Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

GoGreenNation News

Learn more about the issues presented in our films
Show Filters

All but 7 Countries on Earth Have Air Pollution Above WHO Standard

New research found that fewer than 10 percent of countries and territories met World Health Organization guidelines for particulate matter pollution last year.

Only 10 countries and territories out of 134 achieved the World Health Organization’s standards for a pervasive form of air pollution last year, according to air quality data compiled by IQAir, a Swiss company.The pollution studied is called fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, because it refers to solid particles less than 2.5 micrometers in size: small enough to enter the bloodstream. PM2.5 is the deadliest form of air pollution, leading to millions of premature deaths each year.“Air pollution and climate change both have the same culprit, which is fossil fuels,” said Glory Dolphin Hammes, the CEO of IQAir’s North American division.The World Health Organization sets a guideline that people shouldn’t breathe more than 5 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter of air, on average, throughout a year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed tightening its standard from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter.The few oases of clean air that meet World Health Organization guidelines are mostly islands, as well as Australia and the northern European countries of Finland and Estonia. Of the non-achievers, where the vast majority of the human population lives, the countries with the worst air quality were mostly in Asia and Africa.Where some of the dirtiest air is foundThe four most polluted countries in IQAir’s ranking for 2023 — Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Tajikistan — are in South and Central Asia.Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Scientists Develop Groundbreaking Sensor That Can Wirelessly Detect Chemical Warfare Agents

Researchers have developed a revolutionary sensor capable of detecting chemical warfare agents without wires, representing a major advancement in technology for public safety.This innovative device,...

A breakthrough sensor using SAW technology provides wireless, highly sensitive detection of chemical warfare agents, marking a major advancement in safety technology by allowing for efficient and reliable monitoring in challenging environments. (Artist’s concept). Credit: SciTechDaily.comResearchers have developed a revolutionary sensor capable of detecting chemical warfare agents without wires, representing a major advancement in technology for public safety.This innovative device, capable of identifying substances like dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP), offers a new level of efficiency and reliability in monitoring and responding to chemical threats, without the need for direct power sources or physical connections.The urgent need for advanced detection of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) to ensure global security has led to the development of a novel gas sensor. This sensor is distinguished by its rapid response, high sensitivity, and compact size, crucial for the early detection of CWAs. Accurate detection and monitoring of CWAs are vital for effective defense operations, both military and civilian. Due to the hazardous nature of CWAs, research is typically limited to authorized laboratories using simulants that mimic CWAs’ chemical structure without their toxic effects.Research Findings and Sensor CapabilitiesA recent study led by a team of experts, published on January 3, 2024, in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering, have developed a cutting-edge sensor that wirelessly identifies chemical warfare agents, revolutionizing safety measures. This device efficiently detects DMMP, enhancing threat response capabilities without relying on power sources or connections. In the study, researchers have innovated a passive, wireless sensor system using surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology, set to revolutionize chemical warfare agent detection by specifically targeting dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP), a simulant for nerve agents. This sensor operates at 433 MHz, using a unique coating of fluoroalcohol polysiloxane (SXFA) on a lithium niobate substrate, enhancing its sensitivity and stability under various environmental conditions.Schematic and working principle of the proposed SAW chemical sensor. Credit: Microsystems & NanoengineeringThe system’s core is built around a YZ lithium niobate substrate equipped with metallic interdigital transducers (IDTs) and an attached antenna. The SXFA film’s interaction with DMMP alters the SAW’s properties, such as velocity, enabling precise detection. This design ensures stable operation within a 0-90 cm transmission range and is resilient across a wide temperature range (-30 °C to 100 °C) and humidity levels up to 60% RH.According to the research team, this sensor system marks a significant leap forward in CWA detection technology. Its passive wireless nature allows operation in inaccessible or hazardous areas, ensuring safety and efficiency.This technology has immense potential in military and civilian defense, offering a reliable, efficient means of early CWA detection. Its ability to operate wirelessly and in challenging environments makes it a valuable tool for ensuring public safety and preparedness against chemical threats.Reference: “A passive wireless surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor system for detecting warfare agents based on fluoroalcohol polysiloxane film” by Yong Pan, Cancan Yan, Xu Gao, Junchao Yang, Tengxiao Guo, Lin Zhang and Wen Wang, 3 January 2024, Microsystems & Nanoengineering.DOI: 10.1038/s41378-023-00627-8

Ancient Footsteps Uncovered: Scientists Discover Evidence of Human Activity on This Small Caribbean Island 850 Years Earlier Than Previously Thought

New research establishes that humans occupied Curaçao between 5735 and 5600 calibrated years before present (cal BP). This finding suggests that the island was inhabited...

New findings by researchers from Simon Fraser University and the NAAM Foundation reveal that Curaçao was settled by humans up to 850 years earlier than previously believed, offering new insights into Caribbean pre-Columbian history and emphasizing the importance of archaeological fieldwork and community engagement. The image above depicts a rusty shipwreck on the island.New research establishes that humans occupied Curaçao between 5735 and 5600 calibrated years before present (cal BP). This finding suggests that the island was inhabited up to 850 years earlier than earlier estimates had indicated.New research co-led by Simon Fraser University and the National Archaeological Anthropological Memory Management (NAAM Foundation) in Curaçao has pushed back the date of the island’s earliest known human habitation by several hundred years, contributing new insights into the history of the Caribbean before the arrival of Columbus.A team of international partners has been collaborating on the Curaçao Cultural Landscape Project since 2018 to understand the long-term biodiversity change of the island, and its relationship to human activity. Findings from the team, published in the Journal of Coastal and Island Archaeology, place the human occupation of Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean, as far back as 5735 – 5600 cal BP — up to 850 years earlier than previously thought.This updated timeline was determined by radiocarbon dating charcoal collected from an Archaic period site at Saliña Sint Marie — what is now the earliest known archaeological site on the island — using accelerated mass spectrometry.Insights into Caribbean SettlementChristina Giovas, an associate professor in SFU’s Department of Archaeology and co-lead on the study, explains that the settlement of the Caribbean and the origin of its peoples is still highly debated. “What this new information does is push the initial exploration in this region back to a time where other islands to the north of Curaçao are also being settled. This suggests that the movement of people from the continental mainland into those more northern islands might have entangled with some of the movement of the people into Curaçao,” says Giovas.While more work is needed to determine if this is the case, Giovas notes that this indicates that the exploration of the islands off the western Venezuelan coast began earlier than previously known and provides a baseline for studying human-environment interactions in the area. According to NAAM Deputy Director, Claudia Kraan, who also led the study, the finding demonstrates to the local public that further research can unveil new insights into the people who once inhabited the island. She notes, “Archaeological information is dynamic, continually evolving with ongoing exploration and analysis.”Educational and Community EngagementThe team traveled to Curaçao in the summer of 2022 for their first field season, bringing with them a cohort of SFU archaeology undergraduate students as part of a five-week international field school. Students helped survey, map, and excavate project sites throughout the island, then presented their findings to the local community. Throughout these activities, they worked closely with local volunteers and the project’s Curaçaoan partner, the NAAM Foundation, an NGO that manages the island’s archaeological heritage through collaboration with government and stakeholders.“For archaeology, practical hands-on learning is really the best way to understand the field,” says Giovas. “I really wanted students to get skills in what’s called ‘environmental archaeology’ — techniques and methods that are used to ask questions about human relationships with the environment, in the past and through time. It’s also increasingly about what we can take from the data that we gather from those sorts of investigations and apply to modern-day conservation, and environmental awareness.”The project also works to increase local capacity for archaeology on the island, create opportunities for knowledge mobilization, and bring awareness to the depth of history of the area.“To have students involved in these initiatives is, I think, where you get these generational shifts in the culture of the discipline,” says Giovas.The team plans to return to Curaçao again in 2025 as part of another SFU international field school to dive deeper into how humans have transformed the island throughout time, and the lessons we can learn for future conservation efforts.Reference: “Radiocarbon dates from Curaçao’s oldest Archaic site extend earliest island settlement to ca. 5700 cal BP” by Claudia T. Kraan, Michiel Kappers, Kelsey M. Lowe, S. Yoshi Maezumi and Christina M. Giovas, 12 March 2024, The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology.DOI: 10.1080/15564894.2024.2321575Along with SFU and the NAAM Foundation, the team includes partners from Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, University of Queensland, and InTerris Registries.

