Articles include: Law Firms Serving Fossil Fuel Industry; Book About Youth Climate Lawsuit; Chamber of Commerce Is Pro-Fossil Fuel; California Firefighters Battling Wildfires, Retirement Plans and Coal; Congress Can Support Climate Accountability; Climate Lawsuits and Fossil Fuel Industry; Climate Disinformation Database: David Legates.
Category: Coal and Coal Ash
The residue of a failing past, highly toxic to people, animals, and plants, and costly to safely dispose of.
Federal court backs decision to block Peabody and Arch proposed joint venture
Caspar Star Tribune discusses a Federal court decision to block Peabody and Arch proposed joint venture.
A Federal Trade Commission’s decision to block a proposed joint venture by leading coal firms Peabody Energy Corp. and Arch Resources Inc., in a move that could have widespread implications for coal production in the Powder River Basin.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri affirmed the federal government’s decision to stop the joint venture due to concerns it could stifle competition, according to court documents.
U.S. District Judge Sarah Pitlyk concluded the venture would likely “substantially impair competition” in the southern Powder River Basin coal market.
The video origin of the myth that global warming is good for agriculture
Yale Climate Connections discusses the video origin of the myth that global warming is good for agriculture. Two ’90s-era coal-funded videos on CO2 featured government scientists who say their comments were misleadingly edited. How it all happened.
Misinformation is at the root of many scientific controversies, and fighting it can feel like a losing battle. But one effective method is to expose the mechanics of misinformation, to show tactics and deceptive processes in broad daylight.
And learning from the past can be key to combating persistent misinformation campaigns currently and, no doubt, again in the future. “Those who ignore history,” writer and philosopher George Santayana taught us, “are bound to repeat it.”
A pair of widely circulated climate misinformation videos from the 90s – “The Greening of Planet Earth,” and “The Greening of Planet Earth Continues” – were funded by the benignly named Greening Earth Society, whose membership consisted of coal interests. Featured in the video were U.S. government civil service scientists who had no idea they would land in the midst of a pro-pollution/pro-CO2 narrative. Special interests supporting use of fossil fuels used the inclusion of the scientists, which seemed to give the video credibility, to cast doubt on the idea that climate change would harm people and ecosystems.
At Climate Week, America’s Cascading Disasters Dominate
The New York Times discusses how, At Climate Week, America’s Cascading Disasters Dominate. This year’s events come amid a climate reckoning in the world’s richest country. Here are the takeaways.
It’s been a very different Climate Week in New York City this year, and not just because of social distancing. The annual gathering, meant to showcase efforts against global warming worldwide, came as climate disasters pummeled the host country.
There were fire tornadoes in the American West; a slow-moving hurricane drowned northwest Florida; children in Silicon Valley breathed a bit of the foul air that children in the shanties of Delhi grow up with.
A recent analysis conducted by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute found that around half of all the planet-warming gases produced between 1990 (when the first United Nations climate report was published) and 2015 (when the Paris climate accord was reached) came from the world’s richest 10 percent.
Corporate America Is Irrationally Enthusiastic About Carbon Capture
New Republic discusses why Corporate America Is Irrationally Enthusiastic About Carbon Capture. Pulling carbon from the air is a noble goal. But that’s not why fossil fuel executives are embracing it.
Between 2010 and 2018, the Department of Energy poured $5 billion worth of research and development funding into carbon-capturing technologies, which aim to extract the greenhouse gas from power plants and other industrial activities, limiting the extent to which they warm the planet. In 2018, Congress also passed a generous tax break known as 45Q, encouraging companies to partake. This summer, however, the only coal-fired power plant capturing a meaningful amount of carbon in the United States—the country’s main showcase for that technology—unceremoniously closed down following months of inactivity. It’ll be “mothballed” (switched off) until market conditions improve.
Trump EPA guts tough standards for toxic metals dumped into US waterways by coal-fired power plants, including biggest polluter on Lake Michigan
Chicago Tribune discusses how Trump EPA guts tough standards for toxic metals dumped into US waterways by coal-fired power plants, including biggest polluter on Lake Michigan.
But President Donald Trump’s political appointees stalled the regulations soon after taking office in 2017, and last week they gutted the Obama-era standards for Oak Creek and other fossil fuel plants. The Trump EPA’s alternative fails to require the most effective treatment methods, pushes back deadlines and exempts many power plants from doing anything at all.
