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    Inside the E.P.A. Decision to Narrow Two Big Climate Rules

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    Michael Regan, the E.P.A. administrator, said the Biden administration would meet its climate goals despite tweaking regulations on automobiles and power plantsPresident Biden’s climate ambitions are colliding with political and legal realities, forcing his administration to recalibrate two of its main tools to cut the emissions that are heating the planet.This week the Environmental Protection Agency said it would delay a regulation to require gas-burning power plants to cut their carbon dioxide emissions, likely until after the November election. The agency also is expected to slow the pace at which car makers must comply with a separate regulation designed to sharply limit tailpipe emissions.Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the E.P.A., said on Friday that changes to the two major regulations wouldn’t compromise the administration’s ability to meet its target of cutting United States emissions roughly in half by 2030. That goal is designed to keep America in line with a global pledge of averting the worst consequences of a warming planet.“We are well on our way to meeting the president’s goals,” Mr. Regan said in a telephone interview from Texas. “I am very confident that the choices we are making are smart choices that will continue to rein in climate pollution.”But experts said the Biden administration is making significant concessions in the face of industry opposition and unease in the American public about the pace of the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy, as well as the threat of legal challenges before conservative courts.“There are two key factors: the Supreme Court, and the election,” said Jody Freeman, the director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program and a former Obama White House official. “There are some adjustments needed for both,” she said. “You’ve got make sure these final rules are legally defensible, and you’ve got to make sure you’ve done enough for the stakeholders that you have support for the rules.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Administration Toughens Limits on Deadly Air Pollution

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      The E.P.A. says the new rule will prevent 4,500 premature deaths annually. Industry leaders are expected to challenge the regulation, saying it will harm the economy.The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday tightened limits on fine industrial particles, one of the most common and deadliest forms of air pollution, for the first time in a decade.Business groups immediately objected, saying the new regulation could raise costs and hurt manufacturing jobs across the country. Public health organizations said the pollution rules would save lives and strengthen the economy by reducing hospitalizations and lost workdays.Fine particulate matter, which can include soot, can come from factories, power plants and other industrial facilities. It can penetrate the lungs and bloodstream and has been linked to serious health effects like asthma and heart and lung disease. Long-term exposure has been associated with premature deaths.The new rule lowers the annual standard for fine particulate matter to nine micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from the current standard of 12 micrograms. Over the next two years, the E.P.A. will use air sampling to identify areas that do not meet the new standard. States would then have 18 months to develop compliance plans for those areas. By 2032, any that exceed the new standard could face penalties.“Soot pollution is one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution,” Michael S. Regan, the E.P.A. administrator, said in a call with reporters on Tuesday. “This is truly a game changer for the health and well-being of communities in our country.”Mr. Regan estimated that the rule would prevent 4,500 premature deaths every year and 290,000 lost workdays because of illness. The E.P.A. maintained that the rule also would deliver as much as $46 billion in net health benefits in the first year that the standards would be fully implemented.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Parenting: A ‘Wonderful and Challenging Adventure’

