Environmental news digest 10/26/20

    Earlier this July, Joe Biden announced a $2 trillion climate plan which highlighted carbon capture, fracking, economic policies, and expansion of renewable technologies as "transition methods" to a net zero carbon economy. In Biden's own words from the second presidential debate these policies are in support of a "managed decline with rapid transition to renewable energy."

    One of technology featured is carbon capture which captures carbon from factory smoke stacks and car exhaust. While this does not reduce the initial carbon generated, carbon capture does lead to less carbon entering the atmosphere and cleaner air. Carbon capture can help retain jobs in areas with factories and is supported by labor unions. Carbon capture also has the possibility of creating new jobs and has been made a profitable technology through tax incentives. 

    Biden also said that he will reduce tax incentives on the fossil fuel industry and increase spending on renewables. Fracking while emitting less carbon than coal is equally devastating to the environment in the areas around fracking sites. Additionally the use of chemicals is toxic to the local ecosystem and pollutes drinking water. While some scientists say carbon capture is necessary to avoid 1.5 C warming,  what is the best way this technology can be coupled with the addition of new renewables and electric cars?

    Over the last twenty years 90% of grasslands in the South have been lost. Meadows, savanna, and grassland are highly endangered regions and their range has been reduced by development, farming, changing climate conditions, and faulty conservation. This change has affected the local ecology, biodiversity, and the climate in those regions. However, a new effort has been made to enact better conservation and bring awareness to these areas. Southern grasslands are home to the most diverse group of plants and animal species in North America and new insect species like grasshoppers are even being discovered today. An effort has been made to preserve more land and low temperature burns are being used as conservation strategies to reduce the risk of large wildfires as seen in many parts of the world today. Additionally, a seed bank has been founded with the hopes of categorizing and preserving the rich biodiversity found in Southern grasslands. 

    It is hard to say why Union's ranking has decreased, but it may be because other campuses have become more environmentally friendly with sustainability initiatives in their dining halls, full campus composting, greener management of outdoor spaces, and renewable energy. Union has been an environmentally friendly school for many years and last year with the break through in the divestment movement the school has begun taking steps to green its financial portfolio. However, since covid there has been an increase in food and food packaging waste. Recently to reduce waste, the school has supplied a Union branded reusable utensil kit and tote bags for students to use around campus. While these measures are good, Union no longer looks for LEED certification or environmental procedures in new construction or renovation. Environmental consideration was questionable during the construction of the new integrated science and engineering complex. 

    Recently I have been working with music faculty and facilities to look into greening developments in the Taylor music center. This week we are walking through the space to look at power usage and measures to reduce the building's environmental impact.

Thank you so much for reading!

Pre-Halloween environmental news

• high-waste holiday
• Pumpkins: 2018 - farmers produced over a billion pumpkins, many of which end up decomposing in landfills and emitting methane
• Candy: many are made with palm oil, linked to deforestation. Also much of the packaging can’t be recycled, becomes part of landfill.
• Costumes: made from cheap materials, lots of chemicals in production process, only used once or twice
• Solutions - set limits on what you need, use what you already have in your house, clothing swaps, make-your-own-candy

Thank you so much to Alyssa for her collaboration with this slide show. Used with permission.


    TED's climate countdown movement has begun. Countdown is a TED media platform to introduce climate ideas, organization and cross collaboration between contributors, event planning, and to facilitate real world science and design to engineer an array of multidisciplinary projects to tackle current and future climate challenges and to expand environmental thinking into new solution spaces.
    The main goal of countdown is to help accelerate our world's progress to a zero emission 2030, reduce damage already done, and help prevent further damage through investment in education and targeted projects. Although large in scheme, many of the projects supported by TED are impact heavy: have specific targets and effective methods of meeting those goals. While countdown was announced October 2019, the event has now officially begun in October 2020. 

    
    I have always been a huge fan of TED talks, first drawn by the cutting edge science, engineering (biomedical engineering), and LEED talks particularly the ones by researchers at the MIT research labs and have always appreciated TED’s interest in environmental causes. For the first time, TED is shifting its focus to a particular cause, in this case the climate and climate justice. Already, new talks about hightech solutions to climate change utilizing AI and computer modeling have shown the possibility for real results.     A recent talk by Thomas Crowther unveils an application which has modeled the entire earth and can predict based on patterns found in nature the best locations for planting new trees and what species to plant where.     TED is also featuring talks by leading developers in projects to address challenges in a wide range of disciplines: climate leadership, city design and waste, energy production, food production, soil carbon, geo-engineering, and biodiversity, etc. 

