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“The House Oversight Committee has widened its inquiry into the oil and gas industry’s role in spreading disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming, calling on top executives from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, as well as the lobby groups American Petroleum Institute and the United States Chamber of Commerce, to testify before Congress next month,” the New York Times reports.
Sara Goddard: A fossil fuel industry under fire. Will it last?
“Just five of the world’s largest meat and dairy companies, among them JBS, Tyson and Cargill, are responsible for more emissions than oil giants like Exxon and BP,” Green Queen reports.
Sara Goddard: How to fight climate change with climate-friendly food choices.
California took steps toward becoming the first state to ban companies from using the recycling symbol unless they can prove the material is in fact recycled, the New York Times reports.
Related from Green That Life:
Washington Post: “President Biden on Tuesday warned of a ‘code red’ moment on climate change as he toured two northeastern states ravaged by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, while his administration prepared to ask Congress for billions in federal aid to respond to last week’s storm and other natural disasters.”
“Editors of 220 leading medical, nursing and public-health journals from around the world called for urgent action on climate change, in a joint editorial published on Sunday,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Axios: “This is the first time so many publications have come together to issue such a joint statement to world leaders, underscoring the severity of the situation — with the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Lancet and the British Medical Journal among those issuing the warning.”
“Nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster in the past three months,” the Washington Post reports.
“On top of that, 64 percent live in places that experienced a multiday heat wave — phenomena that are not officially deemed disasters but are considered the most dangerous form of extreme weather.”
After our town was slammed this week by the third “50-year flood” in the last ten years, Sara Goddard writes that we need to acknowledge that “we’re in a climate crisis and we shouldn’t call it anything else.”
“The remnants of Hurricane Ida brought a tropical deluge of unprecedented proportions to the New York City metro area on Wednesday night into Thursday,” Axios reports.
“The flooding that resulted from the heavy rainfall shut down Newark Airport, and turned city and country roads in all five boroughs and surrounding areas of New Jersey and Pennsylvania into rivers.”
“The historic deluge clearly demonstrates that climate change is winning the battle between a rapidly shifting climate and outdated infrastructure.”
“A federal judge on Monday threw out a major Trump administration rule scaling back federal protections for streams, marshes and wetlands across the United States, reversing one of the previous administration’s most significant environmental rollbacks,” the Washington Post reports.
“The Department of Health and Human Services is preparing to launch an office that will treat climate change as a public health issue, designed to address what the White House says are health risks including those that disproportionately affect poor and minority communities,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The new office is likely to spur initiatives touching on many aspects of healthcare… It is expected to offer protections for populations most at risk—including the elderly, minorities, rural communities and children—and could eventually lead to policies compelling hospitals and other care facilities to reduce carbon emissions.”
Related from Green That Life: Opening our eyes to climate change myths.
“Hurricane Ida explosively intensified overnight into a high-end Category 4 storm, and is bringing ‘catastrophic effects’ to Louisiana as it gears up to be one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the state’s recorded history,” Axios reports.
“Maximum sustained winds were measured by aircraft to be 150 mph, just shy of Category 5 intensity.”
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) told CNN that Ida “will be one of the strongest hurricanes that hit anywhere in Louisiana since at least the 1850s,”
“Hurricane Ida is rapidly gaining strength Saturday over the unusually warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and is predicted to hit southeastern Louisiana as an ‘extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm on Sunday evening,’ Axios reports.
Sara Goddard: “The unbridled impunity with which fossil fuel companies and plastics producers greenwash their activities is deeply entrenched. It’s accepted with ignorance or cynical resignation by a nation that lacks robust, centralized climate leadership in tackling a planetary crisis of epic proportions.”
“Oil producers act with abandon, fueled with cash and no guardrails… But it’s not just the power of money that ensures industry dominance. Energy companies exert an enormous amount of influence in policy-making at every level of government…”
“And let’s not forget the influence that the industry exerts on individual lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, alike.”
Gizmodo: “It turns out ignoring bedrock environmental laws may not have been the best choice for a multibillion-dollar construction project.”
“Photos show former President Donald Trump’s border wall in deep disrepair after summer monsoon rains literally blew floodgates off their hinges.”
New York Times: “Something extraordinary happened last Saturday at the frigid high point of the Greenland ice sheet, two miles in the sky and more than 500 miles above the Arctic Circle: It rained for the first time.”
“The rain at a research station — not just a few drops or a drizzle but a stream for several hours, as temperatures rose slightly above freezing — is yet another troubling sign of a changing Arctic, which is warming faster than any other region on the planet.”
New York Times: “The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it is banning a common pesticide, widely used since 1965 on fruits and vegetables, from use on food crops because it has been linked to neurological damage in children.”
Bill Gates told the Wall Street Journal he would spend $1.5 billion over three years on infrastructure projects aimed at slowing the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change.
However, he will likely shift funding for the biggest projects to Europe and Asia instead if the bipartisan infrastructure package doesn’t become law.
“Nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years, though there is still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future, a major new United Nations scientific report has concluded,” the New York Times reports.
“Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades, a hotter future that is now essentially locked in.”
“At 1.5 degrees of warming, scientists have found, the dangers grow considerably. Nearly 1 billion people worldwide could swelter in more frequent life-threatening heat waves. Hundreds of millions more would struggle for water because of severe droughts.”
Green That Life: Opening our eyes to climate change myths.
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.