Costa Rica is about to become the first country to ban single-use plastics!

We Can Save The World

June 20, 2018

Costa Rica is about to become the first country to ban single-use plastics!

Costa Rica Bans Plastic

Costa Rica is about to become the first country to ban single-use plastics!

Posted by We Can Save The World on Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Ocasio-Cortez Becomes Most Ambitious Climate Democrat After Surprise Primary Win

EcoWatch

Ocasio-Cortez Becomes Most Ambitious Climate Democrat After Surprise Primary Win

Olivia Rosane       June 27, 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – 2018

After what CNN called a surprise primary victory Tuesday over 10-term incumbent Representative Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th congressional district, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just became the leading Democrat on fighting climate changeThe Huffington Post reported.

Ocasio-Cortez, a 28 year old Democratic Socialist, is now likely to win November’s general election in the historically Democratic district that stretches from the Bronx to Queens, meaning she will join Congress with some of the most ambitious climate plans of any current representative, according to The Huffington Post.

In an email to The Huffington Post, she explained her plans for a Green New Deal to help America switch to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, which advocates say is our best shot of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

“The Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan,” she wrote. “We must again invest in the development, manufacturing, deployment, and distribution of energy, but this time green energy.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s climate plans dovetail with some of the other progressive points on her platform, such as a Federal Jobs Guarantee and Solidarity with Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

Ocasio-Cortez told The Huffington Post that the island would be the ideal place to test-run a Green New Deal to help with recovery efforts.

“Our fellow Americans on the island have suffered horrendous losses and need investment at a scale that only the American government can provide,” she said.

On her platform, Ocasio-Cortez also links the fight against climate change with her commitments to economic justice and immigrant rights.

“Rather than continue a dependency on this system that posits climate change as inherent to economic life, the Green New Deal believes that radically addressing climate change is a potential path towards a more equitable economy with increased employment and widespread financial security for all,” her platform reads.

Her platform also says fighting climate change is necessary “to avoid a world refugee crisis.” Concern for immigrants is a large part of her platform. She supports abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which was created in 2003 in the post-9/11 escalation of national security operations and executive power and operates outside the Department of Justice, unlike previous immigration enforcement.

The link between the potential for global warming to increase the number of climate refugees and the need to improve the treatment of current immigrants, many of which are already fleeing deteriorating environmental conditions, is something picked up by the Democratic Socialists of America, the group to which Ocasio-Cortez belongs, on the platform for its climate and environmental justice working group, according to The Huffington Post.

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A Socialist Woman of Color Just Turned the Entire Democratic Party

Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ousts Joe Crowley in

This Performance Is a Uniquely American Brand of Authoritarianism

Esquire

This Performance Is a Uniquely American Brand of Authoritarianism

Some Trump supporters know it’s a shtick. That doesn’t make the consequences any less real.

By Jack Holmes      June 26, 2018

Getty Images

Like it or not, this country that has for so long called itself Exceptional can now take some cues from other nations—specifically, those that slid into authoritarianism.

We have a president who attacks and seeks to undermine all institutions of democracy that provide a check on his power, from an independent judiciary and the rule of law to the free press. (The Republican Congress no longer merits a mention.) He combines that with dehumanizing attacks on vulnerable social minorities, whom he blames for the country’s problems—real and imagined. He has cultivated a base of support whose members have incorporated support for The Leader into their basic identities.

And, as Filipino author Rin Chupeco put it so well in a series of tweets early Tuesday morning, all this has been met by a chattering class of predominantly white elites who deny efforts to resist the slide into autocracy on the basis they are “uncivil.”

Rin Chupeco: Speaking as someone born in the last years of a dictatorship, you Americans are already several steps in one. Ferdinand Marcos’ greatest trick was convincing people all protesters were communist animals, so when they went missing, few cared. Even after bodies were discovered.

Rin Chupeco: Speaking as someone born in the last years of a dictatorship, you Americans are already several steps in one. Ferdinand Marcos’ greatest trick was convincing people all protesters were communist animals, so when they went missing, few cared. Even after bodies were discovered.

Rin Chupeco: These white people & journalists talking about being civil? These were the rich people, the Fil-Chinese, the mestizos in the Philippines who knew they won’t be affected by many of Marcos’ policies, and therefore could ignore them even as the killings started.

Rin Chupeco: But Filipinos have always been susceptible to strongman personality cults, just like your Republicans. (Yeah don’t @ me on this one, Repubs still singing Reagan’s praises despite the fact he was FRIENDS with Marcos and helped him retain power, making it 1000x worse for us.)

Rin Chupeco: White people, journalists who insist on civility- you seem to think civility is a common ground you share with opponents like Trump et al. Here’s a clue – whenever you offer these assholes middle ground, they will invade that space & then claim you never gave them ground at all.

This was in evidence at President Trump’s rally in South Carolina Monday night, which was nominally on behalf of South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster. In reality, it could only ever be about Trump. This was a full exhibition of the Trumpian id, as he rated late-night hosts and talked up his verification-free nuclear deal with Kim Jong-un and explained that if Melania Trump had gotten a facelift, he would let you know.

