The plastics industry has also found itself navigating a tricky global landscape. Some of the world’s biggest oil- and gas-producing countries are aligned with the industry’s position. Nations are aiming to hammer out a draft of the treaty by the end of the year, at the final round of negotiations in South Korea. On top of reining in plastic production, scientists are urging negotiators to aim for a treaty that mandates testing of the chemicals in plastics.
According to the U.N. Environment Program, the world produces more than 430 million metric tons of plastic a year. Two-thirds are short-lived products that soon become waste.
“We will continue to need plastic for specific uses, such as renewable energy technologies,” said Inger Andersen, U.N.E.P.’s executive director. “But there is growing agreement that short-lived and single use can go.” ” . . . . .
“The orphans, three baby females, arrived one after the other at ZooTampa’s manatee hospital.
The first had been found swimming alone in shallow waters, her umbilical cord still attached. Two months later, another was rescued from a canal. Then came the smallest they’d ever gotten: Manatees typically should weigh about 65 pounds at birth, but this one was only 44 pounds.
They were named Calliope, Soleil and Piccolina.” . . .
” . . . . It was 2021, a bad year for Florida manatees. On the state’s east coast, decades of sewage and fertilizer pollution had led to a mass die-off of seagrass, which the animals rely on for food. Wildlife officials tallied hundreds of emaciated corpses. Elsewhere, other threats continued, like collisions with boats and poisoning from red tide, a toxic algae.
No one knows what happened to the mothers of the three babies, who were rescued on Florida’s west coast. Normally, a calf stays with its mother for up to two years, swimming right behind one of her flippers as it learns where to find both food and the warm-water areas it will need to survive cold spells.” . . .
Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.
“Drifting in the channels of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, it’s easy to imagine that you are in some deeply isolated wilderness, far from the motors of man. Even when the city of Mobile, Ala., is visible in the distance.
This teeming oasis of biodiversity — 300 square miles of rivers, bogs, forests, swamps, marshes and open water — is known in Alabama as America’s Amazon. It hums with birdsong and busy insects and gently lapping water. I was last out on this delta in 2018, and what I remember most is the peace of a world that feels untouched by human hands, unharmed by human commerce.
As with all the wild places we have left, however, this breathtaking delta is far from unspoiled. The nine rivers that feed it carry all the usual pollutants we carelessly pour into our rivers, whether directly or through rainwater runoff: silt, microplastics, pesticides, industrial and agricultural waste and more. Like all river deltas, the Mobile-Tensaw Delta acts as a kind of natural filter, but there are only so many contaminants a delta can absorb and still survive.
By Winston Choi-Schagrin and Hiroko Tabuchi Illustrations by Rinee ShahApril 21, 2022
The universal symbol for recycling, known as the “chasing arrows” logo, is stamped on so many things. But that doesn’t mean they’re recyclable.
Manufacturers can print the logo on just about any product. That’s because its main purpose isn’t to say whether it’s recyclable, but to identify the type of plastic it’s made from. (For example, if there’s a “3” in the center, it’s PVC, which most curbside recycling programs don’t accept.) The logo is so widely misunderstood that last year California banned its use on things that aren’t recyclable.
There are efforts to improve the system. But first, the central question:
Why is this so hard?
The rules are confusing.
The unhelpful symbol is just one aspect of a recycling system that is far too confusing to be broadly effective. It puts the burden on individuals to decode a secret language — to figure out not only whether a thing is recyclable, but also if their local recycling program actually accepts it.” . . . .
The fourth article in a series on the causes and consequences of disappearing water.
Along a parched stretch of La Salle County, Texas, workers last year dug some 700 feet deep into the ground, seeking freshwater. Millions of gallons of it.
The water wouldn’t supply homes or irrigate farms. It was being used by the petroleum giant BP to frack for fossil fuels. The water would be mixed with sand and toxic chemicals and pumped right back underground — forcing oil and gas from the bedrock.
