<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<font size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>March</b></i></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b> 22, 2024</b></i></font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font> <br>
<i>[ imagine jury duty for this big one ]</i><br>
<b>Fossil fuel firms could be tried in US for homicide over
climate-related deaths, experts say</b><br>
Public Citizen, a non-profit group, proposed the idea last year to
prosecute companies for millions of deaths due to climate crisis<br>
Dharna Noor<br>
Thu 21 Mar 2024 <br>
Each year, extreme temperatures take 5 million lives, while 400,000
people die from climate-related hunger and disease and scores perish
in floods and wildfires.<br>
<br>
Now, researchers are promoting a new legal theory that says fossil
fuel companies – which, data show, are the leading contributors to
planet-heating pollution – could be tried for homicide for
climate-related deaths.<br>
<br>
The radical idea, first proposed last year by consumer advocacy
non-profit Public Citizen, may sound far-fetched, but it’s gaining
interest from experts and public officials.<br>
“We’ve been really excited to see the curiosity, interest and
support these ideas have garnered from members of the legal
community, including from both former and current federal, state and
local prosecutors,” said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel with
Public Citizen’s climate program.<br>
<br>
The Public Citizen researchers are currently holding events at top
law schools including Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard,
University of Chicago and New York University to promote the idea.<br>
<br>
“I strongly support the effort to go after these bastards,”
Christopher Rabb, a Pennsylvania state representative said at a
recent UPenn event. The researchers say other public officials have
expressed interest behind the scenes as well.<br>
<br>
The proposal, which will soon be published in the Harvard Law
Review, stems in part from the growing body of evidence that the
fossil fuel industry hid information about the dangers of fossil
fuel use from the public. Those revelations have inspired 40
lawsuits alleging big oil has violated tort, product liability and
consumer protection laws and engaged in racketeering.<br>
<br>
In addition to those civil lawsuits, fossil fuel companies should
also face criminal charges, the researchers say.<br>
<br>
“Criminal law is how we say what is right and wrong in our society,”
said David Arkush, who directs Public Citizen’s climate program and
co-authored the paper on the proposal. “I think it’s important that
some of the most damaging conduct in human history be squarely
recognized and pursued as criminal.”<br>
<br>
There are a range of statutes that could criminalize fossil fuel
companies’ climate conduct, the researchers say. Many of the civil
claims facing oil companies, such as conspiracy and racketeering,
have criminal counterparts, and other laws could be used to
criminalize conduct that could inflict future harms, such as
reckless endangerment. But the claim that could capture the sector’s
gravest harms, the researchers say, is homicide.<br>
Because oil companies fought to delay climate action despite knowing
about global warming, there is a case to be made that they committed
reckless or negligent homicide, according to Public Citizen.<br>
<br>
“It’s well within the four signposts of the law that you ought to be
able to bring one of these cases,” said Arkush. “We’ve talked to
dozens of criminal law professors across the country, we’ve talked
to former prosecutors, former department of justice prosecutors, and
no one really has anything to say about us being wrong on the law.”<br>
Energy companies have been charged with homicide for environmental
crimes before, Arkush noted. California prosecutors charged the
utility PG&E with manslaughter after a tree fell onto an aging
transmission line and sparked a deadly 2018 wildfire in Paradise,
California. Federal prosecutors also charged oil company BP with
manslaughter after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed
11 workers and resulted in the largest oil spill in the history of
marine oil-drilling operations. Both companies pleaded guilty and
paid billions of dollars in penalties and fines.<br>
<br>
Cindy Cho, a former Department of Justice prosecutor, said she was
initially skeptical about Public Citizen’s proposal, which is called
Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Death.<br>
<br>
“But once I read it, I thought that it was more compelling than I
had guessed it would be,” she said.<br>
<br>
Though she now believes it could be a “viable avenue for
prosecution”, the legal proposal is not a slam dunk, said Cho, now a
professor at Indiana University’s Maurer school of law. Even if a
district attorney or attorney general is willing to bring such
charges against some of the world’s most powerful corporations, that
prosecutor would need significant resources and a highly specialized
team, she said.<br>
<br>
“You need people who understand the science on the prosecution team,
in addition to people who understand a homicide prosecution, in
addition to people who understand big, document-intensive
white-collar prosecutions,” she said. “That’s not an easy team to
assemble.”<br>
Another challenge: though bringing charges of reckless or negligent
homicide would not technically require plaintiffs to demonstrate oil
companies killed with intent, in practice that’s something many
prosecutors and jurors will look for, she said.<br>
<br>
Demonstrating causality between an oil company and any single
climate-related death would also likely prove difficult, she said.
