Government tests found 54 different pesticides on blueberries and 84 on green beans
WASHINGTON – Thirty years after a landmark National Academies of Sciences study warning of the dangers posed to children by pesticides, 75 percent of non-organic fruits and vegetables sold in the U.S. are still riddled with the potentially toxic agricultural chemicals, according to the Environmental Working Group’s 2023 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™, released today.
This year, blueberries and green beans join the Dirty Dozen™, the Shopper’s Guide section listing the 12 non-organic, or conventionally grown, fruits and vegetables with the highest amounts of pesticides, based on federal agencies’ tests. Some of the pesticides detected have been banned in the U.S. or Europe because of concerns about how they harm people.
“Despite the abundance of science linking exposure to pesticides with serious health issues, a potentially toxic cocktail of concerning chemicals continues to taint many of the non-organic fruits and vegetables eaten by consumers,” said Alexis Temkin, Ph.D., EWG toxicologist.
The findings underscore the need for stronger regulations around and oversight of how pesticides are used on food crops.
The Shopper’s Guide compiles EWG’s analysis of the latest fruit and vegetable testing data from the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. The 2023 edition includes data from 46,569 samples of 46 fruits and vegetables, covering 251 different pesticides.
In addition to the Dirty Dozen, the guide includes the Clean Fifteen™, EWG’s list of the fruits and vegetables with very low or no traces of pesticides. The guide also features a full report on pesticides on produce and more detailed analyses about specific fruits and vegetables and what chemicals were found on them.
“Everyone – adults and kids – should eat more fruits and vegetables, whether organic or not,“ Temkin said. “A produce-rich diet provides many health benefits.
“But in the ongoing absence of meaningful federal oversight, consumers concerned about pesticide exposure can use EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce to navigate the produce aisle in ways that work best for them and their families,” Temkin said.
EWG recommends that consumers buy organic versions of Dirty Dozen produce and choose either conventionally grown or organic versions of Clean Fifteen items..
Blueberries and green beans
Both blueberries and green beans – 11th and 12th, respectively, on this year’s Dirty Dozen – had troubling concentrations of organophosphate insecticides, pesticides that can harm the human nervous system. Nine out of 10 samples of each of the popular foods had residues of pesticides – with some showing traces of up to 17 different pesticides.
Nearly 80 percent of blueberry samples had two or more pesticides. Phosmet was detected on more than 10 percent of blueberry samples and malathion on 9 percent. Both are organophosphates that are toxic to the human nervous system, especially children’s developing brains. In 2015, malathion was classified as probably carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
More than 70 percent of green beans had at least two pesticides, with a combined 84 different pesticides found on the entire crop. Six percent of samples showed residues of acephate, a toxic pesticide the Environmental Protection Agency banned for use on green beans more than 10 years ago. Green beans also had traces of several pesticides banned in the European Union but allowed in the U.S.
The health risks posed by pesticides
Pesticides are toxic by design, created expressly to kill living organisms – insects, plants and fungi considered “pests.” But many pesticides pose health dangers to people, too, including cancer, hormone disruption, and brain and nervous system toxicity. These hazards have been confirmed by independent scientists, physicians, and U.S. and international government agencies.
Most pesticide residues found by the USDA and FDA fall below government limits and are legal. But legal limits don’t always indicate what’s safe for human consumption.
The conventional agriculture industry, and even the EPA, often claim pesticides like chlorpyrifos are safe, right up until the moment they are banned because of overwhelming evidence showing they are toxic to humans.
Children are especially vulnerable to many of the health harms associated with pesticide exposure. Research published by EWG in 2020 found that the EPA, which oversees pesticide safety, fails to adequately consider children in setting legal limits for 90 percent of the most common pesticides.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends parents concerned about their children’s exposure to pesticides consult EWG’s Shopper’s Guide.
“EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce is a key tool for parents and caregivers concerned about protecting vulnerable children from the potential serious risks of consuming even low levels of pesticides in food,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, renowned public health expert and one of the principal authors of the 1993 National Academies of Sciences study on pesticides in children’s diets.
Also in 1993, EWG released its first report, Pesticides in Children’s Food, which analyzed federal government consumption data and pesticide tests of more than 20,000 samples of food, among other government and industry data. The exhaustive investigation found that millions of U.S. children were receiving up to 35 percent of their entire lifetime dose of some carcinogenic pesticides by age 5.
“The Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen provide simple guidelines for how to pursue a diet rich in vital fruits and vegetables, while avoiding the items that might be most contaminated with chemicals,” said Landrigan, director of the Global Public Health Program and Global Observatory on Planetary Health in the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society at Boston College.
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The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action. Visitwww.ewg.org for more information.
The Proximity Principle – Uniting Local Farmers with Local Buyers – The Imperative of Our Time
Independent small and medium-sized farms have been handed a death sentence by Klaus Schwab head of The World Economic Forum. Schwab, and fellow architects of top-down control, have officially let it be known that under the policy known as ‘Green Deal’ traditional family farms are no longer wanted and the foods they produce are to be replaced by laboratory and genetically engineered synthetic lookalikes. This policy is spelled out in the pages of Klaus Schwab’s book ‘The Great Reset’ which is part of the envisaged ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’.
The British government and the European Commission are committed to adopting this insane agenda in which working farmers are to be replaced by digitalized precision robots, as part of a so-called Global Warming mitigation crusade. When properly analyzed, this is revealed as a totalitarian program for complete corporate and banking control of the food chain. A program that is designed to eliminate the independent farmer.
What Are We Going to Do About It?
There is a very straightforward answer to this question. We are going to come together at the local level and launch a mutually supportive initiative that will guarantee both the farmer and the purchaser of the farmer’s food a fair and mutually beneficial exchange.
How does it work?
Very simple. The purchaser (consumer) approaches his or her local responsible farmer and asks to buy some fresh produce. The farmer considers this proposition. Some may decline, but this will be because it has not occurred to them that the future of their current dependency on a corporate-controlled marketing regime is completely untenable under the program proposed by Mr. Schwab.
Any good farmer will not turn down an opportunity to do business with near neighbors who are in search of positive and value-for-money farm-raised foods. Especially once the farming community realizes that their future income will depend more and more upon establishing a marketplace amongst those in the immediate vicinity of his/her farm. Those who do not wish – or cannot any longer – purchase their staple food requirements from corporate-owned super and hypermarket food chains.
The Savvy Farmer…
The savvy farmer can see the writing on the wall. Can see that slavery to a system of national and global manipulation – totally out of his/her hands – is a recipe for disaster. Such a farmer will be on the lookout for a secure local market; one where purchasers want to buy direct from the farm with no middle-man taking a cut. This must be the way forward if a secure future on the land is the desired outcome. Any intelligent farmer will recognize this and will take seriously a bonafide
request to supply farm-raised produce to those eager to buy it.
The Savvy Consumer…
The savvy consumer will be looking for fresh, healthy, flavourful good quality foods upon which to raise their family, or simply to feed themselves. They will recognize that the chance to acquire such food ‘direct from the farm’ represents the best possible outcome. A bond built-up with a local farmer, via regular purchasing of their farm-raised products, provides a powerful ally for times ahead when the commercial food chain is subjected to the brutal intervention of the architects of global control and shortages become the norm. Such times are no longer speculative. They are on our doorstep.
The Savvy Farmer and the Savvy Consumer – Getting Together
Either the consumer or the farmer can take the initiative of bringing both parties together.
How?
By calling a ‘round table’ meeting in the local village/town hall or simply in your home. Invite one or two farmers to sit around that table with some individuals eager to obtain food directly from the farm. Some might even be ready to discuss contracting a farmer to grow the staple foods they require. Good quality food is grown without recourse to chemical pesticides.
Farmers need a secure income and the buyers a secure local source of nutritious food. Fair prices for both parties and delivery or ‘pick-up from the farm’ can be negotiated in a friendly and informal manner. This is not purely ‘business’ in the old sense of the term; it is forming a common bond in a time when such bonds have been tragically neglected and supermarket convenience cultures have destroyed the links that hold communities together.
New trading, bartering, and sharing practice will be built around the adoption of this ‘proximity principle’. This is the one sure way of effectively resisting the Klaus Schwab farm killer and the New World Order plan for global domination of the food chain.
