Tag: Climate Change

The Climate Change Bill

I know it is Saturday and I try to deviate from the news of the day….but for today this report is too important to push back until Monday.

A large climate change bill is headed to Biden for his signature…..here is what is in it……

The House gave final passage on Friday to the biggest investment ever in the US to fight climate change. The bill heading to President Biden’s desk also includes a hard-fought cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare recipients and a new corporate minimum tax on big businesses. All told, the Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction Act” may not do much to immediately tame inflationary price hikes, but the package will touch countless American lives with longtime party proposals. Republicans deride the 730-page bill as big-government overreach and point particular criticism at its $80 billion investment in the IRS to hire new employees and go after tax scofflaws. Here are key parts of the $740 billion package—made up of $440 billion in new spending and $300 billion toward easing deficits, per the AP:

  • Climate: The bill would infuse nearly $375 billion over the decade in climate change-fighting strategies that Democrats believe could put the country on a path to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030. It represents the single biggest climate investment in US history.
  • EV tax breaks: For consumers, that means tax rebates to buy electric vehicles—$4,000 for used vehicle purchase and up to $7,500 for new ones, eligible to households with incomes of $300,000 or less for couples, or single people with income of $150,000 or less. Not all electric vehicles will fully qualify for the tax credits immediately, thanks to requirements that component parts be manufactured and assembled in the US. And pricier cars costing more than $55,000 and SUVs and trucks priced above $80,000 are excluded.
  • Other tax breaks: There’s also tax breaks for consumers to go green. One is a 10-year consumer tax credit for renewable energy investments in wind and solar. For businesses, the bill has $60 billion for a clean energy manufacturing tax credit and $30 billion for a production tax credit for wind and solar, seen as ways to boost and support the industries that can help curb the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. The bill also gives tax credits for nuclear power and carbon capture technology that oil companies such as Exxon Mobil have invested millions of dollars to advance.
  • Drilling: The bill would impose a new fee on excess methane emissions from oil and gas drilling while giving fossil fuel companies access to more leases on federal lands and waters.
  • Drought: A late addition pushed by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and other Democrats in Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado would designate $4 billion to combat a mega-drought in the West, including conservation efforts in the Colorado River Basin, which nearly 40 million Americans rely on for drinking water.
  • Prescription costs: The bill would allow the Medicare program to negotiate some prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, saving the federal government some $288 billion over the 10-year budget window. The result is expected to lower costs for older adults on medications, including a $2,000 out-of-pocket cap for older adults buying prescriptions from pharmacies. The revenue raised would also be used to provide free vaccinations for seniors, who now are among the few not guaranteed free access, according to a summary document. Seniors would also have insulin prices capped at $35 a month.
  • Health insurance: The bill would extend the subsidies provided during the COVID-19 pandemic to help some Americans who buy health insurance on their own. Under earlier pandemic relief, the extra help was set to expire this year. But the bill would allow the assistance to keep going for three more years, lowering insurance premiums for some 13 million people who are purchasing their own health care policies through the Affordable Care Act.

This will be great fodder for the 2024 election……..it is a good start but more needs doing.

Diabetes sufferers will get a break with insulin prices which is great for those that have the disease.

Biden needed a win to prop up his approval rating.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That 1972 Environmental Report

As per my usual stuff I just feel that I must inject a little history into the conversation on the Climate.

For the past couple of decades the climate has been the center of the debate on the future of this planet and its people…..but most everything that is happening these days with our climate was reported back in 1972….and no one wanted to hear it….especially our corporate controlled Congress……

For those too damn young to remember this report….I am here to help……

The computer modeling made it plain: If people continued to overextract finite resources, pollute on a massive scale, and balloon the human population in an unsustainable way, civilization could collapse within a century. It sounds like that modeling could have been done last week, what with climate change, water shortages, and microplastics corrupting every corner of the Earth. But in fact it dropped in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth, published by the Club of Rome, an international organization of intellectuals founded in 1968. 

The book sold millions of copies and was translated into at least 30 languages, attracting a storm of controversy. It was, after all, very early computer modeling—completed on a punch-card machine at MIT—and a highly simplified simulation of complex global systems. And it was making rather grand and consequential predictions. (As the old quip goes: All models are wrong, but some are useful.) That model spit out scenarios in which humanity either got more sustainable and equitable, and thus flourished, or continued letting capitalists plunder the planet and our civilization to death.

