Aug 16, 2025
Aaron Dunbar
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
“To the American who is more than satisfied with himself and his country this volume is affectionately dedicated.”
So reads the opening dedication to J.A. Mitchell’s 1889 novel “The Last American.” An early example of post-apocalyptic literature, this brief tale describes a crew of explorers in the year 2951, who happen upon the ancient ruins of a devastated America. Of particular note is how the book describes the downfall of our once powerful nation:
“Climatic changes, the like of which no other land ever experienced, began at that period, and finished in less than ten years a work made easy by nervous natures and rapid lives. The temperature would skip in a single day from burning heat to winter’s cold. No constitution could withstand it, and this vast continent became once more an empty wilderness.”
Bear in mind that this prophecy came at a time when climate science was still in its infancy, with Svante Arrhenius, a relative of Greta Thunberg, only describing industrial civilization’s contribution to the greenhouse effect seven years following the book’s publication.
Nor is the book especially charitable to the self-destructive architects of the nation’s undoing, describing Americans as a “shallow, nervous, extravagant people,” as well as a “sharp, restless, quick-witted, greedy race, given body and soul to the gathering of riches. Their chiefest passion was to buy and sell.”
I must sorrowfully admit that I’ve come to share this perspective over the past several years. My personal political awakening, for all intents and purposes, largely began with the political rise of Donald Trump one long, miserable decade ago around 2015.
It was as clear then as it is today that Trump was a cold-blooded fascist who had zero place anywhere in America’s halls of power. It horrified me to see his naked racism, rampant abuse of women, and insatiable thirst for violence so warmly embraced by so much of the general populace.
“This is not normal,” I kept telling myself as I watched this brazen demagogue ascend to power. Eventually, though, I came to the awful realization that I was mistaken – that rather than some anomaly, Trumpism is the inevitable culmination of every worst impulse displayed by our society. Furthermore, I realized that many of those professing to be horrified by Trump’s actions were, instead, merely opposed to his lack of decorum, and were only too happy to overlook policies and actions that were indistinguishable from Trump’s own when carried out by their preferred candidates or members of their own party, so long as it was being done in a more “decent” and presentable fashion.
My coming of age as a climate activist has followed a largely similar course. My initial response to the catastrophic heating of our planet was to (correctly) assign blame to rightwing extremists and climate deniers for deliberately hindering efforts to combat the problem. And yet again, the further I delved into the issue, the more I came to realize that the looming climate apocalypse was a wholly bipartisan affair.
The acolytes of neoliberalism who at least give lip service to the crisis at hand offer little more than wholly inadequate, piecemeal solutions as a means of greenwashing what is, in reality, a colossal and systemic catastrophe. Insofar as they may appear polar opposites, the average climate-denying Republican and “trust the science” Democrat share common priorities of individual material comfort, Western global hegemony, and preservation of the status quo above all other concerns.
Finally I arrive at the ongoing holocaust being carried out in Gaza. Never in my life did I anticipate witnessing the American-backed horrors that have haunted my every waking thought for the past two years — or at least, not until the global collapse of the biosphere inevitably makes such atrocities an everyday occurrence.
As author Antony Loewenstein writes in his excellent book “The Palestine Laboratory:”
“Israel’s Palestine Laboratory thrives on global disruption and violence. The worsening climate crisis will benefit Israel’s defense sector in a future where nation states do not respond with active measures to reduce the impacts of surging temperatures, but instead ghetto-ize themselves Israel style. What this means in practice is higher walls and tighter borders, greater surveillance of refugees, facial recognition, drones, smart fences, and biometric databases.”
Ecological economics professor and IPCC Assessment Report author Julia Steinberger warned similarly back in October 2023: “Gaza is a blueprint for all of us this century. This is what the first real signal of this new century looks like, out in the open, clear for all to see.”
There’s a common thread of imperialist racism and violent capitalist gluttony that pervades these issues, but there are two unique features that stand out to me above all else.
First there’s the complete lack of guardrails, the total absence of a safety net in place to prevent the unthinkable. The complete fascist takeover of America should be wholly inconceivable to us, as should the reality of so thoroughly polluting the planet that much of it becomes uninhabitable. It should not be possible, in the 21st Century, that 2 million people should face the prospect of total annihilation at the genocidal hands of a settler colonialist state. Time and again we find ourselves desperately looking to the mechanisms we’re meant to believe will protect us, be it international law or the U.S. Constitution, only to realize we’ve been entirely abandoned to our own devices.
What stands out secondly is our society’s total unwillingness to engage in what should be a natural response to these realities. America’s ubiquitous apathy, the complete indifference we show to the eradication of human life in our names, and perhaps even the total collapse of our own society, simply boggles the imagination.
As the Twitter user UMO once memorably wrote, “Americans are the least rebellious people on earth who also like to congratulate themselves on being rebellious more than anyone. “I’m a renegade! My favorite people are the cops and my boss!””
Indeed, at a time when our need for resistance to these systems of mass death and oppression is at its greatest, what passes for “rebels” in our society are bigots rolling coal in their oversized pickup trucks, proudly waving Confederate flags beneath a smog-filled sky. This brand of “rebelliousness” being sold to us is nothing more than a sad Halloween costume, while the dominant cultural attitude remains one of apathy and subservience to a system that is quite literally burning our planet to the ground, murdering us and our children with our full and informed consent.
In its closing pages, set fittingly within the centuries-old ruins of the U.S. Capitol Building, “The Last American” notes that “it would be impossible to imagine a more pathetic mixture of glory and decay, of wealth and poverty, of civilization and barbarity.”
With every day that passes in the dying U.S. empire, Miller’s century old novel comes to seem less and less like some outlandish science fiction satire, and increasingly like a faithful portrait of the grim but wholly preventable fate to which we’ve so pitifully resigned ourselves.
***
Aaron Dunbar is a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Posted: August 30, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Hijacking the plastics treaty
Aug 30, 2025
Randi Pokladnik
Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner
On Aug. 15, the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee of the United Nations ended without a legally binding treaty on plastics pollution. With more than 2,600 participants, including 1,400 member delegates from 183 countries, the session was declared a failure. One of the major issues was, “should a treaty impose caps on new plastic production or should it focus instead on waste management, reuse, and improved design?”
The conglomerate of oil-producing nations refused to adhere to legally binding rules and were adamant in stating that they would not agree to curtailing new plastic production. They were also against disclosing hazardous chemicals used in production or phasing these chemicals out. Many nations argued that the treaty needs to address the full life cycle of plastics; from production to waste disposal.
Over 16,000 compounds used in plastics have their origins in the petrochemical industry. Many of these are carcinogenic or endocrine disruptors and have never been tested for toxicity. They include pesticides, phthalates, bisphenols, and styrene. According to the August 2025 report “Plastics Poison the Workplace,” exposure to plasticizers can occur at a recycling facility, at a waste to energy plant, and even at an office where workers are exposed through contact with carpeting, synthetic fibers, electronics, and office furniture.
Some of the plasticizers, colorants, flame retardants, UV stabilizers, and metals added to plastic formulations are compounds included on the Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) list. This list was a result of the Stockholm Convention, a global treaty to regulate the worst of the worst toxic compounds. The USA signed the treaty in 2001 but never ratified it. Without full disclosure of the chemical compounds used in plastics, the ability to select an appropriate disposal technique becomes problematic. For example, brominated flame retardants and fluorinated water repellents can contain the persistent carcinogenic compounds known as PFAS.
PFAS are compounds manufactured from polyfluoroalkyl substances. They were made famous by the movie “Dark Waters,” which exposed the contamination of communities around Parkersburg and Marietta where DuPont was manufacturing the precursor to PFAS (C-8).
These compounds are widely used in everything from rain coats and food wrappers to cosmetics and school uniforms. The industries that use PFAS are adamant about not banning its use or even disclosing its role in polymer mixtures. The Trump administration recently rolled back Biden era rules that tried to limit the amount of six widely used PFAS compounds.
While there are many applications where plastics are necessary, there are also many current uses of plastics that are not crucial to our lives. I grew up in the late 50s and still remember a world without seeing plastics everywhere. Why have plastics become so ubiquitous? First, the plastic industry’s PR campaigns have us convinced we cannot live without the convenience of plastics. Every day we throw away 356,000 tons of single-use plastics globally. The fast food cups, forks, and plates that make life convenient also create microplastics. When a plastic cup enters the environment, it is exposed to UV light and oxygen. Over time it becomes brittle, and as a result breaks up into tiny pieces known as microplastics. Microplastics can enter our bodies via ingestion and inhalation and can build up in most of our organs. Researchers have detected them in lungs, liver, heart, brain, and reproductive organ tissue.
Another reason the production of plastics keeps increasing is to offset declining demand for oil and gas in the energy sector. Plastics have become the new darling of the industry. This is evidenced by the build out of the petrochemical facilities in the Ohio River Valley, including Shell’s plastic cracker plant in Monaca, Pa.
In addition to health effects, plastic production is a major driver of climate change. The industry releases as much carbon dioxide as 600 coal-fired power plants. “Researchers found that more than 75% of the greenhouse gases generated by plastics are emitted in the steps before plastics compounds are assembled.” The emissions start at the well-pad where a gas mixture is obtained via fracking Marcellus or Utica shale. Ethane gas is separated from the mixture and becomes the building block for polyethylene plastic. During the process, emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas, are released via pipeline leaks and flaring at the well pad.
The nations who produce petrochemicals and fossil fuels are trying to convince us that better recycling programs and “advanced chemical recycling” can help us get out of this plastic mess. Our recycling rate has not improved in the last 30 years, and has dropped from 9% to about 6% for plastics. Mechanical recycling is expensive and generates microplastics during the process, which involves shredding recycled materials. Economically speaking, virgin plastics are just cheaper to make than recycling plastics.
Additionally, advanced chemical recycling or pyrolysis fails to create the promised “new plastics.” The process involves heating waste plastics in an oxygen-free setting with the hopes of breaking large polymers into smaller monomers, which might be converted to a new plastic. What happens in reality is that more hazardous wastes are generated in the form of a toxic fuel. “A 2023 study by scientists from the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) found that when pyrolysis is used to process plastic waste, only 0.1% to 6% of this plastic waste can become new plastic.” Alterra, an Akron-based pyrolysis plant, was one of three pyrolysis facilities that generated more than 2 million pounds of hazardous wastes in less than four years.
There is only one way to get us out of this plastic mess; stop using single-use plastics and avoid buying plastic-based clothing. The companies that produce plastics are not about to solve a problem that hurts their bottom line. It is up to us, the consumers, to take on the plastics industry and “just say NO.”
***
Randi Pokladnik, Ph.D., of Uhrichsville, is a retired research chemist who volunteers with Mid Ohio Valley Climate Action. She has a doctorate degree in environmental studies and is certified in hazardous materials regulations.
Last Updated: August 23, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner No more time to waste
Aug 23, 2025
Eric Engle
At a recent meeting I attended with a representative from Congressman Riley Moore’s office at the Resiliency Center in Parkersburg, another meeting attendee referred to the anthropogenic (human-caused) global climate crisis as, to paraphrase, a hoax or a farce. I was floored that someone who seemed otherwise competent, rational and data-driven could hold such a willfully ignorant view.
There is more evidence for human-driven global climate change than for the scientific theory of gravity. The greenhouse effect has been well-understood since at least the 18th Century. As I’ve shared in the pages of the News and Sentinel before, Dr. James Lawrence Powell, MIT-trained Geophysicist twice appointed to the National Science Board by Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr., completed a literature review of peer-reviewed, published scientific literature in 2019-2020 and published his findings in the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society. Powell found 100% consensus that human-driven climate change is absolutely occurring amongst 11,602 published scientific articles on “climate change” and “global warming.”
Recent reporting from the American Meteorological Society shows that every single one of the 58 glaciers the society tracks globally lost mass in 2024. Recent melting of the Mendenhall Glacier forced evacuations in Juneau, Alaska, as the Mendenhall River swelled to record levels. Enormous swaths of continental Europe and Canada are experiencing wildfires following record heat extremes. Record-breaking sea surface temperatures enabled Hurricane Erin to go from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane at a historic rate. As I write, the storm is set to cause dangerous surf and rip currents along Carolina and other beaches but fortunately is not projected to hit the U.S. East Coast head on.
We can no longer afford the kind of head-in-the-sand thinking that says all this is just part of normal climactic cycles or is attributable to solar activity or that excess CO2 and equivalent greenhouse gas emissions building up in the atmosphere and oceans are a net positive for life on earth. Unfortunately for us all, this nonsense is what’s coming out of the second Trump administration, costing us invaluable time to address this ongoing crisis.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has recently released an analysis showing that from January 20th to June 30th of this year, the second Trump administration carried out 402 attacks on science–instances where science has been sidelined or threatened in the federal government. To quote from a piece in the Charleston Gazette-Mail by Mike Tony, “The Union of Concerned Scientists pointed to Trump administration moves to remove experts from federal agency leadership, halt government data collection and cut scientists out of government decision-making.”
With all of the mass precipitation events we’ve seen devastate West Virginia and Kentucky in recent years, you would think there would be a heightened awareness about and desire to understand cause and effect. Our atmosphere holds 7% more moisture for every 1-degree centigrade of warming. With the Arctic and Antarctic warming about 3x faster than the rest of the globe, changes in jet streams making them wavier with more extreme rises and troughs lead to more extreme temperatures (e.g. tropical heat in summer or polar vortexes in winter) reaching mid-latitudes and contribute to stalled out systems of precipitation that can drop feet of rain on small geographic areas in extremely short periods. When those rain extremes hit Central Appalachia, our extraction industry-scarred landscapes atop and between our hollers and hills can and do become conduits of death.
If you visit Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action’s very popular Facebook group page, you can use a search tool to sort through posts dating back 10 years offering a wide range of incredibly important information and analysis. We’re also revamping our website (movclimateaction.org) to become, in part, a hub of climate, environmental and public health resources from the local to the global. We have the technology and knowledge to mitigate the global climate crisis and adapt to what’s locked in; what we lack is the sustained political will.
Very popular yard signs that we’ve deployed for years say on one side “Climate Voter: Make America Green Again” and on the other “Protect What’s Ours: Be A Climate Voter.” We’d love for you to put a sign out as we approach another election year! More important than simply putting the sign out, though, is following its guidance. We hope you and yours will be climate voters in 2026 and beyond. There’s no more time for denial or delay.
***
Eric Engle is board president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Posted: August 16, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner:’The Last American’
Aug 16, 2025
Aaron Dunbar
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
“To the American who is more than satisfied with himself and his country this volume is affectionately dedicated.”
So reads the opening dedication to J.A. Mitchell’s 1889 novel “The Last American.” An early example of post-apocalyptic literature, this brief tale describes a crew of explorers in the year 2951, who happen upon the ancient ruins of a devastated America. Of particular note is how the book describes the downfall of our once powerful nation:
“Climatic changes, the like of which no other land ever experienced, began at that period, and finished in less than ten years a work made easy by nervous natures and rapid lives. The temperature would skip in a single day from burning heat to winter’s cold. No constitution could withstand it, and this vast continent became once more an empty wilderness.”
Bear in mind that this prophecy came at a time when climate science was still in its infancy, with Svante Arrhenius, a relative of Greta Thunberg, only describing industrial civilization’s contribution to the greenhouse effect seven years following the book’s publication.
Nor is the book especially charitable to the self-destructive architects of the nation’s undoing, describing Americans as a “shallow, nervous, extravagant people,” as well as a “sharp, restless, quick-witted, greedy race, given body and soul to the gathering of riches. Their chiefest passion was to buy and sell.”
I must sorrowfully admit that I’ve come to share this perspective over the past several years. My personal political awakening, for all intents and purposes, largely began with the political rise of Donald Trump one long, miserable decade ago around 2015.
It was as clear then as it is today that Trump was a cold-blooded fascist who had zero place anywhere in America’s halls of power. It horrified me to see his naked racism, rampant abuse of women, and insatiable thirst for violence so warmly embraced by so much of the general populace.
“This is not normal,” I kept telling myself as I watched this brazen demagogue ascend to power. Eventually, though, I came to the awful realization that I was mistaken – that rather than some anomaly, Trumpism is the inevitable culmination of every worst impulse displayed by our society. Furthermore, I realized that many of those professing to be horrified by Trump’s actions were, instead, merely opposed to his lack of decorum, and were only too happy to overlook policies and actions that were indistinguishable from Trump’s own when carried out by their preferred candidates or members of their own party, so long as it was being done in a more “decent” and presentable fashion.
My coming of age as a climate activist has followed a largely similar course. My initial response to the catastrophic heating of our planet was to (correctly) assign blame to rightwing extremists and climate deniers for deliberately hindering efforts to combat the problem. And yet again, the further I delved into the issue, the more I came to realize that the looming climate apocalypse was a wholly bipartisan affair.
The acolytes of neoliberalism who at least give lip service to the crisis at hand offer little more than wholly inadequate, piecemeal solutions as a means of greenwashing what is, in reality, a colossal and systemic catastrophe. Insofar as they may appear polar opposites, the average climate-denying Republican and “trust the science” Democrat share common priorities of individual material comfort, Western global hegemony, and preservation of the status quo above all other concerns.
Finally I arrive at the ongoing holocaust being carried out in Gaza. Never in my life did I anticipate witnessing the American-backed horrors that have haunted my every waking thought for the past two years — or at least, not until the global collapse of the biosphere inevitably makes such atrocities an everyday occurrence.
As author Antony Loewenstein writes in his excellent book “The Palestine Laboratory:”
“Israel’s Palestine Laboratory thrives on global disruption and violence. The worsening climate crisis will benefit Israel’s defense sector in a future where nation states do not respond with active measures to reduce the impacts of surging temperatures, but instead ghetto-ize themselves Israel style. What this means in practice is higher walls and tighter borders, greater surveillance of refugees, facial recognition, drones, smart fences, and biometric databases.”
Ecological economics professor and IPCC Assessment Report author Julia Steinberger warned similarly back in October 2023: “Gaza is a blueprint for all of us this century. This is what the first real signal of this new century looks like, out in the open, clear for all to see.”
There’s a common thread of imperialist racism and violent capitalist gluttony that pervades these issues, but there are two unique features that stand out to me above all else.
First there’s the complete lack of guardrails, the total absence of a safety net in place to prevent the unthinkable. The complete fascist takeover of America should be wholly inconceivable to us, as should the reality of so thoroughly polluting the planet that much of it becomes uninhabitable. It should not be possible, in the 21st Century, that 2 million people should face the prospect of total annihilation at the genocidal hands of a settler colonialist state. Time and again we find ourselves desperately looking to the mechanisms we’re meant to believe will protect us, be it international law or the U.S. Constitution, only to realize we’ve been entirely abandoned to our own devices.
What stands out secondly is our society’s total unwillingness to engage in what should be a natural response to these realities. America’s ubiquitous apathy, the complete indifference we show to the eradication of human life in our names, and perhaps even the total collapse of our own society, simply boggles the imagination.
As the Twitter user UMO once memorably wrote, “Americans are the least rebellious people on earth who also like to congratulate themselves on being rebellious more than anyone. “I’m a renegade! My favorite people are the cops and my boss!””
Indeed, at a time when our need for resistance to these systems of mass death and oppression is at its greatest, what passes for “rebels” in our society are bigots rolling coal in their oversized pickup trucks, proudly waving Confederate flags beneath a smog-filled sky. This brand of “rebelliousness” being sold to us is nothing more than a sad Halloween costume, while the dominant cultural attitude remains one of apathy and subservience to a system that is quite literally burning our planet to the ground, murdering us and our children with our full and informed consent.
In its closing pages, set fittingly within the centuries-old ruins of the U.S. Capitol Building, “The Last American” notes that “it would be impossible to imagine a more pathetic mixture of glory and decay, of wealth and poverty, of civilization and barbarity.”
With every day that passes in the dying U.S. empire, Miller’s century old novel comes to seem less and less like some outlandish science fiction satire, and increasingly like a faithful portrait of the grim but wholly preventable fate to which we’ve so pitifully resigned ourselves.
***
Aaron Dunbar is a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Posted: August 9, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Educating for the earth – youth programs can build a greener future
Aug 9, 2025
Jean Ambrose
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
Humans like to imagine ourselves at the top of the pyramid when thinking about our place in the universe. But we often forget that we are just one part of the complex biological processes that govern all life on Earth. Politics, social media, misinformation, and willful ignorance don’t change this fact–but they can confuse us about what’s really happening and mislead us about our future.
Right now, the removal or destruction of decades of scientific data from public access is obscuring our understanding of the world. This is particularly dangerous when it comes to issues like climate change, weather patterns, and the life cycles of foundational species such as pollen producers, plankton, and krill–organisms that form the base of food chains and ecosystems. For example, in 2023, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) faced political pressure to scale back reporting on ocean temperature anomalies and krill population declines. Likewise, in Texas and Florida, educational guidelines have removed or downplayed climate science in textbooks and curricula. Even the USDA’s pollen monitoring network was defunded, making allergy forecasting less reliable.
This erasure contributes to the illusion that if we simply stop measuring change, change itself will stop–that the world will remain comfortable and manageable, especially for those of us living in wealthy nations. But the planet doesn’t work that way. The consequences of climate disruption are real, and ignoring them puts future generations at risk.
This makes it even more urgent to educate our children about how the climate crisis affects the broader ecological systems that sustain us. We are part of a living web that includes animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and archaea (the oxygen-free organisms living in places like our guts). Remember when science textbooks taught that everything was divided into “animal, vegetable, or mineral?” That’s long outdated. Our current understanding includes five or six biological kingdoms, and the growing interest in probiotics reflects our expanding awareness of the ecosystems inside and around us.
Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action (MOVCA) has long recognized the need for youth to become climate-literate and civically engaged. For several years, we’ve run a program called Climate Ambassadors to support high school students in designing and completing projects that benefit their local environment. These students have planted trees and gardens, installed bat boxes, founded environmental clubs, and more.
However, we discovered that many students lacked experience in planning and carrying out community-based projects. Schools often treat the community primarily as a source of funding, rather than fostering mutually beneficial partnerships where students can apply their learning to real-world issues. So where do young people gain the skills to collaborate, lead, and take meaningful action?
In response, MOVCA is restructuring the Climate Ambassadors program to focus on partnerships with youth-serving organizations that already provide mentorship and structure. Beginning in January 2026, mini-grants of up to $1,000 will be available to organizations like Scouts, 4-H, and church youth groups. These grants can support existing environmental projects, help launch new initiatives, or connect students to ongoing community efforts:
* PurpleAir Monitoring
Students can help install air quality monitors at homes and public spaces, analyze air quality data, and educate the public about what it means for health and policy.
Contact: Eric Engle – 304-488-4384
* Restoration Ecology
Engage in native ecosystem restoration, remove invasive species, and support habitat for endangered plants and animals. Work sites include Broughton’s Nature Park, the Ohio River Islands, and Mountwood Park.
Contact: Mark Krivchenia – 224-545-1604
* Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge
Activities include forest restoration, mussel propagation, and tree planting–direct work that supports biodiversity and ecological resilience.
Contact: Vic Elam – 620-203-8514
Project leaders are available to provide educational programming about the science behind each effort, helping young people connect fieldwork to real-world science and see the tangible results of their actions.
To apply for a mini-grant or view a list of project ideas, visit movyouthca.com. The deadline for applications is Sept. 15.
Let’s ensure the next generation understands that the health of the planet is tied to their own future–and give them the tools to make a difference.
***
Jean Ambrose is a founding member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Posted: August 8, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Here comes the sun
Aug 2, 2025
Giulia Mannarino
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
It’s exciting that one of the world’s largest solar microgrid and storage projects is currently under construction and located in West (by God) Virginia! The “Canary Solar Grid” project in Jackson County, just outside of Ravenswood, will help power a titanium manufacturing facility. A solar microgrid is an innovative, popular energy technology that’s giving businesses and communities access to cleaner and more reliable power. Energy generated by the solar array can be stored in a battery storage system for use during times when the sun doesn’t shine. This project is notable as one of the first where a large industrial plant is directly powered by a solar-plus-storage microgrid. It’s also supporting and strengthening domestic renewable energy initiatives and supply chains; 100% of the solar panels are sourced and manufactured in Ohio, and 100% of the steel used is made in the U.S. The project is a collaborative effort between BHE Renewables and Precision Castparts Corp.(PCC), specifically their Titanium Metals Corporation facility (TIMET). The companies are part of the Berkshire Hathaway diverse portfolio of businesses.
For 50 years, the 2,000 acre site was home to Century Aluminum. Their giant smelter was idled in 2009 and permanently closed in 2015. Since then the site has been an empty expanse along the Ohio River. Now PCC has started construction on the facility that will melt titanium while BHE Renewables is installing arrays of solar panels and large battery systems, which will form the microgrid that connects to the titanium facility. Demand for titanium products is rising in the U.S., driven largely by the aerospace and defense industries. As a metal, titanium is twice as strong as aluminum and weighs nearly half as much as steel, while still having a similar strength. It is durable, highly corrosion-resistant and used in industrial applications such as airplane wings and military armor as well as high-end consumer products like golf clubs and iPhones. Many people have titanium fused into their bodies, in the form of joint replacements, dental implants, and pacemakers. Transforming titanium minerals into a sturdy metal requires enormous amounts of electricity. The solar-plus-battery system will provide the reliable power supply the melting furnaces require at a cost that compares to traditional power sources.
The cost of building the solar microgrid system is eligible for investment tax credits included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was signed into law in August of 2022. The IRA provisions included clean energy production initiatives that addressed the crisis of global warming by helping the U.S. reach critical climate emissions goals of the Paris Agreement. BHE Renewables is constructing the microgrid in phases that match TIMET’s energy needs as it develops and operates its facility. Initially, the melting plant is expected to need around 18 megawatts of power to operate before ramping up to its full capacity by the end of 2027. The first phase began operations in May 2025 when the first solar microgrid panels were installed at the Ravenswood Business Park. Each phase contains part of the solar array and part of the battery system. PCC will have their TIMET facility use the solar energy to produce titanium products, creating the start of an industrial hub. It’s designed to serve 70% of TIMET’s expected energy demand. When fully built, the BHE Renewables project will include a 106 MW solar array and a battery energy storage system with a capacity of 50 MW, or 260.5 megawatt-hours. The project is expected to be a model for future industrial facilities seeking to utilize renewable energy.
Another company based in Michigan, ONE (Our Next Energy), will also be building a new factory on the site. ONE debuted a new utility scale battery storage system in February 2023 and will make the batteries the BHE Renewables facility will need right on site. And the company will continue to manufacture their utility scale battery storage system to market to other interested businesses. The batteries deploy lithium iron phosphate technology, a lower-cost chemistry that’s catching on for stationary storage. This project may be the first to show that a microgrid can meet an industrial customer’s demands as well as create economic revitalization through manufacturing without polluting the environment. With all of West Virginia’s members of Congress racing backwards towards the fossil Fool industry, my hope is more solar projects will materialize in our state’s future.
***
Giulia Mannarino of Belleville, is a grandmother concerned about her two granddaughters’ futures and a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action
Last Updated: August 12, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Climate change and children’s health
Jul 26, 2025
Linda Eve Seth
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is. — Greta Thunberg, Swedish activist
***
Children are uniquely vulnerable to climate change.
In many parts of the world, people are facing multiple climate-related events such as severe drought, flooding, air pollution and water shortages … leaving children especially vulnerable to malnutrition and disease. Almost every child on earth is exposed to at least one of these climate and environmental hazards. Without action, the impacts will continue to grow.
Children are often more vulnerable than the general population to the health impacts of climate change because their bodies are developing physically, which can make them more vulnerable to climate-related hazards like heat and poor air quality. They also breathe at a faster rate, which increases their exposure to dangerous air pollutants. And children tend to spend more time outdoors than adults, increasing their exposure to heat and cold, rain and snow, outdoor allergens, and insect bites.
Climate change has the potential to increase outdoor air pollutants, including dust from droughts, wildfire smoke, and ground-level ozone, which are associated with increases in asthma and other respiratory conditions in children. Climate change also increases pollen levels and prolongs the allergy season. In extreme heat, children are more prone to heat stroke that can cause organ and brain damage.
As the climate continues to change, extreme heat events are expected to last longer and become more frequent and intense. Increases in average and extreme temperatures are expected to lead to more heat illnesses and deaths among vulnerable groups including children.
Young athletes are at particular risk of heat stroke and other heat illnesses. Approximately 9,000 U.S. high school athletes are treated for heat-related illnesses each year. Children who live in homes without air conditioning are especially at risk. Young children and infants are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illnesses and death, as their bodies are less able to adapt to heat.
Heavy rainfall has been linked to occurrences of gastrointestinal illnesses in U.S. children. Runoff from more frequent and intense rains, flooding, and coastal storms can introduce more pollutants and disease-carrying organisms into bodies of water where children swim and play or that communities use as drinking water supplies
Because children spend a lot of time outdoors, they are vulnerable to insect and tick bites that can cause illnesses like West Nile virus and Lyme disease. Climate change is expanding the habitat ranges and length of time when insects and ticks are common.
And all this is just a sliver of the immediate health concerns for children that come with climate change. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that climate change has become a health emergency, and children are especially vulnerable because they metabolize their air intake more quickly while still in critical stages of development. Their concerns include dermatologic, respiratory, and cardiovascular diseases. They breathe more air, eat more food, and drink more water relative to their body size, making them more susceptible to pollution, heat, and disease.
Our younger citizens may also experience mental health impacts from major storms, fires, and other extreme events that are expected to increase because of a changing climate. Anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, phobias, and post-traumatic stress may affect children who go through a natural disaster or extreme weather event. Children’s ability to cope with these events depends on many factors, including their living situation and support systems.
Climate change has impacts on health worldwide; nearly every child around the globe is at risk from at least one climate hazard. Given the frequent co-occurrence of various extreme weather episodes, their interactions and cumulative environmental impacts are an additional growing concern. All children are at risk, but children of color and those from low-income households are more at risk of the health effects of climate change and air pollution, due to poor health-care access and food insecurity.
And as the crisis worsens, our children face growing threats: less access to clean water and healthy food, more illness, and more extreme weather disasters. Since 2022, extreme weather has forced over 400 million students worldwide out of school. Even when classrooms stay open, disasters disrupt learning, displace families, and put children at risk. Climate change is already reshaping childhood.
If you stay silent and passive in this climate fight your life might be easier, but your children’s lives won’t be.
Until next time, be kind to your Mother Earth.
***
Linda Eve Seth SLP, M Ed., is a mother, grandmother, concerned citizen and member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Posted: July 19, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: The urgent case for reviving the Ohio River Basin
Jul 19, 2025
Charlise Robinson
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
The Ohio River Basin covers a vast region that encompasses portions of 14 states and homelands of over 40 federally recognized Tribal Nations. The waters of the basin supply drinking water to more than 30 million people in the states. The Ohio River and the many local streams, creeks, lakes and wetlands are the foundation of the region’s economy and culture. Yet, this vast region is currently under siege, as it faces continuous challenges and threats such as aging infrastructure, extreme flooding, sewage contamination, and legacy toxic pollution. We can still hope for our region if we work toward manageable solutions that protect drinking water, public health, jobs and quality of life.
A newly released draft report, “Healthy Waters, Healthy Communities, Healthy Economies,” offers a bold, scientifically grounded vision to restore and protect this national treasure. The document, a collaboration led by the Ohio River Basin Alliance, National Wildlife Federation and the University of Louisville’s Envirome Institute, outlines the challenges and provides a roadmap for recovery. But more importantly, it issues a clear call for immediate, coordinated and federally supported action.
The report identifies nine core challenges plaguing the region: crumbling water infrastructure, persistent toxic pollution, widespread runoff, mining legacies, altered hydrology, habitat loss, invasive species and extreme weather events. More than 69% of assessed stream miles and 64% of assessed lake acres fail to meet state water quality standards. In short, the system is breaking down, and it’s hitting the most vulnerable communities the hardest.
Yet, the solutions are within reach. The restoration plan draws inspiration from successful restoration models like the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay initiatives. The Ohio River Basin region must have increased federal investment. There is a need for robust monitoring and research, while providing the necessary technical assistance to inform future actions. If there is holistic regional coordination across states and Tribal Nations, this will ensure communities of all sizes and income levels can benefit from the restoration efforts in the Ohio River Basin.
This is not just about the environment; it’s about equity, public health and economic prosperity. The plan emphasizes restoring rivers while revitalizing communities. Investments in clean water infrastructure and workforce development can yield thousands of jobs and unlock billions in economic growth. Simultaneously, prioritizing nature-based solutions and green infrastructure will strengthen climate resilience.
The Ohio River Basin may not yet enjoy the national attention that other iconic water bodies command, but it should. The region’s ecological, cultural and economic value is undeniable, and its health is inseparable from that of its people.
Public input on the draft is solicited. The Ohio River Basin restoration report and the ability to submit a public comment can be found at ohioriverbasinalliance.org. Citizens, local leaders and policymakers must engage now, while there is still time to shape a shared vision for clean water, healthy communities and sustainable prosperity. The future of the Ohio River Basin depends on us. To the communities in the Mid-Ohio Valley and beyond, let’s seize this opportunity together!
***
Charlise Robinson is Ohio River coordinator, WV Rivers.
Posted: July 12, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: The future my daughter lost and how we get it back
Jul 12, 2025
Jonathan Brier
climatecorner@brierjon.com
2025 is … the year the government of the United States turned its back on science. … the year I became a dad. … the future my daughter should have seems to be more of a dream now. I am not going to lie down and let this future slip away from her, nor should you let it slip away from your kids or grandkids. We deserve clean air, clean water, clean energy, and public lands that are preserved along with a clean environment. It is time to speak up and take action. Here are a few ways to start.
