Energy/Environment – Page 15 – artdiamondblog.com

Netherlands Dairy Farmers “No Longer Allowed To Exist” Due to “Climate Tyranny”

(p. 6) WOUDENBERG, Netherlands — The dairy farmers of the Netherlands have had enough.

They have set fire to hay and manure along highways, dumped trash on roads to create traffic jams, and blockaded food distribution centers with their tractors, leading to empty shelves in supermarkets. Across the country, upside down flags wave from farmhouses in protest.

The anger of the farmers is directed at the government, which has announced plans for a national 50 percent reduction of nitrogen emissions by 2030, in line with European Union requirements to preserve protected nature reserves, that they believe unfairly targets them. Factories and cars also emit large amounts of nitrogen and have not been targeted, they say, although the government said that cuts associated with both polluters would be addressed in the future.

Agriculture is responsible for the largest share of nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands, much of it from the waste produced by the estimated 1.6 million cows that provide the milk used to make the country’s famed cheeses, like Gouda and Edam.

To realize those planned cuts, thousands of farmers will be required to significantly reduce livestock numbers and the size of their farming operations. If they cannot meet the cuts the government demands of them, they may be forced to close their operations altogether.

The Dutch government has set aside about 25 billion euros, about $26 billion, to carry out its plan, and some of that money will be used to help farmers build more sustainable operations — or buy them out, if possible.

“My livelihood and my network is being threatened,” said Ben Apeldoorn, whose farm in the province of Utrecht has about 120 cows producing milk for making cheese. “You’re just no longer allowed to exist,” said Mr. Apeldoorn, 52, who has been a farmer for 30 years.

. . .

Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who this month became the country’s longest-serving prime minister and has grappled with what is known in the Netherlands as “the nitrogen crisis,” has condemned the protests, calling them “unacceptable.”

. . .

Helma Breunissen, 47, a dairy farmer who with her husband also runs a veterinarian’s office, attended one of the meetings with Mr. Rutte to make her anger known.

“If half of the cattle needs to disappear, then my veterinary’s office will also end,” Ms. Breunissen said by telephone. “I don’t want a bag of money from the government, I just want to do my job.”

. . .

While many Dutch support the aims of a greener Netherlands, some right-wing groups have expressed support for the Dutch farmers as a way of opposing climate activism. The right-wing Forum for Democracy has declared that “there is no climate crisis” and opposes the government’s plans.

And the Dutch farmers have also received some support from abroad.

“Farmers in the Netherlands — of all places — are courageously opposing the climate tyranny of the Dutch government, can you believe it?” former President Donald J. Trump said at a rally last month.

For the full story, see:

Claire Moses. “Emission Cuts in the Netherlands Have Dairy Farmers Up in Arms.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, August 21, 2022): 6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 20, 2022, and has the title “Dairy Farmers in the Netherlands Are Up in Arms Over Emission Cuts.” Where there is a minor difference between the online and print versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Environmentalists Ignore “The Unintended Impacts of Policies”

(p. A1) Nicole Kramaritsch of Roxbury, N.J., has 46 bags just sitting in her garage. Brian Otto has 101 of them, so many that he’s considering sewing them into blackout curtains for his baby’s bedroom. (So far, that idea has gone nowhere.) Lili Mannuzza in Whippany has 74.

“I don’t know what to do with all these bags,” she said.

The mountains of bags are an unintended consequence of New Jersey’s strict new bag ban in supermarkets. It went into effect in May and prohibits not only plastic bags but paper bags as well. The well-intentioned law seeks to cut down on waste and single-use plastics, but for many people who rely on grocery delivery and curbside pickup services their orders now come in heavy-duty reusable shopping bags — lots and lots of them, week after week.

While nearly a dozen states nationwide have implemented restrictions on single-use plastic bags, New Jersey is the only one to ban paper bags because of their environmental impact. The law also bans polystyrene foam food containers and cups, and restricts restaurants from handing out plastic straws unless they’re requested.

