Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 12/18
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EPA Extends Comment Date for Proposed Rule on Reporting Requirements for Mercury Inventory under New TSCA
Dec 18, 2017 | The National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson
On December 19, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is scheduled to publish in the Federal Register a notice extending the comment period for the proposed rule on reporting requirements for the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) mercury inventory for 16 days, from December 26, 2017, to January 11, 2018. -
REACH Exposure Scenario Group Looks to Boost Tools
Dec 18, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Echa has initiated a cross–sector analysis of the first use maps published on its website in an effort to make the approach more attractive for registrants. -
Energy Industry Confronts the NAFTA Doldrums
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
David Schnare was 26 years old and just out of the U.S. Navy Reserves in 1974 when he had an unforgettable encounter with a dead horse. -
White House Reviews EPA Bid to Repeal Oil and Gas Guidelines
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA is proceeding with its planned repeal of Obama-era guidelines intended to curb smog-forming emissions from existing oil and gas operations. -
Week Ahead: Arctic Drilling Measure Nears Finish Line
Dec 18, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Congress is expected to vote in the coming week on final passage of Republicans' tax-reform bill, which would also open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and natural gas drilling. -
New NPR-A Assessment to Spark Debate over Expanded Drilling
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
U.S. Geological Survey scientists are completing a new assessment of how much oil and gas is waiting to be discovered in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and surrounding northwestern Alaska lands. -
The Man Who Stormed out of Pruitt's EPA
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
David Schnare was 26 years old and just out of the U.S. Navy Reserves in 1974 when he had an unforgettable encounter with a dead horse. -
White House Huddles with Industry on Climate Deal
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Zack Colman
A White House official met with an industry group last week to discuss how to move forward on an international treaty to phase out greenhouse gas emissions from refrigerants, sources told E&E News. -
Trump Unveils Security Strategy Without Warming
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Nick Sobczyk
President Trump is set to unveil his first National Security Strategy in a speech this afternoon, but don't expect the changing climate to come up much in the seminal document.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
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Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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Environment News
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Dec 18, 2017 | The National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson
On December 19, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is scheduled to publish in the Federal Register a notice extending the comment period for the proposed rule on reporting requirements for the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) mercury inventory for 16 days, from December 26, 2017, to January 11, 2018. The notice states that “EPA received requests to extend the comment period and believes it is appropriate to do so … to give stakeholders additional time to assess the impacts of the proposal, review technical documents in the docket, and prepare comments. The 2016 amendments TSCA require EPA to establish periodic mercury reporting requirements for any person that manufactures mercury or mercury-added products or otherwise intentionally uses mercury in a manufacturing process to assist in the development of an inventory of mercury and other recommended actions. EPA’s proposed rule, issued on October 26, 2017 (82 Fed. Reg. 49564), specifically requires reporting on the manufacture, import, distribution in commerce, storage, and export of mercury.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-extends-comment-date-proposed-rule-reporting-requirements-mercury-inventory
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REACH Exposure Scenario Group Looks to Boost Tools
Dec 18, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Echa has initiated a cross–sector analysis of the first use maps published on its website in an effort to make the approach more attractive for registrants.
It is one of a number of projects underway to demonstrate the effectiveness and value of the tools developed by the Exchange Network on Exposure Scenarios (Enes) – the joint authority/industry initiative to improve safe use communication under REACH.
Andrew Murray, who works in the agency's risk management implementation unit, says it is important registrants quickly understand how to process the information supplied by their customers through sector–specific standardised use maps. By looking at the use maps in a holistic way, he says, the agency aims to get a better understanding of the consequences of the different approaches for registrants and downstream users, including formulators and end–users.
The maps aim to provide realistic descriptions of chemical uses and, depending on their relevance, inputs for worker, consumer and environmental exposure, in specific industries. So far Echa has published information for six groups in its use map library. Tools from another five sectors will be published soon. Cefic project
In addition, the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) has conducted a project to demonstrate how the use maps, related specific determinants for workers (Sweds), and safe use for mixtures information (Sumis) sheets, support registrants and safe use communication.
