Conservative States Seek Billions to Brace for Disaster. (Just Don’t Call It Climate Change.)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is about to distribute billions of dollars to coastal states mainly in the South to help steel them against natural disasters worsened by climate change.

Water submerged homes in Houston in the
aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

But states that qualify must first explain why they need the money. That has triggered linguistic acrobatics as some conservative states submit lengthy, detailed proposals on how they will use the money, while mostly not mentioning climate change.

A 306-page draft proposal from Texas doesn’t use the terms “climate change” or “global warming,” nor does South Carolina’s proposal. Instead, Texas refers to “changing coastal conditions” and South Carolina talks about the “destabilizing effects and unpredictability” of being hit by three major storms in four years, while being barely missed by three other hurricanes.

Louisiana, a state taking some of the most aggressive steps in the nation to prepare for climate change, does include the phrase “climate change” in its proposal in one place, an appendix on the final page.

Read the story from The New York Times by Christopher Flavelle - “Conservative States Seek Billions to Brace for Disaster. (Just Don’t Call It Climate Change.).”

Trump Administration Blocks Energy Efficiency Rule for Light Bulbs

The Trump administration announced Friday that it would block a rule designed to phase out older incandescent bulbs and require Americans to use energy-efficient light bulbs.

The energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, said the administration
 had chosen “to protect consumer choice.”

In announcing the move, the secretary of energy, Dan Brouillette, who is a former auto lobbyist, said the administration had chosen “to protect consumer choice by ensuring that the American people do not pay the price for unnecessary overregulation from the federal government.” The new rule was unnecessary, he said, because innovation and technology are already “increasing the efficiency and affordability of light bulbs without federal government intervention.”

The rule, which would have gone into effect on Jan. 1, was required under a law passed in 2007 during the administration of President George W. Bush. 

Noah Horowitz, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s center for energy efficiency standards, assailed the move, saying the administration had “just thumbed its nose at Congress, America’s families and businesses, and the environment.” 

Read the story from The New York Times by John Schwartz - “Trump Administration Blocks Energy Efficiency Rule for Light Bulbs.”

Trump Serves Notice to Quit Paris Climate Agreement

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration formally notified the United Nations on Monday that it would withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, leaving global climate diplomats to plot a way forward without the cooperation of the world’s largest economy.

President Trump at the White House on June 1, 2017, after
announcing his intention to abandon the Paris Agreement.

The action, which came on the first day possible under the accord’s complex rules on withdrawal, begins a yearlong countdown to the United States exit and a concerted effort to preserve the Paris Agreement, under which nearly 200 nations have pledged to cut greenhouse emissions and to help poor countries cope with the worst effects of an already warming planet.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the notification on Twitter and issued a statement saying the accord would impose intolerable burdens on the American economy. 

Read the story from The New York Times by Lisa Friedman - “Trump Serves Notice to Quit Paris Climate Agreement.”

Curbs on Methane, Potent Greenhouse Gas, to Be Relaxed in U.S.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration laid out on Thursday a far-reaching plan to cut back on the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change.

Leaks from natural gas drilling, shipping and storage are one of the
main sources of methane emissions in the United States.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule aims to eliminate federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities. It would also reopen the question of whether the E.P.A. had the legal authority to regulate methane as a pollutant. 

The rollback plan is particularly notable because major energy companies have, in fact, spoken out against it — joining automakers, electric utilities and other industrial giants that have opposed other administration initiatives to dismantle climate-change and environmental rules. 

Read the story from The New York Times by Lisa Friedman and Coral Davenport - “Curbs on Methane, Potent Greenhouse Gas, to Be Relaxed in U.S..”

E.P.A. Finalizes Its Plan to Replace Obama-Era Climate Rules

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday replaced former President Barack Obama’s effort to reduce planet-warming pollution from coal plants with a new rule that would keep plants open longer and undercut progress on reducing carbon emissions.

