text:
Even though public opinion has turned against fracking, and even though low natural gas prices have slowed the surge in new drilling, researchers continue to find evidence of the negative impact that unconventional drilling has on the local environment. The academics from the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions showed that spills from actual fracking operations — the only type of spill that's currently recorded by regulators — are only part of the problem:
Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and North Dakota saw more than 6,600 spills from fracking wells—or more than one spill for every five wells?—?from 2005 to 2014, according to a study released Wednesday by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
The results suggest that the oil and gas industry needs to have stronger, more consistent reporting requirements for spills, which can include oil, chemical-laden water, and other substances, researchers said.
"As this form of energy production increases, state efforts to reduce spill risk could benefit from making data more uniform and accessible to better provide stakeholders with important information on where to target efforts for locating and preventing future spills," said lead author Lauren Patterson.
The researchers looked closely at every phase of the process:
"Understanding spills at all stages of well development is important because preparing for hydraulic fracturing requires the transport of more materials to and from well sites and storage of these materials on site," Patterson said. "Investigating all stages helps to shed further light on the spills that can occur at all types of wells?—?not just unconventional ones."
The researchers also found that newly drilled wells were more likely to have a spill. The first three years of a well's life, when it is most active, were the most problematic.
In addition, between 26 percent (Colorado) and 53 percent (North Dakota) of all spills were from wells that spilled multiple times.
"I think the most compelling result from the study is that many of the spills are caused by problems that could be relatively easily fixed," said Hannah Wiseman, another author on the report and a professor at Florida State University College of Law. "A lot of the spills came from equipment like flowlines."
From Day One, many environmentalists and activists have argued the if fracking is to occur — and allow utilities and others to replace the dirtiest fuels, like coal, with somewhat cleaner natural gas — then such operations should be very tightly regulated. A decade later, nothing of that sort has happened. And in recent years, the surge in clean energy has raised questions about whether widespread unconventional drilling is needed at all. More and more states should follow the lead of New York and Maryland (and possibly Florida) and ban fracking altogether. This report is one more powerful piece of ammunition to back that up.
Read more about the Nicholas Institute report from ThinkProgress: https://thinkprogress.org/6600-spills-fracking-four-states-92df12858f6e#.zzwz752ln
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
This week, amid reports that radiation levels inside the damaged areas have spiked to the highest levels since the 2011 accident, the Japanese authorities sent a robot into one of the damaged reactors to see what is happening inside, since conditions remain way too unsafe for humans. What the expedition discovered was alarming:
The radiation levels in Fukushima's unit two reactor are so high they could kill a human in two minutes, according to data collected by a robot.
Tokyo Electric Power, the company which operates the nuclear plant in Fukushima, carried out a robotic survey of the area around the core that melted six years ago, following the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the nuclear accident.
But the scorpion robot Sasori got stuck inside the reactor after its crawling functions failed while climbing over highly radioactive debris and had to be abandoned inside the reactor.
It recorded radiation measures in the area of 210 sieverts per hour, which are lethal enough to kill a human within two minutes.
This is not the first time a robot has become inoperable after entering the reactor.
During a previous survey, another robot designed to clean the debris for Sasori's passage had to return halfway through when two of its cameras failed after being exposed for two hours to radiation and reaching its maximum tolerance of 1,000 sievert. Such an exposure to radiation can kill a human within seconds.
Despite the dangerously high levels of radiation, company officials said it was not leaking outside the reactor.
It's hard to overstate how bleak this latest news out of Fukushima is. Under the most optimistic scenario, TEPCO and its contractors wouldn't even begin serious cleanup operations that would remove the radioactive material until 2021. That's four long years from now (indeed, after Donald Trump's current term as U.S. president is over, to give you some idea) or, framed another way, an entire decade after the meltdown occurred. But given the difficulties in simply sending a robot into the damaged reactors — and the impossibility of sending human workers for some time, if ever — it's difficult to imagine that the 2021 target will even be met. Meanwhile, the once-thriving region of northern Japan surrounding the plant remains a kind of dead zone, with everyday people unable to return to their family homes.
Why keep re-visiting the Fukushima saga, when there are so few signs of improvement in a grim situation that never seems to change? Because the story has great relevance for the future of nuclear power around the United States and around the world. Just a few short years ago, the American nuclear industry seemed poised for a revival, thanks in part to concerns about global warming and burning fossil fuels. Today, that rebirth is not happening for a variety of reasons, including soaring costs as well as the surging use of alternative energy. But Fukushima may have been the tipping point. Nearly six years after the catastrophe, the Japanese site remains a monument to the folly of humankind's faith in controlling the power of the atom.
Read more about the recent robot probe of Fukushima from the Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/radiation-fukushima-nuclear-plant-high-enough-kill-human-two-minutes-a7587646.html
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
In fact, five years ago things got so bad — punctuated by problems at ExxonMobil's giant refinery near Baton Rouge, where air pollution emergencies went unpunished while residents went unwarned of the possible consequences of breathing the air — that state environmental groups like the Louisiana Bucket Brigade pleaded with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to come in and take over the state Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ. That didn't happen; however, in 2015 voters did hand over the power of state government from former Gov. Bobby Jindal, a full-fledged tool of Big Oil, to a Democrat, John Bel Edwards, who has promised a balanced approach on environmental issues.
But real change takes time. A recent incident reported this weekend in the Advocate shows how far environmental protection in Louisiana still needs to go:
A company's neglect to report a spill has allowed up to 18,480 gallons of oil to stagnate uncleaned in the wetlands of Iberville Parish for at least six months, regulators said Wednesday.
An Office of Conservation inspector noticed the crude oil leak at a Metairie Energy site during a routine inspection on Aug. 29, said Department of Natural Resources spokesman Patrick Courreges.
The next month, the agency sent a formal order to clean the site. However, the work was never done properly, and Metairie Energy did not notify other regulatory agencies as required, representatives of the Department of Environmental Quality and Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator's Office said.
As a result, those groups did not follow-up with the clean-up efforts and DEQ only noticed the effects of the spill in January, said State Police Maj. Doug Cain.
"It was still pretty much a mess when we eventually got there," said DEQ spokesman Greg Langley.
The company had made some attempts to clean the oil with detergents but did not follow generally-accepted practices, he continued.
Company officials did not return a call for comment.
The lack of communication between the various state agencies — especially the DEQ and the Department of Natural Resources, or DNR — is striking. As the agencies weren't talking to each other and while the company was shirking its own responsibility to the local community, a 10-acre wetland — Louisiana's main buffers against tropical storms — was coated in this leaked oil. As the Advocate notes, local law enforcement only learned of the spill when state conservation officers began firing noise cannons in an effort to scare wildlife away from the gooey mess.
This story comes out at the same time that state officials are considering some major new oil and gas projects — most notably the massive Bayou Bridge Pipeline, which is generating considerable opposition. Critics have said that Louisiana has way too many oil and gas spills and that the state has done an inadequate job in policing the industry to guarantee these new projects will be safe. This incident only serves to prove the critics are right.
Find out more about the Iberville Parish oil spill from the Advocate: http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/environment/article_28ccf1ac-f3d6-11e6-82a1-1f6f5b44c091.html
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
But in the last few years, thanks to rising sea levels, which in turn have been largely caused by global warming, a number of Atlantic Ocean communities are finding flooding has become much more frequent, a routine occurrence. In fact, some towns say it now doesn't take much more than a full moon and an unusually high tide for major roadways and homes near the waterfront to flood. Over the next generation, researchers have found, these types of flooding events are likely to occur as much as several times a week in some locales:
The lawns of homes purchased this year in vast swaths of coastal America could regularly be underwater before the mortgage has even been paid off, with new research showing high tide flooding could become nearly incessant in places within 30 years.
Such floods could occur several times a week on average by 2045 along the mid-Atlantic coastline, where seas have been rising faster than nearly anywhere else, and where lands are sagging under the weight of geological changes.
Washington and Annapolis, Md. could see more than 120 high tide floods every year by 2045, or one flood every three days, according to the study, published last week in the journal PLOS ONE. That's up from once-a-month flooding in mid-Atlantic regions now, which blocks roads and damages homes.
"The flooding would generally cluster around the new and full moons," said Erika Spanger-Siegfried, a Union of Concerned Scientists analysts who helped produce the new study. "Many tide cycles in a row would bring flooding, this would peter out, and would then be followed by a string of tides without flooding."
The report from the award-winning Climate Central website look at the impact on one Atlantic community in the state of Delaware:
"This is not something that we can address alone," said Theodore Becker, mayor of Lewes, Del., a town of a few thousand residents that swells with summertime visitors.
The new analysis showed high tides could bring floods to Lewes every second day on average by 2045 — a risk that local and state leaders are toiling to reduce.
"We engage in at least two programs to educate people about what they can do to prepare themselves," Becker said. "We have a very engaged community. They get it."
To reduce future risks and impacts from current flooding, Lewes lawmakers recently adopted new rules for building and renovating homes in flood-prone regions. The city is also seeking funding from the state to elevate roads that frequently flood. It protects and enhances sand dunes, which can buffer floods.
Increasingly, we've seen active officials on the local level taking the lead in aggressive action to fight the effects of global warming. That's smart — to both boost community engagement, and because leaders on the ground often know what's best for their own hometowns. But let's not forget that the federal government has been abdicating its responsibility in this area. When it comes to climate change, the other half of the job is tackling pollution from fossil fuels so that we can slow the rise of sea levels in the first place — and that's a task that only Washington and the world's other industrial powers can handle.
Read more about the rise in Atlantic Ocean coastal flooding from Climate Central: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/coastal-cities-flood-three-times-a-week-2045-21153
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
Since taking office on Jan. 20, Trump has done exactly that; he's signed executive orders aimed at restarting both the Dakota project and Keystone XL pipeline that President Obama sought to shut down last year, and he's ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to remove any remaining protesters off federal land. It's a crushing blow for those who believe that the pipelines ratify America's addiction to fossil fuels at a moment when the threat from global warming is already upon us. And yet — even with the president and the Congress now aligned in favor of pipeline expansion — there are still avenues for protesters to make their presence felt. And the best place to hit the pipeline builders is right in the pocketbook:
In a win for Standing Rock, Seattle just moved to dump Wells Fargo. A Seattle City Council committee voted 8-0 to divest from the bank, which currently manages $3 billion of the city's money and is a major funder of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. Hundreds of demonstratorsswarmed outside City Hall before the Wednesday morning hearing and erupted in cheers upon learning the outcome.
The bill, which will go to a vote by the full council on Monday, calls for Seattle to find a more socially responsible bank and prohibits the city from investing in Wells Fargo over the next three years. Wells Fargo holds $120 million in a $2.5 billion credit agreement directly financing the construction of the pipeline. If the bill passes, Seattle will be the first major city to divest over Dakota Access.
On Tuesday, the acting secretary of the Army told two members of Congress that he has ordered approval of a final easement necessary to complete construction of the pipeline.
But the anti-pipeline fight continues on multiple fronts. In cities like Seattle, activists aim to apply financial pressure to Dakota Access' biggest investors. In North Dakota, #NoDAPL organizer LaDonna Brave Bull Allard asked water protectors and their allies to return — seemingly contradicting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's request to clear the resistance camps by Jan. 30.
Of course, it's only a first step — but as protests against the Dakota Access pipeline increase around the country, one hopes that more cities and states will divest from the financial backers of this ill-advised project. Since the protests began in earnest last summer, the pipeline opponents have been highly creative in finding ways to win support and — so far — to keep the project from getting completed. Despite a difficult situation in Washington, let's hope they find new ways to demonstrate resistance to this terrible project for America's environment.
Read more about Seattle decision to divest in Wells Fargo Bank from Grist: http://grist.org/briefly/in-a-win-for-standing-rock-seattle-just-moved-to-dump-wells-fargo/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
Last year, environmentalists hailed a deal by California state officials to speed up the decommissioning of that state's Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, whose coastal location not far from the San Andreas Fault raised issues similar to the catastrophe at Fukushima. Earlier this month in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a similar plan to accelerate the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear plant, which has been plagued by safety issues and which is just 30 miles north of New York City. But it's important to note that these agreements took place in states with relatively progressive governors and a history of strong environmental activism. In my own region of the Southeast, which is home to a disproportionately large collection of nuclear plants, the nuclear industry is still going strong — with negative consequences for ratepayers, not too mention the significant safety risks:
While nuclear power operators are struggling with political challenges or to remain competitive in deregulated markets in other parts of the county, many of the monopoly utilities in the Southeast are adding capacity, often with willing support from lawmakers and regulators.
The single biggest differentiator of nuclear's future in the U.S. is whether utilities are protected from competition, as most are in the Southeast.
Taken together, there are 39 reactors operating across 10 Southeast states. Along with extensions granted to their original operating licenses, most of these reactors are poised to operate well into the second half of this century. Add to that the reactors that are under construction, two each in Georgia and South Carolina and projected to begin generating electricity by 2020.
Coming on the heels of the long-awaited startup of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)'s Watts Bar 2 reactor in Tennessee in October and federal regulators' commencing this month a siting assessment for what would be one of the nation's first new small modular reactors, also in Tennessee, professionals say the industry's future hasn't looked this bright for decades – at least in the Southeast. There is even a development company that paid the TVA $111 million to try to resurrect its never-completed dual-reactor Bellefonte nuclear plant in Alabama.
As the story from Southeast Energy News notes, the big difference in region is state regulators' willingness to pass the exorbitant costs of nuclear power down to consumers:
Sara Barczak, the High Risk Energy Choices Program Director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, pointed to a construction-work-in-progress (CWIP) law in most states, or something very similar to it, that backstops utilities on rising costs. "Unfortunately we haven't seen any of the states with reactors under construction such as Georgia and South Carolina defer these costs over to shareholders," Barczak said. "Until utility ratepayers feel the pain, these utilities are not going to change their behavior."
Unfortunately, this is the result of public complacency and the conservative, pro-utility bent of Southern state governments. It's a guaranteed loser for electric customers — and that's assuming that these plants continue to operate without a major accident into the 2020s and, in some cases, well beyond. Even worse, the over-reliance on nukes will delay the Southeast's embrace of alternative clean energy. It's more proof that the fight against nuclear power still has a long way to go.
Find out more about nuclear power issues in the region from Southeast Energy News: http://southeastenergynews.com/2017/01/26/at-least-in-the-southeast-the-future-of-nuclear-is-brightening/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
But President Trump insists that pipelines are the best pathway to U.S. energy independence. At the signing ceremony earlier today, Trump told reporters: "We'll see if we can get that pipeline built. A lot of jobs." He also said he'd push to renegotiate contracts to ensure that the pipelines are built with American steel. Needless to say, environmentalists and tribal groups are seeking to prevent the work from re-starting — either through legal action or through protests. Meanwhile, call it ironic but a major pipeline in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan — also passing through indigenous lands — offered up a reminder of what's really at stake:
A pipeline in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan has leaked 200,000 liters (52,834 gallons) of oil in an aboriginal community, the provincial government said on Monday.
The government was notified late in the afternoon on Friday, and 170,000 liters have since been recovered, said Doug McKnight, assistant deputy minister in the Ministry of the Economy, which regulates pipelines in Saskatchewan.
Oil pipelines are viewed by the oil-rich provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan as a critical lifeline to move crude to the coast, but they have drawn fierce opposition from environmental and indigenous groups. The spill came seven months after another major incident in Saskatchewan, in which a Husky Energy Inc pipeline leaked 225,000 liters into a major river and cut off the drinking water supply for two cities.
Like many pipeline spills, this one went on for a while before the environmental damage was detected:
She said an area resident who had smelled the scent of oil for a week located the spill and alerted her on Friday. The chief said there are no homes near the spill but it is about 400 meters (1,320 feet) from the local cemetery." We have got to make sure that Tundra has done everything that they can to get our land back to the way it was. That can take years," she said. "They have assured me that they follow up and they don't leave … until we are satisfied."
This is all so painfully familiar. As oil and natural-gas production has increased in North America, the energy companies and their defenders insist that this is the safest and most modern way to transport fossil fuel. The reality has been hundreds of spills — in streams and into major American rivers such as the Kalamazoo and the Yellowstone, on farm fields and into suburban-style subdivisions — and a complete lack of accountability. Now, the new president's push for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access projects has raised the stakes dramatically. Given the tangled history of these two project, the only certainty is that this fight is far from over.
