Climate Point: What should we ask U.N. leaders at the climate summit?
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. I'm Janet Wilson, and next week, I'll be at the United Nations in New York City, where world leaders are convening a Climate Action Summit. Scientists say the planet will experience catastrophic global warming impacts unless people make “unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” by 2030.
What would you like to ask these researchers and officials?
We want you to help drive our reporting as we explore climate change in our local communities and beyond. So we're conducting a reader survey. Have a query that you would like me to ask top experts about climate change? Let me know and I'll do my best to report on it, thanks to the United Nations Foundation, which is sponsoring my trip.
You can take the survey here: https://bit.ly/2kfMDQn. Feel free to pass this link on to anyone who might be interested.
Here are some other stories that may be of interest:
MUST-READ STORIES
Oil explosions. A Saturday drone attack on the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure sent prices of crude and gasoline up sharply by Monday, as Michael Safi and Graeme Wearden tell us in The Guardian. But the United States is far less reliant on imports than it once was, thanks to a domestic shale oil boom, as USA Today's Nathan Bomey reports. In fact, the United States briefly surpassed Saudi Arabia this summer to become the world’s No. 1 oil exporter, with flourishing production from Texas, New Mexico and elsewhere, as Rakteem Katakey reports for BNN Bloomberg.
Fracking halted. Meanwhile, California has not issued any fracking permits since late June, as I report for The Desert Sun. But dozens of illegal oil spills are underway in oil-rich Kern and Santa Barbara counties, dismaying activists who are pushing for an end to all oil production in the state to help slow climate change and air pollution. The spills, known as "surface expressions" or "seeps," were banned in April. The agency regulating the oil industry is still under review for a surge in fracking permits earlier this year, as are employees who invested in oil companies they oversee.
POLITICAL CLIMATE
Rolling on the river. In a win for manufacturers and farmers, the Trump administration last week announced a rollback of a sweeping Obama-era clean water regulation, as Ledyard King tells us in USA Today. The overturning of the rule by EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, denounced by conservation groups as a threat to clean water, paves the way for a new rule that would give states more authority to regulate wetlands, streams and smaller bodies of water.
Delta blues. Big-name California Democrats, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom, joined powerful water districts to denounce a Democratic state bill to block any Trump administration environmental rollback in the Golden State. The reason? As Dale Kasler and Ryan Sabelow report in The Sacramento Bee, the critics said the law could derail tentative water-sharing agreements between farmers and environmentalists in the California Delta, where the endangered delta smelt struggles to survive. After the legislature passed the bill anyway, Newsom vowed to veto it, as Phil Willon reports for The Los Angeles Times.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE
Fish fry. Warming temperatures in the Great Lakes region are causing population shifts among cold water and warm water fish — a big concern to scientists and fisheries managers, as few animals are more sensitive to temperature than fish. As Keith Metheny reports for The Detroit Free Press, what fish can be caught where will change over the next few decades, and that could harm a vital economic driver. Some 1.1 million anglers contribute $2.3 billion to Michigan's economy each year, buying gear and clothing, booking hotel rooms and more.
CUTTING CLASS FOR CLIMATE
NYC kids get OK for climate strike. New York City kids who skip school to participate in an international climate strike this Friday won't be punished, reports Selim Algar with The New York Post. Students across the city plan to walk out of classrooms on Sept. 20 — three days before the climate summit at the United Nations — to demand immediate action on global warming, led by Swedish youth activist Greta Thunberg. Kids with parental permission to attend will be granted excused absences, per Michael Elsen-Rooney with The New York Daily News. “We applaud our students when they raise their voices in a safe and respectful manner on issues that matter to them,” the Department of Education tweeted.
Rather than the weekly update on carbon emissions, in the run-up to the U.N climate events, here's a handy-dandy chart showing global warming and cooling over the past 2,000 years. See the far right for the current state of things.
That's all for this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow me on Twitter @janetwilson66 You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here.