Did you know?
Bill Jacobs, an ecologist and a Catholic from Long Island NY, believes that humans can fight climate change and help repair the world right where they live.
Surrounded by carefully manicured lawns from all sides in his humble home on the Long Island’s North Shore is barely visible behind the jungle of flora that attracts birds, insects, and other nature dwellers.
Mr. Jacobs says people need to reconnect with nature and experience the sort of spiritual transcendence he feels in a forest, or on a mountain, or amid the bounty of his own yard. It’s a feeling that, for him, is akin to feeling close to God.
While his neighbors praise his efforts to get rid of lawns, landscapers argue that a garden is much harder to upkeep. “It takes a special kind of person to do something like that,” said Justin Camp, a landscaper and Jacobs’ neighbor, “I mow lawns for a living, so it’s not my thing.”
Politics & Environment
Climate Policy VS Coal Mines
For years, environmentalists have sought compromises with labor unions in industries reliant on fossil fuels, and have been effective in states like Washington, New York and Illinois that have enacted renewable-energy laws representing workers who build and maintain traditional power plants.
But at least one group of workers appears far less enthusiastic about the deal-making: coal workers, who continue to regard clean-energy jobs as a major risk to their standard of living.
While there are fewer than 50,000 unionized coal miners in the country, compared with the millions of unionized industrial and construction workers, they have been rather effective in their political agenda in election battleground states like Pennsylvania or states with powerful senators, like Joe Manchin III of West Virginia. When he opposed Biden’s climate change agenda, the miners applauded.
Unlike the carpenters and electricians working at power plants who could apply their skills to renewable-energy projects, many miners are unlikely to find jobs on wind and solar farms that resemble their current work.
“Until something gets done, I don’t want to jump on anyone’s coattail,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of promises, that’s about it,” says Gary Campbell, a heavy-equipment operator at the Loveridge mine, “It’s definitely going to pay less, not have our insurance.”
Although Mr. Biden has sought to address the concerns about pay with subsidies that provide incentives for wind and solar projects to offer union-scale wages, many people remain skeptical that health benefits and lost-wage compensation promised for displaced workers would actually happen.
Daily ED: United States
California's iconic Giant Sequoias, nearly indestructible trees that can live for thousands of years, are under threat from a range of factors stemming from climate change like wildfires and drought. Experts say that up to a fifth of the world’s population of sequoias have been lost to fires in the past years.
Satelite data shows that ocean temperature in Alaska are nearly 10 degrees Fahrenheit (five degrees Celsius) above normal. Birds and marine animals are showing up dead, and sea temperatures are warm enough to support algal blooms, which can make the waters toxic to wildlife.
Hundreds of subterranean streams, creeks and springs hidden under New York’s high-rise buildings and streets. Tibbetts Brook is one of them with the final stretch diverted into a drain in the Bronx around 1912 and environmentalists want to dig it out. However, the project could cost around $130 million, so engineers and politicians are not too happy.
Environment & Justice
Black and Latino neighborhoods pay more for energy despite far lower emissions
A new study conducted the first national-level analysis of the energy use and carbon emissions of roughly 60 million American households and discovered that although energy-efficient homes are more often found in white neighborhoods, carbon emissions from these neighborhoods are significantly higher than those in majority Latino and Black neighborhoods.
The study found that across the U.S., Latino neighborhoods have the lowest per capita emissions, at only 60% of white neighborhoods. While Black neighborhoods emissions are higher than Latino neighborhoods, they’re still just on average 10% less than those in white neighborhoods.
However, they’re paying more for it. According to a 2020 report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) compared to white households, Black households spend 43% more of their income on energy costs, Latino households spend 20% more, and Native American households spend 45% more.
Why? Economic ineqaulity and a growing wealth gap.
Going back decades, from redlining to racial covenants and racial segregation, which forced Black and Latino families into deliberately under-resourced and environmentally toxic corridors, making it difficult to build wealth and ownership across generations.
Today that has left Black and Latino families less likely to own their homes and subsequently less likely to have a say in energy-efficiency measures. It has also made it more likely that homes in majority-white communities are spatially larger, thus requiring more energy use, despite being better insulated and equipped with more efficient appliances.
Daily ED: International
If you would like to see how beautiful places on our planet changed over time, follow this link to NASA’s Images of Change project, which shows areas that have been directly affected by the climate crisis.
Every time new climate research is published, news headlines are posted or tweets are shared, a giant steel box perched on a granite plain in the Australian state of Tasmania will be recording it all. The developers of "Earth's Black Box" say the city bus-sized structure will be indestructible to the climate crisis itself and is meant to outlive humans.
Marine biologist, Erika Woolsey, has seen first-hand how coral reefs and sea life are being damaged by climate change. Through her non-profit, The Hydrous, Woolsey is using virtual reality to "bring the ocean to everyone."
Climate & Science
Misunterstood Metric of 1.5˚C
A number that dominated negotiations at last month’s United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, where close to 200 countries gathered to agree on a forward trajectory for solving the climate crisis.
The president of COP26 Alok Sharma insisted that the 1.5-degrees-C target had been kept alive, though “its pulse is weak.” The goal is only achievable if global emissions fall by half by 2030.
COP26 drove home that 1.1 degrees C — the global temperature rise to date — has already caused catastrophe for the most vulnerable people and communities around the world.
Many vulnerable countries were bitterly disappointed that the Glasgow Climate Pact did not establish a fund to compensate them for “loss and damage”.
Even if all the pledges that governments made in Glasgow are implemented — a big if — temperatures are still projected to rise a catastrophic 2.4 C this century, according to the nonprofit Carbon Action Tracker.
Journalists from all over the world are ready to track, scrutinize, and report the progress of governments and their promises.
Follow their work over here.
Sustainability
Sick of Plastic? Stop Making It!
A report from leading scientists found that the U.S. is the world’s leading generator of plastic waste, at 287 pounds per capita. It’s clogging the oceans, and poisoning plankton and whales.
A committee of academic experts who wrote the report at the request of Congress described an environmental crisis that will only get worse as plastic production, nearly all from fossil fuels, continues to soar.
In fact, the first of the study’s main recommendations is to stop making so much plastic—especially plastic materials that are not reusable or practically recyclable. It suggested a national cap on virgin plastic production among other strategies, all of which the report concluded will be needed to control pollution from plastics and all of the related health and environmental issues.
“The fundamental problem here is that plastics are accumulating in the natural environment, including the ocean,” Margaret Spring, chief conservation and science officer at Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. She called plastics “pervasive and persistent environmental contaminants,” creating a problem that is “going to continue unless we change—we have to change. And that’s just the truth.”