‘Green News Report’ – September 3, 2020

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Environmental champion Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) wins tough primary challenge; Trump Administration racing to dismantle even more environmental protections; PLUS: Sign of the times — ExxonMobil dropped from the Dow… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Arctic wildfires emit 35% more CO2 so far in 2020 than for whole of 2019; The Sitting President Has No Climate Plan. Why Isn’t That Headline News?; House Democrats Demand Climate Be ‘Centerpiece’ Of 2020 Presidential Debates; Will Clean Energy Projects Face Troubles That Have Bedeviled Pipelines?; UN Urges Probe of Trump Arctic Drilling Plan for Human Rights Abuses… PLUS: To solve everything, solve climate: A conversation with Varshini Prakash, leader of the Sunrise Movement… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Nana and Omar: Earliest 14th and 15th named storms:
• Nana and Omar become the earliest 14th and 15th named storms (CNN)
• Nana becomes a Category 1 hurricane before expected landfall in Belize (Orlando Sun-Sentinel)
• Tropical Storm Omar just broke an Atlantic hurricane-season record (CNET)
• South Korea hit by two typhoons in 5 days:
• South and North Korea brace for two typhoons within a week (CNN)
• Typhoon pummels South Korea, ship missing in rough waters (AP)
• Typhoons Maysak and Haishen may deal South Korea a one-two punch (Yale Climate Connections)
• Environmental champion Sen. Ed Markey wins tough primary challenge:
• ‘Bold action is a winning message’: climate advocates hail Ed Markey win (Guardian UK):
  Markey was trailing Kennedy earlier in the race, before the youth-led Sunrise Movement intervened to back him as one of their biggest allies in the Senate. Volunteers phone-banked and provided the content for a much-heralded campaign ad where Markey repurposed John F. Kennedy’s historic phrase as president and told Americans to “start asking what your country can do for you”.
• The Energy 202: Ed Markey uses climate change to flip insurgent script on Joe Kennedy in Mass. race (Washington Post)
• How Markey beat Kennedy: The miracle of being green (Washington Post):
  But fascination with the Kennedy Mystique should not cloud the important message out of Massachusetts: The progressivism of the young is now dyed deep green.
• VIDEO: Senator Ed Markey Victory Speech (C-SPAN)
• AUDIO: Progressive Climate Champ Markey Fends off Dynastic Kennedy Challenge in MA Primary: ‘BradCast’ 9/2/2020 (The BRAD BLOG)
• Thousands of facilities have stopped compliance, monitoring of pollution releases:
• Thousands allowed to bypass environmental rules in pandemic (AP):
  Thousands of oil and gas operations, government facilities and other sites won permission to stop monitoring for hazardous emissions or otherwise bypass rules intended to protect health and the environment because of the coronavirus outbreak, The Associated Press has found.
• “An open license to pollute”: Trump administration indefinitely suspends some environmental protection laws during coronavirus pandemic (CBS News)
• Trump Admin. racing to rollback environmental standards, Make America Polluted Again:
• Drilling, mines, other projects hastened by Trump order (AP)
• US Wildlife Officials Aim To Remove Wolf Protections in 2020 (AP)
• EPA unveils final coal discharge rule (Politico)
• E.P.A. Relaxes Rules Limiting Toxic Waste From Coal Plants (NY Times)
• Trump administration proposes easing oil and gas permitting in national forests (Reuters)
• Tracking deregulation in the Trump era (Brookings Institution)
• Exxon Mobil dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average
• An Oil Giant’s Wall Street Fall: The World is Sending the Industry Signals, but is Exxon Listening? (Inside Climate News)
• VIDEO: Exxon was the world’s largest company in 2013. Now it’s being kicked out of the Dow (CNN):
  As recently as 2013, Exxon (XOM) was the the most valuable company on the planet. Its market value topped out at $446 billion in mid-2014, the last time crude prices traded above $100 a barrel.
  But Exxon is now a shell of its former self… Exxon is the poster child for the fossil fuels industry at a time of deep concern about the climate crisis. And the company’s market value has crumbled by a staggering $267 billion from the peak.
• Exxon Mobil Exits: The Dow Drops Its Oldest Member (NPR)
• Tomlinson: Oil companies following in coal’s footsteps to oblivion (Houston Chronicle)
• Why Exxon Is Being Dropped From the Dow (Barrons)

‘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

• Arctic wildfires emit 35% more CO2 so far in 2020 than for whole of 2019 (Guardian UK)
• The Sitting President Has No Climate Plan. Why Isn’t That Headline News? (The Nation)
• To solve everything, solve climate: A conversation with Varshini Prakash, leader of the Sunrise Movement (The.Ink)
• House Democrats Demand Climate Be ‘Centerpiece’ Of 2020 Presidential Debates (Huffington Post)
• Indiana city turns flood-prone properties into a riverside trail system (Yale Climate Connections)
• Will Clean Energy Projects Face Troubles That Have Bedeviled Pipelines? (NY Times)
• Rampant destruction of forests ‘will unleash more pandemics’ (Guardian UK)
• Bureau of Land Management allows itself to issue mass royalty cuts for mining (The Hill)
• IG: Senior officials’ testimony on BLM move ‘misleading’ (E&E News)
• Not This Year, Either: Landmark California Plastic Recyling Bill Fails Again (KQED)
• State now has an opportunity to veto Pebble Mine. Pebble foes aren’t getting their hopes up. (Alaska Public Media)
• More than half the deaths associated with Hurricane Laura were caused by the improper use of portable generators (CNN)
• UN Urges Probe of Trump Arctic Drilling Plan for Human Rights Abuses (Earther)
• It’s Not Easy Being Green: Stimulus Spending in the World’s Major Economies (Rhodium Group)
• Exxon’s Snake Oil: 100 years of deception (Columbia Journalism Review)
• 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)
• 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).