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UN gives airlines a break on emissions targets because, duh, COVID-19

Governments around the world have rushed to help the airline industry, one of the planet’s biggest polluters, survive the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump administration lined up a $32 billion bailout for U.S. carriers in April, and, in late May, the German government approved a $10 billion bailout for Lufthansa. This week, a United Nations group gave them another big break, saying that airlines won’t need to offset millions of tons of emissions.

It’s a blow to the booming, billion-dollar market for carbon offsets, and a blow to efforts to curb airline emissions. The U.N. group “is looking more and more like a puppet of the airlines, who are really calling the shots,” said Dan Rutherford, a program director for marine and aviation at the International Council on Clean Transportation, in an email.

The aviation industry accounts for around 2.4 percent of carbon emissions worldwide. If airlines formed a country, it would rank in the top 10 carbon polluters. It’s also one of the hardest industries to decarbonize: There aren’t clean alternatives for jet fuel, and not everyone can travel, Greta Thunberg-style, by high-speed sailboat.

But one of the few bright spots for cutting fossil-fuel pollution from aviation has been a United Nations scheme to get airlines to offset their growing emissions starting in 2021. The plan, signed in 2016 by 191 countries, is voluntary until 2027, and requires airlines to offset the emissions from all international flights that exceed a baseline of the average emissions from 2019 and 2020. The scheme is supposed to be policed by individual countries, who will oversee the emissions produced by companies headquartered within their borders.

So airlines would still be emitting millions of tons of carbon dioxide, but at least they would also be investing cash in planting trees and other schemes to suck that CO2 back out of the atmosphere.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic and one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression. This year, airlines worldwide are expected to lose over $85 billion, and the number of people flying is expected to plunge 50 percent. The prospect of paying to offset emissions suddenly didn’t look so good.

In response, the airline industry petitioned the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO — the United Nations council overseeing international air travel — to erase 2020 from baseline calculations. Because traffic has been so low this year, the airlines argued that using it as part of a baseline would be an “inappropriate economic burden,” under the assumption that air traffic will resurge in coming years.

On Tuesday, the U.N. organization gave them a break, setting a new baseline of 2019 alone. Rutherford said the decision lets airlines off the hook for between 50 and 200 million tons of CO2. And, given how long it might take airline travel to rebound, he expects most airlines won’t have to offset anything until 2024.

If there’s a bright spot here, it’s that this move is unlikely that this will slow the long-term decarbonization of aviation — which, according to Rutherford, is more dependent on new technology than short-term offsetting. British Airways, Delta, and a host of other major airlines have already claimed that they will reach “net-zero” emissions by 2050, through a combination of better fuel efficiency and clean jet fuel. British Airways, for instance, wants to make fuel out of household waste like diapers and coffee cups.

But the coronavirus pandemic may be a sign that, when profits are on the line, airlines will throw green policies out the window. If carbon offsets are too much of a burden, can big promises and coffee-cup fuel clean up this polluting industry?

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UN gives airlines a break on emissions targets because, duh, COVID-19

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The Devil’s Teeth – Susan Casey

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The Devil’s Teeth

A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks

Susan Casey

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: May 30, 2006

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Seller: Macmillan


A journalist's obsession brings her to a remote island off the California coast, home to the world's most mysterious and fearsome predators–and the strange band of surfer-scientists who follow them Susan Casey was in her living room when she first saw the great white sharks of the Farallon Islands, their dark fins swirling around a small motorboat in a documentary. These sharks were the alphas among alphas, some longer than twenty feet, and there were too many to count; even more incredible, this congregation was taking place just twenty-seven miles off the coast of San Francisco. In a matter of months, Casey was being hoisted out of the early-winter swells on a crane, up a cliff face to the barren surface of Southeast Farallon Island-dubbed by sailors in the 1850s the "devil's teeth." There she joined Scot Anderson and Peter Pyle, the two biologists who bunk down during shark season each fall in the island's one habitable building, a haunted, 135-year-old house spackled with lichen and gull guano. Two days later, she got her first glimpse of the famous, terrifying jaws up close and she was instantly hooked; her fascination soon yielded to obsession-and an invitation to return for a full season. But as Casey readied herself for the eight-week stint, she had no way of preparing for what she would find among the dangerous, forgotten islands that have banished every campaign for civilization in the past two hundred years. The Devil's Teeth is a vivid dispatch from an otherworldly outpost, a story of crossing the boundary between society and an untamed place where humans are neither wanted nor needed.

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The Devil’s Teeth – Susan Casey

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Help Your Kids with Math – Barry Lewis

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Help Your Kids with Math

Barry Lewis

Genre: Mathematics

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: July 1, 2014

Publisher: DK Publishing

Seller: PENGUIN GROUP USA, INC.


