Category: Energy/Environment

California Labor and Environment Policies Reduce Nimble Response to Supply Chain Backups

(p. A17) The backup of container ships at the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports has grown in recent weeks despite President Biden’s intervention to get terminal operators to move goods 24/7.

. . .

The two Southern California ports handle only about 40% of containers entering the U.S., mostly from Asia. Yet ports in other states seem to be handling the surge better. Gov. Ron DeSantis said last month that Florida’s seaports had open capacity. So what’s the matter with California? State labor and environmental policies.

Some 20 business groups recently asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency and suspend labor and environmental laws that are interfering with the movement of goods. Opening the Port of Los Angeles 24 hours a day “alone will do little without immediate action from the state to address other barriers that have created bottlenecks at the ports, warehouses, trucking, rail, and the entire supply chain,” they wrote.

One barrier is a law known as AB5. Before its enactment in 2019, tens of thousands of truck drivers worked as independent contractors, which gave them more autonomy and flexibility than if they were employees. As contractors, truck drivers can work for multiple companies, which allows them to nimbly respond to surges in demand.

. . .

Another problem: a shortage of storage space. “There is absolutely no available capacity in the warehousing sector due to the difficulty in developing any new capacity,” the businesses noted in their letter. The vacancy rate for warehouses near the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports was a mere 1%, compared with 3.6% nationwide.

If warehouses don’t have space in their facilities or parking lots to unload goods, drivers can’t make deliveries. Some truck drivers are leaving container boxes along with the chassis outside storage facilities and are picking them up later, but that results in a shortage of chassis at the ports. (About half of chassis are leased to truckers from a common pool supplied by private companies.)

. . .

. . . in California warehouse growth ignited opposition from environmental groups, which complain of pollution and noise. Many cities have limited new logistics facilities.

For the full commentary, see:

Allysia Finley. “California Is the Supply Chain’s Weakest Link.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Nov. 5, 2021): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 4, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

China Adds to Coal Use, While Already Burning More than Rest of World Combined

(p. B1) LINFEN, China — Desperate to meet its electricity needs, China is opening up new coal production exceeding what all of Western Europe mines in a year, at a tremendous cost to the global effort to fight climate change.

The campaign has unleashed a flurry of activity in China’s coal country. Idled mines are restarting. Cottage-sized yellow backhoes are clearing and widening roads past terraced cornfields. Long columns of bright red freight trucks are converging on the region to haul the extra cargo.

China’s push will carry a high cost. Burning coal, already the world’s single biggest cause of human-driven climate change, will increase China’s emissions and toxic air pollution.

. . .

China is expanding mines to produce 220 million metric tons a year of extra coal, a nearly 6 percent rise from last year. China already digs up and burns more coal than the rest of the world combined.

The effort is infused with patriotism. “Guarantee the supply” has become a national slogan, appearing frequently now in state media and official statements and even on red banners on the front of coal trucks.

. . .

(p. B4) Coal shortages were not China’s only electricity problem by September. A lack of rain in southwestern China meant hydroelectric dams generated less power. Calm skies in northeastern China meant wind turbines also contributed less.

Coal prices nearly doubled. Utilities, prevented from raising prices, began running power plants less. Blackouts followed as China’s factories ran flat out to meet strong demand. Heavy rains and flooding in Shanxi in early October briefly delayed China’s initial ability to dig extra coal. The Shanxi government said on Thursday [October 28, 2021] that all but four mines have reopened.

Officials have responded by partially deregulating electricity tariffs. Depending on the province, energy-intensive industries like steel or chemicals production now face cost increases of as much as 50 percent. That may prompt them to embrace energy efficiency, said Yan Qin, a lead analyst at Refinitiv, a data provider.

For the full story, see:

Keith Bradsher. “China Hurries to Burn More Coal, Putting Climate Goals at Risk.” The New York Times (Friday, October 29, 2021): B1 & B4.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 28, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

UNL Ph.D. Studies Cow Manure and Burps “to Help Save the Planet”

(p. A1) ITHACA, Neb. — In what’s been dubbed the “methane barn” at a University of Nebraska-Lincoln agricultural research center near here, sensitive electronic equipment monitors and logs the amount of gas belched out by a herd of yearling steers.

