2017

Jan 4 –Air pollution —  China issues national “red alert” as heavy smog blankets major cities.

Jan 5 — Climate Change — Two independent studies show that sea surface temperatures continued to increase in the 21st century.  Previously, scientists had found a slowing of the rate of warming in comparison to the 1950s to 1990s time frame.  However, the independent studies, once adjusted for differences in temperature recording methods, found that warming in the first 15 years of the 21st Century was “virtually indistinguishable” from the rate of warming between 1950-99. The studies included one by a team at UC Berkeley and another at the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Jan 5 — Coal ash — Angry protests break out over loose coal ash in Port Augusta in south central Australia.

Jan 9 — Renewable energy trend is ‘irreversible,’ writes outgoing president Barack Obama in Science magazine.   The momentum will not be outdone during the Trump administration, he says.

Jan 18 — NASA scientists report that new, warmer temperature record has been set for 2016, the first time a three-year warming trend has been detected.

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Jan 20 — Donald J. Trump, the most anti-environmental American president in history, takes office. Over the coming years, Trump will launch an all-out assault on environmental science; appoint corrupt industry sycophants to positions of high public responsibility; and will attempt to dismantle regulations that protect public health and natural resources.

Jan 24 — Support for the environmental movement starts to recover, according to Gallup, an international polling organization.   Asking whether its more important to protect the environment or foster economic growth,  71 percent favor the environment in 1992, dropping to 41 percent following the crash of 2008, and then recovering to 57 percent during 2018.  Similarly, Pew Research finds that two thirds of the US public still favors  renewable energy over fossil fuels —  a ratio consistent from the 1970s.

Feb. 14 — Corruption — US president Donald Trump signs legislation allowing secret payments by energy companies to foreign governments.  Previously, such payments were illegal under anti-corruption laws.

Feb. 16 — Stream pollution –US president Trump signs legislation taking away the  stream protection rule, which prevented mining companies dumping their waste into streams. Trump calls it a “terrible job-killing rule.” No new jobs accompany the new pollution; in fact, the coal industry moves into permanent long-term decline.

Feb. 28 — US president Donald Trump instructs the EPA to rewrite an act that protected public water supplies,  the ‘waters of the United States’ rule.

Feb 17  — Scott Pruitt, a state attorney general who led the fight against the US Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama years,  is confirmed as Trump’s EPA secretary.  Meanwhile, emails released from Pruitt’s years in Oklahoma show that he worked closely with oil and gas industries to destroy environmental protection. He resigns over a variety of ethical problems in July, 2018.

March 2 — US EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt orders EPA to stop collecting methane emissions data from around 15,000 oil and gas operations.

March 7 — Former Nixon and Reagan head of EPA, Donald Ruckleshaus, writes in a New York Times op-ed that US president Trump’s approach to environment is not what American industry wants or needs.

March 11 — Six years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, costs are reaching the hundreds of billions, without any hope of containing the runaway nuclear reactions.

March 28 – An  executive order from President Trump is the beginning of the end for EPA’s clean power plan.

March 28 — US President Donald Trump orders a stop to climate change prevention and research in a series of executive orders.   The move is widely seen as gravely mistaken, especially by the  European Union and the Vatican.

March 30 — El Salvador rejects all metals mining, in the wake of a dispute between Pacific Rim – Cayman and the government.  The mining company plan would have ruined water supplies for thousands of people, the government said.

April 27 — Trump’s EPA  wins a court battle halting  a challenge by states and industry groups to an Obama administration rule aimed at reducing toxic emissions from power stations. Pruitt, in his previous role as attorney general of Oklahoma, had sued the EPA to stop the rule, which is known as MATS.

May 21 — Swiss voters support a government plan to subsidize renewable energy and get rid of new nuclear power plants.

May 21 — Atlantic Magazine profiles the struggle over holding companies responsible for the health effects of lead paint and leaded gasoline in one New Orleans housing development.

