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6 ways the Rio Olympics are failing on sustainability

by AlineBardin Posted on August 5, 2016

Game of groans

6 ways the Rio Olympics are failing on sustainability

By on Aug 5, 2016Share

Brazil wooed the International Olympic Committee with promises of sustainability when it made its bid in 2009 for Rio to host the games, but it hasn’t followed through on those pledges. From waters teeming with pathogens to transportation troubles, the Rio Olympics are looking like a hot mess. Of course, lots of past Olympics looked disastrous just before they kicked off too.

1. There’s something in the water

Athletes have been advised to keep their mouths closed when swimming or sailing, as Olympic waters have been found to have virus levels 1.7 million times higher that what would be considered worrisome in the U.S. Rio constructed barriers to keep trash out of the main areas where events are being held, but that won’t stop the sewage and pathogens from floating in (though they might stop body parts from washing ashore).

2. A transportation nightmare

Rio’s traffic is so bad (it’s the fourth most congested city in the world) that members of the International Olympic Committee are already regretting the decision to hold the games there. A $3 billion subway extension was massively delayed and has just barely opened. And earlier this year, a new bike path constructed for the games collapsed, raising safety concerns.

3. Scary diseases

Even though Zika infection rates are slowing down because it’s winter in Brazil, there are plenty of diseases and illnesses to worry about, including dengue fever, rotavirus, norovirus, and hepatitis A. Oh, and as if that’s not already enough, drug-resistant superbacteria.

4. Injustice to residents

An estimated 77,000 people have been evicted from their homes to make way for infrastructure for the games, and entire neighborhoods have been bulldozed.

5. Clashes with critters

The controversial Olympics golf course was built in a sensitive coastal area, and environmentalists say it destroyed habitat and harmed native plants and animals, including endangered species. But it didn’t drive all the animals away: The golf course is still teeming with wildlife like capybaras, sloths, boa constrictors, and miniature crocodiles, so organizers have hired five handlers to keep potentially dangerous critters away from players during game time.

6. Shoddy construction

The Olympics require a vast amount of construction in a short amount of time, and that’s led to buildings that aren’t up to code. Haphazard construction has already caused gas leaks, a small fire, and plumbing mishaps in the Olympic Village. Conditions have prompted some athletes to stay in hotels or luxury cruise ships instead.

Most Brazilians think the 2016 Olympics will do more harm than good. Judging by what we’ve seen so far, the average Brazilian citizen just might be smarter than the Olympic organizers.

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6 ways the Rio Olympics are failing on sustainability

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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.

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

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Humans are gobbling up natural resources at a terrifying rate

by FranklyR14 Posted on August 3, 2016

Eat the rich

Humans are gobbling up natural resources at a terrifying rate

By on Aug 3, 2016Share

Humans are using too much crap.

That’s the official word from a new U.N. report on the use of natural resources. It found that, from the food we eat to the homes we live in to the fuels we burn, our rates of consumption are just unsustainable. That’s not too surprising, but the real shock is that our extraction of the primary materials used to make all of our stuff has more than tripled in the past 40 years.

United Nations Environment Programme

“We urgently need to address this problem before we have irreversibly depleted the resources that power our economies and lift people out of poverty,” said the U.N.’s Alicia Bárcena Ibarra.

Unfortunately, it’s a trend that’s likely to continue. Unless we drastically change our systems of production, according to the U.N., the world’s population will require almost three times the amount of resources we currently use by 2050. Rich nations, especially, are overusing materials, sucking up 10 times more than the world’s poorest nations and twice the global average.

So put down those diggers, humans! It’s time to save some stuff for the future.

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Humans are gobbling up natural resources at a terrifying rate

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Behold, the death of memes at the hand of the fracking lobby

by andrew9225 Posted on August 2, 2016

Too Far

Behold, the death of memes at the hand of the fracking lobby

By on Aug 2, 2016 7:02 amShare

As any denizen of the internet will tell you: There are dank memes and then there are bad memes.

Dank memes: Arthur’s fist, Crying Michael Jordan, and Sandra Lee’s extra-special two-shot vodka pour

Bad memes: Anything on frackfeed.com

Frackfeed is a budget bin Buzzfeed created by North Texans for Natural Gas, a natural gas lobbying group that aims to “give a voice to those who support natural gas.” As they say: When a disenfranchised group needs a voice, let them have memes.

In addition to memes, Frackfeed offers #millennialfriendly content like listicles and quizzes. Want to know which Friends character you are? Frackfeed has got you covered, even though — as far as we know — Central Perk has nothing to do with natural gas extraction. Frackfeed also want you to vote for a candidate in the 2016 election named, yes, Fracking — perhaps the dark horse third-party candidate the nation has been waiting for!

At first glance, a website using celebrities, fuzzy animals, and MS Paint to praise natural gas might seem like some fairly high-effort pandering by a lobbying group. Upon closer inspection, however, you will find the still-warm corpse of internet comedy.

