Page #1

Orlando
Llampay’s
scrAPESbook
Scraping together the truth behind
the environment’s crisis and the hope
left for safeguarding the environment

Orlando Llampay
Ms. Calalo’s Sixth Period AP
Environmental Science Class
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Table of Contents
1) From Miami to Shanghai: 3°C of Warming Will Leave World Cities Below Sea Level-The
Guardian

2) Trump Administration Releases Report Finding “No Convincing Alternative Explanation”

for Climate Change-The Washington Post

3) Good News On Warming: Ozone Hole Is Smallest Since 1988-LiveScience

4) Scientists Identify A Third Species Orangutan Species-The Atlantic

5) Prince William Is Worried There Are Just Too Many People In The World-Newsweek

6) How India's Battle With Climate Change Could Determine All Of Our Fates-The Guardian

7) Environmentalists and Developers: A Love Story-Salon

8) Ohio Sues Developer Behind Dakota Access Pipeline Over Pollution Issues-Thinkprogress

9) The COP23 Climate Change Summit in Bonn and Why It Matters-The Guardian

10) House Approves Bill To Speed Logging To Combat Wildfires-The Associated Press

11) How Has Air Quality Been Affected by The U.S. Fracking Boom?-Salon

12) Why Apple’s iPhone X is bad- for the environment-Market Watch

13) The Seven Megatrends That Could Beat Global Warming: ‘There is Reason for Hope’-The
Guardian

14) Don’t Convert Africa’s Savanna To Agricultural Land-The Scientific American

15) Donald Trump Cannot Halt U.S. Climate Progress, former Obama Advisor Says-The
Guardian

16) Fossil Fuel Burning Set To Hit Record High In 2017, Scientists Warn-The Guardian

17) Plastics Found In Stomachs Of Deepest Sea Creatures-The Guardian

18) 15,000 Scientists Warn It Will Soon Be Too Late To Avoid Climate Catastrophe-
ThinkProgress

19) Trump Is Doing Nothing To Save Americans From Air Pollution, Luckily The Rest of The
World Exists-NewsWeek-

20) How Climate Change Could Lead To More Wars In The 21st Century-Vox
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From Miami to Shanghai: 3°C of Warming Will Leave Cities Below Sea Level
Link: From Miami to Shanghai: 3C of warming will leave world cities below sea level
Author: Jonathan Watts
Source: The Guardian-News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian
Date: Friday 3 November 2017 02:48 E.D.T.
Collected: Friday November 3rd, 2017
Topic: Climate Change

Original Article (946 words):

“Hundreds of millions of urban dwellers around the world face their cities being inundated by rising sea waters if latest
UN warnings that the world is on course for 3°C of global warming come true, according to a Guardian data analysis.
Famous beaches, commercial districts and swaths of farmland will be threatened at this elevated level of climate change,
which the UN warned this week is a very real prospect unless nations reduce their carbon emissions.
Data from the Climate Central group of scientists analysed by Guardian journalists shows that 3°C of global warming
would ultimately lock in irreversible sea-level rises of perhaps two meters. Cities from Shanghai to Alexandria, and Rio
to Osaka are among the worst affected. Miami would be inundated - as would the entire bottom third of the US state of
Florida.
The Guardian has found, however, that local preparations for a 3°C world are as patchy as international efforts to
prevent it from happening. At six of the coastal regions most likely to be affected, government planners are only slowly
coming to grips with the enormity of the task ahead - and in some cases have done nothing.
This comes ahead of the latest round of climate talks in Bonn next week, when negotiators will work on ways to monitor,
fund and ratchet up national commitments to cut CO2 so that temperatures can rise on a safer path of between 1.5 and
2°C, which is the goal of the Paris agreement reached in 2015.
The momentum for change is currently too slow, according to the UN Environment Programme. In its annual emissions
gap report, released on Tuesday, the international body said government commitments were only a third of what was
needed. Non-state actors such as cities, companies and citizens can only partly fill this void, which leaves warming on
course to rise to 3°C or beyond by the end of this century, the report said.
The UN’s environment chief, Erik Solheim, said progress in the year since the Paris agreement entered into force has
been inadequate. “We still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of
millions of people from a miserable future,” he said.
Nature’s ability to help may also be diminishing. On Monday, the World Meteorological Organisation said
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose last year at a record speed to reach 403.3 parts per million - a
level not seen since the Pliocene era three to five million years ago.
A 3°C rise would lead to longer droughts, fiercer hurricanes and lock in sea-level rises that would redraw many
coastlines. Depending on the speed at which icecaps and glaciers melt, this could take decades or more than a century.
Colin Summerhayes of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge said three-degrees of warming would melt polar
and glacier ice much further and faster than currently expected, potentially raising sea levels by two meters by 2100.
At least 275 million city dwellers live in vulnerable areas, the majority of them in Asian coastal megacities and
industrial hubs such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Bangkok and Tokyo.
Japan’s second biggest city, Osaka, is projected to lose its business and entertainments districts of Umeda and Namba
unless global emissions are forced down or flood defences are built up. Officials are reluctantly accepting they must now
put more effort into the latter.
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“In the past our response was focused on reducing the causes of global warming, but given that climate change is
inevitable, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we are now discussing how to respond
to the natural disasters that will follow,” said Toshikazu Nakaaki of the Osaka municipal government’s environment
bureau.
In Miami - which would be almost entirely below sea level even at 2°C warming - the sense of urgency is evident at city
hall, where commissioners are asking voters to approve a “Miami Forever” bond in the November ballot that includes
$192 million for upgrading pump stations, expanding drainage systems, elevating roads and building dykes.
Elsewhere, there is less money for adaptation and a weaker sense of urgency. In Rio de Janeiro, a 3°C rise would flood
famous beaches such as Copacabana, the waterfront domestic airport, and many of the sites for last year’s Olympics.
But the cash-strapped city has been slow to prepare. A report compiled for Brazil’s presidency found “situations in
which climate changes are not considered within the scope of planning.”
In Egypt, even a 0.5m sea-level rise is predicted to submerge beaches in Alexandria and displace 8 million people on the
Nile Delta unless protective measures are taken, according to the IPCC. But local activists say the authorities see it as a
distant problem. “As far as I’m concerned, this issue isn’t on the list of government priorities,” said Ahmed Hassan, of
the Save Alexandria Initiative, a group that works to raise awareness of the effects of climate change on the city.
The impacts will also be felt on the economy and food production. Among the most vulnerable areas in the UK is
Lincolnshire, where swaths of agricultural land are likely to be lost to the sea.
“We’re conscious that climate change is happening and perhaps faster than expected so we are trying to mitigate and
adapt to protect people and property. We can’t stop it, but we can reduce the risk.” said Alison Baptiste, director of
strategy and investment at the UK Environment Agency. She said the measures in place should protect most communities
in the near and medium term, but 50 years from now the situation will become more challenging. “If climate change
projections are accurate, we’re going to have to make some difficult decisions.”
Summary: The article, discovered through scrolling down The Guardian, discusses the need for the planet to
act immediately in reducing carbon emissions to prevent the worst effects of climate change which will
drastically change and negatively affect the lives of millions of people from all walks of life across the planet in
economical and societal ways that will negatively affect human development standards improvements over the
past couple of decades. It also discusses how the majority of cities and regions that will most be affected
directly and immediately from the side effects of climate change, have weak, poorly planned, unambitious or
even no plans drafted to adapt and protect their very constituents that voted for those in charge from the long-
term fiscal well-being, health, economical and safety hazards climate change will bring very soon. The most
cities, municipalities and regions can do to protect their economies and constituents from the inevitable climate
change growing more powerful and possibly apocalyptical to the Earth’s well-being of its inhabitants and
economy by the day would be to simply adapt through constructing the infrastructure and utilizing the private
and public sector together to create adaptive, resilient, prepared and protected urban areas that can meet up
today’s elevating living standards, increase density to hold the world’s growing urban population and continue
being places of opportunity in where people can improve their own lives.
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Trump Administration Releases Report Finding ‘No Convincing Alternative Explanation’ For Climate
Change
Link: Trump administration releases report finding ‘no convincing alternative explanation’ for climate change
Authors: Chris Mooney, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis
Source: The Washington Post-Washington Post: Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis ...
Date: Friday November 3rd, 2017 at 4:00 P.M.
Collected: Friday November 3rd, 2017
Topic: Climate Change

Original Article (1,891 words):

“The Trump administration released a dire scientific report Friday calling human activity the dominant driver of global
warming, a conclusion at odds with White House decisions to withdraw from a key international climate accord,
champion fossil fuels and reverse Obama-era climate policies.
To the surprise of some scientists, the White House did not seek to prevent the release of the government’s National
Climate Assessment, which is mandated by law. The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by
human action, warns of a worst-case scenario where seas could rise as high as eight feet by the year 2100 and details
climate-related damage across the United States that is already unfolding as a result of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of global
warming since 1900.
“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th
century,” the document reports. “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation
supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”
The report’s release underscores the extent to which the machinery of the federal scientific establishment, operating in
multiple agencies across the government, continues to grind on even as top administration officials have minimized or
disparaged its findings. Federal scientists have continued to author papers and issue reports on climate change, for
example, even as political appointees have altered the wording of news releases or blocked civil servants from speaking
about their conclusions in public forums. The climate assessment process is dictated by a 1990 law that Democratic and
Republican administrations have followed.
The White House on Friday sought to downplay the significance of the study and its findings.
“The climate has changed and is always changing. As the Climate Science Special Report states, the magnitude of future
climate change depends significantly on ‘remaining uncertainty in the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to [greenhouse gas]
emissions,'” White House spokesman Raj Shah said in a statement. “In the United States, energy related carbon dioxide
emissions have been declining, are expected to remain flat through 2040, and will also continue to decline as a share of
world emissions.”
Shah added that the Trump administration “supports rigorous scientific analysis and debate.” He said it will continue to
“promote access to the affordable and reliable energy needed to grow economically” and to back advancements that
improve infrastructure and ultimately reduce emissions.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and President Trump have all
questioned the extent of humans’ contribution to climate change. One of the EPA’s Web pages posted scientific
conclusions similar to those in the new report until earlier this year, when Pruitt’s deputies ordered it removed.
The report comes as Trump and members of his Cabinet are working to promote U.S. fossil-fuel production and repeal
several federal rules aimed at curbing the nation’s carbon output, including ones limiting greenhouse-gas emissions
from existing power plants, oil and gas operations on federal land and carbon emissions from cars and trucks. Trump
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has also announced he will exit the Paris climate agreement, under which the United States has pledged to cut its overall
greenhouse-gas emissions between 26 percent and 28 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2025.
The report could have considerable legal and policy significance, providing new and stronger support for the EPA’s
greenhouse-gas “endangerment finding” under the Clean Air Act, which lays the foundation for regulations on
emissions.
“This is a federal government report whose contents completely undercut their policies, completely undercut the
statements made by senior members of the administration,” said Phil Duffy, director of the Woods Hole Research
Center.
The government is required to produce the national assessment every four years. This time, the report is split into two
documents, one that lays out the fundamental science of climate change and the other that shows how the United States
is being affected on a regional basis. Combined, the two documents total over 2,000 pages.
The first document, called the Climate Science Special Report, is a finalized report, having been peer-reviewed by the
National Academy of Sciences and vetted by experts across government agencies. It was formally unveiled Friday.
“I think this report is basically the most comprehensive climate science report in the world right now,” said Robert
Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers who is an expert on sea-level rise and served as one of the report’s lead authors.
It affirms that the United States is already experiencing more extreme heat and rainfall events and more large wildfires
in the West, that more than 25 coastal U.S. cities are already experiencing more flooding, and that seas could rise by
between 1 and 4 feet by the year 2100, and perhaps even more than that if Antarctica proves to be unstable, as is feared.
The report says that a rise of over eight feet is “physically possible” with high levels of greenhouse-gas emissions but
that there’s no way right now to predict how likely it is to happen.
Most striking, perhaps, the report warns of the unpredictable — changes that scientists cannot foresee that could involve
tipping points or fast changes in the climate system. These could switch the climate into “new states that are very
different from those experienced in the recent past.”
Some members of the scientific community had speculated that the administration might refuse to publish the report or
might alter its conclusions. During the George W. Bush administration, a senior official at the White House Council on
Environmental Quality edited aspects of some government science reports.
Yet multiple experts, as well as some administration officials and federal scientists, said Trump political appointees did
not change the special report’s scientific conclusions. While some edits have been made to its final version — for
instance, omitting or softening some references to the Paris climate agreement — those were focused on policy.
“I’m quite confident to say there has been no political interference in the scientific messages from this report,” David
Fahey, an atmospheric scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a lead author of the
study, told reporters on Friday. “Whatever fears we had weren’t realized. … This report says what the scientists want it
to say.”
A senior administration official, who asked for anonymity because the process is still underway, said in an interview that
top Trump officials decided to put out the assessment without changing the findings of its contributors even if some
appointees may have different views.
Glynis Lough, who is deputy director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and
had served as chief of staff for the National Climate Assessment at the U.S. Global Change Research Program until mid-
2016, said in an interview that the changes made by government officials to the latest report “are consistent with the
types of changes that were made in the previous administration for the 2014 National Climate Assessment, to avoid
policy prescriptiveness.”
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Perhaps no agency under Trump has tried to downplay and undermine climate science more than the EPA. Most
recently, political appointees at the EPA instructed two agency scientists and one contractor not to speak as planned at a
scientific conference in Rhode Island. The conference marked the culmination of a three-year report on the status of
Narragansett Bay, New England’s largest estuary, in which climate change featured prominently.
The EPA also has altered parts of its website containing detailed climate data and scientific information. As part of that
overhaul, in April the agency took down pages that had existed for years and contained a wealth of information on the
scientific causes of global warming, its consequences and ways for communities to mitigate or adapt. The agency said
that it was simply making changes to better reflect the new administration’s priorities and that any pages taken down
would be archived.
Pruitt has repeatedly advocated for the creation of a government-wide “red team/blue team” exercise, in which a group
of outside critics would challenge the validity of mainstream scientific conclusions around climate change.
Other departments have also removed climate-change documents online: The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land
Management, for example, no longer provides access to documents assessing the danger that future warming poses to
deserts in the Southwest.
And when U.S. Geological Survey scientists working with international researchers published an article in the journal
Nature evaluating how climate change and human population growth would affect where rain-fed agriculture could
thrive, the USGS published a news release that omitted the words “climate change” altogether.
The Agriculture Department’s climate hubs, however, remain freely available online. And researchers at the U.S. Forest
Service have continued to publish papers this year on how climate change is affecting wildfires, wetlands and aquatic
habitat across the country.
The climate science report is already coming under fire from some of the administration’s allies.
The day before it was published, Steven Koonin, a New York University physicist who has met with Pruitt and advocated
for the “red team/blue team” exercise, preemptively criticized the document in the Wall Street Journal, calling it
“deceptive.”
Koonin argued that the report “ominously notes that while global sea level rose an average 0.05 inch a year during most
of the 20th century, it has risen at about twice that rate since 1993. But it fails to mention that the rate fluctuated by
comparable amounts several times during the 20th century.”
But one of the report’s authors suggested Koonin is creating a straw man. “The report does not state that the rate since
1993 is the fastest than during any comparable period since 1900 (though in my informal assessment it likely is), which
is the non-statement Steve seems to be objecting to,” Kopp countered by email.
Still, the line of criticism could be amplified by conservatives in the coming days.
Joseph Bast, the chief executive of the Heartland Institute, a think tank that has long challenged many aspects of the
science of global warming, also strongly critiqued the report in a statement to The Washington Post Friday.
“This is typical Obama-era political science,” Bast said. “It’s all been debunked so many times it’s not worth debating
anymore. Why are we still wasting taxpayer dollars on green propaganda?”
The administration also released, in draft form, the second volume of the National Climate Assessment, which looks at
regional impacts across the United States. This document is available for public comment and will begin a peer review
process, with final publication expected in late 2018.
Already, however, it is possible to discern some of what it will conclude. For instance, a peer-reviewed EPA technical
document released to inform the assessment finds that the monetary costs of climate change in the United States could be
dramatic.
 Page #8
That document, dubbed the Climate Change Impacts and Risk Analysis, finds that high temperatures could lead to the
loss per year of “almost 1.9 billion labor hours across the national workforce” by 2090. That would mean $160 billion
annually in lost income to workers.
With high levels of warming, coastal property damage in 2090 could total $120 billion annually and deaths from
temperature extremes could reach 9,300 per year, or in monetized terms, $140 billion annually in damage. Additional
tens of billions annually could occur in the form of damage to roads, rail lines and electrical infrastructure, the report
finds.
This could all be lessened considerably, the report notes, if warming is held to lower levels.”