Read more about the major pipeline spill in Saskatchewan from CNBC: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/24/canada-oil-pipeline-spills-200000-liters-on-aboriginal-land.html
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
That's why wetlands restoration has finally become a priority for state officials. One side effect of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe has been that Louisiana is receiving a massive payment — at least $6.8 billion — in settlements and fines from BP that can be applied to environmental projects, including restoration. In addition, with the election of a Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, in 2015, the state now has a governor who supports a plan to sue dozens of oil and gas companies to pay for wetlands damage caused by energy exploration — an effort that could also reap billions of dollars. With help from these monies and federal aid, Louisiana is hopeful that it can spend as much as $50 billion in the upcoming years, in order to bring back hundreds of square miles of these critical marshlands.
So what's the bad news? It seems that even the massive sum of $50 billion won't be enough — not enough to bring back all of the wetlands that have been destroyed in the fossil fuel era, and not enough when one considers the additional pressure of rising oceans from climate change. That was spelled out by a top state official who recently updated lawmakers on Louisiana's coastal master plan:
BATON ROUGE — Bren Haase, chief of planning and research, painted a bleak future for Louisiana's coast during the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority board meeting Wednesday should no counter-actions be taken by the legislative and executive branches. He presented a draft of the 2017 coastal master plan that calls for $50 billion worth of projects aimed at flood risk reduction and minimizing land loss.
The draft underscored Louisiana's erosion loses from 1932 to 2010: 1,800 square miles of land. "As much as we would like to have the coast that we had in 1932, there's no question we can't get there," Haase said. "We're never going to be able to restore it to that level."
The draft includes scenarios for flood damage and land loss based on high, medium and low estimates using different levels for environmental drivers. For example, the medium scenario is based on less than historic precipitation, a sea level rise of slightly more than 2 feet and a 12.5 percent increase in average storm intensity, among other factors.
Haase said the low scenario for sea level rise, almost 1 1/2 feet, is similar to the high estimate in the 2012 master plan. Under the 2017 medium scenario, the state could lose 2,254 square miles of land over the next 50 years without action.
The draft shows that with restoration projects outlined in the master plan, 802 square miles of land would be built or maintained under the medium scenario. Haase said the plan was developed using a $50 billion ceiling. He said $150 billion is preferred but is likely unrealistic in the state's precarious fiscal situation.
One thing is very clear from Haase's presentation: Taking no action at all — which would leave a healthy chunk of southern Louisiana under water — is not an option. That said, it's hard to know whether Louisiana will have either the fiscal wherewithal or the legislative gumption to see this plan through. There's no doubt that help on the national level, as well as globally, to fight global warming will be critical. We may never get back to where we were a century ago. But we must hold on to what we have left.
Read more about Louisiana's plan for saving its wetlands from NOLA.com: http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2017/01/louisiana_will_never_be_able_t.html
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
It seems clear that a corner has been turned. A growing number of Americans are coming to believe that the risks of a catastrophic oil or gas spill, or an explosion, from a pipeline running through their community simply isn't worth it. This weekend, the pipeline protest movement sprouted in Tampa. Florida:
The clash over the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota — and the success opponents have had temporarily blocking it — has inspired a Florida group opposed to a controversial new pipeline cutting through North Florida. They're planning to hold a major protest this weekend.
Construction has already begun on the $3.2 billion Sabal Trail Pipeline, a 515-mile conduit for natural gas that when completed will snake through Alabama, Georgia and Florida. At 268 miles, the Florida section is the longest, and will involve drilling beneath the state's most famous river, the Suwannee.
The protest, which formally begins with a sit-in on Saturday, was scheduled for this weekend because that's when the drilling under the Suwannee is supposed to begin, said Panagioti Tsolkas, former editor of the Earth First! Journal and an organizer of the Sabal Trail Resistance group. The fact that it's also the start of the weekend celebrating civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a bit of serendipity, he said.
Their goals, according to their Facebook group, is "putting a wrench into the gears of the pipeline machine" with a mass sit-in.
Just as in North Dakota, the Sabal Trail Pipeline fight is sparking confrontation between protesters and the authorities:
Among those arrested already: St. Petersburg resident Katherine "K.C." Cavanaugh, 33, who has hiked — and sometimes danced — along 250 miles of the pipeline's Florida route. When asked why she danced, she said "I wanted to give back to the Earth."
But she said she was neither hiking nor dancing when she was arrested last month in Gilchrist County.
Cavanaugh was helping escort some reporters along a public road near the construction site to take photos when she said a deputy ordered her to stop and hand over her driver's license. When she asked why, she said she was again told to hand over the license. A third try asking why, she said, resulted in her arrest for obstruction.
"We weren't even protesting," said Cavanaugh, who said she ended up spending the night in jail in the small town of Trenton, near Gainesville.
There are many good reasons to oppose the Sabal Trail Pipeline. The project aims to rob Florida of some 900 acres of valuable wetlands, the project's current route criss-crosses Florida's springs, which are a major source of drinking water, and there are fears that the construction will also create sinkholes. But more importantly, a sea change in public opinion may be underway. America's addiction to fossil fuels can only be fed by these massive pipelines. By blocking these projects, everyday citizens are saying to their leaders: It's time to find a different way.
Read more about the Florida pipeline protests from the Tampa Bay Times: http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/water/mass-sit-in-targets-controversial-sabal-trail-pipeline-at-suwannee-river/2309433
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
But times have changed. Maybe part of it is that the energy companies have broken so many of their promises here in Louisiana, whether it's been to clean up their drilling sites or restore all the wetlands that they've destroyed, or — more recently — on the jobs front. The local economy isn't quite as dependent on oil and gas jobs as it used to be, and — given the fragility of Louisiana's coastal environment — residents are starting to focus more on the major risks of oil over-development, and less upon the often transitory economic rewards. Today, the plan to run a major oil pipeline through the heart of the sensitive Atchafalaya Basin is drawing major opposition in parts of northern Louisiana:
A newly formed Shreveport environmental activist group plans to travel to Baton Rouge to protest an incoming pipeline that threatens parts of the state's wetlands.
North Louisiana for Climate Justice — Shreveport-Bossier's newest environmental watchdog group — was created on Friday at the Whole Foods Market in Shreveport. Currently, about a dozen members strong, the group's first mission is to tackle the Bayou Bridge Pipeline project at a Jan. 12 public hearing in Baton Rouge.
"The purpose of this trip is to gather information and make connections with allies," said Ron Hagar, a concerned citizen from Shreveport.
Members have different reasons for protesting the pipeline — a $670 million, 162 mile-long route that will carry an estimated 280,000 barrels of oil through 11 southern Louisiana parishes. The pipeline is backed by Energy Transfer Partners, Inc, the same company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.
The appeal of jobs has clearly lost its allure for these activists:
Several members of the group had relatives or children whose jobs are in the oil and gas industry. The proposed pipeline itself is expected to bring in at least 1,500 temporary construction jobs to surrounding regions.
But Cassie McDaniel, a Keithville resident who attended the meeting and whose son worked in the oil and gas industry, said she was willing to "go to battle" over the cause and that the focus of the issue needs to be re-framed.
"It's not enough to bring a job in. How long are those jobs going to stay here?" she said. "When people talk about jobs, we need to refocus on whether those jobs are going to be permanent."
This is a highly positive development, and it hasn't happened overnight — or in a vacuum. For many Louisiana residents, the pain of the Deepwater Horizon spill and what that did to the Gulf of Mexico still burns. Also, a lot of courageous activists from groups like the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and, more recently, Gen. Russel Honore's Green Army have helped raise environmental consciousness across the state. Here's hoping that the 21st Century can be remembered as the time that the people took Louisiana back from Big Oil.
Read more about the forming opposition to the Louisiana pipeline from the Shreveport Times: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2016/12/30/not-my-bayou-local-group-prepares-protest-southern-louisiana-pipeline/95995580/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
The initial reports are that this morning's fire won't have that kind of impact. That's a cause for relief, and yet it should also be an occasion for reflection on the steady expansion of offshore drilling in the Gulf.
Here is the most recent report:
The Coast Guard says a fire that broke out on a platform in the Gulf of Mexico has been extinguished.
Chief Petty Officer Third Class Travis Magee says there are no signs of pollution in the area where the fire broke out early Thursday on a platform owned by Houston-based Renaissance Offshore LLC. No injuries were reported. Magee and Renaissance spokesman Oliver Marsh say four workers were safely evacuated from the oil production platform after the fire broke out about 2:30 a.m. A Coast Guard statement says the fire was extinguished about 6:15 a.m.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. The platform is about 80 miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana.
Four people aboard the platform evacuated into the water and were rescued by the crew of the 130-foot Mary Wyatt Milano, a supply vessel, the Coast Guard said. Crew members aboard that boat and three other vessels were battling the blaze.
Clean Gulf, an oil spill response organization, was on its way to the platform early Thursday, the Coast Guard added in its statement. Clean Gulf is a non-profit oil industry cooperative that responds to spills and provides equipment to help clean them up, according to its website.
Needless to say, there are more questions than answers at this stage. We can all breathe a sigh of relief for those four men who escaped what must have been a harrowing experience by leaping into the water, as well as for their friends and families. As far as pollution is concerned, let's also hope that initial reports are correct. But — as we learned from the initial reports that came from the Deepwater Horizon disaster — this first wave of reports are often wrong.
But even if the final analysis shows no major pollution, in addition to the good news of no serious injuries, today's news is hardly a vote of confidence for offshore drilling in the Gulf. For the last seven years, those of us who care about the Gulf, and the health and welfare of its wildlife and the millions of people who live along its coastline, have been dreading what a second Deepwater Horizon-type catastrophe could do to this natural treasure. The often contradictory policies of the Obama administration — which steadily expanded offshore leasing for oil exploration before finding religion on the issue in recent months — have only heightened these risks.
What's more, recent environmental studies have pointed out that the Gulf also routinely endures hundreds of oil-related accidents and spills every year — some just a few gallons but others, such as the notorious Taylor Energy spill, persisting for years. There is only so much this abused body of water, the lifeblood of my native Louisiana and its neighboring states, can truly take. This 2:30 a.m. fire should have served as an early wake-up call.
Read more about this morning's Gulf of Mexico oil platform fire from the Associated Press: http://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/louisiana/2017/01/05/coast-guard-fire-burns-oil-platform-gulf-mexico/96191056/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2017 – All Rights Reserved
But one of the worst stories to come out of this region involved the small town of LaPlace, which is home to a facility that manufactures a type of synthetic rubber and emits unhealthy amounts of a known carcinogen. But even though scientists from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had reached the conclusion that the levels of pollution from the substance known as chloroprene that regularly occur in LaPlace are unsafe, regulators were completely toothless when it came to doing anything the situation. But in this case, angry residents and Louisiana's ever-stronger network of environmental activists kept fighting until they finally got action:
A chemical plant in LaPlace that has routinely discharged an air pollutant that the Environmental Protection Agency now says is "likely" to cause cancer has agreed to try to cut its emissions by 85 percent by the end of next year.
A spokesman for the company, Denka Performance Elastomer, said the manufacturer will spend $17.5 million on technology that will reduce the airborne levels of the chemical, an organic compound called chloroprene, which is used to make synthetic rubber.
The requested reduction, which the company has agreed to abide by, comes after a year of meetings in which concerned residents and public officials have demanded that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality immediately address the issue to mitigate potential health hazards.
According to the EPA, recent studies show evidence that chloroprene causes an increased risk of liver cancer in workers making the chemical and the possibility of an increased risk of lung cancer in others. Representatives from the agency say the chemical can also cause shorter-term problems ranging from headaches and dizziness to respiratory irritation, chest pains and hair loss. Data from LaPlace-based air testing sites show that in the past year, the EPA has detected more than 330 times the concentration that the agency says could potentially be harmful to humans. The EPA assesses risk by determining the likelihood a person could get cancer.
The decision is welcome news for LaPlace citizens like 76-year-old Robert Taylor, who told the Advance newspapers that he's been breathing foul-smelling air for the vicinity of the plant for years, and said his wife has been complaining about trouble breathing and burning eyes. Still, it never should have taken so long. For years, Louisiana environmentalists have been complaining — and with considerable justification — that the state Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, is a completely useless agency, largely a tool of the industries that it regulates and incapable of dealing with actual health emergencies. Hopefully, DEQ's problem-solving skills are improving under Louisiana's new Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards.
But there's one other lesson from LaPlace, which is that if average citizens make enough noise, they can get things done even in the face of seeming government indifference. With a brand new pro-industry crew about to assume the reins at federal agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, community action is more important than ever. Hopefully, this early Christmas present for the people of tiny LaPlace will also serve as an inspiration to other, similar locales.
Read more about the new pollution-control plan for the Denka plan in LaPlace from the Advocate: http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/environment/article_6170671c-c6f1-11e6-8b51-5ba657e762a3.html
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
The New York Times hailed the move in an editorial:
President Obama's decision to forbid oil and gas drilling in nearly all United States waters in the Arctic is in itself a spectacular environmental gift, offering protection to what he accurately described as a "sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth."
It also adds one more chapter, though probably not the last, to the administration's eight-year record of rebalancing the scale between the conservation of natural resources and their exploitation. And it sharpens an already glaring contrast between Mr. Obama and his successor, Donald Trump, who on the basis of his cabinet appointments alone seems hellbent on reviving the "drill, baby, drill" sensibilities of the George W. Bush administration.
The White House announcement was coordinated with similar steps announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. Neither announcement affects state-owned waters along the coasts, but together they will shield nearly all of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas north of Alaska from drilling.
Mr. Obama based his decision on a provision in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which governs oil and gas activities in federal waters. The provision gives a president unilateral authority to "withdraw from disposition" any unleased lands on the shelf. Despite Senator Ted Cruz's complaint that this was simply one more "Obama abuse of power," the provision, though rarely used, goes back as far as President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who used it to protect the reefs off Key Largo, and has since been invoked by Democratic and Republican presidents alike. Mr. Obama previously used it to bar drilling in the rich fishing grounds of Alaska's Bristol Bay and parts of the Bering Sea.
As the editorial notes, drilling in the Arctic had already proved a dangerous, money-wasting fool's errand, and yet Big Oil was determined to hold onto its rights to drill in the region — and anywhere else that it wants to. With this move by Obama, along with his decision to order further environmental reviews and hold up the Dakota Access pipeline and to block the Keystone XL pipeline altogether, the outgoing president is determined to leave Washington with a flurry of activity to both protect the environment and stymie climate change.
And yet there clear is another motive here. Obama knows that the incoming president, Donald Trump, has assembled a team of oilmen and climate-change deniers to run his environmental ship; even his nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is the CEO of the world's largest oil company, ExxonMobil. The current administration's new policies will force Trump to make a public show of reversing them, and some of these maneuvers can't be easily overturned. If nothing else, it all buys some valuable time for those of us who are determined to protect Planet Earth for the next four years. We owe President Obama a debt of gratitude.
Read more about President Obama's ban on Arctic and Atlantic drilling from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/opinion/leaving-the-arctic-alone.html?ref=opinion
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
The wheels of justice turn slowly, but sometimes they do turn. This week, there were new criminal charges in the Flint fiasco:
FLINT, Mich. — A criminal investigation into this city's water crisis reached into the top ranks of supervision over Flint on Tuesday as Michigan officials announced felony charges against two former state-appointed emergency managers, accusing them of fixating on saving money rather than on the safety of residents.
The managers, who were appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to lead Flint out of fiscal distress, were charged over their roles in the public health crisis prompted by the city's switch to a new water source, as well as the delays in responding to residents' complaints as they suffered the devastating effects.
Announcing the charges at a banquet center not far from the Flint River, Bill Schuette, the state's attorney general, described "a fixation on finances and balance sheets" as at the root of what happened in Flint, where the water has been tied to the lead poisoning of children and the deaths of 12 people from Legionnaires' disease.
"All too prevalent in this Flint water investigation was a priority on balance sheets and finances rather than health and safety of the citizens of Flint," said Mr. Schuette, a Republican who is seen as a possible candidate for governor in 2018.
Make no mistake: It's great news that some of the higher-ups in Flint are finally being held accountable. The bad news is that too many other cities and small towns have made the same kind of mistakes — ignoring persistent pollution problems for decades, or overlooking the need for critical infrastructure repairs either because there's not enough money or not enough political will, or both. Typically, the problems are the worst in poor communities, often with a large non-white population, that lack both resources and good leadership.
Now, there's a new crisis, and it's hitting a small town in the northeastern corner of my home state of Louisiana. The water emergency in the small town of St. Joseph, La., is one of the worst we've seen yet:
Residents in the Louisiana town of St Joseph have been told they should not drink from their taps after tested water showed high levels of lead and may possibly be dangerous. A public health emergency was called in the town on 16 December, with the state's governor, John Bel Edwards arriving on Monday (19 December) to meet local officials.
