Articles Include: Maryland Senate passes climate act by wide margin; Canadian lobbyists attack Netflix children’s film for ‘anti-oil propaganda’; Poor and Latino neighborhoods endure hotter temperatures, Study finds; Maps reveal redlined areas face higher flood risks; Report: Renewable energy growth must speed up to meet Paris goals, agency says; Exclusive: U.S. Congress launches probe into multibillion-dollar ‘clean coal’ tax credit; Line 3: Stopping the next big climate threat crossing the U.S.-Canada border
Category: Coal and Coal Ash
The residue of a failing past, highly toxic to people, animals, and plants, and costly to safely dispose of.
The Daily Climate, March 15, 2021
Articles include: Energy companies left Colorado with O&G cleanup costs; Treaty rights acknowledged pipeline’s history; How the oil industry is shifting to offshore wind; Western states chart diverging paths as water shortages loom; Study finds that Floridans are underpaying for flood insurance; How climate change worries affect young people’s mental health; Amazon rainforest could be worsening climate change, study suggests; This billionaire governor’s coal companies owe millions more in environmental fines; Tiny town, big decision: What are we willing to pay to fight the rising sea?; How dirt could help save the planet
Yale Climate Connections, March 12, 2021
Articles include: Biden’s executive orders on climate have broad public support ; Details behind Biden’s ’30 by 30′ U.S. lands and oceans climate goal ; Hard-hitting video explains the origins of climate change ‘polarization’ ; Lab-grown chicken approved for sale in Singapore ; How Indigenous people in the Amazon are using drones to protect rainforests ; Severe drought could make Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser less faithful ; Pennsylvania poet Art Zilleruelo grapples with coal’s legacy
The Daily Climate, March 11, 2021
Articles include: Saguaro cactuses are under threat because of climate change; Warming oceans mean smaller baby sharks struggle to survive; Food systems responsible for ‘one third’ of human-caused emissions; Bitcoin rise could leave carbon footprint the size of London’s; The economic case for restoring abandoned oil wells; Summer could last six months by 2100, study finds; As oil prices rise, executives aim to keep them high; Between a black rock and a hard place; Utah agency reverses course, pulls back energy leases in original Bears Ears monument; LAW: Big Tobacco had to pay $206B. Is Big Oil next?
The Daily Climate, March 12, 2021
Articles include: Hawaii’s rains, floods cited as examples of climate change; First-ever study of all Amazon greenhouse gases suggest the forest is worsening climate change; How Biden can invest in energy efficient homes; HSBC plans to phase out coal financing by 2040; New US vehicles must be electric by 2030 to meet climate goals – report; 10 years after Fukushima, safety is not the biggest problem for the us nuclear industry.
Big energy sues Netherlands over coal phase-out
DW: Video on Big energy sues Netherlands over coal phase-out. German energy company RWE is suing the Dutch government for €1.4 billion over its decision to shut down all coal-fired power plants by 2030. Does the energy giant stand a chance?
Judge rules coal mine’s climate costs matter; NM could curb gov’s powers
Colorado Politics: Judge rules coal mine’s climate costs matter; NM could curb gov’s powers.
Judge orders US officials to weigh coal mine’s climate costs
BILLINGS — A judge says U.S officials downplayed climate change impacts and other environmental costs from the expansion of a massive coal mine near the Montana-Wyoming border, in a case that could test how far the Biden administration is willing to go to unwind its predecessors’ decisions.
Study: Coal-Fired Power Took a Beating During the Pandemic
New York Times: Coal-Fired Power Took a Beating During the Pandemic, Study Finds. A broad move away from coal power was an important factor in pushing down global greenhouse gas emissions, researchers said, and could help accelerate a shift toward renewable energy.
The share of energy generated from coal has dropped more sharply during the coronavirus pandemic than that of any other power source, according to a new report on Monday that looked at coal demand in some of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
The shift away from coal power had a significant impact on global emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide, the researchers said, and could lead to an acceleration of the global shift toward renewable energy.
The report, led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, analyzed emissions and electricity demand in the United States, Europe and India.
Report: COVID Took a Toll on Coal, Clearing Way for a Green Recovery
New York Magazine: COVID Took a Toll on Coal, Clearing Way for a Green Recovery.
The COVID pandemic has provided climate hawks with plenty of cause for despair. The fact that America’s capacity for misgovernance, ideological delusion, and consumerist myopia has proved vast enough to sustain opposition to indoor-dining restrictions and facial masks — even after a viral illness put 463,000 Americans in the ground — does not bode well for the prospects of a green awakening. The threat that COVID poses to the public is more universal than any discrete climate disaster is likely to be. And the policies necessary for mitigating the pandemic — universal mask-wearing and sustained lockdowns — demand less economic disruption and more immediate payoff than those necessary for affecting a rapid energy transition ever will.
More concretely, while the pandemic did yield the largest annual carbon-emissions reduction on record, this nevertheless proved much smaller than analysts had initially expected, as energy demand rebounded by the end of the year. The current trend line suggests that the world could catch back up to its pre-pandemic pollution potential by 2022.
But the news isn’t all grim. In addition to the ouster of a manically pro-pollution administration from the White House, and a brightening in climatologists’ forecasts, a new study finds that coal’s share of global energy production has plummeted since the pandemic’s onset.
How a public uprising caused a province built on fossil fuels to reverse course on coal mining
The Narwhal: How a public uprising caused a province built on fossil fuels to reverse course on coal mining. Country music stars, conservationists and tens of thousands of Albertans came together to roll back plans for mountaintop-removal mining in the Rockies.
Last May — on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend — Alberta’s United Conservative Party government quietly announced it was rescinding a policy that dated back to 1976.
The coal policy, it said, was “no longer required.” The government did not anticipate how the quiet rescission of a decades-old policy could ignite the passion of Albertans.
What followed was a months-long backlash from Albertans of all political stripes and walks of life, from country music stars to conservation enthusiasts to downstream First Nations communities to ranchers.