It’s no surprise a U.S. senator with an appalling lifetime score of 6% from the League of Conservation Voters for his environmental votes and a history of rejecting climate science would ridicule Democratic actions to address the impacts of the global warming crisis. At a debt ceiling hearing of the Senate Budget Committee Thursday, Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas attacked Democratic green policies generally and remarked, “Jupiter is the Roman god of climate and weather. Indra was the Hindu god; Horus the Egyptian god of climate and weather; Zeus, the Greek mythology god. I ask you: Who is America’s climate god. Is it John Kerry? Is it Al Gore? Why do we get this religious experience with climate rather than using common sense?”
If your gag reflex gets triggered any time a Republican talks about somebody’s lack of common sense, you’re not alone. Notice that Marshall didn’t mention Koalemos, the Greek god of stupidity.
Even though there’s zero chance the Senate will pass the House Republicans’ extremist, fossil fuel-friendly, slash-and-burn, debt ceiling bill that would cut or eliminate countless programs—including the energy- and climate-related provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act—it was the focus of the hearing Democrats titled “The Default on America Act: Blackmail, Brinkmanship, and Billionaire Backroom Deals.” A perfect description of Republican willingness to play chicken with the U.S. and world economy over raising the debt ceiling, that nonsensical approach to budgeting no other developed nation on the planet follows.
As reported by Emma Duman at E&E Daily, Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse, who has long focused on the climate crisis in his Senate work, blasted the Republican debt ceiling bill in the context of its economic and other negative impacts. He called the bill a “field day for polluters,” and pointed out that “275 of the 315 pages of the dirty ‘Default on America’ bill are devoted to giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.”
Mark Zandi, a chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, has previously said that if the Republican bill—the “Limit, Save, Grow Act”—were enacted into law, it would result in the loss of 800,000 jobs. He told reporters after the hearing that this calculation accounts for damage to the clean energy workforce that would occur if the Inflation Reduction Act tax incentives were removed.
Solar Energy Industries Association President and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said that since enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act last year, upwards of 40 new electric vehicle battery manufacturing sites — and 22 factory expansions — have come online in the United States.
“Collectively these factories … represent tens of billions of dollars in new investments and 100,000 homegrown jobs across the country,” she said. “Any threat to the IRA is a threat to these factories and these jobs.”
Whitehouse presented a list Budget Committee members from states that are experiencing a clean energy boom since the IRA passed. He later held up a sign filled with quotes from Republicans who opposed the IRA in the Senate but praised it when campaigning on their home turf. For those watching the hearing remotely, Whitehouse noted “Freeze-frame that and read it at your leisure.” Those quotes and the cynical hypocrisy they conceal ought to be front and center in the coming elections.
WEEKLY ECO-VIDEO
GREEN BRIEFS
The first delivery of next generation vehicles to replace the U.S. Postal Service’s decrepit van fleet has been delayed from December this year until June 2024 at the earliest, according to court filings. Three-fourths of the USPS fleet of 212,000 vehicles is between 27 and 35 years old, are inefficient, have no air conditioning or airbags, are prone to fires, and require ever more maintenance the older they get.
A changeover has been in the works since 2015. In early 2021, the USPS announced that Oshkosh Defense—known as a producer of armored vehicles—was being awarded a 10-year, $482 million contract to deliver between 50,000 and 165,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV), the first of them slated to be on the road in 2023.
There was a hitch. President Joe Biden had promised to electrify the entire federal fleet of more than 650,000 trucks, vans, and passenger cars. But U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told Congress that only 10% of the new delivery trucks would be battery electric.
Going electric is obvious in big ways. Besides cutting lifetime emissions by 50% or more, EVs are typically cheaper over their lifetimes than gas-powered vehicles and easier to maintain. While some uses, like long-distance trucking, can present issues for battery-powered vehicles, EVs are perfect for mail delivery, with trucks returning to a central location to be charged overnight.
