U.S. envoy to U.N. will go to Vienna to review Iran nuclear activities – U.S. official,Michelle Nichols, UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) 10 Aug 17, – U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley will travel to Vienna later this month to discuss Iran’s nuclear activities with U.N. atomic watchdog officials, a U.S. official said on Wednesday, as part of Washington’s review of Tehran’s compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal
The official told Reuters that Haley, a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, would meet with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials and the U.S. delegation in Vienna to further explore the extent of Iran’s nuclear activities.
In April, Trump ordered a review of whether a suspension of sanctions on Iran related to the nuclear deal was in the U.S. national security interest. He has dubbed it “the worst deal ever negotiated.”
Most U.N. and western sanctions were lifted 18 months ago under a deal Iran made with world powers to curb its nuclear program. It is still subject to a U.N. arms embargo and other restrictions, which are not technically part of the deal.
The IAEA polices restrictions the deal placed on Iran’s nuclear activities.
Under U.S. law, the State Department must notify Congress every 90 days of Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal. The next deadline is October and Trump has said he thinks by then the United States will declare Iran to be noncompliant……..
A PUBLIC sector department has told employees to cease using the term ‘climate change’ and opt for other more benign words instead. Benedict Brook@BenedictBrook, news.com.au , 8 Aug 17 GOVERNMENT employees in the US have been given a dictionary of accepted words to use — and “climate change” isn’t one of them.
In a directive reminiscent of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where people were only allowed to communicate in an ever diminishing language called “newspeak”, employees of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to ditch the word “climate change”.
They should use “weather extreme” instead.
The clampdown comes as President Donald Trump further distances the US from global moves to limit global warming. Last week, the US formally announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
In a series of emails received by the Guardian, the director of the USDA’s soil health department, Bianca Moebius-Clune, listed terms that should be avoided and the alternatives to be used instead.
As well as giving climate change the flick, staff were told to avoid the term “climate change adaptation” and instead opt for “resilience to weather extremes”.
When talking about the cause of climate change, sorry “weather extremes”, saying people should “reduce greenhouse gases” is a big no-no. Rather, staff should talk in favour of “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency”.
The email was dated 16 February but has only just come to light.
However, far from being a politically motivated reaction against the science of climate change, the instructions to staff may instead be a way for the Government department to continue its work without ruffling feathers in a White House averse to discussing global warming.
In the missive, Ms Moebius-Clune said that, “we won’t change the modelling, just how we talk about it — there are a lot of benefits to putting carbon back in the soil, climate mitigation is just one of them”.
The Guardian report added that public relations staff from the USDA had advised departments should “tamp down on discretionary messaging right now”.
The USDA denied it was limited discussion of climate change.
In a statement, the department said, “this guidance, similar to procedures issued by previous administrations, was misinterpreted by some to cover data and scientific publications.
Al Gore: We’re working around Donald Trump on climate change, DW, 8 Aug 17 The former vice president turned environmental activist says that the US will stick to the Paris Agreement despite Donald Trump’s opposition. He also accused the current president of censoring scientific information.
The 69-year-old environmental activist was in Berlin to preview “An Inconvenient Sequel,” a follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth” about global warming. Citing the axiom from physics that “for every action there is an equal counter-reaction,” Gore said that Trump’s election had galvanized and energized environmentalists in the US.
“The good news is that we are working around [Trump],” Gore said. “The US is going to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement, regardless of what Trump says or does or tweets. He has isolated himself.”
Gore added that the majority of Republican voters in the US think that the country should have stayed in the Paris agreement. In perhaps the most unlikely scene in the film, Gore visits the Republican mayor of a town in the most conservative part of Texas, which had just completely gone over to using renewable energy sources. And that’s not the only example of Americans acting locally.
“In his speech on June 1, President Trump said that he was elected to represent Pittsburgh and not Paris,” Gore related with a smile. “And the next day the mayor of Pittsburgh said ‘Well, we’re still in the Paris Agreement.'”……
The former vice president took the current US president to task for suppressing scientific evidence and accused him of blocking a report, drawn up by scientists every four years, which concluded the earth is already feeling the effects of human-caused climate change. Excerpts from a draft of the report, which was leaked to the New York Times newspaper, were published on Monday.
A CONTROVERSIAL draft report on climate change that contradicts claims made by Donald Trump’s administration on global warming has been leaked. A DAMNING report on climate change that contradicts claims made by Donald Trump’s administration on global warming has been leaked, as scientists fear the President may suppress it.
“Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now,” the report said according to The New York Times, which acquired a draft copy of the report by scientists from 13 federal agencies.
The report says extreme heatwaves have become more common and extreme cold waves have less common since the 1980s. It says emissions of greenhouse gases will affect the degree to which global temperatures continue to rise — a claim President Trump and some members of his cabinet have disputed. One scientist cited anonymously by the Times says he and other researchers are worried that the Trump administration, which must approve the report’s release, will suppress it.
