Climate crisis

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden announces new measures to protect Americans from extreme heat

      by

      Joe Biden announced new steps on Thursday to help Americans face the “existential threat of climate change” and extreme heat.“We want the American people to know help is here, and we’re gonna make it available to anyone who needs it,” the president said, speaking in a summer of record-breaking temperatures in the US and globally.The new measures will shield workers from high temperatures, improve weather forecasting, strengthen access to drinking water and otherwise improve heat resilience, Biden said.Experts described the measures as positive but modest, and the president stopped short of declaring a climate emergency or directly addressing the need to phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.Biden directed the Department of Labor to issue a hazard alert for workplaces such as farms and construction sites, where workers face a higher risk amid high temperatures. Heat has killed 436 workers since 2011, according to federal statistics.Sectors including agriculture and construction also frequently see heat-related safety violations, so the labor department will also increase its inspections of high-risk workplaces, Biden said. He also took a veiled swipe at Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, who this year banned his state’s municipalities from requiring workers be offered water breaks.“We should be protecting workers from hazardous conditions and we will, and those states where they do not, I’m going to be calling them out,” Biden said, later adding that when he played football as a young man, coaches would be fired for refusing players water breaks.The president also said the US Forest Service will award more than $1bn in grants to help cities and towns plant trees, “so families have a place to go to cool off”. Tree coverage can help lower temperatures in urban areas by more than 15 degrees fahrenheit.Biden added that the Department of Housing and Urban Development had set aside billions to help communities make their buildings more energy efficient and to open cooling centers. And he said the Department of Interior was boosting funding to “expand water storage capacity in the western states”, referring to the earmarking of $152m for water storage and pipelines for the drought-stricken western states, according to the White House.Biden also highlighted $7m in funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will use to improve weather forecasts, thereby improving preparedness for extreme weather like heatwaves.The press conference, held from a White House auditorium, came as nearly 40% of Americans face heat advisories, according to the National Weather Service.The president was joined virtually by mayors of Phoenix, Arizona and San Antonio, Texas, which have both roasted under scorching temperatures this summer.Phoenix has experienced 27 consecutive days where temperatures crossed 110F (43C), while San Antonio saw temperatures cross 100F (38C) on at least 15 straight days.“We feel like we are very much on the frontlines of climate change,” said Phoenix’s mayor, Kate Gallego.Gallego has been pushing Congress to pass a bill adding extreme heat to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s list of major disaster qualifying events, which would allow states to be reimbursed opening cooling centers, distributing water and otherwise tackling high temperatures.“We would love it if Congress would give you the ability to declare heat a disaster,” she said on Thursday.San Antonio’s mayor, Ron Nirenberg, touted the steps his city is taking to promote climate action, including boosting public transit and solar energy production.“Thankfully, sustainability and green energy are no longer four-letter words in the state of Texas,” he said.The nation’s capital is experiencing its own heat crisis, with officials warning that temperatures this week could exceed 100F (37.8C) for the first time in seven years. Oppressive heat is expected to spread into the midwest and north-east in the coming days.Heat is the “number one weather-related killer” in the US, Biden said.“Six hundred people die annually from its effects – more than from floods, hurricanes and tornadoes in America combined,” he said.Thursday’s announcement followed other heat-related measures from the White House. Last year, federal officials launched the interagency heat-focused website Heat.gov. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) also announced it was developing a heat standard for workers, but it could take years to finalize.Juley Fulcher, a health and safety advocate at the non-profit Public Citizen, said that while Thursday’s heat hazard alert reaffirmed existing federal heat-related protections, the new rule is crucial to expanding those measures.“Without a rule, Osha is in a very difficult position trying to hold employers accountable,” she said. “It must be a priority.”Industry interests are attempting to stall the rule’s completion, she said. On Wednesday, legislators introduced a bill which would require Osha to issue an interim rule.Climate activist Jamie Henn, who founded Fossil Free Media and previously co-founded 350.org, said Thursday’s announcements were insufficient. He noted that the president had failed to declare a federal climate emergency, which could allow him to speed the energy transition and block fossil fuel projects without congressional approval.“Addressing extreme heat will require us to stop pouring fuel on the flames,” said Henn.On Thursday, federal officials are expected to greenlight the expansion of a gas liquefaction and export terminal in Port Arthur, Texas, enabling the equivalent of 698bn cubic feet of the planet-heating fuel to be exported each year for three decades.“Stop approving and subsidizing projects which will increase climate-changing carbon in our atmosphere that’s fueling this extreme weather,” said John Beard, the chief executive of Port Arthur Community Action Network. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      We warned you about this climate emergency. Now it’s here | Peter Kalmus