But one moment in particular spoke to Chupeco’s point:

Aaron Rupar: Trump detours into telling the crowd about a backhanded compliment filmmaker David Lynch gave him, then tells his audience that they are “the super elites.”
“Look, everybody here makes money, works hard, pays taxes. Does a great job.” pic.twitter.com/pECbx0uF1K

Aaron Rupar: Trump calls the media “the enemy of the people,” then brags about a woman who was recently interviewed and said there was nothing Trump could possibly do to lose her support. pic.twitter.com/pHuDcFM4XW

Here Trump called the free press “the enemy of the people,” a suggestion it spreads false information to the detriment of Trump and, in his extended view, the country. Except he then told the story of a supporter who said she would never abandon him, which the president learned about because … members of “the media” interviewed her. This is part of a long-running performance from Trump, who has openly admitted he attacks the media as “fake” to defend himself against legitimate negative reporting, and that when he says “fake news,” he really means negative coverage:

donald j. trump: The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

Of course, the most troubling thing about Trump’s account a fan is that she has completely abdicated her responsibility as a citizen to hold her elected representative accountable, instead pledging undying fealty to a politician. (You don’t really have to trust Trump on this—accounts like this are common among Trump supporters.) But both sides of this point to the irrelevance of facts, and even intention.

It doesn’t matter that Trump openly admits he derides legitimate coverage as fake. It doesn’t matter that this entire thing is delivered in bad faith, just like all the calls for “civility.” What matters is the performance: Trump, the strongman leader, bashing the Enemies. That includes undocumented immigrants, but it also includes the free press, Democrats, late-night hosts, and anyone else who might stand in the way of The Movement. The details aren’t important.

This has filtered down to the fanbase, which had a fascinating encounter with CNN’s Jim Acosta last night at the rally.

Chuck@Hyduch: This is just….wow. Trumpers scream at CNN, then ask for autographs, then ask for on air shout outs. Attention seeking morons
https://twitter.com/i/moments/1011402213401358336 …

At least some of Trump’s supporters understand his shtick as a performance, and they engage in it, too. That’s why they’re ready with “Build the Wall” and “Lock Her Up!” chants, even when they’re only tangentially related to whatever he’s ranting about. All the world’s a stage, and even Acosta got in on the act, signing autographs for people who just assaulted his integrity and suggested he did not belong there. And yet the performance, at its root, is a primal scream from White America in defense of a social order fast eroding under strain from monumental forces of change.

And of course, Trump’s performance has real consequences:

the realkenidrawoods: A friend, Esteban Guzman sent me this video of a racist white woman harassing him while out working with his mom.

“Why do you hate us?”
“Because you’re Mexicans.”
“We are honest people right here!”
“Haha..yeah.. rapists & animals.”

Trump supporters always reveal themselves 1/2

This reality show presidency is a uniquely American flavor of authoritarianism. Citizens from the national home of The Bachelor require only a thin veneer of reality to paper over the obvious money-grabbing deceit of the production in order to be taken in. This is our version of the authoritarian slide, in which The Leader rants about Jimmy Fallon and whether his wife got a facelift as he attacks the institutions of democracy that safeguard a free society. The entire production is carried out in complete bad faith, just like when Sarah Huckabee Sanders—who works for a man who invents demeaning nicknames for opponents, bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy,” and calls predominantly black and brown countries “shitholes”—insists we need civil discourse.

It is a way of waging the trench war against any and all constraints on the range of acceptable discourse, the range of acceptable behavior, and The Leader’s power. It’s just our American version of the same impulses Chupeco highlighted:

Rin Chupeco: So you shift the goalposts, and you enable the gaslighting, even if inadvertently. “Maybe if YOU hadn’t been so rude they wouldn’t have done that.”
Bullshit. You KNOW they’ll do it anyway because again, your goddamn status quo.

People invested in putting kids in cages don’t want your civility. They don’t want you to extend them the same courtesy they never had – and never wanted – from you. What they want is for you to retreat.

Replying to RinChupeco: People invested in putting kids in cages don’t want your civility. They don’t want you to extend them the same courtesy they never had – and never wanted – from you. What they want is for you to retreat.

Rin Chupeco: And every ground you grudgingly give, hoping that they’ll construe that as some good faith on your part, is only an incentive for them to push harder until you have no ground left. Then they’re going to tell you they’ve owned the land all along.

Chupeco’s whole thread is worth reading.

The president again suggested we should suspend due process for people captured at the border last night. He is creeping up the field, seizing first the shallow ground allotted to the most vulnerable among us. No amount of civil discourse is going to convince him to turn back, or persuade any of his supporters they have chosen the wrong path. It might be reality TV, but the supporters don’t want to know. They’re enjoying the show. The tax cuts might be reserved for the rich, but the attacks on the Other are all theirs to savor. Where will the next attack be, the next ground seized?

