June 26, 2018
For some time now, evidence has been accumulating that the oil & gas industry has become financially a ‘jack-built’ house, made of pieces of lies and subterfuge. In this issue we examine some of the stories.
But first the news.
Legislature Highlights from Tompkins County
meeting on Cayuga Power Plant
switch to fracked gas
Dozens of people packed Legislature Chambers, and 16 addressed the Legislature urging sustained and steadfast opposition to reported plans that coal-fired Cayuga Power Plant might seek to re-power using trucked-in compressed natural gas. Among those speaking out were former County Legislators Carol Chock and Dooley Kiefer—Ms. Chock reminding Legislators of the County’s proud history of striving to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions and in leading the drive against fracking. “Why then would be want to allow that same fracked gas to be highly compressed and trucked through our County, exposing our residents to the same dangers and burned to release those same methane gas emissions now?” she asked. Ms. Kiefer told Legislators, “We have to count on you to not let this happen…What is important is that you stand up for us and our climate.”
The Legislature observed a moment of silence in memory and honor of beloved civil rights pioneer Dorothy Cotton, who died June 10th.
The Legislature scheduled a July 3rd public hearing on a proposed Local Law that would permit the Legislature to override the County’s State-mandated Tax Levy Limit for 2019, if deemed necessary in preparation of the County’s 2019 Budget. The hearing is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at Legislature Chambers, located in the Governor Daniel D. Tompkins Building, 121 E. Court Street, Ithaca.
The Legislature approved revisions to its Minutes policy, governing meetings of the Legislature, and its standing and special committees.—Marcia E. Lynch, Public Information Officer
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Action Alert! The Heat is On Cuomo:
OFF Campaign Meeting
New York Society for Ethical Culture
2 West 64th Street, Manhattan
Thursday, June 28
7:00 – 9:00 pm
This summer, we’re turning up the heat on Governor Cuomo to move New York off fossil fuels.
We’re generating hundreds of calls every week, rallying outside his public appearances, and collecting thousands of petitions.
Join us on June 28 for an update on the Off Fossil Fuels Campaign.
We’ll also conduct a training on how to communicate with and engage the public.
Between now and primary day, we have a valuable opportunity to influence Governor Cuomo – and we must maximize this leverage.
As the heat rises, so must the pressure on Cuomo to halt fossil fuel infrastructure and transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.
For more information, or to RSVP, please contact Laura Shindell at Food & Water Watch: lshindell@fwwatch.org.
https://www.facebook.com/events/386598585177750/
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Killing Incinerator Bill:
A Victory for Elite Donor to Cuomo
Killing Incinerator Bill: A Victory for Elite Donor to Cuomo, a Defeat for ‘NIMBYs’
ROCHESTER, June 22, 2018 — The attorney for a Rochester company seeking to build a garbage incinerator in Romulus has congratulated the state Assembly for refusing to pass a bipartisan bill to block permitting of the project on the final day of the 2018 legislative session Wednesday.
The incinerator’s lead developer has been an elite campaign contributor to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a timely backer of Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Morele (D-Rochester).
The bill that would have blocked the project had unanimously passed the state Senate and had sailed through the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee, but Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not call it up for a vote.
Further reading: DO or DIE Today for Romulus Incinerator Bill — Where’s Joe Morelle?
“The Assembly acted responsibly by declining to pander to NIMBYs and junk science,” Alan Knauf said in a statement issued Thursday.
The bill has the backing of more than 30 Finger Lakes area local governments and school boards as well as 20 environmental and business groups. Romulus officials say the plan violates its zoning code. Opponents have cited the plant’s proximity to a public school and the plan’s reliance on more than 200 trucks a day to cart garbage from New York City.
…Although Knauf claimed that the ash from the Romulus incinerator would not be toxic, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that that ash from municipal waste incinerators cannot be exempted from hazardous waste regulations.… —Peter Mantius, “Killing Incinerator Bill: A Victory for Elite Donor to Cuomo, a Defeat for ‘NIMBYs’,” Water Front Online, 6/22/18
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Pa. DEP wants more information
about Shell’s ethane pipeline
Pa. DEP wants more information about Shell’s ethane pipeline – Pittsburgh Business Times
Shell Pipeline Co. said it’s working with Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection officials following the DEP’s sending of three technical deficiency letters to Shell in the permitting process of the Falcon Pipeline.
