMI: LIGHT RAIN; RESIDENTS AT RISK OF DYING FROM BOREDOM.” Limbaugh and Coulter’s comments were covered by the mainstream media, and Google searches for “hurricane conspiracy” reached an all-time high.The damage was done. For their study, the researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles found that only 34 percent of Floridians who likely voted for President Trump in the 2016 election evacuated before Irma hit, compared to 45 percent of Hillary Clinton voters. But ahead of two other hurricanes – Matthew in 2016 and Harvey in 2017 – when skepticism of hurricane threats was less widespread in the media, the researchers found that Trump and Clinton voters evacuated at similar rates.

Climate change: Oceans running out of oxygen as temperatures rise – Climate change and nutrient pollution are driving the oxygen from our oceans, and threatening many species of fish. That’s the conclusion of the biggest study of its kind, undertaken by conservation group IUCN. While nutrient run-off has been known for decades, researchers say that climate change is making the lack of oxygen worse. Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s. Researchers say the depletion is threatening species including tuna, marlin and sharks. As more carbon dioxide is released enhancing the greenhouse effect, much of the heat is absorbed by the oceans. In turn, this warmer water can hold less oxygen. The scientists estimate that between 1960 and 2010, the amount of the gas dissolved in the oceans declined by 2%. That may not seem like much as it is a global average, but in some tropical locations the loss can range up to 40%. Even small changes can impact marine life in a significant way. So waters with less oxygen favour species such as jellyfish, but not so good for bigger, fast-swimming species like tuna.

The Ocean Is Running Out of Oxygen, Largest Study of Its Kind Finds – Human activity is smothering the ocean, the largest study of its kind has found, and it poses a major threat to marine life. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) report combined the work of 67 scientists from 17 countries to conclude that oxygen levels in the ocean had declined around two percent since the mid-20th century, and the volume of waters entirely deprived of oxygen had increased four-fold since the 1960s. The report was released Saturday at the COP25 UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid, CBS News reported, in hopes of persuading world leaders to protect the oceans from future oxygen loss.”Urgent global action to overcome and reverse the effects of ocean deoxygenation is needed,” IUCN Global Marine and Polar Programme director Minna Epps said, as CBS News reported. “Decisions taken at the ongoing climate conference will determine whether our ocean continues to sustain a rich variety of life, or whether habitable, oxygen-rich marine areas are increasingly, progressively and irrevocably lost.” Ocean deoxygenation comes from two major causes: nutrient pollution and the climate crisis.Nutrient pollution has long been understood as a threat to ocean oxygen levels. Run-off from sewage and agriculture, as well as nitrogen from fossil fuel emissions, encourages the excessive growth of algae, which depletes oxygen. This process is relatively fast and easy to fix. But in recent years scientists have come to understand how rising ocean temperatures are also lowering oxygen levels. Warmer water can’t hold as much oxygen, and it is also more buoyant, which means it mixes less with deeper, less-oxygenated water, reducing oxygen circulation overall. Rising temperatures are likely responsible for around 50 percent of the oxygen loss in the top 1,000 meters (approximately 3,281 feet) of the ocean, which are also the most abundant in biodiversity. Climate-change-related oxygen loss is difficult or impossible to reverse.”This is one of the newer classes of impacts to rise into the public awareness,” Kim Cobb, a Georgia Tech climate scientist who was not involved with the study, told The New York Times. While a two percent decrease in overall oxygen levels might not sound like a lot, there are environments where a small change in oxygen can make a huge difference, “[I]f we were to try and go up Mount Everest without oxygen, there would come a point where a 2 percent loss of oxygen in our surroundings would become very significant,” he said.He also said the oxygen loss was not evenly distributed. Some waters in the tropics had seen a 40 to 50 percent decrease in oxygen. The number of oxygen-deprived areas has also increased, from 45 before the 1960s to 700 in 2011, according to the report.

Warren’s Blue New Deal Aims to Protect and Restore Oceans – Sen. Elizabeth Warren expanded her vision for combating the climate crisis on Tuesday with the release of her Blue New Deal – a new component of the Green New Deal focusing on protecting and restoring the world’s oceans after decades of pollution and industry-caused warming. The plan includes proposals for an array of ocean-related issues – including fossil fuel emissions, ocean acidification, overfishing and the destruction of coastal communities. The Massachusetts Democrat and 2020 primary contender wrote in a Medium post that “a Blue New Deal must be an essential part of any Green New Deal.” “As we pursue climate justice, we must not lose sight of the 71% of our planet covered by the ocean,” Warren wrote. “While the ocean is severely threatened, it can also be a major part of the climate solution – from providing new sources of clean energy to supporting a new future of ocean farming.” In keeping with the Green New Deal’s focus on a “just transition” for fossil fuel sector workers, the plan aims to expand offshore renewable energy exploration as Warren follows through with an earlier promise to impose a moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling.Along with reversing President Donald Trump‘s inaction on offshore renewables, Warren wrote that she will “work to streamline and fast-track permitting for offshore renewable energy, including making sure projects are sited with care based on environmental impact assessments.” Coastal communities hosting the projects will be consulted regarding transparency, environmental and labor standards, and community agreements will ensure that those living in these areas see a share of the benefits. With Warren’s planned investment in the industry, she wrote, the U.S. could come closer to filling 36,000 well-paying offshore renewable energy jobs.

Climate Tipping Points Are Closer Than We Think, Scientists Warn – Research now shows that there is a higher risk that “abrupt and irreversible changes” to the climate system could be triggered at smaller global temperature increases than thought just a few years ago. There are also indictations that exceeding tipping points in one system, such as the loss of Arctic sea ice, can increase the risk of crossing tipping points in others, a group of top scientists wrote Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature. “What we’re talking about is a point of no return, when we might actually lose control of this system, and there is a significant risk that we’re going to do this,” said Will Steffen, a climate researcher with the Australian National University and co-author of the commentary. “It’s not going to be the same conditions with just a bit more heat or a bit more rainfall. It’s a cascading process that gets out of control.” The scientists focused on nine parts of the climate system susceptible to tipping points, some of them interconnected:

• Arctic sea ice, which is critical for reflecting the sun’s energy back into space but is disappearing as the planet warms.
• The Greenland Ice Sheet, which could raise sea level 20 feet if it melts.
• Boreal forests, which would release more carbon dioxide (CO2) than they absorb if they die and decay or burn.
• Permafrost, which releases methane and other greenhouse gasesas it thaws.
• The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a key ocean current, which would shift global weather patterns if it slowed down or stopped.
• The Amazon rainforest, which could flip from a net absorber of greenhouse gases to a major emitter.
• Warm-water corals, which will die on a large scale as the ocean warms, affecting commercial and subsistence fisheries.
• The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would raise sea level by at least 10 feet if it melted entirely and is already threatened by warming from above and below.
• Parts of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet that would also raise sea level significantly if they melted.