Speaking at the recent Enes meeting, Cefic's Alejandro Garabatos said the step involving registrants uploading use map information and generating the exposure scenario in Chesar works. Formulators reported it is easier to check the compliance of the resulting exposure scenario. However, they had some difficulty in connecting the incoming exposure scenarios with the right Sumi. They also noted that there is relatively good harmonisation of phrases, even when dealing with different suppliers and substances.
There are areas for further work though. Unexpected differences between registrants for the same assessment exist, and some registrants report difficulty in selecting the right contributing activities. The way downstream sectors have differentiated uses in their use maps has lead to long exposure scenarios.
Another example of cross-sector analysis is the comparison between the European Solvent Industry Group's (Esig) generic exposure scenarios and downstream sector use maps.
The findings will be incorporated into further use map guidance and support to registrants, and sector associations as they develop or update use maps.
Enes is currently developing a work programme for 2018-2020.
For more detail on these projects, please see the extended version of this story on Chemical Risk Manager.
https://chemicalwatch.com/62688/reach-exposure-scenario-group-looks-to-boost-tools
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Energy Industry Confronts the NAFTA Doldrums
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
President Donald Trump sent shock waves through the Texas business world when he opened up the North American Free Trade Agreement for renegotiation four months ago.
Would he tear up the deal? Would he imperil what for many is a lucrative cross-border trade between Texas and Mexico?
But so far developments have been slow in coming, with government officials announcing that negotiations would extend through at least the end of March.
"Most people think this is going to take a while," said Chet Thompson, president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents a number of Texas refineries. "You have the Mexican election and the U.S. midterms to contend with. This could easily go through 2018."
Texans in Washington are left trying to figure out what the White House is trying to accomplish.
What has many corporate leaders worried is U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer's focus on a provision within NAFTA that allows companies that feel they have not been treated fairly by a host government to take their claims before an independent tribunal.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce maintains the provision is critical to protecting U.S. investments abroad. And considering the billions U.S. oil companies are readying to invest in Mexico now that its energy sector is open to foreign investors, oil executives are among NAFTA's biggest cheerleaders.
Last week, during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Texas congressmen expressed concern that if the Trump administration demanded a roll back in investment protection, it could do damage to increasingly intertwined energy markets in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
"On the one hand, the White House says we believe in energy dominance for our country and North America. On the other hand, the U.S. trade representative is undercutting that," Rep. Bill Flores, R-Waco, said.
The risk for Texas were NAFTA to be done away with - as President Donald Trump has threatened - is the loss of business for the state's dominant oil and gas industry. Mexico is the biggest export market for U.S. natural gas producers, at the same time refineries along the Gulf Coast rely on crude from Mexico and Canada to operate.
But Trump is riding increasing skepticism within the Republican and Democratic parties on free-trade deals that many see as giveaways to multinational corporations at the expense of the domestic workforce.
But just how far he is willing to go remains an open question among lobbyists in Washington.
"We hope some of this is just negotiating tactics," Thompson said.
In the meantime, corporate lobbyists are eagerly making their case for the White House to preserve NAFTA more or less as is - with some adjustments here and there to account for economic and technological advances made since the original agreement was signed into law by former president Bill Clinton in 1993.
At the center of those efforts are the growing oil and gas production out of North America, with the United States, Canada and Mexico ranking first, fifth and 11th on the global list of largest oil producers.
And more centrist congressmen from both parties are taking note.
"We're on our way to replacing OPEC with a de facto NAPEC," said Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land. "The Eagle Ford Shale doesn't stop at the Rio Grande, waiting for a visa to cross."
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Energy-industry-confronts-the-NAFTA-doldrums-12435306.php
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White House Reviews EPA Bid to Repeal Oil and Gas Guidelines
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA is proceeding with its planned repeal of Obama-era guidelines intended to curb smog-forming emissions from existing oil and gas operations.
The agency forwarded a proposed withdrawal notice Friday of the "control techniques guidelines" to the White House Office of Management and Budget for a standard review, according to the Reginfo.gov website. That was one day after the agency leaders telegraphed their interest in repeal with a short notice in their latest rundown of planned regulatory actions (Greenwire, Dec. 15).
EPA is set to formally seek public comment on the proposal as early as next month. While agency spokesmen have declined to comment for the record on the move, it would mark another step in the Trump administration's quest to roll back restrictions on energy producers over objections from public health and environmental groups.
