Environment

Organic Farming is Better than Factory Farming for Carbon Capture

- Adam Clare

It turns out that not only is eating organic food better for you than processed foods, growing organic food is better for everyone. Organic farms (and likely home gardens) are better at capturing and retaining carbon than farms that are focused on mass production.

Last year, researchers reexamined all 74 studies that had looked at organic farming and carbon capture. After crunching the numbers from the results of these studies they concluded that, lo and behold, organic farms are carbon sponges.
…
Recently, a team of scientists decided to compare the microbes in organic and conventional plots (plus one “low intensity” field that was somewhere between organic and conventional) at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station in Michigan. They noticed that there was a much lower diversity of microbes in the conventionally farmed plot [PDF]. Perhaps the more complex community is better at exchanging the carbon among themselves, rather than releasing it to the atmosphere.

Read more at Grist.

USA Raises ‘Carbon Price’

- Adam Clare

Climate change is happening and it’s costing a lot of money to deal with. More floods, tornados, hurricanes, and other natural events are happening with greater frequency thanks to planetary temperature increase. The reason the planet’s temperature is increasing is thanks to the way previous generations have dealt with waste.

One such waste product comes in the form of exhaust from cars and other air pollution from various sources. This much is obvious, but very few countries have acted on this issue (in fact, Canada has gone out it’s way to stop action). In the USA, the Obama administration has quietly passed a new law that raises the cost of releasing pollutants into the air in the hopes it will help slow more climate change.

Buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens is a change in the U.S. government’s accounting for carbon emissions that could have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline.

The increase of the so-called social cost of carbon, to $38 a metric ton in 2015 from $23.80, adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations. The figure is meant to approximate losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops.

Read more at Bloomberg.

Save the Environment, Live in a City

- Adam Clare

The IEEE Spectrum recently interview William Meyer who is the author of the book The Environmental Advantages of Cities: Countering Commonsense Antiurbanism. The book’s central thesis is that we need to change the discourse around cities from a negative one to a more positive conversation about the efficiencies of cities compared to lower density areas.

Steven Cherry: Good. Let’s go back to the list then. Cities are ravenous consumers of natural resources, true or false?

William Meyer: Okay, well, they are in an absolute sense, yes, and that’s the distinction between absolute and proportional impact. Cities do consume a lot of resources because there are lots of people there consuming, but the question is: If you had the same population, would it consume more resources if it lived in a less-urban settlement pattern? And the answer is no, because per capita, people in cities consume less. Cities are much more efficient in the consumption of resources, notably energy, but also materials, also water, and also, of course, land, because of their higher densities. So it’s true that they are large consumers, but the people who live in them are not, and, again, if we had a less-urban settlement pattern, we’d have more resource consumption.

Read more at IEEE Spectrum.

Greenpeace Launches Wikileaks Inspired Site

- Adam Clare

Wikileaks has been a great source of information that governments and corporations wanted to deny or keep secret. Now Greenpeace has modelled a site, Arctic Truth, for whistleblowers who work in the world of arctic drilling for oil. As climate change turns the frozen north into accessible waters oil companies want to move in and further the reach of their harmful industry. Even people in the industry are realizing how dangerous it is to drill closer to the north pole than ever before and have started to speak up.

The website is intended to shield the identities of whistleblowers as part of an effort to attract those willing to report on problems. Vaguely modeled on Wikileaks, the site is intended to protect whistleblowers but whether that will be tested in the courts remains to be seen.

“We know there have been a lot of problems with Shell and other companies and we wanted to create a way for employees to feel safe and secure,” if they reported problems, Ms. Ferguson said.

Shell canceled its 2013 Arctic drilling program after both its drill ships experienced serious problems last year. Its big circular drillship Kulluk broke away as it was being towed south after the drill season and ran aground on Kodiak Island New Year’s Eve. It has been taken to Asia for repairs.

Read more at the Globe and Mail.
Check out Arctic Truth.

Unilever’s Sustainability Strategy Saves Costs, Environment

- Adam Clare

Unilever is a massive corporation that owns a ton of brands from Q-Tips to Ben Jerry’s Ice Cream. They have recently pushed for more efficiency and sustainability across all their brands and have found that their environment-saving approach has saved money.

The company’s sustainability director for manufacturing, John Maguire, echoed the sentiment that sustainability can be a force for cost-saving, as opposed to an added new cost. He said in a statement: “Eco-efficiency isn’t just about reducing the environmental footprint it also makes good business sense … Since 2008 our eco-efficiency programmes have avoided more than €300m of costs–almost €100m in energy; €186m in materials; €17m in water; and €10m in waste disposal. The benefits are very clear in a world where energy prices are increasing.”

Read more.

Scroll To Top