Environmental News For The Week Ending 07 March 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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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:

• Coronavirus Disease News 07March 2020
• Coronavirus Economic News 07March 2020

Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report | CDC – Key indicators that track flu activity remain high but decreased for the third week in a row. Severity indicators (hospitalizations and deaths) remain moderate to low overall, but hospitalization rates differ by age group, with high rates among children and young adults. The percentage of respiratory specimens testing positive for influenza at clinical laboratories decreased from 28.0% last week to 24.3% this week. Nationally, influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses are now the most commonly reported influenza viruses this season. Genetic and antigenic characterization and antiviral susceptibility of influenza viruses collected in the U.S. are summarized in this report. Visits to health care providers for influenza-like illness (ILI) decreased from 5.5% last week to 5.3% this week. All regions remain above their baselines. The overall cumulative hospitalization rate for the season increased to 57.9 per 100,000. The percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza is 6.9%, below the epidemic threshold of 7.3%. 11 influenza-associated pediatric deaths occurring during the 2019-2020 season were reported this week. The total for the season is 136. Key Points:

• Outpatient ILI and clinical laboratory data remain elevated but decreased for the third week in a row.
• Nationally, influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses are now the most commonly reported influenza viruses this season. Previously, influenza B/Victoria viruses predominated nationally.
• Overall, hospitalization rates remain similar to this time during recent seasons, but rates among school aged children and young adults are higher at this time than in recent seasons and rates among children 0-4 years old are now the highest CDC has on record at this point in the season, surpassing rates reported during the second wave of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
• Pneumonia and influenza mortality has been low, but 136 influenza-associated deaths in children have been reported so far this season. This number is higher for the same time period than in every season since reporting began in 2004-05, except for the 2009 pandemic.
• CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 34 million flu illnesses, 350,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 deaths from flu.

Heat Waves May Lead to Birth Defects, Low Birth Weight Babies –Researchers from the University of California in San Diego found that longer and hotter heat waves, exactly the type that is commensurate with the climate crisis, might increase preterm births. As temperatures climbed higher and stayed that way for more and more days, the risk of preterm birth increased, according to the new study that was published in the journal Environment International, as The New York Times reported. “We looked at acute exposure to extreme heat during the week before birth, to see if it triggered an earlier delivery,” said first author Sindana Ilango, a Ph.D. student in the joint doctoral program in public health at UC San Diego and San Diego State University, in a statement. “We found a consistent pattern: exposure to extreme heat does increase risk. And, importantly, we found that this was true for several definitions of ‘heatwave.'” The senior author on the paper Tarik Benmarhnia, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine, added that this was the first study to look what particular factors of a heatwave increased the risk of preterm birth. “[N]o one had tried to figure out exactly what kinds of conditions could trigger preterm births,” he said in the statement. “Is it the temperature? Is it the combination of the temperature and the humidity? Is it the duration of the heatwave? It’s important to ask these questions to know when we need to intervene and inform pregnant people to stay inside and stay cool.” Birth before 37 weeks of gestation is a leading cause of infant death and illness. To examine how heat contributes, the researchers looked at California birth records from 2005 to 2013, comparing gestation length to heat records from 2005 to 2013, as The New York Times reported. The scientists found a striking pattern – the rate of preterm deaths tracked right alongside increases in temperature or length of a heat wave. The New York Times provided an example: at an average a temperature of 88 degrees for two days 6.63 percent of births were preterm. However, at four days of 98-degree temperature, the rate was 7.46 percent.

The number of millennials with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is surging, report finds – Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease traditionally have been considered a concern for older generations. But recent spikes in early onset of these conditions in Americans as young as 30 suggest a different story. Between 2013 and 2017, early-onset dementia and Alzheimer’s diagnoses increased by 83% among commercially insured Americans aged 30 to 44, according to a report released by the health care insurer. That age group includes the oldest millennials. Overall, early-onset diagnoses increased by 200% among commercially insured Americans between ages 30 to 64. That included a 50% jump among those 45 to 54 and by 40% for those aged 55 to 64. The average patient was diagnosed at age 49.”The results of this report are concerning, especially the increase in early-onset dementia and Alzheimer’s disease among younger people,” Dr. Richard Snyder, chief medical officer for Independence Blue Cross, said in a statement.”While the underlying cause is not clear, advances in technology are certainly allowing for earlier and more definitive diagnosis. Regardless, those who develop dementia or Alzheimer’s at an early age will likely require caregiving, either from family members or healthcare providers. The time, cost and impact on families can be significant and can require additional support as these diseases progress.”Diagnosis rates were higher in the East, South and parts of the Midwest. Women made up 58% of the diagnoses. Alzheimer’s, the most common type of dementia, begins with mild memory loss, eventually progressing to the point where victims can no longer hold a conversation or respond to their environments. Symptoms generally occur after age 60.

Climate Change Will Turn These Common Foods Toxic -The neurological disease known as “konzo,” which translates to “tied legs,” is irreversible, said Nzwalo, a neurologist and professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences of Algarve in Portugal. It can also lead to sudden paralysis. Konzo is brought on by exposure to high amounts of a toxin from a starchy root vegetable, cassava – one of the staple foods in the diet of more than 500 million people who live in Africa. With proper preparation, the toxin, hydrogen cyanide, can be flushed out with water. But in the face of agricultural crisis, drought, and poverty, people are forced to choose between going hungry and adhering to these preparations. A lack of rain can also increase the concentration of hydrogen cyanide in cassava, making the plant even more dangerous to eat. All these factors, and especially drought, are predicted to get worse with climate change and increase the risk of konzo. Konzo is just one example of how the climate crisis is going to fundamentally change the availability and safety of the foods we eat. In 2019, researchers found that climate change and higher CO2 levels could reduce certain vitamins in foods, like zinc, iron, and protein. But there might be even more dramatic impacts: Instead of just making plants less nutritious, they could also become toxic, like cassava when faced with drought. If your diet doesn’t regularly include foods like lychee or cassava, a 2004report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) found that some more familiar foods are also at risk for becoming more toxic. Plants use a compound called nitrate to grow, and convert it into other molecules like amino acids and proteins. When crops like barley, maize or millet are faced with drought, they slow down or stop this conversion, which leads to a nitrate buildup. If a human eats large amounts of nitrate, it can “stop red blood cells from transporting oxygen in the human body,” Yale360 reported. In the opposite direction, heavy rains can lead to a toxic buildup of hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid in foods like flax, maize, sorghum, arrow grass, cherries and apples. Hydrogen cyanide is the same ingredient that can be found in some types of chemical warfare, Reuterspointed out. With flooding, there can be an increase in fungal growth and mycotoxins on crops. All these toxins cause disorders of the nervous system. “They can really make it difficult for people to breathe – it’s like asphyxiation [suffocation],” McGlade said in the interview.

Dicamba litigation against Bayer, BASF poised to explode, lawyers say Thousands of farmers from multiple states are expected to join mass tort litigation pending in federal court over claims that weed-killing products developed by the former Monsanto Co. and other chemical companies are destroying and contaminating crops, including organic production, a group of lawyers and farmers said on Wednesday.The number of farmers seeking legal representation to file suit against Monsanto and BASF has surged over the last week and a half after a staggering $265 million jury award to a Missouri peach farmer who alleged the two companies were to blame for the loss of his livelihood, according to Joseph Peiffer of the Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane law firm. Peiffer said more than 2,000 farmers are likely to become plaintiffs.There are already over 100 farmers making claims against the companies that have been combined inmultidistrict litigation in U.S. District Court in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.Earlier this month the bellwether trial for that litigation ended with a unanimous jury awarding the family-owned Bader Farms $15 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages, to be paid by Bayer AG, the German company that bought Monsanto in 2018, and by BASF. The jury concluded that Monsanto and BASF conspired in actions they knew would lead to widespread crop damage because they expected it would increase their own profits. “We now have the road map to get justice for dicamba victims. The Bader verdict in Missouri sent a clear signal that you can’t profit off of hurting innocent farmers and get away with it,” said Peiffer. “The crop damage research and increasing farmer complaints forecast a much bigger problem than Monsanto/Bayer and BASF want to admit.”

China Warns Of Looming Locust Invasion As Coronavirus Outbreak Fades – Just days after Beijing promised to send a a 1,000-duck “army” to Pakistan to help farmers fend off one of the largest locust swarms in decades, senior government officials warned that China could soon face an “invasion” of desert locusts and urged local authorities to prepare for battle, even as the country struggles to get back on its feet after being shut down for so long. The locusts are reportedly approaching China via Pakistan and India. Swarms could enter Tibet from Pakistan and India, or the southwestern province of Yunnan through Myanmar, depending on climate conditions, the notice said. Swarms could also fly across Kazakhstan and into China’s Xinjiang region, according to Reuters.To be sure, the National Forestry and Grassland Administrations said on its website that the risk of the swarm entering China and attacking farms is “low”. But if the swarms do arrive, Beijing will be limited by a paucity of knowledge about the locusts’ migratory patterns and techniques to fight them (aside from the ducks, apparently).Swarms could also attack the southwestern province of Yunnan via Myanmar. It all depends on climate conditions. Swarms could also fly across Kazakhstan and into China’s Xinjiang region.Chinese customs officials at Khunjerab, a crossing between China and Pakistan in southwestern Xinjiang, have started monitoring the surrounding 2 km for locusts. They inspect vehicles crossing the border and, if they find locusts or locust eggs hidden, they destroy them.The desert locusts have already ravaged crops and pastures in several countries in Africa, as well as India and Pakistan.

2020’s Plague of Locusts: Updates on Africa and Pakistan (and China) – Lambert Strether —For much of Africa, the spectre at the feast is not #COVID-19 but a plague of locusts of Biblical scale. From Locust Watch, by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Watch, the latest map: (The link includes detailed country reports.) The map includes “adult groups” in Congo.) From the Associated Press, “East Africa’s huge locust outbreak now spreads to Congo“: A small group of desert locusts has entered Congo, marking the first time the voracious insects have been seen in the Central African country since 1944, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency said Tuesday…. The FAO said mature locusts, carried in part by the wind, arrived on the western shore of Lake Albert in eastern Congo on Friday near the town of Bunia…. “Needless to say the potential impact of locusts on a country still grappling with complex conflict, Ebola and measles outbreaks, high levels of displacement, and chronic food insecurity would be devastating,” the U.N. officials said in the joint statement. AP’s story that made me think I should take a look at locusts again (first post here) because you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Why? Because the locust’s life-cycle is extremely fast. More from AP:Desert locusts have a reproduction cycle of three months, the U.N. officials said, and mature swarms are laying eggs in vast areas of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, “many of which are already hatching.” “In just a few weeks, the next generation of the pests will transition from their juvenile stage and take wing in a renewed frenzy of destructive swarm activity,” the joint statement said.This is a time when farmers’ crops begin to sprout, which could devastate East Africa’s most important crop of the year, the U.N. officials said. So, we’ve already seen enormous swarms. Those swarms have laid their eggs – in the nice moist earth created by this season’s heavy rains – which will shortly emerge as hoppers. In this post, I’m going to take a quick look at the situation in Pakistan, followed by a longer look at Africa[1]. (I’m going to ignore the Arabian Peninsula; perhaps I’ll post on that topic later.) In each case, I’ll focus on remedies for the swarms – ducks (!), pesticides, locust-killing fungus. I’ll conclude with a look at coming “food insecurity” (what we call starvation and hunger these days, I guess), and the funding situation.

How DuPont may avoid paying to clean up a toxic ‘forever chemical’ – Robin Andrews of Pedricktown, New Jersey, has been fighting an autoimmune disease and thyroid condition for the past three years, suffering severe dental problems, hair loss and other symptoms. All, she believes, are the result of exposure to drinking water tainted by a group of chemicals called PFAS, used widely for decades in products like Teflon pans, stain-resistant carpets, even cosmetics. Known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the body, PFAS increasingly have been linked to conditions experienced by Andrews, 65, as well as birth defects, cancer, obesity and diabetes. People have been exposed to the chemicals by direct contact and from polluted ground and surface water and soil. Potential liabilities associated with the chemicals – both environmental cleanup and ongoing healthcare costs – have been estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. Now, however, there’s a risk that Andrews and other people with illnesses linked to the chemicals could end up with no compensation for their health problems. That’s because a major manufacturer, DuPont, recently unloaded its PFAS obligations to smaller companies that do not have the money to pay for them. Jeff Tittel, senior chapter director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, has watched DuPont’s moves with concern. “They are setting up other companies to take the fall on liabilities that won’t have enough money, so even if people win lawsuits, they will get nothing or very little,” he said.PFAS are not regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act and their side effects are still being understood by scientists and the public. In February, the EPA put out a proposal to regulate two of the most common PFAS chemicals found in drinking water and is asking for comment on how to monitor them.On Wednesday, the EPA disclosed it “has multiple criminal investigations underway concerning PFAS-related pollution.” The agency did not identify the entities being investigated and it could not be determined if DuPont is one of them.Daniel Turner, reputation and media relations manager for DuPont, said the company had not received an information request from the EPA related to a criminal investigation. Manufactured between the 1940s and the early 2000s, the chemicals have been associated with high cholesterol, increased liver enzymes, decreased vaccination response, birth defects, pregnancy-induced hypertension and testicular and kidney cancer,according to a 2016 EPA study. The National Institutes of Health concluded in a 2019 analysis that PFAS are in the blood of 97 percent of Americans.

How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades – Every human on Earth is ingesting nearly 2,000 particles of plastic a week. These tiny pieces enter our unwitting bodies from tap water, food, and even the air, according to an alarming academic study sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, dosing us with five grams of plastics, many cut with chemicals linked to cancers, hormone disruption, and developmental delays. Since the paper’s publication last year, Sen. Tom Udall, a plain-spoken New Mexico Democrat with a fondness for white cowboy hats and turquoise bolo ties, has been trumpeting the risk: “We are consuming a credit card’s worth of plastic each week,” Udall says. At events with constituents, he will brandish a Visa from his wallet and declare, “You’re eating this, folks!” With new legislation, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020, Udall is attempting to marshal Washington into a confrontation with the plastics industry, and to force companies that profit from plastics to take accountability for the waste they create. Unveiled in February, the bill would ban many single-use plastics and force corporations to finance “end of life” programs to keep plastic out of the environment. “We’re going back to that principle,” the senator tells Rolling Stone. “The polluter pays.” The battle pits Udall and his allies in Congress against some of the most powerful corporate interests on the planet, including the oil majors and chemical giants that produce the building blocks for our modern plastic world – think Exxon, Dow, and Shell – and consumer giants like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and Unilever that package their products in the stuff. Big Plastic isn’t a single entity. It’s more like a corporate supergroup: Big Oilmeets Big Soda – with a puff of Big Tobacco, responsible for trillions of plastic cigarette butts in the environment every year. And it combines the lobbying and public-relations might of all three.

What If Nestlé and Coke Had to Clean Up Their Own Plastic Pollution? – Plastic waste – most of it from single-use processed food and drink packaging – contaminates our drinking water, soil, air and waterways, including the deepest parts of the ocean.The Break Free From Plastic Act of 2020 aims to curb plastics pollution by shifting the responsibility from consumers to the companies that produce plastic. The bill, introduced by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), would hold major plastic polluters, such as Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, accountable for their pollution by requiring them to finance waste and recycling programs.The Break Free From Plastic Act would also place an all-out ban on certain single-use plastics that are non-recyclable, and prohibit plastic waste from being shipped overseas to developing countries.Plastic pollution is so rampant in our oceans that scientists predict the sea will contain more plastic than fish by the year 2050. It also pollutes soil and freshwater.Tiny bits of plastic or microplastic are contaminating humans, too. The average person eats at least 50,000 particles of microplastic each year – and we inhale a similar amount – studies show. Consumers should shop responsibly, sure. But it’s time we held the biggest plastic polluters responsible for the damage they cause to the environment and human health.

Trump Admin Failed to Protect 241 Species From Extinction – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of the Interior have failed to protect 241 plant and animal species under the Endangered Species Act, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week by the Center for Biological Diversity, as Bloomberg Environment reported.Four years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services created a framework to address the backlog of more than 500 species that were slated to receive protections, including the 241 species listed in the lawsuit. In the filing, the Center for Biological Diversity claims that the Trump Administration prevented the Fish and Wildlife Service from working its way through the list, as Newsweek reported.One of the most pernicious things that can happen for species that need direct protection or habitat protection is for the federal government to do nothing. By systematically doing nothing, the administration has allowed 241 species to reach the brink of extinction, according to Mother Jones. Most of the species listed in the lawsuit have been awaiting protections for a decade or longer.Among the species listed in the suit are spotted turtles in the Great Lakes and on the Eastern seaboard, moose in the Midwest, a western bumblebee that has declined by 84 percent, and a tiny freshwater fish in Chesapeake Bay that flips stones with its nose to find food, according to a statement from the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center also created an interactive map of the U.S. that details which species are living in each state. “As moose and golden-winged warblers and hundreds of other species fight the rising tide of the extinction crisis, Trump officials won’t lift a finger to help,” Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity’s endangered species director said. “This administration’s ugly contempt for wildlife and the Endangered Species Act threatens our country’s entire web of life. Every day of delay brings these incredible, irreplaceable plants and animals one step closer to extinction.”

Koalas Face Extinction Threat After Wildfires: New Report – Australian conservation groups are asking the government to declare koalas endangered after the devastating wildfires this summer killed thousands of them and destroyed 45 million acres of bush that they call home, according to a new report from the conservation group International Fund for Animal Welfare. The report used witness accounts and satellite imagery to assess the damage to the koala population. It conservatively estimates that nearly 5,000 koalas were killed, which accounts for 12 percent of the population in New South Wales, according to CNN. Another report from the World Wide Fund for Nature found that nearly 10,000 koalas died in New South Wales, which would comprise one-third of the koala population, according to the Australian Broadcasting Company.Dr. Stephen Philips, principal research scientist and koala ecologist at the environmental consultancy Biolink, which compiled the International Fund for Animal Welfare report, said: “We’ve taken a conservative approach. But we still think that we have lost two out of every three koalas in NSW. It’s a spectacular loss in terms of conservation criteria and meets endangered listing almost immediately.”It also found that the intensity of the fires made it extremely difficult for koalas to escape to safety. The researchers estimated that in areas of intense burning, at least 70 percent of the koala population perished, according to the report’s executive summary.”Koalas are particularly vulnerable to bushfires as they are slow moving and live in eucalyptus trees that burn quickly and intensely,” wrote Josey Sharrad from the International Fund for Animal Welfare to CNN. “When fires sweep through their homes, they often don’t have time to escape, particularly in intense crown fires that rage through the treetops where they live,” she added.Those are troubling numbers since the koala population, prior to this summer’s wildfires, had already experienced a nearly 20 percent population decline over the last three generations, which is about 18 years, according to the report. The study looked at the effects of the wildfires from Oct. 1 to Jan. 10. The group expects to have a more complete picture of the threat koalas are under after it looks at data running through Feb. 10. The preliminary analysis shows a wide range of losses, anywhere from 29 percent to 67 percent of the koala population, according to the The Guardian. Even if the losses are on the conservative side, it still means nearly one-third of the population was lost in just a few months, plus much of their habitat was completely destroyed threatening their future viability.

