Cartoon

The Crown

Written by SK Ashby

(Cartoonist - Matt Davies)

In other news, Hurricane Dorian is now forecast to potentially make landfall in Florida as a category 4 storm on Monday morning. The storm is moving very slowly meaning it could dump a dangerous amount of rain on the area.

Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence found that the mysterious nuclear accident in Russia earlier this month was the result of a failed operation to recover a nuclear-powered missile that was lost in the ocean.

“This was not a new launch of the weapon, instead it was a recovery mission to salvage a lost missile from a previous test,” said a person with direct knowledge of the U.S. intelligence assessment. “There was an explosion on one of the vessels involved in the recovery and that caused a reaction in the missile’s nuclear core which lead to the radiation leak,” said another person, who spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity.

Finally, the Trump regime is formally proposing new rules that will roll back regulations on methane gas emissions even though some of the largest energy companies in the world support the regulations.

Some large oil companies including BP actually favor federal regulation of methane, saying the regulatory certainty is preferable to a patchwork of varying rules by states and legal challenges by environmentalists. BP has said it is already taking steps to limit methane emissions. [...]

Susan Dio, chairman and president of BP America, supported federal regulation of methane in an opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle earlier this year calling it the “the best way to help further reduce and ultimately eliminate methane emissions industrywide.”

Environmentalists vowed to sue the administration over the proposal. “We simply cannot protect our children and grandchildren from climate catastrophe if EPA lets this industry off scot-free,” said David Doniger, a climate and clean energy specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If EPA moves forward with this reckless and sinister proposal, we will see them in court.”

We've covered this here in the past, but the larger companies support the regulations because they operate in many states and other countries and limiting methane gas emissions is already considered a best practice. Rolling back regulations will primarily help smaller, dirtier operations operating in low-regulation states that don't give a shit.