The report “directly contradicts claims by President Trump and members of his cabinet who say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain and that the ability to predict the effects is limited,” the Times said.
“How much more the climate will change depends on future emissions and the sensitivity of the climate system to those emissions,” a draft of the report states.
The report is part of the National Climate Assessment, which is carried out every four years, The New York Times reports. The National Academy of Sciences has signed off on the draft and is awaiting permission from the Trump administration for it to be publicly released.
The report also found that we would still experience at least 0.30 degrees Celsius of warming over this century compared with today, even if we put a stop to greenhouse gas emissions.
A small increase in global temperatures can lead to prolonged heatwaves, storms and the breakdown of coral reefs. The report found that surface, air and ground temperatures in Alaska and the Arctic are warming twice as fast as the global average.
“It is very likely that the accelerated rate of Arctic warming will have a significant consequence for the United States due to accelerating land and sea ice melting that is driving changes in the ocean including sea level rise threatening our coastal communities,” the report states.
The United States just announced Friday it would still take part in international climate change negotiations in order to protect its interests, despite its planned withdrawal from the Paris accord on global warming. Two months after President Trump announced the United States would abandon the 2015 global pact, his administration confirmed it had informed the United Nations of its “intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement” — a process that will take at least until 2020.
The United States is the world’s second biggest producer of greenhouse gases after China and its withdrawal was a seen as a body blow to the Paris agreement.
The accord commits signatories to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, which is blamed for melting ice caps and glaciers, rising sea levels and more violent weather events.
They vowed steps to keep the worldwide rise in temperatures “well below” two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times and to “pursue efforts” to hold the increase under 1.5 degrees Celsius
SC Attorney General sues feds for $100 million over plutonium left behind, BY JOHN MONK jmonk@thestate.com, AUGUST 08, 2017 COLUMBIA, SC
The South Carolina Attorney General’s Office announced Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit against the federal government seeking to recover an eye-catching $100 million it says the U.S. Department of Energy owes the state for failing to make good on a promise to remove one ton of plutonium from the Savannah River Site this year.
“A case of such magnitude has never been filed by South Carolina against the federal government,” a press release from the attorney general’s office said.
The press release said that Congress mandated that the U.S. Department of Energy would pay South Carolina $1 million per day, beginning Jan. 1, 2016, for every day the department failed to remove from the state one metric ton of weapons-grade defense plutonium. The requirement is in place during the first 100 days of each year from 2016 through 2021.
“The Department of Energy has failed to process or remove the plutonium or pay the state the $100 million owed for 2016 or 2017. This lawsuit seeks the recovery of the $100 million owed for 2017,” the press release said……http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article166008462.html
Friends of the Earth/Sierra Club will soon file a request that the hearing it garnered in response to a complaint filed on June 22 (Docket 2017-207-E) to be merged with SCE&G’s abandonment docket. The PSC issued an order on August 2 that positions on docket consolidation be filed by FOE/Sierra Club and SCE&G within 21 days.
SCE&G ratepayers already pay 18% of their monthly bill, averaging $27 per household, to pay for the failed nuclear project. Customers have been hit with nine rate hikes since 2009 to pay for the project in advance. Under SCE&G’s abandonment plan, that percentage of the bill would be increased, to pay for $2.2 billion in abandonment costs. SCE&G has presented a pay-back period of 60 years, meaning that additional billions of dollars would be collected by SCE&G, while no costs would be assumed by SCE&G and its shareholders.
Reflective of growing concern on the political level about the failed reactor project, leaders in the South Carolina Senate on August 4 requested a special legislative session to discuss SCE&G’s failed project. The attorney general of South Carolina followed by also submitting a letter to the legislature in support of such a legislative session and requested that any additional rate hikes to pay for abandonment be delayed while an investigation is proceeding.
COLUMBIA, S.C. – In an effort to protect ratepayers and advocate for alternative energy, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club today filed a formal intervention against a proposal from South Carolina Electric and Gas (SCE&G) to abandon its troubled nuclear construction project and charge ratepayers $2.2 billion over the next 60 years to pay for the failed project.
The plan, filed on August 1 by SCE&G with South Carolina Public Service Commission (PSC), abandoned the problem-plagued V.C. Summer reactor construction project. (See Docket 2017-244-E.) The project was abruptly halted on July 31 after continuous formal opposition by Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club since 2008.
“Due to growing pressure from the public and legislators, the PSC will not be able to simply rubber stamp passing the cost onto SCE&G’s ratepayers,” said Tom Clements, senior adviser with Friends of the Earth. “We will fight this unjust plan and make sure that the company and its shareholders are put on the financial hook for the bad decisions made by SCE&G since 2008. It is simply unacceptable that SCE&G customers, who will not get any benefit after paying into the project since its inception, will now be stiffed with all of the costs while SCE&G walks away unscathed.”
