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<font color=gray><big><big><big>'''August 2020'''</big></big></big></font> | |||
'''Murdoch Family that Controls Fox Media Empire Imploding''' | |||
Climate, Politics, News -- Inside the Family | |||
Rupert Murdoch's media empire | |||
'''News Corp hugely influential across the world''' | |||
The Sun, The Times, Sky-Sky News, the New York Post, global satellite distribution, entertainment media and internet corporations... | |||
Fox Corporation (legally separated from the News Corp as of 2013) - Fox networks, Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports | |||
James Murdoch was previously regarded as heir apparent to his father's right-wing media empire, with its deep political influence around the world. He has grown increasingly critical of the firm's news outlets for their "denial" of the climate crisis | |||
As quoted: | |||
''James and wife Kathryn grew increasingly vocal in expressing their progressive political views.'' | |||
''Following the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 James sent an open letter to company employees criticising US President Donald Trump's response. "I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis," he wrote. "Or Klansmen, or terrorists."'' | |||
''Last September he told The New Yorker: "There are views I really disagree with on Fox."'' | |||
''He made headlines again when he lashed out at the company's climate coverage during the summer bushfire crisis in Australia.'' | |||
''"Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known,” a spokesperson for Murdoch and his wife told The Daily Beast website.'' | |||
''"They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary." | |||
''Earlier this month it was revealed that James and Kathryn had each donated US$615,000 to Joe Biden's campaign, making them among the Democratic nominee's biggest supporters.'' | |||
''Now, with just three months until the US presidential election, James is completely untethered from his family's empire - raising the possibility he will become more outspoken about his political views and his concerns about the Murdoch empire's editorial positions.'' | |||
* https://amp.smh.com.au/world/north-america/james-murdoch-makes-statement-in-the-style-of-his-dramatic-departure-20200801-p55hjs.html | |||
* https://news.sky.com/story/rupert-murdochs-son-james-quits-news-corporation-board-after-disagreements-over-editorial-content-12040255 | |||
* https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/james-murdoch-quits-news-corp-board-citing-editorial-rift.html | |||
* https://www.dw.com/en/james-murdoch-quits-news-corp-board-over-editorial-content-disagreement/a-54399898 | |||
* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-31/james-murdoch-quits-news-corp-board-over-editorial-content | |||
* https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/business/media/james-murdoch-resigns-news-corp.html | |||
* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-01/james-murdoch-resigns-from-news-corp-board/12514700 | |||
* https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/31/media/james-murdoch-resigns-news-corp/index.html | |||
[[File:James Murdoch quits News Corp.jpg]] | |||
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Revision as of 15:05, 1 August 2020
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August 2020
Murdoch Family that Controls Fox Media Empire Imploding
Climate, Politics, News -- Inside the Family
Rupert Murdoch's media empire
News Corp hugely influential across the world
The Sun, The Times, Sky-Sky News, the New York Post, global satellite distribution, entertainment media and internet corporations...
Fox Corporation (legally separated from the News Corp as of 2013) - Fox networks, Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports
James Murdoch was previously regarded as heir apparent to his father's right-wing media empire, with its deep political influence around the world. He has grown increasingly critical of the firm's news outlets for their "denial" of the climate crisis
As quoted:
James and wife Kathryn grew increasingly vocal in expressing their progressive political views.
Following the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 James sent an open letter to company employees criticising US President Donald Trump's response. "I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis," he wrote. "Or Klansmen, or terrorists."
Last September he told The New Yorker: "There are views I really disagree with on Fox."
He made headlines again when he lashed out at the company's climate coverage during the summer bushfire crisis in Australia.
"Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known,” a spokesperson for Murdoch and his wife told The Daily Beast website.
"They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary."
Earlier this month it was revealed that James and Kathryn had each donated US$615,000 to Joe Biden's campaign, making them among the Democratic nominee's biggest supporters.
Now, with just three months until the US presidential election, James is completely untethered from his family's empire - raising the possibility he will become more outspoken about his political views and his concerns about the Murdoch empire's editorial positions.
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July 2020
July 30, 2020
John Lewis asked The NYT to publish this on the day of his funeral. He writes, “When you see something that is not right, you must say something ... Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part.”
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July 27, 2020
WASHINGTON DC –- Legislation introduced in U.S. Congress to close tax loopholes and eliminate other federal subsidies for the oil, gas, and coal industries.
Right now, American taxpayers are on the hook for about $15 billion in direct federal subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. In 2019 alone, the oil, gas, and coal companies that receive these handouts spent $190 million lobbying Congress – for an over 11,000 percent return on investment. At a time when climate change is already causing devastating harm around the world, it makes no sense for Congress to continue giving away taxpayer money to the hugely profitable and highly polluting fossil fuel industry.
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'Tree, Hold on...'
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Even though the U.S. isn't part of an international treaty devoted to the issue
Via Bloomberg Law / Environment (@environment) / July 22, 2020
U.S. Senators emphasized bipartisan, global support for addressing the world’s ocean plastic pollution
Even though the U.S. isn't part of an international vaccine plan
Via Associated Press / Medical / July 15, 2020
U.S. declines to join global effort to ensure vaccine distribution around the world
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As U.S. Hurricane Season Starts...
Earth Science Research from Space
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Biggest-ever 3D map of Universe
Astrophysicists today (20/07/2020) published the largest-ever 3D map of the Universe, the result of an analysis of more than four million galaxies and ultra-bright, energy-packed quasars.
The efforts of hundreds of scientists from around 30 institutions worldwide have yielded a "complete story of the expansion of the universe", said Will Percival of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
In the project launched more than two decades ago, the researchers made "the most accurate expansion history measurements over the widest-ever range of cosmic time"...
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World Population Could Be 2 Billion Less Than Predicted in 2100
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This App Could Be a Game Changer
This could be a very big deal
There’s an old truism in the business world: what gets measured gets managed. One of the challenges in managing the greenhouse gas emissions warming the atmosphere is that they aren’t measured very well.
“Currently, most countries do not know where most of their emissions come from,” says Kelly Sims Gallagher, a professor of energy and environmental policy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. “Even in advanced economies like the United States, emissions are estimated for many sectors.” Without this information “you cannot devise smart and effective policies to mitigate emissions,” she says, and “you cannot track them to see if you are making progress against your goals.”
The ultimate solution to this problem — the killer app, as it were — would be real-time tracking of all global greenhouse gases, verified by objective third parties, and available for free to the public.
Now, a new alliance of climate research groups called the Climate TRACE (Tracking Real-Time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions) Coalition has launched an effort to make the vision a reality, and they’re aiming to have it ready for COP26, the climate meetings in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021 (postponed from November 2020). If they pull it off, it could completely change the tenor and direction of international climate talks.
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Read the Fracking Full-Cost Story
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"Build Back Better": The Biden Climate & Clean Energy Plan
Biden's climate initiative calls to chart the United States on "an irreversible path" to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
To do that, the plan would aim to achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035. It would also upgrade 4 million buildings and weatherize 2 million homes over four years to increase energy efficiency. And the proposal, Biden's campaign says, would seek to shift major cities toward public transportation and "create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure."
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In Memory of Huey Johnson
San Francisco Chronicle / pugnacious environmentalist passes away at 87
'Green Plans' ... California and global
Huey Johnson takes the long road
Rebels With A Cause Trailer
Resource Renewal Institute
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- Remembering Cassini
- There we are, home, 7.7 billion of us on that speck of light between Saturn's rings
In the realm of 'Big Picture' thinking, the Hubble telescope, nearing the end of its mission, presents distant galaxy 'NGC 2775'
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A Comprehensive Approach to Addressing Climate Change
Details of the Democratic Party's New Plan to Deal with the #ClimateCrisis
The Select Committee on the Climate Crisis' majority staff report is arguably the most comprehensive climate policy plan in American politics, surpassing presidential candidates' proposals and previous congressional white papers in specificity and scope.
Taken together, its policy recommendations would reduce emissions 88% below 2010 levels by 2050 and generate benefits totaling roughly $8 trillion, according to an analysis by Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan environment and energy research firm (E&E Daily, June 30).
The goal is getting the nation to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. That's the target widely agreed upon by Democrats and advocates to avoid the worst effects of climate change, based on science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report encompasses more than 100 bills, and the table of contents alone takes four pages. So what are the report's high points and takeaways?
Ambitious standards
The report's linchpin policies for both the power and transportation sectors reflect an ideological trend that's been building for years among environmentalists. In short, it's all about decarbonization standards.
For the power sector, the report recommends a clean energy standard based on H.R. 2597, from Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), and various portfolio standards enacted by states, which aim to hit net-zero emissions by 2040.
For transportation, the report suggests a technology-neutral standard that would ensure all new light-duty vehicles are zero emission by 2035.
In the past, a carbon tax was widely seen by advocates as a catch-all policy for decarbonization, And while the report does recommend carbon pricing, it's as a complement to the standards that spell out explicit emissions and green technology deployment schedules.
National climate bank
The report also includes another policy that's gaining traction with environmentalists and Capitol Hill: a national climate bank.
It's an idea that's become popular in recent years. There are more than a dozen green banks operating around the country, funding clean energy technology and infrastructure resilience projects.
Together, they cobbled together more than $5 billion in investment from 2010 to 2019, according to an annual report from the American Green Bank Consortium and the Coalition for Green Capital...
Environmental justice
The report is heavy on environmental justice considerations, which is unsurprising given that environmentalists and lawmakers have highlighted environmental justice activists more than ever over the last year (E&E Daily, Jan. 31).
If all the report's recommendations were enacted, the federal government would have to vastly expand its environmental justice outreach through more aggressive enforcement at EPA and through the National Environmental Policy Act, among other policy avenues.
Perhaps the most wide-ranging recommendation is the "Environmental Justice for All Act," from Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Donald McEachin (D-Va.), a bill written with heavy input from environmental justice communities.
National supergrid
There's plenty of talk in the report about investing in infrastructure, but perhaps most important to the clean energy transition is its proposal to move toward a national supergrid.
Because wind and solar power stations are usually far from population centers, the country will likely need to build new high-voltage direct-current transmission lines across state lines to reach its climate goals...
Civilian Conservation Corps
The report endorses the creation of a 21st-century Civilian Conservation Corps, a job training program for young people to work in national parks and on public lands....
June 2020
US Democratic Party Reveals Long-in-Development Climate Plan
Tampa, Florida Congresswoman Kathy Castor out in front
Democrats move climate-economy-jobs legislation
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Louisiana attempts to outlaw dissent
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Southern slavery memories
Slavery was ending on 'Juneteenth', 1865
On June 19, 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in Texas and the surrender of the Southern army of General Lee became 'official' as a final state heard the Civil War was over. Freedom had arrived.
Yet racism and acts of racism, discrimination, mass imprisonment and forced labor, peonage, brutality and worse, lynchings continued in the South as a terrible legacy. Within many political groups, Democrats-Dixiecrats and Republicans over the years, and formations such as the KKK, fear mongering and hate spread. This harsh reality was met with faith and courage, day by day, year by year, and gradually progress was made in the struggle against systemic racism. New voices and generations rose up. The 1960s marches, the Civil Rights Act, young voices with progressive beliefs grew, and expanded educational opportunity became reality in city after city. The racists lost in their attempts to stop progress. 'Dixie-Democrats' walked out of a changing Democratic Party in 1964 and 1968. The struggle continued in new ways across the US, and across the world.
The battle for civil rights and human rights continues today, generation to generation, across states and nations. With hope for a better tommorow being felt across the earth, an arc of justice can be seen growing.
Today, it's fitting to speak of a new Independence Day. A 'Juneteenth holiday' being spoken of brings remembrance of a celebration of freedom and is another step forward in a long journey.
We support the proposed new national Juneteenth holiday introduced this week formally in the US Senate by a TX Republican, John Cornyn, and in the US House of Representatives by a TX Dem, Sheila Jackson.
The 1865 Handwritten Order Marking Juneteenth
NYT / June 19, 2020: The original written order to Texans that “all slaves are free” is found in a Union Army records book in the National Archives in Washington.
The re-location in the Army archive of the original announcement -- General Order No. 3 --- is historic.
The order was read aloud by a Union officer, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, in Galveston on June 19, 1865... That date, which became known as Juneteenth, has been celebrated ever since.
The discovery (of the order) was spurred by Michael Davis, a public affairs specialist for the National Archives who was writing a piece about the history of the holiday.
“In light of what has happened recently in our nation with police brutality, I wanted to make sure that we highlighted Juneteenth,” Mr. Davis said in an interview. He asked his colleagues if the archives had any documents from that day in 1865, hoping to find something but not sure that he would.
Trevor K. Plante, the director of archival operations at the National Archives building in Washington, zeroed in on the Union Army records from Texas. And on Thursday, in the stacks on the 10th tier of the building’s west side, he found a leather-bound book with a June 19 entry in neat cursive...
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free,” it said. “This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”
The document, encased in its original binding, was legible and in good condition, Mr. Plante said. “It’s more powerful when you see the handwritten version of it, as opposed to the printed versions that came much later,” he added, referring to the copies of Civil War documents that were compiled by the United States War Department (a precursor to the Department of Defense) around the end of the 19th century.
June 19th, Juneteenth 2020
A tip of our Green political hat to Will Sutton who writes from New Orleans on June 18, 2020 of a call rising across the U.S. for a national "Juneteenth" holiday.
Mr. Sutton speaks of a historic first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.
- The first Southern reading of the proclamation was in what is now Hampton, Virginia, and more specifically on land that is now Hampton University, my alma mater. You can’t attend Hampton and not learn about the Emancipation Oak.
Over two years later came another reading. The people of Texas finally heard of the Emancipation Proclamation...
- June 19, 1865... the day they heard slavery ended. That day has been recognized — and celebrated — annually as Juneteenth since that’s the day that Union soldiers pulled into Galveston and told all who would listen that the Civil War had ended and enslaved people were free. That’s about two and a half years after Lincoln’s proclamation became law.
- "Juneteenth", June 19th... For all who want to celebrate Juneteenth — and I have been in that number — I support you.
We at GreenPolicy360 support the call for and the cause of justice and freedom.
Celebrating Freedom & Resilience
Remembering a Great Oak Tree of the South
One day in 1863, the members of the Virginia Peninsula’s black community gathered to hear a prayer answered. The Emancipation Oak was the site of the first Southern reading of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
With limbs over a hundred feet, the Emancipation Oak is designated as one of the 10 Great Trees of the World by the National Geographic Society.
~
In 1863 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring “all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Nonetheless, the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation. Lincoln recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution
The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865. On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. The necessary number of states ratified it by December 6, 1865. The 13th amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
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Global Temperature Summary / Earth Science
Globally, May 2020 is estimated to have been the warmest May since records began in 1850, exceeding the previously warmest year in 2016
The global mean temperature in May 2020 was 0.99 ± 0.08 °C (1.78 ± 0.14 °F) above the 1951 to 1980 average.
This is equivalent to being 1.36 ± 0.09 °C (2.43 ± 0.16 °F) above the 1850 to 1900 average, which is frequently used as a benchmark for the preindustrial period.
The global mean temperature anomaly in May 2020 cooled markedly compared to April (a decrease of 0.14 °C) and was below the temperature anomaly of January through April, but still similar to values observed in November and December 2019 and among the warmest months ever observed. Due to higher weather variability during the Northern winter months, it is not unusual for the temperature anomaly in May to be somewhat smaller than those in January to March. Though the temperature anomaly is less extreme than in a few other recent months, it remains the highest temperature anomaly ever observed during May.
Social justice is on peoples minds. It is overdue. It is our common responsibility, each of us, to do what we can to make a positive difference in these times.
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June 11 / Update & Apology
‘I should not have been there,’ Gen. Milley says of Trump photo op.
The country’s top military official apologized on Thursday for taking part in President Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square for a photo op after authorities used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the area of peaceful protesters.
“I should not have been there,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a prerecorded video commencement address to National Defense University, reports Helene Cooper. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
His first public remarks since Mr. Trump’s photo op, in which federal authorities attacked peaceful protesters so that the president could hold up a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, are certain to anger the White House, where Mr. Trump has spent the days since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis taking increasingly tougher stances against the growing movement for change across the country.
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Tuesday, June 9, 2020
• #SocialJustice #EconomicJustice #ClimateJustice •
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Saturday, June 6, 2020
Hundreds of thousands of people across the United States—and, in stunning displays of solidarity, around the world—poured into the streets Saturday demanding an end to police brutality and racial injustice in the largest day of demonstrations since the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis officers last week.
Enormous and diverse crowds of demonstrators marched in the streets of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, and other major cities in a striking display of non-violent mass action. Participants in the historic demonstrations voiced hope that the remarkable energy behind the protests can be transformed into a sustained movement for change. (Via Common Dreams)
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The Wars Come Home: Dissent and Discord in the US
Nationwide Demonstrations, a President's Threats
Washington Post / June 3 / Pentagon chief says he does not support the use of active-duty military forces to quell unrest, breaking with Trump
Repurposed from the Battlefields, Transferred to US Law Enforcement Agencies
Morning After Screenshots from DC June 2, 2020
The Wars Come Home
Deep Costs, Costs of War
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Washington Post: President Trump made 19,127 false or misleading claims in 1,226 days
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Attacks on Decades of Environmental Protections
Over 100 Rules, Regs, and Laws Ended
Wildlife Next to Fall
The Trump administration moved forward Friday (June 5, 2020) with plans to scale back a century-old law protecting most American wild bird species despite warnings that billions of birds could die as a result.
More than 1,000 species are covered under the law, and the changes have drawn a sharp backlash...
Ending Protections for Marine Conservation Monument Area and Fisheries
President Donald Trump rolled back protections Friday at a marine conservation area off the New England coast, signing an order to allow commercial fishing in a stretch of water environmentalists say is critical for endangered right whales and other fragile marine life. “We are reopening the Northeast Canyons to commercial fishing,” Trump told a roundtable meeting with fishing industry representatives and Maine officials. “We’re opening it today.” The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the New England coast, created by former President Barack Obama, was the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean, and one of just five marine monuments nationwide. The conservation area comprises 5,000 square miles (8,000 square kilometers) east of Cape Cod, which contains vulnerable species of marine, such as fragile deep sea corals and endangered right whales, which number only about 400.
The action comes a day after the equally sweeping rollback and proposed rollback of public health and environment protections by the Trump administration. On Thursday (June 4, 2020), Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to look for ways to override environmental laws to push big projects like highways and pipelines to completion.
And the Environmental Protection Agency proposed changing the rules for crafting air pollution limits under the Clean Air Act, in a way critics say will make it harder to move against dangerous pollutants in the future.
Unprecedented Attacks on Science, Environment and Health
"Donald Trump's administration has unleashed an unprecedented assault on our environment and the health of our communities. His policies threaten our climate, air, water, public lands, wildlife, and oceans; no amount of his greenwashing can change the simple fact: Donald Trump has been the worst president for our environment in history. Unfortunately, our children will pay the costs of this president's recklessness. Our organizations have repeatedly fought back against these attacks and we will continue to fight to ensure that our kids don't bear the brunt of the Trump administration's anti-environmental agenda."
-- Alaska Wilderness League Action, Clean Water Action, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, EDF Action, Friends of the Earth, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society.
The Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School and many public interest groups are tracking Trump administration rollbacks of decades of environmental protection law and government operational directives and practices.
Visit Harvard Law for latest news on Trump rollbacks of environmental/health/worker/public interest protections:
Environmental Law and Policy Trackers
Brookings Interactive Tracking Deregulation in The Trump Era — monitors a selection of delayed, repealed, and new rules, notable guidance and policy revocations, and important court battles across eight major categories, including environmental, health, labor, and more.
Center for American Progress Law of the Land — tracks legal battles over the future of America’s public lands.
Center for Western Priorities Government Shutdown: Oil and Gas Permitting Tracker tracks new drilling permit approvals and applications processed by the Bureau of Land Management during the government shutdown.
Center for Western Priorities is tracking policies the Interior Department is hoping to enact. The policy changes include rolling back offshore drilling regulations, offering oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and revising land management plans to allow more drilling and mining.
Coalition for Sensible Safeguards Rules at Risk — tracks rules at risk of being repealed or that have been repealed under the Congressional Review Act.
Columbia University, Sabin Center Climate Deregulation Tracker — identifies steps taken by the Trump administration and Congress to scale back or wholly eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures.
Columbia University, Sabin Center Silencing Science — tracks government attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research, education or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information
Earthjustice Overruling Trump tracks rollback litigation and outcomes.
Global Energy Institute (U.S. Chamber of Commerce) with support from Beveridge & Diamond Energy Tracker — tracks regulatory, judicial, and legislative developments associated with the Trump administration’s energy policy agenda.
Harvard Law School Environmental & Energy Law Program — EPA Mission Tracker monitors and analyzes the Trump administration’s dismantling of EPA’s capacity to perform its public health mission, and Regulatory Rollback Tracker tracks the rule by rule, case by case rollbacks of the Trump Administration.
Institute for Policy Integrity Roundup: Trump-Era Deregulation in the Courts — tracks the outcomes of litigation over the Trump administration’s deregulatory efforts, including litigation over federal agency rule suspensions; repeals; rescissions; efforts to weaken regulations through guidance, memoranda, amendments, or replacements; and other agency actions. Also, Health & Environmental Benefits Under Threat from Recent Environmental Deregulatory Actions lists the maximum value of the estimated benefits of selected rules as reported in the original regulatory actions. These estimates reveal the economic losses that the American public would experience should these rules be eliminated entirely. IPI has also built the Weakened Environmental Laws and Policies in Response to COVID-19 Tracker, which notes the suspension and altered enforcement of environmental laws and policies by federal, state, and city agencies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
National Employment Law Project — tracks the Trump administration’s actions that impact workers (including worker safety).
National Geographic — A running list of how President Trump is changing environmental policy.
New York Times / 95 Environmental Rules Being Rolled Back Under Trump — updated every few months.
NYU State Energy & Environmental Impact Center — Attorney General actions
NRDC Trump Watch — monitors Trump administration's environmental actions.
Reuters, The Trump Effect — Energy and Environment.
Save EPA — maintains a master list of Trump administration EPA rollbacks and provides tools and talking points to support others’ advocacy about public health and environmental protections.
Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy / Attacks on Science — disappearing data, silenced scientists, and other assaults on scientific integrity and science-based policy at the federal level.
Washington Post — How Trump is rolling back Obama’s legacy — updated every few months.
We Mean Business Climate Policy Tracker — Points business to a practical climate regulation response.
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May 2020
COVID-19 Global Pandemic Causing Cancellation of 2020 Internationanal Climate Conference - COP26
Glasgow meeting to be pushed back a full year?
UK government letter requests crucial Summit to be rescheduled for November 2021
The UK government has written to the UN's climate change secretariat to request a full year delay to the postponed COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow, warning that the spread of the coronavirus pandemic around the world could make an earlier date unviable.
The UN is set to consider the request in the coming days and is expected to approve the proposed new dates, rescheduling the global summit for November 1st to 12th, 2021.
"Postponement of COP26 does not mean postponement of climate action," the government letter goes on to state. "We must scale up action to respond to the climate emergency. It is vital that all Parties increase ambition by submitting enhanced Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and long-term strategies that chart a path to net zero; that support is enhanced and the $100bn climate finance goal is met; and through scaling up action and support for adaptation."
Observers remain concerned that a long delay could minimise the ability of the COP26 Summit to shape economic recovery plans and ensure governments continue to prioritise climate action as they seek to rebuild their economies....
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Human Disruption:
Eradication of Species by the Human Species
Via the Journal of Nature
We are in the midst of a global biodiversity crisis, with severely limited resources for conservation action. At current extinction rates, we are set to experience unprecedented losses of species and their phylogenetic diversity (PD). PD is the sum of the phylogenetic branch lengths connecting a set of species to each other across their phylogenetic tree, and measures their collective contribution to the tree of life. PD quantifies the amount of evolutionary variation across a set of species4, and is thus a valuable tool for prioritising species and regions for conservation.
Phylogenetic Diversity is increasingly recognised as an important component of global biodiversity linked to increased ecosystem productivity and human well-being4,13. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognises the importance of conserving PD (in the forms of ‘taxonomic hierarchy’ and ‘evolutionarily distinct lineages’) and has established a Task Force of the Species Survival Commission dedicated to PD conservation. Similarly, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) recognises PD as a key indicator of global trends in nature’s contribution to people.
