According to Politico, the five offshore wind projects paused by the Trump administration would be able to power nearly 2.7 million homes for up to 30 years using a free, non-polluting fuel: wind. Alternatively, to power those homes with fossil fuels would mean an unending cycle of digging up coal, oil or gas, transporting it, and burning it to generate electricity. In the process, we pollute our air — causing disease and death — and our atmosphere with heat-trapping carbon pollution, furthering global warming and climate change.

Fossil fuel interests have worked for years to discredit offshore wind projects. A 2023 investigation by Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab revealed that, in recent years, six major fossil fuel and dark money donors have funneled more than $72 million to the various organizations fighting offshore wind. The transition to a clean energy future will be significantly affected by the speed with which offshore wind projects are developed. Knowing this, fossil fuel interests will do all they can to slow it down.

Robert Taylor, Santa Barbara

..

To the editor: President Trump’s war against renewable energy sources is hurting Americans while lining the pockets of the oil industry. His latest suspension of major wind projects is keeping cheaper, cleaner and healthier energy sources away from our nation.

His administration has claimed this pause will enable them time to assess national security risks. But wouldn’t those have been assessed by administrations years ago? This looks like just another way of slowing down alternative energy production.

Not allowing all forms of competitive energy production risks our energy independence and thus creates a different national security issue. Electricity needs are growing and AI data centers are adding to this energy drain today.

Trump has proposed that some waters off the U.S. coastline be opened for offshore drilling. He knows our energy needs are growing and oil is his product of choice. But keep in mind that ocean wind farm energy, by most accounts, will lower our energy costs. The Los Angeles Times article on the offshore wind projects even said a partially completed wind project in New England saved residents “$2 million a day during a cold snap this month,” according to the Boston Globe. Additionally, wind farms are less destructive, posing less environmental damage than offshore drilling.

Tell your Congress member that you want cheap, clean energy sources to be allowed to move forward when the permitting process is already agreed upon. No administration should be allowed to interfere with our free markets in the middle of construction.

Jonathan Light, Laguna Niguel

The post Letters to the Editor: In halting offshore wind projects, we hinder our own clean energy potential appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Because a stove’s blue flame releases air pollution into your kitchen, California lawmakers have passed a bill that would require such warning labels on gas stoves for sale in stores and online. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until the end of September to sign the bill into law.

The legislation comes after a series of lawsuits was filed against stove manufacturers, claiming they should have warned customers about potential health risks. Environmental activists are encouraging people to switch to electric stoves, part of a broader campaign to cut climate pollution from buildings. Now there’s an effort to put health warning labels on stoves nationwide.

A chef replaces her gas stove

About 38% of U.S. homes cook with natural gas, and utilities have preserved that market share with tobacco-style tactics to avoid regulations on gas stoves. Part of that is a decades-old “cooking with gas” campaign that has helped gas stoves remain popular with cooks, including famous ones.

“I will say, historically, I’ve been really a snob about that,” says Samin Nosrat, who wrote the 2017 award-winning cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. She learned to cook with gas. “I just never accepted an alternative in my imagination.”

But a few years back, she bought a house with a gas stove, and her carbon monoxide alarm kept going off when she cooked. At first, she assumed the alarm was broken and installed a new one. Finally she called the gas company. A utility worker said that levels of the poisonous gas were “off the charts high” and that she should get checked for carbon monoxide poisoning.

Nosrat was fine but says, “I really didn’t feel safe. I just always had this feeling of like, ‘Is my oven going to kill me?'”

For her to switch from a gas to electric range could have required expensive electrical upgrades and construction that would inconvenience her neighbors. So Nosrat opted for a new style of electric induction stove with a battery that doesn’t need a special outlet.

As part of her installation, the California company Copper measured pollutants in Nosrat’s home before and after. It found that both nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide levels dropped dramatically.

While Nosrat still uses a gas stove in her studio for work, she says it’s a relief to know her home range is no longer sending fossil fuel pollutants into her living space. And she found another benefit to using an induction stove with a smooth cooktop: “Cleaning it rules — like, you just spray it down and wipe it off.”

A California law to warn stove buyers

Another Californian has been learning about indoor air pollution from gas stoves, and as a state lawmaker, she sponsored legislation to warn other stove buyers.

California Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, a Democrat from Santa Cruz, says she knew to turn on the vent hood when using the cooktop, but she hadn’t thought about her gas oven. “So if I’ve got a lasagna in the oven, I have never put the vent on, because you’re not seeing the smoke and everything,” Pellerin told NPR. “So I was emitting horrible gases into my home.”

Medical experts say nitrogen dioxide is the biggest concern. It’s a reddish-brown gas and is a key element of smog outdoors. It can irritate airways and may contribute to the development of asthma, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The American Public Health Association has labeled gas cooking stoves “a public health concern,” and the American Medical Association warns that cooking with gas increases the risk of childhood asthma.

Gas stoves can also leak methane, even when they’re off, and stoves emit benzene, which is linked to cancer. While stove manufacturers have developed cleaner and more efficient burners, they aren’t widely available to consumers.

If Pellerin’s legislation becomes law, it will require a label on gas stoves for sale in stores and online that says, “Gas stoves can release nitrogen dioxide, benzene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and other harmful pollutants into the air, which can be toxic to people and pets.” The label would also mention associated risks for breathing problems, suggest using a vent hood and say, “Young children, people with asthma, and people with heart or lung disease are especially vulnerable to the toxic effects of combustion pollutants.”

“I think this is just important for us to have transparency and inform consumers so they can make the decision that’s right for their family,” Pellerin says.

Similar bills were introduced in Illinois and New York, but unlike California’s version, lawmakers did not pass them out of the legislature.

The campaign for warning labels is part of a larger climate effort to get consumers to switch to electric appliances that don’t burn fossil fuels. Commercial and residential buildings account for about 13% of heat-trapping emissions, mainly from the use of gas appliances.

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) opposed California’s health warning legislation and suggested a different label that does not focus on fossil fuel combustion pollution. The trade group echoes gas industry arguments that smoke and fumes from cooking food are a bigger problem than pollution from burning gas and that two separate issues are being conflated.

“If we want to talk about people’s health and indoor air quality, then let’s talk about that. If we want to talk about fossil fuel versus electrification, then we need to talk about that,” says Kevin Messner, AHAM’s executive vice president and chief policy officer.

Messner says all pollution from stoves — electric or gas — requires proper ventilation to prevent pollution from accumulating in homes. With warning labels only on gas stoves, Messner argues that this sends the wrong message.

“So if you go to, let’s say, a retailer and you see a gas cooking product with a warning or information that says you should use ventilation. Then right next to it, you have an electric appliance or an induction [stove] that does not have that warning — this is common sense that you’re going to think, ‘I don’t need to use ventilation for the electric appliance,'” Messner says.

AHAM says it’s disappointed California lawmakers passed the health warning label only for gas stoves. But that has energized activists, who hope they can get similar labels on gas stoves for sale nationwide.

A national campaign for gas stove health warnings

The use of gas stoves has become a flash point in the culture wars. One of the groups pushing for health warning labels has turned to humor to spread its message. Gas Leaks Project released a parody trailer this year for a reality show it calls Hot & Toxic. The premise is an “unsuspecting homeowner” who loves her new gas stove but later learns it comes with some of “the hottest, most toxic housemates imaginable.”

Each character represents a pollutant created from burning gas, including carbon monoxide, or “C.MO,” who echoes a line that reality show fans will recognize, but with a twist. “I did not come here to make friends,” she says. “I came here to cause chest pain, nausea and vomiting.”

A campaign associated with the parody encourages people to sign a petition to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) telling it to put warning labels on gas stoves nationwide.

The CPSC was at the center of a 2023 culture war campaign led by conservatives, who falsely claimed the Biden administration wanted to take away Americans’ gas stoves. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, wrote on social media, “I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands.”

The outrage was prompted by a story in which CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. suggested that the CPSC might consider stricter regulations on new gas stoves in response to health concerns.

Trumka and the CPSC did not respond to NPR’s requests for interviews. Even before that kerfuffle, the CPSC had launched a task force about gas stoves and indoor air quality. It included industry, environmental and consumer groups.

“We met at least monthly for a year and a half,” says AHAM’s Messner, adding that participants were leaning toward regulating cooking fumes instead of fossil fuel combustion pollution. “The enthusiasm for having CPSC’s task force trailed off by some who didn’t see it going in the direction where they wanted it to go, politically.”

