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Even coronavirus can’t stop Trump’s environmental rollbacks

On Thursday, political risk research and consulting firm the Eurasia Group released an updated version of its “Top Risks 2020” report to show how coronavirus has sped up the trends that worry the group the most. The new report warns that the public health crisis will pull attention and resources away from addressing climate change.

“With large-scale protest activity diminished because of social distancing, civil society actors will turn to cyber and online tools to apply pressure on companies and governments, most of which will have less appetite and ability to respond to climate change,” the report says.

In addition to climate action, environmental protection at large may be threatened. The Trump administration is in the process of implementing major environmental policy changes, such as a rule that would allow companies to kill birds without repercussions, a total overhaul of the bedrock National Environmental Protection Act, and new restrictions on the types of scientific research the EPA can use in decisions that affect public health. “The government has been trying to rush through and finalize rollbacks before the upcoming election,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit. “Trump wants to be able to say ‘I accomplished all this.’”

Even with the nation’s attention turned to a public health crisis, the administration does not appear to be slowing down. On Wednesday night, the EPA officially opened the required 30-day comment period for its proposal to limit science that can be used in regulatory decisions. Due to the coronavirus, there will be no public hearing.

On Thursday, the comment period for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act closed, despite pleas for an extension from conservation groups. Also on Thursday, the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told reporters that he did not plan to delay the commission’s regulatory actions during the pandemic. And earlier last week, a BLM spokesperson told E&E News that the agency did not plan to postpone oil and gas lease sales.

Typically, when policy changes are proposed, they have to undergo a robust public input process, said Jesse Prentice-Dunn, Policy Director for the Center for Western Priorities. Legally, he said, agencies have to take the public’s comments into account, respond to them, and incorporate them into decision-making. “If you don’t actually have the public able to attend public meetings, able to really thoughtfully put together public comments, then that’s kind of short-circuiting that feedback process,” he said, and it allows agencies “to kind of move forward with whatever they want.”

More than 80 environmental organizations sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt on Thursday requesting that the department suspend major policy and regulation changes, oil and gas lease sales, and public comment periods for the immediate future.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told Grist, “All DOI actions, including comment periods and lease sales, are being evaluated on a case-by-case basis and adjustments are being made to ensure we are allowing for proper public input, while protecting the health and safety of the public and our employees.”

While the public at large may not have the mental bandwidth or physical ability to participate in rulemaking procedures right now, environmental organizations are keeping the pressure on, especially in the courts. “We’ve got about 100 active lawsuits to protect our air, water and endangered species and thus far they are proceeding,” said Suckling. “The federal courts have not stalled any of them yet.”

On Wednesday, after the Trump administration proceeded with an auction for offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental groups immediately filed a legal challenge to the sale. On Thursday, groups filed a lawsuit against the EPA for approving new chemicals without adequately informing the public, in violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act.

“[W]e are continuing to hold the Trump Administration accountable for its efforts to undermine our climate and clean air and water safeguards,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a statement to Grist. “The work may look different right now, but we’re still pushing forward to create the world we want to see together.”

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Even coronavirus can’t stop Trump’s environmental rollbacks

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The Big, Bad Book of Beasts – Michael Largo

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The Big, Bad Book of Beasts

The World’s Most Curious Creatures

Michael Largo

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: April 16, 2013

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


The world's wildest collection of animal knowledge and lore! Lions, and tigers, and bears . . . and dinosaurs, dragons, and monsters. Oh my! For hundreds of years, the most popular books in the Western world next to the Bible were "bestiaries," fanciful encyclopedias collecting all of human knowledge and mythology about the animal kingdom. In these pages, eagles and elephants lived next to griffins and sea monsters. Now, in The Big, Bad Book of Beasts, award-winning author Michael Largo has updated the medieval bestsellers for the twenty-first century, illuminating little-known facts, astonishing secrets, and bizarre superstitions about the beasts that inhabit our world—and haunt our imaginations. You'll learn about the biggest bug ever, the smallest animal in the world, and the real creatures that inspired the fabled unicorns. You'll discover how birds learned to fly, why cats rub against your legs, and a thousand other facts that will make you look at nature in a wonderfully new way. Did you know? The fastest animal in the world is the peregrine falcon, which reaches speeds of over 200 miles per hours. Circus ringmaster P.T. Barnum fooled many when he displayed a "mermaid" carcass that was later proved to be monkey bones sewed together with the body of a fish. Discovered in a remote volcanic crater in New Guinea, the Bosavi wolly rat grows to the size of a cat. President Andrew Jackson bought an African gray parrot to keep his wife company. The bird outlived them both and was removed from Jackson's funeral for cussing in both English and Spanish. A to Z: From Aardvark to Zooplankton! For all ages! Includes 289 illustrations!