Industry groups, citing the guidelines' potential expense to small producers, back the repeal. But at the American Lung Association, Senior Vice President for Advocacy Paul Billings in an email today called it "another reckless step" to "undermine state efforts to protect the public from dangerous ozone pollution."
EPA had issued the guidelines in October 2016 as part of a strategy to cut releases of volatile organic compounds from existing oil and gas facilities.
Strictly speaking, they are not regulations but recommendations for states to consider in implementing pollution control requirements in areas that are in "moderate nonattainment" or worse for the 2008 ground-level ozone standard of 75 parts per billion. They also apply in the Ozone Transport Region, which encompasses 11 Northeastern states, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia.
Ozone, the main ingredient in smog, is a lung irritant produced by the reaction of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides in sunlight. While implementation of the 2008 standard is continuing, EPA in 2015 tightened the threshold to 70 ppb.
The agency is now facing lawsuits from Democratic-led states, as well as the lung association and other advocacy groups, over its failure to meet a statutory Oct. 1 deadline for making all attainment designations for the 2015 standard.
In a brief interview last week, Bill Wehrum, EPA's recently installed air chief, predicted the process would be completed by next spring (E&E News PM, Dec. 12).
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/12/18/stories/1060069287
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Week Ahead: Arctic Drilling Measure Nears Finish Line
Dec 18, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Congress is expected to vote in the coming week on final passage of Republicans' tax-reform bill, which would also open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and natural gas drilling.
The conference committee responsible for reconciling the House and Senate tax bills — which includes top ANWR drilling proponents Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) — is due to unveil their final bill late Friday, setting up potential votes for next week.
Murkowski and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have said ANWR drilling would be in the legislation.
Since the bill is being considered under budget reconciliation rules, it only needs 51 votes to pass.
Some House Republicans expressed concern about opening up ANWR, but in recent days have said its inclusion in the tax bill would not be a deal breaker.
The GOP is eager to pass the tax bill before Christmas to secure a major legislative victory for the year.
Under the initial proposal that passed the Senate, the Interior Department would be required to hold at least two auctions for drilling rights leases in ANWR's Coastal Plain area in the next 10 years.
The vote would cap off decades of advocacy by most Alaska leaders, some Alaska Native groups, the oil industry, Republicans and others to open up ANWR for drilling.
Environmentalists have been furiously fighting the proposal at every step, arguing that drilling would be devastating for AWNR's ecology, its imperiled fauna and the climate.
But greens and Democrats have recognized that their time and options for stopping drilling are running out, particularly since the drilling provision is in a budget bill.
The Senate also could act on Trump administration nominees who are pending before the year ends.
The nominees still in the Senate's hopper include Andrew Wheeler to be the Environmental Protection Agency's deputy administrator, Kathleen Hartnett White to be chairwoman of the Council on Environmental Quality, Barry Myers to be the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) administrator and Jim Bridenstine to be NASA's administrator.
A Senate panel cleared Myers on Wednesday. Myers was, until recently, the CEO of AccuWeather, Inc., which he co-founded. The company provides weather forecasting information similar to the National Weather Service, which NOAA oversees. Democrats had raised concerns that Myers would be conflicted.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/365163-week-ahead-arctic-drilling-measure-nears-finish-line
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New NPR-A Assessment to Spark Debate over Expanded Drilling
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
U.S. Geological Survey scientists are completing a new assessment of how much oil and gas is waiting to be discovered in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and surrounding northwestern Alaska lands.
The report, expected to come out this week, will be in part based on data from three recent oil discoveries that suggest the NPR-A could hold far more oil than USGS projected seven years ago.
The 2010 report concluded that a scant 900 million barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil could be found across the vast, 22.8-million-acre petroleum reserve, the nation's largest single block of public land.
Over the last two years, however, oil companies have uncovered significant amounts of oil in North Slope geological structures that had been previously overlooked by earlier explorers. Armstrong Energy LLC, Caelus Energy LLC and ConocoPhillips Alaska each has announced massive new oil discoveries in or near the NPR-A. Taken together, those plays contain at least 3.5 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil.
USGS research geologist David Houseknecht has described the new discoveries as "game changers" for northeastern Alaska.
