Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - July 11, 2018
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(ACC Mentioned) The Big News out of Trump’s Brussels Trip
Jul 11, 2018 | Politico
By Anna Palmer, Jake Sherman, Daniel Lippman and Akela Lacy
...Other business groups that called for de-escalation of tensions include the American Chemistry Council, whose members include Dow, DuPont, 3M, Honeywell, Exxon Mobil and Chevron. -
(ACC Mentioned) Latest US Tariffs on China Include More Plastics
Jul 11, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Over 100 types of plastic products, materials and equipment from China are included in a massive new round of U.S. tariffs released late July 10 and covering $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. -
(ACC Mentioned) US Markets Sink as Trump Escalates 'Unnecessary Trade War'
Jul 11, 2018 | Washington Examiner
By James Langford
The three major U.S. stock indexes sank on Wednesday as the White House moved to make good on President Trump's threats to impose an additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports, dismissing the concerns of economists, corporate executives and GOP lawmakers. -
(ACC Mentioned) AAR, Shippers: Trade War Threatens U.S. Economy
Jul 11, 2018 | Progressive Rail Roading
In an op-ed published today in the Washington Examiner, Association of American Railroads (AAR) President and Chief Executive Officer Edward Hamberger and shipper industry executives issued a strong rebuke of President Donald Trump's trade policies. -
DOJ Fights States’ Bid to Join Suit over Trump's '2-For-1' Rule Order
Jul 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking a judge to block California and Oregon from intervening in the suit over President Donald Trump’s “2-for-1” executive order that requires EPA and other agencies to target two existing policies for repeal before enacting a new rule, claiming the order has no special effect on states that would justify their intervention. -
Ewire: GOP Senators in No Rush to Name Permanent EPA Chief
Jul 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
Republican lawmakers seem to be in no rush for President Donald Trump to nominate a permanent EPA administrator, saying their workload is full this fall with spending bills and other nominations and that they are comfortable with acting chief Andrew Wheeler running the agency for the foreseeable future. -
Top Pruitt Aides, Spokespeople Leave EPA
Jul 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
Several top aides and spokespeople for former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt are leaving the agency after his departure last week and the appointment of Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler as acting EPA chief, including a spokesman that often clashed with reporters over their coverage of Pruitt. -
‘Approved by Donald Trump’: Asbestos Sold by Russian Company Is Branded with the President’s Face
Jul 11, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Eli Rosenberg
A Russian asbestos company that operates a giant mine in the Ural Mountains is marketing its wares with President Trump’s image, according to photos it posted on social media, citing former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt as well as Trump’s outspoken support for the carcinogen. -
Russian Asbestos Company Makes Trump Its Poster Boy
Jul 11, 2018 | Eco Watch
By Olivia Rosane
Asbestos killed at least 45,221 Americans between 1999 and 2015, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found. But President Donald Trump has long expressed his support for the dangerous mineral currently banned by 65 countries. -
New Digital Chemical Screening Tool Could Help Eliminate Animal Testing
Jul 11, 2018 | Science Magazine
By Vanessa Zainzinger
Toxicologists today unveiled a digital chemical safety screening tool that could greatly reduce the need for six common animal tests. -
Companies Voice Support for Toxic-Free Circular Economy
Jul 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
In a paper published by NGO ChemSec, companies and trade groups have expressed their support for a circular economy free from hazardous chemicals. -
Monsanto Cancer Case Pushes on
Jul 11, 2018 | Politico
By Liz Crampton
A federal judge is allowing a major class-action suit against Monsanto to go forward, even as he cast doubts on the credibility of the evidence offered by experts on behalf of hundreds of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients. -
Judge Allows 'Shaky' Roundup Cancer Cases to Proceed
Jul 11, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
A federal judge has ruled that lawsuits brought against Monsanto Co. by hundreds of cancer patients who blame the pesticide Roundup for their illnesses can move forward. -
Investigators Find Illegal CFC-11 Use in China’s Polyurethane Industry
Jul 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Sunny Lee
An NGO investigation has uncovered the illegal and widespread use of CFC-11, or trichlorofluoromethane, by Chinese manufacturers for rigid polyurethane foam. -
Caerus to Spend $229M for Piceance Natural Gas Operations
Jul 11, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Denver-based Caerus Oil and Gas LLC plans to spend up to $229 million this year on drilling and completing natural gas wells in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado, an executive said this week. -
New Study Shows Who Has Top Wells in West Texas
Jul 11, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Rye Druzin
New data collected by a Canadian energy research group shows which oil and gas explorers in West Texas have the most prolific wells. -
Natural Gas-Fired Power Plants to Set Near Record This Summer
Jul 11, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By L.M. Sixel
Natural gas-fired power plants are expected to supply 37 percent of the nation's electricity generation this summer, near the record set two years ago, the Energy Department reported Wednesday. -
Natural Gas Explosion Kills Firefighter
Jul 11, 2018 | AP (In E&E Greenwire)
By Todd Richmond
After workers accidentally punctured a natural gas main yesterday, a gas leak caused an explosion that rocked a Wisconsin suburb, killing a firefighter and injuring at least a dozen others. -
(ACC Mentioned) Plastic Straw Bans Leave Out People with Disabilities
Jul 10, 2018 | Earther
By Paola Rosa-Aquino
On Monday, Starbucks announced it would be joining the bevy of fast food eateries that have pledged to be more environmentally friendly. -
Regulatory Costs Loom Large for Kavanaugh
Jul 11, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
When the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that EPA unlawfully failed to consider the costs when deciding to regulate hazardous air emissions from power plants, the late Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion tracked closely with a dissent written by a conservative judge on another court. -
The Energy 202: How Brett Kavanaugh Could Rein in Environmental Rules on the Supreme Court
Jul 11, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
Two years ago, the second highest court in the land upheld a controversial decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to block a permit for what would have been one of West Virginia's largest strip-mining operations. -
Brett Kavanaugh: ‘The Earth Is Warming’
Jul 11, 2018 | The Atlantic
By Robinson Meyer
It probably isn’t surprising that Judge Brett Kavanaugh—a longtime member of the conservative movement whom President Trump nominated to the Supreme Court on Monday—has written about climate change. -
Environmentalists, Oil Sector Spar over EPA Plan to Retain SO2 NAAQS
Jul 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
Environmentalists and public health advocates are sparring with the oil industry over EPA's proposal to leave its health-based sulfur dioxide (SO2) national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) unchanged, with environmental groups pushing EPA for a tougher standard, and the oil sector pressing for a less-stringent limit. -
Group Launches Lobbying Blitz for Action Against Warming
Jul 11, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
Kids and adults in bright red T-shirts are charging to Capitol Hill today to demand climate action from members of Congress.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) The Big News out of Trump’s Brussels Trip
Jul 11, 2018 | Politico
By Anna Palmer, Jake Sherman, Daniel Lippman and Akela Lacy
THE PRESIDENT, after meeting with German Chancellor ANGELA MERKEL, whose country Trump bashed earlier in the day:
TRUMP to reporters: “We’re discussing military expenditure. We’re talking about trade. We have a very, very good relationship with the Chancellor. We have a tremendous relationship with Germany. They’ve made tremendous -- you’ve had tremendous success and I congratulate you. Tremendous success. And I believe that our trade will increase and lots of other things will increase. But we’ll see what happens over the next period of a few months.”
MERKEL, through a translator: “Well, let me say that I am very pleased, indeed, to have this opportunity here for this exchange of views. And, indeed, we had an opportunity to have an exchange about economic developments, on issues such as migration, and also the future of our trade relations.
“We also briefly touched upon the upcoming trips of the president. And let me say that I’m very much looking forward to further extending our exchanges in the future and enhancing them. I think they’re very important to have those exchanges together. Because after all, we are partners, we are good partners, and we wish to continue to cooperate in the future.”
TRUMP with French President EMMANUEL MACRON: Q: “President Macron, do you agree that Angela Merkel is beholden to the Russians?” TRUMP: “Oh, I believe they asked you that. (Laughter.) Thank you. Thank you very much.” MACRON: “No, I think … We just discussed the nature of that. We work together.”
WAPO’S MICHAEL BIRNBAUM and SEUNG MIN KIM in BRUSSELS: “After a tirade against allies, Trump pushes for NATO countries to raise defense spending to 4 percent of GDP”: “President Trump called here Wednesday for NATO leaders to increase their countries’ defense spending commitments to 4 percent of gross domestic product, according to senior U.S. and European officials, hours after he delivered a blistering tirade against Germany and other allies.
“Although Trump joined fellow NATO leaders in approving a sweeping set of plans to bolster defenses against Russia and terrorism, the officials said the U.S. president urged his counterparts in a private session to substantially raise their defense spending goal.
“Asked at a news conference about Trump’s demands on defense spending, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg did not deny that the president called for the increase and rather suggested that the focus should be on getting every member country to reach the current goal of 2 percent. Only eight of 29 NATO countries are on track to meet the 2 percent goal this year.” https://wapo.st/2zE5eNd
LIVE FROM THE BRUSSELS BUBBLE -- THE PRESIDENT, at 8:40 a.m.: “I am in Brussels, but always thinking about our farmers. Soy beans fell 50% from 2012 to my election. Farmers have done poorly for 15 years. Other countries’ trade barriers and tariffs have been destroying their businesses. I will open…” ...
… also at 8:40 a.m.: “...things up, better than ever before, but it can’t go too quickly. I am fighting for a level playing field for our farmers, and will win!” …
… at 12:41 p.m.: “Democrats in Congress must no longer Obstruct -- vote to fix our terrible Immigration Laws now. I am watching what is going on from Europe -- it would be soooo simple to fix. Judges run the system and illegals and traffickers know how it works. They are just using children!”
… 12:50 p.m.: “What good is NATO if Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for gas and energy? Why are their only 5 out of 29 countries that have met their commitment? The U.S. is paying for Europe’s protection, then loses billions on Trade. Must pay 2% of GDP IMMEDIATELY, not by 2025.”
SOME CONTEXT … LOUIS NELSON: “[Trump’s tweet] appeared minutes after an appearance by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Fox News’s ‘Fox & Friends,’ where he said both he and his constituents are ‘very, very nervous’ about the president’s trade policies, particularly as they pertain to the agriculture industry, which would be particularly vulnerable in a trade war.
“Grassley warned that the president’s tactics have the potential to be ‘catastrophic’ not just for farmers or Iowans, but for the entire U.S. economy. The ‘uncertainty’ wrought by Trump’s threats, Grassley said, has already had a devastating impact.” https://politi.co/2N8IRBb
-- REBECCA MORIN: “Pelosi, Schumer blast Trump’s criticism of Germany”: “The top two Democratic leaders Wednesday denounced Trump‘s criticism of Germany during the NATO Summit in Brussels, saying his comments show that the president is more closely allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin than NATO allies.
