Environmentalist President Banned Chemical Fertilizers “to Turn Sri Lanka Into ‘the Organic Garden of the World’”

(p. A6) COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The president was cornered, his back to the sea.

Inside the dimly lit colonial mansion he had found lonely, Gotabaya Rajapaksa watched from a hastily arranged operations room as the monthslong protests demanding his ouster as Sri Lanka’s leader reached his very doorstep.

. . .

Three years after winning the election handsomely, and just two years after his family’s party had secured a whopping two-thirds majority in Parliament, Mr. Rajapaksa had become deeply resented. And the bill for his family’s years of entitlement, corruption and mismanagement, made worse by a global economic order plunged into chaos by Covid and war, had at last come due.

. . .

Even as the economic crisis deepened, the president’s focus was often elsewhere. In April 2021, he suddenly declared a ban on chemical fertilizers. His hope, his advisers said, was to turn Sri Lanka into “the organic garden of the world.”

Farmers, lacking organic fertilizer, saw their yields plummet. And a rift in the family grew: Gotabaya resisted attempts by his brother Mahinda, who was now prime minister, to change his mind on the fertilizer ban.  . . .

By the spring of 2022, long lines were forming for fuel, supermarkets were running low on imported foods, and the nation’s supply of cooking gas was almost exhausted as the government’s foreign reserves dwindled almost to zero.

The country was in free fall. And the one person who could do something about it was adrift. In meetings, the president was often distracted, scrolling through intelligence reports on his phone, according to officials who were in (p. A7) the room with him.

. . .

Gotabaya Rajapaksa eventually fled the country on a military plane, first to the Maldives and then to Singapore, before arriving in Thailand on Thursday [August 11, 2022].

For the full story, see:

Mujib Mashal, Emily Schmall and Atul Loke. “How the Middle Class In Sri Lanka Pushed A President Into Exile.” The New York Times (Saturday, August 13, 2022): A6-A7.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 12, 2022, and has the title “Showdown at the Mansion Gates: How Sri Lankans Rose Up to Dethrone a Dynasty.”)

Global Warming “Presents a Fleeting Opportunity for Glacial Archaeologists”

(p. 14) Espen Finstad was trudging through mud in the Jotunheimen mountains of eastern Norway this month when he happened upon a wooden arrow, bound with a pointed tip made of quartzite. Complete with feathers, it was so well-preserved that it looked as if it could have been lost just recently.

. . .

The find, which Mr. Finstad and his colleagues believe belonged to a reindeer hunter in the late Stone Age or early Bronze Age, is among thousands of artifacts and remains that have emerged from melting ice in recent years, as climate change thaws permafrost and glaciers around the world.

. . .

The thaw presents a fleeting opportunity for glacial archaeologists: They must find the historical treasures just as they emerge from the ice and before they are destroyed by the elements.

“We’re sort of in a race against time,” said Lars Holger Pilo, a glacial archaeologist and a colleague of Mr. Finstad’s.  . . .

For more than a decade, their team, which runs the Secrets of the Ice project, has scoured mountain passes across the country.  . . .

Since then, the team has discovered around 4,000 artifacts and remains, including a 1,000-year-old wooden whisk and Viking mitten, medieval horseshoes, Bronze Age skis and more than 150 arrows.

Similar work is taking place near Anchorage, Alaska, as well as in northeastern Siberia and Mongolia.

Among the most exciting finds have been Yuka, a 39,000-year-old baby Mammoth found in Siberia in 2010, and a 280-million-year-old tree fossil found in Antarctica in 2016. But the most famous of all is Ötzi — a 5,300-year-old iceman found in 1991 by hikers on the northern Italian border with Austria.

For the full story, see:

Livia Albeck-Ripka. “Melting Ice in Norway Reveals Ancient Arrow.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, September 24, 2023): 14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 23, 2023, and has the title “Ancient Arrow Is Among Artifacts to Emerge From Norway’s Melting Ice.”)