Emily Gonyou, 22, a gig worker in Roselle Park who provides shopping services for people (p. A11) through Instacart, said she was surprised when she learned the delivery company had no special plans for accommodating the ban. “They pretty much said, ‘OK, do exactly what you’re doing, but with reusable bags,’” she said.

Ms. Gonyou said she goes through up to 50 reusable bags a day, many of which, she suspects, could end up in the garbage.

Compared to single-use plastics, the more durable reusable bags are better for the environment only if they are actually reused. According to Shelie Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, a typical reusable bag, manufactured from polypropylene, must be used at least 10 times to account for the additional energy and material required to make it. For cotton totes, that number is much higher.

. . .

Dr. Miller said the bag situation in New Jersey was emblematic of a lot of environmental policies. “If we don’t pay attention to the unintended impacts of policies such as the plastic waste ban, we run into the potential of playing environmental Whac-a-Mole,” she said. “We solve one environmental problem only to create or exacerbate another problem.”

For the full story, see:

Clare Toeniskoetter. “New Jersey Bag Ban’s Unforeseen Consequence: Too Many Bags.” The New York Times (Friday, September 2, 2022): A1 & A11.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 1, 2022, and has the title “Why Do Some People in New Jersey Suddenly Have Bags and Bags of Bags?”)

Government’s “Controlled Burn” Created an Environmental “Catastrophe”

(p. A1) Heavy monsoon rains would normally be cause for celebration in the drought-parched mountains of northeastern New Mexico, where the Rockies meet the Great Plains, especially after the largest wildfire in state history came within a mile of torching the region’s largest community this spring.

. . .

Instead of replenishing reservoirs, the downpours are flooding a burn scar left by the blaze known as the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire, releasing contaminants into private wells and overwhelming Las Vegas’s main water (p. A16) supply with ashy sludge.

It is the latest chapter in a catastrophe created by the federal government when Forest Service employees lost control of not just one but two prescribed burns set this spring to clear out undergrowth. That sparked a vast blaze that destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of people across a fire zone larger than the city of Los Angeles.

. . .

Mr. Trujillo, the mayor of Las Vegas, emphasized that the federal government, which was responsible for starting the fire, should cover the costs of securing the town’s water supply over both the short and long term. “We intend to bill them for every cent,” he said. “I’m having to hold their feet to the fire, no pun intended.”

For the full story, see:

Simon Romero. “A Controlled Burn Left Scars and a Water Crisis.” The New York Times (Tuesday, September 27, 2022): A1 & A16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Sept. 28, 2022, and has the title ‘How New Mexico’s Largest Wildfire Set Off a Drinking Water Crisis.” Where there are minor differences in wording between versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Climate-Driven “Inflation Reduction Act” Costs $369 Billion and Cuts Emissions by Only 8 Percent

(p. A17) Top administration officials are fanning out across the U.S. in a victory lap for the new Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden calls “the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis.” America, we are told, is a global climate leader again. This narrative has serious problems.

The foremost issue is that the act will have a trivial impact on climate change. The Biden administration claims the law will enable the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions in 2030 by around 40% below 2005 levels. This is less than the 50% reduction Mr. Biden promised only last year, but it still sounds impressive. One major wrinkle: Most of that cut has nothing to do with the Inflation Reduction Act.

Unlike most other nations on the planet, the U.S. has substantially reduced its carbon emissions over the past 15 years. This is largely owing to the fracking revolution that replaced a lot of America’s coal with natural gas, which is cheaper and cleaner. Even without the new law, the U.S. was on track to cut emissions substantially by 2030, according to research by the Rhodium Group. Averaging their high and low emission predictions, the U.S. would drop emissions by almost 30% absent the new law. With the new law, emissions will decline instead by a little over 37%. The “most significant legislation in history” will actually cut emissions by less than eight percentage points.

. . .

Given the $369 billion price tag on the act’s climate policies, it’s hard to imagine the Inflation Reduction Act surviving a Republican majority. It might not even survive sustained Democratic rule.

. . .

