Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - January 28, 2019
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(ACC Mentioned) Trickle Sideways? Trump’s Business-Friendly $1.5 Trillion Tax Overhaul Incentivized Corporations Into Changing Nearly Nothing
Jan 28, 2019 | CCN
By David Hundeyin
One year after one of the biggest tax overhauls in American history, a survey released on Monday has revealed that the tax cut has not brought about the anticipated huge changes to the investments and employment plans of... -
Two Years of Attacks on Science are Putting Public Health and Safety at Risk
Jan 28, 2019 | Union of Concerned Scientists
By Jacob Carter
Today, UCS is releasing the report “The State of Science in the Trump Era: Damage Done, Lessons Learned, and a Path to Progress.” This report is truly a culmination of the state of science in the Trump era to date. In it, we have detailed... -
EPA’s Chemicals Office May Get to Normal Work By Week’s End
Jan 28, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The staff in the EPA’s chemicals office may be able to return to reviewing new and evaluating the risks of existing ones by the end of this week, a former agency chemist told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 28. But it will take EPA months to... -
NJ Landfill Agrees to Accept PFAs-Contaminated Soil from Pennsylvania Military Base
Jan 28, 2019 | NJ Spotlight
By Jon Hurdle
A New Jersey landfill has agreed to accept a consignment of soil contaminated with toxic PFAS chemicals that are increasingly seen as a threat to public health and are being more tightly regulated by New Jersey and other states. -
Exposure at Young Age Leads to Poor Mental Health — Study
Jan 28, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
Exposure to lead at a young age could have long-term consequences for mental health and personality traits, according to new research. Millions of people were exposed to high levels of lead during the 50-year peak period of its... -
No Longer Able to Rely on the EPA, DEQ Turns to NC Policy Collaboratory for PFAs Testing in Drinking Water
Jan 28, 2019 | The Progressive Pulse
By Lisa Sorg
With the EPA hamstrung by the government shutdown, the NC Department of Environmental Quality has asked the NC Policy Collaboratory to sample drinking water for 26 types of perfluorinated compounds. DEQ samples weekly at five... -
Why Makeup Brands Are Shifting Towards Natural Beauty Products
Jan 27, 2019 | BeautyMatter
By Kelly Kovack
There are over 13,000 chemicals found in cosmetics beauty products, and 90% have never been cleared by the FDA. Some of these chemicals have been proven to cause serious health risks, including cancer and infertility. -
Trump Rollbacks for Fossil Fuel Industries Carry Steep Health, Environmental Costs
Jan 28, 2019 | AP (In the Denver Post)
By Matthew Brown
As the Trump administration rolls back environmental and safety rules for the energy sector, government projections show billions of dollars in savings reaped by companies will come at a steep cost: more premature deaths and... -
New Technology Boosts Alaska Oil Resources: Fuel for Thought
Jan 28, 2019 | Platts
By Tim Bradner
Rapid technology advances are allowing explorers and producers in Alaska to add hundreds of millions of barrels of new resources to portfolios at a cost competitive with finding oil in the Lower 48 states. Chief among the technologies... -
How the Shutdown Hamstrung Agency's Giant Grant Machine
Jan 28, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
With the partial government shutdown over, EPA's work is just beginning. The agency reopened today with thousands of its employees returning to work. Among their backlog will be rebooting EPA's massive grant-making apparatus... -
'Uncertainty Is ... Stressful' as Staff Return Post-Shutdown
Jan 28, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
EPA employees returned to work today after the partial government shutdown that closed the agency came to an end. As staff filed into EPA headquarters this morning, their mood was mixed — elated to be getting back to work but... -
Ewire: EPA Staff Resume Work Under Stopgap Funding Measure
Jan 28, 2019 | Inside EPA
EPA and the multiple other agencies that were subject to the longest government shutdown in the country's history are getting back to work today, but staff now must play catch-up on a month's worth of lost productivity with the prospect... -
Oregon Poised to Cap Carbon Pollution
Jan 28, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Erica Morehouse
Federal climate action is in an indefinite holding pattern with a serious risk of major backtracking; but the good news is that non-federal climate action has continued, with states, cities and businesses gearing up to take big strides... -
The New Language of Climate Change
Jan 28, 2019 | Politico Magazine
By Bryan Bender
Leading climate scientists and meteorologists are banking on a new strategy for talking about climate change: Take the politics out of it. That means avoiding the phrase “climate change,” so loaded with partisan connotations as it is.
Industry and Association News
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Environment News
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Jan 28, 2019 | CCN
By David Hundeyin
One year after one of the biggest tax overhauls in American history, a survey released on Monday has revealed that the tax cut has not brought about the anticipated huge changes to the investments and employment plans of businesses across the United States.
In 2018, the Donald Trump-led administration effected a $1.5 trillion tax cut with hopes of increasing both job growth and investments, in line with its hotly-debated trickle-down economic philosophy.
The quarterly business conditions poll carried out by The National Association of Business Economists (NABE) however, shows that the vast majority of survey respondents have not changed their hiring and investment plans since the tax cut was passed. According to the survey results, the number of respondents who have not increased investments has actually gone up from 81 percent to 84 percent compared to the prior poll published in October 2018.
TAX SAVINGS FAIL TO TRICKLE DOWN
The corporate tax slash from 35 percent to 21 percent which took effect in January 2018 was marketed by the Trump White House as a business-friendly policy that would catalyze investment and job creation as well as increase business spending, resulting in overall economic growth and increased wages. According to the trickle-down theory, such tax cuts which put more money into the hands of investors and shareholders will result in increased business and personal spending, which will act as a boost for the economy.
Quoted by Reuters, President of NABE, Kevin Swift indicated that the exact opposite has taken place saying:
A large majority of respondents, 84 percent, indicate that one year after its passage, the corporate tax reform has not caused their firms to change hiring or investment plans.
A notable exception to the mean, however, was the production sector which returned a 50 percent increase in investments as well as increased local hirings compared to the pre-tax cut era.
In what looks like bad news for equity markets, the poll also revealed that business spending slowed down in Q4 2018 even though reports from the third quarter had indicated a mid balance. According to the survey, capital spending is at the lowest it’s ever been since July 2017 and the coming next three months are also not looking positive.
Swift who also doubles as American Chemistry Council’s chief economist said:
Fewer firms increased capital spending compared to the October survey responses, but the cutback appeared to be concentrated more in structures than in information and communication technology investments.
Compared to the third quarter, employment growth has spiked a bit with at least 33 percent of the respondents reporting increased employment at their companies – an improvement from the 31 percent reported in October.
https://www.ccn.com/trickle-sideways-trumps-business-friendly-1-5-trillion-tax-overhaul-incentivized-corporations-into-changing-nearly-nothing/
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Two Years of Attacks on Science are Putting Public Health and Safety at Risk
Jan 28, 2019 | Union of Concerned Scientists
By Jacob Carter
Today, UCS is releasing the report “The State of Science in the Trump Era: Damage Done, Lessons Learned, and a Path to Progress.” This report is truly a culmination of the state of science in the Trump era to date. In it, we have detailed the administration’s attacks on federal science and scientists during the past two years, highlighted successes that the scientific community and their supporters have had in pushing back against these attacks, and outlined a path forward for a new Congress to hold this administration accountable for these attacks.
Attacks on science are attacks on our health and safety
In the past two years, we have documented 80 attacks on science by the Trump administration. This large number makes it clear that these are not isolated incidents at this point, but a pattern that signifies that this administration is undermining science in the policy process.
