8 Mins Read Just how bad is the air pollution in Hong Kong? And what can be done about it? Here’s everything you need to know. In 2019, the American Women’s Association (AWA) of Hong Kong hosted a panel talk on air pollution in the city at Explorium Hong Kong’s exciting space. The panel, which was moderated by […]
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This month, the Central Jakarta District Court ruled on a lawsuit accusing the Indonesian government of unlawfully permitting air pollution in the capital to exceed permissible, healthy limits, reports Binoy Kampmark.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
Rather than relying on court cases, is it time for the right to clean air to be enshrined in UK and US law?
Last week the high court ruled that the UK Environment Agency must do more to protect a five-year-old boy from dangerous fumes leaking from a nearby landfill site. It was among recent legal cases focusing on air pollution.
In 2020 the coroner’s court concluded that air pollution was a factor in the death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, who lived alongside London’s South Circular road, and in 2021 French courts halted the deportation of a Bangladeshi man due to the risks posed by air pollution in his home country.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
It seems utterly beyond debate but acknowledging legal rights to clean air has assumed the makings of a slow march over the years. The 1956 Clean Air Act in Britain arose from the lethal effects of London’s 1952 killer smog, which is said to have taken some 12,000 lives. The Act granted powers to establish smoke-free zones and subsidise householders to shift to the use of cleaner fuels (gas, electricity, smokeless solid fuel).
There is certainly no shortage of advocates for the self-evident point that clean air is vital. Some of this has been reduced – at least historically – to an issue about the non-smoker’s wish not to have the air clouded by the selfish actions of a smoker. But this is small beer when compared to the general levels of global pollution that keeps the Grim Reaper busy on an annual basis. According to the World Health Organization, air pollution kills 7 million or so people each year, with 9 out of 10 people breathing air “that exceeds WHO guideline limits containing high levels of pollutants, with low- and middle-income countries suffering from the highest exposures.”
In 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment David R. Boyd noted approvingly that a majority of States had, be it through their constitutions, statutes and regional treaties, recognised the right to a healthy environment. But recognition for such a right on a global level remained an unfulfilled object. The UN General Assembly, for instance, may have adopted a range of resolutions on the right to clean water, but never on the right to clean air. This is despite such a right being, according to Boyd, “implicit in a number of international human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration to Human Rights (right to adequate standard of living), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (right to life) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (right to health).”
This month, a flutter of interest was caused by a ruling in the Central Jakarta District Court on a lawsuit lodged two years before accusing the Indonesian government of unlawfully permitting air pollution in the capital to exceed permissible, healthy limits. Citizens such as Istu Prayogi, who had never so much as touched a cigarette in their lives, joined the suit after his lungs revealed the sort of lung damage that would arise from being a heroic, persistent smoker.
The unanimous decision by the three-judge panel found that the seven officials concerned, including President Joko Widodo, three cabinet ministers and the governors of Jakarta, Banten and West Java were negligent in not upholding environmental standards. As Duta Baskara, one of the panel members observed, “They have been negligent in fulfilling the rights of citizens to a good and healthy environment.” The judges, however, dismissed the applicants’ submission claiming that the president had violated human rights.
The court directed that the seven officials take serious action to guarantee the rights of Jakarta’s residents by improving air-quality regulations and implementing measures to protect human health, the environment and ecosystems informed by science and technology. Environmental laws would also have to be policed more rigorously, along with the imposition of sanctions for offenders.
The scale of this effort is hard to exaggerate. On June 4, 2019, Jakarta registered the worst air quality in the world, if one takes the readings of the air quality monitoring app AirVisual as accurate. At 210 on the Air Quality Index (AQI), the city keeps ahead of the pack of other polluters such as New Delhi, Beijing and Dubai.
Rapporteur Boyd also offered his services to the 32 applicants, writing in his supporting brief that, “Protecting human rights from the harmful effects of air pollution is a constitutional and legislative obligation for governments in Indonesia, not an option.” The director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, Nur Hidayati, affirmed this view to The Jakarta Post in early June that breathing “clean air is our right that the government has to fulfil.”
These are not positions plucked out of some speculative realm of legal reasoning. The right to clean air in Indonesia is guaranteed by such legal documents as the country’s 1945 Constitution and the 1999 Law on Environmental Protection and Management. But the writ of law is not always a guarantee of its policing.
Before the September decision, Jakarta’s governor, Anies Baswedan, did not feel that a ruling against the authorities would cause much fuss. As the governor’s climate change envoy Irvan Pulunga explained, “The governor doesn’t see this lawsuit as a disturbance to the government’s work but a vehicle for collaboration.” Pulungan also insisted that improvements had been made to the city’s air quality over the course of two years.
This tune coming from the office of president has been somewhat different, more a case of fleeing rather than addressing a problem. In part, this is understandable, given that Jakarta has become a city of nightmares for policy makers, urban planners and the authorities. Few such concentrations of humanity on the planet are as plagued by environmental concerns. To debilitating air pollution can be added flooding, regular seismic activity and gradual subsidence.