Studying math is often a source of great anxiety for children and teenagers. It also proves troublesome for parents, as many are reminded of their own struggles with the subject and feel lost when trying to tackle it again years later. Help Your Kids with Math is designed to reduce the stress of studying math for both children and adults. Help Your Kids with Math uses an appealing and uniquely accessible illustrative style that will show you what others only tell you, covering everything from basic arithmetic to more challenging subjects such as statistics, geometry, and algebra. Every aspect of math is explained in easily understandable language so that adults and children can deal with the subject together. Tricky concepts are explored and examined step-by-step, so that even the most math-phobic individual will be able to approach complex problems with confidence. Part of an original series of study aids that aims to demystify subjects that seem tricky and incomprehensible, Help Your Kids with Math provides invaluable guidance and easy explanations for all those desperate kids and parents who need to understand math and put it into practice.

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Help Your Kids with Math – Barry Lewis

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The Outermost House – Henry Beston

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The Outermost House

A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Henry Beston

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: May 17, 2013

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Seller: Macmillan


The seventy-fifth anniversary edition of the classic book about Cape Cod, “written with simplicity, sympathy, and beauty” ( New York Herald Tribune ) A chronicle of a solitary year spent on a Cape Cod beach, The Outermost House has long been recognized as a classic of American nature writing. Henry Beston had originally planned to spend just two weeks in his seaside home, but was so possessed by the mysterious beauty of his surroundings that he found he “could not go.” Instead, he sat down to try and capture in words the wonders of the magical landscape he found himself in thrall to: the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. Beston argued that, “The world today is sick to its thin blood for the lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.” Seventy-five years after they were first published, Beston’s words are more true than ever.

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The Outermost House – Henry Beston

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Emperors of the Deep – William McKeever

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Emperors of the Deep

Sharks–The Ocean’s Most Mysterious, Most Misunderstood, and Most Important Guardians

William McKeever

Genre: Biology

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: June 25, 2019

Publisher: HarperOne

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


In this remarkable groundbreaking book, a documentarian and conservationist, determined to dispel misplaced fear and correct common misconceptions, explores in-depth the secret lives of sharks—magnificent creatures who play an integral part in maintaining the health of the world’s oceans and ultimately the planet. From the Jaws blockbusters to Shark Week, we are conditioned to see sharks as terrifying cold-blooded underwater predators. But as Ocean Guardian founder William McKeever reveals, sharks are evolutionary marvels essential to maintaining a balanced ecosystem. We can learn much from sharks, he argues, and our knowledge about them continues to grow. The first book to reveal in full the hidden lives of sharks, Emperors of the Deep examines four species—Mako, Tiger, Hammerhead, and Great White—as never before, and includes fascinating details such as: Sharks are 50-million years older than trees;Sharks have survived five extinction level events, including the one that killed off the dinosaurs;Sharks have electroreception, a sixth-sense that lets them pick up on electric fields generated by living things;Sharks can dive 4,000 feet below the surface;Sharks account for only 6 human fatalities per year, while humans kill 100 million sharks per year. McKeever goes back through time to probe the shark’s pre-historic secrets and how it has become the world’s most feared and most misunderstood predator, and takes us on a pulse-pounding tour around the world and deep under the water’s surface, from the frigid waters of the Arctic Circle to the coral reefs of the tropical Central Pacific, to see sharks up close in their natural habitat. He also interviews ecologists, conservationists, and world-renowned shark experts, including the founders of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, the head of the Massachusetts Shark Research Program, and the self-professed “last great shark hunter.” At once a deep-dive into the misunderstood world of sharks and an urgent call to protect them, Emperors of the Deep celebrates this wild species that hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of the ocean—if we can prevent their extinction from climate change and human hunters.

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Emperors of the Deep – William McKeever

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Physics of the Impossible – Michio Kaku

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Physics of the Impossible

A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

Michio Kaku

Genre: Physics

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: March 11, 2008

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships—the stuff of science fiction or potentially attainable future technologies? Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Back to the Future , renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Michio Kaku takes an informed, serious, and often surprising look at what our current understanding of the universe's physical laws may permit in the near and distant future.Entertaining, informative, and imaginative, Physics of the Impossible probes the very limits of human ingenuity and scientific possibility.

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Physics of the Impossible – Michio Kaku

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Seeing Science – Iris Gottlieb

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Seeing Science

An Illustrated Guide to the Wonders of the Universe

Iris Gottlieb

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: October 30, 2018

Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC

Seller: Chronicle Books LLC


Science is really beautiful. With original illustrations that deftly explain the strange-but-true world of science, Seeing Science offers a curated ride through the great mysteries of the universe. Artist and lay scientist Iris Gottlieb explains among other things: neap tides, naked mole rats, whale falls, the human heart, the Uncertainty Principle, the ten dimensions of string theory, and how glaciers are like Snickers bars. With quirky visual metaphors and concise factual explanations, she offers just the right amount of information to stoke the curious mind with a desire to know more about the life forces that animate both the smallest cell and the biggest black hole. Seeing Science illustrates, explicates, and celebrates the marvels of science as only art can.