In just two years, the Trump administration has done serious damage to science and science-based policies. They have rolled back science-based protections on air pollution, water pollution, chemical safety, and endangered species. They have excluded scientific staff and studies from the decision-making process. They have placed new restrictions on what science can be used in the creation of policy and put more political pressure on scientific researchers. They have appointed unqualified or conflicted individuals to lead key science agencies—or they have left these positions entirely vacant.
In our research, we also discovered that the Trump administration has conducted far fewer environmental reviews compared with the prior four administrations. During the administration’s first two years only 237 environmental impact statements were prepared. This record low means that there has been far less public input into federal infrastructure projects, and that this administration couldn’t care less about considering alternatives that may be more beneficial to our environment.
The consequences of these actions are real and dangerous. Lives depend on federal science and the enforcement of science-based laws. Through disbanding scientific advisory panels on the particulate matter and ozone pollutants in our air, more people will suffer from asthma attacks, cardiovascular disease, and lung cancer. In asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—against the advice of scientists—to reconsider its decision for the EPA to ban the dangerous pesticide chlorpyrifos, the administration is exposing children and farmworkers to serious health risks, including brain damage. By amending rules to the Toxic Substances Control Act as suggested by the chemical industry, more people will be exposed to dangerous chemicals like asbestos that cause, among other diseases, cancer.
There is a path forward to reverse this dangerous course
There is a new Congress in town as of January 2019. And with great power comes great responsibility. For the past two years, Congress has neglected its duty to hold the administration accountable to its responsibility of serving the public and making sure that Trump’s political appointees are following the rule and enforcing the law. It’s urgent that Congress put forth proactive solutions as soon as possible to protect the role of science in public policy—to safeguard the public.
We have outlined a path forward for Congress to reverse these attacks on science in our new report. What are our recommendations? I’ll list a few here.
Congress must pass a Scientific Integrity Act to defend federal science from political interference, and craft other proactive legislation to advance the use of science to protect the public. This Scientific Integrity Act should include, among other things, provisions that declare scientists’ right to review and ensure accuracy of public materials that rely on their work or use their name; that prohibit political appointees and communications staff from editing scientific content of official documents; and that declare scientists’ right to publicly express personal views.
Additionally, Congress must address the Trump administration’s sidelining of independent science advice from science advisory committees by bolstering the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Congress should, among other recommended provisions, ensure that party affiliations, political opinions, and other inappropriate criteria are not part of the selection process for these committees; clarify that scientists who exercise their rights as private citizens or receive government funding for scientific work should not be excluded from these committees because of concerns of bias; and codify the process used for committee formation.
These are only a couple of the many recommendations we outline to get federal science back on track. There is a lot of work to be done. Did I mention that in two years the Trump administration has attacked federal science and scientists 80 times?
Scientists are pushing back
While Congress has been largely silent on the Trump administration’s attacks on science during the past two years, scientists and their supporters have not. Advocates of federal science have been more engaged and vocal about attacks on science than ever before. They have called out the dangers that these attacks present to the public, demanded that the Trump administration stop these attacks, and urged Congress to take up proactive policy solutions that repair the damage done.
The science community and their supporters have participated in public events, comments, the courts and other avenues to limit the damage and contain some abuses of science in the Trump era. This group has seen great success in pushing back against these attacks on science. Concerted efforts by this group have helped block dangerous nominees to scientific leadership positions—such as Michael Dourson and Kathleen Hartnett White. The release of a suppressed report on contamination of a dangerous group of chemicals known as PFAS was made possible by pressure on Congress from advocates of federal science. And just after Scott Pruitt left his charge at the Environmental Protection Agency, this group of advocates blocked one of Pruitt’s efforts to create a loophole for high-polluting trucks.
When scientists get involved in the democratic process as constituents, they are an unstoppable force.
Keep the fight going
The Trump administration isn’t backing down. It seems that every week, we are helping push back against this administration’s anti-science agenda. But we know our efforts are worth this battle—the health and lives of people across this country depend on federal science. There is path forward with a new Congress to stop this administration’s sidelining of science, but continued and sustained engagement is required. I hope you’ll continue to march on with me—there’s a lot that we all can do.
It’s up to us to let our elected officials know that we care about what’s at stake when it comes to science-based policymaking, so that they step up their efforts to shine a light on bad actors and conduct investigations to hold agencies accountable. The Union of Concerned Scientists has many resources on how to effectively engage with their lawmakers. These resources include guidance on how you can schedule an in-person meeting with your lawmaker, craft a pitch for your lawmaker on a specific issue, and what to say on a call with your lawmaker’s office. To access resources on how to effectively engage with their lawmakers and more, please visit www.ucsusa.org/watchdog.
With a new Congress starting in 2019, we have a renewed opportunity to stand up for science. Join the scientific community in calling on Congress to investigate federal agency actions that undermine critical science-based safeguards. Sign the letter today!
https://blog.ucsusa.org/jacob-carter/two-years-of-attacks-on-science-are-putting-public-health-and-safety-at-risk
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EPA’s Chemicals Office May Get to Normal Work By Week’s End
Jan 28, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The staff in the EPA’s chemicals office may be able to return to reviewing new and evaluating the risks of existing ones by the end of this week, a former agency chemist told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 28.
But it will take EPA months to fully recover—and it will be even longer if another shutdown happens, said Richard Engler, director of chemistry at Bergeson & Campbell PC. The new stopgap funding measure runs out on Feb. 15.
Reviewing emails, updating passwords, figuring out how to pay staff, and identifying which contracts and contractor work assignments may have lapsed during the shutdown will be among the first tasks agency staff and managers will have to do, said Engler, who worked for 17 years in the EPA’s chemicals office prior to joining Bergeson & Campbell’s Washington office.
Chemical manufacturers’ requests to make new chemicals have been delayed since the shutdown began Dec. 22, and they are anxious to get those compounds into production, he said.
A critical question the agency’s new chemicals program will have to answer is how it will handle the ticking “clock” for the hundreds of new chemical notices that staff couldn’t address during the shutdown, Engler said.
By clock, Engler referred to the 90 days the original and amended Toxic Substances Control Act give the EPA to review the details contained in a form, called a premanufacture notice, or PMN, that companies must file before they can make a new chemical.
Chemical manufacturers want to know, for example, if their PMN was on day 70 when the partial government shutdown began, what day is that notice on now, he said.
Despite the anxiety companies understandably feel, “the more patient all stakeholders can be, the easier they will make it for the EPA to recover,” Engler said.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epas-chemicals-office-may-get-to-normal-work-by-weeks-end
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NJ Landfill Agrees to Accept PFAs-Contaminated Soil from Pennsylvania Military Base
Jan 28, 2019 | NJ Spotlight
By Jon Hurdle
A New Jersey landfill has agreed to accept a consignment of soil contaminated with toxic PFAS chemicals that are increasingly seen as a threat to public health and are being more tightly regulated by New Jersey and other states. Some environmentalists have expressed alarm at the decision and have called for the dumping to be halted.
The soil is from the former Naval Air Station at Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, where high levels of PFAS chemicals have contaminated public and private water sources, and where the Navy is removing the most highly polluted soil.
The material will be taken to a landfill at Rosenhayn, near Vineland in South Jersey. The site is operated by the Cumberland County Improvement Authority, which has agreed to take 4,500 tons of soil from the base and has determined that it meets the requirements of non-hazardous material even though it contains high levels of some PFAS chemicals.
