Democrats Want To BAN Gas And Diesel Cars By 2040 To Make California More Like China

One California lawmaker is seeking to have the state ban all vehicles powered by fossil fuels by the year 2040.  Should the bill succeed in becoming a law, the state of California would not allow residents to register any vehicle that emits carbon dioxide.

According to Bloomberg, California Assemblymember Phil Ting, a Democrat who is chairman of the chamber’s budget committee, said he plans to introduce a bill that, starting in 2040, would allow the state’s motor vehicles department to register only “clean” vehicles that emit no carbon dioxide, such as battery-electric or hydrogen fuel-cell cars.

“Until you set a deadline, nothing gets done,” Ting, who represents much of San Francisco, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s responsible for us to set a deadline 23 years in advance.” This is not the first time California has considered a ban on the internal combustion engine vehicle either. The topic has been discussed at the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state’s overly powerful air quality regulator, after Governor Jerry Brown showed interest in similar moves by other countries, including communist China.

“I’ve gotten messages from the governor asking, ‘Why haven’t we done something already?’” CARB Chairman Mary Nichols said in September, referring to communist China’s planned phase-out of fossil-fuel vehicle sales. “The governor has certainly indicated an interest in why China can do this and not California.” Perhaps because Chian is a communist country run by an all-powerful government.  By all means, the lawmakers now seek to make California more like China.

Using buzzwords like “climate change” the tyrants in the Golden State will be able to enact any law they see fit in an attempt to control those who live in the state.

Ting said he’ll introduce the bill when lawmakers return to Sacramento next month for the upcoming legislative session. If adopted, it would eliminate a huge chunk of carbon emissions from the transportation sector (now the top source of the” greenhouse gas” in the U.S.) as part of the state’s quest to slash emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

Tobacco Doesn’t Just Kill Smokers; It Kills the Environment

About 90% of all lung cancers are caused by cigarette smoking. Smoking kills 7 million people a year, speeds aging, destroys the heart and cardiovascular system, and leads to asthma and COPD. But cigarettes don’t just wreak havoc on the human body; they also wreak havoc on the environment through deforestation, pollution, and littering. [1] [2]

In May, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a study detailing the environmental costs of tobacco, adding to the mind-blowing $1.4 trillion in healthcare costs and lost productivity. The report looks at the immediate environmental damage caused by tobacco consumption, as well as “the post-consumption waste and health implications that continue to play out long after the tobacco has been smoked.” [3]

WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said:

“Tobacco threatens us all. Tobacco exacerbates poverty, reduces economic productivity, contributes to poor household food choices, and pollutes indoor air.” [2]

Source: TobaccoFreeCo.org

A few of the main take-aways from the report:

• There are more than 7,000 toxic chemicals in tobacco waste – some of them cancer-causing – and these substances also pollute the environment.

• Tobacco smoke has created thousands of tons of human carcinogens, toxicants, and greenhouse gases.

• Cigarette butts and other tobacco waste account for a huge amount of trash. According to a 2014 study, tobacco waste constitutes more than a third of the refuse collected during coastal cleanups. Additionally, nearly two-thirds of all cigarettes purchased every day wind up tossed in the streets, grass, and water. Too few people “flick their butts” into a trash receptacle. [3]

Tobacco-leaf curing requires burning enormous quantities of wood, which contributes to deforestation. Larger tobacco growers also use coal, which emits carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas implicated in global warning. [4]

Read: The True Cost of Smoking Revealed

As if that’s not disgusting enough, the planet is littered with millions of kilograms of non-biodegradable cigarette butts.

Pollution aside, tobacco is a drain on the world’s resources, including energy and water, and requires the extensive use of harmful chemicals. [2]

The report states:

“From start to finish, the tobacco life cycle is an overwhelmingly polluting and damaging process.” [4]

Mammoth amounts of insecticides, herbicides, GMOs, fungicides, and fumigants are applied to tobacco plants. Many of these products are so harmful to health and the environment that they’ve been banned in some countries.

The WHO is calling on world governments to work toward controlling tobacco pollution by enacting measures such as banning tobacco marketing and advertising, promoting plain product packaging, and making all public spaces and workplaces smoke-free. [3]

World health experts are also urging governments to implement tobacco taxes. It is one of the least-used tobacco control methods, but raising tobacco taxes and prices is remarkably effective, according to Dr. Oleg Chestnov, the WHO’s Assistant Director-General for NCDs and Mental Health.

