Considering Environmental Topics Impacting Us Daily
I split these topics out from my other groupings of things found in my In-Box. I thought I would give it its own post as it considers environmental topics to include poverty, housing, nature, recycling, and business. All of which have an impact on the world we live in today. What is there is how people are thinking today and the results of their actions. I think I got it right. Maybe you think differently?
Housing and Environment
DIY ‘AirCrete’ Dome Homes Are Affordable, Resilient, and Eco-Friendly, (treehugger.com), Derek Markham. Beyond its affordability, this superstar material is easy to work with and drying in just one night. It is flexible enough to be shaped into almost any form.
Are Adobe Houses Sustainable? treehugger.com, Maria Marabito. These simple, earthen structures produce impressive environmental benefits.
What Is a Geodesic Dome Home? History and Architectural Features, treehugger.com, Lisa Jo Rudy. While efficient and beautiful, these homes can be tricky to build and maintain.
Unprecedented 21st century heat across the Pacific Northwest of North America, npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, nature.com, Authors. Extreme summer temperatures are increasingly common across the Northern Hemisphere and inflict severe socioeconomic and biological consequences. In summer 2021, the Pacific Northwest region of North America (PNW) experienced a 2-week-long extreme heatwave,
Nature
Earth Month Challenge: 30 Easy Actions for Every Day of April, treehugger.com, Treehugger Editors. Celebrate our beautiful home planet with a small act for every day of the month.
What Trees Can Do for You, (treehugger.com, Dan Lambe. Trees naturally call for attention as they climb toward the sky with outstretching arms. Yet, it’s still easy for us to ignore them.
Monarch Butterflies Will Go Extinct if We Don’t Take Action Now, (treehugger.com), Melissa Breyer. Monarch butterflies perform one of the most mind-bending feats in the animal kingdom. Weighing just half a gram, they fly on wafer-thin wings through cities and across interstates, migrating up to 2,800 miles from Canada and the United States to their wintering grounds in the forests of Mexico.
Want to help wildlife? Turn off your lights, nationalgeographic.com, Sarah Gibbens. The day to night cycle is an essential part of nature, telling animals when to emerge to hunt, forage, migrate, and mate. When artificial light disrupts those natural light cues, wildlife from bugs to birds, and even plants, are seriously impacted.
Here is What’s Happening to US Honey Bees, treehugger.com, Meissa Breyer. Back in the winter of 2006, beekeepers in the United States began reporting startling losses of up to 90% of their hives.
Business
What if your bank fails? Here’s how to get your money out, consumeraffairs.com, Mark Huffman. Deposits of up to $250,000 are insured by FDIC so depositors with less than that amount in the bank will be made whole.
6 Best Meal Delivery for Seniors, ConsumerAffairs, Amelia York. For seniors and those with mobility issues, meal delivery services aren’t just a matter of convenience.
There’s very little blue sky in the latest consumer complaints about airlines, consumeraffairs.com, Gary Guthrie. The latest DOT Air Travel Consumer Report has been released and complaints are four times greater than they were in pre-COVID 2019. And, get this – that volume came at a time when fewer people were flying, too.
How the Jones Act Ruins Your Commute, The Atlantic, Scott Lincicome. David Zetland. The Jones Act, formally known as Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, was ostensibly intended to ensure adequate domestic shipbuilding capacity and a ready supply of merchant mariners and ships in times of war or other national emergencies.
The FDA proposes to give food producers the OK to use salt substitutes on more than 160 products, consumeraffairs.com, Gary Guthrie. Salt lovers might not like this news, but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to give food producers the permission to use salt substitutes instead of the real thing.
FDA makes sales of opioid overdose treatment drug over-the-counter, consumeraffairs.com, Mark Huffman. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted over-the-counter (OTC) sales status to Narcan, a move that health experts say could save lives.
Second lab-grown chicken product cleared for human consumption by U.S. regulator, Reuters, Leah Douglas. California-based cultivated meat company GOOD Meat has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to bring its lab-grown chicken to market, according to agency documents released on Tuesday.
