[TheClimate.Vote] June 4, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Tue Jun 4 09:30:50 EDT 2019

/June 4, 2019/

[Legal arguments today -live stream 2 PM - 
https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/view_video.php?pk_vid=0000015741]
*Is it our constitutional right to live in a world safe from climate 
change?*
Juliana is the first lawsuit to argue that there's a constitutional 
right to a safe and livable climate. Experts say it's an ambitious and 
unprecedented tactic, and many were surprised that the case has made it 
this far.

"It's a novel legal claim," said Ann Carlson, a professor of 
environmental law at UCLA...
- - -
"The Trump administration has pulled out all the stops, legally, in 
trying to prevent the trial," said Michael Gerrard, the director of the 
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University who is not 
involved in the suit.

Now its fate lies with three judges in Portland, Ore., who will decide 
if the case has enough legal merit to proceed to trial. On Tuesday, 
lawyers for Baring and the other young plaintiffs will try to convince 
them that it does. (The hourlong hearing will be livestreamed on YouTube 
starting at 2 p.m. Pacific time.)
For starters, they will have to refute the government's argument that 
the plaintiffs don't have standing to sue. To do that, they must show 
that the plaintiffs have been harmed by the government's actions (or in 
this case, its inaction), and that the court can do something to remedy 
the problem...The plaintiffs have a long list of injuries...
"If the Constitution doesn't protect your right to live in an 
environment that will protect your life, then what does it protect?" she 
said.
https://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-youth-climate-trial-juliana-20190603-story.html
- - - -
[Live stream 2PM Pacific time today]
*United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit - Juliana v. 
United States*
https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/view_video.php?pk_vid=0000015741*
*
- - -
[Read the Case documents]
Juliana v. United States
Filing Date: 2015
Case Categories: Constitutional Claims  Fifth Amendment
Public Trust Claims
Principal Laws:
Public Trust Doctrine, Ninth Amendment, Fifth Amendment--Due Process, 
Fifth Amendment--Equal Protection
Description: Action by young plaintiffs asserting that the federal 
government violated their constitutional rights by causing dangerous 
carbon dioxide concentrations.
http://climatecasechart.com/case/juliana-v-united-states/
- - -
[If you missed the live, then check for the archive video at:]
*United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit*
https://www.youtube.com/user/9thcirc
- - -
[Legal overview]
*Why Two Ex-Surgeons General Support the 'Juliana 21' Climate Lawsuit*
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/opinion/climate-change-juliana-21.html

[message to Joe Biden]
*Sanders Says With Future of Planet at Stake, There's #NoMiddleGround*
Inspired by Sen. Bernie Sanders's speech at the California Democratic 
Convention in California -- in which the 2020 contender took a thinly 
veiled shot at fellow White House hopeful Joe Biden's centrist policy 
approach -- progressives made the Twitter hashtag #NoMiddleGround go 
viral on Sunday in an effort to make clear that there can be no 
compromises when it comes to confronting the global climate crisis, 
providing healthcare to all as a right, and battling inequality.
https://truthout.org/articles/sanders-says-with-future-of-planet-at-stake-theres-nomiddleground/

[Not just England, every nation]
*We must mobilise for the climate emergency like we do in wartime. Where 
is the climate minister?*
Unfortunately, much scientific knowledge produced for climate 
policymaking is conservative and reticent.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2019/jun/03/we-must-mobilise-for-the-climate-emergency-like-we-do-in-war-time-where-is-the-climate-minister

[report]
*WHAT LIES BENEATH - THE UNDERSTATEMENT **OF EXISTENTIAL CLIMATE RISK*
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/publications

[Consider the future of food - Heard on Fresh Air]
*'Fate Of Food' Asks: What's For Dinner In A Hotter, Drier, More Crowded 
World?*
June 3, 20191:24 PM ET
Environmental journalist Amanda Little says the sustainable food 
revolution will include meat cultured in a lab, 3-D printer food, 
aquaculture and indoor vertical farming.
- - - author of:
_The Fate of Food - What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World_
by Amanda Little
Hardcover, 340 pages
- - -
*LITTLE:* So I visited a farm in Newark, N.J., that's located inside an 
old warehouse that was once a laser tag arena. And it's in sort of an 
industrial part of Newark. And I walked inside and entered this sort of 
"Blade Runner"-esque sort of cathedral of indoor plant production 
(laughter).

They grow leafy greens for now, but eventually other kinds of 
high-nutrient foods, on trellis structures, or these stacks of trays 
that go up about 30, 35 feet high. Metal trays. And the plants are not 
grown in soil but, rather, they're grown into a fabric. And the roots 
dangle down into a nutrient mist that is continually nourishing these roots.

