Here’s a riddle. How many economists does it take to sound the alarm on the need for immediate action to address global climate change?  If you guessed 3,558, you’d be on the money. That’s the total number of American economists, plus four former chairs of the Federal Reserve, plus twenty-seven Nobel Laureates, plus fifteen former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers, plus two former treasury secretaries—all of whom signed onto a statement explaining the rock-solid case for passing legislation to establish a carbon tax and dividends. Some of the most recognizable among the group include Alan Greenspan, George Schultz, Ben Bernanke, Lawrence Summers, Paul Volcker, and, my personal favorite, Janet Yellen. [Read the complete roster here.] Their declaration was published just over a year ago in The Wall Street Journal. Of course, America still isn’t listening. Acknowledging the importance of this overwhelming consensus on the part of the most accomplished American minds in the field of economics, the Climate Leadership Council called this urgent message “the largest public statement of economists in history.”

What Is a Carbon Tax?

Basically, a carbon tax is a fee on the burning of carbon-based fuels—or greenhouse gases—like oil, gas, and coal. A carbon tax represents a method by which the users of carbon fuels pay for the damage caused to the climate by the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A carbon tax, according to economists and scientists, is probably the single most effective tool in the toolbox to eliminate the use of carbon-based fuels. How the tax works is simple. The tax creates a strong monetary disincentive to the continued use of carbon-based fuels as a result of higher costs. These higher costs motivate a switch to clean energy by making non-carbon fuels and energy efficiency more cost competitive.

Has Any Community in the U.S. Passed a Carbon Tax?

Boulder, Colorado, became the first city to pass a voter-approved carbon tax in 2007. Boulder’s carbon tax is based on the number of kilowatt-hours used in the generation of electricity.  According to Boulder officials, the carbon tax has reduced emissions by more than 100,000 tons a year and generated up to $1.8 million in revenue per year at a modest cost to residential and commercial users. The funds are funneled through the city’s Office of Environmental Affairs and pay for implementation of the Boulder Climate Action, which includes rebates on energy-efficient equipment, expansion of bike lanes, and funding for community-based solutions to reduce energy consumption.

Is There Any Action on a Carbon Tax from the Federal Government?

The answer, unfortunately, is not much, even though public calls for federal climate action—including a price on carbon—from private citizens and environmental groups, as well as businesses in the energy, food, and transport sectors, have grown louder. Over the past few years, discussions in Congress about a federal carbon-tax proposal have repeatedly been floated only to fade away. The political will simply isn’t there.

With a Republican president in the White House and a Republican majority in the Senate, discussion of any new tax isn’t going to see the light of day. However, even though the most vociferous climate-change deniers occupy the Republican side of the two chambers of Congress, in 2019 carbon-tax bills have been introduced by both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate. Carbon-tax bills introduced by Senator Christopher Coons (D-DE), Representative Dan Lipinski (D-IL), and Representative Francis Rooney (R-FL) have proposed using the tax-generated revenue for measures as varied as payroll tax cuts, investments in innovation and infrastructure, and carbon dividends (or equal lump-sum rebates to all U.S. citizens, as proposed by the economists’ statement).

No riddle here. From a climate as well as a social-justice and economic perspective, those benefits sound like a win-win if ever there was one.

Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends

Global climate change is a serious problem calling for immediate national action. Guided by sound economic principles, we are united in the following policy recommendations.

1. A carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary. By correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future.
2. A carbon tax should increase every year until emissions reductions goals are met and be revenue neutral to avoid debates over the size of government. A consistently rising carbon price will encourage technological innovation and large-scale infrastructure development. It will also accelerate the diffusion of carbon-efficient goods and services.

III.        A sufficiently robust and gradually rising carbon tax will replace the need for various carbon regulations that are less efficient. Substituting a price signal for cumbersome regulations will promote economic growth and provide the regulatory certainty companies need for long- term investment in clean-energy alternatives.

1. To prevent carbon leakage and to protect U.S. competitiveness, a border carbon adjustment system should be established. This system would enhance the competitiveness of American firms that are more energy-efficient than their global competitors. It would also create an incentive for other nations to adopt similar carbon pricing.
2. To maximize the fairness and political viability of a rising carbon tax, all the revenue should be returned directly to U.S. citizens through equal lump-sum rebates. The majority of American families, including the most vulnerable, will benefit financially by receiving more in “carbon dividends” than they pay in increased energy prices.

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New York State has approximately 2,625 miles of coastline. There are, of course, a myriad of reasons for protecting the state’s coastline. Beyond the coastline’s beauty and its role as an irreplaceable habitat for wildlife and endangered species, there is the indisputable fact that those 2,625 miles of coastline support industries that are vital to New York States’ economy—industries like commercial fishing, tourism, recreation, and shipping that employ more than 345,000 workers and contribute billions to the state’s revenues. It’s no surprise, then, that when Donald Trump signed what he called his “America-First Offshore Energy Strategy” in 2017, the response from New York, as well as other coastal states, was immediate and vehement. By declaring his intention to reverse an Obama-era ban on drilling in Alaska and parts of the Atlantic and his intention to open up previously protected areas of the Outer Continental Shelf to gas and oil exploration, Trump threw down a gauntlet that coastal states could not ignore.