Greenland’s Ice Sheet Is Melting at Rate That Surpasses Scientists’ Expectations, Study Shows –The rate that Greenland‘s ice sheet is melting surpassed scientists’ expectations and has raised concerns that their worst-case scenario predictions are coming true, Business Insider reported.A new study published in the journal Nature from a team of scientists at NASA and the European Space Agency looked at satellite imagery from 1992 to 2018 from 26 independent data sets. The images revealed a massive amount of ice loss that is picking up steam as time goes on. In fact, the researchers found that Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tons of ice over the 26-year period studied. In the 90s, Greenland lost an average of 25 billions of ice per year. That number has picked up to an annual average loss of 234 billion tons per year. The study finds that the acceleration in melting will mean a three to five-inch rise in global sea levels by 2100, which is in line with the worst-case scenarios set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC).That rate will mean 400 million people will be at risk of flooding every year, instead of the 360 million that the IPCC’s main prediction forecasted, as The Guardian reported.”The most surprising aspect by far is that the increased sea-level rise, which may seem small to most people but is enough to cause an extra 40 million people to experience annual floods,” said Andrew Shepherd toBusiness Insider. Shepherd is from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modeling at the University of Leeds in the UK, and he is the study’s lead author. “Small changes in sea-level rise do matter.”It also means some of the irreversible effects of the climate crisis will happen sooner than scientists first predicted, as The Guardian reported. In fact, every centimeter of sea level rise makes a big difference and increases the chances that a storm surge will breach any sea wall. “Storms, if they happen against a baseline of higher seas – they will break flood defenses,” said Shepherd to the BBC. “The simple formula is that around the planet, six million people are brought into a flooding situation for every centimeter of sea-level rise. So, when you hear about a centimeter rise, it does have impacts.”

Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice since 1992 – Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice since 1992, according to our latest research. It can be hard to imagine a number that big: 3.8 trillion tonnes is 3,800 billion tonnes or even 3.8 million billion kilograms. If you put all that ice into a single cube it would be 16 kilometres along each side and twice the height of Mount Everest. But what’s really important here is the impact this has globally. All that ice making its way into the ocean has already caused the sea level to rise by more than a centimetre, and future sea level rise will mean lots more coastal flooding. For example, a rise of 60cm by the year 2100, as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), would put 200 million people at risk of permanent inundation and 360 million people at risk of annual flooding. And 60cm is only the IPCC’s “central estimate” – in that period the sea could rise by as little as 28cm or as much as 98cm. By far the largest uncertainty in sea-level projections concerns the ice stored in Antarctica and Greenland, both of which have complex interactions with the climate system and are difficult to model. Greenland alone holds enough frozen water to raise the sea by 7.4 metres were it to melt. Therefore, finding out how much ice it has lost so far is hugely important for us scientists who are trying to determine how much it will contribute to sea level rise in future. This is why we used satellites to measure Greenland’s ice loss between 1992 and 2018. Our assessment, now published in the journal Nature, is produced by an international team of scientists who combined the results of 26 different surveys as part of a programme known as the ice sheet mass balance inter-comparison exercise (IMBIE). In all, measurements from 11 different satellite missions launched by the European Space Agency and NASA were used to track changes in the ice sheet’s volume, speed and gravity. We found that the Greenland ice sheet lost around 3,800 billion tons of ice in that 26-year period. This is enough water to cause the sea level to rise by around 10.6mm.

Greenland’s ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s –Greenland’s ice sheet is melting much faster than previously thought, threatening hundreds of millions of people with inundation and bringing some of the irreversible impacts of the climate emergency much closer. Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, and the scale and speed of ice loss is much higher than was predicted in the comprehensive studies of global climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to data. That means sea level rises are likely to reach 67cm [26 in] by 2100, about 7cm more than the IPCC’s main prediction. Such a rate of rise will put 400 million people at risk of flooding every year, instead of the 360 million predicted by the IPCC, by the end of the century. Sea level rises also add to the risk of storm surges, when the fiercer storms made more likely by global heating batter coastal regions. These impacts are likely to strike coastal areas all around the world. Greenland has lost 3.8tn tonnes of ice since 1992, and the rate of ice loss has risen from 33bn tonnes a year in the 1990s to 254bn tonnes a year in the past decade. Greenland’s ice contributes directly to sea level rises as it melts because it rests on a large land mass, unlike the floating sea ice that makes up much of the rest of the Arctic ice cap. About half of the ice loss from Greenland was from melting driven by air surface temperatures, which have risen much faster in the Arctic than the global average, and the rest was from the speeding up of the flow of ice into the sea from glaciers, driven by the warming ocean.

A 14-year-old climate activist inspired by Greta Thunberg sits outside the UN on Fridays. She says she’s been getting death threats. — Over a year ago, teen climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered an impassioned speech at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland. Her remarks caught the attention of Alexandria Villaseñor, a New York middle-schooler who was 13 at the time. Villaseñor had just visited family in northern California, and the trip coincided with the deadliest blaze in the state’s history: the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed at least 85 people. She’d stayed in a town about two hours away from the flames, and said the smoke caused her asthma to flare up. “I was sick,” Villaseñor told Business Insider, adding that she donned a face mask and placed wet towels in the crevices of windows and doors at her family’s home. “So I started to really research wildfires and I saw the connection between them and climate change.” When she came across a video of Thunberg’s COP24 speech, Villaseñor said, she decided that she could help prevent a future climate-related disaster by joining Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement. The initiative encourages students to skip school to demand action on climate change from their governments, and it has swelled to encompass thousands of student activists like Villaseñor. She now sits outside the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan on Fridays. Each time, Villaseñor brings a sign that reads “COP24 Failed Us,” a reference to the fact that global emissions have continued to rise since that conference in December 2018. This week marked the one-year anniversary of her strike; she goes rain or shine and even sat outside the UN during a polar vertex. But joining Thunberg’s movement also comes with challenges: namely, criticism from adults. Villaseñor said she has been harassed on social media and even received death threats from climate-change deniers. But that hasn’t stopped her from protesting.

Greta Thunberg Is Time’s Person of the Year 2019 – Greta Thunberg is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, the magazine announced this morning. “Thunberg is not a leader of any political party or advocacy group,” the magazine’s article on Thunberg lays out. “She is neither the first to sound the alarm about the climate crisis nor the most qualified to fix it. She is not a scientist or a politician. She has no access to traditional levers of influence: she’s not a billionaire or a princess, a pop star or even an adult. She is an ordinary teenage girl who, in summoning the courage to speak truth to power, became the icon of a generation. By clarifying an abstract danger with piercing outrage, Thunberg became the most compelling voice on the most important issue facing the planet.” For a deeper dive: TIME

Even as 500,000 March in Madrid, Greta Thunberg Warns Climate Movement Has ‘Achieved Nothing’ Until Emissions Fall – Before taking part in a 500,000-strong climate march in Madrid, teen activist Greta Thunberg spoke plainly yet forcefully Friday about the impact the global climate strike movement has had thus far and reiterated the demand of the climate justice movement for global leaders to act with the urgency the planet’s ecological emergency mandates. Speaking to reporters at the cultural center La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Spain – where COP 25 is underway – Thunberg called herself “just… a climate activist – a small part of a big movement” that needs even more activists to effect change. Global delegates attending the UN Climate Change Conference, Thunberg said, must heed the young marchers’ call and commit to real action. “I sincerely hope that the COP 25 will lead to something concrete and that will lead to also an increase in awareness among people in general.” She said she hopes that those in power “grasp the urgency of the climate crisis because right now it doesn’t seem like they are.” “We have been striking now for over a year and still, basically, nothing has happened,” said Thunberg. “The climate crisis is still being ignored by those in power and we cannot go on like this. It is not a sustainable solution that children skip school.” The strikers, Thunberg said, “don’t want to continue. We would love some action from the people in power… because people are suffering and dying from the climate and ecological emergency today and we cannot wait any longer.” A lot has been achieved, added Thunberg. “We have have raised public awareness and we have created opinion and that is a big step in the right direction. But of course it’s nowhere near enough.” “The CO2 emissions aren’t reducing. They are in fact increasing,” Thunberg continued, “so of course there is no victory because the only thing we want to see is real action and real action has not been happening. So of course we have achieved a lot,” she added, “but if you look at it from a certain point of view we have achieved nothing.”

