Olson, Colorado, and Peduto

Juliana v. United States

Julia Olson, an environmental attorney, is no mountain climber but she really loves to climb mountains, in fact, she’d take the longer ways with the steeper hills any day if there were any. She recently climbed Spencer Butte in Eugene, Oregon right after a federal court hearing. Although she does have her own office with the conference room and the long table and a bit of chilled kombucha on tap in the kitchen, the top of that mountain is where she goes to do her “legal thinking.” She could fixate on the shrouding pines, the vista of the cataracts, and the summer wildfires that put a bit of a haze in the sky once she’s reached the summit, it’s not too much ask really, but these days, she had all that and more to turn over in her head (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17).

Ms. Olson will be representing 21 juvenile plaintiffs, ages 11 to 22, in a landmark federal lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday. Olson filed a similar suit back in 2015 against the Obama administration with a similar, but more deep-seated motivation: for a faster move-on in undoing climate change. Nobody likes a sluggish president any more than they like a hypocritical one. Olson is a subscriber to the Public trust doctrine, a legal principle that states that the quickest way to decide which politicians America favors most is by checking how well-preserved their resources for public use are, under the influence of her alma mater’s law professor, Mary Christina Wood, who had proposed the doctrine as a resourceful way to get head and shoulders above climate change for her students, a lesson not to be scoffed at and if you do scoff at it, joke’s on you because according Erwin Chemerinsky, chairman of the UC Berkeley School of law and head over heels for the suit, that resourcefulness is responsible for what we got in cases like Obergefell v. Hodges or Brown vs Board of education (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17).
Ms. Olson met with the young plaintiffs during their stay at the converted 1920s bungalow that houses her nonprofit organization, Our Children’s Trust, from a campground retreat sponsored

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, one of the 21 

plaintiffs on Ms. Olson's panel

by her a week ago. She interviewed each of them, going over the personal ordeals climate change had put them through. Levi Durheim, for instance, lives in the red zone of Florida on a barrier island where sea-levels escalate (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17). 
In her opening statement, she claims that the Trump administration had willfully disregarded the dangers in fossil fuel burning. The government has turned what makes up part of the youth’s oyster upside down with their rising climate levels. But that on its own was merely a metaphor. Last the supreme courts heard -- and the Obama administration made the same argument when it tried to dismiss the case back in 2015 -- pedophilia, abuse by parents or legal guardian, and kidnapping were the biggest fish to fry as far as the constitutional rights of the youth were concerned. Jeffrey H. Wood, the head representing attorney for the government, states that the supreme courts can’t be bothered with anything that can’t be proven without a few bruises or scars to show. There are two kinds of scars in this world. There are physical scars and there are emotional scars. And you can’t gain the former from a few gases released into the air (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17). Everybody, including Chemerinsky, has always considered

Kelsey Juliana (Left) in a Eugene courtroom for an Earlier 

climate case she filed against the state of Oregon

creative legal theories and the courts a bad combination. However, Anne Aiken, the judge presiding over the trial, as a subscriber herself to the Public trust doctrine said she will allow the case to go forward. People actually can like it when their instincts are incorrect. Olson didn’t think she do so well on her LSAT and the results were a pleasant surprise. And so gave way to another case rumbling toward the courts that the government have sought to dismiss and have yet to succeed, but Kelsey Juliana, the eldest of the 21 plaintiffs, was still very much down in the mouth at the aftermath of the election (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17).

Colorado widens divide  

Meanwhile, local leaders are concerned that the statewide anti-fracking measure -- dubbed Proposition 112 -- added to the Colorado ballot could have dire consequences on the oil and gas companies of Colorado if passed in November. In the last decade, fracking has been the gold standard for Colorado’s diverse economy and it gave new meaning to the phrase ‘pennies from heaven’ in Colorado’s book. It, however, like many other greenhouse energy sources, is also at the center of the state’s tug of war between economic development and environmental protection. Colorado is one huge melting pot full of Republicans, Democrats, and independents and there will never be a tie breaker, though building on a way to pull out of this bottleneck may just be what they need to earn a progressive stamp (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Fight Over Fracking Widens Divide in Colorado, A18). Supporters of the measure say that there are fracking sites awfully close to the many homes, schools, and schoolyards and you’d have to be a huge nostalgic for the Neolithic age to