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      More from our inbox:Aligning Election Calendars to Increase TurnoutNatural Gas ExportsEmbracing the Semicolon Illustration by Frank Augugliaro/The New York Times. Photographs by Getty Images/iStockphotoTo the Editor:I was moved by “I Wrote Jokes About How Parenting Stinks. Then I Had a Kid,” by Karen Kicak (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 25).I have marveled at my child and couldn’t bring myself to complain about night waking or tantrums. I stayed quiet at birthday parties when parents lamented missing out on adult time and said they wanted to get away from their children. I felt so proud of my daughter and wanted to be around her all the time, yet I learned to push that part down.Ms. Kicak is right that when we downplay our parenting skills and our child’s greatness we rob ourselves of joy.Our self-effacing language may be an attempt to cover up how proud we actually are of our kids. We may also be preemptively self-critical to avoid feeling judged by other parents.These insecurities are getting in the way of celebrating together, and Ms. Kicak reminds us what we need to hear, that we’re “doing great.” She calls us to nudge the pendulum back so we can balance the real challenges of parenting with its tender and fleeting glow.Maybe we could connect more deeply if we allowed ourselves to communicate the parts of ourselves that love being a parent, too. I hope we can, before our little ones grow up.Elaine EllisSan FranciscoThe writer is a school social worker.To the Editor:Many thanks to Karen Kicak for her essay about parenting and positivity. When I was in sleep-deprived chaos with two small children, my neighbor, a public school art teacher and artist, asked how I was doing. I replied, “Surviving,” and she replied, “Ah, well, I think you are thriving.” That kind comment made me look at all the good things going on and made a world of difference.I too make only positive comments to parents. Thank you again for reminding people that kind and reassuring words go a long way in helping parents feel confident and supported by their community.Angel D’AndreaCincinnatiTo the Editor:I appreciate Karen Kicak’s piece about our culture’s overemphasis on the negatives of being a parent. It goes along with the focus on children’s “bad behaviors,” as people define them, which parents use to shame and ridicule their kids, even though they are still developing into who they will become. As if children are bad people all the time.Life is good and bad, easy and hard. So is motherhood. Why not note the deepest joys of this remarkable, intimate relationship alongside recognition of how hard it can be? We owe that to mothers. Admiring the love and care and pleasures and new identities that motherhood offers does not have to negate how hard it can get at times.I tell parents, “Enjoy this wonderful and challenging adventure of parenthood.” It is both of those things.Tovah P. KleinNew YorkThe writer is the director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development and the author of “How Toddlers Thrive.”Aligning Election Calendars to Increase Turnout Carl Iwasaki/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “A New Law Will Help Bolster Voting in New York,” by Mara Gay (Opinion, Dec. 27):For every one person who votes in the mayoral general election, two vote in the presidential election. That’s a statistic that should concern anyone who cares about our local democracy.Last month, New York took a big step toward addressing this when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation moving some local elections to even-numbered years. Aligning local races with federal or statewide races that typically see higher voter turnout will increase voter participation, diversify our electorate and save taxpayer dollars.Los Angeles held its first election in an even-numbered year in November 2022 and saw voter turnout nearly double. Other cities that have made the move have seen similar turnout gains. Research shows that this reform helps narrow participation gaps, particularly among young voters and in communities of color.Unfortunately, the New York State Legislature cannot shift all elections on its own, but lawmakers have committed to passing more comprehensive legislation through a constitutional amendment that moves local elections to even years across the entire state. That would include municipal elections in New York City.Good government groups must continue to advocate this reform, which would create an elections calendar that better serves voters and strengthens our local democracy.Betsy GotbaumNew YorkThe writer is the executive director of Citizens Union and a former New York City public advocate.Natural Gas ExportsA Venture Global liquefied natural gas facility on the Calcasieu Ship Channel in Cameron, La. The company wants to build a new export terminal at the site.Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Decision on Natural Gas Project Will Test Biden’s Energy Policy” (front page, Dec. 27):The Biden administration has a choice to make on climate policy: achieve its policy goal or continue to rubber-stamp gas export terminals. Rarely in politics is a choice so straightforward. In this case, it is.It’s simple. The fossil fuel industry is marketing liquefied natural gas (L.N.G.) as “natural.” It’s a “transition fuel,” they say. It’s not. It’s mostly methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. The gas may emit less smoke and particulate matter than coal, but exporting it causes more greenhouse gas emissions.One of the latest reports on U.S. gas exports by Jeremy Symons says that “current U.S. L.N.G. exports are sufficient to meet Europe’s L.N.G. needs.” So why approve more plants? In the same report, it’s also revealed that if the administration approves all of the industry’s proposed terminals, U.S.-sourced L.N.G. emissions would be larger than the greenhouse gas emissions from the European Union.How can we add another emitter of greenhouse gases — one that would be a bigger contributor than Europe! — and meet the administration’s climate goals? We can’t.It’s time to embrace science, stop listening to the industry’s marketers and say “no, thank you!” to more gas.Russel HonoréBaton Rouge, La.The writer is the founder and head of the Green Army, an organization dedicated to finding solutions to pollution.Embracing the Semicolon Ben WisemanTo the Editor:Re “Our Semicolons, Ourselves,” by Frank Bruni (Opinion, Dec. 25):I feel like Frank Bruni when he writes about how he prattles on “about dangling participles and the like.” My students must also “hear a sad evangelist for a silly religion.”In more than three decades as a writing professor, I require my students to read my seven-page mini-stylebook, “Candy Schulman’s Crash Course in Style.” My mentor used to chastise me in red capital letters in the margins of my essays. “Between You and I?” he’d write; finally, I metamorphosed from “I” to “me.”Notice the semicolon I just used? I love them, like Abraham Lincoln, who respected this “useful little chap.”Kurt Vonnegut, however, felt differently. “Do not use semicolons,” he said. They represent “absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”Until the day I retire, I will continue to teach my students that proper writing is not texting — where capitalization, punctuation and attention to spelling are discouraged.As colleges de-emphasize the humanities, I’ll still be preaching from the whiteboard of my classroom, drawing colons and semicolons to differentiate them, optimistically conveying my joy for proper grammar. Between you and me, I’m keeping the faith.Candy SchulmanNew YorkThe writer is a part-time associate writing professor at The New School. More

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      British Conservatives’ Commitment to Green Policy Is Tested

