New England Public Radio

Massachusetts Has To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions By 2020. How’s It Going?

Last year, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled in favor of environmental groups who argued the state hasn’t been doing enough to reach its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Those goals were put into law in 2008.

The law calls for the state to reduce emissions to 25 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2020. The Supreme Judicial Court ordered the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to come up with new regulations to ensure the state meets that mark. Those new rules are getting public hearings this week.

For more on the new regulations and who would be affected by them, we spoke to David Abel, a reporter for the Boston Globe.

Click the audio player above to hear Henry Epp’s interview with Globe reporter David Abel.

New Study Says Northeast to Warm Faster Than Rest Of Country

A new study says that in the coming decades, temperatures in the Northeast will rise faster than in the rest of the country.

The Paris climate agreement calls for holding average temperatures to within 2 degrees Celsius — about 3 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit — of where they were before the Industrial Revolution.

Scientists at UMass Amherst wanted to find out what’s likely to happen in different parts of the world. Their conclusions surprised them. The American Northeast is on track to hit the threshold 20 to 25 years before the planet as a whole, meaning warmer, wetter winters.

“This winter in our region is probably typical of what we might expect, with a lot more rain and freezing rain and mixed wintry conditions rather than the traditional snow and cold weather that we might have had in past,” said Professor Raymond Bradley, who co-authored the study.

Bradley hasn’t determined why the Northeast will warm faster, but thinks it’s probably related to a shift in the jet stream.

UMass Study Shows Unexpected Shifts In Bird Populations As Climate Warms

In scientific research, the results can sometimes surprise you. That was the case recently for biologists at UMass Amherst. They were looking at shifts in bird populations in New Hampshire’s White Mountains over 17 years. Their hypothesis: that as the climate warms, species will move north or up-slope in the mountains. That turned out to be only partially true. Some lower elevation birds did move up, but many birds in higher elevations moved down.

Bill DeLuca, a conservation biologist at UMass, is one of the authors of the study. He said some of the surprising shifts could be due to changes in the birds’ habitat.

Click the audio player above to hear Henry Epp’s interview with Bill DeLuca. 

Healey Says She Won’t Comply With Subpoena On Exxon Investigation

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is refusing to comply with a Congressional subpoena. It challenges her investigation into whether Exxon misled consumers and investors about global warming.

The subpoena asks Healey’s office to send copies of  all of its communications with U.S. Department of Justice, the White House and groups like Greenpeace.  She says the fraud investigation into Exxon has ticked off some in Congress, such as Republican Lamar Smith, chair of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

“His position is without legal authority,” Healey says. “And we will address it appropriately in our response, but more importantly our work will continue. And we’ll go wherever the facts leads us.”

The committee says it’s investigating whether there’s been a “coordinated attempt to deprive companies” of their First Amendment rights “to conduct scientific research free from intimidation.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren has backed Healey, tweeting to Smith and Exxon “you picked a fight with the wrong state & the wrong AG.”

 

 

The Week Ahead On Beacon Hill

Governor Charlie Baker will be in the spotlight this week to outline his vision for the state.  Of equal import to voters, however, is a constitutional amendment (H 3933) up for a public hearing on Tuesday that would raise taxes on the wealthiest residents of Massachusetts by roughly $1.9 billion and attempt to dedicate that new revenue to education and transportation.  For comparison’s sake, a $1.5 billion infusion would constitute about three times as much new discretionary revenue than state budget writers expect to have on hand for the annual budget debate this spring and summer.  The measure is the only matter before the Revenue Committee, whose House chairman Rep. Jay Kaufman strongly supports the proposal and is confident the Legislature, meeting in a joint Constitutional Convention, will deliver the 50 votes needed to advance the proposal to the 2017-2018 Legislature, where a second favorable vote would put the matter on the statewide ballot in 2018.  Baker and House Speaker Robert DeLeo have thrown cold water on new taxes in the upcoming budget cycle, but the low 50-vote threshold to advance a citizens amendment to the constitution to the ballot is appealing to tax increase advocates who are hoping the wave of voter interest in income inequality will propel them to victory.

Senate President Stanley Rosenberg has selected Thursday, the day of Baker’s State of the State address, to bring the Senate back to Beacon Hill for its first formal session since Nov. 18.   Senators have held weeks of meetings about the future of charter school expansion and are engaged in talks with the House over a solar energy bill, but there were no signs of progress on either of those major matters over the holidays. On Thursday, Senate leaders have teed up for consideration bills establishing benchmarks in 2030 and 2040 to ensure that emissions reductions occur and banning drivers from using handheld electronic devices while driving.

NAS Confirms New Global Warming Study

The National Academy of Sciences has released a report confirming the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any during the last one-thousand years. A team of scientists including UMass Amherst’s Raymond Bradley originally made the claim in the 1990s. They illustrated a “hockey stick” effect — a graph depicting a downward trend in temperature until the 20th century, when the graph abruptly rises. The scientists could only explain the change because of an increase in greenhouse gases. These findings set off a political firestorm, forcing the Academy to re-examine the evidence. WFCR’s Karen Brown spoke with Raymond Bradley about the politics of his report.