Category Archives: G & F

Here’s how coronavirus affected carbon emissions in every state

by NannieWhitelegg Posted on May 19, 2020

The pandemic is far from over, but some states are opening back up again, creating a situation where life is going back to some semblance of normal in some areas of the United States and staying eerily quiet in other places. A new analysis in the science journal Nature Climate Change sheds light on what happened to emissions during the months when the U.S. was maximally locked down.

Previous estimates of emissions reductions due to COVID-19 said the pandemic would take an 8 percent bite out of global emissions this year. This study, published Tuesday, is the first to analyze and quantify emissions drops on a day-to-day basis across 69 countries and state by state in the United States.

It found that the world is on track for the biggest emissions drop since World War II, or maybe even the biggest drop in history, depending on how long global lockdowns stay in place. (The study estimates that by the end of the year emissions could decline anywhere between 2 to 13 percent overall, depending on the nature and duration of governments’ lockdown policies.) During the peak of global lockdowns in early April, average daily emissions decreased by 17 percent compared to the 2019 average, hitting their lowest point since 2006. Nearly half of those emissions were from “surface transport,” like car rides.

In the U.S., emissions dropped by about a third for a couple of weeks in April, a development that Robert Jackson, a co-author of the study and a Guggenheim fellow at Stanford University, told Grist was “absolutely unprecedented.” On a national level, emissions decreased by about a quarter on average during each country’s peak of confinement.

Jackson and his fellow researchers created a “confinement index” to describe how locked down 69 countries were between the months of January and April according to three levels of confinement ranging from broad travel restrictions to “policies that substantially restrict the daily routine of all but key workers.” By examining six economic sectors — aviation, electricity, transportation, public buildings and commerce, residential, and industry — the study’s authors were able to determine to what extent economic activity, and the carbon dioxide emissions that accompany it, slowed as a result of which lockdown measures. The 69 countries they analyzed represent 97 percent of global CO2 emissions.

In the U.S., the study showed some major differences between states’ daily maximum emissions reductions. Washington state, for example, saw a more than 40 percent drop in emissions during its peak confinement, whereas the pandemic swallowed up just under 18 percent of Iowa’s emissions during its peak. Jackson says there’s a fairly straightforward reason why some states saw such big emissions deficits. “In general, states that are more rural acted much more slowly than states with big cities,” he said. In a few months’ time, those differences between states could deepen even more as the easing of lockdown restrictions in some states spur an increase in emissions.

Clayton Aldern / Grist

For the most part, the emissions decline will only last as long as the lockdowns. “Previous crises have not dented emissions very much,” he said, referencing the 2008 financial crash that decreased emissions globally by 1.5 percent for a year. By 2010, emissions had come roaring back, increasing 5 percent globally. “We’re forcing people to stay at home,” Jackson said. “That won’t last. If they hop back in their cars and consume at the same levels things will go back to normal.”

But Jackson says the pandemic has provided an opportunity for people to rethink transportation, at the very least. Sitting in an hour of traffic to get to work doesn’t sound super appealing after months of commuting 30 seconds to the dining room table. “That could jolt us into a longer-term drop in emissions,” he said.

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Here’s how coronavirus affected carbon emissions in every state

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Saving Chaco: As coronavirus consumes New Mexico, drilling threatens sacred land

by Stacey5834 Posted on May 19, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed tribal communities in New Mexico, where Native Americans comprise about 11 percent of the state’s population but a staggering 56 percent of its recorded COVID-19 cases. Last week the Navajo Nation, whose territory stretches across northern Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, recorded the highest number of coronavirus cases per capita in the country, surpassing New York and New Jersey.

It is against this backdrop that the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) just moved forward with its decision to hold a series of meetings to gather public input on a controversial oil and gas drilling plan for the Greater Chaco Region, a culturally and spiritually significant area for the Pueblo and Navajo peoples of northwestern New Mexico. Of course, the ongoing pandemic means that the meetings were held virtually — but because less than half of rural tribal households have fixed broadband access, critics say that these meetings were “public” in name only.

The meetings were intended to allow the public to give feedback on a proposed amendment to the region’s land use plan, which will update guidelines on how the BLM manages oil and gas development (such as fracking leases) on public land, as well as lands on which the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has authority to issue leases. The plan could ultimately add more than 3,000 new oil and gas wells to the area. Air quality monitoring has already found unusually high and hazardous levels of particulate matter pollution in one of the affected counties — the exact kind of pollution that has recently been linked to COVID-19 deaths, and may be exacerbated by new drilling.

Local tribes were heavily involved in the public input process until the novel coronavirus hit. Now they say that it’s shortsighted and reckless for the agency to plow ahead with the comment period. On Friday, during the second of the BLM’s five virtual public meetings, Richard Smith Sr., the tribal historic preservation officer for the Pueblo of Laguna, told the agency that the pueblo’s leadership couldn’t attend any of the meetings because it remains laser-focused on addressing the urgent health and safety needs of its community during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March the tribe requested that the BLM extend the deadline for the public comment period — and the situation has only grown more dire since then, Smith said.

“It is simply unconscionable to continue with the current schedule … and on behalf of the Pueblo of Laguna I urge you to immediately halt the current schedule and work with tribes and other stakeholders on developing a feasible timeline,” said Smith Sr.

Known as the Farmington Mancos-Gallup Draft Resource Management Plan Amendment (RMPA) and Environmental Impact Statement, the draft land use plan was publicly released for a 90-day public comment period on February 28. Depending on which version of the plan is ultimately adopted, the BLM projects that there could be as many as 3,101 new oil and gas wells within the planning area. A broad coalition of tribal leaders, environmental groups, conservationists, and politicians — including U.S. Senator Tom Udall and the entire New Mexico congressional delegation — have urged the BLM and BIA to postpone the public comment period, which is currently set to expire at the end of this month.

“The Greater Chaco Canyon Region is a sacred landscape that we owe a duty to protect. We take that duty seriously,” said J. Michael Chavarria, governor of the Santa Clara Pueblo and chairman of the All Pueblo Council of Governors, during a recent press call with other tribal, state, and federal leaders. He noted that the council, which represents the 20 governors of the sovereign Pueblo nations of New Mexico and Texas, was shocked and dismayed that federal agencies decided to move forward with the meetings in the midst of the pandemic. The last of the five meetings concluded on Monday morning.

Santa Clara Pueblo Gov. J. Michael Chavarria, right, during a forum at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, N.M., on Sept. 20, 2016. AP Photo / Russell Contreras

“Some of our pueblos have been hit hard by the virus and we cannot participate in meaningful consultation, even though it’s a virtual RMPA meeting,” said Chavarria.

The BLM began the amendment process in 2014 to update its current plan, and it pledged to address tribal concerns such as air quality, climate change, and environmental justice. The Greater Chaco Coalition, which represents more than 200 tribal, environmental, and community groups working to protect the region from further drilling, says that the draft plan shows that the agency has not followed through on these promises — and instead will facilitate more fracking. (The BLM did not respond to Grist’s request for comment.) Once approved, the plan will determine how land in the region is managed for the next 10 to 15 years.

Considered the cultural heart of the American Southwest, the Greater Chaco Region is home to ancient Puebloan ruins, including Chaco Canyon, where Chacoans built complex, multi-story buildings and flourished more than a millennium ago. While the canyon itself — which is now part of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site — is protected from drilling, the surrounding region within the San Juan Basin is not permanently protected.

The basin’s Mancos Shale rock formation is a major reservoir of natural gas and oil that has attracted industry attention in the past decade as new technologies emerged for horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. If the BLM doesn’t extend the public comment period, then it’s clear the federal agencies are intent on fast-tracking oil and gas development despite community opposition, according to Paul F. Reed, a preservation archaeologist and Chaco scholar with Archaeology Southwest, a conservation-focused nonprofit based in Tucson, Arizona.

“With the price of oil way down currently because of the crisis, there’s absolutely no reason to rush this planning process and thrust a hasty decision on New Mexicans that puts thousands and thousands of historic, sacred sites at risk as well as the folks living now at ground zero,” said Reed during the public comment portion of the BLM’s virtual meeting on Friday.

In court over the last five years, tribal, environmental, and legal organizations have successfully challenged the BLM’s approval of fracking and oil and gas drilling in the Greater Chaco Region, citing the agency’s failure to address the cumulative impacts of fracking on human health, the environment, and the cultural landscape. The agency has already leased more than 90 percent of federally managed land in the basin for drilling, including areas that intersect historic Chacoan roads and villages. But now those organizations say that long-protected areas are newly at risk for drilling. This comes as the Trump administration has dramatically increased drilling leases on public lands across the American West and the Gulf of Mexico.

“Part of the problem is that this [public input process] is now taking place in the context of an unprecedented health pandemic,” said attorney Kyle J. Tisdel, the climate and energy program director at the Western Environmental Law Center, which has taken the BLM to court over the cumulative effects of drilling since 2015. “That pandemic obviously has also an outsized impact on the Navajo Nation.”

Daniel E. Tso, who represents eight local government subdivisions, or chapters, within the Navajo Nation Council, the nation’s governing body, said in a letter to BLM officials last month that the leasing of land parcels for new oil well development throughout New Mexico’s tribal communities has worsened air pollution. This has weakened the respiratory health of residents, he wrote, making them more vulnerable to severe cases of COVID-19. One chapter, Counselor, has seen particularly heavy development by the oil and gas industry, and its neighboring chapters of Ojo Encino and Torreón-Starlake could experience an increase in oil lease sales if the new land use plan goes into effect.

For residents in these rural areas, there’s no escaping the presence of the oil industry, according to Tso, who noted during the recent press call that residents who travel long distances for medical treatments such as dialysis must share the road with heavy industry-related traffic. Given residents’ concerns around increased air pollution, it’s crucial that the comment period be delayed, Tso said during the press call.

