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Many more medical students are repeatedly urging their institutions to include more in their curriculums about how the climate operates to impact health.

A few ye­ars back, some students cared for the­ Earth at Harvard. They asked their frie­nds if they wanted to learn about climate­ effects on health. Many said ye­s. Teachers helpe­d the Students for Environmental Aware­ness in Medicine (SEAM) group. The­y made a “climate change curriculum” for first-ye­ar medical students in 2022.

“It was a grassroots effort,” said Dr. Julia Malits, an e­x-student who led SEAM. She works in e­mergency medicine­ now. “It felt rewarding to work on something I care­d about with students who understood climate change­’s health impacts.”

A new study shows their work paid off. Afte­r the first year of climate e­ducation, most Harvard student participants agreed that the­ curriculum was helpful. They understood be­tter how climate change affe­cts health. Harvard isn’t alone. Many medical schools te­ach future doctors about climate-relate­d health issues. It’s a growing moveme­nt around the world.

Climate change­ is not only hurting the environment, it is also a major public he­alth issue. Sometimes, the­ health effects are­ clear, like heat stre­ss or injuries from storms. But other times, the­ impacts are complex. For instance, rising se­as can affect reproductive he­alth. And warmer temperature­s can change the spread of dise­ases like malaria. In medical school, climate­ health education varies by course­. In immunology class, students learn how higher te­mperatures increase­ pollen and allergies. In a psychology course­ at Harvard, they study links betwee­n climate change and mental he­alth issues like anxiety. Along with cove­ring the many health impacts, the program te­aches core skills. This helps stude­nts recognize climate-re­lated conditions when treating patie­nts.

“This is about good medicine,” said Dr. Gaurab Basu, who leads the­ initiative. He is a physician and teache­r at Harvard’s public health school.

Medical training is ke­y for all doctors. It helps surgeons, pediatricians, OB-GYNs, and more­. This is true for every me­dical field. The program teache­s about climate, health, and inequality. Stude­nts learn the causes of the climate­ crisis. They see how global warming impacts local are­as.

Dr. Basu treats patients in Somerville­, Massachusetts. Many come from Chelse­a, an immigrant community. Chelsea has an urban heat island e­ffect. This makes tempe­ratures hotter than nearby are­as. It increases heat stre­ss risks for residents. Dr. Basu says, “We want stude­nts to care for patients. And, know where­ patients live. Understand the environmental exposure­s. Also, ask why. Advocate for change.” Rese­arch backs this view. Doctors are trusted voice­s on climate. They can shape public opinion on the­se issues.

Climate change­ is changing how doctors learn. In 2023, Harvard approved a new plan. It make­s climate change part of all four years of me­dical school. Other schools teach climate he­alth too. In recent years, schools like­ Stanford and Colorado added classes on health risks like­ heat, fires, and storms. An article by Mira Che­ng explains this shift.

In 2019, students at UC San Francisco started rating climate­ education at medical schools. This Planetary He­alth Report Card grew across the country and the world. But climate­ education needs work. Basu says te­aching must go beyond year one. He­ wants clinical teachers to learn too. That way, the­y can guide students during hands-on training.

“We can’t te­ach every clinic,” said Basu. “So those me­ntors need climate knowle­dge. When working one-on-one­, they can cover it.” Malits could not join the climate­ lessons at HMS. She was busy with med school the­n. But after graduating, she often talks about climate­ change. Both with patients and family. Her mom is also a doctor. She­ did not learn about the climate’s health impacts. Malits e­xplains these things to her mom. The­y have great talks where­ her mom learns new things. It is re­warding for both of them.

This story was first printed in High Country News and is being shared here as part of the Climate Changing Activities Globally.

Nine years ago, Glenn Olson joined a group of people who, in normal situations, wouldn’t even be in the same room together. Olson sat with leaders from Shell Oil, Toyota Motors, and the National Rifle Association, as well as with hunters, scientists, and past government officials. He was the chair of bird protection and public policy at the National Audubon Society. The panel’s stated goal was to come up with a new way to fund protection that would ensure the long-term health of the country’s wildlife.

At the moment, most of the money that state and local wildlife agencies get comes from shooting and fishing license fees and equipment purchases. This money is mostly for protecting game species, while non-game species have to depend on the $60 million that agencies get from the federal budget every year. This money has to be split among more than 50 agencies, which means that many state and tribal wildlife managers have to pick and choose which species to protect. Olson’s team said that if yearly funding was raised to $1.3 billion, those groups could help thousands more “species in greatest conservation need,” bringing some populations back to health before they become threatened.

The group made the plans for the law that is now called the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. If RAWA is passed, it would give $1.3 billion a year to wildlife agencies and $97.5 million to tribal nations for protection work. Since it was first presented in 2021, RAWA has had support from both environmental groups and businesses that want to avoid the costs that come with following government rules about protected species. In a Congress that is usually very divided, the bill has gotten extremely strong backing from both parties. Olson said, “It got to the point where we just kept getting more co-sponsors.” It was agreed upon by everyone that this would work in the long term.

RAWA is going to be voted on again this year in the Senate. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are still signing on to the bill, but they haven’t decided where the money will come from yet.

Now, a new bill to protect the environment may be competing for backers, especially among Republicans.

The America’s Wildlife Habitat Conservation Act (AWHCA) passed the House Committee on Natural Resources last week with a vote of 21 to 17. The vote was split down the middle between the two parties. The new bill wants to give $300 million to wildlife agencies in each state and $20 million to tribes every year for five years. However

these funds would be “subject to appropriation” by Congress, which means that Congress might not give the full amount every year. To make up for this spending, the bill would take back $700 million in government funds that were given to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the Inflation Reduction Act. (NOAA plans to use most of the government spending money for projects that will protect and strengthen the coast.)

A staff member for the House Committee on Natural Resources said that the $320 million was the amount that the bill’s authors thought they could justify. When asked about the rescinding, the source said that the committee looked at departments that had gotten money from the Inflation Reduction Act but hadn’t spent it yet.

The bill, which is being pushed by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), who is the head of the House Committee on Natural Resources, would also change the Endangered Species Act to let states send the US Fish and Wildlife Service their own recovery plans for endangered species. In some cases, the government would have to set “objective, incremental goals” for healing. As those goals are met, the rules will become less strict. The bill would also make it harder for the agency to name private land as critical habitat. It would also get rid of the rule that government agencies have to change their land-management plans every time a new species is mentioned or a new critical habitat is named.