The Friends of the Earth/Sierra Club intervention petition, filed by well-known South Carolina environmental lawyer Bob Guild, requests that the PSC review the imprudence of decisions related to the project, that reparations be made to SCE&G customers and that “available least cost efficiency and renewable energy alternatives,” as advocated by the groups now be pursued.
The hearing earlier granted to Friends of the Earth/Sierra Club on the project will likely now be consolidated with the abandonment docket, giving the organizations the right to review past cost overrun decisions, chronic schedule delays and repayment to customers for money wasted by SCE&G.
The abandonment petition filed by SCE&G included a suggested November date for a hearing on the matter, but in an unprecedented move late on the evening of Friday, August 4, the PSC’s chief clerk rejected the hearing dates. As pressure grows on how the PSC failed to properly monitor the project, no new dates have been set for the abandonment hearing.
The next step in the process will be for the PSC to approve the Friends of the Earth/Sierra Club intervention, which will then enable discovery to be filed for internal SCE&G documents. In particular, the groups want to learn what SCE&G knew about the bankruptcy of the reactor design company Westinghouse, filed on March 29, and if the PSC was informed by the company about what it knew.
Friends of the Earth is the U.S. voice of the world’s largest grassroots environmental network, with member groups in 77 countries. Since 1969, Friends of the Earth has fought to create a more healthy, just world.
Plutonium detected in air near public Highway 240 at Hanford, BY ANNETTE CARY, acary@tricityherald.com, AUGUST 08, 2017 Radioactive plutonium and americium have been found in air samples collected at the Rattlesnake Barricade just off public Highway 240, where workers enter the secure area of the Hanford nuclear reservation, according to the state Department of Health.
Air samples were collected by the Department of Health on June 8, the day that workers at the Plutonium Finishing Plant were ordered to take cover indoors because of an airborne release of radioactive particles during demolition of the highly contaminated facility.
Analysis results for the air samples were received Monday, Department of Health officials said at a Hanford Advisory Board committee meeting Tuesday in Richland.
US Government department tells staff to not use term ‘climate change,A PUBLIC sector department has told employees to cease using the term ‘climate change’ and opt for other more benign words instead. Benedict Brook@BenedictBrook, news.com.au , 8 Aug 17,
In a directive reminiscent of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where people were only allowed to communicate in an ever diminishing language called “newspeak”, employees of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to ditch the word “climate change”.
They should use “weather extreme” instead.
The clampdown comes as President Donald Trump further distances the US from global moves to limit global warming. Last week, the US formally announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
In a series of emails received by the Guardian, the director of the USDA’s soil health department, Bianca Moebius-Clune, listed terms that should be avoided and the alternatives to be used instead.
As well as giving climate change the flick, staff were told to avoid the term “climate change adaptation” and instead opt for “resilience to weather extremes”.
When talking about the cause of climate change, sorry “weather extremes”, saying people should “reduce greenhouse gases” is a big no-no. Rather, staff should talk in favour of “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency”.
The email was dated 16 February but has only just come to light.
However, far from being a politically motivated reaction against the science of climate change, the instructions to staff may instead be a way for the Government department to continue its work without ruffling feathers in a White House averse to discussing global warming.
In the missive, Ms Moebius-Clune said that, “we won’t change the modelling, just how we talk about it — there are a lot of benefits to putting carbon back in the soil, climate mitigation is just one of them”.
The Guardian report added that public relations staff from the USDA had advised departments should “tamp down on discretionary messaging right now”.
The USDA denied it was limited discussion of climate change.
In a statement, the department said, “this guidance, similar to procedures issued by previous administrations, was misinterpreted by some to cover data and scientific publications.
Climate change is turning cities into harsh, sweltering hotspotshttp://grist.org/article/climate-change-is-turning-cities-into-harsh-sweltering-hotspots/By Brian Kahnon Aug 5, 2017Tina Johnson has a sense of place. She’s a fourth-generation New Yorker who lives in the same apartment in West Harlem’s Grant housing development that her grandparents lived in. She calls that apartment her anchor, and the nine buildings that make up the development towering above 125th Street — home to roughly 4,400 residents spread across nine high rises — a small town.
“I have fond memories [of here] and this sense of belonging I want my children to have,” she said.
To keep that sense of place is going to take some work, though. Changes outside that “small town” nestled in a city of 8 million will only compound the stresses altering West Harlem..A mix of poverty, a lack of services, and aging infrastructure already make West Harlem one of the most vulnerable communities in Manhattan.
Climate change is putting further stress on Johnson and the 110,000 people that call the neighborhood home. And the biggest threat is rising temperatures.
As carbon pollution turns up the planetary heat, the impact is clearest on what’s happening to extremely hot days: They’re becoming more common and more intense.