“Nature has no boundaries, air has no boundaries. We are all connected in this aspect,” said Tso. “The greater Chaco area really needs to be saved for the future.”

Despite their concerns about the prospect of increased drilling, these Navajo communities were largely excluded from the BLM’s virtual public meetings because they either don’t have reliable high-speed internet access or lack it altogether, according to Tso. A 2019 Federal Communications Commission report found that less than half of households (46.6 percent) on rural tribal lands have access to fixed broadband service. Beyond the technological hurdles, many residents primarily speak Navajo, so virtual meetings conducted by the BLM in English present an added obstacle, said Tisdel of the Western Environmental Law Center.

“The notion that they’re going to just hold these public events and put them on Zoom calls is really problematic because that is not how Navajo communities engage in dialogue or communication,” he said.

Federal agencies are required by law to engage the public via robust outreach. If residents can’t meaningfully participate, then the agencies aren’t fulfilling that statutory obligation, noted Tisdel. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1970 requires that federal agencies assess the environmental effects of proposed actions such as federal infrastructure projects, while the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 has requirements to ensure public participation.

“The point of NEPA and the reason you have the comment period is to allow the public to engage and allow those comments to help shape the decision-making process — to help shape the ultimate choices that are made,” said Tisdel. “The key community is not going to have an opportunity, at least at this point, to be able to shape what that decision looks like.”

Though the BLM did not respond to Grist’s request for comment, the agency’s state director for New Mexico, Tim Spisak, used Friday’s virtual public meeting to acknowledge community pushback and defend the agency’s decision to move forward.

“We understand that these conversations are often preferred to be done in person, but right now it is critical that we do our part to keep the American public and BLM and BIA employees healthy and safe,” said Spisak. “It is also important though that we maintain a capable and functioning government to the greatest extent possible during the COVID-19 outbreak.”

Rebecca Sobel, a senior climate and energy campaigner with the environmental conservation nonprofit WildEarth Guardians, said during the same meeting that she would have preferred to cede her comment time to a local community member, person of color, or elder. But that’s not possible in a virtual forum, without face-to-face engagement where she could easily see all the attendees, she told the BLM.

“These meetings were pretty broadly and uniformly called out for their racism and inequitable access for participation,” said Sobel. She then proceeded to blast Twisted Sister’s hit 1984 song “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” which kicked off the public comment portion of the meeting on a raucous note.

The ruins of Pueblo Bonito house at Chaco Culture National Historical Park on May 20, 2015. Mladen Antonov / AFP via Getty Images

Compromised by Exposure

Earlier this spring, Harvard’s school of public health released a study that found a connection between elevated COVID-19 death rates and air pollution, specifically elevated levels of the particulate matter known as PM 2.5. The research, while not yet peer-reviewed, does suggest that people in counties with higher levels of PM 2.5 are more likely to die from the new coronavirus. This is a major concern for Navajo community leaders who have been studying the health effects of pollution connected to oil drilling in the Navajo chapter of Counselor in New Mexico’s Sandoval County, as well as the surrounding area.

The San Juan Basin, which has more than 300 oil fields and 40,000 drilled wells, encompasses the New Mexico counties of San Juan, McKinley, Rio Arriba, and Sandoval, all of which have land that will be assessed for additional drilling as part of the resource management plan. All of those counties, with the exception of Rio Arriba, are facing COVID-19 outbreaks, according to Senator Udall.

Five years ago, after residents began voicing concerns about unusual respiratory and health symptoms, the Counselor chapter submitted a resolution to the Navajo Nation calling for a moratorium on oil drilling. The chapter also undertook a health impact assessment to examine how oil and gas drilling is affecting residents in the Greater Chaco Region. One part of the assessment focused on air monitoring in Counselor, a rural community of about 700 residents that is part of a tri-county area (that also includes the chapters of Ojo Encino and Torreon) where there’s been a marked increase in fracking.

Community members formed the Counselor Health Impact Assessment Committee, which collected air monitoring data in 2018. The results were analyzed by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, a nonprofit public health organization that assists communities impacted by oil and gas development. The outdoor measurements show that Counselor has higher-than-average levels of PM 2.5 compared to similar communities across the country — communities that are also near oil and gas drilling.

The air monitors also measured hazardous spikes of PM 2.5 in the air outside homes and well pads. All of this was concerning before COVID-19 struck, given that residents who live near a source of air pollution are at greater risk for developing or worsening respiratory or cardiovascular diseases. But the recent Harvard findings clarified just how dangerous even small increases in exposure to this type of fine particulate matter could be for residents with any kind of respiratory illness during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Teresa Seamster, who co-authored the 2019 assessment and is a volunteer researcher and member of the Counselor Health Committee.

“This is why in the Navajo Nation so many people are getting seriously ill,” said Seamster. “If you’re exposed to oil and gas emissions, it could be very serious for you because you’re compromised.”

Protecting a history

U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt visited Chaco Culture National Historical Park last year. Afterward he implemented a one-year deferral on oil leasing in a 10-mile buffer zone around the park. That was supposed to give the BLM time to work on the resource management plan and also give Congress the time to vote on a bill that would permanently protect federal land within that zone from future oil and gas leasing. Now, that time is running out: The deferral is set to expire this month.

Among U.S. parks, Chaco Canyon is among the most threatened by oil and gas development, according to a National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) report. For tribal leaders, Chaco scholars, and environmental conservationists, protecting the region surrounding the park is a top priority because it is part of the cultural and spiritual landscape for the area’s tribes. The region is a vital part of the present identity of residents of Laguna Pueblo, who interact with the land through song, prayer, and pilgrimage, said Smith Sr.

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“Now more than ever, connections to our pueblo identities are a source of strength in difficult times,” he said during Friday’s BLM meeting. “We must ensure that these connections will not be irreparably severed, but maintained intact for future generations that will surely follow this crisis.”

The NPCA, which has also urged the Department of Interior to pause the public input process during the pandemic, notes in its report that oil and gas development has resulted in pollution from flares, leaking infrastructure, and “rampant” methane waste — particularly in the San Juan Basin, which has created a 2,500-square-mile methane cloud over the Four Corners region, including the area around Chaco Park.

“This plan to further industrialize these areas immediately surrounding the park with more drilling risks further scarring the landscape and destroying archeological sites, while the increase in carbon emissions will affect local air quality and the climate,” said Emily Wolf, New Mexico program coordinator at NPCA, in a statement to Grist.

Preserving archaeological sites requires a regional approach that preserves landscapes so that Pueblo communities don’t lose cultural and spiritual connections, said Reed — for example, when a historic corridor is breached by a pipeline or a power line. This means not just preserving individual sites, but also protecting the broader landscape from oil and gas development.

“The sites become these islands of protected bits of history and important spiritual landscapes for tribal folks, but then we get infill all around it with the industrial landscape, so the character, the feeling, and some of the other spiritual and intangible aspects get lost through time,” said Reed.

Improving management of this landscape to maximize protection of these sites requires the input of tribes, but with stay-at-home orders limiting mobility and a broad lack of internet access impeding communication, this is all but impossible, according to tribal, state, and federal leaders who have submitted communiqués to the BLM.

The greater Chaco landscape “is a uniquely special place that we can’t get back once destroyed,” said Senator Udall. “The short extension of this process out of respect and concern for the tribes, pueblos, and communities impacted is imperative.”

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Saving Chaco: As coronavirus consumes New Mexico, drilling threatens sacred land

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We Earthlings: Green Your Wardrobe

by renaldolangridge Posted on May 12, 2020

At Earth911, we’ve created a community that helps people find their own shade of green, match their values to their purchase behaviors, adopt environmentally sound practices and drive impactful environmental changes. We are dedicated to increasing recycling rates and helping you choose sustainable options to live a happier, healthier lifestyle; one that protects this wonderful planet we call Earth.

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We Earthlings: Green Your Wardrobe

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In the middle of a pandemic, renewables are taking over the grid

by kendrazimmermann Posted on May 1, 2020

The reduction in driving, flying, and industrial activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic has cleared the air in typically smog-choked cities all over the world, inspiring awe in residents who are seeing more blue skies and starry nights than ever before. While the drop in pollution doesn’t necessarily mean we’re making progress in mitigating climate change, it’s now proving to be a boon for solar energy generation.

Pollution blocks solar radiation, and the fine particles spat out during combustion can settle on the surface of solar panels, reducing their efficiency. Smog-free skies, along with a lucky combination of sunny days and cooler temperatures, which boost panel efficiency, have helped solar panels break records in the U.K., Germany, and Spain this spring. The trend points to the potential for a positive (and hopeful) feedback loop — as polluting energy sources are replaced by solar panels, those solar panels will be able to generate more energy.

In Germany, a record that was set in March was broken again on April 20, when solar generated 40 percent of the country’s electricity, while coal and nuclear power generated just 22 percent. It’s actually not unusual to see solar generation records this time of year, when new panels installed in the winter get their first time to shine in the spring weather. While the added capacity explains some of solar’s grid takeover, the drop in electricity demand right now due to the pandemic has also inflated its proportion in the total mix.

In the U.K., record solar power generation also helped coal plants set a major record, but the opposite kind. The entire U.K. energy system ran with zero coal-fired power plant generation for more than 18 days, the longest streak in more than a century. Britain has just four remaining coal plants, all of which are scheduled to close by 2025.

The COVID-19 pandemic has touched renewable energy in myriad ways, and not all good. In early March, it became clear that the virus was disrupting supply chains and financing, which will delay new solar and wind projects in the U.S. For the first time in decades, we probably won’t see increased growth in U.S. renewable energy capacity this year. But even if growth is slower, a new report from the International Energy Agency released Thursday predicts that renewables will likely be the only energy sector to see any growth in demand this year, and that coal is set for the largest decline in demand since World War II.

