Dear friends,
Today, we’ll start close to home. If you appreciate a pleasing interaction of built-environment and sunset, you can check out “Manhattanhenge” at 8:12 this evening.
Check for best locations to view the sunset framed by the skyline.
The NYC Parks Department is planting more than 9,000 trees this spring. About a third are already in the ground in communities where residents need fresh air and shade from the summer heat.
The data shows dense clusters of newly planted trees in Harlem, Morningside Heights, Sunset Park and other neighborhoods. More plantings are planned in Pelham Parkway, Parkchester and Castle Hill in the Bronx, and in a broad swath of southeast Queens.
Section 8 housing vouchers are back, baby! Section 8 has been around since the 1970s, and the desirable vouchers cover housing costs that exceed 30 percent of the holder’s income.
After a nearly 15-year closure, the New York City Housing Authority will reopen the Section 8 waitlist on June 3, giving New Yorkers across 200,000 households a fresh shot at a coveted, federally-backed rental voucher.
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) will reopen the waitlist for its Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) Program from Monday, June 3, 2024, at 12:00 AM through Sunday, June 9, 2024, at 11:59 PM.
For more information about applying for Section 8, go here. Pass it on.
The National Education Association has 3 million members, who teach and support nearly 50 million students in public schools. They are ready with a response to the ridiculous proposal from the House of Representatives to
remove a 2018 Farm Bill requirement for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reassess the cost for a frugal, healthy meal every five years to update its Thrifty Food Plan , which is used to determine benefit levels.
The House proposal is bad news that needs our collective response. The NEA made it easy. Let’s help Congress get it right.
Strengthen the most effective anti-hunger program in the US.
You may have noticed my tendency to be excessively earnest. I often think of this dimension of my character as No-fun Lynnie.
Of course, earnestness has its place. When I was a teacher, NfL was very busy insisting that students learn to properly cite their sources. Those who went on to college sometimes come back to thank me for teaching them the rules.
Now, I urge people to comment on proposed rules and celebrate the good ones.
The Environmental Integrity Project has been tracking the average benzene emissions from the nation’s 115 refineries and their analysis of EPA data shows progress:
The number of US oil refineries exceeding EPA’s action level for benzene at the end of 2023 fell by half since 2020, suggesting that a new federal program that requires fenceline monitoring for the cancer-causing pollutant and cleanup actions is working to reduce health risks to nearby communities.
Although the relevant rule dates from 2015, a lawsuit against oil refineries in Texas and Louisiana was necessary to get companies to start monitoring benzene concentrations.
A new rule from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission provides the US with an overdue long-term planning strategy for energy transmission to facilitate the connection of clean energy resources to the grid.
The rule requires a holistic assessment of transmission benefits, which
discourages selective benefit analysis—or planning and building lines for only a narrow set of issues—which has previously led to piecemeal investments in our grid infrastructure. These benefits include things such as upgrading or replacing aging infrastructure, reducing energy losses, improving grid congestion, and mitigating extreme weather events.
It’s time to stop pretending that these rules are not a big deal for ordinary people, even if folks don’t know what the rules are called or who makes them.
More than 60 percent of US voters support climate litigation against Big Oil. An even greater share of Latino and Black voters — 66 and 71 percent respectively — believe that
oil and gas companies should be held legally accountable for their contributions to climate change, including their impacts on extreme weather events and public health.
Cities and states have filed 40 civil suits against fossil fuel companies for deceiving the public about climate change.
Although Black voters have become less enthusiastic in their support for Biden, their concern about climate impacts on their communities has grown. This reality represents an opportunity.
Biden should be standing shoulder to shoulder with Americans sweltering in record heat and picking up the pieces of their shattered lives when powerful storms devastate their communities. Let him show up for those people the way he did for the United Auto Workers last year, in other words. “My message would be relentless and simple,” McKibben says. “To get out of this cycle of destruction, we need clean energy. I’ve supported it. My opponent has opposed it, and on laughable grounds — that windmills cause cancer. So let’s go forward, not backward.”
It would be so much easier to take climate action if the conversations about climate were happening whenever candidates encounter their constituents.
Tell the President to talk about the climate every chance he gets.
She pointed out a lot of the unpleasantness that we live with now and the historical decline in human happiness.
[T]here’s a way to frame [climate action] as: This is an opportunity to live a different and better life. . .Often we think about the changes that are needed, and we don’t look at both sides of the coin. We think about, This is going to be expensive, or, This is going to be inconvenient, without thinking about, Do you know how inconvenient and expensive climate change is? It is so much worse.
She also reminds us of some of the things we love in nature:
We love clean rivers. We love all of these things: the susurrus of aspen leaves. . . .Petrichor. . . the smell of the soil after it first starts to rain.
Dr. Johnson is the author of a new book, coming out this summer: What if we got it right? Visions of Climate Futures.
The coolest thing about science is that you never know what you’re going to find when you start looking. The Euclid team captured dwarf galaxies, star clusters and planets that were previously unknown.
Check out the pictures from Euclid!
Imagine what we might learn about ourselves and the other living things on earth if we turned off the path of our own destruction. That’d be so cool.
with love,
L