Sunday, September 1, 2019

Scientists Astonished After Finding Microplastics In Arctic Snow

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/microplastics-snow-arctic-alps-precipitation_n_5d59289be4b0d8840ff48b4f?fbclid=IwAR1eI5E6A-9ABG_KoggDHLGxhq4QahqpJVpREs_7xZ8LEilo6pq5aCZWzYI
"Scientists in Germany are raising the alarm after finding a significant amount of microplastics in snow samples in the Alps and the Arctic — two of the most pristine locations on Earth. In a study published in the journal Science Advances last week, the researchers said their findings point to a troubling possibility: that plastics aren’t just polluting our lands and clogging our waterways, but befouling the air around us as well. “I was really astonished concerning the high concentrations” of microplastics found in Arctic snow, study co-author Gunnar Gerdts told the Los Angeles Times. Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastic that often originate from larger debris that have degraded over time. Gerdts’ team said it found up to 14,400 microplastic particles per liter of melted Arctic snow ― a staggering amount for a remote region where few humans reside. “We found a lot of microplastics, like record concentrations,” Gerdts said of the Arctic snow, “and the question arose: From where does the microplastic originate?” There are just two possibilities, he noted: “from the water or from the air.” While it’s known that microplastics and other plastic debris is transported by ocean currents, scientists have become increasingly convinced that small plastic fragments are also being carried through winds and precipitation."

Giving 'Upper Hand to Corporate Polluters,' EPA Drops Surprise Inspections

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/19/giving-upper-hand-corporate-polluters-epa-drops-surprise-inspections?fbclid=IwAR0ab1h2Z_UbtGDcCPdP5q5S3ggVfLHHGDEgZpDFZlGntGFxeLWoXkxu1a0
"President Donald Trump's EPA is provoking criticism once again, this time over a new "no surprises" policy stopping unannounced visits to power, chemical, and waste facilities. "The Trump @EPA is just chucking aside any flimsy pretense that they care about upholding environmental laws, enforcing against big polluters, or protecting Americans," tweeted John Walke, Clean Air Director and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Giving a courtesy heads up to suspected *ongoing* lawbreakers is beyond the pale even for the Trump @EPA"."

Trump Pushes to Open the World’s Largest Remaining Temperate Rainforest to Logging and Mining

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/trump-open-alaskas-tongass-national-forest-worlds-largest-remaining-temperate-rainforest-logging-mining.html?fbclid=IwAR0NytRqVXRzb1UiqYAQik995vrnG-vZCsXq31shnAC8cxo8tGYe3Nuivw4
"There are many reasons the rise of right-wing populism is global threat, but perhaps the most lasting—and worrying—impact the ascendancy of this new breed of nihilist, know-nothing leader will have is on the environment. At the very moment when human ingenuity and collective will are required to stave off serious climate consequences, we have a rising tide of global leadership that believes in nothing. They certainly don’t believe in something they can’t touch or sell or kill—or understand. The deep cynicism of the likes of President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro comes at a time when belief, political bravery, and transformative leadership are required. But instead of big, broad-minded thinking, we get a president in Brazil who’s setting fire to the Amazonian rainforest for sport and an American president who, well, doesn’t believe in anything he can’t pawn. It seems unsurprising, then, that a week after Brazil’s space agency announced that fires in the Amazon were burning at a record rate—an 83 percent increase from before Bolsonaro took power—to the tune of 72,843 fires detected so far this year, on Tuesday we hear that the Trump administration is reportedly pushing to open up Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, to logging, mining, and energy extraction. “President Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7-million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago, according to three people briefed on the issue, after privately discussing the matter with the state’s governor aboard Air Force One,” the Washington Post reports."

Trump moves to allow logging in the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-moves-to-allow-logging-in-the-worlds-largest-intact-temperate-rainforest-3802173b038f/?fbclid=IwAR0aY0k_Vgi2qJ9wRS273SNUeJ--_IN6vEZe3oV4z-x06pVmukDxxa6ti4s
"On Tuesday, the president instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to allow logging in the 16.7 million acre Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, the nation’s largest national forest. Together with British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest in Canada, the Tongass encompasses the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth. The move would undo logging restrictions that have been in place for nearly 20 years, according to The Washington Post, impacting more than half of the national forest."

