Environmental News For The Week Ending 04 January 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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Mysterious Respiratory Virus Strikes 44 People in China – An unidentified form of viral pneumonia has struck several dozen people in the Chinese city of Wuhan, sparking concerns that the country may be facing an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Back in 2002 and 2003, SARS spread to 26 countries, infecting more than 8,000 people with a severe, flu-like illness and claiming more than 750 lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The outbreak began in China, where 349 people died from the disease on the mainland and 299 more perished in Hong Kong, according to Asian news channel CNA. The SARS virus spreads through person-to-person contact and can be expelled from an infected individual when they cough or sneeze, contaminating both people and nearby objects. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared that China was free of SARS in 2004, but now, a mysterious bout of viral illness has led to speculation that the disease is back. Forty-four cases of the unidentified illness have been reported so far, including 11 “severe” cases, according to the international news agency AFP. Many of the infected individuals were stall holders at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which health authorities have closed until further notice, according to the South China Morning Post. In a further effort to contain the outbreak, airports in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan have ramped up screenings for fever among their passengers. The cause of the infections remains unknown, but the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission has ruled out “influenza, avian influenza, adenovirus infection and other common respiratory diseases” as potential culprits, according to TK. “At this point, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus is not yet confirmed or excluded as the cause of the outbreak,” said Gauden Galea, WHO’s representative in China, AFP reported. In response to speculation about a SARS outbreak, the Wudan police announced Wednesday (Jan. 1) that eight individuals had been punished for “publishing or forwarding false information on the internet without verification,”

Avian Flu Outbreak Hits Europe’s Largest Poultry Producers — Reuters reports Wednesday that bird flu, also called avian influenza, has been detected in Europe’s largest poultry producers, located in eastern Poland. Reuters, citing local media reports, said up to 40,000 turkeys could be culled in the coming days to prevent a further outbreak. This is the first outbreak of the bird flu since France culled 800,000 birds to prevent the spread of H5N8 in 2017. Andrzej Danielak, president of the Polish Association of Breeders and Poultry Producers, said three large scale farms, in close proximity of each other, have detected an outbreak of the deadly virus — puts at least 350,000 turkeys at risk. “Veterinary services are implementing virus eradication procedures in this situation,” said government officials in Lubartowski county, a region in eastern Poland, at a Tuesday press conference outlining the virus was a subtype of H5N8 bird flu that can spread to people. Officials warned that if residents developed common “flu-like” symptoms: fever, chills, headache, coughing, and weakness — seek immediate medical attention. The virus cannot kill people, but it’s very deadly to turkeys — it can kill them in a matter of hours. Local broadcaster Polsat said, “to prevent the virus from spreading, the police blocked roads in the vicinity of infected farms. Within a radius of three kilometers, it can be up to 350 thousand pieces of poultry.” More developments are expected in the days ahead of how many turkeys will be culled.

Polio Eradication Program Faces Hard Choices as Endgame Strategy Falters – The “endgame” in the decadeslong campaign to eradicate polio suffered major setbacks in 2019. While the effort lost ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which recorded 116 cases of wild polio – four times the number in 2018 – an especially alarming situation developed in Africa. In 12 countries, 196 children were paralyzed not by the wild virus, but by a strain derived from a live vaccine that has regained its virulence and ability to spread. Fighting these flare-ups will mean difficult decisions in the coming year. The culprit in Africa is vaccine-derived polio virus type 2, and the fear is that it will jump continents and reseed outbreaks across the globe. A brand new vaccine is now being rushed through development to quash type 2 outbreaks. Mass production has already begun, even though the vaccine is still in clinical trials; it could be rolled out for emergency use as early as mid-2020. At the same time, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) is debating whether to combat the resurgent virus by re-enlisting a triple-whammy vaccine pulled from global use in 2016. That would be a controversial move, setting back the initiative several years, as well as a potential public relations disaster – an admission that the carefully crafted endgame strategy has failed. “All options are on the table,” says viro-logist Mark Pallansch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the five partner organizations in GPEI. “We are clearly in the most serious situation we have been in with the program,” adds Roland Sutter, who recently stepped down as the director of polio research at the World Health Organization (WHO).

Persistent organic pollutants in mother’s blood linked to smaller fetal size – Pregnant women exposed to persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, had slightly smaller fetuses than women who haven’t been exposed to these chemicals, according to an analysis of ultrasound scans by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. The researchers also found that the women in their study had lower levels of POPs than women in the 2003-2004 U.S. Health and Nutrition Survey, the most recent comprehensive study of these compounds in U.S. pregnant women. The latest findings suggest that the chemicals, which are no longer produced in the United States but persist in the environment, may have lasting health effects even at low levels. The study appears in JAMA Pediatrics and was conducted by Pauline Mendola, Ph.D., an investigator in the Epidemiology Branch at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and colleagues. Persistent organic pollutants are chemicals once used in agriculture, disease control, manufacturing, and industrial processes. They include the pesticide DDT and dioxin, a byproduct of herbicide production and paper bleaching. POPs are slow to break down, may persist in water and air, and may be passed through the food chain. Their health effects vary, but some compounds have been linked to reproductive disorders and a higher risk of birth defects. Earlier studies of the potential effects of POP exposure during pregnancy have produced conflicting results. According to the authors, most of these studies looked at infant birth weight and length, measures that could suggest impaired fetal growth but could also indicate genetic factors that lead to smaller birth size and weight. Moreover, previous studies have investigated POPs as individual chemicals, but people typically are exposed to a mix of these compounds. “The differences we found in fetal growth measures may be more sensitive indicators, compared to birth size, of the potential effects of these compounds,” said Dr. Mendola. “Even at low levels, there is evidence of a possible effect on fetal growth.”

Malibu wants to ban all pesticides. The state of California says that’s against the law – Wilmar Mejia shimmied into the house’s low-slung attic, crawling through tufts of white insulation studded with fresh rat droppings. “You’ve got tenants and they’re not paying rent!” the exterminator said with a grin. Mejia has been evicting vermin from Malibu for more than a decade. In lieu of brodifacoum blood-thinners – ubiquitous poisons so effective that hawks regularly bleed to death after eating mice that have eaten them – his new boutique pest control company, Tree of Life, uses snap traps and steel wool to keep rodents in check. “It’s about controlling the problem without the use of poisons that affect everything else,” Mejia said. “That hawk flying around, that’s what we’re protecting.” If the city of Malibu gets its way, Mejia’s methods will soon be the rule. Earlier this month, the City Council approved a sweeping chemical ban that could pave the way for other coastal cities looking to protect wildlife by limiting toxicants. But state officials say it runs afoul of the law. “We passed a ban not just on rodenticides but on all pesticides,” said Malibu Mayor Pro Tem Mikke Pierson. “Of course, the Department of Pesticide Regulation said absolutely we can’t do it.” California is one of more than 40 states that restrict how local governments can regulate pesticides. For decades, the state’s food and agriculture code has preempted municipalities like Malibu from limiting their use in almost any way. But Malibu officials say their ban skirts that law in a bureaucratic pas de deux with the Coastal Commission, a state agency not subject to preemption. The commission is expected to approve the anti-pesticide measure as an amendment to Malibu’s local coastal program early next year. If successful, it could be a model for scores of other cities in the commission’s area of responsibility.

Science Panel Staffed With Trump Appointees Says E.P.A. Rollbacks Lack Scientific Rigor – NYT – A top panel of government-appointed scientists, many of them hand-selected by the Trump administration, said on Tuesday that three of President Trump’s most far-reaching and scrutinized proposals to weaken major environmental regulations are at odds with established science.Draft letters posted online Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, which is responsible for evaluating the scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, took aim at the Trump administration’s rewrite of an Obama-era regulation of waterways, an Obama-era effort to curb planet-warming vehicle tailpipe emissions and a plan to limit scientific data that can be used to draft health regulations.In each case, the 41 scientists on a board – many of whom were appointed by Trump administration officials to replace scientists named by the Obama administration – found the regulatory changes flew in the face of science.A forthcoming rule on water pollution “neglects established science” by “failing to acknowledge watershed systems,” the scientists said. They found “no scientific justification” for excluding certain bodies of water from protection under the new regulations. They saw “significant weaknesses in the scientific analysis of the proposed rule” to roll back vehicle emission standards, a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s effort to combat climate change.As for the proposal to limit scientific data in health regulations, the scientists wrote that “key considerations that should inform the proposed rule have been omitted from the proposal or presented without analysis.” The letters come as the Trump administration contends with mounting criticism that its policies have ignored, distorted or marginalized scientific data at the expense of the environment, public health and legal obligations. Legal experts said the advisory body’s opinion could undermine the Trump administration’s rollbacks in the courts. “The courts basically say if you’re going to ignore the advice of your own experts you have to have really good reasons for that,” said Patrick Parenteau, a professor of law with the Vermont Law School. “And not just policy reasons but reasons that go to the merits of what the critiques are saying.”

Why a corporate lawyer is sounding the alarm about these common chemicals -According to Rob Bilott, we face a “unique health threat” from a class of industrial chemicals that most Americans have never heard of. These chemicals are widely used in everyday products such as non-stick cookware and stain-resistant fabrics, even though science shows they are linked to a range of deadly diseases, reproductive problems and other ailments. Powerful corporations are fighting to protect the use of these profitable chemical compounds, Bilott says, and US regulators are doing next to nothing to stop them. It’s worth listening to what Bilott has to say. He has spent the last two decadesadvocating for people in West Virginia and Ohio whose water was contaminated with one of these toxins, a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. Bilott achieved a class-action settlement with DuPont in 2004, part of which paid for a six-year health study. That study found links between PFOA and high cholesterol, kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, high blood pressure, pregnancy-induced hypertension and thyroid disease. In a follow-up case in 2017, Bilott achieved a multimillion-dollar settlement of thousands of personal injury claims against DuPont. His two decades of work negotiated water filtration and treatment for affected communities, the establishment of a novel scientific panel for human health studies, and the introduction of a medical monitoring program for thousands of people exposed. His work led to DuPont and other manufacturers phasing out the use of PFOA in the US, though similar replacement chemicals have prompted fresh concerns. Bilott’s battle against DuPont, documented in a memoir, has been made into the feature film Dark Waters, released to theaters across the country this month. Dark Waters tells of Bilott’s journey from a chemical industry defense attorney to a plaintiffs’ champion who uncovered evidence that DuPont knowingly hid the dangers of PFOA, even as its manufacturing facility near Parkersburg, West Virginia, was spilling the toxin across the landscape. DuPont’s own lawyers and scientists raised concerns about the local community’s exposure to PFOA, Bilott told me. “Unfortunately what we saw was decisions made for business purposes to continue using the chemical, releasing it, and exposing people to it,” Bilott says.

Seattle Company Used Secret Drain To Dump Toxic Waste Directly Into Sewer System — According to a 36-count grand jury indictment, a Seattle company used a hidden drain to dump a highly-corrosive chemical solution directly into the sewer system. The King County sewer system eventually reaches the Duwamish Waterway and the Puget Sound.After “a sensitive sewer flow meter tipped them off to something strange,” agents sent a robot into the sewer to investigate, the Seattle Times reports.Inside the sewer, the robot’s camera recorded a white stain of unknown origin and, according to a federal indictment handed down earlier this month, federal agents executed a search warrant after real-time monitoring equipment they installed indicated an unusual spike in the water’s pH.During the search, a portable pump covered in a high-pH liquid and a hidden drain that had never been disclosed were both discovered. It turns out, both the company’s owner and the manager of the plant, who happen to be cousins, have been lying to regulators since at least 2009, according to the indictment. The scheme was discovered in 2018.The Seattle Barrel and Cooperage Company collects used 55-gallon industrial drums and resells them after undergoing a reconditioning process that involves washing them in a tank full of highly-corrosive chemical solution. The family-owned company is legally obligated to dispose of the caustic solution properly.

Hexavalent chromium contamination likely leaking onto Detroit-area freeway since 2016 – The toxic leak onto a Detroit-area freeway discovered by motorists before Christmas has likely been seeping into the soil and groundwater since 2016, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press on Monday.The Free Press made the determination after conducting its own analysis of Google Street View images of the location where the green-yellow substance froze into a blob on the shoulder of the service drive of the eastbound lanes of the I-696 interstate on Friday, December 20. The report notes, “Google Street View images of the area on the freeway … show what appears to be a small stream of clear liquid draining from the wall in the same spot beginning in at least July 2016. The amount of liquid seeping out appears to be increasing in an August 2018 photo, and even more in a photo from May 2019. There appears to be a small amount of greenish liquid at the base of the wall in the May photo.” Indicating that the seeping of the chemical onto the freeway shoulder began sometime in 2016, the Free Press report says, “The pavement appears dry in eight Google map images of the spot taken at various times between 2008 and October 2015.” The evidence of the chemical leak in the Google Street View images was brought to the attention of the Free Press by a reader on the newspaper’s Facebook page. After the right lane of the freeway was closed on December 20 and a cleanup operation began, state and federal environmental officials determined that the chemical was the highly dangerous hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium-6. Officials said the leak was coming from the basement of a metal plating factory just above the freeway embankment that had been shut down in December 2016 by regulators for numerous hazardous waste violations. Hexavalent chromium is a known cancer-causing chemical that humans should never come into direct contact with. On November 6, Gary Sayers, the owner of Electro-Plating Service, Inc. of Madison Heights, Michigan was sentenced to one year in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.45 million in restitution for what was supposed to have been the cleanup of the site after it was closed in 2016. As is clear from a press release by the US Attorney’s office at the time, Sayer’s storage of the hazardous chemicals in the basement of his facility was well known. It says, “Sayers stored the hazardous waste in numerous drums and other containers, including a pit dug into the ground in the lower level of the EPS building in Madison Heights. For years, Sayers stonewalled state efforts to get him to legally deal [with] the hazardous wastes. Ultimately, the EPA’s Superfund program spent $1,449,963.94 to clean up and dispose of the hazardous wastes.”

Chinese metal mines feed the global demand for gadgets. They’re also poisoning China’s poorest regions. WaPo – Day and night, overfilled trucks rumble down Nanjiu Road in the saw-toothed hills that stretch to the Vietnam border. It’s a procession at the heart of one of China’s most hazardous industries. The trucks load up on metal ore in the valley below, where 13 miners died in October in underground shafts laden with tin, copper and zinc. Then the trucks motor up the mountain toward belching smelters – the culprit, researchers say, behind arsenic levels in Dachang’s dust reaching more than 100 times the government limit. Across southern China – far from the affluent coasts and Beijing’s gaze – a vast metals industry has fed the country’s manufacturing boom and sated global demand for components used in products from smartphone batteries to electric motors to jet airframes. China’s production of material such as aluminum, copper, lead and zinc, known as base or nonferrous metals, has soared as the country has become the world’s factory floor. Combined output was 57 million tons last year, up from 6 million in 1998, according to the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association. But some of the country’s most isolated, impoverished communities are paying the price. In Guangxi, a balmy southern region that has some of China’s most concentrated mineral deposits, large tracts of farmland lay wasted by runoff carrying cadmium and lead. Metal miners toil in shafts deadlier than China’s notorious coal pits. Villagers roll up their sleeves to show deformities caused by ingesting food contaminated by heavy metals. Residents wait daily for shipments of fresh water. After an eight-year study that began as a state secret, the Chinese government said in 2014 that 20 percent of the country’s farmland was contaminated and a third of its surface water unfit for human contact.

Mile high ugh: What you should know before you eat airplane food – An NBC News investigation of airline catering found an industry with limited oversight in which outbreaks are difficult to track. Food safety for airline caterers and airlines is regulated by the federal Food and Drug Administration, which requires inspections of this industry far less frequently than it recommends local health agencies inspect restaurants. When airline food inspections do occur, they can reveal serious safety violations – as many as 22 in a single inspection – but rarely lead to penalties. Under the FDA’s rules, the agency only has to inspect airline caterers every three to five years. FDA rules for airlines are even looser than for caterers: planes receive random FDA inspections “when time and opportunity allow,” according to an agency manual. In contrast, the FDA’s food code, which guides the food safety rules adopted by state and local governments, recommends that local authorities inspect food establishments every six months, with exceptions for low-risk facilities. But airline catering facilities don’t always fall under those codes. The FDA considers them different from restaurants because caterers do not sell food directly to consumers, instead contracting with airlines that do. In the past four years, FDA inspectors have found condensation dripping onto food, fans blowing dust on food, thermometers off by as much as 25 degrees, raw meat contaminating cooked meat, moldy bread, live birds and insects, as well as bird and rodent poop and more at airline catering facilities, according to more than 1,000 pages of inspection reports obtained by public records request. Whether those violations may have led to illnesses is difficult to say, according to food safety experts. NBC News also found that tracking foodborne illnesses from airplane food is particularly challenging. First of all, the victims disperse. “Outbreaks from airline food are very difficult to identify because the people get dispersed into various locations,” said Roy Costa, an environmental health inspector and trainer who has worked as a state food inspector and served as an expert witness in food safety lawsuits. “It’s not like having a cluster of people that you can identify all had one exposure, so it’s difficult to pin them down.”