The forthcoming USGS assessment is certain to reignite a long-simmering debate over which parts of the NPR-A should be available for oil and gas development. The current integrated activity plan, issued in 2013, protects almost half of the reserve for wildlife habitat and subsistence hunting.
Now the Trump administration is pushing to overhaul that management plan to open some of those protected areas to energy exploration. At the same time, Alaska state officials are urging the Interior Department to permit construction of a network of roads through the petroleum reserve to connect eight isolated Native communities to the state's limited road system (Energywire, Sept. 12).
In preparation for drafting a new integrated activity plan, the Bureau of Land Management this summer asked the public to comment on which NPR-A lands should be available for oil leasing, including territories that are currently protected under the 2013 management plan.
In response, regulators received tens of thousands of widely varying comments, with some recommending even more aggressive land preservation policies, while others called for the entire petroleum reserve to be opened to oil drilling.
Meanwhile, the oil industry has shown limited interest in the NPR-A lands now available for exploration. Early this month the federal government offered 1.4 million acres of petroleum reserve lands for oil and gas leasing — all of the lands currently open for development.
However, only seven bids were received, all of them from ConocoPhillips Alaska. In total, the company spent $1.1 million for 15,000 acres of lands adjacent to its existing oil operations in the reserve.ConocoPhillips gears up
The USGS assessment isn't likely to come as a complete surprise to ConocoPhillips, which has been studying Alaska's northwestern lands for more than two decades.
In the early 1990s, the company began exploring the area around the Colville River, which forms the eastern border of the NPR-A. In 1999, Conoco acquired area leases in the government's first NPR-A oil and gas lease sale.
By 2003, the company had developed a long-term master plan to build a string of oil operations in the reserve, complete with pipelines and roads connecting those potential fields to its Alpine oil production site on state lands.
Now ConocoPhillips, which bills itself as "Alaska's oil company," owns the only oil production operations in the NPR-A. In 2015, the company began pumping oil at its Colville Delta play. Late next year, oil production is slated to begin at its Greater Mooses Tooth 1 field.
Meanwhile, BLM is putting the finishing touches on a draft supplemental environmental impact statement for the company's third petroleum reserve operation, Greater Mooses Tooth 2. ConocoPhillips officials say the draft SEIS is due to be released before the end of the year. The company plans to begin drilling at the site in 2020 and to begin pumping oil a year later.
A year ago, the company announced its most promising oil discovery in the NPR-A: the Willow oil play, which holds at least 300 million barrels of oil. That field is located 28 miles west of Alpine.
ConocoPhillips made the find in early 2016 but didn't announce it until after BLM's December 2016 lease sale for the NPR-A. At that auction, the firm scooped up 600,000 acres of petroleum reserve lands, essentially taking ownership of the entire oil-rich northeastern corner of the petroleum reserve.
During this winter's ice-road season, the company plans to drill four exploration wells near the Willow site and a fifth well on state lands just outside the NPR-A. ConocoPhillips has also scheduled new seismic studies on 160,000 acres of nearby state lands.
However, under the existing federal management plan for the petroleum reserve, ConocoPhillips cannot extend its chain of oil development projects farther west due to current restrictions on oil and gas leasing in the neighboring Teshekpuk Lake special area.
That 3.65-million-acre region is protected as an important habitat for migrating shorebirds and waterfowl. The Teshekpuk Lake area is also the calving grounds for caribou, an essential part of the subsistence diet for many North Slope Alaska Native communities. More than a half-million caribou journey to NPR-A every year.
Now the company is pushing the Trump administration to open up some of that protected land.'Way of life'
Alaska's North Slope Native communities have had mixed reactions to industry suggestions that Interior should expand oil development in the petroleum reserve.
The North Slope Borough, a regional governmental body that encompasses the entire NPR-A, maintains that the Teshekpuk Lake special area is far bigger than it needs to be. In comments filed with the BLM, Borough Mayor Harry Brower Jr. explained that "according to our wildlife biologist, the boundaries for the Teshekpuk Lake area are too large and incorporate areas that are neither critical for wildlife or subsistence hunting."
The borough, which receives revenue from oil operations on the North Slope, acknowledged that oil development in the special area could affect the Teshekpuk caribou herd.
