illustration: javier jaén/getty images
The Economist shares this news:
Carbon emissions are dropping—fast—in Europe
Thanks to a price mechanism that actually works
“Our most pressing challenge is keeping our planet healthy,” declared Ursula von der Leyen on the day she was elected president of the European Commission in July 2019. Continue reading
A JBS facility in Tucuma, Brazil. JONNE RORIZ / BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Reducing meat in our diet was easier living in India, and we committed specifically to cutting beef consumption. This effort has been assisted by awareness of this issue. Thanks to Yale e360 for bringing the work of this team to our attention:
Marcel Gomes (center) with colleagues at Repórter Brasil’s offices in São Paulo. GOLDMAN ENVIRONMENTAL PRIZE
Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
Journalist Marcel Gomes has traced beef in supermarkets and fast food restaurants in the U.S. and Europe to Brazilian ranches on illegally cleared land. In an e360 interview, he talks about the challenges of documenting the supply chains and getting companies to clean them up.
Investigative journalism can be a very deep dive. By the end of his probe into the supply chain of JBS, the world’s largest meat processing and packing company, Marcel Gomes reckons he and his team at the São Paulo-based nonprofit Repórter Brasil knew more about the origins of the beef it supplies from the Amazon to the world’s hamburger chains and supermarkets than the company itself. Continue reading
In our extended family there are several cases of diabetes that have made me interested in sugar and its alternatives. Stevia came to my attention while working in Paraguay, when honey was my primary interest, because stevia is native to that place. Stevia is a taste of place product as much as any other we have come to share in our current work.
But neither stevia nor have any other so-called sugar alternatives have featured in our work. Still, this article by Yasmin Tayag in The Atlantic fits perfectly as a theme in our pages:
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic
A New Sweetener Has Joined the Ranks of Aspartame and Stevia
Unfortunately, it’s still nothing like real sugar.
A few months ago, my doctor uttered a phrase I’d long dreaded: Your blood sugar is too high. With my family history of diabetes, and occasional powerful cravings for chocolate, I knew this was coming and what it would mean: To satisfy my sweet fix, I’d have to turn to sugar substitutes. Ughhhh. Continue reading
Heat pumps are energy efficient and considered by many to be powerful tools in combating climate change. Jackie Molloy for The New York Times
The technology is still young, and raising questions, but also full of promise according to this article by Hilary Howard in the New York Times:
Why Heat Pumps Are the Future, and How Your Home Could Use One
The highly efficient devices are the darlings of the environmental movement. Here’s why.
Heat pumps, which both warm and cool buildings and are powered by electricity, have been touted as the answer to curbing greenhouse gas emissions produced by homes, businesses and office buildings, which are responsible for about one-third of the emissions in New York State. Continue reading
People wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP)
Seven years and many bus stories among us recall the old buses. Noisy, smoke-belching, hot and crowded. Time to retire the old ones and at least lessen the noise and belching. Thanks to Sarah Spengeman and Yale Climate Connections:
India makes a big bet on electric buses
Fast-growing cities need electric buses if the country is to meet its climate goals.
Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that arrives earlier to wait for a smoother, cooler ride in a new model. This has fed a new problem: overcrowding. Fortunately, more new buses are on the way. Continue reading
Thanks to Yale Climate Connections for this primer:
Does recycling actually do anything? What about carbon offsets? Did you know that the average person’s carbon footprint is about 6.5 tons but the average American’s footprint is double that? Meteorologist Alexandra Steele talks to the experts to get answers about what actually helps the planet, and what doesn’t. You can calculate you carbon footprint by using the links below:
https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/calc…
https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-invo…
Credits Script, research, interviews, camera: Alexandra Steele Script Editors: Sara Peach, Pearl Marvell Edit Producers: Iain Moss, Sam Lucas Production support: Anthony Leiserowitz, Lisa Fernandez Production Editor: Iain Moss Graphics: Screen Stories Production Manager: Ellie Aitken Social Media Manager: Ellie Phillips Director of Production: Hal Arnold Production Company: Little Dot Studios
Recycled polypropylene pellets at a PureCycle Technologies plant in Ironton, Ohio. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
Big companies have not earned our trust, especially when it comes to plastics. So, our thanks to Hiroko Tabuchi for the tough questions in this New York Times article:
There’s an Explosion of Plastic Waste. Big Companies Say ‘We’ve Got This.’
By 2025, Nestle promises not to use any plastic in its products that isn’t recyclable. By that same year, L’Oreal says all of its packaging will be “refillable, reusable, recyclable or compostable.”
And by 2030, Procter & Gamble pledges that it will halve its use of virgin plastic resin made from petroleum.
