Month: June 2020

Big Oil suffers pivotal losses in 2 climate cases

E&E News discusses how the O&G industry has suffered pivotal losses in 2 climate cases.

The oil and gas industry lost appeals in two major climate damages cases yesterday brought by cities and counties in California.

A panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that attorneys for oil companies failed to show why San Mateo County and Oakland could not pursue state court battles for industry compensation for climate change impacts, such as sea-level rise.

“We hold that the state-law claim for public nuisance does not arise under federal law,” Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote in the Oakland opinion.

At issue were two climate lawsuits brought by a slew of California cities and counties against oil companies like Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC.

The cases — which both seek to hold companies financially responsible for misleading the public on climate change consequences — were heard by the same 9th Circuit panel earlier this year. The appeals court was tasked with resolving split decisions from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Climatewire, Feb. 6).

Ikuta, a George W. Bush appointee, and the rest of the three-judge panel affirmed the district court’s 2018 decision to throw the San Mateo case back to a state venue and revived the Oakland climate case for more proceedings in district court after the same bench — but a different judge — scrapped the case that same year.

Can Planting a Trillion Trees Stop Climate Change? Scientists Say it’s a Lot More Complicated

Inside Climate News discusses whether planting a trillion trees can stop climate change? Scientists say it’s a lot more complicated. Compared with cutting fossil fuels, tree planting would play only a small role in combating the climate crisis.

It seems simple. Plant enough trees to soak up all the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels and people can forget about global warming and get on with their lives.

The idea even resonates with President Trump who, in January, said he backs an international “trillion trees” plan “to protect the environment.”

Trump’s endorsement, at the Davos World Economic Forum, grabbed headlines, coming from a president who has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, dismantled environmental regulations aimed at reducing emissions and called climate change a “hoax.” In the same speech, he attacked young climate activists as “prophets of doom.”

Since Davos, the tree planting plan has morphed on Capitol Hill into the so-called Trillion Trees Act, a proposed bill that would set targets for increasing wood growth to capture carbon, part of a growing global focus on nature-based climate solutions to complement greenhouse gas reduction efforts.

Internationally, the WWF, BirdLife International and the Wildlife Conservation Society formed TrillionTrees.org to “protect and restore” forests, while the Davos discussions spurred formation of 1t.org as a global platform to mobilize funds that leans heavily on commercial forest interests. There’s even a tree-based cryptocurrency. 

Climate-friendly almond farmers coax life from drying Spanish soil

Reuters discusses how climate-friendly almond farmers coax life from drying Spanish soil. In one of the driest corners of Europe, Manuel Barnes has watched the soil become healthier since he started growing almonds using techniques aimed at bringing new life to the land.

Barnes and his neighbours in southern Spain are turning to pre-industrial methods they hope will avert the risk of their land turning into desert to grow crops that command higher prices from increasingly environmentally-aware consumers.

Part of a growing international movement to harness the power of the soil to combat climate change, they leave grassy plants to wither in the fields, forming fertiliser that protects the soil, and have reduced tilling.

“The soil here was poor, degraded, pale and lifeless. Now it has changed colour, the structure has changed, it’s looser,” Barnes, 35, said at the hangar where his family has processed almonds, one of the area’s most prolific crops, for 40 years.

Hartford trash-to-energy plant plans to ship waste out of state, scrapping renovation effort over lack of funding

Courant discusses how a Hartford. CT, trash-to-energy plant plans to ship waste out of state, scrapping renovation effort over lack of funding.

The regional trash-to-energy and recycling plant in Hartford’s South Meadows is abandoning its effort to renovate the aging facility, with officials of the quasi-state system saying a desperate lack of state funding is now forcing a return to trucking garbage out of state.

At a special meeting Thursday, the board of directors for the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority unanimously agreed to move on from a $333 million proposed plan to modernize and upgrade the old trash-incinerating plant and instead convert it into a transfer station.

“It’s a travesty,” Richard Barlow, vice chairman of the board of directors, said before the body’s vote. “It’s a great disappointment to me to be in the position where that is the only alternative.”

Listen to experts and tackle the toxic chemical crisis contributing to chronic disease

The Hill discusses why we should listen to experts and tackle the toxic chemical crisis contributing to chronic disease.