Indian Ocean Dolphin Population Plummets Due to Commercial Fishing –Fishing operations in the Indian Ocean have decimated dolphin populations over the last 70 years, according to a new study published in the journal Endangered Species Research. The fishing operations that have had dolphins swept up as bycatch have meant that nearly 4 million dolphins have died since 1950 and the population of dolphins in the Indian Ocean has declined by nearly 80 percent, as The Guardian reported.Those numbers just represent the dolphins killed directly as bycatch of drifting nets that trail behind large fishing boats and do not represent the number of dolphins, porpoises or whales killed by floating ghost nets, harpoons, other types of tuna fishing or animals that are injured and succumb to their wounds later. That means the actual number of dolphins killed from commercial fishing may actually be much higher, according to the study.Looking at driftnets, which account for just over one-third of Indian Ocean commercial fisheries, the researchers were able to calculate that the number of dolphins, porpoises, and whales killed directly each year as bycatch peaked at around 100,000 from 2004 to 2006. That number has come down slightly and is now around 85,000 cetaceans annually, according to the study.Unfortunately, the authors do not believe the decline in bycatch is the result of improved practices, which are essentially unregulated. Instead, they believe it reflects the declining dolphin population, according to The Guardian.The study’s lead author, Charles Anderson of the Manta Marine organization in the Maldives, estimated that the dolphin numbers had probably dropped to only 13 percent their pre-1980 levels, which is when large-scale tuna fishing in the Indian Ocean began, as The Guardian reported. “Declining cetacean bycatch rates suggest that such levels of mortality are not sustainable,” the study says. “Indeed, mean small cetacean abundance may currently be 13 percent of pre-fishery levels. None of these estimates are precise, but they do demonstrate the likely order of magnitude of the issue.”

Almost 90 Percent Of Dolphin Population Killed Off By Overfishing – Overfishing has been blamed for an “alarming” drop in dolphin numbers, with fears their populations may be at just 13 per cent of what they were in 1980. An international group of scientists — including from Queensland’s James Cook University — used the numbers of dolphins caught accidentally in fishing nets as a way to estimate the wider population present in the world’s oceans. Tens of thousands of dolphins are snared in nets each year. The researchers found the numbers of dolphins snared had decreased by one-fifth since 2004, a sign of a rapid decrease in the number of dolphins in the ocean. “The declining cetacean bycatch rates shown by what we can measure suggest current mortality rates are not sustainable,” said James Cook University’s Dr Putu Mustika, one of the researchers involved in the project. “The estimates we have developed show that average small cetacean abundance may currently be 13 percent of the 1980 levels.” She pointed to a rise in the use of gillnets, which are huge rectangular nets set up as vertical walls in the ocean and currently banned by the United Nations — but still used widely by fishing companies in some countries.They can be up to 30 kilometres long, and run 20 metres deep into the ocean.

Stony Corals Seem to Be Preparing for a Mass Extinction, Scientists Report – Stony corals provide habitat for an eye-popping one-fourth of the ocean’s species. They serve as the centerpiece of a rich and diverse ecosystem, which is why their recent behavior has scientists concerned. New research shows that stony corals around the world are hunkering down into survival mode as they prepare for a mass extinction event, according to a new study published in Scientific Reports. The international research team noticed a suite of behaviors that correspond to a survival response commensurate with how they behaved during the last mass extinction 66 million years ago, according to the new study. “When we finally put all this together and saw the result, for me it was that moment when the hair on the back of your neck stands up,” said marine biologist David Gruber, from The City University of New York, toNewsweek. “It was like, Oh my goodness, [the corals] are doing exactly what they did back then.”The researchers had a rich-history of corals to compare with modern species. Coral skeletons leave an indelible, time-stamped fossil record for scientists to examine the conditions that led to their dying. The scientists were able to compare those fossils with the 839 coral species on the red list of threatened speciesrecognized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as Newsweek reported.The scientists looked at the traits of corals that survived the last major extinction event. They found that the colorful, wavy corals that attract scuba divers did not last. The ones that did survive are the ones that form small colonies and seek out deep water, which are the same ones showing signs of thriving today, asNewsweek reported.”It was incredibly spooky to witness how corals are now exhibiting the same traits as they did at the last major extinction event,” said Gruber, in a statement put out by the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. “Corals seem to be preparing to jump across an extinction boundary, while we are putting our foot further on the pedal.”

Half of the World’s Beaches Could Disappear by 2100, Study Finds – If nothing is done to lower greenhouse gas emissions, sea level rise could swallow nearly half of the world’s sandy beaches by 2100.That’s the conclusion of a study published by the European Union’s Joint Research Center in Nature Climate Change Monday, which marks the first worldwide assessment of the future of sandy shorelines, EU Science Hub reported.”What we find is that by the end of the century around half of the beaches in the world will experience erosion that is more than 100 meters,” lead author Michalis Vousdoukas said in an Associated Press story published by Time. “It’s likely that they will be lost.” That would harm the wildlife that calls the beaches home and could be a major blow to coastal communities, who enjoy beaches for recreation and rely on them for protection against coastal flooding and storm surges. “Apart from tourism, sandy beaches often act as the first line of defence from coastal storms and flooding, and without them impacts of extreme weather events will probably be higher,” Vousdoukas told AFP.The researchers looked at 35 years of coastal satellite data and combined it with 82 years of climate and sea level rise predictions. They also modeled more than 100 million storms to gauge erosion, EU Science Hub explained.They then assessed what would happen to the world’s beaches under two different climate change scenarios, AFP explained. Under the worst-case scenario, known as RCP8.5, greenhouse gas emissions would continue unchecked or natural feedback loops such as methane release from melting permafrost would kick in, increasing warming. According to that scenario, the world would lose 49.5 percent of its sandy beaches by 2100.

Truck Destroys Sacred 1,000-Year-Old Easter Island Statue — A rogue pickup truck has destroyed a 1,000-year-old statue on Easter Island. The accident took place in the Pu A Pau sector of the island earlier this month, the cultural heritage organization, Ma’u Henua, said on Facebook. The truck had been parked, The New York Times reported Friday, but an apparent brake failure caused the vehicle to roll down a hill, crashing into an ahu, a stone pedestal that supports moai – the iconic giant head-shaped figures that have made the island famous. Jo Anne Van Tilburg of the Easter Island Statue Project told the outlet that the outcome of the accident “could not be worse.” The ahu are a fundamental part of the island’s culture. “This is a mortuary. That is what ahu are,” Tilburg said. “This man basically ran right smack into a grave. It could not be worse.””The damage is incalculable,” said the president of Easter Island’s indigenous community.

At Least 25 Dead as Tornadoes Devastate Tennessee – At least 25 people have died in Tennessee following the deadliest tornado day in seven years.A storm system spawned tornadoes that wreaked havoc in west and central Tennessee Tuesday morning, including one that touched down in Nashville and ripped through the city for miles, USA Today reported. The storm cut a 10 mile path through downtown Nashville, according to The Weather Channel. One-hundred and fifty-six were treated for injuries at the hospital, and almost 50 buildings collapsed, though more were damaged. The Nashville tornado touched down north of downtown just before 1 a.m. and destroyed buildings in Germantown before moving east to the Five Points part of East Nashville, USA Today reported. Because it moved so quickly and struck so late, many people did not have time to seek shelter. Residents in East Nashville only had a six minute warning, CNN reported. “I got the warning and in less than ten minutes you could just feel the pressure, my ears were popping we all ran downstairs and just huddled together,” Danielle Theophile told CNN affiliate WSMV. “It went by so fast … it’s gone.” The storm system also wreaked havoc outside of Nashville. It was the deadliest in Putnam County, 70 miles east of Nashville, where at least 19 people were killed, according to The New York Times. Several of those who died were children, The Nashville Tennessean reported. It was the worst natural disaster in the county’s history. Eighty-eight people were treated at the Cookeville Regional Medical Center and 77 are missing, though authorities think some of them may be unreachable due to power outages. The storm also killed three people in Wilson County and one person in Benton County, according to theTennessee Emergency Management Agency. Tennessee has a history of devastating tornadoes, according to The New York Times. It survived deadly storms in 1933, 1998 and 2008. Tuesday’s storm was the deadliest tornado event since a tornado in Moore, Oklahoma killed 24 in 2013, according to CNN.

Moscow crushes record for warmest winter as milestones are set across Europe and North America – The meteorological winter of 2019-2020 shattered temperature records in Russia and France as well as other parts of Europe and the United States. In Moscow, this was the warmest winter in nearly 200 years of record-keeping, and the first winter there to have an average temperature at or above 32 degrees (0 Celsius).The average winter temperature during the months of December, January and February in Moscow was 32.3 degrees (0.2 Celsius), which is 11.3 degrees (6.3 Celsius) above the 1981-2010 average, and shatters the previous record held by the winter of 1960-61 by an astonishing 3.5 degrees (2.8 Celsius), according to Etienne Kapikian of Meteo France, along with the Russian TASS news agency. In Moscow, officials brought in artificial snow for New Year’s celebrations because both December and January hit monthly temperature records as the city went through a rare snow drought.Other parts of Europe also missed out on winter.In Helsinki, no snow fell in January or February for the first time on record, and just 0.2 centimeters fell during the entire winter. Not surprisingly, Finland saw record warmth for the season. France as a whole had its warmest winter on record. According to Meteo France, the average temperature this winter was 4.86 degrees (2.7 Celsius) above average. In Germany, the country’s ice wine harvest failed for the first time on record as temperatures failed to drop as low as 19 degrees in any of the country’s 13 wine-growing regions, according to Ernst Büscher from the German Wine Institute (DWI), in a statement. Ice wine is a sweet dessert wine produced from frozen grapes. Numerous U.S. cities also had a top five warmest winter, particularly areas east of the Mississippi River, with well-below-average snowfall along the East Coast in particular.

Europe Has Warmest Winter ‘by Far’ on Record – Europe has just experienced “by far” its warmest winter since records began, the European Union climate change observer Copernicus announced on Wednesday.The average temperature in Europe between December 2019 and February 2020 was 3.4 degrees Celsius warmer than the average temperature between 1981 and 2010, according to the report from the Copernicus Climate Change Service.The average temperature was also 1.4 degrees Celsius above the warmest winter ever, which was 2015/16.The temperature in the north and east of the continent was especially high. Despite some extreme storms, Germany was among the countries that experienced an especially warm winter.There are concerns around agriculture across Europe. This was the first winter ever that Germany was unable to produce any “ice wine,” a local delicacy made from grapes harvested when they are frozen.”Considerably above-average temperatures were not confined to Europe, but extended over most of Russia,” the climate service wrote on their website.”Other regions that were quite substantially warmer than average include north-western Africa, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, and much of China, with smaller pockets in North and South America, central and southern Africa and Western Australia,” they explained. The EU’s official weather service uses information from satellites, ships, planes and weather stations to determine its findings.