* Downloading the Climate Action Now app. Take action: i.e. read an article, sign a petition, call and/or send a letter to your elected representative. Read more about Climate Action Now at www.climateactionnow.com/ and if you can afford to, consider making a donation to a local environmental organization
* Invest if you can in ways which support the economy you want. www.cleanenergycu.org/ and www.climatefirstbank.com/ support a clean energy and more efficient use of energy. Their Certificates of Deposit and accounts are used to back loans for solar and energy upgrades while you get a Return on Investment (ROI).
* Invest in projects (and get returns on that investment) such as climatize.earth/ (as low as $10 investment) and www.energea.com/ are some ways you directly help finance energy efficiency, electrification, and renewable energy and make a ROI. Then there is Kiva.org which has no ROI, but you can relend to help finance www.kiva.org/ and experiment.com/ to support research projects.
* Become a member, donate, sign up for emails from a local climate organization: i.e. Mid Ohio Valley Climate Action, Citizens Climate Lobby, Rural Action, Save Ohio Parks, etc. support those taking action in your community for a more sustainable environment.
* Make a plan to electrify your home. Electrification can be cost effective when replacing at the end of life and electricity utilizes energy much more effectively than other energy sources. https://homes.rewiringamerica.org/personal-electrification-planner
* Read up on topics, don’t just listen to the opinions of others. I’ve found many to be misinformed and outdated. I’m currently reading Plug In!: The Electrification Handbook by Saul Griffith ISBN 9781743823927 to understand more about the economics of home electrification in Australia.
* Vote – This may be the most impactful as policy shapes our society and economy present and future. Educating yourself on the candidates and making an informed decision. Vote for the individual, don’t be lazy and vote just because they are in a party you affiliate with.
My daughter’s future is at stake. Your wallet and retirement are at stake. For heaven’s sake, all our health seems to be no longer relevant based on the current EPA rollback of environmental standards and defunding NASA and the weather service, removing critical climate and weather data, defunding science projects which mean gaps and potential loss of critical research data.
So I ask you, if you can do one thing this weekend, what is your plan to do it? Then share your plan or if you did it, what you did social media with the hashtag #climatecorner and tag this newspaper. Help bring back the future my daughter deserves.
***
Jonathan Brier is a Marietta, Ohio resident, Information Scientist, Data Librarian, and an Eagle Scout. He is a member of the American Library Association, Association of Computing Machinery, American Association for the Advancement of Science, OpenStreetMap US, Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, and a Wikipedia contributor. If you would like to reach him, visit https://brierjon.com or email: climatecorner@brierjon.com.
Posted: July 5, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Do we live in a pollution haven?
Jul 5, 2025
Vic Elam
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
Over the past several decades, the United States has experienced a steady loss of manufacturing and heavy industry to countries with more lenient environmental regulations. While globalization and economic factors like labor costs and trade agreements have certainly played a role, one of the more troubling aspects of this shift is the environmental dynamic: U.S. companies often relocate operations to countries where pollution laws are weaker or poorly enforced, allowing them to reduce costs at the expense of global environmental health. This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as “pollution offshoring” or the “race to the bottom,” carries serious consequences for the environment, U.S. workers, and long-term global sustainability.
Environmental regulations and competitive disadvantage
The U.S. has some of the most stringent environmental regulations in the world, particularly when it comes to air and water pollution, hazardous waste management, and emissions control. Agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency enforce rules designed to protect ecosystems, public health, and climate stability. While these regulations are necessary and beneficial, they also impose compliance costs on industries, particularly in sectors like steel, chemicals, textiles, and electronics manufacturing.
To avoid these costs, many companies have moved production overseas, where environmental oversight is weaker or less enforced. In countries such as China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and parts of Latin America and Africa, factories often operate under laxer pollution rules, allowing companies to produce goods more cheaply while externalizing the environmental costs. This puts American manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage, discouraging domestic production and contributing to the offshoring of jobs.
The rise of pollution havens
This trend has given rise to what economists and environmentalists call “pollution havens” — countries that attract industry by offering minimal environmental oversight. These nations often rely heavily on foreign investment for economic development and are more willing to tolerate high levels of pollution in exchange for jobs and growth.
In China, for example, the explosive growth of the industrial sector over the last few decades came with massive environmental costs, including severe air and water pollution. While the Chinese government has recently made efforts to tighten regulations, enforcement remains inconsistent, particularly in rural or less-developed regions. Similar situations exist in parts of Southeast Asia, where rivers have become toxic from dye runoff from garment factories and air quality suffers due to poorly regulated industrial zones.
The environmental degradation in these regions is not confined within their borders. Air pollution can cross continents, contaminated rivers flow into international waters, and the carbon emissions from overseas factories contribute to global climate change, affecting every country, including the United States.
It often seems that legislators representing the MOV have designs on making our area a pollution haven by relaxing air and water pollution regulations or failing to enforce the standards in place. The argument is always job creation – must we sacrifice the environment in which we live to have jobs? There are better ways to create better jobs if we embrace it and if we can divorce ourselves from the influence of corporations that control our policy makers.
Economic and social consequences at home
The outsourcing of environmentally intensive industries has hollowed out many American communities, particularly in the Midwest and Rust Belt. Once-thriving industrial towns have suffered job losses, declining tax bases, and economic stagnation. Workers in traditional manufacturing sectors have found it increasingly difficult to compete with low-wage, low-regulation countries. The result has been rising economic inequality, loss of skilled labor, and a sense of disconnection from global trade policies that appear to prioritize corporate profits over environmental and social justice.
Moreover, the offshoring of pollution does not solve environmental problems — it merely shifts them elsewhere. The global nature of climate change and pollution means that Americans still feel the effects, whether through global warming, supply chain disruptions, or the import of goods produced with toxic chemicals that remain in consumer products.