Only a month after the lawsuit was filed, the president proposed relocating the capital to another spot to be built in East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. “The burden Jakarta is holding right now,” he claimed at the time, “is too heavy as the centre of governance, business, finance, trade and services.” Such moves promise to abandon one problem by creating another, given the risks posed to the environment of East Kalimantan.
Showing a spirit not exactly collaborative in nature, an appeal against the ruling is expected by the government. Jakarta’s governor, in particular, finds himself facing a range of orders from the court, including designing environmental “strategies” and policies to mitigate the air pollution” under the direction of the supervision of the Home Affairs Minister.
Modest as it is, the victory for the applicants in the Central Jakarta District Court shows, at the very least, that courts remain an increasingly important forum to force the hand of legislatures in ensuring that something so elementarily vital is not just seen as a right but enforced as one.
The post The Right to Clean Air in Jakarta first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Wildfire smoke causes more than 33,000 deaths a year across 43 countries, according to a new global study.
While previous studies estimated premature deaths from wildfires in a specific country or region, authors of a study published Wednesday in Lancet Planetary Health say this is the most comprehensive assessment to-date of global wildfire mortality. The findings come as the smoke from yet another season of record-breaking wildfires in the Northern Hemisphere impacts air quality hundreds of miles away from burn areas.
“Policy makers and public health professionals should raise awareness of wildfire pollution to guide prompt public responses and take actions to reduce exposure,” write the study authors.
The study authors first estimated daily fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) concentration using a combination of machine learning, ground measurements, weather conditions, and chemical transport models. They then cross-referenced those pollution levels with data on more than 65 million deaths from 2000-2016 across 749 cities in 43 countries to get city-specific death estimates from wildfires.
They found that short-term exposure to wildfire PM 2.5 pollution caused, on average, 33,150 deaths a year in the countries looked at in the study, with an estimated 6,993 cardiovascular deaths and 3,503 respiratory-related deaths a year.
Of the countries studied, Guatemala had the highest proportion of estimated deaths from wildfire smoke, followed by Thailand and Paraguay. The authors note that all the mortality data used in the study comes from cities, and that the study is not a comprehensive look at global mortality; for example, although wildfires have burned more than 40 million acres in Siberia this summer, no Russian cities were included in the study.
Lead author Yuming Guo, professor of global environmental health and biostatistics at Monash University, told EHN that he was surprised to see that citizens from certain countries that don’t have frequent wildfires, like France and Germany, were still harmed from wildfire smoke.
PM 2.5 refers to particles that are 2.5 microns or smaller in diameter — for reference, a human hair is about 70 microns wide. Because of their small size, these fine particles can travel deep into the lungs, where they can damage airways and enter the bloodstream. Children, infants, older adults and people who already have heart and lung conditions are especially at-risk from PM 2.5 pollution.
While wildfires are far from the only source of PM 2.5 pollution in cities, the study authors found that PM 2.5 exposure from wildfires was more deadly, and longer-lasting, than fine particle pollution from other urban sources. They suspect that’s in part because of the chemical makeup and smaller size of the particles in wildfire smoke.
Wildfire smoke also contributes to suicide, diabetes, renal diseases, and other conditions, said Guo. The study authors suggest that future research should look at the mortality data by age, sex, and other factors to better understand who is most vulnerable.
Climate change is worsening wildfires by making wildfire-prone parts of the world, like California and Australia, hotter and drier.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
4 Mins Read With the launch of the United Nations (UN) Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, the UN has called on nations to meet their sustainability commitments by 2030 with the warning that collectively, at least 1 billion degraded hectares of land must be restored, the equivalent to an area around the size of China. Furhter, and to further add […]
The post U.N. Report: We Need To Restore A Billion Hectares Of Land To Avoid Ecosystem Collapse appeared first on Green Queen.
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5 Mins Read In a landmark special report released this week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that there is a visible pathway for the global energy sector to reach net-zero emissions in 2050, but it is extremely narrow and will urgently need a transformation in how energy is produced and used throughout the world- including no more […]
The post No New Oil, Gas Or Coal Development If World Is To Reach Net-Zero By 2050, Says World Energy Body appeared first on Green Queen.
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A new study from a group of agricultural researchers found that nearly 18,000 deaths occur annually in the United States due to air pollution coming from farms.
The study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, noted that gases associated with manure and animal feed are producing particles that are able to drift hundreds of miles away from their source. Most of the deaths attributable to farm pollution, however, come from animal-based agriculture, accounting for 80 percent of the deaths the study uncovered.
Chronic exposure to increased levels of fine particulate matter (sometimes shortened to PM2.5) that is released from farms “increases the risk of heart disease, cancer, and stroke,” an analysis of the study noted.