“What came from the simulations is that most of the cases—but not all, and it’s important to say not all—the evolution of a number of variables like population, production, pollution, was showing that around the mid-21st century, we would have a scenario of collapse of human civilization,” says Carlos Alvarez Pereira, vice president of the Club of Rome and co-editor of the new retrospective book Limits and Beyond: 50 Years on From The Limits to Growth, What Did We Learn and What’s Next? “The whole thing was framed into doomsday prophecy. We didn’t succeed in bringing the message that it was not about that. It was really about: We have the capacity to choose. We have, as humanity, the capacity to decide what kind of future we want.” 

https://www.wired.com/story/the-infamous-1972-report-that-warned-of-civilizations-collapse/

As you can see science has pointed to the position we find our planet in all those years ago……and yet we did nothing.

And we are still doing NOTHING!

I am glad I am old and will not witness the total destruction of the planet by these total douches that answer to no one but the pigs that own them….the corporations.

Turn The Page!

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The Mouth Of The South

I am referring to Rep. Taylor-Green……one could dedicate a whole blog to the idiocy that she spreads with daily posts….her moronic dribble flows out of her mouth with ease.

Her latest regurgitation are legendary….

Did you know that climate change is good for us?

Controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Right Side Broadcasting Network host Brian Glenn on Monday that global warming is “actually healthy.”

“We have already warmed 1-degree Celsius and do you know what has happened since then?” Greene told Glenn, apparently confirming she believes in global warming as a trend.

While Greene nailed the degree to which the planet has warmed, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) says the planet has warmed at least 1.1° Celsius (1.9° Fahrenheit) since 1880, she then offered a much less conventional take on its impact.

“We have had more food grown since then, which feeds people,” she claimed, arguing that the temperature increase has been a net positive.

“We are producing fossil fuels, that keeps people’s houses warm in the winter. That saves people’s lives, people die in the cold,” she continued.

“This Earth warming and carbon is actually healthy for us. It helps us to feed people, it helps keep people alive, the Earth is more green than it was years and years ago and that is because of the Earth warming,” Greene added, without offering evidence.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Believes in Climate Change, Says it is ‘Actually Healthy For Us’: ‘People Die in the Cold’

Her lunacy over climate change was beyond absurd….but she topped it with her thoughts on Tampons….

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spread a baseless, transphobic rumor that blamed the country’s ongoing tampon shortage on trans people. 

“Men have taken over everything. They’re ‘women of the year’ in every category, in women’s categories. And the latest news is, there’s a shortage of tampons, and that’s probably because men are buying tampons,” Greene said on an episode of her podcast, “MTG Live.”

However, the Georgia lawmaker did not provide evidence for her groundless claim concerning tampon shortages in some parts of the country.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mtg-spreads-baseless-transphobic-rumor-about-trans-people-tampon-shortage-2022-6

She constantly lies and lies and yet she will most likely be re-elected…..that makes me think that the people of her district are morons…..how can any intelligent person take her seriously….and yet they do.

She, every time she opens her mouth, proves that you just ‘can’t fix stupid’.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Saturday’s News Round-Up

The weekend begins and as my usual tact I will give news that did not make the MSM for various reasons.

First, the climate change (that issue that does not exist in some minds)…..

When Chris Rogers returned to the NSW Central Coast after a stint living overseas, he was eager to embrace the quintessential Australian lifestyle — a home where his kids could swim in the ocean whenever they liked and he could walk along the beach he loves every day. 

But more than a year after powerful swells battered Wamberal Beach, causing massive erosion beneath the waterfront properties, he’s been left fearing his home could be washed away in the next storm surge.

“We’ve worked our whole life, this is our family home, and to look at your kids and not be able to comfort them is scary,” Rogers says.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-17/will-climate-change-put-an-end-to-coastal-living/100504100

Next is a subject that would make an interesting scifi movie……

Earth formed 4.5 billion years or so ago. Ever since then, it’s been slowly cooling on the inside.

While the surface and atmosphere temperatures fluctuate over the eons (and yes, those external temperatures are currently warming), the molten interior – the beating heart of our planet – has been cooling this entire time.