June 1 — Trump withdraws US from Paris Climate agreement, further isolating the US from global environmental protection.

July 8 — Explosive growth in US rooftop solar is slowing due to lobbying by “traditional” utilities, according to the New York Times.   

June 26 –– Rise in global sea levels is accelerating  and is now at 3.3 millimeters annually,  according to a team of scientists from China, Australia and the United States.   The study, led by Xianyao Chen of the Ocean University of China,  found that early satellite data had exaggerated the rate of sea level rise in the 1990s, masking the recent acceleration. (Reuters)

 July 9 — G20 Summit in Hamburg Germany — US completely isolated in disdain. German chancellor Angela Merkel said she “deplored” the US exit from the agreement and added that she did not share the view of Theresa May, the British prime minister, that Washington could (later) decide to rejoin the pact.
 — Protests rock Hamburg Germany at the G20- Summit 1000 GESTALTEN / G 20 Hamburg Summit

Aug 25 – Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas, leaving 108 deaths and $125 billion in damages in its wake.

Sept 19 — Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico, killing between 112 and 1,113 people and causing over $93 billion in damage.

October —  Forty six people are killed in California at the height of western wildfire season, making 2017  the most expensive and destructive on record so far.

Oct. 27 — US president Trump announces plans to trim two million acres from Utah national monuments to allow mineral and petroleum exploitation.   The national monuments were created by past presidents under the Antiquities Act – a law that protects cultural and historical treasures.  Trump claimed the law was   misused because it put land off limits to development, which, of course, was the purpose of the law.

Nov 3 — Defying the Trump administration, US scientists from the EPA, NOAA and other agencies report that the pace of  climate change is almost certainly driven by human activity, like burning fossil fuels.  “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence,” said the Fourth National Climate Assessment.  

Nov 14 — Syria formally joined the UN climate pact, making the United States the only country on earth officially opposed to global action to mitigate climate change.

Dec. 16 — Tax credits for solar, wind and other renewable energy sources will be kept in the tax code following negotiations over new legislation.

2018

Jan 4 — The year 2017 was the second hottest on record,  just behind 2016, according to NASA and a European Union monitoring center. The Copernicus Climate Change Service  said temperatures averaged 14.7 degrees Celsius (58.46 Fahrenheit) at the Earth’s surface, which is 1.2C (2.2F) above pre-industrial levels.  Sixteen of the 17 warmest years have been in the 21st century, Copernicus scientists said.

Feb 1 – Lethal levels of radiation have been detected outside the Fukushima nuclear power plant, officials said.

Feb 3 — Pollution is among the most serious worldwide health problems, the British medical journal Lancet reports.

Pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death in the world today. Diseases caused by pollution were responsible for an estimated 9 million premature deaths in 2015—16% of all deaths worldwide—three times more deaths than from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined and 15 times more than from all wars and other forms of violence. In the most severely affected countries, pollution-related disease is responsible for more than one death in four. that pollution is the largest environmental cause of death worldwide

Feb 5 — Esmond Bradley Martin, one of the world’s leading investigators into the illegal trade in ivory and rhino horn, is killed in Kenya.

March 20 — Last male white rhino is dead, a Kenyan conservancy says, leaving only two females alive in the world.

April 3 — Day zero for water in Cape Town South Africa may come in 2019, and not in the summer of 2018, as originally feared.

April 5 — Fourteen states sue the US EPA over delays in methane emissions regulations.

April 7 — TransCanada Corp says some 9,700 barrels of oil leaked from the Keystone pipeline in a Nov. 16 spill in South Dakota. The original estimate was 5,000 barrels.

April 29 — Australia announces A$ 500 million to curb agricultural emissions and ease the deterioration of the Great Barrier Reef.  Many scientists doubt it will be effective.

June 8 — Plastic pollution threatens world’s oceans, Greenpeace says on World Ocean Day.

June 10 — Ethiopia and Egypt are negotiating over the Grand Renaissance hydro dam on the Nile River that may threaten Egyptian water supplies.