Good News On Warming: Ozone Hole Is Smallest Since 1988

Link: Good News on Warming: Ozone Hole Is Smallest Since 1988
Author: Stephanie Pappas
Source: Live Science-Live Science: The Most Interesting Articles, Mysteries & Discoveries
Date: November 3rd, 2017 at 2:27 P.M. Eastern Time
Collected: Friday November 3rd, 2017
Topic: Climate Change; The Ozone Layer

Original Article (506 words):

“Higher temperatures over Antarctica this year shrank the hole in the ozone layer to the smallest it's been since 1988.
The ozone hole is a depletion of ozone gas (O3) in the stratosphere above Antarctica. The three-oxygen molecule is toxic
at ground level, but high in the atmosphere, it deflects dangerous ultraviolet rays from reaching Earth's surface.
In 1985, scientists first detected the hole in the ozone layer and realized it was being caused by man-made chlorine and
bromine, often found in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), compounds used as refrigerants. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol
initiated the phase-out of these chemicals. As they gradually leave the atmosphere, the ozone hole will heal, and
scientists expect it to return to 1980s size by 2070.
Natural variability affects this healing year-to-year, however.
"The Antarctic ozone hole was exceptionally weak this year," Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth Sciences at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. "This is what we would expect to see given
the weather conditions in the Antarctic stratosphere."
Weather and Ozone
In the upper atmosphere, CFCs break apart, freeing chlorine to react with ozone molecules, a reaction that creates
oxygen and chlorine monoxide. Similar reactions occur with bromine. Polar stratospheric clouds, which form in frigid
temperatures, speed up this process by providing surfaces for the reactions to occur on. That's why the ozone hole
worsens in the Southern Hemisphere winter.
The hole in Earth's protective ozone layer that forms over Antarctica each September was the smallest seen since 1988,
according to NASA and NOAA.
Higher temperatures in the stratosphere, on the other hand, allow ozone to remain more stable in the atmosphere,
meaning they keep the ozone hole smaller on a year-to-year basis. This year on Sept. 11, NASA measured the maximum
extent of the hole at 7.6 million square miles (19.6 million square kilometers), 2.5 times the size of the United States.
That was smaller than in 2016, when the maximum extent was 8.9 million square miles (22.2 million square km), also a
below-average size. According to NASA, the average maximum extent of the ozone hole since 1991 has hovered at about
10 million square miles (25.8 million square km).
 Page #9
Historic High
However, scientists said that two years of lower-than-usual ozone hole extent isn't a sign that the ozone layer is healing
faster than expected. Instead, it's a side effect of the Antarctic vortex — a low-pressure system that rotates clockwise
above the southernmost continent — undergoing a few years of instability and warmth, which prevented the proliferation
of polar stratospheric clouds.
Using an instrument called a Dobson spectrophotometer, NASA researchers monitor the concentration of ozone over
Antarctica on a regular basis. On Sept. 25, the concentration of ozone reached a minimum of 136 Dobson Units, which
is the highest minimum since 1988. However, that concentration is still low compared with the 1960s, before man-made
compounds created the ozone hole. In that decade, ozone concentrations over Antarctica were between 250 and 350
Dobson Units.”

Summary: Although climate change already has proven itself to do more harmful changes to the very places
we call home, our wallets and the general welfare of the human species and our neighbors than good, which
scientists say is the original, negative side effect intention this man made phenomenon has made, it has shown
that there is a glimmering silver lining to the global overall warm up, in where the ozone has shrunken. Closing
up the ozone (O3) layer will help humans a tad bit more from the dangerous and harmful ultraviolet rays that
radiate from the sun. What seems fascinating would be the very things that improve living and human
development standards globally, in this case, refrigeration and the chemicals utilized to make refrigeration a
reality that save millions of people from food poisoning and long term infections just has proven to also make
skin health, shed off in its wellbeing through skin cancers and well, most universally hated in the beauty world
ladies and gentlemen, aging. But because of this news of a significantly pacing ozone layer that’s shrinking,
deflecting a tiny bit more of harm and with the Trump administration believing climate change is a hoax (for
China to dominate the global manufacturing industry according to the Commander in Chief), if Trump read this
news more often instead of his “Fox (Faux) & Friends” show in the mornings, we can be sure that Trump can
finally fire off an honest tweet about this of the few if any accomplishments, of his very poorly rated
administration in recent history or some say, in the entire history of the United States. But nonetheless, this
positive news does not mean that humans should reboot carbon emissions because the vast majority of
studies show that climate (-) change will do more negative change than positive (aside from this and possibly
putting more of Russian land into agricultural use).

Scientists Identify A Third Orangutan Species

Link: Scientists Identify a Third Orangutan Species
Author: Ed Yong
Source: The Atlantic-The Atlantic
Date: November 2nd, 2017
Collected: Friday November 3rd, 2017
Topic: Endangered Species; Genetics; Habitat Destruction

Original Article (1,231 words):

“By the time they got to the orangutan, it was already dying.
In the Batang Toru forest, on the western flank of Sumatra, orangutans will often venture from the jungle to pick fruit
from nearby gardens—a habit that puts them in conflict with villagers. In November 2013, the conservationist Matthew
Nowak got word of one such conflict, and his veterinary colleagues went to investigate. They arrived to find a male
 Page #10
orangutan, badly beaten, his face and hands riddled with cuts. Despite the team’s efforts, he died from his injuries eight
days later.
With just 120,000 orangutans left in the wild, the loss of any one is a tragedy. But this particular ape has a significance
that will transcend his death. Based on a close analysis of his skeleton, and a study of several orangutan genomes,
Nowak and his colleagues think that the dead individual belongs to a different species of orangutan than those that we’re
familiar with. If they’re right, there are actually three species of these orange-haired apes. And the newly described one
would be the most endangered great ape alive.
When I was a child, an orangutan was an orangutan was an orangutan. But in 2001, after years of debate, scientists
formally agreed that there actually two species—one from the Indonesian island of Borneo, and the other from
neighboring Sumatra. The Sumatran species is slimmer and paler, with fur that’s closer to cinnamon than maroon. It
spends more time in trees (perhaps because Sumatra, unlike Borneo, has tigers). And it’s rarer, with about 14,000
remaining individuals, compared with 105,000 in Borneo.
Most of the Sumatran orangutans live on the northern part of the island. But there’s another small group that lives in
Batang Toru—100 kilometers to the south, on the other side of the sizable Lake Toba. A few obscure reports from the
1930s hinted at the existence of this splinter cell, but the group was only formally described in 1997, by a team led by the
conservationist Erik Meijaard. These orangutans always seemed a little unusual. They live in more mountainous forests,
and they eat different kinds of food.
Their genes are also distinct. In 2013, Michael Krützen, from the University of Zurich, analyzed the DNA of 123
Sumatran orangutans, and found that, in at least one part of their genome, the Batang Toru (or Tapanuli) orangutans
were distinct. If anything, they seemed more closely related to the Bornean orangutans on a different island than the
Sumatran ones just a day’s walk to the north. “We didn’t expect that,” says Krützen. “It was peculiar, but we needed
more data.”
He later mentioned this peculiarity while giving a talk at a conference, where both Meijaard and Nowak happened to be
in the audience. The three talked, and, suspecting that these orangutans might belong to their own distinct species, they
teamed up to test that idea.
Krützen’s team analyzed the entire genomes of 37 orangutans, including two from Batang Toru. This more thorough
analysis confirmed that these animals are indeed genetically distinct from both the Bornean and Sumatran species—and
closer to the former than the latter.
They think that the ancestors of all modern orangutans traveled from mainland Asia into Sundaland—a continuous
landmass that includes what is now Sumatra, Borneo, and other islands. Around 3.4 million years ago, these ancestral
apes split into two populations, one of which gave rise to the current Batang Toru lineage. The other group spread
throughout Sundaland; around 670,000 years ago, they split again into two new lineages, which we now know as the
Bornean and Sumatran orangutans. The Batang Toru population occasionally crossbred with their Sumatran cousins,
but those interspecies shenanigans stopped almost completely 100,000 years ago, when an erupting volcano cut them off.
It’s often said that humans differ from chimps by just 1 percent of our genome, so I wondered how close the three
orangutan species are. Krützen disabused me of that question; the number depends on the history of each pair of species,
and there’s little to be gained by comparing between different pairs. “There’s no magic number where, beyond that
level, it’s a different species,” he says. And besides, genetic differences aren’t the only line of evidence the team has.
At the time Krützen was analyzing orangutan DNA, Nowak got word of the dying male who had been attacked in Batang
Toru. And when his team compared its skeleton to those of 33 other orangutans, whose remains are housed in museums,
they found clear differences in the shapes of its skull, teeth, and jaw. Even from the outside, they look distinctive, with
frizzier fur and a more prominent mustache, and beards on the females. They behave differently too: They eat different
plants than the northern populations, and the males have a higher-pitched call.
 Page #11
Not everyone is convinced, though. “It’s premature to consider this a separate species based on one cranium and two
genetic samples,” says Rebecca Stumpf, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “I’d suggest that more
evidence is needed before adopting separate species designations.”
But Nowak and Krützen argue that it’s the weight of all their evidence that matters. The physical measurements “are
based on a sample size of one, which is a pity but we can’t change that,” says Krützen. But there’s also the genetic data,
and the unique behaviors. Besides, other primates have been billed as distinctive species on the basis of much less.
Bonobos, for example, were proposed as a distinct species from chimpanzees based on a single female specimen and five
skulls—without any supporting genetic information to begin with. “There’s no one smoking gun that this is a species,”
says Nowak, “but we kept looking, and we kept on finding unique things.”
“Time will tell,” Krützen says. “We’ll continue to work on this, and it might be that in 10 years’ time, we’ll say we have
new data that doesn’t support a species status. That’s okay. That’s scientific progress.”
The apes might not have 10 years, though. The Sumatran orangutans were already critically endangered, and now their
population might be even smaller than anyone suspected. The newly identified Batang Toru orangutan is rarer still, with
an estimated 800 individuals left. Like the other two species, they are killed as agricultural pests, hunted for the pet
trade, and rendered homeless as their forests are felled.
The good news is that since 2006, biologist Gabriella Fredriksson from the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program
has been pushing the local government to spare the Batang Toru forest from logging. Thanks to her efforts, around 85
percent of the forest is now at least partially protected.
The bad news is that the unprotected 15 percent includes land that’s being set aside for a hydroelectric dam. If built, the
dam would cut off two large chunks of forest where the Batang Toru orangutans live, splitting this already small
population into even smaller factions. That would be devastating. “It’s probably one of the most endangered great apes
we know,” says Krützen. “With just 800 individuals, there’s not much leeway for any mistakes.”
Marc Ancrenaz, co-director of the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project, is hopeful, though. “I hope that this
new status will foster conservation efforts to make sure that the population doesn’t go extinct shortly after being
described,” he says. “It’s definitely good news in these times where conservation is more often than not gloom and
doom.”

Prince William Is Worried There Are Just Too Many People In The World
Link: Prince William Is Worried There Are Just Too Many People in the World
Author: Josh Lowe
Source: Newsweek-Newsweek - News, Analysis, Politics, Business, Technology
Date: November 3rd, 2017 at 8:06 A.M.
Collected: Friday November 3rd, 2017
Topic: Endangered Species; Human Overpopulation; Habitat Destruction

Original Article (412 words):

“Prince William, second in line to the British throne, has warned that exploding populations around the world will put
“enormous pressure” on wildlife unless it is properly managed.
“In my lifetime, we have seen global wildlife populations decline by over half,” the prince, who is known as the Duke of
Cambridge, said at a gala dinner for the Tusk Trust charity in London, the Telegraph reported.
"We are going to have to work much harder,” the duke continued, “and think much deeper, if we are to ensure that
human beings and the other species of animal with which we share this planet can continue to coexist.
 Page #12
“Africa’s rapidly growing human population is predicted to more than double by 2050—a staggering increase of three
and a half million people per month.
“There is no question that this increase puts wildlife and habitat under enormous pressure.
“Urbanisation, infrastructure development, cultivation—all good things in themselves, but they will have a terrible
impact unless we begin to plan and to take measures now.”
The duke said new ideas were needed on how to manage water resources and the grazing of animals, in case
overcrowding ends up having a “catastrophic effect” on wildlife.
A report from WWF and the Zoological Society of London published in 2016 found that the world was on course to lose
two-thirds of its wild animals by 2030, with the destruction of wilderness for agriculture, logging and poaching all major
contributing factors, The Guardian reported at the time.
In 2010 William’s father, Prince Charles, who is first in line to the British throne, warned that the earth could not
“sustain us all,” and that “in the next 50 years, we face monumental problems as the figures rocket,” according to a
separate Telegraph report.
Charles said at the time that “it would certainly help if the acceleration slowed down, but it would also help if the world
reduced its desire to consume.”
And he praised the success of family planning services: “Interestingly, where the loans are managed by the women of
the community, the birth rate has gone down. The impact of these sorts of schemes, of education and the provision of
family planning services, has been widespread.
“I fear there is little chance these sorts of schemes can help the plight of many millions of people unless we all face up to
the fact more honestly than we do that one of the biggest causes of high birth rates remains cultural,” Charles added.”
Summary: Prince Harry, pardon, the love at first sight affair between Harry and actress Meghan Markle just has
been too much of a realistic fairy tale in a world where grounded reality is necessary in what Prince William has
to say about a critical global dilemma (but I think Harry’s affair will workout blissfully given both are just madly
into each other). Anyways, Prince William, forewarned the world, unless the human population stabilizes its

expansion, biodiversity would be at a possibly borderline apocalyptic exigency within the very near future.
Within William short life span thus far, species biodiversity has significantly decreased and will have to survive
under elevating stress and environmental pressure to the fellow living species we coexist with and depend for
our survival, directly and indirectly. Population and living standards, in the meanwhile were on the infinite rise
and will continue to implode fresh records sooner or later, according to Prince William and will implode
enormous pressure on society and political figures to map out a way to elevate living standards and teach
humans the importance of not over consumption to start with and the resources and trends that have
supported this while figuring out a sustainable, harmfully minimalist manner to ensure it will decrease per capita
human footprints to ensure the apocalyptic extinction and endangerment rate that pro-environmental NGOs
and scientists claim will happen does not become a dooming, permanently sunsetting reality. Finally, Charles
admits that cultures will have to break the norms and decrease their birth rates to ensure humanity’s posterity
can thrive in a more secured Earth that will produce and sustain itself for long as possible. I believe that what
Prince William was the blunt truth and with the reality being said, action must be taken before extreme
overpopulation will cause hyper-extreme exploitation to the environment to the point it will decline human
progress for the first time in decades.
 Page #13
How India's Battle With Climate Change Could Determine All Of Our Fates
Link: How India’s battle with climate change could determine all of our fates
Author: Damian Carrington and Michael Safi
Source: The Guardian-News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian
Date: Monday 6 November 2017 03:36 E.D.T.
Collected: Friday November 3rd, 2017
Topic: Climate Change, Economic Development and Income Inequality, Renewable Energy

Original Article (1,559 words):

“It’s a lucky charm,” says Rajesh, pointing to the solar-powered battery in his window that he has smeared with
turmeric as a blessing. “It has changed our life.”

