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Woman in Buffalo found dead in her car after getting trapped by snow, family says | CNN

CNN
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A 22-year-old woman was found dead over the holiday weekend in Buffalo, New York, after being trapped in her car by the blizzard that paralyzed western New York, her family told CNN on Tuesday.

Anndel Taylor, who had moved to Buffalo from Charlotte, North Carolina, was driving home from work at a senior citizen center and was only six minutes away by car from her house when she became stranded, said relatives who live in Charlotte and who became frantic when they lost touch with her.

Tomeshia Brown, one of Taylor’s older sisters, told CNN that Taylor sent a video to a group chat with her sisters around 3 p.m. on Friday. In the video, Taylor captured the snow and whiteout conditions. She told her sisters who live in North Carolina that she was stuck and the snow kept falling, Brown said.

Taylor called 911 and was waiting for first responders, Brown and Wanda Brown Steele – Taylor’s mother – told CNN.

“Her plan was to wait until the police got there,” her sister said. But if that failed, she planned to “get up and walk once her car ran out of gas.” She also said she planned to go to sleep and then try to walk home once she woke up if help did not arrive.

Her family said they kept in touch with Taylor as the day dragged on. At one point, Taylor texted one of her other sisters separately to say that she was starting to panic, Brown added.

In the early hours of Christmas Eve, Taylor would send her last video message to the group chat. In the video, Taylor cracks open the driver’s side window of her car, revealing a road turned into a barren wasteland by the snow. A van down the road, which appears to be stuck, can be seen flashing its hazard lights. Taylor wrote in the group chat that she thought the snow would probably be up to her waist if she got out of her car.

Later that morning, at around 9 a.m. on Christmas Eve, members of her family in North Carolina called and sent her multiple messages. “We texted her in the group to ask, ‘Are you OK?’” Brown said. The family was alarmed when Taylor was not responding.

“Maybe two hours later, my sister tracked her phone,” Brown said. “She [Taylor] must’ve shared her location with my sister. And it showed that she was still outside.”

The family alerted Taylor’s relatives in Buffalo to the address, but once they arrived, they said they saw Brown’s car, but did not see her inside.

“So I put the info on a private Facebook page called Buffalo Blizzard 2022 and asked for help,” Brown said. She posted the address of the tracked phone and later that evening, she got a phone call from an unnamed man. “He let us know he checked her pulse and there was no pulse,” Brown said.

“I really didn’t believe it,” she said. “It was like a piercing feeling in my stomach, a pain I’ve never felt before.”

Taylor’s mother, Brown Steele, told CNN she was in “shock.”

It would not be until the next day that Taylor’s body was removed from the car, Brown said, after a woman sent a message on Facebook to let Brown know that she had also located the car – and her sister’s body.

The woman told the family in Charlotte that she would not leave until someone came to pick her up.

With emergency personnel unable to reach the car, the woman waited until Taylor’s relatives who live in Buffalo arrived. They all helped move Taylor’s body into another vehicle, where she was taken to the hospital, Brown said.

After leaving multiple voicemail messages through the course of the holiday weekend, the family in Charlotte heard back from authorities on Monday evening. They were calling to let them know they were ready to go to rescue Taylor, Brown said. The Brown family informed them that Taylor’s body had already been transported to the hospital the day before.

“I want to get to the bottom of why the city was unable to help,” Brown Steele told CNN.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on “CNN This Morning” on Monday that two-thirds of the equipment that was dispatched to help clear snow during the height of the storm got stuck.

Poloncarz added that a historian with the Buffalo Fire Department said this was the first time in the agency’s history that personnel could not respond to emergency calls because the severity of the conditions wouldn’t allow it.

Erie County officials said on Tuesday that the county had restored its emergency response service, but they were still begging residents to abide by Buffalo’s travel ban and stay off the roads.

CNN has contacted the Buffalo Police Department for further details.

As of Tuesday evening, Taylor’s family in Charlotte has yet to learn the official cause of Taylor’s death, Brown said.

Taylor was described by her sister as “a caring and nurturing person. She hustled a lot, she cared about a lot of people,” her sister said.

“If she could help, she would help you,” her mother said. “She had a lot of friends here in Charlotte – a lot of people cared about her.”

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles released a statement offering her deepest condolences to Taylor’s family and friends.

“Anndel was taken from this world far too soon, and words cannot begin to express the heartache and pain her loved ones feel during this difficult time,” Lyles’ statement reads. “This was a devastating storm that brought tremendous tragedy, and our community here in Charlotte mourns with her family.”

Her family set up a GoFundMe campaign to pay for her funeral services.

Taylor would have turned 23 next month, Brown said.

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December 28, 2022
Crews work to clear snow-covered roads for emergency responders in Buffalo after storm that left 31 dead in area | CNN

CNN
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Emergency services have been restored in Buffalo, New York, officials said, as crews continue to clear roads and first responders check on people they couldn’t reach days ago when a deadly winter storm swept the nation.

At least 31 people have died in New York’s Erie County, where Buffalo was buried with nearly 52 inches of snow, trapping residents at home – many without heat as the Christmas weekend blizzard took out power lines. At least 25 others across 11 US states also have been reported dead in the storm.

A driving ban remains in effect Wednesday in Buffalo amid a two-day effort to clear at least one lane on every street to accommodate emergency responders, according to the city and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. They’re still hampered, though, by hundreds of vehicles abandoned in the snow, hazardous driving conditions and snow-covered lanes, with emergency and recovery vehicles still getting stuck, Poloncarz spokesperson Peter Anderson said Tuesday.

The county is bringing in 100 military police, plus New York State Police, to manage traffic control “because it has become so evident that too many people are ignoring the (driving) ban,” Poloncarz said. Officials also are working to coordinate deliveries of fuel to emergency crews and grocery supplies to markets, he said.

“It’s the reason why you need to stay off the road in these impacted areas, because we need to be able to get those resources to where they need to be so that the shelves are in fact stocked and ready to go,” Poloncarz said.

Meantime, Buffalo is bracing for possible flooding as rising temperatures being to melt the massive amount of snow and 2 inches of rain is forecast through the weekend. The flood risk is small, the National Weather Service said.

For now, authorities are focusing on welfare checks and getting people to hospitals after hundreds of calls for help went unanswered as the storm slammed the area, Erie County Sheriff John Garcia has said.

Amid the frigid, whiteout conditions, “people … got stranded in their vehicles and passed away in their cars. We have people that were walking during blizzard conditions and passed away on the street, passed away in snowbanks,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said. “And we have people that were found that passed away in their homes.”

At least one reported death in Erie County has been attributed to an EMS delay, Poloncarz told CNN on Tuesday. “Our emergency responders could not get to the person because of the snow,” he said. “They were blocked, and by the time they got there it was too late.”

