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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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For more than a hundred years, California, Arizona, and Nevada never accounted for evaporation on the lower basin of the Colorado River as they divided its water between themselves and later with Mexico. Their logic held that as long as there was more water than people used, they could ignore small losses from natural processes. More importantly, it was politically fraught—for decades, the lower basin states have been unable to reach an agreement about how evaporation should be taken into account when sharing the river’s waters. Even as a 23-year-long megadrought sucked moisture out of the already arid region, evaporation stayed off the books with decision making.

But now, as water managers scramble to find a solution to a river that’s been overused, mostly for irrigation-heavy crops like livestock feed, they’re forced into a harsh reality: every drop counts, including those that disappear into the air. 

In August 2022, the Biden administration ordered California, Arizona, and Nevada to cut their annual allotments from the river by significant amounts. Last month, the White House released a plan outlining two options, which would reduce the states’ use of the river by as much as one quarter: evenly split reductions on the lower basin, which divides the river’s flow from the tip of Arizona down to northern Mexico, between the three states, or make reductions based on senior water rights, which means fewer cuts for California. On May 22, after much politicking, the states proposed an alternative deal that pledges to use 13 percent less water from the river overall. But it’s still unclear if and how the proposed plan accounts for evaporation. 

How much water is evaporating from the lower basin of the Colorado River?

One way to measure how much water dries up in the system each year is by looking at the evaporation losses on Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the nation’s two largest reservoirs, located in Nevada and Arizona and Utah and Arizona, respectively. About 1.9 million acre-feet or 13 percent of the water from the reservoirs across the entire river is lost to evaporation each year, says Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University. 

In particular, the lower basin (which includes Lakes Mead, Mohave, Havasu, and a few smaller mainstream reservoirs) lost an average of 906,000 acre-feet of water per year to evaporation from 2016 to 2020, according to Schmidt, who cites data from the Bureau of Reclamation. To put that number into context, Nevada can legally use about 300,000 acre-feet per year with the existing deal. “The evaporation of water in the lower basin is equal to three Nevadas. Some people would say that’s a big number,” Schmidt says. Other estimates put the amount of water lost to evaporation even higher at about 1.5 million acre-feet per year, or about five Nevadas.

But the overall amount of water that evaporates hasn’t actually changed that much in the past decade. That’s because there’s just less water in the reservoirs, which means there’s less water to lose,” according to Katherine Earp, a hydrologist for the Nevada Water Science Center. At the same time, she adds, as the reservoirs become shallower, the water becomes warmer, and evaporation increases slightly.

[Related: See inside Glen Canyon Dam as Lake Powell levels drop]

Evaporation occurs when energy, usually in the form of heat, turns a liquid into gas. In this case, sunlight heats up water from the reservoirs and transforms it into water vapor. While the process seems straightforward, many factors affect how much evaporation occurs on the reservoirs. “It’s the sun; it’s dry winds sweeping across the reservoirs; it’s whether or not it’s cloudy,” Schmidt says. “It’s all about the heat and the relative humidity of the air over the reservoir.” A warming climate can accelerate those drivers as well, he says.

Earp cautions that scientists don’t know how much climate change and evaporation will cut into water held in the lower basin. She says there are two factors that could see direct impacts: the reservoirs’ temperature and depth. “Those are changing as the [lakes along the Colorado River] are changing,” she says. “Most of the evaporation is being done right at the surface with the wind. So that’s not changing. We’ve always had a big hot desert—we will continue to have a big hot desert.”

What can states in the Colorado River deal do to fight evaporation?

Even if the states took immediate action to prevent evaporation on the Colorado River, it wouldn’t be simple. The reservoirs are too big for quick fixes. “People put covers on their swimming pools and hot tubs,” Schmidt says. “You’re not going to do any of that on Lake Powell and Lake Mead—these are reservoirs are more than 100 miles long.” Instead, he outlines two potential solutions: consolidating water from the two major reservoirs into one or pumping some of the water underground. 

Schmidt did the math behind the first option. In a white paper published in 2016, he examined how much water might be saved if the lower basin states fill Lake Mead and put any remaining water into Lake Powell. “Right now we manage the system to equalize the storage contents in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, and so we sort of maximize the surface area exposed to the sun,” he says. But he found the savings would be minimal, about 50,000 acre-feet of water across the two reservoirs, and says it should be used as a second-tier strategy.

[Related: Solar panels and water canals could form a real power couple in California]

In the second option, water from the reservoirs would slowly be cached underground. Arizona and California already store some water underground in recharge basins with the intention to put water back into local aquifers. But there’s a risk of not being able to track and recover all of the water that seeps back into the ground. Still, Schmidt says recharge basins might be a good option if evaporation gets worse. “It’s a technique trusted by water managers,” Schmidt says. “Yes, it’s uncertain. But those uncertainties do not concern people enough that they don’t do it.”

Earp says the subterranean-storage strategy might be difficult in southern Nevada, where the geology can’t store such large volumes of water. “When users can’t use all the water, they do store excess in smaller orders in Arizona and Las Vegas. But doing the whole lake is a much bigger scale thing,” she says. “I don’t know if it would work.”

Both Earp and Schmidt agree that evaporation will keep playing a role in negotiations over the lower basin. “The most fundamental attribute of the river is it’s fully tapped out,” Schmidt says. “When the natural flow of the river system declines, and you begin to account for everything (because you must), then evaporation is a significant process. And somebody’s got to account for it.”

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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 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.

Kelp is common along temperate shorelines around the world. For millennia, this large brown algae has been vital to coastal Indigenous peoples. In Washington State and British Columbia, kelp is a traditional food source, a focus for commercial cultivation, and habitat for critically endangered and threatened species like rockfish and young salmon. It’s hard to overstate kelp’s value. For the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, says shellfish biologist Annie Raymond, “you can’t quantify how important this biodiversity is, culturally.”

But over the past four decades, warming water and other factors have been killing kelps across the Salish Sea. So this summer, Raymond and her team will be hunting for kelp spores—colloquially called seeds—in the Juan de Fuca Strait, part of an ongoing effort to build an emergency fund for kelps, says Raymond, and ensure their future in the tribe’s traditional territory.

To face the pressing need to preserve kelp biodiversity, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is partnering with the Puget Sound Restoration Fund (PSRF) and other tribes, universities, and organizations to expand a seed bank for Washington kelps as part of the Puget Sound Kelp Conservation and Recovery Plan.

Begun in 2010 by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, the existing seed bank houses a collection of bull kelp spores from the Washington coast. Currently, the spores are housed in Wisconsin, but in the coming months, the collection will be moved to a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries research station in Manchester, Washington.

The expanding seed bank, says Raymond, is designed to preserve vulnerable kelp species for future restoration. While the tribe will only collect spores along the Juan de Fuca Strait, “the seed bank allows the tribe to contribute to habitat protection,” she says. “We want to help build resilience across the region.” The PSRF will also contribute to the seed bank, sampling sites along the Washington coast.

Jodie Toft, PSRF’s deputy director, says it’s taken years to build the infrastructure necessary to house such a precious resource at the Manchester Research Station for the long haul. Although the seed bank will house thousands of samples in a refrigerator no bigger than one in a typical kitchen, “we needed to make sure that our kelp lab was going to be able to keep the seed bank alive,” says Toft.

Unlike with many terrestrial plant seeds, which can be dried and stored for decades and remain viable, storing kelp for extended periods is more complex. To reproduce, explains Raymond, kelps release zoospores that develop into male and female gametophytes. To keep them viable, scientists store kelp gametophytes under red light, in low iron environments, or in a freezer, which puts it in a kind of arrested development. This means that the new bank needed to keep conditions tightly controlled, with emergency measures in case the power goes out.

The PSRF seed bank is just one of several kelp seed banks in California, Oregon, Alaska, and British Columbia. Simon Fraser University plant biologist Liam Coleman, who is working to start another kelp seed bank in British Columbia, says there’s an urgent need to make and maintain these kinds of biobanks. “The number one priority is just to make sure that biodiversity is backed up,” says Coleman. By preserving genetic diversity, scientists hope to give species the best chance they can to cope with future environmental challenges.

Seed banks will also give people in the future a chance to reforest kelps with the same genes that existed in the region in the first place, maximizing the chances that kelps will thrive.

“The gold standard for restoration is to replicate what was lost in the place where it was lost,” says Toft. Raymond hopes restoration in the future won’t be necessary. But if it is, and all goes as planned, “even 50 or 100 years in the future” the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe will be able to access the seed bank.

It’s not just the Jamestown S’Klallam who will benefit. Todd Woodard, the infrastructure and resources executive director of the Samish Indian Nation, says that in Samish territory, kelp populations have declined by 36 percent from 2006 to 2016. Woodward expects his community will use the seed bank to reseed some of their restoration sites.

Yet as NOAA’s Manchester seed bank nears completion, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe will have to make crucial decisions about which kelp species to preserve. “We know bull kelp will be one,” says Raymond, “but there are also a number of understory kelps that we want to study.”

Time, however, is already running short for Salish Sea kelps. Biodiversity is still high in the Juan de Fuca Strait, but other parts of Puget Sound have already lost nearly all of their bull kelp, and for some remaining populations, genetic diversity is exceedingly low. That’s why Raymond knows they need to work fast.

“The tribe has countless cultural resources that are intertwined with kelp,” she says. “You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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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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On May 25, the Supreme Court of the United States cut back the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate wetlands in another setback for the landmark Clean Water Act. In the 5 to 4 ruling, the court said that the law does not allow the EPA to regulate the discharges into the wetlands that are near a body of water, unless the wetland has a unless they have “a continuous surface connection” to those waters. 

[Related: The EPA’s roll back of the Clean Water Act could impact drinking water for millions of Americans.]

The issue before the court was the reach of the 51-year-old Clean Water Act and how courts should determine what counts as “waters of the United States” for the purposes of legal protection. In 2006, the court ruled in two consolidated cases that wetlands are protected by the Clean Water Act if they have a “significant nexus” to regulated waters. Business interests and property rights groups sought to narrow the regulations in wetlands and areas that are directly connected to “navigable waters,” like lakes and rivers.

This case–Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency–concerned Michael and Chantell Sackett, a couple who wanted to build a home on what an appeals court called “a soggy residential lot” near Priest Lake in Idaho’s panhandle. The Sacketts began construction in 2007 by filling in the land, and the EPA ordered them to stop. The agency threatened the couple with fines, saying  they must return their property to its original condition. Backed by successful conservative property rights group Pacific Legal Foundation, the Sacketts sued the EPA. A dispute regarding if the lawsuit was premature reached the Supreme Court in an earlier appeal and the justices ruled that the suit could proceed in 2012. Justice Alito said that the Clean Water Act gave the EPA too much power in a concurring opinion that same year.

Thursday’s 5 to 4 majority opinion is the latest decision in a trend where the conservative-leaning court has narrowed the reach of environmental regulations. In 2022, the court restricted the EPA’s authority to curb emissions from power plants in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the EPA’s interpretation of its power went too far. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett concurred that the Clean Water Act extends only to those “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own rights.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Brett Kavanaugh, dissented, with Kagan writing a concurring opinion. They agreed that the Sacketts should prevail, but wrote that they would have ruled for them on more narrow grounds without changing what defines “waters in the United States.”

[Related: What would America be like without the EPA?]

In his own dissent, Justice Kavanaugh wrote, “By narrowing the [Clean Water] Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

Wetlands are some of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on the planet and the US has roughly 75.5 million acres of wetlands. They are an important tool against slowing the pace of human-made climate change, particularly in urban areas, while protecting communities from flooding and storms. 

Since 1972, the Clean Water Act has dramatically cut pollution in America’s waterways, leading to major rebounds of fish species. Since the wetlands like those at the center of the Sackett case have a close relationship with the larger water system of streams and rivers, the court’s ruling has major potential to impact the health and quality of all waterways in the United States. 

“This decision will cause incalculable harm. Communities across the country will pay the price,” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) President & CEO Manish Bapna said in a statement following the ruling. “What’s important now is to repair the damage. The government must enforce the remaining provisions of law that protect the clean water we all rely on for drinking, swimming, fishing, irrigation and more. States should quickly strengthen their own laws. Congress needs to act to restore protections for all our waters.”

Correction (May 30, 2023): Kagan wrote a concurring opinion, not the dissenting opinion as this originally stated. We regret the error.

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Typhoon Mawar pelted Guam with heavy rain and the strength of a Category 4 hurricane over about two days. The storm was upgraded to a ‘Super Typhoon’ when it reached maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour as it moved north of the island. President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the  US territory of about 150,000 people on Tuesday May 23.

[Related: What hurricane categories mean, and why we use them.]

According to the National Weather Service Guam, the storm had Category 4-level winds of about 140 miles per hour just before midnight local time on Wednesday May 24 as it passed over Guam. Guam International Airport recorded sustained winds of 71 mph and a gust of 105 mph. The storm’s eye passed just north of the island, but the powerful eyewall hit the whole island.

Initial estimates say that close to a foot of rain fell and approached two feet in some parts of the territory. Guam is about the size of the city of Chicago and sits about 1,500 miles east of the Philippines.

Typhoons are the same type of warm-core tropical storm as hurricanes, except that they form west of the Northwest Pacific Ocean. Mawar was one of the strongest typhoons to hit Guam in decades. In 2002, Super Typhoon Pongsona struck the island with the force of a Category 4 hurricane and caused over $700 million in damage. 

In an address on Facebook, Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero urged residents to stay home for their safety, as the island was still seeing 40 to 50 mph winds on Thursday morning. The governor reported that the strongest winds from the storm were felt throughout the island, but particularly in the north.

The Guam Power Authority reported that the island’s energy grid was providing power to only about 1,000 of its roughly 52,000 customers. As of Thursday morning, the government had not reported any deaths due to the storm. 

According to The New York Times, strong building codes minimized damages and deaths from major storms in Guam. In most cases, “we just barbecue, chill, adapt” when a tropical cyclone blows through, says Wayne Chargualaf, who works at the local government’s housing authorities. However, since it has been over 20 years since Super Typhoon Pongsona, he told The Times that “we have an entire generation that has never experienced this. So a little bit of doubt started to creep into my mind. Are we really ready for this?”

[Related: Typhoon Merbok breaks records as it lashes the Alaskan coast.]

Human-caused climate change is contributing to an increasing number of intense tropical storm systems like Mawar. Tropical systems are generating more rainfall and bigger storm surges and are also more likely to intensify faster. Mawar rapidly intensified from Monday into Tuesday, with the storm’s top wind speeds increasing by 50 mph in only 18 hours.

Mawar will continue to track west-northwest away from Guam and towards the northern Philippines and Taiwan. It strengthened to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane with winds of 165 mph and gusts up to 200 mph, but slow weakening is likely and it is not expected to threaten land in the next several days.  

The Atlantic Hurricane Season begins on June 1 and runs until November 30. The National Hurricane Center is already watching a system off the coast of Florida. An early forecast from Colorado State University released in April calls for slightly below-average hurricane activity, partially due to the current neutral conditions before El Niño likely begins in the Pacific Ocean.

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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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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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The decades-old international treaty that banned ozone-depleting substances has successfully averted huge amounts of sea ice loss—delaying the first ice-free Arctic summer by as much as 15 years, according to a new study. The study published May 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that regulating these harmful substances helped delay further globalc heating.

[Related: Fixing the ozone hole was a bigger deal than anyone realized.]

In 1985, scientists first discovered a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica on the Earth’s south pole. Representatives from countries around the world gathered to craft a treaty to protect the ozone layer, which shields the planet from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The resulting Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 and went into effect in 1989 with the purpose of reducing atmospheric concentrations of ozone-depleting substances (OSDs) that were commonly used in refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers, and aerosols. It remains the only United Nations treaty ratified by every country in the world. 

This new study demonstrates that the treaty’s impact depends on future emissions and the impact goes as far north as the Arctic. 

“The first ice-free Arctic summer–with the Arctic Ocean practically free of sea ice–will be a major milestone in the process of climate change, and our findings were a surprise to us,” study co-author and Columbia University geophysicist Lorenzo Polvani said in a statement. “Our results show that the climate benefits from the Montreal Protocol are not in some faraway future: the Protocol is delaying the melting of Arctic sea ice at this very moment. That’s what a successful climate treaty does: it yields measurable results within a few decades of its implementation.”

According to Polvani and other climate scientists, the rapid melting of sea ice in the Arctic is the largest and most clear sign of human-made climate change. The first completely ice-free Arctic summer will likely occur by 2050, largely due to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Other powerful greenhouse gasses like ODS’ also contributed to this warming, but their concentrations in the atmosphere began to decline in the mid-1990s. 

In this new study, the two authors analyzed new climate model simulations and found that the changes implemented by the Montreal Protocol is delaying the first appearance of an ice-free Arctic summer by up to 15 years, depending on future carbon dioxide emissions. They compared the estimated warming from ODS’ with and without the Montreal Protocol under two scenarios of future carbon dioxide emissions from 1985 to 2050. If the Montreal Protocol had not been enacted, the estimated global mean surface temperature would be about 0.9°F warmer and the Arctic polar cap would be almost 1.8°F warmer in 2050, according to their results.

[Related: Fixing the ozone hole was a bigger deal than anyone realized.]

“This important climate mitigation stems entirely from the reduced greenhouse gas warming from the regulated ODSs, with the avoided stratospheric ozone losses playing no role,” co-author and University of Exeter applied mathematician and atmospheric scientist Mark England said in a statement. “While ODSs aren’t as abundant as other greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, they can have a real impact on global warming. ODSs have particularly powerful effects in the Arctic, and they were an important driver of Arctic climate change in the second half of the 20th Century. While stopping these effects was not the primary goal of the Montreal Protocol, it has been a fantastic by-product.” 

Both authors stressed the importance of remaining vigilant to atmospheric concentrations as the ozone layer is healing, especially due to a slight rise in ODS concentrations from 2010 to 2020.  In 2016, an amendment to the Montreal Protocol (called the Kigali Amendment) that required the phase out of the production and consumption of some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) was added. While HFCs do not directly deplete ozone, they are powerful climate change-inducing gasses which can accelerate warming. An uptick in CFC use was detected in 2018 and tracked to China, but that was quickly fixed. Scientists say that the Kigali Amendment is estimated to avoid 0.5–0.9°F of warming by 2100, not including contributions from HFC-23 emissions.

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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 catastrophic flooding from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy inundated parts of the New York City subway system with corrosive salt water and brought with it a warning for the future. Now, scientists have learned that the city is sinking, and it’s not just the underground trains that are in trouble.

[Related: New York City’s subway system isn’t ready for a storm-filled future.]

A study published earlier this month in the Earth’s Future journal found that New York City is sinking at a rate of roughly one to two millimeters per year, but certain parts of northern Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and lower Manhattan are actually sinking faster at 2.75mm per year. 

There is not one cause for this sinking, but the weight from giant skyscrapers is magnifying the problem. In the study, the team calculated that all of the city’s structures weigh 842 million tons (1.68 trillion pounds), about the weight of 140 million elephants.   

Many of the city’s largest buildings sit upon solid bedrock called Manhattan schist, but there is a mixture of sand and other clays holding up some of the other structures. For example, the Manhattan stanchion of the famed Brooklyn Bridge is built on a hard layer of sand, since it was too dangerous for the workers building it to keep drilling down to bedrock. 

“The softer the soil, the more compression there is from the buildings. It wasn’t a mistake to build such large buildings in New York but we’ve just got to keep in mind every time you build something there you push down the ground a little bit more,” study co-author and a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey Tom Parsons told The Guardian. 

The clay and sand is adding to the sinking effect that might be due to the way that the Earth below continues to shift following the Earth’s most recent ice age–about 10,000 years ago. Giant ice sheets covered Earth during the coldest parts of the planet’s last ice age, which caused the ground right underneath them to sink. The landmasses tilted up and after the ice sheets melted, the areas that were propped up like New York and other cities in eastern North America are now sinking back down. Earlier studies suggest the East Coast could see as much as 19 to 59 inches of sinking by 2100. 

Climate change is compounding the issue, as the sea level rise continues to accelerate. The waters surrounding New York City are rising at about twice the global average due the glaciers melting from the effects of climate change and seawater expanding. Since 1950, the sea level around New York City has increased about nine inches. According to the NYC Panel on Climate Change, the sea level could rise between eight inches and 30 inches by the 2050s and as much as 15 inches to 75 inches by the end of this century.

“A deeply concentrated population of 8.4 million people faces varying degrees of hazard from inundation in New York City,” the team wrote in the study.

[Related: At New York City’s biggest power plant, a switch to clean energy will help a neighborhood breathe easier.]

New York is not the only city that will be facing this crisis. A report from the C40 Group, a network of mayors from some of the world’s biggest cities dedicated to confronting the effects of climate change, found that 800 million people are expected to live in coastal cities where sea levels are expected to rise by over a foot by 2050.

The study’s authors also stress the need to adapt to these threats of increased flooding. “Every additional high-rise building constructed at coastal, river, or lakefront settings could contribute to future flood risk,” the authors wrote. 

In the fall of 2020, New York City began construction on the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project which is aimed at reducing the flood risk and sea level rise along Manhattan’s east side. According to the city government, the boundaries of this project correspond with the natural “pinch-points” in the 100-year floodplain. These are areas where the land is higher along the coastline, making it easier to close the system off from water entering from the north and south. The project is expected to be complete in 2026 and will eventually span 2.4 miles and include 18 movable floodgates. 

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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. 

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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In 1985, the British Antarctic Survey alerted the world that in the atmosphere high above the South Pole a giant hole was forming in the Earth’s protective ozone layer. World leaders swiftly assembled to work out a solution. Two years later, the United Nations agreed to ban the chemicals responsible for eroding the layer of the stratosphere that shields Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Known as the Montreal Protocol agreement, it is still one of the UN’s most widely ratified treaties.

The Montreal Protocol was a win for diplomacy and the stratosphere. But unbeknown to its signatories at the time, the agreement was also an unexpected ward against climate catastrophe. As new research shows, the aptly named ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) that created the hole over Antarctica are also responsible for causing 30 percent of the temperature increase we saw globally from 1955 to 2005.

Michael Sigmond, a climate scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada is the lead author of a new study calculating the greenhouse-trapping potency of ODSs. The substances’ contribution to global warming are, he says, “larger than most people have realized.”

The Montreal Protocol regulates nearly 100 ozone-eating chemicals. Many fall under the umbrella of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chemicals popularized in the 1930s for use in spray cans, plastic foams, and refrigeration. Compared with the array of toxic, flammable alternatives they replaced, CFCs were seen as wonder chemicals, and by the early 1970s, the world was producing nearly one million tonnes of them each year.

CFCs are inert, so they don’t react with other gases. Instead, they tend to accumulate in the atmosphere and drift wherever the wind takes them, hanging around in the air for 85 years or more. Once they reach the stratosphere, the second layer of Earth’s multilayered atmosphere, CFCs begin to break down. They’re “destroyed by being blasted apart by photons,” explains Dennis Hartmann, a climate scientist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the research. That reactive ruckus is what causes the hole in the ozone layer.

In the troposphere—the lowest level of the atmosphere, which fewer photons reach—ODSs act as long-lasting greenhouse gases. Back in 1987, scientists knew ODSs trapped some solar radiation, but they didn’t know how much. Only recently have scientists been putting together the evidence that ODSs are actually one of the most damaging warming agents of the past half century.

The effects of this warming are amplified at the poles. Sigmond and his colleagues’ work shows that if ODSs had never been mass produced—if the concentration in the atmosphere had stayed at 1955 levels—the Arctic today would be at least 55 percent cooler, and there’d be 45 percent more sea ice each September.

ODS production leveled off in the 1990s. But because they’re so long-lived, these gases are still kicking around, and the warming they cause is still increasing. Yet it could have been much worse. By banning ODSs, the Montreal Protocol unintentionally prevented 1 °C of warming by 2050.

With the Montreal Protocol, world leaders rallied around an urgent cause. In the process, we inadvertently phased out the second-largest forcer of global warming. The unanticipated benefits for the global climate, says Susann Tegtmeier, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Saskatchewan who was not involved in the study, “can be considered a very welcome and very positive side effect.”

While it’s taken a lot more negotiation and innovation to begin dislodging the main driver of climate change—carbon dioxide—the Montreal Protocol proves the power of collective action and shows how tackling environmental woes can help us in ways we didn’t expect.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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This year is going to be pretty unforgettable, and not in a good way. Climate scientists have predicted the arrival of El Niño, a climate pattern that temporarily warms up waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean and will change precipitation and temperature patterns around the world.. The last El Niño event took place from 2018 to 2019.

Each El Niño is unique in terms of how intense the warming effect gets, says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. This makes it harder for individual areas along the Pacific, like California and countries in Southeast Asia, to know how to properly prepare for upcoming storms or flooding. 

Past El Niño events can help areas get a broad sense of how strong the next one will be, but as time goes on, Swain says it is likely we will see an increase in extreme El Niño events because of climate change. This upcoming one is expected to make 2023 the hottest year in human history.

What is the forecast for El Niño 2023?

Climate scientists use a variety of tools to predict when and how hard El Niño will hit. Some examples include satellites to track wind and tropical rainfall patterns, ocean buoys to monitor sea surface temperatures, and mini radios strapped to weather balloons that measure air temperature, humidity, and pressure. 

David DeWitt, director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, forecasts an 82 percent chance of El Niño arriving between May and July. A weak El Niño is not out of the question, but the likelihood of a strong El Niño is about 55 percent. There’s also a 90 percent chance of El Niño persisting in the first few months of 2024.

How does El Niño warm the ocean?

During El Niño, weak winds coming from the east cause heat to build up along the equator in the eastern Pacific Ocean. As the waters warm up, they transfer heat to the atmosphere and create moisture-rich air that fuels rainstorms and floods.

One sign of an upcoming El Niño event to look out for is Kelvin waves in the Pacific. These aren’t your normal beach waves: They resemble the slow sloshing ones in your bathtub. The long movements pull expanding warm water to the ocean’s surface, which in turn, raises sea levels. They also strengthen El Niño by further reducing how much cold water is on the ocean’s surface. 

[Related: The jet stream is moving north. Here’s what that means for you.]

Recently, satellites orbiting Earth detected two- to four-inch-high Kelvin waves moving west to east along the equator. They also measured higher than average sea levels—another strong clue for El Niño. “If it’s a big one, the globe will see record warming,” NASA scientist Josh Willis said in a statement.

How will El Niño affect global weather patterns?

Brad Rippey, a meteorologist for the US Department of Agriculture, says El Niño is expected to cause flooding in some regions and droughts in others. During the Northern Hemisphere summer (June to August), El Niño will likely suppress Atlantic hurricanes and bring drought in regions such as Central America, the Caribbean Basin, and southern and southeastern Asia. During the Southern Hemisphere summer (December to February), areas like southern Africa, Australia, and the western Pacific Basin will experience more heat, droughts, and fires. 

Some regions of the world, however, will face wetter conditions. Rippey says that parts of South America, such as Argentina, have been reeling from drought because of the long-running La Niña that began in 2020. With El Niño, these areas would finally get doused with precipitation.

Is climate change making El Niño worse?

El Niño and its cooler counterpart La Niña are part of a natural cycle between warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean that was first detected by South American fisherman in the 17th century. That said, climate change is interacting with this cycle and shaping a future with stronger El Niño episodes. “The Earth’s natural climate cycle and climate caused by humans are not independent of each other,” Swain explains. He adds that before global warming, the world’s temperature would reset after El Niño, but now it remains elevated.

The combination of human-caused global warming and short-term warming from El Niño could mean that the second half of 2023 or early 2024 will break global temperature records, Swain says.

Is the world prepared for the switch from La Niña to El Niño?

Yes and no. While most communities have experienced the upturns and downturns of El Niño before, each cycle is different. This upcoming one is no exception.

The level of preparation depends on the country and whether El Niño will trigger more heatwaves or flooding. Another factor is a country’s economy and whether they can afford to invest in protective measures.

[Related: This summer could push US energy grids to their limits]

“It’s usually the places that are most vulnerable that often have the least ability to shift things around to prepare,” says Swain. The 2015-2016 El Niño event, for example, caused heat stress, malnutrition, and disease outbreaks for more than 60 million people living in developing countries. But that doesn’t mean richer countries come out unscathed. For instance, El Niño events in the past 15 years cost the US economy $25 billion. A study published on May 18 in the journal Science estimates the average El Niño cost the global economy $3.4 trillion.

Being a few months away, Swain says it’s unlikely that a resource-poor region can change things around in a short time. “Now the question becomes, how much resilience do these places have to these kinds of natural hazards?”

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A worrying new report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) estimates over two-thirds of North America will see elevated risks of energy grid shortfalls and blackouts over the summer if faced with extreme temperature spikes and dire weather. While resources remain “adequate” for normal seasonal peak demand, the major non-profit international regulatory authority’s 2023 Summer Reliability Assessment warns most of the US—including the West, Midwest, Texas, Southeast, and New England regions—may not possess enough energy reserves to handle heatwaves, severe storms, and hurricanes.

NERC’s report is particularly troubling given this year’s El Niño forecast. El Niño historically produces wetter-than-average conditions along the Gulf Coast alongside drier climates for areas such as the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountains. While a naturally occurring event, both El Niño and La Niña weather patterns are expected to rapidly strengthen by the end of the decade due to the exacerbations from climate change. On top of this, industry watchdogs say the US power grid still requires critical maintenance, repairs, and modernization. “The system is close to its edge,” warned NERC’s Director of Reliability Assessment and Performance Analysis John Moura in a call with reporters.

In Texas, for example, the NERC explains that “dispatchable generation may not be sufficient to meet reserves during an extreme heat wave that is accompanied by low winds.” Wildfire risks in the West and Northwest, on the other hand, could jeopardize the ability to transfer electricity as needed, resulting in “localized load shedding.”

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

“This report is an especially dire warning that America’s ability to keep the lights on has been jeopardized. That’s unacceptable,” Jim Matheson, the CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said in a statement.“Federal policies must recognize the compromised reliability reality facing the nation before it’s too late.”

In addition to reliability concerns during peak performance times, the NERC report notes that continued supply chain issues concerning labor, material, and equipment have affected preseason maintenance for generation and transmission facilities across North America.

Still, NERC’s assessment isn’t entirely bad news—much of northern Canada and the US East Coast face a low risk of exceeding their operating reserves. Meanwhile, no region in North America is currently staring down a “high” risk of not meeting their needs during normal peak conditions. “Increased, rapid deployment of wind, solar and batteries have made a positive impact,” said Mark Olson, NERC’s manager of Reliability Assessments. “However, generator retirements continue to increase the risks associated with extreme summer temperatures, which factors into potential supply shortages in the western two-thirds of North America if summer temperatures spike.”

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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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Within the next five years, the planet is 66 percent likely to reach 2.7°F (1.5°C ) of warming according to a jarring new update from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 2.7°F is the internationally accepted global temperature threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change.

[Related: For marine life to survive, we must cut carbon emissions.]

The WMO forecasts that global temperatures are expected to surge to record levels fueled by heat trapping gasses and a naturally occurring El Niño event. The organization also predicts that the annual average near-surface temperature will be over the threshold for at least one year between 2023 and 2027.

The 2015 Paris climate agreement set 2.7°F as a guardrail against increasingly dangerous atmospheric warming, and over 100 countries including the United States, Argentina, China, and Egypt, pledged to prevent long-term warming if possible. A special United Nations report from 2018 said going past this point would be dangerous and lead to significantly more death, destruction, and damage to global ecosystems.

According to the WMO, these new findings do not mean that Earth will permanently exceed the 2.7°F level that was specified in the Paris Agreement. The organization believes that the jump would be a temporary, and is not as worrisome as the agreed-upon climate danger point.

“A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory. This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Scientists believe that there is a 62 percent chance that an El Niño will develop by the end of this year. El Niño is a natural part of an oscillating weather system that develops in the Pacific Ocean. Earth has been in a rare “triple dip” of the opposing phase called La Niña for the past three years. La Niña typically has had a dampening effect on temperature increases around the world. With the new El Niño developing, there is a 98 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will be the hottest on record, according to the WMO.

Warming in the arctic is also disproportionately high. This region heats much faster than the rest of the world, largely because as sea ice melts, solar radiation can no longer be reflected back and the heat is absorbed. This rapid warming is affecting global weather patterns and the jet stream. 

[Related: The past 8 years have been the hottest on human record, according to new report.]

Reaching this point, even just for a single year, would represent an acceleration of human impacts on the global climate system and send the world into “uncharted territory,” since average surface temperatures have never breached the threshold in recorded history. The highest average in previous years was 2.5 °F (1.28°C) above pre-industrial levels.

Scientists do not believe that the anomaly will occur this year, but the chance of temporarily exceeding this threshold has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero. Between 2017 and 2021, there was only a 10 percent chance of exceeding this target.

“Global mean temperatures are predicted to continue increasing, moving us away further and further away from the climate we are used to,” Leon Hermanson, a Met Office expert scientist who led the report, said in a statement. 

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Bleaching occurs when a stressed marine creature, most commonly a coral, expels its symbiotic algae and turns a ghostly white, often in response to a warming sea. But bleaching affects more than just corals. Giant clams—massive mollusks that can grow more than 1.2 meters in diameter and weigh as much as 225 kilograms—can bleach, too. And in recent research, scientists have learned more about how bleaching disrupts these sessile giants, affecting everything from their nutrition to their reproduction.

Giant clams live on coral reefs and are the largest bivalves on Earth. Like corals, giant clams bleach when they’re stressed, often as a response to excessively warm water. As with a coral, a bleached giant clam expels the algae, called zooxanthellae, that live inside it. These algae dwell in the soft tissue of the clam’s mantle and provide energy for the animal through photosynthesis, leaving a bleached clam with less energy and nutrients. At worst, bleaching can kill giant clams through food deficiency.

Scientists have been studying bleaching in giant clams for decades. In 1997 and 1998, during a brief period that saw extensive coral bleaching worldwide with corals succumbing in at least 32 disparate countries, bleached giant clams were observed from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to French Polynesia after water temperatures in the South Pacific rose significantly. In 2010, similar temperatures in the water off Thailand’s Ko Man Nai Island also led to scores of deaths.

Of the 12 species of giant clams, some are more resistant to heat stress than others. But as scientists are finding, even when a giant clam survives bleaching, other physiological functions can still be severely impaired.

A recent study in the Philippines of wild clams, for example, found that bleaching can hamper their reproduction. Bleaching reduces the number of eggs giant clams produce, and the more severe the bleaching, the fewer eggs they make. Reproducing “takes a lot of energy. So instead of using that energy for reproduction, they just use it for their survival,” says Sherry Lyn Sayco, the lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan.

Mei Lin Neo, a marine ecologist and giant clam expert at the National University of Singapore who was not involved in the study, says the work contributes to the story of how climate change can have “repercussions on the longevity of species.”

In general, she says, we know much more about how climate change affects corals than marine species with similar physiologies. “By understanding how other symbiotic species respond to climate change, each species becomes a unique indicator on how the overall reef ecosystem is doing.”

Bleached giant clams, it turns out, are often better than corals at coping with bleaching. Near Ko Man Nai Island, 40 percent of the bleached clams re-colored after a few months as the zooxanthellae repopulated in their tissues when temperatures cooled again. After the 1997–1998 bleaching event, over 95 percent of the 6,300 bleached clams near Australia’s Orpheus Island recovered.

Giant clams seem amenable to restocking, too. In the Philippines, where the largest species, Tridacna gigas, went locally extinct in the 1980s, restocking has brought it back.

“Clams are not just any organism,” Sayco says. “It’s not that we are just conserving them for them to be there,” she adds, “they have lots of benefits and ecosystem services, such as [boosting] fisheries [and] tourism.”

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

To get plastics ready for use in consumer and industrial products, companies add thousands of chemical additives that give them properties like elasticity and fire resistance. Many of these chemicals, however, are hazardous to human health and the environment, and environmental advocacy groups have long pushed for their elimination.

Those advocates scored a victory last week when parties to the Stockholm Convention — an international treaty regulating hazardous pollutants — agreed to add three new chemicals to a list of globally banned substances, including the plastic additives UV-328 and Dechlorane Plus. The move is expected to safeguard people and the natural world, although a handful of exemptions mean the chemicals will not completely disappear as a threat.

World governments “took an important step today toward protecting human health and the environment,” Sara Brosché, a science adviser for the International Pollutant Elimination Network, or IPEN, said in a statement. “But we are disappointed that financial interests caused unnecessary and dangerous exemptions that will lead to ongoing toxic exposures.”

The decision came out of a two-week-long conference in Switzerland on the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions, a series of United Nations agreements to regulate waste and hazardous chemicals. The Stockholm Convention, which will control the three new chemicals, was first passed in 2001 to phase out or restrict the global production of “persistent organic pollutants,” hazardous pesticides and industrial chemicals that don’t break down naturally. There were 12 chemicals on the original list, but it’s since expanded to cover more than 30. More than 150 countries have ratified the Stockholm Convention and are subject to its restrictions; the U.S. is not among them.

The most recently banned chemicals include a pesticide called methoxychlor, as well as two plastic additives: UV-328, which absorbs UV light and is widely used in transparent plastics products, and Dechlorane Plus, a flame retardant that’s added to plastic coatings and electrical wires. All three chemicals have been shown to persist in the natural environment and bioaccumulate up the food chain, and have been linked to health concerns ranging from neurodevelopmental damage to endocrine disruption. These concerns are particularly acute for people who work in recycling workshops, where plastics are exposed to high heat and other processes that encourage chemical leaching.   

By placing the chemicals in a category known as “Annex A,” parties to the Stockholm Convention have agreed to take steps to eliminate them from global use and production — with a handful of exemptions, in the case of the two plastic additives. Until 2044, both UV-328 and Dechlorane Plus will still be allowed in spare parts for motor vehicles and agricultural equipment, among other uses. Strangely, Dechlorane Plus will also be allowed indefinitely for use in medical imaging devices and aerospace products — even though the chemical’s production is projected to end globally by 2026 due to a national-level bans that are already on the books.

“We are quite disappointed” with the exemptions, said Jitka Straková, a project manager for the Czech nonprofit Arnika. Although there are fewer exemptions than there have been for previous chemicals, she said any ongoing use or production of UV-328 and Dechlorane Plus will harm recyclers in the developing world — especially because countries could not agree on rules for labeling contaminated products. This means that, even though the Stockholm Convention now bans the recycling of products containing UV-328 and Dechlorane Plus, recycling workers could unwittingly accept plastics containing these chemicals into their workshops.

“Exempted uses mean that the products will still be contaminating waste streams when they reach their end of life,” Straková said. A recent study she helped conduct with IPEN found alarming Dechlorane Plus contamination in and around e-waste recycling sites in Thailand, where much of the world’s plastic waste is exported. The study showed that a group of 40 Thai recycling workers had blood serum concentrations of Dechlorane Plus that were more than 39 times higher than those of a control group.

“Everyone has a right to know when toxic chemicals threaten their bodies, their food, and their health,” Thitikorn Boontongmai, toxic waste and industrial program manager for the watchdog Ecological Alert and Recovery – Thailand, said in a statement.

UV-328 contamination is also widespread, thanks to the chemical’s ubiquity in consumer products. An IPEN analysis of 28 hair accessories and toys from Russia, China, and Indonesia found UV-328 in every item. A separate study from IPEN found UV-328 in recycled plastic pellets from nearly two dozen different countries, suggesting that UV-328 travels into recycled products even if they were never meant to contain the additive.

“We are essentially losing track” of where UV-328 and Dechlorane Plus are going or what type of products they’re reaching, Strakova said. She said companies should immediately switch to safer alternatives despite the Stockholm Convention exemptions, and that countries should set strict limits for those chemicals in waste, banning them from being recycled into new products.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/regulation/more-than-150-countries-agree-to-ban-3-toxic-chemicals/. 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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On May 11, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will propose new limits on the greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants. Second only to the nation’s transportation sector, the electricity sector generates about 25 percent of all greenhouse gas pollution in the US. 

[Related: Renewable energy is climbing in the US, but so are our emissions—here’s why.]

According to the EPA, the proposal for coal and new natural gas power plants would keep up to 617 million metric tons of total carbon dioxide from spilling into the air through 2042. This is the equivalent to reducing the annual emissions of about half the cars in the United States. The EPA estimates that the net climate and health benefits of these new standards on new gas and existing coal-fired power plants are up to $85 billion through 2042.

“By proposing new standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, EPA is delivering on its mission to reduce harmful pollution that threatens people’s health and wellbeing,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “EPA’s proposal relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution and seizes the momentum already underway in the power sector to move toward a cleaner future. Alongside historic investment taking place across America in clean energy manufacturing and deployment, these proposals will help deliver tremendous benefits to the American people—cutting climate pollution and other harmful pollutants, protecting people’s health, and driving American innovation.”

The new rules will likely not mandate the use of technologies that capture carbon emissions before they leave a smokestack, such as direct air capture. It will instead set caps on pollution rates that planet operators will have to meet by either using a different technology or switching to a fuel source like green hydrogen. 

The new limits represent the Biden administration’s most ambitious effort to date to roll back the pollution from the US’ second-largest contributor to climate change. It also follows the current administration’s plans to cut car tailpipe emissions by speeding up the transition to mostly elective vehicles and curb methane leaks from gas and oil wells.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is adding over $370 billion into clean energy programs and the administration hopes that these new actions push the US further in the fight to constrain further human-made global warming.  

[Related: At New York City’s biggest power plant, a switch to clean energy will help a neighborhood breathe easier.]

These investments and regulations could put the US on track to meet President Biden’s pledge that the US will cut greenhouse gasses in half by 2030 and stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2050. While more policies are needed to reach the 2050 target, scientists say these goals must be met by all major industrialized nations to keep average global temperatures from increasing by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit compared with pre industrial levels. Beyond that temperature tipping point, catastrophic flooding, drought, heat waves, flooding, species extinction, and crop failure will become significantly harder for humanity to handle. Earth has already warmed by two degrees Fahrenheit.

If these regulations are finalized, they would mark the first time that the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. It extends to all current and future electric plants as well. 

The plan will face steep opposition from the fossil fuel industry and Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.

Despite these proposed new regulations, Biden has also faced criticism from many environmentalists for the decision to approve the Willow oil project in Alaska this March. Environmental groups call this massive oil drilling plan by ConocoPhillips a “carbon bomb” that could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil per day. 

Many younger voters and young climate activists say Biden broke a major 2020 campaign promise by approving Willow. With this in mind, EPA officials will announce these new regulations at the University of Maryland.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

Dead fish were everywhere, speckling the beach near town and extending onto the surrounding coastline. The sheer magnitude of the October 2021 die-off, when hundreds, possibly thousands, of herring washed up, is what sticks in the minds of the residents of Kotzebue, Alaska. Fish were “literally all over the beaches,” says Bob Schaeffer, a fisherman and elder from the Qikiqtaġruŋmiut tribe.

Despite the dramatic deaths, there was no apparent culprit. “We have no idea what caused it,” says Alex Whiting, the environmental program director for the Native Village of Kotzebue. He wonders if the die-off was a symptom of a problem he’s had his eye on for the past 15 years: blooms of toxic cyanobacteria, sometimes called blue-green algae, that have become increasingly noticeable in the waters around this remote Alaska town.

Kotzebue sits about 40 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, on Alaska’s western coastline. Before the Russian explorer Otto von Kotzebue had his name attached to the place in the 1800s, the region was called Qikiqtaġruk, meaning “place that is almost an island.” One side of the two-kilometer-long settlement is bordered by Kotzebue Sound, an offshoot of the Chukchi Sea, and the other by a lagoon. Planes, boats, and four-wheelers are the main modes of transportation. The only road out of town simply loops around the lagoon before heading back in.

In the middle of town, the Alaska Commercial Company sells food that’s popular in the lower 48—from cereal to apples to two-bite brownies—but the ocean is the real grocery store for many people in town. Alaska Natives, who make up about three-quarters of Kotzebue’s population, pull hundreds of kilograms of food out of the sea every year.

“We’re ocean people,” Schaeffer tells me. The two of us are crammed into the tiny cabin of Schaeffer’s fishing boat in the just-light hours of a drizzly September 2022 morning. We’re motoring toward a water-monitoring device that’s been moored in Kotzebue Sound all summer. On the bow, Ajit Subramaniam, a microbial oceanographer from Columbia University, New York, Whiting, and Schaeffer’s son Vince have their noses tucked into upturned collars to shield against the cold rain. We’re all there to collect a summer’s worth of information about cyanobacteria that might be poisoning the fish Schaeffer and many others depend on.

Huge colonies of algae are nothing new, and they’re often beneficial. In the spring, for example, increased light and nutrient levels cause phytoplankton to bloom, creating a microbial soup that feeds fish and invertebrates. But unlike many forms of algae, cyanobacteria can be dangerous. Some species can produce cyanotoxins that cause liver or neurological damage, and perhaps even cancer, in humans and other animals.

Many communities have fallen foul of cyanobacteria. Although many cyanobacteria can survive in the marine environment, freshwater blooms tend to garner more attention, and their effects can spread to brackish environments when streams and rivers carry them into the sea. In East Africa, for example, blooms in Lake Victoria are blamed for massive fish kills. People can also suffer: in an extreme case in 1996, 26 patients died after receiving treatment at a Brazilian hemodialysis center, and an investigation found cyanotoxins in the clinic’s water supply. More often, people who are exposed experience fevers, headaches, or vomiting.

When phytoplankton blooms decompose, whole ecosystems can take a hit. Rotting cyanobacteria rob the waters of oxygen, suffocating fish and other marine life. In the brackish waters of the Baltic Sea, cyanobacterial blooms contribute to deoxygenation of the deep water and harm the cod industry.

As climate change reshapes the Arctic, nobody knows how—or if—cyanotoxins will affect Alaskan people and wildlife. “I try not to be alarmist,” says Thomas Farrugia, coordinator of the Alaska Harmful Algal Bloom Network, which researches, monitors, and raises awareness of harmful algal blooms around the state. “But it is something that we, I think, are just not quite prepared for right now.” Whiting and Subramaniam want to change that by figuring out why Kotzebue is playing host to cyanobacterial blooms and by creating a rapid response system that could eventually warn locals if their health is at risk.

Whiting’s cyanobacteria story started in 2008. One day while riding his bike home from work, he came across an arresting site: Kotzebue Sound had turned chartreuse, a color unlike anything he thought existed in nature. His first thought was, Where’s this paint coming from?

The story of cyanobacteria on this planet goes back about 1.9 billion years, however. As the first organisms to evolve photosynthesis, they’re often credited with bringing oxygen to Earth’s atmosphere, clearing the path for complex life forms such as ourselves.

Over their long history, cyanobacteria have evolved tricks that let them proliferate wildly when shifts in conditions such as nutrient levels or salinity kill off other microbes. “You can think of them as sort of the weedy species,” says Raphael Kudela, a phytoplankton ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Most microbes, for example, need a complex form of nitrogen that is sometimes only available in limited quantities to grow and reproduce, but the predominant cyanobacteria in Kotzebue Sound can use a simple form of nitrogen that’s found in virtually limitless quantities in the air.

Cyanotoxins are likely another tool that help cyanobacteria thrive, but researchers aren’t sure exactly how toxins benefit these microbes. Some scientists think they deter organisms that eat cyanobacteria, such as bigger plankton and fish. Hans Paerl, an aquatic ecologist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, favors another hypothesis: that toxins shield cyanobacteria from the potentially damaging astringent byproducts of photosynthesis.

Around the time when Kotzebue saw its first bloom, scientists were realizing that climate change would likely increase the frequency of cyanobacterial blooms, and what’s more, that blooms could spread from fresh water—long the focus of research—into adjacent brackish water. Kotzebue Sound’s blooms probably form in a nearby lake before flowing into the sea.

The latest science on cyanobacteria, however, had not reached Kotzebue in 2008. Instead, officers from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game tested the chartreuse water for petroleum and its byproducts. The tests came back negative, leaving Whiting stumped. “I had zero idea,” he says. It was biologist Lisa Clough, then from East Carolina University and now with the National Science Foundation, with whom Whiting had previously collaborated, who suggested he consider cyanobacteria. The following year, water sample analysis confirmed she was correct.

In 2017, Subramaniam visited Kotzebue as part of a research team studying sea ice dynamics. When Whiting learned that Subramaniam had a long-standing interest in cyanobacteria, “we just immediately clicked,” Subramaniam says.

The 2021 fish kill redoubled Whiting and Subramaniam’s enthusiasm for understanding how Kotzebue Sound’s microbial ecosystem could affect the town. A pathologist found damage to the dead fish’s gills, which may have been caused by the hard, spiky shells of diatoms (a type of algae), but the cause of the fish kill is still unclear. With so many of the town’s residents depending on fish as one of their food sources, that makes Subramaniam nervous. “If we don’t know what killed the fish, then it’s very difficult to address the question of, Is it safe to consume?” he says.

I watch the latest chapter of their collaboration from a crouched position on the deck of Schaeffer’s precipitously swaying fishing boat. Whiting reassures me that the one-piece flotation suit I’m wearing will save my life if I end up in the water, but I’m not keen to test that theory. Instead, I hold onto the boat with one hand and the phone I’m using to record video with the other while Whiting, Subramaniam, and Vince Schaeffer haul up a white-and-yellow contraption they moored in the ocean, rocking the boat in the process. Finally, a metal sphere about the diameter of a hula hoop emerges. From it projects a meter-long tube that contains a cyanobacteria sensor.

The sensor allows Whiting and Subramaniam to overcome a limitation that many researchers face: a cyanobacterial bloom is intense but fleeting, so “if you’re not here at the right time,” Subramaniam explains, “you’re not going to see it.” In contrast to the isolated measurements that researchers often rely on, the sensor had taken a reading every 10 minutes from the time it was deployed in June to this chilly September morning. By measuring levels of a fluorescent compound called phycocyanin, which is found only in cyanobacteria, they hope to correlate these species’ abundance with changes in water qualities such as salinity, temperature, and the presence of other forms of plankton.

Researchers are enthusiastic about the work because of its potential to protect the health of Alaskans, and because it could help them understand why blooms occur around the world. “That kind of high resolution is really valuable,” says Malin Olofsson, an aquatic biologist from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, who studies cyanobacteria in the Baltic Sea. By combining phycocyanin measurements with toxin measurements, the scientists hope to provide a more complete picture of the hazards facing Kotzebue, but right now Subramaniam’s priority is to understand which species of cyanobacteria are most common and what’s causing them to bloom.

Farrugia, from the Alaska Harmful Algal Bloom Network, is excited about the possibility of using similar methods in other parts of Alaska to gain an overall view of where and when cyanobacteria are proliferating. Showing that the sensor works in one location “is definitely the first step,” he says.

Understanding the location and potential source of cyanobacterial blooms is only half the battle: the other question is what to do about them. In the Baltic Sea, where fertilizer runoff from industrial agriculture has exacerbated blooms, neighboring countries have put a lot of effort into curtailing that runoff—and with success, Olofsson says. Kotzebue is not in an agricultural area, however, and instead some scientists have hypothesized that thawing permafrost may release nutrients that promote blooms. There’s not much anyone can do to prevent this, short of reversing the climate crisis. Some chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, show promise as ways to kill cyanobacteria and bring temporary relief from blooms without affecting ecosystems broadly, but so far chemical treatments haven’t provided permanent solutions.

Instead, Whiting is hoping to create a rapid response system so he can notify the town if a bloom is turning water and food toxic. But this will require building up Kotzebue’s research infrastructure. At the moment, Subramaniam prepares samples in the kitchen at the Selawik National Wildlife Refuge’s office, then sends them across the country to researchers, who can take days, sometimes even months, to analyze them. To make the work safer and faster, Whiting and Subramaniam are applying for funding to set up a lab in Kotzebue and possibly hire a technician who can process samples in-house. Getting a lab is “probably the best thing that could happen up here,” says Schaeffer. Subramaniam is hopeful that their efforts will pay off within the next year.

In the meantime, interest in cyanobacterial blooms is also popping up in other regions of Alaska. Emma Pate, the training coordinator and environmental planner for the Norton Sound Health Corporation, started a monitoring program after members of local tribes noticed increased numbers of algae in rivers and streams. In Utqiaġvik, on Alaska’s northern coast, locals have also started sampling for cyanobacteria, Farrugia says.

