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Berkeley Became First US City to Ban Natural Gas

Photo-illustration: Pixabay

Berkeley this week became the first city in the United States to ban natural, fossil gas hook-ups in new buildings.

Photo-illustration: Pixabay

The landmark ordinance was passed into law on Tuesday, after being approved unanimously by the city council the previous week amid resounding public support.

Although Berkeley may be pushing the vanguard, the city is hardly alone. Governments across the US and Europe are looking at strategies to phase out gas.

Natural gas, it seems, has become the new climate crisis frontline.

Berkeley’s ordinance, which goes into effect on 1 January, will ban gas hook-ups in new multi-family construction, with some allowances for first-floor retail and certain types of large structures.

The reasons behind the decision are multifold. Energy use in buildings accounts for about 25% of greenhouse gas emissions in California. If the state is to meet its goal of 100% zero-carbon energy by 2045, the gas will have to go.

For decades, gas was considered among the preferred energy sources for buildings and embraced as a bridge from dirtier fossil fuels to a green energy future.

“There’s been a lingering perception that burning gas was cleaner than electricity, which might have been true 20 years ago when electricity came from burning coal,” said Pierre Delforge, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council . “When we look at electrification policies, we need to think about what the grid will look like in 10 or 20 years, not what it looked like yesterday.”

A state energy commission report released in early 2019 concluded that building electrification was “a key strategy” for reducing the state’s climate impacts, one that “offers the most promising path to achieving [greenhouse gas] reduction targets in the least costly manner”.

Roughly 3% of all natural gas extracted by industry is leaked into the atmosphere, where methane is a far more potent, if shorter lived, greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Berkeley was also motivated to reduce health and safety risks endemic to gas appliances, which release significant emissions and pollutants indoors.

And then there’s the matter of running large amounts of flammable fuel around a state known for large earthquakes. A Pacific Gas and Electric pipeline explosion in 2010 turned a Northern California neighborhood into a smoking crater.

“We really believe we have the underpinnings of good legislation with economic, health and safety and climate impacts,” said the Berkeley councilmember Kate Harrison. “We can do this and we’ll end up a lot healthier and cleaner for it.”

Read more: Guardian

Mangrove Conservation More Valuable Than Ever Thanks to Carbon Trading

Photo-illustration: Pixabay
Photo-illustration: Pixabay

When a proven ecosystem restoration method also helps reduce poverty and build economic resilience, governments will often back them as a win-win solution.

The UN Environment Programme, the Kenya Forest Service, the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute and partners recently launched the Vanga Blue Forests Project on the Kenyan coast, a groundbreaking initiative to trade carbon credits from mangrove conservation and restoration.

“The whole of this village and other nearby villages depend on fishing. And the mangrove forest is the actual breeding area for the fish,” says Vanga chief Kama Abdallah.

“If the mangroves are destroyed there would be hunger,” adds Vanga resident Mwasiti Salim.

In June 2019, the Vajiki Community Forest Association participatory forest management plan was launched in Vanga, as part of the project supported by UN Environment through the Global Environment Facility Blue Forests Project and the International Coral Reef Initiative/UN Environment coral reefs small grants programme.

According to the plan, mangroves in Kwale County will be co-managed by the Kenya Forest Service and the Community Forest Association. UN Environment helped develop the plan while the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute provided technical support to the community.

The management plan includes the sale of carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market, verified by the Plan Vivo carbon trading standard. It builds on the success of a similar project in Gazi, a community just a few kilometres north, which has been trading mangrove carbon credits on the Voluntary Carbon Market since 2012.

“Globally, this is one of the first projects that is trading carbon credits from mangrove conservation and restoration,” says UN Environment mangroves expert Gabriel Grimsditch.

“The project will conserve and restore over 4,000 hectares of mangroves in Kwale County and support the livelihoods of over 8,000 people in fishing communities in the area through community development initiatives,” he adds.

Lilian Mwihaki from the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute highlights the benefits of carbon trading: “From the sale of carbon credits they’re going to have funds that they can pump into the community. The Gazi community have been able to buy books for their schoolchildren. They’ve been able to buy some equipment for their hospital. They’ve been able to bring water to their community.”

The launch was a high-profile event, with attendance by Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for Environment Keriako Tobiko, Chief Conservator of Forests for Kenya Julius Mwaura, Chief Scientist of the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute James Kairo and Chairman of the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute John Safari Mumba.

Mangroves are rare, spectacular and prolific ecosystems on the boundary between land and sea. They support a rich biodiversity and provide a valuable nursery habitat for fish and crustaceans. Mangroves also act as a form of natural coastal defence against storm surges, tsunamis, rising sea levels and erosion. Their soils are highly effective carbon sinks, sequestering vast amounts of carbon.

Yet mangroves are disappearing three to five times faster than overall global forest losses, with serious ecological and socio-economic impacts. Current estimates indicate that mangrove coverage has been halved in the past 40 years.

“Estimates of the total mangrove area in the world vary but range from 12–20 million hectares. The Vanga project covers only a tiny percentage of this area, but its innovations are replicable and scalable—with local modifications—globally,” says Grimsditch.

The International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove on 26 July was adopted by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2015.

Source: UNEP

Germany Installs Cables over a Highway to Power Hybrid Trucks

Photo-illustration: Pixabay
Photo-illustration: Pixabay

A stretch of a prominent Germany highway just got a high-tech upgrade: overhead power lines — like the ones you only see over rail tracks — that can power hybrid trucks.

