‘Green News Report’ – May 2, 2017

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: People’s Climate March draws hundreds of thousands in the sweltering heat; Trump’s EPA deletes climate change from its website; Last-minute government funding deal ignores Trump’s proposed environmental cuts; Largest electric utility in Iowa to go 100% renewable; PLUS: Trump rolls back oil spill safety regulations implemented after the BP Gulf Oil Disaster… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): The New York Times should not have hired climate change bullshitter Bret Stephens; Scientists have shown they can march. Can they help win elections?; Sea-Level Rise: Gentrification As High Ground Becomes Hot Property; New York Plan to Dump Chlorine Into Sewers Worries Environmentalists; Justices Deny Review Of Case Challenging Polar Bear Habitat; Nitrite Pollution Puts Warming Waters At Risk; USDA Secretary Rolls Back Obama Nutrition Standards For School Lunches… PLUS: Melting Arctic Threatens Age-Old Hunt In Northernmost Greenland Village… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Massive People’s Climate March draws of hundreds of thousands in sweltering heat:
• Climate March draws massive crowd to D.C. in sweltering heat (Washington Post):
  “Hang on EPA, the midterms are coming. 2018,” read one sign carried by Kathy Sommer of Stony Brook, N.Y, as the protest assembled on the Mall Saturday morning.
• VIDEO: Climate marchers urge Trump to protect environment (PBS NewsHour)
• The Climate March’s Big Tent Strategy Draws a Big Crowd (The Atlantic):
  “It’s important to affirm to ourselves that this is a huge community,” she told me. “It also sends a message to the corporations that really run things that people care. Even in Appalachia, now, the power companies are moving to renewables. Marches like this continue that pressure.”
• Dulles Airport sets record high, D.C. and BWI tie for hottest on record (Washington Post):
  But D.C. did break a different record early this morning when it didn’t cool down past 70 degrees. That’s never happened in the month of April, and in a lot of ways that’s more significant than a record high. We’re seeing more overnight heat as the climate warms, which is also a significant health risk in the form of more heat stress on the body.
• 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)
• Trump executive order rolls back offshore drilling safety regulations:
• Trump orders easing safety rules implemented after Gulf Oil Spill: (NY Times):
  Mr. Trump also took aim at regulations on oil-rig safety. In the final years of the Obama administration, the Interior Department implemented several new rules aimed at improving the safety of specific pieces of offshore drilling equipment that had failed during the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and were found to have been responsible for the deadly BP oil rig explosion that caused that spill.
• Native Americans: Trump’s order silences Alaskan Native voices (NARF)
• Bering Sea tribal groups slam Alaska delegation for ‘standing by’ as as Trump struck order giving them voice (Alaska Dispatch News):
  Alaska Native elders from Bering Sea coastal communities on Friday blasted Alaska’s congressional delegation for not doing more to prevent President Donald Trump from striking an Obama-era executive order that gave them a voice on federal management decisions in the region.
• EPA deletes climate change data from website on night before Climate March:
• EPA website removes climate science site from public view (Washington Post):
  “As EPA renews its commitment to human health and clean air, land, and water, our website needs to reflect the views of the leadership of the agency,” J.P. Freire, the agency’s associate administrator for public affairs, said in a statement. “We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how we’re protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.”
• Airbrushing science (Climate Crocks)
• The Interior Department just quietly scrubbed its climate change page (Motherboard VICE)
• Emergency funding deal ignores Trump’s drastic proposed cuts:
• Appropriations Deal Ignores Trump Calls For Deep Energy, Enviro Cuts (E&E News):
  Congressional leaders reached a bipartisan deal last night to fund the government through the rest of the year that avoids steep cuts for U.S. EPA and renewable energy programs sought by the Trump administration.
• Appropriations: Omnibus Boosts Most Interior Programs But Cuts LWCF (E&E News)
• Appropriations: 2 Contentious Air Provisions Hitch Ride On Omnibus (E&E News):
  The broad fiscal 2017 spending bill released overnight includes contentious language to require the federal government to treat emissions from forest biomass as carbon neutral.
• Ohio: DAPL pipeline company spills 2 million gallons of drilling fluid:
• Company behind Dakota Access Pipeline spills over 2 million gallons of drilling fluids into Ohio wetlands (Climate Progress):
  Energy Transfer Partners has twice spilled drilling fluids into “pristine” Ohio wetlands this month.
• Iowa’s largest electric utility to go 100 per cent renewable:
• Wind blown: MidAmerican zeroes in on 100% renewable energy (Des Moines Register)
• Iowa’s biggest utility aims to produce all its energy from renewable sources (AP)
• Iowa’s electric costs blowing downward, group says (Des Moines Register)

‘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 New York Times should not have hired climate change bullshitter Bret Stephens (David Roberts, Vox):
  It’s time for the opinion page to take climate change as seriously as the paper’s reporters do.
• Scientists have shown they can march. Can they help win elections? (Vox):
  Four questions for the newly energized science movement against Trump.
• Sea-Level Rise: Gentrification As High Ground Becomes Hot Property (E&E News0:
  One of the first sea-level rise maps Broadway Harewood saw was a few years back, when climate activists gathered in his neighborhood to talk about how global warming would affect people in less-affluent South Florida communities.
• New York Plan to Dump Chlorine Into Sewers Worries Environmentalists (NY Times):
  Facing a chronic problem of raw sewage emptying into city waterways during rainfalls, and struggling to meet health regulations, New York City environmental officials are turning to a new method of treating bacteria in sewage: dumping chlorine into sewer pipes leading to the waterways.
• Justices Deny Review Of Case Challenging Polar Bear Habitat (The Hill):
  The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a challenge to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to designate 187,000 square miles of Alaska’s coast and waters a critical habitat for the threatened polar bear.
• Nitrite Pollution Puts Warming Waters At Risk (Climate News Network):
  Nitrite pollution caused by rising temperatures is changing the chemistry of coastal waters, threatening more algal blooms and zones devoid of fish.
• Melting Arctic Threatens Age-Old Hunt In Northernmost Greenland Village (Washington Post):
  The northernmost village in Greenland sits just shy of 78 degrees north latitude — deep in the Arctic — yet during the summer, meltwater is everywhere. It flows in small rivulets and larger streams, past multicolored houses built against a sloping hill and down to the Inglefield Bredning, as it is called in Danish — a broad body of water at the confluence of several fjords.
• USDA Secretary Rolls Back Obama Nutrition Standards For School Lunches (LA Times):
  Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Monday that he would roll back part of former First Lady Michelle Obama’s healthy eating initiative: stricter nutritional standards for school lunches.
• Fire in Georgia Wildlife Refuge Could Take Months To Fight: Officials (Reuters):
  A wildfire that has burned more than 100,000 acres (40,469 hectares) at the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in southern Georgia could take until November before it is put out, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said on Monday.
• Heat wave melting record snowpack in Northern California: (Sacramento Bee):
  Forecasters expect at least one California river to hit flood stage later this week as a heat wave melts record snowpack in the Sierra Nevada.
• Make America Polluted Again (Op-ed, US News):
  The Trump administration is bringing us back to our polluted past by undermining the EPA.
• U.S. Appeals Court Grants Trump Request On Climate Regulations Case (Reuters):
  A U.S. appeals court on Friday granted a Trump administration request to put on hold a legal challenge by industry and a group of states to former President Barack Obama’s regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse emissions mainly from coal-fired power plants, rules that the Republican president is moving to undo.
• Fact-checking Trump’s Antiquities Act order (High Country News):
  Trump and his supporters rely on dubious claims to attack national monuments.
• 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.
• 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).