Thu.May 19, 2022

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Beyond Magical Thinking: Time to Get Real on Climate Change

Yale E360

Despite decades of studies and climate summits, greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar. Energy scientist Vaclav Smil says it’s time to stop ricocheting between apocalyptic forecasts and rosy models of rapid CO2 cuts and focus on the difficult task of remaking our energy system. Read more on E360 ?.

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Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Available to Orgs June 1

Environment + Energy Leader

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability solutions will be available June 1 and will provide the intelligence and data management capabilities for organizations to make progress with their sustainability goals and requirements. . The post Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Available to Orgs June 1 appeared first on Environment + Energy Leader.

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Minnesota Lawmakers Could Go Big on Clean Energy, or Go Small

Union of Concerned Scientists

Minnesota needs substantial investments now to build toward an equitable clean energy future. The good news is, Minnesota legislators have a chance to pass the level of investment needed to set the state on a path to a carbon-free economy. The bad news is, they have to find a compromise between two vastly different clean energy bills—by Monday. The science is clear: Limiting the adverse effects of climate change requires rapid reductions in emissions now.

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Texas Instruments to Build LEED Certified Fabrication Plants

Environment + Energy Leader

Texas Instruments is building new 300-mm semiconductor wafer fabrication plants (or "fabs") in Sherman, Texas. The post Texas Instruments to Build LEED Certified Fabrication Plants appeared first on Environment + Energy Leader.

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Implementing D.E.J.I. Strategies in Energy, Environment, and Transportation

Speaker: Antoine M. Thompson, Executive Director of the Greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition

Diversity, Equity, Justice, and Inclusion (DEJI) policies, programs, and initiatives are critically important as we move forward with public and private sector climate and sustainability goals and plans. Underserved and socially, economically, and racially disadvantaged communities bear the burden of pollution, higher energy costs, limited resources, and limited investments in the clean energy and transportation sectors.

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My Kind of Town

Legal Planet

“My kind of town, Chicago is my kind of town.” Or so Frank Sinatra sang. I’m not sure he really felt that way himself, but the song rings a chord with me. I didn’t grow up in Chicago but we visited frequently to see my parents’ families. Chicago is also, as it turns out, ground zero for climate change. The Chicago lakefront has been a site of contestation, development, and preservation since its early days.

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New Legislation on PFAS May Affect Your Fire Suppression System

Environment + Energy Leader

Over the past few decades, the fire protection industry has been affected by national/international restrictions and bans on production of the chemicals used in fire suppression systems. With the ongoing concern over climate change substances and materials with high global warming potential have increasingly come under scrutiny from Congress and other international governing bodies.

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How Will the Rise of WFH Help Us to Adapt to Climate Change?

Environmental and Urban Economics

Millions of American workers engaged in Work from Home (WFH) during the pandemic. WFH helped us to adapt to the risk of disease contagion. Going forward, WFH will also helps us to adapt to the rising climate risks we now face. Given that global greenhouse gas emissions are likely to continue to rise as the world’s population and per-capita income grows faster than the decarbonization of the world economy (declining GHG emissions per dollar of GNP), the climate change challenge will grow more sev

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Income-targeted environmental policies, Episode 2

Legal Planet

This is the second post in a short series on income-targeted environmental policies. You can read the first post, introducing the concept of “Area Median Income,” here. In this second part of my series on income-targeted environmental programs, I want to talk about affordable housing, and one particular housing program, Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC).

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USC Economics Faculty Hiring Since 2015

Environmental and Urban Economics

I joined the USC Economics faculty in 2015 and Romain Ranciere also joined that year. Permit me to list the impressive scholars who have subsequently joined our faculty. Marianne Andries Tim Armstrong Vittorio Bassi Augustin Bergeron Fanny Camara Thomas Chaney Pablo Kurlat Jonathan Libgober Robert Metcalfe Monica Morlacco Afshin Nikzad Paulina Oliva Simon Quah Jeffrey Weaver David Zeke In July 2022, a star theorist will join our department as our newest hire.

