Tagfossil fuels

The war on fossil fuels goes hyper-local

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One theme that I’ve come back to a lot in the last few months is the notion that local jurisdictions — state and even city and county governments — can take the lead in the fight against climate change, even at a time when Washington seems determined to pull back. All across the country, local jurisdictions are taking actions to promote the use of electric cars, though charging...

Flooding of Atlantic coastal cities about to get a lot worse

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If you live near the Atlantic Ocean — and millions of Americans do, along the most densely populated stretch of the nation — then you know the coastal flooding is always in the background. When a big storm like a Nor’easter barrels its way up the Eastern Seaboard, cities from Miami Beach all the way up to Maine can expect some beach erosion and possibly a couple feet of water...

Protest at the Dakota Pipeline project is starting to pay off

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People often wonder whether political protest is effective. Certainly, we live an era where our politicians seem to listen mainly to their big donors and to the large corporations, while the average citizen struggles to be heard. Still, even in an era when most people seem to spend most of their time glued to their smartphones, taking matters to the streets can actually work. Protestors have to...

It’s time to call off the dogs in North Dakota

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Earlier this decade, it was the Keystone XL pipeline project that became the moral epicenter of the environmental movement in this country. And for good reason: the notion that the United States might allow a project to ship some of the dirtiest fuel — oil from the Canadian tar sands — across the American heartland, to meet the lucrative energy needs of overseas markets raised a...

‘We’ve never seen anything like this before’

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Every day, a new reminder of the urgency of the world’s climate crisis — and, by logical extension, the 2016 elections here in the United States — shows up in my inbox or somewhere on the web. The streak of record monthly average world temperatures shows absolutely no sign of letting up. The hurricanes are coming earlier and growing stronger; the floods in places like Texas are...

A President Trump would undo years of environmental progress

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It took a long time, but President Obama finally has many — not all, but many — aspects of U.S. environmental and energy policy moving in the right direction. Even with a U.S. Congress that is led by deniers of climate change, the Obama administration has been able to promulgate new rules to restrict greenhouse-gas pollution from U.S. coal-fired power plants, and recently signed onto...

New Orleans is sinking just as the waters are rising

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When it comes to climate, the latest news for my lifelong hometown of New Orleans is not very good at all. As many people know — and as Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed made quite clear in 2005 — much of the Crescent City sits below sea level, which is why the city’s levees and its other defense mechanisms such as flood pumping stations are so critical. When...

Keystone spill is more proof that pipelines are unsafe at any speed

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It happened again. Another oil spill, and another claim by a Big Energy company that the environmental impact is minimal. Then, a day or two later, or maybe even longer, the world learns somehow that the spill is much larger than was originally announced, and that the ecological damage is a lot more severe. The most extreme example of this Big Oil dishonesty, of course was what happened in home...

A ‘hothouse’ Planet Earth is about to enter uncharted waters

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There’s no doubt, at this point, that something of enormous consequence is happening with the planet and our climate. You could probably feel it in the air, if you lived in one of the parts of the United States that just went through a record-warm winter. Of course, it’s always important to note that weather is not the same thing as climate, but those record highs along the Eastern...

How local protests are saving the planet

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There’s an old saying in politics: Think globally, act locally. But when it comes to the major issues facing our environment, that idea has been largely honored in the breach. The rise of large and well intentioned lobbying groups such as the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council led a lot of rank-and-file voters to assume that someone was off in Washington, D.C., or maybe...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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