      by

      We’ve passed into a ferocious new phase of global heating with much worse to come. Biden must declare a climate emergency.I’m terrified by what’s being done to our planet. I’m also fighting to stop it. You, too, should be afraid while also taking the strongest action you can take. There has never been a summer like this in recorded history: shocking ocean heat, deadly land heat, unprecedented fires and smoke, sea ice melting faster than we’ve ever seen or thought possible. I’ve dreaded this depth of Earth breakdown for almost two decades, and, like many of my colleagues, I’ve been trying to warn you. As hard as I could. Now it’s here.And mark my words: it’s all still just getting started. So long as we burn fossil fuels, far, far worse is on the way; and I take zero satisfaction in knowing that this will be proven right, too, with a certainty as non-negotiable and merciless as the physics behind fossil-fueled global heating. Instead, I only feel fury at those in power, and bottomless grief for all that I love. We are losing Earth on our watch. The Amazon rainforest may already be past its tipping point. Coral reefs as we know them will be gone from our planet by mid-century, and possibly much earlier given this surge in sea-surface temperatures. These are cosmic losses. And as a father, I grieve for my children.Fossil fuels are causing this damage. Therefore, the only way out of this heat nightmare is to end them. No amount of tree planting, recycling, carbon offsetting, or wishful carbon-capture thinking will ever change this. The longer we allow the fossil fuel industry to exist, the more irreversible damage to Earth the people who profit from it will continue to knowingly cause. We are careening toward fossil-fueled heatwaves that will kill over a million people in single events. And it will not plateau there: more fossil fuels, more heat, more death. The only way out is to end fossil fuels.Biden’s refusal to declare a climate emergency and his eagerness to push new pipelines and new drilling – at an even faster pace than Trump – goes against science, goes against common sense, goes against life on Earth. In the world of politics-as-usual, with its short-term goals and calculus of “safer to follow than to lead”, I suppose there are reasons and rationalizations for this planet-destroying choice. But speaking as a scientist, it seems ignorant and short-sighted. It’s certainly a form of climate denial. And I have no doubt that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists – and those who chose to stand with them – will, in the future, be considered criminals.Because the stakes could not be greater. Every speck of fossil fuel sold and burnt combusts into carbon dioxide, forcing the planet to heat. Carbon dioxide resides in the atmosphere for a very long time, making the excess heat and other climate impacts basically irreversible on human-relevant timescales. Every bit of extra heat makes climate disasters more frequent, widespread and intense.Each minute the fossil fuel industry exists, each drilling permit, airplane flight, gallon of gas, fossil fuel ad, lobbyist’s email, takes us further into irreversible heat catastrophe, socially and physically. These floods and fires and heatwaves and crop failures will keep pushing harder against the systems of our society – insurance, real estate, infrastructure, food, water, energy, geopolitics, everything – until at some point, inevitably, the systems will break. Nowhere is safe.Using executive orders and federal agency rules, and without needing to involve this failure of a Congress, Biden could end new drilling leases on federal lands and waters, block new pipelines and effectively ban fracking. He could unleash a historic education program to counter fossil fuel industry disinformation, using the bully pulpit to build awareness and support. He could prohibit government financing of overseas fossil fuel infrastructure, end energy department fossil-fuel financing programs, ban new fossil-fuel vehicle sales by 2030, prosecute violations by fossil fuel polluters, commit to veto laws granting immunity to such criminals, and more.Declaring a climate emergency would unleash additional powers such as banning oil exports and further accelerating renewable energy buildout on a scale not seen since the mobilization for the second world war. It would send an unmistakable signal to investors still living in the past, to universities that have been shamefully slow to divest, to media outlets that have failed to connect the dots, to all the dangerously lagging institutions of our society. And it would be a desperately needed win for climate activists.Biden had the last opportunity of any president to keep the world under 1.5C of heating. Tragically, this opportunity has now almost certainly been squandered. However, Biden could still choose to pivot and prevent, instead of cause, even greater damage. But will he choose to do so? Or will he continue to champion oil executives and their pipelines?The planet is desperate for visionary leadership. The planet is desperate for policy that creates an equitable transition away from fossil fuels, and into climate emergency mode as a society.I have not given up, and I never will. I owe that to my children, to all the good people who don’t deserve this, and to all the life on this gift of a planet. No matter how much we’ve lost, it will never be too late to fight. But the hour is late. It is time to set aside differences and fight together, as creatively and courageously as we can, to save all we still can. Soon, all but the greatest fools among us will realize that nothing was more important.
      Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist and author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US Republicans oppose climate funding as millions suffer in extreme weather