Yes, Andrea Watson and her fellow UNL scientists are studying cow burps. She has already heard all the jokes.

“My brother especially thinks it’s funny I had to get a Ph.D. to study cow manure and cow burps,” she said.

But this work is really quite serious. If it can help reduce the beef industry’s global environmental hoofprint, it could one day help save the planet.

. . .

Consider that in a year, the average cow belches out 220 pounds of greenhouse gas. According to United Nations figures, if the world’s beef and dairy cattle were their own country, they would be the third-largest emitter, after only China and the United States.

. . .

(p. A9) “Trying to blame the cow industry for any of this is BS,” said Jay Wolf, an Albion, Nebraska, cattle rancher who definitely is familiar with real BS. “We have reduced the herd by one-third. When other sources reduce by one-third, come talk to me.”

. . .

Climate experts are increasingly recognizing that in the decades-long battle ahead, reducing methane emissions from all sources is crucial to helping the planet buy time and avoid catastrophe. Cattle can play a big role in that, said Joe Rudek, lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.

. . .

(p. A11) In North America, livestock are responsible for 28% of all methane emissions, with an additional 41% from the oil and gas industry (mostly through leaks) and 21% from landfills. In all, a hefty 25% of today’s warming globally is driven by methane.

Rudek said if methane emissions across all industries worldwide can be cut by 30% by 2050, it would be enough to avoid a half degree of warming.

For the full story, see:

Henry J. Cordes. “Much-maligned cattle now have chance to be part of climate solution.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, October 24, 2021): A1 & A9-A11.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated November 4, 2021, and has the title “The State of Beef: Much-maligned cattle now have chance to be part of climate solution.”)

Many Plants and Animals Quickly Adapt to Global Warming

(p. A15) Amid the ice floes of the Arctic, tiny seabirds called dovekies feed in the plankton-rich waters, a survival strategy that worked well until the pack ice began to dwindle around the islands in Russia’s Franz Josef Land, where the dovekies breed. Like their Arctic neighbors the polar bears, often seen stranded on shrinking icebergs, it appeared that the dovekies faced an existential threat because of climate change. Scientists working in the region predicted that they would have to fly an hour or more to find food.

Instead, data from radio-tagged birds have revealed something entirely different: Faced with the prospect of extinction, the dovekies adapted. They were able to pivot to a new foraging opportunity a five-minute flight away, where water from melting glaciers slams into ocean currents just offshore, making plankton there easy pickings. For now, the dovekie population is thriving, producing just as many healthy chicks as before. Unfortunately, this tactic is not a permanent solution, as Arctic glaciers are dwindling too. But it could buy the birds another century to try to adjust their survival strategy again.

The Franz Josef dovekies remind us that nature is not a passive bystander to climate change. In some surprising cases, new conditions can trigger new behaviors.

. . .

When a group of biologists recently fanned out across the eastern Pacific to study aggression in butterfly fish, they expected to witness the constant territorial skirmishes for which these feisty coral reef dwellers are famous. Then a marine heat wave caused the corals to expel their algae, a damaging process called bleaching that leaves once-colorful reefs ghostly pale and lacking in nutrients for fish.

Suddenly without meals worth fighting for, the butterfly fish changed too. They transformed from aggressors into pacifists almost overnight, becoming docile to save energy and eke out an existence, albeit a subdued one, in a calorie-starved environment. If the corals ever recover, then the fish may regain their previous territorial vigor. If not, then they’ll no longer be famous for defending their food; they’ll be too busy trying to find enough of it.

Butterfly fish and dovekies both employ what biologists call “plasticity,” a natural ability to be flexible.

. . .

Warmer temperatures are forcing conifers to shift northward, while many hardwoods are moving north and west, chasing increases in rainfall. But the direction of these shifts isn’t nearly as surprising as their speed. Red oaks like those at Walden Pond are lumbering north by more than 10 miles every decade, which is nothing next to the 40-mile pace set by honey locusts. Both are shifting considerably faster than the range of the average bird: . . .

. . .

When back-to-back hurricanes Irma and Maria battered the Turks and Caicos Islands in 2017, they flattened buildings, uprooted trees and left the community reeling. They also created a rare scientific opportunity. Surveys of a local species of anole—a distant cousin of iguanas—had just been completed prior to the storms. The researchers had intended to show the effects of predation on the lizards by non-native rats. Instead, they turned their attention to the impact of the hurricanes and immediately repeated their field work. What they found was survival of the fittest in action: Lizards in the post-storm population all had larger toe pads and stronger front legs better suited to gripping trees in high winds. And those traits were being passed on to the next generation.