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      British conservatives kept a seat in a recent election by opposing an ultralow emissions zone, and some are now questioning ambitious emissions-reduction targets.Britain, blanketed by cool, damp weather, has seemed like one of the few places in the Northern Hemisphere not sweltering this summer. Yet a fierce political debate over how to curb climate change has suddenly erupted, fueled by economic hardship and a recent election surprise.The surprise came last week in a London suburb, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where the Conservative Party held on to a vulnerable seat in Parliament in a by-election after a voter backlash against the expansion of a low-emission zone, which will penalize people who drive older, more polluting cars.The Conservatives successfully used the emission zone plan as a wedge issue to prevail in a district they were forecast to lose. It didn’t go unnoticed in the halls of Parliament, where even though lawmakers are in recess, they have managed to agitate over environmental policy for four days running.Britain’s Conservative government is now calling into question its commitment to an array of ambitious emissions-reduction targets. Tory critics say these goals would impose an unfair burden on Britons who are suffering because of a cost-of-living crisis. Uxbridge, they argued, shows there is a political price for forging ahead.With a general election looming next year, the Tories also see an opportunity to wield climate policy as a club against the opposition Labour Party, which once planned to pour 28 billion pounds, or about $36 billion, a year into green jobs and industries but scaled back its own ambitions amid the economic squeeze.On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would approach environmental policies in a “proportionate and pragmatic a way that doesn’t unnecessarily give people more hassle and more costs in their lives.”It was a strikingly circumspect statement given Britain’s self-proclaimed leadership in climate policy, which goes back to Margaret Thatcher and includes hosting the annual United Nations climate conference in 2021. And it clearly reflected the new political thinking in the aftermath of the Uxbridge vote.Government officials insist Mr. Sunak is not giving up on a ban on the sale of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2030. Britain remains committed to a benchmark goal of being a net-zero — or carbon neutral — economy by 2050, which is enshrined in law. But on Tuesday, a senior minister, Michael Gove, said he wanted to review a project to end the installation of new gas boilers in homes.Traffic at the edge of the London Ultra-Low Emission Zone this month.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockEven before Mr. Sunak’s comments, critics contended that Britain’s historically strong record on climate policy had been waning.The Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises the government, recently said Britain “has lost its clear global leadership position on climate action.” The group cited the government’s failure to use the spike in fuel prices to reduce energy demand and bolster renewables. It also noted Britain’s consent for a new coal mine, and its support for new oil and gas production in the North Sea.Last month, Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio, blaming “apathy” over the environment for his departure, though he was also a close ally of the former prime minister, Boris Johnson. In a letter to Mr. Sunak, Mr. Goldsmith wrote, “The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our prime minister, are simply uninterested.”Climate experts said Britain’s economic troubles fractured what had been a broad political consensus on the need for aggressive action. The schism isn’t just between the two main parties: Even within the Conservative and Labour parties, there are fissures between those who continue to call for far-reaching goals and those who want to scale back those ambitions.“This used to be an issue of across-party consensus; now it is not,” said Tom Burke, the chairman of E3G, an environmental research group. “The Tories have gone out of their way to turn it into a wedge issue, and I think that’s a mistake.”In Uxbridge, however, the strategy worked. The district, with its leafy streets and suburban homes, has one of the capital’s highest ratios of car dependency. That made plans by London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, to expand an ultra-low-emissions zone to encompass the district a potent issue for Conservatives, who opposed widening the zone.While the plan aims to improve London’s poor air quality, rather than reach net-zero targets, it was vulnerable to accusations that was piling on costs to consumers — in this case drivers of older, more polluting, vehicles.“It’s a really big impact at a time when people are concerned more generally about the cost of living,” said David Simmonds, a Conservative lawmaker in neighboring district of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. “In the short term, a lot of people who don’t have the money to buy an electric vehicle or a compliant vehicle are caught by this.”Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio.Matt Dunham/Associated PressThe surprise Conservative victory also sent alarm bells ringing within Labour. It caused tension between Mr. Khan, who insists the expansion will go ahead, and the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, who seemed to want a delay.“We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet,” Mr. Starmer said after the defeat. “We’ve got to face up to that and learn the lessons.”Even before the by-election, Labour had backtracked on its plan to invest billions a year on green industries. It blamed rising borrowing costs, which spiked during the ill-fated premiership last year of Liz Truss. Now, instead of rolling out spending in the first year of a Labour government, the party said it would phase it in.Labour’s fear was that voters would conclude the incoming government would have to raise taxes, which would give the Tories another opening. “Economic stability, financial stability, always has to come first, and it will do with Labour,” Rachel Reeves, who leads economic policy for the Labour Party, told the BBC.Such language is worlds away from a year ago, when Ed Miliband, who speaks for Labour on climate issues, told Climate Forward, a New York Times conference in London, that “the imprudent, reckless thing to do is not to make the investment.”He did, however, also argue that consumers should not carry all the burden of the transition. “The government has to collectivize some of those costs to make this transition fair,” said Mr. Miliband, a former party leader.Climate activists said Labour had made a mistake by highlighting the costs of its plan at a time of tight public finances. But given the broad public support for climate action, particularly among the young, some argue that a debate over which climate policies are the best need not end in failure for Labour.“Voters want something done,” Mr. Burke said. “They don’t want to pay the price for it but equally, they don’t want the government to say they are not doing anything about climate change.”Protesters rally against the Ultra-Low Emission Zone, or ULEZ, this month in London.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockFor all the new skepticism, climate policy is also deeply embedded in the Conservative Party. Mrs. Thatcher was one of the first world leaders to talk about the threat to the planet from greenhouse gases in 1989. A former prime minister, Theresa May, passed the net-zero pledge in 2019, and Mr. Johnson, as mayor of London, conceived the low-emission zone that boomeranged against Labour in Uxbridge, which Mr. Johnson had represented in Parliament, last week.Alice Bell, the head of climate policy at the Wellcome Trust, noted that some Tory lawmakers were rebelling against Mr. Sunak because they were worried about losing their seats by appearing to be against firm action on climate change.Extreme weather, she said, would continue to drive public opinion on climate change. While Britain’s summer has been cool, thousands of Britons have been vacationing in the scorching heat of Italy and Spain, to say nothing of those evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes in the face of deadly wildfires.“I’m wondering if we’re going to have some people coming back from holiday as climate activists,” Ms. Bell said. More