New York has averaged three days above 95 degrees F over the past 20 years. If carbon pollution continues on its current trend, by 2075 that number is likely to increase to 31, according to a new Climate Central analysis.
Myriad cities across the country will be far worse off, though. Atlanta is projected to see 69 days above 95 degrees F, Boise could spend 80 days above that threshold, while Dallas is on track to have 140 days above 95 degrees F. Then there’s Phoenix, where residents may have to contend with more than half of the year above 95 degrees F (163 days in case you’re wondering).
Many small towns will suffer even more. Alva, Florida (population 2,182) could see 142 days above 95 degrees F while Salton City, California (population 3,763) could have to cope with a mind-bending 203 days where the mercury tops out at 95 degrees F or higher.
The biggest factor in the number of future hot days is how fast the world reins in carbon pollution today. However, even if emissions are dramatically cut, every place across the U.S. will face more hot weather.
But extreme heat is hardly some far-off problem for 2100. It’s already taking a toll on people and influencing the decisions they make.
For Johnson, living in public housing means paying a surcharge of $18 per month to keep air conditioning in her apartment. Her grandparents didn’t believe in getting an air conditioner both because of the cost and a “tough it out” attitude. Johnson herself used to tease her kids when they complained it was too hot, but she finally relented, especially as warm weather has become more common in New York.
“When I was growing up here, I knew the summer was going to be hot,” she said. “There might be some hot days, but there was a regular pattern of it getting really hot the first weeks of August and then summer would start to peter out. Now it’s harder to predict the weather.”
But because of New York City Housing Authority rules and antiquated wiring, she can only have two air conditioners in her apartment. In hot months, that effectively turns her three-bedroom apartment into a two-room apartment.
Johnson spends her summers sleeping in the living room with her two sons. Her 20-year-old daughter gets a small portable unit to herself and a series of fans to stay cool, but family tensions tend to bubble up more in the summer without enough space for everyone.
Access to adequate air conditioning isn’t just about maintaining family relationships, though. Staying cool can be a matter of life and death. In New York, that heat sends 450 people to the emergency room and kills 121 people directly or indirectly on average each year. A study published last year by Columbia University researchers showed that the city could see 3,331 heat-related deaths by 2080.
It will take more than air conditioning to make West Harlem a safe, habitable neighborhood if carbon pollution continues to rise.
Cutting carbon pollution will help mitigate some of the heat stress, but cities and towns across the country will have to act soon to protect citizens and the infrastructure and services upon which they rely.
New York just unveiled a $100 million plan to kickstart that preparation. It focuses on the most vulnerable areas like Harlem, the South Bronx, and other underserved neighborhoods.
“We know we can’t do business as usual dealing with heat impacts,” Kizzy Charles-Guzman, the deputy director of the New York Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency, said. “We need to prepare now.”
There’s a layer of urgency for cities like New York. Summer days in the city are up to 14 degrees F hotter than rural areas due to the urban heat island effect, a byproduct of all the pavement in cities trapping more heat than trees and fields. But there are heat islands within heat islands. Where Johnson lives in Harlem is one of them, underscoring that climate adaptation is as much a social justice issue as one of engineering and infrastructure (it’s also a problem playing out throughout the world).
In Midtown Manhattan, air conditioners keep office buildings cool, but they release heat into the surrounding air. Breezes from the south whisk that air into Harlem and the South Bronx, intensifying the heat island effect there.
For Johnson and thousands of others suffering with limited or no air conditioning, it’s adding injury to insult. A constellation of groups including WNYC public radio and WE ACT, a local environmental justice nonprofit, put together a pioneering study dubbed the Harlem Heat Project last summer. They put thermometers in 30 Harlem residents’ apartments and found that the temperature indoors frequently exceeded the ambient air temperature outdoors, particularly at night.
Building walls throbbed with heat they had absorbed throughout the day, radiating into homes and making sleeping and recovery from the day’s heat near impossible. That puts particular stress on elderly, the young, and the infirm. Those conditions are also partly why Johnson, who has lupus and can’t spend much time outdoors, decided to install air conditioning.
“The communities that will be hardest hit by climate change are already the most vulnerable to environmental pollution and inequity,” Peggy Shepard, executive director of WE ACT, said. “Heat exacerbates asthma, other respiratory problems, and cardiovascular disease.”
“It puts stress on the family and the house,” Johnson said.
To help ease some of the heat, New York’s $100 million plan will cover a host of initiatives, from planting trees and painting roofs white to cut the heat island effect, to connecting neighbors so that the elderly aren’t forgotten when the mercury skyrockets.
The latter idea holds particular promise, as it’s a low-cost program that could achieve major results. Charles-Guzman, the deputy director at the New York Mayor’s Office, said what happened in the wake of Sandy is a textbook example.
