More Coal Closures in Midwest - When Will MA Go Coal-Free?

The Sierra Club is announcing a big victory for clean air and climate action in the Midwest today:

Today a coalition of citizen groups, states and U.S. EPA announced a landmark settlement agreement with American Electric Power (AEP) requiring AEP to stop burning coal by 2015 at three power plants in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. AEP also agreed to replace a portion of these coal plants with new wind and solar investments in Indiana and Michigan, bringing more clean energy on line to meet the region’s electricity needs. [...]

Coal-fired power plants are the nation’s largest source of mercury, sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution, carbon pollution and many other deadly pollutants that can trigger heart attacks and contribute to respiratory problems. According to estimates from the Clean Air Task Force, 203 deaths, 310 heart attacks, 3,160 asthma attacks, and 188 emergency room visits per year will be averted once the Muskingum River, Tanners Creek and Big Sandy power plants stop burning coal.

Aside from the obvious climate and public health benefits, ratepayers in Ohio should be cheering this long-overdue move to get Ohio off its addiction to one source of energy. In 2009, Ohio was getting a ridiculous 84 percent of its energy from coal. That dropped to 78 percent by 2011, but with coal prices rising, natural gas prices plummeting and the cost of wind and solar dropping by the day, diversifying Ohio's electric portfolio is just good business.

We've nearly weaned ourselves off of coal here in Massachusetts, but the Mt. Tom plant in Holyoke and the Brayton Point station near Fall River remain. (I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the only coal plants left are near poor urban areas.)

Tell Gov. Deval Patrick you want Massachusetts to go coal-free - and while you're at it, show your support for building Cape Wind now.

Even After the Climate Canary Has Died, Will We Keep Digging the Coal Mine Deeper?

From Washington Post political cartoonist Tom Toles:

Even as America weans itself off of coal-fired electrical power, coal corporations want to keep mining and export America's to developing countries. That way Americans don't get any of the electricity, but our natural resources are still plundered, our climate is still polluted, taxpayers are still on the hook, and big coal corporations still get to reap all the profit. What's not to like?

THIS is Cheap Heat?

I recently moved from an apartment building (well insulated with a lot of free heat from my neighbors) to an old house (poorly insulated, stand-alone). Even keeping our thermostat as low as we can and doing some weatherization work, our natural gas heating bill last month was $147.

I thought that was a lot, but then my aunt told me her bill for oil heating was $600 last month alone. Big New England electricity customers are also feeling the burn of high natural gas prices.

When people say "but clean energy might cost more" I reply "like our current system is so affordable?" There may be some bumps along the way, but isn't it worth at least trying a different path?

Couldn't Make DC Climate Rally? Watch This

"This River Healed Me"

A new documentary, Not Yet Begun to Fight, details a program to give wounded veterans a chance to find peace on a secluded river. It's a reminder that when we talk about the value of America's natural resources, it goes far beyond jobs & GDP.

Overreliance on Gas, Offshore Wind Delay Burning New England

Natural gas has been pitched as a "bridge fuel" by those who don't want to transition New England's electricity supply from dirty fossil fuels like coal and oil to clean energy sources like solar and wind right away.

But the toll on the natural gas "bridge" has suddenly gone way up. That's not surprising since, as the chart shows, natural gas has always been subject to wild price swings. With New England now more dependent on natural gas than ever, supply has struggled to keep up with demand. As the New York Times' Matthew Wald reports, that's sent New England electricity prices spiking sharply this winter:

The six-state New England region and parts of Long Island are the most vulnerable now to overreliance on gas, a vulnerability heightened by a shortage of natural gas pipeline capacity, but officials worry that similar problems could spread to the Midwest.

“We are sticking a lot of straws into this soft drink,” said William P. Short III, an energy consultant whose clients include companies that move and burn gas. “This is a harbinger of things to come in New England, as well as New York.”

But natural gas companies aren't interested in selling it to New England at a discount. They want to export it to get top dollar on the international market:

Several companies want to liquefy and export gas from the continental United States because of the shale gas glut, and the events in New England could affect that debate. Opposition has come mostly from domestic industries that use the gas. A spokesman for Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said Mr. Wyden saw the price gyrations in New England as a reason to “look before we leap ahead with unfettered exports of gas.”

The natural gas price spike shows that while natural gas may be cleaner burning and at times cheaper than coal, it's still a bad idea to put all our eggs in one fossil fuel basket. The more we can diversify our energy sources with modern, clean energy sources, the more insulated we'll be from price spikes. (Plus there are plenty of questions about the health and water impacts of natural gas fracking.)

Today, there's not one offshore wind turbine harvesting wind energy off the Atlantic Coast. Not one! Wind may cost a little more to build up front, but Mother Nature isn't going to threaten to export our breezes to Europe unless we pay exorbitant prices.

It's been 12 years since Cape Wind was first proposed and our regulators have let big mansion money on the Cape tie it up in regulatory knots. Let's build Cape Wind now - and a lot more offshore wind to follow.

Chart via Our Finite World

Happy Valentine's Day, Big Oil

Apparently penguins sound like Woody Allen and polar bears sound like union guys. Who knew?

Matt Damon Goes on Strike: No to Toilets, Yes to Clean Water

Matt Damon isn't a boutique activist trying to shed light on some obscure issue no one knows about. No, he's tackling the unsexy, big, lethal problem that's right in everyone's face: Lack of clean water spreading disease, particularly in Africa, South Asia and Central America.

You'd think someone who's dead serious about saving millions of lives would be tackling the issue with grim stoicism. Instead, Matt Damon has produced the funniest video about clean water I've ever seen to promote StrikeWithMe.org:

Tonight's State of the Union: No More Yes Man?

President Obama's first four years saw him attempt to say yes to everything on climate and energy - yes to both the right policy choice AND the political pander. Tougher fuel efficiency standards and new air pollution limits? Yes! The fastest expansion of oil drilling in U.S. history? Yes!

This all-of-the-above strategy has been a failure - instead, we've gotten the worst of all worlds. More risky drilling than ever? Gas prices near record highs? Price tag for climate-fueled weather disasters hitting $188 billion? Yes, yes and yes!

Tonight, I hope President Obama continues his inaugural theme of making good choices and smart investments. He needs to keep saying yes to clean energy investment and yes to carbon emissions continuing to go down while economic recovery continues its upward track.