At the moment, governments rake in about $270 billion in yearly tobacco excise tax revenues. But the WHO says this could increase by more than 50% to bring in an additional $141 billion by simply increasing taxes on packs of cigarettes by $0.80 a pack.

Additionally, the WHO wants to make it mandatory for tobacco companies to supply information on the amount of environmental damage their operations contribute to. At the moment, some large manufacturers do report on their use of environmental resources and waste streams, but ‘the data is limited and opaque.” [4]

The authors wrote:

“All producers should be required to compensate for the environmental harms caused by deforestation, water use, waste, etc. through offsets in order to ultimately reduce the long-term ecological harm their business causes.” [4]

Read: Tobacco Industry Forced to List Ingredients in their Products

Chan said:

“By taking robust tobacco control measures, governments can safeguard their countries’ futures by protecting tobacco users and non-users from these deadly products, generating revenues to fund health and other social services, and saving their environments from the ravages tobacco causes.” [3]

Sources:

[1] Web MD

[2] CNN

[3] Consumerist

[4] RTT News

TobaccoFreeCo.org

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

It’s Here. Geoengineering now Normalized as Scientists Spray Chemicals to Dim the Sun, Soak Up CO2

Undeterred by steep cost and the interminable controversy on the very concept of global warming, scientists will again experiment with geoengineering — as a means to bolster the effect of cloud cover by seeding the atmosphere with chemicals meant to dim the light of the sun — in a concerted effort to cool the planet.

While the project will undoubtedly stir distrust among those already doubtful pumping the air full of chemicals could ever end well, ‘chemtrail’ theories have seemingly been proven recently, particularly as a growing number of projects aim to align with strictures from the laden Paris Climate Accord.

Unsurprisingly — considering the arrogance of meddling with nature — praise of its methods and even of its goal has been anything but unanimous.

Swiss company Climeworks coughed up $23 million and constructed a facility to begin collecting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the air in May using sizable fans and filters — billing itself the planet’s first “commercial carbon dioxide capture plant.”

Reuters reports,

“Climeworks reckons it now costs about $600 to extract a tonne of carbon dioxide from the air and the plant’s full capacity due by the end of 2017 is only 900 tonnes a year. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of only 45 Americans.”

Another, “Carbon Engineering, set up in 2009 with support from Gates and Murray Edwards, chairman of oil and gas group Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, has raised about $40 million and extracts about a tonne of carbon dioxide a day with turbines and filters.”

Several additional companies have similar projects underway in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands — but nascent technology and lack of cost-benefit efficacy mean carbon scrubbing, alone, won’t be sufficient.

Obviously, even that effort sees the world falling behind in guidelines agreed upon by major world powers in Paris in April 2016 — a grave concern for scientist-adherents who laud the cooperative attempt to stave off what many believe will be untenably hot conditions (a global average rise from the birth of industry of over 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degree Celsius), should dense gases and particulates, like methane and carbon, continue filling the atmosphere, unhindered.

Considering renewable energy has only recently begun dethroning fossil fuels as the go-to source for power generation, emissions from manufacturing, vehicle exhaust, and innumerable other polluters should be expected to continue for decades — a dire concern, according to U.N. data — meaning additional solutions may have to take up the slack to make the goals of the Paris accord attainable, particularly now that President Trump announced the U.S.’ withdrawal.

“We’re in trouble,” Janos Pasztor, head of newly-created Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Project, told Reuters of Earth’s putatively perilous warming. “The question is not whether or not there will be an overshoot [of the post-industrial maximum tenable temperature rise] but by how many degrees and for how many decades.”

“If you want to be confident to get to 1.5 degrees you need to have solar geo-engineering,” David Keith, of Harvard University, explained, referencing the preferred maximum 1.5-degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature, compared to what is considered the 2-degree point of no return.

Harvard will conduct a geoengineering experiment of its own in Arizona next year, for which private donors have already contributed some $7.5 million, as Reuters adds,

“Keith’s team aims to release about 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) of sun dimming material, perhaps calcium carbonate, from a high-altitude balloon above Arizona next year in a tiny experiment to see how it affects the microphysics of the stratosphere.”