He lives in Rajghat, a village on the border of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states, and until very recently was one of
the 240 million Indians who live without electricity. In the poverty that results, Rajghat has become a village of
bachelors, with just two weddings in 20 years.

“No one wants to give their daughter to me,” says Sudama, another young man. “People come, they visit, but they see
the conditions here and they leave.”

For now, the technology is proving most useful to Rajesh as a way to charge his mobile phone, saving a lengthy journey
to the nearest city, but he also hopes for future benefits: “I’ll use this to let my children study.”

According to an ambitious pledge by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, every Indian will have electricity, and the
education, health and business benefits that follow, by the end of 2018. But how Modi achieves that, and the development
of what will soon become the world’s most populous nation, matters to the entire world.

Of all the most polluting nations – US, China, Russia, Japan and the EU bloc – only India’s carbon emissions are rising:
they rose almost 5% in 2016. No one questions India’s right to develop, or the fact that its current emissions per person
are tiny. But when building the new India for its 1.3 billion people, whether it relies on coal and oil or clean, green
energy will be a major factor in whether global warming can be tamed.

“India is the frontline state,” says Samir Saran, at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi. “Two-thirds of India is
yet to be built. So please understand, 16% of mankind is going to seek the American dream. If we can give it to them on a
frugal climate budget, we will save the planet. If we don’t, we will either destroy India or destroy the planet.”

This view is shared internationally: Christiana Figueres, the UN’s former climate chief who delivered the landmark
Paris climate change agreement says India is “very, very important” for everybody, and the nation will play a key role
at the UN summit that starts in Bonn, Germany next week.

Lord Nicholas Stern, the climate economist who has worked in India for 40 years, says a polluting, high-carbon
development would leave India alone accounting for a huge chunk of the world’s future emissions, making it “very
difficult” to keep the global temperature rise below the internationally agreed danger limit of 2°C.

What will happen remains in the balance. “Anyone who claims to be able to predict India’s emissions in 2030 doesn’t
have a lot of humility,” says Navroz Dubash, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi.

But what is clear is the scale of the challenge. “India has a vast amount of energy-using infrastructure yet to be put in
 Page #14
place,” says Ajay Mathur, the head of the Energy and Resources Institute, an influential Delhi-based think tank. “No
matter what numbers you look at, we will at least double or double-and-a-half our energy consumption in the decade to
2030.”

India is embarking on one of the fastest rural-to-urban transitions in human history, with 200 million more city dwellers
expected by 2030, all using new buildings, roads and cars. In this context, keeping the rise in emissions to just a
doubling would be truly remarkable, says Stern, and leave India’s emissions per person well below the current global
average.

But India’s vast population means that even small increases in emissions per person add up to a huge amount of carbon
dioxide and India is likely to become the world’s biggest polluter. “The sheer numbers of the population multiplied by
anything makes it a big number – that is India’s reality,” says Saran.

There are signs of hope, however, driven by astonishing drops in the price of renewable energy in the last few years.
Costs are falling faster than anyone predicted, with new record-low prices set this year for solar and wind. State
governments can now pay less for clean energy than they pay for new coal power.

Mathur, who was the Indian delegation’s spokesman at the 2015 Paris climate summit, says that once batteries become
powerful enough to store renewable energy for night time or when winds are weak, India’s energy emissions are likely to
plateau and then fall. “I personally saw this happening around 2035, but in the past three years, that has shifted to 2025,
driven by the news in the solar prices and the sharper than expected fall in the price of batteries.”

India’s government has now forecast that no new coal-fired power stations will need to be built for at least 10 years. By
that time, Mathur argues, it will be cheaper to supply new demand using renewable power. “As [existing] coal plants
retire they will be replaced by renewables, because that’s what makes economic sense.”

Another crucial driver is India’s appalling air pollution – half of the world’s most polluted cities are in the nation. “It is
far, far worse than China,” says Stern. “That has really started to build into Indian consciousness and politics.”

That awareness is growing fast – India’s supreme court even banned Diwali festival fireworks in Delhi this year – and is
putting heavy pressure on the government to act. In April, ministers announced that the sale of new petrol or diesel cars
would be banned from 2030, a decade before the UK.

Cutting pollution also cuts carbon emissions, but filthy air is not the only incentive to act. Unchecked global warming
will hit India hard, increasing extreme weather, like the floods that killed thousands in August, and affecting the
monsoon upon which India’s farmers depend.

Heatwaves already cause thousands of deaths in India and rising temperatures that make outdoor work impossible have
already seen the labour equivalent to about half a million people lost since 2000. But in coming decades, heatwaves
could reach a level of humid heat classed as posing “extreme danger” for three-quarters of the population.

Despite the compelling reasons for India to follow a green path into the future, serious obstacles remain, not least the
sorry state of the country’s coal-fired power industry, currently forced to slow its operations by a surplus of electricity in
the market.

“These guys are hurting,” Mathur says, and that has knock-on effects for India’s slowing economy. “They have taken
loans, and they can’t sell electricity, so they can’t repay the loans. And if they can’t repay the banks, the banks have no
 Page #15
money to lend for more growth.” Recent months have seen a backlash against renewables, with intensified lobbying for
coal.

Another problem is ensuring the buildings and transport systems shooting up in cities around India are energy efficient.
“There is the risk of great, sprawling messes, and it is a very big risk,” says Stern, requiring the institutional ability of
the government to shape the future to grow as fast as the cities themselves.

The political climate is – for now – behind the green growth story, says Saran: “Modi, unlike other populist leaders, has
made climate into a strength and not an adversarial debate, like Donald Trump.” But he warns that could change: “The
street capture of irrationality is not something India is immune from either.”

What happens in India also matters to the rest of the world for a practical reason, says Saran, by driving down the costs
of, for example, rolling out solar plants and super-efficient LED bulbs. This would mean all developing countries can
leapfrog a polluting fossil fuel phase as they grow.

“We will mass produce it, mass aggregate it, mass process it for the world,” he says. “America did it for the first billion
people. India is now doing it for the rest of the six billion on the planet.”

The whole world would benefit from a clean, green India and can help make it happen, says Stern, by bringing down the
interest rates on the loans used to fund the low carbon transition: “The best thing the world could do is help bring down
the cost of capital.” That means long term finance and help to cut project risks.

The path India’s chooses will affect the whole world and, despite the uncertainties and risks, the mood is optimistic, for a
variety of reasons. “India has all the institutions of democracy and a very smart entrepreneurial class which will
respond, and that gives me optimism,” says Saran.

Dubash says: “We’ll [do] it because we don’t have that much high-quality coal. We are already hitting high pollution
[levels]. We already have issues with imports, and so energy security is a big factor. All of those things will lead us to
moderate.”

For those currently without any electricity, solar power is the perfect solution, both fast and affordable, says Stern. Back
in Rajghat, a young mother called Ramhali agrees. Three days earlier, a group of students from a nearby city, Dholpur,
installed a single, five-watt light in her home, powered by solar panels on the roof. It has replaced the old liquor bottle
filled with kerosene, that flickered with toxic, black-tipped smoke and gave the children headaches.

So can India’s leaders bring light to its poorest people, build clean, green cities for its billion-strong population and end
the plague of air pollution? Figueres says: “More important than my opinion is their opinion, and they think they can,
and do so with many benefits.”

Summary: India currently faces a crossroads on how to elevate the standard of living through providing all
Indians with electricity by the end of 2018 to propel its economy, educational attainment rates and general
health well-being never seen before in the developing world in recent memory but with a population almost
quadruple to the United States of America and sooner or later will surpass China’s population, how can India
boost the standard of living to those of developed countries without releasing the amount of climate change
inducing carbon emissions that will hit India hard in the future in the form of mortal heat waves, tsunami
flooding and much more. Narendra Modi, who has some of the highest approval ratings of any politician in the
world thus far believes there’s a middle ground. And while Trump’s (another populist) base goes wild over
 Page #16
Trump’s plans to restrict immigration, no matter the societal, moral or economic cost, Modi’s strength with
people would be his active and hyper-ambitious plans to ensure India minimizes its contribution to the climate
problem while improving the lives of millions. And it's already shaping up to Modi’s vision, according to the
Guardian. Renewable energy from the sun and the wind costs significantly less than fossil fuels with prices
continue to become more affordable for everyday consumers. The oversupply of electricity in the market has
incentivized banks to slow down and in some cases, halt loans to coal fired power plants in the long-term,
leading for an opportunity for renewable energy to dominate what India will be fueled of. And many Indians
believe in India’s actions to frugalize truly sustainable living for the rest of the world and India might be a
paradigm for other developing nations to take multifunctional actions that will benefit their own countries a
myriad of ways through securing a prosperous future in the state of its environment and people while being a
stable societal and economic long-term stimulus for today, tomorrow and for many decades to come.

Environmentalists and Developers: A Love Story

Link: Environmentalists and developers: A love story
Author: Nathanael Johnson
Source: Salon-Salon: in-depth news, politics, business, technology & culture
Date: Monday November 6th, 2017 at 12:58 A.M.
Collected: Monday November 6th, 2017
Topic: Urban Sprawl, Sustainable Urban Growth, Planning and Development, New Urbanism, Green Urbanism

Original Article (2,773 words):