Whiting sees this work as filling a critical hole in Alaskans’ understanding of water quality. Regulatory agencies have yet to devise systems to protect Alaskans from the potential threat posed by cyanobacteria, so “somebody needs to do something,” he says. “We can’t all just be bumbling around in the dark waiting for a bunch of people to die.” Perhaps this sense of self-sufficiency, which has let Arctic people thrive on the frozen tundra for millennia, will once again get the job done.

The reporting for this article was partially funded by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing Taylor/Blakeslee Mentored Science Journalism Project Fellowship.

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

Plunging into the ocean or a lake is one of the great joys of summer. But arriving at the beach to find water that’s green, red or brown, and possibly foul-smelling, can instantly spoil the party.

As a toxicologist, I study health risks from both synthetic and natural substances. I’ve conducted research into early detection of harmful algal blooms, or HABs, which are an increasing threat to humans, animals and the environment.

Toxins produced during these blooms have been implicated in human and animal illnesses in at least 43 states. Scientists have estimated that in the U.S. alone, freshwater HABs cause more than US$4.6 billion in damage yearly. Here’s what to know about them if you’re bound for the water’s edge this summer.

Tiny organisms, big impacts

Algae and cyanobacteria – often called blue-green algae – are simple, plantlike organisms that live in water. They can grow out of control, or “bloom,” especially when the water is warm and slow moving. Climate change is making water bodies warmer, increasing the risk of HABs.

The other major factor that drives blooms is high levels of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, which fertilize algae. Nutrient pollution comes mainly from agriculture, wastewater treatment plants, septic systems and fossil fuel combustion.

Sometimes these blooms contain organisms that produce toxins – an umbrella term for many poisonous substances that come from animals or plants and can make people and animals sick and adversely affect the environment. These events are called harmful algal blooms.

HABs occur throughout the U.S. and worldwide, in both saltwater and freshwater environments. They pose significant health risks to human, pets, livestock and wildlife; damage ecosystems; increase water treatment costs; restrict recreational activities; and cut into economic revenues.

People and animals can be exposed to HAB toxins through many routes. These include skin contact during activities such as swimming or boating; inhaling airborne droplets that contain toxins; swallowing contaminated water; or eating food or supplements that contain toxins. The most severe effects generally result from consuming contaminated seafood.

An array of toxins

There are numerous HAB toxins, including substances such as microcystin, saxitoxin, cylindrospermopsin, anatoxin-A and domoic acid. Each has a different action on the body, so HABs can have diverse harmful effects.

Typical symptoms of illness from exposure to HAB toxins can include stomach pain, vomiting or diarrhea; headache, fever, tiredness or other general symptoms; skin, eye, nose or throat irritation; and neurological symptoms such as muscle weakness or dizziness. Depending on the toxin, higher levels of exposure can result in tremors or seizures, respiratory distress, kidney toxicity, liver toxicity and even death.

As with many environmental exposures, children and older people may be especially sensitive to HAB toxins. People who regularly consume seafood caught in HAB-prone areas are also at risk of long-term health effects from potentially frequent, low-level exposures to HAB toxins.

Recognizing and responding to HABs

It’s not possible to tell whether a bloom is harmful just by looking at it, but there are some warning signs. If the water appears green, red, brown or yellowish in color; has a strong musty or fishy odor; has foam, scum, algal mats or paintlike streaks on the surface; or if there are dead fish or other marine life in the water or washed up on the shoreline, it’s likely that a HAB may be occurring.

If you are unsure whether a bloom is harmful or not, contact your local health department or environmental agency for guidance. As a general rule, it’s good to check with local agencies to see whether there are any relevant warnings when you go to the beach.

If you are notified of a bloom in a nearby body of water or in your public drinking water supply, the most important thing you can do to reduce your chances of getting sick is to follow local or state guidance. If you see signs of a bloom, stay out of the water and keep your pets out of the water.

It’s also important to follow local guidelines about consuming seafood caught through recreational fishing. It’s important to be aware that cooking contaminated seafood or boiling contaminated water does not destroy the toxins.

Be informed

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides resources and recommendations related to HABs and ways to stay safe. Pet owners should also learn how to protect their dogs from HABs.

Other federal agencies that offer information about HABs include the U.S. National Office for Harmful Algal Blooms and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Many states conduct HAB monitoring programs, especially in areas that are known to be vulnerable to blooms, such as western Lake Erie. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers HAB resources by state. Apps used by water quality managers and state officials who make management decisions about public water supply safety, including CyAN Android and CyANWeb, may contain useful information about HABs in your area.

What’s being done about HABs?

Many efforts are underway to prevent, control and mitigate HABs and provide early warnings to water system managers and health officials.

One example in the U.S. is the
Cyanobacteria Assessment Network, or CyAN, a collaborative effort across several government agencies to develop an early warning indicator system to detect algal blooms in freshwater systems. There are also several ongoing projects for HAB forecasting by region.

At the global scale, the Harmful Algal Information System will eventually include harmful algal events and information from harmful algae monitoring and management systems worldwide.

Citizen scientists can provide invaluable help by monitoring local waters. If you would like to participate, consider joining the Phytoplankton Monitoring Network or the Cyanobacteria Monitoring Collaborative, and download and use the
Cyanobacterial bloom app to report potential HABs in bodies of water you visit.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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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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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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Best for large rooms		Mila Smart Air Purifier		SEE IT	This all-purpose smart air purifier adapts to room size and comes with a carbon monoxide detector and sleep and white noise modes.
Best HEPA		Coway Tower True HEPA Air Purifier		SEE IT	This HEPA model features four layers of filtration in a stylish design.
Best for allergies		InvisiClean Aura II Air Purifier		SEE IT	Certified to keep you safe from dangerous levels of ozone gas.

Air purifiers suck in pollen, dust, smoke, other allergens, and even viruses—pummeling them and then circulating clean, filtered air. It sounds simple enough, but not all purifiers are created equal, and there isn’t one that’s right for every person. Your particular environment and the size of your home are huge factors in choosing the best option for you. Is allergy season wreaking havoc on your sinuses? Do you live in a smoggy city? Have there been wildfires? In short, even the finest filters aren’t guaranteed to fix all that ails you and your home. But if you’re wondering whether air purifiers are really worth it … we think so. They can help distribute cleaner air, and that’s always a good thing, considering the link between air quality and health. So, read on as we clear the air on what we think are the best air purifiers.

• Best overall: Dyson Purifier Humidify+Cool Formaldehyde
• Best for large rooms: Mila Smart Air Purifier
• Best for small rooms: LEVOIT Air Purifier for Home Bedroom
• Best for quiet: Blueair Blue Pure 311i Max
• Best HEPA: Coway Tower True HEPA Air Purifier
• Best with UV light: Germ Guardian True HEPA Filter Air Purifier
• Best for allergies: InvisiClean Aura II Air Purifier
• Best for smoke: Alen BreatheSmart 75i
• Best portable: WYND Smart Plus Personal Portable Air Purifier
• Best budget: LEVOIT Air Purifier for Home, Core 300

How we chose the best air purifiers

As pet owners and parents, we’ve experienced our fair share of smells and toxins—and that’s just from inside the house. To create this list of the best air purifiers, we relied on peer recommendations, critical reviews, online research, user impressions, and plentiful personal testing. We also examined what each air purifier claims to eliminate from the air, HEPA square footage, and MERV ratings.

The best air purifiers: Reviews & Recommendations

Pollen, pet dander, smells, smoke, germs, and other airborne goblins are no match for the best air purifiers. This list includes quiet air purifiers, ones that double as humidifiers, and even ones that claim they can help with a majority of airborne pathogens.

Best overall: Dyson Purifier Humidify+Cool Formaldehyde

Tony Ware

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: This three-in-one smart device automatically adapts to changes in air quality and humidity.

Specs

• Recommended room size: 400 square feet
• Dimensions: 36.66 x 11.02 x 12.23 inches
• App connectivity: Yes
• Max decibels (dB): 59.8 dB

Pros

• Connectivity with Siri and Alexa
• Three products in one
• Air quality reporting

Cons

• Expensive

Between its TikTok- and Insta-famous Airwrap multistyler to its line of powerful vacuums, Dyson has made a name for itself in sucking—which we don’t mean negatively. The Dyson Purifier Humidify+Cool Formaldehyde proves yet again that Sir James Dyson really knows what he’s doing when it comes to pushing air out and in. This air purifier uses an intelligent sensing system and Air Multiplier technology to purify, humidify, and cool the air. You don’t even need to touch the stylish, distinctive unit—it automatically senses and reacts to changes in air quality and humidity (we’ve watched one enthusiastically spring to life time and time again after a particularly aggressive sauté session in the kitchen). It even features a solid-state sensor to detect and destroy formaldehyde emitted by household items—a boon if you’re in a newly renovated/refurbished space, as fresh carpet and new mattresses are emitting odd things.

You don’t have to worry about airborne baddies getting re-released into the air since the entire purifier-humidifier is fully sealed to the HEPA H13 standard. If you love numbers, neat tech, and data, this machine will tickle your brain when it reports your air quality in real-time on the LCD screen and DysonLink app (which you can use to tweak/schedule usage). The filters are low-maintenance and easy to replace, and the machine features a deep-clean cycle to get rid of mineral build-up and bacteria that may be lurking in the water system. Although it’s almost $1,000, you’re getting three devices for the cost of one. Talk about smart.

Best for large rooms: Mila Smart Air Purifier

Mila

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: This mold- and carbon monoxide-detecting air purifier comes in different filter configurations for custom air purification.

Specs

• Recommended room size: 1,000 square feet 
• Dimensions: 12 x 12 x 15 inches
• App connectivity: Yes
• Max decibels (dB): 62 dB but lowers to 24 dB while in room

Pros

• Stylist
• Small
• Carbon monoxide, mold detection, and white noise machine built-in

Cons

• Reviews note excessive air quality notifications

This classy, app-controllable large room air purifier adapts to the size of whatever room it’s placed in. It also looks great in any room it’s placed in. The filter has 45 square feet of HEPA, and with 447 CADR, it’s effective in rooms up to 1,000 square feet. Additional features include a sleep mode and white noise so that it won’t interfere with your sleeping habits. The device also features a carbon monoxide detector. It will monitor your room’s humidity and let you know if it detects any mold. If you’re not a fan of notifications, disable them if you go with the Mila—reviewers note that the Mila app sends lots of alerts.

Best for small rooms: LEVOIT Air Purifier for Home Bedroom

Levoit

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: Take this lightweight, compact air purifier from room to room to experience dual-filter, three-stage filtration in your entire home.

Specs

• Recommended room size: 161 square feet
• Dimensions: 6.69 x 6.69 x 10.43 inches
• App connectivity: No
• Max decibels (dB): 52 dB

Pros

• Aromatherapy
• Dual-filter, three-stage filtration
• Specifically targets hay fever

Cons

• Not for large homes

The Levoit promises to help relieve allergies, congestion, and sneezing and is our pick for the best small air purifier. Although we can’t vouch for the unit’s specific efficacy against rhinitis, we can vouch for the fact that it has three filters (one more than most other units): HEPA for dust, pollen, and dander; carbon for odors; and polyester for lint and hair. One fun additional feature is that this one has an aromatherapy option if you’d like a little lavender to help lull you to sleep at night.

Best for quiet: Blueair Blue Pure 311i Max

Tony Ware

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: Particles down to .1 microns are no match for this quiet-but-powerful air purifier.

Specs

• Recommended room size: Up to 929 square feet
• Dimensions: 19 x 12.5 x 12.5 inches
• App connectivity: Yes
• Max decibels (dB): 50 dB

Pros

• Removes particles down to .1 micron
• Stylish
• App connectivity

Cons

• Reviews note occasional problems with auto-sensing

Blueair makes svelte cylinders with Scandinavian style packed with highly effective electrostatic and mechanical filtration. The Blue Pure 311i Max is HEPASilent but deadly … against microbes in the air. This stylish, small air purifier features five fan speeds and a one-touch auto mode with a fine particles (PM 2.5) sensor to monitor concentration and adjust speed according. This air purifier can clean a 387-square-foot room in 12.5 minutes and a 929-square-foot space in 30 minutes (there are both larger and smaller models, so something for every home). And, it snags all those particles (99.97% of them down to 0.1 micron) all nearly undetected, clocking in at 23 dB on low/night mode—louder than a quiet natural area with no wind but softer than a whisper. And it never runs above 50dB, which makes it QuietMark certified and perfect for a bedroom, TV room, any room … plus it’s only 8 pounds, so it’s easy to move around while you decide between your study and your yoga studio (or realize it’s easiest to buy two).

Is it working? We barely hear it. But we also don’t hear ourselves sneezing and wheezing and complaining about our watery eyes, so we’re going with yes. If we need more confirmation, we can look at a five-color LED that changes according to Air Quality Index (AQI), or we can reference an app that gives insight into indoor vs. outdoor pollution and lets you control mode, tweak LED Brightness, set a schedule, and more (assuming the 311i Max and your phone are connected to WiFi). And if we don’t want it to be working, Google Assistant and Alexa compatibility let us turn it off with voice commands if our phone isn’t convenient. While some reviews note that the auto-sensing feature is not as accurate as they hoped, we’ve observed the Blue Pure 311i Max react firsthand thanks to a low smoke-point cooking oil incident or two. It was lively even from across a loft apartment—and helped with the post-coming odors. And the washable pre-filter fabric cover (shown above in “Stockholm Fog” color) meshed effortlessly with the decor to boot.

Best HEPA: Coway Tower True HEPA Air Purifier

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Why it made the cut: Stylish-meets-powerful with this True HEPA air purifier that features four levels of filtration.

Specs

• Recommended room size: 330 square feet
• Dimensions: 10.5 × 32.7 × 10.7 inches
• App connectivity: No
• Max decibels (dB): 52 dB

Pros

• Real-time air sensing
• Washable pre-filter
• Air quality indicator

Cons

• Noisier compared to other air purifiers

Multiple fan speeds, a timer, an air-quality assessor, and a filter-replacement indicator light make this the best HEPA air purifier—not just quiet and effective, but user-friendly. At just under $200, it’s neither cheap nor exorbitant for an air purifier, and it’s also aesthetically pleasing. Reviewers note that this air purifier is noisier than most.

Best with UV light: Germ Guardian True HEPA Filter Air Purifier

Germ Guardian

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Why it made the cut: This quiet air purifier uses CARB-compliant UVC light and titanium dioxide to reduce airborne bacteria, viruses, and mold spores.

Specs

• Recommended room size: 153 square feet
• Dimensions: 10.25 x 6.75 x 21.5 inches
• App connectivity: No
• Max decibels (dB): 61.2 dB

Pros

• Quiet
• Reduces odors
• Pre-filter traps allergens

Cons

• UV light can be bad for the environment

UVC light (the most destructive of all the UVs) in an air purifier works as a UVGI—ultraviolet germicidal irradiation—disinfection method by attacking the DNA of cells floating through the air, like mold spores, viruses, and bacteria. (This means, like all other filters, it cannot do anything for particles that have settled into fabric). An activated charcoal filter reduces odors. The 22-inch purifier filters air four times per hour at maximum speed in rooms up to 153 square feet. The four fan speeds, whisper-quiet operation, and CARB compliance make this air purifier an especially good pick for allergy sufferers. California Air Resources Board (CARB) compliance means you can rest easy about its environmental footprint.

Best for allergies: InvisiClean Aura II Air Purifier

InvisiClean

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Why it made the cut: CARB compliance plus four levels of air purification equals an exorcism for your sneezes.

Specs

• Recommended room size: 319 square feet
• Dimensions: 12.34 x 6.25 x 17.75 inches
• App connectivity: No
• Max decibels (dB): 55 dB

Pros

• Four fan speeds
• Quiet
• CARB compliant

Cons

• No auto-sensing

The four fan speeds, whisper-quiet operation, and CARB compliance make this air purifier an especially good pick for allergy sufferers. The California Air Resources Board requires purifiers to produce .050 parts per million of ozone or less, so any device with this certification keeps you safe from unsafe gas levels.

Best for smoke: Alen BreatheSmart 75i

Alen

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Why it made the cut: Detailed air quality indicators, a B7-Pure filter, and a CADR of 347 mean that this air purifier will stop smoke in its tracks.

Specs

• Recommended room size: 1300 square feet
• Dimensions: 12 x 19 x 27 inches
• App connectivity: No
• Max decibels (dB): 51 dB

Pros

• 8 colorways
• Quickly cleans large rooms
• Auto-adjusts based on air quality

Cons

• Expensive
• Little warranty

This is an easy pick for the best air purifier for smoke, thanks to its CADR of 347 (out of 450). Thanks to automatic air-quality detection, when any type of smoke is present, the unit will kick up to turbo. When no irritants are present, the device goes into energy-saving mode. Five air quality colors give you a more detailed visual indicator of air quality—other air purifiers only include three color indicators.

Best portable: WYND Smart Plus Personal Portable Air Purifier

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Why it made the cut: Take clean air onto the airplane or into the office with this water bottle-sized air purifier developed by NASA and MIT engineers.

Specs

• Recommended room size: N/A
• Dimensions: 9.57 x 8.62 x 4.33 inches
• App connectivity: Yes
• Max decibels (dB): 55 dB

Pros

• Small
• iOS/Android app
• Medical-grade filter

Cons

• Expensive for size

This small-but-mighty air purifier designed by NASA and MIT engineers fits in a cup holder and can purify the air in a car in under 15 minutes—that’s eight liters of air per second. And that comes in handy in a world of wildfires and other pollutants you might encounter as you travel—something we know from experience, as one accompanied three passengers in a Honda CR-V through the smoke-heavy American West during fall 2021. And, if you like numbers, the WYND air purifier connects to an iOS/Android app to track real-time hyperlocalized data on dust and other particulates. It also enables you to switch between different purifier presets, like auto and night, control other WYND devices, and alerts you when encountering poor air quality. The included desktop kickstand accessory lets you position the air purifier to direct a clean bubble toward your face (as shown above), giving your nose and lungs instant access to medical-grade filtered air in an office or elsewhere.

Best budget: LEVOIT Air Purifier for Home, Core 300

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Why it made the cut: This compact air purifier tackles smoke, dust, pollen, bacteria, and viruses without hurting your wallet.

Specs

• Recommended room size: 219 square feet
• Dimensions: 8.7 x 8.7 x 16.25 inches
• App connectivity: No
• Max decibels (dB): 50 dB

Pros

• Filter life indicator
• Timer
• Quiet

Cons

• Louder than other air purifiers

This cheap air purifier targets smoke, dust, and pollen, along with some bacteria and viruses. Four specialty replacement filters include a pet-allergy option and a toxin absorber for particularly smoky or smoggy areas. Like higher-end air purifiers that are more expensive, this Levoit air purifier features timer settings and a sleep mode. And the display lights can be turned off to ensure a pitch-black room when sleeping. Although the air purifier is louder than some competitors, it resembles a whooshing fan at its highest setting—if you can deal with that, this air purifier is for you.

What to consider when buying the best air purifiers

The best air purifier for you might not be the one your best friend or neighbor loves. You want a HEPA filter with a high MERV rating that’s designed to cover the amount of space you have in your particular room or dwelling. Beyond that, consider whether you want other features like pathogen-killing UV light, smart controls, and/or odor elimination. Do you need the best air purifier for pets or perhaps something portable? Air purifiers for mold or models to get rid of smoke? Air filters work only on airborne particles. To get at anything that’s settled into upholstery or rugs, you’ll need a handy vacuum, a helpful robot, or something else that offers deep-clean suction.

Size of space

There’s an alphabet soup to make sense of when choosing the best air purifier for your home. ACH (air changes per hour) correlates to the airflow of your device. It’s calculated based on the volume of your space, ceiling height, and how many cubic feet per minute the device can cover. It’s independent of other factors, e.g., the filter’s efficacy—to calculate that you need the CADR (clean air delivery rate) rating; because a HEPA filter is more efficient, its CADR rating may be lower, which is deceptive.

The most important thing to note is that an air purifier’s efficacy cannot be calculated based on square footage alone. You can find handy calculators online to determine the proper purifier for your needs, but here’s what to consider with any device: Will it successfully rid your home of odors with carbon or other comparable filters? Is it a good choice for pet owners? Does it feature UV light? Read the fine print.

HEPA

You’ve likely heard of high-efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filters. They are a type of pleated air filter that, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, “can theoretically remove at least 99.97% of dust, pollen, mold, bacteria, and any airborne particles with a size of .3 microns.” The smaller the particle, the more penetrating and nefarious it can be. So when you’re shopping for air purifiers, check out their filters’ MERV (minimum efficiency reporting values) rating. The higher the MERV rating, the better it is at trapping the tiniest particles.

Suppose it’s the coronavirus that has you shopping for purifiers. In that case, it should be said that though a HEPA filter should be able to catch a virus of that size, there’s no conclusive proof that an air purifier can kill airborne COVID-19-carrying air droplets. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that any room housing a coronavirus patient “should be exhausted directly to the outside, or be filtered through a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter directly before recirculation.”

If your main concern about your indoor air quality is lingering food or cigarette smoke odors, make sure the model you’re considering specifically targets fumes and other volatile organic compounds. HEPA filters aren’t good at eliminating odors on their own.

The HEPA filter was initially designed to capture radioactive particles when the atomic bomb was being developed because it can capture 99.97 percent of particles as small as .3 microns, which can evade other types of filters. (This is sometimes referred to as “true HEPA,” as European HEPA standards are required to trap only 85 percent of particles.) It works by ensnaring, sieving, and rerouting irritating particles.

A HEPA air purifier is considered the gold standard, but it does have limitations. Any particle smaller than .3 microns—for example, some viruses and VOCs (volatile organic compounds) like aerosols, ammonia, and other toxins—will slip right through. Changing your filter often enough is key. A HEPA filter does a great job of capturing mold. If you don’t change the filter, the purifier can redistribute that mold back into the air.

Allergies

The best air purifiers for allergies depend on what your particular triggers are because different filters work on different-sized particles. Pet hair and pollen are large particles, dust is medium-sized, and smoke is small. A combination HEPA-carbon filter is your best bet for filtering the maximum number of irritants to help reduce your allergies.

The addition of an ionizer and UV light, if you’re comfortable with it, adds a belt to your proverbial suspenders. Because UV light does create ozone particles, we recommend choosing an air purifier with UV light that’s approved for sale in California.

Smoke

Pollutants—like smoke and soot—can aggravate asthma, irritate your eyes, and stress your lungs and heart. An intuitive HEPA purifier with multiple fan speeds, maximum air circulation, and zero ozone output is the best one for allergy sufferers and people who are sensitive to smoke. The best air purifiers for smoke have a higher CADR rating. This means your device will be better at eliminating smoke and its odor, whether you’re talking about cigarettes, cannabis, or wildfires.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best air purifiers

• Best overall: Dyson Purifier Humidify+Cool Formaldehyde
• Best for large rooms: Mila Smart Air Purifier
• Best for small rooms: LEVOIT Air Purifier for Home Bedroom
• Best for quiet: Blueair Blue Pure 311i Max
• Best HEPA: Coway Tower True HEPA Air Purifier
• Best with UV light: Germ Guardian True HEPA Filter Air Purifier
• Best for allergies: InvisiClean Aura II Air Purifier
• Best for smoke: Alen BreatheSmart 75i
• Best portable: WYND Smart Plus Personal Portable Air Purifier
• Best budget: LEVOIT Air Purifier for Home, Core 300

In almost every category, the best air purifiers have a true HEPA filter and a carbon filter. Together, they get you the most coverage regarding the breadth of pollutants the purifier will attack. Beyond that, the most important qualities are energy efficiency and picking the right model for the size of your room. Everything else—design, whether the device is app-enabled, UV lighting—is just gravy.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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In response to climate change, a lot of animals—such as polar bears and birds like sparrows—appear to be getting smaller in size. However, male California sea lions have increased their average body size even as their population has grown and the competition for food and resources has increased. 

In a study published April 27 in the journal Current Biology found that sex selection was a strong driving force for the male sea lions to strengthen the neck and jaw muscles that they use to fight for mate and to grow larger. Additionally, both male and female sea lions responded to food shortages by diversifying their diets and foraging further from the shore in some cases.

[Related: Fish populations thrive near marine protected areas—and so do fishers.]

Numerous marine species have rebounded a bit since the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed in 1972, but California sea lions are notable for the size and duration of their population increase. The number of breeding females have tripled since the 1970s and the population growth is only beginning to plateau now. 

“Body size reduction is not the universal response to population increase in marine predators,” co-author and University of California Santa Cruz and the Smithsonian Institution paleoecologist  Ana Valenzuela-Toro said in a statement. “California sea lions were very resilient over the decades that we sampled and were able to overcome increasing competition thanks to prey availability. They’re like the raccoons of the sea: they can consume almost everything, and they can compensate if something is lacking.”

In the study, the team analyzed museum specimens of adult male and female California sea lions that were collected between 1962 and 2008. To estimate changes in body size, they then compared the overall size of over 300 sea lion skulls, taking into account other skull features like the size of muscle attachment points, to assess the changes made in both neck flexibility and biting force.

To get an idea of where the sea lions were foraging and what they were eating, the team took tiny bone samples from the skulls and measured their stable carbon and nitrogen isotope composition. “Carbon provides information about habitat use—whether they’re foraging along the coast or offshore—and nitrogen provides insights about the trophic level of their prey, for example if they’re consuming smaller or larger fish,” said Valenzuela-Toro.

The team found that overall the male sea lions have increased in size, while females have remained stable. They believe that the sex difference is likely due to the fact that size matters more for a male in terms of mating success. “One male can breed with many females, and males in the breeding colony fight with each other to establish their territory,” said Valenzuela-Toro. “Bigger males are more competitive during physical fights, and they can go longer without eating, so they can stay and defend their territory for longer.”

[Related: For marine life to survive, we must cut carbon emissions.]

The male sea lions also increased their biting force and neck flexibility over this same time period. This allows them to move their heads more with greater agility and bite harder when fighting other males. 

The isotopic analyses showed that both sexes managed to meet nutritional needs through diet diversification and going further north for food. Female sea lions consistently had a more diverse diet than the male sea lions, and the authors suggest that this flexibility in food choice may be what allowed females to maintain average body size. 

The flexibility can only take sea lions so far, however, and climate change is putting their future in jeopardy. The dynamics that allowed for this growth occurred when their prey of sardines and anchovies were plentiful, and the populations of both fish have collapsed in recent years. The California sea lions have continued to diversify their diets to compensate, but are struggling. 