That initial salvo was followed up with the announcement in 2018 that the Interior Department intended to hold forty-seven lease sales for oil and gas drilling between 2019 and 2024 in more than two dozen previously protected areas, nine of which would have been along the Eastern Seaboard. Since that initial signing and the Interior Department’s announcement, every state on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts has declared its opposition to offshore drilling. Legislatures on the East, the West, and the Gulf coasts have crafted various legislative responses to protect their coastal assets. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 200 municipalities, 1,200 local officials, and 40,000 businesses in coastal areas have declared in no uncertain terms their opposition to the Trump administration’s embrace of the oil and gas industries’ reckless pursuit of profits that fail to take into account the environmental costs of oil spills, climate change, and habitat destruction.

This past week, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation—passed with the overwhelming support of the newly elected Democratic majority in the state legislature—prohibiting all oil and gas exploration in coastal waters. In a statement at the signing, Cuomo declared, “This bill says no way are you going to drill off the coast of Long Island and New York, because we must lead the way as an alternative to what this federal government is doing.”

New York’s legislation bans the use of state-owned coastal areas for oil and natural-gas drilling. The legislation also seeks to prevent the Office of General Services as well as the Department of Environmental Conservation from authorizing any leases intended to increase oil or natural gas production in federal waters. Going even further, the legislation prohibits the development of any infrastructure associated with the development or production of oil or natural gas from the coastal waters of New York State.

With this signing, New York State joins California, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon, all of which have enacted their own laws preventing the expansion of federal leasing for oil and gas exploration off their shores. Similar legislation has been introduced in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

On a positive note, the courts have stepped into the fight for preserving America’s coastal waters. On April 25, 2019, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt revealed that the Trump administration’s plans to hold lease sales and expand offshore drilling in federal waters along the East Coast and the Arctic have been suspended indefinitely, following a federal court ruling upholding a ban on drilling in Alaska and parts of the Atlantic put into place during the Obama administration.

Watch the video below, called “Why Trump Is Wrong about Offshore Drilling,” for a brief history of how offshore drilling has been traditionally regulated and an explanation of the dangers of opening up new areas to drilling.

The post New York says no to Trump’s offshore drilling expansion appeared first on Occasional Planet.

While Donald Trump distracts us with bellicose pronouncements and internecine White House wars, his henchmen in regulatory agencies are methodically rolling back decades of progress. Much of the damage is the fulfillment of years of lobbying by industries affected by regulations that benefit consumers, workers, minorities and economically disadvantaged citizens. Some of the erasures reflect the views of hard-line, rightwing ideologues and the “think” tanks who dictate their talking points. Many are happening under the auspices of Trump-installed agency directors who come directly from the industries they are now regulating. And there are many rollbacks that stem from pure vengeance and racial hatred—the drive to obliterate anything enacted by Barack Obama.

Taken together, they are a giant step backward. The effect is like a scene from “Back to the Future,” in which Marty McFly’s image is slowly fading from the family album. It is frightening. It was previously unimaginable. And it represents an existential crisis for the America we thought we knew.

It bears noting that, while Trump’s pronouncements are erratic and often improvised, and while his White House staff appears to be in constant turmoil, there is nothing chaotic about the deregulation orgy taking place in federal agencies. One of Trump’s early executive orders established, within every agency, deregulation teams charged with systematically dismantling rules objectionable to affected industries and lobbying organizations.

The problem with regulations, goes the conservative argument, is that they impede businesses. Yes, they do. They impede corporations and industries from doing whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, and however they want to do it—often to the detriment of consumers, customers, neighborhoods, minorities and the overall environment. While there are always some silly and gratuitous regulations in the mix, most regulations come into existence because people are being harmed. We have come a long way, in this country, from the unfettered days of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the darkness at noon air pollution era, and the times when radioactive and other toxic wastes could be dumped into anyone’s neighborhood, unannounced. Under Trump’s plan, we are looking at a more toxic, more dangerous, more unhealthy, less equitable, less transparent America—but one that will be vastly more profitable for the CEO’s of and shareholders of deregulated industries.

An ugly list of rollbacks

I have been trying to compile a list of regulations that are being reversed under the Trump administration. It’s very hard to keep up. Every week, there is something new and egregious. And the whole process is  fragmented into tiny little pieces–a strategy similar to that used in money laundering–which makes it very hard to track.

Here’s what I have, in no particular order, as of the seventh month of this terrible regime. And these, by the way, are just the ones that have been made public via news reports and the occasional Trump tweet or press-conference blurt. There are undoubtedly many more that we don’t know about, because many of them are being cancelled behind the scenes, without any notification at all.

Environment

One of Trump’s early executive orders aimed at gutting environmental regulations. Under the order, Trump:

-Directed the Environmental Protection Agency to “suspend, revise, or rescind the Clean Power Plan.”

-Mandated that every agency conduct a 180-day review that identifies all regulations and rules that “impede” energy production

-Lifted the moratorium on federal coal leasing.

-Rescinded restrictions on hydraulic fracking

-Eliminated the National Environmental Policy Act, a set of guidelines for agencies to consider climate change into their decision making process.

– Instructed the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to “review and reconsider” the Clean Water Rule that delineates which  of the nation’s waterways should be protected under the federal Clean Water Act. It includes streams, wetlands and other smaller waterways that collectively provide drinking water for an estimated 117 million people — one in three Americans.

