A program in eastern Kentucky is retraining miners in industries that help mitigate the environmental impacts of mining on communities.

Creative Commons: Greg Goebel

Like many men raised in eastern Kentucky, Frank Morris spent a chunk of his working life in the coal industry.

Raised in the city of Hazard, Morris did a little bit of everything, from shoveling belt to diesel mechanics.

“Back then, if you were going to pick to live around here and make good money, you either went into the coal business or you went into the medical field,” Morris said.

Like many others, however, Morris was laid off several years ago when the coal industry started contracting. Metallurgical coal, used for making steel, was waning as part of a regular global cycle, and steam coal, used to produce electricity, suffered a long-term decline as power utilities increasingly moved toward cheaper, cleaner-burning natural gas and renewable wind and solar energy.

Morris found a job at Walmart, but given the cost of child care, he realized he was actually losing money by working there. He tried being a stay-at-home dad, but he found himself yearning to contribute to his family’s financial well-being in a more tangible way, so he started taking small carpentry jobs. Morris had been doing that for a while when he heard about an internship for former coal miners.

The six-month internship with Mountain Association for Community Economic Development offered training in new energy efficiency professions, placement with a local employer, and the potential for longer-term employment after the job ended. Morris applied for the internship and was accepted, along with another ex-miner named Randall Howard. The two received hands-on training in conducting energy audits—learning how to use equipment such as infrared cameras, duct blasters, blower doors, and much more—and went to work at their respective jobs, Morris for the nonprofit Housing Development Alliance and Howard for Christian Outreach with Appalachian People, an affordable housing organization.

Today “things are a lot better for us,” Morris said. “We’re in a better position financially and with our home lives. I’m able to be home every day, most days, before 5 o’clock. That’s something I’ve never had before in my life.”

The money isn’t quite what he made working coal, but it’s a lot better than what he earned at Walmart. He’s also found a better work-life balance than either of those two previous jobs offered.

MACED’s energy efficiency internship program is just one of many initiatives designed to retrain workers laid off during the cratering of the coal industry over the last decade. The coal industry has steadily declined since the 1950s, largely because of mechanization. With the advent of hydraulic fracturing technology in the 2000s leading to an abundance of natural gas, as well as federal regulations that resulted in the closure of older coal-fired power plants, the industry has collapsed in the last decade. Many companies went into bankruptcy or shuttered, resulting in mass layoffs and a ripple effect that’s spread to related businesses, such as railroads and equipment manufacturers.

According to a report produced by Kentucky state officials and reported in the Lexington Herald Leader, the number of coal jobs in 2013 had declined to 12,550—the lowest since the state started recording the figure in 1927. By August 2018, coal jobs had dropped even further to 6,238, according to the Kentucky Office of Energy Policy, which produces quarterly reports on the coal industry.

As a result, many coalfield communities have suffered economic distress and depopulation. Local and state officials have tried a number of approaches to reverse that trend, retraining miners for jobs in industries on the rise, such as computer coding and outdoor recreation.

MACED’s program, funded by a $2 million grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission, $100,000 from Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program Inc., and a $1 million match from MACED’s venture capital loan fund, is designed to build on related skills used in mining that can be adapted for energy efficiency, a growing sector. According to a study by E4TheFuture and Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), nearly 2.25 million Americans work in energy efficiency, including 24,579 people in Kentucky. That figure includes those who work with efficient appliances and lighting, heating and ventilation systems, building materials and insulation, energy audits, building certifications, and more. MACED saw the internship program as an opportunity to add to a growing field while also building local expertise.

“We thought, let’s see if we can develop some local champions who have technical skills,” said Chris Woolery, a program coordinator at MACED. “They can be advocates, they can be independent third-party experts, and they can connect folks to financing through various mechanisms. When I come to Hazard and talk about the gospel of energy efficiency, I’m not received the same way Frank Morris is when he speaks to his community. When Frank became the resident efficiency person at HDA [Housing Development Alliance], we immediately we saw the ripple effects.”

As the first two interns, Howard and Morris were both placed at affiliate organizations of the Appalachia Heat Squad, a collaborative program aimed at expanding access to energy efficient home improvements. They learned how to evaluate a home’s energy efficiency, how to identify and implement improvements, and how to educate homeowners about programs that could help them fund those investments. During their internships, Morris conducted 23 audits and 13 retrofits, while Howard did 22 audits and 5 retrofits.

“Energy efficiency is something that is especially needed in the coal regions,” Morris said. “Around here, electricity has always been cheap. Now we’re getting all these rate increases. That touches everybody—not just doctors and lawyers but grandmothers on fixed incomes, people who have to make a decision: ‘If I don’t pay my electrical bill they’ll cut my power off, but if I do, I might have to miss a few meals this month. Or do I really need my blood pressure medicine this month?’ It’s a hard decision.”

Instead of providing financial aid to pay those electric bills, the Heat Squad aims to fix the issue that’s causing the bills to be high, Morris said.

“Especially around here, housing stock is especially old,” Morris said. “And people living in mobile homes and double-wides can really benefit from this program.”

These energy efficiency programs carry additional possibilities for improving people’s lives. A five-year study of respiratory health in Letcher and Harlan counties found that people who lived in either a mobile home or public housing were twice as likely to have been diagnosed with asthma than people who lived in single-family housing.

The study, known as the Mountain Air Project, now in its second phase, involves prevention. Study participants who have been diagnosed with asthma and had symptoms within the past year meet four times with a trained nurse, and on the third visit, they receive a home assessment. In Harlan County, that’s conducted by Howard, one of the former MACED interns.

“He looks for sources of allergens and irritants in the home,” said Beverly May, a 28-year nurse pursuing a doctor of public health degree at the University of Kentucky, and who manages the Mountain Air Project.