If Regulators Allow, Improved Photosynthesis Can Feed More of the Poor Using Less Land

(p. A13) For decades, scientists have pursued a tantalizing possibility for bolstering food supplies and easing hunger for the world’s poorest: improving photosynthesis, the biological process in plants that sustains nearly all life on Earth.

Now, researchers say that by using genetic modifications to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis, they significantly increased yields in a food crop, soybeans, providing a glimmer of potential that such methods could someday put more food on tables as climate change and other threats make it harder for vulnerable populations across the globe to feed their families.

. . .  Their methods will also have to pass muster with government regulators before crops transformed this way will ever reach farmers’ fields.

. . .

Without major changes to agriculture, governments’ targets for mitigating climate change are at risk, scientists warn. Yet addressing malnutrition and hunger in the short term might require pressing more land and other resources into service, which could accentuate warming.

That is why scientific advancements that could help us produce more nourishment without using more land, whether by improving photosynthesis or otherwise, hold such promise.

. . .

The new research in Illinois focuses on “non-photochemical quenching,” a mechanism in plants that protects them from sun damage. When plants are in bright sunlight, they often receive more light energy than they can use for photosynthesis. This mechanism helps them shed the excess energy harmlessly as heat. But after the plant is shaded again, it doesn’t stop very quickly, which means the plant wastes precious time and energy that could be put toward producing carbohydrates.

The researchers’ genetic transformations help plants adjust more quickly to shade. In multilayered plants like rice, wheat, maize and soy, this extra nimbleness could theoretically increase photosynthesis in the middle layers of leaves, which are constantly flitting between sunlight and shadow during the day.

For the full story, see:

Raymond Zhong and Clare Toeniskoetter. “Researchers Alter Genes To Refine Photosynthesis And Improve Crop’s Yield.” The New York Times (Friday, August 19, 2022): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 18, 2022, and has the title “Scientists Boost Crop Performance by Engineering a Better Leaf.”)

To Force Use of Organic Farming, Government Banned Chemical Fertilizers; A Ban Which “Devastated” Crops and “Destroyed the Farmers”

(p. A6) GALENBINDUNUWEWA, Sri Lanka—For more than half a century, Pahatha Mellange Jayaappu has tilled the field on his modest farm in Sri Lanka’s agricultural heartland, unswayed by recurrent political and economic turmoil.

Now the 71-year-old is just trying to eke out enough of a harvest to feed his family after an abrupt ban on chemical fertilizers last year devastated his crops. He says he has given up on planting for profit.

“We have lived through armed insurrections and bad government policies,” Mr. Jayaappu said. “This is the worst year I’ve ever seen. They have destroyed the farmers.”

Many Sri Lankans aren’t getting enough to eat, and farmers and agricultural experts say the food shortages are set to worsen. The government reversed the ban in November and promised fresh supplies of chemical fertilizers, but farmers said many received only a small amount, and too late for the current growing season.

. . .

The ban on imports of agricultural chemicals took effect in May 2021, and the rice harvest the following March was down 40%, according to government data. Prices soared. Sri Lanka, which had been largely self-sufficient in rice, was forced to use some of its fast-dwindling foreign reserves to import the key staple. Other crops, like tea, an important foreign-exchange earner, have also suffered. In May, the country defaulted on its external debt.

. . .

Mr. Wickremesinghe was installed by Parliament last month after his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the country and resigned in the face of mass protests over fuel shortages and food prices.  . . .

Mr. Rajapaksa billed the ban as a nationwide shift to organic farming, but agricultural experts say that requires a yearslong transition. Opposition lawmakers said cutting off imports of fertilizer, which the government heavily subsidizes for farmers, was a shortsighted attempt to hold on to foreign reserves.

. . .

Farmers complained that the organic fertilizers that came on the market after the ban took effect were poor quality, full of material that wasn’t fully decomposed. And the haste of the ban left insufficient time to make their own compost, or learn how to farm organically.