But he also needs to start saying no - no to America serving as the middleman for dirty, expensive Canadian tar sands. No to unlimited, untracked methane emissions from gas fracking. No to unlimited carbon pollution from existing coal-fired power plants.

The good news for President Obama is that making those hard choices is politically popular. Today's Washington Post poll finds more than half of voters support action on climate change, with just a third of voters in opposition. Climate-fueled extreme weather events like superstorm Sandy have shifted the center - climate action is now a clear political winner.

Now that's worth saying yes to.

Larry Summers' "Energy Transformation" is a Policy About Nothing

In today's Washington Post, Larry Summers has an op-ed saying we should rely more on dirty energy - but dirty NORTH AMERICAN energy!

Fourth, the transformation of the North American energy sector needs to be accelerated. This will have economic and environmental benefits. Those who will decide whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run between the tar sands of western Canada and Nebraska, need to recognize that Canadian oil not flowing to the United States will probably flow to Asia, where it will be burned with fewer environmental protections.

Natural gas exploitation, too, could bring huge environmental benefits. Replacing coal with natural gas has much more scope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than more fashionable efforts to promote renewables. A period of record-low capital costs and high unemployment is the best possible time to accelerate the replacement cycle for environmentally untenable coal-fired power plants. More generally, the production of natural gas and its use in industry should be a substantial job creator for years to come.

This is Summers' entire section on energy. I didn't lift his section on dirty energy out of a broader piece on clean energy or even a make-no-choices all-of-the-above piece. Summers thinks the entire key to our energy "transformation" is what we're already doing - more dependence on high-priced dirty oil, more privatizing our public lands and waters to Big Oil while socializing the risk of oil spills, more putting our water supplies at risk with gas fracking, no mention of climate change.

This is what passes for transformational thinking with the Very Serious People in Washington.

How Did Wind Turbines Do During the Blizzard?

Many of the wind turbines in Massachusetts automatically shut down over the weekend due to the blizzard, annoying but necessary considering ice buildup can hurt a turbine's performance just as much as it would an airplane's. (Notable exception: Ipswich Wind, which had its best two-day stretch of catching clean energy in at least a month.)

One of the more entertaining myths pushed by anti-wind activists is that after an ice storm wind turbines will start aiming chunks of ice at distant homes like a carbon-fiber eye of Sauron. Studies have shown that if a turbine continues to operate even during an ice storm, ice may fall up to 90 meters away. But that's about 4 times closer than any home should be from a wind turbine, so consider yourself safe. Just to be sure, take this advice from The Green Miles: Do not hang out directly under a 130-meter wind turbine during an ice storm.

As is often the case with wind turbines, people worry more about the new weird-looking thing than they do about the existing and actually dangerous thing. Just as people worry about made-up health impacts of wind power while overlooking the very real and very deadly impacts of our dependence on coal-fired power, they worry more about ice chunks from wind turbines that I can't find any evidence have ever hurt anyone when ice chunks from ordinary buildings will murder you dead.

White Out: Will Climate Science Denying TV Weathermen Forecast Less Snow During Blizzard?

Today's massive Northeast blizzard must put climate science-denying TV weathermen in a tough spot. Do you stick to your political guns and forecast based on a world with no temperature increase - pretend there's less energy in the atmosphere for the storm to draw on, pretend the ocean isn't much warmer than usual to add moisture to it - and risk underestimating its strength?

Or do you forecast with the baseline of a warming world fueling extreme weather and acknowledge climate disruption is helping make "Nemo" into a monster?

My guess: All TV meteorologists incorporate climate impacts into their forecasts, but few (if any) talk about the influence of climate change in their on-air forecasting discussion.

What If the Carbon Pollution That's Killing Moose Wasn't Invisible?

Minnesota's moose are dying in jaw-dropping numbers. If they were dying in an oil spill, it'd be the lead story on the national nightly newscasts. But they're being killed by carbon pollution, which is invisible and hence in dispute! So we let the politics of carbon pollution take command and prevent us from confronting this like it what it is - a full-blown climate crisis for both wildlife and people.

On America's Congested Highways, Every Day is Free Cone Day

Great analogy from Matt Yglesias to explain why congested roads should be tolled:

Build a useful road and you'll find that space on the road at peak times is a valuable commodity. And yet it's also a commodity that's generally either available for free or else available for a price that's unrelated to the demand for space on the road. Naturally an underpriced valuable commodity leads to overconsumption. Traffic jams, in other words.

Every once in a while Ben & Jerry's holds a "Free Cone Day" that invariably leads to long lines. Roadways in dynamic metro areas are basically holding Free Cone Day five days a week. Charge people enough money to eliminate routine congestion and you'll find yourself with fewer traffic jams and an enormous pool of revenue that can be used to maintain your basic infrastructure and upgrade your bus service.

Watch Jonas Eliasson, Director of the Centre for Transport Studies at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, explain how congestion pricing can improve traffic patterns - and drivers may not even realize they've been nudged out of their congested routine (if you can't watch the video, read about it here):

Hawks Are Backyard Badasses And Here's Video Proof

I was putting out the recycling yesterday when I heard a flapping from the neighbor's backyard. By the time I'd grabbed my camera, it was already over - a young Cooper's hawk had nabbed a pigeon and was settling down for a leisurely lunch.

If common hawks like Cooper's, red-tailed and sharp-shinned aren't among your favorite wildlife, they should be. You can spot them just about everywhere, watching rural fields from dead trees, watching the highway median from a lamp-post (my girlfriend never gets tired of me pointing them out), watching for A-Rods at Fenway, or watching you from your office.

In urban areas like New Bedford, hawks are downright essential. Pigeons aren't much better than rats with wings and can overrun downtown areas, spreading disease with their droppings (note that the problem is worsening with warming winters - thanks, climate change!). Sure, bald eagles may look majestic fishing out in placid ponds, but are they willing to confront an URBAN SCOURGE like an avian Charles Bronson? I think not.

And not only are hawks tough, males are devoted husbands and hard-working dads:

Red-tailed hawks are monogamous and may mate for life. They make stick nests high above the ground, in which the female lays one to five eggs each year. Both sexes incubate the eggs for four to five weeks, and feed the young from the time they hatch until they leave the nest about six weeks later.

