Bills in blue states goal the fossil gas trade for local weather harm
Democratic lawmakers in two of the nation’s most populous states are pushing laws to punish the fossil gas trade for its obvious position in inflicting droughts, wildfires and different disasters exacerbated by local weather change.
In California, the state Senate final week handed a measure that may prohibit the state’s public pension funds from investing within the largest oil, gasoline and coal firms inside a decade.
And in New York, Democratic lawmakers final week launched a invoice that may require the largest fossil gas companies to assist pay for infrastructure investments essential to adapt to mounting local weather disasters.
The motion in each blue states comes as Democrats in Congress proceed to battle to go President Biden‘s stalled Build Back Better Act, together with its funding in combating local weather change and boosting clear vitality.
Here’s what to learn about each payments — and whether or not they may go earlier than the top of their respective legislative periods:
California eyes pension divestment
Senate Bill 1173, California’s Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, would require the state’s public pension funds to divest from the 200 largest fossil gas firms by 2030. The funds would want to report yearly on their divestment progress beginning in 2024.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System are the 2 greatest public pension funds within the nation, with an estimated $9 billion invested in oil, gasoline and coal.
If handed, the measure would stop the retirement financial savings of the state’s academics, firefighters, and different public staff from getting used to finance fossil fuels at a time when California faces climate-change-driven excessive drought and a relentless wildfire season.
“California can’t be investing in the very thing that is to our detriment,” Majority Whip Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat who co-sponsored the invoice, instructed The Climate 202. “So this bill makes a big statement, but it also puts our money where our mouth is.”
While the state Senate handed the invoice on Wednesday by a vote of 21 to 10, the state Assembly has but to contemplate the measure. There’s nonetheless time to go the invoice earlier than Aug. 31, when California’s legislative session ends, however the proposal may face hurdles within the Assembly’s Committee on Public Employment and Retirement, the place Chair Jim Cooper (D) has signaled opposition to divestment as an idea, Gonzalez mentioned.
Cooper’s workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Meanwhile, a debate has surfaced over the prices of divestment. CalPERS has mentioned it might price between $75 million and $100 million to promote the shares named within the invoice, whereas CalSTRS has mentioned divestment would doubtlessly incur a $20 billion loss for the fund. But Fossil Free California, an environmental group, accused the 2 public pension funds of presenting “wildly exaggerated” price estimates in a latest report.
The numbers reported to the Senate Appropriations Committee final month have been “absolutely ridiculous,” Miriam Eide, coordinating director of Fossil Free California, instructed The Climate 202.
A CalPERS spokeswoman mentioned in an electronic mail that whereas the pension fund acknowledges the dangers of local weather change and has a “strong commitment” to lowering emissions, “as a global investor with a fiduciary duty to its members and employer partners, CalPERS does not believe that divestment is an effective solution to this problem.”
New York weighs polluter payouts
Senate Bill 9417, the Climate Change Superfund Act, would impose a price on the fossil gas firms which have traditionally emitted the most important quantity of greenhouse gases into the environment. If handed, it might generate an estimated $30 billion over 10 years, chipping away on the firms’ hovering earnings amid the battle in Ukraine.
The proceeds could be used to pay for a portion of local weather adaptation tasks, akin to efforts to construct sea partitions, elevate the elevation of roads and bridges, and restore harm brought on by floods. On Capitol Hill, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) introduced similar legislation final yr, however the proposal finally was not included in Democrats’ Build Back Better bundle.
State Senate Finance Chair Liz Krueger, who sponsored the Climate Change Superfund Act, acknowledged that the invoice is unlikely to advance earlier than the legislative session concludes on Thursday. But Krueger, who’s working uncontested for reelection in November, mentioned she plans to push for the measure’s passage when the subsequent session begins in January.
“I’m fairly confident I’ll be returning to the New York State Senate in January 2023, and I’ll be working hard to build support,” she mentioned.
The invoice shares the identical aim as lawsuits introduced by Democratic-led states and municipalities looking for to carry the fossil gas trade financially chargeable for local weather harm. So far, the lawsuits have been tied up in procedural wrangling over whether or not they belong in state or federal courtroom, though Baltimore’s case made it to the Supreme Court final yr on a slender technical query.
