IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Jeb Bush calls for more oil and more gas in America's future!; Premier of Alberta, Canada - home of the dirty tar sands oil fields - foresees the phaseout of fossil fuels; New air pollution standards for oil refineries; PLUS: Elon Musk and Tesla unveil the world's first all-electric SUV... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): E.P.A. to Unveil New Limit for Smog-Causing Emissions; Scientists declare an 'urgent' mission - study West Antarctica, and fast; Endangered fur seals dying on California coast; One of the World's Most Powerful Central Bankers Is Worried About Climate Change; EPA Overhauls Rules for Pesticide Use on Farms; AP Styles 'Deniers' into 'Doubters,' Creating Newsroom Skeptics... PLUS: Caution, Trolling Ahead: Fossil Fuel Advocates Are Hoping You Fail Their Latest Challenge... and much, MUCH more! ...
STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...
Jeb! Bush's energy plan: Sell more oil and gas:
Jeb Bush's low-energy energy plan (Vox.com)
Unleash the Energy Revolution, by Jeb Bush (Medium.com)
Jeb Bush lays out energy plan with call to relax environmental rules (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
"I hope your stock price goes up," he told Rice employees sheltering from the rain in marquee that had set up in the company car park. "That is the American way. Praise Jesus."...After the former governor left, the press tent was overcome with fumes from one of the several generators that had been set up in the parking lot.
Jeb Bush outlines energy plan, calling for lifting oil and gas restraints (Washington Post):
Jeb Bush's Energy Plan Doesn't Even Mention Renewables (Climate Progress):
"We have, thus far, benefited from the energy revolution simply because Washington did not have time to quash it, but we will never know how many other innovations have been lost due to overregulation," Bush's campaign wrote in a Medium post.
Majority of Republican voters accept climate science, support carbon tax:
Survey of Republican Voters Shows a Majority Believe in Climate Change (NY Times):
A majority of Republicans - including 54 percent of self-described conservative Republicans - believe the world's climate is changing and that mankind plays some role in the change, according to a new survey conducted by a trio of prominent Republican pollsters.
Alberta, Canada's Premier Rachel Notley foresees phaseout of fossil fuels:
No long-term future in tar sands, says Alberta's premier (The Guardian UK):
Rachel Notley supports a switch to clean energy to help Canada's biggest oil-producing province move beyond fossil fuels within a century
She went on: "Do I see that as our reason for being 100 years from now? Well, I hope we will have learned a lesson of diversification by then."
AUDIO: Rachel Notley: 'Alberta is facing serious economic challenges' (The Current, CBC):
We're the only province without a renewable energy strategy. The only province without an energy efficiency strategy. These are the kinds of things we need to work on.
VIDEO: Keystone XL a "threat" to Alberta: Rachel Notley (Business News Network)
Alberta will turn away from coal power, Rachel Notley tells Montreal business crowd (CBC)
Albertans support strong action on climate change, including carbon tax: poll (National Post)
EPA issues new air pollution standards for oil refineries:
EPA adopts rules to limit oil refineries' emissions into neighborhoods (LA Times) [emphasis added]:
The rules drew praise Tuesday from those groups as bringing health benefits to predominately Latino and African American communities near oil refineries that have long fought for stricter regulations to control pollution, noise and smoke from the sprawling operations....Southern California activists have long demanded fence-line air monitoring because of the large number of families, schoolchildren and other sensitive groups that live in close proximity to refineries and their emissions.
EPA sets stricter emission standards for oil refineries (AP) [emphasis added]:
The rules will require for the first time that refineries install air monitors along "fence lines" where pollution enters neighboring communities....EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the rules would protect the health of more than 6 million people who live within 3 miles of a refinery. The rules will serve as a kind of "neighborhood watch for toxic pollutants" ...McCarthy called the rules a demonstration of the Obama administration's commitment to "environmental justice," noting that many people who live near refineries are poor, including a large percentage who are members of minority groups.