Fury over the decision among environmental activists, including some in Congress, were sparked by the fact Oshkosh has never built an electric vehicle, the USPS had rejected the proposal of an existing EV maker, and the fossil fuel-powered version of the NGDV with the platypus front end was going to be just 0.4 miles per gallon more efficient than the deteriorating vehicles being replaced
In congressional hearings, then-Rep. Jackie Speier asked “Why not 90%?” To which DeJoy replied, “We don’t have the 3 or 4 extra billion in our plan right now that it would take to do it.” In February 2022, defying all the pleas and head-shaking, the USPS finalized its plan to buy 148,000 new gasoline-powered vans over 10 years. Total price-tag: $11.3 billion. That generated relentless criticism, many from people who already had other issues with DeJoy’s management, a scathing letter from the Environmental Protection Agency driven by its NGDV environmental impact statement, a presidential request, and, in April 2022, a lawsuit from 16 states. Plaintiffs said the USPS had failed to follow requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and that Oshkosh was awarded its fat contract before environmental impact reports had been completed.
After Congress funded legislation to resolve long-festering budget and other issues at USPS, the NGDV decision was altered. In a December announcement, the USPS said it would acquire a minimum of 60,000 new vehicles by 2028, of which at least 45,000 would be battery electric. In addition, the USPS will buy 21,000 commercial EVs off the shelf. Acquisitions delivered in 2026 and thereafter are slated to be 100% electric. The total investment is set at $9.6 billion including $3 billion from Inflation Reduction Act funds.
Worth remembering on election day: the butchered debt ceiling bill the House Republicans recently passed without a chance of passage in the Senate would ax those $3 billion and other EV-related funds from the IRA.
Democratic State Rep. Justin Jones, just reinstated after being booted from the Tennessee legislature for violating decorum by protesting gun violence in the chamber, took on Republican state Rep. Dennis Powers last Friday for claiming that the Earth isn’t heating up and that environmentalism is a racket. "Climate change is just a way of risk, redistribution of wealth. There is no climate change," said Powers, who on March 3 had to apologize for adding "hanging by a tree" to an amendment on a bill that also recommended firing squad executions. "We're always gonna have climate change because the ice age never came. And also the heat, a heating age, or global warming, never came, which is why they changed it to climate change. And you can sit there and argue, argue all you want to about that, but we all know the truth."
Clearly not knowing the difference between truth and truthiness, Powers proved he could roll more deceptive crap into that paragraph than a herd of dung beetles. Jones verbally annihilated him, saying, "Thank you, Representative, for making the case why we need to fund more money into our education, into our public schools, so we can educate our students and they don't grow up with these conspiracy theories."
The bill would cut short the time for environmental reviews and also calls for the completion of the much-protested $6.6 billion Equitrans Midstream Corp's Mountain Valley Pipeline. Several prominent Democrats opposed a previous version of the bill, calling it a handout for fossil fuel companies. Presidential clean energy adviser John Podesta told reporters Tuesday "It's a high priority for us to try to find a path forward on bipartisan, permanent reform." He said he and Manchin talk often and the senator will "continue to squawk when he doesn't like something that we've done." Indeed, Manchin, who has been a spoiler on Biden’s agenda from the get-go, has vigorously and repeatedly attacked the way energy credits in the Inflation Reduction Act are being rolled out. He has noted that the credits are about “energy security” not climate, disregarding the fact that energy security in the Anthropocene Era requires moving away from the burning of fossil fuels that has made Manchin rich.
In response to Podesta’s remarks, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:
“Supporting legislation that would rubber-stamp a fracked gas pipeline and weaken critical environmental protections is not putting the country on the path towards clean energy innovation and implementation. To meet the President’s own climate goals, we must expedite clean energy, not fossil fuels. Championing this bill would be another step backwards from an administration that has said it wants to prioritize action on the climate crisis and advance environmental justice. The Sierra Club will continue to fight alongside frontline communities to protect their right to clean air and water. We will not allow the pet projects of fossil fuel interests to get pushed through against the will of impacted communities.”