Loading coal at the Spring Creek Mine in southern Montana.
The mine’s owner, Cloud Peak Energy, declared bankruptcy in May. 

The rule represents the Trump administration’s most direct effort to protect the coal industry. It is also another significant step in dismantling measures aimed at combating global warming, including the rollback of tailpipe emissions standards and the planned withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

The move largely gives states the authority to decide how far to scale back emissions, or not to do it all, and significantly reduces the federal government’s role in setting standards. The Obama plan would have set national emissions limits and required the reconstruction of power grids to move utilities away from coal.

Read the story from The New York Times by Lisa Friedman - “E.P.A. Finalizes Its Plan to Replace Obama-Era Climate Rules.”

Trump’s New Climate Plan Involves a Guy Who Compared Pollution to ‘Jews Under Hitler’

Withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement was only the beginning. According to a new report from the New York Times, the Trump administration is poised to enter a dangerous, politically motivated new front of its war on climate science. “It reminds me of the Soviet Union,” Philip Duffey, an expert who served on the National Academy of Sciences, told the paper.

Vehicles move along the the New Jersey Turnpike in 2017
while a factory emits smoke. The United States is still c
ontributing to the global greenhouse gas emissions as
the Trump administration has dismantled the U.S.
foreign policy to reduce carbon pollution.

In the coming months, the White House is expected to officially vanquish what’s left of Obama-era regulations to curb emissions from tailpipes and power plants. Though the scientific community agrees that to pumping carbon dioxide into the environment will be catastrophic for future generations, the administration isn’t very concerned with the state of the planet beyond the president’s potential lifespan. According to the Times, U.S. Geological Survey Director James Reilly — a former petroleum geologist appointed by Trump — has ordered his office to only study the effects of climate change up to 2040. Doing so would paint a relatively rosy picture of the effects of climate change, as the rate of warming isn’t expected to increase precipitously until the middle of the century.

Read the story from Rolling Stone by Ryan Bort - “Trump’s New Climate Plan Involves a Guy Who Compared Pollution to ‘Jews Under Hitler’.”

Climate Preparation Report Released by Panel Previously Disbanded by Trump

A climate science advisory panel disbanded by the Trump administration released a report today outlining the steps communities can take to prepare for climate change.

A road in Colorado was damaged after flash flooding in
 2013, cutting off the small mountain town of Jamestown. 

In 2017, the Trump administration dissolved the federal Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment. Its purpose was to translate climate science in the National Climate Assessment into usable guidance for local governments and private companies.

The panel was reconstituted by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and includes members from academia, corporations and the government. Twelve of the original 15 members, along with eight additional experts, spent a year preparing the report, called "Evaluating Knowledge to Support Climate Action." It's designed to help local officials incorporate the latest climate science in their planning.

Read the Scientific American story by Scott Waldman - “Climate Preparation Report Released by Panel Previously Disbanded by Trump.”

Appeals Court OKs Pre-Trial Appeal of Kids Climate Case, Siding With Government

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a petition by the Trump administration for a rare pre-trial appeal in the landmark constitutional climate lawsuit, Juliana v. United States. The appeals court agreed to the interlocutory appeal, which leaves the future progress of the case unclear.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown a
wrench into Juliana v. United States, granting
 a rarely used pre-trial appeal to the government. 

Generally, interlocutory appeals consider certain aspects of a case while allowing other issues to proceed. The young plaintiffs in the case, 21 young people from around the country, have asked District Court Judge Ann Aiken to clarify how the case will move forward while the Ninth Circuit considers its appeal. They argue that they should be allowed to continue the discovery process and other pre-trial proceedings.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision came as somewhat of a surprise because it had denied repeated attempts by the government to short-circuit the case before trial. A three-judge panel voted 2-1 to grant this request, while denying other motions, including the government’s fourth writ of mandamus request. The writ of mandamus is even rarer than an interlocutory appeal because it requires the higher court to decide the lower court clearly abused its judicial power.

But granting the interlocutory appeal still throws the case into uncertainty.

