IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane Isaias hits North Carolina amid a pandemic, and makes weather history; Rising sea levels pushing storm impacts further inland, study warns; PLUS: 15 states clear the air by moving to all-electric trucks and buses... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Big Oil Has Never Lost This Much Money; Tired of Wells That Threaten Residents’ Health, a Small California Town Takes on the Oil Industry; BP built its business on oil and gas. Now climate change is taking it apart; More Coal Power Generation Closed Than Opened Around The World This Year; US: Snake River Dams Will Not Be Removed To Save Salmon... PLUS: Northeast US Climate Pact Has Major Side Benefit — Healthier Children... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Two hurricanes hit the U.S. in one weekend, and make extreme weather history; California plugs in the world's largest battery; PLUS: Trump Administration takes major step toward approving controversial Pebble Mine in Alaska... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Hundreds of toxic Superfund sites threatened by sea level rise; A Detroit soil experiment could unleash the power of urban soil; Kenya environmental defenders win landmark $12m court battle; Deutsche Bank says it won't finance any new Arctic region or oil sand projects; In North Dakota, towns flattened by oil bust; Migratory river fish populations plunge 76 percent in past 50 years... PLUS: Western Water: Interior moving to shift CA federal water projects to former clients of Interior Sec. Bernhardt... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Ohio's GOP House Speaker arrested on bribery charges in corrupt utility company conspiracy; Gonzalo breaks new record in already historic 2020 Atlantic hurricane season; Global methane emissions hit record high; PLUS: Burger King cuts the methane... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Congress passes sprawling plan to boost conservation, parks; Global heating: best and worst case scenarios less likely than thought; Arctic sea ice is in a downward spiral, and may break a record in 2020; Leaked DNC platform draft shows the party is improving on climate—just not enough;
How the United States fails its most important fish habitats; EU considers tax, emissions trading for carbon border plan... PLUS: The Sierra Club faces its white-supremacist history... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Record rains and floods threaten world's largest dam; Siberian heat wave 'impossible' without man-made climate change; Study implicates higher air pollution levels in COVID-19 death rates; PLUS: Remembering civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis, champion of environmental justice... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): FBI raids Ohio house speaker's farm amid alleged investigation into nuke plant bailout; Climate Change Poses 'Systemic Threat' to the Economy, Big Investors Warn; Australia's environment in unsustainable state of decline, major review finds; Facebook's Science Denial Loophole... PLUS: Supreme Court decision declaring half of Oklahoma Indian land raises big questions for oil drillers... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Joe Biden unveils sweeping climate action plan to create jobs, jumpstart the economy, and solve climate change; Donald Trump officially rolls back yet another benchmark environmental law; PLUS: New analysis shows 'extraordinary' increase in U.S. coastal flooding... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Climate change made Siberian heatwave 600 times more likely; What Does Net Zero Emissions Mean for Big Oil? Not What You’d Think; Portugal kills coal two years ahead of schedule; The Wood Pellet Business is Booming. Scientists Say That’s Not Good for the Climate; More shoppers, more shops: report shows benefits of designing streets around cyclists and pedestrians; CNBC's Cramer wakes up to battery technology... PLUS: VIDEO: Mason Ramsey Sings About Cow Farts in New ‘Eco Campaign’... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: How bad is Donald Trump's Administration response to the COVID-19 crisis? Bad enough that "a guerrilla network" of high school kids seem to be doing a better job of getting some much-needed life-saving protective gear to medical workers than the federal government itself, at least in one state so far. [Audio link to show follows below.]

If you tried to fail any worse than the Trump Administration and his GOP acolyte Governors around the nation (Hello, Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis!), you'd be hard-pressed to fail as thoroughly as Trump has managed to, in virtually every aspect of the COVID-19 crisis. His deadly incompetence is continuing to help drive up infection rates, hospitalization rates and deaths in the U.S., even now, some five months into the pandemic. In Florida, the state's incompetent and very Trumpy Governor is at least finally admitting that they do not have nearly enough rapid tests to keep up with the explosion of new cases in the state after DeSantis reopened opened businesses far too early in the spring. But, even as FL hit a national record on Sunday of 15,300 newly confirmed cases in a single day on Sunday (more than most entire nations!), he continues to keep hospitalization rates a secret, despite promising last week to begin reporting them transparently to the public.

