By Alissa Sasso

As a Trump Administration appointee tries to dismantle EPA’s credibility as a guardian of public health and the environment, other actors have been stepping up. We recently examined retailers leading the way on removing chemicals of concern from the marketplace – but there has also been significant activity from state governments and companies to increase transparency about the chemicals we are exposed to every day and to empower consumers to make informed decisions about their product purchases.

Regulatory steps in the right direction

Government activity has recently focused on cleaning products, for good reason as the contents of these products are typically the biggest mystery for consumers.

Recent developments include:

• In April, Governor Cuomo of New York State announced the Household Cleaning Product Information Program; the guidance is expected to be finalized soon and will require cleaning product manufacturers to disclose ingredients on their websites.
• And, on October 15th, Governor Brown of California signed a first of its kind act into law: SB-258-The Cleaning Product Right to Know Act, which was crafted through a successful NGO-industry negotiation.

Alissa Sasso, Project Manager, Supply Chain, EDF + Business

SB-258 stipulates requirements for disclosing cleaning product ingredients online and on the product label, including for designated chemicals of concern and certain fragrances and contaminants. There are threshold limits for the reporting of designated fragrances and contaminants, as well as some exemption provisions for ingredients claimed to be trade secret, but all in all the bill is a noteworthy step forward. The law goes into effect in 2020 for online disclosure and 2021 for on pack disclosure, giving companies the opportunity to prepare for these requirements and to consider removing chemicals of concern before updating their labels.

Why did industry come to the table on what has historically been a combative issue? Consumer demand for transparency has grown greatly, and several major retailers and product manufacturers have gained a competitive advantage by enhancing their own ingredient disclosure.

Companies seeing ingredient disclosure as a competitive benefit

For a long time, consumers could rely only on “green” companies like Seventh Generation and Method to demonstrate ingredient transparency as a core value. For example, Seventh Generation has listed all cleaning product ingredients on pack since 2008; they’ve listed this information and ingredient function online for even longer. Meanwhile, Method started listing ingredient information (names, function, and safety information) online in 2009 and followed this with on pack disclosure in 2012. But recently, larger companies have realized the competitive advantages of gaining consumer trust through transparency.

SC Johnson originally launched the “What’s Inside?” website in 2009; currently for individual products the site lists non-fragrance ingredients and the function in the product. They also disclose fragrance ingredients at or above 0.09% in a product formula, or the top 10 fragrance ingredients by volume, whichever method discloses more information. Last year, SC Johnson launched an air freshener collection with complete fragrance transparency. In May, SC Johnson published a list of over 368 potential skin allergens – well beyond the European Union (EU) fragrance allergen list – on its website. SC Johnson is already working to identify these allergens at the product level and plans to complete this by 2018.

Unilever announced plans in July to provide fragrance ingredient information online for all products across its portfolio. Fragrance components present in products above 0.01% will be disclosed through SmartLabel™ by the end of 2018. Smartlabel™ allows access to ingredient information for products and food through an app, computer, or telephone. Unilever will also label EU fragrance allergens on pack in the US for their full personal care portfolio. Unilever developed a US version of their ingredient website to provide product information including product ingredients, ingredient selection process and ingredient functions.

Transparency is the new black when it comes to chemical ingredients via @EDFBiz
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Walmart’s 2013 Sustainable Chemistry policy called for suppliers of formulated products to disclose ingredients online by 2015, and all priority chemicals on product packaging by 2018. Walmart updated their policy in September, expanding their full transparency commitment globally and adding the EU fragrance allergens to the ingredients that will be disclosed on pack. It’s important to note that since the policy covers cleaning products its deadline occurs before that of the new California law.

Procter & Gamble (P&G) P&G launched a site earlier this year that discloses preservatives in their products. In August, P&G announced that they have started to reveal all fragrance ingredients used above 0.01% across their product portfolio online and will complete this work by the end of 2019. Clorox shares ingredient name and function for non-fragrances online at the product level and provides a fragrance palette for its entire portfolio. Clorox also labels any EU fragrance allergens if its concentration in a product is greater than 0.01%.

Encouraging developments, but there’s still room for improvement

The new law in California will certainly impact how companies provide ingredient information everywhere in the U.S. But federal action in the US is still lagging. In the meantime, we look to companies to lead on meaningful disclosure practices.

Being ahead of the curve on transparency is good for business. Strong disclosure builds consumer trust in your products and processes and makes regulatory compliance an easier venture.

[Check out EDF’s Rules of Online Disclosure]

Follow Alissa on Twitter, @Alissa_Sasso 

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As a Trump Administration appointee tries to dismantle EPA’s credibility as a guardian of public health and the environment, other actors have been stepping up. We recently examined retailers leading the way on removing chemicals of concern from the marketplace – but there has also been significant activity from state governments and companies to increase […]

Written by Moms Clean Air Force

This was written by Elliott Negin, a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It originally posted at EcoWatch:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt recently proposed eliminating federal tax credits for wind and solar power, arguing that they should “stand on their own and compete against coal and natural gas and other sources” as opposed to “being propped up by tax incentives and other types of credits….”

Stand on their own?

Pruitt surely must be aware that fossil fuels have been feasting at the government trough for at least 100 years. Renewables, by comparison, have received support only since the mid-1990s and, until recently, have had to subsist on scraps.

Perhaps a review of the facts can set Administrator Pruitt straight. There’s a strong case to be made that Congress should terminate subsidies for fossil fuels and extend them for renewables, not the other way around.

