Scott Pruitt’s EPA will wreck air quality, American Lung Association finds

The American Lung Association is taking the EPA and Congress to task for sidelining science and imperilling public health in the process.

 EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. 

The group's annual “State of the Air” report tends to be optimistic. Long a backer of the Clean Air Act, the group’s report last year praised regulators for allowing both economic growth alongside an improvement in air quality. But this year, things are a little different.

For one thing, the 2018 report, published Wednesday, singles out EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt for his role in sidelining scientific research at the agency he helms, as well as specific members of Congress that have proposed legislation that would weaken the Clean Air Act.

Read Alex Lubben’s story from Vice News - “Scott Pruitt’s EPA will wreck air quality, American Lung Association finds.”

UN Climate Change Launches First-Ever Annual Report

UN Climate Change News, 30 April 2018 – UN Climate Change today launched its first-ever Annual Report, laying out the key 2017 achievements and pointing to the future of the climate change process.

"Climate Change is the single biggest threat to life, security and prosperity on Earth," said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa. “This annual report shows how UN Climate Change is doing everything it can to support, encourage and build on the global response to climate change.”

The report covers many areas of the 2017 work of UN Climate Change, which includes the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement, as well as their bodies, institutional arrangements, organs and the secretariat.

For example, at the UN Climate Change conference (COP23) presided over by Fiji last November, almost 30,000 people from all levels came together in Bonn, Germany, to drive action on climate change. The conference saw financial commitments amounting to almost USD 1 billion to tackle climate change.

Read the report - “UN Climate Change Launches First-Ever Annual Report.”

There’s a low-energy alternative to cremation

The choices you make in life affect the environment. And so do the choices you make about death. For example, a traditional burial involves embalming chemicals that can seep into the ground. And cremation requires a lot of energy. So some people are now turning to a process that’s been called “flameless cremation.”

The alternative to traditional burial and cremation.

Cattoni: “The process is very similar to what the body intended us to do originally when we pass away, and that’s just to break itself down.”

Ryan Cattoni of Aquagreen Dispositions in Illinois says a warm alkaline solution is used to break down the remains.

Read the story by Eileen Mignoni from Yale Climate Connections - “There’s a low-energy alternative to cremation.”

Shipping’s Heavy Fuel Oil Puts the Arctic at Risk. Could It Be Banned?

Heavy fuel oil—the molasses-like sludge left after the oil refining process—is among the dirtiest fuels on the planet, and yet its use by ships is widespread in the Arctic, a pristine environment where it could do significant harm.

The majority of the Arctic's black carbon, a short-lived climate
pollutant, comes from heavy fuel oil used in ships.

Burning the fuel contributes to climate change, and a spill in Arctic waters would be a nightmare for emergency response coordinators. But it's cheap, and attractive for ships making long hauls, the kind of traffic on the rise as climate change makes Arctic shipping easier.

Concerns about the safety and use of the fuel in a delicate and remote environment led to it being banned in the Antarctic in 2011, but efforts to include the Arctic in that ban fell short.

Read the Inside Climate News story by Sabrina Shankman - “Shipping’s Heavy Fuel Oil Puts the Arctic at Risk. Could It Be Banned?”

Green developers say $100,000 award will help them build a village

The group behind a series of "deep green" inner-city apartment projects – which attempt to cut profit-driven developers out of the construction process to reduce housing costs – has won a $100,000 state government award to push ahead with their latest project.

Architects Fairley Batch (left) and Rachel Nolan on the
 site of what will become Nightingale Village.

Nightingale Housing will on Thursday be given the first grant from the Andrews government's $1 million "Social Impact Investment" sustainability fund.

The not-for-profit organisation was established to share knowledge and support architects, who often invest in the projects. Profits are capped at 15 percent - far less than is normal in the Australian development sector.

Read the story in today’s Age by Clay Lucas - “Green developers say $100,000 award will help them build a village.”

BHP prepares for a hotter future

It's a familiar image: an Antarctic glacier melting in unprecedented warmth. The relentless process goes on without much visible change, until gradually, worn away beneath, the glacier can no longer hold together. The strain becomes too much. The ice splits. Another gigantic iceberg – an object so big that the Earth's maps must be redrawn – falls into the sea.

Something similar is happening in the mining industry, and the cause is the same: climate change. BHP, the world's largest mining company, has given notice to three major industry bodies of which it is a member – the Minerals Council of Australia, the World Coal Association and the US Chamber of Commerce – that it may have to break away. BHP has reviewed the policies and statements on climate change of all the industry bodies it belongs to, and has found these three act in support of views seriously at variance with its own position. That means, in effect, that it has been paying considerable sums to industry representatives who are lobbying against the company's interests on the issue. If they don't stop, a split is inevitable.

Read the Melbourne Age Editorial - “BHP prepares for a hotter future.”

Pakistan sets High Court climate change precedent

A

 high court in Pakistan has set a legal precedent – both at home and internationally – by ordering the government to enforce its own climate change policy and establishing a climate change commission to oversee the process.

An individual farmer, Asghar Leghari, brought a public interest litigation case against the government in the Lahore High Court on 31 August. Leghari, who relies on agriculture for a living, argued that the government had not taken steps to develop the required resilience to climate change as set out in the 2012 National Climate Policy and Framework.

Quoting from the policy, the farmer stated that climate change threats have led to “major survival concerns for Pakistan, particularly in relation to the country’s water security, food security and energy security.”

Read the China Dialogue story - “Pakistan court orders govt to enforce climate law”.

If enough of us decide this is a crisis, then there will be a response - Klein

If enough of us decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one, so says Naomi Klein.

Naomi Klein - "This Changes Everything".

The Guardian newspaper is embarking on a major series of articles on the climate crisis and how humanity can solve it.

In the first, an extract taken from the introduction to “This Changes Everything” by Naomi Klein, the author argues that if we treat climate change as the crisis it is, we don’t just have the potential to avert disaster but could improve society in the process

Klein, in urging action, refers to the former director (now deputy director) of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Kevin Anderson, who explains that 4C warming is “incompatible with any reasonable characterisation of an organised, equitable and civilised global community”.