For their part, the Trump Administration is at least pulling back on one element of their shambolic crisis management. After being sued by 17 states this week, the Administration has walked back its vow to withdraw visas from foreign exchange students attending schools which refuse to open their classrooms to deadly in-person classes five days a week beginning next month. Other than that, the Administration response continues to go from horrific to even more horrific, if that's even imaginable.

NBC News reports today that, according to internal Health and Human Services documents they've obtained, shortages of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) persist across the country as cases and hospitalizations and death rates continue to surge in major metropolitan cities and rural areas alike. The Strategic National Stockpile and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are still only able to fulfill about 30% of the requests for PPE for front-line medical and long-term care facility workers across the country, according to the federal documents, despite the President's ability to invoke the Defense Production Act to commandeer manufacturing facilities to meet the nation's needs.

Meanwhile, some high school kids in Atlanta, Georgia have taken it upon themselves to actually do something about the problem. We're joined today by SHOURYA SETH, high school senior and Chief Operating Officer for Project Paralink, a grassroots organization built with his friends to combat the coronavirus pandemic with the decentralized production producing and distribution of PPE to health workers. So far, they've managed to manufacture and donate more than 420,000 units of PPE, from face-shields to masks to more than 1,500 locations.

They've also gained some corporate support for their efforts, which are now joined by nearly 1,000 volunteers in the work to distribute much-needed protective gear in at least four states, to date. Seth says they have distributed to Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama, though he tells me today they've recently begun working with California, New York, New Mexico and the Navajo Nation as well, for what they describe as "decentralization for social good" and "localized disaster relief".

Recently, he explains, "some hospitals had gone back to the position where they were only left with one week of supplies. And it was just, you know, really frustrating to see that the federal government was not doing anything about it." The project's ultimate goal, Seth explains, is to replace, or at least augment, FEMA's efforts with "Parapod Relief Stockpiles" all over the nation. He describes the project as "a guerrilla network of sorts [to] get the PPE supplies delivered faster than the federal supply chain." He also tells me that Paralink has already even outpaced FEMA in at least one respect in Georgia.

"Recently we actually passed FEMA in the donation of face shields," says Seth. "We didn't really see any coordination, at least on the gubernatorial level or the city level. On June 11th, FEMA put out a public press release, giving out state-by-state PPE data. When we looked at Georgia, what we found out was that FEMA had, at that time, only been able to produce 189,000 face shields, while we had been able to produce 370,000 face shields, essentially doubling the output. And the funny part is, some of the donations we made were to FEMA! So while we had been overproducing we had also been donating to FEMA!"

Seth tells us how how the project came about as an effort to improve food delivery logistics before the COVID crisis struck. They then decided to modify their algorithms to turn to PPE manufacturing and delivery.

"Just before the surge of cases, we started to notice a very, very slow downward trend in the cases. And we realized a lot of people, like Dr. Fauci, were talking about a second wave of the pandemic coming during the winter. We wanted to create the stockpiles in states to prepare for the future," he says. "A lot of the Republican-controlled state governments were ignoring those warnings, but we understood according to virologists, according to common sense, the cases were going to rise again." So, they sprung into action.

Seth also offers his own feelings about whether schools should be opened for in-person classes, as the Administration is now insisting upon, and asks for your help in growing the project. "If you have any sort of questions, inquiries, or ways that you can help us out, reach out to us!"

So, if you're worried about the next generation, today's conversation is likely to make you feel much better about their ability to handle --- and fix --- so much that we've already screwed up for them.

