Biden administration officials are working against the clock doling out billions in grants and taking other steps to try to preserve at leas
I'm going to just copy the whole damn thing below so people know that these efforts are happening:
WASHINGTON (AP) â Biden administration officials are working against the clock doling out billions in grants and taking other steps to try to preserve at least some of the outgoing presidentâs legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
âLetâs make every day count,â President Joe Biden said in an address to the nation last week after Vice President Kamala Harris conceded defeat to Trump in the presidential race.
Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Bidenâs landmark climate and health care law and stop clean-energy development projects.
âThereâs only one administration at a time,â Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters at a news conference Thursday. âThatâs true now, and it will also be true after January 20th. Our responsibility is to make good use of the funds that Congress has authorized for us and that weâre responsible for assigning and disbursing throughout the last three years.â
But Trump will control more than the purse strings come January. His administration also can propose new regulations to undo some of what the Biden administration did through the rule-making process.
Here are some of the moves the Biden administration is taking now:
Getting infrastructure spending out the door
Biden administration officials hope that projects funded under the $1 trillion infrastructure law and $375 billion climate law will endure beyond Bidenâs term and are working to ensure that money from the landmark measures continues to flow.
On Friday, Buttigieg announced over $3.4 billion in grants for projects designed to improve passenger rail service, help U.S. ports, reduce highway deaths and support domestic manufacturing of sustainable transportation materials.
âWe are investing in better transportation systems that touch every corner of the country and in the workers who will manufacture materials and build projects,âł he said. âCommunities are going to see safer commutes, cleaner air and stronger supply chains that we all count on.âł
Speeding up environmental goals
Announcements of major environmental grants and project approvals have sped up in recent months in what White House officials describe as âsprinting to the finishâ of Bidenâs four-year term.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently set a nationwide deadline for removal of lead pipes and announced nearly $3 billion to help local water systems comply. The agency also announced that oil and gas companies for the first time will have to pay a federal fee if they emit dangerous methane above certain levels.
The Energy Department, meanwhile, announced a $544 million loan to a Michigan company to expand manufacturing of high-quality silicon carbide wafers for electric vehicles. The loan is one of 28 deals totaling $37 billion granted under a clean-energy loan program that was revived and expanded under Biden.
âThere is a new urgency to get it all done. Weâre seeing explosions of money going out the door,â said Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club. Biden and his allies âreally want to finish the job they started.â
Ukraine aid
Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters this week that Biden wants to âspend down the authority that Congress has allocated and authorized before he leaves office. So weâre going to work very hard to make sure that happens.â
The Biden administration would have to rush $7.1 billion in weapons â $4.3 billion from the 2024 supplemental and $2.8 billion that is still on the books in savings due to the Pentagon recalculating the value of systems sent â from the Pentagonâs stockpiles in order to spend all of those funds obligated before Trump is sworn in.
Thereâs also another $2.2 billion available to put weapons systems on long-term contracts. However, recent aid packages have been much smaller in size, around $200 million to $300 million each.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said the funds are already obligated, which should make them harder to take back because the incoming administration would have to reverse that.
Pressure to quickly confirm judicial picks
Another priority for the White House is getting Senate confirmation of as many federal judges as possible before Trumpâs inauguration on Jan. 20.
The Senate this week voted 51-44 to confirm former prosecutor April Perry as a U.S. District Court judge in northern Illinois. More than a dozen pending judicial nominees have advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee; eight judicial nominations are awaiting committee votes and six are waiting for committee hearings.
Trump has urged Republicans to oppose efforts to confirm judicial nominees. âNo Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership,â he wrote on social media site X on Nov. 10, before congressional Republicans chose their new leaders.
Student loan forgiveness
The Education Department has been hurrying to finalize a new federal rule that would cancel student loans for people who face financial hardship. The proposal â one of Bidenâs only student loan plans that hasnât been halted by federal courts â is in a public comment period scheduled to end Dec. 2.
After that, the department would have a narrow window to finalize the rule and begin carrying it out, a process that usually takes months. Like Bidenâs other efforts, it would almost certainly face a legal challenge.
