Month: June 2020

Rising Seas Threaten an American Institution: The 30-Year Mortgage

The New York Times discusses how Rising Seas Threaten an American Institution: The 30-Year Mortgage. Climate change is starting to transform the classic home loan, a fixture of the American experience and financial system that dates back generations.

Up and down the coastline, rising seas and climate change are transforming a fixture of American homeownership that dates back generations: the classic 30-year mortgage.

Home buyers are increasingly using mortgages that make it easier for them to stop making their monthly payments and walk away from the loan if the home floods or becomes unsellable or unlivable. More banks are getting buyers in coastal areas to make bigger down payments — often as much as 40 percent of the purchase price, up from the traditional 20 percent — a sign that lenders have awakened to climate dangers and want to put less of their own money at risk.

Report: A 90% Clean Grid Can Be Achieved Quickly. What’s Holding It Back?

Green Tech Media discusses how a 90% Clean Grid Can Be Achieved Quickly. What’s Holding It Back? This week on The Energy Gang, we review a new report that describes how to decarbonize the grid more rapidly than we thought possible.

Most decarbonization proposals play out over 30 years, aiming toward 2050. But a new roadmap from researchers at UC Berkeley and the policy firm Energy Innovation shows the grid can get to a level of 90% clean in just 15 years’ time.

No new fossil fuel plants. Lower rates for consumers. 85,000 lives saved. 500,000 additional jobs. Region by region, the researchers lay out exactly how it can be done.

Prices have fallen so quickly that our understanding of what’s possible hasn’t kept pace. And now, say the researchers, we have the chance to decarbonize much sooner than many thought possible. This week on The Energy Gang, we’ll dig into the study and its implications.

Nine years on, Fukushima’s mental health fallout lingers

Wired discusses how, nine years on, Fukushima’s mental health fallout lingers. As radiation from the Fukushima nuclear accident subsides, a damaging social and psychological legacy continues.

If it were not illegal, Ayumi Iida would love to test a dead body. Recently, she tested a wild boar’s heart. She’s also tested the contents of her vacuum cleaner and the filter of her car’s air conditioner. Her children are so used to her scanning the material contents of their life that when she cuts the grass, her son asks, “Are you going to test that too?”

Iida, who is 35, forbids her children from entering the sea or into forests. She agonises over which foods to buy. But no matter what she does, she can’t completely protect her children from radiation. It even lurks in their urine.

“Maybe he’s being exposed through the school lunch,” she says, puzzling over why her nine-year-old son’s urine showed two-and-a-half times the concentration of caesium that hers did, when she takes such care shopping. “Or maybe it’s from the soil outside where he plays. Or is it because children have a faster metabolism, so he flushes more out? We don’t know.”

The Great Wonders Beyond the Great Reef

The New York Times discusses the great wonders beyond the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

What lies off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, in the Coral Sea? The region was mostly unexplored and uncharted until a recent expedition searched its dark waters, uncovering an abundance of life, weird geologic features and spectacular deep corals. The deepest forays reached down more than a mile.

The expedition was organized by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, founded by Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Google, and his wife, Wendy. Its centerpiece was a ship, nearly the length of a football field, that could map the remote seabed with beams of sound and deploy tethered and autonomous robots to capture close-up images of the inky depths.

“It blew our minds,” Robin Beaman of James Cook University, the expedition’s chief scientist, said in an interview. “We’ve gone from literally knowing nothing to knowing a lot.”

Arctic town records highest temperature ever

The Hill discusses Arctic town records highest temperature ever.

The temperature in a Russian town located within the Arctic circle reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, the hottest temperature on record for the area.

Verkhoyansk, a town in the region of Siberia known for experiencing wide ranges in temperatures throughout the year, reported a temperature reading of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, or 38 degrees Celsius, the Associated Press reported. The previous record was 98.96 degrees Fahrenheit, while temperatures of -90 degrees Fahrenheit have also been reported in the area.

