#emission compliance

[artisticdivasworld]

Navigating the Financial Impact of EPA Emission Standards: Strategic Insights for Trucking Companies

Renee Williams, CEO & PresidentFreightRevCon, a Freight Revenue Consultants, LLC. company The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new emission standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks represent a landmark move toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving public health. With these standards set to roll out from 2027 through 2032, they are projected to cut greenhouse gas…

[kiwikiwikiwiii]

Erin Brockovich did not give 634 blow jobs in 5 days so that 6 corporate puppets could strike down the Chevron Doctrine.

[jcmarchi]

Q&A: Claire Walsh on how J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative tackles the twin climate and poverty crises

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/qa-claire-walsh-on-how-j-pals-king-climate-action-initiative-tackles-the-twin-climate-and-poverty-crises/

Q&A: Claire Walsh on how J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative tackles the twin climate and poverty crises

The King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI) is the flagship climate change program of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which innovates, tests, and scales solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty alleviation, together with policy partners worldwide.

Claire Walsh is the associate director of policy at J-PAL Global at MIT. She is also the project director of K-CAI. Here, Walsh talks about the work of K-CAI since its launch in 2020, and describes the ways its projects are making a difference. This is part of an ongoing series exploring how the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences is addressing the climate crisis.

Q: According to the King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI), any attempt to address poverty effectively must also simultaneously address climate change. Why is that?

A: Climate change will disproportionately harm people in poverty, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, because they tend to live in places that are more exposed to climate risk. These are nations in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia where low-income communities rely heavily on agriculture for their livelihoods, so extreme weather — heat, droughts, and flooding — can be devastating for people’s jobs and food security. In fact, the World Bank estimates that up to 130 million more people may be pushed into poverty by climate change by 2030.

This is unjust because these countries have historically emitted the least; their people didn’t cause the climate crisis. At the same time, they are trying to improve their economies and improve people’s welfare, so their energy demands are increasing, and they are emitting more. But they don’t have the same resources as wealthy nations for mitigation or adaptation, and many developing countries understandably don’t feel eager to put solving a problem they didn’t create at the top of their priority list. This makes finding paths forward to cutting emissions on a global scale politically challenging.

For these reasons, the problems of enhancing the well-being of people experiencing poverty, addressing inequality, and reducing pollution and greenhouse gases are inextricably linked.

Q: So how does K-CAI tackle this hybrid challenge?

A: Our initiative is pretty unique. We are a competitive, policy-based research and development fund that focuses on innovating, testing, and scaling solutions. We support researchers from MIT and other universities, and their collaborators, who are actually implementing programs, whether NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], government, or the private sector. We fund pilots of small-scale ideas in a real-world setting to determine if they hold promise, followed by larger randomized, controlled trials of promising solutions in climate change mitigation, adaptation, pollution reduction, and energy access. Our goal is to determine, through rigorous research, if these solutions are actually working — for example, in cutting emissions or protecting forests or helping vulnerable communities adapt to climate change. And finally, we offer path-to-scale grants which enable governments and NGOs to expand access to programs that have been tested and have strong evidence of impact.

We think this model is really powerful. Since we launched in 2020, we have built a portfolio of over 30 randomized evaluations and 13 scaling projects in more than 35 countries. And to date, these projects have informed the scale ups of evidence-based climate policies that have reached over 15 million people.

Q: It seems like K-CAI is advancing a kind of policy science, demanding proof of a program’s capacity to deliver results at each stage. 

A: This is one of the factors that drew me to J-PAL back in 2012. I majored in anthropology and studied abroad in Uganda. From those experiences I became very passionate about pursuing a career focused on poverty reduction. To me, it is unfair that in a world full of so much wealth and so much opportunity there exists so much extreme poverty. I wanted to dedicate my career to that, but I’m also a very detail-oriented nerd who really cares about whether a program that claims to be doing something for people is accomplishing what it claims.

It’s been really rewarding to see demand from governments and NGOs for evidence-informed policymaking grow over my 12 years at J-PAL. This policy science approach holds exciting promise to help transform public policy and climate policy in the coming decades.  

Q: Can you point to K-CAI-funded projects that meet this high bar and are now making a significant impact?

A: Several examples jump to mind. In the state of Gujarat, India, pollution regulators are trying to cut particulate matter air pollution, which is devastating to human health. The region is home to many major industries whose emissions negatively affect most of the state’s 70 million residents.

We partnered with state pollution regulators — kind of a regional EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] — to test an emissions trading scheme that is used widely in the U.S. and Europe but not in low- and middle-income countries. The government monitors pollution levels using technology installed at factories that sends data in real time, so the regulator knows exactly what their emissions look like. The regulator sets a cap on the overall level of pollution, allocates permits to pollute, and industries can trade emissions permits.

In 2019, researchers in the J-PAL network conducted the world’s first randomized, controlled trial of this emissions trading scheme and found that it cut pollution by 20 to 30 percent — a surprising reduction. It also reduced firms’ costs, on average, because the costs of compliance went down. The state government was eager to scale up the pilot, and in the past two years, two other cities, including Ahmedabad, the biggest city in the state, have adopted the concept.

We are also supporting a project in Niger, whose economy is hugely dependent on rain-fed agriculture but with climate change is experiencing rapid desertification. Researchers in the J-PAL network have been testing training farmers in a simple, inexpensive rainwater harvesting technique, where farmers dig a half-moon-shaped hole called a demi-lune right before the rainy season. This demi-lune feeds crops that are grown directly on top of it, and helps return land that resembled flat desert to arable production.

Researchers found that training farmers in this simple technology increased adoption from 4 percent to 94 percent and that demi-lunes increased agricultural output and revenue for farmers from the first year. K-CAI is funding a path-to-scale grant so local implementers can teach this technique to over 8,000 farmers and build a more cost-effective program model. If this takes hold, the team will work with local partners to scale the training to other relevant regions of the country and potentially other countries in the Sahel.

One final example that we are really proud of, because we first funded it as a pilot and now it’s in the path to scale phase: We supported a team of researchers working with partners in Bangladesh trying to reduce carbon emissions and other pollution from brick manufacturing, an industry that generates 17 percent of the country’s carbon emissions. The scale of manufacturing is so great that at some times of year, Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh) looks like Mordor.

Workers form these bricks and stack hundreds of thousands of them, which they then fire by burning coal. A team of local researchers and collaborators from our J-PAL network found that you can reduce the amount of coal needed for the kilns by making some low-cost changes to the manufacturing process, including stacking the bricks in a way that increases airflow in the kiln and feeding the coal fires more frequently in smaller rather than larger batches.

In the randomized, controlled trial K-CAI supported, researchers found that this cut carbon and pollution emissions significantly, and now the government has invited the team to train 1,000 brick manufacturers in Dhaka in these techniques.

Q: These are all fascinating and powerful instances of implementing ideas that address a range of problems in different parts of the world. But can K-CAI go big enough and fast enough to take a real bite out of the twin poverty and climate crisis?

A: We’re not trying to find silver bullets. We are trying to build a large playbook of real solutions that work to solve specific problems in specific contexts. As you build those up in the hundreds, you have a deep bench of effective approaches to solve problems that can add up in a meaningful way. And because J-PAL works with governments and NGOs that have the capacity to take the research into action, since 2003, over 600 million people around the world have been reached by policies and programs that are informed by evidence that J-PAL-affiliated researchers produced. While global challenges seem daunting, J-PAL has shown that in 20 years we can achieve a great deal, and there is huge potential for future impact.

But unfortunately, globally, there is an underinvestment in policy innovation to combat climate change that may generate quicker, lower-cost returns at a large scale — especially in policies that determine which technologies get adopted or commercialized. For example, a lot of the huge fall in prices of renewable energy was enabled by early European government investments in solar and wind, and then continuing support for innovation in renewable energy.

