OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES
Republicans are trying to undercut Obama in Climate Negotiations prior to the Paris Climate Summit written by Lefty Coaster: “Acting with a breathtaking level of corruption Republicans are doing everything in their power to undercut President Obama’s ability to negotiate urgently needed greenhouse gas reductions with other countries as the Paris Climate Conference approaches. No doubt Republicans are trying to placate their Party’s new owners the Koch Brothers. [...] Republicans are taking aim at a new “Green Climate Fund,” as they look to weaken President Obama’s hand in global climate talks later this month. The pot of money, a $3 billion climate change pledge the president’s administration made last year, is something officials hope to bring to the negotiating table at United Nations summit in Paris. But Republicans — hostile to the climate talks and bent on doing whatever they can to derail a deal in Paris next month — say they’re going to deny Obama the first tranche of money he hopes to inject into the fund.”
Daily Bucket: Florida's Invaders--Spectacled Caiman written by Lenny Flank: “Florida's most famous resident is the American Alligator. But the state is also home to one of the Alligator's much smaller cousins--which is not supposed to be here. In the late 1940's and early 1950's, Florida was undergoing a tourist boom, as post-war middle-class Americans with disposable income sought vacations in the land of sun and sand. And one of the most popular "souvenirs" that tourists brought home with them were baby American Alligators.
Since baby gators don't remain "babies", most of the ones that survived the often-improper care they received were set loose outside somewhere (or, as legend has it, were flushed down the toilet to populate the underground sewer tunnels). By 1960, legal steps were taken, at both the state and federal level, to first regulate and then to completely ban the trade in baby Alligators. So, the pet industry made a substitution--dealers began importing juvenile Spectacled Caimans (Caiman crocodilus) from Central America. These were often sold as "Alligators" or "Dwarf Alligators", and most of the people who purchased them probably never knew the difference. By 1970, tens of thousands of baby caimans had entered the US. Most of them, like the baby Alligators before, quickly died.”
350,000 People Say: #ExxonKnew written by ClimateBrad: “Tomorrow, I will be personally delivering over 350,000 signatures to the Department of Justice, as the new political director of Climate Hawks Vote. Over 350,000 people, organized by over a dozen groups, including DailyKos, have signed petitions calling for a DOJ investigation of Exxon. The Climate Hawks Vote petition has ignited a national movement. And it wasn’t just this petition — Climate Hawks Vote has been involved every step of the way in the #ProsecuteExxon effort. Months ago, research I was doing into the history of Congressional hearings on climate science gave the investigators at InsideClimate News a key insight that led to them unlocking Exxon’s history of covering up their own climate science research. Thanks to outreach from Climate Hawks Vote president RL Miller, Rep. Ted Lieu of California was the first member of Congress to call for a DOJ investigation. Climate Hawks Vote board member Bill McKibben has led the way, first with his bold act of civil disobedience at an Exxon gas station, and then by mobilizing the 350-dot-org network, and then by personally reaching out to leaders of other progressive organizations to sign on to this campaign.”
CLIMATE CHAOS
The Killer No One Is Talking About written by Steven D: “Terrorists get all the attention. Religious fanatics attack people in Paris and the television networks and other news media are all over it like a moths flocking to a flame. According to one data set, around 30,000 people died in terrorist incidents worldwide in 2014, a figure roughly equivalent to gun deaths in the United States each year. And I get it. Terrorism gets eyeballs and sells ads. It's an easy story to tell: Good vs. Evil. But there is a killer out there that no one is covering. It's victims often go unnoticed, and even when they do make the news the killer is not always identified, and the threat it poses is all too often ignored or outright dismissed. Yet the number of its victims is far greater in scale than those who die at the hands of terrorists each year. And every once in a while the veil of secrecy, intentional or not, regarding the scope of its lethality is lifted. Such was the case in 2012, when a panel of dedicated research scientists revealed that roughly 400,000 human lives are lost each year because of this villain, which goes by the euphemistic name of Climate Change: Nearly 1,000 children a day are now dying because of climate change, according to a path-breaking study published Wednesday (PDF), and the annual death toll stands at 400,000 people worldwide. [...] ... That is a significant increase over previous estimates. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gold standard for climate science, said in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 that climate change caused 150,000 extra deaths a year. But the 150,000 figure took into account only deaths from malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea caused by contaminated water, a common result of floods. Excluded were the effects of heat waves, crop losses due to an increase in pests, and a range of other deadly diseases, which can be substantial.”