For the full story, see:

Shan Li and Philip Wen. “Sri Lanka’s Farmers Struggle to Survive.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, August 20, 2022): A6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Aug. 19, 2022, and has the title “Sri Lanka’s Farmers Struggle to Feed the Country—and Themselves.”)

European Regulators Violate Free Choice and Hurt the Environment by Banning Apple’s Lightning Port

(p. B6) . . ., Apple didn’t want to remove the Lightning port. The European Union passed legislation that states that by the end of 2024, mobile phones, tablets and other gadgets sold in the EU will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C “receptacle.”

. . .

In an interview with me last year, Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, argued that this would just create more e-waste since over a billion people would have to get rid of Lightning cables.

“We think the approach would have been better environmentally and better for our customers to not have a government be so prescriptive,” he said.

For the full commentary, see:

Joanna Stern. “PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY; Why a Tiny USB-C Port Is a Huge Deal.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Sept. 15, 2023): B6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date September 12, 2023, and has the title “PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY; iPhone 15 and 15 Pro First Look: Why a Tiny USB-C Port Is a Huge Deal.”)

Open Is Good (Hearts, Minds, Societies, and Windows)

Windows are liberating. The person in the room can decide how much air and light to let in. So I have never liked when central planners who control buildings omitted windows that could be opened. Other things equal, let people choose. Florence Nightingale wanted open windows, partly based on the mistaken miasma theory of disease. John Snow famously and courageously showed that cholera was caused by bad water, not bad air, thereby jump-starting the process of experts rejecting the miasma theory. But although the miasma theory was not universally applicable (some bad things spread in ways other than the air) and was wrong in some details (what was bad about some of the air was not the air itself, but the pathogens in the air), some of the actions that had been taken on the basis of miasma theory had positive effects. Ventilation was good because the air did sometimes have something bad in it–bacteria and viruses. Closing up buildings kept the bad inside to spread and infect. So now, fortunately, we are back to recognizing that ventilation has important good effects. In the meantime less harm would have been done if our buildings and our other rules had allowed more individual liberty to choose (windows that could be opened), and less centrally planned mandates (windows sealed closed).

(p. D1) One of the paramount lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic is that fresh air matters. Although officials were initially reluctant to acknowledge that the coronavirus was airborne, it soon became clear that the virus spread easily through the air indoors. As the pandemic raged on, experts began urging building operators to crank up their ventilation systems and Americans to keep their windows open. The message: A well-ventilated building could be a bulwark (p. D5) against disease.

It was not a novel idea. More than a century ago, when infectious diseases ravaged cities in the United States and Europe, public health reformers preached the power of good ventilation, and open-air homes, hospitals and schools sprang up in New York, London and other locales on both sides of the Atlantic.

But over the last century, society lost hold of that idea. Scientific advances turned pathogens into problems that could be solved at the individual, biomedical level, with medicines and vaccines, rather than through infrastructure or societal change. Skylines became crowded with air-conditioned towers. An energy crisis encouraged engineers to seal structures tightly. And by the time the coronavirus arrived, Americans were spending their days in schools, offices and homes that could barely breathe.

. . .

Germ theory had not yet gained widespread acceptance; instead, the longstanding theory of miasma held that disease was the result of “bad air.” So sanitary reformers began calling for an overhaul of urban spaces, including improvements in ventilation. “An abundant supply of fresh air, at a proper temperature, is the first requisite of health in every place,” the Citizens’ Association of New York wrote in a report published in 1865.

. . .

Similar reforms were also underway in hospitals thanks, in part, to the crusading work of Florence Nightingale, the British nurse who was stationed at a filthy military hospital during the Crimean War in 1854. The nurse, who believed in the healing power of “air from without,” helped popularize pavilion-style hospitals, which featured long, narrow wards with a row of large, open windows running along each wall.