“As climate change progresses, prey availability of sardines and anchovies will decrease even more, and eventually we will have more permanent El Niño-like warming conditions, reducing the size and causing a poleward shift of these and other pelagic fishes,” said Valenzuela-Toro “It will be a really hostile environment for California sea lions, and eventually we expect that their population size will stop growing and actually decline.”

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This article was originally featured on Nexus Media.

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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Although Tesla’s latest Impact Report promises that “a sustainable future is within reach,” the company’s 2022 figures show just how crucial accurate measurements are in achieving the lofty goal. Released earlier this week, an expanded dataset dramatically upped the electric vehicle maker’s total carbon footprint when compared with the prior year’s available information. The larger picture? An estimated 30.7 million tons of CO2 in supply chain emissions atop previously reported categories of pollution. That’s roughly equivalent to Serbia’s total emissions in 2021. 

[Related: Tesla employees allegedly viewed drivers’ car camera footage.]

Tesla only publicly offered how much greenhouse gas the company generated in 2021 via direct operations and EV owners charging their cars—around 2.5 million metric tons of CO2. That might seem small compared to its competitors (Ford recorded 337 million metric tons of CO2 in 2022, for example), but these segments of overall emissions are just a fraction of a company’s supply chain pollution stemming from production, transportation, and indirect operations. And while those numbers weren’t disclosed for 2021, they were for last year within Tesla’s new report.

As The Verge notes, the vast difference in numbers comes down to what companies generally choose to include in these kinds of industry reports. Carbon footprints are often broken down into three “scopes,” with Scope 1 encompassing direct company emissions (i.e. factory emissions, brick-and-mortar offices, and its own vehicles for travel and commuting). Meanwhile, Scope 2 includes emissions stemming from heating, A/C, and electricity usage in company buildings like offices. Scope 3 focuses on all the extra, indirect emissions from supply chain manufacturing alongside products’ lifecycle emissions.

Most often, businesses choose to detail only Scopes 1 and 2, as they are usually smaller than Scope 3’s numbers, even when combined. This often makes a company’s carbon footprint appear much smaller than it actually is when seen as a fuller picture; a strategy often referred to as “greenwashing.” In Tesla’s 2022 Impact Report, for instance, the first two “scopes” totaled just 610,000 metric tons of CO2—a much more palatable figure for investors and consumers than the true total of over 31 million tons.

[Related: Tesla is under federal investigation over autopilot claims.]

Still, Tesla actually making its Scope 3 data available to the public offers some much needed additional transparency within the industry. Even then, however, the company’s  combined Scope 1 and 2 numbers rose a little under four percent, year-over-year. This, as The Verge also added, came even as Tesla still worked to make its EVs less carbon-intensive. Earlier this month, Tesla revealed “Part 3” of its ongoing “Master Plan” to provide sustainable energy for the entire world, estimating it will take $10 trillion in investments to fully realize.

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The oceans are inundated with plastic. Despite the numerous flashy proposed solutions, there unfortunately still isn’t any surefire way to clean it all up. One of the most buzzed about ideas—underwater vacuuming—has recently come up against intense scrutiny for its potential collateral damage to marine ecosystems and wildlife. Meanwhile, even the more delicate alternatives often hinge upon large, cumbersome surface skimmers. To tackle some of these issues, scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) have created a robotic trash collector inspired by some of the oceans’ oldest and most resilient residents—jellyfish.

Recently detailed in the research journal Scientific Advances, the team’s “Jellyfish-Bot” already shows promise in helping cleanup the copious amounts of human-generated trash littering the planets’ aquatic environments. But unlike many other underwater cleaners, the prototype is incredibly small, energy-efficient, and nearly noiseless. Additionally, the hand-sized device doesn’t need to actually physically interact with its cleanup targets. Instead, the robot takes a cue from jellyfishes’ graceful movements via six limbs employing artificial muscles called hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic actuators, or HASELs.

As New Atlas explains, HASELs are ostensibly electrode-covered sacs filled with oils. When the electrodes receive a small current—in this case, about 100 mW—they become positively charged, then safely discharge the current into the negatively charged water around them. Alternating this current forces the oil in the sacs to move back and forth, thus making the actuators flap in a way that generates momentum to move trash particles upward. From there, humans or other gathering tools can scoop up the detritus.

“When a jellyfish swims upwards, it can trap objects along its path as it creates currents around its body,” study author and postdoc in the MPI-IS Physical Intelligence Department Tianlu Wang explained in a statement. “In this way, it can also collect nutrients.”

Wang went on to describe how their robot similarly circulates water around it. “This function is useful in collecting objects such as waste particles,” Wang adds. “It can then transport the litter to the surface, where it can later be recycled.”

[Related: Ocean plastic ‘vacuums’ are sucking up marine life along with trash.]

Apart from generating currents, the Jellyfish-Bots’ actuators could also be divided up into separate responsibilities. In the team’s demonstrations, the prototypes could use all six of its limbs for propulsion, or rely on two of them as claws to lightly grasp targets like an N95 face mask.

The biggest drawback at the moment is simply the fact that a controlled Jellyfish-Bot still requires a wired connection for power, thus hampering its scope. Although researchers have been able to incorporate battery and wireless communications modules into the robots, the untethered versions cannot currently be directed in a desired path. Still, it’s easy to envision future iterations of the Jellyfish-Bot clearing this relatively small hurdle. If that is accomplished, then fleets of the cute cleanup machines may soon be deployed as a safe, efficient, and environmentally harmless way to help tackle one of the environment’s most pressing threats.

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

A new report by the American Lung Association found that more than one in three Americans were exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution between 2019 to 2021. Released on Wednesday, the 24th annual State of the Air report grades Americans’ exposure to two of the nation’s most pervasive air pollutants: ground-level ozone, an air pollutant that forms smog, and particle pollution, also known as soot. 

The report found that while overall smog and soot pollution continues to decrease across the U.S., racial and geographic disparities are rising. As climate-fueled wildfires and drought increase and intensify, more people living in the West face potentially deadly particle and ozone pollution compared to their Eastern counterparts.

People of color were found to be 64 percent more likely than white people to breathe unhealthy air, compared to 61 percent in last year’s report. They are also 3.7 times more likely than white people to live in a county that received the American Lung Association’s lowest rating for all three pollution metrics that the group examined: ozone pollution, annual particle pollution, and short-term particle pollution. The report’s ratings were informed by national air quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Last year, people of color were 3.6 times more likely to live in a county that received a failing grade on all three measures.

Paul Billings, national senior vice president of public policy for the American Lung Association, said that those findings reflect the continued impact of systemic racism. Pollution sources ranging from refineries to highways are disproportionately sited in communities of color — a persistent legacy of racist housing policies such as redlining. “The benefits of clean air have not been equally shared, and in fact, we’re seeing in this report an even wider disparity than we saw last year,” he said. 

Ozone causes what experts describe as a “sunburn of the lungs,” causing shortness of breath and wheezing and increasing the risk for asthma and respiratory infections. And particulate matter pollution bypasses the human body’s natural defenses to enter the deepest part of the lungs. Even short-term exposure to fine particles — those smaller than 2.5 microns across, also known as PM 2.5 — can lead to a host of health harms, including asthma attacks and heart attacks. 

The number of people experiencing 24-hour spikes in particle pollution rose to the highest levels reported in the last decade. Close to 64 million people lived in counties with failing grades for those daily spikes, according to the report. “That’s nearly a half a million more than we saw in last year’s report,” said Billings.

One major contributor is more frequent and intense wildfires linked to climate change, which spew smoke and fine particles.

Billings said that when the American Lung Association started issuing its State of the Air reports 24 years ago, the organization noticed a much broader spread of communities across the U.S. experiencing high levels of pollution. Now, because of wildfires and increasingly hotter and drier weather, Western states are dominating the lists of top 25 cities most impacted by pollution. 

California cities make up four out of the top five in the lists of cities most impacted by annual particle pollution and ozone pollution. 

“We really see this marked shift, and a lot of that we think is due to climate change, not only for the wildfires but also the hot conditions that create the opportunity for ozone formation,” said Billings. 

Ozone forms when nitrogen oxides and other pollutants “cook” in the sun through a series of chemical reactions. According to the EPA, ozone is more likely to form “on warm, sunny days when the air is stagnant.” 

Those hotter days have become more frequent as a result of climate change, leading to “the number of unhealthy ozone days being higher than it would otherwise be,” the report says. “Simply, climate change is undercutting the progress we would have made.”

In response to these challenges, the American Lung Association and other public health groups are calling on the EPA to further limit ozone and particle pollution by significantly strengthening national ambient air quality standards under the federal Clean Air Act passed in 1970. The agency is currently reviewing both the particulate matter and ozone standards. 

Billings said tightening those limits would fulfill the central promise of the Clean Air Act to provide everyone with clean, healthy air. “While we’ve made progress — no question about it — here we are more than 50 years later looking in the rearview mirror, and we still have more than 1 in 3 living in this country, living in a county that has unhealthy air,” Billings said. “No child born in 2023 should have to breathe air pollution that can make them sick.” 

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/health/pollution-smog-wildfires-1-in-3-americans-breathe-unhealthy-air-new-report-says-strong/. 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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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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Best home garden		Gardyn 2.0		SEE IT	Gardyn 2.0’s Hydroponics Growing System actually makes it simple to grow plants at home.
Best Water Filter		Hydros 40oz Water Pitcher		SEE IT	A fridge-friendly pitcher that filters water faster.
Best Tech Toolkit		iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit		SEE IT	iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit can empower you to repair your old technology rather than recycling it (or worse).

Spending as little as 10 minutes reading the latest climate statistics can help induce a sense of existential dread followed by a desire to find ways to help. The good news is that behavioral changes can reduce your personal environmental impact, be it thrifting clothes instead of buying new ones, letting native grasses grow on your lawn, taking public transportation more often, or choosing the right type of vegetable oil. Scientific breakthroughs like increasing the production of seaweed can help, too, as does limiting your use of single-use plastics, which sends a message to corporations to stop using as much.

The irony of putting together a list of products in the name of sustainability is not lost on us, but we had rigid criteria for what we selected. Our recommendations are either more Earth-friendly versions of very common items like toiletries and a cutting board, or gadgets that can help you reduce, reuse, or recycle more efficiently. For example, cutting down on food waste—including knowing when to distrust sell-by dates, preserving the leftovers of what you cook in reusable containers, and composting the scraps—is good for the environment and your wallet.

It’s easy to feel hopeless, but changing your habits, lobbying companies and governments to put the environment first, and investing in items that can reduce your personal waste and carbon footprint over time can all contribute to a healthier planet.

• Best earbuds: Urbanista Phoenix
• Best composter: Reencle Home Composter
• Best water filter: Hydros 40oz Water Filter Slim Pitcher
• Best under-sink filter system: Waterdrop 10UA
• Best insulated water bottle: Hydro Flask 20 oz All Around Tumbler
• Best cutting board: Material reBoard
• Best solar generator: Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro
• Best charcoal: The Good Charcoal Company 15.4-pound bag
• Best smart oven: Tovala Smart Oven
• Best tech toolkit: iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit
• Best smart thermostat: Google Nest Learning Thermostat
• Best detergent: Poesie Laundry Detergent Sheets
• Best liquid soap: Cleancult Dish Soap
• Best indoor gardening kit: Gardyn Home Kit 2.0
• Best menstrual cup: Saalt Soft Menstrual Cup
• Best printer: HP Smart Tank 5101

Best earbuds: Urbanista Phoenix

Urbanista

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Earbuds are the most convenient style of personal audio due to their portability, and Urbanista’s Phoenix doubles down on that thanks to the solar panel on its case, which can continually recharge them. The panel’s inclusion makes this set of true wireless earbuds larger than most models, but that comes with the benefit of a larger battery. The Phoenix buds can offer up to eight hours of music playback, but its case holds enough charge to offer an additional 34 hours of power. Yes, you can still recharge these earbuds and their case with a USB-C cable, but leaving the case out while you listen to music on a sunny day can top it up. The Phoenix earbuds are competitive with similar models in their sub-$150 price range, including hybrid noise cancellation, IPX4 water resistance, and support for Bluetooth 5.2. If you find yourself with dead earbuds at the most inconvenient times, this is the pair you’ve been waiting for.

Best composter: Reencle Home Composter

Reencle

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Reencle’s Home Composter smooths out many annoying details that make composting undesirable or seemingly too difficult. The aesthetically pleasing device suppresses odors, can handle over two pounds of food waste per day, and may only need to be emptied after one to three months. Its carbon filters can last several years without needing to be replaced, and it only consumes roughly $2 worth of power each month. The key to this composter is the “ReencleMicrobe,” which continuously breaks down food and doesn’t need to be replaced. Thanks to motion sensors that can be activated by your hand and foot, you don’t even need to touch this composter to open its lid. The Reencle Home Composter requires a pretty sizable up-front investment, but considering how much food waste is generated in the United States from farm to table, it can help you do your part.

Best water filter: Hydros 40oz Water Filter Slim Pitcher

Hydros

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Filtered water pitchers aren’t new, but they can help you wean yourself off of buying bottled water. This 40-ounce water filter from Hydros is slim enough to fit next to cartons of juice or milk on the door of your fridge, and its filters can reduce 90 percent of chlorine and 99 percent of sediment from your water. Those filters are made from coconut shell carbon inside a BPA-free casing and must only be replaced after a couple of months. Hydros says its filters are up to five times faster than similar options, so you won’t have to wait as long to fill the container or your glasses.

Best under-sink filter system: Waterdrop 10UA

Waterdrop

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If you want filtered water without losing any fridge space, consider Waterdrop’s 10UA, a filtration system connecting directly to the pipes beneath your sink. The only tool required to install the 10UA is a wrench, which is used to attach the filter to your water line. The 10UA does not require new pipes or power to be installed. Once it’s set up, you’ll get filtered water directly from your tap. Waterdrop says its filter can reduce the amount of chlorine, rust, lead, heavy metals, chemical impurities, and sand while also improving the taste and smell of your water. Each filter can clean up to 8,000 gallons of water, and Waterdrop suggests you replace them once per year. An Amazon deal has brought the 10UA’s price down to under $50, which makes it a particularly good Earth Day investment.

Best insulated water bottle: Hydro Flask All Around Tumbler

Hydro Flask

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If you’re struggling to filter your water, you’ll want to keep it in a safe container large enough to reduce frequent trips to your kitchen. HydroFlask’s All Around Tumbler checks both of those boxes. The Water Bottle is made from BPA-free and toxin-free pro-grade stainless steel. This material can also insulate heat, so your hot beverages stay hot, and your cold ones stay cold. The All Around Tumbler’s 20-ounce capacity should reduce trips to the kitchen for refills. A 28-ounce version is available if you’d like a bigger option. HydroFlask offers the All Around Tumbler in multiple colorways, so you can find one that suits your style.

Best cutting board: Material reBoard

Material

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If you’re starting to rethink the sustainability of your kitchen, you should invest in Material’s reBoard. The cutting board is made of 75% recycled plastics and 25% renewable sugarcane; it’s BPA-free, dishwasher-safe, and comes in various colors. This type of cutting board is ideal for use with both vegetables and meat because juices from the latter won’t seep into the pores of the reBoard like they would if it was made out of wood. The reBoard is 14.75 inches long and 10.75 inches wide, which is big enough for most meal prep and carving. Our favorite touch is the reBoard’s circular cutout, which makes it easier to grab and hang.

Best solar generator: Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro

Jackery

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A solar generator is an essential gadget for multi-day camping, but it can also help you increase your renewable energy consumption at home. Jackery’s Explorer 2000 Pro is the top pick in our buyer’s guide because of its high capacity, user-friendly design, and ability to be fully recharged in under three hours when plugged into an outlet. The Explorer 2000 weighs over 43 pounds without the included solar panel, but none of the space is wasted. This solar generator is equipped with three AC outlets, one DC output, two USB-A ports, and two USB-C ports with a total maximum power output of 2200 Watts. If you have a backyard, you could use Jackery’s solar panel to charge the Explorer 2000, and use it to recharge all of your gadgets—and even power electronics like your TV—using renewable power.

Best charcoal: The Good Charcoal Company 15.4-pound bag

The Good Charcoal Company

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Good Charcoal Company has taken on the seemingly impossible task of making grilling less taxing on the environment. It’s made of dense acacia wood that heats to a higher temperature, so you’ll need fewer briquettes to cook your food. Fewer briquettes ultimately lead to less waste. The Good Charcoal Company says it sources its wood from Nambia, a region where the acacia trees are so overgrown that it’s threatening the region’s natural ecological balance. By using this wood rather than needlessly cutting down trees in forests where they’re doing no harm, The Good Charcoal Company’s sustainability story is carried from source to your plate.

Best smart oven: Tovala Smart Oven

Brandt Ranj / Popular Science

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Tovala’s Smart Oven is the only kitchen gadget we’ve tried that reliably helped us cut down on our food waste. The multifunction oven is designed to work with Tovala’s meal subscription, which sends pre-portioned ingredients that can be quickly assembled and cooked. This method is similar to meal kit boxes we’re familiar with but requires a lot less effort. Each meal’s recipe card has a QR code, which the Smart Oven can scan to set its time and temperature automatically. The average time it takes to cook a Tovala meal—from opening the ingredients to sitting at the table—is under half an hour. It’s easy to start the week with an ambitious trip to the grocery store only to end up with spoiled ingredients several days later, and Tovala’s Smart Oven can save you from contributing to that food waste. Sometimes I cook more than I finish; when that’s the case, I reach for some FoodSaver containers to keep leftovers fresh and keep disposable containers out of the trash.

Best tech toolkit: iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit

iFixit

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It’s hard to know what to do when an electronic breaks, but iFixit’s Pro Tech Toolkit can help you get inside and (potentially) fix the problem yourself rather than tossing it out or paying for a costly repair. The toolkit is a natural extension of the company’s website, which features dozens of guides that provide free step-by-step directions on repairing an iPhone, Android device, game console, and more. What separates this toolkit from the rest is its comprehensive set of screwdriver bits, spudgers, and tweezers. These are precise tools that will reduce the chances of accidentally stripping a screw or tearing a wire accidentally. We’re big fans of the right-to-repair movement currently gaining traction in the United States, and iFixit’s Pro Tech Toolkit makes it easier to participate in this revolution.

Best smart thermostat: Google Nest Learning Thermostat

Google

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What if you could reduce the energy consumption in your home without ever thinking about it? That’s the promise of the Google Nest Learning Thermostat. The Wi-Fi-enabled smart thermostat can track when you’re home and away to intelligently manage your HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) system. If it learns correctly, your home will always be warm and cool when you need it to be, while giving your HVAC system a break when necessary. This can save you money on your bills over time, and some utility companies will even offer you credit for upgrading your older thermostats. The Nest has other tangible benefits beyond leveraging AI—like allowing you to monitor and adjust your home’s temperature from anywhere in the world. You’re still going to be in complete control of your HVAC system, but seeding some power to the Nest Learning Thermostat once it has proven it’s capable of handling the responsibility can make your home more sustainable.

Best detergent: Poesie Laundry Detergent Sheets

Posie

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Switching from pods and liquid detergents to detergent sheets is one of those no-brainer swaps that you can make without disturbing your regular routine. Poesie’s sheets contain no plastic, no phosphorus, and no fluorescer without impacting their cleaning performance. Plus, detergent sheets are easier to pack on trips if you rent a place with a washer and dryer. We’re recommending a 160-sheet package, which should last you about a year or more if you do laundry once per week. Poesie says you should use between one and four sheets depending on how much laundry you’re doing and how dirty your clothes are. If you’re looking for a quick, sustainable home swap, here it is.

Best liquid soap: Cleancult Dish Soap

Cleancult

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On a similar note, Clean Cult’s Liquid Dish Soap is another eco-friendly product swap that’s easy to make. This three-pack of dish soap is designed to be used with the company’s glass dispensers, but will work just fine if you decide to use any empty container. Clean Cult’s Dish Soap is made from natural ingredients, free from phthalates, phosphates, petroleum-based ingredients, dyes, and comes in a recyclable paper container. You can choose between three scents: grapefruit basil, lemongrass, and wild lavender. Clean Cult says its dish soap uses 90% less plastic than traditional options, and this three-pack should last several months before you need to top up.

Best indoor gardening kit: Gardyn Home Kit 2.0

Gardyn

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Growing a home garden can seem ambitious—especially if you live in a colder climate or an apartment—but Gardyn’s Home Kit 2.0 makes it possible. The hydroponic garden comes with two strips of LEDs that automatically turn on and off on a set schedule to ensure the vegetables and herbs—stored in pods—get enough light to grow. A water tank built into its base will feed liquid through tubes to each of the pods. The tank will need to be refilled once or twice a week depending on how many plants you’re growing and their size, and Gardyn includes plant food to ensure they get their nutrients. You’ll still be in charge of pruning and harvesting your crops, but the Gardyn Home 2.0 takes a lot of the daily maintenance work out of your hands.

Best menstrual cup: Saalt Soft Menstrual Cup

Saalt

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People looking for a more Earth-friendly alternative to tampons and pads can switch to Saalt’s Soft Menstrual Cup instead. The company says it surveyed over 1 million people to tweak the cup’s design to fit as comfortably as possible without compromising its ability to stay securely in place. It offers three sizes of cups to ensure you’ll find one that fits your body. Saalt says it’s made this cup from 100% medical-grade silicone and that it’s free from BPA, latex, and toxins.

Best printer: HP Smart Tank 5101

HP

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We’re ending on printers because most of them are as annoying to use as they are wasteful. The HP Smart Tank 5101 is better than most because it uses ink tanks instead of traditional cartridges. HP says these tanks allow you to print up to 6,000 monochrome and 6,000 color pages before they need to be topped up. The company says this is roughly two years’ worth of ink. This more eco-friendly approach to ink is complemented by the typical features in a printer, like support for wireless printing and the ability to access certain functions like scanning and copying using buttons and a small LCD screen. HP says the printer can print up to 12 monochrome pages and five color pages per minute, which is pretty standard for an inkjet printer. If you’d like to make your home office a little friendlier to the Earth, HP’s Smart Tank 5101 is a step in the right direction—just remember to use recycled paper.

The post The best Earth Day essentials for 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

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Throwing out trash can be an icky, and sometimes even confusing, experience. To better understand how humans interact with robots, Cornell University researchers recently created and released two trash and recycling bots to do some dirty work in a Manhattan plaza. And for most of the people who interacted with the adorable barrel bots, the robots’ helpful interceptions of waste were welcomed.

The study involved two robots. One was blue, and one was gray, and they were mounted on recycled hoverboard parts and equipped with 360-degree cameras. The bots received all sorts of reactions, from onlookers expressing their appreciation to treating it like a playful dog with a treat. Some of them even felt compelled to “feed” the robots, according to a Cornell press release. 

The scientists behind the creation recently presented their study, called “Trash Barrel Robots in the City,” in the video program at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. This isn’t the first time the trashbots have made their debut in the real world—the robot was deployed at Stanford a few years ago and was met by bystanders who quickly began to dote on the trashbot. According to The Verge in 2016, people became so smitten with the bot that “when it falls over they race to pick it up, even asking if it’s OK.” 

[Related: Meet Garmi, a robot nurse and companion for Germany’s elderly population.]

Team leader Wendy Ju, an associate professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion, originally planned to turn chairs and tables in New York City into bots, but the trash can inevitably won out. “When we shared with them the trash barrel videos that we had done at Stanford, all discussions of the chairs and tables were suddenly off the table,” Ju said in a statement. “It’s New York! Trash is a huge problem!”

Of course, you can’t win over everybody, even if you’re a cute trash can. Some folks found it creepy, raised concerns about surveillance, gave it the middle finger, or even knocked it over. Now, the team hopes to send the trash can out to explore the rest of New York City, hopefully to be met with adoration and not animosity.

“Everyone is sure that their neighborhood behaves very differently,” Ju said. “So, the next thing that we’re hoping to do is a five boroughs trash barrel robot study.”

Watch more about these trash cans on wheels, below:

The post Robot trash cans have survived a New York City field test appeared first on Popular Science.

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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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For at least 22,000 years, the African penguin has been struggling to survive because of habitat loss.  Scientists are now peering into the past to learn more about why to better help the lovable feathered creatures  today and in the future. A study published April 20 in the African Journal of Marine Science paints a paleo-historical picture of where these climate change survivors lived and moved to as the last Ice Age came to a close—and how that changed over time. 

According to the study, the African penguin,also called the black-footed penguin, the Cape penguin, or the Jackass penguin, lived on 15 large islands off the coast of southern Africa more than 20,000 years ago. During this period called the Last Glacial Maximum, massive ice sheets dominated a huge portion of the Earth, and it ended about 15 to 20,000 years ago. Upon this climate shift sea levels began to rise as ice melted, effectively sinking the islands. The rising water reduced the suitable nesting habitat for the penguin colonies by tenfold over the next 22,000 years. 

[Related: The march of the penguins has a new star: an autonomous robot.]

To help them paint this picture, the team used topographical maps of the ocean floor to find potential former islands that lay 32 to 426 feet below today’s sea levels. Penguins use islands as breeding spots to escape predators on the mainland and also need suitable foraging grounds for sardines and anchovies within about a 12 mile radius. 

With the assumption that sea levels were lower during the last Ice Age, the team identified 15 large islands that possibly stood off the southwest coast of Africa, with the largest being about 115 miles long and laying 426 feet below the surface of the sea. When taking the rate of sea level rise over the past 15,000 to 7,000 years into account, they found 220 islands that would have been suitable nesting spots for penguins. 

By comparison, some of the largest modern-day islands with penguins off the southwest coast of Africa are Robben Island less than two miles long, Dassen Island less than one mile, and Possession Island also less than a mile long, which all clock in at less than two miles long.

The study estimates that between 6.4 million and 18.8 million individual penguins could have lived among these islands during the Last Glacial Maximum, before the numbers began to plummet. 

These changes in habitat availability over the past 22,000 years “could have had a massive effect on penguin populations,” co-author and Stellenbosch University ecologist Heath Beckett said in a statement. “These populations are now experiencing additional human pressures on top of this in the form of climate change, habitat destruction, and competition for food.” 

According to Beckett, this new paleo-historical image of penguins all over the islands of southern Africa stands in contrast to the current reality of a post-1900 collapse of the African penguin population. Dassen Island was once teeming with about 1.45 million penguins, but South Africa’s entire African penguin population collapsed to 21,000 breeding pairs by 2011. As of 2019, they dropped even further to 13,600, and roughly 97 percent of the current population in South Africa is supported by seven breeding colonies.

