The Environment in Focus: Recent Episodes
WYPR Baltimore
The Environment in Focus, hosted by Tom Pelton, is a weekly perspective on the issues and people changing our natural world. Pelton is a national award-winning environmental journalist, author, and public radio host.
The Chesapeake Bay is full of history that is slipping away before our eyes.
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One envirnmental advocate has a unique way of bringing attention to the topic: hip hop music.
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Tom reflects on his relationship with a dear friend - an old rowboat.
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Can we engineer Earth's atmosphere to stop global warming?
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In Maryland over the last three years, there was a back-and-forth political battle between Republican Governor Larry Hogan and the Democratic-majority state legislature over a controversial insecticide called chlorpyrifos.
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In a shallow bay of the Potomac River about an hour south of Washington, D.C., lie the remains of 214 wooden cargo ships from World War I, some of which have sprouted trees and become islands.
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The U.S. Senate passed an infrastructure bill that includes $7.5 billion for the construction of electric vehicle charging stations across the U.S. as a step toward combating climate change.
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There is a growing movement to measure the worth of nature by quantifying its economic value. What, then, is the value of fireflies?
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It’s been a summer of record-breaking heat, wildfires, floods. So people can’t avoid thinking about climate change.
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Temperatures in the Pacific Northwest got so hot in June – hitting a record 121 degrees in British Columbia – that hundreds of people died and more than a billion clams and mussels cooked in their shells.
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Matt Fitzpatrick, an ecologist and associate professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science discovered that Maryland's climate future is … Mississippi.
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Tom Pelton takes a trip to western Maryland to visit the Paw Paw bends.
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Last week, after months of negotiations, President Joe Biden announced a bipartisan compromise in the U.S. Senate on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
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When Maryland Governor Larry Hogan ran for office, he promised to address a major environmental threat just north of the Chesapeake Bay.
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Once nearly extinct in the East, beaver populations are booming. Their comeback, however, is creating complications for storm water pollution control systems, which beavers love to dam up.
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Villiages of tent homes are increasingly cropping up around Baltimore because of Covid 19.
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Back in 2007, the number of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay plummeted to an all-time low, in part because of chronic over-harvesting. Watermen every year caught almost two thirds of all the crabs alive in the Bay.
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It was a balmy spring evening when I launched my kayak into Seneca Creek, about 15 minutes northwest of Potomac, Maryland.
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Michael Raupp, a professor of entomology at the University of Maryland, is on his knees in the back yard of a house in Howard County.
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There is a widespread belief, especially among some Republicans and conservative Christians, that the environmental movement is essentially a secular, socialist movement born out of the radical liberalism of the 1960s.
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As, the sounds of spring From the songs of birds at dawn; to the trills of American toads, calling to attract mates; to the splashing of streams, swarming with tadpoles.
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It’s an hour after sunset on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Glenn Therres, a wildlife biologist and associate director at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, is up to his usual Friday night routine: prowling the back roads in a pickup truck, surveying frogs.
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The Maryland General Assembly wrapped up its annual 90-day legislative session at midnight on Monday. The tradition was altered this year by pandemic safety protocols, such as masks and video-only legislative hearings.
The clerk announced at 11:59 pm: “Thank you Mr. President. I move that the Senate of Maryland stand adjourned, Sine Die!”
Senate President Bill Ferguson said: “Without objection, so ordered! Stay safe. Wear your mask. Get thee vaccine.”
In terms of environmental legislation, the session was a mixture of failure and success. A major, groundbreaking piece of climate legislation – the Climate Change Solutions Now Act of 2021 – collapsed in last-minute disagreements between Democratic committee chairs in the House and Senate.
However, lawmakers passed legislation that will ensure continued funding for maintaining mass transit in Maryland, despite threats of sharp cuts from the Hogan Administration. Other bills that passed will require the state to plan better for increased rainfall caused by climate change; and ban the intentional releases of balloons, which litter the Chesapeake Bay.
State Delegate Brooke Lierman, a Democrat from Baltimore, was a sponsor of the mass transit funding bill.
“I think it was a pretty big session for the environment,” Lierman said. “I think especially given the understanding of the intersection of environmental sustainability and public health; and given that we have been spending this whole year thinking about public health, and ensuring that people live in healthy communities, people understood the importance of passing many of these environmental bills.”
The biggest clashes came over the Climate Change Solutions Now bill. A strong version of the legislation was introduced by State Senator Paul Pinsky, a Democrat from Prince George’s County and chair of the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee. Pinsky’s bill passed the Senate by vote of 34 to 11. The legislation would have required the state to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by 2030; achieve net zero emissions by 2045; and require large new buildings and some new schools to adopt energy efficiency and clean energy requirements.