Other ways of supporting local trading include farm shops, farmers markets, box schemes, food cooperatives. Get onto the front foot and regenerate your community – from the ground up!
Julian Rose is an early pioneer and practitioner of UK organic farming; an entrepreneur and leader of projects to create self-sufficient communities based on local supply and demand; a teacher of holistic life approaches and the author of four books – one of which ‘Creative Solutions to a World in Crisis’ lays-out detailed guidelines for the transformation of society into caring communities built upon ecological and spiritual awareness, justice and cooperation. See Julian’s website for more information www.julianrose.info
Americans are taught that the Boston Tea Party ignited the American Revolutionary War because the colonists found the British tea tax tea intolerable. That’s part of the story, but it misses the pivotal turning point of our history — one we need to understand now before we destroy the planet.
Eastern White Pine – the Tree Rooted in American History explains the central role of the Eastern White Pine tree in the founding and building of America, its logging history, and its current importance to wildlife and humans. The king of England prized these huge, straight White Pines as masts for ships and founded New England to provide a reliable source of pines for masts. A mast 36-inches in diameter was valued in the 1700s at $25,000 in today’s currency.
Lumbering was THE economic powerhouse. The White Pine had led to the establishment of the New England colonies. However, contention over ownership of the pine gave rise to the American Revolution! In 1775, the first American flag displayed a White Pine Tree. By 1776, the American colonies had declared their independence from Britain! By 1830, Bangor, Maine was the world’s lumber capital. By the close of the 19th century, Maine had shipped more than 18 billion board feet. Logging dramatically increased in the 20th century.
American History Is Rooted in Eastern White Pine Tree
The St. Croix River Valley on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin supplied pine lumber that built St. Louis, Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City, and other prairie towns. The advent of the railroads increased the demand for lumber for tracks and fuel. The video points out, “It would not be an overstatement to say that the White Pine is the tree that built the United States of America!”
The trees can live to be 200-400 years old. The White Pine is the preferred home for bear cubs and other animals as well as eagles and other birds. The wonderful piney fragrance is caused by terpenes, chemicals in the tree which provides health benefits for a variety of conditions including cancer, neurological conditions, lowering blood pressure, and boosting the immune system.
The video shows that Bob Leverett, co-founder of Native Tree Society, is working to preserve the old-growth forests. He describes them as “forest cathedrals” and speaks of the spiritual ambiance they provide.
The Native Tree Society site says:
“The Native Tree Society was originally established in 1996 as the Eastern Native Tree Society to accurately measure and record the tallest trees, historical trees, and ancient forests of Eastern North America. As the organization grew over the years we gained members from western North America and elsewhere around the world. As the membership has expanded, the original scope of the group has also expanded to include trees and forests around the globe.
In July of 2011 the overall organization changed its name to the Native Tree Society to reflect a broader geographic membership and was restructured to reflect this conceptual change. We have two formal chapters within the broader organization, the Eastern Native Tree Society (ENTS) focused on eastern North America, the Western Native Tree Society (WNTS) focused on western North America. Members from elsewhere in the world are considered to be members at large to the NTS. We hope to establish ties with tree interest groups in other continents and countries and to share our passion for trees and to promote the usage of our measurement standards and scientific goals in these areas.”
Restoring The Lost Forests of New England
The Lost Forests of New England – Eastern Old-Growth tells the story of New England’s ancient, old-growth forests… what they once were, what changes have taken place across central New England since European settlers arrived, and what our remnant old-growth stands look like today.
When Europeans arrived, 80-90% of the landscape in Massachusetts was old-growth forests with Hemlocks that could live 600 years, as well as Beech, Sugar Maples, and White Pines. Today, the old-growth forests are less than one-tenth of one percent of Massachusetts forests!
The video explains that these forests are important “carbon sinks”.
It’s not just the White Pines that have been under attack. The old-growth redwoods of Northern California are among the oldest living organisms in the world. It’s also the magnificent Redwoods.
Restoration of Redwood Forests
One Man’s Mission to Revive the Last Redwood Forests explains that David Milarch’s near-death experience inspired his quest to bring the redwood forests back from the brink of death before they are lost to humanity forever. It explains that in the US, 98% of the old-growth forests have been cut down. These trees have been on the planet for millions of years. Some trees are 2,000-4,000 years old.
These ancient cathedrals were sacrificed for profit — to be turned into tables and chairs, floors, and ships. However, that was extremely short-sighted because apart from being majestic and awe-inspiring, they hold the key to our own survival because of their absorption of carbon and provision of oxygen.
March decided to archive the genetics of the world’s largest trees before they’re gone. This short film documents his effort to save the redwood champions of Northern California from the effects of climate change. He is engaged in what he calls “assisted migration” which involved cloning the best trees, reproducing exact copies in the lab, and planting them in the cooler regions of Oregon in a climate the trees are accustomed to since California is going through a 1,000-year drought. California is the only native home of the redwoods and 96% of them were cut down.
Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is a non-profit organization that collects, propagates, archives, and replants the genetics of ancient and iconic trees to restore the natural filter system to our water and air. These trees have the ability to clean our water, and stack carbon from our atmosphere to reduce the effects of climate change like no other species. Find out more at http://www.ancienttreearchive.org
“CNN International profiled Archangel Ancient Tree Archive and its co-founder, David Milarch. He explains the reasons behind the nonprofit’s urgent mission to collect, propagate, the largest and oldest #ancienttrees, and restore the world’s #oldgrowth forests. We’re working to protect future generations from #climatechange. LEARN MORE: https://ancienttreearchive.org.”
“On December 18, 1999, Julia Butterfly Hill’s feet touched the ground for the first time in over two years, as she descended from ‘Luna,’ a thousand-year-old redwood in Humboldt County, California. Hill had climbed 180 feet up into the tree high on a mountain on December 10, 1997, for what she thought would be a two- to three-week-long ‘tree-sit.’ The action was intended to stop Pacific Lumber, a division of the Maxxam Corporation, from the environmentally destructive process of clear-cutting the ancient redwood and the trees around it. The area immediately next to Luna had already been stripped and, because, as many believed, nothing was left to hold the soil to the mountain, a huge part of the hill had slid into the town of Stafford, wiping out many homes.
Over the course of what turned into a historic civil action, Hill endured El Nino storms, helicopter harassment, a ten-day siege by company security guards, and the tremendous sorrow brought about by an old-growth forest’s destruction. This story — written while she lived on a tiny platform eighteen stories off the ground — is one that only she can tell.
Twenty-five-year-old Julia Butterfly Hill never planned to become what some have called her — the Rosa Parks of the environmental movement. She never expected to be honored as one of Good Housekeeping’s ‘Most Admired Women of 1998′ and George magazine’s ’20 Most Interesting Women in Politics,’ to be featured in People magazine’s ’25 Most Intriguing People of the Year’ issue or to receive hundreds of letters weekly from young people around the world.
Indeed, when she first climbed into Luna, she had no way of knowing the harrowing weather conditions and the attacks on her and her cause. She had no idea of the loneliness she would face or that her feet wouldn’t touch the ground for more than two years. She couldn’t predict the pain of being an eyewitness to the attempted destruction of one of the last ancient redwood forests in the world, nor could she anticipate the immeasurable strength she would gain or the life lessons she would learn from Luna. Although her brave vigil and indomitable spirit have made her a heroine in the eyes of many, Julia’s story is a simple, heartening tale of love, conviction, and the profound courage she has summoned to fight for our earth’s legacy”.
The public-shaming genius made international headlines and inspired a generation of eco-crusaders.
“Julia ‘Butterfly’ Hill poses in her tree-top shelter nearly 200 feet above the ground in December 1998, one year into her standoff with the Pacific Lumber Company in Humboldt County, California. (Yann Gamblin/Paris Match via Getty Images)
On December 10, 1997, the barefoot environmental activist Julia ‘Butterfly’ Hill climbed up a 600-year-old, 200-foot-tall redwood tree in a remote corner of Northern California, and stayed there for 738 days. A native of Arkansas, Hill had teamed up with Earth First!, a group of by-any-means-necessary, redneck-hippie eco-warriors best known for its legally dubious ‘monkey-wrenching’ protest tactics.