      by

      Swaths of the US are baking under record-breaking heat, yet some lawmakers are still attempting to block any spending to fight the climate crisis, advocates say.Nearly 90 million Americans are facing heat alerts this week, including in Las Vegas, Nevada, which may break its all-time hottest temperature record; Phoenix, Arizona, which will probably break its streak of consecutive days of temperatures over 110F; and parts of Florida, where a marine heatwave has pushed up water temperatures off the coast to levels normally found in hot tubs.Stifling heat is also blanketing parts of Texas, which for weeks earlier this summer sweltered under a record-shattering heat dome which one analysis found was made five times more likely by the climate crisis. Despite this, the state’s Republican senator Ted Cruz is rallying his fellow GOP members of the Senate commerce committee to circulate a memo attacking climate measures in Biden’s proposed 2024 budget, Fox News reported on Wednesday.The memo specifically calls on Republican members of the Senate appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee to reject spending provisions focused on climate resilience and environmental justice efforts for scientific agencies. In one example, the memo objects to a Nasa request to fund its Sustainable Flight National Partnership, which seeks to help zero out planet-warming pollution from aviation.“If the goal is to make imperceptible changes in CO2 emissions as part of the administration’s zealous effort to micromanage global temperatures, then Nasa should abandon such wasted mental energy. Nasa should not become a plaything for anti-fossil fuel environmentalists,” the memo says.It should come as no surprise that Cruz, who has accepted massive donations from oil and gas companies, is defending the fossil fuel industry’s interests, said Allie Rosenbluth, US program co-manager at the environmental advocacy and research non-profit Oil Change International.“What is really devastating for communities who are experiencing extreme heat, wildfires, flooding and drought across the US is that because of these bought-out politicians, they are not getting the support that they need to be resilient in the face of climate impacts at the federal level,” she said.House Republicans are fighting climate spending, too. To avoid a government shutdown, lawmakers must pass a slew of spending bills before current funding expires on 30 September. But Republican members of the GOP-controlled House appropriations committee are slipping in anti-climate provisions, which aim to block renewable energy funding and imperil federal efforts to tackle the climate crisis, into their spending bill drafts.Last week, the Clean Budget Coalition – a group of non-profits such as the League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense Fund and Public Citizen – identified at least 17 of these “climate poison pills” in appropriation bill drafts. Among them are amendments that would prevent the federal government from purchasing electric vehicles or building EV charging stations; block funding for the Green Climate Fund, which helps developing countries meet their climate goals under the Paris agreement; and prohibit funding for a Department of Energy initiative aiming to send 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments to flow to disadvantaged communities.Elizabeth Gore, senior vice-president for political affairs at Environmental Defense Fund, said these proposals will impede lawmakers’ chance to reach a budget deal before their fall deadline.“This is not a starting point for any reasonable negotiations,” she said in a release.Early last month, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling. David Shadburn, senior government affairs advocate at the League of Conservation Voters, said that from his perspective, that agreement didn’t include nearly enough government funding, but now, Republicans are trying to cut funding even more.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We wanted to see more spending. We thought the deal was insufficient,” he said. “But a deal is a deal and yet what Republicans immediately did was go back on it.”All Republican representatives can submit proposals to the House appropriations committee and no member is required to sign off on specific proposals. So it’s not clear who is responsible for each “poison pill”. But Shadburn noted that not a single Republican member of the House voted for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included the most climate spending of any bill in US history and that Republican representatives have also repeatedly attempted to overturn the bill’s climate provisions.“The entire House Republican conference is on the record here … [including] those representing places that are seeing extreme weather,” he said.House Republicans also recently proposed an array of amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act aiming to limit the Pentagon’s deployment of electric vehicles, Shadburn said.One of them, which would force the defense department to terminate contracts for electric non-combat vehicles, came from Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, whose state is preparing for triple-digit heat this week. Another, which would authorize soldiers and civilians at the US army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona to use fossil fuel-powered vehicles, came from Representative Paul Gosar from Arizona, where heat last Friday was comparable to “some of the worst heatwaves this area has ever seen”, according to the National Weather Service.“In addition to the extreme heat in the south-west and elsewhere, there’s massive flooding in Vermont and New York … yet the House this week is spending their time debating just how many climate attacks they should include in the defense authorization,” said Shadburn. “It just shows how unserious they are about doing anything significant to tackle the climate crisis.” More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      People in Florida: have you been struggling to insure your property?

