The latest threat to food security
By Celia Bergin | Bloomberg Green From tractors stuck in muddy paddocks to raw sewage washing up from clogged waterways, extreme rain and flooding have wreaked havoc on British farmers this year. The soggy and turbulent weather – exacerbated by climate change – has stunted their ability to provide homegrown crops for bread, beer and […]
Bloomberg: Chasing $100 (Carbon removal)
For years, researchers and founders have said $100 per ton is the key target at which using machines to capture carbon from the ambient air becomes cost-competitive. But costs remain stubbornly high and now companies are beginning to move the goalposts, which risks undercutting trust in an industry the world will almost certainly need to limit global warming.
Bloomberg: Nuclear’s last hurrah
Vogtle marks the US country’s biggest nuclear advance this generation, it will be the last reactor built for a long time. Instead, the country is set to do something more prosaic — retrofit existing plants. Big reactors like Vogtle can take a decade or more to build, and none are on the drawing board in the US. The nuclear industry is still hopeful about the next generation of fission technology — small modular reactors that can be produced in a factory and assembled on site — but a series of setbacks mean few are likely to be in service before the end of the decade. It’s a stark contrast from China, which is on track to surpass the US and become the biggest nuclear-powered nation by the end of the decade. The Asian country may add as many as four reactors in 2024, and could soon be approving as many as 10 a year.
Bloomberg: Why older adults are feeling the heat more
When a heat dome shattered temperature records across the Western US and Canada in June 2021, the resulting fatalities exposed a pattern. In Portland, Oregon, and surrounding Multnomah County, 56 of the 72 people who died were aged 60 and up. In British Columbia, people 60-plus accounted for 555 of the 619 fatalities. Just over a year later, a sizzling June, July and August in England caused roughly 2,800 excess deaths among people 65 and older. More than 1,000 of them occurred over four days in late July.
Intense heat waves in recent years offer a stark warning of what’s at stake for humanity. The planet just endured its 12 hottest consecutive months on record, and this summer threatens to be hotter than ever. But those stakes are not experienced equally across age groups. Older adults are more at risk of experiencing dangerous health impacts during periods of intense heat.
“Older adults are one of the populations that we classically see as being more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, specifically to effects of extreme heat,” says Catharina Giudice, an emergency physician and climate change and human health fellow at Harvard’s FXB Center. “As we age, our ability to adapt to heat diminishes.”
How to Minimize Your Exposure to Microplastics
From the New York Times How to Minimize Your Exposure to Microplastics Furniture, clothing and food packaging can all shed tiny particles that can end up in our bodies. By Sarah Sloat June 7, 2024 Matthew Campen, a toxicologist at the University of New Mexico, wasn’t surprised when his team found microplastics in human testicles during […]
Boardrooms have a lot to learn about trees
If things move at that pace, disclosure on nature issues could be almost as common as climate reporting in less than six years. Nature, in other words, could be the new climate when it comes to priorities for the world’s biggest financial institutions.
JPMorgan bets on CO2 removal
JPMorgan Chase & Co. made waves in May when it announced it would purchase $200 million of carbon dioxide removal. Though it’s a relatively small investment for a bank JPMorgan’s size, it’s one of the largest corporate buys of carbon removal and could be a huge boon to the nascent industry to pull carbon out of the air. …
Iran argues the Taliban reduced the water supply from the Helmand province, while probably a victim of climate change. The disagreement has now become so heated that the Taliban has sent thousands of troops and hundreds of suicide bombers to the border, according to a person familiar with the matter, who says the group is prepared for war.