When he campaigned for the United Autoworkers presidency, Shawn Fain promised a more confrontational approach to the union’s dealings with manufacturers. Now in office, he’s showing that approach is broader than GM, Ford and Stellantis. In an internal memo that made its way to the media, Fain wrote that the powerful UAW will withhold its endorsement of Joe Biden for a second term as president until it gets a better deal for workers in federal electric vehicle programs.
Fain wrote in the memo, "The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers. The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom. We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments."
The day after he was elected in March, Fain told reporters at the bargaining convention in Detroit that the union would continue to endorse candidates. However, he said, "We can't rely on lip service. We've supported candidates in the past, and I believe people have good intentions, but at the end of the day, on some of our bread-and-butter issues, it seems like sometimes we don't get that support where we think it's going to come from. We will be seriously engaged politically, and we're going to have our expectations for our elected leaders, and if they don't produce, then we'll support candidates who do."
While the UAW is concerned that EVs take about half the workforce as does building vehicles with internal combustion engines, another big worry for the union is the move to joint ventures car makers are entering into with battery manufacturers. These operations aren’t unionized.
As Kenny Stancil at Common Dreams reports:
The Ultium workforce at the northeast Ohio plant in December overwhelmingly voted in favor of unionizing with hopes of pay raises and better safety standards. Workers there start at $16.50 per hour, about half of what an hourly worker under the GM-UAW national contract makes ($32.32 at the end of the current contract), and reach up to $20 per hour over seven years.
"This is not a just transition," Fain said in his letter. "The situation at Lordstown, and the current state of the EV transition, is unacceptable. We expect action from the people in power to make it right."
One thing Fain has made clear is that the UAW won’t be endorsing Donald Trump. Another four years of Trump occupying the White House "would be a disaster," he said. "But our members need to see an alternative that delivers real results."
RESOURCES & ACTION
- Brad Johnson at his Hill Heat substack provides a list of environment-related congressional hearings five times a week, along with informed commentaries on such subjects.
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Michael J. Coren discusses four free apps that will help you identify every flower, plant, and tree around you. More than a dozen apps promise to help you identify the natural world, many of them paid. Don’t bother. Four apps, designed and managed by scientists with world-class data, does all they do free of charge.
ECOPINION
Rick Scott & His Senate Friends Introduce The DIRTY CAR EV Act, by Steve Hanley at CleanTechnica. On April 26, Rick Scott announced that he, along with John Barrasso, Roger Marshall, Mike Lee, and Dan Sullivan, have introduced the Directing Independent Research To Yield Carbon Assessment Regarding Electric Vehicles Act [The acronym spells DIRTY CAR EV] to require a federal study on the true carbon footprint of electric vehicles and research the ramifications of widespread electric vehicle usage on the country’s electrical grids. [...] The name of this legislation is childish. It demeans not only the proposed bill, but the people who sponsored it. [...] For instance, a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists found total lifetime emissions from an electric vehicle are 50% less than those from a comparable vehicle equipped with a gasoline or diesel engine.
Climate Change Is Walloping US Farms. Can This Farm Bill Create Real Solutions? By Lisa Held at Civil Eats. Although it seems like everyone in D.C. is buzzing about a “climate farm bill,” some of the most impactful changes, including crop diversification and shifting diets from meat toward plants, are barely on the negotiating table. On a few key issues, such as paying more farmers to use climate-friendly conservation practices, farm groups that don’t always agree—including the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), the National Farmers’ Union, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, a leading member of the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance—are now in accordance. It’s no wonder: In the last round of reports published by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s top climate experts warned of “a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” The reports confirmed what many farmers are experiencing firsthand: Droughts, floods, and wildfires are destroying crops and threatening livelihoods and food supplies in more frequent and severe ways than ever before. Increasing temperatures are also causing heat and water stress that directly impacts the productivity of both crops and livestock.
Reporting on climate adaptation is a mess – here’s how to fix it. By Richard J T Klein, Nella Canales and Biljana Macura at the Columbia Journalism Review. Lots of adaptation action takes place in the form of discrete project interventions financed by public sources, including directly from governments and from funds that rich countries put money into. By assessing these interventions in ways similar to those used in development finance, we hoped to obtain a picture of the effectiveness of adaptation action and support, and thus of progress towards the global goal on adaptation. But we found that data on project outputs and outcomes is not easily accessible or publicly available. If information is available, it is scattered across multiple sources and fragmented across databases. Moreover, most of this information is only entered into databases at the time the project is approved.