New Ethanol Rules Are Testing Farmers' Support Of President Donald Trump

With Amazon in Flames, Trump Moves to Open 16.7 Million-Acre Alaskan Rainforest to Corporate Exploitation

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/28/amazon-flames-trump-moves-open-167-million-acre-alaskan-rainforest-corporate?fbclid=IwAR2nvpeSd_v2aCiJWcbjzg1xrNnWldf_GQA6jhGVMwa2HOsHQ4cMDkU8pZY
"President Donald Trump has reportedly ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to open Alaska's 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest—the planet's largest intact temperate rainforest—to logging and other corporate development projects"

How Ohio’s Chamber of Commerce Killed an Anti-Pollution Bill of Rights

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/29/lake-erie-bill-of-rights-ohio/?fbclid=IwAR3njbcZDESAsjLJGCLlhU68QFeR-l555dOlMI3VAxD59nMEUIVH6ssrvbI
"EARLIER THIS SUMMER, environmental activists in Ohio were alarmed by the passage of a mysterious state budget amendment that would close a new avenue for residents to sue polluters. The provision invalidated a landmark anti-pollution initiative passed by Toledo voters just a few months before. Now, emails obtained in a public records request reveal that the Ohio Chamber of Commerce secured the cooperation of a key Republican lawmaker in a successful effort to slip the amendment into an appropriations bill at the eleventh hour. The emails depict the chamber’s environmental policy director requesting a last-minute meeting with state Rep. Jim Hoops to discuss the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the newly minted ballot initiative allowing citizens to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie. A legislative aide responded quickly, scheduling a same-day meeting. Despite the chamber director’s admission that his proposal would need to be submitted after the legislature’s deadline, the aide produced draft amendment language to share with him three weeks later. The chamber’s subsequent revisions made their way into the final bill, effectively nullifying the Lake Erie Bill of Rights."

How This Brazilian City Became Ground Zero For The Amazon’s Deforestation Crisis

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brazil-amazon-fires-altamira_n_5d697bcce4b0cdfe056fe726
"Rampant corruption, environmental indifference and a thirst for growth helped Brazil ignore a brewing crisis in Altamira."

Nuclear Monitoring Stations Fall Silent After Russian Explosion

Trump Wants to Log Alaska’s Tongass, World’s Largest Intact Temperate Rainforest

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/trump-pushes-to-log-the-worlds-largest-temperate-rainforest.html?fbclid=IwAR3buDDTGRtpu2XWM1_NmNoxxk1PDbI3fcVT40HmNzHbS7Q8QUsKvMs1Ggc
"One Trump staffer who spoke with the paper said forest policy has become “an obsession of his,” while Trump himself has said he has recently taken an interest in “forest management.” But as with many of his interests, the president hasn’t taken all that much time to learn about forest health: In a visit to Paradise, California, after last year’s deadliest fire season in history, Trump suggested the U.S. could limit the state’s wildfire crisis by spending “a lot of time on raking.” Trump’s interest in forestry also involves his usual vindictiveness: Disapproving of California’s fire-management system, he reportedly wanted to cut its federal funding last year. Like other “obsessions” in which the president’s limited financial acumen crashes into his limited understanding of the natural world, his hope for Tongass National Forest is to open it up as a vast logging opportunity. But the timber industry represents less than one percent of southeastern Alaska’s labor force: Seafood processing and tourism, industries immeasurably benefited by an intact Tongass, represent 8 percent and 17 percent of the region’s jobs. The forest’s impact on salmon fisheries alone should be enough to let it be. Chris Wood, the president of the environmental group Trout Unlimited and a former Forest Service staffer who helped implement the “roadless rule” under Clinton, told the Post that the agency has “realized the golden goose is in the salmon, not the trees.” According to the Post, “about 40 percent of wild salmon that make their way down the West Coast spawn in the Tongass: The Forest Service estimates that the salmon industry generates $986 million annually. Returning salmon bring nutrients that sustain forest growth, while intact stands of trees keep streams cool and trap sediment.” Other wildlife rely on the massive forest — it is more than double the size of the next largest national forest — as the Tongass’s remaining old-growth trees provide critical habitat for brown bears, Sitka black-tailed deer, and northern goshawks."

The Trump Administration Has a Multi-Pronged Strategy to Make the Planet Uninhabitable

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a28859487/trump-epa-methane-emissions-climate-crisis/?fbclid=IwAR2QDB_mpbaUpoX68JL7roUUfB7PJqGuALYKyD2WGJtIQmmAnfw52lKOpzI
"This is not the first example of this phenomenon, of course. You might have noticed that line in the Times piece about vehicle emissions standards, which the Trump administration is trying to gut, once again over the complaints of industry (in that case, auto manufacturers). Vehicle emissions account for one-fifth of U.S. carbon pollution, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, so that is also extremely unhelpful. Add to that the administration's decision to kill the Clean Power Plan, aimed at reducing emissions from power plants, and replace it with a weaker plan, and you've got a truly multi-pronged effort to make the planet inhospitable to human life. We are running out of things to f**k up at this point."