Rick Perry gives pep talk to natural gas industry in wake of damaging climate study

ThinkProgress

Rick Perry gives pep talk to natural gas industry in wake of damaging climate study

U.S. gas industry also opposes Trump’s proposed bailout of coal and nuclear industries.

Mark Hand     June 26, 2018

Energy Secretary Rick Perry gave a keynote speech on June 26, 2018, to kick off the 2018 World Gas Conference in Washington, D.C. Credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Energy Secretary Rick Perry touted natural gas as an environmentally friendly fuel in a speech Tuesday, kicking off an international gathering of natural gas industry officials in Washington, D.C.

Perry’s pep talk at the triennial World Gas Conference, attended by thousands of industry representatives from around the world, came less than a week after the release of an important new study that found natural gas to be far more destructive to the climate than previously thought.

The new study, published last week in the journal Science, found that methane emissions from the nation’s oil and gas industry are nearly 60 percent higher than earlier estimates — effectively enough to offset much of the climate benefits of burning natural gas instead of coal.

The study’s results upend arguments made over the past decade — as the controversial practice of fracking gained momentum across the country — that natural gas could play a key role in fighting climate change, including serving as a bridge fuel to greater integration of renewable energy resources.

Perry advocated for the Trump administration’s all-of-the-above energy policy — one that he said includes wind and solar energy — although he paid the highest tribute to natural gas. The president’s strategy “includes the cleanest fossil fuel and one of the most abundant energy sources on the planet, and that’s natural gas,” Perry emphatically told the audience.

Perry criticized fossil fuel opponents who “flatly reject” an all-of-the-above energy strategy. “The answer is not to exclude oil and gas and coal from the world’s energy mix,” he said. “For the sake of environmental progress … we must honor the right of every nation to responsibly use every fuel at its disposal.”

He also claimed these opponents are ignoring the positive side of fossil fuels. “There is still this stubborn opposition to natural gas and other fossil fuels. Opposition exists even as fossil fuels have become cleaner and low-emission natural gas increases its share of total fossil production and use,” Perry said.

The new study, “Assessment of methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas supply chain,” was led by the Environmental Defense Fund. It has authors from 16 different institutions, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Carnegie Mellon — experts who have co-authored many of the most important studies in this area.

The study found that methane emissions are so large that the total warming from natural gas-fired power plants, including leaks from transporting the gas to the plant plus emissions from the burning of gas, over a 20-year period is comparable to the total warming from coal plants over 20-year period.

Researchers concluded that if a coal-fired plant is replaced with a gas-fired plant there is no net climate benefit for at least two decades. Perhaps even more important is that other studies have shown natural gas not only does not have a climate benefit over coal, but that its use displaces many carbon-free sources of power such as wind and solar.

The argument for fracking as a climate solution just went down in flames

Although Perry received a warm welcome at Tuesday’s conference, the natural gas industry has strongly criticized Trump’s plan to subsidize the coal and nuclear power industries. The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America — the industry trade group for the North American natural gas pipeline industry — said in a statement earlier this month that it is “deeply troubled by the Trump administration’s apparent move to scapegoat natural gas to prop up uneconomic coal and nuclear plants.”

Perry didn’t address the coal and nuclear bailout in his address to the natural gas industry. On Monday, though, Perry told reporters that the Trump administration is making progress on the proposal, although he did not offer a timetable for implementation.

A small group of protesters held signs and tried to engage in conversations with attendees as they entered the Washington Convention Center for the conference. One of the protesters, Steve Norris, a member of Beyond Extreme Energy, told ThinkProgress that the “present policies of the United States government with regard to gas, the present regulatory apparatus, and the present leadership of the Department of Energy are heading us in the wrong direction.”

For several years, Beyond Extreme Energy has tried to get officials at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to consider the climate impacts of natural gas. In a change of tone at the commission, the two Democratic members of FERC — Cheryl LaFleur and Richard Glick — have starting highlighting the climate impacts of natural gas.

“We’ve been in their faces for the last four years,” Norris said. “And we’re seeing some changes there. Two of the commissioners, for the first time, are beginning to dissent because of climate issues. And that’s really encouraging. Rick Perry, on the other hand, has his head stuck in the ground, drinks oil for breakfast, and gas for dinner.”

Everybody hates Trump’s coal and nuclear bailout plan

ThinkProgress

Everybody hates Trump’s coal and nuclear bailout plan

Except the president’s favorite coal industry executive and a bankrupt nuke company.

Mark Hand      June 7, 2018

A truck delivers coal to a Pacificorp’s coal-fired power plant on October 9, 2017. Credit: George Frey/Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s fixation on bailing out the coal and nuclear power industries has proved confounding to renewable energy advocates and climate activists. But other sectors of the energy industry, including one that Trump purportedly wants to help, are also questioning the need for the radical intervention in energy markets proposed last week.