Record-Breaking Warm Weather Expected Around Globe As Human-Caused Climate Crisis Now As Powerful As El Niño’s Effects, Says WMO — As countries accustomed to cold, snowy winters reported record-breaking warm weather this season, meteorological experts on Monday predicted that temperatures over the next several months will also be warmer than usual – even without the effects of El Niño. In its El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) update, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that the naturally-occurring El Niño phenomenon has only a 20 to 35% chance of taking place between March and August 2020. Warm weather mirroring El Niño’s effects, however, is 55 to 60% likely over that same time period. “Even ENSO neutral months are warmer than in the past, as air and sea surface temperatures and ocean heat have increased due to climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement. “The signal from human-induced climate change is now as powerful as that from a major natural force of nature.” Even without the phenomenon, above-average sea surface temperatures are expected in both tropical and non-tropical regions in the next several months, which will lead to unusually warm weather on land as well.The WMO report came as officials from around the world reported that cities and countries in a number of regions are experiencing unusually warm winters.Moscow has had its warmest winter season in 200 years of record-keeping, with an average temperature of 32.3 degrees Fahrenheit – the first winter the city has experienced with an average temperature above freezing. Data is still being recorded throughout Russia, the Washington Post reported, and the entire country may have set a warm-weather record this winter. Japan and France have also recorded their warmest winters.

Australia’s Summers Are Now Twice as Long as Its Winters – The climate crisis has now stretched Australia’s summers twice as long as its winters, a new report has found.The report, published by The Australian Institute Monday, comes after the country experienced its warmest and driest year on record, as well as a devastating wildfire season that killed 33 people and more than one billion animals, BBC News pointed out.”Following the hottest Summer on record, it commonplace to hear older Australians claim Summers aren’t what they use to be. And they are right,” Australia Institute Climate & Energy Program Director Richie Merzian said in a press release. “Our findings are not a projection of what we may see in the future. It’s happening right now.” The researchers looked at Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) temperature data from 70 weather stations across Australia, The Guardian reported. First, they compared temperature data from 1999 to 2018 with data from 1950 to 1969. They found that, between the two periods, summers had gotten 31 days longer while winters had gotten 23 days shorter. Then, they looked at data for the last five years and found that summers from 2014 to 2018 were around twice as long as winters.This has major implications for the health and wellbeing of Australians. Extreme heat waves are the deadliest extreme weather events in the country, responsible for more deaths than all other hazards combined, Merzian said. Shorter winters also mean there is less time to implement strategies for managing bushfires during the off season.One region that suffered during the most recent wave of wildfires has also seen its summers extend significantly: Port Macquarie in New South Wales, where the Lindfield Park Road fire burned for almost seven months starting in July 2019, is now seeing 48 more days of summer, ABC News pointed out. Fires in Port Macquarie also devastated koala habitats.” [T]he catastrophic 2019 fires near Port Macquarie occurred before summer as defined by the calendar, but well within the new summer as caused by climate change,” the report said, according to ABC News. Australia has seen one degree Celsius of warming so far, but is on track for three to four degrees of warming based on its current emissions targets.

Water Conflicts Will Intensify. Can We Predict the Worst Problems Before Conditions Boil Over? — In 2015 an estimated 1.8 million migrants crossed into the European Union, fleeing countries gripped by violence, political upheaval and resource scarcity like Syria, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Eritrea and Nigeria. Many made their trips in flimsy, overcrowded boats. Thousands drowned along the way. E.U. governments struggled to deal with the influx of new arrivals, and the confluence of humanitarian and political crises that resulted – including a surge in right-wing anti-immigrant rhetoric. Advance warning, experts say, could have helped world governments and aid workers anticipate and adapt for these problems, and probably save lives in the process. But how do we predict future conflicts on a rapidly warming planet? The Netherlands, which has experienced sharp rises in both immigration and far-right populism, decided to try to answer that question by funding a project to model which areas of the world were likely to face upcoming conflicts. The result – the Water, Peace and Security Global Early Warning Tool – was released in December. It’s an online interface that analyzes data on violent conflicts, as well as dozens of economic, environmental and social indicators, to help pinpoint hotspots where worsening conditions – like food shortages or drought – are likely to shift to violent conflict within the year. “We used a number of traditional indicators of predicting conflicts, such as economic strength, political, stability, demographic trends and past conflict, which is actually a predictor of future conflict,” said Charles Iceland, director of global and national water initiatives at the World Resources Institute. The organization partnered with IHE Delft, Deltares, The Hague Center for Strategic Studies, International Alert and Wetlands International to develop the tool.

Tropical forests losing their ability to absorb carbon, study finds -Tropical forests are taking up less carbon dioxide from the air, reducing their ability to act as “carbon sinks” and bringing closer the prospect of accelerating climate breakdown.The Amazon could turn into a source of carbon in the atmosphere, instead of one of the biggest absorbers of the gas, as soon as the next decade, owing to the damage caused by loggers and farming interests and the impacts of the climate crisis, new research has found. If that happens, climate breakdown is likely to become much more severe in its impacts, and the world will have to cut down much faster on carbon-producing activities to counteract the loss of the carbon sinks. For the last three decades, the amount of carbon absorbed by the world’s intact tropical forests has fallen, according to the study from nearly 100 scientific institutions. They are now taking up a third less carbon than they did in the 1990s, owing to the impacts of higher temperatures, droughts and deforestation. That downward trend is likely to continue, as forests come under increasing threat from climate change and exploitation. The typical tropical forest may become a carbon source by the 2060s, according to Lewis. “Humans have been lucky so far, as tropical forests are mopping up lots of our pollution, but they can’t keep doing that indefinitely,” he told the Guardian. “We need to curb fossil fuel emissions before the global carbon cycle starts working against us. The time for action is now.” This research shows that relying on tropical forests is unlikely to be enough to offset large-scale emissions. “There is a lot of talk about offsetting, but the reality is that every country and every sector needs to reach zero emissions, with any small amount of residual emissions needing to be removed from the atmosphere,” said Lewis. “The use of forests as an offset is largely a marketing tool for companies to try to continue with business as usual.” The uptake of carbon from the atmosphere by tropical forests peaked in the 1990s when about 46bn tonnes were removed from the air, equivalent to about 17% of carbon dioxide emissions from human activities. By the last decade, that amount had sunk to about 25bn tonnes, or just 6% of global emissions.

Russian Arctic shipping up 430 percent in three years – The goods volumes delivered to and from ports on the Arctic shipping route has never been close to the current level. According to Nikolay Monko, the Acting Director of the the Northern Sea Route Administration, a total of 31,5 million tons of goods was shipped on the route in 2019. That is an increase of 56,7 percent from 2019, and 150 percent from 2018. Over the last three years, NSR volumes have hiked by more than 430 percent. The ship traffic on the route is now several times higher than in the Soviet period. The Soviet-era record was set in 1986 when 6,455 million tons was shipped in the area. It is liquefied natural gas (LNG) that constitutes the lion’s share of the goods volumes. A total of 20,5 million tons of LNG was sent out from natural gas terminal Sabetta in Yamal, Nikolay Monko told TASS. In addition comes 1,5 million tons of ores sent from Dudinka, company Nornickel’s port on the Yenisey River, and 7,7 million tons from Gazprom Neft’s Novy Port field, news agency Korabel reports. Transit shipments constitutes only a minor share of the goods. In 2019, a total of 697,200 tons was shipped from the east to the west or vice versa on the route, an increase of 42 percent from 2018. A total of 37 ships last year made transit voyages across the remote and icy Arctic route. The Northern Sea Route includes the waters between the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya and the Bering Strait, a distance of about 5,600 km. It is a significant shortcut between markets in Europe and Asia, but is covered by ice major parts of the year and ships need icebreaker escort for maneuvering through the area.

A Trump official added a dubious claim suggesting that climate change could be good to a scientific report – A Trump administration official pressured Interior Department scientists to add dubious information to at least nine government reports, according to the New York Times, including a discredited belief that an increase in carbon dioxide, which is amplifying the earth’s greenhouse effect and contributing to global warming, was positive. The Times reported on Monday that in one instance, Indur M. Goklany, who was appointed to the department’s office of the deputy secretary in 2017, “instructed department scientists to add that rising carbon dioxide – the main force driving global warming – is beneficial because it ‘may increase plant water use efficiency’ and ‘lengthen the agricultural growing season.'” Goklany, who has a doctorate in electrical engineering, had worked for the department since the Reagan Administration but gained new prominence after Donald Trump took office, the Washington Post reported. Throughout his career, he has questioned whether climate change will have negative impacts on the planet, according to the Post. The language Goklany tried to insert “takes very specific and isolated pieces of science, and tries to expand it in an extraordinarily misleading fashion,” Samuel Myers of Harvard University’s Center for the Environment told the Times. Plants consume carbon dioxide to convert into energy. Research has shown that increased levels of carbon dioxide have contributed to greening around the world. But too much warming, driven by carbon dioxide emissions, is projected to have negative effects. “The more CO2 you have, the less and less benefit you get,” Frances Moore, assistant professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis, told Scientific American. “Food security will be increasingly affected by projected future climate change,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in a 2019 special report on Climate Change and Land. “While increased CO2 is projected to be beneficial for crop productivity at lower temperature increases, it is projected to lower nutritional quality,” the IPCC writes. “Declines in yields and crop suitability are projected under higher temperatures, especially in tropical and semi-tropical regions.”