So sensitive & caring! Now watch one eat a pigeon:



Update: Birding blogger Dendroica pointed out on Twitter that this wasn't a red-tailed hawk as I originally assumed, but a Cooper's hawk. The juvenile Cooper's coloring is similar to a red-tailed, but I should've known better from its small size. The Green Miles will try to do better next time!

Cod Fishermen Are Even More Screwed Than You Thought

After months of contentious debate, New Bedford Standard Times reporter Steve Urbon says the New England Fishery Management Council finalized deep cuts to cod fishing quotas yesterday:

The final vote cut the available catch of Gulf of Maine cod by 77 percent to 1,506 metric tons in fishing year 2013. This will have the effect of reducing some fishing boats to one day at sea, or even one hour.

Georges Bank cod was cut by 61 percent, to 2,506 metric tons. Many fishermen this year are not catching their quota but these cuts are deeper than any shortfall they are experiencing. Some members, including John Quinn, of Dartmouth, implored NOAA scientists to get serious about coming up with ways of measuring the effects of freshwater influxes into the ocean, ocean warming and the rise of predators such as seals and dogfish.

Even more alarming for fishermen and their families: The reduced quota is just acknowledging that the fisheries have completely collapsed. As NOAA Fisheries Northeast director John K. Bullard said a week ago, "There are no fish":

Cape Cod's representative on the council, Tom Dempsey, told The Standard-Times that Cape fishermen are very concerned about their inability to even catch their quotas of Georges Bank cod.

Asked what effect cuts in allocation would mean, Dempsey said fishermen already feel as though their quotas have been cut because they cannot find enough fish under the existing levels.

It's sad to see Massachusetts elected officials trying to blame Bullard for the cuts. Do they really think the former mayor of New Bedford would be trying to stick it to fishermen?

Just look at the annual catch of cod on the Grand Banks:

That's cold, hard reality. We overfished cod, the population collapsed, and even reduced catch quotas aren't bringing them back - we're decades too late. We could eliminate all fishing tomorrow and who knows how long it would take for cod to recover - years? Decades? Conversely, we could eliminate all regulations tomorrow, and the fishermen who depend on cod would still be screwed - there are just no fish left to catch.

If we want to help communities like Gloucester and New Bedford, we should be investing in new industries like offshore wind power. Otherwise we're just leaving them to fight over the last fish left in the sea.

Should Obama Pick Polluter Lobbyist to Lead Interior Department?

Sen. Mary Landrieu is floating former Sen. Blanche Lincoln to follow Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary, reports Phil Taylor of E&E News (subscription required). When we last saw Blanche Lincoln, she was trying to screw over ordinary Americans in an attempt to save her own seat, fighting clean air laws and opposing the public option as part of Obamacare. She lost by 21 points anyway, then became a lobbyist for a firm that represented Koch Industries, among others.

Lincoln left that job to work for the "National Federation of Independent Business," a front group backed by a who's who of corporate activists from Karl Rove to ALEC that gives 97% of its political contributions to Republicans. (This is where I should again remind you that we're supposed to believe Blanche Lincoln is a member of the Democratic Party.)

So whose interests is Lincoln fighting for with NFIB?

Lincoln currently leads NFIB's Small Businesses for Sensible Regulations coalition, a campaign that was launched in 2011 to spare businesses from federal rules, including U.S. EPA proposals at the time to curb smog and set emissions standards for the boilers that provide power and heat to many industrial plants (E&ENews PM, Aug. 3, 2011).

As senator, Lincoln was among 35 lawmakers who signed a letter to Salazar urging him to adopt a George W. Bush-era proposal that would have opened several Atlantic and Pacific coast regions to oil and gas drilling (E&ENews PM, Sept. 21, 2009).

Lincoln, who was chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, was also the co-sponsor of a bill to allow visitors to national parks and wildlife refuges to carry concealed firearms, codifying what was then a new Interior Department rule put on hold by a federal judge (E&ENews PM, April 3, 2009).

Sounds like the perfect steward for America's public air, lands and waters, don't you think?

Why would President Obama nominate someone who's pro-pollution, pro-risky oil drilling, and pro-guns-everywhere to head the Interior Department? If Obama were to nominate Blanche Lincoln as Interior Secretary, why not give up the pretense of democratic elections and just turn over Interior to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Exxon Mobil?

Fortunately, I have heard Blanche Lincoln's name nowhere else and it seems like Mary Landrieu is just trying to do a solid for an old friend. Landrieu's up for re-election in 2014 and if her bid falls short, I'd be gobsmacked if she herself wasn't working alongside Lincoln in the polluter lobbying industry in two years.

Condescending Wonka Talks to Scott Brown About Climate Change

Yes, Climate Science Deniers Really Are Getting Dumber

When I first started tracking climate science denial on this blog six years ago, rebutting denier arguments had a Catcher in the Rye feel to it - you had to try to grab the worst ones and let some go by. Fueled by polluter money, front groups burned the midnight oil trying to come up with new ways to make it seem like carbon pollution wasn't cooking the planet.

But in 2013, denier arguments are so silly, so self-defeating, I'd rather bring attention to them than rebut them. This week, George Will and Fox News are ignorantly cherry-picking numbers to try to claim 2012's wildfire season wasn't so bad.

Really? After Colorado's terrifying, record-breaking 2012 Waldo Canyon fire, you're going to sit in your comfy Washington office or New York City studio and tell Coloradoans to quit whining? Please, proceed.

Here's Stephen Colbert attacking President Obama's radical, pro-survival agenda:

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Gore: Climate-Fueled Extreme Weather "Like a Nature Hike Through the Book of Revelation"

Former Vice President Al Gore appeared on NBC's The Today Show this morning talking about how the climate crisis is fueling extreme weather:

Hurricane Sandy and other recent weather-related disasters, like this week’s intense flooding and monstrous sea foam levels in Australia, are a direct result of climate change, former vice president Al Gore said Tuesday.

“These storms – it’s like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation on the news every day now,” he told TODAY’s Matt Lauer. “People are connecting the dots.”

Watch it below and check out a bonus clip of Gore meeting actress Melissa McCarthy.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Local Bug: "I'm Screwed, Right? I'm Totally Screwed."

