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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Nuke-powered 9000 acre data center complex in Utah
“On 1 October, National Public Radio reported that nuclear startup, Valar Atomics, is proposing a massive data center complex on more than 9,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land near Price, Utah. The project, called Project Beehive, would include data centers powered by roughly 456 small nuclear reactors, along with a facility to produce nuclear fuel and facilities for storing nuclear waste.
“The reactors would collectively produce around 9.6 gigawatts of electricity for the data centers. Utah currently produces around 4 gigawatts of electricity on a daily average.
“BLM’s Utah office confirmed that it has received the company’s application and is reviewing it. Valar is already laying out a timeline. Company documents call for non-nuclear construction to begin as soon as the end of this year, with the first reactors coming online sometime in 2028.” [click the links for the full articles]
Ways to revitalize rural communities
“I have been a small farmer and homesteader in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia for over 40 years. In that time, I’ve witnessed the collapse of rural businesses and the migration of young people to towns and cities.
“Remote rural areas have become retirement destinations and bedroom communities. National and global supply chains financially undercut farms and modest sized businesses that once supported rural communities. Fair Farm-Gate prices don’t exist any longer, because of the industrial farming system and the monopoly of national food wholesalers and distributors.
“This all sounds pretty bad, but resurrecting a lost community is possible. The resurgence of a rural community starts in the nearby town and with local government.
“The county government can provide grants and affordable loans devoted to supporting small farms and homestead businesses. It requires the townsfolk to devote a portion of their weekly food dollar to local growers. With a new demand for their farm produce, a turnaround in the farming community could happen relatively quickly.
“Where does the effort to revitalize our local rural communities begin? It begins with neighbor talking to neighbor. It begins by including local town leaders and politicians. It begins with the commitment of civic organizations, churches, and well-off retirees who have moved to the country.” [click the link for the full article]
Refuse consumerism and de-commodify food
“The myth that the consumer is in command is an essential part of capitalist ideology. It portrays the market as a democratic institution which people can control by ‘voting with their wallets’ — so the story goes. Regardless of the fact that some people have many more dollars in their wallet than others, it gives a totally distorted view of how markets work.
“For almost the whole history of human kind, people have eaten what could be foraged, hunted or fished in their proximity. The idea that ‘consumer demand’ would drive production was incomprehensible. This didn’t change much with the advent of agriculture. Most of the food was consumed by those growing it, the remainder was shared with kin and communities. A very small share was sold in anything resembling a market.
“It is astonishing that there have been so few successful domestication events of major crops for thousands of years. In Sweden, where I live and farm, almost no crop that we grow has any wild ancestor. The Germans developed the sugar beet in the 18th century as a result of them not having any colonies for sugar cane plantations.
“Governments, agriculture input providers, the food industry and retailers are the real shapers of the food system, the ‘choice architects’ and their decisions shape what consumers can and cannot buy. Based on all the above, it is apparent that markets and production methods are not consumer driven.” [click the link for the full article]
An engineer — on the myth of techno solutions
“Marcos Rupérez Cerqueda spent years as an engineer on green hydrogen projects in Spain, installing electrolysers and fuel cells, before the numbers made him stop believing in a technical fix. In this Q&A, he traces this journey and discusses his upcoming book.
“I grew up inside the solution. My father is an engineer who chaired an environmental foundation, and we lived in one of the first bioclimatic houses in my region. If most of the energy that moves our civilization isn’t electricity, hydrogen looked like the perfect bridge: make it with renewables, store it, move it, use it.
“Then one afternoon I did the full count for one common chain. Around 40% of the energy is lost in the electrolyser, roughly another 10% compressing the hydrogen, and another 40 to 50% turning it back into electricity in a fuel cell. That isn’t a problem better engineering can fix. It’s thermodynamics. Hydrogen has real uses in a few narrow niches, but as a universal energy carrier, no.
“I started seeing the same hole everywhere. Electricity is still only around a fifth of the energy the world uses. The rest is fuel, heat, and raw materials: diesel for tractors and trucks, fuel for ships and planes, heat for steel and cement, gas for fertilizer.
“The same dynamic I had found in the energy numbers was running in my own mind. The mind does the same with any capacity it gets: more time, more money, more energy. It doesn’t save them. It uses them all, and then it wants more. That is the core of the book.” [click the link for the full article]
Attribution science — corporate climate damage by the numbers
“Right now, more than 20 civil lawsuits have been filed in state courts by municipalities that attempt to hold the [fossil fuel] industry responsible for climate damages. Two tribes have filed similar lawsuits. Eleven state attorneys general are pursuing consumer fraud and related claims against the industry.