June 21 — Antarctica’s bedrock is rising quickly as its ice melts into the oceans. It’s a trend that might slow sea level rise caused by global warming, scientists wrote in the journal Science. “It’s good news for Antarctica,”   Valentina Barletta of the Technical University of Denmark told Reuters.

July 5 — US EPA administrator Scott Pruitt resigns following disclosure of ethics violations.   His successor, Andrew Wheeler, is a former Senate staffer and lobbyist with connections to oil, coal and biofuels industries.

July 12 — Ireland  divests public funds from fossil fuel companies.

July 18 — The Trump administration eases Obama-era standards on the disposal of toxic coal ash for coal fired power plants.

July 26 — Hydroelectric dam Xepian-Xe Nam Noy in Laos fails, killing 27, with another 131 missing.

Aug 8 — Fuel efficiency standards will stand, California and 18 other U.S. states promised as they filed lawsuits to fight a Trump administration proposal to weaken them. The states argued that the United States has an obligation to protect the environment for future generations.

Sept 11 — Trump administration proposes weakening oil and gas methane regulations.

July – September — Severe hurricanes pound the US and China, while severe floods plague Japan,  Nigeria and India.

Oct 8 — IPCC report says:

• If the global temperature rises by 1.5°C, humans will face unprecedented climate-related risks and weather events.
• We are on track for a 3-4°C temperature rise.
• It’s the final call; the most extensive warning thus far on the risks of rising global temperatures.

Oct 8 — Nobel prize for economics awarded for work with models that explain how the market economy interacts with nature and knowledge. The work by William D. Nordhaus and Paul Romer  allows calculations for appropriately design carbon taxes.  

Oct 24 — Exxon-Mobil sued — The New York state attorney general files an investor fraud lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Oil Co. for deceiving investors that the company was managing the risks of climate change regulation when “it was intentionally and systematically underestimating or ignoring them, contrary to its public representations.”

Oct 28 — Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right anti-environmental figure, is  elected president of Brazil.  Blsonaro’s agenda includes undermining protection for the Amazon rain forest and excluding international environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund.

Nov 6 — Mid Term Elections — Democrats win back the House in the Nov 6 elections, partly due to support for environmental protection. But ballot initiatives that would have placed specific limits or taxes on carbon pollution failed in three states.  “While polls had indicated rising concerns among Americans over carbon emissions and water quality, the measures on the ballot in the three states to rein in fossil fuels industries were soundly rejected,” a Reuters report said. Coal and oil industries spent over $66 million to campaign against the initiatives.   “Big oil spent unprecedented amounts of money to tell big lies,” Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said.

Nov 8 – Nov 25 — Wildfires rage across California, causing an estimated $10 billion,  killing at least 86 people and destroying over 18,000 buildings. The severe nature of the fires is probably related to climate change.

Nov 13 — Climate lawsuit is allowed to proceed following a US Supreme Court decision. Twenty one activists, ages 11 to 22, say the government violates their right to due process under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by failing to deal with carbon pollution from fossil fuels.

Nov 23 —  Climate change will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century,  according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment,  a federal report from variety of agencies (NASA, NOAA, EPA and others). The report reflects the expertise of more than 300 authors from federal, state, and local governments, industry, academia, tribal organizations, and non-government organizations. Its findings are the result of an assessment of over 6,000 unique references. The report is quickly dismissed by president Donald Trump.

Dec. 6 — Coal power — Trump administration proposes revising standards for coal power plant efficiency, allowing  1,900 pounds (862 kg) of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity, up 36 % from the Obama-era  limit of 1,400 pounds.  The relaxation of environmental regulations is an attempt to revive the moribund coal industry, but coming on the eve of the COP 24 climate summit in Poland, was in effect an expression of disdain for the world environmental movement.

Dec. 7 — Union of Concerned Scientists documents anti-science policies and practices at Secretary Ryan Zinke’s US Dept. of Interior.

