Tag Archives: carbon

Forget planting trees. This company is funding 4 far-out carbon removal projects.

by irisj2981283 Posted on May 22, 2020

Last August, a San Francisco–based tech startup called Stripe made a bold climate promise. The company, which makes software that enables online payments and is valued at $36 billion, was already investing in energy-efficiency projects to reduce its carbon footprint. It was also paying for carbon offsets for the emissions that it couldn’t avoid, from things like business flights and the natural gas burned to heat its offices. But Stripe wanted to go even further to take action on climate change. The company announced it would spend an additional $1 million annually on emerging carbon removal technologies, bringing its carbon balance sheet into the black.

The announcement kicked off a vetting process in which Stripe solicited proposals and consulted with scientists to evaluate them. On Monday, it delivered on its promise, revealing its first four winners, which will be receiving about $250,000 each.

Though the amounts are small, the gesture is huge. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that in order to prevent catastrophic climate change, we’ll need to start actively pulling carbon out of the carbon cycle and permanently sequestering it. But a lot of the tools available to do so are still nascent and expensive, and will require the kind of leap-of-faith buy-in that Stripe is offering to help them scale up.

The carbon removal technologies Stripe chose are early stage, and currently remove carbon at a cost of between $75 and $775 per ton — a far cry from common carbon offset projects like forest conservation and methane capture from landfills, which typically cost less than $10 per ton. Stripe’s $1 million will only sequester about 6,500 tons of CO2, assuming the earliest-stage projects it chose actually work.

Swiss-based ClimeWorks has the most established technology of the bunch, and is also the most expensive. ClimeWorks uses renewable energy to power machines that capture CO2 directly from the air and inject it deep underground, where it reacts with rock formations and hardens. The company says its pilot project will bury 50 tons of CO2 in 2020, and it’s in the process of developing a larger plant that will capture several thousand tons of CO2 per year.

Charm Industrial’s bio-oil, produced from biomass, will be injected underground Charm Industrial

Stripe also chose CarbonCure, a Canadian company that takes CO2 sourced from industrial emitters and incorporates it into concrete.

A third company, Charm Industrial, will use the money to test the viability of injecting bio-oil underground — sort of like reverse oil drilling. Bio-oil is a carbon-rich fluid produced by burning biomass like corn husks and rice straw that typically rot in the field; burying it underground removes it from the carbon cycle.

The fourth winner is Project Vesta, a startup founded by a guy who also markets supplements that allegedly enhance brain function. Project Vesta is working on a pilot study to prove the safety and efficacy of spreading a mineral called olivine on sandy beaches, where waves will break the olivine down, speeding up its ability to pull CO2 from the air.

If you’re thinking that some of these projects sound a little out there, you’re not alone. Some climate hawks and scientists have raised their eyebrows at the announcement. “I question whether the companies that they are supporting can scale,” commented Jigar Shah, president of the clean energy investment firm Generate Capital, on Twitter. Volcanologist Erik Klemetti voiced concern that Project Vesta could have unintended ecosystem consequences.

But Jane Zelikova, chief scientist at Carbon180, a nonprofit focused on carbon removal, applauded Stripe for being a leader in the space.

“They’re not the only company thinking about negative emissions or carbon removal,” Zelikova said. “But they’re certainly the first ones essentially saying, ‘We’ll pay any price per ton, we want to move this whole field forward.’ I think that’s really awesome.”

Zelikova’s expertise is in soil carbon sequestration, and she was one of the scientists hired by Stripe as consultants to review submissions. Ultimately the company did not go with any soil-based carbon removal projects, but Zelikova praised Stripe for seeking expert opinion and outside analysis and for making the entire process transparent. Stripe has shared its evaluation criteria online and encouraged other companies to use it, in addition to making all of the proposals it received available on GitHub.

“That is very impressive and I think very rare, the level of transparency and cooperation,” said Zelikova. “I hope they serve as a template for how other people can do something similar.”

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Forget planting trees. This company is funding 4 far-out carbon removal projects.

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Meet the conservative answer to the Green New Deal

by YvonneRodriquez Posted on April 27, 2020

The American Conservation Coalition (ACC) might be the only environmental group on the planet that thinks the United States shouldn’t rejoin the Paris climate agreement. Started by a bunch of college Republicans in 2017, the nonprofit’s mission is to “empower conservatives to re-engage on environmental conversations.” “Environmental conservative” might sound like an oxymoron, but it’s not such an unusual phenomenon these days. Republicans, especially young Republicans, are starting to come around to the idea that the planet is warming and humans have something to do with it.