From Dream to Reality: Low-Cost, Carbon-Neutral Biofuels Are Finally Possible

In the process of converting plants into fuel, the initial phase — decomposing the plant material — has consistently posed the greatest challenge. Recent research...

UCR’s Charles Cai and a newly installed 20-gallon CELF reactor that will be used in the scale-up project. Credit: Stan Lim / UCRIn the process of converting plants into fuel, the initial phase — decomposing the plant material — has consistently posed the greatest challenge. Recent research reveals that incorporating an easily renewable chemical during the pretreatment phase could, at last, render the production of advanced biofuels economically viable and carbon neutral.For biofuels to compete with petroleum, biorefinery operations must be designed to better utilize lignin. Lignin is one of the main components of plant cell walls. It provides plants with greater structural integrity and resiliency from microbial attacks. However, these natural properties of lignin also make it difficult to extract and utilize from the plant matter, also known as biomass.“Lignin utilization is the gateway to making what you want out of biomass in the most economical and environmentally friendly way possible,” said UC Riverside Associate Research Professor Charles Cai. “Designing a process that can better utilize both the lignin and sugars found in biomass is one of the most exciting technical challenges in this field.” To overcome the lignin hurdle, Cai invented CELF, which stands for co-solvent enhanced lignocellulosic fractionation. It is an innovative biomass pretreatment technology.“CELF uses tetrahydrofuran or THF to supplement water and dilute acid during biomass pretreatment. It improves overall efficiency and adds lignin extraction capabilities,” Cai said. “Best of all, THF itself can be made from biomass sugars.”Economic and Environmental Advantages of CELFA landmark Energy & Environmental Science paper details the degree to which a CELF biorefinery offers economic and environmental benefits over both petroleum-based fuels and earlier biofuel production methods.The paper is a collaboration between Cai’s research team at UCR, the Center for Bioenergy Innovation managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratories, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, with funding provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. In it, the researchers consider two main variables: what kind of biomass is most ideal and what to do with the lignin once it’s been extracted.UC Riverside Associate Research Professor Charles Cai, who invented CELF, a biomass pretreatment technology that could make next-generation biofuels competitive with petroleum. Credit: Stan Lim / UCRFirst-generation biofuel operations use food crops like corn, soy, and sugarcane as raw materials, or feedstocks. Because these feedstocks divert land and water away from food production, using them for biofuels is not ideal.Second-generation operations use non-edible plant biomass as feedstocks. An example of biomass feedstocks includes wood residues from milling operations, sugarcane bagasse, or corn stover, all of which are abundant low-cost byproducts of forestry and agricultural operations.According to the Department of Energy, up to a billion tons per year of biomass could be made available for the manufacture of biofuels and bioproducts in the US alone, capable of displacing 30% of our petroleum consumption while also creating new domestic jobs.Selecting Optimal Feedstocks and Achieving Economic BenefitsBecause a CELF biorefinery can more fully utilize plant matter than earlier second-generation methods, the researchers found that a heavier, denser feedstock like hardwood poplar is preferable over less carbon-dense corn stover for yielding greater economic and environmental benefits.Using poplar in a CELF biorefinery, the researchers demonstrate that sustainable aviation fuel could be made at a break-even price as low as $3.15 per gallon of gasoline-equivalent. The current average cost for a gallon of jet fuel in the U.S. is $5.96.The U.S. government issues credits for biofuel production in the form of renewable identification number credits, a subsidy meant to bolster domestic biofuel production. The tier of these credits issued for second-generation biofuels, the D3 tier, is typically traded at $1 per gallon or higher. At this price per credit, the paper demonstrates that one can expect a rate of return of over 20% from the operation.“Spending a little more for a more carbon-rich feedstock like poplar still yields more economic benefits than a cheaper feedstock like corn stover, because you can make more fuel and chemicals from it,” Cai said.The paper also illustrates how lignin utilization can positively contribute to overall biorefinery economics while keeping the carbon footprint as low as possible. In older biorefinery models, where biomass is cooked in water and acid, the lignin is mostly unusable for more than its heating value.“The older models would elect to burn the lignin to supplement heat and energy for these biorefineries because they could mostly only leverage the sugars in the biomass – a costly proposition that leaves a lot of value off the table,” said Cai.In addition to better lignin utilization, the CELF biorefinery model also proposes to produce renewable chemicals. These chemicals could be used as building blocks for bioplastics and food and drink flavoring compounds. These chemicals take up some of the carbon in the plant biomass that would not get released back into the atmosphere as CO2.“Adding THF helps reduce the energy cost of pretreatment and helps isolate lignin, so you wouldn’t have to burn it anymore. On top of that, we can make renewable chemicals that help us achieve a near-zero global warming potential,” Cai said. “I think this moves the needle from Gen 2 biofuels to Gen 2+.”In light of the team’s recent successes, the Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technology Office has awarded the researchers a $2 million grant to build a small-scale CELF pilot plant at UCR. Cai hopes that demonstrating the pilot plant will lead to larger-scale investment in the technology, as harnessing energy from fossil fuels adds to global warming and hurts the planet.“I began this work more than a decade ago because I wanted to make an impact. I wanted to find a viable alternative to fossil fuels and my colleagues and I have done that,” Cai said. “Using CELF, we have shown it is possible to create cost-effective fuels from biomass and lignin and help curb our contribution of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.”Reference: “Economics and global warming potential of a commercial-scale delignifying biorefinery based on co-solvent enhanced lignocellulosic fractionation to produce alcohols, sustainable aviation fuels, and co-products from biomass” by Bruno Colling Klein, Brent Scheidemantle, Rebecca J. Hanes, Andrew W. Bartling, Nicholas J. Grundl, Robin J. Clark, Mary J. Biddy, Ling Tao, Cong T. Trinh, Adam M. Guss, Charles E. Wyman, Arthur J. Ragauskas, Erin G. Webb, Brian H. Davison and Charles M. Cai, 13 December 2023, Energy & Environmental Science.DOI: 10.1039/D3EE02532B

