Weekly Ingest Newsletter: Fifteenth Edition
Each week I curate a newsletter for all my listeners that are comprised of articles that are of interest to the topics I talk about the podcast. This newsletter also brings national and international news about sustainability and climate change that may often get overlooked, forgotten about, or is unheard of to the community I serve.
In the coming weeks, the newsletter will be getting a big facelift. We will be offering more diverse and original content as well as important information related to the podcast!!
Climate Grief and the Election
Illustration: Sonny Ross/The Guardian
Meet the doomers: why some young US voters have given up hope on climate
From The Guardian: Alexandra Villarreal
Politically active young people are often championed as the Earth’s great hope to reverse the climate crisis – but many believe we’ve already passed the tipping point
When Siddharth Namachivayam casts a ballot in Colorado this fall, he’ll forego Democratic nominee Joe Biden, whom he sees as just a “Band-Aid,” and instead support the longshot Green party candidate focused on climate action.
“I guess, yeah, it’d be marginally better if Biden was president, but I don’t think Biden being president is more important than the Green party growing in the next couple of years,” Namachivayam says.
If we continue on our current track, he predicts food shortages, global economic instability, refugee crises, populist reactionary movements: all the forces that are already plaguing humanity, intensified. He has little confidence that the world will do what’s necessary to curtail the climate crisis, and he wrestles with the sheer scale of what needs to happen – such as disrupting the entrenched economic interests that run counter to disaster prevention.
A home burns as the sun sets behind smoke and flames during the Bobcat fire in Juniper Hills, California, on Friday. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images
‘They’re suffering now’: Americans scramble to adapt to daily reality of climate crisis
From The Guardian: Emily Holden
Heat and wildfire smoke force residents to seek respite – and buy cooling systems and air purifiers, if they can afford them
Wildfire smoke had painted the sky orange last week when Sam, a Bay Area resident, plugged in his newest purchase: an air filter with a car adapter that would turn his minivan into an escape vehicle.
Sam’s daughter has an immune disorder, and with smoke from nearby fires making the air among the globe’s dirtiest, the family fled north for clearer skies.
Sam, who asked the Guardian to withhold his last name to respect his daughter’s privacy, said the attempts to protect her vulnerable lungs cost several thousand dollars. “Just the fact that we have this option available to us makes us incredibly lucky,” he said.
Demonstrators gather on the steps of the state capitol in Harrisburg to demand action on climate change on Friday, September 20, 2019. Rachel McDevitt / WITF
What do you want elected officials to do about climate change?
From State Impact Pennsylvania: Rachel McDevitt
The November election will likely have big consequences for climate policy in the United States.
President Donald Trump recently said he doesn’t “think science knows” about climate change during a visit to wildfire-plagued California. His administration has rolled back Obama-era climate initiatives. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is promising to put the country on a path toward a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions from the U.S. no later than 2050.
Windmills in the Mojave Desert outside of Lancaster, California. If elected, Joe Biden could declare a national climate emergency, which would give the administration the power to mobilize the government on a massive scale, like ordering the Secretary of Defense to redirect military spending toward the rapid development of clean energy. Visions of America/Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
Will We Be Able to Reverse Trump’s Climate Damage?
From Rolling Stones: Hannah Murphy
What Joe Biden would need to do starting from Day One to correct the course of U.S. climate policy
When he talks about the Trump administration, David Doniger likes to say: “Imagine where we’d be if they knew what they were doing.” The climate lawyer and senior advisor to the NRDC Action Fund spends his days defending the environment from the U.S. government, and for the past three and a half years, that’s meant a front-row seat to the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on any regulation that’s meant to slow the climate crisis.
But it’s also been a window into the hasty, sloppy, and legally dubious ways that they’ve gone about it. “One of the hallmarks of this administration is how incompetently they’re doing this,” says Doniger. “It shows up in how slowly they’ve been able to work, and how flimsy their legal rationales are.” Almost all of Trump’s attempts at deregulation — some 100 rules that he’s tried to eliminate or weaken — are being challenged in court, and environmentalists are steadily winning. According to the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, the Trump administration has lost 69 of the 83 legal challenges it’s faced in its deregulatory blitz.
The Dying Fossil Fuel Industry
Don Williams and a colleague at work atop a wind turbine in North Dakota. CBS NEWS
As fossil fuel jobs falter, renewables come to the rescue
From CBS News: Jeff Berardelli
In 2011, Don Williams made the long trip from Michigan to North Dakota hoping to capitalize on the Bakken oil boom — to, as he says, "chase oil and make quick cash." It paid off; for years Williams worked in operations on the oil fields, watching over production and maintaining pump jacks.
To say that Williams worked hard would be an understatement. Putting in 12-hour days, 7 days a week — 84-hour work-weeks were typical. And the work was lucrative. The money flowed as fast as the oil did — until it didn't. In May, Williams was laid off, along with most of the Bakken workforce, when boom went bust.