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      Republicans Serve Up Red Meat for a Reason

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      There are, as of Saturday, at least 13 people running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination: former President Donald Trump; his U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, his vice president, Mike Pence; Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida; Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota; the former governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; the former representative Will Hurd of Texas; Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami; and the entrepreneurs and media personalities Vivek Ramaswamy, Perry Johnson and Larry Elder.With this many candidates, you might assume that Republicans were fighting over a broad range of different ideas and competing solutions to the nation’s most serious problems, of which there are more than a few. But they aren’t. Instead, Republicans are studiously focused on the fever dreams and preoccupations of right-wing media swamps while showing an almost total indifference to the real world.Consider the wildfires.This month, because of unusually strong and destructive fires in the Canadian wilderness, much of the U.S. Northeast was blanketed with smoke and other pollutants. In the worst-hit areas, such as New York City, public health officials urged residents to either stay inside or use masks when venturing outdoors.This is what climate crisis looks like. Rising average temperatures mean drier conditions, increased drought and greater accumulation of the organic material — dead and dying trees, leaves and shrubs — that fuel wildfires. And this is on top of emissions produced by cars and other vehicles in an economy that still runs on fossil fuels. For many Americans, in other words, it takes little more than a glance outside the window to see a major problem of national consequence.President Biden issued a statement on Twitter, pledging assistance to the Canadian government as it fought to contain blazes and connecting the increasing strength, length and frequency of wildfires to climate change. “We’ve deployed more than 600 U.S. firefighters, support personnel and equipment to support Canada as they respond to record wildfires — events that are intensifying because of the climate crisis,” he said.Other national politicians have made similar points. “It bears repeating how unprepared we are for the climate crisis,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tweeted. “We must adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure, healthcare, etc ASAP to prepare for what’s to come and catch up to what is already here.”Missing in the discussion of what to do about the wildfires — and how to equip the country for future climate emergencies — is the entire Republican presidential field. There’s been no serious attempt to speak to the reality that millions of Americans have been exposed to dangerous amounts of air pollution and that this will only worsen in our continued climate crisis. No grappling with the fact that wildfire haze over the past several years has erased nearly two decades of clean air gains across the country.But we do have their previous statements on climate change. Trump appears to think that climate change is a hoax. “In my opinion, you have a thing called weather, and you go up, and you go down,” he said in a Fox News interview last year. “If you look into the 1920s, they were talking about global freezing.” As president, he rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations.His closest rival for the nomination, DeSantis, has called the concern over the climate a “pretext” for “left-wing stuff” from activists who are trying to “smuggle in their ideology.”Pence and Scott do not deny that climate change is real, but they consistently downplay the extent of human responsibility and the severity of the effect on the environment. And in a testament to their overall indifference to the problem, both of them want to expand U.S. production of fossil fuels. “From banning gas stoves to blocking vital pipelines, the far-left’s energy policies are completely unrealistic,” Scott said on Twitter this month. “The American people know the solution to affordable energy is simple: stop the radical climate agenda and start unleashing our domestic energy supply.”Haley and Christie have also acknowledged the existence of man-made climate change; they just don’t think the government should actually do anything about it. And Ramaswamy has denounced climate activism as a secular “religion.”You get the picture. In the face of a real crisis, the would-be leaders of the United States have no real plan.You can go down the list of issues. What do the Republican presidential candidates have to say about gun violence and mass shootings? Well Haley, at least, says that we need to end “gun-free zones” and consider the use of “clear bulletproof tape” in schools. Beyond that, she and her rivals have had nothing substantive to say. Child poverty? Nothing. Mental health care? Very little in the way of actual policies.Ask the Republican presidential candidates about the “woke mind virus” or gender-affirming care, on the other hand, and you’ll hear an endless stream of comment and condemnation, all to the deafening applause of Republican voters. Which gets to the issue.Red meat is what Republican voters want. And even Trump — who will say anything to win the approval of a crowd — is a little shocked by it. “It’s amazing how strongly people feel about that,” the former president said this month, referring to critical race theory and transgender issues. “I talk about cutting taxes, people go like that. I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.”I am reminded here of George Wallace, the infamous and influential Alabama governor who rode the anti-civil-rights backlash to the highest reaches of American politics. In 1958, however, he was a racial moderate, running for governor against a virulent segregationist who, he said, was “rolling with the new wave of the Klan and its terrible tradition of lawlessness.” Wallace lost. And when he returned to the stage four years later, he did so as an even fiercer segregationist than his former opponent. Asked to explain his terrible transformation, he was blunt.“I started off talking about schools and highways and prisons and taxes, and I couldn’t make them listen,” he said. “Then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.”If Republican politicians have nothing to say of substance, it is because Republican voters don’t want substance. They want to stomp the floor.What I WroteMy Friday column was on Trump’s conception of the presidency — that it belongs to him — and what that might reflect about the current shape of the Republican coalition.No longer content to run government for business, the Republican Party now hopes to run government as a business.But this doesn’t mean greater efficiency or responsiveness or whatever else most people (mistakenly) associate with private industry. It means, instead, government as the fief of a small-business tyrant.The next Republican president, in short, will almost certainly be the worst boss you, and American democracy, have ever had.Now ReadingRobin D.G. Kelley on the long war on Black studies for The New York Review of Books.J. Mijin Cha on the alliance between labor and climate activists for Dissent magazine.Erik Baker on Daniel Ellsberg for The Baffler magazine.Kali Holloway on Clarence Thomas for The Nation magazine.K. Austin Collins on the westerns of Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart for Current magazine.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieA festive home, seen during a recent visit to New Orleans. I used a Yashica twin-lens reflex camera and Kodak color film.Now Eating: One-Pot Pasta With Ricotta and LemonI’ve been on a real pasta kick recently, and this is an exceptionally easy dish to make — and popular with kids, too. There are a few things you can do to make this a full meal. You can add peas, asparagus or spinach as the pasta finishes boiling, and you can toss with a nice tinned tuna as well. If you want to up the flavor, you can make your own ricotta. Either way, I would serve with a simple salad to make sure the plate has plenty of green. Recipe comes from New York Times Cooking.IngredientsKosher salt1 pound short, ribbed pasta, like gemelli or penne1 cup whole-milk ricotta (8 ounces)1 cup freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino (2 ounces), plus more for serving1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest plus ¼ cup lemon juice (from 1 to 2 lemons)Black pepperRed pepper flakes, for serving¼ cup thinly sliced or torn basil leaves, for servingDirectionsBring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook according to package instructions until al dente. Reserve 1 cup pasta cooking water, then drain the pasta.In the same pot, make the sauce: Add the ricotta, Parmesan, lemon zest and juice, ½ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper and stir until well combined.Add ½ cup pasta water to the sauce and stir until smooth. Add the pasta and continue to stir vigorously until the noodles are well coated. Add more pasta water as needed for a smooth sauce.Divide the pasta among bowls and top with some of the sauce that’s pooled at the bottom of the pot. Garnish with grated Parmesan, black pepper, red pepper flakes and basil, if using. More

