Today’s cruise ships are environmental nightmares. Just one vessel packed with a veritable petri dish of passengers can burn as much as 250 tons of fuel per day, or about the same emissions as 12,000 cars. If the industry is to survive, it will need to adapt quickly in order to adequately address the myriad ecological emergencies facing the planet—and one Norwegian cruise liner company is attempting to meet those challenges head-on.

Earlier today, Hurtigruten Norway unveiled the first designs for a zero-emission cruise ship scheduled to debut by the end of the decade. First announced in March 2022 as “Sea Zero,” Hurtigruten (Norwegian for “the Fast Route”) showed off its initial concept art for the craft on Wednesday. The vessel features three autonomous, retractable, 50m-high sail wing rigs housing roughly 1,500-square-meters of solar panels. Alongside the sails, the ship will be powered by multiple 60-megawatt batteries that recharge while in port, as well as wind technology. Other futuristic additions to the vessel will include AI maneuvering capabilities, retractable thrusters, contra-rotating propellers, advanced hull coatings, and proactive hull cleaning tech.

[Related: Care about the planet? Skip the cruise, for now.]

“Following a rigorous feasibility study, we have pinpointed the most promising technologies for our groundbreaking future cruise ships,” said Hurtigruten Norway CEO Hedda Felin. Henrik Burvang, Research and Innovation Manager at VARD, the company behind the ship concept designs, added the forthcoming boat’s streamlined shape, alongside its hull and propulsion advances, will reduce energy demand. Meanwhile, VARD is “developing new design tools and exploring new technologies for energy efficiency,” said Burvang.

With enhanced AI capabilities, the cruise ships’ crew bridge is expected to significantly shrink in size to resemble airplane cockpits, but Hurtigruten’s futuristic, eco-conscious designs don’t rest solely on its next-gen ship and crew. The 135-meter-long concept ship’s estimated 500 guests will have access to a mobile app capable of operating their cabins’ ventilation systems, as well as track their own water and energy consumption while aboard the vessel.

Next up for Hurtigruten’s Sea Zero project is a two-year testing and development phase for the proposed tech behind the upcoming cruise ship, particularly focusing on battery production, propulsion, hull design, and sustainable practices. Meanwhile, the company will also look into onboard hotel operational improvements, which Hurtigruten states can consume as much as half a ship’s overall energy reserves.

Hurtigruten also understands if 2030 feels like a long time to wait until a zero-emission ship. In the meantime, the company has already upgraded two of its seven vessels to run on a battery-hybrid-power system, with a third on track to be retrofitted this fall.  Its additional vessels are being outfitted with an array of tech to CO2 emissions by 20-percent, and nitrogen oxides by as much as 80 percent.

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The use of plastic across all facets of human life has grown more and more pervasive in the last few decades, resulting in a surge in global environmental pollution. More than half of the amount of plastic produced from 1950 to 2017 became plastic waste, which harms ecosystems, livelihoods, and food security around the globe. In the United States alone, about 35.7 million tons of plastic were generated in 2018. Exploring potential alternatives to conventional petroleum-based plastics, like bioplastics, is necessary to mitigate pollution and reduce the waste stream.

Bioplastics are usually made from extracted starches, oils, and sugars from renewable sources such as corn and sugarcane—like poly(lactic acids) or PLAs. Others are made from polymers produced by microorganisms, like polyhydroxyalkanoates or PHAs. PLA, one of the most commonly used bioplastics, has similar functionalities to conventional plastic and is considered to be recyclable, biodegradable, and compostable. “Biodegradable” means that it can be degraded naturally by microorganisms, while “compostable” means it is biodegradable in industrial composting operations. However, new research shows that PLA might not be as environmentally friendly as initially thought.

[Related: Why the recycling symbol is part of a ‘misinformation campaign’.]

Because PLA is applied extensively in single-use items and often touted as an alternative to conventional plastics, the authors of a recent PLOS One study looked into the biodegradability of textiles made of PLA in marine waters. The authors found that PLA showed no sign of environmental degradation even after spending 428 days under natural marine conditions. If consumers are buying PLA thinking it’s an ecological solution to plastic items since it biodegrades under normal conditions, they are being misled, says Sarah-Jeanne Royer, visiting scholar at the UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography who was involved in the study.

She adds that PLA is only compostable under specific high-temperature conditions that “cannot be found in nature.” Therefore, the material needs to be properly disposed of and composted to be biodegradable. PLA may be industrially compostable, but since it doesn’t degrade easily in the environment, it demonstrates the potential to be a marine pollutant. The authors conclude that the common practice of referring to industrially compostable materials as “biodegradable plastic” could mislead consumers and increase the amount of plastic waste in the environment.

There is a tendency to assume that bioplastics are biodegradable since they are made from biological materials. However, if they are designed to mimic the structure of conventional plastics, they can last in the environment just as long. In fact, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) discourages the use of “bioplastic” and instead pushes for “bio-based polymer” to avoid misleading individuals that any polymer derived from biomass is inherently environmentally friendly.

Royer says potentially misleading terminology about what is biodegradable or not can affect the environment. Some consumers may think of “biodegradable” and “compostable” as interchangeable, but these materials can often end up in the waste stream just like conventional plastic items. To avoid misconceptions, companies promoting PLA can inform consumers how to use and dispose of their products and let them know the conditions under which the material will biodegrade. “This information should not be hidden and hard to find,” says Royer. “The right labeling is important as it is counterproductive to buy PLA and then discard it in the wrong way.”

In general, a material should be tested under different conditions and scenarios to assess its biodegradability, says Royer. More importantly, it must be tested “under realistic scenarios, such as the natural environment, where these types of materials might end up.” For instance, PLA can be biodegradable under composting facilities, while cellulose-based textile fibers can biodegrade under normal oceanic conditions, she adds.

[Related: Earthworms can break down bioplastic, for better or for worse.]

While the idea of bioplastics can be promising, they’re not the end-all solution. Addressing plastic pollution does not mean using more biodegradable and compostable plastics, but rather, generating less waste in general. Royer says PLA is used for single-use items most of the time, something consumers should avoid using at all costs. 

“Creating a product needs a lot of energy and resources, and using it only a few minutes and then discarding it does not make any sense,” she adds. “If consumers really need to buy a biodegradable bioplastic, then they should make sure to have access to composting facilities, which is not always easy.”

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In 2015, the United Nations announced a series of interdependent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) meant to provide a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.” In the years since, the UN and various partner organizations have released periodic progress reports that assess global movement towards these benchmarks. The latest annual recap, published on Tuesday, focuses on SDG 7’s aim at providing “affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy” to the world, alongside universal access to clean cooking and electricity, doubling historic levels of efficiency improvements, and increasing renewable energy usage by the end of the decade.

The UN’s 2023 assessment of efforts so far? Not great.

According to the Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report, the world’s current pace is simply not en route to achieving “any of the 2030 targets.” Although the commission acknowledges some regions’ improvements in various areas such as renewable energy availability, the number of people globally lacking electricity access is likely to have actually increased for the first time in decades due to the ongoing energy crisis exacerbated by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The report also explains the most pressing factors styming progress towards SDG 7 include the uncertain global economic outlook, high inflation, currency fluctuations, the growing number of countries dealing with debt distress, and supply chain issues.

[Related: 1 in 5 people are likely to live in dangerously hot climates by 2100.]

At humanity’s current trajectory, nearly 2 billion people will still lack clean cooking facilities in 2030, with another 660 million without reliable electricity access. The report’s summary notes that, according to the World Health Organization, over 3 million people die every year due to illnesses stemming from polluting technologies and fuel that increase exposure to toxic household air pollution.

“We must protect the next generation by acting now,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said in a statement. “Investing in clean and renewable solutions to support universal energy access is how we can make real change.” “Clean cooking technologies in homes and reliable electricity in healthcare facilities can play a crucial role in protecting the health of our most vulnerable populations,” Ghebreyesus added.

[Related: Extreme weather and energy insecurity can compound health risks.]

There is at least one bright spot in the discouraging report, however. According to the UN Statistics Division, even accounting for recent electrification slowdowns, the number of people lacking electricity has halved over the past ten years—down to 675 million in 2021 versus around 1.1 billion in 2010.

“Nonetheless, additional efforts and measures must urgently be put in place to ensure that the poorest and hardest-to-reach people are not left behind,” explained Stefan Schweinfest of the UN’s Statistics Division in the UN’s statement. “To reach universal access by 2030, the development community must scale up clean energy investments and policy support.”

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Large home renovation projects often require demolishing or drastically altering walls—processes that can be expensive, time-consuming, and wasteful.  In 2018, for example, the EPA estimated that the US generated almost 600 million tons of construction and demolition debris.

But what if your house was built to account for any future alterations and rearrangements you might one day want? A team of architects and researchers at University of Cambridge recently asked that very question, and engineered a creative, stunning solution—or, technically speaking, a multitude of possible solutions.

[Related: Dirty diapers could be recycled into cheap, sturdy concrete.]

As part of London Somerset House’s London Design Biennale, researchers at Cambridge’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation alongside PLP Architecture have unveiled Ephemeral, a conceptual showcase of specialized, rearrangeable partition walls focusing on adaptability, affordability, and sustainability. Unlike a standard building’s rigid structuring, Ephemeral’s engineered timber can be moved as needed to create entirely new rooms of different sizes and shapes.

According to project lead Ana Gatóo, Ephemeral’s unique, minimalist designs were partially inspired by self-assembly and modular furniture, alongside curved wooden instruments like the guitar. The recognizable curve of traditional acoustic guitars is often a result of “kerfing,” a process in which carefully spaced notches are cut into the wood to allow for malleability without the risk of breakage. By employing that same method to walling, Gatóo’s team found that they could create a wide array of design options for homes and offices.

The technique can be built into new constructions’ floor plans, or even retrofitted into existing spaces to provide virtually countless options. For example, people could rearrange their home floor plans once children move out, adapt a space to better meet physical needs as they age, or simply just shake things up for a change of pace.

[Related: The ability for cities to survive depends on smart, sustainable architecture.]

Because of the simplicity and affordability, the team’s techniques on display with Ephemeral show immense promise as an eco-friendly housing solution for countries in need—researchers reportedly are already talking to developers in India, and hope to collaborate with other partners elsewhere in the future. “I wanted to merge making housing more affordable and social with technical innovation and sustainability,” Gatóo said in a statement. “This is what our cities of the future need—caring for people and the environment at the same time.”

Perhaps a team up with the people making diaper concrete is in order.

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The race to electrify the world’s vehicles and store energy will require batteries — so many of them, in fact, that meeting the demand we will see by 2040 will require 30 times the amount of critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel that those industries currently use.

That presents an enormous challenge, one exacerbated by the mining industry’s alarming allegations of labor crimes, environmental destruction, and encroachments on Indigenous land. There are ways to mitigate electrification’s extractive impacts, one of which may seem obvious: Recycle every battery we make. 

Doing so would reduce the world’s need to mine these minerals by 10 percent within 16 years, because the critical materials in batteries are infinitely reusable. Eventually, a robust circular battery economy could all but eliminate the need to extract them at all.

Of course, that would require recovering every EV pack at the end of its life, a sizable undertaking as the United States prepares for hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles to retire by the end of the decade. A nascent ecosystem of startups is working toward that goal, and the Inflation Reduction Act includes tax credits to incentivize the practice. But some electrification advocates say those steps do not go far enough. While the European Union recently passed a regulation mandating EV battery recycling, there is no such law in the U.S. Proponents of a federal recycling standard say that without one, batteries that could be recycled might get left behind, increasing the need for mining and undermining electrification’s environmental benefits. 

“We need a coordinated federal response to truly have a large-scale impact on meeting our demand,” said Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a policy advocate at Earthjustice, which favors a federal recycling requirement. “If you compare us to the EU, we are woefully behind and need to move much more quickly.”

That movement would have to come from Congress, according to Miller-McFeeley. Historically, however, regulating recycling has been left up to the states and local jurisdictions. The Biden administration has instead been supporting the country’s budding EV battery recycling industry, mainly by making it good business to recover critical materials. 

The Department of Energy wants to establish a “battery ecosystem” that can recover 90 percent of spent lithium batteries by 2030. It has granted billions in loans to battery recyclers to build new facilities. Automakers are incentivized to buy those recyclers’ products, because part of the federal EV tax credit applies only to cars with batteries that include a minimum amount of critical minerals that were mined, processed or recycled in the U.S. or by a free-trade partner. Manufacturers also get a tax credit for producing critical materials (including recycled ones) in the U.S.

Daniel Zotos, who handles public advocacy at the battery recycling startup Redwood Materials, said in an email that a healthy market for recycled materials is emerging. “Not only is there tremendous value today in recycling these metals, but the global demand for metals means that automakers need to source both more mined and recycled critical minerals.”

Zotos said Redwood Materials agrees with the approach the federal government has taken. “The U.S. has in fact chosen to help incentivize, rather than mandate, recycling through provisions established in the Inflation Reduction Act, which we’re deeply supportive of.”

During a pilot project in California last year, the company recovered 95 percent of the critical materials in 1,300 lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride EV and hybrid batteries. The cost of retrieving packs from throughout the state was the biggest barrier to profitability, but Zotos said that expense will subside as the industry grows.

A tiny but growing secondary market for EV batteries is also driving their reuse. Most batteries will be retired once their capacity dwindles to about 70 to 80 percent, due to the impact on the car’s range. But they’re still viable enough at that point to sustain a second life as storage for renewable energy like wind and solar power. 

B2U Storage Solutions used 1,300 retired batteries from Nissan and Honda to create 27 megawatts hours of storage at its solar farm just north of Los Angeles in Lancaster, California. Photovoltaic panels charge the packs all day, and B2U sells the stored power to the local utility during peak demand in the evening. “There is more value in reuse,” said company president Freeman Hall, “and we’re not doing anything more than deferring recycling another four or five years.” 

Homeowners and hobbyists are embracing second-life batteries, too. Henry Newman, co-owner of the auto dismantler EV Parts Solutions in Phoenix, said customers buy his Tesla and Nissan Leaf batteries to convert classic cars or create DIY power storage at home. Any batteries that Newman can’t sell are picked up by Li-Cycle, a lithium-ion battery recycler with a plant in Gilbert, Arizona. 

Newman said dismantlers and customers seem to want to do the right thing. “I know there will be people who don’t follow regulation, but my experience in the last six to seven years is that the industry is pretty conscious of it and tries to mitigate throwing these things in the trash,” he said. A law could help prevent mishandling, but Newman worries about any overreach or added costs that would come with more regulation. 

But relying on the market to ensure proper stewardship is risky, said Jessica Dunn, a senior analyst in the clean transportation program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The recycling of cars has traditionally been a market-based environment,” she said. “But we’re dealing with a completely different system now. EV batteries are big and have a lot of critical materials in them that we need to get out of them no matter if it’s economical or not.” 

Transporting EV batteries, which can weigh more than 1,500 pounds, is expensive (as much as one-third of the cost of recycling them), dangerous, and logistically challenging. Packs can catch fire if improperly handled, and they are classified as hazardous material, which requires special shipping permits. If the battery is in a remote location or is damaged, a recycler could deem it too much trouble to retrieve without a mandate to do so.

Dunn also said that not all batteries contain enough valuable materials for it to make financial sense to go through the trouble of recovering them. While most EV batteries currently contain high-value cobalt and nickel, a new generation of cheaper lithium-ion-phosphate, or LFP, batteries don’t use those metals. Tesla, Ford, and Rivian all recently announced they will use LFPs in some models.

“Just because there aren’t nickel and cobalt in them doesn’t mean that the lithium isn’t something that we should be recovering,” said Dunn. Redwood Materials said it collects lithium-ion phosphate batteries and uses the lithium within them to assemble new battery components, and that they collect all battery packs no matter their condition.

Finally, without guidelines in place, viable batteries may not be repurposed before being recycled, which Dunn said undermines their sustainability. “You’ve already put all that literal energy — and the environmental impacts that go along with that — into manufacturing these batteries,” she said. “So if you can squeak an extra five to 10 years out of them, that’s a really good option.” 

With the U.S. poised to see about 165,000 electric vehicle batteries retire in 2030, Dunn said the time to ensure no batteries are stranded is now. “We’re not seeing a big wave now, but that’s coming, and so we need to be prepared for that.”

There has been some federal movement toward a recycling requirement. The 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directed the Department of Energy to establish a task force to develop an “extended battery producer responsibility framework” to address battery design, transport, and recycling.

Extended producer responsibility, or EPR, is the approach that the EU took in its battery regulation that passed last December. EPR puts the onus on the manufacturer to ensure that what they produce is properly repurposed and then recycled, either by compelling them to pay for the recycling or to handle it themselves. 

Thirty-three states have such laws, covering 16 products ranging from mattresses to packaging. “It is a paradigm shift for how waste is managed in the United States,” said Scott Cassel of the Product Stewardship Institute. But Congress has never passed such a law. 

EV battery recycling might be the issue that could garner bipartisan support for one. Access to critical materials is a foreign policy and national security issue: China processes more than half the world’s lithium and cobalt, which means a steady domestic supply from recycling would help alleviate dependency on a geopolitical rival. 

Building out the infrastructure to dismantle, recover, and process battery materials could also create thousands of jobs, an accomplishment most lawmakers are happy to align themselves with.  

Republican senators alluded to both benefits when supporting the bipartisan Strategic EV Management Act of 2022, which passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act last year. It requires multiple agencies to work on guidelines for “reusing and recycling” batteries from vehicles retired from the federal fleet. 

Republican Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee said in a statement that the bill would ensure agencies could “reap the full economic benefits of EV investments … and do so in a manner that lessens our dependence on communist China.” 

These laws set in motion efforts to design recycling frameworks, but the timelines to develop them span years. In the meantime, a few states are weighing their own mandates. “The states don’t want to wait for any of these bills to move,” Cassel said. “They’re ready to act right now.”

In California, a Senate bill would require battery suppliers to ensure that all “vehicle traction batteries” be recovered, reused, repurposed, or recycled. The bill passed unanimously this week and is headed to the Assembly. Senator Ben Allen, who introduced the bill, said there is bipartisan political and industry support for creating a framework. “You need a system in place,” he said. “That’s like saying, ‘Oh, the people will drive just fine to and from work. We don’t need traffic laws.’” 

As it has been with other clean-vehicle targets, California could be a bellwether for a standard that would eventually take hold nationally.

“We’d love to create a system that could help to inform national policy,” said Allen. “And in this case, with this industry support and bipartisan backing, there actually may be a blueprint here.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/technology/the-u-s-doesnt-have-a-law-mandating-ev-battery-recycling-should-it/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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If you’ve bought shoes, torn into beef jerky, or taken certain medication recently, you have likely handled at least one tiny silica gel packet. After briefly wondering why your new backpack contained a squishy little warning-labeled pillow, you probably chucked it into the garbage with the rest of the packaging.

Yet those little packets are as useful as they are ubiquitous, and you can find plenty of uses for silica gel around your home. It’s better to give them a second, third, or fourth life instead of sending them directly to the landfill. 

Although silica beads are not gems, the porous mineral does come from the ground. Silica is harvested through a “straightforward” mining process using open pits or dredging, according to Robert Goodin, a mineral commodity specialist with the US Geological Survey’s National Minerals Information Center. He says this usually removes vegetation and disturbs the ground’s top layer, and adds that explosive charges will occasionally be used to break apart the rock.

[Related: Which expiration dates actually matter?]

“These little silica gel packets, they’re in everything, but [use in desiccation is] actually a very small percentage of what this industrial sand is used for,” Goodin explains. “It’s less than 1 percent of the eventual end use.” He estimates that over 60 percent of silica sand—similar to regular sand but with much more silica—goes to the oil and gas industry for fracking and other needs. Glass production uses up another roughly 10 percent.

“Recently, [the US has] been the top producer, a major exporter and self-sustaining in a lot of these end-uses for silica, so we have a strong silica—or industrial sand—mining industry” in this country,” Goodin says.

What happens if you eat silica gel?

Despite their ominous, all-caps warnings about consumption, silica gel packets are generally considered non-toxic. The real concern is the size of the beads—it’s pretty easy for a child to choke on the packet or the beads within it, although some beads are large enough for adults to choke on, too. Swallowing silica gel can also lead to dehydration, which could irritate your throat and nose, and cause stomach pains, vomiting, constipation, or nausea.

Even so, spending a lot of time up close with silica can lead to health problems. According to Goodin, industrial workers exposed to silica dust may develop respiratory illnesses if inhaled.

And Britta Baechler, senior manager of ocean plastics research at Ocean Conservancy, notes that some silica gel packets feature a color-changing moisture indication. These aren’t supposed to be used near food and contain a compound known as cobalt chloride, which several chemical manufacturers list as an irritant and a carcinogen.

“Overall it seems that when they do not contain cobalt chloride, silica gel packets are relatively safe to use,” Baechler says. Nevertheless, you should avoid reusing these packets for any food-adjacent uses, just in case.

How to use silica gel around your home

Even if you shouldn’t use silica gel packets around food, there are still plenty of ways to safely reuse the desiccant, but you’ll have to reactivate the packets first.

Paper-based heirlooms—think old books, Gramma’s wedding photo album or your children’s handmade holiday decorations—are also frequently threatened by insidious moisture, leaks, or humidity. Tuck some silica packets into your memory box and breathe a little easier.

Protect—or revive—electronics

You’ll need quite a few to be effective, but keeping silica gel packets packed away with cameras, film, smartphones, video tapes, laptops, and other water-sensitive electronics and accessories can keep them safe until subsequent use. Dropped your phone or tablet in the bath? Try using a slew of silica gel packets to adsorb the water and bring the device back from its watery doom.

Keep moisture-prone areas dry

Your bathroom, basement and attic, are all places that can accumulate moisture easily. Adding silica gel packets near areas that might fog up, like windows and mirrors, can help prevent that slightly-annoying or even damaging condensation and slow down the growth of mold.

[Related: The right way to wash your waterproof clothes]

Preserve unique, special-purpose, or expensive materials

Leather and sports gear might be fine in a bit of rain, but prolonged exposure to moisture can ruin, stain or mildew different specialty fabrics. And any boxes of seasonal clothing or items you only use once a year (think: holiday sweaters and decor) might get wet long before you open them up and realize it. Silica gel packets tucked into pockets and between layers of fabrics can adsorb water before anything is ruined. Other water-sensitive materials such as seed packets can benefit from nearby silica gel packs, and you can even speed up drying flowers with silica. 

What happens to silica beads in the environment?

For most silica gel packets, a single use is all they’re likely going to get. Still, the packets that encase the silica gel beads are a relatively understudied source of single-use plastic pollution, Baechler explains.

“By function, [silica gel packets are] a desiccant,” Baechler says. “So if these packets are being dumped into waterways, or even onto land, it can dry out whatever environment ends up in, which can be problematic.”

[Related: How to go zero-waste at the grocery store]

Additionally, silica works as an insecticide for indoor and outdoor uses in powdered form on “stored grain, other food, feed and ornamentals; in food handling areas; and on pets and their living/sleeping quarters,” according to a US Environmental Protection Agency fact sheet.

“That means it’s being applied in an environmental setting,” Baechler adds. “I would surmise that if silica is used in this way and released into the environment, especially in large quantities that could have some impacts in terms of water retention in ecosystems and, perhaps, impacts on [animal and plant life] as well.” 

For now, at least, the environmental effects of silica gel are uncertain, but we think it’s better to be safe than sorry.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on July 27, 2022.

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One of the world’s busiest airports will soon showcase an innovative, undeniably cute way to speed up travelers’ entrances and exits. First announced earlier this month, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is partnering with EV Safe Charge to demonstrate how the company’s mobile electric vehicle charging station, ZiGGY, could be deployed in public spaces to economically and conveniently power up consumers’ parked cars.

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source.]

Electric vehicles are an integral component of the societal shift towards clean, renewable energy. Unfortunately, battery shortages stemming from supply chain issues alongside a need for evermore charging stations is hampering a wider adoption of green transportation. ZiGGY obviously isn’t a catch-all fix, but it’s still a novel tool that both its makers and DFW hope to highlight over the summer as part of the airport’s series of EV charging solution demos.

“We know that electric vehicles will be a big part of the future of transportation,” Paul Puopolo, DFW’s Executive VP of Innovation, said in a statement, adding their air hub is “leaning into emerging technology now so that we are prepared to meet the needs of the airport community well into the future.”

ZiGGY itself resembles a large vending machine on wheels, which makes a certain amount of sense given it dispenses electric fuel on demand. Using geofencing technology, app-based controls, and on-board cameras, ZiGGY can be deployed directly to the location of your parked EV, where a user can then connect the charging bot to their ride. To court additional revenue streams, each ZiGGY also features large video screens capable of displaying advertisements. Don’t worry about getting stuck behind it if someone is using a ZiGGY, either—its dimensions and mobility ensures each station can park itself behind an EV without the need for additional space.

Speaking with Ars Technica on Tuesday, EV Safe Charge’s founder and CEO Caradoc Ehrenhalt explained that the idea is to deploy ZiGGY fleets to commercial hubs around the world, such as additional airports, hotels, and shopping centers. “What we’re hearing from people… is the common thread of the infrastructure being very challenging or not possible to put in or not cost effective or takes too much time. And so there really is the need for a mobile charging solution,” said Ehrenhalt.

[Related: Why you barely see electric vehicles at car dealerships.]

Of course, such an autonomous vehicle could find itself prone to defacement and vandalism, but Ehrenhalt apparently opts to look on the sunnier side of things. “Ziggy is fairly heavy because of the battery,” they cautioned to Ars Technica. “It has cameras all around and sensors, including GPS, and so there potentially could be [vandalism], but I’m always hoping for the best of humanity.”

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Even after all that quarantine hobby honing, gardening can still be an uphill battle for those lacking a green thumb—but a little help from robotic friends apparently goes a long way. Recently, UC Berkeley unveiled AlphaGarden, a high-tech, AI-assisted plant ecosystem reportedly capable of cultivating a polycultural garden at least as well as its human counterparts. And in one particular, consequential metric, AlphaGarden actually excelled.

As detailed by IEEE Spectrum over the weekend, UC Berkeley’s gardening plot combined a commercial robotic gantry farming setup with AlphaGardenSim, an AI program developed in-house by utilizing a high-resolution camera alongside soil moisture sensors. Additionally, the developers included automated drip irrigation, pruning, and even seed planting. AlphaGarden (unfortunately) doesn’t feature a fleet of cute, tiny farm bots scuttling around its produce; instead, the system resembles a small crane installation capable of moving above and tending to the garden bed.

[Related: How to keep your houseplants from dying this summer.]

As an added challenge, AlphaGarden was a polyculture creation, meaning it contained a variety of crops like turnips, arugula, lettuce, cilantro, kale, and other plants. Polyculture gardens reflect nature much more accurately, and benefit from better soil health, pest resilience, and fewer fertilization requirements. At the same time, they are often much more labor-intensive given the myriad plant needs, growth rates, and other such issues when compared to a monoculture yield.

To test out AlphaGarden’s capabilities compared with humans, researchers simply built two plots and planted the same seeds in both of them. Over the next 60 days, AlphaGarden was largely left to its own literal and figurative devices, while professional horticulturalists did the same. Afterwards, UC Berkeley repeated the same growth cycle, but this time allowed AlphaGarden to give its slower-growing plants an earlier start.

According to researchers, the results from the two cycles  “suggest that the automated AlphaGarden performs comparably to professional horticulturalists in terms of coverage and diversity.” While that might not be too surprising given all the recent, impressive AI advancements, there was one aspect that AlphaGarden unequivocally outperformed its human farmer controls—over the two test periods, the robotic system reduced water consumption by as much as a whopping 44 percent. As IEEE Spectrum explained, that translates to several hundred liters less after the two month period.

[Related: Quick and dirty tips to make sure your plants love the soil they’re in.]

Although researchers claim “AlphaGarden has thus passed the Turing Test for gardening,” referencing the much-debated marker for robotic intelligence and sentience, there are a few caveats here. For one, these commercial gantry systems remain cost prohibitive for most people (the cheapest one looks to be about $3,000), and more research is needed to further optimize its artificial light sources and water usage. There’s also the question of scalability and customization, as different gardens have different shapes, sizes, and needs.

Still, in an era of increasingly dire water worries, it’s nice to see developers creating novel ways to reduce water consumption for one of the planet’s thirstiest industries.

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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. 

One in five people could live in dangerously hot conditions by the end of the century if global warming continues at its current pace, even if nations uphold their pledges under the Paris Agreement, scientists warned in a new peer-reviewed study. It’s the latest research published in recent days that points to the stark human and societal costs of the accelerating climate crisis as global carbon emissions continue to rise to unprecedented levels.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Sustainability, estimates that some 2 billion people would see a mean annual temperature of 84 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, starting in as early as 2070, when Earth’s population is expected to reach at least 9.5 billion. Most people live in a “human climate niche” that ranges between a mean annual temperature of 55 degrees and 80 degrees, the researchers said, so that many people experiencing a major uptick in regional heat would be unprecedented.

Such a temperature threshold, where 84 degrees or higher becomes the middle ground for the year, can also be very dangerous for anyone without air conditioning or other means to cool off, the study’s authors also noted. According to their estimate, some of the nations that will be hardest hit by the heat are also home to some of the world’s poorest communities, where air conditioning typically isn’t an option.

Of the estimated 2 billion people that could be forced out of their climate niche and into dangerous extreme heat, the study found, 600 million will be in India, 300 million in Nigeria and 100 million in Indonesia.

“Those people who are affected are the poorer people on the planet,” Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at Exeter and the study’s lead author, told Forbes. “At higher temperatures, life becomes unbearable, affecting water, agriculture and food. You can’t barricade yourself from climate change. There is an undeniable interconnection amongst nations.”

Among the study’s most pertinent findings is the drastic difference it would make for the world to limit average warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—the most ambitious target of the Paris Agreement. Scientists estimate that under the global climate treaty’s current pledges, the world is still on track to warm by roughly 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100. But if emissions were significantly slashed to limit average warming to 1.5 degrees, Monday’s study said, just 400 million people would be pushed outside their climate niche instead of 2 billion.

Monday’s study also comes on the heels of a major report released last week by the United Nations’ weather agency, which warned that heat will likely soar to record levels in many parts of the world over the next five years. Global warming, combined with a climate pattern known as El Niño, will largely drive that heat, the report’s authors said, with the next five years almost certainly set to be the warmest five-year period ever recorded.

“This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment,” Petteri Taalas, the World Meteorological Organization’s secretary general, told the New York Times. “We need to be prepared.”

It’s not just extreme heat that climate scientists have warned about in recent days.

On Monday, the World Meteorological Organization released another report, which found that the economic damage of natural disasters continues to rise, even as improvements in early warning systems have helped reduce the loss of life. In that report, the U.N. body tallied nearly 12,000 extreme weather, climate and water-related events globally between 1970 and 2021 that have killed more than 2 million people and caused $4.3 trillion worth of economic damage.

And climate change is already affecting all parts of the world, not just the poorer regions. About $1.7 trillion of that financial damage took place in the United States alone.

The new studies and reports, in many ways, are pointing to a reality with which many people are already familiar. This week, swathes of India are baking under extreme heat, with some places reaching temperatures as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday. Over the weekend, raging wildfires in Canada continued to send smoke south into the U.S., prompting officials in Colorado and Montana to issue air quality alerts. And last week, heavy rainfall inundated 43 towns in Italy, causing landslides and flash floods that killed 14 people and destroyed hundreds of roads.

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Over the past decade, public awareness about climate change has grown, albeit gradually. As more people became eco-conscious, it isn’t surprising that the demand for environmentally friendly products has increased as well. According to the 2022 Sustainable Market Share Index, sustainability-marketed products now hold about a 17.3 percent share of the consumer packaged goods market, a significant increase from 13.7 percent back in 2015. Products marketed as sustainable also grew about twice as fast as conventionally marketed products from 2017 to 2022.

With more green products entering the market, it’s important to ensure that manufacturers do not mislead consumers when it comes to environmental claims. The Federal Trade Commission made the Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (or “Green Guides”) exactly for this purpose. First issued in 1992, the guide has been updated several times since then to keep marketers from making unsubstantiated claims.

[Related: How to actually recycle.]

Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) submitted a comment about the Green Guides. According to the agency, the use of the resin identification code (RIC) with the recycling symbol—the familiar three chasing arrows—constitutes a misrepresentation of claims. Even though the RIC is meant to identify a product’s unique plastic resin type, consumers generally understand it to represent a universal recycling symbol. A 2019 report from the Consumer Brands Association found that 68 percent of Americans assume any product with the resin code and recycling symbol is recyclable.

“When the plastic industry co-opted the recycling symbol to label their plastic resins, they began a decades-long misinformation campaign to convince Americans that all plastic packaging is recyclable,” says Martin Bourque, executive director of the Ecology Center and co-founder of the Alliance of Mission-Based Recyclers (AMBR). “Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

The RIC refers to the type of plastic of which there are seven in total. However, “very little plastic packaging is even marginally recyclable,” says Bourque. According to Greenpeace, only polyethylene terephthalate (PET) #1 and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) #2 can be claimed as recyclable materials. They are the only types of plastic resin widely accepted by more than 350 material recovery facilities (MRF) across the country. Even if MRFs were to accept other types of plastic, that doesn’t ensure that they will be recycled—they might simply dispose of them.

Recycling contamination occurs when recyclable items are placed in the wrong bins or non-recyclable items end up in the recycling system. Local governments and MRFs face contamination issues in their daily operations, which is associated with consumer confusion about what is recyclable or not. The Recycling Partnership, a nonprofit organization committed to building a circular economy, estimates that contamination costs the US recycling system at least $300 million annually. 

Bourque says the use of the chasing arrows with the RIC has undermined efforts at reducing plastic use, enabled even more single-use and disposable plastic packaging, and cost recyclers millions in collection, sorting, and disposal expenses. The EPA comment says that updating the recyclable claims section on the Green Guides may reduce consumer confusion and the financial burden of facilities receiving and incarcerating plastic materials they cannot recycle.

ASTM International, which administers the RIC system, revised the standard in 2013 and replaced the chasing arrows symbol with a solid equilateral triangle to bring the focus back to the purpose of resin identification and quality control before recycling. The state of California also passed SB 343 in 2021, which prohibits the use of the chasing arrows symbol on products that are not considered recyclable in accordance with statewide recyclability criteria. 

Having an equilateral triangle around the resin identification code is moderately better than the recycling symbol, says Bourque, but he recommends that California’s new labeling law be adopted on a national level since it requires any claims of recyclability (including the use of the chasing arrows symbol) to be backed up with proof.

The RIC system was not intended for consumers in the first place, but rather, for those who work in materials recovery and recycling facilities. In terms of getting more people on board with recycling, it may be helpful to establish consumer communication tools like new labels to indicate specifically whether a plastic material is recyclable or not, says Kate O’Neill, global environmental politics and governance expert and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. It may also restore trust in the system and create more effective recycling practices from consumers, she adds.

[Related: Recycling plants spew a staggering amount of microplastics.]

To increase plastic recycling rates, it’s necessary to invest in recycling infrastructure, says O’Neill. The country’s recycling infrastructure hasn’t been keeping up with today’s waste steam. Last year, the EPA announced $375 million in funding for new recycling, reuse, and waste prevention programs and initiatives—the largest investment in recycling by the EPA in 30 years.

O’Neill says creating markets for recycled plastics could also help. In 2020, California passed AB 793 which requires plastic beverage containers to contain a minimum amount of recycled content. Starting in 2022, the amount of post-consumer recycled resin in plastic beverage containers should at least be 15 percent. The requirement increases to 25 percent by 2025 and 50 percent by 2030, thereby increasing the demand for recycled resin.

Although recycling is part of the solution when addressing plastic waste, O’Neill says it can’t be the panacea. The focus should still be on reducing plastic packaging, not recycling more, says Bourque. Targeting virgin plastic production and use can reduce further waste generation. “We cannot recycle our way out of the plastic packaging crisis,” he adds. “Remember, it goes ‘Reduce, Reuse, then Recycle!’”

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This story was originally published by Grist.

Given America’s penchant for gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs, you might be surprised to learn that the country’s gasoline usage is going down, maybe for good. Even though only about 1 percent of cars on the road today are electric, some say the United States has already passed “peak gasoline” — the pivotal moment when the fuel’s use finally begins a permanent decline after a century of growth. 

Gasoline consumption has not fully bounced back to levels seen before local governments began lockdowns in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of people stopped driving to work every day. Back in the pre-pandemic year of 2018, Americans burned an average of 392 million gallons of gasoline, more than one gallon every day for every person in the country. Since that annual peak, a combination of remote work, high gas prices, and fuel economy standards that require that new cars get better gas mileage have diminished demand. To stay profitable, oil refiners have cut back on production.

Demand for gasoline this year could end up at around 366 million gallons per day, down 7 percent from 2018, according to analysis provided to Grist by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy research and advocacy nonprofit. With recent policies like the Inflation Reduction Act offering a tax credit of up to $7,500 for an electric vehicle and the Biden administration’s new emissions rules — which require two-thirds of new passenger vehicles be electric by 2031 — gasoline demand could decrease almost a quarter by 2030, according to the research group, compared to current levels.

That’s still not fast enough to hit important targets to slash greenhouse gases, says Janelle London, the co-executive director of Coltura, an organization advocating for the end of gasoline. “Scientists are saying that we have to cut emissions from all sources in half by 2030 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and gasoline use just is not on track,” she said. The majority of the country’s transportation-related carbon emissions come from burning gasoline in cars, trucks, and SUVs. And transportation is currently the country’s largest source of pollution. London says that the fastest way to cut consumption is to target electric vehicle incentives toward “gasoline superusers”: the 10 percent of population that drives the most and guzzles nearly a third of the country’s gas. 

That’s not who’s buying electric vehicles right now. The typical EV driver is likely to be among those who drive the least, London said. “The only way we’re going to solve this near-term problem is to get the biggest gasoline users to switch to EVs, like, now, as soon as possible.” California, for instance, is on track for a 10 percent cut in gasoline use by 2030, far from its goal of halving gasoline use by the end of the decade. If superusers in California bought electric vehicles before everyone else, it would result in a steep, 43 percent drop that would move the state much closer to its climate goals.

London says that federal tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act “could be much better designed,” and she’s not the only one who thinks so. Ashley Nunes, director of federal climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center, says the credits aren’t necessarily prompting people to give up their gas-powered cars. They’re just adding another vehicle. An estimated 44 percent of households with an electric vehicle have at least two other cars, if not three — nearly all of which run on gas. “First and foremost, I think that electric vehicle incentives should not be given to people who are not turning in their gasoline-powered car,” Nunes said. “We’re not paying for you to add another car in your garage.” 

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Sustainable Cities and Society, Nunes and other researchers found that offering blanket subsidies for electric vehicles isn’t an economically effective way of reducing carbon emissions. Targeting subsidies at households with only one vehicle and toward taxi or Uber drivers produces more bang for the federal buck. “You want to target people who drive their cars a lot, because that’s where you see the real emission benefits associated with EVs,” Nunes said.

In some states, there’s new interest in getting frequent drivers to switch to EVs. A bill in Vermont, for instance, would allow the Burlington Electric Department to use funds to help gasoline superusers buy electric vehicles. It passed through the state legislature this month and is headed to Republican Governor Phil Scott’s desk. If signed, it’ll be the first legislation in the country to offer EV incentives specifically to “superusers,” a term coined by Coltura two years ago.

Coltura makes the case that converting the biggest gasoline users into EV owners means less money for gas stations and more for power providers. “Utilities have a huge interest in getting these superusers to switch to EVs,” London said. “Suddenly, they’d be using a lot of electricity, right?” Someone who uses 1,000 gallons of gasoline a year, if switched to an EV, would use about 9,000 kilowatts of extra electricity each year, according to Coltura. Using the average cost of gasoline and electricity in February 2023, that means they’d spend about $1,150 on electricity instead of $3,390 on gas, saving roughly $2,000 a year.

There’s another effort underway in California that would allow superusers to receive more funding, in addition to federal tax credits, to switch. Assembly Bill 1267 would have directed the California Air Resources Board to institute a program that maximizes the reduction in gasoline — and thus the climate impact — for each dollar spent on incentives for superusers. After passing unanimously through two committee hearings this spring with bipartisan support, the bill died last week. (London said that it will likely be reintroduced next year.) The state already has a hodgepodge of programs that help lower-income residents buy electric cars — including one that offers grants of up to $9,500 to replace a gas guzzler with a cleaner vehicle — though they have suffered from a lack of funding.

The superusers who make less than the state’s median income wind up spending 10 percent of their income just on putting gas in their car. “People say you can’t afford an EV,” London said. “If you’re a superuser, you can’t afford to keep paying for gasoline.” 

The average price of an electric car is about $59,000, higher than the $48,000 average for all cars. But London says that average EV cost is “irrelevant” since there are cheaper options on the market. “The question is, is there an EV at the price point that I can afford one?” she asks. While the cheapest EV model, the Chevy Bolt, is being discontinued, a new Nissan Leaf starts at just under $30,000, and tax credits can knock the price down further.

Clayton Stranger, a managing director at the Rocky Mountain Institute, said that there was a “compelling” economic case to target superusers with EV incentives, though the savings alone might not be enough to make people switch: The infrastructure needs to be built in rural places to make people feel comfortable driving an electric car, giving them confidence there’s a place to charge if they need it.

And then there’s the other aspect of ending the gasoline era: getting Americans out of their cars and into buses and trains, and onto bike lanes and sidewalks. “We also need to significantly reduce the amount of driving that is done,” Stranger said. “EVs alone don’t get us all the way there.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/peak-gasoline-superusers-electric-vehicle-incentives/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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This article was originally featured on Undark.

Sweat was dripping down Luis Cassiano’s face. It was 2012, and Rio de Janeiro’s hottest day to date: At nearly 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the seaside city had just barely beaten its previous record set in 1984.

Cassiano and his mother, then 82, had lived in the same narrow four-story house since they moved to Parque Arará, a favela in northern Rio, some 20 years earlier. Like many other homes in the working-class community — one of more than 1,000 favelas in the Brazilian city of over 6.77 million — its roof is made of asbestos tiles. But homes in his community are now often roofed with corrugated steel sheets, a material frequently used for its low cost. It’s also a conductor of extreme heat.

While the temperatures outside made his roof hot enough to cook an egg — Cassiano said he once tried and succeeded — inside felt worse. “I only came home to sleep,” said Cassiano. “I had to escape.”

Parque Arará mirrors many other low-income urban communities, which tend to lack greenery and are more likely to face extreme heat than their wealthier or more rural counterparts. Such areas are often termed “heat islands” since they present pockets of high temperatures — sometimes as much as 20 degrees hotter than surrounding areas.

That weather takes a toll on human health. Heat waves are associated with increased rates of dehydration, heat stroke, and death; they can exacerbate chronic health conditions, including respiratory disorders; and they impact brain function. Such health problems will likely increase as heat waves become more frequent and severe with climate change. According to a 2021 study published in Nature Climate Change, more than a third of the world’s heat-related deaths between 1991 and 2018 could be attributed to a warming planet.

The extreme heat worried Cassiano. And as a long-time favela resident, he knew he couldn’t depend on Brazil’s government to create better living conditions for his neighbors, the majority of whom are Black. So, he decided to do it himself.

While speaking with a friend working in sustainable development in Germany, Cassiano learned about green roofs: an architectural design feature in which rooftops are covered in vegetation to reduce temperatures both inside and outdoors. The European country started to seriously explore the technology in the 1960s, and by 2019, had expanded its green roofs to an estimated 30,000 acres, more than doubling in a decade.

“Why can’t favelas do that too?” he recalled thinking.

Scientific research suggests green infrastructure can offer urban residents a wide range of benefits: In addition to cooling ambient temperatures, they can reduce stormwater runoff, curb noise pollution, improve building energy efficiency, and ease anxiety.

More than 10 years since that hot day in 2012 — and several heat records later — Cassiano heads Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit he started to educate residents about how they can build their own green roofs. Favela construction comes with its own set of technical peculiarities and public policy problems, and Cassiano enlisted the help of local scientists to research best practices and materials. But covering the roofs of an entire neighborhood requires time and — even with cost-reducing measures — a big budget.

His work has been steady, but slow. He is still far from converting every roof in his community of some 20,000 people. And with the effects of climate change arriving quickly, time may not be on their side. Still, Cassiano sees Teto Verde Favela as a template for others in similar situations around the world.

“I started to imagine the whole favela with green roofs,” he said. “And not just this favela, but others, too.”

Green roofs have been around for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s that the modern-day version really took off, thanks to new irrigation technology and protection against leaks developed in Germany.

The technology cools local temperatures in two ways. First, vegetation absorbs less heat than other roofing materials. Second, plant roots absorb water that is then released as vapor through the leaves — a process known as evapotranspiration that offers similar cooling effects to how sweat cools human skin.

Green roofs can also help prevent flooding by reducing runoff. A conventional roof might let 100 percent of rain run off, allowing water to pour into streets, but a green roof, depending on its structure and slope, “can reduce this runoff generation rate to anywhere from 25 to 60 percent,” Lucas Camargo da Silva Tassinari, a civil engineer who researches the effectiveness of green roofs, wrote in an email to Undark.

Such interventions could be helpful in Brazil, where flooding is an ongoing issue, and temperatures are rising. A 2015 study showed that land surface temperatures in the city’s heat islands had increased 3 degrees over the previous decade. But greenery appears to help: Researchers from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, or UFRJ, found a 36 degree difference in land surface temperatures between the city’s warmest neighborhoods and nearby vegetated areas.

In Parque Arará, Cassiano said the temperature regularly rises well above what is registered as the city’s official temperature, often measured in less dense areas closer to the ocean. He decided his community’s first green roof prototype would be built on his own home. As he researched the best way to get started, Cassiano came across Bruno Rezende, a civil engineer who was looking at green roofs as part of his doctoral thesis at UFRJ. When he told him about his idea, Rezende came to Parque Arará right away.

There isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach to green roofs. A designer must take into account each location’s specific climate and building type in order for the project to not only be effective, but also structurally sound.

The problem is that green roofs can be quite heavy. They require a number of layers, each serving its own unique purpose, such as providing insulation or allowing for drainage. But Parque Arará, like all of Rio’s favelas, wasn’t built to code. Homes went up out of necessity, without engineers or architects, and are made with everything from wood scraps and daub, to bricks, cinder blocks, asbestos tiles, and sheet metal. And that informal construction couldn’t necessarily hold the weight of all the layers a green roof would require.

After looking at Cassiano’s roof, Rezende’s first suggestion was to cover it with rolls of bidim, a lightweight nonwoven geotextile made of polyester from recycled drink bottles. Inside those rolls of bidim, leftover from a recent construction project, they placed several types of plants: basket plants, inchplants, creeping inchplants, and spiderworts. They set the rolls in the grooves of the asbestos roof, and then created an irrigation system that dripped water down.

With a cheap way to install lightweight green roofs, Rezende brought Cassiano to meet his advisers and present what they had found. The university agreed that the project showed such promise that it would provide materials for the next step, Cassiano said.

Once the plants on Cassiano’s roof had time to grow, Rezende and André Mantovani, a biologist and ecologist at Rio’s Botanical Gardens, returned to see what effect it had on Cassiano’s home. With several sensors placed under the roofs, the researchers compared the temperature inside his house to that of a neighbor’s for several days. (The researchers intended the study to last longer, but the favela’s unreliable energy system kept cutting power to their sensors.)

Despite the study’s limitations, the results were encouraging. During the period that researchers recorded temperatures, Cassiano’s roof was roughly 86 degrees. His neighbor’s, on the other hand, fluctuated between 86 and 122 degrees. At one point, the roofs of the two homes differed by nearly 40 degrees.

For Cassiano, the numbers confirmed what he suspected: If he wanted to make a difference, he needed to put green roofs on as many homes as possible.

“When we talk about green roofs, we think about one house. But that’s not enough,” said Marcelo Kozmhinsky, an agronomic engineer in Recife who specializes in sustainable landscaping. “When you start to imagine a street, a block, a neighborhood, and a city or a community as a whole with several green roofs, then you have something. Because it’s about the collective. It benefits everyone.”

But thinking on a larger scale comes with a host of new challenges. In order for a green roof to be safe, a structure has to be able to support it, and studying the capacity of individual buildings takes time. And even with low-cost materials such as bidim, installing green roofs on hundreds or thousands of homes requires significant funds.

“The biggest obstacle is the cost,” said Bia Rafaelli, an architect based in São Paulo who has worked with communities like Cassiano’s to teach them about sustainable building options. “To make this all viable on a large scale,” installing green roofs on all the favelas, she said, “there would need to be sponsorship from companies or help from the government.”

While some municipalities in Brazil have legislation requiring green roofs on new construction when possible, Rio de Janeiro does not. A bill that would create a similar law to those in other cities has been at a standstill in Rio’s city council since May 2021.

Rio does, however, incentivize builders to install green roofs and other sustainable options — like solar panels and permeable paving. But such efforts don’t typically benefit residents of the favelas, where most building is done informally, without construction companies looking to legislation for guidelines and benefits.

In addition to red tape and other bureaucratic hurdles, any project related to the favelas also faces longstanding racism. According to a 2021 study conducted by Instituto Locomotiva, Data Favela, and Central Única das Favelas, 67 percent of the population in favelas across Brazil is Black. That’s disproportionately higher than the country’s general population, which is 55 percent Black.

“Public policy doesn’t reach” favelas, said Diosmar Filho, a geographer and senior researcher at the research association Iyaleta, where he heads studies on inequality and climate change. The working-class communities, he said, are heat islands because of environmental racism — the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color — which has left much of Brazil’s Black population with inadequate housing and health care, both of which are aggravated by the effects of climate change.

Such trends aren’t isolated to Brazil. A 2020 study published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning found that White neighborhoods in South African cities had disproportionately higher access to urban green infrastructure, including parks and green roofs — which the authors dubbed a “green Apartheid.” In a 2019 study, researchers at the University of Michigan used a spatial analysis to determine that green roofs were predominantly located in the city’s downtown, which they noted was more White and affluent than the rest of the city. (The study had limited data, however, and only analyzed 10 green roofs.)

Without support from the government or other authorities, Filho said, Black people often turn to each other for help. “It’s always the Black population that’s producing quality of life for the Black population,” he said, referring to people like Cassiano and projects like Teto Verde Favela.

“The actions of Teto Verde would be a great point of reference for urban housing policy for the reduction of impacts of climate change,” said Filho. But when municipalities deny people of color the right to safe housing and ways to push back against climate change, he added, “that’s when it becomes a case of environmental racism.”

Back in Rio, Cassiano continues to collaborate with research scientists and students at UFRJ. Together, they test new materials and methods to improve on the initial green roof prototype first installed on his home more than 10 years ago. To adapt for favela construction, his primary focus has been to reduce cost and reduce weight.

Instead of using an asphalt blanket as a layer of waterproof screening, Cassiano uses a vinyl sheet sandwiched between two layers of bidim. This means the cost of roofs installed by Teto Verde Favela is roughly 5 Brazilian reais, or $1, per square foot; conventional green roofs, though difficult to estimate in cost, can run as much as 53 Brazilian reais ($11) for the same amount of space. His roofs also started out hydroponic, meaning no soil was used, in order to decrease their weight.

Cassiano’s mother, now 93, loves caring for the plants on their roof. It not only helps lower the temperature in their home on hot days and retains rainwater to help prevent flooding in a downpour, but Cassiano said it also gives their mental health a much-needed boost.

“Now I couldn’t live here in this house without this green roof,” said Cassiano. “It makes me so happy when I see birds, when I see butterflies, when I see a flower or a fruit,” he added.

“It’s so much more than I ever imagined.”

Jill Langlois is an independent journalist based in São Paulo, Brazil. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, and TIME, among others.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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These days, it seems like every carmaker—from those focused on luxury options to those with an eye more toward the economical—is getting into electric vehicles. And with new US policies around purchasing incentives and infrastructure improvements, consumers might be more on board as well. But many people are still concerned about whether electric vehicles are truly better for the environment overall, considering certain questions surrounding their production process. 

Despite concerns about the pollution generated from mining materials for batteries and the manufacturing process for the EVs themselves, the environmental and energy experts PopSci spoke to say that across the board, electric vehicles are still better for the environment than similar gasoline or diesel-powered models. 

When comparing a typical commercial electric vehicle to a gasoline vehicle of the same size, there are benefits across many different dimensions. 

“We do know, for instance, if we’re looking at carbon dioxide emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, that electric vehicles operating on the typical electric grid can end up with fewer greenhouse gas emissions over the life of their vehicle,” says Dave Gohlke, an energy and environmental analyst at Argonne National Lab. “The fuel consumption (using electricity to generate the fuel as opposed to burning petroleum) ends up releasing fewer emissions per mile and over the course of the vehicle’s expected lifetime.”

[Related: An electrified car isn’t the same thing as an electric one. Here’s the difference.]

EVs also produce no tailpipe emissions, which means reductions in particulate matter or in smog precursors that contribute to local air pollution.

“The latest best evidence right now indicates that in almost everywhere in the US, electric vehicles are better for the environment than conventional vehicles,” says Kenneth Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics at Yale School of the Environment. “How much better for the environment depends on where you charge and what time you charge.”

Electric motors tend to be more efficient compared to the spark ignition engine used in gasoline cars or the compression ignition engine used in diesel cars, where there’s usually a lot of waste heat and wasted energy.

Creating an EV produces pollution during the manufacturing process. “Greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing an electric vehicle are almost twice that of an internal combustion vehicle…that is due primarily to the battery. You’re actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions to produce the vehicle, but there’s a net overall lifecycle benefit or reduction because of the significant savings in the use of the vehicle,” says Gregory Keoleian, the director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan. “We found in terms of the overall lifecycle, on average, across the United States, taking into account temperature effects, grid effects, there was 57 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for a new electric vehicle compared to a new combustion engine vehicle.” 

In terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with operating the vehicles, fully battery-powered electric vehicles were the best, followed by plug-in hybrids, and then hybrids, with internal combustion engine vehicles faring the worst, Keoleian notes. Range anxiety might still be top of mind for some drivers, but he adds that households with more than one vehicle can consider diversifying their fleet to add an EV for everyday use, when appropriate, and save the gas vehicle (or the gas feature on their hybrids) for longer trips.

The breakeven point at which the cost of producing and operating an electric vehicle starts to gain an edge over a gasoline vehicle of similar make and model occurs at around two years in, or around 20,000 to 50,000 miles. But when that happens can vary slightly on a case-by-case basis. “If you have almost no carbon electricity, and you’re charging off solar panels on your own roof almost exclusively, that breakeven point will be sooner,” says Gohlke. “If you’re somewhere with a very carbon intensive grid, that breakeven point will be a little bit later. It depends on the style of your vehicle as well because of the materials that go into it.” 

[Related: Why solid-state batteries are the next frontier for EV makers]

For context, Gohlke notes that the average EV age right now is around 12 years old based on registration data. And these vehicles are expected to drive approximately 200,000 miles over their lifetime. 

“Obviously if you drive off your dealer’s lot and you drive right into a light pole and that car never takes more than a single mile, that single vehicle will have had more embedded emissions than if you had wrecked a gasoline car on your first drive,” says Gohlke. “But if you look at the entire fleet of vehicles, all 200-plus-million vehicles that are out there and how long we expect them to survive, over the life of the vehicle, each of those electric vehicles is expected to consume less energy and emit lower emissions than the corresponding gas vehicle would’ve been.”

To put things in perspective, Gillingham says that extracting and transporting fossil fuels like oil is energy intensive as well. When you weigh those factors, electric vehicle production doesn’t appear that much worse than the production of gasoline vehicles, he says. “Increasingly, they’re actually looking better depending on the battery chemistry and where the batteries are made.” 

And while it’s true that there are issues with mines, the petrol economy has damaged a lot of the environment and continues to do so. That’s why improving individual vehicle efficiency needs to be paired with reducing overall consumption.

EV batteries are getting better

Mined materials like rare metals can have harmful social and environmental effects, but that’s an economy-wide problem. There are many metals that are being used in batteries, but the use of metals is nothing new, says Trancik. Metals can be found in a range of household products and appliances that many people use in their daily lives. 

Plus, there have been dramatic improvements in battery technology and the engineering of the vehicle itself in the past decade. The batteries have become cheaper, safer, more durable, faster charging, and longer lasting. 

“There’s still a lot of room to improve further. There’s room for improved chemistry of the batteries and improved packaging and improved coolant systems and software that manages the batteries,” says Gillingham.

The two primary batteries used in electric vehicles today are NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) and LFP (lithium-ferrous-phosphate). NMC batteries tend to use more precious metals like cobalt from the Congo, but they are also more energy dense. LFP uses more abundant metals. And although the technology is improving fast, it’s still in an early stage, sensitive to cold weather, and not quite as energy dense. LFP tends to be good for utility scale cases, like for storing electricity on the grid. 

[Related: Could swappable EV batteries replace charging stations?]

Electric vehicles also offer an advantage when it comes to fewer trips to the mechanic; conventional vehicles have more moving parts that can break down. “You’re more likely to be doing maintenance on a conventional vehicle,” says Gillingham. He says that there have been Teslas in his studies that are around eight years old, with 300,000 miles on them, which means that even though the battery does tend to degrade a little every year, that degradation is fairly modest.

Eventually, if the electric vehicle markets grow substantially, and there’s many of these vehicles in circulation, reusing the metals in the cars can increase their benefits. “This is something that you can’t really do with the fossil fuels that have already been combusted in an internal combustion engine,” says Trancik. “There is a potential to set up that circularity in the supply chain of those metals that’s not readily done with fossil fuels.”

Since batteries are fairly environmentally costly, the best case is for consumers who are interested in EVs to get a car with a small battery, or a plug-in hybrid electric car that runs on battery power most of the time. “A Toyota Corolla-sized car, maybe with some hybridization, could in many cases, be better for the environment than a gigantic Hummer-sized electric vehicle,” says Gillingham. (The charts in this New York Times article help visualize that distinction.) 

Where policies could help

Electric vehicles are already better for the environment and becoming increasingly better for the environment. 

The biggest factor that could make EVs even better is if the electrical grid goes fully carbon free. Policies that provide subsidies for carbon-free power, or carbon taxes to incentivize cleaner power, could help in this respect. 