Shell received so-called technical deficiency letters for the three-county route of the Falcon Pipeline, which will carry ethane from the MarkWest Houston fractionation plant to a Raccoon Township hub and, from there, to the Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A) petrochemical plant under construction in Potter Township.
DEP identified what it called “serious technical deficiencies” in the plan for Findlay and North Fayette townships in Allegheny County; Chartiers, Mount Pleasant and Robinson townships in Washington County; and Greene, Independence, Potter and Raccoon townships in Beaver County. DEP’s review and approval of Shell’s permit to build the 97-mile pipeline, which includes a section in Pennsylvania, is required before construction can begin.…—Paul J. Gough, “Pa. DEP wants more information about Shell’s ethane pipeline,” Pittsburgh Business Times, 6/25/18
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The House That Jack Built
Carbon Pricing: 5 Reasons It Won’t Work
Carbon Pricing: 5 Reasons It Won’t Work
Over 100 questions were submitted during our recent webinar on carbon pricing, and there were many questions we could not answer in the time allotted. But many of those questions were very similar, so we came up with five responses to some of the most common concerns that were raised.
1. While 100% renewable electricity is a good goal, isn’t a carbon tax is a more comprehensive approach, since it would impact emissions from transportation and electricity generation?
Stopping climate change will require serious action on multiple fronts. That is why Food & Water Watch, along with hundreds of organizations across the country, are supporting the Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act, or OFF Act for short – a comprehensive plan to transition the United States to 100% renewable energy by 2035.
The OFF Act is not just focused on transitioning the energy sector off fossil fuels and mandating an immediate end to new fossil fuel projects; it will also transition our transportation infrastructure, including cars and rail, to 100% renewable energy by 2035. Furthermore, the bill would also establish the Center for Clean Energy Workforce Development and the Equitable Transition Fund to ensure a just and equitable transition for workers impacted by the move to clean energy.
Conversely, carbon taxes – while popular with economists – have proven to be ineffective at actually reducing emissions in the real world. And according to research prepared for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, we will actually see an increase in electricity from fracked gas under a carbon tax plan they studied. That means more fracking, more pipelines, more compressor stations, and more power plants. The impacts of this kind of fossil fuel development disproportionately impacts low-income communities and communities of color. If we create a carbon policy that continues reliance on fossil fuels, we can expect those burdens to continue.
Further reading | Our Lives Depend on Moving America Off Fossil Fuels. Here’s How We’ll Do It. |
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“The Deeply Flawed Conservative Case for a Carbon Tax,” American Enterprise Institute |
Some carbon tax proponents like to point out that big oil and gas companies now support a tax. But this should be serious cause for concern, not a sign of progress. These corporations know a tax will allow them to continue with business as usual, and pass any costs on to consumers.
2. Making consumers pay for corporate pollution doesn’t sound like a good idea. But wouldn’t a fee and dividend approach – which returns tax revenue to households – correct for that problem?
A fee and dividend carbon tax is still a carbon tax, and therefore it has the same problems of any carbon tax – a failure to reduce carbon emissions. In British Columbia, emissions actually went up after they enacted a carbon tax.…—Jim Walsh, “Carbon Pricing: 5 Reasons It Won’t Work,” Food & Water Watch, 4/24/18
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Why It Matters If Fracking Companies Are Overestimating Their ‘Proved’ Oil and Gas Reserves
Why It Matters If Fracking Companies Are Overestimating Their ‘Proved’ Oil and Gas Reserves
Back in 2011, The New York Times first raised concerns about the reliability of America’s proved shale gas reserves. Proved reserves are the estimates of supplies of oil and gas that drillers tell investors they will be able to tap. The Times suggested that a recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule change allowed drillers to potentially overbook their “proved” reserves of natural gas from shale formations, which horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) were rapidly opening up.
“Welcome back to Alice in Wonderland,” energy analyst John E. Olson told The Times, commenting on the reliability of these reserves after the rule change. Olson, a former Merrill Lynch analyst, is best known for seeing the coming Enron scandal 10 years before the infamous energy company imploded in 2000.
Today, those same rules have allowed shale drillers to boost their reserves of oil, as well as natural gas. As a result, these “proved” reserves, which investors and pipeline companies are banking on, could potentially be much less proven than they appear.
