‘Green News Report’ – June 21, 2018

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Blocked water study finally released by Trump Administration, reveals widespread chemical contamination; Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reduces the nutritional value of food crops; Trump rescinds Obama’s protections for oceans and Great Lakes; PLUS: It’s been thirty years since Dr. James Hansen first warned Congress about climate change… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Looking for signs of global warming? They’re all around you; Climate scientists have been remarkably accurate on global warming; GOP senators challenge funding for global warming education program for local TV meteorologists; “Obama sided with Canada”: A ‘new’ image for owners of Detroit toll bridge; HFCs: A climate policy even Trump can support?; New York sues 3M, five others over toxic chemical contamination; Battery Boom: World to get half of electricity from wind, solar by 2050; Colorado to adopt California’s stricter car pollution rules; Microsoft has big power needs and wants to harness the ocean to satisfy them… PLUS: A giant wave of plastic garbage could flood the U.S., a study says… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• CDC quietly releases blocked water contamination study:
• Toxicological Profile for Perfluoroalkyls – Draft for Public Comment, June 2018 [PDF, 852 pages] (U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry)
• Suppressed Study: The EPA Underestimated Dangers of Widespread Chemicals (Pro Publica):
  The CDC has quietly published a controversial review of perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that indicates more people are at risk of drinking contaminated water than previously thought.
• White House, EPA headed off chemical pollution study (Politico):
  Scott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis, after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a “public relations nightmare,” newly disclosed emails reveal.
• CDC Study Shows PFAS Chemicals May Be Risky At Lower Levels Than N.H. Regulates (New Hampshire Public Radio):
  These limits are far lower than the EPA’s current, non-binding health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion for both chemicals…The EPA plans to develop a maximum contaminant level for some kinds of PFAS, which would serve as a binding standard for drinking water. It also may list those chemicals as Superfund-eligible contaminants.
• EPA concludes no new standards necessary for industrial chemical spills:
• EPA regulatory proposal: Don’t regulate (NY Times):
  This week the E.P.A. published its regulatory proposal, meeting the court’s deadline. However, the proposal concludes that no new rules are needed.
• NRDC & Partners: EPA Refuses to Protect Americans from Hazardous Spills (NRDC):
  The Environmental Protection Agency has abdicated its responsibility to establish a rule on chemical spills from industrial facilities-a move it was required to take more than 40 years ago under the Clean Water Act and agreed to take in 2016 under the terms of a court-approved settlement.
• Our Toxicity Experiment in West Virginia (Wired, 1/8/2014)
• Trump repeals Obama’s protections for oceans and the Great Lakes:
• Trump rescinds Obama policy protecting oceans (The Hill):
  In his own executive order signed late Tuesday, Trump put a new emphasis on industries that use the oceans, particularly oil and natural gas drilling, while also mentioning environmental stewardship…The order encourages more drilling and other industrial uses of the oceans and Great Lakes.
• Trump’s new oceans policy washes away Obama’s emphasis on conservation and climate (Science):
  One author of the Obama oceans policy is disappointed. The Trump policy “represents a significant step backward, a throwback to the 1960s when the primary focus was on aggressively expanding the use of the ocean with the assumption that it is so immense, so bountiful that it must be inexhaustible,” marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Obama.
• Stabenow sends President reminder of Great Lakes drilling ban after Executive Order signed (WWMT – West Michigan)
• Trump Dumps Obama-era Ocean Conservation Policy (Surfer Magazine)
• ‘Junk food’: Rising CO2 reduces nutritional value of food crops:
• Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels this century will alter the protein, micronutrients, and vitamin content of rice grains with potential health consequences for the poorest rice-dependent countries (Science Advances)
• Rising carbon dioxide levels are turning rice and fish into junk food (CBC):
  It has been proposed that an increase of carbon dioxide is actually good for crops because it makes them grow faster, larger and in greater abundance. Plants do need CO2, but too much carbon dioxide is turning crops like rice into junk food. Exposure to more CO2 means crops don’t absorb the same amount of micronutrients from the soil, they produce more starches and sugars, less protein and Vitamin B. The reduction in one of the B vitamins has Dr. Ebi especially concerned.
• Climate change strips nutrients from food crops (Deutsche-Welle):
  Environmental changes are posing a serious threat to production and nutritional value of our crops. Not taking action could have major global implications for food security and public health, a new study outlines.
• The weird power of rising carbon dioxide to make rice less nutritious (Vox)
• The great nutrient collapse: The atmosphere is literally changing the food we eat, for the worse. And almost nobody is paying attention. (Politico)
• AUDIO: As Carbon Dioxide Levels Rise, Major Crops Are Losing Nutrients (NPR)
• It’s been 30 years since Dr. James Hansen warned Congress about global warming:
• James Hansen wishes he wasn’t so right about global warming (AP):
  Hansen won’t say, “I told you so.” “I don’t want to be right in that sense,” Hansen told The Associated Press, in an interview is his New York penthouse apartment. That’s because being right means the world is warming at an unprecedented pace and ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are melting. Hansen said what he really wishes happened is “that the warning be heeded and actions be taken.”
• Dr. James Hansen: Global warming cooks up “a different world” over 3 decades (AP)
• 30 years after warning, global warming “is in our living room” (AP)
• Interactive graphic: Find out how much it has warmed in the last 30 years in your area (AP)
• AP Was There: The Age of Climate Change Begins (AP, 6/23/1988)