The other aspect that would make a difference is to encourage more efficient electric vehicles and to discourage the production of enormous electric vehicles. “Some people may need a pickup truck for work. But if you don’t need a large car for an actual activity, it’s certainly better to have a more reasonably sized car,” Gillingham says.  

Plus, electrifying public transportation, buses, and vehicles like the fleet of trucks run by the USPS can have a big impact because of how often they’re used. Making these vehicles electric can reduce air pollution from idling, and routes can be designed so that they don’t need as large of a battery.  

“The rollout of EVs in general has been slower than demand would support…There’s potentially a larger market for EVs,” Gillingham says. The holdup is due mainly to supply chain problems. 

Switching over completely to EVs is, of course, not the end-all solution for the world’s environmental woes. Currently, car culture is very deeply embedded in American culture and consumerism in general, Gillingham says, and that’s not easy to change. When it comes to climate policy around transportation, it needs to address all the different modes of transportation that people use and the industrial energy services to bring down greenhouse gas emissions across the board. 

The greenest form of transportation is walking, followed by biking, followed by using public transit. Electrifying the vehicles that can be electrified is great, but policies should also consider the ways cities are designed—are they walkable, livable, and have a reliable public transit system connecting communities to where they need to go? 

“There’s definitely a number of different modes of transport that need to be addressed and green modes of transport that need to be supported,” says Trancik. “We really need to be thinking holistically about all these ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

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In 2020, about 34 million households in the United States experienced some degree of energy insecurity. Energy insecurity is defined as the inability to meet basic household energy needs, like reducing or foregoing basic necessities to pay energy bills. Others may maintain unsafe temperatures at home due to cost concerns, both of which are “chronic” forms of energy insecurity. Individuals may also experience “acute” energy insecurity, or a short-term disruption to energy sources due to infrastructural or environmental reasons, much like power outages.

People who need electronic medical devices and live in poor housing conditions tend to experience higher rates of energy insecurity. A recent Nature Communications study characterized power outages across the country from 2018 to 2020 and found that there were almost 17,500 power outages lasting more than eight hours. Outages of this duration are considered medically relevant because of potential health hazards for vulnerable groups, especially those who require electricity-dependent durable medical equipment (DME) such as oxygen concentrators and infusion pumps. Although some DME can have backup battery power, they only last a few hours.

“Understanding to what extent power outages affect health motivated us to create the county-level power outages dataset,” says Joan Casey, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, who was involved in the study. “As our grid ages and climate change worsens, we need to understand who power outages affect.”

[Related: Fossil fuels are causing a buildup of human health problems.]

The authors used local indicators of spatial association (LISA) to identify countries with high levels of social and medical vulnerability alongside frequent power outages. In particular, counties in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Michigan experience frequent medically-relevant power outages and have a high prevalence of electricity-dependent DME use. They “face a high burden and may have more trouble responding effectively, which could result in more adverse health outcomes,” says Casey.

The authors also determined the overlap between climate events occurring on the same day as medically-relevant power outages. They reported that about 62 percent of such outages co-occurred with extreme weather events, like heavy precipitation, anomalous heat, and tropical cyclones. Furthermore, medically-relevant outages are 3.4 times more common on days with a single event and 10 times more common on days with multiple events. Weather and climate events may drive large-scale outages, but increased energy demand from an aging electrical grid may play a role in county-level outages.

Upgrading the grid and relying further on distributed generation like generating and storing renewable energy are necessary to prevent power outages and ensure that huge areas won’t go offline, says Casey. The Department of Energy intends to modernize the grid to increase resiliency, add capacity for clean energy, and optimize power delivery. The department is also investing in energy infrastructure like microgrids, which can disconnect from national infrastructure and continue to run even when the main grid is down, and grid-scale energy storage devices, which store clean electricity to help provide power during peak loads.

“Certain communities and individuals may experience more and more severe power outages or have less ability to respond,” says Casey. “These groups may be persistently marginalized and lack access to generators, charging centers, or health care.”

Communities of color have unequal access to energy generation and battery storage, even though they tend to be the hardest hit when it comes to power outages following extreme climate events. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, rural and Black communities in Puerto Rico appeared to have the longest restoration times. Higher percentages of Hispanic/Latino populations were also associated with longer outages in Florida after Hurricane Irma in 2017. Meanwhile, counties with a higher proportion of Hispanic/Latino residents faced more severe power outages during the 2021 Texas winter storm. Black residents reported more day-long outages as well.

“We need to work to understand who is most at risk during an outage and provide support to these populations,” says Casey. “This could involve preparing health systems to receive patients, community charging stations for those that rely on electricity-dependent medical equipment, or weatherproofing homes to keep indoor temperature at more optimal levels.”

[Related: Heart disease-related deaths rise in extreme heat and extreme cold.]

Developing a registry for individuals medically dependent on electricity would establish a national estimate for this vulnerable population and document their geographic location. This can help state, territorial, and local health departments prioritize efforts and anticipate the resources that first responders should deploy during emergencies. At present, the Department of Health and Human Services only keeps the record of over 2.9 million Medicare beneficiaries who need electricity-dependent DME. The number of DME users covered by other insurance programs is not known. 

Jurisdictions with a high prevalence of prolonged outages could also help vulnerable populations by establishing temporary emergency power stations. Such a solution could make electricity more accessible and reduce avoidable emergency department visits, which may prevent crowding. Together, upgrading the grid, mitigating climate change, and providing alternative electricity sources can all minimize the impacts on power supply faced by vulnerable populations and communities of color.

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Researchers recently constructed a material capable of generating near constant electricity from just the ambient air around it—thus possibly laying the groundwork for a new, virtually unlimited source of sustainable, renewable energy. In doing so, and building upon their past innovations, they now claim almost any surface could potentially be turned into a generator via replicating the electrical properties of storm clouds… but trypophobes beware.

According to a new study published today with Advanced Materials, engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have demonstrated a novel “air generator” (Air-gen) film that relies on microscopic holes smaller than 100 nanometers across—less than a thousandth the width of a single human hair. The holes’ incredibly small diameters rely on what’s known as a “mean free path,” which is the distance a single molecule can travel before colliding with another molecule of the same substance.

[Related: The US could reliably run on clean energy by 2050.]

Water molecules are floating all around in the air, and their mean free path is around 100 nm. As humid air passes through Air-gen material’s miniscule holes, the water molecules come into direct contact with first an upper, then lower chamber in the film. This creates a charge imbalance, i.e. electricity.

It’s the same physics at play in storm clouds’ lightning discharges. Although the UMass Amherst team’s product generates a miniscule fraction of a lightning bolt’s estimated 300 million volts, its several hundred millivolts of sustained energy is incredibly promising for scalability and everyday usage. This is particularly evident when considering that air humidity can diffuse in three-dimensional space. In theory, thousands of Air-gen layers can be stacked atop one another, thus scaling up the device without increasing its overall footprint. According to the researchers, such a product could offer kilowatts of power for general usage.

[Related: How an innovative battery system in the Bronx will help charge up NYC’s grid.]

The team believes their Air-gen devices could one day be far more space efficient than other renewable energy options like solar and wind power. What’s more, the material can be engineered into a variety of form factors to blend into an environment, as contrasted with something as visually noticeable as a solar farm or wind turbine.

“Imagine a future world in which clean electricity is available anywhere you go,”Jun Yao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the paper’s senior author, said in a statement. “The generic Air-gen effect means that this future world can become a reality.”

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Update May 25, 2023: This post has been updated with a comment from Chevron.

The already questionable $2 billion a year voluntary emissions offset market is facing even more scrutiny. An investigation by transnational corporate watchdog Corporate Accountability first reported in The Guardian found that carbon offsets from fossil fuel giant Chevron are mostly worthless—could also cause harm. The investigation found that the company relies on “junk” carbon offsets and “unviable” technologies. These actions do little to offset the company’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

The new research from Corporate Accountability found that between 2020 and 2022, 93 percent of the offsets that Chevron bought and counted towards their climate targets from voluntary carbon markets were actually too environmentally problematic to be considered as anything other than worthless or junk.

[Related: Many popular carbon offsets don’t actually counteract emissions, study says.]

Carbon offsets are tradable “rights” or certificates that allow the buyer to compensate for 1 ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent in greenhouse gasses. These offsets are usually in the form of an investment in emissions-reducing environmental projects in other parts of the world. 

An investigation by The Guardian and Germany’s Die Zeit, and the nonprofit journalism outfit, SourceMaterial earlier this year found that the world’s leading provider of these offsets, Verra, may be making the climate worse. Verra is often used by major corporations like Shell and Disney, but over 90 percent of Verra’s most popular rainforest offset credits were discovered to be  “phantom credits” that do not result in “genuine carbon reductions.”

Carbon offsets are considered worthless or having low environmental integrity if the project is linked to a plantation, forest, or green energy project. This includes hydroelectric dams that don’t lead to any additional reductions in greenhouse gasses, or exaggerates the benefits and minimizes risks of emitting emissions, among some other factors.

Chevron often purchased offsets that focused on large dams, plantations, or forests, according to the report. It found that many of these “worthless” offsets are also linked to some alleged social and environmental harms. These harms are primarily in communities in the global south, which happen to face the most harm by the climate crisis that Big Oil helped create. 

“Chevron’s junk climate action agenda is destructive and reckless, especially in light of climate science underscoring the only viable way forward is an equitable and urgent fossil fuel phase-out,” Rachel Rose Jackson from Corporate Accountability told The Guardian.

Chevron is the second-largest fossil fuel company in the United States and its vast operations stretch north to Canada and the United Kingdom and south towards Brazil, Nigeria, and Australia. It reported over $35 billion in profits in 2022 and its projected emissions between 2022 and 2025 are equal to those from 364 coal-fired power plants per year. This is more than the total emissions of 10 European countries combined for a similar three-year period, according to the report.

[Related: BP made $28 billion last year, and now it’s backtracking on its climate goals.]

Chevron “aspires” to achieve net zero upstream emissions by 2050, largely relying on carbon offset schemes and carbon capture and storage to do this. Carbon offsets rely on environmental projects to cancel out a company’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The new report further argues that the widespread use of these worthless offsets undermines the company’s net zero aspiration. Their net-zero aspirations only apply to less than 10 percent of the company’s carbon footprint–the upstream emissions that are produced from the production and transport of gas and oil. It excludes the downstream or end use emissions that are due to burning fossil fuels.

“Any climate plan that is premised on offsets, CCS, and excludes scope 3 [downstream] emissions is bound to fail,” Steven Feit, fossil economy legal and research manager at the Center for International Environmental Law, told The Guardian. “It’s clear from this report and other research that net zero as a framework opens the door for claims of climate action while continuing with business as usual, and not moving towards a low-carbon Paris [agreement]-aligned 1.5-degree [2.7 degree] future.”

Bill Turenne, an external affairs coordinator from Chevron, added via email that Chevron believes the report is “biased against our industry and paints an incomplete picture of Chevron’s efforts to advance a lower carbon future.” The offsets reviewed in the Corporate Accountability report are “compliance-grade offsets accepted by governments in the regions where we operate,” Turenne said.

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This article originally published on The Conversation.

Intestinal infections take a heavy toll on impoverished Black communities that have out-of-date sewage systems. These infections often spread through contaminated soil and water and are among the most common diseases worldwide.

Approximately one-quarter of the global population is infected with soil-transmitted helminths, intestinal parasitic worms that can cause serious health problems.

Additionally, up to 50% of people around the world are infected with Helicobacter pylori, bacteria that live in the stomach and can cause ulcers and cancer.

I am a biological anthropologist, and it is clear to me that these two types of infections contribute to systemic health inequities, especially among communities of color in which limited access to medical care and inadequate sanitation systems may both increase exposure to pathogens and lead to worse outcomes.

Historically, intestinal infections have been prevalent in parts of the U.S. where high poverty rates and environmental factors – such as flooding and warm, humid summers – favor infection spread.

Although many Americans believe these diseases now exist only in lower-income countries, research that my colleague and I have conducted challenges this assumption.

Renewed interest in US intestinal infections

Launched in 2019, the Rural Embodiment and Community Health Study started with the goal of measuring current infection rates and determining which living conditions contribute to infection risk.

Though national infection rates remain unclear because of the absence of large-scale studies, our preliminary work in 2019 found that 38% of children sampled in a predominantly Black Mississippi Delta community had intestinal parasitic infections.

Moreover, 80% of those children exhibited high levels of intestinal inflammation. Those levels are much higher than those observed in other populations and may lead to several poor health outcomes, including impaired intestinal ability to absorb nutrients and stunted growth.

Our more recent analyses from 2022 focused on adults living in the Mississippi Delta and Southwestern Illinois, two areas that experience regular flooding.

Among those adults, 73% displayed elevated intestinal inflammation, while 45% were infected with H. pylori, the bacteria that can cause ulcers and cancer.

Taken together, those results demonstrate widespread intestinal infections and inflammation at all ages in these low-income, mostly Black communities.

Long-lasting intestinal infections and associated inflammation can lead to nutritional deficiencies, restricted growth, reduced educational attainment, decreased work productivity and increased risk for serious diseases later in life, including certain cancers).

A legal challenge in Alabama

The Rural Embodiment and Community Health Study is not alone in recognizing the impact of intestinal infections on Black communities. One of the most widely publicized recent research studies investigating intestinal infections focused on the health effects of poverty and crumbling sanitation infrastructure in Lowndes County, Alabama, a region characterized by a history of racial segregation and inequity.

Researchers found that more than 1 in 3 people tested in Lowndes County were infected with hookworm, an intestinal worm spread through sewage exposure that lives in soil and infects people by burrowing into bare feet.

This 2017 study has since led to legal action.

In a landmark May 2023 court ruling, the Biden administration found that Alabama’s public health department had discriminated against Black residents by denying access to adequate sanitation systems and imposed fines for resulting sewage issues.

This decision is being hailed by environmental justice advocates as a transformative environmental justice agreement that may increase public awareness of the ongoing health crisis that results from infrastructure neglect and associated pathogen exposure.

Community activists – such as Catherine Coleman Flowers, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice – said they hope the federal government continues to intervene, leading to similar results in other affected communities.

“This country’s neglect of wastewater infrastructure in majority Black communities, both urban and rural, is resulting in a hygienic hell for far too many people, a hell that climate change is only making worse,” Flowers said in a March 2023 interview.

Why are there still parasites in the US?

The story of parasite infection in the U.S. is two-sided.

On one hand, the U.S. has successfully controlled many parasite infections. Malaria is one of them.

In addition, advancements in sanitation infrastructure and household construction mean that many Americans do not generally have to worry about parasite infections.

But this national success is not complete, as demonstrated by the recent findings in low-income Black communities across the country.

Limited awareness of the continued threat posed by neglected intestinal infections has made it more difficult to identify and treat these diseases in the U.S. than in lower-income nations.

For instance, in many countries the drugs needed to treat hookworm infections cost mere cents, but in the U.S., where drug prices are unregulated by the federal government, these same medications can cost hundreds of dollars.

The recent court decision in Alabama represents an important step toward increased national recognition of the role intestinal infections play in perpetuating racial health inequities.

Increased awareness will ideally result in improved access to testing and treatment in affected communities. But more work is needed to assess the full extent of these infections across the U.S.

Even if medical treatment is accessible and affordable, vulnerable individuals are often reinfected, as these pathogens continue to spread through the environment. Structural changes are needed to break the cycle of infection and poor health.

Current federal investment in community infrastructure – including water quality – is encouraging but does not go far enough. Ultimately, a concentrated nationwide effort to update and maintain sanitation systems is the best way to finally halt infection transmission and support health equity across the U.S.

Theresa E. Gildner, Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The concept of a sailboat might conjure up thoughts of swanky sailing holidays or fearsome pirates—and some companies are hoping to bring them back into the mainstream, albeit in a modern, emissions-focused way. According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), there are seven types of Wind Propulsion Technologies, or sails, which could potentially help the organization bring down the shipping industry’s currently massive carbon footprint. 

[Related: Colombia is deploying a new solar-powered electric boat.]

Wired reports that a Swedish company called Oceanbird is building a sail that can fit onto existing vessels. The Wingsail 560 looks kind of like an airplane wing placed vertically like a mast on a boat, and this summer the company plans to test out a prototype on land. If all goes well, next year it could be making its oceanic debut on a 14-year-old car carrier, also known as a roll-on/roll-off or RoRo shipping container, called the Wallenius Tirranna.

This is how the sail, coming in at 40-meters high and weighing 200 metric tons, works—the sail has two parts, one of which is a flap that brings air into a more rigid, steel-cored component that allows for peak, yacht-racing inspired aerodynamics, according to Wired. Additionally, the wing is able to fold down or tilt in order to pass underneath bridges and reduce wind power in case of an approaching storm. One Oceanbird sail placed on an existing vessel is estimated to reduce fuel consumption from the main engine by up to 10 percent, saving around 675,000 liters of diesel each year, according to trade publication Offshore Energy.

But, the real excitement is the idea of a redesigned vessel built especially for the gigantic sails. According to Wired, the Oceanbird-designed, 200-meter-long car carrier Orcelle Wind could cut emissions by at least 60 percent compared to a sailless RoRo vessel. The company themselves even estimates that it could reduce emissions by “up to 90 percent if all emissions-influencing factors are aligned.” However, it will still be a few years before one of these hits the high seas. 

[Related: Care about the planet? Skip the cruise, for now.]

Oceanbird isn’t the only company setting sail—according to Gavin Allwright, secretary general of the International Windship Association, by the end of the year there could be 48 or 49 wind-powered vessels on the seas. One such ship already took a voyage from Rotterdam to French Guiana in late 2022 using a hybrid propulsion of traditional engines and sails. However Allwright tells Wired “we’re still in pretty early days.”

The IMO has already set a climate goal of halving emissions between 2008 and 2050, but experts have called this goal “important, but inadequate” to keep emissions low enough for a liveable future. Currently, these goals are still not being reached, with a Climate Action Tracker assessment showing that emissions are set to grow until 2050 unless further action is taken.

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On May 22, the Biden Administration and the states along the Colorado River announced that they had reached an agreement to conserve an unprecedented amount of the river’s water supply. The Lower Basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada have agreed to save an additional 3 million acre-feet of Colorado River Water in the Lower Basin by the end of 2026, or about 13 percent of these states’ total allocation of water from the river.

In return, the federal government will compensate the three states for three-quarters of the water savings, or about $1.2 billion. The money will come from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Actf and is intended to pay Native American tribes, farmers, cities, and others who will voluntarily forgo their supplies.

[Related: What California’s weird winter means for its water problems.]

The Colorado River is a critical water supply in the Western United States and 20 years of severe drought, population growth, and climate change have strained its supply. The three states in the river’s Lower Basin all agreed to take less water from the river for now, in an effort to keep the water levels from falling so low that it jeopardizes the water supply to major cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix, as well as some of the most productive farmland in the country.

The agreement follows almost a year of negotiations and numerous missed deadlines. The plan intended to protect both Lake Powell and Lake Mead—two of the largest reservoirs in the US. Recent  droughts have reduced the Colorado River’s natural water flow by roughly 20 percent. In summer 2022, the water levels in both reservoirs fell so low that officials worried that the hydroelectric turbines they powered might stop working. 

In June 2022, the federal government told the seven states that rely on the river—including Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming—that they must find a way to reduce their water use by two to four million acre-feet of water per year. An agreement was not reached among the states, and the federal government considered unilaterally imposing water cuts on those states last summer. 

The states had until May 30 to take a position on future unilateral reductions, but a deal was being negotiated behind closed doors to reach a deal and avoid imposing cuts that would likely  face legal challenges and delaying any serious action, according to The New York Times.

“There are 40 million people, seven states, and 30 Tribal Nations who rely on the Colorado River Basin for basic services such as drinking water and electricity. Today’s announcement is a testament to the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to working with states, Tribes and communities throughout the West to find consensus solutions in the face of climate change and sustained drought,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a statement. “In particular I want to thank Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau and Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton, who have led the discussions with Basin state commissioners, Tribes, irrigators, local communities, and valued stakeholders to reach this critical moment.”

[Related: What the Colorado River’s record lows mean for western US.]

The agreement runs through the end of 2026 and still needs to be formally adopted by the federal government. By 2026, all seven states that rely on the Colorado River may face a deeper water reckoning and the river’s decline is likely to continue. 

According to The Washington Post, Arizona’s commissioner to the Colorado River Tom Buschatzke emphasized that the deal is not the final outcome, and the parties have also agreed to a new proposal that will be analyzed by the Interior Department. 

“It is important to note that this is not an agreement — this is an agreement to submit a proposal and an agreement to the terms of that proposal to be analyzed by the federal government,” Buschatzke told reporters. “That is a really critical point for everyone to understand.”

The heavy snow and rain that fell in the West during the winter helped ease the crisis and gave the negotiators some breathing room, but this winter was “extraordinary” and was not a solution. 
“This wet winter definitely is great news for the Colorado River because of the snowpack. That snow runoff from the mountains will drain into the Colorado River and increase the stream flow,” Utah State University climate scientist Wei Zhang told PopSci in March. “But that cannot solve the water problem in the Colorado River—that demand is still much larger than the supply.”

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The most irrigated crop in the US isn’t a particularly tasty one. Nationwide, lawn grass takes up a total area bigger than the size of Georgia, and requires more than 300 gallons of watering per household a day. “These turf grasses have really short roots, so they require nearly a constant input of water,” says Becky Barak, a conservation scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden and leader of the Rethinking Lawns Project.

The traditional American lawn, which often holds non-native species from Africa, Asia, and Europe, can be great for kids and dogs to run around on. But there are tons of native plantings that decrease water and pesticide use, reduce time and energy spent on mowing, absorb stormwater, and provide real habitat for wildlife. Not to mention, they make an incredible backdrop in the process. “Some native grasses can be mowed to look more like traditional turf grasses,” Barak says. “But then there are others that are beautiful and can add so much visual appeal and a totally different look.”

[Related: What to consider before ripping out your lawn]

When it comes to choosing types of grass, there are thousands of choices. “They can be all different colors of the rainbow,” Barak says. That might sound overwhelming, but don’t worry—you can narrow down the list by browsing local native nurseries and regional university guides. (Remember to check the soil type in your yard and find plants that match.) Once you have some options that work for your space, no matter how tiny, you’ll be well on your way to creating the native landscape of your dreams. Here are nine beloved varieties to get you started.

Short grasses

Buffalo grass (Bouteloua dactyloides)

• Native range: Central US
• Height: 3 to 10 inches
• Light: full sun
• Water use: low to medium

If you’re looking for a native grass that still keeps the lawn feel, look no further than buffalo grass. Named after the American bison that once grazed all over the Great Plains, this drought-tolerant turf grass is a popular choice for lawns for its sod-forming abilities. You can mow it infrequently or never if you prefer the slightly taller look. Although buffalo grass can survive without irrigation, it may lose some of its color in periods of drought and dormancy. Mix the seeds with other low-growing options for sustained greenery, or consider using a buffalo grass cultivar that’s bred for more consistent color.

Curly mesquite grass (Hilaria belangeri)

• Native range: Southwestern US
• Height: 4 to 12 inches
• Light: full sun
• Water use: low

Another popular turf grass for drought tolerance, this species is the perfect choice for desert and desert-like environments. It’s considered to be one of the best lawn options out of native grasses in the US, though its range is limited to Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Curly mesquite grass can grow in a variety of well-drained soils but works best in clay loam.

Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica)

• Native range: Eastern and Midwestern US
• Height: 6 to 12 inches
• Light: part to full shade
• Water use: low to medium

Although Pennsylvania sedge isn’t technically a grass, its grass-like appearance makes it a great choice for homeowners looking to make their yard more native without losing the lush carpeted look. The plant offers good ground cover, spreads well, and deters deer from grazing. In the fall, this delicate, windswept-looking sedge turns from vibrant green to tan.

Medium grasses

Purple lovegrass (Eragrostis spectabilis)

• Native range: along the East Coast from Maine to Florida, west to Arizona
• Height: 8 to 18 inches
• Light: full sun
• Water use: low

Purple lovegrass, one of Barak’s favorites, adds the perfect pop of color to your lawn. The heat-tolerant plant really starts to shine in August, when it forms an inflorescence of purple-red flowers that seemingly float on the grass like a cloud of color. Though it can be damaged by heavy foot traffic, the grass stays relatively short, only needs to be mowed a few times throughout the year, and is deer-resistant.

[Related: This lawn-mowing robot can save part of your yard for pollinators]

“Hatchita” blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis)

• Native range: Western and Central US
• Height: 8 to 20 inches
• Light: full sun
• Water use: low to medium

Along with buffalo grass and curly mesquite grass, this type of grass completes the trifecta of popular native turf choices in the US, but is even more drought tolerant than the other two members of the big three. It’s also both cold and heat tolerant, can grow in most soils except overly wet ones, and hosts different kinds of skipper butterflies during their breeding season. In the summer, the plant displays an inflorescence of purple flowers; in fall, it turns beautiful hues like orange and red. For fuller coverage, consider combining blue grama with buffalo grass and various native wildflowers in your yard.

Muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris)

• Native range: Southeastern US and the East Coast
• Height: 2 to 3 feet
• Light: full sun
• Water use: low to medium

Planting muhly grass is like setting off living fireworks on your lawn. Each fall, it blooms with feathery pink inflorescences In winter, the grass fades into a rich tan. Beyond that, it retains a gorgeous dark-green color. The plant is easy to grow and germinate and is highly deer resistant.

Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis)

• Native range: Great Plains
• Height: 2 to 3 feet
• Light: full sun
• Water use: low to medium

Another one of Barak’s favorites, prairie dropseed’s flowing green clumps make it the perfect accent or border grass—but that’s not the only fun part. When it begins to pop around June, the grass produces small pink and brown flowers that smell like coriander, licorice, or popcorn. It maintains its shape outside of the warmer seasons, even when blanketed by snow. This slow-growing type of grass is also a great choice if you’re looking to make your yard more pollinator-friendly, as they provide nesting materials for native bees.

Tall grasses

Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)

• Native range: everywhere in the US except the West Coast
• Height: 2 to 7 feet
• Light: full sun
• Water use: low to medium

Despite its name, this drought-resistant grass is rather tall, making it a great choice to add dimension to a yard or garden. Little bluestem also boasts, you guessed it, a beautiful blue hue in summer before turning copper in the fall. Loved by homeowners (including Barak) and animals alike, this grass attracts birds and butterflies and provides nesting materials for native bees. On the flip side, you might catch a few deer visiting your new bluestem buffet.

[Related: How to build a butterfly watering area]

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)

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A new report finds that methane regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency  could spur job growth in Texas as oil and gas operators measure, monitor and mitigate the harmful greenhouse gas.

While Texas officials argue the methane regulations would kill jobs, the report, published today by the Texas Climate Jobs Project and the Ray Marshall Center at the University of Texas, Austin, found that new federal methane regulations could create between 19,000 and 35,000 jobs in the state. 

Oil and gas producing regions, including the Permian Basin, would need a significant workforce to detect methane leaks, replace components known to leak the gas and plug abandoned wells. Previous research shows the methane mitigation industry is already growing.

In the absence of state methane rules, the EPA’s draft methane rule, first issued in November 2021 and strengthened in a supplemental filing last November, along with a new methane fee under the Inflation Reduction Act, will have a major impact on oil and gas operations in the Lone Star state. 

“We want to show that environmental policies are not job killers,” said Christopher Agbo, research and policy coordinator for the Texas Climate Jobs Project, an affiliate of the Texas AFL-CIO. “You can create tens of thousands of good-paying, family-sustaining union jobs while also cutting back on emissions.”

Changing the Methane Narrative 

The EPA’s methane regulations, to be finalized later this year, would reduce methane emissions 87 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The Inflation Reduction Act’s first-ever methane fee for large emitters will also start in 2024 at $900 per ton of methane and increase to $1,500 per ton by 2026.

Reducing methane emissions is one of the most effective short-term measures to slow the pace of climate change because methane traps about 80 times more heat in the atmosphere over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide.

But Texas has been a stubborn opponent of federal methane regulations. In January 2021, shortly after Biden ordered the EPA to develop new methane rules, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order directing state agencies to use every legal avenue to oppose federal action challenging the “strength, vitality, and independence of the energy industry.”

After the EPA released its draft methane rule in 2021, Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian issued a statement that “anti -oil and -gas policies will kill jobs, stifle economic growth, and make America more reliant o[n] foreign nations to provide reliable energy.”

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Railroad Commission submitted joint public comments to the EPA, referring to provisions of the proposed methane rules as “burdensome,” “economically unreasonable” and “onerous.”

The new report, Mitigating Methane in Texas, seeks to change the narrative on methane regulations in Texas, concluding that the methane mitigation sector could grow rapidly as new regulations go into effect. 

Slashing methane emissions in Texas would be a mammoth undertaking. The effort would require the creation of thousands of new jobs, from deploying drones to measure emissions to decommissioning orphaned wells to installing flare systems on storage tanks.

The report authors found that to comply with methane regulations, Texas would need at least 19,000 workers and up to as many as 35,000, which would add between six and nine percent to the number employed in the oil and gas industry in 2022.

“We are the largest emitter of methane in the country,” Agbo said. “So all this funding and regulations toward methane mitigation are going to play a huge role in Texas.”

He and co-author Greg Cumpton, of the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources at UT Austin, found that methane mitigation would create long-term maintenance jobs in the oil and gas sector, including leak inspection and detection, leak repair and storage tank maintenance. Short-term replacement and abatement jobs would include replacing methane-emitting components like pneumatic controllers. 

The biggest labor demand would be in the Permian Basin, where the authors estimate addressing methane emissions would require an additional 7,556 jobs. The report authors urge new jobs in methane mitigation be unionized and protected under prevailing wage laws and other high road employment practices. 

“Part of ensuring that the jobs created in areas like the Permian Basin are good-paying jobs would be implementing Department of Labor-registered apprenticeship programs,” Agbo said. “There needs to be collaboration between labor unions, local, state and local governments, and also workforce development boards in the area.”

“A Big Growth Field”

Oil and gas operators around the world are already working to reduce methane emissions. Some turn to Austin-based SeekOps, a company that pairs sensor technology with autonomous drones to measure emissions. While many of the firm’s clients are in Europe—where methane regulations have been in effect for years—SeekOps expects its U.S. clientele to grow.

“It’s a big growth field,” said Paul Khuri, SeekOps vice president of business development. “Next year is going to be a huge year, because the IRA taxes start on Jan. 1.”

SeekOps currently has 30 employees, including data analysts, atmospheric scientists, software and hardware engineers and drone pilots. The company was founded in California but relocated to Austin to be closer to potential customers in the energy industry. 

Khuri said SeekOps clients include oil and gas companies that have voluntarily committed to emissions reductions, regardless of the local regulatory framework. He said he will be watching how the federal government enforces the new methane fees to gauge how much the methane mitigation industry could grow.

“That will be a really good indicator of where the market is going to head and see whether this will be a massive growth area,” Khuri said.

A 2021 Environmental Defense Fund report found that the methane mitigation sector was already growing rapidly. The report identified 215 firms manufacturing technology or providing services to manage methane emissions in the oil and gas industry. The number of manufacturing firms had increased by 33 percent from 2014 to 2021 and the number of service firms had increased by 90 percent between 2017 and 2021.

The EDF report found that more companies mitigating methane had employees located in Texas than any other state. Companies headquartered in Texas include Solar Injection Systems in Odessa, which manufactures solar-powered chemical injection pumps; Cimarron Energy, an emissions control company in Houston, and CI Systems in Carrollton, which commercializes infrared remote sensing technology. 

Arvind Ravikumar, an engineering professor and co-director of the Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab at UT Austin, said that oil and gas companies are facing pressure on multiple fronts to reign in methane emissions. More buyers of U.S. natural gas in Europe and Asia are tracking supply chain methane emissions and some utilities are seeking “certified natural gas” with lower associated methane emissions.

“Even if the EPA methane regulations were not in place, the majority of these emissions detection and reduction efforts would go on,” Ravikumar said.

Because methane emissions occur through venting and leaking, not combustion, direct on-site measurements are necessary, Ravikumar said. This bodes well for job creation.

“Methane mitigation or methane emissions detection is not something you can do remotely. You have to be on the ground,” he said. “What that means is you’re going to put a lot more people in some of the most remote, rural corners of the country.”

Ravikumar said many facets of methane measurement and accounting must still be ironed out. But he agreed the economic benefits to oil and gas producing regions of Texas cannot be overlooked.

“Having a policy that’s going to create jobs exclusively in remote parts of the country is really hard to do,” Ravikumar said. “And methane is one place where you can do that successfully.”

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On a clear morning in April, after milking his seven cows, Tim Sauder looked over the pasture where he had just turned the animals out to graze. Like many dairy farms, Sauder’s fields swayed with a variety of greenery: chicory, alfalfa and clover. But they were also full of something typically missing on an agricultural landscape — trees. Thousands of them.

Between 2019 and 2021, Sauder planted 3,500 trees at Fiddle Creek Dairy, a 55-acre family farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he and his wife raise cows to produce yogurt, cheese and beef. Today, young willow, hickory, poplar, pecan and persimmon trees stud the pastures, and on a crisp spring morning, rows of honey and black locusts, bur and cow oaks, were beginning to leaf out, casting shadows on the long grass below.

Sauder said planting trees has always been a priority; before he filled his pastures with them, the farm was home to a small fruit orchard as well as riparian buffers — trees planted along the creek to prevent erosion and safeguard water quality. But the trees that his cattle now graze beneath represent a fundamental shift in his operation.

The Sauders are betting the farm, as it were, on silvopasture, the ancient practice of raising animals and growing trees and pasture on the same piece of land (silva is forest in Latin). In a silvopasture setup, farmers carefully manage each element to benefit the other—relying on manure to fertilize trees, for example, or fallen fruit to feed the livestock—resulting in a system that’s greater than the sum of its parts. 

It’s an old idea that’s gaining modern traction. Last year, the USDA awarded the Nature Conservancy and multiple partner organizations a $64 million grant to advance agroforestry — the umbrella term for agricultural practices that incorporate trees — by providing technical and financial assistance to farmers looking to make the switch. This year’s Farm Bill could mean another infusion of funding as well as the expansion of existing agroforestry programs to more explicitly include silvopasture. 

“The USDA is doing a lot, but a lot more could be done,” said Jabob Grace, communications project manager with the Savanna Institute, a nonprofit that promotes agroforestry practices. His organization is advocating that the 2023 Farm Bill increase appropriations for the National Agroforestry Center, the only government agency dedicated to the practice, from $5 million to $25 million (Grace said the Center has been chronically underfunded, never receiving more than $2 million annually). They’re also pushing for the establishment of regional agroforestry centers, the development of a USDA technical assistance program in agroforestry, and more grant money dedicated to helping farmers like Sauder establish a silvopasture system. 

In Sauder’s pastures, “each tree has multiple benefits,” he explained. Mulberry leaves have more protein than alfalfa, and the seed pods that fall off the honey locust every autumn are packed with sugar; those trees were chosen to supplement the animals’ diet. Sauder chose other tree species with leafy canopies to protect his herd’s health. “Come August, there will be shade here when the cows need it.”

Providing shade may seem like a matter of comfort, but it can actually be one of life and death. Last summer, thousands of cattle died in Kansas, after the area was racked by historic heat and humidity. As the climate heats up, researchers think mortality events like the one in Kansas will become more common. But even when cattle survive brutally hot summers, the impact of heat stress can wreak havoc on a farm’s bottom line.

Grace said the farmers he works with are worried about what hotter temperatures mean for their livelihoods. 

“When we talk to our producers about silvopasture, the first thing they’re interested in is shade,” Grace said. “They’re noticing the hotter temperatures. Their cattle are uncomfortable, they’re not putting on weight. Cash is almost directly flowing out of that farmer’s pocket when they have overheated cattle.”

A lot of cash, in fact. A 2022 study from Cornell University predicted that losses of cattle herds due to heat stress will total $15 to $40 billion a year by the end of the century. To avoid these losses, the authors note that “tree–livestock systems can be highly effective in reducing heat stress.” And Farm Bill funding could help more farmers get started.

Shade is one way silvopasture cuts down on costs, but there are others. Some poultry farmers use the method to shield their flocks from birds of prey. Vineyards and Christmas tree farms are increasingly turning to grazing animals to mow and control weeds.

But a silvopasture system can do more than simply save farmers money; it can help them diversify what they grow. Perhaps one of the oldest — and most profitable — examples of silvopasture is the dehesa system of southern Spain, where Ibérico pigs wander among towering oak trees, feasting on acorns and fertilizing the soil, resulting in some of the world’s most expensive ham and a cash crop of cork.

While livestock health and revenue are compelling reasons for farmers to practice silvopasture, perhaps the method’s most convincing advantage is its potential as a climate solution. 

Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that analyzes climate solutions, ranks silvopasture as the 11th most effective strategy for combating climate change — well ahead of solar panels, recycling and electric cars — finding that pastures with trees sequester five to 10 times as much carbon as similarly sized but treeless pastures.

The perennial roots of a silvopasture system can also help stabilize the soil, preventing erosion as well as the flooding that’s becoming more common with heavier rains. Additionally, a well-managed silvopasture operation can reduce wildfire loads — thanks to carefully spaced and pruned trees as well as grazing animals that control the shrubby understory — and increase biodiversity.

What’s more, when livestock get to eat the forage that’s right in front of them, the gas-guzzling farming equipment and trucks typically used to get food to feedlots can stay in park. “Cutting back on harvesting and transporting means a significant reduction in greenhouse gasses,” Grace explained.

According to Grace, large swaths of the American Midwest used to be covered by a natural silvopasture of sorts, an oak savanna ecosystem where grazing animals like bison dined on prairie beneath fruit and nut trees. Many Indigenous cultures embraced and benefited from this form of land management, until European settlers got to work deforesting the region, eventually building farms that worked more like factories. 

This emphasis on efficiency led to widespread monoculture and annual cropping systems where, Grace said, “for a good chunk of the year, not much is happening.” 

Today, only about 1.5% of farmers in the U.S. (approximately 31,000) practice any form of agroforestry, including silvopasture, a 2017 USDA survey revealed. But as summers get hotter and climate predictions more dire, interest in the practice is booming. Matthew Smith, research program lead at the USDA’s National Agroforestry Center, said “the demand for silvopasture knowledge and information is higher than anyone can provide.” 

That’s because silvopasture is more complicated than turning livestock loose in the woods; it requires choosing the right trees and forage for the local climate and constantly moving livestock from one place to another. 

“If folks are interested in silvopasture, they really should have expertise in rotational grazing beforehand…which is hard to learn,” Smith said. “Things can go wrong quickly when all your crops are in the same place.” Livestock left in one spot too long can damage trees, for example, and plants grown too close together can outcompete each other for light and nutrients. 

There are other challenges. For one thing, silvopasture systems require a large area of land and more hours of labor — at least at first — to maintain. Additionally, it takes trees many years to grow and begin to provide meaningful benefits. But, by far, the greatest obstacle for most farmers who want to practice silvopasture is the high price of purchasing, planting and maintaining trees. 

The vast majority of silvopasture operations rely on grants and cost-sharing programs from organizations like the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the USDA, programs  that advocates like Grace say badly need the boost in funding and staff that this year’s Farm Bill could provide. Grace said that the handful of existing agroforestry programs, such as the Conservation Reserve Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, are vague in their wording and need to be tweaked to more explicitly fund silvopasture projects and provide additional cost-sharing opportunities to farmers. 

Savanna Institute ally and climate NGO Carbon 180 is recommending that the 2023 Farm Bill increase federal cost share to 75% for agroforestry practices to help defray upfront costs and ensure farmers can access high-quality, regionally appropriate trees and shrubs. 

In the meantime, funding remains a “major barrier to farmers hoping to pursue silvopasture,” said Austin Unruh, owner of Trees for Graziers, who helped Tim Sauder secure money from the Pennsylvania office of the NRCS. Unruh, whose business has helped about 25 farms implement silvopasture in the last three years, said helping farmers pay for them “has been frustrating. It’s a different source of funding each time, different hoops to jump through.”

For Sauder, the financial assistance from the state was paramount. He said that without it, the trees in his pasture simply wouldn’t be there, “at least not for the next 20 years or so.” 

He admits that the new system has been a lot of work upfront, but that he expects it to pay off in the form of healthier pasture, soil and cows — and hopefully his land’s ability to support more of them. 

And yet, it’s working in tandem with nature that inspires Sauder the most. Running his farm with the health of the ecosystem top of mind, he said, is like making up for the mistakes of his ancestors, Mennonite immigrants who displaced Indigenous people and bent the land to their will. 

“I’m reimagining what would have happened if they had arrived here and said instead, ‘What’s the best way to live in this place?’”

This article is copublished with Ambrook Research as part of a series that looks at ways the 2023 Farm Bill can help address the climate crisis. Nexus Media News is an editorially independent, nonprofit news service covering climate change. Follow us @NexusMediaNews.

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American families need over one trillion diapers every year for the 4 million babies born across the country annually. Diaper use can extend far past the first year of infants’ lives—and they generally don’t finish potty training until somewhere between 1.5 to 3 years old. Extrapolate those needs to the entire world, and it’s easy to see how disposable diapers are the third-most prevalent consumer product found in landfills. Because most diapers contain plastics such as polyester, polyethylene, and polypropylene, they are expected to linger in those same landfills for about 500 years before breaking down.

But what if disposable diapers’ lifespans expanded far beyond their one-and-done use? Environmental engineers recently pondered that very question, and have reportedly found a surprising solution: diaper domiciles.

As detailed in a paper published on Thursday with Scientific Reports, a trio of researchers at Japan’s University of Kitakyushu combined six different amounts of washed, dried, and shredded diaper waste with gravel, sand, cement, and water, then cured their samples for 28 days. Afterwards, they tested their composite materials’ resiliencies, and recorded some extremely promising results.

[Related: Steel built the Rust Belt. Green steel could help rebuild it.]

For a three-story, 36-square-meter floor plan, the team found that the cured diaper waste could replace as much as 10 percent of sand within a structure’s traditional concrete support beams and columns. In a single-story home, that percentage nearly tripled. Meanwhile, diapers could swap out 40 percent of the sand needed in partition wall mortar, alongside 9 percent of the sand in flooring and garden paving. All told, disposable diaper waste could replace as much as 8 percent of all sand in a single-story, 36-square-meter floor plan.

The team’s results are extremely promising for low- and middle-income nations facing intense housing crises. For the purposes of their study, researchers adhered to Indonesian building codes to mirror a real world application. “Like other developing countries, low-cost housing provision in Indonesia has been a serious concern in the last three decades,” writes the team in their article. Indonesia’s urban population is growing at around 4 percent per year, resulting in an annual housing deficit of as much as 300,000 homes per year, the authors also noted.

Moving forward, researchers note that collaboration would be needed with government and waste facility officials to develop a means for large-scale collection, sanitization, and shredding of diaper waste. At the same time, nations’ building regulations must be amended to allow for diaper-imbued concrete. Still, the findings are a creative potential solution to the literal and figurative mountain of a sustainability issue—one that may soon finally be toppled. Just make sure it’s all sanitized first.

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

In the Mon Valley of western Pennsylvania, steel was once a way of life, one synonymous with the image of rural, working-class Rust Belt communities. At its height in 1910, Pittsburgh alone produced 25 million tons of it, or 60 percent of the nation’s total. Bustling mills linger along the Monongahela River and around Pittsburgh, but employment has been steadily winding down for decades.  

Though President Trump promised a return to the idealized vision of American steelmaking that Bruce Springsteen might sing about, the industry has changed since its initial slump four decades ago. Jobs declined 49 percent between 1990 and 2021, when increased efficiency saw the sector operating at its highest capacity in 14 years. Despite ongoing supply chain hiccups and inflation, demand continues growing globally, particularly in Asia. But even as demand for this essential material climbs, so too does the pressure to decarbonize its production.

Earlier this month, the progressive Ohio River Valley Institute released a study that found a carefully planned transition to “green” steel — manufactured using hydrogen generated with renewable energy — could be a climatic and economic boon. It argues that as countries work toward achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, a green steel boom in western Pennsylvania could help the U.S. meet that goal, make its steel industry competitive again, and employ a well-paid industrial workforce.

“A transition to fossil fuel-free steelmaking could grow total jobs supported by steelmaking in the region by 27 percent to 43 percent by 2031, forestalling projected job losses,” the study noted. “Regional jobs supported by traditional steelmaking are expected to fall by 30 percent in the same period.”

In a world struggling to keep global climate change below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the traditional coke-based process of making steel, which uses coal to power the furnaces that melt iron ore, remains a big problem. The industry generates 7.2 percent of all carbon emissions worldwide, making it more polluting than the entire European Union. Old-school steel manufacturing relies on metallurgical coal — that is, high-quality, low-moisture coal, which still releases carbon, sulfur dioxide, and other pollutants. About 70 percent of today’s steel is made that way, much of it produced cheaply in countries with lax environmental regulations. However, only 30 percent of U.S. production uses this method.

Technological improvements and pressure to reduce emissions have led to increased use of leftover, or “scrap,” steel during production. When products made of traditional, coke-based steel have reached the end of their useful life, they can be returned to the furnace and recycled almost infinitely. This reduces the labor needed to produce the same amount and quality of steel as traditional production methods, and it accounts for about 70 percent of the nation’s output.

The scrap is melted in an electric arc furnace and uses hydrogen, rather than coke, to process iron ore. It requires less energy than traditional methods, particularly if renewable energy powers the furnace and generates the hydrogen. Nick Messenger, an economist who worked on the Institute’s study, believes this approach could revitalize the Rust Belt by placing the region at the forefront of an innovation the industry must inevitably embrace.

“What we actually show is that by doing that three-step process and doing it all close to home in Pennsylvania,” he said, “each step of that process has the potential to create jobs and support jobs in the community” — from building and operating solar panels and turbines, to operating electrolyzers to produce electricity, to making the steel itself.

The study claims a business-as-usual approach would follow current production and employment trends, leading to a 30 percent reduction in jobs by 2031. A transition to hydrogen-based electric arc manufacturing could increase jobs in both the steel and energy industries by as much as 43 percent. The study calls western Pennsylvania an ideal location for this transition, given its proximity to clean water, an experienced workforce, and 22,200 watts of wind and solar energy potential.

To make it work for the Mon Valley, the study notes, manufacturers must get started as soon as possible. The quest for green steel isn’t just an ideological matter, but a question of global economic power. “There’s a huge new race, in a sense, to get in on the ground floor,” Messenger said. “When you’re the first one, you attract the types of capital, you attract the types of businesses and entrepreneurs and industries that cause that kind of flourishing boom to happen around this particular sector.” 

The Ohio Valley’s fabled steel mills may be looking, if cautiously, toward a decarbonized future. Two years ago, U.S. Steel canceled a $1.3 billion investment in the Mon Valley Works complex, citing, in part, its net-zero goals and the need to switch to electric arc steel production. Of course, the biggest challenge is that while the Mon Valley has massive wind energy potential, very little of it has been tapped. But thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, federal subsidies and tax breaks could give clean energy developers a boost.

The Biden administration has shown faith in green steel through a series of grant programs, subsidies and tax credits, including $6 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act to decarbonize heavy industry. But Europe has the advantage. Nascent projects in Sweden, Germany, and Spain dot the European Union, with the United Kingdom close behind. Some are using hydrogen, but others are experimenting with biochar, electrolysis, or other ways to power the electric arc process. 

In the United States, a company called Boston Metal is experimenting with an oxide electrolysis model, hoping to make the U.S. a leader in green steel technology. This model eliminates the need for coal by creating a chemical reaction that emulates the reaction that turns iron ore into steel. The company is in the process of commercializing its technology and plans to license it to steel manufacturers. Adam Rauwerdink, the company’s senior vice president of business development, hopes to see its first adopter by 2026.

Rauwerdink believes the world is moving away from traditional steel manufacturing and  that U.S. companies will be playing catch up if they don’t adapt. He has seen more and more companies and investors get on board in the past five years, including ArcelorMittal, the world’s second biggest steel producer. It invested $36 million in Boston Metal this year. He considers that investment a clear sign that the race for green steel is on, and it’s time for manufacturers to embrace the technology — or get left behind.

“Historically, you would have built a steel plant near a coal mine,” he said. “Now you’re going to be building it where you have clean power.”

This story has been updated to clarify that Boston Metal is still commercializing its technology.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/steel-built-the-rust-belt-green-steel-could-help-rebuild-it/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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This month marks the fifth anniversary of “No Mow May,” an annual environmental project dedicated to promoting sustainable, eco-friendly lawns via a 31-day landscaping moratorium. In doing so, the brief respite gives bees and other pollinators a chance to do what they do best: contribute to a vibrant, healthy, and biodiverse ecosystem. To keep the No Mow May momentum going, Swedish tech company Husqvarna has announced a new, simple feature for its line of robotic lawnmowers: a “rewilding” mode that ensures 10 percent of owners’ lawns remain untouched for pollinators and other local wildlife.

While meticulously manicured lawns are part of the traditional suburban American mindset, they come at steep ecological costs such as biodiversity loss and massive amounts of water waste. The Natural Resource Defense Council, for instance, estimates that grass lawns consume almost 3 trillion gallons of water each year alongside 200 million gallons of gas for traditional mowers, as well as another 70 million pounds of harmful pesticides. In contrast, rewilding is a straightforward, self-explanatory concept long pushed by environmentalists and sustainability experts that encourages a return to regionally native flora for all-around healthier ecosystems.

[Related: Build a garden that’ll have pollinators buzzin’.]

While convincing everyone to adopt rewilding practices may seem like a near-term impossibility, companies like Husqvarna are hoping to set the literal and figurative lawnmower rolling with its new autopilot feature. According to Husqvarna’s announcement, if Europeans set aside just a tenth of their lawns, the cumulative area would amount to four times the size of the continent’s largest nature preserve.

Enabling the Rewilding Mode only takes a few taps within the product line’s Automower Connect app, and can be customized to change the overall shape, size, and placement of the rewilding zones. Once established, the robotic mower’s onboard GPS systems ensure which areas of an owner’s lawn are off-limits and reserved for bees, butterflies, and whatever else wants to set up shop.

Of course, turning on Rewilding Mode means owning a Husqvarna robotic mower that supports the setting—and at a minimum of around $700 for such a tool, they might be out of many lawn care enthusiasts’ budgets. Even so, that doesn’t mean you should abandon giving rewilding a try for your own lawns. It’s easy to get started on the project, and as its name suggests, doesn’t take much maintenance once it’s thriving. If nothing else, there’s still two weeks left in No Mow May, so maybe consider postponing your weekend outdoor chore for a few more days.

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A road capable of charging electric vehicles en route to their destinations could power up as soon as 2025 in one of the world’s most eco-friendly nations. As the Amsterdam-based tech site The Next Web explains, Sweden is well on track to electrifying a roughly 13-mile portion of its E20 highway spanning between Hallsberg to Örebro, both of which are located between Sweden’s two largest cities, Stockholm and Gothenburg.

The electric road system (ERS) project is overseen by the nation’s transport administration, Trafikverket, who are still determining which of three specific technologies could be best suited for the task: overhead conductive, ground-based conductive, and ground-based inductive charging. The first format utilizes an overhead pantograph design similar to those seen atop traditional trolleys and streetcars, but would be limited to large vehicles capable of reaching the tall power lines, i.e. public commuter vehicles.

[Related: Car owners: here’s when experts say you should switch to an EV.]

The other two options, however, could hypothetically also support smaller vehicles and private EVs. In a ground-based conductive format, power would transfer from specialized tracks installed either on top or below the pavement via a mechanical arm. Inductive charging would require conductive coils installed in both the roads and vehicles.

As futuristic as these ideas may sound, Sweden has already successfully tested all three ERS methods in various areas around the nation, including the towns of Gotland, Lund, and Sandviken. While much of that work has pertained to mass transit options, designers also tinkered with systems capable of supporting smaller and private vehicles as far back as 2018.

There are immense benefits to expanding ERS capabilities, beyond just the immediate convenience. According to one recent study from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, increased reliance on ERS installations alongside at-home EV charging could lower electrical grid demands during peak usage times, as well as potentially reduce vehicle battery size by as much as 70 percent. Those smaller batteries would mean less rare earth materials are harvested, leading to potentially cheaper, more accessible EV options for consumers.

[Related: Why you barely see electric vehicles at car dealerships.]

“After all, many people charge their cars after work and during the night, which puts a lot of strain on the power grid,” author Sten Karlsson, an energy efficiency researcher and professor at Chalmers, said in a release in March. “By instead charging more evenly throughout the day, peak load would be significantly reduced.”

Sweden isn’t alone in its aim to electrify portions of its roadways. As the electric transportation industry site Electrive notes, similar projects are also underway in the UK, Germain, Italy, and Israel. Here in the US, the Norwegian company ENRX recently announced plans to install a one-mile ERS prototype section within a stretch of four-lane highway near Orlando, Florida.

The post Get ready for the world’s first permanent EV-charging road appeared first on Popular Science.

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Satellite data reveals that methane leaks from two main fossil fuel fields in Turkmenistan caused more global heating last year than all of the carbon emissions in the United Kingdom. The satellite data was produced by French energy and environmental geo-analytics company Kayrros for the Guardian.

[Related: Methane is the greenhouse gas we can no longer afford to ignore.]

The data, as reported by the Guardian, shows that the western western fossil fuel field on the coast of the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan leaked over 2.9 million tons (2.6 million metric tonnes) of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted almost 2 million tons (1.8 million metric tonnes) during that timeline. Because methane is so much more potent than carbon dioxide, the two fields emit the equivalent of more than 403 million tons (366 million metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide, or more than the annual emissions by the United Kingdom. China and the United States are the largest emitters of CO₂ in the world and the UK ranks at 17.

Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas that is emitted during the production and transport of oil, natural gas, and coal. Emissions can also result from agriculture and livestock practices, land use, and the decay of organic waste in landfills, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. In 2021, methane accounted for 12 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the US, which is especially concerning since  it is 25 percent more effective at trapping heat than CO_2.

Methane was officially added to the list of climate change priorities to address this decade by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2021. The amount of methane emitted by human activity has been underestimated in the past and emissions have surged in the past 15 years. A 2020 study by the University of Rochester found that levels of “naturally released” methane reported in the atmosphere were 10 times too high, and fossil fuel-based methane is actually about 25 to 40 percent higher than scientists previously predicted. 

“The big take-home nugget for me is they said if you look at all the warming activity done by humans over the last century … carbon dioxide has contributed 0.75 degrees Celsius, while methane has contributed to 0.5 degrees Celsius,” Bob Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, told PopSci in 2021. 

Previous reporting from the Guardian found that Turkmenistan is a top country for methane “super emitting” leaks and it is possible that switching from a process called flaring to venting methane might be behind the explosion in emissions. Flaring burns unwanted gas and adds CO₂ into the atmosphere, but it is an easy process to detect and has been increasingly frowned upon. Venting releases the invisible methane into the air completely unburned and has been harder to track until more recent developments in satellite technology. Since methane traps 80 times more heat than CO₂  over two decades, venting is far worse for the climate.

[Related: Everything you should know about methane as regulations loosen.]

“Methane is responsible for almost half of short-term [climate] warming and has absolutely not been managed up to now – it was completely out of control,” Kayrros president Antoine Rostand, told the Guardian.  “We know where the super emitters are and who is doing it,” he said. “We just need the policymakers and investors to do their job, which is to crack down on methane emissions. There is no comparable action in terms of [reducing] short-term climate impacts.”

Turkmenistan is currently China’s second biggest supplier of gas and the country is planning to double its exports to China. Until 2018, Turkmen citizens received free gas and electricity, but the country is also incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. The likelihood of severe drought is projected to increase “very significantly” over the course of this century, and crop yields are expected to fail.

The upcoming 2023 COP28 climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates is seen by some to be an opportunity for change in the region. One source told the Guardian that diplomatic efforts are being made to urge Turkmenistan to cut its methane emissions. “We are really hoping Cop28 is a forcing mechanism,” the source said.

The post Satellites traced super methane plumes to Turkmenistan’s gas fields appeared first on Popular Science.

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In the news, it seems like electric vehicles are everywhere—from new tech developments to changing policies to increasingly interesting designs. And while the road to electric vehicles may be bumpy, reports show that it’s absolutely crucial to electrify our transportation sector in order to reach critical climate change goals. But unfortunately, the feeling of EV omnipresence doesn’t currently extend to the dealership.

According to a new study released this week by the Sierra Club, 66 percent of car dealerships nationwide did not have a single electric vehicle for sale. And out of those dealerships, only 44 percent reported that they would offer an EV for sale if they could get their hands on one. While this is a step up from previous reporting done by the Sierra Club in 2019, it’s still low considering the massive EV goals set in place by businesses and certain state legislation.

[Related: EV companies call out their own weaknesses in new clean energy report.]

“To help avoid the worst impacts of climate disruption and protect our communities, it’s important that we accelerate the transition to all-electric vehicles,” Sierra Club Clean Transportation for All Director Katherine Garcia said in a release. “Enough empty promises: The auto industry must step on the accelerator and get electric vehicles on dealership lots now.”

One of the major problems getting EVs to the dealership lots is supply chain problems involving semiconductors and batteries, but some major manufacturers are also part of the problem themselves. Major manufacturers often don’t have many EV options in the US—for example, Honda’s first EV to sell in the US won’t be available until 2024, with Toyota only starting to sell the BZ4X stateside last year. 

For dealers, selling EVs just isn’t the same money making machine as selling combustion cars. A decent chunk of a dealership’s income is from parts and service, something that just isn’t as necessary for electric vehicles, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.

“All else equal, an electric car has fewer mechanical parts than a gasoline or diesel car, which directly means that the revenue a car dealer makes from an electric car is much lower than what the dealer will make from a gas or diesel counterpart,” Vivek Astvansh, an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University, told Vox.

Plus, investing in infrastructure can represent a huge cost, from purchasing chargers and infrastructure to retraining staff on the ins and outs of EVs. Some manufacturers, such as Chevrolet, are enacting EV standards for their dealerships, according to reporting by Vox. 

[Related: Here’s when experts say you should switch to an EV.]

It’s not all bad news, however—the ability to buy directly from EV makers such as Rivian and Lucid can put the pressure on dealerships to get the electrification started. States where policy allows for direct sales account for 615,724 EVs sold in 2022, representing 65 percent of all EVs sold nationwide, according to the report. 

