By Bill Walker
Forty percent of all US imports of consumer goods come through the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Most of the merchandise is initially trucked to one of thousands of distribution center warehouses in the Inland Empire of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, where it is sorted and packaged for delivery to American homes and stores.
By Grace van Deelen
Governments around the world are failing to effectively regulate and mitigate harmful emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with a climate warming potential more than 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide, according to research published Friday.
Only 13% of global emissions from methane are covered by existing public mitigation policies, the researchers reported in the journal One Earth.
“Significant and underexplored [methane] mitigation opportunities exist,” the authors wrote.
The research comes on the heels of a report issued Thursday from the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) showing that methane emissions from just 1,100 US landfills have a climate-warming effect equivalent to the yearly emissions of 66 million gas-powered vehicles.
Methane makes up about 12% of US greenhouse gas emissions stemming from human activities, including agricultural operations, fossil fuel extraction and use, waste management practices, and decay of organic waste in municipal solid waste landfills. Agriculture is the largest single US source of methane emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Global methane emissions are currently rising faster than at any point since the 1980s. To try to keep global warming from exceeding the warming limit of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit set by the Paris Agreement, global methane emissions must be reduced by at least 40-45% of 2020 levels by 2030, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
By Ed Rodgers
The manatees found along Florida’s Gulf Coast already face numerous threats to their survival: Boat strikes, red tide, harmful algal blooms, and a loss of the sea grass beds that provide their main food source have taken a toll on the gentle herbivores.
A new study adds to evidence showing that manatees are facing another serious threat: Plastics.
Researchers from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg conducted a study examining the remains of 26 dead manatees from Tampa Bay, Florida, over a 28-month period and found more than 73% of the animals had plastic particles or microplastics in their gastrointestinal systems and 76% of the manatees had some form of plastic in their digestive tracts.
Study co-author Shannon Gowans said the microplastic exposure appears to be coming from concentrations of pollutants in sea grass beds where manatees graze.
“We couldn’t actually look through all of their gut contents so we only sub-sampled a small amount. So, while we found 76% had some plastics there’s a good chance that a lot more had plastics,” Gowans said.
The study found monofilament fishing line was the most common type of plastic found during in the animals.
An Open Letter to: Michael Regan, Administrator; Michal Freedhoff, Assistant Administrator, Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention; and Ed Messina, Office of Pesticide Programs Director, Environmental Protection Agency
The environment needs protection from neonicotinoid-coated pesticidal seeds, which are by far the greatest single insecticide application across the country, covering more than 100 million acres. Fundamental ecosystem integrity, plus the welfare of millions of birds and other animals where the coated seeds are planted, are at risk. You can be the difference makers if you seize the opportunity.
You know, as we NGO-types have recited to you in the past through broadly-supported letters and petitions, that a major body of evidence now shows neonic-coated seeds are the Devil’s bargain. While there may be some effective uses, they are mostly used prophylactically with no assessment of need. And yet they do great harm to essential pollinators, beneficial insects, and farmland birds, while contaminating the environment with their toxins.
In Ontario, Canada, when farmers were compelled to prove they needed to use neonic-coated seeds before being allowed by the provincial government, their use declined by a huge margin with no adverse economic effect.
Neonics have largely been banned in Europe since 2015. But, in the US, their excess production as a result of your agency’s leniency is a waste that resulted in the ongoing tragedy in Mead, Nebraska, where AltEn gathered about 80,000 tons of unwanted neonic-coated seeds in order to distill them for ethanol but instead ending up contaminating the environment to the tune of roughly $100 million in total damages. EPA’s uncritical approval of these seeds enabled the Mead disaster.
Of all the environmental threats in the United States, pesticides are conceptually the easiest to prevent because all the approved products out there resulted from registrations by your agency. But I am not asking you to cancel registrations, I am just asking you to take a closer look at EPA’s interpretation and regulatory issues that have allowed the harms of neonic-coated seeds to spin out of control.
By Keith Schneider
For decades, leading US farm leaders have likened efforts to rein in harmful climate change as attacks on agriculture itself, aligning with oil and gas industry groups to block policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
That stance has slowly been shifting in recent years, and now, fueled by $3.1 billion in federal grants, farm country is poised to shape a new era of “climate-smart” agricultural practices and take a significant role in addressing the dire consequences of a warming planet.
