crew foia 2014-006851-0000795
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Allen, Kara[[email protected]]
Allen, Kara
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4/10/2014 2:01 :32 PM
SEEC
Daily Clips
4.10.14
Sustainable Energy Environment
Coalition
Top news stories:
Two California Democrats introduced a bill that would provide a bond program
that
would sell bonds
to
pay for clean energy tax incentives.
SEEC
Member Rep
Zoe Lofgren
and
SEEC Vice
Chair
Rep
Doris
Matsui are calling the proposed bonds victory bonds, after war debt that the Treasury Department
sold
to
fund World Wars I and
II
In
1999, I participated in
my first
beach cleanup with I Love A Clean
San
Diego and
the San
Diego
Surfrider Foundation. The
San
Diego region in
many
ways is defined by our relationship with the ocean.
The Obama administration released a comprehensive strategy document Wednesday aimed
at
reducing
wildfires, which it says are being exacerbated by climate change. The strategy recommends preventive
measures like controlled burns, municipal and state zoning
to
reduce the effects of sprawl and
incorporating watersheds into local management plans.
Senior Environmental Protection Agency officials consulted with at least 21 separate groups
representing a broad range of interests in the
Washington
area and held more than
1
meetings and
events with additional organizations across regional offices as the agency
prepared
its carbon pollution
regulation
for
existing power plants.
A House
subcommittee
passed a bill proposed by Rep. Cory Gardner R-Colo.) on Wednesday aimed
at
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expediting liquefied natural gas expor ts
to U.S.
allies. Gardner proposed the bill in
light of the
crisis in
Ukraine, which has highlighted the dependence
of
Eastern Europe on Russia
for
natural gas supplies.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted Wednesday
to
restrict the
Environmental Protection Agency's EPA) authority
to
block permits
to
dump dredge or fill material into
waterways. The measure would prohibit EPA from revoking a dredge or fill permit after the Army Corps
of Engineers grants the permit.
EPA
would still be able
to
veto the permit while the Army Corps is
considering it.
The
concentration of
carbon dioxide,
the
greenhouse gas
that
drives climate change,
hit
402 parts
per
million this
week
- the highest level recorded in
at
least 800,000 years.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed 9. 78 million in civil penalties
against pipel ine operators for alleged violations of federal law in 2013, the agency announced this week.
Energy news
Sixty-five
percent of
people in
the
United States
support the
renewable fuel standard
RFS) that
mandates
production
and blending
of
a certain amount
of
fuel from renewable sources, according
to
a
survey commissioned by
the
Renewable Fuels Association (RFA).
The Federal Railroad Administration FRA) will propose a new rule requiring all trains carrying oil
to
be
crewed
by
at
least
two
people,
the
agency announced Wednesday. The
FRA
also said
it
planned
to
propose a rule on train securement and that the agency wanted a rulemaking on the
movement
of
hazardous materials in general.
One of the answers
to
that is likely
to
be energy storage, which means using batteries or other
technology such as flywheels
to
capture renewable energy and allow it
to
flow
into
the
power
grid as
needed.
Researchers
at the
Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) developed technology
to
extract carbon dioxide
from
seawater
while simultaneously producing
hydrogen, and
then
converted
the
gasses
into
hydrocarbon liquid fuel.
The developer of a proposed 25 megawatt wind farm off the coast of New Jersey yesterday appealed a
state agency's decision
to
reject
the
project. Cape May, N.J.-based Fishermen's Energy asked
the
state's
Board of Public
Utilities
to
revisit what
would
be the
first
wind project
built
in state waters, about 3
miles
from Atlantic
City.
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Federal regu lators have issued four permits
for
oil and gas wastewater disposal wells in Pennsylvania in
the
past six
months,
and
those
are unlikely to be
the
last.
Industry
groups and researchers are
renewing
their
efforts to find sites in the state where the salt- and metals-laden waste fluids produced from ever
more shale gas wells can be entombed deep underground.
Legislation
intended
to quickly add muscle into Massachusetts' greenhouse gas emissions reduction
program is drawing
fire
from both power producers and clean energy advocates because
it
would lock
the
state into long-term hydropower contracts
with
Canadian
utilities
and hinder
the
state's homegrown
clean energy sector.
Mike Bloomberg,
the United
Nations special
envoy
on cities and climate, said U.S. tariffs on solar cells
are helping a
handful of manufacturers
more than
the
American public. The protectionist policies were
sought mainly by a small number of U.S. solar companies
that
are struggling to compete against Chinese
rivals, Bloomberg said.
India is slowly building upon its installed solar power capacity, thanks to the comprehensive and
ambitious National Solar Mission, state solar policies, and relatively increased enforcement of the
Renewable Purchase Obligation.
Climate news:
Can
science tell us
how
much ethical responsibility different countries bear
for combating
climate
change? It's going
to
try.
According
to
a
draft
of
a
forthcoming Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate
Change IPCC) report, ethics takes a front-and-center role in a forum traditionally reserved for exploring
scienti fic consensus.
A
group
of Senate Democrats is urging President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline
by
the end
of next month, saying the process has already taken much longer than anyone can reasonably
justify.
The
letter,
spearheaded by Sen.
Mary
Landrieu (D-La.), who faces a tough reelection bid
this
year,
requests
that
Obama set a hard deadline
for
Secretary
of
State John Kerry to make his
national interest
determination.
President Obama's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency's clean air office
will
be
getting at
least one no
vote
from a lawmaker who on
Monday
said he
can't support
someone who
accepts that climate change can aggravate
extreme
weather events.