‘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

• Looking for signs of global warming? They’re all around you (AP)
• New report examines coal’s future outlook, and it isn’t pretty: New Bloomberg forecast sees 17-fold rise in solar by 2050 (Climate Progress)
• Climate Scientists Have Been Remarkably Accurate on Global Warming (The New Yorker)
• Global warming, now brought to you by your local TV weathercaster (NBC News)
• GOP senators challenge funding for global warming education program for local TV meteorologists (NBC News)
• “Obama sided with Canada”: A ‘new’ image for the Morouns? New bridge TV ad demolishes that fantasy (Detroit Free Press)
• HFCs: A climate policy even Trump can support? (NY Times)
• Exxon Still Isn’t Complying With Climate Subpoenas, New York Says (Bloomberg)
• New York Sues 3M, Five Others Over Toxic Chemical Contamination (Reuters)
• A Giant Wave Of Plastic Garbage Could Flood The U.S., A Study Says (Washington Post)
• Battery Boom: World To Get Half Of Electricity From Wind, Solar By 2050 (Bloomberg)
• Colorado To Adopt California’s Stricter Car Pollution Rules (AP)
• Climate Change Brought a Lobster Boom. Now It Could Cause a Bust. (NY Times)
• Zinke Linked To Real Estate Deal With Halliburton Chairman (Politico)
• Microsoft has big power needs and wants to harness the ocean to satisfy them (Utility Dive)
• Pruitt Has Spent $4.6 Million on Security, Including $1,500 on ‘Tactical Pants’ (The Intercept)
• How the Carmakers Trumped Themselves (The Atlantic)
• Coal Ash Uncovered: Polluted Groundwater Found At 14 Kentucky Sites (WFPL Louisville, KY)
• Inhofe ‘a little embarrassed’ to have doubted Pruitt (Politico)
• The great nutrient collapse: The atmosphere is literally changing the food we eat, for the worse. And almost nobody is paying attention. (Politico)
• The world’s bleak climate situation, in 3 charts: We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there. (Vox)
• AUDIO: An Inconvenient ‘BradCast’ with Al Gore (The BRAD BLOG):
  Guest Host Angie Coiro’s exclusive interview with the former Vice President on elections, pollution, persuasion, activism, and hope…
• The Climate Risks We Face (NY Times):
  To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate – so every reduction in emissions helps.
• The Uninhabitable Earth: When will climate change make earth too hot for humans? (New York Magazine):
  Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak – sooner than you think.
• 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).