Environment

The Gowanus Canal in New York City is notorious for being one of the most polluted waterways in the U.S. Imagine everyone’s surprise when, three weeks ago, an oasis of pure greenery sprouted atop the surface of the river.

Not only is this improbable garden a breathtaking sight on the brackish water, but it is also cleaning the stream as it blooms.

The project, called GrowOnUs, is an experiment in “floating infrastructure” that utilizes a process called phytoremediation to tidy up the murky canal. Over 30 different kinds of plants act as sponges to purify, desalinate, and mitigate the chemicals affecting the waterway.

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The plants are grown inside the very same metal culvert piping used to carry sewage waste into the waterway. These “test tubes” are made buoyant by eco-friendly construction materials like coconut fibers and bamboo.

Balmori Associates, a New York company specializing in creating environmentally sustainable infrastructure since 1995, took action on the GrowOnUs project after receiving a $20,000 grant from the Cornelia & Michael Bessie Foundation.

According to Diana Balmori, three attempts had already been made to produce a sustainable patch of vegetation in the waters, but the pollution had been too much for the plants. Now, since using tougher, more conditioned greenery, the garden has been thriving.

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GrowOnUs, ideally, will deliver a positive change in shoreline protection, wildlife activity, and financial income for the city. It could also become the next wave in locally-grown food.

“We have pioneered floating landscapes, we now want to learn what can make these floating structures financially sustainable” said Balmori in a press release. “Dr. Michael Balick at the New York Botanical Garden suggested we grow herbs, low maintenance crops.”

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“In a few years NYC restaurants may be serving meals and drinks infused with herbs [and fruits] grown on one of these islands.”

(WATCH the video below to learn more)

Photos by © 2015 Balmori Associates

If any place could be described as a living hell, it might be the desert regions of the Middle East. Hot, dry, dusty and arid, these harsh landscapes still manage to support cities populated by tens of millions of people who rely on air conditioning to survive.

Now scientists say that by the end of the century, the effects of climate change will push the region into a zone that surpasses the limits of human survival. They believe that most any outdoor activity will be hazardous.

“This is a significantly more severe type of heat wave than what people have experienced before,” said Elfatih Eltahir, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Co-author Jeremy Pal, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Loyola Marymount University, said that the 2003 heat wave that killed 15,000 people in Europe “looks like a refreshing day” compared to the future conditions expected in some parts of the Middle East.

The pair’s paper is published today in the journal Nature Climate Change and examined when this area would surpass the combined heat and humidity reading, known as wet-bulb temperature, of 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit). At this level, the body is unable to cool itself through normal processes of sweating and ventilation because there is too much water vapor in the air.

“If the environment can’t take any more water, the sweat on your body no longer evaporates,” said Kris Lehnhardt, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. “Your body doesn’t cool anymore.”

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Beyond this level of 35 degrees wet-bulb, (conditions of 100 degrees F, with a relative humidity of 80 percent), the body starts to go haywire, Lehnhardt explained.

After symptoms of headache, nausea and dizziness, the first organ affected is your brain. “People will start to have an altered mental status and behave in an unusual manner,” said Lenhart, who was not involved in the study. “If it gets really bad, they might have trouble walking, and then become unconscious.”

The two climate scientists used global and regional climate models with a very small geographic resolution. That means that they could pinpoint which areas would face the highest temperatures.

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The affected cities include Doha (Qatar), Dharan (Saudi Arabia), Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Dubai, Kuwait City (Kuwait), as well as Bandar Abbas and Badar Mahshahr, Iran.

Because the Persian Gulf region lacks cloud cover or greenery, and because the gulf’s waters are shallow (which causes surface water to evaporate to the atmosphere), the entire area becomes both hot and humid in the summertime.

“People who have resources will live indoors,” said Eltahir.

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But he noted that there are poorer people in places like Yemen, communities that may be forced to migrate elsewhere to avoid the devastating effects of summer heat.

The annual pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, will also be endangered because the ceremony takes place outdoors.

Ironically, the Persian Gulf states are also a center for petroleum and gas production, the same industry whose carbon emissions are responsible for the climate change driving the warmer planet, the scientists say.

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Just as people will suffer, so too, will the oil industry. That’s because petrochemical workers could find it too hot to maintain or repair production facilities in the searing heat, according to Pal.

Transportation, agriculture, aquaculture, fishing and any other industry that relies on moving things outdoors will also be affected, Pal noted.

But Lehnhardt, the doctor, says that humans living in the Persian Gulf will probably survive somehow, just as they do in places like the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland or Asia.

“Humans are extremely adaptable and we find ways to survive in environments we shouldn’t be in anyway,” said Lehnhardt, who also studies the effects of space travel on humans.

“It will lead to a change in the way that homes are designed and cities are designed. It will lead to people making different choice about what they do.”

