Category: Energy/Environment

It No Longer Pays to Recycle

(p. B1) Oregon is serious about recycling. Its residents are accustomed to dutifully separating milk cartons, yogurt containers, cereal boxes and kombucha bottles from their trash to divert them from the landfill. But this year, because of a far-reaching rule change in China, some of the recyclables are ending up in the local dump anyway.
In recent months, in fact, thousands of tons of material left curbside for recycling in dozens of American cities and towns — including several in Oregon — have gone to landfills.
. . .
(p. B5) Recycling companies “used to get paid” by selling off recyclable materials, said Peter Spendelow, a policy analyst for the Department of Environmental Quality in Oregon. “Now they’re paying to have someone take it away.”
In some places, including parts of Idaho, Maine and Pennsylvania, waste managers are continuing to recycle but are passing higher costs on to customers, or are considering doing so.
“There are some states and some markets where mixed paper is at a negative value,” said Brent Bell, vice president of recycling at Waste Management, which handles 10 million tons of recycling per year. “We’ll let our customers make that decision, if they’d like to pay more and continue to recycle or to pay less and have it go to landfill.”
Mr. Spendelow said companies in rural areas, which tend to have higher expenses to get their materials to market, were being hit particularly hard. “They’re literally taking trucks straight to the landfill,” he said.

For the full story, see:
Livia Albeck-Ripka. “Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not?” The New York Times (Thursday, May 31, 2018): B1 & B5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 29, 2018.)

China Will Fail to Corner the Lithium Market

(p. B12) Since emerging as an industrial superpower in the 2000s, China has repeatedly tried to lock up essential resources like iron ore and so-called rare earths. The latest example is lithium, a key battery element: . . . .
. . .
The reality is more mundane.
. . .
. . . it will take just $13 billion in investment to satisfy annual lithium consumption as of 2030, against more $100 billion for nickel and copper.
Even if only a relatively small amount of mining capital spending migrates from mainstays like iron ore into lithium over the next decade, supply probably won’t be a huge problem.

For the full story, see:
Nathaniel Taplin. “China Won’t Be Able to Dominate Lithium Mining Forever.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, May 18, 2018): B12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 17, 2018, and has the title “China Won’t Dominate Lithium Forever.” The last sentence quoted above appeared in the online, but not in the print, version of the article.)

Google Nurtures Cats That Eat Threatened Owls

(p. 1) MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Silicon Valley is booming, and longtime residents are being driven out everywhere. But only in Shoreline Park are the newcomers eating the natives.
A handful of burrowing owls live in this 750-acre wildlife and recreation area, deep in the grass. As the breeding season begins, they are among perhaps 50 left in Silicon Valley. A California species of “special concern,” burrowing owls nest in the ground. That makes them especially vulnerable.
Death strikes hard at Shoreline. The remains of an owl — a leg, a wing, a few scattered feathers — were found here in 2015, shortly after a feral cat was seen stalking it. Another owl was discovered dead near its burrow, and a third disappeared that year and was presumed killed. That was fully half the owls nesting in the park.
Environmentalists have been alarmed for a long time about the number of cats at Shoreline, but they could not determine where they were coming from. Gradually, public records requests and old-fashioned snooping uncovered a trail. It led southwest from the sun-burnished slopes of the park, up Permanente Creek and into the ever-expanding empire of Google.
Google never set out to threaten biodiversity in its front yard, of (p. 4) course. Like so many stories these days about Big Tech, this is a tale about how attempts to do good often produce unexpected consequences, and how even smart people (especially, perhaps, smart people) can be reluctant to rethink their convictions.
At Google, it is not so much that workers do not like birds as it is that they really love cats. There is an employee group called GCat Rescue that traps the cats around the so-called Googleplex. Kittens and friendly adults are put up for adoption. Less-friendly adult cats are neutered and released.
Google is famous for feeding its employees well, and the cats are no different. Every night, all night, dinner is served from cat-feeding stations. The cat community calls this approach “colony care.”
. . .
“Cats that are fed still hunt,” said Mr. Longcore, assistant professor of architecture, spatial sciences and biological sciences at the University of Southern California. “Even neutered cats and spayed cats hunt.” He added, “If you have an outdoor cat sanctuary, you can expect there to be consequences to the native wildlife.”

For the full story, see:
Streitfeld, David. “Google Doesn’t Hate Owls. It Just Loves Cats.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, May 27, 2018): 1 & 4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 26, 2018, and has the title “As Google Feeds Cats, Owl Lovers Cry Foul.” The online version says the print version appeared on May 6 on p. A17 of the New York Edition. My print version, as usual, was the National Edition.)