Then, another bit of encouraging and progressive news, this time from the Joe Biden Campaign today. The presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee announced a massive climate plan aimed at combating climate change and spurring economic growth by overhauling America's energy industry with a proposal to achieve carbon-free renewable power across the entire country by 2035. The ambitious plan echoes that offered during the Democratic primary campaign by then rival Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington state. The ambitious progressive plan would more than doubles the resources and halve the time-frame that Biden had previously proposed during the campaign. The effort to tackle our climate crisis would also, as Desi Doyen explains today, serve as a massive infrastructure jobs engine to help the U.S. climb out of the pandemic, it's accompanying economic crisis, and systemic racism, as the proposal requires that 40 percent of the money spent on clean energy deployment goes to historically disadvantaged front line communities, which have been among the worst and first victims of the climate crisis. It's a New Deal-like proposal that some might even call a Green New Deal --- if that phrase didn't startle delicate Republicans so.

Finally, we close with our latest Green News Report, as the nation attempts to deal with an extended extreme heat wave amidst our coronavirus crisis; as oil and gas companies go belly up, while both leaving environmental disasters for tax-payers to clean up and making sure their executives get huge bonuses on the way out the door; and as one venerable environmental group goes all in on ad buys highlighting Trump's deadly, parallel denial of both COVID-19 and climate change...

Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Extended extreme heat wave spreads across U.S.; June 2020 second hottest June ever recorded; Bankrupt oil and gas companies leaving taxpayers with cleanup bill, while giving bonuses to CEOs; PLUS: Environmental group hits Trump on COVID and climate denial... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Joe Biden sets out aggressive plan to tackle climate change; How Europe’s green pandemic recovery will push the rest of the world; Investigation rebukes Commerce Department for siding with Trump over forecasters during Hurricane Dorian; U.S. Offshore Wind Power Blown on Course; EPA declines to tighten smog standards amid pressure from green groups; G.A.O.: Trump Boosts Deregulation by Undervaluing Cost of Climate Change; Largest battery storage system in US connects to California ISO grid... PLUS: Intense Hurricanes Are Making "Super Abundant" Spiders More Aggressive... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Siberian fires set new pollution record; Atlantic hurricane season breaks new records; Trump Administration approves natural gas bomb trains; PLUS: California mandates zero-emission trucks and buses by 2045... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The scariest thing about global warming (and Covid-19); Sunrun and Vivint form new solar Goliath to challenge Tesla; Virginia joins Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative; PA's GOP state legislature curbs state's ability to join RGGI; The next 5 pipelines facing legal trouble; Sanders-Biden Climate Task Force calls for carbon-free power by 2035; Endangered CA condors found in Sequioa NP for first time in 50 years; Ninth Circuit restores protections for Yellowstone grizzlies... PLUS: Humpback Chub 'Alien Abductions' Help Frame the Future of the Colorado River... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Big and bad news for pipelines, good news for those who oppose them; Japan reeling from another round of record rains and catastrophic floods; Warren Buffett bids to control nearly 20 percent of nation's natural gas storage; PLUS: House Democrats unveil comprehensive proposal to reach net zero emissions by 2050... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Climate Activists See ‘New Era’ After Three Major Oil and Gas Pipeline Defeats; Climate change denial expands on Facebook as scientists face restrictions; Grim Day for Pipelines Shows They’re Almost Impossible to Build; US signs order for first West Coast gas-export terminal; Rapid Arctic Meltdown In Siberia Alarms Scientists... PLUS: Think Covid-19 Disrupted the Food Chain? Wait and See What Climate Change Will Do... and much, MUCH more! ...

Seriously, at some point American officials will need to be prosecuted for mass murder for their criminal delinquency and deceit in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, which has, so far, in just four months, cost the lives of more than 122,000 Americans. Those prosecutions should begin (if not end) with the man currently serving as President of the United States. That is particularly true in the wake of his criminal admission at his Death Rally in Tulsa last week, when he admitted that he told his "people...slow the testing down, please!" The White House later said Donald Trump was just joking, but when asked if he was kidding, he publicly admitted otherwise. "I don't kid," he said, "let me just tell you, let me make it clear." And we now have hard evidence on today's BradCast to prove that, perhaps for the first time, he was finally telling the truth. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

On Wednesday, confirmed new coronavirus cases in the U.S. set a single day record of more than 38,000. At the same time, hospitalizations are rapidly increasing in a number of states around the country, including states such as Florida, Texas, Arizona and Oklahoma, where denialist Republican Governors reopened for business far too quickly, in direct contradiction to almost all health experts.