But Brower said that "a compromise is possible wherein more of the Teshekpuk Lake special area can be open to leasing, and robust permit stipulations and best management practices would prevent significant impacts to wildlife."
However, several other Native Alaskan groups warned that oil exploration and development could cause air pollution on the North Slope and devastate the caribou herds that many northern Alaska Native communities rely on for their subsistence diets.
The Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, a regional tribal government group on the North Slope, said that additional oil drilling in the protected regions of the NPR-A "will make it harder to feed ourselves, as well as make it more expensive if the herd both declines in number and has their migration pattern altered by developments."
"The calving grounds in the NPR-A and the insect relief areas are very important and must stay protected," said George Edwardson, president of the tribal group. "If they are not, it will have devastating effects on our community and way of life."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/18/stories/1060069243
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The Man Who Stormed out of Pruitt's EPA
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
David Schnare was 26 years old and just out of the U.S. Navy Reserves in 1974 when he had an unforgettable encounter with a dead horse.
Awaiting the start of a master's degree program that fall, Schnare took an internship working with Minnesota's public health department. What he saw shocked him. There were communities with raw sewage running down the streets, and a woman and her children living in a home with cracks in the wooden floorboards wide enough to see the ground beneath, he said.
He recounts one particularly gruesome sight. That woman's husband had put a horse carcass under his neighbor's window because they were having an argument, Schnare said. Rats had started to nest in the dead animal's body.
Schnare thought at the time, "This is what real public health is about."
These days, Schnare is best known for his attacks on mainstream climate science and his litigation against scientists doing the research.
As a former member of U.S. EPA's transition team who stayed at the agency after President Trump's inauguration, Schnare proved to be polarizing for his focus on re-examining the cornerstone of EPA's climate regulations, the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. He is among a vocal minority of conservatives who see such a review as possible and necessary for undoing regulations on greenhouse gases. He had pushed unsuccessfully for the new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, to include reconsideration of the endangerment finding as part of the agency's transition plan.
Schnare later left the agency in dramatic fashion, citing conflicts in management styles with Pruitt and later publishing an op-ed criticizing his former boss.
Beyond his most recent work with the Trump administration, Schnare has publicly fought for access to climate scientists' emails in a number of lawsuits. He describes the litigation as an effort to increase transparency, although the targets of his efforts contend that it's an attempt to harass and intimidate them.
Schnare isn't one to call climate change a "hoax," as the president once did. Like Pruitt, he does not reject outright humans' impact on the climate, but he has doubts about how serious that impact will be.
"My examination of climate science suggests that we are not facing a cataclysmic problem. I'm one of those that says, 'Yes, greenhouse gases do have an effect on the climate. The newest and best data we have show that it's a much smaller effect than we thought a decade ago, by a factor of four,'" he said.
In other words, it's not as pressing a problem as a rotting horse with rats nesting in its carcass.'In the weeds' of climate science
Schnare, 69, is easy to pick out of a crowd. He stands over 6 feet tall and sports a silvery-white goatee.
He's given to writing short, sometimes abrupt emails, but in person Schnare is a storyteller, offering anecdotes from conversations decades earlier. He diverts onto seemingly unrelated tangents that ultimately illustrate his thinking on a given issue. He speaks in a soft, measured voice, periodically punctuating important points with sharp raps on the table in front of him.
Schnare first became interested in climate science about a decade ago, when he was a staffer at EPA, he said during a recent interview with E&E News. He recalled conversations with two of his colleagues at the agency, John Davidson and Alan Carlin.
"I respected John's intellect enormously, and Alan Carlin, as well. They are just very bright people. So I decided to take a hard look," he said. "My approach has always been you have to get in the weeds, you have to go look at the data."
Carlin's name has been floated by the conservative Heartland Institute as a potential member of a team to critique climate science — an idea Pruitt is advocating. Both Carlin and Davidson co-authored a report in 2009 that was critical of EPA's use of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data to develop the agency's endangerment finding. Al McGartland, then the director of EPA's economics office, declined to forward the report to the office managing the development of the finding (Greenwire, June 26, 2009).