The German government announced that a 6-mile (10 km) stretch of the autobahn got the upgrade, a test that could pave the way for a new carbon neutral strategy to transport goods.

The system, developed by German conglomerate Siemens in 2012, allows hybrid trucks to charge their batteries while traveling at speeds of up to 56 mph (90 km/h).

Similar stretches of electric highways have been built in Sweden and the United States. Other solutions for charging electric vehicles while on-the-go include rails built into the asphalt.

Cutting emissions

Electrifying truck transportation could also save a tonne of fuel: 20,000 euros’ worth for every truck traveling 62,000 miles (100,000 km), according to Siemens’ website.

Source: WEF

June 2019 Was Hottest on Record for the Globe

Photo-illustration: Unsplash (Hans Reniers)

Mother Earth worked up a major sweat last month. Scorching temperatures made June 2019 the hottest June on record for the globe. And for the second month in a row, warmth brought Antarctic sea-ice coverage to a new low for June.

Photo-illustration: Unsplash (Hans Reniers)

Here’s a closer look into NOAA’s latest monthly global climate report:

Climate by the numbers

June 2019

The average global temperature in June was 1.71 degrees F above the 20th-century average of 59.9 degrees, making it the hottest June in the 140-year record, according scientists to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

Nine of the 10 hottest Junes have occurred since 2010. Last month also was the 43rd consecutive June and 414th consecutive month with above-average global temperatures.

Year to date I January through June

The period from January through June produced a global temperature 1.71 degrees F above the 20th-century average of 56.3 degrees, tying with 2017, as the second-hottest year to date on record.

It was the hottest first half of the year for: South America, parts of the southern portion of Africa, Madagascar, New Zealand, Alaska, western Canada, Mexico, eastern Asia, the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and the Bering Sea.

Source: NOAA

World Hunger Is Still Not Going Down and Obesity Is Still Growing

Photo-illustration: Pixabay

An estimated 820 million people did not have enough to eat in 2018, up from 811 million in the previous year, which is the third year of increase in a row. This underscores the immense challenge of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030, says a new edition of the annual The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report.

Photo-illustration: Pixabay

The pace of progress in halving the number of children who are stunted and in reducing the number of babies born with low birth weight is too slow, which also puts the SDG 2 nutrition targets further out of reach, according to the report.

At the same time, adding to these challenges, overweight and obesity continue to increase in all regions, particularly among school-age children and adults.

The chances of being food insecure are higher for women than men in every continent, with the largest gap in Latin America.

“Our actions to tackle these troubling trends will have to be bolder, not only in scale but also in terms of multisectoral collaboration,” the heads of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) urged in their joint foreword to the report.

Hunger is increasing in many countries where economic growth is lagging, particularly in middle-income countries and those that rely heavily on international primary commodity trade. The annual UN report also found that income inequality is rising in many of the countries where hunger is on the rise, making it even more difficult for the poor, vulnerable or marginalized to cope with economic slowdowns and downturns.

“We must foster pro-poor and inclusive structural transformation focusing on people and placing communities at the centre to reduce economic vulnerabilities and set ourselves on track to ending hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition,” the UN leaders said.

Slow Progress in Africa and Asia

The situation is most alarming in Africa, as the region has the highest rates of hunger in the world and which are continuing to slowly but steadily rise in almost all subregions. In Eastern Africa in particular, close to a third of the population (30.8 percent) is undernourished. In addition to climate and conflict, economic slowdowns and downturns are driving the rise. Since 2011, almost half the countries where rising hunger occurred due to economic slowdowns or stagnation were in Africa.

The largest number of undernourished people (more than 500 million) live in Asia, mostly in southern Asian countries. Together, Africa and Asia bear the greatest share of all forms of malnutrition, accounting for more than nine out of ten of all stunted children and over nine out of ten of all wasted children worldwide. In southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, one child in three is stunted.

In addition to the challenges of stunting and wasting, Asia and Africa are also home to nearly three-quarters of all overweight children worldwide, largely driven by consumption of unhealthy diets.

Going Beyond Hunger

This year’s report introduces a new indicator for measuring food insecurity at different levels of severity and monitoring progress towards SDG 2: the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. This indicator is based on data obtained directly from people in surveys about their access to food in the last 12 months, using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). People experiencing moderate food insecurity face uncertainties about their ability to obtain food and have had to reduce the quality and/or quantity of food they eat to get by.

The report estimates that over 2 billion people, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, do not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food. But irregular access is also a challenge for high-income countries, including 8 percent of the population in Northern America and Europe.

This calls for a profound transformation of food systems to provide sustainably-produced healthy diets for a growing world population.

Key facts and figures

-Number of hungry people in the world in 2018: 821.6 million (or 1 in 9 people)

  • in Asia: 513.9 million
  • in Africa: 256.1million
  • in Latin America and the Caribbean: 42.5 million

-Number of moderately or severely food insecure: 2 billion (26.4%)
-Babies born with low birth weight: 20.5 million (one in seven)
-Children under 5 affected by stunting (low height-for-age): 148.9 million (21.9%)
-Children under 5 affected by wasting (low weight-for-height): 49.5 million (7.3%)
-Children under 5 who are overweight (high weight-for-height): 40 million (5.9%)
-School-age children and adolescents who are overweight: 338 million
-Adults who are obese: 672 million (13% or 1 in 8 adults)

Source: FAO

Your Next Pair of Sneakers Could Be Made from Coffee

coffee
Photo-illustration: Unsplash (Noora Alhammadi)

Coffee is a big deal. While just a handful of countries dominate production, it’s consumed in vast amounts almost everywhere on the planet: around 2 billion cups are drunk every day.

coffee
Photo-illustration: Unsplash (Noora Alhammadi)

All that coffee produces a lot of waste. Coffee grounds often end up in landfill or being washed into sinks and drains, contributing to the food waste problem – around a third of all food produced is thrown away.

