Nov 6, 2021
Randi Pokladnik
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
A few years ago, I attended a Climate Reality Training Conference in Minneapolis. One of the speakers was involved in sustainable fashion. She told us what prompted her to leave the world of high fashion and create her own line of clothing. During a trip to China, her former employer dumped millions of mis-dyed buttons and thousands of yards of fabric into a river in China. Rather than find another use for the imperfect cloth and buttons, they chose to waste them and pollute the environment.
The supply chain of a garment, from cradle to grave, damages the environment. Most damages are in the form of toxic emissions and pollution. The industry workers and the environment pay the price so we can have cheap clothes that must be shipped thousands of miles across the ocean.
We wear blue jeans almost every day totally unaware of the environmental issues surrounding the production of a pair of jeans. More than five billion pairs are made annually. It takes an average of 1,800 gallons of water, 110 kilowatt-hours of energy, and 5 ounces of chemicals to produce one pair of jeans.
Dana Thomas’s book “Fashionopolis” states that jeans, the most popular clothing item in history, are also the most destructive of the fashion items we consume. Guangdong Province, China, claims to be the “jeans capital of the world.” Each year 200,000 garment workers in Xintang’s 3,000 factories and workshops produce 300 million pairs of jeans, about 800,000 pairs a day. The documentary, “The River Blue: Can Fashion Save the Planet,” details the environmental damage from the production of jeans.
In an effort to avoid the “break-in” period for new jeans, the industry came up with distressed jeans. Popular in the late 1980s, these jeans must be artificially treated to achieve that look of being old and worn. Workers use millions of gallons of water and energy to wash the jeans with pumice stone. Often the heavily contaminated wash water is dumped untreated into rivers.
In Guangdong, the local water treatment plant closed years ago, leaving factories to dump dye waste directly into the East River. The river quickly turned opaque; aquatic life could no longer survive. Greenpeace has reported that the riverbed contains high levels of lead, copper, and cadmium, and the river had a pH level of 11.95. Workers exposed to the water and dust reported skin rashes, infertility and lung infections.
The recently released report “A New Textiles Economy” states that between 1.22 billion and 2.93 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere annually by the textile industry. If you include the emissions released to launder those garments the total contribution from clothing accounts for 6.7 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
We live in a time of “fast fashion” where high fashion designs are mass produced in a way that uses incredible amounts of energy and resources as well as large quantities of toxic dyes. Clothing barely lasts beyond a few months before it is deemed “out of fashion” or looks like an old rag from a few washings. Millions of pieces of fast fashion garments end up in landfills every year. In New York City alone more than 400 million pounds of clothes are wasted each year and the EPA reports that 5.8 percent of annual municipal solid wastes is from textiles. It can take up to 200 years for a piece of fabric to break down.
Every type of garment, be it wool, fur, or polyester, has a carbon footprint, but synthetic fibers are much worse than others. If you sew like I do, you probably have noticed that the amount of fleece fabrics available in fabric stores has skyrocketed. In some cases, half the store is stocked with various fleece fabrics.
An article in “The Revelator” states that the amount of polyester in our garments has doubled since 2000. It takes 342 million barrels of oil annually to supply synthetic fibers, which means fibers like fleece have a high carbon footprint. Consider that once discarded, fabrics like polyester, nylon, and acrylics add to the plastic fibers contaminating waterways in our environment.
Cotton-based fabric also comes at a high cost to the environment. Cotton, once referred to as “the fabric of your life,” primarily originates from genetically modified cotton plants. The genetically modified seeds are engineered to be resistant to herbicides such as Roundup, which allows the fields to be sprayed without killing the cotton plants. The use of pesticides and man-made fertilizers also adds to the carbon footprint of conventionally grown cotton. According to the World Health Organization, the world’s cotton crop requires 200,000 tons of pesticides and 8 million tons of fertilizers each year.
The Soil Association’s 2019 report, “Thirsty for Fashion,” details how a switch to organic cotton can help reduce the externalities of the fabric. Organic cotton costs more but workers have much safer working conditions, the crop uses much less water, uses little if any industrial chemicals and improves soils. The higher price tag for organic cotton is well worth it.
Another alternative fiber gaining traction in the world is hemp. The 2018 Farm Bill legalized the cultivation of hemp which, up to that point, had been declared an illegal drug like other cannabis plants. Unlike its cousin marijuana, hemp has no significant amount of THC. Hemp has a long and colorful history in the USA, and farmers were once required to grow it. Our first American flags and Levi jeans were made from hemp, and our navy used ropes crafted from American grown hemp.
However, in the early 1900s, industrialists like DuPont and Hearst lobbied against the crop because they saw the threat it posed to some of their industries. Hemp can produce four times as much paper as trees. PR campaigns quickly started to associate the benign crop with “mad pot smokers.”
Hemp can be grown without pesticides and fertilizers, it grows faster and absorbs more carbon dioxide than other crops, it is biodegradable, UV resistant, and breathes, unlike synthetic materials.
There are other ways to cut the carbon budget from your clothes. Madeline Hill, an author who writes about sustainability, said in her “Good On You” column, “we need to follow these practices when it comes to fashion: reduce, reuse, rewear, repair, and resell.” There are many companies like Patagonia that will take “trade-ins” on old clothing from their stores and repair clothing for a small fee.
In 2015, I attended a conference sponsored by the Patagonia Company. The company gets high marks for its contributions to environmental grassroots groups and its sustainable business practices. During the conference, Yvon Chouinard, founder of the company, spoke to us. As he sat in an over-stuffed chair wearing an old flannel shirt he asked, “Why do kids need so many T shirts and twenty pairs of jeans?” It was a good question and one to consider as the ridiculous madness of Christmas shopping approaches. Instead of buying cheap stuff made in China and transported across the ocean using fossil fuels, why not refrain from consuming or at least purchase something that will last longer than the next wash cycle? Let your fashion choices reflect your desire for a livable planet.
***
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: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Last Week Tonight with Congressman Bill Johnson
Letters to the Editor Marietta Times
Nov 13, 2021
Aaron Dunbar
I was delighted to see our own Congressman Bill Johnson appear in a recent episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight. I was especially delighted to see host John Oliver flatly tell him “shut up” at one point, something I’ve wished I could tell our corrupt, climate change denying Representative for quite a while now.
For context, Oliver hosts a kind of weekly variant on standard late night political talk shows, and spends the bulk of each episode diving deep into a specific topic. The segments are both funny and well-researched, and usually cover important topics that might fly under the radar for most late night hosts.
The segment in question, which can be found in full on YouTube, delves into the topic of America’s power grid. Oliver explores both the recent decline in our energy infrastructure due to its advanced age, as well as the challenges our nation faces in developing a modern grid to accommodate a massive shift toward renewable energy, in order to combat the rapidly escalating climate crisis.
I don’t claim to be an expert on the particular subject of power grids, but I somehow don’t think Congressman Johnson is either, despite an apparent willingness to present himself as such, and to continue shaming the district he represents with his ignorance.
Around 18 minutes into the video, Oliver shows a clip of Johnson grilling Patricia Hoffman, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity (OE) at the U.S. Department of Energy, over the proposed Clean Future Act, which would help to transition us toward a decarbonized power grid.
“What is the return on investment? What is the return on investment?” Johnson keeps yapping at Hoffman like a broken record, interrupting her even as she tries to give an answer about the necessity for this infrastructure toward the health and future of our nation.
Of course, not wanting your kids to be swept up in a climate change-induced firenado isn’t justification enough for Johnson. He wants a specific dollar amount, which Oliver, back in his Last Week Tonight segment, is only too happy to give him, after describing him with a few choice expletives that I really wish I could print here.
Oliver cites multiple studies showing the cost effectiveness of expanding transmission lines across the U.S., including one that predicted approximately $2.50 in benefits for every $1 of cost- a pretty decent return on investment, one might think.
But of course that doesn’t actually matter to Johnson. Evidence doesn’t truly matter at all to those of his ilk. Presenting him with the specific figures he demands isn’t enough, the same way that a 97%+ consensus among the scientific community, half a century’s worth of warnings going back to at least the Kennedy administration, and even buried reports funded by the very fossil fuel industry that created the disaster, aren’t enough to convince him of the runaway climate crisis we are now experiencing. I should know, having delivered a shopping cart full of 100 books on the subject of climate change directly to Johnson’s office two years ago. If he actually wanted to learn what was happening and how to fix it, he would have all the research material he could possibly desire.
But even if I could somehow print off a trillion pages of evidence for Representative Johnson indisputably proving that we were in a climate crisis, it would still pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of dollars he takes in from fossil fuel donors (at least $688,109, according to OpenSecrets.org, as well as, notably, $480,218 from electric utilities.)
Johnson, a supposed Christian who regularly posts Bible verses on his official government Facebook account, is ideologically committed to the notion that greed is good, and that the murderous corporate juggernauts making our planet uninhabitable truly have our best interests at heart.
Johnson’s sustained, willful ignorance cannot be reasoned with, for the simple fact that it’s based exclusively on far right dogma and corruption, rather than actual evidence. And at the end of the day, every last one of us will pay the price for it.
Aaron Dunbar
Lowell
Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: A look back at a record hot summer
Nov 13, 2021
Dr. Danesha Seth Carley
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
Picture this: It’s July, the sun is out, the grass is wilting, and the neighbor’s kids are gleefully running through a sprinkler right down the street. On this peaceful morning as I sit on my patio with a cold glass of lemonade in my hand, I watch my dog chasing a loud and clueless bumble bee (a Bombus griseocollis, or brown-belted bumble bee) through my vegetable and flower gardens.
I look back down at the dog, who is now panting heavily, curled up at my feet on the sunny patio. It isn’t just her romp through my garden that made her need a quick drink of water and a rest break. It is indeed hot. Really, really hot. No surprise; it is summer in the South. However, this July is actually really hotter than usual. Yes, July is typically the hottest month of the year, but this year, July out did itself. It, in fact, is LITERALLY the hottest month EVER recorded in human history.
As I sip my lemonade, I think about how badly my garden needs rain, and yet, in Harrisville, W.Va., where I grew up and where much of my family lives, it rained 11 days in May, 10 days in June, and to-date in July, they have already had 7 days of rain. In fact, with over 11 inches of rain in the last two months, my mother had to delay her tomato planting due to the “muddy soup” her garden had turned into. My tomato plants would love that rain, but it isn’t to happen for another few weeks.
Here in Raleigh, N.C., I planted my tomato plants in early April. Last winter, I only scraped my car windows twice, so I think the tomatoes will be safe. From cold at least. They are on their own for water, apparently.
There was a time I took the advice of the Old Timers and waited diligently to plant my carefully tended seedlings until “after Mother’s Day,” although where I live in North Carolina, the Farmer’s Almanac say I should plant on Good Friday, so I’m only a week or so early this year.
