Abstract
Colorado River Named Plaintiff in Self-Preservation Lawsuit
The State of Colorado and its governor are being sued by the Colorado River. The lawsuit by Denver lawyer Jason Flores-Williams and environmental group Deep Green Resistance seeks personhood rights for the river, which Flores-Williams asserts is being “egregiously overused” as it supplies water to seven states. The suit also alleges the state “violated the river's right to flourish” by polluting and draining it, and threatening endangered species. “If a corporation has rights, so, too, should an ancient waterway that has sustained human life for as long as it has existed in the western United States,” the suit states. An additional goal is to “force humans to take better care of natural resources by creating a legal consequence for inaction,” Flores-Williams says. The suit could practically rewrite environmental law, possibly allowing the redwood forests, the Rocky Mountains, or the deserts of Nevada to sue individuals, corporations, and governments over resource pollution or depletion. Future lawsuits might seek to block pipelines, golf courses, or housing developments, Flores-Williams explains. The suit, if successful, would be a first in the United States, but not unprecedented. Several nations have endowed similar status on natural entities in an effort to preserve them, according to the New York Times. Many legal experts consider the suit “ridiculous,” but Harvard Environmental Law Director Jody Freeman believes it has some merit, although it faces a steep uphill battle.
Nuclear Testing Proving Unfriendly to North Korean Environment
North Korea's ongoing nuclear tests are having an adverse effect on the environment, especially along the northern mountain range that separates the nation from neighboring China. According to 38 North.org—a website sponsored by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University—satellite images show numerous landslides along both sides of the mountain regions not far from where six nuclear tests were conducted. That includes Mt. Paektu, the “sacred mountain of the revolution” and the reported birthplace of late leader Kim Jong Il. Another mountain, 7,000-foot-high Mt. Montop, actually lost a few inches of height following one atomic blast, 38 North reported. There are also reports of minor earthquakes in regions that do not normally experience them, according to a paper by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California at Santa Cruz. Satellite images also show that North Korea has failed to dispose safely of nuclear waste, which is likely to contaminate the groundwater, 38 North reported. Still, in the long run it is better that the government is testing its bombs on the ground than in the air, Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington, DC-based Arms Control Association, told the LA Times.
Environmental group Deep Green Resistance is among those trying to establish personhood rights for the Colorado River to prevent its destruction.
Nuclear explosion (simulated). A series of nuclear tests in North Korea is having a negative impact on the country's mountain ranges and landscapes.
Can Algae Help Capture Power Plants' CO2 Emissions?
Michigan State University (MSU) scientists are testing algae-based technologies to capture power plant emissions and turn them into usable end products. According to a university press release, Wei Liao, associate professor of biosystems and agricultural engineering at MSU, explains that photosynthetic green algae is capable of capturing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, but cannot match the output of a conventional power plant. Instead, the scientists will apply a process called biomass cascade conversion, which utilizes the components of algae for the production of other chemicals and biofuels. “We've been running bioenergy experiments with algae on campus for over a decade,” Liao says. “We're now testing a novel technique not only to mitigate power plant emissions, but also to turn them into new sources of revenue.” Byproducts from the cascade conversion include polyurethanes, biodiesel, and other value-added chemicals and fuels. The university will conduct the research for three years through a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Algae are being studied as an avenue to capture emissions.
Palm Springs Golf Course Gives Way to Olive Grove
The developer of a new residential enclave in Palm Springs is swapping out a golf course for dozens of acres of olive groves. According to Brad Shuckhart, president of the California division of Freehold Communities, the 300-acre development known as Miralon will be one of the nation's largest agricultural neighborhoods or “agri-hoods.” For this type of project, new homes are often built around community farms, Schuckhart points out. Miralon's original developer, SunCal, halted the project in 2005 after its financier, Lehman Brothers, was forced to sell the property. SunCal had completed about half of the development, including its 70-acre golf course, and Freehold had to decide what to do when it bought the land in 2016. The agri-hood idea won out, thanks in part to California's ongoing drought. “Golf courses take a lot of water and other resources to maintain,” Shuckhart says. “On the other hand, an olive grove loves hot weather, can withstand a drought and isn't attractive to animals.” Plus, golf courses are a common sight in Palm Springs. In general, they are becoming less profitable: More than 100 nationwide have closed in the past five years, according to Ed McMahon, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute. Freehold has partnered with the Temecula Olive Oil Company, which will harvest the olives and press oil on site. Groundbreaking is expected in early 2018. When complete, the project will have 1,150 homes and roughly 2,500 residents, according to Schuckhart.