Read More - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16410-6
Researchers calculated the amount of evolutionary history - branches on the tree of life - that are currently threatened with extinction, using extinction risk data for more than 25,000 species.
They found a combined 50 billion years of evolutionary heritage, at least, were under threat from human impacts such as urban development, deforestation and road building.
In a global assessment of extinction of species, research team takes a much broader view of what's been happening to the natural world.
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Microplastic Pollution Across World Oceans: Enormous Disaster
"Particles may outnumber zooplankton, which underpin marine life and regulate climate"
Microplastic pollution vastly underestimated
Microplastics have entered the food chain in rivers, with birds found to be consuming hundreds of particles a day via the aquatic insects on which they feed.
Microplastic pollution has contaminated the whole planet, from Arctic snow and mountain soils to many rivers and the deepest oceans. It is also being consumed and inhaled by people, and the health impacts are as yet unknown.
Research published in the last month in 'Environmental Pollution' has found microplastics in greater quantities than ever before on the seabed and suggested that hundreds of thousands of tonnes of microplastics could be blowing ashore on the ocean breeze every year...
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Super Cyclone Amphan Threatens 500 Million
Cyclone-Hurricane, Cat 5, Hitting Bay of Bengal Tomorrow
Frequency of Intense Storms Increasing with Global Warming, Warmer Waters
Amphan: Bay of Bengal is world's hotbed of tropical cyclones
Extreme Weather Events
The largest bay in the world - 500 million people live on the coastal rim that surrounds it - is also the site of the majority of the deadliest tropical cyclones in world history
The "north coast of the Bay of Bengal is more prone to catastrophic surges than anywhere on Earth"
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On the Death of John Houghton
John Houghton was instrumental in founding and shaping the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The climate scientist led the panel’s Scientific Assessment of Climate Change working group from its formation in 1988 until 2002. Under his guidance, the IPCC did more than any other entity to synthesize the science, sound the alarm of dangerous climate risk and make the case for immediate action, work for which the organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
Testimonial from Dr. Katharine Hayhoe
The field of climate science lost one of its giants to COVID-19. Sir John Houghton was one of the founders of the IPCC and led its scientific working group for many years. He was also a man of deep faith. His granddaughter Hannah, who is currently studying for ordination in the Anglican church and doing her doctoral dissertation on climate grief, says of him, "when I was younger, my consistent memory of him was warnings over the devastation waiting us if we didn’t act on climate change. But my other consistent memory will be his deep faith that he was doing work in service of the God he loved, and the world he loved." When he spoke of climate science, he'd immediately link it to the fact that the poorest and most vulnerable were those most at risk. His faith motivated his life's work and inspired countless other scientists, including me, and his last email to me, in connection to his autobiography ("In the Eye of the Storm," an apt description of his life in the center of the international negotiations on climate change for so many years - link below) was signed, "every blessing." I was honoured to write this brief essay in his memory with my own advisor, Don Wuebbles.
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(US Breaking News)
After a deeply controversial stint at the EPA, the former chemical industry executive nominated to be the nation’s top consumer safety watchdog is now sidelining 'detailed guidelines' to help communities reopen during the coronavirus pandemic.
'Scaled-back guidance', brief edited document now being released
The White House ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to revise an earlier draft it deemed "too prescriptive."
The new CDC guidelines, which appear to be watered down from previously leaked versions, provide brief checklists meant to help key businesses and others operating in public reopen safely. In separate one-page documents, the CDC offers decision-making tools for schools, workplaces, camps, child care programs, mass transit systems, and bars and restaurants.
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(Global News)
Via Geophysical Research Report
With the passage of the first international agreement to limit atmosperic emisskons, the Montreal Protocol, CFCs were banned to protect the earth's ozone layer. A substitute product, HFC-134a, began to be used in cooling systems.
While HFC-134a was less damaging to the ozone layer, it was unfortunately a very powerful greenhouse gas, around 1,400 times more warming that CO2.
In an amendment to the Protocol, manufacturers in the US and Europe agreed to phase out HFC-134a. By 2017 all new cars had to use a different coolant for air conditioning called HFO-1234yf.
While this chemical doesn't damage ozone, and is not a greenhouse gas, it was found to break down to produce short chain PFCAs.
According to researchers, these chemicals can travel a long distance in the atmosphere and often end up in lakes and rivers. They cause "irreversible contamination" and can impact the health of freshwater creatures.
As research comes forward, it is becoming apparent that another shit in products, to a more biodegradle, less toxic product, will be needed. The environmental impacts to health, life systems, biodiversity, carry across borders...
Pandemic, 'It' doesn't stop at national borders
International cooperation is key to identifying and turning back the spread of coronavirus
Monitoring the COVID-19 world data
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Approaching 100 environmental rollbacks, Trump celebrates 3+ yrs in office
Via GreenPolicy360
Environmental Deregulation, Climate Litigation
Climate Deregulation Tracker (Columbia Law)
Columbia Law School - Climate Change Law
Envir Laws Rollback Tracker (Harvard Law)
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A Note From NOAA
May 14, 2020
Global warming pushes April temperatures into record territory, as 2020 heads for heat milestone
Via Washington Post / New data, released May 4 from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, lends further support to the prediction that 2020 will rank among the top two warmest years recorded.
In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, using its own temperature monitoring data, reported that there is a 75 percent chance that 2020 will become the planet’s warmest year since instrument records began in 1880, and very likely long before that.
This year is on track to be Earth’s warmest on record, beating 2016, NOAA says.
Human-caused climate change from increasing amounts of planet-warming greenhouse gases is vaulting temperatures higher...
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Climate change news is big at the Pulitzers
Many stories and nominations, many awards
Staff of The Washington Post won the explanatory reporting Pulitzer for a “groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.”
“Today in this country we are single-mindedly focused on a public-health crisis. But another worldwide public-health crisis is upon us,” said Martin Baron, executive editor of The Post, in a piece for the Post. “As with the coronavirus, we are well served if we pay attention to the science. In producing this series, our staff not only paid attention to the science, but also built on it with deeper and more granular analysis. And then, with the full resources of our news organization, we put a human face to the numbers, showing the severe impact that extreme warming is already having on communities around the world.”
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More on the Heat, a Hot and Hotter Future
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Dandelions
Spring
Somewhere
Seeds
Soon to be
Freed
Into the wind
Floating
Destiny
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April 2020
International Energy Agency (IEA): Renewables Grow While Fossil Fuels Demand Collapses during the Global Coronavirus Crisis
Covid Pandemic & Climate Disruption: Communities, Local and Global Developing Response Tactics and Shared Best Practices
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Science Counts: Use Good Science to Manage in a Crisis
When you talk about flattening the curve, you are talking like a scientist. Science in playing a critical role in motivating billions of people around the world to make tough, fundamental choices individually and collectively, to safeguard our future. As we flatten the curve, we have built a precious trust between science and society. As a scientist and an educator, my spirits are buoyed knowing that so many around the world are developing a new appreciation for what excellent science and science reporting looks like.
GreenPolicy360: Our Position on the Use of Science
Measure to Manage: Good science needs data
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Climate experts criticize 'dangerous' Michael Moore film
Planet of the Humans, which takes aim at the green movement, misleads by omission and misinformation
As Moore's film attacks a global move to renewable energy... fossil fuels, and unsustainable growth, continue to deliver real-world challenges
Human-caused climate change is a crisis-in-the-making
Read Post Carbon Richard Heinberg's thoughtful, nuanced 'Planet of the Humans' review and visit GreenPolicy's Climate News webpages here and here for our thoughts on this controversial documentary.
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How did US politicos act and what did they say on Earth Day
Pope Francis weighs in
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Earth Day Memories on the 50th Anniversary
Earth Day 2020
50th Anniversary of first Earth Day "Teach-In" / April 22, 1970
Art by Olivia Schmidt / BY-NC Creative Commons / Use w/ Attribution + Non-commercial
On the 50th Anniversary
Memories on the Road to the First Earth Day
Steven Schmidt / GreenPolicy360 Siterunner
It started on a Schwinn bike in the mid-1960s. My road to April 22, 1970. The day that would be called the first "Earth Day"...
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Day_Memories_on_the_50th_Anniversary
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Earth Day -- April 22, 1970
April 22, 2020 -- 50 Years On
Bioneers interview with Hispanic activist Arturo Sandoval:
You were part of Denis Hayes’ team that produced the first Earth Day in 1970. What was that experience like?
ARTURO: It was my first time organizing on a national level. I worked with a very bright team. It was lots of work. It was very exhilarating. It completely exceeded anything we hoped to achieve. It was like holding onto the tail of the tiger. We were basically just trying to stay out of the way of a freight train coming down the tracks because the response to the first Earth Day was so overwhelming. It was huge. It was just unbelievable, and took everything we had to just try to connect the dots and get information out to the people and not get in their way.
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Project Coral / Earth Day News
Good news for preserving the only living coral reef in U.S. ocean waters
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Rolling Backwards
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Oil futures contracts go where they've never gone -- negative. We'll pay you to take our oil
A negative price has never happened before for an oil futures contract
Worst Day Yet for US Oil Markets
Trump - 'I believe in the free market'
Global demand drops for oil/gas
OPEC, Russia price war leads to int'l oil/gas price collapse
U.S. crude prices plunged to their lowest level in history as traders continue to fret over a slump in demand due to the coronavirus pandemic. The price of the nearest oil futures contract, which expires Tuesday, was the hardest hit, detaching from later month futures contracts with a drop of more than 50%. This suggests that some believe there could be a recovery later in the year.
West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery tanked 69%, or $12.69, to $5.58 per barrel, its lowest level on record.
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From Bell Science Hour & Frank Capra
Produced & Distributed in 1958
We are heating the atmosphere, disruption is coming
Glass-bottom boats touring over Miami?
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Remembering the BP America Fire, Oil Blowout Spill in the Gulf
On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank 5,000 feet beneath the Gulf
A Decade After
By Craig Pittman / Florida Phoenix
On March 31, 2010, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited St. Petersburg’s Vinoy hotel to give a speech where he talked about how safe offshore oil drilling was. He was touting his book, Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.
On that same day, then-President Barack Obama announced he would open a lot of the nation’s coastline to drilling, including two-thirds of the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, Florida legislators were considering allowing drilling in state waters just three miles off the coast, figuring that from that distance, the tourists wouldn’t see it, so what could go wrong?
A decade later, this all seems remarkably stupid because within three weeks, on April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank 5,000 feet beneath the Gulf.
Two days later, on Earth Day, the damaged rig began spewing oil that coated coastlines in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and even Florida, ruining tourism, charter fishing and other industries that depend on clean beaches and uncontaminated water.
The BP oil continues polluting the gulf even today, according to recently released findings by scientists from the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Sciences. It’s still affecting fish and other marine species...
After the disaster, Obama appointed a federal commission to investigate what went wrong. The commission’s chief investigator, “Sam” Sankar, said the commission’s recommendations called for imposing strong, clear regulations to ensure safety, evaluating the risks of another spill and making sure the oil industry can be held liable in the event of another disaster.
Of those recommendations, “none of them have been implemented"...
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Visit Strategic Demands
Cooperation Necessary Between Nations
The Gates Foundation announcement comes as President Trump moves to cut off funding to the World Health Organization...
Fact Checking and Media Literacy Must Be Upped During the Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic
From our associate, Strategic Demands
Measure-to-Manage Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic
Testing, Sound Science, and Smart Policy Management
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Coronavirus Disrupts Global Plans for this Year's 50th Annual Earth Day
Denis Hayes, an original Earth Day 'Teach-in Organizer, asks U.S. citizens to vote on November 3rd
As I’m writing this, the world has suffered 1,506,936 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 90,000 deaths. Of those, the U.S. has 453,748 cases and just more than 16,000 deaths.
The global economy is reeling.
Congress swiftly passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package. To put $2.2 trillion in context, that is more than three times as much money as national military spending.
Initially, President Donald Trump did not take COVID-19 seriously. On Jan. 22, he famously said, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.” In subsequent weeks, he spoke at eight large rallies and went golfing six times.
He is taking it seriously now.
Understandably lost amid this death and tumult is the crushing impact COVID-19 has had on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Thousands of people around the world have worked for years to leverage a massive global Earth Day.
Earth Day, April 22, 2020
For two years, the Earth Day Network patiently laid the groundwork for gigantic crowds in 180 nations, from St. Peter’s Square to Kolkata, from Rio to Paris, from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to Seattle Center. We built alliances with Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin, Alexandria Villaseñor, Lili Flanigan and thousands of other youth-climate activists; with 350.org, the Sunrise Movement, and scores of national and international environmental groups. We obtained commitments from Pope Francis and other religious leaders, heads of state and mayors, green corporate leaders and labor chiefs. We allied with the Smithsonian to enlist many of the world’s leading museums. We engaged colleges, universities and tens of thousands of K-12 schools; zoos, aquariums, and botanical gardens.
The goal was to build an irresistible worldwide force to demand a global Green New Deal and, ultimately, solve the climate crisis.
Then COVID-19, the ultimate Black Swan, surged out of China and engulfed the world. All our marches, rallies and protests; our teach-ins, lectures and concerts — everywhere — were made illegal....
This April 22, we want everyone to stay in the safety of their homes. Spend some hours streaming talks and films and musicians (playing from their living rooms) at earthday.org. Check out opportunities for future engagement in King County at earthdaynw2020.org/...
But understand that the real challenge lies in the next six months. The 2020 U.S. election will be the most important of your lifetime. It can be an inflection point for the world.
The 2020 election will determine whether the great American experiment — universal suffrage, separation of powers, Bill of Rights, rule of law — will be resuscitated from the dark impact of the worst president in the nation’s history.
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EV sales to plunge 43% this year — report
Via E&E News / April 9, 2020
The one-two punch of pandemic and recession is likely to defer purchases of electric vehicles, leading to a precipitous drop in sales, according to a new report...
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Via Mashable / After Earth experienced its second-hottest year in 140 years of record-keeping in 2019, the first few months of this year have either broken historic monthly records, or come close. January 2020 was the warmest January on record. February 2020 was the second hottest such month on record... the European Union's climate monitoring agency EU Copernicus reported that March 2020 was "on par" with the second and third warmest Marches on record...
"The continued onslaught of record and near-record global temperatures is a reminder that, while we’re understandably preoccupied with another crisis (the Coronavirus pandemic), a more formidable one in the grand schemes of things looms in the background," said climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University.
The consequences of a warmer atmosphere are countless. Most glaciers on Earth are fast receding. Wildfires are overpowering us. Meanwhile, the oceans absorb over 90 percent of the heat created by human activities. These boosted, above-average water temperatures amplify the marine heat waves that cause the bleaching and widespread deaths of coral.
"As I write this sentence, the Great Barrier Reef is suffering its third major bleaching event in the space of five years, an unprecedented and foreboding development," said Mann. "The ever-worsening nature of the climate crisis and the need to address it must guide any policy actions that are taken to address the Coronavirus crisis."
Death and Devastation of the Living Reef Ecosystems
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Ecology of Disease
NYT / 2012 - 2020
Looking at wildlife-borne viruses across the tropics, building a virus library. Most of the work focuses on primates, rats and bats, which are most likely to carry diseases that affect people...
First Post / India
Concern over 'Wet Markets' in China, Sale of Wild Animals Meat -- Bats, Pangolins, 'Crossover' Strains of Virus
SARS, MERS, Covid-19, new diseases, deadly threats
March 2020
Another Day: Here comes another environmental protection rollback
New Trump mileage standards to gut Obama climate effort
🌎
As a deadly respiratory disease becomes a pandemic, as auto emissions cause toxic air pollution, lung disease, and threaten atmospheric disruption and climate crisis, the US moves backwards on health and forward-looking economics
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Ocean warming devastates the Australian Great Barrier Reef
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Countries Around the World Taking Varied Paths to Respond to Coronavirus Pandemic
Billions in 'Lockdown', 'Stay at Home', 'Social Isolation', Disease Prevention Measures
International Markets Collapse, Recession or Depression?
(March 25) President Donald Trump says he wants the nation "opened up and just raring to go by Easter."
"I give it two weeks," Trump said in a broadcast Fox News town hall, suggesting he was ready to phase out his 15-day self-isolating guidelines when they expire. "I guess by Monday or Tuesday, it's about two weeks. We will assess at that time and give it more time if we need a little more time. We have to open this country up."
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Earthview from DSCOVR on #International Earth Day
- 🌎
Increasing threats: New 'crossovers' and 'spillovers'
“We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbour so many species of animals and plants – and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses,” David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic, recently wrote in the New York Times. “We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.”
Research suggests that outbreaks of animal-borne and other infectious diseases such as Ebola, Sars, bird flu and now Covid-19, caused by a novel coronavirus, are on the rise. Pathogens are crossing from animals to humans, and many are able to spread quickly to new places...
A new discipline, planetary health, is emerging that focuses on the increasingly visible connections between the wellbeing of humans, other living things and entire ecosystems.
The SARS Covid-19 'Coronavirus' Genome
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At home due to the coronavirus? School closed? Time off from business as usual? Interested in listening into some streaming?
Perhaps in the mood for some educational, dramatic Podcasting? How about a mind-opening 3-season investigative series?
Ready?? How about Drilled... An exposé, drilling down into climate science denial, the lucrative business of climate dis- and mis-information.
The eerie sci-fi movie music that launches the series gives us a sense of what's to come as we're reminded that so many disaster movies begin as a scientist's warnings are being ignored...
The Madmen of Climate Denial
Drilled: A True Crime Podcast about Climate Change
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Coronavirus pandemic
Jack Ma Foundation to donate 500,000 testing kits, 1 million masks to the US
The pandemic can "no longer be resolved by any individual country."
Billionaire Jack Ma said his foundation will donate 500,000 testing kits and one million masks to the United States to combat the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The statement posted to Twitter on March 13 was accompanied by a photo post signed by Ma. It read: "Over the past few weeks, Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation collaborated to source and donate much-needed materials to combat COVID-19 to afflicted areas in Japan, Korea, Italy, Iran and Spain. Now, we have sourced and readied for shipment 500,000 testing kits and one million masks to be donated to the United States."
Drawing from China's experience in dealing with the virus, Ma said speedy and accurate testing and adequate personal protective equipment for medical professionals are most effective in preventing the spread of the virus.
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Top scientist Dr. David Ho leading aggressive efforts to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus after winning a $2.1 million grant from Chinese billionaire Jack Ma
Coronavirus Outbreak: When Will We Get a COVID-19 Vaccine?
Feb 28, 2020
○
Global Pandemic: COVID-19 Can Help Wealthier Nations Prepare for a Sustainability Transition
Forecasts of the economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic are growing increasingly dire as the scale and severity of the contagion expands. Global supply chains are collapsing, tourism is in free fall, and entire calendars of public events are being canceled. School closures and mass quarantines beyond China, Italy, and other frontline countries are leading to deeply curtailed consumer expenditures. The threat of a protracted global recession is with each passing day becoming ever more probable. Investors are looking to finance ministers and central bankers to further slash interest rates and to offer ironclad promises of generous fiscal stimulus. However, it is becoming apparent that the effectiveness of these strategies is extremely limited and will do little to steady anxious stock markets. Meanwhile, in the real economy, businesses are beginning to feel the tight pinch of dampened demand and preparing to furlough employees.
While the challenge of getting the coronavirus outbreak under control is surely ominous, it merits recognizing that from a sustainability standpoint we may have a rare window of opportunity. The challenge will be to lock in the reductions in energy and material utilization that are already occurring and will probably intensify in coming weeks and months. COVID-19 could inadvertently contribute to meaningful progress toward meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals...
An observation frequently attributed to Winston Churchill is that we should never let a good crisis go to waste. The coronavirus outbreak is a deeply unfortunate situation that is unquestionably causing widespread suffering. While this is regrettable, we should not dismiss that the event provides an opportunity to make some significant headway toward a timely and necessary sustainability transition.
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With Coronavirus spreading globally, climate organizing must find ways to protest against the climate crisis other than mass demonstrations
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Tesla: One Million 'Units'
Whirring Engines, New Factories in China & Germany
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In the Oil Patch, Prices and Production Plunge
House of Saud vs Russians vs US Shale-Fracking
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PLASTIC
By Tim Dickinson / Rolling Stone
MARCH 3, 2020
- https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/plastic-problem-recycling-myth-big-oil-950957/
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 Oil meets 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...
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COVID-19
World Pandemic: Coronavirus
Covid-19: Daily Updates
Covid-19: Day 62: March 1st: Trillions lost: In China, the 'factory of the world', virus could affect 42 % of China's economy
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Marine Heatwave - "The Blob"
Gulf of Alaska closed for the first time ever
In an unprecedented response to historically low fish numbers, the Gulf of Alaska is closing for the 2020 season.
“We’re on the knife’s edge of this over-fished status,” North Pacific Fisheries Management Council member Nicole Kimball said during talks in Anchorage. It’s not over-fishing to blame for the die-off, but rather, climate change. Warming ocean temperatures linked to climate change are wreaking havoc on a number of Alaska’s fisheries, worrying biologists, locals and fishermen with low returns that jeopardize fishing livelihoods. A stock assessment this fall put Gulf cod populations at a historic low, with “next to no” new eggs, according to NOAA research.
Up until the emergence of a marine heatwave known as “the blob” in 2014, Gulf cod was doing well. But the heatwave caused ocean temperatures to rise 4-5 degrees. Young cod started dying off, scientists said. “A lot of the impact on the population was due to that first heatwave that we haven’t recovered from,” Barbeaux said during an interview last month. Following the first heatwave, cod numbers crashed by more than half, from 113,830 metric tons in 2014 to 46,080 (a loss of almost 68,000) metric tons in 2017. The decline was steady from there.
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Net zero goal ‘greatest commercial opportunity of our time’
Every private finance decision must take into account climate change and how to decarbonise the world economy to net zero, incoming UN special envoy on climate action Mark Carney has told banks and investors.
Setting out strategies to mobilise private finance ahead of the UN climate talks in Glasgow, or Cop26, Carney said such investments “could become the greatest commercial opportunity of our time”.
“The objective for the private finance work for Cop26 is simple,” he said, “to make sure that every private finance decision takes climate change into account.”
Appointed special advisor on climate finance to UK prime minister Boris Johnson, Carney, outgoing governor of the Bank of England, made the remarks at the heart of the City of London on Thursday.
“Achieving net zero emissions will require a whole economy transition – every company, every bank, every insurer and investor will have to adjust their business models... This could turn an existential risk into the greatest commercial opportunity of our time.”
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Today is Launch Day
Announcing the Publication of The Future We Choose
Authors: Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac
February 25, 2020
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Jeff Bezos of Amazon jumps in the fight against the #ClimateCrisis
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Climate Change Pushes January 2020 to Hottest in 141 Years
Feb. 13
The year has started with the hottest January in the 141 years that global records have been kept, and it’s the biggest record-breaking margin—1.14° Celsius above the 20th century average—achieved without help from a warming El Niño event in the Pacific Ocean.
' The new monthly record set by January 2020, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, continues an aggressive trend toward higher temperatures. The four hottest Januarys on record have all occurred since 2016, and the top-10 warmest have all occurred since 2002...
February 10, 2020 / 416.08 ppm
• https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/monthly.html
• https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/carbon-clock/
RISING EMISSIONS DRIVE GREENHOUSE GAS INDEX INCREASE
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President Trump's 2021 Federal Budget with (Proposed) Cuts to Environmental Programs
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Thread from Michael E. Mann
Climate disinformation and 'troll's lies' are not the way to go...
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The URL Says It
The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which has a $2.85 billion budget, was targeted for 80% cuts in the last White House budget request -- only to see Congress increase its funding instead.
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In the Permian Basin, New Mexico, Texas, Water & Fracking
In the "Oil Patch", reporting from the "most prolific oil field in the world"
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New Study: How Global Warming Climate Science Looks at (Cooling) Clouds
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Tesla, Electric Vehicle 'Magic'
Tesla roars past Volkswagen to become the second most valuable car company in the world
The stock price of the California-headquartered company is up more than fifty percent since Decemeber and has tripled since August. Tesla is now worth about $117 billion...