The authority agreed in mid-December to take the soil, but it has not yet been delivered, its president, Jerry Velazquez, said on Friday. He said it’s not unusual to have a delay in delivery after a contract is signed but said in this case, it may be due to the now-ended federal government shutdown.
Velazquez said the landfill is double-lined, which guarantees that the chemicals in the soil will not leak into the nearby groundwater, as they have at Willow Grove and another military base nearby, contaminating the water and forcing utilities to install technologies that cut the presence of PFAS chemicals to levels that are designed to protect public health.
Planned dumping is ‘shameful’
Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, called the dumping “shameful” and dismissed the authority’s assertion that its lined landfill won’t leak. “All institutional controls fail at some point,” he said. “It’s called geology, it’s called physics.”
The man-made chemicals, formerly used in consumer products like nonstick cookware and flame-retardant fabrics, have been linked to some cancers, low birth weights, elevated cholesterol and other illnesses, and have become the focus of growing concern by regulators and public-health advocates as more becomes known about their dangers.
New Jersey last year became the first state to adopt a tough new standard for one of the chemicals, PFNA, and is considering similarly strict limits for two related chemicals. The chemicals have been found in more places and in higher concentrations in New Jersey than in many other states.
So the planned shipment of soil from within the 95th percentile of contamination at the Willow Grove base to a landfill in the state that has become a national leader in regulating the chemicals was greeted with consternation by some environmentalists.
“It is unbelievable that the military would think to rid themselves of the pollution they caused by dumping it on their neighboring state and that New Jersey would allow this contamination to be accepted, especially considering the known PFAS contamination with which New Jersey is already burdened,” said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and a longtime campaigner for tighter limits on PFAS.
Making PFAS contamination worse?
Carluccio called on New Jersey and Pennsylvania to halt the dumping, and to adopt regulations that would allow PFAS chemicals to be treated as hazardous chemicals.
“What the Willow Grove Base is doing is not cleanup, it is sleight-of-hand manipulation that actually makes our PFAS contamination worse,” she said.
At Willow Grove, the Navy plans to remove soil containing at least 1,027 parts per trillion (ppt) for the chemical PFOS, or more than 14 times higher than the 70 ppt health limit recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water. PFOS, which had the highest concentrations of any PFAS chemical at the site, is one of the chemicals that’s being considered for strict new regulation by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Like many other military bases around the country, Willow Grove is a major source of PFAS contamination because it used the chemicals in firefighting foam for decades.
Navy officials presented their plans to the December 12 meeting of the Willow Grove Restoration Advisory Board, a panel that invites public input to the environmental cleanup of military bases. They said then that excavation started in November and was due to end in January.
In fact, the excavation is now complete, and the soil has been stockpiled and covered at Willow Grove pending approval by the EPA for it to be moved to the Cumberland County landfill. That approval has not been given because of the partial government shutdown and may take several weeks to implement after the EPA resumes full operations, said William Franklin, a spokesman for the Navy.
Material ‘meets the criteria for non-hazardous soil’
Despite the high level of PFAS contamination, the soil consignment did not meet the landfill’s standards for hazardous material, and so was accepted, according to a letter from the authority on December 13. “I have determined that this material originating from the above-referenced site [the Willow Grove base] meets the criteria for non-hazardous soil and is acceptable for use as daily cover at the Cumberland County Solid Waste Complex,” Velazquez wrote.
Willie Lin, environmental coordinator for the Willow Grove cleanup under the Base Realignment and Closure process, confirmed the material was determined to be non-hazardous.
“The soil removed from the former NASJRB Willow Grove, has been characterized in accordance with the applicable regulations and does not meet the definition of a hazardous waste,” Lin said in a statement. “This waste profile and information supporting it, including the concentrations of PFAS in soil, was provided to the disposal facility as well as the U.S Environmental Protection Agency for their review and approval.”
He said the Rosenhayn landfill had been chosen because it has the permits to take the materials found in the soil, and because it was “the most cost-effective choice for the government.”
And he said the landfill had agreed to take about 1,000 tons more than the Navy’s estimate of the excavated amount to allow for additional weight if the soil turned out to contain more moisture than expected.
Just cleaning ‘the worst of the worst’
Hazardous waste is defined by the federal government as that which presents an imminent danger because of qualities such as explosiveness or corrosiveness, said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the DEP, which is not required to issue permits for the dumping of contaminated soil.
Even though the Navy is removing the most contaminated soil from the base, it likely contains a lot more of the material even if what remains is not as highly tainted, said Chris Crockett, chief environmental officer for the water utility Aqua which serves many communities in the area around Willow Grove, and has installed carbon filters in some of its wells to prevent its water supplies exceeding the EPA’s health limit.
“They’re just cleaning the worst of the worst,” he said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that the soil that’s below the 95th percentile doesn’t result in contamination. They took the really, really bad stuff away, which is a start.”
https://www.njspotlight.com/stories/19/01/27/nj-landfill-agrees-to-accept-pfas-contaminated-soil-from-pennsylvania-military-base/
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Exposure at Young Age Leads to Poor Mental Health — Study
Jan 28, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
Exposure to lead at a young age could have long-term consequences for mental health and personality traits, according to new research.
Millions of people were exposed to high levels of lead during the 50-year peak period of its use in gasoline, the '40s through the '90s. The study, which was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry last week, followed 579 children born in New Zealand between April 1972 and March 1973 — the height of the peak period — for more than 30 years.
It found that higher blood lead levels in the kids were linked to "greater psychopathology across the life course and difficult adult personality traits."
Researchers measured blood lead levels when the participants were 11 years old. They found that 94 percent of the participants had blood lead levels that were higher than 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood — the level that doctors today would say requires additional medical attention.
Most of these kids were not treated for lead exposure because those levels were considered normal at the time, according to Terrie Moffitt, the senior author of the study.
Previous research has established a link between lead exposure and intelligence, but the relationship between changes in personality and mental health after exposure to the heavy metal is less researched.
"Lead exposure decades ago may be harming the mental health of people today who are in their 40s and 50s," study co-author Jonathan Schaefer said in a statement.
Schaefer added it is "very likely" that similar results would be found in the United States and other countries that used similar levels of leaded gasoline at the same time.
As far as future prevention and intervention, Schaefer said the study suggests "if you're going to intervene on a group of kids or young adults that have been lead exposed, you may need to think very long term when it comes to their care."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/01/28/stories/1060118755
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Jan 28, 2019 | The Progressive Pulse
By Lisa Sorg
With the EPA hamstrung by the government shutdown, the NC Department of Environmental Quality has asked the NC Policy Collaboratory to sample drinking water for 26 types of perfluorinated compounds.
DEQ samples weekly at five facilities — Bladen Bluffs, International Paper, Northwest Brunswick, Pender County and the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s Sweeney plant — and usually sends those to the EPA for testing. However, because of the 35-day federal government shutdown, most EPA employees were furloughed and couldn’t conduct the tests at the agency’s Athens, Ga., lab. Over the past month, DEQ’s samples have been refrigerated to preserve them.
Even though the government reopens today, it’s expected the backlog of work could take weeks, even months, to plow through. And it’s possible the government could close again in three weeks if President Trump and Congress can’t agree on a border security plan.
Detlef Knappe of NC State University, who with an EPA scientist was the first to discover these compounds in the Cape Fear River and drinking water supplies, is leading the project.