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      Alberta Fires Rage While Election Ignores Global Warming

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      For politicians, discussing climate change in a province enriched by oil money is fraught.When I arrived in Alberta recently to report an upcoming political story, there was no shortage of people wanting to talk about politics and the provincial election on May 29. But, even as wildfires flared earlier than usual and raged across an unusually wide swath of forest, discussions about climate change were largely absent.Destruction left behind by wildfires in Drayton Valley, Alberta.Jen Osborne for The New York TimesThe smoke that enveloped Calgary this week briefly gave the city one of the worst air-quality ratings in the world, as the fires to the north and west led to the evacuation of roughly 29,000 people across the province.[Read: A ‘Canadian Armageddon’ Sets Parts of Western Canada on Fire][Read: Canada’s Wildfires Have Been Disrupting Lives. Now, Oil and Gas Take a Hit.][Read from Opinion: There’s No Escape From Wildfire Smoke][Read: 12 Million People Are Under a Heat Advisory in the Pacific Northwest]Smoke from wildfires has blotted out the sun in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver several times in recent years and kept runners, cyclists and walkers indoors. Charred forests, already burned in previous wildfire seasons, lined the roads I drove in Alberta’s mountains.I had been to Alberta in 2016 to cover the fires sweeping through Fort McMurray, but that blaze, almost miraculously, took no lives except in a traffic accident. But fires in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan have become bigger and stronger, and research suggests that heat and drought associated with global warming are major reasons. When the town of Lytton, British Columbia, was consumed by wildfires in 2021, temperatures reached a staggering 49.6 degrees Celsius.Poll after poll has shown that Albertans are more or less in line with other Canadians on the need to take steps to reduce carbon emissions. But the candidates aren’t talking much about it.During Thursday’s debate between Danielle Smith, the premier and leader of the United Conservative Party, and Rachel Notley, the former premier and leader of the New Democratic Party, the subject of climate came up only in an economic context.Ms. Smith repeatedly accused Ms. Notley of springing a “surprise” carbon tax on the province, and warned that any attempt to cap emissions would inevitably lead to reduced oil production and reduced revenues for the province, (an assessment not universally shared by experts).A layer of dense smoke spread through much of Alberta this week.Jen Osborne for The New York TimesI asked Feodor Snagovsky, a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, about this apparent disconnect in Alberta between public opinion about climate change and campaign discourse.“It’s very tough to talk about oil and gas in Alberta because it’s sort of the goose that lays the golden egg,” he said. “It’s the source of a remarkable level of prosperity that the province has enjoyed for a long time.”This year oil and gas revenues will account for about 36 percent of all the money the province takes in. And during the oil embargo of the late 1970s, those revenues were more than 70 percent of the province’s budget. Among other things, that has allowed Alberta to be the only province without a sales tax and it has kept income and corporate taxes generally low relative to other provinces.But oil and gas production account for 28 percent of Canada’s carbon emissions, the country’s largest source. While the amount of carbon that’s released for each barrel produced has been reduced, increases in total production have more than offset those gains.The energy industry is also an important source of high-paying jobs, though. So the suggestion that production might have to be limited in order for Canada to meet its climate targets raises alarms.“People hear that and they think: my job’s going to go away,” Professor Snagovsky said. “It hits people really close to home.”He told me that he had lived in Australia in 2020 when that country was plagued by extreme heat and wildfires. At the time, Professor Snagovsky said, not only was there very little discussion there about climate change, but politicians and others argued that it was not an appropriate time for such talks.Professor Snagovsky said he hoped that the fires and smoke will prompt Albertans to start thinking about the climate effects that caused them, but he’s not confident that will happen.“I think it’s unlikely, but you can always hope,” he said.Trans CanadaImages made from the scan of the Titanic wreck clearly show small details.Atlantic/Magellan, via Associated PressA hyper detailed 3-D scan of the Titanic’s wreckage off Canada’s coastline has produced evocative images of the doomed steamship.A dilapidated farmhouse near Palmyra, Ontario, which is a favorite of photographers, may face demolition.Canadian Tire is among the companies picking over the ruins of Bed Bath & Beyond.A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More

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      in US Politics

      What’s in the air in East Palestine, Ohio? – podcast

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      When a train derailed in a small town in Ohio last month, it shed its toxic load, spewed smoke and set off a political firestorm that is still raging

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      On the evening of 3 February, a train made up of 149 carriages and more than a mile long came off the rails in the small Ohio town of East Palestine. No one was injured but the train shed its cargo, which included toxic chemicals including vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen. The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani has been reporting from East Palestine where residents have returned to their homes after those within the disaster’s exclusion zone were forced to leave the area. She tells Michael Safi that local people are furious about the way the accident happened – and how the cleanup has been handled. Seeing an opportunity, Donald Trump arrived last week to distribute bottles of water as well as campaign material for his 2024 presidential run. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden was criticised for visiting Ukraine rather than East Palestine. This week, Ohio’s two senators have prepared a bill aimed at federal regulations around what trains can legally transport and under what conditions. But much of the anger from local people is focused on how close the rail industry has got to government in recent years, in order to allegedly water down existing restrictions, which many in East Palestine believe to be an important factor behind the disaster in their town. More