I found this bug in our apartment yesterday. Bizarre to see a bug when it's 15 degrees outside. But was 55 in New Bedford on Sunday, and much like some of DC's cherry blossoms got fooled by the warm snap into thinking it was spring, I wonder if this guy came out of hibernation too early:

We don't think it's big deal when it's a bug, but global warming is wreaking havoc on hibernation across the animal kingdom.

CNN's Climate Bamboozlement 1, Jon Stewart's Satire 0

"Global warming is a total hoax. And I'll tell you how I know: Because it’s cold, today, where I live," said Jon Stewart at the open of last night's Daily Show. "That’s jus’ science." Ha ha! Satire ... right?

Little did Stewart know that just 10 blocks away at CNN's New York studios, Piers Morgan was hosting a segment asking if global warming was a total hoax because it was cold, today, where he lives. And it wasn't even the only CNN segment last night that prominently featured a professional denier lying about climate science.

Your move, Stewart.

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Daily Show clip via Talking Points Memo

Worcester Official Unleashes Epic Clean Water Whine

The Environmental Protection Agency is doing a routine inspection to make sure Worcester's water system isn't poisoning anyone. Does Worcester Mag's Walter Bird, Jr. report on whether this will potentially keep people and the fish we eat healthy - maybe even save lives? No - he reports on how Worcester Public Works and Parks Commissioner Robert Moylan, Jr. thinks it's all a huge pain in the ass:

Public Works and Parks Commissioner is not relishing a visit to the city Tuesday, Jan. 22 by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), saying inspectors likely will be looking for "faults" in the operation and maintenance of Worcester sanitary sewer collection system. That is the conclusion he reached after talking to colleagues in Portland, New Bedford and Holyoke, where the EPA conducted similar inspections. Visits were also made to Andover and Lawrence.

"I have contacted my colleagues in Portland, Maine; New Bedford; and Holyoke who are responsible for the sanitary sewer system in their community," Moylan says in a Jan. 16 memo to City Manager Mike O'Brien. "Each of them is a seasoned veteran with extensive experience. Each stated unequivocally that the inspection was aimed at finding fault; this was not an inspection to assist, advise or to be helpful. The EPA team was not interested in what the community was doing right, they were only interested in finding what they believed to be failings and stated the same."

FACKIN' EPA, ALWAYS BUSTIN' MY BALLS ABOUT MAKIN' SURE PEOPLE AHH NAWT DRINKIN' PISS!

Look, I don't doubt the EPA's wastewater system oversight is terribly boring and very complex - but it's also incredibly important. It focuses on "failings" because that means people are getting sick or ecosystems are being polluted. Have Worcester's public officials and journalists forgotten that?

How to Confuse the Public for Fun & Profit, CNN Edition

Run a special on climate change that doesn't mention carbon pollution at all, then poll people and act surprised when more of them don't connect climate change to carbon pollution.

Update: Much more on this from Media Matters.

Does Car Dependency Make Us Winter Wimps?

Faced with similarly cold weather, people in suburban southeastern Massachusetts complain even more than people in warmer cities. Is the car culture the difference?

The Green Miles moved from DC to New Bedford last summer and as winter has set in, I've been a little surprised at how much whining I've heard about the cold. When the weather turned cold inside the Beltway, folks would walk into office pulling off their scarves talking about how chilly it was, but with an edge of bravado - "Cold couldn't stop me! Tauntaun froze to death on the way to Metro, but I KEPT GOING."

In this area, there's more of a feeling of dread. While New Bedford's downtown is walkable, there are public buses & lots of people bike, the city and its neighboring towns aren't dense enough to make a car-free diet an option for most people. (The lack of a downtown grocery store doesn't help, either.) Most people make most trips in their cars.

Driving everywhere combines the cold with helplessness - instead of striding out into the cold and warming up as you go, you have to sit there shivering waiting for the car to heat you up. I'm used to layering up and getting ready to show the cold who's boss, but around here, people leave the house wearing only what they need to keep them warm long enough for the car's heat to kick in. It's odd to think of urban folks as more in touch with nature than their suburban counterparts, but in this sense, they are.

And it's not hard to imagine the impact beyond winter - other things the car keeps you sheltered from year-round, whether positive (a new restaurant whose menu you might've liked had you walked by instead of sped past) or negative (graffiti that's easier to ignore from your glass & steel cage).

Climate Change Turning Northeast Into New Hurricane Alley?

Climate change is shifting hurricane tracks away from the Gulf Coast and towards the Northeast, according to a new study that's backed up by both previous research and the historical record. Reports Paul Voosen of E&E News (sub. req.):

By the end of this century, fewer hurricanes are likely to barrel through the Caribbean Sea into the U.S. Gulf Coast, with the storms instead curving back into the Atlantic Ocean -- and possibly toward an East Coast newly sensitive to hurricanes, according to climate models developed by researchers in Hawaii and Miami. [...]

Their results match a modeling study published in 2010 by Hiroyuki Murakami and Bin Wang, two Hawaii-based researchers who used a powerful Japanese climate model to simulate the Atlantic basin. Like [researcher Angela] Colbert, they saw storm tracks shift east. But they went a step further, finding that this shift increased influence of tropical storms for Florida and the northeastern United States.

"I feel these results are very robust," Murakami said.

In fact, a slight eastward shift can already be seen in historical records since the late 19th century, compiled by the National Hurricane Center and corrected by Gabriel Vecchi, a co-author of Colbert's paper and researcher at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. These observations are far from definite but do lend some credence to the models' results, Colbert said.

Research also shows global warming is making hurricanes stronger (though climate change's impact on hurricane frequency is still being debated). 

It's not exactly reassuring for this stormy future that Congressional Republicans doing all they can to skimp on Superstorm Sandy aid. Maybe time to cut carbon pollution now?

Screw Your Kids, Top Virginia Democrat Wants Uranium Mining Now

If future generations don't like Virginia Democratic Senate Minority Leader Dick Saslaw's refusal to protect Virginia's public health from the dangers of uranium mining, they can dig him up and kiss his dead ass:

State Sen. Dick Saslaw does not mince words about his support for uranium mining. A Northern Virginia Democrat who is also the Senate minority leader, Saslaw says burying the radioactive byproduct known as tailings underground should be a solution to environmental concerns. And he says he can’t be concerned about what might happen 100 [years] from now.