Last year, the legislature budgeted $5 million for the collaboratory to award grants to more than 20 researchers within the UNC System to conduct PFAS testing and work on related research projects on the compounds in drinking water, air emissions — as well as ways to remove them to protect the public health.
Collaboratory Research Director Jeffrey Warren said the group will cover costs, estimated at $10,000 per month. That is equivalent to five samples at $500 each, per week for a month. The collaborators is awarding an initial $50,000 grant to Knappe to cover the two-month backlog, which started even before the shutdown, as well as sampling, through the end of April.
The EPA took as long as six weeks to analyze the samples and return the data. Warren said the collaboratory scientists could do that in half the time.
Duke University scientist Lee Ferguson has also offered to train a DEQ employee, especially hired to operate a mass spectrometer to do in-house PFAS analysis, on the equipment. The mass spec, as it’s known, is identical to the one Ferguson uses in his laboratory. He will set up the system, shaving six months to a year off the agency’s start-up time, Warren said. Duke University is not part of the UNC system covered by the collaboratory, so Ferguson will offer these services to DEQ for free.
https://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2019/01/28/no-longer-able-to-rely-on-the-epa-deq-turns-to-nc-policy-collaboratory-for-pfas-testing-in-drinking-water/
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Why Makeup Brands Are Shifting Towards Natural Beauty Products
Jan 27, 2019 | BeautyMatter
By Kelly Kovack
There are over 13,000 chemicals found in cosmetics beauty products, and 90% have never been cleared by the FDA. Some of these chemicals have been proven to cause serious health risks, including cancer and infertility.
After decades of ignoring the warning signs, some of the top makeup brands are finally making the switch to natural beauty products. This shift is not the result of a “change of heart” by the big brands. Consumers have simply become more aware of the risks and the demand for organic beauty products has soared.
Consumers have learned the significant health, moral, and environmental dangers of conventional makeup products. As a result, we are seeing a massive shift towards vegan or eco-friendly ingredients, and a tsunami of organic cosmetics hitting the market.
Here are the top 3 reasons for the transition from harmful chemicals to all-natural beauty products.
1. Organic Makeup Products Don’t Contain Harmful Ingredients
As stated earlier, the cosmetic industry is extremely unregulated. Over 80 percent of makeup products have not been reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration, and both men and women are exposing themselves to harmful chemicals.
Environmental Defense tested 49 different makeup items including concealers, powders, blushes, foundations, mascaras, eyeliners, eyeshadows, lipsticks, and lip glosses.
Their testing revealed serious heavy metal contamination in virtually all of the products:
● 96 percent contained lead
● 90 percent contained beryllium
● 61 percent contained thallium
● 51 percent contained cadmium
According to a study, the average woman uses 12 personal care products a day, containing 168 different chemicals. While most men use fewer products, they’re still exposed to about 85 such chemicals daily.
The toxic chemicals in beauty products are potential carcinogens and hormone disruptors and have been linked to cancer, infertility, Alzheimer’s, and a variety of other diseases. This harmful truth has caused controversy within the cosmetic industry. Consumers are now aware of hazards that they might be exposing themselves to and are opting for products that contain cleaner and healthier ingredients .
2. FDA Is Cracking Down on Toxic Makeup
In the past, the FDA didn’t have the resources to “routinely” test products or even to take regulatory action unless under extreme circumstances.
However, a new bill, coined the Personal Care Products Safety Act, could change that. As reported by ABC News :
“Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, introduced an amendment to the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act that would give the Food and Drug Administration more power and oversight to regulate the chemicals men and women slather on their bodies every day.”
The bill involves a system that requires product manufacturers to register their products and ingredients. It would also require the FDA to review five chemicals in cosmetic products each year in order to access their safety. The first set of chemicals recommended for testing include:Diazolidinyl ureaLead acetateFormaldehydePropylparabenQuaternium-15
Now that the FDA is routinely testing cosmetic ingredients and taking action against companies that are not in compliance with the law, more makeup brands are abiding by this law and are implementing healthier ingredients in their products.
3. Traditional Beauty Products Can Destroy the Environment
Toxic makeup products contribute to toxic pollution. The disposal of cosmetics is one of the primary causes of the contamination of fresh and ocean waters in developed nations.
For example, a chemical called P-phenylenediamine is a dangerous, coal tar-derived chemical most often found in lipsticks but also in dark hair coloring.
This chemical, along with many others, has a long-term effect on aquatic ecosystems. It destroys the animal plankton population, alters fish behavior, and can even cause death to a large number of aquatic species.
Cosmetics-related chemicals have been found in our public water supply, rivers, oceans, streams, lakes, agricultural soil, and even household dust particles. Livestock can also be exposed to these chemicals and suffer from reproductive, genetic, and developmental changes as well as many types of cancer.
Because of these reasons, makeup brands are catering to the needs of their consumers and providing them with organic makeup products that are as good for their skin as it is for the environment. Make sure you read the labels! And remember, if you can’t pronounce the ingredients that are listed, then it might not be safe to use.
https://beautymatter.com/2019/01/why-makeup-brands-are-shifting-towards-natural-beauty-products/
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Trump Rollbacks for Fossil Fuel Industries Carry Steep Health, Environmental Costs
Jan 28, 2019 | AP (In the Denver Post)
By Matthew Brown
As the Trump administration rolls back environmental and safety rules for the energy sector, government projections show billions of dollars in savings reaped by companies will come at a steep cost: more premature deaths and illnesses from air pollution, a jump in climate-warming emissions and more severe derailments of trains carrying explosive fuels.
The Associated Press analyzed 11 major rules targeted for repeal or relaxation under Trump, using the administration’s own estimates to tally how its actions would boost businesses and harm society.
The AP identified up to $11.6 billion in potential future savings for companies that extract, burn and transport fossil fuels. Industry windfalls of billions of dollars more could come from a freeze in vehicle efficiency standards that will yield an estimated 79 billion-gallon (300 million-liter) increase in fuel consumption.
On the opposite side of the government’s ledger, buried in thousands of pages of analyses, are the “social costs” of rolling back the regulations. Among them:
— Up to 1,400 additional premature deaths annually due to the pending repeal of a rule to cut coal plant pollution.
— An increase in greenhouse gas emissions by about 1 billion tons (907 million metric tons) from vehicles produced over the next decade — a figure equivalent to annual emissions of almost 200 million vehicles.
— Increased risk of water contamination from a drilling technique known as “fracking.”
— Fewer safety checks to prevent offshore oil spills.
For the Trump administration and its supporters, the rule changes examined by AP mark a much-needed pivot away from heavy regulations that threatened to hold back the Republican president’s goal of increasing U.S. energy production. But the AP’s findings also underscore the administration’s willingness to put company profits ahead of safety considerations and pollution effects.
The AP found the administration has sought to bolster the changes by emphasizing, and sometimes exaggerating, economic gains while minimizing negative impacts.
For example, when calculating future damages from greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants, the Trump administration looked only at U.S. effects, instead of globally. That drastically reduced the benefits of emission restrictions and allowed the administration to conclude the Obama-era rule was no longer justified, given costs to the coal industry.
In another instance, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to stop considering secondary benefits of controlling mercury emissions — namely reductions in other pollutants projected to prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths.
Last month, the AP revealed that the administration understated the advantages of installing better brakes on trains carrying crude oil and ethanol. Transportation Department officials acknowledged they miscalculated potential benefits by up to $117 million because they failed to include some projected future derailments.