Infectious disease experts, scientists, and doctors have warned about the potential for a pandemic for years. Microsoft founder Bill Gates did a TED Talk on it and U.S. intelligence agencies knew it was a real threat. There was even a major USAID program, recently de-funded, called Predict, designed to head off pandemics.

And now, these scientific warnings have come true.

The once invisible threat of a virus spreading throughout our country is painfully visible today. Given a choice, wouldn’t we all choose to prevent the spread of this horrible virus in the first place?

It’s too late to stop COVID-19 from entering our lives. But there is another invisible threat to our health and well-being we can address.

Similar to those who cautioned us about a disease like COVID-19, leading public health experts, scientists, and doctors today warn us that exposure to toxic chemicals is contributing to rates of chronic illnesses.

Many of these chemicals are found in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the products in our homes. And many of these illnesses worsen the impacts of COVID-19.

Study: Climate change creates camouflage confusion in winter-adapted wildlife

Daily Climate discusses how climate change creates camouflage confusion in winter-adapted wildlife. Twenty-one species molt from brown to white to survive the winter season. But climate change has created a mismatch between their snowy camouflage and surroundings.

A thousand feet above the winter landscape, a golden eagle is on the hunt.

Riding the wind, the bird careens over scrubby contours and rolling hillsides. It’s late April and the days are growing longer. The snow melted weeks ago, revealing the dormant vegetation beneath. Suddenly, the eagle spots a shock of white on the brown landscape. The bird swoops, extending its talons toward the bounding white blob.

Here, on the dark earth, the snowshoe hare meets an untimely end.

Across the world’s temperate regions, climate change is toying with the survival strategies of winter-adapted animals. Twenty-one species, from lemmings to ptarmigans, cope with the changing of the seasons by molting from brown to white, and back again. This transformation allows the animal to avoid easy detection by predators, such as birds of prey, foxes and lynx, during the harsh winter.

Such climate-change induced phenological mismatches have been the subject of robust study in recent decades when it comes to hibernation, spring green-up, and migration. But research on the consequences of climate change for winter camouflage is still in its infancy.

Economic Giants Are Restarting. Here’s What It Means for Climate Change.

The New York Times discusses how Economic Giants Are Restarting. Here’s What It Means for Climate Change. Want to know whether the world can avert catastrophe? Watch the recovery plans coming out now in Europe, China and the United States.

As countries begin rolling out plans to restart their economies after the brutal shock inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic, the three biggest producers of planet-warming gases — the European Union, the United States and China — are writing scripts that push humanity in very different directions.

Europe this week laid out a vision of a green future, with a proposed recovery package worth more than $800 billion that would transition away from fossil fuels and put people to work making old buildings energy-efficient.

In the United States, the White House is steadily slashing environmental protections and Republicans are using the Green New Deal as a political cudgel against their opponents.

Offshore Wind Project approved by Ohio, but with a poison pill.

E&E News discusses how Ohio has approved nation’s 1st freshwater offshore wind project. Ohio yesterday unanimously approved the Icebreaker wind farm, North America’s first offshore freshwater project, planned for just off the Cleveland shore in Lake Erie. The ruling by Ohio’s Power Siting Board came a decade after plans for the project began to take shape and is contingent on a series of nearly three dozen conditions to be satisfied before, during and after construction. Included is a requirement that the project go silent for months of the year to protect birds and bats. The order also is a turning point for Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. (LEEDCo), a Cleveland-based public-private partnership that’s developing the project with partner and investor Fred. Olsen Renewables of Norway. But LEEDCo’s president said the condition to stop turbines from March through October could ultimately be fatal to the project.

Allegheny Front discusses that same offshore wind project, but points to the “poison pill” included in the approval. When Ohio recently approved construction of a wind farm in Lake Erie, the first ever freshwater offshore wind project in North America, the developers were shocked. The approval by the Ohio Power Siting Board included conditions that the developer, Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo), says will essentially kill the project. The turbines must be shut down at night for eight months of the year, from March to October, to protect birds and bats.

DeSmogBlog, May 31, 2020

This week’s articles include: