1. Do Your Part Eating To Reduce The Impacts Of Climate Change. For a potent New Year diet motivator, look no further than October’s doomsday report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. High among its prescriptions for limiting global sea level rise and climate disruption is an advisory for humanity to reduce its collective consumption of animal products by at least 30 percent. After all, between the feed production required to raise cattle and other livestock and these animals’ massive release of methane, animal agriculture harms the climate more than the combined emissions from every plane, train, car, bus, and boat in the world.
Luckily, it’s gotten a lot easier to find satisfying alternatives to meat and dairy products. What’s more, doing so could really boost your personal and pocketbook health. California’s Oakland Unified School District, for example, reduced meat and dairy purchases by 30 percent over a period of two years, shrunk its carbon footprint by 14 percent, and saved $42,000 annually.
Meatless Monday: Research shows that Monday is the easiest day to commit to small, health-forward changes. Ergo Meatless Monday, a campaign that harks back to the First and Second World Wars, during which the US government urged Americans to reduce consumption of key staples to aid the war efforts. More than 13 million families pledged their commitment to Meatless Monday (as well as Wheatless Wednesday). In 2003, the former was revived by ad man turned health advocate Sid Lerner, in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with the goal of reducing global meat consumption by 15 percent. The premise is simple: One day a week, cut the meat. Monday Campaigns provides information, news, recipes, and free promotional materials to help individuals, schools, restaurants, hospitals, companies, and entire municipalities—the New York City Council is presently considering a resolution to officially recognize Meatless Monday. Food providers including Aramark and Sodexo are on board, as are major chain restaurants like Subway and Chipotle. Now in its second decade, Meatless Monday is embraced in more than 40 countries and feted in 20 languages. Consider this a straightforward way to commit to 52 meat-free days each year.
Freestyle Friday: In a throwback to the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition of abstaining from animal meat on Fridays, consider jump-starting plant-based eating plans on Fridays. “This way, it carries into the weekend, when people have more time to plan their meals, cook, and be mindful of their eating habits,” says nutrition consultant Stacy Goldberg. “Hopefully it also makes for less weekend indulgence!”
VB6 (Vegan Before 6): When New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman found out he had pre-diabetes, pre-heart disease, and high cholesterol, he embarked on a mostly plant-based diet: He’d eat vegan meals and snacks before 6 P.M., and at night enjoy whatever he wanted. That way, Bittman figured, he wouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and he’d still get to dine out and indulge in favorite foods. In 2013, Bittman turned his new lifestyle—which helped him lose weight and avoid taking medication—into a best-selling book in which he shares more about his non-diet “diet,”as well as his go-to plant-based meals. Consider it a system fit for the environmentalist who just can’t live without cheeseburgers—but who can wait for them until dinnertime.
Weekday Vegetarian: In a similar vein, Treehugger.com founder Graham Hill delivered a 2010 TED Talk in which he argued that eating no meat from Monday through Friday carried potent personal, economic, and societal benefits, carnivorous weekends be damned. Hill has since expanded the talk into a digital book that includes a full range of veggie recipes to get weekday vegetarians rolling. Source: Katie O’Reilly, “Sierra”
2.
BIOSOLIDS SEMINAR
January 29, 2019
From 7:30 AM – 3:30 PM
SRP Pera Club, Tempe, AZ
INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER
Come join us for a one-day seminar offering 6 PDHs – on cutting edge topics for residuals and biosolids management; addressing the need for renewable resources and their impacts now and in the future.
Topics
- Digestion Overview
- ATAD
- Dewatering & Drying
- Thermal Hydrolysis
- Resource Recovery
- 91st Ave Biogas Project-Case Study
- Pima County Implementation- Case Study
- ASU Research Project
- Q&A
Contact: Nathan Antonneau, nantonneau@walshgroup.com, (414) 418-9994
3. 10 Glimmers Of Environmental Hope That Humanity Will Opt For Less Screwed Over A More Screwed 2019.