A plateful of plastic: Visualising the amount of microplastic we eat – Reuters graphics – Microscopic pieces of plastic have been discovered in the most remote locations, from the depths of the ocean to Arctic ice. Another place that plastic is appearing is inside our bodies. We’re breathing microplastic, eating it and drinking plastic-infused water every day. Plastic does not biodegrade. Instead, it breaks down into smaller pieces, and ultimately ends up everywhere, including in the food chain. Pieces that are less than five millimeters in length, around the size of a sesame seed, are called “microplastics.” Dozens of reports have been published on microplastics but the scientific community is still only scratching the surface of understanding just how much plastic we consume and how harmful it could be. People could be ingesting the equivalent of a credit card of plastic a week, a recent study by WWF International concluded, mainly in drinking water but also via sources like shellfish, which tend to be eaten whole so the plastic in their digestive systems is also consumed. Based on the findings of the study, Reuters created the following images to illustrate what this amount of plastic actually looks like over various time periods.

• Every week: 5 grams of plastic. That’s about the same weight as a plastic bottle cap and enough shredded plastic to fill a porcelain soup spoon.
• Every month: 21 grams of plastic. That’s about the same weight as five casino dice and enough shredded plastic to half-fill a rice bowl.
• Every 6 months: 125 grams of plastic. That’s enough yellow shredded plastic flakes to fill a cereal bowl, as pictured below.
• Every year: 250 grams of plastic. That’s a heaped dinner plate’s worth of shredded plastic, as pictured below. Every 10 years: 2.5kg of plastic. Reuters did not have enough shredded plastic to weigh in order to visualise this comparison. However, a standard life buoy weighs 2.5 kilograms so we found one of those.
• In our lifetime: 20kg of plastic. The average human lives for 79 years. Using the current estimate of microplastic in our diets and assuming the situation doesn’t improve or worsen, that equates to 20 kilograms of plastic consumption. That’s more plastic than the two mobile recycling bins shown below, which only weigh 10kg each.

London Tops Global Study for World’s Worst Microplastics Pollution – Jerri-Lynn Scofield – Over the last couple of years, news accounts have highlighted the ubiquity of microplastics in environments previously regarded as pristine. Despite evidence that microplastics are everywhere, there’s a lack of scientific consensus so far on the impact this pollution has on human health. Note that this is not because microsplatics are harmless, but rather, that the study of how they affect human health is in its infancy.This week, a study published in Environment International, Atmospheric microplastic deposition in an urban environment and an evaluation of transport, reported the highest ever concentrations of such pollution yet recorded in samples taken from a London rooftop – awarding London the dubious accolade of worst microplastics contamination ever.The London samples showed a rate of microplastics deposition twenty times higher than that of Dongguan, China; seven times higher than that of Paris, France; and nearly three times higher than Hamburg, Germany.As the Guardian reports in Revealed: microplastic pollution is raining down on city dwellers:The level of microplastic discovered in the London air surprised scientists. “We found a high abundance of microplastics, much higher than what has previously been reported,” said Stephanie Wrightfrom Kings College London, who led the research. “But any city around the world is going to be somewhat similar.”“I find it of concern – that is why I am working on it,” she said. “The biggest concern is we don’t really know much at all. I want to find out if it is safe or not.” These findings seem to contradict the conventional wisdom that such pollution is less in cities such as London, which exercise some degree of environmental regulation, compared to more widely known polluted environments, such as Asian countries with high pollution density: e.g,, China, India, Indonesia, to name just some examples. I’m not particularly concerned about which city shows the worst microplastics contamination. What we can say is that this pollution is more widespread than was realized even recently. But the potential health impacts of inhaling plastic particles from the air, or consuming them via food and water, are unknown. People eat at least 50,000 microplastic particles per year, according to one study.

Against Recycling – Earlier this month, the New York Times posted a video op-ed correctly debunking “The Great Recycling Con.” According to the Times, the plastics industry has sold generations of consumers a lie about just how much of the waste they produce could be recycled in order to create the false possibility of eco-friendly, guilt-free consumption. It comes painfully close, but misses the full story. The true “Great Recycling Con” runs far deeper than lies about which products can and cannot be recycled; it is an ongoing political battle waged by waste-generating corporations against the public to evade regulation, shift responsibility for environmental destruction onto consumers, and protect the ecocidal and highly profitable business model that lies at the heart of industrial capitalism. The tragedy of the Great Recycling Con is not just that corporations have gotten away with planetary murder and passed the costs of cleaning up their mess onto consumers. At this point, it is not a question of fair labor distribution at all. It is a question of survival. Individual recycling alone is simply not sufficient to save the planet. Even the most diligent and civically minded recyclers, the modern-day Susan Spotlesses, face structural obstacles to minimizing their waste footprint. And even if we were all Susan Spotlesses and the recycling systems worked perfectly, the means of production of American industrial capitalism will continue to generate an unending supply of waste-to-be in the production process. We have no choice but to take on the producers of waste. We have an obligation to keep our focus on the owners of the means of waste production – on those who can be coerced by state regulation into making the grand-scale, systemic changes required for any climate mitigation.

The World’s Recycling System Is Falling Apart. What’s Going On? — According to one calculation, all the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next one thousand years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side – not that big (unless you happen to live in the neighborhood). Put another way, it would take another 20 years to run through the landfills the U.S. has already built. So the notion that we’re running out of landfill space – the original impetus for the recycling boom – turns out to have been a red herring.What we do know is that the complex admixture of government programs, private contractors, profits and subsidies, media propaganda, and stark realities have now reached the point of collapse. For decades, the economic growth of communist China created a voracious demand for every resource, introduced labor rates a fraction of those in some developed countries, and showed a willingness to accept some pollution and waste as the price of economic growth. To an extent almost unimaginable, the developed world “recycled” literally billions of tons of waste over decades – metals, plastics, paper, wood – by shipping it to the People’s Republic of China on Chinese ships returning from delivering Chinese goods for sale in developed countries. China accepted it all, paid for it, and used its huge and eager workforce – paid often less than one-tenth of comparable U.S. labor – to transform whatever was in truth recyclable into materials for its industrial-manufacturing-construction powerhouse. In fact, though, as we now know, somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of what was promiscuously shipped out of the developed economies to be “recycled” was actually dumped by China, as unusable, into landfills and the oceans of Southeast Asia, where it has become a major cause and poster-child of environmentalists as an “island” (sometimes) or a “sea” (sometimes) of floating plastic waste. Today, we know this in far more detail and know that the developed world never really faced the “economics” of recycling – impossible without the market pricing system. We know it now because, on the first day of 2018, China announced to the world its “National Sword Policy.”

Lies, Damned Lies, and Recycling The Baffler — Recycling is dead – or close to it. China no longer wants our trash and its neighbors are following suit, shedding the region’s undesirable role as a dumping ground for the Global North. This reversal was several years in the making, but after decades of offshoring our low-quality recyclables and generally neglecting our domestic waste infrastructure, American towns and cities have proved woefully ill-equipped to handle the logjam of unwanted material. As municipal waste commissioners and their private industry counterparts scramble to find alternatives, many of the items collected in blue and green bins are being discreetly rerouted into landfills and incinerators, extinguishing any last pretense that recycling can alleviate our ballooning waste footprint. American recycling has died several times before, the result of falling commodity prices, low participation rates, or the entry or exit of a major scrap buyer. But China’s latest effective ban – dubbed the “National Sword,” it cuts imports on more than two dozen types of scrap material through severe anti-contamination measures – comes at a peculiar moment for the U.S. political economy. Devastating images of plastic marine pollution have reawakened public anger over the dangers of unregulated production, prompting several states to implement bans on single-use items such as straws, bags, and foam containers. At the same time, consumers flock towards on-demand services from the likes of Amazon and Uber Eats that churn out epic rivers of waste. As our consumer overlords deploy armies of robots and drivers to deliver the world to our doorsteps, they continue to avoid widespread scrutiny over the wastelands of packaging that lie in their imperial wakes. It’s not yet clear how this moral friction might resolve into political action. Amid the fray of proposed federal legislation are several worthy and overdue measures – around “producer pays” (or “cradle-to-grave”) laws and single-use packaging bans – as well as one old Trojan horse that certainly represents the worst case scenario. Last month, on America Recycles Day, Representatives Tony Cflrdenas (D-CA) and Larry Bucshon (R-IN) unveiled the RECOVER Act, a bill written by the plastics industry that would invest up to $500 million towards “modernizing” America’s recycling infrastructure. The announcement included vague allusions to “public-private partnerships and a new grants program” that would “clean up our nation’s environment” and “make an impact on sustainability from coast to coast.”Bailing out the recycling industry may sound like a benign proposal. The funds might even be a wise infusion at such a precarious moment for scrap buyers, processors, and sellers. But the hazy aspirations of the RECOVER Act are just the latest cover in a long-running deceit that for more than half a century has deflected responsibility from the companies who profit from pollution while ensuring our broader waste problem goes unaddressed.

The Missing 99%: Why Can’t We Find the Vast Majority of Ocean Plastic? – Every year, 8m tons of plastic enters the ocean. Images of common household waste swirling in vast garbage patches in the open sea, or tangled up with whales and seabirds, have turned plastic pollution into one of the most popular environmental issues in the world. But for at least a decade, the biggest question among scientists who study marine plastic hasn’t been why plastic in the ocean is so abundant, but why it isn’t. What scientists can see and measure, in the garbage patches and on beaches, accounts for only a tiny fraction of the total plastic entering the water. So where is the other 99% of ocean plastic? Unsettling answers have recently begun to emerge. What we commonly see accumulating at the sea surface is “less than the tip of the iceberg, maybe a half of 1% of the total,” says Erik Van Sebille, an oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “I often joke that being an ocean plastic scientist should be an easy job, because you can always find a bit wherever you look,” says Van Sebille. But, he adds, the reality is that our maps of the ocean essentially end at the surface, and solid numbers on how much plastic is in any one location are lacking. It is becoming apparent that plastic ends up in huge quantities in the deepest parts of the ocean, buried in sediment on the seafloor, and caught like clouds of dust deep in the water column. Perhaps most frighteningly, says Helge Niemann, a biogeochemist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, it could fragment into such small pieces that it can barely be detected. At this point it becomes, Niemann says, “more like a chemical dissolved in the water than floating in it”.

Thailand Begins the New Year With Plastic Bag Ban – Thailand rang in 2020 with an effort to tackle the plastic crisis filling the country’s waste sites and choking its waterways. The country’s ban on plastic bags at major retailers began as soon as the clock struck midnight in Bangkok. A complete ban of bags that includes smaller shops will go into effect in 2021, as Reuters reported.The campaign to reduce single-use plastics, especially plastic bags is an ongoing effort by the country’s government to reduce land and sea debris. There has been a public backlash to the plastic waste crisis in Thailand after several animals were found dead with inordinate amounts of plastic stuck in their digestive tracts, including land and sea mammals like deer and dugongs, as The Hill reported. Green sea turtles were also found to have choked on plastic, according to France 24. The epidemic of man-made litter killing Thailand’s wildlife led to some soul-searching from government and business leaders in Thailand.”Thailand was ranked sixth among the world’s top countries that dumps waste into the sea,” said Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Varawut Silpa-Archa to reporters on New Year’s Day after handing out reusable bags to the public, as Reuters reported. “During the past five months, we were down to 10th … thanks to the cooperation of the Thai people.”Major mall retailers and the ubiquitous 7-Eleven convenience stores will no longer distribute plastic bags under the new law. Instead, customers will have to bring in their own bag or pay a small fee for a reusable cloth-bag, according to France 24.Some consumers were offended by the idea of paying for a bag. “Instead, I will go to the local markets because they still give us plastic bags,” said Viroj Sinchairokekul, a 63-year-old said, at a Bangkok mall, to France 24.

Palau bans ‘reef-toxic’ sunscreen – Palau’s pioneering ban on “reef-toxic” sunscreens took effect Wednesday as the tiny Pacific island nation introduced strict environmental measures that also include one of the world’s largest marine sanctuaries. “We have to live and respect the environment because the environment is the nest of life, and without it nobody in Palau can survive,” President Tommy Remengesau told AFP as the new laws took effect. Palau, which lies in the western Pacific about halfway between Australia and Japan, is renowned for its marine life and is regarded as one of the world’s best diving destinations, but the government is concerned its popularity is coming at a cost. Remengesau said there was scientific evidence that the chemicals found in most sunscreens were toxic to corals, even in minute doses. With Palau’s popular dive sites regularly packed with tourists there were concerns a build-up of these chemicals would irreparably harm the reefs. From New Year’s day, any reef-toxic sunscreen imported or sold in Palau will be confiscated and the owner will be fined US$1,000. “When science tells us that a practice is damaging to coral reefs, to fish populations, or to the ocean itself, our people take note and our visitors do too,” Remengesau said. “Toxic sunscreen chemicals have been found throughout Palau’s critical habitats, and in the tissues of our most famous creatures. “We don’t mind being the first nation to ban these chemicals, and we will do our part to spread the word. With better education and awareness, more jurisdictions will have the confidence to take this necessary action. “The science is clear, and once that message has spread, we will be the first of many.” Along with the sunscreen ban, Palau’s much-touted marine sanctuary came into effect on January 1, closing 80 percent of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to fishing and other marine activities including mining and shark finning. “It is a very ambitious and worthy goal for Palau’s future,” Remengesau said. The marine sanctuary prohibits commercial fishing in about 500,000 square kilometres (190,000 square miles) of ocean.

‘Heartbreaking’ Vulture Poisoning in South Africa Raises Alarm – Another mass vulture poisoning incident has ended the year on a sour note for Wildlife ACT rangers in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Soon after releasing two rehabilitated vultures, rescued from a different poisoning scene earlier this year, WildLife ACT was alerted to another incident on Dec. 23, on Rolling Valley Ranch, located between Pongola and Mkuze in the far north of the province. “Arriving at a scene like this with everything so fresh, but too late to assist in saving any poisoned birds is heartbreaking. Losing one vulture is always a tragedy. Losing at least 16 birds at one feeding is a crisis,” said PJ Roberts, manager of Wildlife ACT’s Emergency Response Team. The first bird found, a white-backed vulture (Gyps africanus), hinted at Roberts’s worst fears: “It had a full crop (still containing undigested food), contorted feet and many dead flies were scattered around its remains – all clear signs of fast-acting poison. The team swept the area, but it took an aerial search to locate more victims. “We landed to find the devastating remains of multiple birds hidden at the base of the tree. Included in this discovery was the removed, yellow, wing tags of H065; a young lappet-faced vulture (Torgos tracheliotos) tagged in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in October 2017 as a fledgling,” said Roberts. “No more than 30m away, the morbid discovery of 13 processed and harvested white-backed vultures, with their heads and feet removed, were found very purposefully hidden in a thick bush,” added Roberts. Nearby was the body of an impala – snared, killed, and laced with poison. The rangers burned all the contaminated carcasses to ash to remove the poison from the ecosystem. It is the fourth vulture poisoning incident in northern Zululand this year, bringing the total recorded number of vultures harvested for body parts in this region alone to 53. The actual number of birds killed is believed to be much higher as many incidents are never detected. According to records kept by EWT, more than 1,200 vultures have been deliberately poisoned in Southern and Eastern Africa this year. Culprits include poachers who poison the carcasses of elephant and other game in an apparent effort to conceal illegal activities from rangers. Africa’s vulture populations have already declined by an average 62 percent over the past three decades – with seven species crashing by 80 percent. Experts recently warned that the continent’s vulture populations face the prospect of collapsing, in much the same way as vulture species did in Asia thirty years ago.

Furry, cute and drooling herpes: what to do with Florida’s invasive monkeys? Visitors to Florida’s picturesque Silver Springs state park have been warned that they may encounter an unusual threat: hundreds of wild, herpes-infected monkeys.The monkeys, rhesus macaques, originate from two small groups released into the Silver Springs state park almost 100 years ago by an eccentric boat captain. Their numbers have soared since then, and experts predict there could be 400 roaming the park by 2022. A video captured by a Florida kayaker in October showed how close humans can come to the monkeys. The footage showed the rhesus macaques hurling themselves into the Silver River from the treetops.“I personally am concerned,” said Steve Johnson, an associate professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida. Johnson and a colleague, Jane Anderson, published research into the monkeys in 2018.About 25% of the monkeys harbor herpes B, which can be fatal to humans, and 4-14% of them were found to be “shedding the virus orally by mouth” – meaning a bite could transmit the virus.“There’s a low risk, but very high consequence should something happen. Fortunately nothing has happened yet, but I wouldn’t want to have that looming over me if I was the state,” Johnson said.It’s not just the risk of herpes infection that troubles scientists. The monkeys are also having a detrimental effect on native wildlife. Anderson found that the monkeys were “major predators” on artificially placed birds’ nests. “So if that translates to real nests there’s the potential for predation there, and so the environmental impact of something from an invasive species is what I’m concerned about,” Johnson said. “Even though the monkeys have been there over 100 years they’re not native, they’re not supposed to be there. There were brought there by people. They’re like feral hogs, or feral cats.