Trump Aims To Open Vital U.S. Forest To Logging, Drilling, Mining

Why should Wisconsin drain Lake Michigan for Foxconn?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-should-wisconsin-drain-lake-michigan-for-foxconn/2019/08/28/b717ed40-c99e-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html?fbclid=IwAR357WcIZQegvf9B1lyjTIoIA-Nc0pDEMUb9h8zBPzyYro13qBDmGNdb33I
"The Great Lakes — five inland seas holding one-fifth of all the fresh water on Earth — are vast, but they are not limitless. So it is alarming that Wisconsin intends to send water out of the basin not because public health demands it but because a private company wants it. This cuts against the understanding of the lakes as a public trust and, in an era of nationwide water insecurity, sets a dangerous precedent. Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, is building a plant to make LCD screens in Mount Pleasant, Wis. The state that landed Foxconn with environmental waivers and about $4 billion in incentives decided that it was fine for it to have Great Lakes water, too. In 2018, Wisconsin granted a permit for Racine and Foxconn to use 7 million gallons a day from Lake Michigan, taking it outside the area where water naturally returns to the Great Lakes watershed. The diversion sidesteps a key piece of water policy that is commonly called the Great Lakes Compact. The compact, along with Ontario and Quebec’s parallel agreement, is a protocol for when water can be taken outside the basin — which is to say, almost never. But there are exceptions for cities and counties that straddle the watershed boundary. With its groundwater contaminated by naturally occurring radium, Waukesha, Wis., went through an intensely scrutinized application to take water from Lake Michigan. It took seven years, including legal appeal, before the diversion was finalized. Mount Pleasant, a village of 27,000 people, is a straddling community, so the Foxconn diversion would be expected to go through similarly tough scrutiny. But Mount Pleasant didn’t make the diversion request. It was made instead by Racine, a neighboring city on the lakeshore. As an in-basin community, Racine merely asked the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to expand its service area, and the DNR agreed."

'Sociopathic Disregard for Our Future': Trump EPA Set to Gut Restrictions on Planet-Warming Methane Emissions

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/29/sociopathic-disregard-our-future-trump-epa-set-gut-restrictions-planet-warming?fbclid=IwAR2ROZyo7E1pwLZZWhnVeUatyb4p96CVzbaqFtN66xdIc1IRdvN2BRHKGfc
"Amid dire scientific warnings that the international community must act immediately to slash greenhouse gas emissions, President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly set to take another step in the opposite direction Thursday by unveiling a rule that would gut restrictions on the fossil fuel industry's methane pollution."

Even Oil Companies Think Trump’s Environmental Destruction Is Awful

Trump’s EPA Sides With Water Polluters In Major Hawaii Case

https://www.dcreport.org/2019/08/09/trumps-epa-sides-with-water-polluters-in-major-hawaii-case/?fbclid=IwAR3rqRIuwxsfH_DlIL3nOB713HSX4hRFWhkK8GVWXNt6adWiw9LIzqVGBtw
"If you like sewage, chemical wastes or radioactive molecules in your drinking water the Trump Administration has your back. It’s part of Team Trump’s determined efforts to remake the Environmental Protection Agency into the Environmental Pollution Agency. Soon the U.S. Supreme Court, urged on by Team Trump, may give its stamp of approval to effectively undo many benefits of the 1972 Clean Water Act in a case from the Hawaiian island of Maui. Environmental groups are seeking to stop Maui County from injecting pollutants into the ground, where they mix with groundwater and then flow to the ocean. The groups say the practice evades current pollution laws that bar the fouling of surface waters. The Trump Administration, reversing the Obama Administration’s stance, is on the polluters’ side."

Groups Sue Trump's EPA in Response to 'Nauseating' Approval of Bee-Killing Pesticide

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/20/groups-sue-trumps-epa-response-nauseating-approval-bee-killing-pesticide?fbclid=IwAR25135GyxOr0ObKMqZh72s5i-RVpD0qtsZDzE7KrGleiNYf03lmEOeODVs
"A pair of environmental groups on Tuesday filed suit against the President Donald Trump administration over the Environmental Protection Agency's recent approval of expanded use of the bee-killing pesticide sulfoxaflor across 200 million acres in 12 states. The Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity filed the suit (pdf) in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against the EPA and agency administrator Andrew Wheeler."