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The Big, Bad Book of Beasts – Michael Largo

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How the oil industry pumped Americans full of fake news

The world has known about the dangers of climate change for decades — so why are oil and gas companies still drilling for crude as if there’s no tomorrow? There’s no simple answer. But any explanation would have to give some credit to the wizards of public relations. For more than a century, these spinmasters downplayed misdeeds, twisted facts, and cajoled the media into mimicking their talking points.

“A lot of what we have as PR today, in general, was built in service of the fossil fuel industry,” said Amy Westervelt, the host of Drilled, billed as “a true-crime podcast about climate change.” The first season of Drilled investigated the history of climate denial, and the second looked at the West Coast crabbers suing Big Oil for contributing to warmer oceans and throwing the marine food web out of whack. In the latest season launched last month, Westervelt introduces the “Mad Men of Climate Denial” — the publicists who coached the fossil fuel industry how to shape public opinion over the past century.

Creating a cloud of confusion around established science is one of their well-known tactics. Exxon and the coal industry knew about global warming as early as the 1960s; instead of telling the public, they spread doubt about the science behind it. That’s just one facet of the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda machine. (“Propaganda” might seem too strong of a word, but Westervelt says it’s the very definition: “a one-sided message with the aim of shifting public opinion or policy.”) Digging through archives, presidential libraries, and old PR books, Westervelt found the pushy executives, manipulative schmoozers, and “inventive” storytellers who made it work.

“People are largely unaware that there’s a massive system running underneath everything,” Westervelt said in an interview with Grist. “A lot of the ideas they have about the fossil fuel industry and even the language they use has been crafted very carefully by the industry itself.”

She takes us on a wild journey from a turn-of-the-century massacre in Colorado coal country to the messaging strategy of, yes, Nazi Germany, telling the stories of the people who worked to boost oil’s image and how their experiences taught them to influence the media, politicians, and the courts. Here are just a handful of the wild strategies they came up with, all still in use.

Fake news: “Fake news” proliferates on the internet today, a plague of modern life with a long pedigree. You can trace it back to Ivy Ledbetter Lee, often called the father of modern public relations. In the early 1900s, Lee was tasked with rehabilitating the public image of the tycoon John D. Rockefeller. His company, Standard Oil, had brutally stamped out a workers strike at a Colorado coal mine in 1913, setting tents on fire and spraying their camp with machine guns. Lee crafted a story to smooth things over, claiming that the strikers were actually plants hired by a labor union, and that the whole thing had been orchestrated by Mother Jones, a famous labor organizer (he also made up that she ran a nearby brothel). “What are facts anyway but my interpretation of what happened?” Lee said later on.

Corporate philanthropy: Lee’s coverup went so well that Rockefeller kept him on board for the rest of his life. In addition to inventing the press release (imagine, the newspaper prints your version of the story word for word!), Lee prodded Rockefeller to donate to charitable causes, like museums, to burnish his reputation. The approach gained traction as other robber barons realized that they, too, could be remembered as kindly philanthropists. The arts are now soaked with oil money — and with their names emblazoned on art museum walls and festivals signs, corporations get a similar reputational boost.

Herb Schmertz and Sheila O’Malley Fuchs attend a party at the Parrish Art Museum in 2007. Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Astroturfing: What better way to counter grassroots activists than to fake your own grassroots group? This practice, called “astroturfing,” was the brainchild of Daniel Edelman, a PR whiz who advised Mobil Oil, Big Tobacco, and many other companies in the mid-20th century. There are now hundreds of fake front groups backed by oil-funded lobbying groups like the Western States Petroleum Association, said Christine Arena, former vice president of the firm Edelman (yes, named after Daniel), in the podcast. They go by friendly names like “California Drivers Alliance” or “Washington Consumers for Sound Fuel Policy.”

False equivalence: Herb Schmertz, who advised Mobil starting in the 1960s, took an aggressive stance toward the press. He’d attack any journalist or outlet critical of his company, arguing that they weren’t hearing Mobil’s side of the story, and then watch them overcorrect in the next edition. The approach eventually expanded to demanding airtime for climate deniers. One study looking at climate change articles in major U.S. outlets between 1988 and 2002 found that more than half of them presented climate science and fringe, Big Oil-friendly theories as equivalent. “It took a while for newspapers to realize that this was not a great way to go,” Westervelt said.

It seems like many in the media have decided to stop playing along. And there are other signs that the tide is turning against the oil industry. Once the world’s most valuable company, Exxon’s stock has dropped by a third over the last five years, wiping away nearly $200 billion in market value. Jim Cramer, the loudmouth host of CNBC’s Mad Money, recently said that it’s time to ditch oil stocks. Even public relations companies are now taking their services elsewhere.

“As soon as an industry starts to get an irretrievably bad image, the PR folks start dropping off, and the industry has to find somebody else to do this stuff,” Westervelt said. She said she has seen oil companies turn to more obscure consulting groups, like FGI Consulting and the DCI group, to do their PR work.

The fossil fuel industry is starting to move away from publicly denying the facts about climate change (which isn’t working as well these days) and back toward pro-oil, all-American messaging, like the new ads from the American Petroleum Institute that tout oil and natural gas as “energy progress.” If only Big Oil was as good at cutting greenhouse gas emissions as it was at marketing.

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How the oil industry pumped Americans full of fake news

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The Homing Instinct – Bernd Heinrich

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The Homing Instinct

Meaning & Mystery in Animal Migration

Bernd Heinrich

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: April 8, 2014

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


“A noted naturalist explores the centrality of home in the lives of humans and other animals . . . A special treat for readers of natural history” ( Kirkus Reviews ).   Every year, many species make the journey from one place to another, following the same paths and ending up in the same places. Every year since boyhood, the acclaimed scientist and author Bernd Heinrich has done the same, returning to a beloved patch of western Maine woods. Which led him to wonder: What is the biology in humans of this primal pull toward a particular place, and how is it related to animal homing?   In The Homing Instinct, Heinrich explores the fascinating mysteries of animal migration: how geese imprint true visual landscape memory; how scent trails are used by many creatures to locate their homes with pinpoint accuracy; and how even the tiniest of songbirds are equipped for solar and magnetic orienteering over vast distances. And he reminds us that to discount our human emotions toward home is to ignore biology itself.   “A graceful blend of science and memoir . . . [Heinrich’s] ability to linger and simply be there for the moment when, for instance, an elderly spider descends from a silken strand to take the insect he offers her is the heart of his appeal.” —Julie Zickefoose, The  Wall Street Journal   “Deep and insightful writing.” —David Gessner, The Washington Post

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The Homing Instinct – Bernd Heinrich

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Congress wants to know why the incoming Interior Chief is keeping his calendar secret

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This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The acting head of the Interior Department David Bernhardt says he has to carry a small card around to remind himself of the list of his former clients he should avoid, but the former oil and gas lobbyist insists that he does not need to keep a detailed daily calendar. “I have no legal obligation to personally maintain a calendar,” Bernhardt wrote in a letter to Congress in late February. “Further, no Agency guidance exists recommending that I create or retain one. I have not personally maintained a calendar for years, and I have no intention of suddenly doing so now.”

The fight over Bernhardt’s calendars signals one of the bigger controversies ahead in his tenure after his likely confirmation as Interior secretary. Environmentalists have charged Bernhardt, and his predecessor Ryan Zinke, of politicizing Freedom of Information Act responses, omitting calendar entries, and even stretching the boundaries of the Federal Records Act.

“It worries me a lot that that’s not being followed,” House Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva (a Democrat from Arizona) tells Mother Jones. The calendar “is the window into decision-making.”

Calendars of public officials can help reveal who is influencing the policy and provide some measure of accountability when certain special interests appear to have a particular hold over the decision-making. Scott Pruitt’s early calendars showed his close coordination with oil industry executives, for example, as his EPA decided to reverse regulations on methane emissions. It’s also become more common for officials to keep secret calendars.