Widespread Mussel Die-Offs Worry Scientists (video) Scientists are scrambling to understand why thousands of dead mussels are turning up in several rivers across the United States and Europe, including one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. Experts worry that the rapid decline of mussels in Appalachia’s Clinch River may be a sign of a worldwide die-off of the important water cleaners. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.

New Border Wall Construction Threatens 8 Species With Extinction – A new report shows that groundwater needed to construct Trump‘s border wall will increase the likelihood of extinction for eight species, as Newsweek reported. A plan to construct the 30-foot tall border wall along the edge of the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Arizona threatens the likelihood that the rare Rio Yaqui fish will continue to survive. The protected desert springs and streams provide the only habitat for the fish, as The Guardian reported.In addition to the Rio Yaqui fish, three other fish rely on the groundwater there that is rapidly depleting as construction marches forward on a 20-mile stretch of wall. The Yaqui topminnow; chub; beautiful shiner; and Yaqui catfish are all directly threatened by the loss of groundwater. The federally protected Chiricahua leopard frogs, Huachuca water umbel, Mexican garter snakes and Aplomado falcon are also threatened, as Newsweek reported. “There’s good reason to believe that the Yaqui fish’s only U.S. habitat is drying up as a result of tens or hundreds of thousands of gallons of groundwater being pumped to build the border wall,” said Laiken Jordahl, a borderlands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity who recently visited the area, as the The Guardian reported.The endangered species there were already under threat from a prolonged drought and extensive heat waves fueled by the climate crisis. Furthermore, water-intensive crops like alfalfa and pecans are straining aquifers in the region, according to The Guardian. To construct the border wall, the Trump administration claimed a national emergency, which allowed it to divert Department of Defense funds earmarked for national security and counter-drug programs towards construction of a wall. To accelerate construction, the federal government waived 28 laws designed to protect clean air, clean water, public lands and endangered wildlife, as the Center for Biological Diversity noted in apress release.The Trump administration waived some of the bedrock environmental protections, including the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Fish and Wildlife Act and Migratory Bird Conservation Act. All of these acts require extensive scientific, environmental and costs analysis before a proposed project can move forward, according to The Guardian.

Extreme heat wipes out almost one third of Australia’s spectacled flying fox population – An extreme heatwave in far north Queensland last month is estimated to have killed more than 23,000 spectacled flying foxes, equating to almost one third of the species in Australia. The deaths were from colonies in the Cairns area where the mercury soared above 42 degrees Celsius [107.6 F] two days in a row, breaking the city’s previous record temperature for November by five degrees [9 F]. Ecologist, Dr Justin Welbergen from the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (Western Sydney University) is collating the numbers of bat deaths and said it was the second-largest mass die-off of flying foxes recorded in Australia and the first time it had happened to this species. “These are certainly very serious wildlife die-off events and they occur at almost biblical scales,” he said.”[The biggest] was in south-east Queensland back in 2014 where about 46,000 animals (predominantly black flying foxes) died.”The population size of the spectacled flying fox in Australia is estimated to be about 75,000 individuals, give or take, so for all intents and purpose that means we have lost close to a third of the entire species in Australia. “Losing a third of the species on a hot afternoon I would argue certainly strengthens the case for both the Federal and Queensland Governments to consider lifting the species from ‘vulnerable’ to ‘endangered’, if not ‘critically endangered’.” Flying foxes dropped dead from roosting trees around Cairns during the heatwave with some residents forced to leave their homes due to the smell from thousands of rotting carcasses.

Thousands of Koalas Feared Dead in Australia Wildfires – Australia is still on fire. And now thousands of koalas are feared to have died in a wildfire-ravaged area north of Sydney. “Up to 30 percent of their habitat has been destroyed,” Environment Minister Sussan Ley told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Friday. “We’ll know more when the fires are calmed down and a proper assessment can be made.” Land clearing and development over time has meant a loss of habitat for the tree-dwelling koalas. Last year, a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Australia report said there were fewer than 20,000 koalas left in New South Wales and they risked becoming extinct as early as 2050, largely because of “excessive tree-clearing for farming.” Minister Ley said up to 30% of the koalas in the region had been killed in recent days. Australia has just endured a heatwave that broke records for highest temperature ever for consecutive days. And the fires accelerated on Saturday in the country’s east as temperatures soared. “I think this is the single loudest alarm bell I’ve ever heard on global heating,” said Kees van der Leun, a director at the American consultancy firm Navigant. Common Dreams has reported that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison attacked environmental activists in a November speech, warning of a “new breed of radical activism” that was “apocalyptic in tone” and pledging to outlaw boycott campaigns that he argued could hurt the country’s mining industry. “We are working to identify mechanisms that can successfully outlaw these indulgent and selfish practices that threaten the livelihoods of fellow Australians, especially in rural and regional areas,” Morrison said. “New threats to the future of the resources sector have emerged,” he said. “A new breed of radical activism is on the march. Apocalyptic in tone. It brooks no compromise. It’s all or nothing.”

Photos of a koala hospital in Australia show just how devastating recent bushfires have been for the iconic marsupial – Bushfires throughout the Australian territory of New South Wales have devastated its koala population.So far, the wildfires have ravaged about 12.35 million acres of land, killing nine people and destroying more than 1,000 homes. Moreover, the feared ecological loss is enormous. Australia’s environment minister, Sussan Ley, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that her ministry estimated that up to 30% of koalas’ habitat had been destroyed. Exactly how much has been lost won’t be known until the fires die down.But some Australians have been galvanised to save one of their country’s most beloved animal species. As Australia continues to face extreme heat and bushfires, videos of koalas being given water have spread across social media. And the grassroots support doesn’t stop there.Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, a small koala hospital in New South Wales, raised over 2.2 million Australian dollars after starting a GoFundMe page with a goal of just 25,000 AUD. The GoFundMe is one of the most successful in Australian history, and it even caught the attention of the actor Leonardo DiCaprio.Pictures from the hospital s how the devastation Australia’s koalas are facing and the efforts of ordinary Australians to save the iconic marsupial.

Australia bushfires: More than 500 million animals and plants die –There are real concerns entire species of plants and animals have been wiped out by bushfires following revelations almost 500 million animals have died since the crisis began.Ecologists from the University of Sydney now estimate 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles have been lost since September. That figure is likely to soar following the devastating fires which have ripped through Victoria and the NSW South Coast over the past couple of days, leaving several people dead or unaccounted for, razing scores of homes and leaving thousands stranded. This morning more than 130 fires were raging across NSW and Victoria, with millions of hectares of national park already burnt. Harrowing scenes of kangaroos fleeing walls of fire, charred bodies of koalas and cockatoos falling dead out of trees have horrified the world as it tries to take in the scale of the unfolding disaster. Koalas have been among the hardest hit of Australia’s native animals because they are slow moving and only eat leaves from the eucalyptus tree, which are filled with oil, making them highly flammable.

Australia fires worsen as every state hits 40C – Scores of fires are burning out of control across Australia amid a heatwave that has seen temperatures exceed 40C (104F) in every state. The most dangerous fires on Monday were in the state of Victoria. About 30,000 residents and tourists were urged to flee East Gippsland – a popular holiday region – but evacuations were later deemed too risky as fires encroached on major roads. A volunteer firefighter died battling a blaze in the state of New South Wales. In total, 10 people have died in the nation’s bushfire crisis since September. Meteorologists say a climate system in the Indian Ocean, known as the dipole, is the main driver behind the extreme heat in Australia. Authorities said the volunteer firefighter was killed and two others suffered burns after their truck rolled over in extreme winds while they were battling a blaze east of the city of Albury. “Words fail at times like this,” New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklia wrote on Twitter. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said another firefighter was injured in a separate vehicle. The volunteer firefighter is the third to be killed so far this fire season. Two volunteer firefighters, both fathers to young children, died on 19 December battling a blaze near Sydney. Scorching temperatures, strong winds and thunderstorms created dangerous conditions in Victoria on Monday. In East Gippsland, three fires burning near the towns of Bruthen, Buchan and Bonang rapidly expanded as temperatures soared to the mid-40Cs. Officials said the wind-driven blazes were “racing” towards the coast, and had moved faster than predicted. Residents in northern Melbourne were told to “act immediately to survive” as firefighters struggled to battle an out-of-control fire. Officials said the fire in Bundoora, some 16km (10 miles) north of Melbourne city centre, was “threatening homes and lives”. “The safest option is to take shelter indoors immediately. It is too late to leave,”

‘A day we do not often see’: Australia’s southeast under huge fire threat (Reuters) – A volunteer firefighter was killed battling Australian bushfires on Monday as “columns” of flames generating their own dangerous weather systems bore down on a tourist region, prompting the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. The firefighter, and two others who suffered burns, were working on a fire about 70 km (45 miles) east of Albury in New South Wales (NSW) when, it is believed, their truck rolled after being hit by strong winds, authorities said on Twitter. The incident took the death toll from the country’s raging bushfires to nine and added pressure on authorities to reconsider New Year celebration plans for the city of Sydney. Around 100 fires are burning across Australia, with as many as 14 “emergency” warnings in place for Victoria while fires are also threatening homes and infrastructure in South Australia and Tasmania. Tens of thousands were evacuated as “columns of fire” fuelled by extreme heat and high winds bore down on the popular tourist region of East Gippsland in Victoria state in Australia’s southeast. Wildfires that have plagued the country’s eastern coast for weeks flared again to danger levels in East Gippsland, an area encompassing two national parks, lakes and coastal plains that is half the size of Belgium. By late afternoon, officials warned holiday makers to stay off the roads because of thick smoke and unpredictable, fast-moving fires, adding that it was now too late for people who had not left the region to do so. “Leaving now would be deadly,” authorities said. The state’s Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp said “columns of fire” were punching into the atmosphere and generating their own erratic weather systems. “There’s lightning coming out of these columns,” Crisp told reporters. “It is unpredictable, it’s dangerous out there.” With some firefronts stretching more than 1,000 km (620 miles) and temperatures reaching as high as 43 Celsius (109 Fahrenheit), Crisp said the danger will remain high into the evening. Bushfires have destroyed more than 4 million hectares (10 million acres) – an area the size of Japan – across Australia in recent weeks.

Sydney Fireworks Show to Go Forth Despite Fire Risk – Despites calls by politicians and more than a quarter of a million signatures on an online petition to cancel Sydney’s New Years’ Eve fireworks show, city officials are pushing forward and saying the show will happen, as CNN reported. The Change.org petition now approaching 300,000 signatures asks for the money spent on the iconic fireworks display to be given to the firefighters and farmers struggling to battle the prolonged brushfires in New South Wales, according to NPR. Temperatures in the harbor near the Sydney Opera house will push past 90 degrees on Tuesday, while temperatures in Western Sydney are expected to exceed 100 degrees. The heat wave coupled with the smoke already in the air and the threat of more brushfires has forced several towns in New South Wales to cancel their fireworks displays, according to The Guardian. Deputy Premier of New South Wales John Barilaro took to Twitter to say the Sydney show should be cancelled. “Sydney’s New Years Eve Fireworks should just be cancelled, very easy decision,” Barilaro tweeted. “The risk is too high and we must respect our exhausted RFS volunteers.” The NSW Rural Fire Service forecast “severe” fire danger for the region on Tuesday and did not lift the total fire ban for several rural communities that had applied for an exemption to the ban so they too could have a fireworks display. Several mayors of towns where fireworks were cancelled said the wind conditions made it irresponsible to continue with a fireworks display, according to the The Sydney Morning Herald. As one of the first cities in the world to welcome in the new year, Sydney invests heavily in a spectacular fireworks show in the city’s harbor, which generates roughly $90 million for the New South Wales economy, asThe Sydney Morning Herald reported

The holiday is over – get out NOW! More than 30,000 tourists are forced to cut short their breaks and are ordered to flee picturesque seaside town before extreme bushfires shut major highway — Residents and holidaymakers are being told to leave a massive part of Victoria amid worsening fire conditions. About 30,000 holidaymakers in Lakes Entrance along with locals have been given the blunt warning. ‘We are asking you to now leave East Gippsland from that area, east of Bairnsdale, along the coast there, into the parks, into the forest,’ Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp told reporters on Sunday. ‘You should not be there tomorrow, and we want you to get out now.’ Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews posted a Tweet urging tourists to leave. ‘If you are in East Gippsland you should leave today while it’s safe to do so,’ Mr Andrews posted. ‘Residents should activate their fire plan and consider staying with friends and family outside the area. If you are visiting, you should leave today. Please DO NOT travel to the area.’ Bureau of Meteorology Kevin Parkyn said a wind change in East Gippsland about midnight is ‘very problematic when it comes to fires and the landscape’. ‘It’s a very serious life-threatening situation. Make no mistake about it,’ he said.The combination of the hot, dry windy conditions coupled with the wind change across the state on Monday will fuel the nasty fire conditions. If visitors and locals refuse to budge from the area, Mr Crisp warned there won’t be enough trucks to go around and people may be stuck for days due to road closures. More than 70 helicopters and planes will be working on Monday if conditions allow. Richard Darby from the Swifts Creek General Store told The Herald Sun that ignoring the warnings could have devastating consequences. ‘It’s going to be a very bad day tomorrow, they are telling everyone to get out while they can,’ Mr Darby said. ‘There are 100kmh winds tomorrow, that could be suicide.’

Australia fires: Thousands flee to the sea as fires race to coast – BBC News – Thousands of people in Australia have fled to the seafront to seek shelter from bushfires racing to the coast. One blaze moved into the Victorian coastal town of Mallacoota, throwing embers towards homes. Locals described a “terrifying experience” of camping on wharves and boarding boats under blood-red skies. Meanwhile, officials confirmed another two people had died in blazes in New South Wales. There are now 12 deaths linked to the nation’s bushfire crisis. The beach town where fires turned day to night Several holiday spots along the coast between Sydney and Melbourne are currently cut off by fire fronts. More than a dozen “emergency-level” blazes span a 500km (310 miles) stretch across two Australian states – from Batemans Bay in New South Wales (NSW) to Bairnsdale in Victoria. The bodies of two men – believed to be a father and son – were found in the town of Corbargo in NSW. A massive blaze had ripped through the town’s main street on Tuesday. “Very tragic set of circumstances,” said NSW police deputy commissioner Gary Worboys. “[They were] obviously trying to do their best with the fire as it came through in the early hours of the morning.” Authorities said there were five more people missing in the region – four in Victoria and another man in NSW. Victoria’s state premier Daniel Andrews said navy ships may be called upon to provide food, water and power to the cut-off townships. The main road in the region – the Princes Highway – has been closed off. “Some of these isolated communities can be accessed by sea,” he said. Authorities had urged people in the region – many of them tourists – to stay put because by Monday it was too late and dangerous to evacuate.

Australia Wildfire Forces 4,000 to Flee to Sea –An out-of-control wildfire in the Australian state of Victoria forced thousands of people to flee towards the coast Tuesday. Residents of the town of Mallacoota hunkered down in their homes or headed for the relative safety of the beach when a siren sounded around 8 a.m., BBC News reported. Victoria’s state emergency commissioner Andrew Crisp said 4,000 sheltered by the water.”It’s mayhem out there, it’s armageddon,” evacuee Charles Livingstone told The Guardian Australia. He said he had evacuated to the town’s jetty Monday night with his wife and 18-month-old baby, but moved to the community center to escape the smoke. The fire that prompted the flight to the coast sparked Sunday in Wingan, according to The Guardian, but CNN reported that there were more than 10 fires burning Monday in the East Gippsland area where Mallacoota is located. Three of those fires have been burning for more than a month, and several new blazes were started Sunday by dry lightning and then spread because of hot, dry, windy weather. Mallacoota was not evacuated along with the rest of East Gippsland Sunday, and by Monday it was too dangerous for anyone to move, The Guardian explained. Instead, residents fled to the water’s edge, and the fire followed them around 1:30 p.m. “It should have been daylight but it was black like midnight and we could hear the fire roaring,” local business owner David Jeffrey told BBC News. “We were all terrified for our lives.” He said residents planned to jump off a sea wall into the water if the flames came too close. Luckily, a change in the wind redirected the fire away from the town. However, residents will now have to deal with fire damage. Warrington told CNN that “a number of houses” were destroyed or damaged. Mallacoota residents estimated on social media that around 20 homes, the school, golf club and bowling club had been burned, according to The Guardian.

