It's our world

The Environmental Defense Fund posted on "Vital Signs" about the latest political ploy which will endanger the environment as well as many people.

Endangerment Finding repeal ignores decades of evidence, 

would harm millions of people.

"...under the Trump administration, the EPA promised fossil fuel companies “concierge, white-glove service” and offered some of the nation’s worst polluters opportunities to evade clean air safeguards. 

Here are three key points from that newsletter.

Climate pollution worsens asthma and other health issues

Without the Endangerment Finding, the air we breathe is about to get a lot dirtier and more dangerous. That’s because it is foundational to a host of vital clean air protections that limit pollution from power plants, oil and gas operations and vehicles. 

(as an Asthma sufferer with Bronchiectasis (a COPD) I will not be able to go for walks safely.)

Climate pollution fuels hurricanes, heat waves and more dangerous weather    

A mountain of scientific evidence shows that climate pollution is warming the planet and driving more frequent and intense heat waves, storms, floods and wildfires.

As a survivor of the floods of Hurricane Helene, and having relatives in Florida who frequently have hurricanes, this is obvious to all of us!

Asheville NC Sept 29, 2024

Climate pollution makes gas, insurance more expensive  

Rising home insurance premiums, driven in part by climate-fueled extreme weather events, are placing severe financial burdens on Americans. 

Home insurance costs have doubled in parts of many states, including in California, Florida, Colorado and Louisiana over the last several years, making it impossible for some Americans to purchase insurance at all. In many of these disaster-prone regions home values have, at the same time, dropped by tens of thousands of dollars.

Driving a gas-powered car is about to get more expensive too. The Trump administration’s own analysis shows that getting rid of the Endangerment Finding will raise the price you pay at the pump, increasing gas prices by 25 cents per gallon by 2035. 

Without the Endangerment Finding, there will also be fewer jobs to help people pay for all these rising costs. Repealing the Endangerment Finding and vehicle standards is projected to cost 450,000 jobs across the country over the next decade. Those job losses have already begun: since the start of the year, the administration has cancelled $25 billion in clean energy manufacturing investments — a move that’s cost 34,000 American jobs.  

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Katharine Hayhoe also gives some environmental notes:

With the Winter Olympics in full swing, athletes are using their platforms to encourage action on the climate crisis. As the Associated Press reports, a coalition of Winter Olympians and other athletes delivered a petition with 21,000 signatures to the International Olympic Committee, urging the IOC to consider ending fossil fuel sponsorships.

and

 Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show drew attention to Puerto Rico’s ailing power grid, which has been battered by climate-fueled hurricanes.

and

Entertainment companies, sports franchises, media outlets and other cultural institutions won’t prioritize climate unless consumers demand it. So, demand it.

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Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. 

- Howard Zinn

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Sorry Canadian friends. I didn't watch the game. I was watching the US win gold in Women's Single Figure Skating.

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Well, the doctors found another bug in my lungs – so I’m on antibiotics again. There were two recommended to treat this rare bug, but one of them makes me so dizzy I cannot walk. The other was one which I thought I was allergic to for the last 60 years. But I am giving it a try. My sense is that it wasn’t the antibiotic, sulfa, which perhaps made me throw up, but that it was the disease process which I already had. Anyway, I’ve now had 3 doses and I’m hoping that my tummy can accept it.

EPA regulation proposed to elminate pollutions from Power Plants

 

An EPA proposal to (almost) eliminate climate pollution from power plants

May 11, 20235:01 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition on NPR

"Coal and gas-fired power plants would have to eliminate nearly all their climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions in just a little over a decade, under proposed regulations issued today by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Owners of those plants have been allowed to spew climate-warming carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere for more than a century. If these proposed regulations are finalized, they would come close to putting a stop to that practice.

"The EPA's proposed rule sends an unequivocal signal to American power plant operators: the era of unlimited carbon pollution is over," wrote Dan Lashof, U.S. Director at the World Resources Institute, in a statement responding to the proposal.

The regulations are based on technologies that capture and then store deep underground 90% of carbon dioxide from coal and gas-fired plants.

Environmental groups welcomed the rules, which are almost certain to face opposition and a legal challenge from the fossil fuel industry and its allies.

"EPA's proposal relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution and seizes the momentum already underway in the power sector to move toward a cleaner future," said EPA Administrator Michael Regan.

The regulations also would help the U.S. meet its obligations under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and they would be crucial in meeting President Biden's goal of zeroing out carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 2035."

FROM NPR

Today's quote:

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. -T.S. Eliot, poet ( 1888-1965)