This was at least the eighth time that Scott Wiener sat through the same PowerPoint presentation, and he was beginning
to wonder what the heck was going on. It was 2009, and Wiener was an environmentalist and LGBT-rights activist who
had become president of his neighborhood association in San Francisco’s Castro district. Developers were presenting
plans for a bunch of apartments atop a Whole Foods — and it seemed like a good idea to Wiener. The development
would replace a vacant Ford showroom, it was on a transit line, and it would be designed by deep-green architect
William McDonough+Partners.
But before they could build, they had to have meetings — so many meetings!
Even though this project complied with all local zoning codes, city officials had scheduled some 50 meetings to solicit
community feedback, Wiener said. It seemed like a system designed to stop developers from building housing. This, he
thought, had to be bad for the environment.
Environmentalists are usually thought of as folks who are trying to stop something: a destructive dam, an oil export
terminal, a risky pipeline. But when it comes to housing, new-school environmentalists — like Wiener — understand that
it’s necessary to support things, too. To meet California’s ambitious goals to cut pollution and greenhouse gas
emissions, regulators say the state must build dense, walkable neighborhoods that allow people to ditch their cars.
If you slow down development in cities, houses will sprawl out over farmland, and people will wind up making longer
commutes. “You can’t legitimately call yourself an environmentalist,” Wiener says, “unless you support dense housing
in walkable neighborhoods with public transportation.”
Wiener decided to get involved in his neighborhood’s development issues, and he got elected to office — first as a San
Francisco supervisor, then as a state senator. He’s made it a top priority to ditch all of those redundant meetings and
clear away red tape for responsible housing development in cities. This year, he introduced a bill in the California state
assembly that served as the lynch-pin in a historic package of 15 new laws aimed at spurring new housing, which San
Francisco and other parts of the state desperately need.
 Page #17
All of this makes Wiener perhaps the most powerful voice in the YIMBY — yes, in my backyard! — movement. The
YIMBYs are mostly millennials who, angered by the urban housing shortage, have begun demanding a building boom to
put roofs over heads, get people out of cars, drive down rents and stop sprawl.
But the idea that profit-driven builders could provide equitable, environmentally friendly housing sounds like a joke to
much of San Francisco’s progressive establishment. The arguments against new, dense development are familiar:
homeowners talk about the “character of their neighborhoods,” renters fear losing rent-controlled units. For decades,
developers have been the bad guys. Now they’ve got some degree of public support on their side.
“The YIMBYs have pretty much been a Trojan horse for developers,” says Chris Carlsson, a cycling advocate and
author in San Francisco.
And it’s not just in the Bay Area. Seems like everywhere across the country where there’s a housing shortage, you’ll find
YIMBYs or like-minded advocates for denser development. The result: new partisans within the green movement
sparring over policy and throwing more shade than a 50-story tower.
When Wiener got elected to San Francisco’s city hall as a supervisor in 2010, environmental activists would shout at
him as he walked through the halls. “There was a lot of opposition to every conceivable housing proposal,” he
remembers, “and not a lot of support — other than from the developers.”
Then Sonja Trauss started showing up.
An environmentalist from Philadelphia, Trauss grew up “aggressively committed to biking and walking,” because she
didn’t want to be part of the climate problem. “I felt very resentful that people would design cities that required people
to buy a car,” she says.
When she moved to San Francisco in 2011, she was shocked to see the local chapter of the Sierra Club opposing
development. No matter the proposal — for affordable housing, or a luxury tower — there was always some ostensibly
green organization ready to argue that it was fatally flawed. As thwarted projects piled up, something snapped inside
her.
“I said, ‘Fuck you guys, I know what you are doing. You are making signs, I can make signs. You are writing letters? We
can write letters.’”
She started urging people to join her at planning commission hearings. Anyone who had complained about NIMBYs on
Facebook, over beers, or in the comments section of blog posts made her invite list. She made a Google group to keep
the conversation going online. It was a snarky, profane community where social justice advocates and libertarians
argued, found common ground, and trolled anyone opposed to new housing.
The chaotic nature of the group suited Trauss, who considers herself an anarchist. In a devil-may-care gesture, she
named the group the San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation — SF BARF.
Other YIMBY clubs sprang up (there are now 10 around the Bay Area) — although none had quite as provocative a
name. Trauss, like a good anarchist, encouraged them all. “There’s tons of crazy people against development. I wanted
to get a bunch of crazy people for development.”
These YIMBYs were a godsend for Wiener. He was no longer in the uncomfortable position of voting against all the
community members that came to hearings. “These young, hip millennials were showing up and saying, ‘Hey, I’m a
renter, and I want to know what my future is in this city,’” Wiener recalls. “‘Why are we making it so hard to build
housing?’”
Unlike the buttoned-up businessmen who had spoken for developments in the past, these YIMBYs made their points
forcefully. They could be funny, passionate, and a little unhinged. Trauss showed up for a debate on television wearing a
Batman T-shirt.
 Page #18
“I’m really upset by some of the things that were said up here,” one YIMBY stalwart, Laura Foote Clark, ranted at a
hearing. “My entire generation has been stunted by a housing shortage brought on by people who can’t stand to have
apartment buildings in their neighborhoods.”
When Wiener ran for the California Senate last year, the YIMBYs were squarely behind him. They had more than 200
volunteers knocking on doors, and many more skirmishing on social media. Wiener never missed an opportunity to point
out that he had voted for controversial measures to build more housing, which his opponent, Jane Kim, had fought.
It seemed like a risky move, but polls suggested the tactic was sound, he says. “The voters were ahead of the politicians
in understanding that we need to have more housing.” (Kim’s office did not respond to an interview request.)
In December, on his first day in the Senate, Wiener introduced a housing bill aimed at fast-tracking developments in that
meet zoning regulations in housing-strapped cities. It essentially stripped away the kind of meetings that Wiener had to
sit through as a community activist.
To win support, he bargained with labor and environmental groups. The former wanted tweaks to require builders to
hire a union workforce, the latter wanted revisions to prevent sprawl and protect prime farmland, wetlands, and coastal
areas.
With those amendments, the California League of Conservation Voters and Natural Resources Defense Council both
ultimately threw their weight behind Wiener’s measure. The California Sierra Club remained opposed, but “they never
went to war,” he says. “They could have made things a lot harder.”
Still, the proposal had powerful opponents, including a powerful committee leader. Five months after Wiener had
proposed the bill, it appeared to be stuck in legislative purgatory. “We just have to keep it going,” Wiener told staffers.
“Our job is to keep this bill alive and intact until the cavalry arrives.
As strange as San Francisco’s breed of anarchist-inspired YIMBYs might have seemed to traditional progressives,
they’re part of a national trend, as millennial environmentalists embrace a different shade of green from their
predecessors. They’re focused on social justice and looming global peril, not on saving beautiful places and individual
species.
Carol Galante, a housing policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says many environmental groups
have started to advocate for housing, reflecting this generational change.
“I see a huge shift happening,” she says.
The Sierra Club straddles that shift, with chapters on opposing sides. Sierra Magazine published an admiring article on
the YIMBY movement earlier this year, and the group’s Seattle chapter is led by supporters of denser housing.
But the Bay Area chapter has clashed repeatedly with YIMBYs over both individual projects and big-picture policies.
Last year, YIMBYs unsuccessfully tried to shift the chapter’s stance by joining en masse. This April, around the time that
Wiener’s bill was beginning to hit opposition in legislative committees, a YIMBY journalist went to a Sierra Club
meeting and wrote about members planning to use environmental laws to prevent housing from replacing a car repair
shop.
The article garnered attention, and lots of people started pinging the California state lobbying arm of the Sierra Club to
ask why they were fighting on the side of cars instead of urban housing.
After reading a series of critical tweets, the director of Sierra Club California, Kathryn Phillips, emailed the leaders of
the San Francisco chapter to say that, even if the story was wrong, the chapter should correct the perception that it was
using environmental protection rules to stop housing.
“Public perception and political optics right now are not good,” she wrote.
 Page #19
The Bay Area chapter declined my interview request, but leaders sent me a statement agreeing that more affordable
housing in urban areas is good for the environment “as long as the ‘solutions’ don’t sell out values that are key to
building a sustainable and equitable Bay Area — for example, by breaking urban limit lines, increasing reliance on cars,
or prioritizing luxury development over affordable housing.”
But in San Francisco, all market-rate housing must sell at luxury prices to make a profit. The land itself, the community
planning process, and the environmental reviews are staggeringly expensive. One new government-subsidized housing
project in San Francisco cost $600,000 per apartment to build.
When environmentalists only support housing that offers below-market rents, they’re essentially opposing all private
development. Some greens promote creative ideas for land trusts, government-backed co-ops, and other “anti-
capitalist” options, as Miguel Robles-Durán, a Parsons School of Design professor, calls them, but experts don’t see
those working in the United States anytime soon.
As UCLA planning professor Michael Lens puts it: “You could say we need to blow up the system, but it doesn’t strike
me as being particularly realistic. I think the YIMBY movement is right to work within that system and work with
developers.”
If the solution is to wait for the government to make affordable housing a priority, hardly anything will get built, argues
Argues Brian Hanlon, a car-hating, vegetarian YIMBY: “It’s this idiotic thinking where the environment you are trying
to protect gets worse and worse because you are waiting for some perfect solution to be delivered from God or the
revolution or something. It’s monstrously unethical.”
When Wiener’s bill stalled in committee this spring, the YIMBYs kept up their support, but it was California Governor
Jerry Brown who broke the stalemate in July, threatening to veto other housing bills supported by lawmakers without
something similar to Wiener’s fast-track proposal.
The YIMBYs also lobbied for a tax on real estate sales and a $4-billion bond to pay for more affordable housing. Then
there was the most audacious bill of them all — a measure to help YIMBYs and developers sue cities that blocked
housing projects.
All of this, they hoped, would lead to a boom in urban housing, lower prices, and, eventually, less pollution. Wiener built
green cred by working on other environmental bills as well, including measures to boost solar power, water
conservation, and recycling (just to name a few).
After negotiations with the governor, legislators realized they needed Wiener’s bill to pass the housing package. On
Sept. 14, Clark and several other YIMBYs were drinking in San Francisco’s Mission when word arrived that lawmakers
were tussling over the housing measures late into the night.
We pulled out our laptops and set up a mini war room right there in the bar,” says Hanlon, the car-hating vegetarian.
The YIMBYs started emailing their compatriots, asking them to call or contact their legislators on social media. Around
11 p.m., one affordable housing bill after another passed, and the bar erupted in cheers.
Brown brought politicians from around the state to San Francisco to sign the bills into law on Sept. 29. Weiner made a
speech, proclaiming: “Today, California begins a pivot — a pivot from a housing-last policy to a housing first policy.”
Is YIMBYism the future of environmentalism? Most researchers I talked to said the pro-housing activists are good for
the environment, because they push cities to become denser and more transit-friendly. But not always.
Christine Johnson, the San Francisco director of the urbanism think tank SPUR, applauded YIMBYs for making
NIMBYism less attractive, for changing the political conversation, and for fighting single-family zoning, which causes
the most environmentally destructive sprawl. But she cautions that there’s a small segment of YIMBYs who embrace any
form of housing, including sprawl.
 Page #20
“To really get to a new form of equitable environmentalism, YIMBYs need to take a step further,” she says. “I think they
will get there. They aren’t there yet.”
That means taking a strong stand for policies that encourage modest and efficient living in cities, rather than luxury
blight. YIMBYs could fight for limits on apartment sizes, Johnson suggests, so that more people can share each new
development, and could also campaign for the regional transit lines needed to make dense cities work.
There’s also concern about the movement getting co-opted by developers, who definitely aren’t saints. As Clark started
working full time as an activist, for instance, her group YIMBY Action started taking money from developers ($5,000 last
year from a building PAC) and tech companies. But the majority of her funding still comes from individuals.
And she’s still not doing it for the money, she says. “There is no amount of money that could make me go to these
hearings,” she laughs. “Caring is the worst.”
At least one point is beyond dispute: Californians need more places to live. Housing costs are the main reason that
California has the highest poverty rate of any state, worse than Alabama and Mississippi. And California keeps building
sprawling subdivisions. Pushing poor people away from the coasts to hot inland suburbs — where they have to run air
conditioners and spend hours each day in cars — is terrible for the environment.
The housing crisis is what gives YIMBYs their power. Organizing offers people an outlet for their frustration and an
opportunity to influence housing policy on a local level. Advocates can show up at a planning commission, join an online
group, write letters to politicians, and knock on doors before local elections.
YIMBYs are making a difference, says Berkeley’s Galante. “They are really driving to get localities to approve new
housing across the income spectrum — places with good transit and jobs.”
Now, with the passage of California’s big housing package, they’ve played a crucial role in changing the rules of the
game. The new laws will provide more than $1 billion a year to build affordable housing, while eliminating some of the
barriers that NIMBYs use to stop new buildings.
There are YIMBY clubs popping up all over the country and around the world.
After last year’s election, Clark went to Wiener’s apartment to interview him for the YIMBY podcast, Infill, which she,
Trauss, and Hanlon started last year. His home was tiny and — she whispers — “kind of crappy.” They were both
exhausted. After Donald Trump’s election, it felt like the world might crumble around her.
But she also felt like she had just made the world a little better by getting a YIMBY elected to state office. Clark has
spent a lot of her life feeling powerless, she said, a sentiment she thinks many young people share. “Especially for
millennials — a lot of them landed out of college, and there just wasn’t anything there for them,” she says. “You feel like
you’re a bag of shit and a waste of space.
“To be part of something that’s bigger than yourself, and to actually be able to move it forward, is a very uplifting
feeling. It feels like it’s not about me. It’s about what we can accomplish together.”
Summary: Meet Scott Weiner, currently California Senator Member and prides himself into being an actual
environmentalist, not only taking action and initiative to put forward ideas to protect the environment in the
long term and short term but also molds in social and economic justice into his actions. And many people have
followed his lead and took initiative despite the chances of failure, the controversial NIMBYists that were willing
to brag that this movement will only enrich the wealthy’s pockets while destroying the very neighborhoods they
grew up in, even though the change is a necessary evil according to YIMBYs, into this relatively new
environmental and economic revolution known as YIMBYism. It has already won major accomplishments,
recently with the California governor, Jerry Brown, signing Weiner’s SB 35 bill, which will force cities to simplify
and speed up the permitting process if their localities have fallen behind on the state’s recommended housing
 Page #21
targets, based on job and population growth. Jerry Brown, that same day signed a host of bills to provide more
funding for affordable housing in the form of bonds and taxes and make the state more housing development
friendly. And YIMBYs see the prosperity their ideas, their actions, their words and their protests after all these
years will bring to the Golden State, which suffers from inflated poverty rates deriving from above average
rents and mortgages, contributing unnecessary carbon emission rates to the atmosphere, especially in a state
ambitious to reduce carbon emissions to significantly lower levels in the near future, in odds with the Trump
administration and elevated levels of homelessness, unlike any other state in the union. These new-age
environmentalists believe that simplifying, speeding and reducing the cost of the permitting process for high
density urban infill projects in underutilized urban areas such as the mixed-use project Wiener fought in 2009
next to public transportation in an abandoned car dealership/showroom, would not only allow more housing to
come online to balance out the whacked out supply and demand curve seen leading to the reality we see
today in regards to housing costs. New-age environmentalists see this as a way to ramp up job growth even
further, boosting the construction industry’s workforce to levels never seen before and providing more money
into the middle, working and poor class within California, meaning increased consumer spending, a catalyst for
tax coffers and job expansion through lowering the cost of producing housing, meaning lower costs and
permitting heightened competition, leading to even lower prices and making it easier to build the very housing,
affordable and missing middle that will benefit ordinary Californians the most. And pro-environmental groups
see this in an increasingly positive connotation, knowing more housing to wear people play and live, means
less to no driving (due to a more walkable, bikeable and public transit friendly environment, allowing locals to
have more eco-friendly methods to move around), decreasing climate change provoking CO2 and not
incentivizing urban sprawl into warmer regions, meaning reduced energy usage equaling less CO 2 pollution
from fossil fueled plants and allowing more space for wildlife and habitat preservation/restoration, excellent for
ensuring biodiversity for generations to come. Pro-environmental groups realize that true environmentalism
would be ensuring their actions to protect the environment do not have a negative environmental side effect or
worse, be hypocritical policies and actions in themselves and that justice is at the forefront of protecting the
environment to ensure all parties involved, despite their walks of life, receive fairness, recognition and justice.

Ohio Sues Developer Behind Dakota Access Pipeline Over Pollution Issues
Link: Ohio sues developer behind Dakota Access Pipeline over pollution issues
Author: Mark Hand
Source: ThinkProgress-ThinkProgress
Date: Monday November 6th 2017 at 12:01 P.M.
Collected: Monday November 6th, 2017

Original Article (869 words):

The state of Ohio filed a lawsuit against Rover Pipeline, operated and majority-owned by Energy Transfer Partners, for
allegedly polluting state waterways as it constructs a 713-mile natural gas pipeline that would transport natural gas
from southwest Pennsylvania across Ohio and into Michigan and Ontario, Canada.
The lawsuit against Rover Pipeline, filed on behalf of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, comes as Energy
Transfer Partners is still facing fallout from its Dakota Access Pipeline, a controversial oil pipeline that sparked massive
protests in North Dakota and across the country.
The Rover Pipeline allegedly discharged several million gallons of drilling fluid into wetlands at different locations
along the pipeline’s route, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Altogether, the $4.2 billion Rover
 Page #22
Pipeline project has been slapped with at least 13 environmental violations by Ohio regulators since construction began
earlier this year.
The biggest spill began on April 13, when Rover Pipeline is accused of discharging several million gallons of drilling
fluids into wetlands in southwestern Stark County, Ohio.
The lawsuit, filed on Friday by Ohio Attorney General Michael DeWine (R) in the Court of Common Pleas in Stark
County, contends that Rover Pipeline’s activities “harmed pristine wetlands in Stark County that require the highest
level of protection” and that “Rover failed to secure any water pollution permits designed to control these discharges.”
Whether through “a series of calculated business decisions or complete indifference to Ohio’s regulators efforts, Rover
had endangered the environment in more than 10 counties (including Start) and violated state laws, rules, and permits
designed to protect the quality of Ohio’s water,” the lawsuit says.
The Ohio EPA also contends Energy Transfer Partners owes the state about $2.3 million dollars in civil fines and
damages. In the lawsuit, the attorney general is seeking the court’s permission for the state environmental agency to
assess the civil penalties.
In an email to ThinkProgress, Energy Transfer Partners said it has “worked cooperatively” with the Ohio EPA for the
past six months to resolve the claims in a way that is satisfactory to all parties involved. “We are therefore disappointed
that they have resorted to litigation when Ohio EPA has acknowledged publicly that Rover has complied with all
applicable environmental laws,” Energy Transfer Partners said.
Ohio EPA spokesperson James Lee, in an email, said Energy Transfer Partners’ statement “is not correct.” Rover
Pipeline “has not fully complied” with the agency’s orders, he said. In a September 20 letter asking the Ohio attorney
general’s office to begin civil proceedings against Rover Pipeline, the state environmental agency said the pipeline
company “has committed dozens of violations of Ohio’s water pollution control laws and air pollution laws.”
The state agency tried to address the violations with the pipeline company, but “despite these efforts, we were unable to
come to a negotiated resolution,” Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler said in the letter to the attorney general’s office.
The pipeline company, however, does not believe the Ohio attorney general’s lawsuit will affect its construction timeline.
A portion of the Rover Pipeline in Ohio began operating in August. Another phase, starting in Noble County, Ohio, to
Harrison County, Ohio, is expected to be completed by the end of the year. The entire Rover Pipeline is expected to be in
full service by the end of the first quarter of 2018, the company said.
One of the alleged violations led the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to issue a four-month stop on
drilling in May under waterways and roads following the release of about 2 million gallons of drilling fluid, a clay and
water mix, into wetlands in Ohio. FERC’s ban on drilling was lifted in September.
In April, the construction on the pipeline discharged more than two million gallons of clay-like drilling wastewater in
Ohio, damaging wetlands. A spokesperson for the Ohio EPA told ThinkProgress at the time that the wetlands would not
recover “for decades.”
The list of Energy Transfer Partners’ infractions in Ohio continued to grow. In June, Rover Pipeline LLC, a subsidiary
of Energy Transfer Partners, agreed to pay $1.5 million annually for five years to the Ohio History Connection
Foundation to compensate for damages to historic properties while constructing the pipeline. In July, West Virginia’s
Department of Environmental Protection ordered some construction on the Rover Pipeline in the state to stop, citing
environmental violations.
Energy Transfer Partners’ $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline has been operating since June 1, moving oil from North
Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to a distribution point in Illinois.
 Page #23
In October, a judge ruled that Energy Transfer Partners could continue transporting oil on the Dakota Access Pipeline
during an ongoing environmental review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The ruling was a blow to the Standing
Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes of North and South Dakota, whose opposition led to a huge gathering of
Native Americans — near the Standing Rock reservation in 2016 and into early 2017 — in protest of the pipeline’s
potential impact on the tribe’s water supply.
Last spring, the Dakota Access pipeline system leaked more than 100 gallons of oil in North Dakota in two separate
incidents in March as crews prepared the disputed $3.8 billion pipeline for operation.
The COP23 Climate Change Summit in Bonn and Why It Matters
Link: The COP23 climate change summit in Bonn and why it matters
Author: Damian Carrington
Source: The Guardian-News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian
Date: Sunday November 5th 2017 at 04.00 EST
Collected: Monday November 6th, 2017
Topic: Climate Change

Original Article (1,368 words):