Those Republicans began bucking the party line right around the time that the Green New Deal — the progressive proposal to transition the United States economy from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and enact a host of social justice policies along the way — became the reigning environmental philosophy on the left.

On Tuesday, the ACC released its answer to the Green New Deal with a plan called the American Climate Contract. The contract champions policies with bipartisan support, existing climate and environmental legislation in Congress, and free-market principles. It doesn’t include many of the trappings of the climate change platforms floated by progressive thinkers and groups. You won’t find a carbon tax, the aforementioned Paris Agreement, or language about “solving” the climate crisis in the contract.

“We don’t think that there is a silver bullet approach to climate change,” Quillan Robinson, the vice president of government affairs for ACC who recently became its first-ever lobbyist, told Grist. “So there’s not a laundry list of policy things that we can do that, if we check all those off, climate change will be solved.”

Instead, ACC aims to hit refresh on the climate narrative by getting back to what the group considers the first and most important step in the effort to address the crisis: reducing emissions. Robinson says he’s happy to talk about health care or accessibility to education — two issues woven into the Green New Deal — “but if we’re gonna talk about climate change, let’s focus on climate change,” he said.

In order to do that, ACC’s climate contract suggests passing some of the climate and environment legislation stalled in the House and Senate right now (in no small part due to GOP leadership, which, as anyone who hasn’t been living under a boulder knows, has been a massive impediment to climate action so far). The Carbon Capture Modernization Act, for example, would incentivize the use of carbon capture and storage technology for coal plants by extending existing tax credits to coal companies that opt to retrofit their plants. The Expanding Access to Sustainable Energy Act would require the Department of Energy to award grants to rural energy cooperatives for renewable energy projects. In all, the group cites 14 bills that Congress could act on in the short term.

In the long term, the group advocates for investing heavily in clean energy research and development — an approach that some congressional Republicans have already voiced support for. It calls for expanding the nation’s nuclear energy portfolio, investing in carbon capture technology for all kinds of power plants,, and planting more trees — all things Republicans in Congress have said they support.

But the contract goes beyond what congressional Republicans have already endorsed. It proposes expanding battery storage capabilities; getting the federal government to invest in modern, green transportation infrastructure; and exporting American-made electric vehicles to developing countries to help reduce global emissions. It even suggests restoring and protecting ocean habitats (to better store “blue carbon” — the carbon sequestered in marine plants), something Senator Elizabeth Warren called for in a primary climate plan called the Blue New Deal. The plan has some components that would make congressional Democrats squirm, too: It advocates for building out pipeline infrastructure, exporting more natural gas, and deregulating the energy market.

“The contract makes a lot of sense,” Alex Trembath, deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute, a research center that focuses on technological solutions to environmental problems, told Grist. Trembath praised the plan’s focus on technology and innovation. “It’s not the end-all-be-all of climate policy, but it creates another policy platform — another way of thinking about the problem — that might get Republicans who weren’t enthusiastic or supportive of climate and clean energy policy to the table in a way that hasn’t been possible before.”

Not all climate hawks are as enthusiastic. “This ‘contract’ has some good ideas, like expanding renewables and restoring wetlands,” Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org and an organizer of the Stop the Money Pipeline campaign, told Grist, “and some really terrible ones, like building more pipelines and wasting money on carbon capture and sequestration.” Carbon capture proponents have been criticized for promising too much too soon — the technology isn’t where it needs to be in order to put a serious dent in carbon emissions, researchers say. Henn thinks that the only way to bend the emissions curve is to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy by the end of this decade.

“The more we keep pushing forward, the more the right will keep running to catch up,” he added. “Now isn’t the time to compromise.”

For Robinson, though, compromise is the name of the game, especially in the aftermath of a pandemic. Stimulus legislation presents a significant opportunity “to figure out what the win-wins are in terms of getting Americans back to work, creating economic prosperity, but also addressing these important environmental issues and moving us forward in the fight against climate change,” he said.

“Let’s identify what we can agree on, work on the policies that fit with that, and then continue to move forward.”

