Climate Point: Returning gifts? Many will head to a landfill.
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and environment news. I'm Janet Wilson, writing to you from sunny, breezy Southern California.
Thinking about mailing back some of those gifts via free return shipping? You may get a refund, but there's an environmental cost, from truck fumes to packaging, as Danielle Renwick writes for The Guardian. And many items will join 5 billion tons of returned goods in landfills.
Here are some other stories of interest:
MUST-READ STORIES:
Crying wildfire. Australia's "ferocious" bush fires, fueled by one of the hottest, driest months ever, are going to get worse this weekend, Grace Hauck and Doyle Rice with USA Today tell us. Nearly half a billion animals have burned to death, and the toll is likely to rise, as Emma Newberger with CNBC and others report. The blazes have destroyed more than 1,000 homes and nine million acres, and killed 18 people.
Tasmania tragedy. For a devastating portrait of how Australia reached this point, check out Darryl Fears' Washington Post piece on bull kelp forests vanishing, koalas burning and the decimation of indigenous Tasmanians.
POLITICAL CLIMATE
Teed off. Congress has sandbagged an attempt by a New Jersey billionaire to expand his golf curse into Liberty State Park (at the doorstep of the Statue of Liberty), after Scott Fallon with the North Jersey Record reported on the effort. But some representatives who have received large donations from the developer are urging reconsideration of the deal, for which the developer is willing to pay to clean up polluted waters.
Science trumps Trump. A top panel of government scientists, many of them appointed by the Trump administration, said on Tuesday that EPA's proposals to weaken regulations of watersheds, auto emissions and health data fly in the face of established science, Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman report for The New York Times.
ALL ABOUT ENERGY
Barging in. Diesel-powered ocean tankers steaming into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach —the nation's busiest — are poised to become the region's top smog source unless state regulators step in, writes Tony Barboza in the Los Angeles Times.
Shale boom or bust? A nice round-up of how the shale boom was the biggest disruptor of the past decade — bigger than iPhones — is offered by Joshua Brown in The Reformed Broker. He and others caution the industry may be over-extended.
AND ANOTHER THING
Really? Geoengineering, often thought of as wacky ideas to save the planet, is being seriously studied by some. USA Today's Elizabeth Weise gives us a round-up, including a giant, orbiting parasol to block the sun, submarine-sized ice cubes, and blankets to keep glaciers from losing their cool. The furthest along involves sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and burying it.
Scientists say to keep a livable planet, we need to reduce carbon emissions to 350 ppm. We're above that and rising. Here are the latest numbers:
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. And if you are interested in California news, sign up for USA Today's new newsletter, In California.