      by

      Farmers Insurance became the latest property insurer to pull out of Florida on Tuesday despite repeated efforts by the state’s legislature and its Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to try to calm the volatile market that is making home ownership less affordable.Farmers said in a statement that the decision was based on risk exposure in the hurricane-prone state.We’d like to hear from people living in Florida who have been struggling to get insurance for their properties, and how this has been affecting their finances and plans for the future. More

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Sweltering weather has left swaths of the US baking. A ‘heat tsar’ could help, experts say

      by

      Record-breaking temperatures. Millions under heat alerts. Hikers dying on hot trails.As large swaths of the US bake under sweltering heat, some advocates and officials say the Biden administration should consider appointing a “heat tsar” to manage a response.The Earth saw its two hottest days in recorded history this week as parts of the south-west roasted, and as a stretch of the south endured a brutal heat dome that was parked over Texas for weeks.Heat kills more Americans than any other form of extreme weather. The threat is increasing amid the climate crisis and will accelerate, especially if the world doesn’t urgently stop burning fossil fuels.In response, Phoenix, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; and Miami-Dade county, Florida have all appointed chief heat officers – or “heat tsars” – over the past three years, as have at least six global cities.“It’s been very valuable for us in the city to have a permanent office dedicated to heat,” Kate Gallego, the mayor of Phoenix, whose administration created the nation’s first-ever office of heat response and mitigation in 2021, helmed by chief heat officer David Hondula. “Before, it wasn’t always clear who was in charge.”Rising temperatures have been brutal in Phoenix, the hottest city in America. Last year, Maricopa county reported 425 heat-associated deaths, a 25% increase from the previous year.It’s a trend affecting regions across the US, leaving governments scrambling to prepare. A federal body could help them share best practices, said Gallego.“We have probably 30 ideas about how to respond to heat,” she said. “If New Orleans already knows 25 of them but they benefit from five new ones, that could be incredible. It’s the same for mayors in Texas, who have lost too many lives already.”Gallego says that such a federal body could be helpful for historically temperate regions like the Pacific north-west, where hundreds died in a record-breaking 2021 heat dome.She recalled rare floods in Phoenix in 2014, her first year in office.“We didn’t have huge expertise in responding to flooding, but the federal government does, and they were able to provide consulting through Fema that helped me understand where to get an emergency supply of sandbags, for instance, or what tools are available if your fire station gets flooded,” she said.Traditionally hot regions also sorely need more federal support, said Jane Gilbert, who has served as Miami-Dade county’s first chief heat officer since May 2021. That support is needed with collecting data on deaths and injuries to capture the true toll of heat waves.“Heat could be the cause of … cardiac arrest, of a worker falling off a ladder, a psychotic break in a homeless person, of kidney failure in an outdoor worker, but it’s not necessarily coded as heat-related, so we don’t have good data on emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and deaths,” she said, adding that federal officials could help compile research and convene experts to navigate the problem.The Biden administration has taken steps to improve heat preparedness. Last summer, it unveiled Heat.gov, an interagency heat-focused website. The site, which tools such as heat index guides, a heat and health tracker, and a climate and health forecast, has improved communication between federal agencies and local officials, Gilbert said.While the National Weather Service has traditionally based heat alerts on how often certain thresholds are crossed in certain areas, for instance, it is beginning to consider health impacts of heat, thanks to input from the CDC, she said. To kick off these efforts, it’s piloting a program this summer in Miami-Dade county that lowers heat alert thresholds. Heat advisories will be issued at 105F (40.5C) instead of the previous level of 108F, and excessive heat warnings will be issued at 110F (43C) instead of 113F (45C) – changes Gilbert said could help keep people safe.But Juley Fulcher, health and safety advocate at consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen, said while Heat.gov has produced useful tools, it has not led to policy changes or increased material support.“Interagency actions in Washington, have a history of not functioning as well as we might like them,” she said. “If there is that kind of concerted effort, there has to be some concerted funding put toward it [and] you can’t just take somebody who has a job that takes up 100% of their time and say, ‘here’s 20% more work to do.’”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA heat-focused office could see ongoing policies through to completion, she said. For years, Fulcher has pushed for a federal rule to protect workers from heat, which her organization found could save hundreds of lives each year. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration began creating the rules in 2021, but the process could take “a couple of years” to finish, she said. A heat office could ensure the rule’s completion is a priority, and could go even further to protect workers, distributing more educational materials to employers and conducting more research on risks.Federal officials could help boost preparedness in other ways too, said Gallego, the Phoenix mayor. Currently, she is pressuring the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make heat eligible for the same relief available after other disasters like hurricanes – something a heat tsar could also see through.Without those formal structures, said Gilbert, officials’ responses may be less sophisticated. Until her role was created, Miami-Dade’s response to extreme heat mirrored plans for extreme cold.“With the unsheltered population, it was about getting people into shelters overnight when it’s coldest, but with heat, the biggest time of day that we need to worry about is from noon to 7pm,” she said. Now, responders are focused on getting people into daytime cooling centers, and are being trained to distribute cold packs and cooling towels.In another example, Cecilia Sorensen, director of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University, said that amid the Pacific north-west’s unprecedentedly deadly 2021 heat dome, the region had no disaster protocol plan for heat.“They activated their only disaster protocol, which was related to earthquakes,” she said. “That got all the right people on the phone to be able to coordinate, but that’s an example of … unpreparedness.”Sorensen agreed that municipalities need help responding, but added that a new office or “tsar” might not be the answer.“Each geographic area is is very unique,” she said. “And so much of the work to really prepare communities to be resilient involves engagement of community members and other stakeholders, and I don’t think the federal government can really convene at that level.”Instead, she suggests that officials focus on boosting existing bodies that can support municipalities. In 2021, the Biden administration established the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity within the US Department of Health and Human Services. But a lack of congressional funding and authorization has left it without full-time staff or funding, she said.“We should fund the office that’s supposed to be doing this work, rather than creating a whole new system in the executive branch,” she said.But Gallego said heat is an urgent enough threat to warrant its own office.“It’s time that the federal government had a new tool to address heat. Our entire planet is experiencing climate change and we need to adapt to that fact,” she said. “If the federal government created a one stop location for heat, they could save so many lives.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Senate examines role of ‘dark money’ in delaying climate action

