EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler Leaves the Environment In Worse Shape

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler - The consequences of a coal man at the helm of the EPA

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler will leave environmental damage as his legacy. His latest decision causes harm to both human health and the environment. He chose to ignore his own scientists and keep a 2012 standard for particulate matter pollution. An EPA report recommends a standard for nine micrograms per cubic meter, 25 percent stronger than the current limit of 12 micrograms. The current standard results in more than 52,0000 premature deaths a year.

Wheeler claimed that the EPA under the Trump administration “has continued America’s leadership in clear air.” He also claimed that “maintaining these important standards will ensure Americans can continue to breathe some of the cleanest air on the planet.” Perhaps he should read the EPA report that contradicts his statement. 

Lower-income communities and people of color bear a greater burden

Particulate matter pollution affects low-income communities and communities of color more. as studies show. A 2015 study found that low-income communities experience higher concentrations of air pollution. Those in poverty had a 1.35 times higher burden than the overall population while blacks had a 1.54 times higher burden, according to a 2018 study of particulate matter pollution. A 2016 study found that racial isolation is associated with long term pollution exposure. People of color have more exposure to particulate matter pollution than do whites, a 2012 study found.

“Low-income communities and communities of color will bear the brunt of Wheeler’s heartless decision,” said Al Armendariz, Sierra Club’s Senior Director of Federal Campaigns, in a statement. “The people most in need of strong science-based standards are the ones who will suffer.”

The health and environmental effects of particulate matter pollution

There are two types of particulate matter: PM10 (10 micrometers or smaller) and PM2.5 (2.5 micrometers and smaller). Both types can cause a slew of health problems, including nonfatal heart attacks, irregular heartbeat, aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, increased respiratory symptoms, and even premature death in people with heart or lung disease. An estimated three percent of cardiopulmonary and five percent of lung cancer deaths are attributable to particulate matter globally. People with heart or lung disease, children, and elderly adults are the ones most likely to be affected by particulate matter pollution.

Particulate matter also causes environmental damage. Particulate matter can be carried over long distances and can settle on the ground or water. Lakes and streams can become acidic as a result of particulate pollution. The nutrient balance in large river basins and coastal waters can change. Nutrients in the soil can be depleted. Sensitive forests and farm crops can be damaged, while the diversity of ecosystems is affected. Particulate matter can also contribute to acid rain effects.

Andrew Wheeler, the fossil fuel lobbyist 

Before Wheeler took the helm of the EPA, he worked as an energy lobbyist. His clients included Murray Energy Corporation, the largest coal mining company in the U.S. Wheeler is the vice president of the Washington Coal Club, a federation of over 300 coal producers, lawmakers, business leaders, and policy experts. He loves coal. 

Before working as a lobbyist, he worked as a legislative aide to Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, one of the biggest climate change deniers in Congress. Inhofe referred to climate change as “the greatest hoax” ever perpetrated and said in a radio interview that teaching children about climate change is “brainwashing.” When Wheeler’s nomination was announced, Inhofe praised the choice of the fossil fuel lobbyist. 

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is a man who puts profit above people, companies above nature. It should come as no surprise that one of his last acts as the head of the EPA is one that demonstrates no regard for human health.


Image by Donkey Hotey on Flickr

What Will President Biden’s Environmental Policies Look Like?

Renewable energy like this wind farm is key to Biden's environmental policies

Now that the electoral college voted for Joe Biden as the next president, it’s time to consider his environmental policies. They will definitely not look anything like Donald Trump’s policies that opened the nation’s air, water, and soil up to fossil fuel companies to exploit. 

Biden’s first days in office will certainly include undoing the damage of Trump’s policies. He has pledged to reinstate the U.S. commitment to the Paris climate accord. Biden will not need Senate approval since the U.S. involvement with the accord was set up by an executive action

A 100 percent clean energy economy and net zero-emissions by 2050

Achieving a 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050 is one of the key parts of Biden’s environmental policies and climate change plan. Using the federal government procurement system, which spends $500 billion annually, as a driver to meet the 100 percent clean energy goal is one of those measures. Making U.S. government buildings, facilities, and installations more efficient and environmentally-friendly is another measure. 

Biden’s plan recognizes that transportation is a key sector as it is the fastest-growing source of climate pollution. He pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in several ways. One of those ways is by using the Clean Air Act. Another way is developing new fuel economy standards to ensure 100 percent of new sales for light and medium-duty vehicles will be electric.

Protecting nature

Biden’s environmental policies include a climate change plan committed to protecting nature. The exact opposite of President Trump’s administration. Instead of offering up public lands to fossil fuel and mining companies, Biden pledges to protect biodiversity, slow extinction rates, and conserve 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. Biden’s plan also includes protecting areas impacted by President Trump’s executive actions. The president-elect vows to permanently protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other areas that face environmental destructions due to Trump’s policies.

He pledges to ban new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters and create programs to enhance reforestation and develop renewables on federal lands and waters. He has a goal to double offshore wind by 2030. 

Investing in clean energy, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles

Biden’s environmental policies also include pledges to make a federal investment of $1.7 trillion in clean energy over the next 10 years. He also pledges to leverage private sector and state and local investments to total more than $5 trillion in investments. This summer, Biden mentioned the $90 billion investment the Obama administration made in clean energy. “We’ll do it again, but this time bigger and faster and smarter,” Biden said. “We’re not just going to tinker around the edges. We’re going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity and meet this moment in history.”  

The Biden plan will incentivize clean technology deployment in several ways. One of those is by improving the energy efficiency of the nation’s buildings. He pledges to set a goal of reducing the carbon footprint of the U.S. building stock by 50 percent by 2035. Part of that includes directing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to make housing for low-income communities more efficient and directing the U.S. Department of Energy to redouble efforts to accelerate new energy efficiency standards for household appliances.

Biden pledges to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles. One of the barriers to accelerating the deployment of EVs is the lack of charging stations. Biden’s plan includes working with governors and mayors to support deploying more than 500,000 new public charging outlets by 2030. He will also restore the full EV tax credit.

The next great railroad revolution

Biden’s plan includes starting the second great railroad revolution. The first part of his plan is bringing higher speed rail to the Northeast Corridor.

He pledges to shrink the travel time from Washington, D.C. to New York by half. He also pledges to make progress on California’s high-speed rail project, start constructing end-to-end high-speed rail across the Midwest and West, and begin construction of a high-speed rail system that will connect the coasts. 


Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash

The Move to Keep Fossil Fuels In the Ground

An idle rig. Keep fossil fuels in the ground

The covid-19 pandemic failed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. According to the World Meteorological Organization, global carbon emissions continue to increase. Perhaps one of the reasons is that most of the world’s electricity still comes from fossil fuels. And fossil fuel exploration and extraction continues despite the pandemic.

Fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change. Coal, oil, and gas comprise nearly 80 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution. The world is on track to produce more than twice as many fossil fuels by 2030 than is consistent with limiting the rise in global temperature to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. The world’s fossil fuel reserves contain enough carbon to push the world beyond the 1.5C goal. 

Phasing-out existing stockpiles and the production of fossil fuels is in line with the 1.5C goal. The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty calls for the phasing out of both stockpiles and production. A treaty would put the supply-side of fossil fuels in center focus by creating an international agreement to deal with greenhouse gas emissions at source. A treaty would help keep large amounts of fossil fuels in the ground. 

Why a treaty is necessary

The latest UN Environment Program report on the emissions gap found that nationally determined contributions of emissions imply a temperature rise of three degrees Celsius by 2100. If the emissions gas is not closed by 2030, the goal of staying below two degrees Celsius is out of reach. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest findings calls for a reduction of carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and for investments in fossil fuel extraction and power generation to decrease by up to $.85 trillion by 2050. 

The global demand for oil, gas, and coal is growing. Fossil fuels comprise 81 percent of energy use, according to the International Energy Agency. Fossil fuel use will increase for decades, the IEA projects. However, to keep warming below two degrees Celsius, 80 percent of fossil fuel reserves should not be burned, according to a report by Carbon Tracker. 

Some countries have policies in place to phase out fossil fuels

Although international treaties neglect supply-side solutions, countries are moving to keep fossil fuels in the ground. New Zealand, France, Belize, and Costa Rica have moratoriums on oil exploration in place. France, Germany, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Uruguay have moratoriums on hydraulic fracturing (fracking). The UK, Spain, and China have set timetables for phasing out existing fossil fuels. Several other countries committed to divesting from fossil fuels. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund divested from coal stocks. Ireland’s Parliament voted to require its sovereign wealth fund to divest from fossil fuel stocks.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance launched in November 2017 as a coalition of national and sub-national governments, businesses, and organizations to advance the transition from coal to clean energy. Over 25 nations are part of the Alliance. These nations have pledged to phase out coal-fired power generation. To be a member of the Alliance, nations must make public declarations they will not build new, unabated coal-fired power stations and will phase out existing ones.

Phasing out subsidies

Fossil fuel subsidies occur in all stages of fossil fuel production. The Production Gap report by the UNEP looked at production plans in 10 key countries. Seven of the countries (China, the United States, Russia, India, Australia, Indonesia, and Canada) are top fossil fuel producers. Three are significant producers with strong climate goals (Germany, Norway, and the UK). What the report found out is that the production of fossil fuels in nearly every national plan exceeds the 2030 levels projected by the IEA. Subsidy reform is a tool governments can use to help make their fossil fuel plans line up with climate goals. 

The will to act

The world is already experiencing climate change impacts. The 2020 hurricane season so far has had 30 named tropical storms and forced forecasters to use the Greek letters of the alphabet. That breaks the record set in 2005 when there were 28 named storms. Hurricanes are not the only climate change impacts this year. California has experienced a record number of devastating wildfires, with 4.1 million acres and counting burned in 2020. 

Do countries have the will to act to keep fossil fuels in the ground so the world can keep warming to the 1.5C goal? Only time will tell


Photo by WORKSITE Ltd. on Unsplash

Lawsuits Challenge Trump’s Rollback of Obama-Era Power Plant Wastewater Standards

A facility that needs rigorous power plant wastewater standards.

One hallmark of the Trump administration is rolling back Obama-era environmental standards. Environmental groups fight the rollbacks with lawsuits. Nine environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in early November over its rollback of national powerplant wastewater standards limiting water pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Filed in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s decision to roll back the Obama-era national standard. The EPA’s rollback allows coal-fired power plants to dump wastewater filled with toxic chemicals and heavy metals into rivers and lakes. Toxic heavy metals from coal power plant wastewater cause severe health problems, including cancer, reproductive issues, and impacts on children’s IQ. Wastewater also harms aquatic life. 

The Obama-era rule enhancine power plant wastewater standards

The Obama-era rule prohibited power plants from dumping fly ash or bottom ash wastewater into U.S. waters. It also imposed strict limits on toxic metals and other contaminants in sludge from power plants. Experts projected that the rule would have reduced an estimated 1.4 billion pounds a year of toxic heavy metals and other pollutants in waterways. 

Called the Steam Electric Effluent Limitations and Guidelines (ELG) rule, the EPA issued the rule in 2015. It was the nation’s first pollution standards to limit the number of toxic chemicals and heavy metals power plants can dump into the water. The rule required power plants to achieve zero discharge of fly ash and bottom ash wastewater and set strict limits on discharges of arsenic, mercury, selenium, and nitrogen in scrubber sludge wastewater. The rule also required power plants to implement a closed-looped/zero discharge system for wastewater to remove coal ash in boilers. 

“This absurd step backward is little more than a gift to the dirty fossil fuels industry at the expense of people’s health, endangered wildlife, and water quality,” said Hannah Connor, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Many power plants could easily adopt affordable technologies that dramatically reduce toxic discharges, but with this rule, the EPA is telling their polluter friends not to bother with these common-sense measures.”

The Southern Environmental Law Center lawsuit

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit in early November challenging the Trump administration’s rollback of the Obama-era rule. The lawsuit filed in the  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was filed on behalf of the Stokes County Branch of the NAACP, Winyah Rivers Alliance, Appalachian Voices, and Good Stewards of Rockingham, which represent communities downstream and close to coal plants in the Carolinas. 

Two power plants represent the dangers that the rollback of the rule poses. Santee Cooper’s Winyah Plant in South Carolina is set to decommission all its coal-fired units by 2027. The company may not be required to implement pollution controls or meet the weaker limits under the new rule thanks to a loophole. Duke Energy installed new technology to limit wastewater pollution at its plants in North Carolina as required by the 2015 rule. The new rule allows the company to pollute more. Communities in North Carolina experienced increases of byproducts in their treated drinking water that cause cancer due to bromide pollution from upstream coal-fired power plants. 

“This illegal rollback of clean water protections by the Trump administration allows dirty coal-burning plants to dump more toxic substances into our rivers, lakes, and drinking water reservoirs and exposes our communities to more cancer-causing pollution,” said Senior Attorney Frank Holleman, in a statement. “ Instead of protecting people, this administration made it easier for the most polluting and worst run coal-fired plants to dump poisons into the waterways our communities depend upon.”

The good news

There is good news, not just for power plant wastewater standards, but for planet earth: on January 20, 2021, President Trump will leave office. He leaves behind an environmental mess that former Vice-President Joe Biden will be left to clean up. A glance at Biden’s environmental policies indicates he will reinstate Obama-era environmental standards.

Trump Administration Bails Out the Declining Oil and Gas Industry

The oil and gas industry bailout by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 crises costs taxpayers millions while small businesses fail.

The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department began a corporate bailout in March. Since then, oil and gas companies issued $99.3 billion in new bonds, a report by Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, and BailoutWatch found. 

The Federal Reserve bought debt from 19 oil and gas companies, and those companies have since sold debt investors over $60 billion in new bonds. Their bond sales represent about 60 percent of energy debt issuance during that period. Twelve of the 19 companies received downgrades of their short-term debt, long-term debt, credit, or default ratings from major credit rating agencies since the bailouts in March. 

The total tally of new bonds issued this year by oil and gas companies is $129 million, which is a record going back at least a decade. This year marked the highest level of energy debt issued since 2010. “This surge in borrowing was made possible by the Fed’s promise to purchase large quantities of corporate debt,” the report stated. 

There is a big gap between the favorable treatment given to corporations and the treatment of municipalities, small businesses, and individuals, the report noted. States and municipalities have been offered much more restrictive loan terms than have private companies although municipal bonds are far less likely to default than corporate debt. Chevron and Wisconsin serve as good examples. The Federal Reserve bought a Chevron bond at a rate of about 0.9 percent over four years. Wisconsin has the same credit rating as Chevron but has to pay about 1.3 percent over three years. 

“This bailout is an unprecedented rescue of a dying industry,” said co-author Alan Zibel, research director of Public Citizen’s Corporate Presidency Project, in a statement.

“Instead of bailing out climate-destroying fossil fuel companies, we must assist small businesses, local governments, and individuals facing dire financial straits.”

Alan Zibel

The oil and gas industry declined until Trump’s corporate bailout

Earlier this year, before the pandemic and the oil price war between Russia and Saudia Arabia caused global demand to sink to an all-time low, the oil and gas industry “showed unmistakable signs of decline,” according to the report. Moody’s. The credit rating agency forecast in February a higher risk of default and a harder time borrowing for the oil industry. Some companies may not have made it if the Federal Reserve had not stepped in. 

Despite the intervention of the Federal Reserve, the oil and gas industry will continue to decline. The consulting firm Rystad Energy forecasts that up to 190 oil-related bankruptcies by the end of 2022 if prices stay low. The firm also warns that investors, including the Federal Reserve, are less likely to be repaid. The report by the three environmental organizations points out that “a bad investment by the central bank can harm taxpayers.”

A total of 12 fossil fuel companies that received investments by the Federal Reserve received downgrades of their debt or credit ratings from major rating agencies since March. EQT Corporation is one of those companies, and its debt was downgraded to junk by Moody’s before the pandemic. Yet the company was able to sell $500 million in bonds in the second quarter of this year. 

The Bureau of Land Management bails out a company that owes back taxes

The Federal Reserve is not the only one to give bailouts to oil companies. The Bureau of Land Management provided US Realm Powder River a 96 percent discount on 23 federal leases in Wyoming even though it owes $4 million in unpaid federal royalties and failed to pay local taxes for the last three years. According to a report by the Western Values Project, US Realm Powder River is either the sole or majority lessee on 16 Bureau of land management leases on over 7,976 acres that were given a reduced royalty rate to 0.5 percent. 

“Once again, the Trump administration has opted to put polluters over people without a second thought while taxpayers foot the bill,” said Western Values Project Director Jayson O’Neill. 

What you can do

There is something you can do if you are tired of the oil and gas industry bailout from the government. Vote on November 3. Let your voice be heard at the ballot box.


Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash

The Climate of Our Moral Character

Strangers on a subway platform all staring into the phones

Energy, capital, and human well-being

The growing climate activism among the world’s youth opens a fresh debate on the moral character of a civilization that would foreclose the future in a last gasp effort to preserve, as Donald Trump sees it, the “wealth underneath our feet.” American wealth, Trump says, is “based on energy” and that he won’t “jeopardize that for dreams and windmills.”

To have a substantive discussion about wealth, dreams, windmills, and morality, we have to go beyond anything Trump says or does, of course. Especially when the discussion revolves around morality. And so we shall.

I will give Mr. Trump this, however: energy is wealth. Certainly in the capitalistic, transactional sense, there is wealth in energy, but limiting our worldview, as Trump does, to the simple equation of wealth accumulation in terms of capital transfer is, as Greta Thunberg so eloquently said at the UN last week, a fantasy of unlimited growth. It is, many argue, an immoral fantasy. One in which most of us live.

We all want energy, in this simple sense, to power the machinery of modern life. Without question, humanity has flourished from the “wealth beneath our feet.” As such, there is an argument for the moral good of pulling up the trapped sunlight in ever more sophisticated methods of extraction. This makes some of us uncomfortable. How can we consider a fossil fuel economy a “good” thing, when we see the environmental destruction, social injustice, unrestrained greed, and existential climate crises that come with it?

I suggest that the “good” we derive from access to fossil energy is not a moral grounding for humanity. Moral good derives from it, just as a moral wrong. Fossil fuel extraction is a method, a tactic, technology. It is not a basis upon which to hang any moral argument. It is amoral. Just like our president.

Moral energy

In order to consider issues of energy and morality, we must think past our current age, even past the totality of human history. Throughout the world, most of us underpin our moral sense in some form of religious ideation. We apply an abstract notion of “God” as an external moral force guiding our behavior.

Indeed, we are a storytelling species, framing our perception of consciousness and reality on personal and social narratives. In one form or another, this is arguably inevitable. Not having a story is not having a life.

The problem with pinning the ultimate nature of morality on any particular myth is that we pin our allegiance, and thus our humanity, on the story, not the underlying principle the story intends to illustrate. We learn to hate those who don’t know or don’t believe in our story. Or at least dismiss them as deluded.

What if morality is rooted in biology?

Evolution, biology, and moral character

Writing in New Scientist, neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland argues against the common notion that our self-interested survival precludes altruism. In Deliver us from evil: How biology, not religion, made humans moral,” Churchland says that it is through the evolution of our mammalian brains and our unrivaled ability of learning and abstraction that we find our moral ground. The plasticity of our brain and flexibility in our social interactions necessitates innate selflessness. Without it, we would never survive. We would have never come to be.

This is generally true of all mammals and even birds to some degree. Care for the other — kin, kith, and beyond. But no other species has climbed so high or developed such complex social interaction as Homo sapiens.

All this is enormously oversimplified, of course. It seems like war, cruelty, dishonesty, gluttony, egocentrism, violence, and greed are all part of the human package. Ages of philosophers have posited the reasons why. It will be on the minds of philosophers when the last breath of humanity flickers out, sooner or later.

If it is essentially the ability of selfless adaptation and learning from which our morality arises, we can then take agency and responsibility, not just for ourselves (though certainly that’s where it must start), not just for the greedy accumulation of wealth, not just to fearfully cling to dogma, but for a better world of our making.

Fossil fuels entrench us in a Faustian bargain. It has corrupted the human spirit even as we have thrived in its heat. It is the cognitive dissonance that isolates us from our moral grounding.

We act morally when we learn and adapt to the world around us and in a manner that the moral climate of our character transcends the generations. It is here that we risk losing ourselves entirely. 

Leading Experts Make the Case for Climate Action in the United States

Human impacts and climate action

A new, cross-disciplinary white paper authored by three prominent international climate experts for the US-based Universal Ecological Fund refutes the notion that taking proactive actions to mitigate and adapt to rapid climate warming runs contrary to U.S. domestic economic interests.

It was precisely that contention that President Donald J. Trump used to justify his intention to back the US out of its commitment to the Paris Climate Accord, to which then President Barack Obama committed the US in December 2015.

In contrast to numerous other studies that have sought to assess the multitude of impacts and effects climate warming has and will continue to have over the course of the 21st century, the FEU-US study, “The Economic Case for Climate Action in the United States,” zooms in on economic losses resulting from extreme weather events, and on health costs of exposure to air pollution that result from burning fossil fuels. Continue reading “Leading Experts Make the Case for Climate Action in the United States”