Now two entrepreneurs in Helsinki have started making sneakers from used coffee grounds.

Son Chu and Jesse Tran are self-confessed sneaker obsessives. But, concerned about their environmental impact, they couldn’t find sustainably made sneakers they found stylish and affordable. So they made some.

Their business, Rens, combines fabric made from coffee grounds with recycled plastic waste to create a material light and durable enough to use for footwear. A pair of their sneakers weighs 460g – 300g of that is coffee. The equivalent of six discarded plastic bottles is also used in each pair.

The sweet smell of innovation

One of the natural properties of coffee grounds is that they help eliminate odours – good news for anyone familiar with the smell of well-worn sneakers. And Rens says its shoes are vegan, too.

With customers in 57 countries, the firm is about to ramp up production after a successful fundraising campaign. Its coffee collection and shoe-making processes are currently handled in China, but it says it has ambitions to move manufacturing to its founders’ home country of Vietnam.

“We just wanted to make the best sneakers, something that was technically advanced and sustainable,” says Tran. “We both came to Finland to study. But it’s important to us that our manufacturing eventually moves to our home country – there’s a huge growth in manufacturing and investment in Vietnam and we want to be part of that.”

Oranges are the new black

Rens isn’t alone in using food byproducts and waste to create clothing.

The fashion industry is huge, with annual sales of $1.3 trillion. But it consumes a vast amount of resources and generates harmful pollution and emissions. It is responsible for around 20% of the world’s wastewater.

An increased interest in sustainability in fashion, though, has led to a range of alternative materials.

Hemp, pineapple leaves, banana trunks and sugar cane bark are being turned into packaging, fertilizer, biofuel and environmentally friendly fibre.

Clothing company Hugo Boss has a range of footwear made from Pinatex, derived from pineapple plant fibre. Fashion designer Stella McCartney is backing a leather alternative called Mylo that is made from mushrooms. Italian fashion label Salvatore Ferragamo has a range of clothes that use a material made from orange peel. And Swedish fashion retailer H&M uses algae in the soles of some its sandals.

According to the sustainable fashion industry body Common Objective, 57% of all discarded clothing ends up going to landfill, while “35% of all materials in the supply chain end up as waste before a garment or product reaches the consumer”.

A greater use of alternative materials could help reduce the fashion sector’s waste levels, as well as make use of leftovers from other industries.

Source: World Economic Forum

IEA Launches New Tool for Tracking Oil and Gas-Related Methane Emissions Worldwide

Photo-illutration: Pixabay

The International Energy Agency has launched a new online tool that tracks oil and gas-related sources of methane, a major and often overlooked greenhouse gas. The new “methane tracker” offers the most comprehensive global picture of methane emissions, covering eight industry areas across more than seventy countries.

Photo-illutration: Pixabay

This new and unique tool provides the IEA’s most up-to-date estimates of current oil and gas methane emissions, drawing on the best available data. It also sets out the reductions that are possible using existing technology and sheds light on this underexplored component of energy transitions. IEA analysis has highlighted that global methane emissions from the oil and gas sectors could be reduced by nearly half at no net cost.

The concentration of methane in the atmosphere is currently around two-and-half times greater than pre-industrial levels and increasing steadily. This rise has important implications for climate change as methane is a potent greenhouse gas. The energy sector is one of the largest sources of methane emissions originating from human activity.

IEA projections suggest that oil and, in particular, natural gas will play important roles in the energy system for years to come, even under strong decarbonisation scenarios aligned with international climate goals. Reinforcing efforts to minimise methane emissions along their supply chains is an essential complement to the reductions in CO2 that are led by increased efficiency and deployment of clean energy technologies.

“The oil and gas sectors have an open goal in front of them. They can avoid close to 50% of their methane emissions without hurting the bottom line. Doing so would have the same long-term climate benefits as immediately eliminating emissions from more than half the cars on the road worldwide,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s Executive Director.

Natural gas accounted for almost half the growth in global energy demand in 2018, and 70% of the increase came in two countries – the United States and China – where the rise in gas came at the expense of coal. This switch to gas has been a factor in preventing a faster rise in global CO2 emissions in recent years.

A new study on The Role of Gas in Today’s Energy Transitions, released by the IEA alongside the methane tracker, shows that an additional 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 could swiftly be abated by switching to gas using existing infrastructure, if prices and regulation are supportive. This would be enough to bring global CO2 emissions back down to where they were in 2013.

Taking both CO2 and methane emissions into account, coal-to-gas switching is currently able to reduce emissions on average by 50% when producing electricity and by 33% when providing heat. The level of deployment of carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies, for both coal and gas, is another crucial factor for future emissions from those two sectors.

Source: IEA

Supermarkets in Asia Are Now Using Banana Leaves Instead of Plastic Packaging

Foto: Facebook/perfecthomes
Foto: Facebook/perfecthomes

Supermarkets in Vietnam have adopted an initiative from Thailand that makes use of banana leaves instead of plastic as a packaging alternative.
Supermarket in Chiangmai, Thailand earned praise on Facebook for coming up with the eco-friendly packaging after a local firm featured it on their page last week.

