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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Hillary Clinton pushes Congress to act on the Flint Water Crisis; Donald Trump calls out Republican hypocrisy on eminent domain; Bernie Sanders fights to stop oil and gas pipelines in New Hampshire and Vermont; PLUS: President Obama proposes a ten dollar per barrel tax on oil, and fossil fuel industry heads explode… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Green News Report
with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen
2/9/2016
‘Green News Report’ – February 9, 2016 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen... · · · · · ‘Green News Report’ – February 9, 2016 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): U.N. Agency Proposes Limits on Airlines’ Carbon Emissions; Sea-Level Rise ‘Could Last Twice As Long As Human History’; New Federal Gas Storage Rules Likely to Mimic Industry’s Guidelines; Obama Proposing Clean-Water Cuts Amid Flint Outcry; Gulf Of Mexico Open For Fish-Farming Business; Australia ‘Isolated’ From Global Research After CSIRO Climate Cuts; Half-Built Nuclear Fuel Plant in S. Carolina Faces Test on Its Future; Chlorine Trains Pose an Even Deadlier Threat Than Oil Trains… PLUS: ‘Wrong type of trees’ in Europe increased global warming… and much, MUCH more! …
STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…
- Hillary Clinton Cites Racial Bias, Pushes Congress to Act on Flint Water Crisis:
- Water expert blames DEQ ‘cover-up’ for Flint crisis (Detroit News) [emphasis added]:
“One-hundred percent of responsibility lies with those employees at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. There’s no question,” Marc Edwards, a water expert at Virginia Tech University, told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform.
- Democrats prepare to block Senate energy bill over Flint aid (Washington Post) [emphasis added]:
Republican senators remained split on the deal, with some arguing that the package represents an unfair “earmark” for one city and could create a precedent for federal aid for other incidents that they see as a largely state and local responsibility.
- Michigan Water Regulator Fired as Flint Crisis Fallout Continues (NY Times)
- Lead Contamination Crisis Unfolding in Sebring, OH:
- With Lead in the Water, Could Sebring, Ohio Become the Next Flint? (Newsweek):
Sounding eerily similar to the lead-laced water crisis that has affected Flint, Michigan, for more than a year, tests at schools and homes in the Sebring area found multiple examples of lead contamination below the federally acceptable level, although the water treatment plant said there was “no detectable lead leaving the water treatment.”
- John Kasich: Northeast Ohio lead situation not like Flint water crisis (Cincinnati Enquirer)
- Kasich Lectures On Flint While He Ignores Crisis In His Own State (Climate Progress):
Other officials in Sebring have admitted that their response was delayed. Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler told the Daily Mail: “It has become apparent that our field office was too patient in dealing with the village of Sebring’s ‘cat and mouse’ game and should have had closer scrutiny on the water system meeting its deadlines.”
- NYT: 3-10 Million Lead Pipes Still In Use in Country:
- Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint (NY Times):
Federal officials and many scientists agree that most of the nation’s 53,000 community water systems provide safe drinking water. But such episodes are unsettling reminders of what experts say are holes in the safety net of rules and procedures intended to keep water not just lead-free, but free of all poisons.
- Bernie Sanders Fights Proposed Pipelines in Northeast:
- Bernie bashes Hillary on Keystone and other pipelines (Grist)
- Bernie Sanders Says No to Fracked Oil Pipeline in Iowa, Will It Help Him in Today’s Caucus? (Democracy Now!)
- Gas Pipeline Plans Face Stiff Opposition (Hartford Courant)
- NH attorney general intervenes on Kinder Morgan pipeline oversight (Nashua Telegraph)
- GOP Debate: Trump Calls Out Republican Hypocrisy Over Eminent Domain:
- VIDEO: Trump calls out Bush over eminent domain (CNN)
- Trump: Bush family used eminent domain to build a baseball park (The Hill),/li>
- Iowa Will Soon Decide Whether To Allow An Oil Company To Seize Residents’ Land (Climate Progress)
- Obama Proposes $10 Per Barrel Tax On Oil:
- VIDEO: President Obama Remarks on Proposed $10/Barrel Oil Tax (C-SPAN)
- Obama to propose $10-a-barrel oil tax (Politico):
The biggest chunk of Obama’s proposed new spending, about $20 billion a year—roughly equivalent to the EPA and Interior Department budgets combined—would go to “enhanced transportation options,” especially alternatives to driving and flying. That would include subways, buses, light rail, freight rail modernization projects, and a major expansion of the high-speed rail initiative that Obama launched in his 2009 stimulus bill. It would also include a 150 percent increase for a more popular stimulus program known as TIGER, which provides competitive grants for multi-modal transportation projects with measurable economic and environmental benefits.
- Obama wants a $10 tax on oil. Here’s why economists agree. (Washington Post)
- Obama Wants to Raise Your Gas Prices to Pay for Trains (Mother Jones)
- Obama’s Politically Impossible Transpo Plan Is Just What America Needs (Streetsblog),/li>
- Obama’s $10 oil tax proposal would cost motorists (USA Today):
Although the tax is likely to run into political opposition from Republicans, it comes at the most politically expedient time possible: Rock-bottom oil prices could make the inevitable increase in gas prices that would follow a tax increase more palatable.