While it’s still hard to say how the industry will emerge from the rubble of a massive recession — especially as efforts to help it domestically have been a nonstarter in Congress — a new study by clean energy research firm BloombergNEF paints an optimistic picture that the renewable energy takeover will continue on a global scale. The financial research firm found that utility-scale solar farms and onshore wind farms now offer the cheapest source of electricity for about two-thirds of the world’s population.

The study finds that falling costs, more efficient technology, and government support in some parts of the world have fostered larger renewable power plants, with the average wind farm now double the size it was four years ago. The larger the plant, the lower the cost of generation. The price of electricity from onshore wind farms dropped 9 percent since mid-2019, and solar electricity prices likewise declined 4 percent.

The pandemic has depressed the price of coal and natural gas, so it remains to be seen whether and how quickly wind and solar will push them off the grid. But Tifenn Brandily, an analyst at BNEF, said in a statement that solar and wind prices haven’t hit the floor yet. “There are plenty of innovations in the pipeline that will drive down costs further,” he said.

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In the middle of a pandemic, renewables are taking over the grid

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Why climate skeptics are less likely to wear coronavirus masks

by DakotaMacDonnel Posted on April 30, 2020

There are many ways in which the coronavirus pandemic intersects with climate change — so many that Grist launched a whole newsletter about them. This week, the pollsters at Morning Consult unveiled another link between the two issues: Concern about climate change correlates with the way people are responding to the virus.

The poll, conducted online between April 14 and 16 on a national sample of 2,200 adults, found that people who said that they are not concerned about rising temperatures are less likely than the general public to take steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19. (The poll was weighted for age, educational attainment, gender, race, and region and has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.)

Forty-four percent of all the adults surveyed said they “always” wear a mask to grocery stores, public parks, and other public places. Fifty-four percent of folks who said they’re concerned about climate change said they always wear masks, but just 30 percent of people who are unconcerned about climate change said they always wear masks in public places. That’s a 24-point difference.

The survey defined climate-concerned adults as people who said they’re worried about climate change and agree that it’s driven by human activity. Climate-unconcerned respondents were those who said they were “not too concerned” or “not concerned at all” about climate change. (Must be nice!)

The disparity between climate hawks and climate skeptics was also evident in responses to other survey questions about disinfecting and social distancing, albeit on a smaller scale. The researchers said that the relatively small gap between climate concerned and unconcerned adults on the question of social distancing — a modest 8 percent — could be due to the fact that local, state, and federal officials started getting out the message about distancing earlier and were clearer about it than they were about disinfecting surfaces and wearing masks. (The CDC only advised Americans to start wearing masks in public in early April.)

Morning Consult cites experts who say there could be two reasons why people who aren’t concerned about climate are less likely to take steps to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic. A general skepticism of science and scientists is one of them. Previous polling has shown a partisan disparity in the way people regard scientists, primarily environmental scientists. In a 2019 poll, 43 percent of Democrats had “a great deal” of confidence in scientists, compared to 27 percent of Republicans. Much of conservatives’ mistrust of science is the result of a long, deliberate disinformation campaign from fossil fuel companies. Now, many of the same conservative pundits and leaders (including the president) who have sown doubt about climate change are also spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.

Concerns about personal autonomy can also help explain the divide in the poll, Emma Frances Bloomfield, an assistant professor in communication studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Morning Consult. “Everything that science asks us to do is really sacrificing personal convenience for community convenience and well-being,” Bloomfield said. “And for a lot of people, the coronavirus is invisible, just like climate change is invisible.”

The pandemic has asked a lot of Americans. The climate crisis will surely ask more of us. The question, as we get deeper into the pandemic and more Americans are affected or know someone who has been touched by COVID-19, is whether authority-averse and science-skeptical adults will start drawing connections between their personal choices and scientist’s warnings, or if the pandemic will force everyone deeper into their ideological foxholes.

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Why climate skeptics are less likely to wear coronavirus masks

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Coronavirus’s next victim: Big Meat

by JulianeBurchfie Posted on April 30, 2020

Americans are soon going to be eating a lot less meat — just not in the way environmentalists had hoped that would happen. Coronavirus has shuttered so many meatpacking plants around the country that the number of cattle and pigs slaughtered every day is down 40 percent. Farmers are euthanizing pigs by the thousand and trucking the meat to landfills to rot.

“The food supply chain is breaking,” wrote John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods Inc. in a full-page that ran in major newspapers on Sunday.

As far as his business is concerned, Tyson is right: The meat industry has never experienced a crisis like this before. It’s likely to lead to many long term changes: more scrutiny of the industry’s consolidation, more support for smaller meat companies, and a renewed push for mechanization. In the short term, it means two things: scarcity and higher prices.

“It’s going to cause price spikes somewhere downstream,” said Rich Sexton, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis. But the average shopper might only notice empty shelves rather than higher prices, because “big grocery chains don’t like to jack up prices, especially in times like this.”