What is happening?
The world’s nations are meeting for the 23rd annual “conference of the parties” (COP) under the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which aims to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the
climate system”, ie halt global warming. It is taking place in Bonn, Germany from 6-17 November.
Why does it matter?
Climate change is already significantly increasing the likelihood of extreme weather, from heat waves to floods. But
without sharp cuts to global carbon emissions, we can expect “severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts” for billions
of people and the natural world. The landmark Paris agreement at COP21 in 2015 delivered the first truly global deal to
tackle climate change, but national action needs to be significantly toughened to meet to goal of keeping global
temperature rise to well below 2°C, and 1.5°C if possible.
All the science, and the battering that extreme weather has inflicted this year from floods in India and Nigeria to
hurricanes in the Caribbean and wildfires in the US and Europe, indicates that global emissions need to start falling
urgently – in the next few years. The Paris agreement set out principles, but not the details, with one diplomat likening it
to having a brilliant new smartphone but no operating system. The Bonn meeting will be vital in building the rules that
will enable the Paris deal to work.
What’s new?
COPs are always run by a designated nation and for the first time this will be one of the small island nations that are
most at risk from the sea-level rise and extreme storms that climate change is bringing. Fiji’s prime minister, Frank
Bainimarama, is the COP president, though the summit is being held in Germany for practical reasons. Fiji suffered
damages of well over $1 billion after Cyclone Winston struck in 2016, which is likely to focus attention on the
contentious issue of compensation for climate damage and adapting to future threats, as much as cutting emissions.
Hasn’t Donald Trump pulling the US out of the Paris agreement scuppered hopes of progress?
No. As the world’s second biggest polluter and richest nation, the US is important. But when President Trump
announced the US withdrawal in June – it takes effect in 2020 – the UN’s chief climate negotiator, who delivered the
Paris deal, ended up thanking him. “It provoked an unparalleled wave of support for the treaty,” said Christiana
Figueres. “He shored up the world’s resolve on climate action, and for that we can all be grateful.”
The US now seems very isolated – only war-torn Syria is also outside the Paris deal. What role they will play in Bonn is
largely unknown, though promotion of coal and gas as climate solutions is planned. Rumours that the climate-sceptic
 Page #24
head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, would lead the US delegation proved unfounded however.
One COP veteran said: “The mood on the ground is it is going to be OK: the US is not going to be a pain in the arse.
They still don’t know what they actually want.” Nazhat Shameem Khan, Fiji’s chief negotiator was even less diplomatic
when asked about dealing with the US: “You can have a dialogue [even] with somebody who is an axe murderer.”
In any case, many US states, cities and businesses have pledged to honour the Paris deal and will have a high profile in
Bonn. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he will pay the $15m in UNFCCC administration costs
if the US government does not.
What needs to be done?
The current pledges for carbon cuts by the world’s nations would mean at least 3°C of global warming and severe
damage. So the Paris agreement included a mechanism for the pledges to be reviewed and ratcheted up, but without
setting the rules. The vital groundwork for this has to be done in Bonn before being finalised in 2018. Without serious
preparation to build trust and agreement, deals don’t get done, as the failed COP in Copenhagen in 2009 showed. Fiji
has renamed the ratchet talks process from the bland “facilitative dialogue” to the “talanoa dialogue” after a Pacific
island concept of using storytelling and talking as a way to make good decisions.
Could there be flashpoints?
Yes. There are deep and longstanding tensions over the issue of “loss and damage”, the idea that developing nations
should be compensated for destruction resulting from climate change which they did little or nothing to cause. “The
principle is one of compensation because the western countries developed their economies at the expense of the planet
and of poor people,” says Dorothy Grace Guerrero, at campaign group Global Justice Now. The stakes are heightened
further as some developing nations feel they lost out in the Paris agreement which, unlike previous deals, does not
impose legally binding commitments on rich nations.
There is a strand of the negotiations tackling this – the Warsaw mechanism – but they have a “glaring omission”,
according to aid groups: no money. The rich nations are opposed to loss and damage payments, seeing them as similar
to calls for reparations for slavery.
The issue is highly charged and needs to be resolved to prevent harm spreading to other areas of negotiation.
Widespread and cheap insurance against extreme weather is a compromise being heavily pushed by western nations, for
example the G7’s InsuResilience initiative aimed at helping 400 million of the world’s poorest people. But it is unclear
how insurance could solve slow and inevitable problems like overwhelming sea-level rise on low-level coasts.
What about the funds already pledged to help poorer nations?
Rich nations had already pledged to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer nations restrict their emissions
as they grow and adapt to climate change. But there are rows about what kind of funding should be counted and indeed
whether $100 billion is enough. The US was expected to be a big contributor and so a question to be tackled in Bonn is
whether other countries will pick up the tab.
Who else turns up for the COP?
Nations do the negotiating but business groups pledging action also attend, such as the Renewable Energy 100 and We
Mean Business and in Bonn the California governor Jerry Brown and Bloomberg are expected to make a splash with an
announcement about their America’s Pledge initiative on 11 November.
The presence of big fossil fuel companies is always controversial: detractors say their lobbying hinders progress while
defenders say the low-carbon revolution won’t happen without getting them on board. The civil society groups that are
always a big part of every COP will protest on this issue, in particular against the lignite coal industry near Bonn that
still provides a lot of Germany’s power. “Some of our guests will be fairly surprised to see just how much Germany still
relies on coal,” says Annalena Baerbock, climate spokesperson of Germany’s Green party.
 Page #25
NGOs also pressure nations to increase their ambition and aid smaller nations that lack the negotiating resources of the
bigger countries. COPs are certainly becoming broader, with Figueres saying: “Paris is everyone’s deal. It belongs to
cities, businesses, NGOs and all of global civil society as much as it belongs to nation-states.”
Won’t the Bonn summit have a massive carbon footprint?
There will be 10,000 government delegates, another 8,000 people from other groups and 2,000 members of the media
travelling to Bonn from all over the globe. The organisers are trying to avoid as many emissions as possible, for example
by using electric buses for conference transport. But the emissions that can’t be avoided will be offset, mainly using UN-
certified schemes in small island states, in recognition of Fiji’s presidency of the COP.
So what represents success in Bonn?
An editorial in the leading science journal Nature, which calls the Paris accord a “triumph”, puts it succinctly: “In
theory, the annual climate roller coaster is idling through one of the low-key phases in which success is measured by
nothing going wrong. In practice, the Bonn meeting will serve as a litmus test of how the rest of the world plans to stand
united [without the US] and to keep the spirit of Paris alive.”

House Approves Bill To Speed Logging To Combat Wildfires

Link: House approves bill to speed logging to combat wildfires
Author: Matthew Daly
Source: The Associated Press-Associated Press
Date: Wednesday November 1st, 2017 at 6:36 E.T.
Collected: Monday November 6th, 2017
Topic: Deforestation, Wildfire Prevention Management and Forest Management

Original Article (530 words):

Responding to deadly wildfires in California and the West, House Republicans on Wednesday passed a bill to allow
faster approval for logging and other actions to reduce the risk of fire in national forests.
The House voted 232-188 to loosen environmental regulations for forest-thinning projects on federal lands. The measure
now goes to the Senate.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said the bill was needed to protect the nation's forests "from the kind of devastation that
California experienced." The GOP bill "will help us stop forest fires before they occur," said Ryan, R-Wisconsin
Republicans and the timber industry have long complained about environmental rules that block or delay plans to cut
down trees to reduce fire risk. Democrats and environmentalists say GOP policies would bypass important
environmental laws to clear-cut vast swaths of national forests, harming wildlife and the environment.
The GOP bill is one of at least three being considered in Congress to address wildfires and solve a longstanding "fire
borrowing" problem that forces officials to take funds from fire prevention programs to put out increasingly dangerous
wildfires.
The legislation comes as the Forest Service and other federal agencies spent a record $2.9 billion battling forest fires in
one of the nation's worst fire seasons. Wildfires have burned nearly 9 million acres across the country, with much of the
devastation in California, Oregon and Montana.
At least 43 people were killed in a series of wildfires in California last month, and firefighters have been killed in
Montana, Oregon and other states.
 Page #26
The House bill's sponsor, Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said the fires show "how years of unmanaged federal forests
have wreaked havoc on our environment, polluting our air and water and destroying thousands of acres of wildlife
habitat."
He and other Republicans say proactive management of forests — including prescribed burns, salvage logging of dead
trees and projects to cut small trees and underbrush — reduces the risk of wildfires and lessens the severity of fires that
occur.
Democrats say they support responsible projects to prevent fires, but accuse Republicans of using the current fires as an
excuse to undermine the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and other laws.
Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, senior Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said the GOP bill would
"elevate logging over all other uses, increasing logging companies' access to public lands but doing little to prevent
forest fires."
House Republicans "know the bill has no future in the Senate and are pushing it anyway as a purely ideological
exercise," Grijalva said.
The Trump administration said it "appreciates the intent" of the bill, but questioned a provision aimed at solving the fire
borrowing issue. As written, the bill would force firefighting agencies to compete for emergency funding with other
natural disasters such as hurricanes, the White House said in a statement.
The White House said it supports a separate emergency fund for wildfires, an approach also taken in a bipartisan bill
led by Western senators.
Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop of Utah said the bill provides important resources for firefighters, but also
gives federal land managers needed tools to improve conditions on the ground and reduce the threat of wildfire.
Summary: Lately, subsequently after disasters, tragedy and matters that touched controversy fell upon
Americans from all walks of life like dominos, hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, terroristic mass shootings,
terrorism, waves of allegation of sexual assault, rape, misconduct and harassment to many prominent, but now
disgraced movie moguls, journalists, politicians, massagers, celebrities, etc., the GOP might be preventing one
natural disaster that has recently upended the lives of hundreds of thousands, left dozens dead and wiped
entire cities and towns off the face of the Earth in California’s wine country, that has been wildfires. The House
bill plans to “loosen environmental regulations for forest-thinning lands on federal lands” so the private sector
can clear off dry brush and forestry to prevent savage like wildfires and to axe off the fire instigation risk dry
brush and trees supply. This comes after nine million acres burned thus far this year, mostly in the West and
almost $3 billion spent fighting them, with some of the very humble heroes who fight in the front lines to save
property and other lives, tragically died while slaying the fire down. Democrats, however, charged to the attack
claiming that Republicans utilized this use as a chance to undercut the importance of landmark environmental
laws such as the Endangered Species Act and will incentivize the clear cutting of forest, endangering wildlife
and the stability/resilliency of ecosystems. What do you think? In environmental terms, there is two sides to the
coin, one being that although axing trees off their stumps reduces the ecosystem’s capacity to capture climate
change inducing carbon dioxide and leaves less variety of habitat for species, but eventually when the forest
burns during a wildlife, it releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and the other side is vice-versa. That is
what I found most fascinating about the article, that for certain environmental issues, there is two environmental
perspectives to the proposed solutions to the environmental matter. The best that could be done to prevent
wildfires in the first place, would to simply remind human beings trekking, discovering and hiking the way up to
not engage in childish behavior that can flare up fires.
 Page #27
How Has Air Quality Been Affected By The US Fracking Boom?
Link: How Has Air Quality Been Affected By The US Fracking Boom?
Author: Gunnar W. Schade
Source: Salon-Salon: in-depth news, politics, business, technology & culture
Date: Friday November 3rd, 2017 at 3:00 A.M.
Collected: Monday November 6th, 2017
Topic: Fracking, Energy Extraction and Air Pollution

Original Article (1,357 words):

Fracking has led to increased truck traffic, a reasons for worsening trends on air quality in areas with drilling
Urban air pollution in the U.S. has been decreasing near continuously since the 1970s. Federal regulations, notably the
Clean Air Act passed by President Nixon, to reduce toxic air pollutants such as benzene, a hydrocarbon, and ozone, a
strong oxidant, effectively lowered their abundance in ambient air with steady progress.
But about 10 years ago, the picture on air pollutants in the U.S. started to change. The “fracking boom” in several
different parts of the nation led to a new source of hydrocarbons to the atmosphere, affecting abundances of both toxic
benzene and ozone, including in areas that were not previously affected much by such air pollution.
As a result, in recent years there has been a spike of research to determine what the extent of emissions are from fracked
oil and gas wells – called “unconventional” sources in the industry. While much discussion has surrounded methane
emissions, a greenhouse gas, less attention has been paid to air toxics.
Upstream Emissions
Fracking is a term that can stir strong emotions among its opponents and proponents. It is actually a combination of
techniques, including hydraulic fracturing, that has allowed drillers to draw hydrocarbons from rock formations which
were once not profitable to tap.
Drillers shatter layers of shale rock with high-pressure water, sand and chemicals to start the flow of hydrocarbons from
a well. The hydraulic fracturing process itself, aside from its large demand for water, is possibly the least
environmentally impactful step along the complete operational chain of drilling for hydrocarbons. Arguably, the more
relevant environmental effects are wastewater handling and disposal, as well as the release of vapors from oil and gas
storage and distribution.
The production, distribution and use of hydrocarbons have always led to some emissions into the air, either directly via
(intended or accidental) leaks, or during incomplete combustion of fuels. However, through regulations and
technological innovation, we have reduced this source dramatically in the last 30 years, approximately by a factor of 10.
Nevertheless, wherever hydrocarbons are produced, refined or stored, there will be some emissions of pollutants. In the
age of fracking, the large operations at conventional well sites have been replaced by hundreds of well pads dotting the
landscape. Each requires the transportation of water, chemicals and equipment to and from these pads as well as the
removal of wastewater, and none is regulated like any larger facility would be.
As a result, unconventional production has not only increased truck traffic and related emissions in shale areas, but also
established a renewed source of hydrocarbons. They enter the atmosphere from leaks at valves, pipes, separators and
compressors, or through exhaust vents on tanks. Together with nitrogen oxides emissions, largely from diesel engines in
trucks, compressors and drilling rigs, these hydrocarbons can form significant amounts of harmful, ground-level ozone
during daytime.
Measurement Challenges
 Page #28
In 2011, a paper argued that methane emissions from unconventional sources compared to conventional oil and gas
exploration were being significantly underestimated. Researchers began to investigate hydrocarbon emissions from
fracking operations in earnest. And thus a significant body of literature has developed since 2013, much of which
focuses on methane emissions, the main component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas.
The EPA keeps track of methane emissions in its greenhouse gas inventory, but the numbers are based upon estimates
developed in the 1980s and 1990s and are compiled through calculations and self-reporting by the industry.
In fact, both satellite and atmospheric measurements suggest that the EPA estimates could be underestimating real-
world methane emissions by up to a factor of two. And if this is true for methane, co-emitted hydrocarbon gases are
likely underestimated as well.
Ozone Formation
As in many such cases, nuances exist.
Airborne measurements by NOAA suggest that the EPA methane estimates may be applicable to older, mature shale
areas with mostly natural gas production. But that’s not the case in younger shale areas that also produce large
amounts of oil alongside natural gas, such as the Bakken in North Dakota. Emissions from just the Bakken may be so
large as to be responsible for roughly half of the renewed increase of atmospheric ethane in the Northern Hemisphere
since the beginning of the fracking boom.
Similarly, our own studies for the Eagle Ford shale in south-central Texas suggest that hydrocarbon emissions are
higher than currently estimated. This increases the potential for regional ozone formation as these hydrocarbons are
oxidized in the atmosphere in the presence of nitrogen oxides. And as the ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard
was recently lowered to 70 parts per billion (ppb), with ozone in San Antonio downwind of the Eagle Ford trending close
to the old threshold of 75 ppb, the impact of shale hydrocarbon emissions is not trivial.
San Antonio’s ozone woes are not unique. In some areas, decades-long progress on ozone air quality has stalled; in
others, particularly the Uintah basin in Utah, a new ozone problem has emerged due to the fracking industry’s
emissions.
Benzene
Aside from effects on ozone trends, the increase of hydrocarbon emissions has also led to the resurgence of an air toxic
thought to be a story of the past in the U.S.: benzene. Unlike ozone, which is widely monitored, benzene is not. However,
since it is a known carcinogen, it has long been on the radar of regulatory agencies.
Routinely measured above 1 part per billion in urban areas in the 1970s and ‘80s, urban ambient benzene
concentrations have dropped 5-10 percent per year, similar to other air pollutants, throughout the last 20 to 30 years.
Annual average benzene levels are now below 1.5 parts per billion at over 90 percent of locations monitoring benzene
regularly, but few such monitoring stations are in or near shale areas.
High levels of benzene in shale areas, such as near well pads in the Barnett shale in Texas, were recorded early into the
fracking boom, but few continuous air monitoring data are available to this day, with virtually no data prior to the
fracking boom for comparison.
While benzene is generally monitored below levels the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) would be
concerned about, it is becoming clear that levels must have increased at rural shale area locations.
Our fingerprinting analysis of 2015 data from the newest air monitor in Karnes City, Texas, at the center of the Eagle
Ford shale, suggests that less than 40 percent of benzene is still related to tailpipe emissions, its formerly dominant
emission source. Instead, over 60 percent is now linked to various oil and gas exploration activities, including gas
flaring emissions.
 Page #29
Studies from Colorado and Texas show that elevated levels of benzene in shale areas are clearly correlated with other
hydrocarbon gases emitted from oil and gas exploration.
Health impacts
While ozone is distributed relatively uniformly in a region, primary emissions of benzene and other non methane
hydrocarbons will be at higher concentrations in air next to sources. Therefore, whereas most monitoring stations of
ozone are quite representative for a larger area, monitoring benzene far from its dominant sources in shale areas does
not provide a representative picture.
The risks for people living in shale areas are elevated by their nearness to well pads. Ongoing health research has
revealed that certain minor health effects such as sinusitis, migraines and fatigue, but also hospitalization rates and
certain birth defects, are identifiably connected to an area’s well density or a home’s distance to oil and gas wells as a
proxy of exposure, warranting more detailed research.
In conclusion, the shale boom has created a new source of large-scale, diffuse hydrocarbon emissions that adversely
affect air toxics levels. While the effects are subtle, they happened in areas generally without any air pollutant
monitoring, making estimates of trends difficult.
In many cases, these pollutants can be reduced by common-sense emissions reduction measures and some companies put
or plan to put good practice in place. Nevertheless, continued growth of the fracking industry as well as plans to remove
regulations on methane emissions will not alleviate high hydrocarbon emissions and associated regional ozone
problems.”
Summary: The report describes how fracking, although helpful for the United States of America to achieve
energy independence has contributed to increasing carbon dioxide, toxic and carcinogenic emissions in the
United States in both regions that have long suffered from toxic emissions and regions where previously, such
emissions did not exist in the land, air and water regionals breathe, drink and utilize. The article simply explains
how fracking commonly works and how the byproducts of fracking become disposed, although the article
states it has been done in a safer manner due to advances in fracking technology and governmental
regulation. Fracking has lead to more miles traveled by trucks, congesting traffic leading to unnecessary
carbon emission levels and the nitrogen oxides from diesel engines in trucks, compressors and drilling rigs,
combine with hydrocarbons contribute to infamous smog in clearer, plainer skies previously. Methane, another
potent greenhouse gas emitted through fracking for natural gas, advertised as a cheaper and cleaner
alternative to coal due to the abundance of natural gas recently discovered, can contribute twenty times more
than carbon dioxide to climate change, yet the article explains it has been overlooked but not overanalyzed,
despite the risk it poses to the planet’s future. And many other toxic byproducts do not even have recognition
that it poses a health hazard to the public, especially to high-density, poor inner-city neighborhoods and rural
areas, usually with high percentages of minorities, unfortunately. This article was chosen because it strongly
related to an article I read a while ago on the Los Angeles Times regarding fracking in South Los Angeles, a
poor, mostly minority region in where many residents suffer from health complications due to the chemicals
utilized by petroleum companies to extract some oil and that’s what made this article interesting because of its
more in depth insight to what fracking was all about. The next step, should be the creation of a long-term plan
to reduce reliance on fracked natural gas to overall create a trend into bringing an increasing percentage of
safer and healthier renewable energy into the market, given it has none of the associated greenhouse gases
emissions that have warmed up the planet to crisis levels.

