This month, a controversial plan to discharge contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean could be approved over the objections of Japan’s public, local leaders and environmental activists.
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority in May said dropping more than 1.2 million tons of treated wastewater will help the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) secure space needed to decommission the plant, where three reactors melted down in March 2011 after a tsunami.
The discharge could start next year, but critics including Gov. Yoshihiro Murai of a neighboring region are calling on TEPCO and the Japanese government to consider other options.
TEPCO wants to use an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) to treat wastewater that has been pumped in to Fukushima to cool fuel from the melted reactors and has mixed with rainwater and groundwater since the disaster.
The system isn’t able to remove radioactive tritium from the water, and South Korean officials and area fishing communities say marine life will be harmed.
In 2018, TEPCO acknowledged that other isotopes including cobalt, strontium and plutonium, “sometimes slip through the ALPS process,” according to Science magazine.
Biden administration against climate change lawsuit
Any day, a federal circuit court could rule against a major climate change lawsuit proceeding to trial.
But even if the case moves forward, it faces a major obstacle: President Biden’s Justice Department.
The lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, was brought in 2015 by 21 young plaintiffs who seek to establish a federal, constitutional right to a livable planet. If the case is successful, any federal policies that enable more fossil fuel development could be challenged as unconstitutional.
However, the Biden administration — and the Obama and Trump administrations before — have fought the lawsuit.
“I have asked very directly, if we win this motion, and we can move forward with the case, do you intend to go to trial?” Julia Olson, the lead plaintiff’s lawyer, told Jacobin magazine. “Their response has always been something along the lines of, ‘It is our position that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction and that this case should never go to trial.’ ”
Not all judges have agreed. In 2016, Oregon federal judge Ann Aiken wrote, “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.”
Plus, other public officials back the claims. Last year, six state attorneys general filed an amicus brief in support of the case, and 48 congresspeople wrote to the Justice Department in support of the plaintiffs. The matter is also gaining attention through the 110-minute documentary “YOUTH V GOV,” streaming on Netflix.
“I’ve realized climate change isn’t a partisan issue — I don’t mean that in a singsongy, ‘everyone is supporting it’ way,” said Nathan Baring of Fairbanks, Alaska, who joined the lawsuit when he was 15 years old. “I mean the exact opposite.
“Just because a Democrat is in office doesn’t mean that we suddenly need to stop fighting,” he told Jacobin. “I stopped putting a kind of blind faith in the party label.”
Fifty-seven billion metric tons of topsoil lost in Midwest
Topsoil in the Midwest is eroding at an average rate of 1.9 millimeters per year, according to a new study from University of Massachusetts-Amherst geosciences professor Isaac Larsen and co-researchers, who studied elevation differences between native prairie and farm fields at about 20 sites in Illinois, Iowa and other states.
That loss translates to 57.6 billion metric tons of topsoil since farmers began tilling 160 years ago. Such erosion, Larsen said, makes it more difficult and more expensive to grow crops since soil productivity declines as topsoil thins.
“We’re going to need to feed more people in the future,” Larsen said, “and degraded soils that have lost their organic rich horizons just aren’t as productive.”
“It’s not some unsolvable problem,” he continued, adding, that the solution is to adopt no-till farming.
Gas pipeline in Illinois could be closed
The U.S. Supreme Court in May declined to hear the St. Louis-based Spire, Inc. natural gas company’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that could close a pipeline running through parts of Illinois and Missouri.
The court rejected Spire Inc.’s appeal without comment. Spire President Scott Smith pledged to continue fighting to keep the pipeline up and running.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2018 OK’d the 65-mile pipeline, which became operational in 2019. It connects with another pipeline in western Illinois and carries natural gas to the St. Louis region.
The Environmental Defense Fund sued in 2020, saying the pipeline was approved without adequate review. In June, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that FERC had not adequately demonstrated a need for the project and vacated the approval.
FERC issued a temporary certificate allowing the pipeline to continue operating while the agency considers Spire’s appeal.