Footage Of Australia’s Massive Mouse Plague Will Haunt Your Nightmares
Ed Mazza, Overnight Editor
Parts of Australia are battling a “plague” of rodents.
Large rural portions of inland New South Wales and Queensland are being overrun by millions of mice, which have taken over farmland, homes, stores, hospitals and cars. They’re also eating everything in sight.
“You can imagine that every time you open a cupboard, every time you go to your pantry, there are mice present,” rodent expert Steve Henry told the wire service. “And they’re eating into your food containers, they’re fouling your clean linen in your linen cupboard, they’re running across your bed at night.”
They’re also leaving behind haunting videos and images:
At one farm, the mice ate through hundreds of thousands of dollars of hay bales, reducing them to mounds of dust in a matter of weeks.
“It’s a real kick in the guts,” farmer Rowena Macrae of Coonamble told Queensland Country Life. “It’s so very hard to watch.”
“They stink whether they are alive or dead, you can’t escape the smell sometimes,” Pip Goldsmith of Coonamble, who has trapped thousands of mice, told The Guardian Australia. “It’s oppressive, but we are resilient.”
Lisa Gore of Toowoomba told the newspaper that her 12-year-old son caught 183 in a single night.
“It’s like his job at the moment,” she said. “He is very proud of himself.”
Local reports said the mouse population continues to grow and efforts to poison the rodents had started to backfire as dead critters were turning up in water tanks. One homeowner in Elong Elong investigating a water blockage encountered a “revolting” smell, according to Australia’s ABC News.
“We always filter the water going into our house from the tanks so for us, personally, we feel we’ve covered our precautions so we didn’t notice anything with the taste,” Louise Hennessy told the news agency. “But the smell of the mice at the top of the tank was so disgusting.”
Public health authorities are now warning of the potential for bacteria in the water if dead mice remain in the tanks.
Authorities said a drop in temperature or a heavy rainfall could wipe out most of the mice at any time.
Electric Semi Trucks Are Actually Cheaper Per Mile Than Diesel Trucks, Report Finds
Climate Nexus March 17, 2021
Diesel trucks are seen driving along a U.S. highway. Lumigraphics / Getty Images
Heavy duty electric trucks (a.k.a. semis) cost so much less to operate per mile than diesel-powered trucks at today’s prices that they would pay for themselves in just three years, according to a new report by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCLA, and UC-Berkeley.
Electrifying heavy-duty trucks would substantially improve air quality.
Semis account for just 11% of vehicles on the road, but more than half of carbon pollution and 71% of deadly particulate pollution.
At today’s costs, electric semis could cost 13% less per mile than a comparable diesel-powered truck, and could cost just half as much per mile by 2030 with the right mix of policy.
Regenerative agriculture is the next great ally in fight against climate change
Nancy Pfund March 11, 2021
It seems that every week a new agribusiness, consumer packaged goods company, bank, technology corporation, celebrity or Facebook friend announces support for regenerative agriculture.
For those of us who have been working on climate and/or agriculture solutions for the last couple of decades, this is both exciting and worrisome.
With the rush to be a part of something so important, the details and hard work, the incremental advancements and wins, as well as the big, hairy problems that remain can be overlooked or forgotten. When so many are swinging for the fences, it’s easy to forget that singles and doubles usually win the game.
As a managing partner and founder of DBL Partners, I have specifically sought out companies to invest in that not only have winning business models but also solve the planet’s biggest problems. I believe that agriculture can be a leading climate solution while feeding a growing population.
At the same time, I want to temper the hype, refocus the conversation and use the example of agriculture to forge a productive template for all business sectors with carbon habits to fight climate change.
First, let’s define regenerative agriculture: It encompasses practices such as cover cropping and conservation tillage that, among other things, build soil health, enhance water retention, and sequester and abate carbon.
The broad excitement around regenerative agriculture is tied to its potential to mitigate climate impact at scale. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimates that soil sequestration has the potential to eliminate over 250 million metric tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to 5% of U.S. emissions.
It is important to remember that regenerative practices are not new. Conservationists have advocated for cover cropping and reduced tillage for decades, and farmers have led the charge.
The reason these practices are newly revered today is that, when executed at scale, with the heft of new technology and innovation, they have demonstrated agriculture’s potential to lead the fight against climate change.
So how do we empower farmers in this carbon fight?
Today, offset markets get the majority of the attention. Multiple private, voluntary markets for soil carbon have appeared in the last couple of years, mostly supported by corporations driven by carbon neutrality commitments to offset their carbon emissions with credit purchases.
Offset markets are a key step toward making agriculture a catalyst for a large-scale climate solution; organizations that support private carbon markets build capacity and the economic incentive to reduce emissions.
“Farming carbon” will drive demand for regenerative finance mechanisms, data analytics tools and new technology like nitrogen-fixing biologicals — all imperatives to maximize the adoption and impact of regenerative practices and spur innovation and entrepreneurship.
It’s these advancements, and not the carbon credit offsets themselves, that will permanently reduce agriculture emissions.
Offsets are a start, but they are only part of the solution. Whether generated by forestry, renewable energy, transportation or agriculture, offsets must be purchased by organizations year after year, and do not necessarily reduce a buyer’s footprint.
Inevitably, each business sector needs to decarbonize its footprint directly or create “insets” by lowering the emissions within its supply chain. The challenge is, this is not yet economically viable or logistically feasible for every organization.
For organizations that purchase and process agricultural products — from food companies to renewable fuel producers — soil carbon offsets can indirectly reduce emissions immediately while also funding strategies that directly reduce emissions permanently, starting at the farm.