Biden desires to rebuild the EPA. He doesn’t have the cash to do it.
President Biden campaigned on a promise to reinvigorate the Environmental Protection Agency as a part of his push to sort out local weather change, however the company’s restricted spending energy is stopping the nation’s prime air pollution regulator from doing its job, The Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni stories.
The EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which is tasked with monitoring harmful chemical compounds, is working on roughly the identical finances it did in 2016, regardless of needing about 200 extra toxicologists to finish vital evaluations and meet regulatory deadlines.
The company’s budgetary woes come as Republicans in Congress stay reluctant to meet Biden’s finances request of $11.9 billion for the EPA for fiscal 2023, particularly because it simply acquired billions as a part of the bipartisan infrastructure legislation.
“It’s not a good idea to starve the agency when it comes to trying to protect the public health,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan mentioned throughout congressional finances hearings this month. “We have to rebuild the agency.”
E.U. agrees to part out Russian oil however exempts pipeline deliveries
The European Union on Monday lastly reached a deal to part out Russian oil, though the influence will probably be blunted by an exemption for oil transported by pipeline, a concession to Hungary and different landlocked nations, The Post’s Emily Rauhala and Quentin Ariès report.
The announcement comes after weeks of frenzied negotiations among the many 27-nation bloc. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had obstructed a deal, insisting on extra money and time to improve his nation’s oil infrastructure.
While a number of international locations will get exemptions or extensions, European Council President Charles Michel mentioned the settlement would cowl greater than two-thirds of Russian oil imports, chopping off “a huge source of financing for its war machine.” E.U. officers and diplomats will nonetheless must agree on technical particulars to make sure formal adoption by all member nations.
Facing an influence disaster and searing warmth, India falls again on coal
While India faces a persistent warmth wave turbocharged by international warming, its authorities is scaling away from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s imaginative and prescient for the nation to turn into a pacesetter in clear vitality, underscoring the battle of the world’s third-largest greenhouse gasoline emitter to fulfill inexperienced ambitions whereas assembly hovering vitality demand, The Post’s Gerry Shih stories.
Despite beforehand pledging to put in 450 gigawatts of renewable vitality capability by 2030, India’s coal ministry introduced prior to now month that it might reopen previous mines to offset rolling blackouts brought on by elevated electrical energy consumption for cooling. Meanwhile, the ability ministry ordered vegetation that burn imported coal to run at full capability.
“Earlier we were hailed as bad boys because we were promoting fossil fuel and now we are in the news that we are not supplying enough of it,” Anil Kumar Jain, India’s deputy coal minister, instructed reporters.
Agatha barrels into Mexico as its strongest May hurricane
Hurricane Agatha slammed into Mexico’s southern west coast on Monday as a Category 2 storm, the strongest the nation has ever recorded within the month of May, with winds reaching 105 mph, Jason Samenow stories for The Post.
Agatha strengthened because it handed over abnormally heat water, which is linked to local weather change. As the storm strikes inland, the National Hurricane Center warns that Agatha will unleash life-threatening winds and an especially harmful ocean surge, together with flash flooding and mudslides.
If the storm stays on its present path, it may convey rain to Florida by the weekend. If a storm takes form at that time, it is going to be named Alex and turn into the primary of the Atlantic hurricane season that begins June 1.
The quest to maintain carbon in North Carolina’s wetlands
Up and down the coast of North Carolina, environmental advocates and wildlife officers have spent years working to revive a panorama important to the combat in opposition to local weather change, The Post’s Brady Dennis stories.
North Carolina’s peatlands can retailer large quantities of carbon when moist, however they will additionally exacerbate international warming by releasing huge quantities of carbon when drained or burned. Restoration efforts contain re-wetting greater than 43,000 acres of peat to counteract the factitious drainage that may starve wetlands of their pure moisture, making them vulnerable to fireplace.
If such areas are protected, the United Nations has mentioned that peatlands throughout the globe can retailer twice as a lot carbon as in all of the planet’s forests, lowering greenhouse gasoline air pollution by a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of tons yearly and serving to the world meet its local weather objectives.