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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Tempering the urban heat island effect with food gardens
“In the concrete jungle of North Philadelphia, a garden blooms in vivid color. Flowers, vegetable beds and fruit trees thrive to the chatter of songbirds that flit between the trees. Estelle Vaughn can hear them through the windows of her house overlooking the Tioga-Hope Park and Garden, which she has tended for over 25 years.
“This urban oasis is more than ornamental — it constantly works to cool the environment, reduces community health risks, and serves as social infrastructure. Creating more spaces like the Tioga-Hope garden is at the core of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s mission. Each year, the group partners with the city transform hundreds of vacant lots into maintained green spaces.
“In cities, asphalt, concrete and closely clustered tall buildings trap heat and ramp up temperatures, creating a ‘heat island effect’. Not all neighborhoods endure heat the same way. Some are up to 22 degrees hotter than others in Philadelphia. Social and economic inequities shape that reality.” [click the link for the full article]
Big Meat & Dairy greenwashing
“Big Ag’s sustainability pledges are nothing new, but are they taken seriously? To find out, researchers at the University of Miami analyzed the sustainability claims of 33 of the world’s largest meat and dairy corporations. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found, 98% of the environmental claims made in meat and dairy reports are greenwashing.
“Animal agriculture has disproportionate environmental impacts relative to other forms of food production, and accounts for at least 16.5% of all global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Many of the largest meat and dairy companies have responded by making explicit environmental commitments.
“Researchers identified 1,233 environmental claims, of which 68% (841) were climate-related. Of the 1,233 claims, 38% (467) were unverifiable future projections such as ‘achieve carbon neutrality by 2030’.
“Of the 33 companies, 17 have made net-zero commitments, but the commitments appear to rely on plans to offset carbon emissions rather than to decarbonize. Companies provided supporting evidence for 356 (29%) of the 1,233 claims and provided scholarly scientific evidence to support only three of these claims.” [click the link for the full article]
Big Meat’s gigantification — is that redundant or what?
“Nearly everything in the far southwestern corner of Nebraska — the farm supply stores, the corn fields, the gas stations, the hotels, the schools, the bars — operates, one way or another, in service of the great American beef machine.
“Decades ago, most cattle raised in the United States grazed on grasslands like these, taking several years to reach their optimal slaughter weight. But in the 1950s ranchers figured out that if cattle spend their final months in pens and are fed a highly fattening grain-based diet, that timeframe shrinks.
“This was the beginning of concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, where beef cattle, dairy cows, hogs and poultry are raised in confinement. This system of intensified confinement makes money. It has abundantly served growing global appetites for cheap burgers, hot dogs and chicken wings.
“But here, in a part of the country where many people can trace their roots back to the early days of ranching, even they say that concept goes too far. Within a year or two, an expanse larger than one square mile will be covered in concrete, and on it, 200,000 head of cattle will live their last months.” [click the link for the full article]
Greenland — extort, exploit, extract
“An American oil company connected to Donald Trump is preparing to sink wells in remote Greenland despite not having received permission from the local authorities. Amid Trump’s imperialist threats, tensions have been rising on Greenland’s eastern coast after the oil company brought drilling equipment ashore in July without permission, drawing a ‘strong warning’ from the government.
“The Greenland government said ‘All future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority — before they are carried out’. Two days later, Trump made his latest menacing post on Truth Social, showing himself looming over a Greenlandic village.
“As a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, decisions about Greenland’s natural resources rest with its local elected leaders, who now face a delicate decision. They could grant permission for oil drilling, even though the planned wells are protected by the Ramsar convention on wetlands. Or they could refuse and give Trump a pretext to advance his imperialist agenda.” [click the links for the full articles]
Gasoline price — US economic barometer
“News reports say that the Trump administration may be considering an export ban on crude oil, gasoline, and diesel in order to bring those prices down. But, a Trump administration spokesperson said the administration has no plans to ban exports of oil or natural gas products.
“It’s important to note that there is an old adage in Washington, D.C.: ‘Nothing is true until it is officially denied’. The administration has probably discussed such a ban. Whether it will implement one is the question. The short answer is two-fold.
“1. The oil industry has always enjoyed the right to export refined products such as gasoline and diesel. The U.S. has refinery capacity in excess of its needs and so the industry has sold the excess abroad. Only more recently did the industry gain the unfettered right to export crude oil and natural gas.
“2. Until recently, Trump touted his support of the oil industry and delivered on many industry-friendly policies. The industry spent $450 million on campaign contributions, lobbying, and advertising to support Trump and Republicans in 2024. It’s hard to see now how Trump would defy an industry which is so powerful.