But, hey — if you can’t pay BuzzFeed to make listicles for you, as Shell did this week, you might as well create your own.

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Behold, the death of memes at the hand of the fracking lobby

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The Seattle Minimum Wage Experiment: Mixed Results So Far

by DamianPinner892 Posted on July 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’ve mentioned before—only half jokingly—that I’m happy to see other people experiment with a $15 minimum wage. It’s the best of all worlds: it provides us with test beds to see what happens, but if it’s a disaster it won’t affect me personally.

Seattle was one of the first to do this, and as a first step they raised their minimum wage to $11 about 18 months ago. It’s probably still too early to draw any sweeping conclusions about what happened, but we do have some preliminary results from the Seattle Minimum Wage Study Team at the University of Washington. Their basic methodology is to compare Seattle with surrounding regions (plus a composite “Synthetic Seattle”) to see how it compares. So what have they found so far?

Wages up. For starters, they spend a surprising number of pages confirming that, yes, wages went up. Apparently Seattle employers are complying with the law. However, the Seattle economy has been booming recently, so it’s hard to know how much of the increase is due to the minimum wage law and how much would have happened anyway thanks to the tight job market. They conclude that the law was responsible for an average hourly increase of 73 cents among workers who were previously making less than $11.
No impact on availability of jobs. But what about jobs? Did the number of low-wage jobs go down? Yes it did—but less than in areas that didn’t increase their minimum wage: “The half-percentage-point reduction in persistent jobs at these businesses between mid-2014 and late-2015 is actually a positive development, as these businesses contracted more slowly than usual in the historical record. We find the exact same pattern in Synthetic Seattle, suggesting that the minimum wage had little or no net impact on the number of persistent jobs.”
Hours worked decreased. How about hours worked? Did low-wage employers reduce their hours? Yes: “We estimate that hours per employee declined between 7.5 and 9.9 over a quarter, or 35-40 minutes per week.”
Employment decreased. How about employment of low-wage workers? Unsurprisingly, it went down: “While these low-wage workers increased their likelihood of being employed relative to prior years, this increase was less than in comparison regions. We estimate that the impact of the Ordinance was a 1.1 percentage point decrease in likelihood of low-wage Seattle workers remaining employed.”
No effect on business closures. Did more establishments go out of business? Not really. It was a wash: “For single-location establishments that paid more than 40% of the workers less than $15 per hour at baseline, we find a slightly larger negative impact of 1.0 percentage points. Yet, this modest increase in business closure rates was more than offset by an increase in the rate of business openings….The net effect is an estimated 0.9 percentage point increase in business openings as a result of the Minimum Wage Ordinance. This increase in both business closures and business openings perhaps should not come as a surprise. A higher minimum wage changes the type of business that can succeed profitably in Seattle, and we should thus expect some extra churning.”

Bottom line: wages went up, but employment went down. This is about what you’d expect. However, I’m a little unclear on how to reconcile this employment decrease with the finding that the number of persistent jobs didn’t change. Perhaps there was a decrease in seasonal or intermittent jobs? It will probably all become clearer in future reports.

Needless to say, the real test will come over the next few years, as the minimum wage climbs to $15.

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The Seattle Minimum Wage Experiment: Mixed Results So Far

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For this black church, supporting climate action is a no-brainer

by WesleyRosman Posted on July 29, 2016

preach

For this black church, supporting climate action is a no-brainer

By on Jul 29, 2016 7:06 amShare

Earlier this month, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, or AME — one of the oldest black churches, with 2.5 million members around the world — made history. At their general conference in Philadelphia, they voted to hold local, state, and national policymakers accountable for climate action to make the Paris climate agreement viable. The resolution from the the 200-plus-year-old black church is the first to address climate change wholly, committing to “support climate policies that will protect families, create healthy and safe communities, and build a clean energy future.”

The resolution was met with strong affirmation from congregants around the world, says Jackie Dupont-Walker, who directs the social action commission for the AME. Some individual churches had already taken a stance on climate change: An AME church in Zimbabwe, for example, already incorporates it into its Sunday school curriculum.

While some might be surprised that AME made such a bold move, it’s perfectly keeping in the church’s tradition. AME emerged in response to racial segregation in Philadelphia’s Methodist church. Addressing climate change, which church leaders says disproportionately impacts African Americans, makes perfect sense.

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For this black church, supporting climate action is a no-brainer

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Finally, the climate teardown of Trump you’ve been waiting for

by wilbertbarber4 Posted on July 28, 2016

What can Brown do for you?

Finally, the climate teardown of Trump you’ve been waiting for

By on Jul 28, 2016Share

PHILADELPHIA — Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention was dedicated to ripping apart the GOP nominee while extending an olive branch to blue-collar voters and moderate Republicans. With so much material to choose from, perhaps it’s no surprise that Joe Biden, Tim Kaine, Michael Bloomberg, and President Obama stuck largely to their opponent’s character and business record.