While scientists expected to eventually see evolution in reaction to extreme weather, many were stunned that it could happen so fast. Understanding how some species adapt in various ways, while others can’t, may help to inform our own responses to climate change. Plasticity may become an unavoidable priority in preparing for a warmer world.

For the full commentary, see:

Thor Hanson. “Some Species Are Changing Along With the Climate.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date September 24, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

The commentary quoted above is adapted from Hanson’s book:

Hanson, Thor. Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change. New York: Basic Books, 2021.

To Survive a Disaster You Need “Basic Skills and Self-Reliance” in Time Before First-Responders Respond

(p. C17) The coronavirus has challenged us in ways that our society hadn’t been challenged for decades.

. . .

. . . being stressed and anxious doesn’t mean you can’t be resilient. Actively working to mitigate the damage from a disaster can help to reduce stress, because it makes you feel more empowered and less like a helpless bystander.

. . .

Experience and preparation paid off for me in September 2017, as Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm, approached Key West, Fla., where my husband and I had spent two years building our home together. We didn’t freak out: We knew about the risk of hurricanes when we moved there. I had studied the maps to see which areas of Key West were prone to flooding, and we prepared our property accordingly.

. . .

My long experience has taught me that when a disaster strikes, you can’t wait for someone else to bail you out. You have to have some basic skills and self-reliance initially. If a grease fire breaks out in my kitchen and I have a fire extinguisher, I can probably put it out. But if I call the fire department and wait for them to arrive, my grease fire could turn into a house fire. I will still call the fire department, in case I can’t control the fire, but the first response has to be mine.

For the full essay, see:

Robert Jensen. “Staying Resilient When Disaster Strikes.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021): C17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date September 30, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

The essay quoted above is adapted from Jensen’s book:

Jensen, Robert A. Personal Effects: What Recovering the Dead Teaches Me About Caring for the Living. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2021.

Malnutrition of Poor Is Reduced More by Economic Growth Than by Ending Climate Change

Source of graph: online version of WSJ commentary quoted below.

(p. A17) The Paris climate agreement is projected to keep 11 million more people in poverty come 2030 than otherwise would be. If the Glasgow climate conference in November leads to the adoption of much stronger climate measures, policy makers will raise that total to 80 million additional people in poverty by 2030, which will inevitably cause even more malnutrition deaths.

Climate change deserves our attention, but policy makers need to be realistic. What really protects the world’s poor from malnutrition is getting out of poverty. It’s not expensive climate regulations.

For the full commentary, see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “Climate Change Barely Affects Poverty.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, October 7, 2021): A17.

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated October 7, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

$80 Billion in 200 Large Projects to Develop Hydrogen as Clean Energy Source

(p. B1) SHEFFIELD, England — Rachel Smith has lived through green hydrogen’s bumpy journey from scientists’ dream to an industry that may be on the verge of a commercial breakthrough. An engineer, she started out two decades ago working in a converted barn on early devices for making the clean-burning gas.

Now she is part of a team racing to build giant machines that will use electricity to separate hydrogen from water for major companies like Royal Dutch Shell and Orsted, the Danish offshore wind developer.

“We have gone through those toddler years,” said Ms. Smith, an executive director at ITM Power, which is run out of an expansive new factory in Sheffield, a faded center for steel mills and coal mining. “We are playing in the grown-up world rather than in research labs.”

A consensus is forming among governments, environmentalists and energy companies that deep cuts in carbon emissions will require large amounts of a clean fuel like hydrogen.

Proponents of hydrogen have identified more than a score of potential applications of the element for cutting carbon emissions. It could be used to power long-haul trucks and train and air travel. Energy companies are experimenting with blending hydrogen with natural gas for home heating and cooking.

All told, more than 200 large-scale projects are underway to produce or transport hydrogen, comprising investments of more than $80 billion. Daimler and Volvo, the world’s largest truck makers, plan in a few years to begin mass producing long-haul electric trucks that run on devices called fuel cells that convert hydrogen to electricity. Water will be the trucks’ only emission.