However, times, as they say, are a changin’. The climate (i.e. the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period) is anyway. The extreme heat I am currently contemplating is a part of this new normal. As are the heavy rains that kept my mother complaining about her lack of gardening progress even now, in July. We don’t have it as badly as the Northwest right now, a fact I remind my dog of as she whines to go back in the air-conditioned house.
Many will remember summer 2021 for being a hot one. An historic heat wave just baked the Pacific Northwest in June, setting all-time highs in Portland, Ore., Seattle, Wash. and Lytton, British Columbia. In fact, the 121 F reading in Lytton was the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada. The event was heralded as a “1,000-year event” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was the hottest June ever in the United States. And subsequently, the hottest July as well. Especially if you live in Death Valley, Calif. There, on more than one occasion in June, they came within striking distance of its own world record temperature of 134 degrees F from 1913, hitting 128 F. Talk about hot!
Wildfires were raging across the hot western U.S., with the Dixie Fire in California devastating town after town, burning nearly 1 million acres. Smoke from the wildfires in the United States and Canada traveled across all the way to the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard over much of the summer, and caused some of the most vivid and beautiful sunsets, but unfortunately, and more importantly, they are also negatively impacting air quality across vast swaths of the country.
As a Professor in Horticultural Science and a pollinator habitat expert, I fully appreciate the impact that these weather and climate events have not only on my tomatoes and other plants in my garden, but on a regional, and global scale. As the June months trend wetter, and the July months trend hotter, we will see more and more super storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and heat waves.
The impacts will be felt not only by upscale California and Colorado communities, but also our very own rural communities in Ritchie, Roane, Wood … and other counties in West Virginia. I think about how our children will be impacted, but also our rich and unique wildlife, including, but not limited to the brown-belted bumble bees, painted lady butterflies, and the much-adored honey bees.
Personally, what hits home most to me is simply the new challenges gardeners will continue to face. However, as I sip my lemonade, contemplating the heat, the lazy dog at my feet, and the bees visiting my coneflowers, I think there may just be a silver lining. Think of how much I will save on lemons when I can grow my own lemon trees year-round right here in North Carolina! But then, there’s that water bill…
***
Dr. Danesha Seth Carley is a West Virginia native, author, director NSF Center for IPM / USDA, Director, Center of Excellence for Regulatory Science in Agriculture, Associate Professor, Dept. Horticultural Science NC State Univ.
Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: The environmental costs of cheap fashion
Nov 6, 2021
Randi Pokladnik
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
A few years ago, I attended a Climate Reality Training Conference in Minneapolis. One of the speakers was involved in sustainable fashion. She told us what prompted her to leave the world of high fashion and create her own line of clothing. During a trip to China, her former employer dumped millions of mis-dyed buttons and thousands of yards of fabric into a river in China. Rather than find another use for the imperfect cloth and buttons, they chose to waste them and pollute the environment.
The supply chain of a garment, from cradle to grave, damages the environment. Most damages are in the form of toxic emissions and pollution. The industry workers and the environment pay the price so we can have cheap clothes that must be shipped thousands of miles across the ocean.
We wear blue jeans almost every day totally unaware of the environmental issues surrounding the production of a pair of jeans. More than five billion pairs are made annually. It takes an average of 1,800 gallons of water, 110 kilowatt-hours of energy, and 5 ounces of chemicals to produce one pair of jeans.
Dana Thomas’s book “Fashionopolis” states that jeans, the most popular clothing item in history, are also the most destructive of the fashion items we consume. Guangdong Province, China, claims to be the “jeans capital of the world.” Each year 200,000 garment workers in Xintang’s 3,000 factories and workshops produce 300 million pairs of jeans, about 800,000 pairs a day. The documentary, “The River Blue: Can Fashion Save the Planet,” details the environmental damage from the production of jeans.
In an effort to avoid the “break-in” period for new jeans, the industry came up with distressed jeans. Popular in the late 1980s, these jeans must be artificially treated to achieve that look of being old and worn. Workers use millions of gallons of water and energy to wash the jeans with pumice stone. Often the heavily contaminated wash water is dumped untreated into rivers.
In Guangdong, the local water treatment plant closed years ago, leaving factories to dump dye waste directly into the East River. The river quickly turned opaque; aquatic life could no longer survive. Greenpeace has reported that the riverbed contains high levels of lead, copper, and cadmium, and the river had a pH level of 11.95. Workers exposed to the water and dust reported skin rashes, infertility and lung infections.
The recently released report “A New Textiles Economy” states that between 1.22 billion and 2.93 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere annually by the textile industry. If you include the emissions released to launder those garments the total contribution from clothing accounts for 6.7 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
We live in a time of “fast fashion” where high fashion designs are mass produced in a way that uses incredible amounts of energy and resources as well as large quantities of toxic dyes. Clothing barely lasts beyond a few months before it is deemed “out of fashion” or looks like an old rag from a few washings. Millions of pieces of fast fashion garments end up in landfills every year. In New York City alone more than 400 million pounds of clothes are wasted each year and the EPA reports that 5.8 percent of annual municipal solid wastes is from textiles. It can take up to 200 years for a piece of fabric to break down.
Every type of garment, be it wool, fur, or polyester, has a carbon footprint, but synthetic fibers are much worse than others. If you sew like I do, you probably have noticed that the amount of fleece fabrics available in fabric stores has skyrocketed. In some cases, half the store is stocked with various fleece fabrics.
An article in “The Revelator” states that the amount of polyester in our garments has doubled since 2000. It takes 342 million barrels of oil annually to supply synthetic fibers, which means fibers like fleece have a high carbon footprint. Consider that once discarded, fabrics like polyester, nylon, and acrylics add to the plastic fibers contaminating waterways in our environment.