The European Union’s proposed climate law has not gone down well with Greta Thunberg – A proposed climate law to enforce the European Union’s commitment to be climate-neutral by the year 2050 has drawn criticism from environmental organizations and activists including Greta Thunberg. Plans for the European Climate Law, as it’s known, were unveiled by the European Commission on Wednesday. In a statement issued alongside the announcement, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the law as the “legal translation of our political commitment, and sets us irreversibly on the path to a more sustainable future. It is the heart of the European Green Deal.” Among other things, the Commission said its Climate Law included “measures to keep track of progress and adjust our actions accordingly.” Announced toward the end of last year, one of the European Green Deal’s central aims is for the EU to be climate-neutral – that is to say “an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” – by the year 2050. Poland, which is heavily dependent on coal, is currently the only EU country not to back this aim. In December 2019, the European Council noted this stance, stating: “One Member State, at this stage, cannot commit to implement this objective as far as it is concerned, and the European Council will come back to this in June 2020.” EU’s proposed climate law amounts to ‘surrender’ While von der Leyen was keen to praise the proposed legislation, it drew sharp rebukes from both environmental organizations and campaigners. “When your house is on fire, you don’t wait a few more years to start putting it out. And yet this is what the Commission are proposing today,” Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said during an appearance at the European Parliament’s Environment Committee on Wednesday. The 17-year-old went onto describe the proposed climate law as “surrender, because nature doesn’t bargain and you cannot make deals with physics,” a remark which drew applause.This sense of urgency was echoed by Molly Walsh, a climate justice campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe. “A target 30 years in the future does not represent emergency climate action – our house is on fire and Europe is still twiddling its thumbs,” she said in a statement.

Anti-Greta Knocks ‘Climate Alarmists’ During CPAC Speech -A 19-year-old European activist dubbed the ‘anti-Greta’ slammed “climate alarmists” on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland, according to Bloomberg. Self-proclaimed “climate realist” Naomi Seibt, who has roughly 60,000 followers on YouTube, told a panel sponsored by the Illinois-based Heartland Institute think tank: “The climate has always been changing, and so it’s ridiculous to say we deny climate change.””Man vastly overestimates his power if he thinks he can, with CO2 emissions, destroy the climate.”Very impressive CPAC speaker… 19-y-o German “climate realist” Naomi Seibt: Climate alarmists should be more humble. They want to drive us into energy poverty which is a way to control us. I see a dangerous socialist totalitarianism at the root of this pic.twitter.com/gg6B8qrav3 – Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) February 28, 2020Seibt dismissed allegations she is being used by climate skeptics to woo young people and counter Thunberg, the Swedish activist who has won international acclaim for arguing the world needs to rapidly throttle the greenhouse gas emissions fueling a warming world. “I am not the puppet of the right wing or the climate deniers or the Heartland Institute either,” Seibt said. –BloombergSeibt has come under fire after a video began circulating on Friday of her saying “The normal German consumer is at the bottom, so to speak. Then the Muslims come somewhere in between. And the Jew is at the top. That is the suppression characteristic,” remarks she said were taken out of context, and that she was expressing her view that it is “wrong to comment on different races differently and view them differently.”

Greenpeace Activists Urge Barclays to ‘Stop Funding the Climate Emergency,’ Shut Down Branches Across UK – In a coordinated action to pressure Barclays to stop financing climate destruction, Greenpeace activists on Monday morning shut down 97 of the British investment bank’s branches across the United Kingdom.”Barclays must stop funding the climate emergency; that’s why we’ve taken action today,” Morten Thaysen, climate finance campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said in a statement. “From floods to bushfires and record heat in Antarctica, the impacts of this crisis are staring us in the face. Yet Barclays keeps pumping billions intofossil fuel companies at exactly the time we need to stop backing these polluting businesses.””Banks are just as responsible for the climate emergency as the fossil fuel companies they fund, yet they’re escaped scrutiny for years,” Thaysen added. “We’ve shut down branches across the country to shine a spotlight on Barclays’ role in bankrolling this emergency. It’s time Barclays pulled the plug and backed away from funding fossil fuels for good.” Activists across the country disabled the doors at Barclays branches and plastered the buildings with photos of campaigners holding signs that declared: “Stop funding the climate emergency,” “Climate criminals,” and “Stop funding fossil fuels.”Greenpeace UK’s #BarclaysShutdown action was welcomed by fellow climate advocacy groups and activists who praised the group for fighting for a habitable planet:According to the Rainforest Action Network’s latest fossil fuel finance report card, published nearly a year ago, Barclays poured over $85 billion into coal, oil and gas companies from 2016 to 2018, and was the sixth largest funder of the fossil fuel industry worldwide. Climate action campaigners and Barclays shareholders alike have urged the bank to phase out its support for dirty energy firms.

Blocked Heathrow Airport Expansion Celebrated by Climate Activists =- The British government’s plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050 conflicts with its long-standing plan to level a village to expand Heathrow Airport, one of the world’s busiest airport hubs. Now an appeals court in Britain has ruled that the expansion is illegal since the government did not take into account how building a third runway would jibe with the government’s commitment to fight the climate crisis, according to The Guardian. Heathrow currently handles around 80 million passengers per year. A third runway would cost nearly $18 billion to build and would increase traffic by about 700 planes per day, spurring a huge rise in carbon emissions, according to The GuardianThe court ruled that the British government made firm commitment to the Paris agreement, but did not work that into its plans, as CNN reported. Climate activists who brought the suit celebrated the decision on the court steps.”We have not found that a national policy statement supporting this project is necessarily incompatible with the United Kingdom’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change under the Paris Agreement, or with any other policy the Government may adopt or international obligation it may undertake,” the judges wrote in their ruling, according to CNN.”The Paris Agreement ought to have been taken into account by the Secretary of State … and an explanation given as to how it was taken into account, but it was not,” the judges added. The future plans of the proposed third runway, which Heathrow has wanted to build for 20 years, are uncertain. Heathrow Airport said it would appeal the decision to the country’s Supreme Court, but the British government said it would not appeal the verdict, according to a tweet from Transportation Secretary Grant Shapps who was the defendant in the case.

FACT: We Are Too Late to Stop the Hell Climate Change Will Unleash – I recently watched an interview with David Attenborough, in which he was asked whether there is hope that things can get better for our planet. He replied that we can only slow down the rate at which things get worse. It seems to me that this is the first time in history we have known things will get worse for the foreseeable future. How do you live in the shadow of such rapid and inevitable decline? And how can you cope with the guilt? This isn’t like a war or an economic recession, where you know things will be bad for a few years but eventually improve. Never before have we known that the deterioration of not just our countries, but our entire planet, will continue for the foreseeable future – no matter what we do. As Attenborough says, we can (and should) fight to slow the rate at which things get worse, even though we can’t realistically hope for improvement. We can’t hide from the fact that Attenborough’s opinion reflects mainstream science. Even if we halted carbon emissions tomorrow, a significant degree of future warming is already baked in. Under the most likely scenarios, we’re set for warming of 1.5℃ or much more. The consequences are dire. If we succeed in limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, we will still have sea level rises of around half a metre, killer heatwaves and drought in many parts of the world – leading to a decrease in agricultural productivity. We can expect mass migrations, death and destruction as a result, with many parts of the world becoming uninhabitable.

In Midwest, ethanol and electric vehicle advocates join forces on clean fuel plan – After years of fighting their own policy battles, ethanol and electric vehicle advocates are tentatively banding together against a shared enemy: fossil fuels. More than two dozen organizations have been meeting for nearly two years in Minnesota to work on a “technology-neutral” policy proposal aimed at decarbonizing transportation, which has surpassed electricity production as the state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. The group includes ethanol companies, agriculture associations, conservation groups, gas and electric utilities, and clean energy advocates, including some that have been skeptical about ethanol’s environmental qualities. In January, the coalition released a white paper outlining a concept known as a low-carbon fuel standard or clean fuels policy for the Midwest, which would reward fuels or technologies based on their lifecycle carbon emission reductions. Supporters say the idea, which is likely to become legislation for the 2021 session, could accelerate decarbonization in both the transportation and agriculture sectors. It also has the potential to win support from lawmakers in greater Minnesota, who have recently raised equity concerns about electric vehicles. “The report’s clear conclusion is there are many resources that will play a role in decarbonizing transportation and we’ll get a lot farther with this approach,” said Brendan Jordan, vice president of Great Plains Institute, which convened the group and produced the white paper. Collaboration between biofuels supporters and electric vehicle proponents has been rare, with both camps more often competing for limited attention and funding from policymakers. The proposal outlined in the report attempts to move past that tension with a fuel-agnostic approach to decarbonization.

America’s Gasoline Demand Has Quietly Reached Record Levels – Supplying nearly 20 percent of total U.S. energy needs, gasoline has been a hallmark of the American experience since Ford’s first Model T in 1908. At 9.5 million b/d, U.S. gasoline demand is now as high as it has ever been (see Figure). Looking forward, it is simply just assumed that gasoline and the internal combustion engine that it fuels will “go gentle into that good night” to be replaced by electric vehicles. Yet in reality, gasoline is an incumbent technology with entrenched large-scale infrastructure. Let us examine just a few of the reasons why the reports of the death of gasoline have been greatly exaggerated. The sheer size of the U.S. gasoline fleet overwhelms. The country today has 255 million passenger cars that run on gasoline, compared to less than two million for electricity. This dominance is made even more staggering given how substantial the subsidies, tax breaks, and other political favoritism have been to support or even mandate the widespread adoption of electric cars.Surveys from J.D. Power, PiplSay, and others signal that Americans are not as enthralled with electric cars as some suggest. A lack of charging infrastructure remains a major obstacle. There are 140,000 gasoline stations across the country, some seven times more than electric charging stations. The length of time to charge an electric car, and the miles range that charge brings, is a persistent complaint. Electric cars are far more expensive, with the average Tesla buyer, for instance, making $400,000 a year – seven times the national average.Even from a purported benefits perspective, electric cars hold serious doubts for consumers. They depend on a myriad of rare and diminishing critical minerals, most of which have to be imported from supply chains dominated by the Chinese government. As such, some studies have reported that electric cars are actually worse for the environment than gasoline-based ones. And the reality remains: today in America, with gas and coal generating a combined 60-65 percent of power, electric cars would be more aptly termed “fossil fuel cars.” Further, it seems rather unlikely that electric cars will win a race that they have already lost. To illustrate, most Americans probably do not realize that almost 40 percent of U.S. cars in 1900 were electric, only to be beaten out by the more powerful gasoline. Oil-based products have reigned supreme for so long because they pack a mighty punch. Gasoline has an energy density of ~47 megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg), while lithium batteries for electric cars at a paltry 0.5 MJ/kg. Thus, for the same amount of stored energy, electric car batteries weigh 90-100 times more than gasoline. Importantly, this extra weight runs contrary to our environmental goal to enhance vehicle efficiency.