Notably, deaths associated with farm pollution are more localized than deaths that occur with greenhouse gas pollution. Communities upwind from farms discharging the pollutants are at greatest risk, said Jason Hill, University of Minnesota professor and a lead author of the study. In other words, the health effects from agriculture-based air pollution tend to be more localized, dependent upon local weather patterns and other factors.
While that reduces the risk from these pollutants at the national and global levels (areas most affected by this type of pollution are in eastern North Carolina, California’s Central Valley and the Upper Midwest), the annual number of deaths caused by farm pollution now exceed deaths caused by pollution from coal power plants in the U.S.
The biggest culprit behind the deaths from farm pollution, in the study’s estimation, is ammonia, a chemical that’s released by manure and fertilizer, and which often combines with other pollutants found on farms, including nitrogen and sulfur. Hill, speaking with The Washington Post about the study, pointed out that animal waste is often stored in “lagoons” on farms, where huge amounts of ammonia are generated by the breakdown of animal feces. Ammonia is also created when farmers apply too much fertilizer on crops.
According to the study, livestock waste and fertilizer overuse likely accounted for about 12,400 deaths per year. While particulate matter emanating from “dust from tillage, livestock dust, field burning, and fuel combustion in agricultural equipment use” accounted for around 4,800 more deaths annually.
Agriculture industry leaders were quick to push back against the study’s findings. “U.S. pork producers have a strong track record of environmental stewardship,” claimed Jim Monroe, a spokesperson for the National Pork Producers Council.
A spokesperson for Smithfield Foods, which runs industrial hog operations in North Carolina, agreed with Monroe’s contentions, citing a study from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, which said it didn’t find air quality problems in the areas where they had farms. But that study has some noteworthy flaws, including the fact that monitors used to detect ammonia levels were set up far away from the farms themselves.
Ammonia is a reactive chemical, and is difficult to detect unless a significant amount is released at one time.
In spite of this pushback, the study on agricultural air pollution noted there are potential solutions to the problem that could reduce yearly deaths in the U.S.
“Air quality–related health benefits … can be achieved through the actions of food producers and consumers,” the study’s authors said. Reducing particulate-related emissions, promoting dietary shifts in animals, reducing food loss and waste, and other methods are cited in the study as helpful to reducing the number of deaths from agricultural air pollution.
“The greatest benefits are from changes in livestock waste management and fertilizer application practices,” the study said. “Producer-side interventions in the 10 percent of counties with the highest mitigation potential alone could prevent 3,600 deaths per year.”
Methods based out of regenerative agriculture — described as “a system of farming principles and practices that seeks to rehabilitate and enhance the entire ecosystem of the farm” by the Climate Reality Project — could also be beneficial for scaling back farm-based air pollution, particularly in California, where such efforts could potentially reduce the impact of wildfires in the state. Such methods (including encouraging animals to graze natural plants, shrubs, or grass on the land, rather than animal feed, and engaging in no-till farming strategies to increase moisture levels in the soil) have been cited by farmer Alexis Koefoed as helping her family’s farm survive a wildfire last year.
“I think what the fire reinforced for me is that regenerative agriculture, managing the soil, using animals as grazers to build healthy soil is absolutely the direction to go in,” Koefoed said.
Beyond saving family farms, reducing the impact of wildfires could result in better health outcomes for nearby areas, particularly since smoke from those fires has been found to be 10 times more harmful than from other sources, including car exhaust.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
3 Mins Read In a new study led by the University of Birmingham and UCL, along with an international team of contributors from Belgium, India, Jamaica, and the U.K., researchers found that the levels of hazardous air pollutants in cities in India and U.K. are on the rise, by utilizing observations from instruments on satellites that assess the world’s skies on a daily basis. To conduct this […]
The post Dangerous Air Pollutants Continue To Rise In Indian & U.K. Cities, New Study Finds appeared first on Green Queen.
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Millions of children and young people live in areas of England where air pollution law has been breached, according to figures from the Labour Party.
More than 19,000 schools, colleges and nurseries are in local authority areas with illegal levels of air pollution, and more than 7.8 million people aged 18 or under live in those parts of the country, according to estimates.
The Labour Party is calling for a new Clean Air Act to establish the legal right to clean air, bring World Health Organisation (WHO) targets into UK law with duties on ministers to enforce them, and grant new powers to councils to take urgent action on air quality.
Air pollution, caused by pollutants including particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide from sources such as traffic fumes, contributes to tens of thousands of early deaths a year.
It can create a catalogue of health problems: it triggers strokes, heart and asthma attacks, causes cancer and can stunt lung growth in children, has been linked to premature births, damage to children’s learning and even dementia.
Labour’s call comes after the coroner in the inquest of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, who died from an asthma attack after being exposed to years of toxic air, urged the government to set legally binding targets for particulate matter in line with WHO guidelines.
Assistant coroner Philip Barlow said national limits for particulate matter – a dangerous form of air pollutant – were set far higher than WHO guidelines, and legal targets in line with the guidelines would reduce the number of deaths.