Since Bernhardt was first confirmed as the deputy secretary in the summer of 2017, the public has had relatively few details about how he spends his days while running an agency responsible for a fifth of the nation’s landmass. Most of the calendars that Interior has made available lack descriptions about who he is meeting with and calling. Bernhardt has more than two-dozen former clients and a wider net of industry contacts from a career spent in the lobbying sector.

As I noted in my profile of Bernhardt:

Bernhardt’s understanding of the department’s workings and the allies he’s installed in key political posts enable him to steer its complex network of decentralized offices while leaving few fingerprints. His calendars often have little detail in them; the environmental group Western Values Project has noted how few of his emails turn up in their frequent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Interior. “Kind of amazing that he can do anything without leaving a paper trail behind him,” said Aaron Weiss, media director of Center for Western Priorities, another conservation group.

On the eve of David Bernhardt’s Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday to lead the Department of the Interior, the House Natural Resources staff had 27,000 pages of internal documents that it had not yet processed or examined. Interior sent over the batch earlier this week in response to the committee’s repeated requests for more communications surrounding the acting secretary’s activities and decision-making, in an attempt to tease out how much of it has been influenced by his prior relationship with oil, gas, and mining industries.

“That’s a good example of what’s been a pattern under Zinke and now under Bernhardt, which is to basically to make it very difficult for people to get information.”

On Wednesday, Grijalva told Mother Jones that his staff is investigating the question of whether Bernhardt has circumvented maintaining an ongoing record of his day-to-day activities by relying on a Google Doc calendar for his detailed schedule that is overwritten each day. The matter is concerning for the chair because it raises questions about whether Interior is breaking a federal records law in deleting his daily schedule and claiming it falls outside FOIA’s purview.

House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings (a Democrat from Maryland) pressed the question in a hearing earlier with an acting deputy FOIA director earlier this month.

“Is the calendar for the acting Secretary deleted at the end of each day, do you know that?” he asked. The deputy FOIA director, Rachel Spector, replied she didn’t, but acknowledged “that the solicitor’s office in the department is working with the records officer in the department to determine what’s occurred there, and whether it’s consistent.”

Interior’s political appointees have exerted more control over the FOIA process in recent months. At the end of 2018, a political appointee who is a former Charles and David Koch adviser took charge of responding to and fielding requests. Then, at a House Natural Resources budget hearing on Wednesday, Grijalva pointed to a March 14 email from a senior Interior official, whose name was redacted, asking that “any correspondence being sent to any Senator as well as Representative Grijalva NOT be sent until you have further direction.” Grijalva noted the timing of the instructions was significant: The next day the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee publicly announced Bernhardt’s confirmation hearing date.

Democratic senators plan to ask Bernhardt directly about his calendars in the Thursday hearing. Nonetheless, very little still stands in the way of his confirmation in the GOP-controlled chamber, after which Bernhardt will certainly face more questions from the Democratic House.

“Why go through all these machinations?” Grijalva asked. “Why deny me or the senators information if there’s not something you’re hiding and something you’re concerned about?”

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Congress wants to know why the incoming Interior Chief is keeping his calendar secret

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Youth climate strikers: ‘We are going to change the fate of humanity’

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The students striking from schools around the world to demand action on climate change have issued an uncompromising open letter stating: “We are going to change the fate of humanity, whether you like it or not.”

The letter, published by the Guardian, says: “United we will rise on 15 March and many times after until we see climate justice. We demand the world’s decision makers take responsibility and solve this crisis. You have failed us in the past. [But] the youth of this world has started to move and we will not rest again.”

The Youth Strikes for Climate movement is not centrally organized, so keeping track of the fast-growing number of strikes is difficult, but many are registering on FridaysForFuture.org. So far, there are almost 500 events listed to take place on March 15 across 51 countries, making it the biggest strike day so far. Students plan to skip school across Western Europe, from the U.S. to Brazil and Chile, and from Australia to Iran, India, and Japan.

“For people under 18 in most countries, the only democratic right we have is to demonstrate. We don’t have representation,” said Jonas Kampus, a 17-year-old student activist, from near Zurich, Switzerland. “To study for a future that will not exist, that does not make sense.”

The letter says: “We are the voiceless future of humanity … We will not accept a life in fear and devastation. We have the right to live our dreams and hopes.” Kampus helped initiate the letter, which was created collectively via a global coordination group numbering about 150 students, including the first youth climate striker, Sweden’s Greta Thunberg.