Australia Burning; Tourists in New South Wales and Victoria Flee to Beaches – Yves Smith – Seeing what is happening to Australia, even from this remove, is sickening, for its people, for its wildlife, and for what it bodes for the future of significant swathes of the planet. As most readers know, I lived in Sydney from 2002 to 2004. Even though Australia had been moving in a neoliberal direction, it was still well behind the US and UK. It was strongly egalitarian. People mixed across lines. Even in a commercially-minded town like Sydney, the prevailing ethic was to work hard and play hard. It had fine amenities like its public transportation system and beaches. Of course, this was also the same Australia that joined the Iraq “coalition of the willing” even though 94% of the population, a level pretty much never seen in polling, had opposed the I remember the two days when I was a Sydney resident when brush fires got close enough to Sydney to turn the sky a sickly yellow and give an acrid smell to the air when it blew from inland to the harbor. That was disconcerting, yet it’s a pale shadow compared to what is happening now. By way of background, why Australia is going up like a torch. From a November 20 article in Science: Driven in part by a severe drought, fires have burned 1.65 million hectares in the state of New South Wales, more than the state’s total in the previous 3 years combined… David Bowman, a fire ecologist and geographer and director of the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, spoke with Science about the crisis. The flames have charred even moist ecosystems once thought safe, he says…. We’re seeing recurrent fires in tall, wet eucalypt forests, which normally only burn very rarely. A swamp dried out near Port Macquarie, and organic sediments in the ground caught on fire. When you drop the water table, the soil is so rich in organic matter it will burn. We’ve seen swamps burning all around. Even Australia’s fire-adapted forest ecosystems are struggling because they are facing increasingly frequent events. In Tasmania, over the past few years we have seen environments burning that historically see fires very rarely, perhaps every 1000 years. So worsening conditions were likely even before the super hot days set in. Lambert found this National Museum of Australia article on the Federation Drought of 1895 to 1903, which gives some perspective on contemporary droughts and fires. Very much worth reading in full. Some key bits: In 1892 Australia had 106 million sheep, two-thirds of which were in the eastern states. By 1903 the national flock had almost halved to 54 million. The nation lost more than 40 per cent of its cattle over the same period, nearly three million in Queensland alone. Droving took an immense toll on sheep and cattle with losses of up to 70 per cent recorded, particularly in regions where watering points could be 100 kilometres apart. In 1902 local newspapers reported that more than 2000 steers lay dead along the Goondiwindi to Miles route in Queensland….

The bushfires in Australia are so big they’re generating their own weather – ‘pyrocumulonimbus’ thunderstorms that can start more fires — The bushfires in Australia are now so big that they are generating their own weather, in the form of giant thunderstorms that start more fires, according to the Bureau of Meteorology in Victoria. “Pyro-cumulonimbus clouds have developed to altitudes over 16km in East #Gippsland this afternoon. These fire-induced storms can spread fires through lightning, lofting of embers and generation of severe wind outflows,” the bureau tweeted on Monday. Satellite photography shows the intense smoke generating atmospheric clouds: Intense fires generate smoke, obviously. But their heat can also create a localized updraft powerful enough to create its own changes in the atmosphere above. As the heat and smoke rise, the cloud plume can cool off, generating a large, puffy cloud full of potential rain. The plume can also scatter embers and hot ash over a wider area. Eventually, water droplets in the cloud condense, generating a downburst of rain – maybe. But the “front” between the calm air outside the fire zone and a pyrocumulonimbus storm cloud is so sharp that it also generates lightning – and that can start new fires. If powerful enough, a pyrocumulonimbus storm can generate a fire tornado, which happened during the Canberra bushfires in 2003. Scientists worry that “pyroCbs” are on the rise around the world, driven by warmer temperatures and more intense fires, Yale E360 reported. Their plumes are so strong that they can even shoot smoke into the stratosphere, 6 to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface. Here is a time lapse of a pyrocumulonimbus storm in action, from a different Australian fire:

Australia is becoming a nation of dread – and the world looks on with pity and scorn – We know the sight by heart: corrugated iron on a low pile of ash with a chimney left standing. Another house gone. And the pattern of bushfires is part of our lives too. They burn until a cold wind blows up the coast when it buckets down dousing the flames. But that’s not the pattern now. The downpour has been postponed officially until late January. Things are looking up: it was April. Either way the experts are saying the weeks ahead are looking dry, tinder dry. As that news sank in this summer an unfamiliar emotion took hold in Australia: not fear so much as dread. These fires are not going out. We know the language of fires. All our lives we’ve waited to hear a blaze is “under control”. Sweet words. But these days they come with a caveat: only for a few days until the wind shifts and the fire jumps the lines. And the rain never comes. We’re used to seeing the bush growing back quickly, green shoots appearing within days on burnt trunks. Eucalypt forests have amazing regenerative powers. But these fires are tearing through ancient forests that have never burnt before. They are done for. And the burnt gums are waiting for rain. We’re taught not to look at the sun. Every child on earth is given the same warning. But in Australia these days you can stare all you like. Take a good long look at that pink disc sinking in the murk. It can’t do you much harm. It’s been tamed by smoke. The smoke is new too: cities suffocating. We’re used to a day or two in town when there’s a bit of smoke about and the light turns a horrible yellow. That’s every summer. But this is different. Deep in cities, miles from the fire front, the smoke is so thick you can’t see to the end of the street. Yet we’ve never seen so much before. Everyone is a photographer now. And until the transmission towers burn and batteries flatten extraordinary images are making their way to the media. We’re seeing these horrors in all their detail. On the beach at Mallacoota, families sat in the smoke under a sky of flame. It’s all on camera. The scene was repeated up and down the coast. At Malua Bay in New South Wales, children, their parents and grandparents were trapped for a day and night between fires and the sea. One of the duties of a leader is to find the words in times like these. So many have died. So much has been destroyed. But how can Scott Morrison speak to the experience of the country if he can’t admit we are living through unique times? He says instead: “We have faced these disasters before.” Watch and act, Prime Minister. Watch and act. If Morrison could face the truth, he might speak not only to his country but the world. If Australia were taking effective action against climate change, this catastrophe would give us the right to demand better of the great rogue states on climate, China and the USA. We’re doing our bit, he says as the country burns and the world looks on with a mix of pity and scorn.

Queensland government was warned about risks of Chinese company’s water extraction – Queensland government experts raised repeated warnings about the long-term sustainability of groundwater extraction at a southern Queensland property which has since been approved to operate as a commercial water mine. The approval for the 96m litre a year bottled water extraction operation at Cherrabah – in a severely drought-hit area where locals are on water rations andcommunities at imminent risk of running dry – has raised significant questions about the oversight and regulation of critical water resources in Queensland. Documents obtained by Guardian Australia show how longstanding concerns about groundwater security at Cherrabah were overridden by changes to Queensland law enacted by Campbell Newman’s government in 2013. Under the changes, the Chinese-owned company Joyful View Garden Real Estate Development Resort Pty Ltd was automatically granted a 94-year extraction permit at Cherrabah when a short-term allocation expired in 2017. Written concerns outlined in the documents obtained by Guardian Australia include the expert review of a study commissioned by Joyful View in 2009 that was the basis for its subsequent water extraction applications. The study contained repeated qualifications that its modelling could not be relied upon for a period longer than 12 months. One bureaucrat detailed “not small or irrelevant errors” in that study, including that it overstated the amount of rainfall recharge to groundwater “by a factor of almost 20″. The public servant, whose name is redacted from the document, calculated an annual recharge of 40m litres – less than half the Cherrabah allocation. Another public servant, the principal natural resource officer for groundwater, wrote that he had concerns about Joyful View, which at the time had wanted the allocation to support plans for a massive resort development. He raised concerns the company might seek to exert political pressure to gain the permit.

10 children allegedly started recent Queensland bushfires, police say – More than half of the 18 people who have been dealt with by police over recent Queensland bushfires are children, police have revealed. Since a state of emergency was declared in Queensland on November 9, police said they had taken action against 18 people for deliberately lighting fires. Of that, police said, 10 are juveniles who are being dealt with under the Youth Justice Act.In the two years to the end of 2018, 136 children were charged with endangering property in Queensland by lighting fires – just 18 were convicted.Several teens were charged over recent fires including a 16-year-old boy who allegedly started a fire west of Yeppoon that destroyed 30 structures and two other teens over a September blaze at Peregian on the Sunshine Coast.Police chose not to charge two teenagers who were believed to have accidentally started a fire from a cigarette which gutted Binna Burra Lodge in the Gold Coast Hinterland in September. Attorney General Yvette D’Ath said statistics showed there were more effective ways to deal with young offenders than youth detention.

Firefighters face 20m high wall of flame | The Canberra Times – Fire crews are battling catastrophic fire dangers in Victoria with flames leaping 20 metres into the air and 14 km high smoke columns creating fire-generated thunderstorms. Multiple emergency alerts have been issued for out-of-control blazes in Victoria’s far east and northeast. A fire is also threatening lives and homes in Melbourne’s northern suburb of Bundoora, where residents have been told it’s too late to leave. The worst is yet to come with a dangerous wind change expected to sweep fire grounds across Victoria around midnight on Monday. The state is now bracing for the potentially ferocious wind change, which could bring gusts up to 120 km/h across East Gippsland into Tuesday morning, the weather bureau has warned. “It is quite an extreme day for us, really the first really bad day that we’ve had on this group of fires since they started on November 21,” East Gippsland fires incident controller Ben Rankin told reporters at Bairnsdale. “(It’s) comparable almost to Black Saturday in some ways, if the forecast does eventuate as given to us.” Earlier, Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp said firefighters had faced 20 metre high walls of flames generating massive smoke columns. “It is unpredictable, it’s dangerous out there. A fire that started mid-afternoon moved about 24 km within four or five hours as the wind changed direction,” he said. “It put up a column, punching into the atmosphere 14km high. These columns are generating their own weather. There’s lightning coming out of these columns.” Of the more than 30 bushfires burning across the state, 17 started due to dry lightning.

Australia’s temperate mountains evacuated as bushfires approach (Reuters) – Hundreds of residents and holiday-makers have been ordered to evacuate Australia’s temperate Snowy Mountains region in the state of New South Wales as fierce fires threaten from two sides, authorities said on Thursday.The order covers the Kosciuszko National Park, a near 7,000 square km (2,700 square mile) area popular for snow sports in winter, requiring hotels and other businesses to close and people to leave by Friday morning.“This is not a fire season that New South Wales has seen before,” the state’s National Parks and Wildlife Service said on Thursday.“It is hotter and drier than we have previously experienced.” The mountain area is located 200 km (125 miles) inland from a mass exodus occurring along Australia’s south-east coast where fires fueled by extreme temperatures are decimating small towns.Huge bushfires have been burning for weeks across Australia, with new blazes sparked into life in bushland left tinder dry after a three-year drought.Although the valleys and mountains around Mount Kosciuszko, the country’s highest peak, are much cooler than the fire zones further east, fires are threatening to the west and south of the national park and are unlikely to be immediately contained, authorities said.While the mountainous region is best known for its winter ski fields, it also attracts a large number of tourists in summer enticed by the cooler climate.Poole said there were typically several hundred people staying in the area’s main tourist hubs at this time of year.

Bushfire emergency declared on Hobart’s outskirts, lives and homes in danger – A major bushfire burning out of control on the outskirts of Hobart will put lives in danger and may destroy homes, the Tasmania Fire Service has warned. The blaze, which is listed at an emergency level, is burning at Collinsvale Road in Glenlusk, in a rural area north-west of the city. The Tasmania Fire Service has urged Glenlusk residents and those in surrounding areas to leave immediately, as thick smoke and thousands of embers are likely to put surrounding homes in danger. It is unclear at this stage what caused the blaze. Water bombing aircraft have been called in, while 10 fire crews are on foot working to bring the fire under control. The blaze is described as fast-moving and is in an area close to several homes and the Collinsvale Primary School. An evacuation centre has been set up at Collinsvale Recreational Ground and War Memorial Hall. Dozens of bushfires continue to burn across the rest of the state. Five watch and act alerts are in place for the Fingal area, in Tasmania’s north-east, and four advice warnings are in place in Pelham, Longford and in the state’s south-west. The weather bureau has forecast warmer temperatures over the weekend. More to come.

Seventeen people missing in fire-ravaged East Gippsland – Victorian authorities are ramping up efforts to reach and evacuate cut-off communities in East Gippsland, where 17 people remain missing after destructive bushfires tore through the region. Rescue crews were battling to clear roads to reach them so they could evacuate before the risk increased this weekend, he said. “I’m very sad to have to report that there are at least 17 people at this stage that we can’t account for,” Mr Andrews told reporters this afternoon. “I want to reassure every Victorian that Victoria Police are sparing no effort to try to locate these people,” he said. A body found in a home at Buchan has been identified as 67-year-old Mick Roberts. Authorities are trying to help evacuate anyone who wants to leave the town before the fire danger rises with more hot and windy weather on the weekend. Nine satellite phones had also been dropped into other isolated communities, Mr Andrews said. The charity group Need for Feed has also organised fodder to be dropped across East Gippsland to help isolated farmers trying to stop their livestock from starving. Meanwhile, some of the 4,000 people trapped in the coastal town of Mallacoota are waiting to be evacuated by a Navy ship that arrived this morning.

Navy prepares for mass evacuation of Mallacoota – Sick and vulnerable people, including children, could be evacuated from the bushfire-ravaged town of Mallacoota by air later today if smoky conditions allow. But most residents and tourists will have to wait until tomorrow morning to evacuate on board a naval ship that is docked off shore. About 800 people are expected to board the HMAS Choules when the evacuations begin at 7:00am on Friday. Mr Andrews said it may be necessary for the ship to make multiple journeys. “Some people will want to go, some people will be happy to stay,” he said. “Air becomes an option too, to evacuate further people, but not while this very, very dense smoke makes it unsafe.” Victoria Police assistant commissioner Michael Grainger said the priority would be to evacuate the sick, children and vulnerable people and then those who want to leave. “We have aircraft ready to fly immediately and I’m advised by this afternoon, late this afternoon today, we’ll be in a position to evacuate some people from Mallacoota by air,” he said. Brown-grey smoke covers a pier, jutting out into the water. About 3,000 tourists and 1,000 locals are stuck in Mallacoota as roads remain cut off after a fire tore through on New Year’s Eve.They have been told to attend public meetings which will be held throughout the day, and register their interest if they want to leave. Elsewhere in East Gippsland, 17 people are still missing.

NSW fires: State of emergency declared as PM urges calm amid mass exodus – The New South Wales government has declared a seven-day state of emergency ahead of dangerous bushfire conditions forecast for Saturday. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian says the state of emergency will allow officials to conduct forced evacuations, road closures and “anything else that we need to do as a state to keep residents safe and to keep properties safe”. NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said 113 fires are burning across the state and that large parts of the state are expected to be affected by the dangerous fire conditions on Saturday. “We are focusing very much on south-eastern quadrant of New South Wales but not at the exclusion of all these other fires we have across the state.” He said efforts to contain the fires are continuing to prevent multiple fires from converging. “[On Saturday, it will be a] pretty volatile stretch along the coastal stretch like we saw on New Year’s Eve with the wind strengths, gusting particularly 70, 80km/h or more in some parts. “It is going to be a very dangerous day. It’s going to be a very difficult day.” Parts of the NSW South Coast are in “chaos” as a mass exodus of holiday-makers begins before a return of extreme fire danger on Saturday. Tourists who have been ordered to leave fire-hit communities on the NSW South Coast are facing shortages of food, water and fuel shortages.Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged Australians to remain calm. “My simple request is to be patient, to have confidence in the state agencies,” Mr Morrison told media in Sydney on Thursday.

NSW Premier declares state of emergency, as thousands flee South Coast ahead of horror fire weekend (photos) NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has declared a seven-day state of emergency starting at 9:00am on Friday due to the ongoing bushfire crisis. It will mean forced evacuations and road closures for people in bushfire zones ahead of Saturday’s forecast “horrible” fire conditions. NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said Saturday was likely to bring conditions more dangerous than New Year’s Eve, when bushfires left seven dead and thousands in peril. “There’ll be real challenges and very real risks associated with what’s being forecast and predicted for fire spread under the sorts of weather conditions we’re expecting as we head into Saturday,” he said.”The conditions on Saturday are likely to be worse than New Year’s Eve and a lot of those areas in the south-east quadrant of the state have the potential to be impacted – and impacted very heavily.”A “tourist leave zone” has been declared for a 14,000-square-kilometre area between Nowra and the edge of Victoria’s northern border. The NSW RFS initially declared a leave zone between Batemans Bay down to the border, but extended that zone to the area between Nowra and Ulladulla late on Thursday. It is the “largest mass relocation of people out of the region that we’ve ever seen,” NSW Minister for Transport Andrew Constance said.RFS Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said it was a race against the clock to get tourists out before Saturday.”We have so many fires still burning down there … and quite close to communities as well,” he said. “We won’t get containment on those fires before Saturday.” Strong winds, scorching temperatures and low humidity are forecast for Saturday with temperatures set to hit 41 degrees Celsius on the South Coast. The Princes Highway is closed between Milton and Tomerong, and between Batemans Bay and Moruya. Police and emergency services have been escorting people out of the Bendalong, Manyana and Cunjurong areas – north of Ulladulla – about 20 cars at a time. Those villages were cut off after the Currowan fire decimated large swathes of Conjola Park.