Hill, however, brought a Zen-like mysticism to the movement, and her motivation for occupying the tree, dubbed ‘Luna’ (‘anyone that would climb this high is a lunatic,’ she later explained), was as much about spirituality as it was politics. ‘There’s no way to be in the presence of these ancient beings and not be affected,’ the exhausted 24-year-old told a group of reporters after descending the tree in December, 1999. ‘There’s something more than profit, and that’s life.’
People had been tree sitting before Julia Butterfly came along. But Hill ushered in a new sense of urgency and determination, the likes of which were completely irresistible to the press. Between riding out torrential El Niño storms and freezing winds from her precarious 8-by-8-foot plywood perch, she conducted radio interviews via solar-powered cell phone, and hosted reporters and photographers willing to make the two-hour climb to her rustic penthouse. On Earth Day in 1999, Joan Baez and Bonnie Raitt even dropped by. Baez called the visit ‘one of the most remarkable experiences of my life.’
Her protest worked: Luna was spared the chainsaw (though nearby redwoods continue to be cut). When Hill finally came down, wobbly kneed and ecstatic, she said ‘it was so cold and wet this morning, I had to laugh, because I was so thankful that I don’t have to sit through another winter.’”
In Julia in the Storm, Julia explained in 2010 how she conquered her fears in the tree.
Importance of Disagreeing Agreeably
Julia is not just an activist. She is also a profound philosopher and a healer who is important to listen to now as the country faces such sharp divisions over a variety of issues that many foresee a Civil War. In this video, Julia calls for unity even with those who see us as an “enemy”. For example, even as loggers initially labeled her derisively, she refused to label them. She says it’s important to disagree agreeably.
Julia Butterfly Hill is known for climbing a 1,000-year-old redwood tree in 1997 when she was 23 years old, and remaining there without touching the ground for two years, as part of a successful effort to call worldwide attention to the destruction of California’s ancient redwoods. Since then, she has addressed the U.N., lobbied Congress, and continued to stand on the front lines of environmental and social justice issues all over the world. She is the author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods and One Makes the Difference: Inspiring Actions That Change Our World.
“Julia Butterfly Hill ascended Luna—a giant 1,500-year-old redwood tree near Stafford, California—in December 1997. She lived in Luna for 738 days, until finally descending in December 1999 when an agreement was made with Pacific Lumber Company that protected Luna and a 200-foot buffer zone surrounding the tree.
Julia Butterfly Hill was interviewed on June 23, 2021, by Trees Foundation’s Director of Development and Outreach, Kerry Reynolds. The transcription has been edited for length. You can watch the full 27-minute interview at https://youtu.be/WPnwqKtjLgs….
Julia says:
“While I was in Luna, I learned that every issue we’re facing is the symptom, and the disease is the disease of disconnect. When we’re disconnected from the Earth and we’re disconnecting from each other, we make choices and don’t realize how it’s truly impacting all of us, and that means all the beings, everything, and the future generations. I wanted to try and help weave that together for people, that if…we’re working on the symptoms if we don’t work also at the disease, we’ll never be able to get to the healing that our world and our planet needs…. If the disease is the disease of disconnect, then the healing is all the ways that we can, and do, connect.”
About the Author
Neenah Payne writes for Activist Post and Natural Blaze
Science tells us that we now have fewer than 10 years to reduce the human burden on Earth or trigger tipping points in Earth’s natural systems from which there is no return. Most discussion centers on the climate emergency, but we also have crises related to air, water, soil, species extinction, and more.
We can hold to course with an economy that grows GDP to provide a few with the opportunity to make a killing as they prepare to escape to outer space. Or we can embrace the current opportunity to transition to an ecological civilization, with a living economy dedicated to supporting us all.
A viable human future depends on living with less. Does that mean to sacrifice? Leaving more people behind? Or is this challenge an unprecedented opportunity to achieve a better future for all? The question of how much is enough, the theme of the fall 2021 issue of YES! Magazine, poses a foundational question for our time.
Daily reports on economic indicators such as GDP celebrate increases in consumption and sound alarm bells when consumption declines. Meanwhile, daily news reports tell of one climate-related disaster after another. Rarely, if ever, do we hear serious discussion of the connection between growing GDP and growing environmental disasters.
The question of how much is enough begins an essential conversation. It is one that usually involves exploring what we as individuals can do to limit our consumption. Asking “when is less more?” invites us to look at societal choices over which we have little individual control. In examining these societal level choices, we can see areas on which we can potentially join in a common cause. Let us look at several key areas where less could be more.
Deadly Weapons. Humans have long dreamed of peace, yet we consume enormous amounts of resources for war. A recent study found that the U.S. Department of Defense accounts for an estimated 80% of the federal government’s energy consumption. The defense department is also the world’s single largest institutional consumer of petroleum, which supports the world’s largest collection of guns, tanks, military aircraft, and warships. Though the U.S. military imposed the largest environmental burden of any nation’s military, the U.S. is only one nation among many with large militaries.
The statistic on the defense department’s energy use tells us nothing about the social and environmental costs of producing deadly weapons or the impacts of their use not just by the military, but also by local police, terrorist groups, criminal syndicates, gangs, and armed individuals. It is far past time we learned to live in peace with one another. The production and use of weapons of war is an obvious example of where less would be more.
Mis-/Disinformation. A healthy society needs responsible media to inform us and connect us with each other. Our expanded communications capabilities create an unprecedented potential for us to join in creating an ecological civilization that works for all of life. Tragically, our ever more extraordinary communications capabilities are most often used to manipulate our minds for purposes contrary to our well-being. This includes advertising that promotes wasteful, even harmful consumption, and propaganda to promote socially and environmentally destructive political agendas. These activities provide lucrative employment to support lavish lifestyles for those who serve them. Less would be more.
Financial Speculation. Money is nothing but a number that has no existence outside the human mind. It can be useful as a tool but becomes a threat to life when its only purpose is to accumulate more money. The structures of modern society make it virtually impossible to live without money, which gives enormous power to those who create it and decide how it is used. Honest money is created transparently by public institutions to serve public purposes. But we now allow private bankers and financial gamers to make claims against society’s real wealth without the burden of creating anything of value in return. The Gross World Product (a global GDP) for 2021 is projected to be around $94 trillion. Analysts project that the value of global financial services will reach $26.5 trillion by 2022. Only a small portion of that amount represents essential financial services. The rest should be considered a form of theft, and a primary driver of income inequality and environmentally burdensome, ego-driven displays of extravagance. Less financial manipulation would give us radically increased equality with far less waste.
The Bitcoin Con. Private cyber currencies are a form of counterfeiting. Bitcoin, a cyber-currency favored by global cybercriminals and tax evaders, is an especially costly example. The energy consumed in “mining” Bitcoins equals the energy use of a small country or major city. The related computer facilities contribute to electronic waste and the current global shortage of semiconductor chips. Bitcoin and other cyber currencies have value only because buyers expect the market to bid up the price further, or else they need it to prevent tracking of an illicit transaction.
Global Supply Chains. Until very recently in our history, we organized our economies around the labor and needs of local communities. This facilitated repair, reuse, recycling, and resilience, and allowed communities to work within the capabilities of the Earth’s regenerative systems. But global trade rules first introduced in the 1990s stripped place-based living communities of control of their markets, labor, and other resources, and allowed transnational corporations to consolidate their power without concern for the well-being of workers, customers, and nature. China has become the epicenter of a highly fragile interdependent system of global supply chains involving the massive, environmentally destructive long-distance movement of material goods by sea, land, and air. Less reliance on global supply chains would reduce this burden while helping restore the social and environmental health of local communities.
Short Stay Air Travel. Air travel has helped to bring us together as a global species, but it consumes enormous amounts of time, energy, and other resources for purposes that can often be better served in less socially and environmentally costly ways. The purposes of a great many international business meetings and professional conferences could be better served by sharing information electronically, including with video conferencing. In terms of vacation travel, a stay in a nearby resort often better serves the need for restful time off in a beautiful relaxing environment. Visits to destinations on your bucket list for purposes of bragging rights commonly overwhelm the destination to give you little more than a selfie in a crowd. When it comes to travel, less can be much more.