[Related: Ceramic ‘igloos’ could keep African penguins cool and cozy.]

“Changing sea levels would have necessitated the need for multiple relocations of breeding colonies of African penguins on time-scales of centuries, if not even shorter time-scales, and intense competition for breeding space as island habitat became greatly reduced in size,” said Beckett. “This historical flexibility of response provides some leeway for conservation managers to make available suitable breeding space, even in mainland sites, as long as appropriate nesting sites are made available.”

Some further questions brought on by this research surround relocation for the penguins, and analyzing just how much more the species can handle as human pressures continue to rise and food competition heats up. 

However, despite the alarming drops in population and their continued struggle, the team points out that these findings highlight the African penguin’s resilience as a species and that this could be leveraged for its conservation and management in an uncertain climate.

“It’s a total survivor and given half a chance, they will hang on,” co-author and Stellenbosch University biologist Guy Midgley concluded in a statement.  “Island hopping saved it in the past, they know how to do this.” 

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Today is a very special holiday where a skunky smell permeates the air. If you’re celebrating 4/20, Popular Science has the perfect lineup of dope science stories to make you everyone’s favorite bud. Don’t puff puff pass on this one!

Essential cannabis accessories

First things first, everyone needs some cannabis supplies before lighting up. But with so many twists on glassware and other options, how do you decide? From vaporizers to grinders to pen batteries, PopSci’s roundup of essential cannabis accessories will walk you through the choices.

A step-by-step guide to rolling a joint

Rolling a joint can’t be that hard, right? Wrong. Thankfully, in honor of 4/20, our DIY step-by-step guide will explain both the art and the science of rolling a joint, with advice straight from some of New York City’s expert budtenders. It’s the perfect refresher for veterans and crash course for newbies, complete with photos, detailed instructions, and material recommendations.

Can CBD help you chill? Here’s what we know so far.

CBD, THC’s sister molecule, has been working its way into various products as part of a budding industry. CBD is legal in more US states than cannabis, and can be added to almost any product as long as it has less than 0.3 percent THC. It’s a great alternative for those looking for stress relief, or don’t want the psychoactive effects of cannabis itself. Still have some questions about CBD? It’s not a panacea, but it may be worth trying out.

Is growing weed sustainable? The answer is complicated.

Using cannabis products to ease climate anxiety might be a Catch-22. Researchers say it’s hard to measure the environmental impact of today’s celebrated plant: Grow operations across the US take up a lot of water, land, and energy. Here’s what we know about the sustainability of cannabis.

Can you overdose on weed?

All substances have their risks, what about weed? Well, thankfully its not possible to overdose in the traditional sense, but overdoing it does pose some safety threats. Before you celebrate 4/20, listen to this Ask Us Anything podcast on the side effects of weed to gain some insights on responsible consumption.

The tasty chemicals flavoring the edible cannabis boom

Cannabis may have a distinctive smell, but a little-known aspect to users and non-users alike is that each strain has a special chemical composition. Like wine with its various aromas (such as floral, fruity, or earthy) different strains of cannabis possess a signature scent and taste. What makes them unique? Terpenes, or “terps,” are aromatic compounds found in many herbs and flowers. There are hundreds of known kinds that yield diverse flavors and effects. PopSci reported a comprehensive overview on the science of terpenes, ending with a list of the most buyable varieties.

Is marijuana a performance-enhancing drug? The best evidence says no.

Unfortunately for many athletes, cannabis use still falls on the list of prohibited substances. These regulations are in place to prevent the use of performance-enhancing drugs and ensure fair competition, but does cannabis really belong on the same list as steroids? Learn why the scientific reasoning behind cannabis regulations in sports might be lacking.

Cannabis gets its high-inducing power from ancient viruses

The next time a friend thanks a higher power for cannabis, remind them to appreciate viruses for their genetic contributions. (At the very least, it was a joint effort.) The psychoactive and medicinal effects of cannabis probably evolved from ancient viruses Mapping the genome of the plant posed a challenge to researchers as an illicit substance, but as it slowly became legal in different states over the past two decades, they dove deep into its background. What better time than 4/20 to learn the evolutionary history of cannabis.

Why German scientists got cows stoned

Nobody wants animals to get high on our supply, but these German scientists did it on purpose with cows. Not to laugh at the animals’ “pronounced tongue play,” as researchers described: They wanted to test if leftover organic matter from the hemp industry could be fed to livestock, reducing waste and curbing methane emissions from regular hay and soy. The German study led to some especially silly bovine behavior and THC-spiked milk.

Does CBD show up on a drug test?

Using cannabis products might lead to a positive drug test that could cost you a job or other opportunities. For those that want the stress-reducing effects of cannabis, but have to keep off the grass, consider quality products with this CBD drug test and product guide.

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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.

In Dick Ogg’s 25 years of commercial fishing, he’s had a few close encounters with whales—mostly while pulling Dungeness crab pots off the ocean floor. “I’ve had whales right next to me,” within about five meters, says Ogg. “They follow me, they watch, they’re curious. And then they go on about their business.”

Ogg is fortunate his interactions have been so leisurely. For nearly a decade, California’s whales and crabbers have been locked in a persistent struggle. From 1985 to 2014, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported an average of 10 whales were entangled in fishing gear each year along the west coast of the United States. But between 2015 and 2017, that number jumped to 47 entanglements per year. Since 2015, most of the identifiable gear found on entangled whales has been from crab pots. For crabbers, efforts to protect whales from entanglement often hit their bottom line.

The Dungeness crab fishery is one of California’s largest and most lucrative; until recently, it was considered one of the most sustainable fisheries in the state. In recent years, managers have sought a balance between protecting whales and ensuring crabbers’ livelihoods. But as climate change transforms the northeast Pacific and whales are increasingly at risk of being entangled in crabbers’ lines, that delicate balance is beginning to unravel.

The 2015 crabbing season was a catastrophe for both crabbers and whales. A marine heatwave nurtured a bloom of toxic algae that pushed anchovies close to shore, and the whales followed. That year, NOAA recorded 48 entangled whales along the US west coast—nearly five times the historical average. The algae also rendered the crabs inedible, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) delayed the start of the fishing season by several months. The federal government declared the failed season a fishery disaster.

In 2017, the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity sued the CDFW over the spate of entanglements, prompting the department to set up a rapid risk assessment and mitigation program that closes portions of the Dungeness crab fishery when whales are nearby. The new approach has decreased entanglements, but it’s come at a high price for commercial fishers.

The CDFW has a handful of other tools they can use to protect whales, such as shortening the crabbing season and limiting the number of traps crabbers can drop. But according to a recent study, the only measure that could have effectively protected whales during the heatwave—shortening the crabbing season—is the one that would have hampered crabbers the most. And even then, these strong restrictions would have only reduced entanglements by around 50 percent.

If a similar marine heatwave hits again, entanglements could spike, too, says Jameal Samhouri, a NOAA ecologist and author of the paper. “It’s going to be really hard to resolve these trade-offs,” he says. “There may be some hard choices to make between whether we as a society want to push forward conservation matters or allow the fishery.”

Every year since the CDFW set up its mitigation program, the fishery has faced closures. Since 2015, the crabbing season has only opened on time once. Though the heatwave is gone, a boom of anchovy has kept whales close to shore.

For Ogg, the most difficult part of the season is waiting to go fish and not having any income. “It’s been really, really tough for a lot of guys,” he says. Another recent study calculates that in 2019 and 2020, whale-related delays cost California Dungeness fishers US $24-million—about the same as they lost during the heatwave in 2015.

Smaller boats, the study showed, were most severely impacted by the closures. It’s a trend Melissa Mahoney, executive director of Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust, has seen firsthand. While a large boat might set hundreds of crab pots in a day, smaller vessels can’t make up for a shortened season. “I just don’t know how long a lot of these fishermen can survive,” Mahoney says.

With climate change, marine heatwaves are now 20 times more frequent than they were in preindustrial times. As the Earth grows warmer, heatwaves that would have occurred every 100 years or so could happen once a decade or even once a year. In this hotter world, balancing the needs of both crabbers and whales will only grow more difficult.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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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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South Florida is bracing for more showers and storms today after the Fort Lauderdale region saw 25.91 inches of precipitation in a 24-hour period this week. On Wednesday afternoon, a supercell thunderstorm being fed by warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico stalled over the region, producing rainfall rates of more than three inches per hour at times, according to preliminary reports.

“You had this extreme warmth and moisture that was just feeding into the cell and because it had a bit of a spin to it, it was essentially acting like a vacuum and sucking all that moisture back up into the main core of the system,” meteorologist Steve Bowen told the Associated Press. “It just kept reigniting itself, essentially.”

[Related: Rain storms have gotten more intense across most of the US.]

During the peak of the rain, one month’s worth of rain fell in only one hour. Average rainfall for April 3 in Fort Lauderdale is three inches, and it’s been close to 25 years since the city saw 20 inches of rain in a month.

Homes and businesses in the city of around 200,000 residents were flooded, the streets were littered with abandoned cars, and the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport completely closed on April 12. The airport plans to reopen today.

Nearby communities of Hollywood, Dania Beach, and Lauderdale Lakes saw between 12 and 18 inches of rain in the same period, according to preliminary reports. Roughly 12 homes were damaged by an EF0 tornado in the city of Dania Beach, about five and a half miles south of Fort Lauderdale. While no injuries were reported, roofs were ripped off of several mobile homes.

A state of emergency was declared for Broward County on Thursday. The deepest standing water surveyed on Thursday was measured in the Edgewood neighborhood just north of the airport. The National Weather Service in Miami said that a still water mark of just over three feet was measured near Floyd Hull Stadium.

Emergency officials in Fort Lauderdale said about 600 people were taken to emergency shelters, some who had to climb through windows to escape flooded homes. Some of the roads that were passable on Wednesday became impassable on Thursday, as storms dropped another more rain on the waterlogged region.

[Related :What is a flash flood?]

“This amount of rain in a 24-hour period is incredibly rare for South Florida,” National Weather Service meteorologist Ana Torres-Vazquez told CNN. She added that a powerful hurricane would typically dump 20 to 25 inches of rain over more than a day and said that this week’s rainfall was a “1-in-1,000 year event, or greater.” This is a weather event so intense and rare that the chance of it happening in any given year is only 0.1 percent.

Climate change is making rain events like these worse. A 2022 study found that when it rains in the United States, the precipitation falls more fiercely than in decades past and that the intensity of rainfall has shifted from lighter periods of rain to more moderate and heavy deluges. 

To be prepared for flooding, especially as the US prepares for hurricane season, the American Red Cross recommends always having an evacuation plan ready and knowing your flood risk, and to prepare a “go-bag” with supplies and important documents.

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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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Climate change has deteriorated the habitats of many migratory birds, permanently altering the timing of their expeditions. However, birds may be fighting back by changing their own plans. 

A study published April 11 in the journal Ecology finds that birds can partially compensate for these changes. They do so by delaying the start of spring migration and completing the journey faster, but this strategy does come with the cost of a decline in overall survival. 

“We found that our study species, the American redstart, can migrate up to 43 percent faster to reach its breeding grounds after delaying departure from wintering grounds in Jamaica by as much as 10 days,” co-author and Georgetown postdoctoral fellow Bryant Dossman said in a statement. “But increased migration speed also led to a drop of more than 6 percent in their overall survival rate.”

[Related: Migratory birds in the Eastern US are struggling to adapt to climate change.]

American redstarts breed in the trees and woodlands of southern Canada and the northeastern United States. They can lay two to five eggs at a time and both parents feed their young. According to the National Audubon Society, warblers like the redstart are often called ‘the butterflies of the bird world,’ for their ability to flit among treetops. The iconic redstart may live up to that nickname more than other warblers for its speed and colorful wings.

Some of the ways that birds like the redstarts can speed up the migration are by flying faster and making fewer or shorter stops to refuel. The speedier voyages  help compensate for the delayed departures, but can’t entirely make up for the lost time. According to the team on this study, individuals can recover about 60 percent of the lost time to a 10-day delay, but the birds will still be late to their breeding grounds. 

Jamaica, where some of the redstarts spend their non-breeding seasons, has become an increasingly dry climate in recent decades. The dryness means fewer insects, which are the mainstay of the redstart’s diet. It now takes the birds longer to get into the physical condition needed for the rigors of migration. Climate change is also causing the plants to bloom sooner and the insects to emerge sooner on the breeding grounds. 

“On average, migratory songbirds only live a year or two, so keeping to a tight schedule is vital. They’re only going to get one or two chances to breed,” said Dossman. “Longer lived birds are less likely to take the risk of speeding up migrations because they have more chances throughout their lives to breed and pass on their genes.”

The team from Cornell University, the University of Maryland, and Georgetown University used 33 years of American redstart migration departure data in tandem with automated radio tracking and light-level tags. They compared the birds’ expected departure date with their actual departure date to see how it has changed over time. 

[Related: Birds are so specialized to their homes, it shows in their bones.]

“Understanding how animals can compensate is an important part of understanding where the impacts of climate change will play out,” said co-author and Georgetown University biologist Peter Marra, in a statement.  “In this case, we may not lose a species entirely, but it is possible that populations of some species may go extinct locally due to climate change.” 

Activities at the redstart’s wintering grounds, such as not having enough food to eat, also carry over into the bird’s breeding season. While the redstart population is stable and increasing in much of its breeding range, eBird trend maps show that the species is declining in southern Quebec, Canada, and the northeastern US. 

“The good news is that birds are able to respond to changes in their environment,” Dossman said. “They have some flexibility and variation in their behaviors to begin with, but the question is, have they reached the limit of their ability to respond to climate change?”

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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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Climate change is giving us stronger, more destructive ocean waves, which in turn exacerbate already serious coastal erosion issues. With this in mind, researchers are designing a new underwater engineering project that could help literally swing the pendulum back in humanity’s favor. As first highlighted by New Scientist on Sunday, a team at the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Marine Science are working on MetaReef—a system of upside-down, submersible pendulum prototypes capable of absorbing underwater energy to mitigate wave momentum.

Although still in its laboratory design phases, MetaReef is already showing promising results. To test early versions of their idea, the team tethered together 11, half-meter-long plastic cylinders to the bottom of a narrow, 50-meter long tank. Each cylinder is made from commercial PVC pipes, filled with air to make them less dense than water, and subsequently waterproofed with polyurethane foam. A steel cable then anchors each cylinder with just enough tension to keep them in place underwater, while also able to swing back and forth depending on currents’ strength and direction.

[Related: Maritime students gear up to fight high-seas cyberattacks.]

It’s not as simple as just anchoring a series of tubes under the waves, however. Researchers needed to hone both the cylinders’ size and distance between one another to ensure optimal results that wouldn’t accidentally create a watery echo chamber to exacerbate current strengths. Once the parameters were fine tuned, a piston at one end of the tank generated waves that interacted with the cylinders. By absorbing the tidal energy, the team’s MetaReef managed to reduce wave amplitudes by as much as 80 percent.

Of course, ocean current interactions are much more complicated than pistons splashing water in a relatively small tank. Speaking with New Scientist, Mike Meylan,  a professor of information and physical sciences, warned that especially strong storms—themselves increasingly frequent—could easily damage pendulum systems deployed in the real world. That said, researchers are confident that MetaReef’s customizability alongside further experimentation could yield a solid new tool in protecting both threatened coastlines, and valuable structures such as offshore platforms. This malleability is contrasted with artificial coastal reefs, which while effective, are much more static and limited in placement than MetaReef, or similar designs.

The team is presenting their findings this week at the annual International Workshop on Water Waves and Floating Bodies held in Giardini Naxos, Italy. Although societal shifts in energy consumption remain the top priority to stemming the worst climate catastrophes, tools like MetaReef could still offer helpful, customizable aids that deal with damage already done to our oceanic ecosystems.

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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.”

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

Spring has sprung unusually early in the eastern United States. From parts of the Gulf Coast all the way up through southern New England, leaves are popping out of shrubs and trees days or even weeks ahead of schedule. Some areas are experiencing their earliest spring on record, which means communities are also enduring an unusually early allergy season. Experts say rising temperatures, among the most visceral consequences of unfettered fossil fuel combustion, play a role in this year’s accelerated spring. 

Phenologists — people who study biological life cycles — use two metrics to delineate the change in seasons: First bloom, when plants begin to flower, and first leaf-out, when leaves unfurl. This year, first bloom and first leaf-out started creeping up the East Coast between three and four weeks ahead of schedule. That’s not entirely unusual; natural variation in seasons results in an early spring every few years. But, in some places, spring arrived extremely early — earlier than any time in the past four decades. 

Parts of central Texas and the Louisiana coast, southern Arkansas, southern Ohio, the D.C. area, New York City, and the New Jersey coastline all clocked their earliest spring on record, said Theresa Crimmins, director of the National Phenology Network, a group that collects data on seasons and other natural cycles. The organization uses mathematical models that combine historical observations of first leaf and first bloom with temperature and weather data to predict when lilacs and honeysuckles, typically the first plants to turn green each year, will start becoming active. The group then compares that first growth to an average baseline from the three decades between 1991 and 2020. The network’s models show that spring arrived a full 20 days ahead of schedule in spots across the eastern U.S. The trend was particularly vivid in the mid-Atlantic region.  

Warmth has everything to do with when trees start budding and leaves begin opening. This year, an especially mild winter in the eastern U.S., plus a string of very warm days in recent weeks, created ideal conditions for an early-onset spring. “That’s really what caused things to get so far ahead of schedule,” Crimmins said. 

It’s tough to peg climate change to a particular early leaf-out in any one place, but evidence of anthropogenic warming is obvious in how the timing of seasons in the U.S. has changed in the past several decades. “There is a clear underlying trend over the long term toward progressively earlier starts to the spring season in much of the country, much of the eastern U.S. in particular,” Crimmins said. “That is the result of steadily increasing global average temperatures.” 

Earlier springs are associated with a host of problems for human health. Recent research shows that the lengthening growing season has led to an allergy season that is 21 percent more intense and 20 days longer, on average, in North America. Shortened winters allow insects that carry disease, such as ticks and mosquitos, to get active earlier and spread pathogens to other animals and humans. 

“There’s a good chance that if you’re a sufferer of seasonal allergies and live in the eastern two-thirds of the U.S., you’re already feeling the effects of an early bloom,” Ben Noll, a meteorologist who tracks weather in New York’s Hudson Valley, told Grist.  

And early spring is a nightmare for farmers across the country who are already struggling to adapt to rapidly shifting environmental conditions. Mississippi’s blueberry crop was imperiled a couple of weeks ago when a hard frost descended on the state after a spate of abnormally warm days caused blueberry bushes to bloom early. One farmer in the state estimated that the frost wrecked 80 percent of his crop. 

“These seasonal changes can make life particularly tough for farmers whose livelihoods depend on the weather and ultimately produce the food that we consume,” Noll said.

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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As average global temperatures continue to rise, America’s pastime could be entering the “climate-ball era.” A report published April 7 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society found that since 2010, more than 500 home runs can be attributed to higher-than-average temperatures. These higher-than-average temperatures are due to human-made global warming.

While the authors of this study only attribute one percent of recent home runs to climate change, their study found that warmer temperatures could account for 10 percent or more of home runs by 2100, if emissions and climate change continue on their current trajectory.

[Related: What’s really behind baseball’s recent home run surge.]

“Global warming is not just a phenomenon that shows up in hurricanes and heat waves—it’s going to alter every aspect of how we live and play,” study co-author and doctoral candidate in geography at Dartmouth University Chris Callahan tells PopSci in an email. “Reducing human emissions of greenhouse gasses is the only way to prevent these effects from accelerating.”

This study primarily arose because Callahan, a huge baseball fan, was interested in any possible connections between climate change and home runs. “This simple physical mechanism—higher temperatures mean reduced air density, which means less air resistance to batted balls—had been proposed previously, but no one had tested whether it shows up in the large-scale data. It turns out that it does!” Callahan says. 

Callanhan and his team analyzed more than 100,000 Major League Baseball (MLB) games and 220,000 individual hits to correlate the number of home runs with the occurrence of unseasonably warm temperatures during the game. Next, they estimated how much the reduced air density that results from high air temperature was a possible driving force in the number of home runs on one given day compared to other games. 

Other factors, such as performance-enhancing drugs, bat and ball construction, and technology like launch analytics intended to optimize a batter’s power were also taken into account. While the team does not believe that temperature is the dominant factor in the increase in home runs, particularly because present day batters are primed to hit the ball at optimal angles and speeds, temperature does play a factor.

The team particularly looked at the average number of home runs annually compared to every 2 degrees Fahrenheit increase in local average temperature at every MLB ballpark in the US. They found that the open-air Wrigley Field in Chicago would experience the largest spike (more than 15 home runs per season per 2 degree change), while Tampa Bay’s dome roofed Tropicana Field would stay level at one home run or less regardless of how hot it is outside the stadium. 

[Related: Will baseball ever replace umpires with robots?]

Night games lessened temperature and air density’s potential influence on the distance the ball travels, and covered stadiums would nearly eliminate the influence. Additionally, the study did not name precipitation as a factor, after all, most games are postponed or delayed. The number of runs per season due to temperature could be higher or lower depending on the conditions on each game day.

“I think it was surprising that the [heat’s] effect itself, while intuitive, was so clearly detectable in observations. As a non baseball fan, I was astounded by the data,” study co-author and geographer Justin Mankin tells PopSci. Mankin also noted that some next steps for this kind of research could potentially be looking into how wooden bats should change due to warming and how other ballistics based sports (golf, cricket, etc.) are affected by the increased temperature. 

While more home runs arguably makes for more exciting games, exposure to players and fans to extreme heat is a major risk factor that MLB and its teams will need to consider more frequently as the planet warms. 

“A key question for the organization at large is what’s an acceptable level of heat exposure for everybody and what’s the acceptable cost for maximizing home runs,” Mankin said in a statement. “Home runs are one pathway by which temperature is affecting game play, but there are other pathways that are more concerning because they have human risk attached to them.”

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Melting ice sheets in Antarctica can retreat much faster than scientists previously thought. A study published April 5 in the journal Nature found that at the end of the last Ice Age, parts of the Eurasian Ice Sheet retreated up to 2,000 feet per day. This rate is 20 times faster than previous measurements. These changes far outpace even the fastest-moving glaciers studied in Antarctica, which are estimated to retreat as quickly as 160 feet per day. 

The new findings could be crucial to better understanding today’s ice melt.

The Eurasian Ice Sheet was the third-largest ice mass during the last Ice Age and retreated from Norway about 20,000 years ago. At its largest, it had a span of almost 3,000 miles. Mirroring these retreats are ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, which have lost more than 6.4 trillion tons of ice over the past three decades. Both of these modern-day ice sheets are responsible for more than one-third of total sea level rise. 

“Our research provides a warning from the past about the speeds that ice sheets are physically capable of retreating at,” Christine Batchelor, study co-author and physical geographer from Newcastle University, said in a statement. “Our results show that pulses of rapid retreat can be far quicker than anything we’ve seen so far.”

[Related: We’re finally getting close-up, fearsome views of the doomsday glacier.]

For this study, an international team of researchers used high-resolution imagery of the seafloor to see how the ice sheet changed over. They mapped out more than 7,600 small-scale landforms called “corrugation ridges” on the seafloor around where the ice sheet once stood. The ridges are less than eight feet high and are spaced around 82 to 984 feet apart. These types of ridges are believed to have formed when the ice sheet’s retreating margin moved with the tide. Seafloor sediments are pushed into a ridge every low tide, so two ridges would have been produced during two daily tidal cycles. The spacing helped the team calculate the enormous speed of retreat. 

This kind of data on how ice sheets reacted to past periods of warming can help inform computer simulations which predict future ice-sheet and sea-level change. It also suggests that these periods of rapid melt may only last for days to months, which are relatively short periods of time from a geologic standpoint. 

“This shows how rates of ice-sheet retreat averaged over several years or longer can conceal shorter episodes of more rapid retreat,” study co-author and University of Cambridge glaciologist Julian Dowdeswell said in a statement. “It is important that computer simulations are able to reproduce this ‘pulsed’ ice-sheet behavior.”

[Related: Ice doesn’t always melt the same way—and these visuals prove it.]

Understanding these seafloor landforms also showcases the mechanics behind rapid ice retreat. The study found that the former ice sheet retreated most across the flattest point of its bed where, “less melting is required to thin the overlying ice to the point where it starts to float,” explained co-author and Cambridge glacial geophysicist Frazer Christie from Scott in a statement. “An ice margin can unground from the seafloor and retreat near-instantly when it becomes buoyant.”

The team believes that pulses of similarly quick retreat could soon be observed in some parts of Antarticia, including West Antarctica’s vast Thwaites Glacier. Nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier,” Thwaites could undergo a similar pulse of rapid ice retreat since it has recently retreated close to a flat area of its bed.

“Our findings suggest that present-day rates of melting are sufficient to cause short pulses of rapid retreat across flat-bedded areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, including at Thwaites,” said Batchelor. “Satellites may well detect this style of ice-sheet retreat in the near-future, especially if we continue our current trend of climate warming.”

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Water is quickly flooding back into California’s Tulare Lake Basin, engulfing towns and farms, submerging roads, and reviving a so-called phantom lake. Tulare was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi until settlers diverted its source rivers, forcing it to vanish by the mid-20th century. Now, it seems Tulare Lake is back with a vengeance. 

According to a 2007 study for the US Environmental Protection Agency, Tulare Lake was once a permanent feature of the San Joaquin Valley. It covered an estimated 790 square miles, creating a biodiverse wetlands ecosystem that encompassed approximately 10 percent of California. In the late 1800s, settlers began diverting Tulare’s tributaries for agricultural purposes, incrementally drying the lake and exposing nutrient-rich soil. 

[Related: Rain, storms, and mudslides batter California]

Now, the lake-turned-farmland is one of the most important agricultural regions in the state, worth an estimated $2 billion dollars in dairy products and crops like grapes, cotton, corn, alfalfa, almonds, and pistachios. While an influx of water is a relief to many in California, easing a years-long drought and refilling reservoirs, it spells disaster for regions like the Tulare Basin. Residents are already seeing vast amounts of water threaten their livelihoods—and it’s only just beginning. If current conditions keep up, says UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain,this may be the worst flood for the Lake Tulare Basin yet.