DBL invests in ag companies that work on both sides of this coin: facilitating soil carbon offset generation and establishing a credit market while also building fundamentally more efficient and less carbon-intensive agribusiness supply chains.
This approach is a smart investment for agriculture players looking to reduce their climate impact. The business model also creates demand for environmental services from farmers with real staying power.
Way back in 2006, when DBL first invested in Tesla, we had no idea we would be helping to create a worldwide movement to unhinge transportation from fossil fuels.
Now, it’s agriculture’s turn. Backed by innovations in science, big data, financing and farmer networking, investing in regenerative agriculture promises to slash farming’s carbon footprint while rewarding farmers for their stewardship.
Future generations will reap the benefits of this transition, all the while asking, “What took so long?”
Goodbye, Organic; Hello, ‘Regen-Certified’—Ready for the Newest Label on Store Shelves?
Karn Manhas March 9, 2021
Now that they’re spending more time at home, my young nieces have gotten into cooking and gardening. Just the other day, they called to grill me on pesticides in fruits and vegetables, and “the Dirty Dozen”—a list designed to generate awareness around pesticides in food. “Uncle Karn,” they asked, “how important is it to buy organic strawberries? What about bananas?”
This got me thinking. For many of us, the organic certification label has become a touchstone we look for to help us choose what’s good for us. Indeed, “organic” has influenced an entire generation of shoppers’ food choices.
But is it enough?
As important as the organic designation has been, it leaves a critical part of the agricultural puzzle unaddressed. We may know that our kale has been grown without certain synthetic chemicals. But how do we know if it’s been cultivated in a way that restores the planet, strengthens food security or fights climate change?
For many people, these questions are more important than ever. But to know the answers, we’d need a new label entirely, one that speaks to a farming philosophy that’s gaining widespread traction, exactly when it’s needed most: regenerative agriculture.
Regenerative Agriculture 101
So, what is it? Regenerative agriculture is an approach to farming that gives back to the land. Practices like cover crops, reduced tillage and diverse crop rotations are regenerative because they can take carbon out of the air and reinvest it back into the soil. The result is heartier soil, dense in nutrients. As the soil grows richer, crops grow healthier, boosting yields for farmers.
This stands in contrast to conventional farming methods, from mono-cropping to tilling, that strip the soil of the nutrients required to grow healthy plants. Farmers then must rely on inputs like pesticides and fertilizers to ensure crops survive. This system, which we’ve embraced for much of the last century, has now reached a point of diminishing returns, requiring ever more inputs simply to sustain yields.
But there’s another critical virtue to regenerative agriculture: Pulling carbon out of the air and into the soil is a powerful means of addressing climate change. Indeed, some studies suggest that farmland and rangelands could sequester over 600 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere. The potential of regenerative agriculture is getting attention from leaders, like U.S. President Joe Biden and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, as one solution for curbing the climate crisis.
Ultimately, regenerative agriculture aspires to be more than sustainable: The goal is to leave the earth better than we found it, setting in motion a virtuous cycle of healthier soil, healthier plants, healthier people and healthier ecosystems.
Jumpstarting the Regenerative Revolution
While the benefits of moving to regenerative agriculture practices are clear, awareness is just blossoming. And this is precisely where advocates can borrow from the organic playbook. After all, even 25 years ago, “organic” remained a niche distinction, understood and championed by a relative few. But by showing not just consumers but farmers, corporations and governments alike the upsides of embracing organic foods, these advocates jumpstarted a revolution.
Regenerative agriculture now needs to show these same stakeholders that the approach can be a win-win.
Consumers are already eager for change. The pandemic has driven demand for more sustainable, environmentally friendly and ethical products. One survey found that 83 percent of respondents take the environment into consideration when making purchases. By building awareness around regenerative agriculture as a tool to fight climate change, we can incentivize shoppers to look for regenerative foods the way they look for organic labels.
For farmers, meanwhile, regenerative agriculture promises real returns, minus some of the hurdles posed by organic farming. In the U.S., transitioning to organic requires a hefty upfront investment that many farmers can’t afford. Converting a farm to organic takes a minimum of three years. During that time, farmers often contend with steep losses that are only partly offset by higher market prices. But making the switch to regenerative pays dividends that only grow year-over-year as soil becomes healthier and more productive. A no-till farmer in Ohio, for example, earns a net of $500 more per acre than her peers who use conventional farming techniques.
For organic, the real turning point came with corporate buy in. Costco and Whole Foods were early leaders, but now nearly every grocery chain has organic options. The good news is that major companies are beginning to invest in regenerative farms. In 2019, General Mills, motivated by the business threat of climate change, committed to advance regenerative agricultural practices on one million acres of farmland by 2030. Meanwhile, Cargill has committed funds to promote regenerative systems, and food supplier Tate & Lyle has invested in a sustainable agriculture program.
Better soil, it turns out, is better business.
Earning the Regenerative Label
As more farmers adopt regenerative farming techniques, however, there’s confusion around how their products should be labeled. Some products grown through regenerative practices are labeled sustainable, some organic. A better option would be a clear labeling system that embraces the regenerative distinction. This would help customers identify what to buy, give farmers a guide and accelerate the regenerative movement as a whole.
Options are already emerging. Companies like Patagonia and Dr. Bronner’s have partnered with the organic pioneers at the Rodale Institute to develop the Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) seal: an indication that a product promotes soil health and land management, animal welfare, and farmer and worker fairness. A bunch of grapes at the grocery store might earn the ROC standard if it’s grown using conservation tillage and was picked by farmworkers who were paid a living wage, for example.
While it’s a good start, this system uses the USDA organic certification system as a baseline—which, for all its virtues, is heavily proscriptive. By imposing a set of rules and requirements that dictate how farmers can farm, this system has proved a barrier to adoption in the past.
Instead, we should focus on a system that allows farmers to do what they do best and rewards them for outputs and outcomes, not for process. If their use of regenerative practices increases soil carbon, for example, they should qualify for the regenerative label. That way, farmers could employ the regenerative techniques most accessible and applicable in their context, be that conservation tillage, cover cropping or crop rotation, rather than having to satisfy a laundry list of costly rules.
This will hasten adoption and—as farmers see the benefits for themselves—lead to the wholesale embrace of healthier agricultural practices. Because regenerative agriculture encourages a virtuous cycle, over time, farmers would have less need for inputs like pesticides, fertilizers and antibiotics.
Indeed, this is the real power of regenerative agriculture: It creates its own forward momentum. Not only is it better for the planet, but—as soil health progressively improves—it yields better quality harvests at a better price. Much like electric car adoption is accelerating not only because vehicles are better for the planet but increasingly because they outperform and outprice competitors, so too regenerative agriculture represents a better model, whether the barometer is global health or farmers’ bottom lines. Just as most cars may one day be electric, so might all agriculture one day be regenerative.
In fact, by the time my nieces are grown, I hope their grocery trips won’t involve carefully scanning for a label. I look forward to the day where it’s a given that food is grown using the most economical, productive and healthy approach that leaves the planet better than we found it. Why would we have it any other way?
Karn Manhas is the CEO and founder of Terramera, a global agtech leader fusing science, nature and artificial intelligence to transform how food is grown and the economics of agriculture.
Scientists: Climate-whipped winds pose Great Lakes hazards
John Flesher
This undated photo provided by Josef Daniel Ackerman of the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, shows researchers aboard the research vessel Keenosay deploying scientific instruments in Lake Erie. Powerful gusts linked to global warming are damaging water quality and creating a hazard for fish in Lake Erie and perhaps elsewhere in the Great Lakes, according to researchers. (Aidin Jabbari/University of Guelph via AP)
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Powerful gusts linked to global warming are damaging water quality and creating a hazard for fish in Lake Erie and perhaps elsewhere in the Great Lakes, according to researchers.
Extremely high winds occasionally churn up deep water with low oxygen and high levels of phosphorus in Erie’s central basin and shove it into the shallower western section, creating a hazard for fish and insects on which they feed.
Such events have happened more frequently since 1980 and particularly in recent years, scientists with the University of Guelph said in a paper published last week in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
“As temperatures increase overall, we will get higher winds and larger waves,” said Josef Ackerman, a professor of physical ecology and aquatic sciences with the Canadian university who led the study.
The findings underscore the need to limit phosphorus overloading that fuels algae-like bacterial blooms in Lake Erie’s western basin, he said — an elusive goal despite pledges by Michigan, Ohio and the Canadian province of Ontario to achieve a 40% reduction from 2008 levels by 2025.
“We can’t control the winds but maybe we could double down on our efforts to reduce inputs into the lakes to keep the ecosystems healthy,” Ackerman said. “If so, the winds won’t have as bad an impact.”
Marc Gaden, spokesman for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission who didn’t take part in the study, said it illustrates the complexity of Great Lakes ecosystems and the need for better models that can forecast how weather can disrupt them.
“Any change that’s happening like this needs to be understood by fishery managers who are making decisions on a daily basis about stocking and harvests,” Gaden said Monday.
The report adds to a growing body of scientific evidence that human activity is affecting the Great Lakes in unforeseen ways.
Some nearshore areas have too much phosphorus because of runoff from overfertilized croplands and releases from sewage plants. In others, invasive quagga mussels that were brought to the lakes in ship ballast water are trapping the nutrient in shallow waters.
Yet deeper areas of Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Ontario and eastern Lake Erie are running short of phosphorus needed to feed algae that form a key link in food chains. Again, the mussels are suspected of playing a role.
A February study by University of Minnesota Duluth scientists found that quagga mussels, which filter phosphorus from the water and then excrete it, have become the biggest factor in determining concentrations of the nutrient in all the Great Lakes except Lake Superior.
Meanwhile, climate change resulting from emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane is believed to be warming the lakes and causing heavier storms, which also affect water quality.
Lake Erie, shallowest of the Great Lakes, is deep enough in its central basin to have two distinct temperature levels. The lower, colder level has little oxygen and lots of phosphorus. Low or depleted oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia, can cause fish die-offs.
Unusually strong winds, which usually happen in August, can be powerful enough to propel that unhealthy water into the western basin even though Erie’s prevailing current moves eastward, Ackerman said.
Those extreme events, which formerly happened a couple of times a year, more recently have happened three or four times annually, he said. In the past decade, they’ve increased more than 40 percent. They can alter lake chemistry within hours.
While adult fish can swim away from those low-oxygen, high-phosphorus zones, younger ones might be trapped and die, Ackerman said. Another victim is the mayfly, an important food for prized fish such as perch and walleye.
He said extreme gusts also might have similar effects in other waters that have experienced hypoxia, such as Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay, Lake Michigan’s Green Bay and Muskegon Lake, which opens into Lake Michigan.
Tiny Town, Big Decision: What Are We Willing to Pay to Fight the Rising Sea?
Christopher Flavelle March 15, 2021
An aerial view of Avon, N.C., March 13, 2021. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)
AVON, N.C. — Bobby Outten, a county manager in the Outer Banks, delivered two pieces of bad news at a recent public meeting. Avon, a town with a few hundred full-time residents, desperately needed at least $11 million to stop its main road from washing away. And to help pay for it, Dare County wanted to increase Avon’s property taxes, in some cases by almost 50%.
Homeowners mostly agreed on the urgency of the first part. They were considerably less keen on the second.
People gave Outten their own ideas about who should pay to protect their town: the federal government. The state government. The rest of the county. Tourists. People who rent to tourists. The view for many seemed to be, anyone but them.
Outten kept responding with the same message: There’s nobody coming to the rescue. We have only ourselves.
“We’ve got to act now,” he said.
The risk to tiny Avon from climate change is particularly dire — it is, after all, located on a mere sandbar of an island chain, in a relentlessly rising Atlantic. But people in the town are facing a question that is starting to echo along the U.S. coastline as seas rise and storms intensify. What price can be put on saving a town, a neighborhood, a home where generations have built their lives?
Communities large and small are reaching for different answers. Officials in Miami, Tampa, Houston, San Francisco and elsewhere have borrowed money, raised taxes or increased water bills to help pay for efforts to shield their homes, schools and roads.
Along the Outer Banks — where tourist-friendly beaches are shrinking by more than 14 feet a year in some places, according to the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management — other towns have imposed tax increases similar to the one Avon is considering. On Monday, county officials will vote on whether Avon will join them.
This despite the reality that Avon’s battle is most likely a losing one. At its highest point, the town is just a couple dozen feet above sea level, but most houses, as well as the main road, are along the beachfront.
“Based on the science that I’ve seen for sea-level rise, at some point, the Outer Banks — the way they are today — are not forever,” said David Hallac, superintendent of the national parks in eastern North Carolina, including the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which encompasses the land around Avon. “Exactly when that happens is not clear.”
The Outer Banks have a rich past. Hatteras Island, originally home to members of the Algonquin tribe, is near the site of the so-called lost colony of Roanoke. A few miles north and several centuries later, the Wright brothers flew their first airplane.
And it is the vulnerability to the sea — the very threat Avon is wrestling with today — that, in a twist of fate, helped transform the Outer Banks into a tourist spot, according to Larry Tise, a former director of North Carolina’s Division of Archives and History.
In 1899 a terrible hurricane all but destroyed the islands, and the state decided not to spend money developing them. Land speculators later swooped in, snapping up property and marketing the curious local history to attract tourists.
Today, tourism dominates Avon, a hamlet of T-shirt shops and cedar-shake mansions on stilts lining the oceanfront. A few blocks inland sits a cluster of modest older houses, called the Village, shaded by live oaks, Eastern red cedars and wax myrtles. This is where most of the remaining lifelong Avon residents live.
Audrey Farrow’s grandmother grew up in Avon and met Farrow’s grandfather when he moved to town as a fisherman in the late 1800s. Farrow, who is 74, lives on the same piece of land she, and her mother before her, grew up on.
Standing on her porch last week, Farrow talked about how Avon had changed in her lifetime. Vacationers and buyers of second homes have brought new money but have pushed out locals.
And the ocean itself has changed. The water is now closer, she said, and the flooding more constant. The wind alone now pushes water up the small road where she lives and into her lawn.
“If we’ve had rain with it, then you feel like you’ve got waterfront property,” she said.
From any angle, the reckoning for Avon seems to be drawing nearer.
Over the past decade, hurricanes have caused $65 million in damage to Highway 12, the two-lane road that runs along the Outer Banks and connects Avon and other towns to the mainland. The federal and state governments are spending an additional $155 million to replace a section of Highway 12 with a 2.4-mile bridge, as the road can no longer be protected from the ocean. Hatteras Island has been evacuated five times since 2010.
County officials turned to what is called beach nourishment, which involves dredging sand from the ocean floor a few miles off the coast and then pushing it to shore through a pipeline and layering it on the beach. But those projects can cost tens of millions of dollars. And the county’s requests for federal or state money to pay for them went nowhere.
So the county began using local money instead, splitting the cost between two sources: revenue from a tax on tourists, and a property tax surcharge on local homes. In 2011, Nags Head became the first town in the Outer Banks to get a new beach under that formula. Others followed, including Kitty Hawk in 2017.
Ben Cahoon, the mayor of Nags Head, said that paying $20 million to rebuild the beach every few years was cheaper than buying out all the beachfront homes that would otherwise fall into the sea.
He said he could imagine another two or three cycles of beach nourishment, buying his city 20 or 25 more years. After that, he said, it’s hard to guess what the future holds.
“Beach nourishment is a great solution, as long as you can afford it,” Cahoon said. “The alternative choices are pretty stark.”
Now the county says it’s Avon’s turn. Its beach is disappearing at a rate of more than 6 feet per year in some places.
During the meeting last month, Outten described Avon’s needs. As the beach disappears, even a minor storm sends ocean water across Highway 12. Eventually, a hurricane will push enough water over that road to tear it up, leaving the town inaccessible for weeks or more.
In response, the county wants to put about 1 million cubic yards of sand on the beach. The project would cost between $11 million and $14 million and, according to Outten, would need to be repeated about every five years.
That impermanence, combined with the high cost, has led some in Avon to question whether beach nourishment is worth the money. They point to Buxton, the next town south of Avon, whose beach got new sand in 2018, paid for through higher taxes. Now, most of that sand has washed away, leaving a beachfront motel and vacation rentals teetering over the water.
“Every bit of it’s gone,” Michael David, who grew up in Avon and owns a garage in Buxton, said during last month’s meeting. “We’re just masking a problem that never gets fixed.”
Speaking after the meeting, Outten defended beach nourishment, despite its being temporary. “I don’t think we can stop erosion. I think we can only slow it down,” he said.
In interviews with more than a dozen homeowners in Avon, a frequent concern was how the county wants to divide the cost. People who own property along the beach will benefit the most, Outten said, because the extra sand will protect their homes from falling into the ocean. But he said everyone in town would benefit from saving the road.
To reflect that difference, the county is proposing two tax rates. Homeowners on the ocean side of the road would pay an extra 25 cents for every $100 of assessed value — an increase of 45% over their current tax rate. On the inlet side, the extra tax would be just one-fifth that much.
Sam Eggleston, a retired optometrist who moved to Avon three years ago from outside Raleigh, North Carolina, and bought a house on the western side of town, said even that smaller amount was too much. He said that because Highway 12 is owned by the state, the state should pay to protect it.
If the government wants to help, Eggleston argued, it should pay people to move their houses somewhere else — a solution he said would at least be permanent. “To keep spending millions and millions of dollars on the beach, to me doesn’t make sense,” he said.
That view was not shared by people who live on the beach.
When Carole and Bob Peterson bought a house on the ocean in 1997, it was protected from the water by two rows of huge dunes, Peterson said. Years of storms have washed away those dunes, leaving their 2,800-square-foot home exposed to the water.
Peterson acknowledged that she and her neighbors would benefit the most from rebuilding the beach. But the rest of the town should be willing to pay for it too, she said, because it protects the jobs and services they depend on.
“People that live over there, on that side, don’t understand that the beach is what keeps them alive,” she said, pointing across the road. “If you don’t have this beach, people aren’t going to come here.”
Audrey Farrow’s son, Matthew, a commercial fisherman, said he worried about the future of the place he grew up in. Between the flooding and the demand for vacation homes, which continues to drive up real estate prices, he said, it was getting harder to make a good life in Avon.
“I’m telling my kids already,” Farrow said, “go somewheres else.”
The U.S. Is Building a Bike Trail That Runs Coast-to-Coast Across 12 States
World Economic Forum
By Natalie Marchant January 04, 2021
Lehigh Gorge State Park with River and cyclist on Lehigh Gorge Rail Trail path, Poconos Mountains, near Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Jumping Rocks / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
The Great American Rail-Trail will be almost 6,000km when complete, and will serve 50 million people within 80km of the route.
Trails have proved invaluable for recreation and transport during lockdown.
Cycling and safe routes are vital for cities planning their post-pandemic recovery.
Stretching almost 6,000km and crossing 12 states, the Great American Rail-Trail will enable cyclists, hikers and riders to traverse the entire US.
Rail trails – paths built on disused railway tracks – and other recreational routes have proved invaluable respites for many during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing alternative commuting routes and space for people to exercise, often near built-up urban areas.
“This year has proven how vital projects like the Great American Rail-Trail are to the country. Millions of people have found their way outside on trails as a way to cope with the pandemic,” said Ryan Chao, president of RTC.
“As the Great American Rail-Trail connects more towns, cities, states and regions, this infrastructure serves as the backbone of resilient communities, while uniting us around a bold, ambitious and impactful vision.”
Great American Rail-Trail. Rails-to-trails
Cycling Increasingly Popular During Pandemic
While multi-use trails can be used by anyone from joggers to horse riders, cycling has become particularly popular during lockdown both as a form of exercise and a method of transport. Bike sales soared across the world as people sought to avoid public transport.
There are the obvious health benefits of traveling by bike. Not only does it provide an aerobic workout and trigger the body’s feel-good chemicals, endorphins, cycling is also easy on the joints, builds muscle, increases bone density and helps with everyday activities. Cycling is also seen as a way of handling post-pandemic pollution levels.
Milan is implementing a similar program, while Buenos Aires has introduced free bike rental schemes. Europe has spent 1 billion euros on cycling infrastructure since the pandemic began, according to the European Cyclists’ Federation.
Cycling Routes Across the World
At around 5,955km, the Great American Rail-Trail may be particularly ambitious in terms of scale, but it is one of many innovative cycling projects across the world. The 4,450km EuroVelo 6 route runs through 10 countries as it crosses Europe between the Atlantic and the Black Sea.
The 346km Transpennine Trail across the north of England, which opened in 2001, uses disused railway tracks left empty after the decline of the coal industry and passes through city centers, heritage sites and national parks on its way between coastlines.
Last year, the UK launched the 1,300km Great North Trail running from the Peak District in the north of England to John O’Groats at Scotland’s north-eastern tip.
In the Belgian province of Limburg, the Cycling Through Water path enables cyclists to cut through the ponds of Bokrijk. The 200-meter path is at eye-level with the water, allowing riders to glide across the lake.
Meanwhile the 7.6km Xiamen bicycle skyway is the world’s longest elevated cycle path and runs above the Chinese city’s road network. It has capacity for about 2,000 cyclists during rush hour, with much of it suspended under an elevated bus lane, providing shelter from the weather.
Youth Climate Activist Picks Up Trash on Hiking Trail for 589 Consecutive Days
Tiffany Duong March 12, 2021
Climate activist Edgar McGregor spent more than a year picking up litter every day at Eaton Canyon in Los Angeles. USMARINE0311 / Flickr/ CC by 2.0
“I AM DONE!!! I DID IT!!!”
These were the words that climate activist Edgar McGregor tweeted after 589 consecutive days of picking up trash at a popular Los Angele hiking spot.
The 20-year-old visited Eaton Canyon, his local park, for at least an hour every day to clean up municipal waste. He persisted during the pandemic and through extreme weather, including hail, 65 MPH winds and ashy rain from nearby wildfires, he said in the viral video celebrating his accomplishment.
