Plastic pollution dumped into oceans will triple by 2040
Isabella O’Malley, The Weather Network
Plastic pollution dumped into oceans will triple by 2040
Despite the growth of biodegradable materials and bans on single use plastics, a recent study finds that there could be 600 million tons of plastic in the oceans by 2040, which is equivalent to the weight of over three million blue whales.
Recycling has become increasingly popular over the years, but the study says that the complex composition of plastic materials limits the ability for technologies to easily sort and reprocess them.
For example, black plastic cannot be recycled in Canada because technologies do not recognize them on the sorting belt and pizza boxes cannot be recycled if they are greasy. Many people are in the habit of checking for the optimistic recycling symbol, but the reality is that many recycling facilities cannot save multi-material plastics and 86 per cent of discarded plastics in Canada end up in landfills.
The researchers say that their ominous projection is plausible due to several factors including the rapid growth in plastic production, the prevalent ‘throw-away’ culture and insufficient capacities of waste management systems at a global level.
Single use plastics are projected to increase by over 40 per cent in the next ten years and the amount of plastic flowing into oceans each year will more than double by 2040. However, the researchers reassure us that 78 per cent of plastic pollution can be solved in just two decades by using current knowledge and technologies.
The researchers projected several global outcomes based on different plastic solutions between 2016 and 2040 and found five possible scenarios: ‘Business as Usual’, ‘Collect and Dispose’, ‘Recycling’, ‘Reduce and Substitute’, and an integrated ‘System Change’ scenario that features all of the possible interventions. The reality that plays out will be determined by the level of effort that governments and corporations invest in solving the plastic crisis.
The ‘Business as Usual’ scenario provides a baseline that shows us what the volume of plastic pollution could look like if nations choose to not implement policies that curb it and if we resist changing our consumption habits. If no action is taken, between 11 to 29 million tons of plastic waste will be generated in the next 20 years, which is equivalent to nearly 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of plastic on each metre of coastline in the world.
Compared to ‘Business as Usual’, the annual combined land and ocean plastic pollution rates were reduced by 57 per cent in 2040 under the ‘Collect and Dispose’ scenario and by 45 per cent under the ‘Recycling’ scenario.
Under the ‘Reduce and Substitute’ scenario, the annual combined land and ocean plastic pollution in 2040 decreased by 59 per cent while annual plastic production decreased by 47 per cent. This scenario focused on pre-consumption solutions that reduced the volume of plastics used and replaced plastics with other materials including paper, coated paper and compostables.
The ‘System Change’ scenario yielded the most promising impacts, with the annual land and ocean plastic pollution decreasing by 78 per cent in 2040. This scenario is defined by the conservation of resources, enthusiasm from corporations to design biodegradable and recyclable materials, minimizing waste generation, reducing greenhouse gases and better managing disposed waste.
While the level of pollution significantly differed in each scenario, the costs only varied by less than 20 per cent. The ‘System Change’ and ‘Recycling’ scenarios were the cheapest, whereas the ‘Collect and Dispose’ scenario was the most expensive.
The ‘System Change’ scenario was 18 per cent cheaper than the ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and our current global strategy because of savings from reduced plastic production, revenues from the sales of recycled materials. Waste management costs were the only expenses in this scenario and the study states that this is generally financed by taxpayers.
Many countries, states and corporations have created initiatives to reduce plastic pollution, including straw bans and fees for plastic bags at grocery stores. But a stark environmental lesson COVID-19 has taught us is that in times of an emergency, the demand and reliance on single use plastics will skyrocket, and recycling systems will be stalled.
Some of the biggest challenges that the study identified include scaling collection to all households in the world and increasing the role of ‘waste pickers’ (the informal collection and recycling sector who bring municipal solid waste to recycling centres in low- and middle-income settings).
The researchers say that the ‘System Change’ scenario could be put into action by consumer, corporate and policy actions that both lower the demand for plastics and increase the rate that plastic waste is reused and recycled.
“Further innovation in resource-efficient and low-emission business models, reuse and refill systems, sustainable substitute materials, waste management technologies and effective government policies are needed,” the study states.
“Substantial commitments to improving the global plastic system are required from businesses, governments and the international community to solve the ecological, social and economic problems of plastic pollution and achieve near-zero input of plastics into the environment.”
CANADIAN COMPANY USES PLASTIC AND FISHING GEAR TO MAKE SYNTHETIC LUMBER:
A grapefruit-scented perfume ingredient that’s toxic to ticks and mosquitoes is the first new insect repellent to be approved in a decade
Andrea Michelson August 13, 2020
A European dog tick. imv/Getty Images
The EPA has approved a new ingredient, nootkatone, for use in insecticides and insect repellents.
Nootkatone is effective at repelling and killing mosquitoes, ticks, and other biting pests.
The chemical is nontoxic to humans and has been used in perfume and food for its grapefruit aroma.
The introduction of a new insect repellent ingredient could help slow resistance to insecticides.
The Environmental Protection Agency approved a fragrant and relatively safe chemical as a defense against ticks and mosquitoes on Monday.
The chemical, nootkatone, smells and tastes like grapefruit and is naturally found in the rind of the fruit, as well as in Alaskan yellow cedar trees.
Nootkatone protects from bug bites at similar rates as insect repellents currently on the market and has a staying power of up to several hours, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found. It’s the first new chemical to be approved for this purpose since 2009.
The newfound insect repellent shows promise as a protector against ticks in particular, insect toxicology expert Joal Coats told Insider. Compared to synthetic chemicals like DEET, nootkatone is equally effective at repelling mosquitos but much better at warding off ticks.
Nootkatone has superior staying power and efficacy compared to other natural repellents
While nootkatone is poisonous to insects, the chemical is nontoxic to humans and other mammals, so much so that it’s commonly used in perfumes, foods, and drinks.
Other essential oils derived from plants such as peppermint and lemongrass have been found to have some insect repellent properties but poor staying power. Those oils wear off after an hour or two, but Coats estimated that nootkatone could last up to three times longer.
Nootkatone is also more effective at killing ticks than other natural products, public health entomologist Thomas Mather told Insider. In an evaluation of minimal risk natural insecticides, he found nootkatone was 83 percent effective — comparable to the synthetic standard — while most other natural products failed.
As biting insects develop resistance to products on the market, nootkatone could offer an alternative
The introduction of a new insect repellent comes at a time when pests are developing resistance to commonly used chemicals and insect-borne diseases are on the rise.
A CDC report found in 2018 that diseases caused by ticks, mosquitoes, and fleas — such as Lyme disease, West Nile, dengue, and Zika — have tripled in the United States in the past 15 years.
Adding some variety to the arsenal of insect killers and repellents will slow the development of resistance and help the fight against insect-borne diseases.
The discovery of nootkatone takes advantage of naturally-occuring compounds that plants use to protect themselves, Coats added.
“Terpenes, or naturally compounds occurring in plants, have lots of importance from a chemical ecology perspective,” Coats said. “They’re in plants as some sort of defensive strategy to prevent insects from attacking those plants, so it’s great that we’re starting to learn how to use those more and more for our benefit.”
CLEARING THE PR POLLUTION THAT CLOUDS CLIMATE SCIENCE
The Bakken Boom Goes Bust With No Money to Clean up the Mess
By Justin Mikulka August 8, 2020
More than a decade ago, fracking took off in the Bakken shale of North Dakota and Montana, but the oil rush that followed has resulted in major environmental damage, risky oil transportation without regulation, pipeline permitting issues, and failure to produce profits.
Now, after all of that, the Bakken oil field appears moving toward terminal decline, with the public poised to cover the bill to clean up the mess caused by its ill-fated boom.
In 2008, the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) estimated that the Bakken region held between 3 and 4.3 billion barrels of “undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, ” starting a modern-day oil rush.
This oil was technically recoverable due to the recent success with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and gas-rich shale, which allowed hydrocarbons trapped in the rock to be pumped out of reservoirs previously unreachable by conventional oil drilling technology.
The industry celebrated the discovery of oil in the middle of North America but realized it also posed a problem. A major oil boom requires infrastructure — such as housing for workers, facilities to process the oil and natural gas, and pipelines to carry the products to market — and the Bakken simply didn’t have such infrastructure. North Dakota is a long way from most U.S. refineries and deepwater ports. Its shale definitely held oil and gas, but the area was not prepared to deal with these hydrocarbons once they came out of the ground.
Most of the supporting infrastructure was never built — or was built haphazardly — resulting in risks to the public that include industry spills, air and water pollution, and dangerous trains carrying volatile oil out of the Bakken and through their communities. With industry insiders recently commenting that the Bakken region is likely past peak oil production, that infrastructure probably never will be built.
Meanwhile, the petro-friendly government of North Dakota has failed to regulate the industry when money was plentiful during the boom, leaving the state with a financial and environmental mess and no way to fund its cleanup during the bust.
Haste Makes Waste: Booms Move Faster Than Regulations
After the USGS announced the discovery of oil in the Bakken, the oil and gas industry moved fast, with both the industry and state and federal regulators ignoring whether what amounted to essentially new methods of extracting and transporting large amounts of oil called for new rules and protections.
The Bakken’s big increase in oil production quickly exceeded its existing pipeline capacity, leading producers to turn to trucks to move their oil out of the fields. But as the Globe and Mail reported in 2013, this stop-gap solution wasn’t working well: “The trucking frenzy was chewing up roads, driving accident rates to record highs and infuriating local residents.”
The industry could have restricted production until new pipelines and processing equipment were built but instead moved to rail as the next transportation option. High oil prices motivated drillers to get the oil out of the ground and to customers as fast as possible. Moving oil by rail was essentially unregulated and would not require the permits, large investment, or lead times required for pipelines, leading to the Bakken oil-by-rail boom.
Moving large amounts of this light volatile oil on trains had never been done before — but there was no new regulatory oversight of the process. Without proper oversight, the industry loaded the Bakken’s volatile oil into rail tank cars originally designed to carry products like corn oil. That’s despite the National Transportation Safety Board warning that these tank cars were not safe to move flammable liquids like Bakken crude oil.
The industry waved away these warnings. July 6, 2013 marked the first major derailment of a Bakken oil train, resulting in a massive explosion, 47 deaths, and the destruction of much of downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. Bakken “bomb trains” (as train operators called them) continued to derail, creating large oil spills and often catching fire and burning for days. Regulators have still failed to address the known risks for oil trains in the U.S. and Canada.
Fracking for oil also resulted in large volumes of natural gas coming out of the same wells as the oil, further contributing to the financial troubles of shale producers. However, with no infrastructure in place to process or carry away that gas, the industry chose to either leave it mixed in with the oil loaded onto trains (making it more volatile and dangerous) or simply burn (flare) or release (vent) the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
More than a decade after the Bakken boom started, North Dakota was flaring 23 percent of the gas produced via fracking — making a mockery of the state’s flaring regulations. In July, The New York Times detailed the environmental devastation caused by flaring in the oil fields of Iraq, where they flare about half of the gas as opposed to the quarter of the gas that North Dakota has flared.
Also in July, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of Southern California published research that found pregnant women exposed to high levels of flaring at oil and gas production sites in Texas have 50 percent higher odds of premature birth when compared to mothers with no exposure to flaring.
Another major blindspot for the industry and regulators has been the radioactive waste produced during fracking. When the industry did finally acknowledge this issue in North Dakota, its first move was to try to relax regulations to make it easier to dump radioactive waste in landfills — a practice that is contaminating communities across the country.
In 2016, a study from Duke University found “thousands of oil and gas industry wastewater spills in North Dakota have caused ‘widespread’ contamination from radioactive materials…”
The fracking boom in North Dakota has resulted in widespread environmental damage and is worsening the climate crisis, given its high flaring levels, methane emissions, and, of course, production of oil and gas. As major Bakken producers go bankrupt and continue to lose money while the oil field goes bust, who will pay to clean up the mess?
Like most oil-producing states, North Dakota had the opportunity to require oil and gas producers to put up money in the form of bonding which would be designated to properly clean up and cap oil and gas wells once they were finished producing. Unfortunately, the state didn’t put that precaution in place, and now bankrupt companies are starting to walk away from their wells.
“It’s starting to become out of control, and we want to rein this in,” Bruce Hicks, Assistant Director of the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division, said last year about companies abandoning oil and gas wells.
The state recently decided to use $66 million in federal funds designated for coronavirus relief to begin cleaning up wells the oil industry has abandoned — costs that the industry should be covering, according to the law, but that are now shifted to the public.
The Bakken boom made a lot of money for a select few oil and gas executives and Wall Street financiers. But as the boom fades, taxpayers and nearby residents have to deal with the financial and environmental damage the industry will leave behind.
Bakken’s Best Days Are a Thing of the Past
As DeSmog reporting has revealed, shale producers have not been profitable for the past decade, even though they have drilled and fracked most of the best available shale oil deposits. While the prolific Permian region in Texas and New Mexico still has some of the best “tier one” core acreage for oil production left, that isn’t the case in the Bakken.