Forty-seven percent of the proved oil reserves in Texas’ and New Mexico’s Permian Basin — recently touted as potentially the largest oil basin in the world — now fall into the proved undeveloped category, a review of SEC filings from thirteen of the largest Permian operators reveals.
And the unprecedented degree to which this is happening in the shale industry casts a shadow of doubt on the purportedly bright future of America’s booming oil and gas industry.
Rising ‘Proved Undeveloped’ Reserves
Under the updated SEC rules, which went into effect in 2009, drillers can count oil and gas from wells that won’t be drilled or fracked for up to five years as part of their proved reserves. Those as-yet-untapped wells can be put on a company’s books as a subset of their “proved” reserves, listed under the label “proved undeveloped” reserves.
And drillers can count all of the oil and gas they expect to pump out over the well’s entire lifetime — before they’ve found out how fast that well flows or seen a single drop of oil from it.…—Sharon Kelly, “Why It Matters If Fracking Companies Are Overestimating Their ‘Proved’ Oil and Gas Reserves,” DeSmogBlog, 6/15/18
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‘Not even on the radar screen’:
Why Big Oil has abandoned Canada’s once-promising energy industry
‘Not even on the radar screen’: Why Big Oil has abandoned Canada’s once-promising energy industry
OTTAWA — In October 2013, then-Liberal leader Justin Trudeau told a room full of oil and gas executives in Calgary that the arms-length National Energy Board had become so politicized under Stephen Harper that it was now “an advisory board to Cabinet.”
It was part of a mantra that he would repeat throughout his election campaign and well into his tenure as prime minister that eroded confidence in Canada’s regulatory approval process: For too long, major energy projects had been rubber stamped despite strong environmental and First Nations’ opposition.
“Governments may be able to issue permits, but only communities can grant permission,” Trudeau said.
They are words that some argue have come back to haunt him. Trudeau’s government agreed to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline system and the proposed 590,000-barrel-per-day expansion from Calgary-based Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. for $4.5 billion — an extraordinary move to ensure the project would be completed. The pipeline expansion has been delayed by intense opposition from First Nations and local communities along the route.
“I think the deal with the devil that Trudeau made was he acquiesced, and indeed actively participated, in a pact against institutions that we have very carefully developed in Canada,” said Brian Lee Crowley, the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa.
Ottawa’s effective nationalization of the pipeline, alongside a dramatic drop in foreign direct investment into Canada’s vast oil and gas reserves, has in turn prompted political hand-wringing in recent years, and questions over whether Canada can still secure the sort of large-scale investments needed to expand its natural resources industry.
Further reading: Big Oil abandoning Canada’s tar sands in quest for cleaner crude
The total stock of foreign direct investment in Canadian oil and gas extraction slumped 7.4 per cent in 2017, down to $162.2 billion, due to a hasty retreat by international oil producers last year, including massive divestments by Royal Dutch Shell Plc ($9.3 billion) and ConocoPhillips Co. ($17.7 billion), totaling nearly $30 billion, according to Statistics Canada. Statoil ASA and Total SA have also sold off heavy oil assets. The exodus doesn’t account for the tens of billions of dollars in potential liquefied natural gas projects that were scrapped because of a combination of low commodity prices and domestic regulatory uncertainty..…—Jesse Snyder, “‘Not even on the radar screen’: Why Big Oil has abandoned Canada’s once-promising energy industry,” Financial Post, 6/4/18
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Colorado Adopts California Clean Car Standards in Defiance of Trump Admin
Colorado Adopts California Clean Car Standards in Defiance of Trump Admin
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper announced Tuesday that his state would join 13 states and the District of Columbia in adopting California’s clean car emissions standards.
“Colorado has a choice,” Gov. Hickenlooper said in a statement. “This executive order calls for the state to adopt air quality standards that will protect our quality of life in Colorado. Low emissions vehicles are increasingly popular with consumers and are better for our air. Every move we make to safeguard our environment is a move in the right direction.”
Under the Clean Air Act, states have the right to adopt California’s emissions standards for motor vehicles.
Currently, California’s standards for greenhouse gas emissions are harmonized with national standards, under “The National Program” that was negotiated by the Obama administration, automakers, and the state of California back in 2011.
However, the Trump administration is threatening to roll back the national standards, freezing limits on greenhouse gas emissions at model year 2022 levels for cars sold in 2022-2025.