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      in US Politics

      Natural but deadly: huge gaps in US rules for wood-stove smoke exposed

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Green Light newsletter Glenn Helkenn lives in a spruce forest, in a tiny log cabin he built himself on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska’s third largest city.Give him an hour and a handsaw and Helkenn says he can harvest enough firewood to heat his 96 sq ft home for a couple of days, even when the temperature drops to -40F. For him, it’s about more than free fuel.“It is what I enjoy doing,” Helkenn said. “You know, it’s the fresh air. It’s the time out in the woods. It’s the snowshoeing. It’s the exercise.”The trouble is about 12,000 much larger Fairbanks-area homes heat with wood too. The city is partially ringed by hills, so smoke can get trapped in low-lying neighborhoods for days or weeks.Fairbanks has some of the dirtiest air in the country, in large part due to smoke from wood stoves. Wood smoke is a serious health threat. It emits high levels of fine-particle pollution that can be inhaled deep into the lungs, exacerbating respiratory problems like asthma and increasing the risk of premature death from heart attacks and strokes.In 2015, the US government required that newer models of wood stoves perform better and began spending millions of dollars to subsidize the transition away from older models. Now, an investigation by state environment officials is revealing a critical flaw in that plan: the latest stoves might not be any less polluting than the previous ones.A review of 250 wood-burning stove certifications found unexplained data omissions and atypical lab practices. When the officials retested about a dozen of the heaters in their own labs, they were not able to reproduce the certification results. They found many stoves were polluting as much as the previous models. One was producing so much pollution that it wouldn’t have met the Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever standards from 1988.“We pulled the test reports that are supposed to be publicly posted and we compared – did this certification report meet all the rules? And we couldn’t find any that actually met all the rules,” said Cindy Heil, an air official with Alaska’s department of environmental conservation. “That’s a problem.”Alaska, along with a group of north-east air regulators called Nescaum, expanded the review and concluded the certification procedures and EPA’s oversight of them are a “systemic failure”.As long as the stove review process continues virtually unsupervised, people inhaling wood smoke from the stoves will continue to get sick and die early, not just in Alaska but around the US, the state officials said.Fairbanks resident Patrice Lee has been campaigning for cleaner air for 14 years, since her son, who was born with heart defects, collapsed outside his high school on an especially smoky day.Lee says millions of dollars have been wasted trying to get people to burn wood more cleanly when it would have been better spent switching them to another fuel.“We have a whole generation of young people who may never achieve their full lung capacity, or even potentially their cognitive potential, because they’ve been breathing this smoke,” Lee said.Lee says the problem isn’t just stove technology. Wet wood sends more particulates up the smoke stack, so Fairbanks is steeped in public service messages about how to split and store firewood. A new kiln in town dries firewood for three days before it’s offered for sale. A local stove dealership offers classes every Saturday to ensure residents know how to operate their stoves for minimal pollution.And yet Lee can drive around her city on a cold day and see chimneys emitting thick plumes. “This house right here is a habitual offender. Just burns and burns and burns,” she said, pointing out a home in an older neighborhood. An air sensor there, on the porch of an 86-year-old woman, regularly registers the worst readings in Fairbanks, Lee said.Lee doubts the problem will be solved in her lifetime. The attempts to clean up Fairbanks’ air are a story of half measures, technology that didn’t pan out, administrative blunders and political resistance. It’s also been hard for many to accept that burning wood – an activity that seems so wholesome and close to the land – should be subject to intense regulation.Lee says her neighbors are nice people who believe that what they do on their property is their own business.