Sweeping Senate Energy Bill Could Come to a Vote This Week — The U.S. Senate will consider a bipartisan energy package this week that could be this year’s best legislative hope to increase federal funding for a number of energy technologies, from solar, wind and batteries, to more efficient fossil fuel-fired power and carbon capture. The American Energy Innovation Act, introduced Thursday by Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, contains nearly 50 energy bills from last year in a sprawling 555-page document. Murkowski, chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, called it “our best chance to modernize our nation’s energy policies in more than 12 years,” or since the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The bill contains hundreds of millions of dollars in funding over the coming years to boost research and development for solar and wind power, energy storage, smart grid, electric vehicles and other key clean energy technologies. Manchin, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said it would “make a down payment on emissions-reducing technologies, reassert the United States’ leadership role in global markets, enhance our grid security and protect consumers.” But its lack of targets or mandates for reducing carbon emissions, and some of its provisions on fossil fuels and mining, are expected to draw opposition from Democrats seeking a national policy to combat climate change. Democrats in the House have submitted a bill, dubbed the CLEAN Act, that calls for a 100 percent clean economy by 2050 and a comprehensive climate policy. The bill also doesn’t include any extension of investment tax credits for solar power or federal tax credits for electric vehicles that were left out of the $1.37 trillion spending bill passed by Congress in December. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-New York, plans to seek amendments to the new Senate energy bill to extend these tax credits as well as push for more stringent building codes, The Washington Post reported Monday. Efficiency groups are also decrying the bill’s absence of a provision to allow homeowners to qualify for larger mortgages for more energy-efficient homes. This policy, part of a 2019 bill from Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, was stripped from the Senate bill due to pressure from homebuilder industry groups, according to the Alliance to Save Energy nonprofit group. It’s unclear how the bill will fare in a Senate controlled by a Republican party that has largely rejected efforts to combat climate change. House Republicans did introduce legislation last month to fund a massive tree-planting effort to help absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Critics say Ohio proposal to bar foreign ownership will deter renewable projects – A proposed constitutional amendment in Ohio to ban foreign ownership of power plants and other “critical infrastructure” threatens to further deter renewable energy development in the state, experts and advocates say.Many of the world’s largest renewable energy developers are based in Europe, including the companies behind some of Ohio’s largest projects. While the proposal does not list wind or solar facilities as critical infrastructure, critics say the message it sends is that Ohio is not interested in their business. “We send out a signal that this is a bad place for foreign domestic investment to be made,” said Ned Hill, an economics and energy policy expert at Ohio State University’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs. The criticism extends to other foreign companies’ investments as well. Others say the proposal perpetuates a debunked conspiracy theory used by dark money groups last year to thwart a referendum on House Bill 6. That law gutted the state’s clean energy standards and requires ratepayers to subsidize certain nuclear and coal plants. “House Joint Resolution 2 is not about Ohio’s energy policy, but another xenophobic political charade designed to intentionally misrepresent the security of our electric grid, confusing Ohioans and worrying them unnecessarily,” Global companies have invested heavily in Ohio’s clean energy sector. For example, EDP Renewables’ North American subsidiary developed the Timber Creek II wind farm in Paulding County. Avangrid Renewables, which owns the Blue Creek Wind Farm in Van Wert County, grew out of acquisitions and a merger by Iberdrola, another Spanish company. Wyandot Solar Farm in Upper Sandusky was built by Juwi Americas, a subsidiary of a German company.Ohio utilities and their affiliates have likewise benefited from foreign investment, Hill said. Additionally, federal law already addresses any concerns about foreign investment.“The Critical Infrastructure Amendment doesn’t make Ohioans more secure and inflicts significant costs,” said researchers Ronnie Eytchison and Sam Malloy in an analysis for Ohio State University’s Battelle Center for Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, posted on Feb. 20. “Ohio infrastructure isn’t at risk of control through foreign investment.”

EPA settles more than a decade of pollution claims against Zimmer power plant for $600K — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a consent decree to settle more than a decade of pollution violations at the William H. Zimmer Power Station in Moscow, Ohio, raising new questions about the future of the coal-fired power plant. The settlement calls for Vistra Energy Corp., which acquired the plant in 2018, to pay a civil penalty of $600,000 to the U.S. Justice Department and spend $45,000 on energy-efficient lighting at a nearby school. The settlement also requires Vistra to mitigate past pollution by replacing three older school buses with cleaner-burning vehicles. One environmental attorney said the agreement is an example of increasing leniency on coal plants by the Trump Administration, which is rolling back Obama-era regulations that were designed to combat global warming in an attempt to revive the U.S. coal industry. “This is a relatively light fine for a company that appears to have been cutting corners for quite a long time to save money directly at the expense of public health,” said Thomas Cmar, a Chicago-based deputy managing attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm specializing in environmental cases. “To me what’s most significant about this settlement is it appears the EPA caught the company red handed not using the controls they already had in place.”

Coal deliveries to US power plants fall to 555 million st in 2019: EIA – Platts – Coal deliveries to US power plants fell to 555.02 million st in 2019, down 6.7% from 594.68 million st delivered a year earlier, according to US Energy Information Administration data released late Friday. Over 44.44 million st of coal was delivered to power plants in December, up 0.1% from November and down 16.1% from the year-ago month. Contract deliveries, or purchases with a term of one year or longer, were at 483.51 million st in 2019, down from 519.85 million st in 2018. Spot purchases, or contract deliveries less than one year, were at 68.34 million st in 2019, down from 72.43 million st a year earlier. However, new contract purchases made up 2.77 million st, up from 2 million st in 2018. The majority of the new contract coal, or 1.56 million st, came from Wyoming in the Powder River Basin, while 1.01 million st of bituminous coal was delivered from seven states, led by 556,999 st from West Virginia. The remaining 192,484 st was lignite coal from Texas and 12,787 st of waste coal from Pennsylvania. In 2018, 771,839 st of the 2 million st of new contract deliveries was lignite coal, while 681,937 st was bituminous and 545,139 st was subbituminous coal. Imports to US power plants totaled 3.45 million st in 2019, up from 3.01 million st delivered in 2018. The majority of the coal imports came from Colombia at 2.79 million st, which was up from 2.11 million st in 2018. Alabama took delivery of 1.79 million st of the Colombian coal, while Florida, Maine and New Hampshire took 211,357 st, 62,360 st and 45,084 st, respectively. A Hawaii coal plant took 665,423 st of Indonesian coal in 2019, down from 847,200 st in 2018. The US power sector did not take delivery of any Russian coal in 2019, after a New Hampshire plant imported 48,502 st in 2018. Over 25.01 million st of the deliveries in December were subbituminous coal, which was down from 25.38 million st in November and 30.09 million st in the year-ago month. Subbituminous coal deliveries in 2019 were at 306.15 million st, down 7.8% from 332.03 million st in 2018.Bituminous coal deliveries to US power plants fell to 15.19 million st in December, up 3.4% from November but down 15.9% from the year-ago month. In 2019, bituminous coal deliveries totaled 197.94 million st, down from 205.14 million st delivered a year earlier.

Super Polluters – – To see one of the country’s largest coal-fired power plants, head northwest from this Ohio River city. Or east, because there’s another in the region. In fact, nearly every direction you go will take you to a coal plant – seven within 30 miles. Collectively they pump out millions of pounds of toxic air pollution. They throw off greenhouse gases on par with Hong Kong or Sweden. Industrial air pollution – bad for people’s health, bad for the planet – is strikingly concentrated in America among a small number of facilities like those in southwest Indiana, according to a nine-month Center for Public Integrity investigation.The Center, which merged two federal datasets to create an unprecedented picture of air emissions, found that a third of the toxic air releases in 2014 from power plants, factories and other facilities came from just 100 complexes out of more than 20,000 reporting to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A third of the greenhouse-gas emissions reported by industrial sites came from just 100, too. Some academics have a name for them: super polluters.Twenty-two sites appeared on both lists. They include ExxonMobil’s massive refinery and petrochemical complex in Baytown, Texas, and a slew of coal-fired power plants, from FirstEnergy’s Harrison in West Virginia to Conemaugh in Pennsylvania, owned by companies including NRG Energy and PSEG. Four are in a single region – southwest Indiana. Together, owners of these 22 sites reported profits in excess of $58 billion in 2014.

Evansville community rallies for clean energy – A crowd, young and old, stood atop the stairs in front of the Evansville Civic Center on Feb. 29, voicing their opposition to Vectren’s coal power plants. “Getting this many people to come out to ask for clean energy is pretty amazing,” said Mary Stoll, associate professor of philosophy. “I’m really excited for the young people I’ve seen so far, and I’ll be even more excited if we see enough critical mass of youth to really make a difference.” Students, alumni and professors united at the Civic Center protesting for stronger clean energy policies in the community. Stoll said Evansville needs to start planning for a smarter infrastructure going into the future. Seven coal-powered plants lie within 30 miles of the city, according to the Center for Public Integrity. These plants make up 40% of the state’s electricity, yet only 6% of Indiana’s population lives in this area. This energy produced then has to be transferred throughout the state.

Macoupin County coal mine to shut down – The bankrupt owner of St. Louis-based coal company Foresight Energy has signaled that it plans to shut down a Macoupin County mine. The likely closure was first made public earlier this week, when Murray Energy – the Ohio-based coal producer that owns a controlling stake of Foresight – disclosed a fresh round of documents amid its ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganization. The release featured an internal company presentation from January that stated that its Shay No. 1 Mine complex near Carlinville, Illinois, about an hour north of St. Louis, is scheduled to be shut down in the first quarter of the year “due to its inability to operate profitably and ongoing issues with coal quality.” The complex began production in 2009, and is one of Foresight’s four operations across Southern Illinois.