Legal limits for another dangerous pollutant, nitrogen dioxide, which are in line with WHO guidelines, were breached in 142 local authority areas in England in 2019, according to Labour analysis of data.
These areas are home to an estimated population of more than 33 million, including more than 7.8 million who are 18 or under, and more than 19,000 schools, nurseries and colleges, figures suggest.
Shadow environment secretary Luke Pollard said: “The pandemic has shown us that public health is more important than ever.
“It should be a national scandal that eight million children are growing up breathing polluted air.
“The Government’s approach to air quality has been little more than a box ticking exercise.”
By The Canary
This post was originally published on The Canary.
9 Mins Read By: Sarath Guttikunda Delhi has once again topped the chart of the world’s capital cities with the worst PM2.5 annual average levels in 2020. Another 34 Indian cities are in the top 50, according to the report by IQAir. That this is after months of lockdown and restricted industrial activity across the country that led to some decrease in […]
The post 10 Reasons Why Indian Cities Continue To Top the World’s ‘Most Polluted’ Lists appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
Without warning, on the most bitter winter days, or the hottest of summer, smoke stacks that sit idle much of the year switch online, spewing trails of climate-altering, coronavirus-exacerbating pollutants across the sky, like carbon dioxide (CO2) and particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5), known for penetrating deep into the lungs and entering the blood system.
One thousand power plants known as “peaker plants” are still operational across the U.S. Their name derives from the function they serve, shifting from idle to burning gas or oil in infrequent moments when energy demand peaks beyond average — typically when heating and cooling needs are the greatest.
In addition to serving as eyesores and taking up large swaths of space that might better serve the needs of crowded communities, the plants are often located alongside waste treatment facilities and other undesirable infrastructure in low-income and communities of color. Many of the plants were built in these locations during the era of redlining, or later, in or near areas that had been redlined. Decades down the line, many of the Black and Brown neighborhoods that host them also have the highest COVID-19 mortality rates, due to the long legacy of health inequities. An estimated 397 of every 100,000 people living in the Bronx neighborhood where a plant called Hell Gate is located have died of the virus, in comparison with the U.S. average of 171 per 100,000. In other words, the neighborhood has lost one out of every 252 residents.
An informal network of scientists, activists and lawmakers in at least nine states have identified the plants as a first-line target to be replaced with wind, solar and distributed battery storage, and say doing so would save money and lives. In March, a coalition of community organizations dedicated to environmental justice in New York City published a detailed report offering a blueprint for lawmakers to deliver on the vision, in two five-year waves, which they’ll introduce to the public in an April 21 webinar.
Peaker plants tend to be older and inefficient, says Carlos Garcia, energy planner with the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA). “A lot of them run on jet fuel oil, and some natural gas, which is literally the dirtiest type of energy fuel source you can imagine,” Garcia tells Truthout. Though many of them only come online a handful of times a year, those that burn natural gas emit 30 times the nitrous oxide (NOx) of newer plants. The PM2.5 particulates they spew are linked to higher COVID-19 mortality rates, as well as 6,000 emergency department visits each year for asthma in New York City.
NYC-EJA is one of five organizations comprising the PEAK Coalition, which launched in 2020 and is working with the New York Power Authority to advocate for replacing peaker plants with community-led energy generation projects. Other members of the coalition include UPROSE, THE POINT CDC, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) and Clean Energy Group.
Not only do peakers tend to be dirtier than base load plants, but using them raises utility costs significantly, due to the expense of maintaining them at central locations and powering them on and off with short notice. Companies that own them collect millions in subsidy payments, while residents foot the bill. In New York, peaker plants received $4.9 billion during the last decade, in comparison with $112 million in incentives for solar projects over the last two decades, according to the coalition’s report.
“Inequities in our dated energy system are rooted in the continued investments in fossil fuels at the expense of the health of our most vulnerable communities,” Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, a multiracial Brooklyn-based community development organization focused on bringing about a just transition for residents, said in a statement. “We must move funds to frontline communities for clean energy projects and stop fossil fuel developers from perpetuating conventional investments in dirty energy and injustice,” Yeampierre said, noting the ongoing effort of power company NRG to add yet another natural gas burning peaker to its fleet in Astoria, known as “asthma alley.”
Residents living within a one-mile radius of the Oswego Harbor Power Plant, one of only a handful of such plants left in Upstate New York, are ranked in the 99th percentile for incidence of heart attacks, based on an analysis of New York State Health Department data by the nonprofit research institute Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE). The 73-year-old plant only went online six times in 2018 (the most recent year for which data are available). But if residents suspect hazier-than-usual skies, no federal air quality data exists to help make sense of the short-lived plume of pollution, as the closest Environmental Protection Agency monitors are 40 and 70 miles away, respectively, in Syracuse and Rochester.
