January 2023 - News - lists.bikelover.org

BIG BREAKFAST ~ Blueberry Pancakes, Sausage & Maple Syrup — w/ Coffee
by Frack Check WV: Duane Nichols 31 Jan '23

31 Jan '23

# [BIG BREAKFAST ~ Blueberry Pancakes, Sausage & Maple Syrup — w/ Coffee](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/31/big-breakfast-blueberry- pancakes-sausage-maple-syrup-%e2%80%94-w-coffee/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/B34E5757-0533-429E-B4D9-70B2383A203A-300x230.jpg)](… content/uploads/2023/01/B34E5757-0533-429E-B4D9-70B2383A203A.jpeg) Young sugar maple trees are beautiful in the autumn **Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner: Maple syrup season approaches – but for how much longer?** From the [Opinion Editorial of Rebecca Phillips, Parkersburg News & Sentinel](https://www.newsandsentinel.com/opinion/local-columns/2023/01/mid- ohio-valley-climate-corner-maple-syrup-season-approaches-but-for-how-much- longer/), January 21, 2023 **If you are like me, you look forward to each year’s maple syrup crop. After tasting the real thing, the artificially flavored and colored substance that passes for syrup in most grocery stores is a sad imitation. Ohio has a long history of maple syrup production, going back to its indigenous peoples, and is the fourth-largest producer of maple syrup in the U.S.** **With more than 900 producers, mostly small businesses, the maple industry adds about $5 million to our state’s economy each year, according to the Ohio State University — not bad for a niche crop that can live for over 300 years. In West Virginia, maple products are helping small farmers succeed while preserving woodlands on their property, as witnessed by the state’s annual Maple Days.** Unfortunately, this long tradition and the economic boost it provides are endangered by our changing climate. The sugar maple requires specific conditions to thrive, and even more specific conditions for peak sap production. Scientists are warning that those conditions may cease to exist in our region within the next few decades. During the growing season, maple trees store starch, a process that ends with leaf fall. The starch stored over the summer and fall converts to sugar when the temperature of the tree’s wood reaches 40 degrees or so, and the sap rises. In Ohio, the tapping of maple trees generally begins in late January when, historically, conditions have been right for optimal sap flow — daytime temperatures in the low 40s and nights slightly below freezing. The tapping ends when the trees bud out, something that is happening earlier in the season than it once did due to earlier spring thaws. A shorter season means less maple syrup and reduced income for producers. Higher temperatures also result in reduced sugar content in the sap, making it not as good for syrup production. **Erratic weather is also bad for the trees themselves.** Early extreme cold such as the Christmas freeze we recently experienced can damage roots and slow tree growth, especially when there is no snow pack. Early warmth and late frosts can kill the year’s first leaf buds, forcing trees to expend energy growing a new set of leaves. These combined stresses, besides reducing sap production, can harm the long-term health of the trees. **Climate change is harming maple forests in other ways.** Sugar maples evolved in relatively cool climates with abundant rainfall; they do not tolerate heat or drought well. Unfortunately, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Ohio River Valley is likely to see heavier rainfall over short periods of time interspersed with summer drought. All predictions are for more days exceeding 90 degrees. Increased temperatures mean that insect seasons are longer, and while insects are a vital part of all ecosystems, a warmer climate is allowing certain invasive species to thrive. Pear thrips, tiny insects originally from Europe, are thriving in the northern half of the U.S. and, despite their name, damaging millions of acres of maple forest, over a million in Pennsylvania alone. It is true that we are unlikely to see a massive sugar maple shortage in the near future, these trees being as long-lived as they are. Recent studies from several universities and the Department of the Interior, however, indicate that seed germination is likely to decrease, and the range of these magnificent trees will slowly move north, possibly vanishing from the southern part of their range (Virginia, West Virginia, and southern Ohio) by 2100. It is likely that the cool overnight temperatures required for optimum sap movement will decrease, and that our region may not be able to sustain syrup production for more than a few more decades. This is bad news, but at least for now, we can enjoy this gift of the forest while supporting the small farmers who produce it — before a changing climate takes it away from us. ***#####***#####***#####***#####***##### >>> **Rebecca Phillips is a retired professor from WVU Parkersburg.** A member of [Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action](http://main.movclimateaction.org/), she is also on the coordinating committee for the [Fort Street Pollinator Habitat](https://fuusm.org/index.php?page=gs-projects-programs) in Marietta, OH. $$$$$$$@@@@@@@$$$$$$$@@@@@@@$$$$$$$@@@@@@@ **SEE ALSO:** [Sugar Maple Research to Save the Trees & Syrup Industry](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2017/10/04/sugar-maple-research-to- save-the-trees-syrup-industry/) ~ _Climate research on maple tree sap ~ Maple Watch has its focus on the color of the maple tree sap_ , From a Bulletin of Forest Watch, Univ.of New Hampshire, October 2017 $$$$$$$@@@@@@@$$$$$$$@@@@@@@$$$$$$$@@@@@@@@ **SEE ALSO:** ['This is our forest': Climate change means uncertain future for maple trees, syrup season](https://phys.org/news/2022-05-forest-climate- uncertain-future-maple.html), Dinah Pulver, Phys-dot-org News, May 16, 2022 URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/31/big-breakfast-blueberry- pancakes-sausage-maple-syrup-%e2%80%94-w-coffee/>

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COLUMBIA MAGAZINE ~ Can the World’s Religions Help Save Us from Ecological Peril? Part 2
by Frack Check WV: Duane Nichols 30 Jan '23