However, in the House, state Delegate Kumar Barve of Montgomery Country, chair of the House Environment and Transportation Committee, and allies, thought Pinsky’s bill went too far. They wanted more modest pollution reduction targets, and opposed the mandates for real estate developers and schools.
Senator Pinsky said he was frustrated after negotiations between the Senate and House broke down.
“Unfortunately, when the House got around to paying attention to it, they stripped about 75 percent of the bill out, and they sent it back to us,” Pinsky said. “And we didn’t receive it until Saturday, with two days left in the session. So I just don’t think there was the urgency or the interest in passing legislation that pushed the envelope, which Maryland, a very vulnerable state, needs.”
Delegate Barve did not respond to a request for an interview for this program. But the vice chairman of the House environment committee, State Delegate Dana Stein of Baltimore County, said he was disappointed because he also wanted a strong climate bill.
But Stein said a silver lining was that two important parts of the climate bill – mandating that the state plant five million trees and buy only electric buses to reduce greenhouse gas pollution – were pulled out and passed separately.
“If you clean the bus system, electrify it, you are really going to make the air – especially in urban areas – much better,” Stein said.
Maybe the political climate for climate legislation will warm next year.
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The Environment in Focus is independently owned and distributed by Environment in Focus Radio to WYPR and other stations. The program is sponsored by the Abell Foundation. The views expressed are solely Tom Pelton's. You can contact him at pelton.tom@gmail.com.
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The Maryland General Assembly wrapped up its annual 90-day legislative session at midnight on Monday. The tradition was altered this year by pandemic safety protocols, such as masks and video-only legislative hearings.
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Back in 2004, Maryland lawmakers approved a bill meant to encourage wind power, solar panels, and other renewable energy sources as a strategy for fighting climate change.
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It is strange but true that the environment has become a politically-charged wedge issue in America – like abortion or gun control. In the last election, for example, the phrase “Green New Deal” was used by Republicans as a weapon to scare voters into thinking Democrats are socialists bent on government control.
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Back in the late 1990’s, the Houston-based energy trading company, Enron, went on a lobbying and campaign contribution spree in the Maryland General Assembly.
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A landmark court decision last week requires the Maryland Department of the Environment – for the first time – to start regulating the ammonia air pollution that rises from the Eastern Shore’s massive poultry industry.
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Daniel Estrin remembers when he was about eight years old. He was fly fishing with a friend in a stream in New York State. His friend’s father caught something. At first they thought it was a fish. But when he reeled it in, it turned out to be a salamander, but with a huge mouth and weird flaps of skin hanging off its sides.
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Developers are proposing to build a high-speed, magnetic levitation train line between Baltimore and Washington. The $13 billion Maglev project is designed to cut the hour-long train trip to a mere 15 minutes, with trains travelling at more than 300 miles an hour.
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Exactly one week after his inauguration, President Joe Biden issued an executive order promising to tackle climate change. He set a goal of making all electricity generation in the U.S. free of carbon dioxide pollution by the year 2035.
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After World War II, the DuPont chemical company began marketing Teflon, the miraculous-seeming nonstick agent sold on pots and pans around the world.
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My brother Mike texted me about our mom. He wrote: "If you want to say any last words, Tom, you'd better get out here fast.” Our mother, Patty Jane Pelton, had been slowly declining from congestive heart failure.
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As President Biden gears up to tackle a daunting variety of problems – ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to climate change – he’s forming a cabinet to reflect his priorities. His pick to spearhead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is Michael Regan.
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It’s a cold winter day, and I’m exploring an old forest of oaks, tulip poplars and beech trees in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
I’m with Dennis Whigham, an ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, hunting for orchids. Many of the 25,000 known species of these flowers are threatened or endangered, in part because their complex lifecycle is vulnerable to disruptions caused by development.
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Amid the chaos of a pandemic, as well as the lingering shock waves from the recent anti-Democratic riots by Trump followers in Washington D.C., the Maryland General Assembly’s annual legislative session opened today in Annapolis.
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Yesterday, the Trump Administration’s EPA Administrator spoke during an online press conference to announce a new regulation that he said would end EPA’s use of “secret science” in federal government decisions to control pollution from industry.
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Kevin Omland, a biology professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, stands below a highway overpass towering above a wooded stream valley in the Patapsco Valley State Park, just southwest of Baltimore. He aims his binoculars up at a scraggly nest of sticks that ravens built in the steel beams beneath Interstate 195.
