WTF Climate Change News

WolfEyes

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The leaked draft opinion that signals the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade has sparked fear not only among abortion activists, but also environmental lawyers who say the federal government should have expansive legal authority to tackle the climate crisis.

The draft opinion, published by Politico on Monday, indicates that at least five conservative justices are willing to cast aside long-standing precedent to achieve major objectives on the political right, these environmental lawyers said.

That does not bode well, they said, for the Supreme Court's forthcoming decision in West Virginia v. EPA, a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate carbon emissions from the power sector, the country's second-largest source of planet-warming pollution.

“The court's dismissive attitude toward precedent … is really just another signal of a conservative majority that's eager to roll up its sleeves and fix all the issues in the law that conservatives have complained about for years,” Dan Farber, a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Climate 202.

“And climate regulation is seen by conservatives as a dramatic example of regulatory overreach because Congress hasn't passed any specific laws that tell EPA to go regulate [carbon emissions],” he added.

Nathan Richardson, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and a university fellow at Resources for the Future, agreed with that assessment.

Supreme Court leak strikes fear among environmental lawyers (msn.com)
 
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Beebo Brink

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People who don't like deserts, but moved into one anyway.
Grass and nonnative shrubs and trees help to mask the fact that the area is part of the Mojave Desert.

“A common view that we got from customers when we in the past recommended turf reduction to save water was, ‘I bought in this community because it didn’t look like a desert,’” Mr. Hyde said.
 

Aribeth Zelin

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People who don't like deserts, but moved into one anyway.
Like WTF?!

Meanwhile I'm over here wanting to find an exception to growing sea oats in my yard [I love them, they are endangered, and then we would never need to mow again - seems like a win-win-win].

Like, who moves somewhere to not -live- in that environment, except for work
 

danielravennest

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Like WTF?!

Meanwhile I'm over here wanting to find an exception to growing sea oats in my yard [I love them, they are endangered, and then we would never need to mow again - seems like a win-win-win].

Like, who moves somewhere to not -live- in that environment, except for work
It's a grass species. Do your local ordinances specify grass species that finely? Or is it yard height they limit?
 

Aribeth Zelin

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It's a grass species. Do your local ordinances specify grass species that finely? Or is it yard height they limit?
Sea oats are protected - primarily to make it where people can't pick it and keep it from holding the barrier islands together. They are also really tall, so....
 

Beebo Brink

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Sid

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Well, we* still want to drive cars, go on cruises, order our stuff in China or Amazon, fly realtively short distances, use escalators etc.
Yesterday on the Dutch news: an average escalator uses the same amount of electricity as 20 average households.
As long as we* use resources without giving it a thought, and mostly expect the others to do something, we* get nowhere with climate control.

*= general we.
 

Beebo Brink

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As long as we* use resources without giving it a thought, and mostly expect the others to do something, we* get nowhere with climate control.

*= general we.
This is one of the main reasons that I don't expect us* to mount any significant effort to mitigate climate change (assuming it's even possible at this stage). Human self-interest is very difficult to scale up to a national level, much less a global level. We** have spent 230,000 years living in small bands of "us" and haven't adapted very well at all to groups that number in the millions or billions.

As has been demonstrated all too clearly over the past two years, a significant portion of the U.S. population (at least a third) is not bothered by any issue until it directly affects them (and sometimes not even then). The preponderance of this attitude may well be a pathology of the U.S. society, but it's a factor everywhere.

We** are locked into a pattern of profligate resource usage and surrounded by an infrastructure based on cheap oil & gas energy. Few people are keen to give that up, and many couldn't, even if they wanted to, without enduring severe hardship. We** are too clever by half. We've built a jungle of bright shiny objects and now we're trapped in it. A few key players may be evil, but the vast majority of people are just trying to get by in their everyday lives, ignoring all that annoying yammering in their ears from hysterical people, when it's obvious if you look around that everything is just f... oh shit.

*=general us
**=borrowing your general we
 

Sid

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Same here on this side of the pond. A lot of people could not care less, others talk a lot about it but do very little or only use the heavily by government subsidized programs like installing solar panels on their roofs or driving in an electrical company car, because they have to pay less income tax over the privately driven kilometers in those cars.
The last four out of five years the spring season has way too little rainfall over here.
Nobody but the farmers really care. They have to pump up more ground water for their sprinkler installations.
Result: Some common tree species in this part of the world are in trouble, their roots don't always reach the ground water levels anymore all year long.
It is saddening.
 
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Beebo Brink

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A better way to describe this current decline of water in Nevada, California and other states is the aridification of the American West, Udall said, in which the region will become drier and more arid over the long term. That’s already playing out in many parts of the region where wet winters do not translate to wet summers as the soil does not retain the same amount of water from the previous year.

The skeletal remains emerging from the earth are a byproduct of a system in decline.

“We’re finding out horrifying things that we would have just as soon not found out,” Udall said. “Unfortunately, I think we’re gonna find a lot more horrifying things, including probably more bodies, but more concerning on some level, just that our human systems are not set up to deal with these kinds of water declines.”
 
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Beebo Brink

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The future of forests is on a knife’s edge, with a tug of war between two very important forces: the benefits trees get from increasing levels of carbon dioxide and the stresses they face from the climate, such as heat, drought, fires, pests, and pathogens. Those climate stresses are increasing a lot faster as the planet warms than scientists had expected. We’re seeing immense wildfires and drought-driven forest die-offs much sooner than anyone had anticipated. When those trees die, that carbon goes back into the atmosphere. We’re also seeing evidence that the benefits trees get from higher levels of carbon dioxide in a warming world may be more limited than people realize.
 

Sid

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The lawns in NL used to stay green all year long, even without sprinklers.
Maybe during hot and dry summers it might get some brown spots here and there during August.
Now it is May 17 and the lawn on the backside of the appartment building I live in is already browner than normally mid August.
No bueno.