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group disputes that conclusion and says the staff member directing the group was reassigned. Still, U.S. PIRG has redirected its campaign and launched a new effort to get health warning labels on gas stoves sold in Washington, D.C., by suing one of the biggest stove manufacturers.

Suing gas stove companies

U.S. PIRG filed a lawsuit in May against the Chinese company Haier, which owns GE Appliances. U.S. PIRG says the manufacturer violates the District of Columbia’s consumer protection law, which “prohibits a wide variety of deceptive and unconscionable business practices.”

“We’re saying that it’s a deceptive practice for GE Appliances to sell gas stoves in the District without warning consumers about the well-documented health risks associated with cooking with gas,” says Abe Scarr, U.S. PIRG’s energy and utilities program director.

The group isn’t asking for money, aside from paying U.S. PIRG’s attorney fees and costs. Instead it wants the court to require GE Appliances to put health warning labels on gas stoves sold in the District.

A spokesperson for GE Appliances said the company won’t comment on the litigation but said: “All our ranges and cooktops meet or exceed applicable safety standards.”

Other gas stove manufacturers face potential class action lawsuits in California and Wisconsin that claim companies should disclose the risk of pollutants to consumers. Attorneys in Massachusetts have filed a similar case against the local gas utility Eversource.

Scarr says the legal cases are needed because stove buyers aren’t getting the message that pollution from gas stoves can lead to health problems. His group surveyed 62 Lowe’s, Home Depot and Best Buy locations in 11 states. Secret shoppers were dispatched to ask about health concerns.

U.S. PIRG found that most salespeople “flatly denied or expressed ignorance about the health risks of gas stoves” and that 15% of them “recommended gas stoves over electric ranges or induction cooktops, even when the secret shopper voiced concerns about pollution.”

Lowe’s and Best Buy did not respond to NPR’s interview requests. A Home Depot spokesperson said, “Most customers choose a gas, electric or induction range based on which fuel their home is equipped for” and also said that the retailer sells range hoods and that a stove’s instruction manual “speaks to the importance of ventilation.”

As Scarr’s group pursues its D.C. lawsuit, he says they plan to again pressure the CPSC to require health warning labels for the entire country, possibly as soon as next year.

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Before he was a presidential candidate, he said global warming was “a hoax” invented by China to kneecap the American economy.

“The climate has always been changing,” he shrugged more recently.

If he’s elected president, Trump says, one of his “Day One” priorities will be increasing oil and gas production — or, as he puts it: “Drill, baby, drill!”

With more fossil fuels, he promises, “we will be rich again and happy again.”

Those positions are at the heart of Trump’s campaign to regain the White House. And they put him on a collision course with California, where the Democratic-led government, supported by most voters, has made a clean-energy economy a major goal.

“It’s breathtaking how easily manipulated this man is,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “His only interest is pleasing Big Oil CEOs, and mortgaging our kids and the planet in the process.”

A large majority of Californians support their state’s ambitious climate goals, the Public Policy Institute of California found in a survey last year. Almost two-thirds said they believe protecting the environment should be a priority even at the risk of curbing economic growth.

“If you look at California, it’s got brownouts and blackouts every single day,” he claimed in a campaign video last year. “People can’t turn on their air conditioners.” (Not true; California hasn’t had significant power grid problems since 2020.)

If he wins a second term, Trump plans to scrap President Biden’s programs encouraging renewable energy. He has said he would offer tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers; repeal federal subsidies for solar, wind and other renewable energy projects; and roll back Biden’s efforts to encourage the use of electric vehicles.

“First day in office, I’ll be ending all of that,” Trump said last year, referring to EV tax credits and other subsidies. (In fact, he couldn’t repeal the tax credit on Day One — that would take an act of Congress — but he could add requirements to limit the cars and trucks that qualify for the subsidy.)

Former aides say Trump is also likely to revive two of his first-term goals that spurred clashes with California: revoke the state’s tough vehicle emissions standards and open more federal waters to oil drilling, including off the Pacific coast.

He failed at both partly because of opposition from California and other states but also because of his administration’s incompetence.