Supporters of Westerman’s plan say that Republicans who are careful with money will like the suggested way to pay for it. They also say that the changes to the Endangered Species Act would make it easier for private property and government agencies to work together to help species survive.

But environmentalists say the bill is full of things that make it impossible to pass. Supporters of RAWA say that the five-year sunset clause would limit what agencies can do and even who they can hire. RAWA, on the other hand, would give long-term environmental projects like forest repair the basic funds they need. It’s also a fear of many backers that the planned changes to the Endangered Species Act will make plans to protect species less strong. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), who spoke out against the new bill as it left the committee, said that RAWA was the “gold standard” at the time.

When it comes to protection led by tribes, RAWA has many perks that aren’t included in the new bill. For one thing, it would give almost five times as much money, which is a big deal because that money would go to more than 574 officially recognized groups and more than 100 million acres of land. Another thing is that RAWA does away with any equal requirements for tribes, so they don’t have to keep applying for more handouts.

Julie Thorstenson, executive director of the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, said that tribes are already doing a lot to protect wildlife. She pointed to the return of bison, salmon, and the black-footed ferret as examples of past and present work that tribes have done. RAWA wants to raise a certain amount of money every year, which would let them do more work and be more involved in national talks. They wouldn’t have to split their income between partner workshops and work on the ground. Thorstenson said, “We still need base funding for tribes, and RAWA has been the most promising way to get that.”

Senior head of wildlife, hunting, and fishing policy at the National Wildlife Federation, Mike Leahy, said that the yearly funds that RAWA is asking for are the very least that is needed to protect over 12,000 species that are in danger across the country. Leahy agreed with Westerman’s goals but said the bill has a big “political problem” because most Democrats are against taking any money away from the Inflation Reduction Act.

At the same time, RAWA has its own problems: The people behind the billion-dollar plan still haven’t agreed on where the money will come from, even though many ideas have been put forward. In earlier versions of the bill, money was sought from oil and gas leases, bitcoin taxes, and fees charged to people who pollute.

Like Leahy, Olson praised the new bill’s readiness to give a lot more money to environmental protection. But it doesn’t have the broad support that RAWA did for almost a decade, and Olson said, “In order to be durable, it almost has to be bipartisan.”

At a hotel in Dhaka, the city of Bangladesh, the World Bank study called “The Bangladesh Country Environment Analysis 2023” was made public.
According to the 2019 data, air pollution and environmental Pollution killed 1,49,294 people, arsenic killed 64,78 people, and lead killed 59,42 people. The World Bank is the source.
About three lakh people died too soon in Bangladesh in 2019 because of three types of pollution: air pollution, water pollution, and soil pollution. Air pollution is to blame for 50% of these deaths. A loss of 17.6% of the country’s gross domestic product that year was due to pollution. Dhaka has the dirtiest air of any city in recent years.
The level of pollution in many rivers, including those near Dhaka, has gotten very bad. Thus, a World Bank study has shown the harm that waste does to the environment in Bangladesh. An expert from the World Bank on the climate and a co-author of the study, Anna Licha Gomez, gave the presentation. He said that most of the data on air and water pollution came from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and the Environment Directorate. Data on lead pollution came from both national and foreign studies.
That information is shown through science models, and an estimate of the damage is made. It was the Minister of Environment, Forestry, and Climate Change Affairs of Bangladesh who was there when this study came out. At the event, he talked about how pollution has killed almost three million people too soon. He said, “We will never say that there is no problem; we admit that there are many environmental problems.” But we should think about how bad the harm really is. The Global Atmosphere Report 2023 was released this month by the Swiss company IQAir. That study said that in 2023, Bangladesh had the most polluted air and Dhaka was the most polluted city.

How many deaths and damages are caused by any pollution

The study says that arsenic and lead poisoning, dirty water, bad sanitation and cleanliness, and pollution of the air have killed at least 273,000 people. Because of these pollutions, people in the country get sick 522 million days a year. According to the World Bank, the most dangerous types of pollution are air pollution, both indoors and outdoors. 8.3% of 2019 GDB was lost in this deal. Then there are deaths caused by arsenic in drinking water, cleaning, and cleanliness. Sixty-five thousand people died in it. Lead poisoning killed around 60,000 people. Some people say that PN 2.5 particles make the air dirty. A study from the World Bank that came out yesterday said that Bangladesh is dealing with very high amounts of pollution and health risks from the climate. It hurts poor people, kids younger than five, the old, and women more than men. The study says that if the right steps are taken, the amount of PM 2.5 in the air can be cut by 33% by 2030.
Some steps that can be taken include speeding up the use of LPG or electricity instead of the harmful materials that are currently used in cooking to cut down on pollution in industry and power production. Integrated handling of trash can also help a lot with this.

How death can be prevented

A study from the World Bank says that thirteen thousand deaths can be avoided if policies and quick actions are taken. The study says that children are being hurt by pollution in their surroundings. Lead pollution is hurting kids’ brain growth in a way that can’t be fixed. It is thought that this causes people to lose about 20 million points of IQ every year. To cook at home with solid fuel is one of the main ways that air pollution is made. Most women and kids are hurt by this. The water quality in Bangladesh’s rivers has gotten much worse because of trash and sewage from other places, like plastics and industry waste that hasn’t been cleaned up. Investing in green power creation, cooking with green fuels, and tighter rules to stop pollution from factories are all things that can help clean up the air. Ana Luisa Gomez Lima, who helped write the study, said that Bangladesh can stop polluting the environment by putting in place the right policies and programs at the right time. Pollution can be lowered by making environmental protection measures stronger, spending on green food and other rewards, and spreading information. Ana Luisa Gómez Lima lists a number of problems that make it hard to clean up the environment in Bangladesh. They include problems with institutions and rules, not enough money, red tape and study, keeping an eye on public participation, honesty, and law enforcement. This study says that in 2022, there were 40,000 factories and 580,000 cars in the country. A lot of the trash in the world comes from cars and workplaces. But in 2021 and 2022, Bangladesh had about 2,000 mobile courts. To date, the Department of Environment has fined more than 2,000 companies for damage to the environment. The World Bank study focuses on a set of suggestions to stop waste in the environment. This includes making environmental laws and systems more diverse and stronger. Increasing the power of institutions and supporting a green economy.

