‘Green News Report’ – December 19, 2023

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Record rain and floods inundate northeast Australia and batter the U.S. East Coast; 2023 unleashed a record number of billion-dollar weather disasters in the U.S.; PLUS: New polls show bipartisan majorities of Americans increasingly want climate action… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): El Nino is nearing historic strength and what it means; Why people still fall for fake news about climate change; Thousands of Texas drilling wastewater spills threaten land, water, animals; CA prepares to transform sewage into pure drinking water under new rules; Young voters explain why they’re bailing on Biden — and whether they’d come back; EPA must do more to ensure captured carbon stays underground, report warns… PLUS: 12 climate change books to give friends and family over the holidays… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Queensland, Australia inundated by record rain, catastrophic floods:
• Far North Queensland floods live: Severe storm warnings finally cancelled as flood warnings remain active, rain eases for the first time in days (ABC Australia)
• Massive floods in Australia strand hundreds, prompt crocodile warnings (Washington Post):
  Remnants of a tropical cyclone unexpectedly dropped 30 to 40 inches of rain across a swath of Australia’s northeastern coast in recent days, inundating an area known as the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and at least briefly threatening drinking water supplies.
• How a low-level category cyclone caused Cairns’ largest flood in more than a century (ABC Australia):
  More than a century of flood records were broken in rivers just outside of Cairns and the Daintree, as ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper dumped unrelenting rain over the region, with flood warnings still in place. According to Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll, these falls were also “unexpected”. So what happened?
• North Queensland’s record-breaking floods are a frightening portent of what’s to come under climate change (The Conversation)
• Australia swelters through heat wave as firefighters battle bushfires (Reuters)
• Deadly winter storm batters U.S. from Florida to Maine:
• Record-setting storm wallops East Coast with flooding, high winds (Washington Post):
  Over 800,000 customers had no power in the Northeast on Monday afternoon while major coastal flooding pushed water levels up to 4 feet above normal…an ocean surge comparable to tropical storms and hurricanes from Florida’s west coast to southern New England…inundating low-lying roadways.
• East Coast storm death toll climbs to five as thousands still without power (Yahoo News)
• Flood flight: How climate change is pushing millions in US to move (AP)
Flooding is driving millions of people to move out of their homes, limiting growth in some prospering communities, and accelerating the decline of others, according to a new study that details how climate change and flooding are transforming where Americans live.
• 2023 set a new record for billion-dollar U.S. weather disasters in a single year:
• Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (NOAA)
• Extreme weather cost $80 billion this year. The true price is far higher. (Grist):
  There are a few key reasons for this…”A large majority of our country was built and designed during the 20th century, but now exists in a 21st-century climate,” he said. At the same time, said Smith, more people have moved into areas that are vulnerable to fires and flooding, raising the overall risk profile of the country and ensuring higher damages.
• 2023’s extreme storms, heat and wildfires broke records – a scientist explains how global warming fuels climate disasters (The Conversation)
• I Can’t Believe We Actually Lived Through These 5 Devastating And Unreal US Climate Disasters In 2023 (Buzzfeed/MSN)
• IEA: Global coal consumption hits record high – but will decline in 2024:
• Global demand for coal to peak this year but begin fall in 2024 (Carbon Brief)
• Global coal demand set to fall as China uses more renewables (CNN):
  Global coal demand is likely to have peaked this year, and could drop by about 2% over the next three years as China brings more renewable energy sources online, the International Energy Agency said Friday. It’s the first time the Paris-based agency has predicted a drop in appetite for the dirty fuel over a three-year period.
• Coal 2023: Analysis and forecast to 2026 (International Energy Agency)
• China’s newly installed solar capacity approaches decade high in first 10 months, industry body chair says (Yicai)
• New polls show bipartisan majorities of Americans support climate action:
• Poll: Majorities Increasingly Want Climate Action (Climate Crocks)
• CNN poll: Large majority of US adults and half of Republicans agree with Biden’s goal to slash climate pollution (CNN):
  Even more want the federal government to do something about it. A broad majority of US adults – 73 percent – say the federal government should develop its climate policies with the goal of cutting the country’s planet-warming pollution in half by the end of the decade… Cutting US climate pollution is a bipartisan aspiration, the CNN poll finds. Nearly all Democrats say the US should slash its greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030, and 76% of independents and half of Republicans agree.
• Global Warming’s Six Americas, Fall 2023 (Yale Climate Change Communication)
• California’s Salton Sea could be the Saudi Arabia of lithium:
• The Salton Sea has even more lithium than previously thought, new report finds (LA Times):
  “It’s going to be roughly the equivalent of 382 million electric vehicle batteries,” Prisjatschew told me. There are fewer than 300 million cars and trucks registered in the United States today. So yeah, that’s a big deal.
• Long-awaited analysis shows this desert holds a gold mine of lithium: ‘It’s pretty exciting how much is there’ (The Cool Down)
• Characterizing the Geothermal Lithium Resource at the Salton Sea (UC Davis)
• First U.S. commercial-scale offshore wind farm now online:
• VIDEO: Decades after Europe, turning blades send first commercial offshore wind power onto US grid (AP):
  Despite some recent financial setbacks, U.S. offshore windpower has hit a milestone. An 800-foot tall turbine is now sending electricity onto the grid from a commercial-scale offshore wind farm on pace to be the country’s first. The moment is years in the making and at the same time a modest advance in what experts say needs to be a major buildout of this type of clean electricity to address climate change.
• First turbine at Long Island offshore wind farm now operational (CBS News/MSN)
• Shift happens: Hope and optimism in the climate era:
• 5 reasons to be hopeful about the climate (DW News)
• VIDEO: Nations at COP28 agree to transition away from fossil fuels, but loopholes remain (PBS NewsHour):
  Manish Bapna: Look at just what’s happened in the United States in the last 18 months after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. We have seen over $100 billion of announcements of investments in solar, in wind, in electric vehicles. We have seen over 100,000 new jobs created. We’re beginning to see shovels on the ground. We’re starting to see the proof points of real things being built, a better future. And I think that shift is going to happen in a more quicker pace than many of us realize.

‘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

• El Niño is nearing historic strength. What this means and when it will end. (Washington Post)
• Why People Still Fall For Fake News About Climate Change (Grist)
• 12 climate change books to give friends and family over the holidays (Yale Climate Connections)
• 1,000s of Texas Drilling Wastewater Spills Threaten Land, Water, Animals (Inside Climate News)
• CA prepares to transform sewage into pure drinking water under new rules (LA Times)
• The Clean Energy Backlog Barely Budged This Year. What’s The Way Forward? (Canary Media)
• Young voters explain why they’re bailing on Biden — and whether they’d come back (NBC News)
• Financial Times Video: Are Small Modular Reactors the Future? (Climate Crocks)
• US EPA must do more to ensure captured carbon stays underground -report (Reuters)
• Biden’s Arctic Oil Rules May Leave ‘Big Gaps’ On Climate (E&E News)
• EPA enforcement bounces back (E&E News)
• The Biden Administration Has A Chance To Do Clean Hydrogen Right (Canary Media)
• How to electrify your life when you rent (The Verge)
• The trillion-dollar quest to make green steel (Canary Media)
• Rising Temperatures Are Wreaking Havoc Year-Round (gift link, Bloomberg)
• Complete Series: Farmers Under Attack for Supporting Clean Energy (Climate Crocks)
• These are the places most at risk from record-breaking heat waves as the planet warms (CNN)
• Building Steam in Lithium Valley (The American Prospect)
• Feeling Overwhelmed About Going All-Electric at Home? Here’s How to Get Started (Inside Climate News)
• VIDEO: See what three degrees of global warming looks like (The Economist/YouTube)
• The 7 climate tipping points that could change the world forever (Grist)
• The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world (Guardian UK)
• Four solutions to mitigate climate change, from the IPCC (Dr. Michael Mann, Penn Today)
• Environmental Sacrifice Zones: 8 Places We’ve Given Up-Probably Forever (Environmental Health Network)
• Feeling Hopeless About the Climate? Try Our 30-Day Action Plan (The Revelator)
• VIDEO: 2050: what happens if we ignore the climate crisis (Guardian UK)
• 99.9 percent Of Scientists Agree Climate Emergency Caused By Humans (Guardian UK)
• Climate Fund Choices for Investors Are Multiplying (Bloomberg/Yahoo)
• How climate change could undo 50 years of public health gains (Grist)
• Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration (Pro Publica)
• Exxon’s Snake Oil: 100 years of deception (Columbia Journalism Review)
• VIDEO: A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (The Intercept)
• 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.