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January 2020
Guess What. What? You won't believe it. Believe what? Guess!
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EPA’s New Water Rule a Mockery of Science and Clean Water Act
Union of Concerned Scientists | January 24, 2020
With the Environmental Protection Agency’s own data showing that nearly half of our rivers and streams and a third of our wetlands are in “poor biological condition,” and with millions of Americans exposed to unsafe chemicals in water systems, this is a bad time to make a mockery of the Clean Water Act. But that is precisely what the Trump administration did this week when it issued its Navigable Waters Protection rule and completed its rollback of the Obama administration’s 2015 Waters of the United States rule.
Fitting of the Trump administration, the “protection” in the rule’s name doesn’t really have anything to do with water. Not when it will reportedly remove half of the nation’s wetlands and nearly 20 percent of streams from protection. It cannot be about water when the administration excludes from regulation other potential aquatic transporters of toxic chemicals, such as groundwater, rivers that run only during rainfall (a huge feature of the arid West), waste treatment systems, ditches, and ponds and depressions related to mining and construction.
No, the Trump rule is designed to allow oil and gas producers, chemical makers, agricultural interests, and developers to navigate a federal water regulatory world cleared of permits and penalties for pollution, a world not seen since the 1960s...
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Scientists warn that Earth is closer to disaster
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of its symbolic Doomsday Clock closer to midnight, indicating that the likeliness of a human-caused apocalypse has increased since last year.
The Bulletin adjusted the clock to reflect looming threats from nuclear weapons and accelerated global warming.
The clock is now set at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to symbolic doom and the first time the hands have been within the two-minute mark.
"We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds — not hours, or even minutes," Rachel Bronson, the Bulletin's president and CEO, said in a statement. "We now face a true emergency — an absolutely unacceptable state of world affairs that has eliminated any margin for error or further delay."
Former California Governor Jerry Brown, executive chair, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “Dangerous rivalry and hostility among the superpowers increases the likelihood of nuclear blunder. Climate change just compounds the crisis. If there’s ever a time to wake up, it’s now.”
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At the World Economic Forum
Marc Benioff announces financial backing for a new platform, 1t.org, that will support an ongoing global initiative to plant, restore, and conserve 1 trillion trees over the next decade, the Trillion Trees Initiative...
As reported in a study in the journal Science, planting saplings to regrow on land where forests have been cleared would increase global forested area by one-third and remove 205 billion metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere. This is two-thirds of the roughly 300 billion metric tons of carbon humans have put up there since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
“The point is that [reforestation is] so much more vastly powerful than anyone ever expected,” said Thomas Crowther, a professor of environmental systems science at ETH Zurich and a co-author of the paper. “By far, it’s the top climate change solution in terms of carbon storage potential.”
Some climate scientists who were not involved with the study disagree with its calculations and are warning against its “silver bullet” message. Still, supporting natural systems that can soak up carbon is widely accepted as a major component of any climate change mitigation strategy — in addition to deploying clean energy, switching to electric vehicles, and curbing consumption overall.
While many are proposing climate impact solutions, Donald Trump arrived at the economic conference in Davos, Switzerland bragging about US oil-gas production.
Watch at Davos
On the opening day of the US president's impeachment trial in the US Senate, Trump castigated climate activists after Greta Thunberg and young activists spoke of the need for immediate international climate action.
Trump Just Called Climate Scientists ‘Foolish Fortune Tellers’
According to Trump, we shouldn't listen to those "alarmists," who want “absolute power to dominate, transform and control every aspect of our lives.”
(Associated Press)
News on Greta's speech at Davos
(CNN)
News on the US president
President Donald Trump attacked climate activists as "perennial prophets of doom" on Tuesday while addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the agenda is focused on tackling the climate crisis.
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Trump's remarks underscored the chasm between his denialist view of climate change and the overwhelming scientific consensus driving the rest of the developed world to action. Speaking shortly after the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg accused world leaders of not taking action, Trump rejected calls for urgent action and encouraged the world to instead embrace "optimism."
"To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse," Trump said.
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Judges Matter
By a Two to One Vote
U.S. appeals court throws out youth climate lawsuit
January 17, 2020
A federal appeals court threw out a lawsuit by children and young adults who claimed they had a constitutional right to be protected from climate change, in a major setback...
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Another warning, after years of warnings
In one generation the climate crisis has gone from the Energy & Climate warnings from the National Academy of Sciences in 1977 and the first US climate legislation put into effect in 1978 -- the National Climate Act -- drafted by Rep. George E. Brown to the environmental work of the first era of green political activists. The cumulative studies and reports of earth science, as with this report from NASA and NOAA that announces the hottest decade on record, continue to deliver overwhelming data that we ignore at our common peri. Even as the current president of the US willfully ignores the science, the physics and consequences cannot be ignored.
New Definitions of National Security are needed
New Definitions of Security / GreenPolicy360
A Tip of Our GreenPolicy360 hat to 'Congressman of Big Science' George E. Brown and the first generation of Earth science pioneers
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A fundamental reshaping of finance due to climate change
US acts to unravel environmental protections as president is impeached and another war is imminent
Trump administration attacks the 'Magna Carta' of US Environmental Protection, the NEPA Act
Administration officials say they aim to "modernize and clarify" the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA.
National Environmental Policy Act
NEPA is often said to be the Magna Carta of the environmental movement...
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Letter to the Los Angeles Times and the United States from an Australian Citizen
A Decade of Climate Warnings, Science, Data / InsideClimateNews
December 2019
December 31st...
In Germany, a New Year's Message
“Our children and grandchildren are the ones who will have to live with the consequences of what we do, or fail to do, today,” Merkel said in the written version of a televised address to be broadcast on Tuesday.
“That is why I am making every effort to ensure that Germany does its part –- environmentally, economically and socially –- to deal with climate change.”
“The warming of our planet is real. It is dangerous. Global warming and the crises that arise from it are caused by human activity. This means that we must do everything humanly possible to meet this human challenge. It isn’t too late.”
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December 30th, as 2019 draws to a close...
SJS: Future generations will look back at our era and they will decide, and they will judge, who was on the right side of history...
World News / Reuters
December 30, 2019 / 6:37 AM
I wouldn't have wasted my time on Trump, says Greta Thunberg
LONDON (Reuters) - Teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg said on Monday that talking to U.S. President Donald Trump at a United Nations summit on global warming would have been a waste of time since he would not have paid any attention...
Thunberg spoke in Monday’s BBC program with veteran British broadcaster David Attenborough, telling him how his nature documentaries had inspired her.
“You have aroused the world,” the 93-year-old Attenborough told Thunberg in reply, adding that she had achieved things “that many of us who have been working on the issue for 20 years have failed to do”.
Watch the BBC Skype call between Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough
When Greta Met David
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Australia, 'Extreme Weather'... Wildfires Rage As Never Before
“If 800 million sounds a lot, it’s not all the animals in the firing line... Over a billion would be a very conservative figure...”
The scale is almost too big to fathom.
The level of ecological destruction underway is unprecedented.
More than 26 million acres of Australia have burned...
“You may want to think of dropping off some toys for the children of the firefighters,” the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is quoted as saying.
“These are things that people can do constructively. Australians, we need to rally together. The time for argument is not now.”
GreenPolicy360: The Australian government, ranking last in an international survey of national climate action, is pushing to speed up coal production and consequent CO2 emissions, a disturbing outlier position among nations.
Evidently history-making heat waves and temperatures, droughts and dystopian conditions across Australia are not, per the PM, a time for 'argument' or a change of national policy. The influence of climate change denial on Australia's politics, and Murdoch-influenced media reach in AU, its home base, and in the UK with Sky and US with Fox, is delivering a lasting legacy.
News Corp Australia dominates the country’s media landscape, publishing more than 140 newspapers and employing 3,000 journalists in print, broadcast, and online.
Postscript / January 14, 2020 (strife within the Murdoch family):
A spokesperson for James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, told The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Cartwright, “Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known. They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary.”
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President Trump's very bad year (and the future will be a judge)
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Remembering William Greider, December 25th, Rest in Peace
GreenPolicy360 Siterunner: In May 1992 William Greider's book "Who Will Tell the People" was formally published. In pre-print it had already impacted the direction of the 1992 U.S. campaign of one presidential candidate, California Governor Jerry Brown. The "We the People / Platform-in-Progress" formed a critique of Neoliberal economics and global financial services. The book was detailed, convincing and powerful. It further developed Greider's analysis of 'Reaganomics' and served as a call for a new political economy. As powerful as was the case Greider made, and the Brown campaign's 'new economics' platform continued to build upon with needed electoral and economic reform, Brown and Greider were set aside by Democrats and Republicans.
Today, as 2020 approaches, the economic landscape portends increasing corporate dominance that Greider warned of and Governor Brown continues to confront... The people have been told. Political action, real change, is the most pressing challenge of our time.
William Greider's vision and legacy live on in his ideas carried forward...
"Who Will Tell the People", reviewed @GoodReads
The Greider Message & the Brown Campaign
At the 1992 Platform hearings of the Democratic party, a potential turning point for the Democratic party...
A Runner-up campaign is set aside as the Democrats party turns to Neoliberalism and corporate support
Arguing the Brown campaign platform v. the Clinton campaign platform
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A Holiday Message
David Attenborough speaks of saving the planet (video)
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Another squandered opportunity: Transition to renewable energy set back in the U.S. Federal budget
Coal, oil, gas provisions expanded
Electric vehicle, solar, renewable credits removed
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The Oldest Forest: Discovering the Devonian Roots
https://marlin-prod.literatumonline.com/cms/attachment/baa483e3-a437-496e-b302-42942a2ddfdf/gr3.jpg
“The origin of big trees and forests seems to be coincident in time with some dramatic changes in the Devonian ecosystem and climate,” said lead author William Stein, an emeritus professor of biology at Binghamton University.
“In particular, there’s been pretty clear evidence that there was a drawdown of CO2 levels from the atmosphere during this time,” causing global cooling, he added. “This is important because we’re, in a sense, looking at the opposite trending effects currently with people, deforestation, and global warming.”
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After the Climate Summit in Madrid
As some 27,000 conference attendees return home, by most accounts disappointed with the results
We recall a recent interview with one climate scientist-activist from Texas, Katharine Hayhoe
Everything You Wanted To Know About Climate Change But Were Afraid to Ask
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is a climate scientist who leads the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and is the host and producer of the PBS series Global Weirding.
Via Forbes, Interview by Devin Thorpe
Hayhoe has a positive, upbeat manner that leaves people feeling as if she’s talking about planning the best birthday party ever rather than warning about climate change. Perhaps that is her appeal. She has earned a reputation—she’s been named to Time’s 100 most influential people list and Fortune added her to their World’s Greatest Leaders list—for being able to communicate climate science better than most.
She explains why a difference as small as two degrees actually matters, why she calls it global weirding, how she explains climate science to skeptics who are religious, and the respective roles of big business, entrepreneurs and individuals in fighting climate science...
"Climate change affects us all. And so, I was really happy to participate in a project called New Climate Voices. And people can find it online at newclimatevoices.org with a Republican politician, with the leader of a libertarian think tank and with a military general who all talked about solutions that are consistent with their values and their perspective."
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What was achieved at the Climate Summit? Little progress.
The next conference of the parties may be in Glasgow, but the chance of any real success there will be determined, to a large extent by what happens in the EU-China summit taking place in the German city of Leipzig next September.
The hope is that by then the EU will have formalised its zero-carbon long term goal and also updated its 2030 pledge to cut emissions by 55% of 1990 levels.
The EU will likely try and secure agreement from the Chinese to improve their nationally determined contribution (NDC).
Back in 2014 the climate pact signed by President Obama and President Xi Jinping became the lynchpin of the Paris Agreement.
National Climate Plans (INDCs)
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"Nothing is as important as climate change..."
-- Former Calif. Governor Jerry Brown speaking at the AGU, December 11, 2019
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THX Greta!
You go girl. Thank you for being you and being out in front ...
Great Thunberg chosen as Time 'Person of the Year'. In response, the President of the U.S sarcastically mocks her and her climate work to his millions of Twitter followers
(CNN) On Thursday morning, the President of the United States sent a tweet to his 60+ million followers blasting a 16-year-old girl with Asperger's syndrome who has rallied efforts at fighting climate change around the globe.
"Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend!" Trump wrote of teenage climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg. "Chill Greta, Chill!"
This isn't the first time Trump has gone after Thunberg.
"She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future," Trump sarcastically tweeted following Thunberg's speech in front of the United Nations General Assembly earlier this fall. "So nice to see!"
Sadly, Trump's response is predictable in the wake of the Swedish climate activist being named as Time's Person of the Year.
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'Hans Solo' cares and is speaking up to make a positive difference. Are you too?
In Madrid, how did the first week of the 25th UN Climate Change Conference go?
Little to no news in the U.S. media on the great challenge we face with the nations of the world ---
National security, Global security in great peril
In Madrid, U.S. Delegation Speaks Out
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, insisted that the US is still committed to the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement despite President Trump’s formal request to withdraw from the accord. Accompanying the Democrat politician was a congressional delegation including members of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, a body established earlier this year.
“By coming here we want to say to everyone: we’re still in, the United States is still in,” said Pelosi. “Our delegation is here to send a message on Congress’ commitment to take action on the climate crisis is iron clad. We must act because the climate crisis for us is a matter of public health – clean air, clean water for our children’s survival our economy.”
Kathy Castor, chair of the select committee from Tampa Bay, Florida, spoke about plans to publish a climate action plan in March 2020 containing public policy recommendations. “We intend to follow the science. And we intend to ensure that vulnerable communities across America –and across the globe – have every opportunity to participate in this clean energy economy and transformation.”
World Weather Reporting: Hottest decade since weather-keeping records began
- Check out @WMO’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/WMO/status/1201810834080649216?s=09
2019 set to conclude warmest 10 year period on record. Temperatures are only part of the story. Many impacts on health, food security, migration, displacement, ecosystems and oceans. #StateofClimate report has input from many UN partners.
Full World / WMO Report -- https://bit.ly/2DHY4GS
In Madrid, world leaders arrive at the 25th UN Climate Change Conference
#TiempoDeActuar! #TimeforAction !
"We inherited the planet from our parents, and we need to hand it over to future generations" - @KurtykaMichal formally opens the #ClimateChange gathering before handing over its Presidency to Carolina Schmidt @CarolaSchmidtZ.
Recently a majority of lawmakers in the European Parliament voted to declare "a climate and environmental emergency in Europe and globally." The European Parliament vote to declare a 'climate emergency' stands in stark contrast to the United States and its president.
(CNN) Summit that could make or break the world's climate commitments
Around 25,000 people from 200 countries are descending on Madrid this week to attend the COP25 climate change conference. They include dozens of heads of state and government, business leaders, scientists and, of course, activists -- including Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg.
Climate point-of-no-return "hurtling toward us"
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivered a sharp rebuke (see the video) to world leaders today (December 1st) ahead of the international climate conference in Madrid.
'War against nature must stop,' U.N. chief says
MADRID (Reuters) - The world must stop a “war against nature” and find more political will to combat climate change, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Sunday, the eve of a two-week global climate summit in Madrid.
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To fly or not to fly? Do what you can do to make a positive difference. That's what we say at #GreenPolicy360 #GoingGreen
Each of us can make a positive difference stepping up & doing our best / Becoming Planet Citizens
Climate scientists try to cut their own carbon footprints
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November 2019
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Pope urges abolition of nuclear weapons during Japan visit
24 November 2019
Pope Francis has made an impassioned appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons during a visit to Nagasaki, one of the two Japanese cities targeted by atomic bombs during World War Two.
He decried the "unspeakable horror" of nuclear weapons and insisted they were "not the answer" for global peace.
At least 74,000 were killed in Nagasaki by the attack by US forces in 1945...
In a sombre ceremony, the Pope unequivocally condemned the use of nuclear weapons.
"This place makes us deeply aware of the pain and horror that we human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another"...
In Hiroshima today, Pope Francis declared the use and possession of atomic weapons "immoral."
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Looks to Cover Up Health Impact Science
The Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to limit what scientific evidence can guide public health regulations echoes tactics used by the tobacco industry to invalidate science regarding the tobacco industry, scientists told Newsweek.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, overriding protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policymaking...
The measure would make it more difficult to enact new clean air and water rules because many studies detailing the links between pollution and disease rely on personal health information gathered under confidentiality agreements. And, unlike a version of the proposal that surfaced in early 2018, this one could apply retroactively to public health regulations already in place.
“This means the E.P.A. can justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best information to protect public health and the environment, which means more dirty air and more premature deaths,” said Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association.
Public health experts warned that studies that have been used for decades — to show, for example, that mercury from power plants impairs brain development, or that lead in paint dust is tied to behavioral disorders in children — might be inadmissible when existing regulations come up for renewal.
For instance, a groundbreaking 1993 Harvard University project that definitively linked polluted air to premature deaths, currently the foundation of the nation’s air-quality laws, could become inadmissible. When gathering data for their research, known as the Six Cities study, scientists signed confidentiality agreements to track the private medical and occupational histories of more than 22,000 people in six cities. They combined that personal data with home air-quality data to study the link between chronic exposure to air pollution and mortality.
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Trashing the Oceans
Lost and abandoned fishing gear deadly to marine life makes up majority of large plastic pollution in the oceans, according to a report by Greenpeace.
More than 640,000 tonnes of nets, lines, pots and traps used in commercial fishing are dumped and discarded in the sea every year, the same weight as 55,000 double-decker buses.
The report, which draws on the most up-to-date research on “ghost gear” polluting the oceans, calls for international action to stop the plastic pollution, which is deadly for marine wildlife.
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U.S. Officially Rejects International Agreement on Climate
November 4, 2019
What can be said? It is a day that will be remembered as historical tragedy
The United States files paperwork to withdraw 'officially' from the Paris Climate Agreement
The Trump's plan to exit will take effect November 4, 2020, the day after the presidential election....
Civilization witnesses hubris and disassembling, an immeasurable immorality, a self destructive insanity is in evidence today
Secretary Pompeo ✔ @SecPompeo
Today we begin the formal process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. The U.S. is proud of our record as a world leader in reducing all emissions, fostering resilience, growing our economy, and ensuring energy for our citizens. Ours is a realistic and pragmatic model.
3:41 PM - Nov 4, 2019
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As a Juggernaut of Oil/Gas, Business-as-Usual, Wars for Control for Fossil Fuel Energy Define Our Era
Individual choices may seem insignificant -- they aren't, our choices can make a difference
October 2019
SJS/Siterunner:
A protest day today ...
Former California Governor Jerry Brown was testifying before the US Congress. He's not happy with General Motors/GM, and the attempted rollback of every green initiative of the past five decades by the current US president is cause for concern ...
WASHINGTON (Wire Services) — Former California Gov. Jerry Brown came to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to give an impassioned plea for dramatic action to combat climate change, citing California’s wildfires as an example of the “life-and-death” stakes.
Accusing Republicans of being “flat Earth” science deniers, Brown defended California’s efforts to set higher fuel economy standards in the face of President Trump’s attempted rollback of such rules nationally, but called for far more dramatic action as well.
“California’s burning while the deniers make a joke out of the standards that protect us all,” Brown said. “The blood is on your soul here and I hope you wake up. Because this is not politics, this is life, this is morality. ... This is real.”
The former governor also predicted that electric vehicles would eventually triumph over traditional gas-powered cars, saying, "The combustion car is going the way of the dodo bird, and you better get with it or get out of the way."
The Republicans on the committee called for a adjournment of the hearing, so they could attend the president's impeachment hearing. Committee Chairman Rouda held a vote, the Democrat's prevailed to continue with the hearing.
"We're here to talk about the very pressing issue of cutting our carbon emissions and saving our planet," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And we have an entire political party that is trying to get out of their job, adjourn this hearing."
She continued: "I just want to know what the reason for such a disrespect of our process would potentially be. Do we have a reason for why this hearing is trying to be adjourned? Or, you know, do we have just like a cocktail party?"
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) responded: "Yes. I have one. I have a real easy one. The oil industry is the second-largest industry in my state. My constituents expect me to be here. We are running an impeachment hearing down in the basement of the Capitol right now."
Ocasio-Cortez responded: "Wait, so is this about the oil industry or the impeachment hearing?"
Another day that begins to capture the state of American politics...
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Climate-Related Disruption / Rolling Blackouts
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US Moves to 'Officially' Withdraw from International Climate Agreement
Nearly All Nations Are In, US Is Odd Nation Out
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Rights of Nature Constitutional Amendment Introduced in Swedish Parliament
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Memories & Moments over the Years
Looking back & looking forward
At the Bioneers 2019 -- 30 Years On and What a Trip It's Been
Growing Transformative Solutions, Everyday a Vision of Possibilities & Change
- https://bioneers.org * https://bioneers.org/about/history * https://conference.bioneers.org * https://bioneers.org/the-green-new-deal
Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons, co-founders of the Bioneers --- Welcoming all to the annual conference in Marin, California
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Debating Climate
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Climate Change, Global Disruption
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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to...
- John B Goodenough, M Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino
Their work to develop Lithium-ion batteries... "Their pioneering research is everywhere you look and a great example of how chemistry has paved the way for everything from the mobile phone in your pocket to the electric vehicles and home energy storage of the future."
Bonnie Charpentier, president of the American Chemical Society spoke of the battery's clean energy applications: "In the face of increasing threats from extreme climate change, today's announcement shines a welcome bright light on the portability of energy that has enabled unprecedented advances in communication, transportation and other tools to support critical aspects of life around the world."
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The Earth just had its hottest September on record
Via USA Today / "The Heat Goes On"
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Around 90% of the 🌎’s population breathe polluted air.
At the @UN #ClimateActionSummit, @PinskyMichael recreated the air of five major cities for the project #pollutionpods, designed to raise awareness about air quality and health.
Environmental policy... #Emissions #Pollution #Externalities #FullCosts #TruePricing #Cities #AtmosphericScience
Check out @UNFCCC’s Tweet:
September 2019
When You Become Politically Effective...
The attacks come but they don't slow #ClimateAction
- By Charlie Warzel / NYT
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United Nations Climate Summit / 2019
"You are failing us"...
One Day in the Life of GreenPolicy360
Every day our team looks out at Green News on the web and then chooses (curates) the highlights and distributes stories of the day to our global network of GreenLinks.
Here is today's first group of potential Green News links. Guess what stories were chosen for sharing and networking?
Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate
• https://www.nationalgeographic.com/rewindnature/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/srocc/
• https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2019/09/SROCC-factsheet.pdf
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases a major report this morning on the climate impacts for oceans and the world's ice sheets, which lays out in detail the threat from rising sea levels.
— Environmental advocates and state officials dismissed the Trump administration's threat as a political attack to pull billions of dollars in transportation funding from California over pollution.
— As the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee eyes a broader energy package, her committee will mark up some 20 bills today on everything from grid storage to energy efficiency.
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SJS-GreenPolicy360 Siterunner / Greta Thunberg speaks of the beginnings of her strike and the global student climate strike calling for climate action now and her post is reposted across social media
Greta
Recently I’ve seen many rumors circulating about me and enormous amounts of hate. This is no surprise to me. I know that since most people are not aware of the full meaning of the climate crisis (which is understandable since it has never been treated as a crisis) a school strike for the climate would seem very strange to people in general.
So let me make some things clear about my school strike.
In may 2018 I was one of the winners in a writing competition about the environment held by Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish newspaper. I got my article published and some people contacted me, among others was Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland. He had some kind of group with people, especially youth, who wanted to do something about the climate crisis.
I had a few phone meetings with other activists. The purpose was to come up with ideas of new projects that would bring attention to the climate crisis. Bo had a few ideas of things we could do. Everything from marches to a loose idea of some kind of a school strike (that school children would do something on the schoolyards or in the classrooms). That idea was inspired by the Parkland Students, who had refused to go to school after the school shootings.
I liked the idea of a school strike. So I developed that idea and tried to get the other young people to join me, but no one was really interested. They thought that a Swedish version of the Zero Hour march was going to have a bigger impact. So I went on planning the school strike all by myself and after that I didn’t participate in any more meetings.