And if you’re looking to find a dealership that has an EV in stock, your best bet is to try locations in the Southeast (which have a 41 percent rate of dealers with EVs) or look around for Mercedes-Benz dealerships which above 75 percent of offer EVs. 

But for dealerships, the time to act is now. There are already 1.9 million reservations or pre-orders for recently released EVs, and the percentage of EVs in new vehicle sales has tripled since 2020.

The post Why you barely see electric vehicles at car dealerships appeared first on Popular Science.

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This story from the March 2012 issue of Popular Science covered the nuclear fusion experiments of Taylor Wilson, who was then 16. Wilson is currently 28 and a nuclear physicist who’s collaborated with multiple US agencies on developing reactors and defense technology. The author of this profile, Tom Clynes, went on to write a book about Wilson titled The Boy Who Played With Fusion.

“PROPULSION,” the nine-year-old says as he leads his dad through the gates of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “I just want to see the propulsion stuff.”

A young woman guides their group toward a full-scale replica of the massive Saturn V rocket that brought America to the moon. As they duck under the exhaust nozzles, Kenneth Wilson glances at his awestruck boy and feels his burden beginning to lighten. For a few minutes, at least, someone else will feed his son’s boundless appetite for knowledge.

Then Taylor raises his hand, not with a question but an answer. He knows what makes this thing, the biggest rocket ever launched, go up.

And he wants—no, he obviously needs—to tell everyone about it, about how speed relates to exhaust velocity and dynamic mass, about payload ratios, about the pros and cons of liquid versus solid fuel. The tour guide takes a step back, yielding the floor to this slender kid with a deep-Arkansas drawl, pouring out a torrent of Ph.D.-level concepts as if there might not be enough seconds in the day to blurt it all out. The other adults take a step back too, perhaps jolted off balance by the incongruities of age and audacity, intelligence and exuberance.

As the guide runs off to fetch the center’s director—You gotta see this kid!—Kenneth feels the weight coming down on him again. What he doesn’t understand just yet is that he will come to look back on these days as the uncomplicated ones, when his scary-smart son was into simple things, like rocket science.

This is before Taylor would transform the family’s garage into a mysterious, glow-in-the-dark cache of rocks and metals and liquids with unimaginable powers. Before he would conceive, in a series of unlikely epiphanies, new ways to use neutrons to confront some of the biggest challenges of our time: cancer and nuclear terrorism. Before he would build a reactor that could hurl atoms together in a 500-million-degree plasma core—becoming, at 14, the youngest individual on Earth to achieve nuclear fusion.

WHEN I MEET Taylor Wilson, he is 16 and busy—far too busy, he says, to pursue a driver’s license. And so he rides shotgun as his father zigzags the family’s Land Rover up a steep trail in the Virginia Mountains north of Reno, Nevada, where they’ve come to prospect for uranium.

From the backseat, I can see Taylor’s gull-like profile, his forehead plunging from under his sandy blond bangs and continuing, in an almost unwavering line, along his prominent nose. His thinness gives him a wraithlike appearance, but when he’s lit up about something (as he is most waking moments), he does not seem frail. He has spent the past hour—the past few days, really—talking, analyzing, and breathlessly evangelizing about nuclear energy. We’ve gone back to the big bang and forward to mutually assured destruction and nuclear winter. In between are fission and fusion, Einstein and Oppenheimer, Chernobyl and Fukushima, matter and antimatter.

“Where does it come from?” Kenneth and his wife, Tiffany, have asked themselves many times. Kenneth is a Coca-Cola bottler, a skier, an ex-football player. Tiffany is a yoga instructor. “Neither of us knows a dang thing about science,” Kenneth says.

Almost from the beginning, it was clear that the older of the Wilsons’ two sons would be a difficult child to keep on the ground. It started with his first, and most pedestrian, interest: construction. As a toddler in Texarkana, the family’s hometown, Taylor wanted nothing to do with toys. He played with real traffic cones, real barricades. At age four, he donned a fluorescent orange vest and hard hat and stood in front of the house, directing traffic. For his fifth birthday, he said, he wanted a crane. But when his parents brought him to a toy store, the boy saw it as an act of provocation. “No,” he yelled, stomping his foot. “I want a real one.”

This is about the time any other father might have put his own foot down. But Kenneth called a friend who owns a construction company, and on Taylor’s birthday a six-ton crane pulled up to the party. The kids sat on the operator’s lap and took turns at the controls, guiding the boom as it swung above the rooftops on Northern Hills Drive.

To the assembled parents, dressed in hard hats, the Wilsons’ parenting style must have appeared curiously indulgent. In a few years, as Taylor began to get into some supremely dangerous stuff, it would seem perilously laissez-faire. But their approach to child rearing is, in fact, uncommonly intentional. “We want to help our children figure out who they are,” Kenneth says, “and then do everything we can to help them nurture that.”

At 10, Taylor hung a periodic table of the elements in his room. Within a week he memorized all the atomic numbers, masses and melting points. At the family’s Thanksgiving gathering, the boy appeared wearing a monogrammed lab coat and armed with a handful of medical lancets. He announced that he’d be drawing blood from everyone, for “comparative genetic experiments” in the laboratory he had set up in his maternal grandmother’s garage. Each member of the extended family duly offered a finger to be pricked.

The next summer, Taylor invited everyone out to the backyard, where he dramatically held up a pill bottle packed with a mixture of sugar and stump remover (potassium nitrate) that he’d discovered in the garage. He set the bottle down and, with a showman’s flourish, ignited the fuse that poked out of the top. What happened next was not the firecracker’s bang everyone expected, but a thunderous blast that brought panicked neighbors running from their houses. Looking up, they watched as a small mushroom cloud rose, unsettlingly, over the Wilsons’ yard.

For his 11th birthday, Taylor’s grandmother took him to Books-A-Million, where he picked out The Radioactive Boy Scout, by Ken Silverstein. The book told the disquieting tale of David Hahn, a Michigan teenager who, in the mid-1990s, attempted to build a breeder reactor in a backyard shed. Taylor was so excited by the book that he read much of it aloud: the boy raiding smoke detectors for radioactive americium . . . the cobbled-together reactor . . . the Superfund team in hazmat suits hauling away the family’s contaminated belongings. Kenneth and Tiffany heard Hahn’s story as a cautionary tale. But Taylor, who had recently taken a particular interest in the bottom two rows of the periodic table—the highly radioactive elements—read it as a challenge. “Know what?” he said. “The things that kid was trying to do, I’m pretty sure I can actually do them.”

A rational society would know what to do with a kid like Taylor Wilson, especially now that America’s technical leadership is slipping and scientific talent increasingly has to be imported. But by the time Taylor was 12, both he and his brother, Joey, who is three years younger and gifted in mathematics, had moved far beyond their school’s (and parents’) ability to meaningfully teach them. Both boys were spending most of their school days on autopilot, their minds wandering away from course work they’d long outgrown.

David Hahn had been bored too—and, like Taylor, smart enough to be dangerous. But here is where the two stories begin to diverge. When Hahn’s parents forbade his atomic endeavors, the angry teenager pressed on in secret. But Kenneth and Tiffany resisted their impulse to steer Taylor toward more benign pursuits. That can’t be easy when a child with a demonstrated talent and fondness for blowing things up proposes to dabble in nukes.

Kenneth and Tiffany agreed to let Taylor assemble a “survey of everyday radioactive materials” for his school’s science fair. Kenneth borrowed a Geiger counter from a friend at Texarkana’s emergency-management agency. Over the next few weekends, he and Tiffany shuttled Taylor around to nearby antique stores, where he pointed the clicking detector at old
radium-dial alarm clocks, thorium lantern mantles and uranium-glazed Fiesta plates. Taylor spent his allowance money on a radioactive dining set.

Drawn in by what he calls “the surprise properties” of radioactive materials, he wanted to know more. How can a speck of metal the size of a grain of salt put out such tremendous amounts of energy? Why do certain rocks expose film? Why does one isotope decay away in a millionth of a second while another has a half-life of two million years?

As Taylor began to wrap his head around the mind-blowing mysteries at the base of all matter, he could see that atoms, so small but potentially so powerful, offered a lifetime’s worth of secrets to unlock. Whereas Hahn’s resources had been limited, Taylor found that there was almost no end to the information he could find on the Internet, or to the oddities that he could purchase and store in the garage.

On top of tables crowded with chemicals and microscopes and germicidal black lights, an expanding array of nuclear fuel pellets, chunks of uranium and “pigs” (lead-lined containers) began to appear. When his parents pressed him about safety, Taylor responded in the convoluted jargon of inverse-square laws and distance intensities, time doses and roentgen submultiples. With his newfound command of these concepts, he assured them, he could master the furtive energy sneaking away from those rocks and metals and liquids—a strange and ever-multiplying cache that literally cast a glow into the corners of the garage.

Kenneth asked a nuclear-pharmacist friend to come over to check on Taylor’s safety practices. As far as he could tell, the friend said, the boy was getting it right. But he warned that radiation works in quick and complex ways. By the time Taylor learned from a mistake, it might be too late.

Lead pigs and glazed plates were only the beginning. Soon Taylor was getting into more esoteric “naughties”—radium quack cures, depleted uranium, radio-luminescent materials—and collecting mysterious machines, such as the mass spectrometer given to him by a former astronaut in Houston. As visions of Chernobyl haunted his parents, Taylor tried to reassure them. “I’m the responsible radioactive boy scout,” he told them. “I know what I’m doing.”

One afternoon, Tiffany ducked her head out of the door to the garage and spotted Taylor, in his canary yellow nuclear-technician’s coveralls, watching a pool of liquid spreading across the concrete floor. “Tay, it’s time for supper.”
“I think I’m going to have to clean this up first.”
“That’s not the stuff you said would kill us if it broke open, is it?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not instantly.”

THAT SUMMER, Kenneth’s daughter from a previous marriage, Ashlee, then a college student, came to live with the Wilsons. “The explosions in the backyard were getting to be a bit much,” she told me, shortly before my own visit to the family’s home. “I could see everyone getting frustrated. They’d say something and Taylor would argue back, and his argument would be legitimate. He knows how to out-think you. I was saying, ‘You guys need to be parents. He’s ruling the roost.’ “

“What she didn’t understand,” Kenneth says, “is that we didn’t have a choice. Taylor doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘can’t.’ “

“And when he does,” Tiffany adds, “he doesn’t listen.”

“Looking back, I can see that,” Ashlee concedes. “I mean, you can tell Taylor that the world doesn’t revolve around him. But he doesn’t really get that. He’s not being selfish, it’s just that there’s so much going on in his head.”

Tiffany, for her part, could have done with less drama. She had just lost her sister, her only sibling. And her mother’s cancer had recently come out of remission. “Those were some tough times,” Taylor tells me one day, as he uses his mom’s gardening trowel to mix up a batch of yellowcake (the partially processed uranium that’s the stuff of WMD infamy) in a five-gallon bucket. “But as bad as it was with Grandma dying and all, that urine sure was something.”

Taylor looks sheepish. He knows this is weird. “After her PET scan she let me have a sample. It was so hot I had to keep it in a lead pig.

“The other thing is . . .” He pauses, unsure whether to continue but, being Taylor, unable to stop himself. “She had lung cancer, and she’d cough up little bits of tumor for me to dissect. Some people might think that’s gross, but I found it scientifically very interesting.”

What no one understood, at least not at first, was that as his grandmother was withering, Taylor was growing, moving beyond mere self-centeredness. The world that he saw revolving around him, the boy was coming to believe, was one that he could actually change.

The problem, as he saw it, is that isotopes for diagnosing and treating cancer are extremely short-lived. They need to be, so they can get in and kill the targeted tumors and then decay away quickly, sparing healthy cells. Delivering them safely and on time requires expensive handling—including, often, delivery by private jet. But what if there were a way to make those medical isotopes at or near the patients? How many more people could they reach, and how much earlier could they reach them? How many more people like his grandmother could be saved?

As Taylor stirred the toxic urine sample, holding the clicking Geiger counter over it, inspiration took hold. He peered into the swirling yellow center, and the answer shone up at him, bright as the sun. In fact, it was the sun—or, more precisely, nuclear fusion, the process (defined by Einstein as E=mc2) that powers the sun. By harnessing fusion—the moment when atomic nuclei collide and fuse together, releasing energy in the process—Taylor could produce the high-energy neutrons he would need to irradiate materials for medical isotopes. Instead of creating those isotopes in multimillion-dollar cyclotrons and then rushing them to patients, what if he could build a fusion reactor small enough, cheap enough and safe enough to produce isotopes as needed, in every hospital in the world?

At that point, only 10 individuals had managed to build working fusion reactors. Taylor contacted one of them, Carl Willis, then a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate living in Albuquerque, and the two hit it off. But Willis, like the other successful fusioneers, had an advanced degree and access to a high-tech lab and precision equipment. How could a middle-school kid living on the Texas/Arkansas border ever hope to make his own star?

When Taylor was 13, just after his grandmother’s doctor had given her a few weeks to live, Ashlee sent Tiffany and Kenneth an article about a new school in Reno. The Davidson Academy is a subsidized public school for the nation’s smartest and most motivated students, those who score in the top 99.9th percentile on standardized tests. The school, which allows students to pursue advanced research at the adjacent University of Nevada–Reno, was founded in 2006 by software entrepreneurs Janice and Robert Davidson. Since then, the Davidsons have championed the idea that the most underserved students in the country are those at the top.

On the family’s first trip to Reno, even before Taylor and Joey were accepted to the academy, Taylor made an appointment with Friedwardt Winterberg, a celebrated physicist at the University of Nevada who had studied under the Nobel Prize–winning quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg. When Taylor told Winterberg that he wanted to build a fusion reactor, also called a fusor, the notoriously cranky professor erupted: “You’re 13 years old! And you want to play with tens of thousands of electron volts and deadly x-rays?” Such a project would be far too technically challenging and hazardous, Winterberg insisted, even for most doctoral candidates. “First you must master calculus, the language of science,” he boomed. “After that,” Tiffany said, “we didn’t think it would go anywhere. Kenneth and I were a bit relieved.”

But Taylor still hadn’t learned the word “can’t.” In the fall, when he began at Davidson, he found the two advocates he needed, one in the office right next door to Winterberg’s. “He had a depth of understanding I’d never seen in someone that young,” says atomic physicist Ronald Phaneuf. “But he was telling me he wanted to build the reactor in his garage, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my lord, we can’t let him do that.’ But maybe we can help him try to do it here.”

Phaneuf invited Taylor to sit in on his upper-division nuclear physics class and introduced him to technician Bill Brinsmead. Brinsmead, a Burning Man devotee who often rides a wheeled replica of the Little Boy bomb through the desert, was at first reluctant to get involved in this 13-year-old’s project. But as he and Phaneuf showed Taylor around the department’s equipment room, Brinsmead recalled his own boyhood, when he was bored and unchallenged and aching to build something really cool and difficult (like a laser, which he eventually did build) but dissuaded by most of the adults who might have helped.

Rummaging through storerooms crowded with a geeky abundance of electron microscopes and instrumentation modules, they came across a high-vacuum chamber made of thick-walled stainless steel, capable of withstanding extreme heat and negative pressure. “Think I could use that for my fusor?” Taylor asked Brinsmead. “I can’t think of a more worthy cause,” Brinsmead said.

NOW IT’S TIFFANY who drives, along a dirt road that wends across a vast, open mesa a few miles south of the runways shared by Albuquerque’s airport and Kirkland Air Force Base. Taylor has convinced her to bring him to New Mexico to spend a week with Carl Willis, whom Taylor describes as “my best nuke friend.” Cocking my ear toward the backseat, I catch snippets of Taylor and Willis’s conversation.

“The idea is to make a gamma-ray laser from stimulated decay of dipositronium.”

“I’m thinking about building a portable, beam-on-target neutron source.”

“Need some deuterated polyethylene?”

Willis is now 30; tall and thin and much quieter than Taylor. When he’s interested in something, his face opens up with a blend of amusement and curiosity. When he’s uninterested, he slips into the far-off distractedness that’s common among the super-smart. Taylor and Willis like to get together a few times a year for what they call “nuclear tourism”—they visit research facilities, prospect for uranium, or run experiments.

Earlier in the week, we prospected for uranium in the desert and shopped for secondhand laboratory equipment in Los Alamos. The next day, we wandered through Bayo Canyon, where Manhattan Project engineers set off some of the largest dirty bombs in history in the course of perfecting Fat Man, which leveled Nagasaki.

Today we’re searching for remnants of a “broken arrow,” military lingo for a lost nuclear weapon. While researching declassified military reports, Taylor discovered that a Mark 17 “Peacemaker” hydrogen bomb, which was designed to be 700 times as powerful as the bomb detonated over Hiroshima, was accidentally dropped onto this mesa in May 1957. For the U.S. military, it was an embarrassingly Strangelovian episode; the airman in the bomb bay narrowly avoided his own Slim Pickens moment when the bomb dropped from its gantry and smashed the B-36’s doors open. Although its plutonium core hadn’t been inserted, the bomb’s “spark plug” of conventional explosives and radioactive material detonated on impact, creating a fireball and a massive crater. A grazing steer was the only reported casualty.

Tiffany parks the rented SUV among the mesquite, and we unload metal detectors and Geiger counters and fan out across the field. “This,” says Tiffany, smiling as she follows her son across the scrubland, “is how we spend our vacations.”

Willis says that when Taylor first contacted him, he was struck by the 12-year-old’s focus and forwardness—and by the fact that he couldn’t plumb the depth of Taylor’s knowledge with a few difficult technical questions. After checking with Kenneth, Willis sent Taylor some papers on fusion reactors. Then Taylor began acquiring pieces for his new machine.

Through his first year at Davidson, Taylor spent his afternoons in a corner of Phaneuf’s lab that the professor had cleared out for him, designing the reactor, overcoming tricky technical issues, tracking down critical parts. Phaneuf helped him find a surplus high-voltage insulator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Willis, then working at a company that builds particle accelerators, talked his boss into parting with an extremely expensive high-voltage power supply.

With Brinsmead and Phaneuf’s help, Taylor stretched himself, applying knowledge from more than 20 technical fields, including nuclear and plasma physics, chemistry, radiation metrology and electrical engineering. Slowly he began to test-assemble the reactor, troubleshooting pesky vacuum leaks, electrical problems and an intermittent plasma field.

Shortly after his 14th birthday, Taylor and Brinsmead loaded deuterium fuel into the machine, brought up the power, and confirmed the presence of neutrons. With that, Taylor became the 32nd individual on the planet to achieve a nuclear-fusion reaction. Yet what would set Taylor apart from the others was not the machine itself but what he decided to do with it.

While still developing his medical isotope application, Taylor came across a report about how the thousands of shipping containers entering the country daily had become the nation’s most vulnerable “soft belly,” the easiest entry point for weapons of mass destruction. Lying in bed one night, he hit on an idea: Why not use a fusion reactor to produce weapons-sniffing neutrons that could scan the contents of containers as they passed through ports? Over the next few weeks, he devised a concept for a drive-through device that would use a small reactor to bombard passing containers with neutrons. If weapons were inside, the neutrons would force the atoms into fission, emitting gamma radiation (in the case of nuclear material) or nitrogen (in the case of conventional explosives). A detector, mounted opposite, would pick up the signature and alert the operator.

He entered the reactor, and the design for his bomb-sniffing application, into the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. The Super Bowl of pre-college science events, the fair attracts 1,500 of the world’s most switched-on kids from some 50 countries. When Intel CEO Paul Otellini heard the buzz that a 14-year-old had built a working nuclear-fusion reactor, he went straight for Taylor’s exhibit. After a 20-minute conversation, Otellini was seen walking away, smiling and shaking his head in what looked like disbelief. Later, I would ask him what he was thinking. “All I could think was, ‘I am so glad that kid is on our side.’ “

For the past three years, Taylor has dominated the international science fair, walking away with nine awards (including first place overall), overseas trips and more than $100,000 in prizes. After the Department of Homeland Security learned of Taylor’s design, he traveled to Washington for a meeting with the DHS’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which invited Taylor to submit a grant proposal to develop the detector. Taylor also met with then–Under Secretary of Energy Kristina Johnson, who says the encounter left her “stunned.”

“I would say someone like him comes along maybe once in a generation,” Johnson says. “He’s not just smart; he’s cool and articulate. I think he may be the most amazing kid I’ve ever met.”

And yet Taylor’s story began much like David Hahn’s, with a brilliant, high-flying child hatching a crazy plan to build a nuclear reactor. Why did one journey end with hazmat teams and an eventual arrest, while the other continues to produce an array of prizes, patents, television appearances, and offers from college recruiters?

The answer is, mostly, support. Hahn, determined to achieve something extraordinary but discouraged by the adults in his life, pressed on without guidance or oversight—and with nearly catastrophic results. Taylor, just as determined but socially gifted, managed to gather into his orbit people who could help him achieve his dreams: the physics professor; the older nuclear prodigy; the eccentric technician; the entrepreneur couple who, instead of retiring, founded a school to nurture genius kids. There were several more, but none so significant as Tiffany and Kenneth, the parents who overcame their reflexive—and undeniably sensible—inclinations to keep their Icarus-like son on the ground. Instead they gave him the wings he sought and encouraged him to fly up to the sun and beyond, high enough to capture a star of his own.

After about an hour of searching across the mesa, our detectors begin to beep. We find bits of charred white plastic and chunks of aluminum—one of which is slightly radioactive. They are remnants of the lost hydrogen bomb. I uncover a broken flange with screws still attached, and Taylor digs up a hunk of lead. “Got a nice shard here,” Taylor yells, finding a gnarled piece of metal. He scans it with his detector. “Unfortunately, it’s not radioactive.”

“That’s the kind I like,” Tiffany says.

Willis picks up a large chunk of the bomb’s outer casing, still painted dull green, and calls Taylor over. “Wow, look at that warp profile!” Taylor says, easing his scintillation detector up to it. The instrument roars its approval. Willis, seeing Taylor ogling the treasure, presents it to him. Taylor is ecstatic. “It’s a field of dreams!” he yells. “This place is loaded!”

Suddenly we’re finding radioactive debris under the surface every five or six feet—even though the military claimed that the site was completely cleaned up. Taylor gets down on his hands and knees, digging, laughing, calling out his discoveries. Tiffany checks her watch. “Tay, we really gotta go or we’ll miss our flight.”

“I’m not even close to being done!” he says, still digging. “This is the best day of my life!” By the time we manage to get Taylor into the car, we’re running seriously late. “Tay,” Tiffany says, “what are we going to do with all this stuff?”

“For $50, you can check it on as excess baggage,” Willis says. “You don’t label it, nobody knows what it is, and it won’t hurt anybody.” A few minutes later, we’re taping an all-too-flimsy box shut and loading it into the trunk. “Let’s see, we’ve got about 60 pounds of uranium, bomb fragments and radioactive shards,” Taylor says. “This thing would make a real good dirty bomb.”

In truth, the radiation levels are low enough that, without prolonged close-range exposure, the cargo poses little danger. Still, we stifle the jokes as we pull up to curbside check-in. “Think it will get through security?” Tiffany asks Taylor.

“There are no radiation detectors in airports,” Taylor says. “Except for one pilot project, and I can’t tell you which airport that’s at.”

As the skycap weighs the box, I scan the “prohibited items” sign. You can’t take paints, flammable materials or water on a commercial airplane. But sure enough, radioactive materials are not listed.

We land in Reno and make our way toward the baggage claim. “I hope that box held up,” Taylor says, as we approach the carousel. “And if it didn’t, I hope they give us back the radioactive goodies scattered all over the airplane.” Soon the box appears, adorned with a bright strip of tape and a note inside explaining that the package has been opened and inspected by the TSA. “They had no idea,” Taylor says, smiling, “what they were looking at.”

APART FROM THE fingerprint scanners at the door, Davidson Academy looks a lot like a typical high school. It’s only when the students open their mouths that you realize that this is an exceptional place, a sort of Hogwarts for brainiacs. As these math whizzes, musical prodigies and chess masters pass in the hallway, the banter flies in witty bursts. Inside humanities classes, discussions spin into intellectual duels.

Although everyone has some kind of advanced obsession, there’s no question that Taylor is a celebrity at the school, where the lobby walls are hung with framed newspaper clippings of his accomplishments. Taylor and I visit with the principal, the school’s founders and a few of Taylor’s friends. Then, after his calculus class, we head over to the university’s physics department, where we meet Phaneuf and Brinsmead.

Taylor’s reactor, adorned with yellow radiation-warning signs, dominates the far corner of Phaneuf’s lab. It looks elegant—a gleaming stainless-steel and glass chamber on top of a cylindrical trunk, connected to an array of sensors and feeder tubes. Peering through the small window into the reaction chamber, I can see the golf-ball-size grid of tungsten fingers that will cradle the plasma, the state of matter in which unbound electrons, ions and photons mix freely with atoms and molecules.

“OK, y’all stand back,” Taylor says. We retreat behind a wall of leaden blocks as he shakes the hair out of his eyes and flips a switch. He turns a knob to bring the voltage up and adds in some gas. “This is exactly how me and Bill did it the first time,” he says. “But now we’ve got it running even better.”

Through a video monitor, I watch the tungsten wires beginning to glow, then brightening to a vivid orange. A blue cloud of plasma appears, rising and hovering, ghostlike, in the center of the reaction chamber. “When the wires disappear,” Phaneuf says, “that’s when you know you have a lethal radiation field.”

I watch the monitor while Taylor concentrates on the controls and gauges, especially the neutron detector they’ve dubbed Snoopy. “I’ve got it up to 25,000 volts now,” Taylor says. “I’m going to out-gas it a little and push it up.”

Willis’s power supply crackles. The reactor is entering “star mode.” Rays of plasma dart between gaps in the now-invisible grid as deuterium atoms, accelerated by the tremendous voltages, begin to collide. Brinsmead keeps his eyes glued to the neutron detector. “We’re getting neutrons,” he shouts. “It’s really jamming!”

Taylor cranks it up to 40,000 volts. “Whoa, look at Snoopy now!” Phaneuf says, grinning. Taylor nudges the power up to 50,000 volts, bringing the temperature of the plasma inside the core to an incomprehensible 580 million degrees—some 40 times as hot as the core of the sun. Brinsmead lets out a whoop as the neutron gauge tops out.

“Snoopy’s pegged!” he yells, doing a little dance. On the video screen, purple sparks fly away from the plasma cloud, illuminating the wonder in the faces of Phaneuf and Brinsmead, who stand in a half-orbit around Taylor. In the glow of the boy’s creation, the men suddenly look years younger.

Taylor keeps his thin fingers on the dial as the atoms collide and fuse and throw off their energy, and the men take a step back, shaking their heads and wearing ear-to-ear grins.

“There it is,” Taylor says, his eyes locked on the machine. “The birth of a star.”

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Back in 2021, President Joe Biden announced the administration’s new Justice40 Initiative through Executive Order 14008. The program’s aim is that 40 percent of the benefits of certain federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities. Investments related to climate change, clean energy, reduction of legacy pollution, and the development of water and wastewater infrastructure, among others, all fall within the initiative.

The administration doesn’t intend the program to be a one-time investment, but rather, a way to improve the distribution of the benefits of government programs and ensure that they reach disadvantaged communities. Since it was established, 19 federal agencies have released a total of nearly 470 covered programs, with three agencies joining just last month. While it’s promising that the administration recognizes the need to address long-standing equities, it’s critical to assess how they plan to make environmental justice a reality.

Marginalized and underserved communities must be prioritized to advance environmental justice

Hannah Perls, senior staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program (EELP), says that many of the environmental injustices around the country today are the result of a legacy of disinvestment in low-income communities. This is especially true in communities of color where “racist policies barred or discouraged public and private investment in housing, critical infrastructure, public transit, and natural spaces.”

[Related: Stronger pollution protections mean focusing on specific communities.]

These communities often face greater exposure to industrial pollution, higher health risks from deteriorating infrastructure, and more energy and housing burdens than wealthier, white communities, says Perls. They also lose out often in competitive federal funding processes—and in some cases, funding is intentionally withheld. This only reinforces existing wealth disparities. By explicitly targeting that 40 percent of federal climate investments reach these communities, the Justice 40 Initiative hopes to combat the legacy of disinvestment and equitably distribute the benefits of the transition to renewable energy, she adds.

To identify disadvantaged communities, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has put out its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), a geospatial mapping tool that identifies overburdened and underserved census tracts across all states.

“Agencies can build upon the CEJST as needed, again on a program-by-program basis,” says Perls. “One benefit of this flexibility is that agencies can incorporate burdens specific to their jurisdiction. For example, the Department of Energy’s definition incorporates five measures of energy burden and two measures of fossil dependence.”

The CEJST is an exciting starting point that the federal government can continue to refine. That said, “environmental justice burdens don’t necessarily follow census boundaries, so there should be opportunities for communities to make the case to receive federal dollars if their community is not identified by the tool,” says Silvia R. González, director of climate change, environmental justice, and health research at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

How to ensure that the benefits reach disadvantaged communities

All covered programs are required to consult the community stakeholders, ensure their involvement in determining program benefits, and report data on said benefits. An established number of 40 percent provides clear guidelines and expectations for agencies. To strengthen that goal, a team of researchers and advocates recommend that the 40 percent be a minimum for direct investments in disadvantaged communities.

“A direct investment means the percentage is not just a goal that relies on counting trickle-down benefits,” says González, who was involved in the report. “The straightforward nature of a direct benefit strategy would enhance transparency and accountability to taxpayers because it is tough to measure trickle-down benefits.”

To ensure investment objectives are met, transparency in reporting and evaluation is necessary, she adds. Accountability mechanisms are a must in guaranteeing equitable, effective, and efficient implementation.

[Related: The hard truth of building clean solar farms.]

“We currently have no federal environmental justice law,” says Perls. “As a result, most of the administration’s environmental justice commitments, including the Justice40 Initiative, are established via Executive Order and are therefore not judicially enforceable.”

Fortunately, there are some ways to monitor how the government is living up to its promises. The administration recently published the first version of the Environmental Justice Scorecard, a government-wide assessment of the actions taken by federal agencies to achieve environmental justice goals. Harvard Law School’s EELP also has a Federal Environmental Justice Tracker that tracks the progress of the administration’s environmental justice commitments and other agency-specific initiatives.

Overall, experts say it’s a positive sign that the Justice40 Initiative has catalyzed critical discussions to face climate change and historical disinvestment head-on. But as with any ambitious policy agenda, the implementation will need to overcome many hurdles, says González. The most vulnerable communities tend to be those that are least resourced, and they should not get left behind. Some communities or households may be under-resourced due to language, technology, trust, and capacity barriers to programs that can help them develop financial and health resiliency. There will need to be capacity-building and technical assistance for under-resourced communities to apply for and manage these investments, she adds.

In general, there is strong potential for Justice40-covered programs to bring transformational change from the bottom up. The knowledge and lived experiences of disadvantaged communities could shape targeted investments to ensure that their needs are met. “I hope Justice40 builds a framework rooted in principles of self-governance and self-determination, direct engagement, and collaboration with communities,” says González, “instead of top-down solutions.”

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An unsettling report released barely a year ago painted a grim picture of the plastics industry—only about 5 percent of the 46 million annual tons of plastic waste in the US makes it to recycling facilities. The number is even more depressing after realizing that is roughly half of experts’ previous estimates. But if all that wasn’t enough, new information throws a heaping handful of salt on the wound: of the plastic that does make it to recycling, a lot of it is still released into the world as potentially toxic microplastics.

According to the pilot study recently published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances focused on a single, modern facility, recycling plants’ wastewater contains a staggering number of microplastic particles. And as Wired explained on Friday, all those possibly toxic particulates have to go somewhere, i.e. potentially city water systems, or the larger environment.

The survey focusing on one new, unnamed facility examined its entire recycling process. This involves sorting, shredding, and melting plastics down into pellets. During those phases of recycling, however, the plastic waste is washed multiple times, which subsequently sheds particles smaller than 5 millimeters along the way. Despite factoring in the plant’s state-of-the-art filtration system designed to capture particulates as tiny as 50 microns, the facility still produced as many as 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater.

[Related: How companies greenwash their plastic pollution.]

The silver lining here is that without the filtration systems, it could be much worse. Researchers estimated facilities that utilized filters cut down their microplastic residuals from 6.5 million pounds to around 3 million pounds per year. Unfortunately, many recycling locations aren’t as equipped as the modern plant used within the study. On top of that, the team only focused on microplastics as small as 1.6 microns; particles can get so small they actually enter organisms’ individual cells. This implies much more plastic escapes these facilities than previously anticipated.

“I really don’t want it to suggest to people that we shouldn’t recycle, and to give it a completely negative reputation,” Erina Brown, a plastics scientist at the University of Strathclyde, told Wired. “What it really highlights is that we just really need to consider the impacts of the solutions.”

Most experts agree that the most important way to minimize coating the entire planet in microplastics is to focus on the larger issue—reducing society’s reliance on plastics in general, and pursuing alternative materials. In the meantime, recycling remains an important part of sustainability, as long as both facilities do everything they can to minimize microscopic waste.

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Originally published by The 19th.

LOS ANGELES — The L.A. Fashion District buzzes with energy on a sunny afternoon in March. Bolts of colorful fabric — beaded, velvet, speckled with tulle butterflies, patterned, lacy — spill out onto the sidewalk. Storefront after storefront sells spools of ribbon and bags of sequins. The smell of taco trucks fills the air.  

Nayantara Banerjee — a campaigner with the Garment Worker Center (GWC), a labor rights organization located in the Fashion District — walks down the street, pointing out multi-story buildings where sewing and pattern-making takes place. 

Through the grid of windows, there are signs of an industry at work. A woman appears to be pressing fabric in one room, two dressmaker dummies are positioned in front of another like headless ghosts. In one of the buildings, the steady hum of sewing machines permeates as workers diligently sew from behind closed doors. 

Banerjee has given a similar tour of the Fashion District — a key part of sustainable fashion in the United States — to L.A. city planners and council staff, who hold immense influence over its future. 

In an effort to bring more housing to Los Angeles, where it is desperately needed, the city has been working on a plan to rezone the Fashion District and other parts of the city since 2014. Banerjee wants the district and the 20,000 garment workers who power the district top of mind for city officials, who have until May 12 to vote on this plan and could vote as early as Wednesday. 

“We’ve spent a lot of time trying to educate our elected officials, our city planners, even our allies about what this industry is, and how it works and our vision for the future of it as well,” Banerjee said. 

The Downtown Los Angeles Community Plan has enormous implications for the future of the district and the garment workers — mostly immigrant women from Mexico and Guatemala — who power the industry.

It opens up more opportunities to build hotels, apartment complexes and other businesses in the district that advocates fear will compete with an already fragile industry composed of small and large apparel companies, pattern makers, sewers — part of the more than 1,400 businesses that power the existing garment manufacturing hub. They worry it could lead to gentrification, pricing workers out in the surrounding neighborhoods. 

This comes at a time that the GWC and its allies nationally are fighting to preserve domestic manufacturing in the United States, through federal legislation like the FABRIC Act, which was introduced last May by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat. The bill will be reintroduced this September during New York Fashion Week. The act aims to incentivize domestic garment manufacturing nationally and strengthen worker protections. 

Eighty-three percent of domestic garment manufacturing in the United States takes place in Los Angeles, so without measures in place to protect the district, the chances of reshoring, or bringing back more of the industry domestically, narrows. 

“In sustainable fashion, where the industry is trying to move, we want to reduce the carbon footprint of garment manufacturing,” Banerjee said. “Los Angeles has already been doing that, because you have your pattern maker, your sample maker, your production house, your cutter, everything is right here … The ecosystem is very strong here where different partners rely on one another.”

Bringing in market-rate and luxury housing not only affects those who are directly in that building, but all of these other partners as well, she said.  

To get ahead of potential impacts of the new zoning, the GWC has been educating the City Council and the city’s planning department about the importance of the industry, working with them on ways to make the Downtown Los Angeles Community Plan more inclusive of garment work and workers. 

So far they’ve been successful at working with city staff, who they’ve been meeting with over the past two years to influence the plan’s outcome. They  feel optimistic that the full City Council will vote to adopt a plan that includes their recommendations. 

In the process, the GWC has attracted a larger coalition of sustainable apparel companies that see the fight for the Fashion District as integral to their ability to source ethically and create sustainably made garments. If they are successful, they could cement a future not just for themselves and their community, but for the industry as a whole, as sustainable apparel companies aim to grow their operations in the United States. 

The Fashion District is one of two major hubs for domestic garment manufacturing in the country. New York City steals the limelight for its fashion designers and world-renowned fashion week, but a majority of domestically produced apparel is made in L.A. According to the World Trade Center in Los Angeles, apparel is the city’s second-largest manufacturing sector, worth around $11 billion annually.

In recent years, the Fashion District has become a hub for sustainable fashion, attracting apparel manufacturers like Mary Price, who makes eco-friendly tunics through her line, Ocean and Main. Price has over 30 years of experience in the industry. Over a decade ago, she felt she had to make a change. “I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be part of this system. And the world doesn’t need another $5 T-shirt,” Price remembers. 

For most of her career she was a designer and buyer for luxury brands, but in 2015, she started her own company in L.A. where nearly every aspect of the work on her pieces occurs within a 15-mile radius — the Fashion District. She’s been heavily involved in the campaign to save it. 

“Being able to support this really delicate ecosystem within the downtown Los Angeles area is really core to my business, and sustainability has been a key part,” she said. “I don’t import and ship everything over a continent and an ocean before we make it. And all of the fabrics that we use are noble fabrics [or made of natural fibers like silk and cotton] that are all sourced here from local vendors. And I use a lot of upcycled fabric. So to me, keeping that carbon footprint as low as possible is really key.” 

A majority of clothing production happens outside of the United States in places like Bangladesh, where rivers have been heavily contaminated with pollution from dyes and tanning acids used to make clothing. A factory collapse in Bangladesh killed over a thousand garment workers in 2013, mostly women. Workers there are paid paltry wages, and their rivers are contaminated by a mixture of toxic dyes and chemicals. According to the UN Environment Programme, textile dyeing is the second largest contributor to water pollution globally. 

For business owners like Price, there is an opportunity to do things differently in L.A. 

On a Monday afternoon in March, Price is busy filling orders from her fulfillment and logistics office, located in a building with dozens of other apparel companies. Paper orders are lined up in a neat row on the table in front of her. A cart of fabric in the shapes of her tunics has recently been brought back from the cutting service a couple blocks away.  

“We need to take those over to the sewer, which is across the street, who will do all the sewing and then it’ll come back here. We’ll separate it out … and then they’ll go to the dye house,” she explains, pointing out how close all the various stages of manufacturing are through her window. 

“Being able to walk across the street and get whatever I need, from fabric to buttons … It doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

It also reduces the carbon footprint of her production. The fashion industry is responsible for anywhere between 4 to 8 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.

 “One of the biggest problems facing the impact that apparel is having on global emissions is overproduction,” said Price. Abroad, apparel companies have to meet order minimums, which are usually in the thousands and lead to an excess of clothing waste.. “So being able to manufacture here, we only make what we can sell,” she said. 

Price said keeping production here also helps eliminate the guesswork around worker well-being. “I can walk into the factory, I know the people, and I know that we’re paying them well, I know their spaces are livable,” she said. “And there’s no human trafficking, there’s no slave labor. When you go overseas, you’re just kind of crossing your fingers.”

Many of the same brands that are part of this campaign to save the district, including Price’s company, previously joined the GWC in the fight to pass California’s Senate Bill 62 in 2021, which required that workers be paid an hourly wage instead of a piece rate system that pays workers based on the number of units they produce. 

“One of the ways that the issues are really linked when it comes to the climate crisis and inequity is that when you have so much pervasive wage theft, when you have a piece rate system, that’s when you’re also able to produce products at very cheap prices,” said Ayesha Barenblat, CEO and Founder of Remake, a global fashion advocacy organization.

Remake has also been a supporter of the campaign to preserve the Fashion District, along with Fashion Revolution USA, which works on systemic change in the fashion industry and advocates for more transparency in the industry. 

At the end of March, around 30 garment workers gathered to talk about the rezone at a park in Pico-Union, a neighborhood where many of them live. The workers and their family members — many who organized to pass SB 62 — spoke about how the plan would affect their communities.

Workers like Grigorio Mancilla would be out of a very specific job if the industry were to shrink or move. Grigorio, like many other garment workers, plays a specialized role in this garment manufacturing ecosystem. Originally from Mexico, Grigorio has 35 years of experience affixing buttons and sewing button holes for garments. When he’s not sewing buttons, he’s fixing sewing machines. 

His wages support his three daughters. “We are fighting because we need money for the rent for the bills, and every year the rent is rising,” he told me. 

His concern gets to another demand being made by garment workers — that the city prioritize the development of affordable housing for those with extremely low income levels in the rezone. 

Banerjee, who helped draft these housing demands with workers, said it is important to be specific about what kind of affordable housing is required in new developments. 

“Affordable can mean you’re making 80 percent of the average median income for the area, and our members may be earning 15 to 30 percent,” she said. “So that’s a huge, huge difference.”

For workers like Magdalena Utuy, garment work moving out of the district could mean longer commutes. Utuy lives in Pico-Union, which is well-connected to the district by public transportation, requiring about a 15-minute commute. She has two daughters who are in school in the area. 

“My main concerns are that they move all the garment work outside of the district, and we have to look for work much further,” Utuy said. “I would have to be away from my children for much longer to go to my work.” 

Utuy was considered an essential worker during the pandemic. Her job shifted to making masks, which were urgently needed across the country as supply chain issues made it difficult to import them. At the time, the mayor of L.A. launched an initiative to produce 5 million masks with local apparel companies. Many workers became infected in crowded factories.

As the GWC has pointed out in their campaign to save the district, its workers and the industry played a crucial role in protecting L.A. residents. The pandemic also showcased the need for reshoring garment manufacturing when supply chains went haywire. 

In the month since the forum, workers and their allies ramped up their advocacy efforts, organizing a march to city hall and sending letters advocating for ways the planning commission could preserve and incentivize the garment industry in L.A. This included asking that resources be allocated to businesses displaced by development, requiring a percentage of manufacturing space be preserved in redevelopments and required in new buildings, and prohibiting industrial spaces from being converted into other uses like stadiums or entertainment venues. 

On April 24, around 100 workers attended a hearing held by the L.A. City Council planning and land use management committee. Workers, including Cris Lopez, testified about how the rezone would impact them. 

“We are here because most of us have been working in this industry for over 20 years … behind us we have families, children, our grandchildren who will all be affected by this plan,” Lopez said.  

Their advocacy worked. City council members voted unanimously to adopt recommendations pushed by GWC, including incentivizing developers to create more room for manufacturing in new construction and supporting efforts to expand affordable housing in the district for very low wage workers. 

“There are definitely still concerns about displacement, but within this plan we were able to get some strong anti-displacement measures,” said Daisy Gonzalez, an organizer with GWC. 

Now Gonzalez and others are focused on the next chapter for the Fashion District, working on a workforce development program that could include upskilling workers for apparel companies working on sustainable clothing initiatives and continuing their advocacy work on a national level for legislation like the Fabric Act.  

For organizations like Remake, keeping the Fashion District moving forward is essential to the future of the industry. 

“When we think about sustainable industry, it is really about looking at both sides of the coin, [both] quality of life and wages for workers, and also how it’s better for the planet,” Barenblat said. “In both of those realms the production hub that we have right here in California, is really important.”

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Nicknamed the “Earth’s lungs” for its dense oxygen producing forests, the Amazon can absorb 132 billion tons of the planet’s carbon. However, more than 30,000 square miles of the Amazon have been lost since the 1970s. Deforestation, clearing land for agriculture, and climate change fueled wildfires have severely taken its toll on the region, where about 10,000 acres of forest (almost the size of California) has been destroyed every day since 1988. 

However, there is still time to save it—and now scientists may have a “secret weapon” that could not only help reforest the Amazon, but other depleted forests around the world. And it comes from soil deep in the region’s past.

[Related: Brazil’s presidential election is a win for the Amazon—and the planet.]

From roughly 450 BCE and 950 CE, the people living along today’s Amazonia transformed the originally poor soil over many human generations. The soils were enriched with charcoal from low-intensity fires for cooking and burning refuse, animal bones, broken pottery, compost, and manure. The fertile result of these processes is Amazonian dark earth (ADE), or terra preta. The exceptionally fertile black soil is rich in nutrients and stable organic matter derived from charcoal. According to a study published May 5 in the journal Frontiers in Soil Science, it now may help reforest the same area where it was created. 

“Here we show that the use of ADEs can enhance the growth of pasture and trees due  to their high levels of nutrients, as well as to the presence of beneficial bacteria and archaea in the soil microbial community,” co-author Luís Felipe Zagatto, a graduate student at the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture at São Paulo University in Brazil said in a statement. “This means that knowledge of the ‘ingredients’ that make ADEs so very fertile could be applied to help speed up ecological restoration projects.”

The team’s primary aim was to study how ADEs, or ultimately soils with a microbiome that has been artificially composed to imitate them, could boost reforestation. To do this, they conducted controlled experiments in a lab to mimic the ecological succession that happens in the soil when pasture in deforested areas is actively restored to its forest state. 

They sampled ADE from the Caldeirão Experimental Research Station in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. The control soil in the experiments was from the Luiz de Queiróz Superior School of Agriculture in the state of São Paulo. They filled 36 pots with about 6.6 pounds of soil inside a greenhouse with an average temperature of 94ºF to anticipate global warming beyond current average temperatures in Amazonia (between 71 and 82ºF).

One third of the pots only received the control soil, while another third received a 4 to 1 mixture of the control soil and ADE, and the final third has 100 percent ADE. They planted seeds of palisade grass, a common forage for Brazilian livestock, to imitate pasture. The seedlings were allowed to grow for 60 days before the grass was cut so that only the roots remained in the soil. 

Each of the three soils were then replanted with tree seeds of either a colonizing species called Ambay pumpwood, Peltophorum dubium, or with cedro blanco.

[Related: The Amazon is on the brink of a climate change tipping point.]

The seeds were allowed to germinate and then grow for 90 days and then the team measured their height, dry mass, and extension of the roots. They also quantified the changes in the soil’s pH, microbial diversity, texture, and concentration of organic matter–potassium, calcium, magnesium, aluminum, sulfur, boron, copper, iron, and zinc–over the course of the experiment. 

At the beginning, ADEs showed greater amounts of nutrients than control soil, roughly 30 times more phosphorus and three to five times more of each of the other measured nutrients, except manganese. The ADE also had a higher pH and had more sand and silt in it, but less clay. 

Following the experiment, the control soils contained less nutrients than they had at the start, which reflects take-up by the plants. However, the 100 percent ADE soils remained richer than control soils, while nutrient levels were intermediate in the 20 percent ADE soils.

The 20 percent and 100 percent ADE soils also supported a greater biodiversity of both  bacteria and archaea than control soils.

“Microbes transform chemical soil particles into nutrients that can be taken up by plants. Our data showed that ADE contains microorganisms that are better at this transformation of soils, thus providing more resources for plant development,” co-author and University of São Paulo molecular biologist Anderson Santos de Freitas said in a statement.  “For example, ADE soils contained more beneficial taxa of the bacterial families Paenibacillaceae, Planococcaceae, Micromonosporaceae, and Hyphomicroblaceae.”

Additionally, adding ADE to soil improved the growth and development of plants. The dry mass of palisade grass was increased 3.4 times in the 20 percent ADE soil and 8.1 times in 100 percent ADE compared to in control soil. 

These results were enough to convince the team that ADE can boost plant growth, but it does come with some caution. 

“ADE has taken thousands of years to accumulate and would take an equal time to regenerate in nature if used,” co-author and  University of São Paulo molecular biologist Siu Mui Tsai said in a statement. “Our recommendations aren’t to utilize ADE itself, but rather to copy its characteristics, particularly its microorganisms, for use in future ecological restoration projects.”

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Europe’s fourth busiest airport wants to ground private jet setters for good, making an unprecedented move that could set a new industry benchmark in tackling global travel emissions. In order to achieve the high-profile goal, however, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has a very bumpy journey ahead of it.

Per Bloomberg, the Netherlands’ largest air hub first made headlines last month when it announced plans to shutter all night flights and private jets from its runways beginning in 2026. Schiphol is overseen by the Royal Schiphol Group, a Dutch government majority-owned company whose interim CEO said at the time they “realize that our choices may have significant implications for the aviation industry, but they are necessary. This shows we mean business.”

[Related: The FAA just made East Coast flights shorter.]

On Tuesday, Schiphol Airport representatives explained to Bloomberg that 30 and 50 percent of all its private jet flights are to holiday locales such as Cannes and Ibiza. Additionally, around 17,000 private flights passed through Schiphol last year, “causing a disproportionate amount of noise and generating 20 times more carbon dioxide emissions per passenger than commercial flights.”

A private jet can emit as much as two metric tons of CO2 during one hour of flight. And while private flights make up only four percent of global aviation carbon emissions, the richer half of humanity is still behind roughly 90 percent of all air travel pollution. Factor in the dramatic rise in private air travel, particularly since the onset of the COVID–19 pandemic, and it’s easy to see why public sentiment is turning against the notion of wealthy getaways and exclusive business jaunts.

[Related: How does a jet engine work? By running hot enough to melt its own innards.]

Many in the industry, however, aren’t thrilled by Schiphol’s new goals. One private jet charter company CEO argued to Bloomberg that their customers’ flights were mostly for “business,” while other critics argued passengers will simply transition to nearby alternative airports. The Royal Schiphol Group informed Bloomberg its closest neighbor, Rotterdam The Hague Airport, cannot accommodate the displaced flights, nor does the company plan to transfer flights elsewhere.

Royal Schiphol Group could face an uphill battle in accomplishing its goals, however. Most of its impending green goals require discussions with the company’s stakeholders—such as Delta Air Lines and France-KLM, who previously sued the Dutch government regarding caps on flights. Then there’s Transavia Airlines BV, who oversee the majority of night flights out of Schiphol. Regardless of the final outcomes, Royal Schiphol Group is still setting a very public example when it comes to raising awareness regarding air travel’s exorbitant effects on the planet, and the importance of finding solutions to these issues before it’s too late.

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Over the last four decades, global water use has increased by about 1 percent per year. This rise is driven by many factors, including population growth, changing consumption patterns, and socioeconomic development. By 2050, the United Nations Water estimates urban water demand to increase by 80 percent. As freshwater needs continue to rise in cities, the sustainable management of urban water supply becomes even more critical.

In the past two decades, over 80 metropolitan cities around the world have experienced water shortages and extreme drought. Such urban water crises are expected to occur more frequently in the near future, therefore it’s crucial to understand how they unfold, who is vulnerable to them, and how they can be addressed.

Why urban water crises occur today

Many factors contribute to the development of today’s water crises, including changing land cover and use, urban infrastructure maintenance, and climate change, says Adriana Zuniga-Teran, neighborhood design and environmental sciences expert and assistant professor of geography, development, and environment at the University of Arizona.

For instance, impervious surfaces like concrete and asphalt often replace natural porous land cover as cities grow, resulting in less precipitation infiltration, which can affect the whole hydrological cycle. In addition, cities, farms, mines, and industrial land use all consume a lot of water compared to natural landscapes. Furthermore, rich and poor countries alike face issues with aging water infrastructure, which requires a massive amount of resources to upgrade. Lastly, climate change factors in because extreme weather events can make water more polluted, scarce, and/or unpredictable.

[Related: Groundwater is an incredible resource. It’s time to treat it like one.]

In general, Zuniga-Teran says the reasons for urban water crises are, to an extent, caused by “a consequence of uncontrolled urban growth and the unsustainable use of water resources.”

Population growth is not enough to indicate water demand, because certain individuals and social groups use a lot of water (and other resources) while other groups don’t. What’s at play is the current political-economic system that makes it possible for some individuals to over consume water while others don’t even have access to it, says Elisa Savelli, a research fellow at the Uppsala University Department of Earth Sciences in Sweden.

Socioeconomic inequalities can drive water crises

According to a recent Nature Sustainability study on the metropolitan area of Cape Town, stark socioeconomic inequalities play a major role in the production of water crises. The authors built a model to account for unequal water consumption across different social groups, which allowed them to retrace who over consume water and who doesn’t. They found that privileged households with better access and financial resources are able to consume more water to use however they want to.

“We found that whilst constituting only 13 percent of the urban population, the elite consumed more than half of the city’s water, and for non-basic needs such as gardening or swimming pools,” says Savelli, who was lead author of the Nature study.

Not only did wealthier households consume more public water sources, but they also had access to private sources that aren’t controlled by municipalities, like boreholes. In comparison, informal dwellers and lower-income households constitute over 60 percent of the city population but consume only about 27 percent of the city’s water. 

“Socioeconomic inequalities can drive water shortages and crises as much as, if not more than, population growth or climate change,” says Savelli. The current political-economic system triggers the unsustainable exploitation of water sources with the objective of accumulating profit and capital, without accounting for water as a common resource, she adds.

Wealthy people generally have the infrastructure to make water available to them, so it’s easier for them to consume it. They also have larger properties to maintain, larger dwelling units, pools, and more, says Stephanie Pincetl, director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA.

“In places like the Southwest, we need to aggressively change outdoor landscapes,” says Pincetl. In California, landscape irrigation accounts for about 50 percent of annual residential water consumption. Overall, federal and local governments have a responsibility to manage urban water supplies sustainably and equitably.

Various strategies to manage urban water supply sustainably

To ensure more sustainable management of urban water supply, Pincetl suggests establishing tiered water rates where rates are higher with more consumption. Water use budgets per household are already in some places across the country, like Orange County, California. Those who stay within their monthly water budget get a lower rate per centum cubic feet (CCF) compared to those who go over it.

A 2021 Water Economics and Policy study looked into the county’s application of tiered rates and found that water was saved for the two agencies that converted to a budget-based rate structure at multiple levels of consumption. However, Zuniga-Teran says water demand policies that aim to control human behavior might not be enough to influence the behavior of wealthy residents. After all, they may not mind paying a lot more for water.

Municipalities can also acquire water rights by buying farmlands to change the water use from agricultural to municipal, says Zuniga-Teran. Back in the 1970s, Tucson, Arizona purchased over 20,000 acres of farmland in Avra Valley to acquire water rights and preserve groundwater. Investing in education and communication programs to help individuals learn how they can contribute to sustainable water management is also important, she adds. A 2022 Sustainability study in Mexico aimed to implement an environmental education program on water conservation in 10-year-old students. The authors found that such environmental programs can improve water use and conservation.

[Related: A new climate report finally highlights the importance of our decisions.]

A major part of sustainable resource utilization is water reuse for both potable and non-potable purposes. For instance, Zuniga-Teran says households can collect greywater—excess runoff water from showers or washing machines—and harvest rainwater to use for car washing or toilet flushing. Cities could also reuse reclaimed water, or treated municipal wastewater, and send it to a drinking water treatment plant to be directed into the drinking water distribution system. Meanwhile, stormwater, or surface water from heavy rain or snow, may be used to irrigate landscapes and replenish local aquifers while reducing flooding, she adds. All these alternative water sources could be treated and used for a variety of purposes.

“Instead of building another dam or promoting water technologies, policies should seek to alter privileged lifestyles, limit water use for amenities, and redistribute income and water resources more equally,” says Savelli. “The construction of additional infrastructure would not address the root cause of water overconsumption, and in turn, this and other technocratic solutions would protract current water crises into the future.”

When it comes to sustainable urban water management, cities should prioritize low-income, marginalized communities that still experience legacies of redlining and disinvestment and are likely to suffer the impacts of climate change the most, says Zuniga-Teran. Therefore, funding engagement efforts is critical as well. “Equity has to be at the forefront of all water-related efforts,” she adds. “To address inequities, community engagement is needed to make sure all voices are heard and that programs and policies are designed to address their particular needs.”

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In March, Irene Plenefisch, a senior director of government affairs at Microsoft, sent an email to the eight members of the Washington state Senate’s Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee, which was about to hold a hearing to discuss a bill intended to facilitate the repair of consumer electronics. 

Typically, when consumer tech companies reach out to lawmakers concerning right-to-repair bills — which seek to make it easier for people to fix their devices, thus saving money and reducing electronic waste — it’s because they want them killed. Plenefisch, however, wanted the committee to know that Microsoft, which is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, was on board with this one, which had already passed the Washington House.

“I am writing to state Microsoft’s support for E2SHB 1392,” also known as the Fair Repair Act, Plenefisch wrote in an email to the committee. “This bill fairly balances the interests of manufacturers, customers, and independent repair shops and in doing so will provide more options for consumer device repair.”

The Fair Repair Act stalled out a week later due to opposition from all three Republicans on the committee and Senator Lisa Wellman, a Democrat and former Apple executive. (Apple frequently lobbies against right-to-repair bills, and during a hearing, Wellman defended the iPhone maker’s position that it is already doing enough on repair.) But despite the bill’s failure to launch this year, repair advocates say Microsoft’s support — a notable first for a major U.S. tech company — is bringing other manufacturers to the table to negotiate the details of other right-to-repair bills for the first time. 

“We are in the middle of more conversations with manufacturers being way more cooperative than before,” Nathan Proctor, who heads the U.S. Public Research Interest Group’s right-to-repair campaign, told Grist. “And I think Microsoft’s leadership and willingness to be first created that opportunity.”

Across a wide range of sectors, from consumer electronics to farm equipment, manufacturers attempt to monopolize repair of their devices by restricting access to spare parts, repair tools, and technical documentation. While manufacturers often claim that controlling the repair process limits cybersecurity and safety risks, they also financially benefit when consumers are forced to take their devices back to the manufacturer or upgrade due to limited repair options.

Right-to-repair bills would compel manufactures to make spare parts and information available to everyone. Proponents argue that making repair more accessible will allow consumers to use older products for longer, saving them money and reducing the environmental impact of technology, including both electronic waste and the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing new products. 

But despite dozens of state legislatures taking up right-to-repair bills in recent years, very few of those bills have passed due to staunch opposition from device makers and the trade associations representing them. New York state passed the first electronics right-to-repair law in the country last year, but before the governor signed it, tech lobbyists convinced her to water it down through a series of revisions.