Why Apple’s iPhone X Is Bad- For The Environment

Link: Why Apple’s iPhone X is bad — for the environment
 Page #30
Authors: Jacob Passy
Source: MarketWatch-MarketWatch: Stock Market News - Financial News
Date: Wednesday November 8th, 2017 at 10:15 A.M. Eastern Time
Collected: Wednesday November 8th, 2017
Topic: Consumer Waste

Original Article (1,609 words):

“The iPhone X’s sleek new design carries a hefty environmental price tag.
After a delay, Apple AAPL, +0.82% released the iPhone X to the public to mixed reviews. While many users cheered
the advanced facial-recognition technology and wireless charging capabilities, others balked at the high price tag — the
phone costs $999 or $33 per month on Apple’s installment plan. And now reviewers have found another flaw in the
landmark mobile device: It breaks very easily.
In multiple tests, Apple’s latest iPhone did not perform well. Technology news website CNET reported that the iPhone X
cracked on its first drop. Smartphone device insurer SquareTrade even called it “the most breakable, highest-priced
most expensive to repair iPhone, ever.”
The iPhone X’s main flaw is a feature that’s critical to its design: the phone features glass on both the front and back.
Previous models had metal or plastic on the back. The glass was needed to enable the wireless charging functionality,
but leaves the device more susceptible to damage, according to a somewhat-negative write-up from iFixit, a company
that sells repair parts and creates repair guides for consumer electronics. Plus, the advanced OLED screen is reportedly
more difficult and expensive to replace than the screens on previous iPhone models. The previously-released iPhone 8
and 8 Plus also received mixed reviews for similar reasons.
More frequent repairs won’t just add to consumers’ costs, but the environment’s as well. Smartphone consumption
habits have a significant impact on the environment, and less sturdy designs could contribute to the problem.
There have been 7.1 billion smartphones manufactured since 2007, according to Greenpeace — enough to equip nearly
every person in the world with a device. Yet, new devices like the iPhone X continue to be produced as consumers seek
out new and improved models.
“It’s magnifying the problem very significantly,” said Alex Sebastian, co-founder of Orchard, a Canadian company that
resells smartphones. “If you look at a computer, most people use it until it’s
unusable. But people have gotten used to new updates to the phone every one to two years.”
Millions of people are likely to get the new iPhone. Apple sold 78.2 million iPhones in the months following the release
of the iPhone 7 — a figure that includes older models as well. But this success is contributing to a growing e-waste
problem. The average age of a smartphone traded in between April 2017 and June 2017 was 2.58 years, according to
data collected by HYLA Mobile, a device trade-in company. Traded-in iPhones tended to be slightly older — partly
because they are typically the most expensive on the market.
“If you look at a computer, most people use it until it’s unusable. But people have gotten used to new updates to the
phone every one to two years.”
Alex Sebastian, co-founder of Orchard
Unfortunately, few people recycle their smartphones when they purchase a new one. A 2014 study from the United
Nations University, the UN’s research arm, estimated that less than 16% of e-waste is recycled. That same study
calculated that 3 million metric tons of e-waste was produced in 2014 alone. Much of that waste goes into landfills or is
shipped to developing countries to be taken apart to reclaim the metals held within.
 Page #31
But when handled improperly, there’s a high likelihood that heavy metals such as cobalt or tungsten will leach into
groundwater and cause adverse health effects. “There’s no way of getting rid of a heavy metal,” said Sue Williams, a
documentary filmmaker and director of Death by Design, a film that looks into the environmental impact of technology.
Heavy metals that are burned when smartphones are melted down, for instance, add to the atmospheric pollution that
scientists say is contributing to climate change. The air pollution in China is also associated with adverse health
consequences, according to a report from the Washington Post last year.
Mining metal for smartphones can devastate ecosystems
But smartphones don’t just create pollution when they are discarded. The mining of the metals needed to create them
can devastate ecosystems. The world’s largest producer of cobalt, which is used in rechargeable lithium ion batteries
found in smartphones and other electronics, is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to the U.S.
Geological Survey.
Cobalt mining companies regularly flout the country’s laws meant to protect natural resources and citizens, according
to research by the Center for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), an independent, nonprofit research and
network organization. Consequently, wastewater from cobalt mines has polluted drinking water resources in the country,
SOMO found.
Other issues beyond pollution also persist in mining practices in developing countries. In the DRC, for instance, child
labor is common, and proceeds from mining operations are used to fuel ongoing conflicts in the country, according to an
investigation by the Washington Post. In March, Apple said it would temporarily cease buying cobalt mined by hand in
Congo.
Also see: Bottled water is more popular than Pepsi and Coke — why you should avoid all three
It’s an uphill battle for environmentalists. Despite the concerning environmental ramifications, smartphones have
become a necessary evil. Nearly one-third of people said they now interact with their smartphones more than with
friends and family, according to a report last year from Bank of America.
“It’s not possible to make an electronic device that’s environmentally friendly.”
Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit
Carbon emissions is another smartphone-related problem
Additionally, the vast majority (73%) of carbon dioxide associated with smart devices is emitted during manufacturing,
according to Greenpeace. “It’s not possible to make an electronic device that’s environmentally friendly,” said Kyle
Wiens, CEO of iFixit. “We’re very far away from that.”
Apple has taken steps to reduce its environmental footprint. The company is investing in methods to recover materials
from its products and works to encourage customers to return products through its recycling program Apple Renew.
Apple customers who donate qualifying devices through that program are eligible to receive a gift card. The company is
also working to use more recycled materials in its manufacturing — for instance, Apple said it’s transitioning to using
100% recycled tin solder for logic boards in the iPhone 6s.
Despite Apple’s progress, some believe that the company could be doing more to address its environmental impact. The
choice to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 likely added further to e-waste as older earbuds became
obsolete without a new adapter, Wiens said.
The AirPods wireless earbuds are powered by a rechargeable battery — but Wiens said that battery cannot be replaced.
Traditional headphones use wiring and magnets that are easily recyclable, he said. (Apple did not return a request for
comment regarding this matter for this story.)
 Page #32
There are ways to extend the life of your smartphone
Consumers can take steps to ensure their smartphone use is as environmentally-sound as possible. Putting the phone on
airplane mode will conserve energy and extend the battery’s life — as will making sure that the device does not overheat
when charging.
Additionally, smartphones can outlive their original batteries. Consumers can take the device to the original retailer, get
the battery replaced by an independent repair shop or even do it themselves. Old batteries can be disposed of at many
hardware stores and electronics retailers such as Best Buy, Wiens added. (Consumers should check their warranty
before going to an independent repair shop or making fixes themselves, however.)
“The best thing you can do with your phone is not to let it sit in a drawer or throw it out but sell it immediately,” said
Wiens. Not doing this poses a risk that the device will go too out-of-style to be refurbished, meaning it could just become
e-waste. For folks who don’t want to go to the effort of researching prices and selling their phone, Sebastian
recommended contacting charities. Many charitable organizations will give previously-owned smart devices to folks in
need if the device is still working, ensuring an extended life for it.
As for recycling, consumers are best off going through major retailers, such as Best Buy BBY, +2.58% and Amazon
AMZN, +0.86% or manufacturers, such as Apple and LG 066570, +4.55% They can also find a legitimate local
recycler through the Consumer Technology Association. A recent report from the Basel Action Network, a non-
governmental organization combating the export of toxic waste from technology, found myriad companies running
scams where they claim to recycle devices properly but instead ship them to developing countries where they are
dismantled improperly.
Consumers who purchase new devices should also research their environmental footprint. United Laboratories, a global
independent safety science company, recently established standards for “green electronics” that are more
environmentally friendly. Thus far, Samsung 005930, -0.49% is the only smartphone manufacturer to receive the new
certification. (Samsung did not immediately return a request for comment.)
Why all might not be lost
While smartphones certainly have an adverse impact on the environment, there are silver linings to their adoption,
according to a report from the Consumer Technology Association. For starters, smartphones represent only a fraction of
the electronic waste that’s been produced historically. Plus, they use fewer materials (as compared with items like
cathode-ray televisions). And because smartphones can perform many functions, they have replaced the need to have
separate devices such as an mp3 player and a digital camera, meaning fewer materials are being used overall.
Scientists are also researching ways to make the glass in smartphones more smash-resistant.
And while there is room for improvement where recycling is concerned, consumer electronics have the fastest growing
recycling rate of any product category in the United States, according to a report from the Environmental Protection
Agency.”

The Seven Megatrends That Could Beat Global Warming: ‘There is Reason for Hope’
Link: The seven megatrends that could beat global warming: 'There is reason for hope'
Authors: Damian Carrington
Source: The Guardian-News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian
Date: Wednesday November 8th, 2017 at 02.00 EST
Collected: Wednesday November 8th, 2017
Topic: Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Reforestation
 Page #33
Original Article (2,603 words):
“Until recently the battle to avert catastrophic climate change – floods, droughts, famine, mass migrations – seemed to
be lost. But with the tipping point just years away, the tide is finally turning, thanks to innovations ranging from cheap
renewables to lab-grown meat and electric airplanes
‘Everybody gets paralysed by bad news because they feel helpless,” says Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate
chief who delivered the landmark Paris climate change agreement. “It is so in our personal lives, in our national lives
and in our planetary life.”
But it is becoming increasingly clear that it does not need to be all bad news: a series of fast-moving global megatrends,
spurred by trillion-dollar investments, indicates that humanity might be able to avert the worst impacts of global
warming. From trends already at full steam, including renewable energy, to those just now hitting the big time, such as
mass-market electric cars, to those just emerging, such as plant-based alternatives to meat, these trends show that
greenhouse gas emissions can be halted.
“If we were seeing linear progress, I would say good, but we’re not going to make it in time,” says Figueres, now the
convener of the Mission 2020 initiative, which warns that the world has only three years to get carbon emissions on a
downward curve and on the way to beating global warming. “But the fact is we are seeing progress that is growing
exponentially, and that is what gives me the most reason for hope.”
No one is saying the battle to avert catastrophic climate change – floods, droughts, famine, mass migrations – has been
won. But these megatrends show the battle has not yet been lost, and that the tide is turning in the right direction. “The
important thing is to reach a healthy balance where we recognise that we are seriously challenged, because we really
have only three years left to reach the tipping point,” says Figueres. “But at the same time, the fact is we are already
seeing many, many positive trends.”
Michael Liebreich, the founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, agrees. “The good news is we are way better than
we thought we could be. We are not going to get through this without damage. But we can avoid the worst. I am
optimistic, but there is a long way to go.”
Also cautiously hopeful is climate economist Nicholas Stern at the London School of Economics. “These trends are the
start of something that might be enough – the two keywords are ‘start’ and ‘might’.” He says the global climate
negotiations, continuing this week in Germany and aiming to implement the Paris deal, are crucial: “The acceleration
embodied in the Paris agreement is going to be critical.”

THE TRENDS

1. Methane: getting to the meat

Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the main greenhouse gas, but methane and nitrous oxide are more potent
and, unlike CO2, still rising. The major source is livestock farming, in particular belching cattle and their manure.
The world’s appetite for meat and dairy foods is rising as people’s incomes rise, but the simple arithmetic is that unless
this is radically curbed, there is no way to beat global warming. The task looks daunting – people hate being told what
to eat. However, just in the last year, a potential solution has burst on to the market: plant-based meat, which has a tiny
environmental footprint.
What sounds like an oxymoron – food that looks and tastes just as good as meat or dairy products but is made from
plants – has attracted heavy investment. The buzz is particularly loud in the US, where Bill Gates has backed two plant-
based burger companies and Eric Schmidt, formerly CEO of Google, believes plant-based foods can make a
“meaningful dent” in tackling climate change.
 Page #34
Perhaps even more telling is that major meat and dairy companies are now piling in with investments and acquisitions,
such as the US’s biggest meat processor, Tyson, and multinational giants Danone and Nestlé. The Chinese government
has just put $300 million (£228 million) into Israeli companies producing lab-grown meat, which could also cut
emissions.
New plant-based products, from chicken to fish to cheese, are coming out every month. “We are in the nascent stage,”
says Alison Rabschnuk at the US nonprofit group the Good Food Institute. “But there’s a lot of money moving into this
area.”
Plant-based meat and dairy produce is not only environmentally friendly, but also healthier and avoids animal welfare
concerns, but these benefits will not make them mass-market, she says: “We don’t believe that is what is going to make
people eat plant-based food. We believe the products themselves need to be competitive on taste, price and convenience
– the three attributes people use when choosing what to eat.”
Plant-based milks – soy, almond, oat and more – have led the way and are now about 10% of the market and a billion-
dollar business in the US. But in the past year, sales of other meat and dairy substitutes have climbed 8%, with some
specific lines, such as yoghurt, shooting up 55%. “I think the writing’s on the wall,” says Rabschnuk. Billionaire
entrepreneur Richard Branson agrees. “I believe that in 30 years or so we will no longer need to kill any animals and
that all meat will either be [lab] or plant-based, taste the same and also be much healthier for everyone.”

2. Renewable energy: time to shine

The most advanced of the megatrends is the renewable energy revolution. Production costs for solar panels and wind
turbines have plunged, by 90% in the past decade for solar, for example, and are continuing to fall. As a result, in many
parts of the world they are already the cheapest electricity available and installation is soaring: two-thirds of all new
power in 2016 was renewable.
This extraordinary growth has confounded expectations: the respected International Energy Agency’s annual
projections have anticipated linear growth for solar power every year for the past decade. In reality, growth has been
exponential. China is leading the surge but the impact is being felt around the world: in Germany last week there was so
much wind power that customers get free electricity.
In the US, enthusiasm for green energy has not been dented by President Donald Trump committing to repeal key
climate legislation: $30 billion has been invested since he signed an executive order in March. “I am no longer
concerned about electric power,” says Figueres.

3. King coal: dead or dying

The flipside of the renewables boom is the death spiral of coal, the filthiest of fossil fuels. Production now appears to
have peaked in 2013. The speed of its demise has stunned analysts. In 2013, the IEA expected coal-burning to grow by
40% by 2040 – today it anticipates just 1%.
The cause is simple: solar and wind are cheaper. But the consequences are enormous: in pollution-choked China, there
are now no provinces where new coal is needed, so the country has just mothballed plans for 151 plants. Bankruptcies
have torn through the US coal industry and in the UK, where coal-burning began the industrial revolution, it has fallen
from 40% of power supply to 2% in the past five years.
“Last year, I said if Asia builds what it says it is going to build, we can kiss goodbye to 2°C” – the internationally
agreed limit for dangerous climate change – says Liebreich. “Now we are showing coal [plans] coming down.” But he
warns there is more to do.
 Page #35
Solar and wind are cheaper than new coal, he says, but a second tipping point is needed. That will occur when
renewables are cheaper to build than running existing coal plants, meaning that the latter shut down. If renewable costs
continue to fall as expected, this would happen between 2030 and 2040. At that point, says Liebrich, “Why keep digging
coal out of the ground when you could just put up solar?”

4. Electric cars: in the fast lane

Slashing oil use – a third of all global energy – is a huge challenge but a surging market for battery-powered cars is
starting to bite, driven in significant part by fast-growing concerns about urban air pollution.
China, again, is leading the way. It is selling as many electric cars every month as Europe and the US combined, with
many from home-grown companies such as BYD. US-based Tesla is rolling out its more affordable Model 3 and in
recent months virtually all major carmakers have committed to an electric future, with Volvo and Jaguar Land Rover
announcing that they will end production of pure fossil-fuelled cars within three years.
“We have a domino effect now,” says Figueres. These cars are “now being made for the mass market and that is really
what is going to make the transformation”.
“I don’t think it is going to slow down,” says Viktor Irle, an analyst at EV-volumes.com. Drivers can see the direction of
travel, he says, with a stream of choked cities and countries from Paris to India announcing future bans on fossil-fuelled
cars.
It is true that global sales of electric cars have now achieved liftoff, quadrupling in the past three years, but they still
make up only 1.25% of all new car sales. However, if current growth rates continue, as Irle expects, 80% of new cars
will be electric by 2030.
The rapid rise of electric cars has left the oil giants, who have a lot to lose, playing catch up. The oil cartel Opec has
increased its estimate of the number of electric cars operative in 2040 by five times in the past year alone, with the IEA,
Exxon Mobil and BP all bumping up their forecasts too. Heavy transport remains a challenge, but even here ships are
experimenting with wind power and batteries. Short-haul electric airplanes are on the drawing board, too.

5. Batteries: lots in store

Batteries are key to electric cars and, by storing energy for when the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing, they are
also vital when it comes to enabling renewable energy to reach its full potential. Here too, a megatrend is crushing
prices for lithium-ion batteries, which are down 75% over the past six years. The International Renewable Energy
Agency expects further falls of 50-66% by 2030 and a massive increase in battery storage, linked to increasingly smart
and efficient digital power grids. In the UK alone, government advisers say a smart grid could save bill-payers £8 billion
a year by 2030, as well as slashing carbon emissions.
Fears that lithium-ion, the technology that dominates today, cannot be scaled up sufficiently are overblown, argues
Liebreich, as the metal is not rare. “I think lithium-ion is a banker in that you can be sure it will get cheaper and you
can be sure there is enough.” He is also frustrated by frequent claims that a grid based on renewables and storage
cannot be cheap and reliable: “That stupidity and absolute certainty is in inverse proportion to any knowledge of how
you run an electrical system.”
It is true, however, that batteries will not be the solution for energy storage over weeks or months. For that, long-
distance electricity interconnectors are being built and the storage of the energy as gas is also being explored.

6. Efficiency: negawatts over megawatts

 Page #36
Just as important as the greening of energy is reducing demand by boosting energy efficiency. It’s a no-brainer in
climate policy, but it can be very tricky to make happen, as it requires action from millions of people.
Nonetheless, good progress is being made in places such as the EU, where efficiency in homes, transport and industry
has improved by about 20% since 2000. Improving the efficiency of gadgets and appliances through better standards is
surprisingly important: a new UN Environment Programme report shows it makes the biggest impact of any single
action bar rolling out wind and solar power.
But again, continued progress is vital. “We need to drive energy efficiency very, very hard, even for European
countries,” says Prof Kevin Anderson at the University of Manchester. “We could power down European energy use by
about 40% in something like 10-15 years, just by making the most efficient appliances available the new minimum.”
In countries with cool winters, better insulation is also needed, particularly as a fossil fuel – natural gas – currently
provides a lot of heating. “What is a crime is every time a building is renovated but not renovated to really high
standards,” says Liebreich, who thinks labelling such homes as “zero-energy-bill” homes, not “zero-carbon” homes,
would help overcome opposition.
One sector that is lagging on energy efficiency is industry, but technology to capture and bury CO2 from plants is being
tested and ways to clean up cement-making are also being explored.

7. Forests: seeing the wood

The destruction of forests around the world for ranching and farming, as well as for timber, causes about 10% of
greenhouse gas emissions. This is the biggest megatrend not yet pointing in the right direction: annual tree losses have
roughly doubled since 2000.
This is particularly worrying as stopping deforestation and planting new trees is, in theory at least, among the cheapest
and fastest ways of cutting carbon emissions. But it is not getting the support it needs, says Michael Wolosin at Forest
Climate Analytics. “Climate policy is massively underfunding forests – they receive only about 2% of global climate
finance.” Furthermore, the $2.3 billion committed to forests by rich nations and multilateral institutions since 2010 is
tiny compared with the funding for the sectors that drive deforestation. “Brazil and Indonesia’s governments alone
invested $276 billion in the same timeframe, in just the four key driver commodities: palm oil, soy, beef and timber,”
says Franziska Haupt at Climate Focus.
In fact, new research has shown that better land management could deliver a third of all the carbon cuts the world
needs, and Wolosin says there are some grounds for hope that new forests can be planted. “Achieving large-scale
forestation is not just theoretical. We know we can do it because a few countries have done it successfully.”
In the past two decades, tree-planting in China, India and South Korea has removed more than 12bn tonnes of CO2 from
the atmosphere – three times the entire European Union’s annual emissions, Wolosin says. This action was driven by
fears about flooding and food supply, meaning that global warming needs to be seen as equally urgent in this sector.
Regrowing forests can also play a crucial role in sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere, which is likely to be necessary
after 2050, unless very sharp cuts are made now.

The race against time

Will these megatrends move fast enough to avoid the worst of climate change? Opinions vary and Anderson is among the
most hawkish. He says it remains possible for now, but is pessimistic that the action will be taken. “We’re pointing in the
right direction but not moving [there]. We have to not just pursue renewables and electric vehicles and so forth, we have
to actively close down the incumbent fossil fuel industry.”
 Page #37
Stern is cautiously optimistic, saying that what has changed in recent years is the realisation that green economic
growth in the only long-term option: “There is no long-run high-carbon growth story because it creates an environment
so hostile that it turns development backwards.
“There are some tremendous developments so I am very confident now we can do this, but the change, attractive as it is,
has to be radical,” he says. “Will we have the political and economic understanding and commitment to get there? I
hope so.”

Don’t Convert Africa’s Savanna to Agricultural Land

Link: Don't Convert Africa's Savanna to Agricultural Land
Authors: Esther Ngumbi and Sam Dindi
Source: The Scientific American-Scientific American: Science News, Articles, and Information
Date: Tuesday November 7th, 2017
Collected: Wednesday November 8th, 2017
Topic: Human Societal and Economic Development, Deforestation, Habitat Loss, Endangered Species and Soil
Fertility

Original Article (825 words):

“To feed the increasing number of Africans who are poor, hungry and malnourished, during the launch of the
Transformation of the African Savannah Initiative, the African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina
proposed developing Africa’s 400 million hectares of cultivable savanna lands. The soils are healthy there and can
support the cultivation of many crops, including corn and soybeans.
To begin this initiative, the AfDB plans to convert approximately 2 million hectares of savanna into farmland in eight
African countries: Ghana, Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia,
and Mozambique. It will be used to cultivate maize and soybeans, and to keep livestock.
While we understand why the AfDB has made this proposal, we disagree with it. Of course, there is precedent for the
suggestion of development, like in the United States, where grasslands are major contributors to food and livestock
production. But we see there are many benefits to leaving Africa’s savanna grasslands intact and not developing them.
First and foremost, the savannas can help solve the climate change problem that’s caused an increase in temperature
and erratic weather, resulting to disasters such as floods and droughts. Savanna grasslands contribute to both
mitigation and adaptation of climate change by preventing floods through slowing down the speed of surface runoff,
enabling steady absorption of water by the soil, thus improving land ecosystem health and resilience.
Savanna grasslands are a natural carbon sink, meaning they absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
through a process called carbon sequestration. Carbon accumulation in grasslands occurs mainly below the ground
where soil organic matter is located. Through cultivation of the over 400 million hectares of savanna grassland, the
gigatons of carbon dioxide that have been stored by the savanna grasslands for millions of years will be released into
the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
Secondly, rangeland in Africa constitutes nearly 43 percent of the continent and this is where the savanna grassland
ecosystem is located. In this rangeland, livestock farming is practiced by many communities. In fact, approximately 240
million agro-pastoralists and 25 million pastoralists depend on livestock as their primary sources of income. Therefore,
converting the grasslands into farmlands will directly impact some 240 million agro-pastoralists dependent on this
ecosystem for livelihood.
 Page #38
Thirdly, research shows that with correct grazing management, livestock and other ruminant animals inhabiting
grasslands similar to African savanna can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase soil carbon sequestration,
improve soil fertility and facilitate other ecosystem services including water infiltration and soil nutrient cycling.
Fourthly, the savanna grasslands are home to Africa’s big five animals (buffaloes, elephants, leopards, lions and rhinos)
that attract the attention of tourists. Tourism is a key foreign exchange earner in Africa and a major contributor to
Africa’s gross domestic production (GDP). In 2016, the direct contribution of travel and tourism to Kenya’s GDP was
estimated at 257.4 billion Kenyan shillings ($2.5 billion). In Rwanda, tourism generated $404 million in 2016. And in
Uganda, tourism, largely focused on wildlife, contributed 9.9 percent to the GDP in the financial year 2014–15. Losing
this ecosystem will be both an ecological and economic catastrophe.
Lastly, healthy soil, which is attracting the AfDB, will not continue to be healthy if it is developed. Healthy soils are
home to many microorganisms including beneficial soil microbes that interact with plants to help crops fight off pests
and diseases and tolerate other extremities that come with a changing climate. A major underlying reason behind
savanna grassland healthy soils is the fact that over the years, the land has not been disturbed. The grasses growing in
Africa’s savanna nurture an entire world of creatures including worms, insects, fungi and bacteria that in return feed
and protect the plants. The grasses are home to an entire zoo. Widespread degradation of soils in Africa has been a
result of unsustainable farming practices including the continuous tilling of land and leaving land bare after crop
harvests. Converting savannahs into farmland will leave these creatures homeless and result in more degradation of
Africa’s farmland.
So, although there are many short-term benefits that come along with the proposed AfDB project, including increasing
crop productivity and meeting rising food demands, continuing this initiative would mean destroying Africa savannas,
which play a key role in absorbing carbon emissions, regulating the continent’s ecosystem and supporting the economy
of many nations.
When the Brazilian government proposed turning the Amazon forests into agricultural farmlands and opening 860,000
acres of protected Amazon rainforest to logging mining and farmland, the proposition was blocked due to to pressure
from environmental activists and organizations.
Now it’s Africa’s environmental activists’ turn to speak out. Organizations such as Conservation International and
Soil4Climate that care about conservation at large and the role grasslands play in mitigating climate change should
rise-up and take a stand against this move.
Ultimately, the benefits in leaving this ecosystem intact are many and outweigh the immediate short-term benefits of
converting them to farmland.”

Donald Trump Cannot Halt U.S. Climate Progress, Former Obama Adviser Says
Link: Donald Trump cannot halt US climate progress, former Obama adviser says
Author: Fiona Harvey (in Bonn, Germany)
Source: The Guardian-News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian
Date: Friday November 10th, 2017 at 04.12 EST
Collected: Wednesday November 15th, 2017
Topic: Climate Change, The Paris Agreement (2015)

Original Article (703 words):

“Donald Trump could slow down US progress towards a lower carbon economy, but he will be unable to halt it because
businesses and local governments have committed to a low-carbon path, a former climate negotiator for the US has said.
 Page #39
Through measures such as slapping import tariffs on solar products, scrapping incentives to renewable energy and
promoting coal power, the US president could try to alter the economics of pursuing low-carbon energy.
However, many American states, towns and businesses are moving to renewable energy as it is proving lower cost than
conventional sources. The recent rise in the price of oil has underlined the volatility of fossil fuels.
Paul Bodnar, a lead US negotiator in the climate talks under former president Barack Obama, told the Guardian that
Trump possessed “powerful instruments”, such as import tariffs and quotas, that could hamper the growth of low-
carbon technology. “If he chooses, he could use them,” he said. But he warned this would be short-sighted, as China is
forging ahead with low-carbon power and the US would risk losing any technological lead.
“It is clear the way the market is driving – towards lower carbon. It would be difficult for a Republican administration
to take action that is clearly counter to the forces of the market,” he said.
Coal, he said, was losing ground in the market, even without penalties on carbon output. “A huge percentage of US coal
is just flat out uneconomic,” said Bodnar. “Ratepayers are being asked to pay more for incumbent industries. Questions
are going to be asked about why that is. It would cost a lot to make coal great again.”
He added: “The direction of travel [for businesses] has been set, and it is lower carbon. The only question is the pace at
which that happens. And the pace is important because this is an urgent problem. Trump has the ability to slow that
pace, but he cannot reverse it.”
States, mayors, local governments and businesses from the US have gathered together to present an alternative vision to
Trump’s policies at the ongoing UN climate talks in Bonn. On Saturday, they will unveil a new initiative to move
forward with low-carbon plans in spite of the White House’s opposition.
Trump has begun the process of withdrawing the US from the landmark Paris agreement of 2015, signed and ratified by
the US under Obama, but under UN rules this process cannot be completed until November 2020, with the prospective
official withdrawal date falling the day after the next presidential election.
Earlier this week, the Syrian government became the final functioning state to sign up to the Paris agreement. It was the
last holdout nation, following the decision by Nicaragua to join the agreement shortly before the current talks. This
leaves the US as the only nation poised to reject the 2015 agreement.
Looking to the potential progress at the COP23 talks, Bodnar pointed to China’s actions in pursuing low-carbon
policies, in contrast to the US. He said the country’s stance at the UN talks would be key, in part because the US, though
present and still a party to the Paris agreement, is taking little active part in the talks, which are focused on upping
countries’ commitments to reduce carbon emissions. Current emissions targets are inadequate to keep the Paris goal of
limiting global warming to no more than 2 Celsius, which scientists say is the limit of safety beyond which the ravages of
climate change are likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.
Countries will be expected to come forward in the next few years with new targets that match scientific advice. Bodnar
said that in the process of increasing countries’ carbon-cutting, some countries had more room to manoeuvre than
others. “What’s interesting is to ask whether some countries left something on the table in 2015 [when setting carbon
targets]. Countries that came to Paris with high ambition may find it difficult to crank that up, but others that were more
conservative will have room to make higher commitments. China is very important.”
He said he was hopeful that this round of talks would produce momentum leading to higher goals. “It’s a question of
perceived self-interest. At Copenhagen in 2009, it wasn’t the case that everyone perceived [cutting carbon sharply] to be
in their self-interest. That changed in the run-up to Paris, and now governments do see that they are acting in their own
interests by signing up [to higher goals].”
A US state department official at the Bonn COP23 talks said: “This administration believes in corporate federalism and
is therefore supportive of states and cities making their own choices within their respective borders.”
 Page #40
Summary: Although Trump desires to return to a polluting economy of carbon to amplify his voter base through
bragging that his anti-environmental actions will bring back coal jobs back and heavy duty manufacturing that
provides to this very day, nonetheless, millions of well-paying jobs with benefits without the long-term
educational investment, the trends in economics simply do not support it, in this case being the laws of supply
and demand. Trump’s fellow nation, the United States of America is the only country in the planet to not be part
of the 2015 Paris Agreement to cut carbon emission rates to ensure the planet warms up to a maximum of two
celsius or less to prevent the most apocalyptic effects that climate change can unleash on humanity and the
environment humanity thrives on. That occurs after this year, the Trump administration left Obama’s legacy of
the U.S. being in the landmark and critical agreement through ratification and approval after Trump claimed
that the agreement forced too many bureaucratic environmental restrictions on the economy and the corporate
sector although as of late, just as in India the opposite is true. That is because coal has become increasingly
more expensive to mine out with coal being less valuable and worthy given that natural gas has seen its cost
decreasing due to the fracking boom and energy companies prefer natural gas for its lower cost and cleaner
carbon output and more portable and affordable transportation methods to power plants. Alternative
renewable energy, because of its technological and infrastructural advances has also been more available to
everyday consumers, explaining the skyrocketing profits such companies see, even in red states that voted for
the climate denier in office statistically. What is most fascinating would simply be Trump’s denial of the
economic benefits alternative energy seeks to create to the very ordinary citizens that have suffered the most
under the status quo and that the state of economics today has forced the thriving nature of the sustainable
venture and economy.

Fossil Fuel Burning Set To Hit Record High In 2017, Scientists Warn
Link: Fossil fuel burning set to hit record high in 2017, scientists warn
Author: Damian Carrington (in Bonn, Germany)
Source: The Guardian-News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian
Date: Monday November 13th, 2017 at 03.30 EST
Collected: Wednesday November 15th, 2017

Original Article (807 words):

“The burning of fossil fuels around the world is set to hit a record high in 2017, climate scientists have warned,
following three years of flat growth that raised hopes that a peak in global emissions had been reached.
The expected jump in the carbon emissions that drive global warming is a “giant leap backwards for humankind”,
according to some scientists. However, other experts said they were not alarmed, saying fluctuations in emissions are to
be expected and that big polluters such as China are acting to cut emissions.
Global emissions need to reach their peak by 2020 and then start falling quickly in order to have a realistic chance of
keeping global warming below the 2°C danger limit, according to leading scientists. Whether the anticipated increase in
CO2 emissions in 2017 is just a blip that is followed by a falling trend, or is the start of a worrying upward trend,
remains to be seen.
Much will depend on the fast implementation of the global climate deal sealed in Paris in 2015 and this is the focus of
the UN summit of the world’s countries in Bonn, Germany this week. The nations must make significant progress in
turning the aspirations of the Paris deal into reality, as the action pledged to date would see at least 3°C of warming and
increasing extreme weather impacts around the world.
 Page #41
The 12th annual Global Carbon Budget report published on Monday is produced by 76 of the world’s leading emissions
experts from 57 research institutions and estimates that global carbon emissions from fossil fuels will have risen by 2%
by the end of 2017, a significant rise.
“Global CO2 emissions appear to be going up strongly once again after a three-year stable period. This is very
disappointing,” said Prof Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the UK’s
University of East Anglia and who led the new research. “The urgency for reducing emissions means they should really
be already decreasing now.”
“There was a big push to sign the Paris agreement on climate change but there is a feeling that not very much has
happened since, a bit of slackening,” she said. “What happens after 2017 is very open and depends on how much effort
countries are going to make. It is time to take really seriously the implementation of the Paris agreement.” She said the
hurricanes and floods seen in 2017 were “a window into the future”.
The new analysis is based on the available energy use data for 2017 and projections for the latter part of the year. It
estimates that 37 billion tonnes of CO2 will be emitted from burning fossil fuels, the highest total ever.
The main reason for the rise is an expected 3.5% increase in emissions in China, the world’s biggest polluter, where low
rains have reduced low-carbon hydroelectric output and industrial activity has increased. India’s rise in emissions was
modest compared to previous years at 2%, while the US and EU are both on track for small falls.
2017 is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded in which there was no El Niño event, a natural global cycle that
temporarily nudges up global temperature. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere also saw a record jump in 2016,
and other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture and industry are also rising.
“The news that emissions are rising after the three-year hiatus is a giant leap backwards for humankind,” said Amy
Luers, executive director of Future Earth, a global research initiative. “Pushing the Earth closer to tipping points is
deeply concerning. Emissions need to peak soon and approach zero by 2050.”
However, climate economist Prof Nicholas Stern, at the UK’s London School of Economics, said: “I would not be
alarmed. There will be some fluctuations, for example around poor rains and hydro. We should also remember that the
methods used to calculate emissions will have their own errors.”
He said there is strong climate action in China: “It has a very clear strategy, particularly on coal and energy efficiency
and they are getting, and will get, results.” But Stern said it remains vital that all countries ramp up the ambition of their
emissions pledges and that richer countries support action across the world.
Climate scientist Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University in the US, said the research was authoritative but also
urged caution, noting that the 2% projected rise in emissions is small relative to the overall uncertainties in the data. “It
seems to me they are over-interpreting the 2017 numbers and jumping the gun a bit. Can’t we wait until the actual
numbers are in to do a post-mortem?”
The ability to monitor emissions quickly and accurately is of growing importance. The Paris agreement is based on
voluntary cuts by nations, and without verification that pledges have been fulfilled, the trust that underpins the deal
could be eroded. “This puts immense pressure on the scientific community to develop methods that can truly verify
changes in emissions,” said Le Quéré.”

Plastics Found In Stomachs Of Deepest Sea Creatures

Link: Plastics found in stomachs of deepest sea creatures
Author: Matthew Taylor
Source: The Guardian-News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian
 Page #42
Date: Wednesday November 15th, 2017 at 07.14 EST
Collected: Wednesday November 15th, 2017

Original Article (536 words):

“Animals from the deepest places on Earth have been found with plastic in their stomachs, confirming fears that man-
made fibres have contaminated the most remote places on the planet.

The study, led by academics at Newcastle University, found animals from trenches across the Pacific Ocean were
contaminated with fibres that probably originated from plastic bottles, packaging and synthetic clothes.

Dr Alan Jamieson, who led the study, said the findings were startling and proved that nowhere on the planet was free
from plastics pollution.

“There is now no doubt that plastics pollution is so pervasive that nowhere – no matter how remote – is immune,” he
said.

Evidence of the scale of plastic pollution has been growing in recent months. Earlier this year scientists found plastic in
83% of global tap water samples, while other studies have found plastic in rock salt and fish.

Humans have produced an estimated 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic since the 1950s and scientists said it risked near
permanent contamination of the planet.

Jamieson said underlined the need for swift and meaningful action.

“These observations are the deepest possible record of microplastic occurrence and ingestion, indicating it is highly
likely there are no marine ecosystems left that are not impacted by anthropogenic debris.”

He said it was “a very worrying find.”

“Isolating plastic fibres from inside animals from nearly 11 kilometers deep (seven miles) just shows the extent of the
problem. Also, the number of areas we found this in, and the thousands of kilometre distances involved shows it is not
just an isolated case, this is global.”

The study tested samples of crustaceans found in the ultra-deep trenches that span the entire Pacific Ocean – the
Mariana, Japan, Izu-Bonin, Peru-Chile, New Hebrides and Kermadec trenches.

These range from seven to more than 10 kilometers deep, including the deepest point in the ocean, Challenger Deep in
the Mariana Trench.

The team examined 90 individual animals and found ingestion of plastic ranged from 50% in the New Hebrides Trench
to 100% at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

The fragments identified include semi-synthetic cellulosic fibres, such as Rayon, Lyocell and Ramie, which are all
microfibres used in products such as textiles, to plastic fibres that are likely to come from plastic bottles, fishing
equipment or everyday packaging.

Jamieson said deep-sea organisms are dependent on food “raining down from the surface which in turn brings any
 Page #43
adverse components, such as plastic and pollutants with it.”

“The deep sea is not only the ultimate sink for any material that descends from the surface, but it is also inhabited by
organisms well adapted to a low food environment and these will often eat just about anything.”

An estimated 300m tonnes of plastic now litters the oceans, with more than 5 trillion plastic pieces – weighing more than
250,000 tonnes – currently floating on the surface. Around 8m tonnes of plastic enters our oceans every year.

Jamieson said: “Litter discarded into the oceans will ultimately end up washed back ashore or sinking to the deep-sea,
there are no other options.
“Once these plastics reach the deep-seafloor there is simply nowhere else for them to go, therefore it is assumed they
will simply accumulate in greater quantities.”

15,000 Scientists Warn It Will Soon Be Too Late To Avoid Climate Catastrophe
Link: 15,000 scientists warn it will soon be too late to avoid climate catastrophe
Author: Joe Romm
Source: ThinkProgress-ThinkProgress
Date: Tuesday November 14th, 2017
Collected: Wednesday November 15th, 2017

Original Article (459 words):

“Over 15,000 scientists from 184 nations have co-signed a journal article pleading with humanity to embrace
sustainability now before it is “too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory.”
The article in BioScience, “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice,” notes that 25 years ago,
thousands of the world’s leading scientists warned humanity about the worsening problems of “ozone depletion,
freshwater availability, marine fishery collapses, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change,
and continued human population growth.”
In that 1992 statement, the world’s top scientists, “hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our
stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this
planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.”
A quarter century later, more than 15,000 researchers — “the most scientists to ever cosign and formally support a
published journal article” as the article itself notes — want the world to know things are getting worse and time is
running out. “Since 1992, with the exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to make
sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are
getting far worse.”
Their chart tells the bleakest story:
TRENDS OVER TIME FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IDENTIFIED IN THE 1992 SCIENTISTS’ WARNING TO
HUMANITY.
The authors do note some promising trends. For instance, “The rapid global decline in ozone-depleting substances
shows that we can make positive change when we act decisively. We have also made advancements in reducing extreme
poverty and hunger.” In addition we’ve seen “the promising decline in the rate of deforestation in some regions, and the
rapid growth in the renewable-energy sector.”
 Page #44
But all of those gains are in the process of being overwhelmed by our inaction on the other key trends. The scientists
explain, “Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising GHGs
from burning fossil fuels, deforestation,and agricultural production” (especially from livestock farming). Also, humanity
has “unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be
annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.”
The bottom line is that “To prevent widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss, humanity must practice a
more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual.” Of course, the scientists note, this is the same
warning scientists issued a quarter-century ago. Now, thanks to our dawdling, “Soon it will be too late to shift course
away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out.”
It’s way past time for action, and on our current trajectory, there may well not be a third warning.”
Trump Is Doing Nothing To Save Americans From Air Pollution. Luckily, The Rest of The World Exists
Link: TRUMP IS DOING NOTHING TO SAVE AMERICANS FROM AIR POLLUTION. LUCKILY THE REST OF THE
WORLD EXISTS
Author: Sydney Pereira
Source: NewsWeek-Newsweek - News, Analysis, Politics, Business, Technology
Date: Tuesday November 14th, 2017 at 12:54 P.M.
Collected: Wednesday November 15th, 2017

Original Article (399 words):

“Better air quality will prevent deaths—that much we know. But a new study just pinpointed that foreign countries’
efforts to improve air quality could prevent 24,000 deaths a year in the U.S. alone.
That finding is according to a scenario mapped out by researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at
Chapel Hill in a study published in Environmental Research Letters on Tuesday.
Lead author Jason West of UNC and his colleagues compared a scenario with no global action to reduce greenhouse
gases (GHG) and one with aggressive action that would slow rising global temperatures. The scenario with aggressive
action included an emphasis on energy efficiency and a shift toward cleaner energy sources with less air pollution.
Health benefits of reducing greenhouse gases were calculated and then separated between foreign and domestic
greenhouse gas mitigation in 2050.
The study revealed that 16,000 deaths from fine particulate matter and 8,000 deaths from ozone would be prevented.
Other countries’ policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—such as decisions resulting from the 2015 Paris climate
agreement—contributed to preventing 15 percent of particulate-matter related deaths and 62 percent of ozone-related
deaths. The study also found that the monetary benefits of the prevented deaths would be likely greater than the overall
cost of reducing greenhouse gases in 2050.
“Our results show that the U.S. can gain significantly greater co-benefits for air quality and human health, especially
for ozone, by working together with other countries to combat global climate change,” said Yuqiang Zhang, a co-lead
author of the study. “Previous studies that estimated the health benefits of GHG reductions typically focused locally or
nationally, and therefore missed the benefits from foreign reductions.”
Greenhouse gases can expose humans to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone (O3), which are both associated with
hospitalizations, emergency department visits, school absences, asthma-related health effects and premature deaths.
As hundreds of nations gather in Bonn, Germany, for a global climate change conference to discuss how to implement
the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the Trump administration is pushing fossil fuels instead. President Donald Trump has
also stated his intentions to pull out of the Paris climate accord, leaving the U.S. the only country in the world that
 Page #45
would not be a part of the agreement. Trump cannot technically back out of the agreement until, coincidentally, the day
after the 2020 presidential election as a result of procedural rules of the United Nations.”