A New Orleans neighborhood confronts the racist legacy of a toxic stretch of highway

The “Claiborne Corridor” tore through the heart of one of the nation’s oldest Black neighborhoods

Aside from a few discarded hypodermic needles on the ground, the Hunter’s Field Playground in New Orleans looks almost untouched. It’s been open more than nine years, but the brightly painted red and yellow slides and monkey bars are still sleek and shiny, and the padded rubber tiles feel springy underfoot. For people who live nearby, it’s no mystery why the equipment is in relatively pristine shape: Children don’t come here to play. “Because kids are smart,” explained Amy Stelly, an artist and urban designer who lives about a block away on Dumaine Street. “It’s the adults who aren’t. It’s the adults who built the playground under the interstate.” Hunter’s Field is wedged directly beneath the elevated roadbeds of the Claiborne Expressway section of Interstate 10 in the city’s 7th Ward. There are no sounds of laughter or children playing. The constant cuh-clunk, cuh-clunk of the traffic passing overhead makes it difficult to hold a conversation with someone standing next to you. An average of 115,000 vehicles a day use the overpass, according to a 2012 study. “I have never seen a child play here,” Stelly said. Stelly keeps a sharp eye on this area as part of her advocacy work with the Claiborne Avenue Alliance, a group of residents and business owners dedicated to revitalizing the predominantly African American community on either side of the looming expressway. What happened to Claiborne Avenue isn’t unique. Federal planners often routed highways directly through low-income minority neighborhoods, dividing communities and polluting the air. For as long as she can remember, Stelly has been fighting to dismantle that section of the highway. She’s lived in the neighborhood her entire life and said the noise is oftentimes unbearable. “You can sustain hearing damage,” she said. Now, she’s helping collect new noise and air pollution data to show it needs to be taken down. The Claiborne Expressway was built in the 1960s, when the construction of interstates and highways was a symbol of progress and economic development in the U.S. But that supposed progress often came at a great cost for marginalized communities — especially predominantly Black neighborhoods. When it was built, the “Claiborne Corridor,” as it’s still sometimes known, tore through the heart of Tremé, one of the nation’s oldest Black neighborhoods. For more than a century before the construction of the expressway, bustling Claiborne Avenue constituted the backbone of economic and cultural life for Black New Orleans. Back then, the oak-lined avenue was home to more than 120 businesses. Today, only a few dozen remain. What happened to Claiborne Avenue isn’t unique. Federal planners often routed highways directly through low-income minority neighborhoods, dividing communities and polluting the air. In Montgomery, Alabama, I-85 cut through the city’s only middle-class Black neighborhood and was “designed to displace and punish the organizers of the civil rights movement,” according to Rebecca Retzlaff, a community planning professor at Auburn University. In Nashville, planners intentionally looped I-40 around a white community, and sent it plowing through a prominent Black neighborhood, knocking down hundreds of homes and businesses. Examples like this exist in major cities across the country. The federal government has started working on ways to confront the damage highway construction continues to do to low-income and minority communities. An initiative established in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act called the Reconnecting Communities Pilot seeks to do just that: reconnect neighborhoods and communities that were divided by infrastructure. But there’s wide disagreement on the best way to do that, and some strategies are likely to do little to limit the health effects of living near these highways. What’s unfolding in New Orleans shows how challenging it is to pick and fund projects that will help. Competing Visions for the Claiborne Expressway Stelly’s group, the Claiborne Avenue Alliance, submitted a proposal for Reconnecting Communities Pilot money. It wanted $1.6 million in federal funds primarily for public engagement, data collection, and feasibility planning to work to assess whether it would be possible to remove the expressway altogether, with a plan to raise $400,000 more to cover costs. And it seemed possible its grant proposal would succeed, since even the White House cited the Claiborne Expressway as a textbook example of the biased planning history in a published statement about the Reconnecting Communities Pilot. Ultimately, though, the federal Department of Transportation, the agency charged with allocating the program’s money, denied the Claiborne Avenue Alliance’s grant request. Instead, the Department of Transportation offered a small fraction of the money requested in a competing joint proposal made by the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. That plan called for a $47 million grant from Reconnecting Communities to do overpass improvements, remove some on- and off-ramps, and, most significantly, create the “Claiborne Innovation District” to promote public life and cultural activities under the highway. DOT granted just $500,000 for the project. Stelly said she likes a few aspects of the city-state proposal, notably the plan to remove on- and off-ramps to improve pedestrian safety beneath the expressway and other public safety projects, like better lighting and dedicated pedestrian and bicycle lanes. But, notably, Stelly called the idea of creating an entertainment space and market beneath the highway misguided and ridiculous. Would it be a waste of scarce government funds? “It’s a foolish idea because you’re going to be exposed to the same thing” as the neglected playground, Stelly said. “You’re going to be exposed to the same levels of noise. It’s not a wise decision to build anything under here.” Using Science to Inform Policy Since her group’s proposal was denied, Stelly and her organization are turning to a new strategy: helping with a new study funded by the Environmental Protection Agency on the expressway’s health impacts. They hope the data will support them in their efforts to remove the highway from their neighborhood. In addition to noise impacts, the EPA-funded study is looking at the health impacts of pollution under the Claiborne Expressway — especially harmful pollutants like particulate matter 2.5, or PM 2.5. These microscopic particles, measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter, are released from the tailpipes of passing vehicles, said Adrienne Katner, an associate professor at the Louisiana State University School of Public Health, who is the principal investigator on the EPA study. They’re so small that, when inhaled, they lodge deep in the lungs. From there, they can migrate to the circulatory system, and then spread and potentially affect every system in the body. “So the heart, the brain,” said Katner. “If a woman is pregnant, it can cross the placental barrier. So it has a lot of impacts.” Katner and her team of researchers are beginning the study by taking preliminary readings with monitors at different points along the expressway. Completing the research and publishing the data will likely take two to three years. One of Katner’s monitoring sites is Hunter’s Field Playground. Graduate researcher Jacquelynn Mornay said the noise levels registered there could cause permanent hearing damage after an hour or so of exposure. The pollution levels recorded hover around 18 micrograms per cubic meter. “It should be at most — at most — 12,” said Beatrice Duah, another graduate student researcher. “So it is way over the limits.” Residents and workers occupying the homes and businesses lining the area under the expressway are exposed daily to these levels of noise and pollution. When complete, this EPA study will join a decades-long body of research about how traffic pollution affects the human body. “We’re not inventing the science here,” Katner said. “All I’m doing is showing them what we already know and then documenting it, giving them the data to then inform and influence policy. That’s all I can do.” ‘Removal Is the Only Cure’ Eventually, the study’s findings could help other communities divided by infrastructure across the country, Katner said. “A lot of cities are going through this right now and they’re looking back at their highway systems,” she said. “They’re looking back at the impacts that it’s had on a community and they’re trying to figure out what to do next. I’m hoping that this project will inform them.” Amy Stelly said she’s always known the air she and her neighbors breathe isn’t safe, but she’s hopeful that having concrete data to support her efforts will do more to persuade policymakers to address the problem. That could mean taking down the dangerous on- and off-ramps — or scrapping what she considers to be the wasteful plan of putting a market and event space under the highway overpass. Stelly sees only one true solution to the problems posed by the Claiborne Expressway, only one way to really right the wrongs done to her community. “Removal is the only cure,” Stelly said. “I’m insisting on it because I’m a resident of the neighborhood and I live with this every day.” And, she said, “the science tells us there’s no other way.” This article is from a partnership that includes WWNO, NPR, and KFF Health News. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF. Subscribe to KFF Health News' free Morning Briefing. Read more about pollution