Hot Students Learn Less

More evidence on why air conditioning increases our mental acuity:

(p. A5) Hot weather makes it more difficult for high-school students to learn, a new study suggests.
. . .
The study was circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research as a working paper by Mr. Goodman and three other researchers.
They found that, on average, every increase of 1 degree Fahrenheit in the average temperature during the school year reduced learning by about 1%.

For the full story, see:
Ben Leubsdorf. “Heat Found to Hurt Studies.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, June 8, 2018): A5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 7, 2018, and has the title “American Students Don’t Learn Well When It’s Hot Outside.” The online version is substantially longer, and in some places has different wording, than the print version. Where the wording of a quoted passage differs, my quotation above follows the print version.)

The NBER paper, mentioned above, is:
Goodman, Joshua, Michael Hurwitz, Jisung Park, and Jonathan Smith. “Heat and Learning.” National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper Series, # 24639, May 2018.

Government Uses Cruel Painful Snare Traps to Kill Gorgeous Respectful Foxes

(p. A18) BRIGANTINE, N.J. — Red foxes can be found all over New Jersey, wandering out of the woods and poking through garbage at dusk in search of a meal. In many places, they might be overlooked, if not seen as a disease-carrying nuisance. But not in Brigantine, an island community where the fox has become an unofficial ambassador.
Many residents warmly share stories of their encounters, like the fox that would routinely come up to a back door or the time a children’s soccer game had to pause so one could cross the field. A fox makes an appearance on the cover of the city’s tourism guide, as much of an attraction as its golf course and pristine beaches. A real estate company regularly sends its mascot, Briggy the Fox, to community events.
Yet the island is also the seasonal home to piping plovers, a small bird that returns every year to dig its nests on the beach. The bird is an endangered species in New Jersey that state wildlife officials closely watch and fiercely protect, including from foxes, creating a bitter conflict that has caused an uproar as residents protest the trapping and killing of the animals.
Some are challenging the use of snare traps, a contraption that they describe as cruel and painful. The contretemps has also stirred a wider debate: Is it fair to kill one animal for the sake of protecting another?
“It disgusts me,” said Donna Vanzant, who owns a marina. “Why go after these gorgeous animals? Just let nature take its course.”
State lawmakers recently wrote a letter to wildlife officials expressing their “deep concern,” and the City Council passed a resolution condemning the “inhumane and indiscriminate killing of red foxes.” Briggy the Fox attended the meeting and held a sign: “Please stop killing my friends.”
“Everyone on the island cherishes the foxes and does not want them killed,” said Donna Grazioli DeAngelis, a retired teacher who started a petition online, which about 90,000 people have signed. “They have been so respectful, so perfect in every way,” she said of the foxes. “People paint them, photograph them. They haven’t been a nuisance in any way.”
. . .
“It’s an overreach and overreaction,” Philip J. Guenther, Brigantine’s longtime mayor, said of the fox trapping. “It just doesn’t seem to make any sense from a protection standpoint.”

For the full story, see:
Rick Rojas. “To Save One Precious Animal, a Town Must Sacrifice Another.” The New York Times (Monday, May 7, 2018: A18.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 6, 2018, and has the title “Trapping Foxes to Save Plovers Sets Off Showdown at Jersey Shore.” The online version says the print version appeared on May 6 on p. A17 of the New York Edition. My print version, as usual, was the National Edition.)

Ecosocialism: The “Green-and-Red Agenda” to Eradicate Capitalism

Not all environmentalists are motivated by a desire to destroy capitalism. But some are. See below.

(p. 26) Joel Kovel, a former Freudian psychiatrist who evolved into an apostle of what he called ecosocialism, a so-called green-and-red agenda against the environmental evils of globalization and in favor of the nonviolent eradication of capitalism, died on Monday [April 30, 2018] in Manhattan.
. . .
Whenever he launched an ideological crusade, he did so zealously — even if, as in the case of ecosocialism, its very definition and the collateral demand for an appealing alternative to capitalism were not self-evident.
Under ecosocialist theory, income would be guaranteed, most property and means of production would be commonly owned, and the abolition of capitalism, globalism and imperialism would unleash environmentalists to vastly curtail industrialization and development whose pollution would otherwise cause catastrophic global warming.
“Capitalist production, in its endless search for profit, seeks to turn everything into a commodity,” Dr. Kovel wrote in 2007 on the socialist website Climate and Capitalism. “It is plain that production will have to shift from being dominated by exchange — the path of the commodity — to that which is for use, that is for the direct meeting of human needs.”

For the full obituary, see:
Sam Roberts. “Dr. Joel Kovel, a Founder of Ecosocialism, Is Dead at 81.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, May 6, 2018): 26.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date May 4, 2018, and has the title “Dr. Joel Kovel, a Founder of Ecosocialism, Is Dead at 81.”)