The Shocking Size Of The Australian Wildfires -The devastating California wildfires of 2018 and last year’s fires in the Amazon rainforest made international headlines and shocked the world, but, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, in terms of size they are far smaller than the current bushfire crisis in Australia, where approximately 12 million acres have been burned to date. Fires in remote parts of northern Russia burned 6.7 million acres last year, but most of the regions were sparsely populated and no casualties were reported.While the California fires of 2018 have long been put out and the Amazon fires have been reduced at least, Australia is only in the middle of its fire season. Ongoing heat and drought are expected to fan the flames further. This week, shocking pictures of bright orange skies in Queensland and flames ripping through towns captured the world’s attention.The bushfires grew more severe amidst a heatwave that saw Australia record its hottest day and simultaneously driest spring on record, according to The New York Times. New South Wales has been affected disproportionately, plunging Sydney into dark smoke in mid-December. Around 10 of the 12 million burned acres are located in the state. Bushfires frequently occur in Australia, with some years bringing more severe destruction that others. Scientists are claiming that in connection to climate change, fires will become more frequent and more severe when they happen.

Massive currents of smoke from Australian fires reach New Zealand – Bushfires in Australia are spewing a massive current of smoke across the Tasman towards New Zealand, and it’s likely to continue for a while. Imagery from the Japanese weather satellite Himawari-8 shows a blanket of smoke wide enough to cover the entire South Island has been blowing our way all afternoon. Metservice meteorologist Aidan Pyselman said they had been tracking the smoke for several weeks since the fires began. Bushfire smoke from Australia is blowing across the Tasman Sea towards the South Island. “It’s off and on, when we get a particular setup with the way the upper winds are it tends to come across. We haven’t had it consistently but at the moment we’ve got a front moving on to the South Island.” “It’s been happening for quite some time since the Aussie bushfires have been going. At the moment it’s definitely more noticeable, especially over the South Island,” he said. People in the South Island may notice a light haze up high in the sky, even in fine weather. The smoke wouldn’t have any impact on weather or temperatures in New Zealand, Pseylman said. “It’s only a really thin haze, temperatures are pretty warm but it’s not really anything to do with that.” Winds will continue to push smoke towards New Zealand for the next few days, but wind directions should change around he said. “It will probably peter out. At the moment its coming across on norwesterly flow, but later in the week the winds will be more souwesterly, so we probably won’t see as much.”

Blood red sun greets NZ on New Years Day as Australian bushfire smoke stains skies – An orange haze is covering the sky around New Zealand, reducing visibility to as little as 10km in affected areas. Bushfires in Australia are spewing a massive current of smoke across the Tasman towards New Zealand, and it’s likely to continue for a while. Imagery from the Japanese weather satellite Himawari-8 shows the blanket of smoke is wide enough to cover the entire South Island. Visibility in the affected areas is as low as 10km due to the hazy skies. MetService said a change in wind direction is expected to clear the smoke later in the afternoon. The haze is particularly obvious in Otago where a light yellow cloud cover gives the area a sepia-toned feel. In Lyttleton, Christchurch, Dudley Jackson snapped an image of the rising sun with a deep orange hue. From a boat at Waiheke Island early in the morning, Glyn Kerr captured a remarkable red sky and a dramatic reflection off the water.

‘We’ve lost our beautiful town’: Mogo residents flee as bushfire rages up NSW south coast – Lorena Granados stayed behind in the small New South Wales village of Mogo, until she could stay no longer. She and her family members were among the last to flee the bushfire as it began to envelop buildings along the main street.“The wind was so strong and furious and it just took over everything,” Granados told Guardian Australia.“We couldn’t breathe. We couldn’t see. The flames were just ferocious, they were furious, they were angry. There was nothing we could do, we had to pretty much save ourselves.”Granados and her partner, Gaspar Roman, live in Mogo, just south of Batemans Bay, and own a building in the heritage village centre, from where they run a leather shop. She said they knew about the fire threat late on Monday night and were warned about 5am on Tuesday to consider leaving. Family members spent much of the morning with three hoses, attempting to protect the leather shop. But by late morning it was consumed by the fire front. Granados does not know whether the family home has survived. “We fought to the end to save the leather shop,” Granados said. “It’s just catastrophic. There were three people who came to us that completely lost their homes. Gas bottles were exploding. It felt like we were in a war zone. Of what I’m aware three people have already lost their homes … we fought the flames, the flames were on top of us. When we left we were basically on fire, we had to leave. “We didn’t expect it to come so quickly, we were expecting to have to evacuate, but not so soon. My girlfriend rang me [early on Tuesday] and said ‘the fire is coming to Mogo you’ve got to get out of there’. As soon as she rang me I started getting things in the car, we started getting the hoses out and started fighting. Having left town and headed towards the coast, Granados and her family were unable to reach evacuation centres because roads in both directions were cut. “We’re here on the water and we can see the whole coast burning,” she told Guardian Australia about 2pm, about three hours after fleeing Mogo. “It’s burning right around us. The wind is just swirling.“I’m feeling really numb at the moment. I don’t know what we’re going to eat tonight, where we’re going to sleep tonight. I don’t know what we’re going to do.“We can’t get to the evacuation centres because we’re blocked out. We’re blocked off, we can’t go north or south, right now we have nowhere to go. “Just put the word out there, we’ve lost our really beautiful town.”

Half a Billion Animals May Have Been Killed by Australia Wildfires — Ecologists at the University of Sydney are estimating that nearly half a billion animals have been killed in Australia’s unprecedented and catastrophic wildfires, which have sparked a continent-wide crisis and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in desperation. News Corp Australia reported Wednesday that “there are real concerns entire species of plants and animals have been wiped out by bushfires following revelations almost 500 million animals have died since the crisis began.””Ecologists from the University of Sydney now estimate 480 million mammals, birds, and reptiles have been lost since September,” according to News Corp. “That figure is likely to soar following the devastating fires which have ripped through Victoria and the [New South Wales] South Coast over the past couple of days, leaving several people dead or unaccounted for, razing scores of homes and leaving thousands stranded.”The horrifying figures come as images and videos of animals suffering severe burns and dehydration continue to circulate on social media.Mark Graham, an ecologist with the National Conservation Council, told the Australian parliament that “the fires have burned so hot and so fast that there has been significant mortality of animals in the trees, but there is such a big area now that is still on fire and still burning that we will probably never find the bodies.”Koalas in particular have been devastated by the fires, Graham noted, because they “really have no capacity to move fast enough to get away.”As Reuters reported Tuesday, “Australia’s bushland is home to a range of indigenous fauna, including kangaroos, koalas, wallabies, possums, wombats, and echidnas. Officials fear that 30 percent of just one koala colony on the country’s northeast coast, or between 4,500 and 8,400, have been lost in the recent fires.” Australia’s coal-touting Prime Minister Scott Morrison has faced growing scrutiny for refusing to take sufficient action to confront the wildfires and the climate crisis that is driving them. Since September, the fires have burned over 10 million acres of land, destroyed more than a thousand homes and killed at least 17 people – including 9 since Christmas Day.On Thursday, the government of New South Wales (NSW) declared a state of emergency set to take effect Friday morning as the wildfires are expected to intensify over the weekend.”We’ve got a lot of fire in the landscape that we will not contain,” said Rob Rogers, deputy commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service. “We need to make sure that people are not in the path of these fires.”

Climate change has cut Australian farm profits by 22% a year over past 20 years, report says — Climate change has reduced Australian farms’ average annual profitability by 22%, or around $18,600 per farm, in the past two decades, according to the agriculture department. In a report released on Wednesday, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences has found that since 2000 changes in climate have reduced the revenue of Australian cropping farms by a total of $1.1bn a year. The report notes that average temperatures increased by about 1C since 1950 and compares Australia’s climate over the period 2000 to 2019 with the period from 1950 to 1999 by holding other variables, including farm output and commodity prices, constant. Since 2000, climate change has had a negative effect on the profitability of broadacre farms in Australia. Only Northern Territory farms improved profitability, up 8.7%, with massive cuts to profit in Victoria ( – 37.1%), Western Australia (-25.8%) and New South Wales (-25.5%) attributed to climate change. Cropping farms were the worst hit, with revenue down 8% or around $82,000 a farm, and a 35% reduction in profits, or $70,900 for a typical cropping farm. Report co-author David Galeano said adaptation to climate variability “is certainly helping” – and without it farms would have experienced a 26% reduction in profit, and cropping farms’ profits would be down 49%. Sheep farms experienced an 18.2% reduction in average annual profit, or $6,100 per farm. Beef farms were “less affected overall” with a reduction in average profits of 5%, although some areas – including south-western Queensland – were more affected than others. Climate conditions have “also contributed to increased risk in terms of more variable cash income and profitability, particularly for cropping farms”, the report says. Climate change increased downside risk, with the chance of “very low” profits – below 2% – more than doubling since 2000. The Abares report says that the current drought across much of eastern Australia “has demonstrated the dramatic effects that climate variability can have on farm businesses and households”. It says that drought-affected NSW recorded “large falls in profit in 2018 – 19″ but less drought-affected regions, including Western Australia, increased profits due to high commodity prices for grain and livestock. Abares warns that drought policy faces “an almost unavoidable dilemma: that providing relief to farm businesses and households in times of drought risks slowing industry structural adjustment and innovation”. “In some cases, well-intentioned policies can also disadvantage farmers who have been better prepared – or luckier – than farmers who are provided assistance and relief, diluting management incentives and raising difficult equity issues.”

In Pictures: India’s homeless bear brunt of record cold– The Indian capital of New Delhi entered 2020 reeling under an intense cold wave, with the homeless people on its streets bearing the maximum brunt. The Delhi government set up nearly 200 night shelters, but they are not enough to host all the city’s homeless, forcing hundreds of them to spend their nights in the open. “We have around 40 beds which can accommodate a maximum of 60 people, depending on the size of the families who can share a bed,” Sunil Kumar, who manages a night shelter near the Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, told Al Jazeera. “We can provide two or three blankets a person, but it doesn’t serve the purpose in such biting cold. There should be some room heaters too,” he said. While some kept themselves warm by lighting bonfires on the sidewalks, dense fog blanketed the city on Wednesday with the night temperature falling to 2.4 degrees Celsius (36.3 degrees Fahrenheit), disrupting road, air and rail traffic. On Monday, the Indian capital recorded its coldest December day since 1901, with the maximum temperature plummeting to the lowest ever at 9.4C (48.9F). “The maximum temperature also dipped to less than 10 degrees in large parts of northern India,” Kuldeep Shrivastava, head of the regional weather forecasting centre in New Delhi told Al Jazeera. Apart from the capital, Indian states and territories that continued to face a severe cold wave included Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. “Usually temperature dips in the month of January, but this time mercury has broken the record of decades in December itself,” Shrivastava added.

A Call to Action as World is Rapidly Depleting Essential Groundwater – Nearly 1,100 scientists, practitioners and experts in groundwater and related fields from 92 countries have called on the governments and non-governmental organizations to “act now” to ensure global groundwater sustainability. In their ‘Call To Action‘, the group said: “Groundwater, the invisible water beneath our feet, represents 99% of Earth’s liquid freshwater, making it critical for supplying drinking water, ensuring food security, adapting to climate variability, supporting biodiversity, sustaining surface water bodies and meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.”

• Action Item 1: Put the spotlight on global groundwater sustainability by completing a UN World Water Development Report, planning a global groundwater summit and recognizing the global importance of groundwater in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2022.
• Action item 2: Manage and govern groundwater sustainability from local to global scales by applying a guiding principle of groundwater sustainability by 2030.
• Action item 3: Invest in groundwater governance and management by implementing groundwater sustainability plans for stressed aquifers by 2030.

Groundwater is the drinking water source for more than two billion people, and provides more than 40% of the water for irrigated agriculture worldwide. Groundwater use has impacted environmentally critical streamflow in more than 15% of streams globally, and could impact the majority of streams by 2050. Around 1.7 billion people live above aquifers (geologic formations that provide groundwater) that are stressed by overuse. Poor groundwater quality disproportionately hits poor people with access to insecure drinking water sources – often unprotected shallow groundwater resources.

Megafarms and deeper wells are draining the water beneath rural Arizona – quietly, irreversibly – Vast expanses of lush green fields are multiplying in the Arizona desert, forming agricultural empires nourished with billions of gallons of groundwater in the otherwise parched landscape. Arizona’s groundwater levels are plummeting in many areas. The problem is especially severe in unregulated rural areas where there are no limits on pumping. The water levels in more than 2,000 wells have dropped more than 100 feet since they were first drilled. The number of newly constructed wells is accelerating, and wells are being drilled deeper and hitting water at lower levels. This free-for-all is draining away the water that homeowners also depend on, leaving some with dry wells. As the groundwater is depleted, Arizona is suffering permanent losses that may not be recouped for thousands of years. These underground reserves that were laid down over millennia represent the only water that many rural communities can count on as the desert Southwest becomes hotter and drier with climate change. Unfettered pumping has taken a toll on the state’s aquifers for many years, but just as experts are calling for Arizona to develop plans to save its ancient underground water, pumping is accelerating and the problems are getting much worse. Big farming companies owned by out-of-state investors and foreign agriculture giants have descended on rural Arizona and snapped up farmland in areas where there is no limit on pumping. Buying property from struggling small farms and homeowners, they’ve drilled wells a thousand feet deep or more, often spending more than half a million dollars per well to irrigate tens of thousands of acres of hay, corn, pistachios and other thirsty crops, with the expectation that they’ll soon be raking in profits. In unregulated rural areas where water tables are dropping, homeowners and politicians are calling for the state to step in to halt well-drilling, or create new rules to limit pumping. In these predominantly conservative communities, where the ethos is to take care of yourself and be wary of government regulation, prominent local officials are suggesting a moratorium on drilling, or the formation of new managed areas where drilling would be restricted.

Drought, what drought? Largest snowpack in 4 years, most stored water in Southern California history paint rosy picture – With snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada registering at 90% of normal Thursday and state reservoirs at record historic levels, the urban water supply picture for 2020 could hardly be any rosier. Southern California water managers are trying to restrain their joy, not because of a picture-postcard mountain top, but for the bounty that will come in spring when the snow melts, sending pristine water into state reservoirs and more importantly, southward via the State Water Project aqueduct, a source that supplies 30% of Southern California’s drinking water. Once that happens, local ground water managers will take a portion to restore overpumped basins still low from the five-year drought that ended in 2016, water managers say. And Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the largest wholesaler of water in the nation, says it will be there to facilitate that water transfer as long as its member agencies can pay for the purchases. “We are going into this year with 3.1 million acre-feet of storage – water in the bank. That is the highest storage level we’ve ever had,” said Demetri Polyzos, MWD resource planning team manager on Thursday, Jan. 2. (One acre foot equals 326,000 gallons, about as much as a Southern California family uses in a year). MWD cannot take any more water at its Diamond Valley Lake Reservoir in Hemet, which sit 98% full as of Jan. 2. Instead, it wants to supply basins in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties with extra storage. “We are here to provide supplemental water to the region. We certainly have the supplies,” Polyzos said. Other MWD reservoirs are also filling up: Lake Mathews in Riverside County is 84% full; Lake Skinner in western Riverside County, 87%; Castaic Lake in northern Los Angeles County, 79%. Major state reservoirs are doing even better: Shasta Lake, the state’s largest reservoir, near Redding, is currently 73% full, or 117% of normal. Lake Oroville, in Butte County, is currently 59% full, or 96% of normal. New Melones Lake, in the Sierra Foothills of Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, is 83% full, or 143% of its historic average. And San Luis Reservoir, near Los Banos, is 63% full, or 96% of its historical average. As of Thursday, the statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack stood at 90% of its historical average – the highest total in early January in four years, when it came in at 101% on Jan. 2, 2016.

Jakarta floods leave 21 dead and 30,000 homeless – Torrential rain has caused flash floods to inundate large parts of Indonesia’s capital and nearby towns, killing at least 21 people and forcing thousands more to evacuate. Deaths were caused by hypothermia, drowning and landslides, while four died after being electrocuted by power lines, the country’s disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) said on its website on Thursday morning. Nearly 30,000 Jakaratans had been evacuated to temporary shelters throughout the city by Thursday morning, the authorities said. Social affairs ministry spokesman Joko Hariyanto said in a message to Reuters that the death toll had now reached 21 after standing at nine overnight More rain and thunderstorms were forecast for later on Thursday. Television footage showed cars almost completely submerged and people wading through murky brown water in some parts of the capital. Water levels in east and south Jakarta as well as in the satellite cities of Tangerang and Bekasi in West Java province started to rise from 3am local time (2000 GMT) on Wednesday, according to the disaster mitigation agency. Indonesia’s state electricity utility said it had switched off the power in hundreds of districts in Jakarta, which is home to 30 million people. The floods also caused the temporary closure of the runway at Jakarta’s domestic Halim airport, with flights redirected to the capital’ bigger Soekarno airport.