More recently, Trump signed an executive order cancelling environmental rules for infrastructure.

-Rolled back standards set by Obama [known as the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard] that required the federal government to account for climate change and sea-level rise when building infrastructure.

Gutting protections for minorities

If I understand this correctly, the Department of Justice is using a regulatory shortcut to speed up the dismantling of civil rights rules. According to Slate,

There are two types of regulations: rules, which are binding regulations with the full force of law, and guidance, which interpret rules and are not binding. Rules must go through a public notice-and-comment period; guidance does not. To revoke a rule, an agency must once again undertake the notice-and-comment process, allowing opponents to intervene, protest, or sue. (Congress can also overturn recently finalized rules.) To revoke guidance, an agency need only issue a memo declaring the guidance to be null.

-Under Obama, the rule was that schools could not discriminate against transgender children. Under Trump, this protection has been downgraded to guidance. As a result, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have been able to withdraw the guidance, leaving trans children unprotected.

-A regulation proscribing anti-LGBTQ discrimination in credit, for instance, was handed down in the form of a letter, rendering it susceptible to sudden withdrawal.

Rules are under assault, too.

-The Department of Health and Human Services is planning to repeal a rule interpreting the Affordable Care Act to prohibit discrimination against trans and gender-nonconforming people.

-The Department of Housing and Urban Development is also laying the groundwork to rescind a rule allowing trans people without a home to stay at the sex-segregated shelter that corresponds to their gender identity.

-The Department of Transportation  suspended a rule that would have required airlines to provide more public information about passenger fees. The Transportation Department has estimated that airlines collected more than $4.1 billion last year in baggage fees.

In an article published in May 2017, the New York Times listed the following regulatory changes:

Labor

Reversed: Required companies seeking significant federal contracts to disclose violations of labor standards.

Environment/energy

Reversed: Limited the way mines dump debris when clearing earth in order to prevent the destruction of area streams. The regulation would have protected an estimated 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests over the next two decades.

Health

Reversed: Barred states from withholding federal family-planning funds from Planned Parenthood affiliates and other health clinics that provide abortions.

Gun control

Reversed: Required the Social Security Administration to turn over to the Department of Justice information on individuals with disabling mental illnesses — about 75,000 a year — to include in a registry of those not allowed to buy a gun.

Gun rights groups and others said it unfairly assumed those with mental illness have a tendency toward violence.

Environment/energy

Reversed: Required oil, gas and mining companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments in exchange for access to drilling or mining rights.

The rule was part of an effort to prevent corruption in foreign countries. The industry argued it would put American oil and gas companies at a competitive disadvantage.

Labor

Reversed: Set federal limits on state-based drug testing of people seeking unemployment insurance benefits.The repeal clears the way for the expansion of drug testing of anyone applying for jobless benefits.

Environment/energy

Reversed: Revised the way the federal government conducts land-use planning on 245 million acres controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.

Critics said the rule would make energy development difficult and give the federal government too much power.

Environment/energy

Reversed: Tightened restrictions on efforts by state officials to allow hunting of certain animals, like wolves and grizzly bears,​ on some Alaskan federal wildlife refuges. Backers of the rule said it prohibited inhumane hunting methods used to reduce predator populations.​ State officials argued that the rule too broadly blocked the hunting of predators, making it harder for Alaska to raise its populations of moose and caribou, which are more coveted by hunters.

Education

Reversed: Told school districts how to rate their schools.

Reversed: Created regulations on collecting data on the quality of teacher preparation programs.

Labor

Reversed: Changed rules by which states may establish I.R.A.-based payroll-deduction programs for private-sector workers whose employers do not offer a retirement plan.

Labor

Reversed: Changed rules by which local governments may establish I.R.A.-based payroll-deduction programs for private-sector workers whose employers do not offer a retirement plan.

Labor

Reversed: Clarified that employers have a continuing obligation to maintain accurate records of serious workplace injuries and illnesses for up to five years.

Telecommunications

Reversed: Required broadband providers to get permission from customers to collect and use their online information.

And that’s not all

-Under its new Trump-appointed director, The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] proposed a draft plan to reverse the Obama-era net neutrality order that gave the commission authority to bar internet companies from blocking, throttling or giving “fast lanes” to websites.

-The FCC also reversed a 2016 decision that limits the number of television stations some broadcasters can buy. This decision is a direct giveaway to Sinclair Communications, a company that is rapidly expanding to offer right-wing-oriented news/propaganda in local markets.

-The Department of Labor is now slow-walking Obama-era regulations that would expand the number of workers eligible for overtime pay.

-On March 27, Trump revoked the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order then-President Barack Obama put in place to ensure that companies with federal contracts comply with 14 labor and civil rights laws.

-The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS], under Trump, has reversed its own 2016 decision and is now cooperating with nursing homes in taking away residents’ right to sue.

– The Department of Labor will “reconsider” a rule requiring employers to track workplace injuries and illnesses.

This is far from a comprehensive list. But it is a clear indicator of the direction we are headed in. One indicator of how far this administration intends to go is its focus not just on big issues, but on the small stuff, too—especially if it originated with Obama. Last week, Trump’s de-regulators announced a micro-change that says a lot: They’re rescinding an Obama-era order limiting the use of bottled water in National Parks.