People with ‘Havana Syndrome’ Show No Brain Damage or Medical Illness

The largest and most comprehensive studies of ‘Havana Syndrome’ point to stress or group psychology as likely explanations for most “anomalous health incidents”

In late 2016 U.S. diplomats and family members based in Cuba began reporting a wide swath of neurological symptoms, including dizziness, headaches, deafness and difficulty concentrating, following exposure to ear-splitting noises around their homes. This “Havana syndrome” outbreak disrupted U.S. relations with Cuba, spawned congressional hearings on the “attacks” and left some people with years of disabling symptoms. Reports from people with these symptoms also occurred in other countries, and the U.S. government labeled these cases as “anomalous health incidents” (AHIs).The abrupt onset of these symptoms led to years of debate among scientists and those affected about possible causes, which ranged from pesticides to group psychology to noise from crickets. Now two medical studies that were conducted by the National Institutes of Health and released on Monday morning might finally have an answer. The researchers compared more than 80 of these affected individuals with similar healthy people. The results, detailed in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show no clinical signs or brain image indications to explain those widely varied symptoms. The JAMA findings follow the 2023 release of an intelligence community assessment that found that the injuries were not the result of foreign attacks. More likely, the assessment suggested, they were tied to previous injuries, stress, environmental concerns and “social factors” such as group psychology, in which illness symptoms reported by one individual in a community can spread serially among its members. Such outbreaks have been seen everywhere from hiccupping in high schools to “repetition strain” cases among Australian typists in the 1980s.“These individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time,” said NIH rehabilitation medicine expert Leighton Chan, who led one of the studies, at a briefing for reporters last Friday. Nothing in the new medical findings contradicts the assessment of the injuries in the intelligence community report, he said.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.In the first study, led by Chan, investigators examined 86 people with AHIs, 42 women and 44 men, who last experienced an incident 76 days prior, on average. The participants were U.S. government staff and family members who had been in locations that included parts of Cuba, China and Austria, as well as the U.S. (All of these areas were past sites of Havana syndrome outbreak reports.) A third of these affected participants were unable to work because of their symptoms. (According to Chan, a few of the cases dated to 2015, which was prior to the previously reported cases in Cuba.) Clinical tests for hearing, balance, cognition, eyesight and blood work were matched against the results from 30 people with similar working backgrounds but no symptoms. The researchers found that the only significant differences between the two groups were increased self-reported symptoms of fatigue, stress and depression in people with AHIs, as well as self-reported trouble with balancing that was confirmed through testing.Likewise, in a second study that looked at brain imaging in 81 of the same participants compared with 48 controls, investigators led by Carlo Pierpaoli of the NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering found “no significant differences in imaging measures of brain structure or function” among the two groups. The findings are consistent regardless of where the cases originated. Balance problems were the most pronounced complaint among the participants with AHIs: they were seen during tests in more than a quarter of those affected by this syndrome. These cases of persistent postural-perceptual dizziness point to a brain function disorder that the NIH researchers say could be linked to either external injuries or psychological distress.Notably, these imaging findings contradict a 2018 JAMA study, which was widely reported in the news (with some scientific controversy) and found signs of concussion and possible brain injuries in a few people with Havana syndrome. The new NIH studies relied on advanced magnetic resonance imaging scanners used only in research, which likely showed a more accurate picture of any false positives, Pierpaoli said at the press briefing. In addition, whereas previous studies chose a narrow range of controls without the same background as those with Havana syndrome, in the new study, the researchers compared affected people with more representative individuals without symptoms.The fact that the new studies found no discernible brain or clinical differences between affected and healthy participants, “should be some reassurance to the patients,” said neurologist Louis French of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., which is where many patients with AHIs have been treated and is near the NIH’s headquarters, during the press briefing. “This will allow us to focus on the here and now of getting back to where they should be.”“People who were told by trusted authorities that they suffered brain damage from a secret weapon will likely dismiss the NIH report as a government cover-up,” says University of Maryland neuroscientist Douglas Fields. “It is, however, an excellent scientific study, with conclusions that are well supported by data, and the study will be viewed as highly credible by scientists.”In a 2019 report investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had suggested that a case-control study of people with Havana syndrome—the type of investigation used in the two new studies undertaken by the NIH researchers—might lead to “misleading or obscured findings” because of the time elapsed since the onset of symptoms. In the press event, Chan acknowledged this concern as a reason for caution in interpreting the new results but said a case-control study was the best option left to investigators.He noted that the results do leave open the possibility of some external cause such as pulsed microwaves (suggested in a 2020 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, or NASEM, report) having triggered injuries that then healed and left no signs before any of the clinical tests or brain scans were undertaken. Some of the affected participants were seen as soon as 14 days after an incident, Pierpaoli said, and showed no signs of differences with healthy controls.“I suspect what we are seeing in leaving the door ajar to the possibility to more exotic explanations has less to do with the inability to understand psychologically induced symptoms and more with not wanting to embarrass colleagues,” says medical sociologist Robert Bartholomew,co-author ofHavana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria. Bartholomew suggests the cases sprouted in classic mass psychology fashion, where high-status individuals (intelligence personnel) in a stressful environment (the U.S. embassy in Cuba) reported symptoms, leading to alarm spreading to their wider community (embassies worldwide). In this scenario, an outbreak of people suffering real psychological injuries resulted. “Clearly, the NIH study points to the role of conventional health issues in a population experiencing extraordinary stress,” Bartholomew says. “It’s time to put this episode behind us, heed the lessons and move on.”Mark Zaid is an attorney who represents more than two dozen current and past federal officials, as well as family members, with Havana syndrome who are seeking continued medical treatment at Walter Reed. He questions the ethics of the NIH testing process, saying participation was seen as a requirement for treatment. (Chan strongly disputed this suggestion in the briefing.) Zaid voices concerns that the results would be used to wrongly dismiss Havana syndrome injuries. “The government is knowingly weaponizing the lack of science that exists in this area and intentionally hiding behind the classification wall where much of the evidence that contradicts the results exists,” he says.In 2017, when word of Havana syndrome first broke, news reports widely suggested that “sonic weapons” had played a role. A year later news outlets replaced this claimed potential cause with “microwave” weapons. Then, by 2019, they suggested that “pulsed” microwaves explained the injuries, and the NASEM report later judged that idea as the most plausible cause late that year. Unknown to that report’s writers, a 2018 U.S. Department of State–sponsored technical report conducted by a highly regarded technical group called JASON, which was only declassified later, had already cast doubt on the theory that the injuries were caused by any kind of electromagnetic effect. (Crickets likely explained incident noises, it suggested.) Those doubts also appeared in a 2022 follow-on report from the same experts.Still, in an editorial accompanying the new JAMA studies, Stanford University microbiologist David Relman, who chaired the NASEM report, maintains that pulsed microwaves might explain some injuries. Relman’s article cites wide variations in symptoms, the gap in timing between incidents and the NIH assessments and a wider lack of understanding of brain injury mechanisms from electromagnetic effects in general. In the editorial, he calls for “surveillance systems designed to rapidly detect early cases and clusters of concern.”In the press event, Chan expressed concern that such surveillance might worsen symptoms in diplomats and intelligence personnel who are already under stress and trigger more persistent postural-perceptual dizziness cases where psychological distress plays a part in the malady. He noted that some affected people were from intelligence agencies, which makes communication about their circumstances trickier. (Regarding Chan’s concerns, “I think a surveillance system of the sort I described is a good idea,” Reman wrote in an e-mail to Scientific American.) “It is reassuring that the people experiencing AHIs suffered no brain damage from their experience—but the evidence for that was never strong in any event,” said University of Pennsylvania health physicist Kenneth Foster to Scientific American. The possibility of attack by microwaves “still gives me pause,” he added. “The technology exists to give someone a frightening but not acutely damaging experience by inducing mechanical disturbances to the vestibular system using pulsed microwaves or laser light.”Bartholomew is more skeptical. “They have essentially said, ‘We have not found any compelling evidence for Bigfoot’, but of course, Bigfoot could be there; we just didn’t see it,’” he says.

