Tag "Donald Trump"
Jay Inslee’s Pitch For All-Climate Change Debate Gains Traction
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Content loading… A proposal from Washington Gov.
Jay Inslee to have a presidential debate focused on climate change gained steam on Wednesday with backing from a rival 2020 candidate and a coalition of environmental groups.
The governor, who is centering his presidential campaign around climate change, said in an email to supporters that the Democratic nominee selected to challenge President Donald Trump needed to have a “concrete plan to address” the phenomenon, and that American’s deserved to hear it in advance of the primaries.
Most Democrats in the crowded field have made climate change a core tenet of their campaigns, in direct opposition to Trump’s climate-denying policies.
The White House has dramatically rolled back many environmental regulations and moved to withdraw the U.S. from the landmark Paris Climate Agreement as Trump himself has mocked the science around the issue.
Inslee’s debate idea was quickly endorsed by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who called climate change the “greatest threat to humanity today.” “A DNC debate focused on climate change would show the world that America intends to lead again on this issue, and would be a smart place to discuss the key tenets of the Green New Deal — infrastructure, green jobs and clean air and water — and how to put a price on carbon,” Gillibrand said in a statement to The Daily Beast.
But it’s unclear how far those conversations will go.
The DNC’s communications director declined to commit to Inslee’s proposal, simply saying that the party was “eager to put forward solutions to combat climate change” and that future debates would “absolutely have these discussions during the 2020 primary process.” “The DNC is currently ironing out the details for all 12 debates and will work with the networks to ensure that Democrats have a platform to discuss these issues directly with the American people,” the spokesperson, Xochitl Hinojosa, told Axios.
“We need to know that whoever is nominated to take on Trump in 2020 has what it takes to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and fight for bold solutions to the climate crisis,” the coalition said in a statement.
What drought? These states are gearing up to draw more water from the Colorado.
These projects are in different stages of permitting and funding, but are moving ahead even as headlines about the river’s dwindling supply dominate the news.
The headwaters of the river and the main source of water lie in the upper basin, which includes Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico.
The lower basin, where much of the water is used, includes Nevada, California, and Arizona.
The upper basin has never used its full allotment of water.
As a result, lower basin states such as California and Arizona have benefitted from the “bonus water” that upper basin states have left in the river.
“The upper basin is going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and the lower basin is going on a diet,” said Zachary Frankel, executive director of Utah Rivers Council.
The state wants to build a 140-mile pipeline from the reservoir, which is currently near historic lows, to Washington and Kane counties in southwest Utah.
The pipeline is estimated to cost between $1.1 and $1.8 billion, but Nuding says conservation measures could be implemented to save the same amount of water the pipeline would transport for a third of that cost.
Utah has the legal right to draw more water from the river.
It is allowed to use 1.7 million acre-feet every year, but only draws about a million.
Trump Issues New Presidential Permit for Keystone XL Pipeline
President Trump signed an order greenlighting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline Friday, a move that circumvents a court’s decision to block a previous federal permit on the long-delayed project.
The new permit gives owner TransCanada permission to “construct, connect, operate and maintain” the pipeline on U.S. territory.
A district judge in Montana last fall ruled that the State Department had not sufficiently considered the environmental impacts of the pipeline and ordered a new environmental review.
But Trump’s new order uses presidential power to circumvent the environmental restrictions applied to agencies. “By his action today in purporting to authorize construction” and ignoring previous rulings, lawyer Stephan Volker, who represents environmentalists involved in litigation against the pipeline, told the AP, “President Trump has launched a direct assault on our system of governance.”
For a deeper dive: For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News.
Trump and Big Oil Want to Pull the Plug on the Electric Car Market
Big Oil is panicked by the looming end to the domination of the U.S. transportation system by the internal combustion engine.
A few years ago, the oil industry was shrugging off the threat of electric vehicles, predicting that EVs would reach only 5 percent of global market share by the mid-2030s.
According to EnergyWire, EV sales in the U.S. grew by more than 80 percent last year.
Energy Innovation expects EVs to make up to 75 percent of sales by 2050 — more than 15 million electric cars and trucks a year.
EVs are already cheaper to drive than gas guzzlers.