30 Jan '23

# [COLUMBIA MAGAZINE ~ Can the World’s Religions Help Save Us from Ecological Peril? Part 2](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/30/columbia-magazine-can- the-world%e2%80%99s-religions-help-save-us-from-ecological-peril-part-2/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/27A6DB66-39E5-4481-877A-4B68748160F7-300x224.jpg)](… content/uploads/2023/01/27A6DB66-39E5-4481-877A-4B68748160F7.jpeg) Back Bay and False Cape State Park adjoin Virginia Beach as the ideal locations to observe the life cycle of turtles **A spiritual connection to nature is essential for environmental recovery** From the [Article “Sacred Trees, Holy Waters” in Columbia Magazine](https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/can-worlds-religions-help- save-us-ecological-peril), Winter Edition 2022 – 2023 **Kareena Gore, who is from Tennessee, grew up immersed in American politics.** Her grandfather, Albert Gore, was a US senator, and her father, Albert Gore Jr., was a US senator (1985–1993), vice president (1993–2001), and author of the 1992 book Earth in the Balance, which warned of the global- warming catastrophe (the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth chronicled his campaign to educate people about climate change). Raised in the Baptist tradition, Gore is a remarkably selfless, compassionate advocate who calls her own spirituality “private and ever-unfolding” and whose respect for the power and insights of Indigenous spiritual beliefs is a guiding force in her faith- based environmental work. At Columbia Law School, Gore took a course in copyright law and was absorbed by the concept of intellectual property and, ultimately, she says, of property itself. Being in Manhattan, she thought about the “sale” of the island by the Lenape people to the Dutch colonizers and how the two sides had very different notions of what that transaction meant. And she thought about how we treat the land, and how social norms have blinded us to the environmental impacts of our consumer lifestyle. “We get confused,” she says, “because much of what’s driving ecological destruction is perfectly legal and socially encouraged.” **Karenna Gore graduated from law school in 2000** , which was also the year her father ran for president on a strong environmental platform, winning the popular vote but conceding the race to George W. Bush after the Supreme Court denied a manual recount in Florida. In 2002, President Bush opened previously off-limits federal lands near national parks to oil and gas development, initiating a push for energy independence that has since triggered numerous conflicts over land, water, and air as woods are cleared, roads are built, pipes are laid, and animals are driven from their homes. “We see nature as property rather than as a commonly held or even inhabited community of life,” Gore says. “That we recognize a cathedral as a sacred site but not a rainforest reveals a lot about our thinking.” **James Hansen could not have picked a better day to make his point to Congress.** It was June 23, 1988, and the temperature in Washington was ninety-eight degrees. As director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is housed at Columbia, Hansen, now an adjunct professor at the Columbia Climate School, had come to address the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on the topic of “global warming,” a term popularized by Columbia geochemist Wallace Broecker ’53CC, ’58GSAS in his 1975 paper “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” “The global warming is now large enough,” Hansen told the senators, “that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect” — the process by which carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels collects in the atmosphere, trapping heat. “The first five months of 1988 are so warm globally that we conclude that 1988 will be the warmest year on record.” As if on cue, that summer was unlike any other in living memory. The US saw long, intense heat waves, drought, wildfires, and hundreds of human deaths, even as humans were pumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere annually, with no end in sight. **That same year, Thomas Berry published The Dream of the Earth,** a seminal meditation on human–earth relations. Guided by a profound reverence for the beauty and genius of nature, the book articulates a vision of a living earth whose complex life systems, developed over billions of years, are being severely altered, degraded, and extinguished through deforestation, extraction, contamination, and plunder. “If the earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence,” Berry wrote, “it is primarily because we have lost our sense of courtesy toward the earth and its inhabitants, our sense of gratitude, our willingness to recognize the sacred character of habitat, our capacity for the awesome, for the numinous quality of every earthly reality.” Thirty-five years later, with global carbon emissions near record highs, the earth does seem to be growing inhospitable. The effects are spiritual as well as physical. Ecological anxiety is deepening, especially for children and teenagers, and faith communities have had to find new strategies to address an existential dilemma without precedent. “The psychological breakdown and despair around climate change is so strong that young people are studying for eco-anxiety ministry,” says Tucker. “The next generation gets that climate change is real and caused by human activity. They don’t have to be convinced. Along with religious communities, they are advocating for eco-justice — a concern for the most vulnerable being affected by climate change.” _At the Center for Earth Ethics_ (CEE), **Kareena Gore teaches** that faith leaders can approach the climate crisis in three main ways: **prophetic, pastoral, and practical.** “Prophetic means telling the truth about real value versus GDP-measured value, and about costs that aren’t being counted. Pastoral deals with issues of grief and anxiety as climate impacts — floods, fires — increase. The practical can be things like faith communities greening their land, buildings, and schools and pressuring banks to stop financing fossil fuels.” **Polls show that most religious Americans see climate justice as a political priority, and new expressions of eco-spirituality have appeared, such as the Wild Church movement, in which congregants meet in natural settings, where a pastor might cite the book of Job (“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you, or speak to the earth, and it will teach you”) or repeat a quote attributed to the conservationist John Muir, who fought for the creation of national parks (“I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God than in church thinking about the mountains”).** _“Churches are looking to new ways of being both relevant and in their best forms spiritually,” says Tucker. “The hope is that that ecological anxiety is going to put us back in touch with awe, wonder, and beauty.”_ **>>> A month after Hurricane Ian, as scientists tested the sewage-choked waters of southwest Florida and determined that waterways would be polluted for months, the _Center for Earth Ethics_ hosted a forum at Union Theological Seminary (UTS) on religious freedom for Indigenous people.** >>> **Karenna Gore** , standing in James Memorial Chapel in front of the copse of tall pipes of the Holtkamp organ, opened her remarks by reading the text of a plaque that was to be installed on the seminary grounds, honoring the surroundings as “the homeland and territory of the Lenape people as well as the habitat and dwelling place of the many beings they have been in relationship with.” She then introduced Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, who spoke about his report to the UN General Assembly describing how the nature-based ways of life of Indigenous peoples had been violated by forced displacement, intrusion of industry, and disregard for their spiritual practices. >>> **Betty Lyons,** the CEE advisory board co-chair from the **Onondaga Nation,** spoke of “our sacred relationships to the natural world” and argued that the Indigenous value system — a sense of responsibility, respect, and reciprocity with nature — holds the key to survival for everyone. “We see all living beings as relatives and not merely resources,” she said. “The Creator exists in all living beings.” >>> **Bernadette Demientieff of Gwich’in Nation,** who calls herself a “land, water, and animal protector,” appeared via video from her home in Fort Yukon, Alaska, and expressed anguish over the vote of the US Congress, in 2017, to lease land in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil exploration to feed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. ANWR is one of the last unspoiled areas on the planet, a critical habitat for many animal species, including caribou, waterfowl, and polar bears. Its coastal plains are so hallowed to the Gwich’in that they won’t even set foot on them. “When we were being told we were going to be rich if we opened up our sacred land to oil and gas development,” Demientieff said, “our elders told us we are already rich: rich in our culture, rich in our way of life. And all we have to do is protect it.” Though the Biden administration has suspended the leases, the threat of future development remains, and the pain was audible in Demientieff’s voice. “Our land that we consider extremely sacred is being turned into an oil field,” she said. “Can you imagine a church that you attend, a place that you hold very sacred, being bulldozed over? That is how we feel about this area. This is not a place we built. This is a place we were blessed with. We hold this place to the highest standard. Our connection to the land, water, and animals — it’s all interconnected. There is no one or the other. This is our survival. This is our entire way of life.” >>> **Mona Polacca, a spiritual elder of Hopi, Havasupai, and Tewa lineage,** spoke of the “original instructions” — the ancient teachings of spiritual interconnectivity with creation that have sustained Indigenous people in the Americas for thousands of years — and stated her purpose: “It’s our responsibility as Indigenous people to be gentle reminders to all people about these basic original instructions,” she said. “We made a covenant with the Creator when we first came into this world to live here. We made a promise that we would take care of it. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re making every effort to now be that gentle reminder about that instruction that all people were given — that we are all related, and that our basic survival needs are not any different from each other’s. It’s all the same.” >>> When the program ended, Gore, the speakers, and the audience members exchanged greetings and chatted. Then they made their way down the halls and went outside, where, in the night sky, a waxing crescent moon hung over the spired city, over the churches, mosques, and synagogues, the temples and shrines, and the ancestral land of the Lenape, where bears and wolves once roamed; and for a moment it was possible to believe that it was all the same, that all religions had something to contribute, and that a re-enchantment with creation was within reach, the one humanity needed in order to tackle the great work ahead. >>> **[For further resources, see:](https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/can- worlds-religions-help-save-us-ecological-peril)** 1\. Thomas Berry, The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spirituality and Religion in the Twenty-First Century, 2. Kimberley Patton and Paul Waldau, A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science and Ethics, 3. Online Courses in Religion and Ecology. **This article appears** in the [Winter 2022-23 print edition of Columbia Magazine](https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/can-worlds-religions-help- save-us-ecological-peril) with the title “Sacred Trees, Holy Waters.” URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/30/columbia-magazine-can-the- world%e2%80%99s-religions-help-save-us-from-ecological-peril-part-2/>

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COLUMBIA MAGAZINE ~ Can the World’s Religions Help Save Us from Ecological Peril? Part 1
by Frack Check WV: Duane Nichols 29 Jan '23