That’s why I think social sciences have so much to offer in the fight against climate change and poverty; we are working where technology meets policy and where technology meets real people, which often determines their success or failure. The world should be investing in policy, economic, and social innovation just as much as it is investing in technological innovation.

Q: Do you need to be an optimist in your job?

A: I am half-optimist, half-pragmatist. I have no control over the climate change outcome for the world. And regardless of whether we can successfully avoid most of the potential damages of climate change, when I look back, I’m going to ask myself, “Did I fight or not?” The only choice I have is whether or not I fought, and I want to be a fighter.

[franciscomaialab]

The world of carbon accounting without going into deep layers

With the growing pressure for sustainability, companies must report their carbon emissions effectively. In my new article, I explore carbon accounting and how frameworks such as the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064 help ensure transparency and compliance.

The impact of human activities began to be felt especially from the second and third phases of the Industrial Revolution (late 19th and 20th centuries). The figure below represents data from the Global Carbon Project and a NOAA palaeoclimate study carried out by Frank et al. (2010), which was based on the acquisition of information from three samples of Antarctic ice cores, with the aim of…

[integratedndesolution]

Integrated NDE Solution in Pune: Pioneering Positive Material Identification for Quality Control and Safety Compliance

In the modern industrial landscape, ensuring the integrity and composition of materials is crucial for maintaining quality control and safety compliance. Positive Material Identification (PMI) is an essential non-destructive method used to verify the chemical composition of materials. Integrated NDE Solution in Pune offers comprehensive PMI services, utilizing advanced technologies such as X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyzers and Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES). This article delves into the intricacies of PMI, its benefits, and the cutting-edge services provided by Integrated NDE Solution.

Understanding Positive Material Identification

Positive Material Identification (PMI) is a non-destructive testing method used to verify the alloy composition of materials. PMI ensures that the materials used in manufacturing processes meet the specified chemical composition, thereby maintaining product quality and safety standards. This verification process is crucial for industries where material composition directly impacts performance, reliability, and safety, such as aerospace, oil and gas, power generation, and pharmaceuticals.

Importance of Positive Material Identification

Quality Control: Ensures that materials conform to the required specifications, maintaining the integrity and quality of the final product.

Safety Compliance: Verifies that materials meet industry safety standards, reducing the risk of failures and accidents.

Material Verification: Confirms the correct alloy composition of materials, preventing mix-ups and ensuring proper material usage.

Regulatory Compliance: Helps industries adhere to stringent regulatory requirements and standards.

Cost Savings: Prevents costly material failures and recalls by ensuring the correct material is used from the start.

How Positive Material Identification Works

Positive Material Identification is typically conducted using two main technologies: X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES).

X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) Analyzers

XRF analyzers use X-rays to excite the atoms in a sample, causing them to emit secondary (fluorescent) X-rays. These fluorescent X-rays are characteristic of the elements present in the sample, allowing for a semi-quantitative chemical analysis. The key steps in the XRF process are:

Preparation: The surface of the material is cleaned to ensure accurate readings.

Excitation: The XRF device directs X-rays at the material, exciting the atoms within the sample.

Detection: The device detects the emitted fluorescent X-rays and measures their energy levels.

Analysis: The energy levels correspond to specific elements, allowing for the identification of the material's composition.

Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES)

OES involves exciting the atoms in a sample using a high-energy spark or arc, causing them to emit light. The emitted light is then analyzed to determine the material's composition. The key steps in the OES process are:

Preparation: The surface of the material is cleaned and sometimes ground to create a flat, uniform surface.

Excitation: The OES device generates a spark or arc that excites the atoms in the material.

Detection: The emitted light is collected and passed through a spectrometer.

Analysis: The spectrometer measures the wavelengths of the emitted light, which correspond to specific elements, allowing for precise material identification.

Benefits of Positive Material Identification

Non-Destructive: PMI does not damage or alter the material being tested.

Accurate: Provides precise and reliable identification of alloy composition.

Quick and Efficient: Delivers immediate results, enabling rapid decision-making.

Versatile: Applicable to a wide range of materials, including metals and alloys.

Portable: PMI equipment is often portable, allowing for on-site testing.

Integrated NDE Solution in Pune: Leaders in Positive Material Identification

Integrated NDE Solution in Pune is a leader in non-destructive testing, offering a broad spectrum of services, including Positive Material Identification. Their expertise, state-of-the-art equipment, and commitment to quality make them a trusted partner for industries requiring reliable material verification.

Comprehensive NDT Services Offered

Positive Material Identification (PMI)

Remote Visual Inspection (RVI)

Magnetic Particle Inspection (MPI)

Ultrasonic Testing (UT)

Radiographic Testing (RT)

Liquid Penetrant Testing (LPT)

Eddy Current Testing (ECT)

Portable Hardness Testing

Ferrite Testing

Industries Served

Integrated NDE Solution in Pune caters to a diverse array of industries, including:

Aerospace: Ensuring the safety and reliability of aircraft components.

Automotive: Inspecting critical parts to prevent failures.

Construction: Verifying the integrity of structural components.

Oil and Gas: Ensuring the reliability of pipelines and equipment.

Power Generation: Maintaining the integrity of infrastructure components.

Pharmaceuticals: Verifying the composition of materials used in drug manufacturing.

Positive Material Identification in Action

Case Study: Oil and Gas Pipeline Inspection

In the oil and gas industry, the reliability of pipelines is crucial. Integrated NDE Solution was approached by a leading oil and gas company to conduct PMI on pipeline materials. Using advanced XRF analyzers, the team verified the alloy composition of the pipeline materials, ensuring they met the specified standards for corrosion resistance and mechanical strength. The inspection helped prevent potential failures and ensured the safety and reliability of the pipeline network.

Case Study: Aerospace Component Verification

A major aerospace manufacturer required PMI for critical components used in aircraft engines. Integrated NDE Solution employed both XRF and OES technologies to verify the alloy composition of the components. The precise identification confirmed that the materials met the stringent specifications required for aerospace applications, ensuring the safety and performance of the aircraft engines.

Advanced Positive Material Identification Equipment

Integrated NDE Solution in Pune utilizes the latest PMI equipment to ensure the highest level of accuracy and reliability in their inspections. Some of the advanced equipment includes:

Handheld XRF Analyzers: Portable devices that provide rapid, on-site analysis of alloy composition.

Stationary XRF Analyzers: High-precision instruments used for detailed laboratory analysis.

Mobile OES Units: Portable units that offer precise material identification in the field.

Stationary OES Systems: Advanced systems used for comprehensive laboratory analysis of materials.

The Role of Certified Technicians

The effectiveness of Positive Material Identification largely depends on the expertise of the technicians conducting the tests. Integrated NDE Solution in Pune employs certified technicians who undergo rigorous training and continuous professional development. Their skills and knowledge ensure that clients receive the highest quality of service.

Commitment to Quality and Safety

Integrated NDE Solution in Pune is dedicated to maintaining the highest standards of quality and safety. They adhere to international standards and best practices, ensuring that all inspections are performed with utmost precision and reliability. This commitment to excellence has earned them a stellar reputation in the industry.

Customer-Centric Approach

At Integrated NDE Solution in Pune, customer satisfaction is a top priority. They work closely with clients to understand their specific needs and tailor their services accordingly. Whether it’s a small-scale inspection or a large industrial project, they provide personalized solutions that meet the highest standards of quality and reliability.

Why Choose Integrated NDE Solution in Pune?

Expertise: Extensive experience and technical know-how in NDT services.

Technology: Utilization of the latest and most advanced testing equipment.

Quality: Commitment to providing accurate and reliable results.

Customer Service: Focus on building long-term relationships through excellent service.

Compliance: Adherence to all relevant industry standards and regulations.

