California to Polluters: Go Green or Pay Up Los Angeles Ben Amstutz "Cap and trade" may be a dirty expression inside the DC Beltway, but as of today in California it's the law of the land. Gov. Jerry Brown has brushed aside dire warnings from the fossil fuel industry to forge ahead with the state's first-ever auction of emissions permits under its groundbreaking climate law, AB 32. This morning's auction marks the official launch of the world's second-largest carbon market. At heart, the concept is elegantly simple. Cap and trade is the same: In this case the state of California sets an upper limit on the number of tons of carbon dioxide that can be emitted. AB 32 "is the strongest and boldest move yet in the US to combat climate change." The system created by AB 32 is not the nation's first—that honor goes to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) enacted in 2008 by 10 Northeastern states. Of course, much can go wrong with cap and trade. California has learned from those setbacks.
Hurricane Sandy vs. Katrina Infographic Examines Destruction From Both Storms Over 100 people have died in the U.S. alone so far from Hurricane Sandy, and concerns are mounting that with hundreds of thousands still without power in frigid temperatures, the death toll will continue to climb. As the East Coast examines the destruction, comparisons have been made to other catastrophic storms. Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005, killed over 1,800 people and cost nearly $125 billion. Both storms were deadly, destructive and devastating to the thousands who lost their homes and livelihoods. View the infographic below to see how they compare by the numbers. Infographic by Tim Wallace and Jaweed Kaleem. Editor’s note: This infographic has been updated to to reflect new and more comprehensive data on the number of people displaced or who will potentially be displaced by Hurricane Sandy-related damage, including people in shelters and people who are not in shelters but have had to leave their homes.
First Vertical Farm Opens in Singapore Vegetables grown in multi-level troughs at Sky Greens farm. Photo: Olivia Siong/Channel NewsAsia The first commercial-scale vertical farm has opened in the tiny, densely populated city of Singapore, with the aim of decreasing dependence on food imports. Singapore, which lies at the end of the Malay Peninsula, is just 274 square miles, almost all of which is city. [partner id="wireduk"]The vertical farm, which has been developed by Sky Green Farms, consists of 120 aluminum towers, each extending up almost 30 feet in height. That hasn’t stopped them becoming enormously popular with local consumers, and they’re frequently out of stock. “We are always looking at ways to increase our sources of food supply and if we can produce some in Singapore, then that can go some way to meet local demand,” Lee Yi Shyan, Senior Minister of State for National Development and Trade and Industry, told Channel News Asia.
Arctic environment during an ancient bout of natural global warming Scientists are unravelling the environmental changes that took place around the Arctic during an exceptional episode of ancient global warming. Newly published results from a high-resolution study of sediments collected on Spitsbergen represent a significant contribution to this endeavour. The study was led by Dr Ian Harding and Prof John Marshall of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES), based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. Around 56 million years ago there was a period of global warming called the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), during which global sea surface temperatures increased by approximately 5°C. The warming of the oceans led to profound ecological changes, including the widespread extinction of many types of foraminifera, tiny single-celled organisms with distinctive shells. To help fill this knowledge gap, Dr Harding’s team turned to a site (~78 °N) on Spitsbergen in the high Arctic.
Wik-Bee Leaks: EPA Document Shows It Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Honey Bees The world honey bee population has plunged in recent years, worrying beekeepers and farmers who know how critical bee pollination is for many crops. A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined--electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists. The document, which was leaked to a Colorado beekeeper, shows that the EPA has ignored warnings about the use of clothianidin, a pesticide produced by Bayer that mainly is used to pre-treat corn seeds. The leaked document (PDF) was put out in response to Bayer's request to approve use of the pesticide on cotton and mustard. Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). The entire 101-page memo is damning (and worth a read). Related:
IBM Researchers Develop Highly Recyclable, Biodegradable Plastic A mind-boggling 13 billion plastic bottles are tossed in the trash or recycled each year. And while most plastics are recyclable, the resulting materials are limited to "second generation reuse" only--so anything made out of recycled plastics has to be thrown on the landfill pile at the end of it's life. But now researchers from IBM and Stanford say they have solved the problem by developing plastics that can be continuously recycled. The discovery, published in the American Chemical Society journal Macromolecules, involves the use of organic catalysts instead of the metal oxide and metal hydroxide catalysts typically used in plastic-forming polymers. While metal catalysts degrade the polymers so that the plastic becomes increasingly unrecyclable over time, the organic catalysts stay strong. Another advantage: the organic catalysts are cheap.