When a person dies in a hurricane, even if attribution science shows
climate change was a factor in increasing the severity of the storm,
a court would also have to consider other factors that exacerbated
the risk they faced, such as the victim’s underlying health
conditions or the strength of their home.<br>
“You could probably sit here for an hour and think of all of the
factors,” she said. “And that’s before you even get to the knotty …
question of showing that climate change led to the hurricane, that
nothing else besides the actions of the company that lead to climate
change was a cause.”<br>
<br>
The researchers note that some criminal charges can be brought even
without a demonstration of causality. Pennsylvania, for instance,
has a criminal statute against not only causing, but also risking,
catastrophe.<br>
<br>
Even so, there are political and cultural barriers to filing novel
charges against such well-heeled companies, the researchers say. But
if such criminal litigation were successful, it could have major
consequences for fossil fuel companies, potentially forcing the
sector to alter how it operates.<br>
Researchers point to the case of Purdue Pharma, which in response to
federal charges over its role in the opioid crisis, accepted a 2020
settlement requiring it to restructure as a public benefit
corporation focussed on delivering safe drugs and abating addiction.
A similar settlement with oil companies could require them to focus
on accelerating the clean energy transition and redressing past
harms, the researchers say.<br>
<br>
The proposal also represents a chance to “more accurately portray
what a criminal looks like”, Cho said at the researchers’ UPenn
event last week. While criminal law often targets individuals, many
prosecutors are interested in going after “big defendants” who
create structural harm, she said.<br>
<br>
“I think that prosecutors should actively consider pursuing the
theory, especially if they walk into the investigation with an
understanding of the intense challenges,” she said.<br>
<br>
Larry Krasner, the district attorney of Philadelphia, said in an
email his office will “explore legal avenues by which we may seek
accountability from polluters”.<br>
<br>
Nikil Saval, a state senator from Pennsylvania, said the proposal
captured his curiosity. “Fossil fuel companies and the executives
that lead them … have committed crimes that have harmed the people
of Pennsylvania and they should be held accountable for them,” he
said.<br>
<br>
Marian Ryan, the district attorney for Middlesex, Massachusetts,
said it is “imperative that we acknowledge the profound impact of
pollution and chemical exposure on individuals’ well-being.<br>
“I look forward to learning more about this research as we continue
our collective efforts to address the intersection of public health
and safety,” she said of Public Citizen’s proposal.<br>
<br>
Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which
has supported civil suits against big oil, said the new theory
“makes clear that efforts to hold the oil majors accountable are
only beginning, and that lawyers will continue to pursue innovative
legal strategies until the oil majors are finally held accountable
for the massive harms they have caused”.<br>
<br>
Sharon Eubanks, who was lead counsel on behalf of the US in the
successful 2005 legal action against big tobacco, said she is
supportive of the new theory and noted that her plan to sue big
tobacco faced similar skepticism.<br>
<br>
“There were a lot of people who said we were crazy to charge big
tobacco with racketeering and that we could never win,” she said.