The actions can’t come fast enough. A panel of international scientists warned this month that the world faces a “rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future,” and that the actions implemented over the next few years will have consequences “now and for thousands of years.”
The Biden Administration’s focus on agriculture is just one part of a larger effort to address climate change, but it is a key element. By funding 141 experimental projects, the administration is hoping to push an industry currently responsible for generating 10% of U.S. greenhouse gases, to the front of the nation’s work to reduce carbon emissions.
The first grants from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), for 70 large projects, were awarded in September. A second round of funding, for 71 smaller projects, was awarded in December.
The scope of the climate-smart program is expansive. Grants range from $271,200 to teach climate-friendly practices to immigrant farmers in Iowa to $95 million to encourage grain farmers in 12 Midwest states to use cultivation methods that build soil fertility. In between are projects to expand organic and sustainable agriculture, sequester carbon on pastures where livestock graze, and develop carbon-reducing cultivation methods on farms operated by African Americans and Native Americans.
In all, more than 60,000 farms and 25 million acres of crop and rangeland are involved, with spending reaching all 50 states and Puerto Rico, according to the USDA..
Considerable sums are also earmarked for development of scientific methods to effectively measure whether these climate-smart practices actually meet a program goal of sequestering 60 million metric tons of carbon.
When making the rounds at annual farm conferences across the country over the winter, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack repeatedly declared that a “transformational” new era had opened for U.S. agriculture.
Grant recipients such as Marbleseed, a Wisconsin nonprofit that trains farmers in organic agriculture, say the government support is long overdue. Marbleseed is part of a partnership receiving a $4.5 million, five-year grant to train farmer in 14 Midwest and southern states on how to improve soil fertility.
“We’ve been a tiny voice shouting into the storm for a very long time,” said Tom Manley, Marbleseed program director. “They finally are starting to hear us.”
In California, regulators have rolled out a plan to eliminate “high-risk” pesticides from agricultural and urban use. In Mexico, officials have announced a ban on the widely used weedkiller glyphosate. And in Canada, regulators have implemented some new pesticide restrictions and are reviewing the potential for others.
The moves, which are also playing out in various forms around the United States, have drawn opposition from chemical and farm industry forces. But supporters say they don’t go far enough to adequately protect human and environmental health.
Three University of British Columbia researchers recently published a paper that summarizes what they say is a growing body of evidence showing that pesticides are having harmful ecological impacts beyond what is already well understood, and that these impacts are not being recognized by current testing and regulations. The authors of the paper looked at dozens of studies to draw their conclusions.
The New Lede had a conversation with lead author Risa Sargent about the team’s findings. Sargent is an associate professor of applied biology within the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. She and colleagues reviewed studies from around the world, finding alarming results.
By Sascha Brodsky
On a recent wintry day, Deborah Brown walked along the edge of Lake Washington in Newburgh, New York, and pointed to a sign warning people not to fish because the waters are known to be contaminated with toxic chemicals.
“You wouldn’t want to eat the fish you catch,” Brown, a member of the Newburgh Clean Water Project, told a visitor.
Newburgh is one of many communities around the United States – indeed, around the world – now grappling with the knowledge that their landscapes and lives have come under threat from a class of chemicals known as per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that are being found throughout the environment.
Scientists have linked PFAS exposure to various health problems, including cancer, congenital disabilities, and liver disease. PFAS are known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down easily and accumulate over time. Studies have estimated PFAS to be present in the blood of an estimated 97% of Americans and in hundreds of species of wildlife around the globe.
Last year, the Biden administration announced plans to “research, restrict, and remediate harmful PFAS,” and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has rolled out an array of strategies, including sharply lowering the allowable levels of certain types of PFAS in drinking water. The action is expected to trigger billions of dollars in spending on clean-up efforts across the country.
But for impacted communities, eradicating PFAS contamination – if that is even possible – can’t come fast enough.
By Keith Schneider
The $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act was applauded by a chorus of US organizations and activists enthusiastic about the generous funding earmarked for projects designed to mitigate harmful climate change and improve environmental health.
But some researchers and activists are raising concerns that several provisions of the new law will actually worsen a growing environmental disaster in the nation’s heartland by increasing the tide of farm-related pollution washing into waterways and groundwater.