Cotton-based fabric also comes at a high cost to the environment. Cotton, once referred to as “the fabric of your life,” primarily originates from genetically modified cotton plants. The genetically modified seeds are engineered to be resistant to herbicides such as Roundup, which allows the fields to be sprayed without killing the cotton plants. The use of pesticides and man-made fertilizers also adds to the carbon footprint of conventionally grown cotton. According to the World Health Organization, the world’s cotton crop requires 200,000 tons of pesticides and 8 million tons of fertilizers each year.
The Soil Association’s 2019 report, “Thirsty for Fashion,” details how a switch to organic cotton can help reduce the externalities of the fabric. Organic cotton costs more but workers have much safer working conditions, the crop uses much less water, uses little if any industrial chemicals and improves soils. The higher price tag for organic cotton is well worth it.
Another alternative fiber gaining traction in the world is hemp. The 2018 Farm Bill legalized the cultivation of hemp which, up to that point, had been declared an illegal drug like other cannabis plants. Unlike its cousin marijuana, hemp has no significant amount of THC. Hemp has a long and colorful history in the USA, and farmers were once required to grow it. Our first American flags and Levi jeans were made from hemp, and our navy used ropes crafted from American grown hemp.
However, in the early 1900s, industrialists like DuPont and Hearst lobbied against the crop because they saw the threat it posed to some of their industries. Hemp can produce four times as much paper as trees. PR campaigns quickly started to associate the benign crop with “mad pot smokers.”
Hemp can be grown without pesticides and fertilizers, it grows faster and absorbs more carbon dioxide than other crops, it is biodegradable, UV resistant, and breathes, unlike synthetic materials.
There are other ways to cut the carbon budget from your clothes. Madeline Hill, an author who writes about sustainability, said in her “Good On You” column, “we need to follow these practices when it comes to fashion: reduce, reuse, rewear, repair, and resell.” There are many companies like Patagonia that will take “trade-ins” on old clothing from their stores and repair clothing for a small fee.
In 2015, I attended a conference sponsored by the Patagonia Company. The company gets high marks for its contributions to environmental grassroots groups and its sustainable business practices. During the conference, Yvon Chouinard, founder of the company, spoke to us. As he sat in an over-stuffed chair wearing an old flannel shirt he asked, “Why do kids need so many T shirts and twenty pairs of jeans?” It was a good question and one to consider as the ridiculous madness of Christmas shopping approaches. Instead of buying cheap stuff made in China and transported across the ocean using fossil fuels, why not refrain from consuming or at least purchase something that will last longer than the next wash cycle? Let your fashion choices reflect your desire for a livable planet.
***
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: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: COP26 in Glasgow
Oct 30, 2021
Aaron Dunbar
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
I was four years old when parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held their first annual conference to agree to do nothing about the existential threat of climate change. You’ll forgive me if my now-30-year-old self sees little reason for optimism in anticipation of the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow this Sunday.
It’s been estimated that more than half of our 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2 emissions since 1751 have been produced in the past 30 years alone — more or less the exact same period that UNFCCC parties have been meeting every year to work on “fixing the problem.”
This is, in effect, akin to finding out from your doctor that you’re at imminent risk of a heart attack, and immediately switching to an all-Big Mac diet to try and preserve your health.
As of this writing, COP26 hasn’t even begun yet, and numerous world powers are already trying to weasel their way out of whatever toothless half-measures we can probably expect to see over the course of the next two weeks.
Recent reporting by the BBC revealed that several nations, including Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Australia, have been lobbying the U.N. to try and water down its climate reports. Wording such as “the need for urgent and accelerated mitigation actions at all scales …” has been specifically targeted by these nations, which are all, not coincidentally, massive users and/or producers of fossil fuels.
Odds are, we can expect much aggrandizement of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as an “alternative” to actually reducing fossil fuel emissions, despite it being largely a wishful fairytale technology at this point. Just last month, the Swiss company Climeworks opened up its Orca facility, the largest carbon-removal plant on Earth, in Iceland. In a year’s time, it will have negated approximately three meager seconds’ worth of global emissions from our atmosphere.
Whether or not this technology ever becomes usable at anywhere near the necessary scale, it’s clear that its appeal is the same as so many climate “solutions” being proposed by high polluting nations — taking a problem that’s happening right here and right now, and proclaiming that it’ll be solvable 20 or 30 years in the future, without any concrete evidence to that effect.
Meanwhile, senior observers of COP26 have stated that the summit is unlikely to meet even the goals set forth by the Paris Agreement, which is itself woefully inadequate in getting climate change under control.
Nations such as China, Russia, and India have not yet made further pledges to pollution cuts. The United States, the greatest contributor to climate change throughout all of industrialized history, and currently the world’s second highest emitter behind China, has pledged to slash emissions “50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels in the next decade,” according to The New York Times. However, there is little to suggest that meaningful progress is being made to this effect, with one of our nation’s two serious political parties still flat-out denying that climate change even exists, and the other giving lip-service to climate issues while simultaneously stripping crucial climate legislation from the still-gestating and virtually moribund infrastructure bill.
I keep thinking of the term Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) in relation to the dynamics between major powers that refuse to decarbonize. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but the way that so many nations are unwilling to phase out fossil fuels for fear of being one-upped economically (for instance, opponents of green energy in the U.S. say that we can’t have it because then China will be stronger than us), is grimly reminiscent of the nuclear proliferation and brinksmanship that threatened the entire world throughout the latter half of the 20th Century (the U.S. can’t reduce its world-ending nuclear arsenal because then Russia will be stronger than us.) In both cases, the only ends achieved is widespread death and destruction, through the means of a rabidly competitive suicidal idiocy.