Auto-Dependent Cities. Yet another example relates to our dependence on cars. My wife, Fran, and I lived in New York City from 1992 to 1998. It was the only time in our adult lives that we had no car. Everything we needed or wanted was within walking distance or reachable by rapid public transit. We loved this healthy and friendly way of getting around. Designing every city to make it easier to walk, bike, or take public transit for daily trips could remove a significant human burden on Earth while improving life for everyone. A growing number of major cities are taking steps to become less car-dependent. Regarding car travel, less can be more.
Why do we have so many wasteful sources of consumption? Culturally, it stems from excessive individualism, and societally it stems from using money rather than healthy living as our standard of economic performance. These two forces spur the wasteful consumption that manifests in nearly every aspect of our lives.
Disruptions in our lives caused by the COVID pandemic gave us a wake-up call that both highlighted our human vulnerability and interdependence, and an economy that rewards harmful behavior and inadequately compensates those doing the most important work.
As we learn to think and act as an interdependent global species, we must look critically at all the forms of consumption that could be eliminated to the ultimate benefit of all. Such an examination is needed if we are to transition to an ecological civilization. I elaborate on the concept in my white paper, Ecological Civilization: From Emergency to Emergence, prepared for the Club of Rome’s discussions on a new economics for a new civilization.
We face a defining choice. We can hold to course with an economy that grows GDP to provide a few with the opportunity to make a killing as they prepare to escape to outer space. Or we can embrace the current opportunity to transition to ecological civilization, with a living economy dedicated to supporting us all in making a secure and fulfilling living on a thriving living Earth.
Awakening to the reality that we cannot eat money and there are no winners on a dead Earth points us to the latter as the clearly better choice
This article was written for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Radically reimagining our food systems is a task that is critical to solving the world’s biggest social and ecological problems. It’s also one that garners substantial and often heated debate.
But are we asking the right questions when it comes to evaluating what works, and what doesn’t, for achieving more climate-friendly and food-secure futures?
In many cases, however, this is entirely the wrong question to ask, and the answers it generates lead us to downplay essential and potentially transformative solutions.
Industrial thinking
It seems sensible enough: If our current food production practices use too much water or emit too much greenhouse gas, we ought to replace them with practices that use less or generate less.
Better yet, we can replace them with practices that also reverse ecological harm and improve soil and water health while meeting current and future food needs.
However, evaluating radical new solutions based on whether they scale can be directly at odds with the very nature of these solutions.
Approaches like agroecology and regenerative grazing do not entail a set of standard practices meant to be implemented everywhere. They’re meant to be highly tailored and responsive to the specifics of a place.
It is effectively meaningless to evaluate one set of agroecological practices in say, Thailand, based on how those practices would perform if cloned and applied by different people of different cultures in different places around the world.
Scalability as a value derives from an industrial way of thinking: that the best solutions are those that can be replicated and implemented widely, and that uniformity breeds efficiency and productivity.
This may work in a factory, but ecosystems are not factories. Ecosystem productivity derives not from uniformity but from diversity, flexibility, and change.
Accordingly, these, not scalability, are the traits that are key to success for the most exciting food systems innovations.
A patchwork of solutions
What this means is that a global food system that is both truly sustainable and sufficiently productive will consist, not of a few massively scaled practices, but rather a vast patchwork quilt of smaller-scale solutions that vary dramatically from place to place, over space and over time, in an interplay with local climate, ecology, and culture.
Consider the debate over animal-based proteins. It is not uncommon to see this presented as a sort of global average that implies inherent impacts, regardless of where and how those proteins are being produced.
Yet, there is tremendous place-based variability to how different kinds of livestock are raised. In western Ireland, cattle are used at a small scale to great effect for ecological restoration. Likewise, one estimate shows that greenhouse gas emissions from beef from Canadian dairies are less than one-third of the global average.
Finally, there is a colonial logic to be addressed here: that the validity of new approaches rests not on how well they work for the people implementing them, but on whether they meet a set of metrics construed by and for the Global North.
That they must produce a certain amount of food in service of global populations, or eliminate a certain amount of greenhouse gasses, for example.
Many alternative innovations are not meant to simply be swapped into the existing system, but catalysts that support a complete reorganization of food systems around food sovereignty, community well-being, and ecological health.
Thinking relationally
Rather than asking whether a practice “scales” — whether it works if adopted everywhere — we ought to instead ask whether a practice works in and for specific people and places and whether it can align with or enhance existing culturally valued practices and systems in other places.
“Is this approach in harmony with the people and other living things in this region?” “Does it work with or against the goals and needs here?” And so on.
They also move us away from focusing on specific technologies to focusing on systems and ensuring that our food practices work with rather than against nature.
We face an opportunity today to foster in our food systems truly generative relationships between peoples and places, the domesticated and the wild. Such relationships are the engine by which much of the verdant biocultural diversity in the world today came to be.
In certain circumstances, the question of scalability may indeed be relevant and useful. But given the high stakes of problems like climate change, it’s time to move away not only from the technologies that have failed us but the ideologies on which they are based as well.
Executives from the biggest U.S. airlines asked the Biden administration for “immediate intervention” in today’s scheduled rollout of 5G technology near major airports, warning of an impending “catastrophic” aviation crisis when AT&T and Verizon deploy new 5G service.
Numerous international airlines in response canceled flights to certain U.S. airports — one suspended travel indefinitely — citing concerns over the upcoming 5G deployment and worries that some aircraft haven’t been cleared to fly into airports with 5G signals.
In a letter obtained by Reuters, the representatives of 10 carriers asked President Biden to delay the rollout near airports subject to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flight restrictions once the technology is deployed.
The broader expansion of 5G on Wednesday will provide faster access to the internet than current wireless technology, but airlines warned new C-Band 5G service could leave a significant number of aircraft unusable indefinitely, and “could potentially strand tens of thousands of Americans overseas” and cause “chaos” for U.S. flights.
“The ripple effects across both passenger and cargo operations, our workforce, and the broader economy are simply incalculable,” the executives wrote. “To be blunt, the nation’s commerce will grind to a halt.”
“Unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and the shipping public will essentially be grounded,” wrote chief executives of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and others.
“This means that on a day like yesterday, more than 1,100 flights and 100,000 passengers would be subjected to cancellations, diversions, or delays,” the letter said.
The letter was addressed to White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson, and Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.
Aviation regulators and airlines repeatedly raised concerns the new 5G technology would interfere with safety equipment used to determine a plane’s altitude.
United Airlines in a separate letter on Monday warned of “a devastating impact on aviation” if 5G is rolled out near airports.
“When deployed next to runways, the 5G signals could interfere with the key safety equipment that pilots rely on to take off and land in inclement weather,” United Airlines wrote, warning safety concerns could lead to “significant restrictions” on aircraft being able to operate at airports, including those in Houston, Newark, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.
The FAA also warned potential interference could affect sensitive airplane instruments such as altimeters, and significantly hamper low-visibility operations.
The telecommunications industry countered that regulators and airlines have had years to prepare for 5G.
Countries ground international flights to the U.S.
Air India on Tuesday announced numerous flights departing from India to U.S airports would be canceled. Affected destinations include Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Miami, Newark, Orlando, San Francisco, and Seattle.
The move is “due to operational concerns associated with the planned deployment of 5G mobile network services in the U.S.,” the company said.
Two major Japanese airlines — All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines — announced canceled flights between Tuesday and Thursday to the U.S. due to 5G deployment, Nikkei Asia reported. The cancellation includes 10 scheduled flights affecting about 650 passengers.
Japan Airlines canceled three passenger flights and five cargo flights scheduled for Wednesday.
According to the Nikkei, All Nippon Airways said Boeing 787 planes are still operable amid 5G with equipment adjustments but the Boeing 777 aircraft may be affected, leading to canceled flights for the aircraft that cannot be switched.
United Arab Emirates announced on Wednesday it would halt flights to several American locations due to “operational concerns associated with the planned deployment of 5G mobile network services in the U.S. at certain airports.”
Emirates flies only the Airbus A380 jumbo jet and Boeing 777, which has not been cleared by the FAA to fly into airports with a 5G signal.
