‘Green News Report’ – April 27, 2017

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Trump moves to review and maybe revoke national monuments; Florida governor calls out National Guard to fight drought-fueled wildfires; Even oil companies now predict a surge in electric cars; People’s Climate March on Saturday to demand climate action; PLUS: Sea level rise estimates doubled thanks to melting Arctic… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Trump White House Is At War With Itself About Climate Change; U.S. Power Demand Flatlined Years Ago, and It’s Hurting Utilities; Faucets Go Dry Near South Carolina Mega-Farms; Nearly 400 Military Bases Must Be Tested For Drinking-Water Contamination; Trump’s Plan To Kill Energy Star Could Benefit His Properties; Global warming is sharply raising the risk of ‘unprecedented’ events… PLUS: As Zika Season Nears, States Brace for an End to CDC Funding… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Florida governor calls out National Guard to fight wildfires:
• Florida wildfires: Rain brings brief relief (CNN)
• Wildfire burn victim Donovan Smith: ‘It was like Armageddon’ (Naples News):
  The sanctuary has a hurricane plan and a fire plan, which was in full swing Friday as the wildfire raged. Then the winds shifted. “It went from no fire to fire everywhere,” Smith said Tuesday.
• State says wildfires likely to get worse (Florida News Service)
• Counties to issue burn ban as dry conditions fuel wildfires (WJAX)
• Trump’s executive orders to review national monuments, open lands to fossil fuels:
• Trump Is Expected to Sign Orders That Could Expand Access to Fossil Fuels (NY Times):
  The president is then expected to follow up on Friday with another executive order aimed at opening up protected waters in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans to offshore drilling. The order would direct Mr. Zinke to revisit an Obama administration plan that would have put those waters off limits to drilling through 2022. Friday’s order is also expected to call for the lifting of a permanent ban on drilling in an area including many of those same waters — a measure Mr. Obama issued in December 2016 in a last-ditch effort to protect his environmental legacy from his drilling-enthusiast successor.
• VIDEO: Trump orders review of national monuments, seeks to allow development (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
  The Outdoor Industry Association, the trade group of the recreation industry, also attacked the order. Zinke spoke at the launch of the group’s report, which said the outdoor recreation economy generates over $887 billion in consumer spending and creates 7.6 million jobs. “Less than 24 hours after joining with our industry to celebrate the economic power of outdoor recreation, in a hypocritical move, the Trump administration took unprecedented steps that could result in the removal of protections for treasured public lands,” said Rose Marcario, chief executive of outdoor gear retailer Patagonia.
• Trump orders review of national monuments, vows to ‘end these abuses and return control to the people’ (Washington Post):
  “As Tribes, we will gather ourselves together to continue the fight to save our lands for the future of not just Native people, but all people who connect with these lands,” Shaun Chapoose, the highest elected officeholder of the Ute Indian Tribe, said in a statement. “Bears Ears National Monument is more than just mere federal land to us, as it may be to many other stakeholders — it is a living landscape; it has a pulse. It is offensive for politicians to call the Bears Ears National Monument ‘an abuse.’ ”
• Where Money Grows on Trees (Nexus Media):
  The great outdoors is responsible for billions in consumer spending — and Trump wants to sell it off.
• Trump orders review of national monuments, vows to ‘end these abuses and return control to the people’ (Washington Post)
• Fact-checking Trump’s Antiquities Act order (High Country News):
  Trump and his supporters rely on dubious claims to attack national monuments.
• Trump Wants To Expand Offshore Drilling (The Hill)
• Sea level threat estimate nearly doubled thanks to Arctic ice melt:
• Climate Change Altering the Arctic Faster Than Expected (Climate Central):
  A new report chronicles all these changes and warns that even if the world manages to keep global warming below the targeted 2°C threshold, some of the shifts could be permanent. Among the most harrowing are the disappearance of sea ice by the 2030s and more land ice melt than previously thought, pushing seas to more extreme heights.
• Extreme Arctic Melt Is Raising Sea Level Rise Threat; New Estimate Nearly Twice IPCC’s (Inside Climate News):
  Trajectory of dramatic climate change in the Arctic is locked in through 2050, but what happens after that depends largely on our choices today, report says.
• Scientists keep upping their projections for how much the oceans will rise this century (Washington Post:
  [S]cientists keep uncovering new insights that force them to increase their sea level estimates further, said William Colgan, a glaciologist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, who contributed to the sea level rise section. “Because of emerging processes, especially related to the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet, it now looks like the uncertainties are all biased positive,” Colgan said.
• U.S. Vulnerable to Worst of Extreme Sea Rise (Climate Central):
  A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report warned that regional effects of gravity and ocean current changes triggered by the start of the ice sheet’s collapse could lead to more than 12 feet of sea level rise engulfing some coastlines in the Lower 48. That’s about the height of a one-story house.
• Report: Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost. Summary for Policy-makers (Arctic Monitoring and Asssessment Prograg):
  Meltwater from Arctic glaciers, ice sheets, and ice caps accounts for more than a third of global sea level rise, according to the new assessment. Since 2000, ice on Greenland—the source of 70% of the Arctic’s contribution to sea-level rise—has released enough meltwater to raise global sea levels by more than 1 centimeter.
• Report: Extreme Sea Level Rise and the Stakes for America (Climate Central)
• Rising seas will cause migration into Central U.S.:
  • Migration induced by sea-level rise could reshape the US population landscape (Nature) [emphasis added]:
    With millions of potential future migrants in heavily populated coastal communities, SLR scholarship focusing solely on coastal communities characterizes SLR as primarily a coastal issue, obscuring the potential impacts in landlocked communities created by SLR-induced displacement…unmitigated SLR is expected to reshape the US population distribution, potentially stressing landlocked areas unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants—even after accounting for potential adaptation.
  • The effects of climate change will force millions to migrate. Here’s what this means for human security. (Washington Post)
  • U.S. Vulnerable to Worst of Extreme Sea Rise (Climate Central):
    A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report warned that regional effects of gravity and ocean current changes triggered by the start of the ice sheet’s collapse could lead to more than 12 feet of sea level rise engulfing some coastlines in the Lower 48. That’s about the height of a one-story house.
  • The Nightmare Scenario for Florida’s Coastal Homeowners (Bloomberg):
    Demand and financing could collapse before the sea consumes a single house.