“‘President Trump’s brazen insults and denigration of one of America’s most steadfast allies, Germany, is an embarrassment,’ House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
“‘His behavior this morning is another profoundly disturbing signalthat the President is more loyal to President Putin than to our NATO allies.’ … Republican Utah Senator Orrin Hatch also broke with the president over his comments, saying he ‘doesn’t agree’ that Germany is controlled by Russia.” https://politi.co/2N92hGj
TRADE WARS … DOUG PALMER: “New Trump tariffs raise fear of ‘multiyear’ trade war with China”: “Business leaders and some Republicans pressed President Donald Trump on Wednesday to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to resolve a growing trade dispute after Trump's administration took steps to slap new tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. …
“U.S. business groups also urged the administration to begin talks before the effects of the tariffs can damage U.S. economic growth and undo the positive benefits of tax reform and moves by the administration to reduce red tape. ‘The last thing America’s manufacturing workers need is an escalating trade war,’ said Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, in a statement …
“Other business groups that called for de-escalation of tensions include the American Chemistry Council, whose members include Dow, DuPont, 3M, Honeywell, Exxon Mobil and Chevron. They noted Trump has also alienated many key allies by imposing tariffs on their steel and aluminum exports to protect U.S. national security.” https://politi.co/2Je91jM … Washington Examiner op-ed by the heads of API, AAR and ACC, “A trade war threatens the U.S. economy” https://washex.am/2KP2OAs
-- WSJ’S LINGLING WEI in BEIJING: “‘Shocked’ by Latest U.S. Tariffs, Beijing Seeks Retaliatory Action”: “The U.S.’s plan to wallop China with new tariffs is putting Beijing in a bind, forcing it to retaliate in ways likely to cast doubt on its commitment to rules-based global trade. … [The announcement] stoked anger and hand-wringing among Chinese officials on Wednesday. China doesn’t import enough from the U.S. to match Washington dollar for dollar as it has in previous rounds, so Beijing is reviewing plans to hit back in other ways, said Chinese officials familiar with the plans.” https://on.wsj.com/2KMBnad
** A message from Delta Air Lines: At Delta, we’re committed to donating 1% of our net profits to charitable organizations around the world. Delta contributed over $40 million to charities and nonprofits in 2017, and we look forward to continuing our support for years to come. For more information about Delta, visit www.delta.com. **
Good Wednesday afternoon. SPEAKER PAUL RYAN responded to a question from Rachael Bade, and said he is willing to hold Lisa Page in contempt of Congress. KYLE CHENEY https://politi.co/2L1Bazu
SPOTTED: Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe playing golf at Congressional today. Pic https://bit.ly/2N7sc0V
CASH DASH … SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TEXAS) raised a cool $1 million into his victory fund. Donors included: John Kaneb, the CEO of HP Hood, the parent company of Hood milk ($150,000), Steven A. Cohen ($45,400) and Leon Black ($10,000).
GREAT STORY … WAPO’S PAUL SCHWARTZMAN and MICHELLE BOORSTEIN: “The elite world of Brett Kavanaugh” https://wapo.st/2JdIFOO
-- NAVIGATOR -- a Democratic research and messaging consortium -- has a new poll on what people care about in a Supreme Court justice. https://politi.co/2zwg3ka
NYT’S JONATHAN MARTIN and ALEX BURNS, with a Boonville, Indiana, dateline: “For Midterms, Supreme Court Political Drama Plays to Its Audience”: “Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) knew his audience: Addressing a group of camouflage-clad union mine workers and retirees here last weekend, the Democratic senator trumpeted his efforts to protect their pensions and health care, asked attendees to raise their hands if they knew someone with a pre-existing health condition, and made not a single mention of the upcoming Supreme Court vote that could determine his political fate in November.
“‘It’s a big deal to those who know it’s a big deal, but it doesn’t translate to folks that go to work every day — they’re focused on things that make their life better,’ said Russ Stillwell, a former Democratic state lawmaker from this southern Indiana community …
“The monthslong Supreme Court clash that lies ahead will draw hundreds of thousands of activists to the fray, produce tens of millions of dollars in advertising and consume untold hours of television coverage.But the long-awaited debate over replacing Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s swing vote is more likely to intensify the existing forces of the 2018 midterm elections rather than turn the campaign on its head.” https://nyti.ms/2Jf2F3k
LAST NIGHT AT THE TRUMP HOTEL -- SPOTTED: Corey Lewandowski meeting with Chase Kroll, along with Brian Darling and Beau Rothschild. Matt Schlapp meeting with Tony Sabato Jr., who is running for Congress in California.
ATTN. TRUMP … DE BLASIO BROKE IMMIGRATION LAW, FEDS SAY! -- “Border Protection says NYC mayor crossed border illegally,” by AP’s Coleen Long: “New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his security detail violated both Mexican and U.S. immigration laws by crossing the border on foot during a visit near El Paso, Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection alleges in a letter obtained by The Associated Press. The mayor’s office flatly denied the allegation.
“De Blasio … went to the Texas border with about 20 other mayors from around the country on June 21, the day after President Donald Trump signed an order stopping family separations at the border. De Blasio went to a holding facility for immigrant children but was denied entry. He then went to Mexico and crossed into the U.S. to get a view of the facility. The New York Police Department runs de Blasio’s security detail.” https://bit.ly/2m7Wmpf
FOR YOUR RADAR -- “FCC Proposes Rebuilding Comment System After Millions Were Found Fake,” by WSJ’s James Grimaldi: “The chairman of the [FCC] proposed an overhaul of the agency’s online comment system after millions of fake comments were posted about a recent FCC rule change.
“[Ajit Pai] said in a letter to two senators that he was proposing ‘to rebuild and re-engineer’ the commission’s electronic comment system ‘to institute appropriate safeguards against abusive conduct.’ In the July 6 letter to Sens. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, and Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, Mr. Pai said he has asked Congress for permission to shift funds to pay for the comment system overhaul.
“Messrs. Toomey and Merkley wrote to Mr. Pai in May to complain that their names had improperly been used to post comments on Mr. Pai’s repeal of Obama-era rules on the internet known as net neutrality.” https://on.wsj.com/2KZAryz
WEDNESDAY LISTEN -- ANNA sat down with Scandal’s BELLAMY YOUNG: “On the latest episode of the Women Rule podcast, Young – who played Mellie Grant, the Republican president of the United States in the show’s final season – said the surprise outcome of the 2016 election had a major effect on the popular ABC drama. Had Hillary Clinton been sitting in the Oval Office, ‘we would have ended a year sooner,’ the actress said of the show, which topped off its final season in the spring of this year. With Trump in the White House currently, ‘we definitely got an extra year.’” Listen to the full podcast episode https://politi.co/2N790QS
HMM -- “A Hacker Sold U.S. Military Drone Documents On The Dark Web For Just $200,” by Forbes’ Thomas Fox-Brewster: “On Wednesday, researchers at cybercrime tracker Recorded Future reported that a hacker was trying to flog documents about the Reaper drone used across federal government agencies for between $150 and $200. It appeared they’d successfully hacked into at least two computers belonging to U.S. military personnel and the theft could have a significant impact on American campaigns abroad, Recorded Future warned.
“On Wednesday, researchers at cybercrime tracker Recorded Futurereported that a hacker was trying to flog documents about the Reaper drone used across federal government agencies for between $150 and $200. It appeared they’d successfully hacked into at least two computers belonging to U.S. military personnel and the theft could have a significant impact on American campaigns abroad, Recorded Future warned.” https://bit.ly/2zugifB
MEDIAWATCH -- “As Comcast Weighs Higher Fox Bid, Sky Offer Now in Jeopardy Too,” by Bloomberg’s Joe Mayes: “Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc. boosted its bid for Sky Plc, adding pressure on Comcast Corp. to retaliate in global game of M&A chess that’s being waged by the world’s biggest media companies. Fox offered 14 pounds per share, valuing Britain’s top pay-TV company at 24.5 billion pounds ($32 billion). That’s 12 percent more than Comcast’s rival 22 billion-pound offer.
“Now it’s up to Comcast to respond. Sky is a pawn in a wider contest between Comcast and Walt Disney Co. for the bulk of Murdoch’s media empire, as the U.S. media giants try to take on powerful digital rivals like Netflix Inc. Murdoch has a deal to sell Fox’s entertainment assets to Disney, including its Sky stake. Meanwhile, time is running out for Comcast Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts to come in with a counter bid in both the battle for the Fox portfolio and for Sky.” https://bloom.bg/2ztcc7l
-- NBC NEWS’ CLAIRE ATKINSON launched THE QUERY, a news media blog and forthcoming weekly newsletter. The blog https://nbcnews.to/2IP74Kc
TOP ED -- JAMES STAVRIDIS, former NATO supreme allied commander, in Bloomberg: “Memo to Trump: Don’t Give Away the Farm to Putin” https://bloom.bg/2u9kZGK
SPOTTED -- Eric Holder in the Admirals Club this morning at DCA … Susan Rice on AA 4278 from DCA to Westchester County.
SPOTTED at Morgan Ortagus’ and Katie Pavlich’s joint birthday party last night at DBGB: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Scott Taylor (R-Va.), John Rood, David Trulio, Michael Crowley, Evelyn Farkas, Michelle Kosinski, Marty Obst, Tony Sayegh, Samantha Menh, Stephen Cox, Kevin Cirilli, Reg Brown, Lisa Spies, Michael Greenwald, Robert O’Brien and Jon Harrison.
TRANSITIONS -- Amaya Smith, most recently AFL-CIO’s comms director and senior adviser to the president, is heading to the National Partnership for Women and Families to be VP for marketing and communications. Josh Goldstein is succeeding her. … Lilia Dashevsky is joining AIPAC as direct marketing specialist. She most recently was senior coordinator of social digital content at The Washington Center.
WELCOME TO THE WORLD – ROMNEY ALUMNI: Kaitlyn McClure, a policy adviser at Covington and Burling and a Romney 2012, John Hoeven and Judd Gregg alum, and Matthew Raymond, a program analyst at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the NIH, recently welcomed Alice Riley Raymond. Pics http://bit.ly/2Jf9QIX ... http://bit.ly/2zupkZT
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to SEC chairman Jay Clayton (h/t Natalie Strom)
BONUS BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: KayAnn Schoeneman, marketplace leader for Washington, D.C. and director of public affairs at Ketchum. A trend she thinks deserves more attention: “CEO turnover is the highest it has been in over a decade. I don’t think there is enough coverage about the root cause and the pressure for CEOs to deliver consistently to multiple stakeholders.” Q&A: https://politi.co/2uc3GVa
** A message from Delta Air Lines: At Delta Air Lines, we’re proud to support the causes that shape our world by giving back to the communities where we live, work, and serve. We’re committed to donating 1% of our net profits to key charities and nonprofit organizations as we strive to truly make a difference in D.C. and throughout our global communities.
Our goal is to positively impact the world through continued investments in our current partners as well as contributions to our new partners. Our donations support education, promote health and wellness, and salute our armed service members and veterans.
We contributed over $40 million in 2017 to charities and nonprofits around the world, and we look forward to continuing our support for many years to come.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook-power-briefing/2018/07/11/trump-brussels-nato-merkel-macron-285304
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(ACC Mentioned) Latest US Tariffs on China Include More Plastics
Jul 11, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Over 100 types of plastic products, materials and equipment from China are included in a massive new round of U.S. tariffs released late July 10 and covering $200 billion worth of Chinese imports.
The Trump administration said the proposed list, which would put 10 percent tariffs on thousands of different categories of Chinese imports, is needed to increase the pressure on Beijing to change what the U.S. calls unfair trade practices.