Verizon and AT&T temporarily halt 5G expansion near some airports
The flight cancellations came a day after Verizon and AT&T announced a temporary pause on the expansion of 5G services near some airports. The wireless carriers earlier this month delayed the deployment by two weeks at the request of Buttigieg and FAA administrator Dickson.
An AT&T spokesperson said:
“At our sole discretion, we have voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways as we continue to work with the aviation industry and the FAA to provide further information about our 5G deployment since they have not utilized the two years they’ve had to responsibly plan for this deployment.”
Biden praised the decision, saying, “This agreement will avoid potentially devastating disruptions to passenger travel, cargo operations, and our economic recovery while allowing more than 90% of wireless tower deployment to occur as scheduled.”
Wireless companies and Biden did not say how long the pause would last.
“With the proposed restrictions at selected airports, the transportation industry is preparing for some service disruption,” plane manufacturer Boeing said Monday. “We are optimistic that we can work across industries and with the government to finalize solutions that safely mitigate as many schedule impacts as possible.”
The FAA said it “will continue to ensure that the traveling public is safe as wireless companies deploy 5G,” and will work with the aviation industry and wireless companies to “limit 5G-related flight delays and cancellations.”
Aircraft travel is far from the only concern when it comes to 5G deployment
“It’s unfortunate that advocates for human health and the environment don’t have the robust lobbying power of the airline industry,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense. “The damages to the human and natural biomes from WiFi dwarf the impacts of its interference with aviation altimeters.”
According to the newest data from the New Hampshire legislative commission, wireless technology produces significant negative effects on humans, animals, insects, and plants.
As millions of Americans are suddenly working remotely, it has proven to be a powerful opportunity for regulators to move 5G forward. Yet, in the face of expanding wireless connections, a landmark study recommends reducing exposure.
However, the structure required to support 5G will place cell antenna ports close to houses and workplaces, making it nearly impossible to avoid and raising people’s risk of excessive oxidative stress that may lead to anxiety, depression, and Alzheimer’s.
Offshore Wind Farms Could Help Capture Carbon from Air and Store It Long-Term – Using Energy that Would Otherwise Go To Waste
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The U.S. had seven operating offshore wind turbines with 42 megawatts of capacity in 2021. The Biden administration’s goal is 30,000 megawatts by 2030. AP Photo/Michael Dwyer
Off the Massachusetts and New York coasts, developers are preparing to build the United States’ first federally approvedutility-scale offshore wind farms – 74 turbines in all that could power 470,000 homes. More than a dozen other offshore wind projects are awaiting approval along the Eastern Seaboard.
Offshore wind farms are uniquely positioned to do both – and save money.
Most renewable energy lease areas off the Atlantic Coast are near the Mid-Atlantic states and Massachusetts. About 480,000 acres of the New York Bight is scheduled to be auctioned for wind farms in February 2022. BOEM
The systems use filters or liquid solutions that capture CO2 from the air blown across them. Once the filters are full, electricity and heat are needed to release the carbon dioxide and restart the capture cycle.
For the process to achieve net negative emissions, the energy source must be carbon-free.
The world’s largest active direct air capture plant operating today does this by using waste heat and renewable energy. The plant, in Iceland, then pumps its captured carbon dioxide into the underlying basalt rock, where the CO2 reacts with the basalt and calcifies, turning to a solid mineral.
A similar process could be created with offshore wind turbines.
If direct air capture systems were built alongside offshore wind turbines, they would have an immediate source of clean energy from excess wind power and could pipe captured carbon dioxide directly to storage beneath the seafloor below, reducing the need for extensive pipeline systems.
Climeworks, a Swiss company, has 15 direct air capture plants removing carbon dioxide from the air. Climeworks
Researchers are currently studying how these systems function under marine conditions. Direct air capture is only beginning to be deployed on land, and the technology likely would have to be modified for the harsh ocean environment. But planning should start now so wind power projects are positioned to take advantage of carbon storage sites and designed so the platforms, sub-sea infrastructure, and cabled networks can be shared.
Using excess wind power when it isn’t needed
By nature, wind energy is intermittent. Demand for energy also varies. When the wind can produce more power than is needed, production is curtailed and electricity that could be used is lost.
For example, New York State’s goal is to have 9 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2035. Those 9 gigawatts would be expected to deliver 27.5 terawatt-hours of electricity per year.
Based on historical wind curtailment rates in the U.S., a surplus of 825 megawatt-hours of electrical energy per year may be expected as offshore wind farms expand to meet this goal. Assuming direct air capture’s efficiency continues to improve and reaches commercial targets, this surplus energy could be used to capture and store upwards of 0.5 million tons of CO2 per year.
That’s if the system only used surplus energy that would have gone to waste. If it used more wind power, its carbon capture and storage potential would increase.
Several Mid-Atlantic areas being leased for offshore wind farms also have the potential for carbon storage beneath the seafloor. The capacity is measured in millions of metric tons of CO2 per square kilometer. The U.S. produces about 4.5 billion metric tons of CO2 from energy per year. U.S. Department of Energy and Battelle
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that 100 to 1,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide will have to be removed from the atmosphere over the century to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels.
Researchers have estimated that sub-seafloor geological formations adjacent to the offshore wind developments planned on the U.S. East Coast have the capacity to store more than 500 gigatons of CO2. Basalt rocks are likely to exist in a string of buried basins across this area too, adding even more storage capacity and enabling CO2 to react with the basalt and solidify over time, though geotechnical surveys have not yet tested these deposits.
Planning both at once saves time and cost
New wind farms built with direct air capture could deliver renewable power to the grid and provide surplus power for carbon capture and storage, optimizing this massive investment for a direct climate benefit.
But it will require planning that starts well in advance of construction. Launching the marine geophysical surveys, environmental monitoring requirements, and approval processes for both wind power and storage together can save time, avoid conflicts and improve environmental stewardship.
Beavers Offer Lessons About Managing Water in a Changing Climate, Whether the Challenge Is Drought or Floods
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Wetlands created by beavers, like this one in Amherst, Massachusetts, store floodwaters and provide habitat for animals and birds. Christine Hatch, CC BY-ND
It’s no accident that both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology claim the beaver (Castor canadensis) as their mascots. Renowned engineers, beavers seem able to dam any stream, building structures with logs and mud that can flood large areas.
As climate change causes extreme storms in some areas and intense drought in others, scientists are finding that beavers’ small-scale natural interventions are valuable. In dry areas, beaver ponds restore moisture to the soil; in wet zones, their dams and ponds can help to slow floodwaters. These ecological services are so useful that land managers are translocating beavers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom to help restore ecosystems and make them more resilient to climate change.
Scientists are studying ways to use beavers to mitigate wildfire and drought risks in the western U.S.
How beavers alter landscapes
Beavers dam streams to create ponds, where they can construct their dome-shaped lodges in the water, keeping predators at a distance. When they create a pond, many other effects follow.
Newly flooded trees die but remain standing as bare “snags” where birds nest. The diverted streams create complicated interwoven channels of slow-moving water, tangled with logs and plants that provide hiding places for fish. The messy complexity behind a beaver dam creates many different kinds of habitats for creatures such as fish, birds, frogs, and insects.
Human dams often block fish passage upstream and downstream, even when the dams include fish ladders. But studies have shown that fish have no trouble migrating upstream past beaver dams. One reason may be that the fish can rest in slow pools and cool pond complexes after navigating the tallest parts of the dams.
The slow-moving water behind beaver dams is very effective at trapping sediment, which drops to the bottom of the pond. Studies measuring total organic carbon inactive and abandoned beaver meadows suggest that before the 1800s, active and abandoned beaver ponds across North America stored large amounts of carbon in sediment trapped behind them. This finding is relevant today as scientists look for ways to increase carbon storage in forests and other natural ecosystems.
A beaver dam in Mason Neck State Park in Lorton, Virginia, creates a pond behind it that can spread out and slow down floodwaters during a storm. Virginia State Parks, CC BY
Beavers may persist in one location for decades if they aren’t threatened by bears, cougars, or humans, but they will move on if food runs out near their pond. When abandoned beaver dams fail, the ponds drain and gradually become grassy meadows as plants from the surrounding land seed them.