The strikes have attracted some criticism, and Kampus said: “We wanted to define for ourselves why we are striking.” Another member of the coordination group, Anna Taylor, 17, from north London, U.K., said: “The importance of the letter is it shows this is now an international movement.”

Taylor said: “The rapid growth of the movement is showing how important it is and how much young people care. It is vital for our future.” Janine O’Keefe, from FridaysForFuture.org, said: “I’ll be very happy with over 100,000 students striking on March 15. But I think we might reach even beyond 500,000 students.”

Thunberg, now 16 years old and who began the strikes with a solo protest beginning last August, is currently on holiday from school. She was one of about 3,000 student demonstrators in Antwerp, Belgium, on Thursday, and joined protesters in Hamburg on Friday morning.

In recent days, she has sharply rejected criticism of the strikes from educational authorities, telling the Hong Kong Education Bureau: “We fight for our future. It doesn’t help if we have to fight the adults too.” She also told a critical Australian state education minister his words “belong in a museum.”

The strikes have been supported by Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s climate chief when the Paris deal to fight global warming was signed in 2015. She said: “It’s time to heed the deeply moving voice of youth. The Paris Agreement was a step in the right direction, but its timely implementation is key.” Michael Liebreich, a clean energy expert, said: “Anyone who thinks [the strikes] will fizzle out any time soon has forgotten what it is to be young.”

In the U.K., Taylor said more than 10,000 students went on strike on February 15: “I’m anticipating at least double that on March 15.”

The strikes would not end, Taylor said, until “environmental protection is put as politicians’ top priority, over everything else. Young people are cooperating now, but governments are not cooperating anywhere near as much as they should.” She said students were contacting her from new countries every day, including Estonia, Iceland, and Uganda in recent days.

Kampus, who was invited to meet the Swiss environment minister, Simonetta Sommaruga, on Wednesday, said: “The strikes will stop when there is a clear outline from politicians on how to solve this crisis and a pathway to get there. I could be doing so many other things. But I don’t have time as we have to solve this crisis. My dream is to have a life in peace.”

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Youth climate strikers: ‘We are going to change the fate of humanity’

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Republican Representative Paul Gosar suggests that photosynthesis discredits climate change

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Representative Paul Gosar had a packed schedule on Wednesday. First, the Republican from Arizona called Michael Cohen a “liar, liar pants on fire,” at Cohen’s Congressional hearing, then chaired a forum full of climate deniers talking about the Green New Deal, and later suggested that photosynthesis discredits global warming at a press conference.

Gosar isn’t the only one going nuts. The progressive fervor over the Green New Deal has flipped some kind of switch for some climate-denying members of the House. Not in a “wow, maybe we should do something about climate change” kind of way, more like “let’s double down on ignoring evidence!”

That’s right, folks, the looming threat of actual climate action has caused a meltdown the likes of which we haven’t seen since former Senator Jim Inhofe brandished a snowball on the Senate floor as proof that global warming isn’t real.

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The Western Caucus, a conservative group, hosted a press conference on the Capitol steps to take a stand against the Green New Deal. Gosar took a question from a young man in the crowd.

“My generation is the one that’s going to deal with this catastrophe that’s impending. What is it that you are doing to prevent carbon dioxide emissions?” he asked the Arizona Republican.

“Unfortunately you haven’t been taught about photosynthesis,” Gosar replied. “Photosynthesis is where plants take carbon dioxide to produce oxygen. That’s a problem in today’s world. We haven’t taught kids exactly what’s going on in America and in science.”

The problem, of course, is that we’re putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than plants can handle.

At that same event, Representative Rob Bishop from Utah unwrapped and consumed a hamburger in protest of the progressive plan to slash CO2 and methane emissions. Apparently, he thinks the sponsors of the Green New Deal are plotting to ban cows.

“Before they take it away from me,” Bishop said, before biting into his burger. Relax, Rob, your hamburgers are safe … for now.

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Republican Representative Paul Gosar suggests that photosynthesis discredits climate change

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A bunch of representatives got Fs on their environment report cards

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Every year since 1970, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) tallies how members of Congress vote on environment and public health-related legislation and has released a scorecard that shows where they stand on all things environment.