Youth Climate Activists Storm COP 25 Stage – Young activists took over and occupied the main stage at the COP 25 climate conference in Madrid, Spain Wednesday and demanded world leaders commit to far more ambitious action to address the ecological emergency. Happening now: Youth activists from all around the world storm the stage at #COP25 to demand real climate action! Dear leaders, your empty words will not solve this crisis. #YourVoteOurFuturepic.twitter.com/4S6ZX8Tt4H – Fridays For Future Germany (@FridayForFuture) December 11, 2019 “Nobody has ever done an action like this before,” said youth climate striker Dylan Hamilton of Scotland. “The times are changing.”Video posted by Brussels-based climate activist Damien Thomson shows protesters with Fridays for Future walking onto the stage and siting down. The group’s chants included, “What do we want? Climate justice. When do we want it? Now!”They also shouted, “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!” “World leaders have left us no choice,” said 14-year-old Alexandria Villaseñor of New York about the sit-in. U.N. security threatened to “de-badge” the activists unless they left the stage. The action took place after a plenary that included speeches from teen activist and newly-minted Time Person of the Year Greta Thunberg of Sweden and youth climate activist Hilda Flavia Nakabuye of Uganda. “I am the voice of dying children, misplaced women and people suffering at the hands of the climate crisis created by rich countries,” Nakabuye told the audience. Reacting to the sit-in, author and climate act Bill McKibben said on Twitter, “Time for negotiators to face the people whose lives they are negotiating away.”

Climate scientists try to cut their own carbon footprints – For years, Kim Cobb was the Indiana Jones of climate science. The Georgia Tech professor flew to the caves of Borneo to study ancient and current climate conditions. She jetted to a remote South Pacific island to see the effects of warming on coral. Add to that flights to Paris, Rome, Vancouver and elsewhere. All told, in the last three years, she’s flown 29 times to study, meet or talk about global warming. Then Cobb thought about how much her personal actions were contributing to the climate crisis, so she created a spreadsheet. She found that those flights added more than 73,000 pounds of heat-trapping carbon to the air. Now she is about to ground herself, and she is not alone. Some climate scientists and activists are limiting their flying, their consumption of meat and their overall carbon footprints to avoid adding to the global warming they study. Cobb will fly just once next year, to attend a massive international science meeting in Chile. “People want to be part of the solution,” she said. “Especially when they spent their whole lives with their noses stuck up against” data showing the problem. The issue divides climate scientists and activists and plays out on social media. Texas Tech’s Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist who flies once a month, often to talk to climate doubters in the evangelical Christian movement, was blasted on Twitter because she keeps flying. Hayhoe and other still-flying scientists note that aviation is only 3% of global carbon emissions. Jonathan Foley, executive director of the climate solutions think-tank Project Drawdown, limits his airline trips but will not stop flying because, he says, he must meet with donors to keep his organization alive. He calls flight shaming “the climate movement eating its own.”

EU sets out plans for climate neutrality by 2050 – The EU has released details of its “European Green Deal,” describing it as a “roadmap” to make the bloc’s economy sustainable. One of the plan’s key aims is for the EU to be climate neutral by the year 2050. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Wednesday it would propose a European Climate Law to “enshrine the 2050 climate neutrality objective in legislation.” Other goals include revising the EU’s greenhouse gas emission reductions target for the year 2030, boosting it to “at least 50% and towards 55%” compared to levels in 1990. The Commission said the deal covered all economic sectors, including transport, agriculture, energy and buildings. Industries such as cement, steel, information and communication technology, chemicals and textiles are also covered. In addition, a “Just Transition Mechanism” is set to be established in order to support “those regions that rely heavily on very carbon intensive activities.” In a press statement issued Wednesday the Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen said the deal focused on cutting emissions, as well as creating jobs and boosting innovation. “I am convinced that the old growth-model that is based on fossil-fuels and pollution is out of date, and it is out of touch with our planet,” von der Leyen said. “The European Green Deal is our new growth strategy – it’s a strategy for growth that gives more back than it takes away,” she added. The Commission’s plans drew comment from a wide range of voices. “The proposed package is comprehensive, identifying the right areas for action – from biodiversity and nature restoration to climate change and stopping deforestation – and it presents us with a number of new and potentially transformational initiatives,” Ester Asin, director of the WWF’s European Policy Office, said in a statement. “However, by emphasising continued economic growth as a key objective, the Commission has missed an opportunity to challenge the traditional growth paradigm in favour of an approach that would respect planetary boundaries,” Asin added.

China’s climate titan steps down – As world leaders arrive in Madrid for a second week of climate talks, missing among the familiar faces will be Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate negotiator for over a decade. In his place, Zhao Yingmin, vice minister of ecology and environment, will head the Chinese delegation.There’s unlikely to be an official announcement but multiple sources say that Xie has left his position as the country’s special representative on climate change. Xie has steered China’s climate diplomacy since 2007, and has been critical to forging agreement on international climate action to avoid dangerous global warming.According to a special report by Li Jing in Dialogo Chino, China has become the world’s largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases over the past decade. Yet in that time the country has also shifted from stubbornly defending its right to uncontrolled emission growth to actively embarking on a low-carbon path. That transformation has become a national strategy and Xie Zhenhua’s personal role as a facilitator has been indispensable according to former colleagues, fellow negotiators and civil society representatives. The mantle of head of the Chinese delegation has been passed on to Vice Minister Zhao Yingmin, s protégé of Xie Zhenhua. But a number of observers have questioned whether China’s leadership will retain a special representative for climate change, a position that carries a broader mandate and greater diplomatic flexibility than vice minister. This could affect China’s climate diplomacy at a time when most countries must deliver a step change in their commitments to reduce emissions to meet the Paris Agreement 2C target.

SUPREME COURT: Kavanaugh opens door to carbon rule challenge — Monday, December 9, 2019 — Experts say the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority may seek to revive a long-dormant legal doctrine that could jeopardize U.S. efforts to regulate greenhouse gases.