“In the first term, the Trump administration had a kind of blunderbuss approach. Their proposals weren’t well thought out. They often didn’t hold up under close review,” said Richard M. Frank, a professor of environmental law at UC Davis School of Law. “Now they appear to be trying to learn from those mistakes. … They could be a lot more strategic the second time.”

The clearest example is Trump’s attack on California’s tough automotive emissions standards.

The 1970 Clean Air Act allows the federal Environmental Protection Agency to limit air pollution from automobiles. It also allows California to impose tougher standards because of its decades-long battle to reduce smog, under a “waiver” the EPA normally grants each year.

Congress also allowed other states to adopt the California standards; 17 states and the District of Columbia have done so.

In 2019, after automobile manufacturers complained that the California standards were a burden, Trump announced that he was revoking the state’s waiver “in order to produce far less expensive cars for the consumer.”

His decision was part of a broad effort to scale back federal rules requiring auto fleets to reduce fuel consumption.

Newsom and then-Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra sued the federal government, charging that the EPA had overstepped its authority. The case meandered through the courts until Biden took office and restored California’s waiver.

Trump hasn’t talked explicitly about attacking California’s waiver again. But last year, the conservative Heritage Foundation assembled a team of former Trump aides to compile a policy agenda called “Project 2025.” The approximately 900-page document includes a detailed strategy for revoking or limiting California’s emissions standards.

It suggests that instead of revoking the waiver, the EPA could limit California’s standards to smog-producing pollutants like ozone, not greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. If that fails, the agenda says, the EPA could try to block other states from adopting greenhouse gas standards.

“They’re recognizing that they screwed up the first time and laying out a road map to try to do better the second time,” said Dan Becker, an environmental lawyer at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “They’re basically choosing each of the areas in which California can act and going after each of them.”

Becker said the strategy may be aimed at getting the case into the Supreme Court, where a second Trump administration could try its luck before a 6-3 conservative majority.

If a second Trump administration tried to revoke the waiver, Newsom said at a February news conference, the state would go to court again.

“We know the playbook,” he said. “We were successful over and over [in Trump’s first term] in the courts, and we have confidence that will continue.”

Offshore oil drilling could produce another standoff.

In 2018, Trump proposed opening federal waters along the entire Pacific Coast, as well as Alaska and the Atlantic Coast, to drilling for oil and gas. That kicked up a storm of opposition, including — to Trump’s surprise — from Republicans.

And Trump’s administration found itself tied up in the federal rule-making process.

“They made procedural errors that slowed everything down,” said Kassie Siegel, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

If he wins a second term, Trump would have broad authority to open the continental shelf to oil leases, but he would run into other problems.

One is economics: Deep-water drilling in the North Pacific is expensive and risky. Oil companies are more interested in drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, where known reserves are larger.

The other is local politics. In 2018, when Trump proposed opening the Pacific Coast to drilling, the California Legislature quickly passed a law banning new oil pipelines, piers or other infrastructure within three miles of shore. That could make it prohibitively expensive to move oil from offshore wells to onshore refineries or terminals.

Oil companies know that any attempt to drill new wells off California would spark massive opposition. A PPIC poll in 2021 found that 72% of Californians, including 43% of Republicans, oppose the idea.

A third potential conflict: wind. Offshore wind farms are a big part of California’s clean energy plans, aimed at supplying about 13% of the state’s power supply by 2045. But wind is Trump’s least favorite energy source.

“Windmills rot. They rust. They kill the birds. It’s the most expensive energy there is,” he charged last year. There’s much more to say about that, and I’ll return to it in a later column.

Newsom says he doesn’t believe Trump will get a second term.

“It won’t happen,” he said at the February news conference. Still, just in case, “we’re definitely trying to future-proof California in every way, shape or form.”

“We’re hardly just a punching bag on this,” the governor added. “We’re trying to assert ourselves.”

But environmentalists are still worried.

“The problem is, a second Trump term would come when the climate crisis is more dire than it was in his first term,” Becker said. “Everything the scientists predicted is happening more quickly than they expected. … But Trump doesn’t believe it’s a problem, doesn’t want to solve it and would only make it worse.”

Which helps explain why so many environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, have endorsed Biden’s reelection, even though they have criticized many of his decisions: They’ve considered the alternative.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Yelling that the future and their lives depend on ending fossil fuels, tens of thousands of protesters on Sunday kicked off a week where leaders will try once again to curb climate change primarily caused by coal, oil and natural gas.

