PUBLIC HEALTH RISKS RAISE STAKES IN CLIMATE FIGHT: Climate change will likely exacerbate public health challenges and lead to thousands of premature deaths over the course of the century, an Obama administration report found on Monday.
The study — a product of three years of work led by a trio of health and climate agencies — found climate change presenting a host of challenges for Americans between now and 2100.
{mosads}As the Earth warms, it will lead to an increase in air pollution and allergens, which will worsen asthma and other respiratory diseases; more premature deaths during warmer summers; earlier annual onset of Lyme disease in the eastern U.S.; and threats to the safety of food from pathogens and toxins, among other problems.
“The science has told us that climate change poses a serious risk to human health and that is really the most important takeaway from this report,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told reporters on Monday. “If we want to safeguard the health of future generations, we have to address climate change.”
The study, a product of President Obama’s 2013 climate action plan, doesn’t present new policy proposals for combating climate change or protecting public health. Instead, it’s meant to bolster previous scientific studies into the impacts of climate change, officials said.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said the report bolsters Obama administration rulemaking on greenhouse gas emissions. She said it backs up the 2009 “endangerment finding” that found greenhouse gases pose such a large threat to public life that the federal government must regulate them.
“It does, actually, underscore it. It’s just building on the wealth of evidence we have here,” McCarthy said. “This gives people a really good sense of what the consensus is of all of the top science on this, and the scientists.”
Read more about the study here, and McCarthy’s statement on it, here.
BP SETTLEMENT APPROVED: A federal judge approved Monday a more than $20 billion settlement between the federal government and BP, ending years of litigation over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Under the terms of the settlement, announced last July and finalized in October, BP will spend $5.5 billion to settle civil claims against it under the Clean Water Act. The company will also spend $7.1 billion for environmental restoration work, plus $700 million to compensate for still-unknown damages to natural resources in the region.
It is the largest settlement ever reached between the Justice Department and a single entity. It comes after years of legal wrangling over the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, which killed 11 people and sent 3.19 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.
Read more here.
FRACKING FIGHT STRIKES DEM RACE: Hillary Clinton said this weekend that she “feel[s] sorry sometimes for the young people” who believe accusations from Bernie Sanders and his supporters, who have hit the Democratic front-runner on her donations from hydraulic fracturing interests.
“I’m glad we now can point to reliable independent analysis to say no, it’s just not true,” she said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
Sanders and other green groups have hit Clinton for taking donations from fracking companies and the energy industry. Greenpeace noted on Friday she had received more than $300,000 from industry employees and more than $1.3 million from lobbyists or bundlers associated with the industry.
Sanders, too, said on Friday that Clinton “has taken significant money from the fossil fuel industry,” though fact checkers note her fossil fuel donations amount to a miniscule total when it comes to the fundraising Clinton has already completed.
The fight is important as the Democratic presidential race shakes out. Clinton has moved to the left over the course of the race, pledging a more aggressive climate agenda than President Obama.
But Sanders has found more support among greens, and his side hopes the fracking spat gives him an opening with environmentally inclined voters.
Read more here.
ON TAP TUESDAY: Lawyers on both sides of a wetlands oversight case pending before the Supreme Court will discuss the matter at an Environmental Law Institute event.
AROUND THE WEB:
An investigation into a Minnesota environmental regulator’s emails about the Sandpiper pipeline project revealed “poorly chosen words,” but nothing otherwise inappropriate, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports.
Landowners in Vermont worry a bill working through the state legislature will hurt their ability to expand renewable energy there, the Burlington Free Press reports.
Advocates say New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s flood protection plan leaves most low-income waterfront residents at risk, the New York Daily News reports.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Check out Monday’s stories…
-EPA chief: climate change study backs up agency’s carbon regulations
-Industry groups ask federal court to review DOL’s silica rule
-Judge approves $20B BP oil spill settlement
-Clinton: ‘I feel sorry’ for young people who believe Sanders’s claims
-Climate change expected to raise public health risks
-Exxon given go-ahead to restart California refinery
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