The cost of the act also belies the oft-repeated claim that green technologies are already cheaper than fossil-fuel alternatives. If they were, they wouldn’t need enormous subsidies.

For the full commentary, see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “The Inflation Reduction Act Does Little to Reduce Climate Change.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date August 23, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

“Little Evidence” That San Francisco Is Losing Its Cool Due to Global Warming

(p. 14) Longtime residents of San Francisco have grown weary of explaining to out-of-town visitors that July and August can be fairly cold in the city. Some San Franciscans live in dread of hearing, again, the apocryphal Mark Twain quotation about the coldest winter of the author’s life being a summer in San Francisco.

Now, though, in a time of punishing summer heat waves, when weather maps urgently flash red across the country, the city is reassessing what was once seen as a liability: its chilly Pacific breezes and fog.

. . .

San Francisco’s summer fog and cool breezes are created by a complex interaction between the atmosphere and ocean, a process that pumps cold water from the depths to the surface and acts as an air-conditioner, according to Patrick Brown, a Bay Area climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute, a nonprofit organization.

The long-term effects of climate change on San Francisco’s cool summers are unclear, Mr. Brown said, but there is little evidence that the weather systems that keep the city cooler than inland areas will radically change any time soon. In other words, summers in San Francisco are likely to remain crisp and refreshing for many years to come.

For the full story, see:

Thomas Fuller and Holly Secon. “As Most Spots Swelter, San Francisco Is Chill(y).” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, August 28, 2022): 14.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date August 27, 2022, and has the title ‘Come for the Golden Gate Bridge and Cable Cars. Stay for the Summer Shivers.”)

After Defending Nuclear Power, Green German Energy Minister Is Popular in Polls

(p. A8) BERLIN — Germany will keep two of its three remaining nuclear power plants operational as an emergency reserve for its electricity supply, its energy minister announced on Monday [Sept. 5, 2022], delaying the country’s plans to become the first industrial power to go nuclear-free for its energy.

. . .

. . . the decision to extend the life of it nuclear reactors is one of the most symbolic, if not consequential, the government has taken, breaking a political taboo as it tries to show that it is doing all it can to alleviate the crisis. The government said it made the decision based on a series of stress tests playing out worst-case energy scenarios.

. . .

. . . even as he has led his party into sacrificing nearly all of its sacred cows, Mr. Habeck has become one of the most popular politicians in Germany. In polls, he now regularly receives higher ratings than the chancellor.

“We are doing everything that is necessary,” said Mr. Habeck said.

For the full story, see:

Erika Solomon and Melissa Eddy. “As Energy Crisis Worsens, Germany Extends Life of Two Nuclear Reactors.” The New York Times (Tuesday, September 6, 2022): A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version has the date Sept. 5, 2022, and has the title “Breaking Taboo, Germany Extends Life of 2 Nuclear Reactors.” The online version of the article says that the print version of the article had the title “Germany Extends Life of Two Reactors” but my national print edition of the NYT had the longer title “As Energy Crisis Worsens, Germany Extends Life of Two Nuclear Reactors.”)

Before Ian, 2022 Was a “Quiet” Year for Hurricanes

Before hurricane Ian, the NYT was reporting that this was a quiet year for hurricanes. Now, after Ian, some environmentalists are saying that Ian is evidence that global warming is causing hurricanes to increase in number and severity. This in the name of “science”?

(p. A14) It has been a hurricane season without hurricanes.

. . .

Last month was the first August in 25 years without a named storm in the Atlantic Ocean. No hurricanes have made landfall this year in the United States.

For the full story, see:

Rick Rojas. “Quiet Year for Hurricanes Is Bringing Little Comfort Along Louisiana’s Coast.” The New York Times (Tuesday, September 6, 2022): A14.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version has the date Sept. 5, 2022, and has the title “On the Gulf Coast, a Quiet Hurricane Season (So Far!) Brings Little Relief.”)

“The Car Emancipated the Masses”

(p. 11) Ear-shredding noise, toxic air, interminable traffic jams, chaos and death — all the result of untrammeled population expansion. Is this a description of a contemporary urban nightmare? Not quite: We’re talking about 19th-century London, although the situation in Paris and other major cities wasn’t much better. And the cause of all this misery was … the horse.