It was a reminder that to strike oil in America, you need water. Plenty of it.
An oil site outside Cotula, Texas. Sergio Flores for The New York Times
Today, the insatiable search for oil and gas has become the latest threat to the country’s endangered aquifers, a critical national resource that is already being drained at alarming rates by industrial farming and cities in search of drinking water.
The amount of water consumed by the oil industry, revealed in a New York Times investigation, has soared to record levels. Fracking wells have increased their water usage sevenfold since 2011 as operators have adopted new techniques to first drill downward and then horizontally for thousands of feet. The process extracts more fossil fuels but requires enormous amounts of water.
Together, oil and gas operators reported using about 1.5 trillion gallons of water since 2011, much of it from aquifers, the Times found. Fracking a single oil or gas well can now use as much as 40 million gallons of water or more.
These mega fracking projects, called “monster fracks” by researchers, have become the industry norm. They barely existed a decade ago. Now they account for almost two out of every three fracking wells in Texas, the Times analysis found.
“They’re the newcomers, a new sector that burst onto the scene and is heavily reliant on the aquifers,” said Peter Knappett, an associate professor in hydrogeology at Texas A&M University, referring to fracking companies. “And they could be pumping for several decades from aquifers that are already over-exploited and already experiencing long-term declines.”
Fracking, which is shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, has transformed the global energy landscape, turning America into the world’s largest oil and gas producer, surpassing Saudi Arabia. Supporters say it has strengthened America’s national security and created valuable jobs.
But fracking has long been controversial. The process of cracking the bedrock by injecting chemical-laced water into the ground can lead to spills and leaks and can affect the local geology, sometimes contributing to earthquakes. Critics of fracking say it is an irony that so much water is being diverted to produce fossil fuels, given that the burning of fossil fuels is causing climate change, further straining freshwater resources.
The Times documented the surging water usage by examining an industry database in which energy companies report the chemicals they pump into the ground while fracking. But the database also includes details on their water usage, revealing the dramatic growth.
The problem is particularly acute in Texas, where the state’s groundwater supply is expected to drop one-third by 2070. As the planet warms, scientists have predicted that Texas will face higher temperatures and more frequent and intense droughts, along with a decline in groundwater recharge. Some experts have warned that water issues could even constrain oil and gas production.”
DL: Oh shit. Water wars coming in Texas, and the sooner the better.
Jeovane de Jesus Aguiar was knee-deep in mud in the 100-yard gash he had cut into the Amazon rainforest, filtering brown water out of a pan, when he found the small, shiny flake he was looking for: a mixture of gold and mercury.
Mr. Aguiar had drizzled liquid mercury into the ground in his makeshift gold mine on the eastern edge of the small South American nation of Suriname, just as he had every few days.
The toxic element mixes with gold dust and forms an amalgam he can pluck out of the sludge. Then he sets the mixture aflame, burning off the mercury into the air, where winds spread it across the forest and across borders, poisoning the plants, animals and people it finds.
Left behind is the gold. That part usually ends up in Europe, the United States and the Persian Gulf, most often as expensive jewelry.
Twenty minutes along the river, the Wayana Indigenous community is getting sick. The Wayana eat fish from the river every day and, in recent years, many have been suffering from joint pain, muscle weakness and swelling. They also say birth defects are rising.
Tests show that the Wayana have double to triple the medically acceptable levels of mercury in their blood. “We’re not allowed to eat certain fish anymore,” said Linia Opoya in June, showing her hands, which ache after meals. “But there’s nothing else. That’s what we’ve always eaten.” ” . . . .
David Gelles met with Michael Bloomberg in New York and traveled to Louisiana to report this article.
“Michael Bloomberg is many things: former New York City mayor, founder of a financial data company, failed presidential candidate and the 11th richest man in the world.
Since leaving public office 10 years ago, Mr. Bloomberg, 81, has also emerged as perhaps the world’s single largest funder of climate activism, making himself an expensive thorn in the side of the fossil fuel industry. The former mayor says that so far he has spent $500 million in an effort to shut down coal and gas plants. This month he said he planned to spend another $500 million on the effort.