More #ClimateChange FUD Brought To You By a Koch Network-Linked "Reporter" written by WeAreKochs: ”Kudos to eagle-eyed Twitter user @OpenIB for spotting another Koch-linked article that attempts to spur doubt about whether humans are responsible for climate change. Today, Michael Bastasch wrote an article for the Daily Caller entitled ‘NOAA’s “Hiatus’-Busting Study “Rushed,” Ignored “Scientific Processes”.’ Michael Bastasch’s LinkedIn profile shows that he worked for both the Charles Koch Institute and the Daily Caller News Foundation in the year 2012, in addition to stints with the The Heritage Foundation and ALEC. In fact, the official Charles Koch Institute site lists the Daily Caller News Foundation as a ‘Partner Organization.’”
It's Time for Global Climate Change Mitigation Agenda written by progressivewishlist: “In the run-up to United Nations Climate Change Conference that opens in Paris on November 30, yearly worldwide release of Carbon dioxide (CO2) will be around 32 billion metric tons. At the rate we’re going, the world’s air is set to rise 4 degrees Celsius before the century’s over, twofold what researchers say is a ‘acceptable” level of warming. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gives preservationist benchmarks concerning what is required to balance out the normal worldwide temperature at its present level of around 60.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) over the pre-modern normal of 56.7 degrees. As indicated by the IPCC, worldwide CO2 outflows need to fall by around 40 percent underneath current levels inside of 20 years, to around 20 billion tons, and 80 percent by 2050, to seven billion tons. Indicating what will be the most drastic measure to be taken in avoiding catastrophic environmental change, a recent study in the journal Nature found that 92 percent of US fossil fuels reserves must stay in the ground to keep worldwide temperature rise over 2 degrees Celsius, the threshold climate experts say would bring catastrophic floods, droughts, rising sea levels, and other extreme weather events. So, what to do now?”
Mali. Saudi Arabia. Climate Change written by Karen Hedwig Backman: “Fossil fuels. Climate change. Drought. Starvation. Wars. Saudi Arabia. Fecund, arrogant great mother of fossil fuel production; monstrously, excessively rich because of global hunger for fossil energy; brooding, angry Saudi Arabia, despotic mother of climate change, rabid religious extremism in Wahhabism, prime progenitor of ISIS/ISIL/Da’esh, source of terror throughout the world: Mali, as in most of the central and western Sahel region in Africa, is in the midst of a years-long drought that has left hundreds of thousands starving and millions more, especially children, damaged by malnutrition. With the pastoral nomadic economy collapsing, where did the sudden major influx of funds come from that allowed the rapid expansion of the Wahhabi movement in the Sahel to take place? …. traditional Tuareg fighters, suffering from famine and a collapsing economy have been outgunned and driven from the cities of northern Mali by the Wahhabis, with their shining new pickup trucks, plentiful fuel and seemingly inexhaustible flow of weaponry and supplies. So where is the funding for the Mali Wahhabis coming from? Every Wahhabi movement that has been competently investigated has been tied to the Saudis, in most cases to the almost 30,000 strong Saudi royal family and the Mali Wahhabis are no exception.”