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Seeing Science – Iris Gottlieb

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An Elephant in My Kitchen – Françoise Malby-Anthony & Katja Willemsen

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An Elephant in My Kitchen

What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage and Survival

Françoise Malby-Anthony & Katja Willemsen

Genre: Nature

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: November 5, 2019

Publisher: St. Martin’s Publishing Group

Seller: Macmillan


THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER "Malby-Anthony offers a book of great inspiration and wide appeal to nature-loving readers. " —Publishers Weekly A heart-warming sequel to the international bestseller The Elephant Whisperer , by Lawrence Anthony's wife Françoise Malby-Anthony. A chic Parisienne, Françoise never expected to find herself living on a South African game reserve. But then she fell in love with conservationist Lawrence Anthony and everything changed. After Lawrence’s death, Françoise faced the daunting responsibility of running Thula Thula without him. Poachers attacked their rhinos, their security team wouldn’t take orders from a woman and the authorities were threatening to cull their beloved elephant family. On top of that, the herd’s feisty new matriarch Frankie didn’t like her. In this heart-warming and moving book, Françoise describes how she fought to protect the herd and to make her dream of building a wildlife rescue center a reality. She found herself caring for a lost baby elephant who turned up at her house, and offering refuge to traumatized orphaned rhinos, and a hippo called Charlie who was scared of water. As she learned to trust herself, she discovered she’d had Frankie wrong all along. Filled with extraordinary animals and the humans who dedicate their lives to saving them, An Elephant in My Kitchen is a captivating and gripping read.

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An Elephant in My Kitchen – Françoise Malby-Anthony & Katja Willemsen

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The Ocean Cleanup project finally cleaned up some plastic

Well, folks, there’s a first time for everything — the Ocean Cleanup project has successfully deployed a device that collects plastic pollution.

It only took six years, tens of millions of dollars, and a few unsuccessful attempts (or “unscheduled learning opportunities,” in the words of 25-year-old founder and CEO Boyan Slat). The nonprofit’s prior, unsuccessful designs failed to catch any plastic, broke, or overflowed.

The new system even managed to pick up 1-millimeter microplastics, which Ocean Cleanup described as “a feat we were pleasantly surprised to achieve” in a press release.

Now that it finally has working technology, the Ocean Cleanup project hopes to scale up its fleet of 2,000-foot long, plastic-capturing, floating booms. The goal is to remove 50 percent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the next five years, and 90 percent of ocean plastic by 2040, an effort it estimates will require around 60 devices.

The project has drawn criticism over the years from scientists who argue it provides false hope and is disruptive to marine life. All that money and effort would be better spent diverting the 8 million tons of plastic that enter the oceans every year, the thinking goes.

To his credit, Slat acknowledges the importance of preventing pollution, not just cleaning it up. And his team of more than 80 scientists and engineers have also done some research that has contributed to what we know about the sources, scope, and nature of ocean plastic pollution — although their conclusions are controversial.

The first pieces of plastic gathered by Ocean Cleanup are on their way back to the U.S. to be recycled. Is it a perfect solution to the problem of ocean pollution? Probably not. But at the very least, we can all celebrate today knowing that the Dutch 18-year-old from that TED Talk, who saw plastic while scuba diving and asked, “Why don’t we just clean it up?”, is that much closer to his dreams coming true.

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The Ocean Cleanup project finally cleaned up some plastic

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Here’s why Iceland is mourning a dead glacier

Some 100 people gathered at the top of a volcano in Iceland on Sunday for an unusual funeral. The victim: A 700-year-old, six-mile glacier. Cause of death: climate change.

The Okjokull glacier actually died a decade ago. But Iceland decided to hold the funeral for the deceased ice mass — it’s first to go extinct from rising temperatures — last weekend amid warnings from the scientific community that hundreds of other glaciers across the sub-Arctic country could soon disappear. Iceland is projected to be entirely glacier-free within 200 years.

A plaque at the site of the vanished glacier, installed with a drill and assistance from some of the children in attendance, reads: “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.” Henceforth the glacier will be known as just “Ok”; the Icelandic word for glacier, “jokull,” no longer applies.

An ice-free Iceland represents more than just an identity crisis for Icelanders. If global leaders don’t take action to slow rising temperatures, the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet alone could raise sea-levels more than five feet in the next 200 years. Enormous quantities of methane slumbering in the Arctic permafrost are threatening to come alive as record temperatures fry the top of our planet. Two fast-melting glaciers in Antarctica are holding back enough sea ice to flood oceans with another 11 feet of water.

The symbolic funeral took place three days before a meeting in Reykjavik between Iceland’s prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, other Nordic leaders, and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. Jakobsdóttir said she aims to make addressing the climate crisis a priority at that meeting. “We see the consequences of the climate crisis,” she told the group of mourners. “We have no time to lose.”

Iceland may be the first country to hold a funeral for a dead glacier, but it’s not the first to mourn a natural wonder under assault by global warming. Australia is grappling with the slow death of its Great Barrier Reef, three islands have disappeared into the rising sea in the past year, and the United States is on the cusp of losing many of its cultural sites, like Jamestown, to rising tides.

And the death count is bound to rise as we make our way deeper into this century. Are we prepared to hold a funeral for, say, Miami? By 2070, the city’s streets will flood every single day (whether South Beach real estate agents realize it or not). If world leaders can’t get rampant emissions under control, we’d all better start getting used to living in a world that is just “Ok.”

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Here’s why Iceland is mourning a dead glacier

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