On a climate rollercoaster: how Australia’s environment fared in the world’s hottest year

Conditions deteriorated in 2023 but were stlil relatively good for ecosystems and agriculture. Unfortunately, the alarming decline of threatened species continued.

Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year and numerous weather disasters occurred as climate change reared its head. How did Australia’s environment fare against this onslaught? In short, 2023 was a year of opposites. For the past nine years, we have trawled through huge volumes of data collected by satellites, measurement stations and surveys by individuals and agencies. We include data on global change, oceans, people, weather, water, soils, vegetation, fire and biodiversity. Each year, we analyse those data, summarising them in an annual report that includes an overall Environmental Condition Score and regional scorecards. These scores provide a relative measure of conditions for agriculture and ecosystems. Scores declined across the country, except in the Northern Territory, but were still relatively good. However, the updated Threatened Species Index shows the abundance of listed bird, mammal and plant species has continued to decline at a rate of about 3% a year since the turn of the century. Environmental condition indicators for 2023, showing the changes from 2000–2022 average values. Such differences can be part of a long-term trend or within normal variability. Australia's Environment 2023 Report. Read more: How 2023's record heat worsened droughts, floods and bushfires around the world Riding a climate rollercoaster in 2023 Worldwide, 77 countries broke temperature records. Australia was not one of them. Our annual average temperature was 0.53°C below the horror year 2019. Temperatures in the seas around us were below the records of 2022. Even so, 2023 was among Australia’s eight warmest years in both cases. All eight came after 2005. However, those numbers are averaged over the year. Dig a bit deeper and it becomes clear 2023 was a climate rollercoaster. The year started as wet as the previous year ended, but dry and unseasonably warm weather set in from May to October. Soils and wetlands across much of the country started drying rapidly. In the eastern states, the fire season started as early as August. Nonetheless, there was generally still enough water to support good vegetation growth throughout the unusually warm and sunny winter months. Fears of a severe fire season were not realised as El Niño’s influence waned in November and rainfall returned, in part due to the warm oceans. Combined with relatively high temperatures, it made for a hot and humid summer. A tropical cyclone and several severe storms caused flooding in Queensland and Victoria in December. As always, there were regional differences. Northern Australia experienced the best rainfall and growth conditions in several years. This contributed to more grass fires than average during the dry season. On the other hand, the rain did not return to Western Australia and Tasmania, which ended the year dry. So how did scores change? Every year we calculate an Environmental Condition Score that combines weather, water and vegetation data. The national score was 7.5 (out of 10). That was 1.2 points lower than for 2022, but still the second-highest score since 2011. Scores declined across the country except for the Northern Territory, which chalked up a score of 8.8 thanks to a strong monsoon season. With signs of drought developing in parts of Western Australia, it had the lowest score of 5.5. The Environmental Condition Score reflects environmental conditions, but does not measure the long-term health of natural ecosystems and biodiversity. Firstly, it relates only to the land and not our oceans. Marine heatwaves damaged ecosystems along the eastern coast. Surveys in the first half of 2023 suggested the recovery of the Great Barrier Reef plateaued. However, a cyclone and rising ocean temperatures occurred later in the year. In early 2024, another mass coral bleaching event developed. Secondly, the score does not capture important processes affecting our many threatened species. Among the greatest dangers are invasive pests and diseases, habitat destruction and damage from severe weather events such as heatwaves and megafires. Read more: New ecosystems, unprecedented climates: more Australian species than ever are struggling to survive Threatened species’ declines continued The Threatened Species Index captures data from long-term threatened species monitoring. The index is updated annually with a three-year lag, largely due to delays in data processing and sharing. This means the 2023 index includes data up to 2020. The index showed an unrelenting decline of about 3% in the abundance of Australia’s threatened bird, mammal and plant species each year. This amounts to an overall decline of 61% from 2000 to 2020. Threatened Species Index showing the abundance of different categories of species listed under the EPBC Act relative to 2000. Australia's Environment 2023 Report The index for birds in 2023 revealed declines were most severe for terrestrial birds (62%), followed by migratory shorebirds (47%) and marine birds (24%). A record 130 species were added to Australia’s threatened species lists in 2023. That’s many more than the annual average of 29 species over previous years. The 2019–2020 Black Summer bushfires had direct impacts on half the newly listed species. Population boom adds to pressures Australia’s population passed 27 million in 2023, a stunning increase of 8 million, or 41%, since 2000. Those extra people all needed living space, food, electricity and transport. Read more: Our population is expected to double in 80 years. We asked Australians where they want all these people to live Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen by 18% since 2000. Despite small declines in the previous four years, emissions increased again in 2023, mostly due to air travel rebounding after COVID-19. Our emissions per person are the tenth-highest in the world and more than three times those of the average global citizen. The main reasons are our coal-fired power stations, inefficient road vehicles and large cattle herd. Nonetheless, there are reasons to be optimistic. Many other countries have dramatically reduced emissions without compromising economic growth or quality of life. All we have to do is to finally follow their lead. Our governments have an obvious role to play, but we can do a lot as individuals. We can even save money, by switching to renewable energy and electric vehicles and by eating less beef. Changing our behaviour will not stop climate change in its tracks, but will slow it down over the next decades and ultimately reverse it. We cannot reverse or even stop all damage to our environment, but we can certainly do much better. Read more: As Australia's net zero transition threatens to stall, rooftop solar could help provide the power we need Australia’s Environment is produced by the ANU Fenner School for Environment & Society and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), an NCRIS-enabled National Research Infrastructure. Albert Van Dijk receives or has previously received funding from several government-funded agencies, grant schemes and programmes.Tayla Lawrie is a current employee of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.Shoshana Rapley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Nearly 130,000 children exposed to lead-tainted drinking water in Chicago

Study says the 19% of kids using unfiltered tap water have about twice as much lead in their blood as they would otherwiseSome 129,000 Chicago children under the age of six are exposed to poisonous lead in their household drinking water because of lead pipes, according to a study published Monday.The study used artificial intelligence to analyse 38,000 home water tests conducted for the city of Chicago, along with neighborhood demographics, state blood samples and numerous other factors. Continue reading...

Some 129,000 Chicago children under the age of six are exposed to poisonous lead in their household drinking water because of lead pipes, according to a study published Monday.The study used artificial intelligence to analyse 38,000 home water tests conducted for the city of Chicago, along with neighborhood demographics, state blood samples and numerous other factors.It found that Black and Latino residents are more likely to have lead-contaminated water because of lead pipes. And it estimated that the 19% of Chicago children who use unfiltered tap water as their primary drinking source have about twice as much lead in their blood as they would otherwise.“These findings indicate that childhood lead exposure is widespread in Chicago, and racial inequities are present in both testing rates and exposure levels,” said the study, published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health in Jama Pediatrics. “We estimated that more than two-thirds of children are exposed to lead-contaminated drinking water.”The federal government has said that there is no safe level of lead in drinking water. Studies have shown that even small amounts of the highly poisonous metal can affect childhood brain development and contribute to preterm births, heart problems and kidney disease. Yet Chicago still has 400,000 homes served by potentially-water-contaminating lead service lines – more than any other US city.“I think residents have reason to be concerned,” said public health professor Benjamin Huynh, who authored the study with Elizabeth Chin and Mathew Kiang. “I think this should be a call to get your water tested for lead, see what the results are, then make your decisions accordingly.”Huynh said the idea to conduct the research came after seeing the Guardian’s analysis of 24,000 city water tests, which found one third of home water tests had more lead than the federal limit for bottled drinking water, which is 5 parts per billion (ppb).The Johns Hopkins study used a more stringent measure, and flagged as concerning any home tests that detected more than 1 ppb. Huynh said this is based on the fact that no level of lead consumption is considered safe and lead service lines can often create spikes in lead levels that go undetected, especially after they are disturbed by nearby construction. Similarly, the American Academy of Pediatrics has called for state and local governments to limit the lead in school drinking fountains to no more than 1 ppb.The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a municipal “action level” of 15ppb, meaning that cities are only required to notify the public when at least 10% of a small sample of homes tested are above that amount.By this measure, Chicago is in compliance.While the EPA is proposing to require most cities around the nation to remove all lead service lines within 10 years, it is giving Chicago 40 years to do so because of the large number of unreplaced pipes in the city.“If we’re looking at 40 more years of contaminated drinking water, what does that mean for the children?” Huynh said. “What can we do about that in the meantime?”skip past newsletter promotionOur US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionChakena Perry, Chicago water advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, called for the city to distribute water filters to families with lead service lines and do everything possible to speed up the work to remove them.“Clean drinking water is something that everyone deserves no matter their zip code or their life circumstances,” said Perry.City officials did not immediately respond to a request for a response Monday. The city’s newly elected mayor Brandon Johnson has vowed to replace 40,000 lead lines by 2027.But the study authors and other experts say this is not enough.“With 400,000 lead service lines, Chicago officials need to be way more aggressive in protecting their children and the population in general,” said water safety engineer Elin Betanzo, who was one of the first to flag Flint’s lead water issues. “There’s really no reason for anybody to be drinking lead in their water.”

Fresh batch of YIMBY housing bills clash with coastal protections (again)

After a legislative victory last year, pro-housing legislators and advocates want to strip the California Coastal Commission of more authority in order to spur housing development.

In summary After a legislative victory last year, pro-housing legislators and advocates want to strip the California Coastal Commission of more authority in order to spur housing development. Last year, state lawmakers broke from tradition by not including an exception for the California coast in a major housing law. That deliberate omission came despite opposition from the California Coastal Commission — the voter-created state agency tasked since 1976 with scrutinizing anything that gets built, demolished, dug, divvied up, fixed, tamped down or clear cut within the California Coastal Zone. A stretch of land that grazes the entirety of California’s 840-mile coast, the zone reaches inland from high tide, 1,000 feet at its narrowest and five miles at its thickest. “Once you start exempting classes of development from the Coastal Act,” Sarah Christie, the commission’s legislative director, warned CalMatters at the time, “there will be no shutting that barn door.”  Sure enough, a small herd of bills now trotting through the Legislature would further erode the commission’s long-guarded authority in the interest of spurring more housing on some of California’s most exclusive, valuable and tightly regulated real estate. The bills — all by Democrats — take different tacks: Exempt from the Coastal Act apartment projects that make use of density bonus law, a policy that lets developers build taller, higher and with fewer restrictions if they set aside units for lower income residents. It’s by San Diego Assemblymember David Alvarez. Make the same exception for accessory dwelling units, often known as granny units or casitas. It’s by Encinitas Sen. Catherine Blakespear. Force the Commission to more quickly process appeals of locally-approved apartment buildings, also a Blakespear bill. Cut a chunk of San Francisco out of the Coastal Zone entirely. It’s authored by that city’s senator, Scott Wiener. Together they show that many pro-housing legislators have taken heart from last year’s battle for the coast.  “The Coastal Commission and the Coastal Act have been a bit of a sacred cow and that has meant that it has been carved out of a lot of bills,” said Sen. Blakespear. Reevaluating whether that should be the case is “an area of an emerging focus from the Legislature.” Learn more about legislators mentioned in this story D Catherine Blakespear State Senate, District 38 (Encinitas) Expand for more about this legislator D Catherine Blakespear State Senate, District 38 (Encinitas) Time in office 2022—present Background Mayor of Encinitas Contact Email Legislator How she voted 2021-2022 Liberal Conservative District 38 Demographics Race/Ethnicity Latino 25% White 58% Asian 9% Black 2% Multi-race 5% Voter Registration Dem 38% GOP 32% No party 24% Campaign Contributions Sen. Catherine Blakespear has taken at least $3.2 million from the Party sector since she was elected to the legislature. That represents 66% of her total campaign contributions. The commission is opposed to Wiener’s bill to redraw the San Francisco coastal boundary unless it’s dramatically amended. While it has yet to take formal positions on the remaining bills, it’s clear they don’t welcome this legislative trend. “We’re troubled by the number of bills this year that seek to undermine the Coastal Act in the name of promoting housing,” said Coastal Commission Executive Director Kate Huckelbridge in a written statement. “We know from experience that abundant housing and coastal resource protection are not mutually exclusive.” The commission is likely swimming against the political current. Last year’s apartment boosting bill squeaked through the Assembly’s Natural Resources Committee over the opposition of its chair, Arletta Democratic Assemblymember Luz Rivas.  That committee has a new chair now: Culver City Democratic, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, whom many expect to be more receptive to housing production bills. Ditto for the Assembly as a whole. The new Democratic speaker, Salinas’ Robert Rivas (no relation to Luz Rivas), has signaled that he wants the Legislature to do more than “chip around the corners” on housing policy. What needs protection? In recent years, state lawmakers have passed a slew of bills stripping local governments of their ability to delay housing projects. In most of California now, a developer interested in building most forms of affordable housing or accessory dwelling units need not conduct an extensive environmental analysis, submit to public meetings or win over skeptical elected officials.  But whatever authority local governments have lost, the Coastal Commission has retained. That puts the Coastal Zone, which is largely undeveloped but also includes significant chunks of urbanized beach communities including Santa Monica, Venice, Long Beach, San Diego and Santa Cruz  in a separate regulatory universe from the rest of the state.  And for good reason, say the commission and its defenders. “Sea level rise is a serious threat along the coast and, in particular, in urbanized areas,” said Joel Reynolds, western director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental legal advocacy nonprofit. “The Legislature was very aware of the fact that the scope of the (Coastal Act) was going to cover developed areas in addition to undeveloped areas. I think the case for that has only gotten stronger.” In 1972 voters — concerned that encroaching development was cutting off coastal access for all Californians, and outraged by the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill — passed an initiative to create the California Coastal Commission. Its rallying cry was “Save our Coast” — a determination to keep California’s shores from becoming a West Coast version of Miami Beach. Within a few years the Legislature made the commission a permanent agency with broad authority to protect the state’s coastal resources. Those include the natural variety, such as wetlands, estuaries, creeks and the state’s chalky, erosion-prone bluffs, but also human-centric benefits such as public access, cheap accommodations, ocean views, social and cultural diversity, and aesthetics. Pro-housing advocates argue that the law should apply less rigidly in places where dense development already exists.  “​​A 10-unit mixed income project in Venice Beach simply does not have the environmental salience as the Santa Barbara oil spill,” said Louis Mirante, a lobbyist with the Bay Area Council, which is co-sponsoring the Alvarez density bonus bill. “The Coastal Act is so dubious of housing it harms the environment.” The environmental case for more coastal construction goes like this: More apartments in downtown Santa Cruz or Santa Monica will allow more people to live closer to the state’s job centers without the need for long commutes and air-conditioned sprawl.  That view represents a break from the kind of environmentalism that birthed the Coastal Act, in which restricting development and democratizing the planning process was seen as the best way to protect Earth. As public concern over climate change has eclipsed that conservationist impulse, a fissure has emerged within both the California and national Democratic coalition between development skeptics and a new coalition of liberal ‘build-baby-build’-ers. “The commission has very strong muscles to stop things, because that’s most of their job. But their muscles to help things happen are basically non-existent,” said Will Moore, policy director at Circulate San Diego, a transportation and housing advocacy nonprofit that is also co-sponsoring the Alvarez bill. As a result, the commissioners “protect us from a lot of bad things,” he said. “But housing is a good thing.” He emphasized that the density bonus law, for example, only applies to places already zoned for multifamily housing: “Nobody is going out and building a skyscraper in the lagoon.”  Coastal elites Just shy of 1 million people live in California’s coastal zone, according to an analysis provided to CalMatters by Nicholas Depsky, a climate change research consultant at the United Nations Development Programme.  That sliver of the state population — less than 2.5% — does not represent the state as a whole. Roughly two-thirds of those coastal dwellers are non-Hispanic whites, according to Depsky’s analysis. That would make the coastal zone roughly twice as white as California’s population.  It’s also an enclave of relative affluence. A UCLA School of Law research paper from 2011 found that neighborhoods just inside the Coastal Zone had lower population densities and fewer children than those just outside of it. The homes themselves were 20% more expensive, even after the researchers added statistical controls for a home’s distance from the beach.  The researchers attributed the difference to the introduction of the Coastal Act and its tighter regulatory scheme on new housing, which “triggered both supply and demand effects that on net have gentrified the area.” Members of the Coastal Commission and its staff regularly counter that it has never rejected a proposed affordable housing project. In fact, even if rejecting housing projects was the commission’s goal — which the commission stresses is not the case — it rarely gets the opportunity to do so. In most of the cities that dot the coast, regulatory enforcement has been delegated to local authorities through commission-sanctioned development plans. The public can appeal projects approved by those local authorities to the Coastal Commission itself, but only in designated areas especially close to the shore and other protected waterways.  Those appeals are relatively rare.  Of the 1,261 coastal development permits issued by local governments last year, just 48 were appealed, according to commission data. In roughly two-thirds of those cases, the commission deferred to the local government and declined to review the project. The Commission only denied two of the projects after accepting their appeals. Commission critics argue that looking solely at the number of appeals ignores all the housing that was reduced, slowed down or saddled with higher costs as it made its way through the regulatory process. They also point to a hypothetical universe of developments that would have been proposed in a more development-friendly regulatory regime but weren’t, out of fear of the Coastal Act. “I suspect a lot of projects don’t get proposed knowing that there’s going to be an additional delay and additional appeal risk,” said Nolan Gray, research director for pro-development California YIMBY. “We only see the projects where the developer is like, ‘YOLO!’” A proposed condo development, Pisani Place, in Los Angeles’ Venice neighborhood, is one recent example of a housing project that wasn’t flat-out denied by the Coastal Commission, but died in the face of its regulatory scrutiny anyway. Despite it being approved by the city of Los Angeles, the Coastal Commission took issue with the designs and overall benefits of the project. The project included affordable units, but they were half the size of the market-rate condos and located partially below the sidewalk Commission staff noted that the project raised concerns about the “equitable distribution of environmental benefits,” that its various density bonuses were not “the least impactful on coastal resources,” and that the proposed building was “out of character with the surrounding structures because it does not respect the prevailing height or mass of the existing residences.” Rather than redesign the project under the Coastal Commission’s guidance, the developers withdrew their application this month. A middle ground on the coast? Robin Rudisill, co-founder of Citizens Preserving Venice who appealed the project, said the developer never made a compelling case that the project’s use of state density bonus law was consistent with the Coastal Act. She blamed the Los Angeles for approving the project anyway. “If the city had done its job, this poor developer would have understood the correct regulations along the way and maybe he could have made modifications that would have made things work,” she said.  Current law requires that the Coastal Act and state density bonus law be “harmonized so as to achieve the goal of increasing the supply of affordable housing in the coastal zone while also protecting coastal resources and coastal access.” What that means in practice — especially when the two statutes often seem to require opposite outcomes — isn’t always easy to say. Rudisill said she knows of a “reasonable” middle ground when she sees it, pointing to a handful of density bonus projects sitting in the planning pipeline for Venice. “They’re getting a lot of extra units. They’re getting extra height and, you know, some variances and open space and yards and everything,” she said. “But they’re not asking for the max. They’re not getting greedy.” The current regulatory system allows for a nuanced debate, said Rudisill. “It may take some hard meetings and listening to the community and really understanding the impact,” she said. “That’s why it’s a discretionary decision.” From the outside, that nuanced debate — which the bills under consideration this year would do away with or severely limit — can look a lot like haggling. In Santa Cruz, a density bonus project proposed along the San Lorenzo riverwalk was appealed to the Coastal Commission last October. The commission rejected the appeal, allowing the project to move forward, after the developer agreed to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on affordable housing and to construct a series of publicly accessible walkways through the property. Exempting that project from the Coastal Act would mean “then we wouldn’t be having any of these debates about ‘community character,’” said Lee Butler, the city’s planning director. “But we could also be vulnerable to the scenario where we are seeing density bonus used to preclude public access.

Unburnable Futures: Navigating the Oil Dilemma To Meet 1.5°C Goals

A study led by the University of Barcelona warns of the oil resources that should not be exploited to meet the commitments of the Paris...

The study presents the atlas of unburnable oil in the world, designed based on environmental and social criteria to reduce CO₂ emissions in the atmosphere, combat the effects of climate change and comply with this international treaty, signed in 2015 in Paris as part of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21). Credit: Nature Communications A study led by the University of Barcelona warns of the oil resources that should not be exploited to meet the commitments of the Paris Agreement on climate change.In order to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5°C, it is essential to drastically reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in the atmosphere. This would mean not exploiting most of the existing coal, conventional gas, and oil energy resources in regions around the world, according to research led by the University of Barcelona and published in the journal Nature Communications. The new article presents the atlas of unburnable oil in the world, a world map designed with environmental and social criteria that warns which oil resources should not be exploited to meet the commitments of the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 to mitigate the effects of climate change.The article is led by Professor Martí Orta-Martínez, from the UB’s Faculty of Biology and the UB Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio), and co-authored by Gorka Muñoa and Guillem Rius-Taberner (UB-IRBio), Lorenzo Pellegrini and Murat Arsel, from the Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands), and Carlos Mena, from the University of San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador). The unburnable oil atlas reveals that to limit global warming to 1.5°C, it is essential to avoid the exploitation of oil resources in the most socio-environmentally sensitive areas of the planet, such as natural protected areas, priority areas for biodiversity conservation, areas of high endemic species richness, urban areas and the territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. It also warns that not extracting oil resources in these most sensitive areas would not be enough to keep global warming below 1.5°C as indicated in the Paris Agreement.Oil Exclusion Zones Around the GlobeThe Paris Agreement is an international treaty on climate change that calls for limiting global warming to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and making efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. It was signed by 196 countries on 12 December 2015 at the UN Climate Change Conference COP21 in Paris and has been in force since 4 November 2016.In this context, the unburnable oil atlas provides a new roadmap to complement the demands of international climate policy — based primarily on demand for fossil fuels — and to enhance socio-environmental safeguards in the exploitation of energy resources.“Our study reveals which oil resources should be kept underground and not commercially exploited, with special attention to those deposits that overlap with areas of high endemic richness or coincide with outstanding socio-environmental values in different regions of the planet. The results show that the exploitation of the selected resources and reserves is totally incompatible with the achievement of the Paris Agreement commitments,” says Professor Martí Orta-Martínez.There is now a broad consensus among the scientific community to limit global warming to 1.5°C if we want to avoid reaching the tipping points of the Earth’s climate system, such as melting permafrost, loss of Arctic sea ice and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, forest fires in boreal forests, and so on. “If these thresholds are exceeded, this could lead to an abrupt release of carbon into the atmosphere (climate feedback),” Orta-Martínez states, and adds that this would “amplify the effects of climate change and trigger a cascade of effects that commit the world to large-scale, irreversible changes.”What Would Happen if All Known Fossil Fuels Were Burned?To limit average global warming to 1.5°C, the total amount of CO₂ emissions that must not be exceeded is known as the remaining carbon budget. In January 2023, the remaining carbon budget for the 50 % chance of keeping warming to 1.5°C was about 250 gigatonnes of CO₂ (GtCO2). “This budget is steadily decreasing at current rates of human-induced emissions — about 42 GtCO2 per year — and will be completely used up by 2028,” says researcher Lorenzo Pellegrini.The combustion of the world’s known fossil fuel resources would result in the emission of about 10,000 GtCO2, forty times more than the carbon budget of 1.5°C. “In addition, the combustion of developed fossil fuel reserves — i.e. those reserves of oil and gas fields and coal mines currently in production or under construction — will emit 936 GtCO2, four times more than the remaining carbon budget for a global warming of 1.5°C,” notes expert Gorka Muñoa.“The goal of no more than 1.5°C global warming requires a complete halt to exploration for new fossil fuel deposits, a halt to the licensing of new fossil fuel extraction, and the premature closure of a very significant share (75%) of oil, gas and coal extraction projects currently in production or already developed,” the authors note.With the prospect of the results of the study, which has received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Union’s Next Generation funds, the authors call for urgent action by governments, corporations, citizens and large investors — such as pension funds — to immediately halt any investment in the fossil fuel industry and infrastructure if socio-environmental criteria are not applied. “Massive investment in clean energy sources is needed to secure global energy demand, enact and support suspensions and bans on fossil fuel exploration and extraction, and adhere to the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty,” the team concludes.​​​​​​Reference: “The atlas of unburnable oil for supply-side climate policies” by Lorenzo Pellegrini, Murat Arsel, Gorka Muñoa, Guillem Rius-Taberner, Carlos Mena and Martí Orta-Martínez, 14 March 2024, Nature Communications.DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46340-6

No Results today.

Our news is updated constantly with the latest environmental stories from around the world. Reset or change your filters to find the most active current topics.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.