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Meet the conservative answer to the Green New Deal

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How to tell if a Republican is serious about climate action (or not)

by AudreyL83a Posted on February 7, 2020

Nowadays, the left’s definition of a climate hawk is clear. The progressive wing of the Democratic party has unified behind a shared litmus test: Does the person in question support the Green New Deal? Sterling environmental voting records and support for a carbon tax no longer cut the mustard. A Democrat worthy of the climate hawk label must have all those things plus enthusiasm for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey’s economy-wide proposal to wean the United States off of fossil fuels while strengthening the social safety net.

But what about Republicans?

The GOP has had an aversion to climate science for decades now. It’s grown so severe that acknowledging the reality of climate change has been politically risky for virtually any Republican public figure. Politicians who dare touch the subject have been swiftly excommunicated (pour one out for Representative Bob Inglis of South Carolina).

But the party is beginning to shift, thanks in large part to young Republicans whose opinions on climate policy now align more closely with those of Democrats than with those of older members of their own party. For proof that the GOP is starting to budge on climate change, look no further than the House and Senate. Recently, bipartisan climate action groups in both chambers have attracted several unexpected members (including Lindsey Graham). A few GOPers have started to act more aggressively to combat rising temperatures locally, particularly in the wake of catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes, and floods.

And last month, House Republicans unveiled a new set of climate proposals coordinated by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California. The plan — the GOP’s response to Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal — won’t include an emissions-reduction target, Axios reported. Instead, it focuses on capturing CO2 from the air with trees, reducing plastic pollution, and funding new clean-energy technology.

On the precipice of what could become a major party reversal on climate action from the right, how do conservatives who care about climate change discern Republican politicians who are actually serious about tackling the issue from those who are just jumping on the green bandwagon? More importantly, what are the markings of a genuine conservative climate plan versus a smokescreen plan aimed at waylaying real solutions?

To answer these questions, Grist turned to three Republicans who’ve been beating the climate drum for years.

Alex Bozmoski, the managing director of a climate group founded by Inglis and aimed at building grassroots support for conservative climate solutions, starts by looking at rhetoric. Rhetoric might seem like a useless benchmark, as words aren’t binding, but Bozmoski says a lot can be gleaned from language. “There is substance in what politicians say about what they are doing,” he said. “When a lawmaker is talking about climate change, do the risks compel action or patience and demand for further certainty? Is it a calamity, or is it framed more as a nuisance?” Freshman Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, he says, is a good example of a Republican whose rhetoric hints at a genuine commitment to action. In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Braun called climate change the country’s “next biggest issue.”

Quillan Robinson, who graduated from the University of Washington in 2018, is government affairs director at the American Conservation Coalition, an environment group that’s dedicated to engaging young conservatives on environmental issues. His standard is simple and reflects the fact that Republican climate policy is just in its nascency. Robinson asks: Has the person put his or her name on a piece of climate legislation? “We’re looking for folks who are willing to actually put pen to paper when it comes to real policy solutions which will lower global greenhouse gas emissions — that should be the litmus test for climate action,” he said.

Kiera O’Brien, a recent Harvard graduate and president of Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends, a group that galvanizes student support for a carbon tax, thinks it’s important to discern between Republicans who are climate hawks and Republicans who are just conservationists. “The reality these days is there’s a difference between conservation and issues of climate change,” she said. “Anyone who’s fundamentally serious about conservation should be serious about climate as well, but that’s not always the case, especially among elected Republicans.”

For O’Brien, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s new climate plan doesn’t make the cut. “It does not take that step into what I would call a true Republican rebuttal to the Green New Deal by offering a comprehensive plan for reducing emissions,” she said.

She added, “You can say carbon capture, you can say we’re gonna plant a million trees, but if you’re not actually fundamentally serious about putting a price on carbon or putting another economy-wide mechanism for reducing carbon emissions, you’re not actually serious about climate change.” Going forward, she wants Republicans to advocate for a revenue-neutral carbon tax, which would return the revenue generated by the tax to Americans every year.

Bozmoski reached a different conclusion about the House Republican climate plan. “You measure ambition not by dollars, not by economic reorganization, not by risk. You measure the policy of climate change by the tons,” he said. “Does the policy that they’re supporting abate, avoid, capture, or sequester greenhouse gases and how much?” That’s why he thinks McCarthy’s plan to plant a bunch of trees isn’t half-bad — it will take tons of carbon dioxide out of the air, he said. (The science behind this is actually disputed.) “I know some environmentalists scoff because they’re more interested in attacking the supply side of greenhouse gases,” he said, “but if it makes a dent, that’s how you gauge the ambition of a climate policy.”