California’s state air regulators have said that they have no intention of weakening their state standards, even if the federal government goes forward with its plan to abandon the harmonized plan.
“California will not weaken its nationally accepted clean car standards, and automakers will continue to meet those higher standards, bringing better gas mileage and less pollution for everyone,” Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, wrote in a statement emailed to reporters when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that his agency would revisit the Obama-era rules.…—Ben Jervey, “Colorado Adopts California Clean Car Standards in Defiance of Trump Admin,” DeSmogBlog, 6/19/18
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Despite Trump,
Wall Street is breaking up with fossil fuels
Despite Trump, Wall Street is breaking up with fossil fuels
From Wall Street to the pope, many increasingly see fossil fuels as anything but a sure bet. That gives us reason to hope
If you’re looking for good news on the climate front, don’t look to the Antarctic. Last week’s spate of studies documenting that its melt rates had tripled is precisely the kind of data that underscores the almost impossible urgency of the moment.
And don’t look to Washington, D.C., where the unlikely survival of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt continues to prove the political power of the fossil fuel industry. It’s as if he’s on a reality show where the premise is to see how much petty corruption one man can get away with.
But from somewhat less likely quarters, there’s been reason this month for hope — reason, at least, to think that the basic trajectory of the world away from coal and gas and oil is firmly underway.
Further reading: Permian Pipeline Scarcity Forces Drillers to Leave Oil Wells Unfracked
At the Vatican, the Pope faced down a conference full of oil industry executives — the basic argument that fossil fuel reserves must be kept underground has apparently percolated to the top of the world’s biggest organization.
And from Wall Street came welcome word that market perceptions haven’t really changed: Even in the age of Trump, the fossil fuel industry has gone from the world’s surest bet to an increasingly challenged enterprise. Researchers at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis minced no words: “In the past several years, oil industry financial statements have revealed significant signs of strain: Profits have dropped, cash flow is down, balance sheets are deteriorating and capital spending is falling. The stock market has recognized the sector’s overall weakness, punishing oil and gas shares over the past five years even as the market as a whole has soared.”
The IEEFA report labeled the industry “weaker than it has been in decades” and laid out its basic frailties, the first of which is paradoxical. Fracking has produced a sudden surge of gas and oil into the market, lowering prices — which means many older investments (Canada’s tar sands, for instance) no longer make economic sense. Fossil fuel has been transformed into a pure commodity business, and since the margins on fracking are narrow at best, its financial performance has been woeful. The IEEFA describes investors as “shell-shocked” by poor returns.
The second weakness is more obvious: the sudden rise of a competitor that seems able to deliver the same product — energy — with cheaper, cleaner, better technologies. Tesla, sure—but Volkswagen, having come clean about the dirtiness of diesel, is going to spend $84 billion on electric drive-trains. China seems bent on converting its entire bus fleet to electric power. Every week seems to bring a new record-low price for clean energy: the most recent being a Nevada solar plant clocking in at 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour, even with Trump’s tariffs on Chinese panels.
And the third problem for the fossil fuel industry? According to IEEFA, that would be the climate movement — a material financial risk to oil and gas companies. “In addition to traditional lobbying and direct-action campaigns, climate activists have joined with an increasingly diverse set of allies — particularly the indigenous-rights movement — to put financial pressure on oil and gas companies through divestment campaigns, corporate accountability efforts, and targeting of banks and financial institutions. These campaigns threaten not only to undercut financing for particular projects, but also to raise financing costs for oil and gas companies across the board.”
Hey, the movement against Kinder Morgan’s pipeline got so big, the Canadian government had to literally buy the thing in order to try and ram it through. Protesters will die, a former Bank of Canada governor predicted this week — though he added the country will have to muster the “fortitude” to kill them and get the pipeline built.
For activists, the best part of the IEEFA report is a series of recommendations for precisely how to hurt the industry the most, from creating delays that “turn a marginal project into a cancelled one” to “strategic litigation” to “changing the narrative.”
“The financial world is just beginning to understand the fundamental weakness of the fossil fuel sector, and barely acknowledges the global climate movement’s growing power and reach. This has created a powerful opportunity to develop and foster a new storyline on Wall Street: that the oil and gas industry is an unstable financial partner just as it faces its greatest test.”
That’s work we’re capable of. If a few years of campaigning is enough to convince the Pope we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, a few more quarters might finally persuade the suits that there’s more money to be made elsewhere. But speed is clearly of the essence. If massive losses of money loom over Wall Street, massive losses of polar ice loom over us all.…—Bill McKibben, “Despite Trump, Wall Street is breaking up with fossil fuels,” Grist, 6/19/18
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Trump administration tightens rules
for federal scientists talking to reporters
Trump administration tightens rules for federal scientists talking to reporters
A new directive from the Trump administration instructs federal scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey to get approval from its parent agency before agreeing to most interview requests from reporters, according to employees and emails from officials with the Department of the Interior and USGS.
USGS employees who spoke with The Times on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to do so say the new protocol represents a dramatic change in decades of past media practices at the scientific agency and will interfere with scientists’ ability to quickly respond to reporters’ questions. They expected that taxpayers would see less of the USGS’ scientific expertise as reporters seek scientific comment elsewhere.
The new protocol also permits the Department of the Interior’s communications office to reject interview requests on scientific matters.…—Rong-Gong Lin Ii, “Trump administration tightens rules for federal scientists talking to reporters,” Los Angeles Times, 6/21/18
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Exxon Still Isn’t Complying With Climate Subpoenas, N.Y. Says
Exxon Still Isn’t Complying With Climate Subpoenas, N.Y. Says
Exxon Mobil Corp. is refusing to turn over documents crucial to New York’s investigation into whether the oil giant’s public statements about climate change misled investors, the state’s top lawyer said.
Exxon hasn’t complied with subpoenas for cash-flow projections reflecting how it used so-called proxy costs to calculate the financial impact on its assets from future regulations tied to climate change, Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a filing Tuesday in state court in Manhattan.
New York said it wants to know exactly how the proxy cost for greenhouse gas emissions has been used in making investment decisions, corporate planning reviews, reserves estimates and evaluations for more than two dozen assets and projects. The documents are located in a limited number of electronic folders where Exxon “knows this key evidence is stored,” the state said.…—Erik Larson, “Exxon Still Isn’t Complying With Climate Subpoenas, N.Y. Says,” Bloomberg, 6/20/18
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Why Women From Asia Are Confronting U.S. Fracking:
Oil Extraction Equals Plastic Production
Why Women From Asia Are Confronting U.S. Fracking: Oil Extraction Equals Plastic Production
Heaps of plastic waste cover the shores of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Myrna Dominguez remembers when an abundance of fish inhabited its waters—locals would catch enough to feed their families and sell at the market. Today, she says, they are catching more plastic than fish.
“We’re very afraid that if this is not addressed, the bay, which 100,000 small fishers rely on, will no longer be viable for them,” Dominguez says.
In May, Dominguez and Indian labor organizer Lakshmi Narayan visited communities in the U.S. that are affected by pollution from oil extraction and plastic production, to show the effects that these processes have on communities overseas. The “Stopping Plastic Where It Starts Tour,” organized by #Breakfreefromplastic and Earthworks, is part of a project that aims to reduce plastic consumption and production by raising awareness about the impacts of plastic production on the communities at either end of its supply chain.
Dominguez and Narayan, representing communities in Asia experiencing the effects of plastic pollution, visited places in the U.S. experiencing the impacts of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) oil and gas production—an industry that is producing the raw materials to build plastic.…—Isabelle Morrison, “Why Women From Asia Are Confronting U.S. Fracking: Oil Extraction Equals Plastic Production,” YES! Magazine, 6/25/18
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James Hansen’s legacy:
Scientists reflect on climate change in 1988, 2018,
and 2048
James Hansen’s legacy: Scientists reflect on climate change in 1988, 2018, and 2048
Thirty years ago this week, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to Congress that the age of climate change had arrived.
The announcement shook the political establishment in 1988. George H. W. Bush, in the middle of a heated presidential campaign, vowed to use the “White House effect” to battle the “greenhouse effect.” Four years later, with then-President Bush in attendance, the United States became a founding member of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — which still guides global climate action today.
Of course, it was not enough. Bush’s actions at the time were perceived as weakening the treaty — a missed opportunity. Since 1988, global carbon dioxide emissions have risen 68 percent. At the time of Hansen’s speech, fossil fuels provided about 79 percent of the world’s energy needs. Now, despite every wind turbine and solar panel that’s been installed since, it’s actually worse — 81 percent.
