 Air
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President To Announce Weakened Rule on Coal Power Plant Pollution
At a political rally today in West Virginia, President Trump is expected to highlight an announcement that his Administration is eliminating the Clean Power Plan put in place by President Obama and replace it with a rule allowing states to make their own determination about controls on pollution from coal-fired power plants. The New York Times reported, based on accounts by three people familiar with the new rule, that it will give states great flexibility on how to regulate coal power plants — or indeed whether to regulate their pollution at all — as well as providing looser standards for plants that want to “upgrade” their facilities. It is another government boost to the failing coal industry and is a second powerful (bad pun) blow to Obama’s efforts to curb two of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions — cars and old coal plants. As reported by The Times, the “transportation sector and the power sector accounted for more than half of the country’s emissions, according to the agency.”
This comes as an industry research report last week concluded that, “[a]bsent ‘market interventions at a grand scale’ — such as the Trump administration’s plan to force utilities to buy uncompetitive coal-fired power under the mandate of national security — the same trends are accelerating beyond current estimates, and could lead to the country’s coal fleet being nearly halved again by 2030.” At the same time, in Germany they are having the opposite problem — they are investing in renewable power at a breakneck pace but cannot get rid of coal. The Times reported in “the biggest climate story that no one is talking about” that Germany is at risk of missing its ambitious Paris Agreement emissions reductions targets because coal has been “largely left untouched, and now generates 40 percent of the country’s electricity. Much of that is from lignite, a low-grade and particularly dirty form of coal. ”
Why This Matters: Isn’t it ironic? The more Trump tries to prop up coal, the more doomed it seems in the U.S. While Axios and other news outlets may take the view that climate change is divisive in the U.S. (we will save that debate for another day), its antidote — clean energy — is popular across the U.S. with both Republicans and Democrats alike. Check out this recent poll of North Carolina likely voters, as just one example of the broad support for clean energy in the U.S. Similarly, a recent poll of Arizona likely voters by the Center for Western Priorities found that 77% support clean energy development. It is only a matter of time for coal in the U.S. but, unfortunately, in the short run, these policies will be very harmful to our clean air in the U.S.
H/T to loyal reader Todd S for the German coal story – here’s hoping people talk about it more now.
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 Forests
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Photo: Alvin Jornada/Press Democrat
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How to Protect Your Kids During Wildfire Season
Doctors warn that Wildfires often cast ash and other irritants into the air, which may cause breathing problems for children, especially those with underlying respiratory problems. As Phys reported, during recent summers, children living on the West Coast of Canada have been breathing some of the most polluted air on record. This is due to seasonal wildfires, which have burned through vast zones of North America and affected even larger areas with their smoke. AIr pollution can increase the likelihood of developing asthma and can make it easier for kids to catch colds as air pollutants are especially harmful to developing lungs. There are however steps you can take to minimize your child’s exposure to smoke in the air:
- Monitor the air pollution levels in your community with the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI). AQHI is accessible though news, social media or apps (for iOS and Android).
- Stay indoors as much as possible and avoid exercising or any intense physical activity outdoors when AQHI indicates dangerous levels.
- Use a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter in your house, or at least in the rooms where you spend most of your time. If you buy a portable one, you can place it in the living room throughout the day and then move it to your children’s sleeping area at night.
- If you cannot afford the purchase of a HEPA filter (or the subsequent increase in your power bill), try to spend time in indoor community spaces such as libraries, malls or community centres.
- Avoid smoking inside your house. This is important every day, but it becomes especially relevant when smog levels are already off the charts.
- If your child has been diagnosed with allergies or asthma, schedule a visit with their pediatrician before the wildfire season starts so that you can update their prescriptions and stock up on their medications.
- Be observant of symptoms like wheezing, coughs or labored breathing, and any verbal complaints your child expresses. Take them to a walk-in clinic or an emergency department if necessary.
Why This Matters: Wildfires are expected to become more frequent and it’s important that we limit our smoke inhalation as evidence indicates that limiting how much smog we breathe can prevent greater damage to our lungs.
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This story was brought to you by the National Wildlife Federation. To learn more about how the National Wildlife Federation can help you connect your family with the outdoors, click here.
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 Energy
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What’s the Effect of Trump’s Solar Tariffs?
Back in January President Donald Trump made the decision to impose a 30% tariff on imported solar panels in an effort that according to him would bring back solar manufacturing jobs from China (spoiler alert: it didn’t work that way). Renewable energy experts worried that the tariffs would cripple solar installation companies which employ the bulk of the over 260,000 Americans working in the solar industry. Now, over half a year later Inside Climate News took a deeper dive to determine the effect the tariffs have had so far on the booming US solar market. Many developers had stockpiled cheap panels in anticipation of the import fees. China slowed the pace of domestic installations, creating a surplus of cheap panels that could spill into global markets. And U.S. consumers have a big incentive to install solar panels in the next 18 months before U.S. tax incentives begin to phase out.
For now, the domestic solar market is still strong and had been fueled by corporations making solar purchasing agreements as part of their company goals to use more renewable energy. During the first quarter of 2018, the industry added 2.5 gigawatts of solar capacity an increase of 13 percent from a year earlier, according to a June report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). SEIA did note, however, that there have been 9,000 jobs lost because of the tariffs, a figure based largely on information that companies have provided confidentially. The tally includes both layoffs and prospective jobs that were unfilled.
