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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Underground mycelial fungal network has been mapped
“Directly beneath our feet stretches a world both smaller and much, much larger than the one we know. Scientists have just begun mapping a network of fungal threads that is 68 quadrillion miles long. Until June, the most extensive piece of infrastructure on the planet had not been extensively mapped. This network is larger than every road, cable, and shipping lane combined. And it’s alive!
“To be precise: It’s fungal. This underground network is made of hyphae: hair-thin filaments that knit together into vast structures known as mycelium. A large fraction of these fungi form partnerships with the roots of plants and trees. Roughly 70% of all botanical species indulge in these relationships.
“Think of these relationships, also known as mycorrhizae, not so much as tender friendships, but as shrewd trade agreements: Both parties get something indispensable out of it. The plant can make sugar from sunlight, but is bad at foraging. So the fungus provides phosphorus, nitrogen, and water. The fungus is a foraging superhero, but cannot photosynthesize. So the plant repays the fungus in carbon.” [click the link for the full article]
Emporia developer perjured himself about bankrolling data center
“Secrecy has been a hallmark of the data center assault on rural America, and few subjects have been as secret as the money behind the proposed “digital campus” for my town of Emporia, Kansas.
“The local land in question is the site of a proposed hyperscale data center that has broken local politics. I don’t know any better word than broken to describe how a furious public backlash to the plan collides with defiant city officials.
“There has been little substantial information released about the investment behind the Emporia project. It’s difficult to tell if the city actually knows who put up the money behind Kanza Park Place, because it has denied or slow-walked open records requests seeking information.
“Kanza Park Place, the legal entity behind the Emporia Data Center project, has a business address that is a lawyer’s office in downtown Emporia, and its registered agent is Garrett Nordstrom, a governmental grant specialist from Lawrence.
“A Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in Georgia may eventually shed light on the ownership structure and finances of Kanza Park Place LLC. The debtor in the case, Gary Pinkston, has been touted as the developer. But in sworn testimony in June, he said he had ‘no interest at all’ in the project and received no compensation.
“Just two days later, on June 25, Pinkston received a wire transfer of $3 million from Kanza Park Place, according to court documents.” [click the link for the full article]
Bayer-Monsanto attempting to settle 65,000 cancer claims
“Bayer’s (BAYGn.DE) Monsanto unit heads to a Missouri state court on Monday seeking approval of a $7.25 billion settlement that could resolve tens of thousands of U.S. lawsuits alleging that its popular weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.
“Judge Timothy Boyer will examine the settlement and weigh objections to the deal from some plaintiffs’ attorneys. Boyer will also hear from lawyers who say the settlement is the best way for their clients to receive compensation for injuries caused by Roundup.
“The litigation has been a major overhang on Bayer since its 2018 acquisition of Monsanto, costing the company billions of dollars. A previous settlement in 2020 worth approximately $10 billion resolved many existing Roundup lawsuits but left Bayer exposed to future claims.
“The proposed settlement offers payouts ranging from $10,000 to $165,000 to people who were exposed to Roundup and developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma.” [click the link for the full article]
China’s used EV values plummet
“About four out of five used car dealers in China refuse to accept a fully electric vehicle older than five years, over worries about battery life and replacement costs. A 3-year-old EV in China now resells for about 45% of its original price, down from almost 55% in 2023.
“China has 44 million EVs on its roads. This makes it the first country where EVs are aging in large numbers. Yet there is no agreed way to measure the health of its most expensive part, the battery. The countries that have imported Chinese EVs will face the same valuation problem as the cars turn five.
“Manufacturers’ warranties typically cover the battery for eight years or 160,000 kilometres (99,419 miles), and a replacement can cost a third of a new car. Every year of age eats into that warranty, and once it expires, the cost of a failed battery falls on the owner.
“Checking a battery’s health is easy — any modern EV can report it through a standard diagnostic port. But used car dealers rarely ask for those readings, and price still rests on age, mileage, remaining warranty, and model reputation.” [click the link for the full article]
US self-inflicted wound lost the EV race with China
“A massive battery plant owned by General Motors and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, announced last fall that work would stop in January because of slow electric-vehicle sales. That announcement came a few weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans killed a $7,500 tax credit, sending U.S. EV sales tumbling.
“The $2.3 billion battery plant was built between 2019 and 2024 when the U.S. auto industry embraced an electric future. The U.S. needed its own EV-and-battery manufacturing base to break away from China’s supply chains.
“But since Trump returned to office, an array of policies has undermined factory projects across America’s heartland. Cancellations of EV projects and related battery facilities have snowballed, killing or jeopardizing tens of thousands of jobs.” [click the link for the full article]
The mistake of “solutions” aimed at the wrong “problem”
“Today what I’m going to talk about is the logic of planning under uncertainty. I’m not going to highlight a list of specific actions or causes to support. What I think will be most helpful to you all is a methodology for finding your own plan of action based on what you care about, your local context, what you want for the future.
“We can fail in two directions. There’s a concept from statistics, type 1 and type 2 errors, that describe false positives and false negatives.
“Imagine you hear a noise in the middle of the night and you assume it’s a burglar. So you call the police, but it turns out it was just your cat knocking stuff over in the kitchen. This is a type one error, a false positive.