The White House issued a statement last Friday that said Trump has directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to “prepare immediate steps to stop the loss” of what the administration described as “fuel-secure power facilities,” a thinly veiled reference to coal and nuclear power plants. Also last Friday, Bloomberg News released a leaked draft proposal from the Energy Department that cited national security concerns as a reason for allowing Trump to require regional grid operators or electric utilities to purchase enough power from coal and nuclear plants to prevent them from closing.

But most of the energy industry concedes there’s no emergency that requires the federal government to intervene on behalf of coal and nuclear power.

Speaking earlier this week at an industry conference, Chris Crane, the CEO of Exelon Corp, the nation’s largest owner of nuclear plants, said the retirement of coal and nuclear plants is not a grid emergency that warrants urgent intervention from the federal government.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), one of the president’s biggest industry supporters, also opposes Trump’s directive. The powerful oil and gas lobbying group has joined a diverse coalition that includes wind, solar, and energy storage trade groups to fight any proposed bailout of the coal and nuclear industries that may come from Trump’s Department of Energy.

The renewable energy industry worries about the bailout plan’s potential negative impact on its finances. Investment banks and private equity firms may become skittish about investing in energy sectors that are not on the receiving end of Trump’s handouts.

“It’s a very confused and conflicted and backward-leaning policy that is finding support in no quarters apart from the coal industry,” John Morton, senior fellow at the Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council, told ThinkProgress. “It seems like a Hail Mary pass and a dangerous political gesture at best. There’s no support for it, not simply from the renewables industry but from most parts of the nuclear industry.”

Trump plan to bail out coal industry punishes red states the most

Morton was one of the speakers at an event on Thursday in Washington, D.C. — that offered a status update on the global move to a clean energy economy — sponsored by the Atlantic Council, the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century. Founded in 1961, the Atlantic Council is a think tank that focuses on international affairs.

In his interview with ThinkProgress, Morton asked why the Trump administration would seek to interfere in an electric power marketplace that is functioning fairly efficiently. “There is only one answer,” Morton said in response to his own question. “And it’s pure politics and it’s pure politics to a relatively small base. In the long run, it’s going to set us back in this race to a clean energy future.”

Tom Kiernan, CEO of of the American Wind Energy Association, pointed out at the event that despite claims of a pending catastrophe, the nation’s electric grid operators “are on the record saying that the orderly phaseout of some of these very expensive coal and nuclear plants does not constitute an emergency.”

Kiernan emphasized that coal and nuclear plants do not necessarily improve grid resilience, even though they have onsite fuel supply. During the polar vortex of early 2014, huge amounts of coal-fired plants stopped operating due in large part to frozen equipment.

Of the approximately 19,500 megawatts of capacity lost due to cold weather conditions, more than 17,700 megawatts was due to frozen equipment, according to a report on the polar vortex issued by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. There were also reports of frozen onsite supplies of coal that forced coal-fired generating facilities to shut down.

In 2011, a terrible cold snap in Texas led to frozen coal supplies and prevented equipment on some coal plants from operating properly, forcing coal units to shut down.

More recently, Hurricane Harvey knocked out two coal-fired power plants in Texas “because that wonderful onsite fuel was flooded,” Kiernan pointed out. Operators had to shut down a few wind farms in Texas due to tropical storm-strength winds. But other wind farms “powered right through” the storm, producing large amounts of electricity from the high wind speeds, he said.

Nuclear plants also often face unscheduled outages due to equipment failures or extreme weather, calling into question whether their continued operation creates a more resilient electric grid.

“The notion of promoting nuclear power on the basis of resilience is playing to its weakness,” argued Greg Wetstone, president and CEO of ACORE. “The one thing that history has demonstrated about nuclear power is that it is not resilient, and you can talk to the people at Fukushima about that.”

Morton also fears the Trump administration’s pro-fossil fuel policies are skewing policymakers’ views on renewable energy. The transition to a low-carbon economy is occurring at an extraordinarily fast clip, and one that is faster than most people realize, he told the audience.

David Livingston: “Making policy without good data is inefficient, sub-optimal and, when comes to climate and clean energy, dangerous.” Today at @AtlanticCouncil , @ACGlobalEnergy‘s John Morton kicks off our US launch of the @ren21 Global Renewables Status Report 2018, in partnership with @ACORE

There is “a dangerous gap currently between the perception of where we are in this transition to a low-carbon economy and the reality of how quickly that transition is occurring,” he said.

“If the U.S. pretends that we are playing in a world in which renewables is 2 percent of annual new energy installations and not 70 percent, which it was last year, you make a very different set of policy decisions about how to position your industry,” he said.

The lack of awareness of renewable energy’s rapid growth — and a bias toward fossil fuels — is ingrained in the thinking of Trump administration officials.

But Morton also cautioned that the current trajectory of the clean energy movement is still not occurring fast enough. “We’re not on a 2-degree pathway [set] in the Paris agreement goals,” he said. “And, of course, there are many people, myself included, that agree a 2-degree pathway is insufficient to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change.”

Those who do support Trump’s directive last week have telling motivations.

Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray, one of the few supporters of Trump’s bailout plan for the coal-fired generation, revealed the real reason he supports the initiative in an interview on Fox News Business on Thursday.

He pointed to the fact that coal’s share of the nation’s electric generation capacity is projected to drop from its peak of 58 percent three decades ago to 27 percent by 2020. This will undoubtedly have a negative impact on Murray Energy’s domestic revenues, even though the company is one of the most financially stable coal companies in the nation.

Top energy regulator points to problematic wartime language in Trump’s coal bailout plan

On Wednesday, E&E News shed new light on the close relationship between Murray and the Trump administration. The news service reported that Murray presented Trump administration officials with half a dozen draft executive orders in 2017 aimed at exiting the Paris climate agreement and reducing coal regulations.

Another one of the few supporters of Trump’s plan is FirstEnergy Solutions, the bankrupt nuclear plant-owning company that petitioned Perry earlier this year to use the emergency powers of the Federal Power Act to order regional grid operator PJM to bail out a long list of nuclear and coal power plants. At the time, NRG Energy, one of FirstEnergy’s competitors in the region, described the request as a “manufactured crisis.”

new filing in FirstEnergy Solutions’ bankruptcy case detailed how lobbyists at Akin Gump, a powerful law and lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., spent hundreds of hours in April working on a renewed campaign to secure bailouts for the utility’s coal and nuclear power plants from the Trump administration and state lawmakers in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Emails indicate Pruitt tried to recruit oil execs for EPA jobs

The Hill

Emails indicate Pruitt tried to recruit oil execs for EPA jobs

By Morgan Gstalter      June 25, 2018

© Greg Nash

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt tried to recruit top executives from oil and gas trading groups to jobs within the agency, according to emails obtained through an Freedom of Information Act request.

The emails, by the Sierra Club, show that oil company ConocoPhillips reached out to the EPA after Pruitt met with the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) board of directors.

Kevin Avery, a manager of federal government affairs at ConocoPhillips wrote to then-EPA aide Samantha Travis on March 27, 2017, describing Pruitt’s recruitment “plea.”

“I understand that Administrator Pruitt met with the API executives last week and he made a plea for candidates to fill some of the regional director positions within the agency,” Avery wrote in an email. “One of our employees has expressed interest. He is polishing up his resume. Where does he need to send it?”

A few days later, on April 4, Avery emailed Travis again with the resume of a company employee as well as a friend of one of the executives.

The resumes were reportedly never sent to the EPA.

“We are not aware of that ‘recruiting plea’ but EPA has sought a diverse range of individuals to serve in the Agency and help advance President Trump’s agenda of environmental stewardship and regulatory certainty,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill.

However, Michael Brune, executive director of Sierra Club, blasted Pruitt’s attempt to outsource the position.

“This is Scott Pruitt trying to outsource his job to protect our air and water to the exact people responsible for polluting them. Pruitt’s corrupt tenure at EPA has been a dereliction of the duties he swore to uphold. He’s gotten sweetheart deals from corporate lobbyists and then turned around and pushed their agenda, all while trying to enrich himself at the expense of taxpayers,” Brune said in a statement.

Dozens of CEOs from the oil industry were in attendance for the March 23 dinner at the Trump International Hotel.

Avery offered up the resumes of Brad Thomas and Kim Estes shortly after the dinner, according to Buzzfeed News.

Avery praised Thomas in the email as someone who is “very knowledge on a host of EPA regulations and policies” in Alaska, where he worked for ConocoPhillips.

“The other candidate is recommended by our Vice President for State and Federal Government Affairs, John Dabbar,” Avery wrote in the email. “He is a personal friend of Mr. Estes’ and would be willing to give you any additional information you might need.”

Estes’s consulting company, the Estes Group LLC, works on environmental health and safety issues and emergency response in California.

Estes confirmed to the outlet that he his name had been submitted as a candidate to possible lead the EPA’s Region 9 office in San Francisco.

Dabbar did tell him about the position but Estes said he never submitted a formal application or have an in-person interview.

BNSF: Estimated 230,000 gallons of oil spilled in derailment

Orlando Sentinel

BNSF: Estimated 230,000 gallons of oil spilled in derailment

Associated Press, Doon, Iowa       June 24, 2018

Des Moines Register

An estimated 230,000 gallons (870,619 liters) of crude oil spilled into floodwaters in the northwestern corner of Iowa following a train derailment, a railroad official said Saturday.

BNSF spokesman Andy Williams said 14 of 32 oil tanker cars just south of Doon in Lyon County leaked oil into surrounding floodwaters from the swollen Little Rock River. Williams had earlier said 33 oil cars had derailed.

Nearly half the spill — an estimated 100,000 gallons (378,530 liters) — had been contained with booms near the derailment site and an additional boom placed approximately 5 miles (8.05 kilometers) downstream, Williams said. Skimmers and vacuum trucks were being used to remove the oil. Crews will then use equipment to separate the oil from the water.