A golf course built for an anticipated Palm Springs community is being replaced by an “agri-hood,” including a more resource-friendly olive grove.
UC Davis Tests Cow-Cooling Techniques
Researchers at the University of California at Davis (UCD) are testing two methods in an effort to both reduce global warming and keep the state's prized cows cool. California's dairy industry is its biggest commodity, producing $9.4 billion in milk sales annually, according to a university press release. But heat stress on the cows costs farmers about $800 million, and it also shortens the animals' lives. “The process of rumination, where cows ferment their food, produces a lot of heat, as does milk production itself,” explains Cassandra Tucker, a professor in the UCD Department of Animal Science who focuses on dairy cattle welfare. “When the outside temperatures also rise, it's a challenge for the animal in how she's going to try to keep cool. This project is trying to reduce the energy and water use associated with that, to help both the cows and the dairy producers.” One set of technology being tested uses conduction cooling, where the cows' bedding area is cooled using cold-water infused mats; the other is similar to air conditioning for the cows. The data being collected will help determine which technology the team should use to pilot at a commercial dairy in a future phase of the project, according to Tucker. The project is part of a four-year, $1 million grant from the California Energy Commission.
Innovative cooling technologies tested on dairy cows at the University of California at Davis are taking on the challenge of keeping them cool in an environmentally friendly fashion.
Largest French Bank Quits Funding of Gas, Oil Production
France's largest bank, BNP Paribas, is no longer conducting business with shale and tar sands companies, as part of its expanding policy on global sustainability. According to CEO Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, the financier will also stop funding oil and gas exploration and production projects in the Arctic. The global bank has previously committed to spending (U.S.)$17.7 billion on renewable energy financing and $117.5 million on energy efficiency projects through 2020. It has also ended support for coal mines and coal-fired power plants. “We're a long-standing partner to the energy sector and we're determined to support the transition to a more sustainable world,” Bonnafé asserts. “As an international bank, our role is to help drive the energy transition and contribute to the decarbonization of the economy.” Bonnafé noted that the bank will continue to do business with clients in the energy sector who are “taking significant steps towards energy transition.”
Antarctic Penguin Colony's Disaster Nothing Like Happy Feet
Global warming contributed to near catastrophe for a colony of more than 18,000 pairs of penguins in Terre Adélie, Antarctica. According to the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), only two chicks survived out of thousands born last January; the rest starved to death. It is the second time in four years the colony has experienced such a loss: All 8,000 chicks died in 2013. According to Yan Ropert-Coudert of France's National Centre for Scientific Research, a record amount of summer sea ice forced adult penguins to travel an extra 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, for food. By the time they reached the nesting grounds, all but the two survivors had starved or had been killed by the elements. “Adélie penguins are one of the hardiest and most-amazing animals on our planet,” says Rod Downie, head of Polar Programs at WWF-UK. “This devastating event contrasts with the image that many people might have of penguins. It's more like ‘Tarantino Does Happy Feet,’ with dead penguin chicks strewn across a beach in Adélie Land.” Antarctica overall has experienced a record low amount of summer sea ice but the area around the penguin colony has been an exception. “There may still be years when the breeding will be OK, or even good for this colony, but the scene is set for massive impacts to hit on a more or less regular basis,” adds Ropert-Coudert.
Geysers, hot springs, and other natural wonders at Yellowstone National Park are concealing an underground supervolcano that may erupt centuries sooner than expected.