      by

      The Senate budget committee held a hearing on Wednesday morning to scrutinize the role of oil- and gas-linked “dark money” in delaying climate action – and tearing through local and federal budgets.The hearing was led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has held 10 climate crisis-focused hearings since he took the helm of the budget committee this past February.It follows an inquiry launched by House Democrats in 2021, which focused on big oil’s alleged efforts to mislead the public about the climate crisis.“I am shining a light on the massive, well-documented economic risks of climate change,” said Whitehouse, who has also given nearly 300 speeches about the climate crisis on the Senate floor. “These are risks that have the potential to cascade across our entire economy and trigger widespread financial hardship and calamity.”In his opening remarks, Whitehouse described the well-documented misinformation campaign that fossil fuel interests have waged on the American public.“Beginning as early as the 1950s, industry scientists became aware of climate change, measuring and predicting it decades before it became a public issue,” he said. “But industry management and CEOs spent decades promoting climate misinformation.”Ranking member Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, said the hearing was a “missed opportunity to work together on a responsible budget”. He also claimed Democrats obtain “much more secret or dark money than Republicans”.Committee Democrats invited three witnesses. First to the stand was the Harvard history of science professor Naomi Oreskes. “Climate change is a market failure, and market failures require government action to address,” she testified.Fossil fuel interests’ efforts to disrupt climate policy had come at great expense to the US, including not only financial costs, but also human suffering and lives lost, said Oreskes, who has written several books on oil industry misinformation.Christine Arena, former public relations executive at the firm Edelman who now works in social impact film-making, and who was also invited by Senate Democrats, drew comparisons between the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long misinformation campaign and how the tobacco industry tried to cover up the harms of smoking.“Just like the tobacco executives before them, [fossil fuel executives] characterize peer-reviewed science and investigative journalism that illustrates the extent of their deceptions as biased or inconclusive,” said Arena, who is now the founder of Generous Films.Richard Painter, professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota Law School who was chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush, was third to testify. A political independent, Painter said Americans should get on board with the push to end climate misinformation no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.“This is not a partisan issue,” said Painter, who was also invited by Whitehouse. “This is about caring, and doing something about a grave threat to the human race.”The last two witnesses were invited by Republican senators. First up was Dr Roger Pielke Jr, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who said he believed climate change was real, human-caused and dangerous, but that the Democrats’ concerns were overblown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast to testify was Scott Walker, president of the conservative non-profit Capital Research Center who served in the George W Bush administration as special assistant to the president for domestic policy. “To say that a group uses dark money is like saying the group uses telephones. It’s a universal technology,” he said.He insisted that dark money was not a major problem in American politics. Insofar as it was a problem, he said, the political left took more money than the right.In an interview after the hearing, Oreskes said she suspected the evidence that Democrats take more dark money than Republicans may be based on “cherry-picked” data. “Cherry-picking is a tactic we know climate deniers and skeptics have used for decades,” she said.While being questioned by Whitehouse, Oreskes explained that in the mid-2000s, she and others who wrote about the scientific consensus on the human-caused climate crisis received hate mail and were the targets of official complaints and other attacks.“That experience of being attacked led me to try to understand what these attacks were, who was funding them, who was behind them, and why they were doing it,” she said.Later, Grassley asked Pielke to talk more about the influence dark money has on Democrats. “I can’t explain exactly why your colleagues aren’t willing to look at the dark money ties of their own witnesses,” said Pielke.Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, a Democrat, addressed these allegations, offering a solution for his Republican colleagues who are concerned about dark money’s influence on Democrats. The Disclose Act, introduced by Whitehouse in the Senate this year, would expose the sources of these clandestine funds for Democrats and Republicans alike, he said. “I would invite my colleagues across the aisle to join us in ending dark money on both sides,” said Merkley. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Power move: Stacey Abrams’ next act is the electrification of the US