That’s not a glib metaphor. The rotating, convecting dynamo deep inside Earth is what generates its vast magnetic field, an invisible structure that scientists believe protects our world and allows life to thrive. In addition, mantle convection, tectonic activity and volcanism are thought to help sustain life through the stabilization of global temperatures and the carbon cycle.

Because Earth’s interior is still cooling, and will continue to do so, this means that eventually the interior will solidify, and the geological activity will cease, possibly turning Earth into a barren rock, akin to Mars or Mercury. New research has revealed that may happen sooner than previously thought.

https://www.sciencealert.com/earth-s-insides-are-cooling-faster-than-we-thought-and-it-will-mess-things-up

Not good news…but what the Hell, right?

Finally more idiot news.

These days the younger generation cannot exist without their energy drinks for whatever reason…..everything needs to be flavored now the biggest insult….Coke with coffee…..

Coke with Coffee is a soda that yells at you with sugar. It writes flavor emails in ALL CAPS. It has zero chill — and double the caffeine of normal Coca-Cola.

The newest spinoff from Coca-Cola has mistakenly been called coffee in a can. That’s not really the case. This is very much still soda, just with some coffee vibes. With that said, it’s still potential nightmare fuel if it somehow ends up in the hands of a child.

Let’s use a beer analogy. If Coca-Cola is the normal flagship IPA from a big brewery, Coke with Coffee is the wacky, heavy double IPA that comes out as more of an over-the-top gimmick made with crazy ingredients.

https://www.masslive.com/food/2021/01/coke-with-coffee-review-i-drank-all-3-flavors-so-you-dont-have-to.html

AS a consumer of coffee….I do not want to dick it up….black no sugar is my choice…..I want it to taste like coffee….nothing else.

Now for the most useless news…..and it involves a toilet….

Back in 2003, somebody flushed a toilet in the middle of the night in Italy and the couple in the neighboring apartment thought, boy that was loud. Nineteen years later, that couple near La Spezia has finally won their legal case against the neighbors for too-loud flushing at night, reports the Times of London. The case reached the nation’s highest court, which cited principles laid out by the European Court of Human Rights in deciding for the couple, notes the Washington Post. The toilet was not only loud, it was reportedly used often—”aggravated by frequent night use,” is how the court put it.

The judges ruled that the flushing compromised the couple’s quality of life by disrupting their sleep and jeopardizing their health. As the case inched its way through the Italian legal system over the years, the full story emerged. Four brothers owned the apartment with the loud toilet, and they installed the water tank in a shared wall that happened to be the couple’s bedroom wall. Italy’s supreme court ordered the brothers to move the tank and pay the couple 500 euros (or about $565) for every year it was in place, reports the Guardian. That will amount to about $10,700 for the couple.

I feel so much better now that justice has been served.

Have a great day, my friends.

Be Well and Be Safe

“lego ergo scribo”

Another Worthless Climate Deal

Just how long has the crisis with the climate been kicked down that endless road?

20 Years…..30 years….endless promise and spineless negotiating…..deal after deal…..and yet the corporations keep destroying the air……how long will this continue?

The new deal essentially does absolutely nothing!

Here is what we get after all the years…..

Negotiators from almost 200 nations reached an accord Saturday in the fight against climate change, acknowledging that the problem isn’t solved but setting up another attempt at more dramatic action next year. The Glasgow summit did not achieve the central goal of agreeing on action to limit the warming of Earth to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the Washington Post reports. So the planet then remains on course for increasingly severe damage and weather events. The nations did pressure each other to take greater action, and summit leaders say the agreement at least “keeps 1.5 alive”—a destination possibly to be reached soon.

As the UN climate conference wound down, progress was stalled over what to say about coal, per the AP. At the last minute, India pushed through a wording change saying the nations will “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal. The weakened commitment will make it harder to reach the 1.5-degree goal, a Swedish official said. Without the change, nations were still on track on that goal; the planet already has heated up 1.1 degrees. India received much of the blame. “India has long been a blocker on climate action,” an Australian climate scientist said, “but I have never seen it done so publicly.” Coal is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

John Kerry, the US envoy, was among those emphasizing the positive. “It’s a good deal for the world,” he said Saturday. “It’s got a few problems, but it’s all in all a very good deal.” There was a divide between richer and poorer nations in Glasgow, but they agreed in the end that wealthier nations should “at least double” financial assistance to nations most at risk from global warming by 2025. And there was agreement, per the New York Times, that everyone needs to do more. Nations were asked to return next year with more dramatic proposals for reducing their emissions, but there had been hope that issue would have been settled by now.