The Trump carbon bump: Climate crime or misdemeanor?The international climate community, currently meeting in Madrid for COP 25, will try its best to manage the fallout from the president’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. However, recent data points to a new, tangible and potentially more severe climate challenge: global energy emissions are once again on the rise, driven in part by President Trump’s policies. These policies, and the bump in emissions they have helped to create (what can be called a “Trump carbon bump”), do not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. They are Presidential policy preferences, but for many voters, they likely also constitute a crime against the climate they think justifies his removal from office next election. The International Energy Agency reported last month that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy rose 0.6 gigatons in 2018, which followed on a smaller increase in 2017. The U.S. contributed 25 percent of this 2018 rise and China 40 percent. In contrast, global emissions had remained essentially flat for the three years beginning in 2014. While many things changed between 2014 and 2018, one of the most significant for climate was the inauguration of Donald Trump as president pledging to promote fossil fuels and weaken controls on CO2 emissions. The results are now in from his initial years as president and we are seeing a definite bump in carbon emissions, one which is attributable at least in part to three of his most visible policies that are driving greater fossil use domestically and abroad. These policies involve: domestic oil, coal and gas; international oil prices; and trade with China.

The pitfalls of the ‘social cost of carbon’ -Most of us are rightly concerned about global climate change and its implications for human and ecological wellbeing. However, the most popular metric for assessing the benefits from reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is of little practical use for policymakers. This is creating uncertainty about what we should do to mitigate climate change, and – in some cases – it may even undermine the credibility of such efforts. The most common metric used by economists to value the impacts of CO2 emissions is the “social cost of carbon” (SCC). The SCC is an estimate of the dollar value of the damage of emitting an additional ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. It’s used by federal regulatory agencies to determine the desirability of individual regulations targeting global warming. It is hard to know, for example, how much money society should be willing to spend on a policy expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 100,000 tons. But if the SCC is $40, then these emissions reductions could be assigned a dollar value of $4 million to compare against the anticipated financial costs of the policy. This seems simple enough – and it is what agencies like the Department of Energy (DOE), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Transportation (DOT) do – but it’s also a mistake. That’s because it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. The SCC is an estimate of the impact of climate change on consumption – the value of goods, services, and even environmental amenities climate change forces society to forgo enjoying. The compliance costs of a regulation are different. They displace some consumption, but inevitably displace some investment, too. A dollar’s worth of investment and a dollar’s worth of consumption are two different things, but federal agencies routinely treat them as if they are the same in their regulatory analysis. Some of the most widely cited economic estimates of the effect of climate change suggest its effects will hit consumption in a largely one-time fashion. Over the course of the next century, it’s as if we lose about a year’s worth of economic output. As troubling as that is, it’s relatively finite, at least according to the prevailing wisdom. Meanwhile, regulating involves paying an economic cost – taxes, government spending, business expenses, etc. – for an expected future benefit. That means foregoing investments that could otherwise compound and eventually swamp whatever finite, one-time future hit to consumption the SCC value represents. Even a $1 investment can, with enough time, overtake any static dollar amount, no matter how large. Keep in mind that one could easily argue that climate change will very much impact investment, for example because the economic models used to calculate the SCC are unreliable. Yet we shouldn’t dismiss the notion outright that climate change won’t impact investment much: The developer of one the most popular models for estimating the SCC, known as the DICE model, was William Nordhaus, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2018 for his work in this area.

ENERGY TRANSITIONS: Move over, coal: Gas now emits more CO2 in U.S. — Greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas use now exceed coal emissions in the United States and Europe. And while coal and oil still emit more globally, gas is now the primary driver of emissions growth worldwide.

Natural Gas Rush Drives A Global Rise In Fossil Fuel Emissions -A surge in natural gas has helped drive down coal burning across the United States and Europe, but it isn’t displacing other fossil fuels on a global scale. Instead, booming gas use is fueling the global growth in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University and other institutions.In fact, natural gas use is growing so fast, its carbon dioxide emissions over the past six years actually eclipsed the decline in emissions from the falling use of coal, the researchers found.Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are also failing to cut emissions fast enough, the report says, as much of their growth has provided new energy supplies instead of displacing fossil fuels.The findings of the study, published Tuesday, support those from other recent studies that found the world is continuing to rely on fossil fuels – including coal – to meet growing energy demand, even as renewable energy sees soaring growth.“Globally, most of the new natural gas being used isn’t displacing coal, it’s providing new energy. That’s the key interaction, and that’s true for renewables even,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the report’s lead author. “We need renewables that displace fossil fuels, not supplement them.”Jackson’s paper, published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, is one of three included in Global Carbon Project‘s annual update on the global carbon budget. They show that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are expected to grow by 0.6 percent this year. That would be significantly slower than last year, when emissions grew by 2.1 percent. But it would mark the third straight year of growth, after three years of stable emissions. The assessment does not include the methane emissions released by producing and shipping fossil fuels.

Exxon Wins Over NY in Climate Accounting Case— Exxon Mobil Corp. won a closely watched securities-fraud trial that delved into its internal accounting for the financial risks of climate change, a striking rejection of New York state’s claim that the company misled investors for years. The ruling Tuesday by New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager in Manhattan is a blow to the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, who accused the energy company of lying about its use of a “proxy cost” for carbon to account for future climate-change regulations. “The office of the Attorney General failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor,” Ostrager wrote in a 55-page ruling. The AG “produced no testimony either from any investor who claimed to have been misled by any disclosure,” the judge said. Exxon said in a statement that the ruling affirmed that the company gave its investors “accurate information on the risks of climate change” and that New York “failed to make a case even with the extremely low threshold of the Martin Act in its favor.” New York’s Martin Act empowers officials to target a wide range of corporate behavior that could hurt shareholders. While New York claimed Exxon intentionally misled shareholders, under the act it didn’t have to prove intent to win, or that any investors were misled. “Lawsuits that waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money do nothing to advance meaningful actions that reduce the risks of climate change,” Exxon spokesman Casey Norton said in the statement. “ExxonMobil will continue to invest in researching breakthrough technologies to reduce emissions while meeting society’s growing demand for energy.”

‘Abrupt’ climate policies could see high-emitting firms lose 43% of their value, research claims – Companies with the highest level of carbon emissions will lose 43% of their value by 2025 as governments around the world implement climate policies, a new report has claimed. Published Monday, the report from the UN-backed Principles of Responsible Investing (PRI), Vivid Economics and Energy Transition Advisors estimated how hard the world’s most valuable firms would be hit by environmental policies in the coming decades. It analyzed how companies in the MSCI ACWI index – which includes more than 2,700 firms across 49 countries – would be impacted by “an abrupt and disruptive policy response to climate change.” According to the report, an “inevitable policy response” would permanently wipe up to $2.3 trillion from the value of the companies in the index. The 100 highest-emitting companies in the index would lose 43% of their market capitalization by 2025, equivalent to a total loss of $1.4 trillion, it claimed, while the 100 best-performing firms could see their value increase by 33%, a total gain of $700 billion. Fossil fuel companies would be hardest hit, PRI said, with the report’s authors expecting the sector to lose a third of its value as margins were squeezed by “demand destruction.” Among the biggest losers would be coal companies, according to the forecast, with PRI expecting them to lose 44% of their value and 64% of their profits as a result of new climate policies. PRI claimed the 10 most valuable companies in the oil and gas sector, meanwhile, could see their valuations drop by 31%, an equivalent loss of half a trillion dollars. The report predicted that oil would peak around 2027, with corporate profits from the commodity falling by 34%. Natural gas was expected to peak around 2040, with profits from gas expected to decline by 29%, PRI claimed.

