Two solar power providers stand to gain as the alternative energy type becomes more in vogue, Susquehanna said. Analyst Biju Perincheril initiated Sunnova Energy and SunPower as positive. The analyst slapped a $38 price target on Sunnova, implying upside of 126.5% from Friday’s close of $16.78 trading price. Priced slightly lower at $16.73, SunPower could gain 49.4% based on its $25 target. “We think the risk/reward in residential solar installation names looks attractive with the recent weakness and IRA tailwinds for the sector,” Perincheril said in a note to clients. Perincheril said the industry has short-term headwinds related to higher costs for equipment and financing, supply chain constraints and utility underconnection. But as those growing pains work themselves out, the market is on track to grow 26% in the second half of the year after adding 36% in the first half. Rising utility costs have helped increase demand for both 2022 and 2023 despite some moderation from a California tax credit step down, Perincheril said. The move toward electric vehicles will in turn help adoption of solar, Perincheril noted, as electricity requirements for car charging are easier to meet with solar. Solar as an industry has been boosted by the Inflation Reduction Act , which provides benefits like tax credits for consumers who make the jump to alternative energy. Solar is becoming increasingly popular as consumers look to long-term savings despite up-front costs. Perincheril noted that despite growing 10-fold in the last decade, just 4% of single-family homes have solar – meaning there’s still a huge market to tap into. “Despite the supply chain headwinds and rising prices, residential solar installations have been quite resilient,” Perincheril said. As the market becomes more penetrated, Perincheril said its likely national brands with infrastructure already in place such as Sunnova and SunPower that stand to see the biggest wins. These larger retailers can also benefit from having end-to-end offerings that span selling, installation and financing, which will further separate them from smaller companies. — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
BENICIA, Calif. — Han Solo may be a hunk. But “Pan Solo” is a hunk of bread.
That’s what a bakery in the San Francisco Bay Area has dubbed its 6-foot (1.8 meter) bread sculpture of the “Star Wars” character as he appeared after being frozen in carbonite in “The Empire Strikes Back.”
Hannalee Pervan and her mother, Catherine Pervan, co-owners of One House Bakery in Benicia, California, spent weeks molding, baking and assembling the life-sized sculpture using wood and two types of dough, including a type of yeastless dough with a higher sugar content that will last longer.
The two worked at night, after the day’s business was done. The lovingly crafted details show Han Solo’s anguished face and his hands straining to reach out.
Hannalee said she might have gotten a bit obsessed.
“Mom made me leave it because I was obsessing over the lips,” Hannalee Pervan told the New York Times. “She was like, ‘You need to walk away.’”
Creating Pan Solo was particularly meaningful, she told the paper, because she contracted COVID-19 in January 2021 and lost much of her senses of smell and taste.
“So just to find joy in a different part of food is really important,” she said.
The sculpture is now on display outside of the bakery, located about a half-hour’s drive north of San Francisco.
Pan Solo is the bakery’s entry in the annual Downtown Benicia Main Street Scarecrow Contest. The public will get to vote on their favorites from among more than two dozen creations entered by local businesses.
The Pervans, who are big science-fiction and fantasy fans, entered another “Star Wars”-themed creation in 2020 featuring the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda.
Unfortunately, Pan Solo won’t last forever. The dough eventually will be composted, not eaten.
So as a wise Jedi might warn: Don’t use the forks, Luke.
———
This story was first published on Oct. 15, 2022. It was updated on Oct. 16, 2022 to correct the spelling of baker Hannalee Pervan’s first name.
OMAHA, Neb. — Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium has closed several exhibits and taken other precautions after one of its pelicans died from the bird flu.
The zoo said one of its pink-backed pelicans that died on Thursday tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza. A second pelican became ill Friday and was euthanized.
As a precaution, the zoo has closed its Lied Jungle, Desert Dome and Simmons Aviary exhibits to the public for at least 10 days.
The Omaha zoo was one of many across the country that closed down its aviaries and moved birds inside whenever possible to help protect them from avian influenza that is primarily spread by the droppings of wild birds.
The zoo reopened its aviary in June after bird flu cases waned, but some cases continued to be reported across the country throughout the summer, and the outbreak has started to make a resurgence this fall.
More than 47 million chickens and turkeys have been slaughtered in 42 states to limit the spread of bird flu during this year’s outbreak. Officials order entire flocks to be killed when the virus is found on farms. More than 6 million chickens and turkeys were slaughtered last month to limit the spread of the disease.
The Omaha zoo also took precautions to protect its birds by limiting staff access to them and requiring workers to clean their shoes before entering areas where the birds are kept.
The zoo said its pelicans live outside, so they do come into contact with wild birds. But the pelicans don’t come into contact with other zoo birds and no other birds in the zoo’s collection have shown symptoms of bird flu.
“It is very important that Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium immediately tighten our protocols to protect our birds and guard against any potential spread of avian influenza,” Sarah Woodhouse, the zoo’s director of animal health, said in a statement. “This is important both to prevent infection of other zoo birds, and to prevent the virus from being dispersed off zoo grounds.”
Unlike on farms, zoos are generally allowed to isolate and treat an infected bird as long as they take precautions to protect the other birds in their collections.
Health officials emphasize that bird flu doesn’t jeopardize food safety because infected birds aren’t allowed into the food supply and properly cooking meat and eggs to 165 degrees Fahrenheit will kill any viruses.
A shocking new report paints a grim picture of the state of the planet. The world is facing “double” emergencies, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature found, as the climate crisis deepens and animal populations are declining at frighteningly high levels.
Animals across the planet, from deep below the ocean’s surface to those hiding in the trees of the Amazon, are dying off. The World Wildlife Fund studied more than 5,200 species for its Living Planet Report, and found that out of the nearly 32,000 populations analyzed, there was an average decline of 69% since 1970. Up to 2.5% of mammals, fish, reptiles, birds and amphibians have already gone extinct, the report says.
And the average population numbers have only gotten worse. Four years ago, the Living Planet report found a 60% average decline. Then in 2020, the average hit 68% – a situation that was called an “SOS for nature.”
Now, two years later, authors of the report say the continued decline is a “code red for the planet (and humanity)” as some scientists warn that Earth is heading toward another mass extinction, mostly due to climate change.
“The message is clear and the lights are flashing red. Our most comprehensive report ever on the state of global vertebrate wildlife populations presents terrifying figures: a shocking two-thirds decline in the global Living Planet Index less than 50 years,” WWF International’s Director General Marco Lambertini says in the report.
The World Wildlife Fund for Nature’s Living Planet Index — which tracks populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians — found an average 69% decrease in monitored wildlife populations since 1970.
World Wildlife Fund for Nature
Freshwater populations have been the hardest hit, with an average decline of 83%, the report found, with habitat loss and migration route barriers accounting for roughly half the threats they face.
Most of the biodiversity loss is seen in South America, which has lost 94% of its biodiversity, according to the report. The Amazon has been rapidly depleted over the years, and the report says “we are rapidly approaching a tipping point” where the tropical rainforest “will no longer function.”
Much of the loss is due to humans. Land use – deforestation, agrochemicals and pollution – is the biggest threat to nature, the report says, with human consumption, technology and poor environmental governance also playing a significant role.
The larger the human population grows and the more economic demand is sought, the more land will be destroyed for resources, the report says, and currently, “humans use as many ecological resources as if we lived on almost two Earths.” The U.S., Canada, Australia and Mongolia are among the worst culprits for over-consumption.
But if broad and significant climate action is not taken quickly, the report’s 89 authors expect that climate change will soon take the helm at destruction.
“If we are unable to limit warming to 1.5ºC, climate change is likely to become the dominant cause of biodiversity loss in the coming decades,” the report says. “Rising temperatures are already driving mass mortality events, as well as the first extinctions of entire species. Every degree of warming is expected to increase these losses and the impact they have on people.”
This crisis of nature is an “existential challenge” interlinked with climate change, Lambertini says, and must be addressed globally. For climate change, the goal is reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but for biodiversity, he said, we need an equivalent – “nature-positive by 2030.” And both must be addressed with the same ferocity.
ATLANTA — Workers have begun loading radioactive fuel into a new nuclear reactor in Georgia, utilities said Friday, putting the first new American nuclear reactor built in decades on a path to begin generating electricity in coming months.
Georgia Power says workers will transfer 157 fuel assemblies into the reactor core at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta, in the next few days. There are already two reactors operating at the plant, with fuel being loaded into a third unit and a fourth unit still under construction.