The social toll of peaker plants is significantly greater in urban places like New York City, with 750,000 people living within a mile of a peaker plant, 78 percent of whom are low-income and/or people of color. And whereas the upstate plants only operate a few days annually, the Hell Gate plant, for instance, averages turning on 149 times each year, often on days when air pollution levels are already at their highest. In general, that burden is in line with the findings of research on plants in California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada and Texas, among other states, says Elena Kreiger, director of research at PSE. “Your highest-rate emitters are often near disproportionately impacted communities, so they should probably be the first [in] line for replacement,” Kreiger said of her initial findings in a 2016 study of power plants across California, which the latest PSE research builds on.
The PEAK Coalition’s proposal to phase out select plants in 2025, including Hell Gate, and the remaining plants in 2030 is designed to prioritize communities most impacted by peakers, by ceasing damage to the immediate environment and creating new local job opportunities, the report states. Emissions from the city’s peaker fleet cost the state $43 million annually, on track to rise to $50 million annually by 2030, in expenses related to morbidity and mortality.
By 2025, the PEAK Coalition suggests, peaker plants could be replaced by 1.5 gigawatts of offshore wind, growing to 3 gigawatts by 2030. New York State’s existing offshore wind goal is 9 gigawatts by 2035.
Wind turbines are notoriously low-performing during summer months when demand often skyrockets — just the time when peaker plants are used more frequently. But that’s where solar comes in. Solar panels, which the PEAK Coalition envisions becoming ubiquitous atop city rooftops, generate energy at increased capacity during summer months. The report calls for 2.8 gigawatts of rooftop solar by 2025, and 5.6 gigawatts by 2030, aggregating and storing that power in distributed batteries and through advancements like “virtual power plants.” Energy storage capacity would need to roughly double during those years, and be paired with significant energy efficiency efforts.
“The previous barrier was that of technology, and that’s just not the case anymore,” Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, director of environmental justice for NYLPI, told Truthout. “You have both the solar and wind technology to unleash at the local, regional and national levels.” Solar energy is now the “cheapest electricity in history,” as Carbon Brief has reported.
Rogers-Wright was seven years old when he moved from Washington, D.C. to New York City, where he joined West Side Little League, and remembers being stunned by how many of his teammates, mostly Black and/or Latino boys, relied on inhalers, as compared with his peers in D.C. “They clearly had a lot of cardiovascular impairment simply because of what was built by where they live,” Rogers-Wright said.
The PEAK Coalition’s blueprint provides an opportunity for state officials to deliver on climate policy set out in the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, Rogers-Wright said, which establishes a goal of 70 percent renewable energy generation by 2030. The plan is also in line with the Biden administration and New York State environmental justice commitments, ensuring that at least 40 percent of the benefits of clean energy investments go to disadvantaged communities. Based on the average emissions of New York City peaker plants from 2017 to 2019, retiring the city’s peaker fleet could result in a reduction of 2.66 million tons of CO2 each year, or about one-fifth of New York City’s annual CO2 emissions generated by commercial sources. As Kreiger has pointed out, peaker replacement is only the very tip of the iceberg in the transition to renewables, and is more feasible in certain areas, but represents a logical, actionable, justice-oriented first-step.
Garcia points out that the tendency of the “Big Green” organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council to be awarded funding over smaller-scale organizations is an impediment to the community-led transition the PEAK Coalition envisions, as is the tendency of peaker plant owners like Consolidated Edison to be gatekeepers of their energy generation data.
But Rogers-Wright calls “political will” the greatest existing barrier, noting, however, that the New York State Senate recently passed the Pollution Justice Act of 2021. The bill, which would require peakers to be replaced with renewable energy systems and battery storage within five years of the renewal of a plant’s operating permit, is currently in committee before the New York State Assembly. The PEAK Coalition is also working with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-New York) on a federal bill they’ll introduce later this year.
“People in environmental justice communities are being choked by toxic policies, toxic emissions and toxic police officers — they’re extremely linked,” Rogers-Wright said, noting the necessity of intersectional organizing that brings abolitionists and environmental justice advocates together with labor groups to continually exert pressure on lawmakers.
“I think the [peaker plant replacement] blueprint will serve as that organizing tool.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
3 Mins Read According to China’s new five-year plan, the State Council announced that the sales of electric, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen-powered vehicles in China are predicted to rise to 20% of overall new car sales by 2025 from the present existing 5%. Before we go in-depth about the new plan and what will it mean for NEVs […]
The post With Climate Change The Focus, China’s New Five Year Plan Looks Hopeful For NEVs appeared first on Green Queen.
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5 Mins Read Oil firms were aware of the dangers that fossil fuel burning posed to human health for at least half a decade, reveals a new investigation by the Guardian. Documents showed companies fighting clean air regulations, despite knowing that air pollution caused by their operations were driving grave ill effects, from birth defects to asthma in […]
The post Oil Industry Knew Health Damage Of Fossil Fuel Burning For 50 Years, Investigation Finds appeared first on Green Queen.
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Chicago – Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) announced Tuesday he will join 10 hunger strikers fighting to block another polluter from receiving the city’s approval to operate on the Southeast Side.