What is a phantom lake?

A phantom lake is a seasonal body of water, typically reviving during periods of intense precipitation. These lakes are usually not very deep, as far as lakes go: Prior to water diversion, Tulare was estimated to be about 37 feet deep. Shallow lakes dry up much faster than deeper ones, owing to their larger surface area to volume ratio, allowing the sun to heat up and evaporate the water quickly. The California Central Valley’s hot, arid climate makes its phantom lakes especially ephemeral. 

Owens Lake, 220 miles north of Los Angeles, is another ghost that has recently resurrected. The construction of Los Angeles’ aqueduct depleted the freshwater body by diverting its tributary in 1913, but the lake is now rapidly refilling for the first time in 110 years. 

Tulare Lake has a similar backstory. It comprises a natural watershed for the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which feeds meltwater through multiple rivers and into the basin. Today, levees and dams prevent water from entering the basin by diverting or blocking these rivers. Though, as evidenced by the recent storms, those systems can only do so much to prevent flooding in the face of an extreme influx of water.

Why is Tulare Lake flooding again?

Atmospheric rivers—long, narrow plumes of atmospheric moisture—are to blame for the region’s recent storms. They originate in the tropics, where warm air can take up much more water than in colder climates. Climate change is raising temperatures and the atmosphere’s capacity for holding water, amplifying storms in California and many parts of the world. 

Despite the already significant flooding, most of the water that will enter the Tulare Basin hasn’t done so yet, Swain explains. Plenty of snow can still melt and flow down from the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Flood risk will likely rise across California following an uptick in extreme precipitation events, but the Tulare Lake area is the most vulnerable. With its low elevations and proximity to the Sierra Nevadas, “[the basin] is the place where we very strongly anticipate that flood risk will increase the most in a warming climate,” Swain says.

With global heating driving up temperatures and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, rain has begun to replace snow at high elevations and snowmelt has accelerated earlier in the year. Swain also points out that a much more severe flood could occur in a future scenario with slightly warmer temperatures, but the same amount of precipitation. Rain and snow create the flood, but rising temperatures intensify it.

Where is all the water coming from?

The Sierra Nevada mountain range lies east of the San Joaquin Valley. Each spring, as temperatures warm, the snowpack accumulated over the winter begins to melt. As it does so, gravity pulls meltwater down from the mountains and into the lowest regions of the valley—namely, the Tulare Lake Basin./p>

This year, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is three times larger than normal and still growing. As of April 4, 2023, the estimated snowpack for the southern Sierras is 302-percent above average.

“All of that water is eventually going to have to enter the San Joaquin watershed, and a lot of it’s going to pass through the Tulare Lake Basin,” Swain says. “That’s going to present some serious challenges—I mean bigger challenges than we’re currently seeing.”

In the coming weeks, the Tulare Lake Basin and larger San Joaquin Valley will, unfortunately, experience deeper and more widespread flooding.

“There’s just that much water up in the mountains, it can’t go anywhere else, right?” Swain adds. “… In the end, the water always wins.”

How long with the Tulare Lake flood last?

Tulare Lake is an isolated, shallow body of water. It has no tributaries or outlets, so whatever water enters the basin sits there until it evaporates. An impermeable layer of clay underneath the former lake prevents most water from exiting through the ground.

[Related: What is a flash flood?]

The lake has occasionally been revived in the past. In the last big flood event in 1982 and 1983, the second wettest period in recorded history in the area, the lake did not fully disappear until 1985, per the Fresno Bee. The amount of water that has already accumulated in this year’s flood could take months or even years to evaporate—and there’s still a lot of snow waiting to melt in the wings. As of April 5, current precipitation levels in the Tulare Lake Basin rival its wettest years on record, 1968 and 1969.

What are the solutions to the flooding?

Restoring natural floodplains, adding levee setbacks and recharge basins, and “essentially giving water more room to roam in places where we’ve pre-designated it so it doesn’t cause too many problems” are among the list of solutions for the Tulare Lake region and its residents, Swain says.

But implementing land use changes is easier said than done. The San Joaquin valley has a long history of water wars, and no single entity has the authority to make these changes. Private landowners are responsible for many of these decisions, leading to extralegal activity and political conflict.

“This is a very difficult problem legally, practically, and ethically, and I don’t think there are any obvious solutions,” Swain notes. “Even though there are some obvious land use changes that would help the broader problem, getting there and implementing them in an equitable way is far from a straightforward thing to do.”

It’s already too late to do anything this spring besides survive the influx of water and try to control the damage. The challenge now lies in long-term planning for future floods. Moving forward, local conversations about these decisions should be held, including Indigenous groups like the Yokut people who were forcibly removed from the area in the 1800s.

“We’re really in a tough spot where these are big problems that have been known for a long time,” Swain says. In the coming months, he expects water will inundate some places that are now dry. Not only that, but adding water to farmland that has been treated with fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals may mobilize contaminants. Farms with animal agriculture produce lots of fecal waste, threatening microbial contamination. Tulare County has already issued a health warning regarding floodwater contamination.

“It’s going to be a long spring for some in the San Joaquin Valley and the Tulare Basin, in particular,” Swain says.

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Warmer global average temperatures from human-made global warming continue to be  one of today’s major climate concerns, but the Earth can also be susceptible to colder and darker periods like our Ice Ages. Even tiny ones. 

During a climate interval scientists call the Little Ice Age (from the early 14th century to the mid-19th century CE), mountain glaciers expanded and the global average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere dropped by 1.1 °F relative to the average temperatures from 1000 and 2000 CE. Crops failed, sunlight dwindled, and 1816 is often called  “The Year Without a Summer.”

Scientists are still piecing together what may have triggered the Little Ice Age, which are likely some of recorded-history’s largest volcanic eruptions. A study published April 5 in the journal Nature uses an unlikely source to help put this climate puzzle together: night sky observations made by medieval monks. 

[Related: Geologists: We’re not ready for volcanoes.]

An international team of researchers used these 12th and 13th century records from Europe and the Middle East, and data from tree rings and ice cores to accurately date some of the biggest volcanic eruptions that humanity has seen. 

Over a period of almost five years, the team examined hundreds of records looking for references to total lunar eclipses and their coloration. Typically during a lunar eclipse, the moon remains visible as a reddish sphere since it is still covered in sunlight that has been bent around the Earth by our atmosphere. However, after a big volcanic eruption on Earth, there can be so much dust in the stratosphere, that the eclipsed moon almost completely disappears.

Meticulous record keepers during the Medieval period described everything from the major deeds of popes and kings, important battles, natural disasters, and celestial events. Some believed that the goings on in the sky may foretell calamities back on earth. Medieval monks were ever mindful of the bible’s Book of Revelation, which paints a picture of the end times that includes a blood-red moon. Between 1100 and 1300, 64 total lunar eclipses occurred in Europe and the chroniclers observed in this study faithfully documented 51 of them. In five of these eclipses, they also noted that the moon was exceptionally dark.

“I was listening to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album when I realized that the darkest lunar eclipses all occurred within a year or so of major volcanic eruptions,” Sébastien Guillet, a paleoclimatologist and physical geographer at the University of Geneva and study co-author said in a statement. “Since we know the exact days of the eclipses, it opened the possibility of using the sightings to narrow down when the eruptions must have happened.”

[Related: Researchers found what they believe is a 2,000-year-old map of the stars.]

Looking at records outside of Europe and the Middle East, the team found that chroniclers in Japan also noted lunar eclipses. A well-known scribe and poet named Fujiwara no Teika described an unprecedented dark eclipse observed on December 2, 1229. He wrote “the old folk had never seen it like this time, with the location of the disk of the Moon not visible, just as if it had disappeared during the eclipse… It was truly something to fear.”

The stratospheric dust in these “unprecedented” eclipses not only obscured the moon, but they cooled summer temperatures by limiting the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth’s surface.  

“We know from previous work that strong tropical eruptions can induce global cooling on the order of roughly 1°C [2.0°F] over a few years,” study co-author and geoscientist and climatologist at the University of Geneva Markus Stoffel said in a statement.  “They can also lead to rainfall anomalies with droughts in one place and floods in another.” Stoffel is a specialist in converting measurements of tree rings into climate data and co-designed the study.

At the time, it would have been difficult or impossible for scientists and laypeople to connect that the poor harvests from the lack of sunlight had anything to do with volcanic eruptions.

“We only knew about these eruptions because they left traces in the ice of Antarctica and Greenland,” study co-author and University of Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer said in a statement. “By putting together the information from ice cores and the descriptions from medieval texts we can now make better estimates of when and where some of the biggest eruptions of this period occurred.”

The team worked with climate modelers to compute the likely timing of these eruptions, since the season that the volcanoes erupted in influences how the volcanic dust spread. The modeling helped narrow down the timing and intensity of the volcanic events. 

According to the team, the time interval from 1100 to 1300 is already known to be a particularly active period in volcanic history thanks to evidence from ice cores. Knowing more about this period is crucial to understanding how volcanoes affect society and the planet.

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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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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.

Standing at the foot of a rocky sandstone cliff, biologist Michelle Wainstein inspected her essentials: latex gloves, two long cotton swabs, glass vials, and tubes filled with buffer solution. She placed them in a blue dry bag, rolled it up, and clipped it to a rope wrapped around her waist. It was late afternoon, and she was slick with dirt and sweat from navigating the dense terrain. Her destination lay across the frigid river: two small logs of otter fecal matter resting on a mossy boulder. In she plunged.

The river, the Green-Duwamish in Washington State, trickles out of the Cascade Range and empties 150 kilometers downstream into Puget Sound. The last eight kilometers of the run—known as the lower Duwamish—is so polluted the US Environmental Protection Agency designated it a Superfund site in 2001. For a century, Seattle’s aviation and manufacturing industries routinely dumped waste chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) into the water.

“A lot of the river is still really polluted,” says Jamie Hearn, the Superfund program manager at Duwamish River Community Coalition. “The mud is thick and black, and you can smell it.”

Despite the pollution, river otters are everywhere along the waterway, even in the most contaminated areas near the river’s mouth. “I would be walking the docks looking for scat,” remembers Wainstein, “and a couple of times we were lucky enough to see moms with their pups.”

For several weeks in the summer of 2016 and 2017, Wainstein surveyed otter poop she collected from a dozen sites along the river. Comparing contaminant concentrations in the otters’ poop between the river’s industrial and rural zones, Wainstein uncovered the lingering legacy of the region’s toxic past. The poop from otters in the lower Duwamish contained nearly 26 times more PCBs and 10 times more PAHs than poop from their cousins in cleaner water upstream. PCBs disrupt hormonal and neurological processes and affect reproduction in mammals. Both PCBs and PAHs are human carcinogens.

The discovery that otters along the lower Duwamish are living with such high levels of contamination upends a common narrative: that river otters’ return to a once-degraded landscape is a sign that nature is healing.

In Singapore, where smooth-coated otters have reappeared in canals and reservoirs, they have been embraced as new national mascots. “It plays into that rhetoric that government agencies want to project,” says environmental historian Ruizhi Choo, “that we’ve done such a good job that nature is coming back. That image of a city in nature is the new marketing branding.”

In Europe, the once-common Eurasian otter similarly began reappearing in the late 20th century following successful river cleanup campaigns. Conservationist Joe Gaydos at the SeaDoc Society thinks that this phenomenon has helped form the mental link between otters and ecosystem health.

“The number of animals is our first indicator,” Gaydos says. But few seem to ask the next question: are those animals healthy?

As Wainstein’s study suggests, perhaps not. The otters she analyzed in the lower Duwamish have some of the highest concentrations of PCBs and PAHs ever recorded in wild river otters. Previous research has found a correlation between PCB exposure and health risks in wild river otters, including increased bone pathologies, reproductive and immunological disorders, organ abnormalities, and hormonal changes.

Even so, the contamination is not manifesting in physically obvious ways. “They’re not washing up on shore with tumors all over their bodies,” Wainstein says, and neither is their population dwindling. “They’re not setting off this direct alarm with a big change in their ability to survive.”

The otters’ ability to bear such a heavy contaminant burden suggests that a population resurgence alone may not reflect the quality of an environment. They just become as toxic as the environments they inhabit.

However, their localized bathroom habits, mixed diet of fish, crustaceans, and mammals, and persistence in the face of pollution make them useful indicators of environmental contamination.

River otters have played this role before. Following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, river otters lingered in oil-drenched waterways, allowing scientists like Larry Duffy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks to track the effectiveness of the oil cleanup. In 2014, scientists in Illinois discovered dieldrin in otter organ tissue even though the insecticide had already largely been banned for 30 years. In these cases, the collection of long-term pollution data was made possible by the creatures’ resilience in contaminated waterways. Wainstein wants to similarly use the Green-Duwamish River otters as biomonitors of the Superfund cleanup over the next decade.

Watching workers dismantle a portion of the river’s levied banks to make channels for salmon, Wainstein thinks about the seabirds, shorebirds, and small mammals, like beaver and mink, that were driven out by industrial contamination. She wonders if one day the rumbling machinery dredging up clawfuls of sediment from the riverbed will be taken over by the piercing cries of marbled murrelets, the croaks of tufted puffins, and the bubbling twittering of western snowy plovers.

“How long will it take? And will it actually work?” she says of the cleanup effort. The otters might hold the answer.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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As the world increasingly turns toward natural climate solutions like reforestation and grassland restoration to sequester carbon, it may be overlooking a crucial ally: animals. 

Protecting existing populations and restoring others to their natural habitats often improves the natural capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide within ecosystems, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. Robust populations of just nine species, such as sea otters or gray wolves, or genera, including whales, could lead to the capture of 6.41 gigatons of CO₂ annually, the researchers found. That’s about 95 percent of the amount needed to be removed annually to ensure global warming remains below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

In “Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions,” led by the Yale School of the Environment and the Global Rewilding Alliance, 15 international experts compare the carbon content in savannas, forests, and other ecosystems when their wildlife populations were healthy and when they were below historical numbers. They found multiple cases in which thriving populations of certain species, particularly large vertebrates, through acts like foraging, burrowing, and trampling, increased an ecosystem’s carbon storage capacity by as much as 250 percent.

The researchers argue that these essential species disperse seeds, facilitating the growth of carbon-sequestering trees and plants. Others trample or eat the vegetation that would otherwise rob those trees of space and nutrients. Predators prey on herbivores that, without predation, might adversely impact that essential fauna.

“Ecological science has had a long history of overlooking the role of animals as an important driver of the biogeochemistry of ecosystems,” Oswald Schmitz, an ecologist at the Yale School for the Environment and an author of the study, told Grist. “What we say is that we know animals can change the vegetation makeup of ecosystems, and a lot of ecosystem ecologists say vegetation is important for ecosystem function and carbon cycling, then surely the animals must be important, too.” 

According to the study, keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels not only requires reducing fossil fuel emissions but removing around 500 gigatons of atmospheric CO₂ by 2100. Natural solutions, like protecting and restoring forests, wetlands, and grassland ecosystems can help, but such measures, implemented at their current pace, will not do the job in time. Restoring animal populations, or “trophic rewilding,” can accelerate the rates of sequestration and storage in a process called “animating the carbon cycle.”

“Instead of taking 77 years to get that 500 gigatons out, we could actually have that in 35 years,” Schmitz said. “We could do it if we really made a concerted effort to rebuild these populations.”

In Africa, every increase of 100,000 animals in the Serengeti raises the amount of carbon sequestered by 15 percent. Wildebeest are particularly effective allies in the climate fight. More than 1 million of the ungulates migrate across almost 10,000 square miles of savanna. They consume carbon contained in the grasses they eat, then excrete it in their dung. That carbon is then integrated into the soil by insects. They also manage the grasses, mitigating the risk of wildfires. When disease wiped the wildebeest population in the early 1900s, fires grew more frequent and intense, releasing more carbon, transforming the Serengeti from a carbon sink to a carbon source. When the wildebeest population recovered beginning in the 1960s, the Serengeti became a carbon sink again. 

Similar examples exist across a wide range of ecosystems. In the Arctic, herds of caribou and other large animals compact snow, preventing permafrost melt. Whales feed in deep waters and release nutrients in their waste at shallower depths, stimulating the production of phytoplankton, which are essential to fixing carbon in the ocean. The animals also are enormous carbon sinks in their own right.

Yet many of these populations face increasing threats from overfishing, habitat loss, impediments to their migratory patterns, and other risks. Losing these species, or even seeing their historic range or numbers decrease, risks transforming the ecosystems they inhabit from carbon sinks into carbon sources.

While animating the carbon cycle has the potential to be a powerful accelerant of carbon removal, the study’s authors warn that trophic rewilding cannot be done without considering unintended consequences. Gray wolves can help carbon removal in boreal forests because they prey on the moose that browse on carbon-storing trees, but they can hurt carbon stores in grasslands, where they eat the elk that stimulate plant production through their grazing. Increases in populations of large animals can increase methane release, an issue that can be offset by reducing domestic livestock populations, according to the study. 

Balancing livestock and wildlife populations also raises another central consideration of trophic rewilding: its impact on local human populations. Schmitz said the key to successful trophic rewilding programs is to cater them to local conditions and needs.

Bison, which once roamed North America by the millions, could help store huge amounts of CO₂ in grasslands, but cattle ranchers often resist restoration efforts because of the health threats they can pose for cattle. 

“It’s about having people think about themselves as stewards of the land, and we ought to also compensate them for that stewardship,” said Schmitz. “If we would come up with a carbon market that paid the ranchers for the amount of carbon that these bison sequester, they could maybe make more money by being carbon ranchers than they could by cattle ranching.”

What must come first, Schmitz said, is a change in how the global climate community approaches natural carbon solutions. “One of the big frustrations in the conservation game is you’ve got the U.N. Convention on Climate Change, and then you also have the U.N. Convention on Biodiversity, and they don’t talk to each other,” he said. “One is trying to save biodiversity, and the other is trying to save the climate. And what we’re saying is you can do both, with the same thing, in the same space.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/article/sequester-carbon-save-wild-animals/. 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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Tick season is not only starting sooner—it’s becoming a year-round event. While April through September are usually the most active months, the pesky eight-legged parasites are biting people and animals much earlier in the year than expected. The increasing tick bites are leading to a rise in a variety of tick-borne diseases, including some that were previously uncommon.

One reason for the hike in tick-transmitted diseases like Lyme disease and babesiosis is because humans are expanding towns and cities into previously forested areas. Andrew Handel, a pediatric infectious disease specialist in Stony Brook Medicine, says cutting down forests creates an edge habitat—when one habitat type meets another—which presents more opportunity for common tick hosts such as deer and mice to interact with humans. 

[Related: A guide to the tick species every American should know]

Climate change is another culprit. Changes in rain and temperature have morphed regions with low rates of tick-borne diseases into a more palatable place for the parasites to live. What’s more, warmer conditions are getting ticks to wake up earlier from their winter sleep and have more time to bite nearby mammals. “As we see more mild winters, we’re absolutely going to see more tick-borne diseases,” says Handel.

The best thing to do is to stay aware of how ticks are circulating in your area. Even if you don’t live in the Northeast, you may be at risk for other tick-borne diseases. Knowing what to watch out for in spring, summer, and even other seasons can help treat and potentially prevent future tick bites—and the diseases that follow.

Babesiosis

Babesiosis is a parasitic infection transmitted by the bite of deer ticks (also known as black-legged ticks). These ticks are about the size of a poppy seed and found on small mammals like the white-footed mice living in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Minnesota and Wisconsin are two Midwestern states with endemic transmission of babesiosis.

Once the Babesia parasite enters the human body, it targets red blood cells. The parasites infect and destroy red blood cells by forcing their cell membrane to break open. A tremendous loss of red blood cells can, over time, cause hemolytic anemia. “It’s actually the same way that malaria works, and is why it’s called ‘the malaria of the Northeast,’” says Handel.

Babesiosis is treatable. Your doctor would prescribe a seven- to 10-day course of antibiotics if you are severely ill. Some people are at a higher risk of complications from anemia—people who are immunocompromised, those without a spleen, and newborn babies—and may need to get blood transfusions or other supportive care.

Lyme disease

Lyme disease is also spread through deer ticks. “These ticks carry and spread multiple diseases,” explains Chad Cross, a researcher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who studies parasites and vector-borne diseases. “If you are bitten by one, there’s always the possibility of being infected by more than one disease agent at the same time.”

While the CDC estimate shows 476,000 Lyme disease cases in the US each year, Cross states there are “at least 10 times more cases of Lyme disease than are actually reported” to the department. One reason for the discrepancy is that most cases are asymptomatic. When people do show symptoms, the fatigue and chills they exhibit can be mistaken for another condition. If left untreated, there is a risk of developing neurological problems such as facial paralysis and nerve damage to the limbs. Chronic lyme can lead to a host of persistent issues, too, many of which are still less understood. 

Most early Lyme disease cases are curable with a two- to four-week regimen of oral antibiotics such as doxycycline and amoxicillin. However, some patients may continue to experience pain, fatigue, and concentration issues six months after treatment. 

Anaplasmosis

Anaplasmosis manifests as a flu-like illness in humans. The bacterium is present in deer ticks in the Northeast and Midwestern US. The Western blacklegged tick, most prevalent around the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington, can also spread the pathogen. There has been an upward trend of anaplasmosis cases from 348 cases in 2000 to 5,655 cases in 2019.

Similar to Lyme disease, people who develop anaplasmosis develop nonspecific symptoms such as fever and muscle aches. If left untreated, it may turn fatal with some developing severe bleeding problems and organ failure. Handel says doxycycline is the most effective treatment option.

Powassan virus infection

Three tick species carry the Powassan virus: the groundhog tick, the squirrel tick, and the deer tick. Of those, the deer tick is the one that often bites and infects humans. Nearly all cases of this rare virus have occurred in the Northeast and Great Lakes region.

The virus causes mild symptoms such as headache, vomiting, and fever. By the time a diagnosis is made, Handel says about half of the patients present some type of neurologic deficit. People may also continue to show neurological problems, such as chronic headaches and memory problems after recovery.

Because there are only about 20 to 30 cases a year, Handel says there’s not a lot of medical research on how to treat it. There is no cure or antivirals to treat Powassan virus. Instead, infected individuals are given fluids, over-the-counter medications, and other supportive care to ease symptoms while the immune system fights off the infection.

Rocky Mountain spotted fever

There are two main ticks responsible for spreading rocky mountain spotted fever: the Rocky Mountain wood tick and the American dog tick. Cross says the American dog tick is very common out East while the Rocky Mountain wood tick is found in the West. Despite its name, Cross says Rocky Mountain spotted fever is being found more in the East and South than in the actual Rocky Mountain region. The less-common brown dog tick has also caused several cases along the US-Mexico border. The disease is part of a larger class of illnesses that strike thousands of people in the states each year.

The most noticeable sign is a rash that looks like red splotches or pinpoint dots in the first three days after getting bit. If treated with either doxycycline or an antibacterial agent within the first one to four days, the symptoms won’t worsen. Otherwise, the disease can be fatal. After a week, Cross says that people can develop swelling in the brain, life-threatening respiratory problems, and a coma-like state. Those who recover from severe illness may be left with permanent disability, such as paralysis or amputation of limbs.

Alpha-gal syndrome

A bite from the lone star tick can make you allergic to red meat for life. The unusual condition takes root when someone becomes highly sensitive to a sugar molecule called alpha-gal that’s found in most mammals. People who develop the allergy cannot eat red meat (fish and birds are safe to consume) or mammal-based products like dairy and gelatin. They may also be restricted in using certain medication such as heparin, which uses pig intestines. An allergic reaction can range from hives and nausea to more life-threatening reactions like anaphylactic shock.

Alpha-gal syndrome has been a rare but increasing tick-borne condition. In 2009, there were only 24 alpha-gal cases reported in the US. By 2021, the number was estimated to be around 34,000. While saliva from the lone star tick seems to trigger the mammalian allergy, deer tick bites are suspected of also causing it. According to the CDC, lone star ticks have concentrated in large numbers across the country. They are found in the southeastern, eastern, and south-central US states extending from Maine to central Texas and Oklahoma. 

There is no cure for alpha-gal syndrome. Instead, people need to learn to avoid certain foods and mammal-based products. Symptoms are managed using antihistamines and corticosteroids.

Reduce your chances of tick infections

These days, ticks are a threat across most of the US and in practically every season. Experts warn that cases will only continue to rise as ticks expand to previously uninhabitable areas. 

[Related: Climate change could introduce humans to thousands of new viruses]

Your best bet at avoiding tick-borne diseases is to keep the pests off your body. Rather than staying indoors for the rest of your life, both experts recommend spraying tick and mosquito repellant. “DEET is what we usually recommend at 20 to 30 percent,” says Handel. If you’re going to be hiking or spending a lot of time outside, learn how to handle an insecticide called permethrin. Handel advises leaving your clothes overnight in the solution to kill any insect on contact. The repellency lasts for up to 10 washes. But make sure to only use it on your clothes or gear—it’s not meant to be sprayed directly on human skin.

Remember, you can pick up ticks even if you’re not an avid hiker or camper. Ticks tend to live on tall grass, meaning they might climb on you at the park or even on your own property. Avoid rubbing up on any tall grass and keep to the middle when walking down a path. Wearing long sleeves and tucking your pants inside your socks further prevents any openings for the pests to crawl into if they latch on your clothes. 

Once you get home, immediately wash your clothes in high heat and perform a tick check for any stragglers. If you take your pet outdoors (even if it’s just the yard), you’ll want to check them daily for ticks as well. There are also topical medications that you or a vet can apply to your pet to control for any external parasites. If you or any members of your household are feeling unwell, always let your doctor know that you’ve been in wooded areas or places with high tick circulation.

“These tick-borne diseases have been around for a long time and they’re going to become more common over time,” says Handel. “But by following these steps you can keep yourself safe and still enjoying the outdoors without having to have too much anxiety about catching one of these infections.”

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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.”

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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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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.”

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Artificial light at night can wreak havoc on a number of animals, from confusing moonlight-following sea turtle hatchlings to disrupting the sleep patterns of free-living animals like birds, to even stressing out caterpillars and making them age quicker.

Scientists are continuing to look more at the effects of artificial night light on insect larvae–like caterpillars.  A study published this month in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences found that even moderate levels of artificial light attract more caterpillar predators and reduce the chance that their larvae grow up into moths. Moths are part of the order lepidoptera that also contains butterflies and skippers ,and their larvae can serve as food for larger prey like birds, wasps, and some small amphibians. 

