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Liz Cheney scorns climate action, just like her dad

by Janie22Bmqhb Posted on July 15, 2014

Like father, like daughter

Liz Cheney scorns climate action, just like her dad

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Reuters/Ruffin Prevost |

spirit of america

Darth Vader and his Sith apprentice — a.k.a. Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz — are totally in synch about climate change. Here’s how they responded to a question on the topic during a conversation with Politico’s Mike Allen on Monday:

Mike Allen: Here’s a question from Felix Dodds. What should the Republican Party do about climate change?

Dick Cheney: Liz?

Liz Cheney: Nothing. [Scornful guffaw.] I mean … [Shrug.] Look, I think that what’s happening now with respect to this president and this EPA and using something like climate change as an excuse to kill the coal industry nationwide — and that’s exactly what they’re doing. They’ve been open about it. They even admit that the emissions from coal aren’t actually causing any kind of a heating of the planet. But this is an opportunity to go in, and they’re killing coal. You know, Wyoming is the leading coal-producing state in the nation. But you don’t have to be from Wyoming to understand that your electricity is gonna be directly affected by that. It is bad policy. It’s bad science. We’re seeing increasingly that it’s bad science.

And a much greater threat to us, frankly, is this massive expansion and growth of the bureaucratic state here in Washington — the EPA, the use of things like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act to go directly at people’s private property rights in a way that clearly, frankly, is unconstitutional and is a real threat to our freedom.

That Liz is following in her father’s jackbooted footsteps should come as no surprise. She demonstrated her denier cred during a failed bid for the U.S. Senate last year. She told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “the science is just simply bogus, you know, we know that temperatures have been stable for the last 15 years.” She tweeted that Obama’s climate policy is “using phony science to kill real jobs. This is a war on coal, a war on jobs, a war on American families.” And she tweeted a photo of a snowy scene as though it were a clever rejoinder to the whole body of climate science:


Source
Playbook Lunch: Vice President Dick Cheney, Lynne Cheney, Liz Cheney, Politico
Science Denier Liz Cheney To Run For Senate In Warming-Threatened Wyoming, ClimateProgress

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Liz Cheney scorns climate action, just like her dad

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Can an ice wall stop Fukushima radiation from leaking into the sea?

by Florencepb7 Posted on August 9, 2013

Can an ice wall stop Fukushima radiation from leaking into the sea?

By Lisa Hymas

Shutterstock

The Fukushima ice wall would not look anything like this.

It’s been almost two and a half years since the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the place is still a huge, scary mess.

Here’s how The New York Times introduced this week’s grim news from the plant:

First, a rat gnawed through exposed wiring, setting off a scramble to end yet another blackout of vital cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Then, hastily built pits for a flood of contaminated water sprang leaks themselves. Now, a new rush of radioactive water has breached a barrier built to stop it, allowing heavily contaminated water to spill daily into the Pacific.

It turns out that radioactive water has been spilling into the sea almost since the initial disaster, at a rate of 75,000 gallons, or 300 tons, a day.

So now Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, which owns the plant, has a plan to build an underground wall of frozen earth to stop the radioactive water leakage. NPR explains:

[T]o understand, you need to know the geography of Fukushima. There are three melted down reactors, and they’re all right on the coast. To the west, you have mountains. To the east, you have ocean. And so what’s happening is groundwater flows downhill. It flows down through the ruins of the plant and then flows out to the sea. …

So now, TEPCO has proposed literally creating a wall of ice around the plant. And what they’re talking about is not a wall above ground, but freezing the ground around the plant to stop water from flowing in. …

So the basic idea is that they run piping into the ground and they put coolant in the piping and that freezes the earth around the pipes, and it all sort of gradually forms together into a wall. This is something that civil engineers see sometimes, but it’s not that common. And certainly, the way they’re talking about using it in Fukushima is unprecedented. This wall will be nearly a mile around according to TEPCO. It would require more than 2 million cubic feet of soil to be frozen. But if it worked, then it may be the only way to keep water from flowing into the plant and contaminated water from flowing out.

The New York Times points out another challenge: “the wall will need to be consistently cooled using electricity at a plant vulnerable to power failures. The original disaster was brought on by an earthquake and tsunami that knocked out electricity.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, fed up with continued ineptitude and deception from TEPCO, said this week that his government will get involved in the cleanup. It’s not clear what that involvement will look like, but it may include helping to fund the frozen wall — no small thing, as it’s expected to cost between $300 million and $400 million.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Can an ice wall stop Fukushima radiation from leaking into the sea?

