Earth Matters is a Daily Kos compendium of wonderful, disturbing, and hideous news briefs about the environment.
• Sen. Jeff Merkley introduces aggressive proposals to ban fossil fuel investing: The Oregon Democrat on Wednesday introduced the "Protecting America's Economy From the Carbon Bubble Act,” which would prohibit financial institutions from making new loans for or investments in fossil fuel companies or financing new fossil fuel projects. Part of the idea behind the bill, Merkley said, is to help prevent huge losses if fossil fuel prices collapse during the transition to clean energy. That goes far beyond bills other congressional Democrats have introduced to increase transparency about fossil-fuel investing and climate impacts. Merkley also introduced the "Sustainable International Financial Institutions Act,” which would mandate that the U.S. use its clout in international financial institutions to promote fossil fuel divestment. The bills follow on recent release of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s 196-page report, Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System. It concludes that the climate crisis “poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy.” Said Merkley in a prepared statement, "How we invest our money reflects our values today and will drive our future tomorrow. Fossil fuel investments play a key role in accelerating climate chaos, which continues to spiral further and further out of control and claim lives and livelihoods in the process."
• “Free market” groups seek end of wind power incentive: In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, 41 conservative organizations led by the American Energy Alliance seek an end to the wind energy production tax credit that has spurred the adding of green power to the electric grid since 1992. They wrote: "The PTC has run its course. Tempting though it may be, Congress should not fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy. Though billions of dollars have been squandered already, we urge Congress to cut off the wind welfare tap." The tax credit, which has previously been extended several times, is set to expire on Dec. 31. The letter signers have made no similar call for ending fossil fuel subsidies. That might have something to do with the fact the AEA has been heavily funded by the Koch brothers, Exxon Mobil, and other fossil fuel corporations and lobbyists. The organization was founded in 2008 by Thomas Pyle, previously a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association and for Koch Industries. AEA has been seriously attacking the credit since 2014, lacing its campaign with gobs of disinformation and ignoring the climate crisis. Renewable energy advocates and many House Democrats support an extension of the PTC and passage of other green energy tax incentives to help the renewables industry recover from fall-out of the Pandemic Recession. H.R. 2, the $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that the House passed July 1, includes a five-year PTC extension. The Senate has, of course, ignored the bill.
• Study indicates that shift to harsher climate in East Africa 400,000 years ago made ancestral humans more adaptable: “A cascade of ancient ecological changes led to alternating periods of resource abundance and scarcity, likely helping to make us the most adaptable [hominid] species that ever existed,” said paleoanthropologist and lead author Rick Potts of the Smithsonian Institution. One of the adaptations was a shift to more sophisticated tools made of stone only available at a considerable distance from the dig site in what is now Kenya. Scientists believe the makers of the tools may have traded with other hominids for the stone.
• For the first time on the presidential debate stage, a question on “environmental justice” was asked: NBC News White House correspondent and moderator Kristen Welker asked Donald Trump, “Some people of color are much more likely to live near oil refineries and chemical plants in Texas. There are families who worry the plants near them are making them sick. Your administration has rolled back regulations on these kinds of facilities. Why should these families give you another four years in office?” He dodged, saying that these people “are making a lot of money, more money than they’ve ever made.” That prompted a response from Biden, who indicated that, unlike the squatter in the White House, he actually understands the meaning of environmental justice and the need to take action to repair the damage it has done to communities of color and of low income from pollution and climate change:
“Those people live on what they call ‘fence line’ — he doesn’t understand this,” the former veep said of his rival. “They live near chemical plants that, in fact, pollute — chemical plants and oil plants and refineries that pollute.”
Biden then talked about his childhood growing up near refineries in Delaware, oil slicks on the window of his mom’s car, and how many of the state’s residents at the time were being diagnosed with and dying of cancer. “The fact is those frontline communities, does not matter what you’re paying them, it matters how you keep them safe,” he said, before suggesting that the government impose restrictions on pollutants going into those communities.
• Tesla has best quarter ever: The electric car and battery maker delivered a record 145,036 automobiles in the third quarter, an indication that it may reach or come close to its ambitious goal of 500,000 vehicles in 2020 despite the impacts of the pandemic. To do so, it must build more than 181,000 vehicles by the end of December. The company also generated record cash flow and record profits for the fifth quarter in a row, all the while building three new factories. Revenue for the quarter rose 39% from a year ago to $8.77 billion and net profit rose 131% to $331 million. With the currently estimated 200,000-car capacity of the Shanghai plant in hand, Tesla could reach a million EV sales next year.
• GM debuts its electric Hummer: Tesla haters say the 1,000 horsepower, tri-motor SUV scheduled for delivery late next year will overwhelm Tesla’s Cybertruck, which is expected to come on the market around the same time. But while the Cybertruck tri-motor is priced around $69,000, the Hummer is slated to go for $112,595. Dan Gearino at Inside Climate News reports that while enthusiasm for electric vehicles is growing, only 2% of U.S. sales were electric last year, so there is a long way to go to replace all vehicles now running on internal combustion engines. A survey released this week by Resources for the Future found that 65% of respondents have never driven an EV or know someone who has, 40% would buy an EV, 30% would not, and the rest aren’t interested in buying any vehicle or aren’t sure.
• Beetle’s tough armor provides ideas for future airplane construction: A study by Purdue University civil engineer Pablo Zavattieri found that the exoskeleton of Phloeodes diabolicus, known in English as the diabolical ironclad beetle, can handle everything from being pecked by hungry birds to being run over by a car without being crushed. That’s good for the inch-long beetle native to southern California’s woodlands because it can’t escape from predators by flying away. The secret behind its smash resistance? The architecture of the bug’s armor is a “laminated microstructure of which provide mechanical interlocking and toughening at critical strains, while avoiding catastrophic failure.” When scientists tested just how tough the beetle’s protection is, the layered, jigsaw-like armor held out against compression of more than 39,000 times its own weight. The shells of other local species cracked under less than a third of that. The design could, Zavattieri told GreenWire, replace some or all of the rivets, bolts, screws, welds, and glue that engineers now use when building aircraft and other structures. The U.S. Air Force funded the study as part of an $8 billion effort to evaluate what animals such as mantis shrimp and bighorn sheep can teach us about manufacturing impact-resistant materials.
• Brookings Institution scrutinizes carbon-cutting plans of 100 largest U.S. cities: Only 45 have passed greenhouse gas reduction targets and baseline GHG inventories. Generally, these plans set a goal of cutting emissions 80% by 2050. The total population of these cities is 40 million, around 12% of the total U.S. population and 60% of the total population of the 100 largest U.S. cities. Eleven of those 45 cities are in California. Overall, about two-thirds are lagging in their effort to cut emissions. Greensboro, North Carolina, performed best with emissions 20% below its target levels, and Chicago performed the worst with emissions 50% higher than its target. While the study gave credit to cities for making the effort, the researchers noted that there is much room left “for improvement in terms of reach, rigor, and ambition.”