As the Pilsen alderman joined the strike, United Neighbors of the 10th Ward member Breanna Bertacchi, Southeast Youth Alliance founder Oscar Sanchez and George Washington High School teacher Chuck Stark wrapped up their 20th day without food. They’ll complete their third week Wednesday.
The three initial strikers and eight others who have joined the fast in recent weeks are demanding the Chicago Department of Public Health deny an operating permit to Southside Recycling, a metal scrapper planned for 11600 S. Burley Ave. in East Side.
The post Hunger Strike, Activists Take Fight Against Scrapper To City Hall appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
In December, a British coroner ruled that the cause of 9-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s death in 2013 was “toxic air pollution.” On its face this may not seem all that important, given that an estimated 7 million people die annually from air pollution and more than 90 percent of the world’s population breathes in hazardous air every day. And yet Ella’s certificate of death is the first to formally list toxic air pollution as the cause of death.
Ella’s case is part of a growing recognition that human-produced toxic pollution is causing a substantial global health crisis, and it has substantial implications for environmental policymaking and for the legal liabilities that pollution producers may face in the future.
If the recent cases surrounding glyphosate — the herbicide pioneered by Monsanto in its infamous Roundup weedkiller — are any guide, Ella’s case could trigger a potential windfall of cases. After a California court awarded $289 million in damages to Dewayne Johnson, a groundskeeper who used glyphosate for decades, civil cases mounted by the thousands. As a result, Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, agreed to a $10 billion settlement for all other cases in the U.S..
In the U.K., Ella’s case has already sparked local action. The British government recently stated that in response to the verdict it would allocate $5.2 billion towards cleaning up vehicle transport emissions in cities and reducing urban nitrogen dioxide levels — the pollutant named as partially responsible for Ella’s death in the coroner’s report. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said, “Ministers and the previous mayor have acted too slowly in the past, but they must now learn the lessons from the coroner’s ruling and do much more to tackle the deadly scourge of air pollution in London and across the country.”
Living in London, Ella was like many urban-dwelling children who are more likely to develop asthma or other respiratory illnesses due to early and chronic exposure to air pollution from cars, buses, and industry. The coroner concluded that a complex of different noxious gases and particles in the air she breathed daily caused the asthma attack that led to her death.
While children’s respiratory systems are more vulnerable, adults do not escape the reach of air pollution in cities, where higher rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s are linked to exposure to particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less in size. It’s also one of the strongest correlates of death or hospitalization due to COVID-19. Spikes in particulate matter, along with other air pollutants like nitrogen oxides, are associated with higher death rates in general in the days following exposure.
Here in the United States, there’s been relatively little attention paid to Ella’s case. Given the pandemic, domestic political struggles, and the transition to a new presidential administration, there is certainly an overload of news competing for attention. But with the renewed focus on climate change and environmental justice signaled by the Biden administration and among U.S. policymakers, Ella’s case could be the perfect catalyst for environmental justice, in which poverty, race, and environmental risk exposure intersect. Ella’s case sets a legal precedent to do something about it.
Death certificates fall under the purview of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thanks to guidance issued by the Obama administration, environmental exposure may be listed as a contributing factor to a death, but there is currently no code to attribute the immediate cause of death to a toxic pollution exposure. The Biden administration could issue guidance to the CDC to change that, which could shift the way people think about pollution.
There are more than 450,000 toxic sites across the U.S. and more than 20,000 active permitted polluters. We need to amend and bolster current domestic environmental legislation to hold polluters accountable and to make the changes permanent, rather than executive orders and programs that can be rolled back by a future administration.
Biden’s order to build a White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and an environmental justice interagency council is a formidable start to mitigating and remediating toxic pollution and its unequal distribution. Additionally, the Biden administration needs to put toxic air pollution on the international environmental agenda, for example leading the charge in creating a corollary international agreement to the Paris Climate Agreement.
Doing so would signal a shift from treating the outcomes of climate change to treating the causes. For example, in early 2016, the Department of Housing and Urban Development deemed the Isle de Jean Charles along the Louisiana Gulf Coast too risky to live on and granted $48 million to the community to relocate, for the first time codifying the term “climate refugee.” But what could have been the start to a long process of redistributive environmental justice to communities threatened by climate change was quickly doused by the incoming Trump team.
In that case and in the case of glyphosate, it is the outcomes of pollution that were addressed — either by restitution or relocation — rather than the root cause.
Ella’s tragic death puts a face to a problem that will be responsible for many more deaths in the future if we don’t change our current policies. Let’s not let this opportunity for systemic change pass us by.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Air pollution kills. Naming that problem can help us tackle it. on Feb 24, 2021.
This post was originally published on Grist.
4 Mins Read Unveiling its new plans for reaching its goal of being carbon neutral by 2050, global energy company Shell recently announced its plans to roll out 500,000 electric charging stations in just four years. Building its brand on the search for oil and natural gas in Africa, South America, and the North Sea, the company mentioned […]
The post Shell Plans To Roll Out 500,000 Electric Charging Stations Within Four Years appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
Burning fossil fuels kills nearly 9 million people worldwide and an estimated 350,000 in the U.S. every year, according to a new study by scientists from Harvard and three British universities.