She said Howard is “really brilliant in finding things that can cause trouble. He’s looking for leaks under the sink, pests that are hidden away in dark places you wouldn’t think to look, sources of mold around the outside of the house, water in the basement. Then he talks with the homeowner about what they can do to correct the situation.”

There’s often overlap between healthy homes and those that are energy efficient.

“If a home has cracks and crevices, the door isn’t properly sealed, the windows aren’t properly sealed, then not only does cold air come in during the winter, but there’s also the possibility for pests to come in,” May said. “If you can fix one problem, you might be fixing several problems.”

There are two main challenges. One is that people often feel uncomfortable letting strangers examine their homes, even for a beneficial reason. The other is that the repairs needed to fix problems sometimes outstrip the finances of homeowners. In both cases, Howard is well-positioned to help.

As a local, Howard can talk to homeowners to reassure them.

“I’ll try to connect with them in any way possible to try to ease their mind about letting me go through their home,” Howard said. “I try to show them I’m more of a friend than an enemy, that I’m there to help them. I live in the mountains myself. I guess they connect with me pretty good because I have lived in the past in some of the conditions that they live in. I’m open with them. I tell them I ain’t here to judge you because you’ve got clothes piled up in the corner or dirty dishes in the sink. That’s no concern to me unless there’s mold growing on it. I talk to them a little bit to show them I ain’t there to judge them.”

As for the financial piece, the mission of Howard’s employer, Christian Outreach with Appalachian People, is to build affordable rural housing and offer programs that can offset costs.

The results can make a big difference in a homeowner’s life. Howard describes one such rehabilitation project: “We went in, it didn’t have no insulation under the floor, and the roof was leaking. We put a new roof on, insulation under the floor, a new heat pump. I had to go back later to test everything out. I walked in and there’s an 80-year-old man. He stood up, walked over to me, and gave me a hug. He said, ‘We’ve been here 15 years and I’ve never been as comfortable as we are now. You’ve made this house better, so much more comfortable.’”

The homeowner’s electric bill was cut in half, Howard said.

MACED has now hired two more interns in Hazard for its second round of the program. Their focus is on commercial and industrial instead of residential projects. Because of economies of scale, Woolery said, businesses are often quicker to invest in energy efficiency projects than individual families, and there’s more immediate work available. MACED is hiring for three more internships as well: one doing commercial energy efficiency work in Paintsville, a second more focused on the marketing of energy efficiency and renewable energy in Berea, and a third trained for solar photovoltaic cell installation in Lexington.

Woolery hopes to push some of those interns toward the solar power, where there’s potentially even more opportunity.

“We’re just showing that there’s a ton of different ways we could diversify this economy,” Woolery said. “Knowing we don’t have access to any silver bullets, all we can do is shoot as many silver BBs as we can.”

This article was funded in part by a grant from the One Foundation – and is shared under a Creative Commons License by Yes! Magazine.

Hundreds of millions of people in Asia rely on rice not only as a staple but as their main source of nutrition. But new research suggests the rice they eat will become less nutritious due to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Photo: Public Domain Pictures

The study found that rice exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide contains lower amounts of several important nutrients.

Currently, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere average around 410 parts per million, up from 350 parts per million in the 1980s, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels. The researchers, a New York Times article explains, looked at how crops responded to levels of around 580 parts per million, which could prove tough to avoid this century without drastic changes.

The research involved exposing experimental rice fields in China and Japan to the same elevated levels of carbon dioxide that are expected to occur worldwide later this century.

What did the study find?

The scientists found that the chemical composition of a plant depends on the balance of the carbon dioxide it takes in from the air and the nutrients it absorbs from the soil. Upset this balance, and the plant can change in unexpected ways.

“A strong correlation between the impacts of elevated CO₂ on vitamin content based on the molecular fraction of nitrogen within the vitamin was observed,” says the study.

“Potential health risks associated with anticipated CO₂-induced deficits of protein, minerals, and vitamins in rice were correlated to the lowest overall gross domestic product per capita for the highest rice-consuming countries, suggesting potential consequences for a global population of approximately 600 million,” it concludes.

“We used multiyear, multilocation in situ FACE (free-air CO₂ enrichment) experiments for 18 genetically diverse rice lines, including Japonica, Indica, and hybrids currently grown throughout Asia,” the authors write.

“While these CO₂ enrichment experiments do indicate the threat climate change poses to nutrition security, rice breeding programmes across the world all breed and select under conditions of increasing CO₂ and many are cognizant of the need to maintain and increase nutrient concentration in newly released rice varieties,” says Oliver Frith, Head of Business Development at the International Rice Research Institute.

Challenges ahead

Rice is the primary food source for 3.5 billion people, and production will need to increase significantly by 2050 to meet global demand. One challenge is the likely scarcity of water for rice production due to competing demands for water, environmental degradation and the effects of climate change.

Another conundrum for policymakers is that rice also accounts for 9-11 per cent of global emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. This could be significant, given that for every one billion people added to the global population, an additional 100 million tons of rice needs to be produced every year.

Atmospheric methane (CH₄) is recognized as one of the most important greenhouse gases and may account for 20 per cent of anticipated global warming.

“We know that higher concentrations of atmospheric CO₂ can lead to significant reductions in the amount of zinc, iron and protein in staple crops like rice,” says Montira Pongsiri, former Commissioner of the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health. “Particularly in Asia-Pacific, this has important implications for nutritional security – in fact, this is a nutritional insecurity issue for Asia-Pacific communities.”

UN Environment’s rice work

In October 2017 UN Environment and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) signed a partnership agreement to promote climate-smart and innovative technologies for rice production in developing countries.