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Seven ways the drought in the West really sucks

by p9zyztu Posted on August 6, 2013

Seven ways the drought in the West really sucks

By Lisa Hymas

Johnida Dockens

Almost 87 percent of the Western U.S. is in a drought, the Los Angeles Times reports today in a big, gloomy article with big, gloomy pictures. New Mexico is 100 percent droughty. Here are just a few of the ways that sucks.

1. The Rio Grande is so dry that it’s been dubbed the Rio Sand. Satellite photos show reservoirs drying up too.

2. People in parts of New Mexico are having to take drastic measures to get water. “Residents of some towns subsist on trucked-in water,” the L.A. Times reports, “and others are drilling deep wells costing $100,000 or more to sink and still more to operate.”

3. Water wars are flaring up and states are getting litigious. Also from the Times: “Texas has filed suit, arguing that groundwater pumping in New Mexico is reducing Texas’ share of the Rio Grande. Oklahoma has successfully fended off a legal challenge from Texas over water from the Red River.”

4. Wild critters are in trouble. Wildlife managers in New Mexico are bringing water to elk herds so they don’t die of thirst. Some conservationists think those managers should also bring food to bears so the bears don’t lumber into human settlements while desperately seeking sustenance.

5. Trees are taking a beating. Thousands of trees in Albuquerque have died of thirst.

6. Swimming holes are becoming dirt holes. A trio of Texas state agencies is inviting the public to share photos of the drought, and one recurring subject is swimming signs in front of waterless landscapes, like this one.

7. Some desperate farmers in New Mexico have resorted to selling their water to fracking companies so they can afford to pay their bills. As Joe Romm writes at Climate Progress, “The worse news is that many of them are actually pumping the water out of the aquifer to do so. The worst news of all is that once the frackers get through tainting it with their witches’ brew of chemicals, that water often becomes unrecoverable — and then we have the possibility the used fracking water will end up contaminating even more of the groundwater.”

Is climate change to blame for all the droughtiness? The L.A. Times:

The question many here are grappling with is whether the changes are a permanent result of climate change or part of cyclical weather cycle. …

Nonetheless, most long-term plans put together by cattle ranchers, farmers and land managers include the probability that the drought is here to stay.

John Clayshulte, a third-generation rancher and farmer near Las Cruces, removed all his cattle from his federal grazing allotment. “There’s just not any sense putting cows on there. There’s not enough for them to eat,” he said.

“It’s all changed. This used to be shortgrass prairies. We’ve ruined it and it’s never going to come back.”

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Seven ways the drought in the West really sucks

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These conservatives like renewable energy

by sseerss4tr Posted on July 18, 2013

These conservatives like renewable energy

By Lisa Hymas

Plenty of conservatives like clean energy too — especially clean-energy jobs.

We told you recently that right-wing efforts to overturn state-level renewable-energy mandates have been failing across the nation. Here’s one big reason why: Many conservatives actually like the mandates.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Conservatives fighting against alternative-energy mandates—which they see as unwarranted and costly market interference—are losing ground even in some Republican-controlled states, where legislatures are standing behind policies that force electric utilities to buy renewable energy.

Some of the most vocal support for the policies is coming from an unlikely corner: farmers who see profit in rural renewable-energy projects.

Of the 29 states that require the use of wind, solar and other renewable power sources, at least 14 considered proposals this year to significantly water down or repeal the policies. None have become law yet, with many legislative sessions adjourned until next year.

In North Carolina, state Rep. Mike Hager (R) pushed to repeal the state’s renewable requirement, but his effort failed.

Mr. Hager said his colleagues were swayed by the prospect of local jobs in the renewable-energy sector. “It’s hard to be conservative when it affects your district,” he said in an interview.

In some of the debates over renewable mandates, local people who would benefit from increased job prospects and decreased pollution are pitted against the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity, which pretty much hates renewables in all cases. That was the situation in Georgia last week, as we reported at the time: Tea Party Patriots pushed through a plan to require the state’s largest utility to increase its use of solar power, despite opposition from AFP.