The record high temperatures are thought to be contributing to dangerous wildfires in the region, the AP reported, and are part of a six-month heat wave affecting the region. Some of the wildfires are reportedly so-called “zombie” fires, in which decayed organic matter burns underground causing smoke to rise to the surface.

 

Slip-up reveals Chevron ties to architect of climate attack

E&E News discusses Chevron ties to architect of climate attack.

It was an audacious messaging campaign: White environmentalists are hurting black communities by pushing radical climate policies that would strip them of fossil fuel jobs.

The email to journalists, sent by a public affairs firm at the height of national protests over systemic racism earlier this month, accidentally contained the name of a high-profile client.

It was Chevron Corp.

The Virginia-based communications firm, named CRC Advisors, urged journalists to look at how green groups were “claiming solidarity” with black protesters while “backing policies which would hurt minority communities.”

“Despite this claimed solidarity, environmental organizations, composed of predominantly white members, are backing radical policies like the Green New Deal which would bring particular harm to minority communities,” wrote John Gage of CRC in an email sent to media outlets including E&E News.

The story pitch included an offer to connect journalists with black conservatives who oppose the Green New Deal, a sweeping government jobs program advanced by progressive lawmakers who champion environmental justice issues for communities of color.

The email ended with a revealing tagline.

“If you would rather not receive future communications from Chevron, let us know by clicking here.”

Study: Half of world’s population exposed to increasing air pollution

Independent discusses how half of the world’s population is exposed to increasing air pollution, study finds. Air quality a ‘major, and in many areas growing, threat to public health,’ warn researchers.

More than half of the world’s population is exposed to increasing air pollution despite global efforts to tackle toxic fumes, a study has found.

In some regions pollution has soared five times above safe levels set by the World Health Organisation (WHO), according to researchers at the University of Exeter.

But the Exeter study, published in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science, found levels “remained virtually constant and extremely high” in other regions.

2020 likely to be the warmest year on record globally

CBS News discusses 2020 likely to be the warmest year on record globally.

While the public’s attention is consumed by concern over the global pandemic and protests against social injustices, the chronic condition of climate change continues to escalate. In fact, it’s becoming more and more likely that 2020 will be the hottest year globally since records have been kept, dating back to the late 1800s.

Reviews of temperatures for May 2020 have now been reported by four standard-bearer climate data organizations including NASA, NOAA, Berkeley Earth and the European agency Copernicus. The unanimous conclusion: Last month was the warmest May on record globally, with the caveat from NOAA that it was a virtual tie with May 2016.

​As the nation reels, Trump Administration continues environmental policy rollbacks

Environmental Health News discusses, as the nation reels, Trump Administration continues environmental policy rollbacks. Just beneath the headlines, politics and nature are whipping up a few more storms.

There’s a whirlwind of distressing news these days. Rage over racism; fretting over finance; and coronavirus may just be getting its boots on. It’s all a perfect time to unleash some quiet mayhem on the environment.

It’s all hard to write about, and I’m sorry, I know it’s equally hard to read about. But it’s even more impossible to ignore.

The Trump Administration’s war on environmental regulation might draw a little more attention in normal times. Here are a few things, flying under the radar, that will have ramifications for years.

In early June, Trump launched a frontal attack on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA is a 50-year-old, profoundly un-sexy law that generates tons of paperwork and keeps scores of attorneys gainfully employed. It’s also a cornerstone of environmental law—the statute that requires an Environmental Impact Statement for federally-funded development projects, including pipeline and construction, airport expansion, and more.

With Supreme Court case over, courts again weigh whether Atlantic Coast Pipeline is needed

The Virginia Mercury discusses whether the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is needed.

Last week, the Supreme Court handed a victory to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline when it ruled that the U.S. Forest Service had the authority to allow the project to cross beneath the Appalachian Trail.

But the end of that battle has seen the revival of another, more fundamental conflict: whether the pipeline really is needed.

The project’s main developers — Dominion Energy and Duke Energy — have since its introduction adamantly insisted the pipeline is the best way to supply what they say is the growing demand for natural gas in the region.