Ramping Up Climate Crisis: Trump's New Environmental Rollback

Some Men Just Want to Watch the World Burn

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-methane-rule-climate-crisis-878427/?fbclid=IwAR0Sxl1kTRgTYFBAJnIkqx_46qe0QchEIS54V9Gu7kXinqO-eoeLYkeQBH4
"The EPA is proposing to deregulate the oil and gas industry, to no longer require that new natural gas wells, pipelines and storage facilities include technology to detect and limit leaks of methane — a powerful greenhouse gas, with 28 times the heat trapping effect of carbon dioxide. (Methane is the primary component of natural gas. Thanks to fracking, the United States is the global leader of natural gas production.) The Trump EPA is now governed by climate deniers. Anne Isdal, a former deputy to the Texas land commissioner, is acting administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation told the Wall Street Journal that the purpose of the proposed rule “is to get to the fundamental basis of whether [methane] should have been regulated in the first place,” telling the paper, “I don’t see that there’s going to be some big climate concern here.” The proposed rule would undo methane limits finalized by the Obama administration in 2016. Since those leak monitoring rules were imposed, scientists have discovered that the U.S. oil and gas industry is leaking 60 percent more of the dangerous gas than previously understood — enough to “substantially erode the potential climate benefits” from substituting natural gas for coal. An analysis by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month found that the leaks create the greenhouse equivalent of 69 million cars — not nice. That figure relied on the EPA’s formulas for measuring methane’s climate impacts. Using metrics favored by the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the automobile-equivalent rises to 94 million — or nearly a third of the cars now on the road in the United States."

Trump Pointlessly Poisoning The World

EPA Moves to Loosen Methane Rules as Trump Opens Alaskan Rainforest

https://truthout.org/articles/epa-moves-to-loosen-methane-rules-as-trump-opens-alaskan-rainforest/
"Climate disruption is not lurking in some faraway land of maybe; it was here yesterday and the day before, and last week, and last year. It is here today, and will be here tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives. It will never get better, and is going to get worse, but if we heed the stop signs, we have the chance to, perhaps, keep it from driving us into extinction. Clearly, the president of the United States doesn’t see it that way. “I’m an environmentalist,” said Donald Trump after blowing off a G7 meeting on the climate crisis. “A lot of people don’t understand that. I think I know more about the environment than most people.” In his mind, nuking hurricanes and buying Greenland to plunder its newly ice-free resources is what environmentalists do. Now, Trump the “environmentalist” has also reportedly ordered Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to open Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest — the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world — to logging, energy and mining projects. Not satisfied with his quest to erase Barack Obama from the history books, Trump has begun erasing Clinton-era environmental protections like the one that has defended Tongass for 20 years. “Trump has taken a personal interest in ‘forest management,’” reports The Washington Post, “a term he told a group of lawmakers last year he has ‘redefined’ since taking office.” Trump did not stop with Tsongass. On Thursday, his administration announced it intends to roll back regulations on the release of methane by the oil and gas industry. Methane is a highly dangerous greenhouse gas that has “80 times the heating-trapping power of carbon dioxide in the first 20 years in the atmosphere,” according to The New York Times. There is near-universal fear among environmental scientists that melting Arctic permafrost — exacerbated by the ongoing fires — will release a methane bomb into the atmosphere, creating a feedback loop that will drastically worsen climate disruption."

How One Rich American Is Helping to Burn the Amazon for Profit

Look No Further Than Brazil’s Amazon Fire for the Dangers of Deregulation

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/08/look-no-further-than-brazils-amazon-fire-for-the-dangers-of-deregulation/?fbclid=IwAR3dYNTQkfod8G2nXHszl5VR2xaUlR4hKqQLmfK2uwvjsGd5Ru2uDZtCxCc
"Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took power this year promising to open the Amazon rainforest to industry, roll back environmental and indigenous protections, and stack his Cabinet with ideologues who dismiss climate change as a Marxist hoax. But the record wildfires now raging in the Amazon offer a terrifying rebuke and serve as a stark reminder of what’s at stake as Bolsonaro’s policies allow ranchers, loggers, and miners to destroy the world’s largest forest and repository of carbon dioxide at an unprecedented pace."

Beyond Brazil, Unprecedented Fires Are Engulfing Bolivian Forests

https://truthout.org/articles/beyond-brazil-unprecedented-fires-are-engulfing-bolivian-forests/
"Up to 800,000 hectares of the unique Chiquitano forest were burned to the ground in Bolivia between August 18 and August 23. That’s more forest than is usually destroyed across the country in two years. Experts say that it will take at least two centuries to repair the ecological damage done by the fires, while at least 500 species are said to be at risk from the flames."