The measure is a significant escalation of the conflict and easily tops the $50 billion in tariffs that the two countries have so far levied on each other, or are about to levy.
But the U.S. action drew a swift reaction from the American Chemistry Council, which urged President Donald Trump to "bring an end to this unnecessary trade war."
"The administration's announcement of a potential 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of additional imports from China, including a significant amount of chemicals, is a stunning and unfortunate development for U.S. manufacturers and consumers," ACC said in a July 11 statement.
ACC does not believe the tariffs will change China's trading practices.
"Unilateral actions that alienate long-standing U.S. allies and close off the U.S. market to the rest of the world are not a recipe for economic growth and prosperity and are very unlikely to change China's unfair practices," ACC said. "As an industry that touches 96 percent of all manufactured goods and which has much to gain from a productive, respectful trading relationship with China, ACC and our members remain hopeful that the U.S. and China can resolve their differences and prevent further harm to U.S. manufacturers, farmers, and consumers."
The National Association of Manufacturers also criticized the U.S. decision, saying this latest round of tariffs could undermine the economic gains from the administration's tax and regulatory reform policies.
"The last thing America's manufacturing workers need is an escalating trade war," said NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons. "China cheats, and manufacturers want to see China held accountable. But more tariffs like these will punish America's manufacturing workers — and could undermine our hard-won gains thanks to tax and regulatory reform."
NAM urged the Trump administration to negotiate a trade treaty with China.
But U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the 10 percent duties, which also cover many consumer products that may also contain unlisted plastics components, are needed to put more pressure on China.
The U.S. government said the new tariffs are in response to Beijing's June 15 tariffs on $50 billion in U.S. exports, which were themselves in retaliation for President Trump's initial tariffs against China.
Lighthizer said the initial $50 billion in U.S. tariffs were aimed at goods that "benefit from China's industrial policy and forced technology transfer practices." That list includes Chinese plastics machinery and molds.
He also called this latest round of proposed tariffs targeting $200 billion of Chinese goods "an appropriate response... to obtain the elimination of China's harmful industrial policies."
"We will remain vigilant in defending the ability of our workers and businesses to compete on a fair and reciprocal basis," he said. "For over a year, the Trump administration has patiently urged China to stop its unfair practices, open its market, and engage in true market competition."
The Chinese government, however, called it "totally unacceptable" and said it would take unspecified countermeasures.
For plastics, the list includes more than 100 specific categories, including flexible tube, pipe and hose, and various PVC and other plastic tiles, flooring and furniture.
Additionally, they cover bags and boxes; building products, luggage and include some categories of plastic machinery and molds apparently not covered in previous tariffs.
The U.S. government is scheduling public hearings from Aug. 20-23.
The latest round of proposed tariffs come a few days after the U.S. government unveiled procedures for companies to apply for exclusions from the first round of tariffs, which went into effect July 6.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180711/NEWS/180719982/latest-us-tariffs-on-china-include-more-plastics
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(ACC Mentioned) US Markets Sink as Trump Escalates 'Unnecessary Trade War'
Jul 11, 2018 | Washington Examiner
By James Langford
The three major U.S. stock indexes sank on Wednesday as the White House moved to make good on President Trump's threats to impose an additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports, dismissing the concerns of economists, corporate executives and GOP lawmakers.
The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average dropped 0.53 percent in early New York trading, while the broader S&P 500 fell 0.4 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq slid 0.29 percent. The three widely-followed gauges, which gained steadily in 2017 amid bets that Trump and a Republican Congress would reduce taxes and trim government regulation, have all given up their highs as the president began wide-ranging trade disputes with both U.S. allies and competitors.
"The last thing America's manufacturing workers need is an escalating trade war," said Jay Timmons, head of the National Association of Manufacturers, which represents industrial companies with a combined payroll of more than 12 million people that contributes $2.25 trillion to the U.S. economy annually. "China cheats, and manufacturers want to see China held accountable, but more tariffs like these will punish America's manufacturing workers and could undermine our hard-won gains thanks to tax and regulatory reform."
Trump began acting on his protectionist instincts with double-digit tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in March, then followed up by imposing 25 percent duties on an initial $34 billion of Chinese imports, with an additional $16 billion already in the works. When Beijing promised to retaliated, Trump threatened levies on $400 billion more in goods; the list of proposed items released Tuesday represented half that amount.
It was "a stunning and unfortunate development for U.S. manufacturers and consumers," the American Chemistry Council, a trade group representing the chemicals industry, said Wednesday. "We strongly urge the administration to create a strong, multilateral coalition to bring an end to this unnecessary trade war.”
The council also opposes 25 percent tariffs on auto imports, a proposal on which the Commerce Department is reviewing comments as part of an investigation that's required before it can use national security grounds to impose them. Trump employed the same justification for the metals tariffs, prompting pushback from allies including Canada, Europe and Mexico who said it was groundless.
While Republican lawmakers have also criticized the move, a measure from Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee that would require Congressional approval for national security tariffs, has yet to receive a vote. He and Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Jeff Flake of Arizona expect a test vote today on a nonbinding resolution with similar language.
While the initial tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports — the $34 billion in effect plus the $16 billion on the table — were carefully designed to minimize economic damage, achieving the same result with $450 billion will almost certainly harm the supply chain relied on by U.S. companies and consumers, said Seth Carpenter, an economist with Swiss bank UBS.
"Many of the goods on the longer list are imported largely from China, making substitution essentially impossible," he wrote in a report. "Such an escalation pushes the situation from a trade skirmish to a trade war."
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/business/u-s-markets-sink-as-trump-escalates-unnecessary-trade-war
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(ACC Mentioned) AAR, Shippers: Trade War Threatens U.S. Economy
Jul 11, 2018 | Progressive Rail Roading
In an op-ed published today in the Washington Examiner, Association of American Railroads (AAR) President and Chief Executive Officer Edward Hamberger and shipper industry executives issued a strong rebuke of President Donald Trump's trade policies.
Trump's recently announced tariffs on certain foreign goods will hinder global commerce and could reverse economic progress spurred by the president's regulation reforms and tax cuts, wrote Hamberger, American Chemistry Council CEO Cal Dooley and American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard.
"The president's more recent trade decisions could reverse that tremendous progress, adding hundreds of billions of dollars in potential costs for American businesses — costs that could ultimately be borne by consumers," the CEOs stated.
"America's energy, manufacturing and transportation industries are prime examples of the collateral damage threatened by Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs," they wrote.
In many cases, the specialty steel and aluminum components their industries need are simply not produced in the United States, they said.
"Our industries generate growth and savings that directly benefit U.S. households and small businesses. Fortified by free trade and fueled by the American energy revolution, these sectors support millions of jobs in the U.S. and across an array of industries," they wrote. "Tariffs put those benefits at risk."
The column concluded: "It's already clear that this well-intentioned policy will actually make the United States less competitive, undermine this administration's vision of energy dominance and the manufacturing renaissance, and almost certainly destroy many more jobs than it protects."
https://www.progressiverailroading.com/federal_legislation_regulation/news/AAR-shippers-Trade-war-threatens-US-economy--55082
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DOJ Fights States’ Bid to Join Suit over Trump's '2-For-1' Rule Order
Jul 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking a judge to block California and Oregon from intervening in the suit over President Donald Trump’s “2-for-1” executive order that requires EPA and other agencies to target two existing policies for repeal before enacting a new rule, claiming the order has no special effect on states that would justify their intervention.
DOJ’s July 9 filing in Public Citizen, et al., v. Trump, et al., also says that the states waited too long to join the case, which is already on its second complaint from labor union, environmentalist and other plaintiffs with the government’s motion to dismiss that complaint awaiting a decision.
“The States could have sought to intervene in this lawsuit at any of its prior stages, but they chose instead to stay their hands -- presumably because there was no need to intervene when Plaintiffs had raised the identical claims they now seek to bring. In light of this extensive period of delay, the States should not be allowed to intervene now and further delay resolution of the jurisdictional issues presented in Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss,” DOJ says.
California and Oregon argued in their motion to intervene that “No other plaintiff in this lawsuit relies on or engages with the federal regulatory system as the States do,” because of their “unique interests” in their citizens’ well-being and potential impacts on their economies, infrastructure and natural resources. They say Executive Order (EO) 13771 is unduly delaying final action on planned rules including EPA limits on toxic chemicals in the marketplace and residential energy-efficiency standards.
But DOJ says the law does not allow states to raise those interests in a suit against the federal government.
“In a suit concerning the federal government’s implementation of federal law, ‘it is no part of [a State’s] duty or power to enforce [its citizens’] rights in respect of their relations with the Federal Government,’ because ‘[i]n that field it is the United States, and not the State, which represents them,’” DOJ says, quoting from the 1923 Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. Mellon.
It says the states’ claims fail that test because “the public safety and environmental harms that the States allege are shared in equal part by the States’ residents,” rather than being unique to the state governments. While states can invoke “quasi-sovereign interests” in suits against the federal government, DOJ continues, “the States have failed to identify any such interests that would be at stake in this litigation.”
Finally, the new brief argues that even if the states could show that they have an interest capable of sustaining a suit against the federal government, their claims would still fall victim to the same arguments DOJ raised in its motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ second complaint -- namely, that EO 13771 has not created any concrete “harms” -- which any plaintiff, private or state, must show in order to prove they have standing to sue.
“[T]he States’ allegations related to injuries to their own sovereign interests . . . depend entirely on a ‘speculative chain of possibilities’ and are far from ‘certainly impending,’ as is required to establish standing,” DOJ says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/doj-fights-states%E2%80%99-bid-join-suit-over-trumps-2-1-rule-order
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Ewire: GOP Senators in No Rush to Name Permanent EPA Chief
Jul 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
Republican lawmakers seem to be in no rush for President Donald Trump to nominate a permanent EPA administrator, saying their workload is full this fall with spending bills and other nominations and that they are comfortable with acting chief Andrew Wheeler running the agency for the foreseeable future.
“I think he'll probably be there, in whatever capacity, as long as he wants to be,” said Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), according to a Politico article on the issue.
The story notes that acting officials can serve for roughly seven months under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, meaning Wheeler could stay in his role through the end of January, depending on whether Trump picks him as the permanent administrator.
Part of the reason for the dynamic is that any EPA confirmation battle would be fraught in the closely divided Senate. Republicans hold a 51-49 edge, which is even tighter due to Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) ongoing battle with cancer.
And Republicans also have a jam-packed nomination calendar this fall, headlined by a bruising confirmation battle over Trump's Supreme Court pick, appellate Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Politico also cites uncertainty about a coalition of corn-state Republicans who are “still smarting” over former Administrator Scott Pruitt's implementation of the renewable fuel standard (RFS). Their approach to a confirmation could well hinge on how Wheeler implements the law in the coming months.
“The Senate shouldn’t rush to confirm a replacement for Pruitt until we more fully understand the damage done to the RFS by Pruitt and what can be done to make it right,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told reporters July 10. “I think we ought to wait a while. Let things cool down. See the lay of the land before we fill that position.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-gop-senators-no-rush-name-permanent-epa-chief
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Top Pruitt Aides, Spokespeople Leave EPA
Jul 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
Several top aides and spokespeople for former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt are leaving the agency after his departure last week and the appointment of Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler as acting EPA chief, including a spokesman that often clashed with reporters over their coverage of Pruitt.