“The neighborhoods where everybody knew each other, those neighborhoods did better [with recovery],” she said. “Not everyone wants a city worker knocking on their door. There’s low trust in government. We’re trying to capitalize on social ties people have with their neighbors.”
It’s tempting to peg New York as an outlier. After all, it’s a massive city with a vibrant economy in a deep blue state. But adapting to extreme heat is hardly the purview of rich, liberal cities.
Across the country, cities and towns of all shapes, sizes, and political persuasions are reckoning with increasingly hot weather.
In Las Cruces, New Mexico, a city of 120,000 that sits in the shadows of the Organ Mountains, city planners are preparing residents for the even hotter future that climate change will bring.
At the town’s core is a clutch of low-slung adobe buildings punctuated by acres of parking lots that shimmer in the summer heat. Houses on the fringe of downtown blend with the desert dust and dead lawns that make up their front yards. Beyond that, the city tapers into the desert scattered with ocotillo, yucca, and sagebrush.
The harsh landscape is a product of the sweltering, dry conditions that overtake the southern tier of New Mexico each summer. Even though it’s less dense than New York, trees cover just 4.5 percent of Las Cruces. On days when the temperature tops out above 108 degrees F as it did earlier this summer, that translates to an intense heat island and very little shade for those braving the outdoors. The city is projected to see 64 days above 105 degrees F by 2100, up from just a single day in an average year.
Like New York, Las Cruces is considering how to improve neighborhood awareness as a means to battle more extreme heat. But rather than focusing solely on checking in on neighbors when summer temperatures are at their hottest, city planner Lisa LaRocque said she has a vision to get neighbors helping each other with home repairs that can help keep things cool indoors.
“One of our goals is social cohesion and having neighbors help each other and know each other and create that bonding that might not otherwise occur,” she said. “[One idea is] if we are doing some of the low-hanging fruit of improving energy efficiency, we would do it as a neighborhood cooperative situation where I help you with x and someone else helps me with y.”
About 450 miles to the west of Las Cruces, city planners in San Angelo, Texas, have already glimpsed their future and are weighing how to respond. The city of 100,000 had 100 days above 100 degrees F in 2011, an outlandishly hot year for the city. But that outlandishly hot summer could be routine if carbon pollution isn’t curbed. San Angelo is projected to have 110 days above 100 degrees F by 2100. That’s the equivalent of running from the beginning of May through the end of September with daily temperatures near triple digits (to make matters worse, 39 of those days are projected to top out at 110 degrees F or higher).
That makes the job of city planners in cities like San Angelo that much more important. When AJ Fawver, a city planner, convened a series of meetings to discuss how extreme weather affected basic city functions, managers were skeptical about why they were in the room together.
“Initially, there was a feeling it only affects certain types of people,” Fawver said. “But really it affects everyone. You could see that as we went around the room,” she said, rattling off how firefighters, road crews, utility workers, and even the human resources department found they shared more heat-related woes than they first thought.
Weighing the impacts heat is already having on San Angelo makes the climate projections of what comes next all the more sobering. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe made the three-hour trip down from Texas Tech to talk with the group about what the future holds if carbon pollution isn’t curtailed. The findings painted a picture of relentless heat that will change the way the city functions and people live their daily lives.
“That was a reality check,” Fawver said. “People started thinking about their children and grandchildren and remembering how dreadful that summer was. Then it really hit home.”
San Angelo hasn’t yet decided how to tackle the hotter future that awaits it. But in a county where climate change isn’t a front-burner topic like it is in New York, the conversation is a major first step.
“The idea of climate change is still very controversial for some folks,” said Fawver, who is now the planning director in Amarillo, Texas. “There are people that just don’t want to have that discussion, people that question the science, a whole host of reasons why people want to avoid a conversation. But generally when we try to avoid a conversation, it’s a conversation that’s imperative to have.”
How Congress Is Cementing Trump’s Anti-Climate Orders into Law These efforts are mostly flying under the radar, but they could short-circuit lawsuits and make it harder to restore environmental protections. Inside Climate News, Marianne Lavelle 31 JULY 17,
How NRDC will fight Trump’s attack on our environment.
President Donald Trump marvels at his own velocity when he boasts about dismantling the Obama climate legacy. “I have been moving at record pace to cancel these regulations and to eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production, like never before,” he said at a recent White House event.
But while Trump focuses on speed, his allies in Congress appear increasingly concerned about the durability of the president’s fossil fuel directives.
In recent weeks, they have advanced a handful of legislative measures that echo and extend various presidential orders meant to boost coal, oil and gas production and set aside consideration of climate change.
These moves may seem redundant, but they could provide bulletproof armor during future challenges to Trump’s agenda.
“They are … covering their bases by trying to legislate the rolling back of these safeguards because the process to repeal, undo or rewrite a regulation is as lengthy as the public process that helped establish the standard in the first place,” explained Melinda Pierce, chief lobbyist for the Sierra Club. “And, of course, any attempt to roll back environmental or public health standards can and will be challenged in court.”