EPA’s Whack-a-Mole “Forever Chemicals” Posture Is an Intolerable Failure, by Kyla Bennett at Common Dreams. To great applause, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month proposed “maximum contamination levels” in drinking water for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals. This was the first such action that EPA had taken in more than 30 years on any drinking contaminant. Unfortunately, despite the magnitude of this action for this handful of PFAS, there are at least 12,000 PFAS variations. Before the applause for EPA could die down, this month, a study found 26 types of PFAS in drinking water samples from 16 states. Notably, EPA has no pending proposed standard for 20 of these PFAS. More disturbing, 12 of these PFAS are not included in EPA's current monitoring—in other words, EPA does not even currently test for them.
Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay, by Joe Fassler at The Guardian. The US beef industry is creating an army of influencers and citizen activists to help amplify a message that will be key to its future success: that you shouldn’t be too worried about the growing attention around the environmental impacts of its production. In particular, it would like you not to be especially concerned about how meat consumption needs to be reduced if we are to avoid the most violently disruptive forms of planetary heating (even if all fossil fuel use ended tomorrow). It definitely does not want you to read scientific papers showing wealthy nations must reduce meat consumption to keep below the average global temperature rise of 2 degrees C, a threshold to stop systems collapse, mass extinctions, fatal heat waves, drought and famine, water shortages and flooded cities.
Biden Officials Are Backing Another “Climate Bomb” Fossil Fuel Project in Alaska, by Sharon Zwang at Truthout. Biden administration officials are seeking to revive yet another major fossil fuel project in Alaska that climate advocates are warning would have 10 times the emissions impact of another recently-approved fossil fuel project in Alaska, infuriating climate advocates and experts. Despite blaring warnings about the significant dangers of approving new fossil fuel projects from climate scientists, the Biden administration is seeking to approve the Alaska LNG project. [...] The nearly $40 billion proposal would see the construction of a pipeline and liquified natural gas or LNG facility along Alaska’s south coast with the goal of exporting fossil gas, largely to Asia.
ECO-TWEET
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ
Historic flooding in Fort Lauderdale was a sign of things to come – a look at who is most at risk and how to prepare, by Smitha Rao at The Conversation. When a powerful storm flooded neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in April with what preliminary reports show was 25 inches of rain in 24 hours, few people were prepared. Even hurricanes rarely drop that much rain in one area that fast. Residents could do little to stop the floodwater as it spread over their yards and into their homes. Studies show that as global temperatures rise, more people will be at risk from such destructive flooding—including in areas far from the coasts that rarely faced extreme flooding in the past. In many of these communities, the people at greatest risk of harm from flash flooding are low-wage workers, older adults and other vulnerable residents who live in low-lying areas and who have few resources to protect their properties and themselves.
New York State just banned fossil fuels in most new buildings, by Michelle Lewis at Electrek. New York has become the first state to pass a law that bans the use of fossil fuels in most new buildings. There are some exemptions, such as for emergency backup power, restaurants, and hospitals. However, cities and counties will not be able to override the ban. In 2021, New York City became the largest city in the US to ban gas in new buildings. New construction will have to use such emissions-free options as induction and electric stoves and heat pumps for new buildings. The new law does not affect existing buildings – no one is getting their gas stoves taken away. This legislation positions New York as a leader among states working to reduce emissions from buildings.