29 Jan '23

# [COLUMBIA MAGAZINE ~ Can the World’s Religions Help Save Us from Ecological Peril? Part 1](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/29/columbia-magazine-can- the-world%e2%80%99s-religions-help-save-us-from-ecological-peril-part-1/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/2B3D0C7A-E2E7-4B84-8183-790632524286-300x193.jpg)](… content/uploads/2023/01/2B3D0C7A-E2E7-4B84-8183-790632524286.jpeg) Mother Nature has many lessons for us! DGN **A spiritual connection to nature is essential for environmental recovery** From the [Article “Sacred Trees, Holy Waters” in Columbia Magazine](https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/can-worlds-religions-help- save-us-ecological-peril), Winter Edition 2022 - 2023 **On the morning that Hurricane Ian approached southwest Florida with 155-mile-per-hour winds and a twelve-foot storm surge, Karenna Gore ’00LAW, ’13UTS stood at a lectern in Brooklyn Borough Hall and invoked the divine. Addressing a local interfaith conference on preparing for climate emergencies, Gore said, “When I was a child, my own faith tradition taught me that God looks directly at us through the eyes of someone who is in need: someone who is hungry, thirsty, needs clothes — much like someone affected by a disaster.”** **She acknowledged recent flooding in Pakistan and Puerto Rico, noting that “those who suffer the most from this crisis have done the least to cause it.” She equated climate action with social justice and summoned the civil-rights movement, which inspired people of all religions to transcend their differences and answer a call of conscience. “This,” Gore told the assembled, “is what must happen today around the climate crisis.”** **Gore is the director of the Center for Earth Ethics (CEE), which she founded in 2015 at the Columbia-affiliated Union Theological Seminary (UTS). Its purpose, she says, is to “draw on the world’s faith and wisdom traditions to confront the ecological crisis.” Poised at the crossroads of spirituality, social justice, and environmentalism, CEE is part of a movement known as “religion and ecology,” a new academic field — and a growing moral force in society — that brings people into closer communion with the planet and focuses on honoring and protecting the earth’s life systems. The center grew out of a conference called Religions for the Earth, which Gore and one of her mentors, Kusumita Pedersen ’76GSAS, who is co-chair of the Interfaith Center of New York, organized in conjunction with the 2014 UN Climate Summit.** Gore, who had just gotten her master’s from UTS, was interested in the root causes of the climate problem. She identified two: the widespread belief that humans are separate from, and superior to, all other beings; and a value system that favors profit over environmental health. Wanting to elevate voices outside this worldview, Gore, for CEE’s first academic course, invited a range of Indigenous speakers, including Betty Lyons (Onondaga Nation), the president of the American Indian Law Alliance and co-chair of the CEE advisory board; and Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Cheyenne River Lakota Nation), founder and host of First Voices Radio, who spoke eloquently of the earth as something alive, energy-filled, and communicative. **“We are nature. The air in our lungs, the water we drink, the soil, the sunshine that nourishes the life forms that comprise the food that we eat. "** “Throughout human history,” Gore told the clergy in Brooklyn, “people have understood their relationship with water, wind, fire, and land in the context of their relationship with God or some divine being or beings. This is deep, it’s ancient, sometimes it is unnamed, but it is not to be underestimated.” She echoed UN Secretary General António Guterres, who days earlier had called the climate crisis “a case study in moral and economic injustice” caused by “a suicidal war on nature.” “We are nature,” Gore said. “The air in our lungs, the water we drink, the soil, the sunshine that nourishes the life forms that comprise the food that we eat. We all depend on the health of the biosphere.” As climate-linked weather events intensify and carbon emissions continue to rise globally, faith-based communities and institutions are emerging as pivotal players in the bid for environmental salvation. In 2019, CEE became an affiliate center of the Earth Institute, which is now part of the Columbia Climate School, and brings a moral and spiritual angle to discussions conducted largely among scientists, engineers, businesspeople, lawyers, and policy wonks. In November 2021, the Biden administration formally recognized “Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge” — ways of life that foster respect and care for the environment — as vital to federal science policymaking. This past August, the National Association of Evangelicals, representing a religious group traditionally opposed to climate action, released a hundred- page report laying out the biblical basis for ecological protection, stating, “We worship God by caring for creation.” And a wave of legislation worldwide has granted legal personhood to entities like the Whanganui River in New Zealand, seen by Indigenous Whanganui Maori tribes as a living being. Such laws allow human advocates for these ecological systems to sue for protection on their behalf. Inside Borough Hall, Gore emphasized the need to consider all the planet’s inhabitants in any climate discussion. “A friend of mine from the Church of Sweden, Reverend Henrik Grape, said once that in any room where decisions are being made about climate policy there should be three empty chairs, representing those who are most impacted and least likely to have a voice: the poor, future generations, and all nonhuman life,” Gore said. “If we had been making decisions with those three perspectives in mind, we would not be in this perilous situation. “Realizing this, we can see the connection between Dr. King’s famous statement that ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’ and the words of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh when he said that ‘we are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.’” By the end of the conference, at around 3:15 p.m., a thousand miles away, Hurricane Ian made landfall on the barrier island of Cayo Costa, Florida, as one of the strongest storms ever to strike the United States. “The ecological situation requires the moral force of all the world’s religions,” says Mary Evelyn Tucker ’85GSAS, a historian of religion who holds a dual appointment at the Yale School of the Environment and the Yale Divinity School. She and her husband, John Grim, lead the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and are recognized as the founders of the field, which began as a series of conferences at Harvard in the late 1990s and today includes sixteen graduate programs nationwide. “We all understand that the awe and wonder of the natural world is something that captivates every human — we see it expressed in art, music, poetry — and if we leave that aside, we lose a sense of motivation, joy, engagement, and all the dynamizing energy that’s needed for ecological movements,” Tucker says. “The energy must come from a love of the earth community in all its complexity and beauty.” There’s no shortage of energy to be tapped. Of the world’s eight billion people, some 85 percent claim religious affiliation. According to the Pew Research Center, Christians are the largest group (2.3 billion), followed by Muslims (1.8 billion), Hindus (more than a billion, around the same number as Confucians, who, says Tucker, are often not counted as a religious group), and Buddhists (500 million). Another 400 million practice traditional folk religions. There are fourteen million Jews, and millions of others follow such faiths as Sikhism, Bahaism, and Jainism. Tucker notes that all the world’s religions have ecological components, from Hindu principles of asceticism and loving devotion toward nature to Buddhist concepts of interconnection and compassion to Jainism’s emphasis on nonviolence to Western traditions valuing creation. And she observes that all religions are broadening their teachings and practices in order to meet the ecological challenge. “Their theologies need to be expanded,” she says. “We call it retrieval, reevaluation, and reconstruction. All religions have something to offer, and that’s really the foundation for this new and emerging field.” The field, like Tucker, has deep Columbia roots. Tucker was raised on Claremont Avenue, in the shadow of Riverside Church. Her grandfather, the historian Carlton Hayes 1904CC, 1909GSAS, 1929HON, taught at Columbia from 1907 to 1950 and was ambassador to Spain during World War II. She lived steps from UTS, at 121st and Broadway, where Reinhold Niebuhr ’54HON preached a gospel of social justice. And across Broadway stood Corpus Christi Church, where Father George Barry Ford counseled Thomas Merton ’38CC, ’39GSAS and Wm. Theodore “Ted” de Bary ’41CC, ’53GSAS, ’94HON when they considered becoming Catholics. Tucker came of age during the civil-rights movement and the war in Vietnam, and after graduating from Trinity College (now Trinity Washington University) in 1971, she set out for East Asia, starting with teaching in Japan. “My disillusionment with Western assumptions was so great that my attraction to a culture that was so different was very strong, and it absolutely transformed my life,” Tucker says. “Buddhism has this tremendous sense of the interdependence of all life, and that’s where I started.” She returned two years later and got her master’s in world religions at Fordham under Thomas Berry, a Catholic monk, cultural historian, and scholar of Eastern and Indigenous religions whose passionate, prophetic writings on what he termed “human-earth relations” inspired a generation of environmentalists. For her doctorate at