Coming Soon: Deniers' Direct-to-YouTube Video written by ClimateDenierRoundup: “It turns out ClimateHustler Marc Morano’s upcoming film won’t be the only feature presentation slated for release around the Paris negotiations. Graham Readfearn—in what may be a new film critic gig at DeSmogBlog—reports on another new climate picture, this one from the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. The Cornwall Alliance is an fundamentalist Christian climate denial group that ties its science denial to biblical beliefs, making claims like belief in climate change ‘is an insult to God.’ Based on clips the Cornwall Alliance released on their YouTube channel, the film looks to be a different version of the same old story, filled with hyperbolic denier talking points like ‘Climate Policies kill. People will die.’ Both Morano’s and Cornwall’s films rely on many of the same ‘experts’ and put forward the same message: no action should be taken to reduce emissions.”
ENERGY
Nuclear, Coal, Oil and Gas
Study: Dispersants did not help oil degrade in BP spill written by StanFlouride: “The chemical sprayed on the 2010 BP oil spill may not have helped crucial petroleum-munching microbes get rid of the slick, a new study suggests. And that leads to more questions about where much of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill went. If the new results are true, up to half the oil can't be accounted for, said the author of a new study on the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.”
In the Ground written by Michael Brune: “More ‘oil is inevitable’ rhetoric from USA Today: ‘Environmentalists' campaign to keep tar sands oil in the ground is unlikely to succeed. Current low world oil prices are making it less inviting to move the oil now, but if history is any guide, oil prices will rebound as they always have.’ Sorry, but history cannot be our guide here. History has no precedent for the situation the world has found itself in. That's why world leaders will soon gather in Paris with a goal of finding a path toward peaking and ultimately reducing global carbon emissions. For that to happen, though, we'll need to rethink our relationship with all fossil fuels—and consider how extracting them will affect our climate. Seen through that lens, there's no defense for any policy that would facilitate extracting and burning an increased amount of tar sands oil. That is why Keystone was defeated. This is not solely a moral calculus, however. It's also an economic one. The more serious the world is about reducing carbon emissions, the less sense it makes to invest in a fossil-fuel future.”
On Eve of Climate Talks, a Historic Week in the Shift Beyond Coal written by Mary Anne Hitt: “On Tuesday, the United Kingdom announced it will completely phase out coal throughout the country over the next decade, retiring over 20 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity. The UK, which once employed 1 million coal miners and used coal to power the Industrial Revolution, is now the first major country to end the use of coal. Sierra Club director Mike Brune described it as a ‘historic, unprecedented’ commitment. Also on Tuesday, the OECD countries (an organization made up of 34 industrialized nations, initially formed after WWII to administer the Marshall Plan) announced they had reached an agreement on strict new limits for the financing of new coal plants around the world. While the agreement isn’t as strong as we would have liked, it’s stilla big deal for coal and for international climate diplomacy. However, not to be outdone, on that same Tuesday back in Washington, DC, the U.S. Senate made a valiant stand against the future by voting to repeal the Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency road-map to reduce carbon pollution from power plants. It was an embarrassing display of theatrics that won’t actually slow down the Clean Power Plan, clean energy, or U.S. climate leadership going into international climate negotiations in Paris.”
Renewables & Conservation
Nuclear Deal With Iran Means That Iran Will be Going Solar written by Lawrence: “After all the gloomy and sickening news lately, here’s some news to cheer you up— Iran continues to attract global interest in its largely under-developed renewable energy sector. According to the Iranian news agency, Mehr, the Iran Energy Ministry has recently signed a deal with a German company to build 1,250 MW of solar power plants in the Tehran province. [...] This deal is a part of Iranian’s government goal to install 5 GW of renewable capacity by 2020. The implementation of 500 MW wind energy capacity and 100 MW biomass projects has already started. So, instead of a nuclear Iran it looks like we are going to see an Iran that is increasingly powered by renewable energy as the sanctions are dropped and renewable energy powerhouses bring both expertise and financing to Iran. Without the good faith and patience of President Obama, President Rouhani, and the other nations involved in the talks, this would not have been possible.”