California Regulation Adds $9,500 to Average Home Cost

(p. A1) The California Energy Commission voted 5-0 to approve a mandate that residential buildings up to three stories high, including single-family homes and condos, be built with solar installations starting in 2020.
The commission estimates that the move, along with other (p. A2) energy-efficiency requirements, would add $9,500 to the average cost of building a home in California. The state is already one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, with a median price of nearly $565,000 for a single-family home, according to the California Association of Realtors.

For the full story, see:
Erin Ailworth. “Solar Panel Mandate Jolts Housing Industry.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, May 10, 2018): A1-A2.

(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 9, 2018, and has the title “California Takes Big Step to Require Solar on New Homes.”)

Hundreds of Years of CO2 Emissions Could Be Stored Forever in Oman’s Rocks

(p. A10) IBRA, Oman — In the arid vastness of this corner of the Arabian Peninsula, out where goats and the occasional camel roam, rocks form the backdrop practically every way you look.
But the stark outcrops and craggy ridges are more than just scenery. Some of these rocks are hard at work, naturally reacting with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turning it into stone.
Veins of white carbonate minerals run through slabs of dark rock like fat marbling a steak. Carbonate surrounds pebbles and cobbles, turning ordinary gravel into natural mosaics.
Even pooled spring water that has bubbled up through the rocks reacts with CO2 to produce an ice-like crust of carbonate that, if broken, re-forms within days.
Scientists say that if this natural process, called carbon mineralization, could be harnessed, accelerated and applied inexpensively on a huge scale — admittedly some very big “ifs” — it could help fight climate change. Rocks could remove some of the billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the air since the beginning of the Industrial Age.
And by turning that CO2 into stone, the rocks in Oman — or in a number of other places around the world that have similar geological formations — would ensure that the gas stayed out of the atmosphere forever.
“Solid carbonate minerals aren’t going anyplace,” said Peter B. Kelemen, a geologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who has been studying the rocks here for more than two decades.
Capturing and storing carbon dioxide is drawing increased interest. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that deploying such technology is essential to efforts to rein in global warming.
. . .
The rocks are so extensive, Dr. Kelemen said, that if it was somehow possible to fully use them they could store hundreds of years of CO2 emissions. More realistically, he said, Oman could store at least a billion tons of CO2 annually. (Current yearly worldwide emissions are close to 40 billion tons.)

For the full story, see:

Henry Fountain. “How Oman’s Rocks Could Help Save the Planet.” The New York Times (Saturday, APRIL 28, 2018: A10-A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 26, 2018.)

Discovery of Several Centuries Worth of Rare-Earth Metals

(p. A13) TOKYO–Japan has hundreds of years’ worth of rare-earth metal deposits in its waters, according to new research that reflects Tokyo’s concern about China’s hegemony over minerals used in batteries and electric vehicles.
The deposits were found in the Pacific Ocean seabed near remote Minamitori Island, about 1,150 miles southeast of Tokyo. Extracting them would likely be costly, but resource-poor Japan is pushing ahead with research in hopes of getting more control over next-generation technologies and weapon systems.
A roughly 965-square-mile seabed near the island contains more than 16 million tons of rare-earth oxides, estimated to hold 780 years’ worth of the global supply of yttrium, 620 years’ worth of europium, 420 years’ worth of terbium and 730 years’ worth of dysprosium, according to a study published this week in Nature Publishing Group’s Scientific Reports.
. . .
In 2010, China pushed rare-earth prices up as much as 10 times by cutting its export quota on 17 elements by 40% from the previous year. It said it wanted to clean up a polluting industry, but the move left Japan seeking more independence from prices dictated by its neighbor. Japanese manufacturers have since lowered the amount of rare-earth metals in batteries and motors.

For the full story, see:
Mayumi Negishi. “In Rare-Earth Find, Hope of an Edge Against China.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, April 12, 2018): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 11, 2018, and has the title “Japan Hopes Rare-Earth Find Will Give It an Edge Against China.”)

The study mentioned above, is:
Takaya, Yutaro, Kazutaka Yasukawa, Takehiro Kawasaki, Koichiro Fujinaga, Junichiro Ohta, Yoichi Usui, Kentaro Nakamura, Jun-Ichi Kimura, Qing Chang, Morihisa Hamada, Gjergj Dodbiba, Tatsuo Nozaki, Koichi Iijima, Tomohiro Morisawa, Takuma Kuwahara, Yasuyuki Ishida, Takao Ichimura, Masaki Kitazume, Toyohisa Fujita, and Yasuhiro Kato. “The Tremendous Potential of Deep-Sea Mud as a Source of Rare-Earth Elements.” Scientific Reports 8, no. 1 (April 10, 2018): 1-8.