Columbia, Tucker studied Confucianism with de Bary. “To me, Confucianism has an even more comprehensive philosophy,” she says. “The human is not an isolated individual but is embedded within concentric circles of family, friends, school, society, politics, nature, earth, and the cosmos itself. The most important thing is the triad: cosmos, earth, and human. The human completes this trinity of universe processes, earth fecundity, and human creativity.” Tucker’s two mentors, de Bary and Berry, met on a ship to China in the late 1940s — de Bary was starting a Fulbright scholarship at Beijing University, Berry was a teacher at Fu Jen Catholic University in Beijing — and both were attracted to Chinese religious traditions, especially Confucianism. De Bary went on to pioneer the field of Asian studies in the West, while Berry preached an ethics based on a deep regard for the natural world. In the 1960s, they started the Oriental Thought and Religion Seminar (later the Asian Thought and Religion Seminar) at Columbia. For both scholars, as for Tucker, Confucianism was central. “We were all looking for something beyond the West — a sense of how culture engages people in a feeling of meaning and purpose,” Tucker says. In the late 1970s, de Bary arranged for Berry to teach one of the country’s first courses in Native American religion at Barnard. Tucker eagerly attended those classes, and she and Grim (who were married by Berry in 1978) became Berry’s editors and continued to promote his work after his death in 2009 at age ninety-four, including the book and Emmy-winning PBS film Journey of the Universe. They also coauthored Thomas Berry: A Biography, published by Columbia University Press in 2019. “Berry saw how the destruction of the environment for massive materialism had spread around the world, and how our institutions — politics, education, economics, and religion — are invested in this economic system and therefore inadequate to address the problem,” Tucker says. As Berry wrote, “The reenchantment with the earth as a living reality is the condition for our rescue of the earth from the impending destruction that we are imposing upon it … Our sense of reality and of value must consciously shift from an anthropocentric to a biocentric norm of reference.” If Berry helped plant the seeds of the movement that Tucker and Grim brought forth, it was Martin S. Kaplan ’61CC who delivered the rain. In 1996, Kaplan, a Boston-based lawyer and partner at the firm of Hale and Dorr, was thumbing through the Harvard Gazette when he saw an announcement for a series of three conferences being held at Harvard Divinity School on world religions and ecology, organized by Tucker and Grim. Speakers would discuss Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism. Intrigued, Kaplan decided to attend. One of the speakers was Thomas Berry. “His entire philosophy just blew me away,” Kaplan says. “I was especially taken with his quiet passion for considering the entire earth as a living organism. He was gentle and compelling; you felt his presence. You sensed this was a person of great moral power.” At the conference, Kaplan, exhilarated by what he’d heard, introduced himself to Tucker and told her he was the managing trustee of the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, a philanthropic fund with an environmental bent. He invited Tucker to a grant-making meeting, and the trustees were so impressed with her pitch that they provided money to increase the number of conferences on religion and ecology from three to ten. Those conferences marked the birth of the field. "To make progress on climate you need more than policy and science — you need a commitment to human life and all the life on the planet." Kaplan, who received the Columbia Alumni Medal in 1992 and the John Jay Award in 2000, has directed support to a host of Columbia initiatives, including the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (known today as the Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability), which led to the creation of Columbia’s Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology. But when it came to dealing with climate change, Kaplan, like Tucker and Gore, felt that something was missing from the conversation. “To make progress on climate you need more than policy and science — you need a commitment to human life and all the life on the planet,” Kaplan says. “That’s essential. We want this idea to be accessible to the people I call the ministering class — current and future clergy — so that they speak of these issues in their religious events and not just on Earth Day. They need to do this in a meaningful fashion and on a continuing basis.” On September 26, 2009, three months after Berry’s death, a memorial service for the self-described “geologian” was held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The service featured readings from Thomas Aquinas, who wrote that “the whole universe together participates in and manifests the divine more than any single being whatsoever,” a key idea for Berry. Toward the end of the service, Kaplan ascended to the high pulpit. The Thomas Berry Foundation, founded in 1998 by Berry, Tucker, Grim, Kaplan, and Berry’s sister, Margaret Berry, had honored Kaplan with the 2009 Thomas Berry Award, and now Kaplan offered an address on the “Great Work,” as Berry called it, of reestablishing our connection with nature. “Berry believed that we must expand the scope of religious and humanist concerns to embrace the larger life systems and all species of the planet,” Kaplan told the gathering. “As a lawyer, I am intrigued by Berry’s call for a broader vision of rights.” Kaplan then quoted Berry’s statement that there can be no sustainable future “unless these inherent rights of the natural world are recognized as having legal status.” For the past twenty-five years, Kaplan has been trumpeting Berry’s message. At a UN panel on religion and the environment held in 2000, Kaplan examined the crucial passage in the book of Genesis in which God tells humans to “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” The King James Version translates the Hebrew word radah as “have dominion,” implying domination — resulting, as Berry saw it, in our indifference to nonhuman life, since it has no inherent rights. “Only in this detached situation,” Berry wrote, “could we have felt so free to intrude upon the forces of the natural world.” **As Kaplan told the UN panel, “dominion” is just one translation. “Another is ‘stewardship,’ which is very different,” he says. “Stewardship means that, given our power, we humans have a responsibility to take care of God’s creation.”** This idea, radical in its implications, has reached the highest echelons of organized religion. In 2015, Pope Francis published Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home, a 184-page encyclical that blends science and spirituality and warns of “desolation” if humanity does not change its ways. Says Gore, “One of the main contributions of Laudato si’ — although not explicit — was to unravel that toxic theology of seeing dominion as this domination. Pope Francis says there has been a mistake in interpretation.” The encyclical, which environmentalist Bill McKibben called “probably the most important document yet of this millennium,” was extolled in eco-spiritual circles. Through CEE, Gore convened an interfaith working group around Laudato si’ with Rabbi Burton Visotzky, a professor of interreligious studies at Jewish Theological Seminary, also a Columbia affiliate. Visotzky brought in theologian Hussein Rashid ’96CC, who was exploring similar questions from a Muslim ethical standpoint. The scholars, who had spun off from a larger interfaith study group at Fordham Law School, decided to examine the issue of water as a way to focus their work, and for World Water Day 2017 they published a series of tracts around water-related themes. That got them invited to the Vatican to meet with the pope about Laudato si’. “For me, reading the encyclical made me think of an eighth-century figure named Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq,” says Rashid, who teaches at the New School and UTS. “There’s a work attributed to him where he says for a believer there are four relationships that keep you in balance: to God, to yourself, to other people, and to the rest of creation. My understanding of what Pope Francis was doing really resonated with that.” It was a far cry from another influential Vatican tract, one that Gore learned about as a student at UTS and which supplied an “aha” moment that reshaped her understanding of current social and environmental iniquities. On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull that was part of a body of papal edicts known as the doctrine of discovery. These statements decreed that the lands encountered by Columbus on his voyages, populated by “Saracens, infidels, or pagans,” were Spain’s for the taking. “They proclaimed that the original peoples of Africa and the Americas were merely part of the flora and fauna to be ‘conquered, vanquished, and subdued,’” says Gore, adding that this was occurring just after the crusades against Muslims and during the expulsion of Jews from Spain. “Racism, colonization, exploitation — it all ties together. The military forces and economic interests of those European nation- states were being wed to theology that sees certain people as being subhuman, an interpretation that can be heard in the white Christian nationalism of today.” **TO BE CONTINUED AS “PART 2” ….** **This article appears in the[Winter 2022-23 print edition of Columbia Magazine with the title "Sacred Trees, Holy Waters."](https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/can-worlds-religions-help- save-us-ecological-peril)** URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/29/columbia-magazine-can-the- world%e2%80%99s-religions-help-save-us-from-ecological-peril-part-1/>