By the last week of April, some 16 plants had been shut down. In response, President Donald Trump issued an executive order Tuesday to reopen meatpacking plants, provoking protests from unions and Democratic politicians who say that the order doesn’t do enough to protect workers from getting infected. “We are really putting workers in grave danger today,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut at a press conference on Tuesday. At least 20 meat-processing workers have died from coronavirus so far.

It’s all frightening enough that very serious people are warning of a collapse that could end in food riots. So is it time to panic-buy for real? How could we protect the people risking their lives to produce food? And could this crisis wind up breaking the grip of the few companies that control most of meat processing in America? Here’s our explainer for anyone who wants to get beyond their reflexive Trump-fury and search for solutions.

Would people starve if the meatpacking plants stayed closed?

After Trump announced his order, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa tweeted that “society is 9 meals away from food riots.” But, no, there are still plenty of calories to go around — even with farmers dumping mountains of potatoes and oceans of milk. Meatpacking plants are not an existential necessity, because humans survive primarily on grains; we are more seed eaters than beef eaters. The supply chains delivering bread, pasta, and rice are still working well because they rely on machines rather than virus-vulnerable human labor. And much more food is in storage.

“There’s still enough food, but it might not be what we wanted,” said Jayson Lusk, food economist at Purdue University.

What’s the argument for keeping these plants open?

Keeping even a few of the biggest meatpacking plants closed for more than a month could cripple every food business and farmer connected to them. And they are connected to almost everyone. The meat industry is shaped like an hourglass, with farmers at one end, eaters at the other, and a few enormous packing plants at the chokepoint. For example, just 15 slaughterhouses kill 60 percent of the pigs in America.

Purdue University

So the economists I talked to said it only made sense to find a way to get the plants running again as soon as possible.

Farmers are scrambling to find smaller slaughterhouses and meat packers, and those smaller businesses are benefiting, said Nelson Gaydos of the American Association of Meat Processors, which represents these smaller companies. “A lot of people are saying it’s like Christmas on steroids,” he said.

But the big boys are so enormous that the small- and medium-sized meat companies can’t make up for their losses. Imagine you ran a small slaughterhouse that killed 200 pigs a day from local farmers: That might sound like a lot, but you’d have to do that for 100 days to provide as much pork as one of the big plants butcher in a single day (Lusk did the math in a blog post).

Can the plants reopen safely this soon?

It’s tough to tell. Companies are giving workers masks, having them stand six feet apart, and putting up plexiglass barriers when they need to be closer, said Gaydos.

Democrats have said that the government should mandate worker protections rather than simply asking for good-faith efforts as Trump did in his executive order. “It is vital that we do everything we can to protect food supply workers,” wrote a group of Democratic senators in a letter to Trump. “Breakdowns in the food supply chain could have significant economic impacts for both consumers and agricultural producers.”

There’s only so much the government can do. Trump’s executive order releases meat companies from liability from worker’s lawsuits, and it overrules state and local authorities calling for shutdowns. But the president can’t force workers to come back to the job if they don’t feel safe.

How will this crisis change things?

A crisis exposes weaknesses. This one is revealing two major vulnerabilities in the meat industry: Its reliance on human labor and its concentration.

Henry Ford modeled his assembly lines after the disassembly lines he saw in meat packing plants. Automobile assembly lines grew more and more automated, while meat plants continued to rely mostly on dirty, dangerous grunt work. The experience of a pandemic could soon change that. There’s one slaughterhouse in Holland that is almost completely run by machines.

“There is going to be even more of a rush to automate farmwork and slaughterhouses,” Sexton said.

The hourglass shape of the meat industry is another vulnerability. This concentration of just a few giant meat companies is able to put inexpensive meat on the plate of people at even the lowest income levels in America, but it can’t nimbly respond to changes.

Concentration causes other problems, too. For instance, the meat behemoth JBS recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to a union for conducting a “multi-faceted corporate campaign” to “coerce” the corporation to make worker-safety concessions at a plant in Greeley, Colorado.

Of course, unions exist to coerce companies to give workers more money and better conditions. The fact that JBS views the union demands as an illegal breach, rather than business as usual, suggests that it is not used to serious challenges to its authority.

The number of slaughterhouses has fallen 70 percent since the 1960s, a result of bigger companies swallowing up the little ones to grow even bigger. But the pandemic has put these giants in the spotlight. On Wednesday, a bipartisan pair of Senators asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate meatpacking consolidation.

And maybe this crisis will lead politicians to lift some of the regulatory barriers that keep smaller businesses out, Lusk said.

What about the environment? At the moment, that’s an afterthought. The attention right now is focused on ensuring Americans have a steady supply of meat, not on prodding the industry to become environmentally sustainable.