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Ah, Christmas time! I went walking through my neighborhood and was charmed by the strings of lights illuminating porches, the inflated Santa, the plastic reindeer, the snow and ice. But then I saw flowers emerging from the ground, near a cherry tree in full bloom.
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As President-Elect Biden assembles his new administration, one candidate being considered for a top environmental position, perhaps director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Mustafa Santiago Ali.
Ali worked for 24 years at the Environmental Protection Agency and was its senior advisor for environmental justice. He was a founding member of EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, which is dedicated to reducing pollution in minority and lower-income communities, including those in Baltimore.
After working for EPA most of his life – he started there as a student intern -- Ali quit in March of 2017 after the new Trump Administration tried to eliminate the Office of Environmental Justice. It was part of Trump’s general hostility toward government programs, especially those that would help urban areas and people of color.
Here’s Mustafa Ali: "I saw what the new administration was going to do by not honoring science, by eliminating programs that were critical for front-line communities in protecting their lives and their health. And I knew that I couldn’t be part of that.”
Eventually, Congress blocked Trump from killing the EPA Office of Environmental Justice.
“They were trying to eliminate it,” Ali said. “But because there was so much attention from folks across the country, including some from myself, they were not able to eliminate that office. But it was moved, and taken down the food chain, so to speak….so that it would be less effective.”
In the same way, the U.S. Congress -- including Democrats and Republicans alike -- blocked Trump from slashing EPA’s budget and zeroing out spending on programs like the Chesapeake Bay cleanup. Instead, the Trump Administration diminished and weakened the environmental justice program.
So Ali left EPA. Instead, he helped lead a group called the Hip Hop Caucus, a national non-profit organization that connects the hip-hop community to efforts to create positive change. He then became a vice president at the National Wildlife Federation, working to focus that organization on not just protecting grey wolves and other endangered animals, but also on fighting for lower-income communities and helping them move from surviving to thriving.
Looking to the future and the Biden Administration, Ali said he would recommend that the new administration start treating the covid pandemic as a social justice issue.
“Covid is one of those tragic situations where if we learn the lessons, we can build the right infrastructure to really protect folks,” Ali said. “We got about 25 million people living in medically-underserved areas, in physician deserts. And we all know we’ve got 80 million people uninsured and underinsured. And Covid feeds off of long-term medical conditions.”
So expanding health care and health services –including in cities like Baltimore-- could help tackle the terrible public health environment that is making the pandemic so deadly, especially for minority and poor communities.
“Most folks don’t know that we’ve got 100,000 people dying prematurely from air pollution every year in our country,” Ali said. “That’s more than all those dying from gun violence, more than all those dying from car crashes, and a number of other tragic situations.”
The new administration will have many crises to solve all at the same time – including vaccine distribution, a recession, and climate change. But increasing federal investments in urban and minority neighborhoods, as well as poor rural areas ,could address the unfairness and injustice that fester like ignored wounds beneath America’s skin, threatening our country’s survival.
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The Environment in Focus is independently owned and distributed by Environment in Focus Radio to WYPR and other stations. The program is sponsored by the Abell Foundation. The views expressed are solely Tom Pelton's. You can contact him at pelton.tom@gmail.com.
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Last Friday, on Black Friday, instead of hitting the malls or shopping online, I escaped to go paddling in my kayak. I explored the streams, rivers, and wetlands at Point Lookout State Park, in far southern Maryland.
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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, but because of the coronavirus, many people – for the first time in their lives -- won’t be able to gather with their families and friends. As an alternative to a big indoor get-together, consider a socially-distanced hike in the woods with your family in one of Maryland’s 53 state parks.
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Just before the presidential election, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation sent me a letter asking me for money. Many of you probably received the same fund-raising letter from the nonprofit group, urging financial support for their oyster planting campaign. The letter said, “You can help bring back the oysters and save the Bay! Your gift to CBF of just $18 will help us plant 1,800 oysters… Larger gifts will help us do even more!”
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After a presidential campaign that gave historic prominence to climate change and a debate over the future of the oil industry, Democrat Joe Biden’s victory – even in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the oil industry – could have been a cause for jubilation by environmentalists.
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Charlie Reeves grew up in public housing in South Philadelphia near the oldest and largest oil refinery on the East Coast.
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Next Tuesday is Election day. And for the first time ever, environmental issues --and specifically climate change --are center stage in the public debate during the decisive final phase of a presidential contest.
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The Earth, as we know it, is being threatened by at least two simultaneous environmental crises.