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United Nations Foundation Seeks to Protect Species Diversity Globally
by Frack Check WV: Diana Gooding 28 Jan '23

28 Jan '23

# [United Nations Foundation Seeks to Protect Species Diversity Globally](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/28/united-nations-foundation- seeks-to-protect-species-diversity-globally/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/D08DC6F5-7568-477C-B257-E3C8E4E0D014.jpeg)](https:/… content/uploads/2023/01/D08DC6F5-7568-477C-B257-E3C8E4E0D014.jpeg) The Fourth Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) covered 2011 to 2020 **Biodiversity Explained: Facts, Myths, and the Race to Protect It** From the [Blog Article by M. J. Altman, United Nations Foundation](https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/biodiversity-explained-facts- myths-and-the-race-to-protect-it/), January 4, 2023 **Biodiversity is the interconnectedness of all forms of life on our planet — is in jeopardy as ecosystems and habitats degrade and disappear. On the heels of a landmark global agreement to protect our lands, ocean, and waters, discover what biodiversity really means and what it will take to preserve life on Earth.** From microscopic fungi to mega forests, “biodiversity” is the collective term for the variety of life on Earth in all its forms. It is 4.5 billion years of evolution, embodied. Biodiversity is responsible for our food, our soil, our water, our weather, even the air we breathe. Yet despite being a crucial foundation for our collective future, biodiversity is often lost amid conversations on climate change — until recently. In December 2022, leaders from nearly 200 nations adopted a landmark UN agreement to reverse nature’s rapid decline before it’s too late. Known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, it calls for protecting 30% of the planet’s land, ocean, and inland waters and includes 23 other targets to help restore and protect ecosystems and endangered species worldwide. **§§§ ~…Here are 12 things you should know:** **1\. Biodiversity is more than just the total number of species on Earth.** “It is actually more complex than that,” Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, the late ecologist, told the United Nations Foundation in 2018. “It’s about the genetic diversity within species, the diversity of habitats, and the large biological units known as biomes.” This includes the interactions that occur between species within ecosystems – primordial relationships that shape our environment in countless, often unseen ways. “Without biological diversity, there is no other life on Earth — including our own,” he explained. “Even though we are often oblivious to it, this diversity of life is what provides clean water, oxygen, and all other things that end up being part of our diet, as well as clothing and shelter. It provides a lot of psychological benefits too, which are not much appreciated.” **2\. We’re only just beginning to understand biodiversity’s influence and importance in our lives.** Earth’s many ecosystems rely on a delicate, complicated, and fascinating tangle of life that, in many ways, remains a mystery. In fact, the term “biological diversity” wasn’t introduced to the scientific community until 1980 in a research paper on species loss by Dr. Lovejoy. Scientists still haven’t identified all forms of life on the planet. New species are discovered every year. Take kelp, for example. These undersea forests provide sustenance and shelter for marine species like chinook salmon, which, in turn, serve as a staple food for orcas. And kelp also absorb excess carbon dioxide, which can help mitigate climate change. **3\. The planet’s biodiversity holds enormous, untapped potential for medical and scientific breakthroughs.** Lovejoy described each species on the planet as a unique set of solutions for a particular set of biological problems. “Whoever would have thought a bacterium from a Yellowstone hot spring would revolutionize forensic and diagnostic medicine, make the human genome project possible, and confer benefits in the trillion-dollar range?” he wrote as a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation, citing a previously unknown and seemingly inconsequential microbe discovered in 1966 that revolutionized genetic testing and immunization development, including the COVID-19 vaccine. Today, one-fourth of all modern medicines are derived from tropical plants, and 70% of all cancer drugs are natural or bio-inspired products. In the past decade, researchers in Nova Scotia found a soil fungus that can disarm antibiotic-resistant bacteria — a discovery that could transform the fields of medicine and agriculture. The possibilities for discovery and innovation are monumental. **4\. Climate change and biodiversity are interconnected.** Climate change is causing biodiversity loss, and biodiversity loss is causing climate change. Here’s how: Destroying and degrading ecosystems release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than burning fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the consequences of burning fossil fuels — rising global temperatures, an increase in wildfires, and ocean acidification, to name a few — are devastating to the planet’s biodiversity by destroying habitats and animals alike. In late 2019 and early 2020, for example, more than 60,000 koalas were killed by wildfires in Australia so massive that nearly 3 billion species died or were displaced. Earlier this year, the Australian government officially listed koalas as an endangered species. At COP 27 last year, world leaders reached a historic agreement to create a “loss and damage” mechanism to support vulnerable communities that are already feeling climate change’s disastrous impact, including biodiversity loss and the resulting impact on livelihoods. **5\. Biodiversity can help us adapt to climate change.** The UN considers biodiversity our strongest natural defense against climate change. Land and ocean ecosystems currently absorb 60% of human-caused emissions, and they are the planet’s only way of storing massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Coastal wetlands, for example, protect against storm surges and flooding during extreme weather while also storing carbon dioxide and creating oxygen. According to a joint estimate by the UN Development Programme and the Government of Papua New Guinea, every dollar invested in environmental protection generates more than $2,500 in so-called ecosystem services — water regulation, coastal protection, carbon storage, and other invisible functions that nature provides. It’s one of the reasons that Papua New Guinea launched the first-ever national, independent Biodiversity and Climate Fund to protect its status as one of just 17 “megadiverse” countries. **6\. Less biodiversity means a higher risk of disease.** For decades, the scientific community has warned that biodiversity loss increases the spread of infectious disease. Why? Because extinction upsets the ecosystem in unpredictable ways, and the destruction of natural habitats increases interaction between humans and wildlife. Biodiversity essentially acts as a barrier between humans and animal-borne disease. Species that tend to survive logging, farming, mining, wildlife trade and consumption, and other human activities behind widespread biodiversity loss are often “vectors of disease” like mice and mosquitoes, which host pathogens that are able to make the jump to humans. It’s one of the reasons that cases of Lyme disease in the northeast United States have spiked in recent decades: With fewer mammals to prey on, ticks are increasingly seeking out people. In fact, roughly 75% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic. It’s also why researchers like Dr. Alessandra Nava and her team of virus hunters at Brazil’s Fiocruz Amazônia are tracking the spread of disease in bats, monkeys, and rodents in the world’s largest rainforest. Their goal is to stay a step ahead of future pandemics by better understanding the pathogens contained within the jungle’s creatures before they come in contact with humans — encounters that become more likely as the human footprint expands. **7\. Biodiversity on land depends on biodiversity in water.** Maintaining the ocean’s ecological balance is crucial for protecting biodiversity on land, as well as maintaining our ability to feed future generations. The ocean plays a vital role in regulating the planet’s weather and water and the air we breathe. It is also the planet’s largest source of protein, feeding more than 3 billion people every day who rely on fish as a staple food. Yet the ocean remains a vastly unexplored ecological frontier. While scientists have identified 200,000 marine species, the actual number is estimated to be in the millions. Unsustainable fishing practices, pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction are threatening creatures that may vanish before we even knew they existed. **8\. Our planet’s biodiversity is on the brink.** Some 1 million species are threatened with extinction right now. That’s more than any other time in history, and they’re disappearing at a rate that is 1,000 times the norm. The culprit is the way most humans consume, produce, travel, and live. A 2019 UN report found that we have altered 75% of the planet’s terrestrial environment, 40% of its marine environment, and 50% of streams and rivers. Nearly three-fourths of our freshwater resources are devoted to crop or livestock production, which often means using pesticides, fertilizers, fuels, and antibiotics that pollute our rivers, streams, seas, and soil. Every day we are destroying habitats and degrading massive amounts of soil and water through industrial manufacturing and agriculture while jeopardizing precious natural resources that could be lost forever in our lifetime; in the past two decades, we’ve lost half of the planet’s coral reefs. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest hit a record high last year; some 18% is gone already, with scientists warning that we’re approaching a tipping point toward potential collapse. **9\. Sustainability is the only way forward.** Such irresponsible production and consumption of our natural resources come at a catastrophic cost. We are destroying our planet at an unprecedented rate and losing a vast number of plants, animals, insects, and marine life in the process — to the detriment of our own future. Humanity’s health and well-being are dependent on a biodiverse planet. Fortunately, examples are emerging of a greener, more sustainable way of doing business. Circular economic models are becoming more common as companies realize the economic and environmental value of reducing, reusing, and recycling their supply chain. At the same time, more citizens are demanding sustainable sourcing and socially just labor practices from their consumer goods. In 2022, the founder of the outdoor retailer Patagonia announced plans to invest all of the company’s profits toward combating climate change. “If we have any hope of a thriving planet — much less a business — 50 years from now, it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have,” Yvon Chouinard wrote. **10\. Indigenous communities are crucial.** For thousands of years, Indigenous communities have served as the planet’s most effective environmental stewards. Today, according to the UN, Indigenous people manage more than 20% of the planet’s land and 80% of its biodiversity. “For us, it is not a passion, or a job,” Hindou Ibrahim of the Mbororo tribe in Chad, an SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) Advocate and Indigenous rights activist, told the UN last year. “It is our way of living. And that’s what we have done for all generations.” In 2015, the UN created the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform to ensure their formal participation in global negotiations on climate change. **11\. Conservation is critical.** One of our most promising solutions is preservation. Restoring degraded ecosystems alone could provide up to one-third of the climate mitigation needed to keep the Earth from warming too far above preindustrial levels. This means creating protected areas, curbing extractive capitalism, and restoring the planet’s enormous amount of degraded land. People across the globe are leading efforts to do just that. One inspiring example is Rita Mesquita, who expanded the amount of protected rainforest in Brazil by 76% during her time in the country’s Ministry of the Environment. Today, she oversees programs that encourage residents and visitors alike in Manaus to interact with the surrounding Amazon rainforest. **12\. We need cooperation — and revolution — at all levels.** We need partnerships among countries, communities, consumers, and corporations. And we’re seeing signs of progress every day. In fact, at COP 27, the Governments of Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Indonesia announced an alliance to protect their respective rainforests. Their historic agreement could pave the way for more multilateral action and impact. Coming just a month later, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework represents an enormous and long-awaited step toward halting extinction rates that some scientists are calling an existential crisis akin to climate change. A huge part of the solution to the biodiversity challenge will be transforming how we approach the natural world and our place within it. As Dr. Lovejoy told the UN Foundation in 2018, “There needs to be a major shift in perception from thinking of nature as something with a fence around it in the middle of an expansive, human-dominated landscape … to thinking about embedding our aspirations in nature.” URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/28/united-nations-foundation-seeks- to-protect-species-diversity-globally/>

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Projects Aim to Remove CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) Directly from the Atmosphere
by Frack Check WV: S. Tom Bond 27 Jan '23