“But you know what? We did win. I think we need that same kind of
thinking to deal with the climate crisis.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/21/fossil-fuel-companies-homicide-climate-deaths-lawsuit?utm_">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/21/fossil-fuel-companies-homicide-climate-deaths-lawsuit?utm_</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
<i>[ Harvard considers the law ]</i><br>
<b>New climate paper calls for charging big US oil firms with
homicide</b><br>
Brian Kahn<br>
Wed 22 Mar 2023 06.00 ED<br>
Authors of paper accepted for publication in Harvard Environmental
Law Review argue firms are ‘killing members of the public at an
accelerating rate’<br>
<br>
Brian Kahn<br>
Wed 22 Mar 2023 <br>
<br>
Oil companies have come under increasing legal scrutiny and face
allegations of defrauding investors, racketeering, and a wave of
other lawsuits. But a new paper argues there’s another way to hold
big oil accountable for climate damage: trying companies for
homicide.<br>
<br>
The striking and seemingly radical legal theory is laid out in a
paper accepted for publication in the Harvard Environmental Law
Review. In it, the authors argue fossil fuel companies “have not
simply been lying to the public, they have been killing members of
the public at an accelerating rate, and prosecutors should bring
that crime to the public’s attention”.<br>
“What’s on their ledger in terms of harm, there’s nothing like it in
human history,” said David Arkush, the director of the climate
program at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and one of the
paper’s authors.<br>
The paper is rooted in part in the growing body of evidence fossil
fuel companies knew of the harm their products caused and misled the
public about them.<br>
<br>
Attorneys general and cities have used that information to sue oil
companies for financial damages caused by rising seas, wildfires and
heat. But the new paper argues that oil companies’ climate research
and continued fight to delay climate regulations amount to a
“culpable mental state” that has inflicted harm on people, including
death.<br>
<br>
“Once you start using those terms, you come to realize that’s
criminal law,” said Donald Braman, a law professor at George
Washington University and Arkush’s co-author. “Culpable mental state
causing harm is criminal conduct, and if they kill anybody, that’s
homicide.”<br>
<br>
Braman argued that pursuing homicide charges would have a greater
impact on fossil fuel companies than the cases currently wending
their way through court in part because the penalties would be
steeper. Rather than paying a fine, homicide charges could open up
an array of other outcomes that could materially alter how companies
operate.<br>
<br>
Homicide is a catchall term that includes charges ranging from
manslaughter to murder. The former is a lesser charge where death
was caused without intent, while murder is reserved for cases where
the defendant either had knowledge that taking a specific action
could kill someone or engaged in a premeditated killing. Arkush said
the fact that fossil fuel companies knew that their products
worsened the climate crisis and yet continued to extract oil, gas
and coal “comes extremely close” to meeting the definition of
murder, though the paper lays out the case for multiple types of
homicide charges.<br>
The paper also argues that the case for climate homicide has been
bolstered by attribution science, which seeks to ascertain how much
the climate crisis has worsened individual extreme weather events.
Some studies have even been able to attribute a specific number of
extreme weather deaths to the climate crisis. The duo argue that
this growing body of science is among the most powerful tools to
prove that oil companies’ actions have more than met the standard
for a prosecutor to bring a homicide case.<br>
<br>
Bringing homicide charges against oil companies for deaths caused by
the climate crisis would be unprecedented, but corporations have
been tried for homicide before. California prosecutors charged the
utility PG&E with manslaughter for its role in the deadly Camp
Fire that leveled the town of Paradise in 2018. And federal
prosecutors charged BP with manslaughter following the 2010
Deepwater Horizon disaster. In both cases, the companies pleaded
guilty and paid billions in fines and penalties.<br>
While there may be a theoretical case for climate homicide, the
realities are daunting. First, a district attorney or attorney
general office that has jurisdiction in a place where climate change
has caused deaths would have to be willing to bring charges. And
that office would need significant resources to confront influential
billion-dollar corporations.<br>
<br>
“The morality of what fossil fuel companies have been doing over a
few decades has become clearer and clearer,” said Christopher Kutz,
a distinguished professor and director of the Kadish Center for
Morality, Law and Public Affairs at the University of California,
Berkeley. “They are complicit in the deaths that occur and the
article is very persuasive about that. But whether you could make an
actual criminal charge stick is tricky because their complicity is
mixed with the complicity of everybody else.”...<br>
- -<br>
Kutz said another challenge facing any would-be prosecutions is the
central role fossil fuels have played in shaping the modern world.<br>
<br>
“The central act for which the homicide charges being applied were
embraced, subsidized, and a central part of the world economy for
the last 150 years,” he said. “This is a different kind of case
where the use of fossil fuels is the baseline of normal behavior.