    Have you watched any climate related TED talks? What have you thought? What do you think about TED and this trend towards climate discussion? What do you think about TED letting large tech companies like Amazon and Apple present about their path towards a carbon neutral 2030?

Thanks so much for reading! 

October 2020 environmental news

Hello environmental enthusiasts, this blog post is a recreation of a recent presentation I delivered to students in U-sustain, an environmental organization at Union college. Really hope you enjoy! 

    September 2020 was the hottest recorded month worldwide in recent history. The high was recorded in late August in Death Valley California where the temperature reached 131 F and 55 C. Additional heat waves were recorded in Pakistan, Sudan and South Sudan as well as flooding in Asia and Sudan, and this Fall, Europe is experiencing a drought. 

    This top photo shows the flooding in Sudan. Other sources also mentioned flooding in Egypt along the Nile. The flooding in Sudan threatens population centers along with agriculture regions and ancient UNESCO heritage sites. 

    The bottom photo captures the forest fires in Siberia caused by the heatwave there. These forest fires have destroyed thousands of acres of land and accelerate the release of soil carbon from Siberia's vast soil carbon sink. Siberia's soil carbon is a relatively new discovery and the release of this trapped soil carbon into the atmosphere was not considered in initial climate change models. A warming climate melts the ice in the soil destabilizing the structure that prevented carbon from escaping into the atmosphere.

    This October Hurricane Delta landed in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, causing Loss of power, building destruction and heavy flooding. Louisiana was still recovering from Hurricane Laura in August and was deeply affected by Hurricane Delta. 

    A new forest fire began in California in the North Bay region. The Glass fire named after nearby Glass mountain has burned thousands of acres and is still uncontained. Many people were evacuated. 

    In 2019 a bill was passed in Maryland to ban the use of foam food containers beginning July 1st 2020. This bill terminated the sales of styrofoam and its use in restaurants and schools. Due to covid this new law did not fully take effect until October 1st. Businesses could not purchase new containers, however could use ones left in stock. With an increased trend towards takeout and fast food, restaurants need to supply a new type of containers and many have switched to compostable alternatives*.    

    Compostable containers are much better for the environment than styrofoam because less water, materials, and energy is used in their construction. Additionally compostable containers break down quicker and can be composted! One downside to compostable containers is their cost. For small restaurants spending between $200 and $900 extra on containers each month is too economically costly. Large chains can more easily make the switch due to a wide range of possible reasons: lower cost per store, greater financial backing, greater profit margin. The issue here is that small restaurants are exactly what we need right now! Family run restaurants are much less environmentally destructive than chains and promote culture and community in the places where they operate. 

    To what extent should restaurants be made to switch to compostable take out containers? How do you feel about dining-in during covid? 

    *: Many cardboard containers are easily composed in a backyard composter while compostable containers made out of a plastic like material can only be composted in industrial composters which use higher temperature and pressure. Surprisingly, I had not heard of industrial composting before attending Union college. On campus there is a mix of regular composting (mainly in theme houses) and industrial composting in the dining halls and other eating venues. Take a look at what type of container you recieve. 

    Recently, a team at the University of Portsmouth in Hampshire England has created a new plastic digesting enzyme called PETase. A similar enzyme to the first the same team discovered back in 2016, this PETase is equally groundbreaking. The PETase enzyme is naturally coded in a species of bacteria. The process for creating a biologically free PETase enzyme involves: isolating the gene from the bacteria, mRNA processing, inserting into E.coli for translation, and then lysing the E.coli (placing the e-coli in a centrifuge, the solution spins creating a pellet of e-coli cells at the bottom and a supernatant liquid containing the enzyme (look up Hershey Chase Experiment)). From there the protein can be purified and put to work on plastic waste!

    This second PETase enzyme has a 3D crystalline structure and an activation site which accepts PET plastic polymers. What is so cool about this enzyme is that it breaks plastic polymers into basic building blocks not microplastic. This means any type of plastic can be synthesized from the products of this reaction. Industry can now produce PETase and recycle plastic in this new way. The new PETase breaks down plastic twice as fast as the first and a cocktail of both the first and second can degrade plastic 6x as fast.

There is an excellent 60 minutes report on Climate change by Scott Pelley which recently made its debut about forest fires and other environmental issues. I am always confused when interviewees are asked about their beliefs in climate change. In 2020 this type of question is non-productive to conversations about climate solutions; how do you feel about the science still being questioned at this time? Should 60 minutes discuss the idea of climate denyl on their shows?

Thank you so much for reading