US adds 2.6 gigawatts of solar photovoltaics in third quarter, new figures show – The solar market in the U.S. added 2.6 gigawatts of solar photovoltaics in the third quarter of 2019, with total solar capacity – which includes both photovoltaic and concentrating solar power – hitting 71.3 GW, according to a new report. The figures, released Thursday morning, come from the most recent U.S. Solar Market Insight Report from Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). Photovoltaic refers to a way of directly converting light from the sun into electricity. The SEIA describes concentrating solar plants as using mirrors “to concentrate the sun’s energy to drive traditional steam turbines or engines that create electricity.” The 2.6 GW of capacity added during the third quarter represents a 45% increase compared to the third quarter of 2018 and a 25% increase compared to the second quarter of 2019, the SEIA said. Breaking the figures down, the third quarter saw the U.S. residential market install 712 megawatts (MW) of solar. California led the way in this market, installing almost 300 MW. For 2019 as whole, Wood Mackenzie is forecasting year-over-year growth of 23% and expecting 13 GW of installations. To put things in perspective, China added 44 GW of solar photovoltaics in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In 2017, the country added 53 GW, the IEA says. While Thursday’s figures are encouraging, there is clearly still work to be done for solar in the U.S. Figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that utility-scale electricity generation sites in the U.S. produced around 4,171 billion kilowatt hours in 2018. Fossil fuels were responsible for 63.6% of this generation, while renewables accounted for 16.9%. Breaking the EIA’s numbers down further, solar’s share of the total was just 1.5%. The U.S. figures come after SolarPower Europe published its first EU Market Outlook for Solar Power earlier in the week. According to its report, an estimated 16.7 GW of installations took place in the EU in 2019, a significant increase compared to the 8.2 GW in 2018. Spain represented the largest market for additions in 2019, increasing its capacity by 4.7 GW, according to SolarPower Europe.

A final chance for climate progress in Congress this year – Congress has not been especially productive during the Trump years, to say the least. And it’s safe to say that most of the action has not been notably pro-clean energy. But there’s at least a chance Congress could get something positive done here in the waning days of Trump’s first term. (Yes, believe it or not, it’s still the first term.)By December 20, Congress must pass a spending bill to keep the government running. The Democratic House must agree to the bill. Right now there are furious negotiations taking place as Democrats try to secure a few key political wins, just under the wire.House Democrats are trying to figure out what to prioritize. Many in the party want a boost in the earned income tax credit (EITC) and/or child care tax credits and are pressuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to push for them. The other candidate for top priority is a package of clean-energy tax credits.Last month, Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee distributed a discussion draftof a bill called the Growing Renewable Energy and Efficiency Now (GREEN) Act, which would extend or create tax credits for a whole suite of clean energy technologies, from solar to on- and offshore wind, energy storage, new and used electric vehicles (EVs), carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), and biomass. It is unlikely that anything so ambitious will get through a Republican Senate, but there are some credits, especially for EVs, offshore wind, and storage, that have strong bipartisan backing, or at least backing from some big industries.

Trump says U.S. will finalize new fuel efficiency rules next year – (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that his administration will finalize its rollback of Obama-era vehicle emissions standards next year and expected it would provoke a new legal challenge by California. The administration had signaled in recent months it could finalize its proposed revisions to the requirements before the end of 2019. The administration has argued that the rollbacks are necessary for economic and safety reasons but California and environmentalists reject that analysis, saying consumers would spend hundreds of billions more in fuel costs. In August 2018, the administration proposed freezing vehicle efficiency requirements at 2020 levels through 2026, which would result in average fuel efficiency of 37 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2026, compared with 46.7 mpg under rules adopted in 2012. The Trump administration’s “preferred option” would hike U.S. oil consumption by about 500,000 barrels per day by the 2030s but reduce automakers regulatory costs by more than $300 billion. Republican Trump has sought to reverse his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama’s climate change policy, which was aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Trump said on Friday that the dispute was over “a tiny amount of fuel – of which we have plenty.” He said the rules would lead to “safer and more affordable vehicles.” Trump, without citing any evidence, said the existing rules would require “extra computers put on the engine.” The administration has said the rules would reduce traffic deaths because it would cut future vehicle price hikes and prod speedier purchases of safer vehicles. But some EPA staff disputed that contention, according to documents released last year, arguing it would actually lead to more traffic deaths in some years because of an increase in vehicle travel.

Los Angeles wants to build a hydrogen-fueled power plant. It’s never been done before As Los Angeles weans itself off the last of its coal-generated electricity, the city needs to replace that fuel with a climate-polluting natural gas plant in Utah, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power staff insisted Tuesday. But they also pledged the facility would eventually burn renewable hydrogen instead of natural gas – something that has never been done before. Following pressure from climate change activists, DWP laid out its most detailed timeline yet for transitioning from planet-warming gas to clean-burning hydrogen at a new facility that would replace the coal-fired Intermountain Power Plant. If the utility succeeds, the Intermountain plant could become a model for governments and power companies around the world. “There is no way to get to 100% renewable energy that I can see right now without hydrogen in the mix. It doesn’t exist,” DWP General Manager Marty Adams told the utility’s board of commissioners on Tuesday. Utility staff told the board it’s critical to build an 840-megawatt gas-fired power plant to replace the coal-burning facility that DWP operates today. Without a traditional power plant, they said, the city might have trouble keeping the lights on when there’s insufficient electricity being generated by solar panels and wind turbines. But for the first time, DWP leadership committed to installing turbines capable of burning a mix of 30% hydrogen and 70% gas when the new power plant opens in 2025. Under the timeline described Tuesday, that ratio would steadily change until the plant burns 100% hydrogen in 2045, the deadline set by state lawmakers for a 100% climate-friendly electricity supply. “We will do everything we can to accelerate this,” Adams said.

How much should Colorado customers pay for Xcel’s clean energy transition? -A case before state utility commissioners foreshadows what’s likely to be an ongoing debate as the utility cuts carbon.Colorado utility regulators this week will begin to untangle one of many complicated questions surrounding Xcel Energy’s ambitious clean energy transition: How much should customers pay?The long-term potential costs include not only added renewable, storage and transmission resources but also financial accounting for fossil fuel plants that are closed before the end of their originally planned lifespan.Xcel Energy, which delivers electricity to more than 60% of Coloradans through its subsidiary, Public Service Co. of Colorado, is seeking a base rate increase of 3.99%. The utility says the proposed increase is fair and necessary to help it move toward eliminating carbon emissions by 2050 while maintaining reliability.Others, including the Sierra Club, contend that the utility should not be rewarded for past investments in coal-based generation that now look imprudent. Western Resource Advocates does not challenge past investments in coal plants but does recommend that Colorado’s utility regulators use the rate case to begin embracing performance-based regulation, giving the utility specific incentives for taking steps that align with Colorado decarbonization policies.The arguments are playing out before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission as it prepares to discuss the case on Wednesday, Dec. 11.Performance-based regulation was already on the commission’s agenda. Colorado legislators this year ordered commissioners to investigate performance-based regulation. The commissioners approved a plan Wednesday for the investigation to be supervised by John Gavan, one of the three commissioners. Jeffrey Ackermann, the commission chair, said Colorado is in an interesting and in many ways enviable position. It has done work in many areas but not as robustly in performance-based regulation and can now benefit from the experiences of others. Colorado intends to consult other states’ experience with performance-based regulation in producing a report for legislators by Nov. 27, 2020. Rate-base cases typically tend toward complex, but this one maybe more so because of its many overlapping elements, including wildfire mitigation, decoupling, and renewable energy credits. Through November, some 1,300 documents were filed, including 10,000 pages of testimony in a three-week flurry during early autumn.