A plan for 100% renewable energy worldwide by 2050 written by Krotor: “Scientific American published an intriguing story yesterday, 139 Countries Could Get All of their Power from Renewable Sources. It explores a global blueprint for converting to renewable energy sources—such as solar, wind and wave—completely eliminating carbon-based fuels (petroleum, coal and natural gas) by the year 2050. If that sounds pie-in-the-sky to you, join the crowd. My eyebrows raised just glancing at the title of the article. Then I started reading … and then I started wondering … and then I thought "wow, these guys actually do know what they're talking about." The plan is an expansion of an idea first introduced way back in 2009 in another Scientific American article by two professorial researchers. Yes, those pointy-headed intellectuals used a bunch of science-y stuff to come up with a scheme to pry the planet from the death-grip of Big Oil and its henchmen.”
POPULATION, EXTINCTION & SUSTAINABILITY
One way to REVERSE Global Warming: Kill off 50 Million People written by kellyb2: “There’s no argument about this fact other than specific details among experts, also known as ‘scientists’, who have warned that dire consequential changes to the livability of our habitat are occurring and must be halted.We’ve added 100 parts per million of carbon dioxide already, just passing the 400 ppm ‘Danger Zone’, which scientists warned was a threshold of feedback loops outside of our control. And there's one major reason this behavior continues: corporate profits. So now our discussion shifts to ‘cures’. There is something known to have reversed carbon concentrations in the atmosphere by 7 parts per million in the blink of a geological eye, a mere 200 years. It was the mass extermination of 50 million humans caused by other humans introducing smallpox and the enslavement of Africans to work in plantations in the Americas. Trophic Cascade. Here’s the salient detail from Mass Deaths in America Start New C02 Epoch, Scientific American, David Biello: The atmosphere recorded the mass death, slavery and war that followed 1492. The death by smallpox and warfare of an estimated 50 million native Americans—as well as the enslavement of Africans to work in the newly depopulated Americas—allowed forests to grow in former farmlands. By 1610, the growth of all those trees had sucked enough carbon dioxide out of the sky to cause a drop of at least seven parts per million in atmospheric concentrations of the most prominent greenhouse gas and start a little ice age.”
AGRICULTURE, Food & Gardening
Saturday Morning Garden Blogging, Vol. 11.39: Hummingbirds in Autumn written by estreya: “I was in my 20's when i saw my first hummingbird. My husband and i had just moved to the West coast with two sleeping bags and an Apple computer (the latter of which took up most of the trunk space in our car). What an improbable creature the hummer seemed to be, with its needle-beak and zip-zip speed, as if all the laws of nature had to be suspended in order for it to exist. Years later, it still feels like magic whenever i see one, which i often do since there's a feeder set up within view of the kitchen window. One of my favorite things about living in the Pacific Northwest is that the hummingbirds flit around the garden all year round. Even though the rain was falling in sheets this past week, and the wind huffed and howled like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, the ubiquitous hummers remained undaunted.”
CANDIDATES, STATE AND DC ECO-RELATED POLITICS
Why I don't have a candidate written by citisven: I’ve also been involved in environmental activism, from protesting the Keystone XL pipeline to shaming Chevron to pay for their pollution to calling for climate action more broadly. All of these movements have borne fruit, from Obama nixing Keystone to Chevronlosing big at home and abroad to the U.S. finall ygetting serious about climate change. These weren’t things that any Democratic president could have just pulled out of his/her hat, but issues that needed critical grassroots movement to expose the polluters and generate the kind of change in public opinion that gives leaders the wave they need to ride on, not just to take a more progressive personal stance but to be able to enact policies that will stand the test of time. I think the Keystone XL fight is actually a very good example of how this bottom-up or outside-in process works. While it was essential to have a Democrat in the oval office who would at the very least listen to the arguments on all sides, the foundation for the eventual executive rejection of the pipeline — as Ben Adler outlines in his piece The inside story of how the Keystone fight was won — was laid long before Obama ever put any ink on it. [...] While it’s impossible to know if and how any of the current Democratic presidential contenders would have handled this issue differently from PBO, I think it’s fair to say that the two key elements that led to the eventual rejection of KXL — aside from having an intelligent non-ideologue in the oval office — was to a) let the state department review take its full course and b) use that time to build the kind of citizen mobilization that moves public opinion and pressures decision makers to do the the right thing (which now also happened to be the popular thing).”
