Climate change: ‘We are not backing down,’ White House climate advisor says
Akiko Fujita,Anchor/Reporter – April 22, 2022
White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy defended the Biden administration’s policies to ease record energy prices, even as the president struggles to balance the immediate threat of inflation with long-term challenges posed by climate change.
Speaking to Yahoo Finance Live, McCarthy said the president’s commitment to halve U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels remains “absolute.”
“We’re not backing down,” McCarthy said. “Nor are we giving up on our targets. They are aggressive. But we are on target domestically to do what we need to do.”
McCarthy’s comments come amid growing unease among environmentalists that the White House is backing off of ambitious climate pledges set one year ago in the face of public frustration over rising energy costs.
President Biden addresses a press conference at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on November 2, 2021. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP)
The president rejoined the Paris Agreement on his first day in office, and vowed to lead global leaders in putting countries on path to carbon neutrality by 2050.
At the White House’s first Leaders Summit on Climate last year, Biden announced the U.S. would nearly double its commitment to reducing emissions, while aiming to eliminate fossil fuels from the country’s electric grids by 2035.
However, higher energy prices brought on by pandemic-related supply shortages and the Russia-Ukraine War have threatened to derail those policies. Gas prices have climbed nearly 20% between February and March, though they have moderated in recent weeks.
Under pressure to act, the president has publicly accused oil companies of holding back production to keep prices high. In March, Biden announced a record release of 1 million barrels of oil a day by tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He followed that by issuing an emergency waiver to allow for the year long sale of fuel with higher ethanol content, typically banned during the summer because of higher smog levels.
Last week, the Interior Department announced it would resume selling leases to drill in 145,000 acres of federal land across nine states, reversing his campaign pledge.
White House Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy speaks at a news conference about the American Jobs Plan on April 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“The problem is that we have a Putin war that has actually created an emergency, which the president is making sure he takes control of,” McCarthy said. “We believe we can still get [to the climate targets] but we need Congress to help.”
Biden’s key climate and social spending bill, Build Back Better (BBB), remains stalled in Congress amid opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), a crucial swing vote. McCarthy said lawmakers are looking to break up the $500 billion in climate initiatives tied up in BBB to ensure passage of policies that are critical to keeping the administration’s policies on track.
Manchin has held informal talks with the administration, and told staff that the legislation must be voted on before the August recess, according to the Washington Post.
“We know that Congress is interested in moving,” McCarthy said. “What we want to make sure we do is have enough conversations with Senator Manchin that we can be assured that we can move this forward in reconciliation.”
McCarthy has faced speculation about her own future within the administration as the climate agenda she helped craft sputters. Earlier this week, she released a statement amid reports she was planning to step down next month. McCarthy, who previously led the National Resources Defense Council, said she had no plans to return to the private sector just yet.
“I’m sticking around because there’s still so much more work to do,” she said. “I wouldn’t be staying around if I didn’t think that work was available to us.”
Akiko Fujita is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance.
Experts predict lasting environmental damage from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Julia Jacobo – April 20, 2022
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, environmental experts and activists are warning of a ripple effect of problems, including long-lasting damage to the war-ravaged country’s urban, agricultural and industrial areas.
Nearly two months into its invasion, Russia has begun its long-feared offensive in eastern Ukraine along the 300-mile front near Donbas, a region with a 200-year history of coal mining and heavy industry.
The past seven weeks have been mired by death, displacement and the demolition of a country’s landscape that will take years to repair, experts told ABC News. In addition to the direct impact on Ukrainians, consequences of the war will be felt socially, economically and environmentally.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raises a host of unique and potentially profound environmental concerns for not only the people of Ukraine, but the wider region, including much of Europe,” Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, told ABC News. “Those human impacts of the war take on a lot of forms and a lot of dimensions, and many of them last long after long after the hostilities have ceased.”
While there were catastrophic environmental consequences during World War I and II, conflicts during recent history provide a more detailed blueprint for the sheer amount of greenhouse gases emitted during modern wars.
PHOTO: A rocket sits in a field near grazing cows on April 10, 2022 in Lukashivka village, Ukraine. (Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images)
As a result of the global War on Terror that began in 2001, 1.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gases were released, the equivalent to the annual emissions of 257 million passenger cars — more than twice the current number of cars on the road in the U.S., according to a 2019 report released by Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs.
In addition to the hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and sulfur dioxide emitted from military vehicles, and other heavy machinery, heavy deforestation occurred in Afghanistan as a result of illegal logging, especially by warlords, which then destroyed wildlife habitat, according to the report.
“We now understand the environmental dimensions of war in ways that we didn’t decades ago,” Muffett said. “This is a particularly egregious situation, because the entire world is calling for Russia to end its its invasion right now.”
Once the conflict is over, the environment in Ukraine is going to be the local government’s “No. 1 priority,” Doug Weir, research and policy director of The Conflict and Environment Observatory, told ABC News.
These are the areas of most environmental concern, according to experts:
Industrial regions
Ukraine is a heavily industrialized country, especially in its eastern regions. It contains a large number of mines and refineries of chemical plants that produce substances such as ammonia and urea, Muffett said.
Assessing the damage from attacks on industrial sites and new nuclear facilities will be among the Ukrainian government’s priorities, Weir said.
In addition, there are “serious concerns” about the forced closure of several coal mines, which are now flooding with acid mine drainage without the proper methods to pump out the water, Weir said. Those toxins are then seeping into the groundwater aquifers
“We’ve already seen hints at how those could play out,” she said, adding that multiple refineries in Ukraine have already been hit. “One of the things that the lessons of the the invasion of Kuwait and the Iraq war is teach us is that strikes against facilities of these kinds pose profound risks for massive releases and really long-term damage.”
PHOTO: Firefighters work to put out a blaze at the Lysychansk Oil Refinery after if was hit by a missile, April 16, 2022, in Lysychansk, Luhansk region, Ukraine. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)
Agricultural fields
Researchers are estimating that millions of people could suffer from malnutrition in the years following the invasion as a result of lack of arable land.
Initial assessments show large swaths of agriculture areas affected by heavy shelling an unexploded ordinances, Weir said.
Olha Boiko, a Ukrainian climate activist and coordinator for the Climate Action Network for Eastern Europe and East Asia, said she and her fellow activists still in Ukraine are worried about the state of the agricultural fields and their suitability to grow wheat after the war, which is one of the country’s largest exports, she said.
PHOTO: Goats eat grass next to unexploded shell of multiple rocket launch system, in the village of Teterivka, in Kyiv region, Ukraine, April 14, 2022. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters)
Wildlife and natural ecosystems
The plethora of military vehicles trampling over the Ukrainian border are creating an unforgiving landscape, experts said.
In an effort to defend their country, Ukrainian military laid landmines over at least one beach near Odesa, according to the Conflict and Environment Observatory.
Boiko also alleged that Russian forces have blown up oil exporting equipment, polluted the Black Sea and filled fields with landmines, which were found as Russian forces retreated the regions surrounding Kyiv.
Fighting close to Kherson, near the southern coast of Ukraine, resulted in fires in the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve that were so large they were detectable from space and likely destroyed trees and unique habitats for birds, according to the observatory.
“There have been risks to wildlife and biodiversity we’ve seen that play out in Ukraine, with active battles in in insignificant wetlands,” Muffett said.
PHOTO: A sign warns beach-goers of potential land mines, in Odessa, Ukraine, April 4, 2022. (Igor Tkachenko/Reuters)
Urban areas
One of Russia’s military strategies has been to besieging cities by firing weapons indiscriminately into them, Weir said.
When Russian troops retreated the areas on the outskirts Kyiv after failing to take the capital, the devastation left in cities such as Bucha, Borodyanka and Irpin was immediately apparent.
Buildings were burned or completely destroyed. Burned-out cars littered the roadways. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble.
The rebuilding phase is going to be a “huge task,” Weir said.
“From an environmental point of view, there’s going to be a huge amount of work needed to properly assess these sites, locate potentially hazardous sites,” Weir said, adding that environmental remediation process for the potentially hazardous sites can be complex and expensive.
PHOTO: An armored vehicle of pro-Russian troops drives along a street during fighting near an iron and steel plant in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, April 12, 2022. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
Nuclear facilities
Soon after the conflict began, Russian troops took hold of the exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl power plant, raising concerns that an errant explosive could create another radioactive event at the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986.
The destroyed reactor was sealed in 2019 under a $2 billion stadium-sized metal structure, but the other three untouched reactors remain fully exposed. Within them sits a pool of 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel, as well as dangerous isotopes, such as uranium and plutonium. If hit, the storage facility has the potential to cause an even larger disaster than in 1986 and could prompt widespread evacuations all over Europe, Muffett said.
“The conduct of active military operations in a country with four nuclear facilities and 15 active nuclear reactors poses extraordinary risks,” Muffett said, admonishing Russia for immediately targeting Chernobyl despite “no legitimate military objectives associated with that site.”
Russian troops have cut off power to Chernobyl in ways the site was not “sustained for,” and untrained Russian servicemen disturbed radioactive soil and raised dust as they moved through the area, Muffett said.
“We’ve seen missile strikes actually put a nuclear facility on fire,” she said. “And, in the immediate hours after the fire began, firefighters were unable to reach the blaze, because they were in a live fire situation. These are these are really extraordinary risks.”
PHOTO: A member of a bomb disposal squad works in a mine field near Brovary, northeast of Kyiv, Ukraine, April 14, 2022. (Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)
The role Russian oil plays in the conflict
The conflict in Ukraine is the latest demonstration of the “deep linkages between fossil fuels and conflict,” Muffett said. Boiko, who left Kyiv on Feb. 24, said the connection that fossil fuels play in the current war are “obvious,” because Russia is using the funds from its oil industry to fund the conflict.
“We’ve seen Putin’s regime look to weaponize its own natural gas and oil resources as a way to intimidate countries in Europe and beyond from coming to Ukraine to aid,” Muffett said. “And so, this is a fossil fueled conflict in every conceivable way.”
The environmental activists who remain in Ukraine, those who aren’t helping with the immediate humanitarian relief, are bringing attention to the fact that the E.U. and U.S. have been “very dependent” on Russia’s fossil fuels for years, Boiko said.
While the U.S. has imposed sanctions on all Russian oil and other energy sources, the European Union’s embargo only extends to coal, and not to oil and gas. About 40% of the EU’s gas comes from Russia, according to the observatory.
“This is exactly the leverage that has been used by Russia that is pressuring, basically, other countries to not impose sanctions to not do anything about this war to not help Ukraine,” Boiko said.
But Boiko said the conflict and the aftermath could eventually lead to positive steps in the fight against climate change, because the sanctions imposed on Russia lead to less less fossil fuel consumption. She said the phasing out of fossil fuels could happen more quickly, now that a major world player in oil exports has essentially been eliminated.
“The fact that this conflict is accelerating conversations within Europe about how they free themselves from reliance on fossil oil and fossil gas is also a big step forward,” Muffett said.
Pandemic, war, and inflation has spurred some people to a life of ‘homesteading’ and ‘prepping.’ Here’s how these practitioners live off the land and plan for disaster.
Gabrielle Bienasz – April 16, 2022
The Green Gardens Homestead in Washington.
Homesteading is living off the land, but social media influencers have added a modern spin.
After the pandemic, war, and inflation, it’s grown even more attractive.
Prepping, another survivalist-style niche, has overlap with homesteading and has seen an uptick, too.
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Five years ago, Nivek Anderson-Brown and her husband moved to Virginia, where they now raise chickens, grow crops, sell at farmer’s markets, and broadcasts content on TikTok as the Leaf and Bean Farm — all part of the life of a 21st century, live-off-the-land homesteader.
“People were like, ‘Are you crazy?’ when we first did it. And then, when the pandemic happened, they were like, ‘Tell us what you did!'” Brown said.
Greens of Brown’s homestead.
In a time of chaotic supply chains, rising food prices, inflation, and war anxiety, being able to provide for yourself has a new glow, whether it’s through “homesteading” or its close cousin, “prepping,” 10 of the communities’ online members told Insider.
The homesteading life
“Any small amount of trying to grow your own food or preserving. That’s homesteading,” says Ciearra Evans, of The Thrifted Planer homestead.
But the lifestyle tends to build upon itself, Brown said. For example, she started out growing and drying herbs, then realized she had enough land to forage.
Once she did, she found a patch of the mint-like plant horehound — which led to her making homemade cough drops.
“It was just like one thing rolling into another,” she said. “It takes on a life of its own.”
Preserving at Brown’s homestead.
The term “homesteading” has been co-opted throughout history, from 1970s hippie communes to formerly enslaved Black Americans seeking land in Kansas to fundamentalist Christians raising children off the grid, said Brian Cannon, professor of history at Brigham Young University and author of a book about post-World War II homesteading.
“I think we have, in the US, dating clear back to Thomas Jefferson, the conviction that rural life is wholesome,” he added.
Chickens at Brown’s homestead.
Homesteading also can be a form of political or social dissent, according to a 2016 dissertation Jordan Travis Radke on modern homesteaders, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It’s a way to “opt out” of systems that feel entrenched, from the government to climate change, she wrote.
Many homesteaders tend to be white, Cannon said, which is no surprise, considering land is a key (but not essential) element of homesteading, and many Black Americans have lost land throughout US history.
It’s something on the minds of Evans and Brown, who try to garden and create content as well as give voices to Black homesteaders online.
“There aren’t a lot of people that look like me that do this,” Brown said.
Homesteader’s cousin
For some, homesteading can eventually or immediately evolve into “prepping,” a term coined for another survivalist-type niche that focuses on preparing for a harder or possibly more dystopian future, the perception of which has come to pass for some.
More preserved food at Brown’s homestead.
In particular, prepping has seen heightened interest as inflation has grown worse and amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine-driven anxiety about food shortages, prepper-influencers told Insider.
Tiffany Holloway, an apartment-style prepper on TikTok, said her following grew by about tens of thousands in March amid increasing inflation.
Holloway herself got into prepping after the 2021 ice storms in Texas. One of her neighbors ran out of baby formula. “I ended up having to nurse her baby for her,” via pumping, Holloway said. “This whole experience taught me that you have to prepare.”
Holloway now teaches prepping on TikTok for people with small spaces and lower budgets, as well as focusing on prepping for potential domestic violence as a DV survivor herself – i.e., having a bag with a burner phone, money, and financial and identifying documents.
However, there can be a darker side to the prepper community, as far as folks who lean too far into extreme anxiety or paranoia.
Holloway said she finds some of the content on TikTok fear-monger-y, though she said that’s not her niche.
“I try to keep it pretty positive on my page,” she said.
Most preppers isolate and stay silent about their stores, something known as the “gray man” trope.
“People will become desperate. Ninety-five percent of people don’t have food at their house,” said Cam Hardy of The Casual Preppers Podcast.
If they know you have food, “they’ll know exactly where to go,” he said
Florida might lose its fourth insurance company in as many months as lawmakers are polled on special
Jake Stofan – April 15, 2022
Florida has lost three property insurance companies in as many months and could be on the verge of losing another after FedNat insurance was downgraded Friday.
The four losses combined would leave as many as 400,000 policyholders without coverage.
Homeowners in Northeast Florida are now beginning to see the double-digit year-over-year rate hike that was once reserved for places like Miami.
Some state lawmakers are arguing that without a special session, things are just going to keep getting worse.
Ronnie Rohn is 78.
He lives on Social Security and works here and there to make ends meet.
So, when he was told he’d be seeing his homeowner’s insurance increase by $600 this year, it hurt.
“Half our Social Security goes toward medicine and stuff and the extra $600 would help,” said Rohn.
Rohn is far from alone in his financial struggles.
Rising rates in Northeast Florida are driving more and more Duval residents to the state’s insurer of last resort.
Citizens Insurance has seen its number of Duval policies double over the last year.
“What started out as being a south Florida issue has started to work its way throughout the state,” said Citizens spokesperson Michael Peltier.
State Senator Jeff Brandes (R-St. Petersburg) told us the state’s private insurance market is on life support.
He has initiated a call for a special session to help stop the bleeding.
“And the Legislature’s either going to get our arms around this or the whole market is going to start shutting down,” said Brandes.
The Secretary of State sent out an official poll of lawmakers Thursday.
Two-thirds of lawmakers from both chambers will have to agree by Monday for a special session to be called.
Brandes said that even with a special session, any reforms will take between 18 and 24 months to affect rates, but he argues waiting is no longer an option.
“Let’s make this the primary focus of everything we’re dealing on. This is quickly becoming the number one issue and the number one challenge facing the State of Florida,” said Brandes.
We’ll have a first look at the number of those who have voted yes sometime Friday evening.
Backed-up pipes, stinky yards: Climate change is wrecking septic tanks
Jim Morrison – April 12, 2022
This trench was dug to help alleviate rainwater issues in the yard of Roosevelt Jones, whose septic system has increasingly failed at his Suffolk, Va., home. (Kristen Zeis for The Washington Post)
Lewis Lawrence likes to refer to the coastal middle peninsula of Virginia as suffering from a “soggy socks” problem. Flooding is so persistent that people often can’t walk around without getting their feet wet.
Over two decades, Lawrence, the executive director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District, has watched the effects of that problem grow, as rising waters and intensifying rains that flood the backyard render underground septic systems ineffective. When that happens smelly, unhealthy wastewater backs up into homes.
Local companies, he said, call the Middle Peninsula the “septic repair capital of the East Coast.” “That’s all you need to know,” he added. “And it’s only going to get worse.”
As climate change intensifies, septic failures are emerging as a vexing issue for local governments. For decades, flushing a toilet and making wastewater disappear was a convenience that didn’t warrant a second thought. No longer. From Miami to Minnesota, septic systems are failing, posing threats to clean water, ecosystems and public health.
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About 20% of U.S. households rely on septic, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Many systems are clustered in coastal areas that are experiencing relative sea-level rise, including around Boston and New York. Nearly half of New England homes depend on them. Florida hosts 2.6 million systems. Of the 120,000 in Miami-Dade County, more than half of them fail to work properly at some point during the year, helping to fuel deadly algae blooms in Biscayne Bay, home to the nation’s only underwater national park. The cost to convert those systems into a central sewer plant would be more than $4 billion.
The issue is complex, merging common climate themes. Solutions are expensive, beyond the ability of localities to fund them. Permitting standards that were created when rainfall and sea-level rise were relatively constant have become inadequate. Low-income and disadvantaged people who settled in areas with poor soils likely to compromise systems are disproportionately affected. Maintenance requirements are piecemeal nationwide. And while it’s clear that septic failures are increasing, the full scope of the problem remains elusive because data, particularly for the most vulnerable aging systems, are difficult to compile.
“The challenges are going to be immense,” said Scott Pippin, a lawyer and researcher at the University of Georgia’s Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems who has studied the problem along the state’s coast. “Conditions are changing. They’re becoming more challenging for the functionality of the systems. In terms of large-scale, complex analysis of the problem, we don’t really have a good picture of that now. But going forward, you can expect that it’s going to become more significant.”
Pippin’s work in Georgia is one of several studies as states from New Hampshire to Alabama confront the effects of septic system failures. Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy estimates that 24% of the state’s 1.37 million septic systems are failing and contaminating groundwater. A project funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is examining the potential longer-term impacts of climate change on septic systems in the Carolinas. Virginia has created a Wastewater Infrastructure Policy Working Group to address the issue.
An EPA spokesman said the agency didn’t have a report on the septic problem but noted that sea level rise, changing water tables, precipitation changes and increased temperature can cause systems to fail. The infrastructure bill passed last year provides $150 million to replace or repair systems nationwide.
For a century, conventional septic systems have been an inexpensive solution for wastewater. They work by burying a tank that collects wastewater from sinks, toilets, showers and washing machines, holding the solids while the liquid percolates through a few feet of filtering soil, where microbes and other biological processes remove harmful bacteria.
When that doesn’t happen, bacteria and parasites from human waste flow into drinking water supplies or recreational waters, creating a public health problem. Nitrogen and phosphorous, also a byproduct of the waste, pollute waters, creating oxygen-depleted zones in rivers and along the coast, closing shellfish harvests and killing fish.
For decades, septic systems have been designed with the assumption that groundwater levels would remain static. That’s no longer true. “Systems that were permitted 40, 50 years ago and met the criteria at that time now wouldn’t,” said Charles Humphrey, an East Carolina University researcher who studies groundwater dynamics. In North Carolina’s Dare County, which includes Outer Banks destinations such as Nags Head and Rodanthe, groundwater levels are a foot higher than in the 1980s.
That means there’s not enough separation between the septic tank and groundwater to filter pollutants. The threat isn’t only along the coasts. More intense storms dumping inches of rain in a few hours soak the ground inland, compromising systems for weeks. Too little precipitation is a problem as well. The lack of early, insulating snow in the Midwest, attributed to climate change, drives down the frost line, freezing drain fields and causing failures.
Georgia spent years creating a comprehensive database of septic systems, the only state to complete one. “Everybody wants to skip to a solution – how do we build a new infrastructure for the future? But I think the story is really the value of investing in the data and in that preliminary research to make smart investments and wise decisions,” Pippin said.
While Virginia’s Middle Peninsula has a soggy socks problem, Miami-Dade County has a porous limestone bedrock problem. The soil under its 2.7 million South Florida residents allows septic tank effluent to reach groundwater, a problem intensified by climate change.
About half of the area’s 120,000 septic tanks were compromised during storms or wet years, according to a study. Roughly 9,000 are vulnerable to compromise or failure under current conditions. That number is expected to rise to 13,500 by 2040. The solution is to connect properties to a central sewer system, beginning with the most-threatened areas. So far, the county is using $100 million from the American Rescue Plan to begin converting homes to sewer and another $126 million to convert 1,000 commercial septic tanks. The plan is to expand sewer to the 9,000 most vulnerable properties within five to 10 years, if funding can be secured.
Connecting will cost between $5,000 and $20,000. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the county is looking for funds to help low- and moderate-income property owners.
“What’s at stake?” she asked. “I’m sitting on my 29th-floor office looking out the window at the beautiful bay. This is our lifeblood. Without a clean bay, we don’t have tourism. We don’t have health. We don’t have a marine industry. It is the lifeline, the economic driver.”
The cost Levine Cava outlined can be a barrier to low-income communities. In the Chuckatuck borough of Suffolk, a sprawling city in Southeast Virginia, the mostly Black, elderly residents of the Oakland neighborhood have suffered repeated septic failures in recent years. They blame the combination of new development increasing storm-water runoff and a failure by the city to maintain ditches carrying away the water.
When Roosevelt Jones, 81, moved into the neighborhood in 1961, he used an outhouse. Soon after, he installed septic. But in recent years, his system and others in the neighborhood have increasingly failed, backing up in sinks and toilets. During the 2020 winter, Jones, who has lived in his 1,300-square-foot cottage since 1961, had to pump his tank out four times at $350 each. “Normal is every five years,” he said. “When we get a bad rain, it’s going to flood my septic tank.”
When his toilet fills with sewage, Jones, who retired from a quality control position for a warehouse but still works custodial jobs, slips into a church he cleans up the road.
After the city ran a pipeline through their neighborhood to provide sewer service to a development of more than 100 homes uphill with prices starting at $300,000, residents were given the option to tie into the system. But it came at a cost – roughly $7,000 or more per house. Many in the village are on a fixed income. The price was too high. Only 33 of 75 property owners voted, with 18 of them favoring a sewer connection. “A lot of people got them [the petitions] and ended up throwing them away,” Jones said.
On Virginia’s low-lying Middle Peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the Chesapeake Bay, the Rappahannock River and the York River, Lawrence has had a preview of the effects of climate change and the challenges to septic systems. Failing to address the problem, he said, could eliminate decades of environmental progress.
“You’re sitting on all of the work for the last 30 years to clean up the Chesapeake Bay,” he said. One or two good hurricanes will destroy that because every residential home will become a brownfield because their septic tank is just sitting there full of bad stuff.”
Shortly after Lawrence started at the planning district in 1997, the General Assembly approved alternative septic systems in addition to the conventional gravity-fed systems. They’re engineered to have a secondary treatment that purifies the wastewater before discharging it into the soil.
Now, even those alternative systems are failing. Why? They don’t handle flooding well and flooding happens often on the Middle Peninsula.
Wastewater regulations for septic systems haven’t been overhauled in decades in states. Virginia updated requirements 20 years ago, said Lance Gregory, director of the Department of Health’s Water and Wastewater Services division. A bill passed last year directs the State Board of Health to create regulations making Virginia the first state to include the impacts of climate change on septic. The goal, Gregory said, is to not issue a permit for a system that 10 or 15 years from now will be an environmental and public health problem – and a costly repair for an owner.
Lawrence is looking for solutions, partnering with Rise, a Norfolk-based technology innovations accelerator, in a challenge to design septic systems that can be elevated much like HVAC systems. “Why are we building our communities the same way we built them 100 years ago when we know Mother Nature isn’t operating the same way she did 100 years ago? It makes no sense,” he said. “We’ve got to be reimagining and designing our communities differently. If you can elevate a heat pump, why can’t you elevate a $40,000 septic system?”
The problem percolating underground so concerned William “Skip” Stiles of the nonprofit Virginia advocacy group Wetlands Watch that he created an ad hoc group of policymakers and researchers from Georgia to Maine to share knowledge and discuss solutions.
He hopes the group’s “noodling” on the issues, as he calls it, will inform new regulations. In the end, the answer to the septic problem may not be to improve the regulations and the technology, but to leave threatened areas.
“The septic system is the canary in the coal mine,” Stiles said. “If you’ve got a house and the septic is starting to flood, it won’t be long before the house goes. We ought to be using septic failures as an early warning system for those areas we’re going to have to take people out of.”
Fueling our cars is no small expense, but as a recurring and regular part of owning a vehicle, it’s inevitable. That can make things interesting — frustrating, burdensome — when the market is in turmoil, or when we have a life change that necessitates greater consumption. Gas prices can fluctuate head-spinningly quickly, too. And it’s not just internal combustion vehicles that are subject to changing fuel costs. EV operating costs are tied to energy prices, too, of course, which means changes in supply and demand due to global or national economics, or even regional weather events, can mean we’re paying more per mile regardless of what fuels our vehicles. And perhaps it’s not about the money.
Even when prices are cheap, many of us would like to minimize our footprint in the course of our daily lives. As such, choosing a fuel-efficient vehicle can be a priority for drivers who want to spend less and pollute less. With that in mind, here are the most efficient vehicles you can buy today, broken down by powertrain, with combined fuel economy and estimated annual fuel costs listed. (EPA calculates annual fuel cost based on “45% highway, 55% city driving, 15,000 annual miles and current fuel prices,” but also offers a calculator to personalize your own estimated yearly fuel costs.)
Most efficient EVs for 2022
Battery-electric vehicles are the obvious choice for saving on fuel costs and consumption, but not all EVs are created equal. Range is often the bigger consideration for many customers when choosing an EV — we just want to be able to get where we’re going with the least disruption and downtime. If lower operating costs and carbon footprint is your goal, though, you want to pay more attention to efficiency than driving range. The simplest way for a consumer to do this is to look at the EPA’s combined miles-per-gallon-equivalent (mpge) rating. We’re also including the EPA’s estimated annual fuel costs. Here are the top 20 most efficient EVs, based on the most efficient version of each model. These are also the least expensive to fuel overall.
If going gas-free isn’t in your plans, a plug-in hybrid is a decent compromise to lower your fuel costs and emissions while still having the convenience and security of being able to fill up quickly and be on your way, while still being able to do some driving on electricity alone. These are the most efficient PHEVs currently on sale, based on combined mpge rated by EPA. Estimated annual fuel costs are listed, as well. Note that some of these are even more efficient, by the EPA’s standards, than some all-electric vehicles in the list above. In fact, #1 is rated the most efficient of all the vehicles on this page, period.
Most-efficient internal combustion vehicles for 2022
If you’re not ready or able to get a car with a plug, but still want to get the most mileage from your fill-ups, these are the most efficient gasoline-powered vehicles you can buy. The vast majority of these are traditional hybrids, but a few non-hybrid cars made the list. Again, these are based on the EPA’s combined mpg rating, listed by the most efficient specification for each model, and including estimated annual fuel costs.
Germany Announces New Plan to ‘Turbocharge’ Transition to Renewable Energy
Olivia Rosane – April 07, 2022
A solar energy field next to a coal plant in Germany. Jens Schlueter / Getty Images
Responding to both the climate crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany unveiled a major package Wednesday to speed its transition to renewable energy.
The goal of the new plan is for Germany to get at least 80 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 and achieve almost 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, DW reported.
“On the one hand, the climate crisis is coming to a head. On the other hand, Russia’s invasion shows how important it is to phase out fossil fuels and promote the expansion of renewables,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck told the press, as Reuters reported.
The package comes days after the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warned that nations must reduce carbon dioxide emissions 43 percent by 2030 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It also comes as European countries have vowed to wean themselves off of Russian fossil fuels “well before 2030” in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The new energy plan is a 600-page document known as the “Easter Package,” DW reported. Habeck said it was “the biggest comprehensive energy package in two decades” and would “turbocharge” the transition to renewable energy.
The plan is the work of Germany’s coalition government, which includes the Free Liberals, Social Democrats and Greens, according to Reuters. It was approved by the German cabinet. It increases Germany’s previous renewable energy target from 65 percent by 2030. Currently, the country gets around 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Meeting the 100 percent 2035 goal will require the country to more than double its current rate in 13 years, AP News reported.
The new plan also sets specific targets for different types of renewable energy, according to DW. These include:
Increasing land-based wind power by 10 gigawatts a year, to reach 115 gigawatts by 2030.
Increasing solar by 22 gigawatts a year, to reach 215 gigawatts by 2030.
Reaching 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, 40 by 2035 and at least 70 by 2045.
While the plan is ambitious, Germany may miss its near-term climate targets because of failing to take action in the past, Habeck said, as AP News reported. The transition to renewable energy has lagged in recent years because of regulations and changes to feed-in subsidies, and the country added no offshore wind power in 2021. The new package labels renewable energy as having “overriding public interest,” which should help speed changes through the bureaucracy.
In the immediate push to phase out Russian fossil fuels, Germany may have to increase the use of domestic coal, Habeck acknowledged. He said that the country would stop importing Russian oil and coal this year and gas by halfway through 2024.
“You can see at what speed we are becoming independent of Russian energy,” he said.
Germany aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.
Plant-Based Grocery Sales Outpace Total Food Sales by 3x in U.S., Study Finds
Paige Bennett – April 08, 2022
Plant-based food sales were three times higher than total food sales in the U.S. in 2021. Ole Spata / picture alliance via Getty Images
A new study from The Good Food Institute (GFI), the Plant-Based Foods Association (PBFA) and SPINS, a wellness-focused data technology organization, has found that at U.S. grocery stores, plant-based food sales were three times higher than total food sales in 2021.
According to the report, plant-based food sales increased 6.2% compared to previously record-high sales in 2020, and the plant-based food market reached $7.4 billion last year. For many categories, plant-based products were more popular than conventional counterparts made with dairy or meat.
“Meanwhile, the conventional protein market has been rocked by supply chain disruptions and escalating inflation,” the report said. “Conventional meat dollar sales grew three times faster than its unit sales over the past three years, indicating that the apparent growth is driven solely by price hikes.”
GFI noted that the largest plant-based category is milk, and 42% of U.S. households purchased plant-based milk in 2021. Plant-based milks have been popular in recent years with a dollar sales growth from 4% to 33% over the past three years. In 2021, dairy milk sales declined by 2% in comparison.
Almond milk remains the top choice, making up 59% of all plant-based milk sales. Oat milk has seen rapid growth though and is up to 17% of plant-based milk sales as of last year. In 2017, oat milk sales made up only 0.5% of the category in 2018.
Other dairy-free products, such as ice creams, yogurts, creamers and cheeses, also saw growth over the past year, while many conventional products, such as cheese, actually declined in 2021.
Meat alternatives are an interesting case study in their own right. Although the plant-based meat category matched its 2021 sales to its 2020 sales, plant-based meat unit sales outpaced conventional meat unit sales six times in the past three years. Plant-based burgers lead the category with the most sales, but chicken alternatives and other options like deli slices and meatballs have seen the most growth in the past year.
