Welcome back.
Over 200 people turned out on Wednesday to protest the Weymouth compressor station, currently under construction. Thirteen people were arrested and construction ceased for the day. The point was to draw attention to the environmental damage and local injustice of siting this facility in a densely populated community already burdened with high levels of pollution and related disease.
Another protest drawing considerable attention is happening in Canada in support of the Wet’suwet’en against the Coastal GasLink project. Protesters have blocked ports and rail lines, ramping up pressure on the Trudeau administration.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos captured a lot of attention for his $10B pledge to fight climate change. An article in Vox.com suggests that Bezos might consider putting his money and energy into cleaning up mega-polluter Amazon itself. Meanwhile, a new study in the journal Nature reveals that methane emissions from oil and gas production may be considerably greater than previously understood – and calls out the devastating consequences of the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks.
From the cutting edge of clean energy, we found a report on recent laboratory success in using protein nanowires to produce electric currents from moisture in the air. Near term, this could eliminate the need for batteries in small electronic devices. A little farther out, the technology could potentially scale up to power much larger applications.
Good news on clean transportation: the Trump administration’s effort to weaken vehicle emissions standards appears to be running off the road. While incompetence is partly to blame, the real issue is economics. Clean transportation is rapidly becoming more affordable than the dirty old model.
Wrapping up, we offer an article on serious problems with plastics recycling – and how vast quantities of nominally “recyclable” waste are piling up in landfills.
— The NFGiM Team
WEYMOUTH COMPRESSOR STATION
13 people arrested in protest at Weymouth compressor station site, police say
Over 200 people attended the demonstration calling on state officials to stop the controversial project, activists said.
By Christopher Gavin, Boston
February 20, 2020
Construction began on the compressor station — part of the company’s “Atlantic Bridge Project” to expand capacity on a natural gas pipeline to Canada — in December after Enbridge secured final permits.
According to a statement from FRRACS, Wednesday’s protest was to call on Gov. Charlie Baker and the state Department of Environmental Protection to halt construction of the facility.
“Multiple people were arrested for blocking the gate to the construction site, while two other people were arrested for locking to pieces of construction equipment on site,” the statement says. “As a result of today’s action, construction was stopped and workers left the site.”
» Read article
Press Release: Climate Protectors stop construction at compressor station
By Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station (FRRACS)
February 19, 2020
North Weymouth, MA – Early this morning, over 200 members of Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station (FRRACS) and allies gathered for a mass demonstration at Enbridge’s compressor station site to call on Baker and the DEP to immediately halt construction on the project. Multiple people were arrested for blocking the gate to the construction site., while two other people were arrested for locking to pieces of construction equipment on site. As a result of today’s action, construction was stopped and workers left the site. Thirteen arrests were made in total. Court dates will be held on Thursday, February 20 and Wednesday, February 26 at 8:30AM at the Quincy District Court.
» Read article
Dozens of protesters arrested at Weymouth compression center worksite
By Brynne Connolly, WHDH – Boston
February 19, 2020
WEYMOUTH, MASS. (WHDH) – Dozens of people protesting the construction of a natural gas compressor station in Weymouth were taken into custody Wednesday, according to the group protesting the project.
» View report
Weymouth Compressor Opponents Lock Themselves To Equipment
Protest group said two protesters locked themselves to construction equipment at the site of the Weymouth compressor station on Wednesday.
By Scott Souza, Patch.com
February 19, 2020
WEYMOUTH, MA — The group Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station said efforts for a large-scale protest at the construction site of the proposed Weymouth gas compressor station drew hundreds of protestors and included two locking themselves to equipment to halt construction on Wednesday. The protest was the latest from FRRACS and similar groups in Weymouth that have resulted in arrests in recent months.
» Read article
» More about the Weymouth compressor station
PROTESTS AND ACTIONS
Canada: protests go mainstream as support for Wet’suwet’en pipeline fight widens
Protesters have blocked railways and barricaded ports in wave of dissent – and the pressure on Justin Trudeau has increased
By Amber Bracken at Unist’ot’en Camp and Leyland Cecco in Toronto, The Guardian
February 14, 2020
» Read article
» More about protests and direct actions
CLIMATE
Donating $10 billion isn’t the best way for Jeff Bezos to fight climate change
Amazon is a mega-polluter. Cleaning house at the company should be the CEO’s top priority.
By Sigal Samuel, Vox
February 19, 2020
“I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share,” Bezos wrote in his Instagram announcement on Monday. “This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”
That sounds good, and donating $10 billion to address the climate emergency is certainly a commendable action, although it’s worth noting that figure represents less than 8 percent of Bezos’s total net worth of $130 billion.
But the devil is, as they say, in the details. And Bezos’s announcement is very short on those. Some climate groups are far more effective than others, so depending on where exactly Bezos puts his money, he could have a vastly beneficial effect on the planet — or very little effect at all.
There is, however, something Bezos could do right now that would be guaranteed to have a vastly beneficial effect on our climate: He could clean house at his company. Amazon is a mega-polluter, and although Bezos has lately pledged to decrease its carbon footprint in response to pressure from inside and outside the company, there’s a whole lot more he could do.