Global Warming Most Affects Coldest Regions

(p. A11) Winters in the United States have gotten warmer in the past 30 years, and some of the coldest parts of the country have warmed up the most.
In Minnesota, winters between 1989 and 2018 were an average of 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, compared to a 20th century baseline, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed by The New York Times. Florida’s winters were 1.4 degrees warmer, on average, during that time.
For each 30-year period above, the maps show how much warmer or cooler winters were across the contiguous United States, compared to an average winter for that location during the 20th century. Though it might not always feel like it, warmer winters have become more common across most of the country. The most significant temperature increases can be seen in the Northern Great Plains, a region stretching from Montana to Michigan.
The Northern Great Plains have warmed up particularly quickly in part because of the dry winter conditions typical there, said Kenneth Blumenfeld, a senior climatologist at the Minnesota State Climate Office. Cold air moving into the area from Canada and the Arctic is also not as cold as it used to be, he said.
“In Minnesota, we used to get to negative 30 or negative 40 degrees with certain frequency. But no longer. Maybe we’ll now hit negative 30 with the frequency we used to hit negative 40,” Dr. Blumenfeld said. But, he added, this difference in cold extremes can be difficult for people to perceive. When it’s that cold out, after all, people tend to stay inside.
The pattern of warming shown here is largely consistent with global trends, said Jake Crouch, a scientist at NOAA’s climate monitoring branch. “In general, northern latitudes are warming faster than southern latitudes. Interior locations are warming faster than coastal locations.”

For the full story, see:
NADJA POPOVICH and BLACKI MIGLIOZZI. “Where Are America’s Winters Warming the Most? In Cold Places.” The New York Times (Saturday, MARCH 17, 2018): A11.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 16, 2018.)

Silicon Valley Warms to Trumps Lower Taxes and Deregulation

(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — Two days after Donald J. Trump won the 2016 election, executives at Google consoled their employees in an all-staff meeting broadcast around the world.
“There is a lot of fear within Google,” said Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive, according to a video of the meeting viewed by The New York Times. When asked by an employee if there was any silver lining to Mr. Trump’s election, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “Boy, that’s a really tough one right now.” Ruth Porat, the finance chief, said Mr. Trump’s victory felt “like a ton of bricks dropped on my chest.” Then she instructed members of the audience to hug the person next to them.
Sixteen months later, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has most likely saved billions of dollars in taxes on its overseas cash under a new tax law signed by Mr. Trump. Alphabet also stands to benefit from the Trump administration’s looser regulations for self-driving cars and delivery drones, as well as from proposed changes to the trade pact with Mexico and Canada that would limit Google’s liability for user content on its sites.
Once one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal opponents, Silicon Valley’s technology industry has increasingly found common ground with the White House. When Mr. Trump was elected, tech executives were largely up in arms over a leader who espoused policies on immigration and other issues that were antithetical to their companies’ values. Now, many of the industry’s executives are growing more comfortable with the president and how his (p. B5) economic agenda furthers their business interests, even as many of their employees continue to disagree with Mr. Trump on social issues.
. . .
. . . quietly, the tech industry has warmed to the White House, especially as companies including Alphabet, Apple and Intel have benefited from the Trump administration’s policies.
Those include lowering corporate taxes, encouraging development of new wireless technology like 5G and, so far, ignoring calls to break up the tech giants. Mr. Trump’s tougher stance on China may also help ward off industry rivals, with the president squashing a hostile bid to acquire the chip maker Qualcomm this month. And Mr. Trump let die an Obama-era rule that required many tech start-ups to give some workers more overtime pay.
Mr. Trump “has been great for business and really, really good for tech,” said Gary Shapiro, who leads the Consumer Technology Association, the largest American tech trade group, with more than 2,200 members including Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook.
Mr. Shapiro said that he had voted for Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s opponent, in 2016, but that he and many tech executives had come around on Mr. Trump. While they disagree with him on immigration and the environment, they have found areas where their interests align, like deregulation and investment in internet infrastructure.
“This isn’t Hitler or Mussolini here,” Mr. Shapiro said. And even though the president’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum could hurt American businesses and consumers, “disagreement in one area does not mean we cannot work together in others,” Mr. Shapiro said. “Everyone who is married knows that.”

For the full story, see:

JACK NICAS. “Silicon Valley, Wary of Trump, Warms to Him.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 31, 2018): B1 & B5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 30, 2018, and has the title “Silicon Valley Warms to Trump After a Chilly Start.”)