A Century (or Two) of Subsidies

To promote domestic energy production, the federal government has been serving the oil and gas industry a smorgasbord of subsidies since the early days of the 20th Century. Companies can deduct the cost of drilling wells, for example, as well as the cost of exploring for and developing oil shale deposits. They even get a domestic manufacturing deduction, which is intended to keep U.S. industries from moving abroad, even though—by the very nature of their business—they can’t move overseas. All told, from 1918 through 2009, the industry’s tax breaks and other subsidies amounted to an average of $4.86 billion annually (in 2010 dollars), according to a 2011 study by DBL Investors, a venture capital firm. Accounting for inflation, that would be $5.53 billion a year today.

The DBL study didn’t include coal due to the lack of data for subsidies going back to the early 1800s, but the federal government has lavished considerably more on the coal industry than on renewables. In 2008 alone, coal received between $3.2 billion and $5.4 billion in subsidies, according to a 2011 Harvard Medical School study in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Meanwhile, wind and other renewable energy technologies, DBL found, averaged only $370 million a year in subsidies between 1994 and 2009, the equivalent of $421 million a year today. The 2009 economic stimulus package did provide $21 billion for renewables, but that support barely began to level the playing field that has tilted in favor of oil and gas for 100 years and coal for more than 200.

A 2009 study by the Environmental Law Institute looked at U.S. energy subsidies since the turn of this century. It found that between 2002 and 2008, the federal government gave fossil fuels six times more than what it gave solar, wind and other renewables. Coal, natural gas and oil benefited from $72.5 billion in subsidies (in 2007 dollars) over that seven-year period, while “traditional” renewable energy sources—mainly wind and solar—received only $12.2 billion. A pie chart from the report shows that 71 percent of federal subsidies went to coal, natural gas and oil, 17 percent—$16.8 billion—went to corn ethanol, and the remaining 12 percent went to traditional renewables.

A new study by Oil Change International brings us up to date. Published earlier this month, it found that federal subsidies in 2015 and 2016 averaged $10.9 billion a year for the oil and gas industry and $3.8 billion for the coal industry. By contrast, the wind industry’s so-called production tax credit, renewed by Congress in December 2015, amounted to $3.3 billion last year, according to a Congress Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate. Unlike the fossil fuel industry’s permanent subsidies, Congress has allowed the wind tax credit to expire six times in the last 20 years, and it is now set to decline incrementally until ending in 2020. Similarly, Congress fixed the solar industry’s investment tax credit at 30 percent of a project’s cost through 2019, but reduced it to 10 percent for commercial projects and zeroed it out for residences by the end of 2021.

The Costs of Pollution

Subsidy numbers tell only part of the story. Besides a century or two of support, the federal government has allowed fossil fuel companies and electric utilities to “externalize” their costs of production and foist them on the public.

Although coal now only generates 30 percent of U.S. electricity, down from 50 percent in 2008, it is still responsible for two-thirds of the electric utility sector’s carbon emissions and is a leading source of toxic pollutants linked to cancer; cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological diseases; and premature death. The 2011 Harvard Medical School study cited above estimated coal’s “life cycle” cost to the country—including its impact on miners, public health, the environment and the climate—at $345 billion a year.

In July 2016, the federal government finally began regulating the more than 1,400 coal ash ponds across the country containing billions of gallons of heavy metals and other byproducts from burning coal. Coal ash, which has been leaching and spilling into local groundwater, wetlands, creeks and rivers, can cause cancer, heart and lung disease, birth defects and neurological damage in humans, and can devastate bird, fish and frog populations.

But that was last year. Since taking office, the Trump administration has been working overtime to bolster coal, which can no longer compete economically with natural gas or renewables. Earlier this year, it rescinded a rule that would have protected waterways from mining waste, and a few months ago it filed a repeal of another Obama-era measure that would have increased mineral royalties on federal lands. More recently, Energy Sec. Rick Perry asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ensure that coal plants can recover all of their costs, whether those plants are needed or not.

Natural gas burns more cleanly than coal, but its drilling sites, processing plants and pipelines leak methane, and its production technique—hydraulic fracturing—can contaminate water supplies and trigger earthquakes. Currently the fuel is responsible for nearly a third of the electric utility sector’s carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the U.S. transportation sector—whose oil-powered engine exhaust exacerbates asthma and likely causes other respiratory problems and heart disease—is now the nation’s largest carbon polluter, edging out the electric utility sector last year for the first time since the late 1970s.

Like the coal industry, the oil and gas industry has friends in high places. Thanks to friendly lawmakers and administrations, natural gas developers are exempt from key provisions of seven major environmental laws that protect air and water from toxic chemicals. Permitting them to flout these critical safeguards forces taxpayers to shoulder the cost of monitoring, remediation and cleanup—if they happen at all.

The Benefits of Clean Energy

Unlike fossil fuels, wind and solar energy do not emit toxic pollutants or greenhouse gases. They also are not subject to price volatility: wind gusts and solar rays are free, so more renewables would help stabilize energy prices. And they are becoming less expensive, more productive, and more reliable every year. According to a recent U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report, power from new wind farms last year cost a third of wind’s price in 2010 and was cheaper than electricity from natural gas plants.