27 Jan '23

# [Projects Aim to Remove CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) Directly from the Atmosphere](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/27/projects-aim-to-remove- co2-carbon-dioxide-directly-from-the-atmosphere/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/770AA86B-BABE-4690-8725-7E361B5E0CF5-300x220.jpg)](… content/uploads/2023/01/770AA86B-BABE-4690-8725-7E361B5E0CF5.jpeg) Oxidential Petroleum plans to build the world’s largest “direct air carbon” removal facility **Direct air carbon capture sets up shop in the oilfields of Texas** From the [Article by Ari Phillips, Oil and Gas Watch](https://news.oilandgaswatch.org/post/direct-air-carbon-capture-sets-… shop-in-the-oilfields-of-texas), January 24, 2023 **A subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum is planning to build the world’s largest plant designed to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air in the oil and gas fields of West Texas, with a start-update sometime in 2024.** **Once fully operational, the plant will capture up to 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the capability to scaleup to 1 million metric tons per year. Direct air capture is a nascent technology that extracts CO2 directly from the atmosphere and stores it underground (or uses it to make fizzy drinks or other products).** **While many carbon sequestration experts see the technology as a promising, if expensive, process to remove climate-warming greenhouse gases from the air, major concerns remain about how much of the captured carbon will be pumped back down into the Permian Basin to help Occidental to extract more oil or gas from difficult-to-reach reserves. Critics also wonder how trustworthy the monitoring will be, and how communities and the environment might be impacted by its large-scale application.** **For now, Occidental – one of the largest petroleum producers in the country – has a subsidiary, called 1PointFive, that is taking advantage of billions of federal decarbonization dollars up for grabs under new government subsidies to invest in climate tech solutions to global warming. Meanwhile, Occidental will still be pumping out oil and gas responsible for heating the atmosphere. It will be simultaneously profiting from fossil fuel extraction and carbon capture.** The oil and gas company is also attracting revenue from corporate partners. These partners claim that it is good for the climate that they will be paying Occidental to “offset”– or make up for – their greenhouse gas emissions through direct capture while the partners continue to pollute. For example, the National Football League’s Houston Texans recently announced that they have selected Occidental’s subsidiary as a “preferred carbon removal partner” to offset their flight emissions. Occidental is marketing not only carbon credits but also what they call “net-zero oil” to NFL teams and airlines. According to Occidental, net-zero oil will be attained by removing, via direct air capture, enough emissions to offset all the emissions associated with the oil’s lifecycle from extraction to consumption. **In November, Occidental announced plans for an even bigger direct air capture site in Texas. Occidental has leased 106,000 acres of the 825,000-acre King Ranch, located in South Texas near the Eagle Ford Shale oil and gas field. The company says the land can support up to 30 direct air capture projects that could potentially remove up to 30 million metric tons of CO2 per year, storing up to up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 in the geologic reservoirs below the ranch.** **This storage capacity would be orders of magnitude larger than that provided by the 18 existing direct air capture plants around the world, which capture just 0.01 million metric tons of CO2 each year.** While the latest United National Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate report calls carbon removal essential to meeting climate targets, it also warns of over-relying on notions like direct air capture, which may lull policymakers and perhaps the general public into a false sense of security as to the necessity of deep cuts to emissions now. Anthony R. Kovscek, a professor of petroleum engineering at Stanford University who studies carbon sequestration, worries that the public might reach a different misunderstanding relating to direct air capture. “My most substantial concern about direct air capture is that lack of public understanding of the capture process will lead to negative opinions and the withdrawal of government support before the technology is fully developed and evaluated,” said Kovscek. Currently, initiatives taken through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions are providing the incentive to advance carbon sequestration projects and for businesses to seek out credits. Federal tax credits within the Inflation Reduction Act designate direct air capture projects a $180-per-metric-ton credit, far above the previous $50 allotment. Kovcek believes Occidental’s efforts to be aimed at developing a technology that allows them to use their existing engineering and geosciences expertise as well as sequestration storage space that the company already has rights to use. "If it’s successful, they will have a new business that potentially outlasts hydrocarbon production and performs a necessary service,” said Kovcek. “Because they are trying to develop a new business, I don’t think that what they are doing is greenwashing.” **Greenwashing or not, for the time being direct air capture and carbon sequestration overall face no shortage of obstacles on the road to contributing significantly to decarbonization. The process remains very expensive and energy intensive and could divert resources and attention from renewable energy projects with more clear-cut benefits. Furthermore, the geologic reserves capable of sequestration are often located far away from carbon emitters such as steel plants and might require substantial investment in new pipelines.** Kenneth B. Medlock III, Senior Director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said he believes even if Occidental is not generating truly “net-zero” oil, it is still resulting in a net CO2 reduction, which can buy time for other technologies. “It is an intriguing step in the multitude of options being presented for reducing the net carbon footprint of energy,” Medlock said. “It also can leverage existing infrastructures and business models, which can bode well for its future as the technology develops.” **The Infrastructure Bill designated $3.5 billion towards the establishment of large-scale, regional direct air capture hubs across the U.S. In response to the announcement, the Climate Justice Alliance released a letter calling direct air capture, “an unproven technology that allows fossil fuel extraction and use to continue, resulting in ongoing harm to frontline communities.”** “To have any significant effect on global CO2 concentrations, DAC would have to be rolled out on a vast scale, demanding very large amounts of water and energy, and raising environmental justice concerns about the toxic impacts of the chemical absorbents used in the process,” the letter states. Medlock believes that environmental justice (EJ) concerns about Occidental’s direct air capture are minimal, since the projects are set in remote locations, but that going forward they must be kept front-and-center in the discussion. “As with all new energy infrastructure, EJ assessments are critical to siting and operation,” he said regarding Occidental’s plans. “So, it is incumbent on the industry to internalize EJ asit moves forward, which requires direct engagement with communities and a conscious effort to avoid injustices.” ‍ **Erin Burns, Executive Director of Carbon180** , a climate nonprofit organization focused on carbon removal solutions, said that direct air capture is “an effective means of removing emissions that drive climate impacts and injustice.” But she added that, more broadly: “carbon removal can’t slow efforts to rapidly decarbonize and can't be an excuse to keep using fossil fuels in the US.” **Because of this, Burns believes that federal government should not fund enhanced oil recovery projects in which the sequestered CO2 is used to extract more fossil fuels , such as the Occidental Permian Basin project, and Carbon180 has advocated for its specific exclusion from key federal direct air capture projects.** Burns said trust underpins the success of this field and the ability to achieve gigaton scale carbon removal by 2050. “But before we can build trust in direct air capture, robust monitoring, reporting, and verification – MRV – is a fundamental prerequisite,” Burns said. “MRV is the process of accounting for all the emissions, energy use, environmental and public health impacts associated with a carbon removal project to determine its net climate impact. It tells us if the work was done safely and effectively and provides receipts.” According to Occidental’s agreement with the Houston Texans, the carbon credits purchased will not be linked to any new oil and gas extraction. Instead, the CO2 will be sequestered in reserves not associated with fossil fuel production. However, this agreement is specific to a carbon offset agreement with one NFL team. And it is not clear how much independent verification there will be, or if – in other business agreements or contexts -- Occidental will use captured carbon to inject into shale formations to help extract oil and gas. Aside from the two Texas direct air capture projects, Oil & Gas Watch is also tracking the Sweetwater Carbon Storage Hub, a proposed direct air capture project in Wyoming that would consist of modular carbon capture units capable of removing 12,000 tons of CO2 per year from the air. #######+++++++#######+++++++######## **See Also:** [Direct Air Capture: 5 Things You Need to Know About This Climate Scam](https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2023/01/19/direct-air-capture- climate-scam/) ~ Oakley Shelton-Thomas & Mia DiFelice, Food & Water Watch, January 25, 2023 URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/27/projects-aim-to-remove- co2-carbon-dioxide-directly-from-the-atmosphere/>

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Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now “Z” for Zero
by Frack Check WV: admin 26 Jan '23

26 Jan '23

# [Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now “Z” for Zero](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/26/alphabet-of-climate-change-fr… a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9cz%e2%80%9d-for-zero/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/F03A135B-21BB-496D-A77C-FD855AFE7E35.jpeg)](https:/… content/uploads/2023/01/F03A135B-21BB-496D-A77C-FD855AFE7E35.jpeg) Lake Mead was formed by the Hoover Dam in the Colorado River in AZ & NV **“Z” = Zero …… Lake Mead as Ground Zero of Ground Zero!** >>> From a Compilation of [Articles by Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker Magazine](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elizabeth-kolbert), 11/28/22 **Not long ago, I rented a car in Las Vegas and drove out to Hoover Dam. There I signed up for a tour that began with an educational video.** Construction of the dam, the narrator of the video intoned while grainy black- and-white footage jittered across the screen, entailed pouring more than three million cubic yards of concrete. Put to a different use, this much concrete could pave “a four-foot-wide sidewalk around the earth’s equator.” When the dam was completed, in the middle of the Depression, it “gave new life to the desert Southwest” as well as “to the nation’s spirit.” The Colorado River began backing up behind the massive structure to form Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, which can store enough water to “cover the entire state of Pennsylvania to the depth of one foot.” After the video, my tour group took an elevator down thirty stories, into the dam’s hydroelectric plant. Here we were regaled with more facts: **Hoover Dam is equipped with seventeen generators — eight on the Nevada side of the river and nine across the border, in Arizona. Each generator can produce enough electricity — a hundred and thirty (130 MW) megawatts — to power sixty-five thousand homes. Each contains five miles’ worth of copper wire and a hundred and sixty tons’ worth of electromagnets. The tour ended on an observation deck where an audiotape of yet more dam-related facts — the structure weighs 6.6 million tons and is twelve hundred and forty-four feet long** — was issuing from a loudspeaker. The narrator of the audiotape sounded an awful lot like the narrator of the video. “It has been said that in the shadow of Hoover Dam one feels that the future is limitless, that we have in our grasp the power to achieve anything, if we can but summon the will,” he concluded. Then the tape started over. **The Colorado River basin has been called “ground zero for climate change in the United States.”** If this is the case, then Hoover Dam might be described as **ground zero’s ground zero.** Since 1998, the basin has been stuck in a drought; this drought has lasted so long and grown so deep that it’s now routinely referred to as a megadrought. From the observation deck, the drought’s effects are scarily apparent. An abandoned dock lies, in pieces, high above the lake’s edge. Instead of being submerged, the power plant’s four intake towers stick up into the air, like lighthouses. The steep walls of the reservoir, which in pre-dam days formed Black Canyon, are lined with an enormous white stripe — a geological oddity known as the bathtub ring. The ring, composed of minerals deposited by the retreating water, runs as straight as a ruler, mile after mile. At the start of the drought, the stripe was as high as a giraffe. By 2015, it had grown as tall as the Statue of Liberty. This past summer, it had reached the height of the Tower of Pisa. I had wanted to talk about the dam, the megadrought, and the future of the Colorado basin with a representative of the Bureau of Reclamation, which built and still operates Hoover Dam. But when I got in touch with the bureau’s office in Boulder City, Nevada, a town created to house the workers who erected the dam, I was told that no one there was giving interviews. **I was, of course, welcome to take a public tour. I ended up taking two.** On the first, no mention was made of the drought; on the second, I tried to force the issue. I asked the guide whether she got any questions about Lake Mead, which is now only about a quarter full. She said she did, but she wasn’t supposed to answer them. “We’re not to comment too much on it,” she told me. “You know, I haven’t been on the lake at all this year,” she added. “It’s just sad when I go out there. It’s a little depressing. To save my sanity, I don’t go.” Lake Mead used to be lined with boat launches; most of these are now closed. The construction of Hoover Dam was authorized in 1928, just a year after Svante Arrhenius died. The project reflects the same faith in progress that he held to — a faith in humanity’s power to improve on nature. This is still the faith that the Bureau of Reclamation is pushing even as the logic of the dam comes undone. In April, the reservoir dropped so low that one of the intake pipes for Las Vegas, which gets practically all its water from Lake Mead, poked above the surface. In August, the Interior Department announced what’s officially called a Tier 2a shortage; the shortage means that Arizona’s water allotment for next year will be cut by almost two hundred billion gallons and Nevada’s by eight billion gallons. **Owing to the shortage, the dam’s seventeen turbines operate only sporadically.** Following my second tour, I climbed back up to the observation deck for a last look around. It was almost noon, and the desert sun was high overhead. A couple of tour groups came and went as the tape played in the background: “In the shadow of Hoover Dam, one feels that the future is limitless . . . limitless . . . limitless.” What I felt standing in the dam’s shadow was something different. **Climate change isn’t a problem that can be solved by summoning the “will.” It isn’t a problem that can be “fixed” or “conquered,” though these words are often used. It isn’t going to have a happy ending, or a win-win ending, or, on a human timescale, any ending at all. Whatever we might want to believe about our future, there are limits, and we are up against them.** ♦ ~ Published in the print edition of the November 28, 2022, issue of The N _ew Yorker magazine with the headline “A Vast Experiment.”_ #######+++++++#######+++++++####### **[Subject: Lake Mead& Hoover Dam | Scenic Drive Along Shrinking Lake Mead & Lakeshore Drive to the Hoover Dam 4K](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QWuK5AqVsKY) - YouTube** One hour & ten minutes. <https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QWuK5AqVsKY> Scenic driving in Nevada and Arizona through Lake Mead National Recreation Area on Lakeshore Drive along the shrinking Lake Mead to the Hoover Dam in 4K/5K. Along the way we stop at the scenic overlooks and beaches, and see how far Lake Mead's water level has dropped in the last 22 years. We then head to the Hoover Dam, stopping and walking on the Mike O'Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge and soaking in the magnificent views of the Hoover Dam and Colorado River, then driving and walking on the Hoover Dam. (Apologies for the wind noise, filming was done in very windy conditions) >>> **Click here for our complete scenic drive on Northshore Road through Lake Mead National Recreation Area:** <https://youtu.be/xvtmJtNROD0> URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/26/alphabet-of-climate-change-from- a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9cz%e2%80%9d-for-zero/>