Jahan Wilcox, Pruitt's spokesman, said in a statement he is leaving to work with Republicans on the midterm election campaigns.
“It's been a privilege to advance President Trump's agenda of environmental stewardship and regulatory reform. Now it's time to focus on helping Republicans in November,” he said, according to a Bloomberg report.
Other staff leaving the agency are EPA spokesperson Kelsi Daniell, deputy White House liaison Hayley Foard, and aide Lincoln Ferguson, according to the Washington Post.
Of the departing aides, Wilcox in particular developed a reputation as a fierce defender of Pruitt's deregulatory agenda and there were several instances of the spokesman insulting and criticizing reporters.
In June, he called an Atlantic reporter “a piece of trash” in response to a phone call asking him for confirmation of the departure of another top former Pruitt aide, Millan Hupp.
He also would sometimes refuse to answer press queries because he said the article would be unfair, and he would sometimes answer questions by referring reporters to other published articles, rather than provide an EPA answer. He once told a New York Times reporter: “If you want to steal work from other outlets and pretend like it's your own reporting that is your decision,” after sending links of other outlets reports in response to the Times' question.
Wilcox also fiercely defended Pruitt in response to seemingly endless queries about allegations of ethics violations, including expensive first-class travel and millions for security, which prompted 15 investigations, most of which are ongoing, the Washington Examiner notes.
Before coming to EPA, Wilcox worked for Republican campaigns and elected officials for more than a decade. Most recently he directed rapid response for the Republican National Committee and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential bid. He also helped Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) win her first Senate campaign in 2014, according to a version of his resume posted online.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/top-pruitt-aides-spokespeople-leave-epa
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‘Approved by Donald Trump’: Asbestos Sold by Russian Company Is Branded with the President’s Face
Jul 11, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Eli Rosenberg
A Russian asbestos company that operates a giant mine in the Ural Mountains is marketing its wares with President Trump’s image, according to photos it posted on social media, citing former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt as well as Trump’s outspoken support for the carcinogen.
The company Uralasbest posted photos of the pallets adorned with a seal with Trump’s face in the center on its Facebook page in June.
“Approved by Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States,” the seal read, according to a translation supplied by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit focused on human health and the environment that flagged the posting.
Asbestos, a fibrous silicate mineral that was used widely in industrial and commercial purposes such as construction in the United States, has fallen out of favor in many applications after a large body of scientific evidence connecting exposure to serious health concerns. Its use is restricted in the United States, though it has never been outright banned, as it has been in at least 60 other countries.
But Trump has long expressed skepticism about its potential health effects after it is applied. In his 1997 book, “The Art of the Comeback,” he wrote that he believed that anti-asbestos efforts were “led by the mob.” In 2012, he tweeted that the World Trade Center would not have burned down had asbestos, which is known for fire-resistant properties, not been removed from the towers.
The asbestos company focused on this supportive stance in a post accompanying the pictures.
“Donald is on our side!” the company posted in a caption for the photos, which also cited Pruitt.
The use of asbestos in the United States has decreased dramatically in recent decades as links to health effects such as mesothelioma and lung cancer have come into focus. Because it is no longer mined in the United States, asbestos is imported for its remaining uses, primarily for the chlor-alkali industry. Until recently, 95 percent of asbestos in the United States was imported from Brazil, and the rest from Russia, according to Chemical & Engineering News, but a recent ban on the mining, use and sale of asbestos in Brazil has left an opening in the market. Some lawmakers have expressed worries about Russia being the sole asbestos supplier to the United States, Chemical & Engineering News reported.
Perhaps some companies are aware of these opportunities. Uralasbestos, which reportedly counts Russian President Vladimir Putin as an ally, operates an enormous mine in Asbest, seven miles long, a mile and a half wide and about 1,000 feet deep for an area that is nearly half the size of Manhattan, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The company did not return a request for immediate comment.
Asbest, named for its chief product, was once known as “the dying city” because of elevated rates of lung cancer and other diseases, the center reported. A New York Times report from 2013 paints a grim picture of life in the mining town:
“Residents describe layers of it collecting on living room floors. Before they take in the laundry from backyard lines, they first shake out the asbestos. ‘When I work in the garden, I notice asbestos dust on my raspberries,’ said Tamara A. Biserova, a retiree. So much dust blows against her windows, she said, that ‘before I leave in the morning, I have to sweep it out.’ Asbest is one of the more extreme examples of the environmental costs of modern Russia’s deep reliance on mining.”
The World Health Organization notes that “all types of asbestos cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, cancer of the larynx and ovary, and asbestosis,” saying exposure results from inhaling airborne fibers in working environments, air near factories that handle asbestos or air in buildings that contain decaying asbestos materials. The group says that one of the most efficient ways “to eliminate asbestos-related diseases is to stop the use of all types of asbestos.”
The trade group the Chrysotile Association (chrysotile is what is mined in Asbest) says that its product is less carcinogenic than other types of asbestos.
“The classification of the World Health Organization establishes hazard of a substance rather than risk,” it writes on its website. “Almost four hundred other products and industrial processes are considered carcinogenic to humans, probably or possible carcinogenic to humans, but this does not mean that we must ban their use. This means that we need a strict control over their use.”
Still the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to implement a full asbestos ban for years. In 2016, Congress amended the Toxic Substances Control Act, giving the EPA a mandate to evaluate chemicals in use nationwide and raising hopes initially among some advocates that the agency would move forward with a full asbestos ban. Those hopes have yet to be borne out in the Trump era, in which the EPA has taken a sharp turn toward deregulation.
“Asbestos was poster child for why the original law was broken and not working, so now asbestos is an important litmus test as to whether the new law is better,” Melanie Benesh, an Environmental Working Group lawyer, told The Washington Post. “This administration is really responsible for setting the rules and setting the precedent for some of the ways this new law was going to be implemented. As far as we see, they’re taking every step they can to minimize this law and limit this law and not implement it in the way that it was intended.”
Asbestos producers and associations in Russia have moved actively on potential bans against the product around the world, the Center for Public Integrity reported. Andrei Kholzakov, the chairman of the Uralasbest union, reportedly asked for Putin’s help.
“He promised to support Russian producers of chrysotile,” Kholzakov said afterward in a press release quoted by the Center for Public Integrity, “especially in situations where we find ourselves under political pressure at the international level.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/07/11/approved-by-donald-trump-asbestos-sold-by-russian-company-is-branded-with-the-presidents-face/?utm_term=.256e356e0fd7
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Russian Asbestos Company Makes Trump Its Poster Boy
Jul 11, 2018 | Eco Watch
By Olivia Rosane
Asbestos killed at least 45,221 Americans between 1999 and 2015, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found. But President Donald Trump has long expressed his support for the dangerous mineral currently banned by 65 countries.
"If we didn't remove incredibly powerful fire retardant asbestos & replace it with junk that doesn't work, the World Trade Center would never have burned down," he tweeted in 2012.
Now, Uralasbest, a Russian asbestos producer supported by President Vladimir Putin, is thanking Trump for his support.
In a June 25 Facebook post reported by The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) Wednesday, the company displayed an image of its product in plastic wrap stamped with Trump's face.
The image was surrounded by a seal reading "APPROVED BY DONALD TRUMP, 45TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES," according to a translation by ADAO and EWG.
"Donald is on our side!" the post accompanying the image began.
Uralasbest also praised the decision of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under recently-resigned head Scott Pruitt, to limit risk assessments of asbestos and nine other chemicals mandated by a 2016 amendment to the Toxic Substances Control Act.
"He supported the head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, who stated that his agency would no longer deal with negative effects potentially derived from products containing asbestos. Donald Trump supported a specialist and called asbestos '100% safe after application,'" the post read, according to the translation by EWG and ADAO.
The post comes little over six months after Brazil, previously the U.S.'s main supplier of asbestos, decided to ban the substance, bumping Russian into the NO. 1 spot, as Chemical & Engineering News reported in December.
Russia is home to the largest asbestos industry in the world, The Center for Public Integrity reported.
"Russia's asbestos industry stand to prosper mightily as a result of the Trump Administration's failure to ban asbestos in the U.S.," EWG President Ken Cook said in a press release. "Helping Putin and Russian oligarchs amass fortunes by selling a product that kills thousands each year should never be the role of a U.S. president or the EPA, but this is the Trump administration. Russia's interests are Trump's interests, and any clear-eyed American knows it."
Trump is slated to meet with Putin in Finland July 16.
https://www.ecowatch.com/russian-company-trump-asbestos-2585711084.html
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New Digital Chemical Screening Tool Could Help Eliminate Animal Testing
Jul 11, 2018 | Science Magazine
By Vanessa Zainzinger
Toxicologists today unveiled a digital chemical safety screening tool that could greatly reduce the need for six common animal tests. Those tests account for nearly 60% of the estimated 3 million to 4 million animals used annually in risk testing worldwide.
The computerized tool—built on a massive database of molecular structures and existing safety data—appears to match, and sometimes improve upon, the results of animal tests for properties such as skin sensitization and eye irritation, the researchers report in today’s Toxicological Sciences. But it also has limitations; for instance, the method can’t reliably evaluate a chemical’s risk of causing cancer. And it’s not clear how open regulatory agencies will be to adopting a nonanimal approach.
Still, “We’re really excited about the potential of this model,” says toxicologist Nicole Kleinstreuer, the deputy director of a center that evaluates alternatives to animal testing at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Durham, North Carolina. Kleinstreuer, who was not involved in the work, adds that using “big data … to build predictive models is an extremely promising avenue for reducing and replacing animal testing.”
Most developed nations require new chemicals that enter commerce to undergo at least some safety testing. But the longstanding practice of exposing rabbits, rats, and other animals to chemicals to evaluate risks is facing growing public objections and cost concerns, helping spur a hunt for alternatives. In the UnitedStates, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been backing research into new ways of evaluating chemicals through programs such as its Toxicity Forecaster (ToxCast) effort. And in 2016, Congress passed an updated chemical safety law—the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)—that orders federal regulators to take steps to reduce the number of animals that companies use to test compounds for safety.
One approach is to use what is already known about the safety of existing compounds to predict the risks posed by new chemicals with similar molecular structures. Two years ago, a team led by Thomas Hartung of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, took a step toward that goal by assembling test data on 9800 chemicals regulated by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in Helsinki. They then showed that chemicals with similar structures can have similar health effects, such as being an irritant
In today’s paper, Hartung’s team goes bigger. First, the researchers expanded their database to 10 million chemical structures by adding information from the public database PubChem and the U.S. National Toxicology Program. Next, they compared the structures and toxicological properties of every possible pair of compounds in their database—a total of 50 trillion comparisons—creating a vast similarity map that groups compounds by structure and effect. Finally, they tested the model: they asked it to predict a randomly chosen chemical’s toxicological profile by linking it to similar “neighbors” on the map and compared the results to six actual animal tests of the compound.