But protesters say it’s not going to be enough. And they aimed their wrath directly at U.S. President Joe Biden, urging him to stop approving new oil and gas projects, phase out current ones and declare a climate emergency with larger executive powers.

“We hold the power of the people, the power you need to win this election,” said 17-year-old Emma Buretta of Brooklyn of the youth protest group Fridays for Future. “If you want to win in 2024, if you do not want the blood of my generation to be on your hands, end fossil fuels.”

The March to End Fossil Fuels featured such politicians as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and actors Susan Sarandon, Ethan Hawke, Edward Norton, Kyra Sedgewick and Kevin Bacon. But the real action on Broadway was where protesters crowded the street, pleading for a better but not-so-hot future. It was the opening salvo to New York’s Climate Week, where world leaders in business, politics and the arts gather to try to save the planet, highlighted by a new special United Nations summit Wednesday.

Many of the leaders of countries that cause the most heat-trapping carbon pollution will not be in attendance. And they won’t speak at the summit organized by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a way that only countries that promise new concrete action are invited to speak.

Organizers estimated 75,000 people marched Sunday.

“We have people all across the world in the streets, showing up, demanding a cessation of what is killing us,” Ocasio-Cortez told a cheering crowd. “We have to send a message that some of us are going to be living on, on this planet 30, 40, 50 years from now. And we will not take no for an answer.”

This protest was far more focused on fossil fuels and the industry than previous marches. Sunday’s rally attracted a large chunk, 15%, of first-time protesters and was overwhelmingly female, said American University sociologist Dana Fisher, who studies environmental movements and was surveying march participants.

Of the people Fisher talked to, 86% had experienced extreme heat recently, 21% floods and 18% severe drought, she said. They mostly reported feeling sad and angry. Earth has just gone through the hottest summer on record.

Among the marchers was 8-year-old Athena Wilson from Boca Raton, Florida. She and her mother Maleah, flew from Florida for Sunday’s protest.

“Because we care about our planet,” Athena said. “I really want the Earth to feel better.”

People in the South, especially where the oil industry is, and the global south, “have not felt heard,” said 23-year-old Alexandria Gordon, originally from Houston. “It is frustrating.”

Protest organizers emphasized how let down they felt that Biden, who many of them supported in 2020, has overseen increased drilling for oil and fossil fuels.

“President Biden, our lives depend on your actions today,” said Louisiana environmental activist Sharon Lavigne. “If you don’t stop fossil fuels our blood is on your hands.”

Nearly one-third of the world’s planned drilling for oil and gas between now and 2050 is by U.S. interests, environmental activists calculate. Over the past 100 years, the United States has put more heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than any other country, though China now emits more carbon pollution on an annual basis.

“You need to phase out fossil fuels to survive our planet,” said Jean Su, a march organizer and energy justice director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Marchers and speakers spoke of increasing urgency and fear of the future. The actress known as V, formerly Eve Ensler, premiered the anthem “Panic” from her new climate change oriented musical scheduled for next year. The chorus goes: “We want you to panic. We want you to act. You stole our future and we want it back.”

Signs included “Even Santa Knows Coal is Bad” and “Fossil fuels are killing us” and “I want a fossil free future” and “keep it in the ground.”

That’s because leaders don’t want to acknowledge “the elephant in the room,” said Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate. “The elephant is that fossil fuels are responsible for the crisis. We can’t eat coal. We can’t drink oil, and we can’t have any new fossil fuel investments.”

But oil and gas industry officials said their products are vital to the economy.

“We share the urgency of confronting climate change together without delay; yet doing so by eliminating America’s energy options is the wrong approach and would leave American families and businesses beholden to unstable foreign regions for higher cost and far less reliable energy,” said American Petroleum Institute Senior Vice President Megan Bloomgren.

Activists weren’t having any of that.

“The fossil fuel industry is choosing to rule and conquer and take and take and take without limit,” Rabbi Stephanie Kolin of Congregation Beth Elohim of Brooklyn said. “And so waters are rising and the skies are turning orange (from wildfire smoke) and the heat is taking lives. But you Mr. President can choose the other path, to be a protector of this Earth.”

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