Buried in the fine print of the Republican administration’s new regulations is a stunning admission: Benefits for energy companies would come at the expense of more than 20 million Americans who drink water and eat fish from lakes and rivers polluted by coal plant discharges.
E.P.A. Relaxes Rules Limiting Toxic Waste From Coal Plants
The New York Times discusses how E.P.A. Relaxes Rules Limiting Toxic Waste From Coal Plants. The agency weakened Obama-era rules meant to keep metals and other pollution out of rivers and streams, saving industry tens of millions of dollars.
The Trump administration on Monday relaxed strict Obama-era standards for how coal-fired power plants dispose of wastewater laced with dangerous pollutants like lead, selenium and arsenic, a move environmental groups said would leave rivers and streams vulnerable to toxic contamination.
The Environmental Protection Agency regulation scaled back the types of wastewater treatment technologies that utilities must install to protect rivers and other waterways. It also pushed back compliance dates and exempted some power plants from taking any action at all.
Yale Climate Connections, September 4, 2020
Articles include: kids and climate change; Mortgage lenders risks from sea-level rise; California carbon-neutral within 25 years; flood-prone properties into riverside trail system; report: subsidy for ‘refined coal’; conservative is speaking up about the climate; Farmers can help reduce global warming
2 articles – Trump administration rolls back limiting toxic wastewater from coal plants
The Washington Post discusses how the trump administration is rolling back Obama-era rule aimed at limiting toxic wastewater from coal plants. Power plant discharge ranks as the largest source of toxic water pollution in the United States. The Trump administration on Monday weakened a 2015 regulation that would have forced coal plants to treat wastewater with more modern, effective methods in order to curb toxic metals such as arsenic and mercury from contaminating lakes, rivers and streams near their facilities. In a statement, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler said that the final rule’s “flexible, phased-in” approach would make it easier for the coal industry to comply while also protecting the environment. Three years ago the Trump administration delayed the Obama-era rule — which the EPA had estimated would keep 1.4 billion pounds of pollutants out of U.S. waterways each year — before replacing it with a scaled-back version.
New York Magazine discusses now the Trump Admin Makes It Easier for Coal Companies to Pollute in America Again. On Monday, the Trump administration put in place new regulations for how coal-fired power plants must discard of wastewater tainted by pollutants including lead, selenium, and arsenic, relaxing the steps that power companies must take before this liquid is released into local waterways. Environmental Protection Agency head Andrew Wheeler, himself a former coal lobbyist, praised the change as a way to “reduce pollution and save jobs at the same time.” But environmental advocates anticipate the change will expose the 1.1 million Americans who live within three miles of a coal plant that releases chemicals into a public waterway to a greater level of toxic chemicals. Over a decade ago, the EPA was already aware that Americans exposed to coal-ash wastewater have as high as a one in 50 chance of getting cancer from drinking water containing arsenic, a common waste product.
Study: 3 articles about coal
The Christian Science Monitor discusses what happens in states where wind dethrones King Coal. In an age of global warming, coal consumption is dropping and renewable energy is rising. Nowhere is that trend – and the tension caused by the shift – more evident than in Wyoming, a state with prodigious amounts of fossil fuels and wind resources.
Ohio Valley Resource discusses “The Proof Is In The Pudding.” Coal Country Responds To Democrats’ Clean Energy Transition. Democrats made their pitch to the American people during a largely virtual Democratic National Convention and addressing climate change emerged as a central tenet of the party’s plan. The party platform spells out a major investment in green energy jobs and infrastructure in order for America to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emission no later than by 2050. Environmental justice is a key component of the Democrat’s climate plan and it references ensuring fossil fuel workers and communities receive investment and support during this clean energy transition.
Renew Economy discusses how coal generation kills 800 a year in Australia, says new report. The human cost of burning fossil fuels to generate energy has been laid bare in a new report from Greenpeace this week, with pollution from Australia’s coal-fired power plants found to be causing hundreds of premature deaths a year, as well as asthma symptoms in thousands of children. The report, titled Lethal Power, was put together by a group of scientists, researchers, and medical professionals, including former Australian of the year Professor Fiona Stanley, coal pollution expert Dr Aidan Farrow, and economist and former leader of the federal Liberal Party, Dr John Hewson.