Additionally, the Biden administration has room to speed up student loan cancellation for people who were already promised relief because they were cheated by their colleges, said Aaron Ament, an Education Department official for the Obama administration and president of the National Student Legal Defense Network.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona could decide that case and others rather than hand them off to the Trump administration, which is expected to be far friendlier to for-profit colleges. âItâs a no-brainer,â Ament said. âThereâs a good number of cases that have been sitting on Cardonaâs desk. Itâs hard to imagine that those would just be left untouched.â
Trump has not yet said what he would do on student loan forgiveness. However, he and Republicans have criticized Bidenâs efforts.
We will see these efforts start taking effect and improving people's lives during the Trump Administration. He will try to take credit for them. Don't let him.
On Thursday, Gov. Scott let Vermont's Climate Superfund Act become law without signature.
The Climate Change Superfund Act makes major fossil fuel companies financially liable for damage due to extreme weather events and other dangers related to climate change. The amount these companies are responsible for paying depends on their contributions to emissions since 1995.
Money collected from fossil fuel companies will be used to mitigate the health impacts of climate change and improve public infrastructure.
Preliminary data shows more than 5,000 sq km were cleared, still over six times the size of New York City.
Amazon deforestation fell over 50% in 2023 and as of August 2024 it was 46% lower than this time last year.
The Brazilian government has pledged to end Amazon deforestation entirely by 2030 and their current efforts have deforestation approaching the lowest it has been in the last six years.
â[B]ut then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, [âŚ]: You will be warm again.â
Stateâs transport department given a 2045 deadline to fully decarbonize and achieve zero emissions under agreement
Under what legal experts called a âhistoricâ settlement, announced on Thursday, Hawaii officials will release a roadmap âto fully decarbonize the stateâs transportation systems, taking all actions necessary to achieve zero emissions no later than 2045 for ground transportation, sea and inter-island air transportationâ, Andrea Rodgers, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case, said at a press conference with the governor.
In April, after 10 years of negotiations, Peruâs Council of Ministers approved the creation of the Grau Tropical Sea National Reserve. To Pe
Experts have called the creation of the Grau Tropical Sea National Reserve, which took more than 10 years to be approved, a milestone as it is rich in biodiversity.
Observers expect the reserve to allow for greater control and monitoring of the area to prevent illegal fishing.
However, some industrial fishing, including trawling, is permitted in the new reserve, a decision criticized by marine conservation experts who say Peru needs âno-fishing areas.â
Spiders? Hate them but see their use. Mosquitoes? Begrudgingly acknowledge that they like... feed bats. But can anyone explain what the fuck ticks are doing that's helpful??? Because frankly I'm not convinced they're doing anything nice for anyone
ticks are a massive source of protein for the many many creatures that eat them, same as mosquitos. they're integral to the food chain.
also, parasites of all kinds are incredibly important to ecosystems for many reasons: they help keep populations- especially of large herbivores and predators- low and healthy, they help individuals develop immune strength, and they are often integral parts of their food webs.
much of life is parasitic. it's a very successful life-plan and food strategy. dont hold it against them: blood is a really nutritious food and the creatures they target (generally) have a lot of it. it's not their 'fault' they have the capacity to carry even smaller parasites/diseases. that's just how life is
Deer is big creature, has microbe community inside it making it super good at digesting plant, turning plant into easy nutrients.
Small creatures would like nutrients. Deer is too big to eat, hoards all the nutrients. RUDE! Not everybody can be a wolf! Not fair :(
Tick bites deer. Tick takes tiny bit of deer's blood, falls off deer. Tick now contains deer's nutrients
Small creature eats tick. Nutrients in deer go into small creatures.
In this way, deer can become food for spiders, birds, lizards, beetles, ants. It couldn't happen without ticks. They are the portable snack packs of the forest
I think there's nothing wrong with being disgusted by parasites, it's just an instinct that evolved to stop little guys from taking all your nutrients.
And infectious diseases spread really easily by contact with blood, so the snack packs of the forest are also like public transportation systems for blood-borne pathogens.
But outside of your very understandable desire as an organism to keep your blood inside and pathogens outside, parasites are an amazing and thought provoking aspect of life's diversity.