» Read article
Fossil Fuels Are to Blame for Soaring Methane Levels, Study Shows
By Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times
February 19, 2020
Oil and gas production may be responsible for a far larger share of the soaring levels of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in the earth’s atmosphere, new research has found.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, add urgency of efforts to rein in methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry, which routinely leaks or intentionally releases the gas into air.
Adding to climate concerns, the Trump administration is moving forward with a plan that effectively eliminates requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities. By the Environmental Protection Agency’s own calculations, the rollback would increase methane emissions by 370,000 tons through 2025, enough to power more than a million homes for a year.
» Read article
» Obtain the study
How Warming Winters Are Affecting Everything
By Lauren Sommer, Mose Buchele, Molly Samuel, Patty Wight, Michael Elizabeth Sakas, Amy Mayer, Nat Herz, NPR
February 18, 2020
Winters are warming faster than other seasons across much of the United States. While that may sound like a welcome change for those bundled in scarves and hats, it’s causing a cascade of unpredictable impacts in communities across the country.
Temperatures continue to steadily rise around the globe, but that trend isn’t spread evenly across the map or even the yearly calendar.
“The cold seasons are warming faster than the warm seasons,” says Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “The colder times of day are warming faster than warmer times of day. And the colder places are warming faster than the warmer places.”
» Read article
‘The Saddest Thing Is That This Won’t Be Breaking News’: Concentration of CO2 Hits Record High of 416 ppm
“Emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation need to be reduced to ZERO to stop this trend!”
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
February 12, 2020
The United Kingdom’s national weather service, the Met Office, warned in January that “a forecast of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide shows that 2020 will witness one of the largest annual rises in concentration since measurements began at Mauna Loa, in Hawaii, 1958.”
The Met Office said that “the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is expected to peak above 417 parts per million in May,” noting that the anticipated increase is due in part to emissions from the bushfires that have devastated large swaths of Australia since late last year.
“Although the series of annual levels of CO2 have always seen a year-on-year increase since 1958, driven by fossil fuel burning and deforestation, the rate of rise isn’t perfectly even because there are fluctuations in the response of ecosystem carbon sinks, especially tropical forests,” explained professor Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Center and University of Exeter.
» Read article
Meet the Millionaires Helping to Pay for Climate Protests
By John Schwartz, New York Times
September 27, 2019
Three wealthy donors formed the Climate Emergency Fund this year to support “disruptive activists,” as Trevor Neilson, one of the founders, put it. For years, he said, they have individually given money to more traditional environmental organizations like Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, but concluded that these groups were taking a too-gradual approach to the fight against climate change and that the crisis demanded greater urgency.
“The smartest place for philanthropists to invest is in this new generation of activists who refuse to accept the excuses of the adults whose lazy approach to climate is leading us off a cliff,” Mr. Neilson said. “The era of gradualism in environmental activism is over.”
» Read article
» More about climate
CLEAN ENERGY ALTERNATIVES
New green technology generates electricity ‘out of thin air’
By University of Massachusetts Amherst
February 17, 2020
Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a device that uses a natural protein to create electricity from moisture in the air, a new technology they say could have significant implications for the future of renewable energy, climate change and in the future of medicine.
As reported today in Nature, the laboratories of electrical engineer Jun Yao and microbiologist Derek Lovley at UMass Amherst have created a device they call an “Air-gen.” or air-powered generator, with electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by the microbe Geobacter. The Air-gen connects electrodes to the protein nanowires in such a way that electrical current is generated from the water vapor naturally present in the atmosphere.
» Read article
» More about clean energy
CLEAN TRANSPORTATION
Trump’s Path to Weaker Fuel Efficiency Rules May Lead to a Dead End
By Coral Davenport, New York Times
February 13, 2020
WASHINGTON — Last April, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew Wheeler, proclaimed at an auto show here that he would soon roll back President Barack Obama’s stringent fuel efficiency standards.
That, the administration contends, would unleash the muscle of the American auto industry. It would also virtually wipe away the government’s biggest effort to combat climate change.
Nearly a year later, the rollback is nowhere near complete and may not be ready until this summer — if ever. In January, administration staff members appointed by President Trump sent a draft of the scaled-back fuel economy standards to the White House, but six people familiar with the documents described them as “Swiss cheese,” sprinkled with glaring numerical and spelling errors (such as “Massachusettes”), with 111 sections marked “text forthcoming.”
The cost-benefit analysis showed that consumers would lose more money than they would gain. And, because the new auto pollution rule lacks the detailed technical analyses required by law, the regulations would be unlikely to withstand court challenges.
» Read article
» More about clean transportation
PLASTICS RECYCLING
America’s ‘recycled’ plastic waste is clogging landfills, survey finds
Many facilities lack the ability to process ‘mixed plastics’, a category of waste that has virtually no market as new products
By Erin McCormick, The Guardian
February 18 2020
» Read article
» More about plastics recycling
» Learn more about Pipeline projects
» Learn more about other proposed energy infrastructure
» Sign up for the NFGiM Newsletter for events, news and actions you can take
» DONATE to help keep our efforts going!
No Fracked Gas in Mass 