DNC delivers blow to New Hampshire, Iowa with overhaul of primary calendar

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February 6, 2023
In News

Explain it to me like I’m 12: An analysis of the governor’s “Deep Carbonization Pathways Analysis”

By
February 6, 2023
In Environment

North Carolina has strayed from its path to “net zero,” a crucial way to meet its climate change goals. The state needs a course correction, so last week Gov. Cooper released the “Deep Carbonization Pathways Analysis” — a 101-page, dense-as-a-flourless-cake guide to reaching the state’s 2050 benchmark. 

The background: Over the past five years, the governor has issued several executive orders related to climate change. 

  • In 2018, EO 80 established a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Yes, your math is right — that’s only two years away.
  • In 2022, EO 246 set new goals to reduce those emissions to at least 50 percent by 2030 and achieve net-zero* emissions by 2050.

*Net zero does not mean there are no greenhouse gas emissions. It means only that the amounts are balanced out when technology and/or nature removes them from the atmosphere.

Important context: Unlike the Duke Energy carbon plan, which got a pass from state lawmakers in terms of methane emissions, the Course Correction (it sounds snappier than pathways analysis) accounts for that potent greenhouse gas. 

The Course Correction also includes reducing emissions of HFCs, short for hydrofluorocarbons. These destructive gases are present in air conditioners and cooling systems. Yes, it’s not lost on us that climate change is causing extreme heat waves yet the very devices we use to keep us cool are further heating the planet. See buildings.

The takeaways

Transportation is the state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Passenger cars and trucks account for 70 percent of those transportation emissions, which will surprise no one who has driven through the vehicular hellscape of Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Greensboro and Winston-Salem.
Proposed solutions: Replace gasoline-powered cars and trucks with electric vehicles. Medium- and heavy-duty trucks, school buses and other diesel spewers are gradually being replaced with electrified versions, thanks to federal and state grant funds. Build out an extensive network of EV charging stations, including in rural and underserved areas. (If you run out of juice in Low Gap in Surry County, well, good luck.)

Prioritize public transit in and between urban areas. That also means paying bus drivers more money to cart us around. Exhibit A: Many commuters are eagerly awaiting the return of the GoTriangle express buses between Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill.

Buildings: No one’s coming for your gas stove, but regardless of what Piedmont Natural Gas says, when it’s time to buy a new one, choose electric. Gas stoves emit methane, even when they’re off. They can contribute to asthma, especially in children who live in homes with gas appliances. That includes clothes dryers and water heaters.

Also a problem with natural gas appliances, if they leak carbon monoxide: Possibly death. In 2010, the gas furnace in my rental home leaked carbon monoxide. Alarms sounded. Heat was shut off. Windows were opened. The gas company later told my husband and me if we’d not had CO detectors and heeded their call — well, I wouldn’t be writing this story today.

Which brings us to our next point: If you’re a homeowner of some means, you can choose your appliances. You can take advantage of federal tax credits to help pay for electric heat pumps. Those pumps can replace HFC-exhalations from air conditioners.

Yet what of the renters? I rented for 34 years and had no say-so in any form of climate-friendly improvements other than light bulbs and weatherization strips.

Landlords for new construction can be held to higher account via building codes, but if you’re living in a 1955 ranch house that hasn’t been updated since Nixon was president, the landlord will need some financial prodding to upfit the home, without hiking the rent.

A pie chart showing that transportation is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in North Carolina, followed by electricity generation, agriculture, landfills and buildings

(Chart: Decarbonization Pathway)

Agriculture and landfills are major emitters of methane, but the Course Correction’s response to these gas giants seems lukewarm.

In the past 20 years, voluntary programs have reduced the amount of methane-producing waste going into landfills by 4.2 million tons, the report says. However, that’s some weak tea compared with other states that have enacted actual laws requiring large commercial facilities to compost food waste. 

Maryland passed a law, which just went into effect, requiring any facility that produces at least two tons of food waste per week to divert it to a composting facility, as long as one is within 30 miles of their location. Imperfect? Yes. Better than North Carolina? Also yes. 

The Course Correction projects landfill methane emissions will decline by just 11 percent by 2050.

Agriculture lags behind transportation and electricity in greenhouse gas emissions, but that’s not to say it’s “clean.” In the industry-that-can’t-be-touched-by-meaningful-regulation — concentrated animal feeding operations, also known as CAFOS — manure is the largest source of agriculture sector emissions: 58%. 

The gas is emitted from hog waste lagoons, piles of poultry poop and fields of cow patties. The industry is dead-set on reducing methane through anaerobic digestion — essentially capping the lagoon with a plastic membrane and capturing the gas — although that brings with it a host of other environmental problems. The EPA estimates that the reductions “could also be achieved through environmentally superior technologies or other activity changes.”

If there were only a billion-dollar company in North Carolina that could afford to invest in these superior technologies. Oh, there already is.