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Netherlands invests €1.1bn in the photonic-chip industry

Physics World

The Dutch photonic chip industry has been boosted with €1.1bn of public and private investment. The cash, which includes €470m from the Dutch government’s National Growth Fund, will be used by PhotonDelta over six years to create hundreds of photonic start-up companies and scale up photonic-chip production to encourage development of new photonic applications. .

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Shaping a Resilient Future: Climate Impact on Vulnerable Populations

Speaker: Laurie Schoeman Director, Climate & Sustainability, Capital

As households and communities across the nation face challenges such as hurricanes, wildfires, drought, extreme heat and cold, and thawing permafrost and flooding, we are increasingly searching for ways to mitigate and prevent climate impacts. During this event, national climate and housing expert Laurie Schoeman will discuss topics including: The two paths for climate action: decarbonization and adaptation.

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Procedures: Federal Preemption

National Law Center

The Constitution of the United States is made up of hundreds of clauses. Article VI is known as the Supremacy Clause. The post Procedures: Federal Preemption appeared first on National Agricultural Law Center.

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Black-hole physics and that iconic ‘shadow’ image, balloons and rockets probe the atmosphere’s acoustic duct

Physics World

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, we meet Shep Doeleman , who is the founding director of the Event Horizon Telescope. He explains how he and his colleagues obtained that iconic image of the “shadow” of the supermassive at the centre of the Milky Way. Based in the US at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Doeleman explains what the image tells us about the physics of black holes, and he looks forward to the day when we can watch “movies” of dancing black-hol

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‘Too many people, not enough food’ isn’t the cause of hunger and food insecurity

Environmental News Bits

by Gisèle Yasmeen, University of British Columbia Nearly one in three people in the world did not have access to enough food in 2020. That’s an increase of almost 320 million people in one year and it’s expected to get worse with rising food prices and the war trapping wheat, barley and corn in Ukraine … Continue reading ‘Too many people, not enough food’ isn’t the cause of hunger and food insecurity.

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Ag and Food Law Daily Update: May 19, 2022

National Law Center

A comprehensive summary of today’s judicial, legislative, and regulatory developments in agriculture and food. Email important additions HERE. . The post Ag and Food Law Daily Update: May 19, 2022 appeared first on National Agricultural Law Center.

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Sustainability at Retail

Sustainability impacts every nation, company, and person around the world. So much so that, in 2015, the United Nations (UN) issued a call for action by all countries to work toward sustainable development. In response to this and as part of a global Sustainability at Retail initiative, Shop! worked collaboratively with its global affiliates to address these critical issues in this white paper.

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The pandemic’s gardening boom shows how gardens can cultivate public health

Environmental News Bits

by Alessandro Ossola, University of California, Davis As lockdowns went into effect in the spring of 2020 to slow the spread of the coronavirus, reports emerged of a global gardening boom, with plants, flowers, vegetables and herbs sprouting in backyards and on balconies around the world. The data backs up the narrative: An analysis of … Continue reading The pandemic’s gardening boom shows how gardens can cultivate public health.

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Astronomers question if the first picture of a black hole is accurate

New Scientist

The Event Horizon Telescope’s first image of a black hole showed a distinctive ring feature, but a reanalysis of their data has raised concerns over whether that ring of light is real

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Ontario is failing on climate change

Enviromental Defense

What has Ontario done about climate change the last 4 years? Not much. Once upon a time, Ontario was a provincial leader in fighting climate change. But today, there is virtually no climate policy in place in the province, and the Ontario government has resorted to becoming a climate pretender. That is to say that Ontario doesn’t outright deny that climate change is happening – instead the province just offers inadequate and unsupported climate solutions which it then fails to follow through on,

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Priceless samples from Ukraine's seed bank destroyed in bomb attack

New Scientist

Part of Ukraine’s national seed bank, a repository of genetic diversity, has been destroyed by a blast in Kharkiv, and the rest of the collection remains at risk

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Metals and Mining Companies Face Impacts from Transition to Low-Carbon Economy

Environmental Leader

Metals and mining companies will face varying impacts from the transition to a low-carbon economy, including diverging demand trends and the need to transform production processes and switch to greener energy sources and cleaner feedstock. The post Metals and Mining Companies Face Impacts from Transition to Low-Carbon Economy appeared first on Environment + Energy Leader.