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Forty minutes northeast of Baltimore, at the Boulevard at Box Hill shopping mall in Harford County, hundreds of empty parking spaces surround a J.C. Penney store. Signs out front proclaim: “CLOSING. Entire store, 75 to 90 percent off. Everything must go!”
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After months of ridiculing scientific guidance on the use of masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus – and even demanding that his own employees inside the White House not take precautions around him – President Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19.
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Earlier this month, during a press conference in Jupiter, Florida, President Trump recalled how lawmakers from Florida asked him to sign a nonbinding resolution urging Congress to expand a moratorium on oil and gas drilling off America’s southeastern coast.
“They came to my office and they said that this will make us, and make you, the number one environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt,” Trump said from the podium. “I said, ‘Huh. Why does it have to go back only to Teddy Roosevelt, which is over 100 years? Why can’t we say from George Washington? Right from the beginning. It’s true. I’m number 1 since Teddy Roosevelt. Who would have thought? Trump is the great environmentalist.”
Trump’s endorsement of an offshore drilling ban in Florida – a key swing state in the upcoming election – was a switch for the President, who has opened up millions of acres of public lands to drilling and mining as part of what he calls his “Energy Dominance” policy.
But beyond that, what about this idea of comparing Trump’s environmental record to that of Teddy Roosevelt and other presidents?
Well, Roosevelt –an avid outdoorsman, hunter and explorer – protected 230 million acres of public lands, including by establishing 18 national monuments, one at Grand Canyon. He also created five national parks, 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, and four national game preserves.
Another Republican – Richard Nixon – created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon is not often thought of as a tree hugger, but he gets credit for singing the landmark National Environmental Policy Act, which requires in-depth federal studies before major development projects.
George H.W. Bush signed amendments to the federal Clean Air Act that dramatically reduced sulfur dioxide air pollution across the U.S., curbing acid rain.
Barack Obama raised fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. He also established the largest ocean sanctuary on the planet, imposed limits on greenhouse gas pollution from coal-fired power plants, and signed the Paris Climate Accord to combat global warming.
How does that compare to President Trump’s record? Well, Trump yanked the U.S. out of the Paris agreement. Hiring a former coal industry lobbyist to run his EPA, Trump worked energetically to undo almost every environmental protection that Obama, and many of his predecessors, put into place. Trump has dismantled nearly 70 environmental regulations, including protections for many wetlands and streams and limits on water and air pollution.
Three times, the Trump Administration attempted to eliminate at least 90 percent of the funding for the Chesapeake Bay Program, which oversees the Bay cleanup effort, before being stopped by Congress. He removed federal protections from two million acres of scenic national monuments in Utah, opening them up to potential uranium mining.
In the area of environmental law enforcement, Trump’s EPA has let many companies responsible for illegal pollution off the hook. Amid budget cuts and a shrinking staff, annual inspections and evaluations by EPA of polluting industries declined in 2019 to the lowest level in at least two decades, according to EPA data. The number of civil cases referred for enforcement also dropped last year to the lowest point since at least 2001, federal figures show.
So, no, Trump’s record does not quite stand up to Teddy Roosevelt’s…or even Richard Nixon’s, or George H.W. Bush’s, or Jimmy Carter’s, or Barack Obama’s…or any other president’s. When it comes to anti-environmentalism, Trump is truly greatest of all time, all the way back to George Washington.
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On August 31, Baltimore suspended its curbside recycling program. The coronavirus pandemic and fear of infection had caused about a third of the city’s solid waste workers to call in sick or take days off, which triggered a trash collection crisis in the city.
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The sun was already low on the horizon when I set off into the Susquehanna River in my kayak just southwest of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The golden light illuminated rocky islands in the broad and quiet river, and the crowns of sycamores towering alongshore.
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On the Eastern Shore of Maryland, at the very end of a long peninsula reaching out into the Chesapeake Bay, is a remote and isolated crabbing town called Deal Island.
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During the Republican National Convention last week, President Trump and his surrogates used environmental issues – especially climate change – to try to portray the moderate Joe Biden as a socialist radical.
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Last week, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan chaired an annual meeting of Chesapeake region government officials supervising the Bay cleanup effort.
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Brent Walls has dedicated his life to stopping water pollution in Western Maryland. He’s worked for the last 11 years as the Upper Potomac Riverkeeper, an advocate with a nonprofit organization, the Potomac Riverkeeper Network.
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Since 1971, 10 states – led by Oregon and Vermont – have passed bottle deposit laws. These so-called “bottle bills” have proven to increase recycling rates and reduce litter on roadsides and in waterways. The laws give people a financial incentive, often five or ten cents per bottle or can, to pick up the litter and return the containers for a cash reward.