Dec. 8 — Climate change report rejected by US, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia at the climate summit in Poland.  The IPCC report detailed impacts of a temperature rise of 1.5C and was released in October. “Scientists and many delegates in Poland were shocked” when the four oil producing countries objected to the report, according to the BBC.

Carbon and other GHG emissions did not grow in the 2014-2016 period, but began accelerating again by 1.6 percent in 2017. This is a setback for the  goal of curbing emissions to avert the worst impacts of climate change.   The growth is expected to  increase even more this year due to the sustained use of coal, oil and  gas,   a report by the Global Carbon Project showed.   At this point, the world is on track for a 3-5 degrees Celsius rise in  global average temperature this century, which would mean widespread destruction, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization has also warned.

Dec. 11 — Trump administration will try to roll back clean water protection.   

Dec.  26  — Japan will resume commercial whaling after the International Whaling Commission rejected the country’s commercial hunt proposal.  

2019

Jan. 4 — Banks withdraw financing for the controversial Agua Zarca dam in Honduras following investigations into the murders of Berta Caceres and two other activists who led non-violent resistance campaigns against the dam. In December, 2018, seven men were convicted of her murder. The court found that Desa, the company that had a concession to build the Agua Zarca dam, ordered her murder because protests had delayed the project and cost the company money.

Jan. 14 — Wildfires bankrupt Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., the giant California utility, which announces that it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in response to the financial challenges associated with the catastrophic wildfires that occurred in Northern California 2017-2018.

Feb. 7 — Green New Deal resolution introduced in US Congress by Senator Edward Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Although the resolution was voted down 57 – 43 in the Republican-controlled Senate on March 26, it represents a starting point for discussions about long-term changes in US energy and environmental policy in the post-Trump era. The 14-page document described the current environmental crisis, addressed economic and health issues, then advocated steps towards 100 percent renewable zero emission power in the US through investment in new technology and conservation. Some Republicans offered a “Real Green Deal” in its place, but most simply mocked the proposal and continued supporting the ongoing Trump roll-back of all environmental regulations. “You may laugh,” said Ocasio-Cortez in response, “but your grandchildren will not.”

March 1 — The World Meteorological Organization releases annual climate report, noting an ongoing worldwide warming trend: ” 2018 was
ranked in the top 10 warmest years for Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and South America.”

March 4 — Tropical Cyclone Idai makes landfall in Mozambique, eventually killing 1,973 people across four southeastern African nations and the island of Madagascar.

April 28 – Spain’s Socialist Workers Party wins general elections with an emphasis on its green new deal, described as “a new social contract, a new pact between capital, work and the planet.” The plan calls for “maximum efficiency in the use of natural resources” and “technologies that are less polluting and with less impact on biodiversity, especially renewables and the creation of ‘green jobs’ in every sector.” Energy minister Teresa Ribera says: “This is not pie in the sky. There is no reason for us to delay this debate. I am convinced that whoever (is in government), this will be approved and broadly supported by all Spaniards and political forces.”

May 3 – Tropical Cyclone Fani, the strongest storm to hit India in five years, makes landfall in the eastern state of Odisha, killing 33 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

May 7 — Global species extinction looms — One million animal and plant species are facing extinction due to human activities, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) said in a landmark report. “If we want to leave a world for our children and grandchildren that has not been destroyed by human activity, we need to act now,” said Robert Watson, who chaired the study.

May 10 — US Congress finally agrees on relief for Puerto Rico and other islands hit by Hurricane Maria September 20, 2017. The final death toll was an estimated 3,059, with 2,975 killed in Puerto Rico.

May 18 — Climate deniers win Australian elections — Australian federal elections, originally seen as a referendum on increasingly harsh climate changes, instead led to the re-election of pro-coal climate deniers. Using ‘dodgy’ economic models about the impact of climate change on jobs in Australia, the incumbent Coalition Government, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, won a third three-year term.