21 Dead, 62,000 Displaced in Deadliest Flooding to Swamp Jakarta in Years -At least 21 people have died in some of the deadliest flooding to swamp Jakarta in years, according to the latest report from Reuters. Unusually heavy rain began to fall in and around the Indonesian capital Dec. 31, 2019: 377 millimeters (approximately 14.8 inches) were recorded New Year’s Eve at an East Jakarta airport by the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG). That’s the highest rainfall tally for a single day since records began in 1996, BBC News reported.”This rain is not ordinary rain,” the BMKG said in a statement reported by The Jakarta Post.The BMKG said the extreme rainfall was caused by the combination of a monsoon and the fact that warmer Indian Ocean temperatures south of Java had allowed more water vapor to accumulate in the atmosphere. Jakarta is especially vulnerable to flooding because it is the fastest sinking city in the world: a combination of sea level rise and land sinking caused by the drilling of groundwater wells and the weight of its buildings means much of North Jakarta could be underwater by 2050. Because of this, Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced plans to relocate the capital last year.The current New Year’s flooding has displaced more than 62,000 people in Jakarta alone, according to Reuters.”It has not flooded for so long here. We didn’t have the chance to bring anything,” 52-year-old evacuee Umar Dani told Reuters. “I have to live on the streets now.”The extreme weather also cut power and disrupted train service. Floodwaters swamped the runway at Jakarta’s Halim Perdana Kusumah domestic airport, closing it and stranding around 19,000 people, Al Jazeera reported.The death toll is the highest for flooding since 2013, BBC News reported. The victims, aged between eight and 82, died from hypothermia, drowning and landslides. One 16-year-old boy, Arviqo Alif Ardana, was electrocuted, Al Jazeera reported.

Indonesia: Death count rises as Jakarta flood conditions worsen – Indonesia: Deadly flood forces tens of thousands to leave Jakarta – At least 21 people have been confirmed dead since severe flooding hit Jakarta and surrounding area on New Year’s Day, Indonesian authorities said on Thursday. Several more are considered missing. National Disaster Management Agency spokesman Agus Wibowo said some of those who died were electrocuted. Over 62,000 people were evacuated in Jakarta alone, the Reuters news agency quoted Wibowo as saying. “The floods hit without warning,” said one survivor from western outskirts of Jakarta, Munarsih. “The water came very fast and it rose quickly. We couldn’t manage to get our stuff out, including my car,” she told AFP news agency.. Images from the affected neighborhoods showed waterlogged homes and cars, with people using rubber lifeboats or inner tubes to navigate the floodwater. East Jakarta resident Umar Dani said he and his family were evacuated overnight after water levels reached his neck. “It has not flooded for so long here. We didn’t have the chance to bring anything,” the 52-year-old told Reuters. “I have to live on the streets now.” A horse takes on the floods in Jakarta (picture-alliance/D. Roszandi) A horse takes on the floods in Jakarta on January 1 Landslides on the edge of Jakarta The flooding began on Wednesday after water inundated the Indonesian city after 18 hours of heavy rain. Homes were submerged and vehicles washed away. Water levels reached up to 2.5 meters (8 feet) in parts of the Indonesian capital. The rain and abrupt flooding also triggered deadly landslides on the city’s outskirts. Indonesian President Joko Widodo tweeted about the emergency response, promising to restore public infrastructure with anti-flooding measures. A domestic airport also shut and tens of thousands of people were displaced, Wibowo added. Monsoon rains and rising rivers submerged at least 169 neighborhoods.

Pittsburgh received 50+ inches of precipitation for first time ever in consecutive years – Last year was the third wettest year on record in Pittsburgh history. More than 52 inches of precipitation fell over Southwestern Pennsylvania. This was only the fourth time in recorded history, in well over 100 years, that Pittsburgh received that much rain and snow.One of the other times was last year, which was the region’s wettest in modern history. That makes the last two years the first time in Pittsburgh history that more than 50 inches of precipitation fell in back-to-back years. Had Hurricane Ivan not hit Pittsburgh in 2004, which dropped almost 6 inches of rain in one day, 2019 would have been the second wettest year on record. It’s safe to say Pittsburgh is getting wetter and it is happening pretty rapidly.

It’s Not Just You – Wild Swings in Extreme Weather are Rising – From 2011 to 2016, California experienced five years of extreme drought, during which numerous high temperature records were broken. These hot, dry years were followed by the extremely wet winter of 2016 -2017, when, from October to March, an average of 31 inches of rain fell across the state, the second highest winter rainfall on record. All that rain meant a bumper crop of grasses and other vegetation, which, as hot and dry conditions returned, likely contributed to a combustible mix of fuels that played a role in the severe fires that have swept California in the past two years.These wild swings from one weather extreme to another are symptomatic of a phenomenon, variously known as “climate whiplash” or “weather whiplash,” that scientists say is likely to increase as the world warms. Researchers project that by the end of this century, the frequency of these abrupt transitions between wet and dry will increase by 25 percent in Northern California and as much as double in Southern California if greenhouse gasses continue to increase. “There has been an assumption that the main thing we have to contend with climate change is increased temperatures, decreased snowpack, increased wildfire risk” on the West Coast, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Those things are still true, but there is this other dimension we will have to contend with – the increased risk of extreme flood and drought, and rapid transitions between the two.” Last year in Montecito, California, one of the state’s worst wildfires swept through the region. Weeks later, torrential rains fell on the burned ground, causing mudslides that wiped out houses and killed 21 people. In Europe this year, late spring frosts that damaged crops were followed by heavy rains that washed the crops out of the ground and flooded fields for weeks.In the future, weather whiplash could mean an intense drought year followed by record rains that don’t allow planting or that wash fertilizer into waterways. Extreme swings between freezing and thawing can kill buds on trees, or lead to rain in northerly climes that is followed by freezing weather, forming a barrier of ice that prevents foraging animals like caribou from reaching vital winter browse.

‘Remarkable’ high as Scottish temperature record is broken – Northern Scotland registered a “remarkable” overnight temperature of 16.8C (62.2F) in the early hours of Sunday – a record high for this time of year. North-eastern England and northern Wales were also unusually warm, with 13.3C recorded in Chillingham Barns, Northumberland, and 11.5C in Rhyl. The Scottish figure, recorded by the Met Office at 3am on Sunday in Cassley in Sutherland, is the highest on record for 29, 30 or 31 December. Forecasters have attributed the unseasonably warm weather to a meteorological pattern called the Foehn Effect. It occurs in mountainous areas, creating wet and cold conditions on one side of a mountain and warm and dry conditions on the other. The phenomenon occurs when humid air is pushed over high ground by strong winds. As the moisture-filled air rises, it cools and condenses, resulting in clouds and rain. This then releases dry air, which moves down the mountain’s other side, heating up and raising ground level temperatures as it travels. The effect coincided with gusts of warm air arriving from the southern Atlantic, which have resulted in Britain being warmer than Athens and Rome. This pattern is usually seen in eastern Scotland, north-eastern Wales and north-eastern England. Alex Burkill, a meteorologist for the Met Office, said it was extremely rare to see such high temperatures overnight this late in the year. “Getting temperatures of 16 or 17 degrees in December isn’t all that unusual but it’s remarkable that this was during the night,” he told the BBC. The current record for the highest daytime maximum temperature in December in the UK is 18.3C, registered in Achnashellach in the Scottish Highlands on 2 December 1948.

Moscow resorts to fake snow in warmest December since 1886 – Moscow has been so warm this December that the government has resorted to sending trucks filled with artificial snow to decorate a new year display in the city centre. Videos of the delivery for a snowboarding hill went viral as observers noted the irony of bringing snow to a city that spends millions each year on its removal. The Moscow region is in the throes of one of its warmest winters since temperatures began to be systematically recorded 140 years ago. The temperature in the Russian capital rose to 5.4C on 18 December, topping the previous record for the month set in 1886. Concerns are growing about the effects of global heating on Russia. Permafrost under the country’s northern towns is slowly melting, and receding Arctic ice is driving hungry polar bears to forage in urban areas. The thaw in the northern permafrost has even set off a “gold rush” for mammoth ivory by making the tusks previously buried in ice more accessible to prospectors. The balmy December weather has interrupted hibernation at Moscow zoo and caused crocuses, lilacs and magnolias at Moscow State University’s apothecary garden to flower early. Zoo officials said they had put five jerboas – a type of hopping rodent with long hind legs – into specially refrigerated enclosures to encourage them to hibernate. The most visible impact, however, has been the lack of snow, which usually begins blanketing Russia in October or November. Light flurries have fallen in Moscow and its parks are dusted white, but most of the snow in the city centre has melted. The country virtually shuts down for more than a week after the new year, as Russians eat and drink their way through early January with ample time to recover before returning to work. This year, Moscow has closed down central avenues near the Kremlin and is erecting large soundstages for concerts during the holiday. The warm temperatures have kept Russians off cross-country skis and skating ponds, with children playing football in the courtyard rinks that usually host hockey matches at this time of year. One popular meme showed cupfuls of snow being sold for 50 rubles, or 62p.

Greenland ice loss is at ‘worse-case scenario’ levels, study finds – Greenland is losing ice mass seven times faster than in the 1990s, a pace that matches the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s high-end warming scenario – in which 400 million people would be exposed to coastal flooding by 2100, 40 million more than in the mid-range prediction. The alarming update resulted from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise, a project involving nearly 100 polar scientists from 50 international institutions, among them two from the University of California, Irvine. IMBIE researchers combined 26 separate surveys to compute changes in the mass of Greenland’s ice sheet between 1992 and 2018. Altogether, data from 11 different satellite missions were used, including measurements of the ice sheet’s changing volume, flow and gravity. The findings, published recently in Nature, show that Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tons of ice since 1992 – enough to raise global sea levels by 10.6 millimeters (almost half an inch). The rate of ice loss has risen from an average of 33 billion tons per year in the 1990s to 254 billion tons per year in the last decade – a sevenfold increase within three decades. “There is a rather universal agreement among the independent techniques used in this study and the international group of researchers about the mass loss in Greenland: half from surface melt, half from faster glacier flow,” said IMBIE team member Eric Rignot, chair, Donald Bren Professor and Chancellor’s Professor of Earth system science at UCI. “The more remarkable result from this study is that Greenland is melting along the lines of the highest rate of warming examined by climate models. In other words, we’re in the worst-case scenario.” Rignot was the technical lead for the mass budget method, which compares the accumulation of snowfall in the interior with surface melt and the output of mass into the ocean from glaciers. Isabella Velicogna, UCI professor of Earth system science, directed the part of the project that used time-variable gravity data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment to measure ice sheet mass balance with great precision.

Record hit for most ice to melt in Antarctica in one day, data suggests: “We are in a Climate Emergency” by Kashmira Gander The record in recent decades for the highest level of ice to melt in Antarctica in one day was reached on Christmas Eve, data suggests. Around 15 percent of the continent’s surface melted on Monday, according to the Global Forecast System (GFS) by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The data comes from the Modèle Atmosphérique Régional (MAR), a model used for meteorological and climatic research. Xavier Fettweis, a climatologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, who tweeted the data on Friday, said this is the highest melt extent in Antarctica in the modern era, since 1979. He added the production of melt water is a record 230 percent higher than average since November this year. That’s despite the melting season not yet being over. For the first time, Fettweis said, the melting seemed to explain a negative anomaly in data on Antarctica’s surface mass balance (SMB). This is the net balance between what causes a glacier’s surface to grow or deplete, for instance because it evaporates or melts away. “It should be noted that this process is currently missing in most of SMB estimations over Antarctica as melt has been negligible until now. But the climate is changing…” Fettweis said. Fettweis told Newsweek Antarctica has been “significantly warmer than average” this melting season. But he stressed the data is from a model, and not an in situ observation. The melting could be driven by a number of factors, and experts will need to wait two to three melting seasons to confirm what is going on. “We have observed a crash of the Antarctica polar vortex just before this melting season,” explained Fettweis, referring to low pressure near the pole. “A weaker polar vortex allows warm air masses to reach easier the ice sheet (which is usually protected by its polar vortex as it was the case the previous summer). The fact that the sea ice extent is very low also enhances the possibility of warm air masses to reach the ice sheet.”

Climate Disasters in 2019 Cost Billions, Report Finds — Climate change is getting costlier and deadlier. A new report from British charity Christian Aid found that 15 of the world’s largest natural disasters in 2019 – including wildfires, hurricanes, typhoons and more – had links to a warming world. All 15 of those disasters cost more than $1 billion in damages, and seven of them cost more than $10 billion each. Record rainfall in the spring caused more than $12.5 billion in damages throughout the midwest and southern U.S. due to flooding. On the flip side, a dry summer and record heat waves, which spurred massive wildfires in California, cost more than $25 billion in damages. The report, however, states many of the totals have likely been underestimated.”These figures are likely to be underestimates as they often show only insured losses and do not always take into account other financial costs, such as lost productivity and uninsured losses,” the report states.Although the financial burden of these extreme events is severe, developing nations are experiencing the worst loss. More than 1,300 people lost their lives to Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi in March. Another 1,900 were killed in Northern India from June to October when monsoon flooding hit record levels. And 673 people were killed during Hurricane Dorian, which many regard as the worst natural disaster to ever hit the Bahamas.”The great tragedy of climate change is that it is the poorest and most vulnerable who suffer the most, despite us doing the least to cause it,” Dr. Adelle Thomas from the University of the Bahamas said in apress release. “However as this year has shown, no continent is immune from global warming and its impacts.” This year is projected to be the second hottest year on record and losses from these extreme weatherevents are likely to get worse going into the new decade. The report urges world leaders to begin taking serious steps toward mitigating these losses.

We Broke Down the Last Decade of Climate Change in 7 Charts – As this hottest-on-record, godforsaken decade draws to a close, it’s clear that global warming is no longer a problem for future generations but one that’s already displacing communities, costing billions, and driving mass extinctions. And it’s worth asking: Where did the past 10 years get us? The seven charts below begin to hint at an answer to that question. Some of the changes they document, like the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the number of billion dollar disasters that occur each year, illustrate how little we did to reduce emissions and how unprepared the world is to deal with the warming we’ve already locked in. Even though more people believe in human-caused climate change now than 10 years ago, a growing chasm in political partisanship makes it more difficult than ever for Congress to pass climate legislation. But by other measures, we might one day look back on the 2010s as a turning point in our civilization’s approach to climate change. The growth of renewable energy and rapid retirement of coal-burning power plants this decade illustrate that crucial changes to the world order are currently well underway.

• 1. Atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by about 25 parts per million. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has not only continued to rise over the past 10 years, but it is also now rising at a faster rate than ever before. In 2013, the famous atmospheric carbon monitoring station on Mauna Loa, first installed by Charles David Keeling in 1958, measured levels above 400 parts per million for the first timeever. By 2016, that number became the annual low. The earth’s atmosphere has not contained this much carbon dioxide in millions of years – since before Homo sapiens walked the earth. And unless we find some way to suck carbon out of the atmosphere, the Keeling curve will not dip below 400 parts per million again in your lifetime, your children’s lifetime, or their children’s lifetime, because carbon dioxide can hang around in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.
• 2. Climate change got expensive. One of the best-established consequences of global warming is that it makes natural disasters, like fires and floods, more frequent and severe. In the 2010s, the costs of this consequence came into sharp focus as billion-dollar disasters struck the United States again and again. Hurricanes Irene and Sandy pummeled the Northeast, Maria forever changed Puerto Rico, Florence shook upNorth Carolina, and Harvey drowned Houston, Texas just weeks before Irma sank Florida. Super Typhoon Yutu, the worst storm to hit U.S. soil since 1935, wreaked havoc on the northern Mariana Islands in the Philippines. There was record flooding in the Midwest and Californians were struck by some of the largest and most destructive fires the Golden State has ever seen.

Rise In Climate-Related Deaths Will Surpass All Infectious Diseases, Economist Testifies – More people will die from climate-driven temperature changes in 2100 than the number who die today from all infectious diseases combined, a leading economist told members of Congress last week. Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and the co-director of the Climate Impact Lab (CIL), a collaboration of climate scientists, economists, computational experts, researchers and analysts at multiple universities who are working to establish a precise data-driven estimate of the impact of the climate crisis.The lab’s work is not done, but Greenstone revealed some of what they’ve concluded so far. “The main CIL finding to date is that the increase in the global mortality rate due to climate change-induced temperature changes in 2100 is larger than the current mortality rate due to all infectious diseases,” Greenstone said Dec. 19 to members of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Environment.The lab used data from 40 countries and accounted for both costs and benefits of climate change and adaptation. It estimates “the full mortality risk due to climate change to be an additional 85 deaths per 100,000 in 2100,” he said. In 2018, according to his figures, all infectious diseases accounted for about 75 deaths per 100,000.The lab also monetized this impact on society for its ongoing calculation of the social cost of carbon.Mortality from temperature change makes up only a fraction of the total social cost of carbon, Greenstone said, yet that fraction alone will cost society $23.6 per metric ton of carbon emitted. The Trump Administration estimates the total social cost of carbon at $1-$7 per ton.

