Trumpers are burying clean energy studies

I don't know whether President-to-be Biden will be able to quickly reverse a lot of what Trump has done by blanket executive orders and the like, or whether it will have to be an arduous, one-at-a-time process.

In all, the DOE has blocked reports for more than 40 clean energy studies. The department has replaced them with mere presentations, buried them in scientific journals that are not accessible to the public, or left them paralyzed within the agency, according to emails and documents obtained by InvestigateWest, as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees at the Energy Department and its national labs.

Bottling up and slow-walking studies is already harming efforts to fight climate change, according to clean-energy experts and others, because Energy Department reports drive investment decisions. Entrepreneurs worry that the agency’s practices under the current White House will ultimately hurt growth prospects for U.S.-developed technology. - InvestigateWest/Grist

Young voters have little use for Trump and Republicans

You have to click the link, and check out the "18-34" box, to get the gist.

There are only five states in the U.S. where voters younger than 35 embrace President Trump over Joe Biden, and none are swing states, according to new 50-state SurveyMonkey-Tableau data for Axios... The data also serves as a warning for the Republican Party in nearly every state as it looks beyond one presidential contest. - Axios

I'm not the biggest believer in SurveyMonkey polling. But this is actually just another dump into a sea of data confirming how progressive young voters are. My own take is that we'll know after 2022 if we can start counting on young'ns to turn out, in every election, in numbers large enough to make a big difference. They did in 2018, and very likely are doing so this year, and that's encouraging.

U.S. trade policy is frankly in turmoil

This is actually a pretty comprehensive look at where we're at.

The picture that emerges is complex. Even critics of the administration said that Lighthizer had a point when he argued that the gentler tactics of his predecessors had not been effective. And they acknowledge that the once-obscure USTR is more powerful than it’s ever been, its mission reoriented from easing corporate investment barriers overseas to erecting hurdles that might force those companies to keep jobs in America after decades of manufacturing decline.

Along the way, Lighthizer has bent the rules of the international trading system and thrown businesses into turmoil as they race to comply with changes to import costs. He’s ruptured international relationships, maintained tariffs on $350 billion worth of imports, and constructed a series of piecemeal and delicate agreements with trading partners that are as good as the next president’s dedication to enforcing them.

So far, the promised benefits of this upheaval are hard to see. The gap between American imports and exports of goods is as big as it’s ever been, while manufacturing output and job growth flatlined in 2019. To the extent that manufacturers have pulled out of China, they’ve shifted to countries like Vietnam and Mexico, rather than set up factories in the U.S. And Lighthizer has failed to achieve his most ambitious goals, as a tempestuous president’s abrupt twists and turns sabotaged the patient, insistent approach on which his trade representative had built his reputation. - ProPublica

Public opinion has come around on climate change

Would that said public opinion actually has much to do with driving policy. Poll after poll, year after year, shows strong public support, often 2:1 or better, for progressive policies like strong environmental protections, reproductive choice, making the thieving, parasitic rich man pay up, etc., etc. But it's so much easier to block positive, lasting change, than it is to make it happen.

Today, the Alarmed (26%) outnumber the Dismissive (7%) nearly 4 to 1. More than half (54%) of Americans are either Alarmed or Concerned, while the Doubtful and Dismissive are only 18% of the population. However, because conservative media organizations prominently feature Dismissive politicians, pundits and industry officials, most Americans overestimate the prevalence of Dismissive beliefs among other Americans. - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

The IEA is sanguine about solar

This has to piss off Big Filthy Fossil Fuels, whether they'll admit it or not.

Solar output is expected to lead a surge in renewable power supply in the next decade, the International Energy Agency said, with renewables seen accounting for 80% of growth in global electricity generation under current conditions.

In its annual World Energy Outlook on Tuesday, the IEA said in its central scenario - which reflects policy intentions and targets already announced - renewables are expected to overtake coal as the primary means of producing electricity by 2025. - Reuters

Debt collectors are more than making up for lost time

With bloated, entitled parasites so dependent on a system of debt servitude, what else could you expect?

In recent months, the only real bad news for debt buyers was that local courts across the country temporarily shut down. Debt collection lawsuits provide a key source of revenue for the companies, a way to extract payment from consumers, typically low-income, who don’t offer it up.

But now even that hiccup is over. After a bit of a lull in the spring, Encore and other debt buyers are back at it, filing suits by the thousands every week, according to ProPublica’s analysis of state court filings. - ProPublica

Trump EPA shenanigans will be a public health and environmental disaster

An even more right-wing SCOTUS will make this all that much harder to try to fix.

The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has ush­ered in a wave of wor­ri­some and need­less reg­u­la­to­ry relax­ations that have increased pol­lu­tion across the Unit­ed States. Recent report­ing by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press and oth­er out­lets has doc­u­ment­ed more than 3,000 pan­dem­ic-based requests from pol­luters to state agen­cies and the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency for waivers of envi­ron­men­tal require­ments. Numer­ous state gov­ern­ments, with the tac­it encour­age­ment of the EPA, went along with many of those requests. All too often, those waivers — request­ed, osten­si­bly, to pro­tect Amer­i­can work­ers from expo­sure to the coro­n­avirus — were grant­ed with lit­tle or no review, notwith­stand­ing the risks the result­ing emis­sions posed to pub­lic health and the environment…

These reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ures have occurred against the back­drop of a steady decline in both fed­er­al and state envi­ron­men­tal enforce­ment. The num­bers of gov­ern­ment sci­en­tists and attor­neys whose work focus­es on enforc­ing envi­ron­men­tal laws has dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent years. There have also been sub­stan­tial decreas­es in the num­bers of in-per­son gov­ern­ment inspec­tions of pol­lu­tion sources, the vol­ume of enforce­ment actions pur­sued, the num­ber of envi­ron­men­tal crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, and the amount of mon­ey that pol­luters have been com­pelled to spend on pol­lu­tion con­trol as a direct result of enforce­ment activ­i­ties. EPA has all but aban­doned its long­stand­ing over­sight of state enforce­ment work. And the fed­er­al agency has craven­ly deferred to state enforce­ment (or nonen­force­ment) pri­or­i­ties, even though quite a few states lack the resources and/​or polit­i­cal will to effec­tive­ly enforce envi­ron­men­tal standards.

Howls of protest and a fed­er­al law­suit prompt­ed EPA to ter­mi­nate its Covid pol­i­cy as of Aug. 31. But too much dam­age has already been done. - In These Times