The staggering death toll is more than double the WHO’s 2017 estimate of deaths caused by air pollution. “There’s a perception in the United States that we have this under control, but that’s a mistake,” Joel Schwartz, a Harvard professor and one of the study’s authors, told the Boston Globe.
Based on data from 2018, the scientists found nearly one-in-five deaths that year — and nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia — were caused by burning fossil fuels.
The post Fossil Fuels Kill Nearly Nine Million Annually appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
The health effects caused by decades of systemic racism are staggering. Continue reading
The post America’s Dirty Divide: How Environmental Racism Leaves the Vulnerable Behind appeared first on BillMoyers.com.
This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.
Throughout the world, scientists are speaking out like never before. They’re talking about an emergency situation of the health of the planet threatening “complex life,” including, by default, human life.
It’s scary stuff. On this subject, America’s green NGOs prefer to address the danger by sticking to a middle ground, don’t scare people, too much doom and gloom backfires, turns people off, it’s counterproductive.
However, emergencies have been happening for some time now. So, it’s kinda hard to ignore. In fact, that’s why it’s so obviously easy to declare emergencies today, yesterday, and the day before yesterday and many yesterdays before that. In other words, the house has been on fire for some time but the fire engines never show up.
A recent fundamental study discusses the all-important issue of failing support of complex life:
Humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and, with it, Earth’s ability to support complex life.
The ramifications are unnerving. Accordingly, Earth’s ability to support complex life is officially at risk. That’s what the scientists are implying within the meaning of the article’s title: “Understanding the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future.”
Indeed, the article identifies a life or death chronology, or summation, of all of the emergencies already underway. That’s real! Moreover, the risk of a “ghastly future” is not taken lightly; rather, the heavily researched article includes high-powered renowned scientists authoring one of the most significant articles of the 21st century, boldly describing risks of an offbeat pathway to a ghastly future, therefore begging the question of what a ghastly future really looks like.
An armchair description of a ghastly future is a planet wheezing, coughing, and gasping for air, searching for non-toxic water, as biodiversity dwindles to nothingness alongside excessive levels of atmospheric CO2-e, bringing on too much heat for complex life to survive. Sound familiar? In part, it is.
Along the way, the irretrievable loss of vertebrates, or complex life forms like wild mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians have reduced to 5% of the planet’s total biomass. The remaining 95%: (1) livestock (59%) and (2) humans (36%). (Bradshaw, et al) How long does that cozy relationship last?
It’ll likely last for decades, maybe, but probably not for centuries. But then again, nobody really knows for sure how long it’ll last. Meanwhile, the human version of complex life resides in comfortable artificial lifestyles framed by cement, steel, glass, wood, and plastic, and surrounded by harmful fertilizers, toxic insecticides, and tons of untested chemicals. There are more than 80,000 chemicals registered for use in the U.S., most of which have not been studied for safety or toxicity to humans.
As a consequence of how artificial lifestyles influence how people view the world, it’s no surprise that Disneyland is a huge success, a big hit, with its flawless artificiality that offers a comfort zone for families within its mastery of hilarious bio-diverse imagery, all fake.
But, while Disneyland prospers, biodiversity is on a slippery slope, barely hanging on for dear life at 5% of total biomass. Once that final 5% goes down the drain, which now looks promising, human life will be all that remains along with herds of cows, pens of pigs, and coops of chickens. Phew!
Already, it is mind-blowing that two-thirds of wild vertebrate species have disappeared from the face of the planet within only 50 years, a world-class speed record for extinction events. At that rate, the infamous Anthropocene will usher in the bleakest century since commencement of the Holocene Epoch of the past 10,000-plus years, especially in consideration of the remorseful fact that, over the past 300 years, global wetlands have been reduced to 15% of their original composition.
That one fact alone, as highlighted in the Bradshaw report, describes an enormous hole in the lifeblood of the planet. Wetlands are the “kidneys for the world’s landscape” (a) cleansing water (b) mitigating floods (c) recharging underground aquifers, and (d) providing habitat for biodiversity. What else does that?
Once wetlands are gone, there’s no hope for complex life support systems. And, how will aquifers be recharged? Aquifers are the world’s most important water supply. Yet, NASA says 13 of the planet’s 37 largest aquifers are classified as overstressed because they have almost no new water flowing in to offset usage. No wetlands, no replenishment. Ipso facto, the Middle East is on special alert!
Meanwhile, dying crumbling ecosystems all across the world are dropping like flies with kelp forests down >40%, coral reefs down >50%, and 40% of all plant life endangered, as well as massive insect losses of 70% to 90% in some regions approaching wholesale annihilation. It’s entirely possible that the planet has never before experienced this rate of loss.