Recyling
As Millions of Solar Panels Age Out, Recyclers Hope to Cash In, Yale E360, Jon Hurdle. David Zetland. Solar panels have a lifespan of 25 to 30 years, but they contain valuable metals, including silver and copper. With a surge of expired panels expected soon, companies are emerging that seek to recycle the reusable materials and keep the panels out of landfills.
Your ‘Recycled’ Grocery Bag Might Not Have Been Recycled, undark.org, Ian Morse. David Zetland. Recent laws encourage recycling old plastic into new products. But verifying recycled content relies on tricky math.
Try Swedish Dishcloths and Say ‘Goodbye’ to Paper Towels Forever, treehugger.com, Treehugger Editors. A single Swedish dishcloth can replace 17 rolls of paper towels—and they work even better.
Poverty and Wealth
The One Cause of Poverty That’s Never Considered, The Atlantic, Eyal Press, David Zetland. But what if the focus on the disadvantaged is misplaced? What if the persistence of poverty has less to do with the misfortunes of the needy than with the advantages the affluent presume they are entitled to? In Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at Princeton, argues that we need to examine the behavior and priorities not of the poor but of “those of us living lives of privilege and plenty.”
Elderly Poverty Statistics (2023): Senior Poverty Rate, ConsumerAffairs, Kathryn Parkman. More than 15 million older adults are economically insecure. About 50% of seniors rely on Social Security for the majority of their income. Over the next 10 years, the number of elderly Americans without homes could triple.
The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin
NY Times – April 9
Texas was gasping for electricity. Winter Storm Uri had knocked out power plants across the state, leaving tens of thousands of homes in icy darkness. By the end of Feb. 14, 2021, nearly 40 people had died, some from the freezing cold.
Meanwhile, in the husk of a onetime aluminum smelting plant an hour outside of Austin, row upon row of computers were using enough electricity to power about 6,500 homes as they raced to earn Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
The computers were performing trillions of calculations per second, hunting for an elusive combination of numbers that Bitcoin’s algorithm would accept. About every 10 minutes, a computer somewhere guesses correctly and wins a small number of Bitcoins worth, in recent weeks, about $170,000. Anyone can try, but to make a business of it can require as much electricity as a small city.
In Texas, the computers kept running until just after midnight. Then the state’s power grid operator ordered them shut off, under an agreement that allowed it to do so if the system was about to fail. In return, it began paying the Bitcoin company, Bitdeer, an average of $175,000 an hour to keep the computers offline. Over the next four days, Bitdeer would make more than $18 million for not operating, from fees ultimately paid by Texans who had endured the storm.
The New York Times has identified 34 such large-scale operations, known as Bitcoin mines, in the United States, all putting immense pressure on the power grid and most finding novel ways to profit from doing so. Their operations can create costs — including higher electricity bills and enormous carbon pollution — for everyone around them, most of whom have nothing to do with Bitcoin. …
Bitcoin mines cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price.
Bitcoin mines Bitcoin mines cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price.cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price.
It is as if another New York City’s worth of residences were now drawing on the nation’s power supply, The Times found.
In some areas, this has led prices to surge. In Texas, where 10 of the 34 mines are connected to the state’s grid, the increased demand has caused electric bills for power customers to rise nearly 5 percent, or $1.8 billion per year, according to a simulation performed for The Times by the energy research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
The additional power use across the country also causes as much carbon pollution as adding 3.5 million gas-powered cars to America’s roads, according to an analysis by WattTime, a nonprofit tech company. Many of the Bitcoin operations promote themselves as environmentally friendly and set up in areas rich with renewable energy, but their power needs are far too great to be satisfied by those sources alone. As a result, they have become a boon for the fossil fuel industry: WattTime found that coal and natural gas plants kick in to meet 85 percent of the demand these Bitcoin operations add to their grids.
Their massive energy consumption combined with their ability to shut off almost instantly allows some companies to save money and make money by deftly pulling the levers of U.S. power markets. They can avoid fees charged during peak demand, resell their electricity at a premium when prices spike and even be paid for offering to turn off. Other major energy users, like factories and hospitals, cannot reduce their power use as routinely or dramatically without severe consequences. …
Superyachts Are Climate Supervillains
NY Times – April 10
If you’re a billionaire with a palatial boat, there’s only one thing to do in mid-May: Chart your course for Istanbul and join your fellow elites for an Oscars-style ceremony honoring the builders, designers and owners of the world’s most luxurious vessels, many of them over 200 feet long.
