- Visitor: Adrian Martinez of EarthJustice
- Additionally: Senators alarmed by unknown CIA knowledge assortment program
- Musk readies his ‘Starship’…
No. The BradCast is just not letting this one go. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]
As we mentioned in some element final week, the U.S. Postal Service, beneath the corrupt course of Donald Trump’s still-in-his-post-for-some-reason Postmaster Common Louis DeJoy, is about to spend greater than $11 billion to switch the Service’s mail supply truck fleet. Primarily based on an absurdly (and, as our visitor right this moment argues, purposely) flawed financial and environmental examine, the USPS will probably be buying 165,000 new supply vehicles with simply 10% of them being absolutely electrical. The remainder will burn no less than 110,000 gallons of gasoline annually (and sure way more), getting simply over a ridiculous 8 miles per gallon — or as a lot as 14 when the AC is turned off!
Which means, as our visitor lately wrote, the brand new vehicles, comprising about 30% of the federal authorities’s automotive fleet, will burn by way of “a jaw-dropping 2 to 4 billion gallons of gasoline” over their anticipated 20-year lifetime. All of this in the course of a dangerously worsening local weather disaster for the planet and as President Biden is vowing to drastically minimize greenhouse gasoline emissions over the following decade.
Final week, the EPA and White Home Council on Environmental High quality wrote a letter to the USPS, objecting to the plan and primarily begging the quasi-independent Government Department company to overview their flawed environmental evaluation to contemplate electrifying your complete fleet as a substitute.
DeJoy, in the meantime, is claiming they can not afford to try this, regardless of being flush with greater than $20 billion in pandemic money from the federal authorities. And the Postal Service PR crew is busy greenwashing all of this as “actual sustainability” for “a cleaner world”, as their web site explains how they’re “updating our fleet with fuel-efficient automobiles to assist do our half.” How do they make such an absurd declare? Effectively, the brand new fleet, because it seems, will probably be 0.4 miles per gallon extra environment friendly than the present fleet that is been in use because the Nineteen Eighties!
As if all of this is not obscene sufficient, earlier this week, VICE’s Aaron Gordon reported that the newly designed gasoline-powered vehicles, estimated to clock in at 8,501 kilos with mail on board — “nearly double the burden of the present USPS supply car” — means they may keep away from the EPA’s new gasoline effectivity requirements for “gentle obligation” vehicles, that are restricted to, as luck would have it, 8,500 kilos! In the event that they have been simply .01 pound lighter, he studies, they might probably be unlawful.
Sure. It’s all as outrageous — and insane — and corrupt — because it sounds.
We’re joined right this moment by ADRIAN MARTINEZ, Senior Lawyer for EarthJustice, a non-profit environmental regulation group the place he works on clear air, clear vitality, and different environmental justice points. Martinez particulars extra proof of how the USPS environmental examine seems to have been purposely “flawed, and took each effort to make inner combustion gas-guzzling vehicles look good and electrical automobiles look dangerous,” to justify shopping for almost 165,000 polluting automobiles at this important second.
“The environmental evaluation assumes that gasoline will probably be $2.50 a gallon in 2040,” he explains. “You’ll be able to barely discover a place within the nation the place it’s $2.50 a gallon now! However they assume gasoline costs will stay low. And so what that does is it makes their calculations for the overall price of possession of a gas-guzzling truck look higher than it must be. They did this on a spread of various points and it actually resulted in an evaluation that was defective and reckless, to be utterly candid.”
“To name these automobiles ‘gasoline environment friendly’ is laughable,” Martinez tells me. “There’s nothing sustainable about this determination. The truth is, it is the other. We’re in 2022, and having to have this debate is simply absurd.”
In fact, the Postal Service is doing its greatest to keep away from this “debate” completely. Each the EPA and the state of California have requested the Service to carry public hearings on the matter, earlier than they buy tens of 1000’s of recent gas-powered vehicles from Wisconsin-based army contractor, Oshkosh Protection (maker of professional quality armored automobiles.) To this point, they haven’t agreed to public hearings or to even take public remark. Martinez says that his group has collected greater than 20,000 public feedback to present to the Service, which instructed them over the weekend “we’re not accepting feedback on the environmental doc presently.”
Martinez has way more right this moment on the “brazen” responses from the USPS beneath DeJoy’s command, which is seemingly additionally ignoring a latest letter from 16 U.S. Senators equally asking them to impress the fleet. We additionally focus on why the hell DeJoy remains to be in his job in any respect, and what you and the remainder of the general public can do about all of this. (Desi additionally has an attention-grabbing thought alongside these traces as nicely.) If all else fails, Martinez suggests, there are authorized choices that his group and others are probably to soak up courtroom beneath the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act (NEPA).
Additionally right this moment, two different gadgets of be aware. Solely one in all them is actually disturbing. A newly creating story broke final evening based mostly on a (partially redacted) letter to the CIA Director and the Director of Nationwide Intelligence, from Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), launched late on Thursday evening. The letter suggests there’s some kind of very troubling knowledge assortment going at on the CIA. The unredacted parts cryptically describe a “secret bulk assortment program” that “has been saved from the general public and from Congress” and that’s “completely outdoors the statutory framework that Congress and the general public consider govern this assortment, and with none of the judicial, congressional and even government department oversight that comes with [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] assortment.”
What does that every one imply? We do not but know sufficient but for sure to inform ya. Nevertheless it appears price noting, as I might anticipate extra on this story to develop within the days forward.
And, lastly, we shut with some information — with a wonderful Bowie tune to go along with it — about how we’re all getting just a bit bit nearer to with the ability to escape this more and more unlivable planet in the future for good. That stated, the choices on the market within the universe aren’t but significantly appetizing. So, it could be a lot higher to impress the mail supply fleet as a substitute!…
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[Cross-posted from The BRAD BLOG…]