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Singer and songwriter Caleb Stine – a folk music legend in Baltimore -- is playing his guitar on the porch of his rowhouse in the city’s Remington neighborhood. He recently released a new song called “Let the Trees Do What They Will.” In a way, it’s a radical political statement about modern America – but not radical in the way most people would think.
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The origin of the coronavirus wreaking havoc around the world remains a source of mystery and controversy. Scientists generally agree that COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease. That means it jumped from animals to humans, most likely from horseshoe bats to people perhaps near the city of Wuhan, in China.
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Lynda Mettee lives in a house built high up on risers on a slender peninsula called Swan Point that sticks out into the Chesapeake Bay east of Dundalk, in Baltimore County.
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My wife and I were strolling late at night in Fells Point, near Baltimore’s waterfront when we heard an odd sound coming from the trees in Thames Street Park. A neighbor of the park, Rob Baumann, came walking along with his dog. He smiled at, what to him, were familiar noises.
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Driven in part by the coronavirus recession and reductions in driving and air travel, the number of oil and gas drilling rigs operating in the U.S. has plummeted by 70 percent over the last year, falling to a record low since World War II.
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The global plastics industry is booming, adding trash to our oceans and greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. Plastics production has grown even during the corona virus recession because of the increased need for disposable gloves, cups, and bags.
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It was just after dawn when I set out paddling in my kayak to find nature in one of the least natural places on Earth.
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Thomas RaShad Easley grew up in an apartment in an urban neighborhood in Birmingham, Ala. But he learned to love nature, in part because his grandparents cultivated a lush garden amid the concrete and blacktop.
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In his documentary titled “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” filmmaker Ken Burns described why parks and wildlife preservers – lands owned by the public – are really an American invention.
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The recent legal actions by the attorneys general of Maryland and Virginia against the Trump Administration’s EPA over the Chesapeake Bay cleanup are evidence that the landmark 2010 Bay restoration agreement has failed.
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This is the call of a meadowlark. (Sound of meadowlark plays). This is an upland sandpiper. And this excitable fellow is a burrowing owl. (Hooting sound of owl) What they have in common is that they are among more than 5,000 species of birds whose survival is threatened because of the expansion of industrial-style, modern agriculture around the world. Populations of meadowlarks, for example, have fallen by 71 percent since 1966. And it’s not just birds. Farming and development have reduced the population of all wild animals – mammals, birds, fish, and amphibians -- by more than half since 1970.
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The Attorneys General of Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia filed a notice of intent to sue the Trump Administration’s EPA on Monday over its failure to enforce a landmark Chesapeake Bay cleanup agreement signed in 2010.
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Last week, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, vetoed 38 bills passed in March by the Democratic-majority General Assembly. The governor explained that the economic crash caused by the coronavirus had opened up a massive state budget deficit which made the new proposals– including for increased funding for public schools – suddenly unaffordable.
However, at least one of the bills Hogan vetoed had absolutely nothing to do with state funds or the coronavirus.
That was Senate Bill 300, which would have outlawed the use of a pesticide called chlorpyrifos that researchers have concluded can cause brain damage in children and kill aquatic life in the Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere.
Farmers spray thousands of pounds of chlorpyrifos every year to kill insects that damage corn, fruit trees, and cotton crops.
EPA banned the indoor use of the pesticide in 2000, but the Trump Administration in 2017 decided against expanding that protection to farms and other outdoor locations.
Dr. Clarence Lam is a public health policy expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a Democratic state senator from Howard County who co-sponsored Maryland’s state ban on the insecticide.
“I was disappointed by the veto, because I think this is important legislation to help protect our children and those who are growing up in our state from these kinds of neurological disorders,” said Lam. “I think the science is very clear that this chemical is harmful.”
The Hogan Administration declined to be interviewed. But the governor signed a letter with the veto that said the law was unnecessary, because the administration imposed regulations in April that will effectively prohibit the chemical’s use by the end of 2021.
The governor’s letter said in part: “Following discussions earlier this year with agricultural leaders, farmers and legislators, the Maryland Department of Agriculture crafted reasonable and responsible regulations to phase out all use of chlorpyrifos.”
Ruth Berlin is Executive Director of the Maryland Pesticide Network. She said that Hogan’s substitution of weaker regulations for a stronger law banning the pesticide was, in essence, a political trick. It’s a way of replacing permanent legal action with temporary rules that the governor can alter or weaken at any time. Hogan’s regulations will be administered by a state agency, the Maryland Department of Agriculture, or MDA, that has a mission to promote the agricultural industry, not public health. Over the last quarter century, MDA has opposed every single bill designed to limit or control the use of pesticides, Berlin said.