“The Trump administration is attacking every environmental and health protection we have,” said Sara Jordan, legislative representative for the League of Conservation Voters. “If these legislative proposals get passed, it will make it that much harder for the next administration to restore environmental protections.”
That’s why Congressional Republicans are racing to write his instructions into law.
“We need to put the legislative stamp of approval on what the Trump administration is doing,” said Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) during a recent debate on the House floor.
The House already has voted to fast-track Trump’s withdrawal of a clean water rule and to streamline future environmental reviews over cross-border pipelines like Keystone XL. Now, GOP members are pushing forward legislation to bolster Trump’s revival of federal coal leasing, and to bar government regulatory agencies from considering the future damages caused by greenhouse gas pollution.
‘A Very Slippery Slope to Government by Fiat’
The courts have already started chipping away at the Trump administration’s edicts. A federal appeals court ruled July 3 that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot simply suspend an Obama-era rule on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities. And a federal judge ruled last month that the Army Corps of Engineers had moved too hastily to permit the Dakota Access pipeline project, without considering environmental justice impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
Environmental groups, states, and tribes have planned or filed lawsuits over virtually every aspect of the Trump energy agenda. “We’re going to meet them in court, we’re going to sue them, and we’re going to prevail,” Mitchell Bernard, chief counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a video the environmental group produced.
But Congress could short-circuit that litigation strategy with measures like the provision passed by the House last week allowing withdrawal of Obama’s “Waters of the U.S.” rule without public notice, comment or any of the other requirements that apply to federal departments and agencies. The Trump administration already has begun rescinding the rule, which was written to protect wetlands from dredge and fill material and created new permitting and reporting requirements that the oil, gas and coal industry abhor. The rider that the GOP tucked into an $800 billion budget bill would hurry the repeal and reduce possibilities for legal challenge……….
These Efforts Are Flying Under the Public Radar
Most of the legislative proposals shoring up the Trump energy agenda originate in the House, and their fate is unclear in the Senate, which already has rejected an effort to undo Obama-era methane regulations by legislative fiat, and where appropriators are less tolerant of budget riders.
Still, Senate negotiators may feel pressured to go along with some provisions to pass budget legislation that would keep the government up and running after the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
Senate supporters of the Trump energy agenda already have introduced their own version of the “Ozone Standards Implementation Act” that the House passed on July 18. That bill would help EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt delay implementation of the Obama administration’s standards regulating smog emissions for a year. The House-passed legislation would give states until 2025 to comply with the revised standards and would change long-standing law to allow the EPA to revise the standards every 10 years instead of every five.
Both the NRDC and a coalition of environmental, health and labor groups have published online running tallies of budget provisions that affect regulations, but they lament that the Congressional efforts to cement the Trump agenda have not received attention while the health care repeal effort and Russia investigations crowd out media coverage.
With excessive heat warnings and temperatures reaching the triple digits from northern California through Washington state (places where air conditioning is far from a given), it’s a bit hard to fathom that this week should have been even hotter.
All-time records could have been set up and down the coast, if it hadn’t been for the thick smoke streaming down from more than 100 massive forest fires in British Columbia, about 500 miles north.
This interplay between fire and hot weather has inspired a bleak and eerie feeling for people in this part of the country. As climate scientist Sarah Myhre writes for Seattle’s alternative newspaper, the visceral experience of climate change in the future might feel a lot like it does this week in the Emerald City.
Hot temperatures increase evaporation rates and dry out the soil, resulting in even hotter temperatures. Drier weather makes wildfire more likely, and wildfires in a hot and dry environment can spark pyrocumulus clouds — freak thunderstorms borne literally of the heat of the fires themselves, whose lightning can spark new fires. (This actually happened in northern California on Wednesday.)
It’s no wonder it feels like a sneak peak at the end of the world.
It’s normally fairly dry this time of year from Sacramento to Juneau, but the last six weeks have been exceptional. This summer’s wildfires in British Columbia are the worst in more than half a century. If it doesn’t rain this weekend — and it’s not forecast to — Seattle will set a new a new all-time record for consecutive days without measurable rainfall.
In a normal year, Seattle reaches 90 degrees only three times. In this week’s heatwave alone, Seattle may reach that mark seven days in a row. In parts of southern Oregon, temps rose above 110 degrees this week even despite the smoke. And the latest forecast shows that the smoke might stick around for at least another week.
Overnight lows, in particular, were record warm this week — a classic signal of global warming. The changing atmosphere is effectively becoming a thicker blanket, preventing heat from escaping into space at night, making overnight temperatures warm even faster than daytime highs. That’s a worrying trend for public health.