Sean Ewaskowtiz riding his scooter 

near an oil rig

overlook the possibility of the children being exposed to chemicals from fracking-produced fumes. Just ask Beth Ewaskowtiz of Erie, Colorado, who had her son Sean Ewaskowtiz tested for various diseases obtainable from fracking operations and the results from the blood sample she sent came back positive -- the prognosis was 79^th to 85^th percentile for benzene, ethylbenzene and o-xylene. But the state’s main toxicology cast doubt on the prognosis and a 2017 state study found no direct linkages to fracking. A year later, scientist of the Colorado School of Public Health found that oil combined with gas wells creates the risk of cancer (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Fight Over Fracking Widens Divide in Colorado, A18). There are only two ways to handle the issue, either fight it or to run from it. Many residents of the Denver suburbs have chosen to fight and all the representatives, the district courts, and the regulatory firms have intervened. The Proposition 112, if passed, would set a distance of 2,500 feet for newly constructed well sites away from these homes, schools, waterways, and other areas designated as “vulnerable.” Opponents of the measure believe that fracking ties the economy of Colorado together. The state’s 43,000 jobs rests on fracking with better than $200 million in tax revenue. The Brighton rally that took place just north of Denver was participated in by those who live off those wages. Their argument, in short, is that Proposition 112 is radical work, so radical, it could permanently shut down an entire blue-collar industry and put its

Employees gather for a rally against Proposition 112

employees out of work for good. The industry executives who are deathly afraid of the measure had all that and more to worry about (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Fight Over Fracking Widens Divide in Colorado, A18). They had the sense that Colorado was just the beginning of the gamble. New York, Maryland, and Vermont have become completely frack-free recently whose reserves are relatively unparalleled to Colorado’s anyway. What’s next on the list would be California and New Mexico. Other countries across the nation could adopt to the Proposition 112 as well. And what good would money do the supporting party? Anadarko Noble and Extraction contributed better than $30 to the opposing party. The secretary of the state says that opponents outspent proponents by roughly 40-1 (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Fight Over Fracking Widens Divide in Colorado, A18).

Pittsburgh's greenhouse fund

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the cities that was still hanging onto the idea of abolishing climate change knowing the leaders in Washington D.C. won’t help, has become one of the 20 cities actually on the verge of pulling through. On October 21^st 2018, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has been selected by the Bloomberg American Cities Climate Challenge, orchestrated by former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, as a one of the cities across the country to sign a 2-year contract with Bloomberg Philanthropies to aid in their battle with climate change, the other winning cities announced that Sunday were Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C., and whatever they have in mind, its guaranteed to work better than any other their previous plans (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/22/2018, Peduto's climate change fight results in grant, B1-B3). A National Geographic documentary entitled "Paris to Pittsburgh" -- a documentary film centered on Pittsburgh's struggles with abolishing climate change, featuring Mr. Peduto himself -- was previewed. In 2015, the 

From left to right: Grant Ervin, chief resilience office of Pittsburgh, former New 

York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and current Pittsburgh mayor, William Peduto 

at a press conference in West-End Elliot Overlook Park in Elliot 

international accord sought to turn the dial on global warming thermometer counterclockwise to 2 degrees Celsius. Last spring, the city council subscribed to the Climate Action Plan 3.0, a modified variation of the old plan to add a 50-percent limit mark on the master switch and the city hydrometer. Their proposals will be to rely on 100 percent more green energy, switch to carbon-free vehicle fleets, and dethrone king coal from the power plants. Then, there would be the matter of citywide objectives like cutting transportation emissions tied to climate change by 50 percent (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/22/2018, Peduto's climate change fight results in grant, B1-B3). When reporters approached Bloomberg about his plans that Sunday, he merely changed the subject to the upcoming midterm elections, helping flip congressional seats and selecting candidates to highlight issues on climate change and gun regulations as if a citywide lottery to abolish climate change was nothing to get all excited about. "I think that this country is in real trouble," he said (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/22/2018, Peduto's climate change fight results in grant, B1-B3).