In explaining its actions, the Trump administration said in some cases that the previous administration understated the price tag on new industry restrictions. In others, it said President Barack Obama’s administration had been overly expansive in how it defined benefits to society.
Michael Greenstone, a University of Chicago professor who served as chief economist for Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said the Trump administration was downplaying the health and environmental impacts of its actions.
“When you start fudging the numbers, it’s not that the costs just evaporate into thin air. We will pay,” Greenstone said. “They are reducing the costs for industries where pollution is a byproduct.”
The rules being targeted were largely crafted under Obama in response to climate change, the disastrous 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, massive releases from coal ash dumps and fuel train explosions.Administration: Negligible risks
Trump’s administration has stressed that savings for companies were greater than any increased perils to safety or the environment.
“We fully recognize every significant policy decision has a consequence and that those consequences can differ,” acting U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told the AP. “I think when you look at the track record, holistically, what you see is our deregulatory efforts are still pretty protective.”
The AP’s tally of savings was derived from government projections required under a 1993 executive order. Five of the rule changes are still pending.
On rules for toxic coal ash, offshore safety and refinery pollution, the administration said companies would save hundreds of millions of dollars with little or no added risk — an assertion former federal officials and environmental groups have disputed.
The potential industry savings were projected largely over the next decade.
Sectors of the coal industry see lifting costly rules as a matter of survival because demand has plummeted as utilities switch to cleaner-burning fuels.
For the oil and gas industry, with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue, the economic impact of the Obama-era rules was comparatively small. But they were vigorously opposed as restrictions on business.
“We need to make sure we’re putting together rules that are flexible enough to apply the latest, greatest technologies,” said Erik Milito, vice president for the American Petroleum institute. He said the group focused on whether rules make sense, rather than cost savings.
Critics say the impact on public health and the environment will be even worse than projected.
“I don’t think it’s well understood what the death toll of these policies will be for the American people,” said Paul Billings, of the American Lung Association.Obama climate agenda assailed
Two sweeping changes under Trump — the rollback of the Clean Power Plan that threatened to close many coal power plants and a reversal of plans to increase vehicle fuel efficiency standards — were centerpieces of Obama’s climate change actions.
Killing the power plan would save companies up to $6.4 billion, the EPA concluded.
The trade-off is almost 61 million tons (55 million metric tons) annually of additional carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. The administration calculated that those emissions carry a maximum of $3.2 billion in “social costs,” such as flood damage and higher air conditioning costs.
Since company savings outweighed pollution costs, the administration said scrapping the power plan was justified. That conclusion was possible largely because the EPA limited social costs to effects in the U.S., instead of globally as under Obama.
EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones said the analysis complied with a 2003 directive under President George W. Bush that said such reviews should focus on costs and benefits to people in the U.S.
Joe Goffman, a former EPA official who helped create the clean power plan and now at Harvard Law School, said the omission of international impacts “doesn’t track with reality” given that climate change is a worldwide problem.
The Trump administration also limited pollution cost considerations in its proposal last month on mercury emitted by coal plants.
When the mercury rule was finalized in 2012, the EPA projected up to $90 billion in benefits, including avoidance of up to 11,000 premature deaths from other power plant pollutants.
Now, the EPA says those benefits could not be considered because they are not directly tied to mercury reductions. The only benefits that should be counted, the agency said, were improvements to IQ scores as a result of less mercury exposure, valued at up to $6 million annually.
The National Mining Association had urged the change. Spokesman Conor Bernstein said Obama’s EPA misused the concept of secondary pollution benefits to justify its actions.
The rollback’s impact is unclear since utilities already have spent an estimated $18 billion on new pollution controls.Fuel standards and drilling safety
Some experts outside government take issue with the rationale for relaxing the fuel economy rule.
The Trump administration says reducing standards would save as many as 1,000 lives annually and spare consumers and car companies hundreds of billions of dollars on vehicles with higher gas mileage. To reach that conclusion, officials lowered estimates of how many vehicles people would buy.
But economists including from the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research say that assumption was fundamentally flawed, since looser standards would make cars cheaper and therefore increase demand. The economists said the government used misleading findings to wipe out at least $112 billion in potential societal benefits while falsely claiming its change would save numerous lives.
“Every change they made was made in the direction to make the standards look more expensive and the rollback to look cheaper and better,” said Jeff Alson, who worked 40 years at an EPA lab in Michigan.
Several rules reworked under Trump tie directly to worker and public safety.
The administration rescinded requirements for improved fuel train brakes after determining the costs to industry would be higher than previously calculated. It acknowledged more spills from derailments would likely occur.
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/01/28/trump-energy-sector-regulation-rollback/
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New Technology Boosts Alaska Oil Resources: Fuel for Thought
Jan 28, 2019 | Platts
By Tim Bradner
Rapid technology advances are allowing explorers and producers in Alaska to add hundreds of millions of barrels of new resources to portfolios at a cost competitive with finding oil in the Lower 48 states.
Chief among the technologies being used are advanced 3-D seismic and new data processing techniques, to define and map oil deposits in geological formations that have long been known, but were thought to be unproductive.
Companies are also using advances in horizontal drilling techniques to reach deposits.
In the last two years, over 1.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil has been found mainly in the west central North Slope and northeast National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, areas companies have explored for years.
New exploration and delineation drilling planned this winter is expected to add to newly discovered resources.
ConocoPhillips has been the most aggressive of the new explorers but independents like Denver-based Armstrong Oil and Gas, in partnership with Repsol, have made major discoveries.
Earlier this year Armstrong sold its 51% share of Pikka, one of its discoveries, to Oil Search, which is now project operator.
Pikka’s resources are estimated at 750 million barrels and Oil Search hopes to expand these to over 1 billion barrels after further drilling.
Willow, a major new discovery by ConocoPhillips, is now estimated to hold 400 to 700 million barrels. The company hopes to expand that but has also found 100 million barrels in a separate find, Narwhal, on state lands to the east.
“We believe we can now compete with shale oil producers in the continental US,” ConocoPhillips Alaska President Joe Marushack said.
“Coiled tubing” drilling
The Nanushuk, a formation covering an area along the Colville River and extending into the northeast NPR-A, is attracting particular interest.
The presence of more oil in these areas has long been known but companies’ confidence they can commercially develop what has been regarded as a marginal resource is now buoyed by rapid advances in horizontal drilling allowing drillers to tap deposits several miles from the surface location of a drill rig.
In “multilateral” wells, as many as five producing legs are drilled off underground from a vertical well to the surface, while in “coiled tubing” drilling, wells can be drilled with flexible tubing at far lower costs than with conventional rotary rigs.
ConocoPhillips has pushed horizontal production wells out to 27,000 feet, over five miles, and when a new specialized rig now being built begins service in 2021, lateral wells out to 40,000 feet, or seven and a half miles, will be possible, ConocoPhillips’ Marushack told a business conference in Anchorage last year.
What this means is that wells drilled horizontally from a single 12-acre gravel pad on the surface will be able to drain oil from 154 square miles of underground reservoir.
Lower capital costs, for barrels of oil developed, has allowed ConocoPhillips to reduce its minimum price threshold for new slope projects from $55 per barrel in 2015 to $42 per barrel now, the company told analysts in presentations last July.
Incremental expansion of existing fields can be done for even less cost, down to $30 per barrel, using technologies like coiled-tubing drilling, the analysts were told.
Some limitations
Independent Hilcorp Energy, another slope producer, is also harnessing a new technology with use of a polymer injection to increase production of thick, viscous oil in the Milne Point field, which is near Prudhoe Bay.