“You could imagine an economy that is supported almost entirely by very clean electricity and very clean hydrogen,” said Ernest Moniz, secretary of energy in the Obama administration and now chief executive of the Energy Futures Initiative, a research organization.

(p. B5) But he warned that “a lot of things have to happen” for a gas now mainly used in specialty areas to become a “part of the backbone of the energy system.”

Among the obstacles that must be overcome: creating enough of the right sort of hydrogen, at a price industries and consumers can accept.

For the full story, see:

Stanley Reed and Jack Ewing. “The Race to Harvest Hydrogen.” The New York Times (Saturday, July 17, 2021): B1 & B5.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 4, 2021, and has the title “Hydrogen Is One Answer to Climate Change. Getting It Is the Hard Part.”)

Wind Turbines Kill Up to a Half Million Birds a Year

(p. A4) President Biden has taken steps to restore criminal penalties for accidental killing of migratory birds, a move that if adopted as expected later this year would add pressure to wind power developers who are working to fulfill his mandate to boost wind-farm developments as sources of clean energy.

Wind turbines—some with 200-foot blades spinning up to 180 mph—are estimated to kill between 140,000 and 500,000 birds a year through accidental collisions, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The wide variation in the estimate reflects the difficulty in tracking bird deaths, but whatever the toll, it is expected to rise as more wind turbines are built. Wildlife researchers in 2013 estimated that the Energy Department’s 2008 wind-power target would push bird deaths to about 1.4 million annually. That figure hasn’t been updated to reflect the Biden administration’s plans to expand offshore wind farms.

For the full story, see:

Katy Stech Ferek. “Federal Penalties for Killing Birds Test Wind-Power Firms.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, June 07, 2021): A4.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 5, 2021, and has the title “Expanding Wind Power Yet Killing Fewer Birds Is Biden’s Quandary.”)

Human Footprints from 23,000 Years Ago Found in New Mexico

(p. A3) At the height of the last Ice Age, generations of children and teenagers ambled barefoot along a muddy lakefront in what is now New Mexico, crossing paths with mammoths, giant ground sloths and an extinct canine species known as dire wolves.

Now, some 23,000 years later, the young people’s fossilized footprints are yielding new insights into when humans first populated the Americas. Unearthed in White Sands National Park by a research team that began its work in 2016, the tracks are about 10,000 years older and about 1,600 miles farther south than any other human footprints known in America, scientists reported Thursday in the journal Science.

“It is, in my view, the first unequivocal evidence of human presence in the Americas” during the last Ice Age, Daniel Odess, chief of science and research at the U.S. National Park Service and a senior author of the report, said of the discovery. “The footprints are inarguably human.”

. . .

In earlier work published in 2018, the scientists described an undated set of fossilized human tracks at the White Sands site that they believe were made by people stalking a giant sloth. The tracks overlapped those of the sloth, suggesting a pursuit.

“We will never see humans interacting with giant sloths, but the footprints are telling us the sloths were scared of humans and the humans were confident,” said Sally Reynolds, a paleontologist at Bournemouth and a member of the research team.

The scientists also uncovered what they believe to be the footprints of a prehistoric woman who traveled for almost a mile with a toddler, sometimes carrying the child and sometimes making the young one walk by her side. It is the longest fossilized human trackway ever discovered, according to their research, which was published in 2018 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

For the full story, see:

Robert Lee Hotz. “Footprints Offer Clues About Earliest Americans.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Sept. 24, 2021): A3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date September 23, 2021, and has the title “Footprints Yield New Clues About the First Americans.” The last paragraph quoted above appears in the online, but not the print, version.)

French Regulators Ban Hardy Grapes that Thrive in Global Warming

(p. A4) BEAUMONT, France — The vines were once demonized for causing madness and blindness, and had been banned decades ago. The French authorities, brandishing money and sanctions, nearly wiped them out.

But there they were. On a hillside off a winding mountain road in a lost corner of southern France, the forbidden crop was thriving. Early one recent evening, Hervé Garnier inspected his field with relief.

In a year when an April frost and disease have decimated France’s overall wine production, Mr. Garnier’s grapes — an American hybrid variety named jacquez, banned by the French government since 1934 — were already turning red. Barring an early-autumn cold snap, all was on track for a new vintage.