Perhaps the biggest bonus of transitioning to a clean energy system, however, is the fact that the benefits of improved air quality and climate change mitigation far outweigh the cost of implementation, according to a January 2016 DOE study. Conducted by researchers at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the study assessed the impact of standards in 29 states and the District of Columbia that require utilities to increase their use of renewables by a certain percentage by a specific year. Called renewable electricity (or portfolio) standards, they range from California and New York’s ambitious goals of 50 percent by 2030 to Wisconsin’s modest target of 10 percent by 2015.

It turns out that it cost utilities nationwide approximately $1 billion a year between 2010 and 2013—generally the equivalent of less than 2 percent of average statewide retail electricity rates—to comply with the state standards. On the benefit side of the equation, however, standards-spawned renewable technologies in 2013 alone generated $7.4 billion in public health and other societal benefits by reducing carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions. They also saved consumers as much as $1.2 billion by lowering wholesale electricity prices and as much as $3.7 billion by reducing natural gas prices, because more renewable energy on the grid cuts demand—and lowers the price—of natural gas and other power sources that have higher operating costs.

Take Fossil Fuels Off the Dole

If the initial rationale for subsidizing fossil fuels was to encourage their growth, that time has long since passed. The Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, published a fact sheet in May 2016 identifying nine unnecessary oil and gas tax breaks that should be terminated. Repealing the subsidies, according to CAP, would save the U.S. Treasury a minimum of $37.7 billion over the next 10 years.

An August 2016 report for the Council on Foreign Relations by Gilbert Metcalf, an economics professor at Tufts University, concluded that eliminating the three major federal tax incentives for oil and gas production would have a relatively small impact on production and consumption. The three provisions—deductions for “intangible” drilling costs, deductions for oil and gas deposit depletion, and deductions for domestic manufacturing—account for 90 percent of the cost of the subsidies. Ending these tax breaks, Metcalf said, would save the Treasury roughly $4 billion a year and would not appreciably raise oil and gas prices.

At the same time, the relatively new, burgeoning clean energy sector deserves federal support as it gains a foothold in the marketplace. Steve Clemmer, energy research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, made the case in testimony before a House subcommittee last March that Congress should preserve wind and solar tax incentives beyond 2020.

“Until we can transition to national policies that provide more stable, long-term support for clean, low-carbon energy,” he said, “Congress should extend federal tax credits by at least five more years to maintain the sustained orderly growth of the industry and provide more parity and predictability for renewables in the tax code.” Clemmer also recommended new tax credits for investments in low- and zero-carbon technologies and energy storage technologies.

Despite the steady barrage of through-the-looking-glass statements by Trump administration officials, scientific and economic facts still matter. Administrator Pruitt would do well to examine them. Congress should, too, when it considers its tax overhaul bill, which is now being drafted behind closed doors. If they did, perhaps they would recognize that—economically and environmentally—it would be far better for the future of the planet to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and provide more incentives for clean energy.

Photo: Victoria Pickering / Flickr

TELL CONGRESS: NOBODY VOTED TO MAKE AMERICA DIRTY AGAIN

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Written by Judith A. Ross

When I think about architects, I often imagine a smart, creative professional wearing round, black glasses quietly working at a drafting table. This stereotypical — and often inaccurate — image of architects as low-key figures in our society does not take into account the enormous impact that their work has on the way our families live, and also on climate change.

According to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions,  

“Residential and commercial buildings account for almost 39 percent of total U.S. energy consumption and 38 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Nearly all of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the residential and commercial sectors can be attributed to energy use in buildings.”

Yet that stereotype does reflect Chicago architect Tom Jacobs’s view that his profession has been “strangely silent” when it comes to speaking out about what is literally a world-shaking issue.

Determined to change that, Jacobs, along with fellow Chicago architect Peter Exley launched Architects Advocate in July 2016 to give his profession a voice with which to advocate for action on climate change. With unanimous support from his firm’s partners, they combined their professional network connections, invited fellow Chicago architects to join, and publicly launched the initiative in September 2016.

In a recent phone interview Jacobs explained that architects,

“… are on the front lines of healthy communities and clean air – we do this for a living. In the run-up to the national election, one of the two candidates declared that climate change is a hoax. If we remain silent, we basically become complicit. If we do our job right as architects, we make people’s lives better, their communities healthier. Specifically, this was an encouragement for people to vote for candidates who are guided by science.”

Architects Advocate’s members currently include over 800 firms nationwide, and more than 2,300 individual members. Members’ actions range from posting an Architects Advocate banner on their website, to speaking publicly in support of action on climate change.

According to Jacobs, the group’s primary focus is to build support for the bi-partisan Climate Solutions Caucus, asking members to urge their congressional representatives to participate. The caucus was put together by two U.S. congressional representatives from Florida, one from each party. Representatives who wish to join the caucus must do so with a partner from the other side of the aisle. As of this month, the Climate Solutions Caucus boasts 30 Democrats and 30 Republicans for a total of 60 members.

According to Jacobs, Architects Advocate supports the Caucus because it provides a non-partisan solution to working on climate change. He asserts that while political action is healthy and necessary, partisanship is not.

“Being political is something that is genuinely required of us as good and active citizens. That’s a duty that comes with the system. The partisanship piece has gotten so bad, so dysfunctional, that we can’t even talk to the other side. I’m almost more worried about that than I am about the issue itself.”

And because the U.S is a capitalist country, professional voices have the potential to carry some extra weight. According to Jacobs,

“Everything in our society depends so much on the performance of corporations. We have elected a system of self-organization that invests a lot of power into corporations … it’s about money and everything else gets accommodated as long as the money motive is met.”

