‘Green News Report’ – October 24, 2019

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: California utilities announce more widespread pre-emptive blackouts; Trump’s rollbacks of clean air standards are killing Americans; U.S. Supreme Court refuses to block climate liability lawsuit; PLUS: Former Exxon scientists confirm oil giant lied about climate science… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): U.S. Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due to Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says; The eco-conscious corporations funding climate doom; Trump administration unveils new water rules for California; Trump Admin Sues California Over Cap-And-Trade Agreement With Canada; Ocean acidification can cause mass extinctions, fossils reveal; Southwest tribes oppose spent nuclear fuel storage plans; Ex-CEO and ex-prisoner Blankenship making presidential bid… PLUS: ExxonMobil CEO Depressed After Realizing Earth Could End Before They Finish Extracting All The Oil… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• More planned blackouts for California:
• More than 500,000 California utility customers could lose power as strong winds pick up (LA Times)
• PG&E launches another round of power outages to prevent wildfires in California (CBS)
• Maps show where PG&E will turn off power in California this week (SF Gate)
• Kincade Fire grows to 10,000 acres, second blaze reported (SF Gate)
• California Utility Sees Decade Of Power Cuts To Avoid Wildfires (Reuters)
• 3 key solutions to California’s wildfire safety blackout mess (Vox)
• Climate liability lawsuits move forward:
• The new science fossil fuel companies fear (Politico):
  Researchers can now link weather events to emissions – and to the companies responsible. A string of lawsuits is about to give “attribution science” a real-life test.
• Supreme Court Rules Against Big Oil, Refuses to Halt Three Climate Cases (Climate Liability News):
  The U.S. Supreme Court denied applications by fossil fuel companies to halt three climate liability lawsuits against them. The court’s order allows the cases filed by Baltimore, Rhode Island and three Colorado communities to proceed in state court while the companies pursue appeals to move the cases to federal court.
• Supreme Court Lets Climate Change Lawsuit Proceed (NY Times):
  The court’s brief order addressed a threshold question: Should climate suits filed by state and local governments be heard in state or federal court?
• Supreme Court Denies Oil Companies’ Motion to Halt Baltimore’s Climate Case (Climate Liability News)
• Richmond v Chevron: the California city taking on its most powerful polluter (Guardian UK)
• Federal Judge Refuses to Halt R.I. Climate Case, but Oil Companies Try Again (Climate Liability News)
• Climate Liability Lawsuits Could Help With Costs Of Adapting To A Hotter Earth (NPR)
• Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago (Inside Climate News)
• Oil Industry Braces For Blowback From Exxon Scandal (Oil Price)
• Climate change-fueled disasters are expensive:
• U.S. saw 4 more billion-dollar disasters since May (NOAA):
  2019 is the fifth consecutive year (2015-2019) in which 10 or more billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events have impacted the United States.
• September 2019: Earth’s Warmest September on Record (Scientific American):
  Ten of these disasters were in the U.S., making it the fifth year in a row for ten or more billion-dollar weather disasters—an unprecedented occurrence.
• House Democrats examine the oil industry’s decades of deception about climate science:
• VIDEO: Examining the Oil Industry’s Efforts to Suppress the Truth about Climate Change (House Oversight Committee)
• Amy Westervelt: A complete thread of today’s #ClimateHearing (Twitter)
• Exxon’s ‘Excellent Scientists’ Knew Back in 1982 Exactly How Bad Climate Change Would Be Now (Vice):
  “So in 1982 — seven years before I was even born — Exxon accurately predicted that by this year, 2019, the Earth would hit a carbon dioxide concentration of 415 parts per million and a temperature increase of 1 degree Celsius,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Dr. Hoffert, is that correct?”
• U.S. air pollution is getting worse again:
• Air Pollution Is Increasing for the First Time in a Decade Under Trump (Earther):
  After a decade of improvements in air pollution, the U.S. is backsliding. And that means more people are dying prematurely, according to new research. The paper authors don’t point to a specific reason why the increase happened, but the numbers are clear that it occurred under the presidency of Donald Trump.
• U.S. Air Quality Was Improving. Now It’s Getting Worse (Bloomberg)
• America’s Air Quality Worsens, Ending Years of Gains, Study Says (NY Times)

‘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

• U.S. Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due to Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says (Vice)
• ExxonMobil CEO Depressed After Realizing Earth Could End Before They Finish Extracting All The Oil (The Onion)
• The eco-conscious corporations funding climate doom (Heated.World)
• Trump administration unveils new water rules for California (AP)
• Trump Admin Sues California Over Cap-And-Trade Agreement With Canada (LA Times)
• 6 Years After Exxon’s Oil Pipeline Burst in an Arkansas Town, a Final Accounting (Inside Climate News)
• Investors Detail Exxon’s Misleading Reports on Climate Risks in New York Trial (Climate Liability News)
• Ocean acidification can cause mass extinctions, fossils reveal (Guardian UK)
• Utilities’ failure to plan for DER surge promises missed opportunities, increased costs, analysts say (Utility Dive)
• USDA Internal Watchdog To Probe Allegedly Buried Climate Change Reports (The Hill)
• E&E News report begets possible Pebble Mine insider trading probe (E&E News)
• Southwest tribes oppose spent nuclear fuel storage plans (AP)
• Ex-CEO and ex-prisoner Blankenship making presidential bid (AP)
• Gray Wolves Are Protected In Washington, But State Keeps Killing Them (LA Times)
• What Does ’12 Years to Act on Climate Change’ (Now 11 Years) Really Mean? (Inside Climate News)
• VIDEO: A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (The Intercept)
• This Is How Human Extinction Could Play Out (Rolling Stone)
• SEJ Backgrounder: Green New Deal Proposes Sweeping Economic Transformation (Society of Environmental Journalists)
• Explainer: The ‘Green New Deal’: Mobilizing for a just, prosperous, and sustainable economy (New Consensus)
• What genuine, no-bullshit ambition on climate change would look like: How to hit the most stringent targets, with no loopholes. (David Roberts, Vox)
• A Global Shift To Sustainability Would Save Us $26 Trillion (Vox)
• Project Drawdown: 100 Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (Drawdown.org)
• An Optimist’s Guide to Solving Climate Change and Saving the World (Vice)
• 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)
• 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.

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).