Perhaps in response to popular but unproven allegations aircraft have been spraying the atmosphere with chemicals for years — a burgeoning theory called “chemtrails,” whose adherents believe aerosols are being sprayed from planes to fend off global warming (or for more nefarious purposes) — Keith asserted,

“I don’t think it’s science fiction … to me it’s normal atmospheric science.”

In this race to ostensibly undo damage inflicted upon the planet by human activity, some scientists would rather slam on the brakes. How the manipulation of weather and dimming of the sun’s rays at surface level will affect intricately-related planetary weather patterns — for example, monsoons — remains the subject of, pun intended, heated dispute.

Critics peg carbon scrubbing and other geoengineering tactics as only slightly palliative smokescreens masking the monumental task of actually cutting industrial and personal greenhouse emissions — and generally ending reliance and fealty to fossil fuels and polluting power-generation methods.

Instead of foisting tens or hundreds of millions on projects to compensate for greenhouse gas pollution stemming from dirtier energy, detractors imagine the money put to better use improving and implementing wind, solar, and other green energy sources. Curbing the amount of contaminants spewed into the atmosphere — rather than removing them after the mess has been made — seems infinitely more prudent and cost effective.

Even pro-geoengineering scientists haven’t aligned entirely behind a method to cool the earth — while some believe reflectant chemical additives may be necessary for adequate dimming effect, others admonish against the use of anything other than water vapor.

Whether geoengineering in any form — from simple cloud seeding to capturing, filtering, and using carbon from the air for other uses — will ultimately have any measurable effect on the Earth’s temperatures and climate is a question long from an answer.

Considering the topic of global warming has been itself fraught with unending contention, any plans to manipulate nature further as compensation for the stunning failures in foresight humankind has displayed over the decades since the birth of industry won’t necessarily find welcoming ears in the public.

After all, the same governments sanctimoniously warning of grievous consequences from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases reach deep into their coffers to subsidize the exact oil and gas industry — as well as other notorious environmental villains — largely responsible for the presence of such pollutants in the first place.

China is About to Build Vertical Forest to Combat City Smog

February 8, 2017   |   James Holbrooks

(ANTIMEDIA) Nanjing, China — With much of the developed world looking to China to take the lead on the highly controversial issue of climate change, it was reported this week that the global power will construct two ‘vertical forest’ towers in the major city of Nanjing in an effort to combat greenhouse gas emissions.

The towers, to be completed by 2018, will be the first of their kind in Asia and will be constructed under the guidance of Stefano Boeri, the architect behind similar forest skyscrapers in Italy and Switzerland.

On his website, Boeri describes the concept behind vertical forests:

“Vertical Forest is a model for sustainable residential building, a project for metropolitan reforestation contributing to the regeneration of the environment and urban biodiversity without the implication of expanding upon the territory.”

Combined, the two structures — the outer facades of which will be studded from top to bottom with thousands of trees, plants, and shrubberies — are predicted to produce around 60 kg of oxygen per day and absorb about 25 tons of CO2 a year.

Reporting on the news, the Daily Mail described the amenities the project will provide:

“The taller tower, 600 feet high, crowned on the top by a green lantern, will host offices — from the 8th floor to the 35th — and it will include a museum, a green architecture school and a private club on the rooftop.

“The second tower, 355 feet high, will provide a Hyatt hotel with 247 rooms and a swimming pool on the rooftop.”

Boeri hopes the Nanjing project will lead to others in China, including a luxury hotel in Guizhou, which will be set among 400 acres of rolling hills and will feature a bar, gym, lounge, VIP area, conference room and restaurant.

China — a nation well-known for its pollution problems — is, of late, being looked to for leadership on the climate change issue. Newly-elected President Donald Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a hoax, has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a United Nations pact signed by nearly 200 countries that aims to tackle environmental concerns such as greenhouse gasses.

Whether or not China will step into this role is yet to be determined, but some analysts believe China’s president, Xi Jinping has recently expressed a willingness. “There is only one Earth in the universe and we mankind have only one homeland,” he said while speaking before a United Nations assembly in Geneva. The leader added:

“The Paris agreement is a milestone in the history of climate governance. We must ensure this endeavor is not derailed.”

