10 Big Biden Environmental Rules, and What They Mean – Coral Davenport – The New York Times

By Coral Davenport

May 9, 2024, 5:06 a.m. ET

“The Biden administration has been racing this spring to finalize a slew of major environmental regulations, including rules to combat climate change, a first-ever ban on asbestos and new limits on toxic chemicals in tap water.

Many of the rules had been in the works since President Biden’s first day in office, when he ordered federal agencies to reinstate or strengthen more than 100 environmental regulations that President Donald J. Trump had weakened or removed. The president has pledged to cut the emissions that are driving climate change roughly in half by 2030. That’s something that scientists say all industrialized nations must achieve to keep global warming to relatively safe levels.

Lawyers in the Biden administration have sought to use every available tool to protect the rules from being gutted by a future administration or a new Congress.

Under the 1996 Congressional Review Act, Congress can delete new federal regulations by a simple majority vote within 60 legislative days of their publication in the Federal Register. Senate Republicans used that procedure in early 2017 to wipe out 14 regulations within 16 days that had been written by the Obama administration.”

Forest Restoration Is Creating a Buzz in the Amazon – Manuela Andreoni – The New York Times

By Manuela Andreoni

Photographs by Victor Moriyama

Manuela Andreoni visited restoration projects and ranches in the northern Amazon to understand how local economies there are changing.

• May 2, 2024Updated 8:00 a.m. ET

“The residents of Maracaçumé, an impoverished town on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, are mystified by the company that recently bought the biggest ranch in the region. How can it possibly make money by planting trees, which executives say they’ll never cut down, on pastureland where cattle have been grazing for decades?

“We are killing pasture that a lot of farmers need,” said Josias Araújo, a former cowboy who now works in reforestation, as he stood on a patch of soil he was helping to fertilize. “It’s all strange.”

The new company, which is also Mr. Araújo’s new employer, is a forest restoration business called Re.green. Its aim, along with a handful of other companies, is to create a whole new industry that can make standing trees, which store planet-warming carbon, more lucrative than the world’s biggest driver of deforestation: cattle ranching.

It’s the holy grail of the forest economy. And now, it might be within reach.

The stakes are high. About a fifth of the great rainforest is already gone. And scientist warn that rising global temperatures could push the entire ecosystem, a trove of biodiversity and a crucial regulator of the world’s climate, to collapse in the coming decades unless deforestation is halted and an area the size of Germany is restored.” . . . .

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT NYT comment:

Thank you Manuela Andreoni and all at the NYT for this amazing story, and mostly excellent comments. Is this really going to work. Let’s pray it does, or that we can make it work. My mantra for mitigating climate change is, All hands on deck. When in doubt, try all of the above. David Lindsay blogs at InconvenientNews.com. He performs a folk concert about Nature, Climate Change and the Sixth Extinction, published as “Noah’s New Ark, A Musicalia.”

full access link:

Stephanie Cooke, Opinion | The Fantasy of Reviving Nuclear Energy – The New York Times

By Stephanie Cooke

Ms. Cooke is a former editor of Nuclear Intelligence Weekly and the author of “In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age.”

“World leaders are not unaware of the nuclear industry’s long history of failing to deliver on its promises, or of its weakening vital signs. Yet many continue to act as if a “nuclear renaissance” could be around the corner even though nuclear energy’s share of global electricity generation has fallen by almost half from its high of roughly 17 percent in 1996.

In search of that revival, representatives from more than 30 countries gathered in Brussels in March at a nuclear summit hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Belgian government. Thirty-four nations, including the United States and China, agreed “to work to fully unlock the potential of nuclear energy,” including extending the lifetime of existing reactors, building new nuclear power plants and deploying advanced reactors.

Yet even as they did so, there was an acknowledgment of the difficulty of their undertaking. “Nuclear technology can play an important role in the clean energy transition,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, told summit attendees. But she added that “the reality today, in most markets, is a reality of a slow but steady decline in market share” for nuclear power.” . . . .

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT NYT Comment:

I strongly believe in all of the above. Bill Gates is exited about his new nuclear plant. It is small, powerful, can’t explode or melt down, and runs on spent nuclear fuel, using it up. I’d like more articles on the whole new generation of designs, and when they will come on line anywhere. The war in Ukraine is not helping the development of nuclear. The US should pass the military aid bill ASAP, and the European Union should up its support as well. NATO should protectd the Ukrainians from incoming missiles and drones, the way they protected Israel the other day.

InconvenientNews.net

Free bike repairs? How collaboration is engaging New Haven cyclists A Bike Box in Newhallville run by Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op (where Catherine Lindsay works in management)

“NEW HAVEN — Clint Lowery just happened to be riding his bike to his home on Newhall Street in Newhallville — on a flat front tire, no less — when he saw people gathered around a repurposed shipping container festooned with streamers and surrounded by bicycles at the corner of Hazel Street and Shelton Avenue. Nearby, folks were serving hot chocolate and other snacks.