Indigenous activists fight expansion of Canadian hydropower – Though her father says it’s sometimes better for First Nations people to adapt to the widespread changes sweeping their region, Erin Saunders hasn’t given up on pushing back against the rampant effects of colonization. “I’m young,” the 35-year-old mother of two said, sitting in a modest apartment associated with a local social services organization. “I can still fight.” Like her father, Saunders lives in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, a town of 8,100 on the banks of the Churchill River. Upstream, a 5,428-megawatt hydroelectric plant called Churchill Falls has generated power for New England for years; a second, 824-megawatt plant called Muskrat Falls is expected to come online next year, and a third, 2,500-megawatt plant called Gull Island is on the drawing board for Nalcor, an energy company owned by the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Hydropower has been the lynchpin in a mutually beneficial cross-border arrangement; Canada has gained a major source of revenue, while Vermont and New Hampshire have gained a major source of reliable, renewable energy. But Saunders wants New England purchasers of Canadian hydropower to understand that, while large scale Canadian hydroelectricity is renewable, it’s not green. “It’s not good for our environment,” she said. “For us, everything is at stake.” A primary concern for Saunders, and for many in the watershed that lies downstream from Churchill Falls, is the release of methylmercury into the environment – when land is flooded, the water brings naturally occuring mercury from the soil into contact with water-borne bacteria that transform it into the neurotoxin methylmercury. The methylmercury is absorbed by microscopic plankton, and then is increasingly concentrated as it passes up the food chain, eventually turning fish, seals and waterfowl into potential health risks for humans. That is of particular concern to those who, like Saunders, rely on hunting and fishing for a significant part of their diet. While Nalcor and the Inuit’s Nunatsiavut Government disagree with each other on the impact Muskrat Falls will have on local food sources, Saunders and others in her community deeply resent any poisoning of their food supply by state-owned Nalcor.

Study: Black, low-income Americans face highest risk from power plant pollution – Academic researchers found racial and economic disparities in the distribution of fine particle pollution. Nationwide, black and low-income people face the highest risks for death from power plants’ fine particle pollution, according to new research. The pollution likewise causes thousands of deaths across state lines. Those findings come from a study by researchers at the University of Washington and Stanford University in the Nov. 20 issue of the Environmental Science & Technology journal. The study supports continued regulation of particulate pollution from power plants and raises questions for future research into environmental justice issues. The team used the latest available data for power plant emissions from 2014, along with census data, health statistics and other information to calculate deaths from fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. Particulate emissions cause damage to the heart, lungs and brain, as well as other health problems. For the year studied, most PM2.5 came from coal plants, although natural gas plants also emitted particulates. Nationwide, low-income black people have the highest risk of death from power plants’ fine particulate emissions, followed by middle-income black people, low-income white non-Latinos, and upper-income black people. Risks for upper-income white non-Latinos are close to the nationwide average of 5.3 premature deaths per 100,000 people, with lower levels for other ethnic groups. On a regional basis, black people have the highest risk for death in the MISO and PJM transmission regions as well. The most at-risk group in each state varies, however. For example, black residents faced the highest risk gap in Michigan and Kentucky, as opposed to white non-Latinos in Ohio. Such variations can result from differences in population totals and where people live in relation to power plants, explained lead author Maninder Pal Singh Thind at the University of Washington. Thind hopes the paper will inspire others to “really raise a voice for the environmental justice issues” faced by different racial and income groups. The research also lays the groundwork for other researchers to dig deeper. “What are the reasons behind the disparities that we’re seeing?” Thind asks. .

Climate Activists Arrested Trying To Block Coal Train From Reaching N.H. Power Plant —More than 20 protesters were arrested Sunday trying to block a train from delivering coal to Merrimack Station power plant in Bow. The climate activists who organized the blockades also marched on the plant at a demonstration in September, when dozens more were arrested. Lila Korman-Glaser is an organizer with one of the protest groups, 350 New Hampshire Action. She says they want to end to the burning of planet-warming fossil fuels in the region. “It is crucial that the actions that we take not be one-off actions,” she says. “They are part of a campaign, and we will continue until the power plant is taken offline once and for all.” Two people were charged with resisting arrest, as well as trespassing, after climbing a railway bridge on the coal train’s route through Hooksett. She and about 100 others joined the protest Sunday, delaying the train at three different points along its route – in Worcester and Ayer, Massachusetts, and in Hooksett. About two dozen people were arrested on misdemeanor trespassing charges. Two who climbed a railway bridge in Hooksett and were removed by police are also charged with resisting arrest. Korman-Glaser says their goal is to speed the region’s transition to renewable energy. “We have decided that we’re not going to allow business as usual to proceed at the plant,” she says. “That means that we’re not going to allow coal trains to arrive to Bow unhindered, and it means that we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that the plant cannot run.” Merrimack Station is New England’s largest remaining coal-fired power plant that doesn’t have a retirement date. It typically runs most when energy demand is at its peak.

TVA plans new coal ash dump at Cumberland power plant – The Tennessee Valley Authority plans to begin construction of a new coal ash dump at its Cumberland coal-fired plant in 2021 and is investigating whether its current waste storage system is threatening private and public water sources, officials announced Tuesday. Coal ash waste is the broad term for the byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity. It is a toxic stew of cancer-causing chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive material.At least 15 million tons of the toxic waste is stored at the Cumberland City plant in a complex of unlined dirt pits – with wet coal ash stacked in vertical piles so tall TVA creates coal ash “benches” every 30 feet to keep water flowing downhill – along with coal ash wastewater ponds and a vertical stack of dry coal ash waste.The coal ash labyrinth spans 332 acres. TVA discharges coal ash wastewater into the Cumberland River, according to its permits. The Cumberland is a source of water for two of Stewart County’s largest public water suppliers: the Dover Water Department and North Stewart Utility District. The city of Erin also gets its water supply from the Cumberland River. According to TVA’s reports, the coal ash waste dump complex at the Cumberland plant is leaking, with “seepages” of coal ash waste escaping through holes in dirt walls, and coal ash toxins including arsenic and radium leaking into groundwater monitoring wells. Contamination discovered in monitoring wells does not mean it has reached drinking water supplies – monitoring wells are dug to understand where and how far contamination is from a storage site. Unsafe levels of arsenic, cobalt and lithium were discovered last year. “None of us should be surprised trace contaminants are showing up around our landfills,” “We don’t see any evidence there is any migration. That doesn’t mean it’s not a threat … That doesn’t mean we don’t monitor it.” The utility produces 1.5 million tons of coal ash waste each year at the Cumberland plant. TVA said it wants to shut down its current complex of waste dumps but, for now, will be leaving the bulk of the coal ash in the dumps unless later ordered by regulators to dig it up and store it away from the Cumberland River. TVA said it will build a new coal ash dump on 242 acres of undeveloped land at the plant. The new dump can hold as much as 20 million tons of coal ash waste, according to a report.Lyash, TVA Vice President Scott Turnbow and TVA staffer Danny Stephens said the utility also is constructing new lined water basins to better handle and treat water contaminated by coal ash.