      by

      Stacey Abrams has been hailed as a masterly community organizer, after she helped turn out the voters that secured two Senate seats for Democrats in once solidly red Georgia. She has also run twice – unsuccessfully – for state governor. For her next move, she’s not focusing on electoral power so much as power itself.Recently she left the world of campaign politics and took a job as senior counsel for the non-profit Rewiring America. Her role will focus on helping thousands of people across America wean their homes and businesses off fossil fuels and on to electricity, at a moment when scientists have given a “final warning” about the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions and prevent global catastrophe.“We are at an inflection point where we can choose to electrify,” she said in an interview. “We don’t have to do it everywhere, all at once. If you want to see what the future looks like, we start building it here and now.”The impetus for her role comes from significant moves taken by the Biden administration. When he signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) last year, President Joe Biden hailed it as “the biggest step forward on climate ever”. It includes a sprawling array of tax credits, rebates and other incentives to help people electrify their lives.“The government has basically filled a bank account for you with thousands of dollars that will help you go electric,” Abrams said.Her mission is to help people access that so-called bank account.“You can improve your indoor air quality, make cooking quick and easy, make being cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and be more affordable,” Abrams said. “But we have to talk about it.”Abrams is perhaps best known for registering 800,000 voters in Georgia through her voting rights advocacy organization Fair Fight Action. She wants to use a similar playbook with electrification, and doing so could benefit many of the same people whose voices risked going unheard in elections.Low-income communities and communities of color have long had to contend with polluting, inefficient appliances. This has an impact on public health by increasing the risk of asthma and leads to higher utility bills that take a bigger bite out of households’ income. The IRA takes aim at some of those wrongs, with tax credits and rebates that can help those households swap in heat pumps, induction stoves and electric vehicles for their gas-powered counterparts.But figuring out what incentives you qualify for and how to access them can be involved, to say the least. While Rewiring America has a calculator that lets individuals suss out what IRA benefits they can snag, Abrams will be taking that and other tools to the community level. She highlighted how houses of worship could be prime places to talk about the IRA and a potential target for outreach.And she hopes to work with local leaders such as teachers, mayors and city council members to make the IRA a kitchen table issue. Enlisting them will, she hopes, eventually lead to neighbors talking to neighbors about how much money they saved on a new induction stove or how much more comfortable their home was during a heatwave thanks to a newly installed heat pump.“You meet people where they are, not where you want them to be,” she said. “That means understanding the lives they’re living and the questions they have and who they go to to talk about their questions.”While the IRA has the potential to be transformative, it’s also not enough to electrify every household in the country. The law has billions set aside for home upgrades, but more resources will be needed to achieve the Biden administration’s goal of reducing US emissions up to 52% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAn analysis by the Rhodium Group found the law has the potential to cut emissions by up to 42%. And that it could reduce home energy bills by $717 to $1,146 by 2030.Abrams said that, based on her experience in the arena of voting rights, the prospect of such benefits could help foster an electrification movement. “As people get more, they expect more,” she said. “The most sustainable movement is when people expect more and are willing to work for more.”This isn’t Abrams’ first foray into climate. She was quick to point out her college senior thesis was on environmental justice and that she interned with the Environmental Protection Agency. During her tenure in the Georgia house of representatives, she also worked as minority leader to help pass a bill that included the state’s biggest influx of cash for public transportation.Ultimately, the Biden administration wants the US to reach net zero by mid-century. It might be hard to imagine that occurring – a distant future, when perhaps technologies that are only nascent today like carbon dioxide removal will be more widespread, almost every car and home will be electric, and the inequalities targeted by the IRA and Biden’s executive orders will have dwindled.That scenario can read a bit like science fiction – a genre of which Abrams is a well-known fan.“In almost every sci-fi story, it begins with what decisions people are making long before the story takes place,” she said. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden denies reports that Alaska oil drilling project has been approved