Dried meadows can serve as floodplains for nearby rivers, allowing waters to spill out and provide forage and spawning areas for fish during high flows. Floodplain meadows are valuable habitats for ground-nesting birds and other species that depend on the river.
The value of slowing the flow
As human settlements expand, people often wish to make use of every acre. That typically means that they want either land that is solid and dry enough to farm or waterways they can navigate by boat. To create those conditions, humans remove floating logs from streams and install drains to draw water off of fields and roads as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But covering more and more land surfaces with barriers that don’t absorb water, such as pavement and rooftops, means that water flows into rivers and streams more quickly. Rainfall from an average storm can produce an intense river flow that erodes the banks and beds of waterways. And as climate change fuels more intense storms in many places, it will amplify this destructive impact.
Some developers limit this kind of damaging flow by using nature-based engineering principles, such as “ponding” water to intercept it and slow it down; spreading flows out more widely to reduce the water’s speed; and designing swales, or sunken spots, that allow water to sink into the ground. Beaver wetlands do all of these things, only better. Research in the United Kingdom has documented that beaver activity can reduce the flow of floodwaters from farmlands by up to 30%.
Beaver meadows and wetlands also help cool the ground around and beneath them. Wet soil in these zones contains a lot of organic matter from buried and decayed plants, which holds onto moisture longer than soil formed only from rocks and minerals. In my wetland research, I have found that after a storm, water entering the ground passes through pure mineral sand in hours to days but can remain in soils that are 80%-90% organic matter for as long as a month.
Cool, wet soil also serves as a buffer against wildfires. Recent studies in the western U.S. have found that vegetation in beaver-dammed river corridors is more fire-resistant than in areas without beavers because it is well watered and lush, so it doesn’t burn as easily. As a result, areas near beaver dams provide temporary refuge for wildlife when surrounding areas burn.
Making room for beavers
The ecological services that beavers provide are most valuable in zones where nobody minds if the landscape changes. But in the densely developed eastern U.S., where I work, it’s hard to find open areas where beaver ponds can spread out without flooding ditches or roads. Beavers also topple expensive landscaped trees and will feed on some cultivated crops, such as corn and soybeans.
Debris carried by intense rains in July 2021 overtopped a beaver dam (still standing in the background) and washed out this undersized 3-foot culvert in western Massachusetts. It has since been replaced by a more resilient 9-foot structure. Christine Hatch, CC BY-ND
Culvert guards, fences, and other exclusion devices can keep beavers a safe distance from infrastructure and maintain pond heights at a level that won’t flood adjoining areas. Road crossings over streams that are designed to let fish and other aquatic animals through instead of blocking them are beaver-friendly and will be resilient to climate change and extreme precipitation events. If these structures are large enough to let debris pass through, then beavers will build dams upstream instead, which can help catch floodwaters.
A growing body of research shows that setting aside pockets of land for beavers is good for wetland ecosystems, biodiversity, and rivers. I believe we can learn from beavers’ water management skills, coexist with them in our landscapes, and incorporate their natural engineering in response to weather and precipitation patterns disrupted by climate change.
There’s a human-caused extinction crisis underway — probably the start of the sixth mass extinction — and denial or indifference to this planetary crisis is “an abrogation of moral responsibility,” according to scientists behind a new study.
Published last week in the journal Biological Reviews, the assessment by biologists from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris finds that the unprecedented rate of species loss is undeniable.
The authors reject both the argument that the human-caused loss of species is simply a natural trajectory of life on Earth and that extinction rates are exaggerated.
Part of the issue, they say, may rest in reliance on the “Red List” maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The list, despite assessing more than 120,000 species, covers a mere 5.6% of the more than 2.2 million animal and plant species recognized by taxonomists.
In addition to likely underestimating extinctions of those listed, the authors say the compilation is also heavily skewed toward non-marine vertebrates while invertebrates — both on land and in the sea — constitute up to 97% of known animal species.
“Including invertebrates was key to confirming that we are indeed witnessing the onset of the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history,” said lead author Robert Cowie, a research professor at the UH Mānoa Pacific Biosciences Research Center in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.
The researchers point to data on mollusks, which are the second-largest phylum of invertebrates and whose long-lasting shells leave an important historical record.
They extrapolate mollusk extinction rates to assess greater biodiversity losses, though noting that data shows marine and plant species have fared better in the extinction crisis than land animals.
Their findings show there are 638 mollusk species extinct and 380 possibly extinct — figures that add up to more than twice as many listed by IUCN’s 2020 assessment.
Making a “bold” extrapolation on data on 200 land snail species, the study finds that 7.5% to 13% of roughly 2 million species have gone extinct in the last 600 years. That’s between 150,000 and 260,000 species in total.
It’s clear there is a crisis is underway, the researchers say.
“The Sixth Mass Extinction may have not occurred yet, but heightened rates of extinction and huge range and population declines have already occurred, and whatever it is called, biodiversity is changing at a greater rate than it would in the absence of anthropogenic influences,” they wrote.
“This is a fact,” the researchers continued. “Denying it is simply flying in the face of the mountain of data that is rapidly accumulating, and there is no longer room for skepticism, wondering whether it really is happening.”
The scientists reject the argument that humans are simply “just another species going about its business in the greater evolutionary scheme of things, an argument that gives carte blanche to those who would destroy the Earth for their own short-term gain.”
Humankind has a “power to manipulate the Earth on a grand scale,” they add, and has “a moral and ethical obligation to use that power judiciously not capriciously.”
“We cannot help but feel that humanity is allowing a probable Sixth Mass Extinction to unfold,” the authors lament, “and it is pie in the sky to think that this situation will change in any major way.”
Still, important efforts to at least slow down the crisis are underway, the study notes, pointing to mobilizations by groups of individuals like the Extinction Rebellion and the establishment of protected areas as examples.
Yet more must be done, the researchers say, including by biological scientists who should “spread the message that the biodiversity that makes our world so fascinating and beautiful is going extinct unnoticed at an unprecedented rate” and should also collect species and their descriptions before they go extinct.
According to Cowie, “Despite the rhetoric about the gravity of the crisis, and although remedial solutions exist and are brought to the attention of decision-makers, it is clear that political will is lacking.
“Denying the crisis, accepting it without reacting, or even encouraging it,” said Cowie, “constitutes an abrogation of humanity’s common responsibility and paves the way for Earth to continue on its sad trajectory towards the Sixth Mass Extinction.”
Batteries Get Hyped, but Pumped Hydro Provides the Vast Majority of Long-Term Energy Storage Essential for Renewable Power – Here’s How It Works
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The U.S. has thousands of lakes and reservoirs that could be paired for pumped hydro storage without the need for rivers. Ollo via Getty Images
To cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half within a decade, the Biden administration’s goal, the U.S. is going to need a lot more solar and wind power generation, and lots of cheap energy storage.
Wind and solar power vary over the course of a day, so energy storage is essential to provide a continuous flow of electricity. But today’s batteries are typically quite small and store enough energy for only a few hours of electricity. To rely more on wind and solar power, the U.S. will need more overnight and longer-term storage as well.
While battery innovations get a lot of attention, there’s a simple, proven long-term storage technique that’s been used in the U.S. since the 1920s.
It’s called pumped hydro energy storage. It involves pumping water uphill from one reservoir to another at a higher elevation for storage, then, when power is needed, releasing the water to flow downhill through turbines, generating electricity on its way to the lower reservoir.
Two types of pumped-storage hydropower; one doesn’t require a river. NREL
Pumped hydro storage is often overlooked in the U.S. because of concern about hydropower’s impact on rivers. But what many people don’t realize is that most of the best hydro storage sites aren’t on rivers at all.
We created a world atlas of potential sites for closed-looped pumped hydro – systems that don’t include a river – and found 35,000 paired sites in the U.S. with good potential. While many of these sites, which we located by satellite, are in rugged terrain and may be unsuitable for geological, hydrological, economic, environmental, or social reasons, we estimate that only a few hundred sites are needed to support a 100% renewable U.S. electricity system.
Why wind and solar need long-term storage
To function properly, power grids must be able to match the incoming electricity supply to electricity demand in real-time or they risk shortages or overloads.