The novel idea, which was an instant hit among citizens, soon caught the attention of Vietnamese supermarkets.

Big supermarket chains in Vietnam, such as Lotte Mart, Saigon Co.op, and Big C,have all started to follow in the Thai store’s footsteps by experimenting with banana leaves as a packaging alternative in their stores as well.

In an interview with VnExpress, a representative from the Lotte Mart chain shared that they are still in the testing phase but are planning to replace plastic with leaves nationwide very soon.

Aside from wrapping vegetables and fruits, the grocery chain intends to also use the leaves for fresh meat products.

Foto: Facebook/perfecthomes

“When I see vegetables wrapped in these beautiful banana leaves I’m more willing to buy in larger quantities,” a local customer named Hoa was quoted as saying. “I think this initiative will help locals be more aware of protecting the environment.”

According to VN Express, the use of the leaves as packaging is a welcome addition to the numerous other efforts establishments in Vietnam are experimenting with to reduce plastic waste.

Big C, for instance, already offers biodegradable bags made with corn powder in its stores.
With Vietnam ranking number four in the world for the most amount of plastic waste dumped into the ocean, such efforts are of the utmost importance.

A recent report highlighted the incredible amount of plastic waste generated by Vietnamese people, disposing of about 2,500 tons of plastic waste per day.
As a Vice report noted, banning or reducing single-use plastic bags in supermarkets is a growing trend in Asia.

Foto: Facebook/perfecthomes

Just recently, South Korea banned the use of disposable plastic bags, requiring supermarkets and other commercial establishments to provide recyclable containers to customers.

Singapore supermarkets have also been launching campaigns informing the public on the need to reduce plastic bag use. Meanwhile, Taiwanese shops have started charging for single-use plastic bags to discourage customers from using them.

Meanwhile, China has seen a 66% drop in plastic bag use in over a decade since banning the use of ultra-thin plastic bags in 2008.

Source: nextshark

France Will Hike Air Fares to Fight Climate Change

Photo: Pixabay
Photo: Pixabay

A new ‘eco tax’ will raise money for less polluting modes of transportation.

France announced on 9th July that it will introduce an ‘eco tax’ on all flights originating within the country. The amount will range from 1.5 euros (US$1.70) to 18 euros (US$20), depending on the ticket type and destination, and is hoped to raise over 180 million euros annually. This money would be used to develop less polluting modes of travel, such as trains.

There have been mixed reactions to the tax. Air France says it “strongly disapproves,” and predicts losses of up to $67 million per year, to which the transport minister said there would be “no disadvantages for French airline companies.” The Washington Post reported that, following the announcement, Air France’s stock price tumbled by three percent.

 

Environmental campaigners are cautiously supportive, as they understand that the airline industry cannot continue business as usual in the face of climate change. Andrew Murphy, an air travel expert for a Brussels-based group called Transport and Environment, told the Associated Press, “This alone won’t do much, but it’s at least a recognition by the French government that more is required.”

France’s tax is considerably less than the one implemented by Britain, where the lowest passenger tax is $16.20 and the highest $560. Sweden, Germany, and Italy have also implemented similar taxes. Meanwhile, the Netherlands is lobbying the European Union to introduce a continent-wide aviation tax that would prevent airlines from changing to routes to avoid taxes.

There appears to be more support for an airline tax than for President Emanuel Macron’s diesel fuel tax that sparked the violent ‘yellow vest’ protests across France last winter and caused millions of euros of damage. That tax was eventually abandoned.

But taxes do work, and most people understand that they play an important role. As the State Secretary for Finance Menno Snel told the Washington Post earlier this year,

“If you can choose between taxing the income of people or pollution and CO2, it makes more sense to try and find a tax base on the second than on the first.”

Raising the cost of flights is a smart strategy – not to the point that they become accessible only to the wealthy, but enough to discourage the long-weekend getaways that have become so common. If flights were 50 percent more expensive, for example, people would think twice before hopping on a plane for a single night and be more inclined to plan ahead and go for longer. Whether this price hike takes the form of an eco-tax or a frequent flier’s tax (anyone flying more than once per year) doesn’t really matter; the point is to force people to stop assuming they can and should fly anywhere, anytime.

Written by: 

Source: treehugger.com

Dietary Fibres from Nature

Foto: Pixabay
Foto: Pixabay

The use of antibiotics significantly improved the medical practice of the 20th century, and with the vaccination it contributed to almost completely eradicating certain diseases. Yet, their efficiency and availability led to overuse, which enabled bad bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics, while good bacteria were destroyed.

Therefore, it is very important to find out more about beneficial bacteria, which are crucial for our health, as well as how to protect those bacteria from antibiotics, and preserve them in natural way.

 

Gut Flora in Balance

Do you know that human guts are “habitats” of billions of living bacteria whose total weight can be even 1.3 to 2 kg?! It may sound terrifying, but many of them are needed and helpful. All the bacteria that live in our intestines can be divided into “good” – useful and “bad” – pathogenic. Useful ones make up 75 per cent of immunity and help us get important nutrients and energy from food, accelerate calcium absorption, and vitamin B12 synthesis, regulate blood sugar level, hormones, neurotransmitters… That’s why it’s

Foto: Mark Zamora – Unsplash

important to have them as much as possible.