Here is a link to the documentary aforementioned:

 https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1039911637443010563  

With all this happening, the country is taking a huge shot in the dark, but that seems to be

Activist gathered outside the Eugene federal courthouse

nonmaterial. It's not just adults whose constitutional rights are being put after climate change but the children as well. Aside from that, there also now appears to be an imbalance in green politics. Why should either Eugene and Colorado have to take their matters to the courts, while Pittsburgh gets to tunnel through muck and come out clean on the other side because of a citywide lottery? Regardless, the tug a war between a economical development and environmental protection seems endless. If we were Julia Olson, it'd be nice to have a hobby to clear your head of this.     

Moving heaven and earth and shale.

The life lessons experienced from BP’s mistake faces a small revival in Westby-with-Plumpton of Lancashire, England where a drilling company known as Cuadrilla Resources are retracing their steps to figure out the solution to a series of earthquakes that sprang up out of the blue during one of their hydraulic fracturing operations seven years ago. Shale exploration is the new Sunday expedition. It was decided that way by the central government of Prime Minister Theresa May when they took a good look at the decaying oil and gas fields in the North Sea (The New York Times, 10/12/2018, Britain Gives Fracking Another Try, B1-B7). Studies show Britain is loaded with reliable and fairly profitable shale resources beneath 10 percent of 200 trillion cubic feet just in Lancashire’s license area and only through drilling can we find out who knows how much that can fetch a pretty penny, if not two a penny, is buried underneath tons of mica and flint. Chief Cuadrillo executive Francis Egan called that area. Still, each strike of a well could cost as much as $30 million in revenue for as long as it lasts. 

The majority of Europe outsources its green power from Russia and Middle Eastern countries but it won't be able to continue splitting the green with Britain much longer as fossil fuel eventually comes in short supply and Poland and Romania need it the most. Britain will have to start looking for a new energy source (The New York Times, 10/12/2018, Britain Gives Fracking Another Try, B1-B7). The good news was that was where Cuadrilla Resources came in; the bad news was that was where Cuadrilla Resources came in. Last time they were on the job, the British Geological Survey detailed a  group of small earthquakes possibly caused by various gushes of water, sand, and chemicals into the

Preston New Road where Cuadrilla has stationed its well

 earth mother to pry one's way beneath the deep aquifer where that big bundle of natural gas and oil is hidden, known as fracking. If their first attempt at striking oil got drilling in that area temporarily suspended in 2011 what makes them think what was good for the goose won’t be good for the gander? That is why they bought in Mr. Egan, who has worked in the international oil and gas industries for decades and can meet the eyes of British Regulators should they happen to pass on the streets (The New York Times, 10/12/2018, Britain Gives Fracking Another Try, B1-B7). 

Cuadrilla has set a chain of seismic monitoring equipment about three miles beyond the digging site. The equipment allows them to pick up the first signs of disturbances in the ground and should the Richter scale pick up so much as a single vibration, they’d halt the whole show and take eight until things ease up and they can pick back up from where they left off (The New York Times,

One of the protest camps near Cuadrilla's Little Plumpton station

 10/12/2018, Britain Gives Fracking Another Try, B1-B7). Charles F. Richter would've been proud of the whole concept. Egan isn’t the kind of person to let a few tremors stop him from seeing the Bow-land basin, the name of the many known reserves of shale gas in the Northern and Southern parts of England estimated to hold 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It could take up to three months, whereas the same process could be done within days in the United States, but contractors from Sch-lumberger thought it would be worth it, especially if it would push the cost down to $15 million or fewer per well struck. Live and learn. Artem Abramov of Rystad Energy says shale drilling could account for half of gas production in Britain by 2040 (The New York Times, 10/12/2018, Britain Gives Fracking Another Try, B1-B7).