There are several techniques that grid managers can use to keep that balance with variable sources like wind and solar. These include sharing power across large regions via interstate high-voltage transmission lines, managing demand – and using energy storage.
The Kidston pumped hydro project in Australia uses an old gold mine for reservoirs. Genex Power
Batteries deployed in homes, power stations, and electric vehicles are preferred for energy storage times up to a few hours. They’re adept at managing the rise of solar power midday when the sun is overhead and releasing it when power demand peaks in the evenings.
Pumped hydro, on the other hand, allows for larger and longer storage than batteries, and that is essential in a wind- and solar-dominated electricity system. It is also cheaper for overnight and longer-term storage.
Creating closed-loop systems that use pairs of existing lakes or reservoirs instead of rivers would avoid the need for new dams. A project planned in Bell County, Kentucky, for example, uses an old coal strip mine. Little additional land is needed except for transmission lines.
Examples from the atlas of off-river reservoirs with the potential to be paired for pumped hydro near Castle Rock, Colorado. Andrew Blakers, CC BY
An off-river pumped hydro system comprises a pair of reservoirs spaced several miles apart with an altitude difference of 200-800 meters (about 650-2,600 feet) and connected with pipes or tunnels. The reservoirs can be new or use old mining sites or existing lakes or reservoirs.
On sunny or windy days, water is pumped to the upper reservoir. At night, the water flows back down through the turbines to recover the stored energy.
A pair of 250-acre reservoirs with an altitude difference of 600 meters (1,969 feet) and 20-meter depth (65 feet) can store 24 gigawatt-hours of energy, meaning the system could supply 1 gigawatt of power for 24 hours, enough for a city of a million people.
The water can cycle between upper and lower reservoirs for a hundred years or more. Evaporation suppressors – small objects floating on the water to trap humid air – can help reduce water evaporation. In all, the amount of water needed to support a 100% renewable electricity system is about 3 liters per person per day, equivalent to 20 seconds of a morning shower. This is one-tenth of the water evaporated per person per day in the cooling systems of U.S. fossil fuel power stations.
Storage to support 100% renewables
Little pumped storage has been built in the U.S. in recent years because there hasn’t been much need, but that’s changing.
In 2020, about three-quarters of all new power capacity built was either solar photovoltaics or wind power. Their costs have been falling, making them cheaper to build in many areas than fossil fuels.
Australia is installing solar and wind three times faster per capita than the U.S. and is already facing the need for mass storage. It has two systemsunder construction that are designed to have more energy storage than all the utility batteries in the world put together; another dozen are under serious consideration. None involve new dams on rivers. The annual operating cost is low, and the working fluid is water rather than battery chemicals.
Shifting electricity to renewable energy and then electrifying vehicles and heating can eliminate most human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. has vast potential for off-river pumped hydro storage to help this happen, and it will need it as wind and solar power expand.
The FDA has allowed nanoparticles into the food supply under the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) provision, claiming that they are no more dangerous than their larger counterparts. Human trials for consumable nanotechnology are currently happening and are hidden in the public food supply. Animal studies show nanoparticles change the way our bodies absorb certain minerals.
Twenty states allow alkaline hydrolysis, known as ‘water cremation’ that is achieved by submerging a body in a solution of heated water and lye. After a matter of hours, everything but the bones dissolves into a liquid made up of water, salt, and other components that go down the drain. It is mixed with the sewer water and the bio-sludge is used for fertilizer in factory farms, gardens, schoolyards, and lawns to save the government money for toxic waste disposal.
Why the Volcanic Eruption in Tonga Was So Violent, and What to Expect Next
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The Kingdom of Tonga doesn’t often attract global attention, but a violent eruption of an underwater volcano on January 15 has spread shock waves, quite literally, around half the world.
The volcano is usually not much to look at. It consists of two small uninhabited islands, Hunga-Ha’apai and Hunga-Tonga, poking about 100m above sea level 65km north of Tonga’s capital Nuku‘alofa. But hiding below the waves is a massive volcano, around 1800m high and 20km wide.
A massive underwater volcano lies next to the Hunga-Ha’apai and Hunga-Tonga islands. Author provided
The Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano has erupted regularly over the past few decades. During events in 2009 and 2014/15 hot jets of magma and steam-exploded through the waves. But these eruptions were small, dwarfed in scale by the January 2022 events.
Our research into these earlier eruptions suggests this is one of the massive explosions the volcano is capable of producing roughly every thousand years.
Why are the volcano’s eruptions so highly explosive, given that seawater should cool the magma down?
If magma rises into seawater slowly, even at temperatures of about 1200℃, a thin film of steam forms between the magma and water. This provides a layer of insulation to allow the outer surface of the magma to cool.
But this process doesn’t work when magma is blasted out of the ground full of volcanic gas. When magma enters the water rapidly, any steam layers are quickly disrupted, bringing hot magma in direct contact with cold water.
Volcano researchers call this “fuel-coolant interaction” and it is akin to weapons-grade chemical explosions. Extremely violent blasts tear the magma apart. A chain reaction begins, with new magma fragments exposing fresh hot interior surfaces to water, and the explosions repeat, ultimately jetting out volcanic particles and causing blasts with supersonic speeds.
Two scales of Hunga eruptions
The 2014/15 eruption created a volcanic cone, joining the two old Hunga islands to create a combined island about 5km long. We visited in 2016 and discovered these historical eruptions were merely curtain raisers to the main event.
Mapping the seafloor, we discovered a hidden “caldera” 150m below the waves.
A map of the seafloor shows the volcanic cones and massive caldera. Author provided
The caldera is a crater-like depression around 5km across. Small eruptions (such as in 2009 and 2014/15) occur mainly at the edge of the caldera, but very big ones come from the caldera itself. These big eruptions are so large the top of the erupting magma collapses inward, deepening the caldera.
Looking at the chemistry of past eruptions, we now think the small eruptions represent the magma system slowly recharging itself to prepare for a big event.
We found evidence of two huge past eruptions from the Hunga caldera in deposits on the old islands. We matched these chemically to volcanic ash deposits on the largest inhabited island of Tongatapu, 65km away, and then used radiocarbon dates to show that big caldera eruptions occur about every 1000 years, with the last one at AD1100.
With this knowledge, the eruption on January 15 seems to be right on schedule for a “big one”.
What we can expect to happen now
We’re still in the middle of this major eruptive sequence and many aspects remain unclear, partly because the island is currently obscured by ash clouds.
The two earlier eruptions on December 20 2021 and January 13 2022 were of moderate size. They produced clouds of up to 17km elevation and added new land to the 2014/15 combined island.
The latest eruption has stepped up the scale in terms of violence. The ash plume is already about 20km high. Most remarkably, it spread out almost concentrically over a distance of about 130km from the volcano, creating a plume with a 260km diameter, before it was distorted by the wind.
This demonstrates a huge explosive power – one that cannot be explained by magma-water interaction alone. It shows instead that large amounts of fresh, gas-charged magma have erupted from the caldera.
The eruption also produced a tsunami throughout Tonga and neighboring Fiji and Samoa. Shock waves traversed many thousands of kilometers, were seen from space and recorded in New Zealand some 2000km away. Soon after the eruption started, the sky was blocked out on Tongatapu, with ash beginning to fall.
All these signs suggest the large Hunga caldera has awoken. Tsunami is generated by coupled atmospheric and ocean shock waves during explosions, but they are also readily caused by submarine landslides and caldera collapses.
It remains unclear if this is the climax of the eruption. It represents a major magma pressure release, which may settle the system.
A warning, however, lies in geological deposits from the volcano’s previous eruptions. These complex sequences show each of the 1000-year major caldera eruption episodes involved many separate explosion events.
Hence we could be in for several weeks or even years of major volcanic unrest from the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano. For the sake of the people of Tonga, I hope not.
Wishcycling is putting something in the recycling bin and hoping it will be recycled, even if there is little evidence to confirm this assumption.
Hope is central to wishcycling. People may not be sure the system works, but they choose to believe that if they recycle an object, it will become a new product rather than being buried in a landfill, burned, or dumped.
The U.S. recycling industry was launched in the 1970s in response to public concern over litter and waste. The growth of recycling and collection programs changed consumers’ view of waste: It didn’t seem entirely bad if it could lead to the creation of new products via recycling.