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The people who built Stonehenge may have eaten raw cattle organs

New Scientist

An analysis of fossilised faeces found near Stonehenge suggest the people who built the monument ate raw cattle organs and shared the leftovers with their dogs

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Red Tape or Duct Tape?

Environmental Law Centre

Red Tape or Duct Tape: When is the red tape we are cutting actually duct tape holding it all together? In our work, the ELC focuses on a number. The post Red Tape or Duct Tape? appeared first on Environmental Law Centre.

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Could monkeypox become a pandemic? Here's everything you need to know

New Scientist

Dozens of confirmed and suspected cases have been reported worldwide to date, some with no obvious origin, which means the virus could be spreading undetected

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Cleaning up lakes and oceans

Environmental News Bits

Read the full story from Northwestern University. With a sponge that looks like one you might find in your kitchen, Northwestern University researchers have discovered how to effectively clean up oil, microplastics and phosphate pollution. This sponge could help clean up oil spills without harming marine life and prevent algae blooms from forming when phosphate … Continue reading Cleaning up lakes and oceans.

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Is DeepMind's Gato AI really a human-level intelligence breakthrough?

New Scientist

DeepMind has released what it calls a "generalist" AI called Gato that can perform 600 tasks – but does this mean it is truly intelligent?

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New report reviews Ontario’s poor track record on climate change over the past four years

Enviromental Defense

The report argues that the province is not on track to reach its 2030 emissions reduction target . Toronto | Traditional territories of the Huron-Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Chippewas and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation – A report released today from Environmental Defence reviews the Ontario government’s last four years of climate change policy and argues that Ontario is not on track to meet the province’s emissions reduction target, despite recent modelling released from

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Tree plantations with diverse species grow better than monocultures

New Scientist

Forests can produce more timber or store more carbon if they contain a mixture of tree species, according to an analysis of 273 studies around the world

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Pregnant people are at ‘greater risk’ in states hit hard by wildfire smoke, air pollution, new report shows

Environmental News Bits

Read the full story at The 19th. The American Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report shows wildfires and heat are making air quality worse for those living in the West.

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Tiny Möbius strip fashioned from carbon nanotube building blocks

New Scientist

We have always been able to make Möbius strips out of paper, but now it is possible to make tiny versions of these unusual geometric objects using the molecular building blocks of a carbon nanotube

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A megafire raged for 3 months. No one’s on the hook for its emissions.

Environmental News Bits

Read the full story in the Washington Post. Canada and some other nations argue that events such as wildfires and insect infestations are “natural disturbances” that are mostly beyond human control. Accounting for those emissions against their pledges under the Paris agreement would not only be unfair, they claim, but also obscure efforts to understand … Continue reading A megafire raged for 3 months.

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Waste wood chemically recycled to produce material stronger than steel

New Scientist

A treatment process can turn old pieces of wood into a new super-strong material called "healed wood"

Recycling 101
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Growing Sustainable Communities Conference — October 17-18, 2022

Environmental News Bits

October 17-18, 2022, Dubuque, IAVisit the conference website The Growing Sustainable Communities Conference offers innovation, education, inspiration, and collaboration on growing sustainable communities. Sessions feature presenters with a wide range of expertise, including representatives from federal, state, and local governments, along with business and academic leaders from across the country.

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Stem cells levitated using sound form spherical clumps

New Scientist

When researchers used sound to levitate stem cells they found that the cells formed into spheres.

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Albertsons unveils ESG framework, sets new sustainability targets

Environmental News Bits

Read the full story at Grocery Dive. Suzanne Long, the company’s head of sustainability and transformation, talked about how the grocery chain aims to hit new goals like a 47% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and challenges ahead.

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Canada faces a chemical pollution crisis — and the time to act is now

Eco Justice

This was originally published in the National Observer on May 4, 2022. “The most alarming of all assaults upon the environment is the contamination of the air, earth, rivers, and. Read more. The post Canada faces a chemical pollution crisis — and the time to act is now appeared first on Ecojustice.

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