After stopping, dismounting his old, creme-colored Schwinn and learning that he had stumbled upon The Newhallville Bike Box, he took a break while two Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op volunteers replaced his flat and tightened his brakes — for free. The service even came with a smile and some friendly banter with volunteers Angus Lamont and Julia Nojeim.

“If we have to put new brake cables on, it’s free,” said Lamont — no relation to the governor, as far as he knows. “If we have to put new tires on, it’s free.” ”  . . . .

Source: Free bike repairs? How collaboration is engaging New Haven cyclists

As Wildfires Grow Fiercer, Some Companies Look to Rebuild the Tree Supply Chain – The New York Times

By Lydia DePillis

April 4, 2024

“When it came to wildfires, 2021 was an increasingly common kind of year in Montana: Flames consumed 747,000 acres, an area nearly the size of Long Island.

About 2,700 of those acres were on Don Harland’s Sheep Creek Ranch, where ever-drier summers have turned lodgepole pines into matchsticks ready to ignite. After the smoke cleared, Mr. Harland found creeks running black with soot and the ground hardening more with every day that passed.

A former timber industry executive, Mr. Harland knew the forest wouldn’t grow back on its own. The land is high and dry, the ground rocky and inhospitable — not like the rainy coastal Northwest, where trees grow thick and fast. Nor did he have the money to carry out a replanting operation, since growing for timber wouldn’t pay for itself; most of the nearby sawmills had shut down long ago anyway. The state government offered a few grants, but nothing on the scale needed to heal the scar.

Then a local forester Mr. Harland knew suggested he get in touch with a new company out of Seattle, called Mast. After visiting to scope out the site, Mast’s staff proposed to replant the whole acreage, free, and even pay Mr. Harland a bit at the end. Mast, in turn, was to earn money from companies that wanted to offset their carbon emissions and would put millions of dollars into planting trees that otherwise wouldn’t exist.” . . . . .

To Slow Global Warming, Scientists Test Solar Geoengineering – The New York Times

By Christopher Flavelle

Photographs by Ian C. Bates

Christopher Flavelle reported from a decommissioned aircraft carrier in Alameda, Calif. He spoke with scientists, environmentalists and government officials.

• April 2, 2024

A little before 9 a.m. on Tuesday, an engineer named Matthew Gallelli crouched on the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay, pulled on a pair of ear protectors, and flipped a switch.

A few seconds later, a device resembling a snow maker began to rumble, then produced a great and deafening hiss. A fine mist of tiny aerosol particles shot from its mouth, traveling hundreds of feet through the air.

It was the first outdoor test in the United States of technology designed to brighten clouds and bounce some of the sun’s rays back into space, a way of temporarily cooling a planet that is now dangerously overheating. The scientists wanted to see whether the machine that took years to create could consistently spray the right size salt aerosols through the open air, outside of a lab.

If it works, the next stage would be to aim at the heavens and try to change the composition of clouds above the Earth’s oceans.

As humans continue to burn fossil fuels and pump increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the goal of holding global warming to a relatively safe level, 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times, is slipping away. That has pushed the idea of deliberately intervening in climate systems closer to reality.” . . . .

David Lindsay:  Clearly, we need to pollute less. Preserve our ecosystems. Less Green House Gas emissions would also be helpful.

Here are three of my favorite comments.

Erik Frederiksen

Asheville, NC2h ago

Solar radiation management should be studied because sometime over the next 10 years and beyond some country or countries will get desperate enough to try it and we need to better understand the quite substantial risks. For example if we were to mask the heating for a number of years and then some disaster caused the program to stop those years worth of heating would arrive in a few weeks causing an extinction level event called termination shock. And that’s just one of many potential risks.

3 Replies62 Recommended

Erik Frederiksen

Asheville, NC2h ago

We have a problem with long wave energy (infrared) from the Sun warmed Earth being trapped on its way out to space. And we want to solve this by messing with incoming short wave radiation. What could go wrong?

Reply16 Recommended

 

Federalist commented 2 hours ago

F

Federalist

California2h ago

The use of albedo increasing aerosols that reflect solar energy to prevent it being absorbed by the Earth is like taking an antidote to poison so you can keep eating the poison. Once you do that you cannot stop taking the antidote. When the inevitable interruption happens there will be a rapid and abrupt temperature increase that will cause global disasters.

1 Reply16 Recommended

Margaret Renklm, Opinion | Poetry and Nature: A Love Story – The New York Times

By Margaret Renkl

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

“Even on a computer screen, Ada Limón, who is serving her second term as poet laureate of the United States, projects such warmth and reassurance that you could almost swear she was sitting beside you, holding your hand. This kind of connection between strangers, human heart to human heart, is so rare as to be startling, especially these days.