When I told my parents about my plans they weren’t very fond of it. They did not support the idea of school striking and they said that if I were to do this I would have to do it completely by myself and with no support from them.
On the 20 of august I sat down outside the Swedish Parliament. I handed out fliers with a long list of facts about the climate crisis and explanations on why I was striking. The first thing I did was to post on Twitter and Instagram what I was doing and it soon went viral. Then journalists and newspapers started to come. A Swedish entrepreneur and business man active in the climate movement, Ingmar Rentzhog, was among the first to arrive. He spoke with me and took pictures that he posted on Facebook. That was the first time I had ever met or spoken with him. I had not communicated or encountered with him ever before.
Many people love to spread rumors saying that I have people ”behind me” or that I’m being ”paid” or ”used” to do what I’m doing. But there is no one ”behind” me except for myself. My parents were as far from climate activists as possible before I made them aware of the situation.
I am not part of any organization. I sometimes support and cooperate with several NGOs that work with the climate and environment. But I am absolutely independent and I only represent myself. And I do what I do completely for free, I have not received any money or any promise of future payments in any form at all. And nor has anyone linked to me or my family done so.
And of course it will stay this way. I have not met one single climate activist who is fighting for the climate for money. That idea is completely absurd.
Furthermore I only travel with permission from my school and my parents pay for tickets and accommodations.
My family has written a book together about our family and how me and my sister Beata have influenced my parents way of thinking and seeing the world, especially when it comes to the climate. And about our diagnoses.
That book was due to be released in May. But since there was a major disagreement with the book company, we ended up changing to a new publisher and so the book was released in august instead.
Before the book was released my parents made it clear that their possible profits from the book ”Scener ur hjärtat” will be going to 8 different charities working with environment, children with diagnoses and animal rights.
And yes, I write my own speeches. But since I know that what I say is going to reach many, many people I often ask for input. I also have a few scientists that I frequently ask for help on how to express certain complicated matters. I want everything to be absolutely correct so that I don’t spread incorrect facts, or things that can be misunderstood.
Some people mock me for my diagnosis. But Asperger is not a disease, it’s a gift. People also say that since I have Asperger I couldn’t possibly have put myself in this position. But that’s exactly why I did this. Because if I would have been ”normal” and social I would have organized myself in an organisation, or started an organisation by myself. But since I am not that good at socializing I did this instead. I was so frustrated that nothing was being done about the climate crisis and I felt like I had to do something, anything. And sometimes NOT doing things - like just sitting down outside the parliament - speaks much louder than doing things. Just like a whisper sometimes is louder than shouting.
Also there is one complaint that I ”sound and write like an adult”. And to that I can only say; don’t you think that a 16-year old can speak for herself? There’s also some people who say that I oversimplify things. For example when I say that "the climate crisis is a black and white issue”, ”we need to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases” and ”I want you to panic”. But that I only say because it’s true. Yes, the climate crisis is the most complex issue that we have ever faced and it’s going to take everything from our part to ”stop it”. But the solution is black and white; we need to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases.
Because either we limit the warming to 1,5 degrees C over pre industrial levels, or we don’t. Either we reach a tipping point where we start a chain reaction with events way beyond human control, or we don’t. Either we go on as a civilization, or we don’t. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.
And when I say that I want you to panic I mean that we need to treat the crisis as a crisis. When your house is on fire you don’t sit down and talk about how nice you can rebuild it once you put out the fire. If your house is on fire you run outside and make sure that everyone is out while you call the fire department. That requires some level of panic.
There is one other argument that I can’t do anything about. And that is the fact that I’m ”just a child and we shouldn’t be listening to children.” But that is easily fixed - just start to listen to the rock solid science instead. Because if everyone listened to the scientists and the facts that I constantly refer to - then no one would have to listen to me or any of the other hundreds of thousands of school children on strike for the climate across the world. Then we could all go back to school.
I am just a messenger, and yet I get all this hate. I am not saying anything new, I am just saying what scientists have repeatedly said for decades. And I agree with you, I’m too young to do this. We children shouldn’t have to do this. But since almost no one is doing anything, and our very future is at risk, we feel like we have to continue.
And if you have any other concern or doubt about me, then you can listen to my TED talk in which I talk about how my interest for the climate and environment began.
And thank you everyone for you kind support! It brings me hope.
/Greta
Ps I was briefly a youth advisor for the board of the non profit foundation “We don’t have time”. It turns out they used my name as part of another branch of their organisation that is a start up business. They have admitted clearly that they did so without the knowledge of me or my family. I no longer have any connection to “We don’t have time”. Nor has anyone in my family. They have deeply apologised and I have accepted their apology.
Do what u can do, everything u can do ...
(as deniers and attackers deny and attack)
• https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/thunberg-highest-paid-activist/
A thread for young people to listen to • https://twitter.com/caniwi_nz/status/1176887989940547584
• https://www.politico.eu/article/greens-agree-to-discuss-alliance-with-italy-5stars/
• https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49756280
• https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/what-does-a-carbon-budget-mean/
Fox News? • https://www.foxnews.com/science/un-report-on-worlds-oceans-is-damning.amp
The largest solar energy projects
Largest Wind Farm
• https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-largest-wind-farm/index.html
Pricing externalities/emissions
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_full-cost_accounting
- SJS/GreenPolicy360 -- We/GreenPolicy360 recommend a new descriptor for emissions-externalities-carbon pricing -- Not a tax, let's call it...
- +Emissions Cost... +EC
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_full-cost_accounting
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Time_for_a_Price_on_Carbon
• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/global-carbon-dioxide-emissions-chart-of-day
Visit GreenPolicy360 long-time friends, the Bioneers. Here's 'smart agriculture' @work -- regenerative ag, carbon farming
• https://bioneers.org/carbon-farming/
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Bioneers
• https://conference.bioneers.org/
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Trump says there's no climate crisis, back to his line 'it's a hoax'
• https://earther.gizmodo.com/there-is-not-a-climate-crisis-trump-administration-spo-1838444325
BTW, the 'third pole' is melting too...
Climate change will affect the 10 major river systems originating on the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain chain, and it could leave 1.6 billion people in Asia struggling.
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Arctic
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Antarctica
We leave you with • https://www.nationalgeographic.com/rewindnature/
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Carbon Budgeting as Financial Planning Budgeting
As #PlanetCitizens w/ GreenPolicy360, we turn to our friends at #GlobalCitizen for a deep discussion of a heating Earth, CO2 and a ticking clock
In the US on the Legal Frontlines of the Climate War
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Global Climate Strikes Around the World / Time
- https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/energy-and-environment/2019/9/20/20876143/climate-strike-2019-september-20-crowd-estimate
- https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/climate-crisis-new-beginning.php
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/19/greta-thunberg-we-are-ignoring-natural-climate-solution
- https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/energy-and-environment/2019/9/20/20875523/youth-climate-strike-fridays-future-photos-global
- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/climate/global-climate-strike.html
- https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/summits-strikes-and-climate-change
- https://truthout.org/articles/global-climate-actions-biggest-obstacle-is-us-foreign-policy/
- https://www.bustle.com/p/25-climate-scientists-experts-to-follow-on-twitter-if-you-want-to-stay-informed-18739313
- https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/climate-strike-bill-mckibben-young-people-20190903
- https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/20/the-climate-crisis-explained-in-10-charts
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Continuing its deep cuts and rollbacks of environmental protections and safeguards
Today Sept. 19, the Trump administration rollsbacks clean air and auto mileage standards.
Rep. George E. Brown and the generation who envisioned and created these standards are set aside.
Trump's Losing Record on Energy and the Environment
Trump's Lack of Vision Pushing Fossil Fuel and Consequences
Local Clean Water News / Politics
Fox News US ridicules local efforts to cut back on single-use plastic un-recycled household items
As US Clean Water Act Is Undercut by Fox-supported US president, a first study of 'Tampa Bay Plastic Pollution' reveals '4 Billion Microplastic Particles'
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Preparing for Action -- September 20 -- Climate Strike
Future Coalition demands:
A Green New Deal: Building on “the” Green New Deal resolution in Congress, this calls for transforming the economy to 100% renewable energy by 2030, while creating jobs and ending leases and permits for fossil fuel projects.
Respect for indigenous land and sovereignty: Honoring treaties protecting indigenous land by ending resource extraction in and affecting those areas.
Environmental justice: Investing in the communities affected most by poverty and pollution.
Protecting biodiversity: Protecting and restoring 50% of the world’s lands and oceans and stopping all deforestation by 2030.
Sustainable agriculture: Investing in regenerative agriculture and ending subsidies for industrial agriculture.
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CNN Presidential Town Hall on Climate Change / Sept. 4, 2019
CLIMATE ACTION IS THE REAL DEAL!!! #ActOnClimate
The Democratic presidential candidates are finally getting climate action on the agenda. Next to nuclear blunder, nothing is more important for our future. -- Jerry Brown
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Adding climate change to school curriculums. Geoengineering. Thorium fuel reactors. A Blue New Deal. The Syrian war was a climate war. Climate distress included in asylum petitions. Food deserts. Climate denial is a literal sin. “Democracy” is a verb.
For the first time in the history of the country, these topics and others like them were discussed in detail by presidential candidates on live television, and all with the words “Climate Crisis” in huge letters above them on the stage and flashed in chyrons across the screen. Underscoring the gravity of the topic were constant updates on the ruinous progress of Hurricane Dorian, which reclaimed Category 3 status as it clawed its way toward landfall once again...
Ten candidates were given 40 clean minutes each to answer pointed, detailed, climate-specific questions over the course of seven hours.
Virtually every candidate described climate change as an “existential crisis” that needs to be addressed immediately.
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“We are going to have to change the nature of many of the things we are doing right now... There will be a transition, and there will be some pain. We are going to have to ask people to make those changes now, even though they may be uncomfortable, for the sake of future generations.” -- Bernie Sanders
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"The fossil fuel industry... They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your light bulbs, around your straws, and around your cheeseburgers. When 70 percent of the pollution, of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air, comes from three industries... the building industry, the electric power industry and the oil industry."'
"And why don’t we focus there? It's corruption! It's these giant corruptions that keep hiring the PR firms so we don’t look at who’s still making the big bucks off polluting our earth. And the time for that is past. We have a chance, a chance left in 2020 to turn this around. But we are running out of time on this one." -- Elizabeth Warren
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Media & Social Media Begin Responding to the #ClimateTownHall
• https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateTownHall
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• https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/politics/live-news/climate-crisis-town-hall-august-2019/index.html
• https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/04/politics/democratic-candidates-climate-crisis-plan/index.html
• https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/04/democrats-climate-2020-1481499
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Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods: Shifting Diets Make Sense, Step by Step
As concerns mount over the dangers of a rapidly warming planet, upstart food companies are targeting a major climate-damaging food: beef.
Beyond Meat and its rival Impossible Foods have recently grabbed headlines and fast-food deals for their plant-based burgers that imitate the taste of beef.
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Thank you Planet Citizen Rebecca Moore
Model of Planet Citizen, Planet Science Action
August 2019
Visit GreenPolicy360's associate, Strategic Demands, for more on the G7 Summit
Brazilian Amazon Ravaged By Tens Of Thousands Of Fires, As Deforestation Spikes : NPR
Read more at the Washington Post
Without the Amazon, the planet is doomed
By the Washington Post Editorial Board / August 2019
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The US President Talks of Buying Greenland
Minerals, oil and gas resources are talked of while some say the President has gone 'mad'
Iceland Holds Funeral for Glacier Lost to Climate Change, Set Up Plaque with Chilling Message
By Stewart Perrie
People living in Iceland are understandably devastated after news broke that one of their glaciers has all but disappeared because of climate change.
According to the BBC, it was officially declared 'dead' in 2014 when researchers found it wasn't thick enough to move, but the recent NASA pictures showed just how much ice had receded since then.
So, in honor of the glacier, a group of people travelled to where it once stood and held a funeral. In addition to that, they also erected a plaque that had a pretty chilling message attached to it.
"Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as glacier," it reads.
"In the next 200 years all our main glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done.
"Only you know if we did it."
In addition to that scary message, it also notes the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere so that generations in the future have a reference point to look back on.
People brought signs that said 'Declare Climate Emergency' and 'Pull The Emergency Brake' as they hiked to the site.
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Trump's latest -- Kill the Clean Power Plan
- States Sue the U.S.
- Via the Wall Street Journal (subscription) / States Sue Trump Administration Over Rollback of Power-Plant Regulations
- New York and California lead group saying the government isn’t meeting its Clean Air Act role
Trump: Cut Endangered Species Act Protections
- Via the NY Times / The New Threat to Endangered Species? The Trump Administration
- Via Vox / The Endangered Species Act is incredibly popular and effective. Trump is weakening it anyway
A million species are threatened worldwide. This is how Trump responds
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United Nations: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
The report on global land use and agriculture from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes amid accelerating deforestation in the Amazon
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Via GreenPolicy360's associate, Strategic Demands
Another Nuclear Weapons Control Treaty 'Bites the Dust'
• https://www.strategicdemands.com/another-nuclear-weapons-treaty-bites-the-dust/
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Nuclear_Weapons
Return to Doomsday
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/world/asia/inf-missile-treaty.html
“The United States and Russia are now in a state of strategic instability,” Ernest J. Moniz, the former energy secretary, and Sam Nunn, the former Georgia senator who helped draft the legislation that funded the drastic reduction in former Soviet nuclear forces, write in a coming article in Foreign Affairs ominously titled “The Return to Doomsday.” “Not since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis has the risk of a U.S.-Russian confrontation involving the use of nuclear weapons been as high as it is today. Yet unlike during the Cold War, both sides seem willfully blind to the peril.”
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• https://www.livescience.com/66082-greenland-dumped-197-billion-tons-of-ice.html
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Arctic
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July 2019
Slipping Away
On the 'Space Coast' of eastern Florida, at the launch pad site of the US space program, where the Apollo missions blasted off and Apollo 8 recorded "Earthrise" as our home planet appeared surprisingly out the spaceship's window, and Apollo 17 with its Whole Earth image that was the first of its kind taken by human hands, and Apollo 11 with its astronauts walking on the Moon, celebrating this month the 50th anniversary.
Now, as we remember the historic feats of humanity and science, we watch as the NASA space program site begins to slip underwater as the sea level rises.
USF researchers document Cape Canaveral launch complexes before they slip into the sea
The Atlantic Ocean will reach all of the launch sites within a few decades, but the buildings will live on digitally in 3D
Launch Complex 34, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
[Photo courtesy of the University of South Florida Libraries Digital Heritage and Humanities Collections]
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California says No to Trump, Yes to Increasing car mileage
Via NYT / Automakers secretly negotiate climate deal with California rebuffing Trump's mileage freeze
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July 20th, 1969 / July 20, 2019
SJS / GreenPolicy360 Siterunner: It was a mind-changing year. Beginning with the historic "Earthrise" photo taken as Apollo 8 astronauts circled the moon in preparation for Apollo 11 and humankind's first step on the Moon.
History shifted, cognitive awareness changed as together we welcomed a new 'Whole Earth' vision.
We surprised ourselves, looking back for the first time at the oasis of Earth, our home planet in full blue-green color, all life as we know it suspended in the darkness and vastness of space.
This was to many, including your writer, the beginnings of the modern environmental movement. To protect and preserve life became an ongoing mission that we continue every day. A gift of life.
On this 50th anniversary of the 1969 Moon landing let's celebrate as planet citizen voyagers...
• https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/
• http://www.planetcitizens.org
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_movement
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Overview_Effect
• http://www.planetaryawareness.org
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Apollo_8
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Apollo_Earth_350x350.jpg
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Blue_Marble_photo_-_Apollo_17.jpg
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Under the Category of Tipping Points: Carbon-saturated Oceans and Mass Extinction
Flashback: US President 'gags' government scientists...
Energy: Renewable and Non-Renewable
Listings on Global Stock Exchange Change
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League of Women Voters 2020
Climate change is rapidly escalating into the single greatest threat we face / #Climate Crisis
The Democratic Candidates for President, their Positions on Climate, our Questions, their Answers
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Green New Deal, Positions on the Issues, US 2020 Presidential Campaign
(July 3, 2019, updated weekly)
Comprehensive comparison of US Democratic Party 2020 candidates
○
June 2019
AOC and Greta Meet Up: 'Hope is Contagious'
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Update On Democratic Party Presidential Debate
MOUNTING PRESSURE FROM climate change activists appears to be working on the Democratic National Committee, which has taken up consideration of proposals that could allow a presidential debate on the topic.
The DNC executive committee gathered... and referred two resolutions regarding climate change discussions to a committee. The committee has scheduled a vote on the measures on Aug. 23, according to activist group Sunrise Movement. A DNC official confirmed Tuesday that the next phase of the resolution process will begin in late August.
Activists said that last week's debates proved a conversation focused solely on climate change is necessary. Roughly 15 minutes of the pair of two-hour debates were focused on the issue.
Eight Minutes + Seven Minutes = 15 Minutes Among Twenty Candidates
As the US Democratic party holds its first 2020 presidential candidates debate in Miami...
Four hours of televised debate, how much time involves climate and/or 'existential questions'?
It's Now Obvious, the Democrats via their DNC Need a #ClimateDebate for #ClimateSolutions
The first climate question arrives more than 80 minutes into the Dem presidential debate on both nights
Photo via Vox
Via the Washington Post / First Debate Night, Seven Minutes in Miami, Florida
"Tonight’s debate made it crystal clear that the media and the political establishment are out of touch with our generation," said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement. "Our survival is worth more time than vague, irrelevant, and trivial questions posed 80 minutes into the debate to a few minor candidates."
GreenPolicy360: In 2016, during all the US presidential debates, a
climate policy question was asked, what, once? Tonight (June 26th) the US Democratic Party starts their presidential campaign debate, in Miami, even as the current US pres denies the big picture, the climate/global/atmospheric threat, the existential challenges, the national/state and local #ClimateCrisis impacts.
For decades now the GreenPolicy team has warned of the gathering crisis and we have urged a New Vision, a strategic vision with New Definitions of National and Global Security. The time is now for the Democratic Party to step up and face the great challenge of our generation -- climate disruption, climate crisis.
In Florida, the consequences of sea level rise are vivid and VERY real.
Globally, this is an existantial crisis, climate disruption, that is, atmospheric disruption, what GreenPolicy360 calls the disruption of the "thin blue layer", earth's life protecting atmosphere.
Speaking of climate disruption, global security and protection/preservation of the atmosphere, watch this scientist talk of the clear and present dangers of nuclear war. We are "one mistake away" from nuclear war initiated by any of the nuclear weapons countries (the U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, France, the U.K., North Korea) leading to regional impacts spreading to global winter and collapse of civilization.
We need New Definitions of National and Global Security and concerted action now to protect our common security and prevent the fast escalating threats to life as we know it.
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Existential Threats, National & Global Security
The Eroding Value of Nonproliferation Sanctions / CNAS
Via GreenPolicy360's associate, Strategic Demands
As the United States summarily ends its adherance to nuclear weapons control agreements, think about what's going thru the minds of North Korea, China, Russia... think about an INF negotiation, a New START negotiation... any nuclear negotiation ... as the US unilaterally abandons/withdraws from/violates (pick ur phrase) existing arms control agreements.
Recall this language in the JCPOA. Paragraph 26 of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) states: The United States will make best efforts in good faith to sustain this JCPOA ... 1/3
and to prevent interference with the realisation of the full benefit by Iran of the sanctions lifting specified... The U.S. Administration, acting consistent with the respective roles of the President and the Congress, will refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions. 2/3
Iran has stated that it will treat such a re-introduction or re-imposition of the sanctions specified in Annex II, or such an imposition of new nuclear-related sanctions, as grounds to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part. 3/3
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3 Republican former EPA chiefs accuse Trump of 'undermining of science'
Trump EPA finalizes rollback of key Obama climate rule that targeted coal plants
This Trump environmental rollback is a declaration of war against America and all of humanity. The president and his cynical enablers refuse to recognize that global warming is real and getting worse -- soon to be catastrophic. Stop this insanity.
-- Jerry Brown, June 19, 2019
• https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-epa-weaken-clean-power-20190619-story.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/climate/epa-coal-emissions.html
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Fox News / Pope warns oil execs of need for "rapid" energy transition
• https://www.foxnews.com/world/pope-warns-oil-execs-of-need-for-rapid-energy-transition
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84 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump
Via the NY Times / June 3, 2019
• https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html
• https://twitter.com/nytclimate/status/1136094068914774016
A New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts more than 80 in a Trump administration 'aggressive schedule'...
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Trump administration escalates war on climate science
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html
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Microalgae: Blue-green climate solution?
Stanford/Cornell scientists:
"First of all we're just going to assume electrification of the light-vehicle fleet by 2040," Greene said. "Now people can argue whether that's going to happen or not, but it is doable. But we're still going to need liquid fuels for other parts of the transportation sector."
Those parts are more difficult to clean up: aircraft, ships, trains, trucks, heavy machinery. "Right now we don't see a way to avoid liquid fuels for those, but things happen, so you can't you can't say for sure what the future holds. But anyway we're going to go with the fact that we are likely to need liquid fuels into the future."
Fuel The Rest With Marine Algae
• https://youtu.be/64clWE7AfLg
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May
@Europeangreen News
European Election Results: Green Surge in European Parliament
Green Party (EFA) could hold balance of power in EU parliament with est 70+ MEPs
Green Leader, Ska Keller, to become President of European Commission?
The presidency of the EU Commission, currently held by Jean-Claude Juncker, is among those up for grabs.
“Thank you so much for your trust in us Greens,” Ska Keller, candidate for the post of European commission president, told a press conference in Brussels.
“This is a mandate for real change: for climate protection, a social Europe, more democracy and stronger rule of law.” Above all, Keller said, the Greens “want to achieve climate action now – because if we wait any longer, it will be a disaster”.
Any parliamentary group that wanted Green support would have to “deliver on our three key principles: climate action, civil liberties and social justice”, she said. “For us it’s clear: this is all about content.”
Party leaders from parliamentary groupings are meeting in Brussels in an effort to agree on a "Spitzenkandidat" - lead candidate - for Mr Juncker's job. The Commission enforces EU rules and drafts EU laws, so it is the most coveted post in the 28-nation bloc.
The European Green Party — the federation of national parties that focus on environmental policies — surpassed all expectations in the Europe-wide vote. Buoyed by protest movements, increasingly stark reports from climate scientists, and galvanizing figures like Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg, the party won at least 69 seats in the European Parliament, up from their current 50 seats. They will be the fourth largest group in the 751-seat body, which works with the European Union’s executive arm to propose and approve laws for the bloc.
Across much of northern Europe they made record gains, coming close to doubling their share of the vote in France, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Finland.
It was not just their environmental policies which captured the public’s attention, the group’s leaders say, but a focus on social justice and fairness, and a desire among the E.U. electorate to shake up the traditional parties and vote for people promising change...
For the first time, the big center-left and center-right groups – which traditionally worked together to dominate European policy-making – have lost their majority. So the first task for the European Greens is to work out their alliances in this uncharted parliamentary landscape, and figure out how to leverage their newfound influence.
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Via Vox / Jay Inslee is writing the climate plan the next U.S. president should adopt
Inslee’s campaign is systematically translating the Green New Deal's lofty goals — to decarbonize the economy sector by sector, in a way that creates high-quality jobs and protects frontline communities — into policy proposals, focused on an immediate 10-year mobilization. This isn’t just a campaign play, it’s a document the next Democratic president is going to want in-hand when the time comes to get to work. (And if that president needs some kind of climate czar ...)
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OCO-3 News Coverage Should Have Been of a Globally Important Event
OCO-3 arrives at the International Space Station to begin its earth science-space mission. There's little to find in Media coverage on its real-world importance whether on Google News, Bing Search, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go, pick your international news sources...
Yet, in fact and substance, the science of OCO-3 is critically important. Earth Science. Measuring CO2. JPL-Caltech/NASA, scientific inquiry at its best. Essential data and baseline information critical for informed policy and decision-making (yet President Donald Trump tried to kill the launch of OCO-3 and related US FY2018 missions to measure and monitor CO2).
A global security story... National security... Existential threats ...