New technologies are also being tweaked. ConocoPhillips, in a new “pentalateral” well (five underground producing legs) in the West Sak viscous oil project has developed methods to access each of the producing legs for work without shutting down the others, company spokesperson Natalie Lowman said.
Some oil service companies have experimented with autonomous drilling units inserted underground to drill on their own, remotely controlled.
Ted Stagg, a retired senior BP drilling engineer in Alaska who helped develop horizontal drilling, said a limitation, for now, to how far wells can be drilled is the cost of recirculating drilling fluid, or “mud”, from the bottom of the hole to the surface.
This is needed to remove rock cuttings and to establish a down-hole pressure with the fluid, to counter any uncontrolled flow of oil or gas – known as a blowout in the industry.
https://blogs.platts.com/2019/01/28/new-technology-boosts-alaska-oil/
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How the Shutdown Hamstrung Agency's Giant Grant Machine
Jan 28, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
With the partial government shutdown over, EPA's work is just beginning.
The agency reopened today with thousands of its employees returning to work. Among their backlog will be rebooting EPA's massive grant-making apparatus, which is now saddled with missed deadlines, canceled meetings and piled-up applications.
The agency each year awards more than $4 billion — or about half its current annual budget — in grants to states, local governments and outside organizations. In a website notice, EPA acknowledges potential problems stemming from the shutdown and says it will work with "the grantee community" to extend application deadlines and address other issues.
Scott Clow, environmental programs director for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, told E&E News he doesn't envy EPA for its work ahead to recover from the shutdown.
"They are going to have to work extra hard this year. When they get back to work, they are going to hit it head-on," Clow said. "They are going to have to do more work in a shorter period of time."
Clow estimates the tribe receives between $600,000 and $1 million in grant money annually from EPA. That funding pays for the majority of the tribe's environmental work, such as monitoring air and water quality, assessing pollutants found on its reservation, and providing scientific analysis on environmental issues facing the tribe.
"Most of it. We have a couple of other grants that help pay for it, but that is the lion's share," Clow said.
Clow has been preparing to apply for EPA's State and Tribal Assistance Grants, which were delayed by the shutdown.
"We are a month behind the whole process because the funding notice has not gone out yet," Clow said. "The further along we get, the tougher it gets for EPA to get those funding agreements out the door and funded by the end of September, which is what needs to happen. The clock is ticking, and that's worrisome."
The magnitude of any shutdown-related hang-ups is so far unclear. Asked, for example, whether Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairwoman of the Appropriations subcommittee that helps set EPA's budget, had gotten any reports of issues involving Targeted Airshed Grants and other programs, a spokeswoman said last week she had no information to share.
The shutdown has left other tribes concerned about EPA funding considered vital for their environmental work. Gerald Wagner, the Blackfeet Nation's director of environmental programs, said the agency will be facing a backlog of grant work from the shutdown.
"I'm just curious at their ability to get these grant applications read, reviewed and funded. They're already backed up six weeks," Wagner said.
Wagner submitted one application to EPA during the funding lapse for a grant under Section 319 of the Clean Water Act, which was due last week. The grant, worth a maximum of $100,000, is key support for the tribe's environmental work.
Wagner sought guidance from EPA, only hearing back that grant deadlines would be extended, although the agency couldn't provide more details at that point. Wagner, who also serves as vice chairman of EPA's National Tribal Caucus, said at least one tribal meeting held by the agency was canceled during the shutdown.
"A lot of stuff that was planned was kiboshed," he said. "A lot of the meetings we were having, even the phone calls, were put on hold."
Wagner believes EPA might be releasing grant funds later than expected because of the shutdown.
"So instead of August, we might have to wait until next December before they release the funds," he said. "It just leaves you with that uncertainty."
Others found no one was in when they contacted EPA during the funding lapse. Laura Brion, executive director of the Childhood Lead Action Project, said she dialed into a conference call scheduled earlier this month by the agency to discuss an environmental justice grant that her Providence, R.I.-based group intends to apply for. Its closing date is Feb. 15 — the same day that funding from the latest short-term spending package to reopen the government will run out.
"We called in, and there was nobody on the other end. Not only did we not get the memo, but I don't think the memo got sent in the first place," she said.
Brion's group, which works to eliminate childhood lead poisoning in Rhode Island, has won the EPA grant before, which is worth up to $30,000.
"I used funding like this to leverage other dollars," Brion said. "It's close enough to support one full-time organizer in a region of the state, and it's a significant part of our budget."
Now, EPA's grantees are going to have to play catch-up, too. The agency can expect to be swamped with calls and emails this week from those waiting on grant funds across the country.
"I will probably be making a lot of phone calls to figure things out," said Brion, who has questions about EPA's environmental justice grant.
Wagner said, "On Monday, I don't know if they are going to answer any calls, because they are going to have so many."
Brion said she's glad the government has reopened but hopes lawmakers can secure long-term funding soon.
"Three weeks is better than nothing, but I think we deserve a whole lot more," she said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/01/28/stories/1060118765
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'Uncertainty Is ... Stressful' as Staff Return Post-Shutdown
Jan 28, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
EPA employees returned to work today after the partial government shutdown that closed the agency came to an end.
As staff filed into EPA headquarters this morning, their mood was mixed — elated to be getting back to work but worried that their return would be short-lived, given that the federal government is funded for only three weeks as lawmakers try to secure a compromise on border security.
One EPA employee outside headquarters reported being happy and excited post-shutdown, but also anxious.
"Definitely," said the employee when asked whether they were worried about the short-term spending package. "That it's only three weeks, and what can we accomplish in that time?"
Another EPA employee said staff felt "a little bit abandoned" during the shutdown. The bulk of the agency's staff, roughly 13,000 employees, were on furlough during the funding lapse.
"A little lost, not knowing what's going to going to happen next," said the employee, who added that the shutdown will likely only lead to more employees leaving EPA's shrinking workforce. "This is only going to fuel that, lead to more of that trend."
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler sent an internal email obtained by E&E News to welcome employees back to the agency.
"I know that the past month has been difficult. Uncertainty is very stressful," Wheeler said in the email sent last night. "Please know that each and every one of you and the work that you do was missed. The knowledge and expertise that each of you bring to this Agency is critical to protecting human health and the environment."
Wheeler said one of EPA's first actions will be to send back pay "as quickly as possible" to staff. He noted that the agency's payroll provider will process back pay this week and employees could start seeing those wages as early as Wednesday.
Using carryover funds, EPA remained open during the shutdown's first week, which took place between Christmas and New Year's Day. That meant staff received some pay, essentially half a paycheck, during the funding lapse (Greenwire, Jan. 9).
Wheeler also directed staff to EPA's website for the funding lapse for more information, including on employee counseling, paid leave and travel.
He said he was looking forward to the agency getting back to work "full swing."
"It's great to have you back!" Wheeler said.
Other top managers at EPA welcomed staff back today.
Jeanne Schulze, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 1003, which represents EPA Region 6 employees, said senior management greeted staff as they walked into work this morning. She also shared a letter from the Dallas office's leaders that said the shutdown kept staff from their work and "created unanticipated hardship."
"So it is time we roll up our sleeves, work side by side, and do what we do best — protect human health and environment in Region 6," said the letter, dated today and signed by Anne Idsal, the regional administrator, and David Gray, the deputy.