Hansen’s warning was prescient and his predictions were scarily accurate. Every county in every U.S. state has warmed significantly since then. Sea-level rise is accelerating, heavier rains are falling, countless species of plants and animals are struggling to adapt.…—Eric Holthaus, “James Hansen’s legacy: Scientists reflect on climate change in 1988, 2018, and 2048,” Grist, 6/22/18
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These Auto Industry Companies Are Demanding Strong Clean Car Standards, Despite Trump
These Auto Industry Companies Are Demanding Strong Clean Car Standards, Despite Trump
There’s a major sector of the automobile industry that is unwavering in its support of strong clean car standards: auto parts manufacturers.
Car makers, through the powerful Auto Alliance trade group, have flip-flopped on fuel economy and emissions targets for cars and light duty trucks — claiming they aren’t for rollbacks even after lobbying for them. On the other hand, auto parts suppliers have consistently argued on behalf of strong national standards, going against the direction currently pursued by the Trump administration.
Auto Suppliers Tell Trump ‘Don’t Go Backwards’
The Obama-era clean car standards create jobs and and keep the American auto industry competitive globally, the parts makers argue.
“Do not slow down the pace on CAFE [Corporate Average Fuel Economy] standards,” said James Verrier, president and CEO of Borg Warner, a major auto equipment manufacturer, back in February 2017. “We’ve come a long way as an industry and we need to keep going forward. Don’t go backwards and don’t slow down.”…—Ben Jervey, “These Auto Industry Companies Are Demanding Strong Clean Car Standards, Despite Trump,” DeSmogBlog, 6/18/18
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For once, scientists found good news
about West Antarctica
For once, scientists found good news about West Antarctica
At least since 2014, the news has been dire: The West Antarctic ice sheet is losing ice, and its retreat may be unstoppable. It may be only a matter of time (granted, maybe a very long time) before it adds as much as 10 feet to global sea-level rise. Already, ice loss in the region is accelerating, nearly tripling in the past 10 years alone.
But on Thursday, scientists reported they may have discovered a possible mitigating factor, one that could slow or even prevent the ice sheet’s full collapse into the ocean.
Namely, Earth’s mantle deep beneath several key West Antarctic glaciers appears to be rebounding, rising upward as the weight of ice on top of it lifts — and doing so at a rapid rate of 41 millimeters per year, or just over 1½ inches.
“In this particular region, there is massive ice that is going away, that is melting, and we also have a massive reaction of the Earth,” said Valentina Barletta, a researcher with the Technical University of Denmark who led the work published in Science. “However, this reaction is way more than we expected.”…—Chris Mooney, “For once, scientists found good news about West Antarctica,” The Washington Post, 6/21/18
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“Guardians of the Amazon” seize illegal loggers to
protect uncontacted tribe
“Guardians of the Amazon” seize illegal loggers to protect uncontacted tribe

Guardians of the Amazon from the Guajajara tribe: “We patrol, we find the loggers, we destroy their equipment and we send them away. We’ve stopped many loggers. It’s working.” © Guardians of the Amazon
Members of an Amazon tribe patrolling their rainforest reserve to protect uncontacted relatives from illegal loggers have seized a notorious logging gang, burned their truck, and expelled them from the jungle.
The Guardians of the Amazon are from the Guajajara tribe: “We patrol, we find the loggers, we destroy their equipment and we send them away. We’ve stopped many loggers. It’s working.”
The area they are defending, Arariboia, is in the most threatened region in the entire Amazon. It is home to an uncontacted group of Awá Indians, a tribe well known for their affinity with animals and understanding of the forest, who face total annihilation if they come into contact with the loggers.
The Guardians have recently found abandoned Awá shelters close to where the loggers operate.
Although the area should be protected under Brazilian law, the lack of enforcement by the Brazilian government and the extreme danger posed to the uncontacted Awá has forced the Guardians to take matters into their own hands.…—“‘Guardians of the Amazon’” seize illegal loggers to protect uncontacted tribe,” Survival International, 5/22/18
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And That’s A Wrap! Thanks to everyone who sent in news, action announcements and comments this week. Send kudos, rotten tomatoes and your story ideas, your group’s action events, and news of interest to intrepid climate change and environmental justice warriors! Send to editor@thebanner.news.