Read the Climate Liability News story by Karen Savage - “Appeals Court OKs Pre-Trial Appeal of Kids Climate Case, Siding With Government.”

The Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules

When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, baulked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them.

Marathon, the country’s largest oil refiner, has backed
the Trump administration proposal to roll back car efficiency
 standards.

But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation’s oil industry.

In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country’s largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found.

The campaign’s main argument for significantly easing fuel efficiency standards — that the United States is so awash in oil it no longer needs to worry about energy conservation — clashed with decades of federal energy and environmental policy.

Read the story from The New York Times by Hiroko Tabuchi - “The Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules.”

Trump administration approves seismic tests that could harm thousands of Atlantic dolphins and whales

The Trump administration took an important step toward future oil and natural gas drilling off the Atlantic shore, approving five requests allowing companies to conduct deafening seismic surveys that could harm tens of thousands of dolphins, whales and other marine animals, according to studies.

A North Atlantic right whale appears at the surface
of Cape Cod bay off the coast of Plymouth, Mass. 

In an announcement Friday, the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, declared that it issued final “incidental take” authorizations permitting companies conducting the surveys to harm wildlife if its unintentional.

“NOAA Fisheries is clear in the documentation related to [incidental take authorizations] that we do not expect mortality to occur as a result of these surveys,” said a spokeswoman, Katherine Brogan. But numerous scientific studies show acoustic sound can harm or potentially kill animals.

Read the story from The Washington Post - “Trump administration approves seismic tests that could harm thousands of Atlantic dolphins and whales.”

The Depravity of Climate-Change Denial

The Trump administration is, it goes without saying, deeply anti-science. In fact, it’s anti-objective reality. But its control of the government remains limited; it didn’t extend far enough to prevent the release of the latest National Climate Assessment, which details current and expected future impacts of global warming on the United States.

A trailer park destroyed by the fire that swept
 through Paradise, California, this month - risking
civilization for profit, ideology and ego.

True, the report was released on Black Friday, clearly in the hope that it would get lost in the shuffle. The good news is that the ploy didn’t work.

The assessment basically confirms, with a great deal of additional detail, what anyone following climate science already knew: Climate change poses a major threat to the nation, and some of its adverse effects are already being felt. For example, the report, written before the latest California disaster, highlights the growing risks of wildfire in the Southwest; global warming, not failure to rake the leaves, is why the fires are getting ever bigger and more dangerous.

Read the opinion piece in The New York Times by Richard Krugman  - “The Depravity of Climate-Change Denial."

U.S. Starts Process to Open Arctic to Offshore Drilling, Despite Federal Lawsuit

The Trump administration has begun the process to open a large area of federal waters off Alaska to oil and gas drilling, taking comments on a plan for drilling that is already being challenged in court.

Early exploratory wells in the American Arctic didn’t
produce enough oil or gas, and with falling oil prices,
many large companies abandoned plans for the region.
New attempts are running into other challenges. 

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced on Thursday that it is going to start accepting comments from the public about bringing oil drilling to roughly 65 million acres of offshore waters in the Beaufort Sea and plans to hold a lease sale in 2019.

The waters have been in dispute since early in the Trump administration. In one of his final acts as president, Barack Obama had placed them off limits to drilling. And in one of his early acts as president, Donald Trump moved to overturn that with an executive order of his own.

Read the Inside Climate News story by Sabrina Shankman - “U.S. Starts Process to Open Arctic to Offshore Drilling, Despite Federal Lawsuit.”

7-Degree Global Temperature Rise Is Inevitable, Trump Administration Presumes (and Shrugs It Off)

A recently issued environmental report suggests that leaders in the Trump administration have already shrugged off the possibility of putting the brakes on climate change, a stance that embraces a catastrophic future for the planet.

A cemetery in Bucksport, South Carolina, is inundated by floodwaters
 from the Waccamaw River caused by Hurricane Florence. The increasing
frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as this have been
 linked to human-induced climate change.