Like other consumer tech giants, Microsoft has historically fought right-to-repair bills while restricting access to spare parts, tools, and repair documentation to its network of “authorized” repair partners. In 2019, the company even helped kill a repair bill in Washington state. But in recent years the company has started changing its tune on the issue. In 2021, following pressure from shareholders, Microsoft agreed to take steps to facilitate the repair of its devices — a first for a U.S. company. Microsoft followed through on the agreement by expanding access to spare parts and service tools, including through a partnership with the repair guide site iFixit. The tech giant also commissioned a study that found repairing Microsoft products instead of replacing them can dramatically reduce both waste and carbon emissions.

Microsoft has also started engaging more cooperatively with lawmakers over right-to-repair bills. In late 2021 and 2022, the company met with legislators in both Washington and New York to discuss each state’s respective right-to-repair bill. In both cases, lawmakers and advocates involved in the bill negotiations described the meetings as productive. When the Washington state House introduced an electronics right-to-repair bill in January 2022, Microsoft’s official position on it was neutral — something that state representative and bill sponsor Mia Gregerson, a Democrat, called “a really big step forward” at a committee hearing. 

Despite Microsoft’s neutrality, last year’s right-to-repair bill failed to pass the House amid opposition from groups like the Consumer Technology Association, a trade association representing numerous electronics manufacturers. Later that year, though, the right-to-repair movement scored some big wins. In June 2022, Colorado’s governor signed the nation’s first right-to-repair law, focused on wheelchairs. The very next day, New York’s legislature passed the bill that would later become the nation’s first electronics right-to-repair law.

When Washington lawmakers revived their right-to-repair bill for the 2023 legislative cycle, Microsoft once again came to the negotiating table. From state senator and bill sponsor Joe Nguyen’s perspective, Microsoft’s view was, “We see this coming, we’d rather be part of the conversation than outside. And we want to make sure it is done in a thoughtful way.”

Proctor, whose organization was also involved in negotiating the Washington bill, said that Microsoft had a few specific requests, including that the bill require repair shops to possess a third-party technical certification and carry insurance. It was also important to Microsoft that the bill only cover products manufactured after the bill’s implementation date, and that manufacturers be required to provide the public only the same parts and documents that their authorized repair providers already receive. Some of the company’s requests, Proctor said, were “tough” for advocates to concede on. “But we did, because we thought what they were doing was in good faith.”

In early March, just before the Fair Repair Act was put to a vote in the House, Microsoft decided to support it. 

“Microsoft has consistently supported expanding safe, reliable, and sustainable options for consumer device repair,” Plenefisch told Grist in an emailed statement. “We have, in the past, opposed specific pieces of legislation that did not fairly balance the interests of manufacturers, customers, and independent repair shops in achieving this goal. HB 1392, as considered on the House floor, achieved this balance.”

While the bill cleared the House by a vote of 58 to 38, it faced an uphill battle in the Senate, where either Wellman or one of the bill’s Republican opponents on the Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee would have had to change their mind for the Fair Repair Act to move forward. Microsoft representatives held meetings with “several legislators,” Plenefisch said, “to urge support for HB 1392.” 

“That’s probably the first time any major company has been like, ‘This is not bad,’” Nguyen said. “It certainly helped shift the tone.”

Microsoft’s engagement appears to have shifted the tone beyond Washington state as well. As other manufacturers became aware that the company was sitting down with lawmakers and repair advocates, “they realized they couldn’t just ignore us,” Proctor said. His organization has since held meetings about proposed right-to-repair legislation in Minnesota with the Consumer Technology Association and TechNet, two large trade associations that frequently lobby against right-to-repair bills and rarely sit down with advocates. 

“A lot of conversations have been quite productive” around the Minnesota bill, Proctor said. TechNet declined to comment on negotiations regarding the Minnesota right-to-repair bill, or whether Microsoft’s support for a bill in Washington has impacted its engagement strategy. The Consumer Technology Association shared letters it sent to legislators outlining its reasons for opposing the bills in Washington and Minnesota, but it also declined to comment on specific meetings or on Microsoft.

While Minnesota’s right-to-repair bill is still making its way through committees in the House and Senate, in Washington state, the Fair Repair Act’s opponents were ultimately unmoved by Microsoft’s support. Senator Drew MacEwen, one of the Republicans on the Energy, Environment, and Technology Committee who opposed the bill, said that Microsoft called his office to tell him the company supported the Fair Repair Act.

“I asked why after years of opposition, and they said it was based on customer feedback,” MacEwen told Grist. But that wasn’t enough to convince MacEwen, who sees device repairability as a “business choice,” to vote yes.

“Ultimately, I do believe there is a compromise path that can be reached but will take a lot more work,” MacEwen said.

Washington state representative and bill sponsor Mia Gregerson wonders if Microsoft could have had a greater impact by testifying publicly in support of the bill. While Gregerson credits the company with helping right-to-repair get further than ever in her state this year, Microsoft’s support was entirely behind the scenes. 

“They did a lot of meetings,” Gregerson said. “But if you’re going to be first in the nation on this, you’ve got to do more.”

Microsoft declined to say why it didn’t testify in support of the Fair Repair Act, or whether that was a mistake. The company also didn’t say whether it would support future iterations of the Washington state bill, or other state right-to-repair bills.

But it signaled to Grist that it might. And in doing so, Microsoft appears to have taken its next small step out of the shadows.

“We encourage all lawmakers considering right to repair legislation to look at HB 1392 as a model going forward due to its balanced approach,” Plenefisch said. 

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/technology/microsoft-right-to-repair-quietly-supported-legislation-to-make-it-easier-to-fix-devices-heres-why-thats-a-big-deal/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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The West just had a very wet winter. The snowpack at the top of the Rocky Mountains, which feed the Colorado River, a crucial water source for seven states and Mexico, has been replenished. The Great Salt Lake has risen a little more than three feet. Currently, the US Drought Monitor shows that almost all of California is out of a severe drought.

Now, spring temperatures are causing the snowpack on the Sierra Nevadas to melt and trickle down to California’s waterways. After enforcing steep cuts in some counties in 2021 and 2022, the state just granted more river water to millions of residents and agriculture. For farms in particular, this means they may not have to rely as heavily on groundwater, which is being rapidly depleted in some parts of the state.

[Related: This phantom lake in California is back with a vengeance]

But scientists warn this one strange winter should be taken as that: extraordinary. To fully rid the West of its long-term megadrought, which research shows has been exacerbated by climate change, there would need to be several rainy and snowy winters in a row, says Wei Zhang, a climate scientist and assistant professor at Utah State University.

Zhang calculated how abnormal California’s precipitation was from December 2022 to February 2023 using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and found it was about 52 percent higher than average. “It’s an extreme event—it happens every few decades,” he notes.

“This wet winter definitely is great news for the Colorado River because of the snowpack. That snow runoff from the mountains will drain into the Colorado River and increase the stream flow,” Zhang explains. “But that cannot solve the water problem in the Colorado River—that demand is still much larger than the supply.”

The Colorado River has been overused for decades. And thanks to the megadrought, which has caused increased evaporation and decreased snowfall, it’s also shrinking. The federal government plans to adopt a final decision this summer about how to best manage the parched river—and which states will lose acre-feet of water from the plan. 

Zhang is also digging into why this past winter was so wet in Western states. He says it’s unlikely it was caused by climate change, which would cause precipitation to fall more as rain than snow. He thinks it’s more likely tied to shifts in jet streams, or the upper level wind flows that drive the movement of winter storms. These new patterns could potentially be tied to changes in climate, but either way, scientists need more evidence before they can make a definitive conclusion about the reason behind all the snow this winter.

“This extreme event could be caused by some random [atmospheric] processes in the climate system, or it could also be forced by some sea surface temperature anomalies, or because of the background changes in the [Earth’s] climate,” Zhang says. “But it’s very difficult to build that causal relationship between one extreme winter or one extreme event and climate change.”

[Related: Farmers accidentally created a flood-resistant ‘machine’ across Bangladesh]

Simon Wang, another climate scientist and professor at Utah State University, thinks that while climate change can contribute to the overall warming of the planet and increases in precipitation, it doesn’t regulate year-to-year patterns. 

Like Zhang, he’s cautious about how much impact one season can have. “Drought is a long-term problem that requires sustained water management and conservation efforts, as well as proactive measures to adapt to increasing aridification due to increased evaporation,” he writes in an email to PopSci. “While this wet winter has helped to alleviate some immediate concerns, it is not a solution to the diminishing water supply.”

Both Wang and Zhang emphasize that California and the rest of the West’s water woes have not yet waned. “Many people may think that we don’t have a water problem anymore. I don’t think that’s true,” Zhang says. “All the models are projecting a dryer and hotter western US [in the next decades]. I don’t think this event will overturn that trend.”

Correction (May 2, 2023): The article previous incorrectly stated that the Sierra Nevada snowpack feeds the Colorado River. It should be the Rocky Mountains.

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Just months after it was supposedly shut down for good, a Michigan nuclear power plant could come roaring back to life with help from the very company charged with its demolition. According to an AP report published on Wednesday, Holtec Decommissioning International hopes to resurrect the 800 megawatt Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan’s Van Buren county. However,  it faces many logistical challenges alongside vocal opposition from critics.

Regulators removed Palisades’ reactor fuel in a “permanent cessation of power operations” in May 2022. Holtec bought the property from Entergy just weeks later, with plans to dismantle the 432-acre site. However, the Biden administration’s recent $6 billion federal funding allocation towards prolonging nuclear plants’ lifespans has spurred the company to reconsider the plant’s potential, the AP reports. Now, Holtec wants to update the facility and restore its operational capacities for the region’s energy grid. Palisades supplied an estimated 5 percent of all electricity within Michigan when active, according to the AP.

[Related: The next generation of US nuclear plants could be tiny but powerful.]

Holtec’s goals are lofty, however: Both regulators and activists had long criticized the plant’s poor conditions in the years leading up to its decommission. In fact, Palisades was forced to close two weeks earlier than anticipated due to the degradation of a device that helped control the atomic reaction. At Holtec’s pitch meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC), one radioactive waste specialist promised to “fight this proposal at every turn,” and called restart plans “uncharted risk territory,” per AP.

Meanwhile, nuclear energy production looms large over modern society as an immensely powerful alternative to fossil fuels that emits zero CO2. Restoring and expanding nuclear power access is a central component to the Biden administration’s 2050 goal for a net zero carbon emission nation, but notorious crises such as the Chernobyl and Fukushima plant disasters have soured many’s perception of the fuel source. In March, Germany shut down the last of the country’s nuclear facilities.

According to AP, recommissioning the Palisades site will require hundreds of newly hired and trained operators and engineers, alongside a meticulous review of every part of the facility. More uranium would need to be purchased to power the plant, as well. Holtec aims to secure funding and NRC approval by October, with an eye to restart the site in a couple years’ time. The firm is also requesting $300 million in taxpayer assistance to help restart operations. If all goes according to plan, however, Palisades would mark the first US nuclear reactor to restart after losing its fuel and operating license.

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When David Perdue applied to be part of a climate comedy program, he felt a little out of his element: “I couldn’t recall one time I’d ever had a conversation with my friends about climate change,” said the Atlanta-based comic. Purdue, who is Black, added, “But I knew it was an issue that was going to affect people who look like me, so I wanted to use comedy to address that.” 

Perdue was one of nine comedians who took part in a nine-month fellowship where they learned about climate science and solutions and collaborated on new, climate-related material. The Climate Comedy Cohort produced shorts, toured together, and pitched ideas to television networks. Their work is part of a broader effort to bring some levity to a topic that is increasingly present in everyday life. 

For Perdue, that meant bringing race into the conversation about sustainability and clean energy. “[Solar power] is free labor, and the most American thing to do is to use free labor,” he says in one of his sets. “We just have to tell people the sun is Black.” 

Climate change is increasingly featured in television dramas and apocalyptic thrillers. But comedians like Perdue, as well as higher-profile acts like Michelle Wolf and Joel Kim Booster, are also taking on the climate crisis. (Wolf, in her HBO special, says that “mother nature is trying to kill us in the most passive-aggressive way possible. She’s like, ‘What? I raised the temperature a little.’”)

By talking about climate, even irreverently, social scientists say, they may be helping to combat climate doom and boost civic engagement. 

Comedy—even if it’s about heavy topics like climate change—can motivate feelings of hope and optimism, said Caty Borum, a professor at American University and author of The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power. “Those are routes to persuasion because we’re being entertained and because we’re feeling emotions of play – and this is particularly important for climate change,” she said. 

The Climate Comedy Cohort, a joint project between American University’s Center for Media & Social Impact, which Borum runs, and Generation180, a clean-energy nonprofit, announced a new class of comedians earlier this month. 

“As it just turns out, the very unique qualities of comedy that allow us to break through taboo, allow us to use social critique, and translate topics, all of that really contributes” to people feeling like they can take action, Borum said.

Actor and former Obama aide Kal Penn hosts a new show on Bloomberg called “Getting Warmer” that focuses on climate technology and solutions “with a dose of humor and optimism,” according to its tagline. And in April, a group of comedians is putting on a show called lol climate change: a show in Los Angeles. 

A majority of Americans says climate change is real and caused by humans, but only about half think there’s anything they can do about it, according to a 2022 AP-NORC poll. 

Borum said that programs like hers can help combat climate doom and inaction. “The goal of the program is not to have comedians tell more scary stories about climate change, but to really dig in on the solutions,” she said. 

Just because climate change is heavy and important, it doesn’t mean comedy about it can’t be really silly, said Estaban Gast, a comedian who helped create the Climate Comedy Cohort. 

He noted that comedy often draws from tragedy. Marc Maron’s new special, From Bleak to Dark, delves into the death of his partner, Lynne Shelton; in Nanette, Hannah Gadsby opens up about being sexually assaulted.  “It’s the comedian’s job to pull from that,” Gast said. 

On stage, Katie Hannigan, part of the Climate Comedy Cohort notes that gas stoves are horrible for the planet. She says, “I am doing my part for climate change. I have never even used my gas stove … since I started that fire.”

Kat Evasco, one of the lol climate change comedians, has a joke connecting her mother’s skepticism about climate change to her denial about being gay—even though she’s shared a bedroom with a woman for 25 years, Evasco quips. “It’s about moments that might not center on climate change, but can tie back to it,” she said.

“We aren’t big on sharing data and statistics,” Evasco said. “What we are looking for is: how does this show up in human experience? How do you laugh about death?” 

Max Boykoff, a professor in environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, said he believes comedy can help drive the conversation forward on polarizing topics like climate change. (The majority of Americans don’t feel comfortable talking about the climate with their neighbors or co-workers.)

“The comedic approach is not just simply a matter of making someone laugh. It’s actually a way to open people up,” he said. In 2018, Boykoff and Beth Osnes, a professor of theatre, developed a creative climate communication course in which students developed their own comedy skits. At the end of the semester, 90% of students reported feeling more hopeful about climate change, and 83% said they believed their commitment to taking action on climate change was more likely to last.

Borum said that when comedy is done well, it can change minds on almost any topic – she has studied how comedy can create social change around poverty, inequality and human rights. “The best comedy that inserts something important about the world is not boring and lame,” she said, “and that’s true from a science perspective, but also a comedy perspective.” 

Nexus Media News is an editorially independent, nonprofit news service covering climate change. Follow us @NexusMediaNews.

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Outdoor gear has historically not been very friendly to the environment that it encourages you to go and enjoy. But outdoor gear maker NEMO aims to change that and has announced its first-ever fully recyclable sleeping bag. The company wanted to get a more eco-friendly bag to consumers faster, so it opted to redesign its already popular three-season Spoon shaped bag instead of creating something entirely new. The bag also is the first in NEMO’s Endless Promise series, which Nemo says is a step toward its goal of cutting emissions intensity in half by 2030. We love to see companies making tangible moves to be more environmentally responsible and have high hopes for this bag.

NEMO Forte

NEMO

SEE IT

The redesigned Forte is now made using a single material family and is 100% recyclable. It is made up of a recycled liner, bluesign-approved shell fabric, and Zerofiber PCR insulation, which is made from 100% post-consumer recycled materials. As is typically the benefit of synthetic insulation, it maintains loft and warmth even when wet. And it packs down small to save space. 

The new Forte gets NEMO’s Classic Spoon shape, providing extra room at the shoulders and knees for side sleepers. It also features upgraded Thermo Gill vents with a multistage zipper system to expand the usable temperature range of the bag and overall improve comfort. Hot sleepers and warm-weather campers can rejoice about better temperature control. When the weather is cold, the Blanket Fold draft collar will help to keep out cold air. An integrated pillow pocket will keep your pillow in the right place while you sleep. The full-length double slider YKK zipper makes it easy to get in and out. And it can be zipped together with a sleeping bag with a zipper on the opposite side to create a double sleeping bag.

The Forte is available in men’s and women’s versions in two different lengths and either 20- or 35-degree temperature ratings. Pricing ranges from $179.95 to $239.95, depending on what length and temperature rating you go with. They are available now on NEMO’s website and will be available for purchase at retailers worldwide in June 2023. We suspect this will likely be our favorite sustainable sleeping bag, and we’re eager to test it as we refresh our coverage of camping essentials. 

Endless Promise program details

With the launch of the NEMO Forte, the company is also announcing its newest sustainability program. The Endless Promise product line aims to take “responsibility for the entire life cycle of each product.” That starts with reducing resource consumption and ends with keeping gear out of landfills. As a result, products in this series are specifically designed to be repairable, resellable, and recyclable. 

And NEMO plans to incentivize people to take part in this program. When you are done with a new Forte sleeping bag, you can send it back to NEMO for either resale or recycling. If the bag is in good enough condition to be reused, you will receive a NEMO gift card for the resale value of the bag. If the bag instead needs to be recycled, a $20 NEMO gift card will be sent as a thank you for recycling. For bags that go the recycled route, NEMO partnered up with Unifi, a textile recycler, to turn Forte bags into Repreve polyester yarns so that they can live on.

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It’s often one of the earliest science facts learned in grade school: Wood is a natural insulator. For those who need a refresher, that simply means the material generally isn’t a great conductor for electricity. But as elementary as that information may be, a team of researchers have added an asterisk to the rule of thumb: It turns out some wood, once tweaked, can conduct electricity. What’s more, they can be converted into natural transistors.

According to a paper recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, engineers at Sweden’s Linköping University successfully altered balsa wood by first leeching it of lignin—a natural binding substance found in wood and other plantlife. Once the lignin is removed, what remains is a network of tubing that transports water throughout the balsa known as lumina. The remaining hollowed balsa can be submerged in a liquid solution containing an electrically conductive polymer. What results is a material that can transport electrolyte-containing water through its lumina, and a new, natural transistor.

[Related: This rechargeable battery is meant to be eaten.]

Before balsa, the team attempted to engineer conductive wood with other samples, including birch and ash. These alternatives, however, didn’t not possess the same levels of structural integrity after being submerged in the polymer solution, nor did they properly absorb the polymer. The team also noted that, unlike its other test options, balsa displays a compositional ubiquity throughout the year’s seasons.

But don’t expect to see wood transistors in your next iPhone. Compared to modern silicon transistors, the team’s wood variation is much larger and slower. As New Scientist explains, a single fingernail-sized computer chip today frequently contains billions of transistors, each of which can switch on and off billions of times a second. A single balsa transistor, by comparison, is roughly three centimeters long. On top of that, it takes one second to switch off, and around five seconds to switch back on.

[Related: Watch this metallic material move like the T-1000 from ‘Terminator 2’.]

Still, wood transistors show immense promise in other areas, such as forestry and agricultural monitoring. Wood conductors are also more sustainable than existing alternatives, and could even be used to monitor flora resistance to climate change and other environmental issues. Going forward, researchers told New Scientist they hope to one day grow wood samples with conductive polymers already inside them via using different versions that enter the wood without needing to remove lignin.

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Decarbonizing the energy sector requires ramping up power generation from renewable sources. However, increasing renewable energy generation poses some challenges, like mismatches between production and demand. Output from renewables varies seasonally and annually due to insolation differences and trends in weather, which means there may be periods of over- and undergeneration.

Seasonal heating and cooling—usually the largest energy expenses in households—don’t align often with renewable energy generation patterns, says Amarasinghage T. Perera, an associate research scholar in the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment at Princeton University. For instance, there is higher heating demand in the winter, but more renewable energy generation during the summer. In such cases, it’s important to store additional energy in the summer to cater to the winter heating demand, he adds. This explains why long-term energy storage is needed to support renewable technologies.

According to a recent study published in Applied Energy, underground water has the potential for storing much-needed renewable energy. This approach, called aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES), uses naturally occurring groundwater or aquifers for long-term storage of thermal energy that can be used to assist the heating and cooling of buildings, says Perera, who was involved in the study.

[Related: Scientists think we can get 90 percent clean energy by 2035.]

In an ATES system, there are two wells connected to the same groundwater reservoir. During the summer, cold groundwater is pumped up to provide cooling, warmed at the surface, and then stored. During the winter, the opposite happens—the warm groundwater is pumped up to provide heating, cooled at the surface, and then stored. The cycle repeats seasonally.

Energy storage is often discussed in relation to decarbonizing the transportation sector by replacing internal combustion engine vehicles with those supported by battery and hydrogen storage. However, for grid storage, the materials required to store electric charge in batteries have a high energy cost, while hydrogen storage results in significant energy losses. Perera says more research funding can help identify the broader potential of thermal energy storage technologies.

“Compared to conventional groundwater heat pumps, the extraction of heated or cooled groundwater which was previously injected into the subsurface enables a more efficient operation,” says Ruben Stemmle, a researcher from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)’s Institute of Applied Geosciences in Germany who was not involved in the study. ATES systems can also store excess heat from industrial processes, combined heat and power plants, or solar thermal energy. Overall, it helps bridge the seasonal mismatch between the demand and availability of thermal energy, he adds.

Long-term seasonal storage and demand-driven utilization of previously unused heat sources, like waste heat or excess solar thermal energy, can promote the decarbonization of the heating and cooling sector, as well as reduce primary energy consumption, says Stemmle.

According to the study, ATES can improve the flexibility of the energy system, allowing it to withstand fluctuations in renewable energy demand and generation from future climate variations. It could make urban energy infrastructure more resilient by preventing additional burdens on the grid during hot or cold months.

[Related: How can electrified buildings handle energy peaks?]

ATES has very high storage capacities due to large volumes of groundwater available in many areas like major groundwater basins and complex hydrological structures. This enables ATES application for district heating and cooling or large building complexes with high energy demands, says Stemmle. It can significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels compared to conventional types of heating and cooling, he adds, like gas boilers and compression chillers.

Currently, there are over 3,000 ATES systems in the Netherlands alone. Some are also found in Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium. They aren’t as widely used in the US yet, but adding ATES to the grid could reduce the consumption of petroleum products by up to 40 percent.

To increase ATES deployment, policymakers can support funding programs for ATES systems and related technologies, like heat pumps and heating grids, says Stemmle. He emphasizes the importance of decreasing market barriers as well, which can be achieved by establishing a simple and rapid permitting procedure and a uniform regulatory framework governing ATES operations. The deployment of such thermal energy storage systems could help achieve a more climate change-resilient grid in the future.

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This article was originally featured in Nexus Media News.

After a series of winter storms pummeled California this winter, thousands of trees across the state lost their grip on the earth and crashed down into power lines, homes, and highways. Sacramento alone lost more than 1,000 trees in less than a week. Stressed by years of drought, pests and extreme weather, urban trees are in trouble.  

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that cities are losing some 36 million trees every year, wiped out by development, disease and, increasingly, climate stressors, like drought. In a recent study published in Nature, researchers found that more than half of urban trees in 164 cities around the world were already experiencing temperature and precipitation conditions that were beyond their limits for survival.  

“So many of the trees that we’ve relied upon heavily are falling out of favor now as the climate changes,” said Nathan Slack, the urban forest superintendent for the city of Santa Barbara. Conifers, like pines and coastal redwoods, once extensively planted along the coast, are dying in droves, he said. “The intensity of heat [and] the longer periods [without] rainfall really force us, as urban forestry managers, to reimagine what are good street trees.” 

Trees help keep neighborhoods cool, absorb rain water and clean up air pollution. But in order for them to provide those critical functions they need to survive those same conditions. For many cities, that means reconsidering what species are planted. 

Slack said he is looking to trees that typically grow further east, like the paloverde, that do better in warmer, drier conditions. “The trees that survive in the desert are going to be much more useful to us here,” he said. 

In Sacramento, species like the “Bubba” desert willow are replacing redwoods, said Jessica Sanders, the executive director of the Sacramento Tree Foundation. “It’s sad because it’s an iconic tree,” Sanders said, “but it’s not really suited to the Sacramento region’s climate at this point.”

It’s not just California cities that are rethinking their canopies. 

In Harrisonburg, Virginia, officials are bringing in willow oak and sweetgum — trees that are more tolerant to heat than many local species — from the coast. In Seattle, they’re planting more Pacific madrone and Garry oaks, which stand a better chance of surviving hotter, drier summers.

In Detroit, which was once known as the “City of Trees,” for its extensive canopy, officials are planting hardy trees like the Eastern redbud, American witch hazel and White oak that can withstand extreme heat and flooding.

City officials are also expanding species diversity to fend off disease, aiming not to allow any single species to comprise more than 10% of the city’s canopy. Detroit lost much of its canopy between the 1950s and 1990s to Dutch elm disease and an invasive beetle called the emerald ash borer. Today almost 40% of the trees that remain are considered “poor quality,” said Jenni Shockling, the senior manager of urban forestry in Detroit for American Forests, a nonprofit. “[They] consist of species that are prone to disease and storm damage, cause property and infrastructure damage, and drop heavy amounts of debris.”

Preserving urban tree cover can mean the difference between life and death on a heating planet. Extreme heat kills roughly 12,000 people annually already in the United States; experts say that figure could reach 100,000 by century’s end. A study published by the Lancet in January found that increasing a 30% increase to a city’s tree cover could cut heat-related deaths by a third.

Poorer neighborhoods with large non-white populations tend to have less tree cover and can get up to 20 degrees warmer than wealthier (and greener) neighborhoods, according to several studies.  “A map of trees in any city in America is a map of income and a map of race,” said Jad Daley, the president and CEO of the nonprofit American Forests.

Cites may soon see some relief. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law last year, includes $1.5 billion for the Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry Program, amounting to a five-fold increase in the program’s annual budget. 

The funding has the potential to transform urban canopies, according to experts like Daley. But as Slack and other arborists across the country turn to new species to fill their streets, they’re running into a new issue: supply. 

“Right now there are bottlenecks in the traditional nursery supply line,” said Shockling. “Growers tend to favor specific species because they grow well in the nursery or grow quickly, but that doesn’t necessarily speak to the species diversity standards that we’re trying to adhere to.”

American Forests has partnered with the U.S. Forest Service to invest in and develop nurseries across the country to improve the supply chain. “The nurseries need some assurances that what they’re growing is going to have market value, and we have the assurance that what we’re going to purchase will have a supply,” Shockling said.

Those large-scale investments will be crucial to updating the make-up of urban canopies, according to David Teuschler, the chief horticulturist at Devil Mountain, one of California’s largest nurseries. 

According to Teuschler, even California native trees, like the Coastal Live oak, are struggling in the state’s droughts. He’d like to invest more in trees like Mesa oak or Silver oak to sell in Northern California and Swamp mallet or Salt Marsh gum to sell in Southern California, but it can take years to grow trees to a saleable size, and then he has only a limited time to sell those seedlings. Unsold trees are usually composted, burned, or otherwise destroyed. 

He needs to know he’ll have customers who have a clear eye toward the future. 

“You have to remember that there are a lot of old-school people out there that want to plant redwoods,” he said. “You want to be the nursery that has these drought-adapted species, but if you can’t sell them, it’s waste.” 

One of Devil Mountain’s longtime customers is California arborist Dave Muffly, who stocks all his projects with drought-tolerant species. 

Muffly first began looking for drought-resistant trees 15 years ago, while leading a project to plant 1,000 trees along a two-mile stretch of highway that runs through East Palo Alto. He wanted evergreens, to block freeway pollution from reaching the low-income community on the other side, and drought-tolerant varieties, but most of the state’s nurseries held few options.

Muffly began scouring the Southwest for acorns from hardier species of oaks; with more than 500 species of oak around the world that can breed and create viable hybrids, the trees are particularly likely to evolve traits that can help them survive rapid climate change, Muffly said. 

With Teuschler’s help, his projects – including a 9,000-tree mega-project around Apple’s campus – have served as a proof of concept for cities as they work toward climate-resilient tree canopies.

Through channeling federal funding toward nurseries like Devil Mountain, this kind of holistic system could be replicated around the country to meet each region’s unique needs, Muffly said. 

“The truth is we don’t grow anywhere near enough trees in the United States to spend the money that the government just put out,” Muffly said. “So now it’s time to build an arsenal of ecology, and the production lines are the new nurseries that will have to be built to grow the trees.”

This article is co-published with Next City. Nexus Media News is an editorially independent, nonprofit news service covering climate change. Follow us @NexusMediaNews.

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

As environmental challenges go, microfiber pollution has come from practically out of nowhere. It was only a decade or so ago that scientists first suspected our clothing, increasingly made of synthetic materials like polyester and nylon, might be major contributors to the global plastic problem.

Today a growing body of science suggests the tiny strands that slough off clothes are everywhere and in everything. By one estimate, they account for as much as one-third of all microplastics released to the ocean. They’ve been found on Mount Everest and in the Mariana Trench, along with tap water, plankton, shrimp guts, and our poo.

Research has yet to establish just what this means for human and planetary health. But the emerging science has left some governments, particularly in the Global North, scrambling to respond. Their first target: the humble washing machine, which environmentalists say represents a major way microfiber pollution reaches the environment.

Late last month a California State Assembly committee held a hearing on Assembly Bill 1628, which would require new washing machines to include devices that trap particles down to 100 micrometers — roughly the width of human hair — by 2029. The Golden State isn’t alone here, or even first. France already approved such a requirement, effective 2025. Lawmakers in Oregon and Ontario, Canada have considered similar bills. The European Commission says it’ll do the same in 2025.

Environmental groups, earth scientists and some outdoor apparel companies cheer the policies as an important first response to a massive problem. But quietly, some sustainability experts feel perplexed by all the focus on washers. They doubt filters will achieve much, and say what’s really needed is a comprehensive shift in how we make, clean and dispose of clothes.

The wash is “only one shedding point in the lifecycle of the garment. To focus on that tiny, tiny moment of laundry is completely nuts,” said Richard Blackburn, a professor of sustainable materials at the University of Leeds. “It would be much better to focus on the whole life cycle of the garment, of which the manufacturing stage is much more significant in terms of loss than laundering, but all points should be considered.”

Today, some 60 percent of all textiles incorporate synthetic material. Anyone who’s worn yoga pants, workout gear or stretchy jeans knows the benefits: These materials add softness, wicking and flexibility. Under a microscope, though, they look a lot like plain old plastic. From the moment they’re made, synthetic clothes — like all clothes — release tiny shreds of themselves. Once liberated these fibers are no easier to retrieve than glitter tossed into the wind. But their size, shape, and tendency to absorb chemicals leaves scientists concerned about their impacts on habitats and the food chain.

Anja Brandon is an associate director for U.S. plastics policy at the Ocean Conservancy who has supported the California and Oregon bills. She concedes that filters won’t fix the problem, but believes they offer a way to get started. She also supports clothing innovations but said they could be years away. “I for one don’t want to wait until it’s a five-alarm fire,” she said.

Studies suggest a typical load of laundry can release thousands or even millions of fibers. Commercially available filters, like the PlanetCare, Lint LUV-R and Filtrol, strain the gray water through ultra-fine mesh before flushing it into the world. It’s the owner’s job, of course, to periodically empty that filter — ideally into a trash bag, which Brandon said will secure microfibers better than the status quo of letting them loose into nature.

Washing machine manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe have pushed back, saying the devices pose technical risks, like flooding and increased energy consumption, that must be addressed  first. University experiments with these filters, including an oft-cited 2019 study by the University of Toronto and the Ocean Conservancy, haven’t found these issues, but it’s not a closed case yet: Last year a federal report on microfibers, led by the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, called for more research in this vein.

Manufacturers also argue that microfibers originate in a lot of places, but washers are a relatively modest one. As self-serving as that sounds, people who study the issue agree there’s a huge hole in the available science: While we know clothes shed microfibers throughout their lives, we know surprisingly little about when most of it happens.

Some evidence suggests that the friction of simply wearing clothes might release about as many microfibers as washing them. Then there are dryers, which some suspect are a major source of microfiber litter but have been barely studied, according to the federal report. There is also limited knowledge about how much microfiber pollution comes from the developing world, where most people wash by hand. (A recent study led by Hangzhou Dianzi University in Hangzhou, China pointed to this knowledge gap – and found that hand-washing two synthetic fabrics released on average 80 to 90 percent fewer microfiber pollution than machine-washing.)

To Blackburn, it’s obvious that most releases occur in textile mills, where it’s been known for centuries that spinning, weaving, dyeing and finishing fabric spritzes lots of fiber. “Where do you think it goes when we get it out of the factory?” he said. “It goes into the open air.”

He calls filter policies “totally reactionary,” arguing that they would at best shave a few percentage points off the total microfiber problem. But there is one area where Blackburn is in broad agreement with environmentalists: In the long run, tackling the issue will take a lot of new technology. No silver-bullet solution has appeared yet, but a slew of recent announcements reveals a vibrant scene of research and development attacking the problem from many angles.

Some best practices already are known within the industry. For example, more tightly woven clothes, and clothes made of long fibers rather than short ones, fray less. But for years, popular brands like Patagonia and REI have said what they really need is a way to experiment with many different materials and compare their shedding head to head. This has been tricky: Microfibers are, well, micro, and there’s no industry standard on how to measure them.

That might be changing. In separate announcements in February, Hohenstein, a company that develops international standards for textiles, and activewear brand Under Armour revealed new methods in this vein. Under Armour is targeting 75 percent “low-shed” fabrics in its products by 2030.

These approaches would at best reduce microfiber emissions, not eliminate them. So another field of research is what Blackburn calls “biocompatibility”: making microfibers less harmful to nature. California-based companyIntrinsic Advanced Materials sells a pre-treatment, added to fabrics during manufacturing, that it claims helps polyester and nylon biodegrade in seawater within years rather than decades. Blackburn’s own startup, Keracol, develops natural dyes, pulled from things like fruit waste, that break down more easily in nature than synthetic ones.

New ideas to dispose of clothes are also emerging, though some will cause arched eyebrows among environmentalists. This year U.S. chemical giant Eastman will start building a facility in Normandy, France that it claims “unzips” hard-to-recycle plastics, like polyester clothes, into molecular precursors that can be fashioned into new products like clothes and insulation. Critics charge that such “chemical recycling” techniques are not only of dubious benefit to the environment, they’re really just a smokescreen for fossil-fuel corporations trying to keep their product in demand.

Lest anyone forget about washing machines, there’s R&D going after them, too. In January Patagonia and appliance giant Samsung announced a model that they claim cuts micro plastic emissions up to 54%. It’s already rolled out in Europe and Korea. At around the same time, University of Toronto researchers published research on a coating that, they claim, makes nylon fabric more slippery in the wash, reducing friction and thus microfiber emissions by 90 percent after nine washes. In a press release the researchers tut-tutted governments for their focus on washing-machine filters, which they called a “Band-Aid” for the issue.

One continuous thread through all these efforts, of course, is that everyone is working with imperfect information. The emerging science on microfibers – and microplastics in general – suggests they’re a gritty fact of modern life, but doesn’t yet show the magnitude of their harm to humans and other species. For the moment environmentalists, policymakers and manufacturers aren’t just debating whether to put filters on washing machines, but whether we know enough to act. In 20 years, when scientists know a lot more, it’ll be easier to judge whether today’s policies represented proactive leadership on an emerging environmental problem — or a soggy Band-Aid.

Editor’s note: Patagonia is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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Hana Iqbal drops her toddler off at nursery each day dressed in a raincoat, no matter what the forecast. Iqbal’s daughter goes to a forest school, where kids spend about half or more of their day outside, learning about the natural world. “Last week, my two-year-old was hammering nails into a piece of wood, wearing goggles and gloves,” she says.

Forest schools, also called nature pre-schools, outdoor pre-schools, and forest kindergartens, complement traditional education with a focus on environmental literacy. They vary in their cost, curriculum, and size, but generally mean that children spend a significant part of their classes outdoors and complete activities that help them learn about the nature around them. 

Iqbal describes herself not just as a forest schools convert, but an evangelist. “As a family doctor, I see so much heartbreaking mental health difficulty in young people every working day,” she wrote in a message to Popular Science. “I genuinely believe and hope that these streams of education—which allow children to develop mindfulness, body awareness, and relationship with nature, each other, and oneself—may be a little bit of an antidote to the challenges of modern life.”

She sends her daughter to a forest school in England, where the movement has flourished in recent years. In 2017, a shortlist of the best nurseries in the United Kingdom were all outdoor-focused. The schools are also common in Scandinavia, where the idea originated. Now, the trend is catching steam in the US as well. 

Forest schools have been around in the states since the 1960s, but have seen consistent growth since the 2010s, and a surge since the pandemic. Natural Start Alliance, which is a professional group for educators involved in environmental education, for newborns up to 8-year-olds, reports that it’s seen a big increase in interest in the past decade. In 2017, the organization logged about 275 nature preschools schools across the US; by 2022, that number had risen to more than 800 forest schools.

[Related: Homework might actually be bad]

Emily Van Laan, a communications specialist for Natural Start Alliance, attributes this to a few changes: increased conversation about the importance of early childhood development, the rise of play-based learning, concern over time spent on screens, and the spread of COVID-19 itself. She says that forest schools are scattered throughout the country, but have particularly high concentrations in California, Washington, and Minnesota.

“Sometimes people think about this approach to education as only being in places where the weather is always nice or always mild,” Van Laan says. “And that is definitely not the case. We see nature pre-schools in almost every state, including Alaska and Hawai’i, and definitely in every region of the US.”

Each school’s approach to outdoor learning will differ depending on the region. A program in Texas would think of exercises that keep kids cool during warmer months, or help them navigate snakes in the area. One in Minnesota would consider how children can stay warm and active when the temperature plunges, or teach them to forage for plants and fungi. 

“Every program will have guidance that is clearly communicated with parents in terms of the temperature barrier,” Van Laan says. For example, the forest school will tell parents how long children will spend outside in a certain temperature before going inside to take a break. Educators are also trained in risk assessment, like knowing the signs of when a child becomes too hot or cold.“The importance of having the right gear is a huge part of nature preschool,” Van Laan adds. “So they often do parent education on layering and a lot of programs often provide gear to the students that are enrolled.” 

Most programs are tuition-based and can be expensive, Van Laan says. But some offer a sliding scale or scholarships. One program in Wisconsin is free thanks to a partnership between a school district, nature center, and the YMCA. In Minnesota, 13 nature preschools are partially covered through public funding. 

Forest schools teach children how to be environmental stewards, something that is especially important as the world grapples with a changing climate. But there’s no research-based consensus on how to teach young children about climate change right now, Van Laan notes. (Even for older students, New Jersey is the only state with a mandated K-12 curriculum on climate change.) Van Laan says to start, educators should focus on teaching kids to connect with nature. “Certainly we’re not laying the responsibility of saving the planet on their tiny shoulders,” she says. 

[Related: Food forests can bring climate resilience, better health, and tasty produce to city residents]

At the same time, some forest schools have come face to face with the impacts of climate change. “The daily reality and urgency of climate change has increased,” she says. “And while we don’t want to introduce young children to ideas that frighten them, we also want to recognize their capacity for understanding. There are outdoor programs in California, for example, that have to close because of wildfires … Children are aware of these things. There’s no way to shield them from this knowledge, because they’re seeing it, they’re experiencing it.”

Iqbal says she’s happy her daughter has the unique opportunity to connect with nature daily—something she feels is made even more important with climate change. “My God, will the next generation need to know this and to look after this, after everything our generation and the generations before have created for them.”

Correction (April 24, 2023): The article previous said that Minnesota has 12 school districts with publicly funded nature preschools. The correct number is 13 nature preschools in total.

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Soil is one of the most crucial, if not underrated, elements of daily life—it’s essential for growing the food and resources we rely on, combats drought, protects against flooding, and can sequester carbon dioxide for years to come. But, the dirt beneath our feet is constantly under threat due to rising temperatures and biodiversity loss thanks to climate change. And despite how simple we may think soil is, it’s pretty hard to know what’s really going on deep in the ground from the surface.

Scientists in Italy, however, think they may have a robotic solution—a seed-inspired robot. Scientists at the Bioinspired Soft Robotics (BSR) Lab, a part of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in Genoa, have developed the first 4D printed seed-inspired soft robot, which they claim can help act as sensors for monitoring pollutants, CO2 levels, temperature and humidity in soil. They published their findings earlier this year in Advanced Science. The research is part of the EU-funded I-Seed project aimed at making robots that can detect environmental changes in air and soil. 

What they’ve got here is an artificial seed inspired by the structure of a South African geranium, or the Pelargonium appendiculatum. The seeds of the tuberous, hairy-leafed plant have the ability to change shape in response to how humid their environment is. When the time comes for the seeds to leave the plant, they detach and can move independently to “penetrate” soil fractures, according to the study. This almost looks like crawling and burning action, which is due its helical shape changing according to changes in the environment. In a way. The curly seeds can find a home for themselves simply by expanding and shrinking due to changes in water content of the air.

[Related: This heat-seeking robot looks and moves like a vine.]

The team at IIT-BSR mimicked these seeds by combining 3D printing and electrospinning, using materials that also absorb and expand when exposed to humidity. Using fused deposition modeling, the authors printed a substrate layer of polycaprolactone, a biodegradable thermoplastic polyester activated using oxygen plasma to increase water-attracting abilities. Next, they added electrospun hygroscopic fibers made of a polyethylene oxide shell and a cellulose nanocrystal core. 

When tested in a soil sample, the robot was able to shimmy about, adapt its shape to cracks, and burrow into holes in the ground much like the natural seed. Not to mention, it was capable of lifting about 100 times its own weight. First author Luca Cecchini, a PhD student at IIT, said in a statement that the biodegradable and energy-autonomous robots could be used as “wireless, battery-free tools for surface soil exploration and monitoring.”

“With this latest research,” Barbara Mazzolai, associate director for robotics of the IIT and coordinator of the I-Seed Project, said in the statement, “we have further proved that it is possible to create innovative solutions that not only have the objective of monitoring the well-being of our planet, but that do so without altering it.”

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In the past couple of years, dozens of states that have decided to legalize recreational marijuana. Cannabis, including medicinal and recreational, is legal in more states than illegal now, which means more state-regulated grow operations are popping up around the country. 

Researchers across the country, including at the University of California Berkeley’s Cannabis Research Center, are interested in examining how cannabis cultivation impacts the sustainability, land, and the environment. Ariani Wartenberg, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, is an author of a 2021 article that reviewed all studies that have looked at the environmental impacts of cannabis. “I was surprised, actually, at how few I found. I expected there would be more,” Wartenberg says of the studies they were able to include in the review paper. 

[Related: Can you overdose on weed?]

The reasons that the impact of cannabis cultivation on the environment hasn’t been studied much is likely twofold, Wartenberg says. Looking into federally illegal substances is tricky, even when it comes to things like their impacts on mental health. The stigma against these substances means that empirical studies of the environmental impact of cannabis didn’t become mainstream until about a decade ago. 

Studying cannabis is important because it isn’t lumped in with traditional agriculture as far as regulations go, says Van Butsic, study author and Cannabis Research Center co-director. “One of the reasons why we do research on cannabis is because it has a sort of unique and separate social and cultural history than other agricultural crops,” he says. 

While the environmental impact of cannabis cultivation is a new area of research, early studies show that sustainability needs to be an important consideration of cannabis cultivation. Research from Colorado State University shows that one serving of THC has a much higher greenhouse gas footprint than a serving of beer, wine, or cigarettes. One of the biggest reasons for this disparity—energy-intensive indoor growing.

In Wartenberg’s review paper, the researchers identified six major areas to look at to assess the sustainability of cannabis: air pollution, pesticide use, water use, energy use, land cover change, and water pollution. 

Some of these impact areas, the researchers say, apply to any sort of crops, such as water use and land use. But because cannabis is easy to grow almost anywhere, it is often grown indoors. Eighty percent of Colorado’s one million pounds of cannabis grown annually comes from indoor farming. When farmers grow plants without natural sunlight, they can expect more of a strain on energy use than outdoor or mixed-light methods.

One primary concern with indoor growing is energy use for lighting and air circulation. A 2021 study shows that indoor cannabis cultivation is on its way to becoming a significant greenhouse gas producer in the US. Colorado’s weed industry accounts for 1.3 percent of the state’s total greenhouse gas production. That’s about the same emissions from coal mining in the state, according to the study authors. The same study found greenhouse gas emissions from cannabis cultivation vary based on the region of the US, with the highest amount coming from cannabis grown in the Mountain West, Midwest, Alaska, and Hawaii. Meanwhile, southern California and coastal regions make for less demanding growth regions thanks to mild climates. 

Other studies have shown that growing cannabis can also impact air quality. Cannabis plants, like all plants, emit gasses called biogenic volatile organic compounds, or BVOCs. A 2019 study in Colorado measured how much BVOCs are produced by cannabis cultivated indoors. These gases are a precursor to ozone formation, and further research showed that in Colorado, indoor cannabis cultivation could increase ozone pollution. Ground-level ozone is a pollutant that causes coughing and airway inflammation, so more research is needed to determine if indoor cannabis cultivation poses unique air quality risks. 

[Related: Cannabis might help curb chronic pain, reducing the need for opioids]

Quantifying the overall environmental impact of cannabis cultivation is difficult because of illegal or trespass farming done without state permits. It is difficult to quantify how many illegal farms there are in any state. Still, in northern California, Butsic says, it is a lot. “In northern California, where we’ve done the finest grain research and the most research, over two-thirds of the farms are not permitted,” he says.

An illegal grow operation isn’t necessarily bad for the environment, Butsic says. Many growers have been operating for decades and simply don’t have the money to spend on the permitting process. But on the other hand, an illegal grow operation doesn’t undergo the same testing for pesticides as a permitted site in California. How rigorously states measure pesticides in legal medicinal or recreational cannabis varies a lot from state to state and is far from consistent. There are instances where dangerous rodenticides have been found in animals near trespass cultivation sites. There also isn’t much research about how pesticides applied to cannabis may impact human health because those chemicals could directly impact the lungs when smoked. 

The group at Berkeley and other nonprofits such as the Cannabis Certification Council are trying to bring sustainability and environmental impacts to the forefront when they talk with policymakers. The Cannabis Certification Council has a #Whatsinmyweed campaign that urges consumers to care more about how their cannabis is produced and distributed. The group also provides a list of existing third-party environmental certifications consumers can look out for. 

But with cannabis regulations left to individual states, and a large number of illegal grow operations, the energy, pesticide and water use of grow operations as a whole will likely remain nebulous—at least for now.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on May 6, 2021.

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An ancient Maya city might seem an unlikely place for people to be experimenting with proprietary chemicals. But scientists think that’s exactly what happened at Copán, an archaeological complex nestled in a valley in the mountainous rainforests of what is now western Honduras.

By historians’ reckoning, Copán’s golden age began in 427 CE, when a king named Yax Kʼukʼ Moʼ came to the valley from the northwest. His dynasty built one of the jewels of the Maya world, but abandoned it by the 10th century, leaving its courts and plazas to the mercy of the jungle. More than 1,000 years later, Copán’s buildings have kept remarkably well, despite baking in the tropical sun and humidity for so long. 

The secret may lie in the plaster the Maya used to coat Copán’s walls and ceilings. New research suggests that sap from the bark of local trees, which Maya craftspeople mixed into their plaster, helped reinforce its structures. Whether by accident or by purpose, those Maya builders created a material not unlike mother-of-pearl, a natural element of mollusc shells.

“We finally unveiled the secret of ancient Maya masons,” says Carlos Rodríguez Navarro, a mineralogist at the University of Granada in Spain and the paper’s first author. Rodríguez Navarro and his colleagues published their work in the journal Science Advances today.

[Related: Scientists may have solved an old Puebloan mystery by strapping giant logs to their foreheads]

Plaster makers followed a fairly straightforward recipe. Start with carbonate rock, such as limestone; bake it at over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit; mix in water with the resulting quicklime; then, set the concoction out to react with carbon dioxide from the air. The final product is what builders call lime plaster or lime mortar. 

Civilizations across the world discovered this process, often independently. For example, Mesoamericans in Mexico and Central America learned how to do it by around 1,100 BCE. While ancient people found it useful for covering surfaces or holding together bricks, this basic lime plaster isn’t especially durable by modern standards.

But, just as a dish might differ from town to town, lime plaster recipes varied from place to place. “Some of them perform better than others,” says Admir Masic, a materials scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wasn’t part of the study. Maya lime plaster, experts agree, is one of the best.

Rodríguez Navarro and his colleagues wanted to learn why. They found their first clue when they examined brick-sized plaster chunks from Copán’s walls and floors with X-rays and electron microscopes. Inside some pieces, they found traces of organic materials like carbohydrates. 

That made them curious, Rodríguez Navarro says, because it seemed to confirm past archaeological and written records suggesting that ancient Maya masons mixed plant matter into their plaster. The other standard ingredients (lime and water) wouldn’t account for complex carbon chains.

To follow this lead, the authors decided to make the historic plaster themselves. They consulted living masons and Maya descendants near Copán. The locals referred them to the chukum and jiote trees that grow in the surrounding forests—specifically, the sap that came from the trees’ bark.

The authors tested the sap’s reaction when mixed into the plaster. Not only did it toughen the material, it also made the plaster insoluble in water, which partly explains how Copán survived the local climate so well.

The microscopic structure of the plant-enhanced plaster is similar to nacre or mother-of-pearl: the iridescent substance that some molluscs create to coat their shells. We don’t fully understand how molluscs make nacre, but we know that it consists of crystal plates sandwiching elastic proteins. The combination toughens the sea creatures’ exteriors and reinforces them against weathering from waves.

A close study of the ancient plaster samples and the modern analog revealed that they also had layers of rocky calcite plates and organic sappy material, giving the materials the same kind of resilience as nacre. “They were able to reproduce what living organisms do,” says Rodríguez Navarro. 

“This is really exciting,” says Masic. “It looks like it is improving properties [of regular plaster].”

Now, Rodríguez Navarro and his colleagues are trying to answer another question: Could other civilizations that depended on masonry—from Iberia to Persia to China—have stumbled upon the same secret? We know, for instance, that Chinese lime-plaster-makers mixed in a sticky rice soup for added strength.

Plaster isn’t the only age-old material that scientists have reconstructed. Masic and his colleagues found that ancient Roman concrete has the ability to “self-heal.” More than two millennia ago, builders in the empire may have added quicklime to a rocky aggregate, creating microscopic structures within the material that help fill in pores and cracks when it’s hit by seawater.

[Related: Ancient architecture might be key to creating climate-resilient buildings]

If that property sounds useful, modern engineers think so too. There exists a blossoming field devoted to studying—and recreating—materials of the past. Standing structures from archaeological sites already prove they can withstand the test of time. As a bonus, ancient people tended to work with more sustainable methods and use less fuel than their industrial counterparts.

“The Maya paper…is another great example of this [scientific] approach,” Masic says.

Not that Maya plaster will replace the concrete that’s ubiquitous in the modern world—but scientists say it could have its uses in preserving and upgrading the masonry found in pre-industrial buildings. A touch of plant sap could add centuries to a structure’s lifespan.

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This article was originally featured on High Country News.

The high seas — the ocean waters that begin 230 miles offshore — cover 43% of the planet’s surface and are home to as many as 10 million species, yet remain one of the least understood places on Earth. Among the region’s many mysteries are how Pacific salmon, one of the West’s most beloved and economically important fish, spend the majority of their lives — and why many populations are plummeting. Combined with how little we know about what climate change is doing out there, such questions make the area an international research and conservation priority.

These sprawling waters, though, are a mostly lawless zone, beyond the reaches of any national authority and governable only by international consensus and treaties. They face tremendous challenges that no nation can address alone: Climate change is causing marine heat waves and acidification, while overfishing and pollution are crippling ecosystems, even as pressure grows from companies and nations eager to drill and mine the ocean depths. In early March, negotiators representing nearly 200 nations came to a historic agreement aimed at protecting the ocean’s creatures and ecosystems. When the new United Nations High Seas Treaty was announced, marine scientists and conservationists around the globe rejoiced.

But what will the treaty actually mean for conservation in a region about which humanity knows less than the moon? When it comes to Pacific salmon, will the new treaty’s tools — and the international symbolism and momentum involved in agreeing to them — aid efforts to manage and protect them? Do the provisions go far enough? Here’s what the experts say.

The treaty’s protective tools may not be what salmon need

The treaty’s top provision establishes a road map for creating marine protected areas (MPAs) in international waters. Like national parks for the ocean, MPAs are zones that typically limit fishing or other activities to preserve ecosystems and species. When adequately enforced, they are widely considered to be a powerful tool for ocean and coastal conservation. They are also seen as key to reaching the U.N.’s goal to protect 30% of the planet’s oceans by 2030 — a goal the world is woefully behind on, with just 3% to 8% currently protected.

But when it comes to Pacific salmon, it is unclear whether MPAs can do anything at all. Salmon fishing in international waters has been banned since the 1990s, so future MPAs there will not reduce fishing. And while boosting enforcement of fishing bans may benefit other species, many believe illegal salmon fishing on the high seas is extremely low.

Still, some salmon experts believe that high seas marine preserves could provide indirect protection: By limiting other fishing, they could prevent salmon from being caught accidentally. They might also help preserve important marine food webs, though such ecosystems are vast, mobile and hard to monitor.

“If salmon used those (protected areas) as part of their migration and ocean habitat, then, yes, it could be beneficial,” said Brian Riddell, retired CEO and current science advisor to the Canadian nonprofit Pacific Salmon Foundation. “But to associate changes in marine survival to (an MPA), I think would be very, very difficult.”

MPAs also don’t address climate change or the marine heat waves that many researchers believe are a key factor in recent salmon declines. Matt Sloat, science director at the Oregon-based Wild Salmon Center, said that limiting global emissions would do more to protect salmon.

Although much remains unknown, recent research suggests that salmon ranges in the ocean are shifting or shrinking because of temperature changes. Salmon are also getting smaller, suggesting there may be more competition for fewer resources. “And then (hatcheries) are putting billions more hungry mouths into that smaller area,” Sloat said, referring to the sometimes-controversial state, federal and tribal hatcheries in the U.S. and other countries that raise and release quotas of juvenile salmon each year to maintain local fisheries. He believes that improving international coordination of the scale of those releases, rather than governing remote ocean habitats, might also improve salmon survival in the ocean.

It may boost collaboration and high seas research

Another section of the treaty bolsters collaborative research in international waters. Although the treaty’s language is directed more at support for developing nations — to ensure that new knowledge reflects the priorities of more than just the wealthiest coastal nations — salmon researchers hope that any overall increase in funding and interest in high seas research could help solve the mystery of what actually happens to salmon there.

While much is known about the environmental factors affecting salmon in their coastal and riverine habitats, scientists call the open ocean a “black box” into which salmon disappear for years. “We don’t even know where our salmon are,” said Laurie Weitkamp, a research biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 2022, seeking answers, she led an expedition that was part of the largest-ever high seas salmon research effort in the North Pacific, during which five vessels and more than 60 international scientists surveyed 2.5 million square kilometers (nearly 1 million square miles) in the Gulf of Alaska.

The open ocean has always been a bottleneck for salmon survival; Weitkamp said that, even historically, “95% of the salmon that enter the ocean never come back.” Once, those numbers were predictable based on coastal and river conditions. Now, she said, scientists’ guesses are often wildly wrong. All known conditions will point to a good return, Weitkamp said, “And then it’s just like, where are they? What happened?”

Researchers have been trying to understand what they’re missing in salmon’s ocean habitats, but work on the high seas is extremely expensive: Expeditions cost tens of thousands of dollars a day, but can collect only small amounts of data because salmon are widely dispersed and hard to find. She said the scale of the information gathered during the 2019-2022 expeditions she was part of was possible only because so many ships and nations worked together. It’s the kind of collaboration the treaty may help to inspire — directly in some cases, and symbolically in others — as nations sign on.

“Collaboration is absolutely essential,” said Riddell, who was also part of the 2019-22 expeditions. “We need a dedicated, ongoing program,” to understand what’s happening to salmon and to strengthen ocean and climate models. He hopes the High Seas Treaty will lead to more support and interest in that work.

Ratification and Indigenous inclusion are not guaranteed

This year, many salmon runs are expected to hit record lows, impacting the ecosystems, economies and communities that depend on them. Chinook returns in Oregon, California and Alaska are forecast to be so low that offshore recreational and commercial fishing this spring has been cancelled in many areas. The Klamath River chinook run, upon which the Yurok Tribe relies for cultural and economic security, is expected to be the lowest in history.

“International effort to preserve and protect ocean habitat is critical to restoring these historic salmon runs,” said Amy Cordalis, an attorney, fisherwoman and Yurok tribal member who has served as the tribe’s general counsel. But “those efforts must accommodate traditional uses of those areas.”

In 2020, during negotiations on what became the High Seas Treaty, a group of scientists published a report calling on the United Nations to better incorporate Indigenous management perspectives, which they said were not adequately represented in discussions at that time. The final treaty, which includes language recognizing Indigenous rights, did better than most to include Indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge, said Marjo Vierros, a coastal policy researcher at the University of British Columbia and lead author of the report. “How that plays out in implementation is of course a different question.”

The draft treaty, which is now being proofread, still must be ratified by member nations — a political process that may yet stall out in the U.S. Due to conservative Republican opposition, the United States has yet to ratify the 40-year-old U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea — the last treaty to govern international waters — though U.S. agencies say the country observes the law anyway.

That treaty drew the current boundary between state-controlled waters and the high seas, established rights for ships to navigate freely in international waters, and created an international body to develop deep-sea mining rules — a process that also remains, for now, unfinished. 

Researching at sea, “you gain a whole new understanding for how big (the ocean) really is,” Weitkamp said, and how much of its influence on salmon, climate and humanity remains unknown. “The ocean, especially the North Pacific, is just enormous.”