For Robinson, McCarthy’s plan is reason for optimism that serious climate change legislation is viable under President Trump. “It’s focusing on policies we can pass today which will reduce global greenhouse emissions,” he said. In general, however, Robinson’s under no illusions about where Trump stands. “Is the president where we want him to be on the issue? Absolutely not. But we’re really encouraged by some of the things that have happened recently,” he said.

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How to tell if a Republican is serious about climate action (or not)

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Can we stop stupid politics from ruining carbon farming?

by Shelby7305 Posted on September 3, 2019

It seems like every Democratic presidential candidate wants to get farmers sucking carbon out of the air and sticking it in the ground. Call it regenerative agriculture, carbon farming, soil carbon sequestration, but, boy have the candidates found an idea they love. Among the more popular names, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, and Joe Biden, have included it in their platform. Kristen Gillibrand, Tim Ryan, and Amy Klobuchar have also said they want to pay farmers to catch carbon.

The science is straightforward enough. Planting a cover crop after harvest, when the acres might be bare and vulnerable to erosion, helps capture carbon. Farmers can keep that greenhouse gas in the ground if they stop plowing, because turning over the dirt with a plow releases soil carbon. These are relatively simple practices that many farmers have already adopted.

We’ve treated soil-science like dirt for too long, so it’s nice that it’s finally getting the chance to star in shovel-ready (sorry) national policy proposals. But there’s still reason for caution: Politics has a way of distorting science.

Look back twenty years and everyone was excited about biofuels: Presidential candidates talked about how we could grow green fuel provide new markets for farmers, while freeing ourselves from foreign fossil fuels. And the plants would suck carbon from the air. What’s not to love?

Starting in 2005, the government enshrined market mandates to help people start turning crops into fuel. Farmers cut down rainforests in Southeast Asia to grow oil palm for biofuel. Although the new market for corn and soy beans was great for Midwestern farmers, it was awful for those trying to stop erosion, preserve prairie habitat, and shrink the deadzone in the Gulf of Mexico. At this point, it’s nearly impossible to tell if biofuels are any better or worse for the climate than gasoline.

So if we want to learn from history, rather than repeat it, we’ll tamp down the hyperventilation over soil carbon, make sure we get the numbers right, and look out for unintended consequences.

Right now, the presidential candidates are talking in vague terms. Sanders’s plan, for instance, says the government will “pay farmers $160 billion for the soil health improvements they make and for the carbon they sequester.” O’Rourke’s just says he wants to “allow farmers and ranchers to profit from the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions they secure.” But as these ideas morph from Iowa stump speeches to actual legislation, keep an eye out for some potential stumbling blocks:

It’s uneven. The amount of carbon you draw out of the atmosphere with, say, your winter cover crop depends on how long your fields are frozen, how sandy your dirt is, how many worms are squirming in your soil … and that’s just for starters. So if the point is to fight climate change, proposed policies should pay farmers for results (the amount of carbon dioxide they take out of the air), rather than paying for practices (like planting a cover crop), said Jonathan Sanderman who studies soil carbon and climate change at Woods Hole Research Center.

Returns diminish. As soils “fill up” with carbon it gets harder to add more. Soil gets saturated. Navin Ramankutty, who studies global food systems at the University of British Columbia, thinks of soil like a bathtub: If there’s more water coming through the faucet then leaving through the drain, the water rises. Replace “water” with “carbon” and you get the idea. Eventually the carbon is going to start spilling over the top of the tub. “So, while carbon farming is certainly a useful measure to mitigate carbon emissions, it’s a solution with a finite lifetime,” Ramankutty said.

Keep it in the ground. Once carbon is in the ground, it doesn’t just stay there. Soil is churning with worms, fungi, bugs, and bacteria that eat up, transform, and release carbon back into the air. It really is dynamic, like Ramankutty’s bathtub. If farmers decide to plow up fields after years of sequestration, it would release a lot of the stored carbon. “How you deal with this is clearly a tricky policy problem,” Sanderman said. Perhaps, when agreeing to take money for carbon sequestration, farmers would have to accept restrictions on their land for the next decade.