OCO-3 Arrives at the International Space Station
(Interview at JPL courtesy of the LA Times)
OCO-3 was built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge for less than $100 million, using parts left over from its predecessor, OCO-2. Once the carbon observatory gets to the ISS, a robotic arm will mount it on the underside of the space station so it can keep a close eye on the carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.
That will help scientists answer questions about how and why levels of the greenhouse gas fluctuate over days, months and years.
“Our goal is to get really good data so we can make informed decisions about how to manage carbon and carbon emissions in the future,” said Annmarie Eldering, the mission’s project scientist at JPL.
Carbon dioxide makes up a tiny fraction of the molecules in our atmosphere — roughly 400 parts per million. But seemingly small changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have an outsized effect on the planet’s temperature.
“Carbon is really effective at trapping heat,” Eldering said. “Even changing the ratio from 300 parts per million to 400 parts per million makes a big difference.”
OCO-3 is so sensitive that it can detect changes as small as 1 part per million. So if CO2 levels go from 406 ppm one day to 407 ppm the next, the space-based observatory will record the increase.
Eldering, who also worked on OCO-2, spoke= about the difference between the instruments, the new information she hopes to learn from OCO-3, and how she and her team managed to keep their cool when their project seemed headed for the chopping block.
Q: What are the main science questions you hope OCO-3 will answer?
The big science question is about the movement of carbon dioxide between plants and the atmosphere.
If you look at the ground-based data, it almost looks like the planet is breathing. Plants in the northern hemisphere take up carbon dioxide as they grow in the spring and summer, reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by a few parts per million. In the fall, the leaves drop and carbon is released back into the air.
But every year is different. There are changes in the forests in Canada. El Niño years affect the carbon cycle.
What we want to do is find drivers of the plant uptake of carbon and use that to better predict what will happen in the future. If we have a warmer, drier climate, will plants keep taking up as much carbon?
Q: Why is it helpful to look at Earth’s carbon cycle from space?
We have Earth-based data, but having a satellite observatory lets you see things in a bigger context. That includes data over the oceans that the ground-based measurements generally don’t see.
Q: Can you give me an example of something you learned from data collected by OCO-2?
In 2015 and 2016, there was a global weather pattern called an El Niño that had a big impact on the carbon cycle in South America, South Africa and Indonesia, but in different ways.
South America had drought, so the plants there were not as active and did not remove as much carbon dioxide as they usually do. In the tropical part of Africa it was super hot, so the plant material was decomposing fast and releasing carbon dioxide. And Indonesia was on fire — that put a lot of carbon back in the air.
Before we would have said, “El Niño is affecting the tropics” and just leave it at that. Now we can tease that apart in more detail, and that is really exciting as a scientist.
Q: How is OCO-3 different than OCO-2?
The main purpose of OCO-3 is to make sure we have a continuous record of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but we are adding some new capabilities. One of those is to take a snapshot of carbon levels over an area of 50 miles by 50 miles. This will feed a bunch of science investigations of emission hot spots, like cities or volcanoes.
We can also look at how plant activity changes over the course of a day, which is something OCO-2 could not do.
Q: How does OCO-3 work?
OCO-3 is a spectrometer that looks at Earth’s surface in three wavelengths: two for carbon dioxide, and one for the type of light your eyes see. Every molecule has a unique way that it absorbs light, almost like a fingerprint, and that’s what we exploit in our instrument.
If the CO2 levels are 405 ppm, we will see a certain amount of light change in the CO2 band. If it is 406, we’ll see just a bit more.
Q: President Trump tried to cancel this mission twice. How stressful was that for you and your team?
I’ve been over at JPL for 20 years now, and this is not the first mission I’ve worked on that has had funding ups and downs. We are fortunate that we have three branches of government, and that Congress is very active and has kept the importance of this work in mind as they created the budget.
My strategy for getting my work done is just to put on blinders and get the work done.
More Than a Carbon Copy: OCO-3 on the Space Station -- https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7364
OCO-3 Ready to Extend NASA's Study of Carbon -- https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7389
- • https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/OCO-2
- • https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Science_Research_from_Space
- • https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Global_Security
- • https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/New_Definitions_of_National_Security
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Via the NY Times, May 6, 2019 / Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.
The 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization. A summary of the global biodiversity report findings, which was approved by representatives from the United States and 131 other countries, was released Monday in Paris. The full report is set to be published this year.
Via the Associated Press / UN report: Humans accelerating extinction of species
According to Mike Barrett, World Wildlife Fund's Executive Director of Conservation and Science: “All of our ecosystems are in trouble. This is the most comprehensive report on the state of the environment. It irrefutably confirms that nature is in steep decline.”
(Source: Jonathan Watts, Biodiversity Crisis, Humanity at Risk, UN Scientists Warn, The Guardian, May 3, 2019)
Tags: #Biodiversity #Extinction #Sustainability #Wildlife
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A new effort to save birds pinpoints in amazing detail where they fly
by Anders Gyllenhaal / Excerpt via the Washington Post and wire services
For years, as California's Central Valley grew into the nation's leading agricultural corridor, the region gradually lost almost all of the wetlands that birds, from the tiny sandpiper to the great blue heron, depend on during their migrations along the West Coast.
But a dramatic turnaround is underway in the valley. Dozens of farmers leave water on their fields for a few extra weeks each season to create rest stops for birds. The campaign has not only helped salvage a vital stretch of the north-south migration path called the Pacific Flyway but also tested a fresh model for protecting wildlife.
The experiment is built on new research by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which blends the sightings of tens of thousands of birdwatchers with satellite photos and wildlife data. The combination produces digital maps so precise that they can predict when and where birds will come through, so that farmers know when to flood their fields.
"The amount of information in these maps is way beyond what any single source or even combination of sources could give you, said Marshall Iliff, project co-leader of Cornell's eBird Project. "It's on a scale that's never been done before.
At a time when 40% of the Earth's 10,000 bird species are in decline, according to the State of the World's Birds 2018 report, the still-developing eBird Project helps to remake traditional conservation.
The way eBird works is simple: Cornell collects millions of sightings from birdwatchers using the eBird app that records the location of every species spotted. It computes where birds are over the course of the year, how they move with the seasons and which species are thriving and which are struggling.
Compared with the cumbersome practice of banding birds one by one to track their travels, eBird data produce a far more comprehensive picture for hundreds of species at a time. The targeted approach is also much less expensive than alternatives: The Central Valley "pop-up" wetlands - created by paying farmers small fees to keep fields wet for a few weeks - costs 85 percent less than buying land outright, according to the Nature Conservancy.
"We might only need to protect birds, or restrict, or change the way people use certain landscapes for maybe just a few weeks during the year, said Amanda Rodewald, Garvin professor of ornithology and director of conservation science at Cornell. "We now have the opportunity to dramatically transform how we approach conservation.
More than 400,000 birders have sent in 34 million lists of species in the United States and dozens of other countries in recent years. That makes this the largest citizen-science effort to date. Birders have reported seeing almost every species on Earth.
As the data have poured in, the research started to reveal important, concrete findings about how birds are adjusting to changing climates.
They show how species such as the American bald eagle, a major conservation success story, can be found in every state as its numbers and habitat expand. They show how other birds, such as some hummingbirds and warblers, struggle to adapt to warming trends, which are trimming breeding seasons and reducing their numbers.
Last fall, Cornell launched the stunning animated maps, which bring the migration to life by converting somewhat dry data into video illustrations that show routes birds take over the course of a year.
It's possible to watch the huge sandhill crane work its way from Alaska and Canada across the West and Midwest to Texas and Florida. The path of the ruby-throated hummingbird is shown shifting in a cloud of pixels from Canada down through the eastern United States to Central America. Another animated map shows the yellow warbler moving from the far north to Central America, passing through every state on its massive migration.
"People really get excited over the animations, Cornell research associate Frank La Sorte said of the maps that so far include about 100 species. "We look at them as science. But people are seeing the beauty in it. That's really helping to generate excitement."
This is the time of year when birdwatchers are getting out binoculars and hiking boots to immerse themselves in the spring migration. And Cornell hopes to boost eBird contributors with the Global Big Day, the annual count scheduled for May 4. About 30,000 birders around the world are expected to join the 24-hour push that tracks the yearly numbers for species.
One who'll be out birding for the count is Holly Merker, an environmental educator from Downingtown, Pennsylvania, one of eBird's top contributors. "Why wouldn't everybody be doing this?" she said. "It can make a real difference."
Tags: #CitizenScience #Biodiversity #Wildlife
Re: 'Global Big Day' / May 4, 2019
- • https://cornellsun.com/2019/04/29/global-big-day-24-hour-extreme-birding-event-to-take-place-may-4/
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• https://betoorourke.com/climate-change/
• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/beto-orourke-climate-change-plan
O'Rourke's climate change plan would "set a first-ever, net-zero emissions by 2030 carbon budget for federal lands, stopping new fossil fuel leases, changing royalties to reflect climate costs, and accelerating renewables development and forestation."
"We need a guarantee that we will, in fact, achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and get halfway there by 2030," according to the plan. "For this reason, Beto will work with Congress to enact a legally enforceable standard — within his first 100 days."
The emission reduction goal is in line with the Green New Deal, a broad policy proposal from progressive Democrats to battle climate change among other issues, which is backed by several 2020 Democrats, including O'Rourke.
"By investing in infrastructure, innovation, and in our people and communities, we can achieve this ambition, which is in line with the 2050 emissions goal of the Green New Deal, in a way that grows our economy and shrinks our inequality."
When asked who is advising O'Rourke on energy, a campaign spokesperson told CNN, "Beto consulted with impacted individuals and communities, academics, scientists, entrepreneurs, advocates and activists, and local, state, tribal, and federal government leaders."
"Throughout this campaign, he has listened to Americans all across the country and made their ideas and concerns part of his platform as he he's held 113 town halls in 88 cities and answered 625 questions," the spokesperson said. "That's how he learned more about record f(l)ooding in Iowa, drought in Nevada, a fight over offshore drilling in South Carolina, historic conservation efforts in New Hampshire, plans to protect the water and forests of Virginia, and wind and solar job growth throughout Texas."
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On April 22, 2019, Earth Day in the US
- - A coal lobbyist runs the EPA
- - An oil lobbyist runs the DOI
- - A Monsanto exec runs US Fish & Wildlife
- - A BP oil attorney is the nation's top enviro lawyer
- - A fossil fuel lobbyist is the EPA's air pollution chief
- - A big energy insider regulates our power grid
- Via Public Citizen
• https://www.earthday.org/campaigns/endangered-species/earthday2019
Via The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists / The original Earth Day in 1970 was an eye-popping success. An estimated 20 million Americans joined the events, 10 percent of the country’s population, making it the largest demonstration in U.S. history.
The 1960s and decade that followed also gave us 28 major federal environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.
Before these laws, thick smog dimmed many U.S. cities in the middle of the day. In 1969, floating debris in Ohio’s Cuyahoga River famously caught fire, with flames towering five stories high. That same year, the oil slick from a Santa Barbara drilling accident spread over more than 800 square miles of water.
After seeing California’s oil-scarred shores, Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, came up with an idea. He proposed holding a “teach-in” — used by protesters organizing against the Vietnam War — to get college students around the country talking about the environment. He hired young organizers to make his dream happen, and it turned into Earth Day, a much bigger event that he’d ever imagined.
“He originally would have been happy if a few colleges or universities joined,” said Adam Rome, author of "The Genius of Earth Day". “He had no idea that it was going to explode into the consciousness of the nation.”
Via GreenPolicy360's Siterunner: Senator Nelson and the First Earth Day, 1970
Earth Day Today, April 22, 2019
This year's Earth Day is "Protect Our Species" and draws draw attention to rapid global destruction of species and reduction of the world's plant and wildlife populations.
"All living things have an intrinsic value, and each plays a unique role in the complex web of life. We must work together to protect endangered and threatened species."
Greta Speaks to the European Union:
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Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced
The Overstory / Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction
Reviewed: The Overstory, the latest book from the American novelist Richard Powers
Global ecological collapse is the biggest story of our age. Broken cycles of air, water and earth are challenges against which trade wars pale in comparison. But it has also proved one of the hardest narratives for writers to tell. Novels such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road have offered powerful warnings about the aftermath of disaster, yet few writers have grappled with how the journey towards catastrophe unfurls. Any agency the natural world might possess – its ability to feel, communicate and adapt – has rarely provided more than background to humanity’s self-centred toil.
Richard Powers’s eco-novel The Overstory urgently challenges our ideas about humanity and nature.
Powers collapses the idea that human consciousness is paramount. The novel opens up questions about the “personhood” of plants, how ecology has shaped our minds, and the potential for digital life to shift our consciousness again. It also challenges preconceptions about hippy tree-huggers.
Most importantly, Powers queries earlier representations that might be cluttering our relationship to the natural world. In a section entitled “Trunk”, the activists camp out in the branches of an ancient Californian sequoia, and the tree’s monumental scale is an echo of the 19th-century romantic-sublime. Yet far from portraying nature as an “other”, to be conquered and surveyed, Powers gives us the experiences of daily, tree-top living... pulling the tone back towards the intimate and entwined.
Tracing the lives of nine individuals as they attempt to save the virgin forests of North America, the novel ties together the struggles of humans and plants, and reveals a world “where the wrong people have all the rights”.
Doing so requires a fable-like narrative that sprawls across decades.
The Overstory, the latest book from the American novelist Richard Powers, a writer who puts science at the heart of his fiction...
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Ratcheting Up in the U.K. / Extinction Rebellion
Non-violent Civil Disobedience
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A Roll-Role Model for Cities (and Landowners) across the Country
American Green Zone Alliance / The City of Ojai, California Celebrates the Rollout of its New Electric Fleet / California Out in Front
Like over a hundred other cities across the country, Ojai has been suffering from a contentious gas leaf-blower debate since they enacted a residential gas leaf-blower ban in 1999. There has been no effective enforcement mechanism nor did there seem to be any reasonable alternative to gas equipment. (Brooms and rakes are ideal for some residential properties, but they are not a practical solution for commercial and municipal crews, or the elderly, or those with larger properties.)
But in just the past five years — thanks to cell phones, laptops, and electric cars — incredible advances in lithium-battery chemistry and technology have dramatically increased the power, performance, and run-times of cordless electric lawn and garden tools. In fact the top-of-the-line equipment are now achieving gas-like performance even in all-day commercial settings — except they are quieter, cleaner, simpler, and much more cost-effective over time.
“The health and environmental impacts are substantial and will be enjoyed throughout the entire community, year after year. In embracing electric operations, the city of Ojai has demonstrated inspiring sustainability leadership and vision, and gifted its citizens a permanently quieter and cleaner future.”
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First Meeting of New Select Committee on Climate: Youth Take Center Stage
Speaking to the young presenters... "2050 is just 30 years from now," said US Representative Kathy Castor, chair of the climate committee. "All of you will be about our age." Castor is 52. To avoid many of the most ruinous effects of climate change — namely debilitating droughts, historic flooding, and deadly wildfires — the United Nations has concluded modern civilization must slash carbon emissions to basically zero by 2050. / Via Mashable
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March 2019
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The New Silk Road, China's Infrastructure Project Connects Continents
- Visit GreenPolicy360's associate, Strategic Demands, for the latest geo-political updates
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On the Launch in the 1990s of the Virtual University and on the 50th Anniversary of the Open University
Salud, a Smile, and a Tip of Our GreenPolicy360 Hat
Where you start in life shouldn't limit where you go
We are a movement... We are disruptors, occasional troublemakers, game changers.
We are the fuel of imagination
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:WGU-we_are_wise.jpg
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Kids in 123 countries strike to protect the climate
“This movement had to happen, we didn’t have a choice.”
An estimated 1.4 million young people in 123 countries skipped school Friday to demand stronger climate policies in what may be one of the largest environmental protests in history.
Students Worldwide Are Striking to Demand Climate Action Change
Going Global: Student #ClimateStrike, March 15, 2019
• #ClimateChange #ClimateEmergency #GlobalWarming
• #ActOnClimate #SchoolsStrike4Climate #GretaThunberg
• #YouthForClimate #FridaysForFuture #GlobalStrikeforFuture
• #Klimaatstaking #ClimateJustice #SchoolStrike4Climate
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Trump slashes federal budget for renewable energy development
Via deSmog / When President Trump nominated long-time Koch network insider and renewable energy antagonist Daniel Simmons to lead the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), the administration's priorities for federal energy programs were made abundantly clear. Simmons had, after all, been serving at the time of his nomination as Vice President for Policy at a Koch-funded think tank that had, in 2015, called for the outright elimination of the very office he was tapped to lead.
The Trump administration budget proposal released this week, for fiscal year 2020, goes a long way toward delivering this wish to the Koch network, calling for a 70 percent reduction in funding for the EERE and scrapping entirely the Department of Energy’s loan programs. The EERE ultimately received $2.4 billion in the current 2019 budget, and the current Trump proposal would fund it at $696 million.
The DOE’s renewable energy programs have long been targets of the Kochs' network of “free market” think tanks and advocacy organizations, including the Institute for Energy Research (IER) and its sister organiation, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), where Simmons worked for a decade before joining the Trump administration.
In fact, while Simmons was VP of Policy at AEA, the group called on Congress to eliminate the EERE entirely...
In 2007, Simmons was responsible for producing ALEC’s report, “Energy, Environment, and Agriculture: A Guide for State Legislators,” which as the Energy and Policy Institute describes, “illustrates how the group works to manufacture doubt about the causes and risks of climate change and attack clean energy policies on behalf of its (now dwindling) network of fossil fuel and utility industry funders.”
More on Simmons at E&E News -- https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060054296
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@South by Southwest / #SXSW
AOC: Don't Worship the 'Meh'
“Moderate is not a stance. It's just an attitude towards life of, like, ‘meh,’” she said, shrugging her shoulders for emphasis. “We’ve become so cynical, that we view ‘meh,’ or ‘eh’ — we view cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude, and we view ambition as youthful naivete when ... the greatest things we have ever accomplished as a society have been ambitious acts of visions."
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March 5, 2019
A "Beyond Carbon" Campaign
Michael Bloomberg: “I will launch... 'Beyond Carbon': a grassroots effort to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy.”
Michael Bloomberg will be 'doing' environmental campaigning the next two years, not 'talking' and running for president...
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March 1, 2019
Washington Gov Joins 2020 Race, Promises To ‘Rise Up to the Most Urgent Challenge of Our Time’
- Jay Inslee Promises to Run a Climate Action Campaign
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/transcript-govs-michelle-lujan-grisham-jay-inslee-on-face-the-nation-february-24-2019/ -- https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/jay-inslee-announces-climate-focused-2020-presidential-run-does-he-stand-a-chance/ -- https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/01/politics/inslee-2020-presidential-campaign/index.html -- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/01/washington-gov-jay-inslee-announces-presidential-bid/3025885002/ -- https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/jay-inslee-2020-presidential-run-climate-change -- https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/01/washington-governor-jay-inslee-launches-2020-presidential-campaign-1197170 -- https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-inslee-president-election-201900301-story.html -- https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/jay-inslee-presidential-candidate-2020-801415/ -- https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/jay-inslee-wants-to-be-a-presidential-candidate-for-the-climate-change-era -- https://electrek.co/2019/03/01/jay-inslee-presidential-bid/
A Fable, a Rationalist, a Campaign for Our Times -- http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/jay-inslee-is-the-democratic-partys-sanest-2020-candidate.html
Apollo's Fire by Jay Inslee -- https://www.amazon.com/Apollos-Fire-Igniting-Americas-Economy/dp/1597266493
https://jayinslee.com/act/join-our-movement-for-climate-action
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February 18, 2019
Chicago, Chicago, a town of renown, joining towns and states across the US going to renewable energy
• https://electrek.co/2019/02/18/chicago-sets-100-percent-clean-renewable-energy-goal/
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Earth-NASA.jpg
February 13, 2019
Hearing: The State of Climate Science and Why it Matters
Committee on Science, Space and Technology
CLIMATE / Via E&E News
Democrats praise 'refreshing' change in Science Committee
The Science, Space and Technology Committee kicked off its long-awaited climate hearing this morning by agreeing on one basic fact: Climate change is happening.
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Back in business! After a decade of inaction under a Republican climate denial party line, climate science is again in front of the US House of Representatives.
Climate change is happening. Science-based decisions are needed, resilience is necessary, a Green New Deal is proposed, and healthier, more secure communities are the goal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYSfjDSxKK0
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February 12, 2019
US Senate Votes to Permanently Reauthorize the 'Most Important Conservation Program'
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Bugs Be Gone
Via the Guardian / Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'
Insect collapse: ‘We are destroying our life support systems’
The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found.
Insects... are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.
“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades. The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic...."
The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors.
The new analysis selected the 73 best studies done to date to assess the insect decline. Butterflies and moths are among the worst hit. Bees have also been seriously affected...
“The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification. That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” The demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades.
In the tropics, where industrial agriculture is often not yet present, the rising temperatures due to climate change are thought to be a significant factor in the decline.
“The evidence all points in the same direction,” said Prof Dave Goulson at the University of Sussex in the UK. “It should be of huge concern to all of us, for insects are at the heart of every food web, they pollinate the large majority of plant species, keep the soil healthy, recycle nutrients, control pests, and much more. Love them or loathe them, we humans cannot survive without insects.”
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Envisioning a Green New Deal
Full text of the Green New Deal Resolution
Ocasio-Cortez, Markey unveil Green New Deal with backing of four presidential candidates
Follow the Green New Deal progress at GreenPolicy360
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Washington Post / Fact Checker Analysis
In 745 days, President Trump has made 8,459 false or misleading claims. - (Updated Feb. 3, 2019)
The Fact Checker’s ongoing database of the false or misleading claims made by President Trump since assuming office.
File:Fact checking - 8000 lies and counting as of Feb 2019.png
January 29, 2019
- Kamala Harris, U.S. presidential candidate -- https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1090091453341155328
January 27, 2019
Via Scientific American / The Best Technology for Fighting Climate Change? Forests.
January 24, 2019
January 19, 2019
New Pentagon Report: “The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue”
The January 2019 Changing Climate National Defense report is organized into three primary sections:
I. Summary of Climate Effects and Resulting Vulnerabilities
II. DoD Efforts to Increase Installation Resiliency & Operational Viability
III. Conclusions
GreenPolicy360/Strategic Demands: The latest U.S. climate-related national security report is limited in its scope and, as a result, is severely limited in its ability to analyze and monitor the range of strategic environmental challenges in the immediate-, near-, and long-term.
A varying vision of these threats to security can be found at GreenPolicy360 and associate Strategic Demands.
The key to a "strategic realism" is contingency planning. Any full scientific assessment of security threats on the horizon is replete with environmental/global risks that are drawing daily into view. These risks are presenting clear and present danger, in U.S. Department of Defense terms, yet are being set aside due to political exigencies.
It is time for a new vision of security. Changing climate is a 360, 24/7 threat to the nation and to international relations. Climate change or better named for what it is -- climate disruption -- is the critical challenge of the 21st century. The defense establishment ignores this security reality at our joint peril.
New Definitions of National Security @GreenPolicy360
New Definitions of National Security @Security Demands
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January 17, 2019
Andrew Wheeler, Trump's EPA pick says climate change 'not the greatest crisis'. The former coal lobbyist took over the EPA when his predecessor Scott Pruitt resigned after months of controversy. Wheeler says, in confirmation hearings (reported by few media outlets), that "he is carrying out the president’s “regulatory reform agenda” and that the US is the “gold standard for environmental progress”.
The environment could become a top issue in the 2020 presidential race. Asked if he agreed with the president’s past statements that climate change is a Chinese “hoax”, Wheeler said he would “not use the hoax word, myself”. The latest major Trump resignations and firings. But Wheeler said he would “not call it the greatest crisis”.
“I consider it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally.”
Wheeler also told the New Jersey senator Cory Booker, a likely presidential contender, that he is “still examining” a November report from US government scientists showing the country will suffer from heat-related deaths, coastal flooding and infrastructure damage.
Booker said Wheeler’s regulatory changes “fly in the face” of that science, and the Massachusetts senator Ed Markey called it “unacceptable” that Wheeler would seek confirmation without being familiar with the report.
Wheeler was a lobbyist at Faegre Baker Daniels, where he represented coal company Murray Energy until August 2017. Murray Energy wrote the administration a list of rule changes that would help the industry, and they are largely under way.