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Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now “Y” for Yourself
by Frack Check WV: admin 25 Jan '23

25 Jan '23

# [Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now “Y” for Yourself](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/25/alphabet-of-climate-chang… from-a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9cy%e2%80%9d-for-yourself/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/54762CCF- DFEB-4B20-949A-ADFD4BAF0A15.jpeg)](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/54762CCF-DFEB-4B20-949A-ADFD4BAF0A15.jpeg) You can have a role in the community solar program? Locally & Globaly! **You Are Significant as Climate Change Becomes a Climate Emergency** From the [Article by Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Magazine](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elizabeth-kolbert), November 28, 2022 **So far, average global temperatures have risen by 1.1 degrees Celsius — two degrees Fahrenheit — and the budget for 1.5 Celsius is nearly gone. How hot will it get? Will temperatures climb two degrees Celsius? 2.5? Three?** **A study published a few years ago, by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution, and Yangyang Xu, of Texas A &M, defined a temperature increase of 1.5 C degrees as “dangerous,” an increase of three C degrees as “catastrophic,” and an increase of five C degrees as “unknown, implying beyond catastrophic.”** **A second study, by a group of American and European researchers, determined that, if we were to burn through all known fossil-fuel reserves, global temperatures could rise by as much as eleven degrees Celsius, or twenty degrees Fahrenheit. (How humanity could keep the oil flowing even as the world drowned and smoldered was a question the researchers did not address.)** **There are good reasons to opt for optimism. ([See “narratives.”](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elizabeth-kolbert)) It could be argued that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act this past summer was possible only because so many people believed in a better future.** **At the same time, there are good reasons to wonder whether optimism lies at the heart of the problem. For the last thirty years — more if you go back to 1965 — we have lived as if someone, or some technology, were going to rescue us from ourselves. We are still living that way now.** **“You can’t just sit around waiting for hope to come,” Greta Thunberg observed in a speech scolding E.U. politicians. “Then you’re acting like spoiled, irresponsible children. You don’t seem to understand that hope is something you have to earn.”** #######+++++++#######+++++++######## **See Also:** [West Virginia Environmental Council](https://wvecouncil.org/) URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/25/alphabet-of-climate-change-from- a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9cy%e2%80%9d-for-yourself/>

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Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now “X” for Xcel or Not
by Frack Check WV: admin 24 Jan '23

24 Jan '23

# [Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now “X” for Xcel or Not](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/24/alphabet-of-climate-change-fro… a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9cx%e2%80%9d-for-xcel-or-not/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/C91CDD10-0B04-46EE- BA5D-68FA0D262E39-300x199.jpg)](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/C91CDD10-0B04-46EE-BA5D-68FA0D262E39.jpeg) Looking for the future takes some mighty fine binoculars **“Xcel” Names Outstanding Green or Blue or Brown Things or Not** From the Desk of Duane G. Nichols, FrackCheckWV.net, January 24, 2023 **[XCELPLUS INTERNATIONAL ~ About our company …](https://xcelplusint.com/)** In 1999, XcelPlus was started as a private label distributor for a line of specialty chemicals and lubricants. Along the way, we found reducing energy consumption just wasn’t enough, so we set out to find technologies to help satisfy an increasing demand for energy from waste streams. We discovered ways to make ethanol from garbage, and used biodiesel waste glycerin to make turbine fuels and coal plant fuels. When Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. in 2005, we sought ways to turn the resulting waste into electricity or fuels, including synthetic diesel fuels, gasoline and ethanol. The issue we faced was that technology had not been developed to the commercial and industrial standards we needed. In 2007, we had to suspend our projects. A chance encounter in 2017 changed everything, and since then we have been working diligently to bring our solution to fruition in the form of plasma gasification. We became a public company in 2004 on the OTC Markets under the trading symbol XLPI. [The most recent quote lists the stock price at 6 cents per share.] **We 've been searching for years ~** We spent years searching out and vetting technologies that would improve our quality of life on planet Earth. We consider these to be legacy technologies that will figuratively change the world. We identified a line of energy-reducing lubricants, discovered ways to convert plastics and tires into synthetic diesel fuel, unearthed the technology to turn fuel-injected cars into Flex Fuel vehicles, and created gasifiers that use plasma technologies to dissociate molecules into atoms. Those dissociated atoms are recombined to make syngas. [Such processes generate carbon dioxide, not discussed here.] We’ve already done the hard part, now we can do the innovative part of bringing these new technological solutions to market today. [MISSION STATEMENT](https://xcelplusint.com/about-us/) ~ Using our access to sustainable and innovative technology, we seek to use waste as a resource to provide clean, affordable, pollution-free energy to communities around the world in order to improve the global environment. **We 've Seen the Future of Energy** ~ We have been looking into the future of energy and we are ready to unveil that future right now. Today, the power for electric cars is primarily derived from coal and some energy from natural gas. While cleaner than coal, natural gas is still a polluting energy source. Unless we find new ways to produce clean, sustainable energy – not only for electric cars but other applications – it will be no better than petroleum- powered vehicles. Our technologies can fuel and power the hydrogen highway, electric cars, aircraft, diesel trucks and cars, all while simultaneously using and reducing our world’s waste. Take a look at that future with us. We have developed a better form of energy production. **XCELPLUS PLASMA GASIFICATION OF WASTE ~ 50-Ton-Per-Day Gasifier** We were able to build upon an already solid foundation. We've hired engineers to take a proven, viable technology and propel it to a whole new level. Fifty tons of material from waste streams allows our gasifier to produce up to 5 megawatt of power, 1,900 gallons of diesel fuel, 2,100 gallons of gasoline or ethanol, or about 1,250 to 6,000 kg of green hydrogen. Whatever your energy needs are, we can accommodate you. We will be manufacturing gasifiers and selling them to global customers and Build-Own-Operate (BOO) customers with access to capped-off landfills. [NOTE ADDED ~ The claims above of subject to verification. The claim is that XcelPlus provides “green” technology. This conventionally means that no carbon dioxide or methane will be emitted. What to believe Xcel or Not? DGN] URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/24/alphabet-of-climate-change-from- a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9cx%e2%80%9d-for-xcel-or-not/>

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Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now “W” for Weather
by Frack Check WV: admin 23 Jan '23