It could crowd out other ideas. How much will carbon farming cost taxpayers, and are there other ideas that — for the same cost — would take even more greenhouse gases out of the air? Expanding forests, growing seaweed, or scrubbing carbon from the air might make more sense in some cases. Could we replace a coal plant with clean energy for the same amount of money and prevent more emissions in the first place? The danger of the latest sexy policy is that it tends to take precedence in every context, not just the ones in which it makes the most sense.

Candidates break hearts. Some of the candidate’s proposals use unrealistically large numbers for the carbon that farming could suck up, said Mark Bomford, director of Yale’s Sustainable Food Program. “I suspect this overstatement has less to do with misunderstanding the science, and more to do with what inevitably happens to communication of the science when it enters the arms race of political rhetoric,” Bomford said.

It just sounds better to say that an acre of farmland can suck up 25-60 tons of carbon a decade, as ex-candidate Jay Inslee did, then to say 7.4 tons per decade, which is the consistent average, Sanderman said.

All this is to say we ought to be a little wary of ambitious soil-policy solutions for climate change. Anyone who says we’ve figured out carbon farming (or whatever your buzzword of choice) deserves your skepticism. But the nice thing about about these proposals is that minimizing tillage, planting cover crops, and the other practices that store soil carbon are generally good for the environment — even if they don’t do as much to stem the climate crisis as advertised.

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Can we stop stupid politics from ruining carbon farming?

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The plastic industry is on track to produce as many emissions as 600 coal-fired power plants

by MittieMadewell Posted on May 16, 2019

When you think about plastic, what comes to mind? Microplastics at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, whales dying with truckloads of garbage in their bellies, that zero-waste Instagram influencer you follow?

A new report shows it’s high time to think more about the fossil fuels that go into making those plastic products. The global plastic industry is on track to produce enough emissions to put the world on track for a catastrophic warming scenario, according to the Center for International Environmental Law analysis. In other words, straws aren’t just bad for unsuspecting turtles; plastic is a major contributor to climate change.

If the plastic industry is allowed to expand production unimpeded, here’s what we’re looking at: By 2030, global emissions from that sector could produce the emissions equivalent of more than 295 (500-megawatt) coal plants. By 2050, emissions could exceed the equivalent of 615 coal plants.

That year, the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions from production of single-use plastics like bags and straws could compose between 10 and 13 percent of the whole remainder of our carbon budget. That is, the amount of CO2 we’re allowed to emit if we want to keep emissions below the threshold scientists say is necessary to ensure a liveable planet. By 2100, even conservative estimates pin emissions from plastics composing more than half of the carbon budget.

So, congrats on ordering that metal straw from Amazon! But the report shows that the plastics industry is still planning on a major expansion in production.

Here are a few more takeaways from the report, which looked at the emissions produced by the plastics industry starting in 2015 and projected what emissions from that sector could look like through the end of the century:

Of the three ways to get rid of plastics — recycling, landfilling, or incinerating — incinerating is the most energy intensive. In 2015, emissions from incinerating plastic in the United States were estimated to be around 5.9 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent.
This year, production and incineration of plastic products will make as many emissions as 189 coal power plants — 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases.
Plastics that wind up in the ocean could even fuck with the ocean’s ability to do what it has historically done a superb job at: sequestering carbon. That’s because the phytoplankton and lil ocean critters that help capture the CO2 at the surface of the ocean and drag it under are being compromised by — you guessed it — microplastic.

But it doesn’t look like the industry is going to slow its roll on refining oil for plastics anytime soon. In 2015, 24 ethylene facilities in the U.S. produced the emissions equivalent of 3.8 million cars. There are 300 more petrochemical facilities underway in the U.S. Two of those, one being built by ExxonMobil and another by Shell, could produce emissions equivalent to 800,000 new cars on the road per year.

So if you’re gonna boycott single-use plastics, keep in mind that you’re not just doing it for the turtles — you’re doing it for us.

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The plastic industry is on track to produce as many emissions as 600 coal-fired power plants

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10 Apps That Will Help You on Your Zero Waste Journey

by AugustaMelbourne Posted on May 15, 2019

Going zero waste can be an absolutely mind-boggling process. Trust me, I’ve done it! Figuring out what you can recycle, where you can shop, what you can buy?? it’s an entirely new way of living.?

Fortunately, there are a lot of creative minds out there who have created?apps that help make living a sustainable lifestyle a whole lot easier. That’s backup, right at your fingertips!?Here are 10 of my favorite zero waste apps, for everyone from the zero waste newbie to the sustainability expert.