Furthermore, the proposed Global Environment Facility (GEF) programme Inclusive Sustainable Rice Landscapes – securing multiple environmental benefits and improved farmer welfare is under development by a multi-stakeholder consortium led by UN Environment and the Food and Agriculture Organization, in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

“The programme builds on the efforts of the Sustainable Rice Platform – hosted by UN Environment, and its 87 institutional members to work with governments and value chain actors at landscape level to drive adoption of proven climate-smart best practices and innovative technologies to reduce the environment footprint of the sector, as well as to benefit farmers’ welfare,” says UN Environment ecosystems expert Max Zieren.

The above partners will host a side event during the GEF Assembly in Da Nang, Viet Nam, on 25 June to introduce this new multi-stakeholder initiative.

For further information: Max Zieren zieren[at]un.org or William Wyn Ellis (Coordinator, Sustainable Rice Platform) ellisw[at]un.org

By 2002, drivers in London, England, were spending as much as half their commuting time stalled in traffic, contributing to much of the city centre’s dangerous particulate pollution. To deal with a growing population, increasing gridlock and air quality concerns, the city implemented a congestion charge, using a photo-based licence-recognition system.

London

Between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays, drivers entering a 21-square-kilometre zone in Central London are charged a fee, which has risen from about C$8.50 in 2003 to $20 now. The city offers discounts or exemptions for zone residents, people with disabilities, emergency vehicles, motorcycles and taxis.

Congestion pricing is a solution that works. But politically, it’s a difficult sell. Drivers don’t like to pay tolls on top of what they already pay to buy, maintain, fuel and park their vehicles. They often forget, though, the less visible costs of congestion: arriving late, having to leave early and burning fuel while stalled or moving at a crawl. Most people end up better off with a well-designed congestion pricing plan.

Although London’s plan faced opposition and debate — even a legal challenge — its success has led to widespread acceptance. Almost overnight, drivers who could change behaviour did, travelling at off-peak hours, carpooling or taking transit. Those who chose to drive despite the charge benefited from less congested roads. Within just three years, traffic went down by 15 per cent, and congestion — the extra time to make a trip because of impeded traffic flow — was reduced by 30 per cent. Businesses saw immediate gains, as costs of shipping delays and paying drivers stuck in traffic fell.

Benefits continue. More people take buses to the centre and fewer rely on private automobiles. Shorter commuting times mean more time with family and friends, less aggravation and saving money on gas and vehicle maintenance. The fees also generate about C$300 million a year, which are invested in non-car transportation improvements.

London now has new congestion challenges. To improve safety, health and the environment, and to move more people, road space has been allocated to walking and cycling, which are surging in popularity. For-hire vehicles like Uber, taxis and minicabs — which are exempt from the fee — have also increased significantly. London is looking to a number of solutions, including expanding the fee zone and studying congestion pricing in places like Stockholm, Sweden, where rates vary according to zone and time of day.

As cities grow, challenges around pollution, traffic congestion and automobile infrastructure increase. Studies show you can’t build your way out of congestion. More roads and bridges bring more cars.

Cities worldwide have implemented or are considering congestion pricing, including Singapore, New York and my hometown of Vancouver. Metro Vancouver’s Mobility Pricing Independent Commission recently released a report that concluded, “Region-wide road usage charging is the most effective tool to provide a systematic, meaningful and lasting reduction in traffic congestion.”

The report recommends point- or distance-based charges which “could generate enough revenue to re-assess our broader approach for funding transportation in the region,” including “the potential to shift or reduce taxation away from other existing revenue sources, including the regional fuel sales tax.”

The commission acknowledged that more study is needed to ensure the system is fair and effective. For example, London already had a good public transportation system and added 300 buses to the Central London fleet on the day the congestion fee came into effect. Because the charge is designed to encourage people to use other forms of transportation, viable alternatives must be available.

The report says congestion pricing could cost an average household that doesn’t alter commuting behaviour anywhere from $5 to $8 a day, not accounting for savings from reduced congestion. Charges would reduce congestion by 20 to 25 per cent — an hour or more a week for the average city commuter. Costs can be offset by reducing or eliminating gas or other taxes, and revenues can be invested in transit improvements to make getting around without a car easier.

Reducing congestion and pollution and tackling the climate crisis require getting people out of their cars. Congestion pricing is a fair, effective way to reduce reliance on private automobiles, improve traffic flow and help fund public transportation. Let’s do it.

Republished by permission of The David Suzuki Foundation

When the Clean Air Act of 1970 became law, members of the business community in the United States responded with opposition. Such regulations are a drag on growth, some economists say, for individual businesses and for the economy at large.

While it is often expensive to upgrade equipment to reduce pollution, other economists argue such actions should be seen not as a tax but rather an investment in human capital and healthy bottom lines.

“What you’re able to do later is partly determined by the environmental quality we have now,” says Joshua Graff Zivin, professor of economics in the School of Global Policy & Strategy and the Department of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, who has conducted a number of studies on this topic. The grow-now, clean-later approach to economic growth, he contends, is counterproductive.

Graff Zivin is among a small but increasing number of health and economics researchers who are looking at possible ways to measure the value — in economic terms — that cleaner air brings to society. They argue that not only are the costs involved in reducing pollution justified by the public health benefits, but businesses may benefit directly in the form of increased productivity of the employees working for them — and more long-term, from a healthier, more educated and more productive labor force in the future. Mounting studies have suggested that air pollution — sometimes even well within regulatory standards — causes workers to be less productive and possibly have impaired decision-making in both indoor and outdoor settings.

From Field to Desk

When regulatory agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency establish air quality standards, they are supposed to take into account health and economic assessments that have evaluated how the pollutants being regulated impact human (and environmental) health, and what the economic impacts of the regulation will be, including both costs and benefits. Researchers have been providing evidence in recent years that suggests regulators should look beyond conventional and visible measures like hospitalizations when weighing costs and benefits related to regulatory standards. Studies suggest they should also include data from the growing body of research on the more subtle impacts of air pollutants, such as ozone and particulate matter, on the labor market.