The post Tracking Trump’s regulatory rollbacks: so far, so bad appeared first on Occasional Planet.

At the annual gathering of The American Geophysical Union in fall of 2016, more than twenty-three thousand earth and space scientists from around the globe met to present their research and to share with one another the latest discoveries, trends, and challenges in their respective fields. The meeting was the largest international gathering of climate and space scientists to date.

The American Geophysical Union is a century-old organization dedicated to the generation and dissemination of scientific knowledge and the free exchange of ideas and information. Its stated mission is “respect for a diversity of ideas and approaches, accountability to the public, and excellence and integrity.”

During the gathering a videographer asked participating climate scientists to articulate a message to then-candidate Trump about the role of science in meeting the challenges of global climate change. Seven scientists came forward to warn the Republican candidate about the folly of dismissing facts, the scientific data, and even the scientists themselves.  Incredibly, one speaker felt compelled to point out what should have been obvious to any individual running for the most powerful office in the world—that “our entire civilization is based on science.”  The range of messages in the video run the gamut from guardedly hopeful to cautious to sounding the alarm about the very real possibility of suppression of scientific data by the then-incoming administration. The scientists featured in the video are male and female. They are young, and they are old. Each, in his or her own way, articulates a sincere and heartfelt call to reason at a time when unreason and willful ignorance were well on their way to sabotaging our national political dialogue.

Below are some highlights. The full video is well worth a listen. You can bet that the admonishments—and wisdom—of those who know the most about the science of climate change will continue to be dismissed by now President Trump and the climate deniers in his administration. For the rest of us, these warnings should serve as a rallying cry.

“A thermometer isn’t Democratic or Republican. It doesn’t give us a different answer depending on how we vote.”

“The challenge is not fighting about the science. The challenge is how are we going to respond to the real threat, the real risks that climate change poses.”

“It [the earth] gives us the air that we breathe. It gives us the food that we eat. It gives us the water we drink. It gives us the place where we live.”

“I truly believe that just about every single person on this planet has the values they already have in their heart to care about climate change. We just have to connect the dots.”

The post “A Message to Trump from Climate Scientists” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Donald Trump’s pick of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State sends a chilling message about the new administration’s commitment to addressing the challenges of a warming planet.

Who is Rex Tillerson? And why should he be asked to answer tough questions about climate change and climate-change denial at his confirmation hearing? As a life-long oil and gas man and an employee of ExxonMobil since 1975 and its CEO since 2006, Tillerson has worked for and then taken the helm of a company that has engaged for four decades in a deliberate, misleading, and well-financed public-relations campaign intended to hide what the company’s own internal climate studies concluded. ExxonMobil has been at the forefront of sowing doubt about the research and causes of climate change. It has been a major player in the effort to discredit the prevailing science and the scientists who engage in climate study. It has fought regulations intended to protect public health and security.

Let’s go back to those four decades of climate-change denial for a moment. The tragic impact of those lost decades of disinformation and suppression of scientific evidence cannot be overstated. During those years, the world lost the opportunity to address the challenges of climate change at an earlier stage by taking aggressive steps to limit fossil fuel consumption and devoting more time and money to research and develop renewable-energy technology that could have made the costs and large-scale conversion to clean energy more affordable. Lost, too, was the opportunity to mitigate, at that earlier stage, some of the most extreme of a warming planet’s destabilizing and destructive effects on the global community.

Tillerson’s public statements and personal history on climate change are mixed at best. After all, it wasn’t until 2007 – one year after Tillerson took the helm at ExxonMobil and forty years after the company had on record the conclusions from its own scientific studies that there was evidence of human-caused climate change—that ExxonMobil first disclosed to its shareholders the threat to future profitability that climate change would certainly pose.

Things might have turned out differently for ExxonMobil—one of America’s largest, wealthiest, and most internationally connected corporations. Beginning in 2004, the Rockefeller Family Fund, a large shareholder in ExxonMobil, tried—and  failed—to convince the company to officially acknowledge what the company’s own scientists had concluded years before, and to disavow climate denial and make the shift toward clean-energy generation. Famously, in 2013 – nine years after the Rockefeller family’s campaign—Tillerson responded coldly to a shareholder resolution calling for emissions reduction by asking, “What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?”

That same year, Tillerson belatedly acknowledged in a speech the reality of a warming climate and the fact that carbon dioxide levels were indeed increasing. In the same speech, however, he went on to defend the oil industry, claiming falsely that no viable alternatives existed and reaffirming ExxonMobil’s disastrous commitment to oil and natural gas production.

Tillerson should face tough congressional hearings on his appointment as secretary of state. If the senate does its job, Tillerson will need to be held accountable for his years at ExxonMobil during the corporation’s campaign to suppress the science on global warming. Because of Tillerson’s complicity in manipulating facts about an issue that will have devastating impacts on the nation’s national security, his appointment should be rejected.

To better prepare for listening to those hearings, here’s a timeline, courtesy of GreenPeace, that highlights the most egregious of the oil giant’s decades’ long campaign of deception and climate denial.

1977

ExxonMobil scientists undertake studies of the human causes of global warming.

1982

An internal ExxonMobil memo reports that “there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered . . . Once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible.”