1.?Tap

Carrying a reusable water bottle with you is a great way to reduce how many cups you’re throwing away while out and about. But what happens when your drink runs out? Tap?maps every location near you that will allow you to fill your bottle up for free. This helps stop millions of plastic bottles from ending up in our oceans and landfills. Remember: every refill counts!

Download Tap?| Free

2.?Flora

One of the best things you can do to build a healthy relationship with the planet is to spend time out in it! Flora, a lovely little “focus keeper” app helps you put down the phone and be productive. Time not spent scrolling your Instagram feed could be used to tend to vegetables in a backyard garden or?go for a long walk. That’s better for everyone!

Download Flora?| Free

3.?PaperKarma

Ohhhh, don’t even get me started on junk mail. It’s the worst, isn’t it? Bottle up all that irritation and channel it toward the senders?through PaperKarma, the app that helps you stop junk mail within 1-3 cycles. Let’s save some trees!

Download PaperKarma | Free

4.?Hoopla

This has my little non-consumer heart soaring! Hoopla allows you to borrow up to ten digital movies, music, audiobooks and eBooks?from its library of millions of digital items?each month. Cool, right??Download an audiobook to listen offline along?your commute (by public transportation, I hope!) or grab a novel for your vacay.

Download Hoopla | Free

5.?ThredUP

Got old clothes crowding your closet? Don’t?send them to the thrift store just yet; try reselling them online instead. ThredUP allows you to earn cash or store credit for items you’re no longer wearing. Anything they think won’t sell will be?either donated or responsibly recycled. What a great way to keep textiles out of the landfill and refresh your closet at the same time.

Download thredUP | Free

6. DoneGood

Struggling to know whether what you’re buying?reflects your values? DoneGood, while still in its early stages,?allows you to shop by value, from eco-friendly to cruelty-free, fair trade, and on and on. Whatever you need in the sustainable market, DoneGood has it?? and lots of discount codes too!

Download DoneGood | Free

7. iRecycle

While the goal with zero waste is to?eliminate the need for recycling altogether, we just aren’t there yet. And recycling can be complicated. What do you do with old lightbulbs? Foil? Electronics? iRecycle will show you?locations near you that can recycle items of all types. It’s super handy!

Download iRecycle | Free

8.?BULK

Avoid unnecessary, wasteful packaging with this web-based app that locates bulk stores near you in the United States or in Canada. You can add new locations, rate your favorite (or least favorite) stores and browse their selection before making the trip. It’s a must have for any zero waster!

Download BULK | Free?

9.?OfferUp

The largest mobile marketplace in the world, OfferUp is a great place to hunt down everything from a new dining table to the carpet cleaner of your dreams, secondhand. People sell pretty much everything under the sun and the app helps protect the buying and selling process so you can be confident in your purchase.

Download OfferUp | Free

10.?Locavore

Shopping at your local farmers markets is a wonderful way to minimize food packaging, reduce your carbon footprint and practice eating seasonally. The more local your food, the smaller its environmental footprint. Locavore?shows you the markets in your area, as well as where they are and when they run.

Download Locavore | Free

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10 Apps That Will Help You on Your Zero Waste Journey

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Deadly air pollution has a surprising culprit: Growing corn

by CalebQ443110 Posted on April 4, 2019

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A new study raises serious concerns about the human health consequences of growing corn. Though air quality has improved in the United States in recent decades, fine particulate matter still kills about 71,000 people each year — and is one of the leading causes of death globally. About 4,300 of those deaths are from the process of growing corn, mostly due to the application of ammonia as a fertilizer. That’s more people than died in Hurricane Maria, every single year.

“The magnitude of the problem is surprising,” said University of Minnesota’s Jason Hill, the study’s lead author. “We tend to think of air pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes, but agriculture is a major contributor to reduced air quality also.” Hill and his colleagues found that ammonia from corn fertilizer significantly increases atmospheric PM2.5 levels, a particularly deadly form of air pollution.

In total, corn alone is responsible for about a quarter of agricultural-related air pollution deaths, with most of the rest due to animal agriculture. Since corn is a primary source of animal feed, the new study likely underestimates its impact on air quality.