Conclusion

In industries where precision and reliability are non-negotiable, Integrated NDE Solution in Pune stands out as a leader in non-destructive testing, particularly in Positive Material Identification. Their dedication to quality, use of advanced technology, and customer-centric approach make them the go-to choice for businesses across various sectors. By partnering with Integrated NDE Solution, companies can ensure the integrity and safety of their materials and components, safeguarding their operations and reputation.

Integrated NDE Solution in Pune continues to set the standard for excellence in non-destructive inspection. Their expertise in Positive Material Identification and other NDT services is pivotal in industries where safety and reliability are crucial. As technology advances and industries evolve, Integrated NDE Solution remains at the forefront, offering unparalleled service and support to their clients.

In conclusion, for businesses seeking the highest standards in Positive Material Identification, alloy composition verification, and comprehensive NDT services, Integrated NDE Solution in Pune is the trusted partner that delivers results. Their innovative approach, advanced technology, and unwavering commitment to quality ensure that every inspection meets the stringent requirements of today’s demanding industrial environments.

[electronalytics]

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Market Insights Includes Dynamics Key Players, Demand, Products, and Application 2017 – 2032

Overview of the Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Market:

The carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) market involves technologies and processes aimed at capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial and energy-related sources, transporting it, and securely storing it underground or utilizing it in other applications. CCS is a key strategy in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and addressing climate change by reducing CO2 emissions from fossil fuel-based power plants, industrial facilities, and other high-emitting sources.

Global Carbon Capture and Sequestration Market is valued at USD 2.1 Billion in 2022 and is projected to reach a value of USD 7.49 Billion by 2030 at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 19.9% over the forecast period 2023-2030.

Key Factors Driving the Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Market:

Climate Change Mitigation: CCS plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change by capturing and storing CO2 emissions from major industrial and energy-related sources. As governments, organizations, and industries commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, CCS offers a viable solution for decarbonizing high-emitting sectors.

Policy and Regulatory Support: Government policies and regulations that incentivize or mandate the reduction of CO2 emissions provide a significant driver for the CCS market. Financial support, tax incentives, carbon pricing mechanisms, and emissions reduction targets create a favorable environment for CCS deployment and investment.

Energy Transition and Fossil Fuel Use: CCS technology enables the continued use of fossil fuels while reducing their carbon footprint. As the world transitions to cleaner energy sources, CCS can play a vital role in mitigating emissions from fossil fuel power plants and industrial processes during the transition period.

Industrial Emissions Reduction: Industries such as cement production, steel manufacturing, and chemical processing contribute to a significant share of global CO2 emissions. CCS can help these industries reduce their emissions by capturing and storing CO2 generated during their production processes.

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR): CCS can be coupled with enhanced oil recovery techniques, where the captured CO2 is injected into oil reservoirs to extract additional oil. The revenue generated from EOR can provide economic incentives for implementing CCS projects.

Here's an overview of the demand and scope of the CCS market:

Demand:

Climate Change Mitigation: The primary driver of CCS demand is the urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and limit global warming. CCS offers a way to capture CO2 emissions from industrial processes and power plants before they are released into the atmosphere.

Regulatory Pressures: Governments and international organizations are implementing stricter emissions reduction targets. CCS can help industries comply with these regulations and avoid penalties.

Emission-Intensive Sectors: Industries such as power generation, cement production, steel manufacturing, and oil and gas extraction are major sources of CO2 emissions. These sectors have a high demand for CCS technologies to lower their carbon footprint.

Transition to Clean Energy: As renewable energy sources like wind and solar power grow, CCS can complement these efforts by capturing emissions from intermittent renewable sources and providing a stable source of low-carbon energy.

Scope:

Carbon Capture Technologies: CCS involves capturing CO2 emissions from various sources such as power plants, industrial facilities, and even directly from the air. Different capture technologies, such as post-combustion capture, pre-combustion capture, and oxyfuel combustion, offer diverse solutions for different industries.

Transport and Storage: Once captured, the CO2 needs to be transported and stored safely. This involves building pipelines to transport CO2 to storage sites, often deep underground in geological formations like depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers.

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR): Some CCS projects leverage the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery, a process where injected CO2 helps extract more oil from depleted wells while simultaneously storing the CO2 underground.

Policy and Incentives: Governments and organizations are providing financial incentives, subsidies, and grants to support CCS projects as part of their climate change mitigation strategies. The scope includes policy frameworks and regulatory mechanisms to encourage CCS adoption.

Research and Innovation: Ongoing research aims to improve the efficiency and affordability of CCS technologies. Innovations in materials, capture processes, and storage techniques expand the scope of CCS applications.

Global Cooperation: CCS requires international cooperation due to its potential for cross-border carbon transport and storage. Collaborative efforts between countries can enhance the effectiveness of CCS projects.

Public Perception and Education: Part of the scope involves raising awareness about CCS, addressing public concerns, and building public support for these technologies as a crucial tool in the fight against climate change.

We recommend referring our Stringent datalytics firm, industry publications, and websites that specialize in providing market reports. These sources often offer comprehensive analysis, market trends, growth forecasts, competitive landscape, and other valuable insights into this market.

By visiting our website or contacting us directly, you can explore the availability of specific reports related to this market. These reports often require a purchase or subscription, but we provide comprehensive and in-depth information that can be valuable for businesses, investors, and individuals interested in this market.

“Remember to look for recent reports to ensure you have the most current and relevant information.”

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Market Segmentations:

Global Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Market: By Company

• Siemens

• Aker Solutions

• Fluor

• Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

• Halliburton

• Honeywell International

• Shell Global

• Maersk Oil

Global Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Market: By Type

• Carbon Capture

• Carbon Sequestration

Global Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Market: By Application

• Energy

• Industrial

• Agricultural

• Others

Global Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Market: Regional Analysis

The regional analysis of the global Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) market provides insights into the market's performance across different regions of the world. The analysis is based on recent and future trends and includes market forecast for the prediction period. The countries covered in the regional analysis of the Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) market report are as follows:

North America: The North America region includes the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The U.S. is the largest market for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in this region, followed by Canada and Mexico. The market growth in this region is primarily driven by the presence of key market players and the increasing demand for the product.

Europe: The Europe region includes Germany, France, U.K., Russia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and Rest of Europe. Germany is the largest market for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in this region, followed by the U.K. and France. The market growth in this region is driven by the increasing demand for the product in the automotive and aerospace sectors.

Asia-Pacific: The Asia-Pacific region includes Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Rest of Asia-Pacific. China is the largest market for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in this region, followed by Japan and India. The market growth in this region is driven by the increasing adoption of the product in various end-use industries, such as automotive, aerospace, and construction.

Middle East and Africa: The Middle East and Africa region includes Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, South Africa, Egypt, Israel, and Rest of Middle East and Africa. The market growth in this region is driven by the increasing demand for the product in the aerospace and defense sectors.

South America: The South America region includes Argentina, Brazil, and Rest of South America. Brazil is the largest market for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in this region, followed by Argentina. The market growth in this region is primarily driven by the increasing demand for the product in the automotive sector.

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Reasons to Purchase Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Market Report:

• To gain insights into market trends and dynamics: this reports provide valuable insights into industry trends and dynamics, including market size, growth rates, and key drivers and challenges.

• To identify key players and competitors: this research reports can help businesses identify key players and competitors in their industry, including their market share, strategies, and strengths and weaknesses.

• To understand consumer behavior: this research reports can provide valuable insights into consumer behavior, including their preferences, purchasing habits, and demographics.

• To evaluate market opportunities: this research reports can help businesses evaluate market opportunities, including potential new products or services, new markets, and emerging trends.

• To make informed business decisions: this research reports provide businesses with data-driven insights that can help them make informed business decisions, including strategic planning, product development, and marketing and advertising strategies.

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[gottalottarocks]

Are you an American? Frustrated by the political process? Do you feel like you have no voice in our government? Let me introduce you to the wonderful world of public comments. 

This is where federal agencies propose new regulations asking for public feedback:

Regulations.gov

Here's a step by step on how to navigate this:

Look through the proposals on the explore tab and filter by "Proposed Rule". These are the regulations that have been proposed, but not finalized. 

If you click on these, they are pretty dense, text heavy explanations of the proposed rule changes. I definitely do a lot of googling when trying to understand what I'm reading. Also there are a lot of different topics here and I definitely don't comment on everything.

This is how you make a public comment. For example, for this proposed rule:

Start a new document and write the subject and docket number. Your comment NEEDS to have the docket number for them to count it most of the time, and the correct subject some of the time.

^^ this is ambiguous, but add the docket ID and subject just to be safe, it should look like this:

Ref: Docket ID No. NSD 104

Provisions Pertaining to Preventing Access to Americans' Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and U.S. Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern

Then address to the person at the very very end of the page. 

Scroll all the way to the end:

^^this is the person you address to. 

Then introduce yourself. If you have experience related to the proposed rule, talk about that. For rules related to the environment and public health I say that I'm a geologist with a master's degree and I work in environmental remediation. Otherwise, I just say I'm a concerned citizen. 

Then I say hey I agree/ disagree with this proposed rule and here's why. Oftentimes there will be lists that the federal agency is asking for specific feedback on.

Commenting on these will have a lot of impact. 

Here's an example comment I forgot to post for a rule regarding methane emissions in the oil and gas industry:

Administrator Michael Regan The United States Environmental Protection Agency 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20460

Ref: Docket ID No. __ Waste Emissions Charge for Petroleum and Natural Gas Systems Dear Administrator Regan, My name is __ and I am writing to you as a geologist and graduate of ___.  I currently work in ____. Thank you for your interest in reducing methane pollution, which I believe to be one of the most important aspects in reducing the harm caused by the climate crisis. Within the short term, methane is a much more powerful force of global warming than carbon dioxide. It breaks down faster than carbon dioxide— but it traps significantly more heat that should be bouncing back into space. When scientists talk about taking our foot off the gas pedal in regards to the climate crisis, methane is at the forefront of our minds. Natural gas is often proposed as a solution to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions (since it produces less carbon dioxide than coal plants), but these methane leaks are a serious threat to public health. Not only is methane hazardous, it’s ability to cause short-term superheating is contributing to the rapid increase in wildfires within the U.S. and globally, further degrading air quality. Last summer in NYC skies were orange, caused by ash from Canadian wildfires. As someone who sets up air monitoring equipment every day to ensure the surrounding community is not impacted from the disposal of hazardous waste, I have a unique opportunity to see on a day-to-day basis how air quality is degrading. I strongly support the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed waste emissions charge. For EPA’s implementation of the fee to fulfill Congress’s goals, the final regulation must continue to include key requirements including: ·       Regulatory compliance exemptions must only become available after final standards and plans are in effect in all states and that these plans are at least as strong as the EPA's 202 methane emissions proposal. Operators filing for exemption must also demonstrate full compliance across their facilities; ·       Strong and clear criteria must remain in place for operators seeking an exemption based on unreasonable permitting delays; ·       When operators seek an exemption for plugged wells, they must clearly demonstrate that their wells have been properly plugged and are no longer polluting; ·       Transparent calculations and methodologies to accurately determine an owner or operator’s net emissions; and ·       Strong verification protocols so that fee obligations accurately reflect reported emissions and that exemptions are only available once the conditions Congress set forth are met. I urge the EPA to quickly finalize this proposal with limited flaring, strengthened emissions standards for storage tanks, and a pathway for enhanced community monitoring. Thank you, ___________

And then paste your comment in or upload a document and submit! You will be asked to provide your name and address. Also the FCC will only take comments on their website, but the proposed rule will be posted on the federal regulations website I put above and they should have a link to the FCC website within that post. 

[reasonsforhope]

The new 'compost obligatoire' rules came into force on 1 January 2024. Here's what they entail.

As of 1 January 2024, organic waste recycling is mandatory in France under new 'compost obligatoire' rules.

With support from the government’s Green Fund, municipalities must provide residents with ways to sort bio-waste, which includes food scraps, vegetable peels, expired food and garden waste.

Households and businesses are required to dispose of organic matter either in a dedicated small bin for home collection or at a municipal collection point. Previously, only those who generated over five tonnes of organic waste per year were required to separate it.

The waste will then be turned into biogas or compost to replace chemical fertilisers. Alternatively, it can be composted at home.

The obligation is currently on local authorities to provide an easy means for households to compost or separate organic waste.

While facilities are rolled out, there will not be fines imposed for non-compliance. It is yet to be seen whether stricter rules will be imposed in future. 

One-third of household waste is bio-waste

Organic waste from food and gardens accounts for almost one-third of household waste. When it is mixed with other rubbish, it typically ends up in landfills or incinerators, where it produces heat-trapping greenhouse gases like methane and CO2.

Food waste is responsible for about 16 per cent of the total emissions from the EU food system, according to the European Commission. Globally, food loss and waste generates around 8 per cent of all human-caused emissions annually, the UN says.

It can also contaminate packaging destined for recycling like paper, plastic and glass.

In 2018, only 34 per cent of the EU’s total bio-waste was collected, leaving 40 million tonnes of potential soil nutrients to be discarded, according to NGO Zero Waste Europe.

In France, an estimated 82 kg of compostable waste per person is thrown away each year.

Is bio-waste separation mandatory in other European countries?

Under the EU’s Waste Framework Directive, bio-waste collection is being encouraged this year, but it stops short of setting mandatory targets.

In many European countries, organic waste separation has already been implemented at the municipal level.

Milan in Italy has been running a residential food waste collection programme since 2014. Households were given dedicated bins and compostable bags to kick off the scheme.

Elsewhere, taxes or bans on incinerating bio-waste have encouraged similar schemes, with separate bins and home composting widespread in Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The UK announced plans to roll out separate food waste collection in 2023. It remains voluntary for households in England, but is more strictly enforced in Wales and for business owners.

How to sort your bio-waste

Ideally, all waste - including organic matter - should be kept to a minimum.

This can be achieved through careful meal planning. Consuming, freezing or preserving food before it expires along with using every part of an ingredient also help to reduce waste. Some food waste can even be repurposed into animal feed.

Any food waste that cannot be saved or repurposed should be either composted or separated for collection. This includes uneaten food scraps, baked goods, dairy products, eggshells, fruit and vegetables and their peels, mouldy food, pet food, raw and cooked meat and fish, bones, tea and coffee grounds.

Liquids, non-food products and packaging should not be placed in bio-waste bins.

-via EuroNews.Green, January 2, 2024

[follow-up-news]

The Supreme Court on Wednesdayallowed the Biden administration at least in the short term to enforce its latest attempt to curb climate-harming carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants that contribute to climate change. The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, rejected emergency requests brought by Republican states led by West Virginia and various industry groups seeking to block the regulation. "We look forward to implementing this rule, which is based on proven and cost-effective control technologies, to secure up to $370 billion in climate and public health net benefits over the next two decades," an Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. The Supreme Court is often skeptical of major agency actions, but it has bucked that reputation in recent weeks. It has now rejected three different efforts to block major air pollution regulations, with the others involving methane and mercury. The brief court order Wednesday noted that conservative Justice Clarence Thomas would have granted the application, while fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito did not participate. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote a brief statement saying the applicants "have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits as to at least some of their challenges." But he added that there is no need for the court to step in at this stage because the first compliance deadlines do not kick in until June. The case will now continue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. After it rules, the issue could go before the justices again.

[artisticdivasworld]

August Trucking News: A Mixed Bag for Owner-Operators

As we wrap up August, it’s been a rollercoaster month for owner-operators in the trucking industry. Here’s a rundown of ten key news stories that have made an impact, both positively and negatively. Credit: AFTdispatch.com Freight Market Struggles Continue The ongoing freight recession has intensified, with a surplus of trucks on the road and a decline in e-commerce demand leading to lower…

[arkanis-englishupdates]

DOCUMENT TRANSLATION

Hello everybody, Admin 🦇 here!

In this post we will translate all the documents we have so far. When more documents are discovered, we will bring the part 2 of this post.

DOCUMENT 1 — [?????] Message.

"Blessed time when the factory arrived in Valigma, they told me. I hate this affirmation, I hate everything, I hate. Bastard, someone save me for the love of all that is most sacred! Help me!!!"

[ "Blessed time" can also be translated to "Worst time" because "Bendita hora" is a phrase with a negative tone, not positive.]

["Someone save me for the love of all that is most sacred!" can also be translated as "Someone save me for the God's sake!". Both have practically the same meaning.]

DOCUMENT 2 — Establishment License Permit.

VALIGMA

ESTABLISHMENT LICENSE PERMIT

EXERCISE NUMBER

2 11

GRANTED TO

NAME: Nascimento Bira.

ADDRESS: Bar de Seu Bira.

Registered in the CMC. Under No. 21C

WITH THE FOLLOWING MAIN ACTIVITY

Bar.

SECUNDARY ACTIVITY

Grocery Store.

WHILE SATISFYING THE REQUIREMENTS OF

CURRENT LEGISLATION.

FOR OPERATION AT THE

FOLLOWING HOURS:

8:00 AM until 3:00 PM

EMISSION DATE EXPIRATION DATE

08/31/1982 03/08/2025

VALIGMA July 7 OF 1985

[Signature] [Signature]

CITY HALL MERCHANT

WARNING

The following permit will be posted

in a visible location.

[In the signatures, it is possible to see the full name of the owner of the establishment and the name of the official responsible for the permit. Unfortunately, as I don't have the text font used, I can't accurately distinguish.]

DOCUMENT 3 — Police Report.

Public Security Secretary

VALIGMA CITY

POLICE REPORT

RESPONSIBLE POLICE OFFICER

Jorge

BOOK

TYPIFICATION 24-12a

Exile

REPORT OF EVENTS IN SEQUENCE

The citizen Bia Raux was exiled from the community after repeated transgressions of the city's regiment and current government laws. Her conduct was meticulously investigated by the competent authorities, revealing practices and behaviors that put public order and citizens safety at risk. Bia Raux's actions were considered incompatible with established standards of coexistence, justifying the application of the exile measure as a way of preserving collective well-being.

The exile procedure was carried out in strict accordance with legal protocols, ensuring that the defendant's rights were fully respected during the judicial process. Witnesses were called and testimony taken, evidences was presented and examined thoroughly, culminating in a verdict that determined the imperative need for exile. The court decision, although severe, was based on the need to maintain order and peace in the community, being widely supported by citizens who desire a safe and harmonious environment.

After Bia Raux's exile, additional measures were implemented to prevent similar infractions from occurring in the future. Authorities reinforced enforcement of laws and promoted educational campaigns to make citizens aware of their obligations and responsibilities. At the present time, Bia Raux is outside the city's territorial limits, subject to strict conditions for any possibility of reinstatement, conditioned to substantial changes in her behavior and demonstration of compliance with established legal and substantial norms.

PAGE 1 OF 2

[Signature]

OFFICIAL SHERIFF

For now, these are all the documents translated so far, stay tuned for more posts!

[jcmarchi]

Steve Statler, Chief Marketing Officer at Wiliot – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/steve-statler-chief-marketing-officer-at-wiliot-interview-series/

Steve Statler, Chief Marketing Officer at Wiliot – Interview Series

Steve Statler is the Chief Marketing Officer at Wiliot, author of Beacon Technologies, and the presenter of the Mister Beacon Ambient IoT podcast.

At the core of the Wiliot System are IoT Pixels, which are low-cost tags approximately the size of a postage stamp, designed for easy integration into a wide range of products. These IoT Pixels continuously gather data from their surroundings and are powered either by harvesting radio frequency energy or, in some versions, by a thin printed battery. The transmissions from IoT Pixels are secure and can be read using existing Bluetooth devices.

What are the potential benefits of integrating WiliBot into existing supply chain management systems?

Integrating WiliBot into existing supply chain management systems will allow brands and manufacturers to communicate with their products in ways that significantly improve their supply chain efficiency and sustainability.

By enabling natural-language conversations with any ambient-IoT connected product, WiliBot can be used by businesses seeking to ask questions about their ambient IoT enabled products and supply chains: How fresh is this product? How did it get to the store? Which product should I stock next, and why? What is the carbon footprint of this product? Why is it so high or low? The answers to these questions can then be integrated in real time into a businesses supply chain strategy.

How does Wiliot’s use of ambient IoT and GenAI enhance real-time data visibility in supply chains?

The combination of ambient IoT and GenAI offers a unique opportunity to enhance and apply real-time data visibility. Wiliot’s IoT Pixels are constantly collecting real-time data throughout the supply chain and even in stores.

WiliBot enhances this real-time data visibility by harnessing the power of generative AI, to make sense of the data provided. This allows companies – and eventually consumers – the ability to have conversations with the products they make, source, distribute and ultimately purchase. Breaking down complex and multitudes of data into easy to understand actionable insights.

For a GenAI model to run effectively, it requires significant data input to train it. In the past, due to the lack of large amounts of real time data, this meant supply chain GenAI models would utilize previously existing data. While this proved generally effective, supply chains shift from year to year, and last year’s data isn’t always the most accurate when predicting what businesses need in a year, month, and even day. The constant real-time data that Wiliot’s IoT Pixels and Ambient Data Platform feeds into WiliBot proves the most effective for brands looking to capitalize on the most current intelligence that’s happening in their supply chains.

In what ways can WiliBot help businesses improve sustainability and reduce waste within their supply chains?

Wilibot empowers consumers to vote with their purses and wallets based on better insights into the provenance, content and carbon footprint of one product versus another that may look identical. By capturing the dynamic carbon impact of storage, transportation at an item level and sharing that insight in real time, businesses can be empowered to manage down their carbon footprint every minute of every day.  An end of year scorecard at a company level can’t do that.

Wiliot’s Ambient Data Platform, already allows companies to gain unprecedented intelligence about the sustainability about trillions of products. With the introduction of WiliBot, businesses will now be able to ask and easily break down that intelligence into real-time information about individual products.

In turn, this means companies can get real-time specifics on the sustainability of their supply chains. They can ask WiliBot questions like: why some products have a greater carbon footprint than others, what products they should stock before they expire, and how weather patterns are impacting products throughout the supply chain.

WiliBot allows companies to recognize where changes could be made to ensure sustainability and reduce waste, without waiting for the past year’s data.

How do Wiliot’s IoT Pixels work, and what makes them unique in enabling continuous, real-time data collection in supply chains without the need for batteries?

Wiliot’s IoT Pixels are low-cost tags, the size of a postage stamp, and can be seamlessly manufactured into just about any product. IoT Pixels are designed to provide insights on “everything, everywhere, all at once” – because of their small size, they can be affixed to almost any product, down to even crate-level shipments. What makes IoT Pixels unique, and what allows for them to provide continuous data collection, is that they’re powered by harvested radio frequency energy, meaning they use the radio frequencies from everyday devices that already exist in the world around us. IoT Pixels then securely transmit that data, also via existing Bluetooth devices, to the Wiliot Ambient Data Platform, where it’s available for businesses to pull from.

What are the security measures in place to ensure the privacy and integrity of data collected by IoT Pixels and processed by the Wiliot Ambient Data Platform?

The data security and governance robustness of Wiliot’s Ambient Data Platform has been certified by two leading examiners. We have achieved Systems and Organization Controls (SOC) 1 Type II and SOC 2 Type II reports, both issued by independent auditors from a leading Big 4 firm.

Additionally, we recently received its third-year recertification of its ISO 27001 and 27018 certifications by the International Organization for Standardization. Both of these certifications validate our ongoing commitment to data security, governance, and privacy.

Unlike other auto-identification technologies like QR codes and RFID, Wiliot’s implementation includes encryption backed access control to the data that relates to the content, movement and usage of products.

How does WiliBot leverage generative AI to provide actionable insights from the data generated by IoT Pixels?

The data generated by IoT Pixels is sent via Bluetooth to the Wiliot cloud once it’s finalized. From there, WiliBot can leverage the generative AI to provide actionable insights.

WiliBot’s Wiliot-developed AI, built on top of a leading Large Language Model, can identify supply chain “events” and automatically generate alerts or AI responses that allow businesses to course-correct or optimize their operations. This could mean creating an automatic alert for a business when shipments of their produce have been handled at an unsafe temperature, or when pharmaceuticals were kept in an environment too moist for them

The answers to these questions are available in the Wiliot Ambient Data platform, but haven’t always been easily accessible. With WiliBot, these actionable insights can be democratized across organizations, as opposed to requiring significant labor or integration costs.

Can WiliBot be customized to address specific industry needs, such as retail, pharmaceuticals, or food production?

Yes. Wiliot IoT Pixels can be affixed to and provide data on any product, across retail, pharmaceuticals, food production, and more, which means that WiliBot can be distinctively tailored to the needs of those industries.

The more relevant product data that is put into WiliBot, the more specific and targeted answers will be able to be. For food retailers, the priority when implementing WiliBot may be determining the effects of their supply chain’s weather patterns upon food rot and spoil; for clothing retailers, WiliBot may be more relevant in determining where product should go in the store. WiliBot is able to uniquely make sense of data based on each customer’s specific needs and to describe products, materials, supply chains, and everything connected to the internet.

How does the Wiliot Ambient Data Platform differentiate itself from traditional IoT platforms in terms of functionality and ease of integration?

The Wiliot Ambient Data Platform differentiates itself from traditional IoT platforms because of its ‘ambient’ aspect. The data drawn from the IoT Pixels into the platform are accessible all the time as opposed to requiring labor to track, scan or read it.

Wiliot also aims to set ambient IoT standards throughout the industry, which will allow for mass adoption and easy integration by the world’s largest retailers. Already, we are contributing to the 3GPPP alongside a number of large handset OEMs, and working on versions of the Ambient Data Platform that will support the Bluetooth, cellular/3GPP, and Wi-Fi/IEEE variants of ambient IoT.

What impact could WiliBot have on consumer transparency, particularly in understanding the carbon footprint and ethical sourcing of products?

Wiliot’s IoT Pixels already enable products to transmit item-level data about their carbon footprint and equip businesses with information needed to track, manage and reduce carbon emissions. WiliBot makes this even easier by allowing businesses to ask specific questions like where the or how products are sourced and their carbon footprint.

In the future, this convergence of ambient IoT and generative AI will be made available to consumers in-store and at-home through an ecosystem of mobile apps – enabling consumers themselves to speak to and converse with their products to better understand their carbon footprint, materials composition, ethical sourcing compliance, freshness and safety, and more.

This proliferation of information will allow for consumers to take their own ethical considerations into account when purchasing, and ultimately allow for an increased consumer experience without increasing employee workload or cost.

How does Wiliot ensure that the integration of ambient IoT with GenAI remains compliant with global data protection regulations?

Wiliot’s ambient IoT foundation for GenAI enables compliance to data protection regulations with accountability and access control, so that there is a clear owner of the data who has the tools to manage access to the data. Unlike other low-cost scalable radio frequency identifiers, every Wiliot tag is enabled with end-to-end encryption which prevents unauthorized access to data broadcast from a tag.  Encryption starts at the chip level inside the tag and ends at the application in the cloud, which gives a single owner access to the data. With other forms of RFID, the owner isn’t clear – it could be the company that bought the RFID tag and applied it to the product, the distributor, the retailer, or the end customer.  Wiliot’s approach of encrypting all the data means ownership can be transferred and data sharing can be regulated.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Wiliot.

[odinsblog]

And this really is a case about the power of government agencies

The Chevron doctrine, it arises from a case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, from 1984. And the idea behind the Chevron doctrine is that courts should defer to a federal agency's interpretation of a federal law that it administers as long as that interpretation is reasonable. So even if a court might look at the statute and come to a different conclusion, as long as the agency's interpretation is reasonable, courts should defer to it.

So there are two steps. First, the courts determine whether or not the statute is ambiguous. And if it is ambiguous, then the courts defer to the agency's interpretation.

And the idea is that when Congress writes a law, it may not think of all of the details. It may not have the expertise that a federal agency has. And so that the federal agency can fill in the gaps when it is interpreting the law.

And the Chevron Doctrine has had sort of a target on its back for some time now with conservative lawyers, conservative law professors, who believe that there shouldn't be a deference to any agency's interpretation of the law. That Congress's job is to write the laws, and then it's the job of courts to say what they mean. And so the Supreme Court has had several requests over the last few years to reconsider the Chevron Doctrine, and it turned those down until last year, when it agreed to take up a pair of cases challenging a regulation issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service that requires a fishing boat to pay for the costs of having an observer come on board and stay on board to monitor the boat's compliance with fishery regulations to make sure that they are not overfishing.

So basically, this would shift power, right from agencies to basically to Congress and judges.

With the caveat that because Congress is having a hard time doing much of everything, what it really does is shift power directly to courts. And as I said, I think it is of a piece with this broader theme that the court, this present court has come up with. We have things like the Major Questions Doctrine, which is a doctrine that sort of doesn't have roots in the Constitution, doesn't even have a long history as an interpretive issue, but the court has been invoking it in recent years, again, to do the same thing, which is to say Congress has to be incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly specific in laying out how a statute is gonna do what it does.

And if it fails to be specific, then it's not a good statute. And we've seen a whole bunch of things. In the very recent past, we've seen the court hobble the EPA's ability to do what it wants to do, invoking the Major Questions Doctrine.

It's another version of the Chevron deference, which is a claim by the court that if Congress wants to do something, it has to do something so, so specifically that there's no ambiguity. And as Chevron does, Chevron suggests that if there is ambiguity in a statute, then you go ahead and you defer to the agency itself, presumably with all its expertise and its scientists and its understanding of how we go about regulating. This is an effort to say, nope, that's not good enough either.

And so what it really effectively does, whether under the guise of Chevron deference or the major questions doctrine, is it spikes authority either back to Congress to fix regulations, or as we're seeing happen in real time, it simply spikes authority right back to the courts. And it arrogates to the courts the power to decide all sorts of public health questions. Last year, the court started to decide what Swampland was under the Clean Water Act, what emissions are under the EPA regulations, what health protections are under COVID.

And so it's really a massive arrogation to the court to do a whole bunch of things that at least some critics say the court doesn't have the kind of technical expertise to do.

And I think that you do have a feeling coming again from some of the justices, that school boards don't know what they're doing, that entities that give out gun licenses don't know what they're doing, that the justice department is all in the tank for Joe Biden and against Donald Trump. So at every single level of government, you're hearing the court raising questions. Last two weeks ago, it was ATF and bump stocks, right?

And I think one of the things that's been so destabilizing to this particular court, in addition to the ethics claims and the claims that it's off the rails in terms of personal conduct of some jurists, is that when you are overturning precedent willy-nilly, as they did in Dobbs, as they did in Brew in the Gun case, as they've been doing in case after case, the American public, separate and apart from the idea that the justices, some of them are unethical, start to have real doubts about whether this court is just a political branch that changes its mind based on political composition. And that's the worst possible outcome for the court. And yet I think that separate and apart from judicial conduct, we are in a deep, deep moment of doubt about the court as anything other than what looks like now to be a political branch that's just kind of changing the law as it goes along.

—The Dangerous Impact of This Supreme Court’s Decisions

[rjzimmerman]

Supreme Court clears way for Biden’s plan to cut power plant emissions (Washington Post)

Excerpt from this Washington Post story:

The Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for a Biden administration plan to cut greenhouse gases and other emissions from fossil-fuel-fired power plants, denying an emergency appeal by more than two dozen Republican-led states, utilities and others.

The groups sought the emergency injunction while they pursue litigation to block the regulations, claiming the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant plan would force the premature closure of some plants, cost jobs and jeopardize the reliability of the power grid.

The Biden administration said the plan was calibrated to avoid economic harm and problems for the electric grid, and that the rule would protect communities from pollution and help the nation meet long-term goals to combat the climate crisis. The initiative is one of the administration’s most significant actions on global warming.

It is the third time this month the justices have refused to immediately block a Biden administrative initiative seeking to clean up power plants and oil and gas drilling operations, giving a major — if perhaps temporary — boost to the president’s efforts to combat climate change and limit air pollution. Litigation over all three initiatives are still playing out in lower courts.

As is customary, the majority of the justices did not give a reason as to why they denied the emergency request on carbon emissions from power plants. But a statement attached to the denial order indicates that some justices may be inclined to eventually block or strike down the power plant regulations.

Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have granted the application for a stay, while Justices Brett Kavanaugh joined by Neil M. Gorsuch issued a statement saying the applicants have shown a “strong likelihood of success on the merits to at least some of their challenges.”Kavanaugh and Gorsuch said they voted to deny the stay because the applicants do not need to start compliance work until June of next year.

The high court’s actions this month break with a string of earlier decisions in which the justices curbed the EPA’s ability to regulate pollution. On Oct. 4, the high court declined to stay new rules on mercury emissions from power plants and curbs on methane emissions from oil and gas drilling operations.

During the term that ended July 1, the court placed on hold an ambitious EPA plan to address smog-forming air pollution that drifts across state lines,whichcompanies and trade associations are challenging in lower courts. The justices also weakened the EPA’s ability to enforce the Clean Water Act last year and in 2022 limited the agency’s ability to regulate power plant emissions that contribute to climate change — a major opinion that also curbed the regulatory power of the executive branch.

[mariacallous]

NextCity recently published a hot take by Steffen Berr tying the ways in which the US is failing at reducing pedestrian deaths to the misaligned training that most transportation engineers in the US receive. Berr explains that a transportation engineer “is a really a civil engineer who has received a little exposure to the transportation sector.” Due to the structure of accredited degree programs, “In a best-case scenario, a civil engineer will only take three transportation classes during their bachelor’s degree. In the worst case, they’ll only take one: Introduction to Highway Engineering. To put this into perspective, the most educated professionals we entrust to design and run our roads and streets have received only half of a minor with a handful of credits on the topic.”

Berr goes on to address the reasonable objection that in many fields, people learn on the job. But what transportation engineers learn on the job, per Berr, is not things like how to choose the most appropriate intersection for the desired use, how the road system should be laid out at a network/route level, or how to fix congestion (none of which, he argues, they learn in school either.) Instead, they learn “how to navigate the impressive amounts of bureaucracy that have been built up in the industry, memorize an impressive vocabulary of technical jargon, practice with design software like AutoCAD to produce engineering plans, and how to copy the current engineering standards. There is no exposure to deep levels of theory that can help our future professionals create original solutions to fundamental problems like safety, congestion, emissions and ethics.” 

I’m less interested in Berr’s point about the wrong degree requirements than I am in his observation about what the job of transportation engineer actually is. As Stafford Beer observed, “the purpose of a system is what it does,” and by analogy, the purpose of a job is not its stated goals but what the people who do it actually do day to day.1 When talking to people who’ve never worked in government, the biggest disconnect is usually a lack of understanding of the actual jobs of public servants. A rather dramatic illustration of this comes from a Mercatus Center podcast with Lant Pritchett in which he shares an anecdote about advocating for evidence-based policy in the Indian bureaucracy. 

After they had done the RCT [random control trial] showing that this Balsakhi program of putting tutors in the schools really led to substantial gains and learning achievement and reading outcomes, he took it to the secretary of education of the place in which they had done the RCT. And he said, “Oh, by the way, I have the solution to your problem of low learning levels, or at least part of the solution. Look, we’ve got this powerful evidence that this works to improve leading outcomes by putting these volunteer tutors and pulling their low learning kids out.” The response of the secretary of education was, “What do you think my job is? Why do you think that this is a solution to a problem I have? Look around my office. See these piles and piles of files that keep me busy 60 hours a week and not one of these files is about a child not learning. I’m under no pressure about that problem. If I try and transfer a teacher, I’ve got a court case on my hand. If I try and close a school, I got a court case on my hand. My job is to administer the existing education policy such that there’s policy compliance. Super kudos to you for this cute little study you’ve done. It has nothing to do with my job as secretary of education.”

Ouch. And that’s a secretary of an agency serving a county with 1.5 billion people.

I suspect a lot of public servants in the US will read that and think “My job is not quite as bad as that but it sure feels that way a lot.” The people I know maintain enough connection to the actual mission to avoid such a meltdown (though I find the secretary’s frankness refreshing.) But both these stories help explain a conundrum that many who care about effective government (or, shall we say, state capacity) struggle to explain: the contradiction between the dedication, smarts, and creativity of most public servants and the sometimes terrible outcomes they are associated with, like the recent tragic lapses in administering student loans by the US Department of Education. (Or in Berr’s world, the 40,000 traffic deaths we’re stuck with every year while countries like the Netherlands have dropped their own already low number by 46%.2) To be sure, there are often extraordinary outcomes (hello Direct File!), and we notice them far less often, to our own detriment. But while it’s impossible to give government a meaningful overall grade, if its job is to meet challenges we face (national security, climate change, an effective safety net, etc.), we are at risk of falling dangerously short. The problem isn’t that public servants are doing a bad job, it’s that they’re doing a great job — at the wrong jobs.''

The (unnamed in this context) Indian Secretary of Education seems to agree: “My job is to administer the existing education policy such that there’s policy compliance.” I highly doubt that’s the job he thought he was getting, or the job he wanted to do. Berr is on the same general theme when he says that what transportation engineers learn on the job is “how to operate in the industry effectively as it has been currently set up.” Note his use of the word effectively. Effective towards what? Not towards reducing traffic deaths or congestion levels. “All the experience in the world of copying and pasting a standard invented fifty years ago is useless when the problems that the standard was invented to resolve have changed,” he says. “Understanding this sheds a lot of light as to why 40,000 people are still dying on our roads every year and why your local city insists on laying down sharrows [which are known to be ineffective and often dangerous] in their latest round of “safety improvements.” Quite frankly, it’s because we have no idea what we are doing.”

This is a useful nuance as I develop a framework for building state capacity. One of my admittedly obvious and oversimplified tenets is that systems have both “go energy” and “stop energy,” much as a car has a gas pedal and a brake. You wouldn’t drive a car without a brake, but you also wouldn’t drive a car in which the brake was pressed all the time, even when you were trying to accelerate. This is a good metaphor for how we’re dealing with the implementation of CHIPS, IRA, and the Infrastructure Bill, for example, where the clear intent is speed and scale but the public servants responsible are held back from that by the brakes of overly zealous compliance functions. I hear a version of this at every agency I visit: “Congress tells us to do something. Then the compliance offices keep us from doing that very thing.” (And side note for further discussion: This is an issue of representation, voice, and democracy.) The stop energy in our government is currently a lot bigger than it should be. We’re hitting the gas but we’re not accelerating because we’re pressing the brake at the same time. 

Lots of people in government have “stop energy” jobs. We need them, and we need them to be good at them. I don’t want to live in a country where our government doesn’t exercise “stop authority.” I try to remember not to complain when my flight is delayed because I really don’t want to die in a plane crash, and a rigidly implemented checklist is a big part of how we keep safe (the current epidemic of doors and engine cowlings blowing off notwithstanding). I also really like being pretty confident that a pill I’m taking has been tested and not tampered with. I like thinking our nuclear arsenal is protected. You know, little things like that.

Stop energy is critical. Rigid adherence to protocol is usually lifesaving. But it must exist in balance. I recently learned the Navy concept of “front of sub/back of sub.” The back of a nuclear submarine, where the nukes live, is run by the book. You don’t deviate from the checklist. You don’t innovate. You don’t question. The front of the sub, on the other hand, is responsible for navigating through dark waters. You have to improvise. You have to make judgment calls. There are manuals and checklists, for sure, but the nature of the work calls for a different approach, and the Navy recognizes that the cultures of front and back have evolved appropriately to meet distinct needs. 

There are times, of course, when you’ll need front of sub judgment in a back of sub context. If the plane I was on was about to be bombed by an enemy combatant (unlikely in my life, I hope), I would be okay with the pilot using her discretion to cut a corner or two on the takeoff checklist, because the very thing that checklist is there to protect (the lives of the people on board) would under threat from a different vector. Taking every precaution in that scenario could be reckless. That’s a bit how I feel about the NEPA reviews and other bureaucratic processes that are holding back building the infrastructure we need to move to a low-carbon economy. I wish for the public servants in charge to see the threat of inaction – those species the checklist is trying to protect are threatened by temperature rise as much or more than they are by the project in question – and make good judgment calls about getting the plane off the runway a lot quicker, so to speak. This feels like a domain where back of sub culture has more hold than it should given the circumstances. And to Berr’s point, we can’t rely on back of sub culture when the checklist and protocols it uses no longer serve the purpose.

Of course, “stop energy” roles can themselves be balanced – if only I had a dime for every discussion about the value of lawyers who get to yes and the frustrations with those who seem to do nothing but block. The analogy breaks down a bit here because the items on a pre-flight checklist are binary – they are either red or green – whereas the ad hoc checklists that lawyers assemble to ensure compliance before signing off on an action are almost always shades of gray – they can be open to lots of interpretations. Any given lawyer, or compliance officer, or ethics cop can treat their role with appropriate balance, reserving their stop authority only when the risks truly outweigh the benefits. But getting the culture of a team, department, or agency to balance stop and go correctly at a macro level is extremely difficult. It’s rare to see leadership really change that balance, or for it to stick. It’s a retail approach, hugely dependent on personalities and circumstances.

What would a wholesale approach to getting back into balance look like? One answer should be a simple matter of top-down workforce planning, of the kind our Office of Personnel Management should be empowered to do: fewer stop energy jobs relative to go energy jobs. Hire more doers than brakers, both in how the position is defined and in the characteristics of the people selected for the job. But that proposal needs several important caveats. Of course, every great employee is some mix of these energies – a “go only” employee would be exhausting and dangerous in all but the most extreme circumstances – so we’re talking about a general orientation. More importantly, having fewer brakers will only result in enormous backlogs if they have the same stopping power. But there are plenty of functions where its possible to safely move from default no to default yes, possibly with an after the fact correction mechanism.3 Instead of requiring form redesigns to go through a long White House approval process before they can be made available to the public, for instance, allow agencies to apply the appropriate level of scrutiny and sign-off for the form at hand and develop a process for catching and quickly fixing anything determined to be detrimental. This example speaks to the issue of multiple levels of safeguards. Loosening a safeguard that operates at the top level of federal government may not make much difference to overall stop energy if agencies, or in turn their subcomponents, or even teams, react by strengthening their own safeguard processes. There might be something like a Law of Conservation of Safeguards at play here. But it’s still worth considering the value of moving to default yes processes where appropriate. 

Of course, the question of the nature of the job public servants are tasked with is about much more than just stop vs go. It’s about what kind of work we’ve decided to invest in. I go into some depth about this in Chapter 5 of Recoding America as it relates to our lack of investment in digital competencies and how ideologies about private sector superiority led to a big outsourcing push just as digital was beginning to massively transform society.

…these internal competencies in digital became necessary just as we were jettisoning internal competencies of all sorts, not developing them. Instead of digital competency, government has developed extensive processes and procedures for procurement of digital work, and the ins and outs of procurements sometimes seem more complex and technical than the latest programming languages.

This points to another way to understand the disconnect between high employee performance and the outcomes our government produces (or fails to), especially relative to the investment made.4 Take procurement. I know a lot of people in procurement who are really good at their jobs. Some of them are considered really good because they’re great at the “back of sub” tasks of making sure every box is checked, and a manager might feel compelled to give them a high performance rating because of their thoroughness and dedication, even if the people who need the thing being acquired are frustrated by the slowness and rigidity of the process, and even if the thing that is ultimately acquired has checked all the boxes but doesn’t actually work. (For an example of this, see Chapter 4 of Recoding America.) But many of these procurement professionals operate according to “front of sub” principles, and are enormously creative and mission-driven. The other public servants who rely on them to procure things value them enormously. They may or may not receive high ratings, if the manager is judging them based on a “back of sub” approach. But procurement processes simply should not be as complex and burdensome as they have become. Both of these kinds of procurement professionals are doing a job that simply shouldn’t exist in its current form.

Especially with the looming threat of the return of Schedule F under a possible Trump administration, there’s a lot of talk of public sector employee performance and protections. I agree strongly with Donald Kettl, who has said about the left’s silence on civil service reforms in the face of Schedule F: “You can’t fight something with nothing.” I hope to be part of proposing a something there, something that improves government’s ability to fill many open positions and to effectively and ethically manage the workforce. But we could succeed entirely at that and still fail to meet the challenges in front of us if the jobs we fill are the wrong jobs.

Another of my admittedly obvious and oversimplified principles of how to build state capacity is that there are really only three things you can do:

You can have more of the right people

You can focus them on the right things

You can burden them less.

There is obviously quite a lot to say about each of those things, and they are all deeply intertwined. A big reason we don’t have more of the right people is that we overburden both the people responsible for hiring and the applicants, focusing both on the wrong things. We overburden public servants generally because we have designed too many of their jobs to stop bad things instead of to enable the things we desperately need. We are too often asking if public servants are doing a good job instead of understanding and questioning the nature of the jobs they’ve been hired to do. 

We need a much more robust understanding of how to fix the problem of hiring the right people to do the wrong jobs. We need wholesale strategies for tuning the dial between front of sub and back of sub, between stop and go, between brake and gas, and refocusing the job of public servants on the work that’s most directly meaningful towards the outcomes we want. We need staffers in agencies who act as if the climate crisis is the enemy plane that’s about to bomb us. We need transportation engineers whose actual job – as practiced on a daily basis, at scale – is to reduce congestion and pollution and improve and save lives. We need Secretaries of Education who have time in their day to look at the study on improving learning achievement, and maybe even take action on it. We need all of this now.

Imagine a world in which this — not just enforcing rules, not even just helping agencies fill open jobs, but ensuring that federal government fills the right jobs — was the mandate of an empowered and deeply collaborative Office of Personnel Management. They couldn’t do it alone, of course — it’s agencies that define the jobs they think they need and Congress that throws down law after law they must comply with, feeding the need for compliance. The White House Office of Management and Budget adds its own reporting and compliance burdens. Each would need to buy in on an agenda of building state capacity and do their part. But this is what workforce planning should really be, and in 2025, we will need it more than ever. If Biden gets a second term, this is the kind of ambitious agenda he should set.

1

Please read Dan Davies’ excellent new book The Unaccountability Machine for a lot more on Beer and why this is important.

2

The US has 12.8 traffic deaths per 100,000 people, the Netherland 3.6 per 100,0000.

3

I think this is a Guarino-ism… if I’m misattributing it, someone will correct me.

4

Some will point out that perverse incentives in the performance management practices can sometimes make it hard to give public sector employees poor ratings, which may skew the data. I don’t quite know how to evaluate that claim, but I also don’t think it’s all that relevant if you’re trying to