Graff Zivin and Matthew Neidell, associate professor of health policy and management at Columbia University, reported in 2012 an association between ozone pollution and productivity among grape and blueberry pickers in California. When ozone exposure decreased by 10 parts per billion — and was at a level well below the federal air quality standard — the workers were 5.5 percent more productive.

Then, in 2014, they and colleagues found that particulate matter, a common air pollutant, also at levels well below the regulatory standard, reduced the hourly earnings of people who packed pears at an indoor facility in northern California and were paid in accordance with how many pears they picked. When levels of fine particulate matter surpassed 25 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m³) — the EPA standard for a 24-hour period is 35 µg/m³, and for a full year is an average of 12 µg/m³ — workers’ earnings decreased by US$1.88 per hour.

The next question for the research team was: What about desk jobs? Are workers affected if they aren’t doing manual labor?

Their subsequent study suggests the answer is yes. In 2016, the researchers reported that workers at two call centers in China were about 5 percent more productive when the outdoor air quality was what the EPA would rate as “good” than when it would have been rated “unhealthy.” And while the levels of pollution in the unhealthy air exceed the levels allowed by EPA on a daily basis, they are nonetheless the semi-regular reality in urban areas around the world, including in the U.S. — where regulations allow for spikes above what’s permitted as a long-term average. Citing EPA data, they wrote that Los Angeles, for example, experienced 13 days of “unhealthy” air in 2014, while Phoenix had 33.

To Graff Zivin, these results suggest the effect may be universal. “There’s nothing special about call center work in China,” he says. “We worked on China because that’s where we could get the data. If it matters there, it should matter everywhere.”

Varying Results

That has not been proven, though, and the few studies that have been done on this have yielded varying results. Last September, a research team in Singapore published a study of workers in two different textile manufacturing plants. The team concluded that pollution exposure did reduce the productivity , but only by about 1 percent, and after prolonged exposure.

Alberto Salvo, economist at the National University of Singapore and an author of that study, says: “We’re all providing data points. At some point, someone has to come along and do a meta-analysis and tell us what the general run of papers is saying. Because we do see a lot of variation across these studies. I think we’re all contributing to answer a question that is important … about the benefits and costs of environmental regulation.”

Salvo and others are looking at other possible ways to evaluate air pollution impacts that could also have implications for labor and economic productivity.

Last year, researchers reported findings drawn from the early days of the 1970 Clean Air Act, when some counties had to reduce their pollution and others didn’t because of some requirements implemented in 1970. People who were born in the counties that didn’t have to improve their air had lower earnings and labor force participation when they were 30 years old, compared with the cohort of people born in counties that did have to make such improvements.

Maya Rossin-Slater, health research and policy assistant professor at Stanford University and one of the authors of that study, says that just as investments in preschool are generally accepted to pay off later in life, ensuring better environmental quality may be affiliated with higher incomes later in life.

“Exposure to air pollution, not just through the workplace but through other channels, such as during early childhood or the in utero stage, could have lasting long-term consequences on the labor market productivity — the economic productivity of basically the next generation,” says Rossin-Slater. “There’s this intergenerational component that I think is important to recognize.”

Education and Equity

A number of studies look at what air pollution means for education. An unpublished study found an association between air pollution and higher school absences. Another study linked air pollution with slower cognitive development in school. In March, Salvo and his colleague Haoming Liu reported that students at three international schools in China — where wealthy expat families tend to send their children — were slightly more likely to be absent from school when levels of air pollution spiked.

That may have two major implications, Salvo explains: It could impede the international flow of workers if people considering jobs overseas choose not to take them out of concern for their families’ health; and it’s an equity issue, because the absences seemed to be a result of families not wanting their children to be exposed to the air.

“These are very high-income families. The parents are very informed. These are parents who are telling their kids to eat their broccoli,” says Salvo. They may know and be able to avoid the air pollution more than kids in lower-income families.

Last year, Sefi Roth, assistant professor of environmental economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, in an analysis of relevant studies, summarized some possible explanations for why air pollution may affect academic performance and ultimately “human capital formation,” defined as the skills, knowledge and experience accumulated by an individual.

First, the brain uses a lot of oxygen and may get less of it when a person is breathing in polluted air. Second, air pollution also appears to affect the development of the brain itself in young children, although the full range of impacts are not fully understood. Third, individuals experiencing physical symptoms associated with air pollution, from eye irritation to asthma attacks, may simply not function as well or even miss school altogether. Ultimately, these disruptions could alter a person’s entire career path.

Impacts on Decision-Making

In January, a study linked higher air pollution with behaviors that are less “prosocial,” a decline the study describes as giving less, cooperating and reciprocating less, and demanding more — which can affect both individual and group decision-making. And in 2016, Neidell and colleagues reported that as fine particulate matter pollution increased in Manhattan, same-day returns on the New York Stock Exchange declined. They suspect that the pollution impairs cognition, changing how people actually think and making them less likely to take risks — which on the stock market means taking safer, and less lucrative, bets.

They looked at pollution in other cities to see if there was a correlation between air pollution elsewhere and the performance of the companies being traded on the stock market, rather than with the investors making trades on those companies — but found no relationship.

“It’s pollution in New York City that matters, and it’s not pollution where the firms are located. It’s pollution where the traders are,” says Neidell.

Most of the studies have been done on either ozone or on particulate matter, largely because they’re both regulated and straightforward to measure. Graff Zivin says the research supports stricter regulations in the U.S. for both — where regulations are already stricter than many other countries — and possibly for other pollutants as well. Revising regulations, he adds, should mean taking into account what have previously been unmeasured and ignored benefits to the economy.

“How much money do businesses spend on training for their employees, on ergonomic design? All those things are meant to improve productivity. This is no different from that,” he says.