The Entire World Is Burning

Of Course Trump Praised Jair Bolsonaro While the Whole World Condemns His Treatment of the Amazon

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a28832920/president-trump-praise-jair-bolsonaro-amazon-wildfires/?fbclid=IwAR1bwxAlGhTz1iyI1hD6TuAkjaUZBR6wT4GQ8ypTsJhGzsraYZLubarUNrY
"The United States president also found time to offer his public support for Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president who's under international pressure now that the Amazon is on fire after he embraced a program of ruthlessly exploiting the rainforest, which is a giant carbon sink that produces 20 percent of Earth's oxygen. It's no surprise to see Trump backing another authoritarian leader—it's kind of his thing. We scarcely talk about it anymore, but the President of the United States almost exclusively attacks the democratic leaders of nations that are our traditional allies while paling around with brutish strongmen. The list of the latter includes Kim Jong-un of North Korea, who orchestrates a system of human-rights abuses against his citizens, but also wrote Trump a beautiful letter; Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who's backed extrajudicial executions of anyone accused of running drugs, but whom Trump said is doing an "unbelievable job"; and of course, his Good Friend Vlad. Bolsonaro, for his part, is a real nasty piece of work. He's spoken of "cleansing" the Brazilian political left, the kind of terminology that never ends well. He told a female Brazilian lawmaker that he "wouldn't rape you because you're not worthy of it," which of course echoes our own president's dismissal of women who've accused him of sexual assault: "She wouldn't be my first choice." More than all that, he openly embraced Brazil's legacy of fascist military dictatorship."

Brazil Isn’t the Only Far-Right Government Destroying the Planet

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/26/brazil-isnt-only-far-right-government-destroying-planet?fbclid=IwAR36_cttzIGSwII4MK7aiAyJNHe50TnK2KLN1GvfX8Q5492W1hkWkNERZl0
"It’s no coincidence that forest destruction has increased under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who assumed office in January. Bolsonaro has promised to exploit the Amazon for agribusiness, mining, and other commercial activities. To do so, his administration has undermined laws protecting both forests and the people who live there—and launched openly racist attacks on indigenous peoples to marginalize them. When confronted with evidence of his own misdeeds, Bolsonaro has done what authoritarians always do—shoot the messenger. He’s called deforestation data from his own government “fake news” and fired the head of the agency that produced it. He is even claiming (without evidence) that the fires were started by NGOs to tarnish Brazil’s reputation. Sound familiar? Here in the United States, the Trump Administration has repeatedly attempted to undermine the science on climate change, spread misinformation about wildfires, and retaliated against government scientists who work on climate change. Where Bolsonaro deregulates the rainforest, Trump deregulates coal emissions (even as the government’s own analysis shows the extra pollution will kill up to 1,600 people). Where Bolsonaro demonizes NGOs, Trump-allied state governments are criminalizing peaceful protests against fossil fuel infrastructure. As in Brazil, the anti-extraction protests being targeted for criminalization in the United States are often indigenous-led. Meanwhile the Trump administration is systematically handing over sacred indigenous lands to oil and gas companies. And don’t forget about trying to sabotage international climate agreements. The United States is the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, yet Trump walked away from the Paris climate accord early in his term. Joining us as a climate “rogue state,” Bolsonaro’s Brazil tried to undermine the global climate talks in Poland last December."

Trump Donors Lit The Amazon On Fire

Top Financier of Trump and McConnell Is a Driving Force Behind Amazon Deforestation

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/27/amazon-rainforest-fire-blackstone/?fbclid=IwAR0CRWv6MzYD4diOgngc1bC1sEMdmvGsckBqx7U7lduSQIezP8o5Sx8lQuY
"TWO BRAZILIAN FIRMS owned by a top donor to President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are significantly responsible for the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest, carnage that has developed into raging fires that have captivated global attention."

The Amazon rainforest’s worst-case scenario is uncomfortably near

https://www.vox.com/2019/8/27/20833275/amazon-rainforest-fire-wildfire-dieback?fbclid=IwAR2cP6pmak_TYrrarMP-2S4faia0KCh87eFi7YEIS0bCl93ZEpYAWQJ7Hmw
"Wildfires and deforestation are pushing the Amazon rainforest toward a dieback scenario: an irreversible cycle of collapse."

How Bolsonaro’s Climate Change Denial & Anti-Indigenous Policies Led to Massive Fires in the Amazon