Personally I do not think this is the way to help the climate crisis…..but what can I expect from negotiators that are puppets of corporations to act….seriously John Kerry a huge corporate shill?

And apparently I am not alone….the Maldives has a similar view….

Small island nations are especially alarmed by the results of the UN climate conference, making the point that they don’t have time for small, incremental steps to slow global warming. The crisis has reached their homes. Negotiators declined to commit to taking immediate action to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius above preindustrial levels. “The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is a death sentence for us,” Maldives’ environmental minister said. They plan to take the issue up again next year. “What is balanced and pragmatic to other parties will not help the Maldives adapt in time,” Aminath Shauna said, per the Washington Post. “It will be too late for the Maldives.”

Before it adjourned, the European Union’s climate chief had warned the conference that the situation is critical for some nations already, per US News & World Report. Frans Timmermans said there’s urgency for low-lying Pacific islands and other nations vulnerable to flooding now, “because you’re standing with your feet in the water.” That’s how Tuvalu’s foreign minister tried to get his message across to the conference, per the Sydney Morning Herald—sending a video of his speech delivered in a business suit while standing in ocean water past his knees. “We cannot wait for speeches,” Simon Kofe says, “when the sea is rising around us all the time.”

Tuvalu and other at-risk countries are preparing for the worst, even as they press their case to larger nations. Kofe talked about people having to leave behind their homes and incomes because of the changes. Tuvalu and other island nations are pursing legal and diplomatic paths to keep their homes sovereign countries even if they’re underwater in 50 to 100 years. The nations’ negotiators in Glasgow, many of whom traveled for several days to get there, are exhausted by their effort, per New Scientist. “We are a group of very small countries that don’t have a significant amount of political leverage,” said a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, which includes 39 nations. “But we have strength in numbers and the moral high ground—though that’s sometimes not enough.”

This ‘summit’ would be laughable if it weren’t so damn pathetic….the planet suffers and the best they could come up with is allowing the corporations to continue to plunder.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A Word Of Warning

Unfortunately we live in a country and a world that seems to be in constant chaos…..politically, climate, socially….everything seems to be in flux.

We have been warned for many years of most of the problems we have today but as usual we are too damn arrogant to listen the the predictions…..

There is no more warning that we need to hear and hopefully understand….

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a dire warning that the world is moving in the wrong direction and faces “a pivotal moment” where continuing business as usual could lead to a breakdown of global order and a future of perpetual crisis. Changing course could signal a breakthrough to a greener and safer future, he said. The UN chief said the world’s nations and people must reverse today’s dangerous trends and choose “the breakthrough scenario,” the AP reports. The world is under “enormous stress” on almost every front, he said, and the pandemic was a wake-up call demonstrating the failure of nations to come together and take joint decisions to help all people in the face of a global life-threatening emergency.

Guterres said this paralysis extends far beyond COVID-19 to the failures to tackle the climate crisis and “our suicidal war on nature and the collapse of biodiversity,” the inequality undermining the cohesion of societies, and technology’s advances “without guardrails to protect us from its unforeseen consequences.” In other signs of a more chaotic and insecure world, he pointed to rising poverty, hunger, and gender inequality after decades of decline, the extreme risk to human life and the planet from nuclear war and a climate breakdown, and the inequality, discrimination, and injustice bringing people into the streets to protest “while conspiracy theories and lies fuel deep divisions within societies.”

In a horizon-scanning report presented to the General Assembly and at a press conference Friday, Guterres said his vision for the “breakthrough scenario” to a greener and safer world is driven by “the principle of working together, recognizing that we are bound to each other and that no community or country, however powerful, can solve its challenges alone.” The report—”Our Common Agenda”—is a response to last year’s declaration by world leaders on the 75th anniversary of the United Nations and the request from the assembly’s 193 member nations for the UN chief to make recommendations to address the challenges for global governance. In today’s world, Guterres said, “Global decision-making is fixed on immediate gain, ignoring the long-term consequences of decisions—or indecision.”

Something we should be concerned about….but instead we spend all our energy on mundane wedge issues….and all the while the world slips further down the rabbit hole.

