Sustainability

Monthly Archives: December 2017

Why healthy soils and forests are key to climate protection and prosperity

What links climate change, poverty and migration? The Global Landscapes Forum addresses how land-use is central to global challenges that are more interconnected than many of us realize.

http://www.dw.com/en/why-healthy-soils-and-forests-are-key-to-climate-protection-and-prosperity/a-41873961

Author Says Soil Is Key To Addressing Effects of Climate Change

In 2013 the United Nations declared Dec. 5 to be World Soil Day, a recognition of the significance of healthy soil in both improving food security and nutrition, and mitigating the effects of climate change, including drought, flood, soil erosion and sea level rise. This year the U.N. held a conference at its New York headquarters on the theme of “caring for the planet starts from the ground.”

Didi Pershouse, founder of the Center for Sustainable Medicine in Thetford and author of The Ecology of Care, and the downloadable PDF which was released online in August, was one of five panelists invited to speak at this year’s conference.

http://www.vnews.com/Soil-expert-Didi-Pershouse-speaks-at-UN-conference-14410464

and

didipershouse.com

 

Latest Monsanto GMO seeds raises worries of monopoly

The rapid growth of Monsanto’s new GMO seeds resistant to the controversial herbicide dicamba has revived worries about the company’s stranglehold over farming during a period of industry consolidation.

Long a producer of dicamba, Monsanto last year introduced genetically-modified cotton and soybean seeds that can resist the weed killer.

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/consumer/latest-monsanto-gmo-seeds-raises-worries-of-monopoly

Divest Responsibly

Barnard unveils criteria it will use to evaluate whether a fossil fuel company is a good or bad actor worthy of its investment. An emphasis is on climate science.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/12/13/barnard-announces-criteria-evaluating-fossil-fuel-companies-investment-worthiness

GREEK YOGURT WASTE COULD BE USED IN JET FUEL AND LIVESTOCK FEED

Your Greek yogurt creates food waste that could one day be used in jet fuel.

That’s right—when Greek yogurt is made, it leaves behind liquid whey, which is the watery remains after protein is strained from milk. A process that mixes this waste with thousands of species of bacteria and some heat transforms the whey into a new material called bio-oil, which could be used in biofuels or additives in livestock feed.

http://www.newsweek.com/2017/12/29/greek-yogurt-waste-could-be-used-jet-fuel-and-livestock-feed-746965.html

and

Waste streams can be renewable feedstocks to produce biofuels and chemicals. Acid whey is an example waste stream and is produced by the Greek-yogurt industry in large volumes. This whey and other waste streams have been successfully converted into methane gas by anaerobic digesters with open cultures of microbial consortia (microbiomes). However, the revenue from methane has been relatively low. Until now, no other products could be produced with microbiomes from this waste stream. This has now changed. Here, we showed that acid whey was converted into valuable medium-chain carboxylic acids (MCCAs), such as n-caproic acid (n-hexanoic acid) and n-caprylic acid (n-octanoic acid), without addition of external electron acceptors.

http://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(17)30179-4

 

Climate Change Has Come for Los Angeles

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is meant to be, in Southern California, the start of rainy season. Not this year. The Thomas Fire, the worst of those roiling the region this last week, grew 50,000 acres on Sunday alone; it has now burnt 270 square miles and forced 200,000 people from their homes. There is no rain forecast for the next seven to ten days, and as of Monday morning, Thomas is just, in the terrifying semi-clinical language of wildfires, “10% contained.” To a poetic approximation, it’s not a bad estimate of how much of a handle we have on the forces of climate change that unleashed it — which is to say, hardly any.

 

We could use further updating: Five of the 20 worst fires in California history have now hit since just September, when 245,000 acres in Northern California burned

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/climate-change-has-come-for-los-angeles.html

When and how to use the term ‘zero waste’ — and when to avoid it

As cities across the country, from Los Angeles to New York City, take “zero waste” pledges, it is clear that “zero waste” is transforming from a trend into a movement. From a sustainability perspective, the central goal of most “zero waste” initiatives — achieving 90 percent diversion — is a clear winner.

But from a communications perspective, “zero waste” is still unclear and potentially confusing. Not only does the term “zero waste” not necessarily mean what it says, but it can be polarizing. How can we most effectively communicate the waste reduction message encapsulated in the term “zero waste”? Do we need the term “zero waste” to guide our consumption and waste behaviors, or are we better off without it?

https://www.wastedive.com/news/zero-waste-pledge-confusion-opinion/512638/

How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist

I’m an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That’s why I spent the last three years as Google’s Design Ethicist caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people’s minds from getting hijacked.

When using technology, we often focus optimisticallyon all the things it does for us. But I want you to show you where it might do the opposite.

Where does technology exploit our minds weaknesses?

http://www.tristanharris.com/essays/

WTO Summit to Ignore Price Crisis, Agricultural Dumping

Around the world, chronically low crop prices are keeping farmers from making a living despite record harvests.

Crops are in across the U.S. farm belt, with record harvests filling farmers’ silos with grain and their hearts with pride. Yet persistent and punishingly low prices for those crops leave them no better off for their efforts. Net farm income this year is about half what it was in 2013.

U.S. farmers are not alone. The world is experiencing what Reuters called a “global grain glut,” with many staple food crops filling silos from Brazil to the Ukraine. Crop prices have fallen dramatically, with serious repercussions for farmers, particularly poor farmers in developing countries.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/12/10/wto-summit-ignore-price-crisis-agricultural-dumping-0

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