#ePA

[reasonsforhope]

"The sleeping giant of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stirred.

In the past month, an avalanche of anti-pollution rules, targeting everything from toxic drinking water to planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, have been issued by the agency. Belatedly, the sizable weight of the US federal government is being thrown at longstanding environmental crises, including the climate emergency.

On Thursday [May 18, 2023], the EPA’s month of frenzied activity was crowned by the toughest ever limits upon carbon pollution from America’s power sector, with large, existing coal and gas plants told they must slash their emissions by 90% or face being shut down.

The measure will, the EPA says, wipe out more than 600m tons of carbon emissions over the next two decades, about double what the entire UK emits each year. But even this wasn’t the biggest pollution reduction announced in recent weeks.

In April, new emissions standards for cars and trucks will eliminate an expected 9bn tons of CO2 by the mid-point of the century, while separate rules issued late last year aim to slash hydrofluorocarbons, planet-heating gases used widely in refrigeration and air conditioning, by 4.6bn tons in the same timeframe. Methane, another highly potent greenhouse gas, will be curtailed by 810m tons over the next decade in another EPA edict.

In just a few short months the EPA, diminished and demoralized under Donald Trump, has flexed its regulatory muscles to the extent that 15bn tons of greenhouse gases – equivalent to about three times the US’s carbon pollution, or nearly half of the entire world’s annual fossil fuel emissions – are set to be prevented, transforming the power basis of Americans’ cars and homes in the process...

If last year’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), with its $370bn in clean energy subsidies and enticements for electric car buyers, was the carrot to reducing emissions, the EPA now appears to be bringing a hefty stick.

The IRA should help reduce US emissions by about 40% this decade but the cut needs to be deeper, up to half of 2005 levels, to give the world a chance of avoiding catastrophic heatwaves, wildfires, drought and other climate calamities. The new rules suddenly put America, after years of delay and political rancor, tantalizingly within reach of this...

“It’s clear we’ve reached a pivotal point in human history and it’s on all of us to act right now to protect our future,” said Michael Regan, the administrator of the EPA, in a speech last week at the University of Maryland. The venue was chosen in a nod to the young, climate-concerned voters Joe Biden hopes to court in next year’s presidential election, and who have been dismayed by Biden’s acquiescence to large-scale oil and gas drilling.

“Folks, this is our future we are talking about, and we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity for real climate action,” [Michael Regan, the administrator of the EPA], added. “Failure is not an option, indifference is not an option, inaction is not an option.” ...

It’s not just climate the EPA has acted upon in recent months. There are new standards for chemical plants, such as those that blight the so-called "Cancer Alley" the US, from emitting cancer-causing toxins such as benzene, ethylene oxide and vinyl chloride. New rules curbing mercury, arsenic and lead from industrial facilities have been released, as have tighter limits on emissions of soot and the first ever regulations targeting the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkylsubstances (or PFAS) in drinking water.” ...

For those inside the agency, the breakneck pace has been enervating. “It’s definitely a race against time,” said one senior EPA official, who asked not to be named. “The clock is ticking. It is a sprint through a marathon and it is exhausting.” ...

“We know the work to confront the climate crisis doesn’t stop at strong carbon pollution standards,” said Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club.

“The continued use or expansion of fossil power plants is incompatible with a livable future. Simply put, we must not merely limit the use of fossil fuel electricity – we must end it entirely.”"

-via The Guardian (US), 5/16/23

[mysharona1987]

[liberalsarecool]

Republicans are malware.

[climatecalling]

The sleeping giant of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stirred.

In the past month, an avalanche of anti-pollution rules, targeting everything from toxic drinking water to planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, have been issued by the agency. Belatedly, the sizable weight of the US federal government is being thrown at longstanding environmental crises, including the climate emergency.

On Thursday, the EPA’s month of frenzied activity was crowned by the toughest ever limits upon carbon pollution from America’s power sector, with large, existing coal and gas plants told they must slash their emissions by 90% or face being shut down.

The measure will, the EPA says, wipe out more than 600m tons of carbon emissions over the next two decades, about double what the entire UK emits each year. But even this wasn’t the biggest pollution reduction announced in recent weeks.

In April, new emissions standards for cars and trucks will eliminate an expected 9bn tons of CO2 by the mid-point of the century, while separate rules issued late last year aim to slash hydrofluorocarbons, planet-heating gases used widely in refrigeration and air conditioning, by 4.6bn tons in the same timeframe. Methane, another highly potent greenhouse gas, will be curtailed by 810m tons over the next decade in another EPA edict.

In just a few short months the EPA, diminished and demoralized under Donald Trump, has flexed its regulatory muscles to the extent that 15bn tons of greenhouse gases – equivalent to about three times the US’s carbon pollution, or nearly half of the entire world’s annual fossil fuel emissions – are set to be prevented, transforming the power basis of Americans’ cars and homes in the process.

[teesadutta]

6.30.22

[lalalyssh]

DND variants of my Fire Genasi, Epa 🔥

[anarchistin]

The Environmental Protection Agency approved a component of boat fuel made from discarded plastic that the agency’s own risk formula determined was so hazardous, everyone exposed to the substance continually over a lifetime would be expected to develop cancer.

Current and former EPA scientists said that threat level is unheard of. It is a million times higher than what the agency usually considers acceptable for new chemicals and six times worse than the risk of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Another dangerous ruling by Samuel Alito

The far right justices on the Supreme Court are out of control and appear to be totally lacking concern for the health and wellbeing of their fellow Americans. Samuel Alito decided to trash the meaning of the Clean Water Act by defining “water” in a ridiculously limited way. Now he has opened the floodgates again to massive pollution of our waterways via wetlands. 

Justice Antonin Scalia died more than seven years ago, but the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday shows that this is the “Scalia Court” far more so than when he was alive. [...] The precise legal issue decided in Sackett concerns the geographic scope of the 1972 Clean Water Act. Congress intended the law to end the practice of the nation’s waterways being used as the unregulated dumping ground for industrial pollution. The effect was transformational: For the first time in the nation’s history, any discharge of pollutants into the nation’s waterways absent a permit was unlawful, making it possible to safely fish and swim waters throughout the country.

Congress was not at all shy about the geographic reach of the Clean Water Act. The statute targeted discharges into “navigable waters,” but Congress also expressly defined that to include all “waters of the United States.” Since the mid-1970s, the courts have uniformly agreed that Congress intended with that expansive definition to extend the law’s protections far beyond traditional navigable waters to include the wetlands, intermittent streams and other tributaries that feed into the nation’s major rivers and lakes.

In a unanimous opinion for the court almost 40 years ago, Justice Byron White explained why. While acknowledging that “on a purely linguistic level, it may appear unreasonable to classify ‘lands’ wet or otherwise as ‘waters,’” the court said “such a simplistic response … does justice neither to the problem faced by the [government] nor to the realities of the problem of water pollution that the Clean Water Act was intended to combat.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s opinion in Sackett, however, embraces the very “simplistic response” that the court rightly criticized in 1985. Relying on a dictionary definition of “waters” and ignoring the Clean Water Act’s purpose, the court’s conservative majority has adopted a radically truncated view of the reach of the law’s restriction on water pollution. Under the court’s new view, pollution requires a permit only if it is discharged into waters that are “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water, ‘forming geographic[al] features’ that are described in ordinary parlance as ‘streams … oceans, rivers, and lakes.’” And “wetlands” are covered only if they are “indistinguishably part” of those narrowly defined covered waters. [...] The impact of the majority ruling is potentially enormous. It could lead to the removal of millions of miles of streams and millions of acres of wetlands from the law’s direct protection. Basic protections necessary to ensure clean, healthy water for human consumption and enjoyment will be lost. As highlighted by Justice Elena Kagan’s separate opinion, the court’s opinion “prevents the EPA from keeping our country’s waters clean by regulating adjacent wetlands.”

Nor will the nation’s economy be spared. Myriad businesses rely on clean water for their industrial processes. The fishing, real estate and tourism industries are all highly dependent on the protections that the Clean Water Act has provided over the past half-century.

None of this was compelled by law. Even Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh rejected Alito’s majority view, announcing that he “would stick to the text.” Congress spoke clearly in the Clean Water Act about its ambitions and backed that intent up with deliberately sweeping language to provide the EPA with the discretionary authority it needed to realize those goals. Our nation’s waters are far cleaner as a result. Yet, for the second time in less than a year, an activist Supreme Court has deployed the false label of “separation of powers” to deny the other two branches the legal tools they require to safeguard the public.

[emphasis added]

[ruthbaeddelginsburg]

Does climate change kill people?

If so, how bad is that in dollar terms?

The EPA is deciding this right now.

Fun fact: when they did the math they said the life of a US citizen is worth A LOT more than the life of someone in India.

Public comment ends Feb 13th... Monday!

Here's the link to comment:

https://www.epa.gov/controlling-air-pollution-oil-and-natural-gas-industry/forms/contact-us-about-controlling-air

The site asks if you're human so BOTS AND OTHER NON-HUMANS BE HONEST!!!

But they don't ask if you're a US citizen, and personally I feel like if you're sentient and live on earth you're entitled to an opinion since THIS AFFECTS YOU.

If you have 15 minutes to listen to a podcast this is my cited source:

Listen to: EPA's proposal to raise the cost of carbon is a powerful tool and ethics nightmare - https://one.npr.org/i/1155544378:1155582117

Anyway apparently the way they calculate a human life is by how much a person would pay to not die. If you're like me, the answer to that is "all my money now, and future money, and all my belongings too because I can't enjoy any of it if I'm dead".

I'm guessing it's a common answer. Maybe the EPA is too? But see as a white lady in the global north I just have more money than a brown lady in say The Philippines? Maybe several times more.

Anyway, please leave a comment for the EPA. Let's make this a weekend to remember tumblr exists. I know everyone thinks tumblr died... But like... I think maybe a panel for the EPA can hear our opinions.

[reasonsforhope]

"Seven federal agencies are partnering to implement President Biden’s American Climate Corps, announcing this week they would work together to recruit 20,000 young Americans and fulfill the administration's vision for the new program. 

The goals spelled out in the memorandum of understanding include comprehensively tackling climate change, creating partnerships throughout various levels of government and the private sector, building a diverse corps and serving all American communities.

The agencies—which included the departments of Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Labor and Energy, as well the Environmental Protection Agency and AmeriCorps—also vowed to ensure a “range of compensation and benefits” that open the positions up to a wider array of individuals and to create pathways to “high-quality employment.”  

Leaders from each of the seven agencies will form an executive committee for the Climate Corps, which Biden established in September, that will coordinate efforts with an accompanying working group. They will create the standards for ACC programs, set compensation guidelines and minimum terms of service, develop recruitment strategies, launch a centralized website and establish performance goals and objectives. The ACC groups will, beginning in January, hold listening sessions with potential applicants, labor unions, state and local governments, educational institutions and other stakeholders. 

The working group will also review all federal statutes and hiring authorities to remove any barriers to onboarding for the corps and standardize the practices across all participating agencies. Benefits for corps members will include housing, transportation, health care, child care, educational credit, scholarships and student loan forgiveness, stipends and non-financial services.

As part of the goal of the ACC, agencies will develop the corps so they can transition to “high-quality, family-sustaining careers with mobility potential” in the federal or other sectors. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said the initiative would prepare young people for “good-paying union jobs.” 

Within three weeks of rolling out the ACC, EPA said more than 40,000 people—mostly in the 18-35 age range—expressed interest in joining the corps. The administration set an ambitious goal for getting the program underway, aiming to establish the corps’ first cohort in the summer of 2024. 

The corps members will work in roles related to ecosystem restoration and conservation, reforestation, waterway protection, recycling, energy conservation, clean energy deployment, disaster preparedness and recovery, fire resilience, resilient recreation infrastructure, research and outreach. The administration will look to ensure 40% of the climate-related investments flow to disadvantaged communities as part of its Justice40 initiative.  

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the MOU would allow the ACC to “work across the federal family” to push public projects focused on environmental justice and clean energy. 

“The Climate Corps represents a significant step forward in engaging and nurturing young leaders who are passionate about climate action, furthering our journey towards a sustainable and equitable future,” Regan said. 

The ACC’s executive committee will hold its first meeting within the next 30 days. It will draw support from a new climate hub within AmeriCorps, as well as any staffing the agency heads designate."

-via Government Executive, December 20, 2023

-

This news comes with your regularly scheduled reminder that WE GOT THE AMERICAN CLIMATE CORPS ESTABLISHED LAST YEAR and basically no one know about/remembers it!!! Also if you want more info about the Climate Corps, inc. how to join, you can sign up to get updates here.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A reed warbler sits on the bud of a blooming lotus flower at an ecological park in the city of Daegu, south-east South Korea

Photograph: Yonhap/EPA

[liberalsarecool]

This regulation was long overdue.

#VotingMatters #VoteBlue

[plethoraworldatlas]

House Republicans approved legislation Friday that would slash nearly 40 percent of the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

The funding bill, passed by a 213-203 vote, cuts 39 percent of the EPA’s budget and would be the smallest budget the agency has had in three decades. Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.) and Marc Molinaro (N.Y.) voted against the bill, while Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (Texas) was recorded as voting for it.

This bill:

●Proposes a draconian 40% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, down to levels not seen in more than 30 years;

● Completely zeroes out spending on environmental justice programs;

●Slashes basic clean air and water protections and environmental cleanup programs;

●Rescinds funding for critical Inflation Reduction Act programs like the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund;

●Mandates fossil fuel leases;

●and Dooms imperiled species to extinction.

[todaysdocument]

Hazy Cleveland skyline on July 20, 1973, day of a pollution alert.

Record Group 412: Records of the Environmental Protection Agency

Series: DOCUMERICA: The Environmental Protection Agency's Program to Photographically Document Subjects of Environmental Concern

Image description: The Cleveland skyline, with the furthest buildings disappearing in haze. The entire photo, including the sky, is tinged yellow-orange. 

[olowan-waphiya]

https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2022/07/15/navajo-nation-citizen-science-pollution

Methane pollution is poorly tracked, so Diné activists are monitoring it themselves.

—

From behind her FLIR GF320 infrared camera, Kendra Pinto sees plumes of purple smoke otherwise invisible to the naked eye. They’re full of methane and volatile organic compounds, and they’re wafting out of an oil tank in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin.

Pinto, a member of the Diné (Navajo) community and field advocate with environmental group Earthworks, relies on this device in her fight to keep her community’s air clean. She lives in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation, home to booming oil and gas production.

“When I walk outside, I can’t just think about fresh air. I’m thinking about the VOCs. I’m thinking about the methane that I’m breathing in, because I know what’s out there,” Pinto said. “I see it all the time.”

She’s one of countless citizen scientists across the country who are tracking and reporting environmental harms committed by the oil and gas industry to regulators. And here, there are many: The Environmental Defense Fund estimates that each year, New Mexico’s oil and gas companies emit more than 1.1 million metric tons of methane, a greenhouse gas around 86 times more potent in its warming potential than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Much of this comes from wasted natural gas—$271 million of it in this state alone, according to the EDF. It leaks out of faulty equipment and is intentionally expelled through the processes of venting and flaring, in which excess, unrefined natural gas is released or burned from oil wells and refineries to eliminate waste or reduce pressure buildups.

This is bad for the planet—high volumes of methane released into the atmosphere accelerate the pace of the climate crisis. It’s also bad for the people who live around it who are exposed to the pollutants that typically come along with methane emissions, like benzene, a carcinogen, and PM2.5 and PM10—particulate matter small enough to get lodged deep in the lungs. Pinto said her neighbors experience disproportionately high rates of headaches, nosebleeds, allergies, and respiratory issues, like sinus and throat discomfort.

“I think the scariest thing about methane is it’s odorless,” Pinto said. “It’s a silent killer. And if my neighbors are breathing it in, that’s worrisome.”

These emissions and the fossil fuel development that causes them have long been “insufficiently regulated,” said Jon Goldstein, senior director of regulatory and legislative affairs at EDF. In 2020, then-president Donald Trump rolled back Obama-era regulations on methane that effectively eliminated the requirement that oil and gas companies monitor and repair methane leaks in their infrastructure.

The Senate voted to reinstate them in April 2021, and last November, the Biden administration announced it would introduce even more comprehensive regulations in an interagency effort to crack down on emissions from the oil and gas sector. As part of the plan, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed its own rules, which include a requirement that states reduce methane emissions from thousands of sources nationwide, and a provision that encourages the use of new technology designed to find major leaks. A final methane rule is expected to be implemented later this year.

The Navajo Nation, too, is taking things into its own hands: The Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency is currently considering adopting a permitting program to regulate methane from oil and gas development on its land.

Here, methane emissions from oil and gas companies are 65% higher than the national average, seeping out of pipelines, oil rigs, and the like. The San Juan Basin, some 150 miles northwest of Santa Fe, has received a failing grade from the American Lung Association for ozone pollution, or smog, the result of the combination between VOCs and radiation from sunlight.

Exposure to ozone has been tied to degraded respiratory health and asthma attacks, and it’s typically seen in cities, Goldstein said.

“The San Juan Basin isn’t home to large cities,” he said. In San Juan County, ozone is the result of the widespread build-out of oil and gas wells; approximately half of the county’s 50,000 residents who identify as Indigenous live within half a mile of those wells, according to EDF.

Catching emissions at the source will be crucial to changing this legacy. And where regulators can’t (or won’t) step in, residents like Pinto are. The federal government is now relying upon community monitoring, or work that citizens do to contribute to public understanding of the scope of air pollution near fossil fuel sites, a development that Eric Kills A Hundred, tribal energy program manager at EDF, believes will be “huge.”

The EPA’s methane proposal includes a plan to implement a program to “empower the public to detect and report large emission events for appropriate follow-up by owners and operators,” according to an agency news release.

During the comment period for the EPA’s proposed community monitoring program, members of the petroleum industry questioned whether the agency has the authority to establish it at all, primarily objecting to the idea that air quality monitoring be conducted by entities other than agencies and producers themselves, E&E News reported​​ in May.

But Pinto said groups like Earthworks have a track record of doing this work long before federal regulators began tapping them for their data collection.

“Documenting these types of emissions is important because no one else is really doing it,” she said. “Even the agencies that are regulating this type of thing. Because we’re in a rural area, what can they actually capture when they come out here? Are they going to more than 100 sites?”

Kills A Hundred said these efforts are not only about what the Navajo Nation can contribute to government data on methane pollution, they’re also about empowering the community to play a role in stopping it.

“Having been the stewards of the land for so long,” he said, “it’s just so important for these communities to be active and raise their voice.”