“Now imagine you hear a noise in the night and you assume it’s the cat, so you roll over and go back to sleep. Only this time, there actually was a burglar, and you missed it. This is a type two error, a false negative. You missed a real threat because you didn’t act.
“Both scenarios have consequences, and the challenge for us planning for a hazy and uncertain future involves both of these risks.
“They’re the shortfalls that we create by failing to act — not protecting biodiversity because GDP doesn’t measure it — not building community resilience because there’s no monetary incentive to do that — not transitioning our energy systems because the current ones still technically work. By the time the shortfalls become visible, it’s often too late to reverse course.
“On the other hand, type one errors are the shortfalls we create by acting wrongly on a model of the world that is incorrect or incomplete. These are false positives. The obvious one is acting on a partial map of our situation, like shutting down fossil fuels overnight when 80% of the world still runs on them, and 99.5% of our supply chains. The diagnosis is partially correct, but the prescription kills the patient.
“Then there’s fighting the wrong war entirely, pouring resources into things like carbon offsets that don’t offset anything, or ESG scores that don’t change the behavior of the economic superorganism. This is all action, but action that’s aimed at the wrong target.
“And then there’s a even deeper one, the deepest one actually. Nearly every institution on Earth, and every government budget, and every pension fund, and infrastructure plan, and corporate strategy are built on the assumption that the economy of the future will be larger than it is today.
“And that means when contraction arrives, and the evidence strongly suggests it will, then almost everything we’re currently promoting and investing in and planning for becomes a ginormous type one error all at once. Many of our individual projects are smart and well-designed and well-intentioned, but they’re answers to a question that implies and assumes continued growth.” [click the links for the full articles]
Ecosystems remediate climate better than techno options
“I remember watching This Changes Everything, a film about the climate crisis and its roots in capitalism. The utopia showed solar panels stretched to the horizon. Was this our dream scenario: endless fields of hardware? It felt cold. Something was missing: life.
“This is not a diatribe against solar energy. Rather, I’m concerned that solar has been presented as a panacea, that a wholesale switch to solar would stabilize the climate.
“My inner alarm rang upon learning about Shaftsbury Solar, the 20 megawatt project that entails clearing 40-plus acres of forest. Vermont’s Climate Action Plan is sanctioning the destruction of ecosystems, thereby undermining climate resilience.
“The rush to solar-at-all-costs derives from two misunderstandings. Climate action is discussed in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, primarily CO2. But the earth regulates climate largely through the water cycle. Water’s phase changes are driven by the actions and interactions of flora, fauna and fungi: by life.
“Another misunderstanding is the assumption that solar replaces fossil fuels. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Rather than substitute for fossil energy, renewable energy adds to the net amount of energy used. “One 2019 study entitled Energy Transitions or Additions? finds technological energy advances prompt increase use of the original source.” [click the link for the full article]
Heat, crops, adaptation
“On August 22, the surface of the world’s oceans averaged 70°Fahrenheit, hottest in recorded history and probably in 125,000 years. This came in what may be the hottest summer on record. This El Nino is tracking at the high end of projections with months of heating ahead.
“Then on August 26, a glacier and mountainside in the Langtang Valley of Nepal crashed into the river below during the area’s fourth hottest summer on record. The season’s monsoon rains were around 50% above normal, melting the glacier surface. University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said, ‘The torrent was the direct result of warming-induced glacial collapse, which dumped millions of tons of rock, unleashing a high-velocity wave of mud and debris’.
“I have written about running a farm through joy and beauty. Not this summer in 36° C heat. I planted the zucchini in mounds of compost as I always do and the plants wilted even faster than I. The peppers took way too long to flower. And don’t get me started about the salad greens in this heat.
“Without enough water, the intense heat has defeated the farms and gardens in my region. 60% of Italy is in drought conditions with the crops compromised or nonexistent. I needed to be taken by the hand and dragged back to the basics.
“Last month I was shocked to see that a neighbor farmer had lost many of his summer vegetables to the heat. But his tall staked tomato plants were still valiantly standing, now covered within tarps. The farmer’s tomatoes were turning red, under the tarp, without sunlight. THIS was my epiphany.
“My gardens received a nineteenth century makeover. I removed most of the tomato plants from stakes, allowing them to vine horizontally — their natural habit. By placing them over low crates, the tomatoes were off the ground but low and horizontal. They continued to grow and produce more large tomatoes. The bushier foliage protected the fruit from the sun and the ground was completely covered, holding onto the moisture.” [click the links for the full articles]
Collective power-down requires individual will power
“Everyone understands that our reality is complex beyond human understanding. But based on what we can know, some conclusions seem unavoidable to me. I offer three of those observations.
“1) Humans are drawing down the ecological capital of the planet beyond replacement levels. The most sensible path forward is ‘fewer and less’ — fewer people consuming less energy and material resources.
“2) No major political or social movement supports that strategy because of ‘the temptations of dense energy’. There’s a lot of wasteful consumption in capitalist economies, but it’s hard for most everyone to reject the work that fossil fuels can do for us.
“3) Because no one has a workable plan for a graceful human retreat from overshoot, the moral high ground is a dangerous place to stand, even when it’s warranted. No one has neat and tidy answers, and being cocky about political programs and personal choices doesn’t help anyone.
“We lack the collective political will to change the human trajectory in part because most of us lack the personal will to change our own energy-seeking behaviors.” [click the link for the full article]
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