Abnormally coloured and foul smelling water had been noted in the town as early as February but the state had said that it was safe to drink. Some recent samples showed high levels of lead while two showed high levels of copper. One of the samples showing elevated levels of lead was from the town hall, the governor's office said. A new wave of sampling is now taking place in the town while every resident is being given three litres of water each day by state personnel.
According to CNN, many residents are blaming the outgoing mayor, Edward Brown, for the water issues. He has been accused by the state legislative auditor of pocketing government funds and handing contracts to his own family members.
The mayor's lateness handing over the town audit meant that a $6m grant from the state to reconstruct the town's almost 90-year-old water system was not released for months. Brown was defeated in the last election and will be replaced by Elvadus Fields in January. St. Joseph is an African American majority town of just over 1,000 residents which covers less than a mile of land.
This is an abomination. The mismanagement of public drinking water may be happening on a local level, but it's taking place in so many different communities that it needs to be viewed as a national emergency, deserving of a massive response. Our incoming president, Donald Trump, has sent mixed signals — promising to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new infrastructure projects that surely would include water-system overhauls, yet alsonaming as his environmental watchdogs various industry types who seem to have little concern about water pollution. But this is also a failing of Louisiana state officials, who for decades have placed environmental concerns on the back burner. The health tragedy now playing out in St. Joseph should not be allowed to occur anywhere.
Read more about the criminal charges in Flint from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/us/flint-water-charges.html
Find out more about the water crisis in Sr. Joseph from the International Business Times: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/louisiana-governor-heads-st-joseph-residents-are-told-they-cant-drink-tap-water-30-days-1597508
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
In Corpus Christi, public officials were shocked to find Indulin AA-86, an asphalt emulsifier which can burn human skin in concentrated form, in the city's tap water:
On Wednesday the city of 320,000 people announced that residents should not touch, drink or use the water. The ban has since been lifted for some city dwellers while officials investigate the origin of the spill.
After a night-time meeting of the city council on Thursday, officials released a map of the city, showing that residents in the outlying regions could resume using city tap water. Angry residents had gathered outside city hall throughout the day to call for answers and to chant "What do we want? Clean water! When do we want it? Now!".
As of Friday morning, about 15% of city residents were told they could use their water.
So what do officials believe happened?
City officials believe between three and 24 gallons of the chemical — Indulin AA-86, an asphalt emulsifier — contaminated the water distribution system near the 6700 block of Up River Road. It has not been confirmed if the chemical spread to other parts of the distribution system.
The contamination led to widespread school closures, cancellation of sporting and holiday events and closed area businesses that rely on water to serve customers.
A second meeting between state and federal agencies, city staff and local elected leaders was held over the water issue that has perplexed seasoned water scientists because of its complexity and rarity at 8 p.m. News of the partial lift was announced after the meeting.
The local state representative, Rep. Todd Hunter, voiced understandable outrage over what happened and the public impact. "We owe it to the public to get answers in a timely manner," Hunter told the Caller-Times newspaper… 'We can't just keep floating from one update to the next while we try to figure out the science. Because this type of contamination is rare, state and federal agencies do not have an established testing procedure, so it's unclear how long the testing could take to remove the water use advisory completely."
This type of chemical or oil-related water contamination is happening again and again — across the United States and especially in the state of Texas, where the large energy companies rule the roost. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the current direction of America is not moving in the direction of solving these problems. To the contrary, President-elect Donald Trump just rewarded the former Texas governor who handed his state over to Big Oil, by naming him to the critical post of energy secretary. Trump has also promised to roll back what he calls "job-killing regulations" — the kind of regulations that aim to make the tap water in a place like Corpus Christi safe to drink. This is a looming national tragedy.
Read more about the contamination of Corpus Christi drinking water from the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38346589
More on the water crisis from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times: http://www.caller.com/story/news/local/2016/12/15/end-water-ban-sight-some-residents/95501066/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
Thus, it was a shock when the EPA's initial draft — while listing compelling evidence that pollution was indeed occurring near fracking pads — offered a statement in the introduction suggesting that its efforts had uncovered no such link. Needless to say, many newspapers and media outlets across the country ran with this headline as well — suggesting that the federal research had vindicated Big Oil and Gas. Few journalists and few citizens, except for the most ardent environmentalists, went to that next level of information or spoke with experts who had a very different view of the data.
But the first draft was exactly that — a draft. Now, in the waning days of the Obama administration, the EPA has released the final version of the report. This time, it more clearly spells out the truth about fracking and the water that we drink:
The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) can affect drinking water.
In light of the facts that tap water near some fracking wells has become flammable, that two families in Pennsylvania last year won a court case over the impacts of fracking on their water, and that scientists have found arsenic in water sources near fracking, the EPA's announcement Tuesday should not come as a surprise.
But it does, since just 18 months ago, a draft version of the EPA's fracking report said that the EPA "did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States." Environmentalists applauded the finalized report, which they say is a more accurate representation of the science and data behind fracking.
"EPA's report confirms what experts and the science show: that fracking operations put our drinking water at risk," said Rachel Richardson, director of Environment America's Stop Drilling Program. "That families from Colorado to Pennsylvania have had their water contaminated from fracking should be evidence enough, but today's report confirms: fracking puts our water at risk."
The EPA does not necessarily conclude that the effects are "widespread" or "systemic." Instead, what this report more accurately depicts is the lack of data on fracking's impact on water.
The report goes on to spell out a number of areas in which fracking can affect water quality, from straining the water supplies in drought-parched sections of the country to spills of water used in the fracking process that is laced with toxic chemicals. It also points out, correctly, that a lack of baseline data on water quality before the fracking began makes it difficult to gauge the full impact. Still, the EPA study becomes another chapter in the saga of how fracking threatens the American environment.
That's a saga that may have an unhappy ending. The incoming Trump administration is aggressively friendly to Big Oil and Gas. The president-elect's nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is the current CEO of ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company. The pick for energy secretary is Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who sits on the board of the company looking to complete the Dakota Access pipeline. And Trump's choices to head the EPA and run the Interior Department also have a long history of hostility toward the environment. That doesn't mean the findings of this major study can be undone — but they may well be ignored. Hopefully, these results will at least encourage regulators on the state and local level to do the right thing when it comes to fracking.
Find out more about the EPA report on fracking and drinking water from ThinkProgress: https://thinkprogress.org/epa-finalizes-water-fracking-report-7e59613aa19d#.9fkm2vkic
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
The Dakota Access protesters were fighting not only for tribal rights, but for something else that directly affects all of us: Ending America's addiction to fossil fuels, and winning the fight against global warming, The $3.8 billion project aims to send millions of barrels of fracked oil from North Dakota around the globe, and the dangerous tentacles of this project are broader than many people realize. In fact, the oil that would start its journey through the Dakota Access pipeline would ultimately pose a threat to the sensitive bayous and wetlands of Louisiana as well:
But the same company that's building the Dakota Access Pipeline wants to build a 162-mile pipeline that would cut through the Atchafalaya Basin and 11 Louisiana parishes, including Lafayette, just south of Youngsville.
Environmental groups, some landowners and concerned citizens are quietly building resistance to the Bayou Bridge Pipeline project, gathering thousands of signatures from as far away as New Zealand and South Africa, forcing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to call for a public hearing where they plan to demand a thorough environmental impact assessment of the project.
Cherri Foytlin, of Rayne, a Native American who spent time with the North Dakota pipeline protesters, believes the Dakota movement may be inspiring people in Louisiana, where the oil and gas industry still reigns, to demand protection for their environment, too. "Enough is enough," she said. "At what point do we draw the line and say we're not going to be the energy sacrifice area for this nation anymore?"
The oil for this project would originate in the Dakotas:
Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the DAPL, owns Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC, the company whose name appears on the Louisiana pipeline permit applications. Energy Transfer and Sunoco already built a pipeline from Nederland to Lake Charles. Now they want to extend it from Calcasieu Parish through Jefferson Davis, Acadia, Vermilion, Lafayette, Iberia, St. Martin, Iberville, Ascension and Assumption parishes, ending on the west bank of New Orleans near St. James. The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would provide a connection between the North Dakota oilfields and Louisiana's refineries and ports.
This project is a travesty. It threatens to tear up the Atchafalaya Basin after a long era in which Louisiana has lost many square miles of its priceless wetlands to oil and gas exploration and production. The excavation work for this project will disrupt fishing and other local activities. And, needless to say, the pipeline poses the risk of a major spill in a corner of the world that is still struggling to recover from the 4 million barrels of oil unleashed from BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in 2010.
"One thing BP taught us is how fragile the wetlands are," the activist Foytlin told the Daily Advertiser newspaper. "How much tax dollars are we spending to allow companies to come in and destroy it?" I could not agree with this more. Much like the more highly publicized Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline threatens our drinking water, perpetuates global warming, and profits a few insiders at the expense of the everyday people who live in Louisiana. Local officials would be wise to block this project before it ever gets started.
Read more about the Bayou Bridge pipeline proposal in the Daily Advertiser: http://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/louisiana/2016/12/03/proposed-south-la-pipeline-linked-dakota-pipeline/94603448/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
Environmental runoff caused by humans harms the corals with toxic pollution or by creating algae blooms that deplete the water of its natural oxygen. The runoff also frequently contains pesticides or pollution from mining waste. But more recently, concern has shifted to the issue of climate change and the impact that a dramatically warmer Pacific Ocean is having on the reef, largely by speeding the process known as bleaching. Earlier this year, Outside magazine caused something of a global environmental panic with a piece which flatly declared that the Great Barrier Reef is dying from bleaching of the corals — a claim that scientists insisted by greatly exaggerated, and not helpful.
But the reality is that climate change and a boiling ocean is causing the reef its worst year since humans began paying attention:
Scientists have confirmed the coral bleaching event that struck the Great Barrier Reef earlier this year led to the worst coral die-off on record.
The worst affected area is a 700km section in the north of the reef, in which 67% of shallow water corals have died in the past nine months.
"Most of the losses in 2016 have occurred in the northern, most-pristine part of the Great Barrier Reef. This region escaped with minor damage in two earlier bleaching events in 1998 and 2002, but this time around it has been badly affected," said Terry Hughes, director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University.
Scientists say the northern section of the reef will take at least 10 years to recover, but are concerned that rising ocean temperatures caused by climate change will lead to another bleaching event within that period, meaning many corals will not be given sufficient time to return to full health.
The bleaching crisis was first uncovered in March, when abnormally high sea temperatures caused corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae called zooxanthellae, turning the coral white. At the time, 93% of corals surveyed were affected. Some of these corals have recovered in subsequent months, but many are now permanently lost.
Other areas of the reef are doing well — better, in some cases, than the researchers expected to find. What's more, the government in Australia is launching a $2 billion plan to restore the Great Barrier Reef to full health by 2050. That certainly runs in a different direction from the United States, where the incoming administration has vowed to slash any and all funding related to global warming.
Still, one has to wonder how many headlines such as this the world can absorb. In 2016, the polar ice caps are melting rapidly, the world is setting records for average temperatures on an almost monthly basis, and higher temperatures have caused record flooding in the Southern United States. But the threat to something as beautiful as the Great Barrier Reef is simply unconscionable. If that doesn't spur the planet to act on climate change, nothing will.
Read more about the 2016 damage to the Great Barrier Reef from Buzzfeed: https://www.buzzfeed.com/robstott/scientists-confirm-great-barrier-reef-coral-die-off-is-worst?utm_term=.ewDonJADPd#.ip1AWdpJ92
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
Few would dispute that Native Americans have not fared as well under the American Experiment as one would hope. After bloody conflict throughout the 19th Century, many of these indigenous people were forced onto reservations in remote and sometimes barren corners of the United States — places that continue to be plagued by poverty and the social ills that come with that. In recent weeks, proud Native people from around the country have flocked to a rural expanse in North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux are leading the fight against the massive Dakota Access pipeline project. This $3.8 billion project is cutting a swath through burial grounds and other sacred tribal sites, and poses an environmental threat to the main source of drinking water not just for the Sioux but for the northern prairie states, the Missouri River.
In 2016, as Thanksgiving dawned, police and other security forces along the pipeline route launched a stunning, violent assault that violated the civil rights of the largely peaceful protesters:
A confrontation between law enforcement and Native American tribes protesting the controversial Dakota Access pipeline turned violent once again late Sunday night. As temperatures in Cannon Ball, North Dakota plummeted below freezing, protesters reported being attacked with water cannons, rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray.
The night began as protesters, who refer to themselves as water protectors, attempted to remove burned military vehicles that were blocking Backwater Bridge on Highway 1806. Protesters say they were clearing the route to improve access for emergency services reaching the camp. The Morton County Sheriff's Department said protesters' actions were "very aggressive" and that the water cannons were necessary because protesters were lighting fires.
The police retaliation resulted in significant injuries among the hundreds of protesters, according to a statement from several indigenous groups: "Multiple people were unconscious and bleeding after being shot in the head with rubber bullets. A member of the International Indigenous Youth Council was sent into a seizure by a flash grenade. One elder went into cardiac arrest at the frontlines but medics administered CPR and were able to resuscitate him."
This was not the first time that violence has been used to quell dissent on the front lines in North Dakota:
Their protests have routinely been met with an aggressive, militarized police force. Native American activists have been pepper-sprayed and shot with rubber bullets while standing in water. They were reportedly kept in "dog kennels" after armed law enforcement cleared one of their camps. Water protectors praying by the side of the road were reportedly swarmed by armed police and threatened with arrest.
As a result, Amnesty International USA sent a group of human rights observers to monitor law enforcement's response to protests last month, saying the group was "deeply concerned about what we heard during our previous visit to Standing Rock and what has been reported to us since." The United Nations is also investigating reports of human rights abuses against Native American protesters.
These actions by the authorities in North Dakota are unconscionable under any circumstances. To watch this violent assault take place against Native Americans — during Thanksgiving week, of all times — makes it especially painful, however. It's been clear for weeks now that President Obama and his administration, as one of their final acts, must act to stop the Dakota Access pipeline, much as the Keystone XL project was halted. But even more must be done. The Justice Department must intervene to prevent further abuses of police power against Native Americans who are only trying to assert their basic human rights.
Read more about the violent police assault on protesters in North Dakota from ThinkProgress: https://thinkprogress.org/police-turn-water-cannons-on-dakota-access-protesters-9dd17c2dff96#.nq338nakq
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
Indeed, resistance to the centerpiece of what one might call his anti-environmental agenda — to "cancel" the Paris climate accord that was signed earlier this year by President Obama — is gaining some expected traction. One of America's best known conservative voices — the Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly — has said that pulling out of the deal would be a waste of time and political energy, while the world's biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, now says that it supports the deal.
Why is pulling out of the Paris accord such a terrible idea? ThinkProgress has a pretty good rundown on the massive possible consequences of Trump's campaign proposal:
Since the United States was a leader in making Paris happen, when the country pulls out (and then works to kill climate action at home and abroad), it will suddenly become a global pariah. Think of the sanctions against Putin's Russia — or, think about a massive, global boycott, like the one against apartheid South Africa, times 10.
Consider how a United States exit will look.
The world will rightly blame the United States for destroying humanity's last, best hope to avoid catastrophic warming. We will be blamed for the multiple ever-worsening catastrophic climate impacts that befall the planet in the coming years (and decades and beyond). And why not? We're the richest country and the biggest cumulative carbon polluter, and the pledge we made for Paris was just about the weakest we could offer. And now we aren't even going to do that.
There's another aspect of this that very few people have mentioned, which is that Trump's reckless idea could spark a devastating trade war:
On Sunday, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–2012) saidEurope should "adopt a carbon tax at the borders of Europe, a tax of 1 to 3 percent for all products that come from the United States." The center-right Sarkozy, who is running to get his old job back, explained, "We cannot find ourselves in a situation where our businesses have [environmental] obligations but where we continue to import products from countries that meet none of those obligations."
If that happened, it's not too hard to imagine the response of the president-elect?—?who has already threatened to put tariffs on a great many foreign countries. The United States will lose all of its so-called "soft power" as the world's "indispensable nation" goes rogue.
That means any effort Trump makes to keep his commitment to be tough on other countries on trade will find zero support around the world. Indeed, a more plausible response would be for the world to treat us like Russia, Iran or apartheid South Africa.
There's another issue here, which is that the Paris deal was constructed in a fashion that it's very complicated, logistically, to withdraw from. But the more important point is that blowing up this international agreement is a terrible idea. Aside from the moral failing of harming the world's environment, evidence is mounting that killing the climate deal would strangle the U.S. economy as well. Thus, it would hurt the very base of voters — working-class families in America's Rust Belt — who elected Trump in the first place. If the president-elect is looking to bring his administration closer to reality, saving Paris would be the perfect place to start.