This storm marked the first time the Buffalo Fire Department could not respond to emergency calls because of severe conditions, Poloncarz said, citing the agency’s historian. Two-thirds of the equipment dispatched to help clear winter snow during the height of the storm also got stuck, he said.

The blizzard – which Gov. Kathy Hochul called a “once-in-a-generation storm” – has drawn many comparisons to Buffalo’s infamous blizzard of 1977 – a powerful storm that left 23 people dead.

“The blizzard of ’77 is considered the worst storm in Buffalo history,” Poloncarz said Monday. “Well, unfortunately, this has already surpassed it for deaths.”

Anndel Taylor, 22, was found dead in Buffalo over the holiday weekend after getting trapped in her car by the blizzard, her family said.

After losing contact with her, the family posted her location to a private Facebook page related to the storm to ask for help, and a man called to say he had found her without a pulse, her sister said.

The winter storm’s grim effects have been widespread, with at least 56 storm-related deaths reported across several states:

• New York: In addition to the 31 deaths in Erie County, one fatal carbon monoxide poisoning was reported in Niagara County.

• Colorado: Police in Colorado Springs reported two deaths related to the cold since Thursday, with one man found near a building’s power transformer, possibly seeking warmth, and another in a camp in an alleyway.

• Kansas: Three people died in weather-related traffic accidents, the Highway Patrol said Friday.

• Kentucky: Three people died, officials have said, including one involved in a vehicle crash in Montgomery County.

• Missouri: One person died after a van slid off an icy road and into a frozen creek, Kansas City police said.

• New Hampshire: A hiker was found dead in Franconia on Christmas morning, said Lt. James Kneeland, a spokesperson for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.

• Ohio: Nine people died as a result of weather-related auto crashes, including four in a Saturday morning crash on Interstate 75 when a tractor-trailer crossed the median and collided with an SUV and a pickup, authorities said.

• South Carolina: Two men – including a 91-year-old who went outside on Christmas Day to fix a broken water pipe – died due to the storm in Anderson County, the coroner’s office there said. The other victim died on Christmas Eve after his home lost power.

• Tennessee: The Department of Health on Friday confirmed one storm-related fatality.

• Vermont: One woman in Castleton died after a tree fell on her home, according to the police chief.

• Wisconsin: The State Patrol on Thursday reported one fatal crash due to winter weather.

With flooding possible in Buffalo, crews are focused on clearing key snowbanks, officials said. Still, “it should take around an inch of rain from this system before flooding becomes a concern,” the weather service said.

City leaders are working with the National Weather Service “not only to reflect back on what happened this past week but also what potentially could come,” Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services’ Daniel Neaverth said.

All major highways across Western New York, including New York State Thruway, had reopened by Tuesday – “a sign that we are finally turning the corner on this once-in-a-generation storm,” Hochul said.

Buffalo got another 1.6 inches of snow on Tuesday, bringing the total since Friday to 51.9 inches and the December total to 64.7 inches, the weather service said. Overall, Buffalo has gotten 101.6 inches this winter season, CNN meteorologist Robert Shackelford said.

Conditions are improving and the lake-effect snowfall has finally stopped, he noted. Warm temperatures are forecast for at least the next week, with Buffalo due for highs in the upper 30s on Wednesday and the 40s through the weekend.

Officials also have responded to a few reports of looting. Eight people had been arrested in Buffalo through Tuesday evening in connection with suspected winter storm looting, according to a tweet from the Buffalo Police Department.

“It is horrible that while residents of our community have died in this storm that people are out looting,” the mayor said, but noted, “This is a minority of individuals.”

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December 28, 2022
Devastating disasters and flickers of hope: These are the top climate and weather stories of 2022 | CNN

CNN
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From a small island in Polynesia to the white-sand beaches of Florida, the planet experienced a dizzying number of climate and extreme weather disasters in 2022.

Blistering summer heat broke records in drought-stricken China, threatening lives and food production. In the United States, drought and sea level rise clashed at the mouth of the historically low Mississippi River. And in South Africa, climate change made rainfall that triggered deadly floods heavier and twice as likely to occur.

Yet against the backdrop of these catastrophic events, this year also sparked some glimmers of hope:

Scientists in the US successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction that generated more energy than it used – a huge step in the decades-long quest to replace fossil fuels with an infinite source of clean energy.

And at the United Nations’ COP27 climate summit in Egypt, nearly 200 countries agreed to set up a fund to help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters they had little hand in causing.

“There was some encouraging climate action in 2022, but we remain far off track to meet our goals of reducing global heat-trapping emissions and limiting future planetary warming,” Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told CNN. “There must be a stronger collective commitment and progress toward slashing emissions in 2023 if we are to keep climate extremes from becoming even more devastating.”

Here are the top 10 climate and extreme weather stories of 2022.

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted in January, it sent tsunami waves around the world. The blast itself was so loud it was heard in Alaska – roughly 6,000 miles away. The afternoon sky turned pitch black as heavy ash clouded Tonga’s capital and caused “significant damage” along the western coast of the main island of Tongatapu.

The underwater volcanic eruption also injected a huge cloud of ash and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, more than 30 kilometers (around 19 miles) above sea level, according to data from NASA satellites.

At the time, experts said the event was likely not large enough to impact global climate.

But months later, scientists found that the eruption actually belched an enormous amount of water vapor into the Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The massive plume of water vapor will likely contribute to more global warming at ground-level for the next several years, NASA scientists reported.

Severe drought reveals incredible discovery at bottom of Mississippi river

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CNN

Searing temperatures, lack of rainfall and low snowpack pushed some of the world’s most vital rivers to new lows this year.

Northern Italy saw its worst drought in more than 70 years. The 400-mile River Po hit a record low due to an unusually dry winter and limited snowpack in the Alps, which feeds the river. The drought impacted millions of people who rely on the Po for their livelihood, and roughly 30% of the country’s food, which is produced along the river.

Also fed by winter snowpack in the Alps along with spring rains, Germany’s Rhine River dropped to “exceptionally low” levels in some areas, disrupting shipping in the country’s most important inland water way. Months of little rainfall meant cargo ships began carrying lighter loads and transport costs soared.

Meanwhile in the US, extreme drought spread into the central states and gauges along the Mississippi River and its tributaries plummeted. Barge traffic moved in fits and starts as officials dredged the river. The Mississippi River dropped so low that the Army Corps of Engineers was forced to build a 1,500-foot-wide levee to prevent Gulf-of-Mexico saltwater from pushing upstream.

After more than a year of negotiations, Democrats in late July reached an agreement on President Joe Biden’s long-stalled climate, energy and tax agenda – capping a year of agonizing negotiations that failed multiple times.

Biden signed the bill into law in August and signaled to the world that the US is delivering on its climate promises.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin was influential in delaying the bill’s passage. Multiple White House and Biden administration officials for months had tried to convince the senator to support the bill over dinners in Paris and ziplining in West Virginia.