. . .

Ventilation rates fell and then plummeted further during the energy crisis of the 1970s, when buildings were sealed even more tightly. “In fact,” said James Lo, an architectural engineer at Drexel University, “a lot of effort pre-Covid is to try to reduce the amount of ventilation because people don’t want to spend the energy.”

. . .

In the United States today, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, or ASHRAE, sets widely used indoor air quality standards and specifies minimum ventilation rates. In practice, these rates typically govern how buildings are designed, rather than how they are operated day to day, and many structures deliver less fresh air than they were designed to provide, experts said.

The standards define acceptable indoor air quality as air that does not have “harmful” levels of “known contaminants,” and with which at least 80 percent of occupants are satisfied. But infectious disease is not a focus.

“It says nothing about, ‘Does this level of air quality protect you from risk of infection when the seasonal flu is going around, or when there’s a novel epidemic disease, like Covid?’” said William Bahnfleth, an architectural engineer at Penn State University and the chairman of the epidemic task force at ASHRAE.

For the full story, see:

Emily Anthes. “The New War on Bad Air.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 20 [sic], 2023): D1 & D5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 23, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

In His Bathysphere Beebe “Maintained a Sense of Childlike Optimism”

(p. 28) Beautifully written and beautifully made, “The Bathysphere Book” is a piece of poetic nonfiction that strives to conjure up the crushing blackness of the midnight zone. Full color, overflowing with stunning illustrations of the uncanny creatures that live beyond the sun, it raises questions of exploration and wonder, of nature and humanity, and lets readers find answers on their own.

. . .

As he slipped deeper and deeper beneath the waves, Beebe bore witness to “a black so black it called his very existence into question,” and saw creatures that could be recorded only by describing them to Else Bostelmann, a painter who worked like a police sketch artist to render animals she would never see in colors like “bittersweet orange, metallic opaline green, orange rufous and orange chrome.”

. . .

. . . he maintained a sense of childlike optimism that pervades the book, cutting through the limitless cold of the sea: “Having traveled the world from the depths of the sea to the highest mountains, tramped through jungles and flown across continents, Beebe was more and more adamant that wonder was not produced by swashbuckling adventures — it was a way of seeing, an attitude toward experience that was always available. At every turn, the world’s marvels were right before our eyes.”

For the full review, see:

W. M. Akers. “Under the Sea.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, June 4, 2023): 28-29.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated May 31, 2023, and has the title “Deep-Sea Creatures of Bittersweet Orange and Metallic Opaline Green.”)

The book under review is:

Fox, Brad. The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths. New York: Astra Publishing House, 2023.

Roughly 5,000 New Species Found in Clarion Clipperton Zone of Pacific Ocean

(p. B3) Researchers from the Natural History Museum London analyzed samples of bottom-dwelling animals collected on expeditions to the 2.3 million-square-mile area, known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone, which lies halfway between Hawaii and Mexico. Of the 5,578 species found in the zone, between 88% and 92% are new to science, according to the paper, published Thursday [May 24, 2024] in the journal Current Biology.

. . .

Adrian Glover, an author of the study and merit researcher at the museum, spent several months at sea collecting samples earlier this year.

. . .

“It doesn’t rival coral reefs or rainforests for diversity,” Glover said. “But it is actually higher than soft sediments along the continental shelf, which is just totally bizarre.”

Glover said new marine invertebrates are valuable because they can contain unusual chemical compounds that could potentially be turned into anticancer, antifungal or antiviral drugs.

For the full story, see:

Eric Niiler. “New Species Discovered Deep in Pacific.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, May 25, 2023): B3.

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

(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 25, 2023, and has the title “Thousands of New Species Discovered in Ocean Area Targeted by Deep-Sea Miners.”)