April is National Poetry Month, and it strikes me that no one is better positioned than Ms. Limón to convince Americans to leave off their quarrels and worries, at least for a time, and surrender to the language of poetry. That’s as much because of her public presence as because of her public role as the country’s poet in chief. When Ada Limón tells you that poetry will make you feel better, you believe her.

In her nearly weekly travels as poet laureate, Ms. Limón has had a lot of practice delivering this message. “Every time I’m around a group of people, the word that keeps coming up is ‘overwhelmed,’” she said. “It’s so meaningful to lean on poetry right now because it does make you slow down. It does make you breathe.”

A poem is built of rests. Each line break, each stanza break and each caesura represents a pause, and in that pause there is room to take a breath. To ponder. To sit, for once in our lives, with mystery. If we can’t find a way to slow down on our own, to take a breath, poems can teach us how.” . . . . .

Climate change, as seen from space. Climate Forward Newsletter NYT

	By David Wallace-Wells Opinion Writer

“This month MethaneSAT, an $88 million, 770-pound surveillance satellite conceived by the Environmental Defense Fund and designed at Harvard to precisely track the human sources of methane being released so promiscuously into the atmosphere, was launched by SpaceX, to great fanfare.

Methane, a somewhat less notorious greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, is produced by industrial and natural processes — leaking oil and gas infrastructure, decomposing melted permafrost, the belching of cows and the microbial activity of wetlands. Weve known that methane is producing a lot of warming and that there is a lot more of it in the atmosphere now, but we didn’t have the full picture. Beginning next year, MethaneSAT will begin beaming down everything picked up by its spectrometer, providing a publicly available quick-turnaround methane-monitoring system that has filled the hearts of climate advocates and data nerds with anticipation. What will it see?

The hope is that it will see a map of climate malfeasance that doubles as a global to-do list. MethaneSAT is not the first effort to track emissions from space, but its launch has been accompanied by a wave of can-do climate optimism for four big reasons.”

Source: Climate change, as seen from space.

The Zombies of the U.S. Tax Code: Why Fossil Fuels Subsidies Seem Impossible to Kill – The New York Times

By Lisa Friedman

• Published March 15, 2024Updated March 20, 2024

“As a candidate in 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. campaigned to end billions of dollars in annual tax breaks to oil and gas companies within his first year in office.

It’s a pledge he has been unable to keep as president.

Mr. Biden’s budget request to Congress this week was his fourth attempt to eliminate what he called “wasteful subsidies” to an industry that is enjoying record profits.

“Unlike previous administrations, I don’t think the federal government should give handouts to big oil,” Mr. Biden said after his inauguration. His new budget proposal calls for the elimination of $35 billion in tax breaks that would otherwise be provided to the industry over the next decade.

Mr. Biden’s wish is opposed by the oil industry, Republicans in Congress and a handful of Democrats. In Washington, it seems, oil and gas subsidies are the zombies of the tax code: impossible to kill.” . . . .

How MethaneSAT Will Track an Invisible Climate Menace From Space – The New York Times

“Six years ago, scientists at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund were wrapping up a major research project to measure methane leaks from oil and gas sites across Texas. Everywhere they looked — using planes, drones, ground measurements and even handheld devices — they found that gas was leaking at a far faster clip than the companies had disclosed.

What if that was happening around the world?

The scientists knew there was only one way to understand the bigger picture: Build a satellite to track methane at a global scale, something the group had never done before. As far as they could tell, no nonprofit had — only governments or private ventures.

“Everybody thought it was crazy,” said Steven Hamburg, the E.D.F.’s chief scientist, who led the project. “I thought it was crazy, to be honest.”

Over the following months, E.D.F. assembled a team of about 70 scientists and engineers from academia, commercial aerospace and defense industries. And it raised about $88 million from philanthropic donors, a shoestring budget given the scope of the project.

The satellite was launched into space Monday on a Space X transporter rocket.

Methane, a colorless and odorless gas, is the main ingredient in natural gas, which is burned in power plants and factories around the world, as well as in homes (think: gas stoves). Gas is far cleaner to burn than coal, but it has a big problem: It’s notoriously leaky. It seeps from oil and gas drill sites. It escapes from pipelines that carry the gas where it needs to go. And some operators simply release it into the air instead of investing in the infrastructure to capture all of it.

And that’s speeding up climate change.

When methane escapes into the atmosphere, it acts as a heavy blanket in the sky, trapping the sun’s heat and warming the world. And in its first 20 years in the atmosphere, methane captures more than 80 times as much heat as does carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. (Luckily, methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere for as long as carbon dioxide.)

Scientists estimate that human-caused methane emissions are responsible for up to 30 percent of the global warming being experienced today.

Figuring out where methane emissions are happening, how big they are and who’s responsible has been a challenge. A lot of drill sites are unmanned. Some companies don’t invest enough in leak-detection technology. Or they don’t welcome inspectors taking measurements.

Enter MethaneSAT.” . . . . .