An analysis suggests the measures in the bill will reduce US carbon emissions by roughly 40% by 2030 and would put Biden well on his way to achieving his goal of slashing emissions in half by 2030.

‘We are in trouble here in Daytona’: Coastal homes collapse into the ocean

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CNN

Hurricane Nicole was the first hurricane to hit anywhere in the US during the month of November in nearly 40 years. The rare, late-season storm also marked the first time that a hurricane made landfall on Florida’s east coast in November.

Although Nicole was only a category 1, it had a massive wind field that stretched more than 500 miles, coupled with astronomically high tides that led to catastrophic storm surge. Homes and buildings collapsed into the ocean in Volusia County, with authorities scrambling to issue evacuation warnings.

Hurricane Nicole flooded streets, destroyed power lines and killed at least five people. The storm came just 42 days after deadly category 4 Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on the west coast of Florida.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed at the UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to set up a new fund for “loss and damage,” meant to help vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters. It was the first time wealthy, industrialized countries and groups, including longtime holdouts like the US and the EU, agreed to establish such a fund.

“We can’t solve the climate crisis unless we rapidly and equitably transition to clean energy and away from fossil fuels, as well as hold wealthy nations and the fossil fuel industry accountable for the damage they have done,” Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told CNN.

The summer’s series of floods started off in Yellowstone National Park in June, when extreme rainfall and rapidly melting snow washed out roads and bridges in the park, causing significant damage to the nearby town of Gardiner, Montana, at the park’s entrance. Authorities had to rescue more than 100 people from the floods.

The year also brought several 1,000-year rainfall events. A 1,000-year rainfall event is one that is so intense it’s only seen on average once every 1,000 years – under normal circumstances. But extreme rainfall is becoming more common as the climate crisis pushes temperatures higher. Warmer air can hold more moisture, which loads the dice in favor of historic rainfall.

Deadly flooding swept through Eastern Kentucky and around St. Louis in July after damaging, record-breaking rainfall in a short period of time.

California’s Death Valley, after a yearslong dry spell, saw its rainiest day in recorded history.

Meanwhile, down south, parts of Dallas, Texas, got an entire summer’s worth of rain in just 24 hours in August, prompting more than 350 high-water rescues.

Wildfires threaten London during record-breaking heat wave

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CNN

Europe experienced its hottest summer on record in 2022 by a wide margin. While the heat kicked off early in France, Portugal and Spain, with the countries reaching record-warmth in May, the most significant heat came in mid-July, spreading across the UK and central Europe.

The UK, in particular, topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time on record. Stephen Belcher, the UK Met Office’s chief scientist, said this would have been “virtually impossible” in an “undisrupted climate.”

Throughout western Europe, the heatwaves gravely increased wildfire risk, with one London fire official noting that the 40-degree day led to an “unprecedented day in the history of the London Fire Brigade.”

As water levels drop at this major lake, bodies begin to appear

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CNN

The past few years have been a reality check for western states that heavily rely on the Colorado River for water and electricity. Plagued by decades of overuse and a climate change-fueled drought, the river that serves 40 million people in seven western states and Mexico is draining at an alarming rate.

The water levels in its two main reservoirs – Lake Mead and Lake Powell – have plunged rapidly, threatening drinking water supply and power generation. In late July, Lake Mead – the country’s largest reservoir – bottomed out and has only rebounded a few feet off record lows. Its rapidly plunging levels revealed human remains from the 1970s and a sunken vessel from World War II.

The federal government implemented its first-ever mandatory water cuts this year for states that draw from the Colorado River, and those cuts will be even deeper starting in January 2023.

Floods caused by record monsoon rain and melting glaciers in Pakistan’s northern mountain regions claimed the lives of more than 1,400 people this summer, with millions more affected by clean water and food shortages. More than a third of Pakistan was underwater, satellite images showed, and authorities warned it would take months for the flood waters to recede in the country’s hardest-hit areas.

UN Secretary General António Guterres said the Pakistani people are facing “a monsoon on steroids,” referring to the role that the climate crisis had in supercharging the extreme rainfall. The hard-hit provinces Sindh and Balochistan saw rainfall more than 500% of average during the monsoon season.

Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s planet-warming emissions, yet it is the eighth most vulnerable nation to the climate crisis, according to the Global Climate Risk Index.

Hurricane Ian was a Category 4 storm when it made landfall in southwest Florida in late September and left a trail of destruction from the Caribbean to the Carolinas. Insured losses from Ian are expected to reach up to $65 billion, according to recent data from reinsurance company Swiss Re.

The storm first struck Cuba before undergoing rapid intensification from a tropical storm to a category 3 hurricane in just 24 hours – something scientists told CNN is part of a trend for the most dangerous storms. That same week, Super Typhoon Noru in the Philippines grew from the equivalent of a category 1 hurricane to a category 5 overnight as residents around Manila slept, catching officials and residents unaware and unable to prepare.

Hurricane Ian’s size and intensity allowed it to build up a storm surge higher than any ever observed in Southwest Florida, devastating Fort Myers and Cape Coral. Ian killed more than 100 people, most by drowning. It will likely be one of the costliest hurricanes on record not only in Florida, but in the US.

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December 28, 2022
Six dead in Spain after bus plunges off bridge into river | CNN

Six people died and two were injured after a passenger bus careened off a bridge and plunged into an overflowing river in northwestern Spain, emergency services said on Sunday.

Two survivors – the vehicle’s 63-year-old driver and a female passenger – were pulled out of the river by firefighters with rope and taken to nearby hospitals with varying degrees of injury.

The driver tested negative for alcohol and drugs, a police spokesperson told Reuters.

The spokesperson added that the search-and-rescue operation around the bridge had now concluded, while engineers attempted to find a way to safely recover the wreckage from the river Lerez.

The river’s strong current and high flow due to heavy rains sweeping the Galicia region hampered efforts to retrieve the bodies throughout the weekend.

The coach from the company Monbus was travelling between the cities of Lugo and Vigo on Saturday night and had stopped at a penitentiary center near the site of the accident.

It skidded off a straight road on the bridge for reasons that remain unclear and plunged into the water in a fall of at least 40 meters (131 feet) at around 9.30 p.m. local time (2030 GMT).

Emergency services were first alerted by a call from a passerby who noticed the bridge’s protective barrier had been severely damaged. Shortly afterwards, they received a second call from inside the bus as it was filling up with water.

The river remained above its overflow threshold throughout the night, forcing emergency rescue workers to suspend the operation for nearly two hours before resuming in the morning.

Authorities at first reported a total of nine people onboard the bus when it fell, based on the driver’s testimony, though the count is now believed to have been eight based on missing person reports filed by relatives.

The regional president of Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, pointed to the “very bad” weather conditions as one of the possible causes of the accident.