EPA issues new water pollution standards for power plants:
EPA sets new discharge limits for power plants (Charlotte Observer):
Federal rule is the first on toxic metals in wastewater; Coal-fired power plants dump half of all toxic discharges...Only 134 of the nation's nearly 1,100 coal-fired power plants will have to spend more money to comply with the rule, it said.
Steam Electric Power Generating Effluent Guidelines - 2015 Final Rule (EPA.gov) [emphasis added]:
The rule sets the first federal limits on the levels of toxic metals in wastewater that can be discharged from power plants, based on technology improvements in the steam electric power industry over the last three decades.
New Power Plant Rules Will Reduce Toxic Pollution and Save Water (NRDC) [emphasis added]:
Because the final rule will now require power plants to use dry handling for managing coal ash... As a result, power plants will significantly reduce their water use....The human health benefits from the final rule are also huge. EPA concludes that the new standards will yield an estimated benefit of $463 million per year to Americans across the country, in the form of reduced cancer risk, neurological risk, and drinking water risks, among others.
Elon Musk and Tesla Motors unveil the world's first all-electric SUV:
Tesla's Model X Is Here, and It's as Awesome as We Hoped (Wired) [emphasis added]:
It's not just the design, which is futuristic without being weird. It's not just the performance, which is holy shit fast. And it's not even the dramatic "falcon" doors that lift like the wings of a bird.... "The mission of Tesla is to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport," CEO Elon Musk said at the car's reveal, held at the company's factory in Fremont, California. "It's important to know that any kind of car can go electric."
VIDEO: Elon Musk's Response To Dieselgate: "We've reached the limit of what's possible with diesel & gasoline." (Clean Technica)
First drive: Tesla Model X is an awesome way to spend $132,000 (USA Today)
VIDEO: Electric Car - They Might Be Giants:
'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...
E.P.A. to Unveil New Limit for Smog-Causing Emissions (NY Times):
The Obama administration on Thursday will unveil a major new regulation on smog-causing emissions that spew from smokestacks and tailpipes, significantly tightening the current Bush-era standards but falling short of more stringent regulations that public health advocates and environmentalists had urged.
It's Getting Harder for Oil Companies to Make Money. Here's Why. (Mother Jones) [emphasis added]:
"They're in a vise," says Mark Lewis, chief energy economist at the international financial consulting firm Kepler Cheuvreux. "You have economics and technology on one side of the vise. And you have politics, the push for climate action, on the other side."...One explanation for falling prices is the glut of cheap domestic oil from the fracking boom. But the industry is also confronting what Bloomberg energy analysts have characterized as a "demand shock."
Scientists declare an 'urgent' mission - study West Antarctica, and fast (Washington Post):
Scientists who have been raising alarms about the endangered ice sheet of West Antarctica say they've identified a key glacier that could pose the single most immediate threat to the world's coastlines - and are pushing for an urgent new effort to study it.
Endangered fur seals dying on California coast (AP):
Teneya Norris, of the Marine Mammal Center which is caring for some of the animals, attributed the strandings to changes in the availability of food due to ocean-warming trends. "These stranded animals are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of animals affected by the unusually warm water temperatures we've been seeing off the coast," Norris said.
One of the World's Most Powerful Central Bankers Is Worried About Climate Change (NY Times):
A new speech about climate change is fascinating both for what it says and who said it. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, declared that the warming climate presented major risks for the global economy and global financial stability, and that businesses and regulators needed to move more quickly to try to contain the potential economic damage even though it may seem uncertain and far off.
Caution, Trolling Ahead: Fossil Fuel Advocates Are Hoping You Fail Their Latest Challenge (Climate Porgress):
The oil and gas advocacy group Western Energy Alliance (WEA) is waging a social media campaign that challenges people to not use fossil fuels for five days. To the group, the point of the Fossil Fuel Free Challenge is to show how impossible it would be to live without fossil fuels right now.
EPA Overhauls Rules for Pesticide Use on Farms (Wall St. Journal):
The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled revised rules aimed at better protecting farmworkers from pesticides, an overhaul that brings safeguards for agricultural laborers closer to parity with employees in other industries.
AP Styles 'Deniers' into 'Doubters,' Creating Newsroom Skeptics (InsideClimate News):
As the Associated Press tries to create consensus on what to call those who question climate science, more disagreement ensues.