“In addition to focusing on the environmental recovery, ongoing monitoring is occurring for any potential conditions that could impact workers and the community and so far have found no levels of concern,” Williams said.

Officials still hadn’t determined the cause of Friday morning’s derailment, but a disaster proclamation issued by Gov. Kim Reynolds for Lyon and three other counties placed the blame on rain-fueled flooding. Reynolds visited the derailment site Saturday afternoon as part of a tour of areas hit by recent flooding.

Some officials have speculated that floodwaters eroded soil beneath the train track. The nearby Little Rock River rose rapidly after heavy rain Wednesday and Thursday.

A major part of the cleanup work includes building a temporary road parallel to the tracks to allow in cranes that can remove the derailed and partially-submerged oil cars. Williams said officials hoped to reach the cars Saturday.

The train was carrying tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to Stroud, Oklahoma, for ConocoPhillips. ConocoPhillips spokesman Daren Beaudo said each tanker can hold more than 25,000 gallons (20,817 imperial gallons) of oil.

Beaudo said Saturday that the derailed oil cars were a model known as DOT117Rs, indicating they were newer or had been retrofitted to be safer and help prevent leaks in the event of an accident.

The derailment also caused concern downstream, including as far south as Omaha, Nebraska, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the derailment site. The spill reached the Rock River, which joins the Big Sioux River before merging into the Missouri River at Sioux City.

Omaha’s public water utility — Metropolitan Utilities District — said it was monitoring pumps it uses to pull drinking water from the Missouri River.

Rock Valley, Iowa, just southwest of the derailment, shut off its water wells within hours of the accident. It plans to drain and clean its wells and use a rural water system until testing shows its water is safe.

For the latest information about the derailment: https://bit.ly/2K1wIAZ

Story has been corrected to show that 32 oil tanker cars derailed, not 33.

Farm Bill With Huge Giveaways to Pesticide Industry Passes House

EcoWatch

Farm Bill With Huge Giveaways to Pesticide Industry Passes House

 Olivia Rosane      June 22, 2018

A farm bill that opponents say would harm endangered species, land conservation efforts, small-scale farmers and food-stamp recipients passed the U.S. House of Representatives 213 to 211, with every House Democrat and 20 Republicans voting against it, The Center for Biological Diversity reported.

similar farm bill failed to pass the House in May when it was caught in the crossfire over immigration reform, but the new bill retains its most controversial provisions.

The bill, officially titled H.R. 2, the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018, is a major win for the pesticide industry, which spent $43 million on lobbying this Congressional season. It would ax a requirement that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assess a pesticide’s impact on endangered species before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approves it and relax the Clean Water Act’s provision that anyone releasing pesticides into waterways obtain a permit.

“This farm bill should be called the Extinction Act of 2018,” Center for Biological Diversity Government Affairs Director Brett Hartl said. “If it becomes law, this bill will be remembered for generations as the hammer that drove the final nail into the coffin of some of America’s most vulnerable species.”

The bill would also be devastating for land conservation efforts. It would allow logging and mining in Alaskan forests, including the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, the Tongass, and get rid of the Conservation Stewardship program, which funds farmers who engage in conservation on their land, according to Environment America.

Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who opposed the bill, also said it favored agribusiness over ordinary farmers.

“The Farm Bill rewards mega-agribusinesses and Wall Street, while slashing funding for nutrition, rural agriculture development, and clean energy programs, cutting key agricultural research and development efforts critically needed to help fight invasive species like the coffee berry borer, macadamia felted coccid, and more,” she said in a statement reported by Big Island Now.

The bill is also controversial because of proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps, Reuters reported. House Republicans have pushed for measures that would increase the number of recipients who must work in order to receive food stamps, including limiting states’ abilities to waive those requirements in areas with poor economies.

Reuters noted that the Senate version of the 2018 farm bill does not include any changes to the SNAP program and that the House bill is unlikely to pass into law because of those provisions.

Environmental groups also prefer the Senate version of the bill.

“House Republican leaders have decided to gamble with farmers’ crucial government support by attaching dangerous policy riders to the farm bill. These would put Americans’ health at risk, pollute our waters, and imperil bees, monarch butterflies, and other bedrock species,” Federal Affairs Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Brian Siu said in a statement.

“For the most part, the Senate is pursuing a serious, bipartisan measure that would support farmers and those needing help buying food. We look forward to working with lawmakers to help pursue that approach,” Siu said.

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Deep-Water Drilling Is Back

Bloomberg

Deep-Water Drilling Is Back

With Trump set to revive offshore exploration, Big Oil is developing cheaper ways to drill.

By Kevin Crowley    June 21, 2018

Pipes and mooring lines rise from the Gulf of Mexico beneath Chevron Corp.’s Jack/St. Malo deep-water oil platform about 200 miles off the coast of Louisiana on May 18, 2018. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

On a hot, sunny May afternoon, flying fish leap out of the Gulf of Mexico’s brilliant blue waters near the steel legs of a Chevron Corp. oil platform, pursued by deep-water predators. “Is that a shark chasing them?” asks barge supervisor Jamie Gobert, peering over a rail. “Think it’s yellow-fin tuna or maybe dolphin fish,” says Emile Boudreaux, his colleague.

Typically in the region, seeing so many deep-water creatures converging on a single spot would be unusual. But these denizens of the Gulf have a road map of sorts to Chevron’s huge Jack/St. Malo platform, a floating steel structure the size of three football fields about 200 miles off the Louisiana coast. The fish are following giant underwater pipelines that carry crude from three oil fields about 15 miles away in different directions from the Jack/St. Malo, like tentacles of an octopus. Unlike old-style platforms that suck oil from a field directly below, this web like arrangement lets the Jack/St. Malo pump more than 3,000 gallons of crude a minute from the trio of fields.

The three-for-one hub is part of a wave of innovation by oil majors including Chevron, BP Plc, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc that’s allowing deep-water production in the Gulf to bounce back from disasters both environmental (BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010) and financial (the oil price).

                                               Oil production equipment onboard Chevron’s Jack/St. Malo platform. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

While U.S. shale production has been dominating markets, a quiet revolution has been taking place offshore. The combination of new technology and smarter design will end much of the overspending that’s made large troves of subsea oil barely profitable to produce, industry executives say. New projects are targeting costs of about $35 to $40 a barrel, which would compete with the lowest-cost shale assets. Cutting costs lets operators tap oil reserves that were previously uneconomic to exploit.

The Gulf of Mexico has been the vanguard of global experimentation for offshore oil, and success this time could encourage more drilling in the world’s hot new oil basins in countries including Brazil, Guyana, Mexico, and Mozambique. Further on, it could even encourage more U.S. offshore production, if President Trump is able to fulfill his plan to open much of the nation’s coastline to fresh exploration. “In the past, a lot of the cost of development has been new technology,” says Jeff Shellebarger, president of Chevron’s North American division. “With the types of reservoirs we’re drilling today, most of that learning curve is behind us. Now we can keep those costs pretty competitive.”

Two things drive drilling: crude prices and production costs. In the 2000s, higher prices spurred much of the growth in the Gulf. Operators fixated on building technically advanced production platforms that were the biggest, the deepest, and able to handle the highest-pressure wells—at almost whatever the cost. They demanded customized equipment including valves and pumps, even when standard models with practically the same specifications were cheaper. Shell had an encyclopedia of 100,000 engineering standards. In some lines of business, it has cut that back 95 percent, says Harry Brekelmans, Shell’s projects and technology director.

Complexity and cost didn’t seem to matter much when oil averaged more than $100 a barrel from 2011 to 2014. But when prices plunged to a 12-year low of $28 a barrel in 2016, the biggest drop in a generation, many projects and companies were generating big losses. “We knew there was incredible waste, but 2014 was the trigger,” Brekelmans says. “We knew there was no way we could put forward a project in the same way again.”

Platform supply vessel Kobe Chouest anchored alongside Jack/St. Malo. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

Take BP’s Mad Dog 2, designed in 2012 to be the biggest platform in the world. The initial plan was so large and complicated that a Finnish shipyard would need to be expanded to build it. The platform’s projected cost was $20 billion. BP executives realized that was outlandish, even before crude prices dropped. So they redesigned the platform, stripping out features and cutting the bill to $9 billion.

BP, the Gulf’s biggest operator, now wants to do more exploration around its existing platforms and pipe oil back to them, as is done at Jack/St. Malo, rather than build expensive new floating hubs. This approach is possible because the range of the so-called tiebacks—the pipes that carry the crude from the drill site to the platform—has increased markedly in the past few years due to new subsea pump technology. Chevron expects it will soon be able to use tiebacks as long as 60 miles, almost four times the length of those at Jack/St. Malo.

If an oil field is in range, tiebacks can save about $12 a barrel compared with the cost of building a new platform, according to researcher Wood Mackenzie Ltd. “The philosophy is around infrastructure-led exploration, maintaining capacity at those hubs and filling them up,” says Starlee Sykes, BP’s regional president for the Gulf of Mexico and Canada. “We’re focused on using technology to be safer and more efficient rather than to build the biggest ever.”

Chevron and BP have cut operating expenses in the Gulf by half since 2013, the companies say, by a combination of using standardized equipment, applying better technology, eliminating jobs, and selling higher-cost assets. Shell has also reduced spending substantially, Brekelmans says.

Chevron workers examine hydrocarbon samples on Jack/St. Malo. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

“People ask about the big hitter in terms of cost savings,” says Stephen Conner, general manager of Chevron’s Gulf of Mexico operations. “But in truth, it’s the one thousand little things we’ve done.”

Analysts remain skeptical about whether the industry is truly reformed. As oil bounces back—it’s up 62 percent in the past year—costs may rise again, especially as drilling and construction suppliers seek to increase their own prices, says William Turner, a Wood Mackenzie senior research analyst. “Margins for servicers are just not sustainable,” he says. “I see costs creeping up, albeit from a low base.”