23 Jan '23

# [Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now “W” for Weather](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/23/alphabet-of-climate-change- from-a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9cw%e2%80%9d-for-weather/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/08EB5151-DC5D-4CD0-874E-602D8384C104-300x300.jpg)](… content/uploads/2023/01/08EB5151-DC5D-4CD0-874E-602D8384C104.jpeg) Predictions from the IPCC Report ~ Click to expand this graph **WHAT? ~ Whether the Weather is Winding for Wicked Wretchedness?** >>> Adapted from the [Article by Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker Magazine](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elizabeth-kolbert), November 28, 2022 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tracks weather-related disasters in the U.S. that cause more than a billion dollars’ worth of damage. According to NOAA, in the nineteen-eighties the U.S. saw an average of three such disasters per year. In the nineteen-nineties, the average was five per year; in the two-thousands, it was six; and in the twenty-tens it jumped to twelve. (The figures have been adjusted for inflation.) In 2020, a record-shattering twenty-two disasters costing more than a billion dollars struck the country. This year is nearly on pace to match that record, with fifteen such disasters by October, including Hurricane Ian, which is likely to prove one of the most expensive storms in American history. Adam B. Smith, a NOAA researcher, has written that a disastrous number of disasters “is becoming the new normal.” The rise is partly a function of more people living in vulnerable areas, such as floodplains. But increasingly it’s a function of climate change. **In the future, the costs may climb steeply or they may climb precipitously. All our infrastructure has been built with the climate of the past in mind. Much of it will have to be rebuilt and then, as the world continues to warm, rebuilt again.** To protect the Houston area (and its many petrochemical plants) from rising seas and storm surges, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is planning to erect a huge system of gates at the mouth of Galveston Bay. The price tag for the project, known as the Ike Dike, is estimated at thirty billion dollars. Norfolk, Virginia, is hoping to stave off the water with a $1.5-billion series of barriers, levees, and tidal gates, and Charleston, South Carolina, is looking to build a billion-dollar flood wall. Some places — large swaths of Miami, for instance — may prove impossible to defend, meaning that real estate now valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars will have to be written off. #######+++++++#######+++++++######## **~. ~. The Accelerating Frequency of Extreme Weather ~. ~.** From an [Article by Carmen Ang, Visual Capitalist](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-accelerating-frequency-of- extreme-weather/), January 13, 2022 _The world is already witnessing the effects of climate change._ A few months ago, the western U.S. experienced one of the worst droughts it’s seen in the last 20 years. At the same time, southern Europe roasted in an extreme heatwave, with temperatures reaching 45°C (113°F)in some parts. But things are only expected to get worse in the near future. Here’s a look at how much extreme climate events have changed over the last 200 years, and what’s to come if global temperatures keep rising. **A Century of Warming & More of Same Going Forward** The global surface temperature has increased by about 1°C (1.8°F) since the 1850s. And [according to the IPCC](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Full_Report.pdf), this warming has been indisputably caused by human influence. **As the global temperatures have risen, the frequency of extreme weather events have increased along with it. Heatwaves, droughts and extreme rainstorms used to happen once in a decade on average, but now:** Heatwaves are 2.8x more frequent Droughts are 1.7x more frequent Extreme rainstorms are 1.3x more frequent **By 2030, the global surface temperature is expected to rise 1.5°C (2.7°F) the Earth’s baseline temperature, which means that:** Heatwaves would be 4.1x more frequent Droughts would be 2x more frequent Extreme rainstorms would be 1.5x more frequent **The Ripple Effects of Extreme Weather** **Extreme weather events have far-reaching impacts on communities, especially when they cause critical system failures.** Mass infrastructure breakdowns during Hurricane Ida this year caused widespread power outages in the state of Louisiana that lasted for several days. In 2020, wildfires in Syria devastated hundreds of villages and injured dozens of civilians with skin burns and breathing complications. As extreme weather events continue to increase in frequency, and communities become increasingly more at risk, sound infrastructure is becoming more important than ever. [The importance of net-zero projects cannot be over emphasized. [WiN = When is Now!](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Full_Report.pdf)]. URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/23/alphabet-of-climate-change-from- a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9cw%e2%80%9d-for-weather/>

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Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now ”V” for Vehicles
by Frack Check WV: admin 22 Jan '23

22 Jan '23

# [Alphabet of Climate Change from A to Z, Now ”V” for Vehicles](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/22/alphabet-of-climate-chang… from-a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9dv%e2%80%9d-for-vehicles/) [![](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp- content/uploads/2023/01/527E2E84-CFAD-4400-B553-C055AFA7D6C4-300x192.jpg)](… content/uploads/2023/01/527E2E84-CFAD-4400-B553-C055AFA7D6C4.jpeg) The term “tipping point” is applied here to Archimedes lever in contrast to tipping points in which ice melting accelerates beyond expectations **Current Climate: Tipping Points To Net Zero, Smarter Train Tracks And Greenland’s Accelerating Melt** >>> From the [Forbes Article by Alex Knapp & Alan Ohnsman](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2023/01/21/current-climat… tipping-points-to-net-zero--smarter-train-tracks-and-greenlands-accelerating- melt/?sh=6d37f4a036f1), January 21, 2023 [This information is from the **“Current Climate” from Forbes** , which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. [Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.](https://www.forbes.com/newsletter/currentclimate/)] Ancient Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes is said to have one said, “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world” – highlighting the power of simple machines to magnify effort. This principle is limited to ancient Greece. **This week, a[report presented to the World Economic Forum](https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/The-Breakthrough- Effect.pdf) meeting at Davos argues that there are points like this that can accelerate the world’s transition to an economy that’s built around more sustainable principles in order to slow climate change. The researchers behind the report identified three potential “tipping points” that can be pushed in order to accelerate some of these changes.** 1\. The first is the **transition to electric vehicles** , as “government policies and better infrastructure increasingly [are] making electric vehicles more attractive than petrol and diesel cars,” according to a press release around the report. 2\. A second tipping point is swapping out **methods of producing ammonia for fertilizers** in a manner that’s more sustainable, which the researchers say could have a side benefit of bringing down the costs of green hydrogen. 3\. The third tipping point is moving towards more **alternatives to animal- based proteins** , which could help reduce emissions from livestock farming and slow down rates of deforestation. All of these areas, the report argues, can produce ripple effects that reach further into the economy in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “This non-linear way of thinking about the climate problem gives plausible grounds for hope,” the report’s lead author aid in a statement. “The more that gets invested in socioeconomic transformation, the faster it will unfold – getting the world to ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions sooner.” **The Big Read ~ Greenland Ice Sheet Warmest In At Least 1,000 Years As Scientists Warn Melting Ice Will Accelerate Sea-Level Rise** Recent temperatures in Greenland’s ice sheet—one of the primary culprits behind rising seas—were the warmest they’ve been in at least 1,000 years, according to a new report, as scientists warn the melting of Greenland’s ice could threaten coastal communities around the world. [Read more here.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/01/18/greenland-ice- sheet-warmest-in-at-least-1000-years-as-scientists-warn-melting-ice-will- accelerate-sea-level-rise/) **More Concerns for Our Earth** Human-caused light pollution has made the night sky nearly 10% brighter each year, according to new research, obscuring astronomical observations and posing a threat to migrating birds that rely on the position of stars and the moon to travel. Nearly two-thirds of coral reef shark and ray species worldwide are threatened with extinction, [reports a new study](https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2023/01/17/most- coral-reef-sharks-and-rays-may-be-at-risk-of-extinction/?sh=1770e5713c74). **Sustainability Deals Of The Week ~ ~ ~** **Durable Batteries:** California-based Noon Energy has raised a $28 million series A round, which is geared towards growing its team and accelerating the commercialization of its carbon-oxygen battery for long-term energy storage. **Carbon Removal:** Financial services firm Rothschild & Co has entered into a multi-year agreement with French startup NetZero to purchase carbon credits for NetZero’s biochar, which sequesters carbon by being mixed with topsoil, which also reduces the need for fertilizers in agriculture. **Electrification:** The city of San Jose has entered into a $489,000 contract with BlocPower to electrify 250 residential buildings. **On The Horizon, Ugggh!** Last week, areas of Northern California featured days worth of rainfall and high winds, causing large amounts of damage to the area. And if sea levels continue to rise, it’s likely that more storms are in the works for the region, according to new research published this week. **Green Transportation Update** When it comes to moving people and goods, even all-electric vehicles can’t match the environmental benefits of trains. And when you think “advanced rail technology,” bullet trains or magnetic-levitation systems might come to mind. But what about the steel rails freight and passenger trains run on? It turns out that machine learning, big data collection and voice-recognition tools that have transformed manufacturing, cars, retail and social media are also being leveraged to make vital rail operations safer and much more efficient. **The Big Transportation Story ~ Cheap, Utilitarian Electric Cars Would Trigger Big Sales Without Subsidies** Dozens of new electric vehicles models are rolling out but most of them are still too pricey for most carbuyers. What if automakers slashed EV prices, weight and battery size and concentrated on the short-range applications electric cars do best? [Read more here.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2023/01/17/cheap- utilitarian-electric-cars-would-trigger-big-sales-without-subsidies/) URL: <https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/01/22/alphabet-of-climate-change-from- a-to-z-now-%e2%80%9dv%e2%80%9d-for-vehicles/>

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