“The truth is, the governor’s veto, puts the MDA – which is the fox guarding the hen house,” Berlin said. “So we know that this will turn into pretty much nothing of use because they have a dismal record. Truly.”
A spokesman for MDA, Jason Schellhardt, did not dispute Berlin’s statement that his agency has opposed all state legislation to control the use of pesticides. But he said in an email: “The department typically would not support legislation that takes regulatory authority away from the science-based review process established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which sets the national standard on pesticide regulations.”
Berlin said the chlorpyrifos ban issue will resurface again in the next General Assembly session. “We are going to push for a veto override, and we feel optimistic about those chances,” she said.
The chlorpyrifos ban legislation passed the Maryland Senate by a vote of 31 to 14; and the House 94 to 37. Both were above the two-thirds majority that would allow a veto override when the General Assembly reconvenes in January.
So…. what’s behind all this maneuvering?
Much of this is about the politics of regulation. It’s also about power of the farm lobby, which – like the modern Republican party -- strongly opposes all laws and rules that might hurt the profits of industry – in this case, farmers or chemical manufacturers.
This profit concern was aired by – among others -- Riley Titus, chief lobbyist for a pesticide industry lobbying group called Crop Life America.
“Eliminating this product would remove an invaluable tool for farmers and cause future threats to food security here in the state,” Titus said while testifying against Maryland’s ban on Chlorpyrifos. “The cost to commodity producers would be impactful.”
There is no question that farmers and golf course owners could earn more money if they could spray whatever chemicals they wanted. But it is important to remember there are costs on the other side of the ledger, too: the secret and incalculable costs of lowered IQ’s and neurological damage in children whose mothers are exposed to this pesticide by simply strolling through an orchard or eating the wrong fruit while they are pregnant.
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With the number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. seeming to decline, but unemployment soaring and the economy in free-fall, President Trump held a press conference recently to talk about a political imperative: getting capitalism off the stretcher.
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On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day last week, documentary maker Michael Moore and his longtime collaborator Jeff Gibbs released a powerful new movie called “The Planet of the Humans.” Like many Michael Moore films, itʼs highly controversial and flawed. But you should watch the movie because itʼs very well done, thought-provoking and gut- wrenching.
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How one woman's life was disrupted by CAFO's, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, which are massive, windowless, airplane hangar-like metal buildings, used to grow thousands of chickens, hogs and other livestock.
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Next Wednesday, April 22nd, is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. So even though we’re living in strange and difficult times – with the coronavirus keeping most of us at home – it is an appropriate time to take stock of how we’re treating our home, the Earth.
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The coronavirus crisis has contributed to a crash in oil prices, as people are driving less while working at home and many businesses are shut down. Competition between Saudi Arabia and Russia has also caused a glut in global oil production.
As a result, many oil and gas companies are suffering huge financial losses, laying off workers, and asking the federal government for a bailout or some kind of government assistance.
President Trump held a meeting on Friday at the White House with the CEO’s of eight major oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Phillips66.
“I just want to start by saying it’s an honor to be with you,” Trump told the executives. “I know most of you… But I know all of you by seeing you on the covers of all the business magazines and other magazines. And you’ve done a great job and we’ll work this out. And we’ll get our energy businesses back. I’m with you 1,000 percent.”
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Ventilators, of course, are medical devices that hospitals use to help patients breathe when they are suffering from pneumonia or lung failure. The goal was to save lives in case of a future global pandemic of the kind we are now experiencing with the coronavirus.
According to reporting in The New York Times, the public health project got off to a great start. The federal Department of Health and Human Services awarded a contract to a small and nimble California company called Newport Medical.
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In these times of the coronavirus, the public health strategy of “social distancing” is hard on people because humans are, by their nature, a social species.
We evolved to hunt, live, play and survive in groups. But the virus takes advantage of our evolution and spreads through groups. So we have to know our enemy and work against our very nature to save lives.
In my effort to practice an extreme form of “social distancing” – and escape the claustrophobia of working at home – I set off with my kayak and a few supplies to the most isolated place I could think of: the pathless, maze-like wilderness of rivers and marshes at the heart of the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
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Kavin Senapathy is a freelance journalist who was drawn to the field of science blogging nine years ago. It was just after her first child was born and she found herself obsessed with and terrified about her daughter’s health.
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Maryland faces a critical decision point in its decades-long effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
The poultry industry on the Eastern Shore produces about 300 million chickens a year. But the byproduct is about a half billion pounds more manure than can be absorbed by crops when farmers spread the litter as fertilizer for their corn and soybeans. That leads to runoff of phosphorus pollution into rivers, streams and the Bay.