Economic growth at the expense of the environment is not sustainable

The study was shown off before the event’s main speaker, the Minister of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change. The minister said, “Unveiling is always a reason to celebrate.” “However, the report today doesn’t bring any good news.” It brings up something that really worries us. There is no question, though, that the study is important. The minister used Article 18 of the Constitution to say, “We are the people who are healthy and beautiful.” In charge of making sure people can live, but we have all sorts of problems. We have issues with money and how well we use our resources. It takes both money and speed to solve environmental issues. The minister said that 40% of the money that has been spent on Bangladesh’s climate sector has come from loans, calling the country a helpless victim of climate change. It’s a terrible thing. It is not the big countries’ fault that climate change is happening. It is up to us to stop it. We need to in this case. Easy-to-repay loans or grants should be given out. Cross-border air pollution is a cause of air pollution in Bangladesh, the minister said, “The dirty air from India’s Punjab goes to Pakistan’s Punjab.”
In the same way, dirty air from one place travels to another. There’s no reason to blame. At the event, Abdulaye Sek, who is the Country Director for Bangladesh and Bhutan for the World Bank, said, “Tackling environmental risks is a priority for Bangladesh at the same time as development and development.” We’ve seen in many places around the world that damaging the environment for economic growth is not a good idea.

The role of responsible agencies is not effective

Prof. Abdus Salam from Dhaka University’s Chemistry Department has been studying the world for a very long time. When he was told about the World Bank study, he said yesterday, “If there is a report on pollution in the world, Bangladesh is at the top of it.” We don’t like the news. Most of this damage to the world is caused by people. But the responsible groups we have to lessen the harm. The part doesn’t work well. Things don’t get better, then.” In 2022 and 2023, Dr. Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman, who was in charge of the Environmental Health Research Group at the Bangladesh Environmental Health Research Center, looked into how much lead was in the bodies of children in Dhaka city. One out of every 500 kids in the study had lead in their bodies. Around eighty percent of them had more lead than was thought to be safe. He said that we know about lead pollution and the harm it does when asked about lead poisoning in children’s bodies in yesterday’s World Bank study. But the problem isn’t fixed just because it’s known.

This article was first released by Inside Climate News. It is being shared here as part of the climate-changing insights to motivate people.

Environmentalists have been calling out banks and consumer brands, like fashion brands ASOS and Barclays, for years for greenwashing, which is when they say things that aren’t true about their goods or practices.

“Greenhushing,” on the other hand, is a practice that seems odd in which companies don’t want the public to know about their eco-friendly actions and goals.

For instance, BlackRock has taken down several mentions on its website of its promise to help reach net zero emissions by 2050. However, the company’s CEO said that the company would still talk about climate problems with the companies it invests in, according to the Washington Post. Grist reports that consumer goods companies, like those that sell clothes, food and drinks, and other goods, are also joining the “greenhushing” trend, even though they are already taking steps to be more environmentally friendly.

At the same time, as the fight against climate change has stepped up over the past few years, so has the desire for goods and services that are good for the earth. What’s the deal with this contradiction? There are a few things that experts say could be going on.

In the past few years, liberal activists and groups have attacked businesses like H&M, Nike, Allbirds shoes, and Canada Goose for their widespread greenwashing efforts. Even though many of these companies won their lawsuits, they still got a lot of bad press. The Post says that lawmakers and thought leaders on the other side of the line are speaking out against “woke” environmental efforts and business decisions that are made with climate change in mind.

“If you’re a CEO with good intentions, you might get sued from both sides—from the left and from the right,” Renat Heuberger told the Post. Heuberger is the co-founder and CEO of South Pole, a climate company that put out a poll on greenwashing trends. “That’s not good news if you want to get more CEOs to do something about climate change.”

South Pole’s study says that because of this criticism, some companies have stopped talking about what they are doing to cut down on pollution or their environmental impact on the public.

Axios reports that Uber added a new tool on Monday that lets riders know how many emissions they could avoid by picking an electric or hybrid car. This is part of a growing market trend. For example, when I was looking for a flight on Skyscanner this week, the app told me which choices put out the least amount of CO2.

People are getting more and more of these tools, but do they use them when they make their final purchase? I asked Xavier Font, who works as a professor of green marketing at the University of Surrey and gives advice to Booking, Google, Expedia, and Skyscanner.

He told me over the phone, “Right now, no one—not even the companies themselves—has done a public study that says, ‘Does this have an effect or not?'” “The thing is, we’re not sure what they add.” They went to a lot of trouble to make a system, so I think we could do a better job of checking it.

In the same way, studies show that people’s actions can vary when they are given with “eco-friendly” goods. In a study done in 2022, 78% of people in the US said that living in a way that is good for the environment is important to them, and 30% said they would be more likely to buy something if it had ads for it that were good for the environment.

But some tests show that it can also work the other way around. For instance, in a 2020 study, more than 250 Americans were asked to rate two ads for laundry detergent: one with the words “sustainable” written on it and one without those words. Most of the people who took part thought that the more environmentally friendly product wasn’t as good, even though they hadn’t tried it.

Font says that marking goods as sustainable makes people a little more aware of too much information, and more suspicious of possible greenwashing.

Katherine White, a researcher in sustainable business at the University of British Columbia, and co-authors in the Harvard Business Review say that companies can use social influence to get people to buy with sustainability in mind, or they can focus on other good things about the product, like how safe it is or how innovative it is.

In general, greenhushing comes with some risks. Some experts say it can be harder to keep track of progress as banks and stores that sell things to consumers play down or get rid of their public promises to be more environmentally friendly.

Austin Whitman, CEO of Climate Neutral, a nonprofit that tracks climate pledges, told Grist, “We really, really, really need a lot more disclosure of all the environmental actions that companies are taking. We need it to be disclosed regularly and transparently, and we need it to be disclosed quantitatively.”

Source – Mother Jones

This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the environmental insights and news to encourage people.

Christopher Mason began this ordeal when his 3-year-old daughter unwittingly licked a subway pole. As any parent would be, he was both alarmed and curious: What sort of microbes might be living on this metal pipe which was touched daily by commuters?

Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine, became fascinated with that question after his toddler had an unpleasant diaper incident. Inspired by his toddler’s disgusting encounter, he set off on an endeavor to explore how bacteria, fungi, and viruses cohabit with over 8 million New York City citizens in urban jungle environments like Manhattan.