On average, the computational tool reproduced the animal test results 87% of the time. That’s better than animal tests themselves can do, Hartung says: In reviewing the literature, his group found that repeated animal tests replicated past results just 81% of the time, on average. “This is an important finding,” Hartung says, because regulators often expect alternative methods to animal testing to be reproducible at the 95% threshold—a standard even the animal tests aren’t meeting.
“Our data shows that we can replace six common tests—which account for 57% of the world’s animal toxicology testing—with computer-based prediction and get more reliable results,” Hartung says. And it could help eliminate duplication of effort, he adds. The team found, for instance, that 69 chemicals were each tested at least 45 separate times using the so-called Draize rabbit test—a method that involves placing a chemical in the rabbit’s eye and has drawn extensive public opposition.
The screening method has weaknesses. Although it can predict simple effects such as irritation, more complex endpoints such as cancer are out of its reach, says Mike Rasenberg, who heads the ECHA’s Computational Assessment & Dissemination unit. “This won’t be the end of animal testing,” he predicts, “but it’s a useful concept for looking at simple toxicity.”
The question now is how regulators will view the method. Rasenberg thinks European regulators will accept it for simple endpoints because it meets validating criteria for so-called quantitative structure-activity relationship models.
In the United States, the NIEHS center is working on validating the method. And once that validation is complete, EPA “will be able to review the evaluation results to determine how and if they can be used to inform chemicals evaluated under TSCA,” officials said in a statement. “If evaluation is favorable, these types of models could be used in conjunction with other tools such as ToxCast to inform screening-level hazard determinations or rank/prioritize large numbers of substances.”
Hartung says he hopes the screening method will also be of interest to countries that are gearing up for implementing new chemical laws, such as Turkey and South Korea.
In the meantime, the researchers have teamed up with Underwriters Laboratories headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, to make the tool available to companies that might want to screen products before submitting them for regulatory review.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/new-digital-chemical-screening-tool-could-help-eliminate-animal-testing
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Companies Voice Support for Toxic-Free Circular Economy
Jul 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
In a paper published by NGO ChemSec, companies and trade groups have expressed their support for a circular economy free from hazardous chemicals.
The paper urges the European Commission to consider the companies' positions and "respect their needs", when implementing the EU’s action plan to boost recycling and preserve resources.
H&M, Ikea, Dell, Shaw Industries, Apple and the Lego group are among its contributors.
Fashion retailer H&M, which aims to use 100% recycled or sustainably sourced materials by 2030, calls for the Commission "to be ambitious in the implementation of a circular economy and make sure the same requirements apply for virgin and recycled material, as a true circular economy will require the elimination of hazardous chemicals at the beginning of the process."
Danish supermarket chain, Coop Denmark, also says it "strongly supports an ambitious regulation of hazardous chemicals, making a truly circular economy possible."
Swedish home improvement chain, Ikea, which has committed to achieving a "circular business" by 2030, supports "more ambitious regulations on hazardous chemicals". It says "eliminating harmful chemicals in the beginning of the process is crucial to enable a circular economy."Electronics view
Electronics giant Dell has set a goal to use 100 million pounds of recycled-content plastic and other sustainable materials in its products by 2020.
The company "sets the same chemical content requirements for recycled material as it does for virgin material," according to its statement.
Meanwhile, Apple says it has launched the Apple GiveBack programme to make it easier for customers to recycle end-of-life products.
"Our work to ensure the safety of materials in our products is integral to the recycling of materials in our products," its statement says.
The paper also includes statements from sustainable business federation for SMEs, Ecopreneur, and the trade association, Eureau, which represents Europe's drinking water and wastewater service operators.Call for transparency
The Commission is in the process of evaluating existing EU policies to see how they contribute to the circular economy.
ChemSec was among NGOs to submit comments to the Commission’s consultation on its roadmap for a "EU product policy framework that contributes to the circular economy", which ended in June.
The NGO is calling for greater transparency about what is in original materials to be recycled.
"Ideally hazardous chemicals are not used in the first place as this really will solve many problems with recycled materials," Mr Pierrou said.
The issue continues to be debated. Last month, recycling industry association, EuRIC, said a European Parliament proposal to set a concentration limit for the flame retardant decaBDE in substances, mixtures and articles, would put a stopto plastics from vehicles and electronics being recycled in Europe.
https://chemicalwatch.com/68528/companies-voice-support-for-toxic-free-circular-economy
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Monsanto Cancer Case Pushes on
Jul 11, 2018 | Politico
By Liz Crampton
MONSANTO CANCER CASE PUSHES ON: A federal judge is allowing a major class-action suit against Monsanto to go forward, even as he cast doubts on the credibility of the evidence offered by experts on behalf of hundreds of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients. The 68-page decision comes after he heard weeks of dense testimony from scientific experts on both sides of the case. The series of hearings was before a judge rather than a jury, but was an important aspect of whether the case had enough to proceed, yours truly reported.
The plaintiffs contend that Monsanto’s flagship product, the weedkiller Roundup, caused them to develop cancer and the company never warned them about the risk.
The lead up: Attorneys for both sides called on their own scientific experts such as epidemiologists to testify throughout the spring about the link between the weedkiller and cancer. Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California had to determine if the experts’ analysis was solid enough to make a case.
He ruled Tuesday that it was a “close question,” but that plaintiffs had presented enough evidence “from which a reasonable jury could conclude that glyphosate can cause NHL at human-relevant doses.” Still, he felt like the evidence was “shaky” and said any weaknesses will be exposed at trial when a jury considers the evidence.
Tough talk: Chhabria was scathing in his remarks in the ruling. Attorneys representing the plaintiffs face a "daunting challenge" in the next phase of litigation because the evidence between exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in humans “seems rather weak," he wrote.
He also said it was a mistake for experts to heavily rely on the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer assessment that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” IARC was making a public health assessment, while a jury has to use a different standard to reach a verdict, he said.
What’s next: Attorneys representing the plaintiffs now have to make a direct connection between each patient’s diagnosis and Roundup. But Tuesday’s development in the case may push them to consider a settlement or revise their legal strategy. And after all, Chhabria won’t be the one making the final call; that decision is reserved for a jury.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-agriculture/2018/07/11/monsanto-cancer-case-pushes-on-275414
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Judge Allows 'Shaky' Roundup Cancer Cases to Proceed
Jul 11, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
A federal judge has ruled that lawsuits brought against Monsanto Co. by hundreds of cancer patients who blame the pesticide Roundup for their illnesses can move forward.
The multidistrict litigation decision yesterday, from Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, will allow more than 400 cases brought across the country by Roundup users who later developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma to rely on testimony from three experts in any trials that may follow.
Monsanto, which recently merged with German chemical giant Bayer, had sought to throw out all of the lawsuits by arguing that the plaintiffs' experts were unreliable.
Chhabria, an Obama appointee who previously served as deputy attorney for the city of San Francisco, denied the pesticide maker's request. But he suggested the plaintiffs still face long odds.
"The opinions of these experts, while shaky, are admissible," he ruled in a 68-page judgmentthat barred testimony in full or in large part from three other experts put forward by the plaintiffs.
Chhabria was broadly skeptical that the blockbuster weedkiller Roundup could cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma at levels users have experienced in the real world.
"However, the question at this phase is not whether the plaintiff's experts are right," he said.
Meanwhile, the district court judge permitted all six of Monsanto's experts to testify at any future trials about the widely used herbicide.
Now for the cancer sufferers' individual cases to proceed, they must present enough evidence that Roundup is to blame for their illness.
"The plaintiffs appear to face a daunting challenge at the next phase," Chhabria wrote. "But it is a challenge they are entitled to undertake."
Any loss for Monsanto could cost Bayer many millions of dollars and amplify questions about the safety of glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient.
The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded in 2015 that glyphosate was "probably carcinogenic to humans." But EPA and other national and international health organizations haven't raised similar concerns about the chemical.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/07/11/stories/1060088803
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Investigators Find Illegal CFC-11 Use in China’s Polyurethane Industry
Jul 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Sunny Lee
An NGO investigation has uncovered the illegal and widespread use of CFC-11, or trichlorofluoromethane, by Chinese manufacturers for rigid polyurethane foam.
And the use of the substance could be the cause of a recently detected rise in ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere.
The investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) found use of CFC-11 as a blowing agent in the production of the foam – used predominantly as insulation by the construction industry.
The agents are a key ingredient and help it expand and enhance insulating properties. They can be a liquid or a gas that is dissolved in the precursors and expand to form the foam, once injected or sprayed.
The EIA, a campaign group specialising in undercover investigations, says there is "significant potential" that pre-mixed polyols, used as a component in foam manufacturing, containing CFC-11 have been traded internationally.
CFC-11 was restricted under the original agreement of the Montreal Protocol on reducing use of ozone-depleting substances in 1987. Production and consumption should have stopped internationally by 2010 under the agreement. Reports indicated that manufacturing and use had done so by 2006.
The investigation was partly prompted by a study published in Nature in May. This showed there had been rapidly increasing levels of atmospheric CFC-11 between 2012 and 2016.
The EIA speculates that much of the increase can be explained by the activities in China. By 2011, the country’s large and growing market in polyurethane foam was already estimated to be a third of the world total.Investigation
Undercover EIA investigators contacted 25 polyurethane companies across China. Out of the 21 that responded, 18 from ten different provinces openly admitted the illegal use. Nearly all gave estimates ranging from 70%-100% as the proportion of blowing agents made up of CFC-11.
Several factors seem to have prompted the illegal manufacture, including:lower costs;CFC-11’s greater effectiveness as a blowing agent;the relative simplicity of production; andthe need to add flame retardants to CFC-11 alternatives for new fire safety laws.
The report also notes the limited incentives for compliance. Penalties under China’s State Council Order No 573 (Ozone Depleting Substances Management Regulations), in force since June 2010, include confiscation and fines of between $750 and $150,000 depending on volumes, with no scaling up for repeat offences.Avoiding detection
The dispersed character of production has made regulating the industry particularly challenging for the Chinese authorities. There are an estimated 3,500 small and medium enterprises producing the foam.
The investigation uncovered steps that companies take to avoid discovery. Many said they regularly move facilities, which are often in anonymous factories. Several used sites in Inner Mongolia beyond the reach of Chinese inspectors.
One company admitted it received tip-offs from local inspectors and then halted production and hid workers until the inspection was over.
The findings have been corroborated in interviews with Shandong province officials. Shandong is a centre of illegal production and the authorities raised the difficulties of dealing with illegal CFC-11 production, last year, in an online presentation. In 2015, they announced the closing down of 15 illegal facilities.Exports
The investigation found limited direct evidence of exports, but several companies told investigators they exported by mislabelling polyols containing CFC-11. They also adopted measures, such as sealing containers, to discourage inspection.
The report suggested a likely way would be to trade in the polyols mix, known as component 'A' or 'white agent'. About 60% of polyurethane blowing agent is distributed as part of this mix, which is combined with the isocyanates in component 'B' or 'black agent' to produce the polyurethane foam.
Exports under the HS codes for "other polyethers" and "polyurethanes" could potentially include significant amounts of polyols with CFC-11, according to the report. UN figures show Chinese exports from 2012-16 averaging 413,000 and 128,000 tonnes annually for the two codes respectively.