Chicago’s Blacks in Green gets a major boost from a $10 million EPA grant, by Audrey Henderson at Energy News Network. As the founder and CEO of Blacks in Green, Naomi Davis has always focused on developing a whole-system approach to empowering her community of West Woodlawn on Chicago’s South Side. And with the award of a five-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Blacks in Green is positioned to extend and expand its community-focused approach to sustainability and climate resilience throughout the Midwest. “Only a whole-system solution can transform the whole-system problem common to Black communities everywhere,” Davis said. “We are about — in our core founding vision and mission—self-sustaining Black communities everywhere. And the mission being to reinvent the walk to work, walk to shop, walk to learn, walk to play village, where African Americans own the businesses, own the land, and live the conservation lifestyle.” Blacks in Green was one of 17 organizations selected to receive a portion of $177 million to form Environmental Justice Technical Assistance Centers. The program is administered through the Federal Interagency Communities Technical Assistance Network as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Justice 40 Initiative designed to ensure that 40% of relevant federal investments are administered in environmental justice communities.
The world’s best rainforest guardians already live there, by Peter Yeung at The Washington Post. As global deforestation continues at alarming rates, the empowerment of Indigenous peoples such as the Kajang is emerging as a key way to protect the world’s rainforests. A spate of recent research suggests that when armed with land rights, these communities, whose members manage half the world’s land and 80 percent of its biodiversity, are remarkably effective custodians. Meanwhile, doubts have arisen about the effectiveness of carbon offsets and other programs aimed at curbing deforestation despite the billions of dollars poured into them. Indigenous cultures “have contributed to reduce forest destruction in various ways,” concluded a landmark U.N. review of more than 300 studies in 2021.
What the US needs for future nuclear power tech to get off the ground, by John Timmer at Ars Technica. "The race against climate change is both a marathon and a sprint," declares a new report from the US National Academies of Science. While we need to start decarbonizing immediately with the tech we have now—the sprint—the process will go on for decades, during which technology that's still in development could potentially play a critical role. The technology at issue in the report is a new generation of nuclear reactors based on different technology; they're smaller and easier to build, and they could potentially use different coolants. The next generation of designs is working to avoid the delays and cost overruns that are crippling attempts to build additional reactors both here and overseas. But their performance in the real world will remain an unknown until next decade at the earliest, placing them squarely in the "marathon" portion of the race. The new report focuses on what the US should do to ensure that the new generation of designs has a chance to be evaluated on its merits.Most of the next generation of nuclear power designs fall into the category of what are termed small modular reactors (SMRs). These designs have two emphases: They are modular and could potentially be mass-produced, and they focus on inherent safety. Combined, these factors will theoretically allow for rapid and cheap production of reactors and a far lower footprint for the supporting power plant where the reactors are installed.
Double Threat: The Greenhouse Gases That Are Also Poisoning You Now. Diesel exhaust and emissions from plastic production warm the planet over time, while immediately threatening those who inhale their toxic fumes, by Mark Schapiro at Capital & Main. Last month, the Canadian province of British Columbia became the largest school jurisdiction in North America to commit to switching entirely from diesel to electricity-powered school buses. Buses currently transport more than 100,000 students there. A new coalition of educators, health professionals and environmental groups, the Canadian Electric School Bus Alliance, is pushing for a national switch to electric as a way to eliminate at least one source of toxic pollutants, diesel exhaust, from endangering the vulnerable bodies of young people. The province of Quebec has committed to achieving a 65% electric school bus fleet by 2030. In doing so, the Canadians are recognizing a fundamental fact of climate pollution often missed by the media, but relevant to all no matter what side of the U.S. border you’re on. Greenhouse gas pollutants not only have long-term impacts on the Earth’s planetary balance, they often cause immediate harm to the health of those exposed directly to their fumes.
GREEN LINKS
UN: World should prepare for El Niño, new record temperatures • What do horses feel at the Kentucky Derby? Mostly fear and pain • Danish Wind Pioneer Keeps Battling Climate Change • Demand for electric cars is booming, with sales expected to leap 35% this year after a record-breaking 2022 • Ethiopia used chemicals to kill locusts. Billions of honeybees disappeared • More than 5,000 tons of toxic chemicals released from consumer products every year inside Californian homes, workplaces • Brazil’s president returns 800 square miles of Indigenous Iand to its original caretakers • 'One of the Corporate Scandals of Our Times': Shell Posts Record $10 Billion in 1st Quarter Profits • The thinking error that makes people susceptible to climate change denial