As states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut --- hit hardest and earliest at the beginning of the pandemic --- have seen case numbers and hospitalizations plummet, they've instituted quarantine restrictions on travelers from some of the currently hardest hit states. As of Wednesday, the list included Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Texas.

When asked what he would say to the leaders of some of those states, including Florida, whose Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had issued a quarantine on travelers from the NY metro area early in the pandemic (while failing to mandate appropriate restrictions in his own state), New York's Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo said today: "You played politics with this virus and you lost. You told the people of your state and you told the people of this country, White House, don't worry about it. Just open up, go about your business, this is all Democratic hyperbole. Oh, really? Now you see 27 states with the numbers going up. You see the death projections going up. You see the economy going down. It was never politics, it was always science. And they were in denial."

Well, many of them are still in denial. And not just denial, but taking purposeful, affirmative efforts to lie to their people about COVID-19 numbers in their own states. The expert who ran Florida's once-lauded COVID-19 tracking website, but was fired because, she says, she refused to manipulate the data, sent out a warning this week. She charges that officials have been "instructed this week to change the numbers and begin slowly deleting deaths and cases so it looks like Florida is improving next week in the leadup to July 4."

In West Virginia, the state's Republican Gov. Jim Justice, a billionaire coal baron, has forced out the commissioner of the state's public health bureau because he didn't like the numbers she was reporting, as cases rise in at least 11 counties. He had previously lauded her at regular COVID-19 press briefings where she spoke. She was not at his latest briefing on Wednesday and released a statement upon her forced resignation that night, urging state officials "to stay true to the science".

Meanwhile, as the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), conceded that the infection rate in the U.S. is likely 10 times higher than the number of cases currently reported (that's 23 million probably infections, instead of the official 2.3 million reported as of today), states like Texas are seeing not just increased cases, but spiking hospitalizations, which have doubled over the past week. In Houston, ICU beds were 97 percent full by Wednesday. (In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has barred hospitals from reporting those numbers anymore.) Even Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is now warning of the state's "massive outbreak", while still failing to mandate masking or even allowing local officials in Houston or anywhere else to do so on their own.

And yet, with all of that, Donald Trump really has told his "people" to "slow the testing down." Talking Points Memo's Josh Kovensky has been documenting the refusal by the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to approve extensions for federally funded testing at 13 sites across five states, including Texas. Where more than 40 such sites were once funded by the federal government across the country, only 13 sites remain, and they have been told by the Trump Administration that those resources will end on June 30th, despite desperate requests from officials in Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania for the much-needed aid to continue.

That's just a taste of today's program, which raises the very serious question: Should these people be held accountable for the thousands --- perhaps tens of thousands --- of American citizens who are likely to die, thanks to their purposeful efforts to ignore science and health officials for purely brazen political purposes?

The deadly denial about the coronavirus is a fast-motion mirror of the Republican denial, for brazen political purposes, regarding climate change. Today we close with some accountability and/or attempts at accountability on that front in our latest Green News Report, in which Minnesota's Attorney General has now filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against Exxon, Koch, and the American Petroleum Institute, citing, by way of just one example, a "proprietary" document from Exxon warning about the dangers of "CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere...due to fossil fuel combustion" that "will cause a warming of the earth's surface" and "dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050." That prescient, on-the-money document is dated October 16, 1979, before Exxon went on to spend millions of dollars over decades to misinform the public that climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels was little more than a hoax. Desi Doyen joins us for that attempted accountability and a bit more that has actually succeeded in a refreshingly encouraging GNR today. And it comes not a moment too soon...

Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Minnesota sues Exxon Mobil for lying to the public about climate change; Justice Department whistleblowers expose corrupt investigation into California deal with automakers; PLUS: Chemical giant Bayer to pay billions to settle Monsanto weedkiller lawsuits... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): District of Columbia sues four oil majors for misleading consumers on climate change; Trump insists on fireworks at Mt. Rushmore, increasing risk of wildfire and COVID spread; Black households pay more for energy than white households: analysis; Facebook 'fact check' policy creates loophole for climate denial groups; The danger of Amazon's $2 billion climate change venture capital fund; Court rejects logging plan for Tongass Nat'l Forest; 'Bomb trains': LNG shipments by rail approved in U.S.... PLUS: Video: A Bold Vision of DERP Down Under... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Months-long Arctic heat wave delivers all-time record high --- in Siberia; Extreme heat now kills more Americans than hurricanes or floods; Trump Administration rolls back decades-old protections for migratory birds as Trump lies about wind again at his sparsely attended Tulsa rally; PLUS: U.K. builds world's largest liquid air battery... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Big Oil is scared shitless; Slip-up reveals Chevron ties to architect of climate attack; Epidemic of contaminated medical waste is following the coronavirus; Record plume of Sahara Desert dust aims at Southeast U.S.; Long-simmering water battle comes to a boil in CA; Utility ransomware attacks becoming more sophisticated, new 'honeypot' operation finds... PLUS: Capitalism is destroying 'safe operating space' for humanity, warn scientists... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are ramping up efforts to pretend, lie and try to distract their way out of the coronavirus crisis in advance of their re-election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday. The virus doesn't care. As our guest today notes, "the virus is non-partisan." [Audio link to full, must-listen show is posted below.]

Even as COVID-19 cases are spiking around the country --- including in OK, where new cases surged 68% in the second week of June and where Tulsa's top health official and major newspaper are both begging Trump to call off this Saturday's planned campaign rally --- both men are now lying about both the growth in infections and in hospitalizations since states have begun reopening for business over the past several weeks.

They are both falsely explaining away the rise in confirmed infections in more than a dozen states as due to increased testing. It isn't. What epidemiologists are worried about is the rise in the percentage rate of positives tests, no matter the increase or decrease in the number of tests performed and about rising hospitalization rates, which are the best indicator of the increasing virulence of the pandemic in various parts of the country.

Pence reportedly instructed Governors, during a phone call on Monday, to lie about both matters, stating "the magnitude of increase in testing" explains the rise in positive cases and that increased hospitalizations are only because "people are going back to hospitals and elective surgery." But hospitalizations for elective procedures are decidedly not what infectious disease specialists are worried about, nor are they included in the spiking and often record rates of hospitalizations being seen right now for COVID-19 infections.

As we have been explaining on the show in recent days, as rates rise in Texas and Florida and Arizona (all three hit records for single day increases today) and elsewhere since Governors in those states prematurely reopened and are now seeing skyrocketing rates of illness since doing so, there is still no treatment, no cure, and no vaccine for the coronavirus. Lifting lock-down orders, failing to wear masks, and ignoring social distancing as many have now done, is little different than had we all done so in March and April as the virus first emerged.

In fact, as one of the very conservative COVID models --- one cited by the White House --- was adjusted today to predict more than 200,000 deaths in the U.S. by the first of October, our guest today explains why she believes "we are in a worse situation now" than we were back in March and April.

"We have a lot of infectious people in the community that we didn't have earlier on," notes DR. PURNIMA MADHIVANAN, infectious disease epidemiologist and Associate Professor at the University of Arizona's Zuckerman College of Public Health. "I would say it's Phase 2 in that regard. We have a lot more people who are infectious, who are shedding the virus, than when we had started earlier on."

Describing ICU beds, particularly in Phoenix, at near-capacity rates just one month after reopening, Madhivanan, Director of her school's Global Health Training Program, says the state of Arizona is in "crisis mode. We need to be doing something, like, yesterday." That, as Republican Governor Doug Ducey --- who abruptly announced reopening plans early last month on the same day as a visit to the state by Donald Trump --- continues to downplay the state's worsening predicament, despite a 76% increase in cases since the end of May and records of new cases and hospitalizations being consistently topped in recent days.