Scientists have warned that if current levels of fossil fuel consumption continue unchecked, Earth could warm by as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) by 2100.

And according to this report, that prediction is already accepted by the government as inevitable — and nothing will be done to prevent it, The Washington Post reported today (Sept. 28). 

Read the story by Mindy Weisberger from LiveScience - “7-Degree Global Temperature Rise Is Inevitable, Trump Administration Presumes (and Shrugs It Off).”

Local climate efforts won't be enough to undo Trump's inaction, study says

Individual cities, regions and businesses across the globe are banding together determinedly to confront climate change - but their emissions reductions are relatively small and don’t fully compensate for a recalcitrant US under the Trump administration, a new study has found.

The emissions cuts promised by cities and businesses fall short
 of enabling countries to avoid breaching agreed thresholds for
dangerous warming.

A cavalcade of city mayors, regional government representatives and business executives from around the world will convene in San Francisco next month for a major summit touting the role of action beyond national governments to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

But the greenhouse gas cuts offered up by these entities are relatively modest, according to new research, placing the onus on nations to raise their ambitions even as the US, the world’s second largest emitter, looks to exit the landmark Paris climate agreement.

An evaluation of climate change pledges by nearly 6,000 cities, states and regions, representing 7% of the global population, and more than 2,000 companies that have a combined revenue comparable to the size of the US economy, found a total projected reduction of between 1.5bn to 2.2bn tons of greenhouse gases by 2030.

Read the story from The Guardian by Oliver Milman - “Local climate efforts won't be enough to undo Trump's inaction, study says.”

Trump administration proposes rule to relax carbon limits on power plants

The Trump administration on Tuesday proposed relaxing pollution standards for power plants nationwide, a move that could slow the decline of U.S. carbon emissions and lead to hundreds more premature deaths and thousands of asthma attacks and missed school days.

President Trump shakes hands with coal mining company
 executive Kevin Hughes before signing signed a
resolution rejecting the Obama Interior Department’s
Stream Protection Rule, in the White House on Feb. 16, 2017.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, which President Trump planned to tout at a roundtable meeting in Charleston, W.Va., on Tuesday evening, represents the administration’s most ambitious proposal to bolster the nation’s coal industry. Although it probably would have a modest impact on curbing carbon dioxide emissions in the power sector, it could potentially increase human health risks from other pollutants.

The measure, which would replace an Obama-era rule that set strict carbon dioxide limits for each state and encouraged the shuttering of coal plants, is likely to widen the environmental policy divide between red and blue states. Officials in conservative states may allow utilities to extend the life of coal-fired units, while those in liberal states are likely to keep pressing for steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Juliet Eilperin - “Trump administration proposes rule to relax carbon limits on power plants.”

The world is burning, and the Trump administration wants to make it worse

Look at the non-political news these days: Deadly wildfires burn out of control in parched California. Unusually heavy rains cause devastating floods in parts of Asia. A punishing heat wave kills scores in Japan, South Korea and normally temperate parts of Europe, pushing the mercury into the 90s in Scandinavia. Can anyone fail to see a pattern?

A man wipes his face with a towel during a hot
day in a residential district in Seoul on Thursday. 

With increasing confidence — and growing alarm — some leading climate scientists attribute this summer’s bizarre weather to human-induced global warming. Meanwhile, the Trump administration wants to make it all worse.

This week we saw a juxtaposition of events that you couldn’t make up. On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that 2017 was the second- or third-warmest year on record, depending on which data set is used, trailing only 2016 and perhaps 2015. The very next day, like some cat-stroking Bond villain, President Trump had his environmental vandals propose rolling back automotive fuel-efficiency standards, which would neuter one of the nation’s most effective means of mitigating climate change.

Read the opinion piece from The Washington Post by Eugene Robinson - “The world is burning, and the Trump administration wants to make it worse.”

The Trump administration just failed to stop a climate lawsuit brought by 21 kids

The Trump administration cannot short-circuit a federal climate change lawsuit brought by a group of 21 children and teenagers, an appellate court ruled on Wednesday, probably sending the ambitious case back to a lower court in Oregon for trial.