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It’s a watershed moment in American politics. Climate change and the environment, for the first time, have risen to become among the top issues in a Presidential election. President Trump is campaigning against the whole idea of environmental regulations and has falsely labelled climate change a “hoax.”
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Glyphosate, the main ingredient in RoundUp, is sprayed on millions of acres of non-organic crops around the world.
Biologists have concluded that glyphosate has contributed to the 80 percent decline – and possible future extinction – of Monarch butterflies. The World Health Organization in 2015 classified glyphosate as a “probable” human carcinogen, triggering more than 100,000 lawsuits – and so far, three court judgments – against Bayer for allegedly causing their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers.
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Jay Falstad, Executive Director of the Queen Anne’s Conservation Association on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, first became obsessed with balloons a few years ago. He was out strolling with his daughter and noticed some litter.
“My daughter and I found a cluster of balloons here on Unicorn Lake,” Falstad said. “And on those balloons was a note written in Sharpie pen that said, ‘If you find these balloons, call this number. We want to see how far they’ve travelled.’ And so, I called the number and it turned out they originated from Dayton, Ohio, and had been released four days earlier, and travelled almost 500 miles and ended up landing here. It was after that that I began to see balloons everywhere. You’d see them in farm fields, and hanging in trees.”
He was not the only one haunted by balloons…kind of like a character in the movie It based on the Stephen King novel about the sinister clown. But in this case, the victim was the Chesapeake Bay.
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While many Republicans have been in denial about the realities of climate science – notably the denier-in-chief, President Trump, who falsely labels climate change a “hoax” – Baltimore County State Senator Chris West is what you might call a fact-based Republican.
West, a 69-year-old resident of West Towson, is an attorney and former President of the Bar Association of Baltimore City.
He is co-sponsoring a bill, introduced on Friday in the Maryland senate, that would dramatically reduce greenhouse gas pollution from the state by requiring a gradual shutdown of the state’s six remaining coal-fired power plants between 2023 and 2030.
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Since 1971, 10 states – led by Oregon and Vermont – have passed bottle deposit laws. These so-called “bottle bills” have proven to increase recycling rates and reduce litter on roadsides and in waterways. The laws give people a financial incentive, often five or ten cents per bottle or can, to pick up the litter and return the containers for a cash reward.
For example, Michigan passed a 10 cent bottle deposit law in 1976 and today enjoys a 95 percent recycling rate for bottles and cans. That’s almost four times the 25 percent rate in Maryland, which does not have a deposit law.
Six times in Maryland over the last decade, legislators have proposed bottle bills. Predictably, soda and beer manufacturers and store chains have fought the laws, because they don’t want to lose any income or take responsibility for handling dirty containers.
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To the strains of Lee Greenwood’s song “Proud to be an American,” President Trump took the stage at the American Farm Bureau convention in Austin last week and boasted about repealing water pollution control regulations across the U.S.
The Obama Administration imposed the Waters of the U.S. Rule in 2015 to protect intermittent streams and scattered wetlands that are not adjacent to rivers or lakes. But what Trump did not tell the farm convention is that the Obama-era regulations already exempted most farming practices, as did previous federal and state wetlands protection rules.
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In 1983, 1987 and 2000, Maryland, Pennsylvania and the other Chesapeake Bay region states all signed much-heralded agreements to clean up the nation’s largest estuary.
But these agreements all failed to make any progress in the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay for a simple reason: They were purely voluntary, with no enforcement mechanism.
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The Maryland General Assembly’s annual legislative session opened today. The two most important environmental issues being debated this year in Annapolis are – once again -- climate change and the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay.
State Delegate Kumar Barve, a Democrat from Montgomery County and chairman of the House Environment and Transportation Committee, is proposing legislation that would shut down Maryland’s six remaining coal fired power plants.
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During the last decade, when the Chesapeake Bay region states publicly promised to increase their efforts to clean up the nation’s largest estuary, four of the six states quietly cut funding for the state environmental agencies responsible for carrying out that cleanup.
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Bonnie Bick is an unassuming person. She’s a 72-year-old former flower child and pre-school teacher with a soft voice, who has little money and few possessions, but loves walking in the woods near her small brick house in southern Maryland.
But among land conservationists, she is a hero – a fierce and tenacious fighter who outlasted developers and the political establishment in Charles County to stop a highway project – the Cross County Connector, which would have fed sprawling subdivisions. The project has now turned into a proposal for a much greener bike path surrounded by trees.
