Climate Point: Fossil fuels, premature births
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Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. My favorite story this week is about the Audubon Society asking the public to help count birds along western rivers and streams, as Joshua Bowling reports for the Arizona Republic. Heaven knows we could all use another good reason to go outside and engage with nature. I might give the bird count a try in the next few weeks.
If this is your first edition of Climate Point, my name is Sammy Roth, and I'm a reporter based in Southern California. Here are some things you might want to know:
MUST-READ STORIES:
'Time for action' on the Colorado River: My Desert Sun colleague Ian James took a trip to California's Imperial Valley, where huge amounts of water from the Colorado River are used to irrigate the farms that produce most of America's winter vegetables. Ian was there to listen to a speech by Brenda Burman, head of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, who told local officials that urgent action is needed to avoid unprecedented shortages on the river. It's a scary situation; tens of millions of people depend on the Colorado for water, but long-term drought has reduced the river's flows, and climate change is expected to make matters worse. The Southwest is already dealing with "exceptional" drought conditions once again this year, as the AP's Susan Montoya Bryan reports.
NASA launches new GRACE satellites: In other water news, NASA launched two satellites that will track the movement of water around the Earth, helping us understand the effects of climate change. Here's the story from my Desert Sun colleague Ian James, who also wrote recently about what we learned from NASA's previous generation of water-monitoring satellites. The satellites are a cool reminder of why the space agency's Earth science missions can be so valuable. (In related news: Paste BN's Ledyard King reports NASA's new administrator, former Republican lawmaker Jim Bridenstine, now acknowledges human activities are the primary cause of climate change.)
ENERGY, CLEAN AND DIRTY:
New Jersey is bailing out its nuclear plants: A lot of people have debated the idea of subsidizing nuclear power plants to keep them open in the face of competition from cheaper energy sources like solar, wind and natural gas. Well, New Jersey has gone ahead and done it. Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed a bill that will bail out two nuclear plants by raising the average residential electricity bill $30 to $40 annually, as James Nash reports for the Record in North Jersey. Some environmentalists say keeping nuclear plants open is a good idea, since they produce climate-friendly energy; others say nuclear plants are dangerous and crowd out solar and wind power.
Fossil fuels and premature births: I spend a lot of time reading and writing about the impacts of fossil fuels, but even I was stunned by the results of this study. Researchers looked at eight coal- and oil-fired power plants that had shut down in California, and found that in the year after the plants closed, premature birth rates among women living nearby fell sharply, especially among African-American and Asian women, as Sabrina Shankman reports for InsideClimate News. How crazy is that? The coal and oil plants closed their doors, and within a year, babies were less likely to be born premature.
MEDIA CLIMATE:
Associated Press reported shoved out of EPA event: Sixteen months into a federal administration that's been remarkably hostile to the press, federal officials keep finding new ways to lower the bar. This week, Scott Pruitt's Environmental Protection Agency blocked the Associated Press, CNN and E&E News from covering a summit on water contamination, with AP reporter Ellen Knickmeyer getting grabbed by the shoulders and shoved out of the building by a security guard, as the AP's David Bauder reports. The particularly galling thing is that other reporters were allowed into the event; for whatever reason, EPA officials claimed there wasn't room for these three news organizations.
Elon Musk was mad on the internet: In other media news, renewable energy magnate/space entrepreneur Elon Musk went on a bizarre anti-media tirade on Twitter. Sounding remarkably like President Trump, Musk accused the media of telling lies to generate clicks and being unfairly critical of Tesla. He told journalists, "No ones believes you anymore. You lost your credibility a long time ago." Paste BN's Nathan Bomey has more details. Musk specifically criticized the Reveal radio program from the Center for Investigative Reporting, which has reported on worker injuries and pervasive safety concerns at Tesla's California factory. Tesla has previously accused Reveal of being an "extremist organization." On Twitter this week, Musk described the news organization as "some rich kids in Berkeley who took their political science prof too seriously."
AND ANOTHER THING:
As the planet heats up, the impacts of climate change are getting harder and harder to deny. So it's not surprising to see politicians who don't want to deal with the consequences grasping for explanations other than human greenhouse gas emissions.
Still, the theory shared last week by Rep. Mo Brooks was breathtaking. At a congressional hearing, the Alabama Republican suggested sea levels may be rising not because of climate change, but rather because lots of rocks are falling into the ocean.
I'm not making this up. Here's the story from Paste BN's William Cummings.
This tweet, from a scientist, does a pretty good job putting Brooks' theory in context.
That's all for this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow me on Twitter @Sammy_Roth. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox here.