That would make it a very unusual kind of homicide case,” he added,
likening it to “a black hole of liability”.<br>
<br>
Guyora Binder, a distinguished professor of law at the University at
Buffalo, said the paper was “exciting, imaginative and insightful in
a number of important ways”, but also advised caution.<br>
<br>
“An obstacle to finding causal responsibility is when death results
from diffuse actions of multiple actors,” said Binder, who has
written extensively on homicide and criminal law. “It’s a little
reminiscent of the issues with tobacco and opioids where you have
multiple manufacturers and you can’t trace which one contributed to
which death … It’s not clear that if you remove any one of [the
fossil fuel companies], that the deaths resulting from global
warming don’t occur.”...<br>
- -<br>
Binder hypothesized that multiple companies could be charged
collectively, though it would still be a very challenging case to
bring about. As an analog, he noted that there have been cases in
which multiple street drag racers have been charged with homicide,
though only of them was physically responsible for killing someone,
because they all competed in a race that resulted in a death.<br>
<br>
“If it turns out [fossil fuel companies] were all colluding in
suppressing research about climate change and all trying to help
each other continue this enterprise, then we may be [able to] hold
them responsible for one another’s actions,” he said.<br>
<br>
Asked for a response to the study, a spokesperson for the American
Petroleum Institute said in an email: “The record of the past two
decades demonstrates that the industry has achieved its goal of
providing affordable, reliable American energy to US consumers while
substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint.
Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”...<br>
- -<br>
It’s possible that the broader social shift taking place, including
criticism over fossil fuel companies’ role in causing the climate
crisis, could make climate homicide a feasible option for the right
prosecutor. The growing wave of lawsuits being brought against them
is proof, Braman said, that those companies are no longer
untouchable.<br>
<br>
The authors go so far as to recommend a particular sentence should
fossil fuel firms be found guilty of homicide: restructuring them as
public benefit corporations, similar to what happened to Purdue
Pharma as part of its settlement for contributing to the opioid
crisis. Doing so, they argue, would allow for rapidly winding down
fossil fuel production to reduce further climate harm while ramping
up investments in clean energy and protecting workers and
communities tied to fossil fuel companies.<br>
<br>
Climate advocates have taken note of the paper’s argument. The
Center for Biological Diversity is a US non-profit that focuses on
protecting endangered species. It has sued over oil companies’
drilling rights, but isn’t directly involved with any of the big oil
cases.<br>
<br>
“The case is compelling that fossil fuel companies’ actions meet the
legal definition of homicide. The paper lays that out clearly,” said
Kassie Siegal, the director of the center’s climate law institute.<br>
<br>
“I think it’s absolutely brilliant,” she said.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/22/big-oil-companies-homicide-harvard-environmental-law-review">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/22/big-oil-companies-homicide-harvard-environmental-law-review</a><br>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<i>[Opinion from Yours Truly still applies ]</i><br>
<b>Suborning Murder, Encouraging Mass Suicide</b><br>
By Richard Pauli on July 9, 2009 <br>
Suborn 1. To induce (a person) to commit an unlawful or evil act.<br>
<br>
Hey EnergyTomorrow, API and the entire fossil fuel industry - we
have to speak out. You suborn murder by heavily promoting carbon
fuel usage. You actively encourage species suicide.<br>
<br>
You have known for decades that CO2 causes global warming. And you
know that fossil fuels are the major human source of CO2 greenhouse
gasses that cause catastrophic heating.<br>
<br>
You hide it from consumers, you deny the science and you secretly
fund skeptics, and now you seek political support for your carbon
fueled campaign of mass suicide.<br>
<br>
Science pretty much knows now that we are a doomed species. It
will be a tough life for all our grandchildren, and we cannot expect
many humans after that.<br>
<br>
And you continue lying when you could have been educating and
