Articles and More!: Midday open thread: EPA rules on sulfur in gasoline, okaying guns in Indiana school parking lots

Monday, March 3, 2014

Sulfur reduction in gasoline another EPA rule for right-wingers to bellyache about:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday released a rulemaking to lower the amount of sulfur in gasoline and significantly reduce air pollution from automobile emissions.
According to EPA, the rule will slash atmospheric concentrations of smog and soot by requiring refiners to cut back on sulfur concentrations by more than 60 percent in gasoline blends. The standards also set limits on tailpipe emissions from automobiles.

“These standards are a win for public health, a win for our environment, and a win for our pocketbooks,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a statement. “We’re continuing to build on the Obama Administration’s broader clean fuels and vehicles efforts that cut carbon pollution, clean the air we breathe, and save families money at the pump.”

12 Years a Slave, the rest of the Oscars:
“I’d like to thank this amazing story,” said Steve McQueen, the British-born filmmaker who grasped a prize that has eluded African-American directors and their movies since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave its first Oscars in 1929.
“Everyone deserves not just to survive, but to live,” said Mr. McQueen, who dedicated the film to those who had endured slavery, both in the past and in the present.

Indiana poised to allow guns in school parking lots:
Supporters of the measure say it would protect parents who inadvertently commit a felony by bringing their guns while picking up their children. Opponents worry easier access to guns could promote school shootings.

Europe’s floods could quadruple by 2050:
The UK has been hit hard by major flooding over the last few months, weather one Met Office scientist called the “most exceptional period of rainfall in 248 years.” Now, new research says extreme floods could become more common in Europe by 2050, causing the financial losses from these weather events to quadruple.
The study, published Sunday in Nature Climate Change, found that instances of very extreme floods now occur around once every 50 years in Europe but could shorten to every 30 years by 2050, and that instances of extreme weather-related damage that now occur every 16 years could occur every 10. That means that Europe’s financial losses related to flooding, which now total about 4.9 billion euros a year, could increase almost 380 percent to 23.5 billion euros by 2050.

Green Trans-Pacific Partnership? Hahahahahahaha:
So in a hearing on Jan 28, Rep Mark Pocan (D-WI) asked Michael Froman—the US Trade Rep running the TPP show—about the environmental standards in TPP. Froman listed four areas in TPP that were “absolutely non-negotiable from a US standpoint,” including “tough new environmental standards.”
When the meeting ended, Pocan asked “So does that mean that if we give you fast track, you won’t send us a deal that doesn’t have that stuff in it?’ At which point, we learned that the US Trade Rep uses a highly specialized meaning for the phrase “absolutely non-negotiable,” meaning “totally up for grabs,” because he immediately said, “I didn’t say that.”

On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin rounds up Ukraine stories, Forbes discovers corporate citizenship. “When May I Shoot a Student?” Douthat’s “surrender.” Was Christie supposed to “save” Ft. Lee? Bunnygirl60′s Obamacare small biz goldmine.

Articles and More!