• Even oil companies believe electric cars will surge:
• The Electric-Car Boom Is So Real Even Oil Companies Say It’s Coming (Bloomberg):
  The surge in battery powered vehicles will cause demand for oil-based fuels to peak in the 2030s, Total Chief Energy Economist Joel Couse said at Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s conference in New York on Tuesday. EVs will make up 15 percent to 30 percent of new vehicles by 2030, after which fuel “demand will flatten out,” Couse said. “Maybe even decline.”
• Oil Giant Total Sees Electric Cars Seriously Cutting Into Oil Demand Soon (Clean Technica)
• People’s Climate March on Saturday, April 29th:
• People’s Climate Movement – find a sister march near you (People’s Climate)
• So Many Reasons to March This Saturday (Sierra Club):
  Although many of these attacks can still be defeated, their scope is unprecedented. Let’s start with public lands and wildlife. That Trump would be different from any previous president was obvious on Day 1, when he picked a fight with the National Park Service over the attendance at his inauguration. From there, things just got worse…
• 100 percent Clean Energy Bill Launched by Senators and Movement Leaders (350.org)
• 100 percent Clean Energy Bill Launched by Senators to Phase Out Fossil Fuels by 2050 (EcoWatch)

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

For a comprehensive roundup of daily environmental news you can trust, see the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Daily Headlines page

• The Trump White House Is At War With Itself About Climate Change (Washington Post):
  Key officials will meet at the White House on Thursday to discuss whether President Trump should make good on his campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement, or allow the United States to remain a party to the global pact — confronting head-on an issue that has divided the administration and raised concern in the international community.
• U.S. Power Demand Flatlined Years Ago, and It’s Hurting Utilities (Bloomberg):
  Electric utilities have been doing everything they can to preserve their bottom line from conducting multi-billion mergers to snapping up more profitable natural gas businesses. Their trouble lies in one thing they can’t control: demand.
• Faucets Go Dry Near South Carolina Mega-Farms (Columbia News):
  Air whistled through the kitchen faucet when Earldell Trowell turned on the tap one morning last summer. On July 4, one of the hottest days of the year, she had no water.”
• As Zika Season Nears, States Brace for an End to CDC Funding (PBS):
  State programs that track Zika infections and Zika-related birth defects around the country are in jeopardy as public health officials have been told not to count on federal funds for those efforts after July.
• Nearly 400 Military Bases Must Be Tested For Drinking-Water Contamination (Sacramento Bee):
  Contamination from former or current military installations has ignited a nationwide review of water on or around bases that used a firefighting foam containing toxic chemicals.
• Trump’s Plan To Kill Energy Star Could Benefit His Properties (CNN):
  Energy Star is best known for labels that tell you how much you’ll pay on your utility bill if you buy a new refrigerator or television. But it also has ratings for hotels, condominiums and office buildings.
• The Newest New York Times Columnist Has Flip-Flopped on Climate Change… but he won’t cop to it. (The Atlantic):
  Stephens is arguing the following: The meteorological data shows that the world is getting warmer. Anthropogenic carbon emissions are causing that warmth, just as scientists have been warning for decades. But if we keep emitting carbon emissions, or do anything to limit our release of them, well, then, who knows what will happen? This is wishful thinking.
• Global warming is sharply raising the risk of ‘unprecedented’ events (Mashable):
  Around the world, global warming is making unprecedented weather and climate events far more likely to occur, with the planet now teetering on the edge of a new era of routinely damaging global warming-related extremes, a new study found.
• A beginner’s guide to the debate over 100% renewable energy (Vox):
  Clean-energy enthusiasts frequently claim that we can go bigger, that it’s possible for the whole world to run on renewables – we merely lack the “political will.” So, is it true? Do we know how get to an all-renewables system? Not yet. Not really.
• 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).