Opinion | Your Gas Stove Is Bad for You and the Planet – By Justin Gillis and Bruce Nilles – The New York Times

By Justin Gillis and Bruce Nilles

Mr. Gillis is a former New York Times environmental reporter and a contributing opinion writer. Mr. Nilles is a managing director at Rocky Mountain Institute.

• May 1, 2019

CreditAngie Wang

“OAKLAND, Calif. — We have some good news that sounds like bad news: Your gas stove has to go.

We know how you’ll feel reading those words. We used to love cooking with gas, too. But if our society is going to solve the climate crisis, one of the things we must do is stop burning gas in our buildings.

Nobody is going to shed a tear about having to switch to a more efficient furnace or water heater. But people feel emotional about gas stoves, and the gas industry knows it. Seeing this fight coming, the industry is already issuing propaganda with gauzy pictures of blue flames.

What the gas companies will not tell you is that your stove is a danger not just to the world’s climate but also to your own family’s health. We’ll explain in a moment.

First, here’s the larger situation: The need to tackle climate change is beyond urgent. We are running out of time. Within the next decade we need to cut climate pollution in half in the United States, roughly, to do our fair part in preserving a livable planet.”

Quiz: How Does Your Diet Contribute to Climate Change? – The New York Times

Quiz: How Does Your Diet
Contribute to Climate Change?

See how your food choices compare with those of other Americans.

PICK the meals that are most similar to what you ate yesterday. (Be honest!)

Your Questions About Food and Climate Change Answered – The New York Times

How to shop, cook and eat in a warming world.

By Julia Moskin, Brad Plumer, Rebecca Lieberman and Eden WeingartApril 30, 2019

Does what I eat have an effect on climate change?

Yes. The world’s food system is responsible for about one-quarter of the planet-warming greenhouse gases that humans generate each year. That includes raising and harvesting all the plants, animals and animal products we eat — beef, chicken, fish, milk, lentils, kale, corn and more — as well as processing, packaging and shipping food to markets all over the world. If you eat food, you’re part of this system.

How exactly does food contribute to global warming?

Which foods have the largest impact?

Meat and dairy, particularly from cows, have an outsize impact, with livestock accounting for around 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases each year. That’s roughly the same amount as the emissions from all the cars, trucks, airplanes and ships combined in the world today.

In general, beef and lamb have the biggest climate footprint per gram of protein, while plant-based foods tend to have the smallest impact. Pork and chicken are somewhere in the middle. A major study published last year in the journal Science calculated the average greenhouse gas emissions associated with different foods.

Holy Cow!

The average greenhouse gas impact (in kilograms of CO₂) of getting 50 grams of protein from:

Beef

17.7

 

Lamb

9.9

Farmed shrimp

9.1

Cheese

5.4

Pork

3.8

Farmed fish

3.0

Poultry

2.9

Eggs

2.1

Milk

1.6

Tofu

1.0

Beans

0.4

Nuts

0.1

Source: Poore and Nemecek, Science

Opinion | Make America Graze Again – By Margaret Renkl – The New York Times

By Margaret Renkl

Contributing Opinion Writer

• April 22, 2019
• • 11

Ewe lambs grazing.CreditWilliam DeShazer for The New York Times

“NASHVILLE — Just past the intersection of Highway 70 and Old Hickory Boulevard, in the Bellevue section of Nashville, stands a tiny patch of native wilderness. Four acres of pristine woodland tucked behind a condominium complex, the Belle Forest Cave Arboretum is a stone’s throw from restaurants, shops and big-box stores. I’ve passed it probably a hundred times over the years with no idea it was there.

Last week, on a drizzly spring afternoon, I found it. The pocket park provides the perfect habitat for a huge range of plant and animal life: In addition to the usual songbirds, mammals, turtles, and wildflowers that can make a home of even the tiniest wooded opportunity, Belle Forest boasts salamanders and tri-colored bats and at least 39 species of trees.