Given everything that’s at stake, and the vanishingly small time frame we have left in which to take action on climate, what exactly might a “successful” COP26 even look like at this point?
To quote the answer of activist group Extinction Rebellion: “How about a world war-sized mobilisation in every high-emitting country to decarbonise as quickly as possible. Anything else will result in mass death and an increasingly uninhabitable world.”
As important as it should be, I can all but guarantee you that this event will be nothing but political posturing from a group of deranged world leaders- a whole lot of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing.
We, the people, must rise up and demand that our governments be held accountable for their failure to reckon with the looming catastrophe that is global warming. If our leaders refuse to act then we must force their hand into doing so, or else risk abandoning our country, and the world, to the corrupting forces of ecological collapse unleashed by an elite few.
Time is up. We simply cannot wait for change from the top down any longer. The moment to act on climate is now.
***
Aaron Dunbar is a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: With climate justice for all
Oct 23, 2021 in the Parkersburg News and Sentinel
Giulia Mannarino
Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner
The climate crisis is not just an environmental issue; it is also an ethical, social and political issue. An online article published in July 2020, by the Yale Climate Connection, gives the following definition of climate justice; “Climate justice is a term, and more than that a movement, that acknowledges climate change can have differing social, economic, public health and other adverse impacts on underprivileged populations.” The fact that historically marginalized groups throughout the world: people of color; indigenous people; people with disabilities; the elderly; women; children; and households with low income are impacted disproportionately as climate change persists is now a more significant part of the global warming concerns raised by the UN, the IPCC and most organized religions. This disproportionate harm is due to many factors that not only increase these underprivileged groups’ exposure to the unhealthy effects of climate change but also their susceptibility to destruction caused by its impacts. And, generally, these victims that suffer the most have a disproportionately low responsibility for the emissions that have caused this crisis.
The indigenous people of the United States were the primary caretakers of our nation’s biodiversity and totally depended on their environment for survival for thousands of years. As a marginalized community, the climate crisis impacts them perhaps the worst because this group still depends on their environment for survival from wild rice fields to salmon. This actually is a treaty right, a law of the land, guaranteed to them by our federal government for as long as the wind blows. Only since 1990, have indigenous people within the United States been formally addressing “environmental and economic justice issues.” That year an alliance of grassroots indigenous people met to discuss the environmental assaults on their communities and the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) was established. Their mission statement is “…to Protect the Sacredness of Mother Earth from contamination and exploitation by Respecting and Adhering to Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Law.” IEN’s native environmental justice movement expanded primarily in North America (Turtle Island) and, in recent years, globally. It is involved in a variety of activities.
An organizer from IEN, along with a senior research analyst from Oil Change International, authored a report that was issued in August 2021, “Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon.” For years, the Indigenous Tribal Nations of the United States and First Nations of Canada have been organizing protests, direct action and other resistance that have canceled or delayed extractive fossil fuel projects and pipelines on indigenous lands. These actions have had an impact on emissions and this report calculated how much CO2 or other green house gas emissions these canceled or delayed projects would have emitted in the last 10 years. According to the math, the indigenous resistance to pipelines and fossil fuel projects saved U.S. and Canada 12% of annual emissions or almost a billion tons of CO2 per year (.8 billion). And if indigenous people in North America were to win every fight they’re in, that amount doubles. A lot of other significant information is contained in the report including the Right of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). This right was recognized by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Persons (UNDRIP), adopted in September 2007. If it is implemented properly, indigenous persons have the right to more than consultation; they have the right to grant or withhold permission for projects that affect them or their territories. Only four countries voted against this resolution; Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
Oct. 11, 2021, Columbus Day, was formally recognized as Indigenous Peoples Day by President Biden. Not coincidentally, this was the first day of a largely indigenous led major mobilization, People vs. Fossil Fuels. This event was held, in Washington D.C., Oct. 11-15. An on line invitation to participate was signed, “In solidarity for the protection of Mother Earth and the next seven generations of life” by representatives of ten indigenous environmental groups throughout the United States as well as an additional four environmental justice organizations located in Texas, Louisiana, California and (Stop the MVP) Appalachia. The two main sponsors were IEN and the Build Back Fossil Free Coalition which was organized shortly after Biden’s election and includes hundreds and hundreds of national, regional, state and local organizations (including MOVCA) that want fossil free solutions to Build Back Better. People vs. Fossil Fuels focused on President Biden’s authority to stop fossil fuels and included two demands: (1) President Biden must stop approving fossil fuel projects and speed the end of the fossil fuel era and (2) President Biden must declare a national climate emergency and launch a just, renewable energy revolution. Both demands included specific actions as well as background and rationale. Non-violent civil disobedience, a time tested tactic which has been a part of every movement for social change, was an essential part of the event. A total of 655 civil arrests, of both indigenous and non-native persons, of various ages and genders, were made by police during the week.
In the 1970s, I spent a summer near Cherry Creek, S.D., on the Cheyenne River Reservation. While there, I was invited to attend a Sun Dance Ceremony, an important sacred ritual of nearly all Plains tribes. Prior to the ceremony, a participant dancer spoke about a major difference between the world views of Western colonial culture and indigenous traditional culture, which influenced how the two groups interacted with the world around them. The basic difference, explained the speaker, is that free will and reason are seen as a blessing by the Western colonial world view and proof that man is superior to and most important of all species. However, free will and reason are seen as a curse by the indigenous traditional world view and proof that man is inferior to and least important of all species. The traditional viewpoint is that free will and reason make life more difficult and confusing compared to other species that operate by instinct.
