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Showing posts with label climate resilient infrastructure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate resilient infrastructure. Show all posts

29 August 2017

Just Before Harvey, Trump Admin Revoked Rules Requiring New Infrastructure to be Climate Resilient & How Donald Trump and Elaine Chao Sold Off Flood-Control Policy to the Highest Bidders 29&28AUG17


SO I JUST HAVE TO ASK, HOW'S THIS CLIMATE CHANGE DENYING ADMINISTRATION WORKING OUT FOR ALL YOU PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR drumpf/trump-pence? Do you think NOT MY pres drumpf/trump will reconsider his action? No, because he is a businessman (4 TIMES BANKRUPT) who is in debt to the 1% and corporate America. Requiring them to rebuild Texas and Louisiana with taxpayer dollars to First World not Third World standards will cut into their profit margins. The American people must demand Congress legislate these rules for all federally funded infrastructure projects so the citizens of Texas and Louisiana and all the American people get the best possible for their tax dollars while helping the areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey rebuild. From +Democracy Now! & The Nation.....

Just Before Harvey, Trump Admin Revoked Rules Requiring New Infrastructure to be Climate Resilient


Two weeks ago today, President Trump signed a widely overlooked executive order to revoke Obama-era standards that required federal infrastructure projects like hospitals to factor in scientific projections for the effects of climate change, such as increased flooding. Critics say the reversal will put more lives in danger by exposing U.S. infrastructure to the kind of damage inflicted by hurricanes and superstorms including Harvey, Sandy and Katrina. Obama’s order marked a rare climate change measure that was praised by both conservative and progressive groups. Trump announced the reversal during the now infamous press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower that was largely overshadowed by his remarks defending the white supremacist protesters behind the violent rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia. We speak with John Nichols, political writer for The Nation. His new book, "Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America" is out today.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Two weeks ago today, President Trump signed an executive order to revoke Obama-era standards that required federal infrastructure projects like hospitals to factor in scientific projections for the effects of climate change, like increased flooding and rising sea levels. Critics say the reversal exposes U.S. infrastructure to the kind of damage inflicted by hurricanes and superstorms including Harvey, Sandy, and Katrina, and will put more lives in danger.
AMY GOODMAN: Trump announced the rollback during the now-infamous press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower, where it was largely overshadowed by remarks defending the white supremacist protesters behind the violent rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia. Well, for more, we’re joined by John Nichols, political writer for The Nation. His new article headlined, How Donald Trump and Elaine Chao Sold Off Flood-Control Policy to the Highest Bidders. John’s new book, Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America. Welcome to Democracy Now!. Explain the headline of your latest piece, John.
JOHN NICHOLS: Sure. And really, everything we have talked about today—i’ve been listening in—comes together in this. Here we had Dr. Bullard say when you have out-of-control development, no zoning, no planning for the future, and then what we just heard, what we know is coming as regards flood surges, not just on the oceans, but on our rivers across the country. This goes inland.
President Obama in 2015 did something logical. He was a little late to the game. I wish he had done it many years before. But he issued an order for flood management or flood risk management. It was just a standard that was set. It said when we pour trillions of dollars—at least the trillion Trump’s talking about on an infrastructure program—when we pour this huge amount of money into infrastructure—roads, bridges—roads and bridges we might use to evacuate—hospitals, all sorts of things that we build—we ought to make sure that they are climate-resilient.
I want people to learn that term. I write about a lot of this in the book. The term "climate-resilient" means that you’re building, anticipating, tragically, that you’re going to have more flooding. That you are going to have more crises like this. On August 15, with virtually no notice—because Trump went off the rails on issues of race—on August 15, the reason that Elaine Chao, his Secretary of Transportation, was standing behind him through that whole horrible press conference, was because the real thing they were doing that day was gutting out and ending Obama’s order. And what the Sierra Club says is, this is climate denial at its most dangerous.
AMY GOODMAN: Now of course Secretary Chao, Secretary of Transportation, also happens to be the wife of the Senate’s most powerful person, and that is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And what this overall means for Houston as President Trump now heads to Texas?
JOHN NICHOLS: Well, what this means for Houston—look, we should always be careful about this. What Obama did and what Trump has done, these are things looking to the future. So a lot of the crises in Houston have been in place for a long time. But what this says for a place like Houston is that as money is poured in to rebuild, there’s not going to be a federal standard that says it has to be climate resilient. There is not going to be a standard that says that the next stuff you build has to be able to handle what we know is coming.
And I got onto this in writing the book because I looked a lot at Elaine Chao. She is a careerist. She comes back whenever there is a Republican president. And she was at the Department of Labor years ago, got horrible marks there for literally ruining programs within, or undermining them. Now, she is the person who is going to be overseeing a $1 trillion infrastructure program, which many Democrats will probably enthusiastically support.
What I’m saying in the article, what I say in the book is, as regards all these departments and all these agencies, we have got to look at what they’re doing. Because if we don’t, we’re going to go through what should be a learning experience—what’s just happened in Houston, what we’re hearing all over the country—this isn’t the only flooding in the country today—what should be a learning experience, we’re not learning at all. In fact, we are literally going backward with Donald Trump, and more importantly, with people like Elaine Chao.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: John, in your book, you have sections—it is basically like a baseball card summary of all the members of the administration.
JOHN NICHOLS: You would get that one. [laugh] Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But the privateers—you go into Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Seema Verma, Sonny Perdue—all of these folks that the administration has hired, and you give little snapshots of their privateering approach.
JOHN NICHOLS: And Elaine Chao is the first one on the list. And this is the interesting thing: our media does such a lousy job today of covering the whole of a presidency. It looks at the individual. What did Donald Trump tweet today? We don’t look at the people who are actually competent. I may disagree with them on—but they know how to run an agency. Former governors, former cabinet secretaries, who Trump has put into these positions.
Well, they have some universals. They are generally climate deniers. They are generally deeply tied to corporate industries, especially the fossil fuel industry. Just put one simple fact together. On any given day, Scott Pruitt of the EPA is undermining climate science, climate responses. Rex Tillerson is dismantling our international response on this issue related to some of the things we talked about.
But Elaine Chao comes out way at the top of this list. That’s why she starts the chapter. Because she is going to be very central to building the future of this country. Literally, the promise of infrastructure, which Democrats and Republicans agree on. If we don’t do that with climate justice—as Dr. Bullard talked about—if we don’t do that with functional structural soundness, and if we don’t do that with some economic common sense—in the article I wrote for The Nation for today, free market think tanks were with Obama on this issue! They were saying, "Yeah, if you’re going to pour billions of dollars into stuff, then you should really make sure that it will survive." And this administration is rejecting it.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we are going to go through that deck of baseball cards and we’re going to post that online at Democracynow.org. Who are the people in the administration? What do they represent? John Nichols, political writer for The Nation. His new book out today, "Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America." I’m Amy Goodman with Juan González. Thanks for joining us.
GUESTS
  • John Nichols
    political writer at The Nation. His new book, "Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America" is out today.
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07 November 2013