Earlier this year, Graff Zivin and Neidell argued that this should not be a regulatory issue only for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to deal with. Because it affects occupational safety, it should involve other agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the equivalent in other countries, as well.

“We’re being very protective of our steel workers and our manufacturing base, and we may be starting a global trade war over it, and yet we’re tearing back regulations left and right, some of which appear to protect and improve the earnings capabilities of those very same workers,” says Graff Zivin.

He suggests the next frontier in this research could be to uncover effects far beyond the workplace, from driving safety to buying a house.

“Any investment decision you might make as an individual, any decision might be corrupted by pollution,” he says. “That’s where the evidence is pointing us.”

Ensia shares this article under the terms of Creative Commons’ Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license.

People sometimes get bugged by insects, but we need them. They play essential roles in pollination, combating unwanted agricultural pests, recycling organic matter, feeding fish, birds and bats, and much more. They’re the most numerous and diverse animals on Earth and form the base of many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

Grasshopper   Photo: PublicDomainPictures.net

Our admiration for these critters goes beyond their ability to adapt, their fantastically diverse colours and shapes, and their accomplishments that create dramatic impacts on our world’s functioning.

Could the same six-legged creatures that form the backbone of ecosystem services also help minimize humanity’s environmental footprint? Could insects revolutionize the way we eat and produce food?

We will be nine billion people on Earth in 2050. To feed that many, we should double food production, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. But the way we currently produce food weighs heavily on the environment.

If food were a country, it would rank third behind China and the U.S. as one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters. We eat too much meat, and its production is disastrous from an environmental standpoint. In Canada, we’re struggling to curb water pollution related to corn and soybean production for livestock feed, and aquaculture relies on wild-caught fish to produce meal and oil feedstock.

Although vegetarian diets would suffice to feed humans and drastically reduce our environmental footprint, meat consumption remains a firmly established tradition. But if we bartered beef, pork or chicken for a handful of insects, the environmental impact of our animal-protein intake would drop dramatically. According to the FAO, 18 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions are linked to animal husbandry. Emissions from insect production are negligible in relation to the amount of protein produced. Insects are especially effective at converting their food because they’re cold-blooded and therefore waste less energy to keep warm.

Although few people in Canada have integrated insects into their regular diet, nearly half of us have tasted an insect, according to a survey conducted in Quebec. According to the study, males are significantly more likely than females to bite into an insect like a fly larva!

To reduce our environmental footprint, not everyone needs to incorporate these crisp, delicious arthropods into their diet. Changing the diet of farmed animals could also help. People who may not want to ingest insects themselves would likely have little problem feeding their pets insect-containing kibble, or eating farmed animals like chickens raised on insect-based feeds. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has already licensed fly larvae to feed farmed salmon and chickens. (Full disclosure: My suggestion to use insects to feed carnivores like salmon inspired a company in which I have invested that harvests insects grown on food waste.)

Emerging entotechnologies (from the Greek root entomo, for “insects”) bring together applications that focus on what insects do best. For example, organic residues can be fed to fly larvae, which can then be used as livestock feed. Black soldier fly larvae have voracious appetites for fruit and vegetable residues and could help improve the way we handle this high-quality organic waste. It’s a way to give a second life to stale food, rather than sending it to compost bins or biogas plants. Considering nearly 45 per cent of fruit and vegetables produced worldwide is wasted, this is not a fringe idea.

After feeding the hungry with the highest quality unsold portions of our food, we could feed our breeding animals with insects raised on organic residues from grocery stores and restaurant kitchens.

With clean organic residues from urban agriculture, we could also feed humans! In Montreal, the Blanc de Gris farm grows grey oyster mushrooms on recovered coffee and brewery residues. But we can take it even further. Several tonnes of mycelium (akin to the “roots” of fungi mixed with growth substrate) are discarded from the company’s mushroom production each year. A research project by the David Suzuki Foundation, Montreal Biodome, Concordia University, Université du Québec à Montréal and Université Laval is finding out if mealworms could grow on this mycelium. The first results are promising. In fact, entotechnology and entomophagy (eating insects) research is blooming in Canada.

You can join the research on edible insects by participating in a survey by Concordia University PhD student Didier Marquis.

By David Suzuki with contributions from Science Projects Manager Louise Hénault-Ethier

This article is shared by permission from The David Suzuki Foundation

Smoking parents misperceive where and when their kids are exposed
to cigarette smoke, Tel Aviv University researchers say

Four out of 10 children in the US are exposed to secondhand smoke, according to the American Heart Association. A new Tel Aviv University study suggests that parents who smoke mistakenly rely on their own physical senses to gauge the presence of tobacco smoke in the air.

“This reliance on their own physical sensory perceptions leads to misconceptions of when and where children are exposed to tobacco smoke,” says Dr. Laura Rosen of TAU’s School of Public Health and Sackler Faculty of Medicine, who led the research for the study, recently published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

“No one has previously put their finger on this exposure perception problem,” Dr. Rosen says. “This is important for the ongoing debate about restrictions on smoking in public places, since people may be exposed without being aware of it.”

Misunderstandings and misconceptions

The research team conducted in-depth interviews with 65 parents of young children from smoking households across Israel. They found many false assumptions and a lack of awareness of where and when the children were exposed to cigarette smoke.

“Many parents believe they are taking adequate measures to protect their children from the damage of cigarette smoke. But we found that they are not even aware of some of the exposure, and therefore do not take sufficient measures to protect their children,” Dr. Rosen continues.

The researchers then compared the participating parents’ misconceptions of secondhand smoke exposure with scientific findings from recent studies. They found that if the parents believed that if they did not see or smell the smoke, their children were not exposed.

“But previous studies have shown that 85% of smoke is invisible, and many components of cigarette smoke are odorless,” says Dr. Rosen. “What’s more, you can’t rely on a smoker’s sense of smell, which may have been damaged by smoking.”

Others reported believing that if they smoked beside an open window, on the balcony or in a designated area — or ventilated the room after smoking — their children would not be exposed to smoke. “But urine tests of children whose parents smoke near open windows indicate double the normal level of cotinine, a product of nicotine,” says Dr. Rosen.

Some parents also noted that they believed smoking in the car with the windows open would not harm their children. “The fact is that the level of harmful particles inside a smoker’s car may be even higher than in bars where customers smoke freely,” says Dr. Rosen. “Research has shown that children exposed to a single cigarette smoked in a car have increased biomarkers 24 hours following the exposure. Also, prolonged exposure at low levels may accumulate over time and cause permanent damage to children’s developing lungs and cardiovascular systems.

“To protect children from secondhand smoke, parents must be convinced that exposure occurs even when they themselves do not see or smell the smoke. Parents’ awareness of smoke exposure is essential to protecting children from secondhand smoke,” Dr. Rosen concludes.

The Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute and Tel Aviv University contributed funding to the study.

American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU) supports Israel’s most influential, comprehensive and sought-after center of higher learning, Tel Aviv University (TAU). TAU is recognized and celebrated internationally for creating an innovative, entrepreneurial culture on campus that generates inventions, startups and economic development in Israel. For three years in a row, TAU ranked 9th in the world, and first in Israel, for alumni going on to become successful entrepreneurs backed by significant venture capital, a ranking that surpassed several Ivy League universities. To date, 2,400 patents have been filed out of the University, making TAU 29th in the world for patents among academic institutions.

Analyses show how demand for electric vehicles and rapidly falling renewable energy prices could take down oil and gas industry

As an increasing number of nations make plans for banning gas and diesel vehicles within the coming decades, and drivers gain an awareness of the benefits associated with electric vehicles, researchers are predicting notable consequences for dirty energy sources as the public shifts toward favoring renewable alternatives.

“Post-2025, that’s where electric car sales take off. The further you go into the future, the more it’s electric cars,” Alan Gelder, a senior analyst for the research group Wood Mackenzie, told the Guardian. “If cities began banning cars with a combustion engine, that would rapidly accelerate the switch to electric vehicles.”

Drivers transitioning to electric vehicles out of necessity, because of such bans—which multiple European nations plan to implement in the next 15-25 years—and efforts by governments to increase fuel efficiency regulations, is only part of what is fueling the blossoming electric vehicle market.

Auto manufacturers are also taking cues from the increased demand due to bans and enhanced regulations as well as consumer desire for more environmentally friendly vehicles, as Business Insider detailed in May.

These efforts by governments to limit emissions and by automakers to meet the rising demand for electric vehicles are expected to substantially impact the oil and gas industry in the coming years.

Wood Mackenzie estimates global gasoline prices will peak then start to fall by 2030, though Gelder posits “the ripples of gasoline’s plateau would be felt much earlier,” as fossil fuel companies take fewer investment risks once demand for gas ebbs.

“While gasoline will peak first,” the newspaper notes, “the analysts expect total oil demand to plateau about 2035, as growth is hit by climate change policies and developing world economies maturing.”

When the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlán in 1325, they built it on a large island on Lake Texcoco. Its eventual 200,000-plus inhabitants relied on canals, levees, dikes, floating gardens, aqueducts and bridges for defence, transportation, flood control, drinking water and food. After the Spaniards conquered the city in 1521, they drained the lake and built Mexico City over it.

The now-sprawling metropolis, with 100 times the number of inhabitants as Tenochtitlán at its peak, is fascinating, with lively culture, complex history and diverse architecture. It’s also a mess. Water shortages, water contamination and wastewater issues add to the complications of crime, poverty and pollution. Drained and drying aquifers are causing the city to sink — almost 10 metres over the past century!

“Conquering” nature has long been the western way. Our hubris, and often our religious ideologies, have led us to believe we are above nature and have a right to subdue and control it. We let our technical abilities get ahead of our wisdom. We’re learning now that working with nature — understanding that we are part of it — is more cost-effective and efficient in the long run.

Had we designed cities with nature in mind, we’d see fewer issues around flooding, pollution and excessive heat, and we wouldn’t have to resort to expensive fixes. Flooding, especially, can hit people hard in urban areas. According to the Global Resilience Partnership, “Floods cause more damage worldwide than any other type of natural disaster and cause some of the largest economic, social and humanitarian losses” — accounting for 47 per cent of weather-related disasters and affecting 2.3 billion people over the past 20 years, 95 per cent of them in Asia.

As the world warms, it’s getting worse. Recent floods in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Nepal have affected more than 40 million people, killing more than 1,000. One-third of Bangladesh is under water. In Houston, Texas, Hurricane Harvey has killed dozens and displaced thousands, shut down oil refineries and caused explosions at chemical plants. Some say it’s one of the costliest “natural” disasters in U.S. history.

Although hurricanes and rain are natural, there’s little doubt that human-caused climate change has made matters worse. More water evaporates from warming oceans and warmer air holds more water. Climate change is also believed to have held the Houston storm in place for longer than normal, and rising sea levels contributed to greater storm surges.

A lax regulatory regime that allows developers to drain wetlands and build on flood plains has compounded Houston’s problems. The city has no zoning laws, and many wetlands and prairies — which normally absorb large amounts of water and prevent or lessen flood damage — have been drained, developed or paved over. President Donald Trump also rescinded federal flood protection standards put in place by the Obama administration and plans to repeal a law that protects wetlands. Compare Houston to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, which sit below sea level. Regulation and planning have helped the Dutch cities lower flood risk and save money.

As climate disruption accelerates in concert with still-increasing greenhouse gas emissions, people are looking for ways to protect cities from events like flooding. In China, authorities are aiming to make them more sponge-like. A Guardian article explains: “Designers will concede to the wisdom of nature to ensure water is absorbed when there’s an excess: instead of water-resistant concrete, permeable materials and green spaces will be used to soak up rainfall, and rivers and streams will be interconnected so that water can flow away from flooded areas.” As well as offering flood protection, the measures will also help prevent water shortages.

Cities worldwide have employed many of these flood-protection measures, including in the U.S. If China goes beyond its 16-city pilot project, it will be the largest-scale deployment of such combined measures ever.

Restoring natural areas costs much more than protecting them in the first place, more intense and frequent storms and floods can still overwhelm natural defences, and growing human populations will further stress resources, but restoring natural assets is a start.

Ultimately, we must work with nature to prevent and adapt to problems such as flooding, water scarcity, wildfires and climate disruption. When we work against nature, we work against ourselves.

By David Suzuki with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington. David Suzuki’s latest book is Just Cool It!: The Climate Crisis and What We Can Do (Greystone Books), co-written with Ian Hanington.

Republished with permission from David Suzuki Foundation

A growing number of initiatives are giving corporations the resources to help achieve global climate goals regardless of government support

New York City from Central Park – Photo: Annetta Hoagland

“We are still in.” On June 5, 2017, with these four words a group of U.S. businesses and investors with a combined annual revenue of US$1.4 trillion sent a powerful message to the world: U.S. president Donald Trump may have withdrawn from the Paris agreement on climate change four days earlier, but corporate America was not following suit.

“We Are Still In” launched with more than 20 Fortune 500 companies on board, including Google, Apple, Nike and Microsoft, as well as a host of smaller companies. The statement was coordinated by a large collective of organizations including World Wildlife Fund, Rocky Mountain Institute, Climate Mayors, Ceres and Bloomberg Philanthropies. It has now grown to include more than 1,500 businesses and investors, as well as nine U.S. states, more than 200 cities and counties, and more than 300 colleges and universities.

And it’s not alone. In recent years, a number of initiatives and collaborations have sprung up around the world focused on private sector action on climate change. With Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement, these initiatives have raised an intriguing question: In the absence of political action, can business save the world from devastating climate change?

“The simple answer is there’s no saving the world without business, but business can’t do it on its own,” says Nigel Topping, CEO of We Mean Business. “The reason we need these kinds of coalitions is so that both business leaders and political leaders hear loud and clear that actually the majority of businesses understand that we’ve got to change, and actually are on board and already in motion.”

We Mean Business is a global coalition of many of the same NGOs that initiated We Are Still In — CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), The B Team, The Climate Group, and others — and the two initiatives are closely connected. We Mean Business’s role is to provide a framework for corporate commitments on climate change and a platform from which to make those commitments public.

Science-based Targets

One such commitment is to adopt science-based greenhouse gas emissions targets. This is where Science Based Targets comes in. This global collaboration among CDP, World Resources Institute, the World Wide Fund and the United Nations Global Compact encourages and helps corporations to align their climate change policies with scientific evidence.

“What we could observe is a majority of companies were setting targets, but at least from a CDP perspective, we had many challenges to understand what targets were best,” says Pedro Faria, technical director of CDP and member of the Science Based Targets steering committee. “Talking with companies and other NGOs, we realized there was no method, so companies were setting targets based on what was feasible and not what was needed.”

Science Based Targets helps companies determine what actions they need to take to contribute meaningfully to the global target of remaining below 2 °C (3.6 °F) warming, a level above which experts say irreversible changes become locked in. These actions will vary across industries, so targets must be tailored to individual companies while still meeting global needs. Nearly 300 companies have signed on from every continent except Antarctica.

“It has been extremely important to just make people aware of this concept: Set your ambition according to what the best available science tells you,” Faria says. “Our mission is to make science-based targets a new norm.” Sixty-two companies have now set approved science-based targets for emissions reductions. For example, Coca-Cola HBC — a leading bottler of The Coca-Cola Company — has committed to a science-based target of reducing its emissions by 50 percent per liter of drink by 2020.

Energy For Renewables

Another corporate commitment We Mean Business advocates is the goal of 100 percent renewable power. More than 100 companies, including Ikea, Walmart, Nestle and Unilever have committed to this, but in a complex energy market like that in the U.S., buying this much renewable energy isn’t always easy. So in May 2016, Business for Social Responsibility, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the World Resources Institute and World Wildlife Fund started the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, or REBA, which helps steer corporations through the energy market maze. The end goal is facilitating the deployment of 60 gigawatts of new renewable energy in the U.S. corporate sector by 2025.

The alliance first made its mark with the World Wildlife Fund and World Resources Institute’s Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers’ Principles, a set of six criteria developed in partnership with a group of large energy buyers to assist utilities in helping companies who want to buy renewable energy.

But more was needed, says Lily Donge, a principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute. “We realized that the buyers need a trusted space to learn about renewable energy and also find ways to interact with each other and the service providers on the sale side in a more transparent and seamless fashion.” Thus was born the Business Renewables Center, which Donge heads. The center convenes, educates and assists corporations around purchasing off-site, large-scale wind and solar energy. It also hopes to facilitate collective buying, although that aspect is still in development. Donge envisages a scenario in which a city — for example, Seattle — its universities, its utilities and a locally based company such as Microsoft might come together to pool their renewable energy buying power. As one of the first to join the REBA network, Microsoft has stated that it is committed to working with the network and new partners to bring more renewable energy onto the grid. It is just one of the 60 percent of Fortune 100 companies that have now set emissions reductions targets or committed to clean energy.

Turning Words Into Action

If We Are Still In is the sentiment, We Mean Business is the statement of intent, and initiatives such as Science Based Targets and the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance are the enablers of action, then America’s Pledge will be the scorekeeper.

Launched on July 12, America’s Pledge will compile and quantify the steps taken by businesses, cities, states and others to address climate change.

Looking across these initiatives, it’s clear which industries are leading the pack. “If you’re one of the IT majors and you haven’t committed to 100 percent renewable electricity, you’re a laggard, you’re a dinosaur, and you really start to stand out,” Topping says. But other industries face more existential challenges around climate change action, particularly in the fossil fuel space.

“While many of the oil majors are publicly supportive of climate action and the Paris agreement, some of them are still proposing future energy and emissions scenarios in which there are very high levels of carbon capture and storage deployment — levels way higher than the current level of investment suggests is plausible,” Topping says.

But even those industries are publicly engaged. The Climate Leadership Council, which launched June 20, features big oil companies BP, ExxonMobil, Shell and Total among its founding corporate members.

“There’s no sector where there’s a sectoral climate denial or sectoral resistance to Paris,” Topping says. “It’s just a question of what is the economic pathway of survival.”

WWF’s senior vice president of Climate Change and Energy Lou Leonard says the challenge ahead for all these initiatives and collaborations is to continue to demonstrate the credibility of the voice of these sub-national actors to the rest of the world, particularly in the lead-up to 2020 when all countries are supposed to return to the table with even more stringent targets than were committed to in 2016, in accordance with the Paris agreement.

“There’s going to have to be a continual injection of confidence and support from non-state actors and sub-nationals in the U.S. if you want those countries to keep [working toward goals],” he says. “This is where the future is, this is where we are going, and we want the rest of the world to know it.”

Ensia shares articles free of charge under the terms of Creative Commons’ Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license.

A new report revealed surprising results when Oakland overhauled its lunch menu at 100-plus schools by serving less meat and more fruits and vegetables.

When her eldest son was in elementary school in the Oakland Unified School District, Ruth Woodruff became alarmed by the meals he was being served at school. A lot of it was frozen, processed foods, packed with preservatives. At home, she was feeding her children locally sourced, organic foods.

Woodruff believes that feeding children well is a foundation of good education. “If kids come to school hungry, if they don’t have access to adequate nutrition … their brains aren’t going to be performing as well,” she said.

So in late 2008, she and a group of parents got together to urge the school district to reconsider how and where it was buying the food it served students.

Now, five years after the district responded by overhauling the menus at its 100-plus schools–serving less meat and adding more fruits and vegetables–a new report has revealed some surprising results. The study by the environmental nonprofit, Friends of the Earth (FOE), found that the district’s Farm to School initiative not only provided its 48,000 or so students with access to healthier foods, but that between 2012 and 2015 its overall food costs declined and its carbon footprint shrank.

What’s more, kids are loving their new lunch choices. OUSD is drawing praise from environmental organizations, and other districts are seeing it as an example for how they can serve more organic meals, made from scratch. “Food is often completely ignored as a climate solution,” said Kari Hamerschlag, lead author of the report and FOE’s food and technology deputy director. “But there really is a climate solution at the end of everyone’s fork.”

Healthy food access is especially significant in Oakland, where a majority of the students are low-income, said the district’s Farm to School supervisor, Alexandra Emmott. Some 73 percent of the district’s students qualify for free and reduced lunches.

“Many of our students are eating multiple meals a day at the school district, so it’s really important that those are healthy and that they’re sustainable,” Emmott said.

In pushing for change, Woodruff and the other parents formed the Oakland School Food Alliance, which studied school-lunch models across the country and encouraged the district to consider more locally sourced, whole foods.

For the cash-strapped district, fresh fruits and vegetables and organic meats would be expensive. So in the fall of 2009, it launched Farm to School to bring foods from local farms into its cafeterias. The program saves the district money because cooks prepare school meals from scratch.

To cut down on the use as well as the cost of meat, they began serving a vegetarian menu once a week. On other days, they reduce meat usage by 30 percent, while also serving more fruits and vegetables. To meet the protein requirements in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s nutrition standards for school meals, they pair higher quality meats with a 10 percent increase in legumes.

The lunch menu in OUSD schools transformed from a smorgasbord of processed foods to local, organic options. School cooks season and roast antibiotic-free chicken in-house, instead of heating up pre-cooked drumsticks. They also substitute frozen vegetables with fresh sides, like carrot salads made from scratch.

In addition to a healthier menu, students get to go on field trips to local farms and take cooking classes through the program. A grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture has allowed the district to continue it.

In 2013, OUSD partnered with the sustainable living nonprofit, Center for Eco-literacy, to pilot a supplemental program called California Thursdays, which allows them to serve even more freshly prepared, locally grown food once a week. It has since been expanded into 58 school districts statewide.

One byproduct of the district’s menu overhaul has had environmental benefits officials hadn’t anticipated.

chool Food FOCUS, a nonprofit that works with companies and schools to bring healthier foods to cafeterias, connected the district with Mindful Meats, a supplier of California-grown organic beef. The company’s meats come from grass-fed matured dairy cows that serve the dual purpose of creating milk and beef and therefore have a smaller carbon footprint.

Animal agriculture is one of the leading drivers of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. And because schools typically purchase large amounts of animal products, they have larger carbon footprints, Hamerschlag said. By choosing organic meat options, the environmental benefits were immediate.

The Friends of the Earth report found that over a two-year period, OUSD reduced its carbon footprint by 14 percent, its water use by nearly 6 percent, and saved the district $42,000, or about 1 percent of its food budget, Emmott said.

The district plans to expand the program. In coming years, it will complete a 48,000-square-foot central kitchen, an instructional farm and education center where students can learn about urban agriculture.

And Woodruff, the OUSD parent, hopes that the new kitchen will allow students to eat even more whole foods cooked from scratch.

This article is republished under a Creative Commons license from Yes! Magazine.