Raul Grijalva and 52 Other Dems: Don't Let BP Get a Tax Write-Off for Its Oil Spill Settlement written by Liberty Equality Fraternity and Trees: “On Wednesday, Raúl Grijalva (AZ-03) led a group of 53 Democrats in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch urging her to close a loophole in the settlement with BP from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that could enable the company to write off a large portion of the settlement in as a “business expense,” thus saving $5 billion in taxes. The $5.5 billion in fines levied under the Clean Water Act are not deductible, but the remaining $15.3 billion of the settlement, which is currently under comment period, could be. From the letter: We applaud the fact that the proposed consent decree forbids the deduction of $5.5 billion in fines levied under the Clean Water Act. Nevertheless, we are concerned that without strict language to the contrary, BP will seek to claim the remaining $15.3 billion as a business expense, displacing the burden of that uncollected revenue onto every other taxpayer while securing a tax windfall worth $5.35 billion for itself.”
Senator Snowball Gets Symbolic Senate Birthday Present written by ClimateDenierRoundup: “On Tuesday, the Senate passed two resolutions aiming to stop the Clean Power Plan. President Obama will, of course, veto these as soon as the House passes their versions, which it's expected to do during the Paris negotiations in an effort to show the international community that the US isn’t serious about climate action. The Daily Caller points out that Tuesday also happens to have been the 81st birthday of Senator Snowball, Jim Inhofe, who is arguably the biggest climate denier in Congress as he literally wrote the book saying climate change is a hoax. Inhofe claims, ‘This vote sends a clear signal to the international community that the American people will not stand in support [of the Paris deal and Clean Power Plan].’ Except for one small thing: the American people do support the Clean Power Plan. The Yale climate opinion maps show that 63% of Americans support “strict CO2 limits on existing coal-fired power plants” like those found in the Clean Power Plan regulations the Senate just voted to overturn; 74% of the country supports regulating CO2 as a pollutant, which the Clean Power Plan does; and 77% of Americans are in favor of funding renewable energy research, which things like the CPP and Paris deal will accelerate. On Paris specifically, polling shows that 72% of Americans support the US signing an international agreement, with even 52% of Republicans in favor. Recent Pew polling shows a similar level of support at 69%, with the total rising to 85% in the 18 to 29 age bracket. ”
OCEANS, WATER, DROUGHT
Save the Boundary Waters From Pro-Sulfide Mining Democrats: “Northeasten Minnesota is home to some of the greatest natural beauty America has to offer, notably the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The BWCA is on National Geographic's list of places you must visit during your lifetime. The surrounding area is home to pristine lakes and rivers and rural families like ours who came to this area for the beauty it has to offer. However, the entire area is under siege by mining activity and exploration for gold, nickle, copper and other non-ferrous metals; the dirtiest type of mining there is. One need only google the Mount Polley mining disaster in British Columbia to see what this type of mining, sulfide mining, does to the environment. For us, this means devastation of the river we live on, our well water and destruction of the surrounding environment and devastation of wildlife. For the BWCA it is worse. PolyMet is a proposed sulfide mine just outside of the BWCA that is inching closer to approval with the help and support of Democratic politicians from the DFL party. These officials include Congressman Rick Nolan. For what, you ask? A few hundred temporary jobs and a few thousand votes. Polymet will devastate a state, national and international jewel; the BWCA. Not only that, these mines are routinely abandoned with fluctuating metal prices, leaving the taxpayer to monitor the permanent pollution left behind. ”