 

Today it is not easy to achieve that, since the foods are abundant with additives and preservatives. Nutritionists say that after all, there is a solution: natural plant fibers – inulin, which help to bring the intestinal flora into balance and for the good bacteria to overpower the bad ones. Inulin comes from roots of the chicory plant and represents the reserve carbohydrate of the plant. It belongs to prebiotics – this means that it is food for probiotics. Only one bag of 5 grams of inulin multiplies the number of useful bacteria by several hundred billion.

 

The Guardian of the Overall Health

Inulin is simple. A bag of 5 grams is dissolved in a beverage, and can be added to ice cream and soup, sauces and other. Just mix and get a probiotic meal in a natural way.

ALLERGIES A higher concentration of useful bacteria drastically reduces the risk of allergy.

CANDIDA If we have a handful of good bacteria in the intestines that are also well-fed with inulin, they are able to fight the candida and prevent it from becoming the systemic illness.

IMMUNE SYSTEM BOOST Inulin in food stimulates the creation of T-cells important for the defense system. By feeding good bacteria, we strengthen the immunity of the digestive system, but also the whole organism.

PREVENTION OF THE OBSTIPATION By helping to develop normal intestinal flora, inulin makes it easier to digest. According to many studies, doses of 5 to 10 grams daily stimulate the growth of bifidobacteria and lactobacilli.

SUITABLE FOR DIABETICS In the digestive tract, inulin is converted into inulin-propionate, which leads to increased insulin secretion from the pancreas and contributes to the regulation of blood sugar. At the same time, it does not increase blood glucose levels.

REDUCES RISK CANCER A lower pH in the colon causes a lower risk of cancer because cancer-causing enzymes are inhibited. Bacteria produce butyrate, which is associated with suicide of cancerous cells and increased glutathione antioxidants in the intestines.

PREVENTS OSTEOPOROSIS Calcium is absorbed along with inulin and thus contents of minerals in bones is impoved and the density of the bone mass.

PROPERLY FUNCTIONING COLON Enables complete detoxification and prevents the reabsorption of harmful substances into the bloodstream.

REDUCES ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION Apart from inulin, serotonin syntesis is regulated, which is 80 per cent synthesized in the intestine. If there is a disorder in the microflora and colon functioning, serotonin synthesis is severely affected.

VITAMIN B12 SYNTHESIS This is very important for vegans, because if they do not eat foods of animal origin and do not have a good microflora, there is a deficit of vitamin B12. But if good bacteria are supplied with inulin, they themselves synthesize vitamin B12.

MEAL IN A SACHET

Inulin is simple. A bag of 5 grams is dissolved in a beverage, and can be added to ice cream and soup, sauces and other. Just mix and get a probiotic meal in a natural way.

 

Contact

Fornatura d.o.o.

office@fornatura. rs 

www.fornatura.rs

Breaching a “Carbon Threshold” Could Lead to Mass Extinction

Carbon dioxide emissions may trigger a reflex in the carbon cycle, with devastating consequences, study finds.

In the brain, when neurons fire off electrical signals to their neighbors, this happens through an “all-or-none” response. The signal only happens once conditions in the cell breach a certain threshold.

Now an MIT researcher has observed a similar phenomenon in a completely different system: Earth’s carbon cycle.

Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics and co-director of the Lorenz Center in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, has found that when the rate at which carbon dioxide enters the oceans pushes past a certain threshold — whether as the result of a sudden burst or a slow, steady influx — the Earth may respond with a runaway cascade of chemical feedbacks, leading to extreme ocean acidification that dramatically amplifies the effects of the original trigger.

This global reflex causes huge changes in the amount of carbon contained in the Earth’s oceans, and geologists can see evidence of these changes in layers of sediments preserved over hundreds of millions of years.

Rothman looked through these geologic records and observed that over the last 540 million years, the ocean’s store of carbon changed abruptly, then recovered, dozens of times in a fashion similar to the abrupt nature of a neuron spike. This “excitation” of the carbon cycle occurred most dramatically near the time of four of the five great mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

Scientists have attributed various triggers to these events, and they have assumed that the changes in ocean carbon that followed were proportional to the initial trigger — for instance, the smaller the trigger, the smaller the environmental fallout.

But Rothman says that’s not the case. It didn’t matter what initially caused the events; for roughly half the disruptions in his database, once they were set in motion, the rate at which carbon increased was essentially the same.  Their characteristic rate is likely a property of the carbon cycle itself — not the triggers, because different triggers would operate at different rates.

What does this all have to do with our modern-day climate? Today’s oceans are absorbing carbon about an order of magnitude faster than the worst case in the geologic record — the end-Permian extinction. But humans have only been pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for hundreds of years, versus the tens of thousands of years or more that it took for volcanic eruptions or other disturbances to trigger the great environmental disruptions of the past. Might the modern increase of carbon be too brief to excite a major disruption?

According to Rothman, today we are “at the precipice of excitation,” and if it occurs, the resulting spike — as evidenced through ocean acidification, species die-offs, and more — is likely to be similar to past global catastrophes.

“Once we’re over the threshold, how we got there may not matter,” says Rothman, who is publishing his results this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.“Once you get over it, you’re dealing with how the Earth works, and it goes on its own ride.”