"What about 10,000 years from now? I’m not going to be here," Saslaw says. "I can’t ban something because of something that might happen 500 or 1,000 years from now."

Terry McAuliffe, Virginia's Democratic candidate for governor this year, must be tearing his hair out. If you can't trust the leader of Virginia's Senate Democrats to protect your children & grandchildren from a no-brainer like radioactive uranium mining waste, how can you trust Virginia Democrats to protect them on anything else?

Virginia Democratic leaders will tell you that Dick Saslaw is an excellent leader because big businesses write him lots of big checks, as if people only write checks to the Democratic Party in one of America's largest swing states because of Dick Saslaw. And Saslaw is terrible at leading the caucus, having almost lost the Democratic majority in 2009, signing off on a terrible redistricting plan that gave away the Virginia House for a decade in hopes of hanging onto the Senate, then losing the Senate anyway.

Virginia Democrats need to dump Dick Saslaw.

A Bigger Problem Than the New York Times Environment Desk Closure

The New York Times is breaking up its environment desk, reports Katherine Bagley at InsideClimate News.

It's disappointing in the broader context of declining NYT newsroom staffing, a bad public signal that the environment isn't a top priority, and if they lay off staff that works on environment issues that's a big setback. But this desk was just formed in 2009 so it's not like they're tearing down some storied institution, and NYT news & editorial coverage of climate change has been strong.

It's the Washington Post that's the real obstacle to a national conversation that takes the climate crisis seriously. It too often takes a disdainful "why are we talking about that climate thing when we could be gutting the social safety net or starting new wars?" attitude that trickles down from its editorial page into its news coverage.

The Cost of Nuclear Power is Killing Nuclear Power

Proponents of nuclear power love to blame the lack of new nuclear power plants on environmentalists. But in reality, many environmentalists have given up their past opposition to nuclear on safety grounds in the face of the need to cut carbon pollution from fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

What's stopping the expansion of nuclear power is its own high cost, as in this example from David Shaffer of the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Xcel originally planned to boost the output of the Prairie Island plant by 164 megawatts with upgrades to the reactor in 2014 and 2015, but the utility shelved those plans last October.

Electricity demand has not been growing as fast as the company earlier estimated, and cheaper natural gas had become more attractive as an alternative power source, the utility told state regulators.

Not only do you have to build the plant (expensive!), you have to have a plan for what to do with the spent fuel (expensive & dangerous!), get a water source to cool the plant (increasingly uncertain - thanks, climate change!) and the big one, you have to insure the plant (incredibly risky & expensive!). At every step of the way, nuclear power relies heavily on taxpayer support, either directly through subsidies & loan guarantees or indirectly through use of public resources & public assumption of risk.

Given all that, why not just build a natural gas plant, or better yet, a wind farm? That's nuclear's real problem.

2012: The Year the Climate Crisis Got Medieval on America

2012 wasn't just America's hottest year on record - it left every previous year in the dust. If you're in the Midwest or Plains, where 2012's historic drought now stretches into 2013, you can take that literally.

Check out that graphic of NOAA data from ClimateCentral.org. 1998 beat 2006 by just a hundredth of a degree and 5th-place 1921 by only half a degree. But 2012 beat 1998 by nearly a full degree. Amazing.

And our climate inaction comes with a huge pricetag. Thanks in large part to Superstorm Sandy, Evan Lehmann of E&E News reports most of the global economic burden of the climate crisis fell on America:

Nearly all the world's economic damage from storms, drought, fire and earthquakes was centered in the United States as it experienced the highest temperatures ever recorded, according to Munich Re, a global reinsurance company. More than 90 percent of insured losses worldwide occurred in the United States, well above the 30-year average of 65 percent.

ClimateCrocks.com says 2012 was the year climate change got real for Americans:



So far in 2013, Australia has been ground zero for the climate crisis. The heat wave there has been so unprecedented, forecasters have had to invent new colors for the temperature map.

Climate Change Fueled Wild Weather in New England in 2012. Will 2013 be Worse?

While NOAA and NASA haven't made official pronouncements yet, 2012 is looking like a climate change-fueled record-smasher for America's hottest year ever. As you'd expect, cities across the country broke local records for hottest year ever, with MetroWest Daily News' Rob Haneisen detailing 2012's extreme weather in Massachusetts - not only on record temperatures, but drought and strong storms:

For Boston, statistical highlights were that it was the second warmest winter on record and the warmest spring on record. These records go back to 1878. The average mean temperature for the year was 2.8 degrees above normal; rainfall was 7.04 inches below normal and snowfall - not surprisingly - was 31.7 inches below normal. Winter and spring also had average mean temperatures of 5.4 and 5.3 degrees above normal.

For Worcester, statistical highlights were that it was the second warmest winter and the warmest spring on record. The average mean temperature for the year was 3.4 degrees above normal; rainfall was 4.19 inches below normal and snowfall was 14.4 inches below normal. Winter and spring also had average mean temperatures of 6.0 and 5.6 degrees above normal.

2012 was also an above-normal season for tropical storms with 19 named storms (average is 12) and 10 hurricanes (average is 6). Here's a link to a wrap-up of the Atlantic tropical season from NOAA. Our most notably entry is post-tropical cyclone Sandy this year - the second consecutive year of a devatasting cyclone affecting New England (Irene was 2011's entry).

Hartford also broke its record for warmest year on record, with Providence coming in at 2nd-warmest. But as Elizabeth Harball of E&E News reports, The Queen City takes the cake: "The biggest record jump occurred in Burlington, Vt., which had an average temperature of 50 degrees in 2012, exceeding the site's previous high, set in 1998, by 1.6 degrees." That's not 1.6 degrees above average, or breaking a single-day's record by 1.6 degrees - the average temperature for an entire year was nearly two degrees higher than any previous year on record. Amazing.

And New Scientist warns that because global warming is melting Arctic sea ice, 2013 could see even more extreme weather:

Predictions that a major El Niño warming event - and the coming solar maximum - would help make next year the warmest on record now seem wide of the mark. All eyes will probably be on the Arctic instead. Some say the record loss of sea ice in summer 2012 was a one-off, others that it was the start of a runaway collapse. If the latter, summer sea ice could virtually disappear as early as 2016. What is certain is that the ice reforming now will be the thinnest on record, priming it for destruction next summer. [...]