Read more about Trump and the Paris climate accord from ThinkProgress: https://thinkprogress.org/pariah-nation-when-trump-exits-paris-climate-fe8c6884b654#.3ld76duwt
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
What are the ways that the nation will lose ground on the environment? It starts with his people. Trump has made it clear that his key appointees in the positions that play a major role on climate change will be comprised of global-warming deniers and by people who've spent a lifetime working on behalf of Big Oil. The New York Times has an alarming profile of the man running Trump's environmental transition:
In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration's signature climate change policies, President-elect Donald J. Trump probably could not have found a better candidate for the job than [Myron] Ebell.
Mr. Ebell, who revels in taking on the scientific consensus on global warming, will be Mr. Trump's lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy more broadly.
Mr. Ebell, whose organization is financed in part by the coal industry, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the linchpin of that policy, the Clean Power Plan. Developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the plan is a far-reaching set of regulations that, by seeking to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation, could result in the closing of many coal-burning power plants, among other effects.
Mr. Ebell has said that the plan, which has been tied up in the courts since it was finalized in 2015, is illegal. In the interview in Paris last year, he said he hoped whoever was elected president would "undo the E.P.A. power plant regs and some of the other regs that are very harmful to our economy."
It's not just people, though. It's also policy. The Huffington Post published an excellent piece this week on the many, many ways that the Trump Administration will be a tool of Big Oil. Here's an excerpt:
Trump's longtime friend Harold Hamm, the billionaire chief executive of the oil company Continental Resources, is a leading contender for energy secretary. Another oil executive, Forrest Lucas, the 74-year-old co-founder of the oil products company Lucas Oil, is on the short list for interior secretary. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who coined the slogan "drill, baby, drill" during her failed 2008 vice presidential bid, is also on that list.
Trump's proposed $1 trillion plan to rebuild infrastructure should include support for the rejected Keystone XL pipeline and the hotly contested Dakota Access Pipeline, Gerard said. Last year, President Barack Obama put the kibosh on Keystone XL, the proposed 1,179-mile oil conduit from Alberta to Nebraska, but TransCanada, the company behind it, said Wednesday it planned to re-pitch the idea to the incoming administration. The Dakota Access Pipeline, which Native American tribes and environmentalists have been battling for months, seemed likely to move ahead anyway, despite Obama's tepid calls to halt construction. A Trump presidency may seal its victory.
"To quote James Hansen," said Michael. E. Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, citing the famed climate scientist, "I fear this may be game over for the climate."
Gerard declined to point out which environmental restrictions he deemed most burdensome, and instead proposed a complete overhaul of the regulatory system.
"We need to look at the current regulatory approach holistically," he said. "When you look at it holistically, you can raise which ones need to be addressed to allow the energy system, to allow infrastructure, to move forward."
At first blush, this seems like an unmitigated nightmare. And there's no doubt that we're in for a very difficult next four years, especially in the early months of 2017 as the majority-Republican Congress races to approve the new president's agenda. But it doesn't have to be a total disaster. If environmentalists and citizens who care about issues such as climate change — that's a majority of Americans, according to the polls — fight back and fight hard, and if Democrats in the Senate use their filibuster power wisely, then key elements of the Trump agenda can and will be thwarted. The future of the planet depends upon us doing nothing less.
Read about Trump's climate denier top adviser from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/science/myron-ebell-trump-epa.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Find out more about how Big Oil might prospect under the Trump administration from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-presidency-oil-gas_us_5824b105e4b02a051293615f
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
Now comes the story of a tiny Louisiana town called Reserve which, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Air Toxics Assessment, has the highest cancer risk from air pollution of any community in America. The frustrating part of this story is the government officials were warned years ago about the risk from a chemical plant once owned by the conglomerate DuPont and recently bought by Japanese-based Denka — and have largely done nothing. A New Orleans station, WVUE, recently told the story of this community in Louisiana's St. John the Baptist Parish that is under siege from toxic air pollution:
RESERVE, LA (WVUE) – St. John the Baptist Parish resident Bobby Taylor lives in fear of something he cannot even see, but the federal government warns him there is no doubt it is there.
"We run inside and turn off the A/C, huddle and wait for it to clear. Hopeful, that it will but not really knowing exactly what it is," the retired pastor said. "It's just sort of disconcerting when you find out there is knowledge now about what this is and the potential that it has."
The potential cancer causing emission that has St. John residents like Taylor running inside is chloroprene. It is a byproduct of Neoprene production, a rubber used to make wetsuits, athletic gear even drink coozies. The Denka Performance Elastomer facility, formerly DuPont, is the only plant making neoprene in the United States, and it is tucked away in the small town of Reserve. The facility, which employs 250 people, began production along the Mississippi River's banks in 1973.
The cancer risk for people who live in the shadow of the Denka facility is a ridiculously high 826 in a million, according to the EPA study; some of the other highest U.S. communities in the EPA study are just down the road. Union officials insist that they warned Louisiana's top officials that the plant in Reserve is bad news, to no avail:
In 2007, when DuPont's neoprene facility closed in Louisville, Kentucky, the Steelworkers Union district director of that region wrote then Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco about the cancer risks involved with chloroprene.
In his letter Director Billy Thompson wrote, "the trade off for a few jobs will be added pollution and a higher risk of cancer…the real costs will be borne by the citizens of Louisiana not DuPont".
"We need the jobs. We need the economy but still if we don't have a community that can survive, we don't need them," (St. John Councilman Larry) Sorapuru said.
WVUE reported that monitors placed at key sites around the community, including public schools, have found that airborne readings of chloroprene frequently exceed the levels that the EPA's scientists have recommended for long-term exposure. But the state and federal officials who regulate the plant have shown no urgency in taking action. The report said that new owner Denka is looking to voluntarily spend as much as $15-20 million on new pollution controls. That could make a difference, but the bigger picture is that Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" deserves better than this toothless regulation.
Find out more about the pollution problems in Reserve, La., from WVUE: http://www.wect.com/story/33542135/air-of-uncertainty-epa-singles-out-small-louisiana-community-as-highest-cancer-risk
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
Still, there are some political leaders who support oil exploration but also see the value of promoting alternative energies such as wind and solar. Arguably, President Obama is such a figure with his so-called "all of the above" energy strategy; his administration has increased offshore oil leasing in the Gulf of Mexico while also spending millions on developing America's solar industry. But Trump is not such a leader. To the contrary, he has mocked clean power that could create thousands of new jobs while reducing greenhouse-gas pollution:
When it comes to renewable energy, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is just really concerned about the eagles.
"[Wind power] kills all the birds," Trump told 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on the latter's radio show Tuesday. "Thousands of birds are lying on the ground. And the eagle. You know, certain parts of California?—they've killed so many eagles. You know, they put you in jail if you kill an eagle. And yet these windmills [kill] them by the hundreds."
Trump also told Cain that solar and wind are "very, very expensive" and "not working on a large-scale." And he criticized the way wind turbines look, calling the windmills in Palm Springs, California a "junkyard." (This is not the case, as Grist points out in their fact-check of Trump's claims.)"
"They have all these different companies and each one is made by a different group from, all from China and from Germany, by the way?—?not from here," said Trump, who often sells products made in other countries. "And you look at all these windmills. Half of them are broken. They're rusting and rotting. You know, you're driving into Palm Springs, California, and it looks like a poor man's version of Disneyland. It's the worst thing you've ever seen."
Like many of Trump rants, this one was largely fact-free, and dismissive of a sound policy. Now, we learn of one more reason why the Republican presidential candidate is such a big fan of fossil fuels at the expense of clean energy. It turns out that Trump has a personal stake in Big Oil:
Donald Trump has money invested in the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline, and he has received campaign contributions from the company's top executive, according to recent campaign disclosure forms.
The Republican presidential nominee's monthly filings to the Federal Election Commission show Trump has invested between $500,000 and a million dollars in Energy Transfer Partners, which owns Dakota Access, LLC. The company's sole project, the Dakota Access pipeline, has been the subject of protests across the country.
The Guardian, which first reported the story Wednesday, said the Trump campaign has also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company's chief executive officer, Kelcy Warren. In the past four months, Warren has given some $103,000 to elect Trump. Three thousand dollars went directly to the campaign, and $100,000 went to the Trump Victory Fund, the joint effort between the candidate's campaign and the Republican Party.
This isn't particularly surprising news. It's pretty obvious that Donald Trump's environmental policies — and those of most Republicans who are running on the ticket beside him — are not driven by what's good for the planet. They are based on billionaire connections and what's good for Donald Trump's bank account That's something that every voters should consider when he or she goes to the polls on Nov. 8.
Find out more about Trump's clean energy rant: https://thinkprogress.org/donald-trump-wind-kills-all-the-eagles-bd4acf3264d#.19lgry28v
Read more about Trump's investment in the Dakota Pipeline from ThinkProgress: https://thinkprogress.org/dakota-access-and-trump-have-deep-ties-5771cc7b63c7#.bd6ytnq3a
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
But when it comes to the use of fossil fuels and their impact on the environment, the big spills and accidents are only part of the story. Increasingly, I've been writing about the less visible — yet planet altering — effect of greenhouse-gas pollution as it creates global warming. But even then, there's more to tell. The truth is there are a lot of smaller accidents — lesser oil spills, releases of dangerous air pollution — which are caused by our need to produce, transport, and consume fossil fuels. And a lot of this slow drip, if you will, of environmental damage doesn't rise to the level where it receives coverage in the news media.
Recently, a coalition of Louisiana's leading environmental groups launched a study to look at these low-profile, under-reported spills that, nonetheless, threaten the water we drink and the air that we breathe. What they found was rather alarming:
Earlier this month, an alliance of environmental groups released data they collected over a three-week period from Sept. 15 to Oct. 6 documenting oil industry accidents in Louisiana. They counted a total of 94 accidents — more than 30 a week. These included both land and offshore spills from pipelines, platforms, tanks, vessels and other facilities.
"We've known for a long time that the oil industry has an accident problem, but since many accidents are offshore and out of site, they get away with it," said Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a pollution watchdog group that worked with 350 Louisiana, DisasterMap.net and Vanishing Earth to compile and release the data. "This sampling … shows that the industry has a problem."
The analysis was based on numbers from the Coast Guard's National Response Center, the federal point of contact for reporting all oil spills and other pollution discharges into the environment. The oil industry is required by law to report its accidents, and the public can also contact the agency if they witness spills.
So far this year in Louisiana, 1,514 spills have been reported. That compares to 2,307 in all of 2015.
"Every time we fly out over the Gulf, we find something that needs to be reported to the National Response Center," said Jonathan Henderson, founding president of Vanishing Earth, a Louisiana-based organization that uses aerial photography to monitor the Gulf's environment. "The public deserves to know just how much contamination of our precious natural resources is occurring everyday."
The risks to the public from these routine accidents and spills are many. As the environmentalists noted, some oil-industry accidents sicken, contaminate or even kill workers in some very hazardous occupations. Out in the Gulf, it's a struggle to document the impact of so many smaller spills, not to mention chronic leaks like the Taylor Energy site — an ongoing oil slick that's been polluting the waters off Louisiana for roughly a decade.
This is why more and more environmentalists are looking at America's addiction to fossil fuels and saying, Keep It In the Ground. For Louisiana, that means stopping the program of offshore leases that keeps pushing Big Oil into deeper waters far our in the Gulf, raising the alarming risk of another Deepwater Horizon-style accident. Such a move would start to turn off the slow drip of ecological destruction.
Read more about the report on fossil-fuel accidents in Louisiana from Louisiana Weekly: http://www.louisianaweekly.com/the-accident-prone-oil-industry-is-a-threat-to-the-gulf-coasts-environmental-health/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
This fall, a Los Angeles Times reporter did an in-depth report from another battered outpost, a place called Eight Mile, Alabama — a largely black community in the industrialized corridor surrounding Mobile, near the Gulf Coast. For eight remarkable years, residents of Eight Mile have struggled to cope with the acrid smell of rotting eggs and a host of unexplained illnesses that many believe result from an underground natural-gas pipeline spill.
Here's some of the Times report:
Residents say there have been no relocations to hotels or rented homes. No transfers to schools out of harm's way. No U.S. Cabinet members swooping in to investigate. No national media hordes.
"Because we don't have the financial wherewithal to put pressure on these people, they simply turn their heads," said Eight Mile resident Carletta Davis, one of hundreds of people suing Mobile Gas Service Corp. over the leak of the chemical mercaptan. "Our children are sick…. It's absolutely an outrage."
Ironically, the chemical that appears to be making people sick, mercaptan, is added to normally odor-free natural gas to warn people when a leak occurs. It seems this so-called "warning" is hurting folks, not helping them. Some of the details are horrifying:
The EPA report said that exposure to methyl mercaptan even when not at those extreme levels can depress the central nervous system and affect respiratory function. Signs of exposure can include mucous membrane irritation, headache, dizziness, staggering gait, nausea and vomiting.
Markell Williams was just 3 years old when a powerful chemical oozed into the soil and water less than a mile from his home. By age 5, he was having seizures. His mother, Raquel Williams, 33, blames the chemical's pungent smell that permeates the air in their community. Whenever the odor would grow strong — and it can hit with a blast that sometimes forces people to run for cover — it seemed to trigger Markell's seizures with growing intensity and frequency, his mother said. Over the last year, the seizures have become so frequent that Markell, now 11, has missed months of school.
"This year, he's been hospitalized five times because his seizures didn't get any better," said Raquel Williams as she sat next to his hospital bed in September. More than 1,300 residents have filled out health assessment questionnaires describing symptoms such as nosebleeds, respiratory distress, nausea, vomiting, seizures, vision problems and hypertension.
There's an ironic twist to this article. It seems the Times — one of the nation's most influential news organizations — only learned about the crisis in Eight Mile because there had been a somewhat similar natural gas leak earlier this year near an affluent and mostly white area in Southern California known as Aliso Canyon. Residents in this California suburb are now worried about their exposure to mercaptan — an issue that has already sparked a flurry of news coverage and intense interest from many of that state's most powerful politicians. (Indeed, I published several posts here about the Aliso Canyon situation.)
The differing reactions to similar incidents in the two communities — one wealthy and one poor — is a dramatic example of the kind of environmental injustice that is still rampant across the United States. It all makes one wonder — how many other Eight Miles are out there, ignored by the politicians and the press?
Read more about the mercaptan poisoning of Eight Mile, Alabama, from the Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-eight-mile-leak/#nt=oft12aH-1la1
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
In recent months we've seen scientific evidence of record-high carbon levels in the atmosphere, a series of monthly worldwide records for average temperatures, epic melting of Arctic sea ice, and unexpectedly large amounts of flooding in U.S. locales such as Louisiana and North Carolina from tropical storms laden with moisture. The good news, however, is that world leaders, including our own federal government in Washington, understand the importance of these developments and are more committed than ever to taking action. This past week, with virtually zero news coverage here in the United States, the Obama administration joined the vast majority of the world's nations in talking an important step forward:
KIGALI (Reuters) – Nearly 200 nations have agreed a legally binding deal to cut back on greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners, a major move against climate change that prompted loud cheers when it was announced on Saturday.
The deal, which includes the world's two biggest economies, the United States and China, divides countries into three groups with different deadlines to reduce the use of factory-made hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases, which can be 10,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as greenhouse gases.
"While diplomacy is never easy, we can work together to leave our children a planet that is safer, more prosperous, more secure, and more free than the one that was left for us," the White House said in a statement on the deal. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the deal was "a monumental step forward" as he left the talks in the Rwandan capital of Kigali late on Friday.
Under the pact, developed nations, including much of Europe and the United States, commit to reducing their use of the gases incrementally, starting with a 10 percent cut by 2019 and reaching 85 percent by 2036. Many wealthier nations have already begun to reduce their use of HFCs. Two groups of developing countries will freeze their use of the gases by either 2024 or 2028, and then gradually reduce their use. India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and the Gulf countries will meet the later deadline.
They refused the earlier date because they have fast-expanding middle classes who want air conditioning in their hot climates, and because India feared damaging its growing industries.
In many ways, this deal is more important than the much-more-talked-about Paris climate accords, because the goals and also the target dates are better defined. And as the news coverage notes, CFCs — without nearly as much hype as pollution from power plants or automobiles — are a significant source of greenhouse-gas pollution. It's a little disappointing that the larger developing nations didn't agree to a quicker reduction, but the important thing is progress, forward motion.