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Scientists have found dozens of species of coastal invertebrates organisms thriving Oscar the Grouch style in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Roughly 620,000 square miles long, or twice the size of Texas, the floating garbage heap is located between Hawaii and California. Five large spinning circular currents constantly pull trash towards the center of the patch, and it is considered the largest accumulation of ocean plastic on Earth.

These creatures found thriving in trash like crabs and anemones are normally found along the coasts, but the study published April 17 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution says that dozens of species have been able to survive and reproduce on the plastic garbage.  

[Related: A close look at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch reveals a common culprit.]

“This discovery suggests that past biogeographical boundaries among marine ecosystems—established for millions of years—are rapidly changing due to floating plastic pollution  accumulating in the subtropical gyres,” co-author and marine ecologist Linsey Haram said in a statement. Haram conducted this research while working at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

The team only recently discovered these “neopelagic communities,” or floating communities of organisms living in deep ocean waters. Organic matter in the ocean decomposes within a few years at most. But plastic debris lasts significantly longer, thus giving the animals a place to live and procreate.  

The team analyzed 105 plastic samples that were collected by The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization that is working on scalable solutions to get rid of ocean plastic, during their 2018 and 2019 expeditions. The samples were found in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a large zone that makes up most of that northern Pacific Ocean and is the largest ecosystem on Earth. Incredibly, 80 percent of the plastic trash that the team looked at showed signs of being colonized by coastal species. Some of the coastal species were even reproducing in their plastic homes, such as the Japanese anemone.

“We were extremely surprised to find 37 different invertebrate species that normally live in coastal waters, over triple the number of species we found that live in open waters, not only surviving on the plastic but also reproducing,” said Haram. “We were also impressed by how easily coastal species colonized new floating items, including our own instruments—an observation we’re looking into further.”

[Related: Ocean plastic ‘vacuums’ are sucking up marine life along with trash.]

While biologists already knew that coastal species can travel towards the open ocean on floating debris or on ships, it was long believed that these species couldn’t thrive or establish new communities at sea. Differences in temperature, water salinity, and the available nutrients between these two environments seemed too vast, but human-caused changes to the ocean ecosystems have forced marine biologists to rethink these ideas. 

“Debris that breaks off from this [garbage] patch constitutes the majority of debris arriving on Hawaiian beaches and reefs. In the past, the fragile marine ecosystems of the islands were protected by the very long distances from coastal communities of Asia and North America,” co-author and UH Mānoa oceanographer Nikolai Maximenko said in a statement. “The presence of coastal species persisting in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre near Hawai‘i is a game changer that indicates that the islands are at an increased risk of colonization by invasive species.”

According to data from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the world produces roughly 460 million tons of plastic annually and this figure could triple by 2060 if government action is not taken soon. Some individual actions to reduce plastic use is shopping more sustainably, limiting use of single-use plastic like water bottles and plastic utensils, and participating in beach and river clean-ups.

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To curb climate change, governments across the globe have set goals to achieve “net zero emissions.” This means that for every unit of greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere, the same amount is removed through a nature-based solution—like forest protection—or artificial ones like carbon capture technology. 

In an effort to reach net zero by 2050, the Biden administration is investing in a promising strategy: blue carbon.

Blue carbon is a nickname for the carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere and stored in the ocean and coastal ecosystems. It’s a focus of the administration’s Ocean Climate Action Plan, announced in March. 

It’s a type of carbon sink—natural or artificial reservoirs that absorb and store CO₂, the heat-trapping gas primarily responsible for warming the planet. But scientists are still figuring out how people can support this process and warn that it’s not the solution to the climate crisis.

What is blue carbon?

First, you should know that blue carbon isn’t really blue.

“We just call it blue because we’re associating it with the ocean,” says Matthew Costa, a postdoctoral scholar researching blue carbon at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. 

Carbon dioxide is like food for plants, which suck the gas out of the atmosphere and use photosynthesis to convert it into plant matter. Plants in the ocean and on the coast do the same thing. Some of that plant matter, which stores carbon, gets trapped in sediment and can stay there for hundreds or even thousands of years. This process results in a carbon sink. 

[Related: Why seaweed is a natural fit for replacing certain plastics]

It’s an example of an ecosystem service, which is an aspect of a natural environment that benefits people. Other examples include forests that filter our air, wetlands that buffer against storms, and the plants we eat. “We put it in the service context in economics terms because it’s basically a service that the system is doing, but we don’t have to pay for it,” Costa says. 

Salt marshes, mangroves, seagrass beds, and kelp forests are the ecosystems people generally refer to when discussing blue carbon in the United States. Mangroves are in southern Florida and some parts of Texas and Louisiana, while most algal beds are on the West Coast. Salt marshes are found on coastlines, while seagrasses are wherever there’s ocean water.

The top meter of sediment in the open ocean stores about double the amount of carbon stored on land, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. Dead animals and plants, which hold carbon, sink and become buried in the seafloor. Phytoplankton—tiny single-cell organisms found throughout the ocean—play a significant role in this carbon burial. 

But since the ocean is so vast, tracking how much carbon is stored is difficult. And more importantly, strategies for increasing carbon storage in the open ocean, like increasing phytoplankton growth, are less established and feasible than strategies for managing coastal ecosystems, according to Costa.

Why is blue carbon important?

While researchers stress that blue carbon won’t “solve” the climate crisis, it is one of many approaches governments can take to chip away at their net zero goals. 

Coastal ecosystems around the globe make up only a few hundred thousand square kilometers, which is relatively small compared to the ocean. But they are particularly good at absorbing carbon. Carbon accumulates in mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses at a rate ten times faster than in terrestrial ecosystems. These areas also store about four times more carbon than terrestrial forests, according to Trisha Atwood, an associate professor of watershed sciences at Utah State University.

Costa says there are two reasons why these coastal ecosystems are more potent at storing carbon than forests, another major carbon sink. First, carbon builds up in the sediment, not just in the plants. Second, coastal ecosystems also import carbon from other environments. For example, when the tide rolls in and out in a tidal marsh, it carries particles of organic matter, which contain carbon. That organic matter also gets trapped in the sediment, storing even more carbon. 

“When a giant tree falls to the forest floor, that trunk is sitting on the forest floor within a couple of years,” Costa says. Fungi, insects, and microorganisms quickly break down the wood and roots. Subsequently, the carbon transforms back into CO₂. 

“Those organisms are eating that material and breathing it out, just like when we eat food and breathe out CO₂,” Costa adds. “So that carbon has a lower residence time, we’ll say it doesn’t get to spend as much time trapped in that ecosystem.” 

Meanwhile, carbon tends to stay in coastal sediment once absorbed. The exception to this is when it’s disturbed by people. 

“If you bulldoze that salt marsh or mangrove, or you disturb and dredge the sediment or something like that, you can then release a lot of that carbon,” Costa explains.

How much can blue carbon help?

Atwood stresses that restoring blue carbon ecosystems is different from replanting a forest, and we have to be careful not to over-promise what blue carbon can achieve.

“These systems are often in difficult-to-reach places, and seagrasses are submerged so they are not really visible,” she explained over email. “As a result, they can be hard to monitor, and we need a good way to ensure that restoration and protection efforts remain effective through time.”

[Related: Climate change is making the ocean lose its memory. Here’s what that means.]

However, if these coastal ecosystems are restored, they can do more than store carbon. Atwood says these natural spaces also reduce the impact of storms on coastal communities, act as nursery habitats for economically important fisheries species, and bring in tourism.

Ultimately, investing in blue carbon is just one of the many actions we must take to mitigate climate change, says Costa.

“This is not a sort of a silver bullet,” he says. “If we’re protecting these ecosystems and not reducing our emissions, we’re not going in a good direction.”

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In the United States, there are over 6,500 rural and urban areas where residents have limited access to stores that sell affordable, nutritious food. Living in these places, sometimes dubbed “food deserts”, can lead to poor diet and associated health risks. However, unlike deserts, the lack of access to healthy food in communities does not occur naturally. They developed over time as a result of racially discriminatory policies and systematic disinvestment.

Given the increase in food insecurity in urban areas, some cities have begun experiments with edible landscapes to address food insecurity. By working together to grow a “food forest,” community members can increase their access to local food sources.

Food forests, or edible forest gardens, are a type of agroforestry system that “mimic the structure and function of a natural forest ecosystem, but are designed to produce food, medicine, fiber, and other products for human use,” says Mikaela Schmitt-Harsh, an associate professor at James Madison University whose research focuses on the social-ecological dynamics of urban forests. 

[Related: How to eat sustainably without sacrificing your favorite foods.]

The first public food forest in the US—the Dr. George Washington Carver Edible Park in North Carolina—opened in 1997. As of 2018, there are more than 70 food forests in public spaces across the country.

Schmitt-Harsh says different layers of vegetation—like trees, shrubs, herbs, and ground covers—all work together to “create a sustainable and diverse food production system.” For example, a food forest could be composed of tall trees like chestnut or walnut as the canopy layer and apple or persimmon trees as the sub-canopy layer. Beneath them can lie currant bushes like elderberry or spicebush, along with edible herbs and mushrooms. Ground cover, medical roots, and climbing plants are also included. “You can swap out any of these selections for your favorite nut trees, fruit crops, and herbs to make your own system,” says Schmitt-Harsh.

Food forests may be grown on private properties, vacant lots, parks, or other open spaces in otherwise urban environments. This helps residents by forming a food production system within the community. The forests, which are typically at least 1/8 of an acre, can be critical in areas where local, fresh foods are inaccessible or unaffordable, says Sheila K. Schueller, ecosystem science and management lecturer at the University of Michigan.

Schueller says food forests don’t just give people access to fresh and nutritious fruits, nuts, and produce, but also empower neighborhoods by increasing food security and sovereignty and the sense of community. Moreover, connecting people with the source of their food may raise awareness about “the benefits of sustainable forms of agriculture and the value of local in-season foods over distantly-sourced or unsustainably-grown foods,” she adds.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation

The ecologically diverse system of food forests benefits the environment in so many ways, says Schueller. For instance, the structural complexity of the different layers can attract perching and nesting birds, while the variety of blooms expands the habitat of pollinators. Deeper root systems also improve water retention. Lastly, the vegetation provides shade and improves temperature regulation, which is ideal in hot cities or arid climates. All of these improve resilience in the face of changing climates and extreme weather events, says Schueller.

[Related: Paleo and keto diets aren’t great for you or the planet, study says.]

Food forests also help mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.

Since they have trees, shrubs, and perennial plants, Schueller says food forests can store more carbon in their biomass and the soil compared to other food systems or land use such as annually tilled crops or lawns.

“This increased vertical layering of plants means that more carbon is sequestered per area, and especially the woody vegetation stores more carbon long term,” she adds. “Food forests are not annually tilled like most crops and have deep root systems, so they can store a lot of carbon in the soil and below-ground vegetation.”

Having an abundance of locally-sourced foods in the community minimizes greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well, particularly those caused by transportation across the food chain. A 2021 Nature Food study previously estimated that food transportation contributed around 4.8 percent of the GHG emissions of the global food system, but newer research suggests it accounts for about 19 percent instead. In general, Schmitt-Harsh says food forests can reduce the food miles traveled, or the distance from where the food was grown to where it’s eaten.

The interest and advocacy for food forests have grown alongside other local food movements, like farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs. They are all experiencing an upward trend in urban and suburban landscapes as communities explore ways to bring food production closer to home, says Schmitt-Harsh. 

A 2017 Public Health Nutrition study on low-income adults’ perceptions of farmers’ markets and CSA programs found that residents of urban, affordable housing communities are motivated to eat healthily, but they cannot afford them. Accepting benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would increase their access to healthy foods and reduce health risks.

“Some of the most successful community food forests are those that embrace a grassroots approach and engage multiple stakeholders in promoting community building and food literacy,” says Schmitt-Harsh. 
If you want to grow a food forest in your area, try getting in touch with potential stakeholders like local governments, community-based groups, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations that can mobilize community members to participate in civic activities. Who knows, there might be an organization near you already.

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

In the premier episode of Apple TV’s climate show, Extrapolations, it’s 2037 and Earth is in turmoil. Global temperatures have reached record highs. Wildfires rage on every continent. People lack clean drinking water, while a stone-faced billionaire hoards patents to life-saving desalination technology. 

People are understandably upset. Because it’s nearly a decade and a half in the future, protests now include towering holograms and desperate calls to limit global warming — which has long since blown past 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — to 2 degrees C. One thing is eerily familiar, though: In one scene, demonstrators chant “net-zero now!” — a catchphrase with origins at the end of the last decade. 

To some, this is a surprising slogan to hear today, let alone in 2037. Although the concept of global net-zero is rooted in climate science, today’s carbon neutrality pledges from individual governments and corporations have been criticized in some quarters as a “con,” because they allow polluters to continue emitting greenhouse gases. The carbon offset projects that are supposed to neutralize all those residual emissions are often questionable, if not a sham.

“If today’s version of net-zero is still the rallying cry for climate action 15 years from now, we are in big, big trouble,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy for the nonprofit Corporate Accountability. “I hope we’re headed down a different path.”

Just what that path looks like, however, remains a matter of debate.

The concept of net-zero is rooted in the climate science of the early 2000s. Between 2005 and 2009, a series of research articles showed that global temperatures would continue rising alongside net emissions of carbon dioxide. The “net” acknowledged the role of long-term processes like deep-ocean carbon uptake, in which the seas absorb the pollutant from the air. These processes occur over decades, even centuries.

The term “net-zero” doesn’t appear in the Paris Agreement of 2015, but it was at about that time that it went mainstream. Based on recommendations from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, countries agreed in Article 4 of the accord to achieve a “balance” between sources and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions during the second half of the century.

So far, so good; this is relatively noncontroversial. “Global net-zero is nonnegotiable if you’re serious about climate targets,” said Sam Fankhauser, a professor of climate change economics and policy at the University of Oxford. Where things start to skew, however, is when individual countries and businesses adopt net-zero targets for themselves. “That’s where you leave the science and get into the realm of policy and opinion,” Fankhauser said.

Sweden became the first country to legislate a midcentury net-zero goal in 2017. Since then, that target has exploded in popularity, almost to the exclusion of other pledges. Some 92 percent of the global economy is now covered by a patchwork of such commitments, made by entities including 130 countries and 850 of the planet’s largest publicly traded companies. 

Fankhauser considers that good news. “None of those firms or organizations had any targets at all before, so they’re moving in the right direction,” he said, although he added that there’s lots of room for improvement in the integrity of those promises. A global analysis published last year found that 65 percent of the largest corporate net-zero targets don’t meet minimum reporting standards, and only 40 percent of municipal targets are reflected in legislation or policy documents.

Others, however, have harsher words for something they consider little more than “rank deception” from big polluters. With heads of state and fossil fuel companies pledging net-zero yet planning to expand oil and gas reserves, Jackson said the logic behind carbon neutrality has been “completely lit on fire” by greenwashing governments and corporations. “They have entirely co-opted the net-zero agenda,” she said. 

At the heart of the issue lies that little word, “net,” and the offsets it implies. When companies or governments can’t get their climate pollution to zero, they can pay for offset projects to either remove carbon from the atmosphere or prevent hypothetical emissions — like by protecting a stand of trees that otherwise would have been razed. Under ideal conditions, a third party evaluates these offsets and converts them into “credits” polluters can use to claim that some of their emissions have been neutralized.

The problem, however, is these offsets are too often bogus — the market for them is “honestly kind of a Wild West,” said Amanda Levin, interim director of policy analysis for the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. For projects claiming to avoid emissions, it’s difficult to prove the counterfactual: Would a given forest really have been cut down without the offset project? And carbon removal schemes like those based on afforestation — planting trees that will store carbon as they grow — might last only a few years if a disease or forest fire comes along.

Levin said polluters too often use poorly regulated and opaque “junk offsets” to delay the absolute emissions reductions required to combat climate change. Although the IPCC includes offsets in nearly all of its pathways to keep global warming well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), experts agree those offsets should be considered a last resort used only when it’s no longer possible to further cut climate pollution. 

“Net-zero does not mean that we don’t have to take steps to directly reduce our emissions,” Levin said. 

Many, many others — from environmental groups to scientists to policymakers — agree. Where opinions differ, however, is what to do about it. Many net-zero critiques are paired with suggestions for reform, like a 2022 report from a U.N. panel that blasted nongovernmental net-zero pledges as “greenwash.” It recommended tighter guidelines on reporting and transparency, as well as new measures to ensure the integrity of offsets.

Carbon Market Watch, a European watchdog and think tank, takes a slightly different approach. In a February letter to members of the European Parliament, the organization called for a total ban on “carbon neutrality” claims for companies’ products, arguing that such boasts give consumers the false idea that business as usual can continue without adverse impacts on the climate or environment. 

“To say that you neutralize your climate impact by investing in an avoided deforestation program halfway across the world? That’s not scientifically sound,” said Lindsay Otis, a policy expert for Carbon Market Watch. “It deters from real mitigation efforts that will keep us in line with our Paris Agreement goals.”

To Otis, it’s not necessarily offset projects that should be banned. Although she acknowledged that many are problematic, she said mitigation efforts like reforestation can have “a potential real-world benefit,” and it would be a mistake to stop funding them. Instead, she considers this a communication problem: Rather than allowing companies to claim carbon mitigation projects cancel out residual emissions, Carbon Market Watch favors a “contribution claim” model, in which polluters advertise only their financial support for such projects. Some carbon credit sellers like Myclimate are embracing a version of that model, as is the global payment service Klarna.

Carbon Market Watch distinguishes between “carbon neutrality” claims, which describe companies’ products and current environmental performance, and “net-zero” claims about what companies say they’ll do in the future, as in “net-zero by 2050.” It says the latter are still permissible, but only if backed by a detailed plan to quickly drive down emissions and not offset them.

On its face, this is similar to an alternative benchmark that has gained popularity in recent years: “real zero,” which involves the rapid elimination of all fossil fuel production and greenhouse gas emissions without the use of offsets. At least two major companies, the utilities NextEra and National Grid, have eschewed their own net-zero goals in favor of real zero. However, some environmental groups — including a coalition of 700 organizations from around the world — take the concept further. They see real zero as a whole new lens with which to view equitable climate action, one that rejects a single-minded, technocratic focus on greenhouse gas emissions. 

“The real zero framing puts at the center not just the urgency” of climate mitigation, “but also fairness,” said Jackson, the policy director at Corporate Accountability. She and others say real zero is an opportunity to reorient the international climate agenda around new priorities, like funneling climate finance to the developing world and protecting Indigenous land rights. It also sets faster decarbonization timelines for the biggest historical polluters and demands that they pay reparations to communities most harmed by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

It’s a far-reaching and ambitious agenda, and its calls for climate justice are broadly supported by experts and policy wonks. Still, some push back, returning to the idea of net-zero as a global necessity. 

“While real zero is a valuable guiding light, net-zero is still a worthy and necessary goal,” said Jackie Ennis, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her modeling shows that even the most ambitious carbon mitigation scenarios will require offsets for the hardest-to-abate corners of the economy, which she defined to include waste management and animal agriculture. She pointed to work from the independent Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market to define criteria that define a “high-quality” offset — including whether it contributes to sustainable development goals and doesn’t violate the rights of Indigenous peoples.

According to Fankhauser, the “gold standard” here is geological removal, in which carbon is drawn out of the atmosphere and locked up in rock formations. This technology can’t yet handle even a tiny fraction of the planet’s overall carbon emissions, but experts say it could one day enable offsets that are less prone to double-counting and more likely to sequester carbon for the long haul.

Fankhauser suggested a sort of middle ground between real and net-zero, in which governments set different decarbonization targets for different sectors: net-zero for those like shipping and steel-making for which zero-carbon alternatives aren’t yet viable, and the total elimination of emissions for the rest of the economy. Some jurisdictions already do something like this. The economy-wide net-zero target set by New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act prohibits offsets for the power sector and caps them at 15 percent for the state’s overall emissions by 2050. That means 85 percent of Empire State emissions reductions must come from actually reducing emissions. 

“That’s a perfect example of how policymakers are trying to constrain the use of offsets so they’re being used where it’s most valuable,” said Levin, with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

More global efforts, however, are hard to come by, likely because there’s so much contention around the net-zero agenda. One thing people seem to agree on, however, is that the status quo is not working. Although thousands of companies and governments have pledged to reach net-zero sometime in the next several decades, the planet is still on track for dangerous levels of global warming — 2.8 degrees C (5 degrees F), to be precise. That’s more than enough to “cook the fool out of you,” as one protester in Extrapolations so eloquently put it.

“The current trajectory is one of failure,” Jackson told Grist, though she said it’s not too late to turn things around. “The money exists, the technology exists, the capacity exists — it’s only the lack of political will. If we’re brave enough to alter course and redirect toward what we know is needed, then a totally different world is possible.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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This article is republished from The Conversation.

Trees can die suddenly or quite slowly.

Fire, flood or wind can cause a quick death by severely damaging a tree’s ability to transport water and nutrients up and down its trunk.

Sometimes a serious insect attack or disease can kill a tree. This kind of death usually takes from a few months to a couple of years. Again, a tree loses its ability to move water and nutrients, but does so in stages, more slowly.

A tree can also die of what you might call old age.

I am a scientist who studies trees and the web of living things that surround them. The death of a tree is not exactly what it seems, because it directly leads to new life.

Different trees, different life spans

Trees can live an incredibly long time, depending on what kind they are. Some bristlecone pines, for instance, are among the oldest known trees and are more than 4,000 years old. Others, like lodgepoles or poplars, will have much shorter life spans, from 20 to 200 years. The biggest trees in your neighborhood or town are probably somewhere in that range.

You’ve probably noticed that different living things have different life spans – a hamster is generally not going to live as long as a cat, which isn’t going to live as long as a person. Trees are no different. Their life spans are determined by their DNA, which you can think of as the operating system embedded in their genes. Trees that are programmed to grow very quickly will be less strong – and shorter lived – than ones that grow very slowly.

But even a tough old tree will eventually die. The years and years of damage done by insects and microscopic critters, combined with abuse from the weather, will slowly end its life. The death process may start with a single branch but will eventually spread to the entire tree. It may take a while for an observer to realize a tree has finally died.

You might think of death as a passive process. But, in the case of trees, it’s surprisingly active.

The underground network

Roots do more than anchor a tree to the ground. They are the place where microscopic fungi attach and act like a second root system for a tree.

Fungi form long, superfine threads called hyphae. Fungal hyphae can reach much farther than a tree’s roots can. They gather nutrients from the soil that a tree needs. In exchange, the tree repays fungi with sugars it makes out of sunlight in a process known as photosynthesis.

You might have heard that fungi can also pass nutrients from one tree to another. This is a topic that scientists are still working out. Some trees are likely connected to other trees by a complex underground network of fungi, sometimes called the “wood wide web.”

How the wood wide web functions in a forest is still not well understood, but scientists do know that the fungi forming these networks are important for keeping trees healthy.

Afterlife of a tree

Before it topples over, a dead tree can stand for many years, providing a safe home for bees, squirrels, owls and many more animals. Once it falls and becomes a log, it can host other living things, like badgers, moles and reptiles.

Logs also host a different kind of fungi and bacteria, called decomposers. These tiny organisms help break down big dead trees to the point where you would never know they had existed. Depending on the conditions, this process can take from a few years to a century or more. As wood breaks down, its nutrients return to the soil and become available for other living things, including nearby trees and fungal networks.

A tree leaves a legacy. While alive, it provides shade, home for many animals and a lifeline to fungi and other trees. When it dies, it continues to play an important role. It gives a boost to new trees ready to take its place, shelter to a different set of animals and, eventually, nourishment for the next generation of living things.

It’s almost as if a tree never truly dies but just passes its life on to others.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to emphasize that much remains unknown about the relationship between trees and fungi.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The foundation for the world’s deepest offshore wind turbine has just been installed 17 miles off the coast of Scotland. Last week, the roughly 441,000-pound “jacket,” or foundation, was placed at a depth of 58.6 meters—just over 192 feet—by the Sapiem 7000, the world’s third largest semi-submersible crane vessel. It was the 112th jacket installed at the 114-wind turbine Seagreen wind farm, which will be Scotland’s largest when it is fully operational later this year.

Wind turbines like these work like an inverse fan. Instead of using electricity to generate wind, they generate electricity using wind. The thin blades are shaped like aircraft wings and as the wind flows across them, the air pressure on one side decreases. This difference in air pressure across the blade generates both lift and drag, which causes the rotor to spin. The spinning rotor then powers a generator, sending electricity to the grid. 

Offshore wind farms like Seagreen have a number of advantages over land-based wind turbines. Since wind speeds at sea tend to be faster and more consistent than they are over land, it’s easier to reliably generate greater amounts of electricity. Even small increases in wind speed can have a dramatic effect: in a 15-mph wind, a turbine can generate double the amount of electricity it can generate in a 12-mph wind.

[Related: The NY Bight could write the book on how we build offshore wind farms in the future]

Also, coastal areas frequently have high energy requirements. In the US, more than 40 percent of the population, some 127 million people, live in coastal counties. By generating power offshore close to where it’s used, there is less need for long-distance energy transmission, and cities don’t have to dedicate already scarce space to power plants. 

But of course, the biggest advantage of any wind farm is that they can provide renewable energy without emitting toxic environmental pollutants or greenhouse gasses. They don’t even need or consume important non-petrochemical resources like water, although they can have other environmental impacts that engineers are trying to solve for.

The recently installed foundations at Seagreen will each support a Vestas V164-10 MW turbine. With a rotor diameter of roughly 540-feet—that’s more than one-and-a-half football fields—and standing up to 672 feet tall—more than twice the height of the Statue of Liberty—these turbines will be absolutely huge. Each one will be capable of generating up to 10,000 kilowatts (KW) of power in good conditions.

Although Seagreen actually started generating electricity last summer, when the wind farm is fully operational later this year, the 114 wind turbines will have a combined total capacity of 1,075 megawatts (MW). While that’s not enough to crack the top 100 power stations in the US, the wind farm is projected to produce around 5,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity each year, which is enough to provide clean and sustainable power to more than 1.6 million UK households. That’s around two-thirds of the population of Scotland. 

Really, the Seagreen site shows how far wind power has come. While wind farms don’t yet have the capacity to fully replace fossil fuel power plants, Seagreen will still displace more than 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise have been released by Scottish electricity generation. According to Seagreen, that’s the equivalent of removing a third of all Scotland’s cars from the road. 

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This article was originally featured on The Drive.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed Wednesday perhaps its most sweeping changes to vehicle emissions controls in its history, a far-reaching measure that could effectively mandate a tenfold increase in EV sales by the middle of the next decade. Under the proposed plan, electric-car sales would comprise more than two-thirds of overall light-duty new car sales and nearly half of all medium-duty car sales by 2032. The plan would also ratchet up emissions targets for internal combustion-powered vehicles by roughly 13 percent every year from 2027 to 2032, compared to 5-10 percent increases proposed for 2023-2026 model-year cars. The EPA’s proposal will likely face a mountain of legal challenges before it’s adopted. Still, regulators said they would build in language that would make the standards tougher to repeal for subsequent administrations.

“By proposing the most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks, we are delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s promise to protect people and the planet, securing critical reductions in dangerous air and climate pollution and ensuring significant economic benefits like lower fuel and maintenance costs for families,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

The EPA said its proposal could save the average new-car buyer $12,000 over the lifetime of the vehicle, compared to an ICE engine. The proposal for light- and medium-duty vehicles was accompanied by a proposal for heavy-duty fleets to electrify 25 percent of their trucks and half of all new buses to be electric by 2032. This week the EPA also proposed recalculating how efficiency is measured among electrified vehicles to represent the impact of those cars more accurately in Corporate Average Fuel Economy figures. Combined, the total impact of the EPA’s suggested regulations could vastly reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced on America’s roadways. However, the ambitious targets exceed President Joe Biden’s initial target of 50 percent EV sales by the decade’s end. 

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most major automakers in America, CEO John Bozzella called the proposal “aggressive by any measure. By that I mean it sets automotive electrification goals in the next few years that are … very high,” he wrote, according to Automotive News. 

Automakers and unions are likely to push back against the regulations, which they’ve said could cost jobs and further hike the prices of new cars. Last year, EV sales accounted for less than 6 percent of overall vehicle sales and 2 percent of heavy-truck sales. In addition to building battery facilities in the U.S. that won’t come online for several years, automakers have warned that existing and planned charging infrastructure may not handle such a dramatic increase in EVs, and critical mineral supplies wouldn’t be enough. The Biden administration has offered trillions in spending to accelerate both while pushing forward with ambitious targets. The EPA doesn’t have the mandate to quantify overall vehicle sales but instead can set targets to force automakers to otherwise comply with those stringent rules. 

Going forward, the plan will be open to public comment and face scrutiny from legislators and others, likely including legal challenges. 

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

Beyond the fields of berries, grass seed, and wheat at Jacque Duyck Jones’s farm in Oregon, she can see distant plumes of exhaust spewing from factories in Hillsboro, just outside Portland. Years ago, Jones and her family didn’t worry much about industry creeping closer to their land. A 50-year-old state law that restricts urban growth, rare in the United States, kept smokestacks and strip malls away.

But a national push to make semiconductors — the microchips that help power modern electronics, from dishwashers to electric vehicles — has prompted Oregon lawmakers to lift some of those restrictions. Keen to tap into $52 billion that Congress earmarked last year in the CHIPS and Science Act, Oregon legislators last week passed a bipartisan bill aimed at enticing chip manufacturers to set up shop in the state, in part by allowing them to convert some of the country’s richest farmland into factories. The bill gives Governor Tina Kotek, a Democrat, authority through the end of next year to extend urban development boundaries, a process currently subject to appeals that can be drawn out for years. 

“That’s like granting divine power,” said Ben Williams, president of Friends of French Prairie, a rural land advocacy group. Under the bill, the governor can select two rural sites of more than 500 acres and six smaller ones for development related to the semiconductor industry. That revision to the state’s rigid land-use system has drawn pushback from farmers and conservation organizations. They say the legislation endangers farms, soil health, and carbon sequestration efforts. One potential site for a factory would pave over rural land within a mile of the Duyck family’s land.

“I am worried,” Jones said. “When [the CHIPS Act] was passed at the federal level, here in Oregon we never imagined it would result in basically a choice. I would have never imagined it to have been a threat to farmland in Oregon,” she added, noting that she doesn’t oppose the industry, only building factories on agricultural lands.

With bipartisan support, President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act last year intending to jumpstart semiconductor manufacturing in the United States, where 37 percent of the world’s chips were made in 1990, compared to only 12 percent in 2020, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Politicians from across the political spectrum lauded the CHIPS Act as a job creator and a way to shore up the semiconductor supply chain during a global shortage. 

Semiconductors are in microwaves and smartphones, but they are also essential for renewable energy technology. They’re key to solar panels, wind energy systems, heat pumps, microgrids, electric vehicles, and more. In a report published last year, the U.S. Department of Energy called semiconductors “a cornerstone technology of the overall decarbonization strategy” and said a lower-carbon future requires “explosive growth” of both conventional and more advanced chips. 

In Oregon, cashing in on the federal bill won’t necessarily mean bolstering a domestic supply of wind turbines or solar panels, which are mostly manufactured in China. In large part, the chips made in the state, which is already a hub for the industry, are used in computers and high-tech products like electronic gaming and artificial intelligence, according to Arief Budiman, director of the Oregon Renewable Energy Center. 

Supporters of the Oregon bill say capturing the CHIPS Act windfall could create tens of thousands of jobs and more than $1.5 billion in local and state tax revenue. 

“Imagine electric and autonomous vehicles, biotech, clean tech, and others doing research and advanced manufacturing here,” the Oregon Semiconductor Competitiveness Task Force said in a report last August. “In short, acting now could spark a boom that lasts another 30 years.” 

To stay attractive to industry giants like Intel, which already has an Oregon campus but recently chose to build a $20 billion mega-factory in Ohio (to the dismay of Oregon’s elected officials), the state needs to make more industrial land available, the task force said. It described “no development ready sites of the size needed to attract a major semiconductor investment, or to support larger size suppliers.”

Rural land-use advocates largely reject that argument. One group — 1,000 Friends of Oregon — has listed several existing industrially zoned sites that could be used for chip factories. The Oregon Farm Bureau, which opposes the land-use provisions in the state bill, also argues there’s already enough available land within urban growth areas to build new factories, said Lauren Poor, the bureau’s vice president of government and legal affairs. “We’re not opposed to the chips bill, generally speaking,” Poor said. But “once we develop these sites, we can’t get that soil back.”

Wet winters and dry, warm summers help the state’s growers produce some 200 crops, ranging from hops to hay. Oregon dominates other states in blackberry, crimson clover, and rhubarb production, and almost all of the country’s hazelnuts are grown there. “We owe that to the diversity of our climate and our soils, which is one of the reasons we’re very protective of our very unique land-use system,” Poor added. 

The state’s land-use restrictions are rooted in the country’s first law establishing urban growth boundaries, which former Governor Tom McCall, a Republican, signed in 1973. The law, aimed at limiting urban sprawl, allows cities to expand only with approval from a state commission. A decision to move boundaries can be appealed multiple times at both the county and state levels, Williams said. Under the new bill, challenges to the governor’s chip-factory designations will be considered only by the state supreme court.

“It’s very detrimental to expand outside the urban growth boundaries,” said Jones, the farmer. She worries building chip factories on farmland could increase nearby property values, making arable land harder for farmers to buy or rent, and could supplant not only rows of crops but essential farm infrastructure like seed-cleaning sites. 

Aside from tweaking Oregon’s special land-use laws, state legislators are considering a bill that would fund nature-based climate solutions, like storing carbon in agricultural soil. Poor said the two bills seem to run counter to each other. “What do you want from us? Do you want us to sequester your carbon, or do you want to pave over our farmlands?”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Microplastics wreak havoc on fish in myriad ways, disrupting everything from eating behavior to brain development. While it’s clear these pesky particles can cause animals a world of trouble, scientists have found it much harder to pin down exactly how they cause so many problems.

“We know that if you expose animals to plastics, then oftentimes we’ll see pathology,” says Andrew Wargo, a disease ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). “But what we don’t really know are the secondary effects.”

That, however, is starting to change.

In controlled laboratory experiments, Wargo and his VIMS colleagues have shown how microplastics leave rainbow trout more vulnerable to a common salmonid disease, infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV). The effect can be dramatic: by exposing trout to a high concentration of either polystyrene beads or nylon microfibers for one month and then subjecting them to IHNV, the scientists found that fish were three to six times more likely to die, respectively, than IHNV-infected fish that hadn’t been exposed to plastics.

As well as increasing the lethality of IHNV, the microplastics also caused the exposed fish to have higher viral loads and shed more virus.

Taking tissue samples from the fish at different points in the experiment, the scientists found that the plastics were damaging the fish’s gills and provoking an inflammatory response. This likely makes it easier for the virus to invade the fish’s body, leading to more severe disease.

“There’s this kind of priming happening with some plastics,” says Meredith Evans Seeley, an environmental chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the study’s lead author. “That allows the pathogens to be more successful at colonizing the host.”

“Understanding the mechanism of how microplastics can increase the virulence of a virus? That’s pretty new,” says Bettie Cormier, an aquatic ecotoxicologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who was not involved in the work.

The deadly synergy between microplastics and viruses could be especially troubling in aquaculture operations, Wargo says. Infections spread easily on fish farms, and farmed fish frequently encounter plastics such as nylon and polystyrene, which are used for buoys and nets.

Wild fish encounter microplastics and viruses, too, Cormier adds, so similar interactions between microplastics and pathogens could be having ecosystem-level effects.

“Plastics and pathogens are everywhere,” Wargo says. “I think if we want to understand the effects of both, we probably need to consider them together.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Maybe you’re used to turning your computer on every day with the power button and off every evening with a few clicks—or perhaps you just leave it running around the clock. Instead, save yourself some time by making your computer turn on and shut down on a schedule.

Not only will you save money on energy bills, but you’ll also have your PC or Mac booted up and waiting for you in the morning when you reach the office (or home office). You can also leave your computer working on a task (like a hefty download or a long video encoding process) knowing that it will switch off when it’s done. Or maybe you just want to fall asleep to some streaming video, without leaving your laptop or desktop running all night—there are lots of ways to use this superpower.

How to automatically turn on a Windows PC

Powering up a PC on a schedule requires a bit of digging around in the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) that launches before Windows does. On computers sold in the last few years, the BIOS has been replaced by the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), but they do a very similar job.

To get to the BIOS or UEFI, you’ll need to press a specific key while your computer is booting up. Which one varies from device to device, but it’s usually F2, F8, Delete, or Esc. The key you’ll need should be displayed on screen during the startup process, but if you’re really stuck, try looking for documentation for your PC’s make and model on the web.

[Related: Small, game-changing utilities for Windows and macOS]

Different manufacturers configure their BIOS or UEFI differently, so we can’t give you exact instructions for how to find the scheduling feature, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to track down—look for some kind of advanced settings or power management menu after you press the proper key. If you can’t find anything, your PC might not have this feature at all, but you should check the web to make sure.

The Dell desktop we used as a test machine for this guide was running Windows 10, and we pressed F2 to enter the BIOS screen. There, we found an Auto Power On option under the Power menu. This gave us the choice to turn the computer on at a certain time every day or on one particular day, but as we’ve said, your PC may be slightly different.

Alternative ways to enter the Windows BIOS/UEFI

On a Windows 11 Lenovo laptop, we were able to access the BIOS/UEFI mode while the computer was still on by navigating through its settings. You can also use the Windows Terminal app. Just know that these two methods are somewhat more complicated and you’ll want to make sure you save all your work before you proceed. Although you’ll be starting with a device that’s already on, you’ll still have to reboot it in the end.

From the Settings app, choose System on the left, then scroll down to click on Recovery. Under the Recovery options heading, find Advanced startup and hit Restart now. Here, Windows will warn you to save your work, but if you’ve already done so you can click Restart now from the dialog box. On the next screen, go to Troubleshoot, Advanced Options, UEFI Firmware Settings, and hit Restart to enter BIOS/UEFI.

If you’d rather use the Terminal app, search for it via the Start menu. Open it and enter this command (without the period at the end): shutdown /r /o /f /t 00. Hit Enter to restart your computer. From the “Choose an Option” screen that appears, click Troubleshoot, Advanced Options, UEFI Firmware Settings, and then Restart.

How to schedule a shutdown on Windows 10 or 11

Shutting down a Windows computer on a schedule is much more straightforward. Use the taskbar search box or Start menu to look for and launch the Task Scheduler program, then click Create Basic Task and give it any name you like.

Work through the task creation process, using the Next buttons to move through the steps. Along the way, you can pick the days and times you want the scheduled shutdown to occur, and have it repeat automatically or leave it as a one-off action. When you get to the Action screen, choose Start a program and enter shutdown.exe as the program to launch. You’ll see a summary, and can click Finish to confirm the scheduling.

To see all the tasks you’ve set up, go back to the main Task Schedule interface and click Task Scheduler Library. You can edit and delete them from here using the options on the right side of the panel. Note that you can configure multiple tasks for multiple times on multiple days if you need to (so your PC automatically shuts down at a different time on a Sunday than a Monday, for example).

How to automatically turn a Mac on and off

If you’re using a version of macOS that predates Ventura, you’ve got it easy and can skip to the following subsection. But if you’ve upgraded to Apple’s latest operating system, scheduling automatic shutdowns and boots is quite a bit more complicated than it used to be.

You used to be able to tell your Mac to shut down and start up on a schedule by clicking through obvious options in the macOS system settings, but all of those are gone in Ventura. Now, you’ll have to use the Terminal app. To find it, search for it on your computer using Spotlight search or your preferred app-locating method.

Inside this app, you’ll be using a “pmset” command, and there are a few things you’ll need to know before you build one:

• Dates are formatted as MM/DD/YY, so April 10, 2021 would be 04/10/21.
• Time is formatted as HH:MM:SS, so 9 a.m. would be 09:00:00.
• Days of the week are generally formatted using their first letter (Monday is “M”, but there are two exceptions: Thursday is “R” and Sunday is “U”.

Whether you’d like to schedule your Mac to shut down, start up, or reboot, the commands follow a similar pattern. You may also need to enter your password before your computer will complete the task. Use these examples as guides to create your own schedule:

• Automatic startup: To get your device to turn on every weekday at, say, 8:59 a.m. (the minute before you sit down at your desk), enter sudo pmset repeat poweron MTWRF 08:59:00 into the Terminal. If you’re someone who puts your computer to sleep instead, you can replace “poweron” with “wake”.
• Automatic shutdown: If you want your Mac to shut down every Friday at 5 p.m., enter sudo pmset repeat shutdown F 17:00:00 into the Terminal. This may just stop you from working into the weekend.
• Schedule restart: For an automatic macOS restart every other day at 3 a.m., enter sudo pmset repeat restart MWFU 03:00:00 into the Terminal. Maybe now you won’t keep putting off those updates.

How to schedule a Mac shutdown, startup, or reboot in older versions of macOS

Unlike with macOS Ventura, you don’t need to bother with the Terminal app to schedule various tasks in older versions of the OS. Instead, open the Apple menu, then choose System Preferences. To get to the scheduling screen, click Energy Saver and Change Settings (on a desktop Mac), or Battery and Schedule (on a MacBook).

Check the Start up or wake box, and you can set a startup time for every day, only weekdays, just the weekend, or on a single day of your choosing—just use the drop-down lists to set your preference.

[Related: 23 useful Mac settings hiding in plain sight]

The next check box has three options: Sleep, Restart, or Shut Down. Once you’ve made your selection, you’ll get the same choices you do with starting up the Mac. Click Apply to confirm your choices.

A few notes to remember: You can’t have multiple timings for different days, just one startup and one shutdown time for each day you scheduled automation. On a MacBook, startup scheduling will only work if the laptop is plugged in and charging.

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The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released its Sixth Synthesis Report on climate change (AR6). The report aims to recognize the current status and trends of climate change and identify adaptation and mitigation pathways in the context of sustainable development. It says there’s still time to act on climate change, but urgent action is needed.

Globally, many factors cause implementation gaps in climate change mitigation and adaptation practices. According to the report, insufficient funding and the lack of political frameworks for finance are two major ones.

“The financial sector should be the engine of the transformation to a low-carbon, resilient, and socially inclusive world economy,” says Kevin P. Gallagher, director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center whose specializations include international environmental policy and economic development. “At present, it is unhinged from those goals, where short-term speculative investment and traditional fossil fuels are seen as less risky than productive, employment-generating investment in clean growth and adaptation.”

[Related: ‘Humanity on thin ice’ says UN, but there is still time to act on climate change.]

Public and private financing for fossil fuels is said to be higher than that for climate adaptation and mitigation. Fossil energy subsidies reached $732 billion in 2021, compared to $543 billion in 2015. Insufficient finances can hamper the adoption of low-emission technologies. This explains in part why the adoption of low-emission technologies like electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries lags in most developing countries.

At the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) of the UNFCCC in 2010, developed countries made a goal of mobilizing $100 billion for climate action in developing countries by 2020. Although the climate finance mobilized by developing countries has increased from $52.4 billion in 2013 to $83.3 billion in 2020, it was still below the collective goal.

According to the IPCC report, accelerated financial support from developed countries and other sources is a “critical enabler” to enhancing mitigation and adaptation action. Otherwise, the poorest and most vulnerable populations will remain disproportionately affected by the losses and damages from climate change.

To help accelerate financial support for developing countries, Gallagher says developed countries can increase the capital of the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) like the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank. Wealthy countries could direct capital into “sectors and sources of economic activity that serve a public purpose until we can reform the financial system commensurately,” which is already on the table this year, he adds. 

Currently, the US and Germany are pushing for a fundamental reform of the World Bank to tackle climate change more appropriately. Gallagher says this can’t be done without an increase in the capital of the World Bank. German Development Minister Svenja Schulze, along with the US and other shareholders, proposed some changes to the World Bank’s current model to make it more appealing for developing countries to use its loans for climate action and biodiversity conservation. This includes climate lending on better terms and providing targeted budget support for governments pursuing climate-neutral policy reforms.

“Given that the fossil fuel sector will be a ‘stranded asset’ as the financial sector is reformed toward these broader goals,” says Gallagher, “the fossil fuel industry and the politicians in states that represent them are pushing back mightily on financial sector reform, especially in the United States.”

Investment in companies with responsible environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices in place may be an effective tool to address climate change, especially if it includes policies that reduce a company’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, corporate investments focused on ESG policies in the US are facing backlash. Last December, Florida’s chief financial officer announced that the state treasury will divest about $2 billion from multi-national investment company BlackRock Inc., arguing that “they’ve got other goals than producing returns” because of their ESG investing practices.

[Related: How banks are using technology to fight climate change.]

Climate change itself affects economic growth and the availability of financial resources. For example, more frequent and severe disasters and the risk of abrupt value losses in climate risk-sensitive geographical areas may impair financial stability.

“Here in the US, we have to look no further than the increased incidences of forest fires, droughts, flooding, and tropical storms,” says Gallagher. “These wipe out the capital stock in terms of businesses and houses, hurt agricultural productivity, and end up putting folks out of work. When the financial sector is exposed to those assets and households through lending and investment, they take collateral damage too.”
Redirecting capital toward climate action within the national and global financial sectors must occur on a major scale to secure a liveable future. As United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said, the climate time bomb is ticking. “Globally, a network of central banks and the International Monetary Fund are starting to move in the right direction,” says Gallagher, “but time is of the essence.”

The post How big banks can make real progress against climate change appeared first on Popular Science.

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

Last year, U.S. renewable electricity generation surpassed coal for the first time, according to newly released federal data. The report marks a major milestone in the transition to clean energy, but experts say that much faster progress is needed to reach international climate targets.

According to the Energy Information Administration, a federal statistical agency, combined wind and solar generation increased from 12 percent of national power production in 2021 to 14 percent in 2022. Hydropower, biomass, and geothermal added another 7 percent — for a total share of 21 percent renewables last year. The figure narrowly exceeded coal’s 20 percent share of electricity generation, which fell from 23 percent in 2021. 

The growth in renewable electricity was largely driven by a surge in added wind and solar capacity, the agency said. Texas was the top wind-generating state last year, producing more than a quarter of all U.S. wind generation. It was also the leading state for natural gas and coal power. Iowa and Oklahoma landed at second and third in wind generation, accounting for 10 percent and 9 percent of national wind power respectively. 

California took the lead in solar, clocking in with 26 percent of the nation’s solar electricity. Texas came in second at 16 percent, followed by North Carolina at 8 percent. Renewable generation also exceeded nuclear for the second year in a row, after surging ahead for the first time in 2021. 

But the report found that fossil fuels still dominate the country’s energy mix. Natural gas remained the top source of electricity in the U.S. — its share rose from 37 percent of electricity generation in 2021 to 39 percent in 2022. 

For 2023, the Energy Information Administration forecasts additional growth in renewables. The agency predicts wind power will increase from 11 percent to 12 percent of total power generation this year. Solar is projected to rise from 4 percent to 5 percent. Coal is expected to further decline from 20 percent to 17 percent. Meanwhile, natural gas generation is expected to remain unchanged.

Despite the encouraging news, some energy experts say the uptick in renewables still isn’t fast enough. On Tuesday, the International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization, announced that global annual investments in renewables need to more than quadruple to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The assessment echoes the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top climate science body, which called for a rapid scale-down of greenhouse gas emissions largely produced from fossil fuels. 

Melissa Lott, director of research for the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, told the Associated Press that the $369 billion in clean energy spending authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act should have a “tremendous” impact on further accelerating domestic renewable energy growth. But to reach that potential, the U.S. may need new policies to remove hurdles that stand in the way of building new clean energy infrastructure. 

In the United States, rapid deployment of renewable energy has been hindered by practical barriers including delays in connecting projects to aging electric grids. At the end of 2021, thousands of wind, solar, and battery storage projects were waiting to connect to grids across the country. According to data from the Department of Energy, less than 20 percent of wind and solar projects waiting to be connected are successfully completed. And even when projects are approved, developers often discover they need to pay for new transmission lines to deliver power to residents and businesses. Those transmission lines often face further permitting delays.

“It doesn’t matter how cheap the clean energy is,” Spencer Nelson, the managing director of research at the nonprofit ClearPath Foundation, recently told the New York Times. “If developers can’t get through the interconnection process quickly enough and get enough steel in the ground, we won’t hit our climate change goals.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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In the United States, almost 32 percent of the average household’s purchased food goes to waste, a total annual loss of around $240 billion. All that squandered sustenance is hard on a household budget, as the moment spoiled food hits the trash can or compost heap, your money goes with it. But if you want to, you know, get what you paid for and eat your groceries instead, consider dehydrating them before they go bad.

How to make dehydrated food

Safely dehydrating food is fairly straightforward, according to Bryan Mayer, a butchery educator based in Kailua, Hawaii. He points out that safe dehydration techniques predate the Industrial Revolution by centuries.

“This has been a part of how we’ve made food safe to eat pre-refrigeration and certainly pre-canning, so it’s something that’s totally within reach for most people,” he explains. “It’s certainly something fun to do and something that I think we can use on an individual basis to reduce waste, keep things out of compost.”

Dehydrating meat, poultry, and fish

Mayer says the main thing to know about drying raw meat, poultry, and fish is that you’ll need to first cook it to a food-safe temperature specific to that protein before reducing the heat to a level more appropriate for dehydrating. If you need a reference, the US Department of Agriculture has a list of safe minimum internal temperatures for various foods.

Beyond that, start with the best-quality cut you can get, Mayer says. He recommends leaner cuts because you’ll have less overall work to do, since you’ll want to remove the fat if there is any.

“You’ll want to slice it however thick or thin you want, and then you’ll want to marinate it, usually up to 24 hours,” he says. The longer you marinate, the more any salt within your spice mix will seep into the meat, which means more time for the salt to penetrate cells and break things down.

[Related: Your food could be better if you salt it at the right time]

Any other spices will just sit on the surface of the meat, not making molecular changes like salt will, Mayer adds. There are no rules for what spices or other flavorings you can add to your meat jerky; you can go for tried-and-true options like barbecue sauce or mustard, or add something less likely to be in store-bought varieties, like Dr. Pepper or red wine and fish sauce. The People’s Choice Beef Jerky, a jerky purveyor, has a long list of possible meat jerky flavor combos.

Once you’ve decided the meat has marinated for long enough, line up the strips on a dehydrator rack or on a pan rack in your oven. Experiment with different lengths of time and temperatures, adding more time for lower temperatures (but always make sure as much moisture has been sucked from the meat as possible before you stop).

Dehydrating fruits, vegetables, herbs, and mushrooms

If you’re dehydrating fruits, vegetables, herbs, or mushrooms, it’s important to wash or brush them to remove any dirt, dust, or other contaminants, and prevent new ones, like insects, from getting into your newly dehydrated goods. That will help prevent the food from spoiling.

You’ll then want to cut everything into same-size pieces to ensure dehydration occurs evenly across your rack; a mandoline will help keep your cuts consistent.

Colorado State University recommends choosing one of several fruit pretreatment methods, using pure ascorbic acid crystals, citric acid, or other similar substances to help break down tough skins, prevent discoloration and kill off unhealthy bacteria. 

Because home-dried produce may not dehydrate evenly, you should mitigate mold growth by “conditioning”—loosely packing it in a shakeable container every day for a week—to help distribute any remaining moisture, according to the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia.

For vegetables, cut off any inedible parts, like stems or rot, before washing and thoroughly drying. Different vegetables dehydrate more easily after blanching, or briefly boiling then dunking in an ice bath, according to the Food Network. 

Herbs get a similar treatment: trim off any bruised, discolored, or inedible bits, as well as thicker stems, before you arrange them on the dehydrating rack. But you’ll have less room for temperature and time experimentation with the herbs, so set your dehydrator or countertop oven to the lowest possible setting and let them bake until they’re crumbly. You can also microwave smaller amounts sandwiched between paper towels for two or three minutes, then 30-second intervals until they’re dry.

[Related: Grow long and healthy hair with this DIY rosemary water]

If you don’t want to mechanically dry your herbs, sage, thyme, rosemary and other sturdy herbs can be bundled and air-dried indoors, according to the Oregon State University Master Food Preserver Program. Tender herbs, like basil and mint, can also be bundled and air dried, but OSU recommends hanging them inside a paper bag with vent holes cut in the top and side, closing the top, and placing it somewhere warm with good air circulation.

Dehydrating mushrooms is similar to other types of food dehydration, except you won’t need to think about pretreatment. You’ll want to clean them thoroughly, ensure no bugs are present, and trim off any inedible or tough bits before cutting them into even-size pieces. Different mushrooms will have different dehydrating times based on how moist they are, so a dryer mushroom won’t need as much time in the heat. Like fruits and vegetables, you’ll want to condition your mushrooms by storing them loosely in a sealed container and shaking them daily for a week.

How much food can I dehydrate at once?

At the height of mushroom season, Rob Rubba, a plant-based chef and co-owner of Oyster Oyster in Washington, D.C., says his restaurant “easily” receives deliveries of 100 pounds of local mushrooms each week. Not all of that will look pretty enough to be plated, so the less-attractive items end up dehydrated for use in future recipes.

That’s to say, there’s no maximum amount to how much food you can dehydrate—as long as you have enough space, heat, and time. But best practice is to lay everything out in an even layer with nothing overlapping on a rack on a sheet pan to maximize heat and air flow. Reasonably speaking, you can dehydrate as much as you can fit in your oven or on your dehydrator racks. You can also dehydrate different types of foods at once, but Rubba recommends considering flavor pairings in case of contamination. Apples and garlic, for example, wouldn’t taste great together.

That being said, while a dehydrator will cost money and take up space, having one means you can multitask in the kitchen by dehydrating while you use the oven for other tasks. A food dehydrator is also purpose-built, so you’ll be able to fine-tune your temperature settings, keep the heat and dryness consistent, and use levels of racks to dehydrate more than you could inside a single-rack countertop oven. In a pinch, you may also be able to build your own dehydrator.

But if you’re really low on space for a new kitchen appliance and feel like using a full oven would be a waste, Rubba suggests using the waning heat from cooking or baking in the oven to dehydrate food.

“As the oven cools, there’ll be a declining temperature that will be slowly drying it out,” he explains, adding that this is also a great way to make breadcrumbs. “The next day, you could pull [the food] out and have something dehydrated—and that’s a good way of just utilizing leftover energy.”

Dehydrated mushrooms can become vegan jerky, but they can also be remoistened and used in stocks, stews, or anywhere you would use a regular mushroom. Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health recommends rehydrating mushrooms for 15 to 20 minutes in boiling water.

[Related: 4 benefits of eating mushrooms]

Other dried produce can be rehydrated too. Generally, you’ll need to soak 1 cup of dried food in 1 to 3 cups of water for 30 to 90 minutes, and the University of Georgia has a handy chart you can refer to when rehydrating fruits and vegetables (page 7 of the linked PDF).

Slices or pieces of dried pineapple, oranges, kiwis, or other fruits can be used to garnish drinks and meals, or be eaten as a snack. Veggies can be dried into chips that can be eaten as-is or crushed into other things, like pasta dough and salads, or as a topping. Herbs can be dehydrated and ground into homemade spice mixes.

For bread service at Oyster Oyster, Rubba’s team makes a vegan marigold butter with “an abundance of marigold flowers that we dehydrate to garnish that and give it these pops of lemony, fragrant flavor on the butter,” he explains.

Another benefit of dehydrating foods is the flavor concentration that occurs when the water is stripped out, which Rubba, a 2023 James Beard award finalist, says can lead to “amazing” complexity.

“We’ve boiled and smoked whole pumpkins and then dehydrated those for a week to get this solid, giant piece that we can grate onto dishes, kind of reminiscent of a bonito [flake],” he explains. Rubba’s restaurant has also “reduced cucumber juice slowly in the dehydrator, and it takes on these wild, spicy flavors that you wouldn’t expect from a cucumber.”

How long you can keep dehydrated food

Proper storage is key to making dehydrated foods last. Rubba recommends using an airtight container to loosely pack anything you dehydrate and popping a silica packet inside to wick away any remaining moisture. Just make sure the packet isn’t broken and that you clean or thoroughly check the food when you use it again—silica beads are generally nontoxic but can be a choking hazard.

That’s going to give anything dehydrated a longer life, especially if you live in a humid climate, he explains, adding that dried fruits, veg, and ‘shrooms are shelf-stable but shouldn’t be exposed to moisture, so they’re better stored in the pantry than in the fridge.

Dried herbs, fruits, and vegetables should last up to a year but will not keep as long under hotter conditions; the National Center for Home Food Preservation says most dried fruits can be stored for one year at 60 degrees Fahrenheit, six months at 80 degrees, and that vegetables will last about half as long as fruits.

Properly dried meat won’t last nearly as long, according to the center—only about two weeks in a sealed container at room temperature, although you can refrigerate or freeze it to increase its shelf life. But odds are you’ll eat it long before two weeks pass.

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A torrent of brands have announced their twist on “AI” integrations, including 170-year-old clothing company Levi’s. The retailer revealed plans last week to begin testing AI-generated fashion models on their website as a potential tool to “supplement human models,” while increasing “diversity” in a “sustainable” way. Critics almost immediately highlighted concerns with the disconcerting corporatespeak, arguing that employing AI software in lieu of a diverse pool of actual human labor betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of equity and representation.

Levi’s has since issued a clarification—on Tuesday, the announcement page included a statement that the group “[does] not see this pilot as a means to advance diversity or as a substitute for the real action” on improving diversity and inclusion, “and it should not have been portrayed as such.” Speaking with PopSci this week, the company maintains the partnership with the “digital fashion studio” Lalaland.ai will still champion another cause—sustainability. Industry experts and insiders, however, remain deeply skeptical of those assertions, as well.

[Related: Why an AI image of Pope Francis in a fly jacket stirred up the internet.]

When first asked earlier this week for clarification on how AI integration promotes environmental sustainability, a spokesperson for Levi’s told PopSci via email, “While we can’t speak for Lalaland.ai, this technology has potential environmental benefits for LS&Co. that could be immediately recognized, including minimizing the carbon footprint of photoshoots.” The company representative went on to reiterate sustainability remains a “top priority” for Levi’s, and that supplementing clothing lines’ rolling style launches with AI-generated models “eliminates extra photoshoots, including the travel needed for the team, shipping the products back and forth, the energy used during the photoshoot, and more.” Lalaland.ai has not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.