      by

      Biden denies reports that Alaska oil drilling project has been approvedSigning off on the Willow plan would place the president’s political career in conflict with climate-minded DemocratsThe Biden administration has denied reports that it has authorized a key oil drilling project on Alaska’s north slope, a highly contentious project that environmentalists argue would damage a pristine wilderness and gut White House commitments to combat climate crisis.Late Friday, Bloomberg was first to report citing anonymous sources that senior Biden advisers had signed off on the project and formal approval would be made public by the Interior Department next week.The decision to authorize drilling on the north slope, if correct, would amount to one of the most symbolically important climate decisions of Biden’s political career and place his administration in conflict with the climate-alert left wing of the Democratic party.But that pressure is countered by unions and some Indigenous communities in Alaska who say approval of the project would provide economic security in the state beyond the borders of the 9.3m-hectare (23m acres) area of the north slope that is considered the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the US.But after reports were published, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “no final decisions have been made” on the project and “anyone who says there has been a final decision is wrong”.Earlier on Friday, former vice-president Al Gore said it would be “recklessly irresponsible” to allow the project to proceed. “The pollution it would generate will not only put Alaska native and other local communities at risk, it is incompatible with the ambition we need to achieve a net zero future,” he said.Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski said on Friday that a decision was “imminent”. The Republican senator previously called the size of the project “minuscule” and that it has been “meticulously planned” to avoid harm to the environment.Biden has come under intense pressure from lawmakers and the courts, and high energy prices that have dogged his first term as president after he vowed “no more drilling on federal lands, period” during his campaign.But White House policy to oppose new oil leases and discourage domestic shale-oil drilling, has also forced its hand in other areas. Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia last year to urge increases in Saudi production came at a high political cost and was broadly fruitless.White House approval of “the Willow Master Development Plan”, a multi-billion ConocoPhillips project to drill oil inside the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska would serve as a substantial win for the oil-and-gas industries.ConocoPhillips has said the Willow plan could provide more than $17bn in revenue for federal, state and local governments and create over 2,800 jobs. It could suck an estimated 600m barrels of oil from beneath the permafrost and, at a projected 180,000 daily barrels of oil, would produce approximately 1.6% of current US production.Under those figures, the project would also contribute 280m tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere when the oil was processed and used across fossil-fuel dependent economy.Unlike other, small oil and gas leases approved by the White House it would also be one that Biden approves without the force of court or congressional orders.The oil giant, which reported profits of $18.7bn in 2022, double the previous year, originally requested permits to drill on five locations but later scaled back to three.ConocoPhillips has said it cannot comment on the decision until it has a formal record.The Interior Department has previously said it has “substantial concerns” about the Willow project’s impact upon the climate and the subsistence lifestyle of native Alaskan communities – but has completed an environmental review of the development that it said would improve it.A wave of opposition to the Willow project has included rallies in Washington DC and an online #StopWillow campaign that has garnered more than 3m signatures.Siqiniq Maupin with the Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic has warned that the project would threaten subsistence lifestyle of native communities that rely upon the migration of caribou.“President Biden continues to address climate change during high-profile speeches and events but his actions are contradictory,” Maupin said.TopicsBiden administrationAlaskaOilClimate crisisIndigenous peoplesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More