On a haunting, contaminated landscape devoid of humans, animals are now thriving. So finds a new study on wildlife populations in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, late of the former Soviet Union and now part of Ukraine.

In 1986, Chernobyl was the site of of a nuclear reactor accident, the radiation from which caused the displacement of human life from an area of more than 1,000 square miles. Only animals were left to roam the the area.

Today, a multi-university study finds, the exclusion zone has abundant roe deer, red deer, elk, and wild boar — so many that the researchers say their numbers rival those of nature preserves in the region that are not contaminated.

Wolves, they add, are seven times more populous than animals in those radiation-free areas.

“It’s very likely that wildlife numbers at Chernobyl are much higher than they were before the accident,” said Jim Smith, of the University of Portsmouth, in a press release.

While earlier studies had shown sharp drops in wildlife thanks to radiation effects, the new data, culled from long-term census information and helicopter surveys, argues that mammals are back with a vengeance.

“These results demonstrate for the first time that, regardless of potential radiation effects on individual animals, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone supports an abundant mammal community after nearly three decades of chronic radiation exposure,” the scientists wrote.

“This doesn’t mean radiation is good for wildlife,” Smith cautioned, “just that the effects of human habitation, including hunting, farming, and forestry, are a lot worse.”

The team’s findings have been published in the journal Current Biology.

Much of South America’s Amazon rainforest will continue to be clean, lush, and green-thanks in part to a country on the other side of the world.

In 2008, when the Amazon was facing a severe deforestation crisis, Norway, a country made rich from oil and gas production (and the biggest donor to protect tropical rainforests), pledged $1 billion to the government of Brazil if it could slow down the destruction. Doing so would protect the forest’s wildlife and also enormously reduce climate-harming greenhouse gas emissions, which are produced when forests are burned to make way for human development.

Brazil has more than risen to the task. By enforcing strict protection laws, promoting education efforts, and withholding loans to local counties that clear too much of the forest, the country has scaled back its forest destruction rate by 75%. It’s estimated that Brazilian farmers and ranchers have saved more than 33,000 square miles (roughly 53,100 square kilometers) of forest-equivalent to 14.3 million soccer fields-from being cut down.

This week, an applauding Norwegian government said it will pay out the country’s final $100 million-rounding out its $1 billion promise-to Brazil at a December UN summit on climate change. In a statement, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the deal an “outstanding example” of international collaboration on sustainability.

Brazil’s blazing success in deforestation reduction is, indeed, a model for other countries-particularly the others that occupy the Amazon rainforest. Its Norway-subsidized efforts have translated into the largest emissions cut in the world, preventing roughly 3.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s, by the way, how much America would save by taking all the cars off its roads for three years.

Steve Howard, Ikea’s sustainability guru, once argued that 100 percent sustainable was an easier goal than 80 percent or 50 percent, because once you set your mind to an ambitious goal, everyone gets on board and does what needs to be done. Plus, you no longer have to spend time and resources investing in an out-of-date paradigm that will eventually be phased out anyway.

That might be true of a company like Ikea, but does it still hold true for entire countries? And what about the whole world? Well, we may be about to find out.

A new report from Greenpeace called Energy [R]evolution 2015, created in collaboration with the Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics, Systems Analysis & Technology Assessment at the German Aerospace Center, sets out a truly ambitious scenario: a 100 percent renewable energy powered global economy by 2050. And that doesn’t just mean zero carbon electricity grids. It means everything-transportation, electricity, heating etc,-coming from entirely renewable resources, even without the need for nuclear power. (This last point will be controversial in many circles.)

Now, I haven’t had the chance to dig through the report in detail-and am not qualified to judge how realistic it is anyway-but I will say that Greenpeace has a (perhaps surprisingly) good track record when it comes to predicting renewables growth -beating out the much more conservative predictions made by the IEA, Goldman Sachs or the US Department of Energy in terms of accuracy.

The authors of the Greenpeace report are by no means the only people beginning to think in terms of 100 percent renewables. We already have roadmaps for how every state in the US could achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, the Australian Capital Territory just committed to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2025, and New Zealand will be at 90 percent renewables by the same date.

Of course possible and probable are not the same thing at all. From a strong global deal at the Paris climate talks to ambitious commitments from businesses and communities, and from local, national and international government bodies alike, there are many preconditions for Greenpeace’s scenario to pan out.

The costs will be tremendous. But the benefits will be too-not least because, authors claim, the report provides a pathway for keeping total cumulative emissions between now and 2050 to 667 gigatonnes, a figure comfortably within the 1,000 gigatonne range considered “safe” by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Oh, and it would create jobs and cut the catastrophic levels of air pollution-related deaths too.