researching and deploying non-polluting energy. Now your momentum
traps us all.<br>
<br>
Your most evil act is to discount the danger and continue promoting
ignorance and doubt. You have pushed the world into total adoption
of carbon based fuels, and like big tobacco you covered up science
and distracted your market, and now you are groveling for political
support to keep your industry going through the chaos ahead.<br>
<br>
More than any other industrial segment, yours - oil, gas, coal, all
the CO2 carbon fuels - are the most directly responsible for the end
of our species. You continue to worsen the struggle and cause an
early death for our progeny.<br>
<br>
It is no comfort that your grandchildren are just as doomed as
mine. Eventually we will all be dying for your sins. But now we
know, and we will neither forgive nor forget this mass murder for
money.<br>
<br>
Richard Pauli July 4th 2009<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.noenergytomorrow.org/2009/07/suborning-murder-encouraging-mass-suicide.html">http://www.noenergytomorrow.org/2009/07/suborning-murder-encouraging-mass-suicide.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[meterologist's impressive documentary of Svalbard ice melt 22
min video ]</i><br>
<b>Melting Point: The Fastest Warming Place on the Planet</b><br>
The Weather Network<br>
Mar 17, 2024 #theweathernetwork #svalbard #climatechange<br>
The Earth has been in a warming trend for decades due to the effects
of human-caused climate change, but there's one place that is
feeling these effects at an accelerated rate. <br>
<br>
Svalbard is a group of Norwegian islands north of the Arctic Circle
where glaciers, polar bears, and people are all reeling as the
higher temperatures promised by global warming have already arrived.<br>
<br>
Join The Weather Network's Jaclyn Whittal, meteorologist and Fellow
of the Explorer's Club, as she journeys through Svalbard to
experience first-hand this incredible and changing land at the
forefront of climate change.<br>
#climatechange #svalbard #theweathernetwork <br>
<br>
Chapters:<br>
02:24 The Town of Longyearbyen<br>
07:09 Voyage To See Calving Glaciers<br>
14:53 A Challenge for Polar Bears<br>
21:04 Preview of Episode 2<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEI8c_n9Vdk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEI8c_n9Vdk</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ Cynically -- study geology, then find gold and oil, then do
nothing else ]</i><br>
<b>Geologists Make It Official: We’re Not in an ‘Anthropocene’ Epoch</b><br>
The field’s governing body ratified a vote by scientists on the
contentious issue, ending a long effort to update the timeline of
Earth’s history.<br>
By Raymond Zhong<br>
March 20, 2024<br>
The highest governing body in geology has upheld a contested vote by
scientists against adding the Anthropocene, or human age, to the
official timeline of Earth’s history.<br>
<br>
The vote, which a committee of around two dozen scholars held in
February, brought an end to nearly 15 years of debate about whether
to declare that our species had transformed the natural world so
thoroughly since the 1950s as to have sent the planet into a new
epoch of geologic time.<br>
<br>
Shortly after voting ended this month, however, the committee’s
chair, Jan A. Zalasiewicz, and vice chair, Martin J. Head, called
for the results to be annulled. They said the members had voted
prematurely, before evaluating all the evidence.<br>
Dr. Zalasiewicz and Dr. Head also asserted that many members
shouldn’t have been allowed to vote in the first place because they
had exceeded their term limits.<br>
After considering the matter, the committee’s parent body, the
International Union of Geological Sciences, has decided the results
will stand, the union’s executive committee said in a statement on
Wednesday.<br>
That means it’s official. Our planet, at least for the time being,
is still in the Holocene epoch, which began 11,700 years ago with
the most recent melting of the ice sheets.<br>
<br>
Even if the Anthropocene does not yet have an official place on the
geologic time scale, the term will “continue to be used not only by
earth and environmental scientists, but also by social scientists,
politicians and economists, as well as by the public at large,” the
statement from the geological union said. “It will remain an
invaluable descriptor of human impact on the earth system.”<br>
<br>
The statement did not directly address Dr. Zalasiewicz’s and Dr.