Egan has expressed high hopes for the project, protesters thought his hopes were little too high. A survey conducted by YouGov clearly showed that according to 42 respondents (It really would've been 45, except the other three protesters were sent up the river in Preston earlier in September for blockading a site and climbing on top of trucks) as far up the deep end of the pool outsourcing has helped Britain’s emissions get past in the last few months, everything drilling companies touch turns to garbage and that's likely to stir things up harder than an earthquake as if it really is nothing a little seismic-monitoring equipment won't solve (The New York Times, 10/12/2018, Britain Gives Fracking Another Try, B1-B7). A groundskeeper named John Norcross

Protest at Preston New Road site

 doesn't want to loss his precious ponds in the small village of Marston and a woman named Katrina Lawrie has been doing her own little monitoring. And it was reported that there are lookout shacks set up by protesters to keep a 24-hour watch across Cuadrilla's gate for any more trucks and vehicles being driven out through.

The British company is treating the circumstance as if it is to be believed that shale gas could be a potential equivalent of Hope Diamond, even if based on Lancashire's experience there would happen to be plenty of spear-headers all over Europe who like their green power like their little Rolex watches--precious-looking and good for the taking, only to become less precious as time passes and John Williams of the Poyry Management Consulting firm in Oxford that has sold economical details of shale gas to clients doubts sincerely it’s what the investors have signed up for.                

Making a Mercury of Clean Power

In a Sunday-issued appraisal conducted by 91 scientists from the International Energy Agency, as if the country wasn’t already home to all fossil fuel production, next to Russia, the world’s largest emitter, the planet is already starting to look like a huge pressure cooker. And if there aren’t any vents found to let out the fumes within the next two months, it will be. Which is why, the only solution they thought was a meeting in Katowice, Poland for a new round of climate negotiations (The New York Times, 10/10/2018, Projection On Climate Is Ominous. Now What?, A8).

We can’t entirely point fingers at the Trump Administration for pulling the country out of the Paris Agreement. Many presidential nominees and prime ministers in their prime from the other countries are either making plans to pull out of the Paris Agreement as well or excuses about why they are seldom keeping their word on emission reductions. Brazilian agribusinesses had transformed many woodlands into farmlands to answer to Brazil’s global demand for soybean growth. And China basically lives off fossil fuel. And what about the Koch’s, Charles and David, the two carbon angels bitten by the petroleum bug who forked over huge wads of dough to keep a carbon tax postponed (The New York Times, 10/10/2018, Projection On Climate Is Ominous. Now What?, A8)? Never mind all that. The Trump administration has conducted yet another proposal that would take the latches off of production and emission of mercury (The New York Times, 10/1/2018, Trump Prepares Major Weakening of Mercury Rules).

A coal terminal in Newcastle, Australia

A lignite mine in Eastern Germany

The proposal was all Andrew Wheeler’s former boss’s idea; Robert E. Murray of Murray Energy Corporation, who contributed the most to the President Trump’s inaugural fund and, alternatively, if the same strings were pulled in order get William Wehrum, a shining body of armor to coal industries, what was in it for Wehrum was a full victory for his former clients. The rollback was fought for in a case back in 2014 in the appellate courts, the same case in which Judge Brett Kavanaugh had gotten overruled (The New York Times, 10/1/2018, Trump Prepares Major Weakening of Mercury Rules). Kavanaugh’s methods of evaluation, which Cody Nett, spokesperson of Murray Energy would call the "questionable  scientific foundation," corresponded to a 2011 finding by the E.P.A. The findings were that if you’re going to lay down the ground rules  for industries, you also need to pick up on the additional incentives in reducing other pollutants, like the drop in soot and nitrogen oxide levels--the primary causes of asthma and bronchitis--when power plants had answered to upgrade regulations of their emission-control technology. Such incentives are known as “co-benefits” (The New York Times, 10/1/2018, Trump Prepares Major Weakening of Mercury Rules). The following are the words written by Kavanaugh in his 2014 dissent to the mercury ruling:

"Industry petitioners focus on the reduction in hazardous air pollutant emissions attributable to the regulations, which amount to only $4 to $6 million each year. If those figures are right, the rule costs nearly $1,500 for every $1 of health and environmental benefit produced" (The New York Times, 10/1/2018, Trump Prepares Major Weakening of Mercury Rules). 