Research in 2012 implicated the fast-warming Arctic in a slowing of the jet stream. This is bringing extreme weather to mid-latitudes, including prolonged cold spells in Europe, Russia's 2010 heatwave, and record droughts in the US in 2011 and 2012. Watch out for more weird weather in 2013.

Learn more about how global warming is fueling extreme weather.

Sunday on CNN: The Coming Storms

Update: The special made no mention of the carbon pollution that's fueling climate change. "It was very well done for showing climate impacts, but doing an hour documentary on climate change and not mentioning fossil fuels is like doing an hour on sexually-transmitted diseases and not mentioning sex," former CNN producer Peter Dykstra & current DailyClimate.org publisher told Climate Progress.

On Sunday January 6th at 8pm ET, CNN Presents will focus on how climate change is fueling extreme weather, premiering "The Coming Storms":

U.S. Temperatures Went Off the Charts in 2012

The US didn't just have a hot year. It blew past every record of the past 117 years. ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-preci… …. twitter.com/PeterGleick/st…
— Peter Gleick (@PeterGleick) January 1, 2013

Ignoring the Climate Crisis, Fixating on Phony Ones

When our children are wondering why we didn't solve the climate crisis when we had the chance, I'm sure they'll be thankful we took the time to try to gut their retirement benefits.

This morning I watched +Meet The Press host David Gregory and his panel not only agree Social Security and Medicare must be cut, but to brainstorm aloud strategy for making it happen. This very same panel had just gotten done unanimously agreeing that objective journalists are not allowed to say that Republicans are the problem in Washington. But they were now designing their very own political campaign.

Despite massive public opposition to social safety net cuts, why did these champions of objectivity assume gutting the social safety net is as American as apple pie? Because people in the insular, wealthy world of Beltway politics will never need to put off a trip to the grocery store until their Social Security check arrives. The threat of going hungry could never compare to the alleged threat of the budget deficit.

Except the same people who push deficit hysteria in public tip their hand at the negotiating table. They don't care about deficits - what they're really after is tax cuts for the wealthy:

In a tremendous irony, Republican requests for lower tax rates, a high estate tax threshold, and a permanent AMT fix; combined with Democratic requests to delay the sequester, include a “doc fix” for Medicare physicians, and extend emergency unemployment benefits; have left the parties negotiating toward a plan that would result in no net deficit reduction over 10 years, according to Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin.

Republicans know it's all a charade - Social Security is solvent through 2038 and Medicare is solvent through 2024. And even then - at least a decade from now - the programs face not crippling bankruptcy but the need for a bit more funding. Considering effective federal tax rates have never been lower, this is not an insurmountable problem.

Meanwhile, James Hansen warned of looming climate insolvency in 1988 and the crisis went full-blown ten years later when we shattered the record for Earth's hottest year. Congress did nothing. After 14 more years of unlimited carbon pollution, 2012 has seen what will likely be America's hottest year on record, record drought and wildfires, and a climate-fueled Superstorm Sandy.

Less than two months later, global warming is once again off the radar in DC - even though just as many Americans recognize global warming is a serious problem as oppose social safety net cuts. This actual crisis, battering America right now, is rarely mentioned on television news and wasn't mentioned in any of this year's presidential debates.

Instead, pundits focus on imaginary social safety net problems and addressing the fiscal cliff austerity crisis that Congress voluntarily created, while ignoring the climate cliff we're already tumbling down. When The Onion gets it and Meet the Press doesn't, we're in big trouble.

Most Viewed Posts of 2012 at The Green Miles

Sunset off Aruba's Eagle Beach

As the sun sets on 2012, here are the most viewed posts of the year at TheGreenMiles.com:

1. GOP VP Nominee Paul Ryan: Science Denier, Fiscal Fraud
2. Arlington's Dumbest Attack Yet on Westover Beer Garden: Help People Drive More!
3. Things Reporters Can't Say: Mitt Romney is Lying About the Environmental Protection Agency

And my top 3 posts of all time since I started blogging here in 2007:

1. Ask The Green Miles: Recycling VHS Tapes
2. Arlington Passes Strip Mall Preservation Act
3. Small Earthquake Felt in Northern Virginia

If you just can't get enough of The Green Miles at The Green Miles, you can follow me on the Facebook, tweet me on the Twitter at @MilesGrant, and + me on the Google+ at +Miles Grant. 

Promised Land: Can Hollywood Make America Care About Fracking?

The 2010 fracking documentary Gasland hit home with environmentalists, but took in less at the box office in its entire national run than The Hobbit did in six average theaters last weekend.

Now comes Promised Land, a new film starring Matt Damon, Frances McDormand and John Krasinski, which focuses on fracking and opens widely on January 4. Will it get Americans talking about the risks of America's barely regulated fracking industry?

What's The Minimum Length for a Sabbatical?

I've always wanted to be a big enough thinker to take one of those. Is a week enough to count?

I'm off to Aruba with my girlfriend and won't have internet access (and even if I found it, my girlfriend would club me to death with my laptop), so don't expect any posts over the next week. A high-carbon-footprint flight, I know, but we'll try to make up for it while we're there, won't even be renting a car. I hear the wildlife is mostly limited to iguanas & other lizards, but maybe we'll catch a migrating bird or two.

See you next week! Can't wait to hear all about the fiscal cliff deal they reached while I was gone when I get back ...

Bill Nye Makes Talking Climate Science Simple

The best way you can advocate for climate action is to talk about climate science and the need for governments to cut carbon pollution. Talk about warmer temperatures, talk about extreme weather, talk about rising sea levels. Talk to your family, your neighbors, your elected officials.

David Roberts gave progressives a simple map for talking climate change and now Bill Nye and the Climate Reality Project are making it even simplerer with Climate 101:



You don't have to know all the answers to know we need to take climate action now. Don't be afraid to speak up.

If someone asks you something you don't know, tell them that's a good question and you want to find out the answer with them! The internet is never far away and it's loaded with really good climate answers.

