The Government Has Faced A Large Amount Of Scrutiny In The Days Preceding The Arrival Of Hurricane Florence

Posted on by Marshall Kesterson

By: Marshall Kesterson

Hurricane Florence, currently labeled as a category 2 hurricane, is expected to move near or along the East coast sometime Friday. 300 miles of coastline received a hurricane warning at the beginning of the week, placing nearly 1 million people in need of evacuation.

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Photo of Hurricane Florence Credit: NPR News

North Carolina Gov. Ray Cooper released a statement to the State’s residents on Wednesday:

Brock Long, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, also issued a warning to those on the East coast saying that it is possible their power could be out for weeks. Thursday a report was issued that approximately 12,000 North Carolina residents have lost power in the hours before the hurricane is expected to make landfall.

Despite warnings, some residents of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia still aren’t evacuating. In the case of South Carolina’s MacDougall Correctional Institution, the state is refusing to move inmates, regardless of the evacuation orders.

Many critics are worried that the government and FEMA might not be prepared to deal with the hurricane. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, resulting in a death count of nearly 3,000 people, FEMA expressed that it vastly underestimated how much water and food was needed to prepare for the storm.

President Trump denied claims that the government failed in handling Puerto Rico, saying that his administration was “incredibly successful” and that he thinks the government’s handling of Hurricane Maria was “one of the best jobs [that has] ever been done” in regards to hurricane relief.

Puerto Rico’s governor disagreed with the President’s assessment and released his own statement:

Not long after being asked about the government’s handling of Puerto Rico, the President took to Twitter to deny the official death count and blame Democrats for making him “look as bad as possible”:

FEMA released a detailed report assessing the agency’s response to the 2017 storm season. In this report, the agency showed that it failed to prepare for Hurricane Maria because the government hadn’t anticipated dealing with two hurricanes.

Recently, a budgeting document surfaced that showed that the Trump administration cut FEMA’s budget by $10 million and used the funds to support ICE. This has further raised questions from critics about if FEMA has the funding to properly prepare for Hurricane Florence.

Follow the link below for live updates on Hurricane Florence:

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/hurricane-florence-live-news-coverage

In Spite Of Local Government Pledges, We Are Still Not Meeting Previous Emissions Goals

Posted on by Marshall Kesterson

By: Marshall Kesterson

Recently, local governments around the United States have made serious legislative strides in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions and rely less heavily on non-renewable energy sources. In the past few weeks, California and Orlando, Florida, have enacted legislation to reduce reliance on fossil fuels for energy.

California approved a measure to require energy sources that power the state to come from renewable sources by 2045. The Assembly of the State of California voted 43-32 in favor of legislation to eliminate reliance on fossil fuels for energy.

California has been a prominent leader in the battle against climate change. A little while back, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power suggested attaching a $3 billion pipeline and a pump station powered by solar and wind energy to the Hoover Dam in an effort to curb carbon emissions.

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An engineer from the Orlando Utilities Commission examining data at a solar test site. Credit: Edward Linsmier for The New York Times

Orlando, Florida, has set a goal to have all energy sources be carbon-free by 2050. The city, which has already placed solar panels on nearly 18,000 of its 25,000 streetlights, is hoping to equip 8 percent of its city-owned utility with solar panels by 2020.

These legislative changes by city and state governments are the latest moves in a long-term response to President Donald Trump’s June 2017 announcement that the United States would be withdrawing from The Paris Agreement.

This announcement prompted a number of U.S. mayors to sign their own pact that vowed their cities would continue to follow the rules the Paris Agreement put in place. Local governments were leading the way to a more environmentally-friendly future even before President Trump declared the withdrawal.

During his announcement, President Trump defended his decision to leave the Paris Agreement by saying that he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Despite the enormous number of pledges by local governments to commit to the Paris agreement, many critics worry that it still isn’t enough to put us on the right track. In one study, greenhouse gas mitigation pledges in nearly 6,000 cities, states, and regions around the globe found that only about 1.5 billion to 2.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas would be reduced, barely impacting the roughly 30 billion tons of total CO2 emissions released annually.

In the United States, however, the impact of mitigation pledges was estimated to reduce emissions half way to what would be needed to meet the US target emissions that were listed in the Paris Agreement. Although this is remarkable, it still doesn’t stop the United States from crossing the threshold for dangerous warming.

Only time will tell if the efforts made by local governments to decelerate climate change worked as intended.