Exports were mainly to other Asian countries and the Middle East, but included the US and Turkey.
https://chemicalwatch.com/68543/investigators-find-illegal-cfc-11-use-in-chinas-polyurethane-industry
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Caerus to Spend $229M for Piceance Natural Gas Operations
Jul 11, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Denver-based Caerus Oil and Gas LLC plans to spend up to $229 million this year on drilling and completing natural gas wells in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado, an executive said this week.
Caerus Vice President Michael Rynearson who handles operations on Monday briefed Garfield County officials on the development plans. Those include restoring some public access to about 10,000 acres in the Piceance, where last year Encana Corp. sold its natural gas assets, including 550,000 net acres and 3,100 operated wells.
According to Rynearson, Caerus has used the Encana purchase to expand its operations in the Piceance. It subsequently sold assets in Oklahoma and New Mexico. Its only remaining assets outside of Colorado are in the Pinedale Anticline in Wyoming.
Caerus plans to drill up to 150 wells this year and complete about 160 wells. Rynearson said the company is operating three rigs in the Piceance, supported by about 240 contract positions.
Concentrating on conventional gas assets in the Piceance, Caerus was producing about 343 MMcfe/d at the end of last year and has about 3.1 Tcfe of reserves and 7,600 drilling locations across 560,000 acres.
Local access and economic issues were addressed with county commissioners, who urged Caerus to re-open some of the acreage that has been closed for safety and other reasons since the Encana acquisition, according to reports. Caerus reportedly has been working to make a decision about opening some of the land.
While low gas prices are pressuring the economics of moving gas supplies from the basin, Caerus projects that average production should reach 387 MMcf/d this year. Within the next year or two, Caerus also wants to become the largest gas producer in the Piceance.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/115012-caerus-to-spend-229m-for-piceance-natural-gas-operations
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New Study Shows Who Has Top Wells in West Texas
Jul 11, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Rye Druzin
New data collected by a Canadian energy research group shows which oil and gas explorers in West Texas have the most prolific wells.
The data from RS Energy Group shows that wells completed by Houston-based EOG Resources in West Texas' Permian Basin oil field had the highest average initial production at 2,051 barrels of oil a day.
Other companies in the top five include the Pioneer Natural Resources of Irving, Occidental Petroleum of Houston, the Denver company SM Energy, and the oil major Chevron Corp.
Ryan Luther, a senior associate with the Permian Basin team at RS Energy Group, said the firm used state data on a well's initial production rates for the first 24 hours after it was completed.
The report also noted Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy's recent well results from the Delaware Basin, where one well had an initial production rate of more than 10,000 barrels of oil. Luther said the results are some of the best in the history of the Delaware, which is a part of the Permian Basin.
The data runs from January 2018 through May. Luther said there is a lag in the data that is reported to the state by oil and gas operators, and that some well results may not be included because of a lack of up-to-date reporting by the companies.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/New-study-shows-who-has-top-wells-in-West-Texas-13064134.php
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Natural Gas-Fired Power Plants to Set Near Record This Summer
Jul 11, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By L.M. Sixel
Natural gas-fired power plants are expected to supply 37 percent of the nation's electricity generation this summer, near the record set two years ago, the Energy Department reported Wednesday.
At the same time, the share of generation from coal-fired power plants will drop to 30 percent, continuing a trend over the past few years of less reliance on coal-fired power generation.
The move away from coal-fired power stems from low natural gas prices, an increase in natural gas-fired power plant capacity and the retirement of coal-fired units, the government reported. The cost of natural gas delivered to electric generators averaged $3.16 per million British thermal units between 2015 and 2017 compared to $7.69 per million British thermal units between 2006 and 2008.
Power plant operators added 5.4 gigawatts of new natural gas-fired generating capacity during the first four months and an additional 15 gigawatts are scheduled to come online by the end of the year, marking the biggest one-year increase in capacity since 2004.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Natural-gas-fired-power-plants-to-set-near-record-13066258.php
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Natural Gas Explosion Kills Firefighter
Jul 11, 2018 | AP (In E&E Greenwire)
By Todd Richmond
After workers accidentally punctured a natural gas main yesterday, a gas leak caused an explosion that rocked a Wisconsin suburb, killing a firefighter and injuring at least a dozen others.
Around 6:20 p.m. local time yesterday, firefighters and police responded to reports of a natural gas leak in Sun Prairie, a small suburb of Madison.
Around 7:15 p.m., witnesses described a loud boom as well as smoke and flames rising into the air.
The blast killed a firefighter who had worked at the department for at least 10 years, said Sun Prairie Fire Chief Christopher Garrison.
"The Sun Prairie Fire Department is strong," Garrison said. "We will keep on building from this. We are hurt, but we will come back."
Several other firefighters, a police officer and seven residents also reported injuries, said Sun Prairie Police Lt. Kevin Konopacki.
A spokeswoman for WE Energies said workers for a contractor appeared to have punctured a 4-inch natural gas main, prompting gas to leak into a building prior to the explosion.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/07/11/stories/1060088787
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(ACC Mentioned) Plastic Straw Bans Leave Out People with Disabilities
Jul 10, 2018 | Earther
By Paola Rosa-Aquino
On Monday, Starbucks announced it would be joining the bevy of fast food eateries that have pledged to be more environmentally friendly. The global coffee giant is phasing out single-use plastics straws from more than 28,000 of its stores worldwide come 2020, a move Starbucks says will eliminate over a billion plastic straws a year.
Proponents of ridding the world of plastic might be quick to call this a big win for the environment. But as these bans become more popular, disability rights activists have started speaking up about how they can erode accessibility.
When blanket straw bans are implemented “people with disabilities are left out,” Kathryn Carroll, a policy analyst at the Center for Disability Rights, told Earther.
Starbucks has not responded to Earther’s request for comment on whether its straw ban will make exceptions for people with disabilities. In its press release and on Twitter, the company has stated that while a straw-less lid will become the new standard for iced beverages, alternative material straws made from paper or compostable plastic will still be available upon request.
Alternative-material straws, however, often don’t cut it. They can be unsatisfactory and even hazardous for some individuals with disabilities. For instance, paper straws don’t hold up well in hot liquids and metal straws, if they’re not bendable, can be virtually unusable.
After Starbucks announced the ban, folks took to Twitter to raise their concerns about accessibility. From the corporation’s responses so far, it’s not clear the company really gets the issues at hand.
Starbucks’ straw ban isn’t the first to garner criticism from disability rights advocates. Recently, Vancouver became the first Canadian city get rid of plastic straws. Disability groups were quick to urge the local government to reconsider an outright ban. Carroll says some of her colleagues involved in the anti-straw debate in New York City, which just recently introduced a bill that would forego all plastic straws for paper ones in eateries across all five boroughs, have been frustrated by its one-sidedness.
“There hasn’t been any outreach [from the anti-straw movement] to the disability community to make sure that their rights are protected and that they weren’t discriminated against, even if it was unintentional in the first place,” she continued.
In Carroll’s view, a better way forward is for cafes, restaurants, and bars to keep a more accessible plastic straw on hand for those who need it. The American Chemical Council also supports this approach, acknowledging that there are circumstances where plastic straws are needed. And some folks seem to be listening: The recent Seattle straw ban makes an exception for people who require a plastic straw for medical reasons, for instance.
Disability rights advocates and environmentalists are not at necessarily at odds with each other. But there needs to be a dialog between these groups. To Carroll’s knowledge, Starbucks did not reach out to disability groups to help design the straw phase-out plan.
“We are troubled by this because Starbucks has been a leader in disability access,” she told Earther. Indeed, Starbucks has received recognition as a top employer for disability inclusion and has previously sponsored awards for disability rights.
Starbucks’ announcement comes at the heels of a wide variety of efforts to tackle the global plastic pollution crisis by banning straws. When straws aren’t recycled, they end up in our landfills, gathering in our rivers, lakes, and oceans. In a press release, Starbucks’ CEO Kevin Johnson referred to the company’s plan as a “significant milestone to achieve our global aspiration of sustainable coffee, served to our customers in more sustainable ways.”
Let’s just hope folks who need plastic straws aren’t left behind as Starbucks marches toward that worthy goal.
https://earther.com/plastic-straw-bans-leave-out-people-with-disabilities-1827456627
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Regulatory Costs Loom Large for Kavanaugh
Jul 11, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
When the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that EPA unlawfully failed to consider the costs when deciding to regulate hazardous air emissions from power plants, the late Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion tracked closely with a dissent written by a conservative judge on another court.
That judge was Brett Kavanaugh, whom President Trump nominated earlier this week to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Kavanaugh diverged from his colleagues on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, writing in 2014 that EPA was "unreasonable" for not taking into account the costs of the landmark regulation.
"To be sure, EPA could conclude that the benefits outweigh the costs," Kavanaugh wrote. "But the problem here is that EPA did not even consider the costs. And the costs are huge, about $9.6 billion a year — that's billion with a b — by EPA's own calculation."
Kavanaugh's dissent in the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, or MATS, litigation reflected the nominee's emphasis on making sure agencies review both the benefits and costs of regulations.
"You would certainly want to understand the benefits from the regulations. And you would surely ask how much the regulations would cost," Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent. "You would no doubt take both of those considerations — benefits and costs — into account in making your decision. That's just common sense and sound government practice."
He'll likely bring that same philosophy to the Supreme Court if he's confirmed.
"There are a couple opinions that indicate that he's pretty favorably disposed to cost-benefit analysis and is of the opinion, generally speaking, that agencies ought to be considering costs when engaging in rulemaking," said Michael Livermore, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and an expert on cost-benefit analysis.
At issue in the MATS case was whether EPA had to consider costs when it determined it was "appropriate and necessary" to regulate mercury and other toxic air emissions from power plants.
EPA finalized the rule in 2011. With its $9.6 billion price tag, MATS was among the most expensive regulations EPA had ever issued.
In the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh heard the case with Chief Judge Merrick Garland — President Obama's doomed Supreme Court nominee — and Judge Judith Rogers. Both are Democratic appointees. Rogers wrote the bulk of the majority opinion denying petitions challenging the rule from a host of industry entities and states.
But Kavanaugh called it a "surprise" that EPA didn't take into account costs when assessing whether to regulate the industry. He noted that the consideration of costs was "commonly understood to be a central component of ordinary regulatory analysis," citing a number of administrative law scholars on the matter.
"EPA's failure to do so is no trivial matter," Kavanaugh wrote. EPA "upsets Congress's careful balance and stacks the deck in favor of regulation of electric utilities under the MACT [Maximum Achievable Control Technology] program," he wrote.
Kavanaugh wrote that the majority on the court had overread Scalia's 2001 opinion in Whitman v. American Trucking Associations Inc. In that case, the court found that EPA could not take costs into account when setting public health standards under the Clean Air Act's National Ambient Air Quality Standards program.
The MATS case "differs significantly," Kavanaugh wrote, because Whitman was about a regulation tied solely to public health.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Legal experts agree that Kavanaugh's dissent likely played a role in persuading the high court to take up the case.
"You can almost imagine him writing that opinion for Scalia," said Amy Sinden, a professor at Temple University's Beasley School of Law.'EPA must consider cost'
In a 5-4 decision in June 2015, the Supreme Court agreed with the future nominee. Scalia's opinion was backed by the court's conservative wing.
