Earth Matters is a Daily Kos compendium of wonderful, disturbing, and hideous news briefs about the environment.
- Midwest utilities will cooperate to build a regionwide EV charging network: Hesitance about buying electric vehicles comes primarily from what they cost and range anxiety. While Tesla’s Elon Musk just Tuesday promised a $25,000 electric car with significantly longer range within three years or so based on an innovative and simpler battery design and manufacturing gains that he says will halve the cost of batteries, engineering obstacles remain significant. As for charging stations, the United States now has 100,000, half of them in California. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to install another 500,000 if he wins the White House. But the Edison Electric Institute calculates that 9.6 million will be needed for the 18.7 million EVs estimated to be on the road in the United States by 2030. Musk has said he wants Tesla to manufacture 20 million EVs a year eventually. In 2018, car manufacturers worldwide produced a total of 70 million conventionally powered cars.
To fill part of the EV charger gap, Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co., Ameren Corp of Missouri, Ameren Corp. of Illinois., Evergy Inc., Consumers Energy, and DTE Electric Co. have signed a memorandum of cooperation to build a network of chargers along highways in their service areas, finishing the job by the end of 2022. No estimate of the numbers of chargers that will be installed were included in the memorandum. “Expanding the use of electricity in transportation saves customers money, improves the environment by reducing emissions, and enhances quality of life for everyone," Edison Electric Institute President Tom Kuhn said in an email on Tuesday. "By deploying charging infrastructure and accelerating electric transportation, EEI’s member companies, including Consumers Energy and DTE Energy, are working together to build a cleaner and stronger economy for the future,” Kuhn said.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom announces 2035 as deadline for zero-emissions cars: The plan requires a phase-out of gasoline-powered passenger cars and light trucks. For medium- and heavy-duty trucks, the Democratic governor’s executive order sets the deadline for 2045, the same year as the state is slated to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions overall. “You deserve to have a car that doesn’t give your kids asthma,” Newsom said in a statement. “Our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse -- and create more days filled with smoky air. Cars shouldn’t melt glaciers or raise sea levels threatening our cherished beaches and coastlines.” Under the plan, people would still be allowed to buy used gasoline-powered cars.
Some critics say yes to Newsom’s executive order but say it’s still not enough. He should, they say, declare a climate emergency and act accordingly to phase out California production of fossil fuels.
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Robert Redford-produced documentary on public lands to be released soon: The film, Public Trust, is directed by David Garrett Byars and shines an unflattering light on several prominent politicians who have long shown themselves eager to turn public land over to profiteers instead of maintaining, much less extending, protection. Byars focuses on three controversies: establishment of the Bears Ears National Monument, congressional legislation to expand oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and efforts to open a copper mine next to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In what Park Record reviewer Nan Chalat Noaker calls “an especially cringe-worthy moment” in the film, Utah Republican Rep. Rob Bishop is shown declaring: “People say public lands belong to all the people. Well, I’d like them to tell me which part is mine because I want to sell it.”
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President Xi Jinping says China will achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2060: Although its per capita greenhouse gas emissions are well below those of the United States, China’s total emissions are the world’s highest, and it has been criticized particularly by Europeans for not moving aggressively to reduce those. Xi made the unexpected net-zero announcement at the UN General Assembly Tuesday. If met, the deadline on that pledge would put China a decade behind the Paris Climate Agreement’s call for all nations to stop emitting greenhouse gases by 2050 to keep the average global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Getting to net zero in China will be tough since the nation emits some 10 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide every year, twice U.S. emissions. China has yet to say how it intends to meet its goal. Although it continues to invest far more heavily than the United States in solar and wind installations, it is still building some coal plants. Many nations and the European Union have pledged to get to zero emissions by 2050, but few have enacted policies that will actually get them there. China may be doing likewise. Nonetheless, Greenpeace Executive Director Jennifer Morgan called Xi’s move "an important signal" that showed climate change is "top of agenda for China." Gang He, a professor who studies energy and climate policy at Stony Brook University, told E&E News: "This is huge given China's energy-related carbon emission accounted for about 28.8% of the global energy-related carbon emissions in 2019 and its continuing growth of [gross domestic product] and growing population of middle class."
- Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announces net-zero plan by 2050: The Democratic governor set a 30-year deadline for reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. That makes Michigan the first state in the Midwest to make a pledge to carbon neutrality by mid-century. The announcement calls for 28% emission reductions below 2005 levels by 2025 and net zero by 2050 through actions by state government and the implementation of a plan by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. Among the other states with net zero laws are New York, California, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Washington.
- Four former EPA chiefs—including two Republicans—endorse Biden: At a Climate Week event in New York, William K. Reilly, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President H.W. Bush, said, “The present situation is a total aberration. The first thing Trump did was fire all the environmental scientists at the agency. Said Carol Browner, who served under Bill Clinton as EPA administrator and as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy under President Barack Obama, ”This administration is simply gutting the Clean Water Act, letting polluters dump whatever they want into the waters. We didn’t just lose four years of the ability of career people to do their jobs, but those career people are being robbed of resources and support they need to do their work.” Christine Todd Whitman, who served under George W. Bush, and Gina McCarthy, who served under Obama, also spoke and endorsed Biden.
- Some good news about elephants: Most of what we hear about African elephants is unhappy. In the 1970s, there were 1.3 million of them. Poachers looking to sell their ivory, meat, and hides were the main reason—along with habitat encroachment by humans—that the population fell to an estimated half-million creatures by 2006. Between then and 2015, another 100,000 were killed. But poaching has declined slightly since then. And in Kenya, since 1989, the elephant population has risen from 16,000 to more than 34,000, according to the Kenya Wildlife Services. For elephant day in August, Kenya Tourism Minister Najib Balala told reporters: "In the past couple of years, we have managed to tame poaching in this country. [...] This year alone, about 170 elephant calves have been born."