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December 26, 2022
A prolonged winter storm delivers power outages, snarled travel and frigid temperatures on Christmas Day | CNN

CNN
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A nearly weeklong winter storm blasting much of the US has plunged temperatures to life-threatening lows, brought blizzards and floods, and left more than a quarter million people without power on Christmas Day.

Blizzard conditions continue across the Great Lakes, while frigid cold temperatures grip the eastern two-thirds of the US, with some major cities in the Southeast, Midwest and East Coast recording their coldest Christmas in decades.

Large areas of the central and eastern US remain under wind chill warnings and advisories, as freeze warnings are in effect across the South.

New York City saw record cold temperatures on Christmas Eve at several locations, including its JFK and LaGuardia airports. The high at Central Park was 15 degrees, marking its second-coldest December 24 in at least 150 years, according to the National Weather Service.

At least 22 deaths have been attributed to dangerous weather conditions since Wednesday, and some residents in the Northeast are spending the holiday without sufficient heat or hot water as extremely cold temperatures persist.

Across the US, 275,856 homes and businesses in the US had no electricity service as of 1 a.m. ET, many of them in Maine and New York, according to PowerOutage.us. Since the start of the storm the number of outages has at times exceeded a million customers.

A power grid operator for at least 13 states in the country’s eastern half asked customers to conserve power and set thermostats lower than usual from early Saturday to 10 a.m. on Sunday because usage was straining capacity.

The operator, PJM Interconnection, serves about 65 million people in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, and warned rolling blackouts could happen if the strain becomes too much.

In New York, utility companies Con Edison and Natural Grid US also urged customers to conserve energy, citing extreme weather conditions and increased energy demand on interstate pipelines carrying natural gas into the city.

Meanwhile, a shortage of electricity in Texas prompted the US Department of Energy to declare an emergency Friday, allowing the state’s energy provider to exceed environmental emissions standards until energy usage drops.

In Jackson, Mississippi, frigid temperatures are hampering efforts to repair a large water main break late Saturday, which has caused a loss in water pressure for residents, city officials said.

“We are grateful to the crews who are braving these frigid temperatures on this Christmas Eve night, while working to restore pressure to residents. Their sacrifice does not go unnoticed and is appreciated not only by this administration, but also by every resident who is affected,” the release stated.

The brutal weather conditions have also snarled travel during the busy holiday weekend, with more than 5,000 flights canceled Friday, more than 3,400 flights canceled Saturday, and more than 1,000 canceled for Christmas Day.

Conditions on the road weren’t any better in parts of the country amid whiteout conditions and icy and snow-covered roadways.

In New York’s Erie County – which is seeing blistering blizzard conditions – about 500 motorists found themselves stranded in their vehicles Friday night into Saturday morning, despite a county driving ban put in place during the storm, according to County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

National Guard troops were called in to help “rescue people that are stuck in vehicles,” and to give rides to medical workers so they could relieve colleagues who had been working at hospitals for more than a day, Poloncarz said.

In Seattle, Washington, online videos have documented cars sliding on the icy roads and bumping into each and residents slipping as they walked on sidewalks, CNN affiliate KOMO reported.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will ask the federal government for a declaration of emergency after a blistering winter storm.

“I’ll be asking the federal government for a declaration of emergency that’ll allow us to seek reimbursements for the extraordinary expenses of all the overtime and the fact that we brought in mutual aid from other parts of the state,” Hochul said to reporters Saturday. “We’ve deployed individuals – the utility crews have come but also making sure that we have all the vehicles we need.”

New York’s three storm-related deaths were reported in Erie County. Two died in separate incidents Friday night when emergency medical personnel could not get to their homes in time for medical emergencies, Poloncarz said Saturday morning. Details about the third death, confirmed by a county spokesperson Saturday afternoon, weren’t immediately available.

“The loss of two lives in Buffalo – storm related – because people were not able to get to medical attention, is again a crisis situation that unfolds before your eyes and you realize that lifesaving ambulances and emergency medical personnel cannot get to people during a blizzard situation,” Hochul added.

Other storm-related deaths have been reported in the country. They include:

• Colorado: Police in Colorado Springs, Colorado, reported two deaths related to the cold since Thursday, with one man found near a power transformer of a building possibly looking for warmth, and another in a camp in an alleyway.

• Kansas: Three people have died in weather-related traffic accidents, the Kansas Highway Patrol said Friday.

• Kentucky: Three people have died in the state, officials have said, including one involving a vehicle accident in Montgomery County.

• Missouri: One person died after a caravan slid off an icy road and into a frozen creek, Kansas City police said.

• Ohio: Eight people have died as a result of weather-related auto accidents, including four in a Saturday morning crash on Interstate 75, when a semi tractor-trailer crossed the median and collided with an SUV and a pickup, authorities said.

• Tennessee: The Tennessee Department of Health on Friday confirmed one storm-related fatality.

• Wisconsin: Wisconsin State Patrol on Thursday reported one fatal crash due to winter weather.

In pictures: Winter storm impacts the US

The storm system is forecast to gradually weaken as it lifts into southeastern Canada, moving slowly during the next couple of days and pulling arctic air from Canada down into much of the eastern side of the country.

The Arctic blast being felt across the eastern two-thirds of the nation will slowly moderate into Monday, but dangerous conditions will persist Christmas Day.

The cold temperatures combined with dangerous wind chills will create a potentially life-threatening hazard for travelers who become stranded, people who work outside, livestock and pets, according to the National Weather Service.

“In some areas, being outdoors could lead to frostbite in minutes,” the Weather Service warned.

As the frigid air continues to blast the warm waters of the Great Lakes, lake-effect snows and blizzard conditions are expected to continue, but slowly become less intense.

Still, strong gusty winds initially up to 60 mph accompanying the snow downwind from the Great Lakes will continue to make for extremely dangerous conditions on the road.

By Christmas night into Monday, another low pressure system coming from the Pacific will deliver the next surge of moisture toward the Pacific Northwest and then into northern California, according to the Weather Service.

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December 24, 2022
A least 9 dead as massive winter storm leaves more than a million without power and bitter cold across much of US | CNN

CNN
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A massive winter storm battered the US on Friday with frigid temperatures, high winds and heavy snow, leaving at least nine people dead, knocking out power to over a million customers and wrecking holiday plans from coast to coast.

The storm – expected to intensify throughout Friday as it barrels through the Midwest and East – is making for grim road conditions with poor visibility and ice-covered streets. Coastal flooding is also an issue, particularly along the shorelines of the Northeast.

All modes of travel – planes, trains and automobiles – were being disrupted: There were hundreds of miles of road closures and flight cancellations were growing rapidly. In New York, flooding along the Long Island Rail Road forced part of the Long Beach branch to temporarily shut down.