There are other forms of indoor food production that is not aeroponic, 
as you call this one, but hydroponic, where the plant roots are dangling 
in a water solution that's continually kind of cycling through. But in 
this case, aeroponic indoor production has the advantage of growing 
plants with about 90% less water than, you know, conventional 
in-the-soil lettuce production or crop production. And that of course, 
can be a big advantage in water-scarce areas.

The lights that are radiating down from right above these trays of 
little leafy greens that I saw are a mixture of blue and red-spectrum 
lights that can - combined with sort of extra oxygen that's pumped in. 
And extra CO2 that's also pumped in into this - along with this nutrient 
mist can cause the plants to grow 30% or more faster than they grow in 
the field....
- - -
*GROSS:* A lot of people have given up meat, and that's for several 
reasons, including they don't want to see cattle slaughtered, they don't 
want to see animals treated inhumanely in factory farms, they don't want 
the cholesterol of meat. So now there's, like, meat alternatives being 
grown - actually, forms of meat being grown in laboratories. And 
basically, it's from cloned cells, right?

*LITTLE:* So it's from biopsied cells that are removed from a living 
animal and then are cultured. So they are replicated in sort of what 
they call a bioreactor, which is basically a very sophisticated 
crockpot. And the cells, live cells are self-replicating, so they 
actually select cells that can continue to replicate themselves, which 
is a - which is a natural process.

Cloning I don't think is quite accurate because cells do this on their 
own; that's, you know, how living creatures grow. These cells that are 
harvested and then cultured in the laboratory are alive. They're so 
alive that they, in fact, can flex or spasm, you know, when stimulated.

And this was really something that - this really got me both excited and 
sort of semiterrified, honestly, about the prospect of eating this 
stuff, was these cells are - they're living cells; they're just not 
attached to a sentient being. And they, in fact, die when they're 
harvested from the bioreactor and then are not fed oxygen any longer, 
and the asphyxiation then kills the cells, and they are no longer reactive.

*GROSS:* Got it. But does it have, like, the flavor of meat?

*LITTLE:* It does have a lot of flavor because what we're eating, I 
mean, in the meat we consume is just that; it's muscle, connective 
tissue and fat. And the meat that I tried, which has a lot of different 
names for it. We've heard sort of, you know, cultured meats is one way 
of putting it; cell-based meats is another, lab meats is another. But 
the laboratory meat that I tried was duck meat that had been freshly 
harvested from a bioreactor in Berkeley, Calif...
*
**GROSS:* Yum...
- - -
And in my case, the duck experience was pretty staggering because the - 
and I haven't eaten a whole lot of duck in my life. But what I did eat, 
which was just this kind of lump of duck meat with salt and pepper that 
had been sauteed in a pan, tasted very much as advertised, as meat.

And (laughter) it - there's a difference between the plant-based meat 
products that we're hearing about on the market, like Impossible, the 
Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat, and these lab meats because the lab 
meats are identical on a cellular level to the meats we eat. So they're 
actual meat. But (laughter) they're not, you know, derived from plants; 
they're derived from the cells of animals...
- - -
*GROSS:* So right now culture meat or laboratory meat is in its 
experimental stages, and it's very expensive right now, too. What do you 
think the odds are that it will be actually available and affordable 
anytime in the foreseeable future?
*
**LITTLE:* I think the odds are very high. I think it's interesting and 
important to kind of note that the basic technology for growing muscle 
tissue has been around for a couple of decades, and this is not, you 
know, brand-new stuff. But the - you know, the work that's being done - 
now there are probably half a dozen or more startups that are getting 
very aggressively funded, that are working on this and that plan to have 
products available in - you know, by 2020, in the next 2, 3 years. 
Valeti has been pretty careful about not putting, you know, a release 
date on his products.

But it's really a matter of scale and cost, and the cost has come down 
from hundreds of thousands of dollars even for an ounce of this meat to, 
you know, a couple of hundred dollars for an ounce of this meat. So it's 
moving very quickly, the progress on this...
- - -
And so when we think about a future in which we may lose access to these 
foods that are, you know, so comforting and familiar to us and we may 
have to resort to Mylar packages and 3D printers and Soylent and this 
kind of thing - it's really upsetting. This is a topic that people have 
a lot of emotion about and should. And it triggers this instinct for 
survival and innovation.

*GROSS: *Have you changed or reconsidered any of your eating habits as a 
result of writing this book?
*
**LITTLE:* The single-biggest change for me has been the way I think 
about food waste. I, like many of us, get really excited when I go to 
the grocery store and like to buy a lot of leafy, fresh things, and I am 
embarrassed when I'm not able to use up all the ingredients I get for 
certain recipes and sort of quietly throw them away. But, you know, the 
broader problem of food waste is pretty staggering.