Republicans at the time and recently have called the episode an example of the Obama EPA suppressing science. Pruitt recently echoed Carlin's and Davidson's critiques in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee (Climatewire, Dec. 8).
Carlin and Davidson weren't the only ones casting doubt on the science behind the endangerment finding. According to emails obtained by E&E News, Schnare also urged EPA staff working on the endangerment finding to consider two different studies that took a divergent view on climate science. In an email exchange with Steve Newbold, an economist at the agency, Schnare said the research cast "significant doubt" on whether man-made greenhouse gases significantly contributed to temperature changes in recent decades.
In the years after EPA published the endangerment finding, Schnare became increasingly interested in speaking out publicly about his views on climate change, a topic that was not a part of his work at the agency.
One of Schnare's main arguments against mainstream climate science is what he describes as an overreliance on climate modeling over empirical temperature data. He questions the way researchers track temperature changes and often points to the benefits of carbon dioxide to plant life and the perils to the planet if atmospheric CO2 fell too low. Climate scientists repeatedly note that other effects of climate change may outweigh the benefits that a CO2 uptick might offer vegetation (Climatewire, Oct. 17).His targets complain of harassment
Inspired by the "Climategate" scandal, in which hacked climate scientists' emails fed fringe theories of a climate conspiracy, Schnare began sending out Freedom of Information Act requests for the emails of a number of government and university climate scientists. If the scientists were too slow to respond or refused his request, Schnare took them to court to get the emails. Schnare describes these lawsuits as part of an effort to publicly reveal the data and people guiding policymaking decisions on climate change.
Those who have been on the receiving end of his lawsuits see matters quite differently. A number of people who spoke to E&E News described Schnare's legal actions as an attempt to harass and silence climate scientists.
Some questioned whether Schnare was following EPA's ethics guidelines when he started pursuing the emails of climate scientist Michael Mann from Mann's time at the University of Virginia. Schnare brought the case while working with a group he helped found, the American Tradition Institute. ATI is the precursor to Schnare's later group, the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, where until recently Schnare served as general counsel. In an Oct. 24, 2011, affidavit, Schnare states he had permission to do pro bono work with ATI before he retired from EPA on Sept. 30, 2011.
Others have critiqued the strength of Schnare's legal arguments and the intent behind his lawsuits.
In one case, Schnare was part of a lawsuit that sought to stop EPA researchers at the University of North Carolina from conducting human trials of air pollutions' impacts. The study tested the temporary impact of inhaling low concentrations of ozone or particulate matter. Schnare had tried unsuccessfully to argue that he had standing as a concerned citizen to bring the case himself, as well as to act as a lawyer. He even referenced the starvation death of his great-uncle and namesake, David Steiner, in a Nazi concentration camp, and the horrors of the human testing done there. This was meant to establish why he could bring the lawsuit, according to Steve Milloy, who worked on the case with Schnare.
Steve Silverman, an attorney for EPA at the time, said EPA's controlled human-exposure studies followed strict ethical and scientific guidelines. He noted subjects were exposed to pollution levels "equivalent to that experienced in domestic urban areas." Silverman slammed the reasoning behind the lawsuit.
"I've never seen anything like it, both the level of malice and baseless legal theories. The District Judge hearing the case dismissed it out of hand," Silverman said in an email.
Gavin Schmidt, a NASA scientist whom Schnare sued to obtain his private emails in a separate lawsuit, derided the suggestion that obtaining those emails would lead to greater transparency in policymaking. In this case, which extended over five years, Schnare was part of a legal team that sought NASA emails on surface temperature records, as well as Schmidt's nonofficial emails.
"The idea that they need to see my personal emails in order to improve transparency in policymaking is transparently bullshit," Schmidt said. "My personal emails, how is that involved in policymaking? I don't work for a policy agency, I've never made policy in my life. And so why are they targeting me? It's just because I'm a scientist in the public eye."
Schmidt noted that now that he has had some distance from the case, he doesn't see the lawsuit as a personal attack, but he and others Schnare had sued became representative of the larger scientific community.
"It is very, very transparent that it's supposed to be a chilling effect on scientists speaking out in public," he said.3 decades at EPA
A longtime Northern Virginia resident, Schnare grew up in the suburbs outside Chicago. His father worked as an accountant for General Electric, and his mother stayed at home to care for Schnare, his twin sister and two brothers. He left Illinois for Mount Vernon, Iowa, where he got an undergraduate degree from Cornell College in 1970.