[Related: The switch to LEDs in Europe is visible from space.]

To test this light theory, scientists from Cornell University placed 552 lifelike caterpillar replicas made of soft clay in a forest in New Hampshire, gluing them to leaves to look as real as possible. They were made from a green clay that mimics the color and size of two moth caterpillars: Noctuidae (owlet moths) and Notodontidae (prominent moths). The marks of predators like birds, other insects, and arthropods can be left in the soft clay if they tried to take a bite of the fake caterpillars. 

Some of the models were placed on experimental lots that had 10 to 15 lux LED lighting, or roughly the brightness of a streetlight. The lights stayed on at night for about seven weeks in June and July 2021.

Of the 552 caterpillars deployed, 521 models were recovered. Almost half (249 fake caterpillars) showed predatory marks from arthropods, during the summer-long nighttime study. Additionally, they found that the rate of caterpillar predation was 27 percent higher on the experimental plots compared with the control areas that didn’t have the LED lighting.

Since the night sky is getting increasingly more polluted with artificial light, this poses another ecological problem for lepidopterans. These creatures already suffer from  threats like  habitat loss, chemical pollutants used in farming, climate change, and increasingly prevalent invasive species, according to the team.

[Related: ‘Skyglow’ is rapidly diminishing our nightly views of the stars.]

These findings are particularly worrisome for caterpillars at a larval stage when they are eating leaves to ensure that they grow into their next stage of development. Study co-author and research ecologist Sara Kaiser told the Cornell Chronicle, “When you turn on a porch light, you suddenly see a bunch of insects outside the door. But when you draw in those arthropod predators by adding light, then what is the impact on developing larvae? Top-down pressure – the possibility of being eaten by something.”
Some simple ways to reduce artificial light are by using smart lighting control to remotely manage any outside lighting, making sure that lights are close to the ground and shielded, and using the lowest intensity lighting possible.

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TikTok announced a number of updates to its community guidelines on Tuesday, including how it will address misinformation, AI-generated art, and deepfakes. The revamped rulebook and classifications go into effect on April 21. The changes arrive amid mounting political pressure from Western lawmakers in the US and UK, alongside an impending congressional testimony from TikTok CEO Shou ZI Chew regarding alleged security concerns within one of the world’s most popular social media platforms.

Perhaps the most noticeable addition comes in the form of TikTok’s new guidelines section dedicated to the rapid proliferation of “synthetic media,” such as altered videos and deepfakes. Although TikTok “welcome[s] the creativity that new artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies may unlock,” it acknowledges these tools often blur the lines between reality and fiction. Beginning next month, all deepfaked or otherwise altered content must be labeled as such through a sticker or caption.

[Related: Why some US lawmakers want to ban TikTok.]

Additionally, a wholesale ban on using the likeness of “any real private figure” will be initiated in April. Public figures, meanwhile, are granted more leeway due to their high profiles and societal relevance. That said, content including a deepfaked politician or celebrity cannot “be the subject of abuse,” or used to mislead audiences on political or societal issues. As The Verge also noted on Tuesday, TikTok’s prior stance on deepfakes were summed up by a single line banning uploads which “mislead users by distorting the truth of events [or] cause significant harm to the subject of the video.”

Notably, the company is also instituting a new section explicitly addressing the proliferation of climate misinformation. Any content that “undermines well-established scientific consensus” regarding the reality of climate change and its contributing factors is prohibited. As TechCrunch explains, conversations on climate change are still permitted, including the pros and cons of individual policies and technologies, as long as it does not contradict scientific consensus. Last year, at least one study showcased that TikTok search results were inundated with climate change misinformation and denialism. The new hardline on misinformation apparently extends beyond climate disinfo, as well. In a separate section, TikTok explains content will be ineligible from users’ For You Feed if it “contains general conspiracy theories or unverified information related to emergencies.”

[Related: US government gives TikTok an ultimatum, warning of ban.]

These and other changes come as TikTok weathers increasingly intense criticisms and scrutiny over its data security, with lawmakers citing issues with the social media platform’s China-based parent company, ByteDance. Last week, the Biden administration issued its starkest warning yet, urging the platform’s Chinese national owners to sell their shares or face a wholesale ban on the app. The announcement came after moves to ban the social media platform from all US government devices—a decision echoed recently in the UK and the Netherlands, as well. Critics of the hardline stances point towards the larger data insecurities within the digital ecosystem.

In a statement released last week from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the digital rights advocacy group conceded that “TikTok raises special concerns, given the surveillance and censorship practices of its home country, China, but contended that the solution isn’t a single business or company ban. Rather, we must enact comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation.”

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The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their Sixth Synthesis Report on climate change (AR6), following a week-long meeting in Switzerland. The up to 50 page-long report finds 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.

“This report can be summarized as a message of hope,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee in a press conference. “This report clearly emphasizes that we do have technology and know how and tools to solve climate problems.” These are the major takeaways from the new report.

We must reduce fossil fuel emissions by 2035

According to the report, carbon pollution and fossil fuel use must be reduced by nearly two-thirds by 2035 in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change. More than 100 years of burning fossil fuels, in addition to unequal and unsustainable energy and land use ,has led to global warming of 2°F above pre-industrial levels. This increase has caused more frequent and intense extreme weather events, and makes the world more dangerous for life in every region of the planet.

[Related: Here’s how global warming will change your town’s weather by 2080.]

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an end to all new fossil fuel exploration by 2040. Additionally, he called for carbon-free electricity generation in the developed world as early as 2035.

“Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” Guterres said. “Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”

The report also says that investment and adaptation measures to climate change must be ramped up to reach the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement of limiting the amount of warming to 2.7°F.  The world has already warmed 2°F, making it a few tenths of a degree away from some of the most dire effects of climate change. Earlier IPCC reports detailed the harms at this level of warming, which includes worsened storms, famine, and sea level rise. 

Adaptation and mitigation has huge net benefits

AR6 also outlines that the solutions lie in climate resistant development, which provide wider benefits to society as a whole. Better access to clean energy and technology can improve health outcomes, particularly for women and children. Low-carbon forms of transportation (walking, cycling, public transit, etc.) can improve air quality. The economic benefits from improving people’s health by reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be roughly the same or possibly greater than the costs it will take to reduce emissions. 

[Related: Pandemic shipping took a heavy toll on the climate.]

The panelists at the press conference stressed how actions this decade are crucial to ensure a safe future and that this report points to the co-benefits from acting now will have more than the IPCC’s report from 2014 (AR5).  

Political and financial will is key

The report also highlights the imperative role of financing adaptation and mitigation measures. The authors found that while government’s are key to enforcing policy, the financial sector must play their role too. 

“At the core, the financial system needs to be able to respond to the challenges ahead,” said Amjad Abdulla, IPCC Vice Chair. “There’s plenty of financing that’s available for multiple reasons and multiple activities, but our underlying assessment suggests, in that context, the investments that need to take place in both climate adaptation and mitigation needs to rise by three to six times at least.”

The report and press conference focused on the disparity between rich and developing nations, as wealthier nations cause more carbon dioxide emissions, while poorer countries get hit harder by extreme weather. The report calls for an increase in financial help for developing countries to adapt to a warmer world and switch to environmentally sustainable forms of energy. Following the UN’s Climate Conference in November 2022, financial pledges were made for a damage and compensation fund for developing countries. 

[Related: 3 of the the biggest climate decisions from COP27.]

The report is based on data from a few years ago, and does not take into account fossil fuel projects that are already in development and comes one week after President Biden approved the massive Willow oil project in Alaska. This new site could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day and is seen by some political columnists and Democrats as a betrayal by President Biden. 

“The Synthesis Report makes clear that we need swift and bold action to have any chance of averting the worst of the climate crisis. Under President Biden’s leadership, the U.S. has made historic progress in building an equitable clean energy economy, including the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Jill Tauber, EarthJustice Vice President of Litigation for Climate & Energy, in a press release. “However, the administration is undermining its own gains by greenlighting carbon bombs, like the Willow project, which would lock us into decades of more greenhouse gas emissions.”

In tandem with the reports findings, the World Resources Institute also points to fact that it is not too late to work to ensure a better future for the planet. 

“Despite their dire warnings, the IPCC offers reasons to be hopeful,” said World Resources Institute President and CEO Ani Dasgupta, in a press release. “The report shows a narrow path to secure a livable future if we rapidly correct course. This involves deep emission reductions from every sector of the economy, as well as much greater investments to build resilience to climate impacts and support for people facing unavoidable climate losses and damage. 

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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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Since taking office, the Biden administration has faced intense cross-pressure regarding the Willow Project, a ConocoPhillips venture that would open up an immense swath of public land on Alaska’s North Slope to new oil drilling. While Alaska politicians and oil industry figures have vigorously lobbied the administration to approve the project — particularly in the wake of the energy crisis stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — progressives, environmental groups, and some Alaska Native communities have strenuously opposed it.

On Monday, the administration tried to placate both sides. The Bureau of Land Management announced its final approval of the project, clearing the way for ConocoPhillips to start drilling over the next few years. At the same time, the Department of the Interior said that it will restrict future drilling in other parts of Alaska as well as ban offshore oil drilling in a swath of Arctic Ocean waters.

The most recent Bureau of Land Management estimates suggest that Willow could produce some 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years, generating as much as $17 billion in revenue for Alaska and the federal government. Its projected economic impact has helped the project garner nearly universal support from elected officials in Alaska at the state and federal level, as well as the endorsement of some Alaska Native communities. Dan Sullivan, one of the state’s Republican senators, has also claimed that Willow could help counter “the dictator in Moscow” by reducing global reliance on Russian oil.

The project’s potential productivity has triggered the opposite response in environmentalist circles, with the Democrat-aligned think tank the Center for American Progress declaring Willow a “carbon disaster” when it called on the president to reject the project last year. As a candidate, Biden said that if he were elected there would be “no new drilling on federal lands, period.” The approval of the Willow Project marks the first time the president has broken this promise without being forced to by Congress or federal courts.

According to the government’s own estimate, Willow could result in the release of more than 249 million tons of carbon dioxide over three decades, after all the oil is drilled and burned — the equivalent of adding around 2 million cars to the road each year. Furthermore, an investigation published by Grist in October suggested that rapid permafrost thaw in the region could create little-understood safety risks if drilling continues as planned. Already last spring, a monthlong natural gas leak caused by Conoco’s nearby drilling led to hundreds of evacuations and panic in the Alaska Native village of Nuiqsut.

ConocoPhillips has been pursuing Willow since at least 2015, when the company’s engineers made a major oil discovery on leases that the company had owned for more than a decade. The Trump administration tried to force the project through the approval process in late 2020, but a federal court ruling kicked the decision back to the incoming Biden administration the following year. Biden’s Bureau of Land Management pushed forward a scaled-down version of the project last month, suggesting Conoco should be allowed to drill at three of its five proposed well pads on the site.

Meanwhile, the announcement from the Interior Department would protect an enormous swath of Alaska wilderness from future development, creating what one official described to the New York Times as a “firewall” against future drilling projects of Willow’s scale. In a press release on Sunday, Interior said it is drafting a rule that will prohibit oil drilling on more than half of the 23 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve, which is the location of the Willow Project and the largest single swath of public land in the U.S. The announcement also promised to protect 3 million acres of offshore waters on the Beaufort Sea.

In a statement, the Department said the rule was intended to “ensure this important habitat for whales, seals, polar bears, as well as for subsistence purposes, will be protected in perpetuity from extractive development.” It also said the new safeguards are “responding to Alaska Native communities who have relied on the land, water, and wildlife to support their way of life.”

Climate groups do not appear appeased by the proposed safeguards, arguing that new protections don’t make up for the damage the Biden administration will cause by approving Willow. Kristin Monsell, an attorney for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told the New York Times on Sunday that the split decision was “insulting.”

“Protecting one area of the Arctic so you can destroy another doesn’t make sense,” she said, “and it won’t help the people and wildlife who will be upended by the Willow project.”

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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Following an unusually warm winter in a decent chunk of the Northern Hemisphere, this spring could bring more mosquito bites than there was frostbite.  Colder temperatures typically kill off or slow down the reproduction of the blood sucking insects and warm temperatures have added almost 10 extra days to Washington DC’s mosquito season since the 1980s. 

While increasingly longer summers and shorter and warmer winters could mean more mosquitoes in the future, some new research might help control increasing populations of the common pest. In a study published March 16 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers find that it’s likely that the proteins that activate mosquito sperm can be shut down. This action would prevent the sperm from swimming to eggs and fertilizing them. This could help control populations of a species of common house mosquito that is known to transmit West Nile Virus and brain-swelling encephalitis called Culex.

[Related: Singapore’s new plan to fight mosquito-borne diseases: bug-infecting bacteria.]

The new paper details all of the proteins that are in the insect’s sperm, which helped researchers find the specific proteins that maintain the quality of the sperm while they’re inactive, as well as the ones that activate the sperm to swim.

“During mating, mosquitoes couple tail to tail, and the males transfer sperm into the female reproductive tract. It can be stored there awhile, but it still has to get from point A to point B to complete fertilization,” said study co-author Cathy Thaler, a cell biologist at the University of California, Riverside, in a statement. 

The specialized proteins secreted during ejaculation activate the flagella (aka sperm tails) and power their movement are key to completing their journey into the female mosquito’s reproductive tract. 

“Without these proteins, the sperm cannot penetrate the eggs. They’ll remain immotile, and will eventually just degrade,” co-author Richard Cardullo, a University of California, Riverside biology professor, said in a statement. 

To get this very detailed information on proteins from a very small insect, the authors worked with a team of students who were able to isolate as many as 200 male mosquitoes from a larger population of bugs. Then, they extracted enough sperm from their reproductive tracts so that mass spectrometry equipment could not only detect the proteins, but identify them. 

In previous studies, the team found that sperm need calcium to power their forward motion upon entering a reproductive tract.  “Now we can look in the completed protein profile we’ve created, find the calcium channel proteins, and design experiments to target these channels,” said Cardullo. 

[Related from PopSci+: Can a bold new plan to stop mosquitoes catch on?]

According to Thaler, profiling proteins offers a path towards controlling mosquito population in a way that is more environmentally friendly and less toxic than methods that use harmful pesticides that can kill other insects and plants and hurt animals—also known as biological control.

Biological control does not mean that mosquitoes would be eradicated as a species. Immobilizing the sperm would be 100 percent effective for the treated mosquitoes, but it is not possible or desirable for scientists to kill all mosquitoes. Using a method like this would instead alter the proportion of fertile to infertile males.

In 2022, scientists from the biotech firm Oxitec completed the first open-air study that released mosquitoes genetically modified to be male, non-biting, and only capable of producing male offspring in the Florida Keys. They found that when the modified mosquitoes matured to adulthood, their flight and exploration behavior matched the abilities of wild mosquitoes and that they successfully mated with native female mosquitoes. The females then laid eggs in traps that the team collected to watch them hatch in a lab. All of the eggs hatched were males. However, the gene that killed female eggs lasted for roughly three mosquito generations.

“Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals on Earth. But as much as people hate them, most ecologists would oppose a plan to completely eradicate them. They play an important role in the food chain for fish and other animals,” Cardullo said.

While this study just looked at Culex, the team is hopeful that this information would apply to some of the more than 3,000 species of mosquitoes. As the planet continues to warm and climate change intensifies, more species of mosquitoes are moving into the Northern Hemisphere, including those that carry malaria. 

Learning more about Culex sperm motility could also have implications for improving fertility in humans. Many cells have flagella, and according to Cardullo, what we can learn about one body system may translate to other species.

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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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Air pollution is messing with the love lives of fruit flies, warns a new study published on March 14 in the journal Nature Communications. Male common fruit flies had trouble in recognizing their female counterparts after breathing in toxic gas, causing them to make a move on another male. 

Though there’s been some research hinting at bisexuality among fruit flies, the current results suggest it has to do more with ozone pollution. Even brief exposure to O₃ was enough to alter the chemical makeup of pheromones, a unique trails insects use to detect and attract mates. Increasing levels of air pollutants from cars, power plants, and industrial boilers around the world could stop common fruit flies from reproducing, causing a dramatic decline in the insect species.

[Related: Almost everyone in the world breathes unhealthy air]

The chemical ecologists placed 50 male flies into a tube and exposed them to 100 parts per billion (ppb) of ozone—global ozone levels range from 12 ppb to 67 ppb—for two hours. After two hours, fruit flies showed reduced amounts of a pheromone called cis-Vaccenyl Acetate (cVA) in compounds involved in reproductive behavior.

A closer look revealed that ozone seems to have changed the chemical structure of pheromones. Most insect pheromones have carbon double bonds, explains Markus Knaden, a group leader for insect behavior at the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology in Germany and study author. Whenever a compound has carbon double bonds, it becomes highly sensitive to oxidization by ozone or nitric oxide and starts to separate. The explanation is in line with their findings of high amounts of the liquid heptanal in the flies, a product that emerges after cVA breaks down. 

Did the altered pheromones affect a male’s chances at finding a partner? It appears so. A separate experiment exposed male flies to 30 minutes of either ozone ranging from 50 to 200 ppb or regular air with a much lower amount ozone before being placed them with female fruit flies. While males from both groups wasted no time in trying to court females, ozone-exposed fruit flies had more trouble getting a mate. 

“The male advertises himself with pheromones. The more he produces, the more attractive he becomes to the female,” says Knaden. Losing the chemical aphrodisiac made ozone-exposed males a less desirable option to females, who took nearly twice as much time choosing from the corrupted bachelors than the clean ones.

Not only is ozone pollution hampering the males’ ability to get female attention, it’s also affecting how they identify other individuals. Knaden says his team expected the altered pheromones to affect the ability for male fruit flies to distinguish between a male and a female, but what they didn’t expect were males to jump on each other. “In the beginning, it was a very funny observation to see really long chains where one male was courting the next and then the next down the line,” he describes. With the altered pheromones, “the male basically jumps on everything that is small and moves a little bit like a fly, regardless of what it is.”

“Very little is known about how air pollution interferes with insect sex pheromone signaling, so it is great to see this work underway,” says James Ryalls, a research fellow in the Center for Agri-environmental Research at the University of Reading in England, who was not affiliated with the research. “The study demonstrates how disruptive air pollution can be to insect communication, with potential ecological ramifications such as reduced biodiversity.”

[Related: Flies evolved before dinosaurs—and survived an apocalyptic world]

Getting rid of the buggers that crowd your bananas and melons might seem like a good idea at first glance. However, Ryalls warns that these agricultural pests contribute greatly to the world’s ecosystem. As nature’s clean-up crew, fruit flies help decompose rotting fruit, releasing nutrients for plants, bacteria, and fungi to use. They also serve as food for other animals like birds and spiders. Lastly, they are a common insect model used in biomedical research and have contributed to countless neuroscience and genetic discoveries.

Fruit flies are not the only ones feeling the effects of air pollution. Knaden says he has seen dangerous ozone levels affecting flower volatile compounds, which are used as cues for pollinators. His 2020 study found moths were less attracted to flower odors from plants exposed to the gas, resulting in less pollination. 

“Insects are on the decline, and we thought it was from pesticides and habitat loss,” says Knaden. “It seems there are more screws we have to turn, one of them being air pollutants.”

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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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This article was originally featured on Grist.

Wastewater treatment plants are typically overlooked when it comes to reducing greenhouse gasses, but new research from Princeton University reveals the plants emit twice as much methane as previously thought.

Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas and the treatment plants should be part of any plan to reduce emissions, according to the study released last week. 

“Wastewater treatment plants are a major source of greenhouse gasses in cities and we need to start treating them like that,” said Mark Zondlo, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton and one of the authors of the research.

Published in the Environmental Science and Technology journal, the report is the largest conducted on methane pollution from wastewater treatment plants in the United States. The scientists examined 63 facilities in California and the East Coast. Their research showed that methane from these facilities exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimates by the equivalent of 5.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. 

Scientists use carbon dioxide equivalence as a metric to standardize the emissions of many different types of greenhouse gasses. The previous estimate for emissions by wastewater treatment plants was 6.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. The new study calculates that current emissions are now 11.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. 

“We have more than a million miles of sewers in the U.S., filled with rich organic matter that may be causing methane emissions, but we have very little understanding of their scope,” said Z. Jason Ren, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, another co-author. 

While methane has long been a concern for scientists and environmentalists it is only recently that governments have focused on curbing the greenhouse gas. Cutting methane emissions as quickly as possible can drastically reduce the rate at which the planet heats up. 

The biggest culprit for methane emissions in wastewater treatment is a domed container used near the end of the process called an anaerobic digester. The digester contains small microbes, like bacteria, that can function without oxygen and help break down the harmful microbes in our waste. While this process produces methane naturally, in the past scientists underestimated the leaks in these supposedly airtight containers, an oversight that resulted in inaccurate emission counts.

The guidelines in use by the EPA were developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization within the United Nations that publishes reports on climate change every few years. But those IPCC guidelines failed to account for wide variations in emissions from plant to plant. The Princeton researchers discovered the most consistent factor in discovering high emissions was the use of an anaerobic digester. 

“We know urbanization is going to increase, we know centralized treatment [of waste] will increase, definitely in the US, but especially in the world. So let’s try and find a way to do this right, that’s a win for the water and a win for the air,” said Zondlo.

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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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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It’s hard to go faster on the road than in a Formula One car, which can reach top speeds of 220 miles per hour. The so-called pinnacle of motorsport races takes place around the world, from Australia to Sao Paulo. And after an exciting week of preseason testing, the 2023 season got underway at the Bahrain International Circuit on March 5. Reigning world champion Max Verstappen won for Red Bull Racing, with his teammate Sergio Perez in second. There are 20 drivers across 10 teams in F1, and none of the other 18 drivers finished within 30 seconds of Verstappen. Only time will tell if the other teams will be able to catch up.

Below F1 are Formula Two and Formula Three, which are called the feeder series, and function in a similar fashion to baseball’s minor leagues. They’re mostly young drivers attempting to prove their worth by competing against each other for a spot in the big leagues. It’s how most drivers gain one of the 20 seats currently available in F1. (All three F1 rookies this season, Nyck DeVries, Oscar Piastri, and Logan Sargeant, drove at least one season in F2.)

But like any other vehicle with an internal combustion engine, Formula One vehicles burn fossil fuels, which is a problem in a world that must decarbonize to combat climate change. Beyond the 20 Formula One cars racing on tracks every other weekend, there are the massive transportation costs to move the teams and drivers across the globe and the millions of fans traveling to and from the racing circuits.

The Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Formula One’s governing body, realizes that. In November 2019, F1 and the FIA announced plans to become fully carbon neutral by the end of 2030, and the plans to make that transition are already underway. 

Formula One currently uses a hybrid fuel that’s 10% biofuel and will make the transition to fully renewable fuels in 2026, meaning all carbon output by the cars will be offset by the production of the fuel. There will be other regulatory changes as well. 

Now, F1 has announced that their feeder series will be following along. Starting with the opening sprint race of the 2023 season at Bahrain last weekend, F2 and F3 cars will use a blend consisting of 55% “Advanced Sustainable Fuel.” And by 2027, according to The Race, the feeder series aim to use a type of sustainable, carbon-captured fuel called e-fuel.

What are sustainable fuels?

“Sustainable fuel” is a catch-all term for a bunch of different alternative ways of producing fuels for planes and cars with the goal of reducing their carbon footprint. It includes biofuels, which recycle organic materials into fuel (this is what F1’s hybrid fuel is) but also carbon-capturing e-fuels that are made by taking carbon from the air, which is what F2 and F3 plan to switch to in 2027. But what all sustainable fuels have in common are their low net carbon emissions.

When it comes to e-fuels created by carbon capture, Nikita Pavlenko, the fuel program lead at the International Council on Clean Transportation, says there are two different sources—getting it directly from the atmosphere, or getting it from smokestacks: “You have a fuel that is pretty close to zero carbon, just produced from renewable electricity and carbon dioxide captured from the air or from a smokestack.” While F1 is allowed to source their carbon from so-called point sources (Pavlenko says this is almost always taken from smokestacks), F2 and F3’s fuel must be fully sourced by direct-air carbon capture technology.

That strict direct-air carbon capturing is what differentiates e-fuel from biofuels and other sustainable power sources, and according to Pavlenko, it’s a very new technology. The F2 and F3 experiments will be one of the first large-scale applications of e-fuel, which has implications for the future of transportation. Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, the chief technology officer at Aramco, who will supply the e-fuel, tells The Race that the FIA understands this is a hard goal to reach because of how underdeveloped carbon capture technologies are but is committed to setting the course. 

Pavlenko says he’s excited that F1 is pursuing e-fuels, because of their very prohibitive cost. “F1 would be one of the use cases that’s best able to support the cost difference,” he says. “It’s a relatively small quantity [in relation to the quantity of non-sustainable fuels] and I assume there’s a high willingness to pay.”

Even better: EVs

There are some concerns, however. The FIA will have to ensure that its e-fuel is made using renewable energy sources. Much like electric cars, producing e-fuel using electricity created by fossil fuels simply moves the source of emissions rather than limits it. In addition, Palvenko says that e-fuel generally has more applications in aviation than on the road, where using electric vehicles is the generally best way to go.

In the past 20 years, F1 has exploded in popularity, thanks to new ownership and a series on Netflix. But as it’s gone global, it’s come under increasing scrutiny for its sustainability, or lack thereof. The FIA is making an effort, however. Even before the fuel changes, F1’s sister electric-only series Formula E launched in 2014. Only time will tell if the two series will eventually merge, but anyone who’s watched Formula E can confirm that the racing is just as electric as the cars are.

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March has already brought chaos to the West Coast as back-to-back winter storms dropped an unseasonable 100 inches of snow in Southern California, causing at least one death and leaving residents trapped. But this weekend is set to bring even more precipitation as an atmospheric river comes for the whole state.

Currently, Northern and central California can expect a great deal of rain in the coming weekend, causing risky flood conditions. As the rain falls, it is bound to melt the unprecedented amounts of snow. Heavy, wet snow is expected at higher elevations, specifically in Northern California and the Sierra Nevadas, which will lead to deep snowpack and rough travel conditions, according to the National Weather Service. Most of California’s residents were already under weather warnings on Thursday night, and evacuations have already begun in counties such as Merced, Mariposa, and Santa Cruz. 