“The sustained rise in the market share of plant-based foods is remarkable, and makes it clear that this shift is here to stay. More and more consumers are turning to plant-based options that align with their values and desire to have a positive impact on personal and planetary health,” said Julie Emmett, PBFA senior director of marketplace development. “The potential impact of these initiatives extends far beyond the store shelf: By taking consumer concerns to heart, the industry is actively embracing its role as a key driver of change that moves us closer to a secure and sustainable food system.”
A study accepted for publication in Science of the Total Environment last month detected micro-plastics in the lung tissue of living people for the first time, and much deeper than the researchers expected.
“We did not expect to find the highest number of particles in the lower regions of the lungs, or particles of the sizes we found,” senior author Laura Sadofsky at Hull York medical school told The Guardian. “It is surprising as the airways are smaller in the lower parts of the lungs and we would have expected particles of these sizes to be filtered out or trapped before getting this deep.”
The research comes as more and more evidence shows that micro-plastics are penetrating the human body. Another study published days earlier found micro-plastics in human blood for the first time, and in almost 80 percent of the people sampled.
The new study also found the plastic in the majority of lung tissue samples – 11 out of 13, the study authors wrote. A total of 39 microplastics were found in all regions of the lung.
Previous studies had found plastics in lung samples taken from autopsies. One 2021 study in Brazil found microplastics in the lungs of 13 out of 20 people studied, The Guardian reported. A 1998 study of U.S. lung cancer patients found plastic and plant fibers in more than 100 samples. However, the lung tissue in the most recent study came from live patients at Castle Hill Hospital in East Yorkshire, the Press Association reported. It was removed in surgeries as part of the patients’ routine medical care.
“Microplastics have previously been found in human cadaver autopsy samples; this is the first robust study to show microplastics in lungs from live people,” Sadofsky said, as the Press Association reported.
The scientists used spectrometry to identify the plastics, The Guardian explained. The most common two types of plastic were polypropylene, which is used for packaging and pipes, and PET, which is commonly used for beverage bottles.
In total, 11 microplastics were found in the upper parts of the lung, seven in the middle and 21 in the lower parts, a result that was particularly surprising, according to the Press Association.
“Lung airways are very narrow so no-one thought they could possibly get there, but they clearly have,” Sadofsky said, as the Press Association reported.
The findings build on reports that people exposed to microplastics in industrial settings have developed respiratory symptoms and diseases, the study authors wrote.
“This data provides an important advance in the field of air pollution, micro-plastics and human health,” Sadofsky said, as the Press Association reported. “The characterization of types and levels of micro-plastics we have found can now inform realistic conditions for laboratory exposure experiments with the aim of determining health impacts.”
Virtually everyone on Earth is breathing polluted air, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO). In a report released Monday, the U.N. agency stated that 99% of the global population “breathes air that exceeds WHO air quality limits, and threatens their health.”
That startling fact can be attributed in part to improved monitoring of air quality. An all-time high of more than 6,000 cities in 117 countries now monitor air pollution. That’s 2,000 more cities than the last update to the WHO’s air quality database, and six times as many as when it launched in 2011. The WHO is also now able for the first time to measure ground-level average annual concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, and it can track smaller sizes of particulate matter than ever before. (Exposure to nitrogen dioxide can cause respiratory disease such as asthma, symptoms such as coughing, and emergency room visits.)
An aerial view of vehicles driving near downtown Los Angeles. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
The high percentage of areas that exceed the threshold for harmful pollution is also driven by the fact that last year the WHO tightened its standards for air quality for the first time in 15 years. The organization lowered exposure levels of pollutants including sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ground-level ozone and particulate matter. The WHO calculates that air pollution causes more than 7 million premature deaths each year.
“It has been recognized that air pollution has an impact at a much lower level than previously thought,” Dr. Sophie Gumy, technical officer at WHO’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, told UN News. “So, with all the new evidence that has come up over the last 15 years since the last WHO air quality guideline update, most of the values of the guidelines levels have been reduced.”
Most air pollution is caused by the combustion of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, which are also responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Climate change is also itself a cause of increasing air pollution, due to the fact that ground-level ozone, also known as smog, forms more readily in warmer temperatures, and wildfires are increasingly frequent and severe.
The WHO called for nations to accelerate their transition to electric vehicles and clean sources of energy.
“Current energy concerns highlight the importance of speeding up the transition to cleaner, healthier energy systems,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in the report. “High fossil fuel prices, energy security, and the urgency of addressing the twin health challenges of air pollution and climate change, underscore the pressing need to move faster towards a world that is much less dependent on fossil fuels.”