At 1 a.m. on Thursday morning in Seattle, the temperature was still 77 degrees, equivalent to the average high for this time of the year. Without the smoke, the high on Thursday would likely have breached 100 for just the fourth time since weather records began in Seattle, back in 1894.
A new study out this week projected that, should global carbon emissions continue unchecked, more than 500 million people in South Asia alone could be subjected to heatwaves so intense by the end of this century that they could kill even healthy people that happened to venture outdoors.
That’s exactly what scientists mean when they say climate change could render parts of our planet uninhabitable. This week’s weather, as mild as it is in comparison, is yet another warning sign.
Kempner: Georgia Power’s nuclear tower teeters; EMCs ‘concerned’By Matt Kempner – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6 Aug 17,
Our bumbling aspiration in Georgia to build more nuclear power is looking suspiciously like that wooden block game, Jenga.
You know, the one where you take turns pulling out a block at a time, hoping not to topple the teetering tower.
How many pieces can be pulled out before Georgia Power’s nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle metaphorically collapses and takes with it billions of dollars in consumer money?
Some elected members of the Georgia Public Service Commission rushed to put distance between South Carolina’s project and the Vogtle one they green lighted and showered with love……..
PSC chairman Stan Wise pounded out a statement highlighting “the dissimilarities of these projects.”
A consultant for the Vogtle team concluded the project is “sufficiently similar to Summer Units 2 and 3 so that one could reasonably compare construction outcomes. This is proven by the fact that there are many similarities in the EPC contracts, generally the same primary plant equipment suppliers, similarities in construction milestone dates, similarities in construction contractors, and evidence that GPC and SCE&G have been and continue to collaborate on the design, construction, and training on these projects.”
Here’s a few more similarities: Both projects suffer soaring costs and stretched timetables. Also last week, Southern disclosed figures suggesting the total price of Vogtle may be close to double the original forecast. And the first juice won’t flow from a new reactor before February 2021 at the earliest, it said, more than a year later than the previous target.
There really are differences between the Georgia and South Carolina projects, though. One of the most important is that there are a bunch more players involved in — and at risk on — the Vogtle expansion.
And those are the blocks anyone wondering about the future of nuclear expansion in Georgia should be eyeballing. (Building nuclear plants is generally a group project to mitigate the massive risk. Because who would be so nutty as to try to do it on their own?)
Georgia Power is managing partner on Vogtle, with just under 50 percent of an ownership stake in the expansion. But also in the mix with almost a third of the ownership is Oglethorpe Power, which represents dozens of community electric membership corporations in Georgia. Most are at risk on this project, too.
The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, owned by bunches of small city power systems across the state, has nearly a quarter of the Vogtle ownership. And the city of Dalton has a small piece of the project.
Every one of those players has a different comfort (or fear) level on sticking with Vogtle. I suspect leaders of EMCs may be among the most nervous……..
Some other utilities limited their exposure to Vogtle early on.
MEAG, the body representing city utilities, sold rights (and cost responsibilities) for two-thirds of the project’s first 20 years of power to PowerSouth in Alabama and JEA in Jacksonville, Fla. That’s according to Marietta’s mayor, Steve “Thunder” (fun, right?) Tumlin, who is on MEAG’s board.
“We spread the risks,” he told me.
If the Vogtle expansion gets killed, “it would hurt, but not kill” the Marietta system, Tumlin said. Customer power bill rates might go up “a few percentage points.”
So far, he said, the consortium of Vogtle owners has “steadfastly stood together and is not panicking.” But they have to be convinced it makes sense to stick with the program.
Trump falls flat with climate change retreat, Markets, not politics, drive energy sector’s push to cut greenhouse gas emission Ft.com by: Ed Crooks, 7 Aug 17, US Industry and Energy Editor On Friday, the US state department submitted a notification to the UN that the administration intended to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement reached in 2015. The statement, confirming the decision that President Donald Trump announced in June, is at one level momentous. The world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is quitting a deal that the governments of leading European countries have described as “a vital instrument for our planet”. In terms of the consequences for the global energy industry, however, its impact has so far been negligible.
Of course, the full implications have yet to play out. But in the nine weeks since Mr Trump announced that leaving the agreement would be “a reassertion of America’s sovereignty”, energy companies around the world have been making plans that suggest their views on the outlook have not changed in any significant way.
The most important reason for that is that moves towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions are going with the grain of energy markets, regardless of political decisions. The plunging costs of renewable power and electricity storage, the rise of electric cars, the availability of cheap gas for power generation, and the prospect of abundant supplies of oil, for a while at least, all point towards investment decisions that would curb emissions.
The comments from oil companies reporting earnings over recent weeks have provided a stark illustration of that point. For years, environmental groups have been raising concerns about stranded assets: projects that cannot be viable in a world where greenhouse gas emissions are constrained.