Masdar City: World's most Sustainable City An artist's rendering of Masdar City Smack dab in the middle of the desert is the location of one of the world’s greenest cities. Masdar City is located in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The city is actually still in the early stages of being developed, but several buildings are fully operational, including the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology Masdar City addresses every sustainability issue you could ever think of: Transportation will be via electric vehiclesRenewable energy powers the entire cityGreenhouse gas emissions are virtually non-existentWaste will be diverted from landfills and recycled or compostedAnd on, and on… Masdar City’s Waste Management Plan Since the focus of Trash Talk is waste/trash/garbage, that’s the part of the city’s master plan we were most intrigued by. The City of the Future? Is Masdar City the city of the future? My best guess is that Masdar City succeeds in developing the most sustainable city in the world.
It's not just oil spills: Our oceans are under more stress than they can handle I saw on the news today that a new tropical storm is forming in the Gulf of Mexico. When you’re from New Orleans, that always grabs your attention. It looks like the Crescent City will be spared – models show the storm more likely drifting east toward Florida — but on the other hand it seems certain that one of these days another hurricane will bear down on Louisiana. And when it does, there’s a good chance it will be every bit as powerful as Katrina, maybe stronger. That’s because the water temperatures in the Gulf region — the key factor for determining how deadly a tropical storm becomes — have generally risen in recent years. And the likely cause is global warming. Coincidentally, there’s a new report on Al Jazeera — which, odd as it sounds, is doing some of the best environmental reporting in North America right now. A drumbeat of recent scientific studies emphases an increasingly alarming convergence of crises for Earth’s oceans. I want to add a couple of thoughts.
-- Press Releases August 2008 - Cutting Fossil Fuel Subsidies Can Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions Says UN Environment Report Cutting Fossil Fuel Subsidies Can Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions Says UN Environment Report Meanwhile New Assessment of Clean Development Mechanism Shows Climate-Friendly Energy Projects Achieving Lift-Off in Sub Sahara Africa Accra/Nairobi, 26 August 2008 - Scrapping fossil fuel subsidies could play an important role in cutting greenhouse gases while giving a small but not insignificant boost to the global economy a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says. The report challenges the widely held view that such subsidies assist the poor arguing that many of these price support systems benefit the wealthier sections of society rather than those on low incomes. They are also diverting national funds from more creative forms of pro-poor polices and initiatives that are likely to have a far greater impact on the lives and livelihoods of the worse-off sectors of society. Globally around $300 billion or 0.7 per cent of global GDP is being spent on energy subsidies annually.
Can 1 miracle plant solve the world's 3 greatest problems? If someone were to tell you that they had a technology — a weed actually — that could sequester huge amounts of carbon permanently while lifting villagers out of poverty by providing both protein-rich food and super-insulated building materials, you might start to wonder if they were, well, smoking a different weed. But it appears that one retired building contractor, Bill Loftus, has actually come upon a brilliant application of the fast-growing, carbon-sucking plant known as Kenaf. Kenaf is in the Hibiscus family and is thus related to both cotton and okra. But researchers have also discovered (PDF) a corresponding ability of Kenaf to inhale huge quantities of our most abundant global warming gas — CO2. It turns out that Kenaf can absorb 3-8 times more CO2 than a tree. But its not enough to simply absorb CO2.
Increased tropical forest growth could release carbon from the soil A new study shows that as climate change enhances tree growth in tropical forests, the resulting increase in litterfall could stimulate soil micro-organisms, leading to a release of stored soil carbon. The research was led by scientists from the University of Cambridge and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. The findings were published online this week in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change. The researchers used results from a six-year experiment in a rainforest at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, Central America, to study how increases in litterfall - dead plant material such as leaves, bark and twigs which fall to the ground - might affect carbon storage in the soil. Their results show that extra litterfall triggers an effect called ‘priming’ where fresh carbon from plant litter provides much-needed energy to micro-organisms, which then stimulates the decomposition of carbon stored in the soil.