As recounted by Bryan Appleyard in his compelling new book, “The Car,” by 1900 the 50,000 horses required to meet London’s transportation needs deposited 500 tons of excrement daily. Hooves and carriage wheels threw up curtains of fetid muck. Accidents caused by mechanical failures and spooked animals were often fatal to passengers, drivers and the horses themselves. New York City employed 130,000 horses and predictions were made that by 1930 that city’s streets would be piled three stories high with dung. Yet another dire prophecy fallen victim to the continuity fallacy — the belief that a current trend will endure forever.

Things change because when problems arise, people work at solving them, and sometimes they arrive at solutions. The answer to the psychosocial and physical degradation brought on by too many people employing too many horses in the burgeoning Industrial Age was, of course, the development of the motor vehicle. Specifically, one powered by the internal combustion engine.

. . .

For all the carping and finger-pointing leveled at traditional automobiles — much of which Appleyard acknowledges as valid — he is unabashed about his appreciation for the most important machine in human history. As he points out, “The car emancipated the masses far more effectively than any political ideology; that it did so at a cost should not obliterate the importance of that freedom.”

Well said. Vroom.

For the full review, see:

Jonathan Kellerman. “Auto Erotica.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, September 25, 2022): 11.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated Sept. 23, 2022, and has the title “How the Car Created the Modern World.”)

The book under review is:

Appleyard, Bryan. The Car: The Rise and Fall of the Machine That Made the Modern World. New York: Pegasus Books, 2022.

Flexible Entrepreneurial Rancher Uses Beavers “As Furry Weapons of Climate Resilience” to Create Water Storage

(p. A1) As global warming intensifies droughts, floods and wildfires, Mr. Smith has become one of a growing number of ranchers, scientists and other “beaver believers” who see the creatures not only as helpers, but as furry weapons of climate resilience.

Last year, when Nevada suffered one of the worst droughts on record, beaver pools kept his cattle with enough water. When rains came strangely hard and fast, the vast network of dams slowed a torrent of water raging down the mountain, protecting his hay crop. And with the beavers’ help, creeks have widened into wetlands that run through the sagebrush desert, cleaning water, birthing new meadows and creating a buffer against wildfires.

. . .

(p. A15) . . . Mr. Smith decided to try a different approach to cattle management, moving them around his land and letting them spend less time around the creeks. That allowed shrubs and trees to grow in along the banks, making the whole area more stable. Eventually, if the beaver dams did give way, they would do so at the center, and the surge of water would stay in the channel.

. . .

Part of what has made the partnership successful is Mr. Smith’s flexibility. For example, beavers have completely rerouted one section of creek. But Mr. Smith doesn’t see the change as good or bad, “just different.” The most important thing, he said, is how much water they’re storing on the land.

Now more than ever, he said, “water is liquid gold.”

For the full story, see:

Catrin Einhorn and Niki Chan Wylie. “A Nevada Rancher Made a Truce With Beavers, and It Paid Off.” The New York Times (Tuesday, September 6, 2022): A1 & A15.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version was updated Sept. 14, 2022, and has the title “It Was War. Then, a Rancher’s Truce With Some Pesky Beavers Paid Off.”)

Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier Is Melting at Only Half the Peak Rate of the Past 200 Years

Barbara Rush’s honest acknowledgement that the scientific evidence suggests slower glacial melting than the popular doomsday predictions claim, is especially powerful and credible coming from the author of an earlier book praised by environmentalists for its sensitive portrayal of the harms of rising sea levels.

(p. 7) If Antarctica is going to lose a lot of ice this century, it will likely come from Thwaites. If it disintegrated, it would be responsible for over two feet of sea level rise, and its collapse could destabilize the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing global sea levels to jump 10 feet or more. In terms of the fate of our coastal communities, this particular glacier is the biggest wild card, the largest known unknown, the pile of coins that could tip the scales one way or another. Will Miami even exist in 100 years? Thwaites will decide.