Written by: Jennifer Chu

Read more on news.mit.edu

Massive Reforestation Is Key to Averting a Climate Catastrophe

Photo illustration: Unsplash (Marian Kroell)
Photo illustration: Unsplash/Jeremy Bishop

Restoring the world’s forests on an unprecedented scale is “the best climate change solution available”, according to a new study. The researchers claim that covering 900m hectares of land – roughly the size of the continental US – with trees could store up to 205 billion tonnes of carbon, about two thirds of the carbon that humans have already put into the atmosphere.

While the best solution to climate change remains leaving fossil fuels in the ground, we will still need to suck carbon dioxide (CO₂) out of the atmosphere this century if we are to keep global warming below 1.5˚C. So the idea of reforesting much of the world isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds.

Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have cut down three trillion trees – about half the trees on Earth. Already 43 countries have pledged to restore 292m hectares of degraded land to forest worldwide. That’s an area ten times the size of the UK. But what the new study advocates is reforesting something like ten times that amount.

Rewilding habitats and reforesting may be easier in the future as the world is already becoming a wilder place in many areas. This may seem a strange prediction, given that the global population will grow from 7.7 billion to 10 billion by 2050, but by then nearly 70% of us will live in cities and have abandoned rural areas, making them ripe for restoration. In Europe already, 2.2m hectares of forest regrew per year between 2000-2015, and forest cover in Spain has increased from 8% of the country’s territory in 1900 to 25% today.

Massive reforestation isn’t a pipe dream and it can have real benefits for people. In the late 1990s, environmental deterioration in China became critical, with vast areas resembling the Dust Bowl of the American Midwest in the 1930s. Six bold programmes were introduced, targeting over 100m hectares of land for reforestation.
Grain for Green is the largest and best known of these. It reduced soil erosion and stabilised local rainfall patterns. The ongoing programme has also helped to alleviate poverty by making payments directly to farmers who set aside their land for reforestation.

Better yet, the new study suggests that bringing back 900m hectares of forest wouldn’t impact on our capacity to reserve land for growing food. This is certainly possible, and in line with other estimates. Reforestation may even result in production from farmland increasing, as was found in China when more stable rainfall and fertile soil followed the return of forests.

No solution without emission cuts

There should be more scepticism about how much CO₂ 900m hectares of new forest could store though. The paper insists on 205 billion tonnes of carbon, but this seems too high when compared to previous studies or climate models. The authors have forgotten the carbon that’s already stored in the vegetation and soil of degraded land that their new forests would replace. The amount of carbon that reforestation could lock up is the difference between the two.

Mature forests can store a lot of carbon, but this capacity is only reached after hundreds of years, not a couple of decades of new forest growth as assumed in this study. The most recent estimate from the IPCC suggests that new forests could store on average an extra 57 billion tonnes of carbon by the end of the century. This is still a huge number and could absorb about one sixth of the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere, but reforestation should be thought of as one solution to climate change among many.

Photo illustration: Unsplash/Evgeni Tcherkasski

Even if warming is stabilised at 1.5˚C, the study indicates that one fifth of the land proposed for reforestation could be rendered too hot for growing new forests by 2050. But this concern ignores the role of carbon dioxide fertilisation – when there are higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, photosynthesis is more efficient, meaning plants need less water and can still be productive at higher temperatures. Today, the most immediate threat to tropical forests is deforestation by people and the fires they light which get out of control, not the more subtle impacts of higher temperatures.

Reforesting an area the size of the US will have massive benefits on local environments and will store a huge amount of man-made carbon emissions. It is not, however, a substitute for reducing those carbon emissions.

Even if the world reduces its carbon emissions to zero by 2050, there will still need to be negative global carbon emissions for the rest of the century – drawing CO₂ out of the atmosphere to stabilise global warming at 1.5˚C. Reforestation is essential for creating negative emissions – not reducing the amount of carbon that humans are still emitting.

There is another sting in the tail. Massive reforestation only works if the world’s current forest cover is maintained and increasing. Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest – the world’s largest – has increased since Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, came to power. Current estimates suggest areas of rainforest the size of a football pitch are being cleared every single minute.

It won’t be easy, but society needs to protect the forests we’ve got, and protect new forests in perpetuity to permanently keep carbon sequestered in trees and out of the atmosphere.

Written by

Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science, UCL

Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science, University of Leeds and UCL

Source: weforum.org

A 550 km-Long Mass of Rotting Seaweed Is Heading for Mexico’s Pristine Beaches

Photo illustration: Unsplash/Agustin Flores
Photo illustration: Unsplash/Jorge Zapata

Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is home to clear blue seas, golden sands and a glorious backdrop that includes ancient Mayan ruins. Millions flock to its resorts every year and tourism is vital to the area’s economy.

But now much of the coast is covered in heaps of rotting seaweed, contributing to an economic and ecological crisis.

The issue has been caused by an enormous bloom of sargassum algae, which washed ashore from the nearby Sargasso Sea. There has long been sargassum in that part of the ocean. But the rate of its growth has increased rapidly in recent years – so much so that in 2018 its summer bloom almost spanned the Atlantic from West Africa to the Caribbean.

And things are set to get even worse.

The roots of the problem

At around 550 kilometres in length, another mass of sargassum algae is heading towards the Mexican coast. It’s roughly the same size as the island of Jamaica, and when it arrives it could stretch all the way south along the Yucatan Peninsula to Belize.

One of the core causes is deforestation. In addition to contributing to global warming, it also causes soil erosion, which in turn, leads to surplus nutrients being washed into rivers and flowing into the ocean.