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During a recent press event, President Trump declared that he is urging his Environmental Protection Agency to weaken federal water conservation standards because of troubles that unnamed friends of his have been having with their toilets.
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It was 9 am Friday outside an office tower on Charles Street in downtown Baltimore. Thirteen activists wearing black t-shirts emblazoned with a rising sun emblem and wielding bright yellow and orange cardboard shields gathered to protest at the office of U.S. Senator Ben Cardin.
Evelyn Hammid, a local leader of the group, called the Sunrise Movement, explained what the organization is all about.
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With the Holiday season upon us, Tony and Chef Cindy take time to speak with you about your favorite ways to spoil yourself. Weather you indulge with a simple hot chocolate or a fancy lobster tail, this episode is all about treating yourself.
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More than two decades ago, an outbreak of toxic algae and fish kills in the Pocomoke River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore set off alarms about the dire state of the Chesapeake Bay’s health.
On December 1, 1997, a blue ribbon panel of experts, led by former Governor Harry Hughes, recommended that Maryland take “immediate” action to halt the over-application of poultry manure to farm fields, which was feeding the algal blooms.
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Last November, just after Thanksgiving, General Motors announced that it would eliminate 4,000 auto manufacturing jobs by shutting down plants in Baltimore County; Warren, Michigan; and Lordstown, Ohio.
But then in March, GM switched gears. The company said it was building a new $300 million auto plant north of Detroit. However, the new plant in Orion, Michigan, would employ only 400 workers – not 4,000. And the workers would primarily be building electric vehicles, not petroleum-fueled cars and trucks.
The change was a sign of the times.
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Populations of frogs and other amphibians have been declining around the world and biologist Lisa Schloegel believes that she may have discovered why.Schloegel and her fellow researchers concluded that the breeding and farming of bullfrogs in Brazil, Taiwan and China, and the international sales of these live frogs may be spreading a fungus that causes a disease called chytridiomycosis, which is often deadly in amphibians.Although bullfrogs are native to North America part of the natural ecosystem here, their sale, release and multiplication around the world is also creating an invasive species problem in other countries, as the large and aggressive bullfrogs gobble up smaller frogs and amphibians.
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Around the world, humans have wiped out 60 percent of all mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, according to a report by the World Wildlife Foundation. To cite one just example in North America, seventy percent of shorebird populations have disappeared since 1973. That was when I was a child strolling on the beach. Modern civilization is wreaking havoc on biodiversity, with our industries, population growth and pesticides gradually killing off most large forms of life that do not serve humanity or feed off of us.This is frightening. But at the same time, the average life span of people around the world has more than doubled since 1900, because of medical improvements, advances in farming technology and rising incomes.
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Since 1971, 10 states – led by Oregon and Vermont – have passed bottle deposit laws. These so-called “bottle bills” have proven to increase recycling rates and reduce litter on roadsides and in waterways. The laws give people a financial incentive, often five or ten cents per bottle or can, to pick up the litter and return the containers for a cash reward.For example, Michigan passed a 10 cent bottle deposit law in 1976 and today enjoys a 95 percent recycling rate for bottles and cans. That’s almost four times the 25 percent rate in Maryland, which does not have a deposit law.Six times in Maryland over the last decade, legislators have proposed bottle bills. Predictably, soda and beer manufacturers and store chains have fought the laws, because they don’t want to lose any income or take responsibility for handling dirty containers.But that’s not why the bottle bills keep dying in Maryland and other states.
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Thomas RaShad Easley grew up in an apartment in an urban neighborhood in Birmingham, Ala. But he learned to love nature, in part because his grandparents cultivated a lush garden amid the concrete and blacktop.He was also an Eagle Scout, and Scouting got him out of the city and into the woods, where he enjoyed spending time at Tannehill State Park.“Yes, we would go camping, and I’m glad that we did it. Because at first, I didn’t want to do it,” Easley recalled. “And then, when we got out there, it was so much fun. You know, me and the guys. And the other good thing about our scout troop was we were a diverse scout troop. So we had black, white, as well as brown young men in our troop. So it was almost like a social experiment – Troop 49 in Birmingham, Alabama.”
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Last week, Baltimore Mayor Jack Young abruptly announced the retirement of city’s Director of Public Works, Rudy Chow, amid public controversy surrounding steep rate hikes that have more than tripled water and sewer bills.One of the most expensive infrastructure projects that Chow launched was right here, in Baltimore’s Hanlon Park. Hundreds of trees have been cut down and the grass torn up into a mud and gravel landscape rumbling with bulldozers.
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