At least that is what many scientists think, which is why Rolling Stone called Thwaites the “doomsday glacier” in 2017. But many of our predictions about just how much ice will enter the ocean from Thwaites and just how quickly this will occur are just that: predictions. That’s because before our mission, we had next to no observational data from this part of the planet, very few bits of raw information on which to base models.

When I read about the collapse of Antarctica’s great glaciers, I feel I am being encouraged to jump to a conclusion: that no matter what we do now, what lies ahead is bound to be worse than what came before.

This kind of thinking not only undermines our ability to imagine a climate-changed world that is more equitable than the one we currently live in; it also turns Antarctica into a passive symbol of the coming apocalypse.

. . .

This week Nature Geoscience published a paper analyzing the data from that submarine. The authors, many of whom were on board the vessel with me, suggest that sometime over the past couple hundred years, Thwaites retreated at two to three times the rate we see today. Put another way: At the cold nadir of the planet, one of the world’s largest glaciers is stepping farther outside the script we imagined for it, likely defying even our most detailed projections of what is to come.

For the full story, see:

Elizabeth Rush. “What Antarctica’s Disintegration Asks of Us.” The New York Times, SundayOpinion Section (Sunday, September 11, 2022): 7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 8, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

The academic article published in Nature Geoscience, and mentioned above, is:

Graham, Alastair G. C., Anna Wåhlin, Kelly A. Hogan, Frank O. Nitsche, Karen J. Heywood, Rebecca L. Totten, James A. Smith, Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand, Lauren M. Simkins, John B. Anderson, Julia S. Wellner, and Robert D. Larter. “Rapid Retreat of Thwaites Glacier in the Pre-Satellite Era.” Nature Geoscience (Sept. 5, 2022), DOI: 10.1038/s41561-022-01019-9.

Rush’s book mentioned above is:

Rush, Elizabeth. Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2018.

An Electric Prayer

(p. A4) BEIRUT, Lebanon — The second the light above Hasmik Tutunjian’s bed came on at midnight, she said a prayer of thanks and got up quickly. She did not know how much time she had before she would be plunged back into darkness.

First, Ms. Tutunjian, 66, stripped the sheets off the bed — soaked with sweat from Beirut’s stifling and humid heat. She grabbed a phone charger hanging on a hook next to a tote bag that reads, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” and plugged it in. Then she moved into the living room to plug in three chargeable lights. Finally, she put in the first of as many loads of laundry as the electricity would allow.

. . .

Power cuts have long been a part of life in this country because of a dysfunctional electricity sector. But over the past year, they have worsened with acute fuel shortages leading to severe blackouts across Lebanon and state-supplied power coming on for only an hour or two a day — at most — and on no set schedule.

. . .

. . . with Lebanese inflation rising to 168 percent in the year that ended in July [2022], and unemployment skyrocketing, a dwindling number of people can afford the extra generator power. And some of the generators provide only a few amps — enough to power a refrigerator, a fan and the television.

Ms. Tutunjian cannot afford any amps.

She has a chargeable fan, but the power does not come on long enough to fully charge it. She tries to cool herself with a folding fan, which does little to fight the suffocating heat of a Beirut summer.

“Sometimes I tell myself I’m not going to get sad, but I can’t help it,” she said, sitting in her living room. “At night, I get into bed angry, I cry.”

. . .

Last month, an armed 42-year-old man held a Beirut bank hostage for hours, demanding that he be allowed to withdraw his entire life’s savings — more than $200,000. But the amount far exceeded the paltry caps on cash withdrawals.

He said he needed the money to pay for an operation for his father, and threatened to kill everyone inside the bank and to set himself on fire.

“That man, good what he did,” Ms. Tutunjian said.

Eventually, he was allowed to take out a small portion of his savings in exchange for his surrender and arrest. He became an instant hero, capturing a nation’s frustrations, and was released days later amid an outpouring of public support.

“He said he’ll do it again,” Ms. Tutunjian said.