Rising nutrient and nitrogen levels have several effects on the seawater. One is to limit the amount of oxygen in the water, creating dead zones, according to the US National Ocean Service. The other is to promote the growth of seaweed and algal blooms – like the Sargasso seaweed that is now swamping Mexican beaches.

Cross-continental causes

 

Several thousand kilometres to the south of the Yucatan lies the Amazon rainforest, around 17% of which has been lost to deforestation over the past 50 years. Meanwhile, the US Geological Survey points to a worsening situation in West Africa, where more than 80% of the Upper Guinean Forest was lost in the first 75 years of the 20th century and continues to face deforestation.

The huge sargassum algae islands that form out at sea are living entities. They also provide shelter for myriad tiny marine organisms. But once they wash ashore, the algae dies and starts to decompose. Toxic gases are then released into the air, while acid and heavy metals are left behind to make their way into the sea, altering the water’s acidity levels and further depleting oxygen.

The economic fallout
Photo illustration: Unsplash/Jorge Zapata

 

It’s a bleak picture. Beaches ruined by deposits of foul-smelling, rotting seaweed are bad for tourism.

And the effect of the chemicals leaching first into the ground and then into the sea is to poison the offshore waters, resulting in a loss of marine life. It is also contributing to so-called white syndrome, which kills coral tissue.

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, estimates the cost of cleaning up the beaches to be around $2.7 million.

But the impact on tourism, which contributes 8.7% to Mexico’s gross domestic product and is worth around $23 billion annually, will be far greater. The government estimates a drop of 30% in some affected areas.

Written by
Sean Fleming, Senior Writer, Formative Content

Source: weforum.org

Small Loads from Internet-Connected Devices All Add Up

Photo: Pixabay

 

Photo: Pixabay

Our always-on devices turn out to consume a lot of power. Do I really need to connect my garage door to the Internet?

A few years ago I called Sanctuary Magazine “the best green shelter magazine available anywhere” (it still is). But Australia’s Alternative Technology Association has also published the much more hardcore Renew Magazine for 40 years. When I started reading it I could barely understand it and complained it was for nerds, but either I have finally started learning what this stuff is all about or it has become more user-friendly. I suspect the latter, because I sort of understood Lance Turner’s article in issue 147 on Small loads that all add up.

It is a subject we have covered before on TreeHugger, where we have noted that every single little smart device has a small electrical drain to run its radio; I calculated that my Hue Smart Bulbs on my dining room table use more energy while they are off than while they are on, and they are not my only Smart devices. It all adds up quickly.

Lance Turner at Renew goes through the list of those little loads that we all have in our homes now, from modems and routers to range extenders, cordless phone base stations and alarm systems. According to Lance, “the average energy consumption for burglar alarms is 5.9 watts continuously, or 52 kWh a year.” That’s a lot of electricity and, for the average American electricity customer, the equivalent of driving 2.5 miles in your average American car.

Things are much better than a decade ago when everyone was talking about vampire power from wall-warts and from computers and TVs on standby mode, but the new smart devices can draw a lot of power. According to an Android site, a Sonos Play unit draws 3.8 watts on standby, an Amazon Echo Plus 3.5 watts.

Lightning exploded a tree outside our house last week, and the power surge exploded much of my home network and Internet setup, so the phone company and George Hardy of Connected Living have been busy replacing things. George and I inventoried the stuff on my network shelf; for fun, I have converted them all to average American CO2 generated and miles driven equivalent, even though I have clean Ontario power and Bullfrog offsets and ride a bike.

The results were pretty shocking; I had no idea that so much power was dribbling out of that closet. I immediately made some changes; I killed the wifi from the router, leaving just one network broadcasting. I pulled the AirPort Extreme unit; I am already saving everything on iCloud. And do I really need to be able to open my garage door with my phone? I am pulling that out too. I have probably cut that electrical load just from the closet in half.

Seriously, all of this Smart Home high tech stuff adds up; I work from home so have more of it than most people, but then other people have other phantom loads, including printers, big smart TVs, gaming consoles and computers and more. We should all be looking at each and every item.

Or, you might say that you have solar power or live in Quebec where everything is water powered and it doesn’t matter. But Lance Turner reminds us:

“One last issue to consider when buying any appliance is embodied energy. All equipment and appliances take materials, energy and resources such as water to manufacture and eventually recycle if that is possible, so the longer they last the lower their environmental footprint, all things being equal.”

So don’t buy stuff you don’t need (do I have to connect my garage door opener to the Internet?) and buy quality stuff that will last a long time. And don’t fall for all this smart home stuff; as the late lamented Mike Rogers noted last year, a well-built dumb house uses a lot less energy.

Source: www.treehugger.com

Canada Declares Climate Emergency, then Approves Pipeline Expansion

Photo: Public Domain Wikimedia – A pipeline in Cornerbrook, NL, Canada 

Trudeau doesn’t seem to understand what ‘climate emergency’ means.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is riding a rollercoaster of public opinion these days. Many Canadians were pleased with the House of Commons’ declaration of a climate emergency on Monday, a motion put forward by Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna that follows in the footsteps of several Canadian cities. As the CBC reported, this declaration requires that

“Canada commit to meeting its national emissions target under the Paris Agreement and to making deeper reductions in line with the Agreement’s objective of holding global warming below two degrees Celsius and pursuing efforts to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

But the happiness lasted only until Tuesday. PM Trudeau jetted back to Ottawa from Toronto where he’d been celebrating the Raptors’ NBA win (the House of Commons vote took place without him) and announced he was approving the Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion project. From the CBC:
“The cabinet has affirmed the National Energy Board’s conclusion that, while the pipeline has the potential to damage the environment and marine life, it’s in the national interest and could contribute tens of billions of dollars to government coffers and create and sustain thousands of jobs.”

