 Water
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Clean Water Rule Watered Down - A Gift To Big Ag and Developers
The Acting EPA Administrator announced yesterday a proposal to drastically cut back the application of the Clean Water Act, under which more than 50% percent of all water bodies in the U.S. will lose their protection, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The rule put in place by the Obama Administration in 2015 (which Trump formally suspended nearly a year ago) ended years of confusion and wrangling in the courts by (1) explicitly defining which waterways were covered, (2) expanding federal protections to all “navigable” waters, and (3) securing the drinking water of more than 117 million Americans. The rollback puts at risk 2 million miles of rivers and streams and 20 million acres of wetlands, in which farmers, industry, and developers can now dump and fill without a federal permit. And the economic impact of clean water is huge too -- each year, 40 million anglers spend $45 billion to fish in rivers, lakes, and streams across the country, and the ripple effects on the economy extend beyond that to all the communities for which tourism is critical.
Administrator Wheeler explained in an op/ed in the Kansas City Star that the new rule greatly expands the list of what is explicitly not covered -- such as water bodies and streams that expand during rainfall events, wetlands that are not "adjacent" to a large water body or river, groundwater, agricultural canals and ditches, converted cropland, stormwater control features, and wastewater and waste treatment systems.
Why This Matters: This ranks with the rollbacks of the Clean Car Rule and the Clean Power Plan and pulling the U.S. from the Paris Agreement as one of the most detrimental economic, health and safety setbacks of the Trump Administration. More than a third of Americans get their water from sources that are no longer protected -- just ask Toledo, Ohio why that matters -- in 2014, toxic pollutants flowed into Lake Erie and turned the southern end of the lake pea green and that shut down businesses and cut off drinking water to half a million people. It also leaves millions of Americans more exposed to flooding and storm surge -- wetlands are our biggest buffer against the hazards caused by our increasingly severe storms. The Administration makes the argument that this makes the law much clearer -- but they can't say that about what it does to our lakes and streams.
But, but but: if you think your State government will protect you, think again. State regulation is unlikely to mitigate the loss of federal protection here. Big Ag, mining and developers have great power in most state capitols. Take, for example, New Mexico where the state government with the EPA's help is considering allowing the water "recycled" from fracking to be used for agriculture and even for drinking.
What You Can Do: The EPA will take comments for 60 days on the repeal of the rule. You can make your voice heard by commenting. You can submit written comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2018-0149, to the Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.
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 Land
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Photo: Adrees Latif/ Reuters
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Trump Admin Ignores Scientists' Warning About Border Wall
Yesterday President Trump's call for a border wall received massive press attention after a heated exchange in the Oval Office with Democratic leaders. The president has vowed to shut down the government if he does not receive $5 billion to build a border wall with questionable efficacy and nebulous costs. He's also made numerous misleading statements about what the wall will accomplish (if anything) and, as it turns out, ignored dire warnings from thousands of scientists noting that an impervious border wall would be an ecological disaster.
As the Washington Post reported,
"Interior Department officials stripped from a key letter to U.S. Customs and Border Protection a number of warnings by career biologists and wildlife managers about the potential impacts of the border wall on the area’s rare cats and other animals, according to new documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. The deletions from a letter that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ultimately sent in 2017, shown in documents provided to the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife, are the latest example of the Trump administration brushing aside career wildlife officials' recommendations when their conclusions clash with political priorities."
Fences will hinder migration of animals such as bighorn sheep, bears, boars, mountain lions, bobcats, endangered wolves, ocelots and possibly even jaguars. Researchers at the University of Texas have warned that a border wall will also pose a risk to biologically important plants and shrubs. Scientific American also explained that while people may think of the land where the border wall will go as desert wasteland it is, in fact, a series of thriving ecosystems. Where New Mexico and Arizona meet Mexico sits one of the largest protected landscapes in North America outside of Alaska and northern Canada. It’s an intersection of deserts and mountains, along with temperate and subtropical climates.
Why This Matters: This proposed iteration of a border wall by President Trump will not keep drugs and the people who smuggle them out of our country. This project is merely a political rallying cry for Trump's base that in addition to wasting taxpayer money will damage precious ecosystems that have been protected through decades of concerted effort.
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 Climate Change
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Arctic Report Card: Warmth Standing Out
NOAA issued its 13th annual Arctic Report Card yesterday, and it chronicled the many records being set there -- none of which are good news. Arctic air temperatures for the past five years (2014-18) have exceeded all previous records since 1900. This year’s report shows that the Arctic region experienced "the second-warmest air temperatures ever recorded; the second-lowest overall sea-ice coverage; lowest recorded winter ice in the Bering Sea; and earlier plankton blooms due to early melting of sea ice in the Bering Sea." Another "highlight" -- warming seas are causing species from warmer environments to spread north into the Arctic Ocean, and species that had been rare in the Arctic have the potential to increase and colonize new areas, including toxin-producing phytoplankton that cause harmful algal blooms and paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) in humans. And fish species are also spreading north, in particular, large fish predators such as cod that are attracted to the warm temperatures and the increasing availability of food. The Arctic is also experiencing a dramatic loss of some of its most beloved creatures -- the abundance of reindeer and caribou has declined 56 percent from a total estimated population of 4.7 million individuals to about 2.1 million individuals over the past two decades. Finally, microplastic contamination is on the rise in the Arctic, posing a threat to seabirds and marine life that can ingest debris.
Why This Matters: Well for most of us, it is all about the wild weather in the mainland U.S. It is mid-December and the temperature as I (Monica) write this is essentially the same in Anchorage as it is in Washington, D.C. The scientists believe that increasing warmth in the Arctic is "coinciding" with abnormal weather events all over the globe, including the heat wave at the North Pole in autumn 2017, a slew of severe winter storms in the eastern United States in 2018, and the extreme cold outbreak in Europe in March 2018 known as "the Beast from the East." But worst of all, especially now, how will Santa pull his sleigh without reindeer???
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NOAA's 2018 Arctic Report Card
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 People
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Pakistan's Civil Society Leaders Resist Coal
As a stance against the Pakistani government's use of coal for power generation a coalition of fisherman and civil society organizations have banded together to announce a 2-week protest march to be held next February to draw attention to the issue. According to Muhammad Ali Shah, chairman of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), (a group which is working for the empowerment of fishermen), the march will be called the "Anti-Thar Coal People’s Caravan" pass through various cities, towns and villages in the Pakistani province of Sindh. Starting from Tharparkar district, the caravan would pass through Umerkot, Sanghar, Nawabshah, Matiari, Hyderabad, Tando Muhammad Khan, Badin, Thatta and Karachi.
The PFF chairman pointed out that two major power plants being constructed in Port Qasim were a major threat to the local environment. In an interview with the Daily Times, Shah said that coal mining in Pakistan's Thar Desert would completely destroy a region as unique as Thar which is home to 1.6 million people, 7 million livestock and several species of wildlife such as blue Indian peafowl, deer, foxes, nilgai and many species of birds and plants. The Thar Desert has coal deposits of around 2,000 trillion cubic feet and it's in this region that Chinese firms have invested billions of dollars to help the Pakistani government build coal-fired power plants. Shah added that “China itself is shutting down its coal-based power plants, but surprisingly, it is helping Pakistan excavate coal."
Why This Matters: Around the world coal causes hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and ending coal power has sparked countless protests from citizens trying to get the attention of their government. In Pakistan, this has been especially complicated because the nation's government has turned to coal to help alleviate years of rolling blackouts that have left residents in the dark and stifled the country’s manufacturing industries, according to the Financial Times. Although Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan had campaigned on a pledge to support renewable energy, Pakistan's current energy woes are making that promise seem more unlikely.
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 Food
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McDonald's to Cut Back Its Use of Beef Raised With Antibiotics
For years, consumers and the medical community have been asking McDonald's, the largest restaurant chain in the world, to reduce the use of antibiotics in the beef in its supply chain. Yesterday the Company announced that they will. But the company explained that it will take some time to accomplish this goal. So the company will collaborate with its suppliers and beef producers to implement the policy in stages.
- First, McDonald’s is partnering with supplying beef producers in its top 10 beef sourcing markets to measure and understand the current usage of antibiotics across a diverse, global supply chain.
- By the end of 2020, based on what they learn, they will establish reduction targets for medically important antibiotics for these markets.
- Starting in 2022 – they will begin to publicly report progress against antibiotic reduction targets across their top 10 beef sourcing markets.
Environmental and health advocates applauded the decision. "The Golden Arches just raised the bar for responsible antibiotic use in meat production. We can't afford to misuse these precious medicines," Matthew Wellington, antibiotics program director for U.S. PIRG Education Fund, stated in a release.
Why This Matters: According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today. With its new policy, McDonald’s is doing its part to help preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics for human and animal health. According to a study commissioned by the U.K. government, in the US in 2016, for antibiotics defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as medically important for humans, over 70 percent (by weight) were sold for use in animals. And U.S. PIRG found that according to data from the FDA, the beef industry is the largest buyer of medically-important antibiotics, accounting for 43 percent of sales. A company the size of McDonald's has sufficient market power to bring those numbers way down. Thank you, Ronald McDonald!
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Keith Kenny, Global VP Sustainability, McDonald's
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 Holidays
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12 Days of Earthmas: Gifts for the Book-Lover
A good book is a gift that keeps on giving so why not send a copy of our picks to all of the readers on your holiday list?
- The Sixth Extinction-- a great intro book for people who aren't necessarily familiar with climate science about the future of our world.
- Oil and Honey-- this book follows the story of an unlikely activist: a Vermont beekeeper protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.
- The Water Will Come-- an important look into coastal resilience and how rising seas will affect humanity.
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