Alas, the loss of biodiversity brings a plethora of reductions in associated benefits of a healthy planet: (1) reduced carbon sequestration (CO2-e already at all-time highs), (2) reduced pollination (insect wipe-out), (3) degraded soil (especially Africa), (4) foul air, bad water (especially India), (5) intense flooding (especially America’s Midwest), (6) colossal wildfires (Siberia, California, Amazon, Australia), (7) compromised health (rampaging viruses and 140 million Americans with at least one chronic disease, likely caused, in part, by environmental degradation and too much toxicity).
Barring a universal all-hands-on-deck recovery effort of Earth’s support systems for complex life; e.g., revival of wetlands, it’s difficult to conceive of a future without the protection of Hazmat suits.
Integral to the continual loss of nature’s bounty, an overcrowded planet brings in its wake regenerative resource limitations. Accordingly, some estimates claim 700-800 million people already are currently starving and 1-2 billion malnourished and unable to function fully. Um, does that describe life or is it sub-life?
One of the most telling statistics within the Bradshaw report states: “Simultaneous with population growth, humanity’s consumption as a fraction of Earth’s regenerative capacity has grown from ~ 73% in 1960 to 170% in 2016.” Ipso facto, humans are consuming more than one Earth. How long does that last, especially considering the deflating fact that regeneration turned negative, circa 1970s?
Ecological overshoot is a centerpiece of the loss of biodiversity:
This massive ecological overshoot is largely enabled by the increasing use of fossil fuels. These convenient fuels have allowed us to decouple human demand from biological regeneration: 85% of commercial energy, 65% of fibers, and most plastics are now produced from fossil fuels. Also, food production depends on fossil-fuel input, with every unit of food energy produced requiring a multiple in fossil-fuel energy (e.g., 3 × for high-consuming countries like Canada, Australia, USA, and China; overshootday.org). (Bradshaw, et al).
As loss of biodiversity delves deeper into the lifeblood of the planet, it becomes a festering problem that knows no end. Still:
Stopping biodiversity loss is nowhere close to the top of any country’s priorities, trailing far behind other concerns such as employment, healthcare, economic growth, or currency stability. It is therefore no surprise that none of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for 2020 set at the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD.int) 2010 conference was met. (Bradshaw, et al)
No surprise there.
Making matters much, much worse:
Most of the nature-related United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (e.g., SDGs 6, 13–15) are also on track for failure. (Bradshaw, et al)
No surprise there.
Even the World Economic Forum, which is captive of dangerous green-washing propaganda, now recognizes biodiversity loss as one of the top threats to the global economy. (Bradshaw, et al)
No surprise there.
So, where, when, and how are solutions to be found? As stated above, there’s no shortage of ideas, but nobody does the work because solutions are overwhelming, too expensive, too complicated. Yet, plans are underway to send people to Mars!
Meanwhile, the irrepressible global warming fiasco is subject of a spaghetti-type formula of voluntary commitments by nations of the world (Paris 2015) to contain the CO2-e villain, all of which has proven to be nightmarishly inadequate. Human-induced greenhouse gases continue hitting record levels year-over-year. That’s the antithesis of success. According to the Bradshaw report: “Without such commitments, the projected rise of Earth’s temperature will be catastrophic for biodiversity.” Hmm — maybe declare one more emergency. Yes, no?
Alas, it’s difficult to imagine loss of biodiversity beyond what’s already happened with 2/3rds of wild vertebrate life gone in only 40-50 years. Also, not to forget invertebrates. When’s the last time a bug splattered on a windshield anywhere in America?
Looking ahead, the best advice may be to make preparations for universal pandemonium, which coincidentally is the namesake of the Capitol (Pandemonium) of Hell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, circa 17th century England.
What to do? Maybe forego any new emergency declarations (the current crop of emergencies, like impending loss of The Great Barrier Reef, are already happening and too much to absorb) and remediation plans that go nowhere, leaving behind a stream of broken promises and false hope, especially after so many years of broken promises and protocols and meetings and orgs that go nowhere, but meanwhile, they preach stewardship of the planet. What’s with that?
Postscript: The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its life forms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well informed experts. (“Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future”)
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Call for world leaders to act in wake of French extradition case that turned on environmental concerns
Air pollution does not respect national boundaries and environmental degradation will lead to mass migration in the future, said a leading barrister in the wake of a landmark migration ruling, as experts warned that government action must be taken as a matter of urgency.
Sailesh Mehta, a barrister specialising in environmental cases, said: “The link between migration and environmental degradation is clear. As global warming makes parts of our planet uninhabitable, mass migration will become the norm. Air and water pollution do not respect national boundaries. We can stop a humanitarian and political crisis from becoming an existential one. But our leaders must act now.”
In recent years, Bangladesh has become one of the worst countries in the world for air pollution. According to the World Health Organization, Bangladesh is in the top 10 countries for concentrations of PM2.5, the harmful pollution particles in the air.
This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.