Why Dengue and Yellow Fever Could Be Coming to a City Near You & Why This Red-State Republican Mayor Backs Obama on Climate Change 4&1 NOV13

HERE'S some climate change news from Mother Jones covering the spread of disease from the tropics to formerly temperate zones and the bipartisan efforts in the nation to address and adapt to the changes we are facing. Not doom and gloom, more an FYI....
—By
| Mon Nov. 4, 2013 3:00 AM PST
Estimated Population at Risk for Dengue Fever in 1990 (A) and 2085 (B) Based on Estimated Population at Risk for Dengue Fever in 1990 (A) and 2085 (B) Based on Climate Data from 1961 to 1990 Dr. Simon Hales/The Lancet
This past summer, Aedes aegypti—the invasive African mosquito best known for carrying the potentially deadly diseases dengue and yellow fever—made its unexpected debut in California, squirming up from Madera to Clovis to Fresno and the Bay Area.
For a blood-sucking nightmare, Aedes aegypti is surprisingly attractive: Its dark skin and bright white polka-dots make it hard to miss. Unfortunately, it is also notoriously difficult to control. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Aedes aegypti can lay its eggs in less than a teaspoon of liquid and survive without water for months.
While Aedes aegypti has long resided in Texas and the southeastern United States, this is the first time it's reached California. News outlets have covered the story extensively, but few have mentioned climate change's role in the mosquito's spread. The CDC says it's "likely that Ae. aegypti is continually responding or adapting to environmental change." In a 2012 report, the World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out that "temperatures, precipitation and humidity have a strong influence on the reproduction, survival and biting rates" of Aedes aegypti.
Aedes aegypti
Muhammad Mahdi Karim/Wikimedia
Climate change studies predict that dengue—which infects as many as 100 million people a year—will expose an additional 2 billion by 2080. In 2009, the mosquito kicked off a Florida outbreak of dengue in a state that hadn't seen the disease in more than 70 years, and Thailand is currently undergoing its worst dengue epidemic in more than 20 years.
Dengue's initial symptoms often resemble the flu, but advanced infections—which cause lung and heart problems, severe abdominal pain, and bleeding from the nose and mouth—kill 15,000 people in 100 countries annually.
Yellow fever is no picnic, either: The disease was one of the world's most feared before the development of a vaccine in 1936. Its name comes from the illness' trademark jaundice, and it also causes severe stomach bleeding (often resulting in black vomit). It kills 15 percent of those infected and closer to 50 percent when left untreated.
In the past, yellow fever in the United States made its way as far north as New York City. In 1793, an outbreak even wiped out 10 percent of Philadelphia. Luckily, citizens figured out that they could stop its spread by overturning containers of standing water where mosquitoes bred, and yellow fever was largely eradicated in the United States. In the last 40 years, there have been only nine cases of yellow fever in the United States, all of which were contracted abroad. But in Africa and Central and South America, it's a much bigger problem: Roughly 200,000 new cases of yellow fever occur every year. Over the last 20 years, outbreaks have occurred in more countries with more frequency, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2010, Uganda had its first outbreak in more than 40 years. WHO reports the increasing number of cases is likely linked to climate change.
There is no vaccine for dengue, and American citizens typically do not get vaccinated against yellow fever unless they travel to a region where it's endemic. So far, there have been no cases of dengue or yellow fever connected to California's new Aedes aegypti, and none of the insects have tested positive for the diseases. But public health officials remain vigilant. "We were shocked," one insect control official in Madera, California, told the Los Angeles Times. "We never expected this mosquito in California."
Front page image: ashleigh290/Flickr
 http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/10/did-climate-change-bring-yellow-fever-carrying-mosquitoes-california