Tennessee Valley Authority removing asbestos near plant (AP) – The Tennessee Valley Authority started removing asbestos-contaminated material last week that was unearthed during construction near its Kingston Fossil Plant. Officials at the utility have said they do not know where the material came from but it could be part of an old burn pit. It was discovered in September while digging to create a new landfill for coal ash disposal. The Knoxville News Sentinel first reported on the asbestos, which requires a special permit for disposal. TVA got the permit from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation on Dec. 3, Brooks said. The permit says up to 22,000 cubic yards (16,820 cubic meters) of material will be removed, including up to 40 cubic yards (30.6 cubic meters) of asbestos-containing material. “We think it will turn out to be more like 10-20 cubic yards, but we won’t know until we’ve done all the removal,” Brooks said in an email. That is about 8-15 cubic meters. Brooks said the permit covers removal of “everything we found like wood, metal, etc.” but there is no practical way to separate that from the asbestos-containing material. It is all going to a landfill in Loudon County that is permitted to store asbestos. The Kingston plant was the site of a massive coal ash spill in 2008.

What insurers allege about Duke Energy’s knowledge of coal-ash risk at NC plant – Charlotte Business Journal – In court filings, insurers contend “Duke intended to contaminate the groundwater, or at the very least, that it was substantially certain that the contamination would take place” at its Mayo Steam Electric Station.

Bill to Ban Coal in Bay Area City Tabled by Mayor, Maybe Permanently – A Dec. 3 meeting of the Richmond City Council ended suddenly, and without explanation, before its slated vote on the eventual ban of coal and petroleum coke storage in the city. And it’s unclear whether the ban will ever get a vote. One hundred people had testified for four hours regarding the ban. Richmond’s Democratic Mayor Tom Butt motioned to table the item until the City Council’s Jan. 14 meeting. Countering Butt’s move, City Council member Jael Myrickfailed to get the five votes needed to override the motion tabling the bill.Butt’s only explanation during the council meeting for tabling the vote was that he was doing so “under the Mayor’s prerogative.” Myrick said that he attempted to overturn Butt’s decision because “We’ve been delaying since 2015.” After the four hours of testimony, the City Council abruptly voted to halt the meeting. Butt told The Real News that he pulled the item from consideration because it was getting late, with the clock striking midnight by the time the public comments were finished. He said he hopes to broker a deal between stakeholders “without legislation and without litigation” with a “goal of moving coal out of Richmond.” In other words, a vote may never occur at all. “You know, it’s just not – it’s just good to continue debating and taking the vote on something that late,” said Butt. “Another reason is that we all received a flurry of letters and reports, you know, all kinds of documents in the last 12 to 24 hours before that meeting and nobody really had a chance to go through them and read them. A third reason is that it gives us some time to sit down with Levin and see if we can find some resolution other than legislation to cure this issue.” Butt said that some of those letters and reports came from Phillips 66 and actors within the coal industry. Phillips 66 owns a nearby tar sands oil refinery in the city of Rodeo, which produces the petroleum coke (“petcoke”) stored at the Levin-Richmond terminal. Petcoke is a coal-like by-product of the tar sands oil refining process, described by U.S. Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI) as “dirtier than the dirtiest fuel.” Extracting bitumen from tar sands is the most carbon-intensive oil extraction process in the world.

Youth Help Identify Causes Of Ohio Valley’s High Lung Disease Rates – According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 percent of adults in Letcher and Harlan Counties reported having an asthma diagnosis, compared to 8 percent nationally. Rates of COPD were also higher in eastern Kentucky. Higher rates of smoking explain some of that disparity, said Mountain Air Project manager Beverly May, but not all of it. “The question from a research perspective is,” May asked, “what other things might be contributing to the disease, and could it be our environment?” In addition to an epidemiological study, researchers employed a research practice called Photovoice, which asks people in a given community to use photography to share their experiences and perspectives with researchers who are typically not from that community. After receiving photography lessons from esteemed Appalachian photographer Malcolm Wilson, 10 young people between the ages of 12 and 18, all attending Letcher County schools, set out with digital cameras to document contributors to lung disease in their communities. “To our knowledge, this is the first Photovoice project in the Appalachian region to specifically involve youth focusing on environmental health,” said University of Kentucky researcher Katie Cardarelli. Researchers analyzed the students’ photographs to identify larger themes which might have gone unnoticed in a traditional health study. One such theme was the choices many eastern Kentuckians have had to make to earn a living. Several photographs expressed deep concern for the dangers that coal mining posed not only to individual coal miners, but to whole communities exposed to particulates from resource extraction. One student submitted a photo of a coal-transport railroad visible from their backyard. “Our area has been coal country for years,” wrote the student photographer, “exposing us to things that people in most parts of the country are not exposed to.” Several earlier studies show higher incidence of disease in communities near large-scale strip mines. This one, however, did not. UK researcher Jay Christian said his analysis of the current contributors to lung disease did not point to environmental exposure from coal mining or oil and gas drilling. “We’re not finding clear evidence of population-level exposures that appear to be driving the high rates of lung disease,” Christian said. But previous exposure may still have contributed to current instances of disease. “Coal mining has decreased very rapidly in the region,” he said. “So it’s hard to know how airborne particulate levels in the region now compare to those 20 years ago.” Occupational exposure to coal dust remains a significant factor in the region, with rates of black lung disease skyrocketing in recent years.