McGregor’s goal involved cleaning up after visitors in order to leave the hiking trail, which is part of the Angeles National Forest in Southern California, trash-free. Armed every day with gloves and empty paint buckets, the activist told ABC that he filled up at least two buckets during each visit.
“I just started picking up one day because I knew it needed to be done. I knew no one was doing it, and that was that,” he added.
McGregor shared his daily progress on Twitter, gaining more than 18,000 followers. He documented not just how much trash he picked up, but also the weather, minor injuries he sustained, where he cleaned and how long it took.
On March 5, the last day of his marathon cleanup, he proudly announced, “After **589** days of picking up trash every single day, I can say with confidence that Eaton Canyon, one of Los Angeles’s most popular hiking trail [sic], is now free of municipal waste!” That single tweet has been liked on Twitter’s platform more than 107,600 times, and even famed climate activist Greta Thunbergcongratulated McGregor.
“There is nothing more satisfying than seeing brand new animals return to your park after months of cleaning up. I highly encourage anyone with any spare time to give this mission a shot. Your parks need you,” McGregor told NPR.
During his months of garbage removal, McGregor separated recyclables from trash and traded the former for cash. It totaled roughly $30 every two to three weeks, NPR reported, and McGregor donated that money to various charities and causes that mattered to him and his followers.
Earlier this week, McGregor tweeted that he raised more than $400 from recycling and donated all of it to plant native trees in Eaton Canyon, fund charities around the world and support political candidates that promise to act on the climate crisis.
McGregor also uses his platform to explain why cleanups matter and how they help.
Five days after his monumental achievement and proclamation, he recorded a new message in Eaton Canyon. McGregor explained how new trash had entered the park from several adjacent communities at higher elevations.
“So trash on city streets gets into storm drains and dumps into this park,” he said. “So this morning, all of this trash in this bucket was brand new. It entered this park after midnight today, and I was able to come out here before the rainstorm hit and clean up trash.”
In his video, McGregor pointed out how the nearby storm drain had filled with water from a flash flood and carried tons of trash a mile and a half. Had he not intervened, that trash would have entered a local watershed that feeds directly to the Pacific Ocean, he explained. McGregor added a call to action for his followers, saying, “So, if you see rain in the forecast, be sure to clean up trash on your local streets and your local boulevards. Because if that trash is not cleaned up and the rain hits, it’s gonna flow into the storm drains, and it can get into your local parks. It can get into the rivers, and, even worse, it can get into the ocean. And, it’s a lot harder to clean up.”
ON CBS, McGregor shared his ideal solution to this massive trash problem, saying, “The only solution to picking up trash in our local parks is to… hire people to clean them up permanently.”
Because that isn’t yet a reality, McGregor continues to return several times a week to Eaton Canyon to remove trash while also considering new parks to clean up. He encourages everyone to go on their own pickup expeditions and post photos with the hashtag #EarthCleanUp, which he promises to retweet and celebrate.
“If you think my work is inspiring, prove it to me by going out there and defending this planet with all you’ve got,” McGregor urged on Twitter. “It can be anything within your abilities. It just has to be something.”
Energy companies have left Colorado with billions of dollars in oil and gas cleanup
As the state tries to reform its relationship to drilling, an expensive task awaits.
Nick Bowlin March 11, 2021
Image credit: Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images
March 11, 2021From the print edition
When an oil or gas well reaches the end of its lifespan, it must be plugged. If it isn’t, the well might leak toxic chemicals into groundwater and spew methane, carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere for years on end.
But plugging a well is no simple task: Cement must be pumped down into it to block the opening, and the tubes connecting it to tanks or pipelines must be removed, along with all the other onsite equipment. Then the top of the well has to be chopped off near the surface and plugged again, and the area around the rig must be cleaned up.
There are nearly 60,000 unplugged wells in Colorado in need of this treatment — each costing $140,000 on average, according to the Carbon Tracker, a climate think tank, in a new report that analyzes oil and gas permitting data. Plugging this many wells will cost a lot —more than $8 billion, the report found.
Companies that drill wells in Colorado are legally required to pay for plugging them. They do so in the form of bonds, which the state can call on to pay for the plugging. But as it stands today, Colorado has only about $185 million from industry — just 2% of the estimated cleanup bill, according to the new study. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) assumes an average cost of $82,500 per well — lower than the Carbon Tracker’s figure, which factors in issues like well depth. But even using the state’s more conservative number, the overall cleanup would cost nearly $5 billion, of which the money currently available from energy companies would cover less than 5%.
This situation is the product of more than 150 years of energy extraction. Now, with the oil and gas industry looking less robust every year and reeling in the wake of the pandemic, the state of Colorado and its people could be on the hook for billions in cleanup costs. Meanwhile, unplugged wells persist as environmental hazards. This spring, Colorado will try to tackle the problem; state energy regulators have been tasked with reforming the policies governing well cleanup and financial commitments from industry.
“The system has put the state at risk, and it needs to change,” said Josh Joswick, an organizer with the environmental group Earthworks. “Now we have a government that wants to do something about it.”
Data not collected for Texas’ clean up funds.
Source: Carbon Tracker Initiative Data visualization: Luna Anna Archey/High Country News
THE FIRST WESTERN OIL WELL broke ground in Colorado in 1860. Drilling has been an important part of the state’s economy ever since; as of 2019, Colorado ranked in the sixth and seventh in the nation for oil and natural gas production, respectively.
When it comes to cleanup, Colorado uses a tiered system known as blanket bonding. Small operators can pay ahead with bonds on single wells. Drillers with more than 100 wells statewide pay a fixed reclamation fee of $100,000, regardless of the number of wells. A similar system also applies to wells on federal public land in the state. Large companies pay a single $150,000 bond, which covers unlimited federal public land wells throughout the country. There are about 7,400 public-land wells capable of producing oil or gas in Colorado, according to the Bureau of Land Management.