Wild animals can have dozens of different species of worms and arthropods living on or in them. (Most big animal species even have their own parasites that can only live on that animal.) To the parasite, animals are worlds; a deer is like a planet inhabited by its own fauna, just like deer inhabit the landscape.
Isn't it awe-inspiring that you can go into a habitat and see animals inhabiting it, but each animal IS a habitat with its own animals...
And it keeps going! Parasites often have their own parasites, called hyper-parasites! And hyper-parasites can have hyper-parasites! How many layers of animal are there?!?
Parasites are symbiotic creatures that decrease the fitness of their partner, but "parasite=harmful" is not quite right, since parasitism interlocks the fates of organisms in complex ways. Sometimes a parasite has to spend the first part of its life cycle in one animal, and the second part in another totally different animal. How do they get there? Maybe the second animal eats the first one. The parasite needs this predator-prey interaction to happen to continue life! If the predator turns to other prey, the parasite can't live. But if the predator loses its other prey and has nothing to eat except that prey, well that might seem like a good thing except now there are 27 of you in the same predator's digestive tract, and the predator is now weak and struggles to hunt. If your host starves, you are all dead for certain!
Parasites in a situation with two hosts, one predator the other prey, sometimes might change the prey's behavior to make it easier for the predator to catch. This might be considered helping the predator. Is the parasite "harming" the predator or just taking a cut of the profits when it makes a kill? It's complicated!
Another way to do it is to be a parasite that lives inside a parasite that lives on the outside of an animal, and when the animal grooms itself and bites the ectoparasite out of its fur, the parasite living inside the parasite can now grow inside the host animal.
Parasites' impact on their hosts' behaviors impacts the whole environment! For example maybe a herd of deer likes to browse on the tender shoots down in the swamp, but they do not like the swarms of mosquitoes. By driving off the deer, the mosquitoes help the orchids in the swamp survive. If a bison wallows in the dirt to get rid of parasites, it creates a disturbance that gives rise to a little mini habitat for flowers that can't survive in the tall, less disturbed grass. If parasites make it unhealthy for animals to live crammed in a small area, they might be driven to disperse and move to new habitats, or to have a system of migrating from place to place. If a large animal is itchy and scratches itself against a tree and rubs the bark off, that might kill the tree, which is bad for the tree but great for the woodpeckers that need standing deadwood to hunt for food.
Speaking of woodpeckers, we have recently learned that woodpeckers transmit lichens and mosses to new places! And woodpeckers also were found to harbor freshwater diatoms...which should be found in freshwater streams, but perhaps got onto the bird when it was taking a bath...why does a bird take a bath? Perhaps to get rid of parasites...?
...Basically, everything is so interconnected that a flea could affect an unimaginable number of things. Parasites weave together the ecosystem in ways we barely understand.
Of course, you should still treat your dog or cat for fleas...but that's part of your symbiosis with the dog or cat, so even the space where a flea should be, is a space where organisms are bound together.
something I don't understand is why we make an exception for pathogens. if there's some intrinsic value in the current species of life on earth continuing to exist, why is it a good goal to eradicate a strain of bacteria? why are we excited that we're close to exterminating guinea worm?
With microorganism pathogens, they evolve so fast that we probably couldn't do lasting damage to the ecosystem. The extinction of a strain of bacteria is no more disruptive than any of the wild evolutionary stunts bacteria are constantly pulling.
Death is a neutral part of nature, even extinction is a neutral part of nature, and this isn't contradictory to the intrinsic value of life. Killing an animal is permissible under some circumstances, and that animal individually was a unique event in the history of the cosmos, it was a Life.
Destroying a species could also be permissible, but it would be the absolute gravest, most serious form of taking life. You would have to know what you were doing as fully as that could be known. I think these cases are mainly limited to creatures that are obligate human parasites, they have a relationship with humans and almost nothing else. That is a relationship we're allowed to terminate, because it is OUR relationship, there are no links in it that don't include us directly.
...What about flies? I've heard that they're basically useless, but I don't particularly believe that. I've just never been able to ask and find an answer.
Flies are important in all the ways mentioned above (biting flies in tundra are important for moving caribou from place to place, for example) but they are also really important as scavengers and as pollinators!
