Tag Archives: america-green

This downer of a holiday keeps getting earlier every year

by AlbaStowell Posted on August 8, 2016

Congrats!

This downer of a holiday keeps getting earlier every year

By on Aug 8, 2016Share

When it comes to gobbling up natural resources, we humans are exceptionally gifted. Monday, August 8, is Earth Overshoot Day, a downer of a holiday that keeps creeping up earlier on our calendars, arriving five days earlier than last year.

The Global Footprint Network tracks the point in the year when we’ve used more of the important stuff that sustains life — you know, water, trees, fish — than nature’s ability to regenerate those resources.

And we’ve still got 145 days left to go.

Here’s how our collective footprint (red line) compares to Earth’s ability to cope with that demand (green line) over the past half century.

Global Footprint Network

We started overshooting our budget in 1971, and we’ve widened the deficit ever since. Give yourselves a pat on the back, humanity!

Check out Grist’s video on Earth Overshoot Day last year, which explains consumption habits in terms you can understand — caffeine addiction.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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This downer of a holiday keeps getting earlier every year

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Volkswagen says it’s cleaning up its emissions, this time for reals

by AdolfoBourget Posted on August 4, 2016

Sorry (I Ain’t Sorry)

Volkswagen says it’s cleaning up its emissions, this time for reals

By on Aug 4, 2016Share

What’s a car company to do when its name becomes synonymous with dirty emissions? If you’re Volkswagen, seek redemption.

This week, the German auto manufacturer announced the rollout of air pollution-cutting filters on 7 million of its new cars. The particulate filters, which should cut soot by 90 percent by 2022, will cause “significant reduction” in vehicles’ emissions, according to the company. Beginning in 2017, the Volkswagen Tiguan and the Audi A5 will sport the new filters.

This is a change — or, at the very least, a mea culpa — for the company whose environmental track record was demolished in the wake of a massive emissions regulations cheating scandal uncovered in 2015. The rigged emissions tests that Volkswagen programmed for 11 million cars released as much as 41,000 tons of nitrogen oxides (a group of gases that contribute to air pollution) into the air annually. They also earned the company multiple investigations into its emissions practices, a drop in stock prices, and, most recently, a lawsuit brought by the German state of Bavaria.

With the new filters, can we believe that Volkswagen is really turning a new, greener leaf? It’s a possibility — but not a guarantee.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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Volkswagen says it’s cleaning up its emissions, this time for reals

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You call it methane, we call it “nature’s bouncy house”

by TaniaGooge4 Posted on July 22, 2016

Imperma-frost

You call it methane, we call it “nature’s bouncy house”

By on Jul 22, 2016Share

Bouncy houses are pretty cool — but not necessarily something we’d want to find in nature.

Siberia’s melting permafrost has led to some puzzling geological marvels: first giant sinkholes, and now, grassy methane trampolines. After a particularly warm summer, hitherto frozen tundra has begun to thaw, releasing greenhouse gases that were held captive beneath the ground for millennia.

The Siberian Times reports that methane and CO2 spew out of these waterbed-like bubbles when popped. Researchers found 15 of them on an island off Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula — and judging from this clip, we expect they gleefully stomped on every last one of them. I mean, we would.

Siberian TimesElection Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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You call it methane, we call it “nature’s bouncy house”

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Way back when, Big Oil taught tobacco companies a few tricks

by JosefHayner Posted on July 20, 2016

Smokescreen

Way back when, Big Oil taught tobacco companies a few tricks

By on Jul 20, 2016Share

For a long time, we’ve thought that Big Oil used a playbook first developed by tobacco companies to hide the dangers of its product, but newly unearthed documents suggest the reverse: It was Big Oil that taught Big Tobacco.

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) analyzed industry documents dating back to the 1950s. CIEL found that when tobacco sought to confuse the public over smoking, it turned a strategy already in use by oil companies, one that sowed doubt on lead, smog, and climate research. Both industries employed PR firm Hill & Knowlton Inc., for public outreach — the very PR firm that helped tobacco executives hatch a plan to hide the mounting evidence linking smoking with cancer.

“Again and again we found both the PR firms and the researchers worked first for oil, then for tobacco,” said CIEL President Carroll Muffett in a statement. “It was a pedigree the tobacco companies recognized and sought out.”

This evidence comes out as ExxonMobil defends itself against allegations that executives knowingly misled the public although company scientists knew that fossil fuels warmed the climate by the mid-20th century.

Learn more in the CIEL video below.

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Way back when, Big Oil taught tobacco companies a few tricks

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India set a record by planting 50 million trees in one day

by Cesar46F721 Posted on July 20, 2016

Forest for the trees

India set a record by planting 50 million trees in one day

By on Jul 20, 2016Share

Trees are a valuable tool in the fight against climate change. It’s the ultimate in carbon-capture technology — but all natural, and without the licensing fees.

On July 11th, volunteers in India took this old-school climate-fighting tool to a whole new level by planting a record number of trees in a single day, beating Pakistan’s previous record of planting 847,275 trees in 2013.

It took 800,000 volunteers to plant just under 50 million tree saplings along India’s roads, rail lines, and on public lands. This is all a part of India’s commitment to reforest 12 percent of its land — a commitment made at the Paris climate talks last year. The goal will increase the total amount of India’s forested areas to 29 percent of the country’s landmass, or 235 million acres.

India, already one of the world’s warmest nations, is particularly vulnerable to climate change. A May heatwave reached 123 degrees and led to thousands of deaths, while severe water shortages impacted 330 million people.

Trees won’t make it rain, but they could bring down the temperature a few degrees. Not only do trees absorb carbon, they also cool the air itself and can even reduce energy consumption and annual cooling costs. Fifty million of them will certainly help.

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India set a record by planting 50 million trees in one day

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