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I asked random Swedes to weigh in on American climate change denial

by TrishaWoodall32 Posted on April 11, 2016

I asked random Swedes to weigh in on American climate change denial

By on 11 Apr 2016commentsShare

Ah, Sweden! The land of IKEA, Volvos, and top-ranking green living. And now, you can learn so much more. Swedish tourist officials created a new app, The Swedish Number, that connects foreign callers to any “random Swede” who’s downloaded the app, per The New York Times. The creators encourage callers to “talk about anything.”

I dialed in to find out what Swedes really think about an issue that is commonplace in the United States and less so in Sweden — climate change denial. Even though Americans are now more concerned about climate change than at any time in the past 8 years, at 64 percent according to Gallup, a 2014 survey also found the United States had the lowest rate of people in the world who think we’re observing human-caused climate change. That study also found Sweden to be more accepting of the science.

I found the same to be true in my small, unscientific experiment as I heard my Swedish conversation partners’ reflections on this unwelcome form of American exceptionalism.

“I see [climate denial] as a sign of poor education, and maybe a bit too much influence from some of the more religious groups or the right wing,” said one Swedish IT developer. “And most of all, I think it’s something sad, actually, for all of us, that we can’t agree that climate change is happening to our planet.”

One man I spoke to, Joachim, said that “we have to stand up for the planet and take responsibility” — he built his own low-energy, solar-powered house 10 years ago, and says his next car will not be Volvo, but a Tesla.

Another resident mused on the political differences between his country and the United States, in progressiveness as well as power. “Most Swedes on the political spectrum fall very much on the left in comparison to the American political spectrum, and therefore most [Swedes] would have some sort of agreement that climate change is a result of human output,” he said. “But to be brutally honest, I don’t think that Sweden’s opinion matters in the world stage. It’s like a little tiny Chihuahua who’s there, barking, barking at the ankle of the big dog. The big dog sort of politely nods at the Chihuahua, and then they get back to their business.”

Another pointed out that climate change is already having an effect in Sweden: “Look, 20 years ago when I was a kid, there was snow in November. Now, the snow is coming in January.”

One Stockholm resident, Frederick, was incredulous there are people who deny climate change is happening. “People are denying that climate change is happening? … Are you sure?” he asked, adding some advice for his American counterparts: “I think maybe they should open their eyes then, because I think it’s a fact. I don’t know anything about it, but I do know it’s happening.” The U.S. might want to take some notes.

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I asked random Swedes to weigh in on American climate change denial

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Ikea is putting more than a billion bucks into the climate fight

by JeannieSheean Posted on June 4, 2015

Ikea is putting more than a billion bucks into the climate fight

By on 4 Jun 2015 3:14 pmcommentsShare

Ikea announced today that it plans to put 1 billion euros toward fighting climate change — more than $1.12 billion. Sixty percent of that will go to build renewable energy capacity, especially wind, moving the company toward its goal of using 100 percent clean energy. The remaining 40 percent will go toward helping poor countries adapt to climate change.

The furniture superstore’s business is booming as people across North America, Europe, and Asia flock to Ikea stores to purchase cheap, supposedly easy-to-assemble furniture and, sometimes, solar panels. And to watch couples fight. Last year the company made more than $32 billion.

But all of those sales take an environmental toll: Fortune magazine reported last year that Ikea consumes 1 percent of the world’s commercially logged wood, turning it into things like stylish laundry baskets and unobtrusive bedframes. And, according to the company’s own statistics, only 41 percent of Ikea’s customers see the company as one that “takes social and environmental responsibility.” Ikea wants to get that figure up to 70 percent this year.

Still, Ikea’s CEO told Reuters that the company’s primary motivation was fighting climate change, not PR. “Getting that message out to the customers is secondary,” he said.

The money for renewable energy investment will add to the $1.7 billion the company has already invested in wind and solar, including 700,000 solar panels on its buildings and more than 300 off-site wind turbines.

“I am heartened to see corporate leadership in this area,” said Amjad Abdulla, chief negotiator on the U.N. climate agreement for the Alliance of Small Island States, which stand to be hit particularly hard by climate change.

Green-minded Ikea customers will also likely be heartened by the news, which is at least as exciting as the vegan Swedish meatballs that started showing up in store restaurants a few months ago.

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Bees Love Nicotine, Even Though It’s Killing Them

by JorjaW12uqno Posted on April 29, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

If a ubiquitous class of pesticides called neonicotinoids harms bees and other pollinators—as many scientists think they do—why don’t those buzzing insects just avoid pollen and nectar that contains them?

That’s the question posed by a new study published in Nature by a team of UK researchers. Champions of these chemicals, the authors note, often argue that bees can simply choose not to forage on neonic-laced plants—an entomological twist, I guess, on the personal-responsibility creed often employed by the food industry to defer blame for the harmful effects of junk food.

