Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
Excerpt from a letter to Donald Trump from attorneys general representing New York, California, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, the District of Columbia, Boulder (CO), New York City, Broward County (FL), and South Miami (FL).
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Negotiators representing most of the world’s nations have agreed to a new legally binding accord that would significantly cut down on use of hydrofluorocarbons, a chemical coolant used in air conditioners and refrigerators. HFCs are a highly potent heat-trapping gas, considered to be a thousand times as potent as carbon dioxide. The new accord is an extension of the landmark Montreal Protocol negotiated in the 1980s, which phased out ozone-depleting CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons).
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“On the heels of the release of a draft environmental impact statement earlier this week, the Shell Puget Sound Refinery announced Thursday it is no longer pursuing the rail unloading facility addressed in the document,” the Skagit Valley Herald reports.
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Following decades of prodding, local leaders representing communities in the greater Victoria area have approved a plan to build a modern state of the art sewage treatment plant at McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt. When the plant is complete, Victoria will subject its sewage to a tertiary treatment process (the highest and best level available) instead of dumping raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca as it does today. The plant and related infrastructure is slated to be built by 2020.
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“The fight at Standing Rock is a big damned thing,” writes Bill McKibben. “It’s a Flint-in-the-making, and it’s also a chance to for once do right by the continent’s oldest inhabitants. Surely Hillary Clinton can rise to the occasion. Can’t she?”
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“For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline. Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes,” the New York Times reports.
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“A shift is under way that will lead to widespread adoption of electric vehicles in the next decade,” writes Bloomberg’s Tom Randall.
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While Republicans deny the science of the climate crisis, the consequences continue to felt. This just in from the New York Times: “The oceans are rising faster than at any point in the last 28 centuries, and human emissions of greenhouse gases are primarily responsible, scientists reported Monday.”
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“Opposition against a proposed natural gas-to-methanol plant in Tacoma grew Thursday night with a unanimous vote against the project by the Federal Way City Council.” KING5 reports.
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The Detroit Free Press reports: “The FBI is now investigating the contamination of Flint’s drinking water, a man-made public health catastrophe, which has left an unknown number of Flint children and other residents poisoned by lead and resulted in state and federal emergency declarations.”
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The City of Seattle is suing megacorporation Monsanto for damages over the contamination of the Duwamish River, which became polluted with toxic chemicals due to the company’s manufacture of PCBs. Monsanto’s predictable response to the lawsuit has been to deny that it is responsible. In Monstanto’s world, accountability simply doesn’t exist.
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“According to newly released emails concerns over the water were dismissed by officials who blamed mayor for exploiting public panic,” The Guardian reports.
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The Christian Science Monitor explains why people are getting sick (and dying) from drinking the tap water in Flint, Michigan. The problems started after the City of Flint, at the behest of the Republican-controlled state government, switched its source of drinking water in an attempt to cut costs.
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The idea that some trade agreement should force us to overheat the planet’s atmosphere is, quite simply, insane. But the oil industry is so used
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Paris will be a watershed… It will be a dividing point in time between the fossil-fuel economy and the renewables era . — Steve Howard,
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TransCanada requests suspension of Keystone XL permit Oil giant TransCanada has sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry asking it to “pause”
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Americans have never been so sure about climate change — even Republicans “Three-quarters of Americans now accept the scientific consensus on climate change, the highest
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Shell says it’s ending Alaska offshore oil exploration In a huge victory for the environment, Royal Dutch Shell PLC says it has decided to cease
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This morning, Pope Francis became the first leader of the Roman Catholic Church to address a joint session of the United States Congress. In his beautifully framed speech, firmly rooted in humanity’s universal progressive values, he urged Congress to act to address income inequality, the climate crisis, and immigration. He also called for the abolition of the death penalty.
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While it seems almost everyone is in thrall to the visiting pontiff, many in the Republican base dislike much of what he has to say:
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Hillary Clinton opposes Keystone XL pipeline Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton announced today she opposes the Keystone XL pipeline project,
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