Environmental Newsflash
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Sierra Club Action: Pass the Build Back Better Act! For our climate. For our communities. For a future where we all can thrive.
https://www.sierraclub.org/2021-Fed-Organizing?homepage
Key to Biden’s Climate Agenda Likely to Be Cut Because of Manchin Opposition. The West Virginia Democrat told the White House he is firmly against a clean electricity program that is the muscle behind the president’s plan to battle climate change. Coral Davenport, The New York Times, October 15.
“The most powerful part of President Biden’s climate agenda — a program to rapidly replace the nation’s coal- and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear energy — will likely be dropped from the massive budget bill pending in Congress, according to congressional staffers and lobbyists familiar with the matter.
“Senator Joe Manchin III, the Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia whose vote is crucial to passage of the bill, has told the White House that he strongly opposes the clean electricity program, according to three of those people. As a result, White House staffers are now rewriting the legislation without that climate provision, and are trying to cobble together a mix of other policies that could also cut emissions.”
“Crucial U.N. climate talks next month are likely to fall short of the global target for cutting coal, gas and oil emissions, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry says, after nearly a year of climate diplomacy that helped win deeper cuts from allies but has so far failed to move some of the world’s biggest polluters to act fast enough…
“Scientists warn the damage is irreversible and headed to catastrophic levels absent major cuts in emissions…
“Asked how the administration’s troubles delivering on its own climate promises affect his work rallying climate action abroad, Kerry said, ‘Well, it hurts.’”
Biden Administration Plans Wind Farms Along Nearly the Entire U.S. Coastline: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced that her agency will formally begin the process of identifying federal waters to lease to wind developers by 2025. Coral Davenport, The New York Times, October 13.
“The announcement came months after the Biden administration approved the nation’s first major commercial offshore wind farm off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and began reviewing a dozen other potential offshore wind projects along the East Coast. On the West Coast, the administration has approved opening up two areas off the shores of Central and Northern California for commercial wind power development. Taken together, the actions represent the most forceful push ever by federal government to promote offshore wind development.”
Picturing Our Future: Today’s climate and energy choices shape tomorrow’s shorelines. Climate Central Website, October 12.
Shocking Interactive before-and-after images and videos are linked for a great many cities, many well inland - like DC, Houston, and Philadelphia. Were the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow taking place eighty years from now, participants might be getting around by boat.
“New Climate Central research shows that under the current emissions pathway leading toward 3°C global warming, about 50 major cities around the world will need to mount globally unprecedented defenses or lose most of their populated areas to unremitting sea level rise lasting hundreds of years but set in motion by pollution this century and earlier.”
“We have the opportunity now to change this future. Meeting the most ambitious goals of the Paris Climate Agreement will likely reduce exposure by roughly half, allowing nations to avoid building untested defenses or abandoning many coastal megacities.”
Earth’s Largest Extinction Event Saw Toxic Algal Blooms at CO2 Concentrations Observed Today. Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch, October 8.
Algal bloom on Lake Erie. Image credit NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory via Creative Commons CC PDM 1.0
"'[The Great Dying] seemed to be a very, very, very fast extinction,' Vajda said, and this is evident in the fossil record."
Google launches new features to help users shrink their carbon footprints: There are updates to Search, Maps, Travel, Nest, and more. Justine Calma, The Verge, October 6.
The changes applied to Googling "Climate Change" - but not to YouTube videos, a major source of climate propaganda.
A world burning up and under water must finally act on climate change | Opinion
Reps. Burchett and Fleischmann deserve credit. Now Sens. Blackburn and Hagerty should go big and support the indispensable tool of carbon pricing.
Jan Berry and Mark Reynolds (guest columnists), Knox News, October 5.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby Tennessee State Co-Coordinator Jan Berry and CCL’s executive director, Mark Reynolds, contextualize this year’s climate chaos in the United States and present a political solution: carbon pricing.
“To ensure that the indispensable tool of carbon pricing is included in upcoming legislation, we ask U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty to support a price on carbon as part of the budget reconciliation negotiations. U.S. Reps. Tim Burchett and Chuck Fleischmann have both joined the Conservative Climate Caucus and support action on climate. Burchett introduced the Carbon Capture Improvement Act, H.R. 3861, while Fleischmann is a strong proponent of energy efficiency and nuclear power.”
“Local environmental advocates want to make sure Memphis Light, Gas and Water is considering the potentially existential threat of climate change while the city-owned utility is bidding out its power supply.”
“The Chickasaw branch of the Sierra Club wrote MLGW leadership and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland a letter that raises issues with a key piece of Memphis' planned electricity strategy — natural gas.”
“If Memphis were to leave the Tennessee Valley Authority and be on its own for its electricity supply, MLGW would rely on what could be several natural gas plants for much of the city's power and much of the reliability. MLGW is also seeking bids on renewable energy and battery storage. That planned reliance on natural gas is not what the Sierra Club would like to see.”
Nobel Prize in physics awarded to scientists whose work warned the world of climate change. Rob Picheta and Katie Hunt, CNN, October 5.
“The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to scientists Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi, whose groundbreaking work over the past 60 years predicted climate change and decoded complex physical systems. Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, were jointly honored for "the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming," according to the news release from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Both men carried out pioneering work in the 1960s and 1970s that sounded an early alarm on human-made climate change.”
Biden officials finalize a rule making it harder to kill birds, reversing Trump. The move restores protections under the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which imposes penalties for unintentionally causing bird deaths through drilling, construction and other activities. Maxine Joselow, Washington Post, September 29.
Migrating birds. Image © Ron Shrieves.
“The Biden administration finalized a rule Wednesday revoking a Trump administration policy that eased penalties for killing birds, restoring federal protections that had been in place for a century.”
“The Trump administration’s reinterpretation of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act ranked as one of its most contentious wildlife policies. It relaxed legal penalties for energy companies, construction firms and land developers that unintentionally killed birds through activities such as construction and oil drilling.”
“The new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule would restore protections under the bedrock environmental law, which prohibits the “take” of migratory bird species — regulatory-speak for hunting, killing, capturing, selling or otherwise hurting them. Under President Donald Trump, officials had sought to exclude accidental deaths from the “take” definition, a move backed by the oil and gas industry.”
John Stewart. Image credit Todd Waterman.
John Stewart in 2019 established the Kingston Worker Assistance Fund through the East Tennessee Foundation, which pays for medical screening for any Kingston coal ash cleanup worker at UT Hospital (https://etf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create?funit_id=3049). The article includes a video interview with Nashville Tennessean Opinion Editor David Playas.
“Under this program, utilities would need to increase their renewable energy capacity by 4% each year to receive Department of Energy grants, which would be used on customer-focused programs like bill assistance, energy efficiency and worker retention. Otherwise, utilities would have to submit a payment — $40 for each megawatt-hour that the utility falls short of the 4% target.”
“This would force utilities to replace fossil fuel capacity with renewable energy, which would deliver immediate and substantial health benefits due to lower emissions of fine particulate matter and ozone pollution.”
Read about other events in Tennessee in our Chapter e-newsletters.
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Snow on Frozen Head Mountain. Image credit Michael Hodge CC BY 2.0