The sweeping new statute, which includes more than $140 billion in incentives designed to promote renewable fuels and cleaner electricity generation, aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. But in its efforts to promote climate-friendly agriculture, it also promotes corn-fed ethanol refineries and manure-based energy production that could unintentionally supercharge fertilizer and fecal contamination.
The Great Lakes and Midwest regions face nothing short of a water quality emergency, say those on the frontlines. Farming-related contaminants have already fouled thousands of drinking water wells from Minnesota to Missouri, and virtually every waterway in Iowa is degraded with little regulation to rein in the pollutants.
“It’s already a national emergency and a national scandal,” said Emma Schmit, senior organizer in the Midwest for Food and Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group. “When we test our waterways, the main pollutants are E.coli and nitrates and phosphorus from agriculture. These are pathogens and contaminants that can cause serious issues for people. We’re about to give large corporate farms carte blanche to make it worse.”
By Carey Gillam
New research by top US government scientists has found that people exposed to the widely used weed killing chemical glyphosate have biomarkers in their urine linked to the development of cancer and other diseases.
The study, published last week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, measured glyphosate levels in the urine of farmers and other study participants and determined that the presence of the pesticide was associated with signs of a reaction in the body called oxidative stress, a condition that causes damage to DNA. Oxidative stress is considered by health experts as a key characteristic of carcinogens.
The authors of the paper – 10 scientists with the National Institutes of Health and two from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – concluded that their study “contributes to the weight of evidence supporting an association between glyphosate exposure and oxidative stress in humans.” They also noted that “accumulating evidence supports the role of oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of hematologic cancers,” such as lymphoma, myeloma and leukemia.
“Oxidative stress is not something you want to have,” said Linda Birnbaum, a toxicologist and former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. “This study increases our understanding that glyphosate has the potential to cause cancer.”
The study findings come after the CDC reported last year that more than 80% of urine samples drawn from children and adults contained glyphosate. The CDC reported that out of 2,310 urine samples taken from a group of Americans intended to be representative of the US population, 1,885 were laced with detectable traces of glyphosate.
Glyphosate is the most heavily applied herbicide in history, both in the US and globally. One of the best-known glyphosate-based products is Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. Roundup has been used by farmers as well as consumers for more than 40 years. Monsanto has always assured the public and regulators that exposure to the weed killer does not pose a threat to human health, but many independent scientists say there is a wealth of evidence to contradict those assurances.
People are exposed to glyphosate by using products made with the chemical and also by eating food and drinking water contaminated with the pesticide. Scientists have found glyphosate residues in an array of popular foods and in waterways across the US.
Notably, in the new paper, the NIH and CDC scientists said that while their study focused on farmers who were exposed to glyphosate when they sprayed it on fields, they saw similar results in “non-farmers.”
The findings suggest “these effects may apply more broadly to the general population who are primarily exposed through ingestion of contaminated food and water or residential applications,” the study authors wrote.
The study is so significant that it warrants regulatory attention, said some independent scientists.
“This is a top level team of investigators and a highly credible study to which regulators need to pay attention,” said Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist who worked for years at the CDC and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and now directs the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College.
Michael Antoniou, a scientist with the department of medical and molecular genetics at King’s College in London who has been researching glyphosate for years, said the results were “worrying,” with “major health implications.”
By Pam Strayer
Last month, Cornell University professor Rachel Bezner Kerr traveled to Egypt where she addressed scientists and political leaders gathered from around the world at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 27).
Bezner Kerr is a co-director of graduate studies for Cornell’s Department of Global Development and one of the three lead coordinating authors of a chapter about food, fiber and “other ecosystem products” for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Bezner Kerr believes that time is running out when it comes to options for preventing severe climate change impacts on people and nature.
Among her observations, Bezner Kerr is calling for a systemic transformation across the agricultural industry, which is responsible for approximately 33% of carbon emissions, including those associated with nitrogen-based fertilizers.
The New Lede (TNL) spoke with Bezner Kerr upon her return from COP 27 about her views on how and why a food system transformation is needed for climate resilience. The following is an edited and condensed account of the conversation:
TNL: When we think of climate change, why do we also need to think about a sweeping change to our current agricultural system?
Bezner Kerr: That is a key message coming out of the IPCC report–that we need transformational change and for multiple reasons. One, in terms of the food system, right now the way we produce food is heavily reliant on fossil fuels. It’s not something that you can just address one component and then your food system is set.
EWG
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