Madhivanan tells me she sees the state running out of ICU space within a week. "We have a crisis situation right here in Phoenix. And if [Ducey] were smart, he would close off the borders to Phoenix yesterday." This is not a so-called "second wave," she cautions. "We haven't even peaked with the first wave yet. We are number 42 among all states in terms of testing rates. So we haven't even gotten to the level where we can say our testing rates are good. And we've not even mentioned contact tracing yet. That's practically non-existent, and a huge concern."

It didn't have to be this way, Madhivanan explains, but for Ducey's abrupt reversal in early May. "What we had actually projected and predicted was we would get to the peak around the end of June, if everything had gone the way we had predicted with all the physical distancing in place, stay-at-home orders. But when the stay-at-home orders were not followed through, that peak came much, much earlier, and we are still continuing up on that wave. We have not come down yet."

This is an important, must-listen, detailed conversation which extends well beyond Arizona. I couldn't even begin to adequately summarize it here. We discuss the denialists and claims from mostly non-epidemiologists and ideologists who charge that lock-downs have made the situation worse, asserting that allowing for "herd immunity" to develop would have been a smarter strategy. She details why she strongly disagrees, explaining that it would have taken years and resulted in exponentially more deaths, in the millions, here in the U.S. Madhivanan further says containment, unlike during the SARS crisis of 2003-2004, became impossible "because we have an uncoordinated and poorly managed COVID response" at the federal level.

That means the only option left is shutdowns, mask wearing (which, she argues, makes a huge difference in mitigating spread of the virus), hand-washing and physical distancing. But, she laments, there is now very little, if any, of that being done in her state. Ducey has never mandated masking, for example, even as "masks are our lowest-hanging fruit and one of the most economical interventions. If all of us did it, we can dramatically bring down the number of infections."

She warns things are going to get much worse before they get better anytime soon. "If we had used the period of the shutdown to put comprehensive testing and tracing protocols in place, this investment would have paid off in the long run. But we failed to do that. So we only delayed the day of reckoning for us."

"At some point people need to start believing in science, is all I can say. We have the data, we have the evidence, and the science is pretty clear about this. We were not ready and we should not have opened," Madhivanan insists.

Finally, after a bit more news on the 28 states in the U.S. where infection rates are decidedly NOT falling, no matter how hard the Administration and his supporters are still trying to pretend it all away, we've got a bit of breaking news that came just before air time on Donald Trump hoping to sue John Bolton's upcoming new book away.

Then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report. That, of course, as usual, includes nothing but lots of much-needed sunshine and flowers! (Hey, if Trump and Pence can lie about absolutely everything, we can too, right?)

Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: U.S. Supreme Court clears the way for controversial fracked natural gas pipeline; Microplastics are raining down on our national parks; Trump plans to open up Florida for offshore drilling --- after the election; PLUS: Administration accelerates resource extraction and cruel wildlife hunting practices on the public's lands... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump’s EPA balks at a chance to save black lives; A war against climate science, waged by Washington’s rank and rile, protecting their jobs; Trump administration blocks tribes from protecting their waters; Americans increasingly understand that climate change harms human health; Scientists warn against Trump's consumer protection nominee... PLUS: Love is Blind: How Germany's Long Romance With Cars Led to the Nation's Biggest Clean Energy Failure... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Major environmental organizations embrace racial justice after the police killing of George Floyd; Communities of color disproportionately at risk from climate impacts; Britain has gone coal-free for two months; PLUS: Step aside, murder hornets! Get ready for the giant toxic toad invasion!... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Falling renewable, storage costs make 90% carbon-free US grid feasible by 2035, UC Berkeley finds; Deadly mosquito-borne illness is brewing in the Northeast; Great, now the ocean is filled with COVID trash; Interior to push drilling in Florida waters after November election; Capturing the green energy of the deep blue sea; Shell’s plastics plant outside Pittsburgh has suddenly become a riskier bet... PLUS: It's time for environmental studies to own up to erasing black people... and much, MUCH more!