New Findings on the Last Supervolcano Eruption
When Arizona State University scientists examined fossilized ash that spewed from the supervolcano resting beneath Yellowstone National Park about 631,000 years ago, they discovered changes in temperature and composition that had only taken a few decades. Until now, geologists had thought it would take centuries for the supervolcano to make those transitions, ASU geologist Christy Till says. According to the New York Times, researchers “suspect that a supereruption scars the planet every 100,000 years, causing many to ask when we can next expect such an explosive planet-changing event.” ASU report coauthor Hanna Shamloo explains that they analyzed trace crystals in the volcanic leftovers, knowing that each crystal once resided within the vast ocean of magma deep underground. As the crystals grew outward, layer upon layer, they recorded changes in temperature, pressure, and water content beneath the volcano, much like a set of tree rings. The outer rims of the crystals revealed a clear uptick in temperature and a change in composition that occurred on a rapid time scale. “That could mean the supereruption transpired only decades after an injection of fresh magma beneath the volcano,” Shamloo asserts. “It's shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption.” She cautions, however, that there's more work to do before scientists can verify a precise timeline.
Five of the world's largest gasoline producers are being sued for knowingly making a product that is harmful to the environment.
San Francisco, Oakland Sue Oil Companies for Flood Damages
The cities of San Francisco and Oakland are suing Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell over climate change, joining an emerging legal effort to hold the fossil fuel industry financially accountable for the damages caused by rising seas. The suits allege that the oil and gas giants have known about the link between fossil fuels and climate change for decades but continue to extract and sell their products, “creating an ongoing public nuisance that is causing harm now, and in the future risks catastrophic harm to human life and property, including billions of dollars of public and private property in Oakland and San Francisco.” San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera alleges the oil companies are borrowing from Big Tobacco's playbook by launching a multimillion dollar disinformation campaign to “deny and discredit what was clear even to their own scientists: Global warming is real, and their product is a huge part of the problem.” Oil industry representatives called the lawsuits “unproductive.” The legal actions follow lawsuits filed last summer by the counties of Marin and San Mateo. Past efforts by other jurisdictions have been largely unsuccessful, but Sean Hecht, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, believes that situation could change now that the federal government is pulling back, leaving the matter to state and local courts.
Colorado College Opens Nation's First Net Zero Library
Students at Colorado College (CC; Colorado Springs) will learn, conduct research, and study in a library built specifically to net zero standards; in other words, the building has a net zero carbon footprint. The school's $45 million renovation of its Charles L. Tutt Library makes it the nation's largest academic library to achieve net zero, according to CC President Jill Tiefenthaler. Originally built in 1962, the new library includes a data visualization lab, space for new and emerging technology, a Geospatial Information Systems laboratory, and an experimental classroom equipped with teaching technology. The building is powered by a geothermal energy field consisting of 80 400-foot-deep wells, a 115-kilowatt rooftop solar array, a 400-kilowatt offsite solar array, a green roof-top garden, and a 130-kilowatt combined heat and power system. “Fifty-five years ago, we dedicated the new, state-of-the-art [Tutt] library,” Tiefenthaler says. “Now we get to do it again. Here's to another 55 years.”
Some GM Manufacturing Plants to Run on Total Wind Power
Seven General Motors plants in Ohio and Indiana will run on 100 percent green electricity by the end of 2018, according to the automaker. A GM press release states that the company has signed long-term contracts to buy electricity from two soon-to-be-built wind farms in Ohio and Illinois. All of the power from the Ohio farm, rated at 100 megawatts, or 1 million watts, will go to GM facilities. One hundred megawatts of the 185-megawatt Illinois wind farm will be sent to GM. The power purchase agreements will lock in fixed prices for 12 to 15 years, according to GM spokesperson Collen Oberc. “GM's corporate sustainability goal is to power all of its plants around the world with electricity generated by renewable technologies by 2050,” she says. “The two new power purchase agreements take the company to 20 percent of that goal.” The action follows another agreement signed last summer with a wind farm in Texas that will supply the company's Arlington, Texas, plant with 100 percent green electricity.
Wind farms will soon supply all of the power GM needs to run its production plants in several states.
Battery-Powered Airplane Could Hit the Skies by 2027
British airline EasyJet wants to bring an electric, battery-powered plane to market within 10 years to handle short-term flights. According to EasyJet Chief Executive Officer Carolyn McCall, the airline's ultimate goal is for all flights to be battery powered in 20 years. But for the moment, “it's a matter of when, not if, a short-haul electric plane will fly.” If so, it will help transform one of the world's most polluting industries, EasyJet Chief Commercial Officer Peter Duffy says. The carbon output for one person taking a cross-country flight in the United States is greater than that of the average person driving a car for a year, he notes.
Are fossil fuel-driven planes on the way out? Airline EasyJet hopes so. The company plans to start short-term flights on electric-powered crafts within a decade.
China Leads Way as No. 1 Solar Power Producer
The world is now building more solar power generators than those for coal, a trend that will continue regardless of what America does with its energy policy, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris. The agency estimates that by 2022, renewable energy capacity will grow by roughly 1,000 gigawatts (GW). “That amount is half the total capacity of all coal-fired power plants worldwide,” asserts IEA director and report coauthor Paolo Frankl. “And it took 80 years to build all of those.” Solar, which grew by 74 GW in 2016—nearly half of the 165 GW of all new renewables worldwide that year—is expected to remain the undisputed leader in green energy into the next decade. A large part of that is due to China's growing dominance in the market: The nation has gone from having a mere 100 megawatts of solar capacity in 2006, less than total capacity for the city of San Antonio, to more than 77 GW available in 2016, according to Frankl. By the end of 2018, China will have installed solar units equal to the total capacity for all of Germany during its 20-year history in solar development. This is due to an aggressive green policy and record-low announced prices of solar and onshore wind power, IEA states. The report Renewables 2017 is available at www.iea.org.
First Sports and Entertainment Smart City Set for 2020
Construction has begun on the nation's first sports and entertainment “smart city.” Johnson Controls expects the $700 million Hall of Fame Village at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, to be open in 2020, but it will take until 2040 to finish. It will feature various smart technologies related to heating and cooling, fire and security, lighting, the experience of the fans, and a building- and campus-wide operating system, according to Johnson Controls Vice President Kim Metcalf-Kupres. “Our innovative, integrated, technologies will provide the right combination of safety and security at the Johnson Controls Hall of Fame Village in an environment that demonstrates how we connect ‘cities’ that run smartly and reliably,” she says. The campus, expected to generate $15.3 billion in revenue over a 25-year period, will also include a luxury hotel, stadium, upgraded Pro Football Hall of Fame museum, virtual reality amusement area, assisted living facility, sports research and medical center, retail shops and restaurants, indoor sports facility, and a youth sports complex. Johnson Controls will become the “Official Smart City Partner” of Hall of Fame Village, and the company will be the presenting sponsor for the annual pro football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Week celebration in Canton each summer.
The NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, is headed for a major facelift as it becomes part of a “Smart City.”
Greenpeace: World's Worst Plastic Offenders Must Improve
Nestlé, Unilever, and Indonesian company PT Torabika Mayora are the top three contributors of plastic waste discovered in the Philippines, according to an audit by Greenpeace (GP) Philippines. The three corporations are primary sources for the 1.88 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste found in the nation each year, according to Abigail Aguilar, a GP campaigner. “Global corporations are locking us into cheap, disposable plastics, rather than innovating and finding solutions,” Aguilar asserts. The Philippines is the third-largest source of plastic ocean pollution, in part due to its position as a “sachet economy,” which encourages the practice of buying single-use consumer goods, according to the audit. “This drives market and profit share for most companies by making it more accessible to people with limited incomes,” Aguilar says. “However, low-value single-use sachets are not collected by waste pickers and usually end up in landfills or scattered indiscriminately as litter in the streets or marine debris.” The report builds on the findings released in September by Greenpeace on the total number of plastic-bottled drinks produced worldwide in one year. That total—500 billion—is equal to 1 million bottles per minute. About 20 percent of the total, or 110 billion, are produced by Coca-Cola. Greenpeace has been critical of the beverage maker for its campaign emphasizing the use of plastic bottles by customers. “We are actually seeing them going backward,” Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner Louisa Casson notes. “Rather than investing more in refillables and reusables, they've increased their use of single-use plastic bottles over the last decade.” Officials at Coca-Cola had no comment.
Plastic pollution is everyone's problem, but several companies have a greater level of responsibility than everyone else, according to Greenpeace.