Related: Follow live updates

“Christmas is canceled,” said Mick Saunders, a Buffalo, New York, resident who was two hours into blizzard conditions that are expected to last through Sunday morning. “All family and friends agreed it’s safer this way.”

At least 9 deaths have been reported since Wednesday.

In north-central Kansas, three people were killed in separate car crashes on Wednesday evening; one death was confirmed to be weather-related, and two were believed to be weather-related but need more investigation, according to Kansas Highway Patrol spokesperson Lt. Candice Breshears.

In Kansas City, one person died after losing control of their Dodge Caravan on icy roads Thursday afternoon, according to the Kansas City Police Department. “The Dodge went down the embankment, over the cement retaining wall and landed upside down, submerged in Brush Creek,” police said in a statement.

In Kentucky, three people died due to the storm, including two in vehicle crashes and the other a “housing insecure” person in Louisville, Gov. Andy Beshear said. The man’s body was found outside with no obvious signs of trauma and an autopsy would determine the cause of death, police said.

And in Ohio, four people have died “as a result of weather-related auto accidents” and several others have been injured, according to Gov. Mike DeWine.

Life threatening cold has pushed all the way to the Gulf Coast and the Mexican border, with below zero wind chills reported as far south as Austin and Atlanta. Many locations in the eastern US are in for their coldest Christmas Eve in decades as the Arctic blast reaches its peak.

About 1.2 million customers in the US are experiencing power outages amid the winter weather and frigid temperatures, according to the website PowerOutage.US. Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania have the most outages.

In pictures: Winter storm impacts the US

In all, more than 200 million people in the US were under wind chill alerts from the Canadian border to the Mexican border and from Washington state to Florida, with below-zero wind chills expected in the Southeast by Friday. Other winter weather alerts are in effect for blizzard conditions, ice, snow as well as flooding.

“The National Weather Service’s Watch Warning graphic depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever,” the agency said Thursday.

Notably, parts of Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming have already seen wind chills below minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the past two days.

The entire state of Texas was seeing temperatures below freezing by early Friday afternoon, according to weather observations from around the state.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned residents about the “epic, statewide hazard” of winter weather.

“I called it a kitchen sink storm because it is throwing everything at us but the kitchen sink,” Hochul said at a press conference Friday afternoon. “We’ve had ice, flooding, snow, freezing temperatures, and everything that mother nature could wallop at us this weekend.”

For Brian Trzeciak, the storm was “living up to the warnings” at his home in Hamburg, New York. Buffalo’s airport, just to the north, reported zero visibility shortly after noon on Friday.

“Whiteout conditions, frigid temperatures, and the waves are like what you would see during a hurricane,” he told CNN.

He and his family decided to cancel their Christmas plans because of the dangers from the storm.

“My mother lives about 30 minutes away and so does my sister and her family, in the other direction,” he said. “We always get together for Christmas Eve and Christmas, but we’re all hunkering down in our houses until it all stops on Monday.”

Driving bans are in place in Erie, Genesee, Niagara and Orleans counties in Western New York because of whiteout conditions.

As many as 250 people could be stranded in their cars in Erie County in a situation that Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said put first responders at unnecessary risk. Brown told CNN Friday night that forecasts call for 36 to 48 inches of snow. The area has had wind gusts of 79 mph.

Many will experience a cold holiday unlike any other: Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Tallahassee, Florida, are all forecast to have their coldest high temperature ever recorded on December 24, according to the National Weather Service.

Washington DC is forecast to see its second coldest Christmas Eve, only behind 1989. In New York, it will be the coldest Christmas Eve since 1906. Chicago is expecting temperatures to rebound above zero, but will still experience its coldest Christmas Eve since 1983.

Much of Florida will experience the peak of their cold on Christmas Day. It will be coldest Christmas Day since 1983 for Miami, Tampa, Orlando and West Palm Beach.

On Friday, the storm unleashed more heavy snow and blizzard conditions, particularly in the Midwest.

As it treks east across the country, the storm is expected to become a “bomb cyclone,” a rapidly strengthening storm which drops 24 millibars of pressure within 24 hours. The storm’s pressure was forecast to match that of a Category 2 hurricane as it moved into the Great Lakes on Friday morning.

Governors in at least 13 states, including Georgia and North Carolina in the South, have implemented emergency measures to respond to the storm. Declarations of a state of emergency in several states have included the activation of National Guard units.

More than 5,400 Friday flights have already been canceled as of 7:30 p.m. ET, after nearly 2,700 cancellations on Thursday, according to flight tracking site FlightAware.

• It will remain very cold: Friday will bring record-low temperatures in large swaths of the US, including from the Lower Mississippi Valley, northeastward into the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys and stretching across large sections of the east from the Southeast, through the Southern to Central Appalachians and into the mid-Atlantic, according to the National Weather Service.

• Dangerous wind chills: The plummeting temperatures will be accompanied by high winds, which will create dangerous wind chills across nearly all the central to eastern US.

• Blizzard warnings: The Upper Midwest will see frigid temperatures, heavy snow and high winds. The warning applies to parts of Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Michigan. Buffalo, New York, will go under a blizzard warning Friday morning. Such warnings go in effect when snow and wind of 35 mph will reduce visibility to less than a quarter of a mile for at least three hours.

• Whiteout conditions: Blizzard conditions may exist even if snowfall stops, because high winds can pick up snow already on the ground and cause low visibility.

A separate storm system is bringing heavy mixed precipitation to the Pacific Northwest on Friday.

A winter storm warning is in effect for western Washington, including Seattle, until 7 p.m. PST Friday. Additional snowfall of up to 2 inches is possible and ice accumulations could reach a quarter of an inch. Precipitation will begin as snow and transition to sleet/freezing rain and then finally to rain. More power outages are likely and travel will be made very difficult.

The ice caused the closure of runways at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where nearly half of flights going into and out of the airport were canceled, according to FlightAware. Further, all express services for Sound Transit, a regional transportation network in the Seattle metro area, were suspended Friday due to the icy conditions.

A winter storm warning is also in effect for northeastern Oregon, including Portland, from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. PST. Total snow and sleet accumulations of up to one inch and ice accumulations of .2 to .4 inches is likely as well as winds gusting to 55 mph. Wind chills as low as zero are possible, and frostbite is possible on exposed skin in as little as 30 minutes.

One of the biggest dangers of the massive winter storm besides heavy snow and blizzard conditions is the rapid drop in temperatures over a short period of time. The air will continue to get and feel colder, especially during night hours.

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December 23, 2022
A trash heap 62 meters high shows the scale of India’s climate challenge | CNN

New Delhi
CNN
—

At the Bhalswa landfill in northwest Delhi, a steady flow of jeeps zigzag up the trash heap to dump more garbage on a pile now over 62 meters (203 feet) high.