“My guess is that unless gasoline and diesel prices remain elevated for months more, export controls will remain off the table. But if the high prices don’t dissipate by then, the American public will be clamoring for a solution.” [click the link for the full article]
Make your “second car” a bicycle
“For many decades after the introduction of the automobile, Americans drove more miles every year. The transportation system gave Americans little choice but to spend their limited household incomes on cars.
“However, for a mix of reasons, residents in several states have broken with this decades-long trend and have driven fewer miles on average in recent years. One factor is compact neighborhoods where residents don’t need to drive as far or as often. Another factor is demographic change, such as an aging population and remote work.
“The decline in per-capita driving in a few leading states suggests that Americans’ current levels of car travel are not inevitable. Travel habits can change, leaving us with less pollution, safer and more pleasant communities, and, often, more choices than before.” [click the link for the full article]
Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival
“Do some people have too much power over others? Do we humans have too much power over the natural world? These questions get to the heart of our biggest global problems.
“There are primarily just two kinds of power: physical power and social power. Physical power can be defined as the rate of energy transfer, or as the use of energy to do something. Social power is the ability of one person or a group to influence the thoughts and behavior of others.
“Nature provides examples of excessive physical power. Wildfires can burn with many gigawatts of power, and torch a small-to-medium-sized city in just a few hours. We humans can likewise physically overpower our surroundings by using the concentrated energy of fossil fuels to over-harvest natural resources.
“Too much social power leads to different problems. Cooperation, the ultimate basis of social power, gives us the means to accomplish wonders. Social power can also manifest itself through the pooling of immense amounts of wealth in just a few hands, resulting in needless widespread poverty and eventual civil unrest, war, or genocide.
“Some individuals desperately seek material riches, homage, and feelings of superiority. Other people don’t; they may lead modest but happy lives oriented toward service to others. What makes some people more power hungry? Often, low self-esteem appears to be a key.
“Climate change can be viewed as being a result of too much power. Nearly everything we use represents a little fire somewhere. Your smart phone? Little fires drove the machines that extracted the raw minerals. Bigger fires smelted the metals.
“The same is typically true for services — keeping us warm, cool, and provisioned. We even need fires to make solar panels and wind turbines. But each of those fires, no matter how carefully controlled and efficient, is contributing CO2 to the atmosphere.
“To avoid this contradiction between the desire for more physical power and the unacceptable consequences, is to hope that renewable energy will solve the climate problem painlessly. Then, we can use even more energy than we do now, it will just be clean energy. We don’t need to give up power.
“But retiring fossil fuels is going far too slowly to avert catastrophe. The core reason is simply that fossil fuels deliver more power than renewables. Averting catastrophic global warming will be mostly a process of reducing total energy usage. Clearly, the people who would need to sacrifice the most are today’s biggest energy users. But these happen to be people with a lot of social power.” [click the link for the full article]
Replacing any age gas car with an EV cuts costs and emissions
“Because building an EV generates emissions, isn’t it better for the planet just to keep a gasoline car running for as long as possible? Professor Elliot Campbell at the University of California, Santa Cruz, didn’t know the answer, so he set out to find it. Turns out the old adage that the greenest car is the one in your driveway is a myth.
“His study, published in the journal Science, finds that swapping even a two-year-old gasoline car for an EV leads to a lifetime emissions savings of roughly 50%. The emissions saved by driving an EV very quickly compensate for the planet-warming gases generated by building it.
“Campbell designed the study to give internal combustion vehicles every possible advantage. Most notably, it ignored the emissions that went into making the gasoline car, treating them instead as a sunk cost. EV still came out ahead, which suggests that climate-conscious drivers should make the switch as soon as it’s feasible.” [click the link for the full article]
AI boosts fossil energy more than it can boost renewables
“Until this point, the public conversation about AI and climate change has been laser-focused on the vast amount of electricity used to power the technology. For good reason. Over the last few years, the AI boom has rapidly increased society’s appetite for fossil fuels via the electricity consumption of data centers. For example, Amazon is planning to build the largest fossil fuel power plant in the United States to power its AI.
“And yet, this is only the tip of the AI-climate iceberg. Because AI is not only consuming fossil fuels to generate electricity — it is also helping the world’s biggest oil companies produce more fossil fuels quicker, cheaper, and for greater profit.
“Data center climate emissions result from electricity used for servers, cooling, and infrastructure. ‘Enabled’ emissions result from the fossil fuels that AI helps extract, expanding output that would not otherwise occur. This is larger by a significant margin.
“Researchers wanted to know: Could the pollution avoided by using AI to help renewables cancel out the pollution enabled by using AI to help fossil fuels? They found that, whenever AI gave both industries a similar boost, global emissions rose. AI had to help renewable energy four to five times more than fossil fuels just for emissions to break even.” [click the link for the full article]
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