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Monday marks the beginning of a week full of national and global action to combat climate change and push for environmental justice. Events ranging from the United Nations’ sustainability assembly to climate change rallies on the National Mall are all happening over the course of this week, in coordination with Pope Francis’ visit to the United States.

This week, the United Nations is meeting to adopt a new 15-year plan for sustainable development. The plan outlines 17 broad goals and 169 specific targets to end world poverty, improve health and education, ensure gender and racial equality for all, implement sustainable building and agricultural practices in impoverished countries, conserve world oceans, and take urgent action to combat climate change. These Sustainable Development Goals replace the previously developed Millennium Development Goals and are intended to be achieved by 2030.

Right now there are no specific plans on how to measure the progress of each target. The goals will be discussed at the Sustainable Development Summit scheduled to take place September 25 to 27, preceding the annual U.N. general assembly on September 28 in New York City.

Critics of the Sustainable Development Goals are calling the targets “too broad,” while supporters are saying that “there is no choice but to go big in a world of expanding population, growing inequality, dwindling resources and the existential threat from global warming,” according to the Global Gazette.

The goals clearly emphasize the need to connect the impacts of climate change to gender and racial equality – specifically women in developing and impoverished countries. With women often being charged with providing critical resources such as food and water, as well as making up the majority of the agricultural workforce, sustainability movements have been pushing the importance of women’s rights in the realm of environmental protection.

“I urge partners across the world to embrace the ambition embodied in the new set of goals. I look forward to working together to deliver on the unfinished MDG commitments, tackle inequality and meet the new challenges that have emerged across the three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at a press conference in New York on September 18.

Complimenting this new season of goal setting, the Climate Group kicked-off its 7th annual “Climate Week NYC” Monday at the United Nation’s Headquarters in New York City. This week-long event is intended to highlight bold climate action from business and political leaders, as well as set sights for furthering renewable energy growth. Leaders such as U.S. Secretary John Kerry, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and Ban Ki-Moon spoke at last year’s conference, making it the largest thus far.

Under-pinning this week’s climate action, “Popemania” is sparking even further public action towards environmental and social justice. Cities across the U.S. East Coast have been anticipating Pope Francis’ first-ever visit from September 22 to the 28. Americans are expecting to hear him speak on the moral case of climate change, along with other social issues. Given his historically progressive stance towards people contributing to climate change, all signs point to Francis making climate a major component of his visit.

“Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day,” he wrote is his 192-page papal encyclical earlier this year. In his words, “climate is a common good” and stronger action must be taken in order to protect it.

Francis will be speaking at the United Nations in New York on Friday, September 25, the day after he plans to deliver a speech to Congress. It is not confirmed that his speech will be centered on environmental action, but several environmental groups have organized a climate rally and free concert on the National Mall at the same time. Over 200,000 people are expected to attend and call on political leaders to follow Pope Francis’ lead in demanding for climate justice.

This week’s wide mix of environmental and global goal-setting are paving the way for further climate action expected at the United Nations climate conference in Paris later this year.

A new report on the health of the ocean finds that the marine vertebrate population has declined by 49 percent between 1970 and 2012.

WWF’s Living Blue Planet Report tracks 5,829 populations of 1,234 mammal, bird, reptile, and fish species through a marine living planet index. The evidence, analyzed by researchers at the Zoological Society of London, paints a troubling picture. In addition to the plummeting number of marine vertebrate species, populations of locally and commercially fished fish species have fallen by half, with some of the most important species experiencing even greater declines.

These findings coincide with the growing decline of marine habitats, where the deforestation rate of mangroves exceeds even the loss of forests by 3-5 times; coral reefs could be lost across the globe by 2050; and almost one-third of all seagrasses have been lost.

Global climate is one of the major drivers causing the ocean to change more rapidly than at any other point in millions of years. The oceans store huge quantities of energy and heat, but as the climate responds to increasing carbon emissions, the exchange intensifies. This may result in extreme weather events, changing ocean currents, rising sea temperatures, and increasing acidity levels-all of which aggravate the negative impacts of overfishing and other major threats such as habitat degradation and pollution.

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Though the challenge seems immense, it’s possible for governments, businesses, communities and consumers to secure a living ocean. To reverse the downward trend we need to preserve the oceans natural capital; produce better; consume more wisely; and ensure sustainable financing and governance.

Our ocean needs a strong global climate deal and work is already underway as President Obama and leaders of the Arctic nations recently pledged to work together to boost strong action on climate change. But more needs to be done to prioritize ocean and coastal habitat health.

Speak up for oceans! Together we can make a difference by halting the depletion of the ocean and restoring damaged ecosystems for species and people. Read the Living Planet Report 2014.

An outright ban on the common use of plastic ” microbeads” from products that enter wastewater is the best way to protect water quality, wildlife and resources used by people, a group of conservation scientists suggest in a new analysis.

