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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane Matthew churns towards U.S.; Climate change shut out – again! – at the Vice Presidential debate; Canada to establish a national carbon tax; New study warns the world is rapidly using up its ‘carbon budget’; PLUS: Global Paris Agreement surges over the finish line before the U.S. Presidential election… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen 10/6/2016

‘Green News Report’ – October 6, 2016  |  With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...   · · · · ·   ‘Green News Report’ – October 6, 2016  |  With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously; How the Earth will pay us back for our carbon emissions with … more carbon emissions; Hurricane Matthew is super strong — because of climate change; Activists Warn That Toxic PCBs Contaminate Thousands Of U.S. Schools; Dakota Access: Judges Appear Skeptical Of Freezing Pipeline; Invasive Insects Cause Tens Of Billions In Damage: Study… PLUS: China’s $450 billion farm plan could determine our fate… and much, MUCH more! …

STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…

• Deadly Hurricane Matthew heads to the U.S. after devastating Haiti:
• Obama Says U.S. Government Prepared To Respond To Hurricane Matthew (Reuters)
• VIDEO: Amid Media Blackout over Climate Change Links to Hurricane Matthew, Top Scientist Speaks Out (Democracy Now!)
• Hurricane Matthew hammers Haiti and Cuba, bears down on U.S. (Reuters)
• Hurricane Matthew threatens to test Lake Okeechobee’s dike (Orlando Sun-Sentinel
• More than 100 Dead in Haiti From Hurricane Matthew (ABC News)
• Following Hurricane Matthew (CNN)
• Climate change is shut out – AGAIN – at the Vice Presidential debate:
• VIDEO: Full Vice-Presidential Debate (NY Times)
• Transcript: The Mike Pence vs. Tim Kaine vice-presidential debate, annotated (Washington Post)
• The VP debate spent a hot second on climate change. (Grist)
• Mike Pence Training For Vice Presidential Debate By Hitting Punching Bag With Climate Change Study Taped On Front (The Onion)
• Fact checking Pence’s claim of a ‘war on coal’ (Chicago Tribune):
  The coal industry is struggling, but the Indiana governor incorrectly blamed its woes solely on new federal regulations, omitting the effects of steep competition from cheap natural gas.
• Here’s What the VP Candidates Think About Global Warming. Now we just need someone to ask them about it. (Mother Jones)
• Pentagon says we could soon be fighting climate wars (Grist)
• Obama Is Right: Climate Change Kills More People Than Terrorism (The New Republic)
• U.N. Paris Agreement crosses crucial final threshold to enactment:
• The Paris climate agreement is entering into force. Now comes the hard part. (Washington Post):
  although the E.U. will now join as a whole – which officially could take place later this week at the United Nations – only seven of its member countries have individually ratified the agreement thus far…There is then a 30-day period before the agreement legally enters into force.
• 3 Ways Trump Could Abandon the Paris Climate Pact (Climate Central)
• Canada PM Justin Trudeau announces a national carbon tax:
• Canada to set national carbon tax from 2018 (Climate Change News)
• Canada’s new carbon tax sets the trend on climate (Bloomberg)
• Canada releases plans for a nationwide carbon tax; Provinces will have two years to create their own scheme. (Climate Progress)
• John Ivison: Trudeau outsmarts opponents on carbon pricing (National Post)
• Trudeau Just Approved a Giant Carbon Bomb in B.C. (DeSmogBlog Canada)
• Trudeau’s LNG Permit Breaks the Sky’s Limit (Oil Change International):
  As the Sky’s Limit report clearly shows, when you’re in a hole, stop digging.
• The world is running out of its carbon budget:
• Recalculating the Climate Math: The numbers on global warming are even scarier than we thought. (The New Republic):
  The future of humanity depends on math. And the numbers in a new study released Thursday are the most ominous yet. Those numbers spell out, in simple arithmetic, how much of the fossil fuel in the world’s existing coal mines and oil wells we can burn if we want to prevent global warming from cooking the planet.
• Existing coal, oil and gas fields will blow carbon budget – study (Guardian UK):
  Expansion of fossil fuel extraction amounts to ‘climate denial’, says thinktank Oil Change International.
• Climate scientist James Hansen: We aren’t doing nearly enough to slow climate change (Climate Progress):
  The last time that the Earth was this hot, the oceans were about 20 feet higher than they are right now. And while that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re in for an unstoppable, 20-foot rise in sea level (although it ostensibly could get that bad), it does mean that the world is leaving a dangerous, and expensive, climate change problem for future generations.

‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…

• No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously (Vox):
  If we mean what we say, no more new fossil fuels, anywhere.
• How the Earth will pay us back for our carbon emissions with … more carbon emissions (Washington Post):
  The really scary thing is that at some point, the Earth will take over and start adding even more emissions on its own. A new study underscores this risk by looking closely at Indonesia, which has a unique quality — some 70 billion of tons of carbon that have built up in peatlands over millennia. In this, Indonesia is much like the Arctic, where even larger quantities of ancient carbon are stored in permafrost, and are also vulnerable.
• Hurricane Matthew is super strong — because of climate change (Climate Progress):
  “Category 4 and 5 hurricanes could double or triple in the coming decades,” expert warns…Scientists are confident that as we continue to heat up the oceans, we’re going to see more of these high-end perfect storms.”
• Activists Warn That Toxic PCBs Contaminate Thousands Of U.S. Schools (Washington Post):
  Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are industrial chemicals so toxic that Congress banned them 40 years ago. Research has shown that they can cause a range of health concerns, including cancer and neurological problems such as decreased IQ. And yet, because they were commonly used in building materials for decades, they continue to contaminate classrooms in between 13,000 and 26,000 schools nationwide, according to Harvard researchers.
• China’s $450 billion farm plan could determine our fate (Grist):
  China’s choices, not to put too fine a point on it, will determine the fate of the world. If China were to follow the same path as the United States and Europe, by using inefficient fossil fuels to lift its 1.3 billion people to a comfortable standard of living, it could be pumping 30 gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by 2030 – that’s three times as much as the whole world emits now. As the country feeding the largest population in the world, China’s policies on fertilizer use, genetically modified seed research, and agricultural regulations will matter to us all. So where will all that money go?
• Dakota Access: Judges Appear Skeptical Of Freezing Pipeline (E&E News):
  In the latest legal showdown over the Dakota Access pipeline, federal judges seemed skeptical today of American Indian tribes’ arguments for extending a work freeze on a contentious stretch of land in North Dakota.
• Invasive Insects Cause Tens Of Billions In Damage: Study (Bangkok POst):
  Invasive insects cause at least $77 billion (69 billion euros) in damage every year, according to a study released Tuesday that says this figure is ‘grossly underestimated’ because it covers only a fraction of the globe.
• To avoid the worst climate impacts, Obama tells Leo DiCaprio, ‘We’re really in a race against time’ (Washington Post):
  Capping a day-long futurist fair and alternative music fest on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday, President Obama told actor Leonardo DiCaprio and atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe “we’re really in a race against time” to curb the worst affects of climate change.
• Environmental records shattered as climate change ‘plays out before us’ (Guardian UK):
  Temperatures, sea levels and carbon dioxide all hit milestones amid extreme weather in 2015, major international ‘state of the climate’ report finds.

FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page

• NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA).