President Biden, in a speech on Wednesday and before an audience at a former coal plant in Massachusetts since converted to support an offshore windfarm project, told the audience the following:

“Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world”… 

“Right now, there are millions of people suffering from extreme heat at home so my team is also working with the states to deploy $385m right now. For the first time, states will be able to use federal funds to pay for air conditioners in homes, set up community cooling centers in schools where people can get through these extreme heat crises.”   “As president, I have a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger, and the health of our citizens and our communities are literally at stake.”

“So my message today is this: since Congress is not acting as it should – and these guys here are, but we’re not getting many Republican votes – this is an emergency.” 

Biden’s actions include $2.3bn in funding to help communities prepare for heatwaves, droughts and floods, new guidance that allows the federal government to help provide cooling centers and air conditioning, and new planned offshore wind energy leases for the Gulf of Mexico coast.

“Right now, there are millions of people suffering from extreme heat at home so my team is also working with the states to deploy $385m right now. For the first time, states will be able to use federal funds to pay for air conditioners in homes, set up community cooling centers in schools where people can get through these extreme heat crises,” Biden went on to explain.

“For too long we have been waiting for a single piece of legislation, and a single Senate vote, to take bold action on our climate crisis,” a group of senators including the leading progressives Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, wrote to Biden this week.  “As a result, we urge you to put us on an emergency footing and aggressively use your executive powers to address the climate crisis.”

Lessons from a Hotter World

Scientists say that heat waves are increasing at a faster rate in Europe than in almost any other part of the world.

Scorching heat baked much of Western Europe this week, with temperatures reaching more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas.

The United Kingdom experienced major disruptions to its transportation networks, and France battled wildfires.

So yes, it’s hot and dry (a continuing drought over many parts of the state), and certainly increasingly muggy for those of us living here in sunny Hawaii.  It’s also difficult to ignore the present extreme weather events now breaking all time temperature records around the world, spurring freak and deadly storms events, warming our oceans, and raising sea levels.

The heat wave presently impacting the US and Europe has set at least 60 records, peaked this week as a historic bout of exceptional temperatures killed more than 1,000 people in Europe. Britain set a record-high temperature Tuesday as several weather stations recorded temperatures which exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time ever.

Cause and Effect –

White House officials are scrambling to advance the president’s environmental agenda after talks with Sen. Joe Manchin (D) recently stalled in a third round political compromise.  In the meantime, Europe struggles to meet climate commitments given Putin’s retaliation for Ukraine sanctions amid its dependency on Russian gas and oil.  What was an EU-sanctioned and European driven methodical transition off fossil fuels has become an all-out route.  At least the Europeans have a plan, which is more than we can say for the US Congress, we can’t even seem to agree on the time of day..

The destruction of President Biden’s climate efforts by Republicans and one Democrat—Joe Manchin from the coal state of West Virginia—has the White House readying to declare a climate emergency, and readying to take needed executive climate action. Nobody likes this option, but the GasOilPollution party holding to the interests of its paymasters, addressing climate policy through congressional means is for all intent and purposes DOA.

President Biden’s efforts since taking office has been to demonstrate his firm belief in good governance through bipartisanship, unfortunately for the Country and planet Earth for that matter, his efforts in re-establishing America a global leader addressing climate change have failed, and certainly not because of the time invested or effort. Biden has, and is, facing a firewall of political resistance that goes against all meaningful climate action and reason.  He must now assume a strongman rule that runs counter to democratic norms and govern by fiat, and for this president, the emerging climate emergency is a new governing reality that has moved the County’s welfare past politics.

Scientists have said the world must slash emissions in half this decade, and phase them out entirely by 2050, if catastrophically worse heatwaves, floods, drought and other climate impacts are to be averted. The US will fall about halfway short of such a goal absent any significant congressional action, even with presidential orders, analysts have forecast.

“President Biden cannot do it alone,” said Heather Zichal, chief executive of the American Clean Power Association. “We urge Congress to get back to the table and come to a consensus on clean energy provisions that our country so desperately needs.”

Ironically, some of the world’s biggest petro-polluters have been advocating planting trees as the magic bullet for carbon neutrality, as if they are Switzerland. Their carbon capture slogan goes like this, “…we are placing the planet on a path to a carbon neutrality (in some undetermined future) by planting millions of trees.”

The problem, accelerating global warming is creating the perfect storm for the burning of the world’s forests now on fire at unprecedented rates, and releasing massive amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The rising temperature consequences don’t end there, as ice sheets are melting in the northern and southern latitudes releasing massive volumes of methane (a highly potent greenhouse gas) compounding this human experiment on the path to extinction, as humans continue to burn fossil fuels and emitting GHG pollutants into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates.

Business as usual in unusual times

For over 30 years, science has shared with policymakers and the public hard evidence and science-based predictions of climate change and the resulting planetary warming feedback loops we’re now beginning to experience.

Beyond the increased warming and associated burning of entire forest systems, the remaining frozen areas in the northern and southern latitudes are now melting at rates not seen since humans walk the Earth, as the ice and tundra meltdown is further releasing massive amounts of once-frozen methane (a highly potent greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere. All this was predicted in publicly available cause-and-effect climate-science findings. These are but two examples of climate-feedback loops compounding today’s global heating of the planet, and making the job of reversing this trend that much more urgent.

However, it’s business as usual for the fossil fuel moguls and their agents in both political parties, as petrol profits are at an all time high, driven more by fear than supply and demand. These fossil fuel stakeholders can no longer deny their way out of the consequences of their products and business practices, now driving global warming beyond worse case predictions and wreaking havoc across Europe, the US, and the entire planet for that matter; it’s much easier for the fossil fuel industrial sector to believe in business-as-usual, and ignore their obvious connection to the problem and their responsibility for genuine participation in the solution.

Perhaps its not enough to destroy global habitat on which humans are so dependent, while global taxpayers annually are paying an estimated $6.2 trillion USD in taxpayer subsidies (IMF-World Bank recent study findings adjusted for inflation) to this same fossil fuel industrial sector – which begs the question…when is enough, enough? 

As the US is blanketed with heat waves and extreme weather this summer, its another reminder we must heed the United Nations climate warning: It’s going to get worse.-

The story of two frogs

Two frogs dove into a pot of warm water, unfortunately for them the pot was on a gas stove being heated. The frogs did not try to jump out of the pot as the temperature continued to rise, they managed to adjust their body temperature accordingly.

As the water neared its boiling point, the frogs were no longer able to adjust their body temperature to the heat and tried to jump out of the boiling pot but couldn’t (that time had passed), and were boiled alive instead.

What was the reason that the frogs didn’t save themselves?  Perhaps, blaming the hot water, and not the frogs for their demise, some would incorrectly conclude is the answer..

Post Supreme Court Ruling Comments; West Virginia v. EPA

• Columnist George F. Will called it a “most momentous decision,” saying it could prod Congress to stop handing off its legislative power to bureaucrats.  This would limit the excessive autonomy currently enjoyed by the executive agencies that are the increasingly autonomous, unleashed and unaccountable administrative state.”

• Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus, an expert on environmental and administrative law, saw it the opposite way. “A radically conservative (Supreme Court) majority,” he warned, “has seriously threatened environmental law’s ability to safeguard public health and welfare.”

In Lazarus’s view, the ruling does not so much incentivize Congress to act as it dangerously hobbles government agencies. “Congress deliberately chose to delegate lawmaking authority to expert agencies in appreciation of Congress’s own inability to anticipate and address all those complexities on a real-time basis.”

Republicans cheered the ruling, with Senator Mitch McConnell saying it limited the power of “unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the court’s conservative majority had decided to “let our planet burn.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, dealing a blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change.

The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal justices in dissent, saying that the majority had stripped the E.P.A. of “the power to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”

The ruling, in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, not only limits the authority of the E.P.A., but potentially that of other agencies to enact a broad array of regulations to protect the environment and public health. It was the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.

Originally published June 25th 2022

At the end of the first full Supreme Court term with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in place, liberal Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he was amazed — and not in a particularly good way — what President George W. Bush’s nominees to the bench had accomplished in such little time.

“It is not often that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Breyer said in June 2007.

But that was nothing compared to this week as three Trump-appointed justices, joined their other Republican-majority court justices in firing off two significant decisions in rapid succession.  First, a Second Amendment gun rights ruling which flies in the face of rising public concerns over escalating national gun violence now targeting the most innocent of society; children.  The Court majority’s second decision was another political win and a shock to many women, a second coming to others in the form of the most significant social ruling in modern times; overturning protections granted women by Roe v. Wade for the nearly 50 years which guaranteed a woman’s fundamental right to health care and abortion.

As significant as these two recent court decisions represent, what’s ahead for this GOP-controlled court will soon affect every American regardless of their sex, race, income, or political party — an environmental climate case now being decided by the Supreme Court. As in the case of the legal dismemberment of Roe v. Wade, this case is the product of a coordinated multiyear strategy led by Republican Attorneys General.

Within days, the Republican majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution found to dangerously heat the planet’s climate.

Fossil Fuel Polluters Retaliate

On the front lines of this emerging battle is the case of West Virginia v. EPA, is the result of a coordinated, multi-decade strategy led by Republican Attorneys General, conservative legal activists, and their funders with ties to the oil and coal industries.

The polluter attack strategy is fairly straight forward; use the judicial system to rewrite environmental laws, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.

Coming up through the federal courts are more and more climate cases and headed to Supreme Court, some featuring novel legal arguments, each carefully selected for its potential to block the government’s ability to regulate industries and businesses that produce greenhouse gases. These legal strategies are becoming more and more sophisticated with time and money.

The plaintiffs seek to hem in what they call the “administrative state”, the E.P.A. and other federal agencies who set rules and enforce regulations that affect industrial sectors responsible for the majority of environmental crimes and offenses in which newer regulations are designed to rein in, e.g., global warming emissions, toxic air and water pollution violations, etc.

Congress has barely addressed the issue of climate change. Instead, for decades it has delegated authority to the EPA and other agencies because it lacks the political will, and equally important, the expertise possessed by the specialists who write complicated rules and regulations and who can respond quickly to changing science – a long standing practice now embedded in today’s Capitol Hill gridlock.

Follow the Money

The Federalist Society is one of many money sources engaged in attacks on Federal environmental and climate protections. The Society is funded by the likes of Koch Industries, which has long fought and funded climate action roadblocks; the Sarah Scaife Foundation, created by the heirs to the Mellon oil, aluminum and banking fortune; and Chevron, the oil giant and plaintiff in the case that created the so-called “Chevron defense”.  After a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, that doctrine holds that courts must defer to reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes by federal agencies on the theory that agencies have more expertise than judges and are more accountable to voters. “Judges are not experts in the field and are not part of either political branch of the government,”  Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his opinion for a unanimous court ruling.

The forthcoming case; West Virginia v. E.P.A., No. 20–1530 on the court docket, is  notable for the tangle of connections between the plaintiffs and the Supreme Court justices who will decide their case.

The Republican plaintiffs share many of the same donors behind efforts to nominate and confirm five of the Republicans on the bench — John G. Roberts, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“It’s a pincer move,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research and a former senior Justice Department official. “They are teeing up the attorneys to bring the litigation before the same judges that they handpicked.”

The pattern is repeated in other climate cases filed by the Republican AG’s now advancing through the lower courts: The plaintiffs are supported by the same network of conservative donors who helped former President Donald J. Trump place more than 200 federal judges, many now in position to rule on the climate cases in the coming year.

At least two of the cases feature an unusual approach that demonstrates the aggressive nature of the legal campaign. In those suits, the plaintiffs are challenging regulations or policies that don’t yet exist. They seek to pre-empt efforts by President Biden to deliver on his promise to pivot the country away from fossil fuels, while at the same time aiming to prevent a future president from trying anything similar.

The Stakes for Climate Cases

Limitations on action in the United States against global warming could doom global efforts to avert the worst climate disruptions.

Victory for the plaintiffs in these cases would mean:

• the federal government could not restrict tailpipe emissions because of vehicles’ impact on climate, even though transportation is the country’s largest source of greenhouse gases.
• The government also would not be able to force electric utilities to replace fossil fuel-fired power plants (the second-largest source of planet warming pollution), with wind and solar power, and
• The executive branch could no longer consider the economic costs of climate change when evaluating whether to approve a new oil pipeline or similar project or environmental rule.

Those limitations on climate action in the United States, which has pumped more planet-warming gases into the atmosphere than any other nation, would quite likely doom the world’s goal of cutting enough emissions to keep the planet from heating up more than an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with the preindustrial age.

A temperature rise greater than 1.5 degrees Celsius is the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic hurricanes, drought, heat waves and wildfires significantly increases.   The Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

“If the Supreme Court uses this as an opportunity to really squash E.P.A.’s ability to regulate on Climate Change, it will seriously impede U.S. progress toward solving the problem,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

But many conservatives say the decision violates the separation of powers by allowing executive branch officials rather than judges to say what the law is.  Associate Justice Gorsuch wrote that Chevron allowed “executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power.” In other words, elected judges and politicians are more qualified than scientists and agency experts to determine public harm when it comes to climate change and other environmental impacts..

“What is most concerning is that this widespread bleaching is happening during a La Niña weather event, which is normally characterised by rain and cloud cover on the east coast of Australia often helping to cool waters. It shows the consistent pressure our reef is now under from global heating.”

Dead coral found at Great Barrier Reef as widespread bleaching event unfolds

“What is most concerning is that this widespread bleaching is happening during a La Niña weather event, which is normally characterized by rain and cloud cover on the east coast of Australia often helping to cool waters. It shows the consistent pressure our reef is now under from global heating.”

Dead corals are now being recorded in aerial surveys across the Great Barrier Reef in what the marine park’s chief scientist says is a widespread and serious bleaching event on the world heritage icon.   Aerial surveys have covered half of the 2,300km reef, with the worst bleaching observed in the park’s central region off Townsville, where corals on some reefs are dead and dying.   The unfolding bleaching comes ahead of a 10-day UN monitoring mission to the reef due to start on Monday.

Sixth mass bleaching event is now unfolding on the reef, adding to events in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020.

Dr David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, told Guardian Australia: “There is certainly a risk we are seeing a mass bleaching event.

Aerial surveys from helicopters that started last Saturday have revealed mild to moderate bleaching driven by rising ocean temperatures on reefs in the remote far north, with the most badly hit reefs across a 250km stretch to the north and south of Townsville.

Most reefs in that central region, between Hinchinbrook Island and Bowen, were severely bleached and there were still sections of the great barrier reef marine ecosystem not yet surveyed there.

Bleaching is considered minor if less than 10% of corals on an individual reef are bleached. Levels up to 30% are categorized as moderate, up to 60% is major and beyond that, bleaching is considered severe.

“The fact that at the very least, most reefs are severely bleached – this is a very serious event. There is no question about that. Some of the observations in that region have been of coral mortality.  “That is where the heat stress has been worst. We haven’t yet surveyed all that area, but I would expect that situation of most reefs being severely bleached would go north and south of Bowen.” Aerial surveys started while the heat stress was still building across large parts of the reef. Wachenfeld said rather than wait until the heat had peaked, the flights had started because “we are starting to see coral die.”

When a coral bleaches, the transparent flesh and white skeleton are easy to see from the air. But if it dies, the flesh begins to rot and is quickly taken over by algae which is darker in color.  “You then can’t see from the air that a living coral was there a week ago,” said Wachenfeld.

In the remote north, Wachenfeld said some reefs had not recovered from a severe 2016 bleaching event. Reports this week’s flights indicated little live coral left.  “It’s a major stress event for corals even if they don’t die from it. There is no historical record of such stress events happening so frequently.  At the moment, what we see is widespread and in some parts it is severe and that is worrying. There is no doubt about it,” Dr. Britta Schaffelke, director of Great Barrier Reef research at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said.

Richard Leck, head of oceans at WWF Australia, said bleaching was directly attributable to global heating caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions.  “Reducing Australia’s domestic and exported emissions fast, this decade, is the main solution within our control,” he said.

The environment group released analysis on Friday showing that for Australia to be part of efforts to keep global heating to 1.5C, the country should release no more than 4bn tons of CO2 between now and mid-century.

But the analysis, carried out by scientists, said the Morrison government’s current strategy to reach net zero would release 9.6bn tons.  “We’re going to blow our emissions budget by more than double,” said Leck. Greenpeace Australia climate impacts campaigner Martin Zavan said: “This latest bleaching event has once again exposed the Morrison government’s failure to protect the Great Barrier Reef, throwing billions at band-aid measures while failing to address climate change, the biggest driver of catastrophic coral damage.”

Dr Zebedee Nicholls, one of the scientists that carried out the analysis, said: “The science is clear: the outlook for coral reefs around the world is bad at 1.5C, and their fate is all but sealed at 2C.”

Kelly O’Shanassy, chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said: “If the federal government is serious about its claim of wanting to protect the Great Barrier Reef it must rapidly phase out coal, oil and gas and stop encouraging the growth of fossil fuel industries.”

What is most concerning is that this widespread bleaching is happening during a La Niña weather event, which is normally characterized by rain and cloud cover on the east coast of Australia often helping to cool waters. It shows the consistent pressure our reef is now under from global heating.