Study Shows Surface Coal Miners Are Exposed To Toxic Dust That Causes Black Lung -Appalachian surface coal miners are consistently overexposed to toxic silica dust, according to new research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and surface mine dust contains more silica than does dust in underground coal mines. The research is the first to specifically analyze long-term data on exposure to toxic silica dust for workers at surface mines. The work reveals that while attention has been trained on a surge in disease among underground coal miners, surface miners are similarly at risk of contracting coal worker’s pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease. Black lung disease has been identified in coal miners in every coal-mining state at both surface and underground mines. NIOSH researchers were specifically interested in surface miners’ exposure because those mines produce the most coal and, in 2017, twice as many miners worked at surface mines compared to underground mines. Researchers analyzed 54,040 coal dust samples taken on surface mines between 1982 and 2017 to determine the percent of that coal dust that was silica, and found that the level of silica was above the permissible limit in 15 percent of those samples. Silica dust comes from quartz in the rock layers near coal seams, and it is significantly more harmful to lung tissue than coal dust alone. After decades of successful reduction in black lung disease through safety controls in coal mines, black lung disease has been on the rise among coal miners for the last two decades. Central Appalachia has seen a marked increase in the most severe form of black lung, known as progressive massive fibrosis. A recent investigation from NPR and PBS Frontline found that federal regulators and the mining industry knew that exposure to silica dust was a major factor contributing to the surge in disease but failed to act to protect miners’ health. The surge in disease is putting strain on the already-indebted federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, and as younger miners become disabled due to black lung, thestrain on Appalachian mining communities continues to grow. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure this is a particularly novel finding,” NIOSH epidemiologist Scott Laney said. “The evidence is very clear. We know that silica and mine dust are toxic, and we have the technology to suppress it, and yet coal miners are still exposed to way too much of it. So from a public health perspective, there’s ample evidence to suggest that further safeguards are necessary.”

Report: black lung funding cut will cost taxpayers billions (AP) – A cut to the tax coal companies pay to fund a trust for sick miners will cost taxpayers at least $15 billion by 2050, according to a new report from a national watchdog group. An excise tax rate on mined coal that funds the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund expired at the beginning of 2019 due to inaction by Congress. That led to a reduction in the amount coal companies pay into the fund, which pays benefits and medical bills for miners diagnosed with black lung disease. “By failing to extend the excise tax, Congress is shifting billions of dollars in liabilities from coal companies to taxpayers,” Taxpayers for Common Sense said the fund’s debt could be as high as $26 billion by 2050. The U.S. Department of Labor earlier this year confirmed to The Associated Press that a funding shortfall in the Black Lung Trust Fund would be covered by borrowing from the U.S. Treasury. A excise tax rate of $1.10 per ton of underground mined coal was cut by more than half to about 50 cents in the new year. The fund took in about $450 million in revenue in fiscal year 2017. The cut came as a surge of black lung disease scars miners’ lungs at younger ages than ever. Dr. Brandon Crum, who has watched the epidemic unfold at his Pikeville, Kentucky, radiology clinic, said earlier this year that he has seen 200 miners diagnosed with a severe form of black lung disease in less than four years. The nation had 31 such diagnoses in the 1990s, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The mining industry supported the higher tax rate’s expiration. Black lung disease, or pneumoconiosis, is caused by inhaling dust in the lungs and has no cure. It has killed about 78,000 miners since 1968

Ohio Valley Lawmaker Plans To Halt Senate Action Over Coal Miners’ Benefits – West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin pledged Wednesday to block all legislation until pensions and health benefits are secured for coal miners. Manchin said no legislation will pass the Senate until he is assured that coal miners’ benefits will be in the spending bill used to fund the federal government. The Bipartisan American Miners Act would permanently secure pensions for about 82,000 coal miners who could lose their retirement benefits by sometime next year without congressional action. In remarks on the Senate floor, Manchin said miners can’t wait another year for congressional action. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky recently signed on as a co-sponsor to a bill with Manchin and other Ohio Valley lawmakers to shore up those benefits. McConnell had blocked earlier Senate action on miners’ pensions. For example, in 2017 McConnell introduced his own bill to provide for miners’ health benefits without dealing with pensions. McConnell did not immediately return a request for comment. The miner’s pension plan was weakened by a series of coal industry bankruptcies. Murray Energy of Ohio was the last major employer contributing to the fund before its bankruptcy declaration in October. In its bankruptcy filing, Murray reports more than $8 billion in obligations under various pension and benefit plans. A bankruptcy court will decide if the company can escape those obligations. Manchin said that uncertainty about pensions is a burden for miners and retirees. “Can you imagine being one of the coal miners trying to enjoy your holidays this year knowing you might wake up January 1st with no health care coverage and a reduction in your pensions?” he said.

Nuke plant owner gave to justices – FirstEnergy Solutions fears the fate of its two nuclear power plants on Lake Erie may rest in the hands of the Ohio Supreme Court as it considers issues that could breathe new life into an effort to kill a recently passed consumer bailout. But six of the seven justices sitting on the court have received campaign cash from the electricity generator and supplier’s soon-to-be-former parent company, FirstEnergy Corp., at some point in their judicial careers. One of them, Republican first-term Justice Pat Fischer, last week recused himself from considering the case without citing a reason. Justices decide for themselves whether they fear they may have a conflict of interest. A review of the Ohio secretary of state’s campaign finance database shows that FirstEnergy Corp.’s political action committee contributed more than $78,000 to state Supreme Court candidates – and in one case, a future justice early in his judicial career – since 2010. Of that, about $43,000 went to jurists now sitting on the bench. “The thing Ohioans need to remember is that when any rule affecting consumers is challenged, it goes to the Ohio Supreme Court,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of government watchdog Common Cause of Ohio. “In fact, FirstEnergy has a real vested interest in how business friendly that justice is,” she said. “Since 2000, the first time I looked at campaign contributions, FirstEnergy has been a major player year after year.” The company’s support has heavily favored Republicans who dominate the bench 5-2. But it has on rare occasions supported Democrats, including $1,000 for current Justice Melody Stewart, elected last year. In fact, it financially supported three of last year’s four candidates running for two seats on the bench. The utility also poured more than $400,000 into state legislative campaigns during the 2017-18 election cycle that helped fashion the General Assembly that this year passed House Bill 6. It also gave to statewide candidates, including nearly $23,000 last year to the campaign and subsequent inaugural celebration of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who signed House Bill 6 into law. Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio.

Canada may store its worst nuclear waste at site near Lake Huron – Canada has narrowed to two communities its list of potential hosts for a permanent national repository for its most radioactive waste – spent fuel from nuclear power generation. And one of those two finalists is on the shores of Lake Huron. If chosen, Huron-Kinloss/South Bruce, in Bruce County, Ontario, could host a large repository, 1,650 feet or more underground, to which the entire nation’s spent nuclear fuel supply would be transported and stored, essentially forever. “This is the worst of the worst” waste, said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist with the nonprofit Beyond Nuclear, based in Tacoma Park, Maryland. “It’s highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel. It is dangerous forever.” For perspective, as the U.S. considered a similar underground repository for its spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, Nevada – a proposal that has since stalled amid backlash from Nevadans – a federal Court of Appeals in 2004 ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop standards to protect people and the environment from the site’s radiation for up to one million years. Canada has an inventory of almost 2.9 million used nuclear fuel bundles currently stored above-ground in wet pools and dry containers at the nuclear plant sites where the waste is generated. That’s about 128 million pounds of highly radioactive material, a number that is growing. The site along Lake Huron is in the same county where another underground storage facility – this one for low-to-intermediate-level radioactive waste from Ontario’s 19 nuclear reactors – was proposed. That plan, still under consideration, generated loud opposition throughout the Great Lakes Basin beginning about five years ago, especially in Michigan. “This makes no sense,” U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow said. “Canada has as much at stake as we do in protecting our Great Lakes. There is no justification for a nuclear waste site so close to Lake Huron to even be under consideration.”

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