Schnare had been accepted into a chemistry Ph.D. program at the State University of New York at Buffalo when he got a call from a Navy recruiter. With the Vietnam draft looming (he remembers his draft number: 29), Schnare joined the Navy Reserve and sailed around the Mediterranean instead.
Schnare credits his time in the Navy in part for pushing him into the government.
"You're making a commitment to the American people that goes beyond yourself. And you are around people who have, as well. So there's an ethic there that you get into," he said.
Afterward, Schnare obtained a master's degree in public health and a Ph.D. in environmental management from UNC. Doctorate in hand, Schnare quickly landed a job working on policy in the office of drinking water at EPA, where he launched what would be a 33-year career at the agency that included work in regulatory analysis and enforcement. After about 14 years at EPA, Schnare began taking evening classes at George Mason University's law school and obtained a law degree while still working full time.
Those close to Schnare are quick to mention his intellect, wry sense of humor and love of dogs. For many years, Schnare and his wife, Marlae, bred and showed Labrador retrievers.
Wade Miller, a consultant on water issues who has known Schnare professionally and personally for more than 40 years, equated Schnare's commitment to the environment to that of Bill Reilly, Russell Train and Lee Thomas, former EPA administrators under Presidents George H.W. Bush, Nixon and Reagan, respectively.
"He is one of the most honest, ethical people I've ever met, and he is more dedicated to the protection of public health and protection of the environment than almost anyone I've ever met," said Miller.'Licking his wounds'
Last year, Myron Ebell, the head of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump's EPA transition, offered Schnare a position on the team. Schnare would later go on to join the "beachhead" team — the first wave of Trump political staffers at EPA — after he said he was assured a position at the agency.
But that never materialized. While Schnare brought decades of experience working at EPA, he said he wasn't able to work effectively with Pruitt (Climatewire, Dec. 8).
The abrupt exit from the agency was not a first for Schnare. In the mid-1990s, Schnare described leaving EPA for a period of time on detail to another federal office after he had conflicts with then-office director Mike Cook. Now, Schnare counts Cook as a personal friend. And Schnare cited conflicts over the proper degree of enforcement actions as one of the reasons he finally left the agency in 2011.
"I don't believe it's appropriate to bang your head against the wall and make a lot of noise and be an aggravation. I believe in team play, and I believe in supporting the people in charge, and if you can't do that, then you don't belong there," he said.
Miller, the consultant who has known Schnare since his days in the office of drinking water, advised his longtime friend to remain at the agency this time, despite conflicts with Pruitt. He noted that Schnare would have been a "tremendously valuable resource" at EPA had he stayed.
"He's still licking his wounds from his parting from EPA; I think he's trying to figure out what to do next," Miller said.
Schnare says he's focusing his attention forward. He sees part of his time in retirement going to some pro bono work, and he is also looking to return to water issues. He is particularly concerned about the blue green algae that is de-oxygenating the Chesapeake Bay.
Outside of work, Schnare plans to get his hands dirty. A potter in his spare time with a pottery wheel and kiln at home, Schnare says he is going to go into crystalline pottery this winter.
"This is what true retirement is, when you quit your job, the kids leave home, the dog dies, and then you can do anything you want and you don't have to worry about it. We are fast approaching that," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/12/18/stories/1060069219
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White House Huddles with Industry on Climate Deal
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Zack Colman
A White House official met with an industry group last week to discuss how to move forward on an international treaty to phase out greenhouse gas emissions from refrigerants, sources told E&E News.
Representatives from the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) met with White House energy aide George David Banks and John Thompson, a State Department official, regarding the Kigali Amendment, named for the Rwandan capital where it was finalized in 2016 with the support of the Obama administration.
AHRI supports the amendment.
The White House has not yet submitted the amendment for Senate ratification. But the path forward for the amendment got complicated in August when a federal court scrapped an Obama-era rule to limit hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a class of climate superpollutants that the Kigali policy targets.