1988  

ExxonMobil joins a group of fossil-fuel companies and industry front groups under the auspices of the American Petroleum Institute to found the Global Climate Science Communications Plan. $2 million is spent in support of a plan to convince the media and the public of “uncertainties” in climate science and to ensure that the uncertainties would become part of “conventional wisdom.”

1980s–2000

Mobil and then ExxonMobil bankrolls a public-relations weekly advertorial blitz in the New York Times casting doubt on climate-change science.

2001  

ExxonMobil’s New York Times advertorial calls Kyoto Protocol “unrealistic” and “economically damaging” because of “fundamental flaws.”

2001

President George W. Bush adopts the ExxonMobil language nearly verbatim in his March speech on his reasons for rejecting the Kyoto Protocols.

2016  

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey open investigations into whether ExxonMobil may have violated state securities and consumer fraud laws by deceiving consumers and investors about the impact of fossil fuels on the environment and the company’s business.

2016

Massachusetts and New York are joined by California, the District of Columbia, Vermont, Virginia, Maryland, and the Virgin Islands in support of investigations of possible consumer fraud by ExxonMobil.

Another trust-worthy source about climate disinformation is the Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2015 “Climate Deception Dossiers,” an exhaustive investigation into fossil fuel companies and climate denial that includes internal memos testifying to “carefully planned campaigns of deception.” The report concludes:

As the scientific evidence concerning climate change became clear, some of the world’s largest carbon producers – including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and Shell – developed and participated in campaigns to deliberately sow confusion and block policies designed to reduce the heat-trapping emissions that cause global warming.

Fossil fuel company leaders knew (emphasis added) that their products were harmful to people and the planet but still chose to actively deceive the public and deny this harm.

. . . With documents made public as recently as 2014 and 2015, the evidence is clear that a campaign of deception about global warming continues to the present.

The post Rex Tillerson: What does he really think about climate change? Who knows? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You wouldn’t think that it would be controversial for a journalism professor to come to high schools in the Midwest to discuss his reporting on current issues in science. And it wasn’t. Justin Catanoso, director of the journalism program at chair of the Wake Forest University, came to St. Louis the week of April 25. In addition to meeting with students at Washington University, he visited six high schools and one middle school to discuss his research on climate change in Peru. And it was not controversial.

This is Missouri, and contrary to myopic and outright mean memes that have been coming out of the recent session of the state legislature, this is not North Carolina or Florida where state law forbids teachers from using terms like “climate change” or “rising ocean tides.” Yet the issue of climate change is still political and many schools shy away from teaching about it.

Catanoso diplomatically discusses the issues with, as Barack Obama says, “the fierce urgency of now.” He says that we cannot shy away from the challenges and look for a Plan ‘B.’ His reasoning is straightforward: because there is no Plan ‘B.’ If the human species (as well as all others on earth) is to survive, humans need to take affirmative and significant steps to restore the climate to where it was in the 1850s, with only 225 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; not the current level of 400.

He notes in speaking with students that the United States is the only country in the world where climate change is a public issue. Every other country has come to face reality and without equivocation wants to contribute to the solution. This was very apparent at the COP21 conference in Paris that he covered in December 2015. He pointed out to students that the existence of a COP21 conference meant that there were twenty Conferences of the Parties that preceded it, and they had all failed to reach the meaningful consensus and agreement that came in Paris.

The question of why the United States has not followed the recent movement of Australia and Canada from skeptics to “accepters” is difficult to answer. But there is no denying the presence of the elephant in the room: There is one political party in the United States that seems to refuse to accept science, at least so long as the producers, distributors and financers of fossil fuels continue to pad their candidates’ campaigns.

Catanoso is not closed-minded about fossil fuels. He notes that over the past fifteen years, carbon-based fuels have played a major role in allowing three hundred million Chinese citizens to move out of poverty. These fuels propelled us into and through the industrial age. But now the damage that they do to our planet has become of far greater consequence than any economic good that can come from their continued wide-spread use. With extinction as a possible outcome of their continued use, the choice is relatively easy for most human beings.

Thanks to the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which sponsored Catanoso’s trip to St. Louis, Catanoso was able to reason with students at Crossroads College Preparatory School, Hixson Middle School, Lindbergh High School, Maplewood-Richmond Heights High School, Nerinx Hall High School, Parkway Central High School, Parkway West High School and St. Louis University High School about how the actions of humans have taken our planet out of its natural balance.

Regrettably, there are still millions of Americans who deny climate change. Fortunately, the head in the sand is less prominent among young citizens than the more elderly. But young people become old and often adopt the ways of their elders. In the case of recognizing climate change, this is not a wise risk.

We need more Justin Catanosos going to our nation’s schools and dispelling the misinformation that many teachers and parents bring to these schools. Climate change is hardly the only issue in which ignorance is bliss in many schools. Conservatives have blanketed our airwaves and suffocated many of our school districts. Most issues that progressives care about do not lend themselves to short-term solutions; they require generational change. As progressives have historically done in our colleges and universities, they need to make their presence disproportionately known in our elementary and secondary schools. To paraphrase the words attributed to Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in “All the President’s Men”, “Boys, if you screw this up, nothing less than the future of the free world rests in your hands.”

The post Teaching the reality of climate change, one classroom at a time appeared first on Occasional Planet.

What happens when a landfill fire meets a radioactive waste dump?  St. Louis, Missouri, may be the first metropolitan area to find out.