As that trend continues, Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts the costs of buying and operating an EV will be cheaper than comparable gasoline-powered cars by the middle of next decade.
That’s a win-win for the climate and for public health.
EVs save lives.
The oil industry and other supporters of ending the EV tax credit say they’re only trying to level the playing field.
But compare the EV tax credit, which currently totals about $400 million per year, to federal subsidies to the oil industry, which total $4.6 billion a year.
America needs President Trump’s Climate Science Committee
Independent scientists must review alarmist “science” that is driving anti-fossil fuel policies John Droz America is in the midst of a cataclysmic battle – and yet you’ve likely heard very little about it.
It is vital that we take immediate action to support President Trump on an important initiative.
Their assignment will be to separate real, evidence-based science from agenda-driven political science.
Those who want a genuine scientific assessment of global warming / climate change claims fully support the PCCS.
Those who oppose a real scientific assessment of climate chaos claims are against the PCCS.
Not surprisingly, so far the most vocal and dominant voices oppose any scientific review of their claims.
The President’s decision is expected within the week, so please do this quickly.
I hope there will be a segment about the PCCS on Fox News, an article or editorial in the Wall Street Journal, and more sensible articles on other media outlets (like this, this, this, and this).
Get involved.
Move over wind farms.
Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez right to ask if the climate means we should have fewer children?
During a recent Q&A live-streamed on Instagram, apparently shot while she was pottering in her kitchen, the rising star of the Democratic party – and one of the few frontline politicians to get the scale of the environmental emergency – pulled no punches in telling viewers that unless we take urgent, radical action on emissions, there is no hope for the future.
“It is basically a scientific consensus that the lives of our children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it OK to still have children?” With this one question put to her 2.5 million Instagram followers, Ocasio-Cortez has stumbled into a highly contentious area.
Population has long been a controversial factor in the climate change debate; one recent study said the most effective thing individuals can do to address the crisis was to have one less child.
However, critics insist we should focus instead on overconsumption, and that putting the onus on individuals to address climate change obscures the systematic nature of the crisis.
Crucially, they say, it lets the real culprits – fossil fuel corporations and successive global governments’ inaction – off the hook.
And even if you accept the premise that having fewer children will tackle climate change, there is also the thorny question of exactly who should be having fewer kids: an American is responsible for 40 times the emissions produced by a Bangladeshi, but often those who advocate population reduction focus on women in the developing world.
Ocasio-Cortez is not encouraging people stop having children.
And as the leading advocate of the Green New Deal plan – which aims to radically transform the US economy by 2030 – she is one of the few politicians to be working on a plan that might just offer a way to avoid the worst impacts of this crisis.
But perhaps she is raising a more profound issue.
Faced with a future of social and political breakdown, flooding, deadly heatwaves and food shortages – and a world full of politicians in various states of denial – why shouldn’t young people question whether bringing children in the world is a good idea?
Arctic Refuge Oil Surveys Put Polar Bears in the Crosshairs
Yet that’s just what the Trump administration would open the door to as it prepares for oil and gas drilling and moves to authorize seismic testing, a precursor to drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
Earthjustice has long worked to defend the Arctic Refuge, which now faces the greatest threat in decades as the Trump administration barrels forward with plans for an oil and gas lease sale as early as next year.
Polar bears on the coastal plain will be especially vulnerable to harm from seismic operations and drilling.
Stealth Angel Survival Visit Site Scientists refer to the polar bears that live in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as the Southern Beaufort Sea population.
As ice melts away, polar bear mothers are increasingly going on land, to the coastal plain, to build their dens—and they are particularly vulnerable to disturbance while denning.
Working 24 hours a day for months on end, this company envisions sending work crews of 150 people or more into this polar bear territory to map out oil and gas reserves.
According to Dr. Amstrup of Polar Bears International, SAE’s proposal could bring deadly consequences.
Amstrup warned in a letter to the Bureau of Land Management: “Lethal disturbances are likely when a heavy vehicle actually runs over a den … On average, if there are 11 undetected bear dens on the refuge, a seismic survey like that proposed by SAE has a 25 percent chance that at least one polar bear will be killed when a heavy vehicle runs over it.