“There’s really no reason for its prohibition,” Mr. Garnier said. “Prohibited? I’d like to understand why, especially when you see the prohibition rests on nothing.”

Mr. Garnier is one of the last stragglers in a long-running struggle against the French wine establishment and its allies in Paris. The French government has tried to rip the jacquez and five other American vine varieties out of French soil for the past 87 years, arguing that they are bad for human physical and mental health — and produce bad wine.

But in recent years, the hardiness of the American varieties has given a lift to guerrilla winemakers like him, as climate change wreaks havoc on vineyards across Europe and natural wines made without the use of pesticides have grown in popularity.

. . .

With France awash in wine, lawmakers urgently addressed the problem around Christmas in 1934. To reduce overproduction, they outlawed the six American vines — including hybrids like the jacquez and pure American grapes like the isabelle — mainly on the grounds that they produced poor wine. Production for private consumption would be tolerated, but not for commercial sale.

The government had planned to follow up with bans on other hybrids but stopped because of the backlash to the initial ban, Mr. Lacombe said. Then the war provided another reprieve.

It was only in the 1950s — when hybrids were still cultivated on a third of all French vineyards — that the government really began cracking down on the six forbidden grapes, Mr. Lacombe said. It offered incentives to rip out the offending vines, then threatened growers with fines.

It then condemned the American grapes as harmful to body and sanity with arguments “not completely honest to try to quell a situation that was slipping away from the government,” Mr. Lacombe said.

“In fact, the present defenders of these vines are right in underlining all the historical and government inconsistencies,” he added.

. . .

Originally from northeastern France, Mr. Garnier, now 68, was once a longhaired high school student who traveled to see Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Janis Joplin perform in concert.

. . .

Some years later, he got into winemaking almost by accident. Two elderly brothers asked him to harvest their jacquez grapes in return for half of the wine production. He learned the history of the forbidden vines and eventually bought the brothers’ vineyards.

Today, he makes 3,400 bottles a year of his deeply colored, fruity “Cuvée des vignes d’antan,” or wine from vines of yesteryear. He got around the ban by creating a cultural, noncommercial association, “Memory of the Vine.” A membership fee of 10 euros, or about $12, yields a bottle.

With the growing threat of climate change and the backlash against the use of pesticides, Mr. Garnier is hoping that the forbidden grapes will be legalized and that France’s wine industry will open up to a new generation of hybrids — as Germany, Switzerland and other European nations already have.

“France is a great wine country,” he said. “To remain one, we have to open up. We can’t get stuck on what we already know.”

For the full story, see:

Norimitsu Onishi. “Guerrilla Winemakers Want France to Yield.” The New York Times (Monday, August 30, 2021): A4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Sept. 16, 2021, and has the title “For France, American Vines Still Mean Sour Grapes.”)

E.U. Blocks Innovations in Charger Port Technology

(p. B1) The European Union unveiled plans on Thursday [September 23, 2021] to make USB-C connectors the standard charging port for all smartphones, tablets and other electronic devices sold across the bloc, an initiative that it says will reduce environmental waste but that is likely to hit Apple the hardest.

The move would represent a long-awaited yet aggressive step into product-making decisions by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm. Apple, whose iPhones are equipped with a different port, has long opposed the plan, arguing that it would stifle innovation and lead to more electronic waste as all current chargers that are not USB-C would become obsolete.

. . .

(p. B6) European Union officials and lawmakers at the European Parliament have been advocating a common charger since 2009, when there were more than 30 charging options on the market, now down to three. They have argued that fewer wires would be more convenient for users and better for the environment, as mobile phone chargers are responsible for 11,000 tons of electronic waste per year across the bloc, according to estimates by the European Commission.

But Apple has also argued that if the European Union had imposed a common charger in 2009, it would have restricted innovation that led to USB-C and Lightning connectors. In a statement, Apple said that although it welcomed the European Commission’s commitment to protecting the environment, it favored a solution that left the device side of the charging interface open for innovation.

For the full commentary, see:

Elian Peltier. “E.U. Aims to Require USB-C Ports.” The New York Times (Friday, Sept. 24, 2021): B1 & B6.

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

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 23, 2021, and has the title “In a setback for Apple, the European Union seeks a common charger for all phones.”)