As I've mentioned here repeatedly in recent weeks, that progress faces a dire threat in the November election. Trump has claimed in the past that global-warming science is a conspiracy cooked up by the Chinese to thwart American industry. Since then, the GOP presidential nominee has questioned the Paris accords and promised to increase the production of coal, the dirtiest fuel around. It's almost certain that a Trump administration would have no interest in an important climate deal like this new pact on CFCs. Americans truly must understand the serious risks of a Trump presidency as they go to the polls.
Read more about the landmark deal to reduce CFC pollution from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/greenhouse-gases-deal_us_5802309de4b0e8c198a86131?section=us_green
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
Increasingly, with global warming in the news, people are wondering whether there is a connection between hurricanes and climate change. The answer is complicated; most of the world's top climate scientists say that not all of the evidence is in. It seems likely that a warmer planet doesn't necessarily mean there will be more hurricanes, even though that's becoming an increasingly popular misconception. However, what climatologists do believe is that climate change will make the hurricanes that do occur stronger than they would have been otherwise. That's largely because tropical storms get their fuel from warm ocean water. And the water in the North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico has been hotter than normal in recent years, because of the earth's rising temperature.
As Hurricane Matthew churned slowly through the Caribbean last week, it intensified from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane (the highest rating) in less than a day — a remarkably fast transformation — and has since retained its strength for days. Many experts say that intensity is a characteristic of climate change. Here's an explanation:
Matthew also showed a very rate of rapid escalation to Category 5 status, and a long persistence at very strong hurricane strength, that is noteworthy. Explosive intensification and long life at intense strength are certainly the kinds of attributes we'd expect to see more often as a warming climate heats the oceans and provides more fuel for the most intense hurricanes.
"The rapid intensification certainly is up there," said Greg Holland, a hurricane expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He called the rate of intensification for Matthew "in the very top echelon."
"Its rapid intensification to Category 5 when it was in the southern Caribbean was not forecast by any model, including my own. Right now, it looks a little bit mysterious," added Emanuel.
These storm traits aren't proof of anything, of course — they're merely consistent with the notion of warming making storms worse.
In truth, though, perhaps the most direct way in which a changing climate affects the storm involves sea level rise, several researchers said. It is hard to dispute that, as sea level ticks steadily upward year after year, a place like Florida grows more imperiled by storms that can hurl large parts of the ocean inland.
Other experts note how unusual it is to see such a powerful storm in October, so late in the hurricane season:
The storm has surpassed several milestones as one of the strongest, longest-lasting hurricanes of its kind on record. But on top of that, scientists note, it's atypical for this time of year.
Matthew is the only hurricane of this strength to persist this many October days since 1963, noted Colorado State University meteorologist Philip Klotzbach, an expert in Atlantic hurricane forecasts.
Given the bizarre behavior of Hurricane Matthew, it certainly looks like something is up. It's one more piece of evidence — much like the floods that devastated Baton Rouge this summer — that the impact of global warming is already here, and the pace of events is accelerating. Meanwhile, there's been no serious discussion of climate change in the U.S. presidential and vice presidential debates. Maybe a direct hit from Matthew — and the dire consequences — would change that equation.
Read more about the link between climate change and Hurricane Matthew from the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/10/06/heres-what-we-can-say-about-climate-change-and-hurricane-matthew/?utm_term=.4c5f47bc5054
Here's more coverage from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hurricane-matthew-october-record_us_57f53c51e4b05f39c51d94f7
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
The company's day-to-day operations are a frequent reminder that oil is a dirty business. I've seen that close-up in my home state of Louisiana, where ExxonMobil's massive refinery — plunked down, of course, in the middle of a poor and mostly black community of Baton Rouge called Standard Heights — pumps hundreds of thousands of pounds of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, into the air every year. That type of corporate malfeasance is hard to take, but over the last year or so a new twist has developed: There is mounting evidence that scientists working for ExxonMobil knew about the risks of climate change and the role of burning fossil fuels decades ago. And the company's greedy approach was to spend millions denying and undermining its own research.
Now, activists in Boston are using a new technique for fighting back:
The environmental advocacy group Conservation Law Foundation has made good on its threat to sue Exxon Mobil Corp., filing what it says is the first U.S. legal action aimed at holding the oil giant accountable for its well-documented climate change cover-up.
The 70-page suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Boston, alleges Exxon Mobil's bulk storage and distribution terminal in Everett, Massachusetts, near Boston Harbor, continues to pollute the Island End and Mystic rivers and threatens nearby communities. The complaint also accuses the company of failing to fortify the facility to withstand climate change, including extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified civil penalties and injunctive relief, comes as Exxon Mobil faces numerous investigations into whether the company lied to investors and committed fraud by covering up the risks of climate change for decades. The attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts are probing the company, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an investigation into how Exxon Mobil values future projects amid climate change and plunging oil prices.
"Communities were put in danger and remain in danger, all to cut costs for one of the most profitable corporations in the world," Bradley Campbell, president of Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, said in a statement. "It's time to make Exxon answer for decades of false statements to the public and to regulators and ensure that its Everett facility meets its legal obligation to protect thousands of people and the Boston Harbor estuary from toxic water pollution."
An interesting twist in this lawsuit is that the foundation accuses ExxonMobil of posing great risk to the local environment by not fortifying its waterside facility outside of Boston against the rising sea levels that will accompany climate change. "Despite knowing of the certainty of rising temperatures and rising sea levels since as early as the 1970s, Exxon Mobil did not use its findings to prepare its Everett Terminal for such risks," the complaint says.
ExxonMobil can be challenged in court of law; I know that, because I've been involved in a such a case, winning a record-setting $1 billion-plus jury verdict in 2001 against the firm for dumping radioactive waste on the property of a Louisiana man. The court system remains the best place for seeking corporate justice. Today, it's increasingly clear that the company is engaged in a massive conspiracy of pollution and denial. This lawsuit in Massachusetts is a bold new step in setting things right.
Read more about the Conservation Law Foundation lawsuit against ExxomMobil: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/exxonmobil-lawsuit-conservation-law-foundation-climate-change_us_57ec1512e4b024a52d2c5ae5?ir=Green&utm_hp_ref=green
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
And of course, the night of the rig explosion — 11 people were killed in the blast — wasn't the end of the Deepwater Horizon story. As chronicled in this blog — which began several months after the initial catastrophe — and elsewhere by activists and by some of the news media, the events of April 20, 2010, were just the beginning. Next came the 4 million-plus barrels of oil, the death and illnesses to creatures from majestic sea turtles to the Gulf's beloved shrimp and other seafood, the illness of cleanup workers exposed to toxic fumes, and the oiling of beaches. Up and down the food chain, the impact is still felt.
That much was confirmed this week in a new and, arguably, timely report from academic researchers. Their work shows that some of the Gulf wetlands that were most heavily damaged by the BP spill are almost certainly never coming back:
The study, published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports, finds the oil spill caused widespread erosion in the salt marshes along the coasts of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. And the researchers say there's a chance these marshes might never completely grow back.
Marshes "provide a variety of important services," said lead study author Brian Silliman, a marine conservation biologist at Duke University. "They benefit humans, including acting as pollution filters, absorbing nutrients as they run off from the land before they get into the estuary, helping to suppress harmful algal blooms. They also act as breakwaters and buffer the shoreline from erosion."
They're also important carbon sinks — in fact, research suggests that coastal wetlands may absorb several times more carbon per unit of area than tropical forests do. And they also provide habitat to a wide variety of animals that are staples of human fisheries, including shrimp, crabs and small fish.
Here's the science of how marsh erosion speeds up:
The researchers found that marshes with low or moderate levels of oiling did not erode any faster than usual. But in places where oil covered at least 90 percent of the plant stems, erosion rates accelerated significantly. The study suggested that erosion in these places was more than three times higher than in marshes with no oil at all, and on average was about 1.4 meters per year higher than normal. These elevated erosion rates persisted for up to two years following the spill.
The results suggest that marshes have a kind of threshold beyond which the effects of the oil begin to manifest themselves. And in the places that are hit the hardest, the effects can be significant.
The loss of Louisiana wetlands is not a new phenomenon. For decades now, my native state has lost the equivalent of several football fields of marshes, most of it from man-made activities such as oil exploration and transport, as well as industrial pollution and runoff. That's been a hard loss to take, since residents of New Orleans and other populated areas depend on these wetlands to protect our hometowns from tropical storms. The added damage caused by the BP spill is the last thing Louisiana needs. If you see Deepwater Horizon this weekend, remind yourself that the bigger story is just beginning.
Check out more from the Washington Post on the BP oil spill and wetlands damage in Louisiana: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/09/27/the-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-may-have-caused-irreversible-damage-to-marshes-along-the-gulf-coast/?utm_term=.5c4056269758
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
This past summer that just ended — at least according to the calendar — was an unusually hot one for the Crescent City. Now, the Washington Post is publishing an alarming statistic that shows how quickly the pace of climate change is accelerating:
During one of the country's hottest summers, New Orleans quietly set a mind-boggling record. On 43 nights, the temperature did not drop below 80 degrees in New Orleans, according to the Louisiana state climatologist. It blows the previous record out of the water — 13 nights in 2010. It's also incredible considering in an average summer, New Orleans has just 2.1 nights at or above 80 degrees. This record should be getting much more attention than it has been.
Very warm overnight temperatures are hard on your body, let alone your utility bills. The elderly are particularly at risk during these times, as is the entire homeless population and anyone with an illness. You might be inclined to raise a finger to mention that air conditioning negates these effects, but around 30 percent of New Orleans's population lives in poverty. If a family is lucky enough to own an air conditioner, they probably cannot afford to use it. Why is this happening? In short, man-made climate change.
It's not just New Orleans and the South in general that are suffering through dangerously uncomfortable nights; this trend is obvious across the entire Lower forty-eight. And that's exactly what we expect in a climate-change world. In reality, very warm overnight low temperatures have been increasing in frequency since the 1970s.
There are a couple of things that can explain this phenomenon. The air can hold more water vapor as it warms up. So as global temperatures increase, so does the humidity. That also means there's more moisture to create clouds. Even though clouds keep things cool during the day — they reflect sunlight — they act as a blanket at night, keeping the day's heat trapped near the ground. The humidity itself also acts like a warm, wet blanket. At night, the air doesn't cool down past the dew point, which is inherently linked to humidity. The more moisture that's in the air, the higher the dew point, and the warmer the overnight temperature.
The water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico has always been a cause for concern. Historically, that's because a bathtub-hot Gulf would add tremendous moisture and strength to any tropical storms or hurricanes that bear down on the region. The last thing that New Orleans needs is another major hurricane the likes of Katrina, and we've been able to dodge that bullet since 2005. But here we see that the warm Gulf is having other adverse impacts.
Native New Orleanians and tourists alike adore the Crescent City for its sweltering summer days and its cool nights, when it's refreshing to stroll through the French Quarter or grab a hot beignet or two outdoors at Cafe du Monde. But nobody wants to step out his or her front door at midnight and get hit with a wet blanket of fetid tropical air. These ridiculously hot nights are hurting New Orleans' quality of life — and they're also a steamy warning for the havoc that rising seas could wreak upon this great American city in just a few short years.
Read more about New Orleans' dubious heat record in the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/09/26/the-mind-boggling-new-orleans-heat-record-that-no-one-is-talking-about/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2016 – All Rights Reserved
But some of the most galling government actions involved the rush to assure the American public that Gulf seafood was safe to eat, even at the time when much of the 4 million barrels of oil that spilled from the busted BP rig were still not yet corralled. I reported on some of the lax oversight in my recent book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America. Here's an excerpt:
The government boasted in late 2010 that it had tested more than 10,000 seafood samples from the Gulf and found no evidence of problems, but the vast majority of those tests were what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called "sensory testing." You and I might call it a smell test, and that's hardly adequate for finding traces of hydrocarbons that are odorless yet highly toxic. Meanwhile, Paul Orr, who is Marylee's son and also the unofficial riverkeeper for the Lower Mississippi, gathered samples of shrimp, crab and fin fish from 20 different locations in the Gulf off the Louisiana and Mississippi coastline and conducted tests that instead showed high levels of total petroleum hydrocarbons, even in seafood from areas that had been declared safe for fishing.
Testing by other independent environmentalists from other areas of the Gulf showed high levels of cadmium, a long-lasting carcinogen, while other news accounts quoted Gulf fishermen who were reeling in red snapper with sores and lesions—some the size of a 50-cent piece—the likes of which they had never seen before. The sick snappers shouldn't have been surprising, since the fish are bottom feeders—eating the shrimp and crabs who live on the sea floor—and independent scientists like Samantha Joye had already shown that oil from the leaking BP rig was coating the bottom of the Gulf. At the same time, crab fishermen were reporting their haul had dropped by 70 percent and the few crabs they did pull up suffered similar lesions and disease.
This should have been a huge national scandal, but the information was all but ignored by the media. So you probably won't consider it a bombshell when I tell you that a new report this week finds that — some six years after Deepwater Horizon — government agencies are still dropping the ball on seafood safety. Even more ironic, the waste and abuse comes from a new Louisiana state program — paid for by BP's penalties for the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Here's an excerpt from the AP report:
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gulf oil spill recovery money intended for testing to ensure fish caught off Louisiana were safe for consumers instead paid for unnecessary iPads, cameras, boats and now-missing fishing equipment, state auditors said, calling the safety program so mismanaged it couldn't even declare if the catch was fit to eat.
Energy giant BP PLC gave Louisiana millions of dollars for the program aimed at restoring confidence in the state's multibillion-dollar seafood industry after a massive oil spill fouled the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. But auditors said they believe hundreds of thousands of dollars were misspent.
The Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Office found "insufficient sampling of fish for contamination from the oil spill, excessive costs and missing property" in part of the $10.5 million BP-financed seafood safety program overseen by the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in the years after the spill.
Some of the tricks uncovered by the auditor's office sounds very familiar:
But auditors took issue with the portion of fish collections based in Venice, at the southeastern tip of boot-shaped Louisiana. About $3 million was spent from December 2010 through August 2014 by the Venice sampling program.
Less than half the tissue samples needed from fish like tuna, mackerel, snapper and grouper were collected, according to the draft report obtained by AP. A biologist wasn't always present for the sampling, auditors say, and seafood tissue samples sat for days — and sometimes weeks — before being submitted. "Management cannot ensure that the work accomplished was sufficient to provide assurances regarding the safety of Louisiana's seafood," the report says.
We've seen time and time again — that regulators are more often servants of the industries they regulate than of the general public. This is another glaring example. It's understood that the Louisiana seafood industry is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy, but the right to eat seafood that won't make you ill is priceless. And I know a lot of good people who stopped eating Gulf seafood altogether after the BP oil spill. A sad story like this one makes it easy to see why.
Read the AP report on significant problems in Louisiana's seafood testing program: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/apnewsbreak-report-questions-louisiana-fish-safety-testing-0
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
Big Oil's response? Basically, it's been "choose your poison" because they insist that all of the oil they're pulling from deep underground has to go somewhere. And statistically, they argue, pipelines are safer than oil trains, which have had an alarming tendency to derail and explode — sometimes with lethal consequences. That argument does give a pause to dedicated environmentalists; the truth is that oil transportation, in outdated tanker cars that should have been removed from service decades ago is indeed fundamentally flawed. But that doesn't mean we should look the other way on pipelines. Over the past week, a massive pipeline spill in the Deep South served as a reminder of that:
A pipeline leak of at least 250,000 gallons of gasoline in a rural Alabama county is expected to affect fuel prices in the coming days across multiple southern states and the East Coast.
The leak already prompted two states of emergency Thursday stemming from fuel shortage concerns.
The oil leak was first discovered a week ago in rural Shelby County?—?just southeast of Birmingham, Alabama. It forced the pipeline company, Colonial Pipeline, to shut the line last Friday, hampering gasoline deliveries in various states including Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.
In response to expected gasoline shortages, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley andGeorgia Gov. Nathan Deal issued states of emergency, AL.com reported. As of Thursday evening, the leaking section of the pipeline remains unexcavated over safety concerns. Spills and gasoline leaks can contaminate soil, groundwater, surface water, and air. Gasoline fumes can also be toxic. Though the line has been shut off, gasoline still in the pipeline may be leaking.
The gasoline is being held in a mine water retention pond and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency staff at the site say residents are not in danger because the site is far from homes. The gasoline is also unlikely to breach the retention pond and enter nearby Cahaba River, Alabama's longest free-flowing stream, the EPA told local media. The cause of the leak is unknown.
The people of Alabama seem to have dodged a bullet here. Although the size of the spill was particularly large, the primary location of the leak was far enough away from homes and the watershed to prevent serious environmental damage. It's important to note that other major American rivers, like the Yellowstone and the Kalamazoo, were not as fortunate when pipelines ruptured near them. And people living with the Colonial Pipeline in their backyards may not be as lucky the next time.