In 2013, he initiated a project that sent out a small army of students carrying packs full of latex gloves, vials, and sterile Q-tips to every open metro stop in the city. These students conducted random samples from turnstiles, benches, kiosks, and turnstiles at every open metro stop – an expedition into uncharted territory similar to Mars or deep-sea canyons full of lifeforms both known and unfamiliar.

Swabbers were collecting environmental DNA or eDNA. This consisted of sampling cells that humans, animals, and microorganisms shed during daily activity leaving behind genetic fingerprints that scientists slowly quantified and mapped in order to create an invisible map of all the microbiome diversity present throughout a city.

In 2015, they reported discovering over 1,600 different species of microbes, nearly half of which had already been described by science. Most were harmless to human skin and digestive tracts while 12 percent were known pathogens such as fragments similar to bubonic plague and anthrax–though no evidence showed they could make anyone sick. They hadn’t discovered any new deadly viruses lurking underground yet.

Four years later, in late 2019, Mason and his colleagues learned of an unknown pneumonia-like disease circulating in China. “Initially we weren’t concerned,” Mason remarked, but by January it had spread across the ocean and into America. Subway swabbers became frontline workers monitoring Covid-19’s presence not only within transit systems but also hospitals, wastewater facilities, and wastewater plants – “we developed new medical protocols and tools which could be deployed anywhere”.

Today, COVID-19 has claimed nearly 80,000 New Yorkers, nearly 1.2 million Americans, and approximately 7 million worldwide. The pandemic spurred technological innovations allowing scientists to quickly characterize organisms leaving genetic traces in the environment; similarly to hurricane-driven innovations in weather surveillance and building engineering; COVID-19 has driven advances in pathogen-hunting science.

Over the last 15 years, research on environmental DNA (eDNA) has experienced explosive growth thanks to advances in sequencing technology, computing power, and metagenomics (the study of DNA from multiple organisms). Scientists across the world can now take samples from cups of dirt, vials of water, and puffs of air to explore and survey eDNA present for thousands of microbial species present. While the field has experienced some concerns related to privacy and technical limitations, many scientists see an opportunity in the early detection of emerging pathogens. Wastewater surveillance remains the premier means for monitoring population-level virus spikes, but other realms are making inroads into monitoring an outbreak as quickly as possible and taking necessary measures to contain it. Health officials are becoming more efficient at quickly recognizing an outbreak and taking appropriate actions against it quickly and efficiently.

Experts predict that technology may soon reach such sophistication that an environmental sample from high-risk locations, such as wet markets, hospitals, and conference hotels can be quickly sequenced using portable devices that report whether pathogens exist. Researchers use genomic databases for rapid identification of pathogens and microbes. Scientists are working towards “monitoring high-risk interfaces in real-time”, according to Erik Karlsson of Institut Pasteur du Cambodge a nonprofit research institution located in Cambodia.

Scientists consider virus hunting to be an early warning system: the aim is to locate pathogens that could spark disease outbreaks before they have the chance. They stress the importance of monitoring high-risk areas where animals and humans cohabitate – typically on the borders between populated areas and tropical forests where hunters capture animals for food, pets, medicine ingredients, and medicine-making purposes, or markets where slaughtered animals are sold for consumption.

“Our motto is, ‘Get left of sneeze,'” explained Karlsson who monitors for avian influenza and other pathogens in Cambodia’s live bird markets. That means they strive to detect potentially threatening pathogens before they spread to humans or another species and cause outbreaks – “Our aim is to get ahead of that,” Karlsson stated.

Studies show that more than 70% of infectious diseases that have emerged since 2000–such as Ebola, HIV, and pox (formerly monkeypox)–have spread from wildlife to humans in recent decades, known as “spillovers.” This trend has only increased with time.

Research indicates one primary event that typically precedes an environmental spillover: forest clearing.

As forests are cut down for timber, farming, and human development, residents and workers in adjacent areas hunt and scavenge for animals for use as food or for sale as pets or medicinal products, sometimes illegally. Handling animals exposes people to potential pathogens; whether one of those pathogens makes its way onto human bodies depends on many factors including viral evolution and human immunity.

Forested areas in Africa and Southeast Asia that have seen vast tracts of once pristine wilderness cut down are some of the primary hotspots for animal-borne, or zoonotic, diseases to emerge. According to WHO estimates, Africa alone saw a 63 percent increase in outbreaks over ten years – these outbreaks included Ebola, viral hemorrhagic fevers, dengue, anthrax plague, and pox.

Ebola stands out among its class as a highly dangerous and devastating illness, first identified in 1976 and first diagnosed subsequently. First identified, this virus causes massive immune system malfunction by overloading it to damage blood vessel walls severely enough that they begin leaking blood from arteries, veins, and capillaries into medical shock or organ failure.

The largest Ebola outbreak ever was launched in December 2013 when the Ebola virus that had been living in bats somehow spread to Emile Ouamouno, then 18 months old in southern Guinea. He quickly developed a fever, passed stool blackened with blood, and vomited for days prior to succumbing quickly thereafter. His mother, sister, and grandmother also fell sick within days and eventually passed on as well.

Soon the disease was detected in nearby Gueckedou, a city with nearly 350,000 residents, alerting world health officials of an Ebola outbreak. Over time it spread through Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, and six additional countries, including three cases in Dallas Texas in 2016. By 2016, over 11,300 had died from Ebola infection while 28,600 had contracted it – all this during an epidemic that eventually ended with 28600 cases being infected and deceased from Ebola infection.

Eeva Kuisma works for the Wildlife Conservation Society, an international conservation group. In the Republic of Congo, she is working to expand a project that could become the first long-term surveillance program for Ebola and other diseases based on forest environmental DNA sampling. This research builds upon an ongoing public education and disease surveillance program where researchers travel to rural communities and educate people on the dangers of Ebola virus infection and other animal-borne diseases; how to minimize exposure; hunting/foraging regulations are enforced through hotlines to report sightings of animal carcasses found in forests; so far this program has engaged 5,800 hunters across over 290 villages.

As part of Kuisma’s new study, survey teams will spend 12 months every five years walking systematic transects over more than 8 million acres of forest, collecting DNA samples from animal carcasses and feces along their route.

Representing various animals ranging from gorillas and chimpanzees to river hogs and antelopes, samples are currently being examined for Ebola and other pathogens using DNA analysis techniques developed over recent years by Kuisma and her colleagues. Their tests compare genetic material against databases of DNA sequences to identify bacteria as well as pathogens or viruses present.