Fires caused by heat and methane gas sporadically break out – the Delhi Fire Service Department has responded to 14 fires so far this year – and some deep beneath the pile can smolder for weeks or months, while men, women and children work nearby, sifting through the rubbish to find items to sell.

Some of the 200,000 residents who live in Bhalswa say the area is uninhabitable, but they can’t afford to move and have no choice but to breathe the toxic air and bathe in its contaminated water.

Bhalswa is not Delhi’s largest landfill. It’s about three meters lower than the biggest, Ghazipur, and both contribute to the country’s total output of methane gas.

Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, but a more potent contributor to the climate crisis because methane traps more heat. India creates more methane from landfill sites than any other country, according to GHGSat, which monitors methane via satellites.

And India comes second only to China for total methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Global Methane Tracker.

As part of his “Clean India” initiative, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said efforts are being made to remove these mountains of garbage and convert them into green zones. That goal, if achieved, could relieve some of the suffering of those residents living in the shadows of these dump sites – and help the world lower its greenhouse gas emissions.

India wants to lower its methane output, but it hasn’t joined the 130 countries who have signed up to the Global Methane Pledge, a pact to collectively cut global methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. Scientists estimate the reduction could cut global temperature rise by 0.2% – and help the world reach its target of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

India says it won’t join because most of its methane emissions come from farming – some 74% from farm animals and paddy fields versus less than 15% from landfill.

In a statement last year, Minister of State for Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change Ashwini Choubey said pledging to reduce India’s total methane output could threaten the livelihood of farmers and affect India’s trade and economic prospects.

But it’s also facing challenges in reducing methane from its steaming mounds of trash.

When Narayan Choudhary, 72, moved to Bhalswa in 1982, he said it was a “beautiful place,” but that all changed 12 years later when the first rubbish began arriving at the local landfill.

In the years since, the Bhalswa dump has grown nearly as tall as the historic Taj Mahal, becoming a landmark in its own right and an eyesore that towers over surrounding homes, affecting the health of people who live there.

Choudhary suffers from chronic asthma. He said he nearly died when a large fire broke out at Bhalswa in April that burned for days. “I was in terrible shape. My face and nose were swollen. I was on my death bed,” he said.

“Two years ago we protested … a lot of residents from this area protested (to get rid of the waste),” Choudhary said. “But the municipality didn’t cooperate with us. They assured us that things will get better in two years but here we are, with no relief.”

The dump site exhausted its capacity in 2002, according to a 2020 report on India’s landfills from the Center for Science and Environment (CSE), a nonprofit research agency in New Delhi, but without government standardization in recycling systems and greater industry efforts to reduce plastic consumption and production, tonnes of garbage continue to arrive at the site daily.

Bhalswa isn’t the only dump causing distress to residents nearby – it is one of three landfills in Delhi, overflowing with decaying waste and emitting toxic gases into the air.

Across the country, there are more than 3,100 landfills. Ghazipur is the biggest in Delhi, standing at 65 meters (213 feet), and like Bhalswa, it surpassed its waste capacity in 2002 and currently produces huge amounts of methane.

According to GHGSat, on a single day in March, more than two metric tons of methane gas leaked from the site every hour.

“If sustained for a year, the methane leak from this landfill would have the same climate impact as annual emissions from 350,000 US cars,” said GHGSat CEO Stephane Germain.

Methane emissions aren’t the only hazard that stem from landfills like Bhalswa and Ghazipur. Over decades, dangerous toxins have seeped into the ground, polluting the water supply for thousands of residents living nearby.

In May, CNN commissioned two accredited labs to test the ground water around the Bhalswa landfill. And according to the results, ground water within at least a 500-meter (1,600-foot) radius around the waste site is contaminated.

In the first lab report, levels of ammonia and sulphate were significantly higher than acceptable limits mandated by the Indian government.

Results from the second lab report showed levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) – the amount of inorganic salts and organic matter dissolved in the water – detected in one of the samples was almost 19 times the acceptable limit, making it unsafe for human drinking.

The Bureau of Indian Standards sets the acceptable limit of TDS at 500 milligrams/liter, a figure roughly seen as “good” by the World Health Organization (WHO). Anything over 900 mg/l is considered “poor” by the WHO, and over 1,200 mg/l is “unacceptable.”

According to Richa Singh from the Center for Science and Environment (CSE), the TDS of water taken near the Bhalswa site was between 3,000 and 4,000 mg/l. “This water is not only unfit for drinking but also unfit for skin contact,” she said. “So it can’t be used for purposes like bathing or cleaning of the utensils or cleaning of the clothes.”

Dr. Nitesh Rohatgi, the senior director of medical oncology at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram, urged the government to study the health of the local population and compare it to other areas of the city, “so that in 15 to 20 years’ time, we are not looking back and regretting that we had a higher cancer incidence, higher health hazards, higher health issues and we didn’t look back and correct them in time.”

Most people in Bhalswa rely on bottled water for drinking, but they use local water for other purposes – many say they have no choice.

“The water we get is contaminated, but we have to helplessly store it and use it for washing utensils, bathing and at times drinking too,” said resident Sonia Bibi, whose legs are covered in a thick, red rash.

Jwala Prashad, 87, who lives in a small hut in an alleyway near the landfill, said the pile of putrid trash had made his life “a living hell.”

“The water we use is pale red in color. My skin burns after bathing,” he said, as he tried to soothe red gashes on his face and neck.

“But I can’t afford to ever leave this place,” he added.

More than 2,300 tonnes of Municipal Solid Waste arrive at Delhi’s largest dump in Ghazipur every day, according to a report released in July by a joint committee formed to find a way to reduce the number of fires at the site.

That’s the bulk of the waste from the surrounding area – only 300 tonnes is processed and disposed of by other means, the report said. And less than 7% of legacy waste had been bio-mined, which involves excavating, treating and potentially reusing old rubbish.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi deploys drones every three months to monitor the size of the trash heap and is experimenting with ways to extract methane from the trash mountain, the report said.

But too much rubbish is arriving every day to keep up. The committee said bio-mining had been “slow and tardy” and it was “highly unlikely” the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (which has now merged with North and South Delhi Municipal Corporations) would achieve its target of “flattening the garbage mountain” by 2024.

“No effective plans to reduce the height of the garbage mountain have been made,” the report said. Furthermore, “it should have proposed a long time ago that future dumping of garbage in them would pollute the groundwater systems,” the report added.

CNN sent a series of questions along with the data from the water testing questionnaire to India’s Environment and Health Ministries. There has been no response from the ministries.

In a 2019 report, the Indian government recommended ways to improve the country’s solid waste management, including formalizing the recycling sector and installing more compost plants in the country.

While some improvements have been made, such as better door-to-door garbage collection and processing of waste, Delhi’s landfills continue to accumulate waste.

In October, the National Green Tribunal fined the state government more than $100 million for failing to dispose of more than 30 million metric tonnes of waste across its three landfill sites.