The study attempted to estimate the cost of growing corn on human health and climate change. The researchers used the EPA’s values of $9 million for every avoided death due to air pollution and $43 per ton of CO2 for the social cost of carbon. In terms of air pollution and carbon emissions, that means the harm caused by growing corn is equal to about 70 percent of the value of the corn that’s produced — a shockingly high value.

But even that doesn’t include the emissions from animal agriculture or corn ethanol. Most corn grown in America goes to producing ethanol, for use in animal feed, and other industrial uses. Only a small percentage is for human consumption.

“The full impact of corn is going to be much larger,” Hill said.

This huge impact is likely not evenly distributed. Hill’s previous research showed that the cost of air pollution in general is borne disproportionately by communities of color. He’s working to see if the same is true for agricultural-based air pollution.

In an interview with Brownfield Ag News, Nathan Fields, the vice president of production and sustainability for the National Corn Growers Association, called the study “divisive.” “It’s no secret that corn production is an intensive cropping system,” Fields said, noting that the industry has been trying to “lower that footprint as much as possible” for decades.

“The way that we react, I would say, is just to highlight all the work that’s been done, all the research that’s going into nutrient use efficiency that’s out there and hopefully not spend more money and more resources on paper studies trying to link it to horrible situations,” he added.

Hill told me that the importance of his research is magnified because it was funded in part by the USDA, EPA, and the Department of Energy. “As members of publicly funded universities, our charge is to look for problems that affect the public and solutions to them,” Hill said. “The paper went into detail about the ways that this problem could be alleviated.”

Among the solutions Hill floated: precision agriculture, using different fertilizer types, changing the location of where corn is planted so it’s not upwind from major cities, crop switching, and even dietary shifts away from foods that use corn-based ingredients.

“We need to do a better job at controlling ammonia emissions from corn itself; that will have immediate benefits to human health,” Hill said.

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Deadly air pollution has a surprising culprit: Growing corn

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Drawdown – Paul Hawken

by Myrna Posted on April 4, 2019

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Drawdown

The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

Paul Hawken

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: April 18, 2017

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Seller: PENGUIN GROUP USA, INC.


•  New York Times  bestseller  • The 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world “At this point in time, the  Drawdown  book is exactly what is needed; a credible, conservative solution-by-solution narrative that we can do it. Reading it is an effective inoculation against the widespread perception of doom that humanity cannot and will not solve the climate crisis. Reported by-effects include increased determination and a sense of grounded hope.” —Per Espen Stoknes, Author,  What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming   “There’s been no real way for ordinary people to get an understanding of what they can do and what impact it can have. There remains no single, comprehensive, reliable compendium of carbon-reduction solutions across sectors. At least until now. . . . The public is hungry for this kind of practical wisdom.” —David Roberts,  Vox “This is the ideal environmental sciences textbook—only it is too interesting and inspiring to be called a textbook.” —Peter Kareiva, Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. One hundred techniques and practices are described here—some are well known; some you may have never heard of. They range from clean energy to educating girls in lower-income countries to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination. If deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, they represent a credible path forward, not just to slow the earth’s warming but to reach drawdown, that point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere peak and begin to decline. These measures promise cascading benefits to human health, security, prosperity, and well-being—giving us every reason to see this planetary crisis as an opportunity to create a just and livable world.

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Drawdown – Paul Hawken

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Ryanair’s budget flights could blow the E.U.’s carbon budget

by AraceliDominiqu Posted on April 2, 2019

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“Europe’s Greenest Airline” just made the list of the top E.U. climate polluters, ranked 10th after nine coal plants. One of these things is not like the others?

The E.U.-commissioned study looked at major, measurable carbon sources like power plants, manufacturing companies, and airlines. This year’s study marks the first time that a non-coal plant has made it into the fabled top 10.

While the study showed total measured emissions fell 3.8 percent, Ryanair’s emissions rose 6.9 percent in 2018, and a whopping 49 percent over the past five years.

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The Irish airline has its frequent flier customers to thank for its climb to carbon-emitting fame. Since its founding in 1984, Ryanair has worked hard to keep its costs as low as possible. This means $12 tickets from Dublin to Amsterdam, but it also includes hiring contract pilots, flying to secondary rather than main airports, and hidden fees, like charging for a second carry-on. Despite all this, Ryanair has quickly become the largest European airline, with over 2,400 flights daily.

To put things in perspective, the next airline company, EasyJet, doesn’t appear on the list until No. 31.