Kuisma noted that long-term data from this project would prove invaluable in tracking Ebola or any other pathogens against changing landscapes, such as proposed road projects linking Congo, Chad, and Central African Republic – areas considered “pristine rainforest until recently”, according to her.

Environmental sampling for the Ebola virus remains in its infancy, yet ongoing environmental sampling could one day prevent a spillover and save lives. If researchers detect signs from animal populations that an epidemic is active. For instance through their feces or carcasses – Kuisma explained, then environmentalists can alert people, warn them, educate them not to consume carcasses, pick them up or otherwise handle them, and warn people accordingly.

Over the last century, Southeast Asia has been one of the main epicenters for emerging zoonotic diseases – and more recently their risk has only grown greater. Population growth, deforestation, climate change, and an explosion in poultry and pig farming have led to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Zika virus infections, and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza or HPAI infections being seen all too regularly across this region.

Karlsson is a virologist in Cambodia who oversees researchers in Phnom Penh collecting environmental samples in areas where people and animals cohabit. Researchers previously had to collect biological samples manually such as feces, blood, urine, or other biological samples by hand. Rapid genetic sequencing has made their work faster and safer allowing Karlsson’s team to quickly collect environmental samples in Phnom Penh areas with mixed populations more quickly and safely than before. “Environmental samples are great for speed,” Karlsson stated, as we don’t need permits nor trained personnel trained on how to handle potentially dangerous animals like bats or something similar – instead you can go out in Phnom Penh environment to collect environmental samples quickly.”

Karlsson’s team recently developed an effective new tool for hunting viruses, air sampling. Karlsson uses air filters designed for construction workers or hotel lobbies as part of an air purification system to test public markets where vendors slaughter, clean, and defeat chickens at high-risk areas for an avian influenza outbreak.

Researchers published in March 2023 a study in which they recruited vendors scattered throughout a market to wear personal air samplers for 30 minutes a day for one week during periods when avian influenza in poultry is predicted to increase (February-May) and then decrease. Viral RNA was detected in 100% of air samples taken, decreasing as people moved further from chicken slaughter areas – further validating Karlsson’s statement about them being “high-risk areas” that required interventions such as improved ventilation measures.

Karlsson’s team has turned to hand-held air-filtering devices no larger than credit card readers to sample for viruses in places that pose both challenges and risks for researchers to access, like bat caves. Bats are reservoirs for various viruses such as Covid-19 that infect humans; their samplers can easily enter these caves while scientists wait outside. They use toy drones or remote-control cars with these small samplers in tandem for rapid entry into bat caves while waiting outside.

Karlsson often considers what other technologies could be utilized for passive, remote sampling–with the ultimate goal being a comprehensive machine that collects samples on-site as well as processes them immediately. “Maybe we could attach it to something like Roomba and have it constantly vacuum the floors while simultaneously sucking up samples?” he asked rhetorically. “You see there are lots of possibilities here.”

Peter Thielen is a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory where he directs viral genomic surveillance projects, often working closely with Karlsson. According to Thielen, Karlsson has been perfectly situated in an area prone to disease spillover to pilot some of the latest technologies that speed response time to outbreaks – taking his laboratory right out into the field is precisely what’s needed, according to Thielen.

Scientists may work to detect pathogens floating in the air, but the COVID-19 pandemic really opened up new avenues for hunting viruses in wastewater. Since people shed genetic material from COVID-19 into their feces and urine, wastewater surveillance became one of the best ways to monitor disease spikes even prior to them becoming symptomatic.

Wastewater monitoring was no novel concept: its origins date all the way back to 1850s London when John Snow, a British physician, investigated an unusual cholera outbreak. Londoners quickly nicknamed it the “blue death,” as dehydration due to diarrhea and vomiting led to dehydrated patients who appeared like living corpses due to intense diarrhea and vomiting; many believed a “miasma”, an evil cloud of polluted air was to blame.

Snow was convinced that cholera was waterborne. After carefully mapping each case and finally tracking their source to Broad Street in London’s West End where there was an infected water pump with its handle still attached, Snow persuaded local council members to have its handle removed, thus ending its spread and eventually leading to modern epidemiology as it exists today. He is often celebrated as being “the father” of modern epidemiology.

Over the last century, wastewater has evolved into an essential tool for monitoring community health, particularly tracking drug use trends in cities and rapidly eliminating polio outbreaks. Yet ten years ago wastewater was only being considered marginally widely; an Environmental Protection Agency scientist proposed creating a nationwide monitoring system but couldn’t get anyone on board his plan at that time.

In September 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finally inaugurated their country’s inaugural National Wastewater Surveillance System – which collects and tests wastewater samples that flow into treatment plants to assist local response efforts – but by then more than 200,000 Americans had died from Covid-19 virus. If such a system had been operational when COVID-19 first hit U.S. shores it may have been detected more rapidly, according to Mason, the geneticist from Weill Cornell Medicine: “We would have known immediately where it was appearing and we would have known immediately within days or two where this virus appeared.”

Wastewater continues to provide important insight into where the COVID-19 virus is circulating and where people may be at risk of exposure, especially now that home test kits have replaced clinical testing as the standard tool of analysis. Wastewater also allows health officials to keep an eye out for new COVID-19 variants as they emerge and track their spread more easily than ever before.

“We’re officially out of a pandemic, but there are still circulating viruses – something interesting is seeing them in wastewater,” Mason noted. If virus levels spike as they did earlier this month (reaching levels similar to late 2020) health officials can alert the public and advise taking precautionary measures such as mask-wearing, hand washing, and social distancing to reduce exposure levels. Mason noted it’s encouraging to note most people have either received vaccination or already been infected and most cases of infection have either been addressed through vaccination or infection or both methods – which provides peace of mind to health officials as health officials can manage exposure more effectively than before. “It’s good that most people either had received vaccination or already been infected so most cases will have either been addressed,” added Mason.

Experts state that resources invested in developing wastewater pathogen surveillance infrastructure have put the United States in a better position to detect and address other health threats, including antibiotic resistance, foodborne illnesses, MPOX virus infection, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), although experts point out the program is still new and may pose ethical and privacy concerns.

Testing wastewater can be more cost- and time-efficient than testing hundreds of people or doing blood testing, yet wastewater remains unregulated when it comes to privacy rights. Who gets to decide what they flush away and its disposal remains unclear. Recently, the National Academies of Sciences issued a report outlining ways the national wastewater surveillance system must implement sufficient oversight measures to safeguard privacy rights while expanding to cover more communities simultaneously and track multiple pathogens simultaneously – as well as adapt to emerging threats when one spikes.