So sad!  So pathetic!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Infrastructure Update

WE have a deal on the infrastructure bill…..it will take om our rail system, roads and bridges, and climate change and that is where I want to pick up this post.

Granted we need to bring our rail, roads and bridges into the 21st century….but this bill offers very spurious solution to the climate problem…..

…

publication of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report whose findings United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called “a code red for humanity,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that the infrastructure bill does not adequately fund measures to address the climate emergency.

“Not even close,” he said. “Though it includes important investments in hard infrastructure like our roads and bridges, it vastly underfunds public transit, [electrical vehicle], and grid infrastructure.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/08/10/bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-rebuked-funding-false-climate-solutions

To get bi-partisan support the good parts of the bill have been gutted to make the concern for the climate just words not action.

I agree with those that state that polluters need to pay for their part in the destruction of the climate…..

Amid unrelenting heatwaves, droughts, fires, and floods, congressional Democrats are seeking to tax roughly two dozen oil, gas, and coal corporations to ensure that the carbon polluters most responsible for the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency pay for some of the destruction.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that a draft bill from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) “directs the Treasury Department and the Environmental Protection Agency to identify the companies that released the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from 2000 to 2019 and assess a fee based on the amounts they emitted.”

Van Hollen estimates that the legislation could raise up to $500 billion over the next decade, with the biggest polluters facing annual bills of $6 billion over 10 years. The funds would be used to pay for renewable energy research and development as well as to assist communities in responding to and preparing for extreme weather disasters that climate scientists say are increasing in frequency, duration, and intensity due to planet-warming emissions.

“It’s based on a simple but powerful idea that polluters should pay to help clean up the mess they caused, and that those who polluted the most should pay the most,” Van Hollen told the Times. “Those who have profited the most should help now pay the damages that they’ve already caused.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/08/04/polluters-should-pay-draft-bill-could-raise-half-trillion-big-oils-climate-wreckers

Keep it simple, stupid!

You pollute you pay.

It is not rocket science….just good solutions.

Watch This Blog!

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The Latest On Climate

The clock is ticking!

TICK TOCK

The UN has released its report on the condition of the planet with climate change…..not at all a glowing report…..

The new week begins with grim reading from a landmark UN report about the state of the planet. The 3,000-plus page assessment of the climate concludes that while things are bad now—witness the extreme weather unfolding around the globe—they are certain to get worse in the coming decade. However, the authors say it’s possible to stave off the most dire scenarios, essentially a planet unrecognizable from the one we know today, though only if nations take immediate steps to start reining in greenhouse gas emissions. Coverage:

  • The report: Read it here. Produced by the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was written by more than 230 scientists and based on more than 14,000 studies. It’s a “code red for humanity,” says the UN, per the AP.
  • New rate: Extreme heat waves that used to hit once every 50 years now happen once a decade, say the authors, per Reuters. And that rate will almost certainly get worse. The same general trend applies to droughts and heavy rains.
  • The warming: The world has warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius since the 19th century, and the authors say it is almost certainly too late to avoid reaching the Paris accord threshold of 1.5 degrees by 2040, reports the New York Times. At that mark, the world becomes an even more dangerous place, with more than 1 billion at risk from frequent heat waves.
  • Bleak quotes: “We can expect a significant jump in extreme weather over the next 20 or 30 years,” says Piers Forster of the University of Leeds, one of the authors. Another co-author, Linda Mearns of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, tells the AP: “It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse. I don’t see any area that is safe.”
  • Longer term: The report lays out five scenarios, and in three of them, the world surpasses 2 degrees Celsius warming by mid-century. On these tracks, it’s possible the mark could surpass 3 or even 4 degrees. In the rosiest scenario, an immediate shift away from fossil fuels would enable the rise to level off at about 1.5 degrees.
  • One forecast: A rise of 2 degrees “could trigger the inexorable collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and more than six feet of sea-level rise that could swamp coastal communities,” per the Washington Post. “Coral reefs would virtually disappear.”
  • Blame: The report says it’s “unequivocal” that human behavior has warmed the planet. As for current events: “Extreme events, heat waves, droughts, heavy precipitation: When we see these things in the news, they really are a result of climate change and the science is really able to detect that,” says co-author Jessica Tierney, of the University of Arizona, per Quartz. “You can always get an extreme flood or drought by chance, but now we can show that the chances of some of these events happening would have been almost nil.”

