EnviroPolitics Blog

A great wall of fire bears down on Sydney

About 100,000 homes in the Sydney area are said to be at risk

Officials have advised people to evacuate while they can saying emergency services will not be able to save everyone. Pictured: Flames encroaching a residential street in Harrington, on the Mid North Coast, on Friday

By CHARLIE MOORE and KAREN RUIZ FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

Sydney residents living near bushland should be prepared to evacuate today as the city faces an ‘unprecedented level of bushfire danger’ and authorities will not be able to save everyone, officials have warned.

The city is facing ‘catastrophic’ conditions with fears 37C temperatures, 90kmh winds and low levels of humidity could produce the ‘perfect firestorm’.

About 100,000 homes in the Sydney area are said to be at risk, with 31,500 of those in the city’s North Shore.

The Army is ready to deploy helicopters to evacuate residents whose lives are endangered amid warnings of ‘the most dangerous bushfire week this nation has ever seen’.

At 9 am on Tuesday morning there were 57 fires burning across NSW with 28 uncontained and 55 in Queensland.

NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said nine in the state are at ‘watch and act status’ and that he expects some to reach emergency level today.

Winds are forecast to pick up in the Blue Mountains from around 11 am and reach up to 90kmh after 6 pm, meaning fires would spread rapidly.

Meanwhile, police have warned about criminals looting from the ruined houses of devastated bushfire victims on the mid-north coast.

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys said any thefts would be ‘thoroughly’ investigated, adding: ‘These communities have suffered enough without individuals stealing what items they have left.’

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The Long Battle to Stop the Kinder Morgan Pipeline

For months, locals and landowners have tried to stop the Permian Highway Pipeline, a piece of infrastructure connecting West Texas’ prolific oil fields to the state’s Gulf Coast refineries. But they’re running out of options.

Andrew Sansom with some remaining sections from a pipeline on his land that was mostly removed in 2011. *CANDICE BERND*

Candice Bernd reports for the Texas Observer

In 1975, Terese Hershey, one of the state’s most influential conservationists, purchased a 1,561-acre tract of land in Stonewall, Texas. For years, she protected the property from the encroachment of nearby development. She worked with The Hill Country Land Trust to establish a conservation easement and turned to Andrew Sansom, a former Texas Parks and Wildlife director, to manage the land with his wife, Nona.

In the past eight years, the Sansoms have cleared more than 1,020 acres of cedar and invasive grasses off the property. They’ve controlled erosion along streams and managed the land’s precious water resources. They’ve also restored the property’s historic 162-year-old stone ranch house, which was left with only its limestone walls standing after a 2003 fire. All of this effort has made the Hershey Ranch the largest piece of protected land in Gillespie County.

Now, it’s under threat.

Kinder Morgan, a multi-billion dollar energy company, intends to build a 430-mile-long, 42-inch-wide pipeline—also called the Permian Highway Pipeline Project—to connect the world’s most productive oil field in West Texas’ Permian Basin to refineries near the Gulf Coast. The pipeline’s proposed path would cut through a 14-acre section of the Hershey Ranch and create a 50-foot permanent easement across about eight-and-a-half acres.

It could also impact the area’s water resources. The ranch sits atop karst, a kind of topography characterized by underground cavities, fractures, and drainage systems. This particular karstic area feeds into the Hill Country’s springs, which in turn, discharge into creeks, which then flow into the Trinity and Edwards aquifers, which supply drinking water to more than 2 million people throughout Central Texas.

The couple first found out that the pipeline would cut through the Hershey Ranch when Kinder Morgan, which is building the pipeline in partnership with EagleClaw Midstream Ventures, sent them a letter about it in October 2018. They immediately approached a lawyer.

Andrew Sansom and his wife, Nona, at Kinder Morgan's proposed pipeline easement on September 13, 2019. The easement is along an old pipeline route that was mostly removed in 2011. — Andrew Sansom and his wife, Nona, at Kinder Morgan’s proposed pipeline easement on September 13, 2019. The easement is along an old pipeline route that was mostly removed in 2011.
*CANDICE BERND photo*

They learned the company’s power of eminent domain supersedes the work the Hershey family did to retire the land from development. The law allows Kinder Morgan to condemn land it needs by checking a box claiming “common carrier” status on a form. By self-designating its pipeline as a common carrier—meaning the company will carry other companies’ products at set rates—Kinder Morgan gains the power to seize private land through eminent domain as a “public utility.” The Texas Supreme Court found in the 2011 case Texas Rice Land Partners v. Denbury Green Pipeline that the Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, doesn’t even have to verify whether a company’s common carrier claim is true.

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Heads up: Mercury to make a rare pass across the sun

Mercury last passed across the sun in May 2016.

Theresa Waldrop reports for CNN

Forget blue moons. Even more rare is when the planet Mercury passes right across the middle of the sun, and it’s happening Monday.

A Mercury transit, as it’s called, occurs only 13 times in 100 years, according to NASA, and it won’t be seen from North America again for another 30 years, or from anywhere until 2032.

Starting at 7:35 a.m. ET, it will take more than five hours for Mercury to pass from one side of the sun to the other. That means watchers on the East Coast will be able to see the whole thing, but viewers almost anywhere in North America won’t miss out, since Mercury will still be making its journey when the sun is up on the West Coast.

Stunning photos of the solar eclipse over South America. In fact, the only places it can’t be seen from are Australia and most of Asia and Alaska, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

But, just like during an eclipse, viewers will need a solar filter since looking directly at the sun can cause permanent eye damage.