Scheduled for release on Sunday in Berlin, Germany, the
new Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate
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Change IPCC) report
will point
to
many
possible ways-from burying greenhouse
gases to
going nuclear
to encouraging biofuel production-to save humanity from
the
ravages of climate
change.
The drought
that
is withering vegetable and fruit crops in California may push up food prices more
than
the dry spell that ravaged
the
Corn Belt in 2012, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
For the first
time,
San Diego County officials are including effects of climate
change in
their update of
the
local Hazard Mitigation Plan. The region's 18 city
governments, county and
several fire
protection
and
water districts are joining to update the plan - with
the
public's
input
via this online survey.
The director and
some
cast members of "Sharknado 2: The Second One"
appeared
on stage in a
Pasadena hotel
on
Tuesday to preview the upcoming airborne shark sequel and
touched
on
a very
serious topic: climate change.
With the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel
on
Climate Change
preparing
to
release
its long
awaited
report assessing options for fighting global warming, a fossil fuel industry-funded
research
group
made the
case
on April 9 that the phenomenon is actually beneficial to the planet.
In February 2013, the
journal
Frontiers
in
Psychology published a
peer-reviewed
paper which
found that
people
who
reject
climate science are more likely
to
believe
in
conspiracy
theories.
Predictably
enough,
those people didn't like it.
Vast
stretches of
the
Somerset
Levels, an
expanse of
coastal plains
and wetlands
in
southwest
England,
have
spent
much
of
the winter underwater. At
the
peak of the crisis,
some
11,500 hectares (28,420
acres) was submerged as violent storms brought "biblical"
deluges
week after week, for months on end.
The Norwegian government, seeking
to
sustain
oil revenues
that
have
fueled the
country's
prosperity,
has floated plans
to
let drillers push closer than ever
to
the ice cap -- only
to
run into the strongest
opposition yet. The uproar
frames
a larger
and
increasingly contentious fight
over
whether the Arctic
Ocean's
mostly untouched oil
and
gas
reserves
can
be
safely or economically exploited.
The U.K. government said it's forming a "lab" to study ways to boost funding for climate-protection
projects, part of a United Nations-led effort to channel 100 billion a year into the industry by 2020.
Summer is just around the corner and, after a winter like this
one,
it's high time to start making those
vacation plans. Of course, our buoyant spirits were somewhat dampened by the
latest
U.N. climate
report.
Spoiler alert, it wasn't real good, well, unless you're into horrific
droughts,
monster
storms,
heat
waves, mass extinctions, failing crops, dogs
and cats
living together,
mass
hysteria,
in
which case,
jackpot
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Environment Health news:
In
a
letter
to
Obama on Wednesday, all
eight
Republicans
on
the
Senate
Environment
and Public
Works
Committee said the agency's proposed rule would
hurt
economic recovery and represents an overreach
of authority.
China plans to ban imports of coal with high-ash and high-sulfur
content
as the nation seeks
to
l imit the
dirtiest fuels
to
fight pollution. The
world s
largest coal consumer
will
encourage imports of higher
quality supplies, according
to
Ren Lixin, the head of the coal division at the National Energy
Administration.
A bill
that
would
place a
moratorium
on
the
use
of
hydraulic
fracturing,
or
fracking, in oil
drilling
in
California was approved
by
a state Senate panel on Tuesday.
The South Portland Planning Board on Tuesday endorsed a 180-day extension of the moratorium on tar
sands developments, which is set
to
expire May 5.
Those cutbacks - continuing a trend, the Center for Public Integrity found,
that
began in 2006 and
accelerated last year - mean
the
EPA will
conduct
thousands fewer inspections and evaluations each
year, and initiate and conclude thousands
fewer
judicial and administrative enforcement cases.
About the only thing former President Ronald Reagan
doesn t
have named after
him
is a
mountain, not
one recognized
by
the federal government anyway.
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
EPA)
is hosting the Advancing Sustainable Ports
summit
to
mark the kickoff of a
new EPA
initiative to recognize ports
that
take action
to
improve
environmental
performance. EPA
will
also award $4.2
million
in
grant funding for
clean diesel projects at
six U.S. ports.
We
already know
that poverty
and climate change are inextricably linked, and
that
poor communities
often
bare
the
brunt
of
the other negative impacts
of
fossil fuel extraction. We,
as
environmentalists,
can t afford
to
ignore the issue of poverty, and we shouldn t assume that the policies we advocate for
are
automatically
benign in terms
of their
human-scale impact.
Walmart
has recognized that 91 percent of its shoppers would be interested in purchasing organic
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groceries
if
they
were more
affordable, and on Thursday
the
company
announced that
it s going
to
finally give customers
what they want
-- a line of organic foods that costs
the same
as non-organic.
We recently found
out
that K-Cups,
those
single-serve thingers you use in your office s Keurig
coffeemaker
create
so much trash
that
debris from the ones sold just in the last year would circle the
planet almost 11 times.
The
oil
industry has
set
its sights
on
this swath
of the state
with a
proposed
drill site
just
1,000
feet
from
the
u
rans house. That would
mean
noise,
dust
and dozens
of
trucks passing each day. But the
u
rans
are most
concerned
about their
drinking water which they fear could
be
poisoned by toxic
waste
from
the well.
Beijing artist Liang Kegang
returned
from a business trip in
southern
France with wel l-rested lungs and a
small item
of protest
against his
home
city s choking pollution: a glass jar of clean, Provence air.
A
popular
tourist town
in
western Puerto Rico has become the island s first municipality to
ban
plastic
bags. Rincon Mayor Carlos Lopez tells
reporters that
plastic bags have
been
affecting marine life
at
a
nearby
reserve.
He
urged
other
municipalities
to
follow his lead.