The agency began to rev back to life today, with its website carrying the banner, "The President has signed a continuing resolution, and EPA will be open on Monday January 28th." Agency staff expected to be swamped with calls and emails today, including on what is happening with grants and other assistance agreements (see related story).
Others were not as excited as EPA reopened. Mark Sims, president of the EPA unit of Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20, part of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said federal contractors will not receive back pay, while small businesses that depend on federal workers suffered "a huge and unnecessary hit."
"This whole pointless shutdown was a disgrace, especially for those who were forced to work without pay. I am completely disgusted by the disrespect shown the federal workforce by those who supported the shutdown," said Sims, whose union represents EPA Region 9 employees.
Some EPA employees said they do not want to go through a shutdown again. One endorsed legislation introduced by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) last week that would keep federal agencies funded, except for the White House and Congress, during a lapse in appropriations.
"I'm a real proponent of the 'Stop STUPIDITY Act,'" said the employee. That acronym stands for "Shutdowns Transferring Unnecessary Pain and Inflicting Damage in the Coming Years," according to Warner's office.
To mark the end of the shutdown this morning, environmental group Moms Clean Air Force greeted EPA employees as they exited the Metro to walk into headquarters. As activists handed out cinnamon rolls and valentines, they were greeted with some smiles and waves as well as employees saying "thanks."
Elizabeth Brandt, the group's Washington, D.C., field organizer, as well as her two daughters were part of the crew. She said she wanted EPA staff to know that they were appreciated.
"What we're hearing is that the staff at EPA feel that their work doesn't matter. It matters to me," Brandt said. "We're concerned about the policy direction of EPA, but we really appreciate the workers who do the work every day."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/01/28/stories/1060118757
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Ewire: EPA Staff Resume Work Under Stopgap Funding Measure
Jan 28, 2019 | Inside EPA
EPA and the multiple other agencies that were subject to the longest government shutdown in the country's history are getting back to work today, but staff now must play catch-up on a month's worth of lost productivity with the prospect of another shutdown looming in just a few weeks.
“It's a reprieve,” said Gary Morton, president of an EPA staff union, according to a Washington Post report about what is facing hundreds of thousands of staff who are returning from weeks of furlough. “But how much will we be able to accomplish before we have to start worrying about shutdown procedures again if they don't reach a deal?”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 25 signed legislation to reopen EPA and several other agencies until Feb. 15, while lawmakers attempt to reach a deal over border security funding. But he pointedly threatened to veto any bill that he deems unsatisfactory, a move that would spark yet another shutdown.
Democrats, who prevailed in their efforts to re-open the government without the precondition of funding Trump's signature border wall, appear unlikely to abandon this position in the coming negotiations. Republicans, meanwhile, appear to have suffered most of the political price from the shutdown and may be wary of repeating it.
The Post reports that EPA must update its enforcement database and various permit registries. It also must re-start efforts to certify new engines, with the shutdown slowing the roll out of at least one new vehicle, Fiat Chrysler's new heavy-duty work truck.
The longest shutdown in U.S. federal history, at 35 days, also halted a slew of EPA regulatory and legal actions, including rollbacks of Obama-era rules. Several federal courts also paused litigation over various agency policies.
When they get back to work, staff will also have to perform a range of mundane administrative tasks -- including chronicling how much of the shutdown they were on furlough or called in to work without pay, the Post notes.
Underscoring the uncertainty about a future funding lapse, staff also must wait until the end of this week to receive back pay that they have been promised.
As Inside EPA's Doug Obey reports in his story about the end of the shutdown, many environmentalists say the funding lapse caused major environmental damage by blocking a range of routine work that helps clean up or prevent pollution.
“For more than a month, Donald Trump toyed with the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of American families, causing untold damage to the economy, our environment and American families in his attempt to get more funding for his destructive border wall,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-epa-staff-resume-work-under-stopgap-funding-measure
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Oregon Poised to Cap Carbon Pollution
Jan 28, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Erica Morehouse
Federal climate action is in an indefinite holding pattern with a serious risk of major backtracking; but the good news is that non-federal climate action has continued, with states, cities and businesses gearing up to take big strides toward the commitments they have made on climate.
Oregon is one key state with a big opportunity for bold action in 2019. The state Legislature reconvened on January 22 and will consider a “cap and invest” bill that promises to place a firm limit on the state’s climate pollution while ensuring continued investments in resilient communities, green jobs and clean energy. Legislators are expected to release bill language by January 31.
On the cusp of success
Oregon is on the cusp of success with the pieces appearing to line up for a climate victory in 2019; but as any campaign veteran knows, some of the most critical make-or-break moments come in the final stretch. The Oregon Legislature has considered versions of a cap and invest proposal for several years with a big push for passage in 2018 with the Clean Energy Jobs Bill. The Legislature was unable to pass that bill during a short session; but laid the groundwork for the current 2019 effort.Leaders of both houses of the Legislature left their session vowing to make cap and invest a key priority in 2019. They also made a down payment on action by creating a Carbon Policy Office and devoting $1.4 million to staffing and analysis.
Gov. Kate Brown and many legislators won contested elections in 2018with climate action front and center of their campaigns. The message was clear: Oregonians know that climate change is already negatively impacting their state and demand action consistent with not only longstanding state climate commitments, but even more importantly with what scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Elected officials are talking the right talk so far and 2019 is the year to deliver.
What will cap and invest look like?
The full details of the legislative package are still being actively negotiated, but we know quite a bit already about how Oregon’s program will likely work. Legislators have been working on a framework that will place an enforceable limit on climate pollution from sources across the state. This limit will decline over time—resulting in an annual “budget” for greenhouse gases. Compliance will be facilitated through a flexible, cost-effective mechanism: “allowances” -equivalent to each ton of pollution in the budget – will be created, and each regulated source of pollution in the state will be required to surrender an allowance for each ton of pollution they put into the atmosphere.Oregon is developing a tailor-made approach for the state, with an eye toward linking to the Western Climate Initiative, a collaboration started in 2007 that included seven states (including Oregon) and four Canadian provinces. This linkage will enable low-cost carbon reductions through regional collaboration. California and Quebec are the current WCI members with active carbon markets and both have seen pollution decline and impressive economic growth since their programs launched in 2013.
Oregon’s program, like California and Quebec’s, will likely cover most sectors of the economy, including transportation fuels, industry, electricity and natural gas. A portion of the allowances will be given to Oregon businesses’ that face competitive pressures from out-of-state, while another portion will be likely auctioned with the proceeds going to further reduce greenhouse gases. These broad-brush design features have been staples of previous iterations of cap and invest in Oregon and are expected to be included in this year’s version.
Defining a movement
If successful, Oregon would be only the second state to set an economy-wide limit on climate pollution that covers all major emitting sectors. Oregon’s progress, along with movement in a few other key jurisdictions, could catalyze a national trend.Nine states plus the District of Columbia have also expressed a commitment to develop the policy to cap transportation emissions in addition to the power sector emissions currently capped by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Moreover, 16 states plus Puerto Rico have joined the Climate Alliance, committing to achieve reductions consistent with the Paris Agreement across their economies. A few governors have even begun the important and cross-sector work of translating those commitments into reality. For example, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has moved deliberately in 2018 to cap carbon pollution from the power sector, committed to developing the policy needed to cap transportation sector pollution, and is exploring regulatory action to cut methane emissions from gas operations.