The Journal reports that AFP was also active in the fight over North Carolina’s renewable mandate:

The repeal’s primary advocates in North Carolina were groups with financial backing from outside the state, such as the conservative political-action group Americans for Prosperity, which also lobbied against such mandates elsewhere. Dallas Woodhouse, the group’s North Carolina director, said he believed Republicans opposed the mandate in principle, but the prospect of jobs is “intoxicating for a lot of legislators” at a time of high unemployment.

Americans for Prosperity has taken funding from the fossil-fuel industry, which competes with renewables.

Imagine that: Even some conservatives prefer job-boosting policies over ideological fealty to dirty energy.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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A Republican calls for climate action — and has to remain anonymous to keep job

by trqe9vwyqm Posted on July 11, 2013

A Republican calls for climate action — and has to remain anonymous to keep job

By Lisa Hymas

Shutterstock

A Republican staffer at the U.S. House has written a fervent call for conservative action on climate change, winning second place in a young conservative writing contest sponsored by the Energy and Enterprise Initiative. But he won’t be collecting his prize in person. He’s afraid to reveal his name or face.

The piece was published yesterday on the Real Clear Science website under the pseudonym of Eric Bradenson. The author explains that he is “writing under a pen name to protect his boss and himself.” Here’s how his piece kicks off:

Someone in the GOP needs to say it: conservation is conservative; climate change is real; and conservatives need to lead on solutions because we have better answers than the other side.

… conservatives have long fought to protect the natural rights and property rights of individuals, living and unborn, from infringement by environmental degradation and pollution.

So why are so many Republicans in Congress taking a weed eater to what would naturally grow from the rich soil of conservatism?

“Bradenson” goes on to propose one climate solution: “a phase-out of subsidies for all sources of energy coupled with a revenue-neutral carbon tax swap.”

He’s probably wise to keep his identity hidden. Bob Inglis, a former Republican U.S. rep for South Carolina, called for a carbon tax and promptly got booted out of office. Now he runs the aforementioned Energy and Enterprise Initiative.

“Bradenson” notes that it’s “conservatives outside of Congress — the ones ‘with nothing to lose’ like Bob Inglis, George Shultz, Art Laffer and Kevin Hassett — [who] are paving the way for Republicans to take the small government, pro-growth conservative stand on climate change.”

We’ve also been hearing anecdotes about young conservatives who want the Republican Party to get real and address climate change. A long article in National Journal two months ago spotlighted some of them, and an article in ClimateWire this week does the same.

But if calling for a carbon tax — or even just calling for discussion of the possibility that 97 percent of climate scientists are on to something — is enough to get you ousted from the GOP establishment, you know the party has a long way to go.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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How climate deniers are like ignorant patrons of ’80s gay bars

by LynetteF1 Posted on June 24, 2013

How climate deniers are like ignorant patrons of ’80s gay bars

By Lisa Hymas

Ryan Cannon

Writer and gay-rights activist Dan Savage has a provocative piece in the Seattle alt weekly The Stranger, comparing today’s climate deniers to gay men in the early ’80s who refused to face up to the reality of AIDS.

He starts out discussing a recent This American Life segment on ranchers in Colorado who won’t acknowledge that climate change is happening, even as it’s ravaging their land and livelihoods.

Listening to the ranchers in [reporter Julia Kumari] Drapkin’s report—hearing the anger, denial, and fear in their voices—took me back 30 years. They sounded like another group of people whose world was on fire and who also couldn’t bring themselves to face reality. They sounded like people I used to know. They sounded like those faggots who stood around in gay bars in 1983 insisting that AIDS couldn’t be a sexually transmitted infection. Even as their friends lay dying, even as more of their friends and lovers became sick, they couldn’t accept that sex had anything to do with this terrifying new illness.

So what was AIDS if it wasn’t a sexually transmitted infection? It was a conservative conspiracy, they said. Or the science was wrong. Or rigged. Or inconclusive. The medical establishment was homophobic and couldn’t be trusted. The federal bureaucracy was dominated by religious conservatives and couldn’t be trusted. Messengers were shot. Larry Kramer, the founder of ACT UP, was called a fearmonger and a drama queen. Randy Shilts, a gay journalist who called for the closure of San Francisco’s bathhouses, was spit on in the Castro. The first grassroots AIDS activists who tried to pass out condoms were chased out of bars.