The reality is that the company that operates the Colonial Pipeline has been fined tens of millions of dollars for violating the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws in the 1990s and the 2000s, And since those years, the agency that regulates pipelines in the United States — the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Act — has been gutted by budget cuts, losing its ability to inspect risky pipelines such as the Colonial as often it should.
It's all another reminder of why Big Oil's promises ring so hollow. The safety track record for American pipelines has never been as good as the energy giants want the public to believe. And that's why the pipeline-vs.-rail debate is dishonest and divisive. The safest way to handle oil and natural gas is to focus on renewable energy — and keep as much fossil fuel in the ground as possible.
Read more about this week's Colonial Pipeline spill: https://thinkprogress.org/alabama-pipeline-leak-prompts-gas-shortages-22f90461bc1f#.dz6i7o27l
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
If your political views are shaped solely by the news coming out of Washington, D.C., it would be hard to contemplate that there's any other course. But if you follow the headlines out of the state of California, you would know that another path is possible. Not long ago, I told you about the Golden State's innovative agreement to close its last remaining nuclear plant, substituting energy from clean, renewable sources. That's just the latest innovation from a state that has been out front on mandating electric cars and other innovations to curb both greenhouse gases and smog. These policies can make a big difference — if for no other reason than the fact that California is one of the world's largest and most dynamic economies.
This summer, California's leaders have launched even bolder measures meant to fight off climate change:
California is extending its plan to drastically cut carbon emissions for another 10 years under a pair of bills signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Thursday, marking a major step forward in the fight against climate change.
The new legislation will significantly ramp up the state's existing efforts to reduce emissions, including increasing the state's reliance on solar power, offering rebates for electric cars and placing stronger regulations on businesses.
SB 32, authored by state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), extends a 2006 law that required the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. (California is currently on track to meet that goal.) Under the new legislation, California must reduce emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. AB 197, written by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella), establishes a new legislative committee to oversee environmental regulation, giving lawmakers more say in efforts to improve air quality and reduce pollution.
The new goals are the most ambitious of any U.S. state. And given the sheer scale of it ? California's economy is now the world's sixth largest ? the law could also serve as a model for international efforts to reduce emissions. "Climate change is real, and knowing that, California is taking action," Brown said in a statement Thursday. "SB 32 and AB 197 are far-reaching moves that continue California on its path of vast innovation and environmental resilience."
Over the last couple of years, I've often pointed toward Europe as a model of what is possible when it comes to turning around the battleship of fossil fuel addiction. But truthfully, one need look no farther than our own back yard, if California can be called that. In recent years, the state's tough fuel and emissions standards have forced the American automakers into action, and I have little doubt that its gold-standard policies on broader greenhouse gas emissions will have the same impact on America's energy suppliers. With Washington hopelessly gridlocked, I only hope that other U.S. state capitals are taking notice.
Find out more about the new climate change legislation signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-climate-law_us_57d2d195e4b03d2d459a0747
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
These factors certainly seem to have come together in the sparsely populated rolling hills and wide-open prairies of North Dakota, where members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, joined in recent days by hundreds of supportive Native Americans (and others) from all over the country, have been making a stand against the Dakota Access oil pipeline project. The protesters say that work on the $3.8 billion pipeline is already desecrating sacred tribal burial grounds and other sites, and that the completed project will pose a pollution threat to the Missouri River. Last weekend, the showdown led to violence — largely the result of attack dogs that private security guards had sicced on Native American activists seeking to block their bulldozers.
The scenes of violent suppression reminded some viewers of the brutal tactics that Alabama sheriff Bull Connor had used in an effort to put down civil rights protests in the 1960s. More importantly, the negative publicity forced the Obama administration to concede that the government — which gave the go-ahead to begin construction earlier this year — hadn't listened to or addressed tribal concerns.
On Friday, there was a dramatic development:
Soon after a federal judge denied Native American tribes' request to halt construction of the Bakken pipeline on Friday, federal agencies told developers to pause construction near a North Dakota site that has inspired months of massive protests.
In a joint statement, the Army, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Interior said they won't authorize construction of the line, also known as the Dakota Access pipeline, on federal land near Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri River, until agencies can determine whether there's a need to reconsider any of the previous decisions regarding Lake Oahe.
"This case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects," the statement said.
The ruling on the injunction request, and the unexpected intervention, comes about a week after Native American demonstrators in North Dakota clashedwith the developers' private security as construction crews building the $3.8 billion fracked oil line bulldozed over documented sacred sites.
Bulldozing started Saturday, a day after the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a court document saying more than two dozen graves, and scores of stone rings, effigies, and other artifacts were in the area near where the Cannonball and Missouri rivers meet, Inside Climate News reported. After the violence both sides reported injuries while dozens of protesters said Dakota Access security personnel attacked them with dogs and pepper spray.
This is clearly just a partial victory; opponents of the pipeline still have a long way to go in order to get the entire project stopped, as happened with the similar Keystone XL project. But for the first time, the momentum is moving in the right direction. The protesters have bought some time for where the real decisive battle may take place, which is in a court of law. But the protesters seem to winning another important fight: In the court of public opinion. The Dakota Access pipeline was on nobody's radar screen just a couple of weeks ago. Now, many ordinary Americans are pressuring the Obama administration to again show that it's serious about ending fossil fuel pollution and reversing climate change. These protesters deserve a ton of credit.
Read more on the Obama administration's stop-work order, from ThinkProgress: https://thinkprogress.org/federal-court-sides-sides-with-bakken-pipeline-eb04eda5d0db#.vr2xo4fte
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
Thankfully, the U.S. government rose to the moral challenge posed by the Keystone XL pipeline and killed the project, probably for good. But now there's a new challenge facing this nation, and the stakes are even higher. Earlier this year, the U.S, Army Corps of Engineers issued a go-ahead for construction to begin on a $3.8 billion project called the Dakota Access Pipeline, also known as the Bakken pipeline. If completed, the more than 1,000-mile project will criss-cross some of the richest farmland in the American heartland, through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. But the environmental risks posed by the Dakota Access Project are exceptional.
The project crosses one of America's most important river, the Missouri, as well as aquifers that supply the drinking water for millions of resident of the Great Plains states. Additionally, the Dakota Access pipeline construction will result in the desecration of burial grounds and other sacred sites with great spiritual significance for the Sioux and other Native American tribes. And it goes without saying that — as was the case with the Keystone KL pipeline — that the completion of this project will lead to even more burning of fossil fuels, and more carbon pollution.
To hundreds of members of the Standing Rock Sioux, other Native American tribes and many supporters, enough is enough. Currently, protesters are camped out on the rolling hillsides of southern North Dakota, determined to block further work on the project before more sacred lands are bulldozed over. This weekend, their action was met with a cruel and violent response:
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A protest of a four-state, $3.8 billion oil pipeline turned violent after tribal officials say construction crews destroyed American Indian burial and cultural sites on private land in southern North Dakota.
Morton County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Donnell Preskey said four private security guards and two guard dogs were injured after several hundred protesters confronted construction crews Saturday afternoon at the Dakota Access pipeline construction site just outside the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. One of the security officers was taken to a Bismarck hospital for undisclosed injuries. The two guard dogs were taken to a Bismarck veterinary clinic, Preskey said.
Tribe spokesman Steve Sitting Bear said protesters reported that six people had been bitten by security dogs, including a young child. At least 30 people were pepper-sprayed, he said. Preskey said law enforcement authorities had no reports of protesters being injured.
There were no law enforcement personnel at the site when the incident occurred, Preskey said. The crowd dispersed when officers arrived and no one was arrested, she said.
The images coming out of North Dakota this weekend were brutal: They reminded me of the newsreel films and pictures taken in the 1960s of Birmingham sheriff Bull Connor siccing police dogs on civil rights protesters. What happened in North Dakota was no less of a human rights violation. At a minimum, the consortium of Big Oil giants behind this monstrosity of a pipeline need to call off the dogs. This weekend, a judge issued a restraining order that should accomplish that, for now. But once peace is indeed achieved, I hope the Army Corps and other governmental agencies will take a closer look at the Dakota Access pipeline to prevent it from ever bring built. Another big fix for America's fossil fuel addiction is the last thing this nation needs.
Read more about last weekend's violent suppression of the North Dakota pipeline protest: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dca1962d120b4b069c0436280ad62bd1/oil-pipeline-protest-turns-violent-southern-north-dakota
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
But the hurricane is another reminder of how increasingly vulnerable our low-lying areas have become in a time of accelerating climate change. There are two issues here. First, tropical storms such as Hermine get their fuel from warm ocean water, and this weather system has strengthened rapidly not once, but twice — thanks to unnatural high water temperatures both in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Those higher-than-average temperatures are the result of global warming. The second issue is rising sea levels, which can make every bad storm cause more flooding than it would have in the recent past.
So it was fitting that this weekend, the New York Times published a piece that looked in-depth at how rising ocean levels — once portrayed as a problem that might affect our children or maybe their children — are in fact already here and wreaking havoc on seaside communities. The message of the story was clear: That climate change is for real, and its impacts aren't going away. Here's an excerpt:
For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States' coastline.
Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes. Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called "sunny-day flooding" — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.
These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water. In coastal regions, that compounds the damage from the increasingly heavy rains plaguing the country, like those that recently caused extensive flooding in Louisiana. Scientists say these rains are also a consequence of human greenhouse emissions.
"Once impacts become noticeable, they're going to be upon you quickly," said William V. Sweet, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Md., who is among the leaders in research on coastal inundation. "It's not a hundred years off — it's now."
As I've noted in this space before, rising sea levels are a special concern to me as a lifelong resident of Louisiana — there's increasing evidence that much of the southern part of my state could become inundated later this century if steps aren't taken to halt the advance of climate change. Indeed, we've already seen folks forced to flee one of Louisiana's coastal enclaves — Isle de Jean Charles — because of higher sea levels in the Gulf. What's frustrating is that climate change denial remains such a deep thread in the American political system — even now as we see the impacts from global warming in real time. The time for debate is clearly over. The time for more aggressive action is now.
Read the remarkable report from the New York Times on ongoing effects of climate change: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-caused-by-global-warming-has-already-begun.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
Author Chase Madar notes that the lead poisoning of the water supply in Flint is a perfect example of this:
The latest criminal charges of public officials in the contamination of the Flint, Mich., water supply seem righteous. After so much government ineptitude with such hideous consequences — tens of thousands of Flint residents poisoned; elevated blood lead levels in nearly 5 percent of the city's children, many with possibly irreversible brain damage — surely these criminal charges will bring, at long last, justice for Flint.
Not really. Though these sorts of charges fulfill an emotional need for retribution and are of great benefit to district attorneys on the make, they are seldom more than a mediagenic booby prize. Prosecutorial responses fill the void left when health and safety regulations succumb to corporate and political pressure.
Madar's core arguments are that a) corporate lobbying and political influence often block the kind of regulatory changes that are needed to ensure things like the purity of our tap water or safety for mine workers and b) the criminal prosecutions that do occur tend not to go after the so-called "big fish." He explains:
Criminal law, however, turns out to be a lot better at catching the small, sad fish of middle management than the sharks of industry and finance. Go to the F.B.I.'s "most wanted" webpage for white-collar crime and what leaps out is how many on the list are nonwhite and how petty their swindles are.
As for the Flint charges — nine officials face them now — no one can doubt that they shine a helpful media spotlight on Michigan's attorney general, Bill Schuette, a Republican with a widely reported eye on the governor's mansion in 2018. Nothing in Mr. Schuette'slong career in politics indicates that he would try to resolve the infrastructural crisis of Flint and Michigan's Flints-in-waiting with major public investment in infrastructure and a regulatory framework. That would take courage in today's climate of neoliberal austerity. On the other hand, Mr. Schuette is brave enough to go after a handful of low-to-mid-level state officials.
The injustice of the Flint contamination and other safety disasters demand a meaningful response. Criminal law is not the right tool for the job.
I don't entirely agree with the author's point: I think criminal charges are an important tool in the arsenal of making sure that it's more costly for a corporation to do bad than it is to do the right thing; in fact, I was deeply disappointed that more BP officials weren't charged over the gross negligence that occurred in the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. I've focused my career as an environmental lawyer using the tort process to get justice for victims of corporate environmental abuse — in part because I know that the regulatory and lawmaking process will only let them down. But Madar is exactly right on the big picture: The best way to make sure that the water we drink and the air we breathe is safe is to make sure pollution is against the rules in the first place.
Read Chase Madar's New York Times op-ed about corporate liability and regulations: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/opinion/the-real-crime-is-whats-not-done.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
But ancient water pipes aren't the only way that children can become exposed to and slowly poisoned by lead. For much of the 20th Century, lead smelters and plants that used the toxic substance for batteries or other materials were scattered across America — typically right next to the same kind of low-income communities where one tends to find lead pipes or heavy use of lead-based paint. Cleaning up these environmental blights has been a low priority for government; occasionally, poorer families are moved right on top of these contaminated sites.
This week, Think Progress carried the story of such a community, East Chicago, Indiana, which is wedged between the industrial wastelands of the Windy City and the smokestacks of other industrial communities that line Lake Michigan. Here, city officials constructed a low-income housing project on the remains of a former lead-producing factory, with sad and predictable results:
Akeeshea Daniels first suspected something was off when her two toddlers came down with scarlet fever. It was 2004, and she just moved her family into a spacious public housing complex in East Chicago, Indiana.
"I looked it up. Scarlet fever hasn't been a problem since the '50s," she said. "It was something straight out of a history book." But when she brought her concerns to the East Chicago Housing Authority?—?the manager of her public housing complex— she was brushed off. "They told me it was my fault for not cleaning well enough," she said. "I had toddlers! I was cleaning every day. And then things kept happening."
The next decade was rife with mysterious family health issues: Ear infections, upper respiratory problems, throat infections. Her son was put on ADHD medication when he was seven. At any time, Daniels or one of her three children were sick with something they couldn't kick. Just last month, Daniels took her now-18-year-old son to the emergency room for severe stomach cramps, and left with no better understanding of what was wrong.
It took years for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and local officials to acknowledge that the soil surrounding the homes of Daniels and her neighbors is contaminated with lead and arsenic and that the residents would have to be relocated, the structures demolished.
In 1973, U.S.S. Lead began dismantling car batteries to recover lead parts. Discarded materials saturated the soil with battery acid. Anaconda Lead has a shorter legacy — after shutting down in 1936, the factory's buildings were demolished and cleared, leaving only lead-rich soil in its wake.
And then the city replaced it with an expansive, 346-unit low-income public housing complex.
It wasn't until U.S.S. Lead shuttered in 1985 that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management tested soil in surrounding areas for contaminants. Out of the 14 locations tested in Anaconda's former property, six had soil with lead levels at 11,000 ppm. EPA's maximum level for lead content in residential areas is 400 ppm.
In 1992, shortly after U.S.S. Lead declared bankruptcy, the EPA proposed the area be included on the Superfund National Priorities List—the EPA's to-do list of toxic environmental areas in dire need of decontamination—but it was mysteriously rejected. After testing the soil directly on the WCC property again in 2009, and finding equally high levels of lead, the 74 acres of Calumet neighborhood were finally deemed a Superfund site.
The residents were the last to know. Some heard murmurs of neighbors having their yards tested, but the city said the EPA did not investigate beyond the nine areas tested for contamination in 2009.
It's certainly understandable why Think Progress would compare East Chicago to Flint. Daniels is just one of dozens of residents of the housing project whose health problems and pleas for help were ignored. I would just note that the common element here is not so much lead as neglect. Big corporations and careless elected officials dump on the poorest communities — without strong political representation or access to attorneys — because they know they can get away with it. That's why an environment justice movement is finally sweeping this country, but there are so many decades, and so many layers of injustice to roll back. The problem isn't finding "the next Flint." There are already scores of them.
Find out more about the lead poisoning of East Chicago from ThinkProgress: https://thinkprogress.org/40-years-in-the-dark-public-housing-residents-have-been-living-on-toxic-soil-for-decades-4c6c3927edba#.vnz15gfsw
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
"Oh my God, I'm drowning," one woman yelled from her almost fully submerged car right before police amazingly pulled her to safety. Others were not so lucky; authorities have confirmed three deaths so far, and there are fears the toll will rise before the waters fully subside.
And more rain is in the forecast for parts of the state. Here's a summary of some of the worst flooding in the history of my low-lying state:
In Baker, just north of Baton Rouge, residents were rescued by boats or waded through waist-deep water to reach dry ground. Dozens of them awoke Saturday morning on cots at a makeshift Red Cross shelter only a few blocks from their flooded homes and cars.