Chris Womack, chairman and CEO of Georgia Power, the largest unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co., said in a statement that fuel loading shows “steady and evident progress” at Vogtle.
“We’re making history here in Georgia and the U.S. as we approach bringing online the first new nuclear unit to be built in the country in over 30 years,” Womack said. “These units are important to building the future of energy and will serve as clean, emission-free sources of energy for Georgians for the next 60 to 80 years.”
After the 90 tons (82 metric tonnes) of uranium oxide is loaded by a crane into the reactor, operating company Southern Nuclear will test whether the plant’s cooling and steam supply system work while fuel is inside the reactor at the super-high temperatures and pressures created by splitting atoms. Operators will then start generating electricity and link the plant to the transmission grid, with the reactor planned to reach commercial operation by the end of March.
The Georgia Public Service Commission approved the new reactors in 2012, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. The cost of the third and fourth reactors has climbed from an original estimate of $14 billion to more than $30 billion.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved plans to load the fuel in August. Approval was delayed because much of the third reactor’s wiring had to be redone after federal regulators found major flaws. Southern Co. also fell behind on inspection documents that had to be completed before the NRC could sign off.
Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers are already paying part of the financing cost and state regulators have approved a monthly rate increase of at least $3.78 a month as soon as the third unit begins generating power. But the elected five-member Public Service Commission will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs. The utility has other unrelated rate increases awaiting a decision.
The fourth unit is supposed to be completed in late 2023. The two new units combined are projected to produce enough power for more than 500,000 homes and businesses.
Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States. Its costs and delays could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions.
Georgia Power owns 45.7% of the two reactors, while Oglethorpe Power Corp. owns 30% on behalf of 38 power cooperatives. The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia owns 22.3% on behalf of 49 city-owned utilities, while the city of Dalton’s utility owns 1.6%. MEAG has contracts to sell electricity from Vogtle to the city-owned utility in Jacksonville, Florida, and to some electric cooperatives and city utilities in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.
The other owners of Vogtle are trying to shift costs onto Georgia Power. Oglethorpe, MEAG and Dalton all sued Georgia Power earlier this year, claiming the company was trying to bilk them out of nearly $700 million by unilaterally changing a contract.
Under a 2018 deal, Georgia Power agreed to assume all cost overruns above a certain level. In exchange, the co-owners would sell part of their ownership shares to Georgia Power. Oglethorpe and MEAG say projected overruns have reached that level, but Georgia Power said the threshold is $1.3 billion higher than the level claimed by the co-owners.
Georgia Power is settling MEAG’s lawsuit in exchange for making at least $76 million in payments to MEAG.
Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of two protesters who have thrown tinned soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s famous 1888 work Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London, Friday Oct. 14, 2022. The group Just Stop Oil, which wants the British government to halt new oil and gas projects, said activists dumped two cans of Heinz tomato soup over the oil painting on Friday. London’s Metropolitan Police said officers arrested two people on suspicion of criminal damage and aggravated trespass. (Just Stop Oil via AP)
Full frame sun, Climate change, Heatwave hot sun, Global warming from the sun and burning
Chuchart Duangdaw | Moment | Getty Images
The White House is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth to temper the effects of global warming, a process sometimes called solar geoengineering or sunlight reflection.
The research plan will assess climate interventions, including spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space, and should include goals for research, what’s necessary to analyze the atmosphere, and what impact these kinds of climate interventions may have on Earth, according to the White House‘s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Congress directed the research plan be produced in its spending plan for 2022, which President Joe Biden signed in March.
Some of the techniques, such as spraying sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, are known to have harmful effects on the environment and human health. But scientists and climate leaders who are concerned that humanity will overshoot its emissions targets say research is important to figure out how best to balance these risks against a possibly catastrophic rise in the Earth’s temperature.
Getting ready to research a topic is a very preliminary step, but it’s notable the White House is formally engaging with what has largely been seen as the stuff of dystopian fantasy. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel, “The Ministry for the Future,” a heat wave in India kills 20 million people and out of desperation, India decides to implement its own strategy of limiting the sunlight that gets to Earth.
Chris Sacca, the founder of climate tech investment fund Lowercarbon Capital, said it’s prudent for the White House to be spearheading the research effort.
“Sunlight reflection has the potential to safeguard the livelihoods of billions of people, and it’s a sign of the White House’s leadership that they’re advancing the research so that any future decisions can be rooted in science not geopolitical brinkmanship,” Sacca told CNBC. (Sacca has donated money to support research in the area, but said he has “zero financial interests beyond philanthropy” in the idea and does not think there should be private business models in the space, he told CNBC.)
To be clear, nobody is saying sunlight-reflection modification is the solution to climate change. Reducing emissions remains the priority.
“You cannot judge what the country does on solar-radiation modification without looking at what it is doing in emission reductions, because the priority is emission reductions,” said Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative. “Solar-radiation modification will never be a solution to the climate crisis.”
The idea of sunlight reflection first appeared prominently in a 1965 report to President Lyndon B. Johnson, entitled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,”Keith told CNBC. The report floated the idea of spreading particles over the ocean at a cost of $100 per square mile. A one percent change in the reflectivity of the Earth would cost $500 million per year, which does “not seem excessive,” the report said, “considering the extraordinary economic and human importance of climate.”
The estimated price tag has gone up since then. The current estimate is that it would cost $10 billion per year to run a program that cools the Earth by 1 degree Celsius, said Edward A. Parson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA’s law school. But that figure is seen to be remarkably cheap compared to other climate change mitigation initiatives.
Stratospheric aerosol injection would involve flying aircraft into the stratosphere, or between 10 miles and 30 miles skyward, and spraying a fine mist that would hang in the air, reflecting some of the sun’s radiation back into space.
“The stratosphere is calm, and things stay up there for a long time,” Parson told CNBC. “The atmospheric life of stuff that’s injected in the stratosphere is between six months and two years.”
Stratospheric aerosol injection “would immediately take the high end off hot extremes,” Parson said. And also it would “pretty much immediately” slow extreme precipitation events, he said.
“The top-line slogan about stratospheric aerosol injection, which I wrote in a paper more than 10 years ago — but it’s still apt — is fast, cheap and imperfect. Fast is crucial. Nothing else that we do for climate change is fast. Cheap, it’s so cheap,” Parson told CNBC.
“And it’s not imperfect because we haven’t got it right yet. It’s imperfect because the imperfection is embedded in the way it works. The same reason it’s fast is the reason that it’s imperfect, and there’s no way to get around that.”
A giant volcanic mushroom cloud explodes some 20 kilometers high from Mount Pinatubo above almost deserted US Clark Air Base, on June 12, 1991 followed by another more powerful explosion. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 15, 1991 was the second largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century.
Arlan Naeg | Afp | Getty Images
There’s also a precedent in factories that burn fossil fuels, especially coal. Coal has some sulfur that oxidizes when burned, creating sulfur dioxide. That sulfur dioxide goes through other chemical reactions and eventually falls to the earth as sulfuric acid in rain. But during the time that the sulfur pollution sits in the air, it does serve as a kind of insulation from the heat of the sun.
Ironically, as the world reduces coal burning to curb the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming, we’ll also be eliminating the sulfur dioxide emissions that mask some of that warming.
“Sulfur pollution that’s coming out of smokestacks right now is masking between a third and a half of the heating signal from the greenhouse gases humans have already emitted into the atmosphere,” Parson said.
In other words, we’ve been doing one form of sunlight reflection for decades already, but in an uncontrolled fashion, explained Kelly Wanser, the executive director of SilverLining, an organization promoting research and governance of climate interventions.
“This isn’t something totally new and Frankenstein — we’re already doing it; we’re doing it in the most dirty, unplanned way you could possibly do it, and we don’t understand what we’re doing,” Wanser told CNBC.
Spraying sulfur in the stratosphere is not the only way of manipulating the amount of sunlight that gets to the Earth, and some say it’s not the best option.
“Sulfur dioxide is likely not the best aerosol and is by no means the only technique for this. Cloud brightening is a very promising technique as well, for example,” Sacca told CNBC.
Marine cloud brightening involves increasing the reflectivity of clouds that are relatively close to the surface of the ocean with techniques like spraying sea salt crystals into the air. Marine cloud brightening generally gets less attention than stratospheric aerosol injection because it affects a half dozen to a few dozen miles and would potentially only last hours to days, Parson told CNBC.
Cirrus cloud thinning, the third category addressed in the 2021 report from the National Academies, involves thinning mid-level clouds, between 3.7 and 8.1 miles high, to allow heat to escape from the Earth’s surface. It is not technically part of the “solar geoengineering” umbrella category because it does not involve reflecting sunlight, but instead involves increasing the release of thermal radiation.
There are significant and well-known risks to some of these techniques — sulfur dioxide aerosol injection, in particular.
First, spraying sulfur into the atmosphere will “mess with the ozone chemistry in a way that might delay the recovery of the ozone layer,” Parson told CNBC.
The Montreal Protocol adopted in 1987 regulates and phases out the use of ozone depleting substances, such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) which were commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioners, but that healing process is still going on.
Also, sulfates injected into the atmosphere eventually come down as acid rain, which affects soil, water reservoirs, and local ecosystems.
Third, the sulfur in the atmosphere forms very fine particulates that can cause respiratory illness.
The question, then, is whether these known effects are more or less harmful than the warming they would offset.
“Yes, damaging the ozone is bad, acid deposition is bad, respiratory illness is bad, absolutely. And spraying sulfur in the stratosphere would contribute in the bad direction to all of those effects,” Parson told CNBC. “But you also have to ask, how much and relative to what?”
The sulfur already being emitted from the burning of fossil fuels is causing environmental damage and is already killing between 10 million to 20 million people a year due to respiratory illness, said Parson. “So that’s the way we live already,” he said.
Meanwhile, “the world is getting hotter, and there will be catastrophic impacts for many people in the world,” said Pasztor.
“There’s already too much carbon out there. And even if you stop all emissions today, the global temperature will still be high and will remain high for hundreds of years. So, that’s why scientists are saying maybe we need something else, in addition — not instead of — but maybe in addition to everything else that is being done,” he said. “The current action/nonaction of countries collectively — we are committing millions of people to death. That’s what we’re doing.”
For sunlight-reflection technology to become a tool in the climate change mitigation toolbox, awareness among the public and lawmakers has to grow slowly and steadily, according to Tyler Felgenhauer, a researcher at Duke University who studies public policy and risk.
“If it is to rise on to the agenda, it’ll be kind of an evolutionary development where more and more environmental groups are willing to state publicly that they’re for research,” Felgenhauer told CNBC. “We’re arguing it’s not going to be some sort of one big, bad climate event that makes us all suddenly adopt or be open to solar geoengineering — there will be more of a gradual process.”
A man waits for customers displaying fans at his store amid rising temperatures in New Delhi on May 27, 2020. – India is wilting under a heatwave, with the temperature in places reaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) and the capital enduring its hottest May day in nearly two decades.
Some environmentalists consider sunlight relfection a “moral hazard,” because it offers a relatively easy and inexpensive alternative to doing the work of reducing emissions.
One experiment to study stratospheric aerosols by the Keutsch Group at Harvard was called off in 2021 due to opposition. The experiment would “threaten the reputation and credibility of the climate leadership Sweden wants and must pursue as the only way to deal effectively with the climate crisis: powerful measures for a rapid and just transition to zero emission societies, 100% renewable energy and shutdown of the fossil fuel industry,” an open letter from opponents said.
But proponents insist that researching sunlight-modification technologies should not preclude emissions-reduction work.
“Even the people like me who think it’s very important to do research on these things and to develop the capabilities all agree that the urgent top priority for managing climate change is cutting emissions,” Parson told CNBC.
Keith of Harvard agreed, saying that “we learn more and develop better mechanism[s] for governance.”
Doing research is also important because many onlookers expect that some country, facing an unprecedented climate disaster, will act unilaterally to will try some version of sunlight modification anyway — even if it hasn’t been carefully studied.
“In my opinion, it’s more than 90 percent likely that within the next 20 years, some major nation wants to do this,” Parson said.
Sacca put the odds even higher.
“The odds are 100 percent that some country pursues sunlight reflection, particularly in the wake of seeing millions of their citizens die from extreme weather,” Sacca told CNBC. “The world will not stand idly by and leaders will feel compelled to take action. Our only hope is that by doing the research now, and in public, the world can collaboratively understand the upsides and best methods for any future project.”
Correction: The Climate Overshoot Commission has not issued a formal statement of support for sunlight reflection.
Lourdes Barreto squats in her greenhouse garden in the village of Huasao in the municipality of Oropesa, in the Andes highlands of the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco, proudly pointing to her purple lettuce, grown with natural fertilizers and agroecological techniques. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
by Mariela Jara (cuzco, peru)
Inter Press Service
CUZCO, Peru, Oct 13 (IPS) – This article forms part of IPS coverage of International Day of Rural Women, Oct. 15.Lourdes Barreto, 47, says that as an agroecological small farmer she has improved her life and that of Mother Earth. “I love myself as I love Mother Earth and I have learned to value both of us,” she says in her field outside the village of Huasao, in the highlands of the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco.
On the occasion of the International Day of Rural Women, commemorated Oct. 15, which celebrates their key contribution to rural development, poverty eradication and food security, Barreto’s story highlights the difficulties that rural women face on a daily basis, and their ability to struggle to overcome them.
“I was orphaned when I was six years old and I was adopted by people who did not raise me as part of the family, they did not educate me and they only used me to take their cow out to graze,” she said during a visit by IPS to her village.
“At the age of 18 I became a mother and I had a bad life with my husband, he beat me, he was very jealous. He said that only he could work and he did not give me money for the household,” she said, standing in her greenhouse outside of Huasao, a village of some 200 families.
Barreto said that beginning to be trained in agroecological farming techniques four years ago, at the insistence of her sister, who gave her a piece of land, was a turning point that led to substantial changes in her life.
Of the nearly 700,000 women farmers in Peru, according to the last National Agricultural Census, from 2012, less than six percent have had access to training and technical assistance.
“I have learned to value and love myself as a person, to organize my family so I don’t have such a heavy workload. And another thing has been when I started to grow crops on the land, it gave me enough to eat from the farm to the pot, as they say, and to have some money of my own,” said the mother of three children aged 27, 21 and 19.
Something she values highly is having achieved “agroecological awareness,” as she describes her conviction that agricultural production must eradicate the use of chemical inputs because “the Pacha Mama, Mother Earth, is tired of us killing her microorganisms.”
“I prepare my bocashi (natural fertilizer) myself using manure from my cattle. And I also fumigate without chemicals,” she says proudly. “I make a mixture with ash, ‘rocoto’ chili peppers, five heads of garlic and five onions, plus a bit of laundry soap.”
“I used to grind it with the batán (a pre-Inca grinding stone) but now I put it all in the blender to save time, I fill the backpack with two liters and I go out to spray my crops naturally,” she says.
The COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021 prompted many rural municipal governments to organize food markets, which became an opportunity for Barreto and other women farmers to sell their agroecological products.
Lourdes Barreto (L) began to learn agroecological farming techniques four years ago, which improved her life in many aspects, including relationships in her family. At the Saturday open-air market in Huancaro, in the city of Cuzco, she wears the green apron that identifies her as a member of the Provincial Association of Agroecological Producers of Quispicanchi. CREDIT: Courtesy of Nadia Quispe
“I sold green beans, zucchini, three kinds of lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, Chinese onions, coriander and parsley,” she says, pausing to take a breath and look around in case she forgot any of the vegetables she sells in the city of Cuzco, an hour and a half away from her village, and in Oropesa, the municipal seat.
Another less tangible benefit of her agroecological activity was the improvement in her relationship with her husband, she says, because she gained financial security with the sale of her crops, in which her children have supported her. Now her husband also helps her in the garden and the atmosphere in the home has improved.
Barreto, along with 40 other women farmers from six municipalities, is part of the Provincial Association of Ecological Producers of Quispicanchi, known by its acronym APPEQ – a productive and advocacy organization formed in 2012.
The six participating municipalities are Andahuaylillas, Cusipata, Huaro, Oropesa, Quiquijana and Urcos, all located in the Andes highlands in the department of Cuzco, between 3100 and 3500 meters above sea level, with a Quechua indigenous population that depends on family farming for a living.
Training to strengthen the organization is part of the activities of the Provincial Association of Ecological Producers of Quispicanchi. Maribel Palomino (2nd-R, wearing a headband), the association’s president, talks with fellow members at a workshop held on Sept. 28, 2022. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
Spreading agroecology
The president of APPEQ, Maribel Palomino, 41, is a farmer who lives in the village of Muñapata, part of Urcos, where she farms land given to her by her father. The mother of a nine-year-old son, Jared, her goal is for the organization and its products, which the rural women sell under the collective brand name Pacharuru (fruits of the earth, in Quechua), to be known throughout Cuzco.
“I recognize and am grateful for the training we received from the Flora Tristán institution to follow our own path as agroecological women farmers, which is very different from the one followed by our mothers and grandmothers,” she tells IPS during a training workshop given by the association she presides over in the city of Cuzco.
The Flora Tristan Peruvian Women’s Center disseminates ecological practices in agricultural production in combination with the empowerment of women in rural communities in remote and neglected areas of this South American country of 33 million people, where 18 percent of the population is rural according to the 2017 national census.
Now, Palomino adds, “we are part of a generation that is leading changes that are not only for the betterment of our children and families, but of ourselves as individuals and as women farmers.”
She is referring to the inequalities that even today, in the 21st century, limit the development of women in the Peruvian countryside.
“Without education, becoming mothers in their adolescence, without land in their own name but in their husband’s, without the opportunity to go out to learn and get training, it is very difficult to become a citizen with rights,” she says.
According to the National Agricultural Census, eight out of 10 women farmers work farms of less than three hectares and six out of 10 do not receive any income for their productive work. In addition, their total workload is greater than men’s, and they are underrepresented in decision-making spaces.
Maribel Palomino (L), president of the Provincial Association of Ecological Producers of Quispicanchi, sells chemical-free vegetables every week at the agroecological market in the neighborhood of Marcavalle in the city of Cuzco, Peru. CREDIT: Courtesy of Maribel Palomino
In this context of inequality and discrimination, Palomino represents a new kind of rural female leadership.
“I am a single mother, my son is nine years old and through my work I give him education, healthy food, a home with affection and care. And he sees in me a woman who is a fighter, proud to work in the fields, who defends her rights and those of her colleagues in APPEQ,” she says.
Palomino says it is crucial to contribute “to change the chip” of the elderly and of many young people who, if they could look out a window of opportunity, could improve their lives and their environment.
“With APPEQ we work to share what we learn, so that more women can look with joy to the future,” she said.
María Antonieta Tito, a farmer from the Andes highlands village of Secsencalla in the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco, shows her seedbeds of lettuce and celery plants. In March 2022 she began learning agroecological practices and is happy with the results that have allowed her to improve the quality of her family’s nutrition while generating her own income from the sale of vegetables at the local market. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
This is the case of María Antonieta Tito, 32, from the municipality of Andahuaylillas, who for the first time in her life as a farmer is engaged in agroecological practices and whom IPS visited in her vegetable garden in the village of Secsencalla, as part of a tour of several communities with peasant women who belong to the association.
“I am a student of the APPEQ leaders who teach us how to work the soil correctly, to till it up to forty centimeters so that it is soft, without stones or roots. They also teach us how to sow and plant our seeds,” she says proudly.
Pointing to her seedbeds, she adds: “Look, here I have lettuce, purple cabbage and celery, it still needs to sprout, it starts out small like this.”
Tito describes herself as a “new student” of agroecology. She started learning in March of this year but has made fast progress. Not only has she managed to harvest and eat her own vegetables, but every Wednesday she goes to the local market to sell her surplus.
“We have eaten lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, and chard; everyone at my house likes the vegetables, I have prepared them in salads and in fritters, with eggs. I am helping to improve the nutrition of my family and also of the people who buy from me,” she says happily.
Every Tuesday evening she picks vegetables, carefully washes them, and at six o’clock the next morning she is at a stall in the open-air market in Andahuaylillas, the municipal capital, assisted by her teenage son.
“The customers are getting to know us, they say that the taste of my vegetables is different from the ones they buy at the other stalls. I have been selling for three months and they have already placed orders,” she adds.
But the road to the full exercise of rural women’s rights is very steep.
As Palomino, the president of APPEQ, says, “we have made important achievements, but there is still a long way to go before we can say that we are citizens with equal rights, and the main responsibility for this lies with the governments that have not yet made us a priority.”
MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, Wyo. — The northeast entrance to Yellowstone National Park will open to all traffic Saturday, even as work continues to repair roads damaged by historic flooding in June, the park service said Thursday.
The Northeast Entrance Road, which runs from Cooke City and Silver Gate to Tower Junction, will open at 8 a.m. Saturday.
“We are very pleased to be restoring public access to the northeast corridor just four months after the June flood event,” Superintendent Cam Sholly said in a statement.
Yellowstone National Park was closed after heavy rain sped up the melting of late spring snowpack, sending rivers over their banks on June 13, washing out bridges, eroding river banks and forcing 10,000 visitors to leave the park.
The flooding reshaped the park’s rivers and canyons and wiped out numerous roads. Visitors were evacuated, and the park was closed. In southern Montana, heavy flooding affected homes along the Yellowstone and Stillwater rivers and Rock Creek in Red Lodge.
Three of the park’s five entrances reopened June 22.
All flood-damaged sections of the Northeast Entrance Road will be paved by Saturday, except for a section of road near the popular trailhead to Trout Lake, the National Park Service said.
Traffic will be allowed on the segment of the road, but there will be short delays, officials said. That work is expected to be done within the following 10 days.
A short section of road in the Lamar Canyon — known for its wildlife viewing — will remain a paved, single-lane road through the winter. A temporary stop light will be in place to allow alternating one-way traffic, park officials said.
Roadwork will continue for as long as weather permits, officials said.
A park entrance near Gardiner, which has also been closed since June, is expected to be open to all traffic by Nov. 1.
Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES, with Hoesung Lee, President of the IPCC. IPBES and the IPCC were joint winners of the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity 2022, which was dedicated to climate change. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
Nairobi, Oct 13 (IPS) – IPBES’ assessment report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species, released in July 2022, painted a troubling picture of the ongoing global biodiversity crisis that could paralyse economies and endanger food security and livelihoods.
Earlier in February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) painted a similarly troubling picture: a warning that every tenth of a degree of additional warming could escalate threats to people, species, and ecosystems.
IPBES and IPCC both produce scientific knowledge, alert society to climate change and biodiversity loss, and inform decision-makers to make better choices for combatting climate change and the loss of biodiversity. In doing so, they provide tools to foster a low-carbon future, mitigate climate change’s negative effects, and promote a resilient society.
For their contribution to climate change adaptation and resilience building, IPBES and IPCC today (October 13, 2022) emerged winners of the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity 2022, which was dedicated to climate change.
“The decision to award the 2022 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity to both IPBES and the IPCC is a powerful statement confirming that the global loss of species, destruction of ecosystems, and degradation of nature’s contributions to people together represent a crisis not only of similar magnitude to that of climate change, but one which must be addressed with at least similar urgency,” said Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES who accepted the prize alongside Hoesung Lee, President of the IPCC.
“The unified message from both of our expert communities is that either we tackle and solve the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis together – or we will fail on both fronts.”
Additionally, Lee emphasised that science was “our most powerful instrument to tackle climate change, a clear and imminent threat to our wellbeing and livelihoods, the wellbeing of our planet and all of its species. For IPCC scientists, this prize is an important recognition and encouragement. For the decision-makers, it is another push for more decisive climate action.”
IPBES is an independent, intergovernmental body set up in 2012 with the objective of improving the interface between scientific knowledge and political decision-makers on questions around biodiversity, the protection of ecosystems, human wellbeing, and sustainability.
IPCC, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2007, in conjunction with Al Gore, is a United Nations-affiliated organisation that fosters the production of scientific knowledge within the scope of evaluating the climate impacts of human actions and supporting governments with regard to their decision-making and the implementation of measures able to combat climate change.
Angela Merkel, former Chancellor of Germany, chaired the jury Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity 2022. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
The two entities – IPBES and IPCC – were selected out of 116 nominations from 41 nationalities spanning five continents. Angela Merkel, former Chancellor of Germany, chaired the jury with vice-chair Miguel Bastos Araújo (Geographer, Pessoa Award 2018).
Merkel attended the prizegiving, as did António Feijó, President of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation that introduced the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity in 2020.
The focus on climate change, Feijó explained, was a very simple decision: “Climate change and all which this philanthropic organisation does, they represent an existential condition for humanity.”
Merkel reiterated the importance of focusing on climate change acknowledging the controversies that often surround decisions made and the many policies on the table for the potential way ahead.
“Science is the most important link. Scientific evidence cannot be removed from the equation. We may have our own political views, but I believe we must make the right decision in order to ensure the survival of humanity,” Merkel observed.
Merkel further stressed that humanity now faces two crises, biodiversity loss and climate change, emphasising their interlinkages.
On biodiversity, Larigauderie spoke of the 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which alerted the world that a million species, out of an overall eight million, of plants and animals, now face extinction – many within decades.
This degradation of nature, she said, is affecting the capacity of ecosystems to deliver on a number of key functions central to human survival, including the capacity to mitigate against climate change and to achieve food security.
The jury, comprised of leading figures in global climate and environment research and action, highlighted how this prize recognises the role of science on the front line of tackling climate change and the loss of biodiversity.
Finding that “evidence-based science has been fundamental not only to advancing many of the political and public actions but also the need to attribute the ‘nature of urgency’ to the ways in which the political agenda approaches the question of combatting the climate crisis”.
In this regard, Larigauderie and Lee expressed their gratitude to thousands of scientists and indigenous and local knowledge holders for volunteering their time and expertise to deliver robust research on climate change and biodiversity.
“Our reports are the most authoritative, may I say, the scientific voice of the United Nations about climate change. They provide the world’s leaders and decision-makers at all levels with a sound and most scrutinised scientific knowledge about our climate system, climate change and how to tackle it,” Lee observed.
“The Prize comes at a critical time for climate change science. IPCC reports are clear and unequivocal. Climate change is man-made, widespread, rapid and intensifying. Today, we are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
Against this backdrop, the Jury stressed that IPBES and IPCC stood out in highlighting the relationship between “science, climate, biodiversity and society, representing the best that is done in this field all around the world.”
The Jury, therefore, recognised how the two organisations serve to emphasise “the need to look at the climate crisis and biodiversity in conjunction, with concerted approaches making recourse to nature-based solutions.”
With an annual cash award of €1 million, the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity recognise people, groups of people or organisations from across the globe that make outstanding, innovative, and impactful contributions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
This is the third edition of the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity. It was awarded for the first time in 2020 to the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. In 2021 the Prize was awarded to the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, the largest global alliance for climate leadership in cities, comprising more than 10,600 cities and local governments from 140 countries, including Portugal.
LISBON, Portugal — A prize worth 1 million euros ($970,000) is being awarded to two intergovernmental bodies for their work on climate change.
Organizers of the annual Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity announced Thursday that this year’s winners are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is president of the prize’s jury, said the award would help keep the issue of climate change in the public mind even as Russia’s war in Ukraine and its consequences compete for attention.
The IPCC is a U.N. body which since 1998 has encouraged scientific research and supported government efforts to combat climate change. It shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.
The IPBES is an independent organization established in 2012 to smooth the transfer of information between scientists and governments.
The prize was created in 2020 by the Lisbon, Portugal-based Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to recognize important contributions toward mitigating and adapting to climate change.
It has previously honored climate activist Greta Thunberg.
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GREAT FALLS, Mont. — A nearly 700-pound grizzly bear charged out of thick brush southeast of Glacier National Park, attacking and injuring a bird hunter before the man shot the animal, Montana wildlife officials said Wednesday.
The 51-year-old Washington state man, whose name and hometown were not released, was left with injuries that were not life-threatening after the encounter Tuesday afternoon in a creek bottom east of the town of Choteau, said officials with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
The man and his wife were hunting on private property when their dogs went on point, said Dave Hagengruber, spokesperson for the state wildlife department. He went to flush a bird when the 677-pound (307-kilogram) male bear charged out of the brush, knocked the man over and stepped on him, Hagengruber said.
The man fired at the bear with a shotgun and a handgun, wounding the animal, which returned to the cover of the thick brush, wildlife officials said.
The couple and their dogs left and notified authorities.
Grizzly bears are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, but state and federal wildlife officials decided the bear had to be euthanized because of its injuries. A drone was used to locate the bear, Hagengruber said.
The man did not suffer claw or bite marks, but did spend Tuesday night in the hospital, Hagengruber said.
The bear had no known previous history of human conflict and had never been handled by bear managers, officials said. Evidence at the site suggested the attack was the result of a surprise encounter.
The administration of President Gabriel Boric, a self-described environmentalist, is facing a growing rift between scientists, social leaders and energy companies that have differences with regard to the production of green hydrogen in Magallanes. The first wind turbines have already been installed in the Magallanes region, in the far south of Chile, such as these in Laredo Bay, east of Cabo Negro, where companies are pushing green hydrogen projects in a scenario where environmental costs are beginning to take center stage. CREDIT: Courtesy of Erika Mutschke
by Orlando Milesi (santiago)
Inter Press Service
SANTIAGO, Oct 12 (IPS) – In Magallanes, Chile’s southernmost region, doubts and questions are being raised about the environmental impact of turning this area into the world’s leading producer of green hydrogen.
The projects require thousands of wind turbines, several desalination plants, new ports, docks, roads and hundreds of technicians and workers, with major social, cultural, economic and even visual impacts.
This long narrow South American country of 19.5 million people sandwiched between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean has enormous solar and wind energy potential in its Atacama Desert and southern pampas grasslands. This has led to a steady increase in electricity generation from clean and renewable sources.
In 2013, only six percent of the country’s total electricity generation came from non-conventional renewable sources (NCREs) – a proportion that climbed to 32 percent this year. Installed NCRE capacity in September reached 13,405 MW, representing 40.7 percent of the total. Of the NCREs, solar energy represents 23.5 percent and wind power 12.6 percent.
In Chile, NCREs are defined as wind, small hydropower plants )up to 20 MW), biomass, biogas, geothermal, solar and ocean energy.
According to the authorities, the wind potential of Magallanes could meet 13 percent of the world’s demand for green hydrogen, with a potential of 126 GW.
Green hydrogen is generated by low-emission renewable energies in the electrolysis of water (H2O) by breaking down the molecules into oxygen (O2) and hydrogen (H2). It currently accounts for less than one percent of the world’s energy.
However, it is projected as the energy source with the most promising future to advance towards the decarbonization of the economy and the replacement of hydrocarbons, due to its potential in electricity-intensive industries, such as steel and cement, or in air and maritime transportation.
The National Green Hydrogen Strategy, launched in November 2021 by the second government of then right-wing President Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022), seeks to increase carbon neutrality, decrease Chile’s dependence on oil and turn this country into an energy exporter.
The government of his successor, leftist President Gabriel Boric, in office since March, created an Interministerial Council of the Green Hydrogen Industry Development Committee, with the participation of eight cabinet ministers.
A spokesperson from the Ministry of Energy told IPS that “this committee has agreed to bring forward, from 2025 to 2022, the update of the National Green Hydrogen Strategy and the new schedule for the allocation of state-owned land for these projects.”
“We will promote green hydrogen in a cross-cutting manner, with an emphasis on harmonious, fair and balanced local development. By bringing forward the update of the strategy, we seek to generate certainty for investors and to begin to create the necessary regulatory framework for the growth of this industry in our country,” he said.
In the area known as Cabo Negro, in the Chilean region of Magallanes, several companies have installed wind turbines to generate wind energy. The installation of thousands of turbines will affect the landscape of Magallanes and environmentalists believe it will impact many birds that migrate annually to this southern region. CREDIT: Courtesy of Erika Mutschke
Warnings from environmentalists
In a letter to the president, more than 80 environmentalists warned of the risk of turning “Magallanes y La Antarctica Chilena” – the region’s official name – into an environmental sacrifice zone for the development of green hydrogen.
“The energy transition cannot mean the sacrifice of migratory routes of birds that are in danger of extinction, otherwise it would not be a fair or sustainable transition,” said the letter, which has not yet received a formal response.
Environmentalists argue that the impact is not restricted to birds, but also affects whales that breed there, due to the effects of desalination plants, large ports and harbors.
Carmen Espoz, dean of science at the Santo Tomás University, who signed the letter, told IPS that “the main warning that we have tried to raise with the government, and with some of the companies with which we have spoken, is that there is a need for zoning or land-use planning, which does not exist to date, and for independent, quality baseline information for decision-making” on the issue.
Espoz, who also heads the Bahía Lomas Center in Magallanes, based in Punta Arenas, the regional capital, clarified that they are not opposed to the production of green hydrogen but demand that it be done right.
It is urgently necessary, she said in an interview in Santiago, to “stop making decisions at the central level without consultation or real participation of the local communities and to generate the necessary technical information base.”
The signatories asked Boric to create a Regional Land Use Plan with Strategic Environmental Assessment to avoid unregulated development of projects.
“We are not only talking about birds, but also about profound social, cultural and environmental impacts,” said Espoz, who argued that the model promoted by the government and green hydrogen developers “does not have a social license to implement it.”
Sunset at Laredo Bay in the Magallanes region where the Chilean government will have to decide on what changes in the grasslands are acceptable, in the face of a flood of requests to use the area for largescale green hydrogen projects. CREDIT: Courtesy of Erika Mutschke
The bird question
Prior to this letter to Boric, the international scientific journal Science published a study by Chilean scientists warning about potential impacts of wind turbines on the 40 to 60 species of migratory birds that visit Magallanes.
“It is estimated that the installation of wind turbines along the migratory paths of birds could affect migratory shorebird populations, which is especially critical in the cases of the Red Knot (Calidris canutus rufa) and the Magellanic Plover (Pluvianellus socialis),” said Espoz.
Both species, she said, “are endangered, as is the Ruddy-headed Goose (Chloephaga rubidiceps).”
She added that if 13 percent of the world’s green hydrogen is to be generated in southern Chile, some 2,900 wind turbines will have to be installed by 2027, “which could cause between 1,740 and 5,220 collisions with bird per year.”
Jorge Gibbons, a marine biologist at the University of Magallanes, based in Punta Arenas, said the big problem is that Magallanes does not have a baseline for environmental issues.
“The scale of production creates uncertainties, heightened because there is no baseline. The question is whether Chile currently has the capacity to carry out large-scale green hydrogen projects,” he told IPS from the capital of Magallanes.
Gibbons believes it would take about two years to update the data on the dolphin and Southern Right Whale (Eubalaena australis) populations
“The greatest risks to dolphins will be seen in the Strait of Magellan. I am talking about Commerson’s Dolphins (Cephalorhynchus commersonii), which are only found there in Chile and whose population is relatively small,” he said.
He proposed studying the route to ports and harbors of these species and to analyze how they breed and feed.
“The issue is how noise disturbs them or interrupts their routes. These questions are still unanswered, but we know some things because it is the best censused species in Chile,” he explained.
According to Gibbons, the letter to Boric is timely and will help reduce uncertainty because “the process is just beginning and the scientific and local community are now wondering if the plan will be well done.”
Conflict of interests
The partnership between HIF Chile and Enel Green Power Chile withdrew from the Environmental Evaluation System the study of the Faro del Sur Wind Farm project, involving an investment of 500 million dollars for the installation of 65 three-blade wind turbines on 3,791 hectares of land in Magallanes.
The study was presented in early August with the announcement that it was “a decisive step for the future of green hydrogen-based eFuels.”
But on Oct. 6, its withdrawal was announced after a series of observations were issued by the Magallanes regional Secretariat of the Environment.
“The observations of some public bodies in the evaluation process of this wind farm exceed the usual standards,” the consortium formed by the Chilean company HIF and the subsidiary of the Italian transnational Enel claimed in a statement.
The companies argued that “the authorities must provide clear guidelines to the companies on the expectations for regional development, safeguarding the communities and the environment.
“In light of these exceptional requirements, it is necessary to understand which requirements can be incorporated and which definitely make projects of this type unfeasible in the region,” they complained.
The government reacted by stating that it is important to remember that Faro del Sur is the first green hydrogen project submitted to the environmental assessment process in Magallanes.
“During the process, some evaluating entities made observations on the project, so the owners decided to withdraw it early, which does not prevent them from reintroducing it when they deem it convenient,” the Ministry of Energy spokesperson told IPS.
He added that the ministry stresses “the conviction to develop the green hydrogen industry in the country and that this means sending out signals, but in no case should this compromise environmental standards and citizen participation in the evaluation processes.”
CHICAGO — A specialist in plastic waste management, artists, musicians, computer scientists, and a poet-ornithologist who advocates for Black people in nature are among this year’s 25 winners of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s prestigious fellowships known as “genius grants” that honor discipline-bending and society-changing people whose work offers inspiration and insight. The Chicago-based foundation announced Wednesday that it increased the “no strings attached” award amount each receive from $625,000 to $800,000 over five years.
The 2022 fellows are:
Jennifer Carlson, 40, Tucson, Arizona, sociologist whose research traces the evolution of gun culture in the U.S.
Paul Chan, 49, New York, artist and publisher, who works in different mediums and draws on a range of cultural references to invite viewers to reflect on the world.
Yejin Choi, 45, Seattle, computer scientist who developed new ways to train computers to understand language and assess the intent of different kinds of communication.
P. Gabrielle Foreman, 58, University Park, Pennsylvania, a literary historian who cofounded an archive of Black activism in the 19th century that has collaboratively identified and collected long dispersed records.
Danna Freedman, 41, Cambridge, Massachusetts, synthetic inorganic chemist designing molecules that have great storage and processing computing capacity.
Martha Gonzalez, 50, Claremont, California, musician, scholar and activist who has convened cross border participatory performances and collaborations around social justice issues.
Sky Hopinka, 38, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, artist and filmmaker whose abstract and documentary films feature Indigenous languages and perspectives.
June Huh, 39, Princeton, New Jersey, mathematician whose work bridges different parts of the field to prove longstanding conjectures.
Moriba Jah, 51, Austin, Texas, astrodynamicist who uses statistical analysis to study data to better estimate the locations and paths of objects in the earth’s orbit.
Jenna Jambeck, 48, Athens, Georgia, environmental engineer whose study of plastics in the environment facilitates the participation of communities in managing their waste.
Monica Kim, 44, Madison, Wisconsin, historian of U.S. foreign policy whose archival research in multiple languages and original interviews reveal unstated motivations and policy goals.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, 69, Syracuse, New York, author, botanist and advocate for environmental stewardship through the traditional knowledge of native peoples.
Priti Krishtel, 44, Oakland, California, health justice lawyer advocating for reforms of the patent system to make access to treatments more equitable.
J. Drew Lanham, 57, Clemson, South Carolina, ornithologist, naturalist and writer who advocates for Black people in nature and encourages connection with and exploration of the natural world.
Kiese Laymon, 48, Houston, Texas, writer whose fiction and nonfiction interrogate the internalization and repetition of violence experienced by Black Americans.
Reuben Jonathan Miller, 46, Chicago, sociologist, criminologist and social worker who examines the consequences of incarceration, incorporating his personal experiences as a chaplain and relative of imprisoned people.
Ikue Mori, 68, New York, electronic music composer and performer whose work expands the bounds of electronic music making by incorporating live and prerecorded sequences.
Steven Prohira, 35, Lawrence Kansas, physicist who develops novel ways to detect and study subatomic particles that could reveal important information about the universe.
Tomeka Reid, 44, Chicago, jazz cellist and composer whose work draws on her community and forges unique combinations of instruments to reimagine classic works and expand the expressive possibilities of cello improvisation.
Loretta J. Ross, 69, Northampton, Massachusetts, reproductive justice and human rights advocate who envisions an end to racist reproductive policies and organizes toward overcoming barriers to reproductive autonomy.
Steven Ruggles, 67, Minneapolis, a historical demographer who built and maintains the most extensive database of population statistics in the world.
Tavares Strachan, 42, New York and Nassau, The Bahamas, interdisciplinary conceptual artist who has accomplished logistical feats while also elevating the histories of past marginalized artists and leaders.
Emily Wang, 47, New Haven, Connecticut, a primary care physician and researcher who founded a network of clinics staffed by community health workers and physicians to treat people released from jail.
Amanda Williams, 48, Chicago, artist and architect whose work explores the intersection of race and the built environment and invites the participation of the community in reimagining their space.
Melanie Matchett Wood, 41, Cambridge, Massachusetts, mathematician whose statistical analyses have helped answer questions related to number theory and algebraic geometry.
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With California’s four-year-old legal marijuana market in disarray, the state’s top prosecutor said Tuesday that he will try a new broader approach to disrupting illegal pot farms that undercut the legal economy and sow widespread environmental damage.
The state will expand its nearly four-decade multi-agency seasonal eradication program — the largest in the U.S. that this year scooped up nearly a million marijuana plants — into a year-round effort aimed at investigating who is behind the illegal grows. The new program will attempt to prosecute underlying labor crimes, environmental crimes and the underground economy centered around the illicit cultivations, said Attorney General Rob Bonta.
He called it “an important shift in mindset and in mission” aimed at also aiding California’s faltering legal market by removing dangerous competition.
“The illicit marketplace outweighs the legal marketplace” Bonta said. “It’s upside down and our goal is complete eradication of the illegal market.”
In keeping with the new approach, the annual Campaign Against Marijuana Planting ( CAMP ) program started under Republican Gov. George Deukmejian in 1983 will become a permanent Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Cannabis (EPIC) task force, Bonta said.
CAMP began in “a very different time, a different era, a different moment during the failed war on drugs and (at) a time when cannabis was still entirely illegal,” Bonta said.
The seasonal eradication program, which lasts about 90 days each summer, still will continue with the cooperation of other federal, state and local agencies. They include the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, National Park Service, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California State Parks and the California National Guard, some of which will also participate in the new task force, he said.
The task force will work with state Department of Justice prosecutors, the department’s Cannabis Control Section and an existing Tax Recovery in the Underground Economy ( TRUE ) task force that was created by law in 2020, all with the goal of filing civil and criminal cases against those behind illegal grows.
Federal and state prosecutors in California have long tried, without much success, to target the organized crime cartels behind the hidden farms rather than the often itinerant laborers hired to tend and guard the often remote marijuana plots scattered across public and private land.
The laborers frequently live in crude camps with no running water or sewers and use caustic pesticides to kill animals that might otherwise eat the growing plants. But the pollution they leave behind has spread into downstream water supplies and the pesticides can spread up through the food chain.
The workers are victims of human trafficking, Bonta said, “living in squalid conditions alone for months on end and with no way out. These are not the people who are profiting from the illegal cannabis industry. They’re being abused, they’re the victims. They are cogs in a much bigger and more organized machine.”
For example, about 80% of the 44 illegal grow sites found on and around Bureau of Land Management properties this year were connected to drug trafficking organizations, said Karen Mouritsen, the bureau’s California state director.
“It’s clear that there are big challenges with respect to organized crime,” Bonta said. But he said he expects better results this time because the new year-round effort by multiple agencies “will make a big dent, a bit splash and lots of noise about our common priority to address the illicit marketplace, including at the highest levels.”
Bonta is running to keep his job from Republican challenger and former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman in next month’s election. He is taking a familiar recent approach by Democrats nationwide in concentrating on dealers who provide illegal drugs rather than the users who support the underground economy. President Joe Biden last week said he is pardoning thousands of Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law, while San Francisco officials announced a new effort to curb open drug dealing.
The year-round approach “is long since overdue,” Hochman said. “Only by hitting illegal drug growers where it hurts, by seizing their plants and their proceeds, will California be able to help the legal cannabis industry survive and thrive.”
For those trying to exist under the legal market approved by California voters in 2016, the problem has been falling pot prices, restricted sales, high taxes despite the recent repeal of the cannabis cultivation tax, and the fact that buyers can find better bargains in the booming underground marketplace.
Aside from the nearly 1 million plants that Bonta valued at about $1 billion, this year’s eradication program seized more than 100 tons of processed marijuana, 184 weapons and about 33 tons of materials used to cultivate the plants, including dams, water lines and containers of toxic chemicals including pesticides and fertilizers.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A malfunctioning heater sent a dangerously high level of carbon monoxide into a Pennsylvania day care center early Tuesday, sickening dozens of children — some of whom were unconscious as they were rushed to the hospital — and several adults.
More than 30 people were hospitalized. All were listed in stable condition.
Emergency responders went to the Happy Smiles Learning Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on reports of an unconscious child, and evacuated the building after a firefighter’s CO monitor was triggered.
The leak was caused by a malfunctioning heating unit and a blocked venting system, investigators said. They noted the building did not have carbon monoxide detectors.
A new city ordinance requires CO detectors in child care facilities by Oct. 27, while legislation that would require them in all child care facilities statewide recently cleared the state Senate. The bill is awaiting action in the House.
Happy Smiles owner Jesenia Gautreaux said she will have CO detectors installed.
A staffer called Gautreaux at home to tell her a child had collapsed, Gautreaux told The Morning Call newspaper of Allentown. She arrived at the center within minutes and saw the boy in an ambulance, she said. He looked ill, she said, but gave her a thumbs-up.
“He was a little dizzy and out of it,” she told the newspaper, adding that other children cried as they evacuated. “I believe they were scared and worried about their friends.”
Of the patients treated by hospitals in the Lehigh Valley Health Network, symptoms included headache, dizziness and nausea, “and several were unresponsive prior to arrival,” Dr. Andrew Miller, chief of pediatric emergency medicine, said in a statement.
Some patients who had very high levels of carbon monoxide in their blood and “required more aggressive treatment” were transferred to hospitals in Philadelphia, about 50 miles away, he said.
City inspectors shut down the building and the day care facility’s license was suspended as a result of the leak.
“There will be multiple inspections needed from the Health Bureau, Building Standards, Fire Department — in order for this facility to reopen,” city spokesperson Genesis Ortega said via email.
Eight staffers were at the child care center, which usually cares for about 40 kids each day. Gautreaux said she plans to have the furnace repaired and reopen the day care center soon.
The center’s last state inspection was conducted late last year, and state records show the only problem found was a door that remained locked when the fire alarm sounded. That was soon repaired, and no sanctions were issued.
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This story has been corrected to show that a new city ordinance, not a state law, requires CO detectors at day care facilities.
Climate scientists described the shocking images of gas spewing to the surface of the Baltic Sea as a “reckless release” of greenhouse gas emissions that, if deliberate, “amounts to an environmental crime.”
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Two subsea pipelines connecting Russia to Germany are at the center of international intrigue after a series of blasts caused what might be the single largest release of methane in history — and many suspect it was the result of an attack.
An initial crime scene investigation last week into what caused the gas leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines reinforced suspicions of “gross sabotage.”
As investigations continue, many in Europe suspect the incident was the result of an attack, particularly as it occurred during a bitter energy standoff between the European Union and Russia.
On Sept. 26, a flurry of detonations on two underwater pipelines connecting Russia to Germany sent gas spewing to the surface of the Baltic Sea. The explosions triggered four gas leaks at four locations — two in Denmark’s exclusive economic zone and two in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone.
The magnitude of those explosions was measured at 2.3 and 2.1 on the Richter scale, respectively, Swedish and Danish authorities said, and likely corresponded to an explosive load of “several hundred kilos.”
Neither of the Nord Stream pipelines was transporting gas at the time of the blasts, although they both contained pressurized methane — a potent greenhouse gas.
Remarkably, the signature of the gas bubbling at the surface of the Baltic Sea could be seen from space.
A satellite image of the Nord Stream leak in the Baltic Sea, captured on Sept. 26, 2022.
Planet
Climate scientists described the shocking images of the methane erupting from the burst as a “reckless release” of greenhouse gas emissions that, if deliberate, “amounts to an environmental crime.”
At the time, Denmark’s armed forces said video footage showed the largest gas leak created a surface disturbance of roughly 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) in diameter, while the smallest leak caused a circle of approximately 200 meters.
The Nord Stream gas pipelines have become a focal point of tensions between Russia and Europe in recent months, with Moscow accused of weaponizing gas supplies in a bid to gain sanctions relief amid its onslaught in Ukraine.
Sweden’s national security service said Thursday that detonations caused “extensive damage” to the pipelines and “strengthened suspicions of gross sabotage.”
Sweden’s Security Service said certain seizures had been made, without offering further details, and that these would now be reviewed and analyzed.
“The continued preliminary investigation must show whether someone can be served with suspicion and later prosecuted,” Sweden’s Security Service said.
Sweden’s prosecutor’s office said in a separate statement that the area was no longer cordoned off.
The European Union has warned that any deliberate attack on European energy infrastructure would be met with the “strongest possible response,” calling what it suspects is an intentional attack “utterly unacceptable.”
U.S. President Joe Biden described the blasts on the Nord Stream pipelines as a “deliberate act of sabotage” late last month, saying Washington was working with its allies to work out exactly what happened.
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, said at a conference in Paris last month that it was “very obvious” who was responsible for the gas leaks, Reuters reported. He did not say who that was, however.
Russia has denied it was responsible for the gas leaks. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Thursday that such claims were “absurd,” according to Tass news agency.
Zakharova emphasized the “enormous investment” that the Kremlin took in the infrastructure project and lashed out at the West for blocking Moscow from taking part in the investigations.
The unexplained Nord Stream gas leaks pose serious questions about the incident’s environmental impact.
Climate scientists acknowledged in the aftermath of the event that it was hard to accurately quantify the exact size of the emissions and said the leaks are a “wee bubble in the ocean” compared with the massive amounts of methane emitted around the world every day.
“It was a deliberate act and in my opinion it can very likely be linked to the push for constant provocation by the Kremlin,” Spanish Energy Minister Teresa Ribera told reporters last month, according to Reuters.
Europa Press News | Europa Press | Getty Images
The two Nord Stream pipelines were estimated to have contained enough gas to release 300,000 tons of methane — more than twice the amount released by the 2015 Aliso Canyon leak in California, the largest known release of methane in U.S. history.
While that means it could be one of the largest single releases of methane, the incident pales in comparison with the roughly 70 million tons of methane emitted by the oil and gas industry each year.
The European Space Agency estimated that the emissions leak from the Nord Stream gas pipelines was roughly equivalent to one and a half days of global methane emissions.
Nonetheless, environmental campaigners argued the incident serves as yet another reminder of the risks associated with fossil fuel infrastructure.
— CNBC’s Emma Newburger contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear arguments over a California animal cruelty law that could raise the cost of bacon and other pork products nationwide.
The case’s outcome is important to the nation’s $26-billion-a-year pork industry, but the outcome could also limit states’ ability to pass laws with impact outside their borders, from laws aimed at combating climate change to others intended to regulate prescription drug prices.
The case before the court on Tuesday involves California’s Proposition 12, which voters passed in 2018. It said that pork sold in the state needs to come from pigs whose mothers were raised with at least 24 square feet of space, including the ability to lie down and turn around. That rules out the confined “gestation crates,” metal enclosures that are common in the pork industry.
Two industry groups, the Iowa-based National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation, sued over the proposition. They say that while Californians consume 13% of the pork eaten in the United States, nearly 100% of it comes from hogs raised outside the state, primarily where the industry is concentrated in the Midwest and North Carolina. The vast majority of sows, meanwhile, aren’t raised under conditions that would meet Proposition 12’s standards.
The question for the high court is whether California has impermissibly burdened the pork market and improperly regulated an industry outside its borders.
Pork producers argue that 72% of farmers use individual pens for sows that don’t allow them to turn around and that even farmers who house sows in larger group pens don’t provide the space California would require.
They also say that the way the pork market works, with cuts of meat from various producers being combined before sale, it’s likely all pork would have to meet California standards, regardless of where it’s sold. Complying with Proposition 12 could cost the industry $290 million to $350 million, they say.
So far, lower courts have sided with California and animal-welfare groups that had supported the proposition. But for a number of reasons the law has yet to go into effect.
The Biden administration, for its part, is urging the justices to side with pork producers. The administration says Proposition 12 would be a “wholesale change in how pork is raised and marketed in this country.” And it says the proposition has “thrown a giant wrench into the workings of the interstate market in pork.”
California’s Proposition 12 also covers other animals. It says egg-laying hens and calves being raised for veal need to be raised in conditions in which they have enough room to lie down, stand up and turn around freely. Those parts of the law aren’t at issue in the case.
The case is National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, 21-468.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand’s government on Tuesday proposed taxing the greenhouse gasses that farm animals make from burping and peeing as part of a plan to tackle climate change.
The government said the farm levy would be a world first, and that farmers should be able to recoup the cost by charging more for climate-friendly products.
But farmers quickly condemned the plan. Federated Farmers, the industry’s main lobby group, said the plan would “rip the guts out of small town New Zealand” and see farms replaced with trees.
Federated Farmers President Andrew Hoggard said farmers had been trying to work with the government for more than two years on an emissions reduction plan that wouldn’t decrease food production.
“Our plan was to keep farmers farming,” Hoggard said. Instead, he said farmers would be selling their farms “so fast you won’t even hear the dogs barking on the back of the ute (pickup truck) as they drive off.”
Opposition lawmakers from the conservative ACT Party said the plan would actually increase worldwide emissions by moving farming to other countries that were less efficient at making food.
New Zealand’s farming industry is vital to its economy. Dairy products, including those used to make infant formula in China, are the nation’s largest export earner.
There are just 5 million people in New Zealand but some 10 million beef and dairy cattle and 26 million sheep.
The outsized industry has made New Zealand unusual in that about half of its greenhouse gas emissions come from farms. Farm animals produce gasses that warm the planet, particularly methane from cattle burping and nitrous oxide from their urine.
The government has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make the country carbon neutral by 2050. Part of that plan includes a pledge that it will reduce methane emissions from farm animals by 10% by 2030 and by up to 47% by 2050.
Under the government’s proposed plan, farmers would start to pay for emissions in 2025, with the pricing yet to be finalized.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said all the money collected from the proposed farm levy would be put back into the industry to fund new technology, research and incentive payments for farmers.
“New Zealand’s farmers are set to be the first in the world to reduce agricultural emissions, positioning our biggest export market for the competitive advantage that brings in a world increasingly discerning about the provenance of their food,” Ardern said.
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said it was an exciting opportunity for New Zealand and its farmers.
“Farmers are already experiencing the impact of climate change with more regular drought and flooding,” O’Connor said. “Taking the lead on agricultural emissions is both good for the environment and our economy.”
The liberal Labour government’s proposal harks back to a similar but unsuccessful proposal made by a previous Labour government in 2003 to tax farm animals for their methane emissions.
Farmers back then also vehemently opposed the idea, and political opponents ridiculed it as a “fart tax” — although a “burp tax” would have been more technically accurate as most of the methane emissions come from belching. The government eventually abandoned the plan.
According to opinion polls, Ardern’s Labour Party has slipped in popularity and fallen behind the main opposition National Party since Ardern won a second term in 2020 in a landslide victory of historic proportions.
If Ardern’s government can’t find agreement on the proposal with farmers, who have considerable political sway in New Zealand, it’s likely to make it more difficult for Ardern to win reelection next year when the nation goes back to the polls.
MILWAUKEE — When researchers wanted to collect data on wild bumble bee nests this past summer, they turned to man’s best friend to help sniff them out.
What You Need To Know
Bumble bee nests are difficult to locate
The dogs help sniff out nests of 20 species of bumble bees
They are used to locate invasive species as well as turtles
One is affectionately named Betty White, and her partner in crime is Ernie. The two spent the summer sniffing out bumble bee nests for researchers.
“Nests, in general, are just super hard for humans to find by themselves. Any valuable find for the dogs is helpful for the researchers,” said Laura Holder of the Conservation Dogs Collective.
Their slogan is “Making a Snifference.”
(Spectrum News 1/Jon Fuller)
The dogs are trained to locate Wisconsin’s approximately 20 species of wild bumble bees.
On a recent training day in Wauwatosa, Holder hid parts of nests for the dogs to locate.
“We train with different volumes of the bumble bee nest material. Out in the wild, there could be a tiny little nest or a really large nest,” explained Holder.
A dog’s superior sense of smell makes it possible to locate nests and collect data on these important pollinators.
“These dogs are super impressive. When they find a nest, they know exactly where it is,” said Jade Kochanski, University of Wisconsin-Madison Ph.D. graduate student.
(Spectrum News 1/Jon Fuller)
With a keen interest in pollinators, Kochanski witnessed the dogs working this summer.
“If we can increase the efficiency and accuracy of finding bumble bee nests, that can help us answer research questions,” explained Kochanski. “Are there species-specific differences in their nesting preferences? Are prairie restorations helping them?”
The dogs love to run and sniff, but their contributions are invaluable.
“Finding the correlation between where they are foraging to where nests are found is a critical piece of information that’s missing right now,” said Holder.
(Spectrum News 1/Jon Fuller)
Sniffing around looking for bees may sound like you’re asking for trouble, but problems are rare, Holder said. She carries Benadryl just in case.
“Bumble bees, you have to make them upset for you or the dog to get stung,” said Holder.
The dogs can detect more than just bee nests. They can also help locate invasive species like the New Zealand mud snail.
“We just had a team that came back from Iowa last week. They were doing ornate box turtle surveys. Wood turtles are another thing here in the area that are of great importance,” said Holder.
The practice is an emerging field that continues to provide useful data for scientists — there’s no doubt it’ll also keep the valuable noses of Ernie and Betty White quite busy.