The campaign against coal was largely successful. Coal is dirty and expensive, and Mr. Bloomberg’s money helped retire more than 70 percent of the coal-burning power plants in the country, according to the Sierra Club and other organizations, or about 370.
Now he is going after a more challenging target: new petrochemical plants that make fertilizer, plastics and packaging. It won’t be easy.
In recent years, coal had become an increasingly costly and uneconomical way to generate electricity, making plant closures easier to achieve. But plastics and chemicals face no such economic headwinds. In fact, the petroleum industry sees these industries as its future as cars electrify and the burning of fossil fuels declines, so it is investing heavily.
While the new campaign, called Beyond Petrochemicals, has scored a few wins, the petrochemicals business is booming and highly profitable, and plastics remain cheap and in demand. And the industry is fighting back with its own counter effort: Beyond Bloomberg.
Companies and local economic development groups argue that Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts are a heavy-handed approach to a nuanced problem and that the world needs more products made with petrochemicals, not less. They add that his efforts are costing people jobs and hurting an area badly in need of economic growth.
“Attempts to shut down American chemical manufacturing are a bet against millions of hard-working men and women in our industry,” Chris Jahn, the chief executive of the American Chemistry Council, said in a statement. He added that Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts “would send essential jobs overseas and threaten America’s leadership to innovate and compete with countries like China.”
Petrochemicals remain an essential part of modern life, used to make clothing, cars, electronics, fuel and fertilizer, not to mention solar panels and other equipment needed in the transition to cleaner energy sources. There are no easy substitutes for most of the products, and the heavy global demand means that if chemical and fertilizer plants aren’t built in the United States, many will instead simply be built in other countries that may have weaker regulations to protect workers and the environment.
But the petrochemical industry is also a major source of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming the world.
During a recent interview at the headquarters of Bloomberg LP, the financial data company that has given him an estimated net worth of $96 billion, Mr. Bloomberg said he was trying to help slow climate change, which he regarded as an existential threat to humanity.
“If there’s something that can destroy the Earth and kill all living people, then it’s hard to argue you shouldn’t focus on that,” he said. “I want my kids, your kids, to be able to have a life.” ” . . .
“As plastics accumulate in rivers and bays, localities across the country are seeking creative, affordable solutions to keep their waterways clean. Many have turned to “trash skimmers,” boats that are designed to remove litter.
Tampa, Fla., is one of the latest cities to invest in such a vessel, a $565,000 boat that it has named the “Litter Skimmer.” It skims single-use plastics and other trash — as well as organic materials such as branches and leaves — from the water and onto a conveyor belt that pulls it into a storage area, a city spokesman said.
The boat debuted about a year ago and has since gathered about 13 tons of debris, said Alexis Black, an environmental specialist with Tampa’s Department of Solid Waste and Environmental Program Management.
As far back as the 1950s, scientists have been warning that marine life was getting stuck in discarded fishing gear and other types of plastic waste. Since then, consumption of single-use plastics has risen to the point where tens of millions of tons of plastic enter Earth’s oceans each year. Over the years, plastics have harmed local ecosystems and disrupted storm water management, leading to flooding.”
Mr. Slat is the founder and chief executive of The Ocean Cleanup.
“The world is finally getting serious about plastic pollution.
Next week, delegates from U.N. member states will gather in Paris to debate the shape of what some hope will become the plastic-pollution equivalent of the Paris Climate Agreement.
There is no time to waste. Plastic is one of the biggest threats our oceans face today, causing untold harm to ecosystems, tremendous economic damage to coastal communities and posing a potential health threat to more than three billion people dependent on seafood.
The U.N. Environment Program has put forward a proposal to keep plastics in circulation as long as possible through reuse and recycling. Some activists and scientists advocate capping and reducing plastic production and use.”
InconvenientNews.Net 