“Their smoke all blows on to my property,” she said. “My most personal property is my body. And when I can’t avoid smoke, that’s invading the most personal property I have.”Airborne particulates from burning wood in homes may be to blame for 10,000 to 40,000 premature deaths annually in the US, according to two studies. In 2017, the particle pollution from residential wood heating was four times higher than the particle pollution from coal-fired power plants.Only about 4% of residential heating in the US is from wood. But that wood heating is responsible for more particulate pollution than any other source – 22%.People in Fairbanks have limited options. Most residents who have wood stoves use them to supplement another heater – typically one that burns oil. But oil costs more. Propane doesn’t perform well in extreme cold. A new utility is trucking natural gas to Fairbanks and piping it to homes, but it’s not available everywhere and residents say the cost of getting it installed is steep.With those factors in mind, the state of Alaska has spent about $12.5m in EPA grants to replace older wood stoves with newer ones in Fairbanks. It has about $15m more available to spend on wood stove programs.At the end of 2020, Congress also approved a 26% tax credit for new wood stoves that meet a certain efficiency level. Ten states provide tax incentives or rebates for the newer stoves, ranging from a 100% tax deduction in Alabama, Georgia and Idaho to a $500 tax deduction in Arizona.In 2015, the Obama administration wrote new rules for wood stoves. They were the first revisions since 1988. The regulation was in full effect as of May 2020. It basically requires that newly manufactured wood stoves meet stricter pollution restrictions and are certified by independent laboratories.But the wood stove industry is suing the federal government over the rule. It also lobbied federal regulators to change testing methods while the rule was under development. The state officials behind the wood stove report argue that led to loopholes that made certification easier.Although the EPA has approved hundreds of new wood stove models, Alaska has double-checked those certifications and allows only a few dozen to be sold or installed in the Fairbanks area, which is not meeting federal standards for particle pollution.“Right now we’ve made compromises and have left some things on the list that we still have concerns on – because we need to have something on the list,” said Heil, the Alaska air official. “We’re hoping through time that will get better and we’ll have more and more confidence.”The EPA is reviewing complaints about the certification program and acknowledged it could revoke approvals for stoves and test labs if appropriate.“Having wood-burning devices that are not meeting the standards is problematic for homeowners, as well as for communities and states working to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for [particulate matter],” the agency said.The wood stove industry has defended its new models. John Crouch, public affairs director for the trade group the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, said he doesn’t know of any significant data missing from stove test results.Crouch said he was not surprised a second lab can’t reproduce the same results.“This is fire. Fire is pretty random,” he said. “And these are in the laboratory. You can imagine when you get out into the real world. It varies a lot.”Crouch said many Fairbanks residents are still using stoves that predate the standard. Area residents have sent hundreds of older stoves to be crushed in change-out programs, but as many as 2,000 may still be in use, according to state regulators.A company called Blaze King produces some of the most popular wood stoves in Fairbanks – black boxy things with catalytic converters.Blaze King’s vice-president, Chris Neufeld, said he had had to run a regulatory obstacle course to sell stoves in the Fairbanks area. The Alaska DEC added a metric that Neufeld calls arbitrary: a particulate limit of six grams for the first hour, when stoves burn less efficiently.“That same stove that might be burning dirtier at the first hour – in hour three, four and five, it might be immaculate,” he said. “It might be burning super-clean. But we’re not giving it any credit for that.”Neufeld said a first-hour standard is like judging a car by how many miles per gallon it gets driving uphill. One Blaze King stove series did not make Alaska’s approved list for the Fairbanks area, even though it was certified by the EPA. Neufeld suspects a testing fluke.“If the wood fell just the way it was intended, it probably would have been like some of the other stoves that were below one gram per hour in the first hour filter-pull. We just got a bad run,” he said.Paul Miller, the executive director of the group of north-east US air associations, said the issue is a “backwater area for EPA”. He said the agency had not double-checked a stove certification in decades.“It’s like having your car out there and EPA never going back to check to see if one of these millions of cars on the road actually performed as certified by the automaker.”Go behind the scenes with the reporters on this story at Floodlight. More