Many websites are available that compare the world views of indigenous traditional and Western colonial cultures, some with ominous names such as “Indigenous Corporate Training.” The many differences are always direct opposites. In the indigenous culture; community is foremost; the future tense is dominant; ownership is communal; soft spoken words carry farthest; the land/resources are sacred and given by the creator for use by all. In the Western culture: individualism is foremost; the present tense is dominant; ownership is personal; emphasis carries the day; the land/resources are for development and extraction for the benefit of humans. This difference in world view will always exist. As one of the indigenous participants of People vs. Fossil Fuels stated during a news segment, “Our infrastructure is land, water, air and people.”
Climate justice is a multifaceted issue and this column seems limited in its review of it. It touches on aspects of climate justice without elucidating finer details. It only discusses indigenous people of North America; however, there are other underprivileged groups in the U.S. as well as across the globe. And each group has its own story regarding environmental wrongs. Also, very little was written about the intent and activities of a five-day historic event. Despite these omissions, it is obvious which world view will take better care of our planet for future generations.
***
Giulia Mannarino is vice-chairperson of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Good plans to move from fossil fuels are out there
The Charleston Gazette-Mail.
Oct. 22, 2021
Eric Engle
In the Oct. 21 edition of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Rebecca McPhail, president of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, wrote a rather condescending op-ed discussing how vital fossil fuels are to manufacturing and how largely unrealistic the demands of climate and environmental activists are nationwide.
I’m not surprised that the president of a trade association and lobbying group that often lobbies on behalf of fossil fuels interests in the state Legislature would write a piece like this, but let’s clear some things up.
McPhail stressed that “we need to hear a real plan” for a transition away from fossil fuels in the United States. There’s no shortage of detailed plans.
One such plan I highly recommend is by Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and senior fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy and Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Jacobson had a book published last year by Cambridge University Press titled “100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything.” The book is a 450-page study with a tremendous amount of information on exactly how our energy and manufacturing transition can work that is anything but pie in the sky.
Another great read on this is the book “Power after Carbon: Building a Clean, Resilient Grid,” by Peter Fox-Penner, director of Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy and professor in BU’s Questrom School of Business. The book was released last year by Harvard University Press.
Taken together, these books represent 1,000 or more pages of reading, so I’ll end my reading recommendations there, but, suffice it to say, the details are readily available.
McPhail specifically targeted protesters with the People vs. Fossil Fuels movement who were in Washington, D.C., last week, stating, “Aside from the obvious questions about how the protesters got to D.C., probably with fuels, vehicles and on roads derived from coal, oil and gas, wearing clothes made from fossil fuel derivatives and eating food raised and transported in similar fashion, one wonders whether they understand what they are asking.”
This is a very popular trope used to silence those who oppose any kind of status quo. If you don’t like the existing systems and institutions, the so-called logic goes, you’d better reject them in their entirety immediately. “Love it or leave it!”
It’s nonsense. You can advocate for change while being beholden to the way things currently are and go.
McPhail asks, “Does the government intend to subsidize the construction of the [solar] panels, and the power they produce?” Let’s look at subsidies, shall we?
According to an analysis by the International Monetary Fund, the fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11 million every minute. To quote from an article in The Guardian, “The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidized by $5.9 trillion in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs.”
Should governments fund and subsidize renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable agriculture and development, and conservation? Yes. And governments should do so at the same time as they end fossil fuels subsidies.
That’s not just a climate activist’s perspective, either. The same Guardian piece quoted above states, “More than 600 global companies in the We Mean Business coalition, including Unilever, Ikea, Aviva, Siemens and Volvo cars, recently urged G20 leaders to end fossil fuels subsidies by 2025.”
Climate activists like myself fully understand that fossil fuels aren’t going away overnight. We fully understand that the transition away from them won’t be easy for many.
That’s why we have advocated, and continue to advocate, through initiatives and organizations like Reimagine Appalachia, for strong wage and salary, health, retirement and alternative career supports for coal communities, for example.
That’s why we support the Build Back Better reconciliation legislation that our state’s senior U.S. senator is hellbent on watering down and possibly even blocking.
That’s why we work tirelessly every legislative session against a Republican supermajority in this state that McPhail and others at the Manufacturers Association helped elect, which is fully committed to maintaining a dirty, uneconomical present, instead of investing in and developing a cleaner, more affordable future.
Eric Engle, of Parkersburg, is chairman of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action and a board member for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.
Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Manchin involvement with coal a real problem
Oct 16, 2021
Eric Engle
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
Sen. Joe Manchin III really likes throwing around the word “entitlements” lately. The senator keeps emphasizing when the media catches up with him that he doesn’t want our society to become an “entitlement society.” Sen. Manchin, to quote Inigo Montoya from “The Princess Bride,” “you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Warren Gunnels, majority staff director for Sen. Bernie Sanders, recently posted a tweet asking, “Does paying a lower tax rate on $500,000 in dividends from coal stocks than a registered nurse who makes $80,000 a year represent an entitlement society?” Warren was referring to approximately what Joe Manchin makes annually from the coal brokerage he founded called Enersystems. Bloomberg’s Ari Natter recently asked Manchin about Enersystems and if it represents a conflict of interest as Manchin negotiates climate provisions in reconciliation legislation. Manchin stated that the company is in a blind trust. Ari mentioned that Manchin gets dividends from the company, to which Manchin replied, “You got a problem?” Ari also mentioned that Manchin’s son still owns the company, to which Manchin replied, “You’d do best to change the subject.”