Climate Change Hurting New Hampshire Hunters

Warmer temperatures and extreme weather fueled by global warming took their toll on New Hampshire's moose hunting season:

Warm weather was one of the factors that attributed to the decrease in the overall success rate, according to biologists. Because moose have already grown their heavy winter coats, they tend to bed down during the day during unseasonably warm weather and wait until nightfall to move about when temperatures drop. Some hunters also reportedly cut their hunts short to head home before the arrival of developing Hurricane Sandy.

It was easiest bag a moose in the north, toughest in the south:

Preliminary numbers show moose hunters having the highest success in the North region at 82 percent, with 73 percent in the Connecticut Lakes Region, 64 percent in the White Mountain Region, 51 percent in the Central Region, 45 percent in the Southwest Region and 35 percent in the Southeast Region.

It's part of a broader trend - temperatures in New Hampshire have risen about three degrees in the last 150 years. (Note that the Eastern Moose is far from endangered - with natural predators like wolves and cougars wiped out, hunting is actually needed to control the population.)

Polls show that even though sportsmen lean conservative politically, they firmly support cutting carbon pollution. Global warming isn't an abstract idea to them - they're already seeing the effects of climate change in the places they hunt and fish, whether it's overheated moose in New Hampshire, a tick explosion in Massachusetts, threatened fish breeding grounds in Florida, or duck habitat drying up in the Plains.

Exxon: Making a Fortune Destroying Your Kids' Future

Exxon Mobil knows that the carbon pollution from its oil causes climate change, fueling extreme weather and sea level rise, yet it continues to use the profits from its oil sales to fight climate action. What else can you conclude but that Exxon Hates Your Children?



Want to help get this message from Oil Change International and The Other 98% on TV? Donate at ExxonHatesYourChildren.com.

Sen. Whitehouse Slams GOP's Generational Fraud on Climate Change

Climate-fueled superstorm Sandy caused $14 million in damage to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's home state of Rhode Island, and apparently it's left him fed up with Congressional deniers of scientific reality.

"Our nation’s best and brightest minds accept the evidence of climate change, and are urging us to act," Whitehouse fumed on the Senate floor today. "Yet still for some in this body, the deniers carry the day."

Then Whitehouse lit into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

When it’s the deficit, he's urged us “to make sure that we have the same kind of country for our children and our grandchildren that our parents left for us.” He’s even talked about, and I quote, “the Europeanization of America,” and as a result of that Europeanization of America “our children and grandchildren could no longer expect to have the same opportunities that we’ve had.”

On virtually every traditional anti-Obama Republican Tea Party bugbear – Medicare, Obamacare, the stimulus, the deficit – even this Europeanization of America – out come the children and grandchildren. Let’s assume they are sincere; let’s assume they have a sincere concern for what is left for our children and grandchildren.

So, when it comes to big corporate polluters of today leaving our children and grandchildren a damaged and more dangerous world, where then is the concern for those children and grandchildren? To have children and grandchildren pay for the care of their grandparents through Medicare and Social Security is a sin and an outrage. To force on them the untold costs and consequences of the harms done by today’s corporate polluters? For that, the future generations’ interests receive nothing from the Republicans but stony silence, or phony and calculated denial.

But the cost will be on them; and the shame will be on us.

McConnell's concern for our children's bottom line stops at his own - both the polluting oil & gas and coal mining industries give 90% of their political contributions to Republicans, both at all-time highs back to the start of OpenSecrets.org records in 1990. Overall, the energy and natural resource drilling/mining industry gives 80% of contributions to Republicans, also an all-time high.

Wondering how to rebut common climate denier talking points? Check out this great guide from ClimateProgress.org.

Nuclear Giant Exelon Back to Bullying Wind Energy

Nuclear power giant Exelon is once again complaining that wind power makes electricity prices too low. On page 21 of Exelon's new report slamming government support for wind energy:

[S]ubsidized wind generation also exacerbates artificially low electric prices, thus imposing economic harm.
on competitive generators that are needed to maintain system reliability.

Aw, poor little Exelon! Considering the company brought in $19 billion in revenue last year while dumping vast amounts of carbon pollution into the air at no charge, I bet that cheap wind power had Exelon executives crying in their Johnnie Walker Blue.

Exelon isn't poor or little - it's a big, powerful bully that has no problem putting its best interests ahead of your family's best interests. Exelon spent $9.2 million on lobbying last year, just one of many electric utilities fighting to protect our dirty, expensive energy status quo. The entire alternative energy industry - from wind to solar to biofuels - spent $28.6 million.

As Michael Hiltzik writes in the Los Angeles Times, for all the nuclear and fossil fuel complaining about wind energy incentives, you don't hear those same industries volunteering to give up their own breaks to level the playing field:

Fossil-fuel producers reap tax accounting breaks such as the depletion allowance, which is worth an estimated $1 billion a year, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a Washington think tank created to advise Congress on energy policy. Tax-expensing options for drillers bring them $1.9 billion a year. Relief on royalty payments due to drillers on government property: $53 billion over the lifetime of the leases. Partially as a result, the U.S. government's take from its oil and gas leases is among the lowest in the world, the Government Accountability Office found in 2007.

Then there's coal, the owners of which get to classify royalty income as capital gains, therefore paying a preferential tax rate. This break was enacted in 1951 as relief from the high taxes levied to pay for the Korean War (paying for wars from tax revenue, not by borrowing, was a quaint practice of that era). Bizarrely, it never went away and today is worth as much as $170 million a year to the coal industry.

Finally, there's nuclear, which over its fledging years received subsidies that dwarf all others, while producing a small fraction of the energy per subsidy dollar of any other fuel source. To this day, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the nuclear power industry receives subsidies worth as much as 11.4 cents per generated kilowatt, or five times as much as the 2.2-cent wind tax credit. (The figure includes such breaks as the federal cap on the industry's liability for nuclear accidents and the government's shouldering of waste management costs.)

What gives away the game on the real goals of the lobbying against the wind credit is that for all their talk about letting "the market" dictate energy policy, Romney and the Koch types never seriously advocate ending the existing subsidies for oil, gas or nuclear. Those politically connected industries are the antithesis of market operators, and their real goal is to tilt the playing field back toward the past, not the future.

Again: I understand the reasons why the nuclear industry is so terrified of extending wind energy incentives, but they're the exact same reasons average Americans should be asking their members of Congress to extend them.