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:RCP-projections-damage_to_US_economy.jpg
• https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/
• https://carbon2018.globalchange.gov/
January 14, 2019
• https://www.ewg.org/release/mining-industry-pro-trump-s-promises-bring-back-coal-he-s-lying
More coal powered US power plants were shutting the first two years of President Donald Trump's presidency than in President Obama's entire first term. According to Data from Reuters and the US Energy Information Administration nearly 15,000 megawatts of coal-fired power retired from 2009 to 2012, while from 2017 to 2018 that number jumped to about 23,000...
Via Reuters News (TV) / Trump can't stop coals decline
January 5, 2019
The new normal is abnormal.
January 4, 2019
In St. Pete/Clearwater, GreenPolicy360's terrestrial home base
January 3, 2019
Why Brazil's new president poses an unprecedented threat to the Amazon
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USA Today / Natural disasters in Texas on the scale of Hurricane Harvey's deadly destruction last year will become more frequent because of a changing climate, warns a new report Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018, ordered by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in a state where skepticism about climate change.
From the Texas Governor’s report / PDF
"We need to stop making the old mistakes in local development that expose homes and businesses to risks that only become apparent when disaster strikes. To paraphrase the old saying, an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure."
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While climate change has largely broken down along partisan lines at the state and federal level, the nation's mayors have overwhelmingly put aside political parties to address the issue. A survey of mayors this year found that 57 percent of cities are planning to take climate-related actions in 2019. And dozens of the country's largest cities have committed to meeting the terms of the 2025 Paris Agreement on climate change, which Trump is withdrawing from on a national level.
"I think every mayor in the country would say it's their responsibility to do something," said James Brainard, the longtime mayor of Carmel, Indiana. "Our mayors are not sitting back. The mayors are the closest elected officials to the people and the mayors can make this happen regardless of what the federal government does."
Brainard, a Republican, said he doesn't consider climate change a political issue, but he acknowledged he sometimes has to tailor his message for different audiences. Liberal groups, for instance, love that the city replaced it's streetlights with LEDs, reducing electricity consumption and therefore the emission of greenhouse gasses. Conservative groups, he said, are usually more interested in the fact that the switch saves the city 20 percent on its electricity bill annually.
January 2, 2019
Steel Manufacturing: Huge Emissions, Huge Challenge
Globally, steel is responsible for 7 per cent to 9 per cent of all direct emissions from fossil fuels, with each tonne produced resulting in an average 1.83 tonnes of CO2, according to the World Steel Association.
And as the world’s population grows, demand is only predicted to increase....
“In principle there are technology routes to lower emissions from steelmaking,” said David Clarke, head of strategy and chief technology officer at ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest producer by tonnage. The catch, he added, was that “society would have to accept higher costs of steel production”....
A well-established alternative to blast furnaces are electric arc furnaces (EAFs) that melt down scrap, instead of using raw materials. EAFs are smaller, less expensive and, because they do not consume coke, pump out less CO2 than blast furnaces. They already account for about one-quarter of global steel output.
However, renewable energy sources alone cannot meet their enormous electricity demands — enough to power a town of 100,000 people. Another limitation is the supply of scrap, while the grades produced in EAFs are often not the right quality for certain applications, like automotive....
Swedish steel group SSAB is building a €150m pilot facility, scheduled for 2020, that would make the Nordic country the first to manufacture the metal without fossil fuels.
Hydrogen produced by electrolysis from Sweden’s abundant renewable energy resources will be used to reduce ore into a product called sponge iron, which can be converted into steel through arc furnaces.
But clean hydrogen production is expensive and would require a huge expansion of renewable energy generation capacity. South Korea’s Posco and Voestalpine of Austria are pursuing similar projects, although the latter said it could take two decades to become reality.
Until then, steelmakers are taking intermediary steps. Tata’s system removes several stages of pre-processing raw materials and, if combined with the capture and storage of waste gases, the company said it could lower CO2 emissions by 80 per cent.
December 30, 2018
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• https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060109689
Philip Shabecoff, a longtime environment reporter, has covered Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and every president in between.
Now, at age 84, he'd like to return to the news business to cover President Trump.
Shabecoff recently spoke to E&E News about his start in environmental journalism, why he thinks the Times owes him an apology and why he labels the Trump administration an "unmitigated disaster."
How did you get the environment beat?
I was assigned to the Washington bureau, and they asked me what I wanted to write about, and I said the environment. That was in 1970. ... The bureau chief told me at the time, "Well, that's not important enough for a full-time reporter in the Washington bureau, and besides, we need some help covering economics." It was not until I'd covered the White House that they let me cover the environment. And at first, not full-time. ... It wasn't until Reagan became president and Anne Gorsuch became EPA administrator and James Watt headed the Interior Department that it became a political issue as well as an environmental issue that they let me cover it full-time.
What were the most interesting storylines that you covered on that beat?
I think my first climate change story was in '78 or '79, and that was buried. The Times held it for a couple of months and put it on page 42 of the Saturday paper, which is as deeply as you can bury a story in the Times.
(SJS / GreenPolicy360 Siterunner: The climate change story of '78 referred to here was a historic event, the first US Congressional legislation passed to study Climate Change. George E. Brown of the House science committee put forward the National Climate Program Act. A memorable moment in time --- National Climate Program Act, Public Law 95-367 --- National Climate Program Act, Public Law 95-367, Sept.17, 1978 95th Congress)
Philip Shabecoff interview continues:
A decade later, I covered the hearing with [Colorado Democratic Sen.] Tim Wirth ... [and NASA climate change expert] Jim Hansen. I had interviewed [Hansen] and knew him, and it was the first major splash. It led the newspaper. ... I fully thought at that point there would be action on climate change, that the world governments would start doing something about it. How wrong I was.
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Hansen-testimony-1988.jpg
Of course, there was the whole Gorsuch-Watt era, when they were trying to dismantle environmental regulations. ... Eventually, they both had to resign, even in the Reagan administration.
What was environmental journalism like in those days?
There was hardly anybody, just a handful [of reporters]. A few of us started the Society of Environmental Journalists with just a handful, and now there's about 1,500 or so, I don't know the exact number. There's a lot of talented environmental journalists out there now.
You know, I had to resign from the Times. Officially I retired, but I resigned because I was taken off the environmental beat in 1990 because my coverage about things like climate change was considered alarmist.
What's your take on the Trump administration?
It is an unmitigated disaster, and he should be — what he's doing to the rollback of environmental regulations and particularly what he's doing to ignore climate change and build up the fossil fuel industry should be considered a crime against humanity, and he should be sent to The Hague and tried.
How do you think Trump has influenced environmental journalism?
I think he's prodded it; I think he's energized it. I think it was sort of fading for a while. I think there's a lot of good reporting coming out of what he's doing. Unfortunately, most of the journalism about the environment is horror stories.
You've seen administrations come and go. Do you think that the Trump administration's environmental policies will be long-lasting?
They can certainly restore a lot of regulations, but the damage that is being done to the climate now, it cannot be reversed. The dumping of toxins into waterways cannot be reversed. I don't think the selling off of public lands can be reversed. The damage by oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge cannot be reversed. One could go on and on. I hope that — and God willing, there will be a next administration in 2020 — they can go back to having a sane environmental policy, but the damage will have been done.
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The Trump administration isn’t about renewable energy, but thanks to the Washington, D.C., city council, it could soon be running on clean power. The council passed one of the most ambitious climate bills in the country on Tuesday requiring the District to get all of its energy from renewables by 2032.
The bill was introduced in July by City Councilmember Mary Cheh and was spurred along by a group of more than 110 environmental, justice and faith groups as well as unions. While it includes a host of new climate rules, chief among them is the renewable requirement.
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December 21, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 launch
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Apollo.jpg
• http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181220-the-nasa-mission-that-broadcast-to-a-billion-people
• https://qz.com/1501935/photos-apollo-8-brought-us-the-moon-as-never-seen-before/amp/
• https://petapixel.com/2018/12/20/how-nasas-iconic-earthrise-photo-was-shot/
Today, Bill Anders says that the most striking image to him was not the Earth as seen from the moon, so much as it was the Earth receding in the distance as they left it behind on their outbound voyage. Arguably, that view has changed us — colored our attitude toward the environment, international affairs, our place in the universe — more than Apollo’s other accomplishments.
“It took a while to affect me,” Anders says, “this beautiful blue ball against the darkest black you could imagine, getting smaller and smaller as we went. It made me realize how insignificant our little planet was.”
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Climate Negotiators Reach an Overtime Deal
Another Step toward International Cooperation: U.S. resists but chooses to sign agreement
The deal requires every country to follow uniform standards for measuring emissions. Analysts said it was now up to the countries to honor their commitments
Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists summed up the need for action as the 24th international climate meeting concluded:
- “The real test is what happens when countries go home. All the decision text in the world doesn’t cut a molecule of carbon. You need action on the ground.”
UN Climate Change Conference (Wikipedia)
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Clean Air Cuts, Now Clean Water Act Rollbacks
- Environmental Protections Agency reports show the rollback of Obama-era regulations will leave 51 percent of the nation's wetlands unprotected
How 'Clean' is the climate/environment of the U.S.?
• Slashing Clean Water Act Protections
• Via The Nation / Trump Moves to Gut the Clean Water Act
• Via AccuWeather / Trump administration proposes rollbacks to Obama's Clean Water Act
• Via E&E News / Trump administration breaks with its predecessors by using a 2006 opinion by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia...
Global carbon emissions reached record high in 2018
Washington Post today as nations hold climate talks in Poland... Latest evidence of the chasm between international goals for combating climate change and what countries are actually doing.
More: https://twitter.com/greenpolicy360/status/1070404767892103168
Via The Guardian / 'Brutal news': global carbon emissions jump to all-time high in 2018
Donald Trump Only World Leader to Reject Climate Change in G20 Statement
The US got its own section in the G20 statement on climate change
In a communiqué released at the end of the summit, the signatories of the Paris climate agreement reaffirmed that the international accord “is irreversible” and that they are committed to its “full implementation,” promising to “continue to tackle climate change, while promoting sustainable development and economic growth.”
Except for the US, which got its own clause restating President Trump’s decision over the summer to remove the US from the agreement.
“The United States reiterates its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, and affirms its strong commitment to economic growth and energy access and security, utilizing all energy sources and technologies, while protecting the environment,” the U.S. clause reads.
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Air Quality / Air Pollution
AirNow / International Air Quality
World Air Quality Index / World's Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index
- Particulate air pollution is the single greatest threat to human health globally.
As the U.S. President thanks himself on a Thanksgiving holiday in November of 2018, and gives himself an "A+" grade on his environmental record, we recall his factual environmental record and his state denial of climate change and its proliferating dangers and risks. Since his administration entered office in 2017, decades of policies put in place to protect the environment have come under assault by federal agencies. The President has not 'done his homework' and has failed in his work. The reality presents a stark contrast to how the U.S. President sees himself and his 'success'.
U.N. climate report card: When it comes to cutting emissions, a dog ate the world’s homework / Via Grist
On Tuesday (Nov. 27, 2018), the U.N. released its annual report card on climate change (The Emissions Gap). The bad news is we’re failing to address the biggest problem facing humanity. The good news? There’s so much room to improve! — and cities and businesses could help pick up the slack.
First, our failing marks: After a three-year plateau, global emissions are rising again “with no signs of peaking,” according to the report. Countries aren’t hitting their Paris goals. In fact, we’re failing at those goals to such a degree that we are making the climate problem worse at an accelerating rate.
And, even if we hit our current targets, it wouldn’t be enough. Factoring in the most ambitious stated climate goals of every nation on Earth, we are still on track for emissions to keep rising beyond 2030. If you’ll recall, the recent IPCC report found that global emissions need to be half their current levels by that year for a shot at keeping warming below catastrophic levels. The U.N. report found that the countries of the world would need to increase the carbon-cutting power of climate policies five-fold in order to meet that goal of 1.5 degrees C warming.
- 27 November 2018
- Authors: UN Environment
The goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change, as agreed at the Conference of the Parties in 2015, is to keep global temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It also calls for efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The annual UN Environment Emissions Gap Report presents an assessment of current national mitigation efforts and the ambitions countries have presented in their Nationally Determined Contributions, which form the foundation of the Paris Agreement.
View the Full Int'l Report on CO2 Emissions
File:UN Climate Agr Emissions Gap FullReport EN.pdf
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Trump Says He’s Too Intelligent to Believe Climate Change Report / Via NY Magazine
White House: Federal climate change report 'not based on facts'
2018 / U.S. National Climate Assessment / Federal Climate Report
U.S National Climate Assessment: A Bleak Report, a Bleak Government Response
The New Abnormal / E&E News: Not Good, Bad, Very Bad, Soon to be Worse
- Via the Washington Post / From Donald Trump's 'gut interview
- President Trump Says He’s Too Intelligent To Believe In Climate Change
- The government’s own climate report predicts the planet will warm dramatically by 2100 without urgent efforts to rein in emissions. Trump responds, “I don’t see it.”
- President Donald Trump asserted that he had “very high levels of intelligence,” and as such, did not believe in the scientific consensus surrounding climate change in a sweeping interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday (Nov 27).
- “One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” said Trump, speaking to the Post’s Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker. “You look at our air and our water and it’s right now at a record clean. ... As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it — not nearly like it is.”
- "You look at our air and our water, and it's right now at a record clean."
- (We do not have 'record clean' and the Trump record is one of increasing atmospheric emissions and loosening clean air rules'.)
- "And when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over."
- ("Oceans are very small"? Oceans cover over 70% of the Earth's surface. And "sailing over?... What should one make of this comment?)
- "It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And it takes many people to start off with."
- (The president has blamed China for creating the "myth" of climate change and global warming. Is he now saying that air pollution from China flows to the U.S. and "sails over"? Who knows what the president is saying as he says "where does this come from"...)
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UN partners with 16 global re/insurers to develop climate risk assessment tools
16th November 2018 / Reinsurance News
The UN Environment’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) has announced a partnership with a group of 16 large, global insurers and reinsurers, to develop a new generation of risk assessment tools that enable the risk transfer industry to better understand the impacts of climate change on their business.
The 16 companies represent around 10% of global insurance premiums and $5 trillion in assets under management, and the pilot group will be tasked with developing analytical tools that they will use to pioneer insurance industry risk disclosures that fall in line with the guidelines and recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
The UNEP FI states that this will require member insurers and reinsurers to leverage the latest climate science, which includes the most advanced, and forward-looking climate scenarios that are out there.
The member re/insurers includes: Allianz, AXA, IAG, Intact Financial Corporation, Länsförsäkringar Sak, MAPFRE, MS&AD, Munich Re, NN Group, QBE, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa, Storebrand, Swiss Re, TD Insurance, The Co-operators, and Tokio Marine & Nichido.
UN Environment Chief, Erik Solheim, commented: “For generations, the insurance industry has served as society’s early warning system and risk manager by understanding, reducing, pricing and carrying risk. Its message now is loud and clear: climate change risk is intensifying and is a serious threat to the insurability of communities and economies around the world.
“An uninsurable world is a price that society could not afford. This is why UN Environment is working with leading insurers to understand and reduce risk, to seize unprecedented business opportunities in climate action, and to ensure an insurable, resilient and sustainable world.”
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7 ways towns and cities are turning from grey to green
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Results of the US Mid-term Congressional Election
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Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.) is poised to take control of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Johnson was the first registered nurse elected to Congress, and will be the first chair of the committee with a STEM background since the 1990s, when it was led by former engineer George Brown (D-Calif.). She has a strong positive rating from the League of Conservation Voters...
Nov 6, 2018
Press Release
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
(Dallas, TX) – Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson’s (D-TX) statement:
“I am heartened that Democrats will be in the Majority in the 116th Congress, and I cannot wait to get to work. If I am fortunate enough to be elected Chair of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, a Committee that I like to call the ‘Committee of the Future,’ I know that there is much that we can accomplish as Democrats and Republicans working together for the good of the nation. There is much to be done in the next Congress, and I believe that at a minimum we need to pursue an agenda that will:
- Ensure that the United States remains the global leader in innovation, which will require attention to a wide range of activities: promoting effective STEM education solutions, engaging the underrepresented minorities and blue collar workers in the STEM fields, supporting a robust federally funded R&D enterprise and emerging areas of science and technology, defending the scientific enterprise from political and ideological attacks, and challenging misguided or harmful Administration actions;
- Address the challenge of climate change, starting with acknowledging it is real, seeking to understand what climate science is telling us, and working to understand the ways we can mitigate it; and finally,
- Restore the credibility of the Science Committee as a place where science is respected and recognized as a crucial input to good policymaking.
“These three priorities will keep us very busy both legislatively and in carrying out the serious oversight that has been neglected by our Committee the past few Congresses. If appointed as Chair, I will work tirelessly to advance this agenda for the good of our nation.”
https://democrats-science.house.gov/
115th Congress
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The EPA's Climate Change Page Is Just Gone Now
November 1, 2018 / Via Environmental Data & Governance Initiative / Motherboard
A report released this week by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative reveals that the removal of climate change information from the EPA website is set to be a long-term policy of the Trump administration.
EPA.gov pages that previously provided information about climate change have been changed from claiming that they are "updating" to an error message that reads, "We want to help you find what you are looking for," as revealed by a report released this week by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative. The change indicates that information related climate change is not being “updated,” but removed entirely.
In April 2017, the EPA put out a press release announcing that EPA.gov would be changing to “reflect the agency’s new direction under President Donald Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt.”
“The process, which involves updating language to reflect the approach of new leadership, is intended to ensure that the public can use the website to understand the agency's current efforts,” the April 2017 press release reads. “The changes will comply with agency ethics and legal guidance, including the use of proper archiving procedures.”
At that point, the EPA’s climate change subdomains were removed and were replaced by a page that said that the subdomains were being “updated.” The pages remained like this until the night between October 16 and 17, when the pages were updated to read “We want to help you find what you are looking for.”
There is no information related to climate change on any of the EPA’s climate change subdomains, and per the language of the EPA’s April 2017 press release, this reflects the priorities of the Trump Administration.
This is far from the first time that the Trump administration has removed information relating to climate change and environmental hazards. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, all references to climate change were removed from the White House website. In April of that year, the Department of the Interior removed references to climate change from its public-facing website. The Federal Emergency Management Agency does not even mention climate change in its five year plan released earlier this year.
The Trump administration has also taken tangible steps toward undermining environmental regulations. For instance, earlier this year, the Trump Administration revoked state waivers to the national Clean Air Act that allows states such as California, a major automobile manufacturer, to enforce stricter policies than the Clean Air Act Demands.
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Earth's oceans have absorbed up to 60 percent more heat than previously thought
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Toward Biological Annihilation
We live in an age of rapid and unprecedented planetary change. Indeed, many scientists believe our ever-increasing consumption, and the resulting increased demand for energy, land and water, is driving a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. It’s the first time in the Earth’s history that a single species – Homo sapiens – has had such a powerful impact on the planet.
This rapid planetary change, referred to as the ‘Great Acceleration’, has brought many benefits to human society. Yet we now also understand that there are multiple connections between the overall rise in our health, wealth, food and security, the unequal distribution of these benefits and the declining state of the Earth’s natural systems. Nature, underpinned by biodiversity, provides a wealth of services, which form the building blocks of modern society; but both nature and biodiversity are disappearing at an alarming rate. Despite well-meaning attempts to stop this loss through global agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, we are failing; current targets and consequent actions amount, at best, to a managed decline. To achieve climate and sustainable development commitments, reversing the loss of nature and biodiversity is critical...
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93 percent of the world’s children breathe toxic, polluted air each day
Nearly 2 billion children – about 93 percent of the world’s children under the age of 15 – breathe toxic, putrid air that’s so polluted it puts their health and well-being at serious risk, according to a new report by the World Health Organization.
Many of the children die: The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 600,000 children died in 2016 from lower respiratory infections caused by dirty air.
“Polluted air is poisoning millions of children and ruining their lives,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO. “This is inexcusable. Every child should be able to breathe clean air so they can grow and fulfill their full potential.”
Air pollution can affect children's cognitive ability and can also trigger asthma as well as cancer. Children who have been exposed to high levels of air pollution may be at greater risk for chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease later in life...
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LA Times / Trump administration gives itself A plus grade on environment
- Few would agree with the self assessment
Never mind the facts. White House says it gets an A+ on environmental issues
A recent essay in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. by Harvard University researchers concluded that Trump’s environmental agenda “is likely to cost the lives of over 80,000 U.S. residents per decade and lead to respiratory problems for many more than 1 million people.”
Yet the heads of Trump’s Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children characterized the administration this week as being singularly focused on keeping Americans, and particularly kids, safe from dangerous industrial practices.
The task force’s activities are “a continuation of the Trump administration’s commitment to preventing future generations from being affected by lead exposure,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, citing “great progress” in safeguarding public safety.
Andrew Wheeler, a former coal-industry lobbyist who now serves as the acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said reducing exposure to toxic lead “is a top priority for EPA.”
Not really. Not if you define “reducing exposure to toxic lead” as reducing exposure to toxic lead.
“Like meat bees on baloney, the pollution lobby has swarmed the Trump administration from its inception,” said Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization.
“No number of press releases and statements by Mr. Wheeler or others claiming environmental and public health protection is a ‘top priority’ for this administration can change that indisputable fact.”
The Trump administration depicting itself as a champion of the environment is as ludicrous as its recent attempts to portray itself as a defender of protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.
It’s neither. The opposite, in fact.
“This rhetoric from the Trump administration is just painting over its refusal to keep our kids safe, not just from lead poisoning, but from toxic air and water pollution,” said Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club.
“Propaganda won't disguise the reality that Trump is responsible for the most serious attacks on clean air and water by any administration ever.”
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Turning the Toxic Tide is a series of editorials published collectively by the six editorial boards of USA TODAY Network-Florida.
- October 18, 2018 / Today's editorial, Florida is at historic crossroads is the first in the series.
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Chris Mooney / Washington Post:
Climate scientists have begun to focus on hurricane rapid intensification as an increasingly prevalent feature in the world we’re entering.
In a recent study in the Journal of Climate, researchers found more rapid intensifications in a simulation of a human-warmed world, and also that this would prove a key pathway toward more intense hurricanes... #RapidIntensification
October 12, 2018
Did global warming 'supercharge' Hurricane Michael?
Hurricane Michael exploded in intensity this week, from a rather nondescript tropical depression Sunday with winds of 35 mph to a Category 4 monster Wednesday with 155 winds.
When it hit land, it became the most powerful hurricane on record to slam Florida's Panhandle and the third-strongest U.S. landfall of all time.
Along with other weather factors, Michael's rapid intensification was fueled in part by unusually warm sea water in the Gulf of Mexico. Warm water of at least 80 degrees fuels hurricanes, and the water in the eastern Gulf this week was as much as 4 to 5 degrees warmer than normal.
Although random weather patterns certainly played a role, the warm waters in the Gulf have a “human fingerprint” of climate change, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate and hurricane expert Jim Kossin.
Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann told ThinkProgress that "once again we see a storm undergoing extreme rapid intensification over unusually warm ocean waters. We saw this pattern last year with Harvey and earlier this year with Florence and now, with my namesake, Michael.”
Weather.us meteorologist Ryan Maue said "there's no doubt the ocean water encountered by Michael was quite warm compared to the last three decades, especially near the coast."
A 2015 study on how ocean temperatures affect hurricane intensity in the North Atlantic found intensification increases by 16 percent for every 1.8 degree increase in average sea-surface temperatures... #HumanFingerprint
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Americans win Nobel Prize of work on climate, growth
Paul Romer: "Many people think that dealing with protecting the environment will be so costly and so hard work that they just want to ignore the problem. They want to deny it exists; they can't deal with it. I hope the prize today could help everyone see that humans are capable of amazing accomplishments when we set about trying to do something."
Romer said that his research has left him optimistic that society can solve even a threat as deeply challenging as the warming of the planet.
William Nordhaus: Nordhaus has been called "the father of climate-change economics" developing models that suggest how governments can combat global warming. One key step he has endorsed is a universal tax on carbon, which would require polluters to pay for the costs that their emissions impose on society. By using a tax rather than government edicts to slash emissions, the policy encourages companies to find innovative ways to reduce pollution -- and their tax burdens.