These microbeads are one part of the microplastic problem in oceans, freshwater lakes and rivers, but are a special concern because in many products they are literally designed to be flushed down the drain. And even at conservative estimates, the collective total of microbeads being produced today is enormous.

In an article just published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, scientists from seven institutions say that nontoxic and biodegradable alternatives exist for microbeads, which are used in hundreds of products as abrasive scrubbers, ranging from face washes to toothpaste. Around the size of a grain of sand, they can provide a gritty texture to products where that is needed.

“We’re facing a plastic crisis and don’t even know it,” said Stephanie Green, the David H. Smith Conservation Research fellow in the College of Science at Oregon State University and co-author of this report.

“Part of this problem can now start with brushing your teeth in the morning,” she said. “Contaminants like these microbeads are not something our wastewater treatment plants were built to handle and the overall amount of contamination is huge. The microbeads are very durable.”

In this analysis and using extremely conservative methodology, the researchers estimated that 8 trillion microbeads per day are being emitted into aquatic habitats in the U.S.-enough to cover more than 300 tennis courts a day. But the other 99 percent of the microbeads-another 800 trillion-end up in sludge from sewage plants, which is often spread over areas of land. Many of those microbeads can then make their way into streams and oceans through runoff.

“Microbeads are just one of many types of microplastic found in aquatic habitats and in the gut content of wildlife,” said Chelsea Rochman, the David H. Smith Conservation Research postdoctoral fellow at the University of California/Davis and lead author on the analysis.

“We’ve demonstrated in previous studies that microplastic of the same type, size and shape as many microbeads can transfer contaminants to animals and cause toxic effects,” Rochman said. “We argue that the scientific evidence regarding microplastic supports legislation calling for a removal of plastic microbeads from personal care products.”

Even though microbeads are just one part of the larger concern about plastic debris that end up in oceans and other aquatic habitat, they are also one of the most controllable. With growing awareness of this problem, a number of companies have committed to stop using microbeads in their “rinse off” personal care products and several states have already regulated or banned the products.

The researchers point out in their analysis, however, that some bans have included loopholes using strategic wording. Many microbeads are used in personal care products that are not “rinse off,” such as deodorants and cleaners. And some regulations use the term “biodegradable” to specify what products are allowed-but some microbeads can biodegrade just slightly, which may allow their continued use.

If legislation is sought, “new wording should ensure that a material that is persistent, bioaccumulative or toxic is not added to products designed to go down the drain,” the researchers wrote in their report.

“The probability of risk from microbead pollution is high, while the solution to this problem is simple,” they concluded.

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China marked the 70th anniversary of their victory during World War II in the only way possible: a ginormous parade.

On Sept. 3, 2015, Victory Day kicked off with a massive military parade through Beijing.

The celebration included 12,000 troops in 50 different military formations along with hundreds of fighter jets. Veterans and soldiers ranging from 20 to 102 years old participated. Parade training was apparently so intense that multiple officers reported losing 10 pounds or more.

Blue sky at night? Parade Day delight!

A parade this size takes months, sometimes even years, of preparation.

And in the case of Beijing’s Victory Day parade, numerous restrictions were put in place leading up to the festivities. Hundreds of factories were shuttered, and half of the 5 million registered cars in the city were banned from driving in the main urban hub.

Say what you will about spending government resources on a giant party, but in this case, it definitely paid off.

An average day in Beijing clocks in on the Air Pollution Index at around 160 (out of 500), which means adverse health effects for absolutely everyone (by comparison, an average day in the worst U.S. cities is said to be around 125). But by parade day, it had dropped to 17.

Grey sky at morning? Air pollution warning.

The day after the Victory Parade, cars were allowed to return to the roads – and the Air Pollution Index in parts of the city immediately returned to an unhealthy 160 out of 500.

Want to see the difference? Here’s how Beijing looked in June:

Here’s Beijing during the Victory Day parade in September:

And here’s Beijing less than one week later. Just in case you thought they were having a hazy day or something.

The sky is back to looking bleak, but the future doesn’t have to be. What happened before the Victory Day parade shows that a sunny change is still possible.

Air pollution is bad. Carbon emissions are bad. Cars are bad. We’ve all heard it before. But what we may not have realized is how much power we have to change things.

What happened in Beijing shows us – yes, how grim the situation is, but also just how easily we can change it.

By cutting back on cars and other emissions for a mere two weeks, Beijing underwent a beautiful and healthy transformation. And yet, all it took was one day of business-as-usual to bring Beijing crashing back into the danger zone.

It’s something to consider the next time you get behind the wheel. We can ensure a future of blue skies if more of us walked to work, rode our bikes, or crammed onto public transportation – even just a few times a week.

Those blue skies sure look nice to me.