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Coronavirus’s next victim: Big Meat

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Study: Gas-powered appliances may be hazardous for your health

by Sang41834480885 Posted on April 30, 2020

Stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures have dramatically improved outdoor air quality in cities around the world, but a new study published Tuesday shows that indoor air quality may pose acute risks of its own — especially now that the novel coronavirus has us all spending so much time at home.

The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health study found that after just an hour of using a gas-fired stove or oven, levels of nitrogen dioxide — one of a group of gases that contribute to smog formation and are considered harmful to human health — inside California homes reached levels that exceeded both state and national ambient air-quality standards. The compromised indoor air quality caused by gas-powered furnaces, stoves, and water heaters could increase the likelihood of respiratory and cardiovascular disease and premature death, according to the study.

“The goal of this report is to provide information to Californians on how pollution from gas-fired appliances affects the air they breathe, and the related health effects,” Yifang Zhu, the study’s lead researcher, said in a statement. “California’s state agencies often focus on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts, but there has been much less focus on how fossil fuel use in household appliances can adversely impact indoor air quality and public health.”

The research, commissioned by Sierra Club, comes as recent studies have linked air pollution to higher rates of COVID-19 mortality. Inhaling nitrogen oxides poses especially acute risks to children and the elderly. Meanwhile, residential gas appliances emit approximately 16,000 tons of nitrogen oxides to outdoor air each year — which Rachel Golden, deputy director of Sierra Club’s building electrification program, notes is more than twice the NOx emissions from all of California’s gas-fired power plants combined.

Air pollution concentration matters a great deal, so residents of smaller homes and apartments often have it worse. Researchers found that after an hour of cooking in a small household, more than 90 percent of smaller residences had peak levels of nitrogen oxides that exceeded national ambient air quality standards. As Grist’s resident advice columnist Eve Andrews reminded us last week, indoor air quality isn’t always better than what you’re breathing outdoors.

The study also highlights environmental justice issues, since low-income households tend to have less space and more unmet maintenance needs, which can increase indoor emissions on top of being more at-risk for poor outdoor air quality. These factors may contribute to higher rates of respiratory challenges among low-income communities — particularly communities of color — which in turn may make residents more vulnerable to developing serious complications if they contract COVID-19.

To decrease indoor air pollution, the study proposes that households transition to zero-emission electric appliances. If all residential gas appliances in California were immediately replaced with clean energy alternatives, the resulting decrease in pollution would result in approximately 350 fewer deaths, 600 fewer cases of acute bronchitis, and 300 fewer cases of chronic bronchitis annually.

Without a massive public intervention, however, it seems unlikely that these appliances will be replaced at that scale, at least not in the homes of many low-income residents that could benefit the most. Golden says that policymakers can prioritize a just transition by focusing on efforts to reduce pollution and lower energy bills for vulnerable households, especially given the economic fallout from COVID-19.

“State agencies have a central role to play in helping people replace polluting gas appliances with clean, pollution-free electric alternatives like heat pumps and induction stoves,” Golden told Grist.

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Study: Gas-powered appliances may be hazardous for your health

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Don’t look now, but the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season could break records

by delmarurd25506 Posted on April 29, 2020

Parts of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans saw record-high temperatures last month. Meanwhile, the average ocean temperature worldwide came in just shy of the record set in 2016.

On Saturday morning, a tropical depression formed in the eastern Pacific Ocean — the earliest tropical cyclone in that area since reliable record-keeping began in the early 1970s.

These two facts are related: Warming water is changing the size and frequency of tropical storms. And new forecasts show that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, which will take place between June and November, is shaping up to be among the worst we’ve ever experienced.

Last week, Penn State’s Earth System Science Center released its predictions for the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. The team of scientists, which include renowned climate scientist Michael E. Mann, said we could be looking at between 15 and 24 named tropical storms this year. Their best estimate is 20 storms. It could be one of the most active hurricane seasons on record.

That’s assuming there’s a La Niña — a weather pattern that blows warm water into the Atlantic and helps dredge up cooler water in the Pacific, sometimes leading to more tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean and fewer in the Pacific. If a La Niña doesn’t develop, then the scientists predict slightly fewer Atlantic hurricanes this year: between 14 and 23 storms. But signs are pointing toward cooling ocean temperatures in the Pacific over the next several months, which could prevent an El Niño — La Niña’s opposite half, which suppresses storms in the Atlantic — from forming. That portends a busy Atlantic season ahead.

In order to get their results, Mann and his team looked at El Niño–Southern Oscillation — the periodic back-and-forth between El Niño or La Niña — in addition to Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies in April and climatic conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. The scientists relied on a statistical model that considers the relationship among a large number of climate factors (water surface temperature, humidity, water vapor, etc.) and the historical Atlantic tropical cyclone record. The actual number of named tropical storms has either fallen within the model’s predicted range or exceeded it every year that the scientists have made a prediction since 2007.