In North St. Louis County, near the St. Louis Airport, and a mile from Pattonville High School, the Westlake Landfill is on fire. It’s not a flaming, above-ground fire, but something more insidious and potentially more dangerous: a smoldering underground fire caused by years of decomposing garbage, the methane gas it produces, and the oxygen that has seeped in.

Close by – some say within 300 feet—is another [previously hidden] burial ground, where high-grade uranium leftovers were dumped during the 1970s.

The smoldering fire is spreading. The boundaries of the radioactively contaminated soil are not clearly delineated. The timing of the merger of the two entities is anybody’s guess. And having never encountered this situation before, no one really knows what the result would be.

A mushroom cloud is not going to happen; and there probably won’t be an explosion. But many speculate that the situation is akin to a slow-motion dirty bomb [without the boom], poised to spread some very nasty stuff into the environment.

Environmentalists say that this situation is unique and unprecedented in the U.S. Neighbors, “radio-activists,” fire officials, EPA regulators, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and Republic Services–which operates the landfill-—agree that something must be done. But no one knows precisely what that something is, or who should be responsible for doing it.

Here’s my [unscientific, unofficial, and possibly factually flawed] understanding of the situation:

How did this happen?

It all started in 1942, when the US decided to try to develop an atomic bomb. A St. Louis chemical company—Mallinckrodt—won the contract to process the uranium needed for the bomb. The source material came from a mine in what was then the Belgian Congo. It was uranium of a radioactive strength unmatched anywhere else. But the enrichment process left tons of highly radioactive waste, and Mallinckrodt had to find a way of getting rid of it. At first, they dumped it downtown, where their main processing plant was. In 1946, Mallinckrodt started dumping it on a 21-acre property just north of the St. Louis Airport. [It’s known as SLAPS.]

In the 1960s, a different company bought the waste ore from the airport site and transported it [sometimes in open trucks] to a nearby storage site. [The Latty Avenue site.]  There was a lot to move: 74,000 tons of Belgian Congo soil, containing approximately 13 tons of uranium; 32,000 tons of Colorado soil containing about 48 tons of uranium; and another 7 tons of uranium from somewhere else.

Finally, in the 1970s, another 47,000 tons of soil mixed with radioactive waste wound up in the nearby West Lake Landfill. At the time, there were no safety regulations for landfills regarding this kind of waste. One activist recently told me that, at the time the landfill operators did ot know that the radioactive waste had been mixed with topsoil. “So, they used those enormous piles of dirt to cover and level out garbage daily,” she said. “Sadly, that radioactive waste now lies nearly on the surface of the landfill, which is why it more easily becomes airborne in the form of dust.”

That toxic stew decomposed and bubbled for years, but almost no one knew that it contained radioactive waste. Then, in 2013, Republic Services reported that an underground area of the landfill was smoldering. That development made some people begin to take notice.

A few years earlier, a group of women who had attended a nearby North County high-school began realizing that many of their classmates—and members of their families– had been diagnosed with various cancers. It seemed like too many of them. They remembered that, as children, many of them had played in nearby Coldwater Creek—a tributary of the Missouri River—which some industrial companies had used as a dumping ground over the years. They also recalled roaming around the open fields and railroad tracks near St. Louis Airport. After looking into it more closely, they were shocked to discover that their neighborhood was ground zero for radioactive waste dumping.

In the early 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency made SLAPS and Latty Ave into Superfund sites. The cleanup at those sites is nearing completion, under the direction of a federal sub-agency called FUSRAP.  [Of course, it’s hard to know when you’re really finished:  The boundaries of the radioactive areas are squishy, because wind, rain and flooding tend to move soil around.]

But Westlake remains a problem. Several groups of activists have been persistent and outspoken in pushing for a resolution to the problems in the area. [Some call themselves “radio-activists.”] But they’re trying to navigate a dizzying matrix of agencies with conflicting jurisdictions and agendas: EPA, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, local politicians, the Bridgeton Fire Department, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to name a few. Some have proven helpful, but many seem to be in denial. [At one community meeting, an EPA official is recorded on video saying, “We have no evidence that the radioactive waste is near the fire.”]

In 2008, EPA proposed sealing off one of the waste areas with a 5-foot cap. Very little happened to that plan, but just this week [April 18, 2016] at another community meeting, EPA revived the idea. It received a chilly reception from  many residents and activists, who have been pushing for years for removal, rather than further burial, of the contaminated waste. Westlake Landfill activists also are leading an  a effort to secure a voluntary buyout of properties within a one-mile radius of the landfill.

Even the “good guys” can be difficult: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control [CDC] has been reluctant to accept the notion that there are cancer clusters in the area. A separate group of activists–“Coldwater Creek – Just the Facts” — is focused on a federal health assessment aimed at determining if there is a link between the elevated cancer rates in the area and radioactive contamination.

In the meantime, most residents of St. Louis City and County are only marginally aware of what’s going on “up there” in the North County area. Even people who now live—or formerly did—near the dump sites may not realize what they may have been exposed to. And when they receive a diagnosis of an unusual cancer, their doctors may say, “This is so rare. You are one in a million.”  The radio-activists beg to differ: “You actually are one of millions,” they counter.