As coal pollution declines, crops begin to flourish | Anthropocene – The decline in coal in favour of natural gas across the United States has brought an unexpected bonus: an increase in crop yields. Appearing in The American Journal of Agricultural Economics, these findings reveal there were increases in both soybean and corn yields over an eight year period in the US, which was directly correlated with less coal pollution floating about in the air. These findings incidentally are joined by another recent study, which also tracks the increase in production of wheat, soybeans, and corn related to a decline in coal. Together, both pieces of research provide a body of evidence that reveals just how closely a country’s energy policy can be tied to the health of its food systems.Studying soybean and corn yields mainly across the Midwestern United States, the researchers on the first study found that between the 2003 and 2005, 2011 and 2013 – two periods of time when coal emissions were declining – corn yields improved by 2.5%, and soybeans by 1.7%. Together, this climb in yields led to an extra $1.60 billion produced each year. The majority of that increase – $1.07 billion – was attributed to corn.Across the country, the regional effect varied. The state of Kentucky nabbed the biggest wins, with an estimated 7% yield increase in corn, and 4.3% in soybeans. This may come down to the fact that there was a higher number of coal plant closures in this region – creating an outsized benefit for some states. It’s also been established in previous research that coal pollution can be transported long distances, depending on the weather, so it’s possible that plant closures in some states transport the agricultural benefits elsewhere. Ozone has what could be likened to a choking effect on plants: once it enters the stomata, it slows photosynthesis and reduces plant growth. It also limits plant’ defences to disease, insects, and severe weather. When there’s less ozone in the air, however, it follows that a resulting boost in photosynthesis will cause a comparative increase in yields. The second study, which was published in Nature Sustainability, looked at a different time period and an extra crop – wheat – but found similarly that the transition from coal to natural gas led to crop increases across the United States. Less pollution, the researcher calculated, led to an extra 570 million bushels of corn, soybeans, and wheat in the regions where plants were shut down. This amounted to roughly half a year’s production for these crops in the US. (That study also estimated the human health benefit of coal plant closures, finding that 26,610 lives were saved by the less-polluted air.)

In Virginia, a push to save country’s ‘cleanest’ coal plant (AP) – Officials from southwest Virginia have mounted a last-minute push to oppose the possible early closure of one of the country’s newest coal plants.A Dominion Energy facility in Wise County that opened eight years ago and is frequently touted as the cleanest of its type could close decades sooner than expected under a sweeping rewrite of Virginia’s energy generation policy Democrats are advancing through the General Assembly.Advocates of the bill say Virginia needs to move away from fossil fuel-fired generation in order to address climate change. But Republican lawmakers and local officials in southwest Virginia have called its potential early retirement a “tragedy” that would blow a hole in the budgets of two localities and devastate a region that’s been working to revitalize an economy built on coal mining but isn’t there yet. The plant pays millions in taxes each year and employs 197 full-time and contract employees, according to Dominion. Local officials estimate it supports about 400 other jobs in the surrounding community.Under the House version of the Clean Economy Act – a measure that would pave the way for an enormous expansion of solar and offshore wind generation plus battery storage – the plant would have to close in 2030 unless it can demonstrate an 83 percent reduction in carbon emissions through capture and sequestration, a lofty goal.The Senate on Thursday accepted an amendment to its version of the bill to push that deadline back until 2050. The amendment came from Republican Sen. Ben Chafin, whose district includes part of Wise County and who insisted that the plant was “barely out of diapers.” The bills will head to a conference committee that will work out a number of differences, including the closure date.

Duke Energy wanted to avoid record keeping of coal ash sales, newly uncovered 1994 documents show –Decades-old documents obtained by our WCNC defenders team reveal Duke Energy asked state leaders permission to not report their sales of toxic coal ash for construction projects.The documents were released in the midst of an investigation into whether coal ash could be the cause of a reported cancer cluster in Mooresville, where much of the ash was used in construction projects. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Duke Energy sold off coal ash to be used as fill dirt.It was allowed back then, and was regulated by the state, but the newly released correspondence from 1994 shows Duke Energy wanted to sell it without having to report where it was going.In the letters, Duke Energy petitioned state leaders to change the rule mandating redecoration, saying those requirements were quote “a barrier” to their ability to sell it in large quantities.The power company asked that the rules be rewritten, to exempt the ash from being classified as “solid waste,” therefore “eliminating the requirement to record its use on property deeds.”This despite the state health department’s documented retort that the ash contains toxic byproducts like arsenic, chromium, and lead, and that the recordation rule was in place to “provide notice to future property owners of potential environmental contamination,” and for “worker safety…with respect to inhalation.”

Coal ash cleanup costs part of Duke Energy rate increase plan – Duke Energy is seeking state approval for a 6% rate hike for Charlotte-area customers, but consumer advocates who advise the North Carolina Utilities Commission have instead recommended a substantial cut in rates.The commission’s Public Staff, an independent agency that represents consumers, also opposes Duke’s request to bill customers hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to clean up coal ash.Duke Energy Carolinas, which serves central and western North Carolina, asked the commission’s approval to collect from customers $445 million a year in new revenue through rates. Federal and state tax savings that Duke has to refund to customers, by adjusting rates, effectively reduces the request to $291 million. If approved, Duke says, the request would raise typical residential bills by about $8 a month. The Public Staff says the commission should grant a revenue increase of only $66 million, partly because it thinks Duke’s profits margin should be smaller than the utility wants. The agency also applies different accounting treatment to the tax refunds to Duke’s customers. By its calculations, Duke should collect $334 million less revenue in the first year after commission approval, and $173 million less in the following four years.

Coal Ash concerns continue in Juliette – Look through the trees and you can catch a glimpse of the stacks at Plant Scherer, said John David Johnson, pointing to the sky across from his former home just off Ga. 87 in Juliette. Johnson remembers when Georgia Power opened the plant in 1982 when he was just a kid and residents anticipated it would bring jobs and stability.They grew accustomed to the chunks of gray ash drifting through the sky and settling on rooftops and cars whenever the sirens sounded at the plant. For a long time, they drank the water that ran gray from the faucet whenever it rained. The ash flakes disappeared when Georgia Power began controlling dust from the plant, Johnson said, but the water is still an issue. “We have been known not to drink the water here … the water is bad,” said Johnson, 51.The residents of this town about an hour southeast of Atlanta have been in and out of news headlines for almost a decade with concerns about the water, which they believe is contaminated by coal ash stored at Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer. Many residents have since sold their homes to Georgia Power. Some locals, current and former, tried to sue the utility. Now they are hoping state lawmakers will take action, not just for their town but for other communities in metro Atlanta and beyond where Georgia Power plans to keep coal waste stored freely in the ground.Georgia Power has said its plans for monitoring and closing the ash ponds are well within federal and state regulations and that the company has found no risks to public health or drinking water. With help from the Altamaha Riverkeeper, Juliette residents have launched a new campaign to support a pair of bills that would require Georgia Power to follow the same rules for coal ash as required for household trash. Just like trash is required to be in landfills with protective liners to prevent toxins from seeping into groundwater, coal ash would be stored in lined pits, preventing the heavy metals from coming in contact with groundwater.

Anderson County leaders seek law change to block TVA coal ash dump –The Anderson County Commission is taking its fight against the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan to build a new coal ash waste dump to the state Legislature. TVA wants to build a new dump for its coal ash waste – a toxic stew of cancer-causing chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive material generated by the burning of coal to produce electricity – in Claxton. It already stores more than 5 million tons of the toxic waste at its current dumps at the utility’s Bull Run Fossil Plant in Claxton and plans to leave it there – despite reports suggesting a threat of contamination of groundwater and public drinking water sources – when the plant is shuttered in 2023. Anderson County citizens have been up in arms over the proposal for months now, holding community meetings and showing up in droves at various governmental meetings to try to block TVA from dumping more coal ash in Claxton.

Don’t fall for utility talking points on coal ash pollution – it’s dangerous and we need real solutions to clean it up – A commentary by Steven Burns published in Utility Dive in January was profoundly misleading and merits substantial disclaimers. Burns’ opinion piece “Ash ponds: Keep calm and close in place” should have disclosed that his law firm, Balch & Bingham, represents Alabama Power – a utility that could reap short-term benefits of hundreds of millions of dollars if it is allowed to cap its coal ash pits rather than remove them responsibly. Talk about legacy: a former Alabama Power president’s brother started Balch & Bingham nearly a century ago. Mark Crosswhite himself started as a Balch & Bingham partner before he became CEO of Alabama Power.But the most egregiously disingenuous statement was Burns’s claim that coal ash “poses less risk than hazardous waste.”Coal ash contains known carcinogens such as arsenic, mercury, selenium, chromium and lead, which are hazardous to human health, wildlife and waterways. A report by a physician-led non-profit found that coal ash pits can leach toxic constituents thousands of times greater than drinking water standards, as Alabama Power has reported its pits are doing.These toxins cause such health problems as nervous system damage, developmental defects, cardiovascular problems, neurological damage, impaired vision and paralysis, and stomach, lung, urinary tract, skin and other forms of cancer. Famed consumer advocate Erin Brockovich is currently investigating one of a number of cancer clusters linked to coal ash pits. The failure of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to classify coal ash as hazardous should not be used as an excuse to pretend it’s harmless. Instead, it should be remembered as the success of a massive utility lobbying complex that leveraged more than $269 million against public health while these regulations were being developed. Utilities were required in 2015 to produce data on ash contamination andeven the companies’ own data revealed that nearly every coal ash pit in the United States, including Alabama Power’s, is contaminating groundwater with dangerous levels of toxins. There’s no such thing as a safe unlined ash pit. Several confirmed and suspected cancer clusters have been found around coal ash sites. Lawsuits against TVA continue to be filed more than a decade after the Kingston coal ash disaster because so many cleanup workers have fallen ill and died. Burns should know all this, since his client Alabama Power is facing $1.25 million in fines for groundwater contamination from its leaking coal ash pits – a drop in the bucket for a company whose 2018 net income was $930 million, $18.9 million of which it spent on lobbying state politicians. That’s more than 3.5 times the amount Georgia Power spent in the same category.

