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EPA boasts of clean energy advances as reversal threat looms
By Shannon Kelleher
In the final week before Donald Trump takes office, federal regulators announced today that the Biden administration has awarded nearly $69 billion through two historic pieces of legislation designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions, lower energy costs, support the clean energy transition and help communities address pollution.
“In just three years, [the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)] has funded thousands of incredibly popular projects in every part of the country, from electrifying school buses in rural Texas to replacing lead pipes in Pittsburgh,” Zealan Hoover, senior advisor to the EPA administrator, said on a press call Friday.
As of Jan. 6, the EPA had awarded 93% of grant funding made available by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to the new report. Biden signed the IRA in August 2022, with the administration calling it “the largest investment in clean energy and climate action ever.” The agency has awarded 82% of funding through the so-called Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which passed in November 2021.
The report comes amid concerns that a Republican budget reconciliation bill could seek to reverse the IRA. A list of “spending reform options” reportedly distributed among House Republicans includes reversing $468 billion in Biden climate policies, which would entail repealing, among other measures, IRA green energy grants.
But while it may be easier to repeal the IRA under a Republican-controlled federal government, Republican lawmakers may hesitate to get rid of funding that benefits their constituents, according to the Brookings Institute, an independent, non-partisan think tank.
Almost 60% of announced IRA projects are in Republican congressional districts, according to a two-year review of the IRA released in August. That month, 18 Republican House Representatives signed a letter calling for attempts to repeal the IRA to leave the legislation’s energy tax credits in place.
As Los Angeles fires rage, states battle over effort to make oil and gas industry accountable for climate change harms
By Dana Drugmand
As fires rage through southern California, the costs of extreme weather events linked to climate change are forecast to keep climbing – adding fuel to growing efforts by some US states to make the oil and gas industry liable for helping foot the bill despite looming legal challenges.
Vermont fired the first shot against the industry last year when it enacted a novel “climate superfund” law aimed at recovering state costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions that drive harmful climate change. New York passed similar legislation last month.
Similar legislation has been introduced in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California, as well as at the federal level. While the federal bill is not expected to make headway in a Republican-controlled Congress, climate activists are pushing Democrat-led states to embrace the legislation as a way to show climate leadership amidst a second Trump administration that has promised to promote the interests of the oil and gas industry and roll back environmental regulations.
Supporters of the legislative moves held a Jan 7 press conference highlighting the actions. Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, told reporters at that press conference that she is “extremely optimistic” that California will enact its version of the climate superfund policy this year.
Experts have said the devastating wildfires raging through the Los Angeles area and surrounding communities in early January are directly tied to climate change as prolonged drought and higher temperatures have left vegetation highly flammable. The costs of the disaster have been estimated at more than $20 billion.
Scientists issue “call to arms” to protect children’s health from chemicals causing disease
By Carey Gillam
Children are suffering and dying from diseases that emerging scientific research links to chemical exposures, findings that require urgent revamping of laws around the world, according to a new paper published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Authored by more than 20 leading public health researchers, including one from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and another from the United Nations, the paper lays out “a large body of evidence” linking multiple childhood diseases to synthetic chemicals, and recommends a series of aggressive actions to try to better protect children.
The paper is a “call to arms,” to forge an “actual commitment to the health of our children,” said Linda Birnbaum, former director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a co-author of the paper.
In conjunction with the release of the paper, some of the study authors are helping launch an Institute for Preventive Health to support the recommendations outlined in the paper and to help fund implementation of reforms. A key player in launching the institute is Robertson Stephens Wealth Management Vice President Anne Robertson, who is a member of the family that built RJ Reynolds Tobacco.
The paper points to data showing global inventories of roughly 350,000 synthetic chemicals, chemical mixtures and plastics, most of which are derived from fossil fuels. Production has expanded 50-fold since 1950, and is currently increasing by about 3% per year – projected to triple by 2050, the paper states.
Meanwhile, noncommunicable diseases, including many that research shows can be caused by synthetic chemicals, are rising in children and have become the principal cause of death and illness for children, the authors write.
Despite the connections, which the authors say “continue to be discovered with distressing frequency,” there are very few restrictions on such chemicals and no post-market surveillance for longer-term adverse health effects.
“The evidence is so overwhelming and the effects of manufactured chemicals are so disruptive for children, that inaction is no longer an option,” said Daniele Mandrioli, a co-author of the paper and director of the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center at the Ramazzini Institute in Italy. “Our article highlights the necessity for a paradigm shift in chemical testing and regulations to safeguard children’s health.”
Fluorinated drugs, a type of PFAS, widely contaminating US drinking water
By Douglas Main
New research suggests that fluorinated pharmaceuticals — a category that includes well-known medications such as Prozac and Flonase — are showing up in the water supply of millions of people. These drugs and their breakdown products are technically classified as being per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals,” which as a chemical class is the subject of worldwide health concern.
A study published January 6 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the bulk of PFAS entering and exiting wastewater treatment plants is made up of these fluorinated drugs. Notably, the researchers determined that the pharmaceuticals were largely not removed from the water by conventional wastewater treatment practices.
This pharmaceutical material “doesn’t get treated in the wastewater treatment plant, and it doesn’t break down,” said Bridger Ruyle, study co-author and researcher at New York University. “And we know [these chemicals] can be re-entering drinking water supplies.”
The study estimates that this material contaminates the water supply of around 23 million Americans, Ruyle said.
These drugs enter wastewater after being excreted by people. About 50% of drinking water utilities are located downstream of a wastewater outflow plant and regularly use varying amounts of this water.
A slight majority of this material was made up of only four drugs and one of their metabolites: the arthritis medication Celecoxib (Celebrex); flecainide (Tambocor), prescribed for arrhythmia; maraviroc (Selzentry), and one of its metabolites, used to treat HIV; and sitaglipt (Januvia), a diabetes drug.
“We don’t know that much about what the exposures or health risks are” for those drinking small concentrations of this material, Ruyle said.