May 27 –– Trump administration “hardens its attack on climate science“ by editing government documents and creating a new “climate review panel” headed by physicist, William Happer, who says the “demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler.”   

June — Renewables surpass coal in US — For the first time, renewable energy generation surpassed coal, at 23% to 21 %, according to an April 2019 US Energy Information Agency report.   

June 7 — Trump administration is in the process of eliminating or rolling back 83 previous environmental rules according to a New York Times report. 

June 13 — US charges withdrawn after a bungled investigation into the Flint, Michigan water crisis, which killed 12 people and made hundreds ill from exposure to lead in the city’s water supply from 2014 – 2018.   

June 22 — Under new Trump rules, US agencies no longer have to consider long-term climate impacts  when assessing how a project will affect the environment, reversing a major Obama administration policy. 

June 28 — Temperatures soar in European heat wave, and France records its highest temperature ever at 44.1 C . (114.4  F).  A few days later the Copernicus Institute says June 2019 is the hottest on record for Europe.  

July 1 — Losing the war on smog — Many U.S. cities have seen a net increase in ozone-related health impacts, according to a paper by NYU researchers.    

July 8 —Donald Trump brags about his administration’s environmental record, saying the US can promote fossil fuels while still leading the world in fighting pollution.  Environmental groups call the speech “utter fantasy.” The speech comes at a time of growing national support for strong environmental action.   According to Reuters news service, Trump has dismantled scores of environmental rules and rejected mainstream climate science since taking office.  

July 18 – Guatemalan courts stop nickel mining by CGN / Solway Investment Group.  CGN allegedly neglected the required consultation process with the affected Mayan Q’eqchi’ people.     

July 24 — US conservative messaging leader Frank Luntz says “I was wrong” on climate change in 2001 and endorses climate solutions in a US Senate hearing. 

Aug 2 — Amazon deforestation is accelerating, says Ricardo Galvao on his way out the door. He was fired as head of Brazil’s space research agency  following a public disagreement  with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro over data published by the agency. “There is not the slightest doubt,” he told Reuters when asked whether the data pointed to a trend of significantly increasing deforestation. “Our data is absolutely correct.”  Germany and Norway cut Amazon fund donations two weeks later.  

Aug 8 —Nuclear explosion kills five Russian scientists at an experimental  nuclear-powered rocket in Sarov, a  closed city three hundred kilometers east of Moscow which has served as a base for Russia’s nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s   

Sept 20 — Climate strikers “drop dead” in Thailand as part of global protests against continued inaction on climate change.  

Sept 22 — Japan’s new environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, pledged on Sunday push for  a low-carbon future by making the fight against climate change “sexy” and “fun.”  Koizumi was speaking on the eve of a United Nations climate summit in New York. 

Sept 23 –The 2019 UN Climate Action Summit brings world leaders, scientists and climate activists together.  The most riveting moment in when young activist Greta Thunberg addresses the conference:  

“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

Greta Thunberg and 15 other young activists also hold a press conference at the  United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in New York to announce formal complaints about nations that have missed their Paris Agreement  CO2 emissions reduction pledges.    The  young activists included Ayakha Melithafa, Alexandria Villaseñor, Catarina Lorenzo, Carl Smith,  and others.  

(List of Thunberg speeches links here).   

Nov 12 — Australia’s  worst bushfire season ever  leads to state-of-emergency declarations.   

Dec 3 — Greta Thunberg again rebukes global leaders for dragging their feet, saying  that Europe’s “Green Deal” to slash fossil fuel dependence was not enough. Speaking in Madrid at the COP25 conference, she says:   “I’m sure that if people heard what was going on and what was said … during these meetings, they would be outraged,” Thunberg told the gathering.   She also  joins with local Fridays for Future climate strikers where she called for more “concrete action,” arguing  that the global wave of school strikes over the previous year had “achieved nothing.”  

Dec 10 — Three environmental protesters glue themselves to British  Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s campaign bus as an Extinction Rebellion protest.