Shanita Angrum, 32, said she called 911 on Friday morning when she realized flood waters had trapped her family in their home. A police officer carried her 6-year-old daughter, Khoie, on his back while she and her husband waded behind them for what "felt like forever."
"Snakes were everywhere," she said. "The whole time I was just praying for God to make sure me and my family were OK."
Beginning Friday, 6 to 10 inches of rain fell on parts of Louisiana and several more inches of rain fell on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service. Some areas got even more rain. In a 24-hour period, Baton Rouge had as much as 11 inches while one weather observer reported more than 17 inches in Livingston.
Forecasters expected a turn to the north Sunday by the system, warning portions of central and northern Louisiana could see heavy rain into next week.
Flooding, of course, is nothing new in Louisiana, where some major population centers are below sea level. Our long network of levees is a testament to humankind's efforts to tame the raging waters of the Mississippi and its tributaries. But weather experts are saying the current deluge tracks with what should be a one-in-a-lifetime event, a so-called "500-year storm." The only problem is that such events are now taking place all across America all of the time. While every storm has its unique characteristics, climate watchers say that factors associated with global warming are giving the recent batch of bad weather its unusual strength.
On August 11, a measure of atmospheric moisture, precipitable water, was in historic territory at 2.78 inches, a measurement higher than during some past hurricanes in the region. Increased moisture in the air and unusually heavy rainfall are classic signals of climate change. As the world warms, storms are able to feed on warmer ocean waters, and the air is able to hold and dump more water. These trends have led to a pronounced increase in intense rainfall events and an increase in flooding risk. In the Southeastern US, extreme precipitation has increased 27 percent from 1958 to 2012.
As the piece in Climate Signals notes:
One of the clearest changes in weather globally and across the United States is the increasing frequency of heavy rain.[4] A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor. And like a bigger bucket, a warmer atmosphere dumps more water when it rains. The storm in the Southeastern US was supercharged by running over a warmer ocean and through an atmosphere made wetter by global warming.
Climate change is now responsible for 17 percent of moderate extreme rainfall events, i.e. one-in-a-thousand day events.[5] The more extreme the event, the more likely climate change was responsible, as climate change affects the frequency of the extreme events the most. In the instance of a one-in-a-thousand year event, the odds that climate change was responsible is dramatically higher.[5]
Indeed, these kind of storms are now all too common:
Today's rainstorm in Louisiana is at least the eighth 500-year rainfall event across America in little more than a year, including similarly extreme downpours in Oklahoma last May, central Texas (twice: last May and last October), South Carolina last October, northern Louisiana this March, West Virginia in June, and Maryland last month.
And these were just the events that the agency decided to write a report on. One notable exception to this list is the Tax Day flood in the Houston metropolitan area this April, at least the fourth major flood in that region in a span of a year. The local flood control district extrapolated the 23.5 inches of rain over 14.5 hours in Pattison, Texas, during the Tax Day storm to be a one-in-10,000-year event.
Statistical calculations like these make a major assumption: That the climate of the past is the same as the climate of today. That's no longer a very good assumption.
Indeed, the situation in Louisiana could almost be described as ironic, given the longtime dependence of the state's economy on fossil fuels like oil and natural gas — the biggest contributors to greenhouse-gas pollution that in turn creates man-made climate change. But rather than ponder those ironies, we should be spurred to action. Efforts to protect and reclaim Louisiana's wetlands — meant to absorb storms like a sponge — are more critical than even. The next "500-year storm' could be only months away.
Read more about this week's historical flooding from the Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-louisiana-flooding-20160814-story.html
For additional information on the Louisiana floods and climate change, check out: http://www.climatesignals.org/headlines/events/gulf-storm-august-2016
Check our more about the recent spate of flooding and global warming here: https://psmag.com/americas-latest-500-year-rainstorm-is-underway-right-now-in-louisiana-98acbdf435d0#.tp8hufpmy
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
And yet by the next gubernatorial election, voters turned to a staunch defender of Big Oil and Gas in Bobby Jindal, whose campaign was backed by huge donations from energy executives. It was Jindal who — among other pro-industry moves — signed legislation that was meant to kill the lawsuits that would have made the oil companies pay for decades of illegal destruction of Louisiana marshlands. The next disaster — the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and spill that killed 11 workers and caused massive environmental devastation in the sensitive waters of the Gulf of Mexico — had even more influence on public awareness. But the growing environmental conscientiousness among citizens — highlighted by the so-called "Green Army" of activists led by retired Gen. Russel Honore — still didn't register in Baton Rouge.
But elections matter.
In January, a new Democratic administration took over in the state capital. And for the first time in decades, Big Oil is on the run:
Louisiana remains the nation's second-largest crude oil producer and oil refiner after Texas, but the industry has been on the defensive since [John Bel] Edwards, a 49-year-old lawyer and Democrat, ended eight years of Republican leadership last November.
Publicly, he joined a campaign by local governments suing to hold the industry at least partly responsible for Louisiana's loss of 1,900 square miles of coast since the 1930s. Privately, he pushed for a pre-trial settlement to resolve all their claims. "Our coast is in crisis," Edwards wrote in a letter to oil executives after their initial meeting in May, calling for an "amicable solution" to avoid years of litigation.
He was soon seconded by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, whose family of Louisiana Democrats long supported Big Oil. Landrieu accused former state leaders of allowing the industry to cripple "in a generation or two what Mother Nature built in 7,000 years," and said the damage has spread "through the marsh like an infection.
In July, Vermilion Parish, deep in Louisiana's "Oil Patch," became the fourth local government to file claims against Exxon, Shell, Chevron and dozens of other corporations. The agency overseeing flood protection for New Orleans also is suing. Republicans have joined in, from GOP-led parishes to Attorney General Jeff Landry. "It's absolutely new," pollster Bernie Pinsonat said. "The oil companies are taking it seriously because you're talking about billions and billions of dollars."
These newfound positions are more courageous than they might appear to outsiders. The oil industry has been a major source of both jobs and tax revenue in Louisiana for decades. For blue-collar families out in Bayou Country, finding work on an offshore oil rig was once a dependable route toward a secure middle-class lifestyle. But Louisiana has also learned the hard lessons that the trade-offs of having an oil-and-gas industry that is largely unregulated and unfettered has become a threat to our way of life. It's been frustrating that it took the state's elected officials so long to figure this out. But it's better that environmental awareness takes hold late, than if it had never arrived at all.
Read more about Louisiana's new tougher stance toward Big Oil from Fuel Fix: http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/08/06/louisiana-pols-go-to-court-blaming-big-oil-for-coastal-ruin/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
This year, the citizens of Alaska have been enjoying an unexpectedly long, hot summer. Even on the North Slope of the state, which borders the Arctic Ocean, residents have been enjoying the kind of 80-degree beach days you might expect to find in the south of France this time of year. Here's more on some of the temperature records that aren't just falling, but which are getting shattered, across America's northernmost frontier:
Anchorage just recorded its hottest month ever, amid a statewide July warm spell that saw temperature extremes from Southeast all the way to Deadhorse.
That's according to National Weather Service meteorologists, who said on Facebook Tuesday that temperatures last month were searing throughout southern Alaska — Kenai also had its hottest month on record, while Homer and Sitka both posted their warmest July ever.
"Most other long-term climate observations locations in southwest Alaska reported the second-warmest July," meteorologists wrote. Two spots on the North Slope saw their warmest single days on record as well, with the Deadhorse Airport hitting 85 degrees on July 13 and Kuparuk reaching 86 degrees on July 14.
Climate scientists said the warmth is due, in part, to above-average sea temperatures. "All around Alaska, sea surface temperatures are much warmer than normal," said Rick Thoman, climate science and services manager for the NWS Alaska Region. "In the Bering Sea, especially south of St. Lawrence Island or so, they're really outrageously warm compared to normal."
Yet some central regions of Alaska saw record rainfall, which actually isn't surprising since excessive heat and warm ocean waters tends to cause more moisture in the atmosphere, which of course leads to more powerful storms. Meanwhile, the storms, the heat and the rising sea levels are beginning to cause coastal villages in Alaska — just like Louisiana's Isle de Jean Charles — to start disappearing from the map:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A tiny island village on Alaska's storm-battered western coast is entering a new chapter in its decades-long pursuit to move the entire community from its badly eroding shores to safer ground.
The Inupiat Eskimo community of Shishmaref will hold a special election next month asking residents if they should develop a new community at a nearby location on the mainland or stay put with added protections, such expanding a seawall that has never been completed.
The culprit, of course, is global warming:
Doing nothing is not an option," Shishmaref Mayor Howard Weyiouanna Sr. said.
But even as government funding becomes increasingly difficult to obtain, erosion continues to eat away at the shoreline, toppling at least two houses as it comes ever closer to other homes. Erosion there and other coastal communities is an escalating problem blamed on climate change that has affected storm patterns in the region. Shishmaref, built on a narrow island just north of the Bering Strait, has been identified as one of Alaska's most eroded communities and among those that expect to ultimately require relocation.
In spite of the pounding drumbeat of evidence that climate change is a pressing problem right now, Washington will continue to implement only piecemeal solutions, at best, unless we see a landslide at the polls this November and elect a radically different Congress. And right now, the communities bearing the brunt of global warming are mostly small and don't have a lot of political clout. But we need wiser heads who'll act before the next articles about vanishing homes start coming out of New Orleans or Miami Beach or New York City.
Read local coverage about the record high temperatures in Anchorage and elsewhere: http://www.adn.com/alaska-news/weather/2016/08/03/anchorage-just-experienced-its-hottest-month-ever-recorded/
Here's more from the Washington Post about eroding villages on Alaska's coast: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/eroding-alaska-village-to-vote-on-whether-to-move-or-stay/2016/07/29/fd36107a-55d6-11e6-b652-315ae5d4d4dd_story.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=climatenexus
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
But it has only been over the last year or so that we've learned exactly how much the oil industry had at stake. Now we know what we didn't know then — that scientists working for the big energy firms such as Exxon informed their bosses as long ago as the late 1970s that the world's climate was starting to heat up and that pollution from burning fossil fuels was a major cause. For a short time, the Big Oil giants seemed to actually consider changing the way that they do business, but they soon decided to embark on a path of denial and cover-up instead. In fact, not only did the oil-and-gas corporations keep their scientific research a secret, but they spent millions on front organizations that peddled a bogus line on climate change.
If this story sounds familiar, it is almost the same strategy pursued by the giant tobacco firms in an effort to obfuscate and confuse customers and regulators about cancer and other health risks from smoking. The only difference seems to be that the cigarette industry leaders got caught in their lies and were called out a decade earlier. Now, a new treasure trove of documents shows how closely the two beleaguered industries actually cooperated:
Indeed, the links between oil and tobacco are truly a bizarre thing. As also reported recently by the Huffington Post:
Among the more telling documents is a 1967 report in which the American Tobacco Company proposes a "tie-in" between its own Colony cigarettes and the petroleum industry.
"Success," the tobacco company wrote, "will depend heavily on the appeal we make to the smoker-driver. And except to say the the appeal is not gasoline, we don't intend to get into the creative requirements here. It is obvious that smoking pleasure and the freedom and leisure of auto travel must be linked successfully if we are to get this program moving."
The tobacco industry has paid a big price — both in dollars and damaged reputations — for its dishonesty, and it's time that Big Oil does the same. Several big state attorneys general, in New York and California, have begun investigations into the oil industry's campaign of deceit, and it's critical that these probes uncover the whole story. At least people can choose whether to smoke cigarettes. None of us are immune to the damage caused by global warming.
Read more about the ties between Big Oil and Big Tobacco from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/oil-tobacco-companies-worked-together_us_5787dab3e4b0867123e04885?section=
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
It is only within the Democratic Party, which meets next week in Philadelphia, that there's been any kind of debate over whether fracking is actually healthy for the human beings who live near the drilling pads. In recent week, the party officials drafting the Democratic platform have debated whether unconventional extraction of oil and natural gas needs to be a) more tightly regulated, with more local input or b) banned altogether. Meanwhile in the scientific community, evidence is mounting that the environmental health impacts of fracking are severe. Here's the latest:
CHICAGO (AP) – Fracking may worsen asthma in children and adults who live near sites where the oil and gas drilling method is used, according to an 8-year study in Pennsylvania.
The study found that asthma treatments were as much as four times more common in patients living closer to areas with more or bigger active wells than those living far away.
But the study did not establish that fracking directly caused or worsened asthma. There's also no way to tell from the study whether asthma patients exposed to fracking fare worse than those exposed to more traditional gas drilling methods or to other industrial activities.
Fracking refers to hydraulic fracturing, a technique for extracting oil and gas by injecting water, sand and chemicals into wells at high pressure to crack rock. Environmental effects include exhaust, dust and noise from heavy truck traffic transporting water and other materials, and from drilling rigs and compressors. Fracking and improved drilling methods led to a boom in production of oil and gas in several U.S. states, including Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado.
Sara Rasmussen, the study's lead author and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, said pollution and stress from the noise caused by fracking might explain the results. But the authors emphasized that the study doesn't prove what caused patients' symptoms.
It's not a stretch to imagine that fracking is linked to asthma. We've already seen high rates of the disease in poorer, urban areas with industry and heavy auto traffic; most fracking pads are located in rural areas that used to be less prone to air pollution before Big Oil and Gas came to town. These new findings come on top of other studies — in Pennsylvania and elsewhere — showing a correlation between fracking and other health problems such as headaches and nausea, with drilling identified as a source of both air pollution and water pollution.
America deserves a much more robust debate on this ongoing scourge, especially as other developed nations move away from fossil fuels toward alternative use of energy. After a decade of pollution nightmares caused by fracking, it's time for the chants of "drill, baby, drill" to fade into silence.
Read more about the study linking fracking to asthma cases in Pennsylvania: http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20160718_ap_86804f261e5748cbab3004358ce2665f.html
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
This weekend, with the selection of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, the rightward odyssey of Donald Trump on environmental issues is complete. During his term as governor of a large Midwestern state, Pence — a former member of Congress — has been a great friend to the coal industry, and promoted the Republican Party's extreme rhetoric of climate change denial.
Here's an early peek inside the environmental thinking of the man who'll be anointed as the GOP vice presidential candidate this coming weekend in Cleveland:
"Global warming is a myth," Pence wrote nearly two decades ago in an op-edunearthed by BuzzFeed. "Environmentalists," the Indiana Republican explained, "claim that certain 'greenhouse gases' like carbon dioxide are mucking up the atmosphere and causing the earth to gradually warm. Despite the fact that CO2 is a naturally occurring phenomenon in nature, the greenpeace folks want to blame it all on coal (another natural mineral) and certain (evil) coal burning power plants." He added (inaccurately) that "the earth is actually cooler today than it was about 50 years ago."
Pence didn't change his tune much after winning election to Congress. "The theory of global warming is just that—a theory," he told the Star Press, a Muncie, Indiana, newspaper, in 2002. Seven years later, he continued to express doubt.
Pence's more recent record on other issues in Indiana is no better:
Pence has also been an outspoken opponent of policies that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He told the Star Press that a cap-and-trade proposal passed by the US House of Representatives in 2009 would raise energy prices and harm the economy. The legislation would have put a limit and a price on the carbon emissions that cause climate change. "I really believe Democratic climate change legislation will cap growth and trade jobs," he said.
As governor of Indiana, Pence has continued to fight against policies intended to combat global warming. His latest battle? An effort to block President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations that would limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. Last year, Pence called Indiana a "proud pro-coal state" on a press call, according to the Indianapolis Star. He vowed to resist the new regulations.
In June 2015, Pence sent a letter to Obama stating that Indiana would refuse to comply with the plan unless there was "significant improvement" to it. As in 2009, he warned of higher electricity prices if the proposal was implemented. He called the rules "a vast overreach of federal power."
None of Pence's views are shocking if you've been following Republican Party orthodoxy over the last generation or so. Nonetheless, the choice for American voters going into November could not be more stark. The Trump-Pence ticket would take America back to an earlier time when pollution went unheeded, and the big energy companies ran wild. Clinton (and whomever she chooses as a running mate) have proposals to continue to reduce greenhouse-gas pollution and more tightly regulate the fracking industry. What's more, Trump's unpredictability seems to make it more imaginable that his vice president could eventually move into the Oval Office. But with the fate of the planet at stake, a climate change denier like Mike Pence is a non-starter.