With numerous incoming governors pledging to take big steps on climate, Gov. Brown’s focus on spurring an efficient, multi-sector policy across the finish line in Oregon—one that puts an enforceable limit on climate pollution and that is consistent with the scale of the challenge—provides a powerful template for what state level climate leadership ought to look like.
http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2019/01/28/oregon-poised-to-cap-carbon-pollution/
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The New Language of Climate Change
Jan 28, 2019 | Politico Magazine
By Bryan Bender
Leading climate scientists and meteorologists are banking on a new strategy for talking about climate change: Take the politics out of it.
That means avoiding the phrase “climate change,” so loaded with partisan connotations as it is. Stop talking about who or what is most responsible. And focus instead on what is happening and how unusual it is—and what it is costing communities.
That was a main takeaway at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting this month, where top meteorologists and environmental scientists from around the country gathered to hear the latest research on record rainfall and drought, debate new weather prediction models and digest all manner of analysis on climatic mutations.
Educating the public and policymakers about climate change at a time when elected leaders are doubling down on denying that it is happening at all or that humans are responsible for it demands a new lexicon, conference attendees told me—one that can effectively narrate the overwhelming scientific evidence but not get sucked into the controversy fueled most prominently by President Donald Trump.
The hope is to persuade the small but powerful minority that stands in the way of new policies to mitigate climate change’s worst long-term effects—as well as the people who vote for them—that something needs to be done or their own livelihoods and health will be at stake.
The new language taking root is meant to instill this sense of urgency about what is happening in ways to which everyday citizens can relate—without directly blaming it on human activity: The spring blossoms keep coming earlier; seasonal allergies are worsening and lasting longer; extreme heat is upending the kids’ summer camp schedule; crops are drying up or washing away at alarming rates.
And wherever possible, climate specialists told me, they are trying to explain the more frequent and deadly weather events in purely historical terms: These storms, these droughts, these dramatic fluctuations in temperature have previously taken place exceedingly rarely—once a century, or even once a millennium. But they keep coming.
“Is it humans or is it not? We really need to get beyond that,” Bernadette Woods Placky, an Emmy award-winning meteorologist who directs the Climate Matters program at Climate Central, told me. Climate Matters is tracking climate trends in 244 cities—including a steadily warming Phoenix. “We are still not getting enough people to talk about it in the ways that matter to human beings in their homes, in their communities, for their family,” she added. “So it is making those connections in ways that really matter to people. It’s a jobs story. It’s an agriculture story. Connect it to the farm bill; boom!”
The strategy is being increasingly employed in more conservative regions of the country, where climate doubt still runs deep—even if there are signs of cracks in the resistance thanks to the pummeling pattern of highly unusual and costly weather events.
“They see it firsthand,” Robert Mark Simpson, a professor of geography at the University of Tennessee at Martin, told me. “There is a sort of acknowledgment that the climate is changing. They just don’t think humans are that impactful. [They think blaming humans is] a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. economy.”
Simpson attended the conference at the Phoenix Convention Center to outline his three-year effort to educate farmers about climate change in western Tennessee and eastern Kentucky, where at some dinner tables the term remains a political curse word. Tennessee just elected a leading climate change doubter, Marsha Blackburn, to the U.S. Senate.
It’s a tall order. So, he is also trying another tack to reach the political and religious conservatives for which farming has been in the family for generations: warning that the family business might be in jeopardy—sooner than they might think.
“Will they be able to farm here 30 to 40 years from now?”
Another line of argument he has found to appeal to conservatives’ personal connection to nature.
“Many are hunters and fishermen. They are really tied to the environment,” Simpson said. He finds he can reach them by trying to tap into their belief that “we’ve been given stewardship” of the Earth.
But the political headwinds that he and others are up against—especially in red states where political leaders are unwilling to accept the scientific consensus that human activity is playing an outsize role in the changing climate—were on display last weekend.
As winter storms bore down on large swaths of the country, Trump took to Twitter to warn Americans to “be careful and try staying in your house. Large parts of the Country are suffering from tremendous amounts of snow and near record setting cold.”
Then the climate science doubter in chief concludedith: “Amazing how big this system is. Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!”
Meanwhile, despite the Democratic takeover of the House, and a new commitment to pass climate change legislation, some leading Republican doubters are still chairing major Senate committees with jurisdiction over climate policy. That includes Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the new head of the Armed Services Committee, which just received a Pentagon reportthat paints a dire picture of the effects of climate change on dozens of U.S. military bases in the coming years.
Nowhere is the challenge of convincing the doubters without being labeled a partisan or environmental zealot greater than in the ranks of broadcast meteorologists. Local TV weather experts were among the last holdouts in the scientific community to accept the consensus that humans are responsible for climate change—so much so that in 2014 then-President Barack Obama met with some of them as part of his effort to sell his environmental policy agenda.
“I think a lot of the broadcasters were concerned that there was such a political divide within the population and if they were very vocal of any aspect of climate change some subset of their audience would not view them with a level of trust,” Keith Seitter, a meteorologist and the American Meteorological Society’s executive director, told me.
Now, some 600 broadcast meteorologists, out of an estimated 2,200 in the United States, are working with Climate Matters to craft new ways to tell their viewers about climate change.
“I have changed my presentation a bit,” Jim Gandy, chief meteorologist for the CBS affiliate in Columbia, S.C., told me. “I used to start with the science. Now I try to show them how it is changing and then I go into why it is changing. That may be a more effective approach. I share the raw data with them that has not been ‘manipulated’ and it throws them for a loop.”
Even in viewing areas considered Democratic strongholds, talking about climate change can be risky.
“You have to be careful,” Bob Ryan, a longtime television meteorologist in Washington who was the first network meteorologist, told me. “If you get into policy you are getting into political quicksand. People don’t want to be lectured to. That doesn’t accomplish anything.”
So he too is in the habit of explaining related weather events in the context of how much more often they are occurring than in the past. “Ellicott City has had a number of 500-year flood events in recent years,” he cites as one example, referring to the Baltimore suburb.READ MORE
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The American Meteorological Society is trying to encourage this approach nationwide. “There has also been some very specific programs that have worked with target audiences—even in some deeply red states—about how do we message some of the science in ways that depoliticize it,” Seitter told me. “If you start talking about, ‘We are getting more rainfall than we used to; our climate is different than it used to be,’ that is different than saying humans are causing it. They’re not saying a whole lot of why on why it is changing but they are at least getting people to understand those changes are there.”
Gandy, who helped found Climate Matters in 2010, recounted a recent presentation he delivered at the Rotary Club in Columbia on the dangers of climate change and the need to take sweeping actions soon to confront it.
In attendance was Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican who hailed Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement in 2017, referring to it as an example of “globalist regulatory policies which seek to hamper American business.”
Wilson remained for the entire presentation before leaving. One of Wilson’s aides came up to Grandy afterward to congratulate him on the presentation, saying he very much enjoyed it.
“I don’t know what he thinks about climate change, though,” Grandy told me of the Wilson aide.
That interaction, of course, highlights a fundamental question about this new lexicon of climate change: Even if opponents like Wilson can be convinced it is really happening, don’t they also need to be convinced that humans are the major cause in order to adopt the right policies to address it?
I asked Grandy that question. He believes recognition is just Step One and hopes that once doubters see climate change as the dire threat it is, it will be easier for them to get on board with the only solutions believed to be able to rein it in: phasing out fossil fuels and scaling back our carbon footprint.
After all, he said, climate change “is happening whether they like it or not. If they ignore it, it is still going to happen.”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/27/climate-change-politics-224295
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