Ten environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the League of Conservation Voters, Sierra […]
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Alex Harris, Reporter - Miami-Herald
Stephan: There are going to be so many unconsidered consequences to sea rise. Here is an example of what I mean. What government official do you know who has even considered the effect of sea rise on residential septic systems?
A Miami-Dade neighborhood that relies on septic tanks experiences flooding during the 2016 King Tide. A new report commissioned by the county shows that half of the county’s septic tanks break down yearly, a problem that sea level rise will worsen. Miami-Dade County. Credit: Miami-Herald
Miami-Dade has tens of thousands of septic tanks, and a new report reveals most are already malfunctioning — the smelly and unhealthy evidence of which often ends up in people’s yards and homes. It’s a billion-dollar problem that climate change is making worse.
As sea level rise encroaches on South Florida, the Miami-Dade County study shows that thousands more residents may be at risk — and soon. By 2040, 64 percent of county septic tanks (more than 67,000) could have issues every year, affecting not only the people who rely on them for sewage treatment, but the region’s water supply and the health of anyone who wades through floodwaters.
“That’s a huge deal for a developed country in 2019 to have half of […]
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Cynthia Tucker, Pulitzer Prize winner - Enterprise-Record
Stephan: Here, based on facts not polemics, we see the stark disgusting truth about the anti-choicers. In reality they care nothing for children. The anti-abortion movement is not about protecting children, it is about controlling and subordinating women. The fact that many anti-choicers are also women reveals how deeply indoctrinated many women are in America.
Mississippi anti-choice demonstration Credit: Slate
There is a profound cynicism, an ugly, jarring hypocrisy, at the heart of the battle to end reproductive rights for women, and nowhere is that fraudulent politics more vividly on display than in Mississippi. The state that brings up the rear on virtually every measure of child vitality and well-being for which we have statistics — behind even my home state of Alabama — has just passed one of the most restrictive anti-abortion measures in the country.
In signing the legislation, Republican Gov. Phil Bryant was able to say this with a straight face: “We here in Mississippi believe in protecting and defending the whole life of that child. … From education to safety to health care, it is the child that we are fighting for here in Mississippi.”
That was incredible, mendacious, indecently contemptuous of the facts. Mississippi is one of the worst places in America for a child to grow up, especially if that child is black and poor. Just take a look at the 2018 […]
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Saturday, March 30th, 2019
Stephan: Be very clear that your wellbeing, and the wellbeing of your family, are of no interest to the Trump administration. There is simply no question about this, on the basis of the evidence. Here is an example of what I mean.
Credit: shutterstock
Climate change garners most of the headlines, but the Trump administration is pushing a much larger and broader pro-pollution agenda whose latest manifestation is a push at the EPA to overturn a long-established scientific consensus that fine particulate pollution (colloquially “soot”) kills people.
This is critically important for two main reasons.
One is that for decades the EPA has been regulating various sources of particulate emissions and the science around how harmful they are plays a role in driving how strict those regulations become. The other is that particulate emissions play a key role in the bureaucratic politics of climate change.
Because carbon dioxide emissions are global and the consequences of climate change are also global, it is generally hard to demonstrate that cutting a given source of greenhouse gas emissions will have large benefits to Americans. But most regulations that reduce carbon emissions also reduce much more localized soot — and taking into account the fact that soot has a marked tendency to kill people who live […]
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