But within a week, he made a huge career leap — 300 feet up, to be exact — ascending from the firm grounds of the Bakken Oil Fields to the top of a giant wind turbine to take part in a 12-week training course to become a wind energy technician. In his words, he no longer wanted to "ride the oil waves, the highs and lows," anymore.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to the media after he toured the North Complex Fire zone in Butte County on Sept. 11, 2020, outside of Oroville, Calif.Paul Kitagaki Jr. / AP
California Gov. signs order banning sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035
From NBC: Denise Chow
The order aims to phase out cars with internal combustion engines within 15 years by requiring that all new cars be zero-emission vehicles.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday to end the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035. The order aims to phase out cars with internal combustion engines within 15 years by requiring that all new passenger cars and trucks sold in the Golden State in 2035 be zero-emission vehicles.
Newsom said the move, which comes as California is battling some of the worst wildfires in the state’s recent history, will help California reduce carbon pollution in the transportation sector, which contributes to more than half of the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Andrew Rush / Post-Gazette
The Revolution pipeline, two years since it exploded, is back under construction in Beaver County
From Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Anya Litvak
Two years and two weeks after the Revolution pipeline slid down a steep hill in Center Township and burst into flames, its owner has begun the process of repair.
Texas-based Energy Transfer Corp. got approval from state environmental regulators to reroute part of the 24-inch natural gas pipeline onto flatter ground near the area of the explosion. The company told nearby residents that it is felling trees this week and plans to be done with construction in about 45 to 60 days.
The pipeline explosion Sept. 10, 2018, was preceded by a heavy rainfall and a history of landslides in that part of Beaver County. The Revolution pipeline had been operational for only a few days before the rupture, and that part hasn’t operated since.
The project is considered a gathering pipeline — it is meant to collect gas from wells starting in Beaver and Butler counties and ferry it to an Energy Transfer gas processing plant in Washington County.
The Regenerative Agriculture Revolution
Solar panels at Tablas Creek Vineyard near Paso Robles, Calif. Reducing carbon footprint is a major tenet of regenerative farming. (Tablas Creek Vineyard)
The ROC certification could become the gold standard for wineries, and the earth
From The Washington Post: Dave McIntyre
Tablas Creek winery, in the Paso Robles region of California’s Central Coast, makes wines from organic grapes, following the biodynamic principles established by the Demeter certification program. Yet the winery has never advertised organic or biodynamic certifications on its bottles. Soon, however, consumers will notice a seal on Tablas Creek labels touting the Regenerative Organic Certification.
The ROC is a new program launched in August by the Regenerative Organic Alliance, a group based in Santa Rosa, Calif., dedicated to reforming agriculture and fighting climate change. The certification emphasizes three “pillars” of regenerative farming: Soil health, eschewing synthetic chemicals and practicing carbon capture to trap more carbon in the soil than is released; animal welfare, including a strict ban on CAFOs, or concentrated animal feeding operations; and social fairness, including living wages and good working conditions for farmworkers.
The program is not just for wineries but also food and clothing industries — anything based on agriculture, really. The alliance’s main financial supporters are Patagonia, the clothing company that increasingly is selling food items, the Rodale Institute and Dr. Bronner’s, a producer of socially and environmentally responsible soap, hair and body care products.
Patty Gentry transformed two acres of trash-strewn dirt on Long Island into a profitable organic farm by betting big on regenerative farming. Alexander Kaufman/Huffpost
The Soil Revolution That Could Save Farming And The Climate
From Huffpost: Alexander Kaufman
Joe Biden and other Democrats are backing regenerative farming, which pulls carbon from the atmosphere and restores nutrients to soil. But is it ready for prime time?
Tropical Storm Isaias downed power lines and trees across the greater New York City area in early August, snapping limbs from the ancient oaks that ring Patty Gentry’s small Long Island farm. Dead branches were still dangling a month later. But rows of mustard greens were unfurling nearby, and a thicket of green vines reached toward the sun, dotted with tangy orange bulbs.
“These sungold tomatoes were toast,” Gentry said, sounding almost astonished. “But now look at them. They’re coming back. It’s like spring again.”
Over the past four years, Gentry has transformed two acres of trash-strewn dirt on Long Island’s southeast coast into a profitable organic farm by betting big on soil. Instead of pumping her crops with pesticides and petrochemical fertilizer, Gentry grows vetch, a hardy pea-like plant, and rye to cover the exposed soil between the rows of greens intended for harvest. She layers the soil with specially mined rock dust that replenishes minerals and pulls carbon from the air. And in the spring and summer, she uses a system of crop rotation ― shifting around where different crops are planted ― so that one plant’s nutrient needs don’t drain the soil. These practices are collectively known as regenerative farming.