1. The Divestment Movement Keeps Growing
In 2012, Unity College, a small liberal arts school in Maine, announced that its trustees had voted to sell their shares in coal, oil, and gas companies. Six years later, more than 1,000 institutions have sold their investments in fossil fuels, bringing the total size of portfolios and endowments in the fossil fuel divestment campaign to nearly $8 trillion. At the start of 2018, New York City took the first steps to divest its $189 billion pension fund from fossil fuels. In July, Ireland became the first nation to do so. The fossil fuel industry is feeling the impact. In 2014, Peabody, the world’s largest coal company, warned investors that divestment could factor into declining profits; the company filed for bankruptcy in 2016. Earlier this year, Shell called divestment a material risk to its business. The divestment movement is forcing the fossil fuel industry to grapple with the real possibility of a future in which its stocks become stranded assets.
2. The Paris Agreement Holds Steady
Coming on the heels of President Trump’s announcement that the US intended to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, 2017’s UN Climate Talks (COP23) were full of defiance, as country after country reaffirmed their commitment to keeping the planet from warming more than 1.5°C (2.7°F). A year later, this global resolve has faltered but not failed. As countries met in Poland in November for COP24, delegates had to contend with the power vacuum left by a recalcitrant United States and its blatant support of the fossil fuel industry. Even worse, the US government’s climate denialism has emboldened backsliding from other countries, most notably Brazil. Nevertheless, the Paris Agreement still stands. Delegates at COP24 managed to negotiate a rulebook for how to measure the progress each country makes in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately reaffirming international cooperation in the effort to combat climate change.
3. The Rule of Law Still Rules
The Trump administration came into office intent on undoing decades of environmental protections and upending the Obama’s administration’s efforts to tackle climate change. There’s no denying that two years in, these policy goals are being realized. According to a recent New York Times report, as of December 2018, the Trump administration has eliminated, or is in the process of eliminating, a total of 78 environmental rules. But the administration has often fumbled in its attempts to unravel environmental legislation. It has failed to provide a credible legal argument for proposed changes or has skipped steps in the rule-making process, and the courts have ruled accordingly. For example, in July, a judge rescinded permits for the 300-mile-long Mountain Valley gas pipeline, declaring that federal officials had neglected to fully vet possible impacts on Jefferson National Forest. In November, a judge blocked the long-contested Keystone pipeline, ruling that the administration had “simply discarded prior factual findings related to climate change.” And federal courts have knocked back the administration’s efforts to rewrite regulations around the leakage of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In short, judges are insisting that if the Trump administration wants to pulverize the planet, it has to at least be able to provide legal justification.
4. Renewable Energy Is on the Rise
In case you missed it, renewable energy is thriving.
A recent report from Wood Mackenzie predicts that clean energy technologies have now become so cost effective that they will replace fossil fuels as the main source of energy within the the next 20 years. Already, five states—California, Nevada, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Vermont—generate 10 percent or more of their energy from solar energy. More than 100 cities and counties across the country have committed to transitioning to 100 percent clean energy. Germany produced enough renewable energy in the first half of 2018 to power every household in the country for a year, and Portugal ran on renewable energy for the entire month of March. In many places, it’s now cheaper to build and run new wind and solar farms than to run existing coal plants.
5. Coal Is Going, Going…
President Trump has promised to revive the coal industry, but, well, that hasn’t happened. If anything, the shrinkage of the coal industry has accelerated. The US Energy Information Administration reports that during Trump’s first two years in office, approximately 20 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity have been retired—that’s compared to a reduction of 15 gigawatts of coal during Obama’s first four years. The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign predicts that, based on the average rate of coal retirements over the past three years, all US coal plants will be closed by 2035. That means that the United States is on track to meet the IPCC’s requirement of totally phasing out coal in the US within 17 years.
6. Technology Is Advancing
It’s tempting to cross our fingers and hope that a technological fix for climate change will come along and we’ll be off the hook for doing the hard work of enacting deeper systemic change. This isn’t going to happen. However, the recent headline-grabbing climate reports do assume that what are called “negative emissions technologies” will play a crucial role in reducing emissions. Some of these, like reforestation and no-till agriculture, aren’t high tech at all and, if employed on a large scale, can do a lot to draw carbon out of the atmosphere. But a recent panel convened by the National Academies concluded that higher tech solutions like direct carbon capture (which likely involve storing extracted carbon deep in the ground) can and should be in the mix. The report stated that given recent breakthroughs, direct air capture of CO2 could become profitable within 10 years. Meanwhile, renewable energy technology keeps advancing, including innovations such as solar-panel-cleaning robots, taller wind turbines, solar panels that float, and better batteries for storing all that clean energy.