I wouldn’t have wasted my time on Trump, says Greta Thunberg – (Reuters) – Teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg said on Monday that talking to U.S. President Donald Trump at a United Nations summit on global warming would have been a waste of time since he would not have paid any attention. In an interview with BBC radio’s Today program, for which she was the guest editor on Monday, Thunberg also said she regarded personal attacks on her as funny and that she hoped to go back to having a normal life. A video of the 16-year-old Swedish campaigner giving Trump what media described as a “death stare” at a U.N. climate summit in New York in September went viral on social media. Trump has questioned climate science and is pulling the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on global warming. Asked what she would have said to the president if they had spoken, Thunberg said: “Honestly, I don’t think I would have said anything because obviously he’s not listening to scientists and experts, so why would he listen to me?” “So I probably wouldn’t have said anything, I wouldn’t have wasted my time,” she said. This month Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro called Thunberg “a brat”. Trump has said on Twitter she needs to work on her anger management problem. “Those attacks are just funny because they obviously don’t mean anything,” she said. “I guess of course it means something – they are terrified of young people bringing change which they don’t want – but that is just proof that we are actually doing something and that they see us as some kind of threat.”

Amazon threatens to fire employees who speak out on climate change — A group of Amazon employees say the company has threatened to fire them for speaking out against the company’s environmental policies. In a statement posted to Twitter on Thursday, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice said that several employees were contacted by legal and HR representatives, who said they were in violation of the company’s external communications policy. Maren Costa, a user experience experience designer, was one of the employees Amazon threatened to fire. In the statement, Costa said: “This is not the time to shoot the messengers. This is not the time to silence those who are speaking out.” Two employees were told their roles would be terminated if they continued to speak out about Amazon’s business, a spokesperson for the group told CNBC. Amazon also threatened to terminate Jamie Kowalski, a software development engineer, according to The Washington Post, which first reported the news on Thursday. Kowalski and Costa said they received letters from one of Amazon’s lawyers after speaking out publicly in October, the Post reported. In the statement, the employee group claimed that Amazon changed its policy in September, claiming that the updated policy “requires employees to seek prior approval to speak about Amazon in any public forum while identified as an employee.” However, Jaci Anderson, an Amazon spokesperson, said the company’s communications policy isn’t new. In September, Amazon actually tried to make it easier for employees to speak out by adding a form on an internal web site where employees could seek approval; prior to that, they had to get direct approval from a senior vice president. She added that employees are “encouraged to work within their teams” and can suggest “improvements to how we operate through those internal channels.” Amazon employees have increasingly pressured the company to address its environmental impact. At Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting in May, thousands of employees submitted a proposal asking Bezos to develop a comprehensive climate-change plan and reduce its carbon footprint, though it was ultimately rejected. The proposal was built on an employee letter published in April that accused Amazon of donating to climate-delaying legislators and urged the company to transition away from fossil fuels.

How Sales Shopping Is Killing the Planet — Things started six weeks before Christmas with Singles Day, which began in China and is now the world’s biggest shopping day. This was followed by Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale, the pre-Christmas sales and now the period of post-Christmas or New Year sales. Soon it will be time for Valentine’s Day sales, Easter sales and so on. The sale events don’t seem to pause but instead persevere throughout the year and in various forms. For consumers, sales provide one or more “legit reasons” for spending and gifting, either to oneself, others or a bit of both. Indulgent spending is expected and even encouraged when discounts or bargains are widely available to be snatched up. . Emotionally, they may drive consumers to spend money they do not have and then feel regret or guilt afterwards. Financially, they may entrap shoppers into (more) financial debt because of the faux sense of “entitled” indulgence or spending when there is a sale on. Psychologically, it may exacerbate compulsive buying disorder, also known as “oniomania”, by legitimising gifting and spending. All this adds up to some serious environmental costs. I think there are two “behavioural lenses” that are applicable here: The throwaway lens, particularly visible in fashion, suggests that the more we buy, the more we throw away. While the correlation is yet to established empirically, it is logical to think that sales promote more buying and in turn mean there is more to throw away. This proposition can be supported by the phenomenon of dwindling living space. In the UK, bedrooms are shrinking and on average living rooms in new build homes are a third smaller than in the 1970s. The product returns lens suggests a possible correlation between sales and the rate of product returns. Sales such as Black Friday have become digitally-oriented, with around three quarters of purchases being made online. Online returns can involve a number of environmentally damaging activities. Consumers sending items back, and couriers collecting and redistributing them, all means extra driving and thus traffic congestion and carbon emissions. Cleaning, repairing and/or repackaging returned items mean consuming more natural resources and potentially using more materials that contain fossil fuels or palm oils. Processing, transporting and landfill of single-use or non-recyclable packaging used in returns mean more land use and a greater carbon footprint.

Firms must justify investment in fossil fuels, warns Mark Carney – The outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has said all companies and financial institutions must justify their continued investment in fossil fuels, and warned that assets in the sector could end up “worthless”. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme being broadcast on Monday, Carney said that although the financial sector was starting to cut back on investment in oil and gas companies, the process was not moving quickly enough. Carney, who will focus on his new role as UN special envoy for climate change and finance after he steps down from the governorship in the new year, agreed to appear on the programme for an edition edited by the climate crisis campaigner Greta Thunberg, one of several guest editors on Today over the holiday period. Carney has been one of the most vocal central bank governors on the need for the financial sector to do more to transition towards a zero-carbon economy.He told the programme that the climate crisis was a “tragedy on the horizon” and that more extreme weather events were inevitable. “By the time that the extreme events become so prevalent and so obvious, it will be too late to do anything about it,” he said. Political leaders had to “start addressing future problems today”. On the issue of whether investors should be divesting from companies in the fossil fuel sector, Carney said fund managers would “have to make the judgment and justify to the people whose money it ultimately is”. When pressed on whether pension funds should divest from oil and gas companies even if the returns were attractive, he replied: “Well that hasn’t been the case but they could make that argument. They need to make the argument, to be clear about why is that going to be the case if a substantial proportion of those assets are going to be worthless.” He warned: “If we were to burn all those oil and gases, there’s no way we would meet carbon budgets. Up to 80% of coal assets will be stranded, [and] up to half of developed oil reserves. A question for every company, every financial institution, every asset manager, pension fund or insurer: what’s your plan?” The Bank of England has said assets worth up to $20tn (£16tn) could become worthless very quickly if the financial sector and business do not make a smooth transition towards a zero-carbon economy.

Going Green Will Pay For Itself in Seven Years, Study Finds – A Stanford University professor whose research helped underpin the U.S. Democrats’ Green New Deal says phasing out fossil fuels and running the entire world on clean energy would pay for itself in under seven years. It would cost $73 trillion to revamp power grids, transportation, manufacturing and other systems to run on wind, solar and hydro power, including enough storage capacity to keep the lights on overnight, Mark Jacobson said in a study published Friday in the journal One Earth. But that would be offset by annual savings of almost $11 trillion, the report found.“There’s really no downside to making this transition,” said Jacobson, who wrote the study with several other researchers. “Most people are afraid it will be too expensive. Hopefully this will allay some of those fears.”Some of Jacobson’s past findings have been questioned, notably a 2017 journal article that criticized his methodology on measuring the cost of phasing out fossil fuels.The biggest challenge of ditching fossil fuels may not be economic. Even some clean-power advocates acknowledge technology isn’t available yet to run power grids entirely on renewables without jeopardizing reliability. The report published Friday looked at 143 countries that generate more than 99% of the world’s greenhouse emissions. The savings would come from not extracting fossil fuels, using higher-efficiency systems and other benefits of shifting entirely to electricity. It follows a paper Jacobson published in 2015 laying out a state-by-state plan for the U.S. to convert to 100% renewables.

York to ban private car journeys from city centre within three years – The medieval city of York has announced plans to ban private car journeys from the city centre within three years in an effort to cut carbon emissions. Councillors spelled out the “unashamedly ambitious” goal that would follow the lead of Bristol, which is due to become the first UK city to ban diesel cars by 2021. The historic Yorkshire city, which attracts nearly 7 million visitors a year, is one of several UK cities with illegally high levels of air pollution. The ban would stop all non-essential private car journeys inside York’s city walls by 2023, with an exemption for people who rely on cars such as disabled residents. Jonny Crawshaw, a Labour councillor in the city, said: “People’s first response might be to be a bit anxious about what we’re proposing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. The public mood is changing – particularly in relation to climate change.” Councillors voted in favour of the plans by a majority. The City of York council is aiming to become carbon neutral by 2030, 20 years before the British government’s net zero target. The UK government has been ordered by the courts to bring air pollution levels down to legal limits in the shortest possible time. A pollution map released by campaigners in February found levels of air pollution that exceed safety limits in almost 2,000 locations across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The worst place for nitrogen dioxide pollution in 2017 was Kensington and Chelsea, followed by Leeds and Doncaster. York, which attracts millions of tourists every year to its medieval walls, cobbled streets and 13th-century Gothic cathedral, does not escape the smog. According to the data, compiled by Friends of the Earth, 12 locations in the city centre exceeded national air quality standards of 40 micrograms of nitrogen dioxide per cubic metre (ug/m3). A bus stop on Rougier Street was the city’s most polluted spot in 2018, the data shows, followed by a taxi rank outside the railway station (59.9 and 57.7 ug/m3 respectively). Crawshaw, who represents a city-centre ward on City of York council, said the proposal was not about stopping tourism or preventing those living in the city centre from having a car. He said: “This is about reducing and removing non-essential car journeys across the whole city, while improving the range and attractiveness of alternative travel options.

The European Auto Industry Is Racing To Ditch Diesel – As if the downturn due to a trade-war-induced slowdown in China were not enough, the European automotive industry is facing the challenge of a rapid switch from diesel to petrol engines that has been gathering pace for the last two years. At the same time, the industry has also had to deal with the implementation of new legislation designed to reduce car makers’ overall fleet emission levels. An article in the Financial Times explains the impact of the new legislation on Europe’s automakers, an industry that supports some 14 million workers across the continent. Quoting Max Warburton, an auto analyst at Bernstein, the article says each carmaker faces its own CO2 target based on the weight of its vehicles. A business selling smaller cars, such as PSA, therefore has a lower CO2 target than a company with a heavier average vehicle, such as Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler. The targets for each company vary from around 91 g/km to just over 100 g/km. Some carmakers, like PSA, have already made good progress, switching less fuel-efficient, four-cylinder GM engines in their new Astra range to new three-cylinder PSA engines has improved efficiency by some 21 percent. However, carmakers like PSA do not have a lot of luxury saloons and SUVs in their lineup. Daimler, BMW and JLR do, and the situation is made worse by a rise in sales of such vehicles in recent years. Europe – once the home of the small, fuel-efficient compact – has fallen in love with the SUV. Some 40 percent of cars sold in the E.U. are now SUVs and automotive carbon emissions have, as a result, risen for the first time in a decade. Potential fines for missing these new fleet emission limits are punishing, the FT states. Every gram over the target incurs a penalty of €95 – multiplied by the number of cars sold by the carmaker, the costs could be crippling. “It’s just stunning how much is going to have to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months,” Warburton is quoted as saying. If the industry sold exactly the same mix of vehicles in 2021 as it did last year, carmakers together would face penalties of €25 billion, the Financial Times reports.

Rust Belt region banks on becoming hub for electric vehicles – The day Youngstown’s steel mills began shutting down 40 years ago remains fresh in the minds of those who live in the blue-collar corner of Ohio. Community leaders don’t want the recent closing of General Motors’ massive assembly plant to leave that same lingering gloom. The region is embarking on an ambitious plan to become a research and production hub for electric vehicles and carve out a new economy for itself by mixing its industrial past with emerging technology. There are positive signs already. GM in early December announced it will form a joint venture and hire more than 1,100 people at a new plant that it says will be among the largest electric vehicle battery cell factories in the world. And the Lordstown assembly plant that GM shut down in March has been sold to a newly formed company that intends to begin making electric trucks by late 2020. But the Youngstown region, which for decades has been a symbol of the American Midwest’s declining industrial might, faces plenty of competition from places like Detroit, Silicon Valley and China – all of which also are positioning to be centers for electric and autonomous vehicles. While the electric transformation within the auto industry is just beginning to take shape, it’s clear that fewer workers and factories will be needed to make cars that require fewer parts. Where those next clusters of electric vehicle manufacturing will sprout is yet to be determined. Economic development leaders point out that the Youngstown area already is home to a electric battery testing lab and business incubators that are focused on energy and additive manufacturing through 3-D printing. Youngstown State University is breaking ground on an advanced manufacturing technology center and wants to play a part in training students to work in the electric vehicle industry. “We want to take charge of our future. An opportunity like this really plays to our regional strengths,” said Mike Hripko, the university’s associate vice president for economic development and government relations.

Planes could fly together in V-shaped flocks to save fuel and cut down on emissions amid growing ‘flight shame’ over their environmental impact – Planes could soon by flying in V-shape formations like migrating birds in a bid to save fuel and emissions. Airbus says flight technology is now mature enough to use the formation which would allow aircraft to effectively ride on the coattails of each other. The tactic is often seen in cycling where racers ‘draft’ behind leaders of the racing peloton, following in their slipstream. Within six months, two A350 planes will make a long-haul formation flight to prove the so-called ‘wake energy retrieval’ can be accomplished, according to The Times. Then early in 2021, an airline will pair two jets, with the second flying nearly two miles from the first, on a transatlantic passenger route. Within five years, airlines will be encouraged to use the formation in a bid to save up to 10 per cent of fuel, lowering costs, as well as lowering carbon emissions. For every tonne of fuel saved, three tonnes less carbon dioxide will be left in the plane’s trail. It comes amid a growing trend of moral objection to flying by plane among environmentalists, with climate activist Greta Thunberg famously sailing to and from the US. She popularised the Swedish term flygskam, meaning flight shame, to discourage others from flying due to its environmental impact.

Report MD Emissions Plan Will Set Climate Movement Back – — Maryland’s climate action plan, which was released in October by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, will not help the state reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 44% by 2030 as promised, according to a new report. Scott Williamson is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Climate Strategies, which released the report. He says the emissions-reduction estimate is based partly on an unsupported prediction that the electric vehicle industry in the state is going to explode. “Maryland, right now, sells reliably less than 10,000 electric vehicles a year within the state,” says Williamson. “And this plan basically takes on an assumption that that number is going to rocket north of 100,000. That’s a pretty quick statement that the automobile market in the state is going to transform.” Officials say their proposal, plus Hogan’s announcement last week of new clean-energy legislation, shows the administration’s strong commitment to leading the charge on affordable clean energy, climate change and greenhouse-gas emissions reductions. But Williamson says the draft of Maryland’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Act sets the entire climate movement back. He points out that one of the plan’s agendas is to reduce congestion on Maryland’s I-270, the Capital Beltway and the Baltimore Washington Parkway. It supports Hogan’s controversial proposal to widen those busy highways and install toll lanes, which the administration says will result in less traffic and less emissions. “Case studies have found that in the very short term, this does occur,” says Williamson. “They also find that what’s called ‘induced demand’ — or simply, more driving on these corridors — also occurs immediately after these corridors are widened. And they continue to occur over the course of the following decade.”

Natural gas development is speeding up in Virginia. Legislators will have to square that with state climate goals. – This September, Gov. Ralph Northam took the stage at the inaugural Virginia Clean Energy Summit to announce he was committing the state to a carbon-free grid by 2050. But as the governor received a standing ovation, elsewhere in the commonwealth work was underway to massively expand infrastructure supporting a very different – and decidedly not carbon-free – type of energy: natural gas. The past year has seen a flow of investments in natural gas in Virginia, from ongoing work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline and continued efforts to construct the Atlantic Coast Pipeline to plans by state utilities and private investors to build up to 12 new natural gas plants. Now, as the General Assembly prepares to convene this January under new Democratic leadership, lawmakers are struggling to chart a course for Virginia’s energy policy in a state split between carbon-free goals and intensive natural gas investment. “I would rather we not (build new natural gas plants),” said Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, shortly after she and Democratic Dels. Rip Sullivan of Fairfax, Jennifer Carroll Foy of Prince William and Alfonso Lopez of Arlington introduced a sweeping proposal to transition Virginia to clean energy. “But I think we are going to have to make sure that while we’re in this transition, we can meet demand.” Utilities, and a handful of private investors, have contended that to meet that demand and keep Virginia’s lights on, natural gas is a necessary bridge. But many clean energy advocates and industry analysts say there are other options – and that continuing to build out the natural gas grid bears environmental and financial risks for the state.