The Obama administration calculated that the commission on mercury control technology would bring up $6 billion per year and the “co-benefits” from reduction of soot and nitrogen oxide could bring that up to a whooping $80 billion as a side effect. Ironically, the appellate courts suspended the law and ordered the E.P.A. to look more thoroughly into the cost analysis or the "questionable scientific foundation." They did so and the law was ultimately reinstated in the year 2016 (The New York Times, 10/1/2018, Trump Prepares Major Weakening of Mercury Rules). The new proposal possesses quite enough dynamite to have those tables turned; that the mercury rule 

Mercury is that alloy stuff the dentists 

use to fill in the cavities in your teeth.

would ensure economic cost greater than health, in fact, greater than quantifiable health. Like oil sands, mercury could also create a deadly airborne virus. When that stuff gets into the oceans or the seas, it practically finds its way into the aquatic food chain. The bigger fish accumulate the largest amounts because they eat the smaller fish. So if you'll forgive me for coming between you and your love of seafood, the risk of mercury poisoning is proximately low, theoretical, but low. And beyond the fact of those co-benefits becoming water over the dam, it would also grant Murray Energy with legitimate momentum to attempt a second sue for the rollback; the first sue was to have it suspended, however, the appellate courts postponed the closing arguments for that case at the petition of E.P.A.'s administrators (The New York Times, 10/1/2018, Trump Prepares Major Weakening of Mercury Rules). 

Germany has its feet closest to the fire. A quarter of Germany's electric grid comes lignite, also known as brown coal--the color of sh*t, makes sense because it is one of the dirtiest fossil fuels ever produced and since Germany is the head master in mining and burning of lignite, the country's name smells even worse (The New York Times, 10/11/2018, Why Germany Remains Addicted to Coal     

The large protest in Cottbus

15 years After Pledge to Dial Back, A6). Germany's main commissioner on lignite is the Jänschwalde Power Station located near the small village of Jänschwalde in Brandenburg. LEAG, one of the world's largest employers of coal mines and coal-fired plants, owns 8,000 of the jobs in Germany. There was a huge protest in front of the city hall in Cottbus, the capital of Eastern Germany coal country, led by Philip Zirow, head of the representatives for coal workers when it was announced that the Jänschwalde Power Station was losing its Block F sector. About 7,800 jobs rely on the many coal mines in Lusatia, a region bordering Poland whereby the sorbs, a slavic micro-nation residing in parts of Southeastern Brandenburg and Eastern Saxony, humbly reside. An additional 8,900 miners work 

A Hambach mine

The tree houses and tent where the protestors squatted 

to stand off for the forest

in North Rhine-West-phalia, a heavily industrialized state and the critical testing ground for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Demo-cratic Party. Liberals have no power in those states and the opposing far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has all of it. The right hand, or wing, should never know what the left hand, or wing, is up to (The New York Times, 10/11/2018, Why Germany Remains Addicted to Coal 15 years After Pledge to Dial Back, A6). The 91 scientists are subscribing to the idea that the quickest way to meet their goal to have 80 to 95 percent of carbon emissions plunged by 2050, thus catching up with their contemp-oraries in Western Europe--except for Spain, is by tinkering with the master meter. But, since recent studies found that a transition to green power without pulling the lever on the master meter was possible, Ms. Merkel's government of 31-members in Lusatia are working out other ways to quit the coal (The New York Times, 10/11/2018, Why Germany Remains Addicted to Coal 15 years After Pledge to Dial Back, A6). Patrick Graichen, director of Agora Energiewende, Germany's own little thinker-tinker for renewable energy shift, suggested that Germany expand its electric grid to the industrial regions farther South. In the former East Germany, in order to create jobs, a team of underwriters would be required to raise investment capital and the only way to the region is through a single-track railway connecting it to the capital and little industry. And the uprising in Cottbus was nowhere near as extreme as the one in Western Germany last month that ignited after the RWE announced their plans to scuttle 500-acres of a forest in Hambach to make room for another lignite mine. Threats to quit the company by representatives of environmental groups did not derail RWE's agenda but a court order to suspend the plans did (The New York Times, 10/11/2018, Why Germany Remains Addicted to Coal 15 years After Pledge to Dial Back, A6). So, that's one victory for Germany. Now there's the other countries. It’s about time someone put their foot down on the petro and crumbled it and you know where it’s going to happen…right there in the heart of Poland’s coal belt