The report is a bleak reminder of just how wide the chasm between America’s two political parties has grown at a time when swift climate action is a matter of life and death.

In 2018, Republican caucuses in the House and Senate each got a collective average score of a mere 8 percent from LCV — meaning their members supported pro-environment legislation 8 percent of the time. On the other side of the political aisle, Democrats scored 95 percent and 90 percent in the Senate and House, respectively. This daylight between the parties has only shrunk by a couple of percentage points since last year’s scorecard. Good thing this contrast isn’t happening amid the backdrop of a worldwide crisis, right? Oh wait, scientists have said humankind has around a decade to take action against catastrophic global warming.

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On the left, 35 Democratic senators (including one independent senator — can ya guess who?) and 29 Democratic representatives received perfect scores. That means they voted pro-environment every single chance they got. Those perfect-scoring Senators include a large handful of 2020 presidential candidates: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bernie Sanders (the answer to the above question).

On the right, seven senators and 77 members of the House earned zeroes. In other words, they cast anti-environment votes every single time such an issue came up. And keep in mind: These votes include topics like exposing waterways to invasive species, confirming former coal lobbyists to run the EPA, undermining clean air standards, and more.

The gap between the parties throws the growing momentum around a comprehensive climate action plan called the Green New Deal in sharp relief. As enthusiasm for the economy-wide plan grows among progressives and moderates on the left, centrist Republicans may soon be forced to come out of their hidey holes and make some kind of climate stand. As Justin Worland wrote for Time Magazine, the great leftward migration toward the progressive Green New Deal “has given conservative lawmakers an opening to present centrist policy proposals without looking like they are giving Democrats a political win.”

The growing consensus that the U.S. political establishment needs to come up with some kind of plan to tackle climate change isn’t a perspective shared by all in Congress. On Wednesday, a conservative group called the Western Caucus invited a bunch of climate skeptics to bash the Green New Deal at a press conference on the steps of the Capitol.

Utah Representative Rob Bishop, former chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, literally ate a hamburger at the podium in protest of the progressive proposal. The Republican wasn’t just hungry at an inopportune time. Fox News and some Republicans have criticized the Green New Deal for being a thinly veiled liberal plot to eliminate the nation’s cows. Nevermind that the resolution being championed by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey doesn’t actually call for a ban on cattle.

For what it’s worth, Bishop got a 3 percent score from LCV last year.

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A bunch of representatives got Fs on their environment report cards

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The results are in, and January was one of the warmest in all of recorded history

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January 2019 was the third-warmest January in the history of global weather record-keeping, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The only warmer global Januarys in the instrumental record, which dates back to the 1880s, were 2016 and 2017, and there’s evidence that the planet hasn’t been this warm in a very long time. The last time January global temperatures were below average was in 1976 — before millennials were even a thing.

So here’s the strange truth: Last month may have felt cold where you live, but your senses were deceiving you. We’ve forgotten what “normal” weather feels like, so global warming is gaslighting us.

Only a few specks of land were even slightly cooler than average: far northern Canada, parts of northern Finland, a bit of central India, and a small corner of western China. Even the eastern United States, which was hit with blizzards and cooler temperatures when the polar vortex roared at full force for days, officially ended the month “near average.” It was one of the coolest spots on the planet and its January was only 1.8 degrees F cooler than normal.

In contrast, some parts of the planet were simply blazing with heat. During the peak of the southern hemisphere’s summer, it was the warmest January for land areas in history — more than 7.2 degrees F outside the bounds of historical norms. Parts of southern Africa, much of Brazil, and nearly all of Australia endured a record-breaking month.

With an official El Niño now underway, January’s oddness only boosts the odds that this year is going to keep on being blazing hot. In fact, NOAA estimates that 2019 is squarely on pace for one of the warmest years in history, with a 99.9 percent chance for another top 10 year.

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The results are in, and January was one of the warmest in all of recorded history

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Krakatoa – Simon Winchester

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Krakatoa

The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

Simon Winchester

Genre: Earth Sciences

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: February 5, 2013

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, examines the legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa, which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all — in view of today's new political climate — the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims, one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere. Krakatoa gives us an entirely new perspective on this fascinating and iconic event. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

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Krakatoa – Simon Winchester

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