Maggots do a really good job at cleaning up rotting corpses, garbage and feces of animals quickly. Without them, our world would be full of a lot more poop and dead bodies, and that doesn't sound like a good or healthy place to live.
It sounds disgusting, but maggots even have an application in medicine to clean up dead and rotting tissue in a wound. The maggots eat dead flesh but won't touch the living flesh.
Flies are pollinators just as much as bees are, and they pollinate some flowers that bees don't visit. For a familiar example, flies are really important pollinators of mangoes. When you eat a delicious mango, a fly did that for you. Thank you, flies.
Hope can fuel the action needed to keep tackling the climate crisis. Experts say tremendous progress has already been made.
"People assume that in the 50 years since the first Earth Day we've made no progress. That we're in a worse position now than we were in the 1970s, that there's no point in environmental action," [...]
Quite the opposite is true. Climate-friendly advances that would have seemed impossible even 10 years ago are now commonplace. And three times in the past 50 years humanity has faced--and fixed--massive, man-made global environmental issues.
The fight isn't won yet, but don't forget that we have made enormous progress.
We would be in a much, much worse position if it wasn't for all the incredible work of environmental activists who came before us, most of whose names and contributions we will never know. They are the reason that we have a fighting chance now, and we owe it to them to pick up their banner and keep running.
Today, please take a moment to remember that there is still so much beauty and complexity and amazing, inexplicable wonder in the world. We are not lost. The Earth is not lost. There is still so much worth fighting for.
âThe climate crisis is ongoing. And, also, a bird is building a nest in the eaves outside my window. Come spring, there will be new birth. In shaky hands, I hold these two truths together.â
CO2 Emissions in 2023 - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.
Previous similar drops in emissions were due to periods of economic stagnation or recession--this is the first significant drop in emissions that has coincided with GDP growth.
The majority of this decline is due to changes in energy use and generation. Coal demand has dropped nearly to 1900s levels, while use of renewables grows significantly--for the first time renewables accounted for half of the energy generated in "advanced economies" included in this analysis.
Shareholder advocacy groups have already won plastics-related concessions from companies including Disney, Hormel, and Choice Hotels
Excerpt from this story from Grist:
Wealthy investors and asset managers wield a lot of power over the major companies whose stock they own or control. Every year, shareholder advocacy groups hope to exert that power for good by filing shareholder resolutions â 500-word proposals that might ask companies to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, or to disclose more information on their resource use.Â
Shareholders typically vote on resolutions between April and June during a period known as âproxy season,â named after the proxy statements that companies distribute to investors ahead of their annual shareholder meetings. These votes arenât binding, but they can influence companiesâ decisions and generate press around a particular issue.
This year, activist investors are notching wins even before the beginning of proxy season. Shareholder advocacy groups have already extracted a handful of plastics-related concessions from major companies â including the entertainment behemoth Disney, the food processing giant Hormel, and Choice Hotels, one of the largest hotel chains in the world. The companiesâ new commitments include reporting on and reducing the amount of plastics they use in their packaging, as well as more closely monitoring hazardous plastic additives.
Activist investment firms like Green Century Capital Management â which manages over $1 billion in assets â must make a business case for environmental action. Douglass Guernsey, a shareholder advocate at Green Century Capital Management who helped negotiate the agreements with Disney and Choice Hotels, said the new commitments show that companies are waking up to the threat that single-use plastics pose to their bottom line. Between the prospect of more stringent state regulations, new lawsuits against plastic producers, and a global plastics treaty being negotiated by the United Nations, plastics are facing some potentially severe regulatory and reputational prospects over the coming years.
The companiesâ pledges also shed light on the shareholder advocacy strategy, which is not necessarily to sway companies through voting on shareholder resolutions, but to use the prospect of a vote as a negotiating tool. According to Guernsey, shareholder advocates almost always prefer to reach an agreement with companies through dialogue â they only file a resolution if they feel that itâs needed to keep the conversation going. In some cases, after a resolution is filed, companies agree to make some kind of commitment in exchange for the resolutionâs withdrawal.
origamiaround
kaledo-art
discoholicmusic
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
izzy806