I recently took a tour of “radioactive St. Louis,” guided by a very knowledgeable activist from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. We went to Latty Ave., to SLAPS and to Westlake, where we ran into a “Just Moms” founder who was making her daily rounds of the site. She was taking pictures of the latest efforts to contain the fire, tamp down the stench, and keep a lid on the situation—literally: The whole landfill is covered with a green tarp, over which is vast web of hoses and exhaust pipes, plus valves, and air-quality meters, and surrounded by a very tall chain-link fence. Iconic yellow “radioactive” signs are everywhere. It’s something you really wouldn’t want in your neighborhood.

And it’s scary. What will happen next is not within the realm of accurate prediction, said our guide. We may not even know when whatever is going to happen actually happens. Maybe it already has. And it’s possible that the consequences may not manifest themselves for years.

One thing is certain, though: The world should be watching.

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The fossil-fuel industry is reaping the rewards of its three-quarters of a billion dollar investment to secure a Republican controlled congress. But they weren’t just buying Republicans—in a spirit of bi-partisanship, they bought 37 Democrats.

On January 9, 28 House Democrats voted with 238 Republicans to authorize construction of the controversial Keystone XL oil-sands pipeline. On January 20, nine Democratic senators voted with 53 Republicans to approve Keystone XL:

1. Michael Bennett, Colo.
2. Thomas Carper, Del.
3. Robert Casey, Pa.
4. Joe Donnelly, Ind.
5. Heidi Heitkamp, N.D.
6. Joe Manchin, W. Va.
7. Claire McCaskill, Mo.
8. Jon Tester, Mont.
9. Mark Warner, Va.

A list of the 28 House Democrats who voted for Keystone can be found here.

Corporate money and the Keystone vote

Think Progress reports that Senators voting in favor of the recent Keystone XL bill have received a combined $31 million over their careers from the oil and gas industry, compared to under $2.7 million in career contributions for the Senators who voted against the bill.

In other words, Republican and Democratic senators voting for Keystone XL have received seven times more oil and gas industry money than the 36 Senators who voted against it. Republican and Democratic Representatives who voted in favor of Keystone XL received 8.5 times more oil and gas industry money in the 2014 election cycle, on average, than those voting against the bill.

Because the Keystone pipeline will cause a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and will threaten the land it crosses with toxic spills, scientists and environmentalists have pronounced it too dangerous to build. Yet 37 Democrats, who claim to represent interests of the people, voted for it.

The motivations of Democrats to vote for Keystone XL, I’m sure, are complicated and varied. But the money connection is there.

Democratic betrayal more damaging than Republican

Republicans have always been the party of banks and corporations. We don’t expect them to be interested in the welfare of ordinary people or in promoting democracy. Their blatant efforts to suppress the vote are well-known. Traditionally, Democrats have been the party of the people. We expect them to be interested in our welfare and in promoting democracy. So when Democrats campaign as progressives, then join Republicans in serving the interests of banks and corporations, when they vote “yes” for the Keystone pipeline in return for donations or favors from the fossil-fuel industry, when they mindlessly accept the false narratives generated by corporations to sway the public, they deliver a huge blow to democracy. When Democrats become corporate Democrats, we have no one left in Washington DC to represent us.

The EPA and Obama’s veto

Obama, a long-time friend of the fossil-fuel industry, has enthusiastically promoted “clean coal,” fracking, and offshore drilling. However, he has decided to veto Keystone X—if it is found to adversely affect climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), by directly contradicting the bogus pro-Keystone studies generated by the State Department, has given him cover to do so.

On February 2, the EPA issued a letter on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, in which it advised that, “development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions.”

The EPA found that greenhouse has emissions from the extraction, transport, refining and use of the 830,000 barrels per day of oils sands crude would result in an additional 1.3 to 27.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. To put that in perspective, 27.4 million metric tons per year is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions form 5.7 million passenger vehicles or 7.8 coal-fired power plants.

If Obama vetoes the Keystone Pipeline bill, it is unlikely there will be enough votes in congress to override his veto. No thanks to Senator McCaskill, and other DINOs, we will have dodged a bullet. But, Sen. John Hoeven, [R-ND], sponsor of the Keystone bill, stated that if Obama vetoes it and there aren’t enough votes to override, Republicans could attach approval for the Keystone to other legislation. Unfortunately, this story is not over.

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Today Claire McCaskill did it. She voted with all Senate Republicans and nine Senate Democrats to pass the House’s Keystone XL authorization. Of course, nine Democrats won’t be enough to override a presidential veto, so maybe she was hoping to get some red Missouri love without having to make anyone pay too big a price.

That line of thought might, though, give McCaskill too much credit. Even most Republicans have to know in their secret hearts that as far as jobs go Keystone XL is very small potatoes indeed.

As Steve Benen writes today:

As for the substance, let’s recap our discussion from a few weeks ago, noting just how straightforward the case against Keystone is. At issue is a proposal to build a pipeline to transport oil, extracted from tar sands, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Critics have said the tar-sands process is environmentally hazardous, which is true. They’ve said the project would have no real impact on already low gas prices, which is also true. And they’ve said Keystone would be largely meaningless to the U.S. unemployment rate, which, once again, is completely true.
And on the other side of the aisle, Republicans have an equally straightforward rejoinder: they really, really, really like this project. Why? Because they really, really, really do

And for some reason, McCaskill, the only Democrat I’ve got representing me in Congress, seems to share the GOP infatuation with the pipeline. She seems to really, really, really like it too. Even pertinent reminders of the problems that plague oil pipelines, events like this month’s disastrous spill into Montana’s Yellowstone River, fail to sway her infatuation with the project – and if you think such spills are rare events, take a look at this list of hundreds of such spills in the United States in the last 14 years alone. And no, engineers can’t really make credible promises to do better. As a USGS engineer observed apropos the problem of protecting pipelines routed beneath rivers, “it’s nature […]. Is it going to follow the equation? I don’t know for sure.”