The academic paper summarized above is:

Rabone, Muriel, Joris H. Wiethase, Erik Simon-Lledo´, Aidan M. Emery, Daniel O.B. Jones, Thomas G. Dahlgren, Guadalupe Bribiesca-Contreras, Helena Wiklund, Tammy Horton, and Adrian G. Glover. “How Many Metazoan Species Live in the World’s Largest Mineral Exploration Region?” Current Biology 33, no. 12 (June 19, 2023): 2383–96.

European Farmers Want Climate Protected by More Innovation, Not by Less Agriculture

(p. 4) To meet climate goals, some European countries are asking farmers to reduce livestock, relocate or shut down — and an angry backlash has begun reshaping the political landscape before national elections in the fall.

. . .

Those like Helma Breunissen, who runs a dairy farm in the Netherlands with her husband, say that too much of the burden is falling on them, threatening both their livelihoods and their way of life.

For almost 20 years, Ms. Breunissen has provided the Dutch with a staple product, cow’s milk, and she felt that her work was valued by society, she said. The dairy sector in the Netherlands, which also produces cheeses like Gouda and Edam, is celebrated as a cornerstone of national pride.

But the sector also produces almost half the Netherlands’ emissions of nitrogen, a surplus of which is bad for biodiversity. Ms. Breunissen and thousands of other farmers bridle that they are now labeled peak emitters.

“I was confused, sad and angry,” said Ms. Breunissen, who manages a farm of 100 cows in the middle of the country. “We are doing our best. We try to follow the rules. And suddenly, it’s like you are a criminal.”

. . .

In the Netherlands, the government has asked thousands of farmers to scale back, move or close. The authorities set aside about 24 billion euros, about $26 billion, to help farmers put in place more sustainable solutions — or to buy them out.

. . .

For Ms. Breunissen, who is 48 and works as a veterinarian in addition to her duties on the farm, none of the government-proposed options seem feasible. She is too young to quit and too old to uproot her life, she said, and the authorities have not provided enough support and information on how to change what she now does.

“There are so many questions,” she said. “The trust in the government is completely gone.”

. . .

A host of new groups are vying to displace traditional parties. They include the Farmer Citizen Movement, known by its Dutch acronym BBB, which was established four years ago.

. . .

Caroline van der Plas, the party’s co-founder, used to be a journalist in The Hague covering the meat industry, and she has never worked in farming. But she grew up in a small city in a rural area, and she said in an interview that she wanted to be “the voice of the people in rural regions who are not seen or heard” by policymakers.

She and her party have talked down the need for drastic steps to cut emissions, saying the reductions can be achieved through technological innovation. Policies should be based on “common sense,” she said, while offering no concrete solutions.

“It’s not like science says this or that,” Ms. van der Plas said, referring to how theories can change. “Science is always asking questions.”

For the full story, see:

Monika Pronczuk and Claire Moses. “New Climate Standards Have Farmers in Europe Bristling.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023): 4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Aug. 28, 2023, and has the title “Labeled Climate Culprits, European Farmers Rebel Over New Standards.”)

Octopus Eggs Thrive in Hot Ocean Water of “Octopus Garden”

(p. 14) In 2018, Amanda Kahn, an invertebrate biologist at San Jose State University, joined an ocean expedition to scout the base of Davidson Seamount, an inactive underwater volcano off the coast of central California. She came for the sponges and corals.

But she and her colleagues stumbled across something much more astounding. As their remotely operated vehicle, which was probing the seafloor and streaming video back to their ship, rose from behind a rock, the crew gasped. In shimmering waters, they saw scores of upside-down octopuses nestled in rocky crevices with their arms clutched around their frames. A closer look revealed that they were protecting eggs, similar to the way that birds brood in a nest.

“Sometimes you recognize immediately the magnitude of something special that you’ve found,” Dr. Kahn said. “And I think that was one of those really special moments.”

When James Barry, a marine ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, got a glimpse on a later expedition, he instantly wondered why so many octopuses were here. “And so we set about to figure out,” he said.

. . .

