News from around the nation.

RFK Jr accused of embracing 'Conspiracy theories, quacks and charlatans'; Advocates want more oversight for 'humane' meat label; Survey: Georgia drivers say carmakers should continue to improve fuel efficiency; WI researchers use microbes to transform wastewater. 

Transcript

The Public News Service Wednesday afternoon update.

I'm Mike Clifford.

Tough words from Democratic Senator Ron Wyden at today's confirmation hearing, accusing RFK Jr. of having embraced conspiracy theories, quacks, and charlatans in his time, particularly over vaccines.

That's for the BBC.

They report Wyden also pointed to RFK Jr.'s 2019 trip to Samoa, which came months before an outbreak of measles, which ultimately claimed 83 lives.

The outbreak made worse due to low vaccination rates.

Kennedy has long maintained he had nothing to do with the people of Samoa resisting vaccines.

And many consumers value animal welfare when they're shopping for meat at the grocery store.

Zach Strong with the Animal Welfare Institute says the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not have the legal authority to send inspectors to farms to ensure practices are conductive to humanely raising animals.

The only thing that the guidelines require is that the company include how it chooses to define humanely raised, either on the package itself or links to where a consumer can find that definition on the company's website.

Researchers say that branding meat products with special labels can be enough to convince buyers to purchase one item over another.

Americans continue to see improving fuel economy as the most significant change they want from vehicle manufacturers when they offer new products.

A new survey from Consumer Reports finds that Georgians and other Americans support regulations that push automakers to deliver new vehicles that cost less to fuel and have fewer emissions.

Chris Hartow, a senior policy analyst for transportation and energy at Consumer Reports, says new car buyers want the government to continue setting standards for fuel efficiency.

Consumers want automakers to continue to improve fuel economy for the vehicles that they sell.

On the flip side of that, consumers didn't really show a lot of trust in automakers to actually deliver those fuel savings without regulations.

Hartow says two-thirds of all drivers say fuel efficiency is very important or extremely important, and 64 percent want the government to increase fuel economy standards.

I'm Mark Richardson.

And some Wisconsin researchers are studying ways microbes can recycle wastewater into eco-friendly products.

In the dairy industry, which produces billions of pounds of cheese per year, whey byproducts can be processed with microbes to create products like bioplastics.

Declan Roche with Foremost Farms USA, a Wisconsin-based dairy cooperative, says the same idea could apply across industries.

A lot of waste is generated in the processing of any food item.

I'm just talking dairy in this instance, but any plant that processes agricultural products generates waste.

The ultimate goal is to transform how more industries use their waste so it can be cycled back into production.

I'm Judith Ruiz Branch reporting.

This story was produced with original reporting from Carolyn Beans for the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This is a public news service.

New research details the major impacts for New York and the nation if President Donald Trump's proposed tariffs take effect.

A Tax Foundation report finds tariffs Trump implemented in his first term have kept prices unreasonably high, tariffs former President Joe Biden maintained.

And a report from the Urban Institute's Tax Policy Center predicts the proposed tariffs would have a 5 to 10 percent impact on New York's gross domestic product.

Melinda St. Louis with the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen doesn't think President Trump is using tariffs effectively.

Tariffs can play a constructive role in protecting U.S. jobs and enforcing labor and environmental standards when they're part of a strategic industrial policy.

But Trump is not doing that.

His approach is to use tariffs to bully countries.

She says the tariffs threatened against Mexico and Canada would have significant impacts since they are some of the largest importers of U.S. goods.

Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump proposed 25 percent tariffs on both countries.

The Tax Foundation's report estimates those and a 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods would cut economic output and raise U.S. taxes by more than one trillion dollars in the next decade.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira.

And data centers are driving the building of gas power plants in the Southeast, but it will leave ratepayers on the hook if those energy needs don't materialize.

That's according to a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which looked at utility and pipeline company plans in North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia.

Utilities in these states are expected to build 20,000 megawatts of natural gas power plants by 2040.

Report co-author Kathy Kunkel says that's despite relatively flat energy demand from consumers, meaning data centers will be using a lot of power.

Generally speaking in the Southeast, data centers are responsible for anywhere between two thirds to more than 85 percent of this projected demand growth.

Kunkel says there's a high risk that utility and pipeline companies will overbuild infrastructure because demand from data centers might not materialize.

I'm Eric Tegethoff reporting.

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Finally, earlier this month, the U.S. Forest Service announced they would not be following through with the National Old Growth Amendment, which would have protected some of Oregon's iconic old growth trees.

The amendment was the result of a Biden administration order to tally old growth forests on federal lands and make a plan to protect them from climate based threats.

For Brenna Bell, forest climate manager with 350 PDX, pulling the plug may have been for the best.

While acknowledging the amendment offered protections, Bell says there were too many loopholes.

Old trees still would have been locked, except people might have believed that it was protected.

So not having it and so people don't have that false sense of protection might be a good thing.

The amendment would have prohibited commercial logging on about 25 million acres of old growth forests.

I'm Isabel Charlay.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service.

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