The nominations for the World Superyacht Awards were all delivered in 2022, and the largest contenders are essentially floating sea mansions, complete with amenities like glass elevators, glass-sided pools, Turkish baths and all-teak decks. The 223-foot Nebula, owned by the WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, comes with an air-conditioned helicopter hangar.
I hate to be a wet blanket, but the ceremony in Istanbul is disgraceful. Owning or operating a superyacht is probably the most harmful thing an individual can do to the climate. If we’re serious about avoiding climate chaos, we need to tax, or at the very least shame, these resource-hoarding behemoths out of existence. In fact, taking on the carbon aristocracy, and their most emissions-intensive modes of travel and leisure, may be the best chance we have to boost our collective “climate morale” and increase our appetite for personal sacrifice — from individual behavior changes to sweeping policy mandates.
On an individual basis, the superrich pollute far more than the rest of us, and travel is one of the biggest parts of that footprint. Take, for instance, Rising Sun, the 454-foot, 82-room megaship owned by the DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen. According to a 2021 analysis in the journal Sustainability, the diesel fuel powering Mr. Geffen’s boating habit spews an estimated 16,320 tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent gases into the atmosphere annually, almost 800 times what the average American generates in a year. …
And that’s just a single ship. Worldwide, more than 5,500 private vessels clock in about 100 feet or longer, the size at which a yacht becomes a superyacht. This fleet pollutes as much as entire nations: The 300 biggest boats alone emit 315,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year, based on their likely usage — about as much as Burundi’s more than 10 million inhabitants.
Then there are the private jets, which make up a much higher overall contribution to climate change. Private aviation added 37 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 2016, which rivals the annual emissions of Hong Kong or Ireland. (Private plane use has surged since then, so today’s number is likely higher.)
You’re probably thinking: But isn’t that a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of coal plants around the world spewing carbon? It’s a common sentiment; last year, Christophe Béchu, France’s minister of the environment, dismissed calls to regulate yachts and chartered flights as “le buzz” — flashy, populist solutions that get people amped up but ultimately only fiddle at the margins of climate change.
But this misses a much more important point. Research in economics and psychology suggests humans are willing to behave altruistically — but only when they believe everyone is being asked to contribute. People “stop cooperating when they see that some are not doing their part,” as the cognitive scientists Nicolas Baumard and Coralie Chevallier wrote last year in Le Monde.
In that sense, superpolluting yachts and jets don’t just worsen climate change, they lessen the chance that we will work together to fix it. Why bother, when the luxury goods mogul Bernard Arnault is cruising around on the Symphony, a $150 million, 333-foot superyacht? …
On a recent Caribbean cruise, our ship was visiting St Thomas, and moored next to two megayachts, one owned by a Walton heiress, the other by Boston auto magnate Herb Chambers. Much gawking from our fellow passengers. They were beautiful boats, but so was ours, and bigger. It turns out, not surprisingly, that such cruise ships are every bit as environmentally harmful as megayachts, actually more so of course. Mrs Fred and I have sworn off future cruising. But we will still be flying cross country to visit our west-coast kids, alas.
No where is the Poverty Never Confronted more evident than the restaurant (and now uber) industries, where waitstaff (and delivery drivers) work for three dollars an hour and tips. Leasing tables, with the waitstaff often ending the day owing the restaurant for the privilege. Along with everything else, it seems as the rich get richer the tipping gets poorer.
OTOH ~ My son tells me Taco Bell in Duluth is offering $21/hr to start …
To expand on that a bit ~ we saw this in the death spiral of the Pacific Northwest timber industry. Long been tradition timber-faller “busheled” it, were paid by the (estimated) board-footage they cut, in the end we saw attempts to pay the rigging by how much board-footage they moved. Of course it all started in the mid-seventies with the crushing of the unions and contracting out the woods work to ‘independent contractors’ ~ gypos. The first to go were the union loggers (your’s truly by but a year or so).
I busheled it fallin’ timber and busheled it rigging for helicopters, made good money at it, but none of that lasted into the 21st century …