In June, oil and gas industry analysts at Wood MacKenzie highlighted this discrepancy in remaining core acreage between the Permian and the Bakken. According to Wood MacKenzie, the top quarter of remaining oil well inventory in the Permian would result in over 8,000 new wells. For the Bakken, however, the analysts put that number at 333 wells.
This difference is why John Hess, CEO of major Bakken producer Hess Corporation, predicted in January that Bakken production would soon peak.
The drop in oil demand due to the pandemic has hit the industry as a whole, but the Bakken was already in decline, with the best producing wells a thing of the past well before the novel coronavirus reached U.S. shores.
In September 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported on the dismal outlook for Hess Corporation’s oil wells, noting last year: “This year’s wells generated an average of about 82,000 barrels of oil in their first five months, 12 percent below wells that began producing in 2018 and 16 percent below 2017 wells.”
Legal Reviews of Pipelines Potentially Causing Shutdowns
Even when the industry did try to construct oilfield infrastructure in the Bakken, its rush to build and manage pipelines hasn’t always worked out well. Legal challenges to two major Bakken pipelines, one old, one new, may shut down both of them soon.
The controversial Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) is facing a potential shutdown after a judge ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers did not properly address oil spill risks and now must complete a full environmental review, which could result in a long-term shutdown of the pipeline while the Corps completes the study. Energy Transfer, DAPL‘s owner, appealed that ruling, and a subsequent court decision has allowed the pipeline to remain in operation while the legal battle over the environmental impact study continues.
At the same time, the Tesoro High Plains pipeline — in operation since 1953 — is facing a shutdown because it failed to renew an agreement with Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation landowners on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, meaning the pipeline’s owner, Marathon, now is trespassing on that land.
These pipelines together ship more than one-third of the oil out of the Bakken, and if they are shut down, Bakken oil producers likely would turn to rail again to move their oil. However, rail is significantly more expensive than pipelines and not economically viable at current low oil prices.
However, at current production levels, existing pipelines (other than the two in question) and current long-term rail contracts can likely handle most of the Bakken’s oil production, especially as the region becomes less attractive to investors.
Energy consulting group ESAI Energy recently released a new report on U.S. pipelines, with analyst Elisabeth Murphy concluding, “An uncertain outcome for Dakota Access will have knock-on effects for the Bakken, such as capital being diverted to other basins that have better access to markets.”
The ESAI analysis also concludes that the Bakken will decline by approximately 270,000 barrels per day on an annual basis in 2020 and by a further 65,000 barrels per day in 2021.
With declining total production and new wells producing less than the past, Bakken producers are facing rising debts without the means to pay them back.
End of the Unconventional Bakken Boom
Oil produced by fracking is called “unconventional oil” due to the new technologies used to extract it from shale. However, it is unconventional in other ways as well. One, it has never been profitable. Another is a change in the boom-and-bust cycle, which has been a part of the oil industry since its inception in the U.S. in the 1850s.
Traditionally the boom-and-bust cycle for conventional oil production was tied to the price of oil. Low prices caused busts. This was true of the shale oil industry in 2014 when oil prices crashed. However, the industry returned to record production after that.
But it’s different this time. Unlike conventional oil fields, shale field production declines much more quickly. While shale producers could retreat to the top-producing acreage during the 2014 bust, most of that acreage is now gone.
The shale industry is faced with trying to come back from a historic downturn in which even the companies that don’t go bankrupt are saddled with crippling debts. That’s because for most of the past decade, shale companies borrowed more money than they made producing fracked oil and gas, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
All of the evidence strongly suggest that the Bakken is an oil field on the decline. Its best acreage has been depleted and the economics of the remaining acreage don’t pan out these days.
Seeking Alpha was purely commenting on the economics of oil production in the Bakken. However, the same could be said about the water, air, and land in the Bakken. Shale companies polluted the environment and are now walking away from the damage — leaving the cleanup bill to the public. It is a tried-and-true approach for industries in resource extraction. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
Hess Corporation CEO John Hess knows more about the economics of the Bakken than most people. In February Reuters reported, “Hess plans to use cash flow from the Bakken to invest in longer-term offshore investments.” A major Bakken producer is apparently no longer viewing the region as a good long-term investment.
From here, the outlook only gets worse for the Bakken.
The report, released on Thursdays by UN chief Antonio Guterres, paints a dark picture for Latin America and the Caribbean, predicting an economic contraction of 9.1 per cent — the worst the region has seen in 100 years.
Devastating economic consequences from the coronavirus pandemic such as a steep decline in tourism and sharp drop in remittances will see Latin America’s poverty levels increase by 7 per cent from 2019. This would mean there will be a total of 230 million people living in poverty in the region with a population of 630 million. Moreover, as many as 28 million Latin Americans could enter a situation of extreme poverty in 2020, meaning they won’t be able to afford to feed themselves.
More than three million people have been infected with coronavirus in Latin America and more than 132,000 have died from it.
Many Latin American countries, such as Brazil, have some of the world’s worst Covid-19 infection rates per capita. Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras are expected to see the biggest increases in poverty in their population, per the UN report.
“This is a region that for seven years has already had very low growth, with structural gaps and an unsustainable development model that have been exacerbated by very weak social protection, fragmented health systems and deep inequalities,” said executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Alicia Bercena, according to the Associated Press.
UN chief Gutierres said in a recorded video message that in order to recover Latin America’s economy, it’s necessary to change the development model of the region.
“This implies creating fairer tax systems, promoting the creation of decent jobs, strengthening environmental sustainability and reinforcing social protection mechanisms,” he said.
A Pandemic in Review: A List of All the Crucial Environmental Pollution and Water Regulations the Trump Administration Has Waived So Far During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration has been tested and faced with impossible tasks and decisions to save the nation from the spread of the Coronavirus. However, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has revoked several crucial regulations in the name of necessity and economic restructuring which has developed a deep wound in terms of environmental safety. Here’s a running list of all the Obama-era regulations revoked, waived, or altered:
EPA waived a regulation for a contaminant in clean water that harms babies’ brains and can reduce their IQ severely at a young age. The chemical, perchlorate, had been recognized as harmful for years and had been ordered by the court to introduce a new regulation by this month. However, the EPA did not introduce a new regulation, instead waiving the current existing regulation out of reason that perchlorate was not present enough in water to the point where regulations would need to be implemented.
The Trump Administration has been accused of doing a poor job maintaining water policy in San Francisco. According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic lawmakers have discovered the carelessness of the Trump Administration in enforcing water policy in California, and this has caught the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency.
EPA announced that they would be removing a key portion of the Clean Water Act, depriving states the ability to block harmful pipeline projects that cross within their waterways. States are now limited in yet another way in moderating clean water quality– before the removal of this rule, part of section 401, states were allowed one year to approve or reject projects that go through rivers and streams to weigh how the project would affect the water quality in the surrounding region. The justification given by an EPA administrator was that the law has “held [the] nation’s energy infrastructure projects hostage.”
EPA lifted the requirement of monitoring waterways in the Midwest for the presence of the weed killer atrazine. Even though the administration’s reason behind this action is because of “the sudden impact of COVID-19,” it is still putting a risk to the health of residents who rely on these now-unchecked waterways.
As the health hazards and perilous impacts on the environment caused by the burning of these fuels continue to be exposed, public outcry to re-assess environmental rules and requirements has likewise increased: this past Thursday, numerous environmental organizations took legal action against the federal organization, Environmental Protective Agency (EPA), due to its inaction in updating over 30-year-old regulations regarding an industrial process known as flaring.
The Trump Administration signed executive orders waiving many environmental regulations. One of the regulations waived was federal authority on clean air regulations. The EPA proposed a new rule that changes the way the agency conducts analyses to impose Clean Air Act regulations. This new rule has been favored by the Trump Administration, and this new rule will effectively limit the strength of air pollution control.
The EPA has recently made steps in its work to roll back its methane emissions limits. With the current timelines the rollbacks could be finalized as early as July. Right now the EPA has sent in the proposal to the Office of Management and Budget to be reviewed and possibly accepted. This particular piece of legislation has been worked on by the Trump Administration’s EPA since 2016.
More than twenty states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming that their decision to lower fuel economy standards puts public health at risk– with the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, this ruling has only become increasingly magnified. Because of this ruling, it is predicted there will be approximately 900 million more tons of carbon dioxide released than the Obama administration standards.
US rivers and lakes are shrinking for a surprising reason: cows
Troy Farah July 2, 2020
Photograph: Rick T Wilking/Getty Images
As a fifth-generation rancher in Colorado, Paul Bruchez knows the value of water. Not only does he raise cattle irrigated by the Colorado River and its nearby tributaries, Bruchez runs a fly-fishing business on those same streams.
“My income, my life, requires a reliable water resource,” he said. But since moving to northern Colorado two decades ago, the Colorado River has shrunk by an average of 20% compared to last century. Climatic conditions are one culprit – the area is suffering the worst regional dry spell on record.
But there’s another big problem….Cows.
A recent analysis published in Nature found cattle to be one of the major drivers of water shortages. Notably, it is because of water used to grow crops that are fed to cows such as alfalfa and hay. Across the US, cattle-feed crops, which end up as beef and dairy products, account for 23% of all water consumption, according to the report. In the Colorado River Basin, it is over half.
“There are many smaller streams that have been dried up completely,” said Brian Richter, the study’s lead author and the president of Sustainable Waters, a water conservation non-profit. “We’re only seeing the beginning of what’s going to become a major natural resource issue for everybody living in the western United States.”
Agriculture accounts for 92% of humanity’s freshwater footprint across the planet, and has long been identified as a major culprit in drought. But the new study suggests how extreme its impact can be.
Cattle in western Colorado.Photograph: John P Kelly/Getty Images
“The fact that over half of that water is going to cattle-feed crops just floored us,” Richter said. “We had to double and triple check to make sure we got the numbers right.”
Lake Mead, in Arizona and Nevada, for example, hasn’t been full since 1983, and has fallen by almost two-thirds in the last 20 years alone. According to Richter’s analysis, almost 75% of that decline can be attributed to cattle-feed irrigation.
In the Colorado River Basin as a whole, which services about 40 million people in seven states and is overtaxed to the point that it rarely ever reaches the ocean anymore, that number is 55%.
It takes a lot of water to make a double-cheeseburger. One calculation puts it at 450 gallons per quarter-pounder. The study also found that most of these water-intensive beef and dairy products are being consumed in western cities. “Beef consumers living in the Los Angeles, Portland, Denver and San Francisco metropolitan areas bear the greatest responsibility for these hydrological and ecological impacts,” Richter and his colleagues reported.
Around 60 species of fish in the western US are experiencing increased risk of extinction due to draining water tables, according to the study. As streams dry up, toxic chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides that run off from farms become concentrated, suffocating river-dwelling fauna. Invasive species can find a foothold in the changing environment.
It’s a dire situation, but people like Richter and Bruchez are working on solutions. For the past 18 years, Bruchez has been involved with local water sustainability efforts, including several multimillion dollar river restoration projects, and champions strategies like improved irrigation systems and rebuilding riparian habitat.
Several states rely on the Colorado River for drinking water and growing crops.Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP
The most cost-effective solution, proposed in Richter’s paper, is fallowing farmland, meaning letting it sit idle, without irrigation. “You can’t get more water savings off of an acre than by not watering it,” Richter said, and described it as “growing water” rather than a crop. He noted that the strategy should be temporary and rotational, and that ranchers should be compensated because they lose income growing nothing. Fallowing is at least twice as effective as other water-saving tactics, according to Richter’s analysis.
Agricultural strategies aside, people who eat beef and dairy will ultimately need to consume less or choose products that don’t depend on irrigated crops fed to cows, Richter said. Plant-based meat alternatives can play a role, as one analysis found that a meatless Beyond Burger generates 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and has practically no impact on water scarcity.
“Reduced consumption of beef is one very effective way for an individual consumer to reduce their water and energy footprint; however, it is difficult to guarantee that there would be a subsequent decrease in water stress in the western US with decreased beef consumption,” Dr Shelie Miller, the director for University of Michigan’s Program in the Environment, said in an email. “Even with decreased water consumption associated with beef and dairy, there are a multitude of competing water demands in the western region of the US.”
In other words, even if beef and dairy are sucking American rivers dry, addressing cattle-feed crops is only part of the solution to growing water scarcity.
Bruchez, the rancher, is concerned about “the volume of water that is used to put into people’s yards, parks, golf courses, whatever for scenery”. Agriculture, he said, “isn’t in my eyes the only thing to look towards”.
White House struggles to understand the ACA case it supports
By Steve Benen June 30, 2020
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaks during a press briefing at the White House on May 1, 2020.Evan Vucci / AP
Last week, Donald Trump and his team asked the Supreme Court to tear down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, despite the ongoing pandemic. If the president succeeds in getting what he wants, his own country’s health care system would be left in shambles, and tens of millions of families would lose benefits they’ve come to rely on.
It was against this backdrop that White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Fox News yesterday morning, and one of the co-hosts asked about the potential political fallout of destroying the existing system without having a replacement ready. The president’s chief spokesperson made the case that it’s actually Democrats who’ll have a political problem.
“Look, the American public looks at this and what they say is this: If Democrats passed an unconstitutional law several years ago, then it’s on Democrats to come forward with a solution.”
McEnany went on to argue that the Affordable Care Act represents a “government takeover of health care” (that’s not true), that the White House has “put forward solutions” (that’s not true), and that Democrats are moving toward “eliminating Medicare” (that’s not true).
There was, in other words, quite a bit wrong with the press secretary’s pitch. But let’s focus on two key elements.
First, to hear McEnany tell it, if Supreme Court conservatives agree to destroy the existing health care system, it will be because Democrats “passed an unconstitutional law several years ago.” She’s confused: the pending ACA case is not a test of the original law’s constitutionality. That case has already come and gone.
Rather, the current case relates to the Republicans’ 2017 tax plan and the GOP’s apparent belief that it altered the ACA in such a way as to render it unconstitutional. It’s the sort of detail the White House really ought to know while it tries to take health care coverage from millions of families.
Second, it’s almost amusing to hear McEnany insist that it’s “on Democrats to come forward with a solution.” In other words, if Republicans make a mess, the White House expects Democrats to clean it up.
In reality, however, it’s Democrats who’ve already “come forward with a solution” — it’s the ACA, and it’s working — which they continue to take steps to improve. Meanwhile, it’s Republicans who’ve spent more than a decade promising to craft an alternative to “Obamacare” that does more and costs less.
At least so far, McEnany’s party has failed to keep that promise.
Unsuitable for ‘human life to flourish’: Up to 3 Billion will live in extreme heat by 2070, study warns.
Doyle Rice, USA TODAY May 4, 2020
If global warming continues unchecked, the heat that’s coming later this century in some parts of the world will bring “nearly unlivable” conditions for up to 3 billion people, a study released Monday said.
The authors predict that by 2070, much of the world’s population is likely to live in climate conditions that are “warmer than conditions deemed suitable for human life to flourish.”
The study warned that unless greenhouse gas emissions are curtailed, average annual temperatures will rise beyond the climate “niche” in which humans have thrived for 6,000 years.
That “niche” is equivalent to average yearly temperatures of roughly 52 to 59 Fahrenheit. The researchers found that people, despite all forms of innovations and migrations, have mostly lived in these climate conditions for several thousand years.
“We show that in a business-as-usual climate change scenario, the geographical position of this temperature niche is projected to shift more over the coming 50 years than it has moved (in the past 6,000 years),” the study warned.
These brutally hot climate conditions are currently experienced by just 0.8% of the global land surface, mostly in the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert, but by 2070 the conditions could spread to 19% of the Earth’s land area.
The future scenario used in the paper is one in which atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are high. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas releases “greenhouse” gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane into Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. The emissions have caused the planet’s temperatures to rise to levels that cannot be explained by natural factors, scientists report.
Temperatures over the next few decades are projected to increase rapidly as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions.
Without climate mitigation or migration, by 2070 a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to average annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today, the study said. These brutally hot climate conditions are currently experienced by just 0.8% of the global land surface, mostly in the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert, but by 2070 the conditions could spread to 19% of the Earth’s land area.
This includes large portions of northern Africa, the Middle East, northern South America, South Asia, and parts of Australia.
“Large areas of the planet would heat to barely survivable levels and they wouldn’t cool down again,” said study co-author Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “Not only would this have devastating direct effects, it leaves societies less able to cope with future crises like new pandemics. The only thing that can stop this happening is a rapid cut in carbon emissions.”
Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could halve the number of people exposed to such hot conditions. “The good news is that these impacts can be greatly reduced if humanity succeeds in curbing global warming,” said study co-author Tim Lenton, a climate specialist from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
“Our computations show that each degree warming (Celsius) above present levels corresponds to roughly 1 billion people falling outside of the climate niche,” Lenton said. “It is important that we can now express the benefits of curbing greenhouse gas emissions in something more human than just monetary terms.”
The study, which was prepared by an international research team of archaeologists, ecologists and climate scientists, was published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In our current climate, the most extreme heat is restricted to the small black areas in the Sahara Desert region. But by 2070, that area will expand to the shaded areas across portions of Africa, Asia, Australia and South America, according to the study.
