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On June 17, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) recommending the issuance of a rocket launch site operator’s license to Camden County. The last step in the process is for the FAA to release a Record of Decision (ROD) expected sometime this month. The Center sent the following letter condemning fundamental flaws in the environmental review that the FAA should correct by conducting a Supplemental EIS before making a decision. You can read the entire EIS online at the FAA's website.

Antares rocket failure October 28, 2014.

General Wayne Monteith, FAA Administrator

Associate Administrator FAA/AST

800 Independence Avenue SW

Washington, DC 20591

General Monteith:

I am writing to restate and expand upon concerns previously conveyed in our comments, and others, expressing well-justified alarm about glaring deficiencies in FAA’s review of Spaceport Camden.

For the sake of brevity, in these comments, I will limit remarks to four prominent areas of factual negligence and faulty assumptions related to the EIS that are both careless and misleading.

1.       Launch trajectory and hypothetical rocket characteristics – According to the most qualified opinions available, the launch trajectory proposed is implausible if not impossible to deliver payload in achieving a viable orbital mission. It appears that the manipulated launch-angle used in the EIS, and consequentially applied in the state’s consistency review, was improperly assumed for the convenience of attempting to reduce the hazard-zone for a launch failure during the initial stages immediately after launch. The misguided nature of this proposal is revealed by the absence of any precedent for small rockets using such an angle of trajectory to support the attainment of an orbital mission. Please clarify if and when such a small-rocket orbital launch has ever been done successfully, or if the notion is just theoretical conjecture.

Regarding the small size of the hypothetical rocket, why does the EIS describe storage at the site for what amounts to some 28 years of small-rocket fuel supply? This strongly suggests the hidden intention to transition to the use of larger rockets that require far more fuel, once licensing is obtained for a site approved based on a fantasized small rocket allegedly having smaller risks.

...continue reading "Letter to FAA Outlining Defects in Review of Spaceport Camden"

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In observance of Independence Day, we are posting this letter to the editor by Center Co-Director, David Kyler. It was originally published in the Savannah Morning News in July 2020.

Photo by Fabian Fauth on Unsplash

In the barrage of recent events, Independence Day invites self-reflection on the history and values associated with this hallowed holiday.

Diverse expressions of dissent related to COVID-19, racial issues, and national interest have exposed contentious rifts in America’s identity. Ironically, these conflicting viewpoints are commonly derived from aspirations embedded in the nation’s origins – foremost, individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Americans are renowned for independent thinking, articulated in the landmark 1841 essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance.” Resisting conformity and following one’s instincts as perceived in an “every-man-for-himself” world have been espoused for much of our history.

Related residual views still predominate among various divisive groups, serving as a vaguely understood basis of self-respect. Yet, intertwined social, economic, and technological changes that have occurred since these tenets of American identity were formulated require that we adapt them to new circumstances.

Personal liberty in the 21st century depends on a respectful society that requires tempering the excesses of a “frontier ethic” whose practitioners are often skeptical of science and hostile toward others – including racial minorities and migrants.

Abandoning fantasized freedoms is essential if we hope to restrain COVID and other diseases, restore our ravaged global environment, and establish lasting social justice.

Achieving an equitable, interdependent society with mutually beneficial opportunities requires that past prejudices and antagonisms be cast aside. A revitalized sense of the common good must inspire our vision.

To honor America’s ideals, we must struggle for independence from the oppressive dogmatism that degrades our country’s worthy prospects.

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When discussing climate change, U.S. Representative Buddy Carter is fond of reminding his colleagues and his constituents that his district encompasses the entire coast of Georgia, as if this fact imbues him with an especially acute understanding of the issue. 

If only it were true. But alas, Mr. Carter consistently opposes legislative measures to curb the greenhouse gas emissions causing the climate to overheat.

Just last week, he appeared before the House Rules Committee (link to video) to oppose the reversal of the Trump administration’s rollback of an Obama-era rule that requires oil and gas companies to use the best available methods to control methane leaks.  

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. While not as long-lasting or as abundant in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it is 84 times more potent in the short term. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of climate change would recognize the importance of employing every means at our disposal to cut methane emissions and quickly approve this measure.

All we get from Carter is confounding doublespeak about his concern for how climate change affects the Georgia coast and how doing anything about it hurts the economy.

Carter’s sophistry confused some of the committee members at first, but his insidious brand of climate denialism became more apparent the more he spoke.

...continue reading "Congressman Buddy Carter’s Climate Denialism on Full Display"

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Various planning updates are underway on Georgia's coast: the comprehensive plans for Chatham County and its cities, the Coastal Regional Plan, and the Jekyll Island Master Plan. Coastal plans must address the increasingly urgent causes and consequences of climate change to achieve community and regional planning benefits in making critical decisions that influence our future.

Over the past five years, climate disruption's dangerous impacts and causes have stirred well-founded public awareness and concern. Our rapidly growing understanding of the scale and significance of the causes of climate change and their grave consequences will be renowned as the fundamental "paradigm shift" of the 21st century.

Surveys consistently conclude that a majority now recognize that human activities are causing worldwide environmental degradation, which is of such urgency and magnitude that we must soon bring them under control or irreversibly impair the planet's life-support systems. Yet, until now, decades after these perils were well-known within the global scientific community, the plans of coastal Georgia's cities and counties have made little or no mention of climate change.

The only references to climate disruption in Georgia's coastal plans have concerned the rising sea level. These were limited to reactive adaptation, such as flood-control projects and flood-risk rating compliance. They were also all based on historical events, rather than the escalating science-based projections linked to global heating.

The current planning updates for coastal communities must acknowledge the urgency and acceleration of these hazards.

Moreover, planning must prioritize actions that reduce the cause of these accumulating hazards – namely, the emission of greenhouse gases – and protection of critical areas, both developed and natural, to the greatest extent possible. The alarming fact that some 43 percent of coastal Georgia residences are within the 100-year flood plain substantiates concern about escalating flooding.

Overdue recognition of climate-change impacts and causes in local and regional plans will have a critical advantage in an array of decision-making.

Furthermore, incorporating these considerations in planning documents, better positions our region in competition for imminent federal funding to support climate-related projects. Examples include flood-control infrastructure, clean-energy implementation, and power-transmission grid upgrades.

...continue reading "Timely advice to the planning authorities in coastal Georgia"

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This op-ed appeared in the April 27 edition of the Savannah Morning News.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

The April 18 edition of the Savannah Morning News featured an Earth Day article in which eight semi-celebrities responded to a USA Today question: "What is the most pressing environmental threat?"

After patiently reading through each of their responses I groaned from real, deep, heartfelt pain. Not one of the celebs opined the right answer - at least not the right answer for anyone who is fully aware of the gravity of the climate crisis.

Vote.

Voting for candidates who pledge to address climate change is the most impactful action a lone individual can do to significantly affect the dismal climate trajectory we now face. Vote only and exclusively for people who are committed, clearly and unswervingly, to achieving the global goals set forth in the Paris Accords on Climate Change, which the United States is now once again a full member and participant.

It is the consensus of virtually every climate scientist - and many scientists of other stripes - that if humanity doesn't sharply curtail its spewing of global warming greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in this decade we will face catastrophic global consequences. Cutting them by at least one-half should be the goal.

...continue reading "What is the Most Pressing Environmental Threat?"

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Many have observed the depletion of credibility in daily discourse – causing a disturbing decline in fact-based consensus.

Without a fundamental sense of shared reality, how can we collectively – as a community, state, or nation – anticipate and respond to imminent threats and opportunities?

Perplexity about this predicament was renewed when I recently learned of terminology – accepted by a federal court – for describing a rocket explosion as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”  This devious euphemism for an event threatening death and destruction epitomizes the abuse of language that accelerates an alarming abandonment of truth.

The impoverishment of facts that afflicts our political institutions has brought us to the brink of environmental destruction. Consider that science has verified the human causes of climate change for more than two decades. Yet, many elected officials still thwart actions to confront them, thereby propagating the serious consequences of rising temperatures. 

...continue reading "Earth Day Must Become Truth Day"

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On Monday afternoon, the Georgia Senate passed HB 150 – a bill prompted by the natural gas industry, alarmed by a Berkeley, California ordinance banning natural gas hookups in new construction.

Confronted with cities in Georgia and across the nation that have established policies to transition to 100% clean energy, the industry has responded defensively by lobbying to hamper such initiatives in over a dozen states. Georgia will be the fifth state to pass an industry-sponsored law prohibiting local governments and state agencies from following Berkeley’s example. 

Laws like this, known as preemption laws, are not new. The tobacco industry has been using this tactic to slow down public health measures that impinge on tobacco sales since the 1980s. In Georgia, the plastics and packaging industries tried and failed to preempt local plastic bag bans when the City of Tybee Island and Athens-Clarke County were considering bans back in 2015. Particularly egregious is the law passed by the Georgia General Assembly in 2013 that prevents local governments from having a policy affecting wages paid by private businesses. This was prompted by the City of Atlanta passing a living wage ordinance for all contractors who use city resources or property.

The use of this tactic has grown over the past decade, as conservative state governments try to reign-in progressive local governments on a wide range of issues, such as fracking, plastic bags, rent control, minimum wage, municipal broadband, and more. Popular progressive policies fighting poverty, protecting public health and safety, and sustaining the environment are perceived as threats to profits and fought with prejudicial fervor by powerful members of the private sector.

...continue reading "The Fossil Fuel Industry Has Captured the Georgia Legislature"

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(Background: Center Co-Director Karen Grainey gave the following two-minute speech at a digital rally organized by Savannah Alderman Nick Palumbo in opposition to HB 150. This bill aims to prevent "governmental entities from adopting any policy that prohibits the connection or reconnection of any utility service based upon the type or source of energy or fuel." The House passed the bill, and it will soon go to the Senate floor for a vote. The term "governmental entities" includes the growing number of cities that have set clean energy targets and all state agencies. Decatur recently joined Athens, Atlanta, Augusta, Clarkston, and Savannah in passing a resolution to transition to 100% clean energy.)

There are many good reasons to support clean energy policies, but one reason stands out above the rest- the overheating of the Earth's climate. Nothing else will matter if the nations of the world fail to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  All our aspirations for a more just, equitable, and prosperous society will be crushed under the weight of an impending environmental collapse that will bring hunger, political division, and a societal breakdown of apocalyptic proportions.

...continue reading "HB 150 Sabotages Clean Energy Transition"

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March 8 was the deadline for Georgians to comment on a justifiably controversial project proposed in Camden County, known as "Spaceport Camden." If approved, this spaceport would be the only such facility in the U.S. ever sanctioned to launch rockets over privately owned and occupied property. Moreover, the "hazard zone" for launching includes the world-renowned Cumberland Island National Seashore, part of which is a federally designated Wilderness Area.

Since 1997, under the federal Coastal Zone Management Act, Georgia's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has been authorized to review major federal permits to determine if they are consistent with Georgia's Coastal Management Program. DNR's Coastal Resources Division (CRD) is currently engaged in evaluating Spaceport Camden.

Accordingly, CRD invited public comments on the agency's proposal to issue Coastal Consistency Certification. If certified by CRD/DNR, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which administers spaceports under U.S. law, would have to decide whether to license Spaceport Camden. Most agree that without state certification, FAA would be less likely to grant the license. 

As objectionable as the project certainly is for jeopardizing humans, wildlife, valuable homesites, tourism destinations, and rare natural resources, there is a less apparent but closely related reason to oppose the spaceport - the appalling lack of detailed information to evaluate such risks responsibly. After years of unsubstantiated claims about the spaceport's benefits, compounded by incomplete, contradictory, and illogical review of the project, fundamental questions remain unanswered.

For instance:

...continue reading "Why DNR Should Give Spaceport Camden a Thumbs Down"