This is the 498th edition of the Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue) usually appears twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Here is the May 10 Green Spotlight. More than 26,900 environmentally oriented stories have been rescued to appear in this series since 2006. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.
OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES
OceanDiver writes—The Daily Bucket - crossing paths with sea turtles: “Sea turtles are rare and gentle creatures. Occasionally I’ll cross paths with one when I’m diving in the Caribbean, and I respectfully pause to watch them calmly but purposefully cruising the depth. For one thing, I know they are holding their breath the whole time, but never look out of their element. They are air breathers like me but completely at home in the sea, their only time ashore crawling clumsily across a beach to lay eggs. They are vulnerable then, with most of their eggs doomed to be eaten by people or other predators. And as air-breathers they drown if entangled in fishing gear, intentionally or incidentally. As coral reefs decline, they lose habitat and food, and pollution takes a toll too. All the turtles in the Caribbean are endangered, and these quiet lone creatures soaring through blue reef waters are the survivors, for now. The turtles I see most often are the smallest of them, the Hawksbill. They can descend as far as I do, a hundred feet deep, where the blue water turns deep indigo, searching for sponges to forage. Hawksbills tear off hunks of rough tissue, oblivious to the toxins and embedded prickly glassy spicules sponges use to protect themselves from grazers. This food makes Hawksbill meat dangerous if you eat too much of it, but the turtles are captured for food anyway, sometimes sold under the guise of Green turtles.”
Next Conservatism writes—Earth to Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.: Drop Dead: “The New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. wants subscribers to know that if they cancel their subscriptions because the paper hired Bret Stephens, a neo-conservative columnist whose record on the subject of climate change has ruin contrary to the scientific consensus. In other words, Stevens is that familiar right-wing media creature, a Squealer in the Animal Farm barnyard. [...] The premise of Stephens as a commentator on climate change is that, from the Times’ point of view, it’s a political issue at the foundation, and a matter of debate for which someone with training in political philosophy is a valid voice. Stephens was necessary for ‘balance’ because so many people weigh in on the other tide of the issue, and no matter what their expertise, they’re all really just commentators too, so hiring a contrarian isn’t pointless, it’s fair. Stephens’ debut hewed right to his standard position that we can’t really know what’s happening, and that this climate change ‘data’ is a matter of perspective as much as it is one of empiricism; and moreover, certainty is a mark of hubris and arrogance and unfairness in this trouble moment of mutual divisiveness, so no one of good wise character every says he's really sure.”
CRITTERS AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Besame writes—Daily Bucket: First Los Angeles snowy plover nests in 68 years! “Despite habitat loss and non-native predators like dogs and humans, western snowy plovers nested on three Los Angeles County beaches this year for the first time since 1949. The sparrow-sized small birds live along the shores of the Pacific Coast, but much of the habitat has been taken over by human recreational use and development. Although snowy plovers hang-glide and roost on Los Angeles area beaches in winter, the last nest was seen 68 years ago at Manhattan Beach, now known for volleyball, biking, jogging, and surfing. Conservation efforts in the county to restore the rare coastal beach-dune ecosystem and to limit human impacts have improved habitat and resulted in four nest sites this year.”
Jackie Ostfield via Mary Anne Hitt writes—On Mother's Day and Beyond, Moms Can Lead the Way in Getting Kids Outdoors: “As moms, we can’t wait for this Sunday’s holiday, filled with adorable homemade craft projects, meals with family, and lots of hugs. For our families, spending time outdoors is another way of sharing some love—love of our families and of our natural world. [...] Unfortunately, today’s children are growing up indoors, with fewer opportunities to explore nature than we had in our childhood. In fact, today’s kids spend 50 percent less time outdoors than our generation did as children - isn't that shocking? Some of the barriers to spending time outdoors are lack of public parks that are safe and close to home, insufficient public transportation connected to natural areas, and school budget cuts which have led to reductions in field trips. The recent REI report on women in the outdoors highlights some statistics that trouble us: • 63 percent of women said they could not think of an outdoor female role model. • 6 in 10 women say that men’s interests in outdoor activities are taken more seriously than women’s.”
CLIMATE CHAOS
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Are Deniers Still Getting Science Wrong? Yep. “With deniers starting fires in Washington over the past few months, we’re feeling nostalgic, and would like to talk about some simpler stories about just how wrong deniers get the science. Happily, we found some extra time to check in and see what’s shaking. John Abraham’s latest column in the Guardian covers the newest study correcting Roy Spencer and John Christy’s satellite records. Published in the Journal of the American Meteorological Society in January (seemingly a lifetime ago, back in the pre-inauguration Before Times), the study compares Spencer and Christy’s UAH satellite records with the RSS and NOAA datasets and shows that there are STILL biases in the UAH records. No surprises here. Another frequent flier in the skies of denial is the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker. He’s still pushing the laughable line that temperatures are falling, and STILL basing his columns on blog sources thinner than the Arctic ice he wants readers to think isn’t melting. At Climate Feedback, scientists take him to task, explaining that Booker ‘fundamentally misrepresent[s]’ their data, shocking absolutely no one.”
committed writes—global warming could get worse: “jeez, this aught to scare the crap out of you, if not scared already. while the great gop’r experiment of ignoring science at our peril proceeds, mother nature isn’t waiting to intensive the trends. [...] A new study suggests that Alaska, with its huge stretches of tundra and forest, may be shifting from a net sink, or storehouse, of carbon to a net source. The study focused on one possible cause: warmer temperatures that keep the Arctic tundra from freezing until later in the fall, allowing plant respiration and microbial decomposition — processes that release carbon dioxide — to continue longer. and the net result…. Arctic and near-Arctic soils contain as much or more carbon, in the form of dead vegetation that has accumulated for centuries, than is currently in the atmosphere. By adding some of that carbon back into the atmosphere, a shift from sink to source could intensify warming, potentially leading to even more emissions.”
CANDIDATES, STATE AND DC ECO-RELATED POLITICS
poopdogcomedy writes—WI, OH & PA-Sen: LCV Helps These Dems Continue To Fight Trump's Anti-Environment Agenda: “Received this e-mail today from the League of Conservation Voters:Last week, a few key senators helped avert a major disaster — and successfully passed a spending deal that stripped out Trump’s top priorities. They rejected Trump’s dangerous calls to gut the EPA’s budget, clean energy funding, and regional clean water programs. They also blocked funding for Trump’s border wall, which would have catastrophic impacts on both communities and wildlife. Just yesterday, we scored a major victory for our health, clean air, and our climate when the Senate rejected a bid to permanently block commonsense protections against methane pollution. This ONLY happened because swing-state senators stepped up big. And now they have HUGE targets on their backs.”
ENERGY
Emissions Controls & Carbon Taxes
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—No You’re not CRAzy or Smoking Meth(ane), Things are Actually Looking up. (For now): “=Foremost on everyone’s mind is Trump can-kicking his decision on Paris, which bodes well for the agreement. Sean Spicer (before the Comey debacle sent him to hide in the bushes) told reporters Trump wanted more time to judge the agreement’s impact on American competitiveness and jobs, something of a break from past language that was more decidedly negative. And from the Bureau of Reporting in the Age of Orwell, Rebecca Leber points out that ‘Among things that have disappeared from Trump’s new website, his pledge to withdraw from Paris deal within 100 days.’ Even as Trump erases small bits of history, the website adjustment and his less threatening language about the agreement are reasons for hope. With the decision now scheduled for after the G7 meeting at the end of the month, Trump has a chance to extract some nominal concessions from world leaders who will lobby and ‘fact check’ him on the agreement. The hope now is that he decides to remain in the agreement in exchange for some token assistance for the fossil fuel industry. So the news is as good as the news gets these days.”
Pipelines & Other Fossil Fuel Transport
S Kitchen writes—Is ALEC Behind National Push to Criminalize Environmentalists Protesting Pipelines? “The full story of what is happening in Pennsylvania can be found here. Recently two Pennsylvania State Senators are getting ready to introduce or have introduced legislation that would criminalize environmentalists protesting pipeline construction. The first bill would hold organizers or landowners financially responsible for public costs if they allow protesters to stay on their property, and the second bill, a critical infrastructure bill, would make it a class two felony for demonstrators to ‘inhibit or impede’ pipeline or natural gas operations. The critical infrastructure bill in Pennsylvania is almost the exact same bill that was signed into law in Oklahoma last week. It begs to ask if the American Legislative Exchange Council or other groups representing the oil and gas industry is behind this model legislation. An excerpt to our full story is found below.”
Leslie Salzillo writes—The Dakota Pipeline Is Already Leaking—Yet Trump Consumes The Media: “The Dakota Access Pipeline has not even been completed and it has already experienced a leak. Reports say 84 gallons of oil spilled at a pump station in South Dakota in April, but it wasn’t made public until now. The state government is only obligated to notify the public of oil spills if there is a threat to public health. CNBC reports: The spill, the equivalent of two barrels of oil, occurred on April 4 in Tulare township in Spink County, according to South Dakota’s Department of Environmental and Natural Resources. The $3.8 billion project drew environmental protesters from around the world after the Standing Rock Sioux tribe said the pipeline would desecrate a sacred burial ground and that any oil leak would poison the tribe’s water supply. The sourced Now This news clip adds: Officials say the leak was contained and quickly cleaned up. But indigenous tribes and protestors are outraged and say it’s further proof the pipeline should be halted.”
Rose Mittiga writes—What VA Lawmakers Could Do to Stop Dominion's Proposed Pipelines Dead in their Tracks: “A common refrain among Virginian legislators is that there is nothing they can do to stop Dominion’s proposed Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines (ACP and MVP, respectively). As they tell it, ;The pipelines are a matter for FERC,’ and that's the end of the story. Now, even if this was true, and Virginia legislators could truly do nothing to stop Dominion’s pipelines (politically or legally speaking), they could still join their constituents in protesting Dominion. High profile individuals drawing attention to this issue could be enough to dissuade Dominion. But virtually every current legislator refuses to do even that—unsurprising, given that Dominion has pumped more than $14 million into the Virginia political system over the last 20 years, with nearly equal amounts going to Republicans and Democrats. [...] The claim is not true, however. There are real, positive steps Virginian lawmakers could take, right now, to stop or at least seriously slow down the construction of Dominion’s fracked-gas pipelines. What follows is a discussion of potential tactics, as regards the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), in particular.”
REGULATIONS & PROTECTIONS
Nathan Empsall writes—A letter to the Trump official who instructed a Native woman to “be nice”: On Monday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke visited Bears Ears National Monument, where he showed surprising disrespect towards an indigenous woman, an organizer from the non-profit PANDOS, who was trying to ask him about his failure to meet with Native American leaders. (Video below.) It came across as patronizing and sexist, yet one more example of a federal official marginalizing American Indian voices.[...]
Context: Bears Ears is the first monument created with significant input and support from American Indian tribes, but as part of their attack on all things Obama, Trump and Zinke are considering rescinding its protected status. [...] I have sent the following letter to Secretary Zinke in protest.”
Dan Bacher writes—Group Ties Interior Nominee/Westlands Lobbyist to Arctic Refuge Scientific Fraud: “It looks like Westlands Water District lobbyist David Bernhardt, Trump’s nominee for Interior’s Deputy Secretary, has not only promoted the evisceration of environmental laws and policies protecting Sacramento River and Klamath-Trinity River salmon, but has been involved in ‘scientific fraud’ on the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, according to s prominent whistleblower group. Bernhardt is no stranger to the ‘revolving door’ between corporations and government. He ‘abetted the doctoring of scientific findings about effects of oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in his first stint at Interior,’ as revealed in documents released on May 11 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Bernhardt was the key aide to then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton under the George W. Bush administration when her office ‘substantially rewrote’ official biological assessments to ‘falsely downplay impacts of drilling before she transmitted them to Congress,’ according to a statement from PEER.”
WILDERNESS, NATIONAL FORESTS AND PARKS, OTHER PUBLIC LANDS
Renfriend writes—Help save our National Monuments...“Yesterday the Department of Interior published a Federal Register Notice regarding Trumps/GOP’s efforts to roll back protection on National Monuments that have been designated or increased in size from 1996 on. This includes 27 National Monuments, mostly in western states or in our oceans. You can read the notice here www.gpo.gov/ . For most of them you must comment before July 10, 2017, one (Bear Ears National Monument) has a due date of May 26, 2017. Some suggestions if you do want to save these lands from development: This goes not just for the monument issue but for any NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) comments you make on any issue. 1. Write them yourself. It is easy to do a form letter from one of the many conservation groups and I am not saying you shouldn't, but if they get 1000 comments saying the same thing...they still only have to consider it/answer it once. 1000 different letters have to be gone through individually.”
ECO-ACTION & ECO JUSTICE
Meteor Blades writes—Years of resistance blocks Seneca Lake fracked gas storage project. But the fight is only half won: “Laura Salamendra, a member of We Are Seneca Lake, made a point important to liberal activists everywhere: ‘Don't think people can't make a difference? People can prevail.’ Victorious opponents of the fracked gas part of the Seneca Lake Storage Project won’t get much of a breather, however. Crestwood has not given up its plans for using the salt caverns to store up to 88 million gallons of liquefied petroleum gas—aka propane. This was always planned to be the larger part of the project. Another opposition group, Gas Free Seneca, stated earlier this week that it will now seek to have the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission take back its approval of the LPG project.”
AGRICULTURE, FOOD & GARDENING
Merry Light writes—Saturday Morning Garden Blogging: Starry, starry night...: ”We had a very ‘unsettled’ month, culminating Thursday in a huge thunderstorm with hail, although nothing like the Front Range of Colorado! Our hail was just little bits, but still… Now the weather is getting very spring-like, sunny and in the 70’s. I’m breaking out the shorts tomorrow. Everything is just a little early this year, earlier of course than last year, and the year before, etc. etc. etc. But the iris were blooming in Grand Junction last weekend and the royal purple ones were just hitting their peak. Grand Junction is also full of rose bushes in the public gardens. They are blooming this time of year and last into June. I love them, and they are gorgeous, but I’m happy with just the ones I have, and no more. I actually have a climbing rose that I may get rid of, it’s a pain. I also found a wild climber in one of my young Carolina poplars, it will have to be trimmed. But I did find a lovely red rose in Grand Junction that looked quite neat in growth — bushy, not climbing.”
MISCELLANY
GreenpowerCA writes—Introducing Greenpower's This Week In The Environment: “Our organization, Greenpower, which takes a lead role in advocating for Community Choice Energy programs in California, has begun aggregating what we find to be the most impactful, powerful, quirky, or otherwise interesting environmental news stories each week. You can hop over to our blog to check out our archives (just one other entry at present), but here’s the post from yesterday: Hello, dear reader, and welcome back for our second edition of the This Week in the Environment—our countdown of the environmental news stories we find the most fascinating from the preceding seven days. In addition to informative pieces including some great, in-depth climate reporting, we hope you’ll find some reason for optimism in this edition.”