Clean electricity: We’ve seen the shortcomings of the Duke Carbon Plan — it relies heavily on natural gas — released by the Utilities Commission on Dec. 30. The Course Correction suggests generating more electricity from renewables and battery storage, and the nascent, but growing technology of green hydrogen. 

Hydrogen can power cars and used in cooking and heating. Note the color is important: The green hydrogen process does not use fossil fuels, as does blue hydrogen, which is produced by steam and natural gas.

Carbon sequestration: This is a fancy term for storing carbon in soil, trees, wetlands and other “sinks,” which keeps the gas from entering the atmosphere. Unfortunately, North Carolina is losing some of its natural carbon sinks through deforestation — trees cleared for sprawling subdivisions, for the dirty, carbon-intensive wood pellet industry. 

Coastal carbon sinks are also disappearing. These include salt marshes and seagrass beds. Sea level rise induced by climate change (are we seeing a pattern here?) can wipe these out, as can coastal development.

Despite slight declines, restoring and preserving both types of landscapes is expected to “remain large” through 2050, according to the report.

What’s next?

The NC Clean Transportation Plan will be finalized by April. It is expected to detail how to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles.

The state Hazard Mitigation Plan is due this spring to explain how state, regional and local governments can adapt to climate change.

And late in the year, DEQ’s Division of Mitigation Services is scheduled to release the draft of the Flood Resiliency Blueprint. The blueprint will be used to write a Neuse River Basin “action strategy.” The blueprint will be applied to other targeted river basins next year. 

State medical cannabis programs failing to make enough progress, advocacy group finds

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February 6, 2023
In News

New Republican majority on the NC Supreme Court agrees to rehear voter ID and redistricting cases

By
February 6, 2023
In News

The state Supreme Court’s new Republican majority will rehear cases on voter photo ID and redistricting that were decided against Republican legislators less than two months ago.

The North Carolina Supreme Court building in Raleigh

In December, the then-Democratic majority on the state’s highest court held that the voter ID law the Republican legislative majority pushed through in 2018 was enacted with “an impermissible intent to discriminate against African-American voters.”

The 4-3 Democratic majority also ruled in December that the state Senate districts used in the November elections were unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders.

With the switch to a 5-2 Republican majority this year, it appears that these victories by voting rights groups will be temporary.

Soon after two seats on the court switched parties and new Republican justices joined, Republican legislators asked for new hearings in both cases. In the redistricting cases, also they asked the court to overrule a February 2022 decision that found state House, Senate, and congressional districts were unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders.

Republicans’ lawyers have argued, and Republican justices agreed in their dissents last year, that issues of partisan redistricting are outside the purview of courts.

The two remaining Democratic justices disagreed with the GOP majority’s decision Friday to rehear the cases.

In her dissent in the redistricting decision, Justice Anita Earls wrote that rehearing the case was a “radical break with 205 years of history.”

Rehearing cases is rare, she wrote. Since January 1993, 214 petitions for rehearing were filed, and only two were allowed.

“Going down this path is a radical departure from the way this Court has operated, and these orders represent a rejection of the guardrails that have historically protected the legitimacy of the Court,” she wrote.

“Not only does today’s display of raw partisanship call into question the impartiality of the courts, but it erodes the notion that the judicial branch has the institutional capacity to be a principled check on legislation that violates constitutional and human rights.”

The rehearings are scheduled for March 14.

Weekend reads: 48th in school funding, a new “Parents’ Bill of Rights” ignites a new fight, and the NC Supreme Court signals it may roll back voting rights for thousands

By
February 5, 2023
In News

In this issue:

1. NC ranks 48th in school funding. Education advocacy group says it’s high time for lawmakers to fix that problem.

North Carolina’s ranking as the best state in the nation to do business doesn’t square with its rank near the bottom of states —  48th — in public school expenditures, Mary Ann Wolf, president and CEO of Public School Forum of North Carolina said Tuesday.

When adjusted for regional cost differences, the Tar Heel state is dead last in school funding effort, Wolf said during the public school advocacy group’s annual “Eggs and Issues Breakfast” in Raleigh. More than 400 educators, lawmakers and public school advocates attended the event.

“North Carolina prides itself in being a state that is known for being business-friendly, but what if we could also take pride in being known for how we value public education,” Wolf said. “We can have both. In fact, the two go hand in hand. Thriving communities attract business investment and high-quality, well-funded, equitable schools are required for communities and businesses to thrive.” [Read more…]

* Bonus read: State teacher vacancies grew by nearly 50% last school year2. Ida B. Wells Society relocates from UNC-Chapel Hill to Morehouse College

The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Journalism will relocate from UNC-Chapel Hill to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

The society,  named for the pioneering Black investigative journalist, is dedicated to increasing and retaining reporters and editors of color in the field of investigative reporting and promoting diverse voices in news organizations. It has been headquartered at UNC-Chapel Hill since  the fall of 2019. It was originally based at City University of New York’s Newmark School of Journalism before shifting to the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2018 and UNC-Chapel Hill a year later.

The move comes after the controversy over the university’s board of trustees denying one of the society’s founders, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, a vote on tenure after the university courted her to join its faculty. [Read more…]

3. After key hearing, NC Supreme Court could roll back voting rights for 56,000 people on parole, probation for a felony.

This article was produced as a collaboration between Bolts and NC Policy Watch.

They packed the courtroom early, filling so many seats that a line stretched out the door of the building in downtown Raleigh that houses the North Carolina Supreme Court. In years past, many of the onlookers had been in handcuffs, jails and prison cells. Now, they wanted access to the ballot box.

Those in line were told the courtroom was full shortly before oral arguments began. The overflow crowd walked down the street to First Baptist Church to watch the hearing streamed live in a basketball gym. Below the projection screen was a sign with a simple demand: “Unlock Our Vote.”

The state Supreme Court on Thursday held a hearing on whether North Carolinians should have the right to vote while on probation or parole. [Read more…]

4. Rehabilitation, solitary confinement, staff vacancies in focus at confirmation hearing for new corrections chief

Senate Judiciary Committee questions Todd Ishee before voting on his appointment later today.

As state senators peppered him with questions gauging whether he should be the secretary of the new Department of Adult Correction, Todd Ishee repeatedly returned to the same point: education and vocational programs are important for many of the roughly 30,000 people held in the state’s prisons, 95% of whom will be released someday.

“We bear a responsibility as a state to produce good neighbors, and transition men and women home that are ready to be successful,” Ishee said. “Education is a very important part of that.”

As much as Ishee plugged rehabilitation for the incarcerated, he also underscored the importance of protecting corrections staff, going so far as to say that the prison system cannot comply with the Mandela Rules on solitary confinement; those rules call for United Nations-member states to prohibit prolonged restrictive housing for more than 15 consecutive days.[Read more…]

* Bonus video: Sec. Todd Ishee discusses needs for NC’s new Department of Adult Correction

5. NC bill requiring schools to out transgender students to parents draws fire

Parents, teachers, and the ACLU of North Carolina criticized a controversial bill moving through the state Senate that would require schools tell parents if their children want to use different names or pronouns at school.

Called the “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” Senate bill 49 mirrors proposed legislation the Senate approved last year, with a few changes. Instruction on gender identity, sexuality, and sexual activity would be prohibited in kindergarten through fourth grade.

Last year’s bill did not get a hearing in the House, but the bill would have an easier time this year overcoming a potential veto.[Read more…]

* Bonus video: NCAE President Tamika Walker Kelly on SB49 “Parents’ Bill of Rights”

6. In appeals court case, a political fight over transgender identity and health care

When a federal District Court judge ruled last year the North Carolina State Health Plan’s exclusion of gender-affirming treatments for transgender people was discriminatory and unconstitutional, the state’s LGBTQ community celebrated victory in a legal fight it had been waging since 2019.

But that decision is being revisited on appeal this month in a political environment in which conservative activists, politicians and lawmakers increasingly portray transgender people as mentally ill, those who support them as a threat to children, and doctors who treat them as “mutilators.”

State Treasurer Dale Folwell, whose office administers the plan, has championed and strongly defended the exclusion of transgender care since taking office in 2017. [Read more…]

7. A moment of hope and light in a dark and violent winter (Commentary)

January has been yet another warm month in North Carolina and across much of the rest of the nation. After a brief and sharp holiday week plunge, temperatures have consistently felt more like mid-March – or, at least, what mid-March used to feel like.

And while a globally warm winter certainly has some temporary advantages – especially for people living on the street and those trying to cope with temporarily inflated home heating costs – it’s hard not to be struck with a profound sense of unease at the rapid change afflicting the Earth’s biosphere.

Most of us attempt to carry on as best we can – either by choosing not to dwell on the existential environmental crises we face or by stubbornly or pigheadedly denying their existence – but the pall cast by the climate emergency and the long list of other crises afflicting our crowded and frequently violent world is undeniable. [Read more…]

8. After years of delay EPA to commence clean-up of Superfund sites in Gastonia, Yadkinville, Charlotte and Jacksonville

The forest lay still, save for the rustling of leaves of bamboo. It was in a clearing on this 15 acres in rural Gastonia that Carl Hendrix, now deceased, scratched out a living. He took in old chemical drums from nearby industry, rinsed them, poured the toxic dregs on the ground, then flattened the metal for sale as scrap.

Over the past 60 years the chemical TCE, found in solvents, has soaked through the earth, meandered through the subsurface rock, inched its way below Hemphill Road and contaminated at least eight private drinking water wells, plus another community well that served an entire neighborhood. TCE entered seeps that fed an unnamed creek where children used to play.

TCE is a known human carcinogen. Exposure can also cause heart malformations in a fetus, especially in the earliest stages of development, before a person knows they are pregnant. [Read more…]

9. Weekly Radio Interviews and Daily Radio Commentaries:

Click here for the latest radio interviews and commentaries with Policy Watch Director Rob Schofield.

10. Weekly Editorial Cartoon:

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