The scientist concludes: “It is virtually certain that most undetected polar bears in their dens will be disturbed at some level.”
It would destroy one of the last truly intact wilderness areas on Earth, an open expanse of public lands that for decades remained off-limits to drilling precisely because Congress recognized its extraordinary value.
‘It’s About Economics’: Two Coal Plants to Close Despite Trump’s Tweet
Trump is losing his rallying cry to save coal.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) voted on Thursday to retire two coal-fired power plants in the next few years despite a plea from the president to keep one of the plants open.
But the TVA board of directors voted 5-2 in favor of closing that plant as well as the Bull Run plant in Tennessee.
Coal is an important part of our electricity generation mix and @TVAnews should give serious consideration to all f… https://t.co/yljvUmkAE5 — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 1549922605.0 After the vote, the agency tweeted that the decision to close the plants “will ensure continued reliable power at the lowest cost feasible.”
So the board’s decision to close the plants wasn’t even based on coal being the most polluting energy source.
But coal plants are closing at a rapid pace because of economics and competing power sources.
One of the “no” votes came from Trump-appointee Kenny Allen, a retired coal exec from Kentucky. “I’m just not completely comfortable with the recommendation because the impact and ripple effect on community cannot be fully quantified,” he said, as quoted by the AP.
But Johnson, TVA’s CEO, said 40 percent of the plant employees whose jobs will be displaced are eligible for retirement, and added that those who want to stay could be offered jobs elsewhere in the utility, the Chattanooga Times Free Press wrote.
TVA said on Twitter, “We will work with impacted employees and communities.”
Green New Deal Has 2020 Dems On Board, But Party Leaders Tread Lightly
formally unveiled Thursday outlines plans to cut global greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 and to reduce human-caused greenhouse gases to net zero by 2050.
In the lead-up to the unveiling, after months of calling for lawmakers to get on board, their plan received enthusiastic support from major candidates hoping to take down President Donald Trump in 2020.
Sens.
Cory Booker (D-N.Y.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has had a more tempered response, emphasizing that there will be other resolutions on the table to consider.
“I welcome the Green New Deal and any other proposals,” she said.
“I’m pleased that House Committees began holding hearings on climate change this week, and I look forward to bringing legislation to the House Floor to reduce carbon pollution, help our communities prepare for current and future climate risks, and create clean energy jobs,” he told HuffPost in an email.
Among the chairs of climate-adjacent House panels, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) of the Natural Resources Committee is the only one to explicitly support the resolution, calling it “the right framework for the work we need to do, in Congress and across the nation, to reduce our fossil fuel use, create green jobs, and protect our country and our planet for the long term.” As for the Senate, none of the party’s leaders have given their support to the Green New Deal or replied to inquiries about it.
“I’m grateful for Senator Markey’s passion and strong voice on these issues,” he said in a statement Thursday.
I encourage members of our committee to examine the Green New Deal resolution and consider the ways in which we may be able to incorporate its ideas within our work this Congress.”
Bill Allowing US to Sue OPEC Moves Forward
The House Judiciary Committee, now led by Democrats, advanced the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act” Thursday.
That sets the bipartisan “NOPEC” bill, which would subject the cartel to possible antitrust action by the Department of Justice, up for a possible House vote.
A similar bill targeting OPEC was introduced in the Senate on Thursday.
OPEC’s members “deliberately collude to limit crude oil production as a means of fixing prices, unfairly driving up the price of crude oil,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said before voting in favor of the legislation.
Various iterations of the bill have been proposed in the past, and former presidents have threatened to use their veto power to scupper the legislation.
But President Donald Trump could be more amenable, given his frequent twitter attacks accusing the group of keeping oil prices artificially high.
“I’m not going to predict it will get passed and enacted into law, but I think its prospects are pretty good,” said Seth Bloom, former general counsel of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee.
“OPEC doesn’t have too many friends right now and the legislation may likely have a friend in the White House given Trump has written favorably about it in the past.”
“If OPEC members conducted the same manipulation in the United States that they practice in Vienna, they could be prosecuted,” said Robbie Diamond, who heads up Securing America’s Future Energy.
All comments are subject to editorial review.