It is also home to a wide range of invasive plants: bush honeysuckle and Chinese privet and a host of others that pose a serious threat to native plants and the wildlife that depends on them. But clearing this densely woven environment of unwanted vegetation, especially without harming native plants, is a challenge: herbicides would poison the creeks, and heavy machinery would dislodge the trees and compact the soil — if machinery could make it up the steep terrain at all.”

In a Poor Kenyan Community Cheap Antibiotics Fuel Deadly Drug-Resistant Infections – The New York Times

By Andrew Jacobs and Matt Richtel
April 7, 2019,  11

NAIROBI, Kenya — Four days after her toddler’s health took a turn for the worse, his tiny body wracked by fever, diarrhea and vomiting, Sharon Mbone decided it was time to try yet another medicine.

With no money to see a doctor, she carried him to the local pharmacy stall, a corrugated shack near her home in Kibera, a sprawling impoverished community here in Nairobi. The shop’s owner, John Otieno, listened as she described her 22-month-old son’s symptoms and rattled off the pharmacological buffet of medicines he had dispensed to her over the previous two weeks. None of them, including four types of antibiotics, were working, she said in despair.

Like most of the small shopkeepers who provide on-the-spot diagnosis and treatment here and across Africa and Asia, Mr. Otieno does not have a pharmacist’s degree or any medical training at all. Still, he confidently reached for two antibiotics that he had yet to sell to Ms. Mbone.

“See if these work,” he said as she handed him 1,500 shillings for both, about $15.

via In a Poor Kenyan Community, Cheap Antibiotics Fuel Deadly Drug-Resistant Infections – The New York Times

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | NYT comment.

Thank you Andrew Jacobs and Matt Richtel for a disturbing look at drug abuse. There is a temptation to give in to despair. One can take comfort from the fact that our descendents probably will not die from climate change and rapid species extinction, since long before we get to that gloomy future, we will all die from the super bugs we are carelessly creating. The saddest part is that we probably could fix these problems with a Marshall plan for family planning and basic medical and educational services. The superbugs are here, and more are coming. One could look at this looming disaster as a solution, rather than a problem. The biosphere is fighting back to save the world’s species from human over population. If humans don’t come to their senses, we will die off like an algae bloom in a lake, that kills itself by a dumb overpopulaiton that takes away all the oxygen. x David Lindsay Jr. is the author of “The Tay Son Rebellion, Historical Fiction of Eighteenth Century Vietnam” and blogs at TheTaySonRebellion.com and InconvenientNews.wordpress.com. He performs folk music and stories about Climate Change and the Sixth Extinction.

 

These Countries Have Prices on Carbon. Are They Working? – By BRAD PLUMER and NADJA POPOVICH – The New York Times

By BRAD PLUMER and NADJA POPOVICH APRIL 2, 2019

NORWAY

NATIONAL PRICE ON CARBON

ICELAND

CANADA

EUROPEAN UNION

UKRAINE

KAZAKHSTAN

SWITZERLAND

SOUTH

KOREA

LIECHTENSTEIN

LOCAL PRICE ON CARBON

California

SCHEDULED PRICE ON CARBON

JAPAN

Mass., N.Y. and seven other states

CHINA

MEXICO

COLOMBIA

SINGAPORE

CHILE

AUSTRALIA

SOUTH AFRICA

ARGENTINA

NEW ZEALAND

Note: A local price on carbon is only highlighted where no national or European Union rules are in place. Some countries with a national price on carbon also have local-level programs that operate under separate rules. | Source: World Bank
The idea of putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions to help tackle climate change has been slowly spreading around the globe over the past two decades.

This week, Canada’s federal government took the latest step when it extended its carbon-pricing program nationwide by imposing a tax on fossil fuels in four provinces that had declined to write their own climate plans.