As a constituent of Manchin’s in West Virginia let me just say unequivocally that my answer to the first question Manchin posed to Ari is yes, Senator, I have a big problem with you negotiating climate provisions in legislation while you directly profit from the coal industry. I also have a big problem with the fact that, according to OpenSecrets.org, a website run by the Center for Responsive Politics, Manchin is the top recipient in the Senate this cycle of fossil fuels industry money. Now why would that be? Oh yea, Manchin is Committee Chairman for the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee.
A recent analysis by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy shows that West Virginia would benefit immensely from the Build Back Better reconciliation legislation being proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee, which Manchin is threatening. The legislation, if enacted, would bring paid family and medical leave to 690,000 West Virginians; monthly Child Tax Credit payments would be made available for 346,000 West Virginian children; 22,000 West Virginia children would be lifted out of poverty; affordable child care and education would be made available for 89,607 West Virginia children under 5, and an average of $103 per week in child care costs would be saved; housing assistance would be made available for 8,000 West Virginians, including 3,000 kids; Earned Income Tax Credit extensions would be made for 102,900 West Virginia workers; and Summer EBT benefits would be available for 222,000 West Virginia kids.
How would this legislation be paid for in West Virginia? WVCBP covers that too. Their analysis shows that taxes would increase 2 percent for those making $443,400+ a year and 0.3 percent for those making $181,800 to $443,400 a year. Taxes would be reduced for every other cohort. Increased tobacco taxes will hit every income cohort but will generally be offset for lower-and-middle income groups by the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.
$350 billion a year spent investing in the care economy like social workers and at-home care providers, climate change adaptation and mitigation, childcare, housing, income, and food support to meet our state’s dire needs, and other human infrastructure needs in addition to the bipartisan infrastructure bill Manchin supports–what about any of this says “entitlement” to Manchin? If Manchin is truly concerned about deficits and debt, then why did he sign off on a $778 billion National Defense Authorization Act just for Fiscal Year 2022? If he’s truly worried about inflation, maybe he needs to pressure the pharmaceutical industry to worry more about vaccine availability globally and less about profits so that we can escape global supply chain issues still impacted by COVID-19. His daughter Heather is connected in the industry (see: EpiPen prices and Mylan jobs leaving West Virginia), maybe she could speak with Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech execs.
Manchin needs to listen to West Virginians. Polls show majorities of us support the Build Back Better legislation. It’s pathetic when West Virginians must kayak up to Joe’s yacht in D.C. just to be heard. Stop worrying about your bottom line and your re-election prospects three years from now and get this done, Joe.
***
Eric Engle is chairman of the not-for-profit volunteer organization Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, Board Member for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, and Co-Chairman of the Sierra Club of West Virginia Chapter’s Executive Committee.
Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Press Release
For Immediate Release
October 14, 2021
MOVCA October 21st Program Features Recording of Webinar:
PFAS, Endocrine Disruption, and Shale Gas Development
PARKERSBURG, West Virginia – Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action is pleased to share a video recording of “PFAS, Endocrine Disruption, and Shale Gas Development,” a webinar originally hosted by Halt the Harm Network and the Environmental Health Project. The program will be offered on Zoom at 7:00 p.m. on October 21st. Webinar speakers include Dusty Horwitt, J.D., who presents on PFAS in Oil and Gas Extraction, explaining how these chemicals were not known to be used in fracking until Physicians for Social Responsibility released his report in July; and Katie Pelch, Ph.D., who presents on PFAS: A Non-stick Nightmare, discussing the health impacts related to PFAS with a focus on endocrine disruption, as well as regulation and exposure mitigation.
A live, interactive discussion led by Dr. Randi Pokladnik will follow screening of the webinar. Dr. Pokladnik earned an associate degree in Environmental Engineering, a BA in Chemistry, MA and PhD in Environmental Studies. She is certified in hazardous materials regulations and holds a teaching license in science and math.
Anyone interested is welcome to join the meeting. Please register in advance:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkcO-vqDgrHdA7un3jXzIllDfSoXJWO3XN
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
“Our region knows a great deal about exposure to “Forever Chemicals,” said Adeline Bailey, MOVCA member. “Learning that these toxic chemicals are approved for use in fracking is disturbing,”
#####
Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action focuses on raising awareness of the solid science establishing the danger of the climate crisis and the urgency of dealing with it. MOVCA supports the efforts of 350.org, and Citizens’ Climate Lobby, and is a Science Booster Club for the National Center for Science Education. The not-for-profit volunteer group also collaborates with other environmental groups on campaigns and events in the Mid-Ohio Valley. For more information, visit the organization’s web page (https://main.movclimateaction.org).
Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Climate change affects leaf-peeping, too
Oct 9, 2021
Nenna Davis
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
I remember shuffling as a child through the rainbow of fallen leaves as I walked past City Park to my fifth-grade class at Park School. I would pick up the prettiest ones on my way home and my mother would help me identify them. She loves botany; the study of flowers and trees intrigues her. She became my resident specialist encouraging me to collect those radiant gems in the fall.
Today, as we consider fall leaf-peeping time, I find the leaves do not have the same vibrant colors of my childhood. Maybe it’s because I am looking through adult eyes, or maybe it is because climate change has been an enemy to our trees. So, you ask, how in the world does climate change have anything to do with the fall colors?
A paper released from the Department of Biology at Appalachian State University shared a list of ten environmental factors that can be the reason for the loss of our so much enjoyed fall colors.