Mann’s model isn’t the only Atlantic hurricane forecast out there predicting a busy season. The Weather Company’s outlook predicts 18 named storms, nine hurricanes, and four major hurricanes (category 3 or higher). Colorado State University also predicts a busy season, with 16 named storms, eight hurricanes, and four major hurricanes. The 30-year average is 12 named storms, six hurricanes, and three major hurricanes. The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration will release its official outlook in late May.

Just because the forecast says the Atlantic is going to have an active hurricane season doesn’t mean that each of those predicted storms will hit land — there’s no way to predict that this far out. But we do know that the storm-suppressing El Niño looks like it’s going to take a sabbatical this year. The news couldn’t come at a less opportune time. The United States and other countries bordering the Atlantic already have their hands full with the coronavirus pandemic. Another disaster on top of that could strain our already-buckling disaster response system.

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Don’t look now, but the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season could break records

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A Splintered History of Wood – Spike Carlsen

by Myrna Posted on April 25, 2020

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

A Splintered History of Wood

Belt-Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats

Spike Carlsen

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: October 6, 2009

Publisher: HarperCollins e-books

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


In a world without wood, we might not be here at all. Without wood, we wouldn't have had the fire, heat, and shelter that allowed us to expand into the colder regions of the planet. If civilization somehow did develop, our daily lives still would be vastly different: there would be no violins, baseball bats, chopsticks, or wine corks. The book you are now holding wouldn't exist. At the same time, many of us are removed from the world where wood is shaped and celebrated every day. That world is inhabited by a unique assortment of eccentric craftsmen and passionate enthusiasts who have created some of the world's most beloved musical instruments, feared weapons, dazzling architecture, sacred relics, and bizarre forms of transportation. In A Splintered History of Wood, Spike Carlsen has uncovered the most outlandish characters and examples, from world-champion chainsaw carvers to blind woodworkers, the Miraculous Staircase to the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and many more, in a passionate and personal exploration of nature's greatest gift.

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A Splintered History of Wood – Spike Carlsen

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More words to describe a world gone nuts: Firenado, ecoanxiety, covidiots

by CeceliaKoenig Posted on April 23, 2020

Remember the first time you heard the phrase social distancing? Chances are that it was earlier this year, even though the phrase was coined in 1957, when it meant something akin to “ghosting.” After more than 60 years of stagnation, the phrase instantaneously wove its way into our everyday speech.

As the coronavirus pandemic tightens its grip on seemingly every aspect of daily life, our vocabularies are adapting at warp speed. Once obscure phrases are suddenly commonplace. The virus, nicknamed the rona, has spawned other creative coinages. A quarantini is a cocktail you drink in the isolation of your home. A covidiot is someone who throws a block party when everybody is supposedly sheltered in place. Technical acronyms like PPE (personal protective equipment) have entered everyday speech, as well as slang like WFH (working from home, a.k.a. working from hell). The most meticulous know the distinction between quarantine and isolation. Someday soon, we’ll all start gossiping about isolationships.

Language is trying to keep up with a world in upheaval, a time in which many see the planet as plotting against us, with fresh heat waves, punishing droughts, and wildfires. Every year brings new crises and new words to describe them, such as ecoanxiety, firenado, flight shame, and climate crisis. In an update last April, Merriam-Webster added all sorts of environment-related words to its online dictionary, including microplastic, “a piece of plastic that is five millimeters or smaller in size,” and omnicide, “the destruction of all life or all human life (as by nuclear war).”

Last month, Merriam-Webster announced its fastest update ever, adding COVID-19 — the shortened form of coronavirus disease 2019 — to its online dictionary a mere one month after the World Health Organization minted it. In the slow-moving world of lexicography, that’s a “rapid pace.” Super-spreader, self-quarantine, and patient zero were also included in the special update.

Dictionaries are simply giving the people the resources they want. The Oxford English Dictionary keeps track of the terms being used more frequently than usual, and in March, all 20 of the top keywords had something to do with coronavirus.

“Any new and widespread phenomenon always brings with it the development of new language to describe it,” wrote Fiona McPherson, editorial manager at the OED, in a statement accompanying the dictionary’s update.

Just four months ago, dictionary editors were picking their 2019 “words of the year.” The selections included climate emergency and climate strike (the global protests first started by Greta Thunberg, the 17-year-old Swedish activist), more evidence that the urgency (or anxiety) around climate change was going mainstream. It seemed like everyone was talking about the Green New Deal, whether they loved it or hated it.

This year, the Word of the Year selections will undoubtedly be related to the novel coronavirus. But it’s by no means the only crisis we’ll face in the coming months. Scientists are predicting that 2020 will deliver devastating floods, hellish wildfires, and even more supercharged hurricanes than usual. Hey, at least we’ll have something else to talk about.

“Usual” is already a pretty high bar these days. Heat records are broken so often that they’re hardly considered news. Under a smoky-red sun, the wind has taken ash from burning forests and rained it down on cities. Holing up in your home for months while sewing face masks for your family? That’s definitely not part of the old normal, either.

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More words to describe a world gone nuts: Firenado, ecoanxiety, covidiots

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