Articles include: GHG commitments from Biden; Miami sea level rise costs; Steel company and GHG goals; Texas and clean energy; clean energy loan risks; humanity’s friend against climate change; bitcoin and the environment; Canada’s biggest banks missing from net-zero pledge; Study: dangerous toxins in Alaska’s algae; Study: ocean currents are changing; farmers and climate change; homelessness in America.
Tag: Texas
The Daily Climate, March 17, 2021
Articles include: In the Pacific, global warming disrupted the ecological dance of urchins, sea stars and kelp. Otters help restore balance; DOD reduces its carbon footprint to protect its bases; An urgent question hangs over catastrophic wildfires: What’s in that toxic smoke?; The Texas freeze set off a methane bomb; Wetlands can help prevent property damage and save lives during floods; China’s climate ambitions collide with its coal addiction; Europe seeks alliance with U.S. to tackle aviation emissions; During February’s freeze in Texas, refineries and petrochemical plants released almost 4 million pounds of extra pollutants
DeSmogBlog, February 27, 2021
Articles include: Racial Equity & Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Community; Exxon & Its Bad Fossil Fuel Investments; Texas Catastrophe Shows How Natural Gas Systems Can Fail; Aquaculture in the US; Texas Refineries’ Release Pollutants During Storm; Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord Matters; Climate Disinformation Database: Mark Steyn.
Texas grid crisis exposes environmental justice rifts
E&E News: Texas grid crisis exposes environmental justice rifts.
As temperatures plunged below freezing and much of Texas’ power grid collapsed last week, Ana Parras braved the pitch-black night to check on friends in the southeast Houston neighborhood of Manchester.
The majority-Latino, low-income community sits along the Houston Ship Channel, bordered by a major oil refinery and several petrochemical plants.
“The whole community was in the dark, there were no streetlights. Nothing. It was dangerous,” said Parras, co-executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services. “But the road was lit because of the refinery flaring.”
While the height of Texas’ blackouts left more than 4 million homes and businesses without power, some experts say low-income areas and communities of color bore the brunt of much of the crisis. That is partly because people living in poverty often lack access to expensive backup generators, community groups say, and they tend to live in older, poorly insulated homes, where temperatures drop quickly when the power goes out.