Energy Revolution 2015 (Greenpeace) [emphasis added]:
While our predictions on the potential and market growth of renewable energy may once have seemed fanciful or unrealistic, they have proved to be accurate. the US-based Meister Consultants Group concluded earlier this year that "the world's biggest energy agencies, financial institutions and fossil fuel companies for the most part seriously under-estimated just how fast the clean power sector could and would grow". It wasn't the IEA, Goldman Sachs or the US Department of Energy who got it right. It was Greenpeace's market scenario which was the most accurate.
Why Shell Quit Drilling in the Arctic (Bloomberg) [emphasis added]:
At $70, Chukchi oil would be "competitive," she told Bloomberg Businessweek, and at $110-a reasonable projection, according to the company's economists-it would be a huge winner. She was talking about prospective prices 15 years from now.
China Says It Will Start the World's Biggest Carbon Market by 2017 (Mother Jones) [emphasis added]:
To those who have closely followed China's extensive actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, today's announcement that the planet's biggest emitter of CO2 will launch a nationwide cap-and-trade sysetm will not come as a surprise. The program-which builds upon seven regional carbon markets that are already active across the country-has been in the works for some time, and first appeared in the press last year. But Friday's high-profile announcement marks the first time that the Chinese president has committed to the cap-and-trade program...
AUDIO: What Exxon Knew and When They Knew It (The Brad Blog) [emphasis added]:
Guest: Neela Banerjee, co-author of an explosive report on Exxon's long knowlege of man-made global warming and their efforts to obscure it
....
But then, with a drop in oil prices, things changed, including leadership at the company. Exxon began discussing "uncertainty and kept cherry-picking quotes from scientists to say that there was too much that was unclear to warrant enormous action on cutting back fossil fuels and changing our economy." In other words, they knew, they denied, and they didn't seem to care.
Exxon: The Road Not Taken: Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago (InsideClimate News):
Top executives were warned of possible catastrophe from greenhouse effect, then led efforts to block solutions.
Every country is now pledging to tackle CO2 emissions. It's still not enough. (Vox.com):
In other words, if the world wants to stay below 2°C of global warming - which has long been considered the danger zone for climate change - these pledges are only a first step. Countries will have to do a whole lot more than they're currently promising. And the IEA has a few ideas for what "do a whole lot more" might entail.
...
1. Increase energy efficiency in the industry, buildings, and transport sectors.
2. Progressively reduce the use of the least efficient coal-fired power plants and banning their construction.
3. Increase investment in renewable energy technologies in the power sector from $270 billion in 2014 to $400 billion in 2030.
4. Gradually phase out fossil fuel subsidies to end-users by 2030.
5. Reduce methane emissions in oil and gas production.
Now's Your Chance to Help Save the Imperiled Monarch Butterfly-and Get Paid to Do So (Take Part) [emphasis added]:
Another threat, according to Grant, has been well-intentioned individuals who have planted a tropical form of milkweed, which competes with native varieties and is not beneficial to monarchs or other pollinators.
FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page
Skeptical Science: Database with FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Myths
4 Scenarios Show What Climate Change Will Do To The Earth, From Pretty Bad To Disaster (Fast CoExist):
But exactly how bad is still an open question, and a lot depends not only on how we react, but how quickly. The rate at which humans cut down on greenhouse gas emissions--if we do choose to cut them--will have a large bearing on how the world turns out by 2100, the forecasts reveal.
How to Solve Global Warming: It's the Energy Supply (Scientific American):
Restraining global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius will require changing how the world produces and uses energy to power its cities and factories, heats and cools buildings, as well as moves people and goods in airplanes, trains, cars, ships and trucks, according to the IPCC. Changes are required not just in technology, but also in people's behavior.
Warning: Even in the best-case scenario, climate change will kick our asses (Grist)
NASA Video: Warming over the last 130 years, and into the next 100 years:
Video Proof That Global Warming is a 'Hoax'!: NASA Temperature Data 1888-2011 (The BRAD BLOG):
NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA).