|
TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
______________________________________________________________________
CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Largest grid operator alarmed by AI data center electricity demand
“A massive heatwave sweeping across the United States is straining the country’s power grid and water supplies. The heatwave comes at a time when the US is racing to build thousands of new AI data centres to support the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. Utilities, regulators, and policymakers have warned that the pace of construction is outstripping the expansion of the country’s electricity and water infrastructure.
“Data centres account for 4% of US power demand. That is expected to increase to 9% by 2030, according to the US Department of Energy. A typical hyperscale data centre requires between 100 and 300 megawatts of electricity. Water demand at data centres increases during periods of extreme heat because cooling systems have to keep computer servers cool so they can operate safely.
“Data centres are already driving up temperatures around the globe by creating what are called heat islands around them. A University of Cambridge study found that temperatures increased by an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
“PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest power grid operator, asked the US Department of Energy to order data centres to switch to backup power generators within 15 minutes of an emergency signal alerting them to do so.
“Seven in 10 Americans opposed data centre construction in their local communities, with half of them citing the excessive use of resources, including power and water supply.” [click the link for the full article]
Kansas now requires eradication of Amur Honeysuckle
“Amur honeysuckle, sometimes called bush honeysuckle, was added to the state Department of Agriculture noxious weed list in May. ‘When a plant is added to the noxious weed list, it becomes the property owner’s responsibility to control the species’, said Jeff Vogel, the Kansas weed control program manager.
“Invasive weeds like those on the list can displace native species, and also interfere with the production of crops. If a landowner doesn’t control noxious weeds on their property, the county sends a letter notifying them of the problem, he said. If the landowner doesn’t comply, the county can send someone in to eradicate the noxious weed and then bill the landowner for the cost of removal
“Landowners can get assistance from county public works departments, which help with purchasing reduced-cost herbicides. ‘The idea is to try to prevent the spread and the production of seeds or reproductive parts’, Vogel said.” [click the link for the full article]
Food miles are more than a problem of energy use
“Humanity is on a collision course with Planet Earth, and so far, we have not been able to address it. The causes are more diverse than CO2 emissions, for example: soybean production has doubled over the past 20 years – not to feed people but to feed livestock in China and Europe while destroying the immense Brazilian Cerrado savannah and the Amazon rainforest.
“The massive global food trade is permanently altering Earth’s soil chemistry. Exporters use energy-intensive, synthetic chemical fertilizers to replenish their soil, while the importers release a toxic surplus of these nutrients into their wastewater systems.
“The European Commission has reported that global food-miles account for 19% of total food-system emissions. How did the global food trade begin? At the end of World War II, a decision was made in the United States to transfer the massive industrial war-fighting machine to farming.
“At the same time, certain corporate and academic leaders, known collectively as the Committee for Economic Development, decided that there were too many farmers. The absent people would be replaced by the mechanical and chemical technologies. Agriculture would become an industry, farms would become factories.
“By the 1970’s, the government had incentivized farmers to ‘get big or get out’ [quote, Earl Butz, Sec. of Agriculture under Richard Nixon], thereby displacing millions of self-sufficient farm families. Apart from its carbon footprint, the international food system is vulnerable to shocks. Interconnected supply chains are fragile.
“The UN Food and Agriculture Organization defines food self-sufficiency as ‘the extent to which a country can satisfy its food needs from its own domestic production’. Guyana is the only nation among 186 studied that achieves 100% self-sufficiency across all seven major food groups. Remarkably, neither the US, Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, or any European countries (except Spain and Greece) made the list.” [click the links for the full articles]
Portland OR funds climate action with 1% corporate sales tax
“In 2018, a 65% majority of voters in Portland, Oregon passed The Portland Clean Energy Fund, an innovative billion-dollar climate fund.. And in 2019, the city began levying a 1% retail sales tax on large corporations within Portland city limits — think Target, Walmart, REI.
“The city has distributed more than 20,000 free air conditioning units to help vulnerable households prepare for heat waves. It has funded energy efficiency retrofits for 3,100 homes. And 2,000 people have been trained in the renewable energy and construction fields.
“Nearly a decade ago, leaders from nonprofits run by communities of color came up with the idea to tax these large corporations to create a new way to fund climate action. Since 2021, the fund has distributed four rounds of community-based nonprofit grants totaling about $262 million. Grants range from about $8,000 to as high as $10.3 million.” [click the link for the full article]
Oregon reusable food container program launches
“In May 2023, Oregon Governor, Tina Kotek, signed a law allowing residents to bring their own reusable containers to food establishments, along with signing a separate polystyrene foam ban. The regional government in greater Portland used the state’s opt-in BYO law as a launchpad for the regional Choose to Reuse campaign, which is designed to encourage residents to bring their own reusable cups and containers to food and beverage businesses.
“Area residents already have familiarity with reuse, and the region is known as a leader in the practice. With Choose to Reuse, Metro staff assist businesses with program aspects such as identifying suitable single-use products to swap out for reusable ones, and navigating processes to implement their own BYO programs.
“Metro’s work also includes other reuse initiatives. Metro is partnering with Waste-Free Advocates on a pilot program incentivizing businesses to adopt their own in-house reusable foodservice ware program. Metro is tracking Choose to Reuse program uptake, and it’s accepting feedback from all involved to inform program evolutions.” [click the link for the full article]
Move fast and break things
“For most of the modern era, capitalism justified itself through growth. Industrial societies converted vast amounts of fossil energy into production, wealth, and rising living standards. That story is beginning to unravel.
“Across much of the developed world, economic life increasingly feels less like construction than demolition. Infrastructure deteriorates. Public institutions struggle to perform basic functions. Yet wealth continues to concentrate at remarkable speed. Political systems seem unable to solve mounting crises while proving highly adept at monetizing them.
“Collapse itself becomes a business model. If growth fails, capitalism will extort wealth for as long as possible by devising new ways to profit from disaster, conflict, chaos, scarcity, and collapse. A useful way to understand this shift is through the concept of catabolic capitalism.
“In biology, catabolism refers to the process by which an organism breaks down its own tissues to survive when external resources become scarce. Applied to political economy, the concept describes a late stage of industrial capitalism in which profits increasingly come from consuming the social, institutional, ecological, and infrastructural foundations built during an earlier era of abundance.
“Rather than building new productive capacity, large pools of capital increasingly generate returns by stripping value from existing institutions. Infrastructure tells a similar story. Preventive maintenance rarely attracts political attention. Emergency repairs and reconstruction then generate large profits. Responding to disasters becomes more lucrative than preventing them.
“The MAGA agenda accelerates capitalism’s catabolic dynamic. Notorious MAGA ideologue Steve Bannon openly calls for the deconstruction of the administrative state. In 2016, Bannon declared that his goal was to ‘destroy the state and bring everything crashing down’.
“Under catabolic conditions, AI may function more as a system for managing and profiting from contraction than as a tool for social advancement. A standard AI search query or text generation task can require far more electricity than a traditional Google search. AI models are trained on the collective knowledge of humanity.
“Who should this resource belong to? Big tech oligarchs, venture capitalists, and Wall Street financiers extract it without permission, acknowledgment, or compensation. Will they use it primarily for the benefit of humanity or to fabricate the next great wealth extraction machine?” [click the link for the full article]
Insect species count has been vastly underestimated
“From half-meter-long moths to fairy wasps smaller than sand grains, insects come in a stunning variety of shapes and sizes and constitute the most diverse animal group on Earth. But the insect species discovered so far may represent just a fraction of the total.
“A team of entomologists estimates there may be as many as 20 million insect species on our planet — more than three times the previous estimate. Scientists have long debated exactly how many insect species there are, with the previous consensus being about 6 million. Entomologists have described about 1 million insect species, but finding and describing them all would be a daunting — if not impossible — task.
“More than 40% of known insect species are threatened with extinction, and many scientists fear insect species are disappearing faster than they can discover them.” [click the link for the full article]
Tribal water rights a stumbling block in Colorado River negotiations
“A deal to bring Colorado River water to Native American communities is being blocked by neighboring states. The largest tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history – to secure water for the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe – was on the verge of being realized before Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming stepped in to oppose it.
“The Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act would resolve the largest outstanding claim on the Colorado River, while providing about $5 billion in federal funding to build infrastructure to transport the water across the reservations.
“The Upper Basin states fear that, in the future, water they currently control might be leased on an open market, as setting a precedent that could allow the highest bidder to buy vast quantities of their water. In an effort to assuage that concern and close the deal, the Navajo and Hopi made major concessions over the volume of water and length of time they could lease.” [click the link for the full article]
Pronatalist agenda is an anti-people-of-color agenda
“As birthrates continue to decline in many industrialized countries, anxious governments are running out of schemes to keep women procreating. In the US, millionaires and billionaires are lining up to donate to Trump’s ‘baby bonus’ savings accounts.
“Trump accounts give parents $1,000 for all babies born between now and 2028, plus whatever private donors add. Late last year tech billionaires Michael and Susan Dell donated $6.25 billion to them. The accounts are part of the broader trend of governments using heavy-handed pronatalist policies, ranging from bribes to outright coercion, to convince women to have more babies.
“A recent Heritage Foundation report admitted, ‘Other nations have tried to reverse declining birthrates through financially generous family policies, none has succeeded. Government spending alone does not ensure demographic success’.
“Such spending is not a priority for U.S. taxpayers, as most Americans do not see falling birth rates as a crisis. Instead, they overwhelmingly want the government to address untenably high child care costs.
“Trump accounts and other pronatalist policies aren’t really about empowerment or saving families or supporting children. They are a bid to make more white Americans, part of a larger nativist program which includes cracking down on immigration from African and Muslim countries, detaining and deporting non-white people in huge numbers, and even abandoning former U.S. efforts to fight child exploitation and trafficking.” [click the link for the full article]
|