Still, the company claims to be “Europe’s greenest and cleanest airline,” despite its sizable carbon emissions and climate change-denying CEO.

What does this all mean for the E.U. going forward? The E.U. uses a cap-and-trade system to monitor and decrease carbon emissions, but aviation companies are privy to a large amount of untaxed emissions. So Ryanair and other airlines have been able to increase their carbon emissions dramatically over the past couple of  years with few economic consequences. Without any policy changes, E.U. airline carbon emissions are expected to grow 300 percent by 2050.

Kevin Anderson, a professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester, told The Guardian, “If we genuinely care for our children’s futures, we need to drive down the demand for aviation. This will require stringent regulations focusing on frequent fliers rather than those taking the occasional trip.”

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Ryanair’s budget flights could blow the E.U.’s carbon budget

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5 Easy Sustainability Tips, Just in Time for Earth Month

by KristinPerkins6 Posted on March 31, 2019

Earth Month starts tomorrow, and there’s never been a better time to?kick your green living into gear. These easy sustainability will help you get started.

Climate change is looking pretty grim?we no longer have the luxury of considering sustainability an “option”. Each and every one of us needs to start pulling our weight and pressuring businesses and governments to make rapid, significant?shifts if we care about?rescuing our planet.

To get you started on the road to personal sustainability, here are a few straightforward ways you can have a major impact on the planet (without much effort)?just in time for Earth Month!

1. Buy less stuff.

Fast fashion is a sustainability nightmare.?Buying new clothes every season? Guess what happens when you?toss your old clothes out?they get thrown in the landfill. And since?many clothes are made with manmade materials like polyester, they likely aren?t biodegradable. Let?s not forget that manufacturing clothing requires a tremendous amount of water resources and chemicals pollutants.

To lessen your impact, shop second hand when you have a craving to go shopping.?If you must buy new, invest in high-quality pieces that will last for years to come. It?s time to ditch fast fashion for good.

2. Take it easy on the new smartphones.

It can be tantalizing to go out and buy the latest and greatest tech device as soon as it hits the market, but if you care about sustainability you?re going to want to think twice.

According to the New York Times, ?The production of an iPhone 6, for example, released the equivalent of 178 pounds of carbon dioxide, or about as much as burning nine gallons of gas, according to a 2015 study.?

Sure, Apple and other tech companies have become more environmentally conscious since the iPhone 6 launched way back in 2014 (Apple has some particularly cool green initiatives going on), but the most sustainable option is still to keep your current phone for as long as possible.

You don’t?really need the latest,?shiniest phone, if you have a perfectly fine functioning one. And when it is time to replace your old phone, definitely make sure to recycle it with the manufacturer, so that it doesn’t leach chemicals in a landfill somewhere.

3. Divest from fossil fuels.

Take a peek at your retirement funds or other investments. Are you supporting the fossil fuel industry (and climate change alongside it)? Divesting is becoming a popular (and effective) way to take a stand.

According to a 2018 report, ?Today, nearly 1,000 institutional investors with $6.24 trillion in assets have committed to divest from fossil fuels, up from $52 billion four years ago?an increase of 11,900 percent.?

It’s not a fringe idea anymore?and it’s sure to make a direct impact on fossil fuel companies. Don?t be afraid to?take a real stand.

4. Reduce your use of plastics.

If you’ve been avoiding it, it’s finally time. No more single-use plastics. That means cutting back on plastic straws, single-use flatware, cups and bottles, grocery and produce bags, food wrap and even garbage bags.

It?s relatively?easy to find more sustainable alternatives?for all these plastic products?whether they?re compostable bio plastics or 100 percent plastic-free. All it requires is a small amount of effort.

5. Support businesses who care about sustainability.

When you buy things, put your money where your mouth is.?Find sustainable alternatives for the products you use most, and support the businesses that make them. For instance, instead of buying plastic food wrap a couple times a year, why not invest in parchment paper or reusable (and incredible) Bee?s Wrap?

The more we support green businesses, the more power we gain as consumers to encourage greater sustainability efforts across the board.

Do you have any other easily-adoptable tips for living a sustainable lifestyle? Share them with the community in the comments section below!

Related on Care2:

Unlock Your Creativity by Napping Like Einstein
Should We Artificially Cool the Planet?
The Surprising Recycling Mistake You’re Probably Making

Images via Getty

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Easy Sustainability Tips, Just in Time for Earth Month

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