The planet is burning and the best we can do is ignore the coming problems.

Time is running out!

TICK TOCK

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

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“lego ergo scribo”

All Those Cow Farts

I can recall from a decade of more ago when cows were being blamed for all the global warming…..oh sorry climate change because they eat a lot of fiber and supposedly do a lot of farting.

Does anyone else remember this?

There were even some that blamed the demise of the dinosaur because of their massive consumption and of course their farting….sorry again I digress.

Long a target of environmentalists due to its purported negative effects on the global environment, cattle farming has lately been pilloried by eco-activists for its alleged hastening of warming across the planet due to the high levels of greenhouse gasses that the industry produces every year. 

Yet a relatively small but growing body of research suggests that certain types of cattle farming— namely, those in which cows are raised on pastures for their whole lives as opposed to in feedlots — may actually have a carbon-negative effect on the environment by helping to sequester greenhouse grasses under well-managed grasslands. 

The vast majority of beef produced in the U.S. is sourced in feedlots in which cattle are fed primarily corn and grains, a diet which hastens their fattening and prepares them for slaughter much earlier than traditional methods.

Environmentalists have criticized those systems as ecologically ruinous due to their heavy carbon footprints, citing in part their dependence on chemically fertilized cattle feed and the copious amounts of methane that cows emit in the form of burps and flatulence.

https://justthenews.com/nation/science/beef-takes-beating-environmentalists-research-suggests-cows-can-actually-climate

Stop blaming cows for the problem….assign blame where it belongs….the technique used by the ranchers.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

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“lego ergo scribo”

But are cows the culprit?

 

Biden’s Climate Change

When Joe Biden was elected he promised to act and act decisively on the question of climate.

He has done just that with the stroke of a pen on an Executive Order…..

“Today is climate day at the White House,” President Biden declared Wednesday as he signed executive orders to “confront the existential threat of climate change.” “We’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer,” Biden said, per the New York Times. The executive actions include a pause on new oil and gas leasing on federal land and an order for the Department of the Interior to conserve 30% of America’s lands and water by 2030. Federal agencies have been asked to “eliminate fossil fuel subsidies as consistent with applicable law.” More:

  • Focus on jobs. Biden tried to get ahead of criticism that the measures will eliminate jobs at a time of mass unemployment, the BBC reports. ” When I think of climate change and the answers to it, I think of jobs,” Biden said. “We’re going to put people to work. We’re not going to lose jobs. These aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams. These are concrete actionable solutions.” He said millions of people will be able to get jobs “modernizing our water systems, transportation, our energy infrastructure.”
  • Ambitious goals. Biden aims to make the electricity sector emissions-free by 2035, followed by the rest of the economy by 2050, the AP reports. The orders will “supercharge our administration’s ambitious plan to confront the existential threat of climate change,” he said Wednesday.
  • A big tent. Biden’s climate plan is backed by a broad coalition that includes racial justice groups, auto companies, labor unions, and the US Chamber of Commerce, Politico reports. But holding the coalition together long enough to get Congress to approve trillions in funding will be a challenge.
  • A “whole-government” approach. Biden’s orders established a National Climate Task Force with leaders of 21 government agencies, the Guardian reports. He also established an environmental justice council to address the disproportionate impact of climate change on low-income and minority communities.
  • An “essential element” of foreign policy. The executive orders state that climate action will be an “essential element” of foreign policy and national security decisions. John Kerry, Biden’s international climate change envoy, denied Wednesday that the administration would make concessions to China on issue like human rights or the South China Sea in return for progress on emissions, Vox reports. “Those issues will never be traded for anything that has to do with climate,” he said. “That’s not going to happen.”
  • Opposition from oil companies. Oil companies have slammed the halt to new leases on federal lands, saying the move will cost jobs and make the US more dependent on foreign energy. But environmental advocates note that energy companies can still extract oil and gas from the existing leases they stockpiled during the Trump administration, the Los Angeles Times reports. “If what this pause does is say to the oil companies, ‘OK, you have thousands of permits you’re not using, let’s work on those,’ that’s still a lot,” said Nada Culver, vice president of public lands for the National Audubon Society.

It is an ambitious plan and I am behind him for the most part…..but I am not optimistic that he can get much of it into policy…..the push backs will be many….

But then…nothing new.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”