The UN estimates between 8 and 10 percent of all global emissions stem from the fashion industry—more than both the aviation and shipping industries combined. Many advocates continue to push for sustainable fashion practices, and even believe some AI integration could help achieve these goals. But, the environmental impact of switching to some AI models for photoshoots is still unknown.

[Related: The universe is getting a weigh-in thanks to AI.]

“As someone who makes a living shooting e-commerce, my first thought was panic. Am I shortly out of a job?” worries Brian Frank, a freelance photographer currently based in Amsterdam. Frank tells PopSci he “did not foresee ‘sustainable’ as the reason. I assumed it would be deemed cheaper,” but conceding “the writing has been on the wall for some time that this was coming.” Still, Frank never thought models would be the starting point, much less for a company as large as Levi’s. “I assumed it would be for a smaller, high-end fashion house,” he says.

But even those running smaller fashion companies aren’t totally convinced. “I understand the benefits of AI technology for tasks such as virtual try-ons, personalized recommendations, and product design. However, for our brand, the final fit must always be on a human,” Andréa Bernholtz, founder of the sustainable swimwear company, Swiminista, writes via email, adding they “firmly believe that an AI cannot feel and move like a human, and it cannot let you know how it truly feels,” and calls the human factor a “non-negotiable.”

Bernholtz says she is excited about the continuing integration of technology within fashion, and believes it can be a powerful tool when combined with sustainable practices to increase efficiency, reduce material waste, and minimize the necessity of physical samples.

[Related: Meet Garmi, a robot nurse and companion for Germany’s elderly population.]

“When discussing sustainability, I must assume [Levi’s is] talking about no more samples produced to be photographed,” continues Frank, arguing that if a design render can be derived directly from AI, then that could eliminate a decent amount of physical waste. 

In Levi’s clarification, the company stated it has no plan to scale back its live photoshoots or the employment of live models, while arguing the Lalaland.ai partnership “may deliver some business efficiencies” for consumers. There is no indication its AI rollout has changed, with plans to begin tests later this year. 

“For now, what we do know is that AI models will never replace our human models, only supplement them where useful,” writes Levi’s in its addendum, adding that, “As with any test, we’ll be paying close attention to the consumer experience and actively listening to consumer feedback. 

The post Levi’s claimed using AI models will boost company’s sustainability and diversity appeared first on Popular Science.

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Update 3/31/23: Another food-tech company, Paleo, alleges that they first developed patent pending meat with mammoth myoglobin in 2021, and are now considering legal action against Vow. This post has been updated with their comments, along with a response from Vow

Researchers and ethicists have argued over the how’s, if’s, and should’s of reviving woolly mammoths for years—in the meantime, one startup just reportedly went ahead and cooked up their own version. As first highlighted by The Guardian, an Australian company called Vow has unveiled what it claims to be the first hybrid mammoth meatball made from fragments of the species’ DNA sequence spliced together alongside elephant cells. In doing so, the startup hopes to promote a speedier cultural transition to what could be environmentally friendly, sustainable lab-grown meats while highlighting humans’ impact on species die-off. But another startup is claiming to have developed mammoth myoglobin tech first, and are now considering legal action against Vow.

Industrial animal farming and consumption are widely considered to be some of the largest contributors to greenhouse emissions and water usage. Climate experts have repeatedly urged the importance of transitioning away from this carnivorous mindset towards healthier, sustainable options, but it can often feel like a steep ask for populations so used to their preferred, culturally reinforced diets. While lab-grown meat alternatives are increasingly gaining attention, Vow hoped to draw attention to cutting edge possibilities via resurrecting the iconic Ice Age giant in miniature, meatball form.

[Related: FDA says this lab-grown chicken is safe for human consumption.]

Despite the wild conceit, concocting the mammoth meatball apparently proved to be “ridiculously easy and fast,” said Ernst Wolvetang, a professor at the University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering who worked alongside the cultivated meatmakers. What’s more, it only took a “couple weeks” for Wolvetang’s team to harvest the approximately 20 billion mammoth-elephant meat cells grown within sheep myoblast stem cells.

For author Lincoln Michel, the news came as surprise. “It’s maybe a cliché at this point, but it’s very hard these days for satire to keep up with reality,” he told PopSci. Michel’s 2021 sci-fi novel, The Body Scout, cheekily mentions lab grown cuisine derived from long-extinct animal species against a dystopian, cyberpunk backdrop. “When I wrote The Body Scout, I thought adding mammoth burgers and teriyaki tyrannosaur wings would be a funny comment on the banality of modern capitalism’s vision,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see mammoth snacks a mere two years after publication.”

[Related: How to enjoy fake meat in a way that actually helps the planet.]

Vow already has plans to supply Singapore restaurants by the end of the year with lab-cultivated Japanese quail grown using similar methods. Additionally, the company has reportedly researched over 50 other species to add to their menu, including buffalo, crocodile, kangaroo, and various fish species. Dodo apparently was researchers’ first choice, but didn’t make the cut because they lacked the necessary DNA sequences.

But don’t expect to take part in mammoth taste tests for the conceivable future. As Wolvetang told The Guardian, humans haven’t ingested mammoth protein for thousands of years, so there’s no telling how immune systems would handle such a dish. Instead, the meatball is meant more as a representation of what the cultivated animal protein industry hopes to achieve. If the same methods continue to be applied to commonly eaten animals, then entirely new avenues for nutrition may become available to consumers. As one researcher explained to The Guardian, “By cultivating beef, pork, chicken and seafood we can have the most impact in terms of reducing emissions from conventional animal agriculture.”

Meanwhile, Paleo—a “precision fermentation company” based in Belgium—alleges Vow’s claims as the first to develop meat with mammoth myoglobin is false. “When we learned about [Vow’s announcement], we were surprised,” Hermes Sanctorum, CEO of Paleo, said in a statement provided to PopSci. “We sent out a press release nine months ago to announce that we developed the exact same mammoth protein (myoglobin), based on our fundamental research and innovation.”

Paleo representatives claim to have reached out to Vow prior to their product announcement. Vow allegedly responded by saying its mammoth meatball “was not food,” and dismissed Paleo’s concerns. “When Vow claim that no one has tasted mammoth myoglobin, this is simply not true,” said Sanctorum, adding that, “We developed the mammoth myoglobin and we tasted it in our lab.”

Sanctorum describes the mammoth protein’s “aromatic profile” as “stronger” than other species, meaning it both “smells and tastes meatier” with a “more vibrant” red coloring. Paleo claims it submitted patent applications that have been under review and available publicly for competitors nearly a year ago. In an email to PopSci, a representative for Vow denied the accusations, stating their mammoth meatball was “conceived, developed and created entirely by the hard work and ingenuity of Vow’s own scientists [and collaborators] and using a combination of publicly available genetic data and Vow’s own proprietary production processes,” and stated it will take “appropriate” responses to maintain “its reputation, its innovations, and its people.”

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Renewable energy is easy for plants. These green organisms take water, sunlight and carbon dioxide and make their own fuel. The magic happens within teeny molecular structures too small for the human eye to perceive. 

But while this process is a breeze for plants, truly understanding what happens is surprisingly hard for humans. Scientists know that it involves electrons, charge transfers, and some atomic-level physics, but the specifics of what happens and when are a bit hazy. Efforts have been made to decipher this mystery utilizing a range of tools from nuclear magnetic resonance to quantum computers.

Enter an approach that shoots laser pulses at live plant cells to take images of them, study author Tomi Baikie, a fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, explained to Earther. Using this tech, Baikie and his colleagues delved into the reaction centers of plant cells. Their findings were published this week in the journal Nature. 

The technique they used allowed the researchers to carefully watch what the electrons are doing, and “follow the flow of energy in the living photosynthetic cells on a femtosecond scale – a thousandth of a trillionth of a second,” according to a press release from University of Cambridge. 

Being able to have such a close eye on the electrons enabled the scientists to be able to make observations such as where the protein complex could leak electrons, and how charges move down the chain of chemical reactions. “We didn’t know as much about photosynthesis as we thought we did, and the new electron transfer pathway we found here is completely surprising,” Jenny Zhang, who coordinated the research, said in the statement.

[Related: The truth about carbon capture technology]

Knowing the intricacies behind how this natural process functions “opens new possibilities for re-wiring biological photosynthesis and creates a link between biological and artificial photosynthesis,” the authors wrote in the paper. That means they could one day use this knowledge to help reengineer plants to tolerate more sun, or create new formulas for cleaner, light-based fuel for people to use. 

Although the possibilities of “hacking” photosynthesis is more speculative, the team is excited about the potential of ultrafast spectroscopy itself, seeing how it can provide “rich information” on the “dynamics of living systems.” As PopSci previously reported, “using ultrashort pulses for spectroscopy allows scientists to peer into the depths of molecules and atoms, or into processes that start and finish in tiny fractions of a blink.”

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Bottled water is one of the most popular beverages in the world. In the United States, bottled water has outsold carbonated soft drinks every year since 2016. Currently, the global bottled water market is worth $270 billion, and it’s projected to exceed $500 billion by the end of the decade. Only three countries combined make up almost half of the global market: the USA, China, and Indonesia.

Despite its widespread consumption, bottled water might actually slow the progress of providing universal access to safe drinking water, according to a recent report from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health (UNU-INWEH).

Bottled water can foster distrust of and distract attention from clean tap water

The report argues that the rapidly-growing bottled water industry may have an adverse impact on the investments in long-term public water supply infrastructure development and improvement. The expansion of the bottled water market may distract governmental efforts to provide safe drinking water for all, says Zeineb Bouhlel, study author and research and communication associate at the UNU-INWEH.

“In certain countries such as Mexico and Indonesia, the industry is somehow reducing the role of the state in providing safe water for the population,” says Bouhlel. “When bottled water is popular, the government may spend less effort and less financial resources to make the public water supply available for all and of better quality.”

According to the report, the drivers of the bottled water market aren’t the same around the world. In the Global North, people drink bottled water because they don’t trust tap water and believe the former is healthier. However, individuals in the Global South are primarily motivated by the lack or absence of a reliable public water supply.

[Related: Sorting and recycling plastic is notoriously hard—but this AI could help.]

“In many places, bottled water is an important source of safe drinking water absent adequate public water supply systems,” says Sara Hughes, water policy expert and associate professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan. “But the bottled water industry actively encourages distrust of tap water, which does erode public support and investment in public drinking water systems even where the water is available and safe to drink.”

The idea that bottled water is unquestionably safer than tap water must be challenged. The quality of bottled water can be compromised by the origin of the water or the industrial processes it goes through, the report says. For example, commercially-bottled water labeled “mineral water” or “spring water” isn’t guaranteed to be free of Cryptosporidium (Crypto) parasites, the second highest cause of reported waterborne disease outbreaks in 2015.

Globally, tap water is much more regulated and monitored than bottled water, with the latter having less sampling and no obligation to disclose information on the content or the process for some types and in certain countries, says Bouhlel.

The growing bottled water industry may distract attention and resources from the development of public water supply systems, when, in reality, less than half of what the world pays for bottled water every year is enough to ensure clean tap water access for millions of people without it for years to come.

The bottled water industry’s impact on the environment

The bottled water industry may have negative effects on the environment through the whole supply chain, from water extraction to packaging disposal, says Bouhlel. For instance, it contributes to the pressure on water resources and may increase water scarcity at a local level, he adds.

“Bottled water can place additional burden on aquifers, rivers, and streams, unless withdrawals are properly accounted for,” says Hughes. “In most parts of the U.S., and globally, we lack tools to accurately track and measure how an additional withdrawal—such as for bottled water—affects aquatic ecosystems, and the ability to regulate withdrawals from shared aquifers in particular.”

The production of plastics and the logistics of delivering the product to the consumer also come at the price of greenhouse gas emissions, says Bouhlel. The manufacturing of bottled water is very fossil-fuel intensive. A 2009 Environmental Research Letters study estimated the energy footprint of the various phases of bottled water production and found that it requires about 5.6 and 10.2 million joules of energy per liter, about 2000 times the energy cost of producing tap water.

[Related: Groundwater is an incredible resource. It’s time to treat it like one.]

“Environmental impacts may also be seen at the stage of disposal, where more than 80 percent of bottled water is packaged in plastic and PET containers, and where the recycling rate so far is very low at a global level,” he adds. Plastic bottles often end up in landfills and bodies of water, harming natural ecosystems and biodiversity.

Improving access to drinking water supply in the US

The United States has one of the safest public water supplies in the world. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for ensuring that public water systems meet the standards for drinking water quality. “[T]he majority of Americans do not need to purchase more expensive and environmentally harmful bottled water to meet their needs,” says Hughes. “That said, there are communities in the U.S. that do lack safe and reliable drinking water and that is completely unacceptable.”

A 2021 Nature Communications study reported that over a thousand community water systems are considered “serious violators” of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Moreover, about 48 percent of households on Indian reservations don’t have access to clean water. Residents of Jackson, Mississippi and Flint, Michigan have all been affected by a major water supply crisis in recent years as well.

According to Hughes, there are three significant drinking water supply challenges in the US, and they can all be addressed with federal investment: ensuring the old drinking water systems are maintained and kept in compliance, providing safe drinking water access in Tribal communities, and addressing drinking water quality and access problems facing rural communities.

“Communities need resources to upgrade and repair aging systems and replace lead service lines, and increasing water rates to cover these costs will not be feasible in all places,” says Hughes. “Tribal communities are in need of significant and long-overdue infrastructure investment.”

Rural communities, which face challenges related to declining water supplies and contaminated water sources, might require a mix of funding and regulatory solutions. This can include restricting agricultural runoff, exploring regionalization opportunities for rural water systems, and investing in technical capacities in these systems and their personnel, says Hughes.

In 2018, the EPA published its Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment and reported that the country needs about $472.6 billion to maintain and improve drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years. It would be used to replace or improve deteriorating pipelines, expand infrastructure to reduce water contamination, and construct water storage reservoirs.

“Some of the most important policy changes could have more to do with how drinking water systems are funded and organized,” says Hughes, “rather than only ramping up regulatory requirements.”

The post Our bottled water habit stands in the way of universal clean drinking water appeared first on Popular Science.

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This article was originally published on Undark.

To jumpstart a paltry market for recycled plastic, governments across the globe are pushing companies to include recycled materials in their products. Last year, the United Kingdom introduced a tax on manufacturers that produce or import plastic packaging containing less than 30 percent recycled plastic. In 2024, New Jersey will begin enforcing similar rules, albeit with lower targets. California now requires that beverage containers be made of 15 percent recycled materials, and Washington will enact a similar requirement later this year. The European Commission, Canada, and Mexico are all considering comparable moves.

Currently, most plastic products are derived from freshly extracted fossil fuels, including crude oil and natural gas. Incorporating some recycled plastic could reduce emissions, and shrink pollution in waterways and landfills, experts say. But collecting, sorting, pulverizing, and melting post-consumer plastics for reuse is expensive. The new laws will potentially help recyclers find buyers for what would otherwise become waste.

But regulators may need a better way to verify that the new laws are working. While companies can enlist a third-party to certify their use of recycled content, most certifiers take a bird’s-eye view, tracking the materials across a range of products and factories. As a result, an item with a “recycled content” label might be completely devoid of recycled content.

This current approach, called mass balance, poses additional challenges for those seeking to verify recycled content. To work well, mass balance requires trustworthy and accurate data, which are not always available across a convoluted supply chain. Experts warn mass balance may also lead to inflated estimates of recycled content.

Researchers in the U.K. have developed a novel method to measure this recycled content that adds fluorescent dyes to recycled plastics at the beginning of manufacturing. By measuring the change in color, the team can determine the amount of recycled content in each individual plastic product. Through the nonprofit ReCon², the team is running pilot tests in real-world conditions and says this approach can help prevent fraud, keep costs low, and improve consumer trust.

In 2019, the world generated roughly 350 million tons of plastic, a doubling of production over the past two decades. Just 6 percent of global plastics produced came from recycled plastics, leaving most to be shoveled into landfills, incinerated, or carried into ecosystems. Recycling is not sufficient for solving the problem of plastic pollution, many researchers suggest. Instead, the issue will require some measure of reduction and re-use as well. Nevertheless, scientists say that these new laws and technologies that focus on this last option could mitigate the environmental harms of plastic production.

It’s “imperative” to be able to track materials through this recycling market in a way that makes sense, said Katrina Knauer, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “If we really want to make the circular economy a reality, efficient tracking and quantifiable tracking is going to be the only way we can really do that and create trust in a system.”

Companies like Unilever, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo have been making claims about using recycled content in their products for years. But the term “recycled content” is as flexible as the term “organic” before regulators clamped down on its use, said Knauer. Earning that badge now requires ticking several boxes determined by federal agencies in the U.S. and the European Commission in the EU. Recycled content hasn’t received the same kind of regulatory scrutiny.

As the recycling industry develops, “I think we will run into some of the same challenges that we ran into in the past with companies making claims that may not be very true,” said Knauer, who is also the chief technology officer at the Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment, an organization at the Department of Energy that helps companies adopt greener plastics technologies.

Right now, many companies use mass balance, which considers all of the inputs that go into making a product and then balances them with the outputs to calculate the amount of recycled material.

For example, say there are 20 plastic bottles in a recycling bin. Those enter a mass balance when they are handed over to a recycling company. A manufacturer may then buy these bottles from the recycling company, as well as the equivalent of 80 bottles from newly extracted oil or gas. Assuming the manufacturer then produces 100 total bottles, the mass balance will conclude that each bottle is made with 20 percent recycled content.

But there’s a twist: Under some certification schemes, the company can attribute its recycled material evenly across several plants, including those that haven’t been able to acquire any recycled material. As a result, you usually cannot calculate a single product’s recycled content, if it has any at all.

For Zero Waste Europe, a network of European communities and experts pushing companies and governments to reduce waste, this makes the mass balance approach “a simplistic and meaningless bookkeeping exercise.” But the problem goes beyond misleading marketing. Recycled material can be lower quality, and too much in a product may threaten the product’s integrity.

There are some benefits to mass balance’s flexible approach. With the supply of recycled plastics limited in some areas, it’s helpful to allow companies to compensate by using extra recycled content in areas with plenty to buy.

Eventually, however, consumers should be able to expect that the bottle in their hands has a specific level of recycled content. “That’s the ultimate goal, but it is a really complex system, and it takes a long time to make changes, so we’ll probably need to rely on mass balance to meet that kind of transition,” said Alix Grabowski, director of plastic and material science at the World Wildlife Fund.

That system complexity is felt in other ways, too. Tracking recycled materials along sometimes tortuous chains of purchases depends on trust between companies, said Wan-Ting Hsu, a material flow research analyst and Ph.D. candidate at University College London. Post-consumer plastic material can pass between many companies and jurisdictions with different rules about responsibility and accounting before it returns to retailers ready to sell it back to consumers.

In interviews with key stakeholders in the plastics value chain, such as brand owners and recyclers, Hsu has learned that companies struggle to verify the source of material, and often they are left to ask for data from previous owners, which can sometimes be inaccurate. Without better proof of content, companies could make misleading claims, experts say, though they could not point to public evidence of such cases.

Another issue: The methods to certify recycled content vary across certification bodies, and there is little consistency. When the Canadian government commissioned the environmental consultancy company Eunomia to consult with manufacturers, as evidenced in the 2021 report, the manufacturers said they often chose certification schemes that offered the most flexible approach. Under such schemes, the company with 20 recycled bottles in its mix of 100, for example, could claim 20 of its bottles are 100 percent recycled, even when this is not the case.

“At this point we haven’t had any real legislation for this,” said Sarah Edwards, North America CEO at Eunomia. Up until now, she added, companies have used certification more for marketing or as part of longer-term sustainability goals.

The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery told Undark that it requires beverage manufacturers to report data to them directly and does not use third-party certifiers at this time. It would not disclose the method to certify information reported. In a draft rule in Washington state that will be finalized later this year, the Department of Ecology said it will require that producers attest to the accuracy of their data or obtain third-party certification.

Mass balance is especially contentious when it is used to certify products created from chemical recycling, a collection of mostly new techniques to strip plastics down to their basic building blocks, called monomers. In contrast to mechanical recycling, which shreds plastic but keeps its chemical form, manufacturers can use monomers to construct many different kinds of plastics, which are made up of polymers.

As part of the chemical recycling process, a plant may burn a portion of the recycled material into fuel or other byproducts. Though this process releases greenhouse gases, some mass balance certifications allow a company to count the burned plastic towards its output of “recycled content.” The hypothetical supply chain that takes in 20 recycled bottles may still claim to produce bottles with 20 percent recycled content, even if 5 of those recycled bottles have been burnt as fuel.

In its 2021 report, Eunomia wrote that the chemical sector preferred to work with ISCC Plus, a third-party certifier in Germany that allows this kind of tabulation. In Edwards’ eyes, the chemical recycling industry is pushing for this as a temporary tool to get started.

There’s an additional point of contention: With some processes of reducing polymers down to monomers, molecules can react with ambient elements like nitrogen and hydrogen, inflating their weight with molecules that aren’t plastic. Calculating a mass balance just on weight — the typical approach for mechanical recycling — doesn’t work as well for chemical recycling and can overestimate the recycled content in materials.

A widely cited white paper published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity committed to creating a circular economy, provided an example: Producing 100 pounds of polyamide, often used in textiles, would require 150 pounds of recycled material if measured with weight, or 170 pounds if measured with calorific value — a unit that quantifies an object’s energy and doesn’t change as readily.

Scientists and engineers have agreed to use more precise units, like calorific value, but “there is quite a bit of argument across the industry” about which units to use, Knauer said.

Michael Shaver, a professor of polymer science at the University of Manchester and one of the researchers involved with ReCon², said the group had “significant concerns in terms of the mass balance approach.”

“If the public believes that this is a measure of exactly how much plastic is in each package, that’s not what mass balance actually gives you, right?” he said.

Shaver wanted to develop a way to measure the recycled content in each individual product. He joined with Ph.D. student Zoé Schyns and research fellow Thomas Bennett, and together they developed a technique that adds fluorescent dye to the recycled materials during the manufacturing process. Regardless of what happens between the beginning and end of manufacturing, the ratio between fluorescence at the beginning and end reveals the concentration of recycled content in each individual product. Some of the light appears as green within the visible light spectrum, but one strategy is to keep the precise technique a secret so companies do not misuse it.

“We can show not only that everyone in your supply chain acted appropriately, but also that you have the same in all of your different bottles or film,” said Shaver. Although the public results focus on three of the most popular plastic types, the researchers say the approach can be adapted for other kinds of plastics and rules. Sponsors of a year-long trial phase include Kraft-Heinz and Reckitt, two large consumer good corporations, and the U.K.’s leading recycling label, OPRL.

The company believes roll out of the technology would require an industry-wide approach, even as others doubt that plastic producers can adapt to including tracers. Shaver expects that their nonprofit ReCon² will “shepherd” firms into the program, while it audits participating companies and gatekeeps against products with inaccurate or false recycled content claims. As a nonprofit, it would prioritize keeping the technique as low- cost as possible to promote adoption and minimize fraud through passive compliance.

On a broader scale, Knauer expects that establishing trust in measuring recycled content will take action from governments, as happened with “organic” labels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may be moving in this direction. In 2021, the agency laid out a national recycling strategy that includes the creation of “recycled content measures.” (A spokesperson told Undark that the EPA hasn’t started working on this yet.)

“I do not think that mass balance is the way we’re going to do it forever,” said Knauer. “I think there’s a lot to be done in this space and a lot more innovation we can certainly do.”

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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One of the greatest inventions humans ever made was by accident. It was 1942, and the US had just entered World War II after the bombing in Pearl Harbor. As Americans enlisted to fight, companies were scrambling for ways to help with the war effort. At the time, the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, came up with the idea of a plastic gun sight that would boost the aim of Allied soldiers. In trying to make the piece, chemist Henry Coover discovered the sticky properties of a compound called ethyl cyanoacrylate, which eventually became Super Glue.

Coover abandoned his efforts at converting ethyl cyanoacrylate into a plastic and instead focused on developing the product as an instant adhesive. But the potential is still there. Super Glue has the chemical monomer needed to create plastic—someone just needs to figure out how to keep it from instantly bonding with other surfaces. Now, a study published in the journal Science Advances details a new method for easily converting Super Glue into a plastic that can be recycled repeatedly. And while it might have the potential to replace nonbiodegradable plastics, some polymers experts warn that it could introduce different kinds of pollution in the manufacturing process.

[Related: Recycling one of the planet’s trickiest plastics just got a little easier]

Super Glue reacts with a lot of different materials, says Allison Christy, a graduate research assistant at Boise State University in Idaho and lead author of the new study. This is ideal if you’re creating an adhesive because it would produce short polymers that increase elasticity. For plastic-making, however, you need long polymers to maintain durability. 

The first challenge with Super Glue is stretching out its reaction time. To create long polymers, you need a longer reaction time. The authors screened for weakly bonding substances (known as initiators in chemistry) and co-reactants that would not produce a new compound once it made contact with Super Glue. They ultimately settled on acetone as their initiator with a small amount of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), a colorless liquid that dissolves most organic and inorganic compounds. 

Another issue the team needed to address was where to set off the reaction. Because Super Glue sticks to mostly everything, they needed a container that would not react with ethyl cyanoacrylate and let them get the plastic out without sticking to the walls. The solution: Tupperware. “Super Glue doesn’t stick well to things like polypropylene and polyethylene,” which are the main plastics in Tupperware, says Scott Phillips, a professor of materials science and engineering at Boise State University and author on the study.

Next, the team came up with a reaction that slowed down the reactivity of Super Glue, lengthened the bonding time between molecules, and created longer polymers. Once they had their resulting plastic—polyethyl cyanoacrylate or PECA—they had to work on strengthening it. Christy did this by annealing the substance, or heating it for 20 to 30 minutes to improve its mechanical properties. The thermal properties of PECA also allowed the researchers to mold the plastic into different shapes, such as a bowl. 

The final step focused on sustainability. The researchers wanted to design a plastic that could be converted back to the raw materials, creating a closed-loop system that reduces waste. To do so, they heated the PECA to 410 degrees Fahrenheit to break the bonds holding the polymer together, along with a dehydrating agent called phosphorous pentoxide to remove any accidentally formed water. 

The process provided a 93-percent yield of the original monomers—a “pretty shocking” result, Phillips says. “The Superglue monomer is just so reactive and I assumed it would react with everything. But it’s also volatile, so under these conditions of heating, it evaporated and that immediately separates it from all the stuff that it would normally react with.” Because materials like acetone and DMSO are cheap and readily available, Christy expects the yield to be even higher if done in an industrial setting.

“This is an interesting paper reporting on synthesizing new polymers, and may provide useful properties for use in plastics applications,” says Ramani Narayan, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University and expert in bioplastics, who was not involved in the study. However, he cautions that PECA could have the same issue as other non-degradable plastics and potentially shed microplastics that would accumulate in the environment.

That’s not the only pollution concern Narayan has. He says one of the reaction steps involves evaporating chemicals like acetone, which in turn allows residual solvents to be emitted into the air. This could be an issue in manufacturing plants that carry strict guidelines for volatile organic compound emissions. Additionally, Narayan notes that two of the ingredients needed to make ethyl cyanoacrylate are chloroacetic acid and sodium cyanide, and are “not generally considered safe [for human health] or environmentally responsible.”

[Related: How companies greenwash their plastic pollution]

The study does bring up an important question: What’s the best way to deal with plastics? There are an estimated 8.3 billion tons of plastic in the world today. While green efforts encourage people to reduce, reuse, and recycle, about 79 percent of plastic sit in landfills because they are unrecyclable. For example, polystyrene is a petroleum-based plastic that is difficult to break down. Yet, it’s a common and versatile plastic that’s used in everyday products such as yogurt cups and single-use spoons. The study authors note that it makes up six percent of total plastic waste. “If people could use [PECA] instead of the polystyrene for various applications, in theory, it should reduce that six percent because we’d be able to recycle [the plastic] back to starting material again,” explains Phillips.

“We can’t get rid of plastic entirely. It’s impossible. It’s one of the most valuable materials to society,” adds Christy. “If we can use creative approaches and rethink plastic and some of the other materials around us, there are solutions out there worth pursuing.”

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On March 21, President Biden hosted the White House Conservation in Action Summit. His administration announced two new national monuments aimed to conserve and restore land, a possible new marine sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean, and the “first of its kind” Ocean Climate Action Plan.

“Our natural wonders are literally the envy of the world,” President Biden said while addressing the summit. “They’ve always been and they always will be as central to our heritage as a people and essential to our identity as a nation.”

[Related: ‘Humanity on thin ice’ says UN, but there is still time to act on climate change.]

Here’s a look at some of the announcements and plans from the summit.

Two new national monuments

Biden announced two new monuments, one in Nevada and another in Texas. Nevada’s Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, “will honor Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples while conserving our public lands and growing America’s outdoor recreation economy,” according to a press release from the Biden Administration.  The new national monument site spans more than 500,000 acres of rugged landscape close to the California and Arizona state lines. It’s home to desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, some almost 900 year-old Joshua Trees, and the sacred desert mountain Avi Kwa Ame.

“The Mojave people, known as the people by the river, hold Avi Kwa Ame in our hearts,” said Fort Mojave Indian Tribal Chairman Timothy Williams at the summit. “Avi Kwa Ame, also known as Spirit Mountain, lays within the vast landscape of the pristine land of Southern Nevada. It is a place we know as our creation. It is the beginning of our traditional songs, and it is the place that Nevada nations throughout the southwest hold sacred.”

In southern Texas, the new Castner Range National Monument intends to honor veterans, servicemembers, and Tribal Nations, while expanding access to the outdoors for the El Paso community. Castner Range is located on Fort Bliss and was once a training and testing site for the United States Army during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. 

Castner Range also hosts significant cultural sites for Tribal Nations, including the Apache and Pueblo peoples, the Comanche Nation, Hopi Tribe, and Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma. 

“Today’s historic announcement has been decades in the making,” said Representative Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, who has pushed for this designation. “Generations of activists have dedicated countless hours and resources toward achieving this once seemingly impossible goal. It brings me such joy to know that El Pasoans will soon be able to enjoy the beauty of this majestic, expansive landmark for years to come.”

[Related: Biden sets an ambitious goal to protect 30 percent of US lands and waters.]

Protecting Pacific Remote Islands

President Biden will direct Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondoto to consider a new National Marine Sanctuary designation within the next 30 days. The designation will protect all US waters near the Pacific Remote Islands (PRI’s). These remote islands and atolls located in the Central Pacific have nearly 777,000 square miles of water around them and expanding the current protections in these areas would further President Biden’s “30 by 30” plan of conserving at least 30 percent of U.S. ocean waters by 2030. 

If enacted, the area would be larger than Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, an area that protects 583,000 square miles around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. President Barack Obama expanded the area in 2016 and the monument is already helping to restore large fish species like tuna.

“Our world’s oceans are at mortal risk, a breaking point precipitated by the unsustainable overfishing and other resource extraction, debris and land-based pollution, exacerbated and compounded by the devastating and pervasive marine effects of climate change,” said Representative Ed Case, D- Honolulu from Makapu’u to Mililani and Ko Olina. “As a nation, we have a duty to ensure the long-term survival of the PRI’s ecological, scientific and cultural value.”

US Ocean Climate Action Plan

According to President Biden, the first-ever Ocean Climate Action Plan will “harness the tremendous power of the ocean to help in our fight against the climate crisis.” He touted building more offshore wind farms to reduce carbon emissions, fortifying coastal communities, and better fisheries management in the speech and this new plan for the ocean. 

The plan outlines actions to meet three major goals: creating a carbon-neutral future without the harmful emissions that cause the climate to change, accelerating nature-based solutions, and enhancing resilience through ocean-based solutions like blue carbon that will help communities adapt and thrive in the face of an ever-changing climate. 

[Related: In the latest State of the Union, Biden highlights infrastructure, chips, and healthcare.]

To many environmental advocates, the plan comes not a moment too soon. On March 20, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their Sixth Synthesis Report on climate change, which found that there is still a chance for humanity to avoid the worst of climate change’s future harms, but it might be our last chance.

“It’s reassuring that President Biden is taking the climate crisis seriously and ensuring that our oceans are factored into the plan to address it. To date, our oceans have helped protect us from the worst impacts of climate change, and we know they can play an outsized role in keeping the planet from warming to catastrophic levels,” said Oceana’s Vice President for the United States, Beth Lowell, in a press release. “But in order for that to happen, countries like the United States must stop the expansion of dirty and dangerous offshore drilling.”

Oil drilling was front and center at some of the protests the same day as the conservation summit. Climate activists gathered outside the Interior Department, protesting what they call Biden’s “climate hypocrisy.” Representatives from activist groups like Democracy Now! demanded that the Biden Administration change course on the controversial Willow oil project in Alaska. On March 13, President Biden approved the $8 billion plan to extract 600 million barrels of oil from federal land, despite a campaign promise of “no more drilling on federal lands, period.”

The post The US inches closer to protecting 30 percent of all its lands and oceans appeared first on Popular Science.

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Believe it or not, you don’t need a refrigerator to keep food cold. Just gather some ceramic pots, sand, and water, and you’ve got a portable, non-electric DIY mini-fridge with a time-tested design. After all, people were preserving food for thousands of years before you had to keep that leftover takeout from stinking up your college dorm.

How to make a refrigerator without electricity

3. Put the smaller pot inside the larger one.

4. Fill the space between the pots with sand.

5. Pour water into the sand.

How this DIY refrigerator works

As water evaporates through the clay, it releases energy into the air and cools the space inside the pot. It’s like splashing water on your face on a hot day; the water evaporates off your skin, cooling it in the process. Refrigerator coolant actually works in a similar way, using evaporation to draw heat out of the fridge itself. That’s why the back of your Frigidaire is so warm.

These pot-in-pot coolers are useful in places that don’t have power grids, but they’re also great for people who don’t have fridges, need more space, or want to cut their energy bills. On that last point: they’re also much better for the environment since they don’t require any sort of fuel, much less oil or gas.

[Related: The scientifically best way to pack a cooler]

It’s best to keep zeer pots in the shade, since the sun will warm them up, but you can also put them in a breezy area—wind makes the water evaporate faster, which cools the food more quickly. They’re most effective in arid climates, because water evaporates more when there’s less of it in the air. So, these pots will likely work better in Arizona than Florida.

They work well in Sudan, where Practical Action has introduced the zeer pot to many in need of refrigeration. Food security is a huge problem in the Northeast African country, and the DIY refrigerators can make food last 10 times longer, Lomas says.

“Someone told me they once made ice out of a zeer pot,” he says, laughing. He didn’t believe the guy, but he does find the pots incredibly effective. According to Practical Action’s website, one woman, Hawa Abbas, used to watch half her okra, tomato, and carrot crops spoil. After discovering zeer pots, that changed.

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This article was originally featured in Grist.

High-income countries have long sent their waste abroad to be thrown away or recycled — and an independent team of experts says they’re inundating the developing world with much more plastic than previously estimated.

According to a new analysis published last week, United Nations data on the global waste trade fails to account for “hidden” plastics in textiles, contaminated paper bales, and other categories, leading to a dramatic, 1.8-million-metric-ton annual underestimate of the amount of plastic that makes its way from the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States to poor countries. The authors highlight the public health and environmental risks that plastic exports pose in the developing world, where importers often dump or incinerate an unmanageable glut of plastic waste.

“Toxic chemicals from these plastics are poisoning communities,” said Therese Karlsson, a science and technical adviser for the nonprofit International Pollutant Elimination Network, or IPEN. IPEN helped coordinate the analysis along with an international team of researchers from Sweden, Turkey, and the U.S.

Many estimates of the scale of the plastic waste trade make use of a U.N. database that tracks different types of products through a “harmonized commodity description and coding system,” which assigns each product category a code starting with the letters HS. HS 3915 — “waste, parings, and scrap” of plastics — is often assumed by researchers and policymakers to describe the total volume of plastic that’s traded globally. But the new analysis argues this is only “the tip of the plastic waste iceberg,” since HS 3915 misses large quantities of plastic that are included in other product categories.

Discarded clothing, for example, may be tracked as HS 5505 and not counted as plastic waste, even though 60 to 70 percent of all textiles are made of some kind of plastic. And another category called HS 6309 — used clothing and accessories — is assumed by the U.N. to be reused or recycled and is therefore not considered waste at all, even though an estimated 40 percent of these exported clothes are deemed unsalvageable and end up dumped in landfills.

Plastic contamination in paper bales — the huge stacks of unsorted paper that are shipped abroad to be recycled — also tends to be overlooked in estimates of the international plastic waste trade, even though these bales may contain 5 to 30 percent plastic that must be removed and discarded.

Accounting for plastic from just these two product categories increases plastic waste exports from all the regions analyzed by as much as 1.8 million metric tons per year — 1.3 million from paper bales and half a million from textiles. That’s more than double the plastic that’s counted when only plastic “waste, parings, and scrap” are analyzed.

Additional product categories like electronics and rubber add even more to the global plastic waste trade, although Karlsson said a lack of data makes it hard to quantify their exact contribution. All this plastic strains developing countries’ waste management infrastructure, leading to large quantities of plastic waste ending up in dumps, landfills, or incinerators. Burning this waste causes hazardous air pollution for nearby communities, and dumps and landfills can leach chemicals like PCBs — a group of compounds that can cause cancer in humans — into soil and water supplies.

More than 10,000 chemicals are used in the production of plastic, and one-fourth of them have been flagged by researchers for their toxicity and potential to build up in the environment and in people’s bodies. The report calls for greater transparency from plastic and petrochemical industries about the chemicals they put in their plastic products, and for regulators to require them to use fewer, nontoxic chemicals.

Karlsson also called for a total ban on the global plastic waste trade, along with enforceable limits on the amount of plastics the world makes in the first place. “Regardless of what way we’re handling plastic waste, we need to decrease the amount of plastics that we generate,” she told Grist, “because the amount of plastic waste being produced today will never be sustainable.”

Without aggressive action to phase down plastic production, the world is on track to have produced a cumulative 26 billion metric tons of plastic waste by 2050, most of which will be incinerated, dumped, or sent to landfills.

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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The basic principles behind glassmaking have stayed virtually the same for thousands of years. Naturally occurring crushed quartz may have been some of glassmakers’ earliest ingredients, but sand, soda ash and limestone is used instead today. These mass-produced glass materials that make our favorite wine glasses, the windows in our homes, and screens on our cell phones are far from biodegradable. In fact, at least one study shows glass bottles are more harmful than plastic equivalents, and recycling them is notoriously difficult.

Given how much glass is around us and gets produced every year, that can be a problem for the environment. Knowing this, researchers recently set out to develop a new form of sustainable, eco-friendly glass—with some very promising results.

[Related: How glass blowing works.]

Detailed in an article published on Friday in Science Advances, a team led by Yan Xuehai at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) has engineered a new form of biodegradable, biorecyclable glass made from biologically derived amino acids, or peptides projected to have minimal impact on the environment.

Eco-friendly bio-glass has so far been largely unsustainable. The materials’ biomolecular makeup possesses poor thermal stability, and breaks down at the high temperatures usually required during glass production. By chemically altering the amino acids and peptides, however, the team created a novel version of natural glass that is far more durable than its predecessors. According to their findings, the new biomolecular glass is both impressively sustainable and recyclable, while also featuring many of the desired traits of standard glass products, including malleability and durability.

[Related: Google finally killed off its Google Glass AR headset.]

Unfortunately, this new biodegradable glass won’t be installed in your sunroom anytime soon. In a statement, Xuehai explains that “the concept of biomolecular glass, beyond the commercially-used glasses or plastics, may underlie a green-life technology for a sustainable future. However, the biomolecular glass is currently in the laboratory stage, and far from large-scale commercialization.”

Still, the very fact that the team at IPE pulled off a new, green glass could provide a much-needed boost for other researchers looking to achieve similar goals. The need for glass, despite its many issues, isn’t going anywhere as the world continues attempting to shift towards a sustainable future—solar panels, for example, currently require copious amounts of glass to manufacture. Biodegradable variants may still need fine-tuning, but the recent breakthrough shows their potential. 

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A class of compounds known as PFAS, or so-called forever chemicals, have made the headlines many times in the past few years—they are difficult to remove or break down, leading to pervasiveness in nature and toxic health implications for our own bodies. In fact, last year the EPA found that the chemicals cause harm at even extremely low levels, noting that any exposure could be unsafe.

And while the European Union and other governments have made steps to reduce their presence, the US has been slower to regulate them until quite recently. 

On Tuesday, the Biden administration debuted a new action to protect communities against this pollution, notably by making the nation’s first drinking water standard for PFAS, technically known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. This proposal would be one of the first new standards to update the Safe Drinking Water Act since 1996, and is even more ambitious than EPA suggested limits proposed in 2016. 

[Related: PFAS are toxic and they’re everywhere. Here’s how to stay away from them.]

“I am thrilled to announce that EPA is taking yet another bold step to protect public health,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Folks, this is a tremendous step forward in the right direction. We anticipate that when fully implemented, this rule will prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious PFAS related illnesses.”

The proposal goes after six chemicals—specifically targeting PFOA and PFOS at 4 parts per trillion. Additionally, there would be limits set on the total mixed amount of four other similar chemicals, known as PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS, and GenX. If finalized, these regulations would require public water systems to monitor these compounds and notify the public if limits are exceeded. 

“Regulating these six highly toxic PFAS chemicals in drinking water is a historic start to protecting our families and communities,” Anna Reade, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, told the New York Times. “We cannot safeguard public health until we get off this toxic treadmill of regulating one PFAS at a time when thousands of other PFAS remain unregulated.”

Unsurprisingly, not everyone is on board. According to the New York Times, members of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies are concerned about high expense of compliance, estimating it would cost $43 million for just one utility in Cape Fear, North Carolina, to filter out PFAS. On the other hand, the American Chemistry Council noted to the Times that two of the chemicals mentioned in the new proposal had already been phased out of production by some manufacturers eight years ago. 

[Related: The right kind of filter can keep microplastics out of drinking water.]

A few experts also pointed out that cleaning up water is only so effective—to preserve human and environmental health, corporations must stop manufacturing these harmful chemicals altogether. While some companies have made promises to stop producing PFAS, they are hardly universal. “You have to turn it off at the source,” Carol Kwiatkowski of the Green Science Policy Institute, an environmental advocacy organization, told the BBC. “It doesn’t make any sense to keep cleaning them out of the water if we keep putting them back in.”

The Biden administration has been laying the groundwork for such a move for over a year. In 2021, Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed, which included $10 billion of funding to address emerging contaminants including PFAS. As of February 2023, $2 billion of that will go towards addressing pollutants in drinking water across the country.

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People often adjust their diets to keep themselves healthy—but what about changing what we eat for the health of the planet? It appears that some popular meal plans, such as ketogenic and Paleolithic diets, aren’t very good for Earth or for your wellness, according to a recent study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition  looked into the environmental impact and nutrition quality of food commodities.

Our food choices can have major consequences: What we eat contributes about a third of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally, when accounting for agriculture and land use, supply chain, and our dietary habits. Given food’s huge impact on climate change, it’s important that dietary patterns become more sustainable. This begins with identifying the food choices that are environmentally friendly, which is exactly what the study sought to find out.

“Given that many people are experimenting with different diets, it’s helpful to have a sense of the differences in their impacts,” says Diego Rose, study author and director of nutrition at Tulane University. “What individuals choose to eat sends signals to producers about what to produce, so individual behaviors can affect what gets produced and thus the impacts from our overall food production.”

Going vegan benefits the environment

The new research assessed the carbon footprint and quality of six popular diets, namely: vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, Paleolithic, ketogenic, and omnivore (which, basically, is the diet of everyone else). Vegans, as defined by the study, ate very little meat and dairy: less than 0.5 ounces of the former and less than 0.25 cups of the latter each day. Meanwhile, vegetarians ate less than 0.5 ounces of meat, poultry, and seafood combined; a pescatarian diet was similar to a vegetarian one, but included seafood.

[Related: How to eat sustainably without sacrificing your favorite foods.]

Those who consumed meat but ate less than 0.5 ounces of grains and legumes per day, and less than 0.25 cups of dairy, followed the Paleo diet. People who have a keto diet eat less than 50 grams of net carbohydrates. The authors allowed minimal amounts of some typically excluded foods to account for any minor deviations or accidental consumption of ingredients that the respondent might not have known.

The findings showed that Paleo and keto are among the highest in carbon emissions and lowest in nutrition quality. The researchers estimated these diets produce about 2.6 and almost 3 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every 1,000 calories consumed, respectively. Meanwhile, a vegan diet was the best for the environment, which generates about 0.7 kg of carbon dioxide for the same number of calories. The amount of dietary GHG emissions significantly decreased when meats are replaced with plant proteins.

A vegetarian diet produces the second lowest emissions at 1.16 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every 1,000 calories consumed, the study authors found. Pescatarian and omnivore diets fared in the middle, generating about 1.66 and 2.23 kilograms of carbon dioxide for the same number of calories, respectively.

The scientists reviewed the diets of more than 16,000 adults, collected by the National Center for Health Statistics’ nationally representative National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Rose and his co-authors’ also created their own database of environmental impacts of food commodities, which they linked to the national dataset to calculate the impact of each food item consumed. This allowed the authors to compute an average carbon footprint for each diet type.

[Related: Why seaweed farming could be the next big thing in sustainability.]

The study shows, in line with previous research, that eating less animal-based food is best for the planet. Consumers have the greatest influence in reducing carbon emissions from the food system by shifting their diets to lower carbon-intensive foods, says Gregory A. Keoleian, director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study. For example, a change away from meat altogether could reduce food-related emissions by up to 73 percent. Additionally, if global food production shifted to plant-based diets by 2050, there could also be sequestration of 366 to 603 gigatons of carbon dioxide from native vegetation regrowth in areas currently occupied by animal agriculture.

“All animal-based foods combined—red meat, poultry, fish or seafood, eggs, dairy, and animal-based fats—represent 82 percent of the baseline diet carbon footprint,” says Keoleian. “Plant-based proteins such as legumes, soy products, and nuts and seeds will dramatically reduce impacts.”

Considering foods’ environmental impact

As of 2018, about 5 percent of Americans are vegetarian, and only 2 percent have a vegan diet. “Taste and price, along with cultural and social backgrounds, are more important for most consumers’ decision-making about food, [rather] than health or the environment,” says Rose.

To encourage consumers to shift to environmentally friendly diets, he says policymakers could start by educating the public about the environmental impacts of food, either through dietary recommendations or food labels. One recent study found that around 16 percent of a nationally representative sample might be receptive to changing their diet to follow environmentally sustainable guidelines.

[Related: Eating seafood can be more sustainable and healthy than red meat.]

The Agriculture Department’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025 that provides recommendations on what to consume to support good health, reduce the risk of chronic disease, and meet nutrient needs may play a role. Keoleian says these guidelines can be expanded to include information about the environmental impact of diets, which is relevant because climate change influences human health, too. Reducing diet-related emissions by making better food choices may lead to improved health, mostly by helping reduce air pollution. 

Applying a carbon tax that raises the price of carbon-intensive foods may encourage consumers to opt for lower-impact foods, says Keoleian. But if this were to happen, programs that assist lower-income households—like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—would be critical since the access and affordability of nutritious food is “particularly problematic,” he adds.

They could also enact programs that subsidize greener food production, promote more sustainable versions of livestock, and offer alternatives to animal-based foods, says Rose. Furthermore, restaurants can place more sustainable foods higher up on the menu and develop new recipes with less meat but more flavor,  he adds.

To make it easier for consumers to shift to environmentally sustainable diets, a whole-of-society approach is needed, Rose says—one that includes policymakers, restaurants, food producers, and eaters, too.

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It’s one of society’s worst kept secrets: Most plastic thrown into the blue and green bins doesn’t actually get recycled. In fact, studies show that barely 5 percent of all plastic intended for recycling facilities makes it through the process and back into new products. There are a number of factors that contribute to this strikingly low number—including contaminated materials, water requirements, and discarded waste—but it’s a problem made even worse by the fact that the average American’s plastic waste consumption has increased 263 percent since 1980.

It’s a serious situation that needs a solution sooner than later, and researchers are on the hunt for an efficient and effective fix. As detailed in a paper published with Frontiers in Sustainability, a team at University College London has developed a new machine learning model capable of isolating compostable and biodegradable plastics from conventional varieties to improve recycling efficiency and accuracy.

[Related: Can recycling close the loop on EV batteries?]

Most of today’s plastics fall within a handful of categories possessing different chemical makeups—polyethylene (PET) and polypropylene (PP) compose the majority of drinking bottles and food containers, while low-density polyethylene (LDPE) can be found in items like plastic bags and packages. Meanwhile, compostable options featuring polylactic acid (PLA) and polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT) are generally in tea bags, magazine wrappings, and coffee cup lids. Finally, biomass-derived plastics from palm-leaf and sugar cane are often used in other packaging needs.

Recycling and composting only works well when these variants are properly sorted and handled appropriately. Cross-contamination often dilutes efficacy, wasting valuable time and energy. To improve this, researchers developed a classification system based on hyperspectral imaging (HSI), which scans materials’ chemical signatures to produce a pixel-by-pixel description of samples. A machine learning (ML) program was then trained on this data, and subsequently employed to look at and sort individual pieces of plastic waste.

[Related: How to actually recycle.]

When plastic materials were larger than 10mm by 10mm, the team’s model achieved perfect accuracy in sorting. While the rates dropped—sometimes precipitously—depending on size and material, the ML program’s initial results show immense promise if honed and scaled up to meet industrial demands.

“The advantages of compostable packaging are only realized when they are industrially composted and do not enter the environment or pollute other waste streams or the soil,” Mark Miodownik, a professor of materials and society within UCL’s department of mechanical engineering and paper corresponding author, said in a statement, adding that they “can and will improve it since automatic sorting is a key technology to make compostable plastics a sustainable alternative to recycling.”

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I AM STANDING in the basement of 1550 Mission Street in San Francisco—a new high-rise in the city’s prime real estate location—listening to the steady hum of human grime being filtered. Above me, residents on 38 floors are showering and brushing their teeth as part of their morning routine. In front of me, a maze of pipes and tubes feeds their discarded water into a membrane bioreactor the size of a backyard hot tub. Inside, the membranes and oxygen bubbles purify the H₂O and channel it back into the building instead of into sewage pipes, clean enough for flushing toilets and urinals. “We’re able to reuse about 95 percent of it,” says Aaron Tartakovsky, co-founder and CEO of Epic Cleantec, the company that designed the technology. His father, Igor, the other co-founder and the chief engineer, chimes in with a twinkle in his eye and a proud smile. “It’s kinda cool how it works.”

The really cool stuff, however, is stationed in the nearby New Market, or NEMA, building where Aaron and Igor piloted their poop-recycling operation. Unlike the 1550 Mission setup, which recovers only grey water—from everything but toilets and kitchen sinks—NEMA’s does the dirty work. Here, a silvery machine resembling a giant food processor the size of a small fridge collects people’s waste, intercepting the sewage outflow. When the machine runs, the sludge splats onto its rotating mesh belt. The liquids trickle through, but the feces stay on. A wrangler squeezes out more water, producing palm-size glops of dung that plop into a bin. 

When the pilot program was in operation in 2019 and 2020, Aaron or his coworkers would replace that 55-gallon bin weekly and drive it to the company’s nearby poo-processing facility, Epic Hub, located in a former car dealership. There, the excrement was chucked into another apparatus that thoroughly mixed it with a disinfecting chemical blend, killing pathogens. The sterilized gunk was composted into soil, which Aaron and Igor used to turn an industrial patch of land outside Epic Hub into a blooming garden. “We call it ‘Soil by San Franciscans for San Franciscans,’” Aaron says. “We’re talking to the city about using it in parks.” I share every bit of his excitement. As someone who grew up on a small farm in the former Soviet Union that my grandfather fertilized with the contents of our septic system, I believe our so-called “humanure” should nourish our crops.  

The US produced 5,823,000 dry metric tons of biosolids—the end product of wastewater treatment plants—in 2018. In terms of its chemistry, the stuff is like your average dirt, albeit with a smell. In an ideal world, biosolids—potent fertilizers high in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium—would be returned to vegetable and dairy farms to replenish the nutrients we’ve extracted or grow the trees we cut. Scientists call this concept circular ecology, which is key to sustainable living in the 21st century. Yet at the moment, only half of our biosolids come back to farmlands. The other half rots in landfills, releasing greenhouse gases—or, worse, is shoved into incinerators that spit smoke into the air. The reasons for these wasteful approaches span from financial to logistical to the general yuck factor. New equipment for turning sludge into pathogen-free fertilizer that meets EPA standards can be expensive. If a big metropolitan area generates a few thousand metric tons of biosolids a week and doesn’t have enough farmland nearby to absorb it, the city will have to truck it away using fossil fuels. Finally, people just don’t love wastewater facilities, which they see as epitomes of filth. 

That mindset began to change in 2011, first among tech creators and then the larger public, when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation issued the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, asking experts to recover valuable resources from toilet outputs, including clean water and nutrients. Originally intended to solve sanitation challenges in poorer countries, it propelled new ideas for sewage treatment in general. California’s historic drought was another big catalyst. “In 2014, our elected officials asked, ‘Why are we still using fresh water to flush toilets in San Francisco? And why can’t we reuse it?’” Aaron says. “So we really focused on solving that problem.”  

The city wanted to encourage water reuse, particularly in big new buildings, says Paula Kehoe, director of water resources at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, an agency that services 2.7 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area. “We started thinking about the on-site water treatment systems as more of resource recovery facilities,” Kehoe says. 

In a time when we embrace locally grown food, it makes sense to process the remnants locally as well. The centralized treatment plants that most city municipalities rely on might have worked well in the 20th century, but many have now aged to the point where they’re no longer sustainable or economical. The typical wastewater pipe lasts 50 to 100 years; the average US one is about 45 years old, with some being more than a century old, which creates the risk of sewage spills and contamination. According to a 2019 estimate from the Report Card of America’s Infrastructure, the nation’s utilities spent more than $3 billion to replace about 4,700 miles of pipelines—only a tiny fraction of the country’s total 1,300,000-mile network. A 2017 report estimates that by 2042, 56 million more people will be using these centralized treatment systems, and some $271 billion will be needed to sustain them annually. 

On-site filtration and treatment could be a crucial alternative. “There are certainly advantages with a centralized wastewater system, as you get specialized knowledge and technical expertise in one place in case something goes wrong,” says Bill Brower, senior biosolids engineer at Brown and Caldwell, an environmental engineering and construction firm. Yet in the era of climate change and increasing droughts, purifying the precious H₂O at the source has real benefits too. “I think there’s certainly a place for doing more decentralized treatment,” Brower says. But before we start shutting down the sewage lines, we need to figure out where to put the “number two.”

From soviet refugee to poop entrepreneur

Growing up in 1960s Odessa, Ukraine, then a part of the USSR, Igor Tartakovsky aimed to be a rocket scientist. “I wanted to build planes and spaceships—that was my childhood dream,” he says. Yet for a Jewish kid, it was a difficult path. The anti-Semitism in the Soviet empire was palpable: Igor graduated from high school with highest honors, but was turned down from his town’s engineering schools. He didn’t give up easily and was eventually accepted to study aeronautics at Electromechanical College in Novosibirsk, a snowbound Siberian city. He traded Odessa’s mild climate for endless winter in a heartbeat. 

When he applied for a summer job in engineering the next year, he filled out 15 forms, submitted more than a dozen photos of himself, and was still rejected. He let go of his aerospace dream and pivoted to studying refrigeration and air conditioning.  

The career switch didn’t help. Again, Igor graduated at the top of his class, and again, he was turned down for the jobs he applied for. He got a gig at a floating fishing factory boat that sailed in the frozen Far East for six months at a time. Besides refrigerating seafood, his engineering prowess came in handy for building a contraption to distill moonshine from fermented apple juice—a feat his crewmates loved, but Igor didn’t. He felt he was wasting his life. It was clear that he didn’t have a future in the Soviet Union, so his family decided to leave. 

The only way to emigrate from the KGB state at the time was to receive an invitation to “reunite with the family” from a relative living abroad. Any correspondence asking for such a favor could be intercepted by the government. So Igor’s kin penned a so-called “underwear letter.” They wrote their names and dates of birth down on the stretched-out waistband of a pair of boxers; when the rubber shrank down, the text wasn’t visible. A person leaving the country took their underwear missive with him, and after a year, the coveted invite came through. The KGB officer working on Igor’s case called him “an idiot” because he “clearly had bright prospects in this country,” and gave him 45 days to leave. Igor obliged. His parents and sister followed. 

In San Francisco, Igor met his future wife, got a job, and had children. Later he launched his own company, designing air-conditioning systems for apartment and office buildings in the city. He never thought he’d end up making “humanure.”

Humans vs. manure

Throughout most of human history, our relationship with our waste has been thorny. We can’t stop producing it, but we can’t live with it. The undigested nutrients in our feces—proteins, lipids, sugars—breed intestinal worms and the deadly bacteria that cause scourges like dysentery, gastroenteritis, and typhoid. To avoid spreading disease, we must distance ourselves from our metabolic output as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

The industrial Western sewage systems of the past 150 years perfected this process. As cities grew, so did their centralized sewage operations. The first wastewater treatment plants in America were developed in the 1850s. Today, more than 16,000 of them chug out sludge 24/7, processing what comes down municipal, home, and office pipes. Combined, the US has enough such tubing to wrap around our planet 52 times. Or reach to the moon and back almost thrice. About 62.5 billion gallons of wastewater flow through these lines daily. 

To my grandfather, none of this made economic or environmental sense, especially the part about tossing dung along with trash. “You have to feed the earth the way you feed people,” he used to say as he filled up his compost pits with the brown goo from our septic tank every fall. He then closed them up and let Mother Nature do her job. When he dug them up again three years later, the pits would be full of fluffy black dirt so nutrient-rich that our plants managed to bear fruit despite the short, cold, and rainy Russian summers. 