[Related: Earth’s natural air-scrubbing system works better when it’s wetter.]

“It could get really ugly,” David Rowe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told SFGate on Wednesday. “Probably most of the melt will be in the foothills. The snowpack is so deep in the higher elevations, even though we’re expecting a lot of rain, it will probably soak right in at the higher elevations.”

Governor Gavin Newsom had already issued a state of emergency due to weather conditions on March 1 for 13 different counties, but has since expanded the list to include 21 more counties in order to provide storm response and relief efforts to even more regions.

“The state is working around the clock with local partners to deploy life-saving equipment and first responders to communities across California,” Newsom said Thursday. “With more dangerous storms on the horizon, we’ll continue to mobilize every available resource to protect Californians.”

This unprecedented weather is the result of an atmospheric river that’s called a “Pineapple Express.” Atmospheric rivers in general are narrow regions of the atmosphere that bring water vapor from the tropics to the north. Once the 250-375 mile-wide stream of humid air hits landfall, they can bring a great deal of precipitation, but many are relatively weak. The Pineapple Express is especially powerful because the moisture is coming from Hawaii and the tropical Pacific, which can deal a serious blow to the West Coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

In general, some experts believe that atmospheric rivers are getting more powerful due to climate change. 

“This is an unrivaled, unparalleled weather event not experienced in several decades, perhaps back to 1969,” Kris Mattarochia, a science and operations officer at the National Weather Service, tells the New York Times.

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Last week in Washington state, an airplane that appeared perfectly normal from the outside made a brief flight. On the left side of the plane was a standard engine, burning jet fuel. But on the right side was something radically different: an electric motor that got its power not from batteries, but from hydrogen stored inside the aircraft. 

While burning jet fuel creates carbon emissions and particulate matter pollution, in this case the hydrogen system produces water vapor and heat. It’s just one way that aircraft makers are trying to make flying less bad for the planet: companies are working on planes that run off batteries, they are creating synthetic aviation fuel, and in this case, they are leveraging hydrogen fuel cells. 

“This is certainly the biggest aircraft to have ever flown on hydrogen fuel cells,” boasts Mark Cousin, the chief technical officer of Universal Hydrogen, the company behind the experimental aircraft. 

Here’s how the system works: While the left side of the plane stored its jet fuel in the wing like a typical aircraft, the hydrogen for the electric motor on the right wing was stored in tanks, in a gaseous form, in the back of the plane. “You simply can’t fit hydrogen in the wing of an airplane,” Cousin says. “It was taking up probably about a third of the fuselage length.” 

[Related: Watch this sleek electric plane ace its high-speed ground test]

The hydrogen travels up to the right wing, which is where the magic happens. There, in the nacelle hanging off the wing where the motor is, the hydrogen combines with compressed air (the air enters the equation thanks to the two inlets you can see near the motor on the right wing) in stacks of fuel cells. The system uses six stacks of fuel cells, each of which is made up of hundreds of individual fuel cells. Those fuel cell stacks create the electricity that the motor needs to run. “A fuel cell is a passive device—it has no moving parts,” Cousin says. The juice it creates comes in DC form, so it needs to go through inverters to become the AC power the motor requires. 

When the plane flew last week, it was a type of hybrid: a regular engine burning jet fuel in the wing on the left side, and the electric motor on the right running off that hydrogen and air. “Once we hit cruise, we throttled back and we flew almost exclusively on the right-hand engine,” the pilot said, according to The Seattle Times. “It was silent.”

Usually holding around 50 people, the aircraft, a modified Dash 8-300, in this case had just three aboard for the test flight, which had a duration of some 15 minutes. It flew at an altitude of about 2,300 feet above the ground. “The aircraft did a couple loops around the airfield,” Cousin says. Then eventually it made a “very, very smooth landing.” 

While the aircraft stored its hydrogen in gaseous form in the tanks in the back, the company has plans to switch to a method that stores the hydrogen as a liquid, which occupies less space than the gaseous assembly and doesn’t weigh as much. Those tanks must be kept at very cold temperatures, and the liquid needs to be converted to a gas before it can be used in the fuel cells. While this type of liquid hydrogen setup still takes up more space than regular jet fuel does, it’s a better solution than storing hydrogen in gaseous form, he says. Their plan is to switch the same plane that just flew over to a liquid hydrogen system this year. 

In terms of trying to decarbonize the aviation industry—after all, it’s a sizable producer of carbon dioxide emissions—Cousin argues that hydrogen is the best approach. “We think that hydrogen fuel is really the only viable solution for short- and medium-range airplanes,” he says. It’s certainly not the only approach, though. In September of last year, a battery powered plane called Alice also made a first flight in Washington state, and other companies, like Joby Aviation and Beta Technologies, are working on small aircraft that are also battery electric. 

Universal Hydrogen isn’t alone in pursuing hydrogen as a means of propelling aircraft. In February of last year, Airbus said that it would use a special, giant A380 aircraft to test out hydrogen technology, and in November, unveiled plans for an electric engine that also runs off hydrogen fuel cells.

Watch a short video about the recent flight, below.

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Air pollution, as it turns out, is incredibly difficult to avoid no matter where you are on the planet. A new study from Monash University in Australia found that nearly 99 percent of the world’s population are exposed to unhealthy levels of dangerous air pollutants called ambient fine particulate matter (PM 2.5). 

The study was published March 6 in the journal Lancet Planetary Health. The team of researchers used computer models to assess annual and daily PM2.5 concentrations around the world from 2000 to 2019.

[Related: Tiny air pollutants may come from different sources, but they all show a similar biased trend.]

The models used data from ground stations that monitor air quality, weather, and simulations of how chemicals travel through the air. They found that in 2019, only 0.001 percent of the global population was exposed to levels of PM 2.5 pollution that World Health Organization (WHO) deems safe. The WHO says concentrations higher than 5 micrograms of PM 2.5 per cubic meter is considered hazardous. 

The study described that while daily levels of air pollutants have decreased in North America and Europe in the two decades studied, levels increased in Australia, New Zealand, Southern Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Over 70 percent of the days monitored in these regions had air pollution that was above WHO recommended levels. The highest concentrations were generally found in southern Asia, eastern Asia, and northern Africa.

According to study co-author and global public health and epidemiologist Yuming Guo, there are seasonal patterns that take place amid unsafe PM2.5 concentrations. Northeast China and northern India saw higher levels during December, January, and February and eastern regions of North America had higher PM2.5 during summer months.  

“We also recorded relatively high PM2.5 air pollution in August and September in South America and from June to September in sub-Saharan Africa,” Guo said in a statement.

Guo told The Washington Post on March 6 that the study does have some limitations—some countries didn’t have as much ground data, which could affect how the models perform in those regions.

This study, possibly the first of its kind, aligns with data released by the WHO in April 2022 that also found that dangerous levels of air pollution affects 99 percent of the population. 

[Related: Wildfire smoke from across continents is changing the Arctic Ocean’s makeup.]

“Particulate matter, especially PM2.5, is capable of penetrating deep into the lungs and entering the bloodstream, causing cardiovascular, cerebrovascular (stroke) and respiratory impacts. There is emerging evidence that particulate matter impacts other organs and causes other diseases as well,” the WHO wrote in a statement last year.

Other studies have shown that even low levels of air pollution can increase excess mortality, traffic pollution could be connected to low birthweight, and is linked to an increased risk of depression and bipolar disorder. 

“[This study] provides a deep understanding of the current state of outdoor air pollution and its impacts on human health,” Guo said in a release. “With this information, policymakers, public health officials, and researchers can better assess the short-term and long-term health effects of air pollution and develop air pollution mitigation strategies.”

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This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

The clock is ticking for many low-lying coastal areas. Sea level is rising faster than at any time in recorded history, promising to radically redraw the map. At a broad scale, we know this to be true. But knowing precisely which plots will be inundated and which will remain dry land is a much more daunting task. That effort may have an ally almost no one would have guessed: one of the smallest and least conspicuous forms of life—lichens.

More than 18,000 species of lichens have been described worldwide. Each is a community made up of one or more species of fungus and an alga or cyanobacteria. This combination has enabled lichens to survive in diverse and often hostile conditions, everything from tropical heat to bitter Antarctic cold.

To scratch out its niche, each species has developed to tolerate different levels of temperature, light, air quality, and other factors. Because of this sensitivity, lichens are already used by scientists to gauge environmental disturbance, such as the influence of logging or nitrogen pollution. Lichens also vary in their salt tolerance. It’s this property, says botanist Roger Rosentreter at Idaho’s Boise State University, that makes them so useful in understanding sea level rise.

“Lichens are a good indicator of site history,” says Rosentreter, who has studied lichens and related species for over 40 years. Specifically, the species of lichens that grow on a coastal site may be an effective indicator of low levels of saltwater intrusion and spray, which can be caused by infrequent flooding or storm events. Since sea levels are continuing to rise, any site that has experienced occasional salt water in the past is likely to see more frequent flooding and storm effects in the future.

Recently, Rosentreter and his wife, fellow Boise State botanist Ann DeBolt, studied the lichen communities of two state parks near West Palm Beach, Florida. One park, on a barrier island, is subject to frequent salt spray and storm flooding, while the other is inland just 500 meters away. The scientists found two surprisingly different lichen communities at each site. By comparing the two, they started building a list of lichen species that can be useful indicators of the long-term or historical presence of salt water.

It takes more than just salt sensitivity to make a lichen a good indicator of whether a site has experienced the first effects of sea level rise. The lichen’s own life history also comes into play.

Species like the powdery medallion lichen (left photo) can be killed if subjected to too much salt water by a storm or flood. But this lichen’s quick reproduction lets it swiftly recolonize after the sea recedes. Larger species with slower growth and reproduction, and also low salt tolerance, like the ruffled blue jellyskin (right photo), can better tell the saltwater history of a site. These salt-intolerant lichens could not have survived and grown if a saltwater event like storm spray or flooding had occurred at any point during their life. Since some lichen species can live for decades or longer, the record they provide can be both hyperlocal in space and extensive in time.

Of the 48 different lichen species Rosentreter and DeBolt found at their two Florida survey sites, 11 are reliable indicators of salt water’s presence. Seven of the species only like to grow in places with very low saltwater impact, while four are salt tolerant, so finding them growing suggests the site has a moderate history of salt and a higher risk of being affected by rising seas.

In general, they found that the species that best indicate if a site will be relatively safe from sea level rise and saltwater inundation are lichens that are larger and leafier and often light green or blue in color. But lichens can be tricky to identify, and some promising indicator species look quite similar to less useful ones. “You’ve got to be at least an intermediate plant person to figure it out,” says Rosentreter.

“The good thing is, these aren’t just in Florida. They’re in the whole southeast coastal plain,” he says. Reports on iNaturalist, for instance, put the ruffled blue jellyskin all along the US East Coast and beyond.

Borja G. Reguero, an expert in conserving natural defenses against sea level rise at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the research, sees parallels between how coastal communities and lichens handle environmental change. “It makes a lot of sense to find those indicator [species] where the frequency of spray or flood events are over a threshold where some species are not able to live anymore,” he says. “You could say the same thing about humans and coastal infrastructure. You get to a tipping point where specific neighborhoods get flooded so regularly that they don’t get insurance.”

Modern science offers an array of tools to study sea level rise, from satellite data to groundwater and soil sampling. Lichens could be another way to see, at smaller site-specific scales, where the sea is coming next, and just as importantly, where it is not.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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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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This article was originally featured on Grist.

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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Many Americans remained locked down and logged online throughout 2021, changing the way people shopped for countless goods and services. Initial coverage frequently focused on the ensuing supply chain woes, but new research is showcasing another grave consequence to all that consumption—the ocean shipping industry boom generated massive amounts of greenhouse gasses. 

Although their pollution statistics rarely make into the news as much as everyday cars, “dirty cargo ships” running on fossil fuels bring an estimated 40 percent of America’s goods into the country each year, and are a major impediment towards transitioning to a greener society. Because individual ships are often connected to dozens of international companies, it is often difficult to assign emissions regulation responsibilities. Meanwhile, thousands of ships burn sulfur-heavy “bunker fuel” that, while sometimes “scrubbed” via exhaust cleaning systems, still produces hazardous waste often dumped into oceans.

[Related: Is acid rain forming from the Ohio train derailment site?]

Commissioned by Ship It Zero, a coalition advocating for ocean freight companies’ transition to clean-energy, the “All Brands on Deck” report analyzes 2021’s international imports from 18 of America’s foremost retailers, including Walmart, The Home Depot, Target, Amazon, and Samsung. The findings aren’t pretty—an estimated 4.7 million containers traveling aboard over 1,650 ships generated approximately 3.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 alone. That’s equivalent to the carbon dioxide belched from 754,000 traditional gas-powered cars, or the energy required to power 440,000 US homes. As Canary Media also notes, “ships spewed enough smog-forming nitrogen oxide to equal the annual emissions of seven coal-fired power plants.”

Most of these imports entered the country through a few major port hubs: Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, alongside Houston, Texas, and Savannah, Georgia. The report explains that due to port  locations, much of the ocean vessels’ asthma- and cancer-causing pollutants most often affect port-adjacent and coastal communities with disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and Brown working class populations.

Walmart, Target, and Home Depot were among the worst offenders analyzed. Their combined  shipping contracts generated over 1.7 million metric tons of CO2 and 33 metric tons of methane in 2021. “Buoyed by reliance on the cheapest, most deadly fossil fuels on the planet, international shipping companies and the corporations that rely on them make billions while treating our oceans, health and climate as externalities,” explains the report’s authors. “For far too long, they’ve gotten away with it.”

[Related: Breathe easier during wildfires with a DIY air purifier.]

Ship It Zero hopes that highlighting these troubling figures and increasing pressure on corporations will spur them to speed their transitions towards cleaner shipping options, like fuel cells, marine batteries, and wind harnessing equipment. Currently, both Walmart and The Home Depot have made no public commitments to fossil fuel-free maritime shipping plans, despite generating “the highest levels of carbon dioxide, methane and carcinogenic particulate matter pollution of all companies studied,” the report reads.

As part of their suggested path forward, Ship It Zero urges these companies to ask ocean carriers to demonstrate immediate and year-over-year emission reduction efforts during contract negotiation periods. “Any ship on the water today could be retrofitted with wind- assist propulsion or other emissions reducing technologies,” argues the authors. “[P]ublic health and the climate cannot wait for an entirely new generation of vessels.”

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Nearly a month after a train derailment in Ohio caused a toxic chemicals spill, the roughly 5,000 residents of East Palestine are worried about whether the air is safe to breathe. Since the accident, locals have complained of headaches, rashes, and a lingering smell in the air resembling “hair perming solution,” along with respiratory issues like chronic coughing, wheezing, and acute bronchitis, possibly from chemical irritants inflaming their airways. And now the concern has spread to people in other states.

Social media users living hundreds of miles away are posting videos showing alleged signs of acid rain and attributing it to air pollutants traveling from Ohio. There are also videos of individuals in other states saying they’re experiencing nausea and a burning sensation in their throats and noses due to a strong chemical odor in the rain. Some TikTokers have also attempted to explain how vinyl chloride, one of the main chemicals in the spill, is causing acid rain outside of East Palestine.

[Related on PopSci+: Dust clouds are killing people out West—and the dangers could spread]

Are their fears of traveling toxins justified? “Given the [high] amount of chemicals that were involved and the controlled conversion, I don’t think it’s a major issue for [people living] long-distance,” says Oladele Ogunseitan, a professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California, Irvine. “I’m not saying it’s an absolute no because we don’t fully understand all the moving parts, but it’s just an infinitesimal chance.” 

First, what is acid rain?

Acid rain is any form of precipitation where water and oxygen react with nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide to form acidic compounds. While natural causes such as volcanic eruptions can release these chemicals, most acid rain events result from human activity, such as burning coal and other sulfur-containing compounds. 

Pure water has a neutral pH of 7, with regular rainfall being slightly more acidic with a pH of less than 6. Acid rain, however, usually falls between a range of 5 to 5.5 on the pH scale, meaning it’s more corrosive. 

Though making contact with acid rain won’t burn your skin off, you might experience irritation in your eyes, throat, and nose. The bigger issue is inhaling the chemical compounds in acid rain. The longer you spend time in acid rain, the likelier it is that pollutants will enter your lungs. Depending on how long you’re exposed and how many particles you inhale, acid rain can cause several long-term health problems, ranging from asthma and chronic bronchitis to heart attacks if you have a history of cardiac issues.

Can vinyl chloride cause acid rain?

In Ohio, officials decided on a “controlled release” after a temperature change in the five derailed train cars carrying vinyl chloride prompted worry about a possible larger explosion. Vinyl chloride—a synthetic, carcinogenic chemical used to make plastic for pipes, wire coatings, and car parts—was released in liquid form before being set ablaze for days in a barricaded area. Burning it breaks it down into hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and a toxic gas called phosphene. 

And while burning vinyl chloride can also produce hydrochloric acid, a component of acid rain, it would have been immediately seen at the site at the time of the controlled chemical release. Right now there are some “pretty bad smells” in East Palestine, says Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University, but not as much air pollution as there was on the first day. If the derailment was causing widespread acid rain, locals would experience it first.

What’s the current air pollution forecast in East Palestine?

After screening 578 homes in East Palestine over the past few weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that outdoor air quality in the residential area was normal and continued to assert that there are no health risks. Some environmental scientists, however, are skeptical of the clean-cut assessment. 

“What would prove if the place is habitable is if nobody gets sick, but we know people are having symptoms,” says Ogunseitan. A separate group of environmental researchers at Texas A&M University conducted their own air sample analysis in the town’s streets. In a Twitter thread posted last Friday, they shared that nine of the 50 chemicals identified by the EPA are at higher-than-normal levels. 

[Related: Breathe easier during wildfires with a DIY air purifier]

While the research is ongoing, the Texas A&M team warns of a potential health concern if levels of chemicals such as acrolein stay elevated. Acrolein can cause irritation in the skin, eyes, and mucous membranes. When inhaled, the suffocating odor may trigger respiratory distress and dizziness. 

Ogunseitan doesn’t think locals need to evacuate again based on this initial study, but does say it should raise the alarm for continuous air monitoring and health screenings for residents. He points out that some people might be more sensitive to even the smallest amount of exposure to toxic chemicals, so solution is to “identify those who are particularly vulnerable to these levels of chemicals and have them temporarily move.”

Is there any chance the chemicals will reach other states?

Based on the EPA’s air emission models on wind direction, rainfall, and the natural settling of dust and smoke from the derailment site, Ogunseitan says the data doesn’t support pollutants traveling as far as the East and West Coasts. When an incident like this happens, he notes there’s always a level of mass hysteria that has people blaming the incident for something unrelated. 

On the very slim possibility of pollutants wafting outside the East Palestine area, DeCarlo says his biggest concern would be for anyone living just across the border in Pennsylvania because of close proximity to the accident. “As you move away from the site, the emissions from the fire become diluted and less concentrated,” he explains. “For people living several states away, this will not be the same type of issue as those in the immediate area.”

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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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In the days after a record-breaking heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest in 2021, state and federal foresters heard reports of damaged and dying trees across Oregon and Washington. Willamette Valley Christmas tree farmers had lost up to 60% of their popular noble firs, while caretakers at Portland’s Hoyt Arboretum said Douglas firs, their state tree, dropped more needles than ever seen before. Timber plantations reported massive losses among their youngest trees, with some losing nearly all of that year’s plantings. 

The damage was obvious even to those who weren’t tasked with looking for it. Drivers, homeowners and tree experts alike called or sent photos of damaged redcedars, hemlocks and spruce, particularly in coastal forests. Swaths of the landscape were so scorched it looked like a wildfire had torn through.

Some farmers and homeowners had tried to prepare, dumping water on their orchards and yards before and during the heat wave. Many lost branches, leaves and entire trees anyway. “There’s a misconception out there that a lot of people have that, if things are just watered enough, they can get through these events,” said Chris Still, an Oregon State University tree ecologist and expert in tree heat physiology. “But the heat spells we’re talking about, like the heat dome, are so intense that I don’t think that’s really a tenable assumption anymore.” Simply watering trees during extreme heat makes intuitive and practical sense, but that idea is based largely on knowledge about droughts. After all, nearly all of the research on climate-related stress in trees has focused only on the impact of insufficient water. But it turns out that trees respond quite differently to extreme heat versus prolonged drought. Still’s own research, including a new study on the heat dome, is part of a growing body of work focused on untangling the effects of both conditions. Given that extreme heat and drought are both becoming more common and intense — and won’t always coincide — foresters and tree farmers will need tools to prepare for each.

The threat human-caused global warming poses to the Northwest’s forests was evident long before the 2021 heat dome: Oregon and Washington’s most common conifer species are all dying in alarming numbers, many because of drought. Starting in 2015, state foresters began warning that western hemlocks, a particularly drought-sensitive species common to the Coast Range and Cascades, were succumbing to pests and fungi that infested the already-stressed trees. More recently, foresters have seen widespread die-offs of western redcedar and Douglas firs. Aerial surveys in 2022 documented what foresters have dubbed “firmageddon” — the sudden death of 1.2 million acres of “true firs” (which include grand and noble firs, but not Douglas firs), mostly in Oregon.

“All of our trees are drought-stressed,” Oregon state entomologist Christine Buhl told HCN last July. “They can’t protect themselves against other agents” in their weakened state. Even common pests and native parasites that don’t normally kill trees are now proving lethal.

When the 2021 heat wave hit, foresters weren’t certain what new chaos it might bring. Drought affects tree stems and the structures that move water and nutrients around, but heat destroys needles and leaves. When those tender green structures heat up — and they often reach temperatures far higher than the air around them — they lose water fast. The tissues inside them fall apart, and they turn red or brown as their chlorophyll breaks down.

“Just like our skin, when (sun exposure) rips those cells apart and we have blisters and sunburn, it does the same exact thing to those needles and leaves,” said Danny DePinte, a forest health specialist who flies annual aerial surveys for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington and Oregon. The 2021 heat dome offered a rare glimpse of the results on a large scale: When DePinte flew over the region later that year, he saw whole landscapes of trees scorched on their south and west-facing sides, where temperatures would have been hottest. The worst damage occurred on southern slopes with prolonged exposure and in coastal forests that are adapted to far cooler temperatures. DePinte’s survey found that at least 229,000 acres of forest had been damaged by the heat wave — a figure state researchers say only begins to capture the total area damaged, which was likely much larger.

Research like Still’s, which drew in part on DePinte’s data, has made it clear that heat stress causes more immediate and acute damage than drought. Its long-term impacts are far less understood, though, because events like the 2021 heat dome are still unusual.

On his 2022 survey flights, DePinte found that the most obvious damage seems to have been temporary: Damaged areas are mostly green again with new growth. Further research, by Still’s team and others, will investigate possible lingering health effects, including whether the trees become more susceptible to pests, disease and death.

Researchers will also consider how foresters and tree farmers could respond, as extreme heat waves become more common. Adaptations might include planting certain species together to shade more vulnerable trees, determining which native trees are most tolerant to extreme heat, and planting species on farms or after wildfires that are already adapted to hotter conditions farther south.

“We need to be smart about what trees we’re planting so that we have forests in the same places,” DePinte said. “We’ve got to think hundreds of years into the future: What is this area gonna look like? And then plan accordingly.”

Update 02/28/23: This story was updated to remove a photo that showed a tree damage unrelated to the heat wave and to include a photo that shows the effects of acute hot weather injury.

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The mapping service and tech providers at TomTom have released their annual global traffic index, and most cities remain costly pains in the trunk to navigate in a vehicle. In their 56-country survey, TomTom researchers assessed 389 cities and metro areas for their average rush-hour travel times, fuel costs, and CO2 emissions to identify the trickiest towns, as well as a handful of car-friendly locales. The team also included a fuel cost and CO2 emission calculator for gas, diesel, and EV to keep everyday drivers, urban planners, and policy makers informed.

[Related: Roads in the US are getting deadlier.]

According to the report,  traffic data such as speed, acceleration, time, and distance were provided to TomTom via their products and services to identify patterns and averages. They then combined the traffic info with map data such as slopes and road health alongside the Graz University of Technology’s “Passenger car and Heavy-duty Emission” (PHEM) Model to estimate fuel consumption. A machine learning model was trained on these data sets, and then used to estimate global emissions and consumption on a total of 543 billion km of its database’s floating car data (FCD).

So how do the cities stack up? London remains the worst city to cruise by far, averaging over 36 minutes to traverse just 10km (roughly 6 miles) of roads via car, and nearly two minutes longer commute times from the prior year. Bengaluru, India, came in a distant second place, averaging a little over 29 minutes for the same distance.

The first American town to show up on TomTom’s ranking is New York City in 19th place, which takes residents around 24-and-a-half minutes to travel 10km in a car. As for stateside cities in general, Washington, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago all also scored relatively poorly.

[Related: Pittsburgh hopes to use AI to cure traffic congestion.]

When it comes to winners, however, Orlando has seen the most year-to-year improvement in vehicle time by far, shaving off an average of 30 seconds of drive time to just 10 minutes and 20 seconds. Although there are numerous ways to assess the rankings, in terms of simply American shortest commutes, Oklahoma City provides the quickest drive times at an average of just 8.4 minutes per 10km.

As convenient and helpful as all these rankings and estimators are, this data underscores just how important it is for global transportation to speed up its shift towards renewable energy sources and increase reliable public transit options to cut down on pollution and resource waste. It’s easier to get to work and back in a car in some cities in large part because they are designed to be extremely car-friendly. Both compact and sprawled cities can benefit from strengthening public transit infrastructures to accommodate local populations. 

Check out the worst and best US cities below.

Worst American cities for commuting in a car (in time per 10 km distance)

1. New York City—24min 30s
2. Washington, DC—20min 40s
3. San Francisco—20min 30s
4. Boston—18min 40s
5. Chicago—18min
6. Baltimore—17min
7. Seattle—15min 30s
8. Philadelphia‚15min 20s
9. Pittsburgh—14min 30s
10. Miami—14min 30s

Best American cities for commuting in a car (in time per 10 km distance)

1. Oklahoma City—8min 40s
2. Knoxville—8min 40s
3. San Diego—8min 40s
4. Dayton—9 min
5. Syracuse—9min 10s
6. Detroit—9min 10s
7. Albany—9min 10s
8. Fresno—9min 10s
9. Jacksonville—9min 20s
10. Raleigh—9min 20s

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