Duke Energy to dig up coal ash at six sites in North Carolina – Duke Energy will dig up nearly 80 million tons of coal ash at six sites in North Carolina in a legal settlement with the state Department of Environmental Quality. DEQ said the excavation would be the largest coal-ash clean up in U.S. history. Last year, DEQ ordered the utility to dig up ash from nine basins at six sites. Duke Energy had planned to keep the ash in place at those locations, sealed with a cap. The utility sued DEQ over the order. The settlement was signed Dec. 31. “North Carolina’s communities have lived with the threat of coal ash pollution for too long,” DEQ Secretary Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “We are holding Duke accountable and will continue to hold them accountable for their actions as we protect public health, the environment and our natural resources.” A 2014 spill that dumped contaminated water and tons of toxic coal ash from a Duke Energy containment pond into the Dan River brought to public attention the environmental hazards posed by coal ash basins. Most of the coal ash at the six sites will be excavated. The settlement says the ash is to be put into lined landfills or used to make building materials. Among the sites to be cleaned up: Duke Energy’s Marshall Steam Station at Lake Norman and the Allen Steam Station in Gaston County. At the Allen plant on Lake Wylie, coal ash storage sites have polluted groundwater with contaminants including arsenic, cobalt and lithium at levels exceeding federal safety standards, according to a report released by environmental groups in 2019. Groundwater at the Marshall plant and 10 other Duke Energy sites has contained high levels of radioactivity, according to a 2018 report by an environmental group. Charlotte-based Duke Energy has pushed back against such reports, insisting there is no reason for concern about nearby drinking water wells or lake water. The Catawba River Keeper Foundation said it has been fighting Duke Energy in court for eight years over coal ash. At a news conference on the banks of Lake Wylie across from Duke Energy’s Allen Steam Station, Catawba River Keeper Brandon Jones said the organization felt good about the settlement. “Our goal was to protect the Catawba River and remove the coal ash from threatening it,” he said. “It’s really just a weight off our shoulders.” Duke Energy is closing all its coal ash basins, including 31 in North Carolina.

COAL ASH: Will Duke’s sweeping cleanup plan influence EPA? — Friday, January 3, 2020 — Duke Energy Corp. has committed to the largest coal ash cleanup in the nation, and environmental advocates hope the Trump administration is watching.

Navajo Generating Station, coal mine face years of breakdown, cleanup – They may have turned out the lights, but the party’s not over at the Navajo Generating Station and its affiliated Kayenta coal mine. The owners of both facilities face several years of decommissioning and cleanup as well as the possibility of decades of environmental monitoring of the sites, which closed down for good this fall after a two-year fight over their futures. At least some of the complex will live on, through salvaged parts and relocated jobs. But the remaining work will likely employ only a fraction of the facilities’ hundreds of workers, many of whom were members of the Navajo and Hopi tribes, whose economies relied on the facilities. Contractors for the Salt River Project, which owns the power plant, have already started a three-year process of decommissioning the 43-year-old coal-fired power plant. National Service and Salvage Corp. of Indiana is dismantling the electrical system that powered the train that delivered coal from Kayenta to NGS, the mine’s only customer. An Ohio company, Independence Demolition, will begin this year removing hazardous materials and additional electrical equipment before demolishing the plant itself. SRP has not announced the contractors who will do coal ash and coal pond cleanup at the site, but those processes are not expected to start until mid to late in the year. SRP says all of its main contractors have been instructed to give preference to Navajo Nation members and companies in hiring and awarding subcontracts on the project. SRP estimates 90% of the material will be recycled, going so far as to set up a website where members of the public can purchase everything from office equipment to industrial parts salvaged from the plant.

U.S. senators ask for government investigation of coal tax credit program – (Reuters) – Three U.S. Democratic senators have asked the investigative arm of Congress to evaluate a $1 billion-a-year subsidy for burning chemically treated refined coal, after research has shown that some power plants using the fuel produced surging amounts of mercury and smog instead of cutting pollution. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, as well as Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, on Friday requested the Government Accountability Office investigate the tax credit program for refined coal, according to a letter viewed by Reuters. The request for an investigation comes after a Reuters Special Report in December 2018 revealed that many power plants burning refined coal pumped out more smog, not less. After the Reuters report, a study by independent nonprofit Resources for the Future found that power plants using refined coal were not reducing mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide pollution to levels required by the tax credit program. Those pollutants rose sharply at some power plants after they began burning refined coal, the study said. Others showed reductions, but not enough to meet the requirements for taxpayer subsidies, according to the study by the Washington, D.C., research institution. “(This) raises questions about the extent to which the use of refined coal is actually achieving the emissions reductions required to claim the refined coal production tax credit,” the senators wrote in their letter to the GAO.

How Worcester activists are stopping coal trains headed to NH —Despite its leadership on climate change, New England still permits natural gas and coal to be used and burned in its borders, which has riled Worcester residents into action. In December alone, Worcester, Mass., residents stopped two coal trains, delaying them from reaching a New Hampshire power plant, and protested against a gas compressor station. On Dec. 28, climate activists blocked a train carrying coal in the Green Island neighborhood in Worcester. According to organizers, 10 were taken into custody by the Worcester Police Department for disturbing the peace. The local action was organized by the Climate Disobedience Center as part of the No Coal, No Gas campaign. The coal train was on its way to the Merrimack Station in Bow, N.H., one of the largest of three coal-burning plants in New England. Activists were ready for the train to leave Worcester at 7 p.m., and fully stopped the train for a half-hour at 7:20. Ari Nicholson, 22, a climate activist who was present at a similar coal stopping on Dec. 7, said they do this because, “we should not be burning coal in 2019.” The Merrimack Station receives the coal it burns from outside the state, and, according to Nicholson, “Worcester is in a key position on the route the coal train makes to the plant.” “Worcester locals are part of the fossil fuel infrastructure,” said Emma Schoenberg, 27, an organizer with the Climate Disobedience Center. “Rate payers, those connected to the electric grid around New England, are on the hook for keeping this coal plant alive through forward capacity payments, which pay for fossil fuels that haven’t been burned yet.” Saturday’s coal train stopping is just one of various Worcester-based actions for regional climate causes going on this winter season. A similar action occurred Dec. 7, which was largely attended by activists from Clark Climate Justice, a student group of climate activists from Clark University. Activists were ready from 7 a.m. that day to stop the coal train, which arrived late in the evening. The students were able to stop the coal train in its tracks for four hours, until railroad police issued a warning. “Our goal was to delay the train long enough so people coming from all different corners of New England had enough time to get in place” to protest farther down the track, said Nicholson, who flagged the train to a halt. Organizers expect several more coal trains to travel via Worcester. “We have to ask ourselves,” said Nicholson, “if fossil fuel infrastructure is rolling through our town, what are we going to do? I’m going to be on the tracks.”

Western Kentucky Coal Mine Closing in Early 2020 — A coal mine in Ohio County will close in a couple of months, forcing the layoff of about 250 workers. In a WARN notice sent to the Kentucky Office of Employment and Training on Thursday, the Western Kentucky Coal Company announced plans to close its Genesis Mine in Centertown on Feb. 24. The decision comes after parent company Murray Energy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October. Murray Energy also owns Midway Mine in Centertown and Pride Mine in Muhlenberg County. Coal companies are struggling to stay afloat as industries switch from coal to cheaper and cleaner forms of energy. Ohio County Judge-Executive David Johnston didn’t return a call from WKU Public Radio, but told WFIE-TV the closure will not only impact employees, but will also lower the amount of coal severance money the county receives from coal production.

Sen. Ryan Weld To Tackle Mine Subsidence Rules – West Virginia Senate Majority Whip Ryan Weld sees a need to protect property owners’ rights in incidents involving mine subsidence. As state lawmakers prepare to return to Charleston for the start of their regular 60-day session Wednesday, Weld, R-Brooke, is preparing legislation giving the State Department of Environmental Protection authority to determine property owner compensation in mine subsidence cases. A long-standing rule in both state and federal law presently permits coal companies to choose the method of compensation they will provide to the property owners. They decide whether they will step in and fully repair the land subsidence, or determine the financial amount they will reimburse the property owner for the decrease in their property’s value, according to Weld. “I’ve been doing a lot of research into how other states handle mine subsidence damages,” he said. “Just because something was done a certain way in West Virginia, or because it was done that way in federal law, doesn’t me we have to continue to do it that way.” Weld’s legislation is modeled after Pennsylvania’s legislation, which directs the property owner to file a claim with the DEP. The agency would then investigate and determine the amount of compensation due the property owner from the coal operator. “This protects property owners from having to hire legal counsel and filing a legal suit against the coal operator,” he said. “Also, it protects them in that it is not just the coal operator who is determining the amount of compensation, but is instead a neutral party.”

Coal-fired plants around New Delhi running despite missing emissions deadline – (Reuters) – Coal-fired utilities around New Delhi were still operating on Wednesday despite threats from the Indian authorities to close them down if they had not installed equipment to cut emissions of sulfur oxides by the end of the year. Three senior executives at companies operating power plants around New Delhi and facing an end-2019 deadline said they had not received direction on whether they could continue to run the plants having not installed the kit. Only one out of the 11 utilities in the national capital region had installed the equipment. India had already extended its December 2017 deadline for its utilities to meet the emissions standards – posing a further challenge to the authorities grappling with the pollution that can cause lung disease and blights air quality. Officials from the India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), who had threatened a shut down for non-compliance, did not respond to repeated calls and text messages seeking comment. Reuters reported last month that more than half of India’s coal-fired power plants and 94% of the coal-fired units ordered to retrofit equipment to curb air pollution would likely miss the phased deadlines. The air quality index for the Indian capital, the worst affected major city, indicated “severe” conditions on Wednesday – like most days this winter – a potential risk for even healthy people. Real-time data government data showed both power plants in the country’s largest state of Uttar Pradesh which had a Dec. 31 deadline were operating. In Punjab, Vedanta-owned TSPL units were producing power, as were state-run plants at Ropar and Bhatinda. Mohammed Shayin, managing director at northern Haryana state-run power generator HPGCL said all units other than ones under scheduled maintenance were operational, adding that the utility was “pleading” with federal authorities to extend the emissions deadline.

Just 2 per cent of Britain’s power now comes from coal. In Australia, it’s more like 75 per cent – Renewable energy has overtaken fossil fuels to become Britain’s largest source of electricity in a historic shift that could signal the “beginning of the end” for coal across Europe. National Grid data released on New Year’s Day revealed coal represented just 2.1 per cent of Britain’s overall electricity output in 2019. By comparison, black and brown coal fuelled 74 per cent of Australia’s energy mix in 2018. The new figures show 48.5 per cent of the United Kingdom’s energy came from zero carbon technology in 2019, while coal, gas and oil crashed to just 43 per cent – down from 75.5 per cent in 1990. In 1990, coal alone accounted for 75 per cent of all generation. That figure fell to 30 per cent in 2009 and now stands at only 2.1 per cent following a tsunami of power plant closures and nationwide boom in wind and solar. Just a handful of coal-fired power stations remain operational and all will be shuttered by 2025 under a plan legislated by former Tory prime minister Theresa May and embraced by her successor Boris Johnson. Gas made up 38.4 per cent and biomass and waste 8.2 per cent last year in the UK. The country also imported about 8 per cent of its energy via undersea cables from continental Europe – the majority from green sources. Wind, solar and hydro power totalled 26.5 per cent, while nuclear – which is classified as a zero carbon source – added 16.8 per cent to the mix. That meant renewables pumped out 48.5 per cent of all generation in 2019 – well above the 24.4 per cent figure recorded in 1990 – in a result that eclipsed fossil fuel’s dominance for the first time in history. While renewables are on the rise in Australia, their contribution to the national energy grid is nowhere near the scale of the UK. Renewable sources grew by 25 per cent in Australia between 2017 and 2018 but their overall contribution to generation was still well below half of what it was in Britain. Even if nuclear was removed from the UK’s total renewable figure, wind, solar and hydro would still be more widely used in Britain than Australia.

Visualizing Every Coal Power Plant In The World (1927-2019) – If you live in a developed country, it’s been clear that the appetite for coal power is falling.Not only has coal been singled out as a primary source of carbon emissions and air pollution, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins details below, it’s also been getting phased out in favor of cheap natural gas in some regions around the world.In the U.S., electricity generation from coal has been dropping since the late 2000s, and in Europe the departure from coal has accelerated even quicker. In fact, it’s estimated that European coal power output could fall 23% in 2019 alone. However, despite a growing consensus around the use of thermal coal in the West, the global story is actually quite different.Today’s animation from SVT Nyheter details every coal power plant in the world from 1927 to 2019, and it shows that coal power – especially in South Asia – has continued to ramp up.As of 2019, there are an estimated 2,425 coal-fired power plants in the world, combining for an operating capacity of about 2,000 GW and roughly 15 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions. However, it seems that this could be the year that the story changes.Preliminary data suggests that Indian coal consumption could drop in 2019 for the first time in over a decade. Meanwhile, it’s expected that China’s growing coal capacity could be fully offset by decreasing use of the fossil fuel in developed nations.As a result, according to Carbon Brief, global coal power generation could fall 3% in 2019:If this trend continues, it could be a sign of a tipping point in global coal consumption – and if the sentiment around coal shifts the same way in China, the potential impact could be amplified even further.

Germany Aims To Close All Nuclear Plants By 2022 -Germany is going forward with its plan to phase out nuclear reactors by 2022 as another nuclear power plant went offline last night. Power company EnBW has said that it would take the Philippsburg 2 reactor off the grid at 7 p.m. local time on New Year’s Eve. This leaves Germany with six nuclear power plants that will have to close by 2022. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, Germany ordered the immediate shutdown of eight of its 17 reactors, and plans to phase out nuclear power plants entirely by 2022. The Philippsburg 2 reactor near the city of Karlsruhe in southwestern Germany has provided energy for 35 years. The Philippsburg 1 reactor – opened in 1979 – was taken offline in 2011.Over the past few years, nuclear power generation in Germany has been declining with the shutdown of its nuclear plants, while electricity production from renewable sources has been rising.In January 2019, Germany became the latest large European economy to lay out a plan to phase out coal-fired power generation, aimed at cutting carbon emissions – a metric in which Berlin has been lagging in recent years.A government-appointed special commission at Europe’s largest economy announced the conclusions of its months-long review and proposed that Germany shut all its 84 coal-fired power plants by 2038. Germany, where coal, hard coal, and lignite combined currently provide around 35 percent of power generation, has a longer timetable for phasing out coal than the UK and Italy, for example – who plan their coal exit by 2025 – not only because of its vast coal industry, but also because Germany will shut down all its nuclear power plants within the next three years. The closure of all nuclear reactors in Germany by 2022 means that Germany might need to retain half of its coal-fired power generation until 2030 to offset the nuclear phase-out, German Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier said earlier this year.

Holtec Projects $2.3 Billion Price Tag for Indian Point Decommissioning – Holtec International believes it can complete decommissioning of the three nuclear reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center in upstate New York in 12 to 15 years at a cost of $2.3 billion, according to a new filing with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Power company Entergy said in April it would sell the Buchanan, N.Y., plant to the New Jersey energy technology specialist. That will require the NRC to approve the transfer of Indian Point’s reactor and spent-fuel storage licenses, which the companies hope will happen by May 31, 2021, Holtec said in its post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR). In the PSDAR, Holtec said it would begin active decommissioning (DECON) immediately upon taking possession of the property. “The plan described in this PSDAR and the cost estimate provided in Enclosure 1 reflect HDI’s current decommissioning plan resulting in obtaining NRC issuance of a license amendment reducing the IP1, 2 & 3 licensed area to the [independent spent fuel storage installation] and permitting partial site release within 12 years of sale closure and license transfer,” the Dec. 19 document says. “While the cost estimate presented herein is based on a 12-year schedule for partial site release, HDI expects that the cost estimates would bound a project schedule supporting partial site release out to 15 years.” Reactor Unit 1 at Indian Point was retired in 1974 and subsequently underwent limited decommissioning. Entergy plans to shut down Unit 2 by April 30, 2020, and Unit 3 by April 30, 2021. The joint Entergy-Holtec license transfer application was submitted to the NRC in November. The PSDAR breaks down the decommissioning cost estimate for each reactor, divided by three main categories of cleanup: license termination, spent fuel management, and site restoration. Work on Unit 1 is estimated to cost $598.2 million: $485 million for license termination, $72.4 million for spent fuel management, and $40.8 million for site restoration. The total expense projection for Unit 2 is $701.8 million: $469.5 million for license termination, $188.3 million for spent fuel management, and $44.1 million for site restoration. Finally, decommissioning Unit 3 is estimated at just over $1 billion: $583.2 million for license termination, $371.4 million for spent fuel management, and $47.8 million for site restoration.

Comment Period on Disposal of Savannah River Defense Waste Extended –The U.S. Department of Energy is extending the comment period by more than a month on its draft environmental assessment for the plan to treat and dispose of about 10,000 gallons of recycled wastewater from the Savannah River Site at a low-level radioactive waste site located out of South Carolina. Stakeholders now have until Feb. 10 to file comments on commercial disposal of recycled wastewater from the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). The prior deadline was Jan. 9.The agency published the draft environmental assessment on Dec. 10. The comment extension notice was posted Monday. Treating the Savannah River Site wastewater would be the first test of the Energy Department’s much-discussed June reinterpretation of what constitutes high-level radioactive waste (HLW).According to the agency, the definition of high-level waste under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the Atomic Energy Act means not all waste resulting from spent fuel reprocessing is highly radioactive. As a result, the agency is looking at options such as sending the material to low-level radioactive waste disposal sites run by EnergySolutions in Utah or Waste Control Specialists in Texas. The waste could be grouted for stabilizaion either before or after it leaves the Savannah River Site. Prior to a disposal decision, the agency would determine if the recycled wastewater meets its new standards for disposal as non-HLW. The Energy Department is not officially redefining any high-level waste at SRS but rather saying some of it poses low-enough risk to be disposed of at a low-level site.

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