Why This Red-State Republican Mayor Backs Obama on Climate Change

—By
| Fri Nov. 1, 2013 1:04 PM PDT
Federal agencies are required to clear the way for more climate change adaptations, like this house being raised out of the floodplain in Virginia. James West/Climate Desk
Just a few days after the Treasury Department announced it would no longer back funding for most overseas coal-fired power plants, today President Obama issued a new executive order that lays the groundwork for how the US will prepare for climate change within its borders. The order is the latest in a series of policies stemming from the president's Climate Action Plan; earlier this year, for example, the administration issued new greenhouse gas emission limits for power plants and cars. But rather than addressing carbon pollution, per se, today's plan focuses on how cities and states can prepare for the climate impacts already on the way.
"We need to work on bipartisan solutions, and put politics aside," said Mayor James Brainard of Carmel, Indiana, a Republican who is one of the local officials taking part in a new advisory task force created by today's order. "The climate is changing, and we need to be prepared for it."
So what does the order call for? Here's what you need to know:
Prioritize climate-ready projects: In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, many civic planning experts called for future infrastructure plans—for bridges, roads, housing development, and the like—to emphasize climate resilience (a popular buzzword among climate wonks that means being able to quickly bounce back from disasters).
Today's order requires federal agencies to support and incentivize "smarter, more climate-resilient investments" through grants, guidance, and other forms of assistance. These could include moving roads away from crumbling coasts or requiring seaside homes to be built higher above the floodplain. The order also directs agencies to "identify and seek to remove or reform barriers that discourage" resilient investments—for example, policies that currently encourage cities to apply weak rebuilding standards after natural disasters.
"What we're seeing here is a promise that resources that might have been dedicated just to rebuilding, there would now be a mandate to rebuild in a more resilient fashion," said Rachel Cleetus, a climate economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The order gives a nod to natural systems, too: Federal agencies are required to look for ways to protect places like watersheds, marshes (which are themselves an important protective barrier from sea level rise), and forests from climate impacts and are directed deliver specific recommendations to the White House within nine months.
Taking cues from locals: Few people know the importance of resilience better than Mayor Dawn Zimmer of Hoboken, NJ, a Democrat who has spent the last year piecing her city—and her own home, which flooded—back together after Sandy. She says local leaders have a unique, boots-on-the-ground perspective that should inform federal climate preparedness policy.
After Sandy, "we learned a lot," she told Climate Desk this morning. "We could share some of what we're doing."
To that end, the executive order convenes a task force with representatives from cities, states, and tribes, including Mayor Zimmer, to produce, within a year, a list of recommendations for the president about what they need from the feds. The task force includes eight governors (all Democrats, except Eddie Calvo of Guam, a Republican) and 14 mayors from places that have been on the front lines of climate change, including towns in coastal Florida and Texas that are fighting off sea level rise, and Ft. Collins, Colo., where over a thousand acres were burned by wildfire earlier this year.
Zimmer said that while the federal government is usually helpful in responding to emergencies, it should be doing much more to encourage cities to invest in climate-proof systems like protected power grids.
"Instead of waiting for the emergency to happen we should be looking at ways to build resiliency before disasters," she said. "We're going to need some help from the federal government."
Brainard, the Republican from Carmel, said mayors are uniquely qualified to weigh in on adaptation. He noted that last year farmers in his state suffered from a crippling drought that struck across the Midwest.
"A lot of people debate why the climate is changing," he said. "That's not important. Mayors are very practical people, so the real question is, what are we going to do about it?"
The order also creates a separate group of more than thirty federal agencies—including NASA, the Defense Department, and the Army Corps of Engineers—tasked with working together on climate adaptation plans; just today, the EPA released a draft climate adaptation plan that recommends changes to everything from water pipelines to waste disposal.
Scientists, raise your voices! Obama's executive order calls for more scientific data about the local impacts of climate change to be made available to policymakers at all levels of government. Specifically, federal data experts will create a climate-focused portal on Data.gov, the government's clearinghouse for open-source datasets.
Cleetus said the idea is to pave the way for adaptation improvements by removing misconceptions about basic climate science among local policymakers. (Last year, North Carolina lawmakers proposed a bill that sought to outlaw considerations of sea level rise in urban planning.)
"The whole issue has become so polarized that good, scientific information isn't getting input," she said. "Hopefully because of this order, people will be more willing to take that into account."
 http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/11/what-you-need-know-about-obamas-new-climate-order
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