When they first started making that argument, with oil at about $100 per barrel, it was often a tough sell, says Andrew Grant of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which has pioneered analysis in this area. Now, he adds, they are “pushing at an open door”.
The central idea is that in a world where fossil fuel consumption is curtailed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, investment in high-cost assets is likely to be wasted………..
Whatever happens to international climate policy in the aftermath of Mr Trump’s decision, unless some other shock comes along to shake the industry out of its current mindset, downward pressure on costs and caution on investment decisions are likely to remain the prevailing rules. https://www.ft.com/content/2f687cfe-7abb-11e7-9108-edda0bcbc928
Trump files notice to withdraw from Paris deal, plans instead to promote fossil fuels, REneweconomy, By Mark Hand on 7 August 2017 ThinkProgress The Trump administration formally notified the United Nations of its plans to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement on Friday, explaining that the United States instead plans to work with countries to help them gain access to fossil fuels……..
The goal of expanding access to fossil fuels is part of Trump’s new “energy dominance” agenda where his administration will work with fossil fuel companies to turn the United States into an oil, natural gas, and coal exporting powerhouse.
The administration also wants to continue to export fracking technology developed in the United States to other countries.
The letter sent to the United Nations has no legal weight nor does it begin the process of withdrawing the United States from the pact of nearly 200 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Rather, it is a political document that affirms Trump’s proclamation in June that the Paris agreement is a bad deal for the nation, the New York Times reported Friday.
According to the terms of the Paris agreement, no country can begin the withdrawal process until three years after the agreement enters into force and the withdrawal would not take effect for one year after that date.
The Paris agreement entered into force on November 4, 2016. Therefore, the United States cannot fully withdraw until November 4, 2020, one day after the next presidential election.
The next president could decide to rejoin the agreement if Trump does not win a second term………
Since June, the California legislature voted to extend the state’s cap-and-trade program until 2030. The U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted several climate and energy resolutions advancing renewable energy, committing to sustainable infrastructure development, and standing by the Paris agreement.
A network of cities, states, businesses, and colleges have united to declare “We Are Still In,” and provide a platform for local leaders to support the commitments of the Paris agreement.
Guru Focus, PR Newswire, ATLANTA, Aug. 4, 2017 Georgia Power expects to complete its comprehensive schedule and cost-to-complete assessment, as well as cancellation cost assessment, for the Vogtle nuclear expansion by the end of the month. The final recommendation is expected to be filed with the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) as part of the 17th Vogtle Construction Monitoring (VCM) Report. Once submitted, Georgia Power will work with the Georgia PSC to determine the best path forward for customers…….
Construction work continues at the Vogtle nuclear expansion under a new service agreement with Westinghouse while Georgia Power’s assessments, as well as assessments by Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities, are finalized…….
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Certain information contained in this communication is forward-looking information based on current expectations and plans that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking information includes, among other things, statements concerning estimated cost and schedule information for Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 and other future actions related to Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4. Georgia Power cautions that there are certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information that has been provided. ……..
Editor’s note: How’s this for one sentence? could be a record?
The following factors, in addition to those discussed in Georgia Power’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, and subsequent securities filings, could cause actual results to differ materially from management expectations as suggested by such forward-looking information: the results of Westinghouse’s bankruptcy filing and the impact of any inability or other failure of Toshiba to perform its obligations under its guarantee, including any effect on the construction of Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4; state and federal rate regulations and the impact of pending and future rate cases and negotiations; the impact of recent and future federal and state regulatory changes, as well as changes in application of existing laws and regulations; current and future litigation, regulatory investigations, proceedings, or inquiries; available sources and costs of fuels; effects of inflation; the ability to control costs and avoid cost overruns during the development construction and operation of facilities, which include the development and construction of generating facilities with designs that have not been finalized or previously constructed; the ability to construct facilities in accordance with the requirements of permits and licenses, to satisfy any environmental performance standards and the requirements of tax credits and other incentives, and to integrate facilities into the Southern Company system upon completion of construction; advances in technology; legal proceedings and regulatory approvals and actions related to Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4, including Georgia Public Service Commission approvals and Nuclear Regulatory Commission actions; interest rate fluctuations and financial market conditions and the results of financing efforts; changes in The Southern Company’s or Georgia Power’s credit ratings, including impacts on interest rates, access to capital markets, and collateral requirements; the impacts of any sovereign financial issues, including impacts on interest rates, access to capital markets, impacts on foreign currency exchange rates, counterparty performance, and the economy in general, as well as potential impacts on the benefits of U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantees; and the effect of accounting pronouncements issued periodically by standard setting bodies. Georgia Power expressly disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking information. https://www.gurufocus.com/news/549936/georgia-power-to-finalize-vogtle-assessments-by-end-of-august
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
Friends of the Earth/Sierra Club will soon file a request that the hearing it garnered in response to a complaint filed on June 22 (
nuclear-news 