‘Green News Report’ – October 18, 2016

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Major new international agreement to phase out refrigerants (HFCs); First-ever international agreement to cut emissions from airplane travel; US emissions hit lowest level since 1991; September 2016 was the hottest September ever recorded; PLUS: Harsh words for climate activists in latest Clinton-Wikileaks revelations… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Judge Tosses Riot Charge Against Journalist Amy Goodman Covering Dakota Protest; Celebrities Rally Behind Filmmaker Arrested In Pipeline Protests; North Carolina: Damage from Hurricane Matthew estimated; Duke confirms coal ash spill at North Carolina plant due to Hurricane Matthew flooding; Greenland Is Melting; Exxon Now Seeks to Block New York Attorney General’s Climate Probe; GAO: Other Cities Face Problems That Led To Flint Crisis; Little-Noticed Court Settlement Will Probably Save Millions Of Animals; Feds Plan To Seal Part Of Nuke Waste Repository… PLUS: Today’s Climate Progress and Tomorrow’s Climate Challenges… and much, MUCH more! …

STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…

• Wikileaks: Harsh words from Hillary Clinton about environmental activists:
• Clinton dissed environmentalists in private meeting with unions (Politico):
  Hillary Clinton dismissed climate activists in withering terms during a meeting with labor unions last year, saying the environmentalists pressing her to renounce fossil fuels should “get a life,” according to allegedly hacked emails released Friday by WikiLeaks.
• Wikileaks Podesta Emails (Wikileaks)
• In wake of Wikileaks, Clinton’s campaign chair seeks to reassure climate activists (Grist)
• A Big Deal: Nations of the world agree to phase out climate-warming refrigerants:
• Nations, Fighting Powerful Refrigerant That Warms Planet, Reach Landmark Deal (NY Times):
  Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to fellow negotiators in Kigali, said, “It is likely the single most important step we could take at this moment to limit the warming of our planet and limit the warming for generations to come. It is,” Mr. Kerry added, “the biggest thing we can do in one giant swoop.”
• U.S. Senate Could Block Landmark HFC Climate Treaty (Climate Central)
• How the Chemical Industry Joined the Fight Against Climate Change (NY Times)
• 197 parties reach deal to cut HFC gases (Japan News)
• VIDEO: Agreement reached to phase out HFCs (Al Jazeera):
  Nearly 200 nations approve timetable to stop use of gases whose elimination could reduce global warming by 0.5C by 2100.
• Sec. of State John Kerry’s Remarks at the Plenary of the 28th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol (US State Dept.):
  “[N]o country has a right to turn its back on this effort and to forget about the meaning of a multilateral effort where the world is looking to us to try to literally save this planet from what we ourselves have chosen to do with respect to how we power our energy and what we have done for more than 150 years or more.”
• An Ambitious HFC Amendment to the Montreal Protocol (US State Dept.)
• September 2016 was the hottest September ever recorded:
• NASA Analysis Finds Warmest September on Record By Narrow Margin (NASA)
• 2016 locked into being hottest year on record, Nasa says (Guardian UK):
  Data shows September was the warmest in modern temperature monitoring following months of record-breaking anomalies this year
• Hottest Months on Record Have Something in Common (Climate Central)
• Earth’s streak of record warm months is coming to an end… but it will be back (Mashable):
  The planet is temporarily ending its streak of record warm global monthly temperatures, according to data released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as other figures NASA published Monday.
• Nations agree to curb international aviation emissions:
• A Weak Deal on Airplane Emissions (Bloomberg)
• First deal to curb aviation emissions agreed in landmark UN accord (Guardian UK):
  The new system will be voluntary until 2027, but dozens of countries, including the world’s two largest emitters, the US and China, have promised to join at its outset in 2020.
• A Historic Climate Agreement Will Make Air Travel Carbon Neutral By 2020 (Fast Co-Exist):
  The entire aviation sector had been previously omitted from the broader Paris climate treaty.
• U.S. emissions drop to lowest level since 1991:
• Record Warmth Helps Shrink U.S. Carbon Emissions (Climate Central):
  As the first half of 2016 blew away temperature records, it also blew away some carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels in the U.S., a new U.S. Department of Energy report shows.
• EIA: Carbon emissions from US power sector lowest in 25 years (Utility Dive):
  The EIA cited mild weather and changes in the nation’s energy consumption: coal consumption fell 18%, natural gas consumption fell 1%, while the consumption of renewable resources rose 9%.

‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…

• Judge Tosses Riot Charge Against Journalist Amy Goodman Covering Dakota Protest (Inside Climate News):
  A North Dakota judge threw out a charge against journalist Amy Goodman for ‘participating in a riot’ while covering a Sept. 3 protest against the Dakota Access pipeline for the independent news show Democracy Now! District judge John Grinsteiner rejected the charge filed by a state prosecutor Monday afternoon in Mandan, N.D.
• Celebrities Rally Behind Filmmaker Arrested In Pipeline Protests (Reuters):
  Singer Neil Young, actor Mark Ruffalo and other celebrities on Thursday joined in calling for charges to be dropped against a documentary maker arrested while filming protesters who shut down oil pipelines from Canada to the United States, saying that she was acting as a journalist.
• North Carolina: Damage from Hurricane Matthew estimated (Washington Post):
  Early next week, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory plans to release a detailed plan of how North Carolina will rebuild, including how to pay for the effort.
• Duke confirms coal ash spill at North Carolina plant due to Hurricane Matthew flooding (Utility Dive):
  Environmental groups, such as the Waterkeeper Alliance and the Neuse Riverkeeper, in a statement insist that the coal ash breach is an example of Duke negligently placing ash in “rickety dams on the banks of flood-prone rivers all across the state.”
• Today’s Climate Progress and Tomorrow’s Climate Challenges (Dot Earth, NY Times)
• Greenland Is Melting (New Yorker):
  The shrinking of the country’s ice sheet is triggering feedback loops that accelerate the global crisis. The floodgates may already be open.” “Just in the past four years, more than a trillion tons of ice have been lost.
• Exxon Now Seeks to Block New York Attorney General’s Climate Probe (Inside Climate News):
• GAO: Other Cities Face Problems That Led To Flint Crisis (The Hill):
  Numerous cities face financial problems similar to the ones that led to the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis, a government watchdog report found.
• New Zoning Restrictions Address Issues From Larger Chicken Houses (Bay Journal):
  Chicken farms, once tucked into fields and in mostly rural areas, have come to roost near schools, daycare centers and subdivisions on the Delmarva Peninsula. The change — in both location and density — is prompting local politicians to enact some of their first zoning restrictions on poultry growers.
• Little-Noticed Court Settlement Will Probably Save Millions Of Animals (Washington Post):
  A little-noticed court settlement in Nevada requires the federal government to re-evaluate its program for killing predatory animals at the request of farmers and ranchers. Two years from now, when the re-evaluation is done, the program could be drastically changed/
• Feds Plan To Seal Part Of Nuke Waste Repository (AP):
  A top U.S. Energy Department official in southern New Mexico says the agency plans to close off part of the federal government’s underground nuclear waste repository due to contamination and stability concerns.
• Scientists Warn Against Relying on Removing CO2 From Atmosphere (Washington Post):
  Scientists in a new paper warn that the widely discussed idea of relying on carbon-removal technology in future years to remove climate-altering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a mistake.
• No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously (Vox):
  If we mean what we say, no more new fossil fuels, anywhere.

FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page

• NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA).