Electric company lineman missed his son’s wedding after Irma: ‘God put us here to restore power’

Yahoo

Electric company lineman missed his son’s wedding after Irma: ‘God put us here to restore power’

Sabrina Rojas Weiss September 16, 2017

Photo: Getty Images

Whenever there’s a hurricane, or any kind of disaster that causes power outages, impacted individuals are generally quick to talk about the energy companies as giant abstract entities that never work fast enough to get the lights back on. In fact, it’s up to the people, such as Duke Energy lineman Jim LeBlanc, to get in their bucket trucks or climb dangerous poles and physically fix those power lines. LeBlanc just missed his son’s wedding this week to get residents in Largo, Fla., back online after Hurricane Irma.

“I said, ‘Son, you’re planning your wedding in the month that’s the busiest for hurricane season here,’” LeBlanc, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, tells Yahoo Style. “When he set up the date, it was for the time I was going to be out of town, and I said, ‘Good luck. Let me know how things work out. I’m sorry I can’t be there.’

In the initial aftermath of Irma, about 6.8 million people were without power in Florida alone. By Friday, Duke Energy said that its crews had restored electricity to 1.1 million customers, with 294,000 left to go. The pressure is especially high for all utility companies to get their work done after the death of eight residents in an un-air-conditioned nursing home.

When the work on Irma began earlier this week, LeBlanc said no one knew how long they’d be in Florida, and his supervisor warned it could be more than two weeks. His son’s wife has a brother who just enlisted in the military and is going to be deployed soon, so they decided not to delay the wedding.

“I’m sorry as I can be, but we’ll celebrate whenever I get done,” LeBlanc said.

In his 16 years of working for Duke, LeBlanc has traveled to repair the damage after Katrina, Francis, Sandy, Charlie, and other big storms. There’s a rotating list of who travels to these emergency situations, and employees have the option to stay home, but LeBlanc said he never considered doing so.

“You’re either a dedicated lineman or you’re someone else,” he said. “Holidays, anniversaries, my children’s birthdays — as a lineman you celebrate it whenever you’re not on call anymore.”

Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks tweeted a video of LeBlanc on Thursday, after the wedding. After sharing a picture of the newly betrothed couple, he said, “This is why we’re here on earth, God put us here to restore power. We’re linemen, that’s what we do.”

This earned the lineman a call from Senior Vice President Michael Lewis, which is when he felt the full force of his sacrifice.

“It hit me all at one time,” LeBlanc says. “A lot of times we suppress our feelings — we’re tough guys out here working on power lines. When Michael Lewis called me, it made me pause and think, ‘What have I done to my son, now?’ I missed his wedding. I felt ashamed for a few minutes about it.”

Millions of Floridians are probably thankful that LeBlanc’s prevailing feeling seems more like pride in his work.

“I can’t sing and dance,” he admits. “I play guitar, but I’m really not that good. I don’t have any other talent, but I can do this job safely.”

You and I don’t deserve a tax cut

Yahoo Finance

You and I don’t deserve a tax cut

Rick Newman September 14, 2017
Most people want to pay less in taxes. I sure do. But believe it or not, taxes in the United States are relatively low, and the case for cutting them is pretty weak.

President Donald Trump has started to barnstorm the country to drum up support for tax cuts. Republicans in Congress say they’ll release a blueprint soon, with the goal of passing a bill within months. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says tax cuts might even be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2017, meaning some of us will get rebates for taxes already paid.

The presumption is that Americans are overtaxed and deserve relief. But if anything, Americans are undertaxed. This isn’t an argument for raising taxes or expanding a government that’s probably too big already. It’s just simple math.

There are two basic types of taxes: Those on individuals and those on businesses. Republicans plan to cut taxes for most individuals, to put more money in people’s pockets. There’s a fundamental problem with doing that, however. The federal government will take in about $3.6 trillion in taxes this year, but it will spend $4.1 trillion. Spending will exceed revenue by 17%, with the Treasury financing the deficit by issuing debt. By definition, Americans are already getting more in government spending than they’re paying for. So why should we pay even less?

Yeah, I know: Some supply-siders think cutting taxes will magically make the economy grow faster, generating more tax revenue, on net. If only. That was the idea when George W. Bush cut taxes in 2001 and 2003. It didn’t happen then and it won’t happen now.

Compared with other developed countries, the U.S. tax burden is low. The total tax burden — including federal, state, local and payroll taxes — on a typical American family with two kids is 14.1% of gross income, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That’s lower than the tax burden in 24 out of 33 other countries surveyed by the OECD. By comparison, the tax burden is 18.3% in Canada, 21.3% in Germany and 22.7% in the United Kingdom. Where are taxes lower? In Chile, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, South Korea, Mexico, the Slovak Republic, and Switzerland. In Spain, the tax burden is the same as in the U.S.

A real life example

I’ll make this personal. Last year, federal income taxes accounted for 20.5% of my total pay. Social Security and Medicare contributions raised the federal cut to 25.4%. Add in state and local taxes and my total income tax burden (not including property taxes!) was 32.5% of my gross pay. That’s a lot. Would I like it to be lower? Hell yeah.

Problem is, I can’t easily identify a big chunk of federal spending that should be slashed so I can keep more of my money. Social Security and Medicare benefit people like my mom. I’ve known people who relied on Medicaid and other relief programs while in between jobs or enduring some kind of hardship. With a nuclear North Korea, a bellicose Russia and all the other global problems, it doesn’t seem like a good time to slash defense spending. The rest of the federal budget is peanuts compared with these big programs. And I don’t think Washington should add even more to the national debt —which my kids and grandkids will have to pay off — so that I can spend a bit more borrowed money today.

Tax burden has eased over the years, but Americans still struggle

Americans tend to think taxes have drifted up over time, but the opposite is true. The average federal tax burden for the middle 60% of earners is 13.8% of income, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office. That’s 2.8 percentage points lower than the historical average of 16.6%. So overall, American taxpayers already get more than they pay for, they pay less than most citizens elsewhere, and the tax burden has dropped over time. This is a weak case for tax cuts. Arguably, no case.

American taxpayers do have some legitimate gripes, however. First, they are not getting good government for the taxes they do pay. Congress can barely accomplish its most basic job — funding the government — and it seems incapable of addressing major problems such as illegal immigration, soaring health care costs, and worsening income inequality. If the government offered a money-back guarantee, no doubt millions of taxpayers would demand a full refund.

A lot of Americans are falling behind, as well. There’s voluminous evidence showing the rich are getting richer while much of the rest struggle to keep up with inflation. This isn’t happening because taxes are too high. It’s happening because a global, digitized economy heavily favors people with certain skills while punishing those who are less-educated. The solution to this is complicated, involving better education, more effective job training and probably also more grit and determination among the disaffected. Lowering taxes won’t do much, if anything, to help people who aren’t prospering prosper.

Corporate taxes are the real problem

There’s a better case for fixing the business tax code, which is riddled with distortions that create incentives for companies to stash money overseas and spend on the wrong things. The top corporate rate, 35%, needs to come down, if only because rates are now lower in most other developed countries. Most U.S. companies pay far less than the 35% rate, thanks to dozens of loopholes bought with lobbyist money. That produces this paradox: The United States has the highest corporate tax rate of any developed nation — 14.5 percentage points higher than the average for Europe — yet corporate taxes have dropped from 17% of federal revenue in 1970 to 10.5% today. Something is seriously broken.

There should probably also be lower rates for small and medium-sized businesses, which often pay taxes at individual rates that can be two or three times higher than the discounted rates corporations with armies of tax lawyers typically pay. In general, lower rates with fewer loopholes are better than high rates with all kinds of workarounds, even if there’s no net difference in the revenue raised. The best thing Congress could probably do is make the U.S. tax code as efficient as possible — the envy of companies everywhere — without cutting any tax revenue or adding to the national debt. And if Congress actually accomplished something, maybe we wouldn’t feel so bitter about the taxes we do pay.

Confidential tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com. Encrypted communication available.

A New Food Label Is Coming Soon and It Goes ‘Beyond Organic’

EcoWatch

A New Food Label Is Coming Soon and It Goes ‘Beyond Organic’

By Ronnie Cummins September 14, 2017

Conscious consumers won’t have to wait much longer for clear guidance on how to buy food and other products that are not only certified organic, but also certified regenerative.

On Wednesday, the Rodale Institute unveiled draft standards for a new Regenerative Organic Certification, developed by Rodale and a coalition of farmers, ranchers, nonprofits, scientists and brands.

When finalized, the certification will go “beyond organic” by establishing higher standards for soil health and land management, animal welfare and farmer and worker fairness.

Organic Consumer Association and our Regeneration International project, fully embrace this new venture to make organic more climate friendly, humane, just and environmentally positive. As we’ve said before, when it comes to food and farming—and as we veer toward climate catastrophe—”sustainable” doesn’t cut it anymore. And certified USDA organic, though far better than GMO, chemical and energy-intensive agriculture, doesn’t go quite far enough.

The standard will be administered by NSF International, an Ann Arbor, Michigan based product testing, inspection and certification organization, and will be open to multiple certification partners, according to Rodale.

When companies like Monsanto and Bayer claim to be “sustainable” and “climate-smart,” those terms lose all meaning. When companies like Ben & Jerry’s, which relies on an industrial dairy system fueled by GMO crops, claim to be “sustainable,” we know that word has been co-opted—and corrupted.

We’ve always supported USDA organic certification—even though the standards are sometimes flawed and sometimes exploited by a few bad actors—because we believe them to be the best way for consumers to avoid pesticides and synthetic ingredients. We’ll continue to fight for stronger, better organic standards, and we’ll hold fast against allowing corporations to weaken or exploit them.

But we also believe it’s time to do better. It’s time to acknowledge the role organic regenerative agriculture plays reversing global warming, by restoring the soil’s capacity to draw down and sequester excess CO2 from the atmosphere. It’s time to acknowledge that organic, regenerative agriculture increases crop resiliency by restoring soil health and biodiversity.

It’s time to recognize that regeneration is the next stage of organic food and farming—and civilization.

This new Organic Regenerative Certification will help consumers identify those products that not only nourish their bodies, but also heal the planet.

The census data has bad news for Black and Latinx Americans

ThinkProgress

The census data has bad news for Black and Latinx Americans

Across the country families are getting wealthier, but rosy coverage of new census figures is hiding an alarming fact.

E.A. Crunden September 13, 2017

AP Photo/David Goldman

New Census Bureau data shows an increasingly optimistic picture for white Americans — but far less so for Americans of color, many of whom still face stark income disparities.

Released Tuesday, the numbers appear to show good news across the board in several key areas. Median household income in the United States in 2016 was $59,039 — a more than three percent rise from 2015 and the highest ever recorded. Poverty also saw a dip, as did the number of people without health insurance. The Census Bureau said that data reflects both a return to pre-recession levels, with 2.5 million people no longer living in poverty, and a precarious drop in the number of uninsured Americans, now around 8.8 percent of the population.

But the figures also show a grim reality. While white families now earn an average income of around $65,041, that picture is far less rosy for other racial demographics. Hispanic families earn around $47,675 — considerably lower than the over-arching average, $59,039. Worse off are Black families, who earn a median of $39,490, more than $25,000 less than their white counterparts. (The top earners, bringing in around $81,431 per year, are families identified as Asian, a broad demographic including those with origins across much of the Asian continent but outside of the Middle East.) Those numbers are despite the fact that medians for both Black and Hispanic households grew at twice the rate of white households in 2016.

The Census Bureau told ThinkProgress that no reason could be given for the gaps, and commentary could only be offered on the figures and trends. But experts and economists highlighted the data on social media, pointing to the numbers as a disconcerting sign that the figures reinforce income inequality in a damning way, one that also cuts along gendered lines. Janelle Jones, an economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, noted on Twitter that “earnings actually DECREASED for black women and Latinas” while they rose for white women (women of all races are still out-earned significantly by their male counterparts):

While the figures alone are striking, they aren’t the only indicator that the United States has a severe economic inequality issue. According to a new study by Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies, wealth trends for Black and Latinx families are dwindling, even as the United States becomes increasingly less white demographically. If the study is correct, the median wealth for Black families will be $0 by 2053; two decades later, Latinx families are expected to reach the same number.

“While households of color are projected to reach majority status by 2043, if the racial wealth divide is left unaddressed, median Black household wealth is on a path to hit zero by 2053 and median Latino household wealth is projected to hit zero twenty years later,” the report’s key findings note. “In sharp contrast, median White household wealth would climb to $137,000 by 2053.”

Related: Census data confirms connection between Obamacare and record-low uninsured rate. But states that did not embrace ACA provisions continue to see higher uninsured rates.

Wealth is about more than income — assets and ownership are an important component of how wealth is determined. But the study still points at an increasingly pressing issue. Projections indicate the United States will be majority non-white by 2044; if trends continue as they are now, that could mean serious repercussions for the U.S. economy, which will suffer along with many communities of color.

This is all part of an enduring legacy, Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, a senior fellow at Prosperity Now, told The Guardian.

“The middle class didn’t just happen by market forces, and the whiteness of the middle class didn’t just happen by market forces,” he said. “Both were intentional.”

Interpretations of Tuesday’s census figures have in many ways overlooked this reality. With much of U.S. focus directed on the country’s middle class, any growth within that group is seen as positive. But for Black and Latinx people, the story becomes more complicated, both because they are paid less than white counterparts, and because white families are more likely to have access to pre-existing wealth and assets.

“You find first-generation, even second-generation African-American and Latino households that have professional jobs and are making ‘middle-income money’ – but they have the wealth of a white high-school dropout,” said Asante-Muhammad. “They’re not truly part of a middle class – which would mean financial stability, money to weather challenging economic situations, or money to invest in the economic opportunities of their children.”

That reality is one that might not be addressed any time soon. In addition to reinforcing pre-existing racial income inequality, census figures also point at another jarring trend — the rich are getting richer more generally, while the poorest households have an even smaller income than before. That’s not a good sign for Americans of color already at a disadvantage, or a positive sign that dramatic shifts could be coming.

Even those welcoming the census data were quick to note that the figures reflect a reality prior to the election of President Donald Trump. The president’s policy proposals, which aim to roll back things like food stamp funding, and wide-scale legislative efforts, like unraveling the Affordable Care Act, could have a dramatic impact on the growth measured in 2016.

That’s something Americans should watch out for, Peter Atwater, president of Financial Insyghts, told the Washington Post.

“There’s a danger that this is as good as it gets,” he said.

While the world is being bombarded by extreme weather events, the Trump administration is attacking scientists and known science.

DeSmogBlog

While the world is being bombarded by extreme weather events, the Trump administration is attacking scientists and known science.

Extreme Weather Pounding the Globe and Trump Attacks Scientists

While the world is being bombarded by extreme weather events, the Trump administration is attacking scientists and known science. #ClimateChange

Posted by DeSmogBlog on Thursday, September 14, 2017

Meet the man on a crusade to clean up the worlds most polluted river.

EcoWatch

Meet the man on a crusade to clean up the world's most polluted river. Read more: http://bit.ly/2wntUpN via Make A Change World #PlasticBottleCitarum

Posted by EcoWatch on Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Meet the Brothers Kayaking Down the World’s Most Polluted River

By Gary Bencheghib and Sam Bencheghib

Super cool!Sam Bencheghib and Gary Bencheghib are about to travel down the world's most polluted river on a plastic bottle kayak to bring awareness to the world's plastic pollution crisis. Read more about the world's plastics crisis: http://bit.ly/2slGAMXvia Make A Change World #PlasticBottleCitarum

Posted by EcoWatch on Saturday, August 12, 2017

We have all heard about the accumulation of plastic pollution in our ocean and the devastating effects it is having on marine life, but very little has been done to stop the plastic from its source.

With more than 80 percent of plastic pollution in the ocean originating from rivers and streams, we have decided to create a shocking visual of the world’s most polluted river, the Citarum in Indonesia, by kayaking down it on two plastic bottle kayaks made from repurposed trash.

We launched Plastic Bottle Citarum to help make people think about the dangers that pollution has on human health. Located in West Java, the Citarum river is the water source for 15 million people for drinking, cooking and bathing.

The two kayaks we are paddling were built by the bamboo experts, EWABI. Each kayak has a bamboo frame and is filled with 300 plastic bottles to keep us afloat, which were collected by our partner, EcoBali, from school groups and waste facilities.

The goal of the expedition is to raise awareness of the dangers of plastic pollution and to inspire positive change by documenting some of the incredible and innovative efforts that are fighting the plastic epidemic in Indonesia.

During our expedition, we will be producing a series of five short videos documenting our descent down the river and highlighting the change-makers living on the river who dedicate their lives to cleaning up the Citarum and educating the local community on the impacts of pollution.

Follow our journey on Facebook and Instagram.

India is Building Roads From Plastic Waste

EcoWatch

Rolling down the plastic highway.

Posted by EcoWatch on Thursday, September 14, 2017

Irma pushes Florida’s poor closer to the edge of ruin

Associated Press

Irma pushes Florida’s poor closer to the edge of ruin

Jay Reeves, Associated Press, September 14, 2017

IMMOKALEE, Fla. (AP) — Larry and Elida Dimas didn’t have much to begin with, and Hurricane Irma left them with even less.

The storm peeled open the roof of the old mobile home where they live with their 18-year-old twins, and it destroyed another one they rented to migrant workers in Immokalee, one of Florida’s poorest communities. Someone from the government already has promised aid, but Dimas’ chin quivers at the thought of accepting it.

“I don’t want the help,” said Dimas, 55. “But I need it.”

Dimas is one of millions of Floridians who live in poverty, and an untold number of them have seen their lives up-ended by Irma. Their options, already limited, were narrowed even further when the hurricane destroyed possessions, increased expenses and knocked them out of work.

Not far from Dimas in impoverished Immokalee, located on the edge of the Everglades, Haitian immigrant Woodchy Darius, a junior at Immokalee High School, must decide whether to return to class when school reopens or head to the fields to pick berries once the land is dry enough to work again.

“The rent is $375, and if I don’t have the money they’ll kick us out,” said Darius, 17. He lives in a grubby apartment building with bare concrete floors, burglar-proof doors and cinder-block walls that make it resemble a jail more than home.

The Census Bureau estimates about 3.3 million people live in poverty in Florida — nearly 16 percent of the state’s 20.6 million population. For them, the amusement parks of Orlando or President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach might as well be on Mars.

Many work by the hour in restaurants, gas stations, hotels, stores and other businesses forced to close for days after Irma, depriving them of paychecks. Others are day laborers or migrants who earn money by the pound picking produce that’s sold in stores nationwide. Still others are retirees on fixed incomes or disability checks whose budgets already were tight before Irma.

Fleeing Irma wasn’t an option for those who lacked transportation to get to a shelter, couldn’t afford gas to drive north and couldn’t rent a hotel room. The likely costs associated with cleaning up or finding a new place to live pushed them closer to the edge than ever.

After Irma, Gwen Bush scrambled to find a place just to sleep after flood waters rose around her home.

A security worker for Amway Center in Orlando, Bush hadn’t worked in the days leading up to Irma because concerts and other events had been canceled as the storm approached. It’s not certain when the arena will be open for business, and she was down to her final $10 before the storm.

“I’ve been through some hurricanes and some storms living here but I can say on my life this is the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Bush, 50, a lifelong resident of Orlando. “How do you recover from this, losing all of your stuff?”

David and Andrea Jewell survive on disability checks and live on a sailboat they bought for $1,000 on eBay years ago. David Jewell, 51, can’t imagine now living on land; both consider the ocean — like the dolphins they watch — their only real neighbors.

After the storm, the Jewells stayed on cots in the gym at a community center in Jacksonville. They tried to figure out if they could get a new boat if theirs was destroyed. Maybe, they decided, they could just cut back on food and find another cheap one with their next disability checks.

“There aren’t any answers,” he said, “so I guess I’ll have to roll with it.”

But in one bit of good news, they later learned from a friend that their boat is still floating.

For some poor people, there’s at least a little upside to the devastation.

Guatemalan immigrant Aura Gaspar totaled up storm-related expenses of about $600 while using a twig-fired grill to stew chicken on her front stoop in Immokalee; she has three school-age children to feed and a 2-week-old baby.

But Gaspar said husband Juan Francisco got a job cleaning up storm debris in the Fort Myers and Naples area. He needed to get busy, she said through a translator: Their storm preparations cost nearly twice as much as his weekly pay of $320.

“We had to prepare the house so it would protect us,” said Gaspar, 28.

Beside his ruined Immokalee mobile home, Dimas is trying to get back on his feet, but it’s tough.

Dimas earns a meager living cooking hamburgers and chicken in a food truck parked by his home, and some customers already have returned — he said he sold all 40 of the hamburgers that were still safe to cook Tuesday.

Dimas needs to replace the income from his rental trailer, already condemned after being split open by the wind. Dimas had used that money to help feed his two teenagers and pay for the rescue inhalers he needs for his asthma. Losing it will only make it harder for Dimas to do what he says is one of his favorite things — providing free or cut-rate food to those who have even less.

Coping with Irma’s aftermath is only making life tougher for people with little who live in places including unincorporated Immokalee, said Dimas.

“A lot of people work. They work hard here. They don’t ask for nothing. They just go to work, come home and something like this happens, it’s ….,” Dimas said. “I don’t know what to say.”

He stopped talking and turned away to keep from crying.

Associated Press writers Terrance Harris in Orlando and Claire Galofaro in Jacksonville contributed to this report.

HURRICANE NEWSLETTER – Get the best of the AP’s all-formats reporting on Irma and Harvey in your inbox: http://apne.ws/ahYQGtb

Mars Inc. Promises $1 Billion Investment in Climate Change and Sustainable Supply Chain

TriplePundit….people, planet, profit

Mars Inc. Promises $1 Billion Investment in Climate Change and Sustainable Supply Chain

by Leon Kaye, Climate and Environment September 7, 2017

Mars & M&Ms North American Headquarters J Stephen Conn, Flickr

As the current presidential administration seeks to reverse all and any policies enacted during the Obama years, businesses have made it clear that they will fill in the vacuum, whether the problems are related to immigration, race relations or climate change. The questions that arise, of course, include: just how big are these challenges and are they even remotely achievable?

To that end, Grant Reid, CEO of the food giant Mars Inc., has stepped into the climate debate with a warning to the business community that turning away from the Paris global climate agreement and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been “nowhere near enough.” Reid made his comments as business and government leaders arrive in New York for the UN’s General Assembly and Climate Week.

Reid and Mars say they are backing up their words with action as the company promises to invest approximately $1 billion in its “Sustainable in a Generation Plan.” The program lasers in on three areas where the $33 billion says it can foster the changes Reid says are necessary on some of the world’s largest challenges, as defined by the SDGs. In sum, Mars says its evolved sustainability agenda is about people, the planet and . . . people’s health.

When it comes to the planet, Mars’ focus on environmental sustainability is hardly new. In recent years, the company insists it has bolstered its anti-deforestation policy, while its United Kingdom operations reportedly run 100 percent on clean energy technologies such as wind power. On this side of the pond, Mars says its renewables portfolio in the U.S. is now enough to offset the company’s power needs to make all of its M&M’s in the U.S. And in the next several years, Mars says it will focus even more on issues such as climate action, water stewardship and land management. Furthermore, the company has a long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions across its entire value chain by 67 percent by 2050 – a considerable expansion of its GHG goals made in previous years.

Like any multinational, Mars has a complicated supply chain that crosses many borders. The company said it is working on fine-tuning the traceability of many of its ingredients, including palm oil and cacao. Now Mars says it will build upon its efforts to improve the lives of smallholder farmers by including one million people in its long term plan to boost incomes, improve its human rights performance and open up more opportunities for women. Examples of this work include the launch of the Livelihoods Fund for Family Farming to accelerate sustainability and poverty reduction across its supply chains as well as the Farmer Income Lab, which the company describes as a “think-do tank” focused on eradicating smallholder poverty.

Finally, Mars is working on widening its portfolio of more nourishing foods. Its “Nourishing Wellbeing” program seeks to integrate science, innovation and marketing in an attempt to reach out to billions of people – and incidentally, their pets as well. This builds upon the company’s efforts on what it says are a focus on food safety and security.

In a public statement, Barry Parkin, Chief Sustainability and Health and Wellbeing Officer of Mars said:

“We know we cannot grow and prosper unless the planet, people and communities on which we rely are healthy and thriving. Doing what’s right, not just doing better, is at the very core of our new plan. It’s about pushing the boundaries and extending our bold ambitions across our extended supply chain. When we do that, and when others join us, only then will we have the greatest impact.”

Based in Fresno, California, Leon Kaye is a business writer and strategic communications specialist. He has also been featured in The Guardian, Sustainable Brands and CleanTechnica. When he has time, he shares his thoughts on his own site, GreenGoPost.com.

Map: where Western wildfires have made the air outside too dangerous to breathe

Vox

Map: where Western wildfires have made the air outside too dangerous to breathe

Particulates from smoke have drastically impacted air quality in areas of several states.

by Casey Miller and Umair Irfan September 13, 2017

Unusually bad wildfires have been blazing in the Western United States, leaving areas across Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Wyoming choking on harmful levels of smoke and shrouded in a cloudy haze.

Fire officials anticipate some relief this week as a weather system is expected to bring rain to some of the smoldering states. But the fires will also continue to burn through dry woodlands.

A map of large fires across the United States National Interagency Fire Center

“We’re expecting another day or two of warm conditions that could keep the fires a little bit active, particularly across the Northwest and the Rockies, and also some breezy conditions in Montana that are pushing fires around,” said Ed Delgado, the national program manager for predictive services at the National Interagency Fire Center.

On Tuesday, NIFC was reporting 62 large fires across nine Western states that had already taken more than 1.6 million acres. And 2017 is on track to be one of the worst years for wildfires in the US on record, with a total of 8.1 million acres burned as of September 12 — already well above the annual to-date average of 6 million acres for the past decade.

For residents of some areas of California, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Montana, the worst threat from the fires is lingering poor air quality that may take up to a week to disperse. You can use this map to zoom in on which towns have it worst.

- https://files.airnowtech.org/airnow/today/cur_aqi_usa.jpg

https://www.airnow.gov/images/aqi_good_text.gif

https://www.airnow.gov/images/aqi_mod_text.gif

https://www.airnow.gov/images/aqi_usg_text.gif

https://www.airnow.gov/images/aqi_unh_text.gif

AirNow

The Environmental Protection Agency measures the harm from wildfires with its Air Quality Index, as shown here.

The math is a little convoluted, but the index allows regulators to make apples-to-apples comparisons of health risks across different pollutants like ozone and sulfur dioxide.

The six categories for the Air Quality Index range from “good” (“It’s a great day to be outside.”) to “hazardous” (“Avoid all physical activity outdoors.”). As you can see, air in some parts of Montana has reached that worst-case, “hazardous” level.

Unfortunately, smoke from wildfires poses a threat even in small quantities, and can cause harm even to people hundreds of miles away from the nearest flames.

Wildfires can loft bits of dust and carbon into the jet stream, but health hazards emerge when the local weather conditions bring these particles back down to ground level, which is why specific local air quality monitoring and forecasts are so important.

The smallest particles are the biggest concern.

EPA regulates PM2.5, which refers to particles with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less. Wildfires directly create these particles as they torch plains and forests.

“Generally, we think that the smaller it is, the more likely it is to make you sick,” said Jia Coco Liu, a postdoctoral researcher studying air quality after disasters at Johns Hopkins University.

These particles penetrate deep into lungs causing inflammation, asthma attacks, and over the long-term, cancer.

Even in tiny concentrations, measured in micrograms per cubic meter, particulates can increase visits to the emergency room, especially for the elderly and people with chronic breathing problems.

“My research shows that when pollution is very high, over 37 [micrograms per cubic meter], we start to see health consequences,” Liu said.

Officials don’t have many options to help people get fresh air under smoke and haze. “Other than staying indoors, it’s pretty hard to do, because you can’t stop breathing,” Liu said.

Overall, this fire season is far worse than officials expected. “We had a very wet winter and spring, but that was pretty much erased in July when we had a very strong heat wave in the West that dried this out very, very quickly,” Delgado said.

As average temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, health officials are bracing for more wildfires scorching wider swaths of Western lands, leading to more coughing, wheezing, heart attacks, and deaths.

But on Tuesday fire officials had at least some good news to share for the regions blanketed by smoke: Almost half of ongoing wildfires didn’t gain any ground yesterday.

“Basically, it’s late in the year, so generally we’re in the wind-down mode,” Delgado added.