Read more about Mike Pence's environmental record from Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/07/mike-pence-climate-change
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
The idea that there's anything positive, at all, about a catastrophe such the BP spill — which, we can never forget, killed 11 workers before it caused literally billions of dollars of damage to the Gulf Coast — is ludicrous. And yet, that's exactly the argument that some industry backers are trying to advance in Vancouver, Washington, where a joint venture of oil companies is seeking approval to open what would be the largest oil-by-rail terminal in North America. The facility would send an additional 155 oil trains per week across the Pacific Northwest, greatly increasing the risk of a major accident or a spill. But backers of the plan insist that's not necessarily bad:
"The Draft Environmental Impact Statement identifies many economic impacts arising from an accident associated with Project operations, but fails to recognize economic activity that would be generated by spill response," Todd Schatzki, vice president of Analysis Group — a consulting group that released an economic report on the terminal commissioned by Tesoro Savage — wrote in pre-filed testimony. "When a spill occurs, new economic activity occurs to clean-up contaminated areas, remediate affected properties, and supply equipment for cleanup activities. Anecdotal evidence from recent spills suggests that such activity can be potentially large."
Schatzki's pre-filed testimony also includes references to both the Santa Barbara and BP oil spills' role as job creating events. He notes that the Santa Barbara oil spill created some 700 temporary jobs to help with cleanup, while the BP spill created short term jobs for 25,000 workers. Schatzki does not mention that BP has paid individuals and businesses more than $10 billion to make up for economic losses caused by the spill. Nor does he mention that California's Economic Forecast Director predicted that the 2015 Santa Barbara oil spill would cost the county 155 jobs and $74 million in economic activity.
For the Columbia River region, the impacts of an oil spill could be equally economically devastating — a report from the Washington Attorney General's office found that an oil spill could cost more than $170 million in environmental damages.
Schatzki also argued that an oil spill would not necessarily have a large impact on commercial and recreational fisheries. The Columbia River, which cuts between Oregon and Washington and borders much of the oil-train route, is one of the most important fisheries for both states. In 2015, the total economic value of Columbia River salmon was $15.5 million, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Those fisheries, however, would not necessarily be impacted by an oil spill, Schatzki argued, because fishermen would simply avoid the areas where the spill had taken place, moving their operations elsewhere.
These views are offensive beyond words. They completely overlook the enormous damage not just to businesses such as fishing and tourism, but more important to human, animal and plant life, that is caused by the toxic pollution of oil spills. It's an insult to the people of Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast , not to mention other communities such as California, that have actually suffered through these catastrophes. I hope that officials in Washington State will reject both this ridiculous argument and this potentially unsafe facility.
Find out more about the shocking oil industry comments on oil spills from ThinkProgress: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/15/3798835/oil-spills-good-for-economy-nature-vancouver/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
That concerns me, of course, but I'm also deeply troubled by what the "Brexit" vote might mean for the environment. Before last Thursday, the United Kingdom was closely tied to the EU's broader efforts to work with the global community to reduce carbon pollution and beat back climate change. The broader point is this: Global warming is a crisis that affects the entire planet, and it requires an enormous level of international cooperation. Britain's vote — albeit by a narrow margin — is a sign that its citizens are willing to withdraw from the world to some degree. And other nations feeling the fallout from globalization might follow.
Here's more on why the "Brexit" vote is a blow to the environment:
Another big unknown is how this will affect the Paris climate agreement. Britain's climate-action pledge was included in the EU's pledge. "From the point of view of the Paris agreement, the U.K. is part of the EU and has put in its effort as part of the EU, so anything that would change that would require then a recalibration,"said Figueres. As it sorts out what to do without the U.K., the EU will likely see a slowdown in its ratification process.
Climate hawks are also concerned that a new government in Britain could be less committed to climate action. Prime Minister David Cameron pushed for the Paris Agreement, but he won't be around for much longer. He had led the failed "Remain" campaign, and on Friday morning, after the results of the referendum came in, he announced his intention to resign in October. At that point, another member of the Conservative Party will become prime minister. Many of the conservatives who had campaigned for Brexit are also climate deniers, and they will likely have more power in a new government.
The impact could go beyond the climate. Farming minister George Eustice, a notable Brexiteer, previously announced his desire to get rid of EU environmental directives that protect birds and habitats. He and other campaigners have advocated for a new, more flexible approach to environmental protection, but opponents of the Vote Leave campaign are skeptical that such an approach will be equally effective.
"Don't tell me that a new Brexit-led British government is going to put environmental regulations at top of its pile on June 24," Stanley Johnson, co-chair of Environmentalists for Europe, told the Guardian late last month. "It is not going to happen."
One irony that this piece notes is that in the short run, the economic turmoil caused by Britain's vote might lead to a wider recession — and less industrial activity would result in less carbon pollution. But this is hardly a long-term fix to global warming — nor is it a desirable approach. It is true that millions of citizens in Great Britain remain supportive of strong environmental protection measures. One can only hope that their influence will be felt on the UK's politics in the tumultuous months and years to come. The rest of the plant is depending upon them.
Read more about the Brexit impact on the environment from Grist: http://grist.org/article/brexit-could-have-serious-repercussions-for-the-climate/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
In California, activists have been crusading for years to close the state's one remaining nuclear plant at Diablo Canyon. Protesters sought desperately — and failed — to prevent Diablo Canyon from opening in 1985, in a part of the world where frequent earthquakes make atomic energy an especially bad idea. In recent years, the state's leaders have reached an admirable consensus that Diablo Canyon's days should be numbered — and also that the Golden State should be a pacesetter for acting on global warming, since our national politicians remain hopelessly gridlocked.
This week's headline from California is very good news for both that state and for the rest of the planet:
Under a proposal announced on Tuesday, Pacific Gas and Electric would shutter the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the state's last operating nuclear facility, and would compensate for the lost output with technologies that do not emit greenhouse gases, including renewable energy.
The proposal, part of an agreement with environmental and labor groups, is intended to help meet California's aggressive clean energy goals, which have already transformed the power mix with a large and growing renewable energy fleet at a time of slowing electric demand. It also comes after years of public pressure to close the plant, near San Luis Obispo, because of safety concerns over its location, near several fault lines, and its use of ocean water for cooling.
"California's energy landscape is changing dramatically, with energy efficiency, renewables and storage being central to the state's energy policy," Tony Earley, PG&E's chief executive, said in a prepared statement. "Diablo Canyon's full output will no longer be required."
Under the proposal, which would require the approval of the California Public Utilities Commission, the plant's two reactors would be shut down in 2024 and 2025, when their operating licenses expire, as long as the State Lands Commission extends a permit set to expire in 2018 that grants access to the ocean for the cooling operation.
Environmentalists are generally hailing the announcement:
"This is an historic agreement," Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, said. "It sets a date for the certain end of nuclear power in California and assures replacement with clean, safe, cost-competitive, renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy storage. It lays out an effective roadmap for a nuclear phase-out in the world's sixth largest economy, while assuring a green energy replacement plan to make California a global leader in fighting climate change."
A robust technical and economic report commissioned by Friends of the Earth served as a critical underpinning for the negotiations. The report, known as Plan B, provided a detailed analysis of how power from the Diablo Canyon reactors could be replaced with renewable, efficiency and energy storage resources which would be both less expensive and greenhouse gas free.
To me, a perfect plan would involve closing Diablo Canyon immediately. The Fukushima catastrophe in 2011 was a grim reminder that disaster can strike at any time — especially for nuclear facilities that are poorly located, as is the case with Diablo Canyon. But California is moving in the right direction — and it's about time. Over the last few years, environmentalists here in the United States have watched with envy as European nations have closed their nuclear plants and moved aggressively into wind, solar, and other forms of alternative power. Now, one state is leading the way here — can the rest of the nation follow?
For more about yesterday's landmark decision on Diablo Canyon, please read: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/business/californias-diablo-canyon-nuclear-power-plant.html
For more reaction from environmentalists, check out: http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/21/diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant-shut-down/
Learn the story about how I fought Big Oil on its radioactive pollution in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
Radiation began to turn up in local rivers and streams. Some close neighbors of fracking rigs were able to light their tap water on fire with a match. Places that had once been stable bedrock, like Oklahoma, were suddenly rocked by earthquakes. Methane, a huge contributor to global warming, escaped from drilling sites in large quantities. And for residents of communities where fracking has taken root, the big issue was whether oil and gas drilling somehow polluted the water they drank and the air that they breathed.
The small town of Pavillion, Wyoming, became a battleground over this issue. In 2008, when the fracking boom was just getting underway, residents there complained of foul odors and awful tasting water; some people fell ill. Two years later, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found benzene, a major carcinogen, and other highly toxic chemicals in the tap water, and residents were ordered not to drink it. Despite the strong evidence, industry officials contested the findings, and it was just this year that the EPA finally confirmed that the water pollution included chemicals that were only used in the fracking process.
But that's not even the scariest part. The newest study out of Pavillion offers a window into how this toxic soup of chemicals has found its way into the bloodstream of the citizens who live there. The findings are alarming, to say the least:
The report found that residents who live near the gas sites have a higher amount of the chemicals in their urine than the general population. Scientists focused on how oil and gas fields can pollute the air and how that pollution ends up in humans living nearby. That's a point Wilma Subra, president of the Subra Company involved in the study, and other leaders in the study have been emphasizing.
"If you have contaminated air, you have no choice but to breathe it," Subra, who has worked on environmental health research across the country, told ThinkProgress. "That's why it is so important to help citizens understand the quality of the air they are breathing."
John Fenton, a Pavillion resident and farmer, said in a release that his family "has experienced phantom odors, rashes, hair loss, respiratory conditions, neurological problems, epileptic seizures, cancer, and huge hits to how we think and reason."
In a 2014 presentation, he said "we went from living on a farm to living on a refinery." His farm is within 350 feet of a gas well, according to the presentation. He first saw health impacts in his mother-in-law, who lost her sense of smell and taste. Later, his wife experienced similar symptoms. He goes on to explain many women often have neuropathy, men experience chronic fatigue and ringing in the ears, and children have nosebleeds and even kidney problems.
The study looked at eight chemicals that belong to the family of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. These VOCs are linked to a string of bad health outcomes: eye, nose, and throat irritation; headaches; lower cognitive function; loss of coordination and nausea; and damage to liver, kidney and central nervous system. The study found that one of the chemicals — an acid that is found in benzene — was in the urine of the Pavillion residents at a rate 10 times higher than the general population. The researchers also discovered an alarmingly high rate of another chemical linked to toulene, which like benzene is highly carcinogenic.
The lead scientist here, Subra, is based in Louisiana, and I have been fortunate to work with her on various environmental crises over the years; she is, quite simply, the best in the business. She analyzes the samples and crunches the numbers that the government and big business don't want you to see. This is just one more, irrefutable layer of proof from the town of Pavillion that fracking is not safe for the people who live nearby. The only question now is, when will our policy makers pay attention?
Read more detail about the Pavillion health study from ThinkProgress: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/16/3788812/chemicals-fracking-health-wyoming/
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
The Interior Department plan that thankfully spared the Atlantic region does still call for offshore drilling leases in 13 new areas, including 10 in the Gulf of Mexico, which of course continues to struggle to get past the ill effects of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe some six years ago. The plan also includes three new sites off Alaska — despite the fact that an attempt by Shell to conduct offshore oil exploration in the Arctic a couple of years ago was an unmitigated disaster. The risks of another costly oil spill and extensive cleanup alonbe should make these new leases a non-starter, but the environmental group Greenpeace USA is also noting that the climate change impact — from a financial perspective — far outweighs what the U.S. Treasury would collect:
The Obama administration's proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico would result in hefty climate-related social costs, a new report found. In fact, those costs, estimated at $58.6 billion to $179.2 billion, may outweigh the economic benefits of selling the energy, according to Tim Donaghy, lead author of the report.
The critical point made by the report's authors is that the indirect costs from global warming are too often taken for granted. That should no longer be the case:
With emissions from existing oil reserves already capable of pushing the planet beyond the 2 degrees Celsius threshold climatologists say would result in drastic impacts, searching of more oil would be a step backward, Donaghy, a senior research specialist at Greenpeace USA, told The Huffington Post.
"Climate change isn't just this abstract thing," Donaghy said. "It's going to actually affect our daily lives."
The 16-page report, released Thursday by Greenpeace USA and Oil Change International, finds that consumption of the oil produced under the five-year program would increase global carbon emissions by roughly 850 million metric tons of CO2 — equivalent to that of 3.6 million cars over a 50-year period. "These carbon emissions will impose high costs to society in coming decades related to human health, flood damages, agricultural productivity and other impacts," the report says.
In addition to quantifying the environmental and social costs of burning the oil, which Donaghy said are likely "underestimated," the report calls on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which regulates offshore oil and gas development, to include climate-related costs in its environmental assessment of the program.
I think that the bigger point here is that the next administration (probably to be led by Hillary Clinton the way things are going, although in politics you really never know) needs to drastically re-think U.S. energy policy. The Obama administration policies of the last eight years have certainly been successful from a lowering-prices-at-the-pump perspective. But it's been a mixed bag, at best, when it comes to reducing our addiction to fossil fuels. Many European counties have put America to shame when it comes to ditching oil or coal or natural gas for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. More offshore oil leasing in the Gulf isn't just reckless. It's completely unnecessary.
Read more about the Greenpeace USA report from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-drilling-expansion-cost_us_575b0a52e4b00f97fba83fd8?ir=Green§ion=us_green&utm_hp_ref=green
Learn more about the need for worldwide action on fossil fuels in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved
In a shocking move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is going in completely the wrong direction on this issue. Succumbing to an industry lobbying campaign that's been going on for years, the agency tasked with protecting Americans and our environment is planning to radically loosen the standard on how much radiation in the water supply that it considers "safe" after an incident — either a Fukushima-style meltdown or some other case of radiological contamination. The proposed new EPA rules would allow a citizen to expose himself — just through his tap water — to as much radiation as 250 chest x-rays in one year. In fact, the rules just proposed by the Obama administration are even more pro-industry than what the George W. Bush administration was pondering a few years back:
Environmentalists took aim at the EPA for establishing what some called egregiously high drinking water guide levels. Several environmentalists had urged the EPA in 2013 to establish guide levels only in line with existing maximum contaminant levels under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
"Given this monstrous proposal, it is unclear what lessons EPA learned from the contaminated water calamity of Flint, Michigan," Jeff Ruch, executive director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said in a statement. "It is unfathomable that a public health agency would prescribe subjecting people to radioactive concentrations a thousand times above Safe Drinking Water Act limits as a 'protective' measure."
The maximum contaminant levels were intended for limiting "everyday exposure" and assume 70 years of continuous exposure, while this guide would be in place only for emergencies, the EPA said. The entity responsible for any radiation incident-impacted drinking water system would be expected to "return to compliance" with maximum contaminant levels "by the earliest feasible time," the EPA's draft guide itself said.
The proposed limits for a radiological incident are truly stunning. For radioactive iodine-131, for example, the EPA rules would allow citizens to consume levels 3,450 times higher than what is now classified as safe. Indeed, other respected groups, such as the international Codex Alimentarius Commission, have set safety standards that are much more conservative than the EPA. But then, these other groups aren't answering to corporate lobbyists:
"Clean water is essential for health," Dr. Catherine Thomasson, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said. "Just like lead, radiation when ingested in small amounts is very hazardous to our health. It is inconceivable that EPA could now quietly propose allowing enormous increases in radioactive contamination with no action to protect the public, even if concentrations are a thousand times higher than under the Safe Drinking Water Act."
The Bush Administration in its last days unsuccessfully tried to put forward similar proposals, which the incoming Obama Administration pulled back. Now, in the waning months of the Obama Administration, the EPA's radiation office is trying again.
"These levels are even higher than those proposed by the Bush Administration—really unprecedented and shocking," Diane D'Arrigo, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said.
The Bush Administration proposal for strontium 90 was 6,650 pCi/L; the new proposal is 7,400 pCi/L. For iodine-131, the Bush proposal was 8,490 pCi/L; the new proposal is 10,350 pCi/L. For cesium-137, the proposal was for 13,600 pCi/L; Obama "beats" Bush with a value of 16,570 pCi/L.
The only good news here is that these are still draft regulations — not finalized. Hopefully enough folks in the general public and their elected officials will speak out and kill this bad proposal. Nuclear accidents need to be prevented — not excused by government officials willing to look the other way while citizens drink poisoned tap water.
Read more about the EPA's proposed new rules from Bloomberg News: http://www.bna.com/epa-issues-draft-n57982073785/
Here's more about the water rules from EcoWatch: https://ecowatch.com/2016/06/08/epa-radiation-drinking-water/
Learn the story about how I fought Big Oil on its radioactive pollution in my new book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America: http://shop.benbellabooks.com/crude-justice
© Stuart H. Smith, LLC 2015 – All Rights Reserved