Why This Matters: One of the challenges of assessing the solar tarrifs’ hit on the economy is that solar developers are remaining tight-lipped about whether projects are getting delayed or canceled. So far our domestic solar industry is still going strong but policy experts believe it would be growing even more rapidly if Trump did not intervene. Additionally, if it’s revealed that developers are readily canceling projects, the tariffs could move from being an impediment to posing real and lasting damage.
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 People
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Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty
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San Francisco’s Poop Patrol
This past June, San Francisco elected its 45th mayor, London Breed. Breed is a native of San Francisco and grew up in poverty and public housing, thus making her personally connected to the drastic housing crisis plaguing the city. She’s made the city’s housing affordability crisis a top priority, which is much needed as households making $117,000 now qualify to live in low-income housing projects. As the Blaze described, as of last year, the city’s homeless population was around 7,500 people, with more than 4,300 recorded as “unsheltered.” Many of the indigent live in tents on the city’s sidewalks, scattering debris of all sorts. Concerned with the volume of complaint calls from residents about human waste on the city’s sidewalks, Mayor Breed announced that the city would be launching a dedicated “Poop Patrol” in an effort to clean up the streets. San Francisco’s Poop Patrol will consist of two trucks equipped with steam cleaners, at the cost of about $750,000. The teams begin their mission this week in what WSL-TV referred to as a “soft launch,” but their official start will be in September. The city also plans to open five more “Pit Stop” public restrooms, bringing the total to 27.
In February, the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit surveyed 153 blocks of the city to determine just how filthy it is. When the team presented its findings to Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley, she told them she believes parts of San Francisco are dirtier than some of the world’s poorest slums. Human waste in the streets creates a public health threat as upon drying it can become airborne and spread lethal viruses.
Why This Matters: Aside from sanitation issues, San Francisco’s poop problem is symptomatic of housing costs that have greatly out-paced increases in income. Cities, like San Francisco, with the highest housing costs see the greatest spikes in homelessness, displacement, and residents spending more of their income on rent rather than on savings, pensions, and other forms of equity. As the Huffington Post noted, if America’s biggest cities, where job growth has been concentrating for years, can’t offer anything beyond check-to-check living, the entire country is sleepwalking into a crisis. To make matters worse, Trump-era HUD policies largely ignore multigenerational housing insecurity and make it more difficult for poor Americans to receive housing assistance thus forcing more people into homelessness.
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 Food
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Trump Immigration Policies Pinching MD Crab Businesses
When President Trump cracked down this year on temporary visas for seasonal workers from places like Mexico, the ripple effects were felt almost immediately by Maryland’s seasonal blue crab industry. Without foreign workers to clean (or pick) the crab meat out of the crabs, seafood businesses on Maryland’s eastern shore have suffered mightily – there was no reason to harvest crabs when there is no one to clean them. The “crab crisis” has been ongoing since the spring when the Baltimore Sun reported that nearly half the crab businesses could not find domestic workers to pull the meat out of their crabs. And local seafood processors could no longer hire the temporary workers from abroad that they had in the past — some going back decades. For the first time, the Trump Administration awarded the temporary visas for workers like this on a lottery basis, rather than on a first-come-first-serve basis, and these seafood businesses did not win the lottery.
Harry Phillips, the owner of Russell Hall Seafoods told The Washington Post that “he has lost about 20 customers — hotels in Ocean City, restaurants in Baltimore and seafood shops from as far as Massachusetts — who are turning to vendors with a more reliable supply.” “We used to sell 800 to a thousand pounds of crabmeat a day,” Phillips said, “but now, we’re producing nothing.” Locals residents of Maryland’s Eastern Shore used to clean the crabs, but their children and grandchildren are not interested in these low paying, rural jobs. Their grandchildren have moved to the cities and their homes have been turned into vacation rentals.
Why This Matters: In years past, the Maryland crab industry had suffered from pollution in the Chesapeake Bay caused by farm runoff, and overharvesting by the crab fishers. In 2007, crab fishermen had the worst crab harvest since Bay-wide record keeping began in 1945 due to overfishing and low oxygen dead zones caused by fertilizer runoff, according to a 2008 Report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The states of Maryland and Virginia, along with the EPA, worked to bring those problems under control and crab populations have been on the rebound. And now, ironically, the President’s anti-immigration policies may be doing just as much to help bring back the Bay’s crab populations as any of the pro-environment regulations.
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 Land
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One Cool Thing: New Zealand Government to Plant a Billion Trees
While the U.S. government is busy working to increase timber harvests particularly on federal lands (as part of its firefighting tactics no less), the government of New Zealand is doing the exact opposite — it has committed $240M NZ to replant trees in areas where wider social, environmental, and regional development goals can be achieved. The government has approved the creation of a grants program and partnership fund to plant huge numbers of trees and to provide forestry training and employment opportunities. This program will create up to 1000 jobs, help New Zealand’ meet its climate change targets, repair damaged and eroded landscapes, and convert nonproductive land to forestry, according to the Forestry Minister of New Zealand. Imagine that — a government that sees conservation as a benefit to the environment, the economy and society overall. Well done, mates!
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