It might seem unnecessary for companies to put so much money and effort into risky offshore projects when oil from onshore shale production is booming. Output from the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico will more than double over the next five years, to 5.4 million barrels a day, more than that produced by any OPEC member other than Saudi Arabia, according to IHS Markit Ltd.

But some companies such as BP lack significant shale assets, so they don’t have a choice. Even for those that do like Chevron, the advantage of drilling offshore is the sheer volume of oil that can be produced. In the Permian, a top-performing well produces about 2,000 barrels of oil daily for a few weeks before declining sharply. In the Gulf, fields can produce as much as 100,000 barrels a day for decades.

Activity in the region is picking up. Shell in April said it will build a deep-water platform named Vito, a project that had to be re-engineered after the 2014 oil-price crash. Chevron’s Big Foot is expecting to produce its first oil by the end of the year. BP’s Mad Dog 2 is also in development mode.

Not surprisingly, BP, Shell, and Chevron all support Trump’s plan to open up more than 90 percent of the U.S. outer continental shelf to drilling. But even if the administration is able to overcome strong environmental opposition by most of the coastal states, it would likely be the mid-2020s before any exploration activity could begin.

On Jack/St. Malo, Gobert and Boudreaux are showing off valves, pumps, enormous lifting chains, pipelines, safety choke points, and a three-turbine generator system that could power 58,000 houses, all floating on its giant frame. Taken together, the equipment cost $7.5 billion, and that figure excludes day-to-day running costs, taxes, and royalty payments. What makes it worth all the effort? Gobert watches as a colleague pours a sample of oil from a tap, as if from a beer keg, connected to a maze of pipes extending 14-feet high. “We call this the cash register,” he says.

Bottom Line – Rising production of oil from shale fields has reinvigorated the U.S. oil industry. But new technology to make offshore drilling more economical could have a longer-lasting impact.

Trump scraps Obama policy on protecting oceans, Great Lakes

Associated Press

Trump scraps Obama policy on protecting oceans, Great Lakes

John Flesher, Associated Press       June 21, 2018

In this April 21, 2010, file photo, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns in the Gulf of Mexico following an explosion that killed 11 workers and caused the worst offshore oil spill in the nation’s history. President Donald Trump is throwing out a policy devised by his predecessor for protecting U.S. oceans and the Great Lakes, replacing it with a new approach that emphasizes use of the waters to promote economic growth. President Barack Obama issued his policy in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Trump says it was too bureaucratic. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Traverse City , Mich. (AP) — President Donald Trump has thrown out a policy devised by his predecessor to protect U.S. oceans and the Great Lakes, replacing it with a new approach that emphasizes use of the waters to promote economic growth.

Trump revoked an executive order issued by President Barack Obama in 2010 following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, it killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of crude that harmed marine wildlife, fouled more than 1,300 miles of shoreline and cost the tourism and fishing industries hundreds of millions of dollars.

Obama said the spill underscored the vulnerability of marine environments. He established a council to promote conservation and sustainable use of the waters.

In his order this week, Trump did not mention the Gulf spill. He said he was “rolling back excessive bureaucracy created by the previous administration” and depicted the Obama council as bloated, with 27 departments and agencies and over 20 committees, subcommittees and working groups.

The Republican president said he was creating a smaller Ocean Policy Committee while eliminating “duplicative” regional planning bodies created under Obama.

But he said federal agencies could participate in regional partnerships formed by states. His administration has encouraged a “cooperative federalism” approach that shifts more responsibility to state governments.

Trump’s order downplays environmental protection, saying the change would ensure that regulations and management decisions don’t get in the way of responsible use by industries that “employ millions of Americans, advance ocean science and technology, feed the American people, transport American goods, expand recreational opportunities and enhance America’s energy security.”

In another reversal of Obama policy, Trump earlier this year called for opening most coastal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling, drawing fierce opposition from many coastal states. His administration also is stepping up federal leases for offshore wind energy development.

“Domestic energy production from federal waters strengthens the nation’s security and reduces reliance on imported energy,” Trump said in his order, which also mentioned shipping, fishing and recreation as among industries standing to benefit from his plan.

The order drew praise from a group representing offshore energy producers.

Jack Belcher, managing director of the pro-industry National Ocean Policy Coalition, said the new approach would remove “a significant cloud of uncertainty” for marine commerce.

Environmentalists said it erases a national mandate to improve ocean health.

“In another attempt to reverse progress made under President Obama, the Trump administration is recklessly tossing aside responsible ocean management and stewardship,” said Arian Rubio, legislative associate for the League of Conservation Voters.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, a Republican and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Trump’s approach would “help the health of our oceans and ensure local communities impacted by ocean policy have a seat at the table.”

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat and ranking member of the committee, demanded a hearing and accused Trump of “unilaterally throwing out” years of conservation work.

Associated Press reporters Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine, and Matthew Daly in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story.