Nobel Prize Links Up the Environment & Climate-Change Economics
Foreign Policy Magazine
The Nobel Prize for Climate Catastrophe
The economist William Nordhaus will receive his profession’s highest honor for research on global warming that’s been hugely influential — and entirely misguided.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. After all, this isn’t just a matter of abstract academic debate; the future of human civilization hangs in the balance.
In the 1990s, Nordhaus invented the first integrated assessment models to explore how economic growth affects carbon emissions, and how climate change in turn affects economic growth. The basic mechanisms that Nordhaus described continue to inform the models that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses today. No one disputes that this qualifies as a significant contribution to the field. The question, rather, has to do with how Nordhaus has used his models to argue for a particular policy agenda.
The models showed that if we were to rapidly reduce carbon emissions in line with what scientists say is necessary to avoid climate breakdown – by putting a high tax on carbon, for instance – it would significantly slow down the rate of economic growth. As far as scientists are concerned, that’s not a problem; we should obviously do whatever it takes to avoid climate catastrophe. But for economists like Nordhaus, this is not acceptable. After all, the whole point of neoclassical economics is to do whatever it takes to grow economic output.
So, Nordhaus’ career has been devoted to finding what he calls a “balance” between climate mitigation and GDP growth. In a famous 1991 paper titled “To slow or not to slow,” he argued firmly for the latter option: Let’s not be too eager to slow down global warming, because we don’t want to jeopardize growth.
To justify this conclusion, Nordhaus manipulates what is known as the “discount rate,” which is how economists value the costs of climate breakdown in the present as compared to the future. It might sound arcane, but it’s really quite straightforward. A discount rate of zero means that future generations are valued equally to the present; a high discount rate means that future generations are valued less, or “discounted,” compared with nearer generations.
Nordhaus prefers a high discount rate—very high. Discounting the future allows him to argue that we shouldn’t reduce emissions too quickly, because the economic cost to people today will be higher than the benefit of protecting people in the future. Instead, we should do the opposite: Focus on GDP growth now even if it means locking in future climate catastrophe. This is justifiable, he says, because future generations will then be much richer than we are and therefore better able to manage the problem.
Using this logic, Nordhaus long claimed that from the standpoint of “economic rationality” it is “optimal” to keep warming the planet to about 3.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels—vastly in excess of the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold that the IPCC insists on.
It sounds morally problematic and flies in the face of scientists’ warnings, but economists and policymakers have lined up behind Nordhaus’s argument. They like it because it gives them license to carry on with the status quo and delay difficult decisions. President Trump, for instance, has been aggressive in his preference for growth over climate action. This is in large part what explains the fact that nearly 30 years after the first IPCC report was published, global emissions are still going up. It also helps explain why even with the Paris climate agreement in place, and with all of the plans promised by the world’s governments, we’re still headed for about 3.3 degrees Celsius of warming. It’s all eerily similar to the Nordhaus trajectory.
So how do economists get away with believing that these extreme temperatures are somehow okay? Because the Nordhaus model tells us that even the worst catastrophes will not really hurt the global economy all that much. Maybe a percentage point or two at the most, by the end of the century—much less than the cost of immediate action.
Read more at FP - https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/the-nobel-prize-for-climate-catastrophe/
and at GreenPolicy360 and Strategic Demands
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Special International Report Released / October 8, 2018
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change / IPCC
The #IPCC Special Report #s on Global Warming
Thousands of scientists gather to bring together the last five years of advances in climate science to answer key questions for policymakers.
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The Environmental Protection Agency: In Retreat from Its Core Mission
"Repeal of everything the Obama administration did."
Under Pruitt, "There was utter contempt for the career staff and the commitment to do whatever industry asked them to do."
"Today, the environmental field is suffering from the temporary triumph of myth over truth."
Elizabeth Southerland (Former director of science and technology in the Office of Water): What I perceived is that the new administration came into the EPA with complete contempt for the career staff in the agency. Not once did they talk to any of us about all these rules that they’ve been requested by industry to repeal.
"It’s not just that the actions of this administration failed to follow science and evidence and facts, but they are also in many cases unlawful."
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Pathways Forward, Changing the World
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The Climate Group Gathers in New York
New climate pledges announced by global leaders at the 10th Climate Week.
California Governor Brown opens the conference with a call to action. Taking innovation and solutions to scale ... pathways, policy action, transparency.
The Climate Group, bringing together over 200 governments and businesses spanning six continents and 43 countries with the goal of reducing GHG emissions toward net-zero by 2050.
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U.S. National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Releases Climate Science Statement
More than 50,000 members received the education group's position ... In part it reads: “Given the solid scientific foundation on which climate change science rests. . . any controversies regarding climate change and human-caused contributions to climate change that are based on social, economic, or political arguments—rather than scientific arguments—should not be part of a science curriculum.”
As an official position statement, it's definitely worth reading in its entirety.
One portion of the teachers’ guidance stands out as a 'clear warning to deniers to stop trying to infect our science with cynical politics'.
The appeal by some to “teach the controversy,” the statement asserts, is a rhetorical tactic not based on science.
“Scientific explanations must be consistent with existing empirical evidence or stand up to empirical testing. Ideas based on political ideologies or pseudoscience that fail these empirical tests do not constitute science and should not be allowed to compromise the teaching of climate science.”
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Closing the Global Climate Action Summit, Governor Brown announces a partnership with Planet Labs
New Space Earth Science here we go ...
September 12-14, San Francisco, California
https://globalclimateactionsummit.org
https://globalclimateactionsummit.org/program
Green Politics in Action: California Builds Bridges to Extend International Cooperation
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Renewable Works for Orlando
Get Going Florida! Your Energy Future Is Now
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Ecology and the Cerrado of Brazil
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Envisioning 'Big Picture' Climate Solutions
Geoengineering
Who sets the global thermostat?
Imagine scenarios, the big picture, sequencing of engineering steps to slow climate change if global consensus on mitigation and prevention cannot be reached. To put it another way, if short-term thinking prevails and governments/business/human actions fail to prevent worsening climate-induced impacts, then what proactive actions can be taken before 'all hell breaks out' ...
HuffPost US to Kim Stanley Robinson
How do you define geoengineering and what are the forms it will most likely take?
I guess the definition would be something like “a deliberate planned attempt by human beings to mitigate the damages of climate change, of carbon dioxide and methane buildup in the atmosphere, and of ecological damage generally, by way of some action that is large-scale” — if not global in reach, then regional in ways that might have global repercussions.
Are you afraid for the future?
Yes.
What makes you most hopeful for a future in which humans who aren’t ultrarich can still thrive?
Progressive taxation, progressive politics, the Paris Accords, the Endangered Species Act, leftists everywhere on Earth including China, environmentalists everywhere, the growing green-red coalition or united front of environmentalists and leftists, the creative power of STEM, the humanist traditions in philosophy, people’s concern for their children, the growing sense of a “global village” we are all part of, the urge to survive. These are some of the things that make me hopeful. Hope is stubborn. It exists in us at the cellular level and works up from there, as part of the urge to live. So hope will persist. The question is, can we put it to use?
GreenPolicy360 / Geoengineering Planet Earth
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Ride along with the 2018 Nautilus Expedition
This expedition takes the Nautilus team, and us, to little-known and unexplored regions of the Eastern Pacific ocean. #NautilusLive
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U.S. Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Will Mean Challenging Times For Environmental Laws
“I call him Lord Voldemort,” conservation lawyer Bill Snape said about Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh...
This may be pushing artistic license just a touch, but... the multiple questions about the Heritage Foundation/Federalist Society choice for SCOTUS are now top of mind... the question of independent judicial review and/or money behind the nominee are out-of-the-starting-gate questions...
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Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the US EPA, Resigns
- (Pink tinting added above by Josh Marshall / via TPM)
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The Last Act
Pruitt seeks to limit EPA's authority to block water pollution permits
The proposed regulation would likely be the most significant change to how the EPA enforces the Clean Water Act’s restrictions on dredging or filling waterways in four decades.
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June 23, 2018, a Thirty Year Anniversary
- June 23, 1988, an epochal day, a history-making day
On June 23rd, 1988, James Hansen testified to the US Senate.
Siterunner: Your GreenPolicy360 siterunner remembers back over the 1970s and 80s working environmental politics with George Brown as he pushed thru the first federal climate act, the National Climate Program Act of 1978 with a climate research program, this after his earlier work to establish the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts with California and Congressional legislators at the start up of the modern environmental movement.
More of James Hansen and George Brown --
James Hansen / Washington Post
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US Environmental Protection Agency Updates
- “@EPAScottPruitt is the most corrupt administrator in the @EPA’s history.”
A demoralized workforce watching as its agency is dismantled by the very people charged to lead it: That is the grim state of affairs depicted by John J. O’Grady, a longtime employee in the Chicago field office of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is tasked with protecting the nation’s air and water, while preventing the exposure of citizens to harmful chemicals. The agency is doing none of that, in O’Grady’s telling, with career officials watching in dismay as EPA administrator Scott Pruitt seemingly lurches from one scandal to another while doing the bidding of oil barons and the chemical lobby.
“Morale is not good,” O’Grady said of the agency’s 14,000 employees. “It’s so low, you need a ladder to get out of the gutter.”
O’Grady, an EPA engineer who is also a chapter leader in the American Federation of Government Employees, a public sector union, made his remarks in an on-the-record breakfast with journalists at the National Press Club, in Washington, D.C. Nearby, a television screen was tuned to CNN, where an anchor discussed Pruitt’s most recent alleged transgression: According to a Washington Post report published that morning, Pruitt had his most influential aide urging Republican donors to hire his wife Marlyn.
Judge Orders EPA to Produce Science
Via E&E News-Scientific American
June 5, 2018 / Freedom of Information Request To Be Acted Upon
EPA must produce the opposing body of science Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied upon to claim that humans are not the primary drivers of global warming, a federal judge has ruled.
The EPA boss has so far resisted attempts to show the science backing up his claims.
Not long after he took over as EPA administrator, Pruitt appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” where he was asked about carbon dioxide and climate change. He said, “I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
The next day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the studies Pruitt used to make his claims. Specifically, the group requested “EPA documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change.”
On Friday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, ordered the agency to comply.
“Particularly troubling is the apparent premise of this agency challenge to the FOIA request, namely: that the evidentiary basis for a policy or factual statement by an agency head, including about the scientific factors contributing to climate change, is inherently unknowable.”
If the case proceeds, it could mean that Pruitt would have to produce such research in the coming months or next year.
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Trump’s NASA Chief: 'I Fully Believe and Know the Climate Is Changing'
“I also know that we human beings are contributing to it in a major way”
“As far as my position on climate change and how it’s evolved, I’ll be very open...” the new administrator of NASA said at a town hall Thursday (May 17) at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“I don’t deny that consensus that the climate is changing,” he said. “In fact, I fully believe and know that the climate is changing. I also know that we humans beings are contributing to it in a major way. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We’re putting it into the atmosphere in volumes that we haven’t seen, and that greenhouse gas is warming the planet. That is absolutely happening, and we are responsible for it.”
... whether Bridenstine’s views on climate change have changed or not, the views of his bosses haven’t, and this remains a point of concern for Bridentine’s critics. The Trump White House has proposed cutting or canceling many of nasa’s earth-science missions. So far, they’ve been spared. Republicans don’t have enough seats in the Senate to pass their dream budgets, so they’ve had to negotiate bipartisan budget legislation with Democrats. This setup has preserved most of nasa’s climate funding, but not all. The latest budget deal didn’t specifically mention nasa’s Carbon Monitoring System, a $10-million program to track greenhouse-gas emissions around the world. The Trump administration took that as an opportunity to terminate the program.
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US EPA Administrator Back in the News
EPA staff Wednesday morning barred POLITICO and reporters from at least two other publications from entering a national summit on toxic chemicals, a day after a partial media blackout at the same event brought criticism from congressional Democrats and a pledge by the White House to investigate the incident... the Associated Press (reported) that one of its journalists was forcibly ejected from the building.
Pruitt scheduled the PFAS summit months ago, but it has attracted increased attention after POLITICO reported that senior EPA officials had helped block the release of an HHS study that would have increased warnings about the chemicals. EPA stepped in after the White House warned in January that releasing the study would create a "public relations nightmare."
Pruitt said he was unaware of that intervention, but it has added to the criticism he has faced from lawmakers and the public in recent months. The embattled administrator is facing more than a dozen federal investigations over his first-class travel, sweetheart condo rental from a lobbyist, heavy security spending and other matters.
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By 2030, China and Taiwan are planning to ban all plastic bags,
straws, disposable food containers, plastic cutlery and cups.
Earth Science & Environmental Security
May 22 / News Reports / California
The New GRACE satellites are launched and on their way...
Two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On -- GRACE-FO -- satellites were released from the Falcon 9's second stage about 11-and-a-half minutes after takeoff. The five Iridium NEXT satellites followed suit about an hour later, after an orbit-raising maneuver by the second stage.
As the name indicates, the GRACE-FO satellites are replacements for an earlier pair that spent 15 years monitoring how water is distributed globally, measuring changes in Earth's oceans, glaciers and ice sheets while tracking sub-surface aquifers and soil moisture.
The original GRACE mission found that Greenland, for example, is losing 281 billion tons of ice per year on average while Antarctica is losing another 125 "gigatons" annually. One gigaton is the mass of water in 400,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.
"GRACE was really a revolutionary mission for us understanding the water cycle and how the climate behaves and the trends that are taking place," said Frank Webb, GRACE-FO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"This was a view we didn't have before of water on the Earth. We were able to see how water has moved from different parts of the Earth by actually measuring its mass. ... We were able to detect things like loss of ice mass from glaciers, ice sheets, Greenland, places like that, we were able to see storage of water on land where there were floods or depletion of water on land where there are large aquifers and we've been pumping water out."
Satellite study finds major shifts in global freshwater
The NASA-led research team ... used 14 years of observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission to track global trends in freshwater in 34 regions around the world.
The study, published in the May 17, 2018 issue of the journal Nature, also incorporated satellite precipitation data from the ESSIC-led Global Precipitation Climatology Project; Landsat imagery from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey; irrigation maps; and published reports of human activities related to agriculture, mining and reservoir operations. The study period spans from 2002 to 2016.
"This is the first time we've assessed how freshwater availability is changing, everywhere on Earth, using satellite observations," said Matt Rodell, lead author of the paper and chief of the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "A key goal was to distinguish shifts in terrestrial water storage caused by natural variability—wet periods and dry periods associated with El Niño and La Niña, for example—from trends related to climate change or human impacts, like pumping groundwater out of an aquifer faster than it is replenished."
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Loss of Permafrost: Ripple Effects Head South
The Great Thaw of America's North Is Coming
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Texas Becoming Greener?
What About Pennsylvania?
May 6, 2018
From Pennsylvania / the Post-Journal
By James Colby / EARTHx
Here is my Earth Day reflection: No single person, politician, political party, or nation can solve the climate-change or sustainability crisis. The responsibility falls on every human being on planet Earth. Young and old, left and right, and rural and urban citizens must unite, collaborate, and cooperate.
Business and industry, and federal, state, and local politicians must enact public policy that reflects sustainability. The first Earth Day” (1970) was excellent, in that the left and right united to change the American landscape and the world. Clean water, air, and soil became priorities, and the EPA was established to advance these goals.
Today, many citizens feel helpless and ask this: “how can I help?”
Some individuals think environmental issues are not important or real… or not concerns of their friends, family, church members, or talk-show hosts. If you are in this group, please consider this fact: Texas is not only Red, but Green. Many Texas Republicans view green living as excellent political and business goals, and reflect fiscal responsibility.
It is a fact: clean, renewable energies, economies, and jobs are now embraced by Americans of all ideologies. Texas, known for big business, big oil, and all sizes of pickup trucks is transforming into an environmental beacon...
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- Bill McKibben: The Question I Get Asked the Most
- The questions come after talks, on twitter, in the days' incoming tide of email—sometimes even in old-fashioned letters that arrive in envelopes...
- "What can I do?" I bet I've been asked it 10,000 times by now... "What can I do to make a difference?"
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Macron Speaks to US Congress
April 25, 2018
"Let us face it, there is no Planet B..."
"I am sure one day the U.S. will come back and rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement."
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Methane, We're Watching
- Detecting methane from space
- There has been quite a buzz around this unique advancement in space, and the valuable data it will provide on methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for a quarter of the warming our planet is experiencing today. Curbing anthropogenic methane emissions is one of the most efficient and economical options available to slow the rate of warming over the next few decades, while efforts continue to reduce CO2 emissions worldwide.
- "As a pollutant, methane is 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-yr period and responsible for a quarter of the global warming happening today. That is a risk not just to emitters in the oil and gas sector, but to investors everywhere."
- Re: Methane Management / Harvard Investment Endowment Fund
- The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) planning to be the first environmental group to send its own satellite into space. The group's efforts are being funded through the Audacious Project, a joint effort of the non-profit group TED and philanthropic organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
- “We need good solid data so that we really can support global action on climate change, and we’ve got to do it fast,” says Steven Hamburg, the EDF’s chief scientist.
- The most detailed measurements currently available of atmospheric methane concentrations currently come from a sensor aboard the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P spacecraft, which launched in October 2017. The Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument provides global coverage at a resolution of nearly 50 square kilometres, but those measurements do not capture the dispersed sources of emissions from oil and gas fields.
- Commercial firms have developed high-resolution sensors that can be placed aboard 10-centimetre-sided CubeSats to measure emissions from individual wells or other facilities. Those data are proprietary, however, and the measurements cannot be scaled up to the level of an entire oil and gas field.
- The Environmental Defense Fund team is designing MethaneSAT to provide more-precise measurements, at a resolution of 1 square kilometre, with global coverage at least once a week.
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April and Birds On the Wing
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Daphne with an Orphan
Orphans No More
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The Oil/Gas Deal in the Arctic
"It was bigger than sending a man to the moon", re: US / Russia to drill in the Arctic
It's a big story, a 'follow the money' story, the story of oil/gas profits and global environmental costs...
Looking at Rosneft/Exxon's $500 billion Arctic deal, Rex Tillerson's appt as US Secretary of State, US/Russia oil/gas interests...
The political-economic reality in a warming North offers a rich bounty -- and pressing challenge to global security.
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https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Starlink-nasa_image.jpg
"Starlink"
- February 22, 2018, the beginning of a SpaceX planetary network...
- Micro-satellites to deliver low-cost Internet access around the globe...
- SpaceX's ultimate goal is to provide gigabit broadband services worldwide...
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Blue-Green Connection to Life on Earth
"The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One"
- "A single kind of blue-green algae in the ocean ('Prochlorococcus') produces the oxygen in one of every five breaths we take"
Planet Citizen, Bioneer and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio joins w/ Planet to launch an amazing ocean imaging, earth science project
- Reefscape
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US Nuclear Posture Review Released
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US Slaps Tariff on Solar Energy Panels
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World Bank to end financial support for oil and gas extraction
- Bank announces in Paris it ‘will no longer finance upstream oil and gas’ after 2019 in response to threat posed by climate change
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European Union unveils plan to make all plastic packaging recyclable by 2030
- The EU wants to make all plastic packaging recyclable, reduce single-use plastic and restrict microplastics. The plan would "lay the foundations for a new plastic economy."
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Green Networking, Going Global
GreenPolicy360: Greening Our Blue Planet
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Rein In Trump's Ability to Launch Nuclear First Strike
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Pope Francis on the Environment
VATICAN CITY, January 8, 2018 (Reuters) - Pope Francis called on Monday for all nations to support dialog to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and to work for a legally binding ban on nuclear weapons.
“Nuclear weapons must be banned,” Francis said, quoting a document issued by Pope John XXIII at the height of the Cold War and adding that there is “no denying that the conflagration could be started by some chance and unforeseen circumstance.”
He noted that the Holy See was among 122 states that last year agreed to a United Nations treaty to ban nuclear weapons. The United States, Britain, France and others boycotted the talks that led to the treaty, instead pledging commitment to a decades-old Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“It is of paramount importance to support every effort at dialog on the Korean peninsula, in order to find new ways of overcoming the current disputes, increasing mutual trust and ensuring a peaceful future for the Korean people and the entire world,” Francis said, addressing the nuclear crisis beween North Korea and the United States.
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Declining oxygen in the global ocean and coastal waters
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- Regenerative Green Best Practices
- "The World's First Professor of Planetary Health" / #PlanetaryHealth
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2017 Green Stories of the Day / Edited/Re-published February 2018
New Definitions of National & Global Security
Rethinking Nuclear Risks
@GreenPolicy's associate, Strategic Demands
When Carl Sagan Warned the World About Nuclear Winter
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News from the Int'l One Planet Summit
- December 2017, Paris, France
Climate commitments at the 'One Planet Summit' in Paris
World Bank Group pledges to stop investing in oil and gas exploration
China/Xinhua -- France hosts climate change summit
World is losing the battle against climate change
Euronews "One Planet" Global Summit Meet Up Video
Macron Holds a Climate Summit, and Trump Casts a Shadow
More than 50 US mayors just signed a charter to meet the Paris agreement goals
With fossil fuel subsidies, humanity investing in 'own doom': UN chief
France wants America’s best climate scientists because our government won’t want them
- France launches Make Our Planet Great Again grants
EU announces €9bn in funding for climate action
- EU funds will be focused on clean energy, and sustainable cities and agriculture
John Kerry: US 'will come back' to Paris climate accord
UK: World’s space agencies to set up climate observatory
- The heads of several of the world’s space agencies have agreed to set up a climate observatory to pool data and share it with scientists across the world. The UK Space Agency has joined other organisations to commit to working together on activities such as increasing observations of key climate variables and validating the data.
- They aim to improve long term sustainability and accessibility of climate data captured by satellites.
- Graham Turnock, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, who signed the agreement in Paris said: “The UK is working with international organisations to encourage the use of space data and technology to tackling climate change. It’s important we come together and agree to work towards improving the quality and sustainability of climate data from space and ensuring it is made freely available to researchers around the world.”
In September 2018, a follow on Global Climate Action Summit will be held in San Francisco.
- Co-chaired by Jerry Brown, the governor of California said of the next Summit:
- If we all work together, humanity can rise to the existential threat of climate change.
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News from the Int'l Climate Conference in Germany
- UN Climate Change@UNFCCC
- @JerryBrownGov joins Facebook UN event at #COP23 in Bonn:
"The #ParisAgreement was a miracle - we must build on this miracle. We are on the road to hell without full Paris Agreement implementation"
- Andy Revkin@Revkin
- Read @ElizKolbert
- FutureEarth
- International research for global sustainability - https://mobile.twitter.com/FutureEarth
- GreenPolicy360
- Climate News - https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Climate_News
- Resilience - https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:GreenPolicy360_-_Resilience.png
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Carbon Dioxide and the "Thin Blue" Atmosphere
- NASA OCO-2, critical measurements, critical mission - https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12478
- Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere through human activities...
- The OCO-2 mission represents an important advance in the ability to observe atmospheric carbon dioxide. OCO-2 collects high-precision, total column measurements of carbon dioxide (from the sensor to Earth’s surface) during daylight conditions.
- Scientists can also use model results to understand and predict where carbon dioxide is being emitted and removed from the atmosphere and how much is from natural processes and human activities.
- Carbon dioxide variations are largely controlled by fossil fuel emissions and seasonal fluxes of carbon between the atmosphere and land biosphere.
- OCO-2's unprecedented science is "a step toward answering critical questions about carbon dioxide and Earth's climate future."
- http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/358655-federal-report-blames-humans-for-global-warming-and-its-effects
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/climate/us-climate-report.html
- http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-pol-climate-change-report-20171103-story.html
- https://thinkprogress.org/trump-national-climate-assessment-9ae0781f7a9a/
- https://www.salon.com/2017/11/03/climate-change-is-happening-because-of-human-activity-trump-administration-admits/
- https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/us-government-climate-report-climate-change-is-real-and-our-fault/
- https://www.rt.com/usa/408764-climate-report-contradicts-trump/
- https://thedailybanter.com/2017/11/white-house-approves-climate-change-report/
- http://grist.org/briefly/the-u-s-government-just-released-a-report-confirming-everything-we-know-about-climate-change/
- http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-11/04/c_136727069.htm
- International Cooperation, Framework Convention on Climate Change
Only One Country Refuses to Support the Int'l Climate Agreement
November 7, 2017
California Gov. Jerry Brown delivers a blunt climate change message in Germany
Brown has been hailed in German media as the “anti-Trump” for his efforts to keep the United States engaged in the 2015 Paris agreement’s commitments to cut greenhouse emissions...