Mercury, the smallest planet in our solar system, will be just a tiny dot on the sun, so NASA recommends using a telescope with a certified solar filter.

Don’t have any of those things? Try looking for a viewing party at a museum or planetarium near you.

According to NASA, the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s website‘ will be showing “near real-time” images of the transit, so you don’t have to miss this rare event, no matter where you are.

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More long-in-the-tooth creatures heading to Florida for the winter

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) – Like snowbirds, there’s another group that’s moving to Florida for the winter.

Shark experts said the coast of Florida is starting to heat up with white shark activity. OCSEARCH, a research group, said the annual migration to warmer waters off the Florida and Carolinas coasts is underway.

The Palm Beach Post reports that eight white sharks tagged by the Utah-based research group were spotted from New Jersey to Florida in the last week.

Three other sharks that had been tagged were detected Wednesday in waters on North Carolina beaches. Two more sharks, Helena and the 2,076-pound Unama’ki, made their presence known with toothy grins just west of Key West in September.

Unama’ki had been tagged off Nova Scotia in September. She’s about 15-feet, 5-inches long.

It’s not unusual for great whites to call southern waters home during winter, and sightings are common near popular fishing and diving spots in Florida through spring.

We’re always looking for stories that might interest our readers. If you come across something so interesting that it cries out to be shared, please send it to editor@enviropolitics.com If we agree, you’ll see it here soon.

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NJ bill offers a smoother e-car ride

By Brenda Flanagan, Senior Correspondent, NJTV News

It’s called “range anxiety” — the fear among prospective purchasers of electric vehicles who love the idea of driving an environmentally friendly car but worry about running out of juice out on the road somewhere.

Environmentalists and some lawmakers say a bill pending before state Legislature offers a solution, authorizing $150 million to build a state-wide network of 1,000 community chargers and 600 souped-up charging stations over the next couple of years.

The measure would also make it easier for people to acquire electric cars in the first place, by offering rebates from Trenton to purchasers. But some worry about the costs associated with the bill.

Nearly half of New Jersey’s greenhouse-gas pollution comes from the transportation sector. The bill sets a state goal of getting 330,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2025. Initial estimates of the cost of the rebates, perhaps $5,000 per car, are $30 million a year.

For proponents, the benefits of championing electric vehicles are clear, as a big help in the battle against a warming planet. Electric vehicles have no tailpipe emissions, and are 70% cleaner than gas-powered cars, when all factors such as generating the electricity they run on are considered. But the vehicles are generally pricy, and inducements are needed to get people on board, advocates say.

“We also have to make sure that the rebate program is robust — and that people can afford these and feel comfortable about buying them,” said Sen. Linda Greenstein, the Mercer/Middlesex Democrat who’s a primary sponsor of the proposal. “But I think this bill is going to give us a giant step in that direction.”

At the same time, though, the state Rate Counsel and business interests have raised concerns about costs, specifically where the money for rebates and the charging network will come from.

The bill states electric utility companies can recover some costs with rate increases, overseen by the state Board of Public Utilities. The state will also get money from rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium of states that work together to reduce emissions.

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Did Exxon Mislead Investors About Climate-Related Risks?

Closing arguments in the oil giant’s investor fraud trial presented two competing narratives.

Protesters outside court on the opening day of the Exxon trial in 2019. Credit: Eduardo MunozAlvarez/VIEWpress via Getty Images — Protesters held signs outside the courthouse on the opening day of the Exxon trial. Two and half weeks later, on Nov. 7, the trial ended. A judge expects to issue a ruling within weeks. Credit: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/VIEWpress via Getty Images

NICHOLAS KUSNETZ reports for Inside Climate News

Lawyers for New York State and ExxonMobil wrapped up a landmark climate fraud trial on Thursday, shaping a tangle of testimony and evidence into competing narratives on whether the oil company misled investors about the risks it faces from climate regulation.

Jonathan Zweig, who gave the closing arguments for the New York attorney general’s office, described the case as a classic securities fraud trial that happened to be about climate change, which he said “may well be the defining risk for oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil in the coming decades.”

Zweig said the evidence showed clearly that Exxon had misled investors by downplaying those risks significantly.

Theodore Wells, the lead lawyer for Exxon, argued that the same evidence shows “that this case is meritless, that each and every allegation in the complaint is not true and not connected to the reality or the truth, and that ExxonMobil has done nothing wrong.”

The two sides actually agree on many of the core facts of the case, chiefly that Exxon used two different estimates for the cost to its business from future climate regulations.

The company disclosed one of those estimates in numerous public reports. A second estimate, which was lower than the public figure, was not disclosed to investors until 2014 when it appeared in one sentence in one report. Much of the case hinges on whether that disclosure was clear and adequate, or whether anyone noticed it at all.

The closing statements capped an investigation that began four years ago after reports by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times detailed what Exxon knew about the impact of fossil fuels on global warming from its own climate science research decades ago. The proceedings have grown contentious at times—the attorney general’s office tried to have Justice Barry Ostrager removed from the case last year after learning he owned shares of Exxon stock. But Ostrager ended the trial by congratulating both sides for their diligent and professional preparations and performance. He has said he will issue a ruling before the end of the year.

While the case centers on discussion of climate change risks, the trial itself—and the legal questions the judge will decide—revolve around relatively narrow questions of New York securities law.

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