To get there, these companies and others are promoting a new generation of recycling plants, called “advanced” or “chemical” recycling, that promise to recycle many more products than can be recycled today.
Crushed plastic waste at the PureCyle plant. Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and L’Oréal have expressed confidence in the company despite its early setbacks. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
So far, advanced recycling is struggling to deliver on its promise. Nevertheless, the new technology is being hailed by the plastics industry as a solution to an exploding global waste problem.
The traditional approach to recycling is to simply grind up and melt plastic waste. The new, advanced-recycling operators say they can break down the plastic much further, into more basic molecular building blocks, and transform it into new plastic.
PureCycle Technologies, a company that features prominently in Nestlé, L’Oréal, and Procter & Gamble’s plastics commitments, runs one such facility, a $500 million plant in Ironton, Ohio. Continue reading
Photographs by Maggie Shannon
It has been our belief since starting that getting outdoors is a very good preventative medicine, but maybe that was too simple a focus. Phones have disrupted life, especially for our young ones, more than we appreciated. Our thanks to Jonathan Haidt and The Atlantic for this (podcast discussion of the research here):
The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development.
Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. Continue reading
Like many Italian aging researchers, Dr. Longo thinks Italy doesn’t invest enough in research. “Italy’s got such incredible history and a wealth of information about aging,” he said. “But spends virtually nothing.” Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times
Faux fasting is new to us, but thinking about diet is not. Our thanks to Jason Horowitz for another story from Italy:
To Live Past 100, Mangia a Lot Less: Italian Expert’s Ideas on Aging
Valter Longo, who wants to live to a healthy 120 or 130, sees the key to longevity in diet — legumes and fish — and faux fasting.
Most members of the band subscribed to a live-fast-die-young lifestyle. But as they partook in the drinking and drugging endemic to the 1990s grunge scene after shows at the Whisky a Go Go, Roxy and other West Coast clubs, the band’s guitarist, Valter Longo, a nutrition-obsessed Italian Ph.D. student, wrestled with a lifelong addiction to longevity. Continue reading
Another reason to subscribe to Bill McKibben’s newsletter:
How Not to Act in an Emergency
Forget AI–we need some human intelligence
We’re getting right to the nub now.
Yesterday the World Meteorological Organization officially certified 2023 as the hottest year in human history. Just to put on the record here what should have been the lead story in every journal and website on our home planet:
Andrea Celeste Saulo, secretary general of the WMO, said the organisation was now “sounding the red alert to the world”.
The report found temperatures near the surface of the earth were 1.45C higher last year than they were in the late 1800s, when people began to destroy nature at an industrial scale and burn large amounts of coal, oil and gas.
Last year’s spike was so scary that NASA’s Gavin Schmidt—Jim Hansen’s heir as keeper of NASA’s climate record—wrote in Nature this week that it raised the most profound possible implications. Please read his words slowly and carefully: Continue reading
The drilling rig at ExxonMobil’s first lithium well, in southwest Arkansas. EXXONMOBIL
Thank you, Fred Pearce. It is not easy to trust ExxonMobil or any other petroleum company to do the right thing, but this sounds better than most of what we hear about their common practices:
In Rush for Lithium, Miners Turn to the Oil Fields of Arkansas
The Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas was once a major oil producer. Now, companies hope to extract lithium — a key metal for electric vehicle batteries — from its underground brines using technologies they say could reduce mining’s carbon emissions and water use.
The town of Smackover, Arkansas, was founded a hundred years ago when a sawmill operator got lucky: his wildcat oil well yielded a gusher. Continue reading
Inside the Guian Data Center of China Unicom, which uses artificial intelligence in its operations. TAO LIANG / XINHUA VIA GETTY IMAGES
For all of technology’s contributions to conservation, energy consumption is one of the downsides. Thanks to David Berreby and Yale e360 for this:
As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires
Generative artificial intelligence uses massive amounts of energy for computation and data storage and billions of gallons of water to cool the equipment at data centers. Now, legislators and regulators — in the U.S. and the EU — are starting to demand accountability.
Two months after its release in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT had 100 million active users, and suddenly tech corporations were racing to offer the public more “generative A.I.” Pundits compared the new technology’s impact to the Internet, or electrification, or the Industrial Revolution — or the discovery of fire.
Time will sort hype from reality, but one consequence of the explosion of artificial intelligence is clear: this technology’s environmental footprint is large and growing. Continue reading
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Courtesy of KitchenAid.
Sharing this article is not with the intent to promote KitchenAid, per se. But okay if it does. More to appreciate The Atlantic for bringing your attention to a practice that is in short supply. Some companies do not build for obsolescence. Thanks to Anna Kramer for this:
Modern appliances are rarely built to last. They could learn something from the KitchenAid stand mixer.