Stupid, stupid faggots. Insisting that it wasn’t true—insisting that AIDS couldn’t be sexually transmitted, or insisting that AIDS wasn’t that serious because “only” 1,500 gay men were sick in the summer of 1983—didn’t prevent a pandemic. It was true. It was deadly serious. We would have to live very differently if we wanted to survive in this world. We would have to fight back. We would have to transform ourselves sexually, socially, and politically. And we did that, all of that, but precious time was wasted before gay men began to make the changes that had to be made, and countless lives were lost as a result of the denial and delay that paralyzed us in 1983. …

[T]he conservatives, the poor conservatives, they’re like those faggots in gay bars in 1983. They’re standing around, drinks in hand, insisting that the conflagration currently engulfing them—the conflagration that is engulfing us all—isn’t happening. That it can’t be happening. But just as denial and anger and shooting messengers didn’t save those gay men in Chicago’s bars in 1983, denial and anger won’t save Colorado’s ranchers in 2013. Nature is exacting an awful retribution.

The only question is how much time will be wasted and how many lives will be lost as a result of denial and delay this time.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Obama climate plan finally coming, on Tuesday

by Justin Elder Posted on June 23, 2013

Obama climate plan finally coming, on Tuesday

By Lisa Hymas

The White House

He’s thinking hard about that upcoming speech.

First we heard it from unnamed sources. Then we heard it from White House climate advisor Heather Zichal. And now we’ve heard it from Obama himself: The president is gearing up for a big speech in which he’ll unveil his long-awaited second-term climate plan.

Obama announced the news in his weekly video address on Saturday. “This Tuesday at Georgetown University, I’ll lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go: a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it,” he said in the video, which was set to overwrought music and peppered with gauzy scenes of American landscapes. (Watch for yourself below.)

Obama urged people to “share this message with your friends,” and WhiteHouse.gov even provided a handy sample tweet: “Climate change is one of the most serious challenges we face—and it’s time to act. RT this video from the President: http://wh.gov” (What, no hashtag?)

The video didn’t give any specifics about what will be in the plan, but Zichal and other advisors have suggested the basic outline:

1) Crack down on carbon emissions from power plants. Regulations on new plants are already in the works. The next step is regs on existing power plants, which would gradually force coal-fired plants to start shutting down. Considering that electric power plants produce about a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, this is a big deal.

2) Boost renewable energy development on federal land.

3) Increase the energy efficiency of appliances, industrial equipment, and public and private buildings.

4) Prepare for the climate impacts we’re already seeing.

That’s all stuff Obama can do without approval from Congress, though congressional Republicans will certainly try to throw up roadblocks.

And what won’t be in the plan? Anything about the Keystone XL pipeline. Obama seems intent on kicking that can further down the road.

Obama’s speech is scheduled for 1:35 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

Here’s the video from Saturday, with a transcript below.

In my inaugural address, I pledged that America would respond to the growing threat of climate change for the sake of our children and future generations.

This Tuesday at Georgetown University, I’ll lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go: a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it.

This is a serious challenge, but it’s one uniquely suited to America’s strengths. We’ll need scientists to design new fuels, farmers to grow them. We’ll need engineers to devise new sources of energy, and business to make and sell them. We’ll need workers to build the foundation for a clean energy economy. And we’ll need all of our citizens to do our part to preserve God’s creation for future generations — our forests and waterways, our croplands and snowcapped peaks.

There is no single step that can reverse the effects of climate change. But when it comes to the world we leave our children, we owe it to them to do what we can.

So I hope you’ll share this message with your friends — because this is a challenge that affects everyone, and we all have a stake in solving it together.

I hope to see you Tuesday. Thanks.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s political group funds ads promoting Keystone and ANWR drilling

by Emil8up51 Posted on April 26, 2013

Mark Zuckerberg’s political group funds ads promoting Keystone and ANWR drilling

By Lisa Hymas

TechCrunch

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

ThinkProgress has the story:

Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group, which bills itself as a bipartisan entity dedicated to passing immigration reform, has spent considerable resources on ads advocating a host of anti-environmental causes — including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and constructing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The umbrella group, co-founded by Facebook’s Zuckerberg, NationBuilder’s Joe Green, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Dropbox’s Drew Houston, and others in the tech industry, is called FWD.US. …

FWD.US is bankrolling two subsidiary organizations to purchase TV ads to advance the overarching agenda — one run by veteran Republican political operatives and one led by Democratic strategists.