1. Higher temperatures cause changes in the sugars during the photosynthesis process in all of our plants including our trees. This sugar is needed for color development.
2. Climate change is causing changes in the amount of precipitation and even the timing of rain, snow and sleet. As we consider the deciduous trees that provide the color we so enjoy, the changes in precipitation patterns will continue to cause harm to them. Many of us in this region have seen an increase in spring rain and an increase in August droughts; both can have deleterious effects on leaf color.
3. Humidity levels are changing because of temperature and precipitation.
4. Changes in the cloud cover can affect the amount of light striking plants, including trees. And as you know from your high school biology class, light is an important factor in the food production process in plants called photosynthesis.
5. Increases in the growing season which change the behavior of leaves as they grow in the spring and change in the fall. According to NASA the frost-free season or growing season may increase by eight weeks by the end of the century!
6. As agriculture practices, such as the use of fertilizer, pesticides and hog production, etc., continue, the release of nitrogen into ecosystems will continue to rise as well. These nitrogen emissions contribute to acidic deposits and acid rain.
7. Nutrients are leached out of soils by continued acidic deposits. Many of these acidic deposits are a result of the use of fossil fuels. According to the U.S. Forest Service, “In sensitive ecosystems, these acidic compounds can acidify soil, surface waters, affecting nutrient cycling and impacting the ecosystem services provided by forests.”
8. Some tree species are migrating north to escape heat. According to the U.S. Forest Service, data show that 70 percent of tree species are migrating. “This ‘range movement’ northward occurs when more seeds germinate and seedlings thrive at the northern edge or higher elevations of the species’ range than at the southern edge or lower elevations.” This migration is why so many of us go to the mountains to do our tree peeping.
9. We are losing some tree species in certain geographical locations because they cannot migrate nor can they survive the environmental changes.
10. And, finally, as species migrate, we will see changes in tree competition because some species migrate causing competition while invasive species and even more and newer pests will increase.
As I am researching and writing for this article, I find my nostalgia increasing. My sadness about the diminishing beauty of something I have treasured all my life may be because of the romantic nature of my memory or because of the environment. I believe it is a bit of both. The glimmer of hope is, that in the trees and forests we could find a partial answer to our problem by the use of reforestation. But, that’s another story for another time. In the meantime, I hope you can find those gold, red, and yellow nuggets in your neighborhood this fall. Enjoy!
***
Nenna Davis, B.S Zoology/Botany; MA, Organizational Communication
Last Updated: April 28, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Extreme Weather
By George Banziger October 6, 2021 in the Marietta Times
Climate change is indeed a worldwide crisis. The international climate summit in Glasgow Scotland, where representatives from 190 nations will convene on November 1, is, only few weeks ahead. And yet, there are still people, some of whom are in influential positions, who are denying and trying to refute what has been evident to everyone including reputable scientists—extreme weather is a direct result of human-caused climate change. Global temperatures have been rising, glaciers and ice caps are melting at an accelerating pace, and seas around the world have been rising, getting warmer, and more acidic.
But what has been most striking and visible in recent months have been extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Ida that ravaged Louisiana and the northeast. Insurance companies are recognizing this scientifically demonstrated phenomenon and have put limits on insurance coverage in flood-prone and hurricane-prone regions. NatCatService, which analyzes losses caused by natural disasters worldwide has documented that there were only 250 extreme natural disasters in 1980 and 750 in 2015.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their recent Sixth Report noted with “high confidence” heavy precipitation in several of the regions of the world, resulting in serious flood hazards. A major reason for the concern expressed by IPCC and their description as a “red alert” warning to the world is the extreme weather events including heat waves, heavy rains, droughts and associated wildfires, and coastal flooding. These events are bad for ecosystems, for our agricultural economy, and for human health. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has reported that 1,300 people die per year in the U.S. from extreme heat, as compared to 600 deaths per year for other extreme weather events. This is an important figure because global warming is what much of climate change is about.
The IPCC is not some random organization identifiable in a Google search. It is the internationally accepted authority on climate change, which is comprised of 234 scientists from 66 countries. Thousands of other professional scientists contributed to studies analyzed by the IPCC, which reviewed over 14,000 scientific papers. These are research articles written by peer-reviewed scientists, i.e., those who subject their writings to review by other experts in the field. Fully 97% of peer-reviewed scientists agree that human-caused climate change accounts for the extreme weather events and other associated crises we are now experiencing
Global warming is changing storms. IPCC scientists have concluded that hurricanes are becoming more powerful with higher winds and more rain. Storms are also moving slowly, covering a wide range, and showing rapid intensification. The earth is getting hotter with more heat waves and drier droughts and at the same time is producing bigger storm surges and even greater snowfall. They further have pointed out that hurricanes may be getting more frequent and a lot more intense. Hurricane Ida, which produced massive devastation, flooding, power outages and human suffering is a striking example of all these trends.
Elected public officials, members of the Biden Administration, and business leaders are well advised to review the summary for policy makers in the recently publicized IPCC Sixth report before the Glasgow Summit. One of the five integrative reasons of concern issued by the IPCC is: “Extreme weather events: risks/impacts to human health, livelihoods, assets and ecosystems from extreme weather events such as heat waves, heavy rain, drought and associated wildfires, and coastal flooding.”
Numerous surveys, such as the recurrent Yale survey, have pointed that the vast majority of Americans supports action on climate change. Times’ readers can show their support of these efforts by contacting Congressman Bill Johnson, Senators Brown, and Portman and other public officials and urge them to support legislation on climate change.
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