My KitchenAid stand mixer is older than I am. My dad bought the white-enameled machine 35 years ago, during a brief first marriage. The bits of batter crusted into its cracks could be from the pasta I made yesterday or from the bread he made then. Continue reading
Brian Otieno
This guest opinion, written by Professor Robert Williams of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona, and published in the New York Times, should make you think twice about the safari that might be on your bucket list:
Kicking Native People Off Their Land Is a Horrible Way to Save the Planet
Over 600,000 tourists travel to Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area each year, and many will catch a glimpse of the Great Migration: the famed trek of more than one million wildebeests and thousands of zebras, gazelles and other animals crossing over the Mara River into Kenya and back again. Continue reading
A press release for this report above summarizes the findings:
Carbon Clean 200 Companies Outperform Dirty Energy by 39%
The 11th cohort of global Clean200 leaves dirty energy investments in the dust
As You Sow and Corporate Knights today released their 11th update of the Carbon Clean200™, a list of 200 publicly traded companies worldwide leading the way among global peers to a clean energy present and future. These companies generated almost double the returns of the main fossil fuel index from July 1, 2016, to January 15, 2024, despite geopolitical tensions that have favored fossil fuel stocks in the past two years. Continue reading
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
Considering the coffee habits, and commercial interests of those of us contributing on this platform, we thank Yasmin Tayag, at The Atlantic for this:
Caffeine’s Dirty Little Secret
“How much is too much?” is an impossible question.
On Tuesday, curiosity finally got the best of me. How potent could Panera’s Charged Lemonades really be? Within minutes of my first sip of the hyper-caffeinated drink in its strawberry-lemon-mint flavor, I understood why memes have likened it to an illicit drug. My vision sharpened; sweat slicked my palms. Continue reading
Charles Duhigg at home. PHOTOGRAPH OF CHARLES DUHIGG BY GLENN MATSUMURA
The themes in Charles Duhigg’s work are ones we aim to pay more attention to this year. So, thanks to Jonathan Shaw at Harvard Magazine for this:
Charles Duhigg unpacks how business and finance—and you—really work.
IN THE HISTORY OF stock market rallies and economic recessions, much defies quantitative explanation. Whether looking back on the tulip mania that gripped the Netherlands in the 1630s, or to the present obsession with bitcoin, the decisive role of human behavior fascinates journalist and author Charles Duhigg. Continue reading
The Royal Caribbean Icon of the Seas cruise ship docked in Miami on Jan. 11. Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg
The “floating hotel” that many people consider the best way to vacation–cruise ships—are not the best environmentally.
We knew that. Now we know this in addition, thanks to Kendra Pierre-Louis at Bloomberg:
The World’s Largest Cruise Ship Is a Climate Liability
Water slides at the Thrill Island waterpark onboard the Icon of the Seas.Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg
As massive ships like Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas tack on more energy-intensive amenities, emissions from the cruise industry are climbing.
When Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas embarks on its first official voyage on Jan. 27, the journey is sure to make waves. The world’s largest cruise ship, the Icon is over 1,000 feet long (360 meters) and weighs in around 250,000 gross registered tons. It boasts 20 different decks; 40 restaurants, bars and lounges; seven pools; six waterslides and a 55-foot waterfall. Royal Caribbean says its boat will usher in “a new era of vacations.” Continue reading
Costco is being urged to cut ties with Citi, the bank that acts as its credit card issuer.
We knew about dirty banking, and now this story from Bill McKibben’s newsletter got us reading about change activism in Progressive Grocer:
Costco Becomes Target of Climate Action Petition
Wholesaler’s credit card issuer Citi is said to have a poor climate record
Costco Wholesale CEO Ron Vachris will receive a petition signed by 40,000 of its shoppers, shareholders and many climate activists on Jan. 17 urging the retailer to drop Citi as its credit card issuer due to the bank’s problematic climate record. Continue reading
Chart: Matthew SparkesSource: Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance Created with Datawrapper
We already knew it was dirty. But it keeps getting dirtier and the guys who cheerlead unfettered “innovation” come across as celebrating the dirty as the unavoidable cost of progress. Something’s gotta give:
Skull of Satoshi, a sculpture by Benjamin Von Wong highlighting the environmental impact of bitcoin. VonWong/Skull Of Satoshi/Greenpeace blog.vonwong.com/skull/
Should nations try to ban bitcoin because of its environmental impact?
Bitcoin miners seem unwilling to take action to curb the cryptocurrency’s energy and water use – so some campaigners argue that it is time for governments to intervene
The amount of electricity used to mine and trade bitcoin climbed to 121 terawatt-hours in 2023, 27 per cent more than the previous year. Continue reading
Organikos 