More than 40 governments worldwide have now adopted some sort of price on carbon, either through direct taxes on fossil fuels or through cap-and-trade programs. In Britain, coal use plummeted after the introduction of a carbon tax in 2013. In the Northeastern United States, nine states have set a cap on emissions from the power sector and require companies to buy tradable pollution permits.

via These Countries Have Prices on Carbon. Are They Working? – The New York Times

Scotland is betting on tidal energy | PBS NewsHour Weekend – December 2018

As Scotland transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy, it is investing in an unexpected source: tidal currents. Similar to wind turbines, which sit above ground, tidal turbines are one hundred feet below water and use tides instead of wind to generate power. In the first of a two-part series, Hari Sreenivasan reports on what may become the world’s biggest tidal power resource.

via Scotland is betting on tidal energy | PBS NewsHour Weekend

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/scotland-is-betting-on-tidal-energy

Copenhagen Wants to Show How Cities Can Fight Climate Change – The New York Times

By Somini Sengupta      Photographs by Charlotte de la Fuente
March 25, 2019,   189

COPENHAGEN — Can a city cancel out its greenhouse gas emissions?

Copenhagen intends to, and fast. By 2025, this once-grimy industrial city aims to be net carbon neutral, meaning it plans to generate more renewable energy than the dirty energy it consumes.

Here’s why it matters to the rest of the world: Half of humanity now lives in cities, and the vast share of planet-warming gases come from cities. The big fixes for climate change need to come from cities too. They are both a problem and a potential source of solutions.

The experience of Copenhagen, home to 624,000 people, can show what’s possible, and what’s tough, for other urban governments on a warming planet.

The mayor, Frank Jensen, said cities “can change the way we behave, the way we are living, and go more green.” His city has some advantages. It is small, it is rich and its people care a lot about climate change.

via Copenhagen Wants to Show How Cities Can Fight Climate Change – The New York Times

No One Is Taking Your Hamburgers. But Would It Even Be a Good Idea? – by Kendra Pierre-Louis – The New York Times

. . . .    . . .    “The beef with beef
Agriculture was responsible for 9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States in 2016, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. While the sectors with the most emissions were transportation and electricity generation, at 28 percent each, United States agricultural emissions were still greater than Britain’s total emissions in 2014, according to data from the World Bank.

Cows and other ruminants are responsible for two-thirds of those agricultural emissions. Their guts produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that’s more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, though it also dissipates faster. Cows release some of that methane through their flatulence, but much more by burping.

ADVERTISEMENT

Deer, camels and sheep also produce methane. But in the United States, it’s cows that primarily account for the 26.9 percent of methane emissions, more than any other source. Natural gas accounts for 25 percent.

via No One Is Taking Your Hamburgers. But Would It Even Be a Good Idea? – The New York Times

Moving Forward: A Path To Net Zero Emissions By 2070 (Paid Post by Shell From The New York Times)

CHANGING HOW TOMORROW’S TRANSPORT IS FUELED COULD HELP THE WORLD HIT THAT GOAL. EXPLORE THE POSSIBILITIES, IN 3-D AND AUGMENTED REALITY.
Getting a new TV delivered to your doorstep can seem like magic. With a few taps on your smartphone, a global delivery process is set into motion: Trucks, trains, jets and even ships all have a role in whisking your order from factory to warehouse to your front door — and in making and moving raw materials and parts to be assembled in the first place. Yet this impressive feat comes with a catch: Currently, the vast majority of vehicles involved run on fossil fuel, releasing CO2 and other gases that feed climate change.

SEE A 3-D VIEW OF WHAT SOME OF TOMORROW’S TECHNOLOGIES COULD LOOK LIKE BELOW
You are viewing a version of this article with immersive features designed for the web and older devices. The full augmented reality (AR) experience is available only on newer iPhones and iPads using the NYTimes app.

via Moving Forward: A Path To Net Zero Emissions By 2070 (Paid Post by Shell From The New York Times)