Head’s concerns about the voting process. It said only that the
committee members had acted with integrity and had wide expertise as
geologists. “The scientific decision is clear, and the specialists
do not see any value in adding a new epoch in the geological
record,” the union’s president, John Ludden, said by email.<br>
<br>
Even though the voting results have been declared valid, Dr. Head,
an earth scientist at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario,
said he expected the Anthropocene episode to prompt geologists to
change their procedures for deciding on future updates to the time
scale.<br>
<br>
“I feel this has been a missed opportunity to recognize and endorse
a simple reality, that our planet left its natural functioning state
in the mid-20th century,” Dr. Head said by email. “A myriad of
geological signals reflect this fact.”<br>
<br>
The Anthropocene issue has polarized scientists in a way that few
issues in the history of the geological time scale ever have.<br>
<br>
The scale divides Earth’s past into chapters, many of which
encapsulate planet-spanning changes. There’s no question our time is
full of such changes. Pollution, urbanization, rapid greenhouse
warming and other disruptions to ecosystems and natural processes
have left traces that will linger in the rocks for long to come.<br>
<br>
But to merit inclusion on the geological scale, any time interval
needs to meet certain criteria, such as having a clear, objective
starting point in the mineral record.<br>
Last month, the first of three scientific committees began voting on
whether the decades since World War II fit the bill. The results,
which were first reported by The New York Times, showed that most
committee members weren’t ready to ratify an epoch that is still so
young, at least by the standards of Earth’s 4.6-billion-year
history. The rejection means the Anthropocene question will not
advance to the next round of voting.<br>
The results are “a sign that the system is not equipped to deal with
looking at the present, nor with the rate of change currently
occurring on our planet,” said Brad E. Rosenheim, chair of the
Geological Society of America’s Geochronology Division, in a
statement.<br>
<br>
“Although it is unclear whether the Anthropocene will ever become a
geological division, it is an important question for every one of us
to ponder: What exactly are we doing to this planet that supports
our civilization?” said Dr. Rosenheim, a geological oceanographer at
the University of South Florida.<br>
<br>
With the Anthropocene issue behind them, the keepers of the geologic
timeline can now turn to other matters. Next on their agenda, among
other things, is deciding precisely when the late Pleistocene epoch
began.<br>
<br>
That would be the time, something like 130,000 years ago, when the
planet was warmer than it is today. As time went on, the world grew
cold again. The ice sheets returned. Neanderthals and other
prehistoric ancestors were either wiped out or assimilated, leaving
only modern humans.<br>
<br>
Geologists say this period deserves an official start date, but they
still need to figure out how and where to define it. The question
has been on their minds for a long time, longer than the
Anthropocene has been. Much longer, in fact. The first time
scientists officially put forth a potential starting point for the
late Pleistocene was in 1932.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/climate/anthropocene-vote-upheld.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/climate/anthropocene-vote-upheld.html</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[The news archive - undoing ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> <font size="+2"><i><b>March 22, 2017 </b></i></font>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> March 22, 2017:<br>
The New York Times reports:<br>
<blockquote><b>Trump Lays Plans to Reverse Obama’s Climate Change
Legacy</b><br>
By Coral Davenport<br>
March 21, 2017<br>
WASHINGTON — President Trump is poised in the coming days to
announce his plans to dismantle the centerpiece of President
Barack Obama’s climate change legacy, while also gutting several
smaller but significant policies aimed at curbing global warming.<br>
<br>
The moves are intended to send an unmistakable signal to the
nation and the world that Mr. Trump intends to follow through on
his campaign vows to rip apart every element of what the president
has called Mr. Obama’s “stupid” policies to address climate
change. The timing and exact form of the announcement remain
unsettled, however.<br>
<br>
The executive actions will follow the White House’s release last
week of a proposed budget that would eliminate climate change
research and prevention programs across the federal government and
slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31 percent,
more than any other agency. Mr. Trump also announced last week
that he had ordered Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, to
revise the agency’s stringent standards on planet-warming tailpipe
pollution from vehicles, another of Mr. Obama’s key climate change
policies.<br>
<br>
While the White House is not expected to explicitly say the United
States is withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate
change, and people familiar with the White House deliberations say
Mr. Trump has not decided whether to do so, the policy reversals
would make it virtually impossible to meet the emissions reduction
goals set by the Obama administration under the international
agreement.<br>
In an announcement that could come as soon as Thursday or as late
as next month, according to people familiar with the White House’s
planning, Mr. Trump will order Mr. Pruitt to withdraw and rewrite
a set of Obama-era regulations known as the Clean Power Plan,
according to a draft document obtained by The New York Times. The
Obama rule was devised to shut down hundreds of heavily polluting
coal-fired power plants and freeze construction of new coal
plants, while replacing them with vast wind and solar farms.<br>
<br>
The draft also lays out options for legally blocking or weakening
about a half-dozen additional Obama-era executive orders and
policies on climate change.<br>
At a campaign-style rally on Monday in the coal-mining state of
Kentucky, Mr. Trump told a cheering audience that he is preparing
an executive action that would “save our wonderful coal miners
from continuing to be put out of work.<br>
Experts in environmental law say it will not be possible for Mr.
Trump to quickly or simply roll back the most substantive elements
of Mr. Obama’s climate change regulations, noting that the process
presents a steep legal challenge that could take many years and is
likely to end up before the Supreme Court. Economists are
skeptical that a rollback of the rules would restore lost coal
jobs because the demand for coal has been steadily shrinking for
years.<br>
<br>
Scientists and climate policy advocates around the world say they
are watching the administration’s global warming actions and
statements with deep worry. Many reacted with deep concern to Mr.
Pruitt’s remarks this month that he did not believe carbon
dioxide was a primary driver of climate change, a statement at
odds with the global scientific consensus. They also noted the
remarks last week by Mick Mulvaney, the director of the White
House Office of Management and Budget, in justifying Mr. Trump’s
proposed cuts to climate change research programs.<br>
<br>
“As to climate change, I think the president was fairly
straightforward: We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Mr.
Mulvaney said at a White House briefing.<br>
<br>
“The message they are sending to the rest of the world is that
they don’t believe climate change is serious. It’s shocking to see
such a degree of ignorance from the United States,” said Mario J.
Molina, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist from Mexico who advises
nations on climate change policy.<br>
<br>
The policy reversals also signal that Mr. Trump has no intention
of following through on Mr. Obama’s formal pledges under the Paris
accord, under which nearly every country in the world submitted
plans detailing actions to limit global warming over the coming
decade.<br>
<br>
Under the accord as it stands, the United States has pledged to
reduce its greenhouse pollution about 26 percent from 2005 levels
by 2025. That can be achieved only if the United States not only
implements the Clean Power Plan and tailpipe-pollution rules, but
also tightens them or adds more policies in future years.<br>
“The message clearly is, ‘We won’t do what the United States has
promised to do,’” Mr. Molina said.<br>
<br>
In addition to directing Mr. Pruitt to withdraw the Clean Power
Plan, the draft order instructs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to
request that a federal court halt consideration of a 28-state
lawsuit against the regulation. The case was argued before the
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit in September, and the court is expected to release a
decision in the coming months on whether to uphold or strike down
the rule.<br>
<br>
According to the draft, Mr. Trump is also expected to announce
that he will lift a moratorium on new coal mining leases on public
lands that had been announced last year by the Obama
administration.<br>
He is also expected to order White House economists to revisit an
Obama-era budgeting metric known as the social cost of carbon.