Mason joked, joking that each time someone flushed, and no samples were collected for epidemiologists to review, somewhere an epidemiologist was saddened by this oversight. Mason explained, however, that wastewater contains vast amounts of information – something we are only just beginning to tap.

After Mason completed his work mapping New York City’s microbiome, researchers from around the globe approached him about conducting similar swabs of their cities too. To meet growing interest, he and Evan Afshin, a medical student at New York Medical College, established the Metagenomics and Metadesign of Subways and Urban Biomes consortium which currently encompasses scientists from more than one hundred cities globally rubbing Q-tips on surfaces within transit systems, sewage canals, hospitals and other public places.

Naturalists have long used atlases of birds or fish found across North America or in the Pacific to track population trends. Mason and his colleagues are following this tradition by compiling an atlas of microorganisms found in urban mass transit systems worldwide. Now sequencing technology and AI-powered software to develop this global reference library of microbes as an open-sourced platform. “We want it so anyone anywhere can upload their DNA sequence and compare it to anything that has ever been sequenced,” explained Mason.

“This global system connects all labs around the world to be able to detect any new virus that might emerge,” Mason stated in an email. By understanding where risks reside and discovering entirely new species of creatures in nature. By tracking all types of microbes, researchers could discover new antibiotics while tracking and mapping antibiotic resistance, with potentially far-reaching implications if such an early warning system catches a pandemic pathogen down the road.

Still, many pathogen trackers hold onto a dream: to one day create an effective worldwide disease surveillance system on par with weather forecasting. Information such as air pressure, temperature, and wind currents feed into weather maps that help forecasters detect developing storm patterns and develop response plans. Similar information from microbiome data could feed into a global disease surveillance system – an expensive endeavor but worthwhile considering “money spent on pathogen surveillance is much cheaper than shutting down an entire economy,” Mason stated.

Scientists have learned a great deal from the Covid-19 pandemic, he noted. Now they just need to apply these lessons.

Source Mother Jones

The Bahamas has one of the lowest per-capita emissions in the world.

According to a recent United Nations report, the effects of climate change are exacerbating economic challenges for some countries, pushing them further into debt and creating a vicious cycle of financial instability. This, in turn, hinders the ability of their governments to provide essential services to their citizens, thereby further exacerbating the crisis. The report examines the effects of natural disasters on the public debt and the fulfillment of human rights for the people of the Bahamas. 

The report’s writer, Attiya Waris, who serves as a UN independent expert on foreign debt, discovered that the impact of five significant hurricanes since 2012 has compelled the nation with a population of approximately 400,000 to accumulate billions of dollars in debt for rebuilding efforts, putting its tourism-reliant economy at risk. Consequently, the government of The Bahamas has faced challenges in allocating funds for initiatives such as food aid, financial assistance for businesses, and support for the unemployed, which are in higher demand following natural disasters caused by climate change.

In 2019, the powerful Hurricane Dorian wreaked havoc on the Caribbean nation, causing immense destruction and loss. The storm’s impact was valued at approximately $3.4 billion, which is equivalent to a significant portion of the country’s GDP. The devastating category five hurricane resulted in the tragic loss of life, with estimates suggesting that over 70 people were killed. Additionally, the storm’s fury affected a further 30,000 individuals, leaving countless homes and businesses in ruins.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News

Following the storm, the finance minister at the time, K. Peter Turnquest, revealed that instead of increasing taxes to support the recovery efforts in light of the hurricane’s negative effects on the economy, the government planned to reduce taxes. To cover the costs of cleanup, temporary shelters, food aid, and other necessities, the government had to borrow around $500 million. Dorian was the most recent costly hurricane to strike the Bahamas, following Joaquin in 2015 with $105 million in damages, Matthew in 2016 with $438.6 million in damages, and Irma in 2017 with $118 million in damages. Waris discovered in her examination that the nation had just settled the debt from a previous hurricane when another one struck, increasing the country’s debt load. The Bahamas had to pay around $989.9 million solely for debt service in the final quarter of 2022, a significant increase from the $525.5 million paid in the first quarter of the same year. Waris remarked that the economy was not thriving but rather struggling to survive in such conditions.

Climate change is projected to lead to more frequent and severe hurricanes, as well as rising sea levels. This is anticipated to cause greater flooding and erosion in areas such as the Bahamas, along with reduced productivity in the seabed and the contamination of groundwater sources with salt water. The sea level in the Bahamas has already increased by approximately one foot in the last hundred years. The harm to nature has a significant impact on the Bahamian tourism industry, which relies heavily on natural resources. And we must know HOW TO PREVENT WATER POLLUTION

As the natural beauty of the islands deteriorates, it affects the industry’s ability to attract visitors, resulting in a decline in tourism-related revenue and employment opportunities. This industry is a vital contributor to the country’s economy, accounting for over 50 percent of its GDP and providing jobs for over half of its workforce.

The Bahamas exemplifies the plight of many nations vulnerable to climate change, which face the recurring need to rebuild in the wake of increasingly frequent floods, droughts, storms, and other natural disasters linked to climate change. Waris urged the international community to provide more affordable loans, forgive debt incurred as a result of climate-related disasters, and contribute to the Loss and Damages Fund, a UN Framework Convention on Climate Change initiative launched in November to support nations severely impacted by climate change. “The nations in question have typically had a negligible impact on the issue of global warming, according to Waris.”

The Bahamas’ carbon footprint is minuscule, accounting for less than 0.01% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and its per capita emissions are among the lowest globally. In the spring of 2022, Waris, a law professor at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, traveled to the Bahamas and witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of Hurricane Dorian on the local communities. She visited towns that were still struggling to recover, where she saw people residing in temporary shelters that were only meant to be used for a brief period. We have also a proper guide about carbon footprint.

In addition to discussing the intricate details of the government’s financial situation amid dealing with climate-related disasters, her report also highlighted worries raised by global financial organizations and investigative studies. These concerns revolved around the Bahamas potentially serving as a hub for illegal money activities, along with the government’s hesitance to implement higher taxes on corporations, inheritances, and capital gains. Waris urged the government of the Bahamas to step up their efforts to prevent illegal financial activities. She also advocated for the establishment of a global tax authority to address this and other issues, which she believes are closely linked to climate financing and the protection of human rights.