New Progress for Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy

The Obama administration today announced plans to sell leases for preliminary offshore wind energy development activities in two areas of federal waters recently identified and reviewed off the coasts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Virginia. The leases will be sold through a competitive auction in 2013:

“Wind energy along the Atlantic holds enormous potential, and today we are moving closer to tapping into this massive domestic energy resource to create jobs, increase our energy security and strengthen our nation’s competitiveness in this new energy frontier,” said [Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar. [...]

The lease sales, which will be held next year, will be the first-ever competitive sales on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) for wind energy, and are major milestones in the Administration’s “Smart from the Start” wind energy program to facilitate the siting, leasing and construction of new projects. These lease sales cover two WEAs along the Atlantic coast that have high wind resource potential.

"Properly-sited clean energy like offshore wind is critical for protecting wildlife from the dangers of climate change, and we applaud the Obama Administration for taking action to advance an important new clean energy source for America," said the National Wildlife Federation's Catherine Bowes.

But like anything that's good for America's air, climate & wildlife these days, wind energy faces a threat from Congressional Republican leadership. A key incentive for wind energy investment is set to expire unless Congress acts soon. Please take a moment to email your member of Congress to keep wind incentives alive.

Possible Autism Link Yet Another Reason to Limit Air Pollution

Six in ten Americans support stronger limits on soot pollution from industrial facilities, according to a new poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the American Lung Association. And the support from the core constituencies that swung the 2012 election to Democrats - young, women, black & Latino voters - is even stronger.

As is the case with lead and mercury pollution, the more we research air pollution, the more we find out it has much great impacts than we first thought:

Researchers from the University of California Keck School of Medicine examined traffic-related air pollution levels in two groups of children: 279 with autism and 245 without. The study found that autistic children and their mothers were twice as likely to live in high-pollution areas during pregnancy and the first year of life.

One in 88 children in the U.S. is affected by autism.

Researchers have been looking at a potential link between air pollution and the enigmatic developmental disorder for three years. Fine particle pollution and nitrogen dioxide — two of the leading pollutants emitted by internal combustion vehicles — affect the behavior of certain genes in the early stages of development. One of these genes is known to be less active in children with autism, according to a report on the study published on WebMD.

Tell President Obama you support tougher limits on soot pollution.

Think We're Saving Money by Driving a Little Less?

Nope - Big Oil is just raising the price of gasoline to make sure your money keeps flowing in. Even though Americans are driving less than we have since 2001, oil companies are on pace for a record revenue year.

It doesn't matter where we drill, or how much we drill, and it may not even matter if we just use a little less. As long as we're dependent on oil companies, we're over a barrel. 

All Downhill for Skiing Industry in Warming World

The skiing industry will be extinct in Massachusetts before a child born today turns 30, according to a new study on the effects of global warming:

Of 103 ski resorts operating in the Northeast, less than half could be economically viable in 30 years if winter temperatures rise by between 2.5 and 4 degrees over the next several decades as expected, according to a study by Scott that will be published early next year. The report says that if society continues to rely heavily on fossil fuels, causing emissions from heat-trapping gases to rise, no Massachusetts ski areas would survive the next 30 years, and only seven of 18 New Hampshire resorts and eight of 14 Maine mountains would remain open.

Check out this graphic the Boston Globe created using data from Daniel Scott, director of the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change at the University of Waterloo in Ontario:

Money quote from Katie Johnston's Globe story: "Ski area officials prefer not to dwell on such dire predictions." Politicians, too!

But ignoring global warming has a decades-long track record of failing to solve the problem. With carbon emissions rising faster than worst-case scenarios, the climate crisis is accelerating faster than worst-case predictions.

Time to acknowledge reality - and do something about it.

Green Monster: Red Sox Cash In With Car-Focused Spring Training Park

Remember how the otherwise-green-conscious Red Sox moved to a new spring training facility called JetBlue Park in Fort Myers, FL that virtually forces you to drive there? Turns out there's plenty of green motivation behind the lack of transit and bike parking - the cash kind:

Fort Myers’ coffers retained parking fees collected from Red Sox games under the terms of the city’s 1991 contract.

Today, the teams keep all the money generated from game day parking, tickets sales, concessions and advertising, while the county pays for expansions that increased the teams’ ability to sell those items.

As the article details, Lee County is on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in ballpark costs while the Red Sox and nearby Twins owe only a small fraction of that in lease payments - and that doesn't cover the cost for road expansion & maintenance to bring all those cars to JetBlue Park.

But even with the driving mandate and JetBlue Park's total lack of solar energy despite the park's Sunshine State location, the Red Sox still got a baseline LEED green building certification, because the U.S. Green Building Council apparently is now giving them away to anyone who recycles.

We Love Our Children Enough to Put Them on the Shittiest Buses Possible

Two blocks up the hill - that's how far a New Bedford school bus was, yet a cloud of diesel exhaust still hung on my street in its wake, leaving the air smelling like a tire fire as I went out to get the morning paper.

All across America each morning, parents who won't let their children out of the house unsupervised because it's "not safe" are happy to put them on some of the most polluting vehicles in America:

According to a study carried out in the Los Angeles area, the levels of diesel exhaust on a bus can be four times as high as those found in passenger cars driving just ahead of the bus. And the concentration of diesel fumes found inside the buses were more than eight times that of the average amount found in California’s outdoor air.

And this:

Children on diesel buses breathe in more soot than everyone else in the surrounding metropolitan area combined, and up to 70 percent more soot than the average commuter. … Kids not only face this increased risk from exposure; they are also more vulnerable to the impacts of air pollution. Research from the Harvard School of Public Health showed that young children’s lungs will get two and half times the dose of soot particles as an adult’s lungs.

Check out the above link from Get Energy Smart Now's Adam Siegel to learn much more about why investing in hybrid school buses would make our children healthier, save taxpayers money in the long run, and curb climate pollution. And make oil executives and Saudi oil barons angry! Good kids win, bad guys lose.

The Fishing Lobby's Paradox

The two most frequent themes from local advocates for the Massachusetts fishing industry:

• Massachusetts fishermen want big government off their backs
• Massachusetts fishermen want massive federal government bailouts

The contradiction seems to be rarely noticed locally, never mind discussed. (I don't know nearly enough about the fishing industry or fisheries science to judge which concerns are actually valid.)