“It’s hard to get your mind around something so extensive,” said Brown, who was appointed by Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, the U.N. conference president, to serve as a special advisor for states and regions...
“Let’s lead the whole world to realize this is not your normal political challenge,” he added. “This is much bigger. This is life itself. It requires courage and imagination.”
- Dawning Thin Blue Perspective
- New Definitions of National And Global Security
- Fragile edge of our planet
- Thin blue line
- Mysterious rhythm
- Our next breath
- Heart struck with wonder
- Mind dizzy with awe
- -- Astronaut Douglas Wheelock @Astro_Wheels
- "Climathon"
- To highlight the global collaboration happening across the world -- http://www.climate-kic.org/
- War on the Rocks
- Look deeply at the threat -- https://warontherocks.com/2017/10/trumps-threat-to-nuclear-order/
- Today's 'Sunday Services' visits Patagonia, with a special thanks to Danny Moses, long-time, now retired, Editor-in-Chief of Sierra Club Books
- I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones. ― Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia
- There were no voices here. There was this, what I saw; and though beyond it were mountains and glaciers and albatrosses and Indians; there was nothing to speak of, nothing to delay me further. Only the Patagonian paradox: tiny blossoms in vast space; to be here, it helped to be a miniaturist, or else interested in enormous empty spaces. There was no intermediate zone to study. Either the enormity of the desert or the sight of a tiny flower. In Patagonia you had to choose between the tiny and the vast. ― Paul Theroux
- There is a saying in Patagonia -- que asegura a la persona que come el fruto del calafate, su regreso a estas tierras -- those who taste the fruit of the calafate will return to this land. I have tasted the calafate berry. ― Jeff Gnass
Environmental Security reasons why environmental protection regulations exist around the world --
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_protection
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Environmental_Protection
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Environmental_Laws
- Deconstructing the Environmental Protection Agency / October 18
- A Frontline Public Broadcasting Investigation
- Prevent Nuclear First Use / October 16
- From our associate #StratDem -- http://strategicdemands.com/
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- Planet Earth's "thin blue layer", strategic necessity
- Living Earth / October 13
- Planet Earth Flag Proposal / October 11
- Google Earth Goes Social / October 10
- Green Business Investing / October 9
- Investing with Green Values -- Green Money Journal
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- Nobel Peace Prize goes to the "International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons" -- ICAN -- http://www.bbc.com/news/world-41528743
- Landmark Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons Bans Research, Possession, Use, Nuclear Deterrence
- How Much Carbon Are We Emitting into Our Atmosphere? / October 5
Planet Earth, Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists / October 4
Union of Concerned Scientists Speaks Out
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_and_Space,_Politics
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- 'Sunday Services' - Looking Out / October 1
- Time to Prepare for the Worst in Korea
- Updates on Nuclear Threat on the Korean Peninsula @ www.strategicdemands.com
- Threat Horizon
- From yesterday's stormy seas to today's performance by Jackson Browne and his band
- Some of them were angry
- At the way the earth was abused
- By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
- And they struggled to protect her from them
- Only to be confused
- By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
- And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
- In the naked dawn only a few survived
- And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
- Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge
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- After the US president threatens at the UN to "totally destroy" North Korea, the UN continues with its vote to totally ban nuclear weapons...
- The US president's speech at the UN -- Transcript
- GreenPolicy360 / Strategic Demands:
- A New Security Vision for the 21st Century
- Stanislav Petrov: Russia remembers - https://www.rt.com/news/403625-nuclear-soviet-officer-died/
- and then there's Vasily Arkhipov http://strategicdemands.com/remembering-a-day-in-1962/
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- GreenPolicy360 launches Net Zero Energy Policy (take that Irma) www.netzeropolicy.com
- With synchronicity @work, a "1000 Cities Initiative" is announced -- https://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/patti-smith-rising-above-and-fighting-climate-change-art.html
- "Patti Smith's daughter explains, "that if 1000 cities come together and commit to becoming 100% renewable and transition off fossil fuels by 2040, we can turn the Paris Agreement into action."
- With synchronicity @work, a "1000 Cities Initiative" is announced -- https://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/patti-smith-rising-above-and-fighting-climate-change-art.html
- Patti Smith remembers an inspiration: “When I worked with Ralph Nader, one of the things that he taught us was that nothing productive comes from negativity or pessimism. So it’s important not to be drawn into a state of pessimism or paralysis, one has to take a breath and rise above it. I’m not saying that as rhetoric, I’m saying it as an action, as what I have to do myself. I feel the same way that you feel, that everyone else feels, but I refuse to be trampled by it, I refuse to be demoralized; I just keep on doing my work, our work.”
- From Clearwater, Evacuating / September 8
- Time to evacuate. Will be back online next week. Stay safe all!
Strategic Demands / #StratDem
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Strategic_Demands
http://strategicdemands.com/environmental-security/
Quote: "Extreme Weather Events" / September 6
- A Losing Choice for NASA / September 5
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) - https://www.nrel.gov/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Renewable_Energy_Laboratory
- Renewable Energy World - http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/index.html / http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/energy-storage/top-news.html
- The Green Goal: A Clean Energy Economy - https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Renewable_Energy
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- World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation
- “The annual World Day of prayer for the Care of Creation offers to individual believers and to the community a precious opportunity to renew our personal participation in this vocation as custodians of creation, raising to God our thanks for the marvelous works that He has entrusted to our care...”
- Not Just Another Climate Speech / September 2
- By Dr. Joseph Romm, creator of climateprogress.org -- http://www.climateprogress.org
- Extreme Weather / August 31
- Boomtown Houston, Flooding Times / August 30
- H/t to ProPublica's investigative series on Houston in danger. Note the series beginning publication date, December 2016...
- Now Comes 'Hell and High Water' Harvey...
https://assets.rbl.ms/10607706/980x.jpg
- Global Fact-Checking Projects in Countries -- PolitiFact is a networking model...
- "There are 96 fact-checking projects in 37 countries", beginning with the original PolitiFact project from Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida
- 'Sunday Services' / Eco-Schism in the Christian Faith
- Now there are some who believe in a 'global warming hoax', evangelism, prophecy, end times -- and there are those more 'on earth', who believe in 'our common home' and in a moral imperative to 'care for our common home'. Take a look at a profound schism growing within the Christian church, a 'split' in beliefs that will act to shape our future life, our future common life on earth, however we look at faith and religion. The actual number of Christians in the world is estimated in the range of 2 - 3 billion, with over 1.2 billion Catholics ...
- Here is US Senator Jim Inhofe, perhaps the most powerful man on environmental policy in the US Senate, his philosophy of a scientific 'hoax' and why he believes as he does, and why he wields his power to fit his religious beliefs...
- In stark contrast to the US evangelical religious views like Senator Inhofe of the oil/gas state of Oklahoma, here's Pope Francis, the first pontiff to name himself after the Catholic Church's patron saint of the environment, St. Francis. The Jesuit pope is promulgator of a first Catholic eco-encyclical and doctrine ... Laudato Si'
- Senator Inhofe (R-Oklahoma): "I disagree with the pope's philosophy on global warming. I am concerned that his encyclical will be used by global warming alarmists..."
- "My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."
- New Views from Above / August 26
The US President, Nuclear Codes & 'First Use' / August 25
- Continuing On Topic / World-US News in Depth:
The US President & 'First Use' / August 24
- Update: GreenPolicy360 and the Strategic Demands team are reviewing a proposed bill that goes further than the Lieu/Markey 'first-use' proposal. Stay tuned. We'll be back...
The US President & Nuclear Codes / August 23
- James R. Clapper Jr., former director of US national intelligence, questioned president Trump’s fitness for office following the president's speech in Phoenix on Tuesday, August 22.
- “I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office... I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it — maybe he is looking for a way out.”
- Clapper continued in an interview after he watched Trump’s speech, saying that he is very worried about the president’s access to nuclear codes...
- “In a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him,” Clapper said, referencing the president and the North Korean leader.
- “The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”
- #HairTrigger
- “U.S. national security policy rests on the assertion that 'forward presence' contributes directly to global peace and security. In Base Nation, David Vine examines, dismantles, and disproves that claim. He demonstrates that America's sprawling network of overseas bases imposes costs — not only financial but also political, environmental, and moral — that far exceed what the Pentagon is prepared to acknowledge. Base Nation offers a devastating critique, and no doubt Washington will try to ignore it. Citizens should refuse to let that happen.” --- Andrew J. Bacevich
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- Green On an August Eve / August 21
- Visiting Strategic Demands / August 19 & 20
- GreenPolicy360's associate ... www.strategicdemands.com
- Trump's Climate Rejection / August 17
- The "Donald Trump Forest" project has been started by campaigners upset at what they call the US president's "ignorance" on climate science.
- Trump Forest allows people either to plant trees locally or pay for trees to be planted.
- Currently the campaign to compensate for the impact of President Trump's climate policies has 120,000 pledges...
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- GrnPolicy Siterunner: Thinking of nuclear this morning when I woke and after checking Google News to see if nuclear war had broken out w/ N Korea ... and w/ China (China 'official' news yesterday: “If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so”) and knowing the US and Chinese pres spoke by phone late yesterday, I began thinking of recent expert opinions I've read (w/ a h/t to Tom Nichols).
- Thinking about a Falk and Krieger piece who talked of a nuclear 'flamenco' a couple months ago, I began thinking about the current US Pacific Fleet admiral, Scott Swift, who last wk said he'd shoot off atomic weapons toward China if ordered by the president. The admiral's statement in Australia was then explained by a US Navy spokesman named Charlie Brown (not kidding). Here's the May 30th Hill op-ed, still timely:
- It's All Connected -- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Relational_Reality.jpg
- What Climate Change Report? / August 8
- On 'First Use' and Banning Nukes / August 7
- Preemptive, Preventive, and/or First-Use Strikes: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-one-should-have-sole-authority-to-launch-a-nuclear-attack/
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- 'Sunday Services' - Jacques Cousteau's Grandson Speaking at the Bioneers Conference
- This past week GreenPolicy looked more closely at the Earth's seas and oceans
- Now, reflecting, we listen to a presentation by an environmental ocean exploring family
- This past week GreenPolicy looked more closely at the Earth's seas and oceans
- Ocean Circulation / What? "Nothing to See Here", Keep Paddling
- https://news.yale.edu/2017/07/31/loss-arctic-sea-ice-impacting-atlantic-ocean-water-circulation-system
"To see Wild Florida you've got to get down into the mud & back into the trees & up into the rivers & into the backwaters & dig around"
Clearwater, Florida, GreenPolicy360's terrestrial home base, geo-located on a limestone/karst peninsula that is still wild here & there...
Save a Butterfly, Save a Species / July 31
- http://www.boredpanda.com/rare-blue-swallowtail-pipevine-butterfly-repopulation-tim-wong/
- https://www.treehugger.com/conservation/pipevine-swallowtail-butterfly-conservation-san-francisco-tim-wong.html
- http://www.boredpanda.com/rare-blue-swallowtail-pipevine-butterfly-repopulation-tim-wong/
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Save Food. Don't Waste It / July 28
Safe Water? See Your City / July 27
- Another Day of Lamar / July 26
- WASHINGTON — Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — who has spent his career cozying up to fossil fuel interests, dismissing the threat of climate change and harassing federal climate scientists — is now arguing that pumping the atmosphere full of carbon dioxide is “beneficial” to global trade, crop production and the lushness of the planet.
- Rather than buying into “hysteria,” Americans should be celebrating the plus sides of a changing climate, Smith argues in an op-ed published July 24th in The Daily Signal, a news website published by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
- Smith — who has used his power as chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology to push his anti-science views — kicks off his op-ed by claiming Americans’ perception of the phenomenon is “too often determined by their hearing just one side of the story.”
- “The benefits of a changing climate are often ignored and under-researched,” Smith said. “Our climate is too complex and the consequences of misguided policies too harsh to discount the positive effects of carbon enrichment.”
- Increased carbon dioxide, Smith writes, promotes photosynthesis, resulting in a “greater volume of food production and better quality food” and “lush vegetation” that “assists in controlling water runoff, provides more habitats for many animal species, and even aids in climate stabilization, as more vegetation absorbs more carbon dioxide.” Warmer temperatures, he notes, results in longer growing seasons.
- Smith goes as far as to make a case for why a rapidly melting Arctic, which scientists warn could cost tens of trillions of dollars by the end of this century, is a positive thing.
- “Also, as the Earth warms, we are seeing beneficial changes to the earth’s geography,” he writes. “For instance, Arctic sea ice is decreasing. This development will create new commercial shipping lanes that provide faster, more convenient, and less costly routes between ports in Asia, Europe, and eastern North America. This will increase international trade and strengthen the world economy.”
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- Decommissioning the Fukushima reactors will cost 8 trillion yen ($72 billion), according to an estimate in December from the Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
- Removing nuclear fuel waste from destroyed reactors may take as long as 40 years.
- Thomas Pesquet, ESA astronaut: “Looking at Earth from above made me think about my own world a little differently, and I hope that the ISS on Street View changes your view of the world too.”
- Law & Environmental Protection / July 19
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- "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
- Green Crowdpowered Air-Q Mapping / July 13
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Banned: Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons Adopted
July/August / Special Issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
2017 Doomsday Clock Statement
Draft Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons
- Nuclear Treaty / @ United Nations / July 5
- http://www.undocs.org/en/a/conf.229/2017/L.3/Rev.1
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Moving To Renewable Energy and Away from Oil/Gas Strategic Conflicts
- Volvo Goes Full EV / July 6
- http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2017/07/6.htm -- http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/volvo-going-all-electric-first-automaker-ditch-combustion-engine-n779791
Moving Toward Electoral Choice and Away from Global Conflict
- Your Vote, Your Voice
- http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article159113369.html
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/05/11/presidential-executive-order-establishment-presidential-advisory
- https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-takes-legal-action-over-trump-election-commission-executive-order -- http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/01/trump-election-panel-fraud-tweets-240165
- https://www.thenation.com/article/the-trump-administration-is-planning-an-unprecedented-attack-on-voting-rights/ -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/30/how-trumps-nationwide-voter-data-request-could-lead-to-voter-suppression -- http://www.wsls.com/top-stories/demand-for-voter-rolls-shows-ugly-truth-about-trumps-voter-fraud-commission -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression
- https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-takes-legal-action-over-trump-election-commission-executive-order -- http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/01/trump-election-panel-fraud-tweets-240165
Strategic Demands: New Definitions of Security, National & Global
New Arms Race Qua Old Arms Race / June 29
Winless War, Endless War / June 28
Surviving Victory Conference / GreenPolicy360
Surviving Victory Conference - Speakers
Strategic Demands: A New Vision for a New World
Putin, Trump, Nuclear Risks / June 27
At the UN: Abolish Nuclear Weapons
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Sunday 'Earth Services' / ThinBlueLayer.com
- Ecologists “are going to have this epiphany.” A University of California scientist describes the rapidly improving satellite view from outer space as a “macroscope.”
- Green Driving / June 22
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Going_Green#Venture_On_with_Best_Green_Ideas
- "New Space", Democratizing Earth Observations / June 20
- At the UN: Abolish Nuclear Weapons / June 16
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June 12 / Reuters -- The U.S. said it would not sign up to a pledge by Italy, Canada, Japan, France, Britain and Germany which called the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change "irreversible" and key for the "security and prosperity of our planet."
As a consequence, Washington formally refused to back multilateral development banks — bodies designed to finance poorer nations and help them reduce their pollution emissions.
"The U.S. is now left as a footnote to climate action and that's very sad," said Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna. "Everyone expressed their deep disappointment with the U.S. decision," she said.
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Sunday 'Earth Services' - Protecting 'The Commons'
- Opening Up the Arctic to Oil/Gas? / June 9
- "It's not a time for inertia, it's a time for radical change" -- https://www.gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=19834
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- Yesterday Was a Bad Day
- The Consequences Start Now / June 1
- The US will be judged, this day will be long remembered.
- National Security & Global Security are interrelated. He doesn't know this. There's so much he doesn't know & so much he doesn't know that he doesn't know.
- “This current departure from reality in Washington will be very short-lived, that I promise you,” Brown told POLITICO in an interview. “I’ve spoken with Republicans here in the Legislature, and they’re beginning to get very serious about climate action, so the momentum is all the other way. And I think Trump, paradoxically, is giving climate denial such a bad name that he’s actually building the very movement that he is [purporting] to undermine...”
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- Premier Li Keqiang of China said on Thursday that his country remained committed to the fight against climate change and to participating in international efforts for a greener world.
- “China will continue to uphold its commitments to the Paris climate agreement,” Mr. Li said, confirming a position his country agreed to alongside the United States in 2014, in what proved to be a watershed moment for the ultimate passage of the landmark accord the following year.
- “Step by step, and very arduously, together with other countries, we will work toward the goals set” by global leaders in 2015, Mr. Li said, standing beside Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Berlin.
- Ms. Merkel, who welcomed the Chinese commitment as “encouraging,” has been a leader in the global push for climate action since 1992, when she played a crucial international role in passage of the world’s first climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol.
- US business leaders point at downside -- http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/big-business-urges-trump-stick-paris-climate-accord-n766641 -- http://lowcarbonusa.org/business
- “If you have to go to a board of directors and say, ‘I have to make a multibillion-dollar investment that is multi-year,’ are you going to base it on two or four years in the political cycle or … on long-term economic, technological, and consumer trends?” -- Melissa Lavinson / The Atlantic
Future of Humanity at Risk / May 31
- Forward or back? -- https://www.axios.com/scoop-trump-is-pulling-u-s-out-of-paris-climate-deal-2427773025.html
- Backwards looking -- "The 22" -- https://www.axios.com/scoop-top-republican-senators-urge-trump-to-exit-paris-climate-deal-2421530161.html
- A policy direction from the US president that will live up to the challenges or deliver economic, environmental disasters.
- “I’ve always made more money in bad markets than in good markets.” -- DJ Trump, Quoted 05/23/16 - MSNBC
- Reflecting on Next Steps:
- The Trump administration: A bump on the road?
- Remember that a future president can rejoin the Paris global climate agreement with a 'flick of a pen'.
- "The noose tightens," Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change, told The Independent. The US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement would only aggravate the climate change problem and make it much more difficult to prevent the crossing of a global temperature to a dangerous threshold. Three billion tonnes of additional carbon dioxide could be released into the air every year...
- "America’s Little Big Man -- http://billmoyers.com/story/little-big-man/
- Trump is teaching us how deeply disturbed our American world actually is"
- "America’s Little Big Man -- http://billmoyers.com/story/little-big-man/
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- Pope & a President Meet / May 24
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- Better Climate Observation Needed / May 13
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- Northern Route thru the Arctic / May 5
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- April 29
- EPA removes climate science website from public view after two decades in operation -- Here's the Pruitt #EPA "kicks" explanation -- https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-kicks-website-updates
An Archived Website of http://epa.gov/climatechange/ can be found at the Wayback Machine
https://www.epa.gov/climatechange
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- GreenPolicy360.net -- Greening our Blue Planet
- GTN Climate / April 20
- Virtual Earth Maps / April 17
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- April 1st
- "Physics... a framework for thinking" https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Tesla,_electric_cars
House Science Committee attacks the science
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- "Results of the Privacy Protection Vote" / http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll202.xml
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Climate Change @GreenPolicy360
- http://www.thinbluelayer.com -- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Environmental_Security,_National_Security
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/15/car-pollution-carbon-emissions-obama-trump-epa
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- March 11th | #Fukushima
- March 9th | #ClimateChange #ClimatePolicy #US #California
- https://www.wired.com/2017/03/want-gut-emission-rules-prepare-war-california/
- California Out in Front
- California Governor Jerry Brown
- US 'Clean Power Plan' Threatened
- March 8 | #DeepState #SecurityState
- March 6 | #Expertise #Science
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- March 1
- Facts & Science, the basis of knowledge
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- Sunday 'Earth Services' / Week 7
Watch the Forests of the Seas & Listen to Philip Glass
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- Sunday 'Earth Services' / Week 6
- Planet, Alphabet-Google, Terra Bella -- Democratization of Space
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- Sunday 'Earth Services' / Week 5
- 'Bridges to Babylon', recorded in Los Angeles @ Ocean Wave Studio w/ Billy Preston on Hammond. 'Saint of Me' - Live in Rio
- Japan has more car charging stations than gas stations
- February 1
- GPS satellites, distributed over 6 orbital planes, provide important context for ongoing and historical science missions, and enable new types of #EarthScience research not previously possible
- The data are publicly available, hosted by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and can be found by searching the data.gov portal or at https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/space-weather/satellite-data/satellite-systems/gps/
- GPS satellites, distributed over 6 orbital planes, provide important context for ongoing and historical science missions, and enable new types of #EarthScience research not previously possible
- January 31
- "Earth in Human Hands"
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- January 28
- National Resources Defense Council launches "onEarth-Trump V. Earth" to track environmental policy moves of the US president
- January 27
- Nuclear Issues / Cold War 2.0 -- Strategic Demands, GreenPolicy's associated site, investigates escalating #nuclear #proliferation
- January 26
- Climate Mirror: https://climate.daknob.net/
- The Climate Mirror Project is working to mirror and safely archive U.S. Govt. websites/datasets related to climate, climate change, and global warming
- Climate Mirror: https://climate.daknob.net/
- January 25
- Powerpak: 80 MWh Powerpack station from TESLA & Southern California Edison, biggest energy storage project in the world using lithium-ion batteries
- January 24
- The REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act of 2017
- The 'Most Dangerous Bill You've Never Heard Of Just Passed the House of Representatives'
- The REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act of 2017
- January 23
- Bill McKibben, former GreenPolicy360 advisor, speaks to challenges with Trump as the US president
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- "THAW" in the Arctic: "It’s almost as if global warming is looking right back at you"
- January 21
- "Divisive Times" and the "Overview Effect"
- "Earth Right Now": Far Beyond an Inauguration Day
- January 19
- Environmental Protection Agency confirmation hearings: Does Scott Pruitt believe in the mission of the EPA?
- January 18, 2017
- US House Science Committee continues down the path of science denial
- January 16, 2017
- "Science on trial". Scott Pruitt comes to the Senate for confirmation hearings to head up the Environmental Protection Agency
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About Us in Clearwater, Florida
- January 14, 2017
- "Being clever". Cities/states/countries confronting the risks of climate change by being out in front with clean energy action
- Tags: #EarthScience #PlanetCitizen #Green360 #ClimatePolicy #EnvironmentalProtection #NewDefinitionsofSecurity
- "Being clever". Cities/states/countries confronting the risks of climate change by being out in front with clean energy action
- January 13, 2017
- Skyscrapers in China in 2016 going up, up and up. Count 'em beginning with Shenzhen
- January 12, 2017
- Alliances at risk, national/global security at risk: President-elect promises to dismiss the international climate agreement
- January 11, 2017
- Pulling into the local supermarket parking lot, what do I see? An EV i3
- January 10, 2017
- Smoking killing millions a year, trillions in costs
- January 9, 2017
- First ongoing study of the Earth's upper atmosphere #EnvironmentalSecurity #Earth360
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- January 7, 2017
- William Perry, 'prophet of doom', warns of nextgen nuclear weapons, proliferation and a new Cold War turning hot
- Visit GreenPolicy's associated site, Strategic Demands
- January 6, 2017
- NASA Climate Resource Center (and vital national/global security programs the Trump administration is threatening)
- January 5, 2017
- Offshore Wind Energy starts up on the East Coast of the US (illustrated with vivid images)
- January 4, 2017
- From the Obama administration's top science advisor, John Holdren, words of caution
- January 3, 2017
- Cornelia Dean, writer of "Against the Tide" #RisingSeas #ClimateChange
- January 2, 2017
- Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist at Texas Tech #PlanetCitizen
- ○
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