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      in Elections

      California has environmental allies once again with Biden in the White House

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      California has led the resistance to Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back environmental regulations in the past four years, with the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, filing a whopping 122 lawsuits challenging Trump administration rules, most of them focused on climate and public health.Now, following Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s swearing in on Wednesday, the Golden state once again has allies in the White House when it comes to environmental protections.Faced with a host of challenges caused by the climate crisis, including growing water scarcity, intensifying heat waves and an ever more dire wildfire risk, environmental regulations are high on California’s policy priority list. The Biden administration shares many of the state’s concerns, and isn’t wasting any time in addressing the deregulation efforts of the previous administration.On his first day in office, Biden released a long, non-exclusive list of Trump policies that will be up for review as part of his new initiative to prioritize public health and climate change. The list is intended as a roadmap for US officials, especially those at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Interior where Trump made significant headway in gutting regulations, and shows how the president plans to use his ambitious environmental goals to bring the country back in line.Many of his outlined priorities neatly align with California’s goals and will ring familiar in the state. “The really ambitious goals that [Biden] has in his plan, a lot of them are modeled on California,” said Jared Blumenfeld, the state’s top environmental regulator, told Politico. “We really want to work with the administration to show what is possible. Whether it’s his goal of getting 2035 carbon-free energy or how we think about zero-emission vehicles or building standards or all the things we’ve done over the last 30 years, what we want to do is work with him to scale that.”Here’s a look at some of the key environmental issues for California in Biden’s plan.Vehicle standardsCalifornia has long set its own pace for climate policy, but the Trump administration sought to stomp out the state’s attempts, particularly when it comes to fuel-efficiency regulations. The EPA revoked the state’s Clean Air Act waiver, barring California from setting its own greenhouse gas standards on vehicles.Biden is expected to reverse that decision and his presidency will pave the way for California to have more control on car manufacturers, a crucial part of the state’s carbon-cutting plan. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has proposed a plan to stop the sale of gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks in the next 15 years, a move that, if approved, will push the industry to move faster toward electric.Oil and gas drillingUnder Trump, the Bureau of Land Management changed its evaluation process for leasing to the oil and gas industry to fast-track and expand development on public lands. At the end of 2019, the agency, which is housed under the US Department of the Interior, moved forward with a plan to open up roughly 1.2m acres across California’s central valley for oil and gas drilling. Environmentalists are hopeful the Biden administration will reset the rules and revoke leases that are already underway.California also challenged Trump’s repeal of regulations governing hydraulic fracturing – the process more commonly known as “fracking” that uses high-pressure injections of water, chemicals, and other substances, to extract natural gas housed in underground rock formations. The process has been tied to increases in seismic activity and can cause dangerous substances to leach into the water supply. Trump overturned regulations that required companies to detail plans to prevent leakage and data on chemicals used, and those repeals are now under review.Water warsTrump waded deep into California’s complex water wars with a plan to divert more of the scarce and valuable water resource from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farmers in the central valley, who are among his strongest supporters in the state. Trump openly ridiculed California’s conservation policies, including protections for a fish called the delta smelt, which is nearing extinction from long periods of drought. California officials bristled at the intervention, arguing that it would harm delicate ecosystems and the endangered fish, and fishermen also filed a suit to challenge the rules. Biden’s review list includes the changed determination for the smelt, and California officials may have the final word.Protecting animalsThe Trump administration in 2019 revised the Endangered Species Act of 1973, adding new criteria for listing and removing animals that may be at risk. The changes increase the opportunity to remove some animals from protection or weigh commercial and corporate needs when considering how to designate critical habitat. Biden has put the rule change up for review, as well as some specific cases where changes in designation have already been made. The northern spotted owl, an inhabitant of the forests in the Pacific north-west, had 3.5m acres – more than a third of its habitat – slashed to give the timber industry more access. The monarch butterfly, which migrates across the US to Mexico each year, didn’t make the list last year even though less than 2,000 were counted in an annual tally taken along California’s coast this year. That marks a 99.9% drop since the 1980s. Protections for the sage-grouse, an imperiled bird known for their unique mating dances that lives in a geographically isolated area along the California-Nevada border, were eased by the Trump administration to pave the way to open up mining and drilling in the area. More