Month: July 2020

Study: A Northeast US climate initiative has had a major side benefit—healthier children

Environmental Health News discusses how a Northeast US climate initiative has had a major side benefit—healthier children. Researchers estimate a climate effort in the Northeast U.S. helped the region reduce toxic air pollution and avoid hundreds of asthma and autism cases, preterm births, and low birth weights.

A climate change initiative in the Northeastern U.S. designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions has also greatly reduced harmful air pollution and related impacts to kids’ health, such as asthma, preterm births and low birth weights, according to a new study.

Led by researchers from the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the study found the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has reduced fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and, due to this reduction, the region avoided an estimated 537 cases of child asthma, 112 preterm births, 98 cases of autism spectrum disorder, and 56 cases of low birthweight from 2009 to 2014.

The microscopic pollution can be made up of many different particles, but in this study—published today in Environmental Health Perspectives— researchers looked at reductions in nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, which, once emitted from power plants, react in the atmosphere to form PM2.5.

Deepwater Horizon Still Plagues the Health of Children a Decade Later

OneZero discusses how the Deepwater Horizon Still Plagues the Health of Children a Decade Later. Research says children suffered physical and mental health as a result of the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Google Image search of “Deepwater Horizon aftermath” brings up an onslaught of sludge — pictures of animals, detritus, and large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico covered in crude oil. Since the massive BP-operated drilling rig exploded and led to a months-long oil spill in 2010, the area has seen massive losses to marine life, the generation of at least 35,000 tons of spill-related solid waste, and oil covering over 57,000 square miles of the Gulf.

Trump administration easing more Obama-era oil and gas rules

ABC News discusses how the Trump administration is easing more Obama-era oil and gas rules. The Trump administration is seeking to ease more rules for oil and gas drilling that were adopted under the Obama administration.

The Trump administration is seeking to ease more rules for oil and gas drilling that were adopted under the Obama administration, with the latest changes projected to save energy companies more than $130 million over the next decade.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management proposal would streamline requirements for measuring and reporting oil and gas produced from federal lands.

The administration’s critics said it marks yet another instance of Trump backtracking on rules that were meant to ensure companies drill responsibly and that the public gets fairly paid for energy extracted from public lands.

Study: Hundreds of Toxic Superfund Sites Imperiled by Sea-Level Rise

Inside Climate News discusses a study showing that Hundreds of Toxic Superfund Sites Imperiled by Sea-Level Rise. The Union of Concerned Scientists, faulting Trump for ignoring climate change, says flooding there could wash deadly chemicals into nearby communities.

A new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists concludes that more than 800 hazardous Superfund sites near the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are at risk of flooding in the next 20 years, even with low rates of sea level rise.

The study, “A Toxic Relationship: Extreme Coastal Flooding and Superfund Sites,” was written by Jacob Carter, a research scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists who began the analysis while working at the EPA. He was forced out of the agency in 2017 when the Trump administration signaled it would no longer prioritize climate change-focused research.

Yale Climate Connections, July 31, 2020

This week’s stories include:  wrong debate about nuclear energy;  What is ‘climate justice’?;  on energy and Shellenberger’s ‘Apocalypse’;   cost of carbon dioxide pollution to society, new research;   reduce bat fatalities from wind turbines;  flooding agricultural land to recharge an Idaho river;  ocean acidification;  Erosion and more extreme rain and storms;  farming and leasing land for solar.

Report: Plastic trash flowing into the seas will nearly triple by 2040 without drastic action

National Geographic discusses plastic and the oceans. Plastic trash flowing into the seas will nearly triple by 2040 without drastic action. An ambitious plan, two years in the making, might have the solution.

THE AMOUNT OF plastic trash that flows into the oceans every year is expected to nearly triple by 2040 to 29 million metric tons.

That single, incomprehensibly large statistic is at the center of a new two-year research project that both illuminates the failure of the worldwide campaign to curb plastic pollution and prescribes an ambitious plan for reducing much of that flow into the seas.

No one knows for certain how much plastic, which is virtually indestructible, has accumulated in the seas. The best guess, made in 2015, was about 150 million metric tons. Assuming things remain the same, the study estimates that accumulation will become 600 million metric tons by 2040.

The project, developed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ, Ltd., a London-based environmental think tank, essentially calls for a wholesale remaking of the global plastics industry by shifting it to a circular economy that reuses and recycles. If such transformation occurs—and that’s a big if—Pew’s experts say the annual flow of plastic waste into the oceans could be reduced by 80 percent over the next two decades, all by using existing methods and technology. Even a five-year delay allows an additional 80 million metric tons of trash to slide offshore.

Bill McKibben: What Joe Biden’s Climate Plan Really Signals

Reader Supported News discusses Bill McKibben’s take on what Joe Biden’s climate plan really signals. When Joe Biden issued his extensive climate plan last week, there were endless analyses, including mostly positive reviews like those from the energy expert Julian Brave NoiseCat, who called it “a Green New Deal in our view, substantively,” and the Sunrise Movement, which had graded Biden’s primary-season plan an F, but now says that he’s “talking the talk,” and that a post-election mobilization will insure that he’ll “walk the walk.” The main opposition came from President Trump, who insisted that Biden, in his zeal for energy efficiency, had called for abolishing windows.

I don’t want to go deeply into the details of the plan here, because chances are that few of the proposals will get enacted in their precise form, but they seem a truly useful compendium of the mainstream and obvious ideas for an energy and conservation transition. And they provide a good roadmap by which to steer, even if that map avoids the most controversial areas of the debate. (The plan is especially quiet about the efforts that will be necessary to limit mining and drilling for fossil fuels.) The best way to understand them, I think, is as a loud signal in the ever-louder conversation among élites about the trajectory and the pace of that transition.