On March 6, Waris submitted the report to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Source Mother Jones

Supporters have put pressure on his administration to make rules about power plant and car emissions, as well as how companies report climate risk. Opponents, on the other hand, are waiting for their chance to weaken the rules.

The Obama administration had hoped that this spring would be a big year for taking action on climate change. A lot of its big plans have been burned by the heat of the 2024 election season.

The Biden administration has given up on some of the most controversial parts of its climate plan because it is facing opposition from political friends and weak Senate Democrats, as well as a growing chance that a future Republican Congress will undo it. Instead, over the next few weeks, government agencies will finish up some long-awaited, much weaker climate rules: Under rules that Wall Street’s top regulator is likely to pass Wednesday, U.S. companies will have to tell investors about climate-related risks for the first time. However, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is likely to back out of its original plan to require companies to include risks linked to climate change all along their supply lines.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is starting over on a project that was started almost ten years ago. The U.S. power business will have to cut down on emissions from coal plants. But the EPA said it would wait to take action on the more than 2,000 natural gas plants that are already in operation and are now responsible for 43% of the greenhouse gas pollution in the sector.
Automakers will have to follow new rules about fumes from tailpipes that are meant to push the industry toward electric cars. However, sources say the EPA will take longer to put the new rules into place. This will mean that the sharp rise in electric vehicles won’t happen until after 2030.

The Biden government says its goals have not changed it is still set on reducing carbon emissions across the whole economy by 50% by 2030 and by 100% by 2050. Administrator of the EPA Michael Regan said that the delay in controlling natural gas power plants, for example, will give his agency time to come up with a “stronger, more durable approach” that will lead to bigger cuts in emissions over time.

For now, making sure that strong rules for coal power plants are approved now will keep them from being completely undone by Republicans in 2025, if they take over Congress. Any rules set in stone after May are subject to review by Congress, which is especially likely if former President Donald Trump wins the general election in November. But some people who want to do something about climate change are afraid that the Biden administration will miss the chance to act before the problem gets worse by slowing down some of its plans.

When asked about the Congressional Review Act, Nathaniel Keohane, head of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, said, “I understand the political urgency. They should be putting things in place to try to meet that deadline.” “But the clock on climate change is ticking even faster. Also, I’d like to see more urgency—not just finishing the rules by the due date, but making them tough enough to keep us on track to meet our goals.

Carrots and sticks: tax breaks and rules

By any measure, Biden has already done more to fight climate change than any other president. In 2022, he got Congress to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. Through a mix of direct funding and tax credits, that law required the federal government to spend an unusual $370 billion to cut carbon pollution.

But top environmental groups like the Rhodium Group, Energy Innovation, and Princeton University’s REPEAT Project have said that the tax breaks, grants, and other incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act will not be enough to help the US meet its carbon reduction goals under the Paris Agreement. To reach those goals, the Biden administration and many people who support climate action think that the economy will need more than just “carrots.” In this case, they mean “sticks,” or rules. “The best way to do it is to combine a lot of incentives with a regulatory path that lets the industry know where they need to go,” said Bob Perciasepe, who used to be the deputy administrator of the EPA and worked on climate projects early in President Barack Obama’s term.

The Biden government has always thought that rules and rewards would work together to let markets know that there will be a greater need for better energy. “Without this flow of capital, none of this would work,” Perciasepe said. “We need new ways to make electricity, drive cars, or do whatever.”

People who want to take action on climate change have long said that rules on corporate accounting are one of the most important things the government can do to get money flowing to companies that are fixing the problem instead of making it worse. Most big businesses that are sold on the stock market put out information about their impact on the environment. However, buyers can’t easily compare these companies because each has its idea of what’s important, such as goods with zero carbon emissions, water use, and plastics use.

“It’s a climate Tower of Babel,” said Steven Rothstein, who runs the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets. Ceres is a Boston-based charity that promotes sustainable investing. In 2003, investors with Ceres met with the SEC for the first time to ask for uniform rules on climate disclosure.

Before March 2022, the SEC didn’t suggest these rules. They have been very important to Chairman Gary Gensler, who was appointed by Biden. The rules say that businesses need to talk about both the actual risks of climate change, like rising sea levels and weather, and the business risks they face because of new laws or rules that are based on climate change. Companies would also have to report their greenhouse gas pollution.

Two of the five-person nonpartisan commission are Republicans, and they have strongly opposed Gensler’s plan. Trump nominee Hester Peirce said, “We are not the Securities and Environment Commission.”

The Commission is going to vote on rules that aren’t very different from the original plan. The original proposal said that companies would have to report emissions and climate risks from not only making their goods but also getting their raw materials and using those products. The burning of fuel in cars, trucks, and power plants is an example of “Scope 3” emissions for oil and gas companies. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, this is where up to 90% of the carbon pollution they cause comes from.

At an American Council on Renewable Energy policy meeting last week, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), one of the Senate’s top climate action supporters, was upset that the SEC’s plan was likely to be weakened. So he said, the fossil fuel business was to blame because they spread the idea that investing based on environmental, social, and governance principles (also called “ESG”) is a far-left idea, or “woke capitalism.”

Whitehouse said, “I would fault the Biden administration for not having called this out in an effective way, even though they had the loudest voice.” “And I think that has made executive agencies and agencies that are kind of independent, like the SEC, less ambitious.”

But among the 16,000 comments the SEC got on its plan, some from Biden administration friends, like Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is running for re-election this year and is worried about the plan. Tester worried that the changes to Scope 3 reporting rules could hurt small farmers and ranchers in a letter sent in January with Sen. Krysten Sinema of Arizona.

The SEC shouldn’t write rules that could force a family farm in eastern Montana that wants to sell wheat to a big, publicly owned brewing company to keep a close eye on the emissions that come from their activities, Tester and Sinema wrote. Sinema, who used to be a Democrat but is now an independent, dropped her tough re-election bid on Tuesday.

A study by Ceres found that most big investors who responded to the SEC’s plan wanted Scope 3 emissions to be included in climate risk disclosure. But Rothstein said that even a disclosure rule that only looks at direct emissions will help get tens of trillions of dollars worth of capital markets interested in climate change. This is important because the government is already investing billions of dollars in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Rothstein said, “The government is a key player, but we need action from both the public and private sectors to get to the market securities we need and make the transition.” He said that money managers haven’t been able to spend wisely in light of climate risks up until now because “fundamentally, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

Businesses, workers, and communities want to delay

Allies have also spoken out against the Biden administration’s rules on climate change set by the EPA.