Like Kavanaugh, Scalia wrote that Whitman had "no bearing on this case."
"EPA must consider cost — including cost of compliance — before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary," Scalia wrote. EPA had strayed "far beyond" the "bounds of reasonable interpretation" when deciding it could ignore cost, the late justice said.
The court sent the rule back to EPA to consider costs.
Starting with Whitman, the case added to a string of Supreme Court decisions — each written by Scalia — that have influenced how lower courts view agencies' decisions about assessing the costs of regulations.
In the 2009 case Entergy Corp. v. Riverkeeper Inc., which challenged EPA regulations for cooling water intakes at power plants, Scalia wrote for the 5-4 majority that when a law doesn't specifically prohibit consideration of costs, agencies are allowed to weigh the costs and benefits of a rule.
Scalia's opinion in Michigan v. EPA fueled the ongoing debate over the extent to which agencies must weigh the costs and benefits of rules. Some legal scholars have said the ruling supports the broader argument that agencies, particularly EPA, are required to compare the costs and benefits of a rule and show that benefits outweigh the costs.
Kavanaugh, in fact, cited the decision in the first paragraph of a 2016 dissent he wrote arguing that EPA needed to go "back to the drawing board" in a permitting decision for a mountaintop-removal coal mining project in West Virginia.
At issue was EPA's 2011 decision to revoke the Clean Water Act permit for the controversial Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County, W.Va.
Kavanaugh's colleagues on the D.C. Circuit ruled that the permit withdrawal fell under EPA's "broad veto power" in the Clean Water Act. But Kavanaugh wrote that EPA had issued a "one-sided analysis" of the mining project's impacts, and that the agency should have considered both costs and benefits in deciding whether to revoke the permit.
"The bottom line is that EPA considered the benefits to animals of revoking the permit," Kavanaugh said, "but EPA never considered the costs to humans — coal miners, Mingo Logan's shareholders, local businesses, and the like — of revoking the permit."Further than Scalia?
Environmentalists say they are worried Kavanaugh's focus on costs would translate into Supreme Court opinions upending more EPA rules.
"Kavanaugh is going to use cost … everywhere and anywhere he can to strike down EPA's authority to regulate," said Patrick Gallagher, the Sierra Club's legal director.
Court watchers say Kavanaugh's approach to costs on the Supreme Court would likely be similar to Scalia's.
"He's very well-versed in this issue," said Cary Coglianese, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and director of the Penn Program on Regulation. "He's frankly very well-versed in the larger body of administrative law and administrative law scholarship."
He added: "If you're looking for somebody to be an intellectual leader, he would be poised to do that."
But Sinden of Temple University said Kavanaugh might go further than Scalia in prescribing that agencies perform a formal cost-benefit analysis.
"Scalia had a deep skepticism about that idea, that you place a dollar value on all the benefits and costs of environmental regulation," she said. "Even though he's pro-cost-benefit analysis, he's not pro-formal cost-benefit analysis.
"And that's where I see Kavanaugh conceivably going further than Scalia."
She noted that, in the MATS dissent, Kavanaugh quoted an Obama executive order that called specifically for quantifying costs and benefits.
"He seems to conflate the idea of EPA should have considered costs and benefits with the kind of cost-benefit analysis that is required under the executive orders," she said.
Livermore said Kavanaugh's approach to costs on the Supreme Court is still an unknown.
"The real issue is, on a case-by-case basis, can we expect Judge Kavanaugh, if confirmed, to apply this kind of general principle in a way that's fair to agencies?" Livermore asked. "In an individual case, is he going to try to get into the business of second-guessing [agency analyses], or is he more interested in ensuring at a general level that they are weighing the costs and benefits?"
One issue that could come up before the Supreme Court sometime in the future is the practice of counting so-called health co-benefits in justifying the economic impacts of clean air rules. The Obama administration counted co-benefits in its analysis of the MATS rule, finding that overall benefits would tally as much as $90 billion annually, though only up to $6 million would come from reduced mercury pollution.
When the mercury rule made its way back to the D.C. Circuit after the Supreme Court decision, Kavanaugh predicted at oral arguments that whether co-benefits are properly part of a cost-benefit analysis would be a "key battleground."
Kavanaugh cited comments by Chief Justice John Roberts that counting such benefits is "an end-run and bootstrapping and disproportionate."
Patrice Simms, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice, called Kavanaugh's skepticism that co-benefits could be counted on the benefits side of the equation an "outlandish proposition."
Kavanaugh's take would mean "the real benefits that save lives" couldn't be counted, he said.
But while Kavanaugh has been focused on consideration of costs, some experts cautioned that he would likely view a failure to count any benefits of a regulation as legally fatal, as well.
Critics of the Trump administration have accused EPA of focusing only on the costs of regulations as it attempts to roll back a host of Obama-era rules.
"The principles in Michigan v. EPA and the principles in Kavanaugh's dissent are as applicable to an agency that wants to go forward and only consider costs and not benefits," Coglianese said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/07/11/stories/1060088795
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The Energy 202: How Brett Kavanaugh Could Rein in Environmental Rules on the Supreme Court
Jul 11, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
Two years ago, the second highest court in the land upheld a controversial decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to block a permit for what would have been one of West Virginia's largest strip-mining operations.
The new coal mine promised so many jobs that in 2010 the state's Democratic governor — Joe Manchin III — sued the Obama administration over the EPA's decision to stop the project.
The only dissenter in the 2-1 decision in 2016 was Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who President Trump picked Monday to take Justice Anthony Kennedy's spot on the Supreme Court. And now Manchin is a senator for West Virginia -- and one of a handful of moderates in the tightly split chamber who will decide Kavanaugh's fate.
Kavanaugh's dissent is illustrative of the pro-business approach to environmental law that he cultivated throughout his dozen years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
If confirmed, his limited-government jurisprudence will swing the court even further to the right.
Kavanaugh has insisted on upholding the expansion of regulatory authority only when there is clear evidence Congress intended to do so.
"It is a perfectly legitimate neutral principle for interpreting federal statutory authority," said Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard. "But as applied to EPA, it had led Kavanaugh repeatedly and consistently to rule against EPA."
Policing regulatory overreach, at least as conservative legal thinkers see it, was once the job of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Robert Percival, an environmental law professor at the University of Maryland, said Kavanaugh "would now inherit Scalia's position."
While the right-leaning high court often reins in government regulation, Kavanaugh has often taken that approach even further than many of the court's current conservatives.
For example, the D.C. Circuit struck down an Obama administration program regulating air pollution that drifts across state lines. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, argued the EPA exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act in crafting the so-called “good neighbor” provisions.
But in 2013, the Supreme Court's four liberals joined with Kennedy and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to reject Kavanaugh's interpretation.
And just last year, the lower court also ruled against another Obama-era EPA program that even the Trump administration had yet to fully challenge, requiring manufacturers to replace a class of potent greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons with other substances.
"However much we might sympathize or agree with EPA's policy objectives," Kavanaugh wrote, "EPA may act only within the boundaries of its statutory authority."
Kavanaugh has actually acknowledged the seriousness of man-made climate change when speaking from the bench. "The earth is warming," he once said. "Humans are contributing."
But when the Obama administration sought to use old environmental statutes to address that and other emerging environmental issues, Kavanaugh tried to strike the actions down.
Instead, Kavanaugh has pushed the EPA to consider the financial impact of its actions. "The bottom line is that EPA considered the benefits to animals of revoking the permit," he wrote in his dissent in the West Virginia coal mine case, "but EPA never considered the costs to humans."
Under former Administrator Scott Pruitt, the EPA is already reviewing how it adds up economic pros and cons of new rules. Kavanaugh "is a thought leader in deregulation," said Abigail Dillen, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at Earthjustice. "I think his writing on it gave it significant momentum."
Kavanaugh has had ample opportunity to promulgate his judicial philosophy. "His record is longer because the DC Circuit hears relatively more cases involving challenges to agency regulatory actions," said Jody Freeman, also a professor at Harvard Law School.
More than 30 percent of filings in that court are administrative appeals, nearly double the average nationwide, according to one study. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reportedly tried to nudge Trump away from Kavanaugh because his lengthy record not only on the bench but also in President George W. Bush's White House makes his confirmation more arduous, though still likely.
For decades, the Supreme Court has generally hewed to a legal doctrine giving agencies wide berth in interpreting federal statute, much to the chagrin of conservatives wishing to rein in government.
Trump's first nominee to the court, Justice Neil Gorsuch, has argued for years in legal opinions that the principle, called Chevron deference after a 1984 case involving the oil company, needed to be revisited.
While Trump's new nominee has not been "vocal" about undoing the doctrine, "Gorsuch may find a comrade in his quest to overturn Chevron deference in Judge Kavanaugh," said Thomas McGarity, a professor of administrative and environmental law at the University of Texas.
Legal experts see Kavanaugh also joining conservatives to curtail the application of anti-pollution rules on wetlands and intermittent streams. Ever since the passage of the Clean Water Act in the 1970s, the court has struggle to define the extent of the federal government's jurisdiction under the law. In 2006, Kennedy staked out a middle-ground position between the court's liberals and other conservatives in an unusual 4-1-4 split.
"I'd be surprised if Justice Kavanaugh didn't decide it differently than Justice Kennedy," McGarity said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/07/11/the-energy-202-how-brett-kavanaugh-could-rein-in-environmental-rules-on-the-supreme-court/5b44e6481b326b3348adde19/?utm_term=.71da78945cd6
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Brett Kavanaugh: ‘The Earth Is Warming’
Jul 11, 2018 | The Atlantic
By Robinson Meyer
It probably isn’t surprising that Judge Brett Kavanaugh—a longtime member of the conservative movement whom President Trump nominated to the Supreme Court on Monday—has written about climate change.
What might be surprising is that he says it’s real.
“The earth is warming. Humans are contributing,” he told a federal courtroom two years ago, during a hearing about a major Obama climate policy. “There is a moral imperative. There is a huge policy imperative. The pope’s involved.”
He’s even inscribed this view in his judicial opinions. “The task of dealing with global warming is urgent and important at the national and international level,” he wrote in 2013.
Yet this is not necessarily good news for liberals. Kavanaugh has sometimes sympathized with the need for environmental protection. But because he considers global warming to be charged with a “huge policy imperative,” he’s skeptical that the EPA (or the executive branch) should be fighting it alone. And as a future justice, he’s likely to block the agency from doing so.
It is a portentous moment for U.S. environmental law. President Obama spent much of his last term trying to deploy the Environmental Protection Agency—and one of its animating laws, the Clean Air Act—against the threat of climate change. The Trump administration has devoted its energy to undoing this work, and environmental groups are trying to block him.
These two approaches were already likely to produce a clash at the Supreme Court in the next few years. But last month, the court’s great swing vote on environmental issues—Justice Anthony Kennedy—announced his resignation. Kennedy famously determined the direction of the nine-member court—joining its four liberals on some cases, its four conservatives on others—but he shaped few parts of American law as completely as he shaped the environment. Since joining the court in 1988, Kennedy voted in the majority in every environmental case in front of the court except one, according to Richard Lazarus, a Harvard Law professor who has argued more than a dozen cases in front of the justices.