This article (China is About to Build Vertical Forest to Combat City Smog) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to James Holbrooks and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Going to Make You a Vegan Environmentalist (Like it or Not!)

Leonardo DiCaprio is patient. He waited decades for his first Oscar win earlier this year. He tirelessly dates gorgeous supermodels one after the other after the other in search of the perfect soul mate (presumably), and he seems to be waiting out every single one of the climate naysayers with the release of yet another poignant climate change documentary he’s narrated and starring in.

“Before the Flood” is the latest documentary directed by Fisher Stevens who’s best known for another Oscar winner: 2009’s “The Cove,” which followed the egregious annual Japanese dolphin slaughter.

“I just want to know how far we’ve gone, and if there’s anything we can do to stop it,” DiCaprio says about the state of the climate in the film’s trailer as he visits chunks of Antarctica’s ice shelf breaking off, floods, deforestation, ocean acidification, and other destitute parts of the planet before talking climate solutions with experts including Barack Obama, Pope Francis, and, of course, Mr. Save-the-Future himself, Elon Musk.

Earlier this year, DiCaprio also reportedly joined forces with the Hindu Nationalist Party, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in calling for a major global decrease in beef consumption. DiCaprio produced the 2015 documentary “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret,” which looked at why some of the world’s leading environmental organizations refuse to call out animal agriculture as a leading cause of climate change.

Animal agriculture accounts for at least 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, although some experts suggest its impact is even higher.

Beef Magazine (yep!) deflects DiCaprio’s urging, pointing instead to his lavish lifestyle as the real culprit: “DiCaprio jets around the world on his private plane, sails the open seas on his personal yacht and lights up his oversized mansion, the actor-turned-activist is calling for average Americans to curtail their energy use and to fight climate change by, get this — banning beef,” writes Amanda Radke.

Radke, a cattle rancher herself, says climate change is questionable, equating it curiously to just visible smog, and insisting that millions of beef cattle aren’t a problem, “perhaps we should look collectively at the many things we use in our everyday lives that require energy — from the clothes we wear to the cars we drive and to the electricity we use,” she writes. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen smog over a pasture full of cattle, but I certainly have seen it in the concrete jungle of big cities where people, not animals, live.”

While yes, of course we should be (and already are) looking at clothes, electricity, and certainly the impact of cars, among other culprits, the blatant ignorance about animal agriculture’s impact on the planet reinforces the need for films like “Before the Flood” and radical calls to shift our dietary habits to more plant-based foods.

Certainly most meat-eaters aren’t going to give it all up just because Leonardo DiCaprio asked them to. But maybe if he keeps asking—keeps making poignant documentaries, delivering powerful speeches, and getting the message out there however he can—maybe it will change some minds. And just giving up meat a few meals a week is not insignificant. Some experts say it’s enough to tip the scales, and one of the easiest ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Moving toward the abundance of plant-based proteins now widely available could reduce costs related to climate change by as much as 50 percent by 2050, found a recent study.

But yet, despite data, and films like “Cowspiracy,” or “Before the Flood,” most people “are still not aware of the full extent of meat’s climate impacts,” researcher Annick de Witt wrote in Scientific American earlier this year.

“We examined how citizens in America and the Netherlands assess various food and energy-related options for tackling climate change,” de Witt explained. “We presented representative groups of more than 500 people in both countries with three food-related options (eat less meat; eat local and seasonal produce; and eat organic produce) and three energy-related options (drive less; save energy at home; and install solar panels). We asked them whether they were willing to make these changes in their own lives, and whether they already did these things. While a majority of the surveyed people recognized meat reduction as an effective option for addressing climate change, the outstanding effectiveness of this option, in comparison to the other options, was only clear to 6% of the U.S. population, and only 12% of the Dutch population.”

“This is the most important issue of our time,” DiCaprio says in the film, “the question is: Can we change our course in time?”

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Jill Ettinger

Jill Ettinger is a Los Angeles-based journalist and editor focused on the global food system and how it intersects with our cultural traditions, diet preferences, health, and politics. She is the senior editor for sister websites OrganicAuthority.com and EcoSalon.com, and works as a research associate and editor with the Cornucopia Institute, the organic industry watchdog group. Jill has been featured in The Huffington Post, MTV, Reality Sandwich, and Eat Drink Better. Twitter @jillettinger | www.jillettinger.com.