What the research team found is remarkable: Far from avoiding neonics, foraging honeybees and bumblebees tend to prefer food laced with it—even though it causes them harm. To test how pollinators react to traces of neonics, the team created controlled environments over 24 hours for both bumblebees and honeybees and gave them two food choices: a straight sugar solution or a sugar solution laced with neonics at levels found in farm-field nectar.

According to the researchers, bees make food choices based on “gustatory neurons in hair-like sensilla” in their mouths. Potential food that’s toxic and/or non-nourishing normally triggers spikes in “bitter”-sensing neurons, alerting the bee to stop eating and move on top something else. The neonic-laced sugar water didn’t generate that reaction for either the bumblebees or honey bees, and so they consumed it freely—and tended to take in more of it than the neonic-free solution.

Why the preference? Here’s how Geraldine Wright, the study’s lead author and a professor at the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University, put it in the press release accompanying the study (ScienceDaily): “Neonicotinoids target the same mechanisms in the bee brain that are affected by nicotine in the human brain.” In other words, while neonics don’t register as toxins, the do give bees the same buzz (so to speak) that people get from a cigarette. Thus the poisons “may act like a drug to make foods containing these substances more rewarding,” Wright added. (Neonics are synthetic versions of of nicotine, and thus chemically similar.

And just as human smokers court all manner of health trouble, the neonic-loving creatures of the study ate less than control groups that didn’t have access to the fun stuff. Cutting calories may sound great for a 21st century American, but it’s not good for beehives relying on well-fed foragers.

Because bees evidently seek out neonics, the authors argue, strategies to limit their exposure by planting pesticide-free nectar and pollen sources along roadsides and whatnot—a key element of President Obama’s “Federal Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators”—might not by enough. “Instead,” they write, “long-term changes to policy that include reducing their use may be the only certain means of halting pollinator population decline.”

Another recent Nature study, this one by Swedish researchers, provides yet more reason for concern. The team tracked how wild bee populations and honeybee hives fared in 16 fields planted with rapeseed (canola)—half of which had been sewn with neonic-treated seeds, half of which hadn’t. The result: Populations of two kinds of wild bees—bumblebees and the solitary bees—dropped in the treated fields compared to the control ones. They found greatly diminished reproductive success in solitary bees in the treated fields. And bumblebee hives in treated fields showed slower growth and produced fewer queens than their control counterparts—both signs of diminished health.

As for honeybees, the insecticide seed treatment “had no significant influence on honeybee colony strength,” the authors report. That finding is consistent with previous studies suggesting that “honeybees are better at detoxifying after neonicotinoid exposure compared to bumblebees,” they write. But they note that their research took place over a short time—several weeks in summer when canola plants flower—and the “lack of short-term effects does not preclude the existence of long-term effects” on honeybees. And their conclusion is hardly comforting: Neonics “pose a substantial risk to wild bees in agricultural landscapes, and the contribution of pesticides to the global decline of wild bees may have been underestimated.”

Responding to similar research, the European Commission placed a moratorium on most neonic use back in 2013. But here in the United States, the chemicals remain ubiquitous. This spring, US farmers will likely plant 174 million acres of corn and soybeans—a combined swath of land about equal to the state of Texas. The majority of it will likely be with seeds that have been treated with neonics, which are then taken up by the crops and present in plant tissue, nectar, and pollen, ready to poison any creatures that munch (except humans—neonics aren’t considered toxic to us).

As the chart below chart—taken from a recent paper by Penn State entomologists Margaret Douglas and John Tooker—shows, US neonic use has exploded since treated seeds first hit the market in 1994. That may mean lots of pleasant neural sensations for bees, if the UK study has it right; but it should make any species that depends on pollination for sustenance—like us—think twice.

From: Previous Article Next Article From: “Large-Scale Deployment of Seed Treatments Has Driven Rapid Increase in Use of Neonicotinoid Insecticides and Preemptive Pest Management in U.S. Field Crops,” Douglas and Tooker, Environmental Science & Technology.”

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Bees Love Nicotine, Even Though It’s Killing Them

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One Weird, Nobel Prize-Winning Trick That Could Halve America’s Lighting Bill

by Tamera4915 Posted on October 8, 2014

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics. In the first of the prestigious awards to be handed out this week, Japanese scientists Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura were honored for their invention of the blue light-emitting diode commonly known as an LED. The $8 million prize “rewards an invention of greatest benefit to mankind”—and LEDs have crossed the bar.

Invented just twenty years ago, blue LEDs paved the way for many now-common devices, like television LCD-screens, Blu-ray discs, and laser printers. But more importantly, they give off white light in a new, more efficient way, reducing energy consumption the world over.

Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

“I (was) not too sure whether I could win a Nobel Prize,” Shuji Nakamura said in a telephone interview after he was informed of the award. “Basically physics, it means that usually people was awarded for the invention of the basic theory. But in my case, not a basic theory. In my case just making the device, you know?”

In traditional electric lighting, most of the energy is lost when it is converted to heat. But LEDs convert electricity directly to light.

The invention was based on over three decades of work and research. And since their discovery in the early ’90s, the technology has rapidly improved: state of the art LEDs are now over four times more efficient than florescents and almost 20 times more efficient than regular light bulbs. Because they last so much longer, LEDs are also less wasteful.

Lighting accounts for about a quarter of the world’s energy consumption. The Climate Group, a nonprofit pushing LED use worldwide, reports that illumination is responsible for over 1,900 million tons of CO2 emissions every year. They calculate that number could be reduced by up to 70 percent, just by replacing traditional streetlamps with LED powered versions.

Created by The Climate Group

Last year, the US Department of Energy released a report saying LEDs could halve the country’s usage of electricity for lighting by 2030. The savings would equal the output of fifty 1,000 megawatt power plants, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as taking 40 million cars off the road—not to mention cutting energy bills by $30 billion.

Of course there are still technical developments and obstacles to be overcome before this vision is realized. But it is not far fetched or far off, thanks to the latest Nobel laureates. To learn more about the science behind their world-changing invention (or to send them a quick congratulatory note!) you can head to the prizes’ site.

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One Weird, Nobel Prize-Winning Trick That Could Halve America’s Lighting Bill

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Here’s Where Food Trends Come From

by SheldonRawls Posted on May 22, 2014

Mother Jones

What makes a food trend? In his new book, The Tastemakers: Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up With Fondue, out May 27, journalist David Sax sets out to discover the hidden forces behind our diets. From a cupcake stop on the Sex and the City tour in New York to the board rooms of the McCormick spice company to the apple orchards of Ontario, Sax talks to the people who decide which foods become popular and when. Along the way, he learns that few fads spread on their own. Most are the result of well orchestrated marketing plans—like how the pork industry engineered the bacon trend to help sell less popular pig parts. I spoke to Sax about the Chipotle-fication of Indian food, how Sex and the City made cupcakes sexy, and how the dawn of the HIV/AIDS epidemic hastened the demise of the fondue-party era.

Journalist David Sax, author of The Tastemakers: Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up With Fondue Photo by Christopher Farber

Mother Jones: Your book opens on a Sex and the City tour bus. Why?

David Sax: The book opens on this Sex and the City hotspots tour, which has been running in New York for ten years or so. They stop at the Plaza Hotel, they go by Tiffany’s, they show clips on the bus. The halfway point of the tour is in the West Village, kitty corner from Magnolia Bakery. Most of the people on the tour went right for Magnolia. It was this edible icon of the show and everything it stood for. That encapsulated so much about the cupcake trend. There were people from Sweden, Australia, Middle America. They all wanted to go to Magnolia because this place was the shrine that symbolized so much more than a little cake.

MJ: So is Sex and the City responsible for the cupcake trend?

DS: That was the tipping point. That imparted the cupcake with something entirely above and beyond. It was no longer just about, this is a delicious thing and you should have it. It was about this is a symbol of femininity, sexually liberalized, capitalist feminism. This is the stiletto, the cosmo, the Rabbit vibrator equivalent. It gave cupcakes a storyline. It changed their identity. This is not a child’s treat anymore. This is, ‘You go girl. You get your cupcake.’ The Virginia Slim of the 21st century.

MJ: So that’s one way a food trend can happen, through pop culture. But the way you tell it, the story of bacon was completely different.

DS: This was an industry-driven trend. It was the result of a concerted effort by the pork industry to revive this cut of meat—pork belly, which is what you make bacon out of—that had been so demonized in the 1980s by the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet trend that was so incredibly popular. They spent money to get pork producers and smokehouses to develop round, pre-cooked slices of bacon that would fit on a hamburger, so then they could go to Burger King and Wendy’s and be like, listen, here is the money to help you to develop new burgers. We really want you to try them with bacon. The fast food companies are always looking for something else to sell. So the bacon trend—unlike most trends, which trickle down because chefs are doing it, or some cool bakery in New York is doing it, and it works its way down through Cheesecake Factory to TGI Fridays and Costco—it started in fast food and worked its way up to something that chefs were tossing with Brussels sprouts. And then it hit its cultural moment.

The coffee trend is another example. There is a Swedish tradition of a coffee break called fika in the afternoon. Maxwell House was looking to increase coffee consumption in the ’30s and ’40s, and they happened upon this thing that they put in their ads and marketing. It became such a big thing that it was in union contracts. And that triggered the growth of coffee consumption.

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Here’s Where Food Trends Come From

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