“The problem is Delhi doesn’t have a concrete solid waste action plan in place,” said Singh from the CSE. “So we are talking here about dump site remediation and the treatment of legacy waste, but imagine the fresh waste which is generated on a regular basis. All of that is getting dumped everyday into these landfills.”

“(So) let’s say you are treating 1,000 tons of legacy (waste) and then you are dumping 2,000 tons of fresh waste every day it will become a vicious cycle. It will be a never ending process,” Singh said.

“Management of legacy waste, of course, is mandated by the government and is very, very important. But you just can’t start the process without having an alternative facility of fresh waste. So that’s the biggest challenge.”

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December 10, 2022
Big Oil has engaged in a long-running climate disinformation campaign while raking in record profits, lawmakers find | CNN Politics

CNN
—

Big Oil companies have engaged in a “long-running greenwashing campaign” while raking in “record profits at the expense of American consumers,” the Democratic-led House Oversight Committee has found after a year-long investigation into climate disinformation from the fossil fuel industry.

The committee found the fossil fuel industry is “posturing on climate issues while avoiding real commitments” to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Lawmakers said it has sought to portray itself as part of the climate solution, even as internal industry documents reveal how companies have avoided making real commitments.

“Today’s documents reveal that the industry has no real plans to clean up its act and is barreling ahead with plans to pump more dirty fuels for decades to come,” House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney told CNN in a statement.

For example, lawmakers reported, BP has stated it strives to “be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner,” but the committee found internal BP documents that show the company’s recent plans do not align with the company’s public comments.

In a July 2017 email between several of the company’s high-level officials about whether to invest in curbing emissions from one of its gas projects off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, BP’s vice president of engineering stated that BP had “no obligation to minimize GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions” and that the company should only “minimize GHG emissions where it makes commercial sense,” as required by code or if it fits into a regional strategy.

The committee said documents uncovered also showed the fossil fuel industry has presented natural gas as a so-called “bridge fuel” to transition to cleaner sources of energy, all while doubling down on its long-term reliance on fossil fuels with no clear plan of action to full transition to clean energy.

A strategy slide presented to the Chevron Board of Directors from CEO Mike Wirth and obtained by the committee states that while Chevron sees “traditional energy business competitors retreating” from oil and gas, “Chevron’s strategy” is to “continue to invest” in fossil fuels to take advantage of consolidation in the industry.

In a 2016 email from a BP executive to John Mingé, then-Chairman and President of BP America, and others, about climate and emissions, an employee assessed that the company often adopted an obstructionist strategy with regulators, noting, “we wait for the rules to come out, we don’t like what we see, and then try to resist and block.”

“The fossil fuel industry has of late been involved in extensive “greenwashing”—misleading claims in advertisements, particularly on social media, claiming or suggesting that they are “Paris aligned,” and that they are committed to meaningful solutions,” Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor who has studied the fossil fuel industry’s rebuke of climate science, told CNN. “Numerous analyses shows that these claims are untrue.”

BP, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were the focus of Democratic lawmakers’ investigation. The companies have denied engaging in a disinformation campaign surrounding climate change and the role the industry has played in fueling it for decades. CNN has reached out to the companies and organizations for comment on the committee’s findings.

Todd Spitler, a spokesperson for Exxon, said in a statement the committee took internal company communications out of context.

“The House Oversight Committee report has sought to misrepresent ExxonMobil’s position on climate science, and its support for effective policy solutions, by recasting well intended, internal policy debates as an attempted company disinformation campaign,” Spitler said. “If specific members of the committee are so certain they’re right, why did they have to take so many things out of context to prove their point?”

Democratic lawmakers had hoped the committee’s hearings would be the fossil fuel industry’s “Big Tobacco” moment — a nod to the famous 1994 hearings when tobacco CEOs insisted that cigarettes were not addictive, triggering accusations of perjury and federal investigations.

The impact of House Oversight’s investigation into Big Oil will not be as immediate, but Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat and the chair of Oversight’s environmental subcommittee, said the findings have added to the historical record for the industry and its role in global warming.

“These hearings and reports have been historic because we succeeded in bringing in the heads of Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, API, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to testify under oath for the first time ever about efforts to mislead the public on climate and forced them to provide explosive internal documents” Khanna told CNN in a statement. “I have no doubt that this work will be analyzed for years to come and help deepen our understanding about the entire industry’s role in funding and facilitating climate disinformation.”

Democratic lawmakers said the oil and gas industry obstructed their investigation throughout the more than year-long process. Many of their requests for internal documents were heavily redacted by the companies, which did not specify reasons for withholding the information.

In other cases, documents were heavily redacted because companies like Exxon said the information was “proprietary and confidential,” though the lawmakers noted that is not a valid reason to withhold information in a committee subpoena.

“These companies know their climate pledges are inadequate but are prioritizing Big Oil’s record profits over the human costs of climate change,” Maloney said. “It’s time for the fossil fuel industry to stop lying to the American people and finally take serious steps to reduce emissions and address the global climate crisis they helped create.”

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December 9, 2022
UK government greenlights first new coal mine in three decades | CNN

CNN
—

The UK has greenlit a controversial plan to open the country’s first new coal mine in three decades, a little more than a year after the nation tried to convince the world to ditch coal at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

Michael Gove, the UK housing and communities secretary, on Wednesday approved the plan to open the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria, a county in northwestern England that is home to the World Heritage-listed Lake District.

The controversial mine is expected to create more than 500 jobs. But the environmental trade-off is steep: The UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent group that advises the government, has estimated the mine and the coal it will produce will emit around 9 million tons of planet-warming emissions every year.

Supporters of the mine argue the project will create jobs and secure the fossil fuel for British steelmaking; however, 85% of the coal mined is due to be exported.

The CCC has criticized the decision. Committee chairman Lord Deben said in a statement: “Phasing out coal use is the clearest requirement of the global effort towards Net Zero. We condemn, therefore, the Secretary of State’s decision to consent to a new deep coal mine in Cumbria, contrary to our previous advice. This decision grows global emissions and undermines UK efforts to achieve Net Zero.”

The mine’s approval was also met with fierce criticism from scientists and environmentalists.

“A new coal mine in Cumbria makes no sense environmentally or economically,” said Paul Ekins, Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, in a statement. “It will add to global CO2 emissions, as the new supply will not replace other coal but divert it elsewhere, and it will become stranded in the 2030s as the steel industry globally moves away from coal.”

Ekins also said that the mine’s approval “trashes the UK’s reputation as a global leader on climate action and opens it up to well justified charges of hypocrisy – telling other countries to ditch coal while not doing so itself.”

The government initially approved the project, but then put it on hold after a wave of protests, including a 10-day hunger strike by two teenage activists.