The EPA made a complicated plan with different rules for each type of plant and fuel to deal with the electric power sector, which is responsible for 25% of the country’s carbon pollution. Because of market forces, cheaper natural gas, and green energy, coal plants have been closing down across the US for the past ten years. The rules are likely to speed up this process. However, the EPA saw a future for both new and old natural gas plants in a world with carbon limits. They thought that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology or co-firing with hydrogen could help these plants survive. Some weak Senate Democrats, like Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, said they were worried that energy costs would go up because of reliance on technologies that were not fully developed yet.

At the same time, people of color, who have generally been the ones most affected by fossil fuel pollution, said that relying on CCS would keep that unfairness going and make the switch to better technology take longer.

Regan said on February 29 that he would delay rules on natural gas plants that are already in use. These rules would have used carbon capture technology to reduce emissions from the biggest plants. Instead, he said that the EPA would start working on “a new, comprehensive approach” for these kinds of plants that would include not only carbon but also air toxins and pollution like ozone and small particles. These kinds of chemicals are already controlled, but people who fight for environmental justice say that EPA rules are not strict enough to protect health in places where people are exposed to a lot of them over time.

“Any rulemaking to address the existing gas sector can and must achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gases while also improving local air quality and the public health of overburdened communities,” said a group led by the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. They praised Regan’s choice to put off action on gas power plants.

The American Petroleum Institute, on the other hand, liked the wait. It plans to use the time to push for more use of natural gas, which it says is less harmful to the environment than coal, even though leaks of the strong greenhouse gas methane can cancel out those benefits. “Natural gas is the backbone of making electricity in the U.S.,” said Dustin Meyer, senior vice president for policy at API.

Some people who care about the environment think that Biden’s EPA is losing a chance to control the power sector’s biggest source of carbon pollution. “March Madness started early this year,” said Frank Sturges, an attorney for Clean Air Task Force, a group that supports CCS and works to protect the environment. “The EPA has chosen to sit on the bench instead of taking action to get rid of emissions from real gas plants.”

Vehicle emissions have become the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. over the past ten years. The Biden administration has not yet made it clear to the public if it will change its plan from last year to speed up the sale of electric cars. Last month, the New York Times said that the EPA is likely to give automakers more time to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that come out of the tailpipes.

Automakers and the United Auto Workers, who are a big part of Biden’s support, both wanted this wait. This is especially true in Michigan, which is a key split state. The AFL-CIO backed Biden in June, which was the earliest it had ever weighed in on a presidential run. However, the UAW didn’t back Biden until much later. Then, in September, Biden became the first president to walk the picket line during the UAW’s six-week strike against Detroit automakers. During this time, the union pushed for a strong role for workers in the future of electric vehicles. In January, the day after the New Hampshire primary, UAW President Shawn Fain finally backed Biden. However, he still had concerns about the policy on electric vehicles.

The UAW told the EPA last year that it “fully supports the transition to a cleaner auto industry,” but it was worried that workers who make cars and items with internal combustion engines would have to do a lot of the work. Since union jobs that pay well are still hard to come by in the EV business, the union asked the EPA to set a standard for vehicle pollution that “increases stringency more gradually and occurs over a greater period.”

The EPA’s rules on vehicles were meant to be one of the main ways that the Biden climate plan cuts pollution. The goal is to make EVs a bigger part of new car sales, going from 7% to 67% by 2032. The EPA predicted that this would cut carbon dioxide pollution by almost 10 billion tons by 2055, which is the same amount of pollution that the whole U.S. economy would produce in two years. Some climate activists are worried that if the U.S. doesn’t move quickly on car emissions, it could really slow down its progress toward the goals it set in the Paris Agreement. According to Dave Cooke, senior vehicles analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, slowing down the rate of improvement of the biggest rule on one of the biggest sources of emissions would make it almost impossible to meet those climate goals. He said this on the S&P Global Commodity Insights podcast on Monday.

An election that could make rules less strict

Because of what Newt Gingrich did as House Speaker, the Biden team has to meet a date that is closer to now. The Congressional Review Act, which was passed as part of Gingrich’s Contract With America legislative package in 1996, makes it easy for Congress to repeal any law that was completed in the last 60 working days of the previous Congress. It only takes a simple majority, as long as the president agrees with the choice.

It is only important for the law to be followed when the opposite party wins both Congress and the White House in an election. The Congressional Review Act was only used once in its first 20 years. That was in 2001 when President George W. Bush’s Republican-led Congress decided to overturn the ergonomic rules for the workplace that were completed near the end of President Bill Clinton’s term.

Then Trump came along. He gave the go-ahead for Congress to kill 16 rules that were approved in Obama’s last year in office.

Obama’s gas rules were saved from being thrown out by the Congressional Review Act by the late Sen. John McCain. (The same thing he did with AIA.) That would have been a terrible hit to efforts to stop climate change because the Congressional Review Act pretty much says that no future government can bring back any rule that the CRA kills. In the end, Trump did get rid of Obama’s rules on methane and about 100 other environmental rules. But a few months after Biden was elected, the methane rules were reinstated by a Congress controlled by Democrats. This was one of three steps taken by Trump that were overturned by lawmakers using the CRA. Since then, Biden has worked to improve the rules on methane and other rules he brought back from Obama’s original climate plan, such as rules on power plants and the emissions from private vehicles.

However, this work has taken up most of Biden’s first time in office. The exact date of Biden’s Congressional Review Act limit is unknown because it rests on how many congressional session days are planned this year. This is mostly up to Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives. Big rule changes are being worked on by officials to be finished by May.

He said, “You don’t want to make it easy for the next guy to roll back your stuff.” Perciasepe was a deputy at the EPA. “They have to figure out which of the most important things—not just climate—they’re going to stack up right now” and get them to the White House for approval. He said, “They’re in a tight spot.”

By law, when agencies approve rules, they have to address all problems brought up in public comments. If you don’t follow the rules properly, there is a greater chance that the courts will reject them. For the EPA, this is becoming almost guaranteed.

That’s why a lot of people think the agencies are putting off the hardest problems that are slowing down work on their climate rules, hoping to keep at least some of the climate benefits they want. But being more careful comes with its risks. For instance, Regan’s promise to take stronger action against natural gas plants in the future has a hidden catch. It can’t happen without another term for Biden.

Source Inside Climate News