So it was left to California Gov. Jerry Brown, as chief executive of one of the most progressive states in the union on climate and energy — and one suffering from a multi-year drought that Donald Trump doesn’t think is real — to make the contrast between Trump and the Dems on sustainability. Brown devoted his entire speech to tearing down the real estate developer’s public statements on climate science, with one-liners earning cheers from the audience.

“Trump says global warming is a hoax. I say Trump is a fraud,” Brown declared. “Trump says there’s no drought in California. I say Trump lies.”

When Obama closed out the night, he provided a broad argument that America is in fact making progress, and that Americans can’t give up on “perfecting our union.” He touched lightly on climate and energy in a conciliatory note to voters who might not always fit the Democratic mold, saying: “If you want to fight climate change, we’ve got to engage not only young people on college campuses, but reach out to the coal miner who’s worried about taking care of his family, the single mom worried about gas prices.”

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Finally, the climate teardown of Trump you’ve been waiting for

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Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump chat about the end of the world

by ReubenWerner Posted on July 27, 2016

Faux News

Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump chat about the end of the world

By on Jul 27, 2016Share

Presidential hopeful Donald Trump appeared on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor Tuesday night to clarify his stance on a few issues. On the list: Bernie Sanders? Liar! Federal minimum wage? Get rid of it! NATO? Who needs it! Job recovery? Never heard of it!

On climate change, the Republican nominee was especially verbose. Here’s his full exchange with Bill O’Reilly (emphasis our own):

O’Reilly: They said that you called climate change a hoax. Is that true?

Trump: I want clean air and I want clean water and if you look at what’s going on in China and all these other countries that talk but they laugh behind our back at what we are doing. We want clean air, we want clean water, I’ve got many environmental awards, believe me. I know what I’m talking about. But we’ve got to have crystal clear water and crystal clean air.

O’Reilly: But did you ever call climate change a hoax?

Trump: Wellll, I might have because when I look at some of the things that are going on — in fact, if you look at what was happening in Europe a few years ago where people were sending out emails, scientists practically calling it a hoax, and they were laughing at it, so yeah I probably did. I see what’s going on and you see what’s going on.

O’Reilly: Do you believe that manmade fossil fuels and gases have eroded the environment so that the sun is more intense on Earth? Because that’s the basic thing. Do you believe that’s happening?

Trump: Well, they’re saying manmade and I say it could have a minor impact but nothing, nothing to what they are talking about. And what it is doing is putting us at a tremendous disadvantage as a country, because other counties are not adhering to the rules, we are, and it makes it impossible for our businesses to compete.

O’Reilly: That’s true.

Rest of the world: Sigh.

Neither O’Reilly nor Trump appear to understand climate change or how it works. And despite Trump’s frequent assertion that he’s “won many, many environmental awards,” the only one on record was bestowed upon him by a golfing organization.

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Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump chat about the end of the world

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Al Gore is voting Clinton, for the climate

by MalloryMcRae Posted on July 25, 2016

Al Gore is voting Clinton, for the climate

By on Jul 25, 2016 3:12 pmShare

Al Gore — climate change activist, one-time VP, and former next president of the United States — has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. He made the announcement Monday on Twitter.

Gore joins a long list of environmentalists in endorsing Clinton, a woman who both believes that climate change exists and has promised to do something about it. Republican nominee Donald Trump, on the other hand, has varyingly referred to climate change as a “hoax,” “mythical,” “nonexistent,” a “con job,” and — a personal favorite — “bullshit.”

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Al Gore is voting Clinton, for the climate

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Hey, someone mentioned climate change on stage at the Republican convention

by SusanneStansfie Posted on July 21, 2016

Hey, someone mentioned climate change on stage at the Republican convention

By on Jul 21, 2016Share

Harold Hamm, a fracking mogul and GOP donor, ventured where few Republicans are willing to go on Wednesday night: He mentioned climate change on stage at the Republican National Convention. “Climate change isn’t our biggest problem,” he said. “It’s Islamic terrorism.” OK, not a rousing call to action, but at least there’s the implication that climate is a problem.

But, of course, the real focus of the speech was the need for more oil and gas drilling — and how it could save us from the bad guys. “We can double U.S. oil production again and put America in a global league of its own,” Hamm said. “Every time we can’t drill a well in America, terrorism is being funded. Every onerous regulation puts American lives at risk.”

Currently an energy advisor to Trump, Hamm is reportedly being considered for energy secretary, a cabinet position that oversees nuclear safety and funding for energy research and technology. During President Obama’s two terms, the spot has been filled by first a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and second a nuclear physicist.

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Hey, someone mentioned climate change on stage at the Republican convention

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