When a driller walks away or cannot pay for cleanup, the well enters the state’s Orphan Well Program, which works to identify and plug these wells. There are about 200 wells in the program right now, according to the state. But a closer look at state data reveals a large number of wells at risk. Nearly half of the state’s unplugged wells are stripper wells — low-producing operations with small profit margins often at the end of their lifespans. These wells are particularly vulnerable to shifts in oil prices. That means they change hands often. “This is a common tactic in the oil and gas industry: Spinning off liabilities to progressively weaker companies, until the final owner goes bankrupt and none of the previous owners are on the hook for cleanup,” said Clark Williams-Derry, a finance analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
“This is a common tactic in the oil and gas industry: Spinning off liabilities to progressively weaker companies, until the final owner goes bankrupt and none of the previous owners are on the hook for cleanup.”
There are also inactive wells: Nearly 10% of the state’s wells have not produced oil or gas in at least two years, according to a Carbon Tracker analysis of state permitting data. Unlike some of the neighboring oil states, Colorado requires that companies pay a single bond on each inactive well of this sort. This costs either $10,000 or $20,000, depending on the depth of the well. In theory, these payments protect the state, in case the well owner goes bankrupt. But in Colorado, it’s still far cheaper for energy companies to pay the cost of that single, unused well — and the small annual premium payments on the bond — than to actually plug it. “Colorado clearly makes it cheaper to idle a well than to clean it up,” Williams-Derry said.
In Colorado, just two companies are responsible for nearly 70% of the bonds for currently inactive wells. One is Noble Energy Inc., which was purchased by the global oil giant Chevron in October 2020. The other is Kerr-McGee, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum. Kerr-McGee was responsible for the 2017 home explosion in Firestone, Colorado, that killed two people. Last year, the COGCC fined the company more than $18 million for the accident, by far the largest fine in state history. Both companies still own large numbers of wells in the Denver-Julesburg Basin, the prolific oil and gas formation beneath central and eastern Colorado. And the mass desertion of wells is not hypothetical: In fall of 2019, a small company called Petroshare Corporation went bankrupt and left about 90 wells for the state to cleanup. That alone will cost Colorado millions of dollars. Last summer, when California’s largest oil driller filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it left billions in debt and more than 17,000 unplugged wells.
The oil and gas industry is already mired in a years-long decline that raises doubts about its ability to meet cleanup costs. In six out of the past seven years, energy has been either the worst- or second-worst-performing sector on the S&P 500. And the economic fallout from COVID-19 has only accelerated the decline. Oil prices hit record lows in 2020. The industry’s debt approached record levels, and thousands of oilfield workers lost their jobs, Colorado Public Radio reported. Many companies went bankrupt, including 12 drilling companies and six oilfield service companies in Colorado, according to Haynes and Boone LLP, a law firm that tracks industry trends.
Oil and gas development on the Roan Plateau near Grand Junction, Colorado. Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images
IN 2019, A NEW LAW completely overhauled the state’s relationship to oil and gas. This spring, Colorado oil and gas regulators are tasked with reforming the financial requirements for well plugging. It’s a big deal, especially in an oil state like Colorado: The law gives local governments more control over oil and gas development, and it rewrote the mission of the COGCC, the state’s energy regulator. The COGCC has subsequently banned the burning off or releasing of natural gas, a routine drilling practice, and instituted a broad range of wildlife and public health protection policies. Recently, it voted for the nation’s largest setback rule, which requires oil and gas operations to stay at least 2,000 feet from homes and schools.
The deep divide between the true cost of cleanup and what industry has so far ponied up is not news to Colorado regulators. In a 2017 letter to lawmakers, the COGCC estimated that the average costs of plugging wells and cleaning up the drilling site “exceed available financial assurance by a factor of fourteen.” With this new rulemaking process, Colorado has a chance to make up this gap.
How to handle this looming liability remains an open question, said John Messner, a COGCC Commissioner. The rulemaking process is still in its early stages and will take months. The commission is asking stakeholders of all kinds — industry, local governments, environmental groups and more — to submit suggestions and opinions to the commission. There are several different methods for how best to reform the process, Messner said. That might involve leaving the current structure in place, while increasing the bond amounts, including on individual well bonds. It might mean a revamped tiered system, where more prolific producers pay more, or a different fee structure based on the number of drilled wells. Messner mentioned the option of a bond pool, where companies pay into a communal cleanup fund and, at least in theory, provide industry-wide insurance to guard against companies defaulting on cleanup obligations. Messner stressed that no formal decisions have been made and that the final rule could involve some combination of these and other tools.
“Regulatory changes in the past two years alone are costing oil and gas businesses an extra $200 million a year.”
I asked Messner about balancing the pressing need to increase cleanup requirements with the possibility of companies walking away from their wells if the cost to operate in Colorado spikes. “It’s a real risk,” Messner said. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association expressed a similar concern in an email to HCN.
“When it comes to financial assurance for current or future wells, we need to ensure that the potential solution doesn’t create an even bigger problem by raising the cost of doing business in Colorado for small businesses,” said COGA President Dan Haley in a statement. “Regulatory changes in the past two years alone are costing oil and gas businesses an extra $200 million a year. For our state to stay competitive, regulators and lawmakers need to be cognizant of that growing tally and the rising cost of doing business.”
But as it stands today, oil and gas companies aren’t realistically paying anywhere near the true cost of cleaning up their drilling sites. And with the industry’s murky financial future, experts predict more and more sales of risky wells to less-wealthy operators, until the state could end stuck with the final cost.
“It’s like a game of hot potato,” Williams-Derry said, “except that when the potato goes off, it’s the public who loses.”
Nick Bowlin is a contributing editor at High Country News.
Could Rubber From Dandelions Make Tires More Sustainable?
Deutsch Welle – By Jack McGovan March 11, 2021
Planting dandelions could help reduce deforestation caused by traditional rubber plantations. Tashka / Getty Images.
In 1931, Soviet scientists were on the hunt for a natural source of rubber that would help the USSR become self-sufficient in key materials.
They scoured the vast and various territories of the Soviet Union and tested over 1,000 different species looking for an alternative to the South American rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensi. Eventually, on the steppes of Kazakhstan, they found one.
By 1941, the Russian dandelion, Taraxacum koksaghyz, supplied 30% of the USSR’s rubber. During the Second World War, shortages of Havea rubber prompted other countries, including the United States, Britain and Germany, to begin cultivating dandelion rubber.
Once the war was over and supplies returned to normal, these countries — including, ultimately, the Soviets — switched back to Hevea tree rubber because it was cheaper.
But now, with demand for rubber continuing to grow, there is renewed interest in the Russian dandelion, particularly from the tire industry, which consumes 70% of the world’s rubber supply.
Diversifying Natural Rubber
Overall, 65% of rubber consumed worldwide is derived from fossil fuels. This synthetic rubber is cheaper and more hardwearing than its natural counterpart. But natural rubber disperses heat better and has better grip, which is why tires are made with a mix of both.
Today, 90% of natural rubber comes from Havea plantations in Southeast Asia, which have been linked to deforestation. And there are commercial as well as environmental reasons the tire industry would like to find an alternative.
Havea rubber trees are vulnerable to a fungal leaf blight that has hit plantations in South America, making some in the tire industry nervous about such dependence on a single crop, with little genetic diversity, grown in a single geographical region.
Developing the Dandelion
Over recent years, projects in both Europe and the US have been taking a fresh shot at making dandelion rubber commercially viable.
Among them is Taraxagum, a collaboration between Continental Tires and the Fraunhofer Institute of Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology in Aachen, Germany.
“Continental Tires tested the performance of the material and said that it was brilliant — in some cases better than Hevea rubber,” said Dirk Prüfer, a plant biotechnologist on the Taraxagum team.
Both Continental and competitor Apollo Tyres have used dandelion rubber to manufacture bike tires, and Continental reports “promising” tests on dandelion truck tires.
Apollo was part of the EU-funded DRIVE4EU consortium, a project that ran from 2014 to 2018 and worked on developing the entire production chain for dandelion rubber, starting with cultivation.
Unlike the rubber tree, the Russian dandelion thrives in temperate climates.
“We cultivated the dandelion in Belgium, the Netherlands and Kazakhstan,” said Ingrid van der Meer, coordinator of DRIVE4EU, adding that other researchers had previously cultivated the crop in Sweden, Germany and the United States.
Fewer Chemicals and Poorer Soils
The Russian dandelion can also be grown on relatively poor soils, meaning it doesn’t have to compete with agriculture. Prüfer said his team was researching whether brownfield land — former industrial sites that may be heavily polluted — might even be suitable.
“There are big areas like this near Cologne or Aachen that could potentially be used for cultivation,” Prüfer said.
Once the dandelions are harvested “hot-water extraction” is used to separate out the rubber. “The roots are chopped up mechanically and water is added,” van der Meer explained. “It has to be heated up, but no large volumes of chemicals are needed.
This is in contrast to Hevea rubber extraction, which requires the use of organic solvents, resulting in chemical waste that poses an environmental hazard if not disposed of properly.
Environmental Problems Persist
But while the Russian dandelion could make the production of tires greener, it won’t improve their environmental impact once they leave the factory.
As tires are used, they shed microplastics, which are then carried on air and end up in oceans. A recent study found that this source of ocean microplastics amounts to 100,000 metric tons each year.
Then, at the end of their life, most tires finish up in landfill, in part because the mix of rubbers make them difficult to recycle.
“Tires are meant to optimize different kinds of properties, so it’s not easy to just use one kind of rubber,” said Francesco Piccihoni, an expert in rubber recycling at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
“You could make tires from only natural rubber but it degrades faster, meaning you would have to change the tires much more often,” Piccihoni added.
Even shifting rubber farming to European wastelands wouldn’t automatically avert deforestation in Asia. Georg Cadisch, an expert in tropical agronomy at the University of Hohenheim in Germany, says forests will continue to be felled as long as the land can be used more profitably for agriculture.
“Rubber farmers need to survive, so they would simply produce other crops,” he said, adding that rubber plantations in China and Thailand have already been replaced with crops like palm oil or bananas.
Bright Prospects?
Still, proponents of the Russian dandelion argue that as demand rises, we need a source of rubber that doesn’t rely on expanding into new areas of forest. Growing it close to European and US tire factories would also means fewer CO2 emissions from transport.
And as far as performance goes, tire makers are impressed.
“The moment natural rubber from the dandelion is available in significant quantities, Apollo will resume using the material and develop other tire products,” chief technical officer Daniele Lorenzetti said.
As things stand, though, the supply chain needs some work. “To compete with other rubbers, the production costs of dandelion rubber need to match the market price. This is not yet the case,” said van der Meer, who will continue working on optimizing Russian dandelion cultivation.
For now, Europe’s wastelands aren’t about to be swathed in sunny yellow. But there might just be a bright future for a material that had been consigned to Soviet history.