7. Transportation Is Headed in the Right Direction
Transportation is the biggest source of carbon pollution in the United States. Fortunately, there are some encouraging signs that a transportation overhaul is underway. In December, nine states—Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Vermont—and the District of Columbia announced a regional plan for limiting carbon emissions in the transportation sector. Meanwhile, California, along with 16 other states, is fighting the Trump administration to hold onto strict tailpipe standards for cars, trucks, and SUVs. As with renewable energy, economics may end up being the game changer. EVs are getting cheaper and more reliable, so much so that Wall Street Journal auto columnist Dan Neil concluded that buying a new internal-combustion engine car is now equivalent to buying a flip phone in an era of smartphones.
8. The Scales of Justice Are Tipping
It used to be if you were worried about global warming, you were supposed to change your lightbulbs and recycle. As the political movement to address climate change has evolved, so has the understanding that some players have made outsized contributions to the problem; researchers have established, for example, that the business practices of about 90 companies are responsible for nearly two-thirds of the observed increases in global surface temperatures. Now, an effort is underway to hold the fossil fuel industry responsible for its actions. In 2018, seven cities, counties, and states filed lawsuits against some of these companies, seeking to recover damages brought on by climate-changerelated disasters. In November, West Coast crab fishermen sued 30 fossil fuel corporations, alleging that global warming has led to fishery closures and lost revenue. And the our Children’s Trust lawsuit—in which 21 young people are suing the US government for fueling global warming—is still making its way through the court system. Climate liability cases are a part of a global trend: Lawsuits are ongoing in the Netherlands, Peru, the Philippines, Canada, and other countries.
SUNRISE MOVEMENT PROTEST INSIDE THE O OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI |PHOTO BY MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN/SIPA USA (SIPA VIA AP IMAGES)
9. The Political Winds Are Shifting
When it comes to dealing with climate change, there are few obstacles to progress as great as the hot mess of greed, denial, and incompetence that is the current US federal government. Happily, that is not the whole political story in the United States. The grassroots opposition to President Trump came to fruition this past November, sweeping a historic number of Democrats (many of them women and people of color) into the House of Representatives and establishing a formidable counterforce to the Trump administration. One of the most famous new representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, is already busy advocating for a Green New Deal—basically, an enormous policy and stimulus package that would tackle both climate change and income inequality. Election night brought lots of green victories on the state and local level as well, with pro-environment governors elected in Illinois, New Mexico, Kansas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. This is important because, as Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign director Mary Anne Hitt points out, states and cities are where the decisions are made in this country about how to produce electricity.
10. Youths Are on the March
Every Friday, 15 year-old Greta Thunberg skips school to sit outside the Swedish Parliament and protest the failure of politicians to act on climate change. She has inspired thousands of kids around the world to do the same. At the end of 2018, 15,000 Australian students marched against plans to build a massive coal mine in Queensland. American kids are agitating for change too. In July, 16-year-old Jamie Margolin led hundreds of youth activists in a march in Washington, D.C., to denounce inaction on climate change. In November, young people from the Sunrise Movement occupied the offices of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Jim McGovern to push for the establishment of the Green New Deal. Righteously pissed that adults are not acting in their best interests, young people around the globe are taking matters into their own hands. As Thunberg put it in a Guardian op-ed, “We can no longer save the world by playing by the rules because the rules have to be changed.”
Here’s to changing all the rules in 2019.
4. Solid and Hazardous Waste Programs Workshop – Phoenix
ADEQ Waste Programs Division invites interested community members and
business and government personnel to participate in this free workshop. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the latest requirements and best practices and to earn Professional Development Hours.
Date: Thursday, Feb. 21, 2018
Time: 9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Location: ADEQ
1110 W. Washington Street
Phoenix, AZ 85007
Topics:
- Solid Waste
- Hazardous Waste
- Pollution Prevention (P2)