Toward a more sustainable and fair trade model
To address this problem, the U.S. and its trade partners must rethink the balance between economic growth and environmental responsibility. One solution is the incorporation of environmental standards into international trade agreements. If trade deals include binding environmental commitments, they can level the playing field and prevent companies from chasing the lowest regulatory standards.
As a person that works in the realm of environmental compliance, I must say that it does need to be less cumbersome. These protections are vital to protecting this countries’ natural resources, but the implementation is unnecessarily onerous. Attorneys get paid well for poking holes in Environmental Assessments, Environmental Impact Statements, Endangered Species Act consultations, etc. and this puts a strain on the people that must produce these documents which creates delays.
Carbon border adjustment mechanisms are another promising strategy. These are tariffs applied to imports based on their carbon intensity, ensuring that foreign producers are held to similar environmental standards as domestic ones. The European Union has already begun implementing such measures, and the U.S. is considering similar policies.
Domestically, the U.S. can invest in clean technologies and green manufacturing to revitalize its industrial base without sacrificing environmental goals. Incentivizing sustainable practices through tax credits, subsidies, and research funding can help American businesses remain competitive while reducing pollution. At the same time, stronger international cooperation is needed to support developing countries in implementing and enforcing environmental standards without compromising their economic growth.
Conclusion
The loss of U.S. industry to countries with lax environmental regulations is a complex issue that intertwines economics, policy, and environmental justice. While globalization has brought benefits, it has also enabled companies to sidestep environmental responsibilities, creating pollution havens and undermining domestic industry. A fair and sustainable future will require coordinated global action to ensure that economic progress does not come at the cost of environmental degradation. Protecting the planet and protecting American workers must go hand in hand.
***
Vic Elam is an avid outdoorsman and contributor to organizations that share his concern for our environment, including Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Posted: June 28, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: What happened to ‘all-of-the-above’ energy?
Jun 28, 2025
George Banziger
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
Federal elected officials in the House, Senate and Oval Office have frequently stated that their energy policy is “all of the above,” meaning coal, oil, natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, and more. But what appears in the “Big, Beautiful Budget Bill,” which is now before the U.S. Senate, seems to be a war on renewables and gift to the fossil fuel industry.
Without clean energy tax credits, which were voted on by Congress with the Inflation Reduction Act, we miss most of the “above.” In Washington County we are seeing plans for data centers as part of economic development, for example with the repurposing of retired coal-fired power plants, these data centers will require lots of energy — from natural gas AND from clean energy sources. Clean Energy Tax Credits will boost the economy in Washington County, in the Mid-Ohio Valley, create jobs and lead to economic stability, which is sorely needed at this point. Without Clean Energy Tax Credits, residents will experience high utility rates; it is estimated by the Clean Energy Buyers Association (2025) that the average American residential consumer would experience an increase of $110 in the next year without these additional sources of energy. These tax credits will also serve the purpose of achieving energy independence for our national economy.
Energy tax credits were intended to increase the country’s electricity supply, reinvigorate its battery and electric vehicle supply chains and cut carbon pollution. These initiatives have helped drive a clean-energy manufacturing boom across the country. The Inflation Reduction Act improved on decades of failed policy by going technology-neutral — its tax credits support any new power plant that doesn’t generate greenhouse gas emissions. That means technologies that even Republicans like, including nuclear fission, geothermal power and nuclear fusion, could benefit.
Furthermore, these tax credits are driving private investment, creating good-paying jobs, and strengthening American energy independence. Businesses across Ohio and West Virginia — especially in manufacturing, construction, and energy–are already benefiting. Rolling back these incentives would disrupt job growth and hurt local economies. By expanding domestic energy production, we reduce reliance on foreign energy sources. These investments in renewable energy are about leveling the playing field, letting businesses compete, and ensuring taxpayers get a return on investment.
Instead, the budget bill before the Senate grants subsidies to oil drillers, provides for drilling on federally owned public lands, gives drillers the benefit of avoiding paying the alternative minimum tax annually, and grants a subsidy for carbon capture and sequestration, a technology that is scientifically unproven, economically impractical, and dangerous to our environment. All of these gifts to the fossil fuel industry involve billions of lost tax revenue and, more notably, will drive up our national debt by the trillions.
As we are experiencing our first major heat wave of what is predicted to be another scorching summer, we are reminded of the environmental costs of the expansion of burning fossil fuels, specifically global warming. Natural gas, which its congressional advocates are so actively supporting, is responsible for over 80 times the greenhouse gas emissions as carbon dioxide — more pollution, more captured heat, and other environmental consequences.
Regional advocates of the natural gas industry falsely claim that the extraction and processing of natural gas are important for the economy and for job creation in Appalachian Ohio and West Virginia. This is a myth. The natural gas industry is not a major employer in Ohio. In a report by the Ohio River Valley Institute (2025) it was noted that of more than five million jobs in Ohio the natural gas industry provides fewer than 10,000. In recent years it has been in decline, laying off 40% of its employees since 2018. This trend has also been apparent in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The employment deficiency in the natural gas industry is particularly striking in Ohio’s eight major gas-produciing counties, which have lost 11,000 jobs since the beginning of the fracking boom in 2008. ORVI has based this report on publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Labor.
So, for the sake of our local and national economies, job growth, energy independence, the environment, let’s put ALL of the above back in the pending budget bill. If you live in West Virginia, contact Senator Shelley Moore Capito and Senator James Justice; in Ohio contact Senator Jon Husted and Senator Bernie Moreno and urge them to put clean energy tax credits back into this bill. Now is the time — Senate leaders are looking at a July 4 deadline.
***
George Banziger, Ph.D., was a faculty member at Marietta College and an academic dean at three other colleges. He is a member of the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta, of Citizens Climate Lobby, and of the Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action team.
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