I mean, we waste more than a third of all the food grown globally. It is 
either thrown out in homes (ph) or it rots in transit or is thrown out 
because it doesn't meet aesthetic standards. And, you know, we have very 
unrealistic expectations about food and how it should look and how much 
we should be able to eat. And we have an amazingly wasteful society, and 
that is a big part of the problem. So I've thought - I've become much 
more sensitive to, you know, the amount of food we waste in our home.

I certainly have become much more sensitive to my own meat consumption. 
I have tried and tried to be, you know, vegetarian and vegan in the 
past. I love meat, and I've had a really hard time letting it go. But I 
have become sort of much more willing to accept and sort of experiment 
with plant-based meat alternatives and certainly can imagine bringing 
these cell-based meats or cultured meats into my kitchen when they're 
ready and affordable.

And certainly, continuing to eat meat and craft meats and support, you 
know, meats that are sustainably farmed is great. But I am on a limited 
budget, like so many of us. And so I can't, you know, only buy the 
really expensive sort of craft, artisanal meats. And so I've thought a 
lot differently about that.
Story with transcript: 
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/02/729261391/fate-of-food-asks-what-s-for-dinner-in-a-hotter-drier-more-crowded-world

[NRDC investigation says there are 2 EPAs]
*The Top-Down Contamination of the EPA*
One thing hasn't changed since Andrew Wheeler replaced Scott Pruitt: 
Career staffers are still being pressured to lie for their boss.
May 31, 2019
Jeff Turrentine
When former administrator Scott Pruitt stepped down and Andrew Wheeler 
took over, few who care about clean air, clean water, and climate change 
actually thought things were going to get dramatically better at the 
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Wheeler, after all, came to the 
job after working as a coal lobbyist and a legislative aide to one of 
Congress's most notorious climate deniers. Still, given that he'd 
actually begun his career as a special assistant in the EPA's Pollution 
Prevention and Toxics Office, it wasn't outlandish to wonder if Wheeler 
might represent at least some kind of improvement over his predecessor.

Short answer: He doesn't. As hard as it is to picture an EPA less 
willing to fight for public health and the environment than the one we 
endured under Pruitt, Wheeler's EPA is emerging as a credible candidate. 
As some of us suspected, the main difference between the two directors 
appears to be a matter of style. Whereas Pruitt's brand of corruption 
was bumbling and often transparently self-serving, Wheeler's is polished 
and insidious. But through their bad-faith actions, both men have been 
exceptional at perverting the agency's mission and cultivating mistrust 
among its staff...
- -
Now these same lawmakers are demanding more information from Wheeler to 
support that claim. In an official letter to Wheeler sent last Thursday, 
they accuse him of "mak[ing] assertions about the proposal that you must 
know do not reflect the views of EPA's expert staff," of "repeatedly 
mischaracteriz[ing] the emissions impact of the proposed rule," and of 
making public statements that have "deviated from the information that 
was provided to you and other EPA political appointees" by the agency's 
scientists and other experts.

They strongly imply that Wheeler's motivations for misleading Congress 
and the public are rooted in his desire to please the oil industry. 
"[It] is hard to discern any other purpose for the proposal," they 
write, "since no entity in the automotive industry has requested such an 
extreme rollback of the current vehicle economy and greenhouse gas 
standards . . . The oil industry stands to reap the most benefit from 
the proposed rollback because Americans will be forced to spend hundreds 
of millions of dollars more for gasoline in less efficient cars."

Taken together, these two developments paint a picture of an EPA where 
the science-backed opinions of career staff count for far less than the 
needs of corporate polluters. In March 2018-- before Pruitt resigned in 
disgrace--I wrote that there were basically two EPAs, a split reflecting 
"deep tensions within an agency that's currently torn between the best 
impulses of its hardworking scientists and the worst impulses of its 
administrator and his industry-coddling cronies." Fifteen months and one 
administrative shakeup later, the point still stands. Nothing has 
changed. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.
https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/top-down-contamination-epa

[Plans for Wind blackouts in California]
*California's Largest Utility Warns People To Expect Blackouts This Summer*
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/03/729390433/californias-largest-utility-warns-people-to-expect-blackouts-this-summer

[video young, sarcastic debater - (he may have trolls from industry and 
nations)]
*Climate Denial: A Measured Response*
hbomberguy
Published on May 31, 2019
Sponsored in part by CuriosityStream: 
https://www.curiositystream.com/hbomb...
Facts. What are they good for?
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hbomberguy
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Hbomb
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/hbomberguy/
Tumblr: http://hbomberguy.tumblr.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqXkYrdmjY

[criticizing Democrats too]
MAY 31, 2019
*Russiagate Trumps Environmental Catastrophe for the Dismal Democrats*
by PAUL STREET
If historians still exist years from now, some of them will be struck by 
how Donald Trump's Democratic Party critics and their media allies 
obsessed over the 45th United States President's real and alleged 
connections to Russia while saying comparatively little about his 
enactment of a soulless anti-environmental agenda that accelerated 
humanity's march towards extinction in service to the United States' own 
homegrown corporate polluters.

