Environment – Page 17 – Things Are Good

How Mangroves Manage Climate Change

Dense mangrove forests provide an ecological boost wherever they are found because they protect both land and sea species. They are really ecosystems unto themselves with nuance and each with their own history. That history can help us understand how the delicate forests will survive climate change, we know they have before and now we can understand how we can help them survive our current rapidly changing climate.

Mangroves are also gorgeous!

“The most amazing part of this study is that we were able to examine a mangrove ecosystem that has been trapped in time for more than 100,000 years,” said study co-author Octavio Aburto-Oropeza, a marine ecologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and a Pew Marine Fellow. “There is certainly more to discover about how the many species in this ecosystem adapted throughout different environmental conditions over the past 100,000 years. Studying these past adaptations will be very important for us to better understand future conditions in a changing climate.”

Combining multiple lines of evidence, the study demonstrates that the rare and unique mangrove ecosystem of the San Pedro River is a relict—that is, organisms that have survived from an earlier period—from a past warmer world when relative sea levels were six to nine meters (20 to 30 feet) higher than at present, high enough to flood the Tabasco lowlands of Mexico and reach what today are tropical rainforests on the banks of the San Pedro River.

Carbon Capture Solutions from Students get Funding

The best thing to do to prevent climate change is to stop burning fossil fuels, until that happens we need to find ways to extract carbon from the air to reduce the speed of climate change. Of course, carbon removal needs to be powered by renewable systems themselves. The XPrize for carbon removal kicked off in February, part of that launch involved a competition for universities to apply for funding radical carbon removal ideas. The winners have been announced and the projects are looking at everything from cleaning up asbestos to making a tea out of yard waste.

The Blue Symbiosis team from Australia’s University of Tasmania is looking to tap into the natural CO2-absorbing properties of seaweed, by repurposing oil and gas rigs as regenerative farming sites. The offshore platforms provide the trunk, while the seaweed will act as the branches, according to the team. The team aims to scale up production to the point where the system can have a real impact on ocean health, with part of the seaweed to also be used in construction materials such as fire-resilient bricks, enabling the carbon being stored to be quantified.

“I researched the potential of repurposing oil and gas infrastructure to regenerative seaweed sites, which led to the conclusion that this holds real promise for both environmental and commercial reasons,” says team leader Joshua Castle. “Decommissioning oil and gas infrastructure is an emerging AU$60-billion (US$44-billion) problem for governments and industries in which they are expected to share the costs. Seaweed has the potential to deliver vast environmental benefits for ocean health – but if it can’t be scaled, significant impacts on ocean health can’t be realized.

Green Your Garage

If you have a garage filled with tools and other oddities, you can easily make it a little nicer for you and the environment. The next time you do some cleaning you can think about what is clean for the rest of the environment. Of course, you’re going to want to properly dispose of pesticides as you should never use them in the first place. There are more things you can do too, like checking your tools to find out if the tools can be replaced by something with a smaller carbon footprint.

After the leaf blower, you might want to check on your lawn mower, chainsaw, snow blower, air compressor, and generator, if you have them. The gasoline engines in these pieces of equipment spew out greenhouse gases that are as concerning as the crud coming out of leaf blowers.

As for alternatives, electric or manual gear is the way to go. There are plenty of lists online that can guide you towards the best push mower, battery-powered chainsaw, electric snow blower, air compressor, or electric generator. My town has been having a craze for robotic lawn mowers recently. They don’t work on hills, but if your lawn is flat, consider one of these electric models. They are mesmerizing to watch, cut the grass in a random pattern, and, bonus points, you don’t have to push them around.

They mapped the thousand places in America where you’re breathing poison

The Trump administration in the USA cut funding for their Environmental Protection Agency which led to an increase in pollution that harms people and nature. The pollution problem isn’t all thanks to Trump though, it comes from years of negligence around policies and procedures to protect communities from dangerous industrial waste. For example, in the early 2000s the Bush administration stopped a few NASA efforts to observe greenhouse gas emissions in the nation.

Despite government inaction, ProPublica decided to map out the most poisoned places in the States. Why is this on a good news site? If we don’t look at where the emission are coming, and what the combined impact is of those emissions then we won’t be able to adequately fight climate change. Knowledge is power.

At the map’s intimate scale, it’s possible to see up close how a massive chemical plant near a high school in Port Neches, Texas, laces the air with benzene, an aromatic gas that can cause leukemia. Or how a manufacturing facility in New Castle, Delaware, for years blanketed a day care playground with ethylene oxide, a highly toxic chemical that can lead to lymphoma and breast cancer. Our analysis found that ethylene oxide is the biggest contributor to excess industrial cancer risk from air pollutants nationwide. Corporations across the United States, but especially in Texas and Louisiana, manufacture the colorless, odorless gas, which lingers in the air for months and is highly mutagenic, meaning it can alter DNA.

In all, ProPublica identified more than a thousand hot spots of cancer-causing air. They are not equally distributed across the country. A quarter of the 20 hot spots with the highest levels of excess risk are in Texas, and almost all of them are in Southern states known for having weaker environmental regulations. Census tracts where the majority of residents are people of color experience about 40% more cancer-causing industrial air pollution on average than tracts where the residents are mostly white. In predominantly Black census tracts, the estimated cancer risk from toxic air pollution is more than double that of majority-white tracts.

Read more.
Thanks to Tom Scott for the title!

Change Your Bank to Slow Climate Change

Is your money being used by your bank to make your life worse? Hopefully not! A bank I used to do business with was literally funding the tar sands with my money, so I withdrew my money and took it to another institution.

Wondering if your bank is trying to make the air less breathable for your kids or grandchildren? You can find out using a nifty new tool called Bank Track that tells you if your bank is funding climate destruction. They have tips on how to talk to your bank and how to move from one financial institution to another.

This engagement with banks could play an important role in shifting such institutions from a fossil fuel dependent pathway. Indeed after a PPL PWR event on “Not just for a rainy day: How to green your finance” at COP26, a spokesperson said, “Whilst the financial system can seem intimidatingly complex, cold, and calculating, it’s important to remember we have power. Our money is what drives the system, so do your research, use your voice, and get your feet on the street to demand a financial system that invests in our future.”

The message about the possibility of making an effective difference in a really simple way is important because, as Ellen Harrison corporate projects manager at Triodos Bank pointed out ,people are slow to change especially in terms of banking saying, “We are more likely to stay faithful to our bank than our partner.” The campaign resonates given the recent announcement that 450 financial institutions have committed to aligning their portfolios with net zero by 2050. This is a major step by the financial sector but has raised serious concerns about the potential for greenwash, given that there is little detail about milestones, timelines or the need to move out of investment in fossil fuels.