Both of those subsidiary groups have put out ads that praise efforts to expand the oil industry — by expanding offshore oil drilling and well as building Keystone XL and opening up ANWR. The ads don’t even mention immigration, but instead “appear to be trying to give political cover to vulnerable centrists, in hopes of ensuring their support for major immigration reform,” ThinkProgress writes.

So much for all that talk about shifting from an old, dirty, fossil-fuel-driven economy to a new, clean, knowledge-based one.

Source

Mark Zuckerberg’s New Political Group Spending Big On Ads Supporting Keystone XL And Oil Drilling, ThinkProgress

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Sierra Club comes out in favor of immigration reform

by dig1iti43 Posted on April 25, 2013

Sierra Club comes out in favor of immigration reform

By Lisa Hymas

It was notable when Bill McKibben of 350.org and Philip Radford of Greenpeace recently came out in support of immigration-reform legislation.

But it’s really notable that the Sierra Club has now joined them. Over the past decade and a half, the club has had vicious leadership battles over immigration and population. But now the board of directors, which is elected by the group’s 1.4 million members, is unanimously agreed. From Politico:

The Sierra Club’s board voted Wednesday to support comprehensive immigration reform …

The decision is a major shift for the group, which has a storied past over the issue.

Sierra Club leaders in the mid-2000s fought off an insurgent effort trying to have the club take an explicitly anti-immigration stance, with some members claiming it was needed to overcome the effects of more people living more consumptive American life styles. The effort fell apart after a pitched battle.

Other environmental groups have historically helped financially support immigration reform opponents like Numbers USA and Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Here’s the official position adopted by the Sierra Club board:

Currently at least 11 million people live in the U.S. in the shadows of our society. Many of them work in jobs that expose them to dangerous conditions, chemicals and pesticides, and many more of them live in areas with disproportionate levels of toxic air, water, and soil pollution. To protect clean air and water and prevent the disruption of our climate, we must ensure that those who are most disenfranchised and most threatened by pollution within our borders have the voice to fight polluters and advocate for climate solutions without fear.

The Sierra Club takes a position to support an equitable path to citizenship for residents of the United States who lack official documentation. America’s undocumented population should be able to earn legalization and a timely pathway to citizenship, with all the rights to fully participate in our democracy, including influencing environmental and climate policies. The pathway to citizenship should be free of unreasonable barriers, and should facilitate keeping families together and reuniting those that are split whenever possible.

If you like (or hate!) this news, you might want to check out another recent Grist post on the issue: How immigration reform can lead us to a stronger environmental movement.

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10 states to sue Obama admin for dragging feet on climate rules

by Ha Zega Posted on April 17, 2013

10 states to sue Obama admin for dragging feet on climate rules

By Lisa Hymas

Delay after delay …

While there’s virtually no chance of meaningful climate legislation passing through Congress, there are meaningful climate actions that the Obama administration can take on its own. Two big ones would be regulating carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants and from existing power plants.

But the administration is dragging its feet on both counts. A draft regulation for new plants was proposed more than a year ago, but the EPA missed a deadline this past Saturday for making it final. “EPA is likely to alter the rule in some way in an effort to make sure it can withstand a legal challenge,” The Washington Post reported on Friday, noting that the agency has not set a timetable for its finalization.

As for regulation of old power plants — which spew about one third of U.S. greenhouse gases — an EPA official said last week that the agency intends to propose a standard within 18 months.

Ten states, two major cities, and three big green groups are fed up with the delays. On Wednesday, they gave notice of their intent to sue. From the Los Angeles Times:

The jurisdictions and the environmental groups sent separate letters to the EPA … notif[ying] the regulator of the groups’ plan to sue after 60 days, if the EPA did not expedite the rules. …

The EPA proposed the rule for [new] power plants in March 2012, and under the Clean Air Act, it must issue the final version of the rule within a year of receiving public comments, the New York attorney general’s office said. But the EPA failed to meet that deadline. It has yet to give the final rule to the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, where it could be reviewed for another 120 days and, based on the progress of some other EPA rules, might be delayed indefinitely.

By finalizing the rules, the EPA would partially fulfill commitments it made in a 2011 agreement with New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman and a coalition of states to issue greenhouse gas emission standards for new and existing power plants.

Really, what’s the rush? It’s not like civilization as we know it is under imminent threat. Oh, wait …

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