The reigning national media politics culture has been mired in the 
Russia-Gate drama for the last two-plus years. Meanwhile, the Trump 
administration has been all too quietly speeding up the end of history 
with a broad sweep of horrific ecological policies and practices:

+ Pulling out of the (admittedly tepid) Paris Climate Agreement, 
signaling complete U.S. abandonment of any commitment to positive and 
coordinated international action to reduce carbon emissions.

+ Scrapping Obama's (admittedly inadequate) "Clean Power Plan," which 
would have required the energy sector to cut carbon emissions by 32 
percent by 2030.

+ Loosening EPA regulations on air pollution.

+ Scrapping EPA rules around methane flaring and leaks.

+ Revoking an executive order that required federally funded 
construction projects to factor rising sea levels into their building 
standards.

+ Weakening fuel economy standards for auto manufacturers.

+ Rolling back federal protection of rivers and wetlands.

+ Approving the climate-cooking and water-endangering Dakota Access and 
Keystone-XL oil pipelines.

+ Issuing executive orders that streamline approval for corporations to 
build oil and gas pipelines while limiting the capacity of state 
governments to block those pipelines.

+ Rolling back safety regulations in offshore oil drilling.

+ Issuing an executive order (in the absurd name of "wildfire 
prevention") to increase the logging of forests on federal public lands.

+ Rolling back Department of Interior restrictions on mining and 
drilling meant to protect the endangered Sage Grouse.

+. Approving the use of seismic air gun blasts to search out underwater 
oil and gas deposits.

+ Dramatically downsizing two great national monuments - Bears Ears and 
Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah - to open public lands for mining and 
drilling.

+ Shrinking the size and influence of Environmental Protection Agency 
while drastically reducing its criminal prosecutions.

+ Lifting restrictions on carbon emissions from coal plants.

+ Approving the first oil and gas production wells in the federally 
managed waters of the Arctic Ocean.

+ Disbanding the EPA's former scientific air pollution review panel.

+ Ending NASA's state-of-the-art Carbon Monitoring System

+ Cutting "climate change" out of the Federal Emergency Management 
Agency's Strategic Plan.

+ Deleting references to "climate change" from federal government websites.

+ Suspending federal scientific study of health risks for people who 
live near mountaintop removal sites.

+ Disbanding a federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment.

+ Revoking federal flood-risk standards that used climate scientists' 
sea-level predictions.

+ Removing rules that protected whales and sea turtles from being 
entangled in fishing nets.

+ Dismissing the EPA's 18-member scientific advisory board and replacing 
its members with industry representatives.

+ Ordering the expansion of offshore drilling.

+ Removing the word "science" from the mission statement of the EPA's 
Office of Science and Technology.

The essentially eco-exterminist attitude of the Trump administration was 
nicely epitomized two weeks ago when Trump's Interior Secretary David 
Bernhardt told a House Democrat "I haven't lost any sleep over" over 
reports that carbon's atmospheric presence has reached 415 parts per 
million, the highest level in more than 800,000 years. Bernhardt is a 
longtime energy industry and agribusiness lobbyist charged, of all 
things, with the federal management and protection of the nation's 
public lands and natural resources.

In the absence of a dramatic transformation to renewable energy and 
sustainable practices (something more "radical" than the good starting 
point of a Green New Deal), we are now speeding towards a not-so 
historically distant termination point for the planet's basic 
life-support systems. Last fall the United Nations Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that humanity has twelve years to 
cut carbon pollution by half if it wants to avoid true catastrophe. We 
are racing towards tipping points of no return.

There's a lot to hate about the vile, creeping fascist Trump 
administration, of course, but there's a strong case to be made that the 
current White House's worst characteristic is its determination to 
increase the rate at which the United States and the global capitalist 
order turn the planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber. The 
environmental crisis we face today (with the climate emergency in the 
lead) is certainly the biggest issue of our or any time in human 
history. If it isn't properly addressed, nothing else we care about 
(including the real and/or alleged subversion of elections within or 
beyond the U.S.) is going to matter all that much...
more at - 
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/31/russiagate-trumps-environmental-catastrophe-for-the-dismal-democrats/

*This Day in Climate History - June 4, 2002 - from D.R. Tucker*
President George W. Bush dismisses an EPA report on the threat of 
human-caused climate change, deriding what he called "the report put out 
by the bureaucracy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/us/president-distances-himself-from-global-warming-report.html 

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