This is the 574th edition of the Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue). Here is the September 22 edition. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.
OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES
Rmuse writes—N.C. Republicans banned science that predicted massive flooding: “The reason North Carolina Republicans, like Republicans across the nation, are to blame for the extra damage from what should have been a less-than-devastating tropical storm is that eight years ago North Carolina scientists predicted that without immediate action and careful planning, exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago was going to happen. The scientists from the North Carolina Resources Commission published a report predicting ‘that sea levels along the coast would rise 39 inches over the next century due to climate change, putting 2,000 square miles of the coast underwater.’ The mention of climate change doomed the report as well as incited Republicans to ban its use for anything because it contradicts every conservative’s ‘belief’ that climate change is a hoax. [...] Cheered on and paid by major real estate and land developers, the Republican-dominated legislature swiftly ‘banned state and local agencies from creating any policies using that report, or any other scientific findings on sea level rise prior to July 2016, when the commission's next report would be updated.’ (author bold). Incredibly, Republicans insisted that going forward, any state policy surrounding sea level prediction could only be founded on historical data—even though historical data along with ‘multiple recent scientific studies reported the exact same findings.’ Just last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued another report warning that as many as “20 coastal North Carolina communities could be submerged in the next 15 years.”
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