For that reason, architects have a unique opportunity to tap into the profit motive, while also helping businesses opt for green energy. Companies can now construct buildings that are energy-positive — producing more energy than they need, and returning the excess back to the grid. Jacobs refers to such buildings as “little power plants.” Not only do we have the technology to do this, he says, but those businesses that can make the initial investment…

“…are setting themselves up to do better down the road and increase their competitiveness. It is a hopeful development that could spur rapid change, and really get us off our fossil fuel addiction into a healthy and clean energy future.”

While the current administration is doing everything it can to support the fossil fuel industry — by destroying America’s Clean Power Plan, for example, — Architects Advocate is adding more voices to an ever-growing chorus that is demanding a healthy environment. Speaking as a parent, Jacobs notes,

“That moment when you have children changes everything. I’m looking at the world we live in. What’s my answer going to be when they ask, ‘Why didn’t you guys do anything about this?’ I will not allow anyone to accuse me of not trying.”

TELL CONGRESS: NOBODY VOTED TO MAKE AMERICA DIRTY AGAIN

 

 

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Welcome to Delta Dispatches with hosts, Jacques Hebert & Simone Maloz. On today's special episode, Jacques hosts a panel discussion with the filmmakers of Water/Ways. These four short films about communities facing land loss along Louisiana's imperiled coast. Below is a transcript of this week's Delta Dispatches Podcast. Subscribe to our feed in iTunes and Google Play.     Listen Now! Show Transcript Jacques: Hello, you are listening to Delta Dispatches. We're discussing Louisiana's Coast its people, wildlife and jobs, ...

Read The Full Story

The post Delta Dispatches: Panel Discussion with Filmmakers of Water/Ways appeared first on Restore the Mississippi River Delta.

Welcome to Delta Dispatches with hosts, Jacques Hebert & Simone Maloz. On today's special episode, Jacques hosts a panel discussion with the filmmakers of Water/Ways. These four short films about communities facing land loss along Louisiana's imperiled coast. Below is a transcript of this week's Delta Dispatches Podcast. Subscribe to our feed in iTunes and Google Play.     Listen Now! Show Transcript Jacques: Hello, you are listening to Delta Dispatches. We're discussing Louisiana's Coast its people, wildlife and jobs, ...

Read The Full Story

The post Delta Dispatches: Panel Discussion with Filmmakers of Water/Ways appeared first on Restore the Mississippi River Delta.

Welcome to Delta Dispatches with hosts, Jacques Hebert & Simone Maloz. On today's special episode, Jacques hosts a panel discussion with the filmmakers of Water/Ways. These four short films about communities facing land loss along Louisiana's imperiled coast. Below is a transcript of this week's Delta Dispatches Podcast. Subscribe to our feed in iTunes and Google Play.     Listen Now! Show Transcript Jacques: Hello, you are listening to Delta Dispatches. We're discussing Louisiana's Coast its people, wildlife and jobs, ...

Read The Full Story

The post Delta Dispatches: Panel Discussion with Filmmakers of Water/Ways appeared first on Restore the Mississippi River Delta.

This blog post originally appeared on Climate 411. The Trump Administration is attempting to justify the rollback of crucial environmental and health protections by vastly undervaluing the costs of climate change. The latest safeguards under attack are the Clean Power Plan, the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants, and the Bureau of […]

The post Trump Administration misleads Americans about the cost of climate pollution appeared first on Market Forces.

By Susanne Brooks

This blog post originally appeared on Climate 411.

The Trump Administration is attempting to justify the rollback of crucial environmental and health protections by vastly undervaluing the costs of climate change.

The latest safeguards under attack are the Clean Power Plan, the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants, and the Bureau of Land Management’s vital standards to reduce wasted natural gas from oil and gas facilities on public and tribal lands. They would have health, environmental, and economic benefits worth an estimated billions of dollars annually. But you wouldn’t know it from reading the Administration’s recently revised documents – because of a series of deceptive accounting tricks, including efforts aimed at obscuring the benefits of reducing carbon pollution.

The Trump Administration has used discredited methods to eviscerate the social cost of carbon — an estimate of the costs that carbon pollution inflicts on the public, represented as the dollar value of the total damages from emitting one ton of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere.

The social cost of carbon is a tool that helps ensure that policymakers consider the health, environmental and economic benefits of avoiding extreme weather, rising temperatures and intensifying smog when they make decisions that affect climate pollution.

Climate change harms businesses, families, governments and taxpayers through rising health care costs, destruction of property, increased food prices and more — so it’s common sense that we should properly account for the value of avoiding these harmful outcomes. But the Trump Administration has systematically undermined and attacked the well-established science of climate change – including the social cost of carbon, which has had a target on its back for a while now.

The most up-to-date estimates of the social costs of carbon were developed by an Interagency Working Group (IWG) of experts from a dozen federal agencies. They were developed through a transparent and rigorous process based on the latest peer-reviewed science and economics, and with input from the public and the National Academy of Sciences.

But in March, President Trump cast aside the results of this thorough and consultative process. He issued an executive order aimed at discrediting the IWG estimates, withdrawing them as government policy, and directing federal agencies to pick their own metric.

The executive order leaves federal agencies to fend for themselves without specific guidance, opens the door to extensive legal challenges, and effectively sets up agencies to cook the books to serve the Administration’s goals.

That’s exactly what EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke just did – releasing benefit-cost analyses that massively undervalue the costs of carbon pollution, radically reducing the estimates by up to 97 percent.

The Trump Administration would have us believe that the costs of carbon pollution are near zero. The Administration’s new estimates are only a couple dollars per ton of carbon dioxide – about as much as a cup of coffee or a bus ticket.

Sadly, communities around the country are already seeing just how wrong that is. From longer wildfire seasons to more intense hurricanes, the American public is already bearing the enormous costs of climate change.

Even the IWG estimates – roughly $50 per ton of carbon dioxide based on year 2020 emissions – are almost certainly a conservative lower bound since they do not yet reflect many different types of climate impacts.

A closer look at the Administration’s deceptive math 

There are two major flaws in the Administration’s drastically reduced estimates, both of which fly in the face of established science and economic principles in service of obscuring the very real benefits of climate action.

First, the reduced estimates ignore that carbon emissions are a global pollutant, so they omit important categories of climate change impacts on the United States.

Second, they shortchange the harm to our children and future generations from climate change.

The so-called “domestic-only” estimate

Since the impacts of carbon pollution are felt globally regardless of where the emissions come from, leading researchers and the IWG have appropriately focused on accounting for that full global impact.

In contrast, the Administration’s revised estimates claim to consider “domestic-only” impacts to the United States. But that title is a misnomer – the Administration’s flawed approach ignores important categories of impacts that affect the American public. Climate impacts beyond our borders have costly repercussions for U.S. citizens in the form of changing global migration patterns, economic and political destabilization, and other “spillover” effects.

The National Academy of Sciences specifically rejected the approach the Administration is taking in a report released earlier this year, concluding that:

[C]limate damages to the United States cannot be accurately characterized without accounting for consequences outside U.S. borders.

Economist Richard Newell – president of the think tank Resources for the Future, which is leading an effort to implement the Nation Academy of Sciences’ recommendations to update the social cost of carbon estimates – has criticized the Administration’s approach, saying that considering only direct domestic impacts is:

[U]nnecessarily constrained and unwise for addressing inherently global pollutants like greenhouse gases.

The use of a “domestic-only” number also harms Americans because it undervalues the cost of climate pollution and encourages other countries to similarly undervalue – and over-emit – this pollution.

More than half a dozen leading experts argue:

[The] United States benefits tremendously if other countries set policy based on global rather than local effects.

They also point out that the use of a global estimate can encourage reciprocal climate action elsewhere. For instance, the Canadian government incorporated the U.S. IWG value in its own policy analysis.

Undervaluing the impacts on children and future generations

The Administration’s estimates also use a sharply lower value for the benefits that today’s carbon reductions provide to children and future generations. Again, this is in direct conflict with the weight of expert opinion that supports valuing these impacts even more than we did before the Trump Administration.

The Administration’s estimates “discount” future impacts at 7 percent – a rate significantly higher than the 3 percent central rate of the IWG, and one that is wholly unsupported by the economics literature when it comes to the long-lived intergenerational effects of carbon pollution.

A growing consensus among leading economists supports lower or declining discount rates, as does the Council of Economic Advisors.

As Richard Newell of Resources for the Future points out:

Practically speaking, the use of such a high discount rate means that the effects of our actions on future generations are largely unaccounted for in the new analysis.

In other words, the Administration’s estimates reveal just how little they value protecting American children and generations to come.

The social cost of carbon has profound influence on our policy process and embodies the very real costs of climate change that communities around the country are already feeling.

The Administration’s distortion of these values is illustrative of a frequent strategy of theirs – twisting the facts to validate their desired outcome, and in the process sowing doubt around the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.

Unfortunately, while the math the Administration is using is warped, the costs of climate change are still very real – and the American public is footing the bill.

This blog post originally appeared on Climate 411. The Trump Administration is attempting to justify the rollback of crucial environmental and health protections by vastly undervaluing the costs of climate change. The latest safeguards under attack are the Clean Power Plan, the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants, and the Bureau of […]

Written by Marcia G. Yerman

Just as the tobacco companies worked to brand cigarettes as harmless, the coal industry has pushed to convince the public that their product is safe for the environment.

The phrase “clean coal” entered public consciousness during the 2008 election cycle. Big coal invested millions of dollars (think between $35-$45 million) on television ads promoting a refurbished version of what they offered as a “clean form of energy” that was “environmentally friendly.” It was a branding and marketing initiative to create confusion and disinformation.

There are methodologies to reduce emissions from coal-fired plants, but this does not make coal a clean source of energy. Rather, even a reduction of pollutants yields an unfavorable comparison to wind, solar, and gas as a source of electricity.

What kind of toxins are we discussing? Particulate matter (soot), sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, lead, arsenic, and carbon monoxide.

Why is it important to pay attention to the “clean coal” terminology?

For the express reason that it is part of the strategy to repeal America’s Clean Power Plan, and negate the carbon pollution standards put into play in 2015 to impact coal plants.

Regardless of how you slice it, producing energy from a coal is the dirtiest way to deliver power.

The promise of coal as a clean source of power is usually tied to the process called carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). The carbon dioxide waste emitted is buried underground. The method has plenty of detractors. Ironically, the FY2018 budget proposed by the Trump administration would slash 85 percent from the monies earmarked for the Office of Fossil Energy, tasked with research and development for coal pollution reduction.

Trump has repeatedly used the empty phrase, clean coal: “We’ve ended the war on beautiful, clean coal.”

The bottom line is that coal emissions are responsible for premature deaths and health issues in the general public, and Black Lung disease in coal miners. It is the most carbon intensive fossil fuel. Coal-fired power plants are the most significant source of mercury pollution. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that is particularly dangerous to pregnant women and children. Mercury easily crosses the placenta, and it concentrates in a developing fetus’s blood and organs, including his or her brain, where it can disrupt the developing architecture of that precious organ. Here’s how mercury poisoning works.

Follow the money…

Not surprisingly, hand in hand with the spinmeisters — are the lobbyists. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), has turned up on the Polluter Watch site and Sourcewatch. They also have a connection with ALEC, a group that was profiled by the New York Times in 2012, and described as a “sophisticated operation for shaping public policy at a state-by-state level.”  Unsurprisingly, ACCCE released a press statement on October 10 congratulating Pruitt’s EPA on repealing the Clean Power Plan.

So, the next time you hear the term “clean coal” bandied about, grab your kids and run…because coal is dirty.

TELL CONGRESS: NOBODY VOTED TO MAKE AMERICA DIRTY AGAIN

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By Susanne Brooks

The Trump Administration is attempting to justify the rollback of crucial environmental and health protections by vastly undervaluing the costs of climate change.

The latest safeguards under attack are the Clean Power Plan, the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants, and the Bureau of Land Management’s vital standards to reduce wasted natural gas from oil and gas facilities on public and tribal lands. They would have health, environmental, and economic benefits worth an estimated billions of dollars annually. But you wouldn’t know it from reading the Administration’s recently revised documents – because of a series of deceptive accounting tricks, including efforts aimed at obscuring the benefits of reducing carbon pollution.

The Trump Administration has used discredited methods to eviscerate the social cost of carbon — an estimate of the costs that carbon pollution inflicts on the public, represented as the dollar value of the total damages from emitting one ton of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere.

The social cost of carbon is a tool that helps ensure that policymakers consider the health, environmental and economic benefits of avoiding extreme weather, rising temperatures and intensifying smog when they make decisions that affect climate pollution.

Climate change harms businesses, families, governments and taxpayers through rising health care costs, destruction of property, increased food prices and more — so it’s common sense that we should properly account for the value of avoiding these harmful outcomes. But the Trump Administration has systematically undermined and attacked the well-established science of climate change – including the social cost of carbon, which has had a target on its back for a while now.

The most up-to-date estimates of the social costs of carbon were developed by an Interagency Working Group (IWG) of experts from a dozen federal agencies. They were developed through a transparent and rigorous process based on the latest peer-reviewed science and economics, and with input from the public and the National Academy of Sciences.

But in March, President Trump cast aside the results of this thorough and consultative process. He issued an executive order aimed at discrediting the IWG estimates, withdrawing them as government policy, and directing federal agencies to pick their own metric.

The executive order leaves federal agencies to fend for themselves without specific guidance, opens the door to extensive legal challenges, and effectively sets up agencies to cook the books to serve the Administration’s goals.

That’s exactly what EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke just did – releasing benefit-cost analyses that massively undervalue the costs of carbon pollution, radically reducing the estimates by up to 97 percent.

The Trump Administration would have us believe that the costs of carbon pollution are near zero. The Administration’s new estimates are only a couple dollars per ton of carbon dioxide – about as much as a cup of coffee or a bus ticket.

Sadly, communities around the country are already seeing just how wrong that is. From longer wildfire seasons to more intense hurricanes, the American public is already bearing the enormous costs of climate change.

Even the IWG estimates – roughly $50 per ton of carbon dioxide based on year 2020 emissions – are almost certainly a conservative lower bound since they do not yet reflect many different types of climate impacts.

A closer look at the Administration’s deceptive math 

There are two major flaws in the Administration’s drastically reduced estimates, both of which fly in the face of established science and economic principles in service of obscuring the very real benefits of climate action.

First, the reduced estimates ignore that carbon emissions are a global pollutant, so they omit important categories of climate change impacts on the United States.

Second, they shortchange the harm to our children and future generations from climate change.

The so-called “domestic-only” estimate

Since the impacts of carbon pollution are felt globally regardless of where the emissions come from, leading researchers and the IWG have appropriately focused on accounting for that full global impact.

In contrast, the Administration’s revised estimates claim to consider “domestic-only” impacts to the United States. But that title is a misnomer – the Administration’s flawed approach ignores important categories of impacts that affect the American public. Climate impacts beyond our borders have costly repercussions for U.S. citizens in the form of changing global migration patterns, economic and political destabilization, and other “spillover” effects.

The National Academy of Sciences specifically rejected the approach the Administration is taking in a report released earlier this year, concluding that:

[C]limate damages to the United States cannot be accurately characterized without accounting for consequences outside U.S. borders.

Economist Richard Newell – president of the think tank Resources for the Future, which is leading an effort to implement the Nation Academy of Sciences’ recommendations to update the social cost of carbon estimates – has criticized the Administration’s approach, saying that considering only direct domestic impacts is:

[U]nnecessarily constrained and unwise for addressing inherently global pollutants like greenhouse gases.

The use of a “domestic-only” number also harms Americans because it undervalues the cost of climate pollution and encourages other countries to similarly undervalue – and over-emit – this pollution.

More than half a dozen leading experts argue:

[The] United States benefits tremendously if other countries set policy based on global rather than local effects.

They also point out that the use of a global estimate can encourage reciprocal climate action elsewhere. For instance, the Canadian government incorporated the U.S. IWG value in its own policy analysis.

Undervaluing the impacts on children and future generations

The Administration’s estimates also use a sharply lower value for the benefits that today’s carbon reductions provide to children and future generations. Again, this is in direct conflict with the weight of expert opinion that supports valuing these impacts even more than we did before the Trump Administration.

The Administration’s estimates “discount” future impacts at 7 percent – a rate significantly higher than the 3 percent central rate of the IWG, and one that is wholly unsupported by the economics literature when it comes to the long-lived intergenerational effects of carbon pollution.

A growing consensus among leading economists supports lower or declining discount rates, as does the Council of Economic Advisors.

As Richard Newell of Resources for the Future points out:

Practically speaking, the use of such a high discount rate means that the effects of our actions on future generations are largely unaccounted for in the new analysis.

In other words, the Administration’s estimates reveal just how little they value protecting American children and generations to come.

The social cost of carbon has profound influence on our policy process and embodies the very real costs of climate change that communities around the country are already feeling.

The Administration’s distortion of these values is illustrative of a frequent strategy of theirs – twisting the facts to validate their desired outcome, and in the process sowing doubt around the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.

Unfortunately, while the math the Administration is using is warped, the costs of climate change are still very real – and the American public is footing the bill.

The Trump Administration is attempting to justify the rollback of crucial environmental and health protections by vastly undervaluing the costs of climate change. The latest safeguards under attack are the Clean Power Plan, the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants, and the Bureau of Land Management’s vital standards to reduce wasted […]

By Aileen Nowlan

A recent study from UPS and GreenBiz revealed that 95 percent of surveyed companies recognize the effect that urbanization – particularly air quality and traffic congestion – will have on business growth and sustainability.

Why? Because poor air quality costs the global economy $225 billion dollars every year in lost labor income, according to the World Bank. Air quality also worsens with congestion, which will likely increase as 2.5 billion more people are expected to live in urban areas by 2050.

It’s no surprise then that less than half of the UPS/GreenBiz study participants feel prepared to address these challenges.

The good news is that cities and businesses can turn their anxiety into action by embracing and utilizing disruptive mobile sensor technologies that collect air quality data.

Air pollution monitoring isn’t new – scientists, universities, and government agencies have been collecting air quality data in cities for decades – but only via stationary monitors that are often dispersed miles apart.

Emerging mobile technologies can collect data on a block-to-block scale that empower policy makers, companies, and scientists to determine which communities are hit the hardest by air pollution, and to tailor solutions that best fit each urban landscape.

What the robust growth in air quality sensors means for businesses, the planet and your lungs via…
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Proof of concept with Google

Source: UPS/GreenBiz Urban Logistics Research Study

To test the feasibility of collecting air quality data on a hyperlocal scale, EDF teamed up with partners for a pilot project that turned Google Street View cars in Oakland, California into mobile air quality monitors. These cars were equipped with a sensor platform that measured black carbon, nitric oxide, and nitrogen dioxide – some of the most harmful kinds of air pollutants.

The results from this ambitious effort were revealed earlier this year. The pilot showed that air quality can vary tremendously even within one city block, and that scientists may be able to pinpoint hotspots where air pollution is far worse than previously understood.

Field-tested experience with sensors

Novel sensor technologies, deployed in coordination with companies and municipalities, have also helped inform environmental action beyond Oakland:

Aileen Nowlan is a Manager at EDF + Business . Follow her on Twitter at @aileennow.

• The Methane Detectors Challenge, a groundbreaking partnership between EDF, oil and gas companies, technology developers and other experts catalyzed the development and deployment of stationary, continuous methane monitors that can prevent the loss of valuable product for the oil and gas industry – and reduce pollution. Today, Shell, Statoil and PG&E are all conducting demonstration projects to test out the next-generation of methane sensors.
• EDF’s rapid-response air quality mapping in Houston’s Manchester neighborhood after Hurricane Harvey revealed a plume of cancer-causing benzene that far surpassed health-based guidelines set by most other states. This information, made possible by a partnership with Entanglement Technologies, provided the most robust monitoring of air quality post-Harvey.
• EDF also worked with New Jersey’s largest gas utility – and again with Google – to survey methane leaks in the underground gas lines. This information should help the utility reduce emissions by more than two-thirds while reducing the need for pipe replacements by 1/3.

These and other sensor technologies hold tremendous potential for finding and measuring invisible pollutants that harm our health and change the climate. However, scaling the creation of hyperlocal insights to inform solutions may require help from corporate fleets and city governments.

Embrace the sensor revolution

What if Houston residents could have learned of the benzene risk even faster, from the delivery vans, garbage trucks, buses and taxis already on their streets?

Vehicles and corporate fleets that are the lifeblood of urban areas could become a community’s mobile air quality monitoring system, thereby helping to inform tailored air quality solutions.

For example – cities could relocate ambulances to be closer to anticipated heart attacks on bad air pollution days. Oakland has already examined air quality insights gathered from the mapping project to aid in planning decisions. Oakland community groups are also employing better data to understand their environment and inform advocacy efforts.

Diving into innovation

There are still tough questions to be answered if our effort to turn air quality data into impact is to succeed, including sensor performance over time, impact of viable drive patterns, minimum data quality needed for acquiring actionable insights, and how to combine low-cost stationary and mobile sensors.

The best way to answer these questions is to employ the rapid iteration strategies perfected in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. (Another conclusion of the UPS/GreenBiz survey: test solutions in advance of full scale deployment.)

Advances in sensing technologies may be new, but EDF knows that business partnerships, when combined with scientific expertise, can turn raw data into action and bring innovative solutions to scale around the world.

Follow Aileen on Twitter, @aileennow

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A recent study from UPS and GreenBiz revealed that 95 percent of surveyed companies recognize the effect that urbanization – particularly air quality and traffic congestion – will have on business growth and sustainability. Why? Because poor air quality costs the global economy $225 billion every year in lost labor income, according to the World […]

A recent study from UPS and GreenBiz revealed that 95 percent of surveyed companies recognize the effect that urbanization – particularly air quality and traffic congestion – will have on business growth and sustainability. Why? Because poor air quality costs the global economy $225 billion every year in lost labor income, according to the World […]

Written by Moms Clean Air Force

This was written by Patrice Tomcik, Moms Clean Air Force’s National Oil and Gas Program Coordinator:

My sons go to school half a mile from a natural gas well pad. In their school district, they have five other well pads along with pipelines that feed into the vast spider’s web of pipelines that crisscross the nation.

Natural gas air pollution includes harmful methane and toxic chemicals like benzene, which has been linked to childhood leukemia. That keeps me up at night. You see, my son had leukemia when he was 3 years old (before natural gas operations came to town). He has a much greater chance of having cancer again than the general population. As a mother, I try so hard to keep him healthy so the cancer doesn’t come back.

However, I can’t control the air my son breathes. I depend on our leaders to protect him, just as moms across the country do also. Unfortunately, the federal government is working to stall and revoke vital methane pollution standards that protect children from the oil and gas industry’s harmful air pollution.

Last year, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made progress toward curbing this pollution, by finalizing the Natural Gas Waste Prevention Rule. But now, Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke wants to delay standards for two years, allowing the oil and gas industry to recklessly leak methane and toxic chemicals into the air — putting our children at greater risk for asthma attacks and cancer.

As the mom of a cancer survivor, I just can’t accept that.

Throughout the country, families and communities like mine are being impacted by natural gas industry pollution. Where natural gas is being drilled, compressed, and sent through pipelines, you will find methane leaking along with dangerous co-pollutants. My sons are among the millions of children who go to school near oil and gas operations.

With so many children living, playing, and learning in close proximity to oil and gas production, it is unconscionable that our leaders want to stall and revoke standards that protect our children from this industrial pollution. Moms want to see these standards implemented, not ignored. We have until November 6 to make our voices heard on this issue.

We need standards in place to protect our children from methane and the toxic co-pollutants from the oil and gas industry.

TELL SECRETARY ZINKE: PROTECT OUR CHILDREN FROM NATURAL GAS POLLUTION

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Written by Lori Popkewitz Alper

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed neurobehavioral disorders of childhood. According to the CDC, approximately 11% of children 4-17 years of age (6.4 million) have been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives. And that number is continuing to rise.

Despite extensive time and research devoted to understanding ADHD, the causes are still not completely understood. In an effort to better understand why ADHD is so prevalent, a new study found an increase in ADHD rates in children exposed to a certain type of air pollutant prenatally, and who also suffer hardship at home. This concerning group of air pollutants are called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which come from the burning of wood, trash, and fossil fuels.

It has been established that pregnant low-income women are more likely to live in polluted areas and more likely to have extensive daily stress, and these two factors combined can impact the health of their fetuses. This new study is the first to link breathing polluted air (PAHs) and living in a stressful home environment with an increased likelihood of developing ADHD in children.

I had an opportunity to catch up with the Molly Rauch, the Public Health Policy Director for Moms Clean Air Force to ask her a few questions about the significance of this new study.

What is the significance of this new study linking higher rates of ADHD to children exposed to high prenatal air pollution and chronic stress including a lack of food, clothing, and shelter?

In our country, pollution is not evenly distributed. Poor communities tend to be disproportionately exposed to industrial pollution. This study adds to the growing recognition that we can’t look just at pollution or just at poverty when we study the health impacts of these problems. We need to look at them together. They all too often occur together, and they each may be making the impacts of the other factor worse.

 You mentioned that air pollution “goes beyond asthma impacts.” Could you explain further?

When people think of air pollution, they often think of dirty stuff getting into our lungs and causing problems in that organ. But the health impacts of air pollution can go far beyond the lungs. Air pollution can cause heart attacks and stroke; it can shorten pregnancy and reduce the birth weight of babies; and, as this study shows, it can harm our children’s brains.

How can we bring more attention to this important issue?

We obviously need to support the kind of scientific research that Dr. Perera (the lead author of the new study, and the director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health) is doing, which is contributing so much to this important conversation. I also think it’s important for educators and social workers to learn about the emerging research highlighting the interaction of pollution and poverty. But for most of us, bringing attention to this issue means talking about it in our schools, in our places of worship, in our neighborhoods, and with our elected officials. Write letters, make calls, and ask for solutions. We know how to make this problem better. Less pollution means healthier kids.

How can we support communities impacted by these findings?

If you are trying to support an impacted community in your city or state, it’s important to learn what they want and need instead of telling them what they should do. So, learn about the pollution problems in your area, and then talk to your lawmakers about why clean air is important. Get involved in local initiatives to reduce air pollution, whether it’s electrifying truck fleets or increasing public transportation options or something else. And make your voice heard at the national level, too. Our Representatives and Senators need to hear that you support our federal pollution protections, such as the Clean Air Act. Everyone has the right to breathe clean air.

TELL CONGRESS: NOBODY VOTED TO MAKE AMERICA DIRTY AGAIN