Pro-recycling messaging from governments, corporations, and environmentalists promoted and reinforced recycling behavior. This was especially true for plastics that had resin identification codes inside a triangle of “chasing arrows,” indicating that the item was recyclable – even though that was usually far from the truth. In fact, only resins #1 (polyethylene terephthalate, or PET) and #2 (high-density polyethylene, or HDPE) are relatively easy to recycle and have viable markets. The others are hard to recycle, so some jurisdictions don’t even collect them.
The plastics industry developed codes in 1988 to identify categories of plastic resins that products were made from. Surrounding them with ‘chasing arrows’ wrongly suggested that they all were recyclable, when in fact many communities only processed the more common types. In 2013, the graphic was changed to a solid triangle. iStock via Getty Images
The China scrap restrictions created enormous waste backups in the U.S., where governments had under-invested in recycling systems. Consumers saw that recycling was not as reliable or environmentally friendly as previously believed.
Contaminating the waste stream with material that is not actually recyclable makes the sorting process more costly because it requires extra labor. Wishcycling also damages sorting systems and equipment and depresses an already fragile trading market.
Many communities are trying to educate consumers about what not to recycle. City of Asheville, N.C.
Huge waste management companies and small cities and towns have launched educational campaigns on this issue. Their mantra is “When in doubt, throw it out.” In other words, only place material that truly can be recycled in your bin. This message is hard for many environmentalists to hear, but it cuts costs for recyclers and local governments.
If you are a farm owner, you know that there are a ton of ways that you can make your farm stand out among all of them in the area you’re in. One simple move can make a big difference to the way your farm performs, which means that you need to pay attention to how you’re making your farm stand out. Not only do you want to generate extra income for your farm, but you also want to generate popularity and success.
In order to have success in your farm, you need to make the improvements that matter the most. You have to inject modern techniques and modern technology to make your farm a success, and the improvements that you can make for your farm matter when you consider how you can change to AKRS Equipment and make more room for your animals. No matter the type of farm you have, there are always ways to make it more profitable and improve it. With this in mind, here are the best suggestions you could have to give your farm a cash injection.
Get to know the market. You can’t hope to grow any crops without a market in mind. So many people rush into farming without making sure that their market is a valid one. There’s no use in looking for ways to add profit until you know what the market is. Those who do rush in become the wrong kind of farmer, and in no time, the market oversaturates too fast.
Choose the best crops. To optimize your farm the right way, you want to choose the right crops and ensure that you are offering what your consumers want. If you know what your consumers expect from you, you’re going to find it much easier to offer a high market value.
Indulge in advance planning. Planning is so important in any business but in farming, planning is the most important thing that you can do. Every professional business needs a plan to stick with, and you can’t guarantee any kind of success without one. Planning will help you to determine what kind of farming you should be doing and whether you can grow your business later.
Hire your equipment. You can buy equipment for your business but before you grow your profits enough, you might choose to hire equipment for a while. Land is the biggest factor in your revenue growth but you need the right amount of equipment to treat the land and plant what you need to plant. Hiring more equipment can help you in the long term.
Know when to diversify. Your farm is going to be far more profitable and successful when you know how to make changes and grow it. You need to therefore know when the best time is to diversify in your farm – and that takes good planning as we mentioned earlier. Take your time here, because it may take some time for you to know that it’s right to diversify!
E.O. Wilson’s Lifelong Passion for Ants Helped Him Teach Humans About How to Live Sustainably With Nature
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E. O. Wilson in 2003. Photo by Jim Harrison via Wiki-Commons
E. O. Wilson was an extraordinary scholar in every sense of the word. Back in the 1980s, Milton Stetson, the chair of the biology department at the University of Delaware, told me that a scientist who makes a single seminal contribution to his or her field has been a success. By the time I met Edward O. Wilson in 1982, he had already made at least five such contributions to science.
Each of his seminal contributions fundamentally changed the way scientists approached these disciplines and explained why E.O. – as he was fondly known – as an academic god for many young scientists like me. This astonishing record of achievement may have been due to his phenomenal ability to piece together new ideas using information garnered from disparate fields of study.
E.O. Wilson reflects on insect society, human society, and the importance of biodiversity in 2009.
Big insights from small subjects
In 1982 I cautiously sat down next to the great man during a break at a small conference on social insects. He turned, extended his hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Ed Wilson. I don’t believe we’ve met.” Then we talked until it was time to get back to business.
Three hours later I approached him again, this time without trepidation because surely now we were the best of friends. He turned, extended his hand, and said “Hi, I’m Ed Wilson. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Wilson forgetting me, but remaining kind and interested anyway, showed that beneath his many layers of brilliance was a real person and a compassionate one. I was fresh out of graduate school, and doubt that another person at that conference knew less than I — something I’m sure Wilson discovered as soon as I opened my mouth. Yet he didn’t hesitate to extend himself to me, not once but twice.
Thirty-two years later, in 2014, we met again. I had been invited to speak in a ceremony honoring his receipt of the Franklin Institute’s Benjamin Franklin Medal for Earth and Environmental Science. The award honored Wilson’s lifetime achievements in science, but particularly his many efforts to save life on Earth.
My work studying native plants and insects, and how crucial they are to food webs, was inspired by Wilson’s eloquent descriptions of biodiversity and how the myriad interactions among species create the conditions that enable the very existence of such species.
I spent the first decades of my career studying the evolution of insect parental care, and Wilson’s early writings provided a number of testable hypotheses that guided that research. But his 1992 book, “The Diversity of Life,” resonated deeply with me and became the basis for an eventual turn in my career path.
Though I am an entomologist, I did not realize that insects were “the little things that run the world” until Wilson explained why this is so in 1987. Like nearly all scientists and nonscientists alike, my understanding of how biodiversity sustains humans was embarrassingly cursory. Fortunately, Wilson opened our eyes.
Throughout his career, Wilson flatly rejected the notion held by many scholars that natural history – the study of the natural world through observation rather than experimentation – was unimportant. He proudly labeled himself a naturalist and communicated the urgent need to study and preserve the natural world. Decades before it was in vogue, he recognized that our refusal to acknowledge the Earth’s limits, coupled with the unsustainability of perpetual economic growth, had set humans well on their way to ecological oblivion.
Wilson understood that humans’ reckless treatment of the ecosystems that support us was not only a recipe for our own demise. It was forcing the biodiversity he so cherished into the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history, and the first one caused by an animal: us.
E.O. Wilson long advocated conserving the world’s biodiversity hot spots – zones with high numbers of native species where habitats are most endangered. This image shows deforestation from 1975 to 2013 in one such area, West Africa’s Upper Guinean Forest. USGS
A broad vision for conservation
And so, to his lifelong fascination with ants, E. O. Wilson added a second passion: guiding humanity toward a more sustainable existence. To do that, he knew he had to reach beyond the towers of academia and write for the public, and that one book would not suffice. Learning requires repeated exposure, and that is what Wilson delivered in “The Diversity of Life,” “Biophilia,” “The Future of Life,” “The Creation” and his final plea in 2016, “Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life.”
As Wilson aged, desperation and urgency replaced political correctness in his writings. He boldly exposed ecological destruction caused by fundamentalist religions and unrestricted population growth, and challenged the central dogma of conservation biology, demonstrating that conservation could not succeed if restricted to tiny, isolated habitat patches.
In “Half-Earth,” he distilled a lifetime of ecological knowledge into one simple tenet: Life as we know it can be sustained only if we preserve functioning ecosystems on at least half of planet Earth.
But is this possible? Nearly half of the planet is used for some form of agriculture, and 7.9 billion people and their vast network of infrastructure occupy the other half.
As I see it, the only way to realize E.O.’s lifelong wish is to learn to coexist with nature, in the same place, at the same time. It is essential to bury forever the notion that humans are here and nature is someplace else. Providing a blueprint for this radical cultural transformation has been my goal for the last 20 years, and I am honored that it melds with E.O. Wilson’s dream.
There is no time to waste on this effort. Wilson himself once said, “Conservation is a discipline with a deadline.” Whether humans have the wisdom to meet that deadline remains to be seen.
