
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Biden pushes for infrastructure resilience following Hurricane Ida's devastation; Toxic chemicals and sewage left swirling in storm's wake; Tropical Storm Mindy forms and hits Florida in mere hours; PLUS: A new milestone --- the world has finally stopped using leaded gasoline... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Biden administration moves to protect key Alaska watershed; Overlapping Disasters Expose Harsh Climate Reality: The U.S. Is Not Ready; Joe Manchin’s Dirty Empire; Climate Change Is Forcing Animals to Quickly 'Shape-Shift,' Study Suggests; How one foil-wrapped home survived the Caldor Fire as everything around it burned... PLUS: World’s biggest machine capturing carbon from air turned on in Iceland... and much, MUCH more! ...
STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...
- League of Conservation Voters pressures Congress to pass climate policies:
- LCV to Congress: Endorsements only considered for supporters of climate, reconciliation (League of Conservation Voters):
LCV Action Fund, will only consider endorsements for members of Congress in the 2022 election cycle or their next election who support the necessary provisions and a final reconciliation package that enable the US to cut its carbon pollution in half by 2030. This has only been done one other time in LCV history and speaks to the once in a generation opportunity before Congress right now for historic progress on climate, clean energy, justice, and jobs. - Power Up: Leading climate group says it won't support Democrats who don't support budget bill (Washington Post/MSN)
- Tropical Storm Mindy forms, landfalls in just hours:
- Mindy weakens after making landfall in Florida as a tropical storm (NBC News)
- Climate change is causing more rapid intensification of Atlantic hurricanes (Yale Climate Connections, 8/ 27/2020):
Rapidly intensifying storms like Hurricanes Laura, Michael, and Harvey are dangerous because they can catch forecasters and the public off guard. - Supertyphoon Chanthu rapidly intensifies into 2nd super typhoon of 2021 (Newsbreak)
- How Climate, ‘Rapid Intensification’ Revved Up Hurricane Ida (Washington Post)
- Hurricane Ida's long trail of disaster:
- VIDEO: Ida’s Toxic Remains (Climate Crocks)
- Hurricane Ida death toll jumps to 82 (CBS News)
- What a hurricane means when you live in Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' (CNN)
- Louisiana Shell refinery left spewing chemicals after Hurricane Ida (Guardian UK)
- Why Hurricane Ida crippled the New Orleans power grid (Reuters)
- New Orleans Levees Passed Hurricane Ida's Test, But Some Suburbs Flooded (NPR)
- Hurricane Ida took down more power poles in 2 states than Katrina, Ike, Delta and Zeta combined, power company says (CNN)
- 56 Percent of New Orleans Gas Stations Without Gas After Hurricane Ida (Newsweek/MSN)
- More than 300,000 Entergy customers still without power after Ida; some parts of system are 'truly a rebuild' (Utility Dive)
- Reports of Hurricane Ida oil, chemical spills escalate in Louisiana waters (NOLA)
- Divers Point To A Broken Pipeline As The Source Of The Gulf Oil Spill (NPR)
- Gulf Oil Spill Shows Risk From 18,000 Miles of Abandoned Pipe (Bloomberg):
“BSEE has allowed the offshore oil and gas industry to leave 97% of pipelines on the sea floor when they’re no longer in use,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans program litigation director with the Center for Biological Diversity. - President Biden links climate change to Ida's devastation, pushes infrastructure jobs bills:
- VIDEO: Joe Biden New York Hurricane Ida Press Conference Transcript (Rev.com)
- Biden surveys Ida storm damage in New Jersey, New York — warns of ‘code red’ moment on climate change (Washington Post):
Biden, in his second Ida-related visit in less than a week, used his trip to press for robust action to combat climate change and focus attention on his expansive domestic infrastructure agenda in Congress. Predicting that natural disasters will continue to occur with "more frequency and ferocity," Biden said the "nation and the world are in peril" and implored passage of his "Build Back Better" plan, which will be drafted on Capitol Hill this month and is expected to include funding to deal with the warming planet. - Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer (Washington Post):
Climate change has turbocharged severe storms, fires, hurricanes, coastal storms and floods — threatening millions. - Calling ‘Code Red’ on Climate, Biden Pushes for Infrastructure Plan (NY Times)
- Manchin calls for "strategic pause" on $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill (CBS/Yahoo News)
- DOE study shows how solar could transform electric grid:
- Biden officials trumpet how solar can provide nearly half of the nation’s electricity by 2050 (Washington Post):
The new Energy Department analysis shows how the United States can scale up production of solar panels, which now provide 3 percent of the nation’s electricity, to 45 percent over the next three decades. It would entail the United States doubling its installed solar power every year for the next four years, compared with 2020, and then doubling it again by 2030. - DOE releases blueprint for massive solar energy expansion in the United States (Solar Off-Grid):
The study shows that by 2035, solar energy has the potential to power 40% of the nation’s electricity, drive deep decarbonization of the grid, and employ as much as 1.5 million people — without raising electricity prices. - Solar could power 40 percent of US electricity by 2035, federal (AP)
- Solar Could Be the Keystone of Biden’s Decarbonization Plans (Treehugger)
- World finally stops selling leaded gasoline:
- AUDIO: The World Has Finally Stopped Using Leaded Gasoline. Algeria Used The Last Stockpile (NPR):
At the time, it was well known that lead was a poison, and there was concern over the risk to workers exposed to the dangerous additive. But researchers working for automakers, oil companies and chemical giants said that the general public would not be harmed by low levels of exposure through leaded gasoline. That turned out to be disastrously false. - End of leaded fuel use a ‘milestone for multilateralism’ (UN News)
- Leaded Gasoline Use in Vehicles Has Now Officially Ended Worldwide (Smithsonian Magazine)
- Finally, the end of leaded gas. The last country in the world to sell it: Algeria. (National Geographic/MSN)
'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...
For a comprehensive roundup of daily environmental news you can trust, see the Society of Environmental Journalists' Daily Headlines page
- Biden administration moves to protect key Alaska watershed (Reuters)
- Overlapping Disasters Expose Harsh Climate Reality: The U.S. Is Not Ready (NY Times)
- Joe Manchin’s Dirty Empire: The West Virginia Senator Reaps Big Financial Rewards From a Network of Coal Companies With Grim Records of Pollution, Safety Violations, and Death (The Intercept)
- Climate Change Is Forcing Animals to Quickly 'Shape-Shift,' Study Suggests (Vice)
- Heat Pumps Could Be the Money-Saving, Job-Creating Climate Solution We Need (Earther),/li>
- How one foil-wrapped home survived the Caldor Fire as everything around it burned (SF Chronicle)
- World’s biggest machine capturing carbon from air turned on in Iceland (Guardian UK)
- Will a Summer of Climate Crises Lead to Climate Action? It’s Not Looking Good (Inside Climate News)
- Colorado co-op sues Xcel Energy over cost of wholesale electricity
(Colorado Sun) - Low-income people were more likely to be denied federal loans after Hurricane Harvey (Yale Climate Communications)
- As DOE ramps up Hydrogen Shot initiative, debate about means of production begins (Utility Dive)
- Electric cars: What will happen to all the dead batteries? (BBC)
- Climate Fund Choices for Investors Are Multiplying (Bloomberg/Yahoo)
- How climate change could undo 50 years of public health gains (Grist)
- Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration (Pro Publica)
- Exxon's Snake Oil: 100 years of deception (Columbia Journalism Review)
- What Does '12 Years to Act on Climate Change' (Now 9 Years) Really Mean? (Inside Climate News)
- VIDEO: A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (The Intercept)
- What genuine, no-bullshit ambition on climate change would look like: How to hit the most stringent targets, with no loopholes. (David Roberts, Vox)
- A Global Shift To Sustainability Would Save Us $26 Trillion (Vox)
- Project Drawdown: 100 Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (Drawdown.org)
- An Optimist's Guide to Solving Climate Change and Saving the World (Vice)
- The great nutrient collapse: The atmosphere is literally changing the food we eat, for the worse. And almost nobody is paying attention. (Politico)
- The world's bleak climate situation, in 3 charts: We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there. (Vox)
- The Climate Risks We Face (NY Times):
To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate - so every reduction in emissions helps. - The Uninhabitable Earth: When will climate change make earth too hot for humans? (New York Magazine):
Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak - sooner than you think. - A beginner's guide to the debate over 100% renewable energy (Vox):
Clean-energy enthusiasts frequently claim that we can go bigger, that it's possible for the whole world to run on renewables - we merely lack the "political will." So, is it true? Do we know how get to an all-renewables system? Not yet. Not really.