Economists and policy makers used the metric to place a dollar
cost on the economic impact of planet-warming carbon dioxide
pollution: about $36 per ton. That measure formed the Obama
administration’s economic justification for issuing climate change
regulations that would harm some industries, such as coal mining,
noting that those costs would be outweighed by the economic
benefits of preventing billions of tons of planet-warming
pollution.<br>
<br>
Eliminating or lowering the social cost of carbon could provide
the Trump administration the economic justification for putting
forth less-stringent regulations.<br>
The draft order would also rescind an executive order by Mr. Obama
that all federal agencies take climate change into account when
considering any form of environmental permitting.<br>
<br>
Unlike the rollback of the power plant and vehicle regulations,
which could take years and will be subject to legal challenges,
Mr. Trump can make the changes to the coal mining ban and undo Mr.
Obama’s executive orders with the stroke of a pen.<br>
<br>
White House staff members and energy lobbyists who work closely
with them say they have been expecting Mr. Trump to make the
climate change announcements for weeks, ever since Mr. Pruitt was
confirmed to head the E.P.A. on Feb. 17, but the announcement has
been repeatedly rescheduled. The delays of the one-page
announcement have largely been a result of disorganization and a
chaotic policy and planning process, said people familiar with
that process who asked to speak anonymously to avoid angering Mr.
Trump.<br>
<br>
One reason for the confusion, these people said, is internal
disputes about the challenging legal process required to dismantle
the Clean Power Plan. While Mr. Trump may announce with great
fanfare his intent to roll back the regulations, the legal steps
required to fulfill that announcement are lengthy and the outcome
uncertain.<br>
<br>
“Trump’s announcements have zero impact,” said Richard J. Lazarus,
a professor of environmental law at Harvard. “They don’t change
existing law at all.”<br>
<br>
Much of that task will now fall to Mr. Pruitt.<br>
<br>
“To undo the rule, the E.P.A. will now have to follow the same
procedure that was followed to put the regulations in place,” said
Mr. Lazarus, pointing to a multiyear process of proposing draft
rules, gathering public comment and forming a legal defense
against an expected barrage of lawsuits almost certain to end up
before the Supreme Court.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/climate/trump-climate-change.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/climate/trump-climate-change.html</a>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<p><font face="Calibri">/Archive of Daily Global Warming News <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/">https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/</a></font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"> === Other climate news sources
===========================================<br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b>*Inside Climate News</b><br>
Newsletters<br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://insideclimatenews.org/">https://insideclimatenews.org/</a><br>
--------------------------------------- <br>
*<b>Climate Nexus</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*">https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*</a>
<br>
5 weekday <br>
================================= <br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b class="moz-txt-star"><span
class="moz-txt-tag">*</span>Carbon Brief Daily </b><span
class="moz-txt-star"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up">https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up</a></span><b
class="moz-txt-star"><span class="moz-txt-tag">*</span></b> <br>
Every weekday morning<br>
more at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief">https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief</a>
<br>
================================== <br>
*T<b>he Daily Climate </b>Subscribe <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*">https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*</a>
<br>
Other newsletters at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/">https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/</a>
</font><font face="Calibri">/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
</font><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"><br>
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request"><mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request></a>
to news digest./<br>
</font>
<p>/Archive of Daily Global Warming News <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/">https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/</a><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"> Privacy and Security:*This mailing is
text-only -- and carries no images or attachments which may
originate from remote servers. Text-only messages provide greater
privacy to the receiver and sender. This is a personal hobby
production curated by Richard Pauli<br>
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for
commercial purposes. Messages have no tracking software.<br>
To subscribe, email: <a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote">contact@theclimate.vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote"><mailto:contact@theclimate.vote></a>
with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe<br>
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote">https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote</a><br>
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://TheClimate.Vote">http://TheClimate.Vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://TheClimate.Vote/"><http://TheClimate.Vote/></a>
delivering succinct information for citizens and responsible
governments of all levels. List membership is confidential and
records are scrupulously restricted to this mailing list. </font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font>
</body>
</html>