So does this mean that McCaskill, who seems uber-cautious when it comes to politics, is inclined to be reckless when in the throes of fossil-fuel passion? There must be some explanation for McCaskill thowing her constituents under the bus. And don’t let anyone fool you. The answer can’t be jobs. The Keystone impact will be so small that Chuck Todd and some of his fellow NBC news staff members, deride the entire effort as laughably “small ball politics.”

Steve Benen has a persuasive take on why Republicans keep batting that diminishingly small ball back and forth:

Rather, Keystone has become a totem of sorts. Its actual value has been rendered meaningless, replaced with post-policy symbolic value that ignores pesky details like facts and evidence. Indeed, the more Democrats and environmentalists tell Republicans this is a bad idea, the more Republicans convince themselves this is The Most Important Project In The World. It’s ideologically satisfying.

Taking this one step further, my suspicion is that GOP officials find all of these circumstances quite convenient. Republicans don’t have a jobs agenda, or much an economic vision in general, but they have a Keystone bill that those rascally Democrats won’t accept.

And when pressed for an explanation on why congressional Republicans aren’t working on economic development, they immediately turn to their talking point of choice: “Keystone! Keystone! Keystone!”

So that explains why Republicans are doing what they are doing. It’s just another Benghazi in a long list of Benghazis, symbolically loaded tags that come in handy when you’re asked why you and your political allies can’t do anything worthwhile.

But this still leaves us with the question of Senator McCaskill and her Democratic allies. Surely, their goals aren’t to provide cover for GOP ne’er-do-wells. Surely, they can’t think that siding with idiots who are running for cover will provide them with the same type of cover. Haven’t they noticed the President’s spiking approval numbers now that he’s showing a tendency to stand up for a progressive agenda? Isn’t that proof that there are still people out there who reward leaders who can act the part?

[Republished from Show Me Progress]

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Last week, Concerned Health Professionals of New York released a major new compilation – a compendium – of the scientific, medical and media findings demonstrating the risks and harms of fracking (read it online at ConcernedHealthNY.org/Compendium).

Based on the results of hundreds of studies nationwide where fracking already exists, it’s clear that permitting fracking in New York could harm the air, water, health and safety of residents statewide.

In January, for instance, an Associated Press investigation analyzed state records from Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas that documented many cases where fracking activities are linked to water contamination. Such records build on multiple studies from Duke University finding risks of nearby groundwater contamination from fracking and a University of Missouri School of Medicine study documenting dangerous hormone-disrupting chemicals in ground and surface water near fracking sites.

The fracking process also has given rise to concerns about increased air pollution. A Colorado School of Public Health study found air pollutants near fracking sites at levels that can raise risks for cancer, neurological deficits and respiratory problems. It’s noteworthy that the American Lung Association in New York also supports a moratorium on fracking in New York. In Utah, fracking has grown rapidly in the past few years, and the once immaculately clean Uintah Basin now ranks as one of the 25 most-polluted counties in the country. There is a continuing investigation into the cause of elevated rates of stillbirth and infant death in that region.

The significant body of compelling findings is why I recently joined more than 250 medical organizations and health professionals in urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo and acting Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to enact at least a three- to five-year moratorium on fracking in New York to allow time for the results of continuing scientific and medical research to emerge. New Yorkers should not be placed in the crosshairs of these public health threats. We need to prioritize the health of all of our residents. It’s inexcusable to consider a pilot project that brings fracking into any part of our state, putting some of our residents immediately in harm’s way and releasing contaminants that do not stop at municipal boundaries drawn on a map.

The Assembly listened to scientists and medical experts June 16 by overwhelmingly passing a three-year moratorium on fracking in New York. Unfortunately, the state Senate refused to schedule a vote. Ultimately, however, the responsibility rests with Gov. Cuomo, who can – and must – protect New Yorkers by implementing a three- to five-year moratorium.
Though a growing number of studies point to serious potential health risks related to fracking, there is quite a lot we still don’t know. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reports that drilling and fracking clearly pose “inherent environmental and public health risks” and that the full extent of those risks is not yet known. Countless prominent researchers have called for more studies, especially of the cumulative, long-term health impacts.

The gas industry has been secretive with information – limiting disclosure and keeping crucial data out of researchers’ hands. As a result, the pace of scientific research has been impeded. Yet, results of a number of important studies tracking short- and long-term health effects of fracking are due to come out in the next few years.

That is why my colleagues and I think a three- to five-year moratorium – at minimum – is prudent.

Clean water, clean air and a safe home and community are not privileges; they are rights. It’s up to Gov. Cuomo to ensure the health of all New Yorkers and enact a statewide moratorium on fracking.

[Editor’s note: This article first appeared on 8/02/2014 in the Poughkeepsie Journal. It is reposted by permission of the author.]

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