Clean Water Wanted: Contaminated Wells And The Legacy Of Fossil Fuel Extraction – Timothy’s grandfather Chet Blankenship died in 2016, at age 69. Blankenship lived on land he and his family have long owned at the end of a road atop Bradshaw Mountain in McDowell County, West Virginia. His hand-painted tombstone sits in the grassy patch above the family homes. Chet Blankenship died from kidney failure soon after his family started noticing odd colors and smells in their well water. After he died, they got their water tested, and learned that arsenic was among the contaminants that had seeped into their well. The National Institutes of Health links high arsenic exposure to a range of kidney diseases. The family can’t prove that the arsenic in the water caused Blankenship’s death, and they can’t get firm answers about the contamination in their well and the mining and drilling activity that surrounds their property. But Timothy’s memories of his grandfather reflect the family’s anxiety about the water they depend on. The Easterlings live in the central Appalachian coalfields and much of the land has been mined for miles in every direction. Water runs through the collapsed network of former mines, which may house industrial waste, as well as byproducts from the gas wells that tapped into the methane associated with coal seams. There are many possible sources of contamination but the family doesn’t know which company might be to blame, or how to hold one accountable to fix the problem, or at least pay for them to get connected to a clean water system. State environmental officials deny there is any evidence connecting the bad water to the mining or drilling nearby. Adding to the family’s frustration, they’ve been asking for a connection to the nearby public water system for years, only to hear that there’s not enough money. For decades, public water systems in the US have been consistently underfunded, affecting both water access and water quality. EPA records show that in Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia alone; there have been more than 130,000 violationsreported in the last twenty years. At least 2,000 systems have tested positive for contaminants since 2012. Those statistics only cover people connected to public water systems. Nationwide, another thirteen million people draw from private wells, and two million people don’t have a reliable source of running water. In areas affected by extraction industry, such as McDowell County, many wells and springs that rural residents are used to relying on are now running dry or showing unsafe levels of contaminants like arsenic and lead.

‘Working sick’ – Kentucky miners fight black lung regulations – Shirley Smith, 64, worked for coal companies for 23 years, including 16 years underground. After a long career, Smith now worries about the onset of pneumoconiosis, or black lung, a work-induced illness that shreds the lungs of coal miners. She doesn’t have a diagnosis, but Smith has begun to notice the signs: extreme shortness of breath and a persistent cough, often associated with phlegm. “I don’t want black lung,” Smith told me. Black lung is a death sentence: eventually, it suffocates those who suffer from the disease. “But if I got it, I deserve to be compensated for it.” Smith comes from a family of coal miners, and has seen the effects of the disease firsthand. Her father died of black lung on her ninth birthday. Her brother David mined underground for 19 years before mounting health problems, including thyroid cancer, forced him to retire. Smith said David was turned down three times over three years before he was able to file a federal black lung case; his lawyers have warned it could take an additional three years before he receives benefits. Ever since a 2018 workers compensation bill – House Bill 2 – limited the type of medical professionals qualified to diagnose black lung from chest X-rays, it’s become more difficult for former miners like Smith to be diagnosed. Prior to 2018, radiologists with “B” reader certifications were qualified to diagnose black lung. But now only pulmonologists, or lung specialists, with “B” reader certifications are legally permitted to diagnose a disease with epidemic proportions. Since House Bill 2 passed, only two doctors in Kentucky are diagnosing black lung patients. Both have long histories of working for coal companies and their insurance brokers, and both are based at least three hours from the coalfields. Noother state has adopted this restriction, and the federal system qualifies both pulmonologists and radiologists with “B” reader certifications to perform diagnoses. In support of impacted miners, two legislators from eastern Kentucky – Representative Angie Hatton of Whitesburg and Senator Phillip Wheeler of Pikeville – proposed House Bill 239 and Senate Bill 215 respectively, to reverse this section of House Bill 2.

Is Cuomo Serious About Addressing Climate Change? Indian Point Decision Says No – Governor Andrew Cuomo claims that New York is a leader in addressing the dangers of climate change. So far, the facts fail to support this. Since 2010, New York’s gas-fired and dual-use (gas & oil) electric capacity has increased over four times as fast as wind plus other sources of renewable power. Fossil fuels today produce eight times as much electricity as all our renewables, exclusive of hydropower. This movement towards greater fossil fuel use is about to get far worse if the carbon-free Indian Point nuclear plant is shut down and replaced by natural gas. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), signed by the governor in July, commits New York to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels for electricity by 2040. Tragically, long before 2040, all the hoped-for benefits of the CLCPA will be negated. In just a few weeks, Unit 2 of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester is scheduled to shut down, to be replaced by gas-fired power that will release 3.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Next year Unit 3 will shut down, adding a similar amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere each year thereafter. At that rate, the “world’s largest off-shore wind farm” that the governor hopes to build off of Long Island will not show any net environmental benefit for at least 20 years. We can’t wait that long to deal with climate change.

NRC promises scrutiny of Indian Point review failures — Thursday, March 5, 2020 — Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki outlined steps yesterday the agency plans to take to rectify a recent inspector general report that called into question the environmental review of a natural gas pipeline running through the Indian Point nuclear plant site.

SC judge pauses Santee Cooper lawsuit pending settlement -The South Carolina judge in the massive class action ratepayer lawsuit against the state’s public utility Santee Cooper has halted proceedings in the case pending a likely $520 million settlement agreement. Major defendants in the case including Santee Cooper and what was formerly known as SCE&G – now Dominion Energy – have tentatively agreed to pay $520 million to ratepayers, according to a five-page tentative agreement obtained by The State. The case had centered on whether and how much money Santee Cooper, an 85-year-old state agency, should refund to 2.2 million ratepayers who were charged extra each month for years to pay some $2 billion for the costly failure of the V.C. Summer nuclear power project that was never completed in Fairfield County. Santee Cooper was the junior partner on the project with the now former Cayce-based SCE&G and SCANA. Santee Cooper paid for 45% of the project and SCE&G paid 55%. SCANA and SCE&G were acquired by Dominion Energy last year. In July 2017, after spending billions on the project, Santee Cooper and SCE&G abruptly announced their nuclear construction project had failed and they were abandoning it. Under the preliminary agreement, Dominion will pay $320 million in cash or marketable securities and Santee Cooper will pay $200 million in three annual installments in amounts of $65 million, $65 million and $70 million

Dark money dominated Ohio’s nuclear subsidy saga | Energy News Network – After-the-fact filings show that FirstEnergy’s generation subsidiary paid nearly $2 million to Generation Now, one of the special interest groups that orchestrated ads, political donations and other efforts behind Ohio’s nuclear and coal bailout. But legal loopholes make it harder to find out the total spent and who else was behind xenophobic advertising, dueling voter petitions, alleged intimidation and other claims of foul play. And none of those actions fully disclosed who was behind them.The scant public filings that are available show additional connections to FirstEnergy Solutions (now Energy Harbor), as well as the law firm of an outspoken legislator who has long fought the state’s clean energy standard, and others with high-level political influence.House Bill 6 gutted Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards while putting ratepayers on the hook for nearly $1 billion in subsidies for nuclear power plants, plus an additional amount for aging coal plants. Multiple groups spent heavily to promote HB 6 and prevent a referendum on the law following its passage.In some cases, nonprofit and for-profit organizations funded each other or shared the same spokesperson. Groups active in the HB 6 campaign also had links to some of the same lobbyists and consultants who acted for companies that stood to benefit from HB 6, or unions with workers at their plants. But only limited amounts of funding could be traced.As FirstEnergy Solutions’ bankruptcy case wrapped up in February and the company began doing business as Energy Harbor, a filing posted to the company’s investor relations page shows a wire payment of $1,859,457 from FirstEnergy Solutions to Generation Now, Inc. on July 5, 2019. “FirstEnergy Solutions’ funding of Generation Now proves that House Bill 6 was always primarily a bailout for the bankrupt utility and its wealthy investors,” said Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, who first spotted the Energy Harbor filing.“Powerful corporations, and utilities in particular, often fund groups to do their dirty work in an attempt to avoid accountability,” Anderson said. “In the case of Generation Now, that dirty work included millions of dollars in misleading ads and hiring petition blockers to prevent Ohioans from having an opportunity to overturn House Bill 6 when they vote in November.” The rise of so-called “dark money” groups, which don’t have to disclose their donors, follows a 2010 Supreme Court case, Citizens United, that held corporations have a constitutional right to unlimited spending for political matters, provided they aren’t directly coordinated with candidates.

Campaign contributions pay off for Ohio utilities and coal interests – Utility, nuclear and coal interests are big players in Ohio politics, giving about $3 million to Ohio political campaigns in 2018, according to data from the National Institute on Money in Politics. The industry interests have long been active politically. But just as competitive markets began coming into their own around 2010, the pattern of campaign contributions also shifted. Donations to Ohio campaigns from the utility, nuclear and coal industries in 2010 were more than double the amount for 2008. Election cycles after 2010 saw a gradual drop-off in recorded donations, followed by a smaller bump in 2018. That doesn’t necessarily mean the industries’ total spending went down, however. “Lots and lots of things changed simply because of Citizens United,” explained Catherine Turcer, executive director of the government watchdog group Common Cause Ohio. In that 2010 case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that corporations have a constitutional right to spend for political advertising. That spending isn’t subject to the same limits as donations, which are coordinated with a specific candidate’s campaign. And it’s not possible to track where all political donations come from. “Ohio has too many dark money loopholes,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. Some of that dark money helped elect additional lawmakers who favored subsidies for nuclear and coal plants in 2019, legislation that also gutted Ohio’s clean energy standards. Dark money spending also funded opposition to a referendum effort that could have let voters reject those subsidies. Current law may exempt much of that information from the Secretary of State’s filing requirements. Yet even with all the opportunities for dark money spending, campaign contributions linked to Ohio utilities and the state’s nuclear and coal industries have remained strong.

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