Spending billions on purifying wastewater to release into rivers and streams, only to pump it back into water mains and clean it again for human consumption, doesn’t make sense either. “In 2015 it became a mandatory requirement for any new building in San Francisco over 250,000 square feet to install an on-site water treatment system for their toilet and irrigation needs,” says Kehoe. “And in 2021 it became a requirement for any new building over 100,000 square feet.”

For Igor and Aaron, his third and youngest son, who studied political science but ended up following in his father’s engineering footsteps, the move was a serendipitous one. They’d just gotten their toes wet in sewage and were pumped to dive in. 

An epic origin story

In 2013, a client asked Igor to find a building-wide sewage recycling system for their space in the Bay Area. He couldn’t find a single model on the market. Some months later, at a tech conference, Igor watched someone sterilize dog poop by whipping it in a food processor with potassium permanganate. He knew the chemical from his childhood: Called margantsovka, it was a common disinfectant. When his aquarium fish would start getting sick, he would add a few drops, he recalls. “The bacteria would die, and the fish would swim in a rosy water for a little while because potassium permanganate is also a colorant.” The compound (chemical formula KMnO₄) causes an oxidizing reaction that kills microorganisms, including the pathogenic ones that commonly afflict humans. “It’s been widely used to wash wounds or disinfect a glass that someone drank from,” says Govind Rao, professor of biochemical engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “It’s a very powerful oxidant, but it works best when pathogen loads are low.” Disinfecting typical sewage would require tons of KMnO₄, but the Tartakovskys found a workaround—just do it at the source. Most people don’t carry large amounts of dangerous pathogens in their intestines (otherwise they’d be very sick), so what they flush isn’t usually festering with germs. It is after sludge floats through the miles of pipes for days that it becomes colonized with all sorts of bugs that naturally dwell there, growing and multiplying. “When sewage swirls down the pipes for days and weeks, its pathogen load is huge,” Aaron explains. “But if you get it right after someone flushed the toilet, the pathogen load is much lower.”

Igor and Aaron started by whipping their family dogs’ droppings in a food processor, too. For better sterilization, they added other chemicals, coming up with their company’s proprietary microbe-busting mix. Now they needed to scale up, so they convinced an Italian company that built industrial-size mixers to let them try their neutralizing method on septic sludge at a wastewater treatment plant near Florence. In March 2015, they flew in for a test. As they experimented with the settings on a machine the size of a backyard grill, the reaction released too much heat. The mixer’s top blew off, painting the ceiling with sanitized yet still stinky slime—a historic incident Aaron caught on video. But that taught the father and son the parameters for an industrial processor. Once back home, they formed Epic Cleantec, a water recycling solution company, and focused on building their own mixer. 

They hired an engineering company in Minnesota to build one. Testing it in the Land of 10,000 Lakes proved messy too. Aaron was filling up a bucket of fecal goo when the pressurized slush hit the bottom so hard, it splashed him from head to toe. “I almost lost my lunch that day,” he recalls. Later, the muck partially froze in the frigid Midwestern winter, rattling around the mixer. They never considered giving up. “I learned early on that failure was not an option,” Igor says. Aaron draws his inspiration from his family history. “My grandparents were Holocaust survivors,” he says. “Considering what they went through, I can deal with sewage.”

The Minnesota exercise gave them exact mixer dimensions—length, diameter, blade size. But the final version was built by a company in Los Angeles. Driving down to give it a whirl, Aaron called every kennel in the area to ask for dog poop. Most laughed and thought it was a prank, but five dished some out. More came from the SPCA, which became Epic’s first official poop supplier. 

Igor and Aaron were also working on assembling the apparatus that managed the sewage flow, which would put sludge through the rotating mesh belt and then a wrangler to compact it into the palm-size glops that would be fed into the disinfecting mixer. Stringing the mesh belt and wrangler together was reasonably straightforward, but the father and son needed large quantities of sewage to test the process from end to end. In 2017, Epic began buying sludge from Stanford University’s Codiga Resource Recovery Center, which had a miniature sewage station, to continue calibrating their system. “It cost 40 cents per pound,” recalls Sebastien Tilmans, Codiga’s executive director.

When even that stream proved insignificant, Epic began chugging sludge by the truckload—literally. By then, Epic Hub was located in a former car dealership, so the sewage trucks that were emptying some of the Bay Area septic systems would roll in to dish out their cargo. “We would stretch a hose from the truck into our system and let it run, end to end,” Aaron says. “Some of these trucks carried sewage from a Facebook cafeteria bathroom,” he explains. “Some of our soil is Facebook-made.”

Once they tested the mixer-processor in their Epic Hub, the Tartakovskys approached the owners of NEMA (whom Igor knew) about testing it in real life. Building engineer Derwin Narvaez’s first reaction was one of sheer disgust. “You’re going to do what?” he remembers asking. Seeing the tech in action won him over. “The end product is just black dirt!”

Standing next to the custom mixer, which resembles a giant meat grinder, Aaron demonstrates how that black dirt was produced during the pilot. The glops of excrement picked up from the sludge squeezer in the NEMA basement were shaken in from the collecting bin—and the machine would chew through them with Epic’s disinfecting blends for about 20 minutes. Then Aaron would put the freshly made earth through a battery of tests, checking for pathogens and heavy metals, before letting it dry outside near the Epic Hub garden. “I always wondered what people in nearby skyscrapers thought we were doing,” he says. “But no one complained,” given there was no stink.

He scrapes some of the dirt residue from the mixer’s innards and offers it to me. After some hesitation, I hold the powdery black substance in my hand and give it a timid sniff. It looks and smells just like the garden dirt from my grandfather’s pits. But while his backyard-farm approach worked on a small scale, Epic’s might change how we process sewage in entire high-rises, which is crucial, because two out of every three people worldwide will likely be living in urban areas by 2050. 

Other companies are redesigning our relationship with excrement in their own unique ways. A group of pee-cyclers in Vermont founded Rich Earth Institute, a nonprofit that gathers urine from residents in containers and distributes it to farmers, but for many that manual process is a downside. Israel-based startup HomeBiogas pioneered a toilet that helps produce fertilizer and methane, the latter to be used for cooking fuel—a self-sustaining approach that works for private homes and small buildings, but not high-rises. South African company LiquidGold Africa developed a way to extract fertilizing compounds from urine, which can be collected en masse from plumbing in buildings, but it doesn’t yet recycle solids. In Portland, Oregon, a large apartment complex, Hassalo on Eighth, built an entire outdoor wastewater treatment facility, but that requires a lot of surrounding space. Australia-based company Aquacell operates several building-level water recycling systems in the Bay Area; according to Kehoe, a few more are in the works, but Aquacell doesn’t dig into the solids business. By comparison, Epic’s end-to-end tech is particularly well suited for offices and dwellings in densely populated cities, the number of which will keep growing. “This firm seems to have a solid, innovative technology,” says William Toffey, sustainability strategist at BlueTech Research, a company that specializes in water solutions. “The 1550 residence in San Francisco is its shiniest example.”

Will more skyscrapers join in? Narvaez, who is now an ardent supporter, thinks so. “Rather than rationing water, buildings should adopt this approach,” he says. “To me, it’s the future of all new buildings. The buildings will save a lot, and so will society. It’s a win-win situation.” 

In the coming years, Epic’s next-generation OneWater system will be installed in four other buildings in San Diego and San Jose, where it will function as a full-blown mini-treatment plant. The mesh belt processor will squeeze water out of the sludge. The membrane bioreactor will clean it and put it back in circulation. And the mixer will turn the gunk into garden topsoil, eventually feeding the cities’ parks, the Tartakovskys hope. “We’ll use the same motto,” Aaron says. “‘The soil by San Diegans for San Diegans.’ And so on.”

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Camilla Rathsach walked along the lichen-covered sand, heading out from the lone village on Denmark’s remote Anholt island—a spot of land just a few kilometers wide in the middle of the Kattegat Strait, which separates the Danish mainland from Sweden. As Anholt Town’s 45 streetlights receded into the distance, moonlit shadows reached out to embrace the dunes. Rathsach looked up, admiring the Milky Way stretching across the sky. Thousands of stars shone down. “It’s just amazing,” she says. “Your senses heighten and you hear the water and feel the fresh air.”

This dark-sky moment was one of many Rathsach experienced while visiting the island in 2020 for work on her master’s thesis on balancing the need for outdoor lighting and darkness. Having grown up in urban areas, Rathsach wasn’t used to how bright moonlit nights could be. And after speaking with the island’s residents, who value the dark sky deeply and navigate with little outdoor light, she realized that artificial lighting could be turned down at night depending on the moon’s phase.

At Aalborg University in Denmark, she worked with her graduate supervisor, Mette Hvass, to present a new outdoor lighting design for Anholt’s church. Rathsach and Hvass picked the church for their project because it is a central meeting place for the community yet it currently has no outdoor lights. They thought lighting would make it easier for people to navigate but wanted to preserve the inviting ambiance of moonlight.

One of the guiding principles of designing sustainable lighting is to start with darkness, and add only the minimum amount of light required. Darkness and natural light sources are important to many species, and artificial light can be downright dangerous.

“Lights can attract and disorient seabirds during their flights between colony and foraging sites at sea,” says Elena Maggi, an ecologist at the University of Pisa in Italy who is not involved in the project. Anholt’s beaches host a variety of breeding seabirds, including gulls and terns, and the island is a stopover for many migrating birds. The waters around the island are also home to seals, cod, herring, and seagrass. Though scientists have made progress in understanding the effects of artificial light at night on a range of species, such as turtles, birds, and even corals, there is still more to learn.

“We still don’t know exactly how artificial light might interact with other disturbances like noise and chemical pollution, or with rising ocean temperatures and acidification due to climate change,” says Maggi.

The scientists’ final design for the church includes path lighting and small spotlights under the window arches, along with facade lighting under the eaves shining downward. To preserve the dark sky, path lighting would turn off on bright moonlit nights, and facade lighting would shut off on semi-bright or bright nights. The window lighting would stay on regardless of the moon’s phase.

The adaptive lighting cooked up by Camilla Rathsach and Mette Hvass would automatically adjust to the availability of moonlight, tweaking this church’s lighting automatically to balance visibility and darkness. Mock-ups show how the church would be lit under no moonlight (first) and a full moon (second). Illustrations courtesy of Camilla Rathsach

“The contrast between the moon’s cold white light reflecting off the church’s walls and the warm orange lights in the windows would create a cozy, inviting experience,” says Rathsach.

The moonlight adaptive lighting design project is part of a growing effort to balance the need for functional lighting in the town and to protect the darkness. Recently, the town’s public streetlights were swapped for dark-sky friendly lamps, says Anne Dixgaard, chairman of Dark Sky Anholt.

Dixgaard also organizes a yearly walk out to Anholt’s beach, where skywatchers can learn about the night sky. “People really value Anholt’s dark sky and want to preserve it,” she says.

Rathsach and Hvass are working on the moonlight adaptive design project in hopes that it will be implemented one day, but they still have some challenges to overcome. Moonlight is a relatively faint light source, so detecting it using sensors is challenging, and lights would need to adjust automatically on nights with intermittent cloud cover. Yet big initiatives often begin with small steps.

“This work is something new and unexpected,” says Maggi. “It’s a very interesting approach to mitigating the negative effects of artificial light at night.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Seaweed is one of the most variable, sustainable substances on earth. Scientists have used it to make new plastics, medical devices, food, biofuels, and more. But right now, one variety of aquatic plant is also making a giant toxic bloom that can be seen from space. 

Meet the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt—a nearly 5,000-mile-long, thickly matted sheet of sargassum algae floating between Mexico and West Africa. Sargassum, a genus of large brown seaweed, is pretty much harmless —or even beneficial—out in the open ocean. But when it creeps up on beaches, it can be a serious problem. And it’s growing. 

While these seaweed mounds may serve as carbon sinks and fish habitats when floating asea, as the mass inches closer to land, it can diminish water and air quality, smother coral reefs, and restrict oxygen for coastal fish. Huge piles of the seaweed typically turn up on Florida beaches around May, but the seaweed is already starting to swamp beaches in Key West, Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, tells NBC. As of last week, 200 tons of the marine plant are expected to wash up on beaches in the Mexican Caribbean. 

[Related: This fossilized ‘ancient animal’ might be a bunch of old seaweed.]

With these pile-ups come even more pile-ups—of dead fish. According to the Independent, around 1,000 pounds of fish were cleared from Florida’s St. Pete Beach this month, and 3.5 tons of dead fish have already been removed in the past two weeks from the state’s Manatee County Parks.

The seaweed can be a huge problem for infrastructure. “Even if it’s just out in coastal waters, it can block intake valves for things like power plants or desalination plants, marinas can get completely inundated and boats can’t navigate through,” Brian Barnes, an assistant research professor at the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science, tells NBC. Not to mention, one 2022 paper linked the hydrogen sulfide that rotting seaweed emits to serious pregnancy complications, alongside headaches and eye irritation. 

[Related: Horrific blobs of ‘plastitar’ are gunking up Atlantic beaches.]

While some types of seaweed make for awesome, sustainable products, this kind of sargassum is virtually useless. Using it as a fertilizer or compost is tricky, thanks to its high heavy metal content. Some scientists have argued for sinking the massive carpet of algae to the bottom of the ocean to use as carbon capture and storage. 

“There is a lot of carbon biomass associated with sargassum–about 3m tonnes in the Great Sargassum Belt,” Columbia University oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam tells The Guardian. 

For now, it’s probably best to keep an eye out for beach closures, event cancellations, and warnings as the season attracts more people—and smelly seaweed—toward the coast. 

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You may not realize it, but various everyday products like adhesives, food packaging, and cookware contain certain chemicals called per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to make them resistant to heat, oil, grease, or water. More than 9,000 PFAS have been identified so far, which are used in a wide range of industrial and commercial applications. 

Despite their important function in various consumer products, they have a serious downside. PFAS don’t break down easily in the environment due to their chemical structure that resists biodegradation. This explains why they’re often called “forever chemicals.”

“Their unique structure allows them to also move through surface and groundwaters and persist in soils and sediments,” says Allen Burton, a professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan whose research deals with environmental toxicology. “They bioaccumulate in humans and wildlife and are so common their ingestion cannot be easily avoided.”

PFAS can leach into soil, air, and water, and they’re already found in humans’ blood and urine. Studies also report that PFAS are ubiquitous in municipal wastewater—not only in those with direct sources like textile mills or papermaking operations, but also in non-industrial wastewater like septic tanks and office buildings. Some suspect it comes from the microfibers in water-resistant clothing during laundry or from human excrement. However, new research reveals another potential source: toilet paper.

[Related: Are bidets really better for the planet than toilet paper?]

Chemicals called disubstituted poly-fluoroalkyl phosphates (diPAPs) are one of the major PFAS found in biosolids, the solid waste generated from wastewater treatment plants. With this understanding, researchers decided to look into toilet paper, a product where diPAPs are commonly used. Their findings in a recent Environmental Science & Technology Letters study suggest that toilet paper may be a major source of PFAS in wastewater treatment systems. 

“It is important to identify sources of PFAS so decision-makers can make informed choices on how to limit their environmental release,” says Jake Thompson, study author and a graduate research assistant at the Sustainable Materials Management Research Group at the University of Florida.

Thompson and his co-authors extracted PFAS from sewage sludge from eight US wastewater treatment plants and toilet paper rolls sold in four world regions, namely North America, South and Central America, Africa, and Western Europe. The most abundant PFAS in both samples was diPAPs, specifically, 6:2 fluorotelomer phosphate diester (6:2 diPAP).

The diPAPs are what you’d call precursor species of PFAS, which means they can be transformed into terminal or more stable PFAS that are known to have impacts on human and environmental health, such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) or perfluorodecanoic acid (PFDA). For example, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies PFOA as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” 

“These transformed species are often more polar and bound to soils and sediment to a greater degree, making them more persistent,” says Burton, who was not involved in the study. “In addition, as these compounds build up in soils and sediments over time, they are more available for [uptake] by soil- and sediment-dwelling invertebrates, and thus pose a food chain contamination threat.”

Based on their findings and data about PFAS levels in sewage and per capita toilet paper use in other countries, the authors estimated that toilet paper can contribute about 35 percent of the 6:2 diPAP in wastewater sludge in Sweden, 89 percent in France, but only around four percent in US and Canada. The impact of toilet paper in Sweden and France is higher because they have much lower 6:2 diPAP concentrations in wastewater sludge compared to North America. 

Furthermore, North America uses more toilet paper than other countries, suggesting that 6:2 diPAPs in US wastewater systems mostly come from other sources, like cosmetics, textiles, and food packaging, which are also worth looking into. The authors hope that by understanding potential PFAS sources, policymakers become “better equipped to address the challenge of PFAS,” says Thompson.

[Related: PFAS are toxic and they’re everywhere. Here’s how to stay away from them.]

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its new plans to develop wastewater pollution limits and restrict PFAS discharges from industrial sources, which were announced earlier this year. However, the ability of wastewater treatment plants to remove PFAS needs to be addressed as well. Currently, available wastewater treatment technologies don’t destroy PFAS. Conventional treatments can’t effectively remove them and may only pass them through to lakes, streams, and groundwater.

Burton says it’s not surprising to find PFAS in toilet paper and sewage sludge, which is “yet another documented widespread source of PFAS contamination of the environment.” But reducing PFAS in wastewater is only one strategy to minimize total exposures in the environment and the risk to humans and biota, he adds.

“Like microplastic contamination, it is most effective and efficient to prevent wastewater contamination by controlling the sources,” he adds. “Undoubtedly, they are effective substitutes for PFAS in making toilet paper and other consumer products.”

Disposable food packaging and food ware commonly use PFAS as an oil and grease barrier, but uncoated paper products, products made from bamboo and palm leaves, and reusable cutlery sets are viable alternatives. PFAS are also used in textile finishing to repel grease, stain, and water, but manufacturers can use melamine-based compounds instead. Non-essential PFAS use, like in personal care products and cosmetics, can be phased out completely.

“If society fails to dramatically reduce these multiple [PFAS] exposures,” says Burton, “we increase the likelihood of our children and wildlife facing serious risks.”

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

When people think of spring, they often picture flowers and trees blooming. And if you live in the U.S. Northeast, Midwest or South, you have probably seen a medium-sized tree with long branches, covered with small white blooms – the Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana).

For decades, Callery pear – which comes in many varieties, including “Bradford” pear, “Aristocrat” and “Cleveland Select” – was among the most popular trees in the U.S. for ornamental plantings. Today, however, it’s widely recognized as an invasive species. Land managers and plant ecologists like me are working to eradicate it to preserve biodiversity in natural habitats.

As of 2023, it is illegal to sell, plant or grow Callery pear in Ohio. Similar bans will take effect in South Carolina and Pennsylvania in 2024. North Carolina and Missouri will give residents free native trees if they cut down Callery pear trees on their property.

How did this tree, once in high demand, become designated by the U.S. Forest Service as “Weed of the Week”? The devil is in the biological details.

A quasi-perfect tree

Botanists brought the Callery pear to the U.S. from Asia in the early 1900s. They intentionally bred the horticultural variety to enhance its ornamental qualities. In doing so, they created an arboricultural wunderkind. As The New York Times observed in 1964:

“Few trees possess every desired attribute, but the Bradford ornamental pear comes unusually to close to the ideal.”

Modern varieties of Callery pear produce an explosion of white flowers in springtime, followed by deep green summer foliage that turns deep red and maroon in autumn. They also are very tolerant of urban soils, which can be highly compacted and hard for roots to penetrate. The trees grow quickly and have a rounded shape, which made them suitable for planting in rows along driveways and roadsides.

During the post-World War II suburban development boom, Callery pear trees became extremely popular in residential settings. In 2005 the Society of Municipal Arborists named the “Chanticleer” variety the urban street tree of the year. But the breeding process that created this and other varieties of Callery pear was producing unexpected results.

Cloning to produce an American original

To ensure that each Callery pear tree had bright blooms, red foliage and other desired traits, horticulturists created identical clones through a process known as grafting: creating seedlings from cuttings of trees with the desired characteristics.

This approach eliminated the messy complexity of mixing genes during sexual reproduction and ensured that when each tree matured, it would have the characteristics that homeowners desire. Every tree of a specific variety was a genetically identical clone.

Grafting also meant Callery pear trees could not make fruits. Some fruit trees, such as peaches and tart cherries, can fertilize their flowers with their own pollen. In contrast, Callery pear is self-incompatible: pollen on an individual tree cannot fertilize flowers on that tree. And since all Callery pears of a specific variety planted in a neighborhood would be identical clones, they would effectively be the same tree.

If a tree can’t produce fruits, it can’t disperse into natural habitats. Gardeners and landscapers thought it was perfectly safe to plant Callery pear near natural habitats, such as prairies, because the species was trapped in place by its reproductive biology. But the tree would break free from its isolation and spread seeds far and wide.

The great escape

University of Cincinnati botanist Theresa Culley and colleagues have found that as horticulturalists tinkered with Callery pears to produce new versions, they made the individuals different enough to escape the fertilization barrier. If a neighborhood had only “Bradford” pear trees, then no fruits could be produced – but once someone added an “Aristocrat” pear to their yard, then these two varieties could fertilize each other and produce fruits.

When Callery pear trees in gardens and parks started depositing seeds in nearby areas, wild populations of the trees became established. Those wild trees could pollinate one another, as well as neighborhood trees.

In today’s landscape, Callery pear is astonishingly fertile. The prolific flowering that horticulturists intentionally bred into these varieties now yields tremendous crops of pears each year. Although these little pears are generally not edible by humans, birds feed on the fruit, then fly away and excrete the seeds into natural habitats. Callery pear has become one of the most problematic invasive species in the eastern United States.

A thorny problem

Like other invasives, Callery pears crowd out native species. Once Callery pear seedlings spread from habitat edges into grasslands, they have advantages that allow them to dominate the site.

In my research lab, we have found that Callery pear leafs out very early in spring and drops its leaves late in fall. This enables it to soak up more sun than native species. We also have discovered that during invasion, these trees alter the soil and release chemicals that suppress the germination of native plants.

Callery pear is highly resistant to natural disturbances. In fact, when my graduate student Meg Maloney tried to kill the trees by using prescribed fires or applying liquid nitrogen directly to stumps after cutting the trees down, her efforts failed. Instead, the trees sprouted aggressively and seemingly gained strength.

Once Callery pear has escaped into natural areas, its seedlings produce very sharp, stiff thorns that can puncture shoes or even tires. This makes the trees a menace to people working in the area, as well as to native plants. Another nuisance factor is that when Callery pears bloom, they produce a strong odor that many people find unpleasant.

Currently, directly applying herbicides is the only known control for a Callery pear invasion. But the trees are so successful at spreading that poisoning their seedlings may simply create space for other Callery pear seedlings to establish. It is unclear how habitat managers can escape a confounding ecological cycle of invasion, herbicide application and re-invasion.

Banned but not gone

In response to work by the Ohio Invasive Plants Council and other experts, Ohio has taken the extraordinary step of banning Callery pear to thwart its ecological invasion into natural habitats. But the trees are common in residential areas across the state and have established vigorous populations in natural habitats. Ecologists will be working well into the future to maintain openness and biodiversity in areas where Callery pear is invading.

In the meantime, homeowners can help. Horticulturists recommend that people who have a Callery pear on their property should remove it and replace it with something that is not an invasive species. Few trees possess every desired attribute, but many native trees have visually attractive features and will not threaten ecosystems in your region.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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For gardeners, rabbits are a common cause of headaches, as they munch on a laundry list of vegetation, from berries and vegetables to perennials and woody plants. Aquaculturists like oyster farmers have the same problem, except not from fuzzy mammals. Marine rays are the main culprit, especially given that more than 80 percent of marine aquaculture consists of some of the rays’ favorite things to “crunch” on: bivalve mollusks.

[Related: Listen to the soothing sounds of a snacking stingray.]

When culturing hard clams (Mercenaria mercenaria), the bivalves must be placed at the bottom of a marine environment where they then grow to a sellable size. Clammers use mesh netting, plastic, or wire covers to protect their clam lease, similar to using a wire fence to try to keep rabbits out of a vegetable garden. However, the effectiveness of using these methods for highly mobile marine predators like rays hadn’t fully been tested until very recently. 

In a study published March 7 in the journal Aquaculture Environment Interactions, a team from Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and the Mote Marine Laboratory studied how the whitespotted eagle ray (Aetobatus narinari) interacted with clams enclosed in anti-predator materials. These rays are a formidable opponent with strong jaws, crushing fused teeth, and nimble pectoral fins. 

In a large outdoor tank, the team used aerial and underwater videos to assess the rays’ responses to various anti-predator materials. One plot of clams were placed inside polyester mesh bags that also had a latex net coating, another under a high density polyethylene (HDPE) netting, and a third under chicken wire cover netting. The control plot of clams were unprotected. 

After the completion of each trial, the team noted the number of crunched clams and how frequently the rays visited the various randomized patches. While the undersea hunters were capable of consuming clams through bags, the anti-predator treatments reduced clam mortality four- to tenfold compared to control plots where the clams were unprotected. The double-layered treatments (bags with cover netting) had the lowest clam mortality.

“Based on our findings, many of the current anti-predator grow-out strategies used in the hard clam shellfish aquaculture industry appear capable of reducing predation by large predators like whitespotted eagle rays,” said study co-author Matt Ajemian, director of the Fisheries Ecology and Conservation Lab at FAU, in a statement. “In par­ticular, bag treatments with cover nettings achieved the highest clam survival rates, although it is important to note that this did not appear to completely deter rays from interacting with the gear.”

[Related: Tiger sharks helped scientists map a vast underwater meadow in the Bahamas.]

The observations suggest that the rays appear to be capable of interacting with the aquaculture gear for longer periods of time, which potentially diverts them from other natural feeding habitats such as sand and mud flats.

“These habitat associations could expose these sensitive animals to other risks, although we are just beginning to understand them and admittedly have a lot more to learn,” said co-author Brianna Cahill, a research technician at Stony Brook University, in a statement. “Contrary to what we expected, rays did not prefer control plots (mimicking natural conditions) over treatment plots with anti-predator gear. This suggests a real possibility that these rays are interacting with shellfish aquaculture gear in the wild, as suggested by our clamming industry partners.”

The researchers also observed the rays interact with the treatments on the deterrents, including using their lower dental plate to dig through the sediment at the bottom of the tank to access the clams in the unprotected control plots and to move the gear.  

More testing could reveal whether chicken wire, a common deterrent in Florida, is actually beneficial. Earlier studies suggest that the electric field of the metal could be detected by rays and sharks and might overstimulate them, protecting the farmed shellfish. 

“Given the frequency of interactions we observed with chicken wire in our experiment, we question whether chicken wire is a deterrent, an attractant, or neutral, as it may not have a powerful enough signal to influ­ence the rays,” said Ajemian. “Still, we have more questions than we started with, and look forward to investigating this further with other species and deterrent types.”

The post Scientists test different gear for protecting clams from ‘crunching’ rays appeared first on Popular Science.

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Those little bottles of travel-sized toiletries you bought before your last trip may be convenient, but they are an environmental nightmare. Most facilities are not properly equipped to recycle small plastic tubes, tubs, and anything with a pump, so they probably won’t. Only 9 percent of plastics get successfully recycled worldwide, and at least 14 million tons of what’s left ends up in the ocean every year, making up for 80 percent of marine debris. 

More sustainable alternatives to these miniatures include products like shampoo bars and toothpaste tablets, but they can be expensive and hard to find locally if you don’t live in a large city. 

Fortunately, putting together a zero-waste toiletry kit for your next getaway doesn’t have to be complicated or spendy, and there are plenty of strategies that won’t require you to buy a single thing. 

Instead of purchasing new vessels, take a moment to scan your surroundings and see what might suit the task at hand. For example, a tiny glass jam jar like the kind you might find at an upscale diner is the perfect size for a week’s worth of face wash. Likewise, a breath mint tin is an excellent place to store a bar of soap, and if you use a non-aerosol variety, you can refill empty hand sanitizer spray bottles with hair spray. Even your child’s empty paint pots with screw-on lids or used-up sample jars that came from beauty counters are practically designed to carry your bathroom products.

Ketti Wilhelm, the author of the sustainable travel blog Tilted Map, has a less conventional idea: contact lens cases. If you wear contacts, you probably have enough of these to last a lifetime, and she explains they hold just enough face lotion or toothpaste (in paste or tablet form) for a weekend trip.

Creativity is key: Any container will do, especially if it has a twist top or a lid that latches. If you think it might hold anything from half a bar of soap to a week’s worth of conditioner, wash the container thoroughly, sanitize the inside by spraying it with alcohol, and let it air dry. Then designate a box under the sink or in the bathroom where you can stash the bottles or jars until your next trip.

Instead of using disposable wipes in non-recyclable packaging, bring a washcloth and facial cleanser. Wilhelm likes to pack small bars of face soap, which she tucks into the pockets of a folded washcloth. This technique saves space but also negates the need for a soap container.

You can replace cotton balls and cotton rounds by cutting 3-by-3-inch squares out of a clean cotton T-shirt or sheets you’d like to retire. You can even cut larger swatches, fold them over several times and sew the edges to create a thicker pad. After every use, wash your pad with gentle soap in the sink, wring it as best you can, and let it air dry.

Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need separate cases, stands, and covers for items like razors to toothbrushes. 

“Ask, do you need extra things to go on top of your things?” Wilhelm says. “It’s just part of re-examining the mindset of excess consumption that we’re so conditioned to.” 

If your toiletry bag has a separate compartment that fits your toothbrush, skip the plastic brush cover. If you’re really afraid your razor is going to slice through something, place a large binder clip or folded piece of scrap mail held in place by a rubber band over the blade.

“Minimalism sounds scary to people, but taking just a small dose of that perspective and rethinking all the products you use can be really transformative,” Wilhelm posits. 

But reconsidering your routines and the products you use is a process. She advises that as you strive for a zero-waste toiletry kit, you start by changing or swapping one thing that feels easy and approachable—maybe a product you’re not in love with and don’t mind replacing. From there, rethink what to get next as you finish your products one by one.

Whether it’s collecting small jars and bottles to use on your next vacation or committing to not using the products in your hotel room, make sure to remember that every bit of waste you reduce makes an impact in the long run.

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YOU’RE WALKING through a forest. The soil is soft beneath your feet, and the sun is shining brightly through the dark green treetops. To your left, you see rotten logs with dense clusters of oyster mushrooms. On your right, a thick bundle of chanterelles sprouts from the leaf-littered floor. Farther off the beaten path are stout-looking porcinis, frequently with a colony of poisonous fly agarics nearby, and, maybe, a bunch of magic blue gyms—those might ruin your nature walk, though. 

The mushroom kingdom holds many shapes and secrets beyond those of the little white buttons and baby bellas found at the grocery store. Ethical foraging is one of the easiest and most valuable ways to incorporate an array of mushrooms into your life; to get started, you can join a mycology group or contact a local guide to learn how to harvest edible fungi safely and sustainably. 

But there are more creative ways to incorporate the power of mushrooms into your days. Fungi are a versatile and adaptable group, which is why they offer a range of benefits to a variety of people. They’re a multifaceted food source, providing fiber, protein, and other nutrients. They can be used to create dyes, build structures, or breed new strains of mushrooms. In essence, they’re really cool, and they’re inspiring biologists, artists, and engineers to develop practices that can make the world prosper. Here’s a mini-tour of what the flourishing field of mushrooming has to offer.

Shopping for mushrooms 

Head to the supplement aisle in any health food store, and you’re bound to find shelf space dedicated to the medicinal wonder of mushrooms. Research on fruit flies and mice shows that cordyceps, popular among consumers (and apocalyptic TV shows), has anti-cancer properties and possibly anti-aging effects, too. Reishi and turkey tail are coveted for their potential immune-stimulating effects, while lion’s mane may help soften dementia, according to a small pilot study.  

Most of these benefits have been investigated on animals or in test tubes, making it challenging to draw conclusions on human health. If you’re looking for guaranteed results, it’s better to grab fresh, whole mushrooms from the produce section than spend all your money on pills and potions. 

“Eating food is always safer and less expensive than using its supplemental form,” says Lori Chong, a registered dietitian at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. With fungi, you should know which edible varieties are good to cook with. Reishi and turkey tail are not commonly used for culinary purposes because their tough texture and bitter taste make them unpalatable. On the other hand, lion’s mane, shiitake, enoki, and maitake make fine ingredients for a meal, each with its distinct flavors and properties. 

A steady intake of mushrooms can work wonders for our bodies. Eating 18 grams daily could reduce someone’s cancer risk by 45 percent, according to a scientific review of 17 observational studies. Using mushrooms to lessen meat consumption can also help reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering saturated fat in a diet—you can do this by mixing chewy stems and caps with ground meat. And they’re one of a few sources of ergothioneine, an amino acid with anti-inflammatory effects, according to several international medical papers. 

Getting them into your diet isn’t too difficult, says Chong. “Mushrooms make a great addition to any combination of stir-fried vegetables,” she explains. “They are easy to prep and quick to cook. Consider sautéing a package of mushrooms and keeping them in the refrigerator to add to an omelet, spaghetti sauce, sandwich, or salad.” 

Oh, and don’t eat them raw: Farmed mushrooms may contain agaritine, a toxic compound destroyed by heat during the cooking process. Research has found that certain store-bought varieties have less agaritine than freshly picked ones, but questions remain.

When shopping for whole mushrooms, make sure they’re firm to the touch, smooth, and dry on the surface. You don’t want any that look dried out, feel slimy, have big spots of discoloration, or show wet spots. Once you get home, store them in the fridge in a loose bag or a glass container with the lid cracked to prevent moisture buildup and fast spoilage.   

Dyeing with mushrooms 

Though they’re certainly delicious, there’s much more you can do with mushrooms than eat them, including making pigments for fabric dyes, ink, and all varieties of paint. In fact, the vastness of the fungus kingdom covers every color of the rainbow, says Julie Beeler, a naturalist, teacher, and artist. “Mushrooms contain a variety of different chemical compounds that create colors ranging from red to yellow to blue and colors in between,” says Beeler. “These pigments can be found throughout the mushroom, but for certain species like Cortinarius semisanguineus [the surprise webcap], the color is concentrated in the caps. For Hydnellum caeruleum [the blue and orange hydnellum], the color is throughout the mushroom. And for Hypomyces lactifluorum [the lobster mushroom], it is only the parasitized outer layer.”

Beeler created the website Mushroom Color Atlas as an educational resource for people who want to use mushrooms to make hues. She walks beginners through the process of extracting dyes from 28 fungal varieties that are common in the wild, and she intends to add another 13 in the coming months. Those few dozen specimens can produce more than 800 colors, she notes.

While the practice is growing in popularity, it has centuries of history. Fungi, particularly lichens—complex organisms created by a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an alga—have been used in cultural practices across North America, North Africa, Asia, and Europe. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, all pigments were processed naturally. Since then, pretty much every dyed item we encounter has been colored using synthetic dyes. “Mushrooms allow you to get back to natural practices that are more regenerative and sustainable for the environment and the planet as a whole,” says Beeler. 

To stain fabrics, she explains, you need a pot, similar to one for making tea. Beeler suggests cutting the fungi into smaller pieces and steeping them for about an hour in hot, but not boiling, water. (A temperature of about 160 degrees Fahrenheit will prevent the compounds from degrading.) When the color of the water has changed, you can dip natural fibers in to dye them. 

The look of your final product will depend on the mushrooms you use and your material. Wool tends to absorb more vibrant, bolder shades from the organisms than other textiles. Cotton, the world’s most widely used fiber, is surprisingly more complicated because it’s cellulose-based and requires a lengthier mordanting process to fix the chemicals to the threads. “You’ll need to be a lot more advanced to get really great colors on cotton,” says Beeler, “but you can get some incredible colors with wool.” 

If you’re not getting the look you want, you can alter the pH of the dye bath depending on what the mushroom you’re working with responds to best. Certain species prefer more acidic environments, so you can add vinegar to produce an orange tinge. Or for greater alkalinity, add a sprinkle of sodium carbonate to get a vibrant blue or green. The hues might fade over time with repeated washing or exposure to sunlight, unless you use a mordant like alum to bind them to the fibers.

The best part is that you can find your main materials almost anywhere: while moving dead limbs around your yard, during a walk through the park, or perched upon a strip of grass in a parking lot after a good rain. Some will look like the mushrooms you get from the grocery store, with the expected gills underneath; others will have more novel structures. Boletes, such as the spring king, have a spongy cap and produce a range of beautiful earth tones. Some false gill mushrooms deliver a spectrum of blues, greens, and yellows, depending on which you grab. Tooth fungi have fanglike spines and often produce blues or greens. Another excellent clue to the dyeing potential of a mushroom is whether it’s colorful inside and out. The lobster mushroom, for example, makes a variety of pinks and reds, true to its name. 

“I just love that as I’m walking in different environments, every step I’m taking, I’m thinking about that fungal underground in the soil and the mycelium, this web of connections creating a rainbow beneath my feet,” Beeler says. 

Building on mushrooms

Creating structures with mycelium—the network of fungal filaments that allows mushrooms to grow aboveground—is an exercise in simulating the layers in natural ecosystems. The practice is a chance to think of the presence of trash as an opportunity to create something new. “In the living world, there isn’t really such a thing as waste,” says Merlin Sheldrake, the author of Entangled Life, a bestselling book on mycology. Scraps are always used to create something else, like a scavenger breaking down a carcass. “Are there ways that we can learn from those cyclical processes to behave more like other living organisms do?” Sheldrake continues. “Or will we continue just to produce stuff and then put it in landfills?” 

Building with fungi is a relatively new field that’s in a state of expansion. Mycelium can be used to create packaging, clothing, and even buildings; researchers are working on making the materials more robust and streamlining production. BioHAB, an architectural project in Namibia, for instance, is salvaging the remains of cleared encroacher bush, an indigenous species that drastically reduces usable land and resources, to create a substrate for farming mushrooms. The waste from cultivating the fungi is then compacted into eco-friendly bricks. The end product is strong, flexible, insulative, and soundproof, and can be used to reinforce structures in local villages, BioHAB’s website states. 

Similarly, NASA is looking into mycelium-based construction materials for astronaut dwellings on the moon and Mars. These composites are light and transportable, protect better against radiation, could self-replicate in their new environments for an endless resource, and, at the end of their life spans, can be turned into fertilizer.

Working with mushroom structures encourages builders to think about the whole cycle of production. “If you’re growing composite material using mycelium and hemp, for example, then you think about where the hemp is coming from,” Sheldrake explains. “Then you start thinking about the fact that you are harnessing a waste stream from another industry to produce the feedstock to grow the fungus.” 

Accessing mycotecture at the consumer level is a bit more complicated, but more opportunities are sprouting up. If you want to wear your mushrooms, luxury fashion houses like Stella McCartney, Balenciaga, and Hermès are experimenting with mycelium leather. In 2021 Hermès introduced a bag in partnership with MycoWorks, a company that develops leatherlike materials in a variety of colors from reishi. 

Pivoting to mushrooms could, in part, help buffer the effect industrialization has on the planet. Manufacturing is a major cause of environmental degradation, pollution, carbon emissions, and waste. Mushroom-sourced components can offer a break from petrochemicals and plastics if they can be produced sustainably enough and brought to scale. But the field, which is still in its infancy, has a ways to go before it can make an earnest contribution to the use of sustainable goods. 

“These fungal materials are exciting when you step back and look at how all these different industries go together and the possibilities that exist between them,” says Sheldrake. “Unless we rethink the way that we build and produce, then we are going to be in even bigger trouble than we already are.” 

Growing your own mushrooms

When Tavis Lynch started raising mushrooms in the early 1990s, he approached it as a hobby before expanding into more complicated projects, eventually becoming a professional mycologist and commercial cultivator. He currently grows 20 indoor and outdoor mushroom varieties employing genetic pairing—creating new strains of mushrooms by mating spores from two existing varieties. 

Lynch has made a fruitful career out of something people can do at home. A DIY venture doesn’t have to be complicated. “There are a lot of different ways to grow mushrooms,” Lynch explains. “We can grow them on wheat or oat straw. We can grow them on natural logs. We can grow them on compost. We can even grow them on blended substrates that we create, typically an enriched sawdust or coffee grounds.” 

Most varieties of mushrooms bred at home are used for cooking or medicine. But the first thing to assess is the resources available where you live. Coffee grounds, compost, or sawdust will be the best substrates for anyone living in a major metropolitan area where green space is limited or tightly regulated. For those budding hobbyists, going the kitchen counter route with a tabletop kit, rearing specimens in a basement, or even hanging them somewhere in your shower will be your best bet. (Choosing a shaded, humid spot is the most important element.)

Once you’ve figured out the logistics, including what type of mushroom you want to farm, Lynch suggests finding a spawn supplier—a step that, like growing the fungi, won’t be too hard. “They’re popping up left and right every day because the trend toward home cultivation of mushrooms is massive right now,” he says. Companies such as Tavis’s Mushrooms, North Spore, Field & Forest Products, Earth Angel Mushrooms, and Mushroom Queens offer online ordering and quick shipping across the US.

I ordered a pink oyster mushroom kit online from Forest Origins. Starting the growth process was as simple as Lynch had said it would be: All I had to do was cut into the substrate bag, disturb some of the top layer with a fork, dampen it, and place it on my counter to get indirect sunlight. Then, twice a day, I came by and spritzed it with a water bottle. I started seeing fruiting bodies develop about a week into this daily ritual. Sadly, I accidentally sprayed it with bleach while cleaning and had to order another kit. 

Bleaching aside, checking on my baby mushrooms felt as good as tending to my other plants. Ensuring they had enough sun and moisture gave me a few minutes of grounding amid chaotic days. It was a reminder that nearly everything provided to us by this Earth is beautiful and useful.

“Getting out, working with your hands, having a distraction from your digital devices and from the noise of others and the city—that’s the real medicine,” says Lynch. “I’m looking out my window right now at my mushroom farm, and I wish I was out there working on it.” 

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It’s been a long time coming, but on March 4, representatives from more than 100 countries agreed on language for a new United Nations (UN) treaty to protect marine life. Nicknamed the High-Seas Treaty, the agreement reached by delegates of the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), is the culmination of talks facilitated by the UN that first began over 20 years ago. 

The planet’s marine life is facing multiple threats from overfishing, the effects of climate change, fossil fuel extraction, and escalating noise from vessel traffic. A 2021 study published in the journal Nature estimates that the shark and ray species that live in the open ocean have declined over 70 percent since 1970. Now, possible deep sea mining for minerals is putting unprotected areas of the world’s oceans in more danger.

[Related: The future of American conservation lies in restoration, not just protection.]

The High-Seas Treaty aims to create more marine-protected areas and more conservation measures in the high seas–a huge expanse of ocean covering almost 50 percent of the world. While there are international agreements and organizations that regulate the high seas, most focus on economic activities (shipping, fishing, mining, etc.). Environmental advocates say that these regulations do not always take biodiversity into account and the high seas are home to human rights abuses and laws are limited. 

Marine protected areas have been shown to benefit both fish and human interests. A 2022 study published in the journal Science found that carefully placed no-fishing zones like the 582,578 square mile wide Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii can help restore the populations of tuna and other large fish species.

The treaty also establishes basic ground rules for conducting environmental impact assessments for commercial activities in the oceans. Individual countries typically are in charge of the sea floor and waters about 200 nautical miles from their shores before the high seas begins. Currently, the world’s open oceans have no international body or agreement that primarily focuses on protecting marine life and this treaty aims to change that if enacted. Now that the language of the agreement is settled, countries will need to formally adopt it and then ratify the treaty itself. This ratification step usually requires legislative approval.

The high seas are home to a wealth of biodiversity, from tiny phytoplankton up to massive blue whales. It’s also where some of Earth’s most mysterious creatures like anglerfish and hatchetfish live. Many species that are found closer to shore like salmon, dolphins, turtles, and tuna, also spend a lot of their lives in the high seas during long migrations, which is partially why agreements like this are needed to extend the protections beyond national boundaries.  

[Related: World governments strike historic deal to protect planet’s biodiversity.]

The legally binding pact is also seen as a crucial component in the effort to reach a target to bring 30 percent of the world’s land and sea under protection by 2030 called 30 by 30. This agreement was struck at the United National Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in December 2022. 

“Today the world came together to protect the ocean for the benefit of our children and grandchildren,” Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs of the United States Monica Medina told The New York Times. “We leave here with the ability to create protected areas in the high seas and achieve the ambitious goal of conserving 30 percent of the ocean by 2030.”

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The idea of a “lost city” may feel like an ancient legend or the plot of a movie, but some of the world’s abandoned cities were bustling not too long ago. In France, the town of Oradour-Sur-Glane has been mostly untouched since 1944, when a military branch of the Nazi Party’s SS organization killed most of its population. Italian city Craco’s population dwindled after landslides in the 1960s and was completely deserted after an earthquake in 1980. The landscape of the western United States is full of the boom and bust towns that cropped up during the 19th Century.

It’s obvious that cities rise and fall, but there often aren’t clear records of why—especially when studying urban areas from thousands of years ago. Archaeologists face the challenge of putting together a puzzle from the remains of cities long gone to form theories of why some places retained their importance longer than others. 

[Related: The Aztecs’ solar calendar helped grow food for millions of people.]

A study published on March 3 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution analyzed the remains of 24 ancient cities in present-day Mexico and found that collective governance, investments in infrastructure, and cooperation between households were consistent in the cities that lasted the longest. 

“For years, my colleagues and I have investigated why and how certain cities maintain their importance or collapse,” said study co-author Gary Feinman, the MacArthur Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, in a statement. 

Previously, the team surveyed a wide range of Mesoamerican cities over thousands of years. They  found a broad pattern of societies with government structures that promoted the well-being of its people that lasted longer than the ones with large wealth gaps and autocratic leaders. 

Their new study focuses more on cities from a smaller time and geographical scale. The 24 cities in the western half of Mesoamerica and were founded between 1000 and 300 BCE, centuries before Spanish colonization dramatically changed the region in the 16th century. 

Clues were found in the remains of the buildings, ground plans, monuments, and plazas. “We looked at public architecture, we looked at the nature of the economy and what sustained the cities. We looked at the signs of rulership, whether they seem to be heavily personalized or not,” said Feinman. 

If remnants contain art and architecture that celebrates larger-than-life rulers, it’s a sign that the society was more autocratic or despotic. By contrast, depictions of leaders in groups, often wearing masks, is more indicative of shared governance. 

Among the 24 ancient cities in the study, the cities that had more collective forms of governance tended to remain in power longer, sometimes by thousands of years more than the more autocratic ones. 

[Related: The ancient Mexican city of Monte Albán thrived with public works, not kings.]

However, even among the cities that were likely governed well, some cities were still outliers.  To understand why, they looked at infrastructure and household interdependence.

“We looked for evidence of path dependence, which basically means the actions or investments that people make that later end up constraining or fostering how they respond to subsequent hazards or challenges,” Feinman said.

They found that efforts to build dense and interconnected homes and large, central open plazas were two factors that contributed to sustainability and regional importance of these cities. 

As a way to measure sustainability in the past, most research looks for correlations between environmental or climatic events like hurricanes and earthquakes and the human response to them. However, it’s difficult to know whether the timing is reliable, and these studies typically emphasize a correlation between environmental crisis and collapse without considering how some cities successfully navigated those major challenges.  

In this study, the team took a different approach. The residents of these cities faced everything from drought and earthquakes to periodic hurricanes and heavy rains, in addition to challenges from competing cities and groups. They used this lens to examine the durational history of the 24 centers and the factors that promoted their sustainability. The team found that it was governance that had an important role in sustainability. According to study co-author Linda Nicholas, this shows that, “responses to crises and disasters are to a degree political”. Nicholas is an adjunct curator at the Field Museum.

While these cities and their inhabitants have been gone for thousands of years old, the lessons learned from their peaks and downfalls are incredibly relevant today. 

“You cannot evaluate responses to catastrophes like earthquakes, or threats like climatic change, without considering governance,” said Feinman. “The past is an incredible resource to understand how to address contemporary issues.”

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Animal feed plays a major role in the environmental impact of your diet. In dairy and beef production, it accounts for about 36 and 55 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, respectively. The raw materials for animal feed typically consist of crops like soybean and wheat and animal-based products like fish meal and fish oil. But the production of these ingredients could be detrimental to the environment. 

About 33 percent of croplands are dedicated to livestock feed production, which may result in nutrient and pesticide runoff. Crops for animal feed also make up about six percent of the GHG emissions from global food production. Meanwhile, increasing demand for feed made from marine byproducts may be unsustainable for ocean ecosystems.

“When we feed these ingredients to animals that have their own environmental impact from production, the overall impact is much higher than if we just ate the ingredients themselves, “ says Caitlin D. Kuempel, conservation scientist and lecturer at the Griffith University School of Environment and Science in Australia. “The more feed required to grow an animal, the higher this overall pressure can become.” 

Global food production, including plant and animal agriculture, is estimated to make up 26 percent of the total GHG emissions around the world. Therefore, to reduce the environmental impact of animal products, it may be beneficial to look at their diets and work on making them more sustainable as well.

Animal feed production has a significant environmental impact

For many types of farmed animals, feed typically accounts for 50 to 70 percent of production costs, says Kurt A. Rosentrater, food engineer and associate professor at Iowa State University whose research focuses on improving the sustainability of agricultural-based systems. 

“Ironically, the production of feed and the ingredients that go into these feeds can often result in up to about 70 percent of the environmental impacts from eating products from these animals,” says Rosentrater. That’s not the case for all species, especially since ruminants produce significant GHG emissions during digestion. But for most animal-based products, the most significant portion of environmental impacts happen on the farm before they are even processed into food products, he adds.

[Related: Smarter fertilizer use could shrink our agricultural carbon footprint.]

For instance, animal feed given to farmed broiler chickens and farmed salmonids (including salmon, marine trout, and Arctic char) account for more than half of their respective industries’ environmental impact, according to a recent Current Biology study. Feed production accounts for at least 78 percent of the environmental pressures of farmed chicken, and over 67 percent for that of salmon.

Chicken and salmon are the largest animal-sourced food sectors on land and the sea, which makes them a fitting focus for research. “We combined data on four pressures—greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater use, nutrient pollution, and land and sea disturbance—into a single metric to get a more holistic view of the environmental footprint of these two production systems,” says Kuempel, who was involved in the study.

The findings revealed that 95 percent of the environmental footprints of chicken and salmon are concentrated in just five percent of the world, which includes some of the largest producers like the US and Chile. Knowing the spatial distribution helps give more local context. This could help identify areas that may have resource competition, and focus on location-specific policies to reduce environmental impact, says Kuempel.

Moreover, the study found that more than 85 percent of farmed chicken and salmon’s environmental footprints overlap primarily due to their shared feed ingredients. Commercial poultry feed often consists of crops like corn and wheat, but they also contain fish meal and fish oils. At the same time, salmon aquaculture requires 2.5 million tons of crops like soybean and wheat for feed, but they still eat fish meal.

“Since feed contributes such a high percentage of their environmental footprint, this is an obvious area where changes could potentially be made to lower their environmental pressures overall,” says Kuempel.

Improve the sustainability of feed production

Some actions can improve the sustainability of feed production, including changing the dietary composition of feed ingredients to include more environmentally friendly options, says Kuempel. This can be effective since the environmental impacts of feeds are primarily influenced by their ingredients.

In a 2021 study, the authors found that reducing the proportion of high-impact ingredients, like cereals and oils, while increasing the proportion of low-impact ones, like peas or fava beans, may result in eco-friendlier pig production without harming animal performance.

[Related: What the ‘B’ label on your favorite drinks and snacks means.]

The fast-growing aquaculture industry has also influenced a shift to crop-based feed ingredients to maintain sustainability in ocean ecosystems. However, for carnivorous farmed fish, plant-based diets would affect their nutritional profile, and subsequently, human nutrition. More studies are needed to understand the impact of different feed formulations on various farmed fish.

A 2020 Scientific Reports study found that reducing the fish meal component from 35 to 15 percent in the feed for the Atlantic salmon parr reduced their growth. However, partially replacing it with fish protein hydrolysate (FPH) supplementation in a high plant protein diet might result in a similar growth performance with the fish fed with a 35 percent fish meal.

Kuempel also suggests introducing novel feeds like microalgae and insects to potentially reduce environmental pressure. Microalgae could successfully replace fish meal and fish oil in aquaculture diets while also improving growth and meat quality in poultry and pigs. Feeding trials conducted on chickens, several fish species, and pigs concluded that insect meal could replace over 25 percent of soy meal or fish meal in animal feed with no adverse effects.

Overall, animal feed production has the capacity to become more sustainable. “Many researchers are hard at work trying to improve the efficiency of ingredient growth and processing, as well as improved digestibility and reduced GHG emissions during digestion,” says Rosentrater. “Many promising developments are underway that will soon reduce the impacts of feed and ingredient production, processing, and digestion.”

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Over the past 15 years, coal power has been on a precipitous decline across the United States, dropping in use by over 50 percent. The rise of cheaper natural gas and renewable energy combined with environmental regulations has led to the shuttering of hundreds of plants across the country. Between 2010 and 2021, 36 percent of the country’s coal plants went offline; since then another 25 percent shut down or committed to retiring by 2030.

But even as coal declines, it is still keeping a deadly grasp on communities across the country, according to a new report from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. The coal sector is responsible for 3,800 premature deaths a year due to fine particle pollution, or PM2.5, from smokestacks. 

“We know that coal plants remain one of the biggest polluters in the United States,” said Holly Bender, senior director for energy campaigns with the Sierra Club. “What the [government] data didn’t show was who was most impacted by each of these plants.”

Coal plants release heavier particles and localized pollution that can have acute impacts within a 30- to 50-mile radius, but they also release fine particulate matter that gets blown hundreds of miles away downwind from tall smokestacks. The report looked at these particles specifically, finding that they had widespread impacts, causing premature death in states that don’t even border another state with a plant.

For example, the highest number of deaths due to coal plant pollution happened in Alleghany County in Pennsylvania and Cook County in Illinois, with 63 and 61 fatalities per year, respectively. Yet Cook Country is hundreds of miles away from the nearest power plant. The Labadie plant, Cook County’s biggest coal pollution contributor, owned by the American energy company Ameren, is over 300 miles away in rural Missouri. For the average coal plant, only 4 percent of premature deaths occurred in the facility’s same county and only 18 percent occurred in the same state, highlighting the cross-regional nature of the problem of coal soot.

Particulate pollution has a well-documented and disproportionate impact on people of color and low-income communities. The report notes how these inequities are increasing over time. While as a whole coal is the only pollution source that affects white Americans more than average, Daniel Prull, the author of the report, noted that the impacts varied from plant to plant; many coal facilities examined in the study had disproportionate impacts on communities of color, depending on where they were located.

Over 50 percent of the mortality caused by coal soot could be traced back to 17 plants, the report found. The parent company with the most deaths was Tennessee Valley Authority, which has four plants, and is owned by the U.S. government. Many of the other super-polluters, such as PPL, Berkshire Hathaway, and Ameren, were investor-owned utilities — which combined were responsible for 40 percent of these coal-driven premature deaths. “This is not just a problem that’s relegated to one part of the industry,” said Bender, adding that the parent companies causing the most harm were also the ones that have failed to make commitments to retire coal plants and transition to clean energy.

In line with the Clean Air Act, the EPA is supposed to regulate particulate pollution; last month it released a draft proposal to do so under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. While the draft standard would lower the exposure limit, the new Sierra Club report notes that it does nothing to explicitly address controlling emissions from coal power plants, over half of which lack modern pollution control technology. 

Coal continues to become increasingly uneconomic, Bender said, but it’s important to make sure the energy sector doesn’t simply move from one fossil fuel to another. “Natural gas could not be further from a climate solution,” she said. “We need to make sure we are truly on track to achieve these emission reductions that are necessary to address the climate crisis and the very real pollution burdens experienced across the country.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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Celebrations in a beachside California city will soon have to take place without an iconic, single-use party favor: balloons.

The city council of Laguna Beach, about 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles, banned the sale and use of all types of balloons on Tuesday, citing their contribution to ocean litter as well as risks from potential fires when they hit power lines. Starting in 2024, people using balloons on public property or at city events could incur fines of up to $500 for each violation. (Balloons used solely within people’s homes are exempt.)

The ban is part of a growing nationwide movement to restrict balloon use, as well as a broader item-by-item push to restrict problematic single-use products like plastic straws and bags. For now, most balloon-related state and city legislation only targets the intentional release of helium-filled balloons, but experts say outright bans on using any type outside are gaining traction as people better understand their environmental consequences. Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 2016 banned any balloon filled with a gas that’s lighter than air, and there are similar bans in places like East Hampton, New York, and Solana Beach and Encinitas, California.

“Plastic in the ocean and environment generally is gaining more attention,” Chad Nelsen, chief executive of the nonprofit environmental organization Surfrider Foundation, told Grist. “It’s good that people are looking at these disposable, single-use items that we have been using every day and not thinking about the consequences.” He said California beach cleanups organized by Surfrider in 2022 collected a total of nearly 2,500 balloons.

Balloons, especially those filled with helium, often become ocean pollution after just a few hours of use. Those made of latex — a kind of soft, synthetic or natural material that may take decades to break down — can be mistaken for food by marine animals and birds. When ingested, latex can conform to birds’ stomach cavities, causing nutrient deficiency or suffocation. 

Balloons made of mylar, a kind of plastic coated in thin metal, basically never break down. “They stick around truly until the end of time,” said Kara Wiggin, a doctoral researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The plastic strings attached to them can strangle marine life and then chip into microplastics that contaminate drinking water and the food chain.

Mylar balloons can also get tangled in power lines, leading to power outages or fires. According to the city of Riverside, California, balloons caused more than 1,300 minutes of power outages for its publicly owned water and electric utility in 2021. Other cities and utilities report thousands of ratepayers losing power each year when balloons get caught in power lines.

Wiggin said balloons are just a small part of society’s broader addiction to single-use items, but that banning them is “low-hanging fruit.” “We don’t throw things purposefully into the environment, but we often do that with balloons,” she told Grist. “That’s a practice that needs to be stopped.”

Nelsen said there are plenty of balloon-free ways to keep the fun going, including paper-based decorations, streamers, flags, kites, and pinwheels — many of which can be safely reused dozens of times. “Let’s find a way to celebrate kids’ birthdays without killing marine life,” he said.

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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For most of human history, the stars blazed in an otherwise dark night sky. But starting around the Industrial Revolution, as artificial light increasingly lit cities and towns at night, the stars began to disappear.

We are two astronomers who depend on dark night skies to do our research. For decades, astronomers have been building telescopes in the darkest places on Earth to avoid light pollution.

Today, most people live in cities or suburbs that needlessly shine light into the sky at night, dramatically reducing the visibility of stars. Satellite data suggests that light pollution over North America and Europe has remained constant or has slightly decreased over the last decade, while increasing in other parts of the world, such as Africa, Asia and South America. However, satellites miss the blue light of LEDs, which are commonly used for outdoor lighting – resulting in an underestimate of light pollution.

An international citizen science project called Globe at Night aims to measure how everyday people’s view of the sky is changing.

Measuring light pollution over time

Relying on citizen scientists makes it much easier to take multiple measurements of the night sky over time from many different places.

To provide data to the project, volunteers enter the date and time, their location and local weather conditions into an online reporting page anytime an hour or more after sunset on certain nights each month. The page then shows eight panels, each displaying a constellation visible at that time of year – like Orion in January and February, for example. The first panel, representing a light-polluted night sky, only shows the few brightest stars. Each panel shows progressively more and fainter stars, representing darker and darker skies. The participant then matches what they see in the sky with one of the panels.

The Globe at Night team launched the report page as an online app in 2011, just at the beginning of widespread adoption of LEDs. In the recent paper, the team filtered out data points taken during twilight, when the Moon was out, when it was cloudy or when the data was unreliable for any other reason. This left around 51,000 data points, mostly taken in North America and Europe.

The data shows that the night sky got, on average, 9.6% brighter every year. For many people, the night sky today is twice as bright as it was eight years ago. The brighter the sky, the fewer stars you can see.

If this trend continues, a child born today in a place where 250 stars are visible now would only be able to see 100 stars on their 18th birthday.

Causes, impacts and solutions

The main culprits driving increasing brightness of the night sky are urbanization and the growing use of LEDs for outdoor lighting.

The loss of dark skies, both from light pollution and also from increasing numbers of satellites orbiting Earth, threatens our ability as astronomers to do good science. But everyday people feel this loss too, as the degradation of dark skies is also a loss of human cultural heritage. Starry night skies have inspired artists, writers, musicians and philosophers for thousands of years. For many, a star-filled sky provides an irreplaceable sense of awe.

Light pollution also interferes with the daily cycle of light and dark that plants and animals use to regulate sleep, nourishment and reproduction. Two-thirds of the world’s key biodiversity areas are affected by light pollution.

Individuals and their communities can make simple changes to reduce light pollution. The secret is using the right amount of light, in the right place and at the right time. Shielding outdoor light fixtures so they shine downward, using bulbs that emit more yellow-colored light instead of white light and putting lights on timers or motion sensors can all help reduce light pollution.

The next time you are far away from a major city or another source of light pollution, look up at the night sky. A view of the roughly 2,500 stars you can see with the naked eye in a truly dark sky might convince you that dark skies are a resource worth saving.

Chris Impey is a distinguished professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona and receives funding from the National Science Foundation and Epic Games. Connie Walker is a
scientist at the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory and works for NSF’s NOIRLab and the International Astronomical Union. She is a member of the American Astronomical Society COMPASSE and on the Board of Directors for the International Dark-Sky Association.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Solar canopies built above parking lots are an increasingly common sight around the country—you can already see these installed at university campuses, airports, and lots near commercial office buildings. Because the sun is a renewable resource, these solar canopies reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with energy production. 

The clean energy benefits are clear: A 32-acre solar carport canopy at Rutgers University in New Jersey, for instance, produces about 8.8 megawatts of power, or about $1.2 million in electricity. They also make use of existing space to generate clean energy rather than occupying croplands, arid lands, and grasslands.

There may be other perks to adding solar panels over parking lots, too. Research shows that the benefits of solar canopies can be taken a step further if electric vehicles (EVs) are able to charge right in the parking lot. People can tap into this potential by installing EV chargers in solar carports, which makes charging more accessible for owners and creates a small-scale local energy grid for the community. The expense of installation and other barriers, though, can make deployment challenging. 

EV charging in the carport

A solar carport canopy with 286 solar modules is able to produce about 140 megawatt-hours of energy per year for EV charging, according to a new Scientific Reports study. That’s enough to provide electricity to more than 3,000 vehicles per month if each car parks for an hour. The authors say charging EVs this way can generate 94 percent lower total carbon dioxide emissions than electricity from traditional grid methods. 

To maximize these benefits, smart technology that controls the timing and speed of charging is critical, says Lynn Daniels, manager at RMI’s Carbon-Free Transportation program who was not involved in the study. Smart charging allows users to optimize energy consumption by charging only when prices are cheaper due to low-energy demand or when more renewable energy is available on the grid.

[Related: Solar energy company wants to bolt panels directly into the ground]

EV ownership is growing so swiftly that entire electric grids are at risk of being stressed. If most owners across the US Western region continue to charge their EVs during nighttime, peak electricity demand can increase by up to 25 percent, according to a 2022 Applied Energy study. Accessible daytime charging at work or public charging stations would help address this problem and reduce GHG emissions.

There are ways to maximize emission reductions when smart-charging electric vehicles, according to a recent report from RMI, a nonprofit organization focusing on sustainability. “Our report found that, today, charging one million EVs at the right times is equivalent to taking between 20,000 and 80,000 internal combustion engine vehicles off the road,” says Daniels. If EVs represent 25 percent of vehicles by 2030, “emissions-optimized smart charging,” he adds, would be the equivalent of removing an additional 5.73 million automobiles with combustion engines.

A source of revenue, goodwill, and more

Solar canopies provide vehicles with protection from rain, sleet, hail, and other inclement weather, says Joshua M. Pearce, whose research specializes in solar photovoltaic technology and sustainable development at Western University in Canada. The shade they provide also means car owners may require less cooling from air conditioning at start-up because the vehicle didn’t stay under the sun. But that’s not all they can do.

A solar carport canopy with EV charging can be an opportunity for site owners to earn money if drivers have to pay a fee to charge their cars, says Daniels.

On the other hand, if businesses or large-scale retailers provide EV charging for free, Pearce says, that may develop goodwill with customers. Shoppers might spend more time and money while waiting for their cars to charge, allowing business owners to earn even more profit, he adds. And shopping centers have lots of potentially convertible areas: If Walmart deployed 11.1 gigawatts of solar canopies over its 3,571 Supercenter parking lots in the US, that would provide more than 346,000 solar-powered EV charging stations for 90 percent of Americans living within 15 miles of a store, according to a 2021 estimate.

[Related: What you need to know about converting your home to solar]

Solar canopies also save energy, since about 5 percent of electricity is lost each year as it travels from a power plant to your home or business. If the electricity the solar panels produce is used directly by the buildings they’re connected to or the EVs charging in the parking lots, transmission losses can be reduced, says Pearce.

The widespread deployment of solar canopies across parking lots may be an opportunity to create a small-scale local energy grid as well. The electrical grid is highly vulnerable to natural disasters, intentional physical attacks, and cyberattacks. Solar systems in parking lots can be used as anchors for microgrids—local, autonomous power systems that can remain operational while the main grid is down—that could make communities more resilient, “similar to how the US military uses solar to improve national security,” says Pearce.

Logistics of transforming parking lots

Upfront capital costs are the primary roadblocks to solar-powered carports with EV charging, says Pearce. The physical structure needs to be taller and more robust than a conventional solar farm, requiring more materials like metal and concrete, he adds. EV chargers also cost money, increasing the price even further. Commercial EV charging stations can cost around $2,500 to $40,000 for a single port. An installation often requires permits and approval from local authorities or inspectors, all of which are additional expenses and barriers to faster deployment.

The design of the solar array may be a challenge, too. “There’s a trade-off between right-sizing the solar array for current EV charging needs versus anticipated future demand and the costs of the solar array,” says Daniels. “The solar array design and location on the site can create significant variability in installation complexity and project costs.”

Daniels recommends raising awareness about the currently-available tax credits and other incentives, such as the federal solar tax credit that can deduct 30 percent of total commercial solar installation costs. There is a tax credit of 6 percent (with a maximum credit of $100,000 per unit) on commercial charging equipment as well, given that it is placed in a low-income community.

When it comes to new regulations, Pearce suggests that policymakers begin with a small step, like mandating solar-powered carports with EV charging capabilities for new surface parking or government-owned lots. After that, requirements for other locations like public universities could follow, he adds.

States or municipalities could also offer incentives other than the existing federal solar tax credit. To encourage state agencies, government offices, businesses, and nonprofits to install EV-charging solar canopies over parking lots, the Maryland Energy Administration’s Solar Canopy and Dual Use Technology Grant Program is offering grants. In 2019, one of these grants enabled IKEA to install a 1.5-megawatt solar canopy with EV charging stations at its Baltimore store.

Moreover, offering low- or no-interest loans to small- and medium-sized businesses can help them “keep up with the big firms investing millions in solar now simply to make money,” says Pearce. In general, if the federal government hopes to break one of the biggest barriers to the installation of solar canopies with EV charging capabilities, reducing upfront costs would be the key.

The post Why your community’s next solar panel project should be above a parking lot appeared first on Popular Science.

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These days, it seems like you can make milk out of anything. But should companies be able to call the liquid made from oats, coconuts and soy beans “milk”? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released draft guidance on how food and beverage companies should label and identify plant-based milk products marketed as milk alternatives. 

The draft guidance proposes that companies can continue to use the word milk to market these dairy alternatives, but they also should include a statement that explains how the product compares nutritionally with dairy milk. One possibility is that culture alt-milk labels state that the product “contains lower amounts of vitamin D and calcium than milk” or “contains less protein than milk.”

[Related: Magnetic microrobots could zap the bacteria out of your cold glass of milk.]

The FDA writes that consumers “understand that plant-based milk alternatives do not contain milk.” The draft cites a survey of consumer comments gathered by the agency where roughly 75 percent of participants reported knowing that the products were not made with dairy. Focus group research also indicated that calling these products “milk” is “strongly rooted in consumers’ vocabulary.”

“Getting enough of the nutrients in milk and fortified soy beverages is especially important to help children grow and develop, and parents and caregivers should know that many plant-based alternatives do not have the same nutrients as milk,” said Susan T. Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, in a statement. “Food labels are an important way to help support consumer behavior, so we encourage the use of the voluntary nutritional statements to better help customers make informed decisions.”

The Good Food Institute, which advocates for plant-based products, objected to the extra labeling writing “the guidance misguidedly admonishes companies to make a direct comparison” with cow’s milk, even though key nutrients are already required to be listed. Meanwhile, chief executive of animal-free meat company BetterMeat Paul Shapiro praised the move on Twitter. 

In response, Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) issued a joint statement saying that the “misguided rule will hurt America’s dairy farmers and our rural communities.” Idaho and Wisconsin, both states with large dairy industries with a vested interest in selling cow’s milk, have been pushing for better labeling of alternative milk products. In 2017, Baldwin introduced the DAIRY PRIDE Act which would require the FDA to enforce the federal definition of milk as the “lacteal secretion … obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows.” The bill has yet to pass, despite being reintroduced in 2021.

According to the FDA, 1 in 3 households in the United States reported purchasing alternative milk products in 2016, and sales of plant-based milk products rose from $1.5 billion to $2.4 billion from 2016 to 2020. 

Consumption of cow milk has decreased by nearly half in the past 50 years, according to the Department of Agriculture. As non dairy milks have surged in popularity, the cattle milk industry has been challenging the right of the plant based milk industry to call their projects milk. 

The FDA oversees “standards of identity”, legally binding definitions of products so that consumers know what they are getting when they purchase something. Another example is how some cheeses, like Kraft Singles, are labeled “cheese product” depending on pasteurization and production processes. 

In 2018, the FDA began a strategy to update these standards “in light of marketing trends and the latest nutritional science,” but milk has already had a complicated history with standards of identity. The FDA previously said that milk can generally be described as “the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows.” 

The dairy industry has raised concerns for two decades regarding the FDA’s policing the definition of milk amidst the rise of plant based dairy milk alternatives. Dairy producers have argued that plant-based milk companies are playing “fast and loose using standardized dairy terms,” arguing that this language use is inaccurate since the plant-based alternatives don’t have the same taste or nutritional profile as dairy milk. 

[Related: The almond milk craze could be bad news for bees.]

In response to the new draft guidelines, Jim Mulhern, head of the National Milk Producers Federation, told The Washington Post that the proposal is a “step toward labeling integrity” that acknowledges the “utter lack of nutritional standards prevalent in plant-based beverages.” He criticized the suggested guidance on terminology, emphasizing that “dairy terms are for true dairy products, not plant-based impostors.”

The debate is likely to continue as some nutritional studies are challenging dairy milk’s superiority over plant-based alternatives. A 2020 review by The New England Journal of Medicine on how milk and human health found that dairy milk did not prevent bone fractures, a common reason for suggesting milk as a healthy beverage. The study found higher rates of hip fractures in countries that consumed the highest amounts of milk and calcium.

“In reality, some plant milks are likely to be superior to cow milk,”  Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of the study told CNN. He added that soy milk has more healthy essential fatty acids than cow’s milk and that eating soy phytoestrogens in adolescence may reduce the risk of breast cancer.

The FDA is currently accepting comments on the new draft guidance and, in a statement, FDA Commissioner Robert Carliff said, “The draft recommendations issued today should lead to providing consumers with clear labeling to give them the information they need to make informed nutrition and purchasing decisions on the products they buy for themselves and their families.”

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Franklin Chang-Díaz gets into his car, turns on the radio and hears the news about another increase in the price of gasoline. But he sets off knowing that his trip won’t be any more expensive: His tank is filled with hydrogen. His car takes that element and combines it with oxygen in a fuel cell that works like a small power plant, creating energy — which goes into a battery to power the car — and water vapor. Not only will Chang-Díaz’s trip cost no more than it did yesterday, it will also pollute far less than a traditional gasoline-powered car would.

Chang-Díaz would like to have a public hydrogen station nearby whenever he needs to fill his tank, but that isn’t possible yet, either in his native Costa Rica or in any other Latin American country. He ends up instead at the hydrogen station he built himself, as part of a project aimed at demonstrating that hydrogen generated with renewable energy sources — green hydrogen — is the present, not the future.

A physicist, former NASA astronaut and the CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company, Chang-Díaz has a clear vision. Green hydrogen, he believes, is a fundamental player in lowering emissions from transportation and converting regions that import fossil fuels — such as his small Central American country — into exporters of clean energy, key to avoiding the catastrophic effects of global warming.

According to data from the Inter-American Development Bank, the most polluting sectors in Latin America to which clean hydrogen technology could be applied are transportation (which generates 40 percent of the region’s CO₂ emissions) and electricity and energy (36 percent of emissions). And Chang-Díaz is not alone in his belief in the promise. Large-scale hydrogen transportation will be part of the future, says Nilay Shah, a chemical engineer at Imperial College London. “By 2050, hydrogen could deliver 18 percent of the global energy supply … 28 percent of which would be destined for the transport sector,” he and his colleagues note in an article on the application of hydrogen in mobility technologies in the 2022 Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

But for green hydrogen to become an important player in the world’s energy resources, the technologies for obtaining it will need to be developed on a large scale. Latin America wants to be part of this future and is already preparing, with projects throughout the region.

Not all hydrogen is the same

Hydrogen is the lightest chemical element: Its nucleus has only one proton, orbited by an electron. It’s also the most common: Up to 90 percent of the atoms in the universe are believed to be hydrogen atoms. In its gaseous state (H ₂), it is tasteless, colorless and odorless. In the terrestrial environment, it is usually found in more complex compounds, such as two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom to form a water molecule (H ₂O), or four hydrogen atoms bonded to one carbon atom to form methane (CH ₄). If we need the hydrogen atoms alone, we must uncouple them from these compounds.

The use of hydrogen as an energy source is not new. For decades, NASA mixed H₂ gas with oxygen to generate the energy needed to lift hundreds of tons and send its shuttles into space. The US Department of Energy lists it as a safer fuel than fossil fuels because it is non-toxic and dissipates quickly in the event of a leak, since it is lighter than air.

At present, hydrogen as an energy source is mainly used in the production of petroleum derivatives, steel, ammonia and methanol. According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2020 the world’s population consumed about 90 million tons of hydrogen — equivalent to only 2.5 percent of global energy consumption. Latin America uses only 5 percent of this hydrogen, mainly in countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia and Chile. It is mostly dirty hydrogen, which pollutes the planet due to the processes used to obtain it.

Depending on how it is derived, hydrogen can be classified as gray, blue, green — or even black. Gray hydrogen is generated using fossil fuels — natural gas especially, in the case of Latin America. In a process called steam reforming, carbon monoxide (CO) and water vapor (H₂O) are subjected to high temperatures, moderate pressure and a catalyst, producing carbon dioxide (CO ₂) and hydrogen (H ₂). If coal is used instead of gas to generate the heat necessary for steam reforming, the hydrogen is then considered black — the worst of all, from an environmental point of view.

Blue hydrogen uses gas or coal in the same steam reforming process, but in this case 80 percent to 90 percent of the carbon emissions end up underground through a process called industrial carbon capture and storage (CSS). Finally, green hydrogen — also called clean hydrogen — uses electrical energy generated by renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, to separate the water molecule into its two elements, hydrogen and oxygen, by means of an anode and a cathode in a process called electrolysis.

Currently, less than 0.4 percent of the hydrogen utilized in Latin America is green; the rest is linked to fossil fuels. In fact, in 2019, hydrogen production for the region required more natural gas than all of the gas consumed in Chile, a country with 19 million inhabitants. And it generated more polluting emissions than those produced in a year by all the cars in Colombia, a nation with some 7 million vehicles.

Globally, 4 percent of hydrogen production is already the result of electrolysis, but the remaining 96 percent still requires gas, coal or petroleum derivatives.

Toward green hydrogen

With the goal of producing more and more green hydrogen, several projects on different scales are taking shape in Latin America.

• The Brazilian company Unigel plans to inaugurate a $120 million plant in 2023, which will produce 10,000 tons per year of green hydrogen — the equivalent of 60 megawatts (MW) — in its first stage.
• Sener Ingeniería Mexico announced in August 2022 the creation of the first of a series of small plants, of about 2.5 MW.
• Chile, for its part, is already seeing some of the fruits of its National Green Hydrogen Strategy, launched in 2020. This South American country says it plans to “conquer global markets” in 2030, mainly Europe and China, where it aims to send 72 percent of its production. The port of entry to Germany will be Hamburg. “With its great potential for green hydrogen production, Chile is on the verge of becoming an exporter of global magnitude,” said the mayor of Hamburg, Peter Tschenscher, during the signing of a cooperation agreement in September 2022.
• Uruguay launched the Green Hydrogen Sector Fund, with $10 million non-reimbursable funding from the government to finance projects. In August 2022, nine companies won a spot, some with names such as “Green H ₂ Production for Forest Transport” and “Palos Blancos Project: green hydrogen, ammonia and fertilizer production plant with wind and solar photovoltaic renewable energy.”
• And in Costa Rica, Chang-Díaz is helping lead the way to add green hydrogen to the country’s portfolio of clean energy sources (about 99 percent of electricity in Costa Rica is generated through sources such as the sun, wind and water from dams). In July 2022, Chang-Díaz demonstrated on social media how he fueled his car, at a prototype station, with green hydrogen produced in his own country.

While some Latin American countries may benefit from the production of green hydrogen, others will benefit from large-scale consumption of the clean energy source. For example, Trinidad and Tobago, which consumes 40 percent of the region’s hydrogen for its oil refining processes, emits 12.3 metric tons of carbon per person per year (by comparison, Costa Rica emits 1.6 metric tons per capita per year, according to 2019 World Bank data). If Trinidad and Tobago used green hydrogen in its processes instead of gray hydrogen, its carbon footprint would be significantly reduced.

Other countries are being creative and are not yet focusing on either production or consumption of green hydrogen. Panama, for example, seeks to become a storage and commercialization node for the element, like the air and maritime transport hub it already is. As part of this national energy transformation plan, called Green Hydrogen Roadmap, the authorities of this country signed a memorandum of understanding with Siemens Energy. Panama also has plans to produce some of its own green hydrogen eventually: The Ciudad Dorada Biorefinery, expected to begin construction this year, will have the capacity to generate 405,000 metric tons.

“Green hydrogen technology is developing worldwide and by 2030 Latin America will be the third region in the world with the most projects, after Europe and Australia,” says José Miguel Bermúdez, chemical engineer and energy technology analyst at the IEA.

For Shah, the reason for this growing interest is clear: Many Latin American countries have the potential to generate more clean energy than they need. “Let’s take Chile, for example,” he says. “The amount of potential for renewable electricity is probably 10 times more than the amount of electricity you need in the country.” Exporting that clean energy from Chile or Costa Rica in the form of electricity over long distances is complicated and expensive. But using it to create hydrogen and transport it in tanks to practically any place in the world is realistic, he says, although it will require investments — just as investments in oil tankers and gas pipelines were once needed.

But, Shah adds, green hydrogen could also be transported with existing infrastructure if it is used to create popular products, such as ammonia (NH₃, a nitrogen atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms, a compound widely used in agriculture) or synthetic fuels.

Challenges to be solved

After the production and distribution of green hydrogen comes its myriad uses. To power car batteries, it’s combined with oxygen in a fuel cell and generates water vapor and energy. To manufacture iron, hydrogen is used to transform one molecule of iron oxide (Fe₂O ₃) into two molecules of iron (Fe) and three molecules of water (H ₂O) at high temperatures — fossil fuels are currently used for this purpose. Processing this iron further, with more energy, produces steel.

The manufacture of cement also requires high temperatures, currently generated with fossil fuels: The IEA indicates that as much as 67 percent of hydrogen demand in 2030 could come from this industry. In addition, hydrogen combined with carbon in the Fischer-Tropsch process generates synthetic fuels, which are cleaner than traditional fossil fuels. Aircraft are already allowed to fly on up to 50 percent synthetic kerosene.

Some 50,000 hydrogen vehicles are already on the road worldwide, Bermúdez adds. Projections are that the number will soon skyrocket — China alone expects to have 1 million on its streets by 2035 — but experts agree that, in the short or medium term, hydrogen will not completely replace the most polluting fuels; instead, it will be one alternative in a matrix of different options, such as traditional electric cars or solar-powered airplanes. However, the experts also agree that it will be a significant option, not a marginal one.

“There will be a series of technologies and areas of opportunity that do not have to be specifically the same in all the countries of our region,” says Andrés González Garay, a process engineer at the chemical company BASF and a coauthor of the article on hydrogen production and its applications to mobility in the Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “It is also true that hydrogen, although it can be applied in a lot of areas, will not make sense in all of them, and it will depend a lot on our political, social and economic systems.”

To arrive at the more environmentally friendly scenario that green hydrogen offers, its production should be increased as soon as possible and, at the same time, its consumption needs to be encouraged, Shah says. “Global hydrogen production is expected to grow six to 10 times between now and 2050,” González Garay says, and the increase is projected to be mainly in clean hydrogen.

The role of governments will be pivotal, the scientists say. “If governments become the first users of hydrogen — for their buildings, for their vehicle fleets, for their other operations, for power generation — they become the customer. Then they can create the supply chain of hydrogen and give confidence to the producers that there is a market,” Shah says.

Adds Bermúdez: “The public sector needs to put the regulations and support programs in place to accelerate the private sector. Public policies are needed to force demand for green hydrogen…. If Latin America does not position itself well and start producing and closing agreements, it runs the risk of being left behind.”

Chang-Díaz, for his part, fears that countries like Costa Rica, despite producing almost all its electricity through clean renewable sources, risk moving too late to take advantage of the wave of green hydrogen that is already beginning to rise. In December 2022 he participated as a speaker at an international meeting held in San José, the capital of his country. But at the same time, a few kilometers away, the bill to support the green hydrogen sector, which has been under discussion for months, has not advanced in the Legislative Assembly.

So, at least for now, Chang-Díaz will remain the only one in his country who can travel in a car that uses green hydrogen as fuel.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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All around New York City, building projects seem to be constantly in the works. But in an era in which climate resiliency and a growing population are key factors that architects must consider, the approach to construction and its related waste may require some more creative thinking. 

A new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan Architecture Now: New York, New Publics shines a spotlight on ideas at the cutting edge of innovation that aim to reimagine the relationship between the city’s architecture, its people, and the nature around it. Here’s a peek at some of the projects that have been selected for display. 

“All of the projects we highlight are what we see as models for future construction in New York or in the world,” says Martino Stierli, chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. “This exhibition is kind of an archipelago, where each of the projects is an island and you can roam around freely.”

Working with nature 

New York has seen a renewed focus on achieving cleaner energy in the next few decades. That includes decarbonizing buildings and transportation wherever possible. For example, a project at Jones Beach Energy and Nature Center in Long Island is putting this vision into practice. Converted from a former bathhouse, the new facility, which opened in September 2020, is net-zero—meaning that it generates all the energy it needs through renewables—and is designed to have a small footprint. It also has a climate resilient landscape. 

It features solar panels atop the building, geothermal wells that heat its insides, and restored beachscape with local native plants that filter stormwater and help secure sediments against erosion. There is a battery on site that stores extra electricity produced by the solar panels that can supply power through nights and stormy weather. “The building is interesting by itself. But you have to see it as a larger environmental system,” Stierli says. 

[Related: This startup plans to collect carbon pollution from buildings before it’s emitted]

On the front of climate resiliency, another project, Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park, has taken into account how rising seas should influence the design of coastal structures. In one way or another, engineers across New York have been thinking of ways to fight the water, or keep it off. 

“This park is designed so part of it can flood. The coastline becomes much more like what it would’ve been naturally, so the water goes back and forth… As you know, New York before civilization was basically a swamp,” says Stierli. “So instead of building high walls to keep the water out, you have these artificial flood plains, and of course that creates a new, but ancient again, biosphere for plants and animals who have always lived in this presence of saltwater.”

Architects from WEISS/MANFREDI tailored the design to the specific ecological conditions and geography of the land. The second phase of the park opened in 2018 next to the East River, which is tidal, narrow, and prone to wave action. Because of this, they developed a landscaped, walkable fortified edge that protects the emerging wetlands from harsh wave action. In an extreme flooding event, the height of the wall is calibrated to gently let water in, allowing the wetlands to act like sponges to absorb flood water. After a storm, water is then slowly released in a safe and controlled way, Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, two architects from the firm, explain in an email. This design was tested through computer and analogue models that factored in the specific features of the East River. And the park held its own even against the real and unexpected test of Hurricane Sandy. 

When the team conducted research into the site history, they found that a marsh shoreline existed in the past along a wider and gentler tidal estuary, Tom Balsley, principal designer at SWA, said in an email. To reinstate the marsh in the present day, they worked in collaboration with civil, marine, and marsh ecologist consultants to create a balanced habitat.

Making use of trash 

Waste is another theme that echoes throughout the exhibit, especially when it comes to addressing the building industry’s relationship with trash and its effective use of supplies. “The construction and the architecture industry really has to come in terms with the fact that our resources are finite,” Stireli says. “This idea of reusing, recycling, is probably the most important aspect of contemporary thinking in architecture.” 

The TestBeds research project, for example, imagines how life-size prototypes for future buildings can be given a second life as greenhouses, or other community structures, instead of heading to the landfill. To illustrate how different bits and pieces of buildings and developments move across the city and find new homes, MoMA created an accompanying board game to help visitors understand the rules and processes behind new construction projects. They can scan a QR code to play it.  

“This is the only project I know that actually deals with architectural mockups, because no one ever asks about them. Often, they just get left behind. They get destroyed,” he adds. “And so here we have this idea to say, these are actually valid building components and you can just integrate them into designs. These are five propositions, one of them is actually built, which is this community garden shed here.” 

On the topic of waste, Freshkills Park—formerly the Fresh Kills Landfill—is in the spotlight for its unique ambitions. “This is the site of the largest dump in the US,” Stierli says. “Former field operations who are very important landscape architects based in New York, they have been working with the city for the last 20 years or so to renaturate and to make it a park that is accessible and create a place for leisure and outdoor activities. Of course a lot of it has to do with the management of toxic waste.”

Part of this involved putting the Landfill Gas System in place that “collects and controls gas emission through a network of wells connected by pipes below the surface that convey the gas through a vacuum,” according to the park’s official website. “Once collected, the gas is processed to pipeline quality (recovery for domestic energy use) at an on–site LFG recovery plant.” There is also a leachate management system to remove and treat pollutants that are made when the waste breaks down. And of course, landfill engineers made sure to put many layers, liners, and caps between the waste and the new park soil. 

Some parts of Freshkills Park are now open to visitors. However, Stireli notes that “this is a work in progress.” 

New York, New Publics will be on display at The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, New York through July 29, 2023. 

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OFF-THE-GRID LIVING is experiencing a renaissance. Dwellings devised to support a sustainable lifestyle could help us adapt to some of our biggest present-day challenges—from a lack of housing for the world’s growing population to pollution and extreme weather. With the climate crisis in mind, architects are looking to more resilient options that don’t depend on the overdrawn electrical grid at all. Some designers are reinvigorating decades-old “biotecture,” like the 1970s Earthships made from reclaimed and natural materials; others are rejecting synthetics and leaning on Indigenous practices of building with natural materials. Meanwhile, weather-resistant domes and 3D-printed dwellings could house more people with fewer resources. We asked architects and engineers about off-the-grid living solutions that could help us adapt to changing environments. 

Earthships

The definition of the term off the grid usually focuses on electricity, but Earthships involve much more. Every feature of these structures, including heating, cooling, water supply, wastewater treatment, electricity, and some food production, is off the grid. Recycled materials like tires and bottles make up the walls and other structural elements; these components are already distributed around the world, so procuring them doesn’t use much energy. Overall, Earthships allow us to be self-sustaining, and therefore happier. 
—Jonah Reynolds, Earthship designer and builder at Pangea Design Build

3D-printed homes

We use trees and other plants to produce the fiber and the resin for printing a home in Maine, so it’s 100 percent renewable. You can change insulation on the walls and roof to make them more energy efficient, so you don’t even get air leaks. If in 200 years, your great-grandchildren don’t want the home anymore, they can grind it up and put it back into the printer and do it again. It makes a good choice for off-the-grid living because it’s customizable to your landscape. It can be made in any shape you desire. If you send in a drawing, in most cases, it can be produced.
—Habib Dagher, executive director of the Advanced Structure and Composites Center at the University of Maine

Tiny houses

A tiny house is generally defined as a dwelling with a main floor of under 450 square feet. Our models come on wheels and can have composting toilets or incinerator toilets, so that means you don’t even need to be hooked up to a sewer. We have special washers, refrigerators, and dishwashers that use a lot less electricity and water than you would in a regular home. We can pre-wire the home so that it’s easy to install solar. Your energy footprint, and just your footprint in general, is much smaller.
—Trine Rieck, lead designer at Tiny Heirloom

Geodesic bioceramic domes

Geodesic domes are constructed with precast ceramic composite materials, which are combinations of ceramics and nontoxic natural fibers like hemp and basalt. The space is really made to mimic the natural environment that humans evolved in. They are highly resilient to fires, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes, and result in about a 90 percent reduction in carbon footprint. They’re also easy for people to build—it’s kind of like putting together a Lego set. The domes are absolutely a great choice for off-grid living, and I think that at some point, they will be very common choices worldwide.
—Morgan Bierschenk, co-founder and CEO of Geoship

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In Hawaii, every resident is estimated to generate 2.8 tons of waste annually. Practically every island in the state contains plastic litter and debris, including microplastics that may be detrimental to the growth and development of marine fish. To address this waste problem, the state has established bans on plastic bags, polystyrene foam food ware, and disposable plastic utensils in recent years. Now, they are taking it a step further. 

Last month, State Representative Sean Quinlan authored a bill banning the retail sale of single-use plastic bottles—specifically, those holding less than two liters of water—and submitted it to the Hawaiʻi State Legislature. Bottled water for emergency response and public health and safety are exempt from the ban. Although the bill is expected to come with significant environmental benefits, it doesn’t come without potential challenges and drawbacks.

A plastic bottle ban can reduce plastic waste

Plastic bottles make up a large fraction of plastic waste found in the environment. According to data from the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy, plastic beverage bottles are the second most littered item in the world.

“Reducing our dependence on plastic bottles, or any throwaway container solution, would certainly be a good thing for the environment,” says Spencer J. Ingley, assistant professor of biology at the Brigham Young University – Hawaii. 

The ocean is a major sink for plastic pollution. Beyond the visible impacts of plastic pollution, Ingley says the increased exposure to chemicals leached from plastics can also disrupt vital physiological functions in a wide variety of animals, including humans. By reducing the amount of waste entering the state as single-serving water bottles, there’s less plastic that must be landfilled or exported and lower potential to cause harm to marine ecosystems, adds Shelie Miller, a professor of sustainable systems at the University of Michigan.

[Related: How companies greenwash their plastic pollution.]

“As an island chain, Hawaii faces specific challenges that many states do not face,” says Miller. “With a large amount of coastline, it is easier for single-use plastic to escape into the ocean and have a direct impact on their marine ecosystem.” 

Eliminating the availability of smaller water bottles potentially incentivizes the use of water fountains and reusable containers. In addition, Miller says containers holding at least two liters of water “require less plastic per volume of water due to a lower surface area-to-volume ratio,” therefore a greater amount of water can be delivered without greatly increasing the amount of plastic.

The shift to other materials may pose some challenges

Although it’s beneficial, a ban on single-use plastic bottles may lead to unintended consequences. This includes a shift to other materials that may be less recyclable or reusable, like Ingley has observed with other single-use plastics in Hawaii. For example, he says vendors offer plant-based plastic utensils, but they’re “often not recyclable and just end up in our waste stream in similar volumes as their plastic relatives.”

“The high demand for small water containers will likely result in a shift to other materials, such as aluminum, glass, or paper cartons,” Ingley adds. “These are typically heavier than plastic bottles, and would therefore result in higher shipping costs, which would either eat into business profits or lead to higher consumer costs.”

Another example of this is California’s ban on plastic carryout bags. According to a 2019 study, the ban unintentionally increased the sales of unregulated plastics like trash bags because consumers previously reused carryout bags to throw their garbage out. Eliminating those bags created a greater market demand for purchasable trash bags, which use more plastic, says Ingley. Similar unintended consequences may occur with this latest bill.

Dealing with these other materials in the waste stream is another issue. Glass and aluminum are recyclable, but their production requires a significant amount of energy, he adds.

Consumer behavior is difficult to predict

If plastic bottles were to be banned, many individuals might switch to reusable water containers. However, despite being more eco-friendly than single-use plastic, Miller says they have to be reused enough times to offset the great number of materials needed to produce them.

“If a bottled water ban creates a spike in reusable water bottles that are not sufficiently reused, there could be a greater overall environmental impact associated with the production of reusable bottles,” she adds. There might also be a shift toward non-water beverages packed in single-use plastics that aren’t covered by the ban, says Miller, since the bill explicitly mentions water and not all beverages.

[Related: The best gallon water bottles of 2023.]

There may be negative health implications if consumers just decided to shift to other drinks instead of carrying a reusable water container. A 2015 study found that a bottled water ban at the University of Vermont led to the increased consumption of less healthy bottled drinks like sugar-sweetened beverages. It didn’t reduce the number of plastic bottles entering the waste stream like the ban initially intended.

The bill just passed its Second Reading earlier this week and will have to go through more stages before becoming law. “There are lots of challenges that consumers and businesses may face if this bill is passed,” says Ingley. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that it shouldn’t pass, but there are certainly some issues that should be considered further.”

At present, you can still purchase bottled water in Hawaii. However, if you want to reduce your environmental impact as much as possible, make the switch to a reusable water container today and be sure to use it frequently.

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Despite a series of devastating rain storms during December 2022 and January 2023, large portions of the western United States are still experiencing drought conditions. The US is just one of multiple countries facing abnormally dry conditions that are being exacerbated by human-made global warming. 

[Related: The nation’s largest water supplier declares a ‘drought emergency’ ahead of 2023.]

The eastern Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya) is forecast to face a sixth consecutive poor rainy season this spring which is intensifying the worst drought the region has seen in 40 years. (There are typically two rainy seasons per year: March to May and October to December.)

The drought is primarily due to a combination of warmer temperatures changing the climate and a weather phenomenon called La Niña. La Niña can temporarily reconfigure weather patterns around the globe and bring more rainfall to places such as Indonesia and Australia while reducing rain in eastern Africa.

In August 2022, a rare third consecutive La Niña was forecast by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO). “The worsening drought in the Horn of Africa and southern South America bears the hallmarks of La Niña, as does the above average rainfall in South-East Asia and Australasia. The new La Niña Update unfortunately confirms regional climate projections that the devastating drought in the Horn of Africa will worsen and affect millions of people,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement. 

A separate WMO report from November 2022 showed that the La Niña conditions are persisting. 

The drought has triggered widespread food insecurity, with Somalia on the brink of famine. Over 1.3 million people in Somalia have been forced to leave their farms and seek food elsewhere.  In Kenya, meteorologists pointed to climate change’s involvement in the crisis.

“It is time we started including climate change as a factor in our development plans. The current drought which we warned about some years ago has wider ramifications on the social economic conditions of the region including peace, security, and political stability,” Evans Mukolwe, former director of the Kenyan and UN weather agencies, told The Associated Press.

[Related: La Niña is likely back for another unpredictable winter.]

Countries in South America are also facing similar La Niña driven dryness. Since 2019, the central region of the continent has seen drought conditions. Neighboring Uruguay declared an agricultural emergency in October 2022 and the drought has also hit Argentina’s soy, corn, and wheat crops. The country is the world’s top exporter of both soy oil and meal and third for corn and the dry conditions have led to sharp cuts in harvest forecasts. 2022 was Central Argentina’s driest year since 1960. 

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) conducted a rapid report on the drought, concluding that climate change is not directly reducing the rainfall here, but the high temperatures are likely worsening the already dry conditions. Last week, Argentina and surrounding countries saw a heat wave which quickly evaporated some of the precipitation that had fallen during January and earlier this month. 

“Higher temperatures in the region in late 2022, which have been attributed to climate change, decreased water availability in the models,” the WWA wrote in their report. “Climate change probably reduced water availability over this period, increasing agricultural drought, although the study could not quantify this effect.”
WWA uses observations and climate models to see if climate change factors are present in extreme weather and compare what is happening now with what has happened in the past.

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This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.

Last July, glaciologist Derek Mueller made his fourteenth annual quest to gather samples from Milne Fjord, a research station on the coastal margin of the “Last Ice Area”— a 400,000-square-mile region north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The facility sits about 500 miles from the North Pole, nestled between tremendous ice flows. The landscape is rich with harsh beauty: Melt ponds, underlined by glistening ice, rest between white hillocks. Contrasted against the vivid white ice and dark, churning sea, each pool glows with its own crystal-blue light. 

Mueller’s work had focused on Milne Fjord’s only known epishelf lake — a microbially rich ecosystem that arises when an ice shelf creates a dam, allowing a thin layer of freshwater to float above seawater connected to the open ocean. As with the rest of the Arctic, they are threatened by climate change. But there was reason to hope for Milne Fjord: For years, scientists believed this area, home to the oldest and thickest ice in the northern hemisphere, would survive the worst effects of global warming. 

But as Mueller and his team approached their old testing grounds, they could tell something was amiss. Where there had once been fingers of turquoise, there was now only the vivid white of ice and the ghostly remnants of melt water. 

Milne Fjord’s epishelf lake had all but disappeared.

“It’s a mixed bag of emotions,” said Mueller. “There’s the scientific curiosity of measuring a changing system, but at the same time it’s a feeling of great loss.”

The Arctic is no stranger to depletion, warming at a rate nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet. It’s widely known that as glaciers calve and collapse, ice-dependent habitats and the wildlife that depend on them will continue to disappear. But while famished polar bears, retreating ice, and ancient viruses tend to drive headlines about Arctic thaw, the slow but steady thaw of the Last Ice Area places scientists on a new level of alert. 

Not only does its disappearance sound an unexpected warning bell for climate change and the carbon cycle, it also means there may be little time left to learn from the Arctic’s unique ecosystems — before they disappear.

The Last Ice Area was once so frozen and hostile it stymied those who sought to traverse it. In the summer 1875, British explorer Albert Hastings Markham wrote of Milne Fjord:

A charming day, although the temperature persists in remaining minus 30 degrees [C]. Glare from the sun has been very oppressive; the snow in places resembles coarse sand, and appears more crystallized than usual. A few of the party, including Parr and myself, suffering from snow-blindness. Distance marched ten miles…a great expanse of hummocks varying in height from twenty feet to small round nobly pieces over which we stagger and fall…There is no chance at present to get out, as the ice pack is too thick. 

The ice shelf was so rugged, in fact, that the team was forced to turn back. But, nearly 148 years later, the Arctic bears little resemblance to that description. According to NASA, the extent of summer sea ice — the area in which satellite sensors show to be at least 15 percent covered in frozen water — is shrinking by more than 12 percent per decade.

Satellite observations have shown that between 1997 and 2017 alone, the region lost around 31 trillion tons of ice. Even if we do manage to limit global warming to the goal of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), a recent study predicted the Earth would still lose a quarter of its glacier mass. 

There are myriad reasons why the Arctic is warming so quickly (a phenomenon scientists often refer to as Arctic amplification), but a leading culprit is sea ice melt. The Arctic’s sea ice, typically 3 to 15 feet thick, freezes during winter and melts each summer. The white, snow-covered sheets reflect roughly 85 percent of incoming solar radiation back out to space. The open ocean, on which the ice floats, is so dark that it absorbs 90 percent of it. 

As the region’s sea ice melts, solar absorption rates create a positive feedback loop: The warmer the ocean, the less ice. The less ice, the more heat is absorbed. The more heat, the warmer the ocean. 

Even accounting for this cycle, most climate models predicted the Last Ice Area would remain relatively frozen, acting as a seasonal stronghold for ice-dependent animals. In the summer ice flows from continental ice shelves near Siberia tend to pile up in the area, forming frozen ridges more than 30 feet high.  

But it seems Milne Fjord’s thick ice isn’t enough to shield it from the current pace of warming. “The glaciers melting are bringing freshwater down, adding heat into the fjord and the epishelf lake,” Mueller said. “Having weaker ice in the fjord would mean that the glacier could advance faster, thin out faster, and break up faster. ” 

 While it’s too early to determine the exact cause behind the disappearance of Milne Fjord’s epishelf lake, Mueller thinks that drainage may be attributed to the Milne Ice Shelf breaking apart two years ago. In 2002, scientists observed a similar phenomenon when the Ward Hunt ice shelf broke off, causing the Disraeli Djord Epishelf Lake to drain away.

“We’re really seeing the last death row of these epishelf lakes,” he said. “There aren’t any others in Canada as far as we know.”

It’s not just epishelf lakes that are disappearing from the Far North. Researchers sometimes refer to Arctic lakes as “sentinels,” due to their swift responses to shifting conditions. “Lakes are more sensitive than other ecosystems to climate change,” said environmental microbiologist Mary Thaler, who felt compelled to study the Arctic’s ecosystems because of the dwindling time they might remain in existence. “They’re like the warning bell going off, the first ones to take the hit, and we see them being utterly transformed.”

According to a 2022 study, lakes constitute almost 40 percent of the Arctic lowlands, the largest surface water fraction of any terrestrial biome. In addition to providing crucial habitat for high Arctic wildlife, marine species, and migratory birds, they are a critical source of freshwater for Indigenous communities such as the Komi and Nenets. 

The rapid disappearance of these essential bodies of water has surprised some researchers. Scientists once predicted that climate change would initially expand them across the tundra. Although they knew drainage might eventually occur, it wasn’t expected for a few hundred more years. But it seems that the thawing of underlying permafrost, the frozen mixture of soil and organic matter that blankets the far north, is counteracting the expansion effect. 

Permafrost is an important form of long-term storage for carbon — holding nearly twice as much as currently found in the atmosphere. But that ability depends on permafrost remaining frozen. As the ground thaws, plants or animals buried within can resume decomposing, releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Permafrost, particularly the layers under Arctic lakes, can also contain a particularly high number of frozen microbes, which help facilitate the release of gases. While a few scientists have expressed concerns over the re-release of prehistoric diseases and pathogens, most researchers say the real worry has to do with climate feedback loops.

“The important part is that it is a very large reservoir of carbon that we don’t want moved into the atmosphere,” said Arctic ecologist Elizabeth Webb. 

Webb’s research has largely focused on why Arctic lakes are disappearing far more quickly than expected. She found that the decreases in surface water over the last 20 years have been correlated with two distinct climate variables. The first, not surprisingly, is increasing temperatures. The second and far more puzzling factor to researchers is the climate-driven increase in rainfall. 

It may seem counterintuitive that more rain could lead to fewer lakes. “We were like, why in what world does this make sense?” Webb said. But because autumnal rain is warmer than the frozen ground, it brings a whole lot of heat to the underlying permafrost. That warmth can open up underground channels that drain surface water. 

“This drying of lakes was expected,” says Webb, “but it’s happening way earlier than the models projected.” 

But time is short to figure out what it all means for the Arctic and beyond. Researchers in the area lost two years of fieldwork due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and many projects were further delayed by the proposal backlog for expedition funding. Even the unpredictable Arctic weather can turn against scientists, with certain expeditions requiring clear skies in order for helicopters to take scientists to key sample sites. Mueller remembers an expedition where fog and rain delayed his team’s arrival by 10 days. “By the time we actually got there, we basically got the bare minimum of what we needed done,” he said.

For those lucky enough to have procured samples from the disappearing ecosystems of the Arctic, those materials have taken on a new significance. 

In Quebec City, Thaler analyzes small amounts of freshwater drawn during a 2016 excursion to Milne Fjord’s epishelf lake. The lake is no more, but the samples teem with life. Thaler goes through each one, trapping bacteria, viruses, and other microbial DNA in filters.

“We had looked at other parts of the Milne Epishelf Lake’s ecosystem but never the viruses,” she said. “Because it’s so dark, cold, and poor in nutrients, most of what’s in the lake is tiny microscopic life — so viruses can make huge differences in which species are going to thrive. 

Thaler and her team found that in terms of viruses, the lake had been 25 percent more abundant and diverse compared to the marine layer beneath. 

“Everything that is going on in terms of photosynthesis, respiration, and releasing carbon is actually being driven by this microscopic community,” she said. “We wanted to know, are there species or genetic codes or different traits that are only found in this one lake? Now, anything that was unique or special about it has been lost forever.”

Much like the journal entries from 1875, the lake’s samples offer a glimpse into the ecosystems of the past – a historic snapshot of a bygone world. For his part, Mueller thinks back on his work at Milne Fjord with a feeling of apprehension and urgency — but also hope. 

“It’s an environment that is stunningly beautiful and rather unique. It would be nice to fully characterize it and understand it before it’s lost forever,” he said. “There’s no local solution to any of this – it’s a global problem, so we need global changes to address this.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/science/last-ice-area-disappearing-arctic-lake-permafrost-thaw-science/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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Since 2019, customers of almost 150 participating restaurants across New York City have had the option of receiving their takeout and delivery orders in returnable, reusable food containers thanks to DeliverZero. The third-party delivery service intends to reduce plastic waste, one reusable container at a time.

The convenience of takeaway food in today’s fast-paced, modern lifestyles might explain why the global market is estimated to reach $120.43 billion this year. However, as the founder of DeliverZero realized, the increasing reliance on to-go meals is not good for the environment. Plastic bags, food containers, cutlery, and other take-out items dominate global litter in most major aquatic environments around the globe.

In some cases, consumers are encouraged to bring reusable alternatives to minimize the waste generated by single-use takeaway containers. But the manufacture of reusable alternatives, because they need to be durable enough to withstand multiple uses, may use more energy and generate more greenhouse gasses (GHG) than the production of single-use ones.

That comparison—whether reusable takeout containers are always more sustainable than single-use ones—is answered by a new study. Reusable containers generally have lower impacts across most metrics than comparable single-use containers, according to a recent Resources, Conservation, and Recycling report. This research quantified environmental performance across different metrics, such as end-of-life waste, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, primary energy usage, and water consumption.

“From a waste perspective, reusable containers are more environmentally preferable even when containers are used only four times,” says Christian Hitt, a graduate student from the University of Michigan and Center for Sustainable Systems research assistant who was an author of the study. However, it doesn’t just come down to the number of times you reuse the container. Many factors need to be considered when assessing whether a product is environmentally preferable over an alternative, he adds.

Transportation, washing, and other elements

Customer behavior can influence how sustainable a container is. For example, if only 5 percent of customers travel to the restaurant solely to return used containers, then the reusable system would have higher life cycle GHG emissions and primary energy use than single-use containers, the study found.

It was also common for customers to wash the container to some extent before returning it to the restaurant, the authors observed. This can be excessive since restaurants must still wash the container themselves before reusing it, says Hitt. If all customers ran the reusable container through the dishwasher before returning it, the life cycle energy impacts could be equal to or more than that of a single-use container. The washing method, water heater type, and electricity grid of the customer all factor in.

[Related: How to make your takeout order less wasteful.]

Individuals are recommended to follow the best practices with washing and transportation, says Hitt. For example, it’s better to scrape or rinse the reusable container with minimal cold water, as opposed to hand- or machine-washing. Returning the container with low-impact transportation, or only returning it when purchasing another meal or when the drop-off is along an already planned route, is also advisable, he adds.

The material composition of a takeout container is crucial, too. The authors considered the material type, like polypropylene (PP), polylactic acid (PLA), and aluminum, in their study. “PLA containers require high water consumption relative to other containers,” says Hitt. Containers also vary in GHG emissions due to differences in their production and disposal, he adds.

A 2019 Journal of Cleaner Production study similarly conducted a life-cycle assessment of four different takeout containers: single-use aluminum, expanded polystyrene (EPS), PP, and reusable PP. The authors found that single-use EPS containers are the best option when compared to reusable PP takeaway containers, because their manufacture uses fewer materials and less electricity. Reusable PP takeaway containers and “Tupperware” food savers would have to be reused three to 39 times and 16 to 208 times, respectively, to become a better option than EPS containers.

The number of reuses matters because it determines how many single-use containers were displaced over the life of the reusable container, says Alejandro Gallego Schmid, senior lecturer in Circular Economy and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment at the University of Manchester, who was involved in the 2019 study. But single-use EPS containers have a major flaw: They are not usually recycled, because it is costly to do so, he adds, which means they cannot be considered a sustainable option.

Rules for restaurants and patrons

People who are conscious about making sustainable choices may reuse their own containers, but that’s not the same for all consumers. Therefore, says Gallego Schmid, restaurants and policymakers must make it easier for everyone to reuse and return containers.

Hitt agrees. “Restaurants should look into implementing reusable systems as this can reduce their environmental impact as well as foodware costs,” he says. “Implementing incentives such as discounts when returning containers could increase participation.”

[Related: How companies greenwash their plastic pollution.]

The restaurant chain Just Salad currently has two reusable bowl programs. In the first one, MyBowl, you can purchase a reusable bowl and receive a free topping every time you reuse it for in-store orders. With the second program, BringBack, you may opt to receive your meal in a green reusable bowl that you can return to participating drop-off locations. For the whole month of February, they are offering salads at a discounted price across all locations for customers who reuse their bowls for in-store purchases.

Meanwhile, lawmakers can ban or tax the use of single-use plastics and also provide grant money to fund reusable container programs. One way to allocate money this way is through a solid waste disposable tax (which is collected per ton of trash delivered to a dump) that could fund circular economy programs, says Hitt.

Outlawing certain carryout items can be effective, too. At least eight states have a ban on single-use plastic bags. Vermont goes even further with a more comprehensive plastics ban, which includes plastic straws, plastic stirrers, and EPS food and beverage containers.

Exploring alternatives to common takeaway containers is crucial, especially given the plastic crisis, says Gallego Schmid. A rigorous analysis of the environmental impacts of different takeout container materials is necessary, he adds, so consumers can be informed of what they use as they eat.

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It’s no secret that agriculture is a huge source of climate-change inducing greenhouse gasses. From methane in beef production to synthetic fertilizers, there’s a lot of work to be done in making our food systems climate-friendly.

Manure and synthetic fertilizers emit the equivalent of 2.6 gigatonnes of carbon annually—enough to fill 26,000 aircraft carriers by weight. That’s more than global shipping and aviation combined.  

[Related: Compost can help protect us from food poisoning.]

Organic fertilizers include manure, compost, or bone meal and are derived from animal or plant sources.  Synthetic fertilizers, which often contain only a few nutrients lost from the soil, instead go through a manufacturing process, even if many come from naturally occurring mineral deposits.

But how much is produced, hasn’t really been quantified. 

“Incredibly, we don’t actually know how many chemicals we produce globally, where they end up, where and how they accumulate, how many emissions they produce, and how much waste they generate,” said André Cabrera Serrenho, an environmental engineer from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, in a statement.

While it’s necessary to reduce the amount of carbon emitted from fertilizers, it has to be done so in a way that doesn’t jeopardize global food security. Previous studies have estimated that 48 percent of the global population consumes crops that are grown using synthetic fertilizers and that the world’s population is projected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050.

For the first time, researchers have calculated and quantified the full life cycle of fertilizers, and their findings published February 9 in the journal Nature Food found that carbon emissions from fertilizers could be reduced by as much as 80 percent by 2050. 

Serrenho, an author of the study, and co-author Yunhu Gao undertook a project to accurately measure the complete impact of these fertilizers on the carbon cycle. 

“In order to reduce emissions, it’s important for us to identify and prioritize any interventions we can make to make fertilizers less harmful to the environment,” said Serrenho. “But if we’re going to do that, we first need to have a clear picture of the whole lifecycle of these products. It sounds obvious, but we actually know very little about these things.”

The team looked at data from 2019 and mapped out the global flows of manure and synthetic fertilizers and their emissions throughout their life cycles across nine regions of the world. They found that two thirds of emissions for fertilizers occurred while they were being used and not during production. 

“It was surprising that this was the major source of emissions,” said Serrenho. “But only after quantifying all emissions, at every point of the life cycle, can we then start looking at different mitigation methods to reduce emissions without a loss of productivity.”

[Related: Wastewater could be the secret to eco-friendly fertilizer.]

The authors found that the most effective mitigation tactic at the production stage would be for the industry to decarbonize the heating and hydrogen creation from the process. The fertilizers could also be mixed with nitrification inhibitors, chemicals which prevent bacteria from forming nitrous oxide. The downside is that these chemicals are likely to increase the cost of fertilizers.

“If we’re going to make fertilizers more expensive, then there needs to be some sort of financial incentive to farmers and to fertilizer companies,” said Serrenho. “Farming is an incredibly tough business as it is, and farmers aren’t currently rewarded for producing lower emissions.”

Reducing the amount of fertilizer used across the board would be the most effective way of reducing the emissions associated with them. Some of the methods the study evaluated include using water electrolysis during fertilizer production that can keep methane from forming and using nitrogen inhibitors in the fertilizer when it is in the field.  

[Related: Potty-trained cows could seriously help the planet.]

“We’re incredibly inefficient in our use of fertilizers,” said Serrenho. “We’re using far more than we need, which is economically inefficient and that’s down to farming practices. If we used fertilizer more efficiently, we would need substantially less fertilizer, which would reduce emissions without affecting crop productivity.”

While Serrenho said there are “no perfect solutions,” research like this will be critical in rethinking how food is produced and the economic incentives that work best to implement change.

“Our work gives us a good idea of what’s technically possible, what’s big, and where interventions would be meaningful,” said Serrenho. “It’s important that we aim interventions at what matters the most, in order to make fast and meaningful progress in reducing emissions.”

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When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down normal life in 2020, nature became a refuge for many people  cooped up inside. As pandemic related travel disturbances continued, the National Park Service saw record numbers of visitors, as spending time outdoors was safer in terms of virus spread.

Even when a pandemic isn’t raging, spending time outside reduces stress, improves cognition, and can help us sleep better. All of this can help people lead happy, healthy, and productive lives, which helps the economy and lowers healthcare costs. 

[Related: Nature saves us trillions of dollars in healthcare.]

Citizen science has been designed to use people power for the benefit of scientific knowledge, but it can also help the citizens doing the science as well. A study published February 9 in the journal People and Nature found that involvement in citizen science boosts wellbeing and connection to nature for participants. 

“People connect with nature in different ways, so it’s great to see nature-based citizen science can provide another form of active engagement that can strengthen the human-nature relationship,” said study co-author Miles Richardson from the Nature Connectedness Research Group at the University of Derby in the UK, in a statement. “When combined with noticing the positive emotions nature can bring, citizen science and help unite both human and nature’s wellbeing.”

The study was conducted during pandemic lockdowns in 2020 by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the University of Derby, and the British Science Association. Five hundred volunteers from across the United Kingdom were randomly assigned to carry out a 10-minute nature-based activity at least five times over a period of eight days: a survey of pollinating insects, a butterfly survey, spending time in nature and jotting down three good things they noticed, or a combination of both. 

Researchers surveyed the participants both before and after the citizen scientists went out into nature, as a way to assess differences in connection to nature, well being, and pro-nature behavior. 

After completing their assignments, the researchers found that all volunteers showed increased scores in feeling connected to nature. 

“It gave me permission to slow down,” wrote one participant. 

“It made me more aware of nature in all aspects of the environment,” said another. 

“It reminded me that small things can make a big difference to my mood,” observed another volunteer.

[Related: Birders behold: Cornell’s Merlin app is now a one-stop shop for bird identification.]

The volunteers who wrote down the three good things they noticed while out in nature.Those who also combined those three positive things with nature recording activities (like counting pollinating insects) said that they were more likely to adopt more pro-nature behaviors beyond their involvement with this study. Some of those behaviors involved planting more pollinator friendly plants in their own gardens or helping build wildlife shelters. 

“Being in and around nature is good for our wellbeing, and we’ve shown that focused, active engagement with nature is just as important – whether that is ‘mindful moments’ in nature or taking part in citizen science,” said Michael Pocock, ecologist and academic lead for public engagement with research at UKCEH, in a statement. “This has been a valuable exercise for us in exploring how we can make citizen science even better. We now know that if we design future projects with additional nature-noticing activities, for example, we can enhance people’s own connection to nature, while still collecting valuable data.”

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