His resignation throws the court’s right-leaning consensus into disarray. With Kennedy gone, conservative groups will likely sue the federal government, trying to exact new law from an emboldened conservative majority. Before the next presidential election, the Supreme Court could rule on the EPA’s authority to fight climate change, the geographical scope of the Clean Water Act, and even the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act.
On these issues, Chief Justice John Roberts will function as the Court’s ideological center. Roberts has occasionally acted as a swing vote on some high-profile cases. It seemed likely that Trump would nominate another judge like Neil Gorsuch, a Federalist Society–minted conservative who was skeptical of regulatory agencies but who had rarely written about them.
Instead, he picked Brett Kavanaugh.
Since 2006, Kavanaugh has served on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court that hears most EPA cases. During this time, Kavanaugh has been randomly assigned to hear dozens of EPA cases, meaning he has described his thinking about the environment across hundreds of pages of opinions.
“We probably have more of a record for Kavanaugh for environmental law than we do for anyone else in recent memory,” Lazarus told me. “Roberts came from the D.C. Circuit, Scalia came from the D.C. Circuit, Ginsburg did, Thomas did—but none of them had the same number of EPA cases that Kavanaugh’s had.”
He has not been a friend of the agency, though he often appears sympathetic to it. Kavanaugh has emerged as a courteous jurist who is intensely skeptical of whether the EPA can legally regulate new environmental threats, experts told me.
“He’s a kinder, gentler version of Antonin Scalia. I think his judicial philosophy is almost identical, but he’s more polite, and more able to make nice noises about the underlying policies,” said Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA.
“He’s a tough grader when it comes to a regulatory agency,” said Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University whose scholarship led to a major challenge to the Affordable Care Act. “He’s not looking for reasons to strike things down, and he’s not looking for broad Constitutional arguments to constrain agencies. But he clearly believes agencies have to dot their i’s and cross their t’s.”
Kavanaugh is particularly skeptical of new EPA programs. Like Scalia, he argues that the agency should only issue a new rule if Congress granted them explicit, precise rules to do so in a piece of legislation, like the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act.
During the Obama administration, Kavanaugh heard three major cases about the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act. In every case, he opposed the agency’s position.
“Why did he rule against the EPA in all three cases?” Lazarus asked. “He’s not like a Scalia—or, to some extent, an Alito—where you read their opinions and find there’s an antipathy, a hostility, to environmental law. Scalia is sometimes even sarcastic in his tone.”
“You never see this in Brett Kavanaugh,” he continued. “He is a really decent person, with enormous integrity, and there’s just not that kind of bent with him. But he is a conservative judge and a stickler for the notion of separation of powers. If he’s going to find an agency has sweeping regulatory authority, with significant economic or social implications, he’s going to want to find that Congress really intended it. He’s going to want to see specific language in the statute that says Congress really meant to give that authority away.”
“That is, in the abstract, a perfectly fair and neutral principle. But it does tend, in environmental law, to lead to one answer, which is: No.”
This isn’t necessarily because Kavanaugh loathes the cause of environmental protection, Lazarus told me. Instead, it’s because Congress hasn’t passed a major environmental law since it revamped the Clean Air Act in 1990. “When the EPA is trying to come up with a way of addressing a problem with some really creative and pragmatic solution, it has to use legal language that is 28 years old, in some cases almost 40 years old,” he said.
One of these three Clean Air Act cases provides a good example. It concerned the EPA’s ability to regulate “cross-state air pollution,” that is, pollution from coal-fired power plants in one state that blows downwind into another.
Judge Kavanaugh found that the agency couldn’t regulate that activity under the Clean Air Act. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court—and the justices disagreed. Both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy joined the liberals in favor of the EPA, affirming the rule. “They were more willing to read into that [Clean Air Act] language some pragmatic authority for the EPA” than Kavanaugh was, said Lazarus.
In the two other major Clean Air Act cases, the Supreme Court eventually took the same side as Kavanaugh. “He somewhat already appears to be listened to [by the justices] on these issues,” Adler said.
Outside of those major cases, Kavanaugh has often but not always ruled against the agency. In 2013, he voted with the EPA, ruling that the agency was legally permitted to revoke a permit for mountaintop-removal mining. A year later, when a different legal question was argued in the same case, he voted against the agency.
If there is one bright spot for liberals, it’s that Kavanaugh may be just as skeptical of the Trump administration’s recent attempts at deregulation. “If he faces some Scott Pruitt–era rule that was kind of done quick and dirty, I don’t think the administration should expect him to rubber-stamp it,” Adler said. “He doesn’t grade federal agencies on a curve.”
“If you look at his jurisprudence on the D.C. circuit, I think he will be a stickler on procedural compliance,” agreed Lazarus.
One of those “big problems” where he may be more skeptical is climate change. In a September 2016 hearing, Kavanaugh seemed skeptical of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, an EPA rule that aimed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from the power sector. It seemed clear that he considered that rule to go beyond the scope of the agency’s authority.
“It’s very clear he’s going to be significantly more conservative than Justice Kennedy, and his nomination does not bode well for climate-change regulation under the Clean Air Act,” said Carlson. “When Gorsuch was nominated, there wasn’t very much in his record. With Kavanaugh, the record’s really clear.”
“I think he would have decided against Massachusetts v. EPA,” she said, referring to the landmark 2007 Supreme Court case that found the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. “Everything points to the direction of a very narrow construction of the Clean Air Act, and that will seriously limit the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases in a way that makes a meaningful difference.”
A recent report found that Trump administration EPA rollbacks would cause the United States to miss its goals under the Paris Agreement on climate change, emitting hundreds of thousands more tons of carbon dioxide by 2025 than it once pledged.
Carlson also wondered if Kavanaugh’s stated belief in climate change carried an ulterior motive. According to a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, the judiciary branch must show some amount of deference to decisions made by agencies like the EPA. But the courts are allowed to discard that deference if the decision concerns a “major question” of political significance.
“I think he’s supporting his own judicial philosophy by saying that climate change is real and a big problem,” Carlson told me. “He’s saying, It’s a major question. Congress you should step up and act. This is not the place for EPA to be engaged in major policymaking.”
Adler, the conservative law professor, agreed that Kavanaugh might strike down future climate rules from the EPA.“I get that the environmental community looks at him and says, he’s going to get in the way of aggressive climate regulation unless Congress does something. And he might.”
“But if climate change is a problem, and it is; and if we should be doing something about it, which we should; then barring some massive technological breakthrough, unless and until Congress steps up to the plate, we’re kind of screwed,” he said.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/what-would-kavanaugh-mean-for-the-environment/564830/
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Environmentalists, Oil Sector Spar over EPA Plan to Retain SO2 NAAQS
Jul 11, 2018 | Inside EPA
Environmentalists and public health advocates are sparring with the oil industry over EPA's proposal to leave its health-based sulfur dioxide (SO2) national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) unchanged, with environmental groups pushing EPA for a tougher standard, and the oil sector pressing for a less-stringent limit.
At a public hearing in Washington, D.C., July 10, EPA took public testimony on its May 25 proposal to leave the existing “primary” NAAQS of 75 parts per billion (ppb) over one hour unchanged, saying the existing standard meets a Clean Air Act requirement of being requisite to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety.
The Obama EPA in 2010 tightened the standard to 75 ppb using a novel one-hour averaging time designed to curb short but intense bursts of SO2 pollution, and revoked weaker annual and 24-hour limits that had been in effect since 1971. Primary NAAQS are intended to protect public health, while secondary standards are intended to protect the environment.
In its proposal, EPA invited comment on not just the level but also the “form” of the standard, which is currently expressed as the 99th percentile of daily maximum 1-hour SO2 concentrations, averaged over three years.
The American Lung Association (ALA) in its testimony at the hearing to EPA urged the agency to tighten the standard down to 50 ppb, using the existing form. ALA says the proposal from EPA relies on human exposure studies available in the last SO2 NAAQS review, but these studies are inadequate to measure the health impacts on vulnerable groups such as the very old, young or sick.
“None of these studies had examined exposures below 100 ppb, nor did any -- understandably -- include young children with asthma,” said ALA National Assistant Vice President Janice Nolen. Nor the studies include adults over 75, another group at higher risk. “Nor did these studies examine the impact of multiple exposures in the same day, a likely event for those living downwind of a major power plant."
Sierra Club representative Ruby Lang in her testimony said that, “EPA should revise the standard to make it more protective, for at least three reasons. First, the data on SO2 shows that the 75ppb standard still puts many at risk; Second, SO2 is a source-oriented pollutant, which makes reducing emissions straightforward. And third, EPA has already been far too slow to implement the 2010 75ppb standard.”
But the group is not committing to a specific level of the NAAQS it is comfortable with for the time-being, while it weighs its written comments to the agency, Sierra Club sources told Inside EPA.
Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute (API) is pushing for a significantly weaker NAAQS, and also a possible shift in the form of the NAAQS. “API continues to assert a standard of 75 ppb is more stringent than necessary to protect public health because it is conservatively based on protection from 5-minute SO2 concentrations of 200 ppb and higher whereas 400 ppb and higher is an appropriate level,” API Senior Policy Advisor Ted Steichen said.
API is pushing EPA to set the standard no lower than 150 ppb should it keep the existing form. But if the agency does keep the existing 75 ppb level, API wants EPA to shift away from a 1-hour daily maximum standard to a different hourly form not dependent on daily maximum levels. Indeed, EPA should probably make such a change “regardless” of the level of the standard, API says.
EPA is taking written public comment on its proposal until Aug. 9.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-oil-sector-spar-over-epa-plan-retain-so2-naaqs
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Group Launches Lobbying Blitz for Action Against Warming
Jul 11, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
Kids and adults in bright red T-shirts are charging to Capitol Hill today to demand climate action from members of Congress.
The lobbying effort, organized by the public health group Moms Clean Air Force, will include 90 meetings with senators and representatives from 30 different states, said spokeswoman Sasha Tenenbaum.
The event comes as the Trump administration has sought to unravel rules aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, including standards on power plants, vehicles and landfills. The group has been a ubiquitous presence at EPA hearings since the beginning of president's term, protesting the changes.
Moms Clean Air Force started the day with its fifth annual "play-in" on the National Mall. The family-friendly event featured games and music for kids, along with brief remarks from the House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and other members of Congress.
Kristin Mink, the teacher who asked former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to resign in an encounter that went viral on social media, was also in attendance.
Pelosi congratulated the group for helping push out Pruitt and noted the role being a mom and grandmother had played in her own work in politics.
"The thing that motivated me to be involved in the political scene is that you can do many things for your children but you cannot have clean air, clean water unless you have responsible public policy," said Pelosi.
"Thank you for the fight you are making," she said. "The voices of moms, dads and parents is a priceless voice, it is a voice that will go against a green wave of money."
Booker compared the work of the Moms Clean Air Force to a long tradition of activism in the country.
"I hope to see you all with your red shirts around the Capitol, if you see me in the hallways, don't act like you don't know me, I hope I can get a hug or two," he said.
"We need to be giving each other courage, these are difficult times, but do not surrender to cynicism, do not despair," Booker added.
Pelosi and other lawmakers on her environmental messaging team are holding a forum this afternoon called, "People Against Polluters."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/07/11/stories/1060088793
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