Trudeau ‘reassured’ Canadians that every dollar made from the pipeline will be used to invest in unspecified clean energy projects. “We need to create wealth today so we can invest in the future,” he said. “We need resources to invest in Canadians so they can take advantage of the opportunities generated by a rapidly changing economy, here at home and around the world.”

It’s a head-scratcher of a decision, especially following Monday’s declaration. Patrick McCully of the Rainforest Action Network likened it to “declaring war on cancer and then announcing a campaign to promote smoking.” Green Party leader Elizabeth May said “the plan to invest profits from Trans Mountain into clean technology is a ‘cynical bait-and-switch that would fool no one'” (via CBC). NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said it’s irresponsible in light of Canada’s obligations to the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions.

Trudeau created an intense controversy by deciding to buy the pipeline in April 2018 for $4.5 billion in the midst of investor uncertainty; but then a court decision blocked construction in August, ruling that further environmental assessments and more consultation with indigenous groups were needed. Trudeau says he has met these requirements and is now ready to proceed. Some Indigenous groups disagree, calling his consultation “shallow.”

It’s a strange move in a world where divestment from fossil fuels is gathering momentum. Activist Bill McKibben wrote a few months ago about the numerous universities, colleges, and religious institutions that have opted to sell their shares in oil, gas, and coal companies – and they’re not hurting because of it:

“Early divesters have made out like green-tinged bandits: since the fossil fuel sector has badly underperformed on the market over recent years, moving money into other investments has dramatically increased returns. Pity, for instance, the New York state comptroller Thomas DeNapoli – unlike his New York City counterpart, he refused to divest, and the cost has been about $17,000 per pensioner.”

Surely, if Trudeau’s main concern is economics, there are better ways to generate wealth and financial stability for Canadians, such as investing that $4.5 billion in green energy and other sustainable projects. These would have the added benefit (and cost savings) of preserving the natural environment, rather than destroying it through construction, transportation, and inevitable contamination, and improving public health, which experts say is already being seriously affected by climate change.

Alas, there seem to be few leaders willing to go out on a limb, fight against the status quo, and create the new world order that we need if we hope to keep the global warming average below 2C. And if Trudeau doesn’t know where to start, I’d point him to the Leap Manifesto, which lays out beautifully a plan for “a country powered entirely by renewable energy.”

As the authors of the manifesto wrote, “Caring for one another and caring for the planet could be the economy’s fastest growing sectors.” If only Trudeau were daring enough to believe it.

Source: www.treehugger.com

US Top of the Garbage Pile in Global Waste Crisis

Photo-illustration: Pixabay
Photo-illustration: Pixabay

The world produces over two billion tonnes of municipal solid waste every year, enough to fill over 800,000 Olympic sized swimming pools.

Per head of population the worst offenders are the US, as Americans produce three times the global average of waste, including plastic and food. 

When it comes to recycling, America again lags behind other countries, only re-using 35% of solid waste.

Germany is the most efficient country, recycling 68% of material.

The study has been compiled by Verisk Maplecroft, a research firm that specialises in global risk.

They’ve developed two new indices, on waste generation and recycling.

They’ve used publically-available data, plus academic research to develop a global picture of how countries are coping at a time when the world is facing a mounting crisis, primarily driven by plastic.

The waste generation index shows per capita rates of municipal solid waste, plastic, food and hazardous materials.

Municipal solid waste is rubbish that’s collected by local authorities from residential, institutional and commercial sources.

While the world produces 2.1bn tonnes of this rubbish every year, only 16% is recycled while 46% is disposed of unsustainably.

In the analysis, China and India make up over 36% of the global population and account for 27% of the waste.

US citizens produce 773kg per head of population, roughly 12% of the global total. Their output is three times that of their Chinese counterparts and seven times more than people living in Ethiopia.

Other European countries, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, France and Germany, feature on the list. The UK ranks 14th in the waste index generating 482kg of household waste per person every year.

The US is the only developed nation with waste generation that outstrips its ability to recycle.

“Where the US is doing badly is the relationship between what it generates and its capacity to recycle,” said Niall Smith, one of the authors of the report.

“And relative to it’s high income peers, that’s where it is performing poorly.”

When it comes to recycling in the US, the issue seems to be one of political will and infrastructure.

“I think you see in survey after survey that infrastructure in the US just isn’t there to provide the recycling option,” said Will Nichols, head of environmental research at Verisk Mapelcroft.

“A lot of US waste – now that it can’t get shipped to China – is just getting burnt, there just isn’t the investment in place in infrastructure to deal with this problem.”

The banning of waste imports in China, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia is changing the global dynamic. There have been tensions between the government of the Philippines which sent back 69 shipping containers containing waste to Canada.

“They (Asian countries) don’t want to be the world’s dumping ground anymore,” said Will Nichols.

“There’s a growing middle class who are not happy with levels of pollution and China because of its political situation has the policy levers to address these issues more quickly than others.”

The report suggests there may be a rocky road ahead, especially for businesses. Verisk Maplecroft expects governments to act on waste issues but with businesses footing the bill.

Author: Matt McGrath

Source: bbc.com