The team’s findings, detailed in a new paper published Wednesday in Science Advances, suggest that this hot spot makes the octopuses’ eggs hatch faster, which improves reproductive success.

. . .

“That’s a big deal for these eggs, because in the deep sea, one of the really big challenges is that it’s cold,” Dr. Barry said. Chilly temperatures slow down the metabolism of coldblooded animals, including rates of embryonic growth. For this species of octopus, it could have taken anywhere from five to 10 years for the eggs to fully develop in ambient waters — but in this nursery, the scientists found that they were hatching in less than two years on average.

The earlier the better, the team reasoned, when it comes to reproductive success. Less time spent as an embryo reduces the risks of being eaten by predators, or suffering infections or injuries that lead to death. Because octopuses don’t eat while brooding — and die after reproducing — they also suspect that quicker egg hatchings might make for a higher chance of survival, since the mother is less likely to lose the energy needed to sustain them.

It’s the mothers’ last hurrah, Dr. Kahn said: “They go all out in protecting those eggs.” She added that brooding near a hot spring helps ensure the mothers’ final acts are a success.

The findings make sense to Michael Vecchione, a deep-sea cephalopod biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who was not involved in the study. Dr. Vecchione, who had seen the discovery of the garden back in 2018, had also speculated that the octopuses were using the heat to speed up embryo growth. “I’m not surprised that the warm temperature was beneficial to them,” he said. “And apparently, it’s starting to look like it’s a pretty widespread phenomenon, even though nobody had ever seen it until just a few years ago.”

For the full story, see:

Katrina Miller. “Under the Sea, an ‘Octopus Garden’ Thrives in the Shade of a Hot Spring.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023): 14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 23, 2023, and has the title “Atop an Underwater Hot Spring, an ‘Octopus Garden’ Thrives.” The online version says that the print version appears on p. 12. My national edition of the print version had the article on p. 14.)

Paper Makers Lobby to Retain Mandate for Costly and Useless Long Pamphlets with Prescription Drugs

(p. B5) Doctors and pharmacists receive lengthy pamphlets for all prescription drugs that can stretch as long as a dining-room table. Efforts to go digital in this heavily regulated industry are finally making headway, offering drugmakers the chance to provide up-to-date information while also saving money, trees and greenhouse-gas emissions.

. . .

Advocates arguing such prescription information should go fully digital say the instructions are only for medical professionals, who often already consult up-to-date electronic versions and leave the papers unread and discarded. Proponents of keeping paper say the printed instructions are consulted frequently enough to help ensure medicine is used safely.

. . .

“It’s like a dream come true looking in the facility and seeing the packs coming off the manufacturing lines without these paper leaflets,” said Pam Cheng, operations and sustainability chief at pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. “This is like win, win, win.”

AstraZeneca spends $30 million a year on the papers globally and is pushing to digitize prescribing information as part of its goal to cut 50% of emissions across its value chain by 2030, Cheng said. The company aims to have a plan by 2025 for all its medical information to go electronic by the end of the decade. Many other pharma companies also want to go digital.

. . .

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2014 proposed to replace the paper information with a digital source, saying it would ensure information is up-to-date and bring environmental and cost benefits. However, an obscure clause in the FDA’s Congressional spending bill has blocked the move, with intense lobbying from two dedicated groups: the Alliance to Modernize Prescribing Information, representing drugmakers such as AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, and the Pharmaceutical Printed Literature Association, backed by paper producers such as Avery Dennison, JP Gould and WestRock.

. . .

Other countries have digitized drug information, with Japan leading the way. In 2021, the country required drug inserts to go digital by August 2023, both those for patients and medical professionals.

For the full story, see:

Dieter Holger. “Bill Would Let Drugmakers Stop Printing Long Pamphlets.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, June 16, 2023): B5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 15, 2023, and has the title “One Change Could Help U.S. Drugmakers Save 11 Million Trees a Year.”)