While the Trump administration signaled support for the treaty last month, it still must either issue a new rule through U.S. EPA or seek to overturn the federal court decision, which is being appealed (Climatewire, Nov. 29). Congress also could pass legislation to that effect (Climatewire, Aug. 9).
What EPA intends to do is unclear. The agency didn't have a representative in the meeting.
"The only thing I would say is if you think about who should be there and who is not there, then you know who they have to get through," AHRI spokesman Francis Dietz said.
Some familiar with the matter say EPA has been more difficult to court because Kigali is about climate change, a topic EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has been keen to avoid. The amendment to the Montreal Protocol seeks a drawdown of HFCs on a tiered approach. Developed countries like the United States must begin hitting goals in 2019 that gradually grow more stringent.
Proponents have instead framed the issue as a business opportunity, as U.S. air conditioning manufacturers contend they're poised to benefit in the marketplace because they have the global lead in substitute technology.
"I think that the industry is doing a fantastic job of making the business case for this, which I think is the strongest case," said Andrew Light, a former State Department climate adviser who is now at the World Resources Institute.
EPA referred E&E News to the White House for comment.
"No announcements at this time," White House spokeswoman Kelly Love said in an email.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/12/18/stories/1060069221
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Trump Unveils Security Strategy Without Warming
Dec 18, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Nick Sobczyk
President Trump is set to unveil his first National Security Strategy in a speech this afternoon, but don't expect the changing climate to come up much in the seminal document.
Climate change was a major feature of the periodical statement of policy during the Obama administration. But the Trump administration did not list the two-word term as a security threat in its first version of the NSS.
Instead, the document focuses mainly on the economic and security importance of developing the U.S. energy sector, while at the same time making note of how climate is shaping global energy policy.
"Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system," the strategy says. "U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests.
"Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty."
That marks a stark change from the last administration, which made global warming's effects on defense a focal point of its national security policy. In President Obama's last NSS, released in 2015, "climate change" was mentioned 13 times, including on the opening page.
The omission has some in the defense community worried climate change could fall out of focus at the Department of Defense, with leadership in the administration taking their cues from the White House.
"I do not believe we can have a national security strategy that does not address the threat multiplier of climate change," said Alice Hill, who served as senior director for resilience policy for the National Security Council during the Obama administration. "People working within the agency look to these documents to guide their decisionmaking."
The Sierra Club was eager to chime in, as well, saying that leaving out specific discussion of climate change as a threat is another instance of the administration bowing to corporate interests.
"Trump is not just ignoring science and public opinion about the dangers of the climate crisis, he's ignoring American generals and the Pentagon about what it takes to keep our military and our country safe," Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement.
"Trump should take military advice from the military, not fossil fuel executives who are pushing to deny climate science and boost their profits at any cost," he added.
In some ways, though, the administration's first NSS is part of a pattern of mixed messaging on climate in the defense world.
So far, the Pentagon has stayed the course on climate under the Trump administration. Department of Defense officials say they plan to continue efforts to address warming started during the last administration and fit them into Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' larger goals for the department (Greenwire, Nov. 16).
Even if Trump thinks climate change is a "hoax," Mattis has said the warming atmosphere is "a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of-government response" (E&E News PM, March 14).
And Trump last week signed the annual defense authorization act, which describes climate change as "a direct threat to the national security of the United States."
All of that indicates climate change will likely remain in DOD's most important planning documents, said Andrew Holland, senior fellow for energy and climate at the American Security Project.
"The National Security Strategy is a political document, so it's a decision by the administration in what they want to focus on in national security," Holland said. The planning documents developed at the Pentagon, on the other hand, have to "prepare for all eventualities."
"If there was some sort of presidential statement saying climate change is not a threat to national security, then that would be worrying. But the omission of it does not bother me," Holland added.
But because the NSS is often a signal of U.S. strategy for other nations, Hill said not pegging climate change as a threat could hurt international diplomacy and send the wrong signals at the Pentagon.
"I think that hinders our ability to plan with others, to better prepare ourselves and ensure that our nation is resilient to these security risks," said Hill, who is now on the advisory board at the Center for Climate and Security.
"At some point, we have to question how much we can put our nation at risk for the sake of avoiding the term 'climate change,'" Hill said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/12/18/stories/1060069305
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