It came under intense pressure to reject the plan in 2021, the year it hosted the COP26 talks in Glasgow.

Alok Sharma, the COP26 President and a lawmaker for the governing Conservative Party, campaigned against the mine.

“Opening a new coal mine will not only be a backward step for UK climate action but also damage the UK’s hard-won international reputation, through our COP26 Presidency, as a leader in the global fight against climate change,” he said ahead of the announcement on Wednesday.

The decision comes a little more than a year after the conference, and after lengthy discussions between the UK government, local authorities and the public.

The Cumbria County Council had also approved the plan three times, but it backtracked its decision last February and called for a planning inquiry, effectively shifting the decision to the national government.

The Whitehaven mine, also known as the Woodhouse Colliery, is scheduled to operate until 2049, which is just a year before the UK’s self-imposed deadline to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net zero (emitting as little greenhouse gas as possible, and offsetting any emissions that cannot be avoided).

According to the International Energy Agency, investment into new fossil fuels infrastructure must stop immediately if the world wants any chance of achieving net zero by 2050. The latest climate science shows that achieving net zero by mid-century is necessary to keep temperatures from rising well above 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared with pre-industrial times. Beyond that threshold, the world will face climate crisis impacts that could take millennia to correct, or could be irreversible altogether.

Climate activists have protested against the project, while West Cumbria Mining, which is developing the mine, said the project would bring hundreds of new jobs into a struggling region. Its opponents argue these jobs may not be secure, given the huge momentum in Europe to phase out coal.

“Opening a coal mine in Cumbria is investing in 1850s technology and does not look forward to the 2030s low carbon local energy future,” Stuart Haszeldine, a professor at the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement.

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December 7, 2022
Accelerating the EV revolution whether you like it or not | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan to remake the way car-obsessed Americans live, using public safety rules to accelerate the shift from internal combustion to electric vehicles.

Just a fraction of the current auto market is EVs, but under standards announced by the EPA Wednesday, up to two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the US would be zero-emission or plug-in hybrid within a decade.

The rules, which are not yet final, would use authority under the Clean Air Act to force auto companies to cut pollution and slash vehicle emissions by more than half. They would phase in with model year 2027 vehicles and be fully implemented by 2032. Read CNN’s full report.

While ambitious, the goals are not unprecedented. They put the federal government on track to catch up with state governments, led by California, that want to stop allowing the sale of internal combustion vehicles by 2035. Read this report from CNN Business about why that’s not as crazy as it seems.

There is a very big legal question mark looming behind California’s action and the EPA’s effort, which still has a public comment and revision period.

The current Supreme Court, dominated by conservative justices, has already shown its scorn for EPA rulemaking and its indifference to addressing climate change. Last year, the court nixed the Biden administration’s plan to curb emissions from existing power plants.

I asked CNN climate reporter Ella Nilsen for her takeaways from the EPA announcement. She offered these key points:

► The standards are ambitious, but doable

If enacted, the newly proposed EPA emissions standards would be one of the Biden administration’s most aggressive climate-change policies yet – moving the US auto market decisively toward electric vehicles in the next decade.

However, multiple experts said the standards are doable, and even lag slightly behind the California standards, which will completely phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 to usher in electric vehicles. The US is also following countries including the EU and China, which are moving more aggressively toward electric vehicles.

► Charging infrastructure and consumer incentives could be tricky

This new proposed rule won’t happen overnight; it would be gradually phased in over the next decade. At the same time, the US needs to build up a network of electric charging stations in addition to the ubiquitous gas station. Federal officials have also talked about needing to incentivize more Americans to buy EVs by bringing the cost down, with federal tax credits.

However, the new $7,500 tax credits (passed last year by Democrats in the Inflation Reduction Act) are incredibly complex due to manufacturing requirements. The credits could actually shrink the eligible number of cars that qualify (however, leased vehicles have more leeway under the new system). Regardless, it will take years for the EV infrastructure, incentives and supply to fall into place to make electric vehicles available to most Americans.

► This is a big deal for US climate policy

This rule will impact the US economy, but it’s also major climate policy. The proposed EPA tailpipe standards would cut planet-warming pollution from US cars in half. Combined with the agency’s medium and heavy-duty vehicles standard, the proposals could cut nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions by 2055.

Given Americans’ reliance on cars, transportation is a big part of overall US emissions – it accounts for nearly 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US, according to the EPA. Cutting down on tailpipe pollution from gas-powered cars and trucks is a big part of decarbonizing the US.

While the federal government and key states are all in on moving toward EVs, and auto companies are spending big to get competitive in the market, Americans generally are not yet completely embracing the idea.

Just 4% of Americans currently own an EV, and a scant 12% are seriously considering buying one, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Less than half, 43%, say they would consider buying an EV in the future, and a sizable 41% are completely closed off to the idea.

The expected partisan breakdown applies to those figures. Most of the interest in EVs is among Democrats. Most of the staunch opposition is among Republicans. Younger Americans and those making $100,000 and above are also more interested in buying an EV in the future.

There are also key regional disparities. In the West, where states are already working to phase in EVs, only 28% say they would not buy an EV. Compare that to half of Southerners who would not consider buying an EV.

A majority of the country is skeptical that EVs will even have an effect on the climate, according to the poll, with 61% saying EVs will help address climate change only a little or not at all.

In a separate AP-NORC poll released this week, the most-cited major reasons for not wanting to purchase an EV – out of eight offered in the poll – were expense (60% said they cost too much) and convenience (50% said there aren’t enough charging stations available).

Access and affordability should be addressed as inventory increases, writes CNN’s Peter Valdes-Dapena, who covers the auto industry. A decade from now, charging should be quicker and easier, EV ranges should be longer and prices should be at or below the cost of an internal combustion vehicle. Read his full report.

Rather than fighting the rules, as the fossil fuel industry is sure to do, the auto industry is already investing heavily in EVs, responding to tougher regulation already imposed around the world and by California, which moved to ban the sale of new gas and diesel powered vehicles by 2035.

California actually took the lead on pushing for EVs in the years when the Trump administration was dialing back on federal climate policy. Other states, like Oregon, Washington and Minnesota, have tied their standards to California’s.

Valdes-Dapena notes that car companies with loyal customer bases are slowly making the switch. He writes:

Currently, Toyota offers only one electric model in the United States, the BZ4X SUV, but more are planned. Honda, another Japanese brand with a loyal following, offers no EVs currently but the company is gearing up factories in Ohio to build future EV models. Honda expects to offer its first EV next year. General Motors also has a number of EV models coming in the next year or two.

He also notes that GM has pledged to sell only electric passenger vehicles by 2035.

And no, this does not mean internal combustion vehicles will be banned. They will still make up the vast majority of vehicles on the road in a decade even if this rule is finalized and withstands challenges in court. But it would represent a tectonic shift.

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April 12, 2021