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…
- ‘Wrong type of trees’ in Europe increased global warming (BBC):
The scientists believe that replacing broadleaved species with conifers is a key reason for the negative climate impact. Conifers like pines and spruce are generally darker and absorb more heat than species such as oak and birch.
- Obama Proposing Clean-Water Cuts Amid Flint Outcry (Politico):
The Obama administration is expected to propose a $250 million cut to its primary funding source for water and sewer systems as part of its budget proposal Tuesday — a prospect that is bringing bipartisan criticism amid the furor over lead contamination in Flint, Mich.
- U.N. Agency Proposes Limits on Airlines’ Carbon Emissions (NY Times):
After more than six years of negotiations, the global aviation industry agreed on Monday to the first binding limits on carbon dioxide emissions, tackling the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas pollution.
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- New Federal Gas Storage Rules Likely to Mimic Industry’s Guidelines (Inside Climate News):
Federal pipeline agency’s response to Aliso Canyon disaster will likely lean on industry proposals that don’t require emergency shutoffs or safer pipes.
- Gulf Of Mexico Open For Fish-Farming Business (NPR):
The Gulf of Mexico is now open for commercial fish farming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last month that, for the first time in the U.S., companies can apply to set up fish farms in federal waters. The idea is to compete with hard-to-regulate foreign imports. But opening the Gulf to aquaculture won’t be cheap, and it could pose environmental problems.
- Australia ‘Isolated’ From Global Research After CSIRO Climate Cuts: WMO (Sydney Morning Herald):
International criticism of the CSIRO’s planned deep cuts to its climate monitoring programs has intensified with the World Meteorological Organisation blasting the move as a “backward” step that would see Australia isolated.
- Half-Built Nuclear Fuel Plant in S. Carolina Faces Test on Its Future (NY Times):
Time may finally be running out on the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, a multibillion-dollar, over-budget federal project that has been hard to kill.
- Chlorine Trains Pose an Even Deadlier Threat Than Oil Trains (Take Part):
A new report finds the railroad cars that transport the toxic gas around the United States are vulnerable to accidents and sabotage.
- Sea-Level Rise ‘Could Last Twice As Long As Human History’ (Guardian UK):
Huge sea-level rises caused by climate change will last far longer than the entire history of human civilisation to date, according to new research, unless the brief window of opportunity of the next few decades is used to cut carbon emissions drastically.
- Meet The ‘Rented White Coats’ Who Defend Toxic Chemicals (Center for Public Integrity):
How corporate-funded research is corrupting America’s courts and regulatory agencies.
- Bayer Rejects EPA Request To Pull Insecticide From U.S. Market (Reuters):
The agricultural unit of German chemicals company Bayer AG said on Friday it will fight a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) request to pull one of its insecticides from the marketplace amid concerns that it could harm organisms in streams and ponds.
- Right-Wing Extremists Are a Bigger Threat to America Than ISIS (Newsweek):
Who are these right-wing militants? And what makes them believe Americans have to engage in armed combat with their own government rather than vote, kill their fellow citizens rather than tolerate differences, blow up buildings rather than just get a job? Billions of words have been written and spoken on violent Islamic extremists. The time has come to do the same for the good old-fashioned Americans who may pose the greatest threat to us all.
- Record Warmth `Almost Certainly’ Due to Humans, Scientists Say (Bloomberg):
The odds are “vanishingly small” that recent years of record warmth aren’t due to human emissions of greenhouse gases, researchers in the U.S. and Germany said, adding to pressure on world governments to cut back on fossil fuel use.
FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page
But exactly how bad is still an open question, and a lot depends not only on how we react, but how quickly. The rate at which humans cut down on greenhouse gas emissions–if we do choose to cut them–will have a large bearing on how the world turns out by 2100, the forecasts reveal.
Restraining global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius will require changing how the world produces and uses energy to power its cities and factories, heats and cools buildings, as well as moves people and goods in airplanes, trains, cars, ships and trucks, according to the IPCC. Changes are required not just in technology, but also in people’s behavior.
Hidden in plain sight … spooky … (The Ghost-Water Constant – 4).
I typed about climate change being responsible for last month’s blizzard. Even climate change believers thought I was crazy. We have a long way to go to get people to believe.
Brian @#2- well, it is technically inaccurate to say that that climate change “caused” or is “responsible” for a specific extreme weather event, because that would require data proving the event would not have happened at all in the absence of climate change. Those kinds of attribution studies takes months or years to complete, so it is too early to know right now to say that about last month’s blizzards.
Climate scientists focus on the influence of climate change on extreme weather events and trends, in the context of the odds of an extreme event occurring and its intensity. Climate scientists have predicted for decades that global warming would bring more extreme and intense extreme weather events — including blizzards. Those projections have come true much sooner than expected.
Once we realize that we live within a damaged system (The Damaged Global Climate System – 5) we don’t have to consider the propaganda of the merchants of doubt (Merchants of Doubt).
The “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” trick is designed to move our focus toward idle banter.
A better question is how many cargo ships can anchor at a port without water in it (Proof of Concept – 6).