“The Supreme Court’s decision in Suncor v. Boulder, depending on how broadly it is written, could kill many, if not all, of these cases. If that happens, it will not signal the end of accountability. In fact, the age of accountability for the fossil fuel industry has just begun. The reason for that is the emergence of a powerful field of climate science known as attribution science.
“Scientists have made remarkable advances in these explorations of climatological cause and effect. A study by scientists at Dartmouth College found that carbon dioxide emissions from the top 111 fossil fuel companies from the burning of coal, oil and gas between 1991 and 2020 accounted for up to $28 trillion in global economic damages.
“A 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gold standard of climate science, devotes many pages to [attribution science]. And as climate models improve, attribution science will only get stronger.” [click the link for the full article]
Arizona sacrifice zone for zinc, manganese, copper, silver, and lead
“The Center for Biological Diversity and Patagonia Area Resource Alliance sued the Trump administration over its September 2 approval of the expansion of South32’s massive Hermosa mine in the Patagonia Mountains, one of Arizona’s most biologically rich and ecologically important mountain ranges.
“The lawsuit challenges approvals by the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that would expand industrial mining activities across more than 52,000 acres of public land in the Coronado National Forest for 83 years.
“The project would destroy and fragment wildlife habitat, cause massive water drawdowns in the Patagonia Mountains, bury hundreds of acres beneath mine waste and carve new roads and powerlines through pristine public lands. The federal agencies rushed their review of potential environmental threats through the FAST-41 permitting process.
“Said Anna Darian of Patagonia Area Resource Alliance, ‘Hermosa may be the first hardrock mining project approved under FAST-41, but it is being held up as a model for what comes next. The long-term effects of weakening or waiving environmental protections could have irreversible consequences for frontline communities like ours’.” [click the link for the full article]
Pace of walking enhances sociability and community
“My love of walkability has little to do with actually walking. So why the topic of walkability? Mostly because walking is a proxy for a certain kind of place, a social place where people are visible. In this way, walkable cities are places that do best what cities are meant to do: contain and display human life with all of its variety, tension, diversity, struggle and beauty.
“The display of human life is critical for our flourishing on various levels. Seeing other people reminds us of a central truth to being human: we are social creatures as such, we are designed to exist not just as individuals but as part of, and participant in, a social community.
“Compare this to the narrative proposed by the isolation of the suburb with its subdivision, stroads, and shopping centers. Your civic duty in this kind of place is not to collaborate with your fellow-citizen to build a better place. Your duty is to not bother your neighbor, to not make eye contact. To not bother anyone.” [click the link for the full article]
Resilience by building sense of community, mutual aid
“The growing frequency and variety of global disruptions, sometimes referred to as the great unraveling, raise the urgent question of how to create resilient communities. This is the backdrop for our new series, Resilient Neighbors.
“Wherever we live, we break bread and form community, or at least try to. Yet by many measures, people across the Global North feel increasingly isolated, lonely, and under-resourced. Even in the wealthiest countries, many people lack a sense of community.
“This series starts in Guilford, Vermont, where residents have launched several experiments in building community connections, mutual aid, and community preparedness. These range from efforts as simple as a weekly coffee meet or ‘klatch’ to more complex ‘work bee’ exchanges between families.
“We use the term ‘place-based resilience’ to distinguish what’s happening from top-down emergency planning or national policy. Crucially, these efforts are developed by neighbors around their specific needs, assets, and relationships. That means they look different everywhere.” [click the link for the full article]
Bolsonaro is back — disgraced former president Jair Bolsonaro’s son Flavio
“Brazilians filling out presidential ballots earlier this month saw three-term incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pitted against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, is campaigning on an agribusiness-friendly, deregulatory agenda.
“Said Carlos Nobre, a climate scientist at the University of São Paulo, ‘If this candidate is elected, certainly deforestation in the Amazon will increase’. In the first round of voting, Bolsonaro finished 2.2 million votes ahead of Lula da Silva. With neither candidate securing the requisite 50%, the two will head to a runoff on October 25.
“The planet’s largest tropical rainforest, the Amazon is big enough to make its own weather: Water drawn up by its trees ultimately accounts for up to half of the region’s rainfall.
Affronting the forest is a menagerie of harms, from drought to fire and logging to clear-cuts. The monitoring network MapBiomas recently estimated that 97% of Amazon land clearing in 2025 showed signs of illegality. If Brazil returned to the elder Bolsonaro’s deforestation pace, the rainforest would lose about 17,600 square miles over the next four years, versus about 8,900 square miles at the 2025 rate.” [click the link for the full article]
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