A U.S. coal-fired power plant.

The federal government’s request to halt the lawsuit “is entirely premature,” wrote Judge Sidney Thomas, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

“We’re looking forward to putting the federal government on trial on climate science and its dangerous fossil fuel policies,” said Julia Olson, the lead attorney for the young plaintiffs and chief counsel of Our Children’s Trust.

Read The Washington Post story by Chris Mooney - “The Trump administration just failed to stop a climate lawsuit brought by 21 kids.”

White House seeks 72 percent cut to clean energy research, underscoring administration’s preference for fossil fuels

The Trump administration is poised to ask Congress for deep budget cuts to the Energy Department’s renewable energy and energy efficiency programs, slashing them by 72 percent overall in fiscal 2019, according to draft budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Filipinos ride energy efficient electric tricycles during
a test drive in TaguigCity, south of Manila, Philippines,
 in January this year. 

Many of the sharp cuts would probably be restored by Congress, but President Trump’s budget, due out in February, will mark a starting point for negotiations and offer a statement of intent and policy priorities.

The document underscores the administration’s continued focus on the exploitation of fossil fuel resources — or, as Trump put it in his State of the Union address, “beautiful clean coal” — over newer renewable technologies seen as a central solution to the problem of climate change.

Read The Washington Post story by Chris Mooney and Stephen Mufson - “White House seeks 72 percent cut to clean energy research, underscoring administration’s preference for fossil fuels.”

How Much Does Climate Change Cost? Try $1.5 Trillion (and Counting)

The Trump administration, and its allies in Congress, are fighting a losing war. They continue to press forward for the development of oil, gas, and coal when the rest of the world understands the implication of that folly. Global warming is the most pressing issue for our time. Period.

The thing is governments really have two choices when it comes to managing the impact on its people from global warming: spend money on trying to reduce the problem or spend money on cleaning up the catastrophes.

Firefighters clear debris from a mudslide in Los Angeles,
California on January 9, 2018. The deadly rain storm claimed
 the lives of 13 people in Santa Barbara County. Flash
flooding also occurred in the recently burned areas
of Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

The Trump administration is on the hook for the catastrophe. A report released Monday by The National Centers for Environmental Information pegged the total cost this year at $1.5 trillion, including estimates for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. (And that doesn’t even begin to count the human toll, lost lives, lost jobs, lost opportunity.)

I witnessed firsthand the impact of Hurricane Maria on the island of Dominica last month. We keep hearing stories about the power grid being down (similar to Puerto Rico) and you think, Why? It’s been months. Why aren’t the lights on? Then you see nearly every electrical pole on the island sideways. The entire grid needs to be rebuilt (or better, rethought) and that’s decades of infrastructure. So the figure of $1.5 trillion is far short of what will be needed. Nearly every electrical line, every other house, the damage was so widespread it’s impossible to overstate. And that’s just one island. Multiple the effect across the region. The planet.

Read Mark Trahant’s story on Yes! Magazine - “How Much Does Climate Change Cost? Try $1.5 Trillion (and Counting).”

Trump drops climate change from US national security strategy

The Trump administration has dropped climate change from a list of global threats in a new national security strategy the president unveiled on Monday. 

Donald Trump has dropped climate change from America’s national security strategy. 

Instead, Trump’s NSS paper emphasised the need for the US to regain its economic competitiveness in the world.

That stance represents a sharp change from the Obama administration’s NSS, which placed climate change as one of the main dangers facing the nation and made building international consensus on containing global warming a national security priority.

White House officials said on Sunday that the Trump NSS was the culmination of 11 months of collaboration between all the leading